Friday, August 09, 2019

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, FRIDAY, AUGUST 9, 2019

Month of Momentum:
 30 Days of Action to Close the Camps (ICE SF)
A month of daily actions every day in August from Noon to 1pm
(Unless otherwise specified)

ICE – San Francisco
630 Sansome St
SF


Calendar: https://bit.ly/32MTXEs  




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San Francisco-Bay Area Veterans For Peace and 
Other Organizations and Individuals will hold a:

Vigil to Expose Monsanto, on
International AGENT ORANGE DAY

Saturday, August 10, 2019
12 Noon to 2 pm, Union Square, San Francisco
< We have Large Striking Photo Boards of Viet Namese Victims of Agent Orange, < plus a large, long banner: 
"Vietnam Veterans and Vietnamese People Still Suffering from Agent Orange."
&  2 new smaller banners:  
"August 10 - International Agent Orange Day"  &
"Agent Orange - Monsanto's Chemical Weapon in the Viet Nam War"
 - all with the VFP Logo and VFP/AO Webs.
< We will have 1/2 page hand-outs and Orange Cards for the public to sign, making the Agent Orange connection to Monsanto-Bayer and recent high-profile lawsuits.
We hope you all might be willing to join us.   
CONTACT: Nadya Williams
Cell: (415) 845-9492,  E-mail: NadyaNomad@gmail.com




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Mitchel Cohen is touring California in August

to present his new book,


The Fight Against Monsanto's Roundup:
The Politics of Pesticides

Written and edited by Mitchel Cohen    
Foreword by Vandana Shiva     
Skyhorse Publishing 2019

A Comprehensive Look at the Worldwide
Battle to Defend Ourselves and Our Environment
Against the Peddlers of Chemical Poisons

"This may be one of the most important books you read this year. We are being poisoned, and this book is sounding a well-informed alarm. Read it. Get educated and then join the thousands rising up against those who care more for profit than the health of our bodies and our earth."   -- Eve Ensler, 
New York Times best-selling author of I Am An Emotional Creature: The Secret Life Of Girls Around The World, The Vagina Monologues, and In the Body of the World

Chemical poisons have infiltrated all facets of our lives — housing, agriculture, work places, sidewalks, subways, schools, parks, even the air we breathe. More than half a century since Rachel Carson issued Silent Spring — her call-to-arms against the poisoning of our drinking water, food, animals, air, and the natural environment — The Fight Against Monsanto's Roundup: The Politics of Pesticides takes a fresh look at the politics underlying the mass use of pesticides and the challenges people around the world are making against Monsanto's most dangerous creation, glyphosate.

Events in the Bay Area and Nearby:

Events are listed chronologically, and by location.
Scroll down for events near you!

Events Nearby:

UKIAH, Sunday, Aug. 11th, 3 pm: 809 Maple Avenue (between Hazel & Live Oak), Ukiah. Free. For details, call 707-391-5853.

SANTA ROSA, Monday, Aug. 12th, 6:30 pm: Santa Rosa Peace and Justice Center, 467 Sebastopol Ave, Santa Rosa (with Sallie Latch and Dennis Bernstein), 707-575-8902.

Events in the Bay Area:

BERKELEY, Wednesday, Aug. 14th, 6:30 pm: Sports Basement, 2727 Milvia Street, Berkeley. Wheelchair accessible. Free. (with Dennis Bernstein and Sallie Latch) For details, call 510-646-5253. 

OAKLAND, Friday, Aug. 16th, 7 pm: "The wider context." E.M. Wolfman Bookstore, 410-13th St., Oakland (with Dennis Bernstein and Sallie Latch). For details, call 510-679-4650

BERKELEY, Saturday, Aug. 17th, 7 pm: Revolution Books, 2444 Durant Ave. at Telegraph, Berkeley. Free. For details, call 510-848-1196.
_  _  _  _  _  _  _

Please visit www.thepoliticsofpesticides.com for more info on author/editor Mitchel Cohen, the other contributors, chapter excerpts, and praise for the book from Bill Ayers, Joel Raskin, Karl Grossman, Sylvia Federici, Bertell Ollman and many others.


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Political Prisoners and Assange: Carole Seligman At S.F. Assange Rally
As part of an international action to free Julian Assange, a rally was held on June 12, 2019 at the US Federal Building in San Francisco and Carole Seligman was one of the speakers. She also speaks about imperialist wars and  the cases of Mumia Abu-Jamal and Fumiaki Hoshino.
For more info:
Production of Labor Video Project
www.laborvideo.org 

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Act Now to Save Mumia's Eyesight and to 

Demand His Release!


Tell them to approve Mumia's cataract surgery immediately!


Tell them to release Mumia Abu-Jamal NOW because he can receive better healthcare outside of prison and also because he is an innocent man!

Update



Prison officials turn away thousands of petitions for Mumia


Dozens of community activists traveled hundreds of miles from four states to Mechanicsburg, Penn., on July 24 to deliver petitions signed by 3,000 people from around the world, simply requesting the right to proper vision care for political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. They expected at the very least that someone with authority in the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections would step out to accept the petitions.

The PA DOC instead placed several burly Capitol District cops and a couple of DOC staff members outside the front doors to "greet" the community representatives.

The activists fighting for Abu-Jamal's freedom — representing a global movement for the freedom of all political prisoners — insisted on their right to speak to John Wetzel, head of the state prison authority or one of his near-equals, before handing over the signatures from thousands of Mumia supporters.

Agreement to meet

Outside the main doors of the state facility, the first of two non-uniformed men to speak to the activists was a Mr. Barnacle. When Pam Africa, representing the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, asked who he was, he pulled out a badge marked "staff," dated 2018. When told someone with real authority and current identification was needed, Barnacle eventually agreed to allow three participants to enter the building to deliver the petitions to a DOC official.

While the assembled activists waited to be joined by people in two additional vehicles from New York City, Megan Malachi, from REAL Justice, read the petition to the press titled "Act Now to Save Mumia's Eyesight and to Demand His Release." (tinyurl.com/y4s3ekpr)

Aminata Sandra Calhoun, from Mobilization4Mumia, followed with a statement from Mumia's medical proxy, Rev. Mark Taylor, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, serving presently as Mumia's "spiritual advisor." The statement read in part:

"So far, the prison officials are discouraging and making complicated the eye-doctor's ability to share with me the medical information that Mumia wants me to have. They have not scheduled his surgery. Every cooperative effort on these matters is being made by Mumia's family and friends; still there is too much stalling by prison officials.

"We insist that SCI-Mahanoy and the PA DOC honor every legal step that Mumia needs to be taken, so that he receives quality eye-care immediately. He must no longer be subject to medical neglect or to any withholding of full information about his medical condition.

"The abuse Mumia suffered in the past nearly killed him, and even when finally addressed left him with cirrhosis of the liver. There is time for PA officials to turn a new corner." (tinyurl.com/yxvmabkr)

Abu Jamal has a lot of trouble reading and doing other tasks that require good eyesight. His eyesight is seriously threatened by glaucoma, a vitreous detachment and cataracts in both eyes. These jeopardize his quality of life and wellbeing, as well as his journalistic profession.

The ophthalmologist whom Abu-Jamal was taken to see outside Mahanoy Prison recommends surgical procedures to remove the cataracts on both eyes.
But months of delays echo the years of delays Abu-Jamal experienced before the DOC was finally forced by a federal court to treat him with the cure for hepatitis C in 2018.

DOC reneges on agreement

When three designated activists — Dr. Suzanne Ross, Rev. Keith Collins and a videographer — later tried to enter the DOC state headquarters, they were met by another DOC staff member, Ken Smith, who claimed he was a Major in "Special Operations," but would not show any valid identification to that effect.

Smith then reneged on the earlier agreement and said he would take the petitions, but would not allow the representatives to enter the building and meet with a DOC official.

The activists were unbending in their demand that a valid DOC person of authority formally accept, "on the record," the inch-think bundle at a location inside the building.

Dr. Ross, designated as one of the petition delivery trio, told Smith: "The DOC has already failed from 2015 to 2017 to make available to Mumia the cure that was available for hep C at that time. The two-year delay left Mumia with cirrhosis of the liver [and other hep C-related damage]. Mumia supporters are determined to prevent the damage that could be caused by a comparable delay in treating his visual problems … . We've been here before and met with people. One time it was with the head of the press office. Send us the press officer."

Rev. Keith Collins, who visited Mumia on July 4 and was also appointed to deliver the petitions, said: "I'm a pastor, a decorated veteran, a paratrooper, also an ex-cop … . We just want to deliver these petitions … . Mumia told me he can see to get around but not to read and that's very important — for a journalist to read and to study … . So we're here … to get him access to the doctor … and to let him come home. He's served forty years for a crime he did not commit."

Despite arguing for over an hour, the activists could not get the DOC to relent. Because of the commotion and locked doors, when a FedEx worker tried to deliver a package, no one on the outside would sign for it, and he was told to come back another time.

Yet the DOC wanted petitions from 3,000 people to be handed over to undesignated staff, off the record, with no way of tracking the petitions, which could immediately be trashed.

Finally, Abu-Jamal's supporters marched away, but not before Pam Africa said: "We're leaving now, but it's not over. Wetzel, we're going to find out wherever you be at, cause there ain't no power like the power of the people." The group left chanting, with the petitions in Rev. Collins' hands, undelivered.

Legal struggle continues

The DOC's refusal to meet with community representatives comes less than a week after the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower-court decision that Corrections Department employees could be sued for their decisions regarding the 65-year-old Mumia. Abu-Jamal asserts his initial denial of treatment with two antiviral drugs for hepatitis C violated his constitutional right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. In an unprecedented January 2017 decision, Federal District Court Judge Robert Mariani used that argument to order the DOC to treat Abu-Jamal with direct-acting antiviral medications for his hep C infection.
Abu-Jamal's supporters argue that because deliberate delay resulted in Mumia's cirrhosis of the liver and because the current delay in cataract surgery may cause further deterioration in his overall health, he should immediately be released to seek treatment that the DOC refuses to make readily available to him.

Abu-Jamal is not alone in enduring these cruel and unusual assaults on his health. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of state prisoners age 55 or older increased 400 percent between 1993 and 2013. Across the nation elderly prisoners experience a torturous journey toward the end of their lives, suffering from life-threatening illnesses without adequate treatment or any "compassionate release." Abu-Jamal's appeals for his right to treatment and for his release could result in increased rights for the freedom of all prisoners experiencing cruel and unusual conditions.

Abu-Jamal is serving a life sentence in the Pennsylvania prison system. The sentence, for the alleged 1981 murder of a Philadelphia policeman, came down in the context of a corruption-ridden and racist police department. That sentence has been declared unfair by human rights organizations and prison activists the world over.

Although Abu-Jamal has suffered a travesty of justice in the denial of his many appeals over the years, now both the Philadelphia District Attorney and the courts have recognized his right to have his appeals re-argued. This was determined by a momentous decision by Common Pleas Court Judge Leon Tucker in December 2018. Abu-Jamal is currently waiting for his Post Conviction Relief Act appeals to be reheard before a new panel of Pennsylvania Superior Court judges.

While the PA DOC remains resistant to giving Abu-Jamal his full rights to timely health care, and while the political powers in Pennsylvania continue to vilify him, Abu-Jamal and his supporters remain strong and energized by his recent court victories.
--
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
Questions and comments may be sent to info@freedomarchives.org


Mumia Abu-Jamal

Take Action:

1.    Sign the petition
2.    Call: Dr. Courtney P Rodgers – (570) 773-7851 and SCI Mahanoy Superintendent Theresa A. Delbalso - (570) 773-2158
3.    Call: Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf – (717) 787-2500; PA DOC Secretary John Wetzel – (717) 728-2573; Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner – (215) 686-8000


Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PA DOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733




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The Campaign To Bring Mumia Home


             
         

ONA MOVE
The MOVE Organization would like to bring to people's attention a very dangerous situation that is currently occurring with our Brother Delbert Africa. For the past two weeks Delbert has been suffering from severe swelling from the bottom of his waist all the way down to his toes. For the past two weeks prison officials at SCI Dallas have ignored Delbert's request for medical until this past week when several calls were made to his counselor. A medical visit was finally scheduled for this past Wednesday 7/31/2019 where it was explained to Delbert that he has a fluid build up which required to be drained. Delbert was immediately taken to an outside hospital; as of today 8/3/2019 we still do not know where Delbert is.
For several days now Delbert has been kept incommunicado from calling his MOVE Family, His Blood Daughter, and even his lawyer. Prison officials and also hospital officials will not give any one information pertaining to where Delbert is at.

Something very suspicious is happening here and it appears the same pattern that occurred with Phil Africa in 2015 where a simple stomach virus turned to a weeklong trip to the outside hospital held incommunicado from family and friends to return back to the prison and be placed in hospice care and to only die a day later. In 1998 Merle Africa who had a stomach virus was forced in her cell and told she was dying only to die a couple of hours later.

This system has no issue with murdering MOVE people and that's what they are trying to do with Delbert now. They have already given ground by letting innocent MOVE people out on parole and they do not want to do this with Delbert. As we said before, this system has always seen Delbert as the leader and isolated him and this latest tactic is no different. Delbert is set to go before the board this September after winning his appeal; now this happens.

As of now, we have heard that it has been stated based on the medical report given from Outside medical they are stating that Delbert has Anemia, High Potassium, High Psa's, Acute malignancy of lower intestines, Kidney Trouble, and Suspicion of prostate cancer. The only thing that Delbert has agreed to with any treatment or exams is the submission of a catheter to be used.

Delbert has requested a phone call to his MOVE Family, which neither the prison nor the hospital will allow. We are highly suspicious that this prison has done something to Delbert to bring on these symptoms so quickly. They could not kill Delbert August 8th after the brutal beating they gave him and now they want to finish the job before he can come home on parole.

These officials are so arrogant; this is the same way they murdered Phil Africa and Merle Africa .

As we have stated before, they have isolated our Brother so they can kill him. They won't let anyone speak to him. This is very dangerous!!!

We need people now to call

SCI Dallas Superintendent Kevin Ransom 570 675-1101
Geisenger Hospital 570 808-7300
We want people to demand that Delbert Orr Africa Am4895 be allowed to call his MOVE Family and let them know what's going on.

Even Though it's the weekend we are still asking people to call and Monday we are going full blast .

The MOVE Organization
People can reach
Sue Africa 215 387-4107
Carlos Africa 215 385-2772
Janine Africa 610 704 4524

          

"When a cause comes along and you know in your bones that it is just, yet refuse to defend it--at the moment you begin to die. And I have never seen so many corpses walking around talking about justice" 

-Mumia Abu-Jamal
Follow on Twitter | Friend on Facebook 
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50 years in prison: 
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!

FREE Chip Fitzgerald 
Grandfather, Father, Elder, Friend
former Black Panther 
              
Romaine "Chip" Fitzgerald has been in prison since he was locked up 50 years ago. A former member of the Black Panther Party, Chip is now 70 years old, and suffering the consequences of a serious stroke. He depends on a wheelchair for his mobility. He has appeared before the parole board 17 times, but they refuse to release him.

NOW is the time for Chip to come home!

In September 1969, Chip and two other Panthers were stopped by a highway patrolman. During the traffic stop, a shooting broke out, leaving Chip and a police officer both wounded. Chip was arrested a month later and charged with attempted murder of the police and an unrelated murder of a security guard. Though the evidence against him was weak and Chip denied any involvement, he was convicted and sentenced to death.

In 1972, the California Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty. Chip and others on Death Row had their sentences commuted to Life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. All of them became eligible for parole after serving 7 more years. But Chip was rejected for parole, as he has been ever since. 

Parole for Lifers basically stopped under Governors Deukmajian, Wilson, and Davis (1983-2003), resulting in increasing numbers of people in prison and 23 new prisons. People in prison filed lawsuits in federal courts: people were dying as a result of the overcrowding. To rapidly reduce the number of people in prison, the court mandated new parole hearings:
·        for anyone 60 years or older who had served 25 years or more;
·        for anyone convicted before they were 23 years old;
·        for anyone with disabilities 

Chip qualified for a new parole hearing by meeting all three criteria.

But the California Board of Parole Hearings has used other methods to keep Chip locked up. Although the courts ordered that prison rule infractions should not be used in parole considerations, Chip has been denied parole because he had a cellphone.

Throughout his 50 years in prison, Chip has been denied his right to due process – a new parole hearing as ordered by Federal courts. He is now 70, and addressing the challenges of a stroke victim. His recent rules violation of cellphone possession were non-violent and posed no threat to anyone. He has never been found likely to commit any crimes if released to the community – a community of his children, grandchildren, friends and colleagues who are ready to support him and welcome him home.

The California Board of Parole Hearings is holding Chip hostage.

We call on Governor Newsom to release Chip immediately.

What YOU can do to support this campaign to FREE CHIP:


1)   Sign and circulate the petition to FREE Chip. Download it at https://www.change.org/p/california-free-chip-fitzgerald
Print out the petition and get signatures at your workplace, community meeting, or next social gathering.

2)   Write an email to Governor Newsom's office (sample message at:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iwbP_eQEg2J1T2h-tLKE-Dn2ZfpuLx9MuNv2z605DMc/edit?usp=sharing

3)   Write to Chip: Romaine "Chip" Fitzgerald #B27527,
CSP-LAC
P.O. Box 4490
B-4-150
Lancaster, CA 93539

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Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/

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Support Chuck Africa for Parole

Michael Africa Jr. started this petition to Pennsylvania Governor


Charles Sims Africa #AM 4975 has been in prison since age 18. He is now 59 years old and a recovering cancer patient. He has been eligible for parole since 2008 but continually denied because of  his political views.
Charles has 8 codefendants. Two has died in prison, four has been released from prison onto parole. Chuck's sister Debbie Sims Africa is one of the four codefendants released onto parole.
Since coming home from prison, Debbie is thriving. Our community of support has supported Debbie to excel and we are committed to do the same for Chuck so that he can excel as well. 
http://chng.it/Yprs8pXBBp

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On Abortion: From Facebook

Best explanation I've heard so far..., Copied from a friend who copied from a friend who copied..., "Last night, I was in a debate about these new abortion laws being passed in red states. My son stepped in with this comment which was a show stopper. One of the best explanations I have read:, , 'Reasonable people can disagree about when a zygote becomes a "human life" - that's a philosophical question. However, regardless of whether or not one believes a fetus is ethically equivalent to an adult, it doesn't obligate a mother to sacrifice her body autonomy for another, innocent or not., , Body autonomy is a critical component of the right to privacy protected by the Constitution, as decided in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), McFall v. Shimp (1978), and of course Roe v. Wade (1973). Consider a scenario where you are a perfect bone marrow match for a child with severe aplastic anemia; no other person on earth is a close enough match to save the child's life, and the child will certainly die without a bone marrow transplant from you. If you decided that you did not want to donate your marrow to save the child, for whatever reason, the state cannot demand the use of any part of your body for something to which you do not consent. It doesn't matter if the procedure required to complete the donation is trivial, or if the rationale for refusing is flimsy and arbitrary, or if the procedure is the only hope the child has to survive, or if the child is a genius or a saint or anything else - the decision to donate must be voluntary to be constitutional. This right is even extended to a person's body after they die; if they did not voluntarily commit to donate their organs while alive, their organs cannot be harvested after death, regardless of how useless those organs are to the deceased or how many lives they would save., , That's the law., , Use of a woman's uterus to save a life is no different from use of her bone marrow to save a life - it must be offered voluntarily. By all means, profess your belief that providing one's uterus to save the child is morally just, and refusing is morally wrong. That is a defensible philosophical position, regardless of who agrees and who disagrees. But legally, it must be the woman's choice to carry out the pregnancy., , She may choose to carry the baby to term. She may choose not to. Either decision could be made for all the right reasons, all the wrong reasons, or anything in between. But it must be her choice, and protecting the right of body autonomy means the law is on her side. Supporting that precedent is what being pro-choice means.", , Feel free to copy/paste and re-post., y
Sent from my iPhone

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Celebrating the release of Janet and Janine Africa
Take action now to support Jalil A. Muntaqim's release


Jalil A. Muntaqim was a member of the Black Panther Party and has been a political prisoner for 48 years since he was arrested at the age of 19 in 1971. He has been denied parole 11 times since he was first eligible in 2002, and is now scheduled for his 12th parole hearing. Additionally, Jalil has filed to have his sentence commuted to time served by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Visit Jalil's support page, check out his writing and poetry, and Join Critical Resistance in supporting a vibrant intergenerational movement of freedom fighters in demanding his release.

48 years is enough. Write, email, call, and tweet at Governor Cuomo in support of Jalil's commutation and sign this petition demanding his release.

http://freedomarchives.org/Support.Jalil/Campaign.html
Write:
The Honorable Andrew M. Cuomo
Governor of the State of New York
Executive Chamber State Capital Building
Albany, New York 12224

Michelle Alexander – Author, The New Jim Crow
Ed Asner - Actor and Activist
Charles Barron - New York Assemblyman, 60th District
Inez Barron - Counci member, 42nd District, New York City Council
Rosa Clemente - Scholar Activist and 2008 Green Party Vice-Presidential candidate
Patrisse Cullors – Co-Founder Black Lives Matter, Author, Activist
Elena Cohen - President, National Lawyers Guild
"Davey D" Cook - KPFA Hard Knock Radio
Angela Davis - Professor Emerita, University of California, Santa Cruz
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz - Native American historian, writer and feminist
Mike Farrell - Actor and activist
Danny Glover – Actor and activist
Linda Gordon - New York University
Marc Lamont Hill - Temple University
Jamal Joseph - Columbia University
Robin D.G. Kelley - University of California, Los Angeles
Tom Morello - Rage Against the Machine
Imani Perry - Princeton University
Barbara Ransby - University of Illinois, Chicago
Boots Riley - Musician, Filmmaker
Walter Riley - Civil rights attorney
Dylan Rodriguez - University of California, Riverside, President American Studies Association
Maggie Siff, Actor
Heather Ann Thompson - University of Michigan
Cornel West - Harvard University
Institutional affiliations listed for identification purposes only
Call: 1-518-474-8390

Email Gov. Cuomo with this form

Tweet at @NYGovCuomo
Any advocacy or communications to Gov. Cuomo must refer to Jalil as:
ANTHONY JALIL BOTTOM, 77A4283,
Sullivan Correctional Facility,
P.O. Box 116,
Fallsburg, New York 12733-0116


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Painting by Kevin Cooper, an innocent man on San Quentin's death row. www.freekevincooper.org

Decarcerate Louisiana

Declaration of Undersigned Prisoners
We, the undersigned persons, committed to the care and custody of the Louisiana Department of Corrections (LDOC), hereby submit the following declaration and petition bearing witness to inhumane conditions of solitary confinement in the N-1 building at the David Wade Corrections Center (DWCC). 
Our Complaint:
We, the Undersigned Persons, declare under penalty of perjury: 
1.    We, the undersigned, are currently housed in the N-1 building at DWCC, 670 Bell Hill Road, Homer, LA 71040. 
2.    We are aware that the Constitution, under the 8th Amendment, bans cruel and unusual punishments; the Amendment also imposes duties on prison officials who must provide humane conditions of confinement and ensure that inmates receive adequate food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and must take reasonable measures to guarantee the safety of the inmates. 
3.    We are aware that Louisiana prison officials have sworn by LSA-R.S.15:828 to provide humane treatment and rehabilitation to persons committed to its care and to direct efforts to return every person in its custody to the community as promptly as practicable. 
4.    We are confined in a double-bunked six-by-nine foot or 54 square feet cell with another human being 22-hours-a-day and are compelled to endure the degrading experience of being in close proximity of another human being while defecating. 
5.    There are no educational or rehabilitation programs for the majority of prisoners confined in the N-1 building except for a selected few inmates who are soon to be released. 
6.    We get one hour and 30 minutes on the yard and/or gym seven days a week. Each day we walk to the kitchen for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, which takes about one minute to get there. We are given ten minutes to eat. 
7.    The daily planner for inmates confined in the N-1 building is to provide inmates one hour and 30 minutes on yard or gym; escort inmates to kitchen for breakfast, lunch, and dinner to sit and eat for approximately ten minutes each meal; provide a ten minute shower for each cell every day; provide one ten minute phone call per week; confine prisoners in cell 22-hours-a-day. 
8.    When we are taking a shower we are threatened by guards with disciplinary reports if we are not out on time. A typical order is: "if you are not out of shower in ten minutes pack your shit and I'm sending you back to N-2, N-3, or N-4"—a more punitive form of solitary confinement. 
9.    When walking outside to yard, gym or kitchen, guards order us to put our hands behind our back or they'll write us up and send us back to N-2, N-3, N-4. 
10.  When we are sitting at the table eating, guards order us not to talk or they'll write us up and send us back to N-2, N-3, N-4. ) 
11.  Guards are harassing us every day and are threatening to write up disciplinary reports and send us back to a more punitive cellblock (N-2, N-3, N-4) if we question any arbitrary use of authority or even voice an opinion in opposition to the status quo. Also, guards take away good time credits, phone, TV, radio, canteen, and contact visits for talking too loud or not having hands behind back or for any reason they want. We are also threatened with slave labor discipline including isolation (removing mattress from cell from 5:00 A.M. to 9:00 P.M.,) strip cell (removing mattress and bedding and stationery from cell for ten to 30 days or longer), food loaf  (taking one's meal for breakfast, lunch, or dinner and mixing it all together into one big mass, bake it in oven and serve it to prisoners for punishment.)
12.  When prison guards write up disciplinary reports and transfer us to the more punitive restrictive solitary confinement in N-2, N-3, N-4 or N-5, guards then enforce an arbitrary rule that gives prisoners the ultimatum of sending all their books and personal property home or let the prison dispose of it. 
13.  Louisiana prison officials charge indigent prisoners (who earn less than four cents an hour) $3.00 for routine requests for healthcare services, $6.00 for emergency medical requests, and $2.00 for each new medical prescription. They wait until our family and friends send us money and take it to pay prisoners' medical bills. 
Our concerns:
14.  How much public monies are appropriated to the LDOC budget and specifically allotted to provide humane treatment and implement the rehabilitation program pursuant to LSA- R.S.15:828? 
15.  Why does Elayn Hunt Correctional Center located in the capitol of Louisiana have so many educational and rehabilitation programs teaching prisoners job and life skills for reentry whereas there are no such programs to engage the majority of prisoners confined in the N-1, N- 2, N-3, and N-4 solitary confinement buildings at DWCC. 
16.  It is customary for Louisiana prison officials and DWCC prison guards to tell inmates confined in the prison's cellblocks to wait until transfer to prison dormitory to participate in programs when in fact there are no such programs available and ready to engage the majority of the state's 34,000 prisoner population. The programs are especially needed for prisoners confined in a six-by-nine foot or 54 square feet cell with another person for 22-or-more-hours-per-day. 
17.  Why can't prisoners use phone and computers every day to communicate with family and peers as part of rehabilitation and staying connected to the community? 
18.  Why do prisoners have to be transferred miles and miles away from loved ones to remote correctional facilities when there are facilities closer to loved ones? 
19.  Why are prison guards allowed to treat prisoners as chattel slaves, confined in cages 22-or-more-hours-per-day, take away phone calls and visitation and canteen at will, and take away earned good time credits for any reason at all without input from family, one's peers and community? 
20.  Why do the outside communities allow prison guards to create hostile living environments and conditions of confinement that leaves prisoners in a state of chattel slavery, stress, anxiety, anger, rage, inner torment, despair, worry, and in a worse condition from when we first entered the prison? 
21.  Why do state governments and/or peers in the community allow racist or bigoted white families who reside in the rural and country parts of Louisiana to run the state's corrections system with impunity? For example, DWCC Warden Jerry Goodwin institutes racist and bigoted corrections policies and practices for the very purpose of oppression, repression, antagonizing and dehumanizing the inmates who will one day be released from prison. 
22.  David Wade Correctional Center Colonel Lonnie Nail, a bigot and a racist, takes his orders from Warden Jerry Goodwin, another racist and bigot. Both Goodwin and Nail influences subordinate corrections officers to act toward prisoners in a racist or bigoted manner and with an arrogant attitude. This creates a hostile living environment and debilitating conditions of confinement for both guards and prisoners and prevents rehabilitation of inmates.
23.  In other industrialized democracies like Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, et al, it is reported that no prisoner should be declared beyond reform or redemption without first attempting to rehabilitate them. Punitive or harsh conditions of confinement are not supported because they see the loss of freedom inherent in a prison sentence as punishment enough. One Netherlands official reported that their motto is to start with the idea of "Reintegration back into society on day one" when people are locked up. "You can't make an honest argument that how someone is treated while incarcerated doesn't affect how they behave when they get out," the official added. 
24.  Additionally, some Scandinavian countries have adopted open prison programs without fences or armed guards. Prisoners who prove by their conduct that they can be trusted are placed in a prison resembling a college campus more than a prison. The result is a 20 percent recidivism rate, compared to a 67 percent rate in the United States. 
25.  The National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC) in a position statement says: "Prolonged (greater than 15 consecutive days) solitary confinement is cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, and harmful to an individual's health."
 What We Believe: 
26.  We believe that when the greater portion of public monies goes to war and the military, this leaves little funds left for community reinvestment and human development.The people have less access to resources by which to get a better idea of human behavior and rely on higher education instead of prison to solve cultural, social, political, economic problems in the system that may put people at risk to domestic violence and crime as a way to survive and cope with shortcomings in the system. 
27.  We believe that investing public monies in the rehabilitation program LSA-R.S.15:828 to teach prisoners job and life skills will redeem inmates, instill morals, and make incarcerated people productive and fit for society. 
28.  We believe that confining inmates in cellblocks 15-or-more=hours-per-day is immoral, uncivilized, brutalizing, a waste of time and counter-productive to rehabilitation and society's goals of "promoting the general welfare" and "providing a more perfect union with justice for all." 
29.  We believe that corrections officers who prove by their actions that incarcerated people are nothing more than chattel slaves are bucking the laws and creating hardening criminals and these corrections officers are, therefore, a menace to society. 
Our Demands:
30.  We are demanding a public conversation from community activists and civil rights leaders about (1) the historic relationship between chattel slavery, the retaliatory assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, and the resurrection of slavery written into the 13th Amendment; (2) the historic relationship between the 13th Amendment, the backlash against Reconstruction, Peonage, Convict Leasing, and Slavery; (3) the historic relationship between the 13th Amendment, the War Against Poverty, the War on Drugs, Criminal Justice and Prison Slavery. 
31.  We demand that the Louisiana legislature pass the Decarcerate Louisiana Anti-Slavery and Freedom Liberation Act of 2020 into law and end prison slavery and the warehousing of incarcerated people for the very purpose of repression, oppression, and using prisoners and their families and supporters as a profit center for corporate exploitation and to generate revenue to balance the budget and stimulate the state economy. 
32.  We are demanding that Warden Jerry Goodwin and Colonel Lonnie Nail step down and be replaced by people are deemed excellent public servants in good standing with human rights watchdog groups and civil rights community. 
33.  We are demanding that the LDOC provide public monies to operate state prison dormitories and cellblocks as rehabilitation centers to teach incarcerated people job and life skills five-days-a-week from 7:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. 
34.  We are demanding that the LDOC release a public statement announcing that "from this day forward it will not support punitive or harsh conditions of confinement," and that "no prisoner should be declared beyond reform or redemption without first attempting to rehabilitate them."
35.  We are demanding that the prison cellblocks be operated as open dormitories (made in part a health clinic and part college campus) so that incarcerated people can have enough space to walk around and socialize, participate in class studies, exercise, use telephone as the need arise. Prisoners are already punished by incarceration so there is no need to punish or further isolate them. Racism and abuse of power will not be tolerated. 
36.  We are demanding an end to unjust policies and practices that impose punishments and deprive incarcerated people of phone calls, visitation, canteen, good time credits, books and other personal property that pose no threat to public safety. 
37.  We are demanding that LDOC provide incarcerated people cellphones and computers to communicate with the public and stay connected to the community. 
38.  We are demanding the right to communicate with reporters to aid and assist incarcerated persons in preparing a press release to communicate to the public Decarcerate Louisiana's vision and mission statements, aims, and plans for moving forward. 
39.  We are demanding the right to participate in the U.S.-European Criminal Justice Innovation Project and share our complaint, concerns, and demands for a humane corrections program. 
40.  We are only demanding the right to enough space to create, to innovate, to excel in learning, to use scientific knowledge to improve our person and place and standing in the free world. The rule of law must support the betterment and uplifting of all humanity. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said: "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." 
41.  We demand that the responsibility for prisoner medical care be removed from DOC wardens and place it under the management of the state's health office; increase state health officer staff to better monitor prisoner healthcare and oversee vendor contracts. 
42.  We have a God-given right and responsibility to resist abuse of power from the wrongdoers, to confront unjust authority and oppression, to battle for justice until we achieve our demands for liberation and freedom. 
We, the undersigned, declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct. 
Executed on this 28th Day of January 2019. 
Ronald Brooks #385964 
David Johnson #84970 
Freddie Williams #598701 
Earl Hollins #729041 
James Harris #399514 
Tyrone Carter #550354 
Kerry Carter #392013 
Ivo Richardson #317371 
Rondrikus Fulton #354313 
Kentell Simmons #601717 
Jayvonte Pines #470985 
Deandre Miles #629008 
Kenneth P. #340729 
Brandon Ceaser #421453 
Tyronne Ward #330964 
Jermaine Atkins #448421 
Charles Rodgers #320513 
Steve Givens #557854 
Timothy Alfred #502378 
—wsimg.com, January 2019
https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/1f4bce95-7ddd-4b2d-8ee7-d8edf36f394f/downloads/Declaration_of_Undersigned_Prisoners.pdf?ver=1555809786117



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New Prison and Jail Population Figures Released by U.S. Department of Justice

By yearend 2017, the United States prison population had declined by 7.3% since reaching its peak level in 2009, according to new data released by the Department of Justice. The prison population decreases are heavily influenced by a handful of states that have reduced their populations by 30% or more in recent years. However, as of yearend 2017 more than half the states were still experiencing increases in their populations or rates of decline only in the single digits. 
Analysis of the new data by The Sentencing Project reveals that: 
  • The United States remains as the world leader in its rate of incarceration, locking up its citizens at 5-10 times the rate of other industrialized nations. At the current rate of decline it will take 75 years to cut the prison population by 50%.
      
  • The population serving life sentences is now at a record high. One of every seven individuals in prison – 206,000 – is serving life.
      
  • Six states have reduced their prison populations by at least 30% over the past two decades – Alaska, Connecticut, California, New Jersey, New York, and Vermont.  
  • The rate of women's incarceration has been rising at a faster rate than men's since the 1980s, and declines in recent years have been slower than among men.
      
  • Racial disparities in women's incarceration have changed dramatically since the start of the century. Black women were incarcerated at 6 times the rate of white women in 2000, while the 2017 figure is now 1.8 times that rate. These changes have been a function of both a declining number of black women in prison and a rising number of white women. For Hispanic women, the ratio has changed from 1.6 times that of white women in 2000 to 1.4 times in 2017. 
The declines in prison and jail populations reported by the Department of Justice today are encouraging, but still fall far short of what is necessary for meaningful criminal justice reform. In order to take the next step in ending mass incarceration policymakers will need to scale back excessive sentencing for all offenses, a key factor which distinguishes the U.S. from other nations. 

Share This 

[Note: China's population is 1,419,147,756* as of April 26, 2019 with 1,649,804 in prison***; while the population of the USA is 328,792,291 as of April 27, 2019** with 2,121,600 in prison.*** 
*http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/china-population/
**https://www.census.gov/popclock/
***https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate]


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Courage to Resist
daniel hale drone activist
Drone vet turned activist facing 50 years for whistle-blowing
Daniel Hale, an Air Force veteran and former US intelligence analyst was arrested May 9th and charged with violating the Espionage Act. Daniel is a well-known anti-drone activist who has spoken out a number of anti-war events and conferences. He's a member of About Face: Veterans Against the War, and he's featured in the documentary "National Bird." For years, Daniel has expressed concern that he'd be targeted by the government.  Learn more.
Podcast: "There were US anti-war soldiers all over the world" - Hal Muskat
"I told my command officer that I wasn't going to, I was refusing my orders [to Vietnam] … In his rage, he thought if he court-martialed me, he'd have to stay in the Army past his discharge date." While stationed in Europe, Hal Muskat refused orders to Vietnam and joined the GI Movement, resulting in two court martials. This Courage to Resist podcast was produced in collaboration with the Vietnam Full Disclosure effort of Veterans For Peace. Listen to Hal Muskat's story.



Chelsea Manning returned to jail after brief release; Faces half million dollar fine in addition to another 18 months prison
Since our last newsletter less than two weeks ago, Chelsea Manning was freed from jail when the grand jury investigating Julian Assange and WikiLeaks expired. However, a few days later, she was sent back to jail for refusing to collaborate with a new grand jury on the same subject. District Court Judge Anthony Trenga ordered Chelsea fined $500 every day she is in custody after 30 days and $1,000 every day she is in custody after 60 days -- a possible total of $502,000. Statement from Chelsea's lawyers.
Stand with Reality Winner, rally in DC
June 3, 2019 at 7pm (Monday)
Lafayette Square, Washington DC 
Please join friends and supporters as we raise awareness of the persecution of this young veteran and brave truth teller. This marks two years of imprisonment of Reality for helping to expose hacking attempts on US election systems leading up to the 2016 presidential election. For more info, visit the "Stand with Reality" pages on Twitter or FacebookOrder "Stand with Reality" shirts, banners, and buttons from Left Together protest shirts.


COURAGE TO RESIST ~ SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT!
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, California 94610 ~ 510-488-3559
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Funds for Kevin Cooper

https://www.gofundme.com/funds-for-kevin-cooper?member=1994108

For 34 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California. 

Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here . 

In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered  limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison. 

The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, paper, toiletries, supplementary food, and/or phone calls.

Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!




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Don't extradite Assange!

To the government of the UK
Julian Assange, through Wikileaks, has done the world a great service in documenting American war crimes, its spying on allies and other dirty secrets of the world's most powerful regimes, organisations and corporations. This has not endeared him to the American deep state. Both Obama, Clinton and Trump have declared that arresting Julian Assange should be a priority. We have recently received confirmation [1] that he has been charged in secret so as to have him extradited to the USA as soon as he can be arrested. 
Assange's persecution, the persecution of a publisher for publishing information [2] that was truthful and clearly in the interest of the public - and which has been republished in major newspapers around the world - is a danger to freedom of the press everywhere, especially as the USA is asserting a right to arrest and try a non-American who neither is nor was then on American soil. The sentence is already clear: if not the death penalty then life in a supermax prison and ill treatment like Chelsea Manning. The very extradition of Julian Assange to the United States would at the same time mean the final death of freedom of the press in the West. 
The courageous nation of Ecuador has offered Assange political asylum within its London embassy for several years until now. However, under pressure by the USA, the new government has made it clear that they want to drive Assange out of the embassy and into the arms of the waiting police as soon as possible. They have already curtailed his internet and his visitors and turned the heating off, leaving him freezing in a desolate state for the past few months and leading to the rapid decline of his health, breaching UK obligations under the European Convention of Human Rights. Therefore, our demand both to the government of Ecuador and the government of the UK is: don't extradite Assange to the US! Guarantee his human rights, make his stay at the embassy as bearable as possible and enable him to leave the embassy towards a secure country as soon as there are guarantees not to arrest and extradite him. Furthermore, we, as EU voters, encourage European nations to take proactive steps to protect a journalist in danger. The world is still watching.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/us/politics/julian-assange-indictment-wikileaks.html
[2] https://theintercept.com/2018/11/16/as-the-obama-doj-concluded-prosecution-of-julian-assange-for-publishing-documents-poses-grave-threats-to-press-freedom/
https://internal.diem25.org/en/petitions/1

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Words of Wisdom

Louis Robinson Jr., 77
Recording secretary for Local 1714 of the United Auto Workers from 1999 to 2018, with the minutes from a meeting of his union's retirees' chapter.

"One mistake the international unions in the United States made was when Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. When he did that, the unions could have brought this country to a standstill. All they had to do was shut down the truck drivers for a month, because then people would not have been able to get the goods they needed. So that was one of the mistakes they made. They didn't come together as organized labor and say: "No. We aren't going for this. Shut the country down." That's what made them weak. They let Reagan get away with what he did. A little while after that, I read an article that said labor is losing its clout, and I noticed over the years that it did. It happened. It doesn't feel good."

[On the occasion of the shut-down of the Lordstown, Ohio GM plant March 6, 2019.]
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/01/magazine/lordstown-general-motors-plant.html

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Get Malik Out of Ad-Seg


Keith "Malik" Washington is an incarcerated activist who has spoken out on conditions of confinement in Texas prison and beyond:  from issues of toxic water and extreme heat, to physical and sexual abuse of imprisoned people, to religious discrimination and more.  Malik has also been a tireless leader in the movement to #EndPrisonSlavery which gained visibility during nationwide prison strikes in 2016 and 2018.  View his work at comrademalik.com or write him at:

Keith H. Washington
TDC# 1487958
McConnell Unit
3001 S. Emily Drive
Beeville, TX 78102
Friends, it's time to get Malik out of solitary confinement.

Malik has experienced intense, targeted harassment ever since he dared to start speaking against brutal conditions faced by incarcerated people in Texas and nationwide--but over the past few months, prison officials have stepped up their retaliation even more.

In Administrative Segregation (solitary confinement) at McConnell Unit, Malik has experienced frequent humiliating strip searches, medical neglect, mail tampering and censorship, confinement 23 hours a day to a cell that often reached 100+ degrees in the summer, and other daily abuses too numerous to name.  It could not be more clear that they are trying to make an example of him because he is a committed freedom fighter.  So we have to step up.


Who to contact:
TDCJ Executive Director Bryan Collier
Phone: (936)295-6371

Senior Warden Philip Sinfuentes (McConnell Unit)
Phone: (361) 362-2300

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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.

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.

Major Tillery has Fought his Conviction and Advocated for Other Prisoners for over 30 Years

Major Tillery Needs Your Help:


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

    Write to:
    Security Processing Center
    Major Tillery AM 9786
    268 Bricker Road
    Bellefonte, PA 16823
    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




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    ILPDC NEWSLETTER BANNER
      

    On Monday March 4th, 2019 Leonard Peltier was advised that his request for a transfer had been unceremoniously denied by the United States Bureau of Prisons.

    The International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee appreciates and thanks the large number of his supporters who took the time to write, call, email, or fax the BOP in support of Leonard's request for a transfer.
    Those of us who have been supporting Leonard's freedom for a number of years are disappointed but resolute to continue pushing for his freedom and until that day, to continue to push for his transfer to be closer to his relatives and the Indigenous Nations who support him.
    44 years is too damn long for an innocent man to be locked up. How can his co-defendants be innocent on the grounds of self-defense but Leonard remains in prison? The time is now for all of us to dig deep and do what we can and what we must to secure freedom for Leonard Peltier before it's too late.
    We need the support of all of you now, more than ever. The ILPDC plans to appeal this denial of his transfer to be closer to his family. We plan to demand he receive appropriate medical care, and to continue to uncover and utilize every legal mechanism to secure his release. To do these things we need money to support the legal work.
    Land of the Brave postcard-page-0

    Please call the ILPDC National office or email us for a copy of the postcard you can send to the White House. We need your help to ask President Trump for Leonard's freedom.
      


    Free Leonard Peltier!


    Art by Leonard Peltier
    Write to:
    Leonard Peltier 89637-132
    USP Coleman 1,  P.O. Box 1033
    Coleman, FL 33521

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    Working people are helping to feed the poor hungry corporations! 
    Charity for the Wealthy!

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    1) "Better Living Through Chemistry?" Think Again!

    By Chris Kinder, May/June 2019 Socialist Viewpoint, Vol. 19, No. 3
    http://socialistviewpoint.org/mayjun_19/mayjun_19_29.html

    The Fight Against Monsanto's Roundup, the Politics of Pesticides
    Mitchel Cohen and others. Forward by Vandana Shiva
    Skyhorse Publishing
    New York, 2019
    "Better Living Through Chemistry" was an advertising slogan, I think for Dow Chemical, seen on black and white TV when I was a youth in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It all seemed so innocent back then. But it never was. 
    The stuff chemical giants like Dow, Dupont, etc., were selling then—pesticides such as DDT and malathion for instance—were all part of an explosion of chemical products following World War II, most based on the development of chemical warfare during the war. Development for war continued, as with the notorious Agent Orange—the long-lasting and harmful effects of which were covered up by Dow and Monsanto—used in the devastating U.S. war on Vietnam. But proliferation of toxic chemicals doesn't stop there. 
    Massive applications of pesticides and herbicides such as Monsanto's Roundup, along with genetically-engineered crops and artificial fertilizers, have transformed big agriculture in a new sort of war. The "green revolution" was supposed to help "feed the world," but we now see it as not only promoting U.S. imperialist interests for market domination, but also actually destroying healthy food production worldwide, all in the name of profit. But imperial domination on the farm fields is only one side of the widespread effects of chemical saturation on humans, animals and the environment.

    Roundup causes cancer

    Roundup's reputation as a cancer-causing poison has been getting some well-deserved ink lately, with a couple of precedent-setting court wins by victims. Over a thousand additional cases against Monsanto are pending. Despite Monsanto's lying insistence that Roundup attacks plants only, not animals, a high correlation between Roundup usage and contraction of non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, a cancer that starts in the white blood cells—which are key to the body's immune system—has been found—but not by U.S. regulatory agencies! 
    It took the World Health Organization's cancer unit, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), to find that glyphosate—the key ingredient in Roundup—was a "probable cause" of cancer in humans and animals. U.S. regulatory agencies, compromised by collusion with chemical corporations—under both Democratic and Republican administrations—were AWOL on this issue.  Unfortunately, the IARC finding came only in 2017, over 40 years after the introduction of Roundup as a herbicide, and after it had already been widely used by the cancer victims coming forward today.

    Activists and scientists take on Monsanto

    Environmental activist, anarchist and poet Mitchel Cohen is the lead author and editor of this book, which includes 14 other authors, including Brian Tokar, lecturer on environmental studies at the University of Vermont; Steve Tvedten, who describes the lessons of his 50 years as a pest control operator; and Stephanie Seneff, PhD, a senior research scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. The preface is by Vandana Shiva, PhD, an Indian scholar, physicist, and environmental and food sovereignty advocate and activist. Together, these writers describe a disturbing and alarming story of the poisoning of the earth in graphic detail. 
    Cohen, as a co-founder of the No Spray Coalition, is a veteran of this struggle and many others. As a leader of the No-Spray Coalition, he helped win a seven-year fight against then New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani's indiscriminate spraying of the organophosphate malathion by aircraft and spray trucks over the city to combat the so-called West Nile Virus. He also organized a campaign to rid NYC public schools of milk from cows injected with Bovine Growth Hormone, a genetically-engineered monstrosity also from Monsanto, also discussed in this book. Mitchel is a long-time Green Party activist who has run for mayor of New York City. And he's a poet, with compilations delightfully titled, One-Eyed Cat Takes Flight, and The Permanent Carnival

    Spraying the city

    This West Nile virus was much less of a threat than it was portrayed. The spraying operation killed more people than the virus ever did, including people sprayed, and operators of the trucks doing the spraying! Eight members of the No-Spray Coalition itself died from cancers or other disorders caused or exacerbated by the spraying. 
    Mitchel describes his first encounter with the spraying:
    "[September 4th, 1999] I was strolling through Prospect Park in Brooklyn on that warm day near the end of summer. Hundreds of people were out in the park sunbathing, reading, kissing, walking their dogs. Kids were everywhere playing baseball and soccer. Suddenly, helicopters buzzed just above the tree line spraying a substance we later learned was malathion—one of a class of organophosphate pesticides invented as a nerve gas by the Nazis in World War II—spewing out in substantial bursts. They drenched 526-acre Prospect Park that afternoon, spraying the malathion over and onto hundreds of children. There were a few police cars patrolling, but none of them warned people to get out of the park and off the streets. I ran like a lunatic trying to get the kids away from the spray. And then I held my breath as long as I could and ran out of the park."

    The politics of pesticides

    The politics of all this is never far from Cohen's (and the other authors') rendering. The title of the Chapter in which this personal experience is reported is, "Poisoning the Big Apple—Forgotten History in the Lead-Up to 9/11." Two years before 9/11, as Mitchel reports, U.S. government officials were ramping up preparations for an attack on Saddam Hussein. Hussein, they said, "...had sent to New York City some arcane virus that was killing birds, mostly crows, and that it could be transmitted to people by mosquitoes. Panic ensued." Just as today as Trump's personal lawyer, Giuliani, then working from his bunker in the World Trade Center, was in lock-step with the nefarious plans of U.S. imperialism.
    The intertwining of the development and use of noxious chemicals such as malathion and Monsanto's Roundup with the international aims of U.S. capitalism is central to this book. Roundup, as well as genetically-engineered crops pioneered by Monsanto to work in tandem with it, is shown to be a key to the transformation of agriculture in the U.S., and to U.S. designs to dominate world food markets, as well as to Monsanto's immense profits, of course. This war by other means has devastated agriculture worldwide from Mexico to India, and threatens the health of farmers and others who use Roundup, as well as the health of the soil, the very basis of all agriculture.

    Glyphosate is derived from an amino acid

    Roundup's key ingredient, glyphosate, is a derivative of the amino acid glycine. (This connection with glycine forms another whole side of the story.) It was discovered in 1950, acquired years later by Monsanto, and formulated for use as an herbicide. Widespread usage began in the 1970s, but the proliferation of this poison shot up dramatically when Monsanto came up with a neat little trick to corner a key agricultural market for itself: the development of genetically-engineered (GE) "Roundup ready" crops. Use of these pesticide-saturated GE crops—soon to be dubbed "franken foods"—caused sales to skyrocket for Monsanto because Roundup could be sprayed randomly over the fields, killing "weeds" everywhere, without harming the crop. 
    While Roundup reduced labor costs for farmers by eliminating the need for weed removal by hand, Monsanto profited both from Roundup sales and also by monopolizing the market for the seeds. This, together with other GE monstrosities such as seeds programmed to produce plants which lack viable seeds, prevents farmers from saving their seeds for future planting. But this is what farmers have done for millennia!

    A death-knell for agriculture 

    All of this is part of a swift and sure demolition of today's agriculture. The advent of synthetic pesticides after World War II helped launch a new era, that of mono-cropping on huge factory farms using pest control with chemicals sprayed regularly as preventatives. Mono-cropping itself encourages the development of insect predators on the huge single-crop fields, but the pesticide spraying (allegedly) took care of that—until it didn't.
    Insects, given their short life-spans—like the bacteria that have developed resistance to antibiotics—can evolve many, many times faster than large mammals such as humans. Crop-eating insects did just that, developing immunities to pesticides, despite numerous replacements of pesticide/herbicide chemicals with new, stronger poisons. This includes Roundup.
    Steve Tvedten, a former pest-control operator for over 50 years, reports in Chapter 11 that despite 70 years of "waging continuous chemical warfare, we have not controlled much less eliminated a single pest species. In fact, there are now many more pests causing much more damage than when we first began to spray pesticides after World War II!" One would think that scientists could have predicted this disaster.

    A fungus now immune to drugs

    As I was starting to write this review, and wondering how I could even begin to describe the vast amount of information in this book, a front-page article in the New York Times caught my eye: "Fungus Immune to Drugs Quietly Sweeps the Globe" (NYT April 7, 2019.) The story, part of a series called "Deadly Germs, Lost Cures," documents the "urgent" threat posed by a fungus germ, Candida auris. Apparently impervious to medications, C. aurishas caused panic in some medical establishments because of its apparent immunity to treatment, its ability to stubbornly permeate hospital environments, and its sometimes lethal effects. C. aurishas been around in relatively harmless forms for thousands of years, but apparently now there is this new strain. Dutch researcher Dr. Meis is quoted saying that "drug-resistant fungi were developing thanks to heavy use of fungicides on crops."
    Enter Roundup. While Cohen's book does not deal in any detail with fungi or fungicides specifically, it does make the point that glyphosate is toxic to more than just plants, and that it destroys the soil on farms by attacking the living organisms within. As University of Vermont lecturer Brian Tokar reports in Chapter 4, "[Roundup] is 100 times more toxic to fish than to people and is toxic to earthworms, soil bacteria, and beneficial fungi." Roundup and similar pesticides have to continually be ramped up or replaced with more toxic formulas, due to the rapid evolution of plants, which—as with bacteria, and the fungi in the soil—adapt to these poisons quickly.

    The interconnection of everything: "what is a weed?"

    This connection with a story on a fungus run amok in the New York Timesgoes to the heart of Mitchel Cohen's book: the interconnection of everything. In his Chapter 18 (Mitchel's seven Chapters are dispersed throughout the book,) He goes to the heart of science today; that is, science as dominated by capitalist corporations like Monsanto, versus what it ought to be. This not just about the facts—well discussed in this book—of Monsanto's use of ghost-written reports and other "scientific" documents that were never peer-reviewed or published to hoodwink corrupted U.S. regulatory agencies into passing on glyphosate. It is about the scientific method—as applied under capitalism—which tends to isolate the parts from the whole, and the whole from its parts. It's about the reductionist methodology that corporations like Monsanto use to isolate the pests it wants to eliminate from the overall environment. And it's about the need for a holistic approach, which views every element as part of a whole that needs to work together.
    "What is a weed?" Mitchel asks. Is it a pest to the farmer, but also a food for another species? We need only to consider the plight of the Western Monarch Butterfly. "It's not that anyone wants to kill butterflies," says Cathryn Swan, author of Chapter 7 in the book. Want to or not, Monsanto wasn't paying attention to this "part" of the whole. The widespread use of Roundup to destroy "weeds" has contributed to the obliteration of milkweed, which is the essential, and in fact only, food that the Monarch's larvae can eat. Monarchs migrate across the continent in an amazing three-generation-long cycle, in which the milkweed-eating larvae are an essential part. But these beautiful butterflies are now on the point of extinction, after a rapid several years-long decline due primarily to the loss of milkweed in California's rural farmland areas.

    Glyphosate's varying effects

    Many interconnections such as this proliferate in this book, such as those in Robin T. Falk Esser's Chapter 13, "Consequences of Glyphosate's Effects on Animal Cells, Animals, and Ecosystems." Falk Esser demolishes Monsanto's claim that glyphosate's water solubility would prevent it from harming animal species. Esser shows that, when combined with the fat solubility of other key ingredients in Roundup, glyphosate is in fact "found to be bioaccumulated by animal cells as well as plant cells!"  
    Also, MIT scientist Stephanie Seneff, in Chapter 20, "Glyphosate Acting as a Glycine Analogue, Slow Insidious Toxicity," makes some frightening conclusions about the possible links between glyphosate exposure and a whole raft of human conditions and diseases, including diabetes, obesity, Autism, kidney failure, Parkinson's and ALS, among others. 
    As the title of Seneff's Chapter indicates, glyphosate is derived from the amino acid glycine; and thus it retains glycine "residues," as Seneff describes it. This chemical connection allows glyphosate to imitate glycine, or "act as an analogue" of this amino acid in the human body's development of proteins. This, in turn, can corrupt and render useless certain proteins that the body needs. It also, says Seneff, could trigger an autoimmune disease in which the body's immune system detects something wrong with this protein, and launches an attack, which could encompass the actual, uncorrupted protein. 
    Seneff also points to another alarming trait of glyphosate, that is, its ability to bond with toxic metals, such as arsenic, aluminum and lead. Noting that glyphosate was first used as a pipe cleaner because of its ability to strip metals off of metal pipes, and noting that Roundup is used widely in the agricultural areas surrounding Flint Michigan, Seneff says that, "one has to wonder whether glyphosate was a major contributor to the high levels of lead found in the drinking water" in that city!

    Think outside the spray truck!

    Seneff makes sure to point out that her theories have been indicated as possible by many studies, they have not been scientifically proven. While acknowledging that, she suggests several laboratory experiments which could be performed to validate her theories; and she says, "While many chemistry experts are skeptical that glyphosate could insinuate itself into proteins by mistake in place of glycine, it has not yet been proven that this does not happen. And, in my opinion, no compelling reasons preclude the possibility." She goes on: "In my opinion, the evidence is overwhelming that glyphosate is wreaking havoc on the earth's ecosystem, with multiple species beyond our own being adversely affected by this insidious, pervasive, toxic chemical." She advocates the shutting down of "the factories where it is being produced," and advises one and all to "switch to a 100 percent certified organic diet." 
    In an introductory comment at the head of Seneff's Chapter, Mitchel notes that the decision to include Seneff's hypotheses in the book "...is mine and mine alone, [and this inclusion] should not be used to malign or detract from the work of the other brilliant contributors to this book. We are opening up space for thinking outside the spray truck." (Emphasis mine)
    My opinion? I think this is great; all avenues suggested in this book should be looked into. Hopefully the book will inspire other honest scientists with access to labs to pursue proofs of Seneff's hypotheses.

    Monsanto's future? Or the future of our planet?

    Monsanto has recently been acquired by Bayer AG, the German chemical and pharmaceutical giant. Already a major producer of fungicides, insecticides and herbicides, Bayer also comes with a back-story of complicity in the Holocaust. This merger will give the combined company further ability to monopolize the world seed supply, and dominate the pesticide business. But why, Cohen asks in a recent radio interview about his book, would Bayer buy a company like Monsanto that comes with a multi-billion-dollar liability potential in over 11,000 lawsuits (and climbing,) in which cancer victims are now starting to win huge settlements? His answer: the company is planning to make a fortune on GE cannabis and herbicides, the business plan that made Monsanto huge profits! They're planning to ramp up Monsanto's example in new markets, and continue the poisoning of the earth.
    That's just another reason why I agree with Eve Ensler, whose comment, "This may be one of the most important books you read this year. We are being poisoned and this book is sounding a well-informed alarm," is on the cover of the book. 
    This work—and it did take several years of hard work to produce this—does sound a very important alarm. But the point, paraphrasing Marx, is not just to analyze the world, but to change it. And here I also agree with Bill Ayers, of Weather Underground fame, who writes in the first of 15 endorsements on the opening pages, "Seriously engaging the environmental catastrophe, which this important collection edited by Mitchel Cohen does brilliantly, and taking the necessary steps to solve it, will mean—I'll spit it out—overthrowing capitalism. This is the real choice in front of us: the end of capitalism or the end of the habitable earth, saving the system of finance capital or saving the system, which gives us life. Which will it be?"
    Indeed.

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    2) Cyntoia Brown Is Freed From Prison in Tennessee
    Ms. Brown, 31, was sentenced to life in prison for killing a man while she was a teenage sex trafficking victim. She was granted clemency in January.
    By Christine Hauser, August 7, 2019
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/07/us/cyntoia-brown-release.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage

    Cyntoia Brown at her clemency hearing in Nashville last year. Her case rose to national prominence, helped in part by celebrities like Rihanna and Kim Kardashian West. CreditCreditPool photo by Lacy Atkins


    Cyntoia Brown, who served 15 years of a life sentence for killing a man who had picked her up when she was a teenage trafficking victim, was released from a Tennessee prison on Wednesday, the Department of Corrections said.
    Ms. Brown's story made national headlines, raised awareness of the plight of trafficked young people and inspired a push for criminal justice reform in Tennessee. 
    In January, the state's governor at the time, Bill Haslam, bowed to pressure from lawmakers, activists and celebrities and granted her clemency

    Placed into adoption as a child, Ms. Brown, now 31, ran away from her adoptive family at 16 and lived in a motel with a pimp who raped her and forced her into prostitution, according to court documents.

    In 2004, Johnny M. Allen, 43, a real estate broker, picked up Ms. Brown at a Nashville restaurant and drove her to his home after she agreed to engage in sexual activity for $150, the documents say. 
    Ms. Brown testified that, at one point when they were in his bedroom, she thought he was reaching for a gun to kill her. She shot him in his sleep with a handgun that had been in her purse, took money and two guns and fled, according to the documents.
    She was arrested and tried as an adult on charges of first-degree murder and aggravated robbery. In 2006, Ms. Brown was convicted by a Davidson County jury of those charges and sentenced to life in prison. She would not have been eligible for parole until 2055. 
    When Mr. Haslam granted her clemency, he set her release for Aug. 7, which commuted her sentence to 15 years from the date she was arrested. 
    Ms. Brown's legal team said in a statement on Monday that Ms. Brown was declining interview requests immediately after leaving prison. "I look forward to using my experiences to help other women and girls suffering abuse and exploitation," she said in the statement.

    While in prison, Ms. Brown was described by supporters as a model prisoner. She earned her high school equivalency diploma and an associate degree with a 4.0 grade-point average through Lipscomb University, and she started working on a bachelor's degree. 
    Over the years, her case attracted increasing attention, propelled by support from celebrities including Rihanna and Kim Kardashian West. A documentary about her life was released in 2011.
    Shortly before Mr. Haslam's term ended in January, lawmakers urged him to use his powers of executive clemency and commute her sentence, pointing out that since her conviction, the laws about trying teenagers as adults had changed. 
    But a detective who had worked on the murder case urged the governor to oppose clemency.
    Mr. Haslam, a Republican, had noted when announcing his decision that Ms. Brown had acknowledged committing "a horrific crime at the age of 16." 
    "Yet imposing a life sentence on a juvenile that would require her to serve at least 51 years before even being eligible for parole consideration is too harsh, especially in light of the extraordinary steps Ms. Brown has taken to rebuild her life," he said.
    Mr. Haslam told NBC News/Today on Wednesday that Ms. Brown "really had done what we hope happens when people are incarcerated."
    "In the end," he said, it was decided that "society was better off with Cyntoia out of prison."
    Ms. Brown was one of nearly 200 people sentenced as minors to the state's 60-year mandatory minimum life sentence, the toughest in the nation, according to the Sentencing Project, an advocacy group.

    She was one of nearly 7,000 women serving a life sentence, many of them after also experiencing sexual or physical trauma, the group said.
    Ms. Brown will be under supervised parole until Aug. 7, 2029. The Department of Corrections said in a statement on Monday that she had prepared for her release by meeting with counselors to design a "re-entry" plan, which includes placement in a transition center and continuing her studies.
    Her lead lawyer, Charles W. Bone, said he had been "honored" to lead her team of lawyers and supporters for the past nine years. 
    He added, "When her story is told in much greater detail, the words which describe her success include redemption, education, rehabilitation, salvation, mercy and freedom."

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    3) Revealed: FBI and police monitoring Oregon anti-pipeline activists
    Emails show the latest example of environmental groups facing increased surveillance by law enforcement
    By Jason Wilson and Will Parrish, August 8, 2019
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/08/fbi-oregon-anti-pipeline-jordan-cove-activists

    Activists protest against the Keystone XL pipeline in front of the US Capitol in Washington 22 April 2014. There has been an uptick in civil disobedience and direct actions challenging fossil fuel infrastructure projects. Photograph: Gary Cameron/Reuters


    Law enforcement groups, including the FBI, have been monitoring opponents of a natural gas infrastructure project in Oregon and circulated intelligence to an email list that included a Republican-aligned anti-environmental PR operative, emails obtained by the Guardian show.
    The South Western Oregon Joint Task Force (SWOJTF) and its members were monitoring opponents of the Jordan Cove energy project, a proposal by the Canadian energy company Pembina to build the first-ever liquefied natural gas terminal on the US west coast, as well as a new 232-mile pipeline that would carry fracked natural gas to the port of Coos Bay.
    The Trump administration has named Jordan Cove as one of its highest-priority infrastructure projects. Jordan Cove opponents have raised concernsabout the project's significant environmental impacts, impacts on public lands, indigenous rights and climate change.
    The emails, obtained via open records requests, reflect the increased scrutiny and surveillance to which law enforcement agencies are often subjecting indigenous and environmental groups, activists say.
    It also comes amid an uptick in civil disobedience and direct actions challenging fossil fuel infrastructure projects – particularly in the wake of the Native American-led struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 and 2017. They also reflect a nationwide tendency for rightwing partisans, law enforcement agencies and the fossil fuel industry to ally with one another in the suppression of such activities.
    An email distribution list associated with the taskforce included addressees in the FBI, the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Justice (DoJ), the National Forest Service (NFS), Oregon state police (OSP), and various Oregon municipal police and sheriffs departments. But some of its recipients are outside any government agency, most notably Mark Pfeifle, the CEO of the political consultancy Off The Record Strategies.
    Pfeifle was previously a Bush administration PR adviser on national security. More recently, Pfeifle worked with law enforcement on a counter-information operation against the Dakota Access Pipeline protesters.
    When contacted by telephone about the Jordan Cove project, Mr Pfeifle said "I just don't have anything for you, I'm not up on it," before ending the conversation.
    Emails circulated on the SWOJTF email list include activists' social media posts, emails and rally announcements.
    Pfeifle appeared on the distribution list of a November 2018 email from the list's apparent keeper, the Coos county deputy sheriff, Bryan Valencia, which described a recent protest action by Southern Oregon Rising Tide, a direct action climate justice group.
    "These are the tactics that are currently being used to forcibly insert their narrative into the conversation," Valencia wrote. He noted: "There has long been a call for a 'Standing Rock' action by the Klamath Tribe in Klamath county."
    Don Gentry, the chairman of the Klamath Tribes, said Valencia's characterization is false – his tribe has never put out such a call. "We're working through the readily available channels to get this project stopped," Gentry said.
    In January 2019, Valencia circulated information on Facebook event attendance to a smaller group of SWOJTF officers, related to an upcoming Oregon department of state lands hearing, to some members of the taskforce, despite stating there was a "lack of a criminal nexus".
    The Coos county sheriffs office (CCSO) public information officer, Gabriel Fabrizio, wrote in response to emailed questions that SWOJTF had been set up to "ensure a multi-agency approach to any and all contingencies".
    Fabrizio added: "As potential dangers to the safety of the citizens and businesses of the county are identified, we monitor groups as long as necessary to determine if they will become a danger to others. Once it's determined a group has not or likely will not conduct criminal activity, we discontinue monitoring."
    He also wrote that "Mr Pfiefle has no relationship with the Coos county sheriff's office or with the SWOJTF. He was involved with training that was presented by the National Sheriffs Association to emergency responders in Coos county."
    He also denied that SWOJTF had been engaged in surveillance. "Surveillance implies an active gathering of data and images, and any monitoring we have conducted has been passive, simply watching for information," he said.
    The records reveal the existence of other law enforcement intelligence activities related to monitoring the work of environmental groups.
    In a November 2018 email to Valencia, a BLM law enforcement analyst noted her role in the "Forest Intelligence Group (FIG)" that is also tracking activists. "I appreciate anything you find, and I am glad to share likewise," the analyst wrote.
    Fabrizio said in an email response to questions that FIG "began its life as a timber investigators meeting in the mid eighties … It has been sharing information about activity including criminal activity in our regions forests since that time. The intent of the group is to identify activities that may require sharing of resources or have an impact across traditional jurisdictional lines."
    In a telephone interview, a spokesman for the US attorney in Oregon also confirmed the existence of another body mentioned in the emails: a "domestic terrorism working group" led by the assistant US attorney, Craig Gabriel, that meets "roughly quarterly" in Portland. He said that the group was mostly made up of federal agencies but included some local law enforcement.
    "It's really just to discuss any current issues in the domestic terrorism arena. This could be local issues, all the way up to international issues," the spokesman said. He said protest movements would be "within the scope" of its discussions even if no criminal activity had occurred.
    In another email exchange, an FBI agent, Michael Frost, offered "open source and social media training" to the Coos county sheriffs, writing to Valencia that "with the significant social media presence of the anti-pipeline individuals, I figured your office would be a good place to start".
    The flyer for the training promises law enforcement officers information on tracking individuals online while minimizing their "digital footprint", and indicates that it would be hosted by yet another law enforcement "task force": the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in Portland.
    A spokesperson for the FBI's Portland field office said in an email: "The FBI does not comment on what may or may not be an ongoing investigation. However, it is important to note that the FBI can never initiate an investigation based solely on first amendment-protected activity."
    On the training session, the spokesperson said: "The FBI's Portland field office regularly provides training to local law enforcement agencies. This training covers a wide range of law enforcement topics, including appropriate and legal use of open source material in investigations."
    Fabrizio said that the offer of training had not been taken up.
    Although Coos Bay is located more than 200 miles away from Portland, the Portland police bureau (PPB) officer Andrew Hearst is also part of the SWOJTF email list. Hearst told Valencia in January 2019: "As always if we hear anything about our people heading down to your area we will alert asap."
    Jordan Cove opponents expressed alarm upon learning about the level of scrutiny they are receiving from so many different law enforcement entities.
    "It is outrageous that our Oregon public agencies are actually working to plan how to stifle the very southern Oregonians whose drinking water, property and communities are threatened by this project," said Sylvia Mangan, a retired public health nurse who lives on one of the proposed pipeline routes.
    Asked why Pfeifle was included in the distribution of intelligence on protest groups, Fabrizio wrote: "Open source information is posted on public forums and not considered sensitive."
    He added: "Anyone who may be affected by potential actions are involved as an effort in community outreach and according to the tenets of community policing."
    Pfeifle previously described his work with law enforcement at Standing Rock during a 2017 presentation to oil, gas and banking executives during a pipeline conference in Houston. "A lot of things that we were doing were being done to put a marker down for the protesters. And, 'OK, if you're going to go protest somewhere? There's going to be consequences from it.'"
    In an email comment, the ACLU of Oregon questioned the legality of the activities revealed in the emails.
    "Monitoring and compiling information about Oregonians' political or social views, activities, or associations violates Oregon law," said the spokeswoman Sarah Armstrong.
    Lauren Regan, the executive director of the Oregon-based Civil Liberties Defense Center, says the SWOJTF's activities reflect a nationwide trend. "Police and corporations are working together to suppress movements against fossil fuels," she said.
    Holly Mills of Southern Oregon Rising Tide, a group regularly subjected to scrutiny in the records obtained by the Guardian, said: "We know that the state, police and corporations have often tried to stop movements like this one by using fear as a tactic and repressing dissent. We have prepared ourselves with this in mind, and we communicate on social media and over email with the assumption that cops might be reading."
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    4) Climate Change Threatens the World's Food Supply, United Nations Warns
    By Christopher Flavelle, August 8, 2019
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/climate/climate-change-food-supply.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

    Cattle grazing outside Sokoto, Nigeria, where large-scale farming is in conflict with local communities. CreditCreditLuis Tato/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


    The world's land and water resources are being exploited at "unprecedented rates," a new United Nations report warns, which combined with climate change is putting dire pressure on the ability of humanity to feed itself.
    The report, prepared by more than 100 experts from 52 countries and released in summary form in Geneva on Thursday, found that the window to address the threat is closing rapidly. A half-billion people already live in places turning into desert, and soil is being lost between 10 and 100 times faster than it is forming, according to the report. 
    Climate change will make those threats even worse, as floods, drought, storms and other types of extreme weather threaten to disrupt, and over time shrink, the global food supply. Already, more than 10 percent of the world's population remains undernourished, and some authors of the report warned in interviews that food shortages could lead to an increase in cross-border migration.

    A particular danger is that food crises could develop on several continents at once, said Cynthia Rosenzweig, a senior research scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the lead authors of the report. "The potential risk of multi-breadbasket failure is increasing," she said. "All of these things are happening at the same time."

    The report also offered a measure of hope, laying out pathways to addressing the looming food crisis, though they would require a major re-evaluation of land use and agriculture worldwide as well as consumer behavior. Proposals include increasing the productivity of land, wasting less food and persuading more people to shift their diets away from cattle and other types of meat. 
    "One of the important findings of our work is that there are a lot of actions that we can take now. They're available to us," Dr.Rosenzweig said. "But what some of these solutions do require is attention, financial support, enabling environments." 
    The summary was released Thursday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international group of scientists convened by the United Nations that pulls together a wide range of existing research to help governments understand climate change and make policy decisions. The I.P.C.C. is writing a series of climate reports, including one last year on the disastrous consequences if the planet's temperature rises just 1.5 degrees Celsius above its preindustrial levels, as well as an upcoming report on the state of the world's oceans.
    Some authors also suggested that food shortages are likely to affect poorer parts of the world far more than richer ones. That could increase a flow of immigration that is already redefining politics in North America, Europe and other parts of the world. 
    "People's lives will be affected by a massive pressure for migration," said Pete Smith, a professor of plant and soil science at the University of Aberdeen and one of the report's lead authors. "People don't stay and die where they are. People migrate."

    Between 2010 and 2015 the number of migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras showing up at the United States' border with Mexico increased fivefold, coinciding with a dry period that left many with not enough food and was so unusual that scientists suggested it bears the signal of climate change.

    Barring action on a sweeping scale, the report said, climate change will accelerate the danger of severe food shortages. As a warming atmosphere intensifies the world's droughts, flooding, heat waves, wildfires and other weather patterns, it is speeding up the rate of soil loss and land degradation, the report concludes. 
    Higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — a greenhouse gas put there mainly by the burning of fossil fuels — will also reduce food's nutritional quality, even as rising temperatures cut crop yields and harm livestock. 
    Those changes threaten to exceed the ability of the agriculture industry to adapt. 
    In some cases, the report says, a changing climate is boosting food production because, for example, warmer temperatures will mean greater yields of some crops at higher latitudes. But on the whole, the report finds that climate change is already hurting the availability of food because of decreased yields and lost land from erosion, desertification and rising seas, among other things. 
    Overall if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise, so will food costs, according to the report, affecting people around the world.

    "You're sort of reaching a breaking point with land itself and its ability to grow food and sustain us," said Aditi Sen, a senior policy adviser on climate change at Oxfam America, an antipoverty advocacy organization.
    In addition, the researchers said, even as climate change makes agriculture more difficult, agriculture itself is also exacerbating climate change. 
    The report said that activities such as draining wetlands — as has happened in Indonesia and Malaysia to create palm oil plantations, for example — is particularly damaging. When drained, peatlands, which store between 530 and 694 billion tons of carbon dioxide globally, release that carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.Carbon dioxide is a major greenhouse gas, trapping the sun's heat and warming the planet. Every 2.5 acres of peatlands release the carbon dioxide equivalent of burning 6,000 gallons of gasoline. 
    And the emission of carbon dioxide continue long after the peatlands are drained. Of the five gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions that are released each year from deforestation and other land-use changes, "One gigaton comes from the ongoing degradation of peatlands that are already drained," said Tim Searchinger, a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank, who is familiar with the report. (By comparison, the fossil fuel industry emitted about 37 gigatons of carbon dioxide last year, according to the institute.)

    Similarly, cattle are significant producers of methane, another powerful greenhouse gas, and an increase in global demand for beef and other meats has fueled their numbers and increased deforestation in critical forest systems like the Amazon.

    Since 1961 methane emissions from ruminant livestock, which includes cows as well as sheep, buffalo and goats, have significantly increased, according to the report. And each year, the amount of forested land that is cleared — much of that propelled by demand for pasture land for cattle — releases the emissions equivalent of driving 600 million cars. 
    Overall, the report says there is still time to address the threats by making the food system more efficient. The authors urge changes in how food is produced and distributed, including better soil management, crop diversification and fewer restrictions on trade. They also call for shifts in consumer behavior, noting that at least one-quarter of all food worldwide is wasted.

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    5) Trump Comes to Console. El Paso Says No Thanks.
    By Simon Romero and Rick Rojas, August 7, 2019
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/07/us/el-paso-trump-escobar.html

    Rarely in recent memory has a relationship between a president and a city been so fraught.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times


    EL PASO — Earlier this year in his State of the Union address, President Trump described to the nation how the Texas border city of El Paso once had "extremely high rates of violent crime" and was considered "one of our nation's most dangerous cities." Then he turned it into the living argument for his border wall.
    "With a powerful barrier in place," he went on, "El Paso is one of the safest cities in our country. Simply put, walls work and walls save lives."

    In this West Texas border city, founded 360 years ago as an outpost of the Spanish empire, those words festered. So did words Mr. Trump repeated at a rally he held on the city's outskirts a few weeks later. "Murders, murders, murders," he said, in reference to immigrants, as the crowd chanted, "Build the wall!"

    For many in El Paso, the potentially devastating consequences of the anger over immigration and race became apparent this weekend, when 22 people were killed at a Walmart and the white suspect warned of a "Hispanic invasion," plunging the city into mourning. So Mr. Trump returned — this time to say he wanted to help the city grieve.

    But rarely in recent memory has a relationship between a president and a city been so fraught. As Mr. Trump arrived here on Wednesday to try to meet the victims, protesters gathered at a memorial outside the scene of the carnage, many angry at the president's visit.
    The El Paso Times published a letter to Mr. Trump defending the city — which lies just across the border from the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez — and its deep sense of bicultural identity. "Our city and Juárez were always linked. Today, we are intertwined more than ever. The evil that visited us targeted people from El Paso and Juárez alike," it said. "Our people are scared."

    [One Walmart worker said he hustled shoppers into empty steel shipping containers behind the store to help them survive the attack.]

    And so this predominantly Hispanic city in a state whose leadership is tightly aligned with the administration's anti-immigration agenda tried this week to chart its own course through America's troubled political waters.
    El Paso officials — pointing out that the Trump campaign still owes the city more than half a million dollars for the security costs of a rally in February — veered between rejecting the president's politics and welcoming his attempt to recognize the city's grief.
    "This is the office of the mayor of El Paso in an official capacity welcoming the office of the president of the United States, which I consider is my formal duty," said Dee Margo, the mayor.
    Others in the city had no patience for such diplomacy.
    "Absolutely everything that Trump stands for was concentrated and fired at the citizens of El Paso that day at Walmart," said Christopher Bailey, 43, a project coordinator for an El Paso health clinic. "Shame should be hung around the neck for every supporter that continues to justify his language and his presidency."
    At the memorial outside the Walmart that was the scene of Saturday's attack and at a poster-making event the night before the protest, many said the president should not have come.

    "It's his words that created the climate that led that hateful man to come to my community," said Lyda Ness-Garcia, a lawyer and an organizer for the Women's March of El Paso who was at the poster event.
    [The victims of the El Paso attack included a couple who had three young children.]
    She said that when Mr. Trump painted El Paso as a dangerous city that needed stronger barriers between it and Mexico he was using the city as nothing more than a prop. El Paso was one of the safest American cities of its size long before barriers went up at the border, and violent crime is relatively low.
    "It's factually false. It's just untrue. It's nothing but some mythed-up white rage," she said. "He needs to apologize and take his words back."
    In an extraordinary series of tweets on the night before the president's arrival, Representative Veronica Escobar, a Democrat representing El Paso in Congress, underscored the way in which the city was taking on a leading role — even in a conservative state like Texas — in opposing Mr. Trump. Only about 26 percent of the voters in El Paso County voted for Mr. Trump in 2016.

    Ms. Escobar revealed that the White House had invited her to join Mr. Trump during Wednesday's visit, but she said she had requested a phone call with the president in an effort to explain that the language he uses to describe Latinos, sometimes equating them with violent criminals, is dehumanizing.
    "I have publicly said he has a responsibility to acknowledge the power of his words, apologize for them, and take them back because they are still hanging over us," Ms. Escobar wrote.

    The president, she said, was "too busy" to talk, and she declined to join him in his visit. "I refuse to be an accessory to his visit."
    El Paso treasures its place as part of a community that straddles two countries. Its vibrancy, many said, comes from its bond with Mexico, with a history that is older than that of the United States.
    "He doesn't really know who we are," said Judy Lugo, president of the Texas State Employees Union, which represents some 10,000 state workers, of Mr. Trump's visit. "He doesn't know our culture, the long history we have. He doesn't understand."
    "We are a community of love, a community of family," Ms. Lugo said. "We are not what he says we are. We are not rapists. We are not dirty. We are not criminals."
    Across the city, some residents worried that Mr. Trump's visit might do more harm than good.
    "He's just putting salt on the wound," Ninamarie Ochoa, 29, a teacher, said of Mr. Trump's visit. Referring to white nationalists who express views like those of the suspect in the attack and the recent detention in tent camps of thousands of migrants arriving in El Paso, she said, "I think that the way he has empowered those voices, to give them license to act on it, you see this in the way that people talk about ICE and Border Patrol and their complacency with the concentration camps."
    Wednesday's visit was intended as an opportunity for Mr. Trump to console family members and survivors and help commemorate those who died in Saturday's attack. But few seemed ready to bridge a gap between the city and the president that had grown wide even before the shooting.

    El Paso's culture has been influenced both by its proximity to Mexico and its distance from so much of the rest of the state, said Richard Pineda, a political communications professor at the University of Texas, El Paso. In a previous era, before jet travel, a trip to El Paso from many cities could be 10 hours or more. It still takes 11 hours to drive there from Houston. It is in a different time zone than the rest of Texas.
    The city, he said, was not as tolerant as some might portray it. Yet a certain influence comes from living so close to another country, with the vibrancy, poverty and sometimes violence of Ciudad Juárez visible on the other side of the border fence. "You literally get to see a totally different world," he said.
    As Mr. Trump has used El Paso as a stage for promoting his immigration policies, some of the city's politicians have used it as an example of a counternarrative. The city's former representative in Congress, Beto O'Rourke, now running as a Democrat for president, often talks about El Paso's experience as a bicultural city to criticize the administration's handling of the surge in migrant arrivals at the southern border. Ms. Escobar has made frequent appearances on television condemning the treatment of migrants in crowded detention centers, many of them in El Paso and nearby.
    Yet some of Mr. Trump's messages have found support in El Paso — though few were eager to talk about it much in the mood of grieving and anger that prevailed on Wednesday.
    Jordan Flores, 20, who buses tables at Peter Piper Pizza, showed up outside the Walmart wearing a MAGA hat. He said he remained a supporter of the president, though he felt uneasy about the killings.
    "For people to put me into the rhetoric that I am supposed to be this racist or homophobic person, it's just not true," Mr. Flores said. "My heart goes out to every single person that was affected by this massacre."

    Jason Carr, 53, who described himself as a libertarian, said it was clear even to him that it would have been better for the president not to have come to El Paso.
    "It's pretty clear he wasn't wanted," he said. "You can see the hurt in people's eyes," he said of the attack, still so fresh after only a few days. "It's just so wrong. There's just so many layers of how wrong it was."

    Arturo Rubio and Erin Coulehan contributed reporting.

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    6) Man Assaulted Boy at Rodeo for Refusing to Remove Hat for Anthem, Officials Say
    Curt Brockway was charged with a felony after grabbing the 13-year-old and slamming him to the ground, the authorities in Montana said.
    By Neil Vigdor, August 8, 2019
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/us/montana-man-attacks-boy-national-anthem.html

    Curt James Brockway of Superior, Mont., was charged with assaulting a minor.CreditCreditMontana Department of Corrections, via Associated Press


    A Montana man has been charged with felony assault after attacking a 13-year-old boy who he said refused to remove his cap for the national anthem at a county rodeo, the authorities said. The confrontation left the teenager bleeding from his ears and with a skull fracture, according to prosecutors.
    The man, Curt James Brockway, 39, of Superior, Mont., grabbed the youth "by his throat, lifted him into the air, and slammed the boy into the ground," according to an affidavit filed by the Mineral County attorney's office. 
    Mr. Brockway told a sheriff's deputy that the boy "was wearing a hat as the anthem began, and Mr. Brockway asked the youth to remove his hat because it was disrespectful to wear one's hat during the national anthem," the affidavit said. 

    Mr. Brockway also told the deputy that the boy had responded with an expletive, according to the affidavit.

    Both were spectators on Saturday night at the county rodeo, which is part of the Mineral County Fair in Superior. There was no indication that the boy was protesting the anthem. 
    The boy was transported by life flight to Sacred Heart Children's Hospital in Spokane, Wash., about 140 miles away, and was later released, the county attorney, Ellen Donohue, said in an email on Wednesday. 
    Mr. Brockway's lawyer, Lance Jasper, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday evening. 
    The episode represented the latest flash point in the heated national debate over patriotism and the anthem. It began in 2016 when Colin Kaepernick, the quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers at the time, sat during "The Star-Spangled Banner" in an N.F.L. preseason game to protest racial oppression. He took a knee during later games, becoming a lightning rod activist for social justice.

    If convicted of assaulting a minor, someone under 14 years old, Mr. Brockway could face up to five years in prison.

    This is not the first time that Mr. Brockway has been arrested. In 2010, he was charged with assault with a weapon and was later placed on probation, according to public records. He was not on probation at the time of the episode at the county rodeo, according to prosecutors. 
    Mr. Brockway is scheduled for arraignment Aug. 14. Under the terms of his release, which a judge signed on Tuesday, he is under house arrest and is allowed to leave his residence only for work, doctor's appointments and court appearances. He must wear an ankle monitor. 
    Prosecutors had asked the judge to set Mr. Brockway's bail at $100,000. 
    "The State based its argument on Mr. Brockway's criminal history of violence, the violence of the alleged crime, the age of the alleged victim and its concern for the safety of the community," Ms. Donohue said in her email.

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    7)  What Makes an American?
    By Jason DeParle, August 9, 2019
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/09/sunday-review/immigration-assimilation-texas.html

    The Villanueva family outside of their home in Texas City, Texas. From left, Rosalie, daughter Lara, age 13, son Dominique, age 12, Chris, and 16-year-old daughter, Kristine.CreditCreditTamir Kalifa for The New York Times


    One man likens immigrants to snakes, frets that they will never “go back to their huts,” and insists that they threaten “jobs, wages, housing, schools, tax bills” and more.
    Another sees a “Hispanic invasion,” fears that it will bring the “cultural and ethnic replacement of Americans,” and warns that the foreign influx endangers “our way of life.”

    After last weekend’s shooting in El Paso, it was so hard to distinguish President Trump’s views of immigration (paragraph one) from those of the accused killer (paragraph two) that the suspect offered a pre-emptive defense against charges of plagiarism. In a “manifesto” released just before the massacre, he insisted he wasn’t just mouthing “Trump’s rhetoric’’ but offering thoughts of his own.

    Posted on a far-right website, the statement never used the word “assimilation.” But it rested on the Trumpian view that immigration was failing and that this failure posed an existential threat. The fear that foreigners refuse to adapt is widespread among immigration critics, and even Americans with more welcoming views sometimes worry that assimilation is proceeding less surely than it once did.

    I took reassurance this past week in another Texas immigration story, which suggests that America’s powers of assimilation remain formidable. It involves a third grader with an apt name, Precious Lara Villanueva, who lingered at dinner a year after arriving in the United States and said, “I sort of agree with Rosa Parks.”
    This was news. The previous year, Lara’s teacher had called Parks a “hero.” But the idea of a hero in handcuffs made no sense to a girl straight from the Philippines, where children are admonished to respect elders and obey authority. “She didn’t listen to the policeman,” Lara had said. (Besides, she added, heroes wear capes.)
    By the following year, her views were in flux. “It wasn’t, like, fairfor the black people to sit in the back,” Lara told me at dinner in 2014. Parks’s courage impressed her, but so did her manners: “She said no — but she didn’t use a bad word.” To an immigrant deftly blending cultures, Rosa Parks became “The Civil Rights Hero Who Didn’t Curse.”
    I’ve followed Lara’s family for 32 years, as they completed a remarkable rise from a Manila shantytown to the Houston suburbs. As a young journalist, I moved into her grandparents’ hovel, to better understand the country’s vast poverty, and I’ve been reporting on the family’s migrations ever since. Lara’s grandfather worked abroad for years at a time, cleaning pools in Saudi Arabia, and her grandmother raised their five children on the money he sent — 10 times his Manila pay.

    All five children grew up to become overseas workers, too, and the one I know best — Lara’s mother, Rosalie — used her father’s remittances to get through nursing school. She worked in the Persian Gulf for nearly two decades, then got her big break in 2012 when a short-staffed hospital in Galveston, Tex., offered her a nursing job. Her husband and three children soon followed.
    While opponents of immigration insist (ever more loudly) that assimilation has failed, the Villanuevas’ experience offers a retort. With a house in the suburbs and kids on the honor roll, they achieved in three years a degree of assimilation that used to take three generations.

    They did so, moreover, in metro Houston, a pro-immigrant corner of Red State America where nearly a quarter of the work force is foreign-born. Once synonymous with honky-tonks and rodeos, Houston now sells itself as a hub of diversity, with Hindu temples and Viet-Cajun cuisine.
    In a country of 44 million immigrants, no family stands for the whole. The Villanuevas merely stand for the substantial immigrant success missing from the Trump Twitter feed.
    I got to see the process of becoming American through the eyes of Lara and her older sister, Kristine, who assimilated rapidly, in surprising and contrasting ways.
    When they arrived in late 2012, it was obvious who had been the first-grade beauty queen. Kristine reigned as if she still wore the tiara. She was saucy, bossy, purposeful and proud, with a toughness that belied her nine years. Proud of the English she had learned back home, she spoke it with a syntax that conveyed exuberance. She was “so very, very excited” to see America and “so very, very proud” of her visa that she taped it to the wall.
    But her move was very complex. In coming to the States, she had gained her “mommy” (Rosalie), but lost her “mama” (Rosalie’s sister, Rowena), who had raised her on a Philippine farm while Rosalie and her husband, Chris, worked in Abu Dhabi. “I didn’t want to leave Mama Wena, but I also couldn’t leave my parents — either way it’s sad,” she told me. Mama Wena called in tears and needed money. When Kristine bought a Barbie, “Mama” chided her for not sending the cash.

    Kristine’s English, good for a foreign child, was weaker than it seemed. Whenever her teacher said “keep your book out,” Kristine put hers in her desk. It took a Filipino teacher to explain that itago, Tagalog for “to keep,” means to hide away. Asked to describe a “pet peeve,” Kristine wrote about her dog. Losing confidence, she hid behind a frozen smile.
    In fifth grade, a new persona appeared. Tired of being the meek foreign girl, Kristine reinvented herself as a wisecracking diva of the sort she saw on TV. She described herself in diaries as “honest” and “joyful,” but also “mean” — a boast. “My classmates say, ‘Kristine, it’s not like you!’” she said. “Now I’m a Kristine who will fight for herself!”
    Kristine snapped selfies by the thousand and posted them on Instagram accounts like “kristinecute” and “swelfwe.queen.” She practiced poses: Fish Mouth required an exaggerated pucker, Duck Face protruding lips. She touted them as sophisticated American looks her Philippine cousins wouldn’t know.
    Kristine’s Barbies, like Kristine, straddled contrasting worlds. Her stories revolved around a family named the Fashion Fashionistas, who lived in a Manila trash dump but used their private plane to shop in America. For Kristine, poor Filipinos becoming rich Americans needed no explanation. It simply felt true.

    Mostly the straddling went smoothly, but occasionally the Fashionistas’ daughter, Stacy, felt burdened by those left behind. When she caught someone back home wearing her shoes, Stacy beat her — as Kristine dramatized by whacking the doll’s head on the floor. Freed from obligations to the needy, Stacy flew back to the rich country and decorated her room in Hello Kitty.
    As her frustration mounted and her school progress stalled, Kristine indulged in a series of minor rebellions — ignoring assignments, disrupting class, and affecting a scatterbrained personality in a bid for popularity. Her teacher affectionately groaned, “She’s becoming Americanized.”
    Once, that would have been a compliment. The classic version of Americanization is called straight-line assimilation. It’s a three-generation tale as central to America’s mythology as the Boston Tea Party: The immigrants struggle amid poverty and bias; their children awkwardly juggle two cultures; the third generation completes the rise, with a white-collar job and a house in the suburbs. The story imparts two lessons: The descendants of immigrants advance and do so by blending in.
    Straight-line assimilation was the reigning narrative of the mid-20th century. Half a century had passed since immigrants from southern and Eastern Europe had poured through Ellis Island. Learned men had warned that they would never adapt, but they did so decisively. A unified country had beaten the Nazis, with Mayflower descendants sharing foxholes with Kowalskis and Mancinis. Groups that warred abroad lived as neighbors in New York and Chicago. A Catholic became president.

    Sometime in the 1960s, this assimilation story fell from favor. It overstated the acceptance that immigrants had won and understated the hardships they had faced. It idealized WASP culture and slighted the satisfactions of the ethnic community. It overlooked race — the lengths to which the country had gone to prevent the assimilation of blacks.

    Leftist scholars condemned “the blight of assimilationist ideology” and celebrated ethnic struggle. Ozzie and Harriet gave way to Kojak and Columbo, heritage travel and klezmer bands. Assimilation seemed wrong as an explanation of what did happen and offensive as an explanation of what should happen.
    The resurgence of ethnic identity was heartfelt but no sign that assimilation had failed. On the contrary, as scholars like Herbert Gans and Mary Waters argued, Americans could celebrate their heritage precisely because it meant so little. It did not affect where they could live, whom they could marry or what jobs they could get. “Symbolic ethnicity” flourished, but divisions faded: intermarriage rose, discrimination fell and residential enclaves dispersed.
    Given the difficulties that immigrants and their descendants faced, Gans rightly called their assimilation “bumpy line” rather than straight. But bumps and all, assimilation prevailed.
    It’s possible that Kristine’s generation will find assimilation harder. Economic mobility has waned, a quarter of the foreign-born lack legal status, and most of today’s immigrants are racial minorities, which could attract more enduring bigotry. Mass media once encouraged common identity. In today’s narrowcast world, pluribus triumphs over unum.
    Trumpism itself may impede assimilation: if you constantly tell immigrants they’re unwanted, they may come to believe it.
    But other differences between the eras could ease assimilation. Immigrants have civil rights their predecessors lacked. (Sicilians did not have affirmative action.) Many arrive like Rosalie, already middle-class. And mainstream culture is much more diverse, making it easier to fit in.

    Two academic camps have shaped debate about the children of immigrants. Both see the majority succeeding — advancing in school, securing jobs and integrating. Intermarriage is high, and English is near universal. “Today’s immigrants are actually learning English faster than their predecessors,” the National Academy of Sciences concluded in 2015.
    But some scholars warn that Americanization carries risks, especially for the poor. The longer newcomers are in the United States, the more likely they are to smoke, grow obese or commit crimes. Two prominent scholars, Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut, have warned that the children of the most disadvantaged immigrants may assimilate downward, joining the native poor in a “rainbow underclass.”
    Kristine’s teacher wasn’t thinking about that when she fretted about Americanization. But even her mild concerns turned straight-line assimilation on its head: She saw Americanization as the problem, not the solution.
    A rival group is more optimistic. They found that children of immigrants not only outperformed children of natives (of similar races) but did so despite having parents with less income and education. How could that be? Philip Kasinitz and three colleaguesargue that children of immigrants often enjoy a “second-generation advantage” over native peers.
    Two parts of the argument are familiar — immigrants, self-selected for ambition, pass along their drive, and the intensity of ethnic networks provides support that natives lack. But the researchers also argue that children of immigrants benefit intellectually from living at a cultural crossroads. (They note it took a Russian-born Jew, Irving Berlin, to write “White Christmas.”) Children of immigrants, they wrote, often “combine the best of both worlds” — their parents’ and their peers’ — or innovate in ways that “can be highly conducive to success.’’
    In the Villanueva family, each theory offers a guide to a different daughter. (A son, Dominique, was too young to share his thoughts in equal depth.) Kristine’s experience provided a small reminder that Americanization isn’t always beneficial: She assimilated energetically, but to the distractions of middle school. Lara blended her Filipino and American selves in ways that supplied an edge. She was second-generation advantage personified.
    While Kristine experienced migration as division (English vs. Tagalog, her mother vs. her aunt), Lara found it addition — Rosa Parks’s protests plus her politeness, parents beside her and grandparents on Skype.
    Lara’s Filipino traits included her manners, her long dinnertime prayers and an immigrant’s belief in opportunity. They also included the benefits of a two-parent family, which social science finds considerable. (“American families are a mess!” her teacher complained.)
    From the United States, Lara got a reduced sense of class and gender constraints, a school full of books and a classroom with just 24 students, instead of 70 in the Philippines. Above all, she got a license to ask questions.

    Nothing about the Philippines had encouraged her to probe. On the contrary, a classroom so crowded had little time for raised hands, and children were taught to respect their elders, not interrogate them. American teachers loved questions.
    “Do fish sleep?” Lara asked.
    “Is the Leaning Tower of Pisa ever going to collapse?”
    “Do nurses have to be caring? Maybe I’ll just be a doctor.”
    Curious about how she had grown curious, Lara formed her own assimilation theory: America had scared her into asking questions. Confused when she arrived and afraid of repeating second grade, “I told myself I should be interested right now.” Being interested became a habit. Put differently, blending cultures produced new thinking — Lara was simply repeating what the Kasinitz camp argues about the cultural crossroads.

    In her second school year in America, Lara flourished. Her teacher first noticed her gift when the class read a book about a bully. Asked what a story is “about,” most third graders summarize the plot. Lara extracted a lesson: “The theme of this book is not to be rude. We should show good character.”
    Lara liked to debate, largely with herself, which of the heroines she studied was greatest. Rosa Parks didn’t swear and Helen Keller didn’t quit, but Harriet Tubman rescued others, “even though they weren’t her relatives!” Every Filipino understands sacrifice for family, but selflessness toward strangers opened a new moral universe. “She did the really, really right thing.”
    One day when we stopped for an after-school snack, Lara sprang a sneaky question. “Do you know how to infer?”
    I frowned as if trying to remember. “I’m going to teach you how!”
    She paused to dip her fry in her milkshake and increase the suspense. “It’s like when you say, ‘Oh, it’s cold — it’s really snow outside.’ I didn’t tell you what season it is. But you can infer it’s winter.”
    She stabbed the air in triumph with a milky fry. “You see? It works!’’
    By the end of their third year in America, Kristine and Lara had each become an exaggerated version of herself, with Lara reveling in grade-school epiphanies and Kristine deep into middle-school intrigue. Her 15 closest sixth grade friends were arrayed in a fluid hierarchy, with “sisters” at the top, followed by “best friends for life,” then “baes for life” and “ride or dies.”“Your ride or dies are like your best friends but not your best-est friends.”
    While Lara’s new word was “onomatopoeia,” Kristine’s was “stuffy-fluffy.” Her science teacher said she “wants to be one of the popular girls” who “act like they don’t have a clue. Her English teacher blamed the “ditsy’’ pose on “Americanization” but said, “I don’t think that’s really her.”

    It wasn’t. With a little more time her English strengthened, her conflict about leaving Mama Wena waned, and the awkwardness of middle school passed. In tenth grade she sent me a matter-of-fact text that read, 
    “My current grades:
    History: 91 
    Chemistry: 99 
    Geometry: 100 
    English: 100”
    Two texts followed:
    Yes!” “Yesssss!”
    When the family bought a new suburban house, Rosalie reminded her Americanized children how far they had come. “Mommy grew up a shanty,” she said.
    “What’s a shanty, Mommy?” Kristine asked.
    Lara spent our last ride to school talking about the difference between mean, median, and mode, then pumped her fist when she heard there was a test. She had studied Harriet Tubman again (“she saved people, even though they weren’t her relatives!”) and made the A-honor roll.
    I offered to mark the occasion with a trip to the toy store, but Lara chose Office Depot and wrote her first book — an enigmatic study of a girl who asks questions.
    “Why would I be excited for a TEST? Just why?!”
    “Why do I have emotions just why — please tell me? Would you?”
    “Why am I so curiouse (cq), just why?”
    I thought back to second grade, when her first experience of America was a classroom of especially disruptive kids. Lara spoke little English but was so well behaved that her teacher exclaimed, “I need a few more like her!”
    Fresh from the Philippines, Lara was the most foreign student in the class and in a Norman Rockwell way the most classically American — the earnest girl in a dainty sweater with an apple on her desk. She didn’t replace an American, she became one.
    Jason DeParle is a reporter for The Times and the author of the forthcoming, “A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves: One Family and Migration in the 21st Century,” from which this essay is adapted.
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    8) Farmers Don’t Need to Read the Science. We Are Living It.
    By Alan Sano, August 9, 2019
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/09/opinion/climate-change-food-report.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

    CreditCreditLucy Nicholson/Reuters


    FIREBAUGH, Calif. — Many farmers probably haven’t read the new report from the United Nations warning of threats to the global food supply from climate change and land misuse. But we don’t need to read the science — we’re living it.
    Here in the San Joaquin Valley, one of the world’s most productive agricultural regions, there’s not much debate anymore that the climate is changing. The drought of recent years made it hard to ignore; we had limited surface water for irrigation, and the groundwater was so depleted that land sank right under our feet.
    Temperatures in nearby Fresno rose to 100 degrees or above on 15 days last month, which was the hottest month worldwide on record, following the hottest June ever. (The previous July, temperatures reached at least 100 degrees on 26 consecutive days, surpassing the record of 22 days in 2005.) The heat is hard to ignore when you and your crew are trying to fix a broken tractor or harvest tomatoes under a blazing sun. As the world heats up, so do our soils, making it harder to get thirsty plants the water they need.

    The valley’s characteristic winter tule fog is also disappearing, and winters are getting warmer. Yields of many stone fruits and nuts that feed the country are declining because the trees require cool winters and those fogs trap cool air in the valley. Warm winters also threaten the Sierra Nevada snowpack, which provides 30 percent of California’s water. We had a good wet winter this year, but a few years ago the snowpack was at its lowest level in 500 years. We also worry that last year’s record California wildfires, which blanketed the valley with smoke for weeks, might become the new normal. I don’t get sick much, but that summer I had a hard time breathing because of the congestion in my lungs.

    The latest report from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reinforces our anxiety. It warns of declines in food yields, instability in food supplies, increased soil erosion and threats to water availability in coming decades. The global food supply system is a big contributor of the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet, the report added. As The Times reported on Thursday, without “action on a sweeping scale” the warming climate will intensify “the world’s droughts, flooding, heat waves, wildfires and other weather patterns” and speed up “the rate of soil loss and land degradation.”
    The good news is that farmers can be part of the solution. At our 4,000-acre farm, where we primarily grow tomatoes, we started planting winter crops that require less water, like garbanzo beans and garlic. When necessary, we leave some fields unplanted for part of the year to save water for our high-value almond and pistachio trees. We switched to drip irrigation long ago, which efficiently delivers water to crops at their roots under the soil, protected from the hot sun.
    We try to take great care of our soil’s health and we keep learning how to do it better. A living soil with lots of organic matter absorbs and holds more water and nutrients, retains more topsoil and grows healthier plants that survive increasing pressures from pests and diseases. 
    After harvesting our fall crops, we now use cover crops that return carbon and nitrogen to the soil and nourish the microbes and fungi essential for a living soil ecology. The plants and soil organisms work together to pull carbon out of the atmosphere and draw it down into the root zone. We minimize disturbance of our land by decreasing tillage, which protects these microorganisms and keeps carbon in the soil, where it belongs. Rather than being a source of carbon emissions, farms could store carbon where it’s needed to grow food.
    This has been good for our business, too. We spend less on water, energy and fertilizer and are getting good yields. 

    We and other farmers here are constantly experimenting with new approaches to keep soils healthy. We’re part of a work group at the University of California, Davis, Cooperative Extension, where we learn about the science and share successes and failures with other farmers. Research and education like this are essential for farmers who are too busy growing food to keep up with the latest science and technologies.
    The science is clear that the challenges facing agriculture will only become more difficult, and in unpredictable ways. Farmers will need more financial incentives to adopt practices that encourage healthy soils and water conservation, like government grants or cost-sharing arrangements. That kind of support would lower the barriers of cost and risk that farmers now face in trying new, climate-friendly ways of farming. With state-of-the-art science, innovation and sound public policy, farmers here and elsewhere in the United States can work to make sure this latest dire warning about the warming planet does not become self-fulfilling.
    Alan Sano owns and operates Sano Farms.
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    9) Hong Kong Protesters Descend on Airport, With Plans to Stay for Days
    By Katherine Li and Mike Ives, August 9, 2019
    “The living conditions facing youngsters nowadays are harsh, and they feel a lack of ownership over their hometown, both economically and politically.”
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/09/world/asia/hong-kong-airport-protest.html

    Antigovernment protesters demonstrated at the arrivals hall at Hong Kong’s international airport on Friday. The protest is planned to last through Sunday.Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times


    HONG KONG — Thousands of black-clad antigovernment protesters demonstrated at Hong Kong’s international airport on Friday, taking aim at both a global transit hub and the city’s closely guarded reputation for order and efficiency.
    The protest in the airport’s arrivals hall, which is planned to last through Sunday, came as Hong Kong reeled from its worst political crisis since Britain handed the former colony back to China in 1997, and less than a week after protests and a general strike caused chaos in the city and led to 148 arrests.
    The airport protest began in the early afternoon, as demonstrators in black T-shirts and face masks nearly filled the cavernous arrivals hall, chanting “Hong Kongers, keep going,” a rallying cry for the two-month-old protest movement.

    “You’ve arrived in a broken, torn-apart city, not the one you have once pictured,” read a pamphlet that protesters offered to arriving travelers. “Yet for this Hong Kong, we fight. We shall never surrender.”

    As of Friday night, the demonstration remained peaceful, and there had been no reports of arrests or disruptions of flights. Protesters were careful to leave a path clear for travelers, some of whom recorded the demonstration on their phones or helped themselves to pamphlets.

    The protests in Hong Kong began two months ago, in opposition to a bill — now suspended — that would allow extraditions to mainland China, where the courts are controlled by the ruling Communist Party. It has since expanded to include a number of other demands for greater democracy.
    In recent days, mainland Chinese officials have issued stern warnings to protesters about the risks of continuing their campaign. On Friday night, the Chinese government struck at Hong Kong’s flagship carrier, Cathay Pacific, some of whose employees were reported to have supported the protests.
    China’s civil aviation authority demanded that the airline bar staffers who have supported illegal assemblies or acts of violence from working on flights to mainland China. A Cathay pilot was reported to have been among dozens of people charged with rioting in connection with a recent protest, and more than 1,500 of its employees called in sick as part of the general strike on Monday, according to a union representative.

    Many of the street protests in recent weeks have ended with the Hong Kong police firing tear gas and rubber bullets in clashes with demonstrators. A hard-core contingent of young protesters has increasingly embraced violent tactics, arguing that the government has ignored more peaceful displays.
    Protesters said they did not expect the police to use tear gas against them at the airport. As of early evening, the police presence in the arrivals hall was light.

    Sam Yang, 45, a Taiwanese businessman, waded through the crowd after arriving on a flight from the mainland Chinese city of Chengdu. He said that his first order of business would be changing out of the black T-shirt that he happened to be wearing.
    “Obviously I’ve never run into any protests here before,” Mr. Yang said. “I don’t know how this conflict will end, either. Good luck to Hong Kong.”
    Before the demonstration, several protesters, including employees of Cathay Pacific, stressed that it was meant to be an entirely nonviolent way of maintaining the movement’s momentum.
    Miki Ip, a real-estate agent who attended the demonstration, said she came partly to refute unproven claims by the Chinese government that the civil disobedience had been led by foreign forces who wanted to undermine Beijing’s authority.

    “China has told us so many lies, and we lack a government that really works in our interests,” Ms. Ip, 38, said in the arrivals hall. “The living conditions facing youngsters nowadays are harsh, and they feel a lack of ownership over their hometown, both economically and politically.”

    This week, news media controlled by the Chinese Communist Party accused a diplomat at the American consulate in Hong Kong, Julie Eadeh, of being behind the protests. A State Department spokeswoman, Morgan Ortagus, suggested that China had leaked personal information about Ms. Eadeh, calling that the act of a “thuggish regime.”
    On Friday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s office in Hong Kong responded by accusing the United States of “venomous and unfounded allegations” and “gangster logic.”
    The stakes are high for the airport protesters, in part because they have not applied for permission to hold the demonstration. That technically makes it an illegal assembly.
    The Hong Kong airport handled nearly 75 million passengers last year, making it the world’s eighth busiest for passengers, according to Airports Council International. It was also the world’s busiest aviation terminal for cargo.

    Several other antigovernment demonstrations are planned for this weekend around Hong Kong. They include a family-friendly rally in the central business district that the police approved in advance, and three planned marches elsewhere for which permit applications were rejected.

    On Wednesday, the United States joined several other countries — including Australia, Britain, Ireland, Japan and Singapore — in issuing a warning to its citizens about traveling to Hong Kong. It advised them to “exercise increased caution” because of recent “confrontational” protests.
    The local government scrambled on Thursday to reassure visitors that Hong Kong was still safe, saying in a statement that while some may have been inconvenienced by the recent protests, the city remained “a welcoming city for tourists and travelers from around the world.”
    The Hong Kong police have in recent weeks dispersed protesters by spraying tear gas in numerous parts of the city, including residential areas and two major shopping districts. But the government’s statement said that “illegal confrontations” had not been widespread and had been “confined to a limited area near the procession routes,” though it acknowledged that some visitors may have been inconvenienced.
    Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, appeared at a news briefing on Friday evening, flanked by her finance secretary and leaders of the local business community. They appeared to be responding to an earlier call from the Chinese government to stand behind her and oppose violence in the semiautonomous territory.
    In her remarks, Mrs. Lam called for all sectors of Hong Kong society to overcome their differences, emphasizing the economic harm she said the protests had inflicted on the economy. But she declined to offer new concessions to the protest movement.
    “I don’t think we should just make concessions in order to silence the violent protesters,” she said.
    Alison Lee, 29, one of the protesters at the airport, said Mrs. Lam’s remarks had left her cold.
    “I think that Carrie Lam is just repeating what she said before,” Ms. Lee said. “She has provided no solutions and no plans to solve the current problems. This is not going to just go away because she wants it to.”

    Ezra Cheung contributed reporting.

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