BAUAW NEWSLETTER, THURSDAY, AUGUST 16, 2018

44 Small Coffins

Yemeni children in the northern Yemeni city of Saada on Monday vented their anger during a mass funeral for children killed in an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition last week.

On August 9th, the Saudis bombed a school bus in Yemen! Dozens of young children have been killed, and many more wounded. The local health department chief in Saada province said 43 were killed and at least 61 injured. Most are children under the age of 10. The bombs that killed these children were made in the USA. For people living in the United States, the blood is on our hands!

Call the State Department ASAP at 202-647-6575 and press 8 for the comment line. Say something like: "I want the State Department to condemn the Saudis for bombing Yemeni children and I want the US to stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia."

Since the Saudis intervened militarily in an internal Yemeni conflict in 2015, they have been committing war crimes by repeatedly bombing civilians, including marketplaces, hospitals, schools and homes. According to Yemen Data Project, an independent group collecting data about the Yemen conflict, the Saudi-UAE coalition carried out 258 airstrikes on Yemen in June alone — nearly one-third of which hit residential areas.

Meanwhile, US weapons companies, particularly Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, make billions of dollars from this carnage. If you want to stop this global proliferation of weapons, join our #Divestfromwar team by contacting divest@codepink.org.

Let the US government know how disgusted you are. Call the State Department right now at 202-647-6575 and press 8. Let them know that you want them to condemn the Saudis for bombing Yemeni children and you insist that the US stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia.

Share now on Facebook and Twitter to spread the word!

With heavy hearts,
Ann, Ariel, Brienne, Eric, Jodie, Kirsten, Mark, Medea, Nancy, Natasha, Paki, Rita, Sarah, Sophia and Tighe

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The Song Of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist

by Graeme Darling

I've been working my arse off for years,
So that parasites can sit on theirs,
Counting all the money they have stolen from me.
These venal cannibals are legal criminals,
Cloaking their immorality in the joke of respectability.
It's the same story in every capitalist trap;
The most essential employees ( exploitees ) are treated like crap.
Decent folk on scrimping wages strain, scrub and mop,
While bloodsucking turds ride on their backs to the top.
You don't need to know the Communist Manifesto
To recognise injustice that's manifestly so.
This situation blights every organisation, I'm telling you true;
The higher the pay, the less work they do!
I'm sick and tired of being trod into the ground,
I'd turn this crazy pyramid the right way round.
The bosses in armchairs should clean toilets and stairs,
And experience an existence of struggling for subsistence.
Along with a decent minimum, I'd have a wage maximum.
Four to one should be the widest disparity;
Anything more is an utter obscenity.
This economic system of domination wreaks global exploitation;
Our training shoes are made by kids in sweatshops,
The Earth is ravaged for our phones and laptops.
We must side with the oppressed of every form and nation;
The universal kinship should be our motivation.

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists: a literary exposure of The Great Money Trick of capitalism

By Jenny Farrell, August 3, 2018

http://www.culturematters.org.uk/index.php/arts/fiction/item/2865-the-ragged-trousered-philanthropists-a-literary-exposure-of-capitalism

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"Give me your tired, your poor 

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. 

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 

Send these, the homeless. Tempest-tost to me, 

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

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Lezley McSpadden started a petition demanding Missouri Governor, Mike Parson, appoint a special prosecutor to reopen the case of Mike Brown.

Tell Missouri Gov. Mike Parson: 

Appoint a special prosecutor for Mike Brown's case!

Four years ago, my son, Mike Brown, was fatally gunned down by Officer Darren Wilson as he surrendered with arms in the air, pleading for his life. The world erupted and nothing has been the same since that nightmarish summer. My family and community took their outrage and pain to the streets. We made public pleas for the officer who murdered my son in broad daylight to be indicted and convicted. Yet, we were denied justice. My heart was broken over and over again. It has been 4 years, but I cannot forget. I will not stop fighting until Mike gets the justice he deserves.

Newly elected Missouri Governor, Mike Parson, has the opportunity to right this terrible wrong by appointing a special prosecutor to reopen my son's case. 

Sign now: Demand Missouri Governor Mike Parson appoints a special prosecutor to investigate Mike Brown's murder.

Over the course of three months after Mike was murdered, my family and I waited as St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney, Bob McCulloch presented my son's case to a grand jury before the police investigation was over. McCulloch completely ignored standard protocol for a Prosecuting Attorney by enlisting the help of a grand jury to determine the charges against Officer Darren Wilson. It was a setup from the beginning. McCulloch abdicated his role as a County Prosecutor by making a politically calculated move that would shield him from criticism from the police and the media. 

Here are the facts:

• McCulloch overwhelmed the jury with redundant and misleading information in an effort to manipulate the jury's confidence in Wilson's guilt.¹ 
• A lawsuit was filed by one of the grand jurors detailing challenges and exposing their experiences on the grand jury.²
• McCulloch admitted to allowing witnesses he knew were NOT telling the truth to testify before the grand jury. ³

The evidence is too significant to ignore. McCulloch thought he could avoid public scrutiny and accountability at the conclusion of this case. But he is wrong. I will not allow Bob McCulloch to get away with obstructing justice for my son. 

Tell Governor Parson: Appoint a special prosecutor for my son's case.

McCulloch cannot be allowed to get away with forgoing any and all responsibility as a high-level prosecutor. McCulloch's actions set a horrible precedent for prosecutors across the country. The primary charge for a prosecuting attorney is to fairly seek and achieve justice. McCulloch instead chose to make a political move with no regard for my family's pain. Furthermore, the relentless state-sanctioned violence against Black people has been nonstop since this nightmare began. Year after year, month after month, day after day, Black people remain targets for a bloodthirsty police force. This year alone, there have been over 600 incidents of deadly police encounters.⁴ Prosecutors are one of the few leverage points we have over the police. We must send a strong message to not only people in Missouri but to everyone around the country - killer cops will be held accountable.  

I am holding onto all hope that we get the justice we deserve. I believe in the resilience of our communities. And I believe that we will win. 

Will you help me get justice?

With love, 

Lezley McSpadden

References: 

1. https://act.colorofchange.org/go/77984?t=12&akid=15843%2E46097%2EOtfN0y

2. https://act.colorofchange.org/go/77985?t=14&akid=15843%2E46097%2EOtfN0y

3. https://act.colorofchange.org/go/77735?t=16&akid=15843%2E46097%2EOtfN0y

4. https://act.colorofchange.org/go/7854?t=18&akid=15843%2E46097%2EOtfN0y

Sign Here:

https://campaigns.organizefor.org/petitions/tell-da-mcculloch-reopen-the-local-investigation-of-mike-brown?akid=15843.46097.OtfN0y&rd=1&t=19

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With your help, we just might free him!

Rally To Free Mumia

Tuesday August 28th

4 pm at 14th & Broadway, Oakland CA

A Philadelphia court now has before it the evidence which could lead to Mumia's freedom. The evidence shows that Ronald Castille, of the District Attorney's office in 1982, intervened in the prosecution of Mumia for a crime he did not commit. Years later, Castille was a judge on the PA Supreme Court, where he sat in judgement over Mumia's case, and ruled against Mumia in every appeal! 

According to the US Supreme Court in the Williams ruling, this corrupt behavior was illegal!

But will the court rule to overturn all of Mumia's negative appeals rulings by the PA Supreme Court? If it does, Mumia would be free to appeal once again against his unfair conviction. If it does not, Mumia could remain imprisoned for life, without the possibility for parole, for a crime he did not commit.

The Philadelphia DA's office has turned over some, but not all, evidence of Castille's complicity in this frame-up prosecution. Call DA Krasner at: (215) 686-8000 to demand full disclosure!

• Mumia Abu-Jamal is innocent and framed!

• Mumia Abu-Jamal is a journalist censored off the airwaves!

• Mumia Abu-Jamal is victimized by cops, courts and politicians!

• Mumia Abu-Jamal stands for all prisoners treated unjustly!

• Courts have never treated Mumia fairly!

Will You Help Free Mumia?

The rally is called by the Free Mumia Coalition of the Bay Area.

Initial sponsor/participants include: Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal,

Workers World Party, Oakland Teachers for Mumia, Alameda County Peace and Freedom Party, and the Oscar Grant Committee. 

Endorse and participate in this action! Send your info to: cskinder44@gmail.com

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Right now, Californians have the opportunity to make waves not just in our state, but around the globe. Together, we can make California the first major economy in the world to stop all new fossil fuel development and embark on a racially, economically just transition to 100% clean energy.
In the past year Trump has launched unprecedented attacks on frontline communities, the Clean Power Plan, and the EPA. Meanwhile, Governor Brown would like to build his legacy around the climate - but he has yet to stand up to Big Oil and prioritize a clean energy future for all of us. Now Governor Brown is hosting the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco September 12-14 with public officials from around the world.
That's why we're planning the largest climate march the West Coast has ever seen – days before the Summit, as part of a global day of action. Sign up to march in San Francisco on September 8.
Eight weeks later, millions more will take these demands to the polls, making Climate, Jobs, and Justice deciding issues in the mid-term elections and beyond.
We won't be acting alone. Bay Resistance is working with the California Environmental Justice Alliance, Idle No More SF Bay, 350, People's Climate Movement, and hundreds of other labor, faith, environmental justice, and community groups.
Mark your calendars to Rise for Climate, Jobs & Justice on September 8th. Then sign up to paint the largest street mural ever with us that day, so elected officials hear our message loud and clear!
In solidarity,
Kung, Celi, Kimi, Irene, and the Bay Resistance team

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Kevin "Rashid" Johnson Self Portrait, 2013

To: Virginia Department of Corrections; Chief of VA Corrections Operations David Robinson

We call on the Virginia Department of Corrections to immediately release Kevin "Rashid" Johnson from solitary confinement and not to transfer him again out of state.
Why is this important?

Click here to sign this petition.

Kevin "Rashid" Johnson has been a Virginia prisoner (#1007485) since 1990. During his imprisonment, he became a human rights advocate and a journalist. His journalistic work in particular exposes abuses by prison administration and staff. His related steps toward litigation have resulted in his being "interstate compacted" or transferred back-and-forth between state prisons.

Currently, Rashid is being held in solitary confinement with no legitimate security justification at Sussex I State Prison in Virginia. Between 2012 and June of 2018, he has been transferred to prisons in three other states (Oregon, Texas, and Florida) before being returned to a different prison in Virginia. He was kept in solitary confinement in Texas and Florida, where he witnessed and suffered many acts of abuse by prison staff. All this, in reprisal for his political and journalistic activity.

Each state prison transfer has subjected Rashid to serious abuses -- the most recent being caged in a freezing cold cell without heat or a blanket for over a week. Over the years, Rashid has had his life threatened by corrections officers and endured explicit, violent retaliation for exercising his First Amendment right of protected free speech. 

Rashid expects to be transferred again soon and to be subjected to more serious conditions of extreme isolation.

Kevin Rashid Johnson does not advocate for violence or illegal activity and has not been charged with anything of the like during his imprisonment. He is not a threat to the Virginia Department of Corrections – he is an imprisoned journalist and human rights advocate – and should be released from solitary confinement immediately.

Help by adding your name here.

Solitary confinement has been increasingly recognized by courts and society as a torturous means of punishment. This punitive measure has been imposed on Kevin Johnson not because of any violent conduct on his part but because of his relentless exposure of abuses by prison officials, his willingness to challenge those abuses through the legal system, and his efforts to educate fellow prisoners and encourage them to challenge by peaceful means the unhealthy and humiliating conditions to which they are subjected. Using solitary confinement as a tool to silence someone who exposes prison abuses and advocates for prison reform is a human rights abuse and unconstitutional.

Click here to demand the immediate release of Kevin Johnson from solitary confinement and for the VADOC not to transfer him again out of state.

After signing the petition, please use the tools on the next webpage to share it with your friends.

This work is only possible with your financial support. Please chip in $3 now. 

-- The RootsAction.org Team

P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Frances Fox Piven, Lila Garrett, Phil Donahue, Sonali Kolhatkar, and many others.

Background:
> Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin "Rashid" Johnson featuring exchanges with an Outlaw 
> Kevin "Rashid" Johnson: The Rising Tide of Hate in Amerika: A Sign of the Times

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US Military Ordered to Host Massive Immigrant Concentration Camps We believe that all military personnel have a moral and legal obligation to refuse to comply with any order that involves collaboration with these camps. Actual concentration camps are in the process of development at military bases across the Southern United States. This isn't the first time in US history that facilities are being constructed and used to imprison large numbers of a persecuted minority in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities (the definition of a concentration camp). Previous examples of this are now infamous, such as the so-called Japanese internment camps. We're now on the brink of adding a new chapter to this dark history. Potential locations have been identified as: Tornillo Port of Entry, Texas - capacity 360 teenagers CURRENTLY ACTIVE Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas - capacity 45,000 Fort Bliss, Texas Dyess Air Force Base, Texas Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas - capacity 20,000 Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Air Station, California - capacity 47,000 Navy Outlying Field Wolf and Silverhill, Alabama - capacity 25,000 Yuma Marine Corps Air Station, Arizona Concord Naval Weapons Station, California - capacity 47,000 CANCELLED D O N A T E to support resistance Military officials, in response to pressured deadlines from the White House, have stated that these camps can begin to be operational by mid-August. Estimates are that capacity for another 10,000 people can be added each month. The White House's stated timeline of 45 days out from June 27th has local base commanders scrambling and caught unaware. In addition to providing the land, military personnel will construct the camps while private agencies will manage the operations. While this simplified explanation of operations seeks to minimize the military's role, it omits the endless capacities in which the armed forces will surely be facilitating the functioning of these camps such as with water, electricity, sewage, trash, and all of the other services to go allow with sustaining tens of thousands of immigrant detainees. The military is strictly prohibited from domestic policing as stated in the constitution yet military personnel are being drafted into doing just that with this rising domestic enforcement of immigration policy. Just because Trump/Sessions Co. declares a war on immigrants, doesn't make it an actual war. Being quite clearly an illegal order, the question is who will refuse to aid and abet? > > READ OUR FULL STATEMENT HERE

COURAGE TO RESIST ~ SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT!
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, California 94610 ~ 510-488-3559
www.couragetoresist.org ~ facebook.com/couragetoresist

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All Hands on Deck:  Get Malik Washington out of Ad-Seg!

Several weeks ago, friends and supporters of incarcerated freedom fighter Comrade Malik Washington were overjoyed to hear that he was getting released, finally, from Administrative Segregation (solitary confinement) at Eastham Unit in Texas--until TDCJ pulled a fast one, falsely claiming that he refused to participate in the Ad-Seg Transition Program to get him released back to general population.  

This is a complete lie:  Malik has been fighting to get out of Ad-Seg from the moment he was thrown in there two years ago on a bogus riot charge (which was, itself, retaliation for prison strike organizing and agitating against inhumane, discriminatory conditions).  

Here's what actually happened:  when Malik arrived at Ramsey Unit on June 21, he was assigned to a top bunk, which is prohibited by his medical restrictions as a seizure patient.  TDCJ had failed to transfer his medical restrictions records, or had erased them, and are now claiming no record of these restrictions, which have been on file and in place for the past ten years.  Malik wrote a detailed statement requesting to be placed on a lower bunk in order to avoid injury; later that night, he was abruptly transferred back to Ad-Seg at a new Unit (McConnell).  

Malik was told that Ramsey staff claimed he refused to participate in the Ad-Seg Transition program--this is NOT true, and he needs to be re-instated to the program immediately!  He also urgently needs his medical restrictions put back into his records!

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We are extremely concerned for Malik's safety, and urgently need the help of everyone reading this. Please take one or more of the following actions, and get a couple friends to do the same!

1. Call Senior Warden Phillip Sifuentes at Malik's current facility (McConnell) and tell them Keith Washington (#1487958) must be transferred out of McConnell and re-admitted to the Ad-Seg Transition Program!

Phone #: (361) 362-2300 (**048) 00 --  ask to be connected to the senior warden's office/receptionist--try to talk to someone, but also can leave a message. 

Sample Script: "Hello, I'm calling because I'm concerned about Keith H. Washington (#1487958) who was recently transferred to your facility.  I understand he was transferred there from Ramsey Unit, because he supposedly refused to participate in the Ad-Seg transition program there, but this is not true; Malik never refused to participate, and he needs to be re-admitted to the transition program immediately!  I am also concerned that his heat restrictions seem to have been removed from his records.  He is a seizure patient and has been on heat and work restriction for years, and these restrictions must be reinstated immediately."

Please let us know how your call goes at blueridgeABC@riseup.net

2. Flood TDCJ Executive Director Bryan Collier with calls/emails!  You can use the above phone script as a guide for emails.  

exec.director@tdcj.texas.gov

(936) 437-2101 / (936) 437-2123

3. Flood TDCJ with emails demanding that Malik's health restrictions and work restrictions be restored: Health.services@tdcj.texas.gov

You can use the call script above as a guide; you don't need to mention the Ad-Seg situation, but just focus on the need to restore his heat and work restrictions!

4. File a complaint with the Ombudsman's Office (the office in charge of investigating departmental misconduct); you can use the above phone script as a guide for emails.

Ombudsman@tdcj.texas.gov 

5. Write to Malik!  Every letter he receives lifts his spirit and PROTECTS him, because prison officials know he has people around him, watching for what happens to him.

Keith H. Washington

#1487958

McConnell Unit

3100 South Emily Drive

Beeville, TX 78103

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Listen to 'The Daily': Was Kevin Cooper Framed for Murder?

By Michael Barbaro, May 30, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/podcasts/the-daily/kevin-cooper-death-row.html?emc=edit_ca_20180530&nl=california-today&nlid=2181592020180530&te=1

Listen and subscribe to our podcast from your mobile device: Via Apple Podcasts | Via RadioPublic | Via Stitcher

The sole survivor of an attack in which four people were murdered identified the perpetrators as three white men. The police ignored suspects who fit the description and arrested a young black man instead. He is now awaiting execution.

On today's episode:

• Kevin Cooper, who has been on death row at San Quentin State Prison in California for three decades.

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Last week I met with fellow organizers and members of Mijente to take joint action at the Tornillo Port of Entry, where detention camps have been built and where children and adults are currently being imprisoned. 

I oppose the hyper-criminalization of migrants and asylum seekers. Migration is a human right and every person is worthy of dignity and respect irrespective of whether they have "papers" or not. You shouldn't have to prove "extreme and unusual hardship" to avoid being separated from your family. We, as a country, have a moral responsibility to support and uplift those adversely affected by the US's decades-long role in the economic and military destabilization of the home countries these migrants and asylum seekers have been forced to leave.

While we expected to face resistance and potential trouble from the multiple law enforcement agencies represented at the border, we didn't expect to have a local farm hand pull a pistol on us to demand we deflate our giant balloon banner. Its message to those in detention:

NO ESTÁN SOLOS (You are not alone).

Despite the slight disruption to our plan we were able to support Mijente and United We Dream in blocking the main entrance to the detention camp and letting those locked inside know that there are people here who care for them and want to see them free and reunited with their families. 

We are continuing to stand in solidarity with Mijente as they fight back against unjust immigration practices.Yesterday they took action in San Diego, continuing to lead and escalate resistance to unjust detention, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and to ICE. 

While we were honored to offer on-the-ground support we see the potential to focus the energy of our Drop the MIC campaign into fighting against this injustice, to have an even greater impact. Here's how:

1. Call out General Dynamics for profiteering of War, Militarization of the Border and Child and Family Detention (look for our social media toolkit this week);
2. Create speaking forums and produce media that challenges the narrative of ICE and Jeff Sessions, encouraging troops who have served in the borderlands to speak out about that experience;
3. Continue to show up and demand we demilitarize the border and abolish ICE.

Thank you for your vision and understanding of how militarism, racism, and capitalism are coming together in the most destructive ways. Help keep us in this fight by continuing to support our work.

About Face: Veterans Against the War is a 501(c)(3) charity,
and welcomes your tax deductible contributions

Please make a one time or monthly donation to sustain this work. 

In Solidarity,

Ramon Mejia
Field Organizer, About Face: Veterans Against the War

P.O. Box 3565, New York, NY 10008. All Right Reserved. | Unsubscribe

To ensure delivery of About Face emails please add webmaster@ivaw.org to your address book.

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Feds extend deadline for public comments on future draft

The feds initially provided only a few days for the public to submit comments regarding the future of the draft in the United States. This mirrored their process of announcing public hearings with only a few days notice. Due to pressure, they have extended the deadline for your online comments until September. 

They need to hear from us!

• It's time to end draft registration once and for all.
• Don't expand the draft to women. End it for everyone.
• No national service linked to the military--including immigration enforcement.
• Until the US is invaded by a foreign power, stop pretending that the draft is about anything other than empire.
• Submit your own comments online here.

As we have been reporting to you, a federal commission has been formed to address the future of draft registration in the United States and whether the draft should end or be extended.

The press release states "The Commission wants to learn why people serve and why people don't; the barriers to participation; whether modifications to the selective service system are needed; ways to increase the number of Americans in service; and more."

Public hearings are currently scheduled for the following cities. We encourage folks to attend these hearings by checking the commission's website for the actual dates and locations of these hearings (usually annouced only days before).

• 
  
• August 16/17, 2018: Memphis, TN
• September 19/21, 2018: Los Angeles, CA

For more background information, read our recent post "Why is the government soliciting feedback on the draft now?"

Courage to Resist Podcast: The Future of Draft Registration in the United States

We had draft registration resister Edward Hasbrouck on the Courage to Resistpodcast this week to explain what's going on. Edward talks about his own history of going to prison for refusing to register for the draft in 1983, the background on this new federal commission, and addresses liberal arguments in favor of involuntary service. Edward explains:

When you say, "I'm not willing to be drafted", you're saying, "I'm going to make my own choices about which wars we should be fighting", and when you say, "You should submit to the draft", you're saying, "You should let the politicians decide for you."
What's happening right now is that a National Commission … has been appointed to study the question of whether draft registration should be continued, whether it should be expanded to make women, as well as men register for the draft, whether a draft itself should be started, whether there should be some other kind of Compulsory National Service enacted.
The Pentagon would say, and it's true, they don't want a draft. It's not plan A, but it's always been plan B, and it's always been the assumption that if we can't get enough volunteers, if we get in over our head, if we pick a larger fight than we can pursue, we always have that option in our back pocket that, "If not enough people volunteer, we're just going to go go to the draft, go to the benches, and dragoon enough people to fight these wars."

The first real meaningful opportunity for a national debate 
about the draft in decades . . .

Courage to Resist -- Support the Troops Who Refuse to Fight!

484 Lake Park Ave. No. 41, Oakland, CA 94610

510-488-3559

www.couragetoresist.org

facebook.com/couragetoresist

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Incarceration Nation

Emergency Action Alert:

RELEASE DRAFTERS OF THE AGREEMENT TO END HOSTILITIES FROM SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

In October, 2017, the 2 year court monitoring period of the Ashker v. Governor settlement to limit solitary confinement in California expired. Since then, the four drafters of the Agreement to End Hostilities and lead hunger strike negotiators – Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa, Arturo Castellanos, George Franco, and Todd Ashker, have all been removed from general population and put in solitary in Administrative Segregation Units, based on fabricated information created by staff and/or collaborating "inmate informants." In Todd Ashker's case, he is being isolated "for his own protection," although he does not ask for nor desire to be placed in isolation for this or any reason. Sitawa has since been returned to population, but can still not have visitors.

Please contact CDCr Secretary Scott Kernan and Governor Edmund G. Brown and demand CDCr:

• Immediately release back into general population any of the four lead organizers still held in solitary

• Return other Ashker class members to general population who have been placed in Ad Seg 

• Stop the retaliation against all Ashker class members and offer them meaningful rehabilitation opportunities

Contact Scott Kernan. He prefers mailed letters to 1515 S Street, Sacramento 95811. If you call 916-324-7308, press 0 for the Communications office. Email matthew.westbrook@cdcr.ca.gov and cc: scott.kernan@cdcr.ca.gov

Contact Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr.,  c/o State Capitol, Suite 1173, Sacramento, CA 95814; Phone: (916) 445-2841; Fax: (916) 558-3160; Email: https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/gov39mail/

As a result of the administrative reviews established after the second prisoner hunger strike in 2011 and the Ashker settlement of 2015, California's SHU population has decreased from 3923 people in October 2012 to 537 in January 2018.  Returning these four men and many other hunger strikers back to solitary in the form of Ad Seg represents an intentional effort to undermine the Agreement to End Hostilities and the settlement, and return to the lock 'em up mentality of the 1980's.

Sitawa writes: "What many of you on the outside may not know is the long sordid history of CDCr's ISU [Institutional Services Unit]/ IGI [Institutional Gang Investigator]/Green Wall syndicate's [organized groups of guards who act with impunity] pattern and practice, here and throughout its prison system, of retaliating, reprisals, intimidating, harassing, coercing, bad-jacketing [making false entries in prisoner files], setting prisoners up, planting evidence, fabricating and falsifying reports (i.e., state documents), excessive force upon unarmed prisoners, [and] stealing their personal property . . ." 

CDCr officials are targeting the Ashker v. Governor class members to prevent them from being able to organize based on the Agreement to End Hostilities, and to obstruct their peaceful efforts to effect genuine changes - for rehabilitation, returning home, productively contributing to the improvement of their communities, and deterring recidivism.

Please help put a stop to this retaliation with impunity. Contact Kernan and Brown today:

Scott Kernan prefers mailed letters to 1515 S Street, Sacramento 95811. If you call 916-324-7308, press 0 for the Communications office. Email matthew.westbrook@cdcr.ca.gov and cc: scott.kernan@cdcr.ca.gov

Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr.,  c/o State Capitol, Suite 1173, Sacramento, CA 95814; Phone: (916) 445-2841; Fax: (916) 558-3160; Email: https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/gov39mail/

Read statements from the reps: 

Joint Statement from the 4 – Don't let CDCR reverse our Hunger Strike-won legal victory

Sitawa – Brutha Sitawa: CDCr and Soledad Prison retaliate with false reports to return me to solitary confinement

Arturo – Statement by Arturo Castellanos

Todd – We stand together so prisoners never have to go through the years of torture we did  (with Open Letter to Gov. Brown, CA legislators and CDCR Secretary Kernan)

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"There Was a Crooked Prez"
By Dr. Nayvin Gordon

There was a crooked Prez, and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked lawyer upon a crooked isle,
They bought a crooked election which caught a crooked mission,
And they both lived together in a little crooked prison.

April 28, 2018

"Trumpty Dumpty"
By Dr. Nayvin Gordon

Trumpty Dumpty sat on his wall,
Trumpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the kingpin's forces and all the KKKlansmem
Couldn't put Trumpty together again.

July 25, 2018

Dr. Gordon is a California Family Physician who has written many articles on health and politics.

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It is so beautiful to see young people in this country rising up to demand an end to gun violence. But what is Donald Trump's response? Instead of banning assault weapons, he wants to give guns to teachers and militarize our schools. But one of the reasons for mass school shootings is precisely because our schools are already militarized. Florida shooter, Nikolas Cruz, was trained by U.S. Army Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) program while he was in high school.

The Armed Services Committees in Congress can stop the JROTC programs in our schools. Tell Senator McCain and Representative Thornberry, of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, to take the war machine out our schools!

Yesterday, Divest from the War Machine coalition member, Pat Elder, was featured on Democracy Now discussing his recent article about the JROTC in our schools. The JROTC teaches children how to shoot weapons. It is often taught by retired soldiers who have no background in teaching. They are allowed to teach classes that are given at least equal weight as classes taught by certified and trained teachers. We are pulling our children away from classes that expand their minds and putting them in classes that teach them how to be killing machines. The JROTC program costs our schools money. It sends equipment. But, the instructors and facilities must be constructed and paid for by the school.

The JROTC puts our children's futures at risk. Children who participate in JROTC shooting programs are exposed to lead bullets from guns. They are at an increased risk when the shooting ranges are inside. The JROTC program is designed to "put a jump start on your military career." Children are funneled into JROTC to make them compliant and to feed the military with young bodies which are prepared to be assimilated into the war machine. Instead of funneling children into the military, we should be channeling them into jobs that support peace and sustainable development. 

Tell Senator McCain and Representative Thornberry to take the war machine out of our schools! The JROTC program must end immediately. The money should be directed back into classrooms that educate our children.

The Divest from the War Machine campaign is working to remove our money from the hands of companies that make a killing on killing. We must take on the systems that keep fueling war, death, and destruction around the globe. AND, we must take on the systems that are creating an endless cycle of children who are being indoctrinated at vulnerable ages to become the next killing machine.  Don't forget to post this message on Facebook and Twitter.

Onward in divestment,

Ann, Ariel, Brienne, Jodie, Kelly, Kirsten, Mark, Medea, Nancy, Natasha, Paki, Sarah, Sophia and Tighe

P.S. Do you want to do more? Start a campaign to get the JROTC out of your school district or state. Email divest@codepink.org and we'll get you started!

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October 20-21, 2018

Cindy Sheehan and the Women's March on the Pentagon

A movement not just a protest

By Whitney Webb

WASHINGTON—In the last few years, arguably the most visible and well-publicized march on the U.S. capital has been the "Women's March," a movement aimed at advocating for legislation and policies promoting women's rights as well as a protest against the misogynistic actions and statements of high-profile U.S. politicians. The second Women's March, which took place this past year, attracted over a million protesters nationwide, with 500,000 estimated to have participated in Los Angeles alone.

However, absent from this women's movement has been a public antiwar voice, as its stated goal of "ending violence" does not include violence produced by the state. The absence of this voice seemed both odd and troubling to legendary peace activist Cindy Sheehan, whose iconic protest against the invasion and occupation of Iraq made her a household name for many.

Sheehan was taken aback by how some prominent organizers of this year's Women's March were unwilling to express antiwar positions and argued for excluding the issue of peace entirely from the event and movement as a whole. In an interview with MintPress, Sheehan recounted how a prominent leader of the march had told her, "I appreciate that war is your issue Cindy, but the Women's March will never address the war issue as long as women aren't free."

War is indeed Sheehan's issue and she has been fighting against the U.S.' penchant for war for nearly 13 years. After her son Casey was killed in action while serving in Iraq in 2004, Sheehan drew international media attention for her extended protest in front of the Bush residence in Crawford, Texas, which later served as the launching point for many protests against U.S. military action in Iraq.

Sheehan rejected the notion that women could be "free" without addressing war and empire. She countered the dismissive comment of the march organizer by stating that divorcing peace activism from women's issues "ignored the voices of the women of the world who are being bombed and oppressed by U.S. military occupation."

Indeed, women are directly impacted by war—whether through displacement, the destruction of their homes, kidnapping, or torture. Women also suffer uniquely and differently from men in war as armed conflicts often result in an increase in sexual violence against women.

For example, of the estimated half-a-million civilians killed in the U.S. invasion of Iraq, many of them were women and children. In the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, the number of female casualties has been rising on average over 20 percent every year since 2015. In 2014 alone when Israel attacked Gaza in "Operation Protective Edge," Israeli forces, which receives $10 million in U.S. military aid every day, killed over two thousand Palestinians—half of them were women and children. Many of the casualties were pregnant women, who had been deliberately targeted.

Given the Women's March's apparent rejection of peace activism in its official platform, Sheehan was inspired to organize another Women's March that would address what many women's rights advocates, including Sheehan, believe to be an issue central to promoting women's rights.

Dubbed the "Women's March on the Pentagon," the event is scheduled to take place on October 21—the same date as an iconic antiwar march of the Vietnam era—with a mission aimed at countering the "bipartisan war machine." Though men, women and children are encouraged to attend, the march seeks to highlight women's issues as they relate to the disastrous consequences of war.

The effort of women in confronting the "war machine" will be highlighted at the event, as Sheehan remarked that "women have always tried to confront the war-makers," as the mothers, daughters, sisters and wives of the men and women in the military, as well as those innocent civilians killed in the U.S.' foreign wars. As a result, the push for change needs to come from women, according to Sheehan, because "we [women] are the only ones that can affect [the situation] in a positive way." All that's missing is an organized, antiwar women's movement.

Sheehan noted the march will seek to highlight the direct relationship between peace activism and women's rights, since "no woman is free until all women are free" and such "freedom also includes the freedom from U.S. imperial plunder, murder and aggression"that is part of the daily lives of women living both within and beyond the United States. Raising awareness of how the military-industrial complex negatively affects women everywhere is key, says Sheehan, as "unless there is a sense of international solidarity and a broader base for feminism, then there aren't going to be any solutions to any problems, [certainly not] if we don't stop giving trillions of dollars to the Pentagon."

Sheehan also urged that, even though U.S. military adventurism has long been an issue and the subject of protests, a march to confront the military-industrial complex is more important now than ever: "I'm not alarmist by nature but I feel like the threat of nuclear annihilation is much closer than it has been for a long time," adding that, despite the assertion of some in the current administration and U.S. military, "there is no such thing as 'limited' nuclear war." This makes "the need to get out in massive numbers" and march against this more imperative than ever.

Sheehan also noted that Trump's presidency has helped to make the Pentagon's influence on U.S. politics more obvious by bringing it to the forefront: "Even though militarism had been under wraps [under previous presidents], Trump has made very obvious the fact that he has given control of foreign policy to the 'generals.'"

Indeed, as MintPress has reported on several occasions, the Pentagon—beginning in March of last year—has been given the freedom to "engage the enemy" at will, without the oversight of the executive branch or Congress. As a result, the deaths of innocent civilians abroad as a consequence of U.S. military action has spiked. While opposing Trump is not the focus of the march, Sheehan opined that Trump's war-powers giveaway to the Pentagon, as well as his unpopularity, have helped to spark widespread interest in the event.

Different wings of the same warbird

Sheehan has rejected accusations that the march is partisan, as it is, by nature, focused on confronting the bipartisan nature of the military-industrial complex. She told MintPress that she has recently come under pressure owing to the march's proximity to the 2018 midterm elections—as some have ironically accused the march's bipartisan focus as "trying to harm the chances of the Democrats" in the ensuing electoral contest.

In response, Sheehan stated that: 

"Democrats and Republicans are different wings of the same warbird. We are protesting militarism and imperialism. The march is nonpartisan in nature because both parties are equally complicit. We have to end wars for the planet and for the future. I could really care less who wins in November."

She also noted that even when the Democrats were in power under Obama, nothing was done to change the government's militarism nor to address the host of issues that events like the Women's March have claimed to champion.

"We just got finished with eight years of a Democratic regime," Sheehan told MintPress. "For two of those years, they had complete control of Congress and the presidency and a [filibuster-proof] majority in the Senate and they did nothing" productive except to help "expand the war machine." She also emphasized that this march is in no way a "get out the vote" march for any political party.

Even though planning began less than a month ago, support has been pouring in for the march since it was first announced on Sheehan's website, Cindy Sheehan Soapbox. Encouraged by the amount of interest already received, Sheehan is busy working with activists to organize the events and will be taking her first organizing trip to the east coast in April of this year. 

In addition, those who are unable to travel to Washington are encouraged to participate in any number of solidarity protests that will be planned to take place around the world or to plan and attend rallies in front of U.S. embassies, military installations, and the corporate headquarters of war profiteers.

Early endorsers of the event include journalists Abby Martin, Mnar Muhawesh and Margaret Kimberley; Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly; FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley; and U.S. politicians like former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. Activist groups that have pledged their support include CodePink, United National Antiwar Coalition, Answer Coalition, Women's EcoPeace and World Beyond War.

Though October is eight months away, Sheehan has high hopes for the march. More than anything else, though, she hopes that the event will give birth to a "real revolutionary women's movement that recognizes the emancipation and liberation of all peoples—and that means [freeing] all people from war and empire, which is the biggest crime against humanity and against this planet." By building "a movement and not just a protest," the event's impact will not only be long-lasting, but grow into a force that could meaningfully challenge the U.S. military-industrial complex that threatens us all. God knows the world needs it.

For those eager to help the march, you can help spread the word through social media by joining the march's Facebook page or following the march'sTwitter account, as well as by word of mouth. In addition, supporting independent media outlets—such as MintPress, which will be reporting on the march—can help keep you and others informed as October approaches.

Whitney Webb is a staff writer forMintPress News who has written for several news organizations in both English and Spanish; her stories have been featured on ZeroHedge, theAnti-Media, and21st Century Wire among others. She currently lives in Southern Chile.

—MPN News, February 20, 2018

https://www.mintpressnews.com/cindy-sheehan-and-the-womens-march-on-the-pentagon-a-movement-not-just-a-protest/237835/

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Major George Tillery

MAJOR TILLERY FILES NEW LEGAL PETITION SEX FOR LIES AND MANUFACTURED TESTIMONY

April 25, 2018-- The arrest of two young men in Starbucks for the crime of "sitting while black," and the four years prison sentence to rapper Meek Mill for a minor parole violation are racist outrages in Philadelphia, PA that made national news in the past weeks. Yesterday Meek Mills was released on bail after a high profile defense campaign and a Pa Supreme Court decision citing evidence his conviction was based solely on a cop's false testimony. These events underscore the racism, frame-up, corruption and brutality at the core of the criminal injustice system. Pennsylvania "lifer" Major Tillery's fight for freedom puts a spotlight on the conviction of innocent men with no evidence except the lying testimony of jailhouse snitches who have been coerced and given favors by cops and prosecutors. Sex for Lies and Manufactured Testimony For thirty-five years Major Tillery has fought against his 1983 arrest, then conviction and sentence of life imprisonment without parole for an unsolved 1976 pool hall murder and assault. Major Tillery's defense has always been his innocence. The police and prosecution knew Tillery did not commit these crimes. Jailhouse informant Emanuel Claitt gave lying testimony that Tillery was one of the shooters. Homicide detectives and prosecutors threatened Claitt with a false unrelated murder charge, and induced him to lie with promises of little or no jail time on over twenty pending felonies, and being released from jail despite a parole violation. In addition, homicide detectives arranged for Claitt, while in custody, to have private sexual liaisons with his girlfriends in police interview rooms. In May and June 2016, Emanuel Claitt gave sworn statements that his testimony was a total lie, and that the homicide cops and the prosecutors told him what to say and coached him before trial. Not only was he coerced to lie that Major Tillery was a shooter, but to lie and claim there were no plea deals made in exchange for his testimony. He provided the information about the specific homicide detectives and prosecutors involved in manufacturing his testimony and details about being allowed "sex for lies". In August 2016, Claitt reaffirmed his sworn statements in a videotape, posted on YouTube and on JusticeforMajorTillery.org. Without the coerced and false testimony of Claitt there was no evidence against Major Tillery. There were no ballistics or any other physical evidence linking him to the shootings. The surviving victim's statement naming others as the shooters was not allowed into evidence. The trial took place in May 1985 during the last days of the siege and firebombing of the MOVE family Osage Avenue home in Philadelphia that killed 13 Black people, including 5 children. The prosecution claimed that Major Tillery was part of an organized crime group, and falsely described it as run by the Nation of Islam. This prejudiced and inflamed the majority white jury against Tillery, to make up for the absence of any evidence that Tillery was involved in the shootings. This was a frame-up conviction from top to bottom. Claitt was the sole or primary witness in five other murder cases in the early 1980s. Coercing and inducing jailhouse informants to falsely testify is a standard routine in criminal prosecutions. It goes hand in hand with prosecutors suppressing favorable evidence from the defense. Major Tillery has filed a petition based on his actual innocence to the Philadelphia District Attorney's Larry Krasner's Conviction Review Unit. A full review and investigation should lead to reversal of Major Tillery's conviction. He also asks that the DA's office to release the full police and prosecution files on his case under the new  "open files" policy. In the meantime, Major Tillery continues his own investigation. He needs your support. Major Tillery has Fought his Conviction and Advocated for Other Prisoners for over 30 Years The Pennsylvania courts have rejected three rounds of appeals challenging Major Tillery's conviction based on his innocence, the prosecution's intentional presentation of false evidence against him and his trial attorney's conflict of interest. On June 15, 2016 Major Tillery filed a new post-conviction petition based on the same evidence now in the petition to the District Attorney's Conviction Review Unit. Despite the written and video-taped statements from Emanuel Claitt that that his testimony against Major Tillery was a lie and the result of police and prosecutorial misconduct, Judge Leon Tucker dismissed Major Tillery's petition as "untimely" without even holding a hearing. Major Tillery appealed that dismissal and the appeal is pending in the Superior Court. During the decades of imprisonment Tillery has advocated for other prisoners challenging solitary confinement, lack of medical and mental health care and the inhumane conditions of imprisonment. In 1990, he won the lawsuit, Tillery v. Owens, that forced the PA Department of Corrections (DOC) to end double celling (4 men to a small cell) at SCI Pittsburgh, which later resulted in the closing and then "renovation" of that prison. Three years ago Major Tillery stood up for political prisoner and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal and demanded prison Superintendent John Kerestes get Mumia to a hospital because "Mumia is dying."  For defending Mumia and advocating for medical treatment for himself and others, prison officials retaliated. Tillery was shipped out of SCI Mahanoy, where Mumia was also held, to maximum security SCI Frackville and then set-up for a prison violation and a disciplinary penalty of months in solitary confinement. See, Messing with Major by Mumia Abu-Jamal. Major Tillery's federal lawsuit against the DOC for that retaliation is being litigated. Major Tillery continues as an advocate for all prisoners. He is fighting to get the DOC to establish a program for elderly prisoners. Major Tillery Needs Your Help: Well-known criminal defense attorney Stephen Patrizio represents Major pro bonoin challenging his conviction. More investigation is underway. We can't count on the district attorney's office to make the findings of misconduct against the police detectives and prosecutors who framed Major without continuing to dig up the evidence. Major Tillery is now 67 years old. He's done hard time, imprisoned for almost 35 years, some 20 years in solitary confinement in max prisons for a crime he did not commit. He recently won hepatitis C treatment, denied to him for a decade by the DOC. He has severe liver problems as well as arthritis and rheumatism, back problems, and a continuing itchy skin rash. Within the past couple of weeks he was diagnosed with an extremely high heartbeat and is getting treatment. Major Tillery does not want to die in prison. He and his family, daughters, sons and grandchildren are fighting to get him home. The newly filed petition for Conviction Review to the Philadelphia District Attorney's office lays out the evidence Major Tillery has uncovered, evidence suppressed by the prosecution through all these years he has been imprisoned and brought legal challenges into court. It is time for the District Attorney's to act on the fact that Major Tillery is innocent and was framed by police detectives and prosecutors who manufactured the evidence to convict him. Major Tillery's conviction should be vacated and he should be freed. Major Tillery and family HOW YOU CAN HELP Financial Support—Tillery's investigation is ongoing. He badly needs funds to fight for his freedom. Go to JPay.com; code: Major Tillery AM9786 PADOC Tell Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner: The Conviction Review Unit should investigate Major Tillery's case. He is innocent. The only evidence at trial was from lying jail house informants who now admit it was false. Call: 215-686-8000 or Email: justice@phila.gov Write to: Major Tillery AM 9786 SCI Frackville 1111 Altamont Blvd. Frackville, PA 17931 For More Information, Go To: JusticeForMajorTillery.org Call/Write: Kamilah Iddeen (717) 379-9009, Kamilah29@yahoo.com Rachel Wolkenstein (917) 689-4009, RachelWolkenstein@gmail.com

Obtain Updates: www.justice4majortillery.info

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Free Leonard Peltier!

On my 43rd year in prison I yearn to hug my grandchildren.

By Leonard Peltier

Art by Leonard Peltier

Write to:

Leonard Peltier 89637-132 

USP Coleman I 

P.O. Box 1033 

Coleman, FL 33521

Donations can be made on Leonard's behalf to the ILPD national office, 116 W. Osborne Ave, Tampa, FL 33603

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Whistleblower Reality Winner Accepts Responsibility for Helping Expose Attacks on Election Systems

After more than a year jailed without bail, NSA whistleblower Reality Winner has changed her plea to guilty. In a hearing this past Tuesday, June 26th, she stated - "all of these actions I did willfully." If this new plea deal is approved by the judge, she will have a maximum prison sentence of five years as opposed to the ten years she faced under the Espionage Act.

Speaking to the family's relief due to this plea deal, Reality's mother Billie sharedthat "At least she knows it's coming to an end." "Her plea agreement reflects the conclusion of Winner and her lawyers," stated Betsy Reed, "that the terms of this deal represent the best outcome possible for her in the current environment."

In a recent campaign status update Jeff Paterson, Project Director of Courage to Resist, reiterated the importance of continuing to support Reality and her truth-telling motives. "We cannot forget this Trump Administration political prisoner. Reality needs us each to do what we can to resist." Although Courage to Resist is no longer hosting Reality's defense fund, online monetary support can be contributed to the Winner family directly at standwithreality.org. Reality's inspiring artwork also available for purchase at realitywinnerart.com.

"It's so important to me as her mom to know just all the people that are writing her, who are touching her, who are reaching out to her giving her that strength and that support . . . Please don't stop that" said Billie Winner-Davis. "And we'll always make sure that everybody knows where she's at, where you can write to her, how you can help her. You know, we'll continue to do that. Just follow us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter. We will continue to do that for her."

Reality will remain at the Lincoln County jail near Augusta, Georgia, for the next few months pending the sentencing hearing and hopefully will then be transferred to a facility closer to her family.

COURAGE TO RESIST ~ SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT!
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, California 94610 ~ 510-488-3559
www.couragetoresist.org ~ facebook.com/couragetoresist

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Working people are helping to feed the poor hungry corporations! 

Charity for the Wealthy!

GOP Tax Plan Would Give 15 of America's Largest Corporations a $236B Tax Cut: Report

By Jake Johnson, December 18, 2017

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/12/18/gop-tax-plan-would-give-15-americas-largest-corporations-236b-tax-cut-report

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1) Stephen Miller Is an Immigration Hypocrite I Know Because I'm His Uncle.
By David S. Glosser, August 13, 2018
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/13/stephen-miller-is-an-immigration-hypocrite-i-know-because-im-his-uncle-219351

Stephen Miller

Let me tell you a story about Stephen Miller and chain migration.

It begins at the turn of the 20th century, in a dirt-floor shack in the village of Antopol, a shtetl of subsistence farmers in what is now Belarus. Beset by violent anti-Jewish pogroms and forced childhood conscription in the Czar's army, the patriarch of the shack, Wolf-Leib Glosser, fled a village where his forebears had lived for centuries and took his chances in America.

He set foot on Ellis Island on January 7, 1903, with $8 to his name. Though fluent in Polish, Russian and Yiddish, he understood no English. An elder son, Nathan, soon followed. By street corner peddling and sweatshop toil, Wolf-Leib and Nathan sent enough money home to pay off debts and buy the immediate family's passage to America in 1906. That group included young Sam Glosser, who with his family settled in the western Pennsylvania city of Johnstown, a booming coal and steel town that was a magnet for other hardworking immigrants. The Glosser family quickly progressed from selling goods from a horse and wagon to owning a haberdashery in Johnstown run by Nathan and Wolf-Leib to a chain of supermarkets and discount department stores run by my grandfather, Sam, and the next generation of Glossers, including my dad, Izzy. It was big enough to be listed on the AMEX stock exchange and employed thousands of people over time. In the span of some 80 years and five decades, this family emerged from poverty in a hostile country to become a prosperous, educated clan of merchants, scholars, professionals, and, most important, American citizens. 

What does this classically American tale have to do with Stephen Miller? Well, Izzy Glosser is his maternal grandfather, and Stephen's mother, Miriam, is my sister.

I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, an educated man who is well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family's life in this country.

I shudder at the thought of what would have become of the Glossers had the same policies Stephen so coolly espouses— the travel ban, the radical decrease in refugees, the separation of children from their parents, and even talk of limiting citizenship for legal immigrants — been in effect when Wolf-Leib made his desperate bid for freedom. The Glossers came to the U.S. just a few years before the fear and prejudice of the "America first" nativists of the day closed U.S. borders to Jewish refugees. Had Wolf-Leib waited, his family likely would have been murdered by the Nazis along with all but seven of the 2,000 Jews who remained in Antopol. I would encourage Stephen to ask himself if the chanting, torch-bearing Nazis of Charlottesville, whose support his boss seems to court so cavalierly, do not envision a similar fate for him.

Like other immigrants, our family's welcome to the USA was not always a warm one, but we largely had the protection of the law, there was no state-sponsored violence against us, no kidnapping of our male children, and we enjoyed good relations with our neighbors. True, Jews were excluded from many occupations, couldn't buy homes in some towns, couldn't join certain organizations or attend certain schools or universities, but life was good. As in past generations, there were hate mongers who regarded the most recent groups of poor immigrants as scum, rapists, gangsters, drunks and terrorists, but largely the Glosser family was left alone to live our lives and build the American dream. Children were born, synagogues founded, and we thrived. This was the miracle of America. 

Acting for so long in the theater of right-wing politics, Stephen and Trump may have become numb to the resultant human tragedy and blind to the hypocrisy of their policy decisions. After all, Stephen's is not the only family with a chain immigration story in the Trump administration. Trump's grandfather is reported to have been a German migrant on the run from military conscription to a new life in the United States, and his mother fled the poverty of rural Scotland for the economic possibilities of New York City. (Trump's in-laws just became citizens on the strength of his wife's own citizenship.) 

These facts are important not only for their grim historical irony but because vulnerable people are being hurt. They are real people, not the ghoulish caricatures portrayed by Trump. When confronted by the deaths and suffering of thousands, our senses are overwhelmed, and the victims become statistics rather than people. I meet these statistics one at a time through my volunteer service as a neuropsychologist for the Philadelphia affiliate of HIAS (formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), the global nonprofit that protects refugees and helped my family more than 100 years ago. I will share the story of one such man I have met in the hopes that my nephew might recognize elements of our shared heritage.

In the early 2000s, Joseph (not his real name) was conscripted at the age of 14 to be a soldier in Eritrea and sent to a remote desert military camp. Officers there discovered a Bible under his pillow which aroused their suspicion that he might belong to a foreign evangelical sect that would claim his loyalty and sap his will to fight. Joseph was actually a member of the state-approved Coptic church but was nonetheless immediately subjected to torture. "They smashed my face into the ground, tied my hands and feet together behind my back, stomped on me, and hung me from a tree by my bonds while they beat me with batons for the others to see."

Joseph was tortured for 20 consecutive days before being taken to a military prison and crammed into a dark unventilated cell with 36 other men, little food and no proper hygiene. Some died, and in time Joseph was stricken with dysentery. When he was too weak to stand, he was taken to a civilian clinic where he was fed by the medical staff. Upon regaining his strength, he escaped to a nearby road where a sympathetic driver took him north through the night to a camp in Sudan where he joined other refugees. Joseph was on the first leg of a journey that would cover thousands of miles and almost 10 years.

Before Donald Trump had started his political ascent promulgating the false story that Barack Obama was a foreign-born Muslim, while my nephew, Stephen, was famously recovering from the hardships of his high school cafeteria in Santa Monica, Joseph was a child on his own in Sudan in fear of being deported back to Eritrea to face execution for desertion. He worked any job he could get, saved his money and made his way through Sudan. He endured arrest and extortion in Libya. He returned to Sudan, then kept moving to Dubai, Brazil and eventually to a southern border crossing into Texas, where he sought asylum. In all of the countries he traveled through during his ordeal, he was vulnerable, exploited and his status was "illegal." But in the United States, he had a chance to acquire the protection of a documented immigrant.

Today, at 30, Joseph lives in Pennsylvania and has a wife and child. He is a smart, warm, humble man of great character who is grateful for every day of his freedom and safety. He bears emotional scars from not seeing his parents or siblings since he was 14. He still trembles, cries and struggles for breath when describing his torture, and he bears physical scars as well. He hopes to become a citizen, return to work and make his contribution to America. His story, though unique in its particulars, is by no means unusual. I have met Central Americans fleeing corrupt governments, violence and criminal extortion; a Yemeni woman unable to return to her war-ravaged home country and fearing sexual mutilation if she goes back to her Saudi husband; and an escaped kidnap-bride from central Asia. 

Trump wants to make us believe that these desperate migrants are an existential threat to the United States; the most powerful nation in world history and a nation made strong by immigrants. Trump and my nephew both know their immigrant and refugee roots. Yet, they repeat the insults and false accusations of earlier generations against these refugees to make them seem less than human. Trump publicly parades the grieving families of people hurt or killed by migrants, just as the early Nazis dredged up Jewish criminals to frighten and enrage their political base to justify persecution of all Jews. Almost every American family has an immigration story of its own based on flight from war, poverty, famine, persecution, fear or hopelessness. Most of these immigrants became workers, entrepreneurs, scientists and soldiers of America. 

Most damning is the administration's evident intent to make policy that specifically disadvantages people based on their ethnicity, country of origin and religion. No matter what opinion is held about immigration, any government that specifically enacts law or policy on that basis must be recognized as a threat to all of us. Laws bereft of justice are the gateway to tyranny. Today others may be the target, but tomorrow it might just as easily be you or me. History will be the judge, but in the meantime the normalization of these policies is rapidly eroding the collective conscience of America. Immigration reform is a complex issue that will require compassion and wisdom to bring the nation to a just solution, but the politicians who have based their political and professional identity on ethnic demonization and exclusion cannot be trusted to do so. As free Americans, and descendants of immigrants and refugees, we have the obligation to exercise our conscience by voting for candidates who will stand up for our highest national values and not succumb to our lowest fears.

Dr. David S. Glosser is a retired neuropsychologist: formerly a member of the Neurology faculties of Boston University School of Medicine and Jefferson Medical College.

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2) Monsanto Ordered to Pay $289 Million in Roundup Cancer Trial
By Reuters, August 10, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/business/monsanto-roundup-cancer-trial.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbusiness&action=click&contentCollection=business&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=6&pgtype=sectionfront

Monsanto, the maker of Roundup, was found liable in a lawsuit filed by a school groundskeeper who said the company's weedkillers caused his cancer.

A California jury on Friday found Monsanto liable in a lawsuit filed by a school groundskeeper who said the company's weedkillers, including Roundup, caused his cancer. The company was ordered pay $289 million in damages.

The case of the groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, 46, was the first lawsuit to go to trial alleging that Roundup and other glyphosate-based weedkillers cause cancer. Monsanto, a unit of the German conglomerate Bayer following a $62.5 billion acquisition, faces more than 5,000 similar lawsuits across the United States.

Mr. Johnson's lawyers said he developed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma after using Roundup and Ranger Pro, another Monsanto glyphosate herbicide, as part of his job as a pest control manager for a California county school system.

Dewayne Johnson, 46, was awarded $39 million in compensatory and $250 million in punitive damages.

The jury in Superior Court of California in San Francisco deliberated for three days before finding that Monsanto had failed to warn Mr. Johnson and other consumers of the cancer risks posed by its weedkillers.

It awarded $39 million in compensatory and $250 million in punitive damages.

Monsanto said in a statement that it would appeal the verdict. More than 800 scientific studies and reviews "support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr. Johnson's cancer," the company said.

The lawsuit, filed in 2016, was put on the fast track for trial because of the severity of Mr. Johnson's cancer. His doctors said he was unlikely to live past 2020.

Brent Wisner, a lawyer for Mr. Johnson, said in a statement that jurors had seen for the first time internal company documents "proving that Monsanto has known for decades that glyphosate and specifically Roundup could cause cancer." He called on Monsanto to "put consumer safety first over profits."

in September 2017, the Environmental Protection Agency concluded a decades-long assessment of glyphosate risks and found that the chemical was not likely carcinogenic to humans. But the World Health Organization's cancer arm in 2015 classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans."

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3) Here's the Video of Schoolchildren Just Moments Before Being Massacred by U.S.-Backed Saudi Bombing
By Jake Johnson, August 13, 2018
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/08/13/heres-video-schoolchildren-just-moments-being-massacred-us-backed-saudi-bombing

"By backing the Saudi coalition's war in Yemen with weapons, aerial refueling, and targeting assistance, the United States is complicit in the atrocities taking place there," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote on Facebook. (Photo: CNN/Screengrab)

As funeral ceremonies for the 51 Yemenis—including 40 young children—massacred by the latest U.S.-backed Saudi bombing took place in the war-torn district of Saada on Monday, cellphone footage captured by one of the murdered children just moments before the coalition's airstrike hit shows the dozens of kids excitedly gathered on a bus for a long-awaited field trip celebrating their graduation from summer school.

According to CNN—which obtained and published the footage on Monday—most of the children on the bus were killed by the Saudi airstrike less than an hour after the video was captured.

This is just the latest horrific attack on civilians by the Saudi-led coalition, which has received explicit military and political backing from the United States. Images sent to Al-Jazeera by Yemen's Houthi rebels suggest that Mark-82 bomb—which is manufactured by the massive American military contractor Raytheon—was used in the strike, though the photos have yet to be independently verified.

According to the Houthi Health Ministry, 79 people in total and 56 children were wounded in the attack, which quickly drew condemnation and demands for an independent investigation from international humanitarian groups, the United Nations, and a small number of American lawmakers.

"By backing the Saudi coalition's war in Yemen with weapons, aerial refueling, and targeting assistance, the United States is complicit in the atrocities taking place there," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote on Facebook. "We must end our support for this war and focus our efforts on a U.N.-brokered cease-fire and a diplomatic resolution."

As Al-Jazeera notes, the U.S. "has been the biggest supplier of military equipment to Riyadh, with more than $90 billion of sales recorded between 2010 and 2015."

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has enthusiastically continued the long-standing U.S. policy of backing the Saudi regime no matter how many innocent people it slaughters in Yemen, openly applauding the kingdom for buying so much American weaponry.

Ahead of Monday's funerals for the dozens of children murdered by the Saudi-led coalition last week, images on social media showed Yemenis digging graves in preparation for the ceremonies.

As Philly.com's Will Bunch noted in a column on Sunday, the Saudi-led coalition's school bus bombing forced the corporate media—which has almost completely ignored the humanitarian crisis in Yemen—"to pay at least a little bit of attention."

"It shouldn't have taken so long," Bunch wrote. "This blood is on America's hands, as long as we keep sending the bombs that kill so many Yemenis, and as long as we give the Saudis our unqualified diplomatic support in a messy regional conflict. And yet there's been no public debate about the murky U.S. role out of this, and no clarification from the White House or the Pentagon over what we hope to accomplish by our support of the mayhem."

"If the American people can take back control of what is being done in our name," Bunch concluded, "maybe we can finally begin washing away this spreading moral stain."

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4) A Crucial Moment for Reproductive Freedom
By Margaret Viggiani, August 2018
http://socialism.com/fs-article/a-crucial-moment-for-reproductive-freedom/

Alarm over the future of reproductive rights is at a fever pitch in the USA. Attacks abound on state and federal levels. Supreme Court Justice Kennedy's decision to retire has raised the threat that Roe v. Wade, the ruling that legalized abortion nationwide, will be overturned. Trump has already announced his top picks for the vacant position — a veritable who's who of hard-right jurists.

The stakes are high. Regardless of legal status, women will seek ways to end unwanted pregnancies. The question is whether the procedure is safe and medically sound, or dangerous and holding the threat of criminal prosecution.

Current assaults. The White House, federal courts and state legislatures are working overtime to demolish what remains of reproductive choice. In April, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to an Arkansas law that effectively bans medication-based abortions. That means women will need to go to Little Rock for a surgical abortion. In June, U.S. District Court Judge Beth Phillips refused to block a law that severely impacts access to abortion medications across Missouri. That same month, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a California law that required anti-abortion "crisis pregnancy centers" to post signs declaring they did not provide a full range of reproductive care.

One of Trump's first acts as president was to reinstate the international gag rule. It bans any non-profit group working in other countries and receiving federal funding from even discussing abortion. In March, Trump upped the ante by threatening a domestic gag rule.

In April, the White House announced intentions to shift the content of the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program to abstinence-only. Immigrant youth are also being targeted. According to the International Business Times, Scott Lloyd, a long-time abortion foe and head of the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement, acknowledged he had instructed that minors in immigration detention who were seeking abortion be taken to anti-abortion pregnancy centers.

State legislatures are pushing the anti-choice agenda with a vengeance. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 57 percent of U.S. women ages 15-44 live in states that are "hostile or extremely hostile to abortion rights." Only 30 percent of such women live in supportive states.

Recently, Mississippi passed a 15-week ban on abortion and Louisiana followed suit. Iowa passed an even more stringent 6-week ban. Adding to the injury, a group of fetus fetishists recently asked the Iowa courts to eliminate exceptions for rape, incest and fetal abnormality.

Wanted: militant feminist movement. Emboldened by Trump, misogynist white nationalists have hit the streets in a far-right assault that includes abortion. But mainstream feminist groups like NOW and NARAL Pro-Choice America have not upped their response. They continue to push "vote Democrat" and "vote pro-choice" as the ultimate solutions. The reality is that Democrats and Republicans have for decades worked together to curtail abortion rights through parental consent laws, age restrictions, and bans on late-term procedures, not to mention cutting the social safety net that poor families rely on.

Radical Women (RW) has always defended Planned Parenthood from anti-choice attacks, but we have critical differences on how to save reproductive rights. RW believes in rallying the community in massive numbers, applying the lessons of the civil rights movement to educate, agitate and organize at a grass-roots level. This is what produced recent victories in Ireland, where 66 percent of the voters said "Yes" to legalized abortion in May. And in Argentina, where years of organizing just won a major step toward legalization (see article on page 4).

In the U.S., the massive women's marches of 2017 and 2018 have yet to translate into a coordinated nationwide movement. But there has been more local organizing as the far-right stakes out clinics for attack.

When Patriot Prayer called a rally against Planned Parenthood in Kent, Wash., 11 groups came together to oppose them. The ad hoc coalition called a demonstration to "Defend women's reproductive freedom" and "Say 'No!' to misogynists and white supremacists."

Participants included Radical Women, Seattle Clinic Defense, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Seattle Gay News, Freedom Socialist Party, Dyke Community Activists, Organized Workers for Labor Solidarity, ANSWER, Steve Hoffman Campaign for U.S. Senate, International Socialist Organization and Workers World Party. Across the street, the General Defense Committee of the Industrial Workers of the World and anarchists gathered. The feminists mobilized hundreds to confront about two dozen opponents.

RW Organizer Gina Petry, who helped plan the event, stated: "We outlasted and outshouted the anti-abortionists. Our side was invigorated by wide collaboration and the large turnout. We vowed to continue working together to stop the white supremacists."

Planned Parenthood leaders, misguidedly, opposed its own defenders. In an email to Radical Women, the clinic security manager expressed their policy to "discourage protesters as well as counter protesters so we treat them alike." Some staffers made it clear they disagreed with this tactic. But the policy encouraged police to treat clinic defenders as the problem, dousing them with pepper spray. Radical Women is protesting to the clinic and the police.

What about Roe v. Wade? How will community organizing save it? The U.S. Supreme Court has never been a hotbed of liberalism, not even when it decided Roe v. Wade. But courts and legislators are sensitive to the pressure of public opinion.

The massive feminist movement of the 1960s and '70s changed the discourse on reproductive justice. Regardless of who is the next justice, that kind of intensity is needed now. It's time to turn up the heat.

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5) Fentanyl Used to Execute Nebraska Inmate, in a First for U.S.
By Mitch Smith,  August 14, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/us/carey-dean-moore-nebraska-execution-fentanyl.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront

Carey Dean Moore

LINCOLN, Neb. — Prison officials in Nebraska used fentanyl, the powerful opioid at the center of the nation's overdose epidemic, to help execute a convicted murderer on Tuesday. The lethal injection at the Nebraska State Penitentiary was the first time fentanyl had been used to carry out the death penalty in the United States.

The execution, Nebraska's first since 1997, represented a stunning political turnabout in a state where lawmakers voted only three years ago to ban capital punishment.

The condemned man, Carey Dean Moore, 60, had been convicted of killing two Omaha taxi drivers decades ago and did not seek a reprieve in his final months. But two pharmaceutical companies tried to block the execution in federal court, claiming their reputations would suffer if the killing proceeded.

The companies could not prove that their products would be used, however, because prison officials refused to identify the suppliers of the drugs to be administered to Mr. Moore. So the execution was allowed to continue.

Mr. Moore's death, using a previously untested four-drug cocktail, could open a new method for states that have increasingly struggled to find execution drugs as suppliers have clamped down on how their products are used. But the unprecedented use of fentanyl in an execution chamber raised new ethical concerns amid a national opioid crisis that has led to an onslaught of fatal overdoses.

Scott R. Frakes, the director of the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, said the first of the four drugs was administered at 10:24 a.m. local time, and Mr. Moore was declared dead at 10:47 a.m.

Before the execution on Tuesday morning, as a steady rain fell in Lincoln, local television journalists filmed reports from the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant across the street from the prison. Police officers stood along the road, and prison guards were on duty in the watch tower. The prison yard, alongside a major highway, appeared empty.

"We really don't know how fentanyl is going to play out in an execution, as opposed to an opioid overdose," Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University who has studied capital punishment, said in an interview on Monday. "Simply because people are dying as a result of fentanyl doesn't mean they're dying in a way that would be considered acceptable as a form of execution."

Nebraska has a particularly complicated history with capital punishment. Before Tuesday, the state had not carried out an execution since 1997 and had never killed someone by lethal injection. (The state most recently had used an electric chair.)

A bipartisan mix of Nebraska legislators voted in 2015 to outlaw capital punishment, citing a mix of moral and financial reasons, and then overrode Gov. Pete Ricketts's veto. But Mr. Ricketts, a Republican, and his wealthy family bankrolled a ballot referendum that gave voters a chance to decide the issue. Nebraskans voted overwhelmingly in 2016 to reinstate the death penalty.

Mr. Moore, who killed Reuel Van Ness Jr. and Maynard Helgeland in 1979, was among the longest-serving death-row inmates in the country. Mr. Moore had seen previous execution dates come and go and had expressed frustration with the repeated delays. People close to him had said he was ready to die.

In recent weeks, the state's Roman Catholic bishops, citing a new teaching by Pope Francis that capital punishment is wrong in all cases, urged church members to contact state officials and try to block the execution. Mr. Ricketts is Catholic, but he said the pope's decision would not change his stance on Mr. Moore's execution.

"While I respect the pope's perspective, capital punishment remains the will of the people and the law of the state of Nebraska," Mr. Ricketts said in a statement earlier this month. "It is an important tool to protect our corrections officers and public safety. The state continues to carry out the sentences ordered by the court."

Eleven more men remain on Nebraska's death row, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in some pending cases. Still, it is unclear when and if the state will kill another inmate. The state's supply of one of the drugs used in the cocktail to kill Mr. Moore expires at the end of this month, and another expires in October.

Scott Frakes, the Nebraska corrections director, said in a court filing this month that execution drugs "are difficult, if nearly impossible, to obtain," and that he has no replacement sources.

The four-drug cocktail contained diazepam, a tranquilizer; fentanyl citrate, a powerful synthetic opioid that can block breathing and knock out consciousness; cisatracurium besylate, a muscle relaxant; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

"A temporary restraining order or injunction," Mr. Frakes said in the court filing seeking to carry out Mr. Moore's execution, "would more than likely have the effect of changing Nebraska's final death sentence into a de facto sentence of life in prison for Carey Dean Moore."

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6) School Choice Is the Enemy of Justice
By Erin Aubry Kaplan, August 14, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/opinion/charter-schools-desegregation-los-angeles.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region

LOS ANGELES — In 1947, my father was one of a small group of black students at the largely white Fremont High School in South Central Los Angeles. The group was met with naked hostility, including a white mob hanging blacks in effigy. But such painful confrontations were the nature of progress, of fulfilling the promise of equality that had driven my father's family from Louisiana to Los Angeles in the first place.

In 1972, I was one of a slightly bigger group of black students bused to a predominantly white elementary school in Westchester, a community close to the beach in Los Angeles. While I didn't encounter the overt hostility my father had, I did experience resistance, including being barred once from entering a white classmate's home because, she said matter-of-factly as she stood in the doorway, she didn't let black people (she used a different word) in her house.

Still, I believed, even as a fifth grader, that education is a social contract and that Los Angeles was uniquely suited to carry it out. Los Angeles would surely accomplish what Louisiana could not.

I was wrong. Today Los Angeles and California as a whole have abandoned integration as the chief mechanism of school reform and embraced charter schools instead.

Fourth- and fifth-grade students at a public charter school in San Jose, Calif., in 2014.

This has happened all over the country, of course, but California has led the way — it has 630,000 students in charter schools, more than any other state, and the Los Angeles Unified School District has more than 154,000 of them. Charters are associated with choice and innovation, important elements of the good life that California is famous for. In a deep-blue state, that good life theoretically includes diversity, and many white liberals believe charters can achieve that, too. After all, a do-it-yourself school can do anything it wants.

But that's what makes me uneasy, the notion that public schools, which charters technically are, have a choice about how or to what degree to enforce the social contract. There are many charter success stories, I know, and many make a diverse student body part of their mission. But charters as a group are ill suited to the task of justice because they are a legacy of failed justice.

Integration did not happen. The effect of my father's and my foray into those white schools was not more equality but white flight. Largely white schools became largely black, and Latino schools were stigmatized as "bad" and never had a place in the California good life.

It's partly because diversity can be managed — or minimized — that charters have become the public schools that liberal whites here can get behind. This is in direct contrast to the risky, almost revolutionary energy that fueled past integration efforts, which by their nature created tension and confrontation. But as a society — certainly as a state — we have lost our appetite for that engagement, and the rise of charters is an expression of that loss.

Choice and innovation sound nice, but they also echo what happened after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, when entire white communities in the South closed down schools to avoid the dread integration.

This kind of racial avoidance has become normal, embedded in the public school experience. It seems particularly so in Los Angeles, a suburb-driven city designed for geographical separation. What looks like segregation to the rest of the world is, to many white residents, entirely neutral — simply another choice.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that in 2010, researchers at the Civil Rights Project at U.C.L.A. found, in a study of 40 states and several dozen municipalities, that black students in charters are much more likely than their counterparts in traditional public schools to be educated in an intensely segregated setting. The report says that while charters had more potential to integrate because they are not bound by school district lines, "charter schools make up a separate, segregated sector of our already deeply stratified public school system."

In a 2017 analysis, data journalists at The Associated Press found that charter schools were significantly overrepresented among the country's most racially isolated schools. In other words, black and brown students have more or less resegregated within charters, the very institutions that promised to equalize education.

This has not stemmed the popular appeal of charters. School board races in California that were once sleepy are now face-offs between well-funded charter advocates and less well-funded teachers' unions. Progressive politicians are expected to support charters, and they do. Gov. Jerry Brown, who opened a couple of charters during his stint as mayor of Oakland, vetoed legislation two years ago that would have made charter schools more accountable. Antonio Villaraigosa built a reputation as a community organizer who supported unions, but as mayor of Los Angeles, he started a charter-like endeavor called Partnership for Los Angeles Schools.

This year, charter advocates got their pick for school superintendent, Austin Beutner. And billionaires like Eli Broad have made charters a primary cause: In 2015, an initiative backed in part by Mr. Broad's foundation outlined a $490 million plan to place half of the students in the Los Angeles district into charters by 2023.

I live in Inglewood, a chiefly black and brown city in Los Angeles County that's facing gentrification and the usual displacement of people of color. Traditional public schools are struggling to stay open as they lose students to charters. But those who support the gentrifying, which includes a new billion-dollar N.F.L. stadium in the heart of town, see charters as part of the improvements. They see them as progress.

Despite all this, I continue to believe in the social contract that in my mind is synonymous with public schools and public good. I continue to believe that California will at some point fulfill that contract. I believe this most consciously when I go back to Westchester and reflect on my formative two years in school there. In the good life there is such a thing as a good fight, and it is not over.

Erin Aubry Kaplan, a contributing opinion writer, teaches writing at Antioch University, Los Angeles, and is the author of "Black Talk, Blue Thoughts and Walking the Color Line" and "I Heart Obama."

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7) Aretha Franklin, the ‘Queen of Soul,’ Dies at 76
By Jon Pareles, August 16, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/obituaries/aretha-franklin-dead.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Ms. Franklin in an undated photo. Gospel was only part of her vocabulary, which also drew on jazz, the blues, rock and, later, opera.

Aretha Franklin, universally acclaimed as the “Queen of Soul” and one of America’s greatest singers in any style, died on Thursday at her home in Detroit. She was 76.

The cause was advanced pancreatic cancer, her publicist, Gwendolyn Quinn, said.

In her indelible late-1960s hits, Ms. Franklin brought the righteous fervor of gospel music to secular songs that were about much more than romance. Hits like “Do Right Woman — Do Right Man,” “Think,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” and “Chain of Fools” defined a modern female archetype: sensual and strong, long-suffering but ultimately indomitable, loving but not to be taken for granted.

When Ms. Franklin sang “Respect,” the Otis Redding song that became her signature, it was never just about how a woman wanted to be greeted by a spouse coming home from work. It was a demand for equality and freedom and a harbinger of feminism, carried by a voice that would accept nothing less.

Ms. Franklin had a grandly celebrated career. She placed more than 100 singles in the Billboard charts, including 17 Top 10 pop singles and 20 No. 1 R&B hits. She received 18 competitive Grammy Awards, along with a lifetime achievement award in 1994. She was the first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in 1987, its second year. She sang at the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009, at pre-inauguration concerts for Jimmy Carter in 1977 and Bill Clinton in 1993, and at both the Democratic National Convention and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral in 1968.

Succeeding generations of R&B singers, among them Natalie Cole, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Alicia Keys, openly emulated her. When Rolling Stone magazine put Ms. Franklin at the top of its 2010 list of the “100 Greatest Singers of All Time,” Mary J. Blige paid tribute:

“Aretha is a gift from God. When it comes to expressing yourself through song, there is no one who can touch her. She is the reason why women want to sing.”

Ms. Franklin’s airborne, constantly improvisatory vocals had their roots in gospel. It was the music she grew up on in the Baptist churches where her father, the Rev. Clarence LaVaughn Franklin, known as C. L., preached. She began singing in the choir of her father’s New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, and soon became a star soloist.

Gospel shaped her quivering swoops, her pointed rasps, her galvanizing buildups and her percussive exhortations; it also shaped her piano playing and the call-and-response vocal arrangements she shared with her backup singers. Through her career in pop, soul and R&B, Ms. Franklin periodically recharged herself with gospel albums: “Amazing Grace” in 1972 and “One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism,” recorded at the New Bethel church, in 1987.

But gospel was only part of her vocabulary. The playfulness and harmonic sophistication of jazz, the ache and sensuality of the blues, the vehemence of rock and, later, the sustained emotionality of opera were all hers to command.

Ms. Franklin did not read music, but she was a consummate American singer, connecting everywhere. In an interview with The New York Times in 2007, she said her father had told her that she “would sing for kings and queens.”

“Fortunately I’ve had the good fortune to do so,” she added. “And presidents.”

For all the admiration Ms. Franklin earned, her commercial fortunes were uneven, as her recordings moved in and out of sync with the tastes of the pop market.

After her late-1960s soul breakthroughs and a string of pop hits in the early 1970s, the disco era sidelined her. But Ms. Franklin had a resurgence in the 1980s with her album “Who’s Zoomin’ Who” and its Grammy-winning single, “Freeway of Love,” and she followed through in the next decades as a kind of soul singer emeritus: an indomitable diva and a duet partner conferring authenticity on collaborators like George Michael and Annie Lennox. Her latter-day producers included stars like Luther Vandross and Lauryn Hill, who had grown up as her fans. Onstage, Ms. Franklin proved herself night after night, forever keeping audiences guessing about what she would do next and marveling at how many ways her voice could move.

Mother Sang Gospel

Aretha Louise Franklin was born in Memphis on March 25, 1942. Her mother, Barbara Siggers Franklin, was a gospel singer and pianist. Her parents separated when Aretha was 6, leaving her in her father’s care. Her mother died four years later after a heart attack.

C. L. Franklin’s career as a pastor led the family from Memphis to Buffalo and then to Detroit, where he joined the New Bethel Baptist Church in 1946. With his dynamic sermons broadcast nationwide and recorded, he became known as “the man with the golden voice.”

The Franklin household was filled with music. Mr. Franklin welcomed visiting gospel and secular musicians: the jazz pianist Art Tatum, the singer Dinah Washington, and gospel figures like the young Sam Cooke (before his turn to pop), Clara Ward, Mahalia Jackson and James Cleveland, who became Ms. Franklin’s mentors.

Future Motown artists like Smokey Robinson and Diana Ross lived nearby. Aretha’s sisters, Erma and Carolyn, also sang and wrote songs, among them “Piece of My Heart,” a song Erma Franklin recorded before Janis Joplin did, and Carolyn Franklin’s “Ain’t No Way,” a hit for Aretha. The sisters also provided backup vocals for Ms. Franklin on songs like “Respect.” From 1968 until his death in 1989, her brother Cecil was her manager.

Ms. Franklin started teaching herself to play the piano — there were two in the house — before she was 10, picking up songs from the radio and from Ms. Ward’s gospel records. Around the same time, she stood on a chair and sang her first solos in church. In David Ritz’s biography “Respect,” Cecil Franklin recalled that his sister could hear a song once and immediately sing and play it. “Her ear was infallible,” he said.

At 12, Ms. Franklin joined her father on tour, sharing concert bills with Ms. Ward and other leading gospel performers. Recordings of a 14-year-old Ms. Franklin performing in churches — playing piano and belting gospel standards to ecstatic congregations — were released in 1956. Her voice was already spectacular.

But Ms. Franklin became pregnant, dropped out of high school and had a child two months before her 13th birthday. She had a second child at 15 by a different father.

Complete information about survivors was not immediately available.

In the late 1950s, following the example of Sam Cooke — who left the gospel group the Soul Stirrers and started a solo career with “You Send Me” in 1957 — Ms. Franklin decided to build a career in secular music. Leaving her children with family in Detroit, she moved to New York City. John Hammond, the Columbia Records executive who had championed Billie Holiday and would also bring Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen to the label, signed the 18-year-old Ms. Franklin in 1960.

Mr. Hammond saw Ms. Franklin as a jazz singer tinged with blues and gospel. He recorded her with the pianist Ray Bryant’s small groups in 1960 and 1961 for her first studio album, “Aretha,” which sent two singles to the R&B Top 10: “Today I Sing the Blues” and “Won’t Be Long.” The annual critics’ poll in the jazz magazine DownBeat named her the new female vocal star of the year.

Her next album, “The Electrifying Aretha Franklin,” featured jazz standards and used big-band orchestrations; it gave her a Top 40 pop single in 1961 with “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody.”

Her later Columbia albums were scattershot, veering in and out of jazz, pop and R&B. Ms. Franklin met and married Ted White in 1961 and made him her manager; he shares credit on some of the songs Ms. Franklin wrote in the 1960s, including “Dr. Feelgood.” In 1964 they had a son, Ted White Jr., who would lead his mother’s band decades later. (She divorced Mr. White, after a turbulent marriage, in 1969.)

Mr. White later said his strategy was for Ms. Franklin to switch styles from album to album, to reach a variety of audiences, but the results — a Dinah Washington tribute, jazz standards with strings, remakes of recent pop and soul hits — left radio stations and audiences confused. When her Columbia contract expired in 1966, Ms. Franklin signed with Atlantic Records, which specialized in rhythm and blues.

Pivot Point in Muscle Shoals

Jerry Wexler, the producer who brought Ms. Franklin to Atlantic, persuaded her to record in the South. Ms. Franklin spent one night in January 1967 at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala., recording with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section, the backup band behind dozens of 1960s soul hits. Ms. Franklin shaped the arrangements and played piano herself, as she had rarely done in the studio since her first gospel recordings.

The new songs were rooted in blues and gospel. And the combination finally ignited the passion in Ms. Franklin’s voice, the spirit that was only glimpsed in many of her Columbia recordings.

The Muscle Shoals session broke down, with just one song complete and another half-finished, in a drunken dispute between a trumpet player and Mr. White. He and Ms. Franklin returned to New York. Yet when the song completed in that session, “I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You),” was released as a single, it reached No. 1 on the R&B charts and No. 9 on the pop charts, eventually selling more than a million copies.

Some of the Muscle Shoals musicians came north to complete the album in New York. And with that album, “I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You,” the supper-club singer of Ms. Franklin’s Columbia years made way for the “Queen of Soul.”

“We were simply trying to compose real music from my heart,” Ms. Franklin said in her autobiography, “Aretha: From These Roots,” written with Mr. Ritz and published in 1999.

“Respect,” recorded on Valentine’s Day 1967 and released in April, was a bluesy demand for dignity, as well as an instruction to “give it it to me when you get home” and “take care of T.C.B.” (The letters stood for “taking care of business.”) Her version of the song resonated beyond individual relationships to the civil rights, counterculture and feminism movements.

“It was the need of the nation, the need of the average man and woman in the street, the businessman, the mother, the fireman, the teacher — everyone wanted respect,” she wrote in her autobiography.

“Respect” surged to No. 1 and would bring Ms. Franklin her first two Grammy Awards, for best R&B recording and best solo female R&B performance (an award she won each succeeding year through 1975). By the end of 1968, she had made three more albums for Atlantic and had seven more Top 10 pop hits, including “Baby I Love You,” “Chain of Fools,” “Think” (written by Ms. Franklin and Mr. White) and “I Say a Little Prayer.”

But amid the success, Ms. Franklin’s personal life was in upheaval. Songs like “Think,” “Chain of Fools” and “The House That Jack Built” hinted at marital woes that she kept private. She fought with her husband and manager, Mr. White, who had roughed her up in public, a 1968 Time magazine cover story noted, and whose musical decisions had grown increasingly counterproductive. Before their divorce in 1969, she dropped him as manager and eventually filed restraining orders against him. She also went through a period of heavy drinking before getting sober in the 1970s.

Her early 1970s pop hits, like her own “Day Dreaming” and the Stevie Wonder composition “Until You Come Back to Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do),” took a lighter, more lilting tone, a contrast to her rip-roaring 1972 gospel album, “Amazing Grace,” which sold more than two million copies, making it one of the best-selling gospel albums of all time. Ms. Franklin recorded steadily through the 1970s and continued to have rhythm-and-blues hits like “Angel,” a No. 1 R&B single in 1973 written by her sister Carolyn.

But her pop presence waned in the disco era, and her 1976 album, “Sparkle,” written and produced by Curtis Mayfield, was her last gold album of the decade. It included “Something He Can Feel,” a No. 1 R&B single. When Ms. Franklin made a showstopping appearance as a waitress in the 1980 movie “The Blues Brothers,” she revived an oldie: her 1968 song “Think.”

Ms. Franklin was married to the actor Glynn Turman from 1978 to 1984, and the divorce was amicable enough for her to sing the title song for the television series “A Different World” when Mr. Turman joined its cast in 1988.

Ms. Franklin’s father was shot in the head during a break-in at his home in 1979 and stayed in a coma until his death in 1984. During those years Ms. Franklin shuttled monthly between her home in California and Detroit. As her marriage to Mr. Turman was ending, she moved back to Detroit in 1982.

Ms. Franklin was deeply traumatized in 1983 by a ride through turbulence in a two-engine plane that was “dipsy-doodling all over the place,” she recalled. She gave up flying, traveling instead by bus to her shows, and ended all international performances. In recent years she had hoped to desensitize herself and fly again, “even if it’s just one more time,” she said in 2007.

Divas and Duets

Ms. Franklin changed labels in 1980, to Arista. There, her albums mingled remakes of 1960s and ’70s hits — “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Everyday People,” “Hold On, I’m Comin’,” “What a Fool Believes” — with contemporary songs.

Luther Vandross’s production of her 1982 album, “Jump to It,” restored her to the R&B charts, where it reached No. 1. But Ms. Franklin did not reconquer the pop charts until 1985, with the million-selling, synthesizer-driven album “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?” The singles “Freeway of Love” and “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?,” both produced by Narada Michael Walden, placed Ms. Franklin back in the pop Top 10, and a collaboration with Eurythmics, “Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves,” reached No. 18.

Ms. Franklin had her last No. 1 pop hit with “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me),” a duet with George Michael from her 1986 album, “Aretha.” Her 1987 gospel album, “One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism,” featured performances with her sisters Carolyn and Erma, and with Mavis Staples of the Staple Singers, as well as preaching from the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Cecil Franklin.

Ms. Franklin recorded more duets (with Elton John, Whitney Houston and James Brown) on “Through the Storm” in 1989, and she made another attempt to connect with youth culture on “What You See Is What You Sweat” in 1991. She released only a few songs — singles and soundtrack material — through the mid-1990s.

But she rallied in 1998 with televised triumphs. She made a noteworthy appearance at the 1998 Grammy Awards, substituting at the last minute for the ailing Luciano Pavarotti by singing a Puccini aria, “Nessun dorma,” to overwhelming effect. On “Divas Live,” for VH1, she steamrollered her fellow stars in duets, among them Mariah Carey and Celine Dion. In the meantime, she had been working with younger producers again for her 1998 album, “A Rose Is Still a Rose”; the title track, produced by Lauryn Hill, reached No. 26 on the pop chart. After her 2003 album, “So Damn Happy,” Ms. Franklin left Arista, saying she would record independently.

Arista released the collection “Jewels in the Crown: All-Star Duets With the Queen” in 2007, including a previously unreleased song with the “American Idol” winner Fantasia. Ms. Franklin said in 2007 that she had completed an album to be called “Aretha: A Woman Falling Out of Love,” with songs she had written and produced herself, but it was not released until 2011, on her own Aretha’s Records label. In 2008 she released a holiday album, “This Christmas.”

Ms. Franklin stayed musically ambitious. She repeatedly announced plans to study classical piano and finally learn to sight-read music at the Juilliard School, but she never enrolled. She received several honorary degrees, including from Yale, Princeton and Harvard.

In 2014, Ms. Franklin returned to a major label, RCA Records, with her executive producer from her Arista years, Clive Davis. “Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics” presented her remakes of proven material: songs that had been hits for Adele, Alicia Keys, Chaka Khan, Gloria Gaynor, Barbra Streisand and Sinead O’Connor. It reached No. 13 on the Billboard album chart and No. 1 on the R&B chart.

She had five decades of recordings behind her, but listeners still thrilled to her voice.

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8)  44 Small Graves Stir Questions About U.S. Policy in Yemen
By Shuaib Almosawa, Ben Hubbard and Eric Schmitt, August 15, 2018
"American military leaders, exasperated by strikes that have killed civilians at markets, weddings and funerals, insist that the United States is not a party to the war. Human rights organizations say the United States cannot deny its role, given that it has sold billions of dollars in weaponry to allied coalition states, provided them with intelligence and refueled their bombers in midair. ...At the same time, however, the defense contractor Raytheon has lobbied lawmakers and the State Department to allow it to sell 60,000 precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in deals worth billions of dollars."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/world/middleeast/saudi-yemen-bomb-bus-children.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

Yemeni children in the northern Yemeni city of Saada on Monday vented their anger during a mass funeral for children killed in an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition last week.

DAHYAN, Yemen — The boys crammed into the bus, their thin bodies packed three to a seat, with latecomers jammed in the aisle. They fidgeted with excitement about the day’s field trip, talking so loudly that a tall boy struggling to get their attention put his hands over his ears and yelled.

Hours later, most of them were dead.

During a stop for snacks in the poor village of Dahyan in northern Yemen, an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition of Arab nations hit nearby, blasting the bus into a jagged mass of twisted metal and scattering its human cargo — wounded, bleeding and dead — in the street below, according to witnesses and parents.

“My leg is bent,” cried a young boy covered in blood, examining his damaged limb. “A jet hit us,” he said in a video taken at the scene after the airstrike.

Yemeni health officials said 54 people were killed, 44 of them children, and many more were wounded.

Yemen’s conflict began in 2014 when Houthi rebels, who are aligned with Iran, seized control of the capital, Sana, and sent the government into exile. In March 2015, Saudi Arabia — Iran’s chief rival for power and influence in the Middle East — formed a coalition of Arab nations and launched a military intervention aimed at restoring Yemen’s government. It has so far failed to do so.

The Aug. 9 attack was particularly shocking, even for a war in which children have been the primary victims, suffering through one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with rampant malnutrition and outbreaks of cholera. The war had killed more than 10,000 people before the United Nations stopped updating the death toll two years ago.

The strike also revived questions about the coalition’s tactics and the United States’ support for the campaign.

American military leaders, exasperated by strikes that have killed civilians at markets, weddings and funerals, insist that the United States is not a party to the war. Human rights organizations say the United States cannot deny its role, given that it has sold billions of dollars in weaponry to allied coalition states, provided them with intelligence and refueled their bombers in midair.

Congress has shown increasing concern about the war recently. A defense policy bill that President Trump signed on Monday included a bipartisan provision that requires Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to certify that Saudi Arabia and its close ally the United Arab Emirates — the two countries leading the coalition — are taking steps to prevent civilian deaths.

If Mr. Pompeo cannot provide the certification, the legislation prohibits the American refueling of coalition jets.

Mr. Pompeo raised the bus attack by phone this week with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, the kingdom’s defense minister. And Defense Secretary Jim Mattis dispatched a three-star general to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, to press the Saudis to investigate the bus bombing.

In the wake of this attack, individual members of Congress have gone further, calling on the military to clarify its role in airstrikes on Yemen and investigate whether the support for those strikes could expose American military personnel to legal jeopardy, including for war crimes.

At the same time, however, the defense contractor Raytheon has lobbied lawmakers and the State Department to allow it to sell 60,000 precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in deals worth billions of dollars.

The Saudi-led coalition says it works to avoid civilian casualties and accuses its enemies, the Houthis, of using civilians as human shields.

The day of the strike, the coalition’s spokesman, Col. Turki al-Malki, said coalition forces had hit a “legitimate military target” after a Houthi missile killed one person and injured 11 in southern Saudi Arabia, which borders Yemen.

“All of the elements that were in the bus were targeted,” Colonel Malki told the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya network, saying they included “operators and planners.”

The next day, the coalition said the bombing had been referred for internal investigation after reports that “a bus was subject to collateral damage.”

Human rights groups say that they doubt the coalition would find itself at fault in any investigation.

“The Saudis aren’t learning,” said Larry L. Lewis, a former State Department official who visited Saudi Arabia five times in 2015 and 2016 to help the country’s air force improve its targeting procedures and investigations. “They’re making the same mistakes they’ve been making all along. And we are not pressing the issue. We are letting them get away with it.”

A visit to the site of the attack, interviews with witnesses and a review of videos from the day painted a picture of the strike’s human cost.

The boys on the bus ranged in age from 6 to about 16, and most were from Dahyan, a poor village in Saada Province along the border with Saudi Arabia.

The province is the homeland of the Houthis, and the coalition has bombed it heavily. For their part, the Houthis have used the area to launch attacks on the Saudi border and to fire missiles into the kingdom.

The boys had been part of a religious summer program organized by the Houthis, and the field trip was meant to be a treat.

When they packed into the bus that morning, one boy, Osama al-Humran, filmed his classmates squirming in their seats with his cellphone. Many were wearing sport coats over their Yemeni gowns, dressed up for a special occasion.

The video then shows them at their next stop, a memorial and graveyard called the Garden of the Martyrs in a nearby village.

In a large hangar decorated with photos of men killed in the war, a man led the boys through prayers and chants. A sign next to the door bore the Houthis slogan: “God is great. Death to America. Death to Israel. Curse the Jews. Victory for Islam.”

Some of the boys giggled when Osama filmed them or put their hands over his camera.

Then they ran into the adjoining graveyard, where grass grew on rows of graves marked with white headstones or plastic signs bearing photos of the deceased.

“I am filming!” Osama yells as he walks among the graves.

Two other boys stand next to a fountain and he calls out, “Come here so I can take your picture.” There, the video ends.

The bus was supposed to continue to Saada, the provincial capital, for a visit to a historic mosque. But it never made it.

The group had stopped along the way to buy juice and snacks when the bomb hit.

Ali Abdullah Hamlah, a local bakery owner, said he heard the explosion and saw a huge cloud billow from the site before seeing a young man covered in blood dragging himself away. Mr. Hamlah approached and saw the bodies of seven children scattered around.

“In some cases, only the upper bodies of the kids were found,” he said. The mangled body of one child was found on the roof of a building, propelled by the force of the blast.

Videos shot in the aftermath show the demolished bus with the lifeless bodies of two boys on the floor. Other boys are on the ground nearby. Some struggle to move. Others are dead and eviscerated, their remains mixed up in the street with the detritus from the explosion.

“It was the first time in my life that I have seen such a horrific massacre,” Mr. Hamlah said.

Among the dead was Osama, the boy who had filmed his classmates. His videos were found on his phone after the bombing, according to Yahya al-Shami, who works for the Houthis’ Al-Maseera television station, which broadcast the images. Parents of boys on the bus confirmed the day’s program and that their children were in the video.

A few days later, local security officials showed The New York Times a metal fin they said had been attached to the bomb and had been found nearby. Writing on the fin indicated it was manufactured by General Dynamics and had been attached as a guidance system on a 500-pound bomb. The Times could not confirm that the fin was from the bomb used in the strike.

But the remnants of American-made weapons have frequently been found in the rubble of airstrikes in Yemen.

Trump administration officials say they have no control over the bombs that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates buy commercially from American or other Western defense contractors. Pentagon officials say they have repeatedly offered assistance to both countries on creating “no strike” lists, but they are not involved in picking targets and do not know the missions of the coalition warplanes that the United States refuels.

At a nearby hospital, Abdul-Rahman al-Ejri comforted his 11-year-old son, Hassan, who was wailing from the pain of a broken leg. He had been on the bus and his father was enraged that the coalition had said it carried military plotters.

“This is the mastermind, along with his companions,” Mr. Ejri said sarcastically. “How can they plot anything? They’re kids and only armed with pens, notebooks and books.”

He did not hesitate to assign blame.

“America is the head of evil, as well as the Saudi regime and the mercenaries of the Saudi regime,” he said.

Shuaib Almosawa reported from Dahyan, Ben Hubbard from Beirut, Lebanon, Eric Schmitt from Washington. John Ismay contributed reporting from Washington.

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9) For 9 Hours, Cubans Got Internet in an Unusual Place: Everywhere
By Sandra E. Garcia, August 15, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/world/americas/cuba-internet-mobile-phones.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=8&pgtype=sectionfront

A young Cuban checking his phone at an internet hot spot on a street in Havana. On Tuesday, Cubans were able to surf the internet beyond the confines of designated public hot spots.

If you walk through Havana, you’ll usually see groups of people huddled around certain plazas, parks and side streets with their cellphones held up to their faces. These people are online.

In order to post a picture to Facebook, send an email or read the news, Cubans must buy an internet access card for about a dollar from Etecsa, the state-run telecommunications company, and then find a public hot spot — but that all seems set to change.

On Tuesday, the Cuban government tested wireless internet directly on mobile phones nationwide for nine hours. The internet was free for the duration of the test, but Etecsa plans to sell mobile phone plans that include internet service.

Etecsa customers were not alerted about the trial, according to Yoani Sánchez, director of the local news site 14ymedio.com. They found out through word of mouth and social media.

For a short period, Cubans could use the internet from their bedrooms, kitchens, porches or wherever they wished.

“You guys won’t believe me,” Ms. Sánchez tweeted from Havana. “I am sending this tweet from my mobile phone.”

The test started at 11 a.m. and concluded at 8 p.m., according to Ms. Sánchez.

“The connection was very slow, with a lot of problems for stretches of time,” she said in an interview on Wednesday. “At one point the connection was dropped, but even so, it felt like a tiny window had been opened.”

Cubans could use only chat services, and it was very difficult to connect to Facebook, she said.

Her site reported that privileged users, including official journalists, businessmen and diplomats, have been enjoying free internet navigation from their cellphones for the last couple of weeks.

For now, Ms. Sánchez said, normal people “stand around in the sun, in blazing heat, at risk of getting their phones stolen.”

“They cannot work from home,” she added. “The government has delayed this for us as long as possible.”

There are more than four million internet-ready mobile phones in the Caribbean country, according to the independent Cuban news site Diario de Cuba, and Etecsa is ramping up to provide internet service to all of them.

“Besides all of its stumbles, this is a citizen’s victory,” Ms. Sánchez tweeted.

Etecsa said on its Facebook page that it would release more details later. The company did not respond to a message seeking comment on Wednesday.

In January, the United States government created the Cuba Internet Task Force to “promote the free and unregulated flow of information in Cuba.” It was unclear if the latest test or the aim to provide internet service to mobile phone users in Cuba were products of the task force.

In July, President Miguel Díaz-Canel told Parliament that “we need to be able to put the content of the revolution online” and added that Cubans could “counter the avalanche of pseudo-cultural, banal and vulgar content” on the internet, suggesting that the government would manage the content.

It would not be unexpected for Cuba to do so, as the state already has a monopoly on the news media.

Cuba has some of the poorest internet service in the Caribbean, but that doesn’t stop its more than 11 million citizens from posting on Facebook and using WhatsApp to communicate with family members outside the country.

Cuban dissidents also use social media to amplify their voices. Many post on Twitter using text messaging, but more are on Facebook.

Etecsa currently has 630 public internet hot spots around the country, but it doesn’t beat going online from the comfort of home, a reality that could be close for Cubans.

Tania Velázquez Rodríguez, an executive at Etecsa, asked customers last month to prepare for a technological leap.

“Everything is designed so that people can self-manage the configuration of the service,” she said. “We are nearly ready.”

Ms. Sánchez said: “Yesterday was the first time Cubans had internet access in their pockets. Even though it was pretty frustrating because the connection wasn’t great, it was a very hopeful moment for us Cubans.”

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10)  Sacks of Mail Reach the West Bank, 8 Years Late
By Megan Specia, August 15, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/world/middleeast/israel-west-bank-mail.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=sectionfront

Palestinian postal workers sifted through undelivered mail dating as far back as 2010 at the post office in Jericho. The mail had been blocked by Israel.

Ten tons of letters and packages, which Israel had long prevented from reaching Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, have finally been delivered. Some of the pieces are eight years old. 

The mail, held in Jordan, began being released to the Palestinian Authority on Monday, according to a statement from Palestinian officials. Some of it was badly damaged after the yearslong delay. 

Israel controls all goods coming in and out of the Palestinian territories, and the Israeli Postal Service sorts mail destined for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Goods are regularly blocked from entering the areas, more strictly for Gaza, on what Israel describes as security grounds.

A 2016 agreement was intended to allow mail to be received directly by the Palestinian postal service, but was never fully implemented.

Still, Israel has for years maintained that international mail is delivered to the Palestinian Authority promptly, and for years the Palestinian Authority has disputed that claim. 

Allam Moussa, the minister of communications and information technology for the Palestinian Authority, said the seized mail included items “coming from around the world, carrying packages, gifts and purchases that did not arrive on time because of the regrettable refusal of the Israeli side.”

The release came after long negotiations with Israel, and Jordan played an instrumental part in getting the mail to its destination, Mr. Moussa said.

Palestinian Post, which is responsible for distributing mail once it arrives in the West Bank, published photos on its website showing staff unloading bag after bag from the back of a truck at Jericho’s general post office. The floor of a warehouse was covered by bags of mail, some piled to shoulder height.

Mr. Moussa said the delay had “implications for citizens’ confidence in Palestinian mail” and contributed to thousands of dollars in losses for Palestinian Post. 

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the branch of the Israeli Defense Forces responsible for civilian operations in the Palestinian territories, said in a statement that the delivery was a good-will measure. 

Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank, signed an agreement last year to limit the seizures of mail delivery to the area, the agency said in a statement. 

The newly delivered mail will take weeks to sort, Ramadan Ghazawi, who works at the central international exchange post office in Jericho, toldAgence France-Presse.

Megan Specia is a story editor on the International Desk, specializing in digital storytelling and breaking news.

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11) Millions of Frequent Flier Miles Are Donated to Reunite Families Separated at Border
By Jacey Fortin, August 16, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/us/migrant-families-frequent-flier-miles.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=sectionfront

Miles4Migrants was started in 2016, but received millions of extra donated miles after a tweet by a law professor in Michigan went viral.

On the morning of Aug. 6, a law professor at the University of Michigan wrote a tweet about a family that had been separated by immigration authorities after crossing into the United States.

Then the professor, Beth Wilensky, went for a run. Then she ate some lunch.

“I came back and checked my Twitter feed and said, ‘Oh my goodness,’” Ms. Wilensky recalled. Her post was blowing up, on its way to getting tens of thousands of retweets.

The tweet said: “My husband travels a lot. Downside: he’s gone a lot. Upside: frequent flier miles. We just used some to fly a 3-yr-old and his dad, who had been separated at the border, from Michigan (where the son had been taken) to their extended family. DM me if you have miles to donate.”

A “zero tolerance” immigration policy from the Trump administration led to the separation of thousands of children from their parents or guardians this year. In June, President Trump signed an order meant to stop the separations. But hundreds of children remain in United States custody without their parents, according to the Homeland Security Department.

Ms. Wilensky said she was seized by a desire to do something. She joined online communities of people who felt the same — citizens busy with day jobs and families of their own, now bound by Twitter threads, Reddit groups and Facebook pages.

But faced with the daunting and sometimes inscrutable bureaucracy of immigration policy and enforcement, many people wondered how best they could help.

The tweet appeared to strike a chord.

Asking for direct messages turned out to be a mistake; Ms. Wilensky could not respond quickly enough to the queries that came pouring in. So later that day she posted again, encouraging people to contact Michigan Support Circle, a group in her area to which she was connected via Facebook. The group was responding to the needs of migrant families on a largely ad hoc basis.

Michigan Support Circle coalesced about six weeks ago to support migrant families affected by the administration’s policy, said Rosalie Lochner, a founder of the group.

“I think a lot of people across both sides of the aisle believe that families need to be protected, and that the trauma of separating these families is something that, as citizens, we are responsible for,” she said. After seeing the tweet, people from across the country reached out to the group on social media, asking how they could help.

Ms. Wilensky also included a link to Miles4Migrants, a two-year-old group that uses donated frequent flier miles to transport refugees to new homes or to reunite families divided by conflict.

Andy Freedman, a founder of that nonprofit, quickly noticed that something was up on Monday. There were more visitors to the website. A few more inquiries. A small spike in donations. He wondered if the extra attention was the result of some new campaign or a smart social media post.

It was, it turned out, the tweet from Ms. Wilensky, a stranger in Michigan. On that Monday alone, Mr. Freedman said, his organization received pledges of over one million miles. That number has now ballooned to more than 28 million.

Miles4Migrants grew out of a Reddit group dedicated to “credit churning,” a risky practice that involves systematically signing up for credit cards to win bonuses and points to cover airfare and hotel costs, and even to get cash back.

It is a time-consuming and “dorky” hobby, said Seth Stanton, a founding member of Miles4Migrants, which coalesced after one member of the Reddit group, Nick Ruiz, shared a story about using his air miles to help reunite a Pakistani family.

In the years since, Miles4Migrants has partnered with donors and aid organizations to reunite dozens of families on an ad hoc, case-by-case basis. The refugees and asylum seekers they helped had international itineraries: Islamabad to Manchester. Addis Ababa to Edinburgh. Tehran to London. (The founders work around day jobs. Mr. Stanton, an optometrist, sometimes arranges flights between patients.)

But this week, flush with more than 28 million newly donated frequent flier miles, the organization is thinking about how to tackle the logistics of reuniting families in the United States.

The group’s overall mission is not really about American politics, and that won’t change now, Mr. Freedman said. “We’re about reuniting families,” he said. “The way we do that is fairly simple. We help them with a flight.”

So far, Miles4Migrants has booked two flights for migrants within the United States. Mr. Stanton said that while the logistics and the bureaucracy are daunting, they hope to do more and are looking for partner organizations, including airlines, to help them do it, as well as cash to cover the fees and taxes associated with flights.

Michigan Support Circle is working with Miles4Migrants to arrange flights as needed, but it, too, is in need of more than just miles, Ms. Lochner said. The organization helps families in whatever way it can, for example by donating home goods or facilitating medical care.

But Ms. Lochner said the extra attention has been encouraging. “I’m so impressed by how much people want to be involved, and how willing people are to help in whatever way they can,” she said.

Ms. Wilensky still wonders why her post was so effective and why the idea of frequent flier miles donations held such appeal for thousands and thousands of strangers.

“I think a lot of people out there, like my husband and I, have watched all of this unfold — this family separation policy — with a sense of absolute horror,” she said. “I think a lot of people felt like we did, which is, ‘Oh my gosh, here’s something real and concrete that might help to fix this problem, even if it’s just for one family.’”

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Posted by: bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com

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