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B. ARTICLES IN FULL
1) Looking back at Labor Day's turbulent origins
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1) Looking back at Labor Day's turbulent origins
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2) New Evidence of State Misconduct in False Conviction of Lorenzo Johnson
Please Contribute to the Campaign
to Free Lorenzo Johnson!
Sign Lorenzo's Freedom Petition
www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org
Identifiable Fingerprints Found at the Scene –
And Hidden for 19 Years.
Main Witness, Carla Brown, Was A Police Suspect –But This was Hidden from the Defense.
The Prosecution Told The Jury That Brown Had
“No Motive To Lie.”
A Second Supplemental Petition was filed in Dauphin County, Pa Court of Common Pleas to reverse and vacate Lorenzo Johnson’s conviction for the 1995 murder of Tarajay Williams in Harrisburg, Pa. This is the third petition filed in a year with new evidence of Johnson’s innocence and police and prosecutorial misconduct in convicting him. A growing international campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson submitted petitions and letters and protested at the office of the Attorney General demanding his immediate release from prison.
On June 13, Eight Pages of police records were finally released by the Harrisburg Police Department to Johnson’s attorney. As Lorenzo Johnson said in an August 22, 2014 interview with Fox 43 investigative reporter Michael Hyland, “It was mind blowing. I knew this was something important that would help show my innocence because they withheld this for 19½ years.”
These Eight Pages contain police summary statements that identifiable fingerprints were found at the scene and listed the names of four suspects. This is evidence not turned over before the trial of Lorenzo Johnson and his co-defendant Corey Walker, evidence of innocence.
No fingerprints were presented at trial. No physical evidence of any sort was presented to support the prosecution. In fact defense counsel were told that no fingerprints were found. This is more proof of Johnson’s innocence and the lack of integrity of the prosecution.
The Eight Pages show that the main prosecution witness, Carla Brown, was identified by police as a suspect. This fact was never disclosed to the defense. Three other people were also listed as suspects, confirming the eyewitness accounts of others, whose affidavits are part of the newly discovered evidence submitted to court this past year. There is no record of any police investigation of these men. And there is no information why the police went from identifying Carla Brown as a suspect in the murder of Tarajay Williams to becoming the main trial witness against Lorenzo Johnson and his co-defendant Corey Walker. In his trial summation, assistant Attorney General Christopher Abruzzo, told the jury that there was no reason not to believe Carla Brown, who had admitted on the stand she was very high on crack the night of the murder. AG Abruzzo told the jury several times that Carla Brown had “no motive to lie,” while keeping silent that she was first a suspect in the murder.
This Second Supplemental Petition also contained two new witness affidavits that Lorenzo Johnson was not in Harrisburg at the time Tarajay Williams was murdered. One of those affidavits came from David Hairston who refused to appear as an alibi witness for Johnson because of police lies to him.
In the past year, beginning with the PCRA Petition filed on August 8, 2013, Lorenzo Johnson has submitted new evidence from fourteen civilian witnesses who provide factual evidence of his innocence. An affidavit from an investigating detective is evidence that the main witness Carla Brown was “worked over” by detectives for weeks until she “told the truth.” Reports of those interviews have still not been released to the defense. Brown’s trial testimony was false, and that falsity was known to the prosecution.
Yet more affidavits, submitted in the First Supplemental Petition, establish the corruption of the investigation with the disclosure that the lead detective, Kevin Duffin, was the god-brother of the motive witness, Victoria Doubs. This fact was never disclosed to the defense. Additionally, at trial Doubs lied when asked if she had been given a deal in a robbery case—where she faced a minimum five years imprisonment— for her testimony against Johnson and co-defendant. The Attorney General did not correct her false statement of “no deal”.
Last December 2013, Pa Attorney General Kathleen Kane said she was “interested in justice” and would examine the new evidence of Lorenzo Johnson’s innocence and false conviction. There are now sixteen new witness statements and proof of corruption in the investigation. Yet the Attorney General’s office recently asked for and has been granted yet another 60-day continuation of its investigation.
As Lorenzo Johnson said in the Fox 43 interview, “I have to ask myself is this investigation being done in good faith or being done in bad faith? It they continue pursuing the case, it’s a long, long malicious prosecution. From day one, December 15, 1995, I’ve been saying I’m innocent. If everything is being done in good faith they should grant me a new trial right now, and let’s go back and right this wrong.”
In this case the wrong has been done to three families who are torn apart by these false convictions: The family of Tarajay Williams who was murdered and the real killer was never persued and prosecuted; and the Lorenzo Johnson and Corey Walker families. Lorenzo Johnson and Corey Walker can't be part of their families as sons, brothers and fathers and husbands because they are in prison for life and are innocent.
Lorenzo Johnson will not stop fighting for vindication and his freedom. His fight is for Every Innocent Prisoner. Read Lorenzo’s commentary, “After two years: the war for freedom."
Please Contribute to the Campaign
to Free Lorenzo Johnson!
Sign Lorenzo's Freedom Petition
www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org
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3) Call for Peace Ahead of Funeral for Michael Brown
ST. LOUIS — Lines of people waiting to get into the funeral of Michael Brown, the unarmed African-American teenager shot by a white police officer more than two weeks ago, stretched around the block in oppressive heat as mourners came to pay their respects at the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church.
On Sunday, the family of Mr. Brown had asked for quiet during the funeral, which is expected to draw thousands of people including an array of national, community and political leaders and about 500 members of Mr. Brown’s extended family. The fatal shooting triggered weeks of protests and severe police reaction in Ferguson, where Mr. Brown was shot and killed.The marches in Ferguson have grown calmer and smaller in recent days, and at a rally on Sunday, Michael Brown Sr. asked the community to come together on Monday. “All I want is peace while my son is being laid to rest,” said Mr. Brown. The family has discouraged any suggestion that the funeral might mark a renewed eruption of violence. The funeral coincides with the return to school — delayed because of the unrest — of students in the Ferguson area.
Outside the church on Monday, one man was selling T-shirts with the slogan “Hands up don’t shoot,” while another was handing out leaflets for a candidate for a city political position. Local television news focused on the arrival of celebrities, including the movie director Spike Lee and the radio host Tom Joyner.
The funeral was to be a deeply personal moment of mourning for those closest to Mr. Brown, but also, some demonstrators here said, a time of reflection for those who never knew him personally but have come to view him as a symbol.
Mr. Brown, who had just graduated from high school, was shot to death on Aug. 9 after a confrontation with an officer, Darren Wilson, along a curving street in Ferguson, a mostly black city where the police force is mostly white. The police described the incident as a physical altercation between the two men that left Officer Wilson with a swollen face; others have deemed it a case of needless police aggression and racial profiling. State and federal investigations are underway.
While Mr. Brown was little known beyond his sphere of friends and relatives before his death, his funeral is expected to draw a large crowd from this region and beyond. Mr. Brown’s family members have said they want the general public to be included in the events, their representatives said, a reflection of the support that so many strangers have offered.
The Rev. Al Sharpton is scheduled to be among the speakers. At least three White House officials plan to be there, including Broderick Johnson, assistant to the president, White House cabinet secretary and chairman of the My Brother’s Keeper task force; Heather Foster, an adviser for the White House Office of Public Engagement; and Marlon Marshall, a deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement who attended high school with Mr. Brown’s mother. Scott Holste, a spokesman for Gov. Jay Nixon, said he would not attend the services “out of respect for the family, who deserve time to focus on remembering Michael and grieving their loss.”
Events are to be followed with a funeral procession to a cemetery, St. Peter’s, and a repast.
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4) Michael Brown Spent Last Weeks Grappling With Problems and Promise
FERGUSON, Mo. — It was 1 a.m. and Michael Brown Jr. called his father, his voice trembling. He had seen something overpowering. In the thick gray clouds that lingered from a passing storm this past June, he made out an angel. And he saw Satan chasing the angel and the angel running into the face of God. Mr. Brown was a prankster, so his father and stepmother chuckled at first.
“No, no, Dad! No!” the elder Mr. Brown remembered his son protesting. “I’m serious.”
And the black teenager from this suburb of St. Louis, who had just graduated from high school, sent his father and stepmother a picture of the sky from his cellphone. “Now I believe,” he told them.
In the weeks afterward, until his shooting death by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, on Aug. 9, they detected a change in him as he spoke seriously about religion and the Bible. He was grappling with life’s mysteries.Michael Brown, 18, due to be buried on Monday, was no angel, with public records and interviews with friends and family revealing both problems and promise in his young life. Shortly before his encounter with Officer Wilson, the police say he was caught on a security camera stealing a box of cigars, pushing the clerk of a convenience store into a display case. He lived in a community that had rough patches, and he dabbled in drugs and alcohol. He had taken to rapping in recent months, producing lyrics that were by turns contemplative and vulgar. He got into at least one scuffle with a neighbor.
At the same time, he regularly flashed a broad smile that endeared those around him. He overcame early struggles in school to graduate on time. He was pointed toward a trade college and a career and, his parents hoped, toward a successful life.
But then came the fatal encounter with Officer Wilson. Shortly after the confrontation in the convenience store, Mr. Brown and a friend were walking down the middle of a nearby street when Officer Wilson told them to get on the sidewalk. The police say Mr. Brown hit the officer and scuffled with him over his weapon, leading to his being shot.
Mr. Brown’s friend said he swung after the officer grabbed his neck and was shot after running away, hitting the ground with his hands raised in surrender. He was hit at least six times, twice in the head. His 6-foot-4 frame lay face down in the middle of the warm pavement for hours, a stream of blood flowing down the street.
Mr. Brown was born in May 1996 in the nearby town of Florissant. He was the first child of teenage parents, Michael Brown Sr. and Lesley McSpadden. Growing up, he lived under one roof with his parents, paternal grandparents and, later, a younger sister.
As a boy, Michael was a handful. When his parents put up a security gate, he would try to climb it. When they left out pens and pencils, he would use them to write on the wall. He used to tap on the ground, so his parents got him a drum set; his father played the drums. He grew into a reserved young man around people he did not know, but joking and outgoing with those close to him.
After his parents split up, he stayed with his mother though he remained close to all of his family, who lived near one another in north St. Louis County.
In the ninth grade at McCluer High School in Florissant, Mr. Brown was accused of stealing an iPod. His mother said she went to the school, eventually showing a receipt to prove the iPod was his. He left McCluer and went to two other high schools before going to Normandy for most of his final two years.
When his mother moved out of the Normandy District, he moved in with his paternal grandmother so he could remain at that school. But he continued to alternate between his parents and maternal grandmother.
He did not have a criminal record as an adult, and his family said he never got in trouble with the law as a juvenile, either.
“You may see him on a picture with some friends that may have been in a gang,” Ms. McSpadden said. “He wasn’t in a gang. He just knew how to adapt to his surroundings. Michael was so cool that he could just get along with anybody.”
Mr. Brown showed a rebellious streak. One time, his mother gave him her A.T.M. card so he could buy shoes, said Mr. Brown’s friend Brandon Lewis. Mr. Brown bought himself a PlayStation console. His mother made him give the system to his brother.
There were times when her son would talk back, Ms. McSpadden said. She relied on family and friends, including a retired juvenile officer, to help mentor her son.
Mr. Brown occasionally hinted at frustration with his family. Last August, he posted a message on Facebook that it was wrong “how yo own family dont wanna see you do good.” And just a week before he was shot dead, he commented that some of his friends treated him better than “my own family.”
Still, some of Mr. Brown’s closest confidants were family members. Mr. Brown’s uncle Bernard Ewings remembers talking to his nephew about how to interact with police officers.
“I let him know like, if the police ever get on you, I don’t care what you doing, give it up,” Mr. Ewings said. “Because if you do one wrong move, they’ll shoot you. They’ll kill you.”
Mr. Lewis said he recalled Mr. Brown getting into one fight. A contemporary they knew from the neighborhood was upset with Mr. Brown because of something Mr. Brown had said to the young man’s girlfriend. So one day the fellow, who was much smaller than Mr. Brown, took a swing at him. Mr. Brown backed up and pushed him back in the face.
“I don’t think Mike ever threw a real punch,” said Mr. Lewis, 19.
The young man’s father confronted Mr. Brown, Mr. Lewis recalled, asking him why he put his hands on his son. Mr. Brown’s father got involved, Mr. Lewis said, and they settled the dispute and went their separate ways. Mr. Brown rarely got into physical confrontations, Mr. Lewis said, because he was so big that nobody really wanted to test him. Mr. Brown tended to use his size to scare away potential trouble, Mr. Lewis said.
“He’ll swell up like, ‘I’m mad,’ and you’ll back off,” he said.
Mr. Brown was not the best student. “His grades were kind of edgy,” Michael Brown Sr. said. “That’s why I said I had to keep my foot on his neck to keep him on track.”
In his senior year, Mr. Brown was a few credits short. He was enrolled in the school’s credit recovery program, which allows students to work at their own pace to try to catch up.
“It seemed like Mike was probably the person that was the most serious in that class about getting out of Normandy, about graduating,” said Terrence Hamilton, the Normandy athletic director.
After graduating in May, Mr. Brown talked to Mr. Lewis about getting a job at the grocery store where Mr. Lewis worked. He also planned to pursue heating and cooling technician courses at a technical college.
He was an avid video game player. His favorite games were Call of Duty Zombies and PlayStation Home, a simulation game in which he created an avatar and a city. He was deft with technology and his hands. Once, when his cousin’s PlayStation broke because a disc was stuck in it, Mr. Brown took it apart, fixed it and reassembled it.
Mr. Brown, who constantly wore his Beats by Dre headphones, also was a big fan of rap music. He knew of Kendrick Lamar before he became famous. His favorite group was Migos. And within the past year, he began producing rap songs with friends.
The content varied. He collaborated on songs that included lyrics such as “My favorite part is when the bodies hit the ground.” But he also derided fathers who “don’t pay child support” and rapped glowingly about his stepmother.
He occasionally smoked marijuana and drank alcohol, according to friends. But for his music he adopted a persona to appeal to hip-hop fans, said his cousin, Bryan Douglas, a music producer who was going to help Mr. Brown pursue his music career.
Mr. Brown was sometimes philosophical, as he showed in his final hours.
“Everything happen for a reason,” he posted to Facebook the night before he was shot. “Just start putting 2 n 2 together. You’ll see it.”
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5) Hell, No, You Can't Go! Teamsters Don't like Bathroom Rules
By Amy Langfield
Bay
Area United Against War Newsletter
Table
of Contents:
A.
EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. ARTICLES IN FULL
B. ARTICLES IN FULL
C.
SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
D.
VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.
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A.
EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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Migration: Causes and Responses
Perspectives from the US and El Salvador
El espacio es accesible por sillas de rueda; habrá interpretación entre inglés y español
--
Allan Fisher
afisher800@gmail.com
415-954-2763
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March to police headquarters
The following call to action was issued by the Justice for Michael Brown Leadership Council, made up of community leaders on the ground in Ferguson.
Protest against police killings, brutality, profiling and legal coverups
"This will be a national massive march on Ferguson. People of conscience, from all walks of life, and all over the United States, will come together in Ferguson in the largest single mass demonstration to demand justice for Michael Brown," said Akbar Muhammad of the Justice for Michael Brown Leadership Council.
The march demands:
1. We demand that Darren Wilson, the officer involved in the shooting death of Michael Brown be immediately fired from Ferguson police department instead of remaining on paid leave. We demand Darren Wilson be charged and vigorously prosecuted for the murder of Michael Brown.
2. We demand that Missouri Governor Jay Nixon under the emergency law clause he issued immediately remove St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert P. McCulloch from the case involving Michael Brown.
3. We call upon the United States Federal Attorney General Eric Holder and Missouri State Attorney General Chris Koster to investigate the policies and practices of the local municipalities in Saint Louis County, Saint Louis City and other municipalities throughout the state of Missouri, that have demonstrated a legacy of racial profiling. Accordingly, we call upon those officials to develop penalties/policies to put an end to those practices.
4. We call for the Missouri State Auditor Tom Schweich to do an audit of the funds of the local municipalities that have demonstrated a history of racial profiling. We demand accountability of how much revenue is being generated from traffic violations and how these funds are being spent.
5. We call for the Ferguson Mayor James Knowles and Police Chief Thomas Jackson to immediately resign from their positions of authority and if not we will call upon the people to immediately do a recall of the Mayor of Ferguson.
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Special event to kick
off CISPES’ 15th National Convention
Migration: Causes and Responses
Perspectives from the US and El Salvador
Friday, August 29th at 6:30 pm
Women’s Building, 3543 18th St. San Francisco (between Valencia and Guerrero, 16th St. BART)
This space is wheelchair accessible; Spanish-English interpretation provided
This space is wheelchair accessible; Spanish-English interpretation provided
Suggested donation: $10-$30
Stay for refreshments, live music, DJs and dancing!
Stay for refreshments, live music, DJs and dancing!
While the mainstream news is finally talking about the poverty and insecurity
that are separating families in México and Central America and forcing
so many to leave their homes, there is little analysis of the role that U.S. policy plays in creating those conditions. Even less is being said about what left and progressive governments are doing, for
example in El Salvador and Nicaragua, to reduce poverty and inequality,
which often involves standing up to transnational corporations and the
enormous power they wield through trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA.
The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) is thrilled to welcome Claudia Escobar,
one of the women in leadership of the Salvadoran Union Front, which
formed in 2005 as the Salvadoran working class’ “instrument of
struggle.” She is the president of her union, which represents workers
at the Ministry of Labor, and has a unique perspective on both labor and
women’s struggles under the new FMLN government.
She will be joined by Angela Sanbrano, president of the National Alliance of Latino and Caribbean Communities (NALACC), and by David Bacon, who has written extensively on the root causes of migration, especially when it comes to US economic and foreign policy.
We will also take the opportunity to celebrate
many generations of the Central American solidarity movement being
under one roof so please stay for refreshments, live music, and dancing!
Feel free to check out the Facebook invitation here and please to spread the word among other solidarity-minded friends and allies.
Please contact Karl Kramer at 415-509-9712 or bayarea@cispes.org with any questions. Hope to see you there!
CISPES le invita
a un evento especial para abrir su Convención Nacional 15o
Migración: Causas y Respuestas
Perspectivas desde los EEUU y El Salvador
Viernes el 29 de Agosto a las 6:30 pm
Women’s Building, 3543 18th St. San Francisco (entre Valencia and Guerrero, 16th St. BART)
El espacio es accesible por sillas de rueda; habrá interpretación entre inglés y español
Donación de $10-$30 sugerida
¡También habrá comida y bebida, música en vivo, DJ, y baile!
¡También habrá comida y bebida, música en vivo, DJ, y baile!
El tema de la pobreza y la inseguridad cómo
una causa fundamental de la separación de millones de familias Mexicanas
y Centroamericanas ha surgido por los medios de comunicación pero no
hay una análisis muy profunda del rol de las políticas de los EEUU
en crear estas mismas condiciones. Aún menos se oiga de las iniciativas
de gobiernos progresistas y de izquierda para disminuir la pobreza y la
desigualdad, por ejemplo en El Salvador y Nicaragua, las cuales
frecuentemente causan reacción de las empresas transnacionales que hoy
en día manejan un poder muy fuerte a través de los Tratados de
Libre Comercio.
El Comité en Solidaridad con el Pueblo de El Salvador (CISPES) tiene el honor de dar la bienvenida a Claudia Escobar,
una lideresa del Frente Sindical Salvadoreño, lo cual se aglutinó en
2005 como el “instrumento de lucha del clase trabajador.” Como
presidenta de su sindicato, lo cual representa las y los trabajadores al
Ministerio de Trabajo y Previsión Social, ofrecerá una perspectiva
única sobre la lucha de ambos las mujeres y los sindicatos bajo el nuevo
gobierno del FMLN.
Daremos la
bienvenida también a Angela Sanbrano, presidenta de la Alianza Nacional de Comunidades Latinoamericanos y Caribeños (NALACC) y David Bacon,
un autor que ha escrito extensivamente en el tema de las causas
fundamentales de la migración, especialmente en relación con la política
económica de los EE.UU.
También vamos a celebrar
la unificación de varias generaciones del movimiento en solidaridad con
Centroamérica - İ vengar para bailar y disfrutar un convivio muy genial
con música en vivo, comida y bebidas!
Favor de compartir esta invitación y también el anuncio por Facebook con sus amig@s y aliad@s solidari@s.
Favor de comunicarse con Karl Kramer a 415-503-0789 o bayarea@cispes.org con cualquier pregunta. İLe esperamos el Viernes 29 de Agosto!
Allan Fisher
afisher800@gmail.com
415-954-2763
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National March for Justice for Michael Brown
National marches for Ferguson and Gaza this weekend!
Saturday, Aug. 30, 2014, 10:00 a.m in Ferguson, Mo., Canfield Dr. and W. Florissant Ave (Ground Zero)
Saturday, Aug. 30, 2014, 10:00 a.m in Ferguson, Mo., Canfield Dr. and W. Florissant Ave (Ground Zero)
March to police headquarters
The following call to action was issued by the Justice for Michael Brown Leadership Council, made up of community leaders on the ground in Ferguson.
Protest against police killings, brutality, profiling and legal coverups
"This will be a national massive march on Ferguson. People of conscience, from all walks of life, and all over the United States, will come together in Ferguson in the largest single mass demonstration to demand justice for Michael Brown," said Akbar Muhammad of the Justice for Michael Brown Leadership Council.
The march demands:
1. We demand that Darren Wilson, the officer involved in the shooting death of Michael Brown be immediately fired from Ferguson police department instead of remaining on paid leave. We demand Darren Wilson be charged and vigorously prosecuted for the murder of Michael Brown.
2. We demand that Missouri Governor Jay Nixon under the emergency law clause he issued immediately remove St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert P. McCulloch from the case involving Michael Brown.
3. We call upon the United States Federal Attorney General Eric Holder and Missouri State Attorney General Chris Koster to investigate the policies and practices of the local municipalities in Saint Louis County, Saint Louis City and other municipalities throughout the state of Missouri, that have demonstrated a legacy of racial profiling. Accordingly, we call upon those officials to develop penalties/policies to put an end to those practices.
4. We call for the Missouri State Auditor Tom Schweich to do an audit of the funds of the local municipalities that have demonstrated a history of racial profiling. We demand accountability of how much revenue is being generated from traffic violations and how these funds are being spent.
5. We call for the Ferguson Mayor James Knowles and Police Chief Thomas Jackson to immediately resign from their positions of authority and if not we will call upon the people to immediately do a recall of the Mayor of Ferguson.
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PEOPLE'S CLIMATE RALLY
n solidarity with the historic September 21 NYC event called by 350.org and
hundreds of local and national environmental, trade union and social justice
organizations across the country.
All Out for Sun., Sept. 21
2 pm – 5 pm
Oakland's Lake Merritt Park Amphitheater
Amphitheater is the new grassy area at the end of Lake Merritt near 12th
Street, across from the Henry J. Kaiser Center, a few blocks from Lake Merritt BART
Station.
The historic NYC protest on Sunday, September 21 is 2 days before the UN
Climate Summit of world leaders. Tragically, more inaction or inadequate
action can be expected. We want to show the world that the climate crisis
can no longer be ignored, that the planet earth is burning, that massive &
unprecedented measures must be taken now to assure humanity’s future.
The People’s Climate March is shaping up to be one of the largest climate
justice mobilizations in history, with organizers of the march setting a goal of getting a half million people to demonstrate in NYC.
For additional information: http://peoplesclimatemarch.org
While people all over the country are mobilizing for New York, many of us will
gather in support in Oakland.
Let's make the West Coast Solidarity action a great success!
• For a world with an economy that works for people and the planet
• For a world safe from the ravages of climate change
• For a world with good jobs, clean air and water, peace and justice and
healthy communities
Bay Area September 21 Coalition: Co-sponsors (Very initial list! Add your
organization now!): 350 Bay Area; Sunflower Alliance; System Change Not
Climate Change; KPFA; Peninsula Peace and Justice Center; Social Justice
Committee/Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists; Our Place in the
World; Adam Hochschild, author/founder Mother Jones magazine; Green Party of
Alameda County; United National Antiwar Coalition; Democratic Socialists East
Bay; Alameda County Peace and Freedom Party; No. Calif. Committees of
Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism; Socialist Action; Mobilization to
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal; Oakland Socialist Group; Bay Area Solidarity; Dr. Jack
Rasmus, Host, Alternative Visions Radio Show/Progressive Radio Network;
International Socialist Organization; San Francisco Bay View newspaper; One
Hundred Thousand Poets for Change; CodePink Bay Area; Multifaith Voices for
Peace & Justice; Food & Water Watch; Cesar Chavez Holiday Parade and Festival;
San Jose Peace and Justice Center, Bay Area IWW; 350 Santa Cruz; SF Sierra
Club; Peace Action of San Mateo County; Solar Justice; Sonoma County Peace and
Justice Center; Project Censored
Send your endorsement to: endorse@BayAreaSept21.org
n solidarity with the historic September 21 NYC event called by 350.org and
hundreds of local and national environmental, trade union and social justice
organizations across the country.
All Out for Sun., Sept. 21
2 pm – 5 pm
Oakland's Lake Merritt Park Amphitheater
Amphitheater is the new grassy area at the end of Lake Merritt near 12th
Street, across from the Henry J. Kaiser Center, a few blocks from Lake Merritt BART
Station.
The historic NYC protest on Sunday, September 21 is 2 days before the UN
Climate Summit of world leaders. Tragically, more inaction or inadequate
action can be expected. We want to show the world that the climate crisis
can no longer be ignored, that the planet earth is burning, that massive &
unprecedented measures must be taken now to assure humanity’s future.
The People’s Climate March is shaping up to be one of the largest climate
justice mobilizations in history, with organizers of the march setting a goal of getting a half million people to demonstrate in NYC.
For additional information: http://peoplesclimatemarch.org
While people all over the country are mobilizing for New York, many of us will
gather in support in Oakland.
Let's make the West Coast Solidarity action a great success!
• For a world with an economy that works for people and the planet
• For a world safe from the ravages of climate change
• For a world with good jobs, clean air and water, peace and justice and
healthy communities
Bay Area September 21 Coalition: Co-sponsors (Very initial list! Add your
organization now!): 350 Bay Area; Sunflower Alliance; System Change Not
Climate Change; KPFA; Peninsula Peace and Justice Center; Social Justice
Committee/Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists; Our Place in the
World; Adam Hochschild, author/founder Mother Jones magazine; Green Party of
Alameda County; United National Antiwar Coalition; Democratic Socialists East
Bay; Alameda County Peace and Freedom Party; No. Calif. Committees of
Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism; Socialist Action; Mobilization to
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal; Oakland Socialist Group; Bay Area Solidarity; Dr. Jack
Rasmus, Host, Alternative Visions Radio Show/Progressive Radio Network;
International Socialist Organization; San Francisco Bay View newspaper; One
Hundred Thousand Poets for Change; CodePink Bay Area; Multifaith Voices for
Peace & Justice; Food & Water Watch; Cesar Chavez Holiday Parade and Festival;
San Jose Peace and Justice Center, Bay Area IWW; 350 Santa Cruz; SF Sierra
Club; Peace Action of San Mateo County; Solar Justice; Sonoma County Peace and
Justice Center; Project Censored
Send your endorsement to: endorse@BayAreaSept21.org
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Please forward and post widely
Protest Now! No To Police Censorship of Mumia, and Teachers!
Reinstate the Urban Dreams Website!
Action Still Needed! Please send messages to the School Board!
- Scroll down for School Board addresses -
Here’s what happened: Under pressure from the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP)—operating through a friendly publicity agent called Fox News—the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) earlier this year shut down an entire website composed of teacher-drafted curriculum material called Urban Dreams. Why? Because this site included course guidelines on the censorship of innocent political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal! The course material compared the censorship of Mumia’s extensive radio commentaries and writings, with that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s later writings, which focused on class exploitation and his opposition to the US’ imperialist War against Vietnam. Both were effectively silenced by the big media, including in Mumia’s case, by National Public Radio (NPR).
Mumia Is Innocent! But He’s Still a Top Target of FOP
Abu-Jamal has long been a top-row target for the FOP, which tried to get him legally killed for decades. Mumia was framed by the Philadelphia police and falsely convicted of murdering a Philadelphia policeman in 1982, with the extensive collaboration of lying prosecutors, corrupt courts, the US Justice Department, and key political figures.
Mumia’s death sentence was dropped only when a federal appeals court judge set it aside because of blatantly illegal jury instructions by the original highly racist trial judge. (The same federal judge upheld every bogus detail of Mumia’s conviction.) The local Philadelphia prosecutor and politicians chickened out of trying to get Mumia’s original death sentence reinstated due to the fact that all their evidence of his guilt had long been exposed as totally fraudulent!
FOP: Can’t Kill Him? Silence Him!
The FOP had to swallow the fact that the local mucky-mucks had dropped the ball on executing Mumia, but they were rewarded with a substitute sentence of life without the possibility of parole, imposed by a local court acting in secret. Mumia is now serving this new and equally unjust sentence of “slow death.”
This gets us back to the FOP’s main point here, which is to silence Mumia. They can’t stop Mumia from writing and recording his world-renownd commentaries (which are available at Prison Radio, www.prisonradio.org). But they look for any opportunity to smear and discredit Mumia, and keep him out of the public eye; and these snakes have found a morsel on the Urban Dreams web site to go after!
Urban Dreams Was Well Used by Teachers
Urban Dreams was initially set up under a grant from the federal Dept. of Education in 1999-2004 and contains teacher-written material on a wide variety of issues. It is (was) used extensively in California and beyond. The OUSD’s knee-jerk reaction to shut the whole site down because of a complaint from police, broadcast on the all-powerful Fox News network, shows the rapid decline of the US into police-state status. Why should we let a bunch of lying, vicious cops, whose only real job is to protect the wealthy and powerful from all of us, get away with this?
Fresh from defeating Obama’s nominee to head the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department because he served for a period as Mumia’s attorney, the FOP is attacking a school lesson plan that asks students to think outside the box of system propaganda. But the grave-diggers of capitalist oppression are stirring.
Labor Says No To Police Persecution of Mumia!
In 1999, the Oakland teachers union, Oakland Education Association (OEA), held an unauthorized teach-in on Mumia and the death penalty. Later the same year, longshore workers in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) shut down all West-Coast ports to Free Mumia. Other teacher actions happened around the country and internationally. And now the Alameda County Labor Council, acting on a resolution submitted by an OEA member, has denounced the FOP-inspired shutdown of Urban Dreams, and called for the site’s complete restoration (ie no deletions).
Labor Says No To Censorship of Mumia, and Teachers!
We are asking union members particularly, and everyone else as well, if you abhor police-sponsored censorship of school curricula, and want to see justice and freedom for the wrongfully convicted such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, send your message of protest now to the Oakland School Board, at the three addresses below.
Union members: take the resolution below to your local union or labor council, and get it passed!
Whatever you do, send a copy of your protest letter or resolution, or a report of your actions, to Oakland Teachers for Mumia, at communard2@juno.com.
Here is the Alameda County Labor Council resolution:
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Labor Speaks: Urban Dreams Censorship Resolution
Alameda County Labor Council
Whereas Mumia Abu-Jamal, an award winning journalist, defender of the rights of the working class, people of color, and oppressed people has been imprisoned since 1982 without parole for a crime he didn’t commit after his death sentence was finally overturned;
Whereas the Oakland Unified School District’s censorship of the Urban Dreams website was in reaction to a Fox News and Fraternal Order of Police attack on a lesson plan asking students to consider a parallel between censorship of Martin Luther King’s radical ideas and censorship of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and;
Whereas it is dangerous and unacceptable to allow the police to determine the curriculum of a major school district like Oakland, or any school district;
Whereas removal of the Urban Dreams OUSD website denies educators and student access to invaluable curriculum resources by Oakland teachers with social justice themes promoting critical thinking, and;
Whereas in 1999, the Oakland Education Association led the teach-in on Mumia Abu-Jamal and the death penalty which helped deepen the debate in the U.S. on the death penalty itself, and greatly intensified the spotlight on the widespread issue of wrongful conviction and demanded justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and;
Whereas OEA and Alameda Contra Costa County Service Center of CTA cited the Mumia teach-in and the censored unit on Martin Luther King Jr. in its Human Rights WHO AWARD for 2013;
Be it resolved that the Alameda Labor Council condemns OUSD’s censorship of the Urban Dreams website and demands that it immediately restore access to all materials on the website, reaffirms its demand for justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and issues a press release to seek the widest possible support from defenders of free speech and those who seek justice for Mumia.
- Submitted by Keith Brown, OEA
- Passed, Alameda County Labor Council, 14 July 2014
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Now It’s your turn!
Join with Ed Asner, and with the Alameda County Labor Council, in protesting the
Oakland School Board’s censorship of the Urban Dreams web site!
• Ask your local union, labor council or other organization to endorse the resolution by the Alameda County Labor Council.
• Demand the School Board reinstate the Urban Dreams website without any deletions!
• Send your union resolutions or letters of protest to the following;
1. Oakland Board of Education: boe@ousd.k12.ca.us
2. Board President Davd Kakishiba: David.Kakishiba@ousd.k12.ca.us
3. Superintendent Antwan Wilson: Antwan.Wilson@ousd.k12.ca.us
Important: Send a copy of your resolution or email to:
Bob Mandel/Teachers for Mumia at: communard2@juno.com.
Thank you for your support!
-This message is from the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal,
and Oakland Teachers for Mumia.
communard2@juno.com.
Please forward and post widely
Protest Now! No To Police Censorship of Mumia, and Teachers!
Reinstate the Urban Dreams Website!
Action Still Needed! Please send messages to the School Board!
- Scroll down for School Board addresses -
Here’s what happened: Under pressure from the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP)—operating through a friendly publicity agent called Fox News—the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) earlier this year shut down an entire website composed of teacher-drafted curriculum material called Urban Dreams. Why? Because this site included course guidelines on the censorship of innocent political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal! The course material compared the censorship of Mumia’s extensive radio commentaries and writings, with that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s later writings, which focused on class exploitation and his opposition to the US’ imperialist War against Vietnam. Both were effectively silenced by the big media, including in Mumia’s case, by National Public Radio (NPR).
Mumia Is Innocent! But He’s Still a Top Target of FOP
Abu-Jamal has long been a top-row target for the FOP, which tried to get him legally killed for decades. Mumia was framed by the Philadelphia police and falsely convicted of murdering a Philadelphia policeman in 1982, with the extensive collaboration of lying prosecutors, corrupt courts, the US Justice Department, and key political figures.
Mumia’s death sentence was dropped only when a federal appeals court judge set it aside because of blatantly illegal jury instructions by the original highly racist trial judge. (The same federal judge upheld every bogus detail of Mumia’s conviction.) The local Philadelphia prosecutor and politicians chickened out of trying to get Mumia’s original death sentence reinstated due to the fact that all their evidence of his guilt had long been exposed as totally fraudulent!
FOP: Can’t Kill Him? Silence Him!
The FOP had to swallow the fact that the local mucky-mucks had dropped the ball on executing Mumia, but they were rewarded with a substitute sentence of life without the possibility of parole, imposed by a local court acting in secret. Mumia is now serving this new and equally unjust sentence of “slow death.”
This gets us back to the FOP’s main point here, which is to silence Mumia. They can’t stop Mumia from writing and recording his world-renownd commentaries (which are available at Prison Radio, www.prisonradio.org). But they look for any opportunity to smear and discredit Mumia, and keep him out of the public eye; and these snakes have found a morsel on the Urban Dreams web site to go after!
Urban Dreams Was Well Used by Teachers
Urban Dreams was initially set up under a grant from the federal Dept. of Education in 1999-2004 and contains teacher-written material on a wide variety of issues. It is (was) used extensively in California and beyond. The OUSD’s knee-jerk reaction to shut the whole site down because of a complaint from police, broadcast on the all-powerful Fox News network, shows the rapid decline of the US into police-state status. Why should we let a bunch of lying, vicious cops, whose only real job is to protect the wealthy and powerful from all of us, get away with this?
Fresh from defeating Obama’s nominee to head the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department because he served for a period as Mumia’s attorney, the FOP is attacking a school lesson plan that asks students to think outside the box of system propaganda. But the grave-diggers of capitalist oppression are stirring.
Labor Says No To Police Persecution of Mumia!
In 1999, the Oakland teachers union, Oakland Education Association (OEA), held an unauthorized teach-in on Mumia and the death penalty. Later the same year, longshore workers in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) shut down all West-Coast ports to Free Mumia. Other teacher actions happened around the country and internationally. And now the Alameda County Labor Council, acting on a resolution submitted by an OEA member, has denounced the FOP-inspired shutdown of Urban Dreams, and called for the site’s complete restoration (ie no deletions).
Labor Says No To Censorship of Mumia, and Teachers!
We are asking union members particularly, and everyone else as well, if you abhor police-sponsored censorship of school curricula, and want to see justice and freedom for the wrongfully convicted such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, send your message of protest now to the Oakland School Board, at the three addresses below.
Union members: take the resolution below to your local union or labor council, and get it passed!
Whatever you do, send a copy of your protest letter or resolution, or a report of your actions, to Oakland Teachers for Mumia, at communard2@juno.com.
Here is the Alameda County Labor Council resolution:
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Labor Speaks: Urban Dreams Censorship Resolution
Alameda County Labor Council
Whereas Mumia Abu-Jamal, an award winning journalist, defender of the rights of the working class, people of color, and oppressed people has been imprisoned since 1982 without parole for a crime he didn’t commit after his death sentence was finally overturned;
Whereas the Oakland Unified School District’s censorship of the Urban Dreams website was in reaction to a Fox News and Fraternal Order of Police attack on a lesson plan asking students to consider a parallel between censorship of Martin Luther King’s radical ideas and censorship of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and;
Whereas it is dangerous and unacceptable to allow the police to determine the curriculum of a major school district like Oakland, or any school district;
Whereas removal of the Urban Dreams OUSD website denies educators and student access to invaluable curriculum resources by Oakland teachers with social justice themes promoting critical thinking, and;
Whereas in 1999, the Oakland Education Association led the teach-in on Mumia Abu-Jamal and the death penalty which helped deepen the debate in the U.S. on the death penalty itself, and greatly intensified the spotlight on the widespread issue of wrongful conviction and demanded justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and;
Whereas OEA and Alameda Contra Costa County Service Center of CTA cited the Mumia teach-in and the censored unit on Martin Luther King Jr. in its Human Rights WHO AWARD for 2013;
Be it resolved that the Alameda Labor Council condemns OUSD’s censorship of the Urban Dreams website and demands that it immediately restore access to all materials on the website, reaffirms its demand for justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and issues a press release to seek the widest possible support from defenders of free speech and those who seek justice for Mumia.
- Submitted by Keith Brown, OEA
- Passed, Alameda County Labor Council, 14 July 2014
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Now It’s your turn!
Join with Ed Asner, and with the Alameda County Labor Council, in protesting the
Oakland School Board’s censorship of the Urban Dreams web site!
• Ask your local union, labor council or other organization to endorse the resolution by the Alameda County Labor Council.
• Demand the School Board reinstate the Urban Dreams website without any deletions!
• Send your union resolutions or letters of protest to the following;
1. Oakland Board of Education: boe@ousd.k12.ca.us
2. Board President Davd Kakishiba: David.Kakishiba@ousd.k12.ca.us
3. Superintendent Antwan Wilson: Antwan.Wilson@ousd.k12.ca.us
Important: Send a copy of your resolution or email to:
Bob Mandel/Teachers for Mumia at: communard2@juno.com.
Thank you for your support!
-This message is from the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal,
and Oakland Teachers for Mumia.
communard2@juno.com.
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B. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Looking back at Labor Day's turbulent origins
August 19, 2014
http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/blog/rachleff/reclaiming-labor-days-turbulent-origins
2) New Evidence of State Misconduct in False Conviction of Lorenzo Johnson
Please Contribute to the Campaign
to Free Lorenzo Johnson!
Sign Lorenzo's Freedom Petition
www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org
Please Contribute to the Campaign
to Free Lorenzo Johnson!
Sign Lorenzo's Freedom Petition
www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org
3) Call for Peace Ahead of Funeral for Michael Brown
4) Michael Brown Spent Last Weeks Grappling With Problems and Promise
5) Hell, No, You Can't Go! Teamsters Don't like Bathroom Rules
By Amy Langfield
By MONICA DAVEY
By JOHN ELIGON
5) Hell, No, You Can't Go! Teamsters Don't like Bathroom Rules
By Amy Langfield
August 23, 2014
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/hell-no-you-cant-go-teamsters-dont-bathroom-rules-n158431
6) Grain Piles Up, Waiting for a Ride, as Trains Move North Dakota Oil
7) Israel Levels Upscale Gaza High-Rise
8) Amid Mourning for Michael Brown, Call for Change
9) Generation Later, Poor Are Still Rare at Elite Colleges
10) 'Poor Doors' Are Only the Tip of the Affordable Housing Iceberg
The controversial practice has everyone up in arms, but there are much more pressing housing policies that need to be changed
By Allegra Kirkland
August 26, 2014
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/poor-doors-are-only-tip-affordable-housing-iceberg?akid=12170.229473.ywAGsv&rd=1&src=newsletter1016976&t=10&paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark
11) LA Police Refuse to Release Information on In-Custody Deaths, Community Pushes Back
Tuesday, 26 August 2014 12:06
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/25815-lapd-refusal-to-release-information-on-in-custody-deaths-feeds-community-mistrust
By RON NIXON
By FARES AKRAM and JODI RUDOREN
By MONICA DAVEY
10) 'Poor Doors' Are Only the Tip of the Affordable Housing Iceberg
By Allegra Kirkland
August 26, 2014
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/poor-doors-are-only-tip-affordable-housing-iceberg?akid=12170.229473.ywAGsv&rd=1&src=newsletter1016976&t=10&paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark
11) LA Police Refuse to Release Information on In-Custody Deaths, Community Pushes Back
Tuesday, 26 August 2014 12:06
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/25815-lapd-refusal-to-release-information-on-in-custody-deaths-feeds-community-mistrust
12) Cops terrorize a mother with 4 small children at gunpoint
Reported by Liku Zelleke
August 27, 2014
http://naturallymoi.com/cops-terrorize-a-mother-with-4-small-children-at-gunpoint/
13) How the Supreme Court Protects Bad Cops
14) The Expanding World of Poverty Capitalism
By Thomas B. Edsall
15) In Aftermath of Missouri Protests, Skepticism About the Prospects for Change
"Many of the towns have come to rely on court fines; in St. Ann, which has a population of around 13,000 and a 27-person jail, court fines and fees make up well over a third of the general fund revenues. ...The problem, said Devondre Hykes, 21, is that a person needs money to pay a ticket and get rid of a warrant, but with a warrant a person’s driver’s license is suspended and employment is difficult."
16) Recording May Capture Shots Fired at Michael Brown
17) Bratton Spurned 25% of Board’s Police Misconduct Findings in First Half of ’14
Reported by Liku Zelleke
August 27, 2014
http://naturallymoi.com/cops-terrorize-a-mother-with-4-small-children-at-gunpoint/
13) How the Supreme Court Protects Bad Cops
By ERWIN CHEMERINSKY
By Thomas B. Edsall
"Many of the towns have come to rely on court fines; in St. Ann, which has a population of around 13,000 and a 27-person jail, court fines and fees make up well over a third of the general fund revenues. ...The problem, said Devondre Hykes, 21, is that a person needs money to pay a ticket and get rid of a warrant, but with a warrant a person’s driver’s license is suspended and employment is difficult."
By MONICA DAVEY and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
18) Crime Scene - New Orleans
By Greg Palast, GregPalast.com
August 27, 2014
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/312-16/25550-focus-crime-scene-new-orleans *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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1) Looking back at Labor Day's turbulent origins
August 19, 2014
http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/blog/rachleff/reclaiming-labor-days-turbulent-origins
Monday,
September 1, will mark the 120th celebration of “Labor Day” as a legal,
national holiday. What is the history of the “Labor Day” holiday? It
had a turbulent, complicated beginning. Understanding more about this
can help us to rethink the significance of this holiday today.
American labor in 1894 was a volatile force. The industrial revolution had radically transformed work, replacing skilled labor with machines, and giving birth to two powerful new institutions: factories and corporations. The economy had been rocked by deep depressions – 1873-1878; 1883-1886; 1893-1896 – when millions lost their jobs and millions more experienced wage cuts. Massive numbers of immigrants – an average of half a million a year between 1880 and WWI – arrived and applied for the low paid, dangerous unskilled jobs that were available. After the brief experiment in political and economic democracy called “Reconstruction” (1867-1877), the four million freed slaves, their descendants, and their northern relatives, found themselves stripped of their newly won rights, from the ballot box and the workplace to the school room and public transportation. Women’s suffrage advocates, who had hoped that the ending of slavery would quickly be followed by the extension of voting (and other) rights to women, were deeply disappointed. None of these developments took place without a struggle, and there were strikes, protests, marches, and rallies continuously in the last decades of the century.
In the summer of 1877, a strike against wage cuts (for many, their third reduction since 1873) among railroad workers from Martinsburg, West Virginia, to St. Louis and Chicago. Tens of thousands, from highly skilled engineers to largely Black and immigrant track-layers, struck. In some places, strikers fought with other workers, who were desperate enough to cross picket lines. When several state militias were called out to protect the strikebreakers, violent clashes ensued and there were deaths on both sides. In some places, militia members refused to fire on workers and they put down their weapons and joined the protestors. For 45 days, the nation’s rail traffic, the heart of its transportation system, was disrupted.
While the railroad strike did not succeed, it had planted new ideas about organizing and strategy among workers. In the 1880s, as the economy recovered, a new labor organization, called the Knights of Labor, swept the country. It took in the unskilled as well as the skilled, immigrants as well as native born, women as well as men, and black as well as white. Its motto was “An Injury to One is the Concern of All,” and, in many communities, its members actually practiced what they preached.
Activists in the Knights, frustrated with long hours (many workers toiled twelve hour days), low pay, little political voice, and general social disregard, hatched a radical new idea: that all workers should strike on May 1, 1886, for a universal eight hour day, and that none would return to work until all had achieved the new standard. This dramatic, unified action would not only bring them the demands they wanted, it would transform their relationships with each other across the country, and it would change the ways they were perceived by the dominant culture. A lot was at stake. 340,000 walked off their jobs on May 1, and their numbers grew each day.
This struggle came to a climax at the country’s largest factory: the McCormick Harvester Works in Chicago. There, Knights of Labor activists used rallies and picket lines at the plant gates to appeal to all the workers, especially the newly hired immigrants in the unskilled jobs, to join the great strike. On May 4, the Chicago police moved in, accused the union leaders of holding rallies without a permit, and ordered the crowd to disperse. Someone threw a bomb into the ranks of the police, who in turn opened fire on the crowd. Seven police and four strikers died, and many more people were injured. The leaders of the strike were arrested and put on trial for murder. Eight were convicted; four of them were hanged. This repression sent a chill through the new labor movement, but it also made martyrs out of the strike leaders, and it made May 1st a labor holiday throughout the world, including parts of the United States.
The new ideas and strategies, particularly the practice of broad-based solidarity, picked up again in the early 1890s. In cities across the country, central labor bodies united local unions from a wide range of trades and occupations. These central labor unions organized solidarity when any union went on strike, and in some cities, they supported independent political action. In 1892, two dramatic strikes – in July at Andrew Carnegie’s flagship Homestead Steel Works, and in November in New Orleans, beginning on the docks but spreading throughout the city into a general strike – again saw the kind of solidarity between immigrants and native born, between white and black, and between skilled and unskilled, which had characterized the Knights of Labor. Among railroad workers, employed by the country’s largest corporations, labeled “robber barons” by the newspapers, a new organization, the American Railway Union, led by a charismatic speaker, Eugene V. Debs, gathered all railroad workers together into one industrial union. In April 1894, facing the kind of wage cuts which had spurred the 1877 upheaval, ARU members struck James J. Hill’s Great Northern Railroad. This conflict led to a showdown in Saint Paul where a striker, Charlie Luth, was shot and killed by a strikebreaker outside an East Side boardinghouse. Charles Pillsbury, head of the huge flour milling company, called Hill and Debs together and mediated a settlement, in which Hill rescinded the 10% wage cut he had imposed. Railroad workers around the country were inspired – and sprang into action.
In June, the workers who built Pullman (sleeping) cars in a Chicago suburb called “Pullman” (a company town in which the employer owned the houses, picked the police, and controlled the schools and stores) rebelled when their wages were cut 25% but their rents were not reduced. They sent word to Debs and asked to join the ARU. Debs welcomed them in, and then called on railroad workers across the country to “boycott” Pullman cars, that is, refuse to move any train which had a Pullman car in it. Some 125,000 railroad workers joined what was, in effect, a nationwide railroad strike. President Grover Cleveland called out the National Guard to police the railroad yards and the roundhouses, but they could not force the strikers to return to work. Pullman’s corporate attorney, Richard Olney, the former Attorney General of the United States, went to court for a federal injunction ordering an end to the strike. The grounds? The strikers were interfering with the shipment of the nation’s mail! Most trains had not only Pullman cars but also U.S. mail cars. The federal judge issued the court order (the first ever federal injunction against a strike) and ordered Debs to call off the strike. When Debs refused, the judge found him in contempt and sent him to prison, where he spent the next eighteen months. In a matter of days, the strikers went back to work.
It was within this context that President Cleveland asked Congress to pass legislation making the first Monday in September “Labor Day.” With one hand, he allowed the country’s greatest labor leader to sit in a prison cell, while, with the other, he created a national holiday celebrating labor. Cleveland was also careful to direct workers’ celebration away from May 1st, which had become an international labor day. He took his cue from the New York City Central Labor Union, which had been celebrating an early September “Labor Day” since 1882. A number of other city and state labor organizations had followed this example. They stayed away from the May 1st date because it had been so badly tainted by the anti-radical backlash that swept over the country and the labor movement in the late 1880s. And so early September seemed an acceptable option to the president, his advisors, and the political establishment.
Despite its official and non-radical identity, “Labor Day” offered the occasion for the labor movement to express solidarity. Parades, pageants, picnics, and rallies marked the day across the country, complete with banners emblazoned with the symbols of particular trades or expressing labor slogans and mottos. Workers listened to speeches, engaged in political debates, and joined in collective songs. Union members’ families were an integral part of the labor movement. Labor Day allowed for the building of a labor culture.
Over the next century, the vitality of “Labor Day” ebbed and flowed with the overall energy and life of the labor movement. After a rather quiet 1920s, Labor Day revived in the 1930s and 1940s only to fade in significance in the 1950s and 1960s. In the tumultuous 1980s and early 1990s, stimulated by PATCO, Hormel, Staley, Caterpillar, the Chicago and Detroit newspapers, and the struggle against the North American Free Trade Agreement, not just picnics and parades, but also expressions of solidarity and militancy became widespread once again. These patterns were as apparent in Saint Paul as they were anywhere else.
As we mark the 120th celebration of “Labor Day,” the labor movement is in an extraordinary period of change. The movement is pressed by changes in the structure of the economy and the organization of work, on the one hand, and by virulent anti-union hostility typified by the Koch brothers, the Tea Party, Walmart and many other corporate giants, on the other. But labor is also energized from within by fast food and retail workers who demand a living wage, immigrants who seek to be recognized for their work and paid appropriately for it, public employees who know that their work contributes to the public’s quality of life and are sick of being scorned in the political pulpits and mass media, college professors who want full-time jobs with economic security and the opportunity to control their own classrooms, and home healthcare and daycare providers who want to throw off their invisibility and be appreciated, in our society, for the important work they perform.
A great history lies ahead.
Happy Labor Day!
American labor in 1894 was a volatile force. The industrial revolution had radically transformed work, replacing skilled labor with machines, and giving birth to two powerful new institutions: factories and corporations. The economy had been rocked by deep depressions – 1873-1878; 1883-1886; 1893-1896 – when millions lost their jobs and millions more experienced wage cuts. Massive numbers of immigrants – an average of half a million a year between 1880 and WWI – arrived and applied for the low paid, dangerous unskilled jobs that were available. After the brief experiment in political and economic democracy called “Reconstruction” (1867-1877), the four million freed slaves, their descendants, and their northern relatives, found themselves stripped of their newly won rights, from the ballot box and the workplace to the school room and public transportation. Women’s suffrage advocates, who had hoped that the ending of slavery would quickly be followed by the extension of voting (and other) rights to women, were deeply disappointed. None of these developments took place without a struggle, and there were strikes, protests, marches, and rallies continuously in the last decades of the century.
In the summer of 1877, a strike against wage cuts (for many, their third reduction since 1873) among railroad workers from Martinsburg, West Virginia, to St. Louis and Chicago. Tens of thousands, from highly skilled engineers to largely Black and immigrant track-layers, struck. In some places, strikers fought with other workers, who were desperate enough to cross picket lines. When several state militias were called out to protect the strikebreakers, violent clashes ensued and there were deaths on both sides. In some places, militia members refused to fire on workers and they put down their weapons and joined the protestors. For 45 days, the nation’s rail traffic, the heart of its transportation system, was disrupted.
While the railroad strike did not succeed, it had planted new ideas about organizing and strategy among workers. In the 1880s, as the economy recovered, a new labor organization, called the Knights of Labor, swept the country. It took in the unskilled as well as the skilled, immigrants as well as native born, women as well as men, and black as well as white. Its motto was “An Injury to One is the Concern of All,” and, in many communities, its members actually practiced what they preached.
Activists in the Knights, frustrated with long hours (many workers toiled twelve hour days), low pay, little political voice, and general social disregard, hatched a radical new idea: that all workers should strike on May 1, 1886, for a universal eight hour day, and that none would return to work until all had achieved the new standard. This dramatic, unified action would not only bring them the demands they wanted, it would transform their relationships with each other across the country, and it would change the ways they were perceived by the dominant culture. A lot was at stake. 340,000 walked off their jobs on May 1, and their numbers grew each day.
This struggle came to a climax at the country’s largest factory: the McCormick Harvester Works in Chicago. There, Knights of Labor activists used rallies and picket lines at the plant gates to appeal to all the workers, especially the newly hired immigrants in the unskilled jobs, to join the great strike. On May 4, the Chicago police moved in, accused the union leaders of holding rallies without a permit, and ordered the crowd to disperse. Someone threw a bomb into the ranks of the police, who in turn opened fire on the crowd. Seven police and four strikers died, and many more people were injured. The leaders of the strike were arrested and put on trial for murder. Eight were convicted; four of them were hanged. This repression sent a chill through the new labor movement, but it also made martyrs out of the strike leaders, and it made May 1st a labor holiday throughout the world, including parts of the United States.
The new ideas and strategies, particularly the practice of broad-based solidarity, picked up again in the early 1890s. In cities across the country, central labor bodies united local unions from a wide range of trades and occupations. These central labor unions organized solidarity when any union went on strike, and in some cities, they supported independent political action. In 1892, two dramatic strikes – in July at Andrew Carnegie’s flagship Homestead Steel Works, and in November in New Orleans, beginning on the docks but spreading throughout the city into a general strike – again saw the kind of solidarity between immigrants and native born, between white and black, and between skilled and unskilled, which had characterized the Knights of Labor. Among railroad workers, employed by the country’s largest corporations, labeled “robber barons” by the newspapers, a new organization, the American Railway Union, led by a charismatic speaker, Eugene V. Debs, gathered all railroad workers together into one industrial union. In April 1894, facing the kind of wage cuts which had spurred the 1877 upheaval, ARU members struck James J. Hill’s Great Northern Railroad. This conflict led to a showdown in Saint Paul where a striker, Charlie Luth, was shot and killed by a strikebreaker outside an East Side boardinghouse. Charles Pillsbury, head of the huge flour milling company, called Hill and Debs together and mediated a settlement, in which Hill rescinded the 10% wage cut he had imposed. Railroad workers around the country were inspired – and sprang into action.
In June, the workers who built Pullman (sleeping) cars in a Chicago suburb called “Pullman” (a company town in which the employer owned the houses, picked the police, and controlled the schools and stores) rebelled when their wages were cut 25% but their rents were not reduced. They sent word to Debs and asked to join the ARU. Debs welcomed them in, and then called on railroad workers across the country to “boycott” Pullman cars, that is, refuse to move any train which had a Pullman car in it. Some 125,000 railroad workers joined what was, in effect, a nationwide railroad strike. President Grover Cleveland called out the National Guard to police the railroad yards and the roundhouses, but they could not force the strikers to return to work. Pullman’s corporate attorney, Richard Olney, the former Attorney General of the United States, went to court for a federal injunction ordering an end to the strike. The grounds? The strikers were interfering with the shipment of the nation’s mail! Most trains had not only Pullman cars but also U.S. mail cars. The federal judge issued the court order (the first ever federal injunction against a strike) and ordered Debs to call off the strike. When Debs refused, the judge found him in contempt and sent him to prison, where he spent the next eighteen months. In a matter of days, the strikers went back to work.
It was within this context that President Cleveland asked Congress to pass legislation making the first Monday in September “Labor Day.” With one hand, he allowed the country’s greatest labor leader to sit in a prison cell, while, with the other, he created a national holiday celebrating labor. Cleveland was also careful to direct workers’ celebration away from May 1st, which had become an international labor day. He took his cue from the New York City Central Labor Union, which had been celebrating an early September “Labor Day” since 1882. A number of other city and state labor organizations had followed this example. They stayed away from the May 1st date because it had been so badly tainted by the anti-radical backlash that swept over the country and the labor movement in the late 1880s. And so early September seemed an acceptable option to the president, his advisors, and the political establishment.
Despite its official and non-radical identity, “Labor Day” offered the occasion for the labor movement to express solidarity. Parades, pageants, picnics, and rallies marked the day across the country, complete with banners emblazoned with the symbols of particular trades or expressing labor slogans and mottos. Workers listened to speeches, engaged in political debates, and joined in collective songs. Union members’ families were an integral part of the labor movement. Labor Day allowed for the building of a labor culture.
Over the next century, the vitality of “Labor Day” ebbed and flowed with the overall energy and life of the labor movement. After a rather quiet 1920s, Labor Day revived in the 1930s and 1940s only to fade in significance in the 1950s and 1960s. In the tumultuous 1980s and early 1990s, stimulated by PATCO, Hormel, Staley, Caterpillar, the Chicago and Detroit newspapers, and the struggle against the North American Free Trade Agreement, not just picnics and parades, but also expressions of solidarity and militancy became widespread once again. These patterns were as apparent in Saint Paul as they were anywhere else.
As we mark the 120th celebration of “Labor Day,” the labor movement is in an extraordinary period of change. The movement is pressed by changes in the structure of the economy and the organization of work, on the one hand, and by virulent anti-union hostility typified by the Koch brothers, the Tea Party, Walmart and many other corporate giants, on the other. But labor is also energized from within by fast food and retail workers who demand a living wage, immigrants who seek to be recognized for their work and paid appropriately for it, public employees who know that their work contributes to the public’s quality of life and are sick of being scorned in the political pulpits and mass media, college professors who want full-time jobs with economic security and the opportunity to control their own classrooms, and home healthcare and daycare providers who want to throw off their invisibility and be appreciated, in our society, for the important work they perform.
A great history lies ahead.
Happy Labor Day!
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2) New Evidence of State Misconduct in False Conviction of Lorenzo Johnson
Please Contribute to the Campaign
to Free Lorenzo Johnson!
Sign Lorenzo's Freedom Petition
www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org
Identifiable Fingerprints Found at the Scene –
And Hidden for 19 Years.
Main Witness, Carla Brown, Was A Police Suspect –But This was Hidden from the Defense.
The Prosecution Told The Jury That Brown Had
“No Motive To Lie.”
A Second Supplemental Petition was filed in Dauphin County, Pa Court of Common Pleas to reverse and vacate Lorenzo Johnson’s conviction for the 1995 murder of Tarajay Williams in Harrisburg, Pa. This is the third petition filed in a year with new evidence of Johnson’s innocence and police and prosecutorial misconduct in convicting him. A growing international campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson submitted petitions and letters and protested at the office of the Attorney General demanding his immediate release from prison.
On June 13, Eight Pages of police records were finally released by the Harrisburg Police Department to Johnson’s attorney. As Lorenzo Johnson said in an August 22, 2014 interview with Fox 43 investigative reporter Michael Hyland, “It was mind blowing. I knew this was something important that would help show my innocence because they withheld this for 19½ years.”
These Eight Pages contain police summary statements that identifiable fingerprints were found at the scene and listed the names of four suspects. This is evidence not turned over before the trial of Lorenzo Johnson and his co-defendant Corey Walker, evidence of innocence.
No fingerprints were presented at trial. No physical evidence of any sort was presented to support the prosecution. In fact defense counsel were told that no fingerprints were found. This is more proof of Johnson’s innocence and the lack of integrity of the prosecution.
The Eight Pages show that the main prosecution witness, Carla Brown, was identified by police as a suspect. This fact was never disclosed to the defense. Three other people were also listed as suspects, confirming the eyewitness accounts of others, whose affidavits are part of the newly discovered evidence submitted to court this past year. There is no record of any police investigation of these men. And there is no information why the police went from identifying Carla Brown as a suspect in the murder of Tarajay Williams to becoming the main trial witness against Lorenzo Johnson and his co-defendant Corey Walker. In his trial summation, assistant Attorney General Christopher Abruzzo, told the jury that there was no reason not to believe Carla Brown, who had admitted on the stand she was very high on crack the night of the murder. AG Abruzzo told the jury several times that Carla Brown had “no motive to lie,” while keeping silent that she was first a suspect in the murder.
This Second Supplemental Petition also contained two new witness affidavits that Lorenzo Johnson was not in Harrisburg at the time Tarajay Williams was murdered. One of those affidavits came from David Hairston who refused to appear as an alibi witness for Johnson because of police lies to him.
In the past year, beginning with the PCRA Petition filed on August 8, 2013, Lorenzo Johnson has submitted new evidence from fourteen civilian witnesses who provide factual evidence of his innocence. An affidavit from an investigating detective is evidence that the main witness Carla Brown was “worked over” by detectives for weeks until she “told the truth.” Reports of those interviews have still not been released to the defense. Brown’s trial testimony was false, and that falsity was known to the prosecution.
Yet more affidavits, submitted in the First Supplemental Petition, establish the corruption of the investigation with the disclosure that the lead detective, Kevin Duffin, was the god-brother of the motive witness, Victoria Doubs. This fact was never disclosed to the defense. Additionally, at trial Doubs lied when asked if she had been given a deal in a robbery case—where she faced a minimum five years imprisonment— for her testimony against Johnson and co-defendant. The Attorney General did not correct her false statement of “no deal”.
Last December 2013, Pa Attorney General Kathleen Kane said she was “interested in justice” and would examine the new evidence of Lorenzo Johnson’s innocence and false conviction. There are now sixteen new witness statements and proof of corruption in the investigation. Yet the Attorney General’s office recently asked for and has been granted yet another 60-day continuation of its investigation.
As Lorenzo Johnson said in the Fox 43 interview, “I have to ask myself is this investigation being done in good faith or being done in bad faith? It they continue pursuing the case, it’s a long, long malicious prosecution. From day one, December 15, 1995, I’ve been saying I’m innocent. If everything is being done in good faith they should grant me a new trial right now, and let’s go back and right this wrong.”
In this case the wrong has been done to three families who are torn apart by these false convictions: The family of Tarajay Williams who was murdered and the real killer was never persued and prosecuted; and the Lorenzo Johnson and Corey Walker families. Lorenzo Johnson and Corey Walker can't be part of their families as sons, brothers and fathers and husbands because they are in prison for life and are innocent.
Lorenzo Johnson will not stop fighting for vindication and his freedom. His fight is for Every Innocent Prisoner. Read Lorenzo’s commentary, “After two years: the war for freedom."
Please Contribute to the Campaign
to Free Lorenzo Johnson!
Sign Lorenzo's Freedom Petition
www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org
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3) Call for Peace Ahead of Funeral for Michael Brown
By MONICA DAVEY
ST. LOUIS — Lines of people waiting to get into the funeral of Michael Brown, the unarmed African-American teenager shot by a white police officer more than two weeks ago, stretched around the block in oppressive heat as mourners came to pay their respects at the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church.
On Sunday, the family of Mr. Brown had asked for quiet during the funeral, which is expected to draw thousands of people including an array of national, community and political leaders and about 500 members of Mr. Brown’s extended family. The fatal shooting triggered weeks of protests and severe police reaction in Ferguson, where Mr. Brown was shot and killed.The marches in Ferguson have grown calmer and smaller in recent days, and at a rally on Sunday, Michael Brown Sr. asked the community to come together on Monday. “All I want is peace while my son is being laid to rest,” said Mr. Brown. The family has discouraged any suggestion that the funeral might mark a renewed eruption of violence. The funeral coincides with the return to school — delayed because of the unrest — of students in the Ferguson area.
Outside the church on Monday, one man was selling T-shirts with the slogan “Hands up don’t shoot,” while another was handing out leaflets for a candidate for a city political position. Local television news focused on the arrival of celebrities, including the movie director Spike Lee and the radio host Tom Joyner.
The funeral was to be a deeply personal moment of mourning for those closest to Mr. Brown, but also, some demonstrators here said, a time of reflection for those who never knew him personally but have come to view him as a symbol.
Mr. Brown, who had just graduated from high school, was shot to death on Aug. 9 after a confrontation with an officer, Darren Wilson, along a curving street in Ferguson, a mostly black city where the police force is mostly white. The police described the incident as a physical altercation between the two men that left Officer Wilson with a swollen face; others have deemed it a case of needless police aggression and racial profiling. State and federal investigations are underway.
While Mr. Brown was little known beyond his sphere of friends and relatives before his death, his funeral is expected to draw a large crowd from this region and beyond. Mr. Brown’s family members have said they want the general public to be included in the events, their representatives said, a reflection of the support that so many strangers have offered.
The Rev. Al Sharpton is scheduled to be among the speakers. At least three White House officials plan to be there, including Broderick Johnson, assistant to the president, White House cabinet secretary and chairman of the My Brother’s Keeper task force; Heather Foster, an adviser for the White House Office of Public Engagement; and Marlon Marshall, a deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement who attended high school with Mr. Brown’s mother. Scott Holste, a spokesman for Gov. Jay Nixon, said he would not attend the services “out of respect for the family, who deserve time to focus on remembering Michael and grieving their loss.”
Events are to be followed with a funeral procession to a cemetery, St. Peter’s, and a repast.
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4) Michael Brown Spent Last Weeks Grappling With Problems and Promise
By JOHN ELIGON
FERGUSON, Mo. — It was 1 a.m. and Michael Brown Jr. called his father, his voice trembling. He had seen something overpowering. In the thick gray clouds that lingered from a passing storm this past June, he made out an angel. And he saw Satan chasing the angel and the angel running into the face of God. Mr. Brown was a prankster, so his father and stepmother chuckled at first.
“No, no, Dad! No!” the elder Mr. Brown remembered his son protesting. “I’m serious.”
And the black teenager from this suburb of St. Louis, who had just graduated from high school, sent his father and stepmother a picture of the sky from his cellphone. “Now I believe,” he told them.
In the weeks afterward, until his shooting death by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, on Aug. 9, they detected a change in him as he spoke seriously about religion and the Bible. He was grappling with life’s mysteries.Michael Brown, 18, due to be buried on Monday, was no angel, with public records and interviews with friends and family revealing both problems and promise in his young life. Shortly before his encounter with Officer Wilson, the police say he was caught on a security camera stealing a box of cigars, pushing the clerk of a convenience store into a display case. He lived in a community that had rough patches, and he dabbled in drugs and alcohol. He had taken to rapping in recent months, producing lyrics that were by turns contemplative and vulgar. He got into at least one scuffle with a neighbor.
At the same time, he regularly flashed a broad smile that endeared those around him. He overcame early struggles in school to graduate on time. He was pointed toward a trade college and a career and, his parents hoped, toward a successful life.
But then came the fatal encounter with Officer Wilson. Shortly after the confrontation in the convenience store, Mr. Brown and a friend were walking down the middle of a nearby street when Officer Wilson told them to get on the sidewalk. The police say Mr. Brown hit the officer and scuffled with him over his weapon, leading to his being shot.
Mr. Brown’s friend said he swung after the officer grabbed his neck and was shot after running away, hitting the ground with his hands raised in surrender. He was hit at least six times, twice in the head. His 6-foot-4 frame lay face down in the middle of the warm pavement for hours, a stream of blood flowing down the street.
Mr. Brown was born in May 1996 in the nearby town of Florissant. He was the first child of teenage parents, Michael Brown Sr. and Lesley McSpadden. Growing up, he lived under one roof with his parents, paternal grandparents and, later, a younger sister.
As a boy, Michael was a handful. When his parents put up a security gate, he would try to climb it. When they left out pens and pencils, he would use them to write on the wall. He used to tap on the ground, so his parents got him a drum set; his father played the drums. He grew into a reserved young man around people he did not know, but joking and outgoing with those close to him.
After his parents split up, he stayed with his mother though he remained close to all of his family, who lived near one another in north St. Louis County.
In the ninth grade at McCluer High School in Florissant, Mr. Brown was accused of stealing an iPod. His mother said she went to the school, eventually showing a receipt to prove the iPod was his. He left McCluer and went to two other high schools before going to Normandy for most of his final two years.
When his mother moved out of the Normandy District, he moved in with his paternal grandmother so he could remain at that school. But he continued to alternate between his parents and maternal grandmother.
He did not have a criminal record as an adult, and his family said he never got in trouble with the law as a juvenile, either.
“You may see him on a picture with some friends that may have been in a gang,” Ms. McSpadden said. “He wasn’t in a gang. He just knew how to adapt to his surroundings. Michael was so cool that he could just get along with anybody.”
Mr. Brown showed a rebellious streak. One time, his mother gave him her A.T.M. card so he could buy shoes, said Mr. Brown’s friend Brandon Lewis. Mr. Brown bought himself a PlayStation console. His mother made him give the system to his brother.
There were times when her son would talk back, Ms. McSpadden said. She relied on family and friends, including a retired juvenile officer, to help mentor her son.
Mr. Brown occasionally hinted at frustration with his family. Last August, he posted a message on Facebook that it was wrong “how yo own family dont wanna see you do good.” And just a week before he was shot dead, he commented that some of his friends treated him better than “my own family.”
Still, some of Mr. Brown’s closest confidants were family members. Mr. Brown’s uncle Bernard Ewings remembers talking to his nephew about how to interact with police officers.
“I let him know like, if the police ever get on you, I don’t care what you doing, give it up,” Mr. Ewings said. “Because if you do one wrong move, they’ll shoot you. They’ll kill you.”
Mr. Lewis said he recalled Mr. Brown getting into one fight. A contemporary they knew from the neighborhood was upset with Mr. Brown because of something Mr. Brown had said to the young man’s girlfriend. So one day the fellow, who was much smaller than Mr. Brown, took a swing at him. Mr. Brown backed up and pushed him back in the face.
“I don’t think Mike ever threw a real punch,” said Mr. Lewis, 19.
The young man’s father confronted Mr. Brown, Mr. Lewis recalled, asking him why he put his hands on his son. Mr. Brown’s father got involved, Mr. Lewis said, and they settled the dispute and went their separate ways. Mr. Brown rarely got into physical confrontations, Mr. Lewis said, because he was so big that nobody really wanted to test him. Mr. Brown tended to use his size to scare away potential trouble, Mr. Lewis said.
“He’ll swell up like, ‘I’m mad,’ and you’ll back off,” he said.
Mr. Brown was not the best student. “His grades were kind of edgy,” Michael Brown Sr. said. “That’s why I said I had to keep my foot on his neck to keep him on track.”
In his senior year, Mr. Brown was a few credits short. He was enrolled in the school’s credit recovery program, which allows students to work at their own pace to try to catch up.
“It seemed like Mike was probably the person that was the most serious in that class about getting out of Normandy, about graduating,” said Terrence Hamilton, the Normandy athletic director.
After graduating in May, Mr. Brown talked to Mr. Lewis about getting a job at the grocery store where Mr. Lewis worked. He also planned to pursue heating and cooling technician courses at a technical college.
He was an avid video game player. His favorite games were Call of Duty Zombies and PlayStation Home, a simulation game in which he created an avatar and a city. He was deft with technology and his hands. Once, when his cousin’s PlayStation broke because a disc was stuck in it, Mr. Brown took it apart, fixed it and reassembled it.
Mr. Brown, who constantly wore his Beats by Dre headphones, also was a big fan of rap music. He knew of Kendrick Lamar before he became famous. His favorite group was Migos. And within the past year, he began producing rap songs with friends.
The content varied. He collaborated on songs that included lyrics such as “My favorite part is when the bodies hit the ground.” But he also derided fathers who “don’t pay child support” and rapped glowingly about his stepmother.
He occasionally smoked marijuana and drank alcohol, according to friends. But for his music he adopted a persona to appeal to hip-hop fans, said his cousin, Bryan Douglas, a music producer who was going to help Mr. Brown pursue his music career.
Mr. Brown was sometimes philosophical, as he showed in his final hours.
“Everything happen for a reason,” he posted to Facebook the night before he was shot. “Just start putting 2 n 2 together. You’ll see it.”
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5) Hell, No, You Can't Go! Teamsters Don't like Bathroom Rules
By Amy Langfield
August 23, 2014
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/hell-no-you-cant-go-teamsters-dont-bathroom-rules-n158431
If you work at WaterSaver Faucet Company, when you gotta go, you might not want to go.
The Chicago company installed a new system that monitors bathroom breaks and penalizes employees who spend more than six minutes a day in the washroom outside their normal breaks.
"The HR woman literally goes through every person's bathroom use and either hands out a reward or discipline," said Nick Kreitman, an attorney for Teamsters Local 743, which represents 80 workers at the plant, which coincidentally manufactures taps and other sink fixtures. Employees who don't use extra breaks get a dollar a day while others who exceed more than one hour in a 10-day period will get a warning, which can lead to termination, he said.
In December, the union-represented employees had to start swiping their badges to gain access to the washrooms. By March, 19 were disciplined for excessive use, Kreitman said.A 12-page rule list given to employees is also pretty strict about how to take care of your personal business at the company.
"Place all toilet paper in the toilet and make sure that the toilet is completely flushed," it states. Employees are also told to place paper towels in the trash, refrain from "malicious gossip" and not to "make derogatory or inflammatory comments about the company."
The bathroom-monitoring part of the policy was put in place only four days after the union requested paid sick days for its members, Kreitman said. Currently the workers are employed under a month-to-month extension of their current contract, making $11 to $16 an hour, he said. While they do get vacation days and some medical coverage, no sick days are allowed. The 7.5 hour work day includes 30 minutes for lunch, a 10-minute morning break, a 15-minute afternoon break and five minutes of cleanup time.
In an email to CNBC, a company spokesperson disputed several of the Teamsters' numbers. The average hourly rate for the union employees is $14, ranging from $12 to over $17. Also, "the comment from the union regarding the monitoring starting after the requested sick days is totally and completely false," the spokesperson said. In a statement sent to CNBC on Wednesday, company president and owner Steven Kersten called the union version of events "a media issue in an apparent effort to influence current negotiations on a new contract."
His statement did not address whether bathroom monitoring is taking place, and he declined to answer specific questions about the policy.
"We understand that employees need to use the washroom outside of scheduled break times. Any person may go to the washroom at any time they need," he said in the statement, which touted its "generally stable union relations" with the Teamsters over the past 40 years.
"It should be noted that union leadership previously had agreed to a policy regarding washroom use, and even suggested language for it," he said.
Kersten told the Chicago Tribune last week that excessive bathroom breaks amounted to 120 hours of lost productivity in May.
"Regardless of the legality, should a company be regulating this kind of thing," asked Wendy Patrick, an attorney who also teaches business ethics at San Diego State University in California. The case in Chicago, she said, is an example of the type of rule that might be legally permissible but not ethically desirable.And beyond that, the company may be opening itself up for a disability claim if a worker has a medical condition that requires multiple restroom breaks.
"When nature calls, you have less control over that," she said.
The Teamsters have filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board over the bathroom discipline process and they continue to negotiate a new contract with WaterSaver Faucet and its sister company across the street, Guardian Equipment. So far the bathroom rules only apply to the 80 union employees at WaterSaver who work on the production line, but not the 60 at Guardian, Kreitman said. (A company spokesperson said there are 90 union workers at WaterSaver and 30 at Guardian.)The swipe card rule only applies to the union members.
"Ha, I'd like to see them try to require an engineer swipe his badge to use the bathroom," Kreitman said.
If you work at WaterSaver Faucet Company, when you gotta go, you might not want to go.
The Chicago company installed a new system that monitors bathroom breaks and penalizes employees who spend more than six minutes a day in the washroom outside their normal breaks.
"The HR woman literally goes through every person's bathroom use and either hands out a reward or discipline," said Nick Kreitman, an attorney for Teamsters Local 743, which represents 80 workers at the plant, which coincidentally manufactures taps and other sink fixtures. Employees who don't use extra breaks get a dollar a day while others who exceed more than one hour in a 10-day period will get a warning, which can lead to termination, he said.
In December, the union-represented employees had to start swiping their badges to gain access to the washrooms. By March, 19 were disciplined for excessive use, Kreitman said.A 12-page rule list given to employees is also pretty strict about how to take care of your personal business at the company.
"Place all toilet paper in the toilet and make sure that the toilet is completely flushed," it states. Employees are also told to place paper towels in the trash, refrain from "malicious gossip" and not to "make derogatory or inflammatory comments about the company."
The bathroom-monitoring part of the policy was put in place only four days after the union requested paid sick days for its members, Kreitman said. Currently the workers are employed under a month-to-month extension of their current contract, making $11 to $16 an hour, he said. While they do get vacation days and some medical coverage, no sick days are allowed. The 7.5 hour work day includes 30 minutes for lunch, a 10-minute morning break, a 15-minute afternoon break and five minutes of cleanup time.
In an email to CNBC, a company spokesperson disputed several of the Teamsters' numbers. The average hourly rate for the union employees is $14, ranging from $12 to over $17. Also, "the comment from the union regarding the monitoring starting after the requested sick days is totally and completely false," the spokesperson said. In a statement sent to CNBC on Wednesday, company president and owner Steven Kersten called the union version of events "a media issue in an apparent effort to influence current negotiations on a new contract."
His statement did not address whether bathroom monitoring is taking place, and he declined to answer specific questions about the policy.
"We understand that employees need to use the washroom outside of scheduled break times. Any person may go to the washroom at any time they need," he said in the statement, which touted its "generally stable union relations" with the Teamsters over the past 40 years.
"It should be noted that union leadership previously had agreed to a policy regarding washroom use, and even suggested language for it," he said.
Kersten told the Chicago Tribune last week that excessive bathroom breaks amounted to 120 hours of lost productivity in May.
"Regardless of the legality, should a company be regulating this kind of thing," asked Wendy Patrick, an attorney who also teaches business ethics at San Diego State University in California. The case in Chicago, she said, is an example of the type of rule that might be legally permissible but not ethically desirable.And beyond that, the company may be opening itself up for a disability claim if a worker has a medical condition that requires multiple restroom breaks.
"When nature calls, you have less control over that," she said.
The Teamsters have filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board over the bathroom discipline process and they continue to negotiate a new contract with WaterSaver Faucet and its sister company across the street, Guardian Equipment. So far the bathroom rules only apply to the 80 union employees at WaterSaver who work on the production line, but not the 60 at Guardian, Kreitman said. (A company spokesperson said there are 90 union workers at WaterSaver and 30 at Guardian.)The swipe card rule only applies to the union members.
"Ha, I'd like to see them try to require an engineer swipe his badge to use the bathroom," Kreitman said.
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6) Grain Piles Up, Waiting for a Ride, as Trains Move North Dakota Oil
FARGO, N.D. — The furious pace of energy exploration in North Dakota is creating a crisis for farmers whose grain shipments have been held up by a vast new movement of oil by rail, leading to millions of dollars in agricultural losses and slower production for breakfast cereal giants like General Mills.
The backlog is only going to get worse, farmers said, as they prepared this week for what is expected to be a record crop of wheat and soybeans.
“If we can’t get this stuff out soon, a lot of it is simply going to go on the ground and rot,” said Bill Hejl, who grows soybeans, wheat and sugar beets in the town of Casselton, about 20 miles west of here.
Although the energy boom in North Dakota has led to a 2.8 percent unemployment rate, the lowest in the nation, the downside has been harder times for farmers who have long been mainstays of the state’s economy. Agriculture was North Dakota’s No. 1 industry for decades, representing a quarter of its economic base, but recent statistics show that oil and gas have become the biggest contributors to the state’s gross domestic product.
Railroads have long been the backbone of North Dakota’s transportation system and the most dependable way for farmers to move crops — to ports in Portland, Ore., Seattle and Vancouver, from which the bulk of the grain is shipped across the Pacific to Asia; and to East Coast ports like Albany, from which it is shipped to Europe.
But reports the railroads filed with the federal government show that for the week that ended Aug. 22, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway — North Dakota’s largest railroad, owned by the billionaire Warren E. Buffett — had a backlog of 1,336 rail cars waiting to ship grain and other products. Another railroad, Canadian Pacific, had a backlog of nearly 1,000 cars.
For farmers, the delays often mean canceled orders from food giants that cannot wait weeks or months for the grain they need to make cereal, bread and an array of other products. “They need to get this problem fixed,” Mr. Hejl said. “I’m losing money, and my customers are turning to other sources as a result. I don’t know how much longer we can survive like this.”
This month, federal Agriculture Department officials said they were particularly concerned that Canadian Pacific would not be able to fulfill nearly 30,000 requests from farmers and others for rail cars before October. As a result, North Dakota’s congressional delegation and lawmakers in Minnesota and South Dakota have called on the Surface Transportation Board, which oversees the nation’s railroads, to step up pressure on the companies.
“This rail backlog is a national problem,” Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Democrat of North Dakota, said in an interview. “The inability of farmers to get these grains to market is not only a problem for agriculture, but for companies that produce cereals, breads and other goods.”
A recent study conducted by North Dakota State University at Ms. Heitkamp’s request found that rail congestion could cost farmers in the state more than $160 million because a local oversupply of grain has lowered prices.
The study also found that farmers would lose $67 million in revenue from wheat, corn and soybeans from January to mid-April. Around $95 million more in losses are expected if farmers are unable to move their remaining inventory of crops.
The study was done before the current harvest, which is forecast at a record 273 million bushels of wheat, up from 235 million bushels in 2013. This year’s soybean harvest is also expected to be a record, and corn will be a near-record.
Food companies say they are feeling the effects of the delayed shipments. General Mills, the Minnesota-based maker of Cheerios, told investors in March that it had lost 62 days of production — as much as 4 percent of its output — in the quarter that ended in February because of winter logistics problems, including rail-car congestion. In its earnings report this month, Cargill, another Minnesota-based food giant, reported a drop in net earnings that it attributed in part to “higher costs related to rail-car shortages.”
Farmers and agriculture groups say rail operators are clearly favoring the more lucrative transport of oil. Rail shipments of crude oil in North Dakota have surged since 2008, and the state now produces about a million barrels a day. About 60 percent of that oil travels by train from the Bakken oil fields in the western part of the state to faraway oil refiners. There are few pipelines to ship it.
“Oil seems to be pushing us off the trains,” said Bob Sinner, a farmer and the brother of a Democratic congressional candidate, George Sinner, who is running against the state’s lone House member, Representative Kevin Cramer, a Republican. George Sinner has called on the Surface Transportation Board to use its emergency powers to address the rail-car shortage — the board could allow shippers to move their products with the help of a different carrier, for example. But Dennis Watson, a spokesman for the board, said it rarely invoked its emergency powers and preferred to work with rail carriers to solve problems.
B.N.S.F. and Canadian Pacific maintain that their oil shipments have not replaced shipments of crops.
“Of course, the big difference in what we are shipping these days is oil,” said Matthew K. Rose, the executive chairman of B.N.S.F. “But we aren’t favoring one type of product over another.”
Nonetheless, B.N.S.F. is investing about $400 million in North Dakota, in part to build additional tracks, hire new staff members and add rail cars. “We understand the frustration of our customers,” Mr. Rose said. “We’re making this investment in our infrastructure to make sure that we get things back to normal.”
Doug Goehring, the state’s agriculture commissioner, is not optimistic so far. “I know that B.N.S.F. especially is trying, but I just don’t see that it’s going to be any better this year,” he said. “We’re expecting record crop yields, and I expect we will see more of the same with shipments lagging.”
Canadian Pacific officials said they were working with farmers to clear the backlog. But in a letter to Ms. Heitkamp, E. Hunter Harrison, the railroad’s chief executive, argued that many of the delays stemmed from what he called phantom requests — farmers’ ordering more rail cars than they need to ship products. As a result, Mr. Harrison said, cars are not available for farmers who have more immediate shipping needs.
The letter prompted an angry response from Ms. Heitkamp and state officials like Mr. Goehring. “With C.P., it’s everybody’s fault but theirs,” Mr. Goehring said.
Both railroads said some of the blame for the slowed traffic lay with one of the coldest winters in years and with an increase in shipments of all types of products as a result of an improving economy.
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
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7) Israel Levels Upscale Gaza High-Rise
GAZA
CITY — The high-rise known as the Italian Compound had four apartments
on each of 13 floors, above an 80,000-square-foot mall with seven shisha
cafes surrounding a garden and shops selling shoes, pharmaceuticals and
mobile-phone accessories, as well as the Hamas-controlled Ministry of
Public Works. It was one of Gaza’s finest residential towers, with
24-hour guards, and generators and wells to keep the elevator running
and taps flowing when electricity and water ran short.
On Tuesday morning, the apartment line on the southeast corner and the elevator shaft were all that was left after a series of Israeli airstrikes that started after midnight, injuring about a dozen residents and leaving 40 families homeless.“We spent the whole night in the street outside because it was dangerous to move,” said Hani Ashi, 44, who bought his 1,750-square-foot apartment on the tower’s fifth floor for $63,000 four years ago. Mr. Ashi said he had fled in shorts and a sleeveless undershirt, carrying only his family’s identity cards and a jalabiya, or cloak, which he donned when he got outside.
The Italian Compound was one of two large buildings Israel targeted in strikes early Tuesday, after destroying an 11-story Gaza City apartment tower on Saturday, as its battle with Hamas, the Palestinian faction that dominates Gaza, entered its 50th day. In Israel, barrages of rockets from Gaza continued to pound southern cities for the seventh consecutive day, with a direct hit on a home in Ashkelon that sent more than 20 wounded people to the hospital, the most in a single strike this summer.
The destructive exchanges came amid continued reports from Cairo of efforts toward a long-term cease-fire that had yet to solidify. Sirens signaling incoming rockets sounded throughout the morning in Israel’s south, and at least one was intercepted over Tel Aviv around 6:30 a.m., according to the Israeli military.
In Ashkelon, 50 houses were damaged by shrapnel after a rocket smashed through the red-tile roof of the home where Yuval and Ofra Cohen had lived for 10 years with their children, now 14 and 17, around 7 a.m., according to the Israeli police and Ynet, an Israeli news site. A water heater fell into the Cohen home, which was destroyed, and a water pipe outside was damaged.
“We hadn’t managed to make it into the safe room when it fell in our bedroom,” Mr. Cohen said in an interview on Army Radio. “It caught us in the children’s room, all the shrapnel and the dust and all of the glass. I don’t know how we escaped without harm, it’s a miracle.”
In Gaza, the Health Ministry said six people had been killed in airstrikes. Two died at dawn and four died in the afternoon, in an airstrike in east Gaza City and a drone attack on a car in the territory’s north. Voice of Palestine radio said that more than 20 homes had been destroyed overnight.
Hamas officials had taken over spaces in Al Basha in 2009 after some of their headquarters were destroyed in Israel’s winter incursion, posting paper signs saying they were information technology companies. But most had moved out after offices were rebuilt.
Al Basha was knocked on its side and by noon on Tuesday was still blocking the intersection of two normally busy streets, Al Jala and Jamal Abdel Nasser. Three bulldozers were working to clear it. A guard who gave his name only as Abu Ismail said an Arabic speaker who identified himself as representing the Israeli military had called his mobile phone twice as a warning before the strikes began about 4:20 a.m. They began with three drone-fired missiles that Israel calls “knocks on the roof,” followed by four bombs dropped by F-16 warplanes.
The guard said the tower contained no residences, just offices over four stores, including a showroom for a juice factory and a business that sold bathroom tiles and fixtures. But some people whose homes elsewhere in Gaza had been destroyed during the fighting had been staying in the building’s basement.
At the Italian Compound, Zaki Shneino, a guard, said one of the apartments hit early in the latest fighting was owned by Dirar Abu Sisi, an engineer who Israel captured in Ukraine in 2011 and who has since been held in prison on charges that he designed Hamas weaponry. Shortly after midnight Tuesday, said Mr. Shneino, who has worked at the building 10 years, several residents received calls on their mobile phones advising them to evacuate.
Mr. Ashi, who lived on the fifth floor with his wife and eight children, the youngest of them 10-year-old twins, said there were four “knocks on the roof” 10 to 20 minutes apart, then six or seven large bombs.
By late morning, uniformed police officers and detectives in plain clothes prevented journalists and others from getting close to the rubble of the building, where bedcovers, cooking-gas cylinders, a computer and an 11th-grade textbook could be glimpsed among the debris. A man was loading boxes of unsold shoes into a van, while a cafe owner recovered bamboo chairs whose dark-red seat coverings had turned gray from the dust.
Residents said 40 of the tower’s 52 apartments had been occupied, many of them by doctors, merchants, engineers and other professionals. It was built by a Palestinian-Italian company, they said, and opened in 1998 or 1999.
“Prices here are a little bit higher than other buildings,” said Mr. Ashi, who worked as a police officer for the Palestinian Authority before it was routed by Hamas in 2007, and then for 10 months in the Hamas-controlled security service. “Because this is a distinguished place.”
Fares Akram reported from Gaza City and Jodi Rudoren from Jerusalem.
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8) Amid Mourning for Michael Brown, Call for Change
ST. LOUIS — His gold-and-black coffin was topped by a baseball cap — a palpable, personal reminder of the young man who was fatally shot by a police officer only weeks ago. But the calls from the pulpit were for Michael Brown’s memory to live on in a broad movement for justice, for voter participation, and for answers to vexing and unending questions about race and policing.
“There is a cry being made from the ground, not just for Michael Brown, but for the Trayvon Martins, for those children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, for the Columbine massacre, for the black-on-black crime,” the Rev. Charles Ewing, Mr. Brown’s uncle, told 2,500 people packed into the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church here on Monday for a funeral attended by family members but also by people Mr. Brown had never met — celebrities, representatives from the White House, members of Congress, civil rights leaders and hundreds of residents.Infused with Scripture and song, the funeral was a mix of intimate reflections and national policy plans. Relatives reminisced in choked voices about Mr. Brown’s wide smile as a picture from his high school graduation flashed on two wide screens, as leaders urged those gathered to memorialize Mr. Brown’s life by carrying forward a vocal, strong and unified effort to seek change across the country.
“Michael Brown must be remembered for more than disturbances,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, reflecting on the sometimes violent demonstrations that followed Mr. Brown’s shooting by a white police officer in nearby Ferguson on Aug. 9. “He must be remembered for: This is where they started changing what was going on. Oh yeah, there have been other times in history that became seminal moments, and this is one of those moments. And this young man, for whatever reason, has appealed to all of us that we’ve got to solve this and not continue this.”
Mr. Sharpton denounced what he called the militarization of the police and how they had treated Mr. Brown, who was black and unarmed. Mr. Sharpton exhorted the crowd, calling on African-Americans here to push for change instead of “sitting around having ghetto pity parties.”
“All of us are required to respond to this,” Mr. Sharpton said. “And all of us must solve this.”
People from all walks of life came: in pumps and dresses but also in jeans and T-shirts bearing Mr. Brown’s image; from Ferguson and far away; old and young — even some infants were bobbed up and down through the service.
An array of well-known figures filled one part of the church, including the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson; the film director Spike Lee; T. D. Jakes, the bishop of The Potter’s House, an African-American megachurch; members of Congress; two children of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; and other families of young people who have been killed.
Mr. Brown’s family had called for a halt to protests on Monday in recognition of the funeral, and those leading the service urged the crowd not to be part of violent protests or looting in the future. “It is imperative that we resist the temptation to retaliate by looting and rioting in our own neighborhoods,” said Bishop Edwin Bass, a Church of God in Christ leader in St. Louis, as some in the church cheered and called out, “Yes!”
“The destruction of property in Ferguson only gives bad pictures to the world,” the bishop said, later adding: “This is a day to immerse the family in the warm affection and abiding peace of the beloved community.”
At one point during the service, men from an overflow room across the street from the church ran into the street and began loudly chanting, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” words that have become a refrain here since Mr. Brown’s death. But a woman screamed back: “Be quiet. Be quiet. Respect that family,” and the men quieted down.
Around the area, some schools reopened on Monday, after delays because of the demonstrations. Officials reported good attendance levels and relatively smooth starts, as the local police described calm streets in Ferguson. Jana Shortt, a spokeswoman for the Ferguson-Florissant school district, said teachers were not instructed on whether to address the issue in their classes, though some students said that they were talking about it and that some had worn buttons and shirts to school in recognition of Mr. Brown. “I heard people yell, ‘Hands up, don’t shoot!’ in the hallways,” said Breeana McKee, a junior at McCluer High School.
Around the nation, Monday was the start of a new school year at many colleges, and on dozens of campuses students walked out of class and held demonstrations to mark the fact that instead of sending Mr. Brown to college, his family was mourning him. Students held silent vigils, listened to speakers and posed for pictures, many posted online, with their hands raised in a pose of surrender.
“We’re starting school and he’s being buried, and we know that what he went through is something that we could have gone through,” said Reuben L. Riggs, 22, a senior at Washington University here and an organizer of a demonstration.
Mr. Brown was shot by Officer Darren Wilson after the officer encountered Mr. Brown and a friend walking down the middle of the street and told them to move off the road. The friend, Dorian Johnson, said that Officer Wilson grabbed his friend’s neck and shirt and that Mr. Brown tried to push the officer off him. The police have said that Mr. Brown and Officer Wilson struggled over the officer’s gun. Autopsies showed that Mr. Brown was shot six times, twice in the head.
In the days that followed, nightly street protests in Ferguson grew violent at times, with the police lobbing tear gas. Eventually, Gov. Jay Nixon called up National Guard troops to protect the police officers’ command post after it came under attack one night.
President Obama, in two news briefings, cited his concern about the shooting and the response to the unrest that followed, which included a show of force by police officers equipped with surplus military vehicles and equipment, which was widely criticized as a provocation.
Two investigations into the shooting are underway, one by a St. Louis County grand jury and the other a civil rights inquiry by the Justice Department, which was ordered by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who visited Ferguson last week.
At the service in St. Louis, family members who affectionately recalled Mr. Brown as “Mike Mike” or “Big Mike” said that he had once predicted that his name would someday be widely known. As the service ended, scores of photographers, television cameras and onlookers crowded in to get a glimpse as his coffin emerged from the church into the sweltering street.
Some here described the service as a needed moment of healing after days of anguish and tumult. “I’m feeling pretty good,” Rodney Hubbard Sr., who lives in St Louis, said as he left what he called “a unity speech.”
As he left, Brandon Lewis, a friend of Mr. Brown, said, “I’m at peace.”
Yet others here said the larger issues raised by the shooting and its aftermath — of police relations, race and political power — remained unsolved and deeply complicated. “In certain ways, things may change after all that has happened, but this is a process that’s going to take another 100 to 200 years,” said Warren Bell, who said he knew Mr. Brown’s mother.
During the service, Benjamin L. Crump, the lawyer who is representing the Brown family, referred to the original constitutional compromise that counted slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of state apportionment in the House of Representatives. “We declare here today as we pay our final respects to Michael Brown Jr. that he was not three-fifths of a citizen,” Mr. Crump said. “He was an American citizen.”
After the service, hundreds of family members, friends and supporters of Mr. Brown huddled under and around a green tent at St. Peter’s Cemetery in nearby Normandy on Monday afternoon as Mr. Brown’s coffin was lowered into a copper-lined concrete vault.
“We shall overcome,” the mourners softly sang at one point.
“We love you, Mike Mike,” someone cried. Others sobbed.
Lesley McSpadden, Mr. Brown’s mother, returned to the vault by herself after everyone else had left. She touched it, then stood over the inscription: “Michael OD Brown; 1996-2014.”
Reporting was contributed by Motoko Rich and Richard Pérez-Peña from New York; Mosi Secret and John Eligon from St. Louis; and Frances Robles from Ferguson, Mo.
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9) Generation Later, Poor Are Still Rare at Elite Colleges
As the shaded quadrangles of the nation’s elite campuses stir to life for the start of the academic year, they remain bastions of privilege. Amid promises to admit more poor students, top colleges educate roughly the same percentage of them as they did a generation ago. This is despite the fact that there are many high school seniors from low-income homes with top grades and scores: twice the percentage in the general population as at elite colleges.
A series of federal surveys of selective colleges found virtually no change from the 1990s to 2012 in enrollment of students who are less well off — less than 15 percent by some measures — even though there was a huge increase over that time in the number of such students going to college. Similar studies looking at a narrower range of top wealthy universities back those findings. With race-based affirmative action losing both judicial and public support, many have urged selective colleges to shift more focus to economic diversity.This is partly because students are more likely to graduate and become leaders in their fields if they attend competitive colleges. Getting low-income students onto elite campuses is seen as a vital engine of social mobility.
Yet as Anthony P. Carnevale, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, put it, “Higher education has become a powerful force for reinforcing advantage and passing it on through generations.”
It is true that low-income enrollment at some top colleges has been slowly climbing. And some studies suggest that colleges are well intentioned but simply ineffectual in addressing economic diversity. College leaders also point to studies showing that most low-income students with high grades and test scores do not apply to highly selective colleges.
But critics contend that on the whole, elite colleges are too worried about harming their finances and rankings to match their rhetoric about wanting economic diversity with action.
“It’s not clear to me that universities are hungry for that,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation who studies college diversity. “What happens if low-income students start calling the bluff of selective universities, and do start applying in much larger numbers? Will the doors be open?”
There are elite colleges, both private and public, with three times as many recipients of Pell Grants — the main federal aid for low-income students — as some of their peers, which critics say shows that the others could be doing more. Prestigious schools like Vassar, Amherst, Harvard and the University of California system have managed to increase low-income enrollment.
“A lot of it is just about money, because each additional low-income student you enroll costs you a lot in financial aid,” said Michael N. Bastedo, director of the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education at the University of Michigan. “No one is going to talk openly and say, ‘Oh, we’re not making low-income students a priority.’ But enrollment management is so sophisticated that they know pretty clearly how much each student would cost.”
Colleges generally spend 4 percent to 5 percent of their endowments per year on financial aid, prompting some administrators to cite this rough math: Sustaining one poor student who needs $45,000 a year in aid requires $1 million in endowment devoted to that purpose; 100 of them require $100 million. Only the wealthiest schools can do that, and build new laboratories, renovate dining halls, provide small classes and bid for top professors.
The rankings published by U.S. News and World Report, and others, also play a major role. The rankings reward spending on facilities and faculty, but most pay little or no attention to financial aid and diversity.
“College presidents are under constant pressure to meet budgets, improve graduation rates and move up in the rankings,” Dr. Carnevale said. “The easiest way to do it is to climb upstream economically — get students whose parents can pay more.”
A big part of that climb has been the rise of “merit aid,” price breaks offered to desirable students regardless of their parents’ wealth. A few dozen top schools give no merit aid, but they are the exception. Historically, American colleges gave far more need-based aid, but it is outweighed today by merit aid.
Since the late 1990s, top schools have made several high-profile moves to become more accessible to low- and middle-income families. The policy changes drew heavy coverage, but had limited effect, studies found, largely because poorer consumers were unaware of them.
Harvard, Princeton, the University of Virginia and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill eliminated early admission programs that were seen as favoring affluent students. Some colleges stopped including loans in financial aid packages, so that all aid came in the form of grants. Others lowered prices for all but affluent families, not requiring any contribution from parents below a certain income threshold, like $65,000.
But the colleges that ended early admissions reinstated them within a few years, after other elite schools declined to follow their lead, putting them at a disadvantage in drawing top students. Many of the benefits of the no-loan and no-parental-contribution policies went to middle-income families, and in any case, not all of the wealthiest schools, like Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Stanford, fully adopted both.
In 2006, at the 82 schools rated “most competitive” by Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges, 14 percent of American undergraduates came from the poorer half of the nation’s families, according to researchers at the University of Michigan and Georgetown University who analyzed data from federal surveys. That was unchanged from 1982.
And at a narrower, more elite group of 28 private colleges and universities, including all eight Ivy League members, researchers at Vassar and Williams Colleges found that from 2001 to 2009, a period of major increases in financial aid at those schools, enrollment of students from the bottom 40 percent of family incomes increased from just 10 percent to 11 percent.
Even with the best intentions, tapping the pool of high-performing low-income students can be hard. Studies point to many reasons poorer students with good credentials do not apply to competitive colleges, like lack of encouragement at home and at school, thinking (correctly or not) that they cannot afford it or believing they would be out of place, academically or socially.
What distinguishes those who apply to elite schools is not family income or their parents’ level of education, according to a groundbreaking study published last year, but location. Exposure to just a few high-achieving peers or attending a high school with just a few teachers or recent alumni who went to highly selective colleges makes a huge difference in where low-income students apply.
So does face-to-face recruiting.
“You can make big statements about being accessible, and have need-blind admissions and really low net prices for low-income kids, but still enroll very few of those low-income kids, by doing minimal outreach,” said Catharine Bond Hill, president of Vassar College. “There has to be a commitment to go out and find them.”
But admissions officers can visit only a small fraction of the nation’s 26,000 high schools, so they rarely see those stellar-but-isolated candidates who need to be encouraged to apply. The top schools that have managed to raise low-income enrollment say that an important factor has been collaborating with some of the nonprofit groups, like QuestBridge and the Posse Foundation, that are devoted to identifying hidden prospects, working with them in high school and connecting them to top colleges.The programs can be expensive for colleges, and many balk at the cost, refusing to join or taking only a handful of students each year. “Last year, we had only 680 slots for 15,000 students nominated by schools and community groups,” said Deborah Bial, president of the Posse Foundation, which has 51 partner colleges but is trying to recruit more. “We could easily triple in size, tomorrow.”
Troy Simon, 21, said that without significant help from two nonprofit groups, he would not be where he is now, preparing for his junior year at Bard College. It is a long way from his chaotic childhood in a poor section of New Orleans, where he was held back in school — so far, in fact, that his story has been hailed by Michelle Obama as an example of what can be overcome. “I was illiterate,” he said. “I clowned around in class, I didn’t understand what was going on, and no one asked too many questions about my failing grades at home.”
Separated from his family during Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed their home, he took refuge with cousins in an abandoned building. He was placed for a time in a school in Houston, where he said that at age 12, he finally began to learn to read, but after returning to New Orleans, he was arrested on suspicion of theft.
But in high school — he attended three of them — a group called College Track took him in, providing tutoring, test preparation, counseling and advice on applying to college. Then he won a Posse Foundation scholarship that paid for college and provided support services there.
“The kids that I hung out with when I was a kid that were smart, some of them are dead now, some are in prison, some of them have several kids that they can’t support,” he said. “I consider myself blessed.”
Ten to 15 years ago, when some elite colleges got more serious about economic diversity, there was a view that increasing financial aid could turn the dial, but “I think we were a little naïve,” said Morton O. Schapiro, president of Northwestern University, a former president of Williams College and, like Dr. Hill at Vassar, an economist specializing in the economics of higher education.
Cost remains a barrier, but so does perception, he said, adding, “It’s a psychology and sociology thing, as well as a pricing thing.”
College presidents like to say that consumers should not be scared off by high sticker prices, around $60,000 a year for top schools. But those are the numbers that draw national attention, concealing a much more tangled picture, in which true costs are hard to discern, hard to compare and wildly variable.
Public colleges remain less expensive, but in an era of declining state support, their prices have risen faster than those of private colleges, and they vary widely from state to state. Private colleges have sharply increased financial aid since the turn of the century, so that the average net price that families really pay has barely changed over the last decade, adjusted for inflation — and for low-income students, it has actually dropped.
But even top private colleges with similar sticker prices differ enormously in net prices, related to how wealthy they are, so a family can find that an elite education is either dauntingly expensive or surprisingly affordable. In 2011-12, net prices paid by families with incomes under $48,000 averaged less than $4,000 at Harvard, which has the nation’s largest endowment, for example, and more than $27,000 at New York University, according to data compiled by the Department of Education.
None of that complexity is apparent to most consumers.
“If you come from a family and a neighborhood where no one has gone to a fancy college, you have no way of knowing that’s even a possibility,” said Anthony W. Marx, president of the New York Public Library, and a former president of Amherst. “And if you go on their website, the first thing you’re going to look for is the sticker price. End of conversation.”
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10) 'Poor Doors' Are Only the Tip of the Affordable Housing Iceberg
The controversial practice has everyone up in arms, but there are much more pressing housing policies that need to be changed
By Allegra Kirkland
August 26, 2014
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/poor-doors-are-only-tip-affordable-housing-iceberg?akid=12170.229473.ywAGsv&rd=1&src=newsletter1016976&t=10&paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark
Last fall, the Extell Development Company received approval from the city to construct a 33-floor luxury condo with two separate entrances: one for residents paying market rate for their riverfront views, and another for affordable housing tenants. Housing advocates, outraged locals and city councilmembers have pointed to the development as a prime example of how New York City prioritizes the interests of its wealthier residents, relegating those in need of affordable housing to the status of “second-class citizens.” Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal said the poor door was a “separate but equal arrangement” that “has no place in the 21st century.” Public Advocate Letitia James called it “segregation.” And New York Magazine proclaimed that with the construction of 40 Riverside, the city “moved just a little closer to all-out class warfare.”
Extell’s development is part of New York City’s inclusionary housing program, under which developers set aside 20% of apartment units for low-income tenants in exchange for incentives including cheap financing, significant tax breaks and permission to build 33% more square footage than would otherwise be allowed. The affordable units can either be scattered throughout the project (onsite) or located within the same community district (offsite). In the case of 40 Riverside, the building where the affordable units are housed is immediately adjacent to the market-rate tower. But this still technically qualifies as offsite, meaning that constructing two separate entrances is perfectly legal, just one of the many creative ways developers have managed to undermine the inclusionary intention of the program.
New York City lawmakers are taking steps to correct this loophole and prevent the implementation of similar “separate but equal” policies in developments currently under construction. Gale Brewer, the Manhattan Borough president, has promised to reject plans for future developments that have separate entrances. And a cohort of elected officials on the Upper West Side, where 40 Riverside is located, wrote to the heads of New York’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development urging them to change the zoning resolution’s language. As Helen Rosenthal, a councilmember from the Sixth District and one of the lead authors of the letter, said in a phone interview, “It’s a question of fundamental dignity and human rights that people should be able to walk through the same door to get to their homes.”
Their efforts are laudable, and in keeping with the spirit of Mayor de Blasio’s campaign promise to loosen the Dickensian economic strictures that define life in this most unequal of cities. But, like the outpouring of articles condemning the poor door, they don’t address the root causes of our national affordable housing crisis or confront the profound difficulties of finding a reasonably priced place to live in our most populous urban centers. In his column this week, the New York Times’ Paul Krugman argues that affordable housing is the key to job creation and regional growth—which explains why people are moving out of the prohibitively expensive Northeast to locations further south. But as Krugman warns,
1. Building for the Rich
Starting with the basics, many apartment complexes like 40 Riverside don’t just have a separate door for low-income residents; they also have gyms, spas, elevators, rooftop gardens, storage areas, and playrooms that are available only to tenants who pay market rate. Developers have tried to explain this away, insisting that affordable housing tenants are lucky to get a spot in their buildings, regardless of their access to these amenities. Free-market advocates and conservative publications have vigorously come to their defense, with the New York Post labeling critics of such policies “wealth-distribution advocates” who are “satisfied merely to play the ‘racism’ card.”
But these arguments only highlight how transparent the motives of the developers are. They want to build luxury apartment buildings, and they include as many amenities as possible in order to attract those who can pay top dollar. But they leverage the affordable housing units, which provide them with tax incentives and permission to build larger and taller buildings, to their advantage without giving the low-income residents anything in return. This is why it is so disingenuous to hide behind the argument that Extell is legally allowed to have two separate entrances for its two buildings. These decisions are not just accidental quirks of design; they are intentional ways of isolating affordable housing tenants and preventing them from feeling at home in their own apartment buildings.
In a piece on the widespread use of these practices, the Times noted that tenant advocates “view the policies as ways to demoralize people who pay less than the going rate and to not so subtly encourage them to move elsewhere.” This isn’t a New York-specific issue; low-income residents in cities from Los Angeles to London have reported similar incidents of systemic exclusion.
2. The Elusiveness of Integration
One of the goals of inclusionary housing programs is to promote social mixing between individuals from different economic backgrounds, avoiding the concentrations of poverty that plagued sprawling midcentury affordable housing developments. But as Henry Grabar argues at Salon, “If there’s one aspect of mixed-income housing that has most obviously fallen short, it’s the promise of new social dynamics and inter-class bonding.” While low-income and wealthy tenants may live in proximity to each other in inclusionary housing buildings, studies by the Department of Housing and Urban Development have shown that little interaction actually occurs between them. Needless to say, isolating affordable housing tenants in their own buildings and preventing them from sharing elevators, lobbies and facilities with their higher-income neighbors only exacerbates this divide.
David Von Spreckelsen, senior vice president at Toll Brothers—another high-end developer operating within the inclusionary housing program—contends it is not the responsibility of private developers to build unified communities. “No one ever said that the goal was full integration of these populations….I think it’s unfair to expect very high-income homeowners who paid a fortune to live in their building to be in the same boat as low-income renters.”
But income levels are not the only distinction between these two groups; race is a critical factor, too. Rent-regulated tenants not only earn less, they are far more likely to be minorities. Seventy-three percent of those who rent at market rates are white, compared to just 47% of rent-regulated tenants. This means that the cries of segregation and “separate but equal” policies are more than just hyperbole; poor people of color are in fact most affected by restrictions on entrances and amenities.
In a phone interview, Barika Williams, deputy director of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD), a New York-based housing advocacy group, expressed concern that these policies reflect the troubling direction the city is headed. “One of New York City’s most enduring and unique attributes is its diversity. And I think there’s widespread concern that we’re turning away from that and no longer embracing the mixed-income, mixed-race, mixed-religion, mixed-culture quality that really makes New York New York.”
3. The Developer’s Choice
One of the critical flaws with New York’s inclusionary housing program is that it is voluntary. Given the reluctance of developers to participate in a relatively new housing system when they can just as easily make huge profits from constructing market-rate luxury buildings, the current program provides little guarantee that communities will get the affordable housing they so desperately need. Indeed, a 2013 report by city councilmember Brad Lander found that since the program began in 2005, it has generated only 2% of all multifamily units built in the five boroughs.
Critics have used this lack of interest on the developer’s part as a reason to overlook discriminatory policies like the poor door for the greater good of more affordable housing. After all, they say, it’s better to have some percentage of affordable housing units than none at all. But this twisted logic ignores the fact that a voluntary program simply doesn’t do enough to address the city’s staggering housing needs. What the low participation rates really prove is that we can’t simply allow the private sector to dictate how affordable housing gets built. As the Nation’s architecture critic, Mark Sorkin, explained in an article on inclusionary zoning, “If we concede that the market is not a system that makes equality its first priority, then we must interfere with it in some way to produce equitable results.”
A report from Association of Neighborhood and Housing Development found that an inclusionary zoning policy that required developers to participate, rather than allowing them to join voluntarily, could generate 4,000 affordable units annually, instead of the current 400 per year. Mayor de Blasio has made mandatory inclusionary zoning a centerpiece of his ambitious housing plan, which is a crucial step in the right direction, but this still won’t do enough to supply a sufficient number of low-income apartments. As ANHD points out, “rent-regulated units are disappearing fast, either as the result of being deregulated once they become vacant, or because of the demolition of the buildings in which they sit.” (Demolition alone cost the city around 8,000 units between 2005-2012.)
4. Affordable, But Not Permanent
Most of the nation’s affordable housing programs only require temporary affordability, which often expires in 30 years or less. This means that developers will continue to profit from the affordable units in their buildings long after they have ceased to be rented to low-income individuals. In New York, the erosion of affordability seriously undermines the mayor’s goal of providing the city with 200,000 affordable units over the next decade. As ANHD reports, starting in 2017, New York City will begin losing an average of more than 11,000 affordable units a year.
5. The Many Shades of Poverty
One of the most striking aspects of the poor door debate is that these affordable housing tenants are defined as “poor.” In order to qualify for one of the 55 affordable units at 40 Riverside, for example, a tenant would need to earn less than 60% of the area’s median income—which would be about $52,000 a year for a family of four. As Pat Regnier pointed out at Time, that family could rent a two-bedroom under the program for around $1,100 per month. Although the extremely high costs of living in New York City mean that a $52,000 salary doesn't go very far, this income level is still far above what most of New York’s affordable housing seekers earn.
Writing at Vox, Matthew Yglesias argues that “the real victims are every economically struggling New Yorker who doesn’t get the discount” made possible through inclusionary zoning. And there are thousands of these people. ANHD found that a full two-thirds of New York City’s affordable housing is actually unaffordable to most neighborhood residents; the typical Bronx household would have to make 1.5 times its income in order to afford the majority of affordable housing built in the borough.
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The affordable housing crisis will not be solved because of the elimination of one policy, nor will it be solved quickly. But in order to mitigate this urgent crisis there are myriad policies cities like New York can implement, like making inclusionary zoning mandatory for developers; ensuring that new low-income units remain permanently affordable; and preventing the displacement of rent-stabilized tenants. The fight for affordable housing is not just about demonizing developers, or attacking the most visible symbols of inequality like the poor door. It’s about taking more than a piecemeal approach to housing policy, understanding the economic constraints for developers, and guaranteeing a supply of comfortable, safe apartments for the urban residents who need housing assistance the most.
Allegra Kirkland is AlterNet's associate managing editor. Her writing has appeared in the Chicago Reader, Inc., Daily Serving and the Nation.
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11) LA Police Refuse to Release Information on In-Custody Deaths, Community Pushes Back
Tuesday, 26 August 2014 12:06
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6) Grain Piles Up, Waiting for a Ride, as Trains Move North Dakota Oil
By RON NIXON
FARGO, N.D. — The furious pace of energy exploration in North Dakota is creating a crisis for farmers whose grain shipments have been held up by a vast new movement of oil by rail, leading to millions of dollars in agricultural losses and slower production for breakfast cereal giants like General Mills.
The backlog is only going to get worse, farmers said, as they prepared this week for what is expected to be a record crop of wheat and soybeans.
“If we can’t get this stuff out soon, a lot of it is simply going to go on the ground and rot,” said Bill Hejl, who grows soybeans, wheat and sugar beets in the town of Casselton, about 20 miles west of here.
Although the energy boom in North Dakota has led to a 2.8 percent unemployment rate, the lowest in the nation, the downside has been harder times for farmers who have long been mainstays of the state’s economy. Agriculture was North Dakota’s No. 1 industry for decades, representing a quarter of its economic base, but recent statistics show that oil and gas have become the biggest contributors to the state’s gross domestic product.
Railroads have long been the backbone of North Dakota’s transportation system and the most dependable way for farmers to move crops — to ports in Portland, Ore., Seattle and Vancouver, from which the bulk of the grain is shipped across the Pacific to Asia; and to East Coast ports like Albany, from which it is shipped to Europe.
But reports the railroads filed with the federal government show that for the week that ended Aug. 22, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway — North Dakota’s largest railroad, owned by the billionaire Warren E. Buffett — had a backlog of 1,336 rail cars waiting to ship grain and other products. Another railroad, Canadian Pacific, had a backlog of nearly 1,000 cars.
For farmers, the delays often mean canceled orders from food giants that cannot wait weeks or months for the grain they need to make cereal, bread and an array of other products. “They need to get this problem fixed,” Mr. Hejl said. “I’m losing money, and my customers are turning to other sources as a result. I don’t know how much longer we can survive like this.”
This month, federal Agriculture Department officials said they were particularly concerned that Canadian Pacific would not be able to fulfill nearly 30,000 requests from farmers and others for rail cars before October. As a result, North Dakota’s congressional delegation and lawmakers in Minnesota and South Dakota have called on the Surface Transportation Board, which oversees the nation’s railroads, to step up pressure on the companies.
“This rail backlog is a national problem,” Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Democrat of North Dakota, said in an interview. “The inability of farmers to get these grains to market is not only a problem for agriculture, but for companies that produce cereals, breads and other goods.”
A recent study conducted by North Dakota State University at Ms. Heitkamp’s request found that rail congestion could cost farmers in the state more than $160 million because a local oversupply of grain has lowered prices.
The study also found that farmers would lose $67 million in revenue from wheat, corn and soybeans from January to mid-April. Around $95 million more in losses are expected if farmers are unable to move their remaining inventory of crops.
The study was done before the current harvest, which is forecast at a record 273 million bushels of wheat, up from 235 million bushels in 2013. This year’s soybean harvest is also expected to be a record, and corn will be a near-record.
Food companies say they are feeling the effects of the delayed shipments. General Mills, the Minnesota-based maker of Cheerios, told investors in March that it had lost 62 days of production — as much as 4 percent of its output — in the quarter that ended in February because of winter logistics problems, including rail-car congestion. In its earnings report this month, Cargill, another Minnesota-based food giant, reported a drop in net earnings that it attributed in part to “higher costs related to rail-car shortages.”
Farmers and agriculture groups say rail operators are clearly favoring the more lucrative transport of oil. Rail shipments of crude oil in North Dakota have surged since 2008, and the state now produces about a million barrels a day. About 60 percent of that oil travels by train from the Bakken oil fields in the western part of the state to faraway oil refiners. There are few pipelines to ship it.
“Oil seems to be pushing us off the trains,” said Bob Sinner, a farmer and the brother of a Democratic congressional candidate, George Sinner, who is running against the state’s lone House member, Representative Kevin Cramer, a Republican. George Sinner has called on the Surface Transportation Board to use its emergency powers to address the rail-car shortage — the board could allow shippers to move their products with the help of a different carrier, for example. But Dennis Watson, a spokesman for the board, said it rarely invoked its emergency powers and preferred to work with rail carriers to solve problems.
B.N.S.F. and Canadian Pacific maintain that their oil shipments have not replaced shipments of crops.
“Of course, the big difference in what we are shipping these days is oil,” said Matthew K. Rose, the executive chairman of B.N.S.F. “But we aren’t favoring one type of product over another.”
Nonetheless, B.N.S.F. is investing about $400 million in North Dakota, in part to build additional tracks, hire new staff members and add rail cars. “We understand the frustration of our customers,” Mr. Rose said. “We’re making this investment in our infrastructure to make sure that we get things back to normal.”
Doug Goehring, the state’s agriculture commissioner, is not optimistic so far. “I know that B.N.S.F. especially is trying, but I just don’t see that it’s going to be any better this year,” he said. “We’re expecting record crop yields, and I expect we will see more of the same with shipments lagging.”
Canadian Pacific officials said they were working with farmers to clear the backlog. But in a letter to Ms. Heitkamp, E. Hunter Harrison, the railroad’s chief executive, argued that many of the delays stemmed from what he called phantom requests — farmers’ ordering more rail cars than they need to ship products. As a result, Mr. Harrison said, cars are not available for farmers who have more immediate shipping needs.
The letter prompted an angry response from Ms. Heitkamp and state officials like Mr. Goehring. “With C.P., it’s everybody’s fault but theirs,” Mr. Goehring said.
Both railroads said some of the blame for the slowed traffic lay with one of the coldest winters in years and with an increase in shipments of all types of products as a result of an improving economy.
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
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7) Israel Levels Upscale Gaza High-Rise
By FARES AKRAM and JODI RUDOREN
On Tuesday morning, the apartment line on the southeast corner and the elevator shaft were all that was left after a series of Israeli airstrikes that started after midnight, injuring about a dozen residents and leaving 40 families homeless.“We spent the whole night in the street outside because it was dangerous to move,” said Hani Ashi, 44, who bought his 1,750-square-foot apartment on the tower’s fifth floor for $63,000 four years ago. Mr. Ashi said he had fled in shorts and a sleeveless undershirt, carrying only his family’s identity cards and a jalabiya, or cloak, which he donned when he got outside.
The Italian Compound was one of two large buildings Israel targeted in strikes early Tuesday, after destroying an 11-story Gaza City apartment tower on Saturday, as its battle with Hamas, the Palestinian faction that dominates Gaza, entered its 50th day. In Israel, barrages of rockets from Gaza continued to pound southern cities for the seventh consecutive day, with a direct hit on a home in Ashkelon that sent more than 20 wounded people to the hospital, the most in a single strike this summer.
The destructive exchanges came amid continued reports from Cairo of efforts toward a long-term cease-fire that had yet to solidify. Sirens signaling incoming rockets sounded throughout the morning in Israel’s south, and at least one was intercepted over Tel Aviv around 6:30 a.m., according to the Israeli military.
In Ashkelon, 50 houses were damaged by shrapnel after a rocket smashed through the red-tile roof of the home where Yuval and Ofra Cohen had lived for 10 years with their children, now 14 and 17, around 7 a.m., according to the Israeli police and Ynet, an Israeli news site. A water heater fell into the Cohen home, which was destroyed, and a water pipe outside was damaged.
“We hadn’t managed to make it into the safe room when it fell in our bedroom,” Mr. Cohen said in an interview on Army Radio. “It caught us in the children’s room, all the shrapnel and the dust and all of the glass. I don’t know how we escaped without harm, it’s a miracle.”
In Gaza, the Health Ministry said six people had been killed in airstrikes. Two died at dawn and four died in the afternoon, in an airstrike in east Gaza City and a drone attack on a car in the territory’s north. Voice of Palestine radio said that more than 20 homes had been destroyed overnight.
Hamas officials had taken over spaces in Al Basha in 2009 after some of their headquarters were destroyed in Israel’s winter incursion, posting paper signs saying they were information technology companies. But most had moved out after offices were rebuilt.
Al Basha was knocked on its side and by noon on Tuesday was still blocking the intersection of two normally busy streets, Al Jala and Jamal Abdel Nasser. Three bulldozers were working to clear it. A guard who gave his name only as Abu Ismail said an Arabic speaker who identified himself as representing the Israeli military had called his mobile phone twice as a warning before the strikes began about 4:20 a.m. They began with three drone-fired missiles that Israel calls “knocks on the roof,” followed by four bombs dropped by F-16 warplanes.
The guard said the tower contained no residences, just offices over four stores, including a showroom for a juice factory and a business that sold bathroom tiles and fixtures. But some people whose homes elsewhere in Gaza had been destroyed during the fighting had been staying in the building’s basement.
At the Italian Compound, Zaki Shneino, a guard, said one of the apartments hit early in the latest fighting was owned by Dirar Abu Sisi, an engineer who Israel captured in Ukraine in 2011 and who has since been held in prison on charges that he designed Hamas weaponry. Shortly after midnight Tuesday, said Mr. Shneino, who has worked at the building 10 years, several residents received calls on their mobile phones advising them to evacuate.
Mr. Ashi, who lived on the fifth floor with his wife and eight children, the youngest of them 10-year-old twins, said there were four “knocks on the roof” 10 to 20 minutes apart, then six or seven large bombs.
By late morning, uniformed police officers and detectives in plain clothes prevented journalists and others from getting close to the rubble of the building, where bedcovers, cooking-gas cylinders, a computer and an 11th-grade textbook could be glimpsed among the debris. A man was loading boxes of unsold shoes into a van, while a cafe owner recovered bamboo chairs whose dark-red seat coverings had turned gray from the dust.
Residents said 40 of the tower’s 52 apartments had been occupied, many of them by doctors, merchants, engineers and other professionals. It was built by a Palestinian-Italian company, they said, and opened in 1998 or 1999.
“Prices here are a little bit higher than other buildings,” said Mr. Ashi, who worked as a police officer for the Palestinian Authority before it was routed by Hamas in 2007, and then for 10 months in the Hamas-controlled security service. “Because this is a distinguished place.”
Fares Akram reported from Gaza City and Jodi Rudoren from Jerusalem.
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8) Amid Mourning for Michael Brown, Call for Change
By MONICA DAVEY
ST. LOUIS — His gold-and-black coffin was topped by a baseball cap — a palpable, personal reminder of the young man who was fatally shot by a police officer only weeks ago. But the calls from the pulpit were for Michael Brown’s memory to live on in a broad movement for justice, for voter participation, and for answers to vexing and unending questions about race and policing.
“There is a cry being made from the ground, not just for Michael Brown, but for the Trayvon Martins, for those children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, for the Columbine massacre, for the black-on-black crime,” the Rev. Charles Ewing, Mr. Brown’s uncle, told 2,500 people packed into the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church here on Monday for a funeral attended by family members but also by people Mr. Brown had never met — celebrities, representatives from the White House, members of Congress, civil rights leaders and hundreds of residents.Infused with Scripture and song, the funeral was a mix of intimate reflections and national policy plans. Relatives reminisced in choked voices about Mr. Brown’s wide smile as a picture from his high school graduation flashed on two wide screens, as leaders urged those gathered to memorialize Mr. Brown’s life by carrying forward a vocal, strong and unified effort to seek change across the country.
“Michael Brown must be remembered for more than disturbances,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, reflecting on the sometimes violent demonstrations that followed Mr. Brown’s shooting by a white police officer in nearby Ferguson on Aug. 9. “He must be remembered for: This is where they started changing what was going on. Oh yeah, there have been other times in history that became seminal moments, and this is one of those moments. And this young man, for whatever reason, has appealed to all of us that we’ve got to solve this and not continue this.”
Mr. Sharpton denounced what he called the militarization of the police and how they had treated Mr. Brown, who was black and unarmed. Mr. Sharpton exhorted the crowd, calling on African-Americans here to push for change instead of “sitting around having ghetto pity parties.”
“All of us are required to respond to this,” Mr. Sharpton said. “And all of us must solve this.”
People from all walks of life came: in pumps and dresses but also in jeans and T-shirts bearing Mr. Brown’s image; from Ferguson and far away; old and young — even some infants were bobbed up and down through the service.
An array of well-known figures filled one part of the church, including the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson; the film director Spike Lee; T. D. Jakes, the bishop of The Potter’s House, an African-American megachurch; members of Congress; two children of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; and other families of young people who have been killed.
Mr. Brown’s family had called for a halt to protests on Monday in recognition of the funeral, and those leading the service urged the crowd not to be part of violent protests or looting in the future. “It is imperative that we resist the temptation to retaliate by looting and rioting in our own neighborhoods,” said Bishop Edwin Bass, a Church of God in Christ leader in St. Louis, as some in the church cheered and called out, “Yes!”
“The destruction of property in Ferguson only gives bad pictures to the world,” the bishop said, later adding: “This is a day to immerse the family in the warm affection and abiding peace of the beloved community.”
At one point during the service, men from an overflow room across the street from the church ran into the street and began loudly chanting, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” words that have become a refrain here since Mr. Brown’s death. But a woman screamed back: “Be quiet. Be quiet. Respect that family,” and the men quieted down.
Around the area, some schools reopened on Monday, after delays because of the demonstrations. Officials reported good attendance levels and relatively smooth starts, as the local police described calm streets in Ferguson. Jana Shortt, a spokeswoman for the Ferguson-Florissant school district, said teachers were not instructed on whether to address the issue in their classes, though some students said that they were talking about it and that some had worn buttons and shirts to school in recognition of Mr. Brown. “I heard people yell, ‘Hands up, don’t shoot!’ in the hallways,” said Breeana McKee, a junior at McCluer High School.
Around the nation, Monday was the start of a new school year at many colleges, and on dozens of campuses students walked out of class and held demonstrations to mark the fact that instead of sending Mr. Brown to college, his family was mourning him. Students held silent vigils, listened to speakers and posed for pictures, many posted online, with their hands raised in a pose of surrender.
“We’re starting school and he’s being buried, and we know that what he went through is something that we could have gone through,” said Reuben L. Riggs, 22, a senior at Washington University here and an organizer of a demonstration.
Mr. Brown was shot by Officer Darren Wilson after the officer encountered Mr. Brown and a friend walking down the middle of the street and told them to move off the road. The friend, Dorian Johnson, said that Officer Wilson grabbed his friend’s neck and shirt and that Mr. Brown tried to push the officer off him. The police have said that Mr. Brown and Officer Wilson struggled over the officer’s gun. Autopsies showed that Mr. Brown was shot six times, twice in the head.
In the days that followed, nightly street protests in Ferguson grew violent at times, with the police lobbing tear gas. Eventually, Gov. Jay Nixon called up National Guard troops to protect the police officers’ command post after it came under attack one night.
President Obama, in two news briefings, cited his concern about the shooting and the response to the unrest that followed, which included a show of force by police officers equipped with surplus military vehicles and equipment, which was widely criticized as a provocation.
Two investigations into the shooting are underway, one by a St. Louis County grand jury and the other a civil rights inquiry by the Justice Department, which was ordered by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who visited Ferguson last week.
At the service in St. Louis, family members who affectionately recalled Mr. Brown as “Mike Mike” or “Big Mike” said that he had once predicted that his name would someday be widely known. As the service ended, scores of photographers, television cameras and onlookers crowded in to get a glimpse as his coffin emerged from the church into the sweltering street.
Some here described the service as a needed moment of healing after days of anguish and tumult. “I’m feeling pretty good,” Rodney Hubbard Sr., who lives in St Louis, said as he left what he called “a unity speech.”
As he left, Brandon Lewis, a friend of Mr. Brown, said, “I’m at peace.”
Yet others here said the larger issues raised by the shooting and its aftermath — of police relations, race and political power — remained unsolved and deeply complicated. “In certain ways, things may change after all that has happened, but this is a process that’s going to take another 100 to 200 years,” said Warren Bell, who said he knew Mr. Brown’s mother.
During the service, Benjamin L. Crump, the lawyer who is representing the Brown family, referred to the original constitutional compromise that counted slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of state apportionment in the House of Representatives. “We declare here today as we pay our final respects to Michael Brown Jr. that he was not three-fifths of a citizen,” Mr. Crump said. “He was an American citizen.”
After the service, hundreds of family members, friends and supporters of Mr. Brown huddled under and around a green tent at St. Peter’s Cemetery in nearby Normandy on Monday afternoon as Mr. Brown’s coffin was lowered into a copper-lined concrete vault.
“We shall overcome,” the mourners softly sang at one point.
“We love you, Mike Mike,” someone cried. Others sobbed.
Lesley McSpadden, Mr. Brown’s mother, returned to the vault by herself after everyone else had left. She touched it, then stood over the inscription: “Michael OD Brown; 1996-2014.”
Reporting was contributed by Motoko Rich and Richard Pérez-Peña from New York; Mosi Secret and John Eligon from St. Louis; and Frances Robles from Ferguson, Mo.
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9) Generation Later, Poor Are Still Rare at Elite Colleges
As the shaded quadrangles of the nation’s elite campuses stir to life for the start of the academic year, they remain bastions of privilege. Amid promises to admit more poor students, top colleges educate roughly the same percentage of them as they did a generation ago. This is despite the fact that there are many high school seniors from low-income homes with top grades and scores: twice the percentage in the general population as at elite colleges.
A series of federal surveys of selective colleges found virtually no change from the 1990s to 2012 in enrollment of students who are less well off — less than 15 percent by some measures — even though there was a huge increase over that time in the number of such students going to college. Similar studies looking at a narrower range of top wealthy universities back those findings. With race-based affirmative action losing both judicial and public support, many have urged selective colleges to shift more focus to economic diversity.This is partly because students are more likely to graduate and become leaders in their fields if they attend competitive colleges. Getting low-income students onto elite campuses is seen as a vital engine of social mobility.
Yet as Anthony P. Carnevale, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, put it, “Higher education has become a powerful force for reinforcing advantage and passing it on through generations.”
It is true that low-income enrollment at some top colleges has been slowly climbing. And some studies suggest that colleges are well intentioned but simply ineffectual in addressing economic diversity. College leaders also point to studies showing that most low-income students with high grades and test scores do not apply to highly selective colleges.
But critics contend that on the whole, elite colleges are too worried about harming their finances and rankings to match their rhetoric about wanting economic diversity with action.
“It’s not clear to me that universities are hungry for that,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation who studies college diversity. “What happens if low-income students start calling the bluff of selective universities, and do start applying in much larger numbers? Will the doors be open?”
There are elite colleges, both private and public, with three times as many recipients of Pell Grants — the main federal aid for low-income students — as some of their peers, which critics say shows that the others could be doing more. Prestigious schools like Vassar, Amherst, Harvard and the University of California system have managed to increase low-income enrollment.
“A lot of it is just about money, because each additional low-income student you enroll costs you a lot in financial aid,” said Michael N. Bastedo, director of the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education at the University of Michigan. “No one is going to talk openly and say, ‘Oh, we’re not making low-income students a priority.’ But enrollment management is so sophisticated that they know pretty clearly how much each student would cost.”
Colleges generally spend 4 percent to 5 percent of their endowments per year on financial aid, prompting some administrators to cite this rough math: Sustaining one poor student who needs $45,000 a year in aid requires $1 million in endowment devoted to that purpose; 100 of them require $100 million. Only the wealthiest schools can do that, and build new laboratories, renovate dining halls, provide small classes and bid for top professors.
The rankings published by U.S. News and World Report, and others, also play a major role. The rankings reward spending on facilities and faculty, but most pay little or no attention to financial aid and diversity.
“College presidents are under constant pressure to meet budgets, improve graduation rates and move up in the rankings,” Dr. Carnevale said. “The easiest way to do it is to climb upstream economically — get students whose parents can pay more.”
A big part of that climb has been the rise of “merit aid,” price breaks offered to desirable students regardless of their parents’ wealth. A few dozen top schools give no merit aid, but they are the exception. Historically, American colleges gave far more need-based aid, but it is outweighed today by merit aid.
Since the late 1990s, top schools have made several high-profile moves to become more accessible to low- and middle-income families. The policy changes drew heavy coverage, but had limited effect, studies found, largely because poorer consumers were unaware of them.
Harvard, Princeton, the University of Virginia and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill eliminated early admission programs that were seen as favoring affluent students. Some colleges stopped including loans in financial aid packages, so that all aid came in the form of grants. Others lowered prices for all but affluent families, not requiring any contribution from parents below a certain income threshold, like $65,000.
But the colleges that ended early admissions reinstated them within a few years, after other elite schools declined to follow their lead, putting them at a disadvantage in drawing top students. Many of the benefits of the no-loan and no-parental-contribution policies went to middle-income families, and in any case, not all of the wealthiest schools, like Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Stanford, fully adopted both.
In 2006, at the 82 schools rated “most competitive” by Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges, 14 percent of American undergraduates came from the poorer half of the nation’s families, according to researchers at the University of Michigan and Georgetown University who analyzed data from federal surveys. That was unchanged from 1982.
And at a narrower, more elite group of 28 private colleges and universities, including all eight Ivy League members, researchers at Vassar and Williams Colleges found that from 2001 to 2009, a period of major increases in financial aid at those schools, enrollment of students from the bottom 40 percent of family incomes increased from just 10 percent to 11 percent.
Even with the best intentions, tapping the pool of high-performing low-income students can be hard. Studies point to many reasons poorer students with good credentials do not apply to competitive colleges, like lack of encouragement at home and at school, thinking (correctly or not) that they cannot afford it or believing they would be out of place, academically or socially.
What distinguishes those who apply to elite schools is not family income or their parents’ level of education, according to a groundbreaking study published last year, but location. Exposure to just a few high-achieving peers or attending a high school with just a few teachers or recent alumni who went to highly selective colleges makes a huge difference in where low-income students apply.
So does face-to-face recruiting.
“You can make big statements about being accessible, and have need-blind admissions and really low net prices for low-income kids, but still enroll very few of those low-income kids, by doing minimal outreach,” said Catharine Bond Hill, president of Vassar College. “There has to be a commitment to go out and find them.”
But admissions officers can visit only a small fraction of the nation’s 26,000 high schools, so they rarely see those stellar-but-isolated candidates who need to be encouraged to apply. The top schools that have managed to raise low-income enrollment say that an important factor has been collaborating with some of the nonprofit groups, like QuestBridge and the Posse Foundation, that are devoted to identifying hidden prospects, working with them in high school and connecting them to top colleges.The programs can be expensive for colleges, and many balk at the cost, refusing to join or taking only a handful of students each year. “Last year, we had only 680 slots for 15,000 students nominated by schools and community groups,” said Deborah Bial, president of the Posse Foundation, which has 51 partner colleges but is trying to recruit more. “We could easily triple in size, tomorrow.”
Troy Simon, 21, said that without significant help from two nonprofit groups, he would not be where he is now, preparing for his junior year at Bard College. It is a long way from his chaotic childhood in a poor section of New Orleans, where he was held back in school — so far, in fact, that his story has been hailed by Michelle Obama as an example of what can be overcome. “I was illiterate,” he said. “I clowned around in class, I didn’t understand what was going on, and no one asked too many questions about my failing grades at home.”
Separated from his family during Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed their home, he took refuge with cousins in an abandoned building. He was placed for a time in a school in Houston, where he said that at age 12, he finally began to learn to read, but after returning to New Orleans, he was arrested on suspicion of theft.
But in high school — he attended three of them — a group called College Track took him in, providing tutoring, test preparation, counseling and advice on applying to college. Then he won a Posse Foundation scholarship that paid for college and provided support services there.
“The kids that I hung out with when I was a kid that were smart, some of them are dead now, some are in prison, some of them have several kids that they can’t support,” he said. “I consider myself blessed.”
Ten to 15 years ago, when some elite colleges got more serious about economic diversity, there was a view that increasing financial aid could turn the dial, but “I think we were a little naïve,” said Morton O. Schapiro, president of Northwestern University, a former president of Williams College and, like Dr. Hill at Vassar, an economist specializing in the economics of higher education.
Cost remains a barrier, but so does perception, he said, adding, “It’s a psychology and sociology thing, as well as a pricing thing.”
College presidents like to say that consumers should not be scared off by high sticker prices, around $60,000 a year for top schools. But those are the numbers that draw national attention, concealing a much more tangled picture, in which true costs are hard to discern, hard to compare and wildly variable.
Public colleges remain less expensive, but in an era of declining state support, their prices have risen faster than those of private colleges, and they vary widely from state to state. Private colleges have sharply increased financial aid since the turn of the century, so that the average net price that families really pay has barely changed over the last decade, adjusted for inflation — and for low-income students, it has actually dropped.
But even top private colleges with similar sticker prices differ enormously in net prices, related to how wealthy they are, so a family can find that an elite education is either dauntingly expensive or surprisingly affordable. In 2011-12, net prices paid by families with incomes under $48,000 averaged less than $4,000 at Harvard, which has the nation’s largest endowment, for example, and more than $27,000 at New York University, according to data compiled by the Department of Education.
None of that complexity is apparent to most consumers.
“If you come from a family and a neighborhood where no one has gone to a fancy college, you have no way of knowing that’s even a possibility,” said Anthony W. Marx, president of the New York Public Library, and a former president of Amherst. “And if you go on their website, the first thing you’re going to look for is the sticker price. End of conversation.”
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10) 'Poor Doors' Are Only the Tip of the Affordable Housing Iceberg
By Allegra Kirkland
August 26, 2014
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/poor-doors-are-only-tip-affordable-housing-iceberg?akid=12170.229473.ywAGsv&rd=1&src=newsletter1016976&t=10&paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark
“Cities are difference engines, and one of the qualities they assign is the place of class in space.” — Mark Sorkin, The NationOn the western shores of the Hudson River, where Riverside Park tapers into a strip of bike lane and busy highway, a row of glass behemoths punctuates the skyline. Rising 30 to 40 stories above street level, these towering residential condominiums are self-contained worlds of steel and glass, their backs to the city behind them. The Trump Place apartments have long been reviled for their architectural blandness and isolation from the surrounding social fabric of the neighborhood. But they will soon have a new, equally glittering neighbor that has taken on a more loaded role in the city’s architectural landscape: poster child for rampant income inequality.
Last fall, the Extell Development Company received approval from the city to construct a 33-floor luxury condo with two separate entrances: one for residents paying market rate for their riverfront views, and another for affordable housing tenants. Housing advocates, outraged locals and city councilmembers have pointed to the development as a prime example of how New York City prioritizes the interests of its wealthier residents, relegating those in need of affordable housing to the status of “second-class citizens.” Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal said the poor door was a “separate but equal arrangement” that “has no place in the 21st century.” Public Advocate Letitia James called it “segregation.” And New York Magazine proclaimed that with the construction of 40 Riverside, the city “moved just a little closer to all-out class warfare.”
Extell’s development is part of New York City’s inclusionary housing program, under which developers set aside 20% of apartment units for low-income tenants in exchange for incentives including cheap financing, significant tax breaks and permission to build 33% more square footage than would otherwise be allowed. The affordable units can either be scattered throughout the project (onsite) or located within the same community district (offsite). In the case of 40 Riverside, the building where the affordable units are housed is immediately adjacent to the market-rate tower. But this still technically qualifies as offsite, meaning that constructing two separate entrances is perfectly legal, just one of the many creative ways developers have managed to undermine the inclusionary intention of the program.
New York City lawmakers are taking steps to correct this loophole and prevent the implementation of similar “separate but equal” policies in developments currently under construction. Gale Brewer, the Manhattan Borough president, has promised to reject plans for future developments that have separate entrances. And a cohort of elected officials on the Upper West Side, where 40 Riverside is located, wrote to the heads of New York’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development urging them to change the zoning resolution’s language. As Helen Rosenthal, a councilmember from the Sixth District and one of the lead authors of the letter, said in a phone interview, “It’s a question of fundamental dignity and human rights that people should be able to walk through the same door to get to their homes.”
Their efforts are laudable, and in keeping with the spirit of Mayor de Blasio’s campaign promise to loosen the Dickensian economic strictures that define life in this most unequal of cities. But, like the outpouring of articles condemning the poor door, they don’t address the root causes of our national affordable housing crisis or confront the profound difficulties of finding a reasonably priced place to live in our most populous urban centers. In his column this week, the New York Times’ Paul Krugman argues that affordable housing is the key to job creation and regional growth—which explains why people are moving out of the prohibitively expensive Northeast to locations further south. But as Krugman warns,
“In a fundamental sense, they’re moving the wrong way, leaving local economies where their productivity is high for destinations where it’s lower. And the way to make the country richer is to encourage them to move back, by making housing in dense, high-wage metropolitan areas more affordable.Krugman is exactly right. These five factors explain why the “poor door” uproar doesn’t begin to address the complexity of the affordable housing conundrum in America.
1. Building for the Rich
Starting with the basics, many apartment complexes like 40 Riverside don’t just have a separate door for low-income residents; they also have gyms, spas, elevators, rooftop gardens, storage areas, and playrooms that are available only to tenants who pay market rate. Developers have tried to explain this away, insisting that affordable housing tenants are lucky to get a spot in their buildings, regardless of their access to these amenities. Free-market advocates and conservative publications have vigorously come to their defense, with the New York Post labeling critics of such policies “wealth-distribution advocates” who are “satisfied merely to play the ‘racism’ card.”
But these arguments only highlight how transparent the motives of the developers are. They want to build luxury apartment buildings, and they include as many amenities as possible in order to attract those who can pay top dollar. But they leverage the affordable housing units, which provide them with tax incentives and permission to build larger and taller buildings, to their advantage without giving the low-income residents anything in return. This is why it is so disingenuous to hide behind the argument that Extell is legally allowed to have two separate entrances for its two buildings. These decisions are not just accidental quirks of design; they are intentional ways of isolating affordable housing tenants and preventing them from feeling at home in their own apartment buildings.
In a piece on the widespread use of these practices, the Times noted that tenant advocates “view the policies as ways to demoralize people who pay less than the going rate and to not so subtly encourage them to move elsewhere.” This isn’t a New York-specific issue; low-income residents in cities from Los Angeles to London have reported similar incidents of systemic exclusion.
2. The Elusiveness of Integration
One of the goals of inclusionary housing programs is to promote social mixing between individuals from different economic backgrounds, avoiding the concentrations of poverty that plagued sprawling midcentury affordable housing developments. But as Henry Grabar argues at Salon, “If there’s one aspect of mixed-income housing that has most obviously fallen short, it’s the promise of new social dynamics and inter-class bonding.” While low-income and wealthy tenants may live in proximity to each other in inclusionary housing buildings, studies by the Department of Housing and Urban Development have shown that little interaction actually occurs between them. Needless to say, isolating affordable housing tenants in their own buildings and preventing them from sharing elevators, lobbies and facilities with their higher-income neighbors only exacerbates this divide.
David Von Spreckelsen, senior vice president at Toll Brothers—another high-end developer operating within the inclusionary housing program—contends it is not the responsibility of private developers to build unified communities. “No one ever said that the goal was full integration of these populations….I think it’s unfair to expect very high-income homeowners who paid a fortune to live in their building to be in the same boat as low-income renters.”
But income levels are not the only distinction between these two groups; race is a critical factor, too. Rent-regulated tenants not only earn less, they are far more likely to be minorities. Seventy-three percent of those who rent at market rates are white, compared to just 47% of rent-regulated tenants. This means that the cries of segregation and “separate but equal” policies are more than just hyperbole; poor people of color are in fact most affected by restrictions on entrances and amenities.
In a phone interview, Barika Williams, deputy director of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD), a New York-based housing advocacy group, expressed concern that these policies reflect the troubling direction the city is headed. “One of New York City’s most enduring and unique attributes is its diversity. And I think there’s widespread concern that we’re turning away from that and no longer embracing the mixed-income, mixed-race, mixed-religion, mixed-culture quality that really makes New York New York.”
3. The Developer’s Choice
One of the critical flaws with New York’s inclusionary housing program is that it is voluntary. Given the reluctance of developers to participate in a relatively new housing system when they can just as easily make huge profits from constructing market-rate luxury buildings, the current program provides little guarantee that communities will get the affordable housing they so desperately need. Indeed, a 2013 report by city councilmember Brad Lander found that since the program began in 2005, it has generated only 2% of all multifamily units built in the five boroughs.
Critics have used this lack of interest on the developer’s part as a reason to overlook discriminatory policies like the poor door for the greater good of more affordable housing. After all, they say, it’s better to have some percentage of affordable housing units than none at all. But this twisted logic ignores the fact that a voluntary program simply doesn’t do enough to address the city’s staggering housing needs. What the low participation rates really prove is that we can’t simply allow the private sector to dictate how affordable housing gets built. As the Nation’s architecture critic, Mark Sorkin, explained in an article on inclusionary zoning, “If we concede that the market is not a system that makes equality its first priority, then we must interfere with it in some way to produce equitable results.”
A report from Association of Neighborhood and Housing Development found that an inclusionary zoning policy that required developers to participate, rather than allowing them to join voluntarily, could generate 4,000 affordable units annually, instead of the current 400 per year. Mayor de Blasio has made mandatory inclusionary zoning a centerpiece of his ambitious housing plan, which is a crucial step in the right direction, but this still won’t do enough to supply a sufficient number of low-income apartments. As ANHD points out, “rent-regulated units are disappearing fast, either as the result of being deregulated once they become vacant, or because of the demolition of the buildings in which they sit.” (Demolition alone cost the city around 8,000 units between 2005-2012.)
4. Affordable, But Not Permanent
Most of the nation’s affordable housing programs only require temporary affordability, which often expires in 30 years or less. This means that developers will continue to profit from the affordable units in their buildings long after they have ceased to be rented to low-income individuals. In New York, the erosion of affordability seriously undermines the mayor’s goal of providing the city with 200,000 affordable units over the next decade. As ANHD reports, starting in 2017, New York City will begin losing an average of more than 11,000 affordable units a year.
5. The Many Shades of Poverty
One of the most striking aspects of the poor door debate is that these affordable housing tenants are defined as “poor.” In order to qualify for one of the 55 affordable units at 40 Riverside, for example, a tenant would need to earn less than 60% of the area’s median income—which would be about $52,000 a year for a family of four. As Pat Regnier pointed out at Time, that family could rent a two-bedroom under the program for around $1,100 per month. Although the extremely high costs of living in New York City mean that a $52,000 salary doesn't go very far, this income level is still far above what most of New York’s affordable housing seekers earn.
Writing at Vox, Matthew Yglesias argues that “the real victims are every economically struggling New Yorker who doesn’t get the discount” made possible through inclusionary zoning. And there are thousands of these people. ANHD found that a full two-thirds of New York City’s affordable housing is actually unaffordable to most neighborhood residents; the typical Bronx household would have to make 1.5 times its income in order to afford the majority of affordable housing built in the borough.
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The affordable housing crisis will not be solved because of the elimination of one policy, nor will it be solved quickly. But in order to mitigate this urgent crisis there are myriad policies cities like New York can implement, like making inclusionary zoning mandatory for developers; ensuring that new low-income units remain permanently affordable; and preventing the displacement of rent-stabilized tenants. The fight for affordable housing is not just about demonizing developers, or attacking the most visible symbols of inequality like the poor door. It’s about taking more than a piecemeal approach to housing policy, understanding the economic constraints for developers, and guaranteeing a supply of comfortable, safe apartments for the urban residents who need housing assistance the most.
Allegra Kirkland is AlterNet's associate managing editor. Her writing has appeared in the Chicago Reader, Inc., Daily Serving and the Nation.
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11) LA Police Refuse to Release Information on In-Custody Deaths, Community Pushes Back
Tuesday, 26 August 2014 12:06
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/25815-lapd-refusal-to-release-information-on-in-custody-deaths-feeds-community-mistrust
Community activists continue to push the Los Angeles Police Department for transparency after two unarmed men died within days of each other as a result of violent stops by LAPD officers. But to date, no information has been given.
Ezell Ford, 25, and Omar Abrego, 37, died on August 11 and August 2, respectively. Police placed a "security hold" on the autopsy reports of both men on August 15, meaning neither report will be released to the public until the hold is lifted. As of now, the LAPD has not released the names of the officers involved. The deaths happened within blocks of each other, and community outrage coincided with civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri after police there shot unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown to death on August 9. Anger in Los Angeles has taken the form of peaceful marches and rallies seeking legal action against the officers involved.
"It's an outrage and a disgrace; they're abusing their power," said Keyanna Celina from the Coalition for Community Control Over the Police. "There's nothing democratic about a family being denied the autopsy report and the officers' names."
LAPD Officer Bruce Borihanh of the media relations division said the department was not going to answer further questions on the two cases and referred to the press releases on its website.
"One reason the names aren't being released is officer safety and their families' safety has to be assessed. The officers' safety hasn't been assessed," he said. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck makes the executive decision on releasing the officers' names.
It remained unclear why security holds were placed on the autopsy reports, or why the holds were placed days, or in Abrego's case, two weeks after the deaths. LA County Coroner Asst. Chief Ed Winter said law enforcement or judges can send a letter requesting the holds, but don't have to say why they are needed. They can be in place for months or even years.
"Nicole Simpson is still on hold to this day," he said. Nicole Brown Simpson was murdered 20 years ago, and her autopsy report has since been on hold by Judge Lance Ito, who presided over the murder trial.
Terry Francke, general counsel for Californians Aware, an open government advocacy group, said the only legal basis for withholding autopsy reports "is that the death is under criminal investigation. There's nothing in the law about a 'security hold.'"
He cited case law Dixon v. Superior Court, in which the court found exempting an autopsy report from public disclosure was necessary only when "public interest in nondisclosure clearly outweighed the public interest in disclosure."
Steven Lerman, attorney for Ezell Ford's family, said he sent Chief Beck a letter asking him what legal code allowed him to maintain a hold on a completed autopsy report. He has yet to receive a written response.
"I think it's because of the public pressure. A lot of times these things happen in the dark and there's no community presence and there are no protests or actions and there's no public awareness of it," Celina said. "The community has continued to maintain a peaceful presence demanding answers and for that reason we believe there is more pressure on them."
Lerman will file a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging the wrongful death of Ezell Ford by the LAPD, and would say only, "As a result of my investigation, I'm completely convinced it was an unjustified use of force." He called Ford's death a "horrifying loss for this family." Lerman successfully represented Rodney King in his federal lawsuit against the city police department.
Community activists rallied on August 21 outside the criminal court building in downtown Los Angeles, where Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey's office is housed, and demanded charges be filed against the officers involved. They had hoped to meet face-to-face with Lacey, but her public relations team met with them in the hallway outside the elevator and told them she was out of town.
While the district attorney's PR staff assured the activists their office takes these cases seriously, took a list of names and contact information for families whose members have been killed by police officers and gave them cards with an email address they could send their concerns to, Celina said being made to sit on a bench in an open hallway by the elevators was "demeaning."
"I would say, personally, that if that is how they received us, sitting on a bench next to the elevator like children waiting for their parents, then I can't imagine how the families of loved ones are treated," she said.
Los Angeles County DA spokeswoman Jane Robison said the DA's office has not yet received the case from the LAPD, because the police department is still doing their own investigation. Once the DA's office gets the case, it will be turned over to the Justice System Integrity Division, which handles police officer misconduct investigations.
There's wide space between stories told by eyewitnesses and those told by police in both cases, and Celina said the community doesn't have much trust in the LAPD or that their investigation will be unbiased. The refusal to release information has exacerbated that mistrust, she said.
A witness told local station KTLA that Ezell Ford, who family members have described to the media as mentally disabled, was lying down when he was shot multiple times by officers in the back. More eyewitnesses have come forward to reporters, one telling The Huffington Post that Ford was on the ground and one of the officers shouted "shoot him" before he was killed. Police contend officers from the department's Newton Area Gang Enforcement Detail "attempted to talk" to Ford (in an earlier release they called it an "investigative stop") who continued walking. They got closer and police say he grabbed one of them, then wrestled to the ground and attempted to grab one of the officer's guns, according to the LAPD official press release, and at that point both officers opened fire.
Two witnesses also told local news station KTLA they saw officers striking Abrego repeatedly, and one said the beating lasted 10 minutes. A grainy video shows Abrego being held face down over a pool of blood. It appears he is crying out in distress. Police contend two officers also from the department's Newton Area Gang Enforcement Detail stopped Abrego because he was driving erratically. After they stopped him, he tried to run away, according to LAPD's official media statement. A "physical altercation" took place, resulting in a "laceration" and an ambulance was called.
Celina said if the DA's office doesn't file charges, her organization plans to go over their heads and seek them from State Attorney General Kamala Harris' office and if necessary, will go higher than that.
"It takes a lot, so much to raise a child. It takes only a second for them to take them away," she said. "There're no words to describe it. You put so much into raising your child and keeping them on the right path. Then to have them gunned down by the people who are supposed to be protecting and serving, it's the opposite of civilization."
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12) Cops terrorize a mother with 4 small children at gunpoint
Reported by Liku Zelleke
August 27, 2014
http://naturallymoi.com/cops-terrorize-a-mother-with-4-small-children-at-gunpoint/
A mother and her four young children were pulled over at gunpoint by police in Forney, TX. The whole incident was recorded on a patrol car’s dash cam.
In the footage, Kametra Barbour is suddenly stopped by the police as she was driving her children home. Her car is then surrounded by officers and then one of them is heard ordering, “Driver let me see your hands, everybody stick their hands out the window.”
Barbour asks, “What is wrong?” to which the officer replies “I’ll tell you in a minute.”
She is then ordered to exit the vehicle with her hands above her head and she complies. Officers then handcuff her.
Barbour then asks, “What is wrong? …My kids!”
The officer asks back, “How old are they?”
“They’re six and eight and ten, nine. What are we doing?”
“Hold on a second, okay?”
“What is going on? Oh my God, you will terrify my children.”
“We got a complaint of a vehicle matching your description and your license plate, waving a gun out the window,” replies the officer.
Apparently, the police executed the traffic stop because they acting on a tip. A 911 call had been made where the caller told dispatch that four black men were seen waving a gun out the window of a beige- or tan-colored Toyota.
What has many people scratching their heads is the fact that Barbour’s car is burgundy red and the make is a Nissan Maxima.
Police only realized they had made a mistake when Barbour’s son, 6-year-old Ryan, came out of the front-passenger side of the car with his hands raised too.
Then the following conversation occurs between the officers:
Officer 1: “Do they look young to you?”
Officer 2: “They do to me.”
Officer 1: “Huh?”
Officer 2: “They do to me.”
Officer 1: “Yep, they’re young.”
Officer 1: [To other officers] “Gun down, gun down, gun down.”
Officer 1: [As the child exits the vehicle] “Come on back here, son. Come on back here, you’re alright.”
The officers then proceed to calm and pacify the terrified kids.
Officer: “Y’all okay?
Child: “I’m scared.”
Officer: “It’s okay.”
Child: “Are we going to jail?”
Officer: “No. No one is going to jail.”
Child: [Scream, crying]
Officer: “Hey, stop crying. It’s okay. It’s okay. Everything’s fine now.”
The Forney police have since apologized over the incident.
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13) How the Supreme Court Protects Bad Cops
IRVINE,
Calif. — LAST week, a grand jury was convened in St. Louis County, Mo.,
to examine the evidence against the police officer who killed Michael
Brown, an unarmed black teenager, and to determine if he should be
indicted. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. even showed up to announce
a separate federal investigation, and to promise that justice would be
done. But if the conclusion is that the officer, Darren Wilson, acted
improperly, the ability to hold him or Ferguson, Mo., accountable will
be severely restricted by none other than the United States Supreme Court.
In recent years, the court has made it very difficult, and often impossible, to hold police officers and the governments that employ them accountable for civil rights violations. This undermines the ability to deter illegal police behavior and leaves victims without compensation. When the police kill or injure innocent people, the victims rarely have recourse.
The most recent court ruling that favored the police was Plumhoff v. Rickard, decided on May 27, which found that even egregious police conduct is not “excessive force” in violation of the Constitution. Police officers in West Memphis, Ark., pulled over a white Honda Accord because the car had only one operating headlight. Rather than comply with an officer’s request to get out of the car, the driver made the unfortunate decision to speed away. The police chased the car for more than five minutes, reaching speeds of over 100 miles per hour. Eventually, officers fired 15 shots into the car, killing both the driver and a passenger.
The Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and ruled unanimously in favor of the police. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said that the driver’s conduct posed a “grave public safety risk” and that the police were justified in shooting at the car to stop it. The court said it “stands to reason that, if police officers are justified in firing at a suspect in order to end a severe threat to public safety, the officers need not stop shooting until the threat has ended.”
This is deeply disturbing. The Supreme Court now has said that whenever there is a high-speed chase that could injure others — and that would seem to be true of virtually all high-speed chases — the police can shoot at the vehicle and keep shooting until the chase ends. Obvious alternatives could include shooting out the car’s tires, or even taking the license plate number and tracking the driver down later.
The court has also weakened accountability by ruling that a local government can be held liable only if it is proved that the city’s or county’s own policy violated the Constitution. In almost every other area of law, an employer can be held liable if its employees, in the scope of their duties, injure others, even negligently. This encourages employers to control the conduct of their employees and ensures that those injured will be compensated.
A 2011 case, Connick v. Thompson, illustrates how difficult the Supreme Court has made it to prove municipal liability. John Thompson was convicted of an armed robbery and a murder and spent 18 years in prison, 14 of them on death row, because of prosecutorial misconduct. Two days before Mr. Thompson’s trial began in New Orleans, the assistant district attorney received the crime lab’s report, which stated that the perpetrator of the armed robbery had a blood type that did not match Mr. Thompson’s. The defense was not told this crucial information.
Through a series of coincidences, Mr. Thompson’s lawyer discovered the blood evidence soon before the scheduled execution. New testing was done and again the blood of the perpetrator didn’t match Mr. Thompson’s DNA or even his blood type. His conviction was overturned, and he was eventually acquitted of all charges.
The district attorney’s office, which had a notorious history of not turning over exculpatory evidence to defendants, conceded that it had violated its constitutional obligation. Mr. Thompson sued the City of New Orleans, which employed the prosecutors, and was awarded $14 million.But the Supreme Court reversed that decision, in a 5-to-4 vote, and held that the local government was not liable for the prosecutorial misconduct. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, said that New Orleans could not be held liable because it could not be proved that its own policies had violated the Constitution. The fact that its prosecutor blatantly violated the Constitution was not enough to make the city liable.
Because it is so difficult to sue government entities, most victims’ only recourse is to sue the officers involved. But here, too, the Supreme Court has created often insurmountable obstacles. The court has held that all government officials sued for monetary damages can raise “immunity” as a defense. Police officers and other law enforcement personnel who commit perjury have absolute immunity and cannot be sued for money, even when it results in the imprisonment of an innocent person. A prosecutor who commits misconduct, as in Mr. Thompson’s case, also has absolute immunity to civil suits.
When there is not absolute immunity, police officers are still protected by “qualified immunity” when sued for monetary damages. The Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia in 2011, ruled that a government officer can be held liable only if “every reasonable official” would have known that his conduct was unlawful. For example, the officer who shot Michael Brown can be held liable only if every reasonable officer would have known that the shooting constituted the use of excessive force and was not self-defense.
The Supreme Court has used this doctrine in recent years to deny damages to an eighth-grade girl who was strip-searched by school officials on suspicion that she had prescription-strength ibuprofen. It has also used it to deny damages to a man who, under a material-witness warrant, was held in a maximum-security prison for 16 days and on supervised release for 14 months, even though the government had no intention of using him as a material witness or even probable cause to arrest him. In each instance, the court stressed that the government officer could not be held liable, even though the Constitution had clearly been violated.
Taken together, these rulings have a powerful effect. They mean that the officer who shot Michael Brown and the City of Ferguson will most likely never be held accountable in court. How many more deaths and how many more riots will it take before the Supreme Court changes course?
Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the School of Law at the University of California, Irvine, is the author of the forthcoming book “The Case Against the Supreme Court.”
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14) The Expanding World of Poverty Capitalism
By Thomas B. Edsall
In Orange County, Calif., the probation department’s “supervised electronic confinement program,” which monitors the movements of low-risk offenders, has been outsourced to a private company, Sentinel Offender Services. The company, by its own account, oversees case management, including breath alcohol and drug-testing services, “all at no cost to county taxpayers.”
Sentinel makes its money by getting the offenders on probation to pay for the company’s services. Charges can range from $35 to $100 a month.
The company boasts of having contracts with more than 200 government agencies, and it takes pride in the “development of offender funded programs where any of our services can be provided at no cost to the agency.”
Sentinel is a part of the expanding universe of poverty capitalism. In this unique sector of the economy, costs of essential government services are shifted to the poor.
In terms of food, housing and other essentials, the cost of being poor has always been exorbitant. Landlords, grocery stores and other commercial enterprises have all found ways to profit from those at the bottom of the ladder.
The recent drive toward privatization of government functions has turned traditional public services into profit-making enterprises as well.
In addition to probation, municipal court systems are also turning collections over to a national network of companies like Sentinel that profit from service charges imposed on the men and women who are under court order to pay fees and fines, including traffic tickets (with the fees being sums tacked on by the court to fund administrative services).
When they cannot pay these assessed fees and fines – plus collection charges imposed by the private companies — offenders can be sent to jail. There are many documented cases in which courts have imprisoned those who failed to keep up with their combined fines, fees and service charges.
“These companies are bill collectors, but they are given the authority to say to someone that if he doesn’t pay, he is going to jail,” John B. Long, a lawyer in Augusta, Ga. active in defending the poor, told Ethan Bronner of The Times.
A February 2014 report by Human Rights Watch on private offender services found that “more than 1,000 courts in several US states delegate tremendous coercive power to companies that are often subject to little meaningful oversight or regulation. In many cases, the only reason people are put on probation is because they need time to pay off fines and court costs linked to minor crimes. In some of these cases, probation companies act more like abusive debt collectors than probation officers, charging the debtors for their services.”
Human Rights Watch also found that in Georgia in 2012, in “a state of less than 10 million people, 648 courts assigned more than 250,000 cases to private probation companies.” The report notes that “there is virtually no transparency about the revenues of private probation companies” since “practically all of the industry’s firms are privately held and not subject to the disclosure requirements that bind publicly traded companies. No state requires probation companies to report their revenues, or by logical extension the amount of money they collect for themselves from probationers.”
Human Rights Watch goes on to provide an account given by a private probation officer in Georgia: “I always try and negotiate with the families. Once they know you are serious they come up with some money. That’s how you have to be. They have to see that this person is not getting out unless they pay something. I’m just looking for some good faith money, really. I got one guy I let out of jail today and I got three or four more sitting there right now.”
Collection companies and the services they offer appeal to politicians and public officials for a number of reasons: they cut government costs, reducing the need to raise taxes; they shift the burden onto offenders, who have little political influence, in part because many of them have lost the right to vote; and it pleases taxpayers who believe that the enforcement of punishment — however obtained — is a crucial dimension to the administration of justice.
As N.P.R. reported in May, services that “were once free, including those that are constitutionally required,” are now frequently billed to offenders: the cost of a public defender, room and board when jailed, probation and parole supervision, electronic monitoring devices, arrest warrants, drug and alcohol testing, and D.N.A. sampling. This can go to extraordinary lengths: in Washington state, N.P.R. found, offenders even “get charged a fee for a jury trial — with a 12-person jury costing $250, twice the fee for a six-person jury.”
This new system of offender-funded law enforcement creates a vicious circle: The poorer the defendants are, the longer it will take them to pay off the fines, fees and charges; the more debt they accumulate, the longer they will remain on probation or in jail; and the more likely they are to be unemployable and to become recidivists.
And that’s not all. The more commercialized fee collection and probation services get, the more the costs of these services are inflicted on the poor, and the more resentful of the police specifically and of law enforcement generally the poor become. At the same time, judicial systems are themselves in a vise. Judges, who in many locales must run for re-election, are under intense pressure from taxpayers to cut administrative costs while maintaining the efficacy of the judiciary.
The National Center for State Courts recently issued a guide noting that while the collection of fines and costs is “important for reasons of revenue,” even more important is the maintenance of “the integrity of the courts.”
In dealing with more serious crimes involving substantial sentences, the rising costs of maintaining and building new prison facilities has prompted many state governments, and even the federal government, to turn to the private prison industry.This industry, which began to grow in the early 1980s, now faces significant problems. As incarceration rates drop, and as some states adopt more lenient sentencing practices, the industry is struggling to find new ways to fill vacant cells.
Take the Corrections Corporation of America, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and reported revenues of $1.69 billion in 2013. The firm describes itself as “the nation’s largest owner of privatized correctional and detention facilities and one of the largest prison operators in the United States behind only the federal government and three states.”
In its 2013 annual report, C.C.A. was clear about the problems facing the company: “under a per diem rate structure, a decrease in our occupancy rates could cause a decrease in revenue and profitability. For the past three years, occupancy rates have been steadily declining in C.C.A. facilities, from 90 percent in 2011, to 88 percent in 2012 and 85 percent in 2013.”
These numbers reflect the brutal math underlying profit margins in private prisons. The “revenue per compensated man-day” for each inmate rose by 35 cents from $60.22 in 2012 to $60.57 in 2013. But expenses “per compensated man-day” rose by 70 cents from $42.04 to $42.74, for a net decline in operating income for each inmate from $18.18 a day to $17.83.
In combination with declining occupancy rates, the result was a dip in total revenue from $1.72 billion in 2012 to $1.69 billion in 2013.
The founders of C.C.A. include Tom Beasley, a former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party. One of its early investors was Honey Alexander, who is married to Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee. Alexander, according to the Sunlight Foundation, has received in excess of $63,000 from C.C.A. employees and the company PAC since his election to the Senate in 2002.
Poverty capitalism and government policy are now working on their own and in tandem to shift costs to those least equipped to pay and in particular to the least politically influential segment of the poor: criminal defendants and those delinquent in paying fines.
Last year, Ferguson, Mo., the site of recent protests over the shooting of Michael Brown, used escalating municipal court fines to pay 20.2 percent of the city’s $12.75 million budget. Just two years earlier, municipal court fines had accounted for only 12.3 percent of the city’s revenues.
What should be done to interrupt the dangerous feedback loop between low-level crime and extortionate punishment? First, local governments should bring private sector collection charges, court-imposed administrative fees and the dollar amount of traffic fines (which often double and triple when they go unpaid) into line with the economic resources of poor offenders. But larger reforms are needed and those will not come about unless the poor begin to exercise their latent political power. In many ways, everything is working against them. But the public outpouring spurred by the shooting of Michael Brown provides an indication of a possible path to the future. It was, after all, just 50 years ago — not too distant in historical terms — that collective action and social solidarity produced tangible results.
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15) In Aftermath of Missouri Protests, Skepticism About the Prospects for Change
"Many of the towns have come to rely on court fines; in St. Ann, which has a population of around 13,000 and a 27-person jail, court fines and fees make up well over a third of the general fund revenues. ...The problem, said Devondre Hykes, 21, is that a person needs money to pay a ticket and get rid of a warrant, but with a warrant a person’s driver’s license is suspended and employment is difficult."
MAPLEWOOD,
Mo. — On Monday night, just a few hours after Michael Brown was laid to
rest, an amiable judge sat in the City Council chambers here and
weighed in on the traffic violations and petty crimes, one by one, of
more than a hundred people. At least two-thirds of those waiting were
black, roughly a reverse racial image of the demographics of Maplewood
itself.
The scene was banal compared to the tear gas and outrage over the last two weeks in Ferguson, 13 miles away. But it is in courts like this that the daily frustrations that led in part to the turmoil in Ferguson begin to fester.Young black men, who in many towns in St. Louis County are pulled over at a rate greater than whites, routinely find themselves in the patchwork of municipal courts here, without lawyers and unable to pay the fines levied for their traffic violations. Many end up being passed from jail to jail around the county until they can pay their fines and in some cases other administrative fees, a revenue source on which some towns are growing increasingly reliant.
“It angers people, because it seems like they’re just messing with you,” said Cameron Lester, a 22-year-old college student who knew Mr. Brown, and days earlier was protesting his death. He described how an unpaid $75 ticket once turned into days behind bars in two different police stations and hundreds of dollars in fees. He was skeptical about change.
“Will it make a difference?” he asked. “Same thing as Trayvon Martin. Where’s that now?”
Though the shooting of Mr. Brown turned a few blocks of suburban St. Louis into disputed territory, many local protesters emphasized that their frustrations go far beyond the city of Ferguson and the police shooting. Instead, they said grievances with the police are common throughout the area. Political leaders at all levels have promised change. President Obama has ordered a review of policies leading to police militarization. The Missouri attorney general said he was exploring ways to improve diversity within police departments, which across St. Louis County tend to be whiter than the towns they serve. Several departments are considering body cameras for police officers.
Ferguson officials have discussed ways to increase the number of black police officers and to encourage officers to live in Ferguson. But in a brief interview, Mayor James Knowles III said he could not commit to any measures without the City Council, whose meeting on Tuesday night was postponed, Mr. Knowles said, until a bigger site could be found. “We don’t want it just to be rhetoric,” he said. “We want it to be action that we’re committed to.”
At the same time, voter registration drives and even an effort to recall the mayor are aimed at changing the political leadership, almost entirely white, in Ferguson. Activists have demanded investigations and audits of the municipalities with the highest racial disparities in police stops and arrests. “I don’t think we’re going back to normal,” said Jerryl Christmas, a lawyer and former St. Louis city prosecutor who was among the black leaders trying to tamp down on disorder at the nightly protests. “The lid has been blown off.”
But even Mr. Christmas acknowledged that the world that created Ferguson is not going to change quickly or easily. The unemployment rate for blacks in St. Louis County in 2012 was more than 10 percentage points higher than that of whites; more than one in five black residents lived below the poverty level.
“It’s hard,” said Lakeisha Taylor, 23, gathering paperwork out of the trunk of her car in the scorching parking lot of a social services office in the city of Florissant. She was coming here once again to find out why she has not received child care assistance. With two small children and a $9-per-hour, 32 hour-per-week job as a home health aide, Ms. Taylor could neither stay at home, nor afford day care.She did not come away from the Ferguson protests with hope. “It seems they’re more against you than for you,” she said. Like others, her main frustration was with the police.
That there is racial disparity in police stops is borne out by official numbers.
In Maplewood, according to a 2013 report by the state attorney general, black motorists were searched or arrested during stops at more than twice the rate of whites. Yet searches of whites and blacks were almost equally likely to turn up contraband. Messages for the police chief in Maplewood were not returned.
In the city of Hazelwood, blacks were twice as likely as whites to be searched during a police stop, and nearly three times as likely to be arrested, while searches of whites were about one and a half times as likely to yield contraband.
City officials, pointing out that there is extensive training to avoid racial profiling, said these numbers cannot be interpreted without context.
“If our stops may reflect a higher percentage of people, perhaps that reflects the percentage of people who are coming through Hazelwood,” said Gregg Hall, the city’s police chief.
Many of the towns have come to rely on court fines; in St. Ann, which has a population of around 13,000 and a 27-person jail, court fines and fees make up well over a third of the general fund revenues.
Matt Conley, the St. Ann city administrator, said that a rise in the number of tickets there came from a crackdown on speeding because of frequent accidents.
“Nobody is forcing people to go out there and speed and commit traffic issues,” he said, adding that radar cameras cannot detect race.
When a person fails to appear and pay, here as in many other places, a warrant is issued and that person’s license is suspended. In the hodgepodge of cities that make up St. Louis County, some drivers may have multiple warrants. In Ferguson, more than one and a half warrants have been issued for every resident. And as the warrants stack up, so do the fines: Not showing up to pay a $90 taillight violation means a failure-to-appear warrant with its own fee of $100 or more; each successive failure-to-appear warrant adds to that; and if there is a stop, there are incarceration fees and towing fees.
In the end, said Brendan Roediger, an assistant professor at St. Louis University Law School, a person who had trouble coming up with $90 might owe a jurisdiction well over a thousand dollars.
“The police aren’t actually pulling people over to find contraband,” he said. “They’re pulling people over to see if they have warrants. And they always do. If you run a system that ultimately makes every black person in your town have a warrant, then racial profiling does work.”State Senator Jamilah Nasheed, who represents part of the city of St. Louis, said the racial disparity in traffic stops, the unwillingness of cities to consider ability to pay and the fact that small city budgets are increasingly reliant on court fines show how officials have learned to “sustain their municipalities by pulling young black men over.”
The problem, said Devondre Hykes, 21, is that a person needs money to pay a ticket and get rid of a warrant, but with a warrant a person’s driver’s license is suspended and employment is difficult.
“I cannot bring you money when you’re hindering me from getting money, and it’s all going to lead to me being in jail” he said, adding that he recently showed up in Maplewood to sort out a traffic warrant, was put into handcuffs and then released and told to return to court. “Do I have $127? No, I have zero dollars.”
Sherry Melson, an owner of Bad Apple Bail Bonds in St. Louis County, sees these cases all the time. She says for many who are stopped the choice was between paying a ticket or paying rent. If you do not pay and are caught, she said, “you’re making the rounds.”
“Making the rounds,” the “muni-shuffle,” the “jail hop”: Talk to a young black man in northern St. Louis County and he knows what this is. When someone is stopped on a warrant in any of the municipalities in north St. Louis County, he knows he is going to jail everywhere he has a warrant for an unpaid traffic ticket. Whether the full amount of the fine — often in addition to hundreds of dollars in fees — is still due after a few days in jail is up to the judge.
“You sit in jail for a week and you get out and you still owe it,” said Brandon Ghoston, 33, who works at a car dealership and has done the rounds himself.
His brother, Nikos Chatman, who paints airplanes at the St. Louis Downtown Airport, has a ritual: “If I know I have warrants in five or six different places, and I get pulled over, the first thing I do is light a cigarette because I know I’m gone, I’m going to do the rounds.”
“I’m 30 years old and I’ve never been locked up for anything but a traffic ticket,” Mr. Chatman added. “I’ve been locked up a lot of times.”
Mr. Roediger and several lawyers from the law school legal clinic and ArchCity Defenders, a nonprofit group, sent a letter to Mayor Knowles last week, urging him to cancel warrants for nonviolent offenses, given the “depths of discord” exposed by the protests.
Antonio D. French, a St. Louis city alderman, said that long-term change would come most reliably through the electoral process, in which many blacks in north St. Louis County have until now not taken part. But he suggested that quick-fix policy solutions are rarely straightforward. If the Ferguson Police Department were simply to be dissolved, as some have proposed, the St. Louis County police would take over.
“They’re the ones who brought out the tanks,” he said, referring to the deployment of armored vehicles during the protests. “Is that better or is that worse?”
Alicia Parlapiano contributed reporting from Washington.
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16) Recording May Capture Shots Fired at Michael Brown
FERGUSON, Mo. — The federal authorities have received a brief video clip from a man who lives near the site where Michael Brown was killed and which, the man’s lawyer says, inadvertently captured the sounds of the gunshots fired at Mr. Brown.
The audio portion of the clip, which was first played on CNN, reveals what sounds like at least 10 gunshots — about six, a pause, and then four more. The voice of the man, who was in his bedroom in a nearby apartment recording the clip of himself for a friend, can also be heard, according to the man’s lawyer, Lopa M. Blumenthal.The federal authorities said Tuesday that they could not verify the authenticity of the recording, but that they were investigating it along with other evidence in their inquiry into the Aug. 9 shooting death of Mr. Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson police officer. A St. Louis County grand jury is also investigating the shooting, which set off protests in a city, which is roughly two-thirds black and where most elected leaders and police officers are white.If authenticated, the recording would provide new information about the number of shots fired that day. Previously, a federal autopsy by military coroners showed that Mr. Brown was struck six times, and a private autopsy on behalf of Mr. Brown’s family showed that he was hit at least six times. Witnesses have told The New York Times and investigators that they saw Mr. Brown and Officer Wilson struggling just before shots were fired, with Officer Wilson inside his patrol car and Mr. Brown leaning in through a window. Evidence shows that the officer’s weapon went off inside the car, according to law enforcement officials. The witnesses say that Mr. Brown then fled and that Officer Wilson got out of his car and fired at him as Mr. Brown was running away. At some point, those witnesses said, Mr. Brown turned around and was facing Officer Wilson when the officer fired the final shots.
One of those witnesses, Michael T. Brady, a janitor who lives near the scene of the shooting, said in an interview that Mr. Brown was bent over when one of the shots hit him in the head. “The officer lets out three more shots at him,” Mr. Brady said. “The second one goes into his head as he was bending down.”
Ms. Blumenthal said she did not know what precisely the new recording would reveal to investigators. “What I do know happened, just from the evidence, is that there was a pause,” Ms. Blumenthal, of Blumenthal & Blumenthal, said in an interview in her small offices in north St. Louis County. “So, at some point, the shooter stopped momentarily and then resumed shooting. What the rationale or reasoning is, I have no way to know.”
Ms. Blumenthal declined to name her client, who she said met with federal officers on Monday night and was expected to again on Tuesday. She also declined to permit his image in the 12-second video clip to be made public, saying that he was trying to maintain his privacy and was already feeling nervous and overwhelmed about the extraordinary level of news media attention on the case. The video shows only the man’s image inside his room, not images of the shooting.
Ms. Blumenthal said her client did not know Mr. Brown, his family or Officer Wilson. She said she approached him — and urged him to go to the authorities — only after his roommate, a former client of hers, showed her the clip last week in passing at a social event and did not seem to grasp the significance of it as evidence.
As for the veracity of the recording, Ms. Blumenthal said, “I am about as sure as I can be — mainly because they had no idea what they had recorded and they had no motivation to come forward.” Ms. Blumenthal, who said she is representing the man who made the recording at no cost, added, “Our main concern was getting it to the authorities.”
Monica Davey reported from Ferguson, and Michael S. Schmidt from Washington. Frances Robles contributed reporting from St. Louis.
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17) Bratton Spurned 25% of Board’s Police Misconduct Findings in First Half of ’14
Since taking over the New York Police Department in January, Commissioner William J. Bratton has replaced each of the top officials in charge of disciplining officers and moved to remake training at the Police Academy to prevent misconduct.
But the effect of those changes has yet to be felt in one key area: the rate at which complaints about misconduct brought by the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent oversight agency, are discarded by the Police Department.
In the first six months of 2014, the department has declined to sanction officers in over 25 percent of cases in which the board found cause for discipline. That rate is near the high end of what was seen during the last years of the Bloomberg administration, when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly were generally hostile to external oversight.How officers are disciplined has come under new scrutiny following the death of Eric Garner during an arrest that included, the city medical examiner said, the use of a chokehold, which is banned by the Police Department. A review by The New York Times last month of substantiated chokehold complaints found their use by officers rarely resulted in strong discipline, despite recommendations from the review board.
The review board is the main avenue for people to formally challenge the conduct of police officers. In a process that can span months and sometimes years, statements are given, including from the officers involved; an investigation is conducted; and the board rules on whether the complaint is valid. If it finds that it is, a discipline recommendation eventually goes to the police commissioner, who has final say.
In about a quarter of cases in recent years, Mr. Kelly rejected the recommendation. In the first six months under Mr. Bratton, that rate held steady.
In a telephone interview on Tuesday, Mr. Bratton said those figures were representative of the broken system he had inherited and vowed to fix. “I suggest you come back in six months and see how we’re doing,” he said.
He also said the review board was sending him cases with recommendations for overly harsh punishment. “Based on my eight months sitting in that chair,” he said, “my sense was that C.C.R.B. was significantly overcharging and overpenalizing.”
Describing discipline as “the engine that drives the Police Department,” Mr. Bratton said that “if it’s thought to be unfair, if it’s thought to be inconsistent, if it’s thought to be delayed, all of that has negative effects on the way the officers respond.”
A decade ago, the department followed the board’s recommendations much more closely, tossing out only about 3 percent of cases each year and, in one year, fewer than 1 percent. But beginning in 2007, the department changed course, declining to pursue discipline in more than a third of cases.
That increase led, in part, to the creation of a prosecution unit within the complaint review board for the most serious cases. Now, it is only the lower-level cases — those in which an officer does not risk suspension or termination — that can be summarily dismissed by the commissioner; in the serious cases, the board is given the opportunity to present its case to a Police Department trial board.
“Given the administration’s laudable concern about police accountability, the last thing the Police Department should be doing is to continue to dismiss cases of misconduct found to be valid by the C.C.R.B.,” said Christopher Dunn, the legal director for the New York Civil Liberties Union.
“It sends a very loud message to officers and the public that the Police Department does not take seriously civilian complaints of police misconduct.”
The cases that Mr. Bratton has declined to pursue include ones that involved stop-and-frisk encounters by officers in Manhattan, a home entered without proper justification in Brooklyn and racially offensive language used by transit officers.
In all but one of the 13 cases that Mr. Bratton declined to pursue, which covered actions before 2014, the board recommended command discipline, a middle-ground punishment that can include the loss of vacation days. In the other case, the board asked for a lighter punishment of “instructions,” or a review of the rules. In each, the police commissioner threw out the case, resulting in no punishment at all.
Nine other cases resulted in no discipline because the 18-month statute of limitations had expired.
In sum, in the cases reaching Mr. Bratton’s desk, the board found proof of misconduct by 53 officers, but only 31 officers received any discipline.
At a public meeting of the board this month, its new chairman, Richard D. Emery, described a historical lack of respect of the board by the Police Department.
“We have to come to a system where discipline is discipline, and it’s not just some recommendation to a higher authority,” said Mr. Emery, a civil rights lawyer and friend of Mr. Bratton, whom the mayor appointed last month.
“It means that Commissioner Bratton, or any police commissioner, has to buy into a different process.”
Mr. Bratton said in the interview that he and Mr. Emery were working to revamp the process and to set a standard for handling proven misconduct. That will involve more mediation by the board, Mr. Bratton said, and fewer future cases sent to the Police Department for final adjudication.
“A lot of things that are complained about against police officers can be corrected with training, with instruction, rather than with discipline and suspension days,” Mr. Bratton said, adding that sometimes punishment was necessary.
“We spend a lot of time on this,” he said. “It is not just a willy-nilly process.”
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Nine years ago this week, New Orleans drowned. Don’t you dare blame Mother Nature. Miss Katrina killed no one in this town. But it was a homicide, with nearly 2,000 dead victims. If not Katrina, who done it?
It wasn’t an Act of God. It was an Act of Chevron. An Act of Exxon. An Act of Big Oil.
Take a look at these numbers dug out of Louisiana state records:
Conoco 3.3 million acres
Exxon Mobil 2.1 million acres
Chevron 2.7 million acres
Shell 1.3 million acres
These are the total acres of wetlands removed by just four oil companies over the past couple decades. If you’re not a farmer, I’ll translate this into urban-speak: that’s 14,688 square miles drowned into the Gulf of Mexico.
Here’s what happened. New Orleans used be to a long, swampy way from the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricanes and storm surges had to cross a protective mangrove forest nearly a hundred miles thick.
But then, a century ago, Standard Oil, Exxon’s prior alias, began dragging drilling rigs, channeling pipelines, barge paths and tanker routes through what was once soft delta prairie grass. Most of those beautiful bayous you see on postcards are just scars, the cuts and wounds of drilling the prairie, once America’s cattle-raising center. The bayous, filling with ‘gators and shrimp, widened out and sank the coastline. Each year, oil operations drag the Gulf four miles closer to New Orleans.
Just one channel dug for Exxon’s pleasure, the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet ("MR-GO") was dubbed the Hurricane Highway by experts—long before Katrina—that invited the storm right up to—and over—the city’s gates, the levees.
Without Big Oil's tree and prairie holocaust, "Katrina would have been a storm of no note," Professor Ivor van Heerden told me. Van Heerden, once Deputy Director of the Hurricane Center at Louisiana State University, is one of the planet’s the leading experts on storm dynamics.
If they’d only left just 10% of the protective collar. They didn’t.
Van Heerden was giving me a tour of the battle zone in the oil war. It was New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, which once held the largest concentration of African-American owned homes in America. Now it holds the largest contrition of African-American owned rubble.
We stood in front of a house, now years after Katrina, with an "X" spray-painted on the outside and "1 DEAD DOG," "1 CAT," the number 2 and "9/6" partly covered by a foreclosure notice.
The professor translated: "9/6" meant rescuers couldn’t get to the house for eight days, so the "2"—the couple that lived there––must have paddled around with their pets until the rising waters pushed them against the ceiling and they suffocated, their gas-bloated corpses floating for a week.
In July 2005, Van Heerden told Channel 4 television of Britain that, "In a month, this city could be underwater." In one month, it was. Van Heerden had sounded the alarm for at least two years, even speaking to George Bush’s White House about an emergency condition: with the Gulf closing in, the levees were 18 inches short. But the Army Corps of Engineers was busy with other rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates.
So, when those levees began to fail, the White House, hoping to avoid Federal responsibility, did not tell Louisiana's Governor Kathleen Blanco that the levees were breaking up. That Monday night, August 29, with the storm by-passing New Orleans, the Governor had stopped the city’s evacuation. Van Heerden was with the governor at the State Emergency Center. He said, "By midnight on Monday the White House knew. But none of us knew."
So, the drownings began in earnest.
Van Heerden was supposed to keep that secret. He didn't. He told me, on camera––knowing the floodwater of official slime would break over him. He was told to stay silent, to bury the truth. But he told me more. A lot more.
"I wasn't going to listen to those sort of threats, to let them shut me down."
Well, they did shut him down. After he went public about the unending life-and-death threat of continued oil drilling and channelling, LSU closed down its entire Hurricane Center (can you imagine?) and fired Professor van Heerden and fellow experts. This was just after the University received a $300,000 check from Chevron. The check was passed by a front group called "America’s Wetlands"—which lobbies for more drilling in the wetlands.
In place of Van Heerden and independent experts, LSU’s new "Wetlands Center" has professors picked by a board of petroleum industry hacks.
In 2003, Americans protested, "No Blood for Oil" in Iraq. It’s about time we said, "No Blood for Oil"—in Louisiana.
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Community activists continue to push the Los Angeles Police Department for transparency after two unarmed men died within days of each other as a result of violent stops by LAPD officers. But to date, no information has been given.
Ezell Ford, 25, and Omar Abrego, 37, died on August 11 and August 2, respectively. Police placed a "security hold" on the autopsy reports of both men on August 15, meaning neither report will be released to the public until the hold is lifted. As of now, the LAPD has not released the names of the officers involved. The deaths happened within blocks of each other, and community outrage coincided with civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri after police there shot unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown to death on August 9. Anger in Los Angeles has taken the form of peaceful marches and rallies seeking legal action against the officers involved.
"It's an outrage and a disgrace; they're abusing their power," said Keyanna Celina from the Coalition for Community Control Over the Police. "There's nothing democratic about a family being denied the autopsy report and the officers' names."
LAPD Officer Bruce Borihanh of the media relations division said the department was not going to answer further questions on the two cases and referred to the press releases on its website.
"One reason the names aren't being released is officer safety and their families' safety has to be assessed. The officers' safety hasn't been assessed," he said. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck makes the executive decision on releasing the officers' names.
It remained unclear why security holds were placed on the autopsy reports, or why the holds were placed days, or in Abrego's case, two weeks after the deaths. LA County Coroner Asst. Chief Ed Winter said law enforcement or judges can send a letter requesting the holds, but don't have to say why they are needed. They can be in place for months or even years.
"Nicole Simpson is still on hold to this day," he said. Nicole Brown Simpson was murdered 20 years ago, and her autopsy report has since been on hold by Judge Lance Ito, who presided over the murder trial.
Terry Francke, general counsel for Californians Aware, an open government advocacy group, said the only legal basis for withholding autopsy reports "is that the death is under criminal investigation. There's nothing in the law about a 'security hold.'"
He cited case law Dixon v. Superior Court, in which the court found exempting an autopsy report from public disclosure was necessary only when "public interest in nondisclosure clearly outweighed the public interest in disclosure."
Steven Lerman, attorney for Ezell Ford's family, said he sent Chief Beck a letter asking him what legal code allowed him to maintain a hold on a completed autopsy report. He has yet to receive a written response.
"I think it's because of the public pressure. A lot of times these things happen in the dark and there's no community presence and there are no protests or actions and there's no public awareness of it," Celina said. "The community has continued to maintain a peaceful presence demanding answers and for that reason we believe there is more pressure on them."
Lerman will file a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging the wrongful death of Ezell Ford by the LAPD, and would say only, "As a result of my investigation, I'm completely convinced it was an unjustified use of force." He called Ford's death a "horrifying loss for this family." Lerman successfully represented Rodney King in his federal lawsuit against the city police department.
Community activists rallied on August 21 outside the criminal court building in downtown Los Angeles, where Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey's office is housed, and demanded charges be filed against the officers involved. They had hoped to meet face-to-face with Lacey, but her public relations team met with them in the hallway outside the elevator and told them she was out of town.
While the district attorney's PR staff assured the activists their office takes these cases seriously, took a list of names and contact information for families whose members have been killed by police officers and gave them cards with an email address they could send their concerns to, Celina said being made to sit on a bench in an open hallway by the elevators was "demeaning."
"I would say, personally, that if that is how they received us, sitting on a bench next to the elevator like children waiting for their parents, then I can't imagine how the families of loved ones are treated," she said.
Los Angeles County DA spokeswoman Jane Robison said the DA's office has not yet received the case from the LAPD, because the police department is still doing their own investigation. Once the DA's office gets the case, it will be turned over to the Justice System Integrity Division, which handles police officer misconduct investigations.
There's wide space between stories told by eyewitnesses and those told by police in both cases, and Celina said the community doesn't have much trust in the LAPD or that their investigation will be unbiased. The refusal to release information has exacerbated that mistrust, she said.
A witness told local station KTLA that Ezell Ford, who family members have described to the media as mentally disabled, was lying down when he was shot multiple times by officers in the back. More eyewitnesses have come forward to reporters, one telling The Huffington Post that Ford was on the ground and one of the officers shouted "shoot him" before he was killed. Police contend officers from the department's Newton Area Gang Enforcement Detail "attempted to talk" to Ford (in an earlier release they called it an "investigative stop") who continued walking. They got closer and police say he grabbed one of them, then wrestled to the ground and attempted to grab one of the officer's guns, according to the LAPD official press release, and at that point both officers opened fire.
Two witnesses also told local news station KTLA they saw officers striking Abrego repeatedly, and one said the beating lasted 10 minutes. A grainy video shows Abrego being held face down over a pool of blood. It appears he is crying out in distress. Police contend two officers also from the department's Newton Area Gang Enforcement Detail stopped Abrego because he was driving erratically. After they stopped him, he tried to run away, according to LAPD's official media statement. A "physical altercation" took place, resulting in a "laceration" and an ambulance was called.
Celina said if the DA's office doesn't file charges, her organization plans to go over their heads and seek them from State Attorney General Kamala Harris' office and if necessary, will go higher than that.
"It takes a lot, so much to raise a child. It takes only a second for them to take them away," she said. "There're no words to describe it. You put so much into raising your child and keeping them on the right path. Then to have them gunned down by the people who are supposed to be protecting and serving, it's the opposite of civilization."
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12) Cops terrorize a mother with 4 small children at gunpoint
Reported by Liku Zelleke
August 27, 2014
http://naturallymoi.com/cops-terrorize-a-mother-with-4-small-children-at-gunpoint/
A mother and her four young children were pulled over at gunpoint by police in Forney, TX. The whole incident was recorded on a patrol car’s dash cam.
In the footage, Kametra Barbour is suddenly stopped by the police as she was driving her children home. Her car is then surrounded by officers and then one of them is heard ordering, “Driver let me see your hands, everybody stick their hands out the window.”
Barbour asks, “What is wrong?” to which the officer replies “I’ll tell you in a minute.”
She is then ordered to exit the vehicle with her hands above her head and she complies. Officers then handcuff her.
Barbour then asks, “What is wrong? …My kids!”
The officer asks back, “How old are they?”
“They’re six and eight and ten, nine. What are we doing?”
“Hold on a second, okay?”
“What is going on? Oh my God, you will terrify my children.”
“We got a complaint of a vehicle matching your description and your license plate, waving a gun out the window,” replies the officer.
Apparently, the police executed the traffic stop because they acting on a tip. A 911 call had been made where the caller told dispatch that four black men were seen waving a gun out the window of a beige- or tan-colored Toyota.
What has many people scratching their heads is the fact that Barbour’s car is burgundy red and the make is a Nissan Maxima.
Police only realized they had made a mistake when Barbour’s son, 6-year-old Ryan, came out of the front-passenger side of the car with his hands raised too.
Then the following conversation occurs between the officers:
Officer 1: “Do they look young to you?”
Officer 2: “They do to me.”
Officer 1: “Huh?”
Officer 2: “They do to me.”
Officer 1: “Yep, they’re young.”
Officer 1: [To other officers] “Gun down, gun down, gun down.”
Officer 1: [As the child exits the vehicle] “Come on back here, son. Come on back here, you’re alright.”
The officers then proceed to calm and pacify the terrified kids.
Officer: “Y’all okay?
Child: “I’m scared.”
Officer: “It’s okay.”
Child: “Are we going to jail?”
Officer: “No. No one is going to jail.”
Child: [Scream, crying]
Officer: “Hey, stop crying. It’s okay. It’s okay. Everything’s fine now.”
The Forney police have since apologized over the incident.
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13) How the Supreme Court Protects Bad Cops
By ERWIN CHEMERINSKY
In recent years, the court has made it very difficult, and often impossible, to hold police officers and the governments that employ them accountable for civil rights violations. This undermines the ability to deter illegal police behavior and leaves victims without compensation. When the police kill or injure innocent people, the victims rarely have recourse.
The most recent court ruling that favored the police was Plumhoff v. Rickard, decided on May 27, which found that even egregious police conduct is not “excessive force” in violation of the Constitution. Police officers in West Memphis, Ark., pulled over a white Honda Accord because the car had only one operating headlight. Rather than comply with an officer’s request to get out of the car, the driver made the unfortunate decision to speed away. The police chased the car for more than five minutes, reaching speeds of over 100 miles per hour. Eventually, officers fired 15 shots into the car, killing both the driver and a passenger.
The Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and ruled unanimously in favor of the police. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said that the driver’s conduct posed a “grave public safety risk” and that the police were justified in shooting at the car to stop it. The court said it “stands to reason that, if police officers are justified in firing at a suspect in order to end a severe threat to public safety, the officers need not stop shooting until the threat has ended.”
This is deeply disturbing. The Supreme Court now has said that whenever there is a high-speed chase that could injure others — and that would seem to be true of virtually all high-speed chases — the police can shoot at the vehicle and keep shooting until the chase ends. Obvious alternatives could include shooting out the car’s tires, or even taking the license plate number and tracking the driver down later.
The court has also weakened accountability by ruling that a local government can be held liable only if it is proved that the city’s or county’s own policy violated the Constitution. In almost every other area of law, an employer can be held liable if its employees, in the scope of their duties, injure others, even negligently. This encourages employers to control the conduct of their employees and ensures that those injured will be compensated.
A 2011 case, Connick v. Thompson, illustrates how difficult the Supreme Court has made it to prove municipal liability. John Thompson was convicted of an armed robbery and a murder and spent 18 years in prison, 14 of them on death row, because of prosecutorial misconduct. Two days before Mr. Thompson’s trial began in New Orleans, the assistant district attorney received the crime lab’s report, which stated that the perpetrator of the armed robbery had a blood type that did not match Mr. Thompson’s. The defense was not told this crucial information.
Through a series of coincidences, Mr. Thompson’s lawyer discovered the blood evidence soon before the scheduled execution. New testing was done and again the blood of the perpetrator didn’t match Mr. Thompson’s DNA or even his blood type. His conviction was overturned, and he was eventually acquitted of all charges.
The district attorney’s office, which had a notorious history of not turning over exculpatory evidence to defendants, conceded that it had violated its constitutional obligation. Mr. Thompson sued the City of New Orleans, which employed the prosecutors, and was awarded $14 million.But the Supreme Court reversed that decision, in a 5-to-4 vote, and held that the local government was not liable for the prosecutorial misconduct. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, said that New Orleans could not be held liable because it could not be proved that its own policies had violated the Constitution. The fact that its prosecutor blatantly violated the Constitution was not enough to make the city liable.
Because it is so difficult to sue government entities, most victims’ only recourse is to sue the officers involved. But here, too, the Supreme Court has created often insurmountable obstacles. The court has held that all government officials sued for monetary damages can raise “immunity” as a defense. Police officers and other law enforcement personnel who commit perjury have absolute immunity and cannot be sued for money, even when it results in the imprisonment of an innocent person. A prosecutor who commits misconduct, as in Mr. Thompson’s case, also has absolute immunity to civil suits.
When there is not absolute immunity, police officers are still protected by “qualified immunity” when sued for monetary damages. The Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia in 2011, ruled that a government officer can be held liable only if “every reasonable official” would have known that his conduct was unlawful. For example, the officer who shot Michael Brown can be held liable only if every reasonable officer would have known that the shooting constituted the use of excessive force and was not self-defense.
The Supreme Court has used this doctrine in recent years to deny damages to an eighth-grade girl who was strip-searched by school officials on suspicion that she had prescription-strength ibuprofen. It has also used it to deny damages to a man who, under a material-witness warrant, was held in a maximum-security prison for 16 days and on supervised release for 14 months, even though the government had no intention of using him as a material witness or even probable cause to arrest him. In each instance, the court stressed that the government officer could not be held liable, even though the Constitution had clearly been violated.
Taken together, these rulings have a powerful effect. They mean that the officer who shot Michael Brown and the City of Ferguson will most likely never be held accountable in court. How many more deaths and how many more riots will it take before the Supreme Court changes course?
Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the School of Law at the University of California, Irvine, is the author of the forthcoming book “The Case Against the Supreme Court.”
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14) The Expanding World of Poverty Capitalism
By Thomas B. Edsall
In Orange County, Calif., the probation department’s “supervised electronic confinement program,” which monitors the movements of low-risk offenders, has been outsourced to a private company, Sentinel Offender Services. The company, by its own account, oversees case management, including breath alcohol and drug-testing services, “all at no cost to county taxpayers.”
Sentinel makes its money by getting the offenders on probation to pay for the company’s services. Charges can range from $35 to $100 a month.
The company boasts of having contracts with more than 200 government agencies, and it takes pride in the “development of offender funded programs where any of our services can be provided at no cost to the agency.”
Sentinel is a part of the expanding universe of poverty capitalism. In this unique sector of the economy, costs of essential government services are shifted to the poor.
In terms of food, housing and other essentials, the cost of being poor has always been exorbitant. Landlords, grocery stores and other commercial enterprises have all found ways to profit from those at the bottom of the ladder.
The recent drive toward privatization of government functions has turned traditional public services into profit-making enterprises as well.
In addition to probation, municipal court systems are also turning collections over to a national network of companies like Sentinel that profit from service charges imposed on the men and women who are under court order to pay fees and fines, including traffic tickets (with the fees being sums tacked on by the court to fund administrative services).
When they cannot pay these assessed fees and fines – plus collection charges imposed by the private companies — offenders can be sent to jail. There are many documented cases in which courts have imprisoned those who failed to keep up with their combined fines, fees and service charges.
“These companies are bill collectors, but they are given the authority to say to someone that if he doesn’t pay, he is going to jail,” John B. Long, a lawyer in Augusta, Ga. active in defending the poor, told Ethan Bronner of The Times.
A February 2014 report by Human Rights Watch on private offender services found that “more than 1,000 courts in several US states delegate tremendous coercive power to companies that are often subject to little meaningful oversight or regulation. In many cases, the only reason people are put on probation is because they need time to pay off fines and court costs linked to minor crimes. In some of these cases, probation companies act more like abusive debt collectors than probation officers, charging the debtors for their services.”
Human Rights Watch also found that in Georgia in 2012, in “a state of less than 10 million people, 648 courts assigned more than 250,000 cases to private probation companies.” The report notes that “there is virtually no transparency about the revenues of private probation companies” since “practically all of the industry’s firms are privately held and not subject to the disclosure requirements that bind publicly traded companies. No state requires probation companies to report their revenues, or by logical extension the amount of money they collect for themselves from probationers.”
Human Rights Watch goes on to provide an account given by a private probation officer in Georgia: “I always try and negotiate with the families. Once they know you are serious they come up with some money. That’s how you have to be. They have to see that this person is not getting out unless they pay something. I’m just looking for some good faith money, really. I got one guy I let out of jail today and I got three or four more sitting there right now.”
Collection companies and the services they offer appeal to politicians and public officials for a number of reasons: they cut government costs, reducing the need to raise taxes; they shift the burden onto offenders, who have little political influence, in part because many of them have lost the right to vote; and it pleases taxpayers who believe that the enforcement of punishment — however obtained — is a crucial dimension to the administration of justice.
As N.P.R. reported in May, services that “were once free, including those that are constitutionally required,” are now frequently billed to offenders: the cost of a public defender, room and board when jailed, probation and parole supervision, electronic monitoring devices, arrest warrants, drug and alcohol testing, and D.N.A. sampling. This can go to extraordinary lengths: in Washington state, N.P.R. found, offenders even “get charged a fee for a jury trial — with a 12-person jury costing $250, twice the fee for a six-person jury.”
This new system of offender-funded law enforcement creates a vicious circle: The poorer the defendants are, the longer it will take them to pay off the fines, fees and charges; the more debt they accumulate, the longer they will remain on probation or in jail; and the more likely they are to be unemployable and to become recidivists.
And that’s not all. The more commercialized fee collection and probation services get, the more the costs of these services are inflicted on the poor, and the more resentful of the police specifically and of law enforcement generally the poor become. At the same time, judicial systems are themselves in a vise. Judges, who in many locales must run for re-election, are under intense pressure from taxpayers to cut administrative costs while maintaining the efficacy of the judiciary.
The National Center for State Courts recently issued a guide noting that while the collection of fines and costs is “important for reasons of revenue,” even more important is the maintenance of “the integrity of the courts.”
In dealing with more serious crimes involving substantial sentences, the rising costs of maintaining and building new prison facilities has prompted many state governments, and even the federal government, to turn to the private prison industry.This industry, which began to grow in the early 1980s, now faces significant problems. As incarceration rates drop, and as some states adopt more lenient sentencing practices, the industry is struggling to find new ways to fill vacant cells.
Take the Corrections Corporation of America, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and reported revenues of $1.69 billion in 2013. The firm describes itself as “the nation’s largest owner of privatized correctional and detention facilities and one of the largest prison operators in the United States behind only the federal government and three states.”
In its 2013 annual report, C.C.A. was clear about the problems facing the company: “under a per diem rate structure, a decrease in our occupancy rates could cause a decrease in revenue and profitability. For the past three years, occupancy rates have been steadily declining in C.C.A. facilities, from 90 percent in 2011, to 88 percent in 2012 and 85 percent in 2013.”
These numbers reflect the brutal math underlying profit margins in private prisons. The “revenue per compensated man-day” for each inmate rose by 35 cents from $60.22 in 2012 to $60.57 in 2013. But expenses “per compensated man-day” rose by 70 cents from $42.04 to $42.74, for a net decline in operating income for each inmate from $18.18 a day to $17.83.
In combination with declining occupancy rates, the result was a dip in total revenue from $1.72 billion in 2012 to $1.69 billion in 2013.
The founders of C.C.A. include Tom Beasley, a former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party. One of its early investors was Honey Alexander, who is married to Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee. Alexander, according to the Sunlight Foundation, has received in excess of $63,000 from C.C.A. employees and the company PAC since his election to the Senate in 2002.
Poverty capitalism and government policy are now working on their own and in tandem to shift costs to those least equipped to pay and in particular to the least politically influential segment of the poor: criminal defendants and those delinquent in paying fines.
Last year, Ferguson, Mo., the site of recent protests over the shooting of Michael Brown, used escalating municipal court fines to pay 20.2 percent of the city’s $12.75 million budget. Just two years earlier, municipal court fines had accounted for only 12.3 percent of the city’s revenues.
What should be done to interrupt the dangerous feedback loop between low-level crime and extortionate punishment? First, local governments should bring private sector collection charges, court-imposed administrative fees and the dollar amount of traffic fines (which often double and triple when they go unpaid) into line with the economic resources of poor offenders. But larger reforms are needed and those will not come about unless the poor begin to exercise their latent political power. In many ways, everything is working against them. But the public outpouring spurred by the shooting of Michael Brown provides an indication of a possible path to the future. It was, after all, just 50 years ago — not too distant in historical terms — that collective action and social solidarity produced tangible results.
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15) In Aftermath of Missouri Protests, Skepticism About the Prospects for Change
"Many of the towns have come to rely on court fines; in St. Ann, which has a population of around 13,000 and a 27-person jail, court fines and fees make up well over a third of the general fund revenues. ...The problem, said Devondre Hykes, 21, is that a person needs money to pay a ticket and get rid of a warrant, but with a warrant a person’s driver’s license is suspended and employment is difficult."
The scene was banal compared to the tear gas and outrage over the last two weeks in Ferguson, 13 miles away. But it is in courts like this that the daily frustrations that led in part to the turmoil in Ferguson begin to fester.Young black men, who in many towns in St. Louis County are pulled over at a rate greater than whites, routinely find themselves in the patchwork of municipal courts here, without lawyers and unable to pay the fines levied for their traffic violations. Many end up being passed from jail to jail around the county until they can pay their fines and in some cases other administrative fees, a revenue source on which some towns are growing increasingly reliant.
“It angers people, because it seems like they’re just messing with you,” said Cameron Lester, a 22-year-old college student who knew Mr. Brown, and days earlier was protesting his death. He described how an unpaid $75 ticket once turned into days behind bars in two different police stations and hundreds of dollars in fees. He was skeptical about change.
“Will it make a difference?” he asked. “Same thing as Trayvon Martin. Where’s that now?”
Though the shooting of Mr. Brown turned a few blocks of suburban St. Louis into disputed territory, many local protesters emphasized that their frustrations go far beyond the city of Ferguson and the police shooting. Instead, they said grievances with the police are common throughout the area. Political leaders at all levels have promised change. President Obama has ordered a review of policies leading to police militarization. The Missouri attorney general said he was exploring ways to improve diversity within police departments, which across St. Louis County tend to be whiter than the towns they serve. Several departments are considering body cameras for police officers.
Ferguson officials have discussed ways to increase the number of black police officers and to encourage officers to live in Ferguson. But in a brief interview, Mayor James Knowles III said he could not commit to any measures without the City Council, whose meeting on Tuesday night was postponed, Mr. Knowles said, until a bigger site could be found. “We don’t want it just to be rhetoric,” he said. “We want it to be action that we’re committed to.”
At the same time, voter registration drives and even an effort to recall the mayor are aimed at changing the political leadership, almost entirely white, in Ferguson. Activists have demanded investigations and audits of the municipalities with the highest racial disparities in police stops and arrests. “I don’t think we’re going back to normal,” said Jerryl Christmas, a lawyer and former St. Louis city prosecutor who was among the black leaders trying to tamp down on disorder at the nightly protests. “The lid has been blown off.”
But even Mr. Christmas acknowledged that the world that created Ferguson is not going to change quickly or easily. The unemployment rate for blacks in St. Louis County in 2012 was more than 10 percentage points higher than that of whites; more than one in five black residents lived below the poverty level.
“It’s hard,” said Lakeisha Taylor, 23, gathering paperwork out of the trunk of her car in the scorching parking lot of a social services office in the city of Florissant. She was coming here once again to find out why she has not received child care assistance. With two small children and a $9-per-hour, 32 hour-per-week job as a home health aide, Ms. Taylor could neither stay at home, nor afford day care.She did not come away from the Ferguson protests with hope. “It seems they’re more against you than for you,” she said. Like others, her main frustration was with the police.
That there is racial disparity in police stops is borne out by official numbers.
In Maplewood, according to a 2013 report by the state attorney general, black motorists were searched or arrested during stops at more than twice the rate of whites. Yet searches of whites and blacks were almost equally likely to turn up contraband. Messages for the police chief in Maplewood were not returned.
In the city of Hazelwood, blacks were twice as likely as whites to be searched during a police stop, and nearly three times as likely to be arrested, while searches of whites were about one and a half times as likely to yield contraband.
City officials, pointing out that there is extensive training to avoid racial profiling, said these numbers cannot be interpreted without context.
“If our stops may reflect a higher percentage of people, perhaps that reflects the percentage of people who are coming through Hazelwood,” said Gregg Hall, the city’s police chief.
Many of the towns have come to rely on court fines; in St. Ann, which has a population of around 13,000 and a 27-person jail, court fines and fees make up well over a third of the general fund revenues.
Matt Conley, the St. Ann city administrator, said that a rise in the number of tickets there came from a crackdown on speeding because of frequent accidents.
“Nobody is forcing people to go out there and speed and commit traffic issues,” he said, adding that radar cameras cannot detect race.
When a person fails to appear and pay, here as in many other places, a warrant is issued and that person’s license is suspended. In the hodgepodge of cities that make up St. Louis County, some drivers may have multiple warrants. In Ferguson, more than one and a half warrants have been issued for every resident. And as the warrants stack up, so do the fines: Not showing up to pay a $90 taillight violation means a failure-to-appear warrant with its own fee of $100 or more; each successive failure-to-appear warrant adds to that; and if there is a stop, there are incarceration fees and towing fees.
In the end, said Brendan Roediger, an assistant professor at St. Louis University Law School, a person who had trouble coming up with $90 might owe a jurisdiction well over a thousand dollars.
“The police aren’t actually pulling people over to find contraband,” he said. “They’re pulling people over to see if they have warrants. And they always do. If you run a system that ultimately makes every black person in your town have a warrant, then racial profiling does work.”State Senator Jamilah Nasheed, who represents part of the city of St. Louis, said the racial disparity in traffic stops, the unwillingness of cities to consider ability to pay and the fact that small city budgets are increasingly reliant on court fines show how officials have learned to “sustain their municipalities by pulling young black men over.”
The problem, said Devondre Hykes, 21, is that a person needs money to pay a ticket and get rid of a warrant, but with a warrant a person’s driver’s license is suspended and employment is difficult.
“I cannot bring you money when you’re hindering me from getting money, and it’s all going to lead to me being in jail” he said, adding that he recently showed up in Maplewood to sort out a traffic warrant, was put into handcuffs and then released and told to return to court. “Do I have $127? No, I have zero dollars.”
Sherry Melson, an owner of Bad Apple Bail Bonds in St. Louis County, sees these cases all the time. She says for many who are stopped the choice was between paying a ticket or paying rent. If you do not pay and are caught, she said, “you’re making the rounds.”
“Making the rounds,” the “muni-shuffle,” the “jail hop”: Talk to a young black man in northern St. Louis County and he knows what this is. When someone is stopped on a warrant in any of the municipalities in north St. Louis County, he knows he is going to jail everywhere he has a warrant for an unpaid traffic ticket. Whether the full amount of the fine — often in addition to hundreds of dollars in fees — is still due after a few days in jail is up to the judge.
“You sit in jail for a week and you get out and you still owe it,” said Brandon Ghoston, 33, who works at a car dealership and has done the rounds himself.
His brother, Nikos Chatman, who paints airplanes at the St. Louis Downtown Airport, has a ritual: “If I know I have warrants in five or six different places, and I get pulled over, the first thing I do is light a cigarette because I know I’m gone, I’m going to do the rounds.”
“I’m 30 years old and I’ve never been locked up for anything but a traffic ticket,” Mr. Chatman added. “I’ve been locked up a lot of times.”
Mr. Roediger and several lawyers from the law school legal clinic and ArchCity Defenders, a nonprofit group, sent a letter to Mayor Knowles last week, urging him to cancel warrants for nonviolent offenses, given the “depths of discord” exposed by the protests.
Antonio D. French, a St. Louis city alderman, said that long-term change would come most reliably through the electoral process, in which many blacks in north St. Louis County have until now not taken part. But he suggested that quick-fix policy solutions are rarely straightforward. If the Ferguson Police Department were simply to be dissolved, as some have proposed, the St. Louis County police would take over.
“They’re the ones who brought out the tanks,” he said, referring to the deployment of armored vehicles during the protests. “Is that better or is that worse?”
Alicia Parlapiano contributed reporting from Washington.
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16) Recording May Capture Shots Fired at Michael Brown
By MONICA DAVEY and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
FERGUSON, Mo. — The federal authorities have received a brief video clip from a man who lives near the site where Michael Brown was killed and which, the man’s lawyer says, inadvertently captured the sounds of the gunshots fired at Mr. Brown.
The audio portion of the clip, which was first played on CNN, reveals what sounds like at least 10 gunshots — about six, a pause, and then four more. The voice of the man, who was in his bedroom in a nearby apartment recording the clip of himself for a friend, can also be heard, according to the man’s lawyer, Lopa M. Blumenthal.The federal authorities said Tuesday that they could not verify the authenticity of the recording, but that they were investigating it along with other evidence in their inquiry into the Aug. 9 shooting death of Mr. Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson police officer. A St. Louis County grand jury is also investigating the shooting, which set off protests in a city, which is roughly two-thirds black and where most elected leaders and police officers are white.If authenticated, the recording would provide new information about the number of shots fired that day. Previously, a federal autopsy by military coroners showed that Mr. Brown was struck six times, and a private autopsy on behalf of Mr. Brown’s family showed that he was hit at least six times. Witnesses have told The New York Times and investigators that they saw Mr. Brown and Officer Wilson struggling just before shots were fired, with Officer Wilson inside his patrol car and Mr. Brown leaning in through a window. Evidence shows that the officer’s weapon went off inside the car, according to law enforcement officials. The witnesses say that Mr. Brown then fled and that Officer Wilson got out of his car and fired at him as Mr. Brown was running away. At some point, those witnesses said, Mr. Brown turned around and was facing Officer Wilson when the officer fired the final shots.
One of those witnesses, Michael T. Brady, a janitor who lives near the scene of the shooting, said in an interview that Mr. Brown was bent over when one of the shots hit him in the head. “The officer lets out three more shots at him,” Mr. Brady said. “The second one goes into his head as he was bending down.”
Ms. Blumenthal said she did not know what precisely the new recording would reveal to investigators. “What I do know happened, just from the evidence, is that there was a pause,” Ms. Blumenthal, of Blumenthal & Blumenthal, said in an interview in her small offices in north St. Louis County. “So, at some point, the shooter stopped momentarily and then resumed shooting. What the rationale or reasoning is, I have no way to know.”
Ms. Blumenthal declined to name her client, who she said met with federal officers on Monday night and was expected to again on Tuesday. She also declined to permit his image in the 12-second video clip to be made public, saying that he was trying to maintain his privacy and was already feeling nervous and overwhelmed about the extraordinary level of news media attention on the case. The video shows only the man’s image inside his room, not images of the shooting.
Ms. Blumenthal said her client did not know Mr. Brown, his family or Officer Wilson. She said she approached him — and urged him to go to the authorities — only after his roommate, a former client of hers, showed her the clip last week in passing at a social event and did not seem to grasp the significance of it as evidence.
As for the veracity of the recording, Ms. Blumenthal said, “I am about as sure as I can be — mainly because they had no idea what they had recorded and they had no motivation to come forward.” Ms. Blumenthal, who said she is representing the man who made the recording at no cost, added, “Our main concern was getting it to the authorities.”
Monica Davey reported from Ferguson, and Michael S. Schmidt from Washington. Frances Robles contributed reporting from St. Louis.
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17) Bratton Spurned 25% of Board’s Police Misconduct Findings in First Half of ’14
Since taking over the New York Police Department in January, Commissioner William J. Bratton has replaced each of the top officials in charge of disciplining officers and moved to remake training at the Police Academy to prevent misconduct.
But the effect of those changes has yet to be felt in one key area: the rate at which complaints about misconduct brought by the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent oversight agency, are discarded by the Police Department.
In the first six months of 2014, the department has declined to sanction officers in over 25 percent of cases in which the board found cause for discipline. That rate is near the high end of what was seen during the last years of the Bloomberg administration, when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly were generally hostile to external oversight.How officers are disciplined has come under new scrutiny following the death of Eric Garner during an arrest that included, the city medical examiner said, the use of a chokehold, which is banned by the Police Department. A review by The New York Times last month of substantiated chokehold complaints found their use by officers rarely resulted in strong discipline, despite recommendations from the review board.
The review board is the main avenue for people to formally challenge the conduct of police officers. In a process that can span months and sometimes years, statements are given, including from the officers involved; an investigation is conducted; and the board rules on whether the complaint is valid. If it finds that it is, a discipline recommendation eventually goes to the police commissioner, who has final say.
In about a quarter of cases in recent years, Mr. Kelly rejected the recommendation. In the first six months under Mr. Bratton, that rate held steady.
In a telephone interview on Tuesday, Mr. Bratton said those figures were representative of the broken system he had inherited and vowed to fix. “I suggest you come back in six months and see how we’re doing,” he said.
He also said the review board was sending him cases with recommendations for overly harsh punishment. “Based on my eight months sitting in that chair,” he said, “my sense was that C.C.R.B. was significantly overcharging and overpenalizing.”
Describing discipline as “the engine that drives the Police Department,” Mr. Bratton said that “if it’s thought to be unfair, if it’s thought to be inconsistent, if it’s thought to be delayed, all of that has negative effects on the way the officers respond.”
A decade ago, the department followed the board’s recommendations much more closely, tossing out only about 3 percent of cases each year and, in one year, fewer than 1 percent. But beginning in 2007, the department changed course, declining to pursue discipline in more than a third of cases.
That increase led, in part, to the creation of a prosecution unit within the complaint review board for the most serious cases. Now, it is only the lower-level cases — those in which an officer does not risk suspension or termination — that can be summarily dismissed by the commissioner; in the serious cases, the board is given the opportunity to present its case to a Police Department trial board.
“Given the administration’s laudable concern about police accountability, the last thing the Police Department should be doing is to continue to dismiss cases of misconduct found to be valid by the C.C.R.B.,” said Christopher Dunn, the legal director for the New York Civil Liberties Union.
“It sends a very loud message to officers and the public that the Police Department does not take seriously civilian complaints of police misconduct.”
The cases that Mr. Bratton has declined to pursue include ones that involved stop-and-frisk encounters by officers in Manhattan, a home entered without proper justification in Brooklyn and racially offensive language used by transit officers.
In all but one of the 13 cases that Mr. Bratton declined to pursue, which covered actions before 2014, the board recommended command discipline, a middle-ground punishment that can include the loss of vacation days. In the other case, the board asked for a lighter punishment of “instructions,” or a review of the rules. In each, the police commissioner threw out the case, resulting in no punishment at all.
Nine other cases resulted in no discipline because the 18-month statute of limitations had expired.
In sum, in the cases reaching Mr. Bratton’s desk, the board found proof of misconduct by 53 officers, but only 31 officers received any discipline.
At a public meeting of the board this month, its new chairman, Richard D. Emery, described a historical lack of respect of the board by the Police Department.
“We have to come to a system where discipline is discipline, and it’s not just some recommendation to a higher authority,” said Mr. Emery, a civil rights lawyer and friend of Mr. Bratton, whom the mayor appointed last month.
“It means that Commissioner Bratton, or any police commissioner, has to buy into a different process.”
Mr. Bratton said in the interview that he and Mr. Emery were working to revamp the process and to set a standard for handling proven misconduct. That will involve more mediation by the board, Mr. Bratton said, and fewer future cases sent to the Police Department for final adjudication.
“A lot of things that are complained about against police officers can be corrected with training, with instruction, rather than with discipline and suspension days,” Mr. Bratton said, adding that sometimes punishment was necessary.
“We spend a lot of time on this,” he said. “It is not just a willy-nilly process.”
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18) Crime Scene - New Orleans
By Greg Palast, GregPalast.com
August 27, 2014
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/312-16/25550-focus-crime-scene-new-orleans
Nine years ago this week, New Orleans drowned. Don’t you dare blame Mother Nature. Miss Katrina killed no one in this town. But it was a homicide, with nearly 2,000 dead victims. If not Katrina, who done it?
It wasn’t an Act of God. It was an Act of Chevron. An Act of Exxon. An Act of Big Oil.
Take a look at these numbers dug out of Louisiana state records:
Conoco 3.3 million acres
Exxon Mobil 2.1 million acres
Chevron 2.7 million acres
Shell 1.3 million acres
These are the total acres of wetlands removed by just four oil companies over the past couple decades. If you’re not a farmer, I’ll translate this into urban-speak: that’s 14,688 square miles drowned into the Gulf of Mexico.
Here’s what happened. New Orleans used be to a long, swampy way from the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricanes and storm surges had to cross a protective mangrove forest nearly a hundred miles thick.
But then, a century ago, Standard Oil, Exxon’s prior alias, began dragging drilling rigs, channeling pipelines, barge paths and tanker routes through what was once soft delta prairie grass. Most of those beautiful bayous you see on postcards are just scars, the cuts and wounds of drilling the prairie, once America’s cattle-raising center. The bayous, filling with ‘gators and shrimp, widened out and sank the coastline. Each year, oil operations drag the Gulf four miles closer to New Orleans.
Just one channel dug for Exxon’s pleasure, the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet ("MR-GO") was dubbed the Hurricane Highway by experts—long before Katrina—that invited the storm right up to—and over—the city’s gates, the levees.
Without Big Oil's tree and prairie holocaust, "Katrina would have been a storm of no note," Professor Ivor van Heerden told me. Van Heerden, once Deputy Director of the Hurricane Center at Louisiana State University, is one of the planet’s the leading experts on storm dynamics.
If they’d only left just 10% of the protective collar. They didn’t.
Van Heerden was giving me a tour of the battle zone in the oil war. It was New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, which once held the largest concentration of African-American owned homes in America. Now it holds the largest contrition of African-American owned rubble.
We stood in front of a house, now years after Katrina, with an "X" spray-painted on the outside and "1 DEAD DOG," "1 CAT," the number 2 and "9/6" partly covered by a foreclosure notice.
The professor translated: "9/6" meant rescuers couldn’t get to the house for eight days, so the "2"—the couple that lived there––must have paddled around with their pets until the rising waters pushed them against the ceiling and they suffocated, their gas-bloated corpses floating for a week.
In July 2005, Van Heerden told Channel 4 television of Britain that, "In a month, this city could be underwater." In one month, it was. Van Heerden had sounded the alarm for at least two years, even speaking to George Bush’s White House about an emergency condition: with the Gulf closing in, the levees were 18 inches short. But the Army Corps of Engineers was busy with other rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates.
So, when those levees began to fail, the White House, hoping to avoid Federal responsibility, did not tell Louisiana's Governor Kathleen Blanco that the levees were breaking up. That Monday night, August 29, with the storm by-passing New Orleans, the Governor had stopped the city’s evacuation. Van Heerden was with the governor at the State Emergency Center. He said, "By midnight on Monday the White House knew. But none of us knew."
So, the drownings began in earnest.
Van Heerden was supposed to keep that secret. He didn't. He told me, on camera––knowing the floodwater of official slime would break over him. He was told to stay silent, to bury the truth. But he told me more. A lot more.
"I wasn't going to listen to those sort of threats, to let them shut me down."
Well, they did shut him down. After he went public about the unending life-and-death threat of continued oil drilling and channelling, LSU closed down its entire Hurricane Center (can you imagine?) and fired Professor van Heerden and fellow experts. This was just after the University received a $300,000 check from Chevron. The check was passed by a front group called "America’s Wetlands"—which lobbies for more drilling in the wetlands.
In place of Van Heerden and independent experts, LSU’s new "Wetlands Center" has professors picked by a board of petroleum industry hacks.
In 2003, Americans protested, "No Blood for Oil" in Iraq. It’s about time we said, "No Blood for Oil"—in Louisiana.
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C.
SPECIAL APPEALS AND
ONGOING
CAMPAIGNS
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Free the Whistle-Blowers
An Appeal from Daniel Ellsberg
I am immensely thankful to both these young whistle-blowers who have so bravely stood up against the powerful forces of the US government in order to reveal corruption, illegal spying and war crimes. They were both motivated by their commitments to democracy and justice. They both chose to reveal information directly to the public, at great cost to themselves, so that citizens and taxpayers could be fully informed of the facts. They also revealed the amazing potential of new technologies to increase public access to information and strengthen democracy. It saddens me that our current political leaders, rather than embracing this potential, have chosen to tighten their strangleholds on power and information, turning away from both progress and justice.
Shockingly, the Obama administration has prosecuted more whistle-blowers under the Espionage Act than every previous president combined. These heroes do not deserve to be thrown in prison or called a traitor for doing the right thing. Obama’s unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of the Espionage Act—as if it were a British-type Official Secrets Act, never intended by Congress and a violation of our First Amendment—and Manning’s 35-year prison sentence will have a chilling effect on future citizens’ willingness to uncover hidden injustices. The government has already brought comparable charges against Snowden.
The only remedy to this chilling precedent, designed to effect government whistle-blowers as a whole, is to overturn the Manning verdict. Given that Manning’s court martial produced the longest trial record in US military history, it will take a top legal team countless hours to prepare their defense. But as an Advisory Board member for the Chelsea Manning Support Network, I was inspired by the way citizens around the world stepped forward to help fund a strong defense during Manning’s trial. I remain hopeful that enough people will recognize the immense importance of these appeals and will contribute to help us finish the struggle we started. That struggle, of course, is for a just political system and freedom for our whistle-blowers.
Chelsea Manning has continued to demonstrate uncommon bravery and character, even from behind bars. With the New York Times Op-Ed she published last month, she has cemented her position as a compelling voice for government reform. Working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq, Manning was privy to a special view of the inner-workings of our military’s propaganda systems. Despite her personal struggles, she felt compelled to share her knowledge of what was happening in Iraq with the Americans people. If the military hadn’t hidden the number of civilian casualties and incidences of torture detailed in the Iraq Logs she released, we would have known far sooner to expect the civil war that has gripped Iraq fully today. Her exposure of US knowledge of the corruption in Tunisia, by the dictator our government supported, was a critical catalyst of the non-violent uprising which toppled that dictator, in turn directly inspiring the occupation of Tahrir Square in Egypt and then the Occupy movement in the US
I personally am inspired by Chelsea Manning as I am by Edward Snowden, which is why I have spent countless hours advocating for both of them. I’m asking you to join me today in supporting what I believe to be one of the most important legal proceedings in our country’s history. We are fortunate to have a truly impressive legal team that has agreed to partner with us. Already, our new appeals attorney Nancy Hollander and her team have begun to research legal strategies, and are collaborating with Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the international news media to highlight the significance of this case.
Chelsea is only 26 now, younger than I was when I learned to recognize the injustices of the Vietnam War. She wishes to complete her education, as I did, and go into public service. Imagine what great things she could both learn and teach the world if she were free. Now imagine if our corrupt government officials are allowed to get their way, holding her behind bars until life has almost passed her by, and extraditing Snowden to suffer the same outcome. What a sad result that would be for our country and our humanity.
I have been waiting forty years for a legal process to at long last prove the unconstitutionality of the Espionage Act as applied to whistle-blowers (the Supreme Court has never yet addressed this issue). This appeals process can accomplish that, and it can reduce Chelsea’s sentence by decades. But unfortunately, without your help today it will not happen. We must raise $100,000 by September 1st, to ensure that Chelsea’s team have the resources to fully fight this stage of the appeals process.
Unless Manning’s conviction is overturned in appeals, Snowden and many other whistle-blowers, today and in the future, will face a similar fate. And with them will perish one of the most critical lifelines for our democracy. But you can join me in fighting back. I’m asking you to do it for Chelsea, to do it for Snowden, and to do it because it’s the right thing to do to preserve our democracy. We can only win this great struggle with your help. Please contribute to help us fund Chelsea’s legal appeals today.
It’s time we band together on the right side of history once again.
Free the Whistle-Blowers
An Appeal from Daniel Ellsberg
July 21, 2014 by Daniel Ellsberg
NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, a personal hero of mine, has recently filed to renew his asylum in Russia. Exiled thousands of miles from friends and family, he awaits his fate. He learned from the example of another top hero of mine, Chelsea Manning. Manning helped inspire his revelations that if he released his vital information while in this country he would have been held incommunicado in isolation as Chelsea was for over ten months—in Snowden’s case probably for the rest of his life. And facing comparable charges to Chelsea’s, he would have no more chance than Chelsea to have a truly fair trial—being prevented by the prosecution and judge (as I was, forty years ago) from even raising arguments of public interest or lack of harm in connection with his disclosures. Contrary to the hollow advice of Hillary Clinton or John Kerry, if he were to return to America he would not be able to “make his case” neither “in court,” nor “to the public” from a prison cell.I am immensely thankful to both these young whistle-blowers who have so bravely stood up against the powerful forces of the US government in order to reveal corruption, illegal spying and war crimes. They were both motivated by their commitments to democracy and justice. They both chose to reveal information directly to the public, at great cost to themselves, so that citizens and taxpayers could be fully informed of the facts. They also revealed the amazing potential of new technologies to increase public access to information and strengthen democracy. It saddens me that our current political leaders, rather than embracing this potential, have chosen to tighten their strangleholds on power and information, turning away from both progress and justice.
Shockingly, the Obama administration has prosecuted more whistle-blowers under the Espionage Act than every previous president combined. These heroes do not deserve to be thrown in prison or called a traitor for doing the right thing. Obama’s unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of the Espionage Act—as if it were a British-type Official Secrets Act, never intended by Congress and a violation of our First Amendment—and Manning’s 35-year prison sentence will have a chilling effect on future citizens’ willingness to uncover hidden injustices. The government has already brought comparable charges against Snowden.
The only remedy to this chilling precedent, designed to effect government whistle-blowers as a whole, is to overturn the Manning verdict. Given that Manning’s court martial produced the longest trial record in US military history, it will take a top legal team countless hours to prepare their defense. But as an Advisory Board member for the Chelsea Manning Support Network, I was inspired by the way citizens around the world stepped forward to help fund a strong defense during Manning’s trial. I remain hopeful that enough people will recognize the immense importance of these appeals and will contribute to help us finish the struggle we started. That struggle, of course, is for a just political system and freedom for our whistle-blowers.
Chelsea Manning has continued to demonstrate uncommon bravery and character, even from behind bars. With the New York Times Op-Ed she published last month, she has cemented her position as a compelling voice for government reform. Working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq, Manning was privy to a special view of the inner-workings of our military’s propaganda systems. Despite her personal struggles, she felt compelled to share her knowledge of what was happening in Iraq with the Americans people. If the military hadn’t hidden the number of civilian casualties and incidences of torture detailed in the Iraq Logs she released, we would have known far sooner to expect the civil war that has gripped Iraq fully today. Her exposure of US knowledge of the corruption in Tunisia, by the dictator our government supported, was a critical catalyst of the non-violent uprising which toppled that dictator, in turn directly inspiring the occupation of Tahrir Square in Egypt and then the Occupy movement in the US
I personally am inspired by Chelsea Manning as I am by Edward Snowden, which is why I have spent countless hours advocating for both of them. I’m asking you to join me today in supporting what I believe to be one of the most important legal proceedings in our country’s history. We are fortunate to have a truly impressive legal team that has agreed to partner with us. Already, our new appeals attorney Nancy Hollander and her team have begun to research legal strategies, and are collaborating with Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the international news media to highlight the significance of this case.
Chelsea is only 26 now, younger than I was when I learned to recognize the injustices of the Vietnam War. She wishes to complete her education, as I did, and go into public service. Imagine what great things she could both learn and teach the world if she were free. Now imagine if our corrupt government officials are allowed to get their way, holding her behind bars until life has almost passed her by, and extraditing Snowden to suffer the same outcome. What a sad result that would be for our country and our humanity.
I have been waiting forty years for a legal process to at long last prove the unconstitutionality of the Espionage Act as applied to whistle-blowers (the Supreme Court has never yet addressed this issue). This appeals process can accomplish that, and it can reduce Chelsea’s sentence by decades. But unfortunately, without your help today it will not happen. We must raise $100,000 by September 1st, to ensure that Chelsea’s team have the resources to fully fight this stage of the appeals process.
Unless Manning’s conviction is overturned in appeals, Snowden and many other whistle-blowers, today and in the future, will face a similar fate. And with them will perish one of the most critical lifelines for our democracy. But you can join me in fighting back. I’m asking you to do it for Chelsea, to do it for Snowden, and to do it because it’s the right thing to do to preserve our democracy. We can only win this great struggle with your help. Please contribute to help us fund Chelsea’s legal appeals today.
It’s time we band together on the right side of history once again.
Daniel Ellsberg
Please contribute to help us fund Chelsea’s legal appeals today!
Learn now how you can write a letter to be included in Chelsea Manning’s official application for clemency!
Please share this information to friends and community leaders, urging them to add their voice to this important effort before it's too late.
Please share this information to friends and community leaders, urging them to add their voice to this important effort before it's too late.
http://www.privatemanning.org/pardonpetition
Help
us continue to cover 100%
of Pvt. Manning's legal fees! Donate today.
of Pvt. Manning's legal fees! Donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38591
COURAGE
TO RESIST
http://couragetoresist.org
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559
http://couragetoresist.org
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559
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Only an Innocent Man Would Voluntarily Return
to Prison to Fight Against his Life Sentence
and For Exoneration —
That Courageous Man is Lorenzo Johnson.
The PA Attorney General’s Office Agrees to Investigate New Facts and Witnesses —
Send Your Message Now to PA AG
Kathleen Kane: Dismiss the Charges!
Free Lorenzo Johnson!
On January 29, 2014 Lorenzo Johnson’s attorney, Michael Wiseman, met with representatives of PA Attorney General Kathleen Kane to discuss the new evidence of Lorenzo Johnson’s innocence contained in legal filings now pending in the Pennsylvania courts. This includes affidavits confirming Johnson’s presence in New York City at the time of the Harrisburg murder and the identity of the actual killers, as well as police and prosecutorial misconduct.
Attorney Wiseman said Kane’s office promised to investigate these new facts in order to assess whether they merit the relief that Lorenzo Johnson seeks in his PCRA petition.
Speaking to AP reporter Mary Claire Dale on February 11, 2014 Wiseman said, “We believe the witnesses we presented to them are credible, and give a coherent version of the events. I take them at their word, that they’re going to do a straightforward, honest review.” Kane spokesman Joe Peters confirmed the meeting to AP “but said the office won’t comment on the new evidence until the court filing,” (referring to the March 31, 2014 date for the AG’s response to Johnson’s October 2013 court filing).
It is the Office of the PA Attorney General that is responsible for the false prosecution of Lorenzo Johnson from trial through appeals. And just a few months ago, the Attorney General’s office opposed a federal petition based on this new evidence saying there was no prima facie claim for relief. This resulted in the denial of Lorenzo Johnson’s Motion to File a Second Writ of Habeas Corpus in the federal court.
On December 18, 2013 a press conference called by the Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson protested these actions of the PA Attorney General and delivered petitions demanding dismissal of the charges and immediate freedom for Lorenzo. Tazza, Lorenzo’s wife, declared, “1,000 signatures means we are not in this alone…I won't stop until he’s home. There is nothing and no one that can stop me from fighting for what’s right.”
This is Lorenzo Johnson’s second fight for his innocence and freedom. In January 2012, after 16 years of court battles to prove his innocence, a federal appeals court held his sentence was based on insufficient evidence – a judicial acquittal. Lorenzo was freed from prison. But after a petition filed by the PA Attorney General the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated Lorenzo Johnson’s conviction and he was re-incarcerated to continue serving a life sentence without parole for a murder he did not commit.
This innocent man drove himself back to prison in June 2012—after less than five months of freedom—leaving his new wife and family, construction job and advocacy on behalf of others wrongfully convicted. The reason Lorenzo Johnson voluntarily returned to prison? Because he is innocent and fighting for full vindication.
In the words of Lorenzo Johnson, “A second is too long to be in prison when you are Innocent, so eighteen years … is Intolerable.”
Add your voices and demand again: Dismiss the charges against Lorenzo Johnson. Free Lorenzo NOW!
SIGN LORENZO JOHNSON'S FREEDOM PETITION
CONTRIBUTE TO HELP TAZZA AND THE OTHER FAMILY MEMBERS VISIT LORENZO AND STAY IN CONTACT!
Write: Lorenzo Johnson
DF 1036
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Rd.
Frackville, PA 17932
Email: Lorenzo Johnson through JPAY.com code:
Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC
www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org
Only an Innocent Man Would Voluntarily Return
to Prison to Fight Against his Life Sentence
and For Exoneration —
That Courageous Man is Lorenzo Johnson.
The PA Attorney General’s Office Agrees to Investigate New Facts and Witnesses —
Send Your Message Now to PA AG
Kathleen Kane: Dismiss the Charges!
Free Lorenzo Johnson!
On January 29, 2014 Lorenzo Johnson’s attorney, Michael Wiseman, met with representatives of PA Attorney General Kathleen Kane to discuss the new evidence of Lorenzo Johnson’s innocence contained in legal filings now pending in the Pennsylvania courts. This includes affidavits confirming Johnson’s presence in New York City at the time of the Harrisburg murder and the identity of the actual killers, as well as police and prosecutorial misconduct.
Attorney Wiseman said Kane’s office promised to investigate these new facts in order to assess whether they merit the relief that Lorenzo Johnson seeks in his PCRA petition.
Speaking to AP reporter Mary Claire Dale on February 11, 2014 Wiseman said, “We believe the witnesses we presented to them are credible, and give a coherent version of the events. I take them at their word, that they’re going to do a straightforward, honest review.” Kane spokesman Joe Peters confirmed the meeting to AP “but said the office won’t comment on the new evidence until the court filing,” (referring to the March 31, 2014 date for the AG’s response to Johnson’s October 2013 court filing).
It is the Office of the PA Attorney General that is responsible for the false prosecution of Lorenzo Johnson from trial through appeals. And just a few months ago, the Attorney General’s office opposed a federal petition based on this new evidence saying there was no prima facie claim for relief. This resulted in the denial of Lorenzo Johnson’s Motion to File a Second Writ of Habeas Corpus in the federal court.
On December 18, 2013 a press conference called by the Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson protested these actions of the PA Attorney General and delivered petitions demanding dismissal of the charges and immediate freedom for Lorenzo. Tazza, Lorenzo’s wife, declared, “1,000 signatures means we are not in this alone…I won't stop until he’s home. There is nothing and no one that can stop me from fighting for what’s right.”
This is Lorenzo Johnson’s second fight for his innocence and freedom. In January 2012, after 16 years of court battles to prove his innocence, a federal appeals court held his sentence was based on insufficient evidence – a judicial acquittal. Lorenzo was freed from prison. But after a petition filed by the PA Attorney General the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated Lorenzo Johnson’s conviction and he was re-incarcerated to continue serving a life sentence without parole for a murder he did not commit.
This innocent man drove himself back to prison in June 2012—after less than five months of freedom—leaving his new wife and family, construction job and advocacy on behalf of others wrongfully convicted. The reason Lorenzo Johnson voluntarily returned to prison? Because he is innocent and fighting for full vindication.
In the words of Lorenzo Johnson, “A second is too long to be in prison when you are Innocent, so eighteen years … is Intolerable.”
Add your voices and demand again: Dismiss the charges against Lorenzo Johnson. Free Lorenzo NOW!
SIGN LORENZO JOHNSON'S FREEDOM PETITION
CONTRIBUTE TO HELP TAZZA AND THE OTHER FAMILY MEMBERS VISIT LORENZO AND STAY IN CONTACT!
Write: Lorenzo Johnson
DF 1036
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Rd.
Frackville, PA 17932
Email: Lorenzo Johnson through JPAY.com code:
Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC
www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org
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U.S.
Court of Appeals Rules Against Lorenzo Johnson’s
New Legal Challenge to His Frame-up Conviction!
Demand the PA Attorney General Dismiss the Charges!
Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!
New Legal Challenge to His Frame-up Conviction!
Demand the PA Attorney General Dismiss the Charges!
Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!
The
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit denied Lorenzo Johnson’s motion to
file a Second Habeas Corpus Petition. The order contained the outrageous
declaration that Johnson hadn’t made a “prima facie case” that he had new
evidence of his innocence. This not only puts a legal obstacle in Johnson’s
path as his fight for freedom makes its way (again) through the state and
federal courts—but it undermines the newly filed Pennsylvania state appeal that
is pending in the Court of Common Pleas.
Stripped
of “legalese,” the court’s October 15, 2013 order says Johnson’s new
evidence was not brought into court soon enough—although it was the prosecution
and police who withheld evidence and coerced witnesses into lying or not coming
forward with the truth! This, despite over fifteen years and rounds of legal
battles to uncover the evidence of government misconduct. This is a set-back
for Lorenzo Johnson’s renewed fight for his freedom, but Johnson is even more
determined as his PA state court appeal continues.
Increased
public support and protest is needed. The fight for Lorenzo Johnson’s freedom
is not only a fight for this courageous man and family. The fight for Lorenzo
Johnson is also a fight for all the innocent others who have been framed and
are sitting in the slow death of prison. The PA Attorney General is directly
pursuing the charges against Lorenzo, despite the evidence of his innocence and
the corruption of the police. Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!
—Rachel
Wolkenstein, Esq.
October 25, 2013
For
more on the federal court and PA state court legal filings.
Hear
Mumia’s latest commentary, “Cat Cries”
Go
to: www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org for more information, to sign the petition, and
how to help.
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SAVE
CCSF!
Posted
on August 25, 2013
Cartoon
by Anthonty Mata for CCSF Guardsman
DOE
CAMPAIGN
We
are working to ensure that the ACCJC’s authority is not renewed by the
Department of Education this December when they are up for their 5-year
renewal. Our campaign made it possible for over 50 Third Party Comments to be
sent to the DOE re: the ACCJC. Our next step in this campaign is to send a
delegation from CCSF to Washington, D.C. to give oral comments at the hearing
on December 12th. We expect to have an array of forces aligned on the other
side who have much more money and resources than we do.
So
please support this effort to get ACCJC authority revoked!
LEGAL
CAMPAIGN
Save
CCSF members have been meeting with Attorney Dan Siegel since last May to
explore legal avenues to fight the ACCJC. After much consideration, and
consultation with AFT 2121’s attorney as well as the SF City Attorney’s office,
Dan has come up with a legal strategy that is complimentary to what is already
being pursued. In fact, AFT 2121’s attorney is encouraging us to go forward.
The
total costs of pursuing this (depositions, etc.) will be substantially more
than $15,000. However, Dan is willing to do it for a fixed fee of $15,000. He
will not expect a retainer, i.e. payment in advance, but we should start
payments ASAP. If we win the ACCJC will have to pay our costs.
PLEASE
HELP BOTH OF THESE IMPORTANT EFFORTS!
Checks
can be made out to Save CCSF Coalition with “legal” in the memo line and sent
to:
Save
CCSF Coalition
2132
Prince St.
Berkeley, CA 94705
Or
you may donate online: http://www.gofundme.com/4841ns
http://www.saveccsf.org/
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16 Years in Solitary Confinement Is Like a "Living Tomb"
American
Civil Liberties Union petition to end long-term solitary confinement:
California
Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard: We stand with the prisoners on hunger
strike. We urge you to comply with the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in
America’s Prisons 2006 recommendations regarding an end to long-term solitary
confinement.
In
California, hundreds of prisoners have been held in solitary for more than a
decade – some for infractions as trivial as reading Machiavelli's "The
Prince."
Gabriel
Reyes describes the pain of being isolated for at least 22 hours a day for the
last 16 years:
“Unless
you have lived it, you cannot imagine what it feels like to be by yourself,
between four cold walls, with little concept of time…. It is a living tomb …’ I
have not been allowed physical contact with any of my loved ones since 1995…I
feel helpless and hopeless. In short, I am being psychologically tortured.”
That’s
why over 30,000 prisoners in California began a hunger strike – the biggest the
state has ever seen. They’re refusing food to protest prisoners being held for
decades in solitary and to push for other changes to improve their basic
conditions.
California
Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard has tried to dismiss the strikers and
refuses to negotiate, but the media pressure is building through the strike. If
tens of thousands of us take action, we can help keep this issue in the
spotlight so that Secretary Beard can’t ignore the inhumane treatment of
prisoners.
Sign
the petition urging Corrections Secretary Beard to end the use of long-term
solitary confinement.
Solitary
is such an extreme form of punishment that a United Nations torture rapporteur
called for an international ban on the practice except in rare occasions.
Here’s why:
The
majority of the 80,000 people held in solitary in this country are severely
mentally ill or because of a minor infraction (it’s a myth that it’s only for
violent prisoners)
Even
for people with stable mental health, solitary causes severe psychological
reactions, often leading people to attempt suicide
It
jeopardizes public safety because prisoners held in solitary have a harder time
reintegrating into society.
And
to add insult to injury, the hunger strikers are now facing retaliation – their
lawyers are being restricted from visiting and the strikers are being punished.
But the media continues to write about the hunger strike and we can help keep
the pressure on Secretary Beard by signing this petition.
Sign
the petition urging Corrections Secretary Beard to end the use of long-term
solitary confinement.
Our
criminal justice system should keep communities safe and treat people fairly.
The use of solitary confinement undermines both of these goals – but little by
little, we can help put a stop to such cruelty.
Thank
you,
Anthony
for the ACLU Action team
P.S.
The hunger strikers have developed five core demands to address their basic
conditions, the main one being an end to long-term solitary confinement. They
are:
-End
group punishment – prisoners say that officials often punish groups to address
individual rule violations
-Abolish
the debriefing policy, which is often demanded in return for better food or
release from solitary
-End
long-term solitary confinement
-Provide
adequate and nutritious food
-Expand
or provide constructive programming and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates
Sources
“Solitary
- and anger - in California's prisons.” Los Angeles Times July 13, 2013
“Pelican
Bay Prison Hunger-Strikers' Stories: Gabriel Reyes.” TruthOut July 9, 2013
“Solitary
confinement should be banned in most cases, UN expert says.” UN News October
18, 2011
"Stop
Solitary - Two Pager" ACLU.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
What
you Didn't know about NYPD's Stop and Frisk program !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rfJHx0Gj6ys#at=990
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Egypt:
The Next President -- a little Egyptian boy speaks his remarkable mind!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeDm2PrNV1I
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Wealth
Inequality in America
[This
is a must see to believe video...bw]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QPKKQnijnsM
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Read
the transcription of hero Bradley Manning's 35-page statement explaining why he
leaked "state secrets" to WikiLeaks.
March
1, 2013
Alternet
The
statement was read by Pfc. Bradley Manning at a providence inquiry for his
formal plea of guilty to one specification as charged and nine specifications
for lesser included offenses. He pled not guilty to 12 other specifications.
This rush transcript was taken by journalist Alexa O'Brien at Thursday's
pretrial hearing and first appeared on Salon.com.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/bradley-mannings-surprising-statement-court-details-why-he-made-his-historic?akid=10129.229473.UZvQfK&rd=1&src=newsletter802922&t=7
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You
Have the Right to Remain Silent: NLG Guide to Law Enforcement Encounters
Posted
1 day ago on July 27, 2012, 10:28 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
Occupy
Wall Street is a nonviolent movement for social and economic justice, but in
recent days disturbing reports have emerged of Occupy-affiliated activists
being targeted by US law enforcement, including agents from the FBI and
Department of Homeland Security. To help ensure Occupiers and allied activists
know their rights when encountering law enforcement, we are publishing in full
the National Lawyers Guild's booklet: You Have the Right to Remain Silent. The
NLG provides invaluable support to the Occupy movement and other activists –
please click here to support the NLG.
We
strongly encourage all Occupiers to read and share the information provided
below. We also recommend you enter the NLG's national hotline number
(888-654-3265) into your cellphone (if you have one) and keep a copy handy.
This information is not a substitute for legal advice. You should contact the
NLG or a criminal defense attorney immediately if you have been visited by the
FBI or other law enforcement officials. You should also alert your relatives,
friends, co-workers and others so that they will be prepared if they are
contacted as well.
You
Have the Right to Remain Silent: A Know Your Rights Guide for Law Enforcement
Encounters
What
Rights Do I Have?
Whether
or not you're a citizen, you have rights under the United States Constitution.
The Fifth Amendment gives every person the right to remain silent: not to
answer questions asked by a police officer or government agent. The Fourth
Amendment restricts the government's power to enter and search your home or
workplace, although there are many exceptions and new laws have expanded the
government's power to conduct surveillance. The First Amendment protects your
right to speak freely and to advocate for social change. However, if you are a
non-citizen, the Department of Homeland Security may target you based on your
political activities.
Standing
Up For Free Speech
The
government's crusade against politically-active individuals is intended to
disrupt and suppress the exercise of time-honored free speech activities, such
as boycotts, protests, grassroots organizing and solidarity work. Remember that
you have the right to stand up to the intimidation tactics of FBI agents and
other law enforcement officials who, with political motives, are targeting
organizing and free speech activities. Informed resistance to these tactics and
steadfast defense of your and others' rights can bring positive results. Each
person who takes a courageous stand makes future resistance to government oppression
easier for all. The National Lawyers Guild has a long tradition of standing up
to government repression. The organization itself was labeled a
"subversive" group during the McCarthy Era and was subject to FBI
surveillance and infiltration for many years. Guild attorneys have defended
FBI-targeted members of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement,
and the Puerto Rican independence movement. The NLG exposed FBI surveillance,
infiltration and disruption tactics that were detailed during the 1975-76
COINTELPRO hearings. In 1989 the NLG prevailed in a lawsuit on behalf of
several activist organizations, including the Guild, that forced the FBI to
expose the extent to which it had been spying on activist movements. Under the
settlement, the FBI turned over roughly 400,000 pages of its files on the
Guild, which are now available at the Tamiment Library at New York University.
What
if FBI Agents or Police Contact Me?
What
if an agent or police officer comes to the door?
Do
not invite the agents or police into your home. Do not answer any questions.
Tell the agent that you do not wish to talk with him or her. You can state that
your lawyer will contact them on your behalf. You can do this by stepping
outside and pulling the door behind you so that the interior of your home or
office is not visible, getting their contact information or business cards and
then returning inside. They should cease questioning after this. If the agent
or officer gives a reason for contacting you, take notes and give the
information to your attorney. Anything you say, no matter how seemingly
harmless or insignificant, may be used against you or others in the future.
Lying to or misleading a federal agent is a crime. The more you speak, the more
opportunity for federal law enforcement to find something you said (even if not
intentionally) false and assert that you lied to a federal officer.
Do
I have to answer questions?
You
have the constitutional right to remain silent. It is not a crime to refuse to
answer questions. You do not have to talk to anyone, even if you have been
arrested or are in jail. You should affirmatively and unambiguously state that
you wish to remain silent and that you wish to consult an attorney. Once you
make the request to speak to a lawyer, do not say anything else. The Supreme
Court recently ruled that answering law enforcement questions may be taken as a
waiver of your right to remain silent, so it is important that you assert your
rights and maintain them. Only a judge can order you to answer questions. There
is one exception: some states have "stop and identify" statutes which
require you to provide identity information or your name if you have been
detained on reasonable suspicion that you may have committed a crime. A lawyer
in your state can advise you of the status of these requirements where you
reside.
Do
I have to give my name?
As
above, in some states you can be detained or arrested for merely refusing to
give your name. And in any state, police do not always follow the law, and
refusing to give your name may make them suspicious or more hostile and lead to
your arrest, even without just cause, so use your judgment. Giving a false name
could in some circumstances be a crime.
Do
I need a lawyer?
You
have the right to talk to a lawyer before you decide whether to answer
questions from law enforcement. It is a good idea to talk to a lawyer if you
are considering answering any questions. You have the right to have a lawyer
present during any interview. The lawyer's job is to protect your rights. Once
you tell the agent that you want to talk to a lawyer, he or she should stop
trying to question you and should make any further contact through your lawyer.
If you do not have a lawyer, you can still tell the officer you want to speak to
one before answering questions. Remember to get the name, agency and telephone
number of any investigator who visits you, and give that information to your
lawyer. The government does not have to provide you with a free lawyer unless
you are charged with a crime, but the NLG or another organization may be able
to help you find a lawyer for free or at a reduced rate.
If
I refuse to answer questions or say I want a lawyer, won't it seem like I have
something to hide?
Anything
you say to law enforcement can be used against you and others. You can never
tell how a seemingly harmless bit of information might be used or manipulated
to hurt you or someone else. That is why the right not to talk is a fundamental
right under the Constitution. Keep in mind that although law enforcement agents
are allowed to lie to you, lying to a government agent is a crime. Remaining
silent is not. The safest things to say are "I am going to remain
silent," "I want to speak to my lawyer," and "I do not consent
to a search." It is a common practice for law enforcement agents to try to
get you to waive your rights by telling you that if you have nothing to hide
you would talk or that talking would "just clear things up." The fact
is, if they are questioning you, they are looking to incriminate you or someone
you may know, or they are engaged in political intelligence gathering. You
should feel comfortable standing firm in protection and defense of your rights
and refusing to answer questions.
Can
agents search my home or office?
You
do not have to let police or agents into your home or office unless they have
and produce a valid search warrant. A search warrant is a written court order
that allows the police to conduct a specified search. Interfering with a
warrantless search probably will not stop it and you might get arrested. But
you should say "I do not consent to a search," and call a criminal
defense lawyer or the NLG. You should be aware that a roommate or guest can
legally consent to a search of your house if the police believe that person has
the authority to give consent, and your employer can consent to a search of
your workspace without your permission.
What
if agents have a search warrant?
If
you are present when agents come for the search, you can ask to see the
warrant. The warrant must specify in detail the places to be searched and the
people or things to be taken away. Tell the agents you do not consent to the
search so that they cannot go beyond what the warrant authorizes. Ask if you
are allowed to watch the search; if you are allowed to, you should. Take notes,
including names, badge numbers, what agency each officer is from, where they
searched and what they took. If others are present, have them act as witnesses
to watch carefully what is happening. If the agents ask you to give them
documents, your computer, or anything else, look to see if the item is listed
in the warrant. If it is not, do not consent to them taking it without talking
to a lawyer. You do not have to answer questions. Talk to a lawyer first.
(Note: If agents present an arrest warrant, they may only perform a cursory
visual search of the premises to see if the person named in the arrest warrant
is present.)
Do
I have to answer questions if I have been arrested?
No.
If you are arrested, you do not have to answer any questions. You should
affirmatively and unambiguously state that you wish to assert your right to
remain silent. Ask for a lawyer right away. Do not say anything else. Repeat to
every officer who tries to talk to or question you that you wish to remain
silent and that you wish to speak to a lawyer. You should always talk to a
lawyer before you decide to answer any questions.
What
if I speak to government agents anyway?
Even
if you have already answered some questions, you can refuse to answer other
questions until you have a lawyer. If you find yourself talking, stop. Assert
that you wish to remain silent and that you wish to speak to a lawyer.
What
if the police stop me on the street?
Ask
if you are free to go. If the answer is yes, consider just walking away. If the
police say you are not under arrest, but are not free to go, then you are being
detained. The police can pat down the outside of your clothing if they have
reason to suspect you might be armed and dangerous. If they search any more
than this, say clearly, "I do not consent to a search." They may keep
searching anyway. If this happens, do not resist because you can be charged
with assault or resisting arrest. You do not have to answer any questions. You
do not have to open bags or any closed container. Tell the officers you do not
consent to a search of your bags or other property.
What
if police or agents stop me in my car?
Keep
your hands where the police can see them. If you are driving a vehicle, you
must show your license, registration and, in some states, proof of insurance.
You do not have to consent to a search. But the police may have legal grounds
to search your car anyway. Clearly state that you do not consent. Officers may
separate passengers and drivers from each other to question them, but no one
has to answer any questions.
What
if I am treated badly by the police or the FBI?
Write
down the officer's badge number, name or other identifying information. You
have a right to ask the officer for this information. Try to find witnesses and
their names and phone numbers. If you are injured, seek medical attention and
take pictures of the injuries as soon as you can. Call a lawyer as soon as
possible.
What
if the police or FBI threaten me with a grand jury subpoena if I don't answer
their questions?
A
grand jury subpoena is a written order for you to go to court and testify about
information you may have. It is common for the FBI to threaten you with a
subpoena to get you to talk to them. If they are going to subpoena you, they
will do so anyway. You should not volunteer to speak just because you are
threatened with a subpoena. You should consult a lawyer.
What
if I receive a grand jury subpoena?
Grand
jury proceedings are not the same as testifying at an open court trial. You are
not allowed to have a lawyer present (although one may wait in the hallway and
you may ask to consult with him or her after each question) and you may be asked
to answer questions about your activities and associations. Because of the
witness's limited rights in this situation, the government has frequently used
grand jury subpoenas to gather information about activists and political
organizations. It is common for the FBI to threaten activists with a subpoena
in order to elicit information about their political views and activities and
those of their associates. There are legal grounds for stopping
("quashing") subpoenas, and receiving one does not necessarily mean
that you are suspected of a crime. If you do receive a subpoena, call the NLG
National Hotline at 888-NLG-ECOL (888-654-3265) or call a criminal defense
attorney immediately.
The
government regularly uses grand jury subpoena power to investigate and seek
evidence related to politically-active individuals and social movements. This
practice is aimed at prosecuting activists and, through intimidation and
disruption, discouraging continued activism.
Federal
grand jury subpoenas are served in person. If you receive one, it is critically
important that you retain the services of an attorney, preferably one who
understands your goals and, if applicable, understands the nature of your
political work, and has experience with these issues. Most lawyers are trained
to provide the best legal defense for their client, often at the expense of
others. Beware lawyers who summarily advise you to cooperate with grand juries,
testify against friends, or cut off contact with your friends and political
activists. Cooperation usually leads to others being subpoenaed and
investigated. You also run the risk of being charged with perjury, a felony,
should you omit any pertinent information or should there be inconsistencies in
your testimony.
Frequently
prosecutors will offer "use immunity," meaning that the prosecutor is
prohibited from using your testimony or any leads from it to bring charges
against you. If a subsequent prosecution is brought, the prosecutor bears the
burden of proving that all of its evidence was obtained independent of the
immunized testimony. You should be aware, however, that they will use anything
you say to manipulate associates into sharing more information about you by
suggesting that you have betrayed confidences.
In
front of a grand jury you can "take the Fifth" (exercise your right
to remain silent). However, the prosecutor may impose immunity on you, which
strips you of Fifth Amendment protection and subjects you to the possibility of
being cited for contempt and jailed if you refuse to answer further. In front
of a grand jury you have no Sixth Amendment right to counsel, although you can
consult with a lawyer outside the grand jury room after each question.
What
if I don't cooperate with the grand jury?
If
you receive a grand jury subpoena and elect to not cooperate, you may be held
in civil contempt. There is a chance that you may be jailed or imprisoned for
the length of the grand jury in an effort to coerce you to cooperate. Regular
grand juries sit for a basic term of 18 months, which can be extended up to a
total of 24 months. It is lawful to hold you in order to coerce your
cooperation, but unlawful to hold you as a means of punishment. In rare
instances you may face criminal contempt charges.
What
If I Am Not a Citizen and the DHS Contacts Me?
The
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is now part of the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) and has been renamed and reorganized into: 1. The
Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS); 2. The Bureau of Customs
and Border Protection (CBP); and 3. The Bureau of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE). All three bureaus will be referred to as DHS for the
purposes of this pamphlet.
?
Assert your rights. If you do not demand your rights or if you sign papers
waiving your rights, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may deport you
before you see a lawyer or an immigration judge. Never sign anything without
reading, understanding and knowing the consequences of signing it.
?
Talk to a lawyer. If possible, carry with you the name and telephone number of
an immigration lawyer who will take your calls. The immigration laws are hard
to understand and there have been many recent changes. DHS will not explain
your options to you. As soon as you encounter a DHS agent, call your attorney.
If you can't do it right away, keep trying. Always talk to an immigration
lawyer before leaving the U.S. Even some legal permanent residents can be
barred from returning.
Based
on today's laws, regulations and DHS guidelines, non-citizens usually have the
following rights, no matter what their immigration status. This information may
change, so it is important to contact a lawyer. The following rights apply to
non-citizens who are inside the U.S. Non-citizens at the border who are trying
to enter the U.S. do not have all the same rights.
Do
I have the right to talk to a lawyer before answering any DHS questions or
signing any DHS papers?
Yes.
You have the right to call a lawyer or your family if you are detained, and you
have the right to be visited by a lawyer in detention. You have the right to
have your attorney with you at any hearing before an immigration judge. You do
not have the right to a government-appointed attorney for immigration
proceedings, but if you have been arrested, immigration officials must show you
a list of free or low cost legal service providers.
Should
I carry my green card or other immigration papers with me?
If
you have documents authorizing you to stay in the U.S., you must carry them
with you. Presenting false or expired papers to DHS may lead to deportation or
criminal prosecution. An unexpired green card, I-94, Employment Authorization
Card, Border Crossing Card or other papers that prove you are in legal status
will satisfy this requirement. If you do not carry these papers with you, you
could be charged with a crime. Always keep a copy of your immigration papers
with a trusted family member or friend who can fax them to you, if need be.
Check with your immigration lawyer about your specific case.
Am
I required to talk to government officers about my immigration history?
If
you are undocumented, out of status, a legal permanent resident (green card
holder), or a citizen, you do not have to answer any questions about your
immigration history. (You may want to consider giving your name; see above for
more information about this.) If you are not in any of these categories, and
you are being questioned by a DHS or FBI agent, then you may create problems
with your immigration status if you refuse to provide information requested by
the agent. If you have a lawyer, you can tell the agent that your lawyer will
answer questions on your behalf. If answering questions could lead the agent to
information that connects you with criminal activity, you should consider
refusing to talk to the agent at all.
If
I am arrested for immigration violations, do I have the right to a hearing
before an immigration judge to defend myself against deportation charges?
Yes.
In most cases only an immigration judge can order you deported. But if you
waive your rights or take "voluntary departure," agreeing to leave
the country, you could be deported without a hearing. If you have criminal
convictions, were arrested at the border, came to the U.S. through the visa
waiver program or have been ordered deported in the past, you could be deported
without a hearing. Contact a lawyer immediately to see if there is any relief
for you.
Can
I call my consulate if I am arrested?
Yes.
Non-citizens arrested in the U.S. have the right to call their consulate or to
have the police tell the consulate of your arrest. The police must let your
consulate visit or speak with you if consular officials decide to do so. Your
consulate might help you find a lawyer or offer other help. You also have the
right to refuse help from your consulate.
What
happens if I give up my right to a hearing or leave the U.S. before the hearing
is over?
You
could lose your eligibility for certain immigration benefits, and you could be
barred from returning to the U.S. for a number of years. You should always talk
to an immigration lawyer before you decide to give up your right to a hearing.
What
should I do if I want to contact DHS?
Always
talk to a lawyer before contacting DHS, even on the phone. Many DHS officers
view "enforcement" as their primary job and will not explain all of
your options to you.
What
Are My Rights at Airports?
IMPORTANT
NOTE: It is illegal for law enforcement to perform any stops, searches,
detentions or removals based solely on your race, national origin, religion,
sex or ethnicity.
If
I am entering the U.S. with valid travel papers can a U.S. customs agent stop
and search me?
Yes.
Customs agents have the right to stop, detain and search every person and item.
Can
my bags or I be searched after going through metal detectors with no problem or
after security sees that my bags do not contain a weapon?
Yes.
Even if the initial screen of your bags reveals nothing suspicious, the
screeners have the authority to conduct a further search of you or your bags.
If
I am on an airplane, can an airline employee interrogate me or ask me to get
off the plane?
The
pilot of an airplane has the right to refuse to fly a passenger if he or she
believes the passenger is a threat to the safety of the flight. The pilot's decision
must be reasonable and based on observations of you, not stereotypes.
What
If I Am Under 18?
Do
I have to answer questions?
No.
Minors too have the right to remain silent. You cannot be arrested for refusing
to talk to the police, probation officers, or school officials, except in some
states you may have to give your name if you have been detained.
What
if I am detained?
If
you are detained at a community detention facility or Juvenile Hall, you
normally must be released to a parent or guardian. If charges are filed against
you, in most states you are entitled to counsel (just like an adult) at no
cost.
Do
I have the right to express political views at school?
Public
school students generally have a First Amendment right to politically organize
at school by passing out leaflets, holding meetings, etc., as long as those
activities are not disruptive and do not violate legitimate school rules. You
may not be singled out based on your politics, ethnicity or religion.
Can
my backpack or locker be searched?
School
officials can search students' backpacks and lockers without a warrant if they
reasonably suspect that you are involved in criminal activity or carrying drugs
or weapons. Do not consent to the police or school officials searching your property,
but do not physically resist or you may face criminal charges.
Disclaimer
This
booklet is not a substitute for legal advice. You should contact an attorney if
you have been visited by the FBI or other law enforcement officials. You should
also alert your relatives, friends, co-workers and others so that they will be
prepared if they are contacted as well.
NLG
National Hotline for Activists Contacted by the FBI
888-NLG-ECOL
(888-654-3265)
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Free
Mumia NOW!
Prisonradio.org
Write
to Mumia:
Mumia
Abu-Jamal AM 8335
SCI
Mahanoy
301
Morea Road
Frackville,
PA 17932
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Rachel Wolkenstein
August
21, 2011 (917) 689-4009
MUMIA
ABU-JAMAL ILLEGALLY SENTENCED TO
LIFE
IMPRISONMENT WITHOUT PAROLE!
FREE
MUMIA NOW!
www.FreeMumia.com
http://blacktalkradionetwork.com/profiles/blogs/mumia-is-formally-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-w-out-hearing-he-s
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"A
Child's View from Gaza: Palestinian Children's Art and the Fight Against
Censorship"
book
https://www.mecaforpeace.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=25
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
WITNESS
GAZA
http://www.witnessgaza.com/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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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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.
VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:
[Some
of these videos are embeded on the BAUAW website:
http://bauaw.blogspot.com/
or bauaw.org ...bw]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Prison vs School: The Tour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogmtAQlp9HI
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Checkpoint - Jasiri X
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq6Y6LSjulU
Published on Jan 28, 2014
"Checkpoint" is based on the
oppression and discrimination Jasiri X witnessed firsthand during his
recent trip to Palestine and Israel "Checkpoint" is produced by Agent of
Change, and directed by Haute Muslim. Download "Checkpoint" at https://jasirix.bandcamp.com/track/ch....
Follow Jasiri X at https://twitter.com/jasiri_x
LYRICS
Journal of the hard times tales from the dark side
Evidence of the settlements on my hard drive
Man I swear my heart died at the end of that car ride
When I saw that checkpoint welcome to apartheid
Soldiers wear military green at the checkpoint
Automatic guns that's machine at the checkpoint
Tavors not m16s at the checkpoint
Fingers on the trigger you'll get leaned at the checkpoint
Little children grown adults or teens at the checkpoint
All ya papers better be clean at the checkpoint
You gotta but your finger on the screen at the checkpoint
And pray that red light turns green at the check point
If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint
He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint
It's Malcolm X by any means at the check point
Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint
Separation walls that's surrounding the checkpoint
On top is barbwire like a crown on the checkpoint
Better have ya permits if your found at the checkpoint
Gunmen on the tower aiming down at the checkpoint
The idea is to keep you in fear of the checkpoint
You enter through the cage in the rear of the checkpoint
It feels like prison on a tier at the check point
I'd rather be anywhere but here at this checkpoint
Nelson Mandela wasn't blind to the check point
He stood for free Palestine not a check point
Support BDS don't give a dime to the checkpoint
This is international crime at the checkpoint
Arabs get treated like dogs at the checkpoint
Cause discrimination is the law at the checkpoint
Criminalized without a cause at the checkpoint
I'm just telling you what I saw at the checkpoint
Soldiers got bad attitudes at the checkpoint
Condescending and real rude at the checkpoint
Don't look em in they eyes when they move at the checkpoint
They might strip a man or woman nude at the checkpoint
Soldiers might blow you out of ya shoes at the checkpoint
Gas you up and then light the fuse at the checkpoint
Everyday you stand to be accused at the checkpoint
Each time your life you could lose at the checkpoint
If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint
He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint
It's Malcolm X by any means at the check point
Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint
At the airport in Tel Aviv is a checkpoint
They pulled over our taxi at the checkpoint
Passport visa ID at the checkpoint
Soldiers going all through my things at the checkpoint
Said I was high risk security at the checkpoint
Because of the oppression I see at the checkpoint
Occupation in the 3rd degree at the checkpoint
All a nigga wanna do is leave fuck a checkpoint
Follow Jasiri X at https://twitter.com/jasiri_x
LYRICS
Journal of the hard times tales from the dark side
Evidence of the settlements on my hard drive
Man I swear my heart died at the end of that car ride
When I saw that checkpoint welcome to apartheid
Soldiers wear military green at the checkpoint
Automatic guns that's machine at the checkpoint
Tavors not m16s at the checkpoint
Fingers on the trigger you'll get leaned at the checkpoint
Little children grown adults or teens at the checkpoint
All ya papers better be clean at the checkpoint
You gotta but your finger on the screen at the checkpoint
And pray that red light turns green at the check point
If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint
He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint
It's Malcolm X by any means at the check point
Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint
Separation walls that's surrounding the checkpoint
On top is barbwire like a crown on the checkpoint
Better have ya permits if your found at the checkpoint
Gunmen on the tower aiming down at the checkpoint
The idea is to keep you in fear of the checkpoint
You enter through the cage in the rear of the checkpoint
It feels like prison on a tier at the check point
I'd rather be anywhere but here at this checkpoint
Nelson Mandela wasn't blind to the check point
He stood for free Palestine not a check point
Support BDS don't give a dime to the checkpoint
This is international crime at the checkpoint
Arabs get treated like dogs at the checkpoint
Cause discrimination is the law at the checkpoint
Criminalized without a cause at the checkpoint
I'm just telling you what I saw at the checkpoint
Soldiers got bad attitudes at the checkpoint
Condescending and real rude at the checkpoint
Don't look em in they eyes when they move at the checkpoint
They might strip a man or woman nude at the checkpoint
Soldiers might blow you out of ya shoes at the checkpoint
Gas you up and then light the fuse at the checkpoint
Everyday you stand to be accused at the checkpoint
Each time your life you could lose at the checkpoint
If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint
He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint
It's Malcolm X by any means at the check point
Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint
At the airport in Tel Aviv is a checkpoint
They pulled over our taxi at the checkpoint
Passport visa ID at the checkpoint
Soldiers going all through my things at the checkpoint
Said I was high risk security at the checkpoint
Because of the oppression I see at the checkpoint
Occupation in the 3rd degree at the checkpoint
All a nigga wanna do is leave fuck a checkpoint
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Exceptional
art from the streets of Oakland:
Oakland
Street Dancing
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
NYC
RESTAURANT WORKERS DANCE & SING FOR A WAGE HIKE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_s8e1R6rG8&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
On
Gun Control, Martin Luther King, the Deacons of Defense and the history of
Black Liberation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzYKisvBN1o&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Fukushima
Never Again
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU-Z4VLDGxU
"Fukushima,
Never Again" tells the story of the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns in
north east Japan in March of 2011 and exposes the cover-up by Tepco and the
Japanese government.
This
is the first film that interviews the Mothers Of Fukushima, nuclear power
experts and trade unionists who are fighting for justice and the protection of
the children and the people of Japan and the world. The residents and citizens
were forced to buy their own geiger counters and radiation dosimeters in order
to test their communities to find out if they were in danger.
The
government said contaminated soil in children's school grounds was safe and
then
when
the people found out it was contaminated and removed the top soil, the
government and TEPCO refused to remove it from the school grounds.
It
also relays how the nuclear energy program for "peaceful atoms" was brought
to Japan under the auspices of the US military occupation and also the criminal
cover-up of the safety dangers of the plant by TEPCO and GE management which
built the plant in Fukushima. It also interviews Kei Sugaoka, the GE nulcear
plant inspector from the bay area who exposed cover-ups in the safety at the
Fukushima plant and was retaliated against by GE. This documentary allows the
voices of the people and workers to speak out about the reality of the disaster
and what this means not only for the people of Japan but the people of the
world as the US government and nuclear industry continue to push for more new
plants and government subsidies. This film breaks
the
information blockade story line of the corporate media in Japan, the US and
around the world that Fukushima is over.
Production
Of Labor Video Project
P.O.
Box 720027
San
Francisco, CA 94172
www.laborvideo.org
lvpsf@laborvideo.org
For
information on obtaining the video go to:
www.fukushimaneveragain.com
(415)282-1908
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1000
year of war through the world
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiG8neU4_bs&feature=share
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Anatomy
of a Massacre - Afganistan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6BnRc11aug&feature=player_embedded
Afghans
accuse multiple soldiers of pre-meditated murder
To
see more go to http://www.youtube.com/user/journeymanpictures
Follow
us on Facebook (http://goo.gl/YRw42) or Twitter
(http://www.twitter.com/journeymanvod)
The
recent massacre of 17 civilians by a rogue US soldier has been shrouded in
mystery.
But through unprecedented access to those involved, this report
confronts
the accusations that Bales didn't act alone.
"They
came into my room and they killed my family". Stories like this are common
amongst
the survivors in Aklozai and Najiban. As are the shocking accusations
that
Sergeant Bales was not acting alone. Even President Karzai has announced
"one
man can not do that". Chief investigator, General Karimi, is suspicious
that
despite being fully armed, Bales freely left his base without raising
alarm.
"How come he leaves at night and nobody is aware? Every time we have
weapon
accountability and personal accountability." These are just a few of the
questions
the American army and government are yet to answer. One thing however
is
very clear, the massacre has unleashed a wave of grief and outrage which
means
relations in Kandahar will be tense for years to come: "If I could lay my
hands
on those infidels, I would rip them apart with my bare hands."
A
Film By SBS
Distributed
By Journeyman Pictures
April
2012
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Photo
of George Zimmerman, in 2005 photo, left, and in a more recent photo.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/02/us/the-events-leading-to-the-sooti\
ng-of-trayvon-martin.html?hp
SPD
Security Cams.wmv
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WWDNbQUgm4&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Kids
being put on buses and transported from school to "alternate
locations" in
Terror
Drills
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFia_w8adWQ
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Private
prisons,
a
recession resistant investment opportunity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIGLDOxx9Vg
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Attack
Dogs used on a High School Walkout in MD, Four Students Charged With
"Thought
Crimes"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wafMaML17w
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Common
forms of misconduct by Law Enforcement Officials and Prosecutors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViSpM4K276w&feature=related
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Organizing
and Instigating: OCCUPY - Ronnie Goodman
http://arthazelwood.com/instigator/occupy/occupy-birth-video.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Rep
News 12: Yes We Kony
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68GbzIkYdc8
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
The
New Black by The Mavrix - Official Music Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4rLfja8488
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Japan
One Year Later
http://www.onlineschools.org/japan-one-year-later/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
The
CIA's Heart Attack Gun
http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/assassination-studies/the-cias-heart-attack-g\
un-.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
The
Invisible American Workforce
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/5/new_expos_tracks_alec_private_prison
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Labor
Beat: NATO vs The 1st Amendment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbQxnb4so3U
For
more detailed information, send us a request at mail@laborbeat.org.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
The
Battle of Oakland
by
brandon jourdan plus
http://vimeo.com/36256273
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Officers
Pulled Off Street After Tape of Beating Surfaces
By
ANDY NEWMAN
February
1, 2012, 10:56 am
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/officers-pulled-off-street-after-ta\
pe-of-beating-surfaces/?ref=nyregion
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
This
is excellent! Michelle Alexander pulls no punches!
Michelle
Alexander, Author of The New Jim Crow, speaks about the political
strategy
behind
the War on Drugs and its connection to the mass incarceration of Black
and
Brown people in the United States.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P75cbEdNo2U&feature=player_embedded
If
you think Bill Clinton was "the first black President" you need to
watch this
video
and see how much damage his administration caused for the black community
as
a result of his get tough attitude on crime that appealed to white swing
voters.
This
speech took place at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem on January 12,
2012.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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...
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
Release
Bradley Manning
Almost
Gone (The Ballad Of Bradley Manning)
Written
by Graham Nash and James Raymond (son of David Crosby)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAYG7yJpBbQ&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Julian
Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
School
police increasingly arresting American students?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl-efNBvjUU&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
FYI:
Nuclear
Detonation Timeline "1945-1998"
The
2053 nuclear tests and explosions that took place between 1945 and 1998 are
plotted
visually and audibly on a world map.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9lquok4Pdk&feature=share&mid=5408
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
We
Are The People Who Will Save Our Schools
YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFAOJsBxAxY
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
In
honor of the 75th Anniversary of the 44-Day Flint Michigan sit-down strike at
GM
that began December 30, 1936:
According
to Michael Moore, (Although he has done some good things, this clip
isn't
one of them) in this clip from his film, "Capitalism a Love Story,"
it was
Roosevelt
who saved the day!):
"After
a bloody battle one evening, the Governor of Michigan, with the support
of
the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, sent in the National
Guard.
But the guns and the soldiers weren't used on the workers; they were
pointed
at the police and the hired goons warning them to leave these workers
alone.
For Mr. Roosevelt believed that the men inside had a right to a redress
of
their grievances." -Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story'
-
Flint Sit-Down Strike http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8x1_q9wg58
But
those cannons were not aimed at the goons and cops! They were aimed straight
at
the factory filled with strikers! Watch what REALLY happened and how the
strike
was really won!
'With
babies & banners' -- 75 years since the 44-day Flint sit-down strike
http://links.org.au/node/2681
--Inspiring
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
HALLELUJAH
CORPORATIONS (revised edition).mov
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws0WSNRpy3g
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
ONE
OF THE GREATEST POSTS ON YOUTUBE SO FAR!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8C-qIgbP9o&feature=share&mid=552
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
ILWU
Local 10 Longshore Workers Speak-Out At Oakland Port Shutdown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JUpBpZYwms
Uploaded
by laborvideo on Dec 13, 2011
ILWU
Local 10 longshore workers speak out during a blockade of the Port of
Oakland
called for by Occupy Oakland. Anthony Levieges and Clarence Thomas rank
and
file members of the union. The action took place on December 12, 2011 and
the
interview took place at Pier 30 on the Oakland docks.
For
more information on the ILWU Local 21 Longview EGT struggle go to
http://www.facebook.com/groups/256313837734192/
For
further info on the action and the press conferernce go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz3fE-Vhrw8&feature=youtu.be
Production
of Labor Video Project www.laborvideo.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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-add\
s-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
*---------*
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
*---------*
THE
BEST VIDEO ON "OCCUPY THE WORLD"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S880UldxB1o
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Shot
by police with rubber bullet at Occupy Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0pX9LeE-g8&feature=player_embedded
*---------*
Copwatch@Occupy
Oakland: Beware of Police Infiltrators and Provocateurs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrvMzqopHH0
*---------*
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
*----*
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
*----*
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
*----*
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
*---------*
Labor
Beat: Hey You Billionaire, Pay Your Fair Share
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY8isD33f-I
*---------*
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
*---------*
#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
*---------*
#OccupyTheHood,
Occupy Wall Street
By
adele pham
http://vimeo.com/30146870
*---------*
Live
arrest at brooklyn bridge #occupywallstreet by We are Change
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yULSI-31Pto&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
FREE
THE CUBAN FIVE!
http://www.thecuban5.org/wordpress/index.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmS4kHC_OlY&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Coal
Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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unsubscribe go to: bauaw2003-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
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