Posted 21 hours ago on Nov. 19, 2011, 8:35 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
http://occupywallst.org/article/occupy-oakland-calls-total-west-coast-port-shutdow/
Proposal for a Coordinated West Coast Port Shutdown, Passed With Unanimous Consensus by vote of the Occupy Oakland General Assembly 11/18/2012:
In response to coordinated attacks on the occupations and attacks on workers across the nation:
Occupy Oakland calls for the blockade and disruption of the economic apparatus of the 1% with a coordinated shutdown of ports on the entire West Coast on December 12th. The 1% has disrupted the lives of longshoremen and port truckers and the workers who create their wealth, just as coordinated nationwide police attacks have turned our cities into battlegrounds in an effort to disrupt our Occupy movement.
We call on each West Coast occupation to organize a mass mobilization to shut down its local port. Our eyes are on the continued union-busting and attacks on organized labor, in particular the rupture of Longshoremen jurisdiction in Longview Washington by the EGT. Already, Occupy Los Angeles has passed a resolution to carry out a port action on the Port Of Los Angeles on December 12th, to shut down SSA terminals, which are owned by Goldman Sachs.
Occupy Oakland expands this call to the entire West Coast, and calls for continuing solidarity with the Longshoremen in Longview Washington in their ongoing struggle against the EGT. The EGT is an international grain exporter led by Bunge LTD, a company constituted of 1% bankers whose practices have ruined the lives of the working class all over the world, from Argentina to the West Coast of the US. During the November 2nd General Strike, tens of thousands shutdown the Port Of Oakland as a warning shot to EGT to stop its attacks on Longview. Since the EGT has disregarded this message, and continues to attack the Longshoremen at Longview, we will now shut down ports along the entire West Coast.
Participating occupations are asked to ensure that during the port shutdowns the local arbitrator rules in favor of longshoremen not crossing community picket lines in order to avoid recriminations against them. Should there be any retaliation against any workers as a result of their honoring pickets or supporting our port actions, additional solidarity actions should be prepared. In the event of police repression of any of the mobilizations, shutdown actions may be extended to multiple days.
In Solidarity and Struggle,
Occupy Oakland
-In Oakland: the West Coast Port Shutdown Coordinating Committee will meet on General Assembly days at 5pm before the GA to organize the local shutdown, and to network with other occupations.
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FREE BRADLEY MANNING
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/national-call-in-for-bradley
I received the following reply from the White House November 18, 2011 regarding the Bradley Manning petition I signed:
"Why We Can't Comment on Bradley Manning
"Thank you for signing the petition 'Free PFC Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks whistleblower.' We appreciate your participation in the We the People platform on WhiteHouse.gov.
The We the People Terms of Participation explain that 'the White House may decline to address certain procurement, law enforcement, adjudicatory, or similar matters properly within the jurisdiction of federal departments or agencies, federal courts, or state and local government.' The military justice system is charged with enforcing the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Accordingly, the White House declines to comment on the specific case raised in this petition...
"This email was sent to giobon@comcast.net
Manage Subscriptions for giobon@comcast.net
Sign Up for Updates from the White House
Unsubscribe giobon@comcast.net | Privacy Policy
Please do not reply to this email. Contact the White House
"The White House • 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW • Washington, DC 20500 • 202-456-1111"
That's funny! I guess Obama didn't get this memo. Here's what Obama said about Bradley:
BRADLEY MANNING "BROKE THE LAW" SAYS OBAMA!
"He broke the law!" says Obama about Bradley Manning who has yet to even be charged, let alone, gone to trial and found guilty. How horrendous is it for the President to declare someone guilty before going to trial or being charged with a crime! Justice in the U.S.A.!
Obama on FREE BRADLEY MANNING protest... San Francisco, CA. April 21, 2011-Presidential remarks on interrupt/interaction/performance art happening at fundraiser. Logan Price queries Barack after org. FRESH JUICE PARTY political action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmtUpd4id0&feature=youtu.be
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Suggested slogan for the 2012 elections:
DON'T VOTE FOR THE ONE PERCENT!
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/protesters-and-officers-clash-near-wall-street/?permid=567#comment567
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We Are the 99 Percent
We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.
Brought to you by the people who occupy wall street. Why will YOU occupy?
OccupyWallSt.org
Occupytogether.org
wearethe99percentuk.tumblr.com
http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
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Drop All Charges on the 'Occupy Wall Street' Arrestees!
Stop Police Attacks & Arrests! Support 'Occupy Wall Street'!
SIGN THE ONLINE PETITION AT http://bailoutpeople.org/dropchargesonoccupywallstarrestees.shtml to send email messages to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, NYC City Council, NYPD, the NY Congressional Delegation, Congressional Leaders, the NY Legislature, President Obama, Attorney General Holder, members of the media YOU WANT ALL CHARGES DROPPED ON THE 'OCCUPY WALL STREET ARRESTEES!
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.
C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
D. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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FREE BRADLEY MANNING! SUPPORT GI RESISTANCE!
MAILING / PIZZA PARTY
Wednesday, November 30th ~ 5 pm to 10 pm
55 Santa Clara Ave, Oakland CA
Dear Friend,
We would love your help with sending out our tri-annual newsletter and fund appeal Wednesday evening, November 30th. If you're in the Bay Area, please drop by for the evening, or just a few spare minutes! This is a great way to learn more about our work in support of GI resisters.
Newsletter highlights will include updates on the growing international campaign to free alleged WikiLeaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning, Army objector Daniel Birmingham, solidarity with the Occupy Movement, and much more.
GI Resistance Pizza / Mailing Party Wednesday, November 30th, 5 pm to 10 pm at 55 Santa Clara Ave, Suite 126, Oakland CA 94610 (One block north of 580 at Harrison--behind the Budget Inn). We can also use help earlier in the day Wednesday as well. Call us for more info at 510-488-3559, or courage@riseup.net
Sincerely,
Jeff Paterson
Courage to Resist project director
Bradley Manning Support Network steering committee member
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Art as Organizing
Political Art From the 1930s to Today
A Community Discussion
at the Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics in San Francisco November 30
Art as Organizing
Political Art From the 1930s to Today
Eric Quezada Center for Culture & Politics
518 Valencia Street @ 16th Street, San Francisco
Wednesday, 6:30-9:30,
November 30, 2011
Artists and activists will come together for a discussion on the use of art for political organizing. As the numbers of people living in poverty continues to swell, this evening will explore the past, present and future uses of art for social justice. Art Hazelwood will present images and themes from the new book Hobos to Street People: Artists' Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present.
A community discussion will be kicked off by speakers Western Regional Advocacy Project organizer, Paul Boden, photographer, Francisco Dominguez, Coalition on Homelessness civil rights organizer, Bob Offer-Westort, Roaddawgz Homeless Youth Creative Drop-in Center director, Machiko Saito
The evening includes an exhibition of political art posters, prints, and photographs by local activist artists.
$5 at the door to benefit Center for Political Education - no one turned away for lack of funds. The event is wheelchair accessible and offers childcare during the event.
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November 19 Organizers' Report on December 2 "Stop the Cuts" Day of Action
Two dozen very experienced organizers met on Saturday, November 19, 1pm-3pm at Local 2 offices in San Francisco. I would say another very collaborative & productive meeting.
Holiday schedule for our LAST Coalition meeting will be
Sunday, November 27, Local 2 offices, 1pm-3pm.
1. Assembly at Federal Building -2pm, Friday, December 2. In addition to core group of CARA; Independent Living Resource Center-SF; SinglePayer Now! & Senior Action Network, assignments were made to discuss further participation of ILWU Drill Team (Connie), Veterans (Frank), USLAW & New Priorities (Charlie?). Richard will contact Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE). We will have a IATSE sound truck (Hene) with speakers and entertainment (Pat W. & David) but are still looking for vans or minibus to transport seniors and disabled desiring to participate in the rest of the dayĆ¢€(tm)s activities. Charlie is contacting Brass Liberation to march with us from the Federal Building.
2. At 3pm we begin marching down Market Street to our first 15-minute stop at the Westfield Mall on 5th & Market which is in a labor dispute with SEIU 87 janitors; then to another 15-minute stop at the Wells Fargo on Montgomery & Market; then down Montgomery to Bush & Battery for another 15-minute stop at the Verizon store. Conny will meet with the core groups organizing this segment which are SF Labor Council, Jobs with Justice, CWA and SEIU 87. Additional assignments were made to contact wide variety of student groups (Alan, Don, Charlie), Occupy CAL (Ramon), AFT 2121 (Conny), Causa Justa & Central Legal (Alan) & SF State Teachers & students (Ann).
3. At 5pm approximately, we will arrive at the Hyatt and spend around one hour picketing with Local 2 (exact time yet to be decided by Local 2). We then will gather for the concert/rally around the Teamster Flat-Bed Long Haul truck (Rudy) near the foot of Market Street. Occupy SF activists (Alan, Rudy & Connie) will be among the featured speakers but there will be plenty of musicians and spoken word artists (Pat W). No additional artists are being solicited except Alan is contacting "Angry Retired Teachers", SF Living Wage is looking for talent that particularly appeals to youth and all are encouraged to think of a Major celebrity they personally can contact to spice the program up a bit.
Leaflets: A new version discussed at the meeting will be ready this week in mass quantities. Call Amber at the SF Labor Council 415-440-4809. We will email the leaflet and a photo copy suitable for posting on FaceBook pages which we very strongly urge all to do.
Security: Our leaflets will note that December 2 is a Peaceful & Family-Friendly Event. Looking for 25 volunteers for any section of the day's activities and also some experienced folks to take leadership of a safety team. David is contacting SEIU 1021, Conny is contacting Rudy, IBT856 and Alan & Richard each pledged three volunteers. For now, additional volunteers can reply to Carl at local1781@yahoo.com
Permits, Sound: Being handled by Amber, SF Labor Council.
Speakers: Contact Conny Ford if you have suggestions ope3conny@sbcglobal.net
These are public minutes, distribute as you feel necessary.
Fraternally submitted,
Carl Finamore
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Howard Petrick's "Rambo" - anti-VietNam activist tells his story-Marsh Berkeleyu-Oct 20-Dec 10
Directed by Mark Kenward and developed with David Ford, the show plays on Thursday and Friday at 7:00 pm and Saturday at 8:30 pm from October 20 to December 10, 2011 (press opening November 4, no performance on Thanksgiving Day) at The Cabaret at The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, near Shattuck. The public may visit www.themarsh.org or call 415-282-3055.
The Little Guy Takes on the Pentagon
in Howard Petrick's "Rambo: The Missing Years"
The Hilarious and True Story of the Private Who Protested the Viet Nam War - While Still in the Army!
"Howard's show is proof you can fight bureaucracy and win. How he does so is told with aplomb and a certain sense of mischievousness." - Vancouver Fringe
"The potency of the show...springs from Petrick's first-hand account of his anti-Vietnam activism from within the army...this comes with an intriguing authenticity."- Winnipeg Free Press
"Petrick delivers...For 60 minutes he has you laughing through the fear." - Winnipeg Uptown
The Vancouver Sun calls San Francisco's Howard Petrick, "a guy who really knows how to get up the nose of the war machine." Petrick's Rambo: The Missing Years is an hilarious - and true - account of the misadventures of a Vietnam-era draftee who frustrates the military brass by asserting his right to organize his fellow GIs against the war. Petrick's Rambo - not to be confused in the least with the Sylvester Stallone action figure - plays at The Marsh-Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way in Berkeley.
The story begins as Petrick reports for the draft and refuses to fill out the forms, befuddling the military bureaucracy for the first of many times to come. Yet, during his time of service he maintains an unblemished military record, breaks no rules, and continues to carry out his military duties.
Directed by Mark Kenward and developed with David Ford.
A twenty-year-old anti-war activist in 1966 when he was drafted into the Army, Pvt. Petrick was a model soldier except when the subject of Vietnam came up. At that point, he missed no opportunity to make his opinions known to his fellow GIs and anyone else who would listen. His activities helped ignite an antiwar movement in the barracks and led to a confrontation with the brass. Calls from the Pentagon! Threats of treason! By the time it was all over, Petrick, who never backed down, had become something of a celebrity. He even had a song written about him and was the subject of an article in the New York Times. From the ass-scratching first cook to the frustrated Military Intelligence officer, Petrick brings over twenty characters to life in this autobiographical solo piece.
"If Westmoreland can give a political partisan speech to the Press Club in New York City supporting the war, then I should be able to speak in uniform opposing the war." - Howard Petrick quoted in the Texas Observer in 1967.
It's a comedy that keeps hope alive. Here are more kudos for the show:
"Petrick made headlines as a GI for his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War, and he's turned his experiences into a deftly crafted solo show." - Georgia Straight (Vancouver)
His "aw shucks" attitude had me right there with him every step of the way, rooting for my new hero. Please don't miss this true tale. - Jenny Revue (Winnipeg)
"His ear for dialogue...is superb." - Georgia Straight (Vancouver)
"It's an engaging tale, often funny...Petrick's writing is strong...valuable as a piece of history in a time when for much of the population, Vietnam is just a vague, long-ago event." - Fresno Bee
"This is an important piece of history - from the common man's point of view." - Victoria Fringe
"A must see!" - The Plank (Vancouver)
Howard Petrick has studied solo performance with David Ford, Ann Randolph, James Donlon, Mark Kenward and Leonard Pitt. He has performed at FronteraFest, The Marsh, Words First, City Solo, San Francisco Theater Festival, Solo Sundays, Tell it on Tuesday, the Fresno Rogue Festival and Fringe Festivals in Boulder, Chicago, Winnipeg, Victoria and Vancouver. For more information, visit www.howardpetrick.com
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We just received news that renowned actor/ director Martin Sheen is going to join SOA Watch for the November Vigil at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia (November 18-20, 2011).
http://us.mg6.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?.rand=7vqbmgsn52gtr
November 18-20 Stand up for Dignity, Justice, Solidarity and Self-Determination
Converge at the Gates of Fort Benning, Georgia
Shut Down the School of Assassins
http://soaw.org/
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Youth Together: RALLY & MARCH NOV. 30
STOP CORPORATIONS STEAL OUR FUTURE!
They make billions, pay little or no tax at all, buy and run our government, and get bailed out at our expense.
Date: Wednesday, Nov. 30th
Time: 4pm
Gather at the steps of City Hall in Oakland and march to Chevron Gas Station on Castro Street
Chevron as the largest corporation in California:
Made $18 billion in profits in 2009 and paid no federal tax. In fact, it received $19 million in benefits;
Pays no tax on drilling oil in California;
Enjoys millions from its under-assessed properties under Prop. 13;
Spent nearly $7 million on lobbying this year;
Contributed almost $1 million to California state politicians during 2009-2010 session;
Has $13 billion in cash on hand, etc.
Money for schools and our future!
JOIN KIDS COUNT! CAMPAIGN
For more information please contact us at 510-645-9209 ext.316 or visit www.youthtogether.net -- facebook.com/kidscountca
Please check the attachment for the flier in PDF File.
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Friday, December 2 - Day of Action in SF
To Stop the Cuts!Proposed by the SuperCommittee & Congress
Because the 1% Got Bailed Out & the 99% Got Sold Out
Because a Phony Deficit Crisis Transfers More Wealth to the 1%!
Because We Oppose Cutting Social Benefits already Paid For by the 99%!
Because We Should Tax the 1%!
Because We Should Fund Jobs instead of Wars!
Because We Should Pay for Schools instead of Prisons!
Expand Social Security!
No Cuts to Medicaid!
Medicare for All!
2pm - Occupy the Federal Building (7th & Mission St.-Civic Center Bart/Muni).Assemble at the SF Federal Building where hundreds of us will peacefully deliver our strong message to government representatives of No Cuts to Medicaid; Expand Social Security and Medicare for All while a rally is held outside in the Federal Building Plaza. We will then march to the Financial District.
3:30pm - Occupy Wall Street West- route to be announced soon. We will march to several symbols of financial gluttony before heading to the Occupy SF area at the foot of Market St.
5pm into the night - Celebrate & Defend Occupy SF - We call upon Bay Area labor and community activists to join us for a rally/concert in Justin Herman Plaza that will support Occupy SF and express solidarity with Hotel Workers Local 2 boycott activity across the street at the Hyatt Hotel, a notorious symbol of corporate greed.
Contact Conny Ford, SF Labor Council Vice President at 415-647-7776
Endorsers forming -San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO; Single Payer Now; CARA; Independent Living Resource Center; Jobs with Justice....
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Oscar Grant Committee Against Police Brutality and State Repression and Berkeley Copwatch present a community forum and video showing:
Silencing The Witnesses:
Government Attacks on the Right To Observe
Saturday, December 3, 2011, 2:00 p.m.
Humanist Hall, 390 27th Street (between Broadway & Telegraph)
Oakland, California 94612
Recent protests have drawn incredibly violent responses from police agencies. Tear gas, flash bang grenades, bean bag rounds and overwhelming force has been documented by civilian journalists across the country at Occupy protests.
Meanwhile, on a daily basis, people who attempt to document police abuse are increasingly being targeted for their efforts to bring human rights violations to light. In response to new legislation and outright assaults, activists are waging a national struggle to keep copwatching safe and legal. Join us for an update of where the right to record stands, how the government is suppressing evidence of brutality and how we can defend our first amendment rights right here in the Bay Area.
· Video Updates will include footage from civilian monitors
· Wheelchair accessible
· There is a $5-$10 suggested donation
· Refreshments will be provided
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MECA and Joining Hands' 9th Annual Palestinian Bazaar
One Day Only: Sunday, December 4th
10 AM - 4PM
Live Oak Park
1301 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley
Beautiful Hand-Crafted Gifts
Bring your friends! Grab a bite of delicious Arabic food and coffee --
Benefits Palestinian craftspeople
Come shop at this popular annual sale of beautifully crafted items:
Olive wood, First Cold Press Extra-Virgin Olive Oil, Pure Olive Oil Soap, Beautiful Scarves & Shawls (new styles!), Traditional Embroidery, Hand-blown Glassware from Hebron, Colorful Hand woven rugs, Ceramics from Jerusalem & Gaza, Cookbooks, Children's books, Calendars, Honey, Jewelry, Children's clothing, Dolls from Gaza, food items and more! New this year-Palestinian Dead Sea Products.
This is a great opportunity to buy something quite special -- and also support cooperative unions and crafts people living under Israeli Occupation.
Please join us in celebrating the heritage, artistry, and creativity of the Palestinian people!
EVENT WEBSITE: http://www.mecaforpeace.org/events/berkeley-ca-meca-and-joining-hands-9th-annual-palestinian-bazaar
--
Leena Al-Arian
Program and Communications Coordinator
Middle East Children's Alliance
1101 8th Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
510-548-0542
www.mecaforpeace.org
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CALL FOR AN EMERGENCY INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Against the wars of occupation; Against the interference in the internal affairs of countries; In defense of the integrity and sovereignty of nations
Algiers, Algeria -- December 3-5, 2011
Ever since the invasion of Afghanistan by NATO troops in 2001, under the pretext of the "War on Terror," and of Iraq in 2003, in the name of a so-called "struggle for democracy," imperialist governments, under the leadership of the U.S. government, have implemented a strategy based on international wars of occupation and plunder. This strategy has also included widespread interference in the internal affairs of nations, the astronomic growth of war budgets, the assault on democratic rights, and the massive cuts in social spending -- particularly in Europe and the United States.
Today, the governments of the imperialist powers -- specifically the U.S., French, British and Italian governments -- have opened a new front in the war; this time in the Maghreb region of Northern Africa. (*)
A new step has been taken with the further implementation of the U.S. government's Greater Middle East Plan, which was first announced by George W. Bush in 2003 at the time of the launching of the war of occupation and looting of Iraq. It's a plan that aims to dismantle nations along ethnic, religious and communitarian lines -- from Pakistan to Mauritania.
At the very moment when the Tunisian and Egyptian workers and peoples are struggling to exercise their full sovereignty by means of democracy, Libya is descending into chaos after a foreign military intervention under the aegis of NATO -- an intervention that threatens its territorial integrity.
By this means, all the countries of the Maghreb region are now facing threats to their integrity. But this is not all: The implications for the SAHEL countries (parts of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Tunisia, Ethiopia and Eritrea) and, more generally, for sub-Saharan Africa are incalculable. This is because the conflict has gone way beyond the Libyan borders in terms of the movement of weapons -- including heavy weapons massively distributed among Libyan civilians and armed terrorist groups who have openly displayed them in the aftermath of the foreign military intervention.
This is not to mention the devastating effects on the economies of these countries, especially when combined with the massive return of hundreds of thousands of migrants who had been working in Libya, as well as more than one million Libyan refugees, mostly in Tunisia.
In reality, through the foreign military intervention in Libya, the U.S., French, British and Italian imperialists seek to terrorize all the peoples of the region and the world.
No political party genuinely committed to the sovereignty of nations and to democracy can condone, under whatever pretext whatsoever, the imperialist war of occupation and plunder in Libya. No labor organization faithful to the traditions of the international labor movement can condone such a war. That is why we the undersigned reject another war on our African continent -- a continent that is already bloodied and torn apart by so-called ethnic conflicts, which are really nothing but the result of foreign plunder of the continent's natural resources, the repayment of foreign debt, and the various manipulations that result therewith.
We reject any foreign military presence in any form whatsoever in our region of the Maghreb, elsewhere across Northern Africa, and, more generally, on our continent of Africa.
We reject any and all attacks upon sovereign nations.
We reject the foreign looting of the riches and resources of the peoples of the Maghreb and of Africa as a whole. Taking control over these resources -- including through the installation of foreign military bases, starting with AFRICOM (United States Africa Command) -- is the real objective of the war of occupation in Libya, under the auspices of NATO. This is what's really at stake.
We denounce the imperialist designs of the governments that are racing to grab the reconstruction deals for the infrastructure of Libya, destroyed by NATO air strikes - another stake of the war.
We deny the imperialist governments, NATO and the mongers of war and chaos the right to decide the fate of the peoples of the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa and all peoples of the world.
We affirm that because there can be no popular sovereignty without national sovereignty, from the standpoint of democracy it is up to sovereign peoples -- and up to them alone -- to define their present and their future without external interference and foreign military intervention.
We call upon organizations and parties around the world and in our own country that oppose the imperialist wars to join us in supporting and participating in an Emergency International Conference in Algiers on December 3-5, 2011, against the wars of occupation, against the interference in the internal affairs of countries, and in defense of the integrity and sovereignty of nations. (**)
signed/
A. Sidi Said
General Secretary
General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA)
Louisa Hanoune
General Secretary
Workers Party of Algeria (PT)
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(*) The five countries that make up the Maghreb region are Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and Mauritania.
(**) For more information about the conference or how you can get involved, please contact the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples in Paris at
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UNAC Conference: March 23-25, 2012
The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) conference originally scheduled for November, 11-13, 2011, has been rescheduled for March 23-25, 2012, in order to tie in to organizing efforts for building massive protests at the NATO/G-8 Summits in Chicago, May 15-22, and to have sufficient time to generate an action program for the next stage of building a mass movement for social change.
Organizations are invited to endorse this conference by clicking here:
http://www.jotform.com/form/12685942513
Donations are needed for bringing international speakers and to subsidize attendance of students and low income participants. Contributions will be accepted at www.UNACpeace.org.
For the initial conference flyer, click here:
http://nepajac.org/conferenceflyer.pdf
Click here to donate to UNAC:
https://nationalpeaceconference.org/Donate.html
Click here for the Facebook UNAC group:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_157059221012587&ap=1
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NATO/G8 protests in Chicago.
United National Antiwar Committee
UNACpeace@gmain.com or UNAC at P.O. Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054
518-227-6947
www.UNACpeace.org
UNAC, along with other organizations and activists, has formed a coalition to help organize protests in Chicago during the week of May 15 - 22 while NATO and G8 are holding their summit meetings. The new coalition was formed at a meeting of 163 people representing 73 different organization in Chicago on August 28 and is called Coalition Against NATO/G8 War and Poverty Agenda (CANGATE). For a report on the Chicago meeting, click here: http://nepajac.org/chicagoreport.htm
To add your email to the new CANGATE listserve, send an email to: cangate-subscribe@lists.riseup.net.
To have your organization endorse the NATO/G8 protest, please click here:
https://www.nationalpeaceconference.org/NATO_G8_protest_support.html
Click here to hear audio of the August 28 meeting:
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/54145
Click here for the talk by Marilyn Levin, UNAC co-coordinator at the August 28 meeting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1tHQ7ilDJ8&NR=1
Click here for Pat Hunts welcome to the meeting and Joe Iosbaker's remarks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoNGcnBGGfI
NATO and the G8 Represent the 1%.
In May, they will meet in Chicago. Their agenda is war on poor nations, war on the poor and working people - war on the 99%.
We are demanding the right to march on their summit, to say:
Jobs, Healthcare, Education, Pensions, Housing and the Environment, Not War!
No to NATO/G-8 Warmakers!
No to War and Austerity!
NATO's military expenditures come at the expense of funding for education, housing and jobs programs; and the G8 continues to advance an agenda of 'austerity' that includes bailouts, tax write-offs and tax holidays for big corporations and banks at the expense of the rest of us.
During the May 2012 G8 and NATO summits in Chicago, many thousands of people will want to exercise their right to protest against NATO's wars and against the G8 agenda to only serve the richest one percent of society. We need permits to ensure that all who want to raise their voices will be able to march.
Chicago's Mayor Rahm Emanuel has stonewalled repeated attempts by community organizers to meet with the city to discuss reasonable accommodations of protesters' rights. They have finally agreed to meet with us, but we need support: from the Occupy movement, the anti-war movement, and all movements for justice.
Our demands are simple:
That the City publicly commit to provide protest organizers with permits that meet the court- sanctioned standard for such protests -- that we be "within sight and sound" of the summits; and
That representatives of the City, including Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, refrain from making threats against protesters.
The protest movement, Occupy Wall Street (OWS), has the support of a majority of the American people. This is because people are suffering from the economic crisis brought about by Wall Street and big banks. As the OWS movement describes it, the "99%" see extreme economic inequality, where millions are unemployed without significant help while bankers in trouble get bailed out.
In Chicago and around the country, the Occupy movement is being met with repression: hundreds have been arrested, beaten, tear gassed, spied on, and refused their right to protest.
The Chicago Police Department and the Mayor have already acknowledged that they are coming down hard on the Occupy movement here to send a message to those who would protest against NATO and the G8.
We need a response that is loud and clear: we have the right to march against the generals and the bankers. We have the right to demand an end to wars, military occupations, and attacks on working people and the poor.
How you can help:
1) Sign the petition to the City of Chicago at www.CANG8.org You can also make a contribution there.
2) Write a statement supporting the right to march and send it to us atcangate2012@gmail.com.
3) To endorse the protests, go to https://nationalpeaceconference.org/NATO_G8_protest_support.html or write to cangate2012@gmail.com
4) Print out and distribute copies of this statement, attached along with a list of supporters of our demands for permits.
4) And then march inChicago on May 15th and May 19th. Publicizethe protests. Join us!
Formore info: www.CANG8.org or email us at cangate2012@gmail.com
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B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:
[Some of these videos are embeded on the BAUAW website:
http://bauaw.blogspot.com/ or bauaw.org ...bw]
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UC Davis Police Violence Adds Fuel to Fire
By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
19 November 11
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/8485-uc-davis-police-violence-adds-fuel-to-fire
UC Davis Protestors Pepper Sprayed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4&feature=player_embedded
Police PEPPER SPRAY UC Davis STUDENT PROTESTERS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuWEx6Cfn-I&feature=player_embedded
Police pepper spraying and arresting students at UC Davis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmJmmnMkuEM&feature=player_embedded
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Officers Put on Leave After Pepper Spraying Protesters
By BRIAN STELTER
November 20, 2011, 2:58 pm
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/officers-put-on-leave-after-pepper-spraying-protesters/?scp=1&sq=Officers%20Put%20On%20Leave%20After%20Pepper&st=cse
UC Davis Chancellor Katehi walks to her car
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CZ0t9ez_EGI#!
Occupy Seattle - 84 Year Old Woman Dorli Rainey Pepper Sprayed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTIyE_JlJzw&feature=related
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THE BEST VIDEO ON "OCCUPY THE WORLD"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S880UldxB1o
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Occupy With Aloha -- Makana -- The Story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-M07v8N_eU&feature=channel_video_title
My guitar tech shot this with a camera phone during my performance for the World Leaders Dinner at APEC, which was hosted by the First Family.
He had to be extremely discreet as Secret Service had warned those on site that any phones used to capture photography or video would be confiscated. Since he has a guitar tuner app on the phone we were able to justify having it out, but grabbing video was not easy. We were under constant surveillance. Personally I like to have video of every performance. It's my art and my right.
About an hour into my set of generally ambient guitar music and Hawaiian tunes, I felt inspired to share some songs that resonated with the significance of the occasion.
I sang a few verses from "Kaulana Na Pua" (a famous Hawaiian protest song in honor of the anniversary of our Queen's passing), then segued into Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower", Sting's "Fragile", and finally my newest song "We Are The Many".
My goal was not to disturb the guests in an offensive fashion but rather to subliminally fill their ears and the entire dinner atmosphere with a message that might be more effectively received in a subconscious manner. I sweetly sang lines like "You enforce your monopolies with guns/ While sacrificing our daughters and sons/ But certain things belong to everyone/ Your thievery has left the people none". The event protocol was such that everyone there kept their expressions quite muffled. Now and then I would get strange, befuddled stares from heads of state. It was a very quiet room with no waiters; only myself, the sound techs, and the leaders of almost half the world's population.
If I had chosen to disrupt the dinner and force my message I would have been stopped short. I instead chose to deliver an extremely potent message in a polite manner for a prolonged interval.
I dedicate this action to those who would speak truth to power but were not allowed the opportunity.
Me ka ha'aha'a,
Makana
We Are The Many -- Makana -- The Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq3BYw4xjxE&feature=relmfu
We Are The Many
Lyrics and Music by Makana
Makana Music LLC (c) 2011
Download song for free here:
http://makanamusic.com/?slide=we-are-the-many
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Rafeef Ziadah - 'Shades of anger', London, 12.11.11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2vFJE93LTI
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News: Massive anti-nuclear demonstration in Fukuoka Nov. 12, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq_xKEWuj1I&feature=player_embedded
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Capt Ray Lewis Joins OWS Protest,Gives Message to NYPD and Slams The Greed 1% from Zuccotti Park
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ocdnl4XlTOU#!
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Shot by police with rubber bullet at Occupy Oakland
antiprocon 62 videos Subscribe Alert iconSubscribed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0pX9LeE-g8&feature=player_embedded
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Copwatch@Occupy Oakland: Beware of Police Infiltrators and Provocateurs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrvMzqopHH0
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Occupy Oakland 11-2 Strike: Police Tear Gas, Black Bloc, War in the Streets
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tu_D8SFYck&feature=player_embedded
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Quebec police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest were actually undercover Quebec police officers:
POLICE STATE Criminal Cops EXPOSED As Agent Provocateurs @ SPP Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoiisMMCFT0&feature=player_embedded
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quebec police admit going undercover at montebello protests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAfzUOx53Rg&feature=player_embedded
G20: Epic Undercover Police Fail
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrJ7aU-n1L8&feature=player_embedded
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WHAT HAPPENED IN OAKLAND TUESDAY NIGHT, OCTOBER 25:
Occupy Oakland Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlPs-REyl-0&feature=player_embedded
Cops make mass arrests at occupy Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R27kD2_7PwU&feature=player_embedded
Raw Video: Protesters Clash With Oakland Police
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpO-lJr2BQY&feature=player_embedded
Occupy Oakland - Flashbangs USED on protesters OPD LIES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqNOPZLw03Q&feature=player_embedded
KTVU TV Video of Police violence
http://www.ktvu.com/video/29587714/index.html
Marine Vet wounded, tear gas & flash-bang grenades thrown in downtown Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMUgPTCgwcQ&feature=player_embedded
Tear Gas billowing through 14th & Broadway in Downtown Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU4Y0pwJtWE&feature=player_embedded
Arrests at Occupy Atlanta -- This is what a police state looks like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YStWz6jbeZA&feature=player_embedded
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Marine Vet at #OccupyWallStreet Tells Sean Hannity to "F**k Off"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aaTGsGdp4c&feature=player_embedded
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Labor Beat: Chicago - War Protest March to Obama's 2012 HQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTkOincM93s
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Labor Beat: Hey You Billionaire, Pay Your Fair Share
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY8isD33f-I
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Voices of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA48gmfGB6U&feature=youtu.be
Voices of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjKZpOk7TyM&feature=related
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#Occupy St. Louis: Bank of America refuses to let customers close accounts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KtI85Zc6Oik
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ALL COLORS (Occupy LA)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Zh6hDQC8I
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#Occupy Wall Street In Washington Square: Mohammed Ezzeldin, former occupier of Egypt's Tahrir Square Speaks at Washington Square!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziodsFWEb5Y&feature=player_embedded
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#OccupyTheHood, Occupy Wall Street
By adele pham
http://vimeo.com/30146870
@OccupyTheHood, Occupy Wall Street from adele pham on Vimeo.
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#Occupy Wall Street Protesters Marching
[Thousands of NYU Students march to OWS...bw]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWJpzx9IqU4
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AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka Supporting Occupy Wall Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soV79czwzoo&feature=player_embedded
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Live arrest at brooklyn bridge #occupywallstreet by We are Change
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yULSI-31Pto&feature=player_embedded
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PEACEFUL FEMALE PROTESTERS PENNED IN THE STREET AND MACED!- #OccupyWallStreet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moD2JnGTToA
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Police Raid on Occpy Boston 10 11 11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5G9agQjM60&noredirect=1
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Occupy Boston protesters arrested
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/occupy-boston-protesters-arrested/2011/10/11/gIQAsCzWdL_video.html
Boston police have arrested 129 people during Tuesday's Occupy Boston demonstrations. The early morning arrests were mostly for trespassing. (Oct. 11) (/The Associated Press)
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Video of Boston PD attacking veterans at OWS protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s3zFca5znU&feature=relmfu
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Occupy Frankfurt Germany
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmxQP2eMdMU&feature=player_embedded
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Occupy Rome - La manifestazione di Roma October 15th OccupyTogether
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25CWyNnJVOI&feature=player_embedded
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FREE THE CUBAN FIVE!
http://www.thecuban5.org/wordpress/index.php
Free Them
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmS4kHC_OlY&feature=player_embedded
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The Preacher and the Slave - Joe Hill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca_MEJmuzMM
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Visualizing a Trillion: Just How Big That Number Is?
"1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years."
Digital Inspiration
http://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/
How Much Is $1 Trillion?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPfY0q-rEdY&feature=player_embedded
Courtesy the credit crisis and big bailout packages, the figure "trillion" has suddenly become part of our everyday conversations. One trillion dollars, or 1 followed by 12 zeros, is lots of money but have you ever tried visualizing how big that number actually is?
For people who can visualize one million dollars, the comparison made on CNN should give you an idea about a trillion - "if you start spending a million dollars every single day since Jesus was born, you still wouldn't have spend a trillion dollars".
Another mathematician puts it like this: "1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years".
Now if the above comparisons weren't really helpful, check another illustration that compares the built of an average human being against a stack of $100 currency notes bundles.
A bundle of $100 notes is equivalent to $10,000 and that can easily fit in your pocket. 1 million dollars will probably fit inside a standard shopping bag while a billion dollars would occupy a small room of your house.
With this background in mind, 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) is 1000 times bigger than 1 billion and would therefore take up an entire football field - the man is still standing in the bottom-left corner. (See visuals -- including a video -- at website:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/
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One World One Revolution -- MUST SEE VIDEO -- Powerful and beautiful...bw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE3R1BQrYCw&feature=player_embedded
"When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty." Thomas Jefferson
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Japan: angry Fukushima citizens confront government (video)
Posted by Xeni Jardin on Monday, Jul 25th at 11:36am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVuGwc9dlhQ&feature=player_embedded
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Licensed to Kill Video
http://nirs.org/multimedia/video/l2k.htm
Gundersen Gives Testimony to NRC ACRS from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.
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BRADLEY MANNING "BROKE THE LAW" SAYS OBAMA!
"He broke the law!" says Obama about Bradley Manning who has yet to even be charged, let alone, gone to trial and found guilty. How horrendous is it for the President to declare someone guilty before going to trial or being charged with a crime! Justice in the U.S.A.!
Obama on FREE BRADLEY MANNING protest... San Francisco, CA. April 21, 2011-Presidential remarks on interrupt/interaction/performance art happening at fundraiser. Logan Price queries Barack after org. FRESH JUICE PARTY political action.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmtUpd4id0&feature=youtu.be
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Max Romeo - Socialism Is Love
http://youtu.be/eTvUs4rY4to
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Cuba: The Accidental Eden
http://video.pbs.org/video/1598230084/
Watch the full episode. See more Nature.
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Labor Beat: Labor Stands with Subpoenaed Activists Against FBI Raids and Grand Jury Investigation of antiwar and social justice activists.
"If trouble is not at your door. It's on it's way, or it just left."
"Investigate the Billionaires...Full investigation into Wall Street..." Jesse Sharkey, Vice President, Chicago Teachers Union
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSNUSIGZCMQ
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Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded
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Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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It's time to tell the White House that "We the People" support PFC Bradley Manning's freedom and the UN's investigation into alleged torture in Quantico, VA
On September 22nd, the White House launched a new petition website called "We the People." According to the White House blog, if a petition reaches 5,000 signatures in 30 days, "it will be reviewed by policy experts and you'll receive an official response."
Act now! Sign our petition to the White House: LINK
This is our chance to make sure the people in power know that the public still care about the fate of PFC Bradley Manning, and that we won't let this issue go away until PFC Manning is recognized as the whistleblower he is. It is also an opportunity for us to educate fellow Americans who may not have heard of PFC Manning yet, by boosting our petition to the top of the WhiteHouse.gov site.
The same day the White House launched the petition website, it also unveiled an Open Government Action Plan calling to "Strengthen and Expand Whistleblower Protection for Government Personnel." We consider this ironic given the fact that in April of 2011 the UN Chief Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, was forced to issue a rare reprimand to the U.S. for repeatedly denying his request to meet with alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower PFC Manning in an official, unmonitored visit to investigation allegations of his torture in the military brig of Quantico, VA.
We submitted the petition to the "We the People" website earlier this week, and we have already gathered over 1,000 signatures. We are relying on your help so that we can reach the 5,000 mark, and then some.
Signing the petition requires a quick and simple registration process. (Should you encounter technical trouble, please check out the link at the bottom of this e-mail.)
Click here to sign the petition now!
Already signed the petition? You can promote it to your friends on facebook and twitter! Copy and paste the following text: Tell the Obama Administration to let UN investigate torture of alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower PFC Bradley Manning! http://wh.gov/40y
We petition the obama administration to:
Free PFC Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks whistleblower.
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/free-pfc-bradley-manning-accused-wikileaks-whistleblower/kX1GJKsD?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl
Using the information PFC Bradley Manning allegedly revealed, media outlets have published thousands of stories, detailing countless attempts by governments around the world -- including our own -- to illegally conceal evidence of human rights abuses.
According to the President, "employees with the courage to report wrongdoing are a government's best defense against waste, fraud and abuse."
It appears that PFC Manning acted on his conscience, at great personal risk, to answer the President's call.
However, he has been subjected to extreme confinement conditions that US legal scholars have said may amount to torture.
Therefore, we also ask the Obama administration to stop blocking the UN's chief torture investigator, Juan Mendez, from conducting an official visit with PFC Manning.
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Cristian Fernandez is only 12 years old. And if Florida prosecutor Angela Corey has her way, he'll never leave jail again.
Cristian hasn't had an easy life. He's the same age now as his mother was when he was born. He's a survivor of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. In 2010, Cristian watched his stepfather commit suicide to avoid being charged with abusing Cristian.
Last January, Cristian was wrestling with his 2-year-old brother, David, and accidentally broke David's leg. Despite this, their mother left Cristian with his brother again in March. While the two boys were alone, Cristian allegedly pushed his brother against a bookcase, and David sustained a head injury. After their mother returned home, she waited six hours before taking David to the hospital. David eventually died.
Now Cristian is being charged with first degree murder -- as an adult. He's the youngest person in the history of his Florida county to receive this charge, and his next hearing is scheduled for tomorrow.
Melissa Higgins works with kids who get caught up in the criminal justice system in her home state of New Hampshire. When she read about Cristian's case, she was appalled -- so she started a petition on Change.org asking Florida State's Attorney Angela Corey to try Cristian as a child. Please sign Melissa's petition immediately before Cristian's hearing tomorrow.
As part of his prosecution, Cristian has been examined by two different forensic psychiatrists -- each of whom concluded that he was "emotionally underdeveloped but essentially reformable despite a tough life."
Cristian has already been through more than most of us can imagine -- and now the rest of his life is in the hands of a Florida prosecutor who wants to make sure Cristian never leaves jail.
The purpose of the juvenile justice system is to reform kids who haven't gotten a fair shake. If Cristian is sent to adult prison, it will be more than a tragedy for him -- it will also be a signal to other prosecutors that kids' lives are acceptable collateral in the quest to be seen as "tough on crime."
Cristian's next hearing is in just 24 hours. State's Attorney Angela Corey needs to know that her actions are being watched -- please sign the petition asking her not to try Cristian as an adult:
http://www.change.org/petitions/reverse-decision-to-try-12-yo-cristian-fernandez-as-an-adult
Thanks for being a change-maker,
- Michael and the Change.org team
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International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
TAKE ACTION: New Punishment Against Rene Gonzalez
On Oct 7, RenƩ GonzƔlez, one of the Cuban 5 Patriots will be released from the US prison in Marianna Florida after serving out his 15 year sentence. Rene's crime was defending the security of the Cuban people against terrorist attacks.
The US government is now trying to stop his immediate return to his homeland, and his family, after he serves out the last day of this unjust sentence. And now, in the most cynical and mean spirited fashion, the US court that sentenced him in 2001 is extending his punishment by making him remain in the United States.
Because Rene was born in the US he will now have to spend an additional 3 years of probation here. Seven months ago his lawyer presented a motion asking the court to modify the conditions of his probation so that after he finished his sentence he be allowed to return to Cuba to reunite with his wife and his family for humanitarian reasons.
On March 25, the prosecutor Caroline Heck Miller asked the judge to deny the motion. On September 16 Judge Joan Lenard rejected the defense motion, alleging among other reasons, that the Court needs time to evaluate the behavior of the condemned person after he is freed to verify that he is not a danger to the United States.
We have to remember that this is the same prosecutor that rejected an attempt to try Posada Carriles as a criminal, and this is the same judge that included in the conditions of his release a special point that while Rene is under supervised release that," the accused is prohibited from associating with or visiting specific places where individuals or groups such as terrorists are known to be or frequent"
By writing this Judge Lenard made the shameful recognition that terrorists groups do exist and enjoy impunity in Miami. Furthermore she is offering them protection from Rene from bothering or denouncing them upon his release.
It was not enough for the US government to make Rene fulfill the complete sentence to the last day; It was not enough to try and blackmail his family by telling them he would not go to trial if he collaborated against his 4 brothers; it was not enough to pressure Rene with what could happen to his family if he did not cooperate with the government, including the detention and deportation of his wife Olga Salanueva; and it was not enough to deny Olga visas to visit her husband repeatedly all these years.
Why does the US government want to continue punishing RenƩ and his family?
The prejudice of the Miami community against the Five was denounced by three judges of the Eleventh Circuit of the Atlanta Court of Appeals on August 27, 2005, where it was recognized who the terrorists were, what organizations they belonged to and where they reside. To mandate that Rene Gonzalez stay another 3 years of supervised "freedom" in Florida, where a nest of international terrorists reside and who publicly make their hatred of Cuba and the Cuban 5 known, is to put the life of Rene in serious risk.
Today we are making a call to friends from all over the world to denounce this new punishment and to demand the US government allow RenƩ Gonzalez to return to Cuba to reunite with his wife and his family as soon as he get out of prison.
Contact now President Barack Obama and US Attorney General Eric Holder demanding the immediate return of RenƩ Gonzalez to his homeland and his family
TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE WHITE HOUSE
Write a letter to President Obama
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20500
EE.UU.
Make a phone call and leave a message for President Barack Obama: 202-456-1111
Send an e-mail message to President Barack Obama
HTTP://WWW.WHITEHOUSE.GOV/CONTACT
TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
Write a letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder
US Attorney General Eric Holder
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Make a phone call and leave a message for US Attorney General Eric Holder: 202-514-2000
Or call the public commentary line: 202-353-1555
Send an e-mail message to US Attorney General Eric Holder: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
To learn more about the Cuban 5 visit:
www.thecuban5.org
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Say No to Police Repression of NATO/G8 Protests
http://www.stopfbi.net/get-involved/nato-g8-police-repression
The CSFR Signs Letter to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel
The CSFR is working with the United National Antiwar Committee and many other anti-war groups to organize mass rallies and protests on May 15 and May 19, 2012. We will protest the powerful and wealthy war-makers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Group of 8. Mobilize your groups, unions, and houses of worship. Bring your children, friends, and community. Demand jobs, healthcare, housing and education, not war!
Office of the Mayor
City of Chicago
To: Mayor Rahm Emanuel
We, the undersigned, demand that your administration grant us permits for protests on May 15 and 19, 2012, including appropriate rally gathering locations and march routes to the venue for the NATO/G8 summit taking place that week. We come to you because your administration has already spoken to us through Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. He has threatened mass arrests and violence against protestors.
[Read the full text of the letter here: http://www.stopfbi.net/get-involved/nato-g8-police-repression/full-text]
For the 10s of thousands of people from Chicago, around the country and across the world who will gather here to protest against NATO and the G8, we demand that the City of Chicago:
1. Grant us permits to rally and march to the NATO/G8 summit
2. Guarantee our civil liberties
3. Guarantee us there will be no spying, infiltration of organizations or other attacks by the FBI or partner law enforcement agencies.
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Supporter of Leak Suspect Is Called Before Grand Jury
By SCOTT SHANE
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16brfs-Washington.html?ref=world
A supporter of Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, who is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, was called before a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., on Wednesday, but he said he declined to answer any questions. The supporter, David M. House, a freelance computer scientist, said he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, because he believes the Justice Department is "creating a climate of fear around WikiLeaks and the Bradley Manning support network." The grand jury inquiry is separate from the military prosecution of Private Manning and is believed to be exploring whether the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, or others in the group violated the law by acquiring and publishing military and State Department documents.
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Justice for Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace: Decades of isolation in Louisiana state prisons must end
Take Action -- Sign Petition Here:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/justice-for-albert-woodfox-and-herman-wallace
For nearly four decades, 64-year-old Albert Woodfox and 69-year-old Herman Wallace have been held in solitary confinement, mostly in the Louisiana State Penitentiary (known as Angola prison). Throughout their prolonged incarceration in Closed Cell Restriction (CCR) Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace have endured very restrictive conditions including 23 hour cellular confinement. They have limited access to books, newspapers and TV and throughout the years of imprisonment they have been deprived of opportunities for mental stimulation and access to work and education. Social interaction has been restricted to occasional visits from friends and family and limited telephone calls.
Louisiana prison authorities have over the course of 39 years failed to provide a meaningful review of the men's continued isolation as they continue to rubberstamp the original decision to confine the men in CCR. Decades of solitary confinement have had a clear psychological effect on the men. Lawyers report that they are both suffering from serious health problems caused or exacerbated by their years of close confinement.
After being held together in the same prison for nearly 40 years, the men are now held in seperate institutions where they continue to be subjected to conditions that can only be described as cruel, inhuman and degrading.
Take action now to demand that Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace be immediately removed from solitary confinement
Sign our petition which will be sent to the Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, calling on him to:
-- take immediate steps to remove Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace from close confinement
-- ensure that their treatment complies with the USA's obligations under international standards and the US Constitution.
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WITNESS GAZA
http://www.witnessgaza.com/
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One year after Bradley's detainment, we need your support more than ever.
Dear Friends,
One year ago, on May 26, 2010, the U.S. government quietly arrested a humble young American intelligence analyst in Iraq and imprisoned him in a military camp in Kuwait. Over the coming weeks, the facts of the arrest and charges against this shy soldier would come to light. And across the world, people like you and I would step forward to help defend him.
Bradley Manning, now 23 years old, has never been to court but has already served a year in prison- including 10 months in conditions of confinement that were clear violation of the international conventions against torture. Bradley has been informally charged with releasing to the world documents that have revealed corruption by world leaders, widespread civilian deaths at the hands of U.S. forces, the true face of Guantanamo, an unvarnished view of the U.S.'s imperialistic foreign negotiations, and the murder of two employees of Reuters News Agency by American soldiers. These documents released by WikiLeaks have spurred democratic revolutions across the Arab world and have changed the face of journalism forever.
For his act of courage, Bradley Manning now faces life in prison-or even death.
But you can help save him-and we've already seen our collective power. Working together with concerned citizens around the world, the Bradley Manning Support Network has helped raise worldwide awareness about Manning's torturous confinement conditions. Through the collective actions of well over a half million people and scores of organizations, we successfully pressured the U.S. government to end the tortuous conditions of pre-trial confinement that Bradley was subjected to at the Marine Base at Quantico, Virginia. Today, Bradley is being treated humanely at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. T hanks to your support, Bradley is given leeway to interact with other pre-trial prisoners, read books, write letters, and even has a window in his cell.
Of course we didn't mount this campaign to just improve Bradley's conditions in jail. Our goal is to ensure that he can receive a fair and open trial. Our goal is to win Bradley's freedom so that he can be reunited with his family and fulfill his dream of going to college. Today, to commemorate Bradley's one year anniversary in prison, will you join me in making a donation to help support Bradley's defense?
http://bradleymanning.org/donate
We'll be facing incredible challenges in the coming months, and your tax-deductible donation today will help pay for Bradley's civilian legal counsel and the growing international grassroots campaign on his behalf. The U.S. government has already spent a year building its case against Bradley, and is now calling its witnesses to Virginia to testify before a grand jury.
What happens to Bradley may ripple through history - he is already considered by many to be the single most important person of his generation. Please show your commitment to Bradley and your support for whistle-blowers and the truth by making a donation today.
With your help, I hope we will come to remember May 26th as a day to commemorate all those who risk their lives and freedom to promote informed democracy - and as the birth of a movement that successfully defended one courageous whistle-blower against the full fury of the U.S. government.
Donate now: bradleymanning.org/donate
In solidarity,
Jeff Paterson and Loraine Reitman,
On behalf of the Bradley Manning Support Network Steering Committee
www.bradleymanning.org
P.S. After you have donated, please help us by forwarding this email to your closest friends. Ask them to stand with you to support Bradley Manning, and the rights of all whistleblowers.
View the new 90 second "I am Bradley Manning" video:
I am Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-P3OXML00s
Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org
"A Fort Leavenworth mailing address has been released for Bradley Manning:
Bradley Manning 89289
830 Sabalu Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027
The receptionist at the military barracks confirmed that if someone sends Bradley Manning a letter to that address, it will be delivered to him."
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/update-42811
This is also a Facebook event
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=207100509321891#!/event.php?eid=207100509321891
Courage to Resist needs your support
Please donate today:
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
"Soldiers sworn oath is to defend and support the Constitution. Bradley Manning has been defending and supporting our Constitution."
-Dan Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower
Jeff Paterson
Project Director, Courage to Resist
First US military service member to refuse to ļ¬ght in Iraq
Please donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
P.S. I'm asking that you consider a contribution of $50 or more, or possibly becoming a sustainer at $15 a month. Of course, now is also a perfect time to make a end of year tax-deductible donation. Thanks again for your support!
Please click here to forward this to a friend who might
also be interested in supporting GI resisters.
http://ymlp.com/forward.php?id=lS3tR&e=bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com
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Drop the Charges Against Carlos Montes, Stop the FBI Attack on the Chicano and Immigrant Rights Movement, and Stop FBI Repression of Anti-War Activists NOW!Call Off the Expanding Grand Jury Witchhunt and FBI Repression of Anti-War Activists NOW!
Cancel the Subpoenas! Cancel the Grand Juries!
Condemn the FBI Raids and Harassment of Chicano, Immigrant Rights, Anti-War and International Solidarity Activists!
STOP THE FBI CAMPAIGN OF REPRESSION AGAINST CHICANO, IMMIGRANT RIGHTS, ANTI-WAR AND INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY ACTIVISTS NOW!
Initiated by the Committee to Stop FBI Repression stopfbi.net stopfbi@gmail.com
http://iacenter.org/stopfbi/
Contact the Committee to Stop FBI Repression
at stopfbi.net
stopfbi@gmail.com
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
NATIONAL CALL-IN DAY -- ANY DAY
to Fitzgerald, Holder and Obama
The Grand Jury is still on its witch hunt and the FBI is still
harassing activists. This must stop.
Please make these calls:
1. Call U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300 . Then dial 0
(zero) for operator and ask to leave a message with the Duty Clerk.
2. Call U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder 202-353-1555
3. Call President Obama at 202-456-1111
FFI: Visit www.StopFBI.net or email info@StopFBI.net or call
612-379-3585 .
Copyright (c) 2011 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights
reserved.
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55415
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Please make a donation today at stopfbi.net (PayPal) on the right side of your screen. Also you can write to:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
This is a critical time for us to stand together, defend free speech, and defend those who help to organize for peace and justice, both at home and abroad!
Thank you for your generosity! Tom Burke
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Mumia Wins Decision Against Re-Imposition Of Death Sentence, But...
The Battle Is Still On To
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL!
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610
www.laboractionmumia.org
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Call for EMERGENCY RESPONSE Action if Assange Indicted,
Dear Friends:
We write in haste, trying to reach as many of you as possible although the holiday break has begun.......This plan for an urgent "The Day After" demonstration is one we hope you and many, many more organizations will take up as your own, and mobilize for. World Can't Wait asks you to do all you can to spread it through list serves, Facebook, twitter, holiday gatherings.
Our proposal is very very simple, and you can use the following announcement to mobilize - or write your own....
ANY DAY NOW . . . IN THE EVENT THAT THE U.S. INDICTS JULIAN ASSANGE
An emergency public demonstration THE DAY AFTER any U.S. criminal indictment is announced against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Spread the word and call people to come out, across the whole range of movements and groups: anti-war, human rights, freedom of information/freedom of the press, peace, anti-torture, environmental, students and youth, radicals and revolutionaries, religious, civil liberties, teachers and educators, journalists, anti-imperialists, anti-censorship, anti-police state......
At the Federal Building in San Francisco, we'll form ourselves into a human chain "surrounding" the government that meets the Wikileaked truth with repression and wants to imprison and silence leakers, whistleblowers and truthtellers - when, in fact, these people are heroes. We'll say:
HANDS OFF WIKILEAKS! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING!
Join the HUMAN CHAIN AROUND THE FEDERAL BUILDING!
New Federal Building, 7th and Mission, San Francisco (nearest BART: Civic Center)
4:00-6:00 PM on The Day FOLLOWING U.S. indictment of Assange
Bring all your friends - signs and banners - bullhorns.
Those who dare at great risk to themselves to put the truth in the hands of the people - and others who might at this moment be thinking about doing more of this themselves -- need to see how much they are supported, and that despite harsh repression from the government and total spin by the mainstream media, the people do want the truth told.
Brad Manning's Christmas Eve statement was just released by his lawyer: "Pvt. Bradley Manning, the lone soldier who stands accused of stealing millions of pages secret US government documents and handing them over to secrets outlet WikiLeaks, wants his supporters to know that they've meant a lot to him. 'I greatly appreciate everyone's support and well wishes during this time,' he said in a Christmas Eve statement released by his lawyer...." Read more here:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/mannings-message-christmas-eve-i-gr/
Demonstrations defending Wikileaks and Assange, and Brad Manning, have already been flowering around the world. Make it happen here too.
Especially here . . .
To join into this action plan, or with questions, contact World Can't Wait or whichever organization or listserve you received this message from.
World Can't Wait, SF Bay
415-864-5153
sf@worldcantwait.org
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DEFEND LYNNE STEWART!
http://lynnestewart.org/
Write to Lynne Stewart at:
Lynne Stewart #53504 - 054
Unit 2N
Federal Medical Center, Carswell
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TEXAS 76127
Visiting Lynne:
Visiting is very liberal but first she has to get people on her visiting list; wait til she or the lawyers let you know. The visits are FRI, SAT, SUN AND MON for 4 hours and on weekends 8 to 3. Bring clear plastic change purse with lots of change to buy from the machines. Brief Kiss upon arrival and departure, no touching or holding during visit (!!) On visiting forms it may be required that you knew me before I came to prison. Not a problem for most of you.
Commissary Money:
Commissary Money is always welcome It is how Lynne pay for the phone and for email. Also for a lot that prison doesn't supply in terms of food and "sundries" (pens!) (A very big list that includes Raisins, Salad Dressing, ankle sox, mozzarella (definitely not from Antonys--more like a white cheddar, Sanitas Corn Chips but no Salsa, etc. To add money, you do this by using Western Union and a credit card by phone or you can send a USPO money order or Business or Govt Check. The negotiable instruments (PAPER!) need to be sent to Federal Bureau of Prisons, 53504-054, Lynne Stewart, PO Box 474701, Des Moines Iowa 50947-001 (Payable to Lynne Stewart, 53504-054) They hold the mo or checks for 15 days. Western Union costs $10 but is within 2 hours. If you mail, your return address must be on the envelope. Unnecessarily complicated? Of course, it's the BOP !)
The address of her Defense Committee is:
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
1070 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York 11216
For further information:
718-789-0558 or 917-853-9759
Please make a generous contribution to her defense.
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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT! FREE KEVIN COOPER!
Reasonable doubts about executing Kevin Cooper
Chronicle Editorial
Monday, December 13, 2010
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/13/EDG81GP0I7.DTL
Death penalty -- Kevin Cooper is Innocent! Help save his life from San Quentin's death row!
http://www.savekevincooper.org/
http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/essays_content.html?ID=255
URGENT ACTION APPEAL
- From Amnesty International USA
17 December 2010
Click here to take action online:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=15084
To learn about recent Urgent Action successes and updates, go to
http://www.amnestyusa.org/iar/success
For a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):
http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa25910.pdf
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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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D. ARTICLES IN FULL (Unless otherwise noted)
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1) Greek Protesters Clash With Police at US Embassy
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/11/17/business/AP-EU-Greece-Financial-Crisis.html?src=busln
2) United States of Hunger
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
November 17, 2011, 2:18 pm
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/united-states-of-hunger/?src=busln
3) Now THAT'S a bank job: Dozens arrested after sit-in by Occupy San Francisco at Bank of America branch
By Associated Press
November 17, 2011
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2062560/Now-THATS-bank-job-Dozens-arrested-sit-Occupy-San-Francisco-Bank-America-branch.html
4) The World Is With Us-Occupy Lives On!
Posted 14 hours ago on Nov. 17, 2011, 10:29 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
http://occupywallst.org/article/world-us-occupy-lives/
5) Violence Erupts in Cairo, Even as Military Cedes Political Ground
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and LIAM STACK
November 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/world/middleeast/violence-erupts-in-cairo-as-egypts-military-cedes-political-ground.html?hp
6) Older, Suburban and Struggling, 'Near Poor' Startle the Census
By JASON DePARLE, ROBERT GEBELOFF and SABRINA TAVERNISE
November 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/19/us/census-measures-those-not-quite-in-poverty-but-struggling.html?hp
7) Brazil Officials Criticize Chevron Over Oil Spill
By SIMON ROMERO
November 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/19/business/energy-environment/brazil-officials-criticize-chevron-over-oil-spill.html?ref=world
8) Redefining the Union Boss
"Ms. Pope later found a better-paying job at a warehouse in Cleveland, as a member of the Teamsters. In 1979, when Teamster steel haulers in Canton, Ohio, went on strike, she helped expand that action throughout the Midwest. Before long, she was driving an 18-wheeler, hauling steel from Cleveland to Baltimore. After the birth of her first child, however, she traded her rig for the bargaining table, and began negotiating local contracts. When Ron Carey, a parcel truck driver from Queens, ran on an anticorruption platform and captured the presidency of the Teamsters, a union that had been long notorious for Mafia connections, Ms. Pope became an international representative for the union's warehouse unit. By then, she had settled in Montclair, N.J. Seven years later, Mr. Carey left after he was accused of misusing union funds. (A court later found him not guilty.) Ms. Pope then joined Teamsters Local 805 in Queens. There, she ran against its incumbent president and won, becoming the head of the 1,100-member local in 2005."
By KATHLEEN SHARP
November 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/business/women-are-becoming-unions-new-voices.html?ref=business
9) Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi
Posted on November 19, 2011 by crank
18 November 2011
http://bicyclebarricade.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/open-letter-to-chancellor-linda-p-b-katehi/
10) Poet-Bashing Police
By ROBERT HASS
Berkeley, Calif.
November 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinion/sunday/at-occupy-berkeley-beat-poets-has-new-meaning.html?scp=1&sq=Poet-Bashing%20Police%20By%20ROBERT%20HASS&st=cse
11) Oakland Occupy Takes New Site...
By Chris Kinder
November 20, 2011
Via Email
12) UC Davis Police Violence Adds Fuel to Fire
By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
19 November 11
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/8485-uc-davis-police-violence-adds-fuel-to-fire
UC Davis Protestors Pepper Sprayed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4&feature=player_embedded
Police PEPPER SPRAY UC Davis STUDENT PROTESTERS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuWEx6Cfn-I&feature=player_embedded
Police pepper spraying and arresting students at UC Davis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmJmmnMkuEM&feature=player_embedded
13) Officers Put on Leave After Pepper Spraying Protesters
By BRIAN STELTER
November 20, 2011, 2:58 pm
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/officers-put-on-leave-after-pepper-spraying-protesters/?scp=1&sq=Officers%20Put%20On%20Leave%20After%20Pepper&st=cse
UC Davis Chancellor Katehi walks to her car
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CZ0t9ez_EGI#!
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1) Greek Protesters Clash With Police at US Embassy
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/11/17/business/AP-EU-Greece-Financial-Crisis.html?src=busln
ATHENS, Greece (AP) - Masked youths clashed with riot police outside Greece's parliament and the U.S. embassy Thursday as thousands of austerity-weary Greeks marched through Athens in an annual commemoration of a bloody student uprising in the 1970s.
Police fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse the rioters, and some 78 people were detained for questioning. Eleven people were arrested. Police also reported four injured police officers. A young protester was reportedly hospitalized after injuring both legs in an attempt to evade police.
Some 28,000 people took part in the march, according to police estimates, making it one of the biggest Nov. 17 protests in years. Seven thousand officers were monitoring the crowd.
With loan-dependent Greece heading for its fourth year of recession and saddled with record unemployment, the demonstration was the first test of public sentiment for the new coalition government of Lucas Papademos, a technocrat enjoying widespread popularity, according to polls.
Thursday's annual protest commemorates the squashing of a pro-democracy student uprising in 1973 by the military dictatorship that ruled Greece from 1967-74 - and whose backing from the U.S. still rankles in the country. But the embassy march has traditionally served as a vent for anti-government protests that often turn violent.
About 15,000 people took part in a similar protest in the northern city of Thessaloniki that turned violent when a couple of hundred anarchists threw projectiles and petrol bombs at police, who responded with tear gas. No injuries have been reported.
The clashes come a day after Papademos, a 64-year-old former central banker, easily won a confidence vote in parliament.
Papademos heads a coalition of the majority Socialists, conservative New Democracy and the small right-wing populist LAOS party, which has nationalist and anti-immigration roots.
He faces a daunting task in the 100 days until early elections in February. As well as staving off looming bankruptcy by securing the country's next rescue loan installment, his government must pass a new austerity budget - to be tabled in parliament Friday - and transform paper pledges of sweeping public sector reform into action.
After its borrowing costs ballooned in 2010, Greece turned to its European partners and the International Monetary Fund, winning a euro110 billion ($148 billion) bailout in return for deeply resented austerity measures to cut deficits bloated by years of government overspending.
But it became clear that the rescue loans were not enough, and European leaders agreed on a second euro130 billion ($175 billion) bailout last month with an additional euro100 billion ($135 billion) debt writedown by banks and other holders of Greek government bonds. Complex talks with the Institute of International Finance, a global bank lobbying group, on the writedown started in Athens Wednesday and will continue over the days and weeks ahead.
The details of the bond swap will determine how much the deal will actually help Greece in getting its debt down to a sustainable level.
"Our goal is to structure a transaction that will attract the broadest possible support from the bondholder community," Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said. "To this end, we will be listening to the IIF, other industry bodies and individual creditors' ideas about how best to design this transaction."
IIF officials said that they were committed to the 50 percent writedown on the face value of the Greek bonds, but much depends on the rate of interest Athens will have to pay on the remaining debt.
IIF managing director Charles Dallara said the creditors who met in the headquarters of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt on Thursday included big banks, insurers, asset managers and hedge funds, representing some 70 to 80 percent of Greek debt that is still in private hands. Making the terms of the bond swap attractive enough will help get participation up to the promised 90 percent, he added.
The Greek government's most pressing task is to secure the release of an euro8 billion ($11 billion) loan installment - frozen by the EU as it awaits written commitments from all parties in the new coalition that they will honor the terms of the new debt agreement after the next election.
Greek conservatives have balked at the demand, despite warnings the country will default before Christmas without the money, leaving Papademos to seek a compromise with the European Union.
He will meet with top EU officials in Brussels on Monday, a day before flying to Luxembourg to meet Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who chairs meetings of eurozone finance ministers.
___
Gabriele Steinhauser in Brussels, Demetris Nellas in Athens and Costas Kantouris in Thessaloniki contributed to this report.
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2) United States of Hunger
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
November 17, 2011, 2:18 pm
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/united-states-of-hunger/?src=busln
Casey Mulligan noted Wednesday on Economix that United States spending on food stamps had skyrocketed since the recession began. A new Census Bureau report provides a look at just how big the program has become. Last year, more than one in 10 families received food stamps, with some states having significantly higher participation rates. In Oregon, the share was nearly one in five.
Here's a map showing what share of families in each state received these benefits to help them buy food:
Census Bureau
In Oregon, 17.8 percent of families received food stamps, officially known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, the highest rate in the nation. Oregon was followed by Tennessee (17 percent) and Michigan (16.9 percent).
The state with the lowest SNAP participation rate was Wyoming, with a rate of 6.2 percent. The next-lowest rates were in New Jersey (6.8 percent) and California (7.4 percent).
I must admit I'm a bit puzzled by some of these numbers. I would have expected California's food stamp take-up rate, for example, to be much higher, since its unemployment rate is 11.9 percent, the state is broke, and so many cities there suffered from housing busts.
I did a quick scatterplot showing the relationship between median household income and food stamp take-up rates, and the relationship is relatively weak:
Source: Census Bureau
The relationship between unemployment rates and food stamp take-up rates was even weaker:
Source: Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics
Of course, there are a lot of variables not at all reflected by unemployment and median income figures, such as inequality and state safety net programs.
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3) Now THAT'S a bank job: Dozens arrested after sit-in by Occupy San Francisco at Bank of America branch
By Associated Press
November 17, 2011
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2062560/Now-THATS-bank-job-Dozens-arrested-sit-Occupy-San-Francisco-Bank-America-branch.html
Now THAT'S a bank job: Dozens arrested after sit-in by Occupy San Francisco at Bank of America branch
The San Francisco branch of the Occupy movement charged into a Bank of America today and set up camp before dozens of protesters were arrested.
Demonstrators had arrived by the busload to march through the Californian city before storming a downtown branch, chanting slogans and attempting to set up tents in the lobby.
Police officers in full riot gear handcuffed activists as hundreds more demonstrators surrounded the building, blocking entrances and exits.
Around 100 people marched into the bank shouting 'money for schools and education, not for banks and corporations'.
Deputy Police Chief Kevin Cashman said 80 arrests were made for trespassing.
The protest was partly organized by ReFund California, a coalition of student groups and university employee unions.
Students from University of California Berkeley, Merced and other schools joined the Occupy march to the bank.
The marches in support of higher education came as police in San Francisco and San Diego cleared encampments in the cities early on Wednesday, citing public health and safety concerns. Several arrests were made during the 2am raid.
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee met with Occupy SF activists to let them know an expansion of their camp would not be tolerated.
Mr Lee said: 'I did give the order to our police chief this morning that there cannot be an expansion of what we're perceiving to be a health hazard in the city.'
Meanwhile students and anti-Wall Street activists set up a new camp at UC Berkeley on Tuesday with police keeping a close eye on activity.
Around two dozen tents were pitched on a student plaza despite a university policy that prohibits camping. Authorities warned that protesters could be arrested if they didn't leave.
While a meeting was held by activists on Tuesday night an armed man was fatally shot by UC Berkeley police.
He was named today as Christopher Travis, a 32-year-old student at the university, officials said.
Investigators were looking into reports that the man had demonstrated erratic behavior in the past, including possible suicide attempts.
Travis, an undergraduate at UC Berkeley business school, died of his wounds in hospital. He was shot by a campus police officer in the school's computer lab after Travis pointed a loaded handgun at officers and refused orders to drop the weapon.
The shooting happened on another part of campus from where the Occupy Wall Street movement was demonstrating and authorities said they have found no connection between Travis and the protests.
Occupy California's general assembly voted for rebuilding their encampment at Berkeley despite earlier violence on November 9, when police jabbed students with batons and arrested 40 people as the university sought to uphold the campus ban on camping.
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4) The World Is With Us-Occupy Lives On!
Posted 14 hours ago on Nov. 17, 2011, 10:29 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
http://occupywallst.org/article/world-us-occupy-lives/
Today, November 17th, over 30,000 New Yorkers took to the streets to resist austerity, rebuild our economy, and reclaim our democracy. It was our largest action to date.
Our will was only emboldened by Mayor Bloomberg's heavy-handed attempt to eradicate Occupy Wall Street; our brutal eviction from our homes at Liberty Square has strengthened both our resolve and our legitimacy. Together, we raised our voices to declare: "No to evictions! No to the 1% that profits from our collective impoverishment." We showed the world we are not a fringe group of naive idealists-we are truly a people's uprising embodying the revolutionary spirit of economic justice, mutual aid, and participatory, consensus-based democracy. We are the 99%.
And the world responded.
Protestors across the United States occupied our most tangible symbols of oligarchic neglect: bridges-essential public infrastructure the 1% has blithely let decay:
* Los Angeles, CA: protestors peacefully shut down a bridge into the financial district. 16 were arrested.
* Portland, OR: the Steel Bridge was occupied
* Detroit, MI: in one of the cities hardest hit by foreclosures and evictions, 1000s marched across the 2nd Ave Bridge
* Washington, DC: protestors demonstrated in support of increased infrastructure projects on the Key Bridge
* Philadelphia, PA: 1500 people marched on the Market St Bridge where at least 25 people were arrested during a nonviolent sit-in.
* Miami, FL: over 2,000 people gathered under the overpass at Jose Marti Park.
* Chicago, IL: LaSalle Street Bridge was shut down and 46 protesters were arrested during a sit-in before flooding intersections and streets around the Federal Reserve Bank and the Chicago Board of Trade
* Hartford, CT: 200 people blocked the entrance ramp to 1-84, with 10 arrests
* Houston, TX: 500 prosters blocked the Travis Street Bridge with at least 12 arrests.
* Pittsburgh, PA: Protestors blocked Greenfield Bridge
* Baltimore, MD: Howard Street Bridge was occupied.
* More bridges were blocked in: St. Louis, Milwaukee, Great Falls, Minneapolis, Kalamazoo, Augusta, Saginaw, Cleveland, Richmond, Iowa City, and countless cities across the country!
And across the world, the people of Canada, Japan, the UK, Spain, Germany, Greece, and elsewhere organized unprecedented solidarity actions, proving beyond doubt that Occupy Wall Street is, and is increasingly becoming, a truly global revolution.
To echo one protest sign: "The World Is Not The Same Anymore."
Bloomberg and his NYPD may have taken Liberty Square for now, just as the banks have taken the homes and livelihoods of thousands across the world. But today, we proved that the spirit of Occupy Wall Street and the will of the 99% is stronger than ever. They, the 1%, cannot evict an idea whose time has come!
Yes, the whole world is watching. But more importantly: the whole world is waking.
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5) Violence Erupts in Cairo, Even as Military Cedes Political Ground
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and LIAM STACK
November 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/world/middleeast/violence-erupts-in-cairo-as-egypts-military-cedes-political-ground.html?hp
CAIRO - Thousands of protesters chanting for an end to military rule battled riot police officers firing tear gas, rubber bullets and bird shot in Tahrir Square on Saturday, as the military-led interim government appeared to soften its demands for special powers and protections in the future Egyptian constitution.
Coming just nine days before the scheduled beginning of parliamentary elections, the clashes were the biggest outbreak of violence here since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in February, and the most violent manifestation yet of the growing anger at the ruling military council.
The clashes began midday Saturday after the police cleared out the last remnants of a large demonstration in Tahrir Square the day before. That demonstration, organized by Islamists but appearing to represent a far broader cross-section of Egyptians, drew tens of thousands of people calling for a swift end to military rule.
The fighting on Saturday began after news circulated that the security forces had moved into the square, the iconic heart of the Egyptian revolution, to force out a few hundred protesters who had spent the night. Hundreds and eventually thousands of other civilians stormed into the square to defend it, setting off battles that spread across downtown Cairo into the night.
Protesters threw rocks at police vehicles, capturing a police truck and passing out handcuffs, hats and other gear found inside. Others smashed the sidewalk into rocks to hurl at the police, and threw Molotov cocktails. Plumes of black smoke from a burning police truck wafted through the white clouds of tear gas.
Retreating riot police officers fired nonlethal weapons from their trucks to try to push back the crowd.
"Police and thugs and thieves," the protesters chanted. Taking aim at Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who leads the ruling military council, they adapted the signature chant of the Arab Spring revolts sweeping the region: "The people want to bring down the field marshal."
"We came because of the field marshal and the military government," said Ahmed Tamer, 37, from the neighborhood of Shubra. "They don't want to turn over power to civilians. The army still has us by the neck and they don't want to let go."
Some bystanders worried that the strife could endanger the elections, now scheduled to begin Nov. 28.
"This is exactly what the army wants," said Mohamed Suleiman, 22, emerging from a government building to find chaos erupting around him. "It is all a plan. I am afraid they will see this now and say the elections are impossible."
Health Ministry officials said Saturday afternoon that at least 168 people were hospitalized. At least one man had been wounded by bird shot to the eye, and medics were seen rushing to treat civilians who appeared to be seriously wounded by tear gas canisters or rubber bullets. There were no reports of fatalities.
The street fight exploded despite signs that the military-led government was taking steps to pull back its attempts to carve out its future role in government. On Saturday, the morning after the large Islamist-dominated protest, the interim government announced that the controversial set of constitutional ground rules they had released was no longer binding, only advisory, including the provisions involving the future role of the military.
The military council, which seized control of the government in the name of the revolution after the ouster of Mr. Mubarak, had initially pledged to turn over power to a civilian government before September. More recently it said it would retain control until after the election of a parliament, ratification of a constitution and election of a president, in 2013 or beyond.
In the last two weeks, the military has explicitly sought to impose a set of ground rules for the new constitution, a "bill of rights" that would also give the military a permanent right to intervene in politics and protection from civilian oversight.
The changes announced Saturday would not only make those provisions advisory, they were also modified to say that the only role of the armed forces was protecting the country and "preserving its unity," rather than the broader assertion of a role guarding "constitutional legitimacy."
Instead of prohibiting scrutiny of the military budget, the practice under Mr. Mubarak's military-backed dictatorship, the revised guidelines say only that the military's special role in national security should be considered when its "technical and budgetary affairs" are discussed.
The revisions, published Saturday by state news media, also explicitly place the military under civilian government, saying that "like other state institutions," it should "abide by the constitutional and legislative regulations."
"The president of the republic is the supreme commander of the armed forces and the Minister of Defense is the general commander of the armed forces," the revised declaration said.
Still though, the military has not agreed to cede power once a parliament is elected, while the constitution is being drafted, nor has it backed away from its right to set procedures or impose new rules for the drafting process.
There was no indication on Saturday whether the modifications had appeased some of the civilian groups opposed to the guidelines, notably the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest Islamist group and the sponsor of a new political party expected to win a major role in the parliamentary elections.
But at the protest Friday, leaders and members of the Brotherhood said they considered any form of ground rules put forward by the military, even if they were only an advisory statement to guide the constitutional convention, to be a manipulation of public opinion and an usurpation of civilian authority.
By nightfall on Saturday, as clashes raged in dispersed pockets of the capital, protesters were seen beating up a man they said was a plainclothes police officer.
But some civilians appeared increasingly confused about what or who they were fighting against.
"The army is the only respectable institution that we have, but the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces are all thugs and thieves," said Ahmed Ibrahim, 28, who said he had been injured by riot police officers during the demonstrations at the start of the revolution nine months ago. "They are all criminals."
But he had not given up, he said. "We are going to liberate our country from all the oppression it suffers from."
"Down with military rule," others chanted. "Freedom, freedom."
Mayy el Sheikh and Dina Amer contributed reporting.
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6) Older, Suburban and Struggling, 'Near Poor' Startle the Census
By JASON DePARLE, ROBERT GEBELOFF and SABRINA TAVERNISE
November 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/19/us/census-measures-those-not-quite-in-poverty-but-struggling.html?hp
WASHINGTON - They drive cars, but seldom new ones. They earn paychecks, but not big ones. Many own homes. Most pay taxes. Half are married, and nearly half live in the suburbs. None are poor, but many describe themselves as barely scraping by.
Down but not quite out, these Americans form a diverse group sometimes called "near poor" and sometimes simply overlooked - and a new count suggests they are far more numerous than previously understood.
When the Census Bureau this month released a new measure of poverty, meant to better count disposable income, it began altering the portrait of national need. Perhaps the most startling differences between the old measure and the new involves data the government has not yet published, showing 51 million people with incomes less than 50 percent above the poverty line. That number of Americans is 76 percent higher than the official account, published in September. All told, that places 100 million people - one in three Americans - either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.
After a lost decade of flat wages and the worst downturn since the Great Depression, the findings can be thought of as putting numbers to the bleak national mood - quantifying the expressions of unease erupting in protests and political swings. They convey levels of economic stress sharply felt but until now hard to measure.
The Census Bureau, which published the poverty data two weeks ago, produced the analysis of those with somewhat higher income at the request of The New York Times. The size of the near-poor population took even the bureau's number crunchers by surprise.
"These numbers are higher than we anticipated," said Trudi J. Renwick, the bureau's chief poverty statistician. "There are more people struggling than the official numbers show."
Outside the bureau, skeptics of the new measure warned that the phrase "near poor" - a common term, but not one the government officially uses - may suggest more hardship than most families in this income level experience. A family of four can fall into this range, adjusted for regional living costs, with an income of up to $25,500 in rural North Dakota or $51,000 in Silicon Valley.
But most economists called the new measure better than the old, and many said the findings, while disturbing, comported with what was previously known about stagnant wages.
"It's very consistent with everything we've been hearing in the last few years about families' struggle, earnings not keeping up for the bottom half," said Sheila Zedlewski, a researcher at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan economic and social research group.
Patched together a half-century ago, the official poverty measure has long been seen as flawed. It ignores hundreds of billions the needy receive in food stamps, tax credits and other programs, and the similarly large sums paid in taxes, medical care and work expenses. The new method, called the Supplemental Poverty Measure, counts all those factors and adjusts for differences in the cost of living, which the official measure ignores.
The results scrambled the picture of poverty in many surprising ways. The measure shows less severe destitution, but a bit more overall poverty; fewer poor children, but more poor people over 65.
Of the 51 million who appear near poor under the fuller measure, nearly 20 percent were lifted up from poverty by benefits the official count overlooks. But more than half were pushed down from higher income levels: more than eight million by taxes, six million by medical expenses, and four million by work expenses like transportation and child care.
Demographically, they look more like "The Brady Bunch" than "The Wire." Half live in households headed by a married couple; 49 percent live in the suburbs. Nearly half are non-Hispanic white, 18 percent are black and 26 percent are Latino.
Perhaps the most surprising finding is that 28 percent work full-time, year round. "These estimates defy the stereotypes of low-income families," Ms. Renwick said.
Among them is Phyllis Pendleton, a social worker with Catholic Charities in Washington, who proudly displays the signs of a hard-won middle-class life. She has one BlackBerry and two cars (both Buicks from the 1990s), and a $230,000 house that she, her husband and two daughters will move into next week.
Combined, she and her husband, a janitor, make about $51,000 a year, more than 200 percent of the official poverty line. But they lose about a fifth to taxes, medical care and transportation to work - giving them a disposable income of about $40,000 a year.
Adjust the poverty threshold, as the new measure does, to $31,000 for the region's high cost of living, and Ms. Pendleton's income is 29 percent above the poverty line. That is to say, she is near poor.
While the phrase is new to her, the struggle it evokes is not.
"Living paycheck to paycheck," is how she describes her survival strategy. "One bad bill will wipe you out."
It took her three years to save $3,000 for the down payment on her house, which she got with subsidies from a nonprofit group, Capital Area Asset Builders. But even after cutting out meals at Red Lobster, movie nights and new clothes, she had to rely on government aid to get health insurance for her daughters, 11 and 13, and she is already worried about college tuition.
"I'm turning over every rock looking for scholarships," she said. "The money's out there, you just have to find it."
The findings, which the Census Bureau plans to release on Monday, have already set off a contentious debate about how to describe such families: struggling, straitened, economically insecure?
Robert Rector, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, rejects the phrase "near poverty," arguing that it conjures levels of dire need like hunger and homelessness experienced by a minority even among those actually poor.
"I don't have any objection to this measure if you use the term 'low-income,' " he said. "But the emotionally charged terms 'poor' or 'near poor' clearly suggest to most people a level of material hardship that doesn't exist. It is deliberately used to mislead people."
Bruce Meyer, an economist at the University of Chicago, warned that the numbers are likely to mask considerable diversity. Some households, especially the elderly, may have considerable savings. (Indeed, nearly one in five of the near poor own their homes mortgage-free.) But others may be getting help with public housing and food stamps.
"I do think this is a better measure, but I wouldn't say that 100 million people are on the edge of starvation or anything close to that," Mr. Meyer said.
But Ms. Zedlewski said the seeming ordinariness of these families is part of the point. "There are a lot of low-income Americans struggling to make ends meet, and we don't pay enough attention to them," she said.
One group likely to gain attention is older Americans. By the official count, only 22 percent of the elderly are either poor or near poor. By the alternate count, the figure rises to 34 percent.
That is still less than the share among children, 39 percent, but it erases about half the gap between the economic fortunes of the young and old recorded in the official count. The likeliest explanation is high medical costs.
Another surprising finding is that only a quarter of the near poor are insured, and 42 percent have private insurance. Indeed, the cost of paying the premiums is part of the previously uncounted expenses they bear.
Belinda Sheppard's finances have been so battered in the past year, she finds herself wondering what storm will come next. Her adult daughter lost her job and moved in. Her adult son does not have one and cannot move out.
That leaves three adults getting by on $46,000 from her daughter's unemployment check and the money Ms. Sheppard makes for a marketing firm, placing products in grocery stores. Take out $7,000 for taxes, transportation and medical care, and they have an income of about 130 percent of the poverty line - not poor, but close.
Ms. Sheppard pays $2,000 in rent and says her employer classifies her as part time to avoid offering her health insurance, even though she works 40 hours a week. Unable to buy it on her own, she crosses her fingers and tries to stay healthy.
"I try to work as many hours as I can, but my salary, it's not enough for everything," she said. "I pay my bills with very small wiggle room. Or none."
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7) Brazil Officials Criticize Chevron Over Oil Spill
By SIMON ROMERO
November 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/19/business/energy-environment/brazil-officials-criticize-chevron-over-oil-spill.html?ref=world
RIO DE JANEIRO - Chevron came under intense scrutiny in Brazil on Friday over an oil spill at an offshore field the company operates, with federal investigators here threatening fines for Chevron and potential prison terms for its officials if they are found guilty of violating environmental contamination laws.
The response to the spill, which Chevron said it was notified of on Nov. 8 and which left an oil sheen near Brazil's southeast coast, is an important test for the authorities as Brazil moves to tap oil from its large recent offshore discoveries. If Brazil meets its ambitious production goals, it may emerge by the 2020s as the world's fourth-largest oil producer after Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States.
While the spill, from an appraisal well in the Campos Basin, is thought to be much smaller than BP's oil spill last year in the Gulf of Mexico and is said by Chevron to have almost dissipated, it also presents an additional challenge for Chevron in Latin America. In nearby Ecuador, Chevron has faced seething resentment and a protracted legal battle over oil contamination in the country's rain forest.
FƔbio Scliar, the head of the environment affairs division of the federal police, flew this week over the area of the spill, where Chevron has said it has 18 vessels controlling and is monitoring the sheen. In an interview on Friday, Mr. Scliar expressed annoyance over Chevron's handling of the spill and its methods of cooperating with Brazilian investigators.
"They've been very resistant about providing information, and they were hesitant about allowing me to land on the platform," Mr. Scliar said. "We had to be rather energetic with them about our requests."
Mr. Scliar said Chevron employees could face prison terms of several years if they were found to be have violated environmental laws. He said he would request testimony next week from several Chevron employees.
Responding to Mr. Scliar's assertions, Kurt Glaubitz, a spokesman for Chevron, said Friday in a statement: "We are working with all appropriate agencies to resolve the issue. We have provided all available resources to manage the situation."
Mr. Glaubitz said that Chevron had "accommodated all requests for information in a timely manner," and that the "situation is largely resolved." He said that Chevron was told by Petrobras, the national oil company and Chevron's partner in the affected area, the Frade field, of the spill on Nov. 8, and that Chevron found oil seeping from the ocean floor the next day.
Several Brazilian government entities monitoring the spill, including the National Petroleum Agency, said Friday in a statement that Chevron had achieved a "substantial reduction" of the oil seepage in recent days.
Mr. Glaubitz said that the volume of the sheen on Friday was estimated at about 18 barrels.
Earlier in the week, Chevron estimated that the spill involved 400 to 650 barrels of oil from its Frade field, in waters about 3,800 deep. (The BP oil spill involved nearly five million barrels.) Mr. Glaubitz said Chevron was planning to conduct an internal investigation, and would cooperate fully with the authorities.
Marina Silva, a former environment minister and presidential candidate, said in a telephone interview that the spill served as a warning as Brazil moved ahead with exceedingly complex projects to produce oil from its "pre-salt" discoveries, beneath waters almost 10,000 feet deep and thick layers of salt, sand and rock.
"This event is a three-dimensional alert to the problems that may occur," Ms. Silva said. "This certainly does not smell good."
Despite Chevron's assertions that the problem was contained, it faced mounting criticism from various other quarters in Brazil. Legislators said they would summon Chevron officials to appear for questioning. And here in Rio, where Brazil's energy industry is largely based around Petrobras, activists from Greenpeace emptied black ink on Friday in front of Chevron's headquarters to protest the spill.
Carlos Minc, the top environmental official for the state of Rio de Janeiro, said the spill was "much bigger" than Chevron's estimates.
Speaking on the Globo television network, Mr. Minc said that the authorities would "demand compensation" for any damage done to fishing or wildlife.
Several Brazilian news media reports referred to information from SkyTruth, an environmental group in the United States that uses satellite images to track oil spills and other accidents. John Amos, the group's president, said he estimated that the spill was perhaps 10 times larger than Chevron's estimates, meaning it extended over about 918 square miles.
Lis Moriconi contributed reporting.
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8) Redefining the Union Boss
"Ms. Pope later found a better-paying job at a warehouse in Cleveland, as a member of the Teamsters. In 1979, when Teamster steel haulers in Canton, Ohio, went on strike, she helped expand that action throughout the Midwest. Before long, she was driving an 18-wheeler, hauling steel from Cleveland to Baltimore. After the birth of her first child, however, she traded her rig for the bargaining table, and began negotiating local contracts. When Ron Carey, a parcel truck driver from Queens, ran on an anticorruption platform and captured the presidency of the Teamsters, a union that had been long notorious for Mafia connections, Ms. Pope became an international representative for the union's warehouse unit. By then, she had settled in Montclair, N.J. Seven years later, Mr. Carey left after he was accused of misusing union funds. (A court later found him not guilty.) Ms. Pope then joined Teamsters Local 805 in Queens. There, she ran against its incumbent president and won, becoming the head of the 1,100-member local in 2005."
By KATHLEEN SHARP
November 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/business/women-are-becoming-unions-new-voices.html?ref=business
NOT long ago, truckers pulled off highways across America and tuned in to someone whose CB handle was "Troublemaker."
"I'm barely hanging on," one driver lamented. His employer, the U.P.S. freight unit, was turning to nonunion drivers - people outside the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, he said.
"We need to start enforcing our contracts!" Troublemaker replied.
Troublemaker, better known as Sandy Pope, is the first woman to run for the presidency of the Teamsters, against the powerful, three-term incumbent, James P. Hoffa.
Yes, Hoffa.
Odds are that Ms. Pope will lose - final results are due today. But whatever the outcome, Ms. Pope represents a new face of labor, one that increasingly is female. In this "We are the 99 percent" moment, when corporate profits are up and wages flat, a handful of women are challenging the old, mostly male world of union bosses.
Unions, of course, have been in retreat for years. But Ms. Pope and several other women, notably Rose Ann DeMoro, of National Nurses United, and Mary Kay Henry, of the Service Employees International Union, are pushing back. Their ascendance has rekindled hope that organized labor maybe, just maybe, could stage a comeback. They have also helped inspire the likes of Occupy Wall Street.
"Some of these women might even make unions relevant to the average American again," said Steve Early, a labor journalist, union organizer and author of "The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor."
That, anyway, is labor's hope. All three women are pushing the old boundaries, and some are engaging traditional foes like anti-union managers and Republicans in Washington and beyond.
From Big Rig to Bargaining
Ms. Pope is an unlikely firebrand. Her father was an investment banker, and she grew up in comfortable surroundings in a Boston suburb. But then she dropped out of Hampshire College and ended up working for minimum wage as an attendant at a psychiatric hospital. When co-workers groused about wages, she organized a strike - and won.
"I saw how empowered people felt when they had control over their lives," she recalled.
Ms. Pope later found a better-paying job at a warehouse in Cleveland, as a member of the Teamsters. In 1979, when Teamster steel haulers in Canton, Ohio, went on strike, she helped expand that action throughout the Midwest. Before long, she was driving an 18-wheeler, hauling steel from Cleveland to Baltimore. After the birth of her first child, however, she traded her rig for the bargaining table, and began negotiating local contracts. When Ron Carey, a parcel truck driver from Queens, ran on an anticorruption platform and captured the presidency of the Teamsters, a union that had been long notorious for Mafia connections, Ms. Pope became an international representative for the union's warehouse unit. By then, she had settled in Montclair, N.J.
Seven years later, Mr. Carey left after he was accused of misusing union funds. (A court later found him not guilty.) Ms. Pope then joined Teamsters Local 805 in Queens. There, she ran against its incumbent president and won, becoming the head of the 1,100-member local in 2005.
When Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York tried to convert shipping piers in Red Hook, Brooklyn, into luxury residences and tourist attractions, Ms. Pope called on other unions, neighborhood groups and local leaders to try to block the move. At stake, she said, were hundreds of midwage, non-Teamster jobs. After three years, New York City abandoned the plan.
"We're small, but we fight big," she said.
Today, Ms. Pope, still president of Local 805, is worried about the future of freight truckers, once the source of the Teamsters' power. Much of her ire is directed at U.P.S. When the stock market tumbled in 2008, the workers' pension funds became underfunded. On top of that, truckers say, they must now work faster and harder just to keep standing still in terms of wages and benefits.
"Workers are getting killed on productivity standards, and they're terrified to speak out," Ms. Pope said.
She worries that her grown daughter can't afford health care, and that her college-age son may not find a full-time job with benefits. "We're supposed to leave our kids a better world than the one we've been born into, but so far we haven't," she said.
If she somehow manages to win the national election, she said, she will fight for all working people. And if she loses? "I'll keep doing the same."
Confronting Schwarzenegger
When Rose Ann DeMoro speaks, her voice sounds like a burbling faucet. Ms. DeMoro, 61, is executive director of National Nurses United, a 170,000-member union that she runs with dramatic flair.
Born in St. Louis, Ms. DeMoro married her high-school sweetheart, moved to California and raised two children. She left college to organize supermarket cashiers and was the first female organizer for the Western Conference of Teamsters. In 1986, she was offered a collective bargaining position at the California Nurses Association - though she had never been a nurse.
At the time, California had fewer registered nurses per patient than most any other state. Night-shift nurses in some hospitals cared for as many as 12 patients at a time, and some bedridden patients would actually dial "911" to seek help. In 2004, California passed a law requiring hospitals to have at least one nurse for every five patients. Arnold Schwarzenegger, then governor, delayed implementing part of that law, and at a conference nurses unfurled a protest banner during his speech. The governor told the crowd to pay no attention to special interests.
"I am always kicking their butts," he said.
Ms. DeMoro pounced. She said the governor's comment was "an affront to women everywhere." Her union hounded the governor, going so far as to throw a New Orleans-style funeral in Sacramento for the concept of patient care.
After much back-and-forth, the law went into effect.
Greg Roth, a former manager in the California Department of Health Services, dealt with Ms. DeMoro during some contentious legislative hearings. He said she "is effective, but I didn't feel as if the union showed appropriate respect for the process or for the rights of other people to be heard."
In more recent years, Ms. DeMoro has helped organize local unions in Texas, Florida and elsewhere, joining forces with other nurse unions to create the national group.
"Rose Ann is not small fry," said Mark Brenner, editor of Labor Notes, a nonprofit project that promotes unions through its magazine and Web site. "The nurses are more in sync with people than most any other group."
Among other things, Ms. DeMoro has started a movement called "Heal America, Tax Wall Street." Her union wants a 0.5 percent tax on stock trades and credit swaps, similar to those levied in 15 other countries. Such a tax might raise as much as $350 billion a year for health, education and jobs programs.
Critics are vocal, saying such a tax would discourage trading profits, but Ms. DeMoro dismisses them. "We pay sales taxes every day, and so should Wall Street," she said.
To drive home that point, she and 1,000 red-shirted R.N.'s streamed onto Wall Street on June 22 to promote the tax and to protest what they saw as corporate welfare. Two months later, thousands of nurses visited 60 Congressional offices in 21 states, urging support for the Wall Street tax. The nurses also drew media attention by staging a mock news conference with a 10-foot tall puppet that looked a lot like Representative Michele Bachmann, the presidential candidate, and chasing adult-size chipmunks who lugged big acorns to their Wall Street "nests."
The nurses' approach has inspired Occupy Wall Street. "The nurses certainly set an example for us," said Andy Pollack, a committee member of that group in Manhattan. Occupy Wall Street protesters have marched with other unions, "but the nurses go beyond their own contract issues and try to tackle the root of the problem," he said.
Ms. DeMoro also recently led nurses from four continents to a Group of 20 meeting in Cannes, France, to lobby for a financial transactions tax in other nations as well.
Wooing the Politicians
Mary Kay Henry, the first woman to lead the two-million-member S.E.I.U., speaks in the measured tones of a diplomat - a tone she adopted early on.
She grew up in a suburb of Detroit, the eldest daughter in a family of 10. She studied labor relations at Michigan State University and joined the union as a researcher out of college. While rising to the top, she coordinated nursing strikes in Kaiser Permanente hospitals in San Francisco and helped R.N.'s in Seattle negotiate with their employers.
In 1995, after the union's president, John Sweeney, resigned to lead the A.F.L.-C.I.O., Ms. Henry was elected to the S.E.I.U.'s executive board. Mr. Sweeney's successor, Andrew Stern, named her as his assistant in organizing.
Mr. Stern's tenure was not without controversy. Some critics, like Mr. Early, the labor historian, say he did not do enough to look after workers. (Mr. Stern has repeatedly said he has always tried to put workers first.)
In 2005, he led several unions and six million workers out of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., explaining that the old federation had become complacent. He then had a dispute with Unite Here, an organization for hotel, restaurant and garment workers that had split into two factions, as well as with another union.
"It got ugly, and Mary Kay was part of that episode," said Mr. Brenner, the Labor Notes editor, and another Stern critic. At one union meeting in Walnut Creek, Calif., Ms. Henry called police to try and eject a dissident union member, but the officers left without doing so, Mr. Early wrote in "The Civil Wars."
Ms. Henry was loyal to Mr. Stern, whose successes included increasing the S.E.I.U.'s membership by 1.2 million, and helping to elevate workers, from janitors to home health workers, into decent-paying jobs. He became a political force by helping to funnel $70 million into Democratic campaigns during 2008. When he retired 18 months ago, he backed a top lieutenant, Anna Burger, to succeed him.
But S.E.I.U. members had apparently grown weary of the union's approach. After Ms. Henry stepped forward, Ms. Burger withdrew. In 2010, Ms. Henry was elected president, and vowed to "heal" the S.E.I.U.
And now? "We're on fire," she said. She is spending to help locals organize workers in banks, grocery stores and biotech companies and to reach independent contractors.
"We're concentrating on helping those who have no voice at work," Ms. Henry said. And she is courting politicians - and not only Democrats, labor's traditional allies. "We want the G.O.P. members of Congress to focus on ways out of the economic recession," she said. "So many Republicans leaders are cutting expenses by cutting social services, and that hurts all workers." About 30 percent of S.E.I.U. members vote Republican, and an additional 20 percent are independent.
In California, the S.E.I.U. has honed its strategy to an art. It recently started a political action committee aimed at helping to elect moderate Republicans in G.O.P. strongholds there next year - evidence, if more were needed, that unions like the S.E.I.U. will play a role in the 2012 elections.
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9) Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi
Posted on November 19, 2011 by crank
18 November 2011
http://bicyclebarricade.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/open-letter-to-chancellor-linda-p-b-katehi/
Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi:
Linda P.B. Katehi,
I am a junior faculty member at UC Davis. I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, and I teach in the Program in Critical Theory and in Science & Technology Studies. I have a strong record of research, teaching, and service. I am currently a Board Member of the Davis Faculty Association. I have also taken an active role in supporting the student movement to defend public education on our campus and throughout the UC system. In a word: I am the sort of young faculty member, like many of my colleagues, this campus needs. I am an asset to the University of California at Davis.
You are not.
I write to you and to my colleagues for three reasons:
1) to express my outrage at the police brutality which occurred against students engaged in peaceful protest on the UC Davis campus today
2) to hold you accountable for this police brutality
3) to demand your immediate resignation
Today you ordered police onto our campus to clear student protesters from the quad. These were protesters who participated in a rally speaking out against tuition increases and police brutality on UC campuses on Tuesday-a rally that I organized, and which was endorsed by the Davis Faculty Association. These students attended that rally in response to a call for solidarity from students and faculty who were bludgeoned with batons, hospitalized, and arrested at UC Berkeley last week. In the highest tradition of non-violent civil disobedience, those protesters had linked arms and held their ground in defense of tents they set up beside Sproul Hall. In a gesture of solidarity with those students and faculty, and in solidarity with the national Occupy movement, students at UC Davis set up tents on the main quad. When you ordered police outfitted with riot helmets, brandishing batons and teargas guns to remove their tents today, those students sat down on the ground in a circle and linked arms to protect them.
What happened next?
Without any provocation whatsoever, other than the bodies of these students sitting where they were on the ground, with their arms linked, police pepper-sprayed students. Students remained on the ground, now writhing in pain, with their arms linked.
What happened next?
Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.
This is what happened. You are responsible for it.
You are responsible for it because this is what happens when UC Chancellors order police onto our campuses to disperse peaceful protesters through the use of force: students get hurt. Faculty get hurt. One of the most inspiring things (inspiring for those of us who care about students who assert their rights to free speech and peaceful assembly) about the demonstration in Berkeley on November 9 is that UC Berkeley faculty stood together with students, their arms linked together. Associate Professor of English Celeste Langan was grabbed by her hair, thrown on the ground, and arrested. Associate Professor Geoffrey O'Brien was injured by baton blows. Professor Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner, was also struck with a baton. These faculty stood together with students in solidarity, and they too were beaten and arrested by the police. In writing this letter, I stand together with those faculty and with the students they supported.
One week after this happened at UC Berkeley, you ordered police to clear tents from the quad at UC Davis. When students responded in the same way-linking arms and holding their ground-police also responded in the same way: with violent force. The fact is: the administration of UC campuses systematically uses police brutality to terrorize students and faculty, to crush political dissent on our campuses, and to suppress free speech and peaceful assembly. Many people know this. Many more people are learning it very quickly.
You are responsible for the police violence directed against students on the UC Davis quad on November 18, 2011. As I said, I am writing to hold you responsible and to demand your immediate resignation on these grounds.
On Wednesday November 16, you issued a letter by email to the campus community. In this letter, you discussed a hate crime which occurred at UC Davis on Sunday November 13. In this letter, you express concern about the safety of our students. You write, "it is particularly disturbing that such an act of intolerance should occur at a time when the campus community is working to create a safe and inviting space for all our students." You write, "while these are turbulent economic times, as a campus community, we must all be committed to a safe, welcoming environment that advances our efforts to diversity and excellence at UC Davis."
I will leave it to my colleagues and every reader of this letter to decide what poses a greater threat to "a safe and inviting space for all our students" or "a safe, welcoming environment" at UC Davis: 1) Setting up tents on the quad in solidarity with faculty and students brutalized by police at UC Berkeley? or 2) Sending in riot police to disperse students with batons, pepper-spray, and tear-gas guns, while those students sit peacefully on the ground with their arms linked? Is this what you have in mind when you refer to creating "a safe and inviting space?" Is this what you have in mind when you express commitment to "a safe, welcoming environment?"
I am writing to tell you in no uncertain terms that there must be space for protest on our campus. There must be space for political dissent on our campus. There must be space for civil disobedience on our campus. There must be space for students to assert their right to decide on the form of their protest, their dissent, and their civil disobedience-including the simple act of setting up tents in solidarity with other students who have done so. There must be space for protest and dissent, especially, when the object of protest and dissent is police brutality itself. You may not order police to forcefully disperse student protesters peacefully protesting police brutality. You may not do so. It is not an option available to you as the Chancellor of a UC campus. That is why I am calling for your immediate resignation.
Your words express concern for the safety of our students. Your actions express no concern whatsoever for the safety of our students. I deduce from this discrepancy that you are not, in fact, concerned about the safety of our students. Your actions directly threaten the safety of our students. And I want you to know that this is clear. It is clear to anyone who reads your campus emails concerning our "Principles of Community" and who also takes the time to inform themselves about your actions. You should bear in mind that when you send emails to the UC Davis community, you address a body of faculty and students who are well trained to see through rhetoric that evinces care for students while implicitly threatening them. I see through your rhetoric very clearly. You also write to a campus community that knows how to speak truth to power. That is what I am doing.
I call for your resignation because you are unfit to do your job. You are unfit to ensure the safety of students at UC Davis. In fact: you are the primary threat to the safety of students at UC Davis. As such, I call upon you to resign immediately.
Sincerely,
Nathan Brown
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Program in Critical Theory
University of California at Davis
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10) Poet-Bashing Police
By ROBERT HASS
Berkeley, Calif.
November 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinion/sunday/at-occupy-berkeley-beat-poets-has-new-meaning.html?scp=1&sq=Poet-Bashing%20Police%20By%20ROBERT%20HASS&st=cse
LIFE, I found myself thinking as a line of Alameda County deputy sheriffs in Darth Vader riot gear formed a cordon in front of me on a recent night on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, is full of strange contingencies. The deputy sheriffs, all white men, except for one young woman, perhaps Filipino, who was trying to look severe but looked terrified, had black truncheons in their gloved hands that reporters later called batons and that were known, in the movies of my childhood, as billy clubs.
The first contingency that came to mind was the quick spread of the Occupy movement. The idea of occupying public space was so appealing that people in almost every large city in the country had begun to stake them out, including students at Berkeley, who, on that November night, occupied the public space in front of Sproul Hall, a gray granite Beaux-Arts edifice that houses the registrar's offices and, in the basement, the campus police department.
It is also the place where students almost 50 years ago touched off the Free Speech Movement, which transformed the life of American universities by guaranteeing students freedom of speech and self-governance. The steps are named for Mario Savio, the eloquent graduate student who was the symbolic face of the movement. There is even a Free Speech Movement Cafe on campus where some of Mr. Savio's words are prominently displayed: "There is a time ... when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part."
Earlier that day a colleague had written to say that the campus police had moved in to take down the Occupy tents and that students had been "beaten viciously." I didn't believe it. In broad daylight? And without provocation? So when we heard that the police had returned, my wife, Brenda Hillman, and I hurried to the campus. I wanted to see what was going to happen and how the police behaved, and how the students behaved. If there was trouble, we wanted to be there to do what we could to protect the students.
Once the cordon formed, the deputy sheriffs pointed their truncheons toward the crowd. It looked like the oldest of military maneuvers, a phalanx out of the Trojan War, but with billy clubs instead of spears. The students were wearing scarves for the first time that year, their cheeks rosy with the first bite of real cold after the long Californian Indian summer. The billy clubs were about the size of a boy's Little League baseball bat. My wife was speaking to the young deputies about the importance of nonviolence and explaining why they should be at home reading to their children, when one of the deputies reached out, shoved my wife in the chest and knocked her down.
Another of the contingencies that came to my mind was a moment 30 years ago when Ronald Reagan's administration made it a priority to see to it that people like themselves, the talented, hardworking people who ran the country, got to keep the money they earned. Roosevelt's New Deal had to be undealt once and for all. A few years earlier, California voters had passed an amendment freezing the property taxes that finance public education and installing a rule that required a two-thirds majority in both houses of the Legislature to raise tax revenues. My father-in-law said to me at the time, "It's going to take them 50 years to really see the damage they've done." But it took far fewer than 50 years.
My wife bounced nimbly to her feet. I tripped and almost fell over her trying to help her up, and at that moment the deputies in the cordon surged forward and, using their clubs as battering rams, began to hammer at the bodies of the line of students. It was stunning to see. They swung hard into their chests and bellies. Particularly shocking to me - it must be a generational reaction - was that they assaulted both the young men and the young women with the same indiscriminate force. If the students turned away, they pounded their ribs. If they turned further away to escape, they hit them on their spines.
NONE of the police officers invited us to disperse or gave any warning. We couldn't have dispersed if we'd wanted to because the crowd behind us was pushing forward to see what was going on. The descriptor for what I tried to do is "remonstrate." I screamed at the deputy who had knocked down my wife, "You just knocked down my wife, for Christ's sake!" A couple of students had pushed forward in the excitement and the deputies grabbed them, pulled them to the ground and cudgeled them, raising the clubs above their heads and swinging. The line surged. I got whacked hard in the ribs twice and once across the forearm. Some of the deputies used their truncheons as bars and seemed to be trying to use minimum force to get people to move. And then, suddenly, they stopped, on some signal, and reformed their line. Apparently a group of deputies had beaten their way to the Occupy tents and taken them down. They stood, again immobile, clubs held across their chests, eyes carefully meeting no one's eyes, faces impassive. I imagined that their adrenaline was surging as much as mine.
My ribs didn't hurt very badly until the next day and then it hurt to laugh, so I skipped the gym for a couple of mornings, and I was a little disappointed that the bruises weren't slightly more dramatic. It argued either for a kind of restraint or a kind of low cunning in the training of the police. They had hit me hard enough so that I was sore for days, but not hard enough to leave much of a mark. I wasn't so badly off. One of my colleagues, also a poet, Geoffrey O'Brien, had a broken rib. Another colleague, Celeste Langan, a Wordsworth scholar, got dragged across the grass by her hair when she presented herself for arrest.
I won't recite the statistics, but the entire university system in California is under great stress and the State Legislature is paralyzed by a minority of legislators whose only idea is that they don't want to pay one more cent in taxes. Meanwhile, students at Berkeley are graduating with an average indebtedness of something like $16,000. It is no wonder that the real estate industry started inventing loans for people who couldn't pay them back.
"Whose university?" the students had chanted. Well, it is theirs, and it ought to be everyone else's in California. It also belongs to the future, and to the dead who paid taxes to build one of the greatest systems of public education in the world.
The next night the students put the tents back up. Students filled the plaza again with a festive atmosphere. And lots of signs. (The one from the English Department contingent read "Beat Poets, not beat poets.") A week later, at 3:30 a.m., the police officers returned in force, a hundred of them, and told the campers to leave or they would be arrested. All but two moved. The two who stayed were arrested, and the tents were removed. On Thursday afternoon when I returned toward sundown to the steps to see how the students had responded, the air was full of balloons, helium balloons to which tents had been attached, and attached to the tents was kite string. And they hovered over the plaza, large and awkward, almost lyrical, occupying the air.
Robert Hass is a professor of poetry and poetics at the University of California, Berkeley, and former poet laureate of the United States.
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11) Oakland Occupy Takes New Site...
By Chris Kinder
November 20, 2011
Via Email
OAKLAND, late night, Saturday 19 November 2011 -- It seemed so easy, maybe too easy. Oakland Occupy protestors marched to a new site at 19th and Telegraph, tore down a fence and began setting up tents for a new encampment tonight. Police quickly melted away as the fence came down, leaving the occupiers to rock away to hip hop blasted from a sound truck, as they settled in for the night despite a cold snap and a maddening drizzle.
Earlier on this same day at UC Davis, police brutally and repeatedly pepper-sprayed non-resisting protestors in an action captured on mainstream TV. Even the Chancellor of the university was forced to demand an "investigation." And we say to the Chancellor: Resign Now!
Flyers handed out at the rally and march announced the next big action, a shutdown of the Port of Oakland, set for December 12th, 2011, in solidarity with longshore workers in Longview, WA. Longshore workers there face a union-bsting drive by a huge conglomerate grain exporter called EGT. The Oakland Occupy, which has already experienced the solidarity of longshore workers, is committed to the kind of support that was shown on November 2nd, when Middle Harbor Road was filled with 30,000 or more to shut down the port on the day of the "general strike."
Today's Scene In Oakland Seemed Almost Bizarre...
The scene in Oakland seemed almost bizarre as we marched up Telegraph Avenue, perhaps 5,000 strong, and arrived at the city-owned vacant lot (with a small city park at one end) which was the new target of the occupiers. As we approached, there were maybe 50 cops or so surrounding this large, fenced-in lot. They were standing a few feet apart like sentries, in regular uniforms, not riot gear, and facing this huge crowd. What were they thinking?
The march wrapped around the park like a snake closing in on its prey, and then the fence started to come down, first at one spot, and then another, the latter right in front of me. I looked up and noticed the cops had disappeared. Soon, the lot was filled with dancing, celebrating occupiers. Then, just across the street, there were the cops, huddling in doorways, trying to stay out of the rain.
Only this morning, Mayor Jean Quan had issued a statement in which she said in no uncertain terms that, "...overnight lodging in any park or other public space will not be allowed." News reports indicated that the police had a plan to prevent any new occupy. But then tonight, news reports said that "city administrators" had instructed the police to avoid confrontations with protestors! Hello?
OK, so I went and figured. Jean Quan is trying to have it both ways, siding with the left, which she once was a part of, and doing her job as mayor of a city, which requires that she crackdown on leftists. This can go on only so long. We'll expect a new attack on Quan from the right, and a new attack on the Oakland Occupy encampment, sometime this coming week.
The Occupies... How Long Can They Last?
As for the occupies? They can go on for only so long as well. How long can a movement that has no power to physically defy the capitalist state power continue trying to reestablish the commons of olde? Attacks on the local occupies are coordinated all the way up to Obama's Justice Department. The occupy movement has got to move forward if it is to survive.
One way to move forward is to go into mass anti-eviction defense, and mass anti-foreclosure defense: put families back in their homes now, with mass action! If the sheriff's department comes to throw the tenants or homeowners out, mobilize again to put them back in! This is the pattern established in the great Depression of the 1930s by young communists. This Occupy movement today has the Ć©lan and the numbers to replicate this. But does it have the will, and the organization? That remains to be seen.
The march today was spectacular. From 14th and Broadway at 3 PM, down to Grand Avenue next to the Grand Lake Theater and the Lakeshore Elementary School, we marched, in the streets the whole way, 5,000 + strong. The march stopped opposite Lakeshore Elementary, which is one of the schools slated to by shut down at the end of this year. We held a teacher & parent-led rally for 40 minutes. Students held a "musical chairs" skit, in which schools slated to be cancelled were removed one by one, when the music stopped. Following this, we marched back to downtown, and on to the new Occupy at 19th and Telegraph.
The "music" is stopping now as the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) bureaucracy caves in to the demands of debts to the big banks. The OUSD board twiddled their thumbs and consulted their watches as hundreds of teachers, students and community members testified against school closures, in a recent hearing.
The great spirit of marches such as today's can't last, unfortunately. The movement needs to transform into a revolutionary struggle with a program to overthrow capitalism. This will involve demands such as: Free public education for all! Free Health Care for All! End the Imperialist Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan! Jobs For Alll with a Shorter Workweek At No Loss In Pay! Expropriate the Banks and Financial Institutions! No Compensation! How to accomplish this? This is an ongoing discussion.
-- Comradely greetings, Chris K
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12) UC Davis Police Violence Adds Fuel to Fire
By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
19 November 11
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/8485-uc-davis-police-violence-adds-fuel-to-fire
UC Davis Protestors Pepper Sprayed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4&feature=player_embedded
Police PEPPER SPRAY UC Davis STUDENT PROTESTERS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuWEx6Cfn-I&feature=player_embedded
Police pepper spraying and arresting students at UC Davis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmJmmnMkuEM&feature=player_embedded
In response to the crackdown on Occupy Wall Street and the pepper-spraying of an 89-year-old woman in Seattle I wrote, "Fanning the Flames of the Revolution." Quite simply, I argued that each violent crackdown by the police against non-violent protesters does little more than "fan the flames" of Occupy protests and, in many cases, adds fuel to the fire of the Occupy movement.
It happened again on Friday afternoon.
This time the scene of the crime was the University of California, Davis. Police once again sprayed fuel on the fire in the form of pepper spray, and lots of it. The target? Students sitting peacefully with arms interlocked on the University's quad. Some were positioned across a pedestrian walkway. It is wide enough for small utility vehicles, but is clearly not a roadway open to traffic.
The students had gathered around an area that had earlier housed their tents. What an ominous threat to the community! Beware of students protesting in the quad instead of throwing a kegger party in a dorm!
The police had already removed the tents. All that remained of Occupy Davis was a banner hanging from a tree that read "Save Public Education." How dare they call for such a radical agenda on a campus in the California University system? The students sitting across the campus walkway chanted the subversive line: "Don't shoot students." How is this a threat to riot-clad police?
Perhaps the really subversive, supposedly "threatening," act was in the simple interlocking of their arms.
Last week The San Francisco Chronicle quoted UC Berkley Police Capt. Margo Bennett:
"The individuals who linked arms and actively resisted, that in itself is an act of violence. I understand that many students may not think that, but linking arms in a human chain when ordered to step aside is not a nonviolent protest."
In fact, Captain Bennett thought that it was okay to use batons to push back the Berkeley crowd, so we shouldn't be surprised that the UC Davis police took it one step further and used pepper-spray to pry apart those threatening arms.
In Berkeley and in Davis, the goal was to break up Occupy encampments. In Berkeley, the police were trying to get to tents. In Davis, the tents were already gone. In both cases one wonders what exactly is so threatening about students camping on the quad? What is so "violent" about sitting with arms joined together?
Wait ... they might just learn something! But it's a lesson plan not approved by the Board of Regents.
Apparently, it would be better to force them back into their frat houses and sorority houses so they can get drunk before returning to their corporate-funded classrooms on Monday morning. We can't have them learning about the effects of corporate greed all weekend, out in the open air of the campus commons. That must be why they moved in at 5pm on a Friday afternoon. What would the town pubs do if the students were camping on the quad instead of doing shots 'til they passed out?
All kidding aside, the scary thing is some of my sarcasm is probably not far from the truth. But the real effect of Friday's police action at UC Davis is that this coming Monday at noon the students will be back, likely in much larger numbers. The pepper-spray fired by the police on Friday further fanned the flames of the revolution. When will they learn the relationship between cause and effect?
Watch the end of this video if you have any doubts about the outcome.
Scott Galindez is the Political Director of Reader Supported News, and the co-founder of Truthout.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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13) Officers Put on Leave After Pepper Spraying Protesters
By BRIAN STELTER
November 20, 2011, 2:58 pm
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/officers-put-on-leave-after-pepper-spraying-protesters/?scp=1&sq=Officers%20Put%20On%20Leave%20After%20Pepper&st=cse
UC Davis Chancellor Katehi walks to her car
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CZ0t9ez_EGI#!
The University of California, Davis, said on Sunday that two police officers had been placed on administrative leave after using pepper spray on seated protesters in a widely recorded encounter on Friday afternoon.
Reflecting widespread anger over the police behavior, the university chancellor, Linda P.B. Katehi, said Sunday that she would insist that the investigation be completed in 30 days. A day earlier, she had said it would take 90 days.
Meanwhile, students and others affiliated with the Occupy U.C. Davis movement planned for a Monday-afternoon protest on campus. AFacebook page for the protest asked attendees to call for Ms. Katehi’s resignation and to “show solidarity and support to the students who were beaten and sprayed by U.C. Davis police in riot gear.”
The Facebook page also promoted a way for sympathizers to donate tents and pizza for the rally. The Amazon.com page set up for donations indicated that more than 70 tents had already been donated by Sunday morning.
The use of pepper spray came after students and other protesters set up tents on campus, an occupation tactic that has been used in cities and towns across the country. As police officers took down the tents, some protesters linked arms and refused to stand up from a sidewalk on the campus quad, even when police officers tried to pick them up to arrest them.
In one of the many YouTube videos of the spraying, bystanders chant, “Don’t shoot students” before an officer shakes a red pepper spray canister and sprays a line of the protesters with orange-tinted pepper spray. The protesters’ faces and clothes are quickly covered in the pepper spray. Some protesters are heard screaming and crying as they are arrested. One bystander is heard screaming: “These are children. These are children.”
Eleven protesters were treated after being pepper-sprayed. Two were sent to the hospital. Ten protesters were arrested, cited and released on misdemeanor charges of unlawful assembly and failure to disperse, according to the university.
After the episode, a police official suggested that the police officers felt threatened and encircled by the protesters. The videos, however, do not show evidence of threats.
The University said Sunday in a statement that two police officers had been “suspended,” but the university later clarified that the officers had been placed on administrative leave with pay pending the investigation, a common procedure in cases like this one.
The university did not identify the two officers, but they were well known to students on the campus. The home and cellphone numbers for one officer was widely distributed on the Web, and that officer’s voicemail box was full by midday Saturday.
The university said that it had been flooded with comments, as well.
Reached by telephone on Sunday, Mitchel Benson, the associate vice chancellor for university communications, said, “We’ve been inundated with people sending messages.” He added, “It literally brought down our servers.”
In her statement on Sunday, Ms. Katehi said: “I spoke with students this weekend, and I feel their outrage. I have also heard from an overwhelming number of students, faculty, staff and alumni from around the country. I am deeply saddened that this happened on our campus, and as chancellor, I take full responsibility for the incident. However, I pledge to take the actions needed to ensure that this does not happen again.”
She also said: “These past few days our campus has been confronted with serious questions, which will challenge us for many months and years to come. We have created great universities which are challenged in their capacity to accommodate our human needs of expression, anger, frustration and even civil disobedience together with the need to feel safe. We need to find a way to change that while at the same time remaining true to our mission of teaching, research and service. We need to think hard and together on how to accomplish this.”
Ms. Katehi held a news conference on Saturday afternoon where she resisted calls for her resignation. Students and other protesters gathered outside the news conference location, and for a time afterward she did not come out of the building. The protesters decided to clear a pathway for her to exit; they sat down and watched in silence as she walked to her car.
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