Friday, August 21, 2015

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 2015






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Starting this September, Rising Tide North America is calling for mass actions to shut down the economic and political systems threatening our survival.

Already, hundreds of thousands are streaming into the streets to fight back against climate chaos, capitalism and white supremacy.

This wave of resistance couldn't be more urgent. To stop climate chaos we need a phenomenal escalation in organizing, participation and tactical courage. We need a profound social transformation to uproot the institutions of capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy, the systems that created the climate crisis. And we need to link arms with allies fighting for migrant justice, dignified work and pay, and an end to the criminalization and brutal policing of black and brown bodies.

We need to #FloodTheSystem.

In the lead up to the United Nations climate talks in Paris, in December, we will escalate local and regional resistance against systems that threaten our collective survival. Together, we will open alternative paths to the failing negotiations of political elites.

This is not another protest. It is a call for a massive economic and political intervention. It is a call to build the relationships needed to sustain our struggles for the long haul. To build popular power along the intersections of race, class, gender and ability. To collectively unleash our power and change everything.

The Story So Far

Over the past year, hundreds of thousands of people have flowed into the streets to fight back.

Fast food workers in over a hundred cities went on strike, with thousands arrested demanding $15 an hour and a union. Young people in Ferguson, protesting the murder of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson, showed us the power of sustained action as they fought back against state violence for weeks, reinvigorating a national movement for Black liberation. Hundreds of thousands of climate activists marched at the People's Climate March in New York, and the next day Flood Wall Street shut down the heart of New York's financial district.

Across the country, and the world, powerful movements are using nonviolent direct action to to disrupt business as usual and demand lasting systemic change.

These moments show that broad mobilization and disruption are ways that we can transform our society. It is time we move beyond conventional strategies. Its time we connect across movements and #FloodTheSystem.

Rising Tide North America and its allies call on communities, networks, affinity groups and organizations across the continent to join together this Fall to rapidly escalate the pace and scale of the anti-capitalist climate justice movements.

We need to wash away the root causes of climate change -- capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and colonialism. These systems enable the domination of people and Earth. They place gains for the elite before the well being of our communities.

To build the scale of movements necessary to take on this challenge, we need everyone. Using sustained, coordinated direct action we can bring more people into a movement for radical social transformation than ever before.

The upcoming United Nations meeting of the Conference of the Parties in Paris (COP 21) at the end of the year provide us with an opportunity. Framed as climate negotiations they are really about capitalism and the corporate elites. We have an opportunity to focus the debate on capitalism itself as negotiators wedded to and benefiting from the status quo refuse to discuss the systems that drive the crisis. This is a natural moment to preemptively highlight community resistance and radical alternatives in advance of another colossal failure of international leadership. Through our combined action we can turn the failure of these critical talks into a moment in which the systemic nature of the crisis moves to the center and in which our movements begin to connect and collaborate.

In the past, the climate movement has repeatedly tried days of action and one-day marches. While these have built important relationships, they have not created the sustained movement swells we need. To lay the groundwork for exponential movement growth we are asking groups to convene Action Councils, like those forming in the Pacific Northwest, California, Montana, Northeast and elsewhere, with the intention of coming together to organize sustained actions beginning in late Summer, continuing through November and beyond.

With luck, waves of mobilizations breaking across the continent and world will build off each other to create a flood of resistance to fossil fuel extraction, capitalism and colonialism.

Vision

#FloodTheSystem invites the Rising Tide network, the larger climate justice movements, and other non-climate focused groups to create a flood of massive economic and political disruption of the systems that allow the climate and economic crisis to continue to escalate. This is not a simple call to action or day of action, it's a long-term process. We want to organize a series of actions that would:
  • Build a more robust anti-capitalist movement that clearly defines climate change as a symptom of capitalism. Specifically, we hope to support and catalyze regional organizing networks and relationships to challenge extreme energy infrastructure and the systems of oppression that enable it.
  • Build long term local, regional and continental networks that can continue to coordinate, build connections between movements, and escalate these fights in 2016 and beyond.
  • Begin to work closely with other movements through the analysis of where our struggles intersect and through a commitment to anti-oppressive organizing practices.
  • Share, implement and gain experience in innovative models of horizontal movement structures and mass democracy in organizing that will serve radical forces for the long haul.
  • Create a flood of energy within regions that inspires others to join in with organic, spontaneous actions and organizing. Regional blocks of escalating action are already planned that will lead into, and play off, each other. More emerge everyday.
  • Preemptively highlight community resistance and real alternatives to the fossil fuel economy ahead of the inevitable colossal failure by global elites at the United Nations climate negotiations in Paris.

Principles

#FloodTheSystem will organize and act according to the following principles.
  • Anti-capitalism/colonialism/racism/patriarchy - We see the climate crisis as a symptom of hierarchical social systems based upon domination and exploitation of lands, and predominately people of color. Addressing the crisis at its roots means joining with and supporting those who are fighting for liberation from these and other oppressive systems, and for their replacement with relations based upon equity, mutual aid, and ecological stewardship.
  • Grassroots Led, NGOs in Support Role - Non-profits and NGOs often function to co-opt and defuse resistance into reform-based avenues which are amenable to the social systems we are ultimately seeking to dismantle and replace. The priorities of this mobilization should be driven by groups grounded in and accountable to the communities most impacted by white supremacy, capitalism, and settler colonialism, with NGOs in a support role -- not the other way around.
  • Community-Based Alternatives - Corporations, nation-states, and multilateral institutions like the United Nations are integral pillars upholding global capitalism and colonialism. We see alternatives to extreme energy and the climate crisis arising out of social struggles which challenge and seek to replace these institutions and their logics. However, we recognize that there may be important defensive struggles within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, such as fighting the expansion of carbon markets or advancing state recognition of Indigenous land rights.


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Commute Kevin Cooper's Death Sentence

Sign the Petition:
https://act.amnestyusa.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1839&ea.campaign.id=40574&ea.tracking.id=Country_USA~MessagingCategory_DeathPenalty~MessagingCategory_PrisonersandPeopleatRisk&ac=W1507EADP1&ea.url.id=432762&forwarded=true

Urge Gov. Jerry Brown to commute Kevin Cooper's death sentence. Cooper has always maintained his innocence of the 1983 quadruple murder of which he was convicted. In 2009, five federal judges signed a dissenting opinion warning that the State of California "may be about to execute an innocent man." Having exhausted his appeals in the US courts, Kevin Cooper's lawyers have turned to the Inter American Commission on Human Rights to seek remedy for what they maintain is his wrongful conviction, and the inadequate trial representation, prosecutorial misconduct and racial discrimination which have marked the case. Amnesty International opposes all executions, unconditionally.

"The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." - Judge William A. Fletcher, 2009 dissenting opinion on Kevin Cooper's case

Kevin Cooper has been on death row in California for more than thirty years.

In 1985, Cooper was convicted of the murder of a family and their house guest in Chino Hills. Sentenced to death, Cooper's trial took place in an atmosphere of racial hatred — for example, an effigy of a monkey in a noose with a sign reading "Hang the N*****!" was hung outside the venue of his preliminary hearing.

Take action to see that Kevin Cooper's death sentence is commuted immediately.

Cooper has consistently maintained his innocence.

Following his trial, five federal judges said: "There is no way to say this politely. The district court failed to provide Cooper a fair hearing."

Since 2004, a dozen federal appellate judges have indicated their doubts about his guilt.

Tell California authorities: The death penalty carries the risk of irrevocable error. Kevin Cooper's sentence must be commuted.

In 2009, Cooper came just eight hours shy of being executed for a crime that he may not have committed. Stand with me today in reminding the state of California that the death penalty is irreversible — Kevin Cooper's sentence must be commuted immediately.

In solidarity,

James Clark
Senior Death Penalty Campaigner
Amnesty International USA

News Updates

  • Death Row Stories
    Kevin Cooper's case will be the subject of a new episode of CNN's "Death Row Stories" airing on Sunday, July 26 at 7 p.m. PDT. The program will be repeated at 10 p.m. PDT. The episode, created by executive producers Robert Redford and Alex Gibney, will explore how Kevin Cooper was framed by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department and District Attorney.Viewers on the east coast can see the program at 10 p.m. EDT and it will be rebroadcast at 1 a.m. EDT on July 27. Viewers in the Central Time zone can see it at 9 p.m. and midnight CDT. Viewers in the Mountain Time zone can see it at 8 p.m. and ll p.m MDT. It will be aired on CNN again during the following week and will also be able to be viewed on CNN's "Death Row Stories" website.
Kevin Cooper: An Innocent Victim of Racist Frame-Up
- from the Fact Sheet at: www.freekevincooper.org
 
Kevin Cooper is an African-American man who was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 for the gruesome murders of a white family in Chino Hills, California: Doug and Peggy Ryen and their daughter Jessica and their house- guest Christopher Hughes. The Ryens' 8 year old son Josh, also attacked, was left for dead but survived.

Convicted in an atmosphere of racial hatred in San Bernardino County CA, Kevin Cooper remains under a threat of imminent execution in San Quentin.  He has never received a fair hearing on his claim of innocence.  In a dissenting opinion in 2009, five federal judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals signed a 82 page dissenting opinion that begins: "The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." 565 F.3d 581.

There is significant evidence that exonerates Mr. Cooper and points toward other suspects:

  The coroner who investigated the Ryen murders concluded that the murders took four minutes at most and that the murder weapons were a hatchet, a long knife, an ice pick and perhaps a second knife. How could a single person, in four or fewer minutes, wield three or four weapons, and inflict over 140 wounds on five people, two of whom were adults (including a 200 pound ex-marine) who had loaded weapons near their bedsides?

  The sole surviving victim of the murders, Josh Ryen, told police and hospital staff within hours of the murders that the culprits were "three white men." Josh Ryen repeated this statement in the days following the crimes. When he twice saw Mr. Cooper's picture on TV as the suspected attacker, Josh Ryen said "that's not the man who did it."

  Josh Ryen's description of the killers was corroborated by two witnesses who were driving near the Ryens' home the night of the murders. They reported seeing three white men in a station wagon matching the description of the Ryens' car speeding away from the direction of the Ryens' home.

  These descriptions were corroborated by testimony of several employees and patrons of a bar close to the Ryens' home, who saw three white men enter the bar around midnight the night of the murders, two of whom were covered in blood, and one of whom was wearing coveralls.

  The identity of the real killers was further corroborated by a woman who, shortly after the murders were discovered, alerted the sheriff's department that her boyfriend, a convicted murderer, left blood-spattered coveralls at her home the night of the murders. She also reported that her boyfriend had been wearing a tan t-shirt matching a tan t-shirt with Doug Ryen's blood on it recovered near the bar. She also reported that her boyfriend owned a hatchet matching the one recovered near the scene of the crime, which she noted was missing in the days following the murders; it never reappeared; further, her sister saw that boyfriend and two other white men in a vehicle that could have been the Ryens' car on the night of the murders.

Lacking a motive to ascribe to Mr. Cooper for the crimes, the prosecution claimed that Mr. Cooper, who had earlier walked away from custody at a minimum security prison, stole the Ryens' car to escape to Mexico. But the Ryens had left the keys in both their cars (which were parked in the driveway), so there was no need to kill them to steal their car. The prosecution also claimed that Mr. Cooper needed money, but money and credit cards were found untouched and in plain sight at the murder scene.

The jury in 1985 deliberated for seven days before finding Mr. Cooper guilty. One juror later said that if there had been one less piece of evidence, the jury would not have voted to convict.

The evidence the prosecution presented at trial tying Mr. Cooper to the crime scene has all been discredited…         (Continue reading this document at: http://www.savekevincooper.org/_new_freekevincooperdotorg/TEST/Scripts/DataLibraries/upload/KC_FactSheet_2014.pdf)

     This message from the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. July 2015

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Free Albert Woodfox!

On June 8, 2015 a federal judge granted Louisiana prisoner Albert Woodfox unconditional release. Albert's conviction had already been overturned three times - most recently in 2013 - yet every time the state has appealed.

Today, Albert is still behind bars after spending four decades in cruel, unjust solitary confinement. He believes that he and fellow prisoners, Herman Wallace and Robert King, were first placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for their activism. All three men were members of the Black Panther Party. Together, they came to be known as the Angola 3.

It is time for the State of Louisiana to stop standing in the way of justice. Call on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to ensure Albert's cruel and unjust confinement is not his legacy. Learn more

http://act.amnestyusa.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1839&ea.campaign.id=35593&ea.tracking.id=Country_USA~MessagingCategory_PrisonersandPeopleatRisk&ac=W1506EAIAR2&ea.url.id=414689&forwarded=true

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Amnesty for all those arrested demanding justice for Freddie Gray!

 

Amnesty for ALL those arrested
demanding justice for Freddie Gray!

Sign and distribute the petition to drop the charges!
Spread this effort with #Amnesty4Baltimore

"A riot is the language of the unheard"
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

An estimated 300 people have been arrested in Baltimore in the last two weeks. Many have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested include journalists, medics and legal observers.

One individual arrested for property destruction of a police vehicle is now facing life in prison and is being held on $500,000 bail. That's $150,000 more than the officer charged with the murder of Freddie Gray.  

The legal system has made it clear that they care more about broken windows than broken necks; more about a CVS than the lives of Baltimore's Black residents.

They showed no hesitation in arresting Baltimore's protesters and rebels, and sending in the National Guard, but took 19 days to put a single one of the killer cops in handcuffs. This was the outrageous double standard that led to the Baltimore Uprising.

 Sign the petition to drop the charges on all who have been arrested.

Petition to Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake

Download PDF of Petition 

http://www.answercoalition.org/amnesty_for_all_those_arrested_demanding_justice_for_freddie_gray?utm_campaign=baltimore_amn1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=answercoalition

Amn3.pngMayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake
City Hall, Room 250,
100 North Holliday St.,
Baltimore, MD 21202

Dear Mayor Rawlings-Blake:

I stand in solidarity with those in Baltimore who are demanding that all charges be dropped against those who rose up against racism, police brutality, oppressive social conditions and delay of justice in the case of Freddie Gray. The whole world now recognizes that were it not for this powerful grassroots movement, in all its forms, there would be no indictment.

It is an outrage that peaceful protesters have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested include journalists and legal observers.

Even the youth who are charged with property destruction and looting should be given an amnesty. There is no reason a teenager -- provoked by racists and justifiably angry -- should be facing life in prison for breaking the windows of a police car.

The City of Baltimore should work to rectify the conditions that led to this Uprising, rather than criminalizing those who took action in response to those conditions. Drop the charges now!

Sincerely,
[add your name below]

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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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Action Alert!

Stand with Major Tillery


Dear Bonnie,

Listen to Mumia tell this story. Major Tillery stood up to the prison administration: he confronted them in no uncertain terms, noting that Mumia must get to the hospital in time- before he dies. SCI Mahanory Superintendent Kerestes told Major to mind his own business, to which Major replied 'Mumia is my business'.

Please join us in standing in solidarity with Major Tillery, who has been transferred and put in solitary confinement as punishment for demanding that Mumia receive medical care.
"Major is in the hole, not because of drugs, but because of something prison administrators hate and fear among all things: prisoner unity, prisoner solidarity."

- Mumia Abu-Jamal
1. Call prison officials to demand that Major Tillery be released from solitary confinement!

Superintendent Brenda Tritt, SCI Frackville
(570) 874-4516

Dept. Of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel
(717) 728-4109
 
  • State that you are calling about Major Tillery #AM9786, to demand he be released from the RHU and placed back in general population.
  • Inform them that you aware that he is in the hole and being denied medication in retaliation for speaking up for another prisoner.

2. Write Major a letter of solidarity:

Dear Major Tillery,

We honor your brave act of solidarity on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal. You urged him to seek medical care and challenged the Prison Superintendent to protect his life. You helped save the life of a fellow prisoner and for that act of solidarity they are trying to bury you in the bowels of SCI Frackville under false charges. No matter how hard they try they cannot hide you under the weight of lies and intimidation. The power of the truth must come to light. Thank you Major Tillery for your courageous service. We salute you!
 
Major George Tillery
AM 9786 
SCI Frackville, 1111 Altamont Blvd, 
Frackville, PA 17931
 

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." -Frederick Douglass
Mumia continues to transcend the prison walls, reaching out to us with his profound commentaries. Prison Radio is committed to amplifying Mumia's voice, getting him the medical care he needs to survive, and winning his freedom.


Mumia Abu-Jamal Has Hepatitis C:
Demand Treatment Now!



Mumia Abu-Jamal has Hepatitis C-- and the prison is refusing treatment. We are going back to court to demand critical care, and we can't do it without you. Will you support Mumia getting immediate treatment by giving $250, $100 or even $25 today? Every gift and action makes the difference for Mumia getting the care he needs. Thank you, Noelle.

The time to act is now.

Five months after being rushed to the hospital, new medical tests show that Mumia has active Hepatitis C. But prison officials are refusing to treat him for it.

With your help, that changes- today.

Mumia Abu-Jamal remains weak, ill, and in the prison infirmary.

Five months after being admitted to the hospital with lethal blood sugar levels and in renal failure, he continues to have a debilitating skin rashes, open wounds and swelling across his lower extremities. Because of our relentless demands for medical testing and treatment, we finally know the likely cause of his severe ailments: Hepatitis C.

But what is news to us is not news to his jailers. Prison officials have known that Mumia was Hep. C positive since 2012-- and have done nothing.

Even now that prison doctors know that Mumia's Hep. C is active -from testing they performed solely because we demanded it- they are refusing to provide treatment.

Today, we are going back to court to demand justice for our brother. 

Mumia's legal team (Bret Grote of Abolitionist Law Center and Robert Boyle of New York) is filing an amended lawsuit today, 'Abu-Jamal v. Kerestes', to include medical neglect and demand immediate treatment.

Meanwhile, Prison Radio is working tirelessly to make sure Mumia's legal and medical team have the necessary resources to get Mumia the critical care he needs.

And we can't do it without you.

We need your help today to ensure that the prison treats Mumia's Hepatitis C now!

The world came together for Mumia when he fell unconscious five months ago. Because of our international outcry for justice and the critical steps we took, Mumia is alive today.

Now, we need your help to get Mumia a treatment plan. Can you fight for Mumia's right to medical care by giving $100, $25 or $250 today?

Your donation will:
File an amended lawsuit 'Abu-Jamal v. Kerestes' to include medical neglect
Get Mumia a full Hepatitis C work up and treatment plan

Grant Mumia's consulting physicians access to directly examine Mumia 

Fuel a public campaign to bring Mumia back to health

Support the demand for treatment of Hepatitis C for all Pennsylvania prisoners
Please join us in demanding immediate medical treatment by giving $25, $100 or even $1,000 now. Every gift and action matters.

bit.ly/fight4mumia
I Demand Treatment NOW!
Luchando por la justicia y la libertad,
Noelle Hanrahan
Director, Prison Radio
To give by check:
PO Box 411074
San Francisco, CA
94141
Stock or legacy gifts:
Noelle Hanrahan
(415) 706 - 5222


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. 

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

$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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The  Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Mobilizes Support Internationally:
No Execution by Medical Neglect!

International Unions Demand Decent Medical Treatment for Mumia Abu-Jamal

June 2, 2015

Mumia Abu-Jamal was recently sent back to prison after having been hospitalized for the second time. There are some reports that his health is improving. He said to Suzanne Ross of the International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal that "if there had not been an international outcry about the lack of appropriate treatment, in fact AGAINST the 'treatment' that was bringing him so close to death, he was sure he would not be alive today".

In some good news, he was also told by the prison doctor that his biopsy results came back negative.
However, neither Mumia nor his wife, lawyers or consulting doctors have been seen the actual medical reports detailing his condition. The Department of Corrections refuses to hand over his medical records, claiming that they don't have to hand them over because there is litigation to have them released! Denying Mumia and his family his medical records is an outrage!
We would like to inform you about some recent actions taken by unions around the world on behalf of Mumia.

- Unite, the largest union in the UK, representing over 1.4 million members, wrote letters to Governor Tom Wolf, Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel and Legal Counsel Theron Perez protesting Mumia's treatment.

- The International Dockworkers Council, representing 90,000 dockworkers from affiliated unions around the world, wrote an appeal to the labor movement calling for action on behalf of Mumia.
- The Inlandboatmen's Union of the Pacific sent a protest letter to Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel.

We hope that you will continue to take action on behalf of Mumia. Please call and email Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel and demand the following:

1) Mumia Abu-Jamal is an innocent man! He should be freed immediatel
2) Confirm what Mumia's medical condition is. Release his medical records to his family and lawyers!

3) Allow Mumia to be given medical treatment from a doctor of his choice. His doctor should be allowed to conduct an on-site medical examination, to communicate by phone with Mumia, and to communicate freely with prison medical staff.

4) Allow Mumia daily visits from his family, friends and lawyers!

5) Conduct an independent investigation of healthcare treatment inside the Pennsylvania prison system!DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, SECRETARY JOHN WETZEL 717 728 4109

We are also attaching a sample union resolution for you to use as a template. Please consider submitting it to your union and asking them to take action on behalf of Mumia. We would also be happy to work with you and make a presentation to your union or community group about his condition.

The Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jam


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Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson
 
Updates from the New "Team Free Lorenzo Johnson":
Thank you all for your relentless effort in the fight against wrongful convictions and your determination to stand behind Lorenzo.

To garner even more support for Lorenzo Johnson, we have been hard at work updating the website and developing an even more formidable and dedicated team. Please take a moment to visit the new site here.

During the month of July, Lorenzo wrote two new articles for The Huffington Post titled "When Prosecutors Deny Justice for the Innocent," and "Hurry Up and Wait for Justice: The Struggle of Innocent Prisoners." In these articles, Lorenzo discusses the flaws in the criminal justice system, which he deems is a "serious problem in this country."

Lastly, Lorenzo has a message to you all.

A Letter from Lorenzo:

July 23, 2015
Dauphin County Prison
Harrisburg, PA

Dear Supporters,

I hope all is well with everyone and your families. As for myself, I'm still on my journey in pursuit of my vindication. Sorry for my website being shut down for a couple of weeks. It was being transferred to a new provider and management. I'm back and will do my best to keep everything up to speed with what's taking place.

I would like to thank ALL of my loyal supporters in the U.S. and in the MANY different counties that have signed on to support my innocence. Thanks for all of the letters, emails, photos, etc. Like I always say, I get energy to carry on and inspiration hearing form you, please stay engaged in my struggle.

As of this moment, nothing has changed, but – the continued delay tactics are constantly being used by my prosecutor, Deputy Attorney General William Stoycos. With the mounting of evidence that supports my innocence and police and prosecution misconduct claims that is steadily piling up, you would think that I would be having a couple of evidentiary hearings on my actual innocence appeal that have been pending since August 5, 2013.

At the time of this writing, I've been moved from SCI-Mahanoy to Dauphin County Prison and locked down for 23 hours and 40 minutes a day. In the 20 minutes I get to come out, I get to take a shower and make a short call. Prosecutor Stoycos had me moved so I can be a witness in his attempt to have my codefendant Corey Walker's attorney removed from representing him. How dare he call into question an attorney who is seeking justice for her client, when prosecutor Stoycos himself violated multiple constitutional rights of mine and Mr. Walker, that led to us being in prison for 20 years and counting.

Prosecutor Stoycos is continuously abusing his power and his endless resources he has at his disposal. He is not tough on crime, he's tough on Innocent Prisoners. Prosecutor Stoycos is doing everything in his power to prevent justice from taking place. I encourage everyone to continue to speak out against my nightmare, invite others to get involved by going to my website and signing my Freedom Petition and whatever else they're willing to do.

On a positive note, I just enrolled in warehouse management trade and started on July 13th. Unfortunately, you're only allowed to miss a couple of days and Prosecutor Stoycos had me temporarily transferred on July 14th … It's extremely hard on Lifers to get into these trades due to the fact that Lifers are placed at the back of the list of ALL vocational classes. I try to further my education every chance I get, so when I do come home, I will be certified in different work.

The month of the hearing has come and left, without me being brought to the courthouse … I'm one of MANY innocent prisoners who endures this non-stop madness in our pursuit of Justice and Freedom. Now that my webpage is almost caught up to speed, I promise prompt updates and as everyone knows that contacted me directly, I personally reply to those in the states and out of the country. For those who can make a financial contribution, everything counts. Take care and let's continue to fight until we achieve Freedom, Justice, and Equality for all innocent prisoners.

"The Pain Within"

Free the Innocent
Lorenzo "Cat" Johnson

[Note: Lorenzo has since been transferred back to SCI Mahanoy and can be reached at his usual address.]

Thank you all for reading this message and please take the time to visit the new website and contribute to Lorenzo's campaign for freedom!

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

 Email: Through JPay using the code:
              Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC
                                     or
              Directly at LorenzoJohnson17932@gmail.com

Have a wonderful day!
- The Team to Free Lorenzo Johnson


freelorenzojohnson.org

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 Join the Fight to Free Rev. Pinkney!

Click HERE to view in browser

http://www.iacenter.org/prisoners/freepinkney-1-28-15/


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."

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!

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) Louisiana: New Trials Can Proceed for Ex-Officers
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/19/us/louisiana-new-trials-can-proceed-for-ex-officers.html?ref=us

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Tuesday upheld a decision giving five former New Orleans police officers a new trial in connection with deadly shootings of unarmed people amid the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Four of the men are charged in the shootings at the Danziger Bridge a week after the storm. A fifth ex-officer is charged in the cover-up, which fell apart as federal investigators bore down. Their 2011 convictions were thrown out by a federal judge who said anonymous online postings by prosecutors tainted the case. The appeals court agreed.

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2) Activists Confront Hillary Clinton
By Charles M. Blow

A newly released video from Good magazine, showing Hillary Clinton in a meeting being confronted by young activists from the Black Lives Matter movement, thrilled me to no end. It also depressed me just as much.

The activists called on Clinton to answer for her and her husband’s part in the rise of mass incarceration in this country, a phenomenon that disproportionately affects black and brown people.

Julius Jones, a Black Lives Matter activist from Boston, said to Clinton:

“I genuinely want to know: You, and your family, have been in no uncertain way partially responsible for this, more than most.”

He then asked:“Now, there may have been unintended consequences, but now that you understand the consequences, what in your heart has changed, that’s going to change the direction of this country? What in you, like not your platform, not, not what you’re supposed to say, like how do you actually feel, that’s different than you did before? Like, what were the mistakes and how can those mistakes that you’ve made be lessons for all of America, or a moment of reflection on how we treat black people in this country?”

(Good magazine pointed out: “Hillary Clinton lobbied lawmakers to back the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. Bill Clinton signed the act into law in 1994. The largest crime bill in history, it provided $9.7 billion in prison funding. From 1992 to 2000, the amount of prisoners in the U.S. increased almost 60 percent.”)

Clinton pointed to her record on civil rights work, but she never apologized for, or even acknowledged, her and her husband’s role in giving America the dubious distinction of having the world’s highest incarceration rate.

To me, the diversion was stunning, and telling.Maggie Haberman noted in The New York Times that the exchange “showed Mrs. Clinton as even her admirers lament that she is seldom seen: spontaneous, impassioned and seemingly unconcerned about potential repercussions.”

Politically, that may be true. She was agile and evasive, for sure. She bobbed and weaved like Floyd Mayweather. But there was a moral issue, an accountability issue, that still hung rotting in the ring: What in her has changed, now that she has seen the devastation a policy she advocated has wrought?

(Last month, at the annual convention of the N.A.A.C.P., Bill Clinton did apologize, saying, “I signed a bill that made the problem worse.” He continued, “And I want to admit it.” His contrition makes Hillary’s nonapology all the more vexing.)

This is the part of the Black Lives Matter political protests that I love so much: The idea that you must test the fealty of your supposed friends in addition to battling the fury of your avowed foes.

The truth of America is that both liberals and conservatives alike have things for which they must answer, sins for which they must atone, when it comes to how the criminal justice system has been aimed at and unleashed upon black people in this country.

And it’s not just the Clintons who have things they must answer for on criminal justice and black people. As I have written about before, toward the end of his tenure, President George W. Bush drastically reduced funding for the Byrne Formula Grant Program, which had been established by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act to supercharge the war on drugs — a disastrous boondoggle that would come to be a war waged primarily against marijuana use by black men.

As the American Civil Liberties Union pointed out in 2011, “The racial disparities are staggering: despite the fact that whites engage in drug offenses at a higher rate than African-Americans, African-Americans are incarcerated for drug offenses at a rate that is 10 times greater than that of whites.’”

A group of senators, mostly Democrats, wrote a letter demanding that the funding be restored. Barack Obama ran on a promise to restore that funding, and once elected, he did just that. As I wrote in 2010:

“The 2009 stimulus package presented these Democrats with the opportunity, and they seized it. The legislation, designed by Democrats and signed by President Obama, included $2 billion for Byrne Grants to be awarded by the end of September 2010. That was nearly a 12-fold increase in financing. Whatever the merits of these programs, they are outweighed by the damage being done. Financing prevention is fine. Financing a race-based arrest epidemic is not.”

And these sins exist not only at the federal level, but also at the local level.Many of the recent cases have been in some of our most liberal cities — cities that, as Isabel Wilkerson brilliantly pointed out in January, were the very ones to which black Americans flocked during the Great Migration.

Eric Garner was choked and killed by police in New York. Tamir Rice was shot and killed by police in Cleveland. Charley Saturmin Robinet was shot and killed by police in Los Angeles.

In a way, these deadly interactions are connected to civic policies that not only implicate the police officers but the liberals who occupy these cities themselves. Stop-and-frisk existed, in obscene proportions, in New York. And yet, most white voters in the city said that they approved of the program, according to a 2012 Quinnipiac University poll.

People from both sides of the aisle have cast poor black people to the wolves and averted their gaze from the ensuing carnage. But in a way, asking liberals to answer for their complicity is even more important than asking conservatives.

More than nine in 10 blacks vote Democratic. That level of fidelity should give black people some leverage, at the very least, to demand accountability

At one point in one of the videos, Clinton said:

“I don’t believe you change hearts. I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate.”

But what if the same person saying that was partially responsible for changing the laws that allocated the resources that built up a system that operated as a tool of destruction?

These young activists, indeed all of us, should expect liberals to have more direct answers for their own actions — and inactions — than the one Clinton gave.

There can be no sacred cows when black people have been treated like sacrificial lambs.


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3) Cornel West: The Fire of a New Generation
By George Yancy and Cornel West
August 19, 2015
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/19/cornel-west-the-fire-of-a-new-generation/?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region

This is the 15th in a series of interviews on race that I am conducting for The Stone. This week’s discussion is with Cornel West, one of the most prominent and provocative intellectuals in public life. He is a professor of philosophy and Christian practice at Union Theological Seminary and professor emeritus at Princeton University. He is the author and editor of more than 30 books, including “Black Prophetic Fire” and “The Radical King.” — George Yancy

George Yancy: Recently, on Aug. 10, you were arrested along with others outside the courthouse in St. Louis because of the collective resistance against continued racial injustice and police brutality. What was the political atmosphere like there?
Fire really means a certain kind of burning in the soul that one can no longer tolerate when one is pushed against a wall.
Cornel West: The black prophetic fire among the younger generation in Ferguson was intense and wonderful. Ferguson is ground zero for the struggle against police brutality and police murder. I just wanted to be a small part of that collective fight back that puts one’s body on the line. It was beautiful because part of the crowd was chanting, “This is what democracy looks like,” which echoes W.E.B. DuBois and the older generation’s critique of capitalist civilization and imperialist power. And you also had people chanting, “We gon’ be alright,” which is from rap artist Kendrick Lamar, who is concerned with the black body, decrepit schools, indecent housing. This chant is in many ways emerging as a kind of anthem of the movement for the younger generation. So, we had both the old school and the new school and I try to be a kind of link between these two schools. There was a polyphonic, antiphonal, call and response, all the way down and all the way live.

G.Y.: One of your newest books is entitled “Black Prophetic Fire.” Define what you mean by “black prophetic fire.”

C.W.: Black prophetic fire is the hypersensitivity to the suffering of others that generates a righteous indignation that results in the willingness to live and die for freedom.

I think in many ways we have to begin with the younger generation, the generation of Ferguson, Baltimore, Staten Island and Oakland. There is not just a rekindling, but a re-invigoration taking place among the younger generation that enacts and enables prophetic fire. We’ve been in an ice age. If you go from the 1960s and 1970s — that’s my generation. But there was also an ice age called the neoliberal epoch, an ice age where it was no longer a beautiful thing to be on fire. It was a beautiful thing to have money. It was a beautiful thing to have status. It was a beautiful thing to have public reputation without a whole lot of commitment to social justice, whereas the younger generation is now catching the fire of the generation of the 1960s and 1970s.

G.Y.: When I think of black prophetic fire, I think of David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Audre Lorde, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Martin L. King, James Baldwin and so many more. In recent weeks, some have favorably compared the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates to Baldwin. I know that you publicly criticized this comparison. What was the nature of your critique?

C.W.: In a phone conversation I had with Brother Coates not long ago, I told him that the black prophetic tradition is the collective fightback of sustained compassion in the face of sustained catastrophe. It has the highest standards of excellence, and we all fall short. So a passionate defense of Baldwin — or John Coltrane or Toni Morrison — is crucial in this age of Ferguson.


G.Y.: In what ways do you think the concept of black prophetic fire speaks to — or ought to speak to — events like the tragic murder of nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.?
I’m an old Coltrane disciple just like I’m a Christian. You can be full of fire, but that fire has to be lit by a deep love of the people.
C.W.: Charleston is part and parcel of the ugly manifestation of the vicious legacy of white supremacy, and the younger generation — who have been wrestling with arbitrary police power, arbitrary corporate power, gentrification, the land-grabbing, the power-grabbing in and of the black community, and arbitrary cultural power in terms of white supremacist stereotypes promoted on television, radio and so forth — has become what I call the “marvelous new militancy,” and they embody this prophetic fire. The beautiful thing is that this “marvelous new militancy” is true for vanilla brothers and sisters, it’s true for all colors in the younger generation, though it is disproportionately black, disproportionately women and, significantly, disproportionately black, queer women.

G.Y.: Why the metaphor of “fire”?

C.W.: That’s just my tradition, brother. Fire really means a certain kind of burning in the soul that one can no longer tolerate when one is pushed against a wall. So, you straighten your back up, you take your stand, you speak your truth, you bear your witness and, most important, you are willing to live and die. Fire is very much about fruits as opposed to foliage. The ice age was all about foliage: “Look at me, look at me.” It was the peacock syndrome. Fire is about fruits, which is biblical, but also Marxist. It’s about praxis and what kind of life you live, what kind of costs you’re willing to bear, what kind of price you’re willing to pay, what kind of death you’re willing to embrace.

That was a great insight that Marcus Garvey had. Remember, Garvey often began his rallies with a black man or woman carrying a sign that read, “The Negro is not afraid.” Once you break the back of fear, you’re on fire. You need that fire. Even if that Negro carrying that sign is still shaking, the way that the lyrical genius Kanye West was shaking when he talked about George W. Bush not caring about black people, you’re still trying to overcome that fear, work through that fear.

The problem is that during the neoliberal epoch and during the ice age you’ve got the process of “niggerization,” which is designed to keep black people afraid. Keep them scared. Keep them intimidated. Keep them bowing and scraping. And Malcolm X understood this better than anybody, other than Ida B. Wells — they represented two of the highest moments of black prophetic fire in the 20th century. Ida, with a bounty on her head, was still full of fire. And Malcolm, we don’t even have a language for his fire.

G.Y.: Does this process of “niggerization” in American culture partly involve white supremacist myths being internalized by black people?

C.W.: Yes. When you teach black people that they are less beautiful, less moral, less intelligent, and as a result you defer to the white supremacist status quo, you rationalize your accommodation to the status quo, you lose your fire, you become much more tied to producing foliage, what appears to be the case. And, of course, in late capitalist culture, the culture of superficial spectacle, driven by capital, driven by money, driven by the market, it’s all about image and interest, anyway. In other words, principle drops out. Any conception of being a person of integrity is laughed at because what is central is image, what is central is interest. And, of course, interest is tied to money, and image is tied to the peacock projection, of what you appear to be.
When you teach black people they are less beautiful, less moral, less intelligent, you defer to the white supremacist status quo.
G.Y.: Can we assume then that you then would emphasize a form of education that would critique a certain kind of hyperrealism that is obsessed with images and nonmarket values?

C.W.: That’s right; absolutely. It’s the kind of thing that my dear brother Henry Giroux talks about with such insight. He’s written many books providing such a powerful critique of neoliberal market models of education. Stanley Aronowitz, of course, goes right along with Giroux’s critique in that regard. The notion has to do precisely with that critical consciousness that the great Paulo Freire talks about, or the great Myles Horton talked about, or the great bell hooks talks about in her works. How do you generate that kind of courageous critical consciousness that cuts against the grain and that discloses the operations of market interests and images, capitalist forms of wealth inequality, massive surveillance, imperial policies, drones dropping bombs on innocent people, ecological catastrophe and escalating nuclear catastrophe?

All of these various issues are very much tied into a kind of market model of education that reinforces the capitalist civilization, one that is more and more obsessed with just interest and image.

G.Y.: What do you see as the foremost challenge in creating a common cause between past generation and the current generation now “catching fire,” as you put it?

C.W.: For me, it is the dialectical interplay between the old school and prophetic thought and action. I’m an old Coltrane disciple just like I’m a Christian. You can be full of fire, but that fire has to be lit by a deep love of the people. And if that love is not in it, then the fire actually becomes just a sounding brass and tinkling cymbal that doesn’t get at the real moral substance and spiritual content that keeps anybody going, but especially people who have been hated for so long and in so many ways, as black people have.

For me, the love ethic is at the very center of it. It can be the love ethic of James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Marvin Gaye, John Coltrane or Curtis Mayfield, but it has to have that central focus on loving the people. And when you love people, you hate the fact that they’re being treated unfairly. You tell the truth. You sacrifice your popularity for integrity. There is a willingness to give your life back to the people given that, in the end, they basically gave it to you, because we are who we are because somebody loved us anyway.

G.Y.: This idea relates to the collection of Dr. King’s writings you edited, called “The Radical King.” Why did you undertake the job of curating and editing the book?

C.W.: Because Martin had been so sanitized and sterilized. He has been so Santa Claus-ified, turned into an old man with a smile, toys in his bag to give out, and leaving everybody feeling so good. It was like we were living in Disneyland rather than in the nightmare that the present-day America is for so many poor working people, especially poor black working people. So, we needed a kind of crystallization. 

But there has been a variety of different voices talking about the radical King. You know my closest friend in the world, James Melvin Washington, was the only person that the King family allowed to bring the collection of sermons and writings together. It’s one of the greatest honors for me to be the second person that the King family allowed to bring those kinds of writings together across the board, laying out a framework. You’ve got James Melvin Washington’s “A Testament of Hope.” You’ve got other wonderful scholars like James Cone, Lewis Baldwin and others who have done magnificent work in their own way. But, you know, as I pass off the stage of space and time, I want to be able to leave these love letters to the younger generation. I want to tell them that they’re part of a great tradition, a grand tradition of struggle, critical, intellectual struggle, of moral and political struggle, and a spiritual struggle in music and the arts, and so on.

Contrary to when people talk about King every January, there is in “The Radical King” in fact a particular understanding of this moral titan, spiritual giant and great crusader for justice. So you get a sense of who he really was beyond all of the sanitizing and sterilizing that are trotted out every year in celebration of him. I consider it the most important book I’ve ever done.

G.Y.: King is well known for quoting the American reformer and abolitionist Theodore Parker’s words, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” What’s your assessment of King’s claim now, in 2015, particularly in the light of the kind of existential plight and angst that black people and poor people are experiencing? Is there an arc of the moral universe?

C.W.: I think King had a very thick metaphysics when it came to history being the canvas upon which God was in full control. As you know, I don’t have such a thick metaphysics. I am closer to Anton Chekhov, Samuel Beckett and a bluesman. I think that King at the end of his life became more of a bluesman. He began to think: “Lord, have mercy. That arc might be bending, but it sure is bending the wrong way.” After all, he’s dealing with white supremacist backlash, patriarchal backlash and capitalist backlash against working people and the possibility of ecological catastrophe. He was already wrestling with the possible non-existence of life on the earth in terms of the nuclear catastrophe that we were on the brink of. So, he made a leap of faith grounded in a certain conception of history that was heading toward justice. I don’t accept that. I just do it because it’s right. I do it because integrity, honesty and decency are in and of themselves enough reward that I’d rather go under, trying to do what’s right, even if it has no chance at all.

G.Y.: I was thinking about your existentialist sensibilities that would in fact be critical of the claim that the universe is moral at all. Yet, both you and King share a blues sensibility that places emphasis on touching the pain and yet transcending the pain, and also the importance of the Christian good news.

C.W.: Oh, absolutely, we are both very similar in terms of never allowing hatred to have the last word, not allowing despair to have the last word, telling the truth about structures of domination of various sorts, keeping track of the variety of forms of oppression so we don’t become ghettoized and tied to just one single issue. Yet, at the same time, we’re trying to sustain hope by being a hope. Hope is not simply something that you have; hope is something that you are. So, when Curtis Mayfield says “keep on pushing,” that’s not an abstract conception about optimism in the world. That is an imperative to be a hope for others in the way Christians in the past used to be a blessing — not the idea of praying for a blessings, but being a blessing.

John Coltrane says be a force for good. Don’t just talk about forces for good, be a force. So it’s an ontological state. So, in the end, all we have is who we are. If you end up being cowardly, then you end up losing the best of your world, or your society, or your community, or yourself. If you’re courageous, you protect, try and preserve the best of it. Now, you might preserve the best, and still not be good enough to triumph over evil. Hey, that’s the way it is. You did the best you could do. T.S. Eliot says, “For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.” T.S. Eliot was a right-wing brother who was full of wisdom. All you can do is to try; keep on pushing. That’s all you can do.

G.Y.: When it comes to race in America in 2015, what is to be done?

C.W.: Well, the first thing, of course, is you’ve got to shatter denial, avoidance and evasion. That’s part of my criticism of the president. For seven years, he just hasn’t or refused to hit it head-on. It looks like he’s now beginning to find his voice. But in finding his voice, it’s either too late or he’s lost his moral authority. He can’t drop drones on hundreds of innocent children and then talk about how upset he is when innocent people are killed. You can’t reshape the world in the image of corporate interest and image with Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and then say that you’re in deep solidarity with working people and poor people. You can’t engage in massive surveillance, keeping track of phone calls across the board, targeting Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning and others, and then turn right back around and say you’re against secrecy, you’re against clandestine policy.

So that, unfortunately, if he had come right in and asserted his moral authority over against Fox News, over against right-wing, conservative folk who were coming at him — even if he lost — he would have let the world know what his deep moral convictions are. But he came in as a Machiavellian. He came in with political calculation. That’s why he brought in Machiavellians like Rahm Emanuel and Larry Summers, and others. So, it was clear it was going to be political calculation, not moral conviction.

How can anyone take your word seriously after seven years about how we need to put a spotlight on racism when, for seven years, you’ve been engaged in political calculation about racism? But then you send out your lieutenants. You send out all your Obama cheerleaders and bootlickers and they say to his critics that he is president of all of America, not black America. And we say white supremacy is a matter of truth. Are you interested in truth? It’s a matter of justice. Are you interested in justice? It’s a matter of national security. Are you interested in national security? Well, we talk about black America. We’re not talking about some ghettoized group that’s just an interest group that you have to engage in political calculation about. When you talk about black people, you’re talking about wrestling with lies and injustice coming at them and their quest for truth and justice. If you’re not interested in truth and justice, no politician ought to be in office, and not just the president. So, we’ve actually had a major setback in seven years; a lost opportunity.

G.Y.: But is it really possible to speak courageous speech while acting as the most powerful country in the world? Of course, we also have to admit the history of racism preceded Obama’s tenure and will exceed it. My point is that there is a deep tension that exists for someone who desires to embody prophetic fire and yet be in charge of an empire.

C.W.: I think that’s true for most politicians, actually. Now when it comes to the intellectuals who rationalize their deference to the politician, so they want to pose as prophetic even though they are very much deferential to the powers that be, they need to be criticized in a very intense way. That’s why I’m very hard on the Obama cheerleaders, you see, but when it comes to the politicians themselves, it is very difficult to be a prophetic politician the way in which Harold Washington was or the way Paul Wellstone was or the way Shirley Chisholm was, or the way my dear brother Bernie Sanders actually is. He is a prophetic politician. He speaks the truth about wealth and equality. He speaks the truth about Wall Street. He speaks the truth about working and poor people being afterthoughts in terms of the kind of calculations of the oligarchs of our day. He shows that it’s possible to be a politician who speaks the truth.

Once you occupy the White House, you are head of the empire. Then you have a choice. We’ve had two grand candidates in the history of the United States. We’ve had Abraham Lincoln and we’ve had Franklin D. Roosevelt. Both of them are full of flaws, full of faults, full of many, many blind spots. But they pushed the American experiment in a progressive way, even given their faults. And that’s what we thought Obama was going to do. We were looking for Lincoln, and we got another Clinton, and that is in no way satisfying.

That’s what I mean by, we were looking for a Coltrane and we ended up getting a Kenny G. You can’t help but be profoundly disappointed. But also ready for more fightback in post-Obama America!

This interview was conducted by email and edited. Previous interviews in this series (with Linda Martin Alcoff, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky, Charles Mills, Falguni A. Sheth and others) can be found here.

George Yancy is a professor of philosophy at Emory University. He has written, edited and co-edited numerous books, including “Black Bodies, White Gazes,” “Look, a White!” and “Pursuing Trayvon Martin,” co-edited with Janine Jones. 
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4) Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to Call New Elections, Officials Say
By NIKI KITSANTONIS and

ATHENS — Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of Greece will call for national elections on Sept. 20 in a bid to consolidate his power and press ahead with the bailout plan he agreed to this summer with European creditors, government officials said Thursday.

Mr. Tsipras is expected to begin the process by submitting his resignation on Thursday, clearing the way for a vote next month on whether he and his leftist Syriza party should be returned to power with a new mandate.

“We know for sure that we will have elections on the 20th,” said one government minister, who agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity. “He is going to resign today.”

Mr. Tsipras has been weighing new elections for weeks amid a deep split within his party over his embrace of the bailout plan.Mr. Tsipras was elected in January on an anti-austerity platform but, after several tumultuous months, he reversed course and agreed to a new bailout program with the country’s European creditors. The deal infuriated Syriza’s far-left factions, and it was passed through Parliament with the help of opposition parties. Defections from Mr. Tsipras’s coalition had raised the possibility that he would not have the necessary support to prevail in a potential parliamentary test of confidence in his leadership, a possibility he short-circuited by calling for new elections.


Some analysts had thought Mr. Tsipras might not call snap elections until October, after the country faces the first review of its progress in meeting the terms of the bailout, but instead he moved to act more quickly.

The move to quick elections could slow or complicate progress in carrying out the initial phases of the changes demanded by the bailout package. But Mr. Tsipras has remained highly popular in Greece despite his reversal on the bailout plan, with polls showing no other leader in a position to challenge him at this stage.

In comments in Parliament on Thursday, Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said early elections would not lead to political instability and called on Greeks to return their savings to banks.

“Now there is an agreement, there is a course ahead,” he said, referring to the latest bailout, which formally took effect on Thursday following approval on Wednesday by the German Parliament and European officials in Brussels.

Energy Minister Panos Skourletis said on state TV earlier in the day that elections were needed to deal with the split in Syriza. “The political landscape must be cleared up. We need to know whether the government has or doesn’t have a majority.”

Niki Kitsantonis reported from Athens, and Jim Yardley from Rome.



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5) Palestinian Ends Fast After Israel Suspended His Detention
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

JERUSALEM — A Palestinian prisoner held without charge in Israel ended his two-month-long hunger strike on Thursday, his lawyer said, a day after Israel's Supreme Court suspended his detention.

The case of Mohammed Allan's 66-day strike tested a new Israeli law allowing force-feeding, which has been criticized by many doctors who say the practice amounts to torture. It also cast light on Israel's use of administrative detention, the holding of suspects for long periods without charge or trial.

Allan's lawyer Jamil Khatib told reporters that his client ended his strike on Thursday and that his condition remained still serious but stable. It could take several weeks to know the full extent of the damage Allan sustained as a result of the prolonged fast, Khatib cautioned.

On Wednesday, Israel's Supreme court suspended the detention order against Allan, releasing him while he receives medical care.Earlier Thursday, Dr. Hezy Levy of Israel's Barzilai hospital, where Allan slipped into unconsciousness last Friday, said the 31-year-old Palestinian was showing "great improvement."

Allan regained consciousness on Monday and is said to have suffered brain damage as a result of his strike.

"We took him off the respirator. He's no longer sedated," Levy said. "He is starting to communicate and I am happy that medically he is on the right path."

Levy said he hoped that Allan would soon start eating again on his own. Allan's body cannot yet process food after such a prolonged fast.

Allan began his fast to protest the Israel's policy of administrative detention, which allows authorities to hold suspects for months without charge or trial.

Israel defends the practice as a necessary tool to stop militant attacks and argues that revealing the charges would expose intelligence networks and put lives in danger. Rights groups say the measure violates due process, is meant only for extraordinary cases, and is overused.

Israel said the detention was applied to Allan for his affiliation with Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant group that has carried out scores of attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers. Allan denies the affiliation.

Wednesday's court decision means Allan will no longer be shackled to his bed and his family will be able to visit him in the hospital.



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6) Britain and France to Announce Measures to Contain Migrant Crisis in Calais
By

LONDON — After a summer in Britain and France dominated by news of migrants trying to break into the Channel Tunnel, the two countries will announce new security measures on Thursday intended to contain a crisis that has disrupted travel and stirred a fierce debate about migration.

Several thousand migrants remain in a makeshift camp at Calais, France, with many making nightly efforts to break into the Channel Tunnel and stow away on cars, trucks and trains. One migrant even walked most of the 31-mile tunnel, where he avoided being hit by trains but was arrested as he approached Folkestone in Britain.

Under plans set to be formally announced later in the day, British police and border protection forces will work with their French counterparts at a new “command and control center” in Calais. The new body will be led by two senior officers, one English and one French, and will try to target those organizing human trafficking, the British government said.The deal will be signed by the British home secretary, Theresa May, who traveled to Calais, and the French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve.

“In order to secure the inhabitants of Calais but also to control the borders,” Mr. Cazeneuve said after arriving in Calais, “1,300 French policemen are mobilized, and 500 more, just behind me, are here to boost security of the borders.”Britain is also promising more spending to reinforce the perimeter of the Eurotunnel railhead with tougher fencing, CCTV, flood lighting and infrared detection technology.

Extra search teams, including detection dogs, will be deployed, more mobile French policing units will be added and a security audit will be conducted, according to the British Home Office.

The problems at Calais have disrupted truck drivers and travelers, but they are only a small part of the migration crisis sweeping Europe. In July alone, the number of migrants detected at the borders of the 28-nation European Union rose to 107,500, more than three times the number in the same month last year, according to Frontex, the bloc’s border management agency.

“I believe that in front of this international and very serious issue, which leads to an increase of the migratory flow pressure all around Europe, we must understand here in Calais that the issue goes beyond Calais and even beyond the frame of our bilateral cooperation,” Mr. Cazeneuve said. “It’s an issue that leads us to also work closely with the authorities of the countries from those people come from.”

Although the number of attempts to storm the Channel appears to have fallen recently — Mr. Cazeneuve said the figures were now one-tenth of what they were a few weeks ago — the images of chaos on the border between two of Europe’s richest nations have highlighted the inability of Europe to deal with the migratory crisis prompted by war and economic hardship in the Middle East and Africa.

Under reciprocal arrangements, British officials conduct passport checks on those crossing the Channel on French soil, before their journey, making them reliant on French cooperation. Although some British politicians have criticized France for failing to deal with the migrant problems at Calais, the government has been careful not to do so.

The scenes at Calais have stoked Britain’s debate about migration, however, and last month, Prime Minister David Cameron was criticized after he referred to the large number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean as a “swarm,” although he later said he had not been trying to dehumanize people trying to reach Europe.

Policy makers in Europe face a big collective challenge in dealing with the crisis, and efforts to agree on quotas for European Union countries to accept refugees have achieved only limited success.

“This is an absolute human tragedy, with people who are dying and people who are in terrible situations,” the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said on Thursday, according to Reuters.



Lilia Blaise contributed reporting from Paris.




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7) Mexican Worker in Trump Hotel Criticizes Donald Trump’s Views, on Video
By

Ricardo Aca knew he could be fired. But he wanted the camera to roll anyway.

Mr. Aca is shown holding his cellphone watching Donald J. Trump call Mexicans who enter the United States rapists, criminals and drug dealers. Then, Mr. Aca calmly tells his story.

A slight 24-year-old Mexican immigrant who graduated from high school and community college in Queens, Mr. Aca works at the Koi SoHo restaurant, which leases space inside the Trump SoHo hotel. He made a short video with a filmmaker friend and posted it on Facebook on Monday, where it attracted more than 300,000 views in 24 hours.

“I was offended because this is not who we are, this is not who I am, this is not anybody I know who is an immigrant,” Mr. Aca said in an interview on Tuesday, wearing his Mexican national team soccer jersey.

Amid the uproar over immigration in the presidential race — marked by Mr. Trump’s inflammatory comments about Mexicans and his plan to build a wall along the border and deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country — the video ignited another debate over what it means to be legal in the United States.

“I know I could lose my job for just talking about Trump,” Mr. Aca says in the video, “but it doesn’t make me proud every day to go to work under his name.”

He described himself as an undocumented immigrant who came here at age 14. But in the video he did not say that he has documents that enable him to remain in the country legally. He was part of a wave of immigrants who came to the United States as children who have been granted deportation deferrals and work permits under a 2012 program.

With this legal permit, Mr. Aca has worked as a busboy for two years for the restaurant, which is not owned or operated by the Trump Organization.

In a brief interview in response to Mr. Aca’s video, Mr. Trump, whose immigration stance has helped vault him to the lead among Republican candidates, said: “He’s got a legal work permit. I’ve heard he does a good job. We thought he was an illegal immigrant at first.”

But while Mr. Trump was quick to point out that his companies employ only people with legal work papers, his immigration policy is far less flexible in its definition of legal status. In announcing his immigration plan in a blueprint and in various interviews, he said he opposed the plan that allowed Mr. Aca to stay in the country and work.

For now, Mr. Trump said he would not press Mr. Aca’s employer to punish him, though he added, “I want to check his file.”

Mr. Aca came to New York from Puebla, Mexico, with his 12-year-old sister. His mother had sought legal avenues for the family to enter the United States, applying for visas, he said, but was unsuccessful. She wound up in New York, getting a job sewing in a factory, and in 2005 arranged for her children to cross the border in Arizona.

As a teenager in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Mr. Aca steadily learned English from listening to Britney Spears songs. He graduated from Grover Cleveland High School in Ridgewood, Queens, and received an associate’s degree in photography at LaGuardia Community College.

He works as an assistant in the photography lab there and splits his time working at a Williamsburg sushi restaurant, Cherry Izakaya, as a runner, and at Koi SoHo. In the video, he said he wanted his three jobs to dispel stereotypes that Mexicans are lazy.

Asked why he defined himself as undocumented in the video, Mr. Aca explained his legal uncertainty.

“I’m in the deferred action program, which I have to renew every two years,” he said. “I consider myself an undocumented immigrant still because it could just be taken away from me at any time.”

On Tuesday, the Koi restaurant group demanded that the filmmaker, Chase Whiteside, take down the video, claiming that Mr. Aca had made false and defamatory statements. The video, titled “Meet Ricardo, an undocumented immigrant who works in a Trump Hotel,” was misleading, said Suzanne Chou, a lawyer for Koi Group, because it implied Mr. Aca was working illegally — for a Trump hotel. Koi SoHo, she said, is a “third-party tenant” in the hotel.

“Our company follows the law, and if you are eligible to work at Koi, you can apply,” Ms. Chou said.

But David W. Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, volunteered on Mr. Whiteside’s behalf to write a letter to the restaurant group in response. He argued that while Mr. Aca was authorized to work, he was still undocumented. He cited information on the website of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services stating that “deferred action does not confer lawful status upon an individual.”

On Monday, shortly after the video was posted, the Koi payroll department called Mr. Aca to bring the renewal of his work permit that he said he had forgotten to submit in December. When he walked into the kitchen, he said that line cooks from Mexico and sushi chefs from Japan told him they were proud of him.

“It’s important to stand up for what I believe in and to be able to defend myself,” Mr. Aca said. “If I do work at Trump SoHo, I have the platform to send this message.”



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8) Cop Shoots at Unarmed Man Because He Pointed His Finger in a 'Gun Gesture'
Instead of apologizing for nearly killing him, police arrested the man and charged him with criminal threatening and reckless conduct.
By Matt Agorist / The Free Thought Project
August 19, 2015
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/cop-shoots-unarmed-man-because-he-pointed-his-finger-gun-gesture?akid=13401.229473.ouDj78&rd=1&src=newsletter1041238&t=18

Salem, NH — It’s entirely bad enough that pointing a finger like a gun will get children suspended from school. However, in police state USA, this hand gesture now appears to be punishable by death.

In a true show of paranoid trigger happiness, a Salem police officer fired on an unarmed man because he allegedly turned quickly toward them with his hands pointed in a “gun gesture.”

Instead of apologizing for nearly killing him, police then arrested 31-year-old Raymond Shawdee and charged him with criminal threatening and reckless conduct.

On Tuesday, police were called to the Phantom Crossfit gym by a Liberty Utilities worker who claimed the gym owner was threatening him with a gun for attempting to shut off his power.

According to WMUR,
The utility company said the gym owner was armed with a gun and told the worker that “he would do what he had to do to keep the power on,” police said.
Police set up a perimeter and restricted traffic on North Broadway. Police said the gym owner obeyed orders to go outside, but another man left the building and didn’t obey police orders.
That “other man” was Shawdee, who was completely uninvolved in the order, until police began to harass him.


As Shawdee was merely trying to get in his car to leave, police began barking orders at him. It’s at this point, police claim, that Shawdee quickly turned and pointed his finger at police. During this “quick” turn around, one of the officers managed to pull out his pistol and fire at Shawdee.

The officer was 35 yards away from the Shawdee when he claimed to see him point his finger. Amazingly enough, none of the other cops felt the need to fire.

“It was some poor decisions made by the person who was not carrying the gun to turn around and act as if he was and forcing our officers to take the actions that they took,” Lt. Joel Dolan said. “This could’ve had horrible consequences.”

Dolan is correct, this could have ended terribly. Had the bullet actually struck Shawdee, he would be dead because of some trigger happy cop. Luckily, the trigger happy cop was a terrible shot.

Despite not being killed, this story does have a horrible ending for Shawdee. After being shot at by police, he was kidnapped and locked in a cage, and is currently being held on a $5,000 bond. 
 


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9) Macedonian Police Clash With Migrants on Border With Greece
"About 42,000 migrants, mostly from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, have traveled through the country in the past two months, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs."
By ALEKSANDAR DIMISHKOVSKI

SKOPJE, Macedonia — The Macedonian police used stun grenades and tear gas early on Friday to disperse a large group of migrants trying to enter the country from Greece.

The clashes took place a day after the Macedonian government declared a temporary state of emergency at its southern border with Greece and at its northern frontier with Serbia. The move appeared to be an attempt to introduce greater control over the wave of migrants who travel through the country, hoping to reach richer countries in Western Europe.

“It is a fact that we are facing an increased pressure from the influx of migrants attempting to cross the border,” said Ivo Kotevski, a spokesman for the Ministry of Internal Affairs. “But so far we have the situation under control, and there haven’t been any major incidents or injuries.”About 3,000 people are currently at the border with Greece, near the Macedonian city of Gevgelija, and the number is increasing as the tightened security reduces how many people get through.


“Within the last 24 hours, a total of 181 migrants have passed the border,” Mr. Kotevski said, “which is around 10 times less than in the previous day.”

Supported by armored vehicles, the police used barbed wire to fence off the cross-border rail tracks along which migrants had been walking. The declaration of a temporary state of emergency allows the government to use soldiers to further bolster security on the border.

Although Macedonia is not in the European Union, many migrants hoping to reach Western Europe travel through the country after arriving in Greece, often by boat. Travel costs and train tickets are also relatively cheap in Macedonia, and other countries in the region have tightened their border controls recently.

Critics of the government’s move on Thursday, technically called a state of crisis because it can last only 30 days, said that it would lead to migrants once again jeopardizing their lives by trying to cross the border illegally — walking along train tracks at night, for example, or falling victim to human trafficking.

“There was no need for declaring a state of crisis,” said Jasmin Redzepi of Legis, a nonprofit organization that provides support to migrants. “It appears to come as a result of the increased pressure from the local citizens, who protested against the migrants who occupied public spaces in the city, from one side and increased pressure from the Western European countries from another.”

Residents of Gevgelija have protested on several occasions over the physical and environmental damage tied to migrants occupying public spaces in the city.

Mr. Redzepi described the slow processing of migrants’ requests for asylum as “one of the main reasons for the forming of big crowds” at the border.

“The migrants that now wait to pass the border face very bad conditions,” Mr. Redzepi added, “with no access to toilets and with only food and water that activists and local citizens manage to supply.”

The Macedonian prime minister, Nikola Gruevski, said the state of crisis was a “temporary mechanism” intended to control the flow of migrants “so that they will have more humane transport through Macedonia.”

“The country does not have the capacity to help so many people, so we had to intervene,” he said.

About 42,000 migrants, mostly from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, have traveled through the country in the past two months, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.





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10) Syriza Dissenters Form New Party in Greece
By NIKI KITSANTONIS

ATHENS — Just hours after Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of Greece called early elections, 25 members of his governing Syriza party announced a breakaway anti-austerity movement on Friday, while the main conservative opposition said it would try to avert elections by forming a government.

The initiatives were likely to thwart the efforts of Mr. Tsipras, whose resignation on Thursday was a calculated move to consolidate his grip on power and press ahead with overhauls required by Greece’s third bailout, to hold elections as quickly as possible.

The election, initially proposed for Sept. 20, could be moved to the end of that month or to early October if all of the country’s major political players exploit their right, under the Greek Constitution, to try to form a government.Twenty-five Syriza lawmakers announced the formation of a party, Popular Unity, in a letter to Parliament on Friday, declaring that they intended to “remain true to our pre-election promises.” They were referring to the general elections in January, which brought Syriza to power on a pledge that it would roll back years of austerity measures, a promise Mr. Tsipras went back on.

Syriza was left on Friday with 124 lawmakers in the 300-seat Parliament, but local news reports speculated that four more legislators were preparing to abandon the party.

Popular Unity will be led by a former energy minister, Panagiotis Lafazanis, the leader of Syriza’s radical Left Platform faction, with which about 40 of Syriza’s lawmakers were loosely aligned.

In a televised news conference, Mr. Lafazanis said his new movement would offer “a realistic alternative” to austerity. He said the main goals would be to “cancel” Greece’s bailout agreements and to write down the country’s debt, which Mr. Tsipras had supported before the January elections that brought Syriza to power.

Mr. Lafazanis, who has lobbied for a return to the drachma, was unfazed by the possibility that canceling the bailout deals would require Greece to abandon the euro. “Any exit would be orderly,” he said, adding that the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, “cannot determine our fate.”

Popular Unity, now the third-largest party in Parliament, would use its mandate to try and form a government, Mr. Lafazanis said, by reaching out to all “progressive” forces that have not endorsed austerity.

“The ‘no’ of the referendum will not be an orphan in these elections,” he said. “We will try to express the spirit and substance of the 62 percent who voted no to austerity.”

The Constitution gives the three largest parties in Greece three days each to explore possible alliances after a government’s resignation.

Mr. Tsipras passed, as expected, but Vangelis Meimarakis, the leader of his main political rival, the conservative New Democracy party, said he would use that right.

“We are trying to find solutions,” Mr. Meimarakis said after speaking with President Prokopis Pavlopoulos.

Referring to an “unprecedented, extremely complex political landscape,” he indicated that he would explore all avenues, suggesting that he would accept the current deputy prime minister, Yannis Dragasakis, a Syriza moderate, as the leader of a “unity government.”

Mr. Meimarakis met later on Friday with Zoe Konstantopoulou, the speaker of Parliament and another Syriza dissenter.

Mr. Meimarakis’s initiative may be more of an effort to frustrate Mr. Tsipras than to actually form a government. With 76 legislators in Parliament, New Democracy would have to gain the support of virtually every party other than Syriza to form a government, including the Communists and the neofascist party Golden Dawn.


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11) Israel Launches 2nd Round of Airstrikes in Syria
By DIAA HADID

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Israeli military launched a second round of airstrikes in Syria on Friday morning, killing all of the passengers traveling in a vehicle and intensifying the most serious conflict in the area in months.

The Israeli military said it was pursuing militants who had fired at Israeli-controlled areas on Thursday, saying in a statement that the air force had “targeted part of the terror cell responsible for the rocket fire at northern Israel on Thursday” but providing no further information.

Sana, the official Syrian news agency, said an Israeli drone strike hit a civilian vehicle near a marketplace in Al Koum, a village in the Quneitra area on the Syrian-controlled side of the Golan Heights.

Israel repeated its claim on Friday that Iran was to blame for the rocket fire, seeking to use the attack as further evidence that the United States Congress should reject the nuclear deal reached last month between world powers and Iran.

Specifically, Israeli officials said an Iranian commander had supervised militants of the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad and accused the organization of firing four rockets toward the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights and Upper Galilee on Thursday. There were no casualties in that attack.

The Israeli news media reported that its airstrike had hit a military vehicle and killed the passengers, either four or five people, less than 10 miles from the Israeli-controlled frontier.

That account was supported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group in Britain, which said that the vehicle had been carrying five progovernment militia fighters who belonged to a group known as the National Defense Forces, but provided no further information.

In statements made to the Palestinian news media, Daoud Shihab, the chief spokesman for Islamic Jihad, denied any involvement in the rocket attack. Mr. Shihab said the militant wing of Islamic Jihad operated “inside occupied Palestine” — a reference to Israel and the Palestinian Territories. There was no immediate comment from Iranian officials.

After the airstrike, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had “no intention of escalating events, but our policy remains unchanged.”

“Those countries that hasten to embrace Iran must realize that it was an Iranian commander who provided protection and direction for the cell that shot at Israel,” he said.

Dore Gold, the director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said in a telephone interview that “it is untenable that Iran can argue it is in a diplomatic process in the West, while its forces continue to wage wars of subversion and terror across the Middle East.”

“Iran derives legitimacy from the nuclear agreement,” Mr. Gold said. “There’s a problem here: almost like an inconsistency between Iran’s stated position of being a diplomatic partner and the continuing warfare.”

After the rocket fire on Thursday, Israeli aircraft conducted retaliatory strikes against more than a dozen Syrian military posts. The Observatory said on Friday that two soldiers had been killed in those strikes.

An Israeli military official said that the rocket fire on Thursday had been “clearly intentional” and not errant fire that had come across Israeli-held territory.

In a sign of protest lodged with the world powers that negotiated the nuclear agreement, Israeli officials said in a statement that they had “credible information” that the attack was carried out by Islamic Jihad operatives.

The statement said that the attack was “facilitated and directed” by Saeed Izaadhi, describing him as an Iranian operative “who heads the Palestinian unit” of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards in Iran.

Israel seized parts of the mountainous Golan Heights plateau from Syria in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, but the frontier area had been largely peaceful until civil war broke out there in 2011.

“We know that the situation along the border won’t be what it was in the past,” Eli Malka, the Golan Regional Council chairman, said in a radio interview after the strikes.

“This is now a hostile border,” Mr. Malka said in the interview. “We realize that things have changed, and we have prepared. We’ve prepared in many ways. In fortifications, in building the fortitude of the residents, in improving the interface between us and the army.”

Jodi Rudoren contributed reporting from Jerusalem; Carol Sutherland from Moshav Ben Ami, Israel; and Hwaida Saad from Beirut.


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12) Migrant Influx Prompts Macedonia, Britain and France to Increase Security
By and

BERLIN — Europe’s migration crisis took on new dimensions Thursday as at least three countries announced added security measures to address the biggest movement of refugees and migrants seen here since the aftermath of World War II.

The sheer numbers of migrants are now clogging critical choke points across Europe. In July alone, 107,500 migrants entered the 28-nation European Union, according to Frontex, the bloc’s border management agency. That was more than three times the number in the same month last year.

The latest country to be overwhelmed by the surge was the tiny Balkan nation of Macedonia. It declared a state of emergency on Thursday and said it would deploy the military to restore calm to its southern border with Greece and its northern frontier with Serbia.Many of the refugees are fleeing the wars in Iraq and Syria and had recently made their way from Turkey to Greek islands. They have flooded into Macedonia — almost 42,000 in the past two months according to the nation’s Ministry of Interior — as they head north to seek asylum in wealthy countries like Austria, Germany, Britain or Sweden.

Migrants in Macedonia told reporters there this week that they were especially anxious to move now that Hungary — the transit land north of Serbia on the long route to Germany — has decided to build a fence to keep migrants out.

Nongovernmental groups in Macedonia criticized the government’s move as a step that would again expose migrants to human traffickers, or tempt them into dangerous paths like walking along rails at night.

At the same time, the British and French authorities announced that they would set up a new “command and control center” in Calais, the French port at the mouth of the Channel Tunnel, where several thousand migrants live in a makeshift camp, awaiting the chance to smuggle themselves to Britain.

While the problems at Calais have disrupted truck drivers and travelers, the images of chaos on the border between two of Europe’s richest nations have highlighted the inability of Europe to deal with the crisis. Indeed, Calais is just one prominent outpost of a situation that German officials have begun to characterize less as an emergency than as the Continent’s new normal.

Europe must act, German leaders say, to distribute refugees from war and persecution more evenly among European nations, while so called “economic migrants” — mostly from impoverished Balkan countries, will be sent home from Germany because they do not qualify for asylum.

Yet so far policy makers have struggled to produce a coherent collective response to the challenge, and efforts to agree on quotas for European Union countries to accept refugees have achieved only limited success.

Hours after meeting in Calais with his British counterpart, the French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, traveled to Berlin for hurriedly scheduled talks with his German colleague, Thomas de Maizière, who on Wednesday announced that Germany, Europe’s No. 1 power, expects up to 800,000 asylum seekers this year.

Germany has grappled with a rising number of attacks on refugee shelters and arriving migrants. On Thursday, media were full of reports about fighting that broke out at an overcrowded shelter in Suhl in the central German state of Thuringia, injuring at least 17 people, including police officers, refugees and bystanders. About 1,800 people are said to be crowded into a space designed for 1,200.

In Macedonia, reports from the border with Greece on Thursday evening suggested that about 1,500 migrants — many of them Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans — were stranded between the Greek and Macedonian borders.

Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski of Macedonia said that the state of emergency was a “temporary mechanism” intended to control the flow of migrants “so that they will have more humane transport through Macedonia.”

Just two months ago, the authorities in Macedonia introduced measures to document migrants. At that point, there were 500 to 600 arrivals each day, he said. Now, the number has climbed to 2,500 a day and is likely to continue to increase to 3,000 to 4,000 a day, he said.

“The country does not have the capacity to help so many people, so we had to intervene,” Mr. Gruevski said, noting that trains designed to accommodate 350 people have been arriving with 650 onboard.

The British-French agreement on Thursday is intended to halt the acts of desperation seen this summer around Calais, typical of countless others across the Continent. Migrants in the French port have tried to break into the Channel Tunnel and stow away on cars, trucks and trains.

Some efforts to make the crossing have proved fatal, and one migrant even walked most of the 31-mile tunnel, where he avoided being hit by trains but was arrested as he approached Folkestone in Britain.

Under plans announced after talks in France, British police and border protection forces will work with their French counterparts at a new “command and control center” in Calais. The new body will be led by two senior officers, one British and one French, and will try to target those organizing human trafficking.

The British home secretary, Theresa May, said that the situation in Calais was “the result of a global migration challenge,” and promised to work with France to ensure that “the rest of the European Union and the transit and source countries from which migrants are coming are also playing their full part in solving this problem.”

Under the new agreement, Britain will now spend more on reinforcing the perimeter of the Eurotunnel railhead with tougher fencing, CCTV, floodlighting and infrared detection technology.

Extra search teams, including detection dogs, will be deployed, more mobile French policing units will be added and a security audit will be conducted.

Although some British politicians have criticized France for losing control in Calais, Britain’s government has been careful not to do so. Under reciprocal arrangements, British officials conduct passport checks on those crossing the Channel on French soil, before their journey, making them reliant on French cooperation.

French officials argue that migrants are attracted to Britain because of its use of the English language, its growing economy and the fact that, because it does not use identity cards, it may be easier to live illegally there.

Meanwhile, the Council of Europe, a human rights organization of 47 member states, criticized Slovakia for saying that it would refuse to accept Muslim migrants.

“Refusing refugees on the grounds of their religion would be a blatant discrimination,” said the Council’s chairman, Thorbjorn Jagland, in a statement.

Alison Smale reported from Berlin, and Stephen Castle from London. Aleksandar Dimishkovski contributed reporting from Skopje, Macedonia, and Lilia Blaise from Paris.




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13) Seventeen Transgender Killings Contrast With Growing Visibility
By KATIE ROGERS

The brutal death of a 36-year-old transgender woman in Kansas City, Mo., is the latest in what activists are calling an alarming rise in anti-transgender violence.

Tamara Dominguez, who was reported to have migrated from Mexico to escape discrimination, was hit by a vehicle early Saturday and run over several times, making her the 17th transgender person reported killed this year, according to data compiled by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs.

Most of the victims have been black or Hispanic.

By comparison, 12 killings of transgender people were recorded by the coalition in 2014, said Sue Yacka, a spokeswoman.

Transgender activists believe the killing in Kansas City was motivated by Ms. Dominguez’s gender identity. Randall Jenson, a representative for the Kansas City Anti-Violence Project who has been working with Ms. Dominguez’s family, characterized her death as an “intentional act” meant to send a message.

And those are just the killings that are reported, said Kris Hayashi, executive director of the Transgender Law Center. Mr. Hayashi said that recent media coverage had brought increased visibility to each victim, but that the killings reflected an “ongoing” state of crisis for the community.

Activists say transgender women of color, who are often poor, are most at risk of violence.

Hoping to increase visibility for the killings, transgender activists and allies are sharing pictures of victims as their deaths are reported.

Also alarming to advocates is that several of the 17 people killed have been slain just this summer. Other recent cases include India Clarke, a 25-year-old black transgender woman who was found dead in July from a gunshot in Tampa Bay, Fla.; Kenton Haggard, a 66-year-old who activists say was transgender, and who was killed in a stabbing in July in Fresno, Calif., that was caught on video; and Kandis Capri, a 35-year-old transgender woman, who was shot and killed in Phoenix on Aug. 11.

Laverne Cox, the transgender actress, said in a statement on Thursday that a lack of national outrage over the killings “adds insult to injury.”

She said transgender women of color exist at the “intersection of multiple forms of violence which are also about race, misogyny, poverty and a system that reinforces the fallacy that we shouldn’t exist and don’t exist.”

A suspect was arrested and charged with Ms. Clarke’s killing after the police found DNA evidence and a condom that contained fluid in her car. There have been no arrests in Ms. Capri’s death, according to ABC 15 in Phoenix, but her family is seeking a hate crime investigation. And authorities say there is no update in Kenton Haggard’s case.

Mr. Hayashi said that transgender people faced a system of discrimination — which includes lack of access to health care, education, housing and job resources — that can result in people who put themselves in “really vulnerable positions as far as the violence that we’re seeing.”

The organization receives about 2,500 calls a year from transgender people and their families seeking assistance, Mr. Hayashi said. The demand often outweighs the resources.

Mr. Jenson, of the Kansas City Anti-Violence Project, said that lengthy police investigations, sometimes carried out in a way that activists feel lack dignity and thoroughness, had sometimes led to tension between officers and the communities they serve.

“We get told by agencies that we’re hindering the process or hurting our communities because they don’t understand hate crimes or how it could work,” Mr. Jenson said. “It’s not a community’s job to have to educate themselves on such a nuanced system and hate crime laws that do not actually work.”

Tension has also occurred over how the gender of a person who either publicly or privately identifies as transgender is reflected in a police report: In Tampa, Kansas City and Fresno, the police referred to Ms. Clarke, Ms. Dominguez and Kenton Haggard by their legal — male — names, which offends activists. And questions have been raised, particularly in the case of Kenton Haggard, over whether the victim publicly identified as transgender at all, though activists include the killing in the summer’s count of fatalities.

Lt. Joe Gomez, the public information officer for the Fresno police, said gender was not a factor in efforts to investigate the death. On Thursday, he said that criticism of the police had been “blown out of proportion.”

“It’s just not an issue in this case,” he said. “We are hoping the community comes forward with more information on the suspect.”



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14) Request for Grand Jury Records in Eric Garner Case Is Rejected
By

A Staten Island judge on Thursday rejected a request from the Civilian Complaint Review Board for grand jury records related to the case of Eric Garner, who died last year after a police officer used a chokehold while trying to arrest him on suspicion of selling loose cigarettes.

Justice William E. Garnett of State Supreme Court wrote in a decision that the review board had not demonstrated a compelling need for the records and that the disclosure would set a bad precedent.

The review board said the records were needed to review police actions, adding that efforts to obtain evidence from the police had been unsuccessful. The Staten Island district attorney’s office had opposed the request, saying that the board lacked standing to obtain the records, which are traditionally kept secret, and that their disclosure would undermine the ability of future grand juries to reach decisions free of outside influences.In the spring, Justice Garnett cited similar findings while ruling in a separate case against other plaintiffs who had also sought the records, including The New York Post, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the New York City public advocate, Letitia James.

On Tuesday, the civil liberties union asked the State Court of Appeals to review the decision to keep the records secret, writing that a “lack of accountability for Eric Garner’s death” had shaken confidence in the grand jury system and prompted conflicting policy proposals.

Richard D. Emery, the chairman of the review board, said that he had recently received the complete cooperation of the Police Department but that independent grand jury records were “obviously critical for a fair analysis” of the Garner case.

He said he would seek an expedited appeal.


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