Tuesday, April 21, 2015

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 2015



CANCEL ALL STUDENT DEBT!
Sign the Petition:

http://cancelallstudentdebt.com/?code=kos

Dear President Obama, Senators, and Members of Congress:
 
Americans now owe $1.3 trillion in student debt. Eighty-six percent of that money is owed to the United States government. This is a crushing burden for more than 40 million Americans and their families. 

I urge you to take immediate action to forgive all student debt, public and private. 

American Federation of Teachers
Campaign for America's Future
Courage Campaign
Daily Kos
Democracy for America
LeftAction
Project Springboard
RH Reality Check
RootsAction
Student Debt Crisis
The Nation
Working Families 


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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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The Local 10 Executive Board voted to pass the motion below with the amendment that we shutdown the port on May Day and march on City Hall to demand an end to police killings. We need to march and speak out for Mumia and his critical situation also. We'll try to organize a rally at City Hall. There's a possibility of predominantly Black longshore unions in the South joining us.

 
Union Action to Stop Police Killings of Black and Brown People

Whereas, police are continuing to kill unarmed Black and Brown people across this country, and

Whereas, ILWU shuts down all West Coast ports on Bloody Thursday to remember the killing of two strikers shot in the back by police in the Big Strike of 1934, and

Whereas, ILWU has a proud history of standing up against racial injustice like the 1984 anti-apartheid action and the 2010 shut down for justice for Oscar Grant, and

Whereas, our brothers and sisters in ILA Local 1422 of Charleston, South Carolina have been organizing protests against the recent killing of unarmed Walter Scott shot in the back by police,

Therefore Be It Resolved that if our brothers and sisters of ILA 1422, home of the Charleston 5 struggle of which Local 10 was in the forefront, call on us to join with them now in a protest against police brutality we will stand with them in solidarity.

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May Day
International Workers Day
Workers and Migrants Rising for Dignity, Against State Violence, and Standing for International Solidarity
Friday May 1st
2pm Rally at Story and King, (Corner of Target Plaza)
3pm Gather Up
4pm March
5:45pm Closing Rally at San José City Hall

May 1st Coalition Endorsements: Santa Clara County Wage Theft Coalition, SEIU USWW, MAIZ,CWA 9423, SJSU S.A.H.E., PAWIS, Anakbayan Silicon Valley, NAFCON, Migrante Northern California, BAYAN USA, South Bay Labor Council, Legal Aid Society of Santa Clara County, United States Social Forum San Jose Bay Area LOC, Human Agenda, San Jose Peace and Justice Center, U.A. Plumbers and Fitters Local 393, San Jose R.A.D., CHAM, Pangea Legal Services, UFCW Local 5, LIUNA Laborers Local 270, Working Partnerships USA, Voluntarios de la Comunidad, South Bay International Womyn’s Day Network, SOMOS Mayfair, American Muslim Voice Foundation, Silicon Valley Latino Democratic Forum, SJSU Gente Unida,  SJSU M.E.Ch.A., Amigos of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Asian Law Alliance and the Coalition for Justice and Accountability, SIREN, San Jose Silicon Valley NAACP, All African People's Revolutionary Party (AAPRP), SV Debug,  Low-Income Self-Help Center,IMA South Bay, Santa Clara County El Comité, El Grito de la Cultura.



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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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NO EXECUTION BY MEDICAL NEGLECT!
SAVE MUMIA'S LIFE!

Political prisoner and revolutionary journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal has been the victim of criminal neglect by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections for months, and his life is in grave danger.

The problem began in January with a severe skin rash which spread to Mumia’s entire body. When he asked for treatment he was given antibiotics and steroids, but these led to allergic reactions, including extreme swelling from his feet to his head, and severe blisters.  His skin was tight and crusted. Mumia told his wife Wadiya Jamal and other visitors that a prison doctor said he looked like he was “in a suit of armor,” with “his chest raised up to his chin to create space to breathe.” 

Obviously he should have been taken to the hospital immediately, but he was not. On February 17th he was admitted to the prison infirmary for a week, then sent back to his cell, where his condition continued to deteriorate.

On March 30, 2015 Mumia walked into the infirmary at SCI Mahanoy and fell unconscious, suffering from what was then an undiagnosed and untreated diabetes (this despite three blood samples that had been taken). FINALLY, he was taken to a hospital and treated in the ICU at the Schuylkill Medical Center for 3 days.  He was in a state of diabetic shock, with a blood sugar level of 779. If this level had been just a bit higher, he would have gone into a coma and likely died.  He was dehydrated and his sodium level was 168. These conditions show that the wretched treatment and lack of proper medical care of the state prison had almost succeeded in killing Mumia!
_  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _

Please donate to help fund Mumia’s health care, at:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mumia-abu-jamal-needs-medical-care-now
 
Sign the petition to help save—and free—Mumia at:

https://www.change.org/p/john-e-wetzel-pa-secretary-of-corrections-tom-wolf-pa-governor-stop-the-medical-execution-of-mumia-abu-jamal-by-neglect-and-malpractice-3

_  _  _  _  _  _  _  see more info below _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _ 

After allowing Mumia’s wife and brother a brief visit on March 31, the prison authorities changed the rules and prevented his family from visiting. An international uproar and hundreds of calls to Pennsylvania state and prison authorities resulted in family visits being allowed again, but a new rule specified only one visit by a close family member per week. Calls are still needed to demand more frequent family visits. (See phone numbers, below.)

Mumia was transferred back to prison on April 1, to the same prison infirmary that failed to properly diagnose or treat him before the hospitalization. Although his condition is somewhat improved from just before his hospitalization, he is weakened by a drastic weight loss of over 80 pounds in about 5 weeks, and his situation remains grave. On April 2nd, Mumia collapsed in the prison infirmary bathroom and lay on the floor for 45 minutes before being found by a doctor and prisoner.
Mumia’s Life Is Still In Danger

Now in a manually operated wheelchair, Mumia is very weak, his skin is still raw and blistered, and he has some difficulty breathing. While his mind is still sharp, he suffers from some loss in the ability to retrieve words. As described by Suzanne Ross of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC), following her visit with Mumia on April 13th:

“Mumia was very alert and deep, as usual filled with extensive historical knowledge, as we discussed some of the same kinds of political issues we generally discuss when I visit.  He was occasionally even humorous.  His spirit and intellect remain unquestionably Mumia.  But he is concerned about some loss in his ability to retrieve words, aphasia like symptoms, and he sometimes experiences fugue states.  He apparently did not experience any of these symptoms while I was there.   Very notable to me was the trauma all this has imposed on Mumia, major, major, major physical and emotional trauma.  He feels the steroids given him for his initial skin problem brought on the diabetes, and now the life threatening diabetic picture, not to mention the pain, the itching, the shaking, and the memory issues he described.  ALL DONE TO HIM, IMPOSED ON HIM.”

(See Ross’ full report at: http://www.freemumia.com/2015/04/mumia-hospitalized/#apr1.)

Mumia’s Plight Is Typical For Long-term Prisoners

The mass incarceration policies in the US, increasingly administered by private corporations interested only in their bottom line, create hellish conditions for their captive victims, particularly those on “slow death row” (life without the possibility of parole), as is Mumia. Mumia is the first one to point this out, and, despite the stress of his present situation, to advocate for other prisoners and the oppressed and exploited in general. As Heidi Bogosian and Johanna Fernandez point out in a piece on Black Agenda Report,

“Mumia’s condition highlights the systemic neglect and abuse of prisoners in our nation’s vast and ever growing system of mass incarceration. A daily diet high in carbohydrates, salt and sugar has left an estimated 80 thousand suffering from diabetes. Compounding the inadequate nutrition is the sub-par medical care provided by a vast for-profit provider that reaps some $1.5 billion a year in profits from prison healthcare contracts. Using an HMO model that puts cost-cutting above all, Corizon Correctional Healthcare has paid millions in legal settlements over inadequate or bungled treatment. Not surprisingly, the Bureau of Justice reported some 40% of prisoners and jail inmates in 2011-2012 reporting chronic medical condition such as asthma, cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure—and diabetes.”

(Heidi Boghosian is a lawyer in New York City, and Johanna Fernandez is Assistant Professor of History at Baruch College  Both are long-time advocates for Mumia Abu-Jamal. See their full piece, titled “A Slow Death for Mumia Abu-Jamal and Thousands of Prisoners in America” at: http://www.blackagendareport.com/mumia-death-by-medical-neglect.)

Mumia Needs All of Us to Help Now!

Targeted by police, prosecutors and the FBI from a young age, Mumia was framed in a blatantly unfair trial for a crime he didn’t commit in 1982. Since then, state and federal courts have continued to cover-up this atrocity by refusing to hear or act on overwhelming evidence that explodes the frame-up and should set him free.  Also since then, Mumia has dedicated his 33 years of life in prison to exposing the racism, imperialism and other crimes of this capitalist system within which we all live, as shown in his hundreds of recorded commentaries and numerous books.

Now we must step up!

Mumia needs his own physician specialists!  Please donate now to help make this possible.  Please got to the web site below and give as generously as you can.

Donate at:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mumia-abu-jamal-needs-medical-care-now

and…
Sign the petition
to help save—and free—Mumia.
Go to:

https://www.change.org/p/john-e-wetzel-pa-secretary-of-corrections-tom-wolf-pa-governor-stop-the-medical-execution-of-mumia-abu-jamal-by-neglect-and-malpractice-3

Also,
We need to keep up the pressure
with phone calls:

Let SCI Mahanoy Superintendent John Kerestes and Secretary of Corrections John Wetzel know we insist that Mumia have medical specialists of his own choosing, and that they have daily access rights to examine and treat him. Also let them know that Mumia’s family needs regular and frequent visitation rights.

SCI Mahanoy
Superintendent John Kerestes
(570) 773-2158

SCI Mahanoy
Chief Health Care Administrator Steinhardt
(570) 773-2158

Christopher Oppman
Director, PA Department of Corrections Health Care Services
(717) 728-5309

John Wetzel
Secretary, PA Department of Corrections
(717) 728-4109

NO EXECUTION BY MEDICAL NEGLECT!
SAVE MUMIA'S LIFE!

Mumia is Innocent! Free Mumia Now!

This message by:
Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
20 April 2015

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For Immediate Release: March 30, 2015

Attn: News Desk

Prisoners and Advocacy Groups Win Right to a Trial On Constitutionality of the Silencing Act (PA SB508)

This morning, Chief Judge for the federal court in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Christopher Conner, will hear the cases Abu-Jamal v. Kane and Prison Legal News v. Kane in a trial that willl determine the constitutionality of PA SB508 "the Silencing Act".  Defendant PA Attorney General Kane will be hard pressed to argue the constitutionality of the Silencing Act, a censorship law targeted at Mumia Abu-Jamal and other currently and formerly incarcerated people.

Defendant Seth Williams was dismissed from the case based on his explicit disavowal of enforcing the act until a court of competent jurisdiction rules on the constitutionality of the statute. His dismissal does not hinder Plaintiffs ability to obtain the relief of invalidating this law, as a favorable ruling on the First Amendment issue against Defendant Kane will achieve the same result. Williams' disavowal of enforcement is a far cry from his political grandstanding in support of this bill's passage in the fall.

The judge has ordered that this trial will include Plaintiffs' motion for preliminary injunction merged with a trial on the merits, meaning that if we win we will be granted a permanent injunction against the statute, and the statue will be invalidated.

“Silencing prisoners is one more way of dehumanizing them,” said Amistad Law Project Policy Director Nikki Grant. “We need the voices of the marginalized to shed light on injustice.”

The trial is set for this morning March 30 in Harrisburg, PA approximately 5 months since former Governor Corbett signed this ill-fated bill into law.

 The Abolitionist Law Center, Amistad Law Project, and the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law filed the lawsuit on Nov. 10th to stop enforcement of the law. The law firms represent Mumia Abu-Jamal, Prison Radio, Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal, Kerry “Shakaboona” Marshall, Robert L. Holbrook, Donnell Palmer, Anthony Chance, and Human Rights Coalition.

The Silencing Act, also known as 18 P.S. § 11.1304, allows the Attorney General, county District Attorneys, and victims of personal injury crimes to bring a lawsuit in civil court against the person convicted of the personal injury crime to enjoin conduct that “perpetuates the continuing effect of the crime on the victim”. The actions that could prompt a lawsuit include “conduct which causes a temporary or permanent state of mental anguish.”

“This law is unconstitutional,” said David Shapiro of MacArthur Justice Center. “The facts are on our side and the law is on our side. The Silencing Act targets a huge amount of constitutionally protected speech based on who is speaking.”

After a prerecorded commencement speech by journalist and prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal was played for graduates at Goddard College in Vermont, the Pennsylvania legislature passed and outgoing Governor Corbett signed into law the Silencing Act on October 21st, 16 days after the commencement speech.

Abu-Jamal has spent 33 years in prison, 29 of which were in solitary confinement on death row after being convicted at a 1982 trial that Amnesty International said “failed to meet minimum international standards safeguarding the fairness of legal proceedings.”

Robert L. Holbrook, who is serving a death by incarceration, life without parole, sentence he received as a child, had this to say about the law: “there are people in prison who will stop writing, stop publishing, stop speaking out because of this law.”

Bret Grote       bretgrote@abolitionistlawcenter.org    412-654-9070
Ashley Henderson ashley@amistadlaw.org          215-310-0424
Noelle Hanrahan info@prisonradio.org         415-706-5222
David Shapiro david.shapiro@law.northwestern.edu        312-503-0711

Amistad Law Project is a West Philadelphia-based public interest law center.
Our mission is to fight for the human rights of all people by providing
legal services to people incarcerated in Pennsylvania’s prisons.
www.amistadlaw.org | @amistadlaw | 267-225-5884

The Abolitionist Law Center is a public interest law firm inspired by the struggle of political and politicized prisoners, and organized for the purpose of abolishing class and race based mass incarceration in the United States.   412-654-9070

Prison Radio has recorded Mumia and other political prisoners for over 25 years, and we are pulling out all the stops to keep these voices on the air.   415-706-5222

Please donate today to amplify prisoners' voices far and wide beyond the bars:
     Support Prison Radio: prisonradio.org/donate
     Defeat SB 508: bit.ly/defendfreespeech

Copyright © Prison Radio
www,prisonradio.org 415-706-5222
Our mailing address is:
Prison Radio PO Box 411074, SF CA 94141

http://us10.campaign-archive2.com/?u=247585f092e945ff55b9a1bb2&id=e113d0b6d0&e=0107d76ccd

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

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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


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Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson

Lorenzo Speaks Concerning Prosecution's Brief:
JANUARY 1, 2015—The prosecutor has run away from (almost) every issue raised in my PCRA by begging the Court to dismiss everything as “untimely”. When they don’t do this, they suggest that me and my lawyers were “defamatory” towards either my former prosecutor Christopher Abruzzo or Detective Kevin Duffin, in our claims they withheld, misused or hid evidence of my Innocence, in order to secure an unjust conviction in this case. If I charged, a year ago, that about a dozen AGs (attorneys general) were involved in circulating porno via their office computers, people would’ve laughed at me, and seen me as crazy.

But, guess what? During 2014, we learned that this was the truth. How can it be defamatory to speak the truth? Notice the OAG (Office of Attorney General), never said the obvious: That AG Abruzzo didn’t inform the Defense about the relationship between his Motive Witness and his head detective (Victoria Doubs and Det. Duffin); that Det. Duffin doesn’t deny Doubs was his god-sister, and that she lived in his family home, or that he assisted her whenever she got into trouble.

Why not? Because it is true. How can you defame someone who defames himself? Mr. Christopher Abruzzo, Esq., when a member of the higher ranks of the OAG, sent and/or received copious amounts of porno to other attorneys general and beyond. What does this say about his sense of judgment? He thought enough about his behavior to resign from his post in the Governor’s Cabinet. If he thought that his behavior was okay, he’d still be sitting in the Governor’s cabinet, right? The OAG cannot honestly oppose anything we’ve argued, but they try by seeking to get the Court to do their dirty work, how? By denying an Evidentiary Hearing to prove every point we’ve claimed.

The prosecution is trying desperately to avoid dealing with the substance of my claims in Com. v. Lorenzo Johnson. So, they slander my Legal Team and blame them for defaming the good AG’s and Cops involved with this case. They try to do what is undeniable, to deny that they hid evidence from the Defense for years. They blamed me for daring to protest the hidden evidence of their malfeasance and other acts to sabotage the defense. They claim that they had an “Open File” policy with my trial counsel. But “Open File” is more than letting an attorney read something in their office. If it’s a search for the truth it must include what is turned over to the attorney, for how do we really know what was shown to her?

They say it is inconceivable that an attorney would read a file, beginning on page nine (9), and not ask for the preceding eight (8) pages. Yet, it is conceivable if trial counsel was ineffective for not demanding the record of the first eight pages. Pages that identify the State’s only witness as a “SUSPECT” in the murder for which her client was charged! How could such an attorney fail to recognize the relevance of such an issue, barring their sheer Ineffectiveness and frankly, Incompetence.

By seeking to avoid an evidentiary hearing, the prosecution seeks to avoid evidence of their wrongdoing being made plain, for all to see. If they believe I’m wrong, why not prove it? They can’t. So they shout I filed my appeal untimely, as if there can ever justly be a rule that precludes an innocent from proving his innocence! Not to mention the fact that the prosecution has failed to even mention the positive finger prints that ay my trial they said none existed. Don’t try to hide it with a lame argument about time. When isn’t there a time for truth? The prosecution should be ashamed of itself for taking this road. It is unworthy of an office that claims to seek justice.

After the trial verdict The Patriot-News (March 18, 1997) reported, “Deputy Attorney General Christopher Abruzzo admitted there were some serious concerns about the strength of the evidence against Johnson and praised the jury for doing a thorough job.” I guess he forgot to mention all of the evidence he left out to show Innocence.

Now, more than ever, Lorenzo Johnson needs your support.
Publicize his case; bring it to your friends, clubs, religious
and social organizations. 


SIGN LORENZO JOHNSON'S FREEDOM PETITION

http://www.freelorenzojohnson.org/sign-the-petition.html

CONTRIBUTE TO LORENZO'S CAMPAIGN FOR FREEDOM!
http://www.freelorenzojohnson.org/how-can-i-help.html


Write: Lorenzo Johnson
            DF 1036
            SCI Mahanoy
            301 Morea Rd.
            Frackville, PA 17932

 Email: Lorenzo Johnson through JPAY.com code:
              Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC



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Click HERE to view in browser
http://www.iacenter.org/prisoners/freepinkney-1-28-15/
       
Join the Fight to Free Rev. Pinkney!

On December 15, 2014 the Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan was thrown into prison for 2.5 to 10 years. This 66-year-old leading African American activist was tried and convicted in front of an all-white jury and racist white judge and prosecutor for supposedly altering 5 dates on a recall petition against the mayor of Benton Harbor.

The prosecutor, with the judge’s approval, repeatedly told the jury “you don’t need evidence to convict Mr. Pinkney.” And ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE WAS EVER PRESENTED THAT TIED REV. PINKNEY TO THE ‘ALTERED’ PETITIONS. Rev. Pinkney was immediately led away in handcuffs and thrown into Jackson Prison.

This is an outrageous charge. It is an outrageous conviction. It is an even more outrageous sentence! It must be appealed.

With your help supporters need to raise $20,000 for Rev. Pinkney’s appeal.

Checks can be made out to BANCO (Black Autonomy Network Community Organization). This is the organization founded by Rev. Pinkney.  Mail them to: Mrs. Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union Street, Benton Harbor, MI 49022.

Donations can be accepted on-line at bhbanco.org – press the donate button.

For information on the decade long campaign to destroy Rev. Pinkney go to bhbanco.org and workers.org(search “Pinkney”).

We urge your support to the efforts to Free Rev. Pinkney!Ramsey Clark – Former U.S. attorney general,
Cynthia McKinney – Former member of U.S. Congress,
Lynne Stewart – Former political prisoner and human rights attorney
Ralph Poynter – New Abolitionist Movement,
Abayomi Azikiwe – Editor, Pan-African News Wire<
Larry Holmes – Peoples Power Assembly,
David Sole – Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice
Sara Flounders – International Action Center

MESSAGE FROM REV. PINKNEY

I am now in Marquette prison over 15 hours from wife and family, sitting in prison for a crime that was never committed. Judge Schrock and Mike Sepic both admitted there was no evidence against me but now I sit in prison facing 30 months. Schrock actually stated that he wanted to make an example out of me. (to scare Benton Harbor residents even more...) ONLY IN AMERICA. I now have an army to help fight Berrien County. When I arrived at Jackson state prison on Dec. 15, I met several hundred people from Detroit, Flint, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids. Some people recognized me. There was an outstanding amount of support given by the prison inmates. When I was transported to Marquette Prison it took 2 days. The prisoners knew who I was. One of the guards looked me up on the internet and said, "who would believe Berrien County is this racist."  

New Court Date on 4 Motions for Rev. Pinkney 

TUES, FEB. 24 1pm Berrien County Court 

Background to Campaign to free Rev. Pinkney

Michigan political prisoner the Rev. Edward Pinkney is a victim of racist injustice. He was sentenced to 30 months to 10 years for supposedly changing the dates on 5 signatures on a petition to recall Benton Harbor Mayor James Hightower.

No material or circumstantial evidence was presented at the trial that would implicate Pinkney in the purported5 felonies. Many believe that Pinkney, a Berrien County activist and leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO), is being punished by local authorities for opposing the corporate plans of Whirlpool Corp, headquartered in Benton Harbor, Michigan.

In 2012, Pinkney and BANCO led an “Occupy the PGA [Professional Golfers’ Association of America]” demonstration against a world-renowned golf tournament held at the newly created Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course on the shoreline of 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 the recall campaign against Mayor Hightower, who opposed a program that would have taxed local corporations in order to create jobs and improve conditions in Benton Harbor, a majority African-American municipality. Like other Michigan cities, it has been devastated by widespread poverty and unemployment. 

The Benton Harbor corporate power structure has used similar fraudulent charges to stop past efforts to recall or vote out of office the racist white officials, from mayor, judges, prosecutors in a majority Black city. Rev Pinkney who always quotes scripture, as many Christian ministers do, was even convicted for quoting scripture in a newspaper column. This outrageous conviction was overturned on appeal. We must do this again!

To sign the petition in support of the Rev. Edward Pinkney, log on to: tinyurl.com/ps4lwyn.

Contributions for Rev. Pinkney’s defense can be sent to BANCO at Mrs Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union St., Benton Harbor, MI 49022

Or you can donate on-line at bhbanco.org.

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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

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!



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) Working, but Needing Public Assistance Anyway
By





2) Atlanta School Workers Sentenced in Test Score Cheating Case
By RICHARD FAUSSET




3) With Driver’s License Suspensions, a Cycle of Debt
By




4) Volunteer for Sheriff Is Charged in Killing After Mistaking Handgun for Taser
By and





5) In Test for Unions and Politicians, a Nationwide Protest on Pay
By NOAM SCHEIBER




6) Outside Judge Is Named for Police Shooting Case
By BENJAMIN MUELLER





7) Use of E-Cigarettes Rises Sharply Among Teenagers, Report Says
By

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/health/use-of-e-cigarettes-rises-sharply-among-teenagers-report-says.html?ref=us&_r=0




8) Chicago Pays $5 Million to Family of Black Teenager Killed by Officer
By




9) A Police Shot to a Boy’s Back in Queens, Echoing Since 1973
By




10) N.Y.U. Labor Guidelines Failed to Protect 10,000 Workers in Abu Dhabi, Report Says
By





11) John Legend's Crusade to End Mass Incarceration
By Asawin Suebsaeng, The Daily Beast
18 April 15
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/29696-john-legends-crusade-to-end-mass-incarceration 




12) Civil Rights Groups in South Carolina Ask U.S. to Investigate Killings by Police
By BENJAMIN MUELLER




13) After Walter Scott Shooting, Scrutiny Turns to 2nd Officer
By




14) Oklahoma: Gas Executions Approved
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS




15) Workers Seeking Productivity in a Pill Are Abusing A.D.H.D. Drugs
By

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/us/workers-seeking-productivity-in-a-pill-are-abusing-adhd-drugs.html?ref=business





































































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1) Working, but Needing Public Assistance Anyway
By

A home health care worker in Durham, N.C.; a McDonald’s cashier in Chicago; a bank teller in New York; an adjunct professor in Mayfield, Ill. They are all evidence of an improving economy, because they are working and not among the steadily declining ranks of the unemployed.

Yet these same people also are on public assistance — relying on food stamps, Medicaid or other stretches of the safety net to help cover basic expenses when their paychecks come up short.

And they are not alone. Nearly three-quarters of the people helped by programs geared to the poor are members of a family headed by a worker, according to a new study by the Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California. As a result, taxpayers are providing not only support to the poor but also, in effect, a huge subsidy for employers of low-wage workers, from giants like McDonald’s and Walmart to mom-and-pop businesses.“This is a hidden cost of low-wage work,” said Ken Jacobs, chairman of the Berkeley center and a co-author of the report, which is scheduled for release on Monday.

Taxpayers pick up the difference, he said, between what employers pay and what is required to cover what most Americans consider essential living costs.

The report estimates that state and federal governments spend more than $150 billion a year on four key antipoverty programs used by working families: Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, food stamps and the earned-income tax credit, which is specifically aimed at working families.

This disparity has helped propel the movement to raise the minimum wage and prompted efforts in a handful of states to recover public funds from employers of low-wage workers. In Connecticut, for example, a legislative proposal calls for large employers to pay a fee to the state for each worker who earns less than $15 an hour. In 2016, California will start publishing the names of employers that have more than 100 employees receiving Medicaid, and how much these companies cost the state in public assistance.

“The low-wage business model practiced by many of the largest and most profitable employers in the country not only leaves many working families unable to afford the basics, but also imposes significant costs on the public as a whole,” Sarah Leberstein, a senior staff lawyer with the National Employment Law Project, testified recently before Connecticut lawmakers.

Other states, as well as several cities, including Washington, D.C., have moved to raise the minimum wage above $10, while local activists in fast food, retailing, home care, airport services and other low-wage industries have organized protests to demand $15 an hour. Organizers of the Fight for 15 movement are planning a nationwide wave of protests and strikes for this Wednesday — April 15.

Adriana Alvarez, a cashier at a McDonald’s in Chicago, is among the people pushing for higher wages. After five years with the fast-food giant, Ms. Alvarez, 22, earns $10.50 an hour, well above the federal minimum wage of $7.25. Still, she depends on food stamps, Medicaid and a child-care subsidy to help get through the week.

“He eats a lot,” Ms. Alvarez said of her 3-year-old son, Manny, with a laugh. He also drinks a lot of milk, she said — “a half-gallon every two days” — and because he is lactose intolerant, he requires a more expensive brand, using up most of her $80 allotment of food stamps.

Most everyone else she works with — including many 10-year-plus veterans of the franchise — receives food stamps, said Ms. Alvarez, who started working at McDonald’s full time when she was in high school.

She depends on Medicaid for her family’s health care, and receives a subsidy for the day care center where she drops off Manny on her way to work.

With the recovery now well into its sixth year, stagnant wages have increasingly become the central economic issue and a political flash point.

A report issued last week by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland said that labor’s share of overall income had fallen to record lows in recent years while profits have soared.

A handful of powerhouse companies have cited a tightening labor market as the reason behind recent wage increases, including McDonald’s, which recently announced a $1 bump over the local legal minimum for its corporate employees. (The announcement does not apply to the vast majority of McDonald’s employees, who work in franchises.)

Several economists, including the Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz, who has written extensively on inequality, credited political rather than competitive pressures for the decision by some larger fast-food and retail employers to raise wages.

William E. Spriggs, chief economist at the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said the McDonald’s announcement was “a response to worker campaigns to increase the minimum wage and what is going on in legislatures on the state and local levels.”

Denise Rush, a home health care worker in Durham, N.C., often works seven days a week, returning home near midnight after her two teenagers have already gone to bed. At $9.50 an hour, her biweekly paycheck totals just over $700, or the cost of her monthly rent. There is little left for other expenses.

“It’s a crazy dilemma,” she said. “Do I pay the whole bill or do I gas up the car to go to work?”

Despite receiving coverage for her children’s health care from Medicaid as well as about $300 a month in food stamps, Ms. Rush, 41, is still struggling. “We’re talking about basic needs,” she said, including such staples of modern life as a cellphone to keep in touch with work and her children and a home Internet connection to allow her children to do their homework.

Her paycheck also fails to pay for the uniforms and fees for the lacrosse, basketball and soccer teams that Ms. Rush says she believes are essential to keep her son and daughter occupied and out of trouble while she is working. Fortunately, she said, the school has helped pick up that tab.

About 48 percent of home health care workers are on public assistance, the Berkeley researchers found. So are 46 percent of child care workers and 52 percent of fast-food workers.

Even some of the nation’s best-educated workers have turned to taxpayers for support; a quarter of the families of part-time college faculty members are on public assistance, the Berkeley researchers found.

“I’m very proud of my doctorate, it was well-earned, but in terms of the work force, it’s a penalty,” said Wanda Brewer, who lives in Mayfield, a Chicago suburb, and teaches at DeVry and Concordia colleges. She is paid $2,700 for each 15-week course she teaches. She and her 4-year-old daughter are both on Medicaid; they also receive $390 a month in food stamps and a child care subsidy.

She has applied for other jobs at chains like Walmart, Home Depot and Menard’s, but says she can’t even get a call back because such employers consider her overqualified.

“When I apply for anything outside education, they laugh at me,” Ms. Brewer said. “The term professor immediately commands respect. The assumption is you’re making a fair wage, a living wage, but that is not necessarily so.”




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2) Atlanta School Workers Sentenced in Test Score Cheating Case
By RICHARD FAUSSET

ATLANTA — Atlanta educators convicted of racketeering in a huge public school cheating scandal who rejected a sentencing deal received prison time during proceedings on Tuesday in a Fulton County court.

One educator who took a sentencing deal negotiated overnight, Donald Bullock, a testing coordinator, was ordered to spend six months of weekends in county jail and five years on probation. He was also fined $5,000 and ordered to do 1,500 hours of community service.

Among those declining deals were three higher-level administrators, Sharon Davis-Williams, Michael Pitts and Tamara Cotman, all regional directors at Atlanta Public Schools. An irate Judge Jerry W. Baxter of Fulton County Superior Court sentenced each of them to 20 years, with seven to be served in prison, and the remainder on probation. Each must also pay a $25,000 file and perform 2,000 hours of community service.

The sentences had been expected on Monday, but after spending most of the day listing to character witnesses — friends and family members — plead for leniency for the educators, Judge Baxter asked prosecutors and defense lawyers to try work out sentencing deals. The judge ordered them back into court Tuesday morning.

A principal, Dana Evans, who also declined a deal, received a five-year sentence — a year in prison and four years probation — and must do 1,000 hours of community service.

The punishments for the other educators are expected to be determined later Tuesday.

The atmosphere in the downtown Atlanta courtroom was highly charged Tuesday morning. In one exchange over the status of appellate bonds, Judge Baxter threatened to put a lawyer in jail if he did not quiet down.

The judge grimaced and bellowed throughout the proceedings, apparently piqued that some of the defendants have declined to take deals. Notably, the sentencing arrangements would have forced the educators to acknowledge their guilt. By refusing the deals, they are able appeal their convictions.

“I think there were hundreds, thousands of children who were harmed in this city,” the judge said. “That’s what gets lost. Everybody starts crying about these educators. There were thousands of students who were harmed by this thing. This was not a victimless crime in this city.”

The educators had been convicted of racketeering, a charge more typically associated with traditional organized crime rings. Prosecutors said they had participated in a wide-ranging conspiracy to artificially inflate student standardized test scores and give a false sense that struggling schools were improving. The motive, the prosecutors said, was to protect their jobs or win bonuses or favor from their superiors.

Prosecutors maintained that some of the most vulnerable students in the struggling system were victims of the scheme, with the false accomplishments ascribed to them obscuring the fact that they actually needed extra help.

The issues came to light more than six years ago as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution began publishing articles that questioned the drastic improvements in scores that some schools were reporting on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, a standardized test once given throughout Georgia.

A state investigation completed in 2011 found that nearly 180 school system employees were complicit, in some cases gathering at cheating parties to erase incorrect test answers and fill in the correct ones. A Fulton County grand jury later indicted 35 educators, including the former schools superintendent Beverly L. Hall, who had previously been celebrated for her data-driven management style and the gains she appeared to have made at the school system.

Twenty-one of the educators reached plea agreements. Dr. Hall maintained her innocence but died before she could stand trial, as did one other defendant.

That left a dozen educators who put their fates in the hands of a Fulton County jury. Each defendant faced up to 20 years in prison for the racketeering charge, and some faced other charges, including making false statements.

They were tried together in an often ungainly trial that dragged on for six months and ended April 1, when the jury returned its verdict. One defendant, Dessa Curb, a former elementary schoolteacher, was acquitted. Another former elementary schoolteacher, Shani Robinson, was found guilty, but she delivered a baby over the weekend, according to news reports, and will be sentenced later.

The sentences expected to be handed down to the other 10 defendants are likely to serve as a somber coda to a scandal that has raised questions nationally about the wisdom of what some see as the country’s preoccupation with standardized testing.

Locally, the drama set off a wave of changes in the 50,000-student school system, as well as broader soul-searching in a majority-black city where teachers have historically been a linchpin of the middle class.

For some, the images of the educators, dressed as if for an awards assembly, being led out of a Fulton County courtroom in handcuffs after the verdict were a welcome if bitter end to an embarrassing civic catastrophe. Mayor Kasim Reed spoke of the closing of “one of the darkest periods in the life of our city,” and said that Atlanta could now “move forward with the education and development of our young people.”

Others have been appalled at what they described as unduly harsh treatment for the 10 educators, all of whom have awaited their sentencing in county jail. Some have denounced their treatment as racism. The Rev. Bernice King, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is among those who have called for leniency.

“While I agree that conspiring to change test scores is unethical and our laws clearly express that it is a crime, I don’t believe that 15-to-25-year prison sentences align with the crimes that were committed by the ‘APS 11,’ ” Ms. King said in a statement. “There are people who have committed far more egregious offenses that have severely harmed humanity who have not served such lengthy prison sentences.”


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3) With Driver’s License Suspensions, a Cycle of Debt
By

LEBANON, Tenn. — The last time Kenneth Seay lost his job, at an industrial bakery that offered health insurance and Christmas bonuses, it was because he had been thrown in jail for legal issues stemming from a revoked driver’s license. Same with the three jobs before that.

In fact, Mr. Seay said, when it comes to gainful employment, it is not his criminal record that is holding him back — he did time for dealing drugs — it is the $4,509.22 in fines, court costs and reinstatement fees he must pay to recover his license.

Mr. Seay’s inability to pay those costs has trapped him in a cycle that thousands of other low-income Tennesseans are struggling to escape. Going through the legal system, even for people charged with nonviolent misdemeanors, can be expensive, with fines, litigation taxes, probation fees and other costs running into hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars. Many people cannot pay.

As a result, some states have begun suspending drivers’ licenses for unsatisfied debts stemming from any criminal case, from misdemeanors like marijuana possession to felonies in which court costs can reach into the tens of thousands of dollars. In Tennessee, almost 90,000 driver’s licenses have been suspended since their law was enacted in 2011.

Tennessee’s law has become part of a broader debate over criminal justice debt, a national issue since a Department of Justice report faulted Ferguson, Mo., for a law enforcement system that focused aggressively on raising revenue and jailing people who could not pay.

Many drivers who have lost their licenses in Tennessee, too poor to pay what they owe and living in places with limited public transportation, have done what Mr. Seay did. They have driven anyway, resulting in courts so clogged with “driving while suspended” cases that some judges dispatch them 10 at a time.

Each time Mr. Seay got caught, he racked up new fines and fees on top of old. As a repeat offender, he would often be jailed, causing him to lose his job, and placed on probation, which carries an additional fee of $40 a month. More recently, he has been jailed for violating probation because he fell behind on those payments. Except for odd jobs, he has been unemployed for about a year, partly because he finally swore off driving.

“If I could get my license back that would be the most wonderful thing that happened to me in my life,” Mr. Seay, 44, said.

Tennessee is not alone in the practice: Five of the 15 states with the largest prison populations do so, according to Alicia Bannon at the Brennan Center for Justice. Most states also suspend licenses for failure to pay traffic fines, another policy that critics say creates a quicksand of debt. The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators has complained that suspension should be reserved for dangerous drivers, not indebted ones.

But in recent years, a few states have reconsidered the policy amid concerns that it hurts low-income residents without achieving its intended goals. In 2013, Washington stopped suspending licenses for failure to pay nonmoving violations like expired registrations. Suspensions dropped by half, said Brad Benfield, a spokesman for the Washington State Department of Licensing, and each month, there have been 500 fewer arrests for driving while suspended, saving an estimated 4,500 hours of patrol officers’ time.

And this month, a California lawmaker introduced a bill that would make it easier for people to reinstate their licenses, after a report said that four million California licenses had been suspended for failure to pay or failure to appear in court.

“For many families, a driver’s license suspension is the beginning of a descent into abject poverty for which there is no escape,” the proposed law says.

In Tennessee, court clerks already had the power to pursue unpaid court debts by garnishing wages or turning the cases over to a collection agency. The new law was intended to give them extra leverage. Now, even some of those clerks say they have mixed feelings about the policy.

“Though it does give us some kind of teeth to be able to go after people who don’t pay their court costs,” said Howard Gentry, the Davidson County Criminal Court clerk in Nashville, “it also has some collateral damage to it for those who are unable to pay.”

Typical court costs can vary widely. Asked for an average, a lawyer at the public defender’s office in Nashville picked up some files from her desk and read off the outstanding debts: $598; $1,100; $5,600; $14,872; and $3,800. That does not include a separate license reinstatement fee of $65 per offense. In Mr. Seay’s case, the reinstatement fee alone is $1,822.

Many defendants are forced to choose between paying court debt or essentials like utility bills and child support. Mr. Seay said his tax refund this year went toward child support debt accumulated during his time in prison and periods of unemployment. For even low-level offenders, debt can make a valid license unattainable.

Stephanie Newhouse, a divorced mother of two in Pulaski, Tenn., had her license suspended for a time after a drunken-driving conviction in Georgia. She said that the suspension was fair punishment, but that having to pay hundreds of dollars to reinstate the license was not. Ms. Newhouse has been able to work only part time since the suspension because her hours are contingent on when she can get a ride to work at an insurance office two counties away.

“You really have to have a full-time, really good job to be able to pay it back,” she said.

Though the law was projected to raise more than $20 million a year, it has not come close, according to state agencies. Revenue from litigation taxes, the primary court fee collected by the state, has remained flat, and even declined a bit in 2014, and license reinstatement fees have increased far less than was anticipated.

But since suspensions under the law began in mid-2012, almost 90,000 licenses have been suspended. Over the same period, 170,000 Tennessee licenses were suspended for unpaid traffic tickets. In both categories, more than 40 percent of the suspended drivers were black, compared with 16 percent of state residents.

Still, State Senator Jack Johnson, one of the sponsors of the 2011 law, said it was needed to rein in shirkers. “It’s usually not a tremendous amount of money, it’s just that folks are just blowing it off,” he said.

Mr. Johnson, a Republican from Williamson County, just south of Nashville, pointed out that the law gives people a year to pay and that it allows people to petition for a hardship license to get to work — a provision that some court officials, public defenders and even one judge said they were unfamiliar with.

“Not a single person has approached me about changing this,” Mr. Johnson said. “Every one of these people ending up with these court fines and fees and expenses, it’s as a result of violating the law in some capacity.”

In Nashville, Cathie Sweat, 21, said she went to apply for a license so she could work as a home health care aide, and learned that it had already been suspended , for unpaid fines relating to a minor drug charge and driving without a license. “How do you suspend a person’s license that they never had?” she asked.

The burden of criminal justice debt often falls on family members. Mr. Seay’s wife, Terrica, uses her income from a $12.50-an-hour factory job to pay all the household bills and has provided money time and again to bail her husband out of jail, pay his probation fees and contribute toward the backlog of fines. Asked how much this had added up to, Ms. Seay choked back tears.

“I’m just crying all day at work,” she said, adding that she had recently smoked marijuana to relieve the stress and promptly failed a drug test at work and had to attend counseling. “I got a good job, and I don’t have no money.”

In Tennessee, judges have the discretion to waive court fees and fines for indigent defendants, but they do not have to, and some routinely refuse. Judges also have wide discretion over how much time to allow defendants to pay traffic tickets before suspending a license. The new law on criminal court debt allows defendants one year to keep their license as long as they stay current on a payment plan approved by a judge.

Nashville has also set up an “indigency docket” where the court debt of poor defendants — at least, those who hear about the option — is routinely waived. But they still have to pay a license reinstatement fee to the Department of Safety, based on the number and type of violations.

Other courts do not take the time to examine defendants’ ability to pay. At a recent court session in Robertson County, north of Nashville, Erin McKissick, who said she had been placed on probation, required to pay for drug tests and threatened with losing her children after being convicted of driving while suspended and other counts, filled out an affidavit of indigency, saying she had a part-time cashier job and received $200 a month in food stamps. When Judge Joel W. Perry of General Sessions Court declined to look at it, she crumpled it into a ball.

Even when people finally manage to get their license back, their ordeal may not be over. James Goodwin, whose blended family includes six young children, failed years ago to pay a $35 traffic fine and then was repeatedly caught driving while suspended. After thousands of dollars and seven months in jail, he said, last month he was able to show a judge his new license. The judge dismissed his latest charge of driving while suspended, but assessed him $275 in court costs.

Mr. Goodwin was given 30 days to pay.


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4) Volunteer for Sheriff Is Charged in Killing After Mistaking Handgun for Taser
By and

Prosecutors in Tulsa, Okla., on Monday filed homicide charges against a 73-year-old Sheriff’s Department volunteer who fatally shot a suspect on April 2, apparently firing his handgun instead of a Taser by accident as other officers were subduing the man on the ground.

The volunteer, Robert C. Bates, was charged with second-degree manslaughter involving culpable negligence, punishable by up to four years in prison.

Mr. Bates, an insurance broker, had been a reserve deputy since 2008. He is among scores of civilian police enthusiasts, including wealthy donors to law enforcement, some of whom effectively act as an armed adjunct to the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Department.

Sheriff’s officials said he had intended to subdue the fleeing suspect, Eric C. Harris, with a Taser, but mistakenly fired his handgun instead. Mr. Harris was accused of trying to sell an illegal gun to an undercover officer.Video shot by a body camera worn by another deputy showed the suspect being knocked to the ground and commanded to roll on his stomach as officers struggled for a few seconds to subdue him. A voice on the video could be heard saying “Taser, Taser,” as if to warn other deputies to get out of the way of the device.

A moment later, there was a single gunshot, and a voice saying, “Oh, I shot him. I’m sorry.”

Mr. Harris, who is black, could be heard repeatedly shouting “He shot me,” while a deputy knelt on the suspect’s head and others yelled at him to stop struggling. The video showed Mr. Bates, who is white, dropping his pistol. Officials later said he dropped it because he was unprepared for the gun’s recoil, and called it added proof that the shooting was an accident; a Taser has negligible recoil.

Mr. Bates’s lawyer, Charles O. Brewster, said that his client would surrender to the authorities on Tuesday morning and that he intends to plead not guilty.

“Anyone that looked at the facts here would find that there was no crime committed,” Mr. Brewster said. “It was a truly tragic incident.”

Mr. Brewster expressed disappointment with the district attorney’s decision to charge his client.

“I think it’s kind of a response to the national fervor and media concerning police shootings,” he said. “I think he just kind of capitulated to that. This truly is an event that was unintended and what I consider to be a justifiable homicide.”

Mr. Bates was working with sworn officers in an undercover operation into illegal gun sales run by the Sheriff’s Department’s violent crimes task force.

Mr. Bates acted as an unpaid member of the department’s Reserve Deputy Program, in which about 130 volunteers receive training and are deployed part-time throughout the department. A Tulsa police officer for a year in 1964-65, he had received hundreds of hours of advanced training and “can do anything a full-time deputy can do,” The Tulsa World quoted a Sheriff’s Department spokesman, Shannon Clark, as saying.

In 2012, the department named Mr. Bates Reserve Deputy of the Year.

Mr. Clark did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

Sheriff Stanley Glanz of Tulsa County told The World that Mr. Bates was an old friend “who made an error.”

Mr. Bates was the chairman of Mr. Glanz’s 2012 re-election campaign and, with a $2,500 contribution, was its biggest donor. In recent years he also donated equipment to the sheriff’s office, including automobiles and technical equipment, according to a list provided by the county clerk to radio station KRMG.

"He made an error," Sheriff Glanz said, according to The World. "How many errors are made in an operating room every week?"

Sheriff Glanz told The World that he had no plans to change the deputy reserve program but that it would be looked at as part of the Sheriff Department’s routine review of operations.

Mr. Brewster, the lawyer for Mr. Bates, said his client was trying to do his duty as a citizen and a reservist. Mr. Bates made a mistake that law enforcement officers have made many times before, Mr. Brewster said, pointing to the 2009 shooting of Oscar Grant in Oakland, Calif., by a transit police officer, who said that he had mistaken his sidearm for a Taser. Prosecutors charged the transit officer, Johannes Mehserle, with murder, but a jury found him guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

“When you look at this man, his life’s work, he’s been nothing more than giving, trusting, and just trying to do the right thing,” Mr. Brewster said.

Ashley Southall contributed reporting.



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5) In Test for Unions and Politicians, a Nationwide Protest on Pay
By NOAM SCHEIBER

The protest by tens of thousands of low-wage workers, students and activists in more than 200 American cities on Wednesday is the most striking effort to date in a two-and-a-half-year-old labor-backed movement that is testing the ability of unions to succeed in an economy populated by easily replaceable service sector workers.

Labor has invested tens of millions of dollars in a campaign for a $15-an-hour minimum wage that goes beyond traditional workplace organizing, taking on a cause that has captured broad public support. But the movement is up against a hostile business sector sheltered by a decades-old federal labor law that makes it difficult for workers to directly confront the wealthy corporations that dominate the fast-food and hospitality industries.For political activists looking to the 2016 presidential campaign and beyond, the wage fight is coming at a potentially pivotal moment, the first concrete, large-scale challenge in decades to an economic system they view as skewed toward the wealthy.“There is a huge upswelling of anger around jobs in this economy that are low-wage jobs,” said Jonathan Westin, director of New York Communities for Change, a grass-roots organizing group that has played a key role in both the Occupy Wall Street movement and the current fast-food workers’ campaign. “This economy we’re living in now doesn’t work for people.”

The protests began with morning rallies that attracted crowds in the hundreds at McDonald’s franchises in Atlanta; Brooklyn; Chicago; Kansas City, Mo.; Los Angeles; and Raleigh, N.C., along with other locations.

A noon rally in front of a McDonald’s restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper West Side attracted throngs of protesters, many of them carrying signs that read “Why Poverty?” and “We See Greed.” They included fast-food workers, laundry workers, carwash employees and sympathetic bystanders.

“America, period, is unequal,” said Chasten Florence, 26, a construction worker from Jamaica, Queens. “Once we accept that, we can change that."

McDonald’s said in a statement: “We respect people’s right to peacefully protest, and our restaurants remain open every day with the focus on providing an exceptional experience for our customers,”

The campaign, staffed in part by organizers from the Service Employees International Union, orchestrated the country’s first-ever fast-food industry strike in November 2012, when 200 New York City workers walked off their jobs. The periodic protests expanded to six other cities in the spring of 2013, 60 cities in August of that year, 150 cities in May 2014, and 190 last December.

The protests have coincided with an extraordinary shift in the political consensus on the minimum wage. In the last two years, Seattle has moved to gradually increase its minimum wage to $15 an hour, from $9.32. Oakland, Calif., established a new minimum wage of $12.25, while Chicago approved an increase to $13, from $8.25, over the next four years. Alaska and Arkansas passed minimum wage increases by referendum in 2014.

In 2013, President Obama endorsed raising the federal minimum wage to $9, from $7.25 an hour, then increased that to $10.10 by the fall of that year. Democrats in the Senate are now working on a proposal to raise the national minimum wage to $12 by 2020.

“The labor movement has been stuck,” said Janice R. Fine, an associate professor of Labor Studies at Rutgers University. “They deserve a lot of credit in deciding that, in a situation this bleak, you needed ‘climate change’ ”— that is, a change in how the public views low-wage work — “before you’d actually get an opportunity to organize again.”

Partly in response to the political shift as well as competitive pressure from tighter labor markets, several major employers of low-wage workers have moved to raised their base pay in recent months. Walmart, Target and McDonald’s have all announced plans to increase their minimum wage to or near $10, though for McDonald’s it would apply only to the roughly 10 percent of its workers employed directly by the company, not by its franchisees.

But business groups argue that a substantially higher increase would force employers to reduce hiring, accelerate automation and even threaten the basic economic model of some industries.

For Mary Kay Henry, the president of S.E.I.U., the investment in the Fight for $15 campaign was initially controversial among her colleagues, many of whom wondered why the union should spend millions of dollars on a campaign that did not immediately net it dues-paying members.

But it was the result of a calculation that the 20th-century model of organizing workers was rapidly becoming obsolete for those in a growing sector where employers considered it essentially costless to replace them. “We can no longer change our lives, and our kids’ lives, without the support of a broader movement of workers,” Ms. Henry said.

The origins of the Fight for $15 campaign date back to early 2012, when organizers from New York Communities for Change, which had built support for Occupy Wall Street activists among more established progressive activists and labor organizers, began canvassing low-income New Yorkers, many of them employed in the fast-food industry.At the same time, public opinion was shifting. According to the General Social Survey, regarded by researchers as the gold standard in public opinion data, the share of Americans who agreed that “inequality continues to exist because it benefits the rich and powerful” spiked by more than 10 points from 2010 to 2012, to over 60 percent.

“People know Walmart and McDonald’s are doing pretty well, people at top,” said Leslie McCall, a professor of sociology at Northwestern University, who has closely analyzed the opinion data on inequality. “It was like: ‘Wait a minute. We’re into the recovery, the unemployment rate is going down. But most people aren’t doing well.’ ”

Even politically moderate voters appear to believe that it is the responsibility of corporations to mitigate the problem. In her own preliminary surveys, Professor McCall found that, when asked to choose who should be most responsible for reducing inequality — the poor, the rich, the government, major companies, or that it did not need to be reduced — a plurality of Republican respondents, about 37 percent, chose “major companies.”

The Fight for $15 campaign hopes to harness these sentiments in ways that Occupy Wall Street never quite succeeded in doing. In Seattle, Steve Gelb, who makes above minimum wage at a work force training outfit, said he supported the protests because “the disparity of wealth has reached alarming proportions and the salaries of business owners and executives are way out of proportion.”

But the odds are still long on whether fast-food workers can formally organize in significant numbers, and push employers to raise wages to their target. Because most are employed by thousands of independent franchisees, rather than corporations like McDonald’s, the coordination challenge is enormous.

For this reason, the minimum wage protests remain only a small piece of a broader strategy intent on dragging McDonald’s to the bargaining table. The S.E.I.U. and other labor groups have tried to spur a tax-avoidance investigation against McDonald’s in Europe. An S.E.I.U.-affiliated investment fund has campaigned against insider corporate directors in McDonald’s Japan.

Most prominently, the groups have helped to bring a complaint, currently being litigated before a National Labor Relations Board judge, challenging the franchise model that allows McDonald’s to disclaim “joint employer” status for most of the workers at its restaurants.

“To the extent we worry about this, that’s the worry here, the policy change brewing in the background,” said Glenn Spencer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “It would change the terms of the franchise model, make it not viable.”

Mr. Spencer said the model extended well beyond the fast-food industry — to hotels, rental cars, auto maintenance and even tax preparation services — and described the protests as “the P.R. wing of this attempt to get policy changed.”

C. J. Hughes contributed reporting from New York, Ronnie Cohen from San Francisco and Julie Weed from Seattle.



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6) Outside Judge Is Named for Police Shooting Case
By BENJAMIN MUELLER

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — In a departure from the way most cases are handled, the chief justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina on Tuesday appointed a judge from outside North Charleston to oversee the case against the former police officer, Michael T. Slager, who has been charged with murder in the shooting of Walter L. Scott, an unarmed man who fled after being pulled over for a traffic stop on April 4.

Chief Justice Jean Hoefer Toal ordered Judge Clifton B. Newman of South Carolina Circuit Court on Tuesday to preside over all legal matters in the case and to retain jurisdiction “regardless of where he may be assigned to hold court.” Judge Newman, a former prosecutor based in Kingstree, about 75 miles north of Charleston, is one of only five African-American Circuit Court judges in the state.A clerk for the Supreme Court said in a statement that “when a matter is complex or is otherwise in need of management from beginning to end by one judge, the chief justice routinely issues an administrative order making such an assignment.” Trial judges typically rotate in the state, making it rare for a single judge to preside over the duration of a case.

Charleston County’s chief prosecutor, Scarlett A. Wilson, seemed to be taken aback by the move, saying in a statement that she was “unaware this was in the works.” Mr. Slager’s lawyer, Andy Savage, welcomed the order. “Judge Newman enjoys an excellent reputation as a jurist, and we look forward to working under his guidance,” Mr. Savage said in a statement, calling it a “long-overdue decision.”

Pete Strom, a former United States attorney in South Carolina, said the order reflected a desire to assure both law enforcement and African-Americans that an experienced hand would be steering the case. “This is important for all of us that our system look right,” he said.

Also on Wednesday, a State Senate subcommittee passed a bill requiring all law enforcement officers in the state to wear body cameras.

The new developments played out after the passenger in Mr. Scott’s car, through his lawyer, made his first comments on the case. The passenger, Pierre Fulton, reported that he heard the crackle of a Taser and a series of gunshots but did not see the encounter, his lawyer, Mark Peper, said Wednesday morning.

Mr. Peper said that Mr. Fulton did not know why Mr. Scott ran from his car after Mr. Slager pulled them over for a broken taillight. Mr. Fulton sat calmly in the car after losing sight of Mr. Scott because he had no reason to think his friend was in danger, Mr. Peper said.

“The best explanation for that is because they weren’t doing anything wrong, and there is nothing to indicate this is anything but a routine traffic stop,” Mr. Peper said.

Mr. Scott picked Mr. Fulton up at his home on the morning of April 4 before the two went to Hardee’s for breakfast, Mr. Peper said. Then they drove to Faith Assembly Church, where they each got a bag of food from a food bank. They dropped off Mr. Fulton’s bag at his home and were continuing to Mr. Scott’s house, where they planned to have a cookout that afternoon.

Mr. Peper said neither man was impaired in any way when Mr. Slager pulled them over.

“Pierre was just sitting there thinking, ‘He’ll just give us a ticket,’ ” Mr. Peper said. “Then all of a sudden, Walter bolts.”

On Friday, in a meeting with officials from the South Carolina law enforcement division, Mr. Fulton gave no indication that he had heard signs of a scuffle between Mr. Scott and Mr. Slager before the shooting, Mr. Peper said, though investigators did not ask Mr. Fulton specifically about that.

Mr. Slager reported on his radio moments after the struggle that Mr. Scott had taken his Taser.

On Thursday, members of Black Lives Matter Charleston plan to present a list of 10 proposed changes to members of the North Charleston City Council. Kwadjo Campbell, a former Charleston city councilman who is working with the group, said the changes would include “calling for a police chief that is more sensitive to community needs” and strengthening independent oversight of the police department.



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7) Use of E-Cigarettes Rises Sharply Among Teenagers, Report Says
By

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/health/use-of-e-cigarettes-rises-sharply-among-teenagers-report-says.html?ref=us&_r=0

Kenny, a high school senior in Weston, Fla., likes to puff e-cigarettes during study sessions with friends after school. James, a senior in Fauquier County, Va., uses them outside at lunch with friends who do smoke tricks. Joe, a senior in Jackson, Miss., uses them in the morning before class as a coffee-flavored way to pass the time.

E-cigarettes have arrived in the life of the American teenager.

Use of the devices among middle- and high school students tripled from 2013 to 2014, according to federal data released on Thursday, bringing the share of high school students who use them to 13 percent — more than smoke traditional cigarettes.About a quarter of all high school students and 8 percent of middle school students — 4.6 million young people altogether — used tobacco in some form last year. The sharp rise of e-cigarettes, together with a substantial increase in the use of hookah pipes, led to 400,000 additional young people using a tobacco product in 2014, the first increase in years, though researchers pointed out the percentage of the rise fell within the report’s margin of error.

But the report also told another story. From 2011 to 2014, the share of high school students who smoked traditional cigarettes declined substantially, to 9 percent from 16 percent, and use of cigars and pipes ebbed too. The shift suggested that some teenage smokers may be using e-cigarettes to quit.

Smoking is still the single-biggest cause of preventable death in the United States, killing more than 480,000 Americans a year, and most scientists agree that e-cigarettes, which deliver the nicotine but not the dangerous tar and other chemicals, are likely to be far less harmful than traditional cigarettes.

The numbers came as a surprise and seemed to put policy makers into uncharted territory. The Food and Drug Administration took its first tentative step toward regulating e-cigarettes last year, but the process is slow, and many experts worry that habits are forming far faster than rules are being written. Because e-cigarettes are so new, scientists are still gathering evidence on their long-term health effects, leaving regulators scrambling to gather data.

In interviews, teenagers said that e-cigarettes had become almost as common at school as laptops, a change from several years ago, when few had seen them.

“It’s the healthy alternative taking over my school,” said Tom, a 15-year-old sophomore at a school in Westchester County, N.Y., who started vaping — the term for puffing on an e-cigarette — to kick a smoking habit. He said about 70 percent of his friends now vaped. But opinions were mixed on why the devices had caught on. A significant share said they were using the devices to quit smoking cigarettes or marijuana, while others said they had never smoked but liked being part of the trend and enjoyed the taste. Two favorite flavors of teenagers interviewed were Sweet Tart and Unicorn Puke, which one student described as “every flavor Skittle compressed into one.”

Joe Stevonson, 18, a senior at a high school in Jackson, Miss., said he used e-cigarettes to quit smoking, after the habit started affecting his ability to play sports. He prefers a flavor called Courtroom, endorsed by the rapper Lil Ugly Mane, which is described on websites where it is sold as “a medley of things you might want while waiting for the jury to convict.”

As for whether he still craved cigarettes, “the only thing that’s really missing is feeling like your entire mouth is coated in dirt,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of people who don’t smoke pick them up because it looks cool. But for every person I’ve met like that, I’ve met another using it like it’s a medicine against cigarettes.”

James, 17, the senior in Virginia, said he and his friends started using e-cigarettes when he was 13, after his father abandoned the devices in a failed effort to quit smoking.

“It was something for us to do that was edgy and exciting,” said James, who asked that his last name not be used because he did not want his smoking habits to be on public display. He liked the smoke tricks that his friends had become good at, like blowing out the vapor so that it spun like a tornado. His favorite flavor is called Hawk Sauce, which he described as “a berry menthol kind of thing.”

He has never smoked cigarettes and said he could not imagine ever starting. “There’s a harshness to cigarettes,” he said. “Girls think they’re gross.”

E-cigarette use had grown exponentially in previous years, but from such a low base that the numbers had been relatively small. But last year’s rise, which was captured in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s annual youth tobacco survey of about 20,000 schoolchildren, lifted e-cigarette use above that of traditional cigarettes, prompting an outcry from anti-tobacco advocates. They warned that e-cigarettes were undoing years of progress among the country’s most vulnerable citizens by making the act of puffing on a tobacco product normal again, and by introducing nicotine, an addictive substance, to a broad population of teenagers.

“This is a really bad thing,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the director of the C.D.C., who noted that research had found that nicotine harms the developing brain. “This is another generation being hooked by the tobacco industry. It makes me angry.”

But the numbers had a bright side. The decline in cigarette use among teenagers accelerated substantially from 2013 to 2014, dropping by 25 percent, the fastest pace in years.

The pattern seemed to go against the dire predictions of anti-tobacco advocates that e-cigarettes would become a gateway to cigarettes among youths, and suggested they might actually be helping, not hurting. The pattern resembled those in Sweden and Norway, where a rise in the use of snus, a smokeless tobacco product, was followed by a sharp decline in cigarette use.

“They’re not a gateway in, and they might be accelerating the gateway out,” said David B. Abrams, executive director of the Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies, an anti-tobacco group.

Some teenagers described vaping as an entirely different culture from cigarette smoking, and scoffed at the idea that it could be a way into cigarettes. Kenny, the senior from Florida, said students liked the mix-and-match accessories that a user could “personalize and call your own.”

“E-cigarettes appeal less towards the stereotypical longhaired stoners, and more towards sweatshirt-blue-jeans Silicon Valley programmer,” said Kenny, who asked that his last name not be published to keep his vaping habits private. “You can compare them to Apple computers.”

Selling e-cigarettes to minors is banned in many states, and the rule the F.D.A. proposed last year would ban it nationally.

But the proliferation of vape shops and equipment for sale online has made access easy, and some teenagers said they simply clicked a button to indicate they were over 18 to be able to order a starter kit. (E-cigarette equipment includes batteries that can be shaped like cigarettes or a cellphone; liquid reservoirs, known as tanks; cartridges; and battery chargers.)

Ethan deLehman, 17, a junior at a private school in Pennsylvania, said he used to ask seniors who were 18 to buy him e-cigarettes at convenience stores, but now he has equipment and buys his liquids on the Internet.

“You can just go online and click yes,” he said. He has used e-cigarettes to quit smoking, a habit he picked up to relieve the pressure over getting into college. His favorite flavors are Caramel Tobacco and Creamsicle.

A starter e-cigarette kit can begin around $40 and go up to $200 or more, with the fluid costing from $7 to $20 a bottle. That can be less expensive than smoking over the long run, particularly in states like New York where the cost of a pack of cigarettes is high, young people said. Alexander Wilson started smoking cigarettes when he was 15. He said that e-cigarettes helped him cut down and save money. “It’s cheaper over all for how much I smoke,” said Mr. Wilson, who lives in Frederick, Md.

He recalled seeing one of the e-cigarette devices for the first time. “I was like, ‘Dude, why do you have a light saber?’ ” he said. “And he was like, ‘No, that’s my e-cigarette.’ ”


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8) Chicago Pays $5 Million to Family of Black Teenager Killed by Officer
By

CHICAGO — The City Council here agreed on Wednesday to pay $5 million to the family of a black teenager who was fatally shot by a Chicago police officer last fall, as federal and state prosecutors acknowledged that they were conducting a criminal investigation into the shooting.

The council’s decision came swiftly and with no debate, even before a suit had been filed in the case by the family of Laquan McDonald, 17, who the police say was wielding a three-inch knife when an officer shot him 16 times on Oct. 20 on the city’s Southwest Side. The authorities say a dashboard camera on a police squad car captured the confrontation, though the recording has not been made public.

Chicago’s settlement in the case came amid increased scrutiny of police shootings around the nation, as well as a flurry of new attention to police conduct in this city, recent and past.

In a prosecution that officials described as rare for fatal police shootings here, a Chicago police officer is on trial for involuntary manslaughter, among other charges, in the death of a woman near a park in March 2012. The officer, Detective Dante Servin, who was off duty, shot recklessly into a group of people in a darkened alley, killing Rekia Boyd, prosecutors say. But lawyers for Detective Servin have said he believed he saw someone in the group pulling out an item that looked like a weapon.

Separately, the City Council this week began considering a $5.5 million reparations package for scores of victims of abuse and torture by the police here in the 1970s and ’80s under the watch of a notorious police commander, Jon Burge. Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced his support this week for the long-sought reparations, which would include a memorial and a formal apology for the mostly black South Siders who have described being shocked with cattle prods, beaten with phone books and suffocated with plastic bags to compel confessions.

The cases involving Mr. Burge and a group of officers under his command had haunted Chicago and its Police Department for years.

Since Mr. Burge was fired from the department in 1993, the city has paid out some $85 million in settlements and other costs. Over the years, some of those abused by Mr. Burge and his so-called midnight crew have been cleared and sent home, but efforts are still underway for reviews of the cases of about 20 people who remain in prison.

“This has been a long time coming,” said Darrell Cannon, 64, who served more than 24 years in prison for murder after a confession in 1983 that he says was coerced by officers who broke his front teeth when they shoved a gun barrel into his mouth. While he was incarcerated, Mr. Cannon said, he settled a lawsuit claiming torture for $3,000, far less than some.

“For the first time, this city is recognizing that black people have been tortured and hurt at the hands of police, and we can take the gains and build on that,” he said. “We’ve been fighting for this for years now.”

Provisions of the reparations plan include free tuition at city colleges; psychological counseling and job training for those abused, as well as their families; financial reparations for those with credible claims of torture; and education about what happened in the Burge cases for Chicago Public School students in eighth and 10th grade. Mr. Emanuel this week described Mr. Burge’s actions as a disgrace, adding, “We stand together as a city to try and right those wrongs and to bring this dark chapter of Chicago’s history to a close.”

After a four-year inquiry, special prosecutors said in 2010 that their investigation had corroborated the abuse claims. Mr. Burge was never directly charged with abuse because of statutes of limitation, but he was convicted in 2010 of perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with the events. He completed his prison sentence this year and receives a pension of $4,000 a month, officials said.

Little has been made public about the shooting of Mr. McDonald last fall. The name and race of the police officer involved, for instance, have not been released; city officials say a union contract bars them from naming the officer at this point. (The officer has been placed on paid desk duty pending the outcome of the investigations.)

A video recording from the scene has also not been released because, city officials said, it is part of a criminal investigation by the F.B.I. and by the offices of the United States attorney and the Cook County state’s attorney.

From mid-2007 until the end of last year, city records show, Chicago police officers shot some 385 people. Of those, 122, including Mr. McDonald, died.

City officials say the police were answering a 911 call about a man with a knife trying to break into vehicles in a trucking yard when they came upon Mr. McDonald on Oct. 20. He refused to drop the knife, the authorities say, and began walking or jogging away.

A pair of police officers followed him, one on foot and the other in a car, and called for backup from an officer with a Taser stun gun.

At one point, Mr. McDonald pounded on the windshield of the squad car and punctured its front tires with the knife, city officials say, as more officers arrived. In the end, six officers were present when one of them fired a weapon at him, striking him 16 times.


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9) A Police Shot to a Boy’s Back in Queens, Echoing Since 1973
By

It was 1973, long before anyone could imagine hashtag declarations of solidarity and protest, the kind of message to the world that today might read, #IamCliffordGloverInTheFourthGrade.

No one could pull out a phone to make a video of Clifford Glover, a 10-year-old running from a plainclothes police officer with a gun who had just jumped out of a white Buick Skylark in Jamaica, Queens, on a spring morning in 1973.

“I am sure a camera would have helped, but the ballistics were clear,” Albert Gaudelli, a former Queens prosecutor, said this week. “The bullet entered his lower back and came out at the top of his chest. He was shot T-square in the back, with his body leaning forward. He was running away.”That bullet killed Clifford Glover. Its trajectory — through a family, a neighborhood, a generation — can be traced to this day, in injuries that never healed, in a story with no final word. When a black man named Walter Scott was shot by a white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., on April 4, a cellphone video made by a passer-by showed that Mr. Scott was also running away when he was killed and that he was not, as the officer claimed, carrying a police Taser.

“With all this killing and stuff,” said Pauline Armstead, a sister of the dead boy, “they need to go back to Cliffie Glover.”

Clifford, a black boy, had been shot by Officer Thomas Shea, a white man, who said he had tried to question him and his stepfather because they fit the descriptions of cab robbers. They ran. The officer said he fired when Clifford, in flight, pointed a gun at him, which the mortally injured boy had then managed to toss or hand to his stepfather.

In the hours and days that followed the shooting, armies of investigators scoured the streets and sewers, pored over court records and arrived, without warrants, to search the homes of Clifford’s family and relatives.

“Guys were trying to help Shea, and coming up with all kinds of stuff,” said Mr. Gaudelli, who was the chief homicide prosecutor in Queens at the time. “Someone showed up with a starter’s pistol, but as soon as you pressed them on it, they folded. There was no gun.”

People in Jamaica rose in protest; the streets were blocked with heavy construction equipment owned by a black contractor. Mr. Shea became the first police officer in nearly 50 years to be charged with committing murder while on duty.

“Shea says that the kid turned and appeared to have a gun,” Mr. Gaudelli said. “That’s what got him indicted: The ballistics made Shea a liar.”

But not, apparently, a murderer, at least in the eyes of the jury of 11 white men and one black woman who found him not guilty. Afterward, many of the jurors joined Mr. Shea and his lawyers at a Queens Boulevard restaurant to celebrate. They told reporters it was possible Mr. Shea had been telling the truth about seeing a gun.That same day, word of the verdict reached a baseball field on the grounds of the South Jamaica Houses, known locally as the 40 Projects. Eric Adams, who was then a 13-year-old from the neighborhood, was waiting to bat.

“We were playing a Long Island team that happened to be all white,” said Mr. Adams, who became a police officer and is now the Brooklyn borough president. “When the news came out, about 200 people emerged on the field. They just took the baseball bats and started beating the white players, chanting, ‘Shea got away.’ ”

Later, Mr. Shea would be fired despite a rally by police officers and the pleas of his lawyer, Jacob Evseroff, who said his client was needed on the force “to protect us from the animals who roam the streets of New York.”

The Long Island baseball team had come to Queens as part of “an interracial, inter-neighborhood thing,” Mr. Adams said. “It was their first visit.” The Jamaica team tried to stop the assault but could not. “That was all the outrage,” he said, adding that “because of what happened, a lot of our guys quit the team, never played baseball again.”

For his generation of black boys and girls, Mr. Adams said, the verdict “brought a lot of despair.”

The year after Clifford Glover died, the number of shots fired by officers declined by nearly half. (In 2013, the number of shots fired was 248, the fewest since the Police Department began keeping detailed records in 1971; at the peak, in 1972, officers fired 2,510 bullets.)

Because Mr. Shea had spoken freely with his superiors, the largest police union began a campaign urging its members not to talk after a shooting until a union lawyer had arrived.

For Clifford’s family, his death changed everything.

“They wrote that we were poor,” Darlene Armstead, a younger sister, said this week. As she and three other siblings, Kenneth, Pauline and Patricia Armstead, described the household this week, the family may not have had much money, but before Clifford’s killing, it was sound.

Darlene’s father, Add Armstead, who was Clifford’s stepfather, went to work every morning at a junkyard.

The family had dinner each night at the same time, around one table, Ms. Armstead said, then watched cowboy shows on television. On summer weekends, neighborhood children feasted in the backyard on watermelon laid out on a door, covered by a sheet, that rested on two clean garbage cans. Add Armstead and his brothers enjoyed cigars and burgers.

“My father taught us structure,” Darlene Armstead said.

She had to make beds. One brother had to clean the yard and bring out the garbage. Clifford, a fourth grader at Public School 40, went with his stepfather on weekends to the junkyard, carrying his own little wrench.

On the morning of April 28, 1973, a Saturday, Add Armstead woke Clifford before dawn so they could be at the yard to move cranes into place for a delivery. They walked a few blocks along New York Boulevard — known today as Guy R. Brewer Boulevard — when an unmarked car pulled alongside them. Mr. Armstead, carrying wages that he had been paid the day before, said he and Clifford ran, afraid that they were going to be robbed. Hearing shots, he flagged down a patrol car, not realizing that Clifford had been felled.

Mr. Shea testified that he did not realize that Clifford, who stood just five feet tall and weighed less than 100 pounds, was a child. After the shooting, prosecutors said, Mr. Shea’s partner, Walter Scott, was recorded on a radio transmission saying, “Die, you little,” adding an expletive. Mr. Scott — who by coincidence has the same name as the man killed in North Charleston — denied it was his voice.

Clifford’s death sent his mother, Eloise Glover, into a tailspin.

“My mother turned on my father — ‘Did you have a gun, they said you had a gun,’ ” Darlene Armstead said. “It caused them to break up. My mother lost her mind.”

The family received a settlement from New York City that, in the memory of the children, came to about $50,000, most of which the mother lent to local churches but never got back.

“My mother didn’t want no one to know when she going outside,” Ms. Armstead said. “She always used the back door.”

Ms. Armstead recalled sleeping nights on chairs in hospital emergency rooms while her mother was being treated, and living off restaurant handouts. “She was going to pay this guy to board up the house and she would pay him to bring the food to us,” she said.

The children went to foster care and group homes. One brother was in a psychiatric institution for about 10 years. Her mother, who had diabetes, died in 1990 at age 54.

Add Armstead died in 2005, at 83. “They put guns on him; they said he had guns at work, at home,” Kenneth Armstead said. “To demonize him would help Shea’s story.”

Mr. Shea, who moved out of the state after his marriage broke up, could not be reached. “I’ve lost it all,” he told the author Thomas Hauser, whose 1980 book, “The Trial of Patrolman Thomas Shea,” is a comprehensive account of the episode.

The defense lawyer, Mr. Evseroff, said a video would have changed nothing. “The case was resolved as a result of a trial,” he said.

For Mr. Adams, the quick termination of the South Carolina police officer in the shooting this month of Walter Scott was a positive step.

“That mayor said: ‘You know what? It has just gone too far,’ ” Mr. Adams said. “The pathway of Shea’s bullet physically stopped when it hit Clifford Glover, but the emotional pathway probably still continues to this day.”




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10) N.Y.U. Labor Guidelines Failed to Protect 10,000 Workers in Abu Dhabi, Report Says
By

About one-third of the migrant construction workers employed at New York University’s campus in Abu Dhabi — or about 10,000 people — were excluded from the protections of the university’s labor guidelines ensuring fair wages, hours and living conditions, according to an investigative report issued on Thursday.

The 72-page report said that some subcontractors were exempted from the guidelines based on decisions made by local contractors running the operation. One of those contractors was Mubadala, a real estate company owned by the government of Abu Dhabi.

“This practice of exempting companies from compliance created a significant gap in coverage that disenfranchised thousands of workers from the protections contemplated by the labor guidelines,” said the report, by the international investigative firm Nardello & Company.The investigation was requested by N.Y.U. and an Abu Dhabi government agency after reports, including an article last May in The New York Times, were published saying that many of the workers, most of them recruited from South Asia, had been charged steep recruitment fees to get their jobs; that few were being paid what they had been promised; and that some lived in miserable conditions, all in contravention of standards N.Y.U. had established for the project. Those guidelines were developed in response to concerns about the region’s reputation for mistreatment of its imported work force.

In statements made on Thursday, N.Y.U. said the report found that a majority of the construction force had been treated in accordance with the guidelines. But it said it was taken by surprise by the findings on how many workers at the campus, which opened last year on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island, had not been protected, and it added that it would repay any shortchanged workers.

“That error, for which we take full responsibility, was inconsistent with the project’s publicly stated commitment to ensure that all of those working on the construction of the N.Y.U.A.D. Saadiyat Campus would be covered by our standards and compliance-monitoring program,” an N.Y.U. statement said.

The university said that a third party would be hired to handle reimbursement of the workers, but it was not immediately clear how much money that would involve.

The report found that the exceptions to the guidelines were initially designed to apply to a narrow group, such as vendors delivering goods to the project. Mubadala and other contractors later expanded the exceptions to include subcontractors whose work fell below $1 million or who worked on-site for less than 31 days at a time, or with gaps of 30 days between visits, the report said.

Ultimately, this provided a financial incentive for contractors to break subcontracts into small amounts, eliminating extra costs for labor compliance, the report said.

The report was somewhat ambiguous about exactly how much N.Y.U. knew about the exemptions.

The report said that N.Y.U. did not know about the practice of granting exemptions, but it also said that “accounts vary” as to the extent of each party’s knowledge. Some N.Y.U. personnel interviewed said they were aware of a “time threshold,” the report said, but not the monetary threshold.

John Sexton, president of N.Y.U., said on Thursday that neither the university nor its Abu Dhabi government partner was aware of the exemption policy “or how widely it was being applied.”

The Nardello report took issue with some details in the Times article, specifically the genesis of a strike that led to the deportation of some workers. The report said the strike was related mostly to conditions at other projects in the area, where many hotels, businesses and cultural institutions have been expanding, in some cases, like N.Y.U.’s, with the financial backing of the oil-rich emirate.

But the report corroborated many of the article’s key findings. Among them was that hardly any of the workers had been reimbursed for fees, generally $1,000 to $3,000, that the workers had paid to recruitment agents in their home countries. The report estimated that more than 25,000 workers would have qualified for the reimbursement.

Only 20 workers were reimbursed, partly because the N.Y.U. policy requiring reimbursement was interpreted to apply only to workers hired specifically to work at the N.Y.U. campus. But most workers were employed by contractors working on several projects, and so were not limited to working on the N.Y.U. job.

The report cited evidence that N.Y.U., after promising in 2011 that it would reimburse recruitment fees even for workers who started on other projects, later narrowed the reimbursement to those “specifically recruited to our job site.” In addition, only those who could supply proof of having paid recruitment fees would receive reimbursement.Daniel Nardello, chief executive of Nardello & Company, said such proof was virtually impossible because the recruiting agents are often dubious characters. “It would be like getting a receipt from a loan shark,” he said.

In an email on Thursday, an N.Y.U. spokesman, John Beckman, said the university believed it had established reasonable requirements. “We are disappointed with the gap between what we intended and the outcome,” he said.

The investigation also found that 30 percent of workers said they had to give up their passports to employers as a condition of working at the campus, a violation of the N.Y.U. labor guidelines.

Claims of poor conditions for workers in the United Arab Emirates date back to a 2009 Human Rights Watch report alleging mistreatment of many of the more than five million low-paid migrant workers who had been employed in the country. Saadiyat Island, a development project hosting the N.Y.U. campus and planned branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums, had become a focal point of those complaints.

A Gulf researcher for Human Rights Watch, Nicholas McGeehan, said the Nardello report was well researched, applauding N.Y.U. for its promise to compensate workers.

Both Mr. McGeehan and the Coalition for Fair Labor at NYU, a faculty-student group, called for restitution to about 200 workers deported as a result of the strike.

Representatives of the United Arab Emirates and its principality Abu Dhabi did not respond to emails seeking comment on the report, which noted a fundamental difference between Western attitudes toward workers’ rights and those in the emirates.

“It is evident that U.A.E. law is completely inconsistent with labor practices in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West,” the report said in a footnote.

In March, the emirates banned travel there by Andrew Ross, a professor at N.Y.U.’s New York campus, who had been critical of labor conditions. Last year, a freelance writer who collaborated on the Times article, Sean O’Driscoll, was also barred from the country.


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11) John Legend's Crusade to End Mass Incarceration
By Asawin Suebsaeng, The Daily Beast
18 April 15
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/29696-john-legends-crusade-to-end-mass-incarceration
 
The musician is joining hands with the ACLU to end mass incarceration in America

inger/songwriter John Legend has a new hobby: campaigning to end mass incarceration in America. And he’s teaming up with the American Civil Liberties Union to do it.

On Monday, Legend unveiled his Free America initiative, which will focus on advancing criminal-justice reform. Part of the launch this week will include a performance at a correctional facility in Austin, Texas, on Thursday. He will then hold a press conference with state lawmakers on the issue.

“We have a serious problem with incarceration in this country,” Legend told the Associated Press. “It’s destroying families, it’s destroying communities and we’re the most incarcerated country in the world, and when you look deeper and look at the reasons we got to this place, we as a society made some choices politically and legislatively, culturally to deal with poverty, deal with mental illness in a certain way and that way usually involves using incarceration.”

One of the organizations already on board with Legend’s project is the ACLU, which has been in touch with Legend’s management for roughly the past year on the issue of criminal-justice reform. (Actor Michael K. Williams, of Boardwalk Empire and The Wire fame, has been an ACLU celebrity ambassador on mass incarceration.)

“We have been invited [by Legend’s people] to some of the different events,” Alison Holcomb, the director of the ACLU’s nationwide campaign to end mass incarceration, told The Daily Beast. “Our executive director of the ACLU of Texas, Terri Burke, will be participating in one of the press conferences that John is holding.”

Legend is also set to co-host an event with Politico in Washington, D.C., later in April. Either Holcomb or Jill Harris, who serves as her deputy director, will represent the ACLU at this event.

So far, there is no formal agreement on longer-term cooperation between Legend and the ACLU, but Holcomb says they are very much looking forward to being as supportive as they can.

“He is definitely out in front on this issue,” Holcomb said. “We certainly hope there are other celebrities who will join him… What is exciting about it is that celebrities are helping to humanize this issue, and to really share their personal experiences, [and] their personal observations of this problem.”

In February, Legend and rapper Common won an Oscar for their song “Glory,” which was featured in the film Selma. During his acceptance speech, Legend touched on mass incarceration and voting rights (the ACLU congratulated him on Twitter for doing so).

Other celebrities who have spoken out recently on mass incarceration and criminal-justice reform include Jay Z, 2 Chainz, and Russell Simmons. In 2013, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson starred in Snitch, a family drama that is all about why mandatory minimum sentencing laws are a terrible idea.
Other organizations working in favor of reform are the libertarian Generation Opportunity, the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, and the umbrella group the Coalition for Public Safety. Last year, Senators Rand Paul and Cory Booker introduced a bill addressing the issue.
It is unclear which of these groups or individuals, if any, will be collaborating with Free America and Legend.



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12) Civil Rights Groups in South Carolina Ask U.S. to Investigate Killings by Police
By BENJAMIN MUELLER

Civil rights groups in North Charleston, S.C., asked the United States Department of Justice on Friday to investigate all fatal shootings by police officers in Charleston County in the last 21 years.

The request by the North Charleston N.A.A.C.P., the Tri-County National Action Network and the Coalition (People United to Take Back Our Community) at a news conference at North Charleston City Hall, reflected a suspicion among activists that the police had been working to conceal the circumstances surrounding the death of a black man, Walter L. Scott, on April 4 before a cellphone video emerged showing that a white police officer shot him in the back as he fled.

The groups said they believed that other officers who shot and killed Charleston County residents in the last two decades escaped prosecution only because similarly stark evidence had not surfaced.“It is commonly believed in the African-American community, those most affected by officer-involved shootings, that law enforcement agencies have deliberately filed false police reports, tampered with evidence, turned a blind eye to the facts of their investigations and launched covered-up campaigns in order to avoid prosecution for their acts of violence perpetrated against black people in North Charleston and in Charleston County,” they said in a written statement. “This is commonly referred to as the Blue Wall of Silence.”

The groups said that in more than 200 shootings by the police in South Carolina “in recent history,” charges were very rarely brought. And they said they believed that Michael T. Slager, the white North Charleston officer who killed Mr. Scott, would not have been charged had the video not surfaced. The statement chided the Police Department for showing “unwavering support” for Mr. Slager’s account of the shooting in its immediate aftermath. He was charged with murder and fired from the department after the video, taken by a bystander, became public.

The civil rights groups called the department’s early actions “the beginnings of a cover-up that would have eventually resulted in the acquittal of Michael Slager.”

Dena Iverson, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said in response to the civil rights groups’ move, “The department will review any requests that are submitted.”

Draped over the lectern at the news conference on Friday was a black T-shirt reading “Do You Believe Us Now?”

Among the cases that the groups said merited further investigation was the death last year of Denzel Curnell, 19, who the police said shot himself in the head as he lay on the ground after being stopped by a Charleston police officer. The chief prosecutor, Solicitor Scarlett A. Wilson, did not seek an indictment of the officer, saying the evidence showed that Mr. Curnell had committed suicide.

In an interview, Elder James Johnson, president of the local chapter of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, said the Justice Department needed to re-examine old cases because “we believe the relationship between the solicitor and the Police Department is too close.”

Later on Friday, state elected leaders and the Rev. Jesse Jackson held a meeting in North Charleston in support of equipping police officers with body cameras.

Mr. Johnson said civil rights groups would continue working to create safeguards against police abuse.

“The culture has not changed in 20-something years,” he said.


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13) After Walter Scott Shooting, Scrutiny Turns to 2nd Officer
By

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — He did not fire a shot. He is black, not white.

But Clarence W. Habersham Jr., the first officer to arrive on the scene after the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man named Walter L. Scott, is drawing intense scrutiny both for the questions surrounding his response to the shooting and for what his role has illuminated about the pressures and expectations black officers face in largely white police departments.

Critics of Officer Habersham, 37, including black leaders and lawyers, have called for him to be prosecuted for what they say was his failure to provide adequate aid to Mr. Scott, 50, and for appearing to go along with what many viewers of a video of the shooting believe was an attempt by Michael T. Slager, the white officer who fatally shot Mr. Scott in the back, to plant a Taser by his body.Officer Habersham later said in a brief police report that he tried to aid the victim by putting pressure on his wounds, but critics say the video does not show him performing CPR or acting with urgency in response to the shooting.

Others, saying a complete investigation is needed, have called any conclusions wildly premature.

The criticism of Officer Habersham by the Rev. Al Sharpton; the National Bar Association, a mostly African-American legal group; and others has complicated the typical racial dynamics in high-profile police killings. And it has touched off a debate among black officials, community leaders and residents about whether to support or denounce Officer Habersham, one of a handful of black officers in a largely white police force in a city that is 47 percent black, or to reserve judgment about him.

“It’s hard,” said Charles P. Wilson, chairman of the National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers and a lieutenant in a campus police force at Rhode Island College in Providence. He is among those who say it is too early to make any judgments about Officer Habersham’s conduct.

“I’m the only black officer on my department, and it’s been that way for 20-something years,” Lieutenant Wilson said. “You often find yourself in a quandary, if you will, when situations like this come up. Do you speak out or do you remain silent? A lot of officers choose to be silent, unfortunately.”

For all the ways Officer Habersham’s role in the case evokes the complicated tensions among black officers, their white counterparts and black communities, Officer Habersham has spent much of his life in a racially mixed and often majority-white world. Friends, acquaintances and a former coach, many of them white, described him as a quiet, compassionate and humble man who is protective of those close to him. As a result, some people here say, there is no simple way to assess the role race played in his response, or whether he was influenced more by loyalty to the department or to a fellow officer.

Officer Habersham grew up in Mount Pleasant, a well-to-do Charleston suburb of 75,000 people, two rivers and an island away from North Charleston, that is 91 percent white. Darius Rucker, the black country-music singer, lives in Mount Pleasant, as does Scarlett A. Wilson, the white prosecutor overseeing any case against Mr. Slager and the responding officers.

Officer Habersham, who goes by C. J., was part of the football and track teams at Wando High School in Mount Pleasant before he played as a 6-foot-1, 260-pound defensive lineman at Elon University in North Carolina.

“I don’t know a thing bad about him,” said the father of one of his high school teammates, who declined to be identified because he did not want to be part of the controversy. He added, “I feel like he’s just kind of a victim of circumstances and really didn’t do anything wrong but was trying to help.”

Ed Mikell, 69, who is white and was Officer Habersham’s track coach on the high school relay team, said he saw an unusually protective side to the young man. “Some of his so-called friends, fellow students, were not very polite to teachers and coaches and so forth,” Mr. Mikell said. “When one of them would say something to me, he’d get in their face and tell them no. I watched him do it several times. My son is an ex-police officer. I wouldn’t rush to judgment on a police officer. I’d want more facts before I made a decision.”

He said Officer Habersham put high expectations on himself.

“I lost several batons due to his temper,” Mr. Mikell said. “He would get mad and throw them down and bend them up. The temper was basically aimed at himself, not at somebody else.”

Officer Habersham attended Elon from 1998 to 2002 but did not complete his degree, a university spokesman said. He joined the North Charleston force in 2007, about two years before Mr. Slager applied in 2009.

On April 4, Officer Habersham arrived on the scene after Mr. Slager, 33, who has since been charged with murder, fired eight shots at Mr. Scott as he was some distance away, fleeing after a traffic stop and a confrontation. In the video, as Mr. Scott lies in a grassy lot after Mr. Slager has handcuffed him, Officer Habersham can be seen crouching over Mr. Scott and at other times standing over him while directing medics to the lot on his radio. He does not appear to perform CPR on Mr. Scott, and he did not claim to have done so in his two-sentence report, stating that he “attempted to render aid to the victim by applying pressure to the gunshot wounds.” Yet there are moments in the video when neither officer appears to be tending to Mr. Scott as he lies dying.

Some experts question that response.

“I wouldn’t have expected him to jump immediately into CPR,” Seth W. Stoughton, an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law and a former police officer, said of Officer Habersham. “You need to treat the bullet holes first to make CPR even remotely effective. But I didn’t really see him doing that. When I see two officers on scene with someone who has just been shot, I certainly do not expect to see both of them standing up and away from the body, neither one of them offering aid.”

Mr. Slager is shown in the video picking up an object from another part of the lot and then dropping either that object or something else by Mr. Scott’s body. Officer Habersham was standing over Mr. Scott, putting on blue medical gloves, when Mr. Slager dropped the object, and it is unclear in the video if he saw it happen. Civil rights activists contend that the dropped object was a Taser that Mr. Slager said Mr. Scott had tried to take from him.

The shooting is also being investigated by state and federal agencies.Ms. Wilson, the prosecutor, said in a statement that the case involved not only the shooting death of Mr. Scott but also “members of the North Charleston Police Department.” Mayor R. Keith Summey has suggested that other officers might be disciplined, but he has also pointed out that Officer Habersham tried to prevent the bleeding, adding, “If it was fast enough, I don’t know, but he was directing the ambulance in.”

Officer Habersham has not made any public statements since the shooting, and he did not respond to emails. On Tuesday, a woman who came to the door of his house in Summerville referred questions to the Police Department. A police spokesman said he was still at work but declined to comment further.

Officer Habersham and four other officers are accused in a federal lawsuit filed last year of beating a black robbery suspect who was handcuffed in November 2011. It was unclear whether Officer Habersham participated in the beating, witnessed it but failed to stop it or played some other role, if any, but the lawsuit also accuses him and other officers of failing to render aid to the suspect.

“This is the Old South, and you have the Old South mentality here,” said Edward Bryant, president of the North Charleston chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. “The whites are always in charge. They’re the lead person, and Mr. Habersham is being in that role as they had it in the 1800s.”

In the 2011 case, the suspect, Sheldon Williams, 47, was hiding under the bed in a motel room when Officer Habersham and other officers searched the room, according to court documents. The officers lifted the mattress, pinned Mr. Williams within the wooden bed frame and stomped on his face while he was handcuffed, according to the lawsuit. His lawyers claim he was not resisting arrest and was left with broken facial bones. “What’s more disturbing than someone beating someone up is having his fellow officers watch and do nothing,” said James Edward Bell III, a lawyer for Mr. Williams, who is now serving a 10-year sentence for armed robbery.

Sandra Jane Senn, a lawyer representing the officers, said Officer Habersham was dropped from a separate state lawsuit by Mr. Williams, as were the other officers, leaving the Police Department the only defendant in the state case. She declined to comment further.

Some black leaders and former police officers say Officer Habersham’s critics reacted too quickly. They say that Officer Habersham may not have seen Mr. Slager do anything suspicious and that it was impossible to determine, based on a brief video, what aid Officer Habersham provided Mr. Scott throughout the entire response.

“We have to wait and see what that investigation details,” said Cedric L. Alexander, the president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives and a member of a task force created by President Obama that examined police practices in minority communities.

Justin Bamberg, a lawyer representing Mr. Scott’s family, agreed. “All we have right now is what’s in the police reports, which is nothing,” Mr. Bamberg said, referring to the brief reports the responding officers filed. “When I see those police reports, they tell me, ‘Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.’”

Alan Blinder, Frances Robles and Benjamin Mueller contributed reporting. Susan Beachy and Alain Delaquérière contributed research.




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14) Oklahoma: Gas Executions Approved
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS



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15) Workers Seeking Productivity in a Pill Are Abusing A.D.H.D. Drugs
By

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/us/workers-seeking-productivity-in-a-pill-are-abusing-adhd-drugs.html?ref=business

Fading fast at 11 p.m., Elizabeth texted her dealer and waited just 30 minutes for him to reach her third-floor New York apartment. She handed him a wad of twenties and fifties, received a tattered envelope of pills, and returned to her computer.

Her PowerPoint needed another four hours. Investors in her health-technology start-up wanted re-crunched numbers, a presentation begged for bullet points and emails from global developers would keep arriving well past midnight.

She gulped down one pill — pale orange, like baby aspirin — and then, reconsidering, took one of the pinks, too.

“O.K., now I can work,” Elizabeth exhaled. Several minutes later, she felt her brain snap to attention. She pushed her glasses up her nose and churned until 7 a.m. Only then did she sleep for 90 minutes, before arriving at her office at 9.

The pills were versions of the drug Adderall, an amphetamine-based stimulant prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder that many college students have long used illicitly while studying. Now, experts say, stimulant abuse is graduating into the work force.

Reliable data to quantify how many American workers misuse stimulants does not exist, several experts said.

But in interviews, dozens of people in a wide spectrum of professions said they and co-workers misused stimulants like Adderall, Vyvanse and Concerta to improve work performance. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing their jobs or access to the medication.

Doctors and medical ethicists expressed concern for misusers’ health, as stimulants can cause anxiety, addiction and hallucinations when taken in high doses. But they also worried about added pressure in the workplace — where the use by some pressures more to join the trend.

“You’d see addiction in students, but it was pretty rare to see it in an adult,” said Dr. Kimberly Dennis, the medical director of Timberline Knolls, a substance-abuse treatment facility for women outside Chicago.

“We are definitely seeing more than one year ago, more than two years ago, especially in the age range of 25 to 45,” she said.

Elizabeth, a Long Island native in her late 20s, said that to not take Adderall while competitors did would be like playing tennis with a wood racket.

“It is necessary — necessary for survival of the best and the smartest and highest-achieving people,” Elizabeth said. She spoke on the condition that she be identified only by her middle name.

Most users who were interviewed said they got pills by feigning symptoms of A.D.H.D., a disorder marked by severe impulsivity and inattention, to physicians who casually write prescriptions without proper evaluations. Others got them from friends or dealers.

Obtaining or distributing stimulants without a prescription is a federal crime, but the starkest risks of abuse appear to be overdose and addiction.

A 2013 report by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that emergency room visits related to nonmedical use of prescription stimulants among adults 18 to 34 tripled from 2005 to 2011, to almost 23,000.

The agency also reported that from 2010 to 2012, people entering substance rehabilitation centers cited stimulants as their primary substance of abuse 15 percent more often than in the previous three-year period.

Just how stimulants like Adderall might improve work performance, and to what extent, remains a matter of scientific debate.

But many young workers insist that using the drugs to increase productivity is on the rise — and that these are drugs used not to get high, but hired.

“Given the increase in rates of abuse in college students over the last decade, it is essential that we understand the outcomes as they leave college and assume adult roles,” Dr. Wilson Compton, the deputy director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said in an interview.

Immediate Impacts

Elizabeth’s sleep tracker was confused. Her nightly rests were so brief, the iPhone software thought they were just naps. It recorded her average sleep over nine months: from 4:17 a.m. until 7:42.

After founding her own health technology company, Elizabeth soon decided that working hard was not enough; she had to work harder, longer. Sleep went from an indulgence to an obstacle.

So she went to a psychiatrist and complained that she could not concentrate on work. She received a diagnosis of A.D.H.D. and a prescription for Adderall in about 10 minutes, she said.

“Friends of mine in finance, on Wall Street, were traders and had to start at 5 in the morning on top of their games — most of them were taking Adderall,” Elizabeth said. “You can’t be the one who is the sluggish one.”

Researchers in the field are quick to caution that, despite stimulants’ reputation as “smart pills,” few studies suggest that they improve a person’s ability to learn or understand. But they often improve attention and motivation, particularly for tedious tasks, which can increase productivity — or at least the appearance of it.

Some industries have banned the use of stimulants for reasons of safety or fairness. The Federal Aviation Administration forbids pilots to use the medications under any circumstances. Major League Baseball players and other athletes had long abused amphetamines to increase focus and endure exhausting travel schedules, but the drugs are now considered performance-enhancers allowed only with a confirmed A.D.H.D. diagnosis.

Interviews with people who have misused the pills showed them to be a diverse group. A dentist in eastern Pennsylvania prescribed herself Adderall and other stimulants for years because, she said in a telephone interview, she could see 15 patients a day rather than 12.

Lisa Deese of Fishers, Ind., said she had abused Adderall as a stay-at-home mother of three for years. The pills, she said, “were like mommy crack.”

“I got so much more done during the day,” she added. “I was hooked by my first pill.”While many studies have assessed the prevalence of misuse among college students, no doctor or researcher contacted for this article could cite a formal assessment of misuse among adults to improve job performance.

But Dr. Anjan K. Chatterjee, the chairman of neurology at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia and an expert in the field of cognitive enhancement, said that even without conclusive data, misuse was undoubtedly rising. “Kids who have been using it in high school and college, this is normalized for them,” Dr. Chatterjee said. “It’s not a big deal as they enter the work force.”

A Slow Realization

Sitting in a conference room at Timberline Knolls, the treatment facility, and hearing the details of Elizabeth’s professed harmless misuse of Adderall, a New York native in her mid-20s said pointedly, “That was me 17 days ago.”

The woman said her road to addiction had begun at her East Coast college, where Adderall was readily available from classmates for $5 or $10 a pill, she said. When her postgraduate job involved extensive early-morning driving and detailed paperwork, she began taking more. She said friends in accounting and teaching were doing the same thing.

“Everything was just —” she said, snapping her fingers loudly. “I did my job faster than anybody. I was on a mission, and I was not going to stop until I succeeded and got what I wanted.”

When she became too wired to relax or sleep, she added the tranquilizer Xanax to calm herself. She tried to stop taking Adderall, she said, but “became terrified that I couldn’t perform without it.” She turned to alcohol, then cigarettes and other prescription drugs to modulate her intensifying mood swings, before entering Timberline for five weeks.

The number of stimulant misusers who become addicted is unclear. But supply has risen sharply: About 2.6 million American adults received A.D.H.D. medication in 2012, a rise of 53 percent in only four years, according to Express Scripts, the nation’s largest prescription-drug manager. Use among adults 26 to 34 almost doubled.

Most experts say a proper evaluation for the disorder typically requires an extensive inquiry into a patient’s history of impulsivity and inattention. Yet misusers routinely described brief chats with doctors to get a prescription. Two lawyers in Houston said wearing a suit to their appointments guaranteed no scrutiny.

Those lawyers said they and dozens of young colleagues at their firms had casually traded pills to work into the night and billed hundreds of extra hours a year in the race for partnerships.

One said he had originally taken 20 milligrams of Adderall a day, moving up to 100 milligrams — almost double the highest dose recommended by the Food and Drug Administration — by getting prescriptions from multiple doctors, a felony in Texas. His productivity, he said, thrilled his unquestioning bosses and clients.

Then came the downside: rapid heartbeat, profuse sweating and acute anxiety due to sleep loss. These overwhelmed any positive effects on his work performance, he said, and transformed his personality to the point that his wife divorced him. After he lost his job, he spent six weeks at a drug treatment center.

“It’s a crutch, and it becomes a crutch immediately,” said the lawyer, who recently joined a smaller firm in Texas.

In her New York apartment, where floor-to-ceiling white boards were scribbled with nascent projects, Elizabeth considered what her generation appears willing to swallow for success.

“It’s like this at most of the companies I know with driven young people — there’s a certain expectation of performance,” she said, banging away on that PowerPoint presentation as her own pills kicked in. “And if you don’t meet it, and I’m not really worried how, someone else will.”


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