Sunday, January 04, 2015

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, SUNDAY, JANUARY 4, 2015


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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:

A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

B. ARTICLES IN FULL



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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS



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JOIN IN CELEBRATING THE RELEASE OF THE CUBAN 5 and NORMALIZATION OF CUBA US RELATIONS

Sunday JANUARY 4TH @ La Pena Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave.,  Berkeley     
$5-10 suggested donation

EVENTS:

3:00 - 5:30 Rumba jam session with live drumming

5:30 - 9:00 Outstanding Mexican cuisine of Los Cilantros and a special Cuban dish

6:30 pm Program of brief statements and artistic presentations

7:45 pm Dance a la Cubana to celebrate our 54 years of efforts to make this happen!!!!!!!

SPONSORS

International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
National Committee to Free the Cuban 5
La Peña Cultural Center
Socially Responsible Enterprise/ Local Development in Cuba  (SRELDC)
La Raza Chronicles ( KPFA)
Richmond Regla FriendshipComm.
Berkeley - Palma Soriano Sister City Assoc.

Medicc Global
Eco Cuba Network
The Literacy Project/ Maestra
Global Exchange
San Jose Peace & Justice Center
Human Agenda
Socialist Action
Socialist Workers Party/Bayview Library
--
Eric Leenson, President
*SOL² ECONOMICS*
Responsible Enterprise *SOL*utions and *SOL*idarity in the Americas
www.soleconomics.com

--
Eric Leenson, President
*SOL² ECONOMICS*
Responsible Enterprise *SOL*utions and *SOL*idarity in the Americas
www.soleconomics.com


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Peña Nieto "not welcome" in Washington, DC PDF Print E-mail
Displaying barack_enrique.jpg PROTEST AGAINST ENRIQUE PEÑA NIETO'S VISIT TO WASHINGTON, DC 

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Enrique Peña Nieto, the President of Mexico, has been invited by Barack Obama to visit the White House on Tuesday, January 6, 2015. Join UStired2, SOA Watch, Mexicanos Sin Fronteras, and others in Washington DC to denounce the use of U.S. taxpayer money for the continued militarization and violence pepretuated by the U.S. and Mexican governments in the name of the "Drug War".

This invitation by President Obama comes in the middle of a crisis of legitimacy of the Peña Nieto government as 100s of thousands of Mexicans have marched in the streets to oppose the Drug War after the enforced disappearances of 43 students from Ayotzinapa in Guerrero state. The Ayotzinapa 43 have become a symbol of the over 100,000 murdered and 25,000 disappeared in the last 8 years since the escalation and increased militarization of the Drug War by the U.S. and Mexican governments. It is a shameless exhibition of the open support of Peña Nieto's Narco-Government and a slap in the face of the Mexican people in their rightful clamor for security, wellbeing, peace, democracy, and true justice.

THE MASSACRE IN IGUALA AND DISAPPEARANCE OF 43 TEACHING STUDENTS FROM AYOTZINAPA IS JUST ONE AMONG MANY STATE CRIMES...
In spite of the international outcry, Obama and his administration continue to support the outrageously corrupt and criminal government of Peña Nieto with millions of dollars through Plan Mexico. Therefore, the United States and Obama are also responsible for the current tragedy in Mexico.

As part of the mobilizations in Mexico and in solidarity with all victims of the Mexican government, including the 43 disappeared students from Ayotzinapa and their families, SOA Watch, USTired2, and  MEXICAN@S SIN FRONTERAS (in coordination with other groups) call for bringing Mexicans abroad, our friends in solidarity with Mexico and the people of the United States, organizations and social movements to participate together in a Day of Protest against Enrique Peña Nieto's visit in the United States.

We invite to peaceful demonstrations all across the US, in front of embassies and consulates in other countries as well as in Mexico, because:

THEY TOOK THEM ALIVE AND WE WANT THEM BACK ALIVE!
JOIN US IN WASHINGTON, D C!

The protest will take place on Tuesday, January 6, 2015 in Lafayette Square in front of the White House (1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500) starting at 10:00 AM.

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SHUT DOWN CREECH!

Mass Mobilization to Stop Drone Wars!

A Convergence For Peace in the Nevada Desert

Join us March 4-6, 2015 at Creech Air Force Base, Indian Springs, Nevada, for a national mobilization of nonviolent resistance to shut down killer drone operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan,Yemen, Somalia, and everywhere. Sponsored by CODEPINK: Women for Peace, Nevada Desert Experience , Veterans For Peace, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and Voices for Creative Nonviolence. CODEPINK will also hold vigils daily on March 2nd and 3rd, prior to the official beginning of this Creech Convergence For Peace, and welcomes everyone to join them.


In 2005, Creech Air Force Base secretly became the first U.S. base in the country to carry out illegal, remotely controlled assassinations using the MQ-1 Predator drones, and in 2006, the more advanced Reaper drones were added to its arsenal.  Creech drone personnel sit behind computers in the desert north of Las Vegas and kill "suspects" thousands of miles away.  Recent independent research indicates that the identity of only one out of 28 victims of U.S. drone strikes is known beforehand. Though officials deny it, the majority of those killed by drones are civilians. In 2014, it was leaked that the CIA's criminal drone assassination program, officially a separate operation from the Air Force's, has been piloted all along by Creech's super-secret Squadron 17. 


Since 2009 dozens of activists have been arrested for allegedly trespassing at Creech, in attempts to stop the indiscriminate killing and burning of innocent people by drones.  At the trial of the "Creech 14," the first Americans prosecuted for trespass at a drone base, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark testified that "to have a baby burn to death because of a 'no trespass'  sign would be poor public policy, to put it mildly."  In a time of burning children, the "no trespass" signs attached to the fences that protect the crimes perpetrated with drones are not legitimate, and they do not command our obedience.  After all, it is the U.S. military that is guilty of lethal trespassing.


The US drone program is rapidly proliferating as air bases are being converted to drone bases across the U.S. and abroad, but Creech remains the primary air base in U.S. state-sponsored global terrorism. Creech is where the killer drone program started--it is where we shall end it.


We must put an end to this desecration of our Mother Earth and all creatures who inhabit it.

We must put an end to the dehumanization of lives from Ferguson to Palestine to Pakistan.

We must close all foreign U.S. military bases.  Money for human needs. 

We must put an end to drone warfare, drone surveillance, and global militarization.

We must...
SHUT CREECH DOWN! 
More details to come soon!

Sign up on facebook https://www.facebook.com/events/1525740921010540/?context=create&previousaction=create&source=49&sid_create=3742154553#

Or contact:

Toby Blomé of Code Pink, 510-215-5974 (h)

Brian Terrell of VCNV and NDE,   773-853-1886

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Save the Date - UNAC National Conference, May 8 - 10, 2015


UNAC is the major national antiwar coalition in the U.S. today.  The existence of a United National Antiwar Coalition is vital and we need your financial support to continue our work and to expand.

With U.S. wars today accelerating and expanding globally in various forms – from drone attacks on Yemen and Pakistan, never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, support to neo-fascists in Ukraine, and proliferating Africom forces to threats of war for regime change in Syria – we have an obligation to do whatever is possible to educate the public and to take action to stop the carnage.

The wars abroad are connected to global warming with most wars fought over energy resources with the U.S. war machine as the largest polluter.

At home, we see hugely growing income inequality, a militarized and racist police force, mass incarceration of Blacks and Latinos, and a massive police state apparatus that includes global surveillance and laws to quell dissent.

In spite of the trillions spent by the U.S. corporate war government and its controlled media propaganda machine to keep us in check, the people are fighting back.  We’ve been inspired and strengthened by the hundreds of thousands of new activists taking to the streets of this country to stop police brutality, to build Occupy encampments, to fight for decent wages, to demand full rights for immigrants, to win marriage equality, to end global warming, to demonstrate solidarity with the besieged people of Gaza, and to protest unending U.S. wars.

UNAC has played an active, often leadership role, in all of the antiwar and social justice movements of our time.  While most activists are focused on their particular issues, the most vital role we can play is to connect the issues to their source.  All of the injustices and crimes we protest, stem from the imperialist insatiable drive for expanding profit and control – and the U.S. is the largest imperialist power militarily and economically.  When there should be plenty for all, only the obscenely wealthy benefit while the rest of the 99% struggle just to survive.

Some of our recent major accomplishments:
·       Initiated protest against NATO and 15,000 marched in Chicago in 2012.
·        Called for immediate actions against threats of war and coups directed at Libya, Iran, No. Korea, Africa, Latin America,    Ukraine, and maintaining the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
·        Organized a national tour for Afghan leader Malalai Joya.
·        Sent representatives to international NATO protests and conferences.
·        Serve on the Board of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms to act against Islamophobia , racist attacks on Muslims, and attacks on our civil liberties.
·        Participated in national efforts to organize anti-drone actions.
·        Campaigned to defend victims of government repression who speak out and expose Washington’s crimes, including Rasmea Odeh, Mumia abu Jamal, Lynne Stewart, Chelsea Manning, and the Midwest activists targeted by the FBI.
·        Produced national educational conference calls featuring experts on topics such as U.S. intervention in Africa, the destruction of Libya, the developing wars in Syria, and others.
·        Built an antiwar contingent in the massive New York City Climate Change march and built Climate Change action in other cities around the country.
·        Helped organize protests against Israel’s attack on Gaza
·        Helped organize protests against the murder of Blacks by white police and the militarization of the police forces in the U.S.

UNAC has a history of bringing hundreds of activists together at large national conferences to learn about the issues of the day, to discuss the way forward and to vote on an Action Program for the coming period.

The UNAC conference next May will bring activists from all the movements in motion to cross-fertilize these struggles.  We are particularly dedicated to bringing young activists together to support and learn from each other.  For this, we need your help to offer subsidies to leaders from Ferguson, from the border wars in the southwest, from the Native Americans who are fighting against the pipelines ruining their lands, from the Students for Justice in Palestine, and many others.

Please give generously so that we can continue our work to bring harmony and justice to the peoples of this earth.

You can send a check to UNAC at PO Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054 or click the button below to contribute on-line with your credit or debit card.

 https://www.unacpeace.org/

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On Behalf of Wadiya Jamal and
Mumia Abu-Jamal,
A Contribution Request

The message following is a forward from:
Rachel Wolkenstein
Sister, Advocate and Friend of the Extended Family

Samiya “Goldii” Abdullah, a daughter of Wadiya Jamal and Mumia Abu-Jamal died on December 17, 2014 after years of battle with breast cancer. Samiya would have been 37 this January 9 and is survived by two young daughters, Aiyanah and Aaiyah, affectionately known as Dolly and Puddy, ages eleven and four.

Samiya was a remarkable woman. She was accomplished as a musician, an activist and rapper on social justice, particularly in the struggle for Mumia’s freedom. She devoured books and education. During her long, often debilitating illness, Samiya finished her Masters Degree in School and Mental Health Counseling from the University of Pennsylvania with honors. She was dedicated to her young daughters and wanted them to grow up loving each other as much as she did her brothers and sisters. And she wanted her daughters to see Mumia (called “Pop Pop” by them) walk out of prison and home with their grandmother, Wadiya.

Samiya's active fight for Mumia's freedom, began at the young age of four. Mumia wrote about this in “The Visit” printed in Live from Death Row in 1994. This was recreated in the movie "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary."

"My father is still considered to be a dangerous individual … his mind is what they fear, there is over- whelming evidence that would exonerate him of his conviction.
"He is an innocent man and the commonwealth has always known this, but being too Black, too smart, and too strong … The government will silence anyone that possesses the power to open the minds of the people."   
                     —Goldii

Samiya’s strength, character and spirit were nurtured by Wadiya and Mumia and are being passed on to her daughters.

On behalf of Wadiya Jamal and Mumia Abu-Jamal, this is a request for funds to assist Wadiya for care of her granddaughters, Dolly and Puddy.

A financial contribution of any amount will be greatly appreciated.

Please send checks or money orders, made payable to Wadiya Jamal:

Wadiya Jamal
P.O. Box 19404
Kingsessing Postal Station
Philadelphia, PA 19143-9998

In loving memory of Samiya and in tribute to her fierce fight for life,

Rachel Wolkenstein
Sister, Advocate and Friend of the Extended Family


Hear Mumia’s Words (and Song) played before the Janazah for Samiya on December 20, 2014: “Samiya Abdullah Makes Transition”:

http://prisonradio.org/sites/default/files/audio/uploads/SamiyaAbdullahMakesTransition12-19-2.mp3?download=1

 - This fwd message is from:
The Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal,
PO Box 16222, Oakland CA 94610. www.laboractionmumia.org

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Cops vs Free Speech
How police are threatening Mumia, convicts, teachers, and all of us with censorship as well as bullets!


• The New “gag” law in Pennsylvania that seeks to silence prisoners. This law, cobbled together in days following Mumia’s recorded presentation to a commencement ceremony at Goddard College, was explicitly designed to “shut him up.” The targets of this blatantly unconstitutional law, however, include all prisoners convicted of violent crimes!

• A Law Suit has been filed to stop the “gag” law from being implemented!  Support for this effort is critical. Donations will go toward the fight against the “gag” law.

• The  suppression of the “Urban Dreams” web site by the Oakland School Board. This teacher-created site of voluntary curriculum ideas included one comparing the suppression of Mumia’s commentaries with censorship of Martin Luther King’s later writings. While the Superintendent of Schools has now promised to restore the site, we must remain vigilant!

• Both of these measures—the “gag” law in Pennsylvania, and the suppression of the Urban Dreams website—were taken at the behest of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP)!  The FOP is a highly politicized organization which seeks to silence social critics such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, and dictate the curricula in schools! The FOP and Democrat/Republican politicians will continue their attempts at intimidation and suppression, unless we act!

• Ferguson shows that black and Latino youth particularly are threatened by militarized and politicized police who shoot first and ask questions later, and frame their targets for crimes they didn’t commit. Chief targets have included Native American Activists like Leonard Peltier, militant working-class activists, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Black Panthers and Martin Luther King. Mumia is currently a top target to silence.  But anyone and everyone can be on their enemies list, and in their cross-hairs!  Fight back now!

Donate Now
to fight the “gag” law!
go to:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protect-freedom-of-speech-keep-mumia-on-the-air

The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222  •  Oakland CA  •  510.763.2347
www.laboractionmumia.org

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Support Prison Radio

$35 is the yearly membership.

$50 will get you a beautiful tote bag (you can special order a yoga mat bag, just call us).

$100 will get the DVD "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary"

$300 will bring one essay to the airwaves.

$1000 (or $88.83 per month) will make you a member of our Prison Radio Freedom Circle. Take a moment and Support Prison Radio

Luchando por la justicia y la libertad,

Noelle Hanrahan, Director, Prison Radio

PRISON RADIO

P.O. Box 411074 San Francisco, CA 94141

www.prisonradio.org
info@prisonradio.org 415-706-5222

Pennsylvania legislators are trying to stop prisoners from speaking about their ideas and experiences. Last week, PA Representative Mike Vereb introduced a bill (HB2533) called the “Revictimization Relief Act,” which would allow victims, District Attorneys, and the Attorney General to sue people who have been convicted of “personal injury” crimes for speaking out publicly if it causes the victim of the crime “mental anguish.”

The bill was written in response to political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal’s commencement speech at Goddard College, and is a clear attempt to silence Mumia and other prisoners and formerly incarcerated people. We believe that this legislation is not actually an attempt to help victims, but a cynical move by legislators to stop people in prison from speaking out against an unjust system.

While to us this seems like a clear violation of the first amendment, unfortunately the PA General Assembly doesn’t appear to agree, and they have fast-tracked the bill for approval and amended another bill (SB508) to include the same language. The legislation could be voted on as early as Wednesday.

If this bill passes, it will be a huge blow to the movement against mass incarceration. People inside prisons play a leading role in these struggles, and their perspectives, analysis, and strategies are essential to our work. Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people who write books, contribute to newspapers, or even write for our Voices from the Inside section would run the risk of legal consequences just for sharing their ideas.

That’s why we are asking you to take action TUESDAY OCTOBER 14 by calling Pennsylvania lawmakers to tell them that prisoners should not be denied the right to speak.

Please call your legislators and demand that they vote NO on HB2533 and SB508. You can look up contact information at http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/.

We are also asking folks to call the following Senate leaders and ask them to stop the bill from moving forward:

Senate Majority Whip Pat Browne  (717) 787-1349

Senate Minority Whip Anthony Williams  (717) 787-5970

Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi  (717) 787-4712

Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa (717) 787-7683

Not sure what to say on the phone? Click here for a sample call script.

Want to write a letter to your legislators, or looking for more talking points? Click here for more info!

- See more at: http://decarceratepa.info/freespeech#sthash.TtdN3AkI.dpuf


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COURAGE TO RESIST
http://couragetoresist.org/

New Action- write letters to DoD officials requesting clemency for Chelsea!

November 24, 2014 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network
mchugh_md
Secretary of the Army John McHugh
President Obama has delegated review of Chelsea Manning’s clemency appeal to individuals within the Department of Defense.
Please write them to express your support for heroic WikiLeaks’ whistle-blower former US Army intelligence analyst PFC Chelsea Manning’s release from military prison.
It is important that each of these authorities realize the wide support that Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning enjoys worldwide. They need to be reminded that millions understand that Manning is a political prisoner, imprisoned for following her conscience. While it is highly unlikely that any of these individuals would independently move to release Manning, a reduction in Manning’s outrageous 35-year prison sentence is a possibility at this stage.
Take action TODAY – Write letters supporting Chelsea’s clemency petition to the following DoD authorities:
Secretary of the Army John McHugh
101 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-0101
The Judge Advocate General
2200 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-2200
Army Clemency and Parole Board
251 18th St, Suite 385
Arlington, VA 22202-3532
Directorate of Inmate Administration
Attn: Boards Branch
U.S. Disciplinary Barracks
1301 N. Warehouse Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-2304
Suggestions for letters send to DoD officials:
  • The letter should focus on your support for Chelsea Manning, and especially why you believe justice will be served if Chelsea Manning’s sentence is reduced.  The letter should NOT be anti-military as this will be unlikely to help
  • A suggested message: “Chelsea Manning has been punished enough for violating military regulations in the course of being true to her conscience.  I urge you to use your authorityto reduce Pvt. Manning’s sentence to time served.”  Beyond that general message, feel free to personalize the details as to why you believe Chelsea deserves clemency.
  • Consider composing your letter on personalized letterhead -you can create this yourself (here are templates and some tips for doing that).
  • A comment on this post will NOT be seen by DoD authorities–please send your letters to the addresses above
This clemency petition is separate from Chelsea Manning’s upcoming appeal before the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year, where Manning’s new attorney Nancy Hollander will have an opportunity to highlight the prosecution’s—and the trial judge’s—misconduct during last year’s trial at Ft. Meade, Maryland.
Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea’s legal fees at this critical stage!
> > > Please donate today! < < <



Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
 Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org

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 B. ARTICLES IN FULL




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1) From the New ‘Annie’ Movie, Lessons on Money and Inequality
By





2) The Big Economic Unknowns of 2015, From
By JUSTIN WOLFERS




3) Crowd Gathers in Brooklyn to Protest a Police Shooting
By DAN GLAUN




4) As Medicaid Rolls Swell, Cuts in Payments to Doctors Threaten Access to Care
By





5) Three Shots From Police Killed Los Angeles [UNARMED] Man, Autopsy Finds
By IAN LOVETT




6) Victims of G.M. Deadly Defect Fall Through Legal Cracks
By and HILARY STOUT





7) Free Reverend Edward Pinkney
National defense campaign building
By Abayomi Azikiwe
San Francisco Bay View, December 23, 2014
http://sfbayview.com/2014/12/national-defense-campaign-building-for-rev-edward-pinkney/




8) Fed Up: Florida Crowd Forms Human Shield to Protect Man Police Try to Arrest for Smoking Marijuana
Signs that citizens have had enough of hyper-aggressive policing abound.
By Zaid Jilani
December 31, 2014
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/fed-florida-crowd-forms-human-shield-protect-man-police-try-arrest-smoking?akid=12639.229473.LDx65Q&rd=1&src=newsletter1029578&t=3




9) Scientists Alter Crops With Techniques Outside Regulators’ Scope
By




10) Despite Thaw, American Base at Guantánamo Still Stings for Cubans
By




11) Three Al Jazeera Journalists Remain in Jail After Egyptian Court Orders a Retrial
By





12) A Look at the Problem of Rape in US Prisons
"More than half of all sexual assaults behind bars are committed by prison staffers, according to the U.S. Department of Justice..."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS




13) Inmate Advocates Worry About Prison-Rape Law's Fate
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

















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1) From the New ‘Annie’ Movie, Lessons on Money and Inequality
By

There will come a point in the next 10 days, after the cabin fever has set in, when the small people you parent, grandparent or otherwise dote on demand to see “Annie.”

You will recall the unfavorable reviews of the newly updated movie musical, or will look them up. You will read of the bad singing and stilted dance numbers. And still you will go, because it’s a children’s holiday after all, and that’s what they want to see.

So how best to make the experience a bit more worthwhile? At its best, the movie suggests some obvious questions about money, materialism and social class. Seeing the film provides an opening to start the sort of meaningful conversations we all want to have at this time of year, when family is often close at hand.

Cue the rolling of the children’s eyes, you say to yourself. Must grown-ups turn everything fun into a teachable moment?

Look, our job is to answer their questions and explain the world to them, even if in this case it’s fictional. And if we think they aren’t noticing the Daddy Warbucks character’s space-age bachelor pad in the sky or wondering about the grand pronouncements about money and yearning by the group-home housemother Miss Hannigan, then we are probably mistaken.

To get some practice myself, I visited a small group of middle school students at Public School/Middle School 279, the Capt. Manuel Rivera Jr. School in the Bronx. I had first met them at a screening for the film; they got to attend as a reward for their perfect attendance, and other good behavior.

Sure enough, they noticed plenty. Like many children their age and younger, they are capable of incredible nuance on these topics. So much so that drawing children out can be a learning experience for grown-ups too.

Here is what we talked about — and the things you might discuss with your younger moviegoing companions as well:

THE POOR There are about 1,110 students at P.S./M.S. 279, and roughly a quarter of them live in shelters. About 40 are foster children, just as Annie is in the new version of the movie. “Our kids are forced to think about things a lot sooner than I was,” said their principal, Jean Dalton Encke, a Bronx native herself.

In the movie’s first scene, Annie presents a report to her classmates about the New Deal, which happened when everyone was poor, and offhandedly declares that the same thing is true today. The half-dozen students I spoke to said that felt true to them and that they identified more with the poor than with the middle class or rich. Still, they defined the lowest rung on the social class ladder in different ways, even among themselves.

“The economy is really rough, and nowadays people are on welfare, Medicaid and Section 8,” said Kiersten Custodio, 13, an eighth grader, referring to the federal housing voucher program. “Poor, to us, means depending on other people for help.”

But the word can also be an insult, hurled as a weapon meant to wound. “Poor means not good enough,” said Fariha Ahmed, 13, an eighth grader. “That people are not living up to expectations and they’re different from you.”

SPLURGES Perhaps the saddest moment in the film is when Miss Hannigan informs the foster children in her care that the worst thing that can happen is for them to get a taste of something good. Once it’s gone, she warns them, then all they’ll be able to taste is its absence.

That may be true. But real children who yearn for things they can’t afford (or things their parents will not buy for them) feel the absence anyway. “I get jealous,” said Sheyra Perez, 12, a seventh grader. “If I want the type of sneaker that just came out, and another person got it, I’ll think that they have more money.”

There is a fairness angle to this, too, and the children said they felt it, while trying not to let it affect how they see their luckier classmates. “It’s not fair that we have to work for things and other people don’t. But at the same time, I’m not jealous,” Kiersten said. “I’m happy for what I have, and I don’t have to hate on you.”

DREAMS When Annie tells her fellow foster children about her desire to find her parents, one of them chides her for her foolishness and adds that an unlimited credit card would be a much better dream.

All of the middle school students were well aware of credit cards and their limits. Kiersten noted that her mother wanted a black card. “Millionaires use them, and they never run out,” she said.

But they listed other dreams when I asked them to conjure up some personal ones that seemed reasonable to them — to be a doctor or an astronaut. And Fariha dismissed the idea that money should be the central driving force. “Sometimes even money gets tedious,” she said. Instead, she wants power. “If you have power, that means nobody can intimidate you.”

PHONES About 75 percent of the students at P.S./M.S. 279 have mobile phones, but only one of the six members of the perfect attendance group that I met with did. And even she loses access to it from time to time when her mother wants to keep her behavior in check.

The film ends with a truly modern, weaponless chase scene, after Annie is kidnapped and driven toward New Jersey in a Subaru. As she moves about, her pursuers track her through social media. Other children who recognize her on the highway and see her waving desperately through the car window take her picture. They tag her on Instagram and Twitter with their locations, and her rescuers eventually catch up with her.

The baseline assumption here is that every child in an automobile back seat has a smartphone with a data plan these days, and the middle school students did not think it was that far-fetched. Still, they understood quite explicitly that the filmmakers had turned social media, which can be an engine of envy for the many people who use it, into a 21st-century crime-fighting tool.

“It felt for me like a commercial for cellphones,” Kiersten said. “Social media is a competition. Who has the most ‘likes.’ The most friends. The best pics. The most comments. The most emails. The most emojis.”

“What happened to our world?” Fariha wondered aloud. “I honestly feel like the world has become corrupt with technology. It’s O.K. to have something for its better uses, but sometimes you have to have limits.”

HAPPINESS In this version of “Annie,” the Daddy Warbucks character is an up-from-Queens cellphone magnate named Will Stacks, with a net worth of $4.3 billion. He wants to be mayor, too, in his relentless quest for something he can’t quite identify but has yet to achieve. That is, at least until he finds his true love and decides to adopt Annie in the movie’s final scene.

“Stacks was doing his job,” said Shah Mazhar, a 12-year-old seventh grader. “But he didn’t even have any fun. Money can’t bring you happiness.”

“He had no one to share it with,” Kiersten added.

Mediocre singing and dancing aside, what “Annie” can teach with just a bit of prompting and a few open-ended questions is this: We get the greatest joy from our relationships and shared experiences with those people we love, not from the things we own.



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2) The Big Economic Unknowns of 2015, From
By JUSTIN WOLFERS

I wish I knew where the economy will be heading next year. If I did, I might become rich. But, alas, I don’t — and even if we don’t always acknowledge it, no economists do.

Too much uncertainty clouds the crystal ball to be confident that any particular course of events will play out in the real world. But we do know something about the sources of that uncertainty, and in a season for sharing, I’d like to offer six questions whose eventual resolution will shape the economic year ahead:

■ How much slack really remains in the labor market?

The unemployment rate stands at 5.8 percent. If it continues on its current trajectory, it will have fallen an additional half a percentage point by mid-2015, putting it at a level that some economists see as effectively full employment.

Yet much of the reduction in unemployment reflects a decline in the share of the population in the work force. If a stronger economy were to induce these people to return to work, the recovery would still have a long way to run before we got to full employment. Moreover, millions of those who are counted as employed remain stuck in part-time jobs but want full-time work.

Further improvements in the labor market also depend on whether the long-term unemployed — those who have been out of work six months or longer — will successfully transition into new jobs. Pessimists emphasize that high levels of long-term unemployment proved to be an intractable problem through much of Europe over the last 40 years. Yet more recent evidence from the United States — particularly from the early stages of this recovery — makes me more optimistic that we can get the long-term jobless back to work.

All of this means we really don’t know how far unemployment could fall without prompting inflation. Get ready for a debate premised on artificial precision about whether the economy can sustain unemployment of 5 or 5.5 percent. That’s the consensus range. But the best research on this question suggests that the lowest sustainable rate could easily differ from our best estimates by a full percentage point or more. Indeed, the Clinton-era boom pushed unemployment below 4 percent without setting off an inflationary surge.

■ Will the Federal Reserve treat its target for 2 percent inflation as a goal or a ceiling?

Officially, the Fed says it is as willing to tolerate the risk that inflation may rise above this level as it has been about inflation undershooting its goal over the last few years. Yet its actions suggest otherwise. Plans to normalize policy — a euphemism for raising interest rates — are already underway, even as the Fed’s own projections suggest that inflation will not breach 2 percent in the next few years.

Higher interest rates could slow the economy. That leads to my third question:

■ How fast does the economy need to grow to stay healthy?

Many commentators assume that a healthy economy grows at an annual rate of at least 3 percent. Yet economic growth in the United States has averaged only 1.9 percent since 2000, and average growth of 2.3 percent during the current expansion has been enough to yield large drops in unemployment. To an important extent, this lower rate has been caused by demographic factors: slower population growth, the end of the transition of women into the work force, and baby boomers retiring.

All told, the work force is growing nearly a full percentage point slower than it was in the 1990s, and this is why 2 percent growth is the new 3 percent. Likewise, much as the economy once needed to generate 150,000 jobs a month just to keep up with new entrants to the labor force, that “break-even” number may now be as low as 50,000.

■ Can the American economy keep motoring without help from the rest of the world?Among the world’s major economies, the United States had the strongest economic growth in 2014. The picture elsewhere is grim. Japan has lurched from optimism about Abenomics — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s program to kick-start the economy — to pessimism as the economy has shrunk over the last two quarters. And Europe hovers on the edge of a double- or triple-dip recession, depending on your definition. China has slowed, with economic growth moving below 8 percent a year from an extraordinary 10 percent. And the Russian economy is on the cusp of a full-fledged crisis. It’s not just that foreign buyers have less money to spend; their weakness has become the dollar’s strength, which also makes our exports more expensive. These global headwinds could easily knock a fragile recovery off course.

■ What will be the consequences of lower oil prices, which have fallen by about half since June?

Typically, an oil price decline is like a tax cut, leaving more money in consumers’ pockets to spend elsewhere. That should spur growth. But since the shale boom, the United States is not only a leading oil consumer but also a leading producer. So lower oil prices also spell smaller revenue for some of our energy companies. And our producers have particularly high costs, so further investment in them may become unprofitable if prices fall too far.

This leads us back to the inherent uncertainty afflicting economics:

■ What, as Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, asked, are the unknown unknowns?

More often than not, the shocks that buffet the economy come out of the blue. Few predicted the huge swings in oil prices over recent years, and the same goes for the financial crisis and many other disruptive events. A few years ago, for example, the weakness in Greece’s fiscal situation was successfully disguised, until it catalyzed the eurozone crisis. In 2011, the tsunami that brought huge damage to Japan also caused global economic tremors. And while we have often seen political gridlock in Congress, the extreme brinkmanship over financing the federal debt in recent years has been a form of economic self-sabotage that was once unimaginable.

I wish I could offer clearer guidance about next year, but an honest account focuses on the limits of our knowledge. We’re not sure how much further the economy can improve next year, or even if it will actually do so, and we don’t know what might drive it off course.

So instead of a forecast, I’ll offer advice: Prepare for the worst, hope for the best and count on being surprised.

Justin Wolfers is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan. Follow him on Twitter at @justinwolfers



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3) Crowd Gathers in Brooklyn to Protest a Police Shooting
By DAN GLAUN

About 200 people marched through the East New York section of Brooklyn on Saturday afternoon to protest the death of Akai Gurley, an unarmed black man who was fatally shot last month by a police officer in a public-housing project stairwell.

Mr. Gurley’s relatives led the demonstration from the building in the Louis H. Pink Houses where the shooting occurred to a nearby police command post.

The protest began shortly after the close of funeral services for Officer Rafael Ramos, who was shot to death in his patrol car along with Officer Wenjian Liu on Dec. 20. By marching, those on hand were defying Mayor Bill de Blasio’s request that protesters suspend their activities in the wake of the police killings.

“Every 28 hours a person is killed in the United States by a police officer or authority figure or vigilante, and nothing stops for them,” said Kirbie Joseph, an organizer of the march. “Everything goes business as usual, and so we can’t stop.”

Mr. Gurley, 28, was killed on Nov. 20 in a Pink Houses stairwell while walking with his girlfriend. Officer Peter Liang was conducting a so-called vertical patrol in the building at the time and had his gun drawn. The weapon fired, killing Mr. Gurley in what Police Commissioner William J. Bratton has described as “an unfortunate accident.”Demonstrators have not accepted that explanation. Mr. Gurley, whose death is the subject of an inquiry by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, has joined Eric Garner and Michael Brown, both of whom died at the hands of police officers this year, as a symbolic figure among those calling for an end to what they consider a pattern of police violence against unarmed black people.

The protesters in Brooklyn repeated several of the chants heard at demonstrations in New York and elsewhere in recent weeks — including “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” and “I can’t breathe!” — and intoned Mr. Gurley’s name from the steps of the building where he was killed.



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4) As Medicaid Rolls Swell, Cuts in Payments to Doctors Threaten Access to Care
By

WASHINGTON — Just as millions of people are gaining insurance through Medicaid, the program is poised to make deep cuts in payments to many doctors, prompting some physicians and consumer advocates to warn that the reductions could make it more difficult for Medicaid patients to obtain care.

The Affordable Care Act provided a big increase in Medicaid payments for primary care in 2013 and 2014. But the increase expires on Thursday — just weeks after the Obama administration told the Supreme Court that doctors and other providers had no legal right to challenge the adequacy of payments they received from Medicaid.

The impact will vary by state, but a study by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research organization, estimates that doctors who have been receiving the enhanced payments will see their fees for primary care cut by 43 percent, on average.

Stephen Zuckerman, a health economist at the Urban Institute and co-author of the report, said Medicaid payments for primary care services could drop by 50 percent or more in California, Florida, New York and Pennsylvania, among other states.

In his budget request in March, President Obama proposed a one-year extension of the higher Medicaid payments. Several Democratic members of Congress backed the idea, but the proposals languished, and such legislation would appear to face long odds in the new Congress, with Republicans controlling both houses.

Dr. David A. Fleming, the president of the American College of Physicians, which represents specialists in internal medicine, said some patients would have less access to care after the cuts. It would make no sense to reduce Medicaid payments “at a time when the population enrolled in Medicaid is surging,” he said.

Dr. George J. Petruncio, a family physician in Turnersville, N.J., described the cuts as a “bait and switch” move. “The government attempted to entice physicians into Medicaid with higher rates, then lowers reimbursement once the doctors are involved,” he said.

But Nicole Brossoie, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Human Services, which runs the state’s Medicaid program, said the increase was not meant to be permanent. “The enhanced rates will not be extended in New Jersey,” Ms. Brossoie said. “It was always understood to be temporary.”

The White House says Medicaid is contributing to the “largest coverage gains in four decades,” with 9.7 million people added to the Medicaid rolls since October 2013, bringing the total to 68.5 million. More than one-fifth of Americans are now covered by Medicaid.

But federal officials have not set forth a strategy to expand access to care with enrollment, and in many states Medicaid payment rates for primary care services, like routine office visits and the management of chronic illnesses, will plunge back to 2012 levels, widely seen as inadequate.

For the last two years, the federal government has required state Medicaid agencies to pay at least as much as Medicare pays for primary care services. Family doctors, internists and pediatricians have thus received Medicare-level payments for primary care, with the federal government making up the difference in costs.

The impending cuts are larger in states like California that have the widest gaps between Medicaid and Medicare rates.

A survey by the Ohio State Medical Association found that some Ohio doctors began accepting Medicaid patients because of the rate increase in 2013. Ohio doctors who were already participating in the program said they had accepted more Medicaid patients after the rate increase. And almost 40 percent of Ohio doctors indicated that they planned to accept fewer Medicaid patients when the extra payments lapsed.

Under federal law, Medicaid rates must be “sufficient to enlist enough providers” so that beneficiaries have at least as much access to care as the general population in their geographic area. In practice, doctors say, this standard is murky.

The Obama administration told the Supreme Court last month that health care providers had no legal right to enforce the “equal access” requirement in court. This section of the Medicaid law provides guidance to federal and state officials in setting Medicaid rates, but does not allow health care providers to sue state officials to enforce it, said Donald B. Verrilli Jr., the solicitor general of the United States.

The case, Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center, was filed against Richard Armstrong, director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, by five providers of residential habilitation services to children with disabilities. They argued that Idaho’s payment rates fell below federal standards, and they sued to enforce federal law, invoking the supremacy clause of the Constitution, which makes federal law “the supreme law of the land.”

The court sidestepped the issue in a similar case from California in 2012. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said then, in a dissenting opinion, that “nothing in the Medicaid Act allows providers or beneficiaries (or anyone else, for that matter) to sue to enforce” the equal-access provision.

Matt D. Salo, the executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, which represents state officials, said his group had not lobbied for an extension of the Medicaid fee increase. “It has rewarded providers who were already doing the right thing, but did not bring in a flood of new providers,” Mr. Salo said.

The higher payments for primary care have been available in the traditional fee-for-service Medicaid program as well as in managed-care plans, which typically pay doctors a fixed amount per patient per month.

Joseph A. Reblando, a spokesman for Medicaid Health Plans of America, a trade group, said, “The fee increase was a good idea in concept, but it was built on an antiquated system in which doctors were paid a separate fee for each service.”


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5) Three Shots From Police Killed Los Angeles [UNARMED] Man, Autopsy Finds
By IAN LOVETT

LOS ANGELES — An unarmed black man killed in August by Los Angeles police died of gunshot wounds to his back and side, according to an autopsy report released Monday.

Ezell Ford, 25, was killed after being confronted by police officers here, just two days after Michael Brown was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. While protests of Mr. Brown’s death raged for weeks in Missouri, the police here ordered Mr. Ford’s autopsy report withheld, citing fears that it could contaminate potential witness accounts during their investigation of the shooting.

Mr. Ford was approached on the night of Aug. 11 by two police officers who “observed him make movements that they regarded as suspicious,” Charlie Beck, the Los Angeles police chief, said Monday. According to the police account of the episode, as the officers stepped toward him, he spun around, tackling one of the officers to the ground and lunging for his handgun.

At that point, the other officer shot twice, while the officer on the ground also fired his backup weapon, the police said.

The autopsy report showed that Mr. Ford had been shot three times: once in the side, once in the arm and once in the back. The wound on his back left a muzzle imprint on his skin.

Chief Beck said that the investigation was continuing, and that he was not yet prepared to comment on whether the officers had been justified in shooting.

“There is nothing in the coroner’s report that is inconsistent with the statements given to us by the officers,” he said. “We are still looking for other versions of events.”

Mr. Ford’s family has filed a civil rights lawsuit and a $75 million claim against the city, which said that Mr. Ford had a mental illness and was known to police officers in the area. The suit also accused the police of using excessive force and racial profiling against black residents.

The family’s lawyer did not respond to requests for comment Monday.


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6) Victims of G.M. Deadly Defect Fall Through Legal Cracks
By and HILARY STOUT

The law firm was unequivocal. It refused to take the case against General Motors involving a car crash that killed 18-year-old Natasha Weigel, saying that the value of her life in a lawsuit was too small to justify the expense and risk of litigation.

Her family was stunned. A Wisconsin police investigator had looked into why the car’s airbags had not opened when it swerved off a road in 2006 and plowed into trees, killing Ms. Weigel and a second teenager. The inquiry uncovered critical clues: The car’s ignition switch had powered off seconds before the accident, and G.M. had received reports of similar incidents, pointing to a possible defect.

But when Ms. Weigel’s family shared that report with a major plaintiff’s law firm in Milwaukee, the firm responded with cold, hard math.Today, at least 42 people are known to have died in crashes linked to the defective ignition switch, and both G.M. and federal safety regulators have come under fire for allowing the danger to linger for more than a decade. But the experience of some accident victims and their families shows that other opportunities to raise public alarm bells — through the legal system — were also lost.

The family of Amy Rademaker, the other teenager killed in the Wisconsin crash, was also unable to find a lawyer to take on G.M. unless they financed the case themselves, said Ken Rimer, Ms. Weigel’s stepfather. Lawyers said they were aware of six ignition-related lawsuits that the automaker had settled out of court, including some under arrangements that barred public disclosures about them.

“This is so frustrating to me,” Mr. Rimer said. “If we had gone to litigation, this would have gone to the forefront. We could have saved lives.”

Companies, lawyers and judges have long faced criticism for suppressing information contained in lawsuits about product dangers. However, legal experts said that factors such as tort reform and rising lawsuit costs might be further dimming the legal system’s role in bringing such risks to light.

Those experts said that the incentives for plaintiffs’ lawyers to invest large sums of money in a case that may or not serve as a kind of legal canary in a coal mine have been diminished. “It is harder to win,” added John C. P. Goldberg, a law professor at Harvard University. Beginning several decades ago, companies, insurers and others, pointing to instances of excessive jury awards and frivolous lawsuits, pushed state lawmakers to pass measures that would reduce awards and limit filings. Since then, many states have capped awards for noneconomic damages such as pain and suffering, limited punitive damage awards or changed how liability is assessed.

Supporters of the changes say they are not intended to bottle up safety information.

“If anything, plaintiff’s lawyers have become aggressive in finding defective products,” said Victor E. Schwartz, a defense lawyer and an executive of the American Tort Reform Association, an advocacy group. Today, he added, lawyers also can use technological tools like the Internet to spot cases.

But some lawyers say the changed financial calculus has affected the kinds of cases being pursued.

“You cannot afford to take an auto products case unless there is a death or serious injury,” said James E. Butler Jr., a plaintiff’s lawyer whose firm was involved in a case against G.M. that the company later counted as one of those linked to the faulty ignition switch.

In the end, the defect’s public disclosure — and the recall of 2.2 million G.M. vehicles in the United States — was set in motion by a lawsuit filed in Georgia, a state that does not place strict caps on damages in product liability lawsuits.

“It increases the ability of a plaintiff to bring a claim,” said the lawyer, Lance Cooper of Marietta, Ga., who filed a lawsuit in 2011 in the case of 29-year-old Brooke Melton, who died in a Chevrolet Cobalt crash.

Initially, Mr. Cooper thought that Ms. Melton had lost control of her vehicle when its power steering failed. G.M. lawyers also did not move to settle the case since it involved a side impact collision, so the car’s airbags would not have been expected to deploy. In other accidents, a failure of the airbags to deploy was a telltale sign that the vehicle’s ignition had powered off.

As a result, Mr. Cooper got to push his lawsuit forward, engaging an engineering expert who discovered the flawed Cobalt ignition switch and its role in causing the crash. Then after he had extracted damaging pretrial testimony from a G.M. engineer, the carmaker in 2013 offered Ms. Melton’s family $5 million to settle the action, but insisted that all the information uncovered in the case be kept secret. Several months later, G.M. disclosed the defect and started recalling vehicles.

In previous years, G.M. settled other cases under confidential terms. Terry DiBattista recalled a meeting in 2006 that she attended between her lawyer and G.M. representatives after the death of her adopted 16-year-old daughter, Amber Marie Rose, in a 2005 Cobalt crash.

When her lawyer presented the company with engineering data showing that the car’s airbags had not deployed because the vehicle had lost power, G.M. lawyers countered that a court in Maryland, where the accident occurred, would not hold the carmaker liable because Amber had been speeding and drinking.

Still, G.M. lawyers offered to settle the claim.

“They said that out of the kindness of their heart basically they had thrown this figure out but they wouldn’t go a penny more, so take it or leave it,” said Ms. DiBattista, who was barred from revealing the amount but described it as modest.

As is often the case in product liability cases, G.M. insisted on settlement terms that require opposing lawyers, victims and their families not discuss the case. As a result, plaintiff’s lawyers handling new claims found it difficult to learn about other incidents.

By 2010, King & Spalding, a firm that represented G.M. in Cobalt cases, saw a pattern in the crashes and warned the automaker that it could face large punitive damage awards if the cases went to trial and information about earlier accidents came to light.

The first warning came in connection with a 2010 lawsuit filed by the family of a nursing student, Hasaya Chansuthus, killed in a Cobalt crash, according a report issued by Anton R. Valukas, who was hired by G.M. this year to review its handling of the ignition defect. King & Spalding lawyers reported that a review by its engineering experts had concluded that certain Cobalts might suffer from a “sensing anomaly” that could prevent airbag deployment, documents cited by Mr. Valukas show.

“The facts and circumstances surrounding the investigation into the sensing system ‘anomaly’ that may be present in some Cobalts could provide fertile ground for laying the foundation for an award of punitive damages, resulting in a significantly larger verdict,” a memo written by a King & Spalding lawyer stated.

G.M. settled the Chansuthus case for an undisclosed sum. A year later, King & Spalding issued a similar warning when another Cobalt lawsuit was filed. Then, in 2012, a different outside defense firm, Eckert Seamans, sounded the same alarm in connection with another Cobalt crash and lawsuit.

In that case, a 35-year-old woman, Tonya Lambert, suffered head injuries and broken bones when the Cobalt in which she was riding spun out of control and smashed into trees. Black-box data showed that the car’s ignition switch had shifted position, disabling its airbags.

“G.M. will also be forced to contend with other incidents, some of which resulted in deaths, due to the non-deployment of the frontal airbags in the 2005-2007 Cobalt,” the firm wrote. G.M. settled Ms. Lambert’s case for $650,000, a third of that sum going to her lawyer, her family said.

Ms. Lambert said her family felt pushed into making the deal by her lawyer, who warned they could never win in a courtroom. “I cried because I didn’t want to settle,” she said in a recent interview. The lawyer did not return messages seeking comment.

Both King & Spalding and Eckert Seamans declined to respond to questions about whether the firms had urged G.M. to recall problem vehicles. The firms referred the inquiries to G.M., and a spokesman for the automaker, James Cain, declined to comment on the outside lawyers’ actions.

Ellen C. Yaroshefsky, a specialist in legal ethics at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, said that lawyers at the outside firms could have alerted higher-ups inside G.M. or even law enforcement authorities about the Cobalt problem, but were not obligated to do so.

“The corporate culture is such that lawyers do not do it because they would never be hired again,” said Ms. Yaroshefsky.

In the 2006 Wisconsin accident, as Natasha Weigel lingered in a coma, her family first hired a lawyer, Mark D. Streed, to help them find ways to pay her medical bills. After the girl’s death, Mr. Streed referred the case to Mr. Rottier’s firm, which describes itself as one of the nation’s top product liability firms.

A few days later, Mr. Rottier told Mr. Streed he was not interested. In a letter to Natasha’s family, Mr. Streed said Mr. Rottier’s firm needed to “see a potential upside recovery well in excess of $1 million” because the costs of pursuing a G.M. case through trial averaged $300,000 and could exceed $400,000. The Milwaukee firm also noted that it had not then heard of other G.M. ignition switch cases.

In an interview, Mr. Rottier said the firm’s decision was not unusual. “I’ve told many people,” he said, “that the value of your dead child doesn’t warrant a case. It is a terrible thing to have to do.”


Danielle Ivory and Rebecca R. Ruiz contributed reporting.









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7) Free Reverend Edward Pinkney
National defense campaign building
By Abayomi Azikiwe
San Francisco Bay View, December 23, 2014
http://sfbayview.com/2014/12/national-defense-campaign-building-for-rev-edward-pinkney/

Michigan political prisoner Reverend Edward Pinkney is now being held in Jackson state prison. He remains in good spirits despite the racist injustice that has landed him in detention over manufactured claims that he changed the dates on five signature entries on a recall petition designed to remove Benton Harbor Mayor James Hightower.

During the course of the trial there was no material or circumstantial evidence presented that would implicate Pinkney in the purported five felonies. Many believe that the Berrien County activist and leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO) is being punished by the local authorities for opposing the corporate program of Whirlpool Corporation, which is headquartered in Benton Harbor.

In 2012, Pinkney and BANCO led an “Occupy the PGA” demonstration against the world-renowned golf tournament that was held at the newly-created Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course on Lake Michigan. The course was carved out of Jean Klock Park, which had been donated to the City of Benton Harbor decades ago.

Berrien County officials were determined to defeat a recall campaign against Mayor Hightower of Benton Harbor, who opposed a program to tax local corporations in an effort to create jobs and improve conditions in the majority African American municipality. Benton Harbor, like other Michigan cities, has been devastated by widespread poverty and unemployment.

Statements of support pour in

This is not the first time that Pinkney has been imprisoned for his political activities. In 2007 he was convicted in a second trial, with the first ending in a hung jury, for “mishandling” absentee ballots during a recall election involving two Benton Harbor city commissioners. The results of the elections removing the officials were overturned after criminal charges were filed against the BANCO leader.

Pinkney was sentenced to one year under house arrest and four more years of probation. Later in 2007, he was charged with violating the terms of his sentence for allegedly threatening a judge in Berrien County.

The threat charge stemmed from an article he wrote in the People’s Tribune newspaper based in Chicago where he quoted scriptures from the Old Testament. He was ordered imprisoned for three to ten years.

The charges were overturned in late 2008 by the Michigan Appeals Court after the activist received widespread support from the civil liberties, ecumenical and academic communities across the country. He was released at the end of 2008 and successfully completed his probation, returning to full-time activism in Berrien County.

Pinkney in 2008 from his prison cell ran for United States Congress on the Green Party ticket in Michigan. He received 3,500 votes in a challenge to Fred Upton, a Republican congressman and heir to the Whirpool corporate dynasty.

A statement issued December 17 by Green Party Watch says: “The overt targeting of an African-American activist for a politically motivated prosecution is reminiscent of recent episodes involving Chuck Turner and Elston McCowan, both Greens who challenged the power structures in their communities. In a system where police officers regularly kill unarmed African-American men without facing trial, it is especially galling that the same system sentences an African-American activist to up to ten years imprisonment on trumped-up, politically motivated charges.”

Black Agenda Report, a well-known media outlet opposing the corporate influence over African American politics in the U.S., wrote in a December 17 editorial: “This may seem like an Old Jim Crow story, about a preacher from a small, mostly Black town who wanted only to help his people through the voting process, but is set upon by backward whites determined to maintain their monopoly on political power. And, it is true; Old Man Jim Crow is alive and well on the banks of Lake Michigan.”

This same editorial goes on, saying: “But it is the New Jim Crow, the Mass Black Incarceration State, that has snatched 66-year-old Reverend Pinkney away to what could become life in prison. The judge and prosecutor said that Pinkney’s 12 past and present felony convictions make him a career criminal, even though each count stems from an elections process. The Old Jim Crow would have unapologetically sent Pinkney to the chain gang for being an uppity Black man, but the New Jim Crow simply piled on a bunch of felonies to put him away as a serial criminal, allowing the system to claim that race had nothing to do with it.”

A national conference call was held on Thursday, December 18, designed to build a defense campaign. Former Vermont State Senator Ben-Zion Ptashnik initiated the call through the People Demanding Action (PDA) organization.

The conference call included activist members of the clergy, electoral reform organizers, former Green Party candidates, progressive Democrats, the People’s Tribune newspaper, Moratorium NOW! Coalition and others. The call provided an update on the case and plans to publicize the plight of Reverend Pinkney and the people of Berrien County, recruit a legal team and organize a fundraising drive to proceed with an appeal.

Ptashnik and Victoria Collier wrote in Truth-out.org on December 16, 2014: “Concerned activists and clergy associated with People Demanding Action, a national social justice organization, are circulating a petition to ministers and various organizations. The petition is to be forwarded to the U.S. Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder, asking for an investigation into the circumstances of Pinkney’s trial and sentencing.”

To sign the petition in support of Reverend Edward Pinkney log on to:

http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/6405/c/10113/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=10735

Contributions for the defense of Reverend Pinkney can be sent to BANCO at 1940 Union St., Benton Harbor, Michigan 49022.

Messages of support for Reverend Pinkney and concern for his welfare should be sent to Warden Randall Haas, G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility, 3500 North Elm Road, Jackson MI 49201, phone: 517-780-5600. Encourage the media to ask the warden to arrange an interview with Reverend Pinkney.

Send some love and light to Reverend Pinkney, who is said to be locked down 23 hours a day: Reverend Edward Pinkney, 294671, G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility, 3855 Cooper St., Jackson MI 49201.

Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of Pan-African News Wire. Pan-African News Wire is the world’s only international daily pan-African news source, is designed to foster intelligent discussion on the affairs of African people throughout the continent and the world.
—San Francisco Bay View, December 23, 2014
http://sfbayview.com/2014/12/national-defense-campaign-building-for-rev-edward-pinkney/



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8) Fed Up: Florida Crowd Forms Human Shield to Protect Man Police Try to Arrest for Smoking Marijuana
Signs that citizens have had enough of hyper-aggressive policing abound.
By Zaid Jilani
December 31, 2014
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/fed-florida-crowd-forms-human-shield-protect-man-police-try-arrest-smoking?akid=12639.229473.LDx65Q&rd=1&src=newsletter1029578&t=3

In addition to the mass protests nationwide against police brutality, incidents where ordinary citizens speak up, start recording and attempt to intervene when they see excessive and abusive cop behavior are being reported more frequently.

Earlier this month in New York City, a woman angrily denounced police who were beating an already restrained teenage boy as others made sure to film the incident to hold the plainclothes officer accountable. It is possible that the assembled and outraged crowd prevented further abuse, and with the help of the cellphone video, the cop faced at least some discipline from the department.

This past weekend in Delray Beach, Florida, dozens of people quickly organized to stop what they believed to be a petty and unnecessary arrest.

That night, Delray Police entered a neighborhood after seeing a man walking down the street smoking. The officers thought the smoke smelled like marijuana, so they decided to pursue the man. When the man entered a home nearby, the police followed and tried to apprehend him. They were surprised when about 20 people came out of the home and surrounded the man to prevent the arrest from taking place.

“They formed this shield and started to get aggressive,” one of the officers said.

“The next thing they know, there's 70 to 75 people out there,” another officer who was on the scene reportedly said. “The officers had to use pepper spray to get the people back.”

The crowd grew rowdy, and at some point an object was hurled at the windshield of a police cruiser. By the end of the night police had detained four people, on charges including inciting a riot.

The incident could foretell greater citizen intervention against what they perceive to be abusive and unnecessary policing and shows the urgency of reining in the over-criminalization of American life.

Zaid Jilani is an AlterNet contributing writer. Follow @zaidjilani on Twitter.

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9) Scientists Alter Crops With Techniques Outside Regulators’ Scope
By

Its first attempt to develop genetically engineered grass ended disastrously for the Scotts Miracle-Gro Company. The grass escaped into the wild from test plots in Oregon in 2003, dooming the chances that the government would approve the product for commercial use.

Yet Scotts is once again developing genetically modified grass that would need less mowing, be a deeper green and be resistant to damage from the popular weedkiller Roundup. But this time the grass will not need federal approval before it can be field-tested and marketed.

Scotts and several other companies are developing genetically modified crops using techniques that either are outside the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Department or use new methods — like “genome editing” — that were not envisioned when the regulations were created.

The department has said, for example, that it has no authority over a new herbicide-resistant canola, a corn that would create less pollution from livestock waste, switch grass tailored for biofuel production, and even an ornamental plant that glows in the dark.

The trend alarms critics of biotech crops, who say genetic modification can have unintended effects, regardless of the process.

“They are using a technical loophole so that what are clearly genetically engineered crops and organisms are escaping regulation,” said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at Consumers Union. He said the grass “can have all sorts of ecological impact and no one is required to look at it.”

Even some people who say the crops are safe and the regulations overly burdensome have expressed concern that because some crops can be left unregulated, the whole oversight process is confusing and illogical, in some cases doing more harm than good.

In November’s Nature Biotechnology, plant researchers at the University of California, Davis, wrote that the regulatory framework had become “obsolete and an obstacle to the development of new agricultural products.”

But companies using the new techniques say that if the methods were not labeled genetic engineering, novel crops could be marketed or grown in Europe and other countries that do not readily accept genetically modified crops.

Freedom from oversight could also open opportunities for smaller companies and university breeders and for the modification of less common crops. Until now, in part because of the costs associated with regulation, crop biotechnology has been dominated by Monsanto and a handful of other big companies working mainly on widely grown crops like corn and soybeans.

“It enables small companies to develop products, and even university start-ups,” said Luc Mathis, chief executive of Cellectis Plant Sciences, which recently received a regulatory exemption for a potato it says will make French fries less unhealthy.

An industry-sponsored study said that the large companies spend an average of $136 million on the development of a genetically engineered crop, including $35 million in regulatory costs. The Agriculture Department once took two to five years to review applications, though it is trying to reduce that to 13 to 16 months.

Genetically engineered crops, popularly called genetically modified organisms or G.M.O.s, typically have genes from other organisms inserted into their DNA. The most popular ones, like Roundup-resistant soybeans and insect-resistant corn, use genes from bacteria.

Under a framework announced in 1986, oversight of the crops is shared by the Agriculture Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration. Rather than enact new laws for genetically engineered crops, the government covers them under existing statutes.

The Agriculture Department, which approves crops for commercial planting, is a case in point. Its authority stems from its responsibility for protecting American crops from plant pests, which typically are insects or pathogens.

That responsibility extends to certain G.M.O. crops because for many of them, the foreign gene is inserted through the use of a bacterium, or the inserted DNA contains a genetic “on” switch from a plant virus.

But companies can get around that oversight by avoiding components from plant pests. In Scotts’s newer grasses, for instance, the foreign genetic material comes only from other plants and is inserted with a gene gun rather than by the bacterium.

“If you take genetic material from a plant and it’s not considered a pest, and you don’t use a transformation technology that would sort of violate the rules, there’s a bunch of stuff you can do that at least technically is unregulated,” Jim Hagedorn, Scotts chief executive, told analysts in December 2013. He said the company nearly shut its biotech program after the previous mishap, until it hit upon the new strategy and created “a stunning array of products that are not regulated.”

The company recently started testing the grass on the lawns of its employees. But a spokesman said the grass was years from reaching the market.

A spokeswoman for the Agriculture Department said the agency was acting within the authority given to it by Congress and that even if it did not have oversight of a particular crop, the F.D.A. or E.P.A. might still be involved.

Other companies, including Cellectis, are using new genome-editing techniques that can change the plant’s existing DNA rather than insert foreign genes. Cibus, a privately held San Diego company, is beginning to sell herbicide-resistant canola developed this way.

“With our technology, we can develop the same traits but in a way that’s not transgenic,” said Peter Beetham, chief executive of Cibus, using a term for a plant containing foreign genes.

Regulators around the world are now grappling with whether these techniques are even considered genetic engineering and how, if at all, they should be regulated.

“The technology is always one step ahead of the regulators,” said Michiel van Lookeren Campagne, head of biotechnology research at Syngenta, a seed and agricultural chemical company.

Some researchers argue that using genome editing to inactivate a gene in a plant, or to make a tiny change in an existing gene, results in a crop no different from what could be obtained through natural mutations and conventional breeding, though it is achieved more quickly.

“Those are basically comparable to what you get from conventional breeding,” said Neal Gutterson, vice president for agricultural biotechnology at DuPont Pioneer, a seed company. “We certainly hope that the regulatory agencies recognize that and treat the products accordingly.”

The gene editing, they argue, is also more directed and precise than the existing technique of exposing plants to radiation or chemicals to induce random mutations in hopes of generating a desirable change. This technique has been used for decades and is not regulated, even though it can potentially cause unknown and unintended changes to crops.

But critics of biotech crops say the genome-editing techniques can make changes in plant DNA other than the intended one. Also, the gene editing is typically done on plant cells or plant tissues growing in a dish. The process of then turning those genetically altered cells or tissues into a full plant can itself induce mutations.

Another category that some researchers say should receive less scrutiny is so-called cisgenic crops, which are developed using conventional genetic engineering but with the inserted genes from the same species as the crop.

An example is a potato developed by the J. R. Simplot Company that resists bruising and makes a less unhealthy French fry. The Agriculture Department reviewed the Simplot potato before approving it recently.

Jennifer Kuzma, co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University, said that there would soon be a flood of crops seeking regulatory exemptions and that there needed to be a public discourse about what should be regulated, in part to allay possible consumer anxiety.

“It’s not that I think these are risky,” she said of the crops escaping regulation. “But the very fact that this is the route we are taking without any discussion is troubling.”






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10) Despite Thaw, American Base at Guantánamo Still Stings for Cubans
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GUANTÁNAMO, Cuba — At a military checkpoint on the road that approaches the American naval base here, one of three along the way, four Cuban soldiers in pea-green fatigues, without guns, stood on duty last Sunday laughing over a joke in the shade of an almond tree, beside a neatly cultivated flower bed. A large sign declared the site “the first anti-imperialist trench.”

They stopped the few cars that approached and asked to see the special passes required for access to Caimanera, the town that once served as the gateway to the United States military base across Guantánamo Bay.

“Because this is an area of high sensitivity for defense, everyone needs a pass,” said one of the soldiers, a first lieutenant named Gamboa, turning back a reporter from The New York Times. Passes usually take 72 hours to approve, he said, and on a Sunday it was certainly impossible to get one.

Despite the sudden thaw in relations between the United States and Cuba, the base here remains a sore point for Cubans, a deeply felt grievance that the Castros, first Fidel and now his brother Raúl, have long pointed to as a stinging symbol of American imperialism.

A senior State Department official in Washington said that Cuban negotiators had raised their government’s oft-repeated demand for the return of the base during the secret talks that culminated in last month’s surprise announcement that the two countries would re-establish full diplomatic relations.

“It’s logical that the Cubans would raise it,” the official said, adding, however, that it did not become a focus of the talks. “These were more intensive conversations than we’ve had in a long time, but it’s also true that Guantánamo comes up all the time, even in our migration talks, as a principled issue for the Cubans.”

Here in Guantánamo, a city of about 216,000 people, with a prosperous-looking downtown and decrepit back streets, residents have repeatedly been reminded over the years that they stand virtually face to face with the enemy.

“It’s a little bit delicate,” said Geny Jarrosay, 25, an art student who has created several pieces based on the complex, sometimes tense relations between the base and the city of Guantánamo, where he grew up. “Coexisting with it is like having a person you don’t like living in your house for 50 years, and you’ve gotten used to both the good and the bad.”

But the base gives Cuba, an island nation, a sort of de facto land border, and a hostile one at that.

“We’re very conscious that it’s American territory even though it’s not,” Mr. Jarrosay said. “It’s Cuban territory.”

For a video and photo project he completed this year, Mr. Jarrosay says he obtained some dirt from the base — he won’t say how — and on a bus trip across Cuba tossed it out the window a little bit at a time.

“It was like returning the soil to Cuba,” he said.

It might be said that the Guantánamo base is the last fruit of America’s original sin in Cuba — its 1898 invasion in the midst of the island’s war of independence from Spain. A peace treaty ending the Spanish-American War in 1898 installed the United States as the island’s administrator, which it remained until 1902, when Washington allowed Cuba to govern itself.But the price was the hated Platt Amendment, a series of conditions written into the Cuban Constitution that gave the United States sway over Cuban affairs and the right to establish naval bases there. In 1903, the open-ended lease for the base at Guantánamo was signed.

For many years, the city of Guantánamo and nearby towns like Caimanera were closely linked to the base. Many residents worked there, and American troops disported in the local brothels and bars.

But after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, the base became a symbol of American highhandedness and a point of repeated friction. Cuba refuses to cash the checks sent by the United States to pay the annual rent of $4,085.

When the Bush administration built a prison on the base to house captured terrorism suspects after 9/11, Cuba strenuously objected. Later reports of brutal treatment of prisoners there deepened Cuba’s ire.

After taking office in 2009 President Obama ordered the closing of the prison. But he has not been able to carry out his pledge, and the prison remains a bitter symbol of frustration and unfulfilled promises, and what many critics call a stain on America’s reputation. Twenty-eight detainees were transferred from the prison to other countries last year, but 127 remain.

Even after the prison is finally shut down, analysts say, it is unlikely that the base will be returned to Cuba any time soon.

“This is an excellent moment to open up that question and ponder what that would mean for the United States and Cuba,” said Jana K. Lipman, an associate professor of history at Tulane University, who has written about the base. But she said that the political risks of returning it were great, recalling the experience of President Jimmy Carter when he negotiated the handover of the Panama Canal in the 1970s.

“That was not a popular decision as far as public opinion was concerned,” Ms. Lipman said. “There was a lot of political spillback that the president had to deal with.”

Nearly all the people interviewed here, whether they supported the Cuban government or opposed it, said the base should be returned to Cuba.

“It’s Cuban territory; it doesn’t belong to” the United States, said Iliana Cotilla. She is a nurse who supplements her government salary by selling coffee and snacks from the front of her house, a business newly allowed under Cuba’s socialist system. “It’s a lack of respect to have that on our territory, to be abusing and torturing people there.”

Periodic tensions aside, there is generally no day-to-day contact between Cubans and the base, which is several miles away and out of sight of the city of Guantánamo. The last two local residents who worked on the base retired in 2012.

A resident of Caimanera, who lives within the restricted zone that requires a pass to enter, said that it was like living on the border between hostile countries, describing a sort of militarized gated community.

Having a military base in the neighborhood does have its advantages, said the man, who spoke anonymously for fear of the authorities. “It’s very calm, it’s very controlled, and there is no crime or drugs,” he said. And residents get a cash bonus for living there.

On a wooded hill just outside the city of Guantánamo, at a newly built tourist overlook with a 10-foot-high viewing platform and a restaurant, Néver Pérez, 48, and his wife, Licet Palomino, 45, gazed over Guantánamo Bay toward the base in the distance.

Mr. Pérez, who is from Guantánamo but now lives in Orlando, Fla., having been a resident of the United States for 14 years, said that he hoped the new opening with the United States would lead to the return of the base. “If they have good relations I think they will give it back,” he said, dressed in a red, white and blue shirt patterned after the stars and stripes of the American flag.

For a small fee, a government-paid guide, Yunior Leyva, 31, provided binoculars to visitors and pointed to what he said was a radar installation on top of a hill within the base, with structures looking like giant white mushrooms.

Back in town, Clara Duany, 74, said that she worked on the base as a housekeeper from 1956 to 1960. She said that during Fidel Castro’s guerrilla war against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, she smuggled medicine from the base to the rebels and had to take refuge on the base to escape capture by the government. Today, she is famous here as La India, the unpaid mascot for the local baseball team, the Indios del Guaso.

Ms. Duany said she felt no rancor toward the Americans despite the government’s anti-imperialist sloganeering.

“If they call me I will go work there again,” she said. In the choppy English she learned years ago on the base she said: “I liked every day. Everything. Yes, too much.”


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11) Three Al Jazeera Journalists Remain in Jail After Egyptian Court Orders a Retrial
By

CAIRO — Egypt’s highest appeals court on Thursday ordered a retrial for three imprisoned journalists from Al Jazeera’s English-language service, implicitly acknowledging critical procedural flaws in a case that rights advocates have described, from the men’s arrests to their convictions, as a sham.

But the decision offered no guarantees that the journalists, who have been imprisoned for more than a year and now face a potentially lengthy second trial, would be freed anytime soon.

The convictions of the three men, Mohamed Fahmy, Baher Mohamed and Peter Greste, focused international condemnation on the government, drawing attention to a sweeping crackdown on news media freedom and political dissent since the military ouster of the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.And from its beginnings, analysts say, the case has perhaps had little to do with the actions of the journalists themselves. Instead, they suggest it reflects a bitter dispute between Egypt’s military-backed government, led by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and Qatar, which owns Al Jazeera and has been a strong backer of his Islamist opponents in the Muslim Brotherhood.

The men were convicted in June on charges that included conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood to broadcast false reports, though prosecutors presented no evidence for such claims. All three were sentenced to seven-year prison terms, but Mr. Mohamed received three additional years for possessing a spent bullet casing that he picked up at an anti-government street protest.

The case has drawn special notice partly because the defendants had reputations as experienced journalists and had in the past worked for other well-known international news organizations. But their ordeal, which the men have outlined in letters from prison and in messages sent through family members, has also highlighted the plight of thousands of Egyptians — including Islamists, leftist activists and other journalists — swept up by the authorities on charges that are widely viewed as politically motivated.

As the families of the Al Jazeera journalists sifted through the meaning of the latest court decision on Thursday, they applauded the court’s apparent criticism of the first trial but expressed disappointment that the judges had not granted a request to suspend the men’s sentences.

“We’ve learned not to expect anything,” said Mr. Greste’s father, Juris Greste. “We did expect a little better than this.”

Amal Clooney, a lawyer for Mr. Fahmy, noting what she said were numerous irregularities with the first trial, said her client could not rely solely “on the Egyptian judicial system to give us a necessarily fair or speedy outcome.”

In addition to focusing on the court proceedings Mr. Fahmy’s legal team was “doubling its efforts on the political and diplomatic tracks,” she said. “That seems to be the most promising way to achieve the outcome that is just.”

Mr. Sisi has said that the journalists should have been deported rather than stand trial, but he has so far insisted that the government does not interfere in judicial decisions.

A recent thaw in relations between Egypt and Qatar, brokered by Saudi Arabia, has raised hopes that the Egyptian president might be more willing to free the men. In December, in a major concession, Qatar suspended the broadcast of an Egyptian affiliate of Al Jazeera that had been sharply critical of Egypt’s government.

But the Qatari government has also refused to extradite Brotherhood leaders and supporters wanted by the Egyptian government, a source of continuing tension, according to Egyptian officials.

Although the appeals court did not give specifics for its decision, it is regarded as among Egypt’s most rigorous and independent legal bodies and may have been eager to remove the stain on Egypt’s judiciary after the spectacle of the first trial.

It was unclear whether the ruling made it any more likely that Mr. Sisi would step in before or during the retrial. The delay of a final decision could be useful in diplomacy with Qatar, or it could be viewed as an obstacle if Egyptian officials were quickly trying to rid themselves of a public-relations headache.

Mr. Sisi had issued a decree in November allowing him to deport non-Egyptians convicted of crimes, in an apparent sign that his government was seeking face-saving ways to end what has been an embarrassing case.

The decree could free Mr. Fahmy, who holds Canadian and Egyptian citizenship and Mr. Greste, an Australian, but it would not help Mr. Mohamed, an Egyptian citizen.

Ms. Clooney said that Mr. Sisi could act in several ways to free the journalists, including by granting a pardon at any time, releasing them on humanitarian grounds, or deporting Mr. Greste and Mr. Fahmy. “There is no reason this can’t happen quickly, and today’s decision doesn’t change that,” she added.

In their request for a new trial, lawyers argued that the previous case had had procedural errors, including that a “special court” had been illegally designated to hear the case, according to Negad el-Borai, another lawyer for Mr. Fahmy. The prosecutor also requested a new trial, Mr. Borai said, though the reasons have not been made public.

The defendants were not present Thursday, and reporters were barred from entering the court until after the hearing. Relatives of the men spoke to reporters after the decision and seemed stunned that they would not be released.

“I don’t know what the next step is,” said Marwa Omara, Mr. Fahmy’s fiancée. “It seems like it’s a long battle.” She added that Canadian officials needed to “do more.”

Lawyers said Thursday that the three journalists could still be granted bail at the start of their new trial, which is expected to begin within a month.

In a statement after the court decision, Al Jazeera said that the Egyptian authorities had a choice: “Free these men quickly, or continue to string this out, all the while continuing this injustice and harming the image of their own country in the eyes of the world. They should choose the former.”

Merna Thomas contributed reporting.





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12) A Look at the Problem of Rape in US Prisons
"More than half of all sexual assaults behind bars are committed by prison staffers, according to the U.S. Department of Justice..."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Inmate advocates worry that a proposal to reduce the financial penalties for states that don't comply with a 2003 federal law aimed at eliminating rape behind bars will severally damage it.

The measure failed this fall. Its sponsor, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, vows to re-introduce it in the new GOP-controlled Congress.

Cornyn said the funds include grants for worthy programs — such as ones that support rape and domestic violence victims — and that the law should be more narrowly tailored to affect money that goes to prison construction, operations and administration.

Supporters of the measure acknowledge the change would essentially eliminate the financial penalties, since little — if any — federal grant money is used for prison construction, daily operations and administration.

Those costs are typically handled by local government budgets.

A LONG-IGNORED PROBLEM: PRISON RAPE

Inmate advocates had lobbied for years for policymakers and lawmakers to address the problem of prison rape. Federal statistics show about 216,000 adult and juvenile inmates are sexually assaulted each year, compared to 238,000 in the overall U.S.

More than half of all sexual assaults behind bars are committed by prison staffers, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, and more than half of those employee-on-inmate assaults are committed by women.

Among the most vulnerable populations are the mentally ill, juveniles and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender inmates.

ATTITUDES BEGIN TO CHANGE IN THE 1990s

By the mid-1990s, more than half of the states passed laws defining staff-on-inmate sexual misconduct as a criminal offense.

And in 1994, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal prison officials in Terre Haute, Indiana, failed to take reasonable measures to protect a transgender woman who was repeatedly raped after she was sent to live with the general male population.

A UNANIMOUS VICTORY

Prison rape survivors, inmate advocacy groups and evangelical organizations lobbied Congress to pass a law that aimed to end sexual assault behind bars. In 2003, Congress unanimously passed it.

The law's requirements ranged from increased training of staff about sex abuse policies to screening new inmates to determine if they're likely to commit sexual assault or to be assaulted.

If states opt out of the law or don't comply, they stand to lose 5 percent of federal funds they get for prison operations.

$110 MILLION, AND CHANGE

In all, states have spent more than $110 million in state and federal funds to implement the law. By last fall, every state was supposed to certify that it had instituted dozens of the standards.

So far, New Jersey and New Hampshire say they are compliant with the law's requirements, and 43 states and the District of Columbia are working toward that goal. All states have made some improvements to follow the law.

Pennsylvania developed a web-based incident reporting program, and is working to improve prosecution strategies to ensure that rapists are brought to justice. Colorado and Oregon, for example, are using software to help track sexual assault reports.

SOME STATES OPT OUT, CITING COST, AUTONOMY

Texas, Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Nebraska, Utah and Idaho have opted out, arguing that it's too costly to implement requirements that they say don't give them the flexibility to administer their facilities the way they see fit.

Texas, for example, says a requirement to prevent guards from seeing inmates of the opposite sex naked in the showers or during strip searches wouldn't work because 40 percent of the correctional officer workforce is female.

TOO EARLY TO SAY IF LAW IS WORKING

Federal surveys show the nation's rate of sexual victimization behind bars has remained steady for at least 7 years, with nearly 1 in 10 adult inmates reporting attacks. The rate is the same for juveniles, although that has improved slightly since 2008.


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13) Inmate Advocates Worry About Prison-Rape Law's Fate
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

When Jan Lastocy was repeatedly raped by a Michigan state prison guard, she felt she'd become invisible. There was no rape crisis center hotline. She'd been warned that inmates were never believed over guards.

She was among roughly 216,000 prison rape victims not included in America's national rape statistics.

So when Congress passed a law in 2003 aimed at ending sexual assault in U.S. prisons, jails and juvenile detention centers, survivors like Lastocy hoped that it would help solve the long-ignored problem.

Lastocy and a coalition of inmate advocacy groups and evangelical groups had worked for years to convince policymakers and corrections officials that rape behind bars shouldn't be accepted, even if the public had little sympathy for its victims.

"I felt vindicated because I had been fighting so hard, and for so long, to bring attention to this issue and get justice for myself and for all survivors," said Lastocy, who was repeatedly raped by a guard while serving time for embezzlement.

Now, some advocates worry that a proposal to reduce the law's financial penalties will severely damage it. The measure failed this fall, but its sponsor, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, vows to re-introduce it in the new GOP-controlled Congress.

Cornyn said the funds include grants for worthy programs, such as ones that support rape and domestic violence victims. He said the law should be more narrowly tailored to affect money for prison construction, operations and administration.

The proposal has put some prison rape survivors on the opposite side of those who survived sexual assault on the outside.

Nearly two dozen organizations, including prison industry groups and the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, have lauded his efforts. They say they trust prison officials to work vigorously at reducing rapes even without financial penalties.

"There's no desire to do anything less than help victims," said Rebecca O'Connor, RAINN's vice president of public policy, adding that her organization just wants to make sure the law is applied in a way that doesn't harm existing programs.

Advocates say the measure is the latest sign that the law's implementation is too slow.

Federal statistics show about 216,000 adult and juvenile inmates are sexually assaulted each year, compared to 238,000 people living outside of correction facilities in the U.S.

Allen Beck, a statistician with the U.S. Department of Justice who researches the incidence of prison rape, said the biggest indicator of prisoner sexual assault is the culture of the facility, not the number of inmates or security cameras.

"Really it's about how the facilities are managed, in terms of institutional culture," Beck said.

When Lastocy stepped into Camp Branch, a minimum security women's prison in Michigan, in 1998, she was facing as much as 10 years in prison for attempting to embezzle several thousand dollars from her employer, ABO Security.

As she adjusted to the discovery after her arrest that she had bipolar disorder, rape quickly became a fact of life.

Like many prison rape survivors, she feared that the guard who raped her could extend her prison stay by writing her false tickets for breaking prison rules if she reported him. He was later convicted of sexually assaulting several inmates, including Lastocy.

When she learned that she may have been his first victim, she felt guilt for not speaking up, said Lastocy, who now is an advocate for prison rape survivors.

The passage of the law, however, gave her hope that there would be fewer victims. But like other advocates, she's been frustrated by the pace of change at correctional institutions throughout the country.

So far, seven states have opted out of the law, and stand to lose 5 percent in federal money that goes toward prisons. Two states — New Jersey and New Hampshire — say they are in compliance, and 41 others are working to meet the law's requirements.

The law's backers say Cornyn's proposal would essentially gut the penalty because little, if any, federal grant money actually goes toward prison administration, operations and constructions. Those are funded by state and local governments.

To take the provision out "would totally obliterate the incentive states have to comply with" the law, said U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, the chairman of the former National Prison Rape Elimination Commission.

The commission developed the law's requirements, which range from increased training of staff about sex abuse policies to screening new inmates to determine if they're likely to commit sexual assault or to be assaulted.

In Texas, which has six facilities among those nationally with the highest prevalence rate of sexual assaults, officials used nearly $2.6 million in federal money to install extra cameras in some facilities and develop a sexual assault awareness curriculum.

The state has since opted out, and faces an $800,000 loss in federal funding.

Jason Clark, a corrections spokesman, said a requirement to prevent guards from seeing inmates of the opposite sex naked in the showers or during strip searches wouldn't work because 40 percent of the correctional officer workforce is female.

Many states have trained staffers and educated inmates about how to spot and report sexual assault.

Addressing sexual assault and caring for victims "decreases the likelihood of an offender becoming a victim again and committing a violent act once he or she returns to the community," said Norah West, Washington state's corrections spokeswoman.

Eight state correctional facilities comply with the federal law, West said. Nine more are set to be audited in 2015.

For Lastocy, the trauma didn't end when she left prison.

She struggled with terror as she watched her teenage daughter begin to navigate the dating. She worked to repair her wounded marriage, trying to explain to her husband why she didn't tell him, or anyone, about the rapes.

She still has nightmares, 15 years after her ordeal.

"I know the judge did not sentence me to be raped," said Lastocy. "As much as I despise him, I don't even wish my rapist would be raped while he is in prison, because nobody deserves it."


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