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Brothers and sisters:
Last night, Iraq veteran and co-founded of the Hartford chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Army Sgt. Jeff Bartos, was arrested at the G20 protests in Pittsburgh while giving medical attention to a protester who had been tear gassed.
The evening of September 25, 2009, marked the end of week-long protests against the Pittsburgh G20. Before returning home, a large group of activists gathered in Schenley Plaza for what they had heard would be a concert. Upon entering the park they were greeted, instead, with a number of police. The police told the group to leave the Plaza, and the activists cooperated; nevertheless, the group was forced into the Cathedral lawn and surrounded.
Approximately 65 people, including veterans, students, medics and journalists, were rounded up and arrested. Although most have reported being released without charges around 7:30am this morning, Jeff Bartos remains in custody, somewhere between the Pittsburgh SCI (where most of the arrested were initially brought) and Allegheny County Jail (where they are being held). Earlier this morning, we were informed that the plastic cuffs Jeff was arrested in had cut off the circulation to his hands, which began to turn blue, and that the police refused to loosen them.
Solidarity actions are taking place outside of the jail, but all of those interested in contacting Jeff or to demand his release, try the following numbers--
SCI Pittsburgh: (412) 761-1955
Allegheny County Jail
main line: (412) 350-2000
booking: (412) 350-2010
booking, line 2: (412) 350-2009
Pittsburgh Mayor's Office: (412) 255-2626
For more info contact in Connecticut:
Christopher Hutchinson: 860-989-1884
Christopher.hutch@gmail.com
Marissa Blaszko: 860-218-0566
marissablaszko@gmail.com
In Pittsburgh
Jeff Panetierre: 203-543-6966
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U.S. Out Now! From Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and all U.S. bases around the world; End all U.S. Aid to Israel; Get the military out of our schools and our communities; Demand Equal Rights and Justice for ALL!
TAX THE RICH NOT THE POOR! MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS NOT WAR!
On the 8th Anniversary of the War on Afghanistan
U.S. -- NATO OUT! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
End colonial occupation in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Haiti...
Healthcare, jobs, housing, education for all--Not War!
San Francisco Protest:
Wednesday, October 7, 5:00 p.m.
New Federal Building
7th and Mission Streets, Near Civic Center BART
Volunteers needed: 415-821-6545
answer@answersf.org
ANSWERcoalition.org
ANSWERsf.org
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17 SAN FRANCISCO MARCH AND RALLY AGAINST THE WARS
U.S. Troops Out Now! Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan!
Assemble 11:00 A.M. U.N. Plaza, SF (Market between 7th and 8th Streets)
March begins at 12:00 Noon
Rally begins at 1:00 P.M. back at U.N. Plaza
Commemorating the eighth anniversary of the war on Afghanistan and the 40th anniversary of the massive October 17, 1969 Vietnam Moratorium.
Sponsor: October 17 Antiwar Coalition
510-268-9429 or 415-794-7354
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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Fault Lines: Despair & Revival in Detroit - 14 May 09 - Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ7VL907Qb0&feature=related
Michael Moore on Good Morning America
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY1pcoBWp3Q
Michael Moore on Countdown With Keith Olbermann
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0URCqniVTOY
VIDEO INTERVIEW: Dan Berger on Political Prisoners in the United States
By Angola 3 News
Angola 3 News
37 years ago in Louisiana, 3 young black men were silenced for trying to expose continued segregation, systematic corruption, and horrific abuse in the biggest prison in the US, an 18,000-acre former slave plantation called Angola. In 1972 and 1973 prison officials charged Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox, and Robert King with murders they did not commit and threw them into 6x9 ft. cells in solitary confinement, for over 36 years. Robert was freed in 2001, but Herman and Albert remain behind bars.
http://angola3news.blogspot.com/2009/09/video-dan-berger-on-political-prisoners.html
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Video Confirms Assassination Attempt Against President Chávez
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGprwzQ5UoU&feature=player_embedded#t=142
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Taking Aim Radio Program with
Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone
The Chimera of Capitalist Recovery, Parts 1 and 2
http://www.takingaimradio.com/shows/audio.html
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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OSCAR GRANT UPDATE:
On Friday. Sept. 25, BAMN held an emergency press conference at the courthouse to stop District Attorney Nancy O'Malley and Michael Rains (lawyer for Oscar Grant's killer Johannes Mehserle) from formalizing an agreement to delay the change-of-venue hearing into November, which only would have helped the police. After we publicly condemned the D.A's collusion with the defense attorney, Rains' motion to delay was denied and the hearing was delayed only until Tuesday, October 6.
We are at a critical juncture in this fight - join us THIS MONDAY:
FORUM:
"HOW WE WIN JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT, PART II"
Monday, September 28, 6:30PM
At UC-Berkeley, MLK Student Union (Bancroft + Telegraph), on the 4th Floor
Legal and political analysis with BAMN national chair and attorney Shanta Driver
• A critical turning point in the fight for justice for Oscar Grant - why we must oppose the change of venue and how we defeat it
• Going through Rains' (the defense attorney's) motion to change venue
• How the District Attorney plans to lose the case, what we must demand the D.A. do
• A strategy to win
BAMN - Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary
BAMN.com (510) 502-9072 california@bamn.com
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THE FINAL OCTOBER 17 COALITION MEETING WILL TAKE PLACE:
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2 PM
Unitarian Church (Fireside Room)
1187 Franklin at Geary, SF (wheelchair accessible).
Let's reach out to as many people as possible to come to these final two meetings to ensure a maximum effort to build Oct. 17. Flyers will be available for pickup as well as cementing the final planning for important, last-minute organizational tasks.
We all need to step up and give our best efforts to make this a successful protest against these wars and bankster-bailouts, and for jobs, education, healthcare, housing and a peaceful world for all.
A new website has been set up at:
www.oct17awc.wordpress.com
A calendar will be posted listing activities and events for flyering and getting the word out about Oct. 17.
To arrange to pick up flyers, or to add another event to the calendar, call either of the numbers below. (Please note, Michael Moor's new film, "Capitalism: A Love Story" opens nationwide on Oct. 2. This will be a great place to flyer for Oct. 17.)(See the trailer at: http://www.capitalismalovestory.com/)
Please call Jeff (510-268-9428) or Kathy (415-641-1997) to volunteer at one of these great opportunities to get out the word.
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein
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Wednesday, September 30, 5:30-7:00pm
Rally Against Budget Cuts
FACE ITT--Feminists Against Cuts Especially in Tough Times
California State Building, 455 Golden Gate Ave., San Francisco
Rally with community members and organizations to protest the state cuts to essential social services. Governor Schwarzenegger is trying to impose $500 million in cuts which will affect women and children the hardest. Let's stand together to fight for real solutions to California's budget crisis.
Demands:
Redirect war funding and prisons into health, public education, domestic violence shelters and HIV/AIDS services!
NO to bailouts--protect working people and the poor, not corporate CEO's!
NO to layoffs and furloughs! No to home foreclosures!
NO to rightwing violence--Defend immigrant rights and women's right to reproductive health care!
Tax the rich and corporations, cut senior management and legislators' salaries to increase revenue for social services!
We want government funded quality, low-cost healthcare and childcare, quality education and living wage jobs!
The rally will feature local activists and social service providers and an open mic. Come share your stories of how the budget cuts are impacting you and ideas on how to fix the economic crisis. All are welcome!
Sponsored by Radical Women
For more information or to get involved, please call 415-864-1278 or email baradicalwomen@earthlink.net.
www.radicalwomen.org
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The Human Face of Death Row
Join us October 2nd at 7pm for the opening reception for an exhibition of paintings from three men - Kevin Cooper, James Anderson and Eddie Vargas. Two of them are condemned - on death row; the third has a life sentence - the other death penalty.
These three men use art to express themselves. We hope you will see their work, hear their stories, and take away an understanding of their humanity from viewing it.
PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY
ROCK PAPER SCISSORS GALLERY
TELEGRAPH & 23RD ST, OAKLAND
October 1 - October 31, 2009
OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2ND - 7 TO 9 PM
JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16TH - 7 TO 9 PM - a memorial movie of Oscar Grant, with Uncle Cephus Bobby Johnson, other members of Oscar's family and Jack Bryson. Come for update: Meserlhe's trial starts October 13th, unless continued again.
STAN TOOKIE WILLIAMS LEGACY NETWORK: SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17TH - 4 TO 6 PM - with Barbara Becnel and Stan Tookie Williams' books for children.
LIVE FROM DEATH ROW: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23RD - 7 TO 9 PM - with Kevin Cooper, an innocent man on San Quentin's death row calling (at 7:30 sharp). Q&A with Kevin Cooper and members of the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee.
PLEASE JOIN US
FOR MORE INFO: CALIFORNIA@NODEATHPENALTY.ORG
510-589-6820
2278 Telegraph Ave., Ca 94612(click here for a map)http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=Oakland&state=CA&address=2278+Telegraph
Presented by the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, a grassroots organization dedicated to the abolition of capital punishment in the United States.
website: www.nodeathpenalty.org
Also by Art for a Democratic Society, an Oakland based art and activism group specializing in participatory grassroots interventionist art.
website: www.a4ds.org email: a4ds@earthlink.net
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EYES WIDE OPEN IN D.C. - SPONSORED BY MFSO
On the weekend of October 3rd and 4th in Washington D.C., Military Families Speak Out and American Friends Service Committee will undertake the first Eyes Wide Open Exhibit showing the Cost of War in Afghanistan.
Over 830 pairs of combat boots representing the fallen troops in Afghanistan and 100 shoes, a fraction of those civilians killed during 8 years of war and occupation will be displayed. The Exhibit will be located on the SE Ellipse, or "President's Park", as they refer to it in the National Parks Service.
See what you can do to help!
http://www.afghanistan8yearsofwar.com/
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On the 8th Anniversary of the War on Afghanistan
U.S. -- NATO OUT!
BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
End colonial occupation in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Haiti...
Healthcare, jobs, housing, education for all--Not War!
San Francisco Protest:
Wednesday, October 7, 5:00 p.m.
New Federal Building
7th and Mission Streets, Near Civic Center BART
Initiated by the ANSWER Coalition--Act Now to Stop War and End Racism
Volunteers needed: 415-821-6545
answer@answersf.org
ANSWERcoalition.org
ANSWERsf.org
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NATIONAL MARCH FOR EQUALITY
WASHINGTON, D.C. OCTOBER 10-11, 2009
Sign up here and spread the word:
http://www.nationalequalitymarch.com/
On October 10-11, 2009, we will gather in Washington DC from all across
America to let our elected leaders know that *now is the time for full equal
rights for LGBT people.* We will gather. We will march. And we will leave
energized and empowered to do the work that needs to be done in every
community across the nation.
This site will be updated as more information is available. We will organize
grassroots, from the bottom-up, and details will be shared on this website.
Our single demand:
Equal protection in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states.
Our philosophy:
As members of every race, class, faith, and community, we see the struggle
for LGBT equality as part of a larger movement for peace and social justice.
Our strategy:
Decentralized organizing for this march in every one of the 435
Congressional districts will build a network to continue organizing beyond
October.
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Please join us for a very exciting day with
President Barack Obama
We have just confirmed that the President will be visiting San Francisco for two events in support of Organizing for America and the Democratic National Committee.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2009
Reception
Reception and Dinner
Westin St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco
Space will be limited for each event. Leadership opportunities will be available for those interested. Please let us know as soon as possible if you are available and interested in attending and/or taking a leadership role in either of the events. More detailed information to follow shortly.
We look forward to welcoming President Obama back to San Francisco!
Please contact Wade Randlett atwade@randlett.com or (415) 692-3556.
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SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17 SAN FRANCISCO MARCH AND RALLY AGAINST THE WARS
U.S. Troops Out Now! Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan!
Assemble 11:00 A.M. U.N. Plaza, SF (Market between 7th and 8th Streets)
March begins at 12:00 Noon
Rally begins at 1:00 P.M. back at U.N. Plaza
Commemorating the eighth anniversary of the war on Afghanistan and the 40th anniversary of the massive October 17, 1969 Vietnam Moratorium.
Sponsor: October 17 Antiwar Coalition
510-268-9429 or 415-794-7354
Money for Human Needs Not War!
Immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops, military personnel, bases, contractors, and mercenaries from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Colombia.
End U.S. support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine! End the Seige of Gaza!
U.S. Hands Off Iran and North Korea!
Self-determination for All Oppressed Nations and Peoples!
End War Crimes Including Torture and Prosecute the War Criminals!
See historical images of the Vietnam Moratorium at:
http://images.google.com/images?q=vietnam+moratorium&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=lGaISs7pMIP-sQOr2OznAg&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4
Image of San Francisco Vietnam Moratorium, Golden Gate Park, October 17, 1969 (I was there...bw):
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.rchrd.com/photo/images/pb2-12-15.jpg&imgrefurl=http://rchrd.com/photo/archives/1969/&usg=__FeHN5CAwDXv-ewwCt2Hfni6ZUn8=&h=567&w=850&sz=143&hl=en&start=3&um=1&tbnid=EJH6Kzj6YI6zzM:&tbnh=97&tbnw=145&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dvietnam%2Bmoratorium%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DX%26um%3D1
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Please forward widely. Contact us if you or your organization would like to endorse this call.
CALL FOR OCTOBER 22 DEMONSTRATION IN OAKLAND, CA:
NATIONAL DAY OF PROTEST TO STOP POLICE BRUTALITY, REPRESSION AND THE CRIMINALIZATION OF A GENERATION
Oscar Grant. Brownie Polk. Parnell Smith. And dozens more Oakland alone. Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo in New York City. Adolph Grimes in New Orleans. Robbie Tolan in Houston. Julian Alexander in Anaheim. Jonathan Pinkerton in Chicago. And thousands more nationwide.
All shot down, murdered by law enforcement, their lives stolen, victims of a nationwide epidemic of police brutality and murder.
The racist arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates this summer in Cambridge, Massachusetts - right in his own home - showed that any Black man or woman, no matter their stature, no matter their education, no matter their accomplishments can be targeted for brutality - even murder - at any moment.
Meanwhile, a whole generation of youth is treated as guilty until proved innocent, and hundreds of thousands are criminalized, and locked away in U.S. prisons with no hope for the future. And immigrants are subject to brutal raids, with families cruelly split up in an instant.
We refuse to suffer these outrages in silence. We need to put a stop to this and drag the truth about the nationwide epidemic of police violence and repression into the light of day for all so see. We say no more! Enough is Enough!
Oct 22nd 2009 is the 14th annual national day of protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of Generation---bringing together those under the gun and those not under the gun as a powerful voice to expose the epidemic of police brutality. On that day in cities across the country many different people will take to the streets against police brutality and murder, against the criminalization of youth, and against the targeting of immigrants.
We call for a powerful demonstration in Oakland on October 22 demanding:
* Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation!
* October 22....No To Police Brutality
* No to ICE raids and round-ups of immigrants!
* Enough Is Enough! No More Stolen Lives!
* Justice for Oscar Grant and all victims of police murder!
* Wear Black, Fight Back
Contact the National Office of October 22nd at:
Info@october22.org or 1-888-NOBRUTALITY
October 22nd Coalition
P.O. Box 2627
New York, N.Y. 10009
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B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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URGENT ALERT!
Call-In To Save San Francisco's Only State Park Wilderness Area From
Toxic Condominium Development!
Within the next two weeks, State Senator Mark Leno will seek to pass a
bill allowing environmentally criminal Lennar Corporation to build high
priced condos on the wildlife habitat and parkland in San Francisco's
Candlestick Point State Recreation Area!
San Francisco Supervisors Avalos, Daly, Mirkarimi, Mar and Campos have
sponsored a local resolution to tell the State legislature not to wreck
our State parkland for real estate developer profits.
This measure needs the crucial sixth vote of Board of Supervisors
President David Chiu to win, before Leno's bill (SB 792) goes for its
own final vote.
**WHAT YOU CAN DO**
Call Supervisor David Chiu at 415-554-7450 with the comment:
"Please bring the Avalos/Daly resolution opposing SB 792 to a full Board
vote by September 15th and vote YES! Don't give away one inch of
California's only urban state park!"
If you call during the weekend or evening, or get a recording, just
leave your comment as voice mail.
For more on the State Park land grab see
http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/privatizing-california-senate-bill-792/
For more on Lennar's history of corporate abuses see page 3 of Our
City's Fall 2007 Update at http://our-city.org/Update-Oct07.pdf
###
This alert sent by:
Our City
1028-A Howard St.
San Francisco, CA 94103
415-756-8844
For more information about Our City campaigns go to:
http://www.our-city.org
info@our-city.org
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HELP VFP PUT THIS BOOK IN YOUR HIGH SCHOOL OR PUBLIC LIBRARY
For a donation of only $18.95, we can put a copy of the book "10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military" into a public or high school library of your choice. [Reason number 1: You may be killed]
A letter and bookplate will let readers know that your donation helped make this possible.
Putting a book in either a public or school library ensures that students, parents, and members of the community will have this valuable information when they need it.
Don't have a library you would like us to put it in? We'll find one for you!
https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/826/t/9311/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=4906
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Take Action: Stop Rite Aid's abuses: Pass the Employee Free Choice Act!
For years Rite Aid workers have faced unfair firings, campaigns of misinformation, and intimidation for trying to form a union. But Rite Aid would never have been able to get away with any of this if Congress had passed the Employee Free Choice Act.
You can help us fight mounting anti-union opposition to the bill that would have protected Rite Aid's workers. Tell Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act today!
http://action.americanrightsatwork.org/campaign/riteaidefca2/8gg63dd407ejd5wi?
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This is a must-see video about the life of Oscar Grant, a young man who loved his family and was loved by his family. It's important to watch to understand the tremendous loss felt by his whole family as a result of his cold-blooded murder by BART police officers--Johannes Mehserle being the shooter while the others held Oscar down and handcuffed him to aid Mehserle in the murder of Oscar Grant January 1, 2009.
The family wants to share this video here with you who support justice for Oscar Grant.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/07/21/18611878.php
WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT!
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Urgent: Ahmad Sa'adat transferred to isolation in Ramon prison!
http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org/
Imprisoned Palestinian national leader Ahmad Sa'adat, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was transferred on August 11, 2009 to Ramon prison in the Naqab desert from Asqelan prison, where he had been held for a number of months. He remains in isolation; prior to his transfer from Asqelan, he had been held since August 1 in a tiny isolation cell of 140 cm x 240 cm after being penalized for communicating with another prisoner in the isolation unit.
Attorney Buthaina Duqmaq, president of the Mandela Association for prisoners' and detainees' rights, reported that this transfer is yet another continuation of the policy of repression and isolation directed at Sa'adat by the Israeli prison administration, aimed at undermining his steadfastness and weakening his health and his leadership in the prisoners' movement. Sa'adat has been moved repeatedly from prison to prison and subject to fines, harsh conditions, isolation and solitary confinement, and medical neglect. Further reports have indicated that he is being denied attorney visits upon his transfer to Ramon.
Ahmad Sa'adat undertook a nine-day hunger strike in June in order to protest the increasing use of isolation against Palestinian prisoners and the denial of prisoners' rights, won through long and hard struggle. The isolation unit at Ramon prison is reported to be one of the worst isolation units in terms of conditions and repeated violations of prisoners' rights in the Israeli prison system.
Sa'adat is serving a 30 year sentence in Israeli military prisons. He was sentenced on December 25, 2008 after a long and illegitimate military trial on political charges, which he boycotted. He was kidnapped by force in a military siege on the Palestinian Authority prison in Jericho, where he had been held since 2002 under U.S., British and PA guard.
Sa'adat is suffering from back injuries that require medical assistance and treatment. Instead of receiving the medical care he needs, the Israeli prison officials are refusing him access to specialists and engaging in medical neglect and maltreatment.
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat demands an end to this isolation and calls upon all to protest at local Israeli embassies and consulates (the list is available at: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/ About+the+Ministry/Diplomatic+mission/Web+Sites+of+Israeli+ Missions+Abroad.htm) and to write to the International Committee of the Red Cross and other human rights organizations to exercise their responsibilities and act swiftly to demand that the Israelis ensure that Ahmad Sa'adat and all Palestinian prisoners receive needed medical care and that this punitive isolation be ended. Email the ICRC, whose humanitarian mission includes monitoring the conditions of prisoners, at jerusalem..jer@icrc.org, and inform them about the urgent situation of Ahmad Sa'adat!
Ahmad Sa'adat has been repeatedly moved in an attempt to punish him for his steadfastness and leadership and to undermine his leadership in the prisoners' movement. Of course, these tactics have done nothing of the sort. The Palestinian prisoners are daily on the front lines, confronting Israeli oppression and crimes. Today, it is urgent that we stand with Ahmad Sa'adat and all Palestinian prisoners against these abuses, and for freedom for all Palestinian prisoners and for all of Palestine!
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat
http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org
info@freeahmadsaadat.org
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Troy Anthony Davis is an African American man who has spent the last 18 years on death row for a murder he did not commit. There is no physical evidence tying him to the crime and seven out of nine witnesses have recanted. New evidence and new testimony have been presented to the Georgia courts, but the justice system refuses to consider this evidence, which would prove Troy Davis' innocence once and for all.
Sign the petition and join the NAACP, Amnesty International USA, and other partners in demanding justice for Troy Davis!
http://www.iamtroy.com/
For Now, High Court Punts on Troy Davis, on Death Row for 18 Years
By Ashby Jones
Wall Street Journal Law Blog
June 30, 2009
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/06/30/for-now-high-court-punts-on-troy-davis-on-death-row-for-18-years/
Take action now:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&aid=12361&ICID=A0906A01&tr=y&auid=5030305
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Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
New videos from April 24 Oakland Mumia event
http://abu-jamal-news.com/article?name=jlboak
Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense in the U.S. Our legal effort is the front line of the battle for Mumia's freedom and life. His legal defense needs help. The costs are substantial for our litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court and at the state level. To help, please make your checks payable to the National Lawyers Guild Foundation (indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). All donations are tax deductible under the Internal Revenue Code, section 501(c)(3), and should be mailed to:
It is outrageous and a violation of human rights that Mumia remains in prison and on death row. His life hangs in the balance. My career has been marked by successfully representing people facing death in murder cases. I will not rest until we win Mumia's case. Justice requires no less.
With best wishes,
Robert R. Bryan
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT!
FLASHPOINTS Interview with Innocent San Quentin Death Row Inmate
Kevin Cooper -- Aired Monday, May 18,2009
http://www.flashpoints.net/#GOOGLE_SEARCH_ENGINE
To learn more about Kevin Cooper go to:
savekevincooper.org
LINKS
San Francisco Chronicle article on the recent ruling:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/13/BAM517J8T3.DTL
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and dissent:
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2009/05/11/05-99004o.pdf
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COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
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C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Obama to Use Current Law to Support Detentions
By PETER BAKER
September 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/us/politics/24detain.html?ref=us
2) Letter From America
A Detainee Freed, but Not Released
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
September 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/us/24iht-letter.html?ref=us
4) Pittsburgh Is Calm After Day of Raucous Protests
By IAN URBINA
September 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/26/world/26pittsburgh.html?hp
5) California University Cuts Protested
By MALIA WOLLAN
September 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/education/25calif.html?ref=us
6) Report Cites Lack of Precautions in 2008 Sugar Plant Fire
By SHAILA DEWAN
September 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/us/25sugar.html?ref=us
7) South African Children Push for Better Schools
By CELIA W. DUGGER
September 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/world/africa/25safrica.html?ref=education
8) Atlanta Judge Rules Dialysis Unit Can Be Closed
By KEVIN SACK
September 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/26/health/policy/26grady.html?ref=us
9) Kuwaiti Ordered Released From Guantánamo Bay
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/26/us/26gitmo.html?ref=us
10) U.S. Job Seekers Exceed Openings by Record Ratio
By PETER S. GOODMAN
September 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/business/economy/27jobs.html?hp
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1) Obama to Use Current Law to Support Detentions
By PETER BAKER
September 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/us/politics/24detain.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration has decided not to seek new legislation from Congress authorizing the indefinite detention of about 50 terrorism suspects being held without charges at at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, officials said Wednesday.
Instead, the administration will continue to hold the detainees without bringing them to trial based on the power it says it has under the Congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, authorizing the president to use force against forces of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
In concluding that it does not need specific permission from Congress to hold detainees without charges, the Obama administration is adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies.
But President Obama's advisers are not embracing the more disputed Bush contention that the president has inherent power under the Constitution to detain terrorism suspects indefinitely regardless of Congress.
The Justice Department said in a statement Wednesday night that "the administration would rely on authority already provided by Congress" under the use of force resolution. "The administration is not currently seeking additional authorization," the statement said.
The department pointed out that courts would continue to review the cases of those held without charges through habeas corpus hearings. The Washington Post first reported the decision.
The legal interpretation applies to detainees whom the government concludes should be held because they are a continuing danger to national security but who cannot be brought to trial for various reasons, like evidence tainted by harsh interrogations. Although it has not determined definitively how many detainees that applies to, officials said it would probably be about 50 of the more than 200 men still held at Guantánamo. The government plans to bring the others to trial or send them to other countries.
Officials said the decision applies only to those already held at Guantánamo. They said it remained an open question whether the administration would seek legislation or establish a new system for indefinite detention of suspected terrorists captured in the future.
Justice Department officials informed representatives of human rights and civil liberties groups about the decision not to seek the new legislation for the current detainees at a meeting last week. Officials said Wednesday that the position was in keeping with the evolving arguments being made by the administration in court over recent months.
"The position conveyed by the Justice Department in the meeting last week broke no new ground and was entirely consistent with information previously provided by the Justice Department to the Senate Armed Services Committee," the department's statement said.
Still, the position surprised some critics who had expected after a speech by Mr. Obama in May that he would seek legislation to put the system of indefinite detention on firmer political and legal ground. In that speech at the National Archives, Mr. Obama said that he was considering continuing indefinite detention in some limited cases but that he would not act unilaterally.
"We must recognize that these detention policies cannot be unbounded," he said at the time. "They can't be based simply on what I or the executive branch decide alone."
He said he would "work with Congress to develop an appropriate legal regime so that our efforts are consistent with our values and our Constitution."
Officials said Wednesday that working with Congress did not mean the president would seek legislation, only that he would consult lawmakers.
Given the opposition in Congress to Mr. Obama's plan to close Guantánamo, especially if it means transferring detainees to prisons on American soil, the prospect of writing legislation that would pass both houses appears daunting at best.
Sarah E. Mendelson, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who led a study about closing Guantánamo, said forgoing legislation was "overall a good step" because it prevented Congress from making things worse. "We don't know if it closes the door definitively on efforts to institutionalize detention without charge," she added, "since the White House might seek to do this by itself."
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2) Letter From America
A Detainee Freed, but Not Released
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
September 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/us/24iht-letter.html?ref=us
NEW YORK - Anybody who thinks it's going to be easy for the Obama administration to meet its goal of closing the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention center by Jan. 22 needs to take a look at the case of Saber Lahmar, who has been imprisoned there since January 2002.
Mr. Lahmar is an Algerian who in 2001 was living and working as a permanent resident of Bosnia.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, he was suspected by the U.S. authorities of involvement in a plot to attack the American Embassy in Sarajevo, which led to his arrest by the Bosnian police, his transfer to the U.S. authorities and his incarceration, along with five other suspects from Bosnia, at Guantánamo.
In November 2008, Mr. Lahmar became the first Guantánamo detainee to successfully challenge his detention, bringing a habeas corpus petition to federal court in Washington.
According to his lawyer, Robert Kirsch, the U.S. government abandoned its claim that there ever was a plot to attack the embassy in Sarajevo, though it maintained that Mr. Lahmar and the other Bosnians were planning to travel to Afghanistan to fight against U.S. forces there.
But Judge Richard Leon, a Bush appointee and no crusader against Guantánamo, ruled that there was no evidence to support the government's claim, and he ordered the United States to use pursue all efforts to get Mr. Lahmar released from custody.
But despite that ruling, nearly a year after his detention was found to be unjustified, Mr. Lahmar is right where he has been for almost eight years: locked up in Guantánamo. He has not seen his wife for that entire time, nor has he ever seen the child that she gave birth to not long after his arrest.
"Relatively speaking," Mr. Kirsch, his lawyer, said, "his conditions are better than those he had before the court decision, but he's still suffering horribly emotionally and psychologically."
Ever since Judge Leon's decision, Mr. Lahmar's detention has been technically illegal, and one way to deal with it would be to allow him to settle in the United States. But Congress has forbidden any Guantánamo detainees from being settled in the United States.
Moreover, Mr. Lahmar himself, Mr. Kirsch said, isn't eager to settle in the country that incarcerated him for so long.
Instead, the matter has been turned over to the State Department, specifically to Daniel Fried, the special envoy whose job is to facilitate the closing of Guantánamo by persuading other countries to take the detainees who have been ordered released by the courts or determined to pose no danger. Mr. Fried has had some modest success lately - but not in the case of Mr. Lahmar or of a majority of the others ordered released by the courts.
In all, since the Supreme Court decision last year, some 37 habeas petitions have been heard. Thirty have been decided in favor of the detainees, seven against them. Of the 30 ordered released, 20 are still in custody.
Lawyers involved in the detainees' cases say that about 226 men remained locked up in Guantánamo in all, of whom 80 have been approved for resettlement while about 40 have been referred for prosecution.
But what sort of prosecution - before civilian or military courts? This basic question has still not been decided, despite the Obama administration's early and outspoken opposition to the Guantánamo way of doing things.
President Barack Obama suspended ongoing military tribunals when he came into office, but since then his administration has postponed a decision on whether to proceed with some military tribunals or to shift those trials to the civilian courts.
According to lawyers involved in some of these cases, the administration's dilemma is this: If it proceeds with military tribunals, it keeps in place the system of the previous administration, which, during the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama called "an enormous failure."
If it moves to civilian trials, it risks having crucial evidence thrown out because it was obtained by waterboarding and other means of "enhanced interrogation."
And so, can Guantánamo be emptied and closed in the next four months?
"I think it's likely that most of the men held prisoner there will be gone by then," Mr. Kirsch said. "It will take tremendous diplomatic effort, but the level of creativity that comes from a deadline should not be underestimated."
Nearly half of the detainees who qualify for release are Yemenis. If Mr. Fried can strike a deal with either Yemen or Saudi Arabia to take them, a large part of the problem could be eliminated at a single stroke.
But not all are Yemenis. Take, for example, the 22 Uighurs, members of the Muslim minority of Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in western China. The men were at one time imprisoned in Guantánamo, and all have since been determined by the courts to pose no danger to the United States.
Nine of them have gone to Albania and Bermuda, and four more have agreed to go to the tiny Pacific island nation of Palau - but the nine others are reluctant to go there, said the lawyer for two of the Uighurs, Susan Baker Manning.
"What happens to those who don't accept the offer to go to Palau - and there could be many reasons for not accepting it - I don't know," Ms. Manning said. "I'd only be guessing at this point."
And then what of those who will be prosecuted? And what of those deemed too dangerous to be released but too difficult to prosecute - a category that isn't much publicly acknowledged, but that lawyers who are involved in the Guantánamo cases believe to exist?
One worry of human rights lawyers is that their clients could be taken away from a closed-down Guantánamo and put someplace else outside the jurisdiction of the law.
"The last thing we want to see is the opening of a similar facility elsewhere in the world, " Jameel Jaffer, director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Security Project, said, "or even in the United States."
E-MAIL pagetwo@iht.com Tomorrow Akash Kapur on the public "option" in India.
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3) Thousands protest fees, cuts at UC campuses
Nanette Asimov, Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writers
Friday, September 25, 2009
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/25/MNVU19SBEV.DTL
Thousands of students, professors and workers at University of California campuses across the state poured out of classrooms Thursday to rally against deep cuts to public education and aim their frustration squarely at UC leaders' handling of its budget crisis.
Even students outside of UC - at San Francisco State University and at City College of San Francisco - held demonstrations in support of the UC walkout.
About 5,000 people showed up at noon at UC Berkeley's Sproul Plaza in a massive gathering - the largest of the 10 campuses - that began as a teach-in about the budget crisis and morphed into a vast student march through downtown Berkeley that blocked traffic for nearly two hours.
"Education should be free! No cuts, no fees!" chanted the protesters, marching shoulder to shoulder and carrying signs reading, "Stop the cuts - they hurt!"
The systemwide walkout reflected frustration and anger as UC lays off hundreds of workers, imposes unpaid employee furloughs and reduces courses to close a budget gap of more than $750 million - the result of dramatically reduced funding from the cash-poor state and higher operating costs.
5 percent tuition hike
The regents are also expected to raise next year's tuition to $10,302, a 45 percent increase over last year's tuition, which many students say will put a UC education out of their reach.
UC leaders said they shared the protesters' frustration over deep cuts to public education, but that the anger should be focused on state government.
"While we understand there's some anger and angst spread across our campuses, our hope is that it will be directed more precisely toward Sacramento, where the heart of the problem lies," said UC's interim provost, Larry Pitts.
Lawmakers, in turn, turned it back on UC.
"The state is facing an unprecedented fiscal crisis," said Julia Brownley, a Santa Monica Democrat who chairs the Assembly Education Committee. "The students are protesting how the university cut its budget. The Legislature left that up to the university."
Screaming interest group
Asked about his cuts to education during a Commonwealth Club appearance in San Francisco, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dismissed the protesters as a screaming interest group.
"They're all screaming," he said. "Everyone has to tighten their belts."
Key among the protesters' concerns is that the cuts will damage UC's role as an economic engine in California that produces top graduates doing the most innovative work in their fields.
Cal officials and protesters said the rally at UC Berkeley was the largest gathering in recent memory, except the night of the Obama inauguration, and was the largest turnout among all UC campuses.
"This is extraordinary," said Shannon Steen, an American studies professor with a faculty group called Save the University. "This so far exceeds anything we thought would happen."
Protests systemwide
At other UC campuses - many of which began fall semester Thursday - crowds estimated at several hundred to 1,000 gathered on quads and at flagpoles to vent their anger, often under a scorching sun.
"It's exciting," said Keith Danner, a lecturer in English who helped organize the rally at UC Irvine. "To have 1,000 people standing for an hour in 95-degree heat just shows the depth of feeling against these devastating cuts."
Lacking tenure, Danner had to be careful about skipping class. So, like many untenured lecturers, he turned the rally into a lesson.
"I did a writing lesson about 'purpose and audience' and had them interview people at the rally," Danner said.
UC has about 19,400 faculty members, but only about 9,000 have tenure, said spokesman Pete King.
Most classes met as scheduled, campus administrators said, though some were held in professors' living rooms and even on picket lines.
Joining the walkout were thousands of nonfaculty employees from the University Professional and Technical Employees union who picketed to highlight a labor dispute with UC.
Chronicle staff writer Kelly Zito contributed to this report. E-mail the writers at nasimov@sfchronicle.com and jtucker@sfchronicle.com.
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4) Pittsburgh Is Calm After Day of Raucous Protests
By IAN URBINA
September 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/26/world/26pittsburgh.html?hp
PITTSBURGH - A calm descended over downtown here Friday morning, a day after raucous confrontations between the police and protesters rallying against the Group of 20 meeting that resulted in 66 arrests, at least 5 people requiring medical attention, and about 19 businesses with broken windows or other damage.
Protest organizers had encouraged civil disobedience Friday morning but little occurred.
The largest permitted rally, organized by the Thomas Merton Center, was scheduled to move to downtown from Forbes Avenue around noon local time.
It was unclear if civil disobedience would occur elsewhere in the city at the same time.
"Up to now there was so much fear - people were told that it would be dangerous and violent," said Peter Shell, president of the center, which advocates change through peaceful struggle.
"We have a permit," he added. "We confront the policies of the G-20, not the police. We're a different kind of protest."
In the city's Oakland neighborhood on Friday morning, where the police pursued protesters the night before, demonstrators gathered again to join the larger permitted march. Protesters with Iraq Veterans Against the War, wearing fatigues, stood near the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on 5th Avenue. Tibetans chiming cymbals and waving signs - like one that read "G20 Let's Talk Tibet" - denounced China in chants. A group called Students for Justice in Palestine assembled on Forbes Avenue and called for an end to the Israeli occupation.
As the groups gathered, state troopers wearing black helmets looked on, but the atmosphere was far less tense than the night before, when hundreds of police officers carrying long batons fired smoke canisters that trailed in high arcs before landing among buildings at the University of Pittsburgh, including the Gothic-style tower called the Cathedral of Learning.
On Thursday, the city had locked down its business district, known as the Golden Triangle, in preparation for possible clashes. Riot fences lined the sidewalks. Police helicopters, gunboats and Humvees darted to and fro. City officials announced that they had up to 1,000 jail cells ready after county officials freed up additional space last week by releasing 300 people who had been arrested on minor probation violations.
Many local residents stayed away from downtown Thursday, fearing clashes.
But the intermittent conflicts that did occur were well outside the security perimeter surrounding the G-20 meetings.
In the afternoon, protesters who tried to march toward the convention center where the gathering was being held encountered roaming squads of police officers carrying plastic shields and batons. The police fired a sound cannon that emitted shrill beeps, causing demonstrators to cover their ears and back up; then the police threw tear gas canisters that released clouds of white smoke and stun grenades that exploded with sharp flashes of light.
City officials said they believed it was the first time the sound cannon had been used for crowd control. "Other law enforcement agencies will be watching to see how it was used," said Nate Harper, the Pittsburgh police chief. "It served its purpose well."
The protesters, who did not have a permit to march, rolled a large blue metal trash container down 37th Street. It stopped short of police vehicles and in front of a women's clothing and shoe boutique called Pavement.
"It was scary," said Alissa Martin, the shop's owner. "You feel like you're living in a war zone."
Much of the afternoon involved a cat-and-mouse game in which protesters, many in all black, evaded large forces of heavily armed police officers in the streets near Liberty Avenue.
The police repeatedly announced over loud speakers that the crowd had assembled unlawfully.
"You must leave the immediate vicinity," the voice over the loud speaker said, adding that if the protesters did not, they would be subject to arrest and would face "the use of riot control agents" and "less lethal munitions," which police later said were soft bean bags fired at protesters. At that point, the police fired tear gas and stun grenades.
Trevor Griffith, 21, was part of the march after driving 16 hours from Pensacola, Fla., with three fellow students from the University of West Florida.
"The fact that 20 or so individuals right now are determining economic trade policies for four to five billion people just isn't right," Mr. Griffith said. "That's why we're here."
The turbulence downtown was in sharp contrast to smaller and less confrontational rallies and parades earlier in the day.
Melanie White, 53, from Fremont, Ohio, said she was marching to bring wider attention to the conflict between the authorities and religious leaders in Myanmar. On Thursday, she joined a rally of about 100 people led by Burmese monks in saffron robes and chanting. The group went from the north side of the city over the Sixth Street Bridge, ending up in Point State Park in downtown Pittsburgh.
"It was very important to be there," Ms. White said, adding that her group was commemorating the second anniversary of the so-called saffron revolution in Myanmar.
"I think it is important to give voice to the Burmese problem because they are not getting their own voice at the G-20," Ms. White said.
Just blocks away, a row of vans filled with police officers escorted several cars carrying meeting attendees past a police barrier to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, where the meeting officially began Thursday evening with a welcoming ceremony.
Sean D. Hamill and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.
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5) California University Cuts Protested
By MALIA WOLLAN
September 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/education/25calif.html?ref=us
BERKELEY, Calif.- Thousands of students, faculty members and employees at the 10 University of California campuses protested budget cuts, unpaid faculty furloughs and tuition increases on Thursday.
Officials at the University of California, Berkeley, estimated that several thousand protesters were in Sproul Plaza chanting and waving signs. Most academic departments on campus reported that some classes had been canceled because faculty members and students walked out. Other campuses reported smaller turnouts at rallies and marches.
"Everyone agrees there is a budget crisis and that the university must respond," said Joshua Clover, an associate professor of English at U.C. Davis who was a co-author of a petition calling for the faculty walkout on Thursday. The problem, Mr. Clover said, is that the administration's handling of the budget cuts "disproportionately harms those who can least afford it both among the workers and the students."
The online walkout petition was signed by 1,221 of the 19,000 faculty members statewide. A union representing more than 11,000 university professional and technical staff members supported the protest and called a one-day strike.
The Legislature approved a reduction of $637.1 million, about 20 percent of the university's 2009-2010 fiscal year financing, as part of the budget agreement reached in August. The university's budget now stands at $2.6 billion. Friction has developed between the administration and some faculty and staff members and students over how and where to cut.
Among the more contentious items are a proposed 32 percent increase in student tuition by fall 2010, and decisions made by the university president, Mark Yudof, over how to handle mandatory faculty furlough days, which will reduce pay by 4 to 10 percent. Average yearly tuition and fees for undergraduates this academic year are $8,720.
"I chose Berkeley over all the other universities because it offered me a very good education at a price my family could afford," said Brandon Pham, 17, a freshman political science major who skipped the day's classes in protest. Mr. Pham held a sign that read: "We make the university. They make the crisis."
Steve Montiel, a spokesman for the University of California's office of the president, said, "We respect people expressing themselves, but we hope they realize that the true source of their frustration is in Sacramento at the state capital."
What started as a planned faculty walkout to address specific furlough issues ballooned into a 10-campus protest of the larger implications of the reduction of money for public higher education in the state.
"We are operating on the assumption that the state's disinvestment will continue," said Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau of Berkeley, adding that the university would now have to rely on higher fees, private foundation donations and better investments. The pain of budget cuts will be felt broadly, he said, and "paying for public education is going to be increasingly difficult for middle-class families."
Catherine Cole, a professor in the theater department, who canceled her classes on Thursday to attend the rally, said: "We've hit a tipping point. What is emerging here is people realizing it doesn't have to be this way."
Still, many students at Berkeley did not participate in the protest and walked about campus as they would on any other Thursday. "I haven't been near Sproul Plaza today," said Ray Liang, 18. "I have classes to go to and homework to do."
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6) Report Cites Lack of Precautions in 2008 Sugar Plant Fire
By SHAILA DEWAN
September 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/us/25sugar.html?ref=us
ATLANTA - A huge fire last year at a sugar refinery near Savannah, Ga., that killed 14 workers and injured 36 more was "entirely preventable," a federal official said Thursday as the results of an investigation into the fire's causes were released.
The owner of the plant, the Imperial Sugar Company, and the plant's managers knew for decades about the hazards of sugar dust but failed to take the necessary precautions, according to the report, issued by the Chemical Safety Board, which investigates industrial chemical accidents.
The report blamed inadequate equipment design, poor maintenance and ineffective housekeeping for the explosion and fire in February 2008, and said that Imperial Sugar and the sugar industry as a whole were aware of the dangers of dust explosions at least as early as 1925.
In a written statement, John C. Sheptor, the president and chief executive of Imperial Sugar, said the company had "collaborated" with the safety board on the report and was "working diligently" to put in place the report's safety recommendations.
The report also cited internal memorandums at the plant, in Port Wentworth, Ga., dating from 1967, before it was owned by Imperial Sugar, showing that managers were concerned about the possibility that accumulations of sugar dust could ignite a chain of explosions that would destroy "large sections of the plant."
The initial explosion most likely occurred inside a sugar conveyor situated beneath two silos, the report said.
The conveyor had recently been enclosed, creating "a confined, unventilated space where sugar dust could accumulate to an explosive concentration," the safety board said.
That explosion quickly spread, igniting sugar dust and spilled sugar in adjacent areas.
Imperial Sugar had not conducted evacuation drills and the explosion and fires disabled most emergency lighting, trapping workers in a dark maze of corridors, the report said.
The Chemical Safety Board does not issue citations or levy fines, but in July 2008, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration found violations at the Port Wentworth plant and at an Imperial Sugar plant in Gramercy, La., where an inspection five weeks after the Georgia fire found sugar dust four feet thick in some areas.
The agency proposed fines of $8.7 million, the third-largest in the agency's history. Imperial Sugar is contesting the fine.
Brent J. Savage, a lawyer in Savannah who is representing some of the victims or family members of victims in lawsuits against the plant, said the report reinforced their case and cast new suspicion on insurers and other third-party inspectors, who the report said failed to make note of accumulations of sugar dust at the plant.
The first of his clients whose case is going to trial is Paul Seckinger, a mechanic who was badly burned and who, Mr. Savage said, has incurred more than $8 million in medical bills.
"They did an unbelievably in-depth study and they had access to things that a typical plaintiff's lawyer would not," Mr. Savage said of the safety board.
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7) South African Children Push for Better Schools
By CELIA W. DUGGER
September 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/world/africa/25safrica.html?ref=education
CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Thousands of children marched to City Hall this week in sensible black shoes, a stream of boys and girls from township schools across this seaside city that extended for blocks, passing in a blur of pleated skirts, blazers and rep ties. Their polite demand: Give us libraries and librarians.
"We want more information and knowledge," said a ninth grader, Abongile Ndesi.
In the 15 years since white supremacist rule ended in South Africa, the governing party, the African National Congress, has put in place numerous policies to transform schools into engines of opportunity. But many of its leaders, including President Jacob Zuma, now acknowledge that those efforts have too often failed.
The new protest movement, with its practical goals, youthful organizers and idealistic moniker, Equal Education, is a quintessentially South African answer to a failing education system, one that self-consciously acknowledged its debt to the past in the march to City Hall.
In 1976, when police officers shot a 13-year-old named Hector Pieterson in Soweto, a children's uprising against apartheid emerged and spread across the country to Cape Town, where students from a mixed-race high school, Salt River, marched in solidarity with black schoolchildren.
Zackie Achmat, South Africa's wiliest campaigner for AIDS treatment, was himself a 14-year-old marcher that September day 33 years ago. Mr. Achmat, now graying, was among the protesters following the same route this week, his white straw hat bobbing in a sea of plaids and ginghams.
The idea for a new movement dedicated to educational equity was his, and he helped nurse Equal Education into being, counseling its young leaders to work with teachers and government officials whenever possible. The country's leadership, which has been slow to grapple with the AIDS crisis, understands the urgent need for better education, he said. The new director general of the country's Higher Education Ministry, Mary Metcalfe, has served as head of Equal Education's board.
"In building a citizens' movement, the most important element is giving people the sense of their own power to change things with little victories," Mr. Achmat said.
The job of organizing the group has fallen to a pair of law school graduates from the University of Cape Town. Doron Isaacs, 29, its coordinator, was leader of Habonim South Africa, an organization of young, left-wing Jewish activists with whom Mr. Achmat has worked for years. Mr. Isaacs recruited a classmate, Yoliswa Dwane, 27, who was raised by her seamstress mother and now lives in a shack in the township of Khayelitsha, south of Cape Town, where she is caring for nieces, ages 12 and 17.
Last year, Equal Education gave students in Khayelitsha, home to more than 500,000 unemployed and working-class people, disposable cameras to document problems in their high schools. They returned with shots of leaking roofs, cracked desks and children crowded around a single textbook.
One image - a bank of window panes at Luhlaza high school, all shattered, captured by a student named Zukiswa Vuka - proved the most resonant. Some 500 windows at the school had been broken for years, leaving the students shivering in wintertime classes.
Equal Education's first campaign was to get them replaced. The school agreed to put up about $650, an amount the group said it would match. That left some $900 still needed. Over months, the group met with local and provincial managers, organized a communitywide petition drive, held a rally of hundreds of township students and garnered coverage in local newspapers.
Finally in November, provincial education officials announced that the windows would be fixed and that a sum almost 10 times what the students had requested would be invested in the school.
This year, students successfully agitated for a science teacher at Chris Hani High School when it had none for the seniors.
They also led a drive to get their classmates to come to school on time, with early-morning pickets at school gates - an effort that also showed up late-arriving teachers.
The libraries campaign is the group's first attempt to tackle a national issue. With financial support from Atlantic Philanthropies and the Open Society Institute, among others, it is also hoping to broaden its membership to include teachers and more parents and to graduate to bigger victories.
Mr. Isaacs said Equal Education's members knew that problems far harder to fix than windows or missing libraries awaited and that part of the answer was building alliances with the teachers' union, which is in the governing alliance.
"We know that the teachers' union is one of the most powerful institutions in the country," he said, "and if we style ourselves as its adversary, we'll be dead in the water."
The marchers, stretched out Tuesday along Main Road in the shadow of majestic Table Mountain, were themselves a wealth of stories.
Nkosinathi Dayimani, a senior, was one of the beneficiaries of the new science teacher this year, but not soon enough to prevent his failure on the recent trial run of the national science exam.
Asanda Sparks, a petite ninth grader from Kraaifontein Township, has been hoping for a library in her school since bullies picked her pocket as she walked to the public library to research Nelson Mandela's life.
And Nina Hoffman was among the dozens of white students who joined the march from one of the country's formerly all-white suburban high schools - Westerford - which can afford a well-stocked library because parents pay annual fees of more than $2,200 per child.
"Coming to a march like this, I realize even more how privileged we are and how much I take for granted," she said.
During their two-hour walk to City Hall on a gloriously sunny afternoon, the young people seemed buoyed by the hope of making a difference.
Abongile, the ninth grader from Luhlaza high school, noted appreciatively that she did not have to sit with chattering teeth in class this winter because the broken windows had been fixed.
"I saw that Equal Education can make something impossible possible," she said.
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8) Atlanta Judge Rules Dialysis Unit Can Be Closed
By KEVIN SACK
September 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/26/health/policy/26grady.html?ref=us
ATLANTA - Uninsured dialysis patients who could be cut off from their life-sustaining care lost a court challenge on Friday when a judge ruled that Grady Memorial Hospital could close its outpatient dialysis clinic. But the hospital gave the patients a temporary reprieve.
Ruling largely on technical grounds, a state court judge dissolved the restraining order that prevented last weekend's scheduled closing of the clinic at Grady, the Atlanta region's safety net hospital. The hospital, which is deeply in debt, quickly announced it would close the clinic within a week. It agreed, however, to pay for up to three months of dialysis at private clinics for the 51 patients who will be dislocated.
Grady will continue to assist the indigent patients, many of them illegal immigrants, in seeking care in their home countries or in other states where they may qualify for emergency Medicaid coverage.
Lawyers and advocates for the Grady dialysis patients had asked in negotiating sessions that the hospital provide a longer transition period. Grady's senior vice president, Matt Gove, said he could not speculate about whether the hospital would extend its financial assistance beyond three months to patients unable to make arrangements.
"The hospital, along with the patient, each bears some responsibility in doing everything we can to find a long-term solution," Mr. Gove said.
Federal law generally prohibits coverage of illegal immigrants by Medicaid and Medicare (which pays for dialysis for citizens regardless of age). Some states - but not Georgia - allow those immigrants to use Medicaid dollars in emergency situations, potentially including dialysis. Legal immigrants must wait five years before qualifying for benefits.
In the Atlanta region, that has made Grady, which accepts all patients regardless of immigration status or ability to pay, the provider of last resort for many illegal and uninsured patients. The taxpayer-supported hospital estimates the dialysis clinic will lose $2 million this year. Mr. Gove said he could not project how much the three-month extension might cost.
Lindsay R. Jones, the lawyer for the patients, called the order Friday by Judge Ural D. Glanville of Fulton County Superior Court "an angry, punitive decision."
"At least 51 patients had their life support system unplugged today under the authorization of this judge," Mr. Jones said.
He said he planned to refile his case in Judge Glanville's court on Monday after addressing its technical problems. He said he hoped to persuade the judge to hear the stories of some of the dialysis patients who accompanied him to a hearing on Wednesday but were not allowed to testify.
Mr. Jones said he did not expect a markedly different result, but hoped to create a record that might be used in a federal court filing that he was considering.
Judge Glanville ruled that Mr. Jones's class-action complaint had been improperly filed because, among other reasons, it lacked signatures from the two patients listed as plaintiffs. But the judge went further by writing that even if the case had been properly filed it would be unlikely to succeed on the merits.
"As it relates to the receipt of medical treatment, the court is unpersuaded at this time that plaintiffs have a constitutional right to the sought-after relief," Judge Glanville wrote.
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9) Kuwaiti Ordered Released From Guantánamo Bay
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/26/us/26gitmo.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal judge has ordered the release of a Kuwaiti man held at Guantánamo Bay and rebuked the United States government for relying on scant evidence, witnesses who were not credible and coerced confessions to hold him for more than seven years.
In an opinion declassified Friday, the judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the Federal District Court here, said government lawyers presented a "surprisingly bare" record in four days of classified hearings last month to oppose the man's request for release.
She said that the man, Fouad al-Rabiah, an aviation engineer, was being held almost exclusively on the basis of confessions that had been obtained through abusive techniques and that his own interrogators had repeatedly concluded were not believable.
"Incredibly, these are the confessions that the government has asked the court to accept as truthful in this case," Judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote in a 65-page opinion that was partly redacted to remove classified material. She called the coerced confessions "entirely incredible" and said they "defy belief."
"If there exists a basis for al-Rabiah's indefinite detention, it most certainly has not been presented to this court," the judge found.
Mr. Rabiah, 50, is the 30th Guantánamo detainee to be ordered released by a federal judge who has reviewed evidence justifying detention. Seven detainees have been denied freedom after a judge determined the evidence suggested they supported terrorism.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the judge's opinion.
Mr. Rabiah is a father of four with a degree in aviation studies from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. He worked for Kuwait Airways for 20 years, was part owner of a health club in Kuwait and often traveled to impoverished countries. He said the travel was for charitable relief work, but government lawyers argued that it was in support of terrorist organizations.
Mr. Rabiah said that he traveled to Afghanistan in October 2001 to aid refugees, but government lawyers said it was to be with Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11 attacks. "The evidence in the record strongly supports al-Rabiah's explanation," Judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote, citing letters that he wrote to his family describing his travels.
Mr. Rabiah was captured on Dec. 25, 2001, as he tried to leave Afghanistan, and detained by American troops. He was sent to Guantánamo in 2002, and Judge Kollar-Kotelly found that from the beginning of his stay, "there is no evidence in the record that anyone directed any allegations toward al-Rabiah nor any indication that interrogators believed al-Rabiah had engaged in any conduct that made him lawfully detainable."
"To the contrary," she said, "the evidence in the record during this period consists mainly of an assessment made by an intelligence analyst that al-Rabiah should not have been detained."
General Wants Prison Closed
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (AP) - The Marine commander who built the prison at Guantánamo Bay said Thursday that the United States had lost the "moral high ground" with its brutal treatment of prisoners and that the facility should be closed as quickly as possible.
It was the first time the commander, Maj. Gen. Michael Lehnert, had publicly acknowledged his doubts, although he said he had made his concerns known through the appropriate chain of command.
General Lehnert, 58, was commander of Joint Task Force 160 when it was assigned to build prison cells in 2001 at the Navy base in Cuba to hold designated enemy combatants from Afghanistan and elsewhere. He said he had been given little guidance from the Pentagon, but he did have his staff read the Geneva Conventions, the international agreements governing treatment of prisoners.
However, another task force was put in charge of interrogating detainees, and there were disagreements over their treatment, General Lehnert said. "I think it is extraordinarily important how we treat prisoners," he said. "Obviously, there were other views."
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10) U.S. Job Seekers Exceed Openings by Record Ratio
By PETER S. GOODMAN
September 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/business/economy/27jobs.html?hp
Despite signs that the economy has resumed growing, unemployed Americans now confront a job market that is bleaker than ever in the current recession, and employment prospects are still getting worse.
Job seekers now outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government began tracking open positions in 2000. According to the Labor Department’s latest numbers, from July, only 2.4 million full-time permanent jobs were open, with 14.5 million people officially unemployed.
And even though the pace of layoffs is slowing, many companies remain anxious about growth prospects in the months ahead, making them reluctant to add to their payrolls.
“There’s too much uncertainty out there,” said Thomas A. Kochan, a labor economist at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management. “There’s not going to be an upsurge in job openings for quite a while, not until employers feel confident the economy is really growing.”
The dearth of jobs reflects the caution of many American businesses when no one knows what will emerge to propel the economy. With unemployment at 9.7 percent nationwide, the shortage of paychecks is both a cause and an effect of weak hiring.
In Milwaukee, Debbie Kransky has been without work since February, when she was laid off from a medical billing position — her second job loss in two years. She has exhausted her unemployment benefits, because her last job lasted for only a month.
Indeed, in a perverse quirk of the unemployment system, she would have qualified for continued benefits had she stayed jobless the whole two years, rather than taking a new position this year. But since her latest unemployment claim stemmed from a job that lasted mere weeks, she recently drew her final check of $340.
Ms. Kransky, 51, has run through her life savings of roughly $10,000. Her job search has garnered little besides anxiety.
“I’ve worked my entire life,” said Ms. Kransky, who lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment. “I’ve got October rent. After that, I don’t know. I’ve never lived month to month my entire life. I’m just so scared, I can’t even put it into words.”
Last week, Ms. Kransky was invited to an interview for a clerical job with a health insurance company. She drove her Jeep truck downtown and waited in the lobby of an office building for nearly an hour, but no one showed. Despondent, she drove home, down $10 in gasoline.
For years, the economy has been powered by consumers, who borrowed exuberantly against real estate and tapped burgeoning stock portfolios to spend in excess of their incomes. Those sources of easy money have mostly dried up. Consumption is now tempered by saving; optimism has been eclipsed by worry.
Meanwhile, some businesses are in a holding pattern as they await the financial consequences of the health care reforms being debated in Washington.
Even after companies regain an inclination to expand, they will probably not hire aggressively anytime soon. Experts say that so many businesses have pared back working hours for people on their payrolls, while eliminating temporary workers, that many can increase output simply by increasing the workload on existing employees.
“They have tons of room to increase work without hiring a single person,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute Economist. “For people who are out of work, we do not see signs of light at the end of the tunnel.”
Even typically hard-charging companies are showing caution.
During the technology bubble of the late 1990s and again this decade, Cisco Systems — which makes Internet equipment — expanded rapidly. As the sense takes hold that the recession has passed, Cisco is again envisioning double-digit rates of sales growth, with plans to move aggressively into new markets, like the business of operating large scale computer data servers.
Yet even as Cisco pursues such designs, the company’s chief executive, John T. Chambers, said in an interview Friday that he anticipated “slow hiring,” given concerns about the vigor of growth ahead. “We’ll be doing it selectively,” he said.
Two recent surveys of newspaper help-wanted advertisements and of employers’ inclinations to add workers were at their lowest levels on record, noted Andrew Tilton, a Goldman Sachs economist.
Job placement companies say their customers are not yet wiling to hire large numbers of temporary workers, usually a precursor to hiring full-timers.
“It’s going to take quite some time before we see robust job growth,” said Tig Gilliam, chief executive of Adecco North America, a major job placement and staffing company.
During the last recession, in 2001, the number of jobless people reached little more than double the number of full-time job openings, according to the Labor Department data. By the beginning of this year, job seekers outnumbered jobs four-to-one, with the ratio growing ever more lopsided in recent months.
Though layoffs have been both severe and prominent, the greatest source of distress is a predilection against hiring by many American businesses. From the beginning of the recession in December 2007 through July of this year, job openings declined 45 percent in the West and the South, 36 percent in the Midwest and 23 percent in the Northeast.
Shrinking job opportunities have assailed virtually every industry this year. Since the end of 2008, job openings have diminished 47 percent in manufacturing, 37 percent in construction and 22 percent in retail. Even in education and health services — faster-growing areas in which many unemployed people have trained for new careers — job openings have dropped 21 percent this year. Despite the passage of a stimulus spending package aimed at shoring up state and local coffers, government job openings have diminished 17 percent this year.
In the suburbs of Chicago, Vicki Redican, 52, has been unemployed for almost two years, since she lost her $75,000-a-year job as a sales and marketing manager at a plastics company. College-educated, Ms. Redican first sought another management job. More recently, she has tried and failed to land a cashier’s position at a local grocery store, and a barista slot at a Starbucks coffee shop.
Substitute teaching assignments once helped her pay the bills. “Now, there are so many people substitute teaching that I can no longer get assignments,” she said.
“I’ve learned that I can’t look to tomorrow,” she said. “Every day, I try to do the best I can. I say to myself, ‘I don’t control this process.’ That’s the only way you can look at it. Otherwise, you’d have to go up on the roof and crack your head open.”
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Saturday, September 26, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
BAUAW NEWSLETTER - FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2009
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U.S. Out Now! From Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and all U.S. bases around the world; End all U.S. Aid to Israel; Get the military out of our schools and our communities; Demand Equal Rights and Justice for ALL!
TAX THE RICH NOT THE POOR! MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS NOT WAR!
On the 8th Anniversary of the War on Afghanistan
U.S. -- NATO OUT! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
End colonial occupation in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Haiti...
Healthcare, jobs, housing, education for all--Not War!
San Francisco Protest:
Wednesday, October 7, 5:00 p.m.
New Federal Building
7th and Mission Streets, Near Civic Center BART
Volunteers needed: 415-821-6545
answer@answersf.org
ANSWERcoalition.org
ANSWERsf.org
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17 SAN FRANCISCO MARCH AND RALLY AGAINST THE WARS
U.S. Troops Out Now! Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan!
Assemble 11:00 A.M. U.N. Plaza, SF (Market between 7th and 8th Streets)
March begins at 12:00 Noon
Rally begins at 1:00 P.M. back at U.N. Plaza
Commemorating the eighth anniversary of the war on Afghanistan and the 40th anniversary of the massive October 17, 1969 Vietnam Moratorium.
Sponsor: October 17 Antiwar Coalition
510-268-9429 or 415-794-7354
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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Report from G20 Protest:
-----Original Message-----
From: Kipp D
To: Kipp D
Sent: Thu, Sep 24, 2009 3:48 pm
Subject: Fw: Pittsburgh today (Thursday afternoon)
Family and friends,
First, an apology for two typos in my previous email (no valid excuse!).
Thomas Merton Center is www.thomasmertoncenter.org
Peoples Summit website is www.peoplessummit.com
This afternoon had a chance to visit Monumental Baptist Church's encampment, in the heart of our Hill District, where August Wilson lived and centered most of his plays. The minister has invited people from all over to set up tents there and use it as a meeting and eating place around G20 protests. It is an awesome gathering spot, just across the street from the NAACP headquarters, surrounded by some of the most blighted residential area in our city. The tents that touch one another as they are closely packed in the lot of this church are temporary homes to such a range of good people .
Now just back from touring parts of Pittsburgh where police are out in large numbers, making parts of our city look like and feel like a war zone (for me evoked memories of San Salvador in the 1980s). Eileen is out with a large band of legal observers, having just left the point of confrontation between non-permitted marchers and police. Don't have the big picture yet but the local conservative news station's reporters kept saying that peaceful walkers were attacked by police tear gas. There were at least some arrests. Don't know of any injuries. Reports of some broken windows in police cars. I'm sure this will be sorted out as various reporters, legal observers, and participants put together their stories.
Video of police vs. non-permitted marchers today:
http://www.post-gazette.com/multimedia/?videoid=102350&cmpid=mmpanel0
Video showing Pittsburgh streets belong to the . . . uniformed/armed deputized people
http://www.post-gazette.com/multimedia/?videoid=102342
New Post-Gazette website devoted to everything going on around the G20; a great website with lots of links, including to international opinions, current demonstrations, etc.; lots of photos and some videos
http://www.pgpremium.com/g20/
Lynn Cullen live (liberal Pittsburgh talk show host) at 11 AM Pgh time, hear live comments from people on the scene:
http://video.pghcitypaper.com/cullen/podcast.xml
Friday's demonstration is featured here:
http://www.pittsburghendthewar.org/
Thank you for your interest!
G20 Protest video from Pittsburgh
Protesters dangle from bridge
http://www.post-gazette.com/multimedia/?videoID=102335
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ReThinking Norma Rae: A Union Icon Falls Fighting the Healthcare Industry
Video and article at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-kim/rethinking-emnorma-raeem_b_287552.html
Take Action: Remembering Crystal Lee Sutton
http://action.americanrightsatwork.org/campaign/CrystalLeeSutton/8gg63ddr27e6k5bm?
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Taking Aim Radio Program with
Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone
The Chimera of Capitalist Recovery, Parts 1 and 2
http://www.takingaimradio.com/shows/audio.html
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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9/26 N. CA Education Workers and Students Conference At SFSU
Defend our Education!
Saturday, Sept. 26, 2009
10:00 am - 3 pm
SFSU
Get with the Program!
Why is our education at risk?
Why is the Budget out of control and no one speaking up?
Students, faculty and staff from many colleges, universities and school districts in California are asking these questions. But more importantly, they are organizing and creating a move-ment to act on these attacks on the basic human right of getting an education. You are invited to attend the Northern California Defend Our Education organizing meeting for all student, faculty, and staff members, parents, Union members, church members, or community group members. We strongly encourage attendance by members of similar committees.
Saturday, September 26th, 2009
San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Avenue, SF
Jack Adams Hall
Upper Level of the Cesar Chavez Student Center
Muni and BART/BART shuttle are easy! Go to 5-1-1
10 AM - 3 PM
For more info: Contact Defend Our Education
Pablo Rodriguez, pabrodriguez@yahoo.com
Nicky Trasvina, trasvina@sfsu.edu,
Steve Zeltzer, lvpsf@igc.org
(Initial endorsers-Defend Our Education-City College of SF, College of BSS Students of Color @ SFSU, AFT 2121, CFA - SFSU, United Public Workers For Action, Progressive Teachers of Richmond, SF Labor Council, SF District 11 Supervisor John Avalos, Karl Kramer, SF Living Wage Coalition)
Friday, September 18, 2009
Hello!
We are hosting the Defend Our Education Northern California Conference at SF State in Jack Adams Hall on Sat. Sept. 26th, 10am-3pm. Our goal is to bring K-12, Higher Education, and Labor Representatives together. We will be discussing how the budget cuts affect education and will be calling for a statewide plan of action to unify and mobilize our efforts. The conference will focus mainly on building an alliance of students and workers.
We are asking for your support by participating in this conference and sending your student and labor leaders and rank and file to join us in the fight in defending our educational rights as well as saving social services in general.
We invite your student group or organization to present reports that represent what is happening on your campus, in your school and workplace, and anticipate reports from all levels of education, as well as from the workers who are struggling with furloughs or experiencing uncertainty in their jobs.
We are also collecting letters of support and endorsements from elected officials and others to document who stands with us in our efforts to save education. Please send your reports, endorsements, and letters as soon as possible so that we can make copies for the conference. Thank you. Address and send to:
Defend Our Education Northern California Conference
c/o AFT 2121
311 Miramar Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94112
Or email to: bssstudentsofcolor@gmail.com
In solidarity,
Nadia Conrad
Chair of the College of BSS: Students of Color and a member of Defending Our Education Coalition
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THE FINAL TWO OCTOBER 17 COALITION MEETINGS WILL TAKE PLACE:
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2:00 PM AND SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2 PM
Unitarian Church (Fireside Room)
1187 Franklin at Geary, SF (wheelchair accessible).
Let's reach out to as many people as possible to come to these final two meetings to ensure a maximum effort to build Oct. 17. Flyers will be available for pickup as well as cementing the final planning for important, last-minute organizational tasks.
We all need to step up and give our best efforts to make this a successful protest against these wars and bankster-bailouts, and for jobs, education, healthcare, housing and a peaceful world for all.
A new website has been set up at:
www.oct17awc.wordpress.com
A calendar will be posted listing activities and events for flyering and getting the word out about Oct. 17.
To arrange to pick up flyers, or to add another event to the calendar, call either of the numbers below. (Please note, Michael Moor's new film, "Capitalism: A Love Story" opens nationwide on Oct. 2. This will be a great place to flyer for Oct. 17.)(See the trailer at: http://www.capitalismalovestory.com/)
Please call Jeff (510-268-9428) or Kathy (415-641-1997) to volunteer at one of these great opportunities to get out the word.
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein
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Wednesday, September 30, 5:30-7:00pm
Rally Against Budget Cuts
FACE ITT--Feminists Against Cuts Especially in Tough Times
California State Building, 455 Golden Gate Ave., San Francisco
Rally with community members and organizations to protest the state cuts to essential social services. Governor Schwarzenegger is trying to impose $500 million in cuts which will affect women and children the hardest. Let's stand together to fight for real solutions to California's budget crisis.
Demands:
Redirect war funding and prisons into health, public education, domestic violence shelters and HIV/AIDS services!
NO to bailouts--protect working people and the poor, not corporate CEO's!
NO to layoffs and furloughs! No to home foreclosures!
NO to rightwing violence--Defend immigrant rights and women's right to reproductive health care!
Tax the rich and corporations, cut senior management and legislators' salaries to increase revenue for social services!
We want government funded quality, low-cost healthcare and childcare, quality education and living wage jobs!
The rally will feature local activists and social service providers and an open mic. Come share your stories of how the budget cuts are impacting you and ideas on how to fix the economic crisis. All are welcome!
Sponsored by Radical Women
For more information or to get involved, please call 415-864-1278 or email baradicalwomen@earthlink.net.
www.radicalwomen.org
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The Human Face of Death Row
Join us October 2nd at 7pm for the opening reception for an exhibition of paintings from three men - Kevin Cooper, James Anderson and Eddie Vargas. Two of them are condemned - on death row; the third has a life sentence - the other death penalty.
These three men use art to express themselves. We hope you will see their work, hear their stories, and take away an understanding of their humanity from viewing it.
PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY
ROCK PAPER SCISSORS GALLERY
TELEGRAPH & 23RD ST, OAKLAND
October 1 - October 31, 2009
OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2ND - 7 TO 9 PM
JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16TH - 7 TO 9 PM - a memorial movie of Oscar Grant, with Uncle Cephus Bobby Johnson, other members of Oscar's family and Jack Bryson. Come for update: Meserlhe's trial starts October 13th, unless continued again.
STAN TOOKIE WILLIAMS LEGACY NETWORK: SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17TH - 4 TO 6 PM - with Barbara Becnel and Stan Tookie Williams' books for children.
LIVE FROM DEATH ROW: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23RD - 7 TO 9 PM - with Kevin Cooper, an innocent man on San Quentin's death row calling (at 7:30 sharp). Q&A with Kevin Cooper and members of the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee.
PLEASE JOIN US
FOR MORE INFO: CALIFORNIA@NODEATHPENALTY.ORG
510-589-6820
2278 Telegraph Ave., Ca 94612(click here for a map)http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=Oakland&state=CA&address=2278+Telegraph
Presented by the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, a grassroots organization dedicated to the abolition of capital punishment in the United States.
website: www.nodeathpenalty.org
Also by Art for a Democratic Society, an Oakland based art and activism group specializing in participatory grassroots interventionist art.
website: www.a4ds.org email: a4ds@earthlink.net
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EYES WIDE OPEN IN D.C. - SPONSORED BY MFSO
On the weekend of October 3rd and 4th in Washington D.C., Military Families Speak Out and American Friends Service Committee will undertake the first Eyes Wide Open Exhibit showing the Cost of War in Afghanistan.
Over 830 pairs of combat boots representing the fallen troops in Afghanistan and 100 shoes, a fraction of those civilians killed during 8 years of war and occupation will be displayed. The Exhibit will be located on the SE Ellipse, or "President's Park", as they refer to it in the National Parks Service.
See what you can do to help!
http://www.afghanistan8yearsofwar.com/
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On the 8th Anniversary of the War on Afghanistan
U.S. -- NATO OUT!
BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
End colonial occupation in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Haiti...
Healthcare, jobs, housing, education for all--Not War!
San Francisco Protest:
Wednesday, October 7, 5:00 p.m.
New Federal Building
7th and Mission Streets, Near Civic Center BART
Initiated by the ANSWER Coalition--Act Now to Stop War and End Racism
Volunteers needed: 415-821-6545
answer@answersf.org
ANSWERcoalition.org
ANSWERsf.org
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NATIONAL MARCH FOR EQUALITY
WASHINGTON, D.C. OCTOBER 10-11, 2009
Sign up here and spread the word:
http://www.nationalequalitymarch.com/
On October 10-11, 2009, we will gather in Washington DC from all across
America to let our elected leaders know that *now is the time for full equal
rights for LGBT people.* We will gather. We will march. And we will leave
energized and empowered to do the work that needs to be done in every
community across the nation.
This site will be updated as more information is available. We will organize
grassroots, from the bottom-up, and details will be shared on this website.
Our single demand:
Equal protection in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states.
Our philosophy:
As members of every race, class, faith, and community, we see the struggle
for LGBT equality as part of a larger movement for peace and social justice.
Our strategy:
Decentralized organizing for this march in every one of the 435
Congressional districts will build a network to continue organizing beyond
October.
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Please join us for a very exciting day with
President Barack Obama
We have just confirmed that the President will be visiting San Francisco for two events in support of Organizing for America and the Democratic National Committee.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2009
Reception
Reception and Dinner
Westin St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco
Space will be limited for each event. Leadership opportunities will be available for those interested. Please let us know as soon as possible if you are available and interested in attending and/or taking a leadership role in either of the events. More detailed information to follow shortly.
We look forward to welcoming President Obama back to San Francisco!
Please contact Wade Randlett atwade@randlett.com or (415) 692-3556.
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SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17 SAN FRANCISCO MARCH AND RALLY AGAINST THE WARS
U.S. Troops Out Now! Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan!
Assemble 11:00 A.M. U.N. Plaza, SF (Market between 7th and 8th Streets)
March begins at 12:00 Noon
Rally begins at 1:00 P.M. back at U.N. Plaza
Commemorating the eighth anniversary of the war on Afghanistan and the 40th anniversary of the massive October 17, 1969 Vietnam Moratorium.
Sponsor: October 17 Antiwar Coalition
510-268-9429 or 415-794-7354
Money for Human Needs Not War!
Immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops, military personnel, bases, contractors, and mercenaries from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Colombia.
End U.S. support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine! End the Seige of Gaza!
U.S. Hands Off Iran and North Korea!
Self-determination for All Oppressed Nations and Peoples!
End War Crimes Including Torture and Prosecute the War Criminals!
See historical images of the Vietnam Moratorium at:
http://images.google.com/images?q=vietnam+moratorium&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=lGaISs7pMIP-sQOr2OznAg&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4
Image of San Francisco Vietnam Moratorium, Golden Gate Park, October 17, 1969 (I was there...bw):
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.rchrd.com/photo/images/pb2-12-15.jpg&imgrefurl=http://rchrd.com/photo/archives/1969/&usg=__FeHN5CAwDXv-ewwCt2Hfni6ZUn8=&h=567&w=850&sz=143&hl=en&start=3&um=1&tbnid=EJH6Kzj6YI6zzM:&tbnh=97&tbnw=145&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dvietnam%2Bmoratorium%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DX%26um%3D1
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Please forward widely. Contact us if you or your organization would like to endorse this call.
CALL FOR OCTOBER 22 DEMONSTRATION IN OAKLAND, CA:
NATIONAL DAY OF PROTEST TO STOP POLICE BRUTALITY, REPRESSION AND THE CRIMINALIZATION OF A GENERATION
Oscar Grant. Brownie Polk. Parnell Smith. And dozens more Oakland alone. Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo in New York City. Adolph Grimes in New Orleans. Robbie Tolan in Houston. Julian Alexander in Anaheim. Jonathan Pinkerton in Chicago. And thousands more nationwide.
All shot down, murdered by law enforcement, their lives stolen, victims of a nationwide epidemic of police brutality and murder.
The racist arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates this summer in Cambridge, Massachusetts - right in his own home - showed that any Black man or woman, no matter their stature, no matter their education, no matter their accomplishments can be targeted for brutality - even murder - at any moment.
Meanwhile, a whole generation of youth is treated as guilty until proved innocent, and hundreds of thousands are criminalized, and locked away in U.S. prisons with no hope for the future. And immigrants are subject to brutal raids, with families cruelly split up in an instant.
We refuse to suffer these outrages in silence. We need to put a stop to this and drag the truth about the nationwide epidemic of police violence and repression into the light of day for all so see. We say no more! Enough is Enough!
Oct 22nd 2009 is the 14th annual national day of protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of Generation---bringing together those under the gun and those not under the gun as a powerful voice to expose the epidemic of police brutality. On that day in cities across the country many different people will take to the streets against police brutality and murder, against the criminalization of youth, and against the targeting of immigrants.
We call for a powerful demonstration in Oakland on October 22 demanding:
* Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation!
* October 22....No To Police Brutality
* No to ICE raids and round-ups of immigrants!
* Enough Is Enough! No More Stolen Lives!
* Justice for Oscar Grant and all victims of police murder!
* Wear Black, Fight Back
Contact the National Office of October 22nd at:
Info@october22.org or 1-888-NOBRUTALITY
October 22nd Coalition
P.O. Box 2627
New York, N.Y. 10009
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B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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URGENT ALERT!
Call-In To Save San Francisco's Only State Park Wilderness Area From
Toxic Condominium Development!
Within the next two weeks, State Senator Mark Leno will seek to pass a
bill allowing environmentally criminal Lennar Corporation to build high
priced condos on the wildlife habitat and parkland in San Francisco's
Candlestick Point State Recreation Area!
San Francisco Supervisors Avalos, Daly, Mirkarimi, Mar and Campos have
sponsored a local resolution to tell the State legislature not to wreck
our State parkland for real estate developer profits.
This measure needs the crucial sixth vote of Board of Supervisors
President David Chiu to win, before Leno's bill (SB 792) goes for its
own final vote.
**WHAT YOU CAN DO**
Call Supervisor David Chiu at 415-554-7450 with the comment:
"Please bring the Avalos/Daly resolution opposing SB 792 to a full Board
vote by September 15th and vote YES! Don't give away one inch of
California's only urban state park!"
If you call during the weekend or evening, or get a recording, just
leave your comment as voice mail.
For more on the State Park land grab see
http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/privatizing-california-senate-bill-792/
For more on Lennar's history of corporate abuses see page 3 of Our
City's Fall 2007 Update at http://our-city.org/Update-Oct07.pdf
###
This alert sent by:
Our City
1028-A Howard St.
San Francisco, CA 94103
415-756-8844
For more information about Our City campaigns go to:
http://www.our-city.org
info@our-city.org
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HELP VFP PUT THIS BOOK IN YOUR HIGH SCHOOL OR PUBLIC LIBRARY
For a donation of only $18.95, we can put a copy of the book "10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military" into a public or high school library of your choice. [Reason number 1: You may be killed]
A letter and bookplate will let readers know that your donation helped make this possible.
Putting a book in either a public or school library ensures that students, parents, and members of the community will have this valuable information when they need it.
Don't have a library you would like us to put it in? We'll find one for you!
https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/826/t/9311/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=4906
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Take Action: Stop Rite Aid's abuses: Pass the Employee Free Choice Act!
For years Rite Aid workers have faced unfair firings, campaigns of misinformation, and intimidation for trying to form a union. But Rite Aid would never have been able to get away with any of this if Congress had passed the Employee Free Choice Act.
You can help us fight mounting anti-union opposition to the bill that would have protected Rite Aid's workers. Tell Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act today!
http://action.americanrightsatwork.org/campaign/riteaidefca2/8gg63dd407ejd5wi?
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This is a must-see video about the life of Oscar Grant, a young man who loved his family and was loved by his family. It's important to watch to understand the tremendous loss felt by his whole family as a result of his cold-blooded murder by BART police officers--Johannes Mehserle being the shooter while the others held Oscar down and handcuffed him to aid Mehserle in the murder of Oscar Grant January 1, 2009.
The family wants to share this video here with you who support justice for Oscar Grant.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/07/21/18611878.php
WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT!
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Urgent: Ahmad Sa'adat transferred to isolation in Ramon prison!
http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org/
Imprisoned Palestinian national leader Ahmad Sa'adat, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was transferred on August 11, 2009 to Ramon prison in the Naqab desert from Asqelan prison, where he had been held for a number of months. He remains in isolation; prior to his transfer from Asqelan, he had been held since August 1 in a tiny isolation cell of 140 cm x 240 cm after being penalized for communicating with another prisoner in the isolation unit.
Attorney Buthaina Duqmaq, president of the Mandela Association for prisoners' and detainees' rights, reported that this transfer is yet another continuation of the policy of repression and isolation directed at Sa'adat by the Israeli prison administration, aimed at undermining his steadfastness and weakening his health and his leadership in the prisoners' movement. Sa'adat has been moved repeatedly from prison to prison and subject to fines, harsh conditions, isolation and solitary confinement, and medical neglect. Further reports have indicated that he is being denied attorney visits upon his transfer to Ramon.
Ahmad Sa'adat undertook a nine-day hunger strike in June in order to protest the increasing use of isolation against Palestinian prisoners and the denial of prisoners' rights, won through long and hard struggle. The isolation unit at Ramon prison is reported to be one of the worst isolation units in terms of conditions and repeated violations of prisoners' rights in the Israeli prison system.
Sa'adat is serving a 30 year sentence in Israeli military prisons. He was sentenced on December 25, 2008 after a long and illegitimate military trial on political charges, which he boycotted. He was kidnapped by force in a military siege on the Palestinian Authority prison in Jericho, where he had been held since 2002 under U.S., British and PA guard.
Sa'adat is suffering from back injuries that require medical assistance and treatment. Instead of receiving the medical care he needs, the Israeli prison officials are refusing him access to specialists and engaging in medical neglect and maltreatment.
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat demands an end to this isolation and calls upon all to protest at local Israeli embassies and consulates (the list is available at: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/ About+the+Ministry/Diplomatic+mission/Web+Sites+of+Israeli+ Missions+Abroad.htm) and to write to the International Committee of the Red Cross and other human rights organizations to exercise their responsibilities and act swiftly to demand that the Israelis ensure that Ahmad Sa'adat and all Palestinian prisoners receive needed medical care and that this punitive isolation be ended. Email the ICRC, whose humanitarian mission includes monitoring the conditions of prisoners, at jerusalem..jer@icrc.org, and inform them about the urgent situation of Ahmad Sa'adat!
Ahmad Sa'adat has been repeatedly moved in an attempt to punish him for his steadfastness and leadership and to undermine his leadership in the prisoners' movement. Of course, these tactics have done nothing of the sort. The Palestinian prisoners are daily on the front lines, confronting Israeli oppression and crimes. Today, it is urgent that we stand with Ahmad Sa'adat and all Palestinian prisoners against these abuses, and for freedom for all Palestinian prisoners and for all of Palestine!
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat
http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org
info@freeahmadsaadat.org
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Troy Anthony Davis is an African American man who has spent the last 18 years on death row for a murder he did not commit. There is no physical evidence tying him to the crime and seven out of nine witnesses have recanted. New evidence and new testimony have been presented to the Georgia courts, but the justice system refuses to consider this evidence, which would prove Troy Davis' innocence once and for all.
Sign the petition and join the NAACP, Amnesty International USA, and other partners in demanding justice for Troy Davis!
http://www.iamtroy.com/
For Now, High Court Punts on Troy Davis, on Death Row for 18 Years
By Ashby Jones
Wall Street Journal Law Blog
June 30, 2009
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/06/30/for-now-high-court-punts-on-troy-davis-on-death-row-for-18-years/
Take action now:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&aid=12361&ICID=A0906A01&tr=y&auid=5030305
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Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
New videos from April 24 Oakland Mumia event
http://abu-jamal-news.com/article?name=jlboak
Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense in the U.S. Our legal effort is the front line of the battle for Mumia's freedom and life. His legal defense needs help. The costs are substantial for our litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court and at the state level. To help, please make your checks payable to the National Lawyers Guild Foundation (indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). All donations are tax deductible under the Internal Revenue Code, section 501(c)(3), and should be mailed to:
It is outrageous and a violation of human rights that Mumia remains in prison and on death row. His life hangs in the balance. My career has been marked by successfully representing people facing death in murder cases. I will not rest until we win Mumia's case. Justice requires no less.
With best wishes,
Robert R. Bryan
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT!
FLASHPOINTS Interview with Innocent San Quentin Death Row Inmate
Kevin Cooper -- Aired Monday, May 18,2009
http://www.flashpoints.net/#GOOGLE_SEARCH_ENGINE
To learn more about Kevin Cooper go to:
savekevincooper.org
LINKS
San Francisco Chronicle article on the recent ruling:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/13/BAM517J8T3.DTL
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and dissent:
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2009/05/11/05-99004o.pdf
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COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
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C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Obama to Use Current Law to Support Detentions
By PETER BAKER
September 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/us/politics/24detain.html?ref=us
2) Letter From America
A Detainee Freed, but Not Released
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
September 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/us/24iht-letter.html?ref=us
4) Pittsburgh Is Calm After Day of Raucous Protests
By IAN URBINA
September 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/26/world/26pittsburgh.html?hp
5) California University Cuts Protested
By MALIA WOLLAN
September 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/education/25calif.html?ref=us
6) Report Cites Lack of Precautions in 2008 Sugar Plant Fire
By SHAILA DEWAN
September 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/us/25sugar.html?ref=us
7) South African Children Push for Better Schools
By CELIA W. DUGGER
September 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/world/africa/25safrica.html?ref=education
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1) Obama to Use Current Law to Support Detentions
By PETER BAKER
September 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/us/politics/24detain.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration has decided not to seek new legislation from Congress authorizing the indefinite detention of about 50 terrorism suspects being held without charges at at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, officials said Wednesday.
Instead, the administration will continue to hold the detainees without bringing them to trial based on the power it says it has under the Congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, authorizing the president to use force against forces of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
In concluding that it does not need specific permission from Congress to hold detainees without charges, the Obama administration is adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies.
But President Obama's advisers are not embracing the more disputed Bush contention that the president has inherent power under the Constitution to detain terrorism suspects indefinitely regardless of Congress.
The Justice Department said in a statement Wednesday night that "the administration would rely on authority already provided by Congress" under the use of force resolution. "The administration is not currently seeking additional authorization," the statement said.
The department pointed out that courts would continue to review the cases of those held without charges through habeas corpus hearings. The Washington Post first reported the decision.
The legal interpretation applies to detainees whom the government concludes should be held because they are a continuing danger to national security but who cannot be brought to trial for various reasons, like evidence tainted by harsh interrogations. Although it has not determined definitively how many detainees that applies to, officials said it would probably be about 50 of the more than 200 men still held at Guantánamo. The government plans to bring the others to trial or send them to other countries.
Officials said the decision applies only to those already held at Guantánamo. They said it remained an open question whether the administration would seek legislation or establish a new system for indefinite detention of suspected terrorists captured in the future.
Justice Department officials informed representatives of human rights and civil liberties groups about the decision not to seek the new legislation for the current detainees at a meeting last week. Officials said Wednesday that the position was in keeping with the evolving arguments being made by the administration in court over recent months.
"The position conveyed by the Justice Department in the meeting last week broke no new ground and was entirely consistent with information previously provided by the Justice Department to the Senate Armed Services Committee," the department's statement said.
Still, the position surprised some critics who had expected after a speech by Mr. Obama in May that he would seek legislation to put the system of indefinite detention on firmer political and legal ground. In that speech at the National Archives, Mr. Obama said that he was considering continuing indefinite detention in some limited cases but that he would not act unilaterally.
"We must recognize that these detention policies cannot be unbounded," he said at the time. "They can't be based simply on what I or the executive branch decide alone."
He said he would "work with Congress to develop an appropriate legal regime so that our efforts are consistent with our values and our Constitution."
Officials said Wednesday that working with Congress did not mean the president would seek legislation, only that he would consult lawmakers.
Given the opposition in Congress to Mr. Obama's plan to close Guantánamo, especially if it means transferring detainees to prisons on American soil, the prospect of writing legislation that would pass both houses appears daunting at best.
Sarah E. Mendelson, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who led a study about closing Guantánamo, said forgoing legislation was "overall a good step" because it prevented Congress from making things worse. "We don't know if it closes the door definitively on efforts to institutionalize detention without charge," she added, "since the White House might seek to do this by itself."
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2) Letter From America
A Detainee Freed, but Not Released
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
September 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/us/24iht-letter.html?ref=us
NEW YORK - Anybody who thinks it's going to be easy for the Obama administration to meet its goal of closing the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention center by Jan. 22 needs to take a look at the case of Saber Lahmar, who has been imprisoned there since January 2002.
Mr. Lahmar is an Algerian who in 2001 was living and working as a permanent resident of Bosnia.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, he was suspected by the U.S. authorities of involvement in a plot to attack the American Embassy in Sarajevo, which led to his arrest by the Bosnian police, his transfer to the U.S. authorities and his incarceration, along with five other suspects from Bosnia, at Guantánamo.
In November 2008, Mr. Lahmar became the first Guantánamo detainee to successfully challenge his detention, bringing a habeas corpus petition to federal court in Washington.
According to his lawyer, Robert Kirsch, the U.S. government abandoned its claim that there ever was a plot to attack the embassy in Sarajevo, though it maintained that Mr. Lahmar and the other Bosnians were planning to travel to Afghanistan to fight against U.S. forces there.
But Judge Richard Leon, a Bush appointee and no crusader against Guantánamo, ruled that there was no evidence to support the government's claim, and he ordered the United States to use pursue all efforts to get Mr. Lahmar released from custody.
But despite that ruling, nearly a year after his detention was found to be unjustified, Mr. Lahmar is right where he has been for almost eight years: locked up in Guantánamo. He has not seen his wife for that entire time, nor has he ever seen the child that she gave birth to not long after his arrest.
"Relatively speaking," Mr. Kirsch, his lawyer, said, "his conditions are better than those he had before the court decision, but he's still suffering horribly emotionally and psychologically."
Ever since Judge Leon's decision, Mr. Lahmar's detention has been technically illegal, and one way to deal with it would be to allow him to settle in the United States. But Congress has forbidden any Guantánamo detainees from being settled in the United States.
Moreover, Mr. Lahmar himself, Mr. Kirsch said, isn't eager to settle in the country that incarcerated him for so long.
Instead, the matter has been turned over to the State Department, specifically to Daniel Fried, the special envoy whose job is to facilitate the closing of Guantánamo by persuading other countries to take the detainees who have been ordered released by the courts or determined to pose no danger. Mr. Fried has had some modest success lately - but not in the case of Mr. Lahmar or of a majority of the others ordered released by the courts.
In all, since the Supreme Court decision last year, some 37 habeas petitions have been heard. Thirty have been decided in favor of the detainees, seven against them. Of the 30 ordered released, 20 are still in custody.
Lawyers involved in the detainees' cases say that about 226 men remained locked up in Guantánamo in all, of whom 80 have been approved for resettlement while about 40 have been referred for prosecution.
But what sort of prosecution - before civilian or military courts? This basic question has still not been decided, despite the Obama administration's early and outspoken opposition to the Guantánamo way of doing things.
President Barack Obama suspended ongoing military tribunals when he came into office, but since then his administration has postponed a decision on whether to proceed with some military tribunals or to shift those trials to the civilian courts.
According to lawyers involved in some of these cases, the administration's dilemma is this: If it proceeds with military tribunals, it keeps in place the system of the previous administration, which, during the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama called "an enormous failure."
If it moves to civilian trials, it risks having crucial evidence thrown out because it was obtained by waterboarding and other means of "enhanced interrogation."
And so, can Guantánamo be emptied and closed in the next four months?
"I think it's likely that most of the men held prisoner there will be gone by then," Mr. Kirsch said. "It will take tremendous diplomatic effort, but the level of creativity that comes from a deadline should not be underestimated."
Nearly half of the detainees who qualify for release are Yemenis. If Mr. Fried can strike a deal with either Yemen or Saudi Arabia to take them, a large part of the problem could be eliminated at a single stroke.
But not all are Yemenis. Take, for example, the 22 Uighurs, members of the Muslim minority of Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in western China. The men were at one time imprisoned in Guantánamo, and all have since been determined by the courts to pose no danger to the United States.
Nine of them have gone to Albania and Bermuda, and four more have agreed to go to the tiny Pacific island nation of Palau - but the nine others are reluctant to go there, said the lawyer for two of the Uighurs, Susan Baker Manning.
"What happens to those who don't accept the offer to go to Palau - and there could be many reasons for not accepting it - I don't know," Ms. Manning said. "I'd only be guessing at this point."
And then what of those who will be prosecuted? And what of those deemed too dangerous to be released but too difficult to prosecute - a category that isn't much publicly acknowledged, but that lawyers who are involved in the Guantánamo cases believe to exist?
One worry of human rights lawyers is that their clients could be taken away from a closed-down Guantánamo and put someplace else outside the jurisdiction of the law.
"The last thing we want to see is the opening of a similar facility elsewhere in the world, " Jameel Jaffer, director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Security Project, said, "or even in the United States."
E-MAIL pagetwo@iht.com Tomorrow Akash Kapur on the public "option" in India.
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3) Thousands protest fees, cuts at UC campuses
Nanette Asimov, Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writers
Friday, September 25, 2009
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/25/MNVU19SBEV.DTL
Thousands of students, professors and workers at University of California campuses across the state poured out of classrooms Thursday to rally against deep cuts to public education and aim their frustration squarely at UC leaders' handling of its budget crisis.
Even students outside of UC - at San Francisco State University and at City College of San Francisco - held demonstrations in support of the UC walkout.
About 5,000 people showed up at noon at UC Berkeley's Sproul Plaza in a massive gathering - the largest of the 10 campuses - that began as a teach-in about the budget crisis and morphed into a vast student march through downtown Berkeley that blocked traffic for nearly two hours.
"Education should be free! No cuts, no fees!" chanted the protesters, marching shoulder to shoulder and carrying signs reading, "Stop the cuts - they hurt!"
The systemwide walkout reflected frustration and anger as UC lays off hundreds of workers, imposes unpaid employee furloughs and reduces courses to close a budget gap of more than $750 million - the result of dramatically reduced funding from the cash-poor state and higher operating costs.
5 percent tuition hike
The regents are also expected to raise next year's tuition to $10,302, a 45 percent increase over last year's tuition, which many students say will put a UC education out of their reach.
UC leaders said they shared the protesters' frustration over deep cuts to public education, but that the anger should be focused on state government.
"While we understand there's some anger and angst spread across our campuses, our hope is that it will be directed more precisely toward Sacramento, where the heart of the problem lies," said UC's interim provost, Larry Pitts.
Lawmakers, in turn, turned it back on UC.
"The state is facing an unprecedented fiscal crisis," said Julia Brownley, a Santa Monica Democrat who chairs the Assembly Education Committee. "The students are protesting how the university cut its budget. The Legislature left that up to the university."
Screaming interest group
Asked about his cuts to education during a Commonwealth Club appearance in San Francisco, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dismissed the protesters as a screaming interest group.
"They're all screaming," he said. "Everyone has to tighten their belts."
Key among the protesters' concerns is that the cuts will damage UC's role as an economic engine in California that produces top graduates doing the most innovative work in their fields.
Cal officials and protesters said the rally at UC Berkeley was the largest gathering in recent memory, except the night of the Obama inauguration, and was the largest turnout among all UC campuses.
"This is extraordinary," said Shannon Steen, an American studies professor with a faculty group called Save the University. "This so far exceeds anything we thought would happen."
Protests systemwide
At other UC campuses - many of which began fall semester Thursday - crowds estimated at several hundred to 1,000 gathered on quads and at flagpoles to vent their anger, often under a scorching sun.
"It's exciting," said Keith Danner, a lecturer in English who helped organize the rally at UC Irvine. "To have 1,000 people standing for an hour in 95-degree heat just shows the depth of feeling against these devastating cuts."
Lacking tenure, Danner had to be careful about skipping class. So, like many untenured lecturers, he turned the rally into a lesson.
"I did a writing lesson about 'purpose and audience' and had them interview people at the rally," Danner said.
UC has about 19,400 faculty members, but only about 9,000 have tenure, said spokesman Pete King.
Most classes met as scheduled, campus administrators said, though some were held in professors' living rooms and even on picket lines.
Joining the walkout were thousands of nonfaculty employees from the University Professional and Technical Employees union who picketed to highlight a labor dispute with UC.
Chronicle staff writer Kelly Zito contributed to this report. E-mail the writers at nasimov@sfchronicle.com and jtucker@sfchronicle.com.
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4) Pittsburgh Is Calm After Day of Raucous Protests
By IAN URBINA
September 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/26/world/26pittsburgh.html?hp
PITTSBURGH - A calm descended over downtown here Friday morning, a day after raucous confrontations between the police and protesters rallying against the Group of 20 meeting that resulted in 66 arrests, at least 5 people requiring medical attention, and about 19 businesses with broken windows or other damage.
Protest organizers had encouraged civil disobedience Friday morning but little occurred.
The largest permitted rally, organized by the Thomas Merton Center, was scheduled to move to downtown from Forbes Avenue around noon local time.
It was unclear if civil disobedience would occur elsewhere in the city at the same time.
"Up to now there was so much fear - people were told that it would be dangerous and violent," said Peter Shell, president of the center, which advocates change through peaceful struggle.
"We have a permit," he added. "We confront the policies of the G-20, not the police. We're a different kind of protest."
In the city's Oakland neighborhood on Friday morning, where the police pursued protesters the night before, demonstrators gathered again to join the larger permitted march. Protesters with Iraq Veterans Against the War, wearing fatigues, stood near the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on 5th Avenue. Tibetans chiming cymbals and waving signs - like one that read "G20 Let's Talk Tibet" - denounced China in chants. A group called Students for Justice in Palestine assembled on Forbes Avenue and called for an end to the Israeli occupation.
As the groups gathered, state troopers wearing black helmets looked on, but the atmosphere was far less tense than the night before, when hundreds of police officers carrying long batons fired smoke canisters that trailed in high arcs before landing among buildings at the University of Pittsburgh, including the Gothic-style tower called the Cathedral of Learning.
On Thursday, the city had locked down its business district, known as the Golden Triangle, in preparation for possible clashes. Riot fences lined the sidewalks. Police helicopters, gunboats and Humvees darted to and fro. City officials announced that they had up to 1,000 jail cells ready after county officials freed up additional space last week by releasing 300 people who had been arrested on minor probation violations.
Many local residents stayed away from downtown Thursday, fearing clashes.
But the intermittent conflicts that did occur were well outside the security perimeter surrounding the G-20 meetings.
In the afternoon, protesters who tried to march toward the convention center where the gathering was being held encountered roaming squads of police officers carrying plastic shields and batons. The police fired a sound cannon that emitted shrill beeps, causing demonstrators to cover their ears and back up; then the police threw tear gas canisters that released clouds of white smoke and stun grenades that exploded with sharp flashes of light.
City officials said they believed it was the first time the sound cannon had been used for crowd control. "Other law enforcement agencies will be watching to see how it was used," said Nate Harper, the Pittsburgh police chief. "It served its purpose well."
The protesters, who did not have a permit to march, rolled a large blue metal trash container down 37th Street. It stopped short of police vehicles and in front of a women's clothing and shoe boutique called Pavement.
"It was scary," said Alissa Martin, the shop's owner. "You feel like you're living in a war zone."
Much of the afternoon involved a cat-and-mouse game in which protesters, many in all black, evaded large forces of heavily armed police officers in the streets near Liberty Avenue.
The police repeatedly announced over loud speakers that the crowd had assembled unlawfully.
"You must leave the immediate vicinity," the voice over the loud speaker said, adding that if the protesters did not, they would be subject to arrest and would face "the use of riot control agents" and "less lethal munitions," which police later said were soft bean bags fired at protesters. At that point, the police fired tear gas and stun grenades.
Trevor Griffith, 21, was part of the march after driving 16 hours from Pensacola, Fla., with three fellow students from the University of West Florida.
"The fact that 20 or so individuals right now are determining economic trade policies for four to five billion people just isn't right," Mr. Griffith said. "That's why we're here."
The turbulence downtown was in sharp contrast to smaller and less confrontational rallies and parades earlier in the day.
Melanie White, 53, from Fremont, Ohio, said she was marching to bring wider attention to the conflict between the authorities and religious leaders in Myanmar. On Thursday, she joined a rally of about 100 people led by Burmese monks in saffron robes and chanting. The group went from the north side of the city over the Sixth Street Bridge, ending up in Point State Park in downtown Pittsburgh.
"It was very important to be there," Ms. White said, adding that her group was commemorating the second anniversary of the so-called saffron revolution in Myanmar.
"I think it is important to give voice to the Burmese problem because they are not getting their own voice at the G-20," Ms. White said.
Just blocks away, a row of vans filled with police officers escorted several cars carrying meeting attendees past a police barrier to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, where the meeting officially began Thursday evening with a welcoming ceremony.
Sean D. Hamill and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.
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5) California University Cuts Protested
By MALIA WOLLAN
September 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/education/25calif.html?ref=us
BERKELEY, Calif.- Thousands of students, faculty members and employees at the 10 University of California campuses protested budget cuts, unpaid faculty furloughs and tuition increases on Thursday.
Officials at the University of California, Berkeley, estimated that several thousand protesters were in Sproul Plaza chanting and waving signs. Most academic departments on campus reported that some classes had been canceled because faculty members and students walked out. Other campuses reported smaller turnouts at rallies and marches.
"Everyone agrees there is a budget crisis and that the university must respond," said Joshua Clover, an associate professor of English at U.C. Davis who was a co-author of a petition calling for the faculty walkout on Thursday. The problem, Mr. Clover said, is that the administration's handling of the budget cuts "disproportionately harms those who can least afford it both among the workers and the students."
The online walkout petition was signed by 1,221 of the 19,000 faculty members statewide. A union representing more than 11,000 university professional and technical staff members supported the protest and called a one-day strike.
The Legislature approved a reduction of $637.1 million, about 20 percent of the university's 2009-2010 fiscal year financing, as part of the budget agreement reached in August. The university's budget now stands at $2.6 billion. Friction has developed between the administration and some faculty and staff members and students over how and where to cut.
Among the more contentious items are a proposed 32 percent increase in student tuition by fall 2010, and decisions made by the university president, Mark Yudof, over how to handle mandatory faculty furlough days, which will reduce pay by 4 to 10 percent. Average yearly tuition and fees for undergraduates this academic year are $8,720.
"I chose Berkeley over all the other universities because it offered me a very good education at a price my family could afford," said Brandon Pham, 17, a freshman political science major who skipped the day's classes in protest. Mr. Pham held a sign that read: "We make the university. They make the crisis."
Steve Montiel, a spokesman for the University of California's office of the president, said, "We respect people expressing themselves, but we hope they realize that the true source of their frustration is in Sacramento at the state capital."
What started as a planned faculty walkout to address specific furlough issues ballooned into a 10-campus protest of the larger implications of the reduction of money for public higher education in the state.
"We are operating on the assumption that the state's disinvestment will continue," said Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau of Berkeley, adding that the university would now have to rely on higher fees, private foundation donations and better investments. The pain of budget cuts will be felt broadly, he said, and "paying for public education is going to be increasingly difficult for middle-class families."
Catherine Cole, a professor in the theater department, who canceled her classes on Thursday to attend the rally, said: "We've hit a tipping point. What is emerging here is people realizing it doesn't have to be this way."
Still, many students at Berkeley did not participate in the protest and walked about campus as they would on any other Thursday. "I haven't been near Sproul Plaza today," said Ray Liang, 18. "I have classes to go to and homework to do."
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6) Report Cites Lack of Precautions in 2008 Sugar Plant Fire
By SHAILA DEWAN
September 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/us/25sugar.html?ref=us
ATLANTA - A huge fire last year at a sugar refinery near Savannah, Ga., that killed 14 workers and injured 36 more was "entirely preventable," a federal official said Thursday as the results of an investigation into the fire's causes were released.
The owner of the plant, the Imperial Sugar Company, and the plant's managers knew for decades about the hazards of sugar dust but failed to take the necessary precautions, according to the report, issued by the Chemical Safety Board, which investigates industrial chemical accidents.
The report blamed inadequate equipment design, poor maintenance and ineffective housekeeping for the explosion and fire in February 2008, and said that Imperial Sugar and the sugar industry as a whole were aware of the dangers of dust explosions at least as early as 1925.
In a written statement, John C. Sheptor, the president and chief executive of Imperial Sugar, said the company had "collaborated" with the safety board on the report and was "working diligently" to put in place the report's safety recommendations.
The report also cited internal memorandums at the plant, in Port Wentworth, Ga., dating from 1967, before it was owned by Imperial Sugar, showing that managers were concerned about the possibility that accumulations of sugar dust could ignite a chain of explosions that would destroy "large sections of the plant."
The initial explosion most likely occurred inside a sugar conveyor situated beneath two silos, the report said.
The conveyor had recently been enclosed, creating "a confined, unventilated space where sugar dust could accumulate to an explosive concentration," the safety board said.
That explosion quickly spread, igniting sugar dust and spilled sugar in adjacent areas.
Imperial Sugar had not conducted evacuation drills and the explosion and fires disabled most emergency lighting, trapping workers in a dark maze of corridors, the report said.
The Chemical Safety Board does not issue citations or levy fines, but in July 2008, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration found violations at the Port Wentworth plant and at an Imperial Sugar plant in Gramercy, La., where an inspection five weeks after the Georgia fire found sugar dust four feet thick in some areas.
The agency proposed fines of $8.7 million, the third-largest in the agency's history. Imperial Sugar is contesting the fine.
Brent J. Savage, a lawyer in Savannah who is representing some of the victims or family members of victims in lawsuits against the plant, said the report reinforced their case and cast new suspicion on insurers and other third-party inspectors, who the report said failed to make note of accumulations of sugar dust at the plant.
The first of his clients whose case is going to trial is Paul Seckinger, a mechanic who was badly burned and who, Mr. Savage said, has incurred more than $8 million in medical bills.
"They did an unbelievably in-depth study and they had access to things that a typical plaintiff's lawyer would not," Mr. Savage said of the safety board.
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7) South African Children Push for Better Schools
By CELIA W. DUGGER
September 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/world/africa/25safrica.html?ref=education
CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Thousands of children marched to City Hall this week in sensible black shoes, a stream of boys and girls from township schools across this seaside city that extended for blocks, passing in a blur of pleated skirts, blazers and rep ties. Their polite demand: Give us libraries and librarians.
"We want more information and knowledge," said a ninth grader, Abongile Ndesi.
In the 15 years since white supremacist rule ended in South Africa, the governing party, the African National Congress, has put in place numerous policies to transform schools into engines of opportunity. But many of its leaders, including President Jacob Zuma, now acknowledge that those efforts have too often failed.
The new protest movement, with its practical goals, youthful organizers and idealistic moniker, Equal Education, is a quintessentially South African answer to a failing education system, one that self-consciously acknowledged its debt to the past in the march to City Hall.
In 1976, when police officers shot a 13-year-old named Hector Pieterson in Soweto, a children's uprising against apartheid emerged and spread across the country to Cape Town, where students from a mixed-race high school, Salt River, marched in solidarity with black schoolchildren.
Zackie Achmat, South Africa's wiliest campaigner for AIDS treatment, was himself a 14-year-old marcher that September day 33 years ago. Mr. Achmat, now graying, was among the protesters following the same route this week, his white straw hat bobbing in a sea of plaids and ginghams.
The idea for a new movement dedicated to educational equity was his, and he helped nurse Equal Education into being, counseling its young leaders to work with teachers and government officials whenever possible. The country's leadership, which has been slow to grapple with the AIDS crisis, understands the urgent need for better education, he said. The new director general of the country's Higher Education Ministry, Mary Metcalfe, has served as head of Equal Education's board.
"In building a citizens' movement, the most important element is giving people the sense of their own power to change things with little victories," Mr. Achmat said.
The job of organizing the group has fallen to a pair of law school graduates from the University of Cape Town. Doron Isaacs, 29, its coordinator, was leader of Habonim South Africa, an organization of young, left-wing Jewish activists with whom Mr. Achmat has worked for years. Mr. Isaacs recruited a classmate, Yoliswa Dwane, 27, who was raised by her seamstress mother and now lives in a shack in the township of Khayelitsha, south of Cape Town, where she is caring for nieces, ages 12 and 17.
Last year, Equal Education gave students in Khayelitsha, home to more than 500,000 unemployed and working-class people, disposable cameras to document problems in their high schools. They returned with shots of leaking roofs, cracked desks and children crowded around a single textbook.
One image - a bank of window panes at Luhlaza high school, all shattered, captured by a student named Zukiswa Vuka - proved the most resonant. Some 500 windows at the school had been broken for years, leaving the students shivering in wintertime classes.
Equal Education's first campaign was to get them replaced. The school agreed to put up about $650, an amount the group said it would match. That left some $900 still needed. Over months, the group met with local and provincial managers, organized a communitywide petition drive, held a rally of hundreds of township students and garnered coverage in local newspapers.
Finally in November, provincial education officials announced that the windows would be fixed and that a sum almost 10 times what the students had requested would be invested in the school.
This year, students successfully agitated for a science teacher at Chris Hani High School when it had none for the seniors.
They also led a drive to get their classmates to come to school on time, with early-morning pickets at school gates - an effort that also showed up late-arriving teachers.
The libraries campaign is the group's first attempt to tackle a national issue. With financial support from Atlantic Philanthropies and the Open Society Institute, among others, it is also hoping to broaden its membership to include teachers and more parents and to graduate to bigger victories.
Mr. Isaacs said Equal Education's members knew that problems far harder to fix than windows or missing libraries awaited and that part of the answer was building alliances with the teachers' union, which is in the governing alliance.
"We know that the teachers' union is one of the most powerful institutions in the country," he said, "and if we style ourselves as its adversary, we'll be dead in the water."
The marchers, stretched out Tuesday along Main Road in the shadow of majestic Table Mountain, were themselves a wealth of stories.
Nkosinathi Dayimani, a senior, was one of the beneficiaries of the new science teacher this year, but not soon enough to prevent his failure on the recent trial run of the national science exam.
Asanda Sparks, a petite ninth grader from Kraaifontein Township, has been hoping for a library in her school since bullies picked her pocket as she walked to the public library to research Nelson Mandela's life.
And Nina Hoffman was among the dozens of white students who joined the march from one of the country's formerly all-white suburban high schools - Westerford - which can afford a well-stocked library because parents pay annual fees of more than $2,200 per child.
"Coming to a march like this, I realize even more how privileged we are and how much I take for granted," she said.
During their two-hour walk to City Hall on a gloriously sunny afternoon, the young people seemed buoyed by the hope of making a difference.
Abongile, the ninth grader from Luhlaza high school, noted appreciatively that she did not have to sit with chattering teeth in class this winter because the broken windows had been fixed.
"I saw that Equal Education can make something impossible possible," she said.
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U.S. Out Now! From Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and all U.S. bases around the world; End all U.S. Aid to Israel; Get the military out of our schools and our communities; Demand Equal Rights and Justice for ALL!
TAX THE RICH NOT THE POOR! MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS NOT WAR!
On the 8th Anniversary of the War on Afghanistan
U.S. -- NATO OUT! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
End colonial occupation in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Haiti...
Healthcare, jobs, housing, education for all--Not War!
San Francisco Protest:
Wednesday, October 7, 5:00 p.m.
New Federal Building
7th and Mission Streets, Near Civic Center BART
Volunteers needed: 415-821-6545
answer@answersf.org
ANSWERcoalition.org
ANSWERsf.org
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17 SAN FRANCISCO MARCH AND RALLY AGAINST THE WARS
U.S. Troops Out Now! Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan!
Assemble 11:00 A.M. U.N. Plaza, SF (Market between 7th and 8th Streets)
March begins at 12:00 Noon
Rally begins at 1:00 P.M. back at U.N. Plaza
Commemorating the eighth anniversary of the war on Afghanistan and the 40th anniversary of the massive October 17, 1969 Vietnam Moratorium.
Sponsor: October 17 Antiwar Coalition
510-268-9429 or 415-794-7354
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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Report from G20 Protest:
-----Original Message-----
From: Kipp D
To: Kipp D
Sent: Thu, Sep 24, 2009 3:48 pm
Subject: Fw: Pittsburgh today (Thursday afternoon)
Family and friends,
First, an apology for two typos in my previous email (no valid excuse!).
Thomas Merton Center is www.thomasmertoncenter.org
Peoples Summit website is www.peoplessummit.com
This afternoon had a chance to visit Monumental Baptist Church's encampment, in the heart of our Hill District, where August Wilson lived and centered most of his plays. The minister has invited people from all over to set up tents there and use it as a meeting and eating place around G20 protests. It is an awesome gathering spot, just across the street from the NAACP headquarters, surrounded by some of the most blighted residential area in our city. The tents that touch one another as they are closely packed in the lot of this church are temporary homes to such a range of good people .
Now just back from touring parts of Pittsburgh where police are out in large numbers, making parts of our city look like and feel like a war zone (for me evoked memories of San Salvador in the 1980s). Eileen is out with a large band of legal observers, having just left the point of confrontation between non-permitted marchers and police. Don't have the big picture yet but the local conservative news station's reporters kept saying that peaceful walkers were attacked by police tear gas. There were at least some arrests. Don't know of any injuries. Reports of some broken windows in police cars. I'm sure this will be sorted out as various reporters, legal observers, and participants put together their stories.
Video of police vs. non-permitted marchers today:
http://www.post-gazette.com/multimedia/?videoid=102350&cmpid=mmpanel0
Video showing Pittsburgh streets belong to the . . . uniformed/armed deputized people
http://www.post-gazette.com/multimedia/?videoid=102342
New Post-Gazette website devoted to everything going on around the G20; a great website with lots of links, including to international opinions, current demonstrations, etc.; lots of photos and some videos
http://www.pgpremium.com/g20/
Lynn Cullen live (liberal Pittsburgh talk show host) at 11 AM Pgh time, hear live comments from people on the scene:
http://video.pghcitypaper.com/cullen/podcast.xml
Friday's demonstration is featured here:
http://www.pittsburghendthewar.org/
Thank you for your interest!
G20 Protest video from Pittsburgh
Protesters dangle from bridge
http://www.post-gazette.com/multimedia/?videoID=102335
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ReThinking Norma Rae: A Union Icon Falls Fighting the Healthcare Industry
Video and article at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-kim/rethinking-emnorma-raeem_b_287552.html
Take Action: Remembering Crystal Lee Sutton
http://action.americanrightsatwork.org/campaign/CrystalLeeSutton/8gg63ddr27e6k5bm?
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Taking Aim Radio Program with
Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone
The Chimera of Capitalist Recovery, Parts 1 and 2
http://www.takingaimradio.com/shows/audio.html
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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9/26 N. CA Education Workers and Students Conference At SFSU
Defend our Education!
Saturday, Sept. 26, 2009
10:00 am - 3 pm
SFSU
Get with the Program!
Why is our education at risk?
Why is the Budget out of control and no one speaking up?
Students, faculty and staff from many colleges, universities and school districts in California are asking these questions. But more importantly, they are organizing and creating a move-ment to act on these attacks on the basic human right of getting an education. You are invited to attend the Northern California Defend Our Education organizing meeting for all student, faculty, and staff members, parents, Union members, church members, or community group members. We strongly encourage attendance by members of similar committees.
Saturday, September 26th, 2009
San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Avenue, SF
Jack Adams Hall
Upper Level of the Cesar Chavez Student Center
Muni and BART/BART shuttle are easy! Go to 5-1-1
10 AM - 3 PM
For more info: Contact Defend Our Education
Pablo Rodriguez, pabrodriguez@yahoo.com
Nicky Trasvina, trasvina@sfsu.edu,
Steve Zeltzer, lvpsf@igc.org
(Initial endorsers-Defend Our Education-City College of SF, College of BSS Students of Color @ SFSU, AFT 2121, CFA - SFSU, United Public Workers For Action, Progressive Teachers of Richmond, SF Labor Council, SF District 11 Supervisor John Avalos, Karl Kramer, SF Living Wage Coalition)
Friday, September 18, 2009
Hello!
We are hosting the Defend Our Education Northern California Conference at SF State in Jack Adams Hall on Sat. Sept. 26th, 10am-3pm. Our goal is to bring K-12, Higher Education, and Labor Representatives together. We will be discussing how the budget cuts affect education and will be calling for a statewide plan of action to unify and mobilize our efforts. The conference will focus mainly on building an alliance of students and workers.
We are asking for your support by participating in this conference and sending your student and labor leaders and rank and file to join us in the fight in defending our educational rights as well as saving social services in general.
We invite your student group or organization to present reports that represent what is happening on your campus, in your school and workplace, and anticipate reports from all levels of education, as well as from the workers who are struggling with furloughs or experiencing uncertainty in their jobs.
We are also collecting letters of support and endorsements from elected officials and others to document who stands with us in our efforts to save education. Please send your reports, endorsements, and letters as soon as possible so that we can make copies for the conference. Thank you. Address and send to:
Defend Our Education Northern California Conference
c/o AFT 2121
311 Miramar Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94112
Or email to: bssstudentsofcolor@gmail.com
In solidarity,
Nadia Conrad
Chair of the College of BSS: Students of Color and a member of Defending Our Education Coalition
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THE FINAL TWO OCTOBER 17 COALITION MEETINGS WILL TAKE PLACE:
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2:00 PM AND SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2 PM
Unitarian Church (Fireside Room)
1187 Franklin at Geary, SF (wheelchair accessible).
Let's reach out to as many people as possible to come to these final two meetings to ensure a maximum effort to build Oct. 17. Flyers will be available for pickup as well as cementing the final planning for important, last-minute organizational tasks.
We all need to step up and give our best efforts to make this a successful protest against these wars and bankster-bailouts, and for jobs, education, healthcare, housing and a peaceful world for all.
A new website has been set up at:
www.oct17awc.wordpress.com
A calendar will be posted listing activities and events for flyering and getting the word out about Oct. 17.
To arrange to pick up flyers, or to add another event to the calendar, call either of the numbers below. (Please note, Michael Moor's new film, "Capitalism: A Love Story" opens nationwide on Oct. 2. This will be a great place to flyer for Oct. 17.)(See the trailer at: http://www.capitalismalovestory.com/)
Please call Jeff (510-268-9428) or Kathy (415-641-1997) to volunteer at one of these great opportunities to get out the word.
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein
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Wednesday, September 30, 5:30-7:00pm
Rally Against Budget Cuts
FACE ITT--Feminists Against Cuts Especially in Tough Times
California State Building, 455 Golden Gate Ave., San Francisco
Rally with community members and organizations to protest the state cuts to essential social services. Governor Schwarzenegger is trying to impose $500 million in cuts which will affect women and children the hardest. Let's stand together to fight for real solutions to California's budget crisis.
Demands:
Redirect war funding and prisons into health, public education, domestic violence shelters and HIV/AIDS services!
NO to bailouts--protect working people and the poor, not corporate CEO's!
NO to layoffs and furloughs! No to home foreclosures!
NO to rightwing violence--Defend immigrant rights and women's right to reproductive health care!
Tax the rich and corporations, cut senior management and legislators' salaries to increase revenue for social services!
We want government funded quality, low-cost healthcare and childcare, quality education and living wage jobs!
The rally will feature local activists and social service providers and an open mic. Come share your stories of how the budget cuts are impacting you and ideas on how to fix the economic crisis. All are welcome!
Sponsored by Radical Women
For more information or to get involved, please call 415-864-1278 or email baradicalwomen@earthlink.net.
www.radicalwomen.org
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The Human Face of Death Row
Join us October 2nd at 7pm for the opening reception for an exhibition of paintings from three men - Kevin Cooper, James Anderson and Eddie Vargas. Two of them are condemned - on death row; the third has a life sentence - the other death penalty.
These three men use art to express themselves. We hope you will see their work, hear their stories, and take away an understanding of their humanity from viewing it.
PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY
ROCK PAPER SCISSORS GALLERY
TELEGRAPH & 23RD ST, OAKLAND
October 1 - October 31, 2009
OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2ND - 7 TO 9 PM
JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16TH - 7 TO 9 PM - a memorial movie of Oscar Grant, with Uncle Cephus Bobby Johnson, other members of Oscar's family and Jack Bryson. Come for update: Meserlhe's trial starts October 13th, unless continued again.
STAN TOOKIE WILLIAMS LEGACY NETWORK: SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17TH - 4 TO 6 PM - with Barbara Becnel and Stan Tookie Williams' books for children.
LIVE FROM DEATH ROW: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23RD - 7 TO 9 PM - with Kevin Cooper, an innocent man on San Quentin's death row calling (at 7:30 sharp). Q&A with Kevin Cooper and members of the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee.
PLEASE JOIN US
FOR MORE INFO: CALIFORNIA@NODEATHPENALTY.ORG
510-589-6820
2278 Telegraph Ave., Ca 94612(click here for a map)http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=Oakland&state=CA&address=2278+Telegraph
Presented by the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, a grassroots organization dedicated to the abolition of capital punishment in the United States.
website: www.nodeathpenalty.org
Also by Art for a Democratic Society, an Oakland based art and activism group specializing in participatory grassroots interventionist art.
website: www.a4ds.org email: a4ds@earthlink.net
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EYES WIDE OPEN IN D.C. - SPONSORED BY MFSO
On the weekend of October 3rd and 4th in Washington D.C., Military Families Speak Out and American Friends Service Committee will undertake the first Eyes Wide Open Exhibit showing the Cost of War in Afghanistan.
Over 830 pairs of combat boots representing the fallen troops in Afghanistan and 100 shoes, a fraction of those civilians killed during 8 years of war and occupation will be displayed. The Exhibit will be located on the SE Ellipse, or "President's Park", as they refer to it in the National Parks Service.
See what you can do to help!
http://www.afghanistan8yearsofwar.com/
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On the 8th Anniversary of the War on Afghanistan
U.S. -- NATO OUT!
BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
End colonial occupation in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Haiti...
Healthcare, jobs, housing, education for all--Not War!
San Francisco Protest:
Wednesday, October 7, 5:00 p.m.
New Federal Building
7th and Mission Streets, Near Civic Center BART
Initiated by the ANSWER Coalition--Act Now to Stop War and End Racism
Volunteers needed: 415-821-6545
answer@answersf.org
ANSWERcoalition.org
ANSWERsf.org
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NATIONAL MARCH FOR EQUALITY
WASHINGTON, D.C. OCTOBER 10-11, 2009
Sign up here and spread the word:
http://www.nationalequalitymarch.com/
On October 10-11, 2009, we will gather in Washington DC from all across
America to let our elected leaders know that *now is the time for full equal
rights for LGBT people.* We will gather. We will march. And we will leave
energized and empowered to do the work that needs to be done in every
community across the nation.
This site will be updated as more information is available. We will organize
grassroots, from the bottom-up, and details will be shared on this website.
Our single demand:
Equal protection in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states.
Our philosophy:
As members of every race, class, faith, and community, we see the struggle
for LGBT equality as part of a larger movement for peace and social justice.
Our strategy:
Decentralized organizing for this march in every one of the 435
Congressional districts will build a network to continue organizing beyond
October.
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Please join us for a very exciting day with
President Barack Obama
We have just confirmed that the President will be visiting San Francisco for two events in support of Organizing for America and the Democratic National Committee.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2009
Reception
Reception and Dinner
Westin St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco
Space will be limited for each event. Leadership opportunities will be available for those interested. Please let us know as soon as possible if you are available and interested in attending and/or taking a leadership role in either of the events. More detailed information to follow shortly.
We look forward to welcoming President Obama back to San Francisco!
Please contact Wade Randlett atwade@randlett.com or (415) 692-3556.
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SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17 SAN FRANCISCO MARCH AND RALLY AGAINST THE WARS
U.S. Troops Out Now! Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan!
Assemble 11:00 A.M. U.N. Plaza, SF (Market between 7th and 8th Streets)
March begins at 12:00 Noon
Rally begins at 1:00 P.M. back at U.N. Plaza
Commemorating the eighth anniversary of the war on Afghanistan and the 40th anniversary of the massive October 17, 1969 Vietnam Moratorium.
Sponsor: October 17 Antiwar Coalition
510-268-9429 or 415-794-7354
Money for Human Needs Not War!
Immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops, military personnel, bases, contractors, and mercenaries from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Colombia.
End U.S. support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine! End the Seige of Gaza!
U.S. Hands Off Iran and North Korea!
Self-determination for All Oppressed Nations and Peoples!
End War Crimes Including Torture and Prosecute the War Criminals!
See historical images of the Vietnam Moratorium at:
http://images.google.com/images?q=vietnam+moratorium&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=lGaISs7pMIP-sQOr2OznAg&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4
Image of San Francisco Vietnam Moratorium, Golden Gate Park, October 17, 1969 (I was there...bw):
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.rchrd.com/photo/images/pb2-12-15.jpg&imgrefurl=http://rchrd.com/photo/archives/1969/&usg=__FeHN5CAwDXv-ewwCt2Hfni6ZUn8=&h=567&w=850&sz=143&hl=en&start=3&um=1&tbnid=EJH6Kzj6YI6zzM:&tbnh=97&tbnw=145&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dvietnam%2Bmoratorium%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DX%26um%3D1
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Please forward widely. Contact us if you or your organization would like to endorse this call.
CALL FOR OCTOBER 22 DEMONSTRATION IN OAKLAND, CA:
NATIONAL DAY OF PROTEST TO STOP POLICE BRUTALITY, REPRESSION AND THE CRIMINALIZATION OF A GENERATION
Oscar Grant. Brownie Polk. Parnell Smith. And dozens more Oakland alone. Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo in New York City. Adolph Grimes in New Orleans. Robbie Tolan in Houston. Julian Alexander in Anaheim. Jonathan Pinkerton in Chicago. And thousands more nationwide.
All shot down, murdered by law enforcement, their lives stolen, victims of a nationwide epidemic of police brutality and murder.
The racist arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates this summer in Cambridge, Massachusetts - right in his own home - showed that any Black man or woman, no matter their stature, no matter their education, no matter their accomplishments can be targeted for brutality - even murder - at any moment.
Meanwhile, a whole generation of youth is treated as guilty until proved innocent, and hundreds of thousands are criminalized, and locked away in U.S. prisons with no hope for the future. And immigrants are subject to brutal raids, with families cruelly split up in an instant.
We refuse to suffer these outrages in silence. We need to put a stop to this and drag the truth about the nationwide epidemic of police violence and repression into the light of day for all so see. We say no more! Enough is Enough!
Oct 22nd 2009 is the 14th annual national day of protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of Generation---bringing together those under the gun and those not under the gun as a powerful voice to expose the epidemic of police brutality. On that day in cities across the country many different people will take to the streets against police brutality and murder, against the criminalization of youth, and against the targeting of immigrants.
We call for a powerful demonstration in Oakland on October 22 demanding:
* Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation!
* October 22....No To Police Brutality
* No to ICE raids and round-ups of immigrants!
* Enough Is Enough! No More Stolen Lives!
* Justice for Oscar Grant and all victims of police murder!
* Wear Black, Fight Back
Contact the National Office of October 22nd at:
Info@october22.org or 1-888-NOBRUTALITY
October 22nd Coalition
P.O. Box 2627
New York, N.Y. 10009
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B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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URGENT ALERT!
Call-In To Save San Francisco's Only State Park Wilderness Area From
Toxic Condominium Development!
Within the next two weeks, State Senator Mark Leno will seek to pass a
bill allowing environmentally criminal Lennar Corporation to build high
priced condos on the wildlife habitat and parkland in San Francisco's
Candlestick Point State Recreation Area!
San Francisco Supervisors Avalos, Daly, Mirkarimi, Mar and Campos have
sponsored a local resolution to tell the State legislature not to wreck
our State parkland for real estate developer profits.
This measure needs the crucial sixth vote of Board of Supervisors
President David Chiu to win, before Leno's bill (SB 792) goes for its
own final vote.
**WHAT YOU CAN DO**
Call Supervisor David Chiu at 415-554-7450 with the comment:
"Please bring the Avalos/Daly resolution opposing SB 792 to a full Board
vote by September 15th and vote YES! Don't give away one inch of
California's only urban state park!"
If you call during the weekend or evening, or get a recording, just
leave your comment as voice mail.
For more on the State Park land grab see
http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/privatizing-california-senate-bill-792/
For more on Lennar's history of corporate abuses see page 3 of Our
City's Fall 2007 Update at http://our-city.org/Update-Oct07.pdf
###
This alert sent by:
Our City
1028-A Howard St.
San Francisco, CA 94103
415-756-8844
For more information about Our City campaigns go to:
http://www.our-city.org
info@our-city.org
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HELP VFP PUT THIS BOOK IN YOUR HIGH SCHOOL OR PUBLIC LIBRARY
For a donation of only $18.95, we can put a copy of the book "10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military" into a public or high school library of your choice. [Reason number 1: You may be killed]
A letter and bookplate will let readers know that your donation helped make this possible.
Putting a book in either a public or school library ensures that students, parents, and members of the community will have this valuable information when they need it.
Don't have a library you would like us to put it in? We'll find one for you!
https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/826/t/9311/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=4906
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Take Action: Stop Rite Aid's abuses: Pass the Employee Free Choice Act!
For years Rite Aid workers have faced unfair firings, campaigns of misinformation, and intimidation for trying to form a union. But Rite Aid would never have been able to get away with any of this if Congress had passed the Employee Free Choice Act.
You can help us fight mounting anti-union opposition to the bill that would have protected Rite Aid's workers. Tell Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act today!
http://action.americanrightsatwork.org/campaign/riteaidefca2/8gg63dd407ejd5wi?
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This is a must-see video about the life of Oscar Grant, a young man who loved his family and was loved by his family. It's important to watch to understand the tremendous loss felt by his whole family as a result of his cold-blooded murder by BART police officers--Johannes Mehserle being the shooter while the others held Oscar down and handcuffed him to aid Mehserle in the murder of Oscar Grant January 1, 2009.
The family wants to share this video here with you who support justice for Oscar Grant.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/07/21/18611878.php
WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT!
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Urgent: Ahmad Sa'adat transferred to isolation in Ramon prison!
http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org/
Imprisoned Palestinian national leader Ahmad Sa'adat, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was transferred on August 11, 2009 to Ramon prison in the Naqab desert from Asqelan prison, where he had been held for a number of months. He remains in isolation; prior to his transfer from Asqelan, he had been held since August 1 in a tiny isolation cell of 140 cm x 240 cm after being penalized for communicating with another prisoner in the isolation unit.
Attorney Buthaina Duqmaq, president of the Mandela Association for prisoners' and detainees' rights, reported that this transfer is yet another continuation of the policy of repression and isolation directed at Sa'adat by the Israeli prison administration, aimed at undermining his steadfastness and weakening his health and his leadership in the prisoners' movement. Sa'adat has been moved repeatedly from prison to prison and subject to fines, harsh conditions, isolation and solitary confinement, and medical neglect. Further reports have indicated that he is being denied attorney visits upon his transfer to Ramon.
Ahmad Sa'adat undertook a nine-day hunger strike in June in order to protest the increasing use of isolation against Palestinian prisoners and the denial of prisoners' rights, won through long and hard struggle. The isolation unit at Ramon prison is reported to be one of the worst isolation units in terms of conditions and repeated violations of prisoners' rights in the Israeli prison system.
Sa'adat is serving a 30 year sentence in Israeli military prisons. He was sentenced on December 25, 2008 after a long and illegitimate military trial on political charges, which he boycotted. He was kidnapped by force in a military siege on the Palestinian Authority prison in Jericho, where he had been held since 2002 under U.S., British and PA guard.
Sa'adat is suffering from back injuries that require medical assistance and treatment. Instead of receiving the medical care he needs, the Israeli prison officials are refusing him access to specialists and engaging in medical neglect and maltreatment.
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat demands an end to this isolation and calls upon all to protest at local Israeli embassies and consulates (the list is available at: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/ About+the+Ministry/Diplomatic+mission/Web+Sites+of+Israeli+ Missions+Abroad.htm) and to write to the International Committee of the Red Cross and other human rights organizations to exercise their responsibilities and act swiftly to demand that the Israelis ensure that Ahmad Sa'adat and all Palestinian prisoners receive needed medical care and that this punitive isolation be ended. Email the ICRC, whose humanitarian mission includes monitoring the conditions of prisoners, at jerusalem..jer@icrc.org, and inform them about the urgent situation of Ahmad Sa'adat!
Ahmad Sa'adat has been repeatedly moved in an attempt to punish him for his steadfastness and leadership and to undermine his leadership in the prisoners' movement. Of course, these tactics have done nothing of the sort. The Palestinian prisoners are daily on the front lines, confronting Israeli oppression and crimes. Today, it is urgent that we stand with Ahmad Sa'adat and all Palestinian prisoners against these abuses, and for freedom for all Palestinian prisoners and for all of Palestine!
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat
http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org
info@freeahmadsaadat.org
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Troy Anthony Davis is an African American man who has spent the last 18 years on death row for a murder he did not commit. There is no physical evidence tying him to the crime and seven out of nine witnesses have recanted. New evidence and new testimony have been presented to the Georgia courts, but the justice system refuses to consider this evidence, which would prove Troy Davis' innocence once and for all.
Sign the petition and join the NAACP, Amnesty International USA, and other partners in demanding justice for Troy Davis!
http://www.iamtroy.com/
For Now, High Court Punts on Troy Davis, on Death Row for 18 Years
By Ashby Jones
Wall Street Journal Law Blog
June 30, 2009
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/06/30/for-now-high-court-punts-on-troy-davis-on-death-row-for-18-years/
Take action now:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&aid=12361&ICID=A0906A01&tr=y&auid=5030305
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Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
New videos from April 24 Oakland Mumia event
http://abu-jamal-news.com/article?name=jlboak
Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense in the U.S. Our legal effort is the front line of the battle for Mumia's freedom and life. His legal defense needs help. The costs are substantial for our litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court and at the state level. To help, please make your checks payable to the National Lawyers Guild Foundation (indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). All donations are tax deductible under the Internal Revenue Code, section 501(c)(3), and should be mailed to:
It is outrageous and a violation of human rights that Mumia remains in prison and on death row. His life hangs in the balance. My career has been marked by successfully representing people facing death in murder cases. I will not rest until we win Mumia's case. Justice requires no less.
With best wishes,
Robert R. Bryan
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT!
FLASHPOINTS Interview with Innocent San Quentin Death Row Inmate
Kevin Cooper -- Aired Monday, May 18,2009
http://www.flashpoints.net/#GOOGLE_SEARCH_ENGINE
To learn more about Kevin Cooper go to:
savekevincooper.org
LINKS
San Francisco Chronicle article on the recent ruling:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/13/BAM517J8T3.DTL
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and dissent:
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2009/05/11/05-99004o.pdf
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COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
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C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Obama to Use Current Law to Support Detentions
By PETER BAKER
September 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/us/politics/24detain.html?ref=us
2) Letter From America
A Detainee Freed, but Not Released
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
September 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/us/24iht-letter.html?ref=us
4) Pittsburgh Is Calm After Day of Raucous Protests
By IAN URBINA
September 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/26/world/26pittsburgh.html?hp
5) California University Cuts Protested
By MALIA WOLLAN
September 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/education/25calif.html?ref=us
6) Report Cites Lack of Precautions in 2008 Sugar Plant Fire
By SHAILA DEWAN
September 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/us/25sugar.html?ref=us
7) South African Children Push for Better Schools
By CELIA W. DUGGER
September 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/world/africa/25safrica.html?ref=education
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1) Obama to Use Current Law to Support Detentions
By PETER BAKER
September 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/us/politics/24detain.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration has decided not to seek new legislation from Congress authorizing the indefinite detention of about 50 terrorism suspects being held without charges at at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, officials said Wednesday.
Instead, the administration will continue to hold the detainees without bringing them to trial based on the power it says it has under the Congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, authorizing the president to use force against forces of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
In concluding that it does not need specific permission from Congress to hold detainees without charges, the Obama administration is adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies.
But President Obama's advisers are not embracing the more disputed Bush contention that the president has inherent power under the Constitution to detain terrorism suspects indefinitely regardless of Congress.
The Justice Department said in a statement Wednesday night that "the administration would rely on authority already provided by Congress" under the use of force resolution. "The administration is not currently seeking additional authorization," the statement said.
The department pointed out that courts would continue to review the cases of those held without charges through habeas corpus hearings. The Washington Post first reported the decision.
The legal interpretation applies to detainees whom the government concludes should be held because they are a continuing danger to national security but who cannot be brought to trial for various reasons, like evidence tainted by harsh interrogations. Although it has not determined definitively how many detainees that applies to, officials said it would probably be about 50 of the more than 200 men still held at Guantánamo. The government plans to bring the others to trial or send them to other countries.
Officials said the decision applies only to those already held at Guantánamo. They said it remained an open question whether the administration would seek legislation or establish a new system for indefinite detention of suspected terrorists captured in the future.
Justice Department officials informed representatives of human rights and civil liberties groups about the decision not to seek the new legislation for the current detainees at a meeting last week. Officials said Wednesday that the position was in keeping with the evolving arguments being made by the administration in court over recent months.
"The position conveyed by the Justice Department in the meeting last week broke no new ground and was entirely consistent with information previously provided by the Justice Department to the Senate Armed Services Committee," the department's statement said.
Still, the position surprised some critics who had expected after a speech by Mr. Obama in May that he would seek legislation to put the system of indefinite detention on firmer political and legal ground. In that speech at the National Archives, Mr. Obama said that he was considering continuing indefinite detention in some limited cases but that he would not act unilaterally.
"We must recognize that these detention policies cannot be unbounded," he said at the time. "They can't be based simply on what I or the executive branch decide alone."
He said he would "work with Congress to develop an appropriate legal regime so that our efforts are consistent with our values and our Constitution."
Officials said Wednesday that working with Congress did not mean the president would seek legislation, only that he would consult lawmakers.
Given the opposition in Congress to Mr. Obama's plan to close Guantánamo, especially if it means transferring detainees to prisons on American soil, the prospect of writing legislation that would pass both houses appears daunting at best.
Sarah E. Mendelson, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who led a study about closing Guantánamo, said forgoing legislation was "overall a good step" because it prevented Congress from making things worse. "We don't know if it closes the door definitively on efforts to institutionalize detention without charge," she added, "since the White House might seek to do this by itself."
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2) Letter From America
A Detainee Freed, but Not Released
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
September 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/us/24iht-letter.html?ref=us
NEW YORK - Anybody who thinks it's going to be easy for the Obama administration to meet its goal of closing the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention center by Jan. 22 needs to take a look at the case of Saber Lahmar, who has been imprisoned there since January 2002.
Mr. Lahmar is an Algerian who in 2001 was living and working as a permanent resident of Bosnia.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, he was suspected by the U.S. authorities of involvement in a plot to attack the American Embassy in Sarajevo, which led to his arrest by the Bosnian police, his transfer to the U.S. authorities and his incarceration, along with five other suspects from Bosnia, at Guantánamo.
In November 2008, Mr. Lahmar became the first Guantánamo detainee to successfully challenge his detention, bringing a habeas corpus petition to federal court in Washington.
According to his lawyer, Robert Kirsch, the U.S. government abandoned its claim that there ever was a plot to attack the embassy in Sarajevo, though it maintained that Mr. Lahmar and the other Bosnians were planning to travel to Afghanistan to fight against U.S. forces there.
But Judge Richard Leon, a Bush appointee and no crusader against Guantánamo, ruled that there was no evidence to support the government's claim, and he ordered the United States to use pursue all efforts to get Mr. Lahmar released from custody.
But despite that ruling, nearly a year after his detention was found to be unjustified, Mr. Lahmar is right where he has been for almost eight years: locked up in Guantánamo. He has not seen his wife for that entire time, nor has he ever seen the child that she gave birth to not long after his arrest.
"Relatively speaking," Mr. Kirsch, his lawyer, said, "his conditions are better than those he had before the court decision, but he's still suffering horribly emotionally and psychologically."
Ever since Judge Leon's decision, Mr. Lahmar's detention has been technically illegal, and one way to deal with it would be to allow him to settle in the United States. But Congress has forbidden any Guantánamo detainees from being settled in the United States.
Moreover, Mr. Lahmar himself, Mr. Kirsch said, isn't eager to settle in the country that incarcerated him for so long.
Instead, the matter has been turned over to the State Department, specifically to Daniel Fried, the special envoy whose job is to facilitate the closing of Guantánamo by persuading other countries to take the detainees who have been ordered released by the courts or determined to pose no danger. Mr. Fried has had some modest success lately - but not in the case of Mr. Lahmar or of a majority of the others ordered released by the courts.
In all, since the Supreme Court decision last year, some 37 habeas petitions have been heard. Thirty have been decided in favor of the detainees, seven against them. Of the 30 ordered released, 20 are still in custody.
Lawyers involved in the detainees' cases say that about 226 men remained locked up in Guantánamo in all, of whom 80 have been approved for resettlement while about 40 have been referred for prosecution.
But what sort of prosecution - before civilian or military courts? This basic question has still not been decided, despite the Obama administration's early and outspoken opposition to the Guantánamo way of doing things.
President Barack Obama suspended ongoing military tribunals when he came into office, but since then his administration has postponed a decision on whether to proceed with some military tribunals or to shift those trials to the civilian courts.
According to lawyers involved in some of these cases, the administration's dilemma is this: If it proceeds with military tribunals, it keeps in place the system of the previous administration, which, during the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama called "an enormous failure."
If it moves to civilian trials, it risks having crucial evidence thrown out because it was obtained by waterboarding and other means of "enhanced interrogation."
And so, can Guantánamo be emptied and closed in the next four months?
"I think it's likely that most of the men held prisoner there will be gone by then," Mr. Kirsch said. "It will take tremendous diplomatic effort, but the level of creativity that comes from a deadline should not be underestimated."
Nearly half of the detainees who qualify for release are Yemenis. If Mr. Fried can strike a deal with either Yemen or Saudi Arabia to take them, a large part of the problem could be eliminated at a single stroke.
But not all are Yemenis. Take, for example, the 22 Uighurs, members of the Muslim minority of Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in western China. The men were at one time imprisoned in Guantánamo, and all have since been determined by the courts to pose no danger to the United States.
Nine of them have gone to Albania and Bermuda, and four more have agreed to go to the tiny Pacific island nation of Palau - but the nine others are reluctant to go there, said the lawyer for two of the Uighurs, Susan Baker Manning.
"What happens to those who don't accept the offer to go to Palau - and there could be many reasons for not accepting it - I don't know," Ms. Manning said. "I'd only be guessing at this point."
And then what of those who will be prosecuted? And what of those deemed too dangerous to be released but too difficult to prosecute - a category that isn't much publicly acknowledged, but that lawyers who are involved in the Guantánamo cases believe to exist?
One worry of human rights lawyers is that their clients could be taken away from a closed-down Guantánamo and put someplace else outside the jurisdiction of the law.
"The last thing we want to see is the opening of a similar facility elsewhere in the world, " Jameel Jaffer, director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Security Project, said, "or even in the United States."
E-MAIL pagetwo@iht.com Tomorrow Akash Kapur on the public "option" in India.
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3) Thousands protest fees, cuts at UC campuses
Nanette Asimov, Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writers
Friday, September 25, 2009
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/25/MNVU19SBEV.DTL
Thousands of students, professors and workers at University of California campuses across the state poured out of classrooms Thursday to rally against deep cuts to public education and aim their frustration squarely at UC leaders' handling of its budget crisis.
Even students outside of UC - at San Francisco State University and at City College of San Francisco - held demonstrations in support of the UC walkout.
About 5,000 people showed up at noon at UC Berkeley's Sproul Plaza in a massive gathering - the largest of the 10 campuses - that began as a teach-in about the budget crisis and morphed into a vast student march through downtown Berkeley that blocked traffic for nearly two hours.
"Education should be free! No cuts, no fees!" chanted the protesters, marching shoulder to shoulder and carrying signs reading, "Stop the cuts - they hurt!"
The systemwide walkout reflected frustration and anger as UC lays off hundreds of workers, imposes unpaid employee furloughs and reduces courses to close a budget gap of more than $750 million - the result of dramatically reduced funding from the cash-poor state and higher operating costs.
5 percent tuition hike
The regents are also expected to raise next year's tuition to $10,302, a 45 percent increase over last year's tuition, which many students say will put a UC education out of their reach.
UC leaders said they shared the protesters' frustration over deep cuts to public education, but that the anger should be focused on state government.
"While we understand there's some anger and angst spread across our campuses, our hope is that it will be directed more precisely toward Sacramento, where the heart of the problem lies," said UC's interim provost, Larry Pitts.
Lawmakers, in turn, turned it back on UC.
"The state is facing an unprecedented fiscal crisis," said Julia Brownley, a Santa Monica Democrat who chairs the Assembly Education Committee. "The students are protesting how the university cut its budget. The Legislature left that up to the university."
Screaming interest group
Asked about his cuts to education during a Commonwealth Club appearance in San Francisco, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dismissed the protesters as a screaming interest group.
"They're all screaming," he said. "Everyone has to tighten their belts."
Key among the protesters' concerns is that the cuts will damage UC's role as an economic engine in California that produces top graduates doing the most innovative work in their fields.
Cal officials and protesters said the rally at UC Berkeley was the largest gathering in recent memory, except the night of the Obama inauguration, and was the largest turnout among all UC campuses.
"This is extraordinary," said Shannon Steen, an American studies professor with a faculty group called Save the University. "This so far exceeds anything we thought would happen."
Protests systemwide
At other UC campuses - many of which began fall semester Thursday - crowds estimated at several hundred to 1,000 gathered on quads and at flagpoles to vent their anger, often under a scorching sun.
"It's exciting," said Keith Danner, a lecturer in English who helped organize the rally at UC Irvine. "To have 1,000 people standing for an hour in 95-degree heat just shows the depth of feeling against these devastating cuts."
Lacking tenure, Danner had to be careful about skipping class. So, like many untenured lecturers, he turned the rally into a lesson.
"I did a writing lesson about 'purpose and audience' and had them interview people at the rally," Danner said.
UC has about 19,400 faculty members, but only about 9,000 have tenure, said spokesman Pete King.
Most classes met as scheduled, campus administrators said, though some were held in professors' living rooms and even on picket lines.
Joining the walkout were thousands of nonfaculty employees from the University Professional and Technical Employees union who picketed to highlight a labor dispute with UC.
Chronicle staff writer Kelly Zito contributed to this report. E-mail the writers at nasimov@sfchronicle.com and jtucker@sfchronicle.com.
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4) Pittsburgh Is Calm After Day of Raucous Protests
By IAN URBINA
September 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/26/world/26pittsburgh.html?hp
PITTSBURGH - A calm descended over downtown here Friday morning, a day after raucous confrontations between the police and protesters rallying against the Group of 20 meeting that resulted in 66 arrests, at least 5 people requiring medical attention, and about 19 businesses with broken windows or other damage.
Protest organizers had encouraged civil disobedience Friday morning but little occurred.
The largest permitted rally, organized by the Thomas Merton Center, was scheduled to move to downtown from Forbes Avenue around noon local time.
It was unclear if civil disobedience would occur elsewhere in the city at the same time.
"Up to now there was so much fear - people were told that it would be dangerous and violent," said Peter Shell, president of the center, which advocates change through peaceful struggle.
"We have a permit," he added. "We confront the policies of the G-20, not the police. We're a different kind of protest."
In the city's Oakland neighborhood on Friday morning, where the police pursued protesters the night before, demonstrators gathered again to join the larger permitted march. Protesters with Iraq Veterans Against the War, wearing fatigues, stood near the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on 5th Avenue. Tibetans chiming cymbals and waving signs - like one that read "G20 Let's Talk Tibet" - denounced China in chants. A group called Students for Justice in Palestine assembled on Forbes Avenue and called for an end to the Israeli occupation.
As the groups gathered, state troopers wearing black helmets looked on, but the atmosphere was far less tense than the night before, when hundreds of police officers carrying long batons fired smoke canisters that trailed in high arcs before landing among buildings at the University of Pittsburgh, including the Gothic-style tower called the Cathedral of Learning.
On Thursday, the city had locked down its business district, known as the Golden Triangle, in preparation for possible clashes. Riot fences lined the sidewalks. Police helicopters, gunboats and Humvees darted to and fro. City officials announced that they had up to 1,000 jail cells ready after county officials freed up additional space last week by releasing 300 people who had been arrested on minor probation violations.
Many local residents stayed away from downtown Thursday, fearing clashes.
But the intermittent conflicts that did occur were well outside the security perimeter surrounding the G-20 meetings.
In the afternoon, protesters who tried to march toward the convention center where the gathering was being held encountered roaming squads of police officers carrying plastic shields and batons. The police fired a sound cannon that emitted shrill beeps, causing demonstrators to cover their ears and back up; then the police threw tear gas canisters that released clouds of white smoke and stun grenades that exploded with sharp flashes of light.
City officials said they believed it was the first time the sound cannon had been used for crowd control. "Other law enforcement agencies will be watching to see how it was used," said Nate Harper, the Pittsburgh police chief. "It served its purpose well."
The protesters, who did not have a permit to march, rolled a large blue metal trash container down 37th Street. It stopped short of police vehicles and in front of a women's clothing and shoe boutique called Pavement.
"It was scary," said Alissa Martin, the shop's owner. "You feel like you're living in a war zone."
Much of the afternoon involved a cat-and-mouse game in which protesters, many in all black, evaded large forces of heavily armed police officers in the streets near Liberty Avenue.
The police repeatedly announced over loud speakers that the crowd had assembled unlawfully.
"You must leave the immediate vicinity," the voice over the loud speaker said, adding that if the protesters did not, they would be subject to arrest and would face "the use of riot control agents" and "less lethal munitions," which police later said were soft bean bags fired at protesters. At that point, the police fired tear gas and stun grenades.
Trevor Griffith, 21, was part of the march after driving 16 hours from Pensacola, Fla., with three fellow students from the University of West Florida.
"The fact that 20 or so individuals right now are determining economic trade policies for four to five billion people just isn't right," Mr. Griffith said. "That's why we're here."
The turbulence downtown was in sharp contrast to smaller and less confrontational rallies and parades earlier in the day.
Melanie White, 53, from Fremont, Ohio, said she was marching to bring wider attention to the conflict between the authorities and religious leaders in Myanmar. On Thursday, she joined a rally of about 100 people led by Burmese monks in saffron robes and chanting. The group went from the north side of the city over the Sixth Street Bridge, ending up in Point State Park in downtown Pittsburgh.
"It was very important to be there," Ms. White said, adding that her group was commemorating the second anniversary of the so-called saffron revolution in Myanmar.
"I think it is important to give voice to the Burmese problem because they are not getting their own voice at the G-20," Ms. White said.
Just blocks away, a row of vans filled with police officers escorted several cars carrying meeting attendees past a police barrier to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, where the meeting officially began Thursday evening with a welcoming ceremony.
Sean D. Hamill and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.
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5) California University Cuts Protested
By MALIA WOLLAN
September 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/education/25calif.html?ref=us
BERKELEY, Calif.- Thousands of students, faculty members and employees at the 10 University of California campuses protested budget cuts, unpaid faculty furloughs and tuition increases on Thursday.
Officials at the University of California, Berkeley, estimated that several thousand protesters were in Sproul Plaza chanting and waving signs. Most academic departments on campus reported that some classes had been canceled because faculty members and students walked out. Other campuses reported smaller turnouts at rallies and marches.
"Everyone agrees there is a budget crisis and that the university must respond," said Joshua Clover, an associate professor of English at U.C. Davis who was a co-author of a petition calling for the faculty walkout on Thursday. The problem, Mr. Clover said, is that the administration's handling of the budget cuts "disproportionately harms those who can least afford it both among the workers and the students."
The online walkout petition was signed by 1,221 of the 19,000 faculty members statewide. A union representing more than 11,000 university professional and technical staff members supported the protest and called a one-day strike.
The Legislature approved a reduction of $637.1 million, about 20 percent of the university's 2009-2010 fiscal year financing, as part of the budget agreement reached in August. The university's budget now stands at $2.6 billion. Friction has developed between the administration and some faculty and staff members and students over how and where to cut.
Among the more contentious items are a proposed 32 percent increase in student tuition by fall 2010, and decisions made by the university president, Mark Yudof, over how to handle mandatory faculty furlough days, which will reduce pay by 4 to 10 percent. Average yearly tuition and fees for undergraduates this academic year are $8,720.
"I chose Berkeley over all the other universities because it offered me a very good education at a price my family could afford," said Brandon Pham, 17, a freshman political science major who skipped the day's classes in protest. Mr. Pham held a sign that read: "We make the university. They make the crisis."
Steve Montiel, a spokesman for the University of California's office of the president, said, "We respect people expressing themselves, but we hope they realize that the true source of their frustration is in Sacramento at the state capital."
What started as a planned faculty walkout to address specific furlough issues ballooned into a 10-campus protest of the larger implications of the reduction of money for public higher education in the state.
"We are operating on the assumption that the state's disinvestment will continue," said Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau of Berkeley, adding that the university would now have to rely on higher fees, private foundation donations and better investments. The pain of budget cuts will be felt broadly, he said, and "paying for public education is going to be increasingly difficult for middle-class families."
Catherine Cole, a professor in the theater department, who canceled her classes on Thursday to attend the rally, said: "We've hit a tipping point. What is emerging here is people realizing it doesn't have to be this way."
Still, many students at Berkeley did not participate in the protest and walked about campus as they would on any other Thursday. "I haven't been near Sproul Plaza today," said Ray Liang, 18. "I have classes to go to and homework to do."
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6) Report Cites Lack of Precautions in 2008 Sugar Plant Fire
By SHAILA DEWAN
September 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/us/25sugar.html?ref=us
ATLANTA - A huge fire last year at a sugar refinery near Savannah, Ga., that killed 14 workers and injured 36 more was "entirely preventable," a federal official said Thursday as the results of an investigation into the fire's causes were released.
The owner of the plant, the Imperial Sugar Company, and the plant's managers knew for decades about the hazards of sugar dust but failed to take the necessary precautions, according to the report, issued by the Chemical Safety Board, which investigates industrial chemical accidents.
The report blamed inadequate equipment design, poor maintenance and ineffective housekeeping for the explosion and fire in February 2008, and said that Imperial Sugar and the sugar industry as a whole were aware of the dangers of dust explosions at least as early as 1925.
In a written statement, John C. Sheptor, the president and chief executive of Imperial Sugar, said the company had "collaborated" with the safety board on the report and was "working diligently" to put in place the report's safety recommendations.
The report also cited internal memorandums at the plant, in Port Wentworth, Ga., dating from 1967, before it was owned by Imperial Sugar, showing that managers were concerned about the possibility that accumulations of sugar dust could ignite a chain of explosions that would destroy "large sections of the plant."
The initial explosion most likely occurred inside a sugar conveyor situated beneath two silos, the report said.
The conveyor had recently been enclosed, creating "a confined, unventilated space where sugar dust could accumulate to an explosive concentration," the safety board said.
That explosion quickly spread, igniting sugar dust and spilled sugar in adjacent areas.
Imperial Sugar had not conducted evacuation drills and the explosion and fires disabled most emergency lighting, trapping workers in a dark maze of corridors, the report said.
The Chemical Safety Board does not issue citations or levy fines, but in July 2008, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration found violations at the Port Wentworth plant and at an Imperial Sugar plant in Gramercy, La., where an inspection five weeks after the Georgia fire found sugar dust four feet thick in some areas.
The agency proposed fines of $8.7 million, the third-largest in the agency's history. Imperial Sugar is contesting the fine.
Brent J. Savage, a lawyer in Savannah who is representing some of the victims or family members of victims in lawsuits against the plant, said the report reinforced their case and cast new suspicion on insurers and other third-party inspectors, who the report said failed to make note of accumulations of sugar dust at the plant.
The first of his clients whose case is going to trial is Paul Seckinger, a mechanic who was badly burned and who, Mr. Savage said, has incurred more than $8 million in medical bills.
"They did an unbelievably in-depth study and they had access to things that a typical plaintiff's lawyer would not," Mr. Savage said of the safety board.
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7) South African Children Push for Better Schools
By CELIA W. DUGGER
September 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/world/africa/25safrica.html?ref=education
CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Thousands of children marched to City Hall this week in sensible black shoes, a stream of boys and girls from township schools across this seaside city that extended for blocks, passing in a blur of pleated skirts, blazers and rep ties. Their polite demand: Give us libraries and librarians.
"We want more information and knowledge," said a ninth grader, Abongile Ndesi.
In the 15 years since white supremacist rule ended in South Africa, the governing party, the African National Congress, has put in place numerous policies to transform schools into engines of opportunity. But many of its leaders, including President Jacob Zuma, now acknowledge that those efforts have too often failed.
The new protest movement, with its practical goals, youthful organizers and idealistic moniker, Equal Education, is a quintessentially South African answer to a failing education system, one that self-consciously acknowledged its debt to the past in the march to City Hall.
In 1976, when police officers shot a 13-year-old named Hector Pieterson in Soweto, a children's uprising against apartheid emerged and spread across the country to Cape Town, where students from a mixed-race high school, Salt River, marched in solidarity with black schoolchildren.
Zackie Achmat, South Africa's wiliest campaigner for AIDS treatment, was himself a 14-year-old marcher that September day 33 years ago. Mr. Achmat, now graying, was among the protesters following the same route this week, his white straw hat bobbing in a sea of plaids and ginghams.
The idea for a new movement dedicated to educational equity was his, and he helped nurse Equal Education into being, counseling its young leaders to work with teachers and government officials whenever possible. The country's leadership, which has been slow to grapple with the AIDS crisis, understands the urgent need for better education, he said. The new director general of the country's Higher Education Ministry, Mary Metcalfe, has served as head of Equal Education's board.
"In building a citizens' movement, the most important element is giving people the sense of their own power to change things with little victories," Mr. Achmat said.
The job of organizing the group has fallen to a pair of law school graduates from the University of Cape Town. Doron Isaacs, 29, its coordinator, was leader of Habonim South Africa, an organization of young, left-wing Jewish activists with whom Mr. Achmat has worked for years. Mr. Isaacs recruited a classmate, Yoliswa Dwane, 27, who was raised by her seamstress mother and now lives in a shack in the township of Khayelitsha, south of Cape Town, where she is caring for nieces, ages 12 and 17.
Last year, Equal Education gave students in Khayelitsha, home to more than 500,000 unemployed and working-class people, disposable cameras to document problems in their high schools. They returned with shots of leaking roofs, cracked desks and children crowded around a single textbook.
One image - a bank of window panes at Luhlaza high school, all shattered, captured by a student named Zukiswa Vuka - proved the most resonant. Some 500 windows at the school had been broken for years, leaving the students shivering in wintertime classes.
Equal Education's first campaign was to get them replaced. The school agreed to put up about $650, an amount the group said it would match. That left some $900 still needed. Over months, the group met with local and provincial managers, organized a communitywide petition drive, held a rally of hundreds of township students and garnered coverage in local newspapers.
Finally in November, provincial education officials announced that the windows would be fixed and that a sum almost 10 times what the students had requested would be invested in the school.
This year, students successfully agitated for a science teacher at Chris Hani High School when it had none for the seniors.
They also led a drive to get their classmates to come to school on time, with early-morning pickets at school gates - an effort that also showed up late-arriving teachers.
The libraries campaign is the group's first attempt to tackle a national issue. With financial support from Atlantic Philanthropies and the Open Society Institute, among others, it is also hoping to broaden its membership to include teachers and more parents and to graduate to bigger victories.
Mr. Isaacs said Equal Education's members knew that problems far harder to fix than windows or missing libraries awaited and that part of the answer was building alliances with the teachers' union, which is in the governing alliance.
"We know that the teachers' union is one of the most powerful institutions in the country," he said, "and if we style ourselves as its adversary, we'll be dead in the water."
The marchers, stretched out Tuesday along Main Road in the shadow of majestic Table Mountain, were themselves a wealth of stories.
Nkosinathi Dayimani, a senior, was one of the beneficiaries of the new science teacher this year, but not soon enough to prevent his failure on the recent trial run of the national science exam.
Asanda Sparks, a petite ninth grader from Kraaifontein Township, has been hoping for a library in her school since bullies picked her pocket as she walked to the public library to research Nelson Mandela's life.
And Nina Hoffman was among the dozens of white students who joined the march from one of the country's formerly all-white suburban high schools - Westerford - which can afford a well-stocked library because parents pay annual fees of more than $2,200 per child.
"Coming to a march like this, I realize even more how privileged we are and how much I take for granted," she said.
During their two-hour walk to City Hall on a gloriously sunny afternoon, the young people seemed buoyed by the hope of making a difference.
Abongile, the ninth grader from Luhlaza high school, noted appreciatively that she did not have to sit with chattering teeth in class this winter because the broken windows had been fixed.
"I saw that Equal Education can make something impossible possible," she said.
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