Tuesday, September 16, 2014

BAUAW NEWSLETTER: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:

A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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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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

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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:

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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
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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) Some Retail Workers Find Better Deals With Unions
By





2) Ferguson Sets Broad Change for City Courts
By




3) Climate Change Will Disrupt Half of North America’s Bird Species, Study Says
By





4) Vancouver Canada Blocks Israeli Ship: Tremendous Victory
From Free Palestine Movement:
On Sep 9, 2014, at 5:31 PM, FPM Newsletter wrote:
http://freepalestinemovement.org/2014/09/10/vancouver-canada-blocks-israeli-ship-tremendous-victory/




5) This Is What an Abortion Looks Like
By MERRITT TIERCE




6) Student Loan Debt Burdens More Than Just Young People
By





7) Regulator Slow to Respond to Deadly Vehicle Defects
By HILARY STOUT, DANIELLE IVORY and REBECCA R. RUIZ




8) Drones and the Democracy Disconnect
By






9) Lost Homes and Dreams at Tower Israel Leveled
By and FARES AKRAM




10) Mistrust Lingers as Ferguson Takes New Tack on Fines
[This is a very important article with a video and charts that exposes what extreme oppression the people of Ferguson are under. Essentially, they live in a prison with no way out!...bw]
By





11) Cuba Sending Medical Teams to fight Ebola
By Portia Siegelbaum
CBS News
September 12, 2014, 3:11 PM
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cuba-sending-medical-teams-to-fight-ebola/




12) U.S. to Commit Up to 3,000 Troops to Fight Ebola in Africa
By , and
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/world/africa/obama-to-announce-expanded-effort-against-ebola.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=LedeSum&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 




13) Number of Prisoners in U.S. Grew Slightly in 2013, Report Finds
By




14) Utah Victim Was Fleeing, Autopsy Finds
By JENNIFER DOBNER




15) Judge Convicts Police Officers in 2011 Assault on a Teenager
By







 








































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1) Some Retail Workers Find Better Deals With Unions
By

By now, the hardships endured by retail workers at clothing stores across New York City are achingly familiar: the frantic scramble to get assigned enough hours to earn a living on painfully low wages; the ever-changing, on-call schedules that upend child care arrangements, college schedules and desperate efforts to find second jobs.

Workers and government officials around the country are increasingly pushing for change. But for an example of more humane workplaces, there is no need to jet to Sweden or Denmark or Mars. We need look no farther than Midtown Manhattan, no farther than Herald Square.

Ladies and gentlemen, step right onto the escalators and glide on up to the sixth floor. Allow me to introduce you to Debra Ryan, a sales associate in the Macy’s bedding department.

For more than two decades, Ms. Ryan has guided shoppers in the hunt for bedroom décor, helping them choose between medium-weight and lightweight comforters, goose-down and synthetic pillows, and sheets and blankets in a kaleidoscope of colors.

But here is what’s truly remarkable, given the current environment in retail: Ms. Ryan knows her schedule three weeks in advance. She works full time and her hours are guaranteed. She has never been sent home without pay because the weather was bad or too few customers showed up for a Labor Day sale on 300-thread-count sheets.

This is no fantasy. This is real life, in the heart of New York.

“I’m able to pay my rent, thank God, and go on vacation, at least once a year,” Ms. Ryan said. “There’s a sense of security.”

So what makes this Macy’s store so different? Its employees are represented by a union, which has insisted on stability in scheduling for its members. (Union workers enjoy similar scheduling arrangements at the Bloomingdale’s, H&M and Modell’s Sporting Goods stores in Manhattan.)

Now, I know the term “union” is a dirty word in some circles, even in this city, where labor still has considerable clout and has catapulted many workers into the middle class. But no one can deny that these union workers savor something that is all too rare in the retail industry right now: guaranteed minimum hours — for part-time and full-time employees — and predictable schedules.

This is no accident.

“The biggest issue for workers today is scheduling,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which negotiated contracts for workers at the Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, H&M and Modell’s stores.

“It’s not just about how much they’re paid per hour,” Mr. Applebaum said, “but how many hours a week they get to work.”

To envision what life is like when you do not have those guarantees, just walk across 34th Street to the Zara clothing store, where Sonica Smith has worked as a sales associate for nearly two years.

Ms. Smith is a 26-year-old single mother of two who loves working in retail. She loves clothes. She loves dressing customers. But her unpredictable work schedule and the relentless struggle to get enough hours wreak constant havoc on her life.

Some weeks, she is assigned 24 hours of work; other weeks, she gets only 16. There is never a guaranteed minimum and there are never enough hours to get close to full time.

“At work, all I’m thinking about is: How am I going to pay the rent for the month?” said Ms. Smith, who earns $11 an hour. “How am I going to pay the person who is caring for my kids today?”

She said her last check amounted to only $396 for two weeks of work. “I nearly cried,” she said.

This is no surprise to anyone who works in retail. In a report scheduled to be released on Monday, Stephanie Luce, an associate professor of labor studies at the City University of New York, and the Retail Action Project, a workers’ advocacy group financed by foundations and Mr. Appelbaum’s union, surveyed 236 retail workers in Manhattan and Brooklyn and found that only 40 percent had set minimum hours per week.

The good news is that some retail companies are promising to do things differently. Last month, Starbucks vowed to improve the “stability and consistency” of the work schedules of its 130,000 baristas. (The company was responding to a New York Times article chronicling the enormous strains that unpredictable scheduling places on workers.)

At Zara, where employees have demanded more predictability, the company has given workers more notice of coming shifts, though workers are still pressing for guaranteed minimum hours. Government officials, meanwhile, are increasingly trying to curb the harsh scheduling practices.

Ms. Ryan, the sales associate at Macy’s, hopes the movement will spread. She knows from personal experience that satisfying, sustainable careers can be built in retail. After 27 years in the business, she earns about $40,000 a year — nearly $20 an hour — and never has to worry from week to week about her pay.

“Thank God, I work for Macy’s,” she said.

Email: swarns@nytimes.com

Twitter: @rachelswarns

Rachel Swarns would like to hear about your experiences in New York’s work world. Please contact her directly by filling out this brief form. She may follow up with you directly for an interview.


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2) Ferguson Sets Broad Change for City Courts
By

FERGUSON, Mo. — In the first major sign of change in this small city since last month’s police killing of an unarmed black teenager, the Ferguson City Council said Monday that it would establish a citizen review board to provide guidance for the Police Department.

It also announced sweeping changes to its court system, which had been criticized as unfairly targeting low-income blacks, who had become trapped in a cycle of unpaid tickets and arrest warrants.

Municipal court fines are the city’s second-highest source of revenue, leading many critics to argue that the authorities had a financial incentive to issue tickets and then impose more fees on those who did not pay.

Young black men in Ferguson and surrounding cities routinely find themselves passed from jail to jail as they are picked up on warrants for unpaid fines, one of the many simmering issues here that helped set off almost two weeks of civil unrest after the teenager, Michael Brown, 18, was killed by a white Ferguson officer on Aug. 9.

Mr. Brown’s killing put a national spotlight on Ferguson, a small city in north St. Louis County. The unrest served to highlight longstanding complaints by a predominantly black community that they were being harassed by the police.

On the eve of what was expected to be a tense City Council meeting on Tuesday, the first meeting since the shooting, the city instead pre-emptively announced many changes activists have long sought.

Among other things, the Council was scheduled to vote on capping how much of the city’s revenue can come from fines. The city also announced a one-month window to quash pending warrants, a major victory for the activists and lawyers who had pressed for change and were expected to force the issue at Tuesday’s meeting.

“The overall goal of these changes is to improve trust within the community and increase transparency, particularly within Ferguson’s courts and police department,” one council member, Mark Byrne, said in a statement. “We want to demonstrate to residents that we take their concerns extremely seriously.”

Lawyers and activists cautioned that the change could be truly meaningful only if other municipalities followed suit, because Ferguson is not alone in its predatory tactics, said Julia Ho, a community organizer at Hands Up United, an organization that formed after Mr. Brown’s killing.

“The bench warrants and traffic fines were a regressive tax on the poor and criminalization of poverty,” Ms. Ho said. “If people no longer receive these charges, that’s huge: It keeps people from getting stuck in modern debtor’s prisons.”

The Arch City Defenders, a nonprofit legal group, and law professors at the St. Louis University School of Law recently wrote a letter to the mayor, James Knowles III, asking him to waive all pending fines and warrants for nonviolent offenses. The letter said that the warrants served as barriers to employment and housing and that waiving them would be an important conciliatory gesture to the community.

Mr. Brown was killed after a brief struggle with the officer, Darren Wilson, who was seated in his vehicle. Although the police said Mr. Brown went for the officer’s gun, witnesses have said that the officer fired at Mr. Brown as he fled and continued shooting after he put his hands up in a sign of surrender. A St. Louis County grand jury is evaluating the case and is expected to make a decision by next month on whether to indict Officer Wilson.

The federal Justice Department has its own civil rights investigation into the shooting and the Police Department’s practices.

Thomas B. Harvey, executive director of the Arch City Defenders, said the changes were about three-quarters of what they had requested. “Although it’s not exactly what we asked for, it’s a substantial step forward,” he said.

Ferguson, a city of just 21,135 people, issued 24,532 warrants for 12,000 cases last year, the group said in a recent report. That amounts to three warrants per Ferguson household.

The city’s traffic fine revenue has increased 44 percent since 2011, city records show. When drivers who could not pay failed to show up for court, the city issued warrants and increased the penalties.

About 20 percent of the city’s $12 million budget is paid through fines, Mr. Harvey said. Under the proposal announced Monday, the city will cap that at 15 percent and spend any excess on special community projects.

“The Council believes that this ordinance sends a clear message that the fines imposed as punishment in the municipal court are not to be viewed as a source of revenue for the city,” Ferguson’s Council said in a statement. “We are hopeful that the Council’s clear statement will encourage the municipal judge and prosecutor to explore and utilize alternative methods of sentencing, such as community service, to punish violators and deter similar unlawful conduct.”

Mr. Harvey said he was concerned about whether the fines would actually decrease and expressed skepticism over the fact that the City Council was endorsing a community service penalty that does not currently exist. “That’s still $1.7 million in fines collected, but it is a million-dollar drop,” he said.The city said it would commit to funding a community improvement program and would hold ward meetings to elicit community input on what other changes should be made.

The city said it would also introduce an ordinance to repeal the “failure to appear” offense in municipal court, eliminating the additional fines imposed on those who do not attend court, and abolish administrative fees, such as the $25 fee to cover the cost of police personnel who arrange for the towing of abandoned vehicles.

Some of the fees the city planned to eliminate, such as the $50 charge to revoke a warrant, were illegal in the first place, Mr. Harvey said.

The city said the municipal judge had established a special docket for defendants who are having trouble making monthly payments on outstanding fines, the city said, giving people the opportunity to renegotiate their payment plans.

At the behest of the City Council, the municipal judge also established a one-month warrant recall program.

Meldon Moffitt, 42, of Ferguson said Monday that he felt the measures did not go far enough.

Mr. Moffitt said he owed more than $600 in fines for a suspended license, even though he had tried to fight the charge in court. He took paperwork to court that the motor vehicles department told him would be sufficient, he said, but the judge levied additional fines anyway.

“To be honest, I don’t see how I should have been fined at all since I did what I was told to do,” Mr. Moffitt said.

Even if the city cuts back on certain fines, he said, the city will still find a way to get the money it needs.

“I need to see that if a person misses a court date, there isn’t a warrant out for their arrest,” he said. “The city needs to stop giving people big old fines for a traffic ticket.”

Julie Bosman contributed reporting from St. Louis.




 
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3) Climate Change Will Disrupt Half of North America’s Bird Species, Study Says
By

The Baltimore oriole will probably no longer live in Maryland, the common loon might leave Minnesota, and the trumpeter swan could be entirely gone.

Those are some of the grim prospects outlined in a report released on Monday by the National Audubon Society, which found that climate change is likely to so alter the bird population of North America that about half of the approximately 650 species will be driven to smaller spaces or forced to find new places to live, feed and breed over the next 65 years. If they do not — and for several dozen it will be very difficult — they could become extinct.

The four Audubon Society scientists who wrote the report projected in it that 21.4 percent of existing bird species studied will lose “more than half of the current climactic range by 2050 without the potential to make up losses by moving to other areas.” An additional 32 percent will be in the same predicament by 2080, they said.Among the most threatened species are the three-toed woodpecker, the northern hawk owl, the northern gannet, Baird’s sparrow, the rufous hummingbird and the trumpeter swan, the report said. They are among the 30 species that, by 2050, will no longer be able to live and breed in more than 90 percent of their current territory.

“Common sense will tell you that with these kinds of findings, it’s hard to believe we won’t lose some species to extinction,” said David Yarnold, the president of the National Audubon Society. “How many? We honestly don’t know. We don’t know which ones are going to prove heroically resilient.”

Can the birds just move? “Some can and some will,” Mr. Yarnold said. “But what happens to a yellow-billed magpie in California that depends on scrub oak habitat? What happens as that bird keeps moving higher and higher and farther north and runs out of oak trees? Trees don’t fly. Birds do.”

The report’s predictions are based on both United Nations estimates of the effects of climate change in 2050 and 2080, and on two voluminous surveys of birds: the Audubon Society’s own Christmas bird count, which thousands of volunteers have worked on for decades, and a more general annual survey of breeding birds. The latter was started by the federal government in 1914; amateur birders began the Christmas bird count a few years earlier.

“The notion that we can have a future that looks like what our grandparents experienced, with the birds they had, is unlikely,” said Gary Langham, the study’s chief author, in an interview. The impact of climate change, he said, will not just harm birds already considered endangered — it is as likely to decimate birds that have robust populations now.

“This whole other threat tends to undo successes we’ve had in the past,” Dr. Langham said.

Terry Root, a Stanford University biologist who specializes in the impact of climate change on the geographic distribution of species, said she found the conclusions in the Audubon survey disturbing indeed. “If we are losing as many species as this is saying, what’s going to happen to all the insects they eat?” she said. “There are going to be winners if you move a species out of a region, and these winners might be mosquitoes and spiders.”

Alternatively, Dr. Root said: “Maybe other avian species will grow in abundance and take up the space. We don’t know.”

On Tuesday, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Smithsonian Institution are scheduled to release their annual state of the birds report, which is also expected to describe declines in bird populations and threats from changing ecosystems. Laury Parramore, a spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a statement on Monday that the Audubon Society’s work “provides a tool to help predict future bird distribution and ranges” that will help guide her agency’s conservation plans.

Birds could feel the impact of a changing climate in different ways. Drought in Southern California is blamed for a sharp drop in breeding among California raptors, perhaps because a lack of water is killing the insects and small rodents they feed on.

Puffins, whose reintroduction off the Maine coast had largely been a success story for the Audubon Society, have shown signs of declining both off the American coast and in countries like Iceland and England, perhaps because of climate-driven changes in the ocean food web.

“Every species of plant and animal is very well-tuned to what it does for a living,” Dr. Langham said. “A bird in the desert can’t go to the boreal forest. Everything about every organism is finely tuned.”

On the bright side, Dr. Langham said, his report shows that many species will continue in their current abundance and, mostly, their current locations: American robins, red-tailed hawks, western scrub jays, western meadowlarks, northern cardinals and northern mockingbirds.

And at least one species, popular among poets and jilted lovers, is expected to flourish as warming takes its course, Dr. Langham said. “You want to know what climate change sounds like?” he asked. “It’s the sound of a mourning dove — their climate potential is going to increase.”

Other species may or may not be able to adapt. For example, the brown pelican, a Gulf Coast resident, could move northward and inland, Dr. Langham said, adding, “But really with any bird that shows new climate space opening up, it is far from certain that any bird is going to capitalize on that potential.”

Dr. Langham called for a revised conservation strategy that focuses not only on species in immediate trouble, but those likely to suffer as climate forces them out of their current homes. The Audubon report, he said, is “a framework to focus on which species are predicted to be sensitive and where they are likely to move, and importantly, where they are likely not to move.”

Mr. Yarnold of the Audubon Society said that birds were resilient, but that climate change will test their limits. “We just don’t know whether they’ll be able to find the food sources and the habitat and cope with a new range of predators,” he said. “Maybe they’ll all be incredibly hardy and find ways to survive.”

But, he added, “That doesn’t seem likely, given, one, the number of birds affected, and two, the pace at which these things are happening.”




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4) Vancouver Canada Blocks Israeli Ship: Tremendous Victory
From Free Palestine Movement:
On Sep 9, 2014, at 5:31 PM, FPM Newsletter wrote:
http://freepalestinemovement.org/2014/09/10/vancouver-canada-blocks-israeli-ship-tremendous-victory/

In a four-day standoff pitting human rights groups and organized labor against Israeli shipping giant Zim, the giant was defeated today in Vancouver, Canada. 

The huge container ship Zim Djibouti first docked at the high-tech Deltaport facility on September 5, only to discover that the workers had agreed to respect a picket line set up by human rights advocates.  The coalition of picketers, under the name Block the Boat Vancouver, were trying to prevent the unloading and loading of the ship, as a solidarity protest against Israel's 47-year blockade of the port of Gaza and the recent Israeli sttack on Gaza that killed more than 2000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, as well as 72 Israelis, almost all soldiers.

The ship then returned to open water along the Pacific coast and stayed there several days, until midnight last night.  At that time it set course for Port Angeles, on the US side of the passage to Vancouver.  By unloading at an unexpected US port, the company apparently hoped to circumvent the blockade.

It didn't work.  Perhaps the logistics of arranging passage by land through another country for the hazardous cargo on board was too much, or perhaps the docking facilities were inadequate for the huge ship, but it turned back and returned to the open sea.  At the time of this report, it has still failed to declare a new destination and arrival time.

This is a huge victory for the Vancouver coalition, undoubtedly costing Zim enormous sums in fuel, delays, and having to carry excess cargo to unintended destinations, impeding the other operations.  It also continues the string of Block the Boat actions at ports on the US west coast that began with the August picket in Oakland, California of another Zim ship that ended with similar results.

Let's all congratulate Vancouver and encourage ports all over the world to refuse Israeli ships and ships from Israeli companies.  Customers will have to think twice about using an Israeli line for their cargo, as delivery becomes less certain.  Hopefully this is just the beginning of a world wide
campaign against Zim and all other Israeli shipping, until Israel reconsiders its policy of blocking all shipping to and from Gaza. 
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5) This Is What an Abortion Looks Like
By MERRITT TIERCE

DENTON, Tex. — I MET Wendy Davis, the Texas state senator and Democratic candidate for governor, for the first time last week, and I told her how much it meant to me that she wasn’t afraid to talk about abortion. But we need a much larger conversation about abortion — one that also includes, without prejudice, the stories unlikely to generate much sympathy. Stories like mine.

Ms. Davis’s background feels familiar to me. She became a single mother at 19, her first marriage lasted only two years, and she worked as a receptionist and waitress until she could afford to go back to school. I had two children by the time I was 21, filed for divorce at 23, and worked as a secretary and waitress. Thanks to the support of friends and family, and especially my ex-husband, the father of my children, I was able to go back to school in 2009. And like Ms. Davis, I have also had two abortions.

In her memoir, “Forgetting to Be Afraid,” which came out this week, Ms. Davis writes about the two wanted pregnancies she terminated. The first abortion ended a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy. (That this procedure must even be reported as an “abortion” is a tremendous failure of taxonomy.) The second pregnancy ended in the second trimester because the fetus had an acute brain abnormality.

Abortions like these represent the basic currency of the debate. These are the stories used to teach us the value of abortion, and the standard against which all other abortion stories must be gauged. By repeating only the gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, terrifying abortion stories, we protect a lie: that abortion isn’t normal. We have learned to think of abortion with shame and fear. We have accepted the damaging idea that a person who wants an abortion must grovel before the consciences of others.

I admire Ms. Davis for having the courage to say the word “abortion” over and over for 11 hours, as she did last year, while filibustering a Texas law that would have restricted access to the procedure. And I deeply respect her for telling her own stories now.

But those stories are not groundbreaking. They are politically safe, because no rational person could be anything but sympathetic and thankful that her experiences are extremely rare.

Abortion itself, however, is not rare.

I have been pregnant five times. I had a son, then a daughter, and my third pregnancy ended in abortion at a Planned Parenthood clinic, at a gestation of about six weeks.

I had an abortion because we were poor and I was depressed and I didn’t know who the father was. I had been having an affair. My kids were 2 and 3, and the debilitating morning sickness, which I experienced early in each of my pregnancies, made it difficult to work or care for two toddlers. I got pregnant again soon after, but miscarried. A few years later I had another abortion because the man I was seeing was emotionally abusive. I had no control in that relationship, so I sabotaged my birth control to get some back. The whole situation was a complete abscess. In spite of my awareness of our miserable present and inevitably doomed future, I didn’t really want to have an abortion. I wanted the man to love me or at least be forced to publicly acknowledge our relationship existed. But he didn’t want to have a baby with me, and I knew that having that baby would have been a terrible thing for my children. And for me.

This is how it really is, abortion: You do things you regret or don’t understand and then you make other choices because life keeps going forward. Or you do something out of love and then, through biology or accident, it goes inexplicably wrong, and you do what you can to cope. Or you do whatever you do, however you do it, for whatever reason, because that’s your experience.

It’s not Ms. Davis’s job to be groundbreaking, and I’m sorry that her personal reproductive history has to be declared and described (not to mention leveraged for votes). Do we approve of what she wanted? Did she suffer enough? These questions are not ours to ask.

We have to stop categorizing abortions as justified or unjustified. The best thing you can do if you support reproductive rights is to force people to realize that abortion is common, and the most common abortion is a five-to-15-minute procedure elected early in the first trimester by someone who doesn’t want to be pregnant or have a child. It’s our job to say it’s O.K. if that’s the end of the story. It’s O.K. if it’s boring or not traumatic or if you don’t even know what it was.

The reasons, the feelings, the personal contexts — these we can also talk about, but only after we grant to each woman the right to make and do with her body what she will. Regardless of whether or not a compelling story is on offer.

Merritt Tierce is the author of the novel “Love Me Back.”

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6) Student Loan Debt Burdens More Than Just Young People
By

JANET LEE DUPREE, 72, was surprised when she received her first Social Security benefits seven years ago. About one-fifth of her monthly payment was being withheld and she called the federal government to find out why.

The woman, who is from Citra, Fla., discovered that the deduction from her benefits was to repay $3,000 in loans she took out in the early 1970s to pay for her undergraduate degree.

“I didn’t pay it back, and I’m not saying I shouldn’t,” she said. “I was an alcoholic, and later diagnosed with H.I.V., but I’ve turned my life around. I’ve been paying some of the loan back but that never seems to lower the amount, which is now $15,000 because of interest.

“I don’t know if I can ever pay it back.”

She is among an estimated two million Americans age 60 and older who are in debt from unpaid student loans, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Its August “Household Debt and Credit Report” said the number of aging Americans with outstanding student loans had almost tripled from about 700,000 in 2005, whether from long-ago loans for their own educations or more recent borrowing to pay for college degrees for family members.

The debt among older people is up substantially, to $43 billion from $8 billion in 2005, according to the report, which is based on data from Equifax, the credit reporting agency. As of July 31, money was being deducted from Social Security payments to almost 140,000 individuals to pay down their outstanding student loans, according to Treasury Department data. That is up from just under 38,000 people in 2004. Over the decade, the amounts withheld more than tripled, to nearly $101 million for the first seven months of this year from over $32 million in 2004.

While older debtors account for a small fraction of student loan borrowers, who have accumulated nearly $1 trillion in such debt, the effect of owing a constantly ballooning amount of debt but having a fixed income can be onerous, said Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging.

“Those in default on their loans can see their Social Security checks garnished, leaving them with retirement income that leaves them well below the poverty line,” he said at a committee hearing this week to examine the issue.

“Some may think of student loan debt as a young person’s problem,” he said, “but, as it turns out, that is increasingly not the case.”

That is the problem that Rosemary Anderson, 57, described to the committee. The woman, who is from Watsonville, Calif., has a home mortgage that is under water, as well as health and other problems, and $64,000 in unpaid student loans. She borrowed the money in her 30s to fund her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, but fell behind on her student loan payments eight years ago.

As a result of compound interest, her debt has risen to $126,000. With her $526 monthly payment, at an 8.25 percent rate, she estimates that she “will be 81” by the time it is paid, and will have laid out $87,487 more than she originally borrowed.

Mrs. Dupree, in a telephone interview, said she, too, needed some relief. As a part-time substance abuse counselor for a nonprofit based in Ocala, she said she could barely afford the $50 each month that she negotiated with the federal government as payment for her growing debt.

She is supporting a measure introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and a committee member, that would allow people who borrowed money for education before July 2013 to refinance at current, lower interest rates.

A person who took out an unsubsidized loan before July of last year “is locked into an interest rate of nearly 7 percent and older loans run 8 percent to 9 percent and even higher,” Ms. Warren said. The measure would lower the interest rate to 3.86 percent for undergraduate loans and a little higher for graduate and parent loans.

But the future of the bill is unclear. It was stalled in the Senate in June by Republican senators, like Lamar Alexander, of Tennessee, who said college students didn’t need a taxpayer subsidy to help pay off a student loan. “They need a good job.”

The measure would help 25 million people refinance their student loans, but impose a tax increase on people making over $1 million — which Senator Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, the majority leader, labeled a “tax increase bill styled as a student loan bill.”

Adam Brandon, executive vice president of the conservative organization FreedomWorks, which opposed Senator Warren’s bill, said such legislation “only makes the current student loan bubble worse by continuing to encourage people to take out more loans than they can afford.

“The market needs to work out who can afford these loans. We shouldn’t be trying to game the market and have people end up with so much debt they can’t afford their car payments.”

Even though the number of retiree debtors is small, $1,000 deducted from their Social Security payments “can make a real difference for affected senior citizens or disabled adults surviving on Social Security,” said Sandy Baum, a professor at the George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development, and a researcher at the Urban Institute.

For most beneficiaries, she said, “the average monthly payment of $1,200 is the primary source of income.” While the government should be holding student borrowers to account for their debt, “and there may be some who just decide not to pay,” she said “most are people who are not earning money so it doesn’t make sense to ask them to pay.”

As the ranks of retirees grow, more attention is being focused on the education debt incurred by the next group of people approaching retirement, those 50 to 64 years old. A 2013 AARP study of middle-class families found that aging households were carrying increasing amounts of debt.

While mortgages account for most of that debt, education debt levels have been rising for the preretiree group, noted Lori A. Trawinski, a director at the AARP Public Policy Institute.

“As of 2010, 11 percent of preretiree families had education debt with an average balance of $28,000. Growing debt burdens pose a threat to financial security of Americans approaching retirement, since increasing debt threatens their ability to save for retirement or to accumulate other assets, and may end up leading them to delay retirement,” she said.

The Government Accountability Office warned this week about the growth of educational debt among seniors. It released a report that relied on different data from that used by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, but nonetheless painted an ominous picture of lingering debt burden.

“As the baby boomers continue to move into retirement, the number of older Americans with defaulted loans will only continue to increase,” Charles A. Jeszeck, the G.A.O. director of education, work force and income security, testified at the hearing. “This creates the potential for an unpleasant surprises for some, as their benefits are offset and they face the possibility of a less secure retirement.”

More than 80 percent of the outstanding balances are from seniors who financed their own education, the G.A.O. report concluded, and only 18 percent were attributed to loans used to finance the studies of a spouse, child or grandchild.

But the default rate for these loans is 31 percent — a rate that is double that of the default rate for loans taken out by borrowers between the ages of 25 and 49 years old, according to agency data.

“Such debt reduces net worth and income and can erode retirement security,” Mr. Jeszeck said. “The effect of rising debt can be more profound for those who have accumulated few or no financial assets.”

And such student loan debt “can be especially problematic because unlike other types of debt, it generally cannot be discharged in bankruptcy,” he added.

As a result of unpaid student debt, Social Security payments can be reduced to $750 a month, which is a floor Congress set in 1998. Senator Susan M. Collins, Republican of Maine, and a member of the committee on aging, said she was planning to introduce a measure to adjust the amount for inflation “to make sure garnishment does not force seniors into poverty.”

For people like Ms. Anderson, help cannot come too soon.

“I incurred this debt to improve my life,” she told the committee, “but the debt has become my undoing.”

Make the most of your money. Every Monday get articles about retirement, saving for college, investing, new online financial services and much more. Sign up for the Your Money newsletter here.
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7) Regulator Slow to Respond to Deadly Vehicle Defects
By HILARY STOUT, DANIELLE IVORY and REBECCA R. RUIZ

General Motors published an article in February on its Chevrolet website trumpeting an achievement certain to help sell a lot of cars.

Its 2014 Chevys had earned more five-star overall safety ratings in a new car assessment program than had any other brand.

The next day, G.M. began recalling millions of its cars for a deadly ignition defect, and by August, six of the eight five-star Chevrolet models had been recalled for a variety of safety issues, including defects in air bags, brakes and steering. Five had been recalled multiple times.

It was an embarrassing turn — but not just for the embattled automaker. The stellar rankings had been awarded by the federal regulatory agency that is mandated by Congress to ensure the safety of automobiles.

The agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, has a record of missteps that goes well beyond its failure to detect an ignition switch defect in several models of G.M. cars now linked to at least 13 deaths.An investigation by The New York Times into the agency’s handling of major safety defects over the past decade found that it frequently has been slow to identify problems, tentative to act and reluctant to employ its full legal powers against companies.

The Times analyzed agency correspondence, regulatory documents and public databases and interviewed congressional and executive branch investigators, former agency employees and auto safety experts. It found that in many of the major vehicle safety issues of recent years — including unintended acceleration in Toyotas, fires in Jeep fuel tanks and air bag ruptures in Hondas, as well as the G.M. ignition defect — the agency did not take a leading role until well after the problems had reached a crisis level, safety advocates had sounded alarms and motorists were injured or died.

Not only does the agency spend about as much money rating new cars — a favorite marketing tool for automakers — as it does investigating potentially deadly manufacturing defects, but it also has been so deferential to automakers that it made a key question it poses about fatal accidents optional — a policy it is only now changing after inquiries from The Times.

Jean Bookout was injured, and her passenger, Barbara Schwarz, was killed in 2007 when the 2005 Toyota Camry Ms. Bookout was driving in Oklahoma suddenly accelerated through an intersection and hit an embankment. When the safety agency inquired about the cause of the accident in 2010, the Japanese automaker replied, “Toyota understands that this request is optional and respectfully declines to respond at this time.”

Three years later, Toyota paid $3 million in compensatory damages after having been found guilty in a lawsuit the two women’s families brought against the company. And in March, a federal judge approved a $1.2 billion settlement of criminal charges that Toyota concealed unintended acceleration problems in its vehicles for years.

By the time General Motors began recalling cars this year for ignition defects that could cause stalling, the agency had logged more than 2,000 complaints about the issue in the recalled models, some from consumers who had picked up on patterns in the agency’s database that its own investigators missed or did not look for.

After Chrysler balked last year at the regulator’s suggested 2.7 million vehicle recall for exploding fuel tanks in its Jeeps, the federal agency scaled back its request by 1.1 million cars. It also agreed to Chrysler’s demand that the automaker not be required to say the vehicles had a safety defect or that the automaker was at fault. The agency has linked 51 deaths and at least two serious injuries to the defect over 14 years.

And four years ago, the agency cut short an investigation into rupturing air bags in Honda vehicles, saying there was “insufficient information” to suggest that the companies had failed to take timely action. Since then, more than 13 million more cars have been recalled by Honda and 10 other automakers for the rupture risk, and Honda has linked two deaths to the defect.

The agency declined to make regulators available for interviews, agreeing only to reply to written questions.

“N.H.T.S.A. has a proven record of aggressively investigating and pursuing recalls,” the agency wrote.

It added: “N.H.T.S.A. evaluates each potential safety defect issue based on the particular circumstances involved and does not have a set threshold for opening defect investigations beyond our core mission of reducing fatalities and injuries from motor vehicle crashes.”

The agency, created in 1970, is part of the Transportation Department and has an annual budget of about $800 million, which is split among vehicle safety, highway safety research and grants geared toward promoting traffic safety at the state level.

While traffic fatalities have fallen considerably since its creation in part because of safety improvements in vehicles, the agency has a history of falling short of expectations in policing automakers and fulfilling its investigations mission.

In the late 1990s, it was sharply criticized by lawmakers and consumer advocates for failing to detect a pattern of highway rollovers in Ford Explorers with Firestone tires that was eventually tied to 271 fatalities. Congress passed a law in 2000 that was meant to give the agency more leverage over the auto industry and better access to its accident data.

Yet since then, the agency has continued to show sluggishness in its investigations, feeding a perception that it does not stand up to the politically influential, multibillion-dollar automobile industry until it is forced to do so by outside pressure.

In a year that has included the deadly ignition scandal at G.M., the billion-dollar Toyota criminal settlement and an ever-expanding number of air bag recalls, some consumer safety advocates are hopeful that the record number of recalls will spur the agency to step up its vigilance. This year automakers have recalled more than 48 million vehicles in the United States, surpassing the previous record of about 30 million in 2004. Safety experts continue to push for a more transparent approach from the agency, including better documenting its internal reviews of safety concerns.

On Tuesday, the Senate subcommittee that questioned G.M.’s chief executive, Mary T. Barra, in two charged hearings on the ignition switch defect will turn its focus to the safety agency.

The session comes as the Transportation Department’s inspector general is conducting an audit of the agency’s handing of the G.M. switch issue, an inquiry that people familiar with the effort say has been widened to look at how effectively the agency carries out its mission beyond the G.M. case.

A primary focus of the inquiry, these people said, is the so-called pre-investigation phase of the agency’s work — when the engineers and other specialists in its Office of Defects Investigation decide whether to proceed with a full investigation of a possible safety defect.

“N.H.T.S.A. is a very critical agency,” said Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that represents state highway safety departments and administers grants from N.H.T.S.A., and whose chairman has been called to testify at the Senate hearing. “I think it’s struggling.”

Spotting Problems

The Times reviewed more than 12,000 consumer complaints to the federal agency about power, speed and ignition problems in the G.M. models recalled for ignition-related problems.

The first stalling complaints arrived in 1997, and starting in May 2000, the agency consistently told drivers that there was insufficient evidence to open an investigation, even when drivers presented similar complaints that they had found on the Internet and on the agency’s own website.

The analysis by The Times found that before the recalls the agency had received more than 5,000 complaints about the ignition problems, including more than 2,000 about unexpected stalling, in the models G.M. eventually recalled for an ignition defect that could lead to stalling.

As recently as a month before the recalls began, the safety agency was dismissing complaints from drivers about such problems. In January the agency responded to a driver of a 2010 Chevrolet Impala, who had been on the road to Tuscaloosa, Ala., when the car’s power cut out. The driver had found similar complaints of sudden stalling and passed them along, urging the agency to examine the problem.

A division chief wrote back that, based on a review of its database, there was “insufficient evidence to warrant opening a safety defect investigation.”

By the time the Impala was recalled in June, regulators had more than 1,000 complaints about ignition problems in the model.

Years earlier, Stephanie Rogers of South Lyon, Mich., had written to the agency in October 2007 cataloging a number of complaints that she had seen on the Internet about cars stalling while moving. “This is an extremely dangerous problem, and since I am not the only one dealing with this issue I am wondering why no letters are being sent,” she wrote.

Bruce Spinney, who worked at the agency from 1970 to 2008, specializing in the cost impact of new safety features, said he did not understand why the agency had not reacted sooner to the ignition problems. “The consumers seem to be divining these patterns before the regulators,” he said.

As of this month, G.M. has recalled nearly 16.5 million vehicles for ignition-related problems, including 2.6 million for the defective switch that the automaker acknowledges it knew about for years. In almost all of the ignition recalls, the problem could result in moving cars suddenly shutting off, disabling air bags and other key systems like power steering and power brakes.

David J. Friedman, the acting N.H.T.S.A. administrator, has said in public forums that data presented by G.M. this year would have most likely changed the regulator’s approach to the issue had the information been available earlier. The new data directly linked the ignition switch problem to the nondeployment of air bags, which in many accidents had been the only clue that something was amiss.

But a review of the agency’s complaints records shows that at least one G.M. driver, Jessica Cruickshank, offered evidence from an OnStar diagnostic test that showed a potential link between the engine cutting out and air bag failure — only to be rebuffed.

During the summer of 2005, it was pitch black on an interstate highway in rural West Virginia when Ms. Cruickshank’s car shut off and she had to wrestle the wheel to bring it to the side of the road. Trucks whizzed by in the dark, and her 2004 Pontiac Grand Prix shook as they did. In the back seat of the car, her youngest daughter began to cry.

“You can see how a child would be frightened,” Ms. Cruickshank said in an interview. “I was afraid, too.”

That was the last time she drove the car. It had already been cutting out more than once a week, she said. Her family hired a lawyer, who wrote to the safety agency in August 2005 to alert it to the stalling problem.

Ms. Cruickshank was not injured, and no impact occurred to set off the air bags. But the lawyer informed the agency that a diagnostic test run by OnStar, a subsidiary of G.M., indicated that there was a “distinct probability that the air bags would either not deploy or misfire in the event of a front-impact collision.” A month later, regulators replied that a review of their database “revealed insufficient evidence to warrant opening a safety defect investigation.”

In that instance, even G.M. seemed to recognize something was not right: A few weeks later, the company bought back the car.

Answer Optional

To give N.H.T.S.A. more muscle, Congress passed a law in 2000 requiring automakers to report to the safety agency any claims they received blaming defects for serious injuries or deaths.

But the safety agency has allowed automakers to conceal important information in that reporting process by not requiring full disclosures when confronted with follow-up questions. In the agency’s so-called death inquiries — requests for further information from automakers — it has made optional a key question: What may have caused the accident?

The Times reviewed nearly 100 death inquiries obtained under the Freedom of Information Act — including all inquiries made of General Motors, Chrysler and Ford in one quarter of 2012 — and found only four cases in which a manufacturer responded to the question, and none in which a defect in the vehicle was identified.

Some of Ford’s responses reviewed by The Times were particularly blunt, including one regarding an August 2011 fatal accident in which a passenger in a 2007 Ford E-350 van was inexplicably ejected through a passenger window though the vehicle had sustained only minor damages. The claim asserted a defect involving a “nonfixed window” or the grade of glass.

N.H.T.S.A.: At your option, provide Ford’s assessment of the circumstances that led to the incident including Ford’s analysis of the claim and/or notice regarding allegations of a defect.

FORD: Ford is not providing an assessment of the circumstances that led to the incident, nor is it providing an analysis of the claim and/or notice regarding allegations of a defect.

Joan Claybrook was the head of the agency from 1977 to 1981, well before the law was passed that instituted the death inquiries. “It should not be an optional question,” she said of the follow-up request to identify the cause of an accident. “You need to show you are serious about enforcement and be tough as nails with the manufacturers.”

General Motors chose not to answer inquiries regarding at least three of the 13 fatal crashes that the automaker has linked to its ignition switch defect. In one of those cases — the death of a 25-year-old Texas man — G.M. responded that it had not assessed the cause of the crash, when, in fact, it had, according to a subsequent internal investigation at the automaker. The safety agency did not request further information about the crash, and the defect was not made public for an additional seven years.

In interviews with former and current employees of the agency, no one was able to explain why the question had been made optional. The agency declined to answer queries from The Times about the death inquiries for more than a month. Late Friday, when informed of the deadline for this article, the agency submitted a written reply.

“All inquiries now require manufacturers to provide this information,” the statement said.

Late and Limited

Data on the agency’s website indicates that 33 investigations from the 1990s remain open.

“The agency is dedicated to ensuring that current safety defect issues affecting the driving public today are addressed, and is dedicating its resources to this priority, rather than to closing old cases that did not find an unreasonable risk to safety,” N.H.T.S.A. wrote in response to a question about the open cases.

But on at least one such current issue, N.H.T.S.A. had stood on the sidelines for years. Now that defect, involving air bags made by the Japanese supplier Takata, has mushroomed into one of the biggest recalls in history.

A recent Times article detailed years of delay inside Honda and Takata in assessing and disclosing the potential of air bags to rupture on impact, spewing shrapnel and chemicals. Documents showing the agency’s early review of the problem indicate that it was lax as well.

Complaints filed with the agency as far back as 2000 allude to rupturing air bags in models carrying Takata air bags, but the first recall did not come until eight years later, and it was relatively tiny.

In November 2008, Honda recalled 4,205 cars over possible air bag explosions. Six months later, after a teenager was killed in her Accord by shrapnel from an exploding air bag, the company recalled more than 510,000 additional cars.

The two recalls prompted the agency to open an investigation in 2009 into the two companies’ handling of the defect, during which the safety agency asked why Honda and Takata had initially recalled so few cars, according to filings at the time. Six months later it closed the investigation, a timetable so swift that it appears to have taken even Takata by surprise.The company had been in the process of fulfilling the agency’s request for more documents, a Takata lawyer wrote in an email dated May 19, 2010, when it received notice that the investigation was now closed. The lawyer called to say that he had located the documents and asked if the agency still needed them. “You told me that such a submission would not be required at this time,” Kenneth N. Weinstein, the lawyer representing Takata, wrote in the email to the agency’s Office of Defects Investigation.

“I confirm this is accurate,” responded an agency official, Jennifer Timian, the principal investigator on the case. In the document officially closing the investigation, the agency wrote that there was “insufficient information to suggest that Honda failed to make timely defect decisions on information it was provided.” The closing statement concluded, “there are no additional vehicles to be investigated.”

Less than a year later, further cases of rupturing air bags prompted Honda to resume its recalls. Other companies soon followed. The current total of cars under recall for the problem is 14 million.

N.H.T.S.A. began a second investigation in June.

Resources and Powers

Part of the safety agency’s problem in dealing with investigations is surely resources, or at least how they are allocated, former employees said.

The agency’s budget for safety defects investigation has hovered around 1 percent of its total budget for each of the last 6 years, even as funding for other divisions such as its ratings program has gained a larger share. The $10.6 million total budgeted for this year is less than the $14.4 million total compensation package that G.M.’s chief executive, Ms. Barra, stands to earn in 2014.

After the so-called Tread Act was enacted in 2000, requiring the agency to analyze fatal crash data and other additional information, the defects office added more staff, growing to 63 employees at one point in 2001. Today it has 51, a decrease that reflects retirements and attrition, N.H.T.S.A. said.

In its written reply to questions from The Times, the agency said it had asked Congress for six additional staff positions for defects investigation and compliance in fiscal year 2015.

How effectively the office uses its staff is one issue of concern to Calvin L. Scovel III, the inspector general of the Transportation Department. He said in a written statement to The Times that N.H.T.S.A. had yet to fulfill a recommendation from an October 2011 report that the agency evaluate its work force to determine the most effective size and mix of staff in its investigative office. “Completing this assessment will put the agency in a better position to identify and investigate vehicle safety defects,” Mr. Scovel said.

Some former staff members emphasized that the dysfunction within N.H.T.S.A.’s defects unit stemmed not only from limited funding and staffing but also from a lack of cohesion and a culture of secrecy.

“It’s always been organized as a silo, without the normal checks and balances that exist in the regulatory process,” said Bill Walsh, a senior associate administrator at the agency until 2004 who helped to put into effect the agency’s current complaints system.

The agency has also not made full use of its legal powers in investigating automakers, which include an ability to force the recall of vehicles and to issue subpoenas to obtain information and documents. In congressional testimony this spring, Mr. Friedman, the agency’s acting head, appeared to have limited knowledge of some of the agency’s legal powers and its history of exercising them. Under questioning by senators, Mr. Friedman indicated he did not realize the agency could issue subpoenas.

Asked by The Times how many subpoenas the agency had issued over the past 10 years, the agency did not offer a direct reply. The agency “routinely issues information requests and special orders” under federal law “to demand information and documents from auto manufacturers and automotive equipment suppliers,” it said.

It has been 35 years since the regulator has invoked its legal authority to order a company to recall cars. The agency said it had “forced manufacturers of vehicles and equipment to conduct thousands of recalls” since 1979 without needing to invoke its powers. By “pressuring” manufacturers to conduct the recalls voluntarily, the agency said, consumers benefit because the recalls occur more quickly. “We will continue to hold manufacturers accountable for the timely identification and reporting of defect and noncompliance issues regarding their products,” the agency said.

In one recent case, the agency threatened to flex its statutory muscles but in the end backed down. In June 2013 the agency asked Chrysler to conduct a recall of about 2.7 million Jeep Grand Cherokees and Jeep Liberties because of the gas tank problem. If the automaker did not comply, the agency said, it would publish a public notice describing the defects, its investigation into the matter and the scheduling of a public meeting. After the public meeting, N.H.T.S.A. could have legally forced a recall.

But the agency struck a deal with Chrysler instead.

After first refusing to recall the vehicles, Chrysler’s chief executive, Sergio Marchionne, spoke with David L. Strickland, who led the agency at the time, and agreed to recall 1.6 million vehicles, according to a person briefed on the conversation. They agreed to install a trailer hitch that would offer more protection in the event of rear-end accidents. It also would be far less costly to Chrysler than more extensive remedies.

As for the remaining 1.1 million vehicles, Chrysler said it would send a notice to dealers, instead of a conducting a recall, which is a far less serious approach to a safety issue. The agency — which looked into the issue only after an outside advocacy group, the Center for Auto Safety, made a formal request — agreed to Mr. Marchionne’s demand that it stop describing the vehicles as defective.

Top Marks

The Chevrolets under recall this year that received the agency’s five-star rating for safety were far from the only models earning top marks in N.H.T.S.A.’s ratings program.

The program dates to 1978 and is supposed to provide consumers with information about the crash protection and rollover safety of new vehicles. In its current form, the agency awards up to five stars to vehicles based on various safety measures. For automakers, a high rating can serve as a powerful government seal of approval.

An analysis by The Times of the individual ratings since 2001, which were obtained from the car-shopping and research site Edmunds.com, shows that almost every model attained high marks.

For models from 2001 to 2010, 87 percent of all the safety ratings awarded through the program were four or five stars.

John O’Dell, a senior editor and vehicle safety expert at Edmunds.com, said that automakers had over the years become savvy to N.H.T.S.A.’s requirements and learned to design their cars to do well in the ratings. For example, the agency tests for a vehicle’s ability to withstand a rollover accident, something that automakers have focused on improving.

But in 2011, the agency said it introduced new standards to make it tougher to score high and added an overall safety rating. “The program raised the safety bar by implementing more stringent crash tests, making it harder for vehicles to achieve the top ratings of five stars,” the agency noted in a request for increased funding for the ratings program.

Yet the ratings have edged even higher since then, The Times found.

For models from 2011 to the present, 92 percent of the overall safety ratings were four or five-star ratings, according to the analysis. The percentage of four and five-star overall ratings increased each year, from 83 percent for 2011 models to 96 percent for 2015 models.

“It’s a waste of a valuable government resource,” said Jack Gillis, a N.H.T.S.A. official in the 1970s and 1980s who was involved in early efforts to develop a ratings program at the agency and now publishes an independent rating. “The government would have the opportunity to dramatically stimulate competition if they were to present this information on a more relative basis.”

Asked about the preponderance of top grades, the agency said they were proof its program was effective in bringing about safety changes. It pointed to the industry’s embrace of the ratings.

“Automakers routinely use our star information in their advertising,” the agency wrote in an email. “Safety sells.”

Hiroko Tabuchi, Bill Vlasic and Aaron M. Kessler contributed reporting.





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8) Drones and the Democracy Disconnect
By

With President Obama’s announcement that we will open a new battlefront in yet another Middle Eastern country — in Syria, against ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) — there is widespread acknowledgement that it will be a protracted, complex, perhaps even messy campaign, with many unforeseeable consequences along the way. The president has said we will put “no boots on the ground” in Syria; he is wary of simply flooding allies on the ground with arms, for fear that they will fall into the wrong hands — as they already have. Obama wants to strike against ISIS in a part of Syria that is currently outside the authority of the Syrian government, which the president has accused of war crimes, and is thus, in our eyes, a legal no-man’s land. He has also made clear that he is ready to go it alone in directing attacks on ISIS — he has asked for Congress’s support, but is not seeking their authorization. All these signs point to drones playing a prominent role in this new war in Syria.

Increasingly, this is how the United States chooses to fight its wars. Drones lead the way and dominate the fight against the several non-state actors we now engage — Al Qaeda, the Shabab in Somalia and now ISIS. Drones have their benefits: They enable us to fight ISIS without getting mired on the ground or suffering casualties, making them politically powerful and appealing. For the moment, the American public favors striking ISIS; that would likely change if our own ground forces were involved.

If any group deserves drone strikes, it may well be ISIS.

This fundamentalist Muslim group, so brutal that even Al Qaeda shunned it, has taken to forcibly converting and exterminating Christians and other minority religious groups; one such minority, the Yazidis, may have narrowly escaped genocide at ISIS’ hands. The West has received vivid proof of the group’s ferocity. On Saturday it released its third video of a beheading — this time of a British aid worker — after two other such videos of the beheadings of American journalists within the past month.

The use of drones raises not just strategic and political problems, but ethical questions as well. In particular, what does our use of and reliance on drones say about us? How do drones affect the nation that endorses them — overtly, or, as is more often the case, tacitly? Are drones compatible with patriotism? With democracy? Honor? Glory? Or do they, as I fear, represent — and exacerbate — a troubling, even obscene disconnect between the American people and the wars waged in our name?

Writing in The Guardian in 2012, George Monbiot declared the United States’ drone strikes in Pakistan cowardly. He echoed the howls of many Pakistanis on the ground, who suffer the drone onslaught firsthand, while those who carry it out are safely removed thousands of miles away. The new breed of warriors is strange indeed: They are safely ensconced here in the United States, often commuting to work like ordinary citizens, and after a day spent monitoring and perhaps striking enemy targets, they return home to kids, homework and dinner.

Drone apologists, and many defense experts, claim drones are a reasonable development in warfare technology. The Slate commentator Jamie Holmes argues that extreme complaints about military innovations are hardly new. To people like Monbiot, or the BBC commentator Jeremy Clarkson, who scoffs that medals for drone pilots “should feature an armchair and a Coke machine or two crossed burgers,” Holmes says, “the hyperventilating about heroism being killed by machines misses the point. For one, the list of weapons once considered ‘cowardly’ … include[s] not only the submarines of World War I but also the bow and arrow and the gun. The point of each of these technologies was the same: to gain an asymmetrical advantage against adversaries and reduce risk.”

There are few philosophers more clear-eyed, frank, even cynical when it comes to war than Niccolò Machiavelli. In “The Prince,” he asserts that war is inescapable, inevitable. He praises the Romans for understanding the danger in putting it off. To the simple question of when you should go to war, Machiavelli’s simple answer is, “When you can” — not when it is just, or “right.” And yet, in another work, “The Art of War,” Machiavelli reveals that how a nation goes to war, how a nation chooses to fight is just as critical, perhaps even more so. At this point, the issue of military technology is pertinent, and Machiavelli’s discussion of the topic is highly reminiscent of our current debate about drones and character.

In “The Art of War,” Machiavelli again praises the ancient Romans, for their battlefield exploits, and states his worry that newly introduced artillery “prevents men from employing and displaying their virtue as they used to do of old.” Machiavelli ultimately dismisses such fears — though he was only contemplating cannons at the time. But elsewhere he declares that “whoever engages in war must use every means to put himself in a position of facing his enemy in the field and beating him there,” since a field war “is the most necessary and honorable of all wars.” Why is this? Because on the battlefield, military discipline and courage are exhibited and forged, and your opponent gets a true taste of what he’s up against — not only the army, but the nation he is up against.

For Machiavelli, military conduct is a reflection, indeed an extension — better yet, the root and foundation of a nation’s character, the bravery and boldness of its leaders, the devotion and determination of its citizens. Military conduct is indelibly linked to civic virtue, which is why he argues that nations should reject a professional army, much less a mercenary one, in favor of a citizen militia. Every citizen must get a taste of military discipline — and sacrifice. Every citizen must have a stake, an intimate investment, in the wars his nation fights.

Machiavelli was highly sensitive to the role military glory plays in inspiring the public and uniting, even defining, a nation. Great battles and military campaigns forged the identity, cohesion and indomitable pride of the Roman Republic, Machiavelli maintains — across the different social classes — and stoked the democratic energy of the people. Haven’t they served a similar purpose in our own republic? War has offered iconic images of our national identity: George Washington crossing the Delaware with his ragtag soldiers; marines hoisting the flag at Iwo Jima. These images are inherently democratic — they offer no king on his steed, lording over kneeling troops. To that extent, they nourish and reinforce our democratic identity and sensibilities.

This is no longer the case in the age of drones. I have strained to imagine the great battles drones might fight, which the public might rally around and solemnly commemorate. But this is a silly proposition — which cuts to the heart of the matter.

Never have the American people been more removed from their wars, even while we are the most martial nation on earth, and drones are symptoms, and drivers, of this troubling alienation. The United States has been engaged in two expensive and protracted wars in the past decade, as well as the seemingly endless war on terror spread the world over. The war in Afghanistan — where drones have made their mark as never before — is the longest in the nation’s history, and we have spent more money rebuilding Afghanistan than we did on Europe after World War II. Through all our recent wars in the region, however, most Americans have hardly felt a thing. Given the extent of our military engagement, unparalleled in the world, that is astounding, shameful even, and politically treacherous.

Critics have long warned that drones put too much warmaking power in the hands of few government actors, who increasingly operate on their own, or in the shadows. Many felt we saw a preview of political abuses to come when President Obama unilaterally ordered a drone strike against an American citizen in Yemen. This new technology has already emboldened our government to openly wage war in countries against which we have not officially declared war. We operate there with the tacit, and dubious, assent of a few ruling interests.

Perhaps it is not inevitable that drones are linked to arbitrary, centralized government; perhaps drone warfare can be waged transparently, democratically, legally, though it is admittedly hard to imagine what that would look like. What is certain, however, is that drone technology offers manifold temptations to those who would expand the borders of our wars, or wage war according to their own agenda, independent of the will, or interest, or attention of the American public.

Most American citizens are quick to let someone or something else bear the brunt of our wars, and take up the fight. Hence there is less worry about whether a given incursion is necessary, justified, logical or humane. Drones point to a new and terrible kind of cruelty — violence far removed from the perpetrator, and easier to inflict in that regard. With less skin in the game — literally — we can be less vigilant about the darker tendencies of our leaders, the unintended consequences of their actions, and content to indulge in private matters.

The United State is gradually becoming a warring nation with fewer and fewer warriors, and few who know the sacrifices of war. Drones represent the new normal, and are an easy invitation to enter into and wage war — indefinitely. This is a state of affairs Machiavelli could not abide by, and neither should we. It is antithetical to a democracy for its voting public to be so aloof from the wars it fights. It is a feature, I fear, of a democracy destined to lose that title.

Firmin DeBrabander, an associate professor of philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, is the author of “Spinoza and the Stoics” and a forthcoming book critiquing the gun rights movement.


 
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9) Lost Homes and Dreams at Tower Israel Leveled
By and FARES AKRAM


GAZA CITY — The men of Zafer Tower No. 4 sit in the shade across the street from the wreckage.

Somewhere in there is Dr. Mohammad Abu Rayya’s stethoscope. Buried, too, is a hard drive filled with 15 years of articles, photos and notes by Hisham Saqalla, a journalist and blogger. And a three-foot replica of the Eiffel Tower that Faraj Shorafa, a 72-year-old lawyer, brought from Paris in 1999.

Nobody was killed in Israel’s destruction of the tower, the first of three high-rises felled in the finale of this summer’s fighting with Hamas, the militant Palestinian movement that dominates the Gaza Strip. But about 500 people lost more than their homes. “They have destroyed our dreams,” said Dr. Abu Rayya, 38.Zafer 4 was erased by two powerful explosions around 7 p.m. on Aug. 23, 17 years to the day after it opened with two penthouses and 40 three-bedroom apartments of 1,615 square feet that originally sold for $60,000. Filled by high-ranking government officials and private-sector professionals, the 11-story tower was an alternative to the Gaza way of extended families living in compounds. It was part of a construction empire whose founder quit school after ninth grade to pick tomatoes in Israel and now lives in a four-story villa with its own elevator and a mosaic-tiled pool in the basement, where Zafer 4’s evacuees waited out the attack.

The Israeli military said the building was “a command and control center” where “multiple floors” were “used regularly by Hamas for operational activities” throughout the seven-week battle. Military officials refused to say what types of activities, why the entire tower was targeted or what type of bombs were used.

In interviews, more than half the tower’s occupants said that Hamas had taken over one of the penthouse apartments in 2007 for what several said was a “media office” filled with computers and communications equipment. Residents said the unit was abandoned during the war, and that teenagers passed many nights on that floor using PlayStation as bombers buzzed overhead.

Atef Adwan, one of 28 Hamas lawmakers elected in 2006, bought a first-floor apartment five years ago for his second wife, and spent much of the summer there with her and their two young sons, fearing the Israelis would target his home in the border town of Beit Hanoun. (They did not.)

“There was concern and people are still concerned” about Hamas presence in the building, said Wael Abu Najja, 47, who lived on the ninth floor, “but they can’t talk about this publicly.”

Most of the tower was taken by leaders of Hamas’s rival, Fatah, men who continued to receive salaries but had not actually worked in the security services or the president’s office since 2007, when Hamas routed Fatah from power in Gaza.

So when residents received mobile-phone evacuation orders that Saturday from an Arabic-speaking Israeli soldier named Mousa, they never expected the entire tower to be destroyed. Many fled without the emergency bags that Gazans keep packed with cash, documents and mementos.

“Hamas is everywhere — in every building, they have an apartment,” said Mohammed Owda H. Abu Mathkour, the wealthy mogul who runs the Zafer contracting company and lives in the villa across Safed Street from the fallen tower. “Israel has no right to destroy the whole building because of one apartment.”

Mr. Mathkour said he could rebuild the tower in eight months for $3 million, a fraction of the $7 billion the Palestinian leadership estimates is required to reconstruct some 11,000 demolished and more than 50,000 damaged structures across Gaza. Besides the money, the massive effort depends on a new arrangement for the import of cement and steel, which Israel has restricted for fear it would be used to manufacture rockets or build tunnels like those militants used to repeatedly penetrate Israeli territory this summer.

First, though, there is the rubble — 2.5 million tons of it. Removal alone could cost $10 million, and the minister of public works said his five bulldozers are not enough to tackle the task.

The pile that was Zafer 4 is perhaps three stories high, topped by a Palestinian flag that Mr. Saqalla’s 17-year-old son, Shafiq, planted with pride. Mattresses and bedclothes peek out between the sandwiches of concrete floors — or ceilings?

There is an Angry Birds notebook and papers from an engineering course explaining “probability theory” and “The Normal Distribution.” A flower pot. A green suitcase, a mangled bathtub, a cracked microwave. Protruding from the back is a crushed white Kia Sportage that belonged to Mr. Adwan, the Hamas lawmaker.

Zafer was the name of a cousin of Mr. Mathkour’s who died of cancer in an Israeli prison in 1993, the year the company was founded.

Mr. Mathkour said three of his 14 Zafer towers were hit by Israel this summer, including the curved glass No. 9, an office building where Gaza’s first rooftop restaurant opened June 13 (his wife’s birthday). On July 17, he said, a missile hit an interior-ministry antenna on Zafer 9’s roof; over the next two weeks, tank shells sprayed the tower three times.

The Israeli military, in an emailed statement, called Zafer 9 “a hub of Hamas terror activity” that had “been ‘on the radar’ for years” and housed “several senior Hamas members.” The statement said the tower was “struck with precise Air Force fire,” though Mr. Mathkour has the tank shells in his office, and walls on several floors were clearly pockmarked by them.

“They broke my heart when they hit the tower, so I’m trying to break them when I am rebuilding,” said Mr. Mathkour, who reopened the restaurant Sept. 4.

Zafer 4 was a workmanlike tower of two-toned stucco, whose apartments had L-shaped living/dining areas around ample kitchens and larger-than-usual bathrooms. In the early years, security guards and drivers were often stationed outside; so many Palestinian Authority bigwigs lived there that it was nicknamed “Fatah Tower.”

Ghazi al-Jabali, the former Gaza police chief who once challenged Yasir Arafat for the Palestinian presidency, used to own the penthouse where Hamas later set up shop. Abdel Rahman Mustafa Yasin, a major general in the security service, had two linked units on the fourth floor. Mr. Abu Najja’s father, the former deputy Parliament speaker, lived on the first.

Ahmad and Rihad Ibrahim, a young couple with a 5-year-old son and an 8-month-old daughter, paid $50,00 for a seventh-floor unit June 25, bought a beige-and-rose sectional sofa and new curtains, and moved in July 5, their sixth wedding anniversary.

“It was the first time it was written under my name for a property,” said Mr. Ibrahim, 31, who did marketing for an insurance company whose offices were also hit during the war. “The lifetime dream of the Palestinian is to own a home. Now I’m looking for an apartment to rent.”

The summer’s fighting brought residents closer, as most spent day after day inside. With potable water scarce, residents ponied up $140 per apartment to dig a 170-foot well during a temporary cease-fire in August. It was two days later that Mousa, the Arabic speaker from Israel, called to tell them to get out.

Dr. Abu Rayya, on crutches, took the elevator up to the ninth floor, where his mother and brother lived in separate apartments, only to learn they had already left. Ms. Ibrahim, 26, said she almost forgot her baby as she shepherded her husband’s 75-year-old mother and 80-year-old aunt.

In Mr. Mathkour’s beautiful basement, Mousa called again, asking if everyone had evacuated. Residents realized an old woman who could not walk was still inside. Mousa gave them five minutes, and five young men ran back in and carried her out on a plastic chair.

A drone-fired warning missile hit the roof. Mousa called again, and Mr. Mathkour’s wife, Aisha, took the phone.

“She asked him which floor or which apartment are you going to hit,” recalled Mr. Mathkour, who is known as Abu Rani. “He said we’re going to hit the whole building. She said that’s haram — forbidden — she was appealing to him. He said yala yala — let’s go, let’s go — goodbye. She came to me, hey, Abu Rani, they are going to bring down the whole building. I told her he is joking. He wants to terrify you.”

Mr. Ibrahim said he needled Mr. Mathkour about how many bombs it would take to topple the tower. The proud builder said 10. Turned out two did the job.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights considers the attack on Zafer 4 a war crime, and has filed complaints with Israel seeking both compensation for residents and a military-police investigation. The site has become a focal point: A group recently adorned it with 101 children’s artworks — 101 because that is the number Gazans dial in emergencies.

The men sit across the street, in the shade of the “umbrella” of Zafer 1, which was one of Gaza’s first high-rises when it opened in 1994. They are scattered now, at relatives’ homes or in apartments rented for up to double the normal rates.

One afternoon, a teenager told Ramadan Helmi El Saqqa, 58, a retired brigadier general, that there was a unit available in Zafer 1. It was on the 10th floor, just like Mr. El Saqqa’s old place in Zafer 4, which he shared with 10 relatives from three generations.

The unit had windows broken from the blast across the street, and glass littered the floors. He stood on the balcony overlooking the rubble pile. The rent was $600, up from $400 before the war, but it was furnished. “We’re not looking for something to like,” he sighed. “We’re looking for something to contain us.”



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10) Mistrust Lingers as Ferguson Takes New Tack on Fines
By

FERGUSON, Mo. — There were lots of jitters at the Ferguson police clerk’s window this week, as steady streams of drivers with unpaid traffic tickets and pending arrest warrants turned themselves in as part of a new city initiative to repair its frayed relationship with black residents.

They looked around skeptically. “I don’t know if they are going to lock me up,” said Katrina Clemons, who owes almost $800 in fines and penalties from a $250 traffic ticket. “I do not like coming here.”

The drivers came with their citations, thousand-dollar invoices, and tales of racial profiling and exorbitant fees. In the wake of last month’s killing of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer, their frustrations with the police and local courts had boiled over, pressuring elected city officials this week to scale back municipal penalties that had helped fill the city’s coffers even as they had lightened the wallets of the poor.On Tuesday, the City Council decided to abolish fines that are routinely issued if a defendant fails to show up for court, repeal a “failure to appear” law that led to many incarcerations, and give people a month to come forward and void their warrants. It also created a special docket for defendants who have difficulty making payments on outstanding fines and moved to establish a civilian review board to oversee the Police Department, which is under investigation by the Justice Department’s civil rights division.

Residents and experts said that while the actions were significant, the problems many drivers face across St. Louis County, where a patchwork of municipal courts enforce an array of ordinances, were so widespread that Ferguson alone could not fix them. Many African-Americans, who are pulled over at higher rates than whites, face traffic fines that, if not paid, can land them in jail.

So the trust level was not high in court and at the police clerk’s window in Ferguson this week.

“I believe it’s all a lie,” said Zurich Bruckner, a 39-year-old construction worker who went to traffic court on Thursday night to fight a $102 ticket he got because of a blue light near the license plate of his 1993 Lexus. “That’s extortion.”

Mr. Bruckner explained: The light was not broken; it was blue. “That’s an extraordinary amount to pay for a bulb that’s working,” he said.

Mr. Bruckner recently served two 90-day sentences for traffic fines in another city and for failing to pay child support, so he made sure to show up to court in Ferguson to avoid problems. The charge was dismissed but he had to pay $25 in court costs.

Municipal fines are the city’s second-highest source of revenue. Last year Ferguson drivers paid $12,400 in fines for driving cars with tinted windows. They paid another $4,905 for loud music coming out of their cars. The biggest slice of that revenue comes from people, like Ms. Clemons, who drive without insurance. In 2013, the city of just 21,000 people made almost $287,000 on that infraction alone.

After missing a court date, Ms. Clemons became one of the nearly 12,000 people with pending arrest warrants in Ferguson. Her husband, Grover, had one, too.

Mr. Clemons got a ticket for an expired license plate, but he showed up in court with $80, not $100, so a warrant was issued. “I did not miss my court date,” Mr. Clemons said. “I was $20 short.”

The city issued about 25,000 arrest warrants last year — three per household, according to Arch City Defenders, a nonprofit legal group that recently published a scathing report on the issue.
To combat the notion that the city deliberately issued tickets to finance its operations, the Council on Tuesday agreed to limit how much of the city’s general fund can come from municipal fines.

“Are we proactively trying to pull people over to raise money? I think the numbers don’t bear that out,” Mayor James Knowles III said in an interview. “There is a review being done of the courts in the area. We are hoping to get in front of it. We hope to become a model.”

Mr. Knowles said he had asked other city mayors to join him in making reforms, but he had not “gotten any takers yet.”

Alexes Harris, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Washington, said it was becoming more common for cities to issue harsh court fines.

“Ferguson is not an outlier,” she said. “This is happening everywhere.”

She and the Arch City Defenders worry that the changes do not go far enough, because people still have to pay off the steep fines.

Mr. Knowles and the City Council sat stone-faced for three hours on Tuesday night as resident after resident vented about racial profiling and police harassment. They heard from Markese Mull, a 39-year-old father of three who told how his traffic fines climbed to $2,000 because the municipal court would not allow him to pay them in $50 installments.

His $600 fine for driving without a license more than tripled and landed him in jail twice, he said. On Friday, he went to the police station and put down $100.

“The pressure of Mike Brown is on their heads and all they stuff they do is coming out,” Mr. Mull said, referring to the 18-year-old who was killed Aug. 9 by a Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson. A private autopsy showed Mr. Brown was struck six times, including once on the top of his head. The police assert that Officer Wilson felt he was being threatened by Mr. Brown, but witnesses have said that the teenager appeared to be surrendering when he was killed.

The episode touched off weeks of unrest and revealed years of resentment toward local law enforcement.

“They act like we don’t know our rights or we can’t find out what they are,” said Sophia Jones, who cleared a warrant on Thursday.

She cut the conversation short and scurried out of the lobby. “I am nervous being in this vicinity, because I’ve been in that jail so many times.”
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11) Cuba Sending Medical Teams to fight Ebola
By Portia Siegelbaum
CBS News
September 12, 2014, 3:11 PM
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cuba-sending-medical-teams-to-fight-ebola/

HAVANA -- Members of a Cuban medical brigade will begin arriving in Ebola-struck Sierra Leone at the beginning of October.

Cuba's Public Health Minister Roberto Morales announced today. He said the 165-member team will include 62 doctors and 103 nurses. All, he said, have more than 15 years' experience and have previously served in medical cooperation missions abroad.

The Cubans will make up the largest contingent of foreign health care workers committed thus far to the fight against Ebola in West Africa.

The region is experiencing the world's worst Ebola epidemic ever with the death toll topping 2,400, according to the World Health Organization.


Morales spoke in Geneva where he met with WHO director general Margaret Chan, who recently visited Cuba and met with President Raul Castro.

There are currently 4,000 Cuban health workers -- 2,500 of them doctors -- providing services in 32 African countries. However, the group going to Sierra Leone will be the first to work in a country where Ebola is present.

There are no Ebola cases in Cuba, according to public health ministry sources. But the country is taking stringent precautions with medical personnel working in all African countries.

Doctor Alberto Duran, head of the Ministry's department of transmittable diseases, recently told reporters that while no Cuban health care workers are currently located in countries where there is an outbreak of Ebola, their health is being systematically checked. This is also true for Cuban diplomats in at-risk locations in Africa and all will be subjected to a 30-day quarantine before being allowed to travel.

He noted that there are no direct flights from Africa to Cuba but authorities have applied strict preventive measures at the island's air and sea ports.

In the same television appearance, Dr. Jorge Perez, head of Cuba's Tropical Medicine Institute, said that special measures were also being taken to contain Ebola should a case manage to bypass security and enter the country.

These measures include the construction of special installations where patients could be isolated.

Public Health Ministry figures show there are some 50,000 Cuban health personnel, half of them doctors, currently working in 65 countries around the world. For decades this oft-time free medical outreach has been described as medical diplomacy. It has gained Cuba friends and respect in many developing countries, as well as kudos from WHO and other international organizations.

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12) U.S. to Commit Up to 3,000 Troops to Fight Ebola in Africa
By , and

WASHINGTON — Under pressure to do more to confront the Ebola outbreak sweeping across West Africa, President Obama on Tuesday is to announce an expansion of military and medical resources to combat the spread of the deadly virus, administration officials said.

The president will go beyond the 25-bed portable hospital that Pentagon officials said they would establish in Liberia, one of the three West African countries ravaged by the disease, officials said. Mr. Obama will offer help to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia in the construction of as many as 17 Ebola treatment centers in the region, with about 1,700 treatment beds.Senior administration officials said Monday night that the Department of Defense would open a joint command operation in Monrovia, Liberia, to coordinate the international effort to combat the disease. The military will also provide engineers to help construct the additional treatment facilities and will send enough people to train up to 500 health care workers a week to deal with the crisis.

Officials said the military expected to send as many as 3,000 people to Africa to take charge of responding to the Ebola outbreak.

“We all recognize that this is such an extraordinary, serious epidemic,” a senior official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of Mr. Obama’s public remarks on Tuesday. The efforts should turn the tide from a high-transmission epidemic that continues to grow every day, other officials said.

The White House plan would increase the number of doctors and other health care workers being sent to West Africa from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other American agencies, officials said.

The American government will also provide 400,000 Ebola home health and treatment kits to Liberia, as well as tens of thousands of kits intended to test whether people have the disease. The Pentagon will provide some logistical equipment for health workers going to West Africa and what administration officials described as “command and control” organizational assistance on how to coordinate the overall relief work. The Army Corps of Engineers is expected to be part of the Defense Department effort.

Administration officials did not say how soon the 17 treatment centers would be built in Liberia; officials there, as well as international aid officials, have said that 1,000 beds are needed in Liberia in the next week alone to contain a disease that has been spreading exponentially.

Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease and public health expert at Vanderbilt University, praised the plan, calling it a “major commitment,” and said it was more extensive than he had expected.

“It seems coordinated and coherent,” Dr. Schaffner said. He added that “the real core” was the Defense Department’s logistical support “because the heart of any kind of epidemic containment concept is getting the goods to the right place, putting up the institution.”

Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said the plan was an important first step, “but it is clearly not enough.” The focus on Liberia, he said, is too limited, and more help should be extended to Sierra Leone and Guinea, the other countries at the center of the worst Ebola outbreak ever recorded.

“We should see all of West Africa now as one big outbreak,” Dr. Osterholm said. “It’s very clear we have to deal with all the areas with Ebola. If the U.S. is not able or not going to do it, that’s all the more reason to say the rest of the world has to do it.”

Dr. Jack Chow, a professor of global health at Carnegie Mellon University, also warned that “the virus does not recognize national borders and will continue to spread where health care is inadequate.”Top White House aides on Monday rejected criticism from African officials, doctors and representatives from aid groups who said the United States had been slow to act in the face of the disease. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said the government, including the C.D.C., had committed more than $100 million since the outbreak started in the early spring.“The C.D.C. has responded commensurate to the seriousness” of the crisis, Mr. Earnest told reporters ahead of a trip Mr. Obama has planned to the agency’s headquarters in Atlanta on Tuesday afternoon. Mr. Earnest called the response “among the largest deployments of C.D.C. personnel ever.”

Senior administration officials conceded that the effort must expand further as the outbreak threatens to spread in Africa and, potentially, beyond the continent. Officials said medical experts in the government were genuinely worried about the possibility of a mutation that could turn the virus into a more contagious sickness that could threaten the United States.

The World Health Organization has issued a dire Ebola warning for Liberia, saying that the number of afflicted patients was increasing exponentially and that all new treatment facilities were overwhelmed, “pointing to a large but previously invisible caseload.” The description of the crisis in Liberia suggested an even more chaotic situation there than had been thought.

Ms. Johnson Sirleaf, who has implored Mr. Obama to do more to help her country battle the disease, traveled over the weekend through Monrovia, the Liberian capital, with the United States ambassador, Deborah R. Malac.

“What is needed is on a scale that is unprecedented,” a senior administration official said in an interview, speaking on the condition of anonymity because she was not allowed by the White House to talk on the record ahead of Mr. Obama’s announcement.

The United States, a second senior administration official said, also plans to send 400,000 home protective kits to the four counties in Liberia that have been hardest hit by Ebola. The kits will include protective gear for family members, gloves and masks, disinfectants, and fever-reducing drugs.

That is worrisome, Dr. Osterholm said, because it is difficult to care for Ebola patients without becoming infected, and there is no proof that the kits will work. “We are going to endanger family members more by providing the kits,” he said.

Helene Cooper and Michael D. Shear reported from Washington, and Denise Grady from New York.

 

 
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13) Number of Prisoners in U.S. Grew Slightly in 2013, Report Finds
By

Breaking three consecutive years of decline, the number of people in state and federal prisons climbed slightly in 2013, according to a report released Tuesday, a sign that deeper changes in sentencing practices will be necessary if the country’s enormous prison population is to be significantly reduced.

The report by the Justice Department put the prison population last year at 1,574,700, an increase of 4,300 over the previous year, yet below its high of 1,615,487 in 2009. In what criminologists called an encouraging sign, the number of federal prisoners showed a modest drop for the first time in years.

But the federal decline was more than offset by a jump in inmates at state prisons. The report, some experts said, suggested that policy changes adopted by many states, such as giving second chances to probationers and helping nonviolent drug offenders avoid prison, were limited in their reach.“The existing reforms can only take us so far,” said Steven Raphael, an expert in criminal justice at the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Raphael said the decline in the state prison population in recent years was driven largely by a steep drop in California, which, under court mandates to reduce overcrowding, sent more nonviolent offenders to community programs or jails and slowed the reimprisonment of parole violators. After initial declines, however, California’s prison population has leveled out.Across the country, drug courts sending addicts to treatment programs rather than jail have proved valuable but are directed mainly at offenders who would not have served much prison time anyway, said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a private group in Washington.

At the same time, Mr. Mauer said, more life sentences and other multidecade terms have been imposed than ever, offsetting modest gains in the treatment of low-level offenders.

“Just to halt the year-after-year increase in prisoners since the 1970s was an achievement,” said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri – St. Louis, and that shift came about because of changes in state policies and a drop in crime.

But experts say it will take more far-reaching and politically contentious measures to markedly reduce the country’s rate of incarceration, which is far above that in European nations and has imposed especially great burdens on African-Americans.

Mandatory sentences and so-called truth-in-sentencing laws that limit parole have not only put more convicts in costly prison cells for longer stretches but also have reduced the discretion of officials to release them on parole.

Given the evidence that few people are involved in criminal activity beyond their mid-30s, some experts are also asking whether it makes sense to keep aging inmates behind bars rather than under community supervision.

The size of the federal prison population is closely tied to federal drug laws and penalties. A majority of the 215,866 offenders in federal prisons in 2013 were there on drug charges, often serving lengthy sentences under get-tough policies that have increasingly come under question.

Recent changes in federal drug enforcement — a 2010 law to reduce disparities in sentences for crimes involving crack as opposed to powdered cocaine, and a directive from Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. calling for less stringent charges against nonviolent offenders — are too new to have had a large impact in 2013.

The drop by 2,000 in federal prisoners last year may, however, reflect other changes in responses to drug offenders, Dr. Rosenfeld said. Just as many local police forces eased up on arrests and prosecutions for marijuana possession, he said, prosecutors may have become less likely to bring federal indictments for less serious marijuana-related crimes.

A Smarter Sentencing Act, which is now before the Congress and has won bipartisan support, would cut some of the federal government’s mandatory drug sentences by half, make the reduced penalties for crack-cocaine violations retroactive and give judges more discretion over sentencing.


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14) Utah Victim Was Fleeing, Autopsy Finds
By JENNIFER DOBNER

SARATOGA SPRINGS, Utah — Independent autopsy findings suggest that a 22-year-old black man was running from the police in Utah when he was shot six times and killed last Wednesday, and not lunging at officers with a samurai sword, as official police reports said, a lawyer for the man’s family said Monday.

The man, Darrien Nathaniel Hunt, whose mother is white and father is black, was shot and killed outside a convenience store in Saratoga Springs, 35 miles south of Salt Lake City. His family contends that a sword he was carrying was a toylike decorative object with a rounded tip that posed no real threat. They have also said they believe the shooting was racially motivated.

But law enforcement officials said Monday that the samurai sword was both real and dangerous, with a two-and-a-half-foot steel blade, and that Mr. Hunt’s race played no role in the officers’ actions. The authorities said Mr. Hunt was shot after he lunged at two police officers who had responded to a 911 caller’s report of a man brandishing a sword in front of a credit union.

Neither the Saratoga Springs police nor the Utah County attorney’s office, which is investigating, have disclosed details of Mr. Hunt’s verbal interaction with the police, or said how many shots officers fired.

Tim Taylor, the chief deputy of the Utah County attorney’s office, said in a phone interview on Monday that he did not know why Mr. Hunt’s family was making such allegations. “I’m sure they are distraught and upset,” he said. “But we’re trying to gather facts and evidence here. Our preliminary investigation indicates that race did not play a role in this incident.”

Autopsy findings from Utah’s state medical examiner will not be available for about six weeks, Mr. Taylor said. “With regard to this independent autopsy, I don’t know who did that and we haven’t been provided with it, so it’s hard for us to comment on something we haven’t seen,” he said.

According to Randall K. Edwards, the Hunt family’s lawyer, the family paid for an autopsy that found that Mr. Hunt had suffered six bullet wounds — two to a leg, and one in a hand, an elbow, a shoulder and mid-chest. All of the bullets entered Mr. Hunt’s body from the back, Mr. Edwards said. “It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile that with the reports that he was lunging at them,” he added.

“They killed my son because he’s black,” Mr. Hart’s mother, Susan Hunt, told The Deseret News, a Salt Lake City newspaper, a few days after the shooting. “No white boy with a little sword would they shoot while he’s running away.”

The episode comes amid continuing unrest in Ferguson, Mo., over the fatal shooting last month of Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American man, by a white officer. His death has prompted a series of protests, some of them violent, and an outcry over the disparate treatment of blacks by law enforcement and the criminal justice system.

According to census data, Saratoga Springs’s population of almost 23,000 is about 93 percent white, and less than 1 percent African-American. Until recently, the city had Utah’s only black mayor, Mia Love, who is Haitian-American.

A weekend vigil for Mr. Hunt drew about 150 people. But Mr. Edwards said he was unaware of any specific or organized call for an evaluation of problems between Utah law enforcement and the state’s black residents, who make up about 1 percent of the state’s population of 2.9 million.

“There’s obviously going to be a race issue any time that you’ve got a dead black kid and a white cop that shot him,” Mr. Edwards said. “But Saratoga Springs is not Ferguson. It’s a different demographic and a different feel.”
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15) Judge Convicts Police Officers in 2011 Assault on a Teenager
By

Two police officers were convicted on Monday of misdemeanor assault in the 2011 beating of a teenager in an alley near their Bronx police precinct station house, the district attorney’s office said.

The two officers, Jose Ocasio and Joseph Murphy, were seen on surveillance video punching and kicking the teenager, Tyre Davis, shortly after 3 a.m. on Feb. 18, 2011.

The video, uncovered in the course of an Internal Affairs Bureau investigation into the assault, helped lead to the conviction of both Officer Ocasio, 31, and Officer Murphy, 29, on charges of attempted assault, a misdemeanor, and harassment, a violation.

The Bronx district attorney, Robert T. Johnson, will ask for probation for the officers at their sentencing next month, his office said.

Earlier on the night of the assault, Mr. Davis, who was 17 at the time, had been arrested and charged with disorderly conduct stemming from blocking street traffic, prosecutors said.

Inside the 46th Precinct station house, near the Grand Concourse, Mr. Davis argued with both Officer Ocasio, who arrested him that night, and Officer Murphy, who prosecutors said had had contact with Mr. Davis the week before.

After Mr. Davis was given a summons and released, the officers followed him down the block and around a corner into an alley at 210 East 181st Street. It was there that a surveillance video camera recorded the assault, which left the teenager with swelling and abrasions to his face and head. He returned home and told his mother about the attack; she reported it to the police.

The officers’ case was decided in a bench trial by Judge Julio Rodriguez III. The Police Department could fire the officers, but unlike a felony conviction, that is not an automatic outcome of the criminal conviction in this case. A police spokesman could not say yet what would happen.


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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND
ONGOING CAMPAIGNS


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Free the Whistle-Blowers

An Appeal from Daniel Ellsberg

July 21, 2014 by Daniel Ellsberg

Time Magazine coversNSA 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.
http://www.privatemanning.org/pardonpetition




Help us continue to cover 100%
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
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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

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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!

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!


Two campaigns that need funds – Please donate!
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
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What you Didn't know about NYPD's Stop and Frisk program !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rfJHx0Gj6ys#at=990

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Egypt: The Next President -- a little Egyptian boy speaks his remarkable mind!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeDm2PrNV1I

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Wealth Inequality in America

[This is a must see to believe video...bw]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QPKKQnijnsM

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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)

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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

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WITNESS GAZA

http://www.witnessgaza.com/

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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]

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Prison vs School: The Tour 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogmtAQlp9HI


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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

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Exceptional art from the streets of Oakland:

Oakland Street Dancing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQRRnAhmB58

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqH9s5mwTEY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atyTZ8prhCg

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NYC RESTAURANT WORKERS DANCE & SING FOR A WAGE HIKE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_s8e1R6rG8&feature=player_embedded

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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

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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


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1000 year of war through the world

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiG8neU4_bs&feature=share

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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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