Below is a message from the Justice 4 Mario Woods Coalition, of which the ANSWER Coalition is a member.
Tuesday, Sept. 27 Join the Justice 4 Mario Woods Coalition 12 noon, Press Conference at 850 Bryant, SF – DA Gascon’s Office To DEMAND that DA Gascon charge Killer Cops with Murder!
And then at 1:30, Steps of City Hall; 2pm Inside City Hall, 2nd FloorFor the Board of Supervisors Vote on the Blue Ribbon Panel Report on Police Misconduct in San Francisco
It is unfathomable that as we see other cops being charged across the country for their heinous murders of Black and Brown people – we in San Francisco still await a SINGLE charge or action from our District Attorney. Not only has DA Gascon not charged anyone in the on-camera execution-style killing of Mario Woods – this DA has not EVER filed charges for ANY of the egregious killings of black and brown people that this city has seen. The DA’s own Blue Ribbon Panel has found damning evidence of violence, corruption, racism, homophobia within SFPD – leading to these murders – and the Chief of Police has resigned in shame over his bloody reign of terror – and STILL Gascon has not acted.
Join us! To demand District Attorney George Gascon CHARGE Killer Police!
Then Join Us at City Hall to demand the Supervisors vote on the Blue Ribbon Report.
#Justice4MarioWoods
#Justice4JessicaNelson
#Justice4LuisGongora
#Justice4AlexNieto
Justice for all victims of police violence
#BlackAndBrownUnited
"Campaign Nonviolence is a long-term movement for a culture of peace and nonviolence, free from war, poverty, racism, environmental destruction, and the epidemic of violence."
Mon.-Tues, Sept. 26 and 27
(Next month at Beale: Oct. 24 and 25)
Wear White Clothing (if you can), and Sky-Blue Scarves to stand with the
Afghan Peace Volunteers: www.OurJourneyToSmile
(Blue scarves will be available to support the Afghan Peace Volunteers).
#ENOUGH
Join CODEPINK, VFP and other N. California activists...
Monday, Sept. 26, 3:00 - 5:00 PM, Vigil/Protest at Wheatland gate 3960 S. Beale Rd. @ Ostrom Rd, Marysville,
followed by potluck and camping at the main gate, 4675 N. Beale Rd.
Tuesday, Sept. 27, 6:00 - 8:00 AM, Vigil/Protest at Main Gate, 4675 N. Beale Rd., Marysville, with breakfast and debriefing in Marysville afterwards.
Don't forget to save dates for Ali Abunimah speaking in Berkeley on Oct. 18, Chivvis Moore's book event on Sept. 27 in Oakland -- and Noura Erakat in Oakland Nov. 17!
Tickets for Ali's event will be available very soon, more info on all these events below.
Book Reading with Bay Area Author/Activist Chivvis Moore Tuesday, September 27 in Oakland
Please Join Us!
Book Reading with Bay Area Author/Activist CHIVVIS MOORE
& her new memoir:
First Tie Your Camel, Then Trust in God:
An American Feminist in the Arab World
Tuesday, September 27, 7pm
360 42nd Street, Oakland
FREE -- and we hope you’ll buy Chivvis’ book, which benefits MECA!
What begins as a trip to meet Hassan Fathy – Egyptian author of the influential Architecture for the Poor – becomes a 16-year odyssey, one that stretches from a year working in a master carpenter’s shop in Egypt to 11 years teaching English in Palestine. Offering a portrait of a land and a people not found in headlines or sound bytes, Chivvis’ book humanizes the misunderstandings and tragedies that arise when we fail to appreciate the humanity at the core of us all.
“I have been reading your beautiful, sad, and deeply moving story, learning a lot of disturbing history about something I thought I knew about but never saw in such depth. This is an important memoir that…evokes tears and also some laughter, with a great sense of compassion and empathy.”
–Alan Rinzler, former editor, Simon & Schuster
“I cried all the way through reading First Tie Your Camel. The tone, the genuine and honest description of reactions and feelings about the experiences, enabled me to truly understand for the first time why, as a Palestinian living in the West Bank, I always feel so upset and physically ill.”
– Muna Giacaman, Instructor, Bir Zeit University, West Bank
“Chivvis takes us on a journey that is fascinating, eye-opening, and ultimately heart-breaking – initially as a fresh-eyed newcomer working in a 1970’s community in Cairo that most Americans have never seen – to life in occupied Palestine, before and after the 2nd intifada…She leads from the heart, earning hard-won respect from Palestinian neighbors, students, colleagues. Honest, unassuming and vulnerable, she asks the hard questions.”
– Penny Rosenwasser, MECA staffer & author, Hope into Practice, Jewish women choosing justice despite our fears
Chivvis Moore lived 16 years in the Arab world, including 11 years in the West Bank. She has earned her living as a journalist, carpenter/general building contractor, editor and teacher.
Wheelchair accessible
Cosponsored by Joining Hands, Jewish Voice for Peace/Bay Area
SAVE THE DATE! Electronic Intifada co-founder/director Ali Abunimah Tuesday, October 18 in Berkeley
Electronic Intifada co-founder/director ALI ABUNIMAH!
Tuesday, October 18, 7pm
First Congregational Church of Berkeley
2345 Channing Way (@ Dana)
Ali Abunimah is a Palestinian-American journalist and author of “The Battle for Justice in Palestine” -- which won the 2014 Palestine Book Award -- and “One Country, A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.” He received the 2013 Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship and has been an activist on these issues for over 20 years.
Alice Walker calls him “a special voice to champion us, one that is… fierce, wise -- a warrior for justice and peace -- someone whose large heart, one senses, beyond his calm, is constantly on fire.”
Tickets available soon!
Benefit for MECA, wheelchair accessible
Cosponsored by KPFA, Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), Jewish Voice for Peace/Bay Area
COMING UP NOVEMBER 17 IN OAKLAND: Palestinian Activist/Scholar/Human Rights Attorney NOURA ERAKAT, Back in the Bay!
COMMUNITY EVENTS
Rumi's Caravan: Recitation of World Poetry -- benefiting MECA Saturday, September 10 in Oakland
Let’s Re-ignite the Movement to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!
From: Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
To: Organizations Concerned with Prisoner Rights, Racism, and Police Terror
Meeting, 6 pm Wed. Oct.12th, The Omni 4799 Shattuck (near 48th and 49th), Oakland
Dear Comrades and Friends,
We write to you in the midst of on-going struggles which unite us all: opposition to rampant police killings of Black men; freedom for political prisoners including former Black Panthers, Oscar Lopez Rivera and Leonard Peltier; opposition to the death penalty, life without parole, solitary confinement; big pharma price-gouging; immigrant deportations; the Standing Rock resistance to the destruction of both native lands and the environment; the Puerto Rican struggle against imperialist oppression; and defense of Palestinians from Zionist terror.
We are writing to advocate joining together now in a renewed fight for freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal. December 9, 2016 will be 35 years since the police tried to execute Mumia on the streets of Philadelphia and then framed him, with the complicity of the prosecution and the court, and sentenced him to death. It took international mass mobilization to prevent his execution. It is taking protest and publicity to keep him alive in prison and to get him treatment for his Hepatitis C.
A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision (Williams v. Pennsylvania) ruled that a prosecutor cannot later sit as judge over the same defendant. This is precedent setting for Mumia who has filed a new legal action based on the fact that Mumia’s appeals of his conviction from 1998 on were denied by Justice Ronald Castille who was the Philadelphia District Attorney,—his prosecutor—during his first appeal. If successful, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rulings that upheld his conviction would be overturned. Mumia would be able to re-appeal the issues of his innocence, jury bias, falsified evidence to obtain a new trial, if not outright dismissal of charges.
It is unlikely that this new legal opportunity to win a court battle for Mumia’s freedom will be repeated. We began the struggle for Mumia’s freedom with the understanding that the fight for Mumia is one that encompasses the fight against capitalist, racist injustice from police street execution to the legal lynching of the death penalty, to frame-up convictions, mass incarceration, and all the horrors of the U.S. prison system. The fight for Mumia is a defense of those who stand in opposition to the policies of U.S. imperialism; it is a case of Black Lives Matter.
Mumia has never succumbed to the state’s attempt to silence him. He is a beacon of light and hope for other prisoners across the US, as well as for all victims of imperialist war, racism and the “incarceration nation.”
We support all legal actions in Mumia’s defense but recognize that there is no justice in the capitalist courts. The Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal (LAC) focuses on mass and labor actions to free Mumia. Without such action, the new case for Mumia’s freedom will—as similar attempts have before—be consigned to the “Mumia exception” judicial waste-bucket. We continue to work to get international labor support for Mumia’s freedom and for Hep C treatment. Mumia’s struggles, if supported by a mass movement can not only free him, but also help unite struggles of prisoners and other victims of the racist-imperialist-capitalist system throughout the world.
We support a renewed campaign to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. An event is planned for Philadelphia for December 9, 2016 initiated by the Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal and the New York Campaign to Bring Mumia Home and a call is in the works.
Slogans being put forward for this event are:
Mumia is Innocent and Framed! Free Mumia, Now!
Abolish the Racist Death Penalty! End Solitary Confinement! End Life Imprisonment without Parole! Quality Health Care for all Prisoners! Hep C Meds for All!
End Mass Incarceration! Black Lives Matter! No Stop and Frisk!
We ask you to join us in an effort to reignite the struggle to free Mumia, on all fronts. We will look forward to seeing you for an organizing meeting at the Omni house, 6 pm October 12, 2016 to plan action here in the Bay Area.
Please call Carole 415 483-4428 or Bob at 510 595-7811 for more information. See you on the 12th of October at the Omni!
I'd like to nip this in the bud. I've been churning out appeals to state after state and prison after prison that rejected the last several Bay Views (different issues for different reasons, though prison strikes seem to scare them the most) and even winning a few, but this is California, and we can't let them get away with this here at home.
Though this rejection applies to only one prison, New Folsom, it's the one that's wired to the capitol -- and the guards' union, CCPOA, is still one of the most powerful lobbies there, not to mention the insatiable budget appetite of CDCr. So New Folsom is a bellwether; other California prisons will follow suit if New Folsom succeeds.
Their objection is to a story headlined "Sept. 9: Strike against prison slavery ..." You can read it here or the way it appears in the print edition here. The major media are calling this Sept. 9 strike the largest prison strike in history. Getting reports from inside is hard and slow, and the strike hasn't been covered as it should, but there's coverage by some mainstream press and by the major alternative outlets. CDCr is telling reporters that no California prisoner participated, but some prisoners say otherwise.
Officials at New Folsom who imagine they can stop word of this revolutionary movement at the California border are delusional. One of the men in a multi-state collaboration (and most of you seeing this know the towering obstacles to prisoner-with-prisoner collaboration) who hatched the idea for a nationwide protest against prison slavery about three years ago is from California; others in the core group are from Alabama, Texas and Ohio.
The recognition that the 13th Amendment permits actual slavery for prisoners is being feverishly discussed in cell blocks across the country, and a demand is growing to strike the "punishment clause" from it. Here's that clause: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." The great minds locked up in California will certainly have a lot to say about this, whether or not they participated in any kind of strike this month.
In Alabama, where three prisoners at Holman Prison, founders of the Free Alabama Movement, are the main organizers of the nationwide strike, they reported yesterday that the guards are coming to them and asking them to use their organizing magic to quell rebellion by those who haven't yet shaken their "criminal mentality" and have been attacking and even killing guards lately. So many guards have quit that those who remain are afraid to enter the dorms, and prisoners are doing count themselves.
But back to California, please put your great mind to ways we can resist these attacks on the Bay View. In August, you'll recall, the FBI released a bulletin blaming the Bay View for what they predicted would be a Black August blood bath for police and prison guards -- a bulletin leaked to and reported by KGO-ABC7. I remain convinced that California guards instigated the bulletin's targeting of the Bay View. But regardless, the FBI prediction was wrong.
The prediction in New Folsom's letter that the September Bay View would "disrupt the order, or breach the security" of New Folsom or any other prison is just as wrong. The prison's decision to censor needs to be appealed, and I'd love help with that. Would it also be effective, do you think, to ask people to call the warden? Any other suggestions?
One suggestion I've been making in appeals to censorship in other parts of the country is for prison officials to sit down with reps chosen by the prisoners and discuss their complaints and demands -- and actually address them. I tell them that California's doing that, and the prison admins and guards haven't suffered -- in fact, their budget is up once again. We could urge New Folsom to set up meetings like that.
Thanks to each and every one of you for caring that the Bay View survives and reaches its subscribers behind the walls, where, according to CDCr, it persuaded 30,000 California prisoners to participate in the 2013 hunger strike. Many of you know that we're currently hanging by a threadbare shoelace financially; if it breaks, CDCr can claim the victory. But if we're able to keep printing the paper, I'll be damned if CDCr gets away with censoring it.
P.S. That's an impressive list of subscribers New Folsom sent (see pages 2-3 of the letter), but it's not complete and I'm curious why they omitted people.
P.P.S. Enjoy one of Michael Russell's censorship masterpieces (attached). Let him remind us that the Bay View's role is not to make change but to encourage and enlighten prisoners and facilitate communication among them so they can organize and make change. We must convince New Folsom and prisons everywhere that change is inevitable and censoring the Bay View will not stop it.
Chelsea Manning ends 5 day hunger strike after Army agrees to medical treatment
Chelsea Manning ended her hunger strike today (Sept 13) after the Army finally agreed to treatment for her gender dysphoria.
"This is all that I wanted – for them to let me be me,” said Chelsea Manning.
“But it is hard not to wonder why it has taken so long and why such drastic measures were needed in order to get this help that was recommended.”
Chelsea was shown a memo today stating she will receive gender-reassignment surgery under the DoD’s new policy affecting transgender service members.
If this occurs, Manning will be the first trans prisoner in the US to receive this treatment, setting a precedent that could benefit thousands of transgender inmates.
“This medical care is absolutely vital for Chelsea. It was the government’s refusal to provide her with necessary care that led her to attempt suicide earlier this year,” said Chase Strangio, Chelsea’s attorney at the ACLU, “and it was all the more troubling when she became subject to an investigation and possible punishment in connection with the suicide attempt.
We hope that the government recognizes that charging Chelsea with the crime of being denied essential health care is outrageous and drops those charges.” Read more here
Daniel Ellsberg, Michael Stipe protest inhumane charges against Chelsea
After years of inhumane treatment from the Army, Chelsea Manning attempted to take her life on July 5th, 2016.
Daniel Ellsberg: “I stand with Chelsea Manning. I hope you will too.” Michael Stipe: “I support human rights for all people. As an American patriot it is my duty to stand with Chelsea Manning... This is unjustifiable. It is unfair, and it needs to be stopped.” Read more and watch the videos
Chelsea will face a disciplinary board later this month, and could very likely be charged for her own suicide attempt.
Chelsea can continue to be a powerful voice for reform, but we need your help to make that happen. Help us support Chelsea in prison, maximize her voice in the media, continue public education, fund her legal appeals team, and build a powerful movement for presidential pardon.
Today is the 406th day that Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan
languishes in prison doing felony time for a misdemeanor crime he did not
commit. Today is also the day that Robert McKay, a spokesperson for the
Free Rev. Pinkney campaign, gave testimony before United Nations
representatives about the plight of Rev. Pinkney at a hearing held in
Chicago. The hearing was called in order to shed light upon the
mistreatment of African-Americans in the United States and put it on an
international stage. And yet as the UN representatives and audience heard
of the injustices in the Pinkney case many gasped in disbelief and asked
with frowns on their faces, "how is this possible?" But disbelief quickly
disappeared when everyone realized these were the same feelings they had
when they first heard of Flint and we all know what happened in Flint. FREE
REV. PINKNEY NOW.
Please send letters to:
Marquette Branch Prison
Rev. Edward Pinkney N-E-93 #294671
1960 US Hwy 41 South
Marquette, MI 49855
Please donate at http://bhbanco.org (Donate button) or send checks to BANCO:
c/o Dorothy Pinkney
1940 Union St.
Benton Harbor, MI 49022
BACKGROUND:
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
State Seeks to Remove Innocent PA Lifer’s Attorney! Free Corey Walker!
The PA Office of the Attorney General (OAG) filed legal action to remove Corey Walker’s attorney, Rachel Wolkenstein, in November 2014. On Tuesday, February 9, 2016 the evidentiary hearing to terminate Wolkenstein as Corey Walker’s pro hac vice lawyer continues before Judge Lawrence Clark of the Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas in Harrisburg, PA.
Walker, assisted by Wolkenstein, filed three sets of legal papers over five months in 2014 with new evidence of Walker’s innocence and that the prosecution and police deliberately used false evidence to convict him of murder. Two weeks after Wolkenstein was granted pro hac vice status, the OAG moved against her and Walker.
The OAG claims that Wolkenstein’s political views and prior legal representation of Mumia Abu-Jamal and courtroom arrest by the notorious Judge Albert Sabo makes it “intolerable” for her to represent Corey Walker in the courts of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Over the past fifteen months the OAG has effectively stopped any judicial action on the legal challenges of Corey Walker and his former co-defendant, Lorenzo Johnson against their convictions and sentences to life imprisonment without parole while it proceeds in its attempts to remove Wolkenstein.
This is retaliation against Corey Walker who is innocent and framed. Walker and his attorney won’t stop until they thoroughly expose the police corruption and deliberate presentation of false evidence to convict Corey Walker and win his freedom.
This outrageous attack on Corey Walker’s fundamental right to his lawyer of choice and challenge his conviction must cease. The evidence of his innocence and deliberate prosecutorial frame up was suppressed for almost twenty years. Corey Walker must be freed!
Read: Jim Crow Justice – The Frame-up Of Corey Walker by Charles Brover
Go to FreeCoreyWalker.org to provide help and get more information.
Judge Robert Mariani of the U.S. District Court has issued an order in Mumia’s case, granting Mumia’s lawyers Bret Grote and Robert Boyle’s motion to supplement the record.
New medical records documenting Mumia’s deteriorated condition from February and March, will be presented June 6th. Judge Mariani has also instructed the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections to provide any updates and changes in DOC hep C treatment and policies which affect the plaintiff’s treatment.
Calling into Prison Radio, Mumia noted:
“My friends, my brothers, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over, but there is some motion. It means that we’re moving closer to hopefully some real treatment not of my symptoms, but of my disease. I thank you all for being there. And freedom is a constant struggle. I love you all. From what used to be death row, this is Mumia, your brother.”
Mumia remains quite ill. While stable, his curable hepatitis C is still active and progressive. The only treatment Mumia has received over the last 14 months to this day is skin ointment and photo therapy. He has not received the medically indicated treatment for hep C, the very condition that put him in the Intensive Care Unit in March 2015.
Hepatitis C is a progressive disease that attacks Mumia’s organs, skin and liver. Unless the court orders the new hepatitis C treatment - one pill a day for 12 weeks, with a 95% cure rate - Mumia's health will remain at serious risk. Before the court is the preliminary injunction motion, which demands immediate medical care.
The exhaustion of administrative remedy and the procedural hurdles make it extremely difficult for people in prison to actually get their grievances heard through the review process. The Prison Litigation Reform Act was passed specifically to create these very almost insurmountable barriers to access to the courts.
In Abu-Jamal vs. Kerestes, one very telling point was when the DOC's Director of Medical Care, Dr. Paul Noel, took the stand. He said that he had never testified before in court! He has worked for the DOC for over a decade.
That meant that no prisoner had access to adversarial cross examination. Before Mumia’s day in court in late December 2015, no prisoner ever had the opportunity to expose the PA DOC’s blatant lies. Lies so bold that Dr. Noel disavowed his own signed affidavit, and in court he stated that he “did not sign it and it was false and misleading”. The knowingly false and fabricated document was put in the record by Laura Neal, Senior DOC attorney.
Take Action for Mumia
Call prison officials to demand immediate treatment!
Dr. Paul Noel-Director of Medical Care, DOC 717-728-5309 x 5312
John Wetzel- Secretary of DOC 717+728-2573 x 4109
Dr. Carl Keldie-Chief Medical Officer, Correct Care Solutions 800-592-2974 x 5783
Theresa DelBalso-Superintendent, SCI Mahanoy 570-773-2158 x 8101
Thank you for keeping Mumia in your heart and mind,
Noelle Hanrahan
Director, PrisonRadio
SUPPORTERS OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL, AND FREE QUALITY HEALTH CARE FOR ALL:
The Oasis Clinic in Oakland, CA, which treats patients with Hepatitis-C (HCV), demands an end to the outrageous price-gouging of Big Pharma corporations, like Gilead Sciences, which hike-up the cost for essential, life-saving medications such as the cure for the deadly Hepatitis-C virus, in order to reap huge profits. The Oasis Clinic’s demand is:
PUBLIC HEALTH, NOT CORPORATE WEALTH!
WE DEMAND:
PUBLIC HEALTH, NOT CORPORATE WEALTH!
IMMEDIATE AND FREE TREATMENT FOR ALL HCV-INFECTED PRISONERS!
NO EXECUTION BY MEDICAL NEGLECT!
JAIL DRUG PROFITEERS, FREE MUMIA!
This message from:
Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610 • www.laboractionmumia.org
06 January 2016
Some two weeks ago Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown) was moved by bus from USP Canaan in Waymart, PA. to USP Tucson, Arizona. His mailing address is: USP Tucson United States Penitentiary P.O. Box Tucson, AZ. 85734 (BOP number 99974555)
Sign the Petition:
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, THE Bureau of Prisons, The Governor of Georgia
We are aware of a review being launched of criminal cases to determine whether any defendants were wrongly convicted and or deserve a new trail because of flawed forensic evidence and or wrongly reported evidence. It was stated in the Washington Post in April of 2012 that Justice Department Officials had known for years that flawed forensic work led to convictions of innocent people. We seek to have included in the review of such cases that of Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin. We understand that all cases reviewed will include the Innocence Project. We look forward to your immediate attention to these overdue wrongs.
ASAP: The Forgotten Imam Project
P.O. Box 373
Four Oaks, NC 27524
For over 31 years, Major Tillery has been a prisoner of the State.
Despite that extraordinary fact, he continues his battles, both in the prison for his health, and in the courts for his freedom.
Several weeks ago, Tillery filed a direct challenge to his criminal conviction, by arguing that a so-called "secret witness" was, in fact, a paid police informant who was given a get-out-of-jail-free card if he testified against Tillery.
Remember I mentioned, "paid?"
Well, yes--the witness was 'paid'--but not in dollars. He was paid in sex!
In the spring of 1984, Robert Mickens was facing decades in prison on rape and robbery charges. After he testified against Tillery, however, his 25-year sentence became 5 years: probation!
And before he testified he was given an hour and a ½ private visit with his girlfriend--at the Homicide Squad room at the Police Roundhouse. (Another such witness was given another sweetheart deal--lie on Major, and get off!)
To a prisoner, some things are more important than money. Like sex!
In a verified document written in April, 2016, Mickens declares that he lied at trial, after being coached by the DAs and detectives on the case.
He lied to get out of jail--and because he could get with his girl.
Other men have done more for less.
Major's 58-page Petition is a time machine back into a practice that was once common in Philadelphia.
In the 1980s and '90s, the Police Roundhouse had become a whorehouse.
Major, now facing serious health challenges from his hepatitis C infection, stubborn skin rashes, and dangerous intestinal disorders, is still battling.
Major Tillery is an innocent man. There was no evidence against Major Tillery for the 1976 poolroom shootings that left one man dead and another wounded. The surviving victim gave a statement to homicide detectives naming others—not Tillery or his co-defendant—as the shooters. Major wasn’t charged until 1980, he was tried in 1985.
The only evidence at trial came from these jailhouse informants who were given sexual favors and plea deals for dozens of pending felonies for lying against Major Tillery. Both witnesses now declare their testimony was manufactured by the police and prosecution. Neither witness had personal knowledge of the shooting.
This is a case of prosecutorial misconduct and police corruption that goes to the deepest levels of rot in the Philadelphia criminal injustice system. Major Tillery deserves not just a new trial, but dismissal of the charges against him and his freedom from prison.
It cost a lot of money for Major Tillery to be able to file his new pro se PCRA petition and continue investigation to get more evidence of the state misconduct. He needs help to get lawyers to make sure this case is not ignored. Please contribute, now.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
Financial Support: Tillery's investigation is ongoing, to get this case filed has been costly and he needs funds for a legal team to fight this to his freedom!
Sign the Petition: http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/petition.php
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
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
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
Show your support for Lorenzo by wearing one of our beautiful new campaign t-shirts! If you donate $20 (or more!) to the Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson, we will send you a t-shirt, while supplies last. Make sure to note your size and shipping address in the comment section on PayPal, or to include this information with a check.
Here is a message from Lorenzo's wife, Tazza Salvatto:
My husband is innocent, FREE HIM NOW!
Lorenzo Johnson is a son, husband, father and brother. His injustice has been a continued nightmare for our family. Words cant explain our constant pain, I wish it on no one. Not even the people responsible for his injustice.
This is about an innocent man who has spent 20 years and counting in prison. The sad thing is Lorenzo's prosecution knew he was innocent from day one. These are the same people society relies on to protect us.
Not only have these prosecutors withheld evidence of my husbands innocence by NEVER turning over crucial evidence to his defense prior to trial. Now that Lorenzo's innocence has been revealed, the prosecution refuses to do the right thing. Instead they are "slow walking" his appeal and continuing their malicious prosecution.
When my husband or our family speak out about his injustice, he's labeled by his prosecutor as defaming a career cop and prosecutor. If they are responsible for Lorenzo's wrongful conviction, why keep it a secret??? This type of corruption and bullying of families of innocent prisoners to remain silent will not be tolerated.
Our family is not looking for any form of leniency. Lorenzo is innocent, we want what is owed to him. JUSTICE AND HIS IMMEDIATE FREEDOM!!!
1) Privately Run Mississippi Prison, Called a Scene of Horror, Is Shut Down By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
A privately operated Mississippi prison that a federal judge once concluded was effectively run by gangs in collusion with corrupt prison guards, closed Thursday, its prisoners transferred to other state facilities, officials said.
Conditions at the prison, the Walnut Grove Correctional Facility, were deemed so substandard by Judge Carlton Reeves of Federal District Court, that he wrote in a 2012 settlement order that it “paints a picture of such horror as should be unrealized anywhere in the civilized world.”
The move to shutter Walnut Grove, in Leake County, comes one month after the Justice Department announced that it would phase out its use of private prisons to house federal inmates after concluding that such facilities are more dangerous and less effective than prisons run by the government.
But the Obama administration decision does not affect states, which have increasingly come to rely on private firms to manage prison populations, including Mississippi.
While states say they enter arrangements with for-profit prison contractors to save money, some studies have cast doubt on whether private prisons are actually less expensive for taxpayers.
On Thursday, Walnut Grove’s demise was celebrated by prison rights organizations and civil liberties groups.
“Good riddance to Walnut Grove, a cesspool sponsored by Mississippians’ tax dollars,” said Jody Owens, managing attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Walnut Grove was run by Management and Training Corp., a Utah-based company that is among the nation’s largest private prison contractors.
The Mississippi Department of Corrections said in June that it had decided to shutter Walnut Grove not because of the often-unrestrained violence at the facility, but for budget cuts. Grace Simmons Fisher, a corrections department spokeswoman, declined to comment on Thursday.
Issa Arnita, a spokesman for the private prison contractor, said on Thursday in a statement that Management and Training Corporation had “made tremendous improvements to overall operations” at Walnut Grove since it took over management in 2012.
But the 1,260-bed facility had been operating since 2012 under a federal consent decree for violating prisoners’ constitutional rights, and in 2014, Walnut Grove was the scene of two major riots.
Last year, Judge Reeves extended federal oversight of the prison because of continuing constitutional violations.
Conditions in a number of Mississippi’s correctional facilities have been denounced by prison overhaul advocates or enjoined by the federal authorities for violating inmates’ constitutional rights, but Walnut Grove was cited as a particularly brutal, often lawless place.
A 2012 Justice Department report found that rape of younger inmates by older prisoners was relatively common, and that guards habitually denied some prisoners access to medical care, while smuggling in weapons and drugs and having sexual relationships with others.
“The sexual misconduct we found was among the worst that we have seen in any facility anywhere in the nation,” the report said.
Some of the guards, the report said, were themselves members of the gangs, including at least one prison supervisor who let prisoners out of their cells to assault unsuspecting rivals.
Organized gladiator-style fights between prisoners and encouraged by guards were also a frequent occurrence, with guards betting on the outcomes, according to the report.
Mr. Owens, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that on one visit to Walnut Grove, the odor of marijuana hung so heavily in the air that he worried he would get a contact high.
“It was like walking out of a club and your clothes smell like smoke,” he said.
Even after juveniles were removed from the facility, violence continued.
At the same time, the neighboring town of Walnut Grove, population 1,900, boomed from prison revenue and employment. The town lobbied to be the site of a prison after one of its major employers, a glove factory, was closed.
As an example of the close ties between the prison and the town, Walnut Grove’s mayor, William Grady Sims, served for a time as the prison’s warden.
In 2009, Mr. Sims drove a female inmate to a motel room where they had sex. He later told the woman to lie to investigators about it. Mr. Sims was convicted and sentenced to seven months in a federal prison.
2) After Sexual Abuse of 1-Year-Old, No Jail Time in Sentence for Teenager By DANIEL VICTOR
An Iowa teenager who was accused of sexually assaulting a 1-year-old girl while the act was recorded will not serve further jail time after he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of engaging in a lascivious act with a child.
A judge this week gave the teenager, Kraigen Grooms, 19, a 10-year suspended sentence and five years of supervised release, according to KTVO, a local television station. He must also register as a sex offender.
He was released after 2 years and four months in jail when he pleaded guilty in July.
Some public reaction to the sentencing this week centered on whether the sentence was strong enough. A man whose Facebook page about missing children and fugitives helped investigators identify the defendant was particularly disappointed.
“He needs to be locked up and have some intensive sex offender treatment,” Tim Caya, who runs the Locate the Missing page, said in an interview.
There was a similar reaction in local media. “Why is it a first time drug offense is more likely to get you a prison sentence than child molestation?” an Ottumwa Radio commenter asked.
Responding to the criticism, Gary Oldenburger, the county attorney for Wapello County, defended the sentence in a statement dated Thursday, presenting Mr. Grooms as the unwitting lackey of child pornographers who tricked him into the assault, as they had done to hundreds of other children. Mr. Oldenburger did not return several messages.
By pretending to be a girl his age, then 16, the two men, one in New Orleans and one in Ireland, persuaded the teenager to perform sex acts he wouldn’t otherwise have done. He did not know he was being recorded, the prosecutor said in the statement.
He added that the child was uninjured, no pain was inflicted, and the child was too young to be aware of what was happening.
“While it is easy for the outside observer to advocate a hard-line stance that every sexual offense against a minor should result in a long prison sentence,” he wrote, “anyone who actually deals with these situations knows that each case is unique and every case must be handled on its own merits.”
In March 2014, investigators at the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement sought help from the public in identifyingsomeone they believed had engaged in unspecified sexual conduct with the girl, who was between 12 and 18 months old, and recorded the encounter on video.
Mr. Caya, who lives in Brookings, S.D., created a flier and the post was shared thousands of times, and commenters zeroed in on Mr. Grooms as a suspect. Mr. Caya and other commenters called the police, and Mr. Grooms was arrested the following day.
Mr. Grooms, who was tried as an adult, was initially charged with second-degree sexual abuse, according to The Ottumwa Post. That charge carried a punishment of up to 25 years in prison.
Mr. Oldenburger did not return a phone call seeking comment on Thursday. But in his statement, he said the parents of the victim did not want Mr. Grooms to serve significant jail time and were more focused on him receiving treatment. The prosecutor also said that important witnesses were unwilling to testify, and psychologists said Mr. Grooms was not a high-risk candidate for committing more offenses.
He said a long sentence likely would have been overturned on appeal, with a quick parole. The 860 days he had already spent in jail would have counted toward his time served.
“If Grooms was sent to prison for a long period of time rather than being sentenced to probation, he more than likely would be a greater risk to the community after his release than he will be after serving the sentence he received,” he said.
It was not immediately clear whether the men in New Orleans and Ireland have been arrested.
Until recently, I had never had any dealings with Wildlife Services, a century-old agency of the United States Department of Agriculture with a reputation for strong-arm tactics and secrecy. It is beloved by many farmers and ranchers and hated in equal measure by conservationists, for the same basic reason: It routinely kills predators and an astounding assortment of other animals — 3.2 million of them last year — because ranchers and farmers regard them as pests.
To be clear, Wildlife Services is a separate entity, in a different federal agency, from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, whose main goal is wildlife conservation. Wildlife Services is interested in control — ostensibly, “to allow people and wildlife to coexist.”
My own mildly surreal acquaintance with its methods began as a result of a study, published this month in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, under the title “Predator Control Should Not Be a Shot in the Dark.” Adrian Treves of the University of Wisconsin and his co-authors set out to answer a seemingly simple question: Does the practice of predator control to protect our livestock actually work?
To find out, the researchers reviewed scientific studies of predator control regimens — some lethal, some not — over the past 40 years. The results were alarming. Of the roughly 100 studies surveyed, only two met the “gold standard” for scientific evidence. That is, they conducted randomized controlled trials and took precautions to avoid bias. Each found that nonlethal methods (like guard dogs, fences and warning flags) could be effective at deterring predators.
Seven other studies met a slightly lower scientific standard, but produced conflicting results or were inconclusive.
So why is this agency so focused on killing predators? While predators are far from the leading cause of death of livestock, they are the most visible. Killing as many of them as possible in turn can feel like a deeply gratifying solution, in a way that dealing with disease or bad weather never has been. We seem to kill predators out of mindless, even primordial antipathy, rather than for any good reason. It is how we managed by the mid-20th century to eradicate gray wolves almost completely from the lower 48 states.
According to the Treves review, one organization of wildlife managers published a number of flawed or biased studies on lethal control in its scholarly journals. Then, in 2004, it published an article debunkingsome of those flawed studies. Thereafter, though, the same journals continued to cite the flawed studies as if they were still valid. Authors, editors and peer reviewers alike were seemingly blinded by conventional wisdom that killing predators protects livestock.
I thought Wildlife Services might have a different perspective on the Treves study, and this is where things turned weird. Gail Keirn, a legislative and public affairs aide for Wildlife Services, declined to arrange an interview. The agency would accept written questions, she said, to be answered in writing, a useful formula for public relations, not journalism. I’ve had better luck getting access at the C.I.A.
Soon after, Dr. Treves held an online session to introduce his study. Two journalists joined the conversation. But so did four other people — Wildlife Services employees, who refused to identify themselves by name despite repeated requests by Dr. Treves. The conversation stumbled to an awkward close.
It was a creepy moment, but it was also wonderfully inept. Even if Ms. Keirn wouldn’t identify herself, her phone number, from which she had dialed into the session, was prominently displayed in a screen shot Dr. Treves sent me afterward. When I emailed to question Ms. Keirn about it, she protested, “I thought this was an open forum” and a good opportunity for Wildlife Services “to learn more.” Later, she sent me a written statement from a Wildlife Services official who ignored the Treves study while citing some of the same studies found to be flawed in that 2004 critique.
It was perfect as slapstick, but also a pity, because taxpayers who spent $127 million in 2014 for the agency’s wildlife damage management operations deserve transparency. Instead, the agency reveals little more than its annual body count, listing only the species, the number of dead and the method of killing. Last year, for instance, it killed 68,905 coyotes using calling devices, snares and traps, “M 44 cyanide capsule” and other poisoning devices, and guns, sometimes fired with the help of “night vision/infrared equipment,” and sometimes from helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft.
But why were different species killed, or where? Your guess is as good as mine — and not just about the predators but about the agency’s decision to kill 17 sandhill cranes last year, or 150 blue-winged teal ducks, or 4,927 cattle egrets. Before killing 708,487 red-winged blackbirds that year, did anyone weigh the damage they do to ripening corn and other crops against the benefit they provide by feeding on corn earworms and other harmful insects? Is the scientific support for killing 20,777 prairie dogs (on which the survival of species like the burrowing owl and the black-footed ferret depend), better than that for killing predators?
There is no way to verify the numbers Wildlife Services provides. The habit of secrecy is a pity because even critics of Wildlife Services acknowledge that killing is sometimes necessary. Feral swine (42,250 killed last year) are, for instance, a menace to agriculture and endangered species alike. Lethal control for livestock protection also “has to be on the table,” said Lisa Upson, executive director of the Montana conservation nonprofit group People and Carnivores. Ranchers will experiment with nonlethal methods first only if they have the option, as a last resort, of killing a specific individual predator that repeatedly attacks livestock. “A lot of ranchers have accepted that wolves are here to stay and have moved to saying let’s try some preventive things,” Ms. Upson said.
In Montana, Wildlife Services has recently begun to collaborate with Ms. Upson’s group and the Natural Resources Defense Council, both longtime critics, on nonlethal predator deterrence projects.
There is reason to hope for more substantial change. Last month, the Obama administration overrode objections by the State of Alaska and announced that 73 million acres of national wildlife refuges there are off limits to what Dan Ashe, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, described as that state’s “withering attack on bears and wolves.” The next step ought to be a closer look at the federal government’s own predator control programs.
In their study, Dr. Treves and his co-authors urge the appointment of an independent panel to conduct a rigorous large-scale scientific experiment on predator control methods. They also recommended that the government put the burden of proof on the killers and suspend predator control programs that are not supported by good science. For Wildlife Services, after a century of unregulated slaughter of America’s native species, this could be the moment to set down the weapons, step out of the way, and let ranchers and scientists together figure out the best way for predators and livestock to coexist.
4) Video Released in Terence Crutcher’s Killing by Tulsa Police By LIAM STACK
The Police Department in Tulsa, Okla., released video on Monday of an encounter during which, the authorities said, a white police officer fatally shot an unarmed black man who could be seen raising his hands above his head.
The department opened a criminal investigation into the shooting and said the Tulsa County district attorney, Steve Kunzweiler, would review its findings. The federal Justice Department opened a separate civil rights investigation.
During the encounter, which took place around 7:40 p.m. Friday, Terence Crutcher, 40, was shot once and killed by Betty Shelby, a Tulsa police officer since 2011, after the police received reports of an abandoned vehicle blocking a road, the department said.
Video recorded by a police helicopter and a patrol car’s dashboard camera shows Mr. Crutcher raising his hands, walking toward a car and leaning against it. He was then Tasered by one officer, Tyler Turnbough, and fatally shot by Officer Shelby, the department said, though the view from both cameras is obstructed in the moments before those actions.
Tulsa’s police chief, Chuck Jordan, said at a news conference Monday that Mr. Crutcher was unarmed and did not have a weapon in his vehicle. Shane Tuell, a police spokesman, said Officer Shelby gave a statement to homicide detectives on Monday morning. She is on paid administrative leave, the department said.
In an interview, Officer Shelby’s lawyer, Scott Wood, said the officer had thought that Mr. Crutcher had a weapon. Mr. Wood said Mr. Crutcher had acted erratically, refused to comply with several orders, tried to put his hand in his pocket and reached inside his car window before he was shot.
Chief Jordan said Officer Shelby had encountered Mr. Crutcher and his vehicle while en route to another call and requested backup because she was “not having cooperation” from him. Officer Turnbough and his partner responded to Officer Shelby’s request for backup. It was the dashboard camera in their patrol car that recorded the shooting.
According to that video, when the second police car arrived, Mr. Crutcher had his hands raised and was walking away from Officer Shelby, who walked behind him with her gun pointed at his back. She was soon joined by three more officers. Mr. Crutcher was shot less than 30 seconds after the second car arrived.
The helicopter video shows the same scene from above. “He’s got his hands up there for her now,” one officer aboard the helicopter can be heard saying. “This guy is still walking and following commands.”
“Time for a Taser, I think,” a second officer in the helicopter can be heard saying.
“I got a feeling that’s about to happen,” said the first officer, identifed by Mr. Wood as Officer Shelby’s husband, Dave Shelby.
“That looks like a bad dude, too,” the second officer said. Mr. Crutcher was shot moments later, and the helicopter camera captured footage of him sprawled on the pavement, his shirt stained with blood. A woman’s voice can be heard yelling over the radio, “Shots fired!”
Members of Mr. Crutcher’s family watched both videos on Sunday, the Police Department said. At a separate news conference on Monday, they called for a thorough investigation and urged protesters to remain peaceful.
Benjamin L. Crump, a lawyer for the family, placed Mr. Crutcher’s death in the context of police shootings of African-Americans across the country and the conviction last year of Daniel Holtzclaw, an Oklahoma City police officer, for sexually assaulting 13 black women while he was on duty.
“This is an issue that is not unique to Tulsa, Oklahoma,” Mr. Crump said. “This is an issue that seems to be an epidemic happening all around America. What are we as an American society going to do about it?”
The Police Department released the video out of a commitment to “full transparency and disclosure,” Officer Tuell, the spokesman, said. The mayor, Dewey F. Bartlett Jr., urged city residents to come together to help Mr. Crutcher’s family grieve and promised a fair investigation.
“This city will be transparent, this city will not cover up, this city will do exactly what is necessary to make sure that all rights are protected and to make sure that all rights shall be done,” Mr. Bartlett said.
5) Protests Erupt in Charlotte After Police Kill a Black Man By ALAN BLINDER
About 16 police officers in Charlotte, N.C., were injured when a standoff between law enforcement and demonstrators turned ugly overnight after an officer fatally shot a black man on Tuesday afternoon.
Protesters clashed with police officers in riot gear and blocked a stretch of Interstate 85. Video from local television early Wednesday showed some demonstrators looting trucks that had been stopped on the highway and setting fire to the cargo.
Police Chief Kerr Putney said during a news conference on Wednesday morning that the officers had sustained minor injuries and that one person had been arrested during the protests, which began in the University City neighborhood in northeast Charlotte, near the campus of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
WSOC-TV reported that looters later moved off the highway and tried to break into a Walmart before officers arrived in force to keep them out, and at least one family driving on Interstate 85 reported that their windshield had been shattered by demonstrators throwing rocks.
Mayor Jennifer Roberts urged calm in a series of Twitter messages and promised a thorough investigation into the shooting death of Keith L. Scott, 43.
“The community deserves answers and full investigation will ensue,” Ms. Roberts said. “Will be reaching out to community leaders to work together.”
The shooting occurred just before 4 p.m. on Tuesday as officers were trying to serve an arrest warrant for another person in an apartment complex.
Police officials said the officer opened fire because Mr. Scott, who they said was armed with a gun, “posed an imminent deadly threat.”
Although their accounts sometimes diverged, members of Mr. Scott’s family generally told local news outlets that he had not had a weapon. Instead, they said, he had been clutching a book while waiting to pick up a child after school.
The shooting revived scrutiny of a police department that drew national attention about three years ago when a white officer was quickly charged with voluntary manslaughter after he killed Jonathan Ferrell, an unarmed black man.
The shooting in Charlotte this week was the latest in a string of deaths of black people at the hands of the police that have stoked outrage around the country. It came just a few days after a white police officer in Tulsa, Okla., fatally shot Terence Crutcher, an unarmed black man, who could be seen on video raising his hands above his head. The encounters, many of them at least partly caught on video, have led to intense debate about race relations and law enforcement.
In Charlotte, dozens of chanting demonstrators, some of them holding signs, began gathering near the site of the shooting on Tuesday evening. Around 10 p.m., the Police Department said on Twitter that it had sent its civil emergency unit to the scene “to safely remove our officers.”
“Demonstrators surrounded our officers who were attempting to leave scene,” the department said. It identified the officer who fired his weapon as Brentley Vinson, an employee since July 2014. Officer Vinson is black, according to local reports.
According to the department, officers saw Mr. Scott leave a vehicle with a weapon soon after they arrived at the apartment complex.
“Officers observed the subject get back into the vehicle, at which time they began to approach the subject,” the department said in its first statement about the shooting. “The subject got back out of the vehicle armed with a firearm and posed an imminent deadly threat to the officers, who subsequently fired their weapon, striking the subject.”
A police spokesman did not respond to an after-hours inquiry about whether a dashboard or body camera had recorded the shooting. Chief Putney had acknowledged that Mr. Scott had not been the subject of the outstanding warrant.
On Facebook, a woman who identified herself as Mr. Scott’s daughter said that the police had fired without provocation.
“The police just shot my daddy four times for being black,” the woman said moments into a Facebook Live broadcast that lasted about an hour. Later in the broadcast, she learned that her father had died and speculated that the police were planting evidence. (The police said that investigators had recovered a weapon.)
In September 2013, officials charged a Charlotte police officer with voluntary manslaughter after he fired a dozen rounds at an unarmed black man, killing him. The criminal case against the officer, Randall Kerrick, ended in a mistrial, and the authorities did not seek to try him again.
The department, which said on Tuesday that Officer Vinson had been placed on administrative leave, said it was conducting “an active and ongoing investigation” into the killing of Mr. Scott.
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6) ThreeNew York Corrections Officers Charged in ’13 Beating of Inmate By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
Three New York State corrections officers were arrested by agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday morning on conspiracy and fraud charges in connection with the beating of an inmate who sustained numerous broken bones and a collapsed lung, and had his dreadlocks ripped out.
The inmate, Kevin Moore, was left lying in a pool of blood, and the officers refused to get him medical care, according to an indictment charging the officers, which was filed by the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York and unsealed on Wednesday morning. One of the officers, George Santiago, later took Mr. Moore’s dreadlocks as a “trophy,” bragging that he was going to use them as decoration for his motorcycle, the indictment said.
The beating occurred on Nov. 12, 2013, at Downstate Correctional Facility in Fishkill, N.Y.
Afterward, according to the indictment, the officers tried to cover up what they did. They hit one of the officers involved with a baton and wrote an official report claiming that Mr. Moore attacked them. Mr. Moore was eventually hospitalized for 17 days.
Mr. Santiago, along with another officer, Carson Morris, and a sergeant, Kathy Scott, were charged with conspiracy to deprive civil rights, deprivation of rights under color of law, conspiracy to falsify records, and falsifying records, according to the indictment.
Two other officers who took part in the beating and cover-up have already pleaded guilty to similar charges and are cooperating with the prosecutors, from the United State’s attorney’s White Plains office, and F.B.I. agents and state investigators, according to a person briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because all of the charges have not yet been formally announced.
The United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, and William F. Sweeney Jr., the F.B.I. assistant director who heads the bureau’s New York office, were scheduled to announce the charges at a news conference Wednesday afternoon with the Dutchess County district attorney, William V. Grady. Also on Wednesday afternoon, the officers were expected to be arraigned in United States District Court in White Plains, N.Y.
The arrests come at a time when the state prison system has been under intense scrutiny from prosecutors and the media.
Last year, just two miles from Downstate, an inmate at Fishkill Correctional Facility named Samuel Harrell died after an encounter with a group of as many as 20 officers, known by inmates at that prison as the Beat Up Squad. The episode, first described in The New York Times, was ruled a homicide by the medical examiner, and is also under investigation by Mr. Bharara’s office.
The United State attorney’s office for the Western District opened an investigation last year into the beating of an inmate at Attica Correctional Facility by three corrections officers who pleaded guilty to a criminal misdemeanor charge and resigned their jobs.
The Downstate case was initially investigated by the Corrections Department’s internal affairs unit, which the Cuomo administration has remade in the last few years, hiring more than two dozen investigators, several of them from federal law enforcement agencies. Traditionally the internal affairs division was run by corrections officers who were often reluctant to take action against their fellow officers. Under the reorganization, the top administrators are former prosecutors.
The unit’s current caseload of suspected wrongdoing by officers numbers over 1,000 cases, but any substantial changes in the way the department does business are unlikely without the cooperation of the powerful corrections officers union. Asked by The Times this year whether brutality by officers was a problem, Michael Powers, the union president, replied, “What are you talking about?”
7) Man Is Shot in Charlotte as Unrest Stretches to Second Night By RICHARD FAUSSET and ALAN BLINDER
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A second night of protests set off by the police killing of a black man spiraled into chaos and violence after nightfall here Wednesday when a demonstration was interrupted by gunfire that gravely wounded a man in the crowd. Law enforcement authorities fired tear gas in a desperate bid to restore order.
The city said on its Twitter account that the unidentified man was on life support after what officials said was a “civilian on civilian” confrontation. The authorities provided no further details.
Charlotte officials had said earlier that the man had been killed in the unrest. The Police Department reported that four officers had injuries that were not life-threatening.
Gov. Pat McCrory’s office said late Wednesday that he had declared an emergency and had “initiated efforts” to deploy the National Guard and the state Highway Patrol.
The shooting heightened the tension among the demonstrators and the police alike. City officials were quick to say the police had not fired any live rounds, but riot police personnel did fire repeated rounds of tear gas.
The scene of the shooting and the largest demonstration of the evening happened along a crowded street in Charlotte’s city center, where the sound of gunfire mixed with the noise of people banging objects into vehicles.
The gunshot victim lay motionless on the ground, his eyes open, as people surrounded him and blood pooled among their feet. He was taken into the nearby Omni Hotel, and a series of confrontations played out afterward as the police kept people from entering.
There was sporadic looting. Twitter messages showed that the team store of the Charlotte Hornets of the N.B.A. had been broken into and gutted of merchandise. “We are working very hard to bring peace and calm back to our city,” Mayor Jennifer Roberts said on CNN.
A spokesman for Ms. Roberts said she had requested and planned to review on Thursday a police dashboard video of the encounter with Keith L. Scott, the black man who was shot and killed here on Tuesday. But she said she would not make the video public.
Around 10 p.m., the police ordered all civilians, including members of the news media, to leave parts of the Uptown neighborhood and threatened to arrest those who did not comply. When the crowd did not respond immediately, the authorities fired more tear gas within minutes. After that, it appeared that the crowd started to disperse, although some stragglers remained in the area.
The unrest in Charlotte came after two other police-involved deadly shootings in the last week.
First came the shooting of a teenager in Columbus, Ohio, who had been brandishing a BB gun. Two days later, on Friday, was the shooting death in Tulsa, Okla., of a man who had his hands above his head before an officer opened fire.
And then it was Charlotte, where Mr. Scott, 43, black like the other two, was shot by a police officer in a parking space marked “Visitor” outside an unremarkable apartment complex. On Wednesday that parking space was both a shooting site and a shrine, and Charlotte was a city on edge, the latest to play a role in what feels like a recurring, seemingly inescapable tape loop of American tragedy.
“To see this happen multiple times — just time after time — it’s depressing, man,” said Tom Jackson, 25, who works with mentally disabled people. He didn’t know Mr. Scott but was drawn here nonetheless, one of many strangers and friends who came to pay their respects and make sense of their sorrow.
In addition to the fatal attacks on police officers in Baton Rouge and Dallas, it was another grim snapshot of America’s continuing crisis in black and blue, this moment amplified by presidential politics. And as usual, there was very little consensus on what went wrong and how to fix it.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Kerr Putney, chief of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police, said officers had found the gun that the police said Mr. Scott had brandished before an officer, who is also black, fatally shot him and were examining police video of the encounter that unfolded as Mr. Scott stepped out of a car.
Family members of Mr. Scott have said that he was unarmed and was holding only a book. Chief Putney said Wednesday morning, “We did not find a book.”
The response of B. J. Murphy, an African-American activist here, could not have been more different: “Everybody in Charlotte should be on notice that black people, today, we’re tired of this,” he said, adding an epithet. “We’re tired of being killed and nobody saying nothing. We’re tired of our political leaders going along to get along; they’re so weak, they don’t have no sympathy for our grief. And we want justice.”
All three shootings are under investigation, and are rife with questions. The police in Columbus said that the BB gun wielded by 13-year-old Tyre King was built to look nearly identical to a Smith & Wesson Military & Police semiautomatic pistol. Mayor Andrew J. Ginther blamed the shooting, in part, on Americans’ “easy access to guns, whether they are firearms or replicas.”In Tulsa, the police said investigators found the drug PCP in the shooting victim’s S.U.V. The drug is known to induce erratic behavior in some users. But Mr. Crump, who is representing the family of the victim, Terence Crutcher, said the discovery of the drug, if true, would not justify the deadly shooting.
In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Crutcher’s father, the Rev. Joey Crutcher, said his son had marched in protest of earlier police killings and had thought about how to protect himself during interactions with police officers.
They had planned to go to a church event aimed at teaching people how behave around the police and avoid becoming another hashtag shared on social media by Black Lives Matter protesters.
“I never thought this would happen to my family,” Mr. Crutcher said, adding that he had counseled his son all his life about how to behave around the police.
“I said, ‘Whenever you’re stopped by a police and you’re in that situation, raise your hands up, always let them see your hands, let them see that you are not going for a gun.’ And that is what Terence was doing. I said, ‘Always put your hands on your car.’ I made that specific, ‘your car.’ And that’s what Terence was walking to do on his car so that they could see his hands.”
John Barnett, a civil rights activist in Charlotte, said during a raucous news conference near the site of the shooting that Mr. Scott had been waiting for his son to arrive home from school.
“The truth of the matter is, he didn’t point that gun,” Mr. Barnett said. “Did he intend to really sit in a vehicle, waiting on his son to get home from school and then plot to shoot a cop if they pulled up on him?”
Adding to an atmosphere loaded with suspicion and mistrust, residents of the apartment complex gave varying accounts of Mr. Scott’s death.
Some differed from the police on which officer fired the shots, and others said that no one had tried to administer CPR for Mr. Scott as officials had said. Brentley Vinson, the officer who the police say shot Mr. Scott, is black, as is the police chief.
“Since black lives do not matter for this city, then our black dollars should not matter,” said Mr. Murphy, the activist. “We’re watching a modern-day lynching on social media, on television and it is affecting the psyche of black people.”
Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said Wednesday that the Justice Department “is aware of, and we are assessing, the incident that led to the death of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte.”
Responding to another police shooting, the state’s attorney in Baltimore County, Md., Scott D. Shellenberger, announced Wednesday that no charges would be filed against any of the officers involved in the Aug. 1 shooting death of Korryn Gaines or the shooting of her 5-year-old son.
In Charlotte, Rakeyia Scott, Mr. Scott’s wife, said on Wednesday the family was “devastated” by the shooting. She described her husband as “a loving husband, father, brother and friend” and called on protesters to remain peaceful.
At a campaign rally in Orlando, Fla., Hillary Clinton spoke about the shootings here and in Tulsa.
“There is still much we don’t know about what happened in both incidents, but we do know that we have two more names to add to a list of African-Americans killed by police officers in these encounters,’’ she said.
“It’s unbearable, and it needs to become intolerable. We also saw the targeting of police officers in Philadelphia last week. And last night in Charlotte, 12 officers were injured in demonstrations following Keith Scott’s death. Every day police officers are serving with courage, honor and skill.”
Her Republican rival, Donald J. Trump, reacted on Twitter. “Hopefully the violence & unrest in Charlotte will come to an immediate end,” he wrote. “To those injured, get well soon. We need unity & leadership.”
Unity, thus far, has been in short supply. On Friday, Mr. Trump earned the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police. But polls show that his support among African-Americans is negligible, even though he has singled them out in promising to solve the ills of poverty and violence that he has characterized as plaguing black neighborhoods.
On Wednesday, Mr. Jackson, the man who came here to mourn, was not thinking about the current presidential candidates.
The police, he said, “are out here killing people, and they don’t even know their backgrounds,” he said. “They could be killing the next president.”
8) U.S. to Step Up Deportations of Haitians Amid Surge at Border By KIRK SEMPLE
MEXICO CITY — The Obama administration, responding to an extraordinary wave of Haitian migrants seeking to enter the United States, said on Thursday that it would fully resume deportations of undocumented Haitian immigrants.
After an earthquake devastated parts of Haiti in 2010, the United States suspended deportations, saying that sending Haitians back to the country at a time of great instability would put their lives at risk. About a year later, officials partly resumed deportations, focusing on people convicted of serious crimes or those considered a threat to national security.
But since last spring, thousands of Haitian migrants who had moved to Brazil in search of work have been streaming north, mostly by land, winding up at American border crossings that lead to Southern California.
Few have arrived with American visas, but nearly all have been allowed to enter the United States because immigration officials were prohibited, under the modified deportation policy, from using the so-called fast-track removal process often employed at the border for new, undocumented arrivals.
Instead, the migrants were placed in a slower deportation process and released, with an appointment to appear in immigration court at a later date, officials said. Since early summer, most have been given permission to remain in the country for as long as three years under a humanitarian parole provision, immigrant advocates said.
With the full resumption of deportations, which took effect on Thursday morning, Haitians who arrive at the border without visas will be put into expedited removal proceedings.
Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, said in a statement that conditions in Haiti had “improved sufficiently to permit the U.S. government to remove Haitian nationals on a more regular basis.”
While Mr. Johnson’s statement did not mention the recent influx of Haitians along the southwestern border, Homeland Security officials, during a conference call with reporters, cited the migrant wave as the other major factor in the administration’s decision.
Since last October, officials said, more than 5,000 Haitians without visas have shown up at the San Ysidro crossing that links Tijuana, Mexico, with San Diego. By comparison, 339 Haitians without visas arrived at the San Ysidro crossing in the 2015 fiscal year.
An additional 4,000 to 6,000 Haitians were thought to be making their way from Brazil, immigrant advocates in San Diego and Tijuana said, based on estimates from shelters along the Brazil-to-Mexico migration route.
The message to those Haitians from the Obama administration, however, seems clear: Turn around or go elsewhere.
An uptick in deportations might not occur immediately. Removals require the cooperation of and paperwork from the receiving country, and Homeland Security officials said they were still in talks with the Haitian government about the policy shift.
In the meantime, officials said, nearly all Haitians stopped at the border and scheduled for accelerated deportations will be put into detention centers.
Officials clarified, however, that asylum law would continue to apply to newly arriving Haitians. A migrant who feared returning to Haiti because of the threat of persecution or torture would be interviewed to determine whether that fear was credible. If an immigration officer determined it was, the immigrant could apply for asylum.
Over the summer, the unusual surge in Haitian migrants was accompanied by an equally unusual surge in migrants from more than two dozen other countries, nearly all traveling along the same arduous routes from South America, across as many as 10 borders.
The migratory wave has overwhelmed shelters along the way, particularly in Tijuana, where the shelters have been at or over capacity for much of the past four months, while also struggling with language and cultural barriers. Some migrants, because they were unable to find accommodations or wanted to avoid shelter living, have chosen to sleep on the streets.
Haitians started migrating to Brazil in large numbers after the earthquake. Haiti was reeling, but Brazil was ascendant, and it had a need for cheap labor, especially with the World Cup and the Olympics approaching. Haitians, with few prospects at home, were happy to oblige.
Thousands of them made their way to Brazil, where many were granted humanitarian visas that allowed them to work.
But amid Brazil’s economic and political convulsions over the last two years, many Haitians lost their jobs or sank deeper into poverty.
The migration north began in earnest during the spring, with a large influx in Tijuana in late May, and the surge has continued.
The Haitian migrant population has mainly consisted of men, though many women have made the trek, too, as have children and even newborns. They have mainly taken an elaborate series of bus rides, though migrants also had to travel at times by foot, truck and boat, and have hired smugglers to help sneak them across certain borders or avoid law enforcement officials.
They have told of highway robberies, frightening encounters with armed gangs and beatings. Some migrants have died during the trip, many being swept away while trying to ford swift-moving rivers.
The shift in American policy caught advocates in San Diego and Tijuana by surprise.
“It was a complete and utter shock,” said Ginger Jacobs, an immigration lawyer and the chairwoman of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium. “We are pretty baffled by what appears to be a complete 180 in terms of policy.”
She added, “We object to a policy change that doesn’t appear to reflect any actual change in reality.”
Margarita Andonaegui, the coordinator of a main migrant shelter in Tijuana, said that on Wednesday afternoon she had received what sounded like heartening news: The American authorities were going to increase their processing capacity for the Haitians, to 150 per day from 50.
But in light of the new deportation policy, that piece of information took on another meaning.
“They’re going to receive them to deport them,” Ms. Andonaegui said. “That’s bad news.”
9) ‘Fees Must Fall’: Anatomy of the Student Protests in South Africa By CHRISTINE HAUSER
University students protested in South Africa for at least a second day this week over plans to increase fees at the country’s colleges in 2017. The protests, which erupted in September, have turned violent as students have clashed with the police.
On Wednesday, at least two students were injured after the police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades to break up protests at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, university and student representatives said.
How did the protests flare up?
On Sept. 19, the minister of higher education, Blade Nzimande, announced that the country’s universities were facing serious funding challenges at the same time that South Africans were having trouble affording tuition. So the minister proposed that universities set their own fee increases for 2017.
But he recommended that the increases be no more than 8 percent. For some categories of needy students, there will be no increase, he added.
The next day, student protests erupted at the University of the Witwatersrand. Demonstrations also began at the University of Cape Town, which suspended classes, and hundreds of students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal marched in Pietermaritzburg city, The Associated Press reported.
On Wednesday, a police spokesman said the police fired stun grenades as students threw stones, Reuters reported.
Earlier this month, 32 students were arrested after a law library at the University of KwaZulu-Natal was torched following protests over tuition fees, Reuters said.
On social media, students shared images and footage of the unrest using the hashtags #fees2017 and #feesmustfall.
What else is fueling the demonstrations?
Some protests have erupted over frustration with the lack of change in post-apartheid South Africa, where 80 percent of the population is black and black South Africans make up the majority of the universities’ student body.
But discontent among black South Africans has been brewing for years.
In March 2015, a student at the University of Cape Town threw excrement at a statue of Cecil Rhodes, the British imperialist who donated land to the university, giving birth to a movement called “Rhodes Must Fall.”
Demonstrations began to dominate life at the university, the country’s most prestigious public university, with students staging rallies and occupying administrative buildings. Black South Africans make up less than one-quarter of the students, and black faculty members are also underrepresented, they said. The protests spread to Stellenbosch University and other institutions.
The police used stun grenades and tear gas to quell the demonstrations.
A global problem: The cost of higher education
South Africa is not alone in struggling with the rising cost of higher education.
In the United States, many students graduate with huge student loan debts that saddle them with burdensome repayment terms amid a tight job market. The issue has become a factor in the United States presidential election, with the two candidates proposing ideas.
The United States government has also cracked down on one of the nation’s largest for-profit educational chains, ITT Technical Institute, after a long period of scrutiny into its recruiting techniques and educational quality.
Last year, the United States also announced a move against what it called “the ethics of payday lending” in higher education. The secretary of education said the Education Departmentwould forgive the federal loans of tens of thousands of students who had attended Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit collegecompany that closed and filed for bankruptcy amid widespread charges of fraud.
Universities in some countries do not charge any tuition at all, or they charge only some students. Germany and Norway have tuition-free university programs. Finland has decided to start charging non-European Union students tuition next year in bachelor’s and master’s programs.
10) Climate Change Threatens World’s Coffee Supply, Report Says By JONAH ENGEL BROMWICH
A report examining the many ways climate change threatens coffee and coffee farmers has alarmed people who are now imagining what it would be like getting through the day without their caffeine fix.
The report, released this month by the Climate Institute, a nonprofit organization in Australia, was commissioned by Fairtrade Australia and New Zealand, the regional hub of the global Fairtrade system.
Though it contains little new research, it has made waves by collating an array of available literature indicating that climate change will have a stark effect on the world’s coffee supply.
The report emphasizes the threat warming temperatures pose to farmland, citing a study from the March 2015 issue of the journal Climatic Change that found climate change “will reduce the global area suitable for coffee by about 50 percent across emission scenarios.”
In addition to the disappearing land on which to grow coffee, the report highlights the way warmer weather is exacerbating the threat of diseases like coffee rust and pests like the coffee berry borer, a type of beetle that a 2011 report said caused annual losses of hundreds of millions of dollars in coffee beans.
“The extra warmth is enabling those sorts of lines of attack to be strengthened,” said John Connor, the chief executive of the Climate Institute.
Coffee plants thrive in stable environments where a precise combination of temperature and precipitation allows beans to prosper while keeping their taste profile.
The report shows that countries once offering the proper mix of climate factors in the “bean belt,” including Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Ethiopia and Vietnam, have become less hospitable because of shifts in weather patterns scientists say can be attributed to climate change.
The report’s findings, though new to many people, are all too familiar to major coffee companies, which have been scrambling to battle climate change’s effect on their product for the past several years.
“It’s a severe threat,” said Doug Welsh, the vice president of coffee at Peet’s Coffee and a member of the board of World Coffee Research, an international group founded by coffee companies intent on protecting their cash crop.
“It’s anecdotal, but I don’t know any coffee farmers who don’t believe that their weather, and with it their disease and productivity issues, have changed dramatically over the last decade,” he said.
A spokeswoman from Starbucks, Haley P. Drage, said that the company had been offering coffee growers support programs for years to help ensure the longevity of their farms.
“This becomes even more important when farmers experience fluctuating weather conditions that are the result of a warmer climate,” she said. “We believe that with the proper vigilance, as well as a long-term approach, we can help farmers manage the variables that come with these new dynamics.”
But Mr. Welsh, touting the benefits of the World Coffee Research group, said, “There is no coffee company on the face of the earth that’s big enough to tackle the challenge of climate change on its own.”
The strategies the organization is developing acknowledge the severity of the threat from climate change, and many are adaptive rather than preventive — taking for granted that temperatures are bound to keep rising.
For instance, one project aims to create a gene bank to preserve the genetic diversity in Arabica coffee. Another strategy is the creation of a variety catalog with information on various beans’ pest resistance, yield and ability to thrive at certain altitudes. A third is a “sensory lexicon” in which the organization evaluates the new coffee varieties being developed by coffee breeders to ensure their palatability.
But even the organization’s website acknowledges that “there are major gaps in our knowledge of how to best help coffee producers adapt to climate change.”
Mr. Welsh said, “No one, of course, would want to see any coffee species go extinct, but we have to prepare for the distinct possibility that that could happen.”
Molly Harriss Olson, the chief executive of Fairtrade Australia and New Zealand, said she was particularly concerned about coffee producers and the impact warming temperatures and unpredictable weather patterns would have on them.
“Coffee supports the livelihoods of 125 million people around the world, including some of the most marginalized and poor people in developing countries,” she said, citing a report from the International Coffee Organization.
“If we don’t do something about it soon, the consequences for these people are going to be absolutely devastating.”
11) Keith Scott’s Family Sees Videos of His Killing, and Says the Public Should, Too By ALAN BLINDER, NIRAJ CHOKSHI and RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The grieving relatives of a man who was killed by the police here watched videos on Thursday of the fatal shooting, a wrenching experience that they said revealed no hint of aggression in him and left the family members convinced that the videos should be made public. But the city’s police chief, who had arranged for the private viewing, held fast to his decision not to release the recordings.
The wife and other relatives of the dead man, Keith L. Scott, watched his killing from two angles, recorded Tuesday by police dashboard and body cameras, and “it was incredibly difficult,” a family lawyer, Justin Bamberg, said in a statement.
He said the family had come away with more questions than answers and a different interpretation from the account offered by the police, who have said that Mr. Scott, 43, was shot after he got out of his car brandishing a gun.
“When told by police to exit his vehicle, Mr. Scott did so in a very calm, nonaggressive manner,” Mr. Bamberg said. “While police did give him several commands, he did not aggressively approach them or raise his hands at members of law enforcement at any time.” When an officer opened fire, he added, “Mr. Scott’s hands were by his side, and he was slowly walking backwards.”
On Thursday night, hundreds of people gathered at an intersection in central Charlotte, holding signs and chanting, “We want the tapes!” in a peaceful demonstration.
Mayor Jennifer Roberts ordered a midnight-to-6-a.m. curfew, the first since the unrest began, though the demonstrations were largely peaceful, and the police did not enforce the curfew as it went into effect. The police said that two officers were being treated after protesters sprayed them with a chemical. There were no immediate reports of injuries to civilians.
On Thursday evening, some protesters marched to the police headquarters and held a moment of silence, fists raised in tribute to a man who was fatally shot during the previous night’s protest and to those killed by the police. They marched to the county jail and chanted for the inmates behind the slats. Some inside blinked their lights off and on in apparent solidarity.
Later, Interstate 277 was briefly shut down as demonstrators moved onto the roadway, and the police fired smoke to try to disperse them.
Mr. Scott’s death touched off violence in Charlotte on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. As hundreds of National Guard troops and State Police officers fanned out across the city on Thursday in an effort to head off further violence, Chief Kerr Putney of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police brushed aside demands by activists, community leaders and the news media to make the police video public.
“We release it when we believe there is a compelling reason,” he said.
Until they viewed the videos on Thursday afternoon, Mr. Scott’s relatives had said they were uncertain whether they should be released to the public, according to Mr. Bamberg.
While the family members differed with the police on some major points about the videos, they seemed to be in agreement with Chief Putney on one aspect. “It is impossible to discern from the videos what, if anything, Mr. Scott is holding in his hands,” they said in a statement.
Earlier in the day, Chief Putney said, “The video does not give me absolute, definitive visual evidence that would confirm that a person is pointing a gun.” He added later that he could not see Mr. Scott’s hands. But the chief, speaking at a news conference, said that eyewitness accounts and other evidence suggested that Mr. Scott was holding a pistol at the time he was shot, and that a weapon had been found at the scene.
Mr. Scott was black — as is the officer who shot him, Brentley Vinson — and his death added to a long list of killings of black men at the hands of law enforcement that had rocked cities and spurred protests around the country, bolstering claims of racial bias in policing.
On Thursday, a white officer in Tulsa, Okla., was charged with manslaughter in the fatal shooting an unarmed black man last week — a case in which startling police video was released within days of the encounter.
During Wednesday night’s demonstrations, a protester was shot in the head in what the police described as a “civilian on civilian” episode. But some protesters accused the police of opening fire. Early Thursday evening, just about the time a crowd was gathering, the police announced that the man had died earlier in the day and that the department had begun a homicide investigation.
The police identified the victim as Justin Carr, 26, without elaborating further on his death.
Some black leaders and protesters have called for the public release of the videos from the outset, and those demands have grown louder in the succeeding days.
“There must be transparency, and the video must be released,” said the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, the president of the North Carolina N.A.A.C.P.
He said the protesters who had taken to the streets here by the hundreds since Mr. Scott’s death were “rising up against systems of injustice that protect officers who kill.”
“It’s about saying we are against bad police, because bad police make it bad for good police,” Mr. Barber said.
In a day of rapid developments and rolling news conferences, local, state and federal officials called for calm. Protests had escalated the previous night, with some people smashing windows and storefronts, and the police used tear gas to disperse crowds and made 44 arrests. Nine civilians were injured, two officers had minor eye injuries, and three officers had heat exhaustion.
At 12:30 a.m. Thursday, local officials declared a state of emergency, calling for help from state forces, who deployed during the day in a show of strength throughout the city. Gov. Pat McCrory said he started mobilizing the National Guard early Wednesday in anticipation of that request, but he refused to second-guess Chief Putney and Mayor Roberts for not asking for help sooner.
The State Bureau of Investigation began an investigation of the case, the governor said, and critics of the police asked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to step in. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said the Justice Department and the F.B.I. were monitoring events and offering help to local officials.
“I know that the events of recent days are painfully unclear and call out for answers,” Ms. Lynch said. “But I also know that the answer will not be found in the violence of recent days.”
Protests began Tuesday night after Officer Vinson shot Mr. Scott while the police were serving a warrant on someone else. Starkly different accounts have emerged about what happened. The police say Mr. Scott was holding a gun before he was shot; friends and family say it was a book. Though the videos do not offer definitive proof on their own, they support the official version of events, Chief Putney said.
“When taking in the totality of all the other evidence, it supports what we’ve heard and the version of the truth that we gave about the circumstances that happened that led to the death of Mr. Scott,” he said. He added that the department’s practice was not to release video to the public, to protect the integrity of investigations.
Demonstrators and black community leaders said the outrage was not just about what had happened to Mr. Scott, but was fueled by a much broader context. “We need folks to understand there is a direct connection between the rioting and the creation of two separate groups based on class and race for decades,” said Justin Perry, an addiction counselor who is black and took part in the protest.
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus pressed the Justice Department to do more by starting a thorough investigation into recent police shootings that had led to nationwide protests. Lawmakers from the 45-member group marched from the Capitol to the Justice Department to deliver a letter to Ms. Lynch, reinforcing the significance of their concerns.
Both Chief Putney and Mayor Roberts sought to reassure residents that the city was prepared to avert another night of violence. Ms. Roberts said that the city was safe. “Our transit system is running; our businesses are open; our center city is here to welcome you,” she said on Thursday morning.
Still, several large businesses encouraged employees to stay home after the chaos.
Wells Fargo told approximately 12,000 employees that they were not expected to report to work in Charlotte’s Uptown neighborhood. Those unable to work remotely would be paid regardless, a spokesman said. Ally, the financial services company, closed two offices in Charlotte, affecting 900 employees. Duke Energy asked 500 employees and contractors to work remotely, and Fifth Third Bank asked the same of its employees.
12) Jeremy Corbyn Is Re-elected as Leader of Britain’s Labour Party By STEVEN ERLANGER
LONDON — Jeremy Corbyn strengthened his grip on Britain’s opposition Labour Party on Saturday, beating back a challenge to his leadership by members of Parliament with increased support from the party’s rank and file.
The results of the summer-long leadership struggle were announced in Liverpool, in northwestern England, on the eve of the annual Labour Party conference.
Mr. Corbyn, a 67-year-old hard-left politician, won 61.8 percent of the more than 500,000 votes cast, up from the 59.5 percent he won a year ago, when his victory shocked and divided the party.
A revolt by Labour members of Parliament, who said they feared that Mr. Corbyn would lead the party to electoral disaster, came to nothing as their favored candidate, Owen Smith, won only 38.2 percent of the vote.
The result tightened Mr. Corbyn’s grip on the party and isolated many of its members of Parliament from a growing membership that is younger and more left-leaning, drawn by Mr. Corbyn’s policies to reduce inequality, make Britain non-nuclear and renationalize key areas of the economy, like the railways and energy.
The party has almost tripled its membership to more than 500,000, making it the largest political party in Western Europe, Mr. Corbyn said. But opinion polls regularly indicate that if an election were held tomorrow, Labour under Mr. Corbyn would suffer a historic defeat in the country as a whole.
In a victory speech, Mr. Corbyn called for unity, said that more held “the Labour family” together than divided it and vowed that the party would win the next election under his leadership.
Mr. Corbyn also promised forgiveness to the rebels, noting that many heated things are said in a campaign that are later regretted. “Let’s wipe that slate clean from today and get on with the work we have to do as a party together,” he said.
There are concerns among the rebels in Parliament that Mr. Corbyn and his team will move against them. Electoral districts are to undergo boundary changes as the House of Commons shrinks from 650 members to 600, and Mr. Corbyn’s opponents fear the leadership team will use those changes to replace them with other candidates. Some of Mr. Corbyn’s allies have been pressing for “mandatory reselection” of all candidates in every district before another British election.
Anticipating his victory before it was announced, Mr. Corbyn had issued a plea for unity. “Whatever the result, whatever the margin, we all have a duty to unite, cherish and build our movement,” he said.
Mr. Corbyn and his allies see Labour as a socialist movement whose purpose is to change society. But most Labour members of Parliament, who regard Mr. Corbyn as a man of the old-fashioned, hard-left fringe, believe the best way to effect change is to win power in elections, which in Britain has meant moving toward the center, not farther to the left.
They have also criticized Mr. Corbyn for poor organization and weak leadership, and have said Labour is not doing its job as an effective opposition to the governing Conservative Party.
But after this resounding victory, Mr. Corbyn is highly unlikely to face another challenge before the next general election, which is due in May 2020. Labour members of Parliament who refused to serve in his shadow cabinet, or who resigned from it as part of the revolt, will be under pressure to join it, even if they sharply disagree with his policies.
Tony Travers, a professor of government at the London School of Economics, said the Labour Party was “like a miserable, unhappy family trying to coexist.”
Labour’s home affairs spokesman, Andy Burnham, told BBC radio that while the party’s “war of attrition” must stop, Mr. Corbyn must also build more support among the general public, not just among Labour activists.
“No one gets the right to take Labour down to a devastating defeat,” said Mr. Burnham, who is trying to avoid the party’s parliamentary problems by running for mayor of Manchester.
Some Conservatives have urged the new British prime minister, Theresa May, who took over from David Cameron, to change the law to call an election sooner, in order to get her own mandate and take advantage of the divisions in Labour. But she has said there will be no early election.
The former Labour foreign secretary David Miliband, a centrist narrowly beaten to the party leadership in 2010 by his more left-leaning brother, Ed, wrote in the New Statesman magazine this past week: “We have not been further from power since the 1930s.”
13) Yielding to Pressure, Charlotte Releases Videos of Keith Scott Shooting By RICHARD FAUSSET, ALAN BLINDER and YAMICHE ALCINDOR
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Under mounting pressure from politicians, community leaders and boisterous protesters who have brought this city’s main business district to a near standstill, the Charlotte police chief on Saturday released body and dashboard camera videos of the fatal police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott, a black resident here.
While they do not show everything that happened at the scene, the two released videos appear to show Mr. Scott exiting a white sport utility vehicle and backing away from it with his hands at his sides. He did not appear to be acting in a threatening or erratic manner, although officers could be heard shouting, “Drop the gun!”
The police said that they had recovered a loaded gun with Mr. Scott’s DNA on it, and that he was wearing an ankle holster. They did not reveal where they had found the gun.
It appeared from the two angles that he had nothing in his right hand. It was unclear what, if anything, Mr. Scott, who was right-handed, had in his left hand. After Mr. Scott was shot multiple times and fell to the ground, his moans could be heard as officers handcuffed him.
The police also revealed for the first time that officers had decided to confront Mr. Scott, 43, in the parking lot of his apartment complex on Tuesday because they noticed, as they were preparing to serve a warrant on another person, that he was rolling a marijuana cigarette inside his S.U.V. — and had observed him “hold a gun up,” according to a news release. Mr. Scott was parked in a visitor’s parking space at his apartment complex, where he often waited for a school bus bringing one of his children home from school.
Chief Kerr Putney of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said that, since Mr. Scott was believed to be in possession of marijuana and a handgun, it raised a safety issue officers felt compelled to confront.
“What we are releasing are the objective facts,” Chief Putney said at a news conference.
Still, he added that neither the videos, nor other evidence he intended to make public provided a definitive answer to all the questions in the case.
“I stand behind the truth,” Chief Putney said. “People can interpret anything they want based on one piece of evidence, and I can tell you, I suspect they will based on the video footage. But what I say is, you have to put all pieces together.”
At a news conference about an hour after the videos were released, lawyers for the Scott family said his relatives were pleased with that decision, but also said the videos raised more questions than they answered.
One of the lawyers, Justin Bamberg, said the family stood by its assertion that Mr. Scott was not armed and that he had not acted in a threatening manner.
“When I look at the dashcam footage, I don’t see anything there, in my opinion, that would lead to him losing his life,” Mr. Bamberg said.
Protesters on Saturday were skeptical that marijuana possession, which has been decriminalized in many places, should have led to a fatal encounter. The officer who shot Mr. Scott, Brentley Vinson, was also black, police officials have said.
Greg Farmer, 25, who has been protesting since Mr. Scott’s death, said on Saturday that even if Mr. Scott did have marijuana and a gun, the police should not have killed him.
“Even if they thought he was smoking weed, why in any world would that warrant him being gunned down?” said Mr. Farmer, who owns a food truck and a handyman business in Charlotte.
The protesters, who have taken to the streets since Tuesday in large numbers — sometimes peacefully and sometimes not — have made “Release the Tapes” a signature chant and most pointed demand, and have accused Chief Putney of obscuring the details of the shooting.
And yet, for a number of reasons, it seems likely that the release of the two videos, and the new information about the case, will do little to quell what has become a roiling national debate over whether it was necessary to fatally shoot Mr. Scott, one of a number of African-American men who have died at the hands of police officers in recent months.
The frustration and anger was evident before Chief Putney had finished his news conference, which protesters were listening to on a loudspeaker at a park in the Uptown area of Charlotte.
Around 4:30 p.m., a protester announced to some cheers that there had been an update about the release of the police videos.
But that cautious optimism turned to anger about 10 minutes later as protesters learned the police would not be releasing all of the video footage. Chief Putney said that while the information being released constituted “the most complete puzzle that we can without trying the case out in public,” he said that some unreleased videos showed only people driving to the scene. He also said that more footage would be released upon completion of an independent inquiry being conducted by the State Bureau of Investigation “and there has been a definitive decision on the part of the prosecutor.”
The mood among the protesters fell.
“Everybody take a deep breath. So basically Chief Putney is saying that they are not releasing the full videos of Keith L. Scott,” Tamika Lewis, 27, one of the protest organizers, said as many others booed and shook their heads. “Our demand clearly states to release the full video, the names and the reports that are related to the shooting. This is a slap in the face. He’s like, ‘Oh, I’m going to give them a little bit of what they want, and then they’re going to go away.’ No. We will occupy the streets of Charlotte until they release the full videos.”
The chief, as well as other officials in North Carolina, had previously resisted demands to release the footage because they said it could undercut the investigation by the state, which is reviewing the shooting at the request of Mr. Scott’s family.
But by Saturday afternoon, word had begun to spread through Charlotte that the chief had agreed to release the footage. During a news conference at a West Charlotte police station, as rifle-bearing members of the National Guard stood outside, the chief insisted that his decision had not been influenced by political pressure, nor by the release on Friday of a video recorded by Mr. Scott’s wife.
The chief said he believed that disclosing some of the state’s evidence would not “taint” the state’s inquiry.
“The footage itself will not create, in anyone’s mind, absolute certainty as to what this case represents, and what the outcome should be,” he said. “The footage only supports all of the other information — physical evidence, the statements from witnesses and officers and all of the other information, scientific and physical — that create an entire picture.”
The matter of whether the police should disclose its footage had been fiercely debated for days here. The authorities repeatedly pledged transparency, but warned that a premature release of any evidence could compromise the case. But protesters marched through the streets of Charlotte and demanded the videos’ release.
The debate even reached the presidential campaign on Friday, when Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, said the city should distribute its footage “without delay.”
Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina, a former Charlotte mayor who had expressed reservations as recently as Friday about releasing any evidence, said he supported Chief Putney’s decision announced on Saturday. He said he was convinced the “release will have no material impact on the independent investigation since most of the known witnesses have been interviewed.”
The anger and suspicion in Charlotte have been fueled in part by memories of the September 2013 police slaying of Jonathan Ferrell, a 24-year-old black man who was shot 10 times by a white officer in a Charlotte subdivision. Mr. Ferrell had been in a car wreck, and had walked to a nearby home and knocked on the door. A white woman, fearing Mr. Ferrell was a robber, called 911. One officer, upon arrival, immediately aimed a Taser at Mr. Ferrell. Another officer, Randall Kerrick, fired his gun, believing that Mr. Ferrell was trying to take the gun away.
Mr. Kerrick was charged with voluntary manslaughter, but the case ended in a hung jury and a mistrial in August 2015. Prosecutors decided not to retry Officer Kerrick, and the case was dismissed.
At Saturday’s news conference held by the Scott family’s lawyers, one of them, Charles G. Monnett III, said he was surprised that North Carolina was again talking about the killing of a black man by the police.
“Quite frankly, I’m shocked that less than two years after the conclusion of the Jonathan Ferrell case, that we are standing back before you again to talk about whether the shooting of another a black man was justified,” he said. “We shouldn’t be here. We’ve got to learn. We’ve got to change our police approach. One of the things that really disturbs me about what I see on the video is the failure of the police to use all of the resources that they had at their disposal to avoid killing Keith.”
After Chief Putney’s news conference, the department released a detailed report of the police’s version of events. It said that Mr. Scott got out of his S.U.V. “with the gun” and “backed away from the vehicle while continuing to ignore officers’ repeated loud verbal commands to drop the gun.”
The release said that Officer Vinson perceived Mr. Scott’s “actions and movements as an imminent physical threat to himself and other officers” before he fired.
Later, the release said, homicide detectives interviewed “multiple” civilian witnesses who said Mr. Scott had ignored repeated commands to drop the gun. A lab analysis of a gun recovered at the scene, the release said, revealed the presence of Mr. Scott’s DNA and fingerprints on the weapon.
The dispute about the footage reached its climax one week before North Carolina was scheduled to restrict access to police recordings. A state law signed by Mr. McCrory that has long been scheduled to take effect on Oct. 1 will prohibit police recordings from being deemed public records. A court order will be required to release any footage, and judges will be allowed to consider whether “release is necessary to advance a compelling public interest,” as well as whether publication “would create a serious threat to the fair, impartial and orderly administration of justice.”
William Barber II, the president of the North Carolina chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., said in an interview on Saturday that the release of the two videos was not sufficient. He called for the full release of all police videos of the incident, and demanded a federal investigation.
He noted that neither he nor anyone else in the public was in possession of all of the facts in the case. But he also said that neither the possession of marijuana nor the possession of a gun should warrant “a death sentence.”
14) Too Poor for Proper Plumbing: A Reality in 500,000 U.S. Homes By SABRINA TAVERNISE
TYLER, Ala. — The hard clay soil in this rural Southern county has twice cursed Dorothy Rudolph. It is good for growing cotton and cucumbers, the crops she worked as a child and hated. And it is bad for burying things — in particular, septic tanks.
So Ms. Rudolph, 64, did what many people around here do. She ran a plastic pipe from her toilet under her yard and into the woods behind her house. Paying to put in a septic tank would cost around $6,000 — a little more than half of her family’s annual income.
“It was a whole lot of money,” she said. “It still is.”
Here in Lowndes County, part of a strip of mostly poor, majority-black counties that cuts through the rural center of Alabama, less than half of the population is on a municipal sewer line. While that is not a hardship for more affluent communities — about one in five American homes are not on city sewer lines — the legacy of rural poverty has left its imprint here: Many people have failing septic tanks and are too poor to fix them. Others, like Ms. Rudolph, have nothing at all.
That is not so uncommon. Nearly half a million households in the United States lack the basic dignity of hot and cold running water, a bathtub or shower, or a working flush toilet, according to the Census Bureau. The absence has implications for public health in the very population that is the most vulnerable.
Crumbling infrastructure has been a theme of this country’s reinvigorated public conversation about race — for instance, a botched fix for old pipes in Flint, Mich., that contaminated the city’s drinking water with lead. But in poor, rural places like Lowndes County, there has never been much infrastructure to begin with.
“We didn’t have anything — no running water, no inside bathrooms,” said John Jackson, a former mayor of White Hall, a town of about 800 in Lowndes that is more than 90 percent black and did not have running water until the early 1980s. “Those were things we were struggling for.”
There is no formal count of residents without proper plumbing in Lowndes, but Kevin White, an environmental engineering professor at the University of South Alabama, said that a survey that he did in a neighboring county years ago found that about 35 percent of homes had septic systems that were failing, with raw sewage on the ground. Another 15 percent had nothing.
“The bottom line is, I can’t afford a septic system,” said Cheryl Ball, a former cook who had a heart attack several years ago and receives disability payments. She lives in a grassy field on which only three of seven homes have septic tanks. Most banks now require proof that a home has proper sewage disposal before lending, but Ms. Ball paid cash for her mobile home — $4,000.
This area, known as the Black Belt (so called more for its soil, than its demographics), is haunted by its history of white violence toward African-Americans and a deep, biting poverty. Lowndes is one of the poorest counties in the country, and its rural population, whose trailers and small houses dot the lush green landscape, often cannot afford the thousands of dollars it costs to put in a tank. Municipalities, with low tax bases, cannot afford extensive sewer lines.
Ms. Rudolph, a retired seamstress, and her husband, a carpenter, live in a tiny, white clapboard house that he built after he, his parents and his siblings fled their home on land owned by a white man who forbade the family to vote. She remembers, as a young girl in the 1950s, not having electricity. They obtained running water in the early 1990s, she said, and used an outhouse until the mid-1990s.
So their white toilet with a fuzzy green cover was a marker of progress. A plastic pipe carries its contents outside and empties into a wooded area not far from the house. There is no visible pooling of sewage, but there are other problems.
“The smell gets so bad,” said Ms. Rudolph, sitting on her porch guarding her chicken coop against a marauding fox. When it rains, she wages war with her toilet. One recent downpour brought its contents gurgling up to the rim.
“I was sitting there looking at it and got me a plunger,” she said. “It took me some plunging to get it clear. I was scared it was going to come back and go on the floor. Horrible.”
She added, “There’s nothing we can do.”
The problem is prickly for the state. Parrish Pugh, an official with the Alabama Department of Public Health, agrees that money plays a part.
“That’s where the rubber hits the road,” he said.
But Alabama law forbids the use of “insanitary sewage collection,” and the responsibility for that rests squarely with the homeowner,” Mr. Pugh said. Resisting is not only illegal, but could have health consequences: Raw sewage can taint drinking water and cause health problems.
“‘My parents had a pipe that ran into the woods, and that’s good enough for me,’” Mr. Pugh said, explaining a common argument. “But we didn’t know as much about disease back then. People are more educated nowadays. They are more concerned.”
The state health department begs, cajoles, and eventually cites people who have problems and do not fix them. In the early 2000s, the authorities even tried arresting people. That prompted a public outcry and the practice soon stopped, but one person spent a weekend in jail and others were left with criminal records.
The department cited about 700 people in the 12 months that ended in March, often because someone complained.
The clay soil makes the problem worse.
“Rural wastewater is usually managed with a septic tank and a drain field, which slowly infiltrates the wastewater into the ground,” Professor White said. “Well, it won’t go into the ground here. Period.”
This area, known as the Black Belt (so called more for its soil, than its demographics), is haunted by its history of white violence toward African-Americans and a deep, biting poverty. Lowndes is one of the poorest counties in the country, and its rural population, whose trailers and small houses dot the lush green landscape, often cannot afford the thousands of dollars it costs to put in a tank. Municipalities, with low tax bases, cannot afford extensive sewer lines.
Ms. Rudolph, a retired seamstress, and her husband, a carpenter, live in a tiny, white clapboard house that he built after he, his parents and his siblings fled their home on land owned by a white man who forbade the family to vote. She remembers, as a young girl in the 1950s, not having electricity. They obtained running water in the early 1990s, she said, and used an outhouse until the mid-1990s.
So their white toilet with a fuzzy green cover was a marker of progress. A plastic pipe carries its contents outside and empties into a wooded area not far from the house. There is no visible pooling of sewage, but there are other problems.
“The smell gets so bad,” said Ms. Rudolph, sitting on her porch guarding her chicken coop against a marauding fox. When it rains, she wages war with her toilet. One recent downpour brought its contents gurgling up to the rim.
“I was sitting there looking at it and got me a plunger,” she said. “It took me some plunging to get it clear. I was scared it was going to come back and go on the floor. Horrible.”
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The problem is prickly for the state. Parrish Pugh, an official with the Alabama Department of Public Health, agrees that money plays a part.
“That’s where the rubber hits the road,” he said.
But Alabama law forbids the use of “insanitary sewage collection,” and the responsibility for that rests squarely with the homeowner,” Mr. Pugh said. Resisting is not only illegal, but could have health consequences: Raw sewage can taint drinking water and cause health problems.
“‘My parents had a pipe that ran into the woods, and that’s good enough for me,’” Mr. Pugh said, explaining a common argument. “But we didn’t know as much about disease back then. People are more educated nowadays. They are more concerned.”
The state health department begs, cajoles, and eventually cites people who have problems and do not fix them. In the early 2000s, the authorities even tried arresting people. That prompted a public outcry and the practice soon stopped, but one person spent a weekend in jail and others were left with criminal records.
The department cited about 700 people in the 12 months that ended in March, often because someone complained.
The clay soil makes the problem worse.
“Rural wastewater is usually managed with a septic tank and a drain field, which slowly infiltrates the wastewater into the ground,” Professor White said. “Well, it won’t go into the ground here. Period.”
Photo
John Jackson, former mayor of White Hall, Ala., said that until the early 1980s, “we didn’t have anything — no running water, no inside bathrooms.”CreditBryan Meltz for The New York Times
He added: “There are some options that may be available, but it’s going to cost thousands of dollars, and most people here can’t afford it. The answer, quite frankly, is not out there yet.”
Experts and advocates have tried to find one. Grants from the state and federal governments to study the problem have come and gone, as have academics wielding surveys. There was even talk of self-composting toilets.
“It’s like we’re going in circles,” said Perman Hardy, a cook in Tyler who even did a urinalysis for a study of health effects. For years, her sewage backed up every time it rained. In December, she spent all the money she had saved for Christmas presents on a new septic tank.
Some change is happening. The town of White Hall recently received funding to connect about 50 homes to sewer lines, the first in its history. Town officials are thrilled: City sewer lines are critical to attract businesses that would bring jobs. But the pace is glacial.
Eli Seaborn, 73, a White Hall councilman, said progress would be slow, like the pace of civil rights gains, where legal discrimination is gone but lingers in other forms. Similar patience is required for sewage, he added.
“Time is going to be the only thing that solves this problem,” he said. “It took more than 50 years for it to happen. But hopefully, it won’t take more than 50 years to fix it.”
And then at 1:30, Steps of City Hall; 2pm Inside City Hall, 2nd FloorFor the Board of Supervisors Vote on the Blue Ribbon Panel Report on Police Misconduct in San Francisco
It is unfathomable that as we see other cops being charged across the country for their heinous murders of Black and Brown people – we in San Francisco still await a SINGLE charge or action from our District Attorney. Not only has DA Gascon not charged anyone in the on-camera execution-style killing of Mario Woods – this DA has not EVER filed charges for ANY of the egregious killings of black and brown people that this city has seen. The DA’s own Blue Ribbon Panel has found damning evidence of violence, corruption, racism, homophobia within SFPD – leading to these murders – and the Chief of Police has resigned in shame over his bloody reign of terror – and STILL Gascon has not acted.
Join us! To demand District Attorney George Gascon CHARGE Killer Police!
#ENOUGH
Please Join Us!
Book Reading with Bay Area Author/Activist CHIVVIS MOORE
& her new memoir:
First Tie Your Camel, Then Trust in God:
An American Feminist in the Arab World
Tuesday, September 27, 7pm
360 42nd Street, Oakland
FREE -- and we hope you’ll buy Chivvis’ book, which benefits MECA!
What begins as a trip to meet Hassan Fathy – Egyptian author of the influential Architecture for the Poor – becomes a 16-year odyssey, one that stretches from a year working in a master carpenter’s shop in Egypt to 11 years teaching English in Palestine. Offering a portrait of a land and a people not found in headlines or sound bytes, Chivvis’ book humanizes the misunderstandings and tragedies that arise when we fail to appreciate the humanity at the core of us all.
“I have been reading your beautiful, sad, and deeply moving story, learning a lot of disturbing history about something I thought I knew about but never saw in such depth. This is an important memoir that…evokes tears and also some laughter, with a great sense of compassion and empathy.”
–Alan Rinzler, former editor, Simon & Schuster
“I cried all the way through reading First Tie Your Camel. The tone, the genuine and honest description of reactions and feelings about the experiences, enabled me to truly understand for the first time why, as a Palestinian living in the West Bank, I always feel so upset and physically ill.”
– Muna Giacaman, Instructor, Bir Zeit University, West Bank
“Chivvis takes us on a journey that is fascinating, eye-opening, and ultimately heart-breaking – initially as a fresh-eyed newcomer working in a 1970’s community in Cairo that most Americans have never seen – to life in occupied Palestine, before and after the 2nd intifada…She leads from the heart, earning hard-won respect from Palestinian neighbors, students, colleagues. Honest, unassuming and vulnerable, she asks the hard questions.”
– Penny Rosenwasser, MECA staffer & author, Hope into Practice, Jewish women choosing justice despite our fears
Chivvis Moore lived 16 years in the Arab world, including 11 years in the West Bank. She has earned her living as a journalist, carpenter/general building contractor, editor and teacher.
Wheelchair accessible
Cosponsored by Joining Hands, Jewish Voice for Peace/Bay Area
Electronic Intifada co-founder/director ALI ABUNIMAH!
Tuesday, October 18, 7pm
First Congregational Church of Berkeley
2345 Channing Way (@ Dana)
Ali Abunimah is a Palestinian-American journalist and author of “The Battle for Justice in Palestine” -- which won the 2014 Palestine Book Award -- and “One Country, A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.” He received the 2013 Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship and has been an activist on these issues for over 20 years.
Alice Walker calls him “a special voice to champion us, one that is… fierce, wise -- a warrior for justice and peace -- someone whose large heart, one senses, beyond his calm, is constantly on fire.”
Tickets available soon!
Benefit for MECA, wheelchair accessible
Cosponsored by KPFA, Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), Jewish Voice for Peace/Bay Area
Chelsea Manning ended her hunger strike today (Sept 13) after the Army finally agreed to treatment for her gender dysphoria.
"This is all that I wanted – for them to let me be me,” said Chelsea Manning.
“But it is hard not to wonder why it has taken so long and why such drastic measures were needed in order to get this help that was recommended.”
Chelsea was shown a memo today stating she will receive gender-reassignment surgery under the DoD’s new policy affecting transgender service members.
If this occurs, Manning will be the first trans prisoner in the US to receive this treatment, setting a precedent that could benefit thousands of transgender inmates.
“This medical care is absolutely vital for Chelsea. It was the government’s refusal to provide her with necessary care that led her to attempt suicide earlier this year,” said Chase Strangio, Chelsea’s attorney at the ACLU, “and it was all the more troubling when she became subject to an investigation and possible punishment in connection with the suicide attempt.
We hope that the government recognizes that charging Chelsea with the crime of being denied essential health care is outrageous and drops those charges.” Read more here
After years of inhumane treatment from the Army, Chelsea Manning attempted to take her life on July 5th, 2016.
Although happy to be alive, Chelsea is now facing disciplinary charges from the Army related to her own suicide attempt.
If convicted of these absurd “administrative offenses”, Chelsea could face indefinite solitary confinement for the rest of her prison term (30 years).
Daniel Ellsberg: “I stand with Chelsea Manning. I hope you will too.”
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.
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