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These are trying times, but they are also filled with intense resistance that gives us hope that a different future is possible. We must continue to work for a world of justice and peace. Berta Cáceres' visionary leadership and resistance during her life and the steadfast continuation of the struggle by her colleagues in COPINH inspires us to continue the long-term work of resisting U.S. empire and domination around the world, including stopping U.S. military aid and training in Honduras.
March 2nd marks the 1 year anniversary of the brutal assassination of Berta, and we encourage you to organize an event this March to remember Berta and call for an end to the U.S. militarization of Honduras. Berta's organization, COPINH has issued a call for actions around the world on March 2nd as well as for events throughout the month of March (Read Statement Here). We share a few ideas and possible dates, by no means all, here:
- March 2 - Global Day of Action and Anniversary of Berta's assassination: Organize an action or a Vigil for Berta and so many others who have lost their lives speaking out for justice. If your Representative or Senator supports continued U.S. funding of Honduras' security forces, hold the event outside his/her office (contact arturo@soaw.org for more on your Rep. or Senator's position)
- March 4 - Berta Cáceres' Birthday: Honor Berta's legacy as an environmentalist, anti-racist, and feminist social movement leader
- March 8 - International Women's Day: Show a film on Berta and her legacy - click here for some suggested videos/documentaries
- March 27 - Anniversary of COPINH: Organize a protest against US military aid to Honduras
- March ? - Participate in an protest in solidarity with refugees & migrants; bring posters of Berta to call attention to the U.S. role in creating forced migration from Honduras
We look forward to hearing your ideas and events you may be planning. Please contact us for contacts, materials, and information about your Representative/Senator's position or anything else you need to make an action, vigil, or event happen near your home. If you plan an event please let us know so we can share it. A number of organizations around the country are planning actions, and we'll be posting information on events already being planned in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago and other locations next week.
To get involved in this Call to Action, SOAW advocacy work (e.g. pushing to suspend US military/security aid to Honduras, or opposing the "Alliance for Prosperity"), or to be a part of the SOAW Honduras Solidarity Collective, please email me at arturo@soaw.org
Grassroots power works! Together we will challenge U.S. Imperialism in Honduras, which contributes so much to the forced migration of Honduran refugees, tramples on Native people's rights, and facilitates the destruction of the environment.
Berta Vive! La Lucha Sigue!
Arturo & Brigitte
SOA Watch
SOA Watch
We appreciate your interest! You are subscribed to the SOA Watch list as bauaw2003-owner@yahoogroups.com.
Click here if you'd like to unsubscribe from these messages, or change your email address.
The movement to close the SOA is a community, and all ideas are welcome.
SOA Watch, 733 Euclid Street NW, Washington, DC 20001
If you like the work of SOA Watch, you can donate here: http://SOAW.org/donate
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National March and Rally
Support Palestine in D.C.! Protest AIPAC!
Sunday, March 26 - Gather 12 Noon
March from the White House to the Convention Center
At last year's AIPAC conference, Donald Trump made an outrageous pledge: "We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem ... The Palestinians must come to the table knowing that the bond between the United States and Israel is absolutely, totally unbreakable." Now that he is the president, Trump seems dead set on following through on his promise.
This would be an extreme provocation that tramples on the Palestinian right to self-determination. Every progressive person needs to mobilize to stop this.
In the short time since Trump took the oath of office, the Israeli government has already announced thousands of new illegal settler homes in the Palestinian territories seized in the 1967 war. The Palestinian people need our solidarity now more than ever as they resist these wanton acts of aggression.
From Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go!
Just like Trump is encouraging Israel to step up its violation of Palestinian rights, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is cheer leading for Trump's extreme right agenda. On Jan. 28, Netanyahu sent this outrageous tweet:
The fight for justice for Palestine and the fight to stop the Trump Agenda are one in the same!
Join the National Rally and March on Sunday, March 26
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right To Return Coalition and the ANSWER Coalition will once again spearhead this National Rally to Support Palestine in DC 2017!
This rally will start at the White House with thousands of people from across the nation and around the world, and end up in front of AIPAC's annual convention! AIPAC is the primary organization lobbying to continue the brutal illegal occupation of Palestine for over 68 years.
Click here to endorse the demonstrationLet us know if you are able to organize transportation to D.C.
We must protest to end this outrageous lobby that ultimately supports the oppression and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Please come out and support the Palestinian people in their noble struggle to be free.
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End U.S. aid to Israel — End the occupation now!
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John T. Kaye invited you to Moms Clean Air Force's event
People's Climate March
Saturday, April 29 at 9 AM EDT
Washington, District of Columbia in Washington, District of Columbia
Going
Interested
Not Interested
Join us April 29th in Washington, DC to let Trump know that we won't let him destroy the environment on our watch. There is no denying it: Donald Trump's election is a threat to the future of our pla... John T. Kaye and Dave Schubert are going. 
| John T. Kaye invited you to Moms Clean Air Force's event | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Rasmea Defense Committee statement - December 21, 2016
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Rasmea retrial set for May 16, 2017
Support the defense now!
This morning, Rasmea Odeh and her defense attorney Michael Deutsch were called into Judge Gershwin Drain's courtroom in Detroit, where the judge and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Tukel were in attendance. The parties all agreed on May 16, 2017, as the new starting date for Rasmea's retrial.
The defense committee will continue to send regular updates regarding any pre-trial hearings or other appearances that Rasmea must make between now and the retrial, as well as requests to participate in regular defense organizing and activities.
In addition, we urge supporters to continue to
call U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade at 313-226-9100,
or tweet @USAO_MIE
and demand that she stop wasting taxpayer money, that she stop persecuting a woman who has given so much to U.S. society, and that she #DropTheChargesNow against Rasmea.
Lastly, and in the spirit of the season, please help us win #Justice4Rasmea by making your end-of-year donation to the defense fund! We thank you all for your continued support!
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Background info
Statement from Tuesday, December 13
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U.S. Attorney extends political attack on Rasmea, brings new indictment against the Palestinian American
Today, U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade announced that a grand jury she had empaneled returned a new, superseding indictment against Rasmea Odeh for unlawful procurement of naturalization. This new indictment, just four weeks before her retrial, is a vicious attack by prosecutors desperate after a series of setbacks in their case against the Chicago-based Palestinian American community leader. From the outset, the government has attempted to exclude and discredit evidence of Rasmea's torture at the hands of Israeli authorities, but the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the prosecution, which led to the retrial; and the government's own expert affirmed that Rasmea lives with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Knowing that it faces the real prospect of losing a retrial before a jury, the U.S. Attorney's office has reframed its case against Rasmea, putting allegations of terrorism front and center. In the first trial in 2014, prosecutors were barred from using the word "terrorism," because Judge Gershwin Drain agreed the word would bias the jury. The new indictment adds two allegations that preclude this protection: first, that the crimes she was forced by torture to confess to are "terrorist activity"; and second, that she failed to report an alleged association with a "Designated Terrorist Organization." Despite the government's claim that this is a simple case of immigration fraud, this new indictment is written to ensure that Rasmea stands before a jury as an accused terrorist.
The Rasmea Defense Committee is urging supporters to call U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade at 313-226-9100, or tweet @USAO_MIE, and demand that she stop wasting taxpayer money, that she stop persecuting a woman who has given so much to U.S. society, and that she #DropTheChargesNow against Rasmea. In addition, the committee is calling on supporters to help win #Justice4Rasmea by donating to the defense and organizing educational events about the case.
"They [the prosecutors] are switching course because they know that a jury will believe Rasmea," says Nesreen Hasan of the Rasmea Defense Committee and its lead organization, the U.S. Palestinian Community Network. "We have always said, from day one, that this is a political case, and that the government is prosecuting Rasmea as part of a broader attack, the criminalization of the Palestine liberation movement. This new indictment is literally the same charge, with the same evidence - immigration forms. Only now, they want to paint Rasmea, and all Palestinians, as terrorists. The real criminals in this case are the Israelis who brutally tortured Rasmea 45 years ago, as well as those in the U.S. government who are trying to put her on trial for surviving the brutality committed against her."
Prosecutors will be disappointed to find that these new allegations fail to erode Rasmea's support. People have mobilized by the hundreds for countless hearings, every day of her 2014 trial, and her appeal earlier this year. "We have people ready to come from across the Midwest to stand with Rasmea in Detroit on January 10, but we are also prepared to adjust those plans to be there whenever we are needed," says Jess Sundin of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, who lives in Minneapolis and has mobilized dozens of Minnesotans and others in support of the defense. "We will redouble our organizing and fundraising work, and make certain Rasmea has the best defense possible."
According to lead defense attorney Michael Deutsch, "We also intend to challenge this indictment as vindictive and politically-motivated."
Visit www.justice4rasmea.org for more information.
### End ###
Copyright © 2016 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
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100,000 protest in San Francisco, CA
Pictures From Women's
Marches on Every Continent
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About the recently appealed Court victory:
On January 3rd, a federal court granted Mumia Abu-Jamal's petition for immediate and effective treatment for his Hepatitis-C infection, which has hitherto been denied him. The judge struck down Pennsylvania's protocols as "deliberate indifference to serious medical need."
This is a rare and important win for innocent political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal in a court system that has routinely subjected him to the "Mumia exception," i.e., a refusal of justice despite court precedents in his favor. Thousands of Hep-C-infected prisoners throughout Pennsylvania and the US stand to benefit from this decision, provided it is upheld.
But, it is up to us to make sure that this decision is not over-turned on appeal--something the State of Pennsylvania will most likely seek.
Hundreds demonstrated in both Philadelphia and Oakland on December 9th to demand both this Hep-C treatment for prisoners, and "Free Mumia Now!" In Oakland, the December 9th Free Mumia Coalition rallied in downtown and then marched on the OPD headquarters. The Coalition brought over two dozen groups together to reignite the movement to free Mumia; and now we need your support to expand and build for more actions in this new, and likely very dangerous year for political prisoners.
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Chelsea Manning's Supporters Are Coming Through for Her in a Big Way
After seven years of imprisonment, Chelsea Manning is about to go free. But that doesn't mean her troubles are behind her.
After seven years of imprisonment, Chelsea Manning is about to go free. But that doesn't mean her troubles are behind her.
Her supporters know that.
"She has endured unimaginable abuses for the seven years she has spent in custody," Chase Strangio, an ACLU staff attorney and Manning's lead counsel, told ATTN:, "from severe conditions of solitary confinement to the repeated denial of her health care, to the ongoing pain and indignity of being held in a facility for men even though she is a woman. The effects of these experiences will be with Chelsea for the rest of her life."
Manning joined the military in 2007, deploying to Iraq where the Army private saw concealed evidence of wrongdoing — U.S. soldiers killing unarmed civilians; detainees being tortured, raped, and murdered by the Iraqi state — that she leaked to the public, an offense that got her sentenced to 35 years in a military prison. Ten years and a presidential pardon later and Manning is set to be freed in a matter of weeks.
But she'll be free to live in a country where the current president thinks her an "ungrateful traitor" who should still be behind bars. And she'll be broke in a country where housing and health care are anything but free.
Strangio wants to make the rest of her life a little easier: He's trying to raise $100,000 by the time Manning is released from military prison on May 17. Now 29, Manning is no longer the teenager her parents named "Bradley," but a transgender woman named Chelsea with a column in The Guardian. The transition from incarceration to civilization is never easy, and it will be especially hard for someone living in a country that her critics charge she doesn't love.
"She has endured unimaginable abuses for the seven years she has spent in custody," Chase Strangio, an ACLU staff attorney and Manning's lead counsel, told ATTN:, "from severe conditions of solitary confinement to the repeated denial of her health care, to the ongoing pain and indignity of being held in a facility for men even though she is a woman. The effects of these experiences will be with Chelsea for the rest of her life."
Manning joined the military in 2007, deploying to Iraq where the Army private saw concealed evidence of wrongdoing — U.S. soldiers killing unarmed civilians; detainees being tortured, raped, and murdered by the Iraqi state — that she leaked to the public, an offense that got her sentenced to 35 years in a military prison. Ten years and a presidential pardon later and Manning is set to be freed in a matter of weeks.
But she'll be free to live in a country where the current president thinks her an "ungrateful traitor" who should still be behind bars. And she'll be broke in a country where housing and health care are anything but free.
Strangio wants to make the rest of her life a little easier: He's trying to raise $100,000 by the time Manning is released from military prison on May 17. Now 29, Manning is no longer the teenager her parents named "Bradley," but a transgender woman named Chelsea with a column in The Guardian. The transition from incarceration to civilization is never easy, and it will be especially hard for someone living in a country that her critics charge she doesn't love.
"Leaving prison is not going to be easy and Chelsea is going to have to face the collateral consequences of her convictions and the effects of all that she endured in prison," Strangio said. "Resources are essential for her if she is going to have a chance to live safely and freely."
President Barack Obama commuted Manning's sentence on Jan. 17, one of his last acts while in office. As soon as that happened, her supporters wanted to know how they could help.
"Chelsea's family and friends wanted to set up a fund that would transfer the money directly into Chelsea's bank account, which is what this fundraiser will do," Strangio said. Money raised will go toward everything it takes to live in this free country: rent, health care, and clothes, among other things. "It likely won't cover everything," Strangio noted, but "we are hopeful that we can reach and exceed that goal."
Since the GoFundMe page was launched on Tuesday, supporters have donated over $47,000.
Another potential cost they might need to cover: protection. Though Manning's supports have hailed her as a whistleblower uncovering injustices perpetrated by the United States, both liberals and conservatives alike have deemed her a traitor.
"It will be Chelsea's decision to decide what safety and security mean to her and how to plan to meet those needs," Strangio told ATTN:. "Hopefully the community of people who recognize Chelsea as a hero will help make sure that she has the financial, emotional and logistical tools to survive."
https://www.attn.com/stories/14850/supporters-say-whistleblower-needs-100000-survive
President Barack Obama commuted Manning's sentence on Jan. 17, one of his last acts while in office. As soon as that happened, her supporters wanted to know how they could help.
"Chelsea's family and friends wanted to set up a fund that would transfer the money directly into Chelsea's bank account, which is what this fundraiser will do," Strangio said. Money raised will go toward everything it takes to live in this free country: rent, health care, and clothes, among other things. "It likely won't cover everything," Strangio noted, but "we are hopeful that we can reach and exceed that goal."
Since the GoFundMe page was launched on Tuesday, supporters have donated over $47,000.
Another potential cost they might need to cover: protection. Though Manning's supports have hailed her as a whistleblower uncovering injustices perpetrated by the United States, both liberals and conservatives alike have deemed her a traitor.
"It will be Chelsea's decision to decide what safety and security mean to her and how to plan to meet those needs," Strangio told ATTN:. "Hopefully the community of people who recognize Chelsea as a hero will help make sure that she has the financial, emotional and logistical tools to survive."
https://www.attn.com/stories/14850/supporters-say-whistleblower-needs-100000-survive
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Protect Kevin "Rashid" Johnson from Prison Repression!
PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY
WHEN: Anytime
WHAT: Protect imprisoned activist-journalist Kevin "Rashid" Johnson
FACEBOOK EVENT: https://www.facebook.com/events/1794902884117144/
On December 21, 2016, Kevin "Rashid" Johnson was the victim of an
assault by guards at the Clements Unit where he is currently being held,
just outside Amarillo, Texas. Rashid was sprayed with OC pepper gas
while handcuffed in his cell, and then left in the contaminated cell for
hours with no possibility to shower and no access to fresh air. It was
in fact days before he was supplied with new sheets or clothes (his bed
was covered with the toxic OC residue), and to this day his cell has not
been properly decontaminated.
This assault came on the heels of another serious move against Rashid,
as guards followed up on threats to confiscate all of his property – not
only files required for legal matters, but also art supplies, cups to
drink water out of, and food he had recently purchased from the
commissary. The guards in question were working under the direction of
Captain Patricia Flowers, who had previously told Rashid that she
intended to seize all of his personal belongings as retaliation for his
writings about mistreatment of prisoners, up to and including assaults
and purposeful medical negligence that have led to numerous deaths in
custody. Specifically, Rashid's writings have called attention to the
deaths of Christopher Woolverton, Joseph Comeaux, and Alton Rodgers, and
he has been contacted by lawyers litigating on behalf of the families of
at least two of these men.
As a journalist and activist literally embedded within the bowels of the
world's largest prison system, Rashid relies on his files and notes for
correspondence, legal matters, and his various news reports.
Furthermore, Rashid is a self-taught artist of considerable talent (his
work has appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, and books);
needless to say, the guards were also instructed to seize his art
materials and the drawings he was working on.
(For a more complete description of Rashid's ordeal on and following
December 21, see his recent article "Bound and Gassed: My Reward for
Exposing Abuses and Killings of Texas Prisoners" at
http://rashidmod.com/?p=2321)
Particularly worrisome, is the fact that the abuse currently directed
against Rashid is almost a carbon-copy of what was directed against
Joseph Comeaux in 2013, who was eventually even denied urgently needed
medical care. Comeaux died shortly thereafter.
This is the time to step up and take action to protect Rashid; and the
only protection we can provide, from the outside, is to make sure prison
authorities know that we are watching. Whether you have read his
articles about prison conditions, his political or philosophical
polemics (and whether you agreed with him or not!), or just appreciate
his artwork – even if this is the first you are hearing about Rashid –
we need you to step up and make a few phone calls and send some emails.
When doing so, let officials know you are contacting them about Kevin
Johnson, ID #1859887, and the incident in which he was gassed and his
property confiscated on December 21, 2016. The officials to contact are:
Warden Kevin Foley
Clements Unit
telephone: (806) 381-7080 (you will reach the general switchboard; ask
to speak to the warden's office)
Tell Warden Foley that you have heard of the gas attack on Rashid.
Specific demands you can make:
* That Kevin Johnson's property be returned to him
* That Kevin Johnson's cell be thoroughly decontaminated
* That Captain Patricia Flowers, Lieutenant Crystal Turner, Lieutenant
Arleen Waak, and Corrections Officer Andrew Leonard be sanctioned for
targeting Kevin Johnson for retaliation for his writings
* That measures be taken to ensure that whistleblowers amongst staff and
the prisoner population not be targeted for any reprisals from guards or
other authorities. (This is important because at least one guard and
several prisoners have signed statements asserting that Rashid was left
in his gassed cell for hours, and that his property should not have been
seized.)
Try to be polite, while expressing how concerned you are for Kevin
Johnson's safety. You will almost certainly be told that because other
people have already called and there is an ongoing investigation – or
else, because you are not a member of his family -- that you cannot be
given any information. Say that you understand, but that you still wish
to have your concerns noted, and that you want the prison to know that
you will be keeping track of what happens to Mr Johnson.
The following other authorities should also be contacted. These bodies
may claim they are unable to directly intervene, however we know that by
creating a situation where they are receiving complaints, they will
eventually contact other authorities who can intervene to see what the
fuss is all about. So it's important to get on their cases too:
TDCJ Ombudsman: ombudsman@tdcj.texas.gov
The Inspector General: 512-671-2480
Let these "watchdogs" know you are concerned that Kevin Johnson #1859887
was the victim of a gas attack in Clements Unit on December 21, 2016.
Numerous witnesses have signed statements confirming that he was
handcuffed, in his cell, and not threatening anyone at the time he was
gassed. Furthermore, he was not allowed to shower for hours, and his
cell was never properly decontaminated, so that he was still suffering
the effects of the gas days later. It is also essential to mention that
his property was improperly confiscated, and that he had previously been
threatened with having this happen as retaliation for his writing about
prison conditions. Kevin Johnson's property must be returned!
Finally, complaints should also be directed to the director of the VA
DOC Harold Clarke and the VA DOC's Interstate Compact Supervisor, Terry
Glenn. This is because Rashid is in fact a Virginia prisoner, who has
been exiled from Virginia under something called the Interstate Compact,
which is used by some states as a way to be rid of activist prisoners,
while at the same time separating them from their families and
supporters. Please contact:
VADOC Director, Harold Clarke
804-887-8081
Director.Clarke@vadoc.virginia.gov
Interstate Compact director, Terry Glenn
804-887-7866
Let them know that you are phoning about Kevin Johnson, a Virginia
prisoner who has been sent to Texas under the Interstate Compact. His
Texas ID # is 1859887 however his Virginia ID # is 1007485. Inform them
that Mr Johnson has been gassed by guards and has had his property
seized as retaliation for his writing about prison conditions. These are
serious legal and human rights violations, and even though they occurred
in Texas, the Virginia Department of Corrections is responsible as Mr
Johnson is a Virginia prisoner. Despite the fact that they may ask you
who you are, and how you know about this, and for your contact
information, they will likely simply conclude by saying that they will
not be getting back to you. Nonetheless, it is worth urging them to
contact Texas officials about this matter.
It is good to call whenever you are able. However, in order to maximize
our impact, for those who can, we are suggesting that people make their
phone calls on Thursday, January 5.
And at the same time, please take a moment to sign the online petition
to support Rashid, up at the Roots Action website:
https://diy.rootsaction.org/petitions/prison-activist-gassed-in-clements-unit-prison-texas-law-enforcement-is-violently-out-of-control
Rashid has taken considerable risks in reporting on the abuse he
witnesses at the Clements Unit, just as he has at other prisons. Indeed,
he has continued to report on the violence and medical neglect to which
prisoners are subjected, despite threats from prison staff. If we, as a
movement, are serious about working to resist and eventually abolish the
U.S. prison system, we must do all we can to assist and protect those
like Rashid who take it upon themselves to stand up and speak out. As
Ojore Lutalo once put it, "Any movement that does not support their
political internees ... is a sham movement."
**********************
To learn more about Kevin "Rashid" Johnson, the abuses in the Texas
prison system, as well as his work in founding and leading the New
Afrikan Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter, see his website
athttp://www.rashidmod.com
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WHEN: Anytime
WHAT: Protect imprisoned activist-journalist Kevin "Rashid" Johnson
FACEBOOK EVENT: https://www.facebook.com/events/1794902884117144/
On December 21, 2016, Kevin "Rashid" Johnson was the victim of an
assault by guards at the Clements Unit where he is currently being held,
just outside Amarillo, Texas. Rashid was sprayed with OC pepper gas
while handcuffed in his cell, and then left in the contaminated cell for
hours with no possibility to shower and no access to fresh air. It was
in fact days before he was supplied with new sheets or clothes (his bed
was covered with the toxic OC residue), and to this day his cell has not
been properly decontaminated.
This assault came on the heels of another serious move against Rashid,
as guards followed up on threats to confiscate all of his property – not
only files required for legal matters, but also art supplies, cups to
drink water out of, and food he had recently purchased from the
commissary. The guards in question were working under the direction of
Captain Patricia Flowers, who had previously told Rashid that she
intended to seize all of his personal belongings as retaliation for his
writings about mistreatment of prisoners, up to and including assaults
and purposeful medical negligence that have led to numerous deaths in
custody. Specifically, Rashid's writings have called attention to the
deaths of Christopher Woolverton, Joseph Comeaux, and Alton Rodgers, and
he has been contacted by lawyers litigating on behalf of the families of
at least two of these men.
As a journalist and activist literally embedded within the bowels of the
world's largest prison system, Rashid relies on his files and notes for
correspondence, legal matters, and his various news reports.
Furthermore, Rashid is a self-taught artist of considerable talent (his
work has appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, and books);
needless to say, the guards were also instructed to seize his art
materials and the drawings he was working on.
(For a more complete description of Rashid's ordeal on and following
December 21, see his recent article "Bound and Gassed: My Reward for
Exposing Abuses and Killings of Texas Prisoners" at
http://rashidmod.com/?p=2321)
Particularly worrisome, is the fact that the abuse currently directed
against Rashid is almost a carbon-copy of what was directed against
Joseph Comeaux in 2013, who was eventually even denied urgently needed
medical care. Comeaux died shortly thereafter.
This is the time to step up and take action to protect Rashid; and the
only protection we can provide, from the outside, is to make sure prison
authorities know that we are watching. Whether you have read his
articles about prison conditions, his political or philosophical
polemics (and whether you agreed with him or not!), or just appreciate
his artwork – even if this is the first you are hearing about Rashid –
we need you to step up and make a few phone calls and send some emails.
When doing so, let officials know you are contacting them about Kevin
Johnson, ID #1859887, and the incident in which he was gassed and his
property confiscated on December 21, 2016. The officials to contact are:
Warden Kevin Foley
Clements Unit
telephone: (806) 381-7080 (you will reach the general switchboard; ask
to speak to the warden's office)
Tell Warden Foley that you have heard of the gas attack on Rashid.
Specific demands you can make:
* That Kevin Johnson's property be returned to him
* That Kevin Johnson's cell be thoroughly decontaminated
* That Captain Patricia Flowers, Lieutenant Crystal Turner, Lieutenant
Arleen Waak, and Corrections Officer Andrew Leonard be sanctioned for
targeting Kevin Johnson for retaliation for his writings
* That measures be taken to ensure that whistleblowers amongst staff and
the prisoner population not be targeted for any reprisals from guards or
other authorities. (This is important because at least one guard and
several prisoners have signed statements asserting that Rashid was left
in his gassed cell for hours, and that his property should not have been
seized.)
Try to be polite, while expressing how concerned you are for Kevin
Johnson's safety. You will almost certainly be told that because other
people have already called and there is an ongoing investigation – or
else, because you are not a member of his family -- that you cannot be
given any information. Say that you understand, but that you still wish
to have your concerns noted, and that you want the prison to know that
you will be keeping track of what happens to Mr Johnson.
The following other authorities should also be contacted. These bodies
may claim they are unable to directly intervene, however we know that by
creating a situation where they are receiving complaints, they will
eventually contact other authorities who can intervene to see what the
fuss is all about. So it's important to get on their cases too:
TDCJ Ombudsman: ombudsman@tdcj.texas.gov
The Inspector General: 512-671-2480
Let these "watchdogs" know you are concerned that Kevin Johnson #1859887
was the victim of a gas attack in Clements Unit on December 21, 2016.
Numerous witnesses have signed statements confirming that he was
handcuffed, in his cell, and not threatening anyone at the time he was
gassed. Furthermore, he was not allowed to shower for hours, and his
cell was never properly decontaminated, so that he was still suffering
the effects of the gas days later. It is also essential to mention that
his property was improperly confiscated, and that he had previously been
threatened with having this happen as retaliation for his writing about
prison conditions. Kevin Johnson's property must be returned!
Finally, complaints should also be directed to the director of the VA
DOC Harold Clarke and the VA DOC's Interstate Compact Supervisor, Terry
Glenn. This is because Rashid is in fact a Virginia prisoner, who has
been exiled from Virginia under something called the Interstate Compact,
which is used by some states as a way to be rid of activist prisoners,
while at the same time separating them from their families and
supporters. Please contact:
VADOC Director, Harold Clarke
804-887-8081
Director.Clarke@vadoc.virginia.gov
Interstate Compact director, Terry Glenn
804-887-7866
Let them know that you are phoning about Kevin Johnson, a Virginia
prisoner who has been sent to Texas under the Interstate Compact. His
Texas ID # is 1859887 however his Virginia ID # is 1007485. Inform them
that Mr Johnson has been gassed by guards and has had his property
seized as retaliation for his writing about prison conditions. These are
serious legal and human rights violations, and even though they occurred
in Texas, the Virginia Department of Corrections is responsible as Mr
Johnson is a Virginia prisoner. Despite the fact that they may ask you
who you are, and how you know about this, and for your contact
information, they will likely simply conclude by saying that they will
not be getting back to you. Nonetheless, it is worth urging them to
contact Texas officials about this matter.
It is good to call whenever you are able. However, in order to maximize
our impact, for those who can, we are suggesting that people make their
phone calls on Thursday, January 5.
And at the same time, please take a moment to sign the online petition
to support Rashid, up at the Roots Action website:
https://diy.rootsaction.org/petitions/prison-activist-gassed-in-clements-unit-prison-texas-law-enforcement-is-violently-out-of-control
Rashid has taken considerable risks in reporting on the abuse he
witnesses at the Clements Unit, just as he has at other prisons. Indeed,
he has continued to report on the violence and medical neglect to which
prisoners are subjected, despite threats from prison staff. If we, as a
movement, are serious about working to resist and eventually abolish the
U.S. prison system, we must do all we can to assist and protect those
like Rashid who take it upon themselves to stand up and speak out. As
Ojore Lutalo once put it, "Any movement that does not support their
political internees ... is a sham movement."
**********************
To learn more about Kevin "Rashid" Johnson, the abuses in the Texas
prison system, as well as his work in founding and leading the New
Afrikan Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter, see his website
athttp://www.rashidmod.com
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As Robert Boyle, Esq. said, "The struggle is far from over: the DOC will no doubt appeal this ruling. But a victory! Thanks Pam Africa and all the Mumia supporters and all of you."
"Everyone has to get on board to keep the pressure on. We have an opportunity here that we have never had before. We are going to do it as a unified community, everyone together." - Pam Africa
Let me be honest. We fundraise like we breathe. We have to. We are going to win-- with your key help. We've got until midnight tomorrow to raise just $2,021! We're 97% there. Please pitch in today to help us reach $60K!
Tomorrow your phone will ring with a special message from Mumia. In it, he says, "This is indeed a serious time for me, and for us all. It is not easy to take on the state and prevail; however, it is right to do so. With your help, we may be able to prevail. This is Mumia Abu-Jamal, thanking you for supporting Prison Radio."
John, the clock's running out- but it's not too late to chip in and help us reach our goal! You can open the airwaves for prisoners to speak out in this urgent time of massive incarceration.
Will you pitch in with a gift of $103, $35 or even $250 to bring us to our goal by midnight and amplify the voices of prisoners?
CONTRIBUTE
Thank you for being a part of this struggle.
Cuando luchamos ganamos! When we fight we win!
Noelle Hanrahan, Director
To give by check:
PO Box 411074
San Francisco, CA
94141
Stock or legacy gifts:
Noelle Hanrahan
(415) 706 - 5222
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. ARTICLES IN FULL
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Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin "Rashid" Johnson featuring exchanges with an Outlaw Kindle Edition
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Join the Fight to Free Rev. Pinkney!
Click HERE to view in browser
http://www.iacenter.org/prisoners/freepinkney-1-28-15/
UPDATE:
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
Contributions for Rev. Pinkney's defense can be sent to BANCO at Mrs Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union St., Benton Harbor, MI 49022
Or you can donate on-line at bhbanco.org.
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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.
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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
Mumia Is Innocent! Free Mumia!
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Commute Kevin Cooper's Death Sentence
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 is an African-American man who was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 for the gruesome murders of a white family in Chino Hills, California: Doug and Peggy Ryen and their daughter Jessica and their house- guest Christopher Hughes. The Ryens' 8 year old son Josh, also attacked, was left for dead but survived.
Convicted in an atmosphere of racial hatred in San Bernardino County CA, Kevin Cooper remains under a threat of imminent execution in San Quentin. He has never received a fair hearing on his claim of innocence. In a dissenting opinion in 2009, five federal judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals signed a 82 page dissenting opinion that begins: "The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." 565 F.3d 581.
There is significant evidence that exonerates Mr. Cooper and points toward other suspects:
The coroner who investigated the Ryen murders concluded that the murders took four minutes at most and that the murder weapons were a hatchet, a long knife, an ice pick and perhaps a second knife. How could a single person, in four or fewer minutes, wield three or four weapons, and inflict over 140 wounds on five people, two of whom were adults (including a 200 pound ex-marine) who had loaded weapons near their bedsides?
The sole surviving victim of the murders, Josh Ryen, told police and hospital staff within hours of the murders that the culprits were "three white men." Josh Ryen repeated this statement in the days following the crimes. When he twice saw Mr. Cooper's picture on TV as the suspected attacker, Josh Ryen said "that's not the man who did it."
Josh Ryen's description of the killers was corroborated by two witnesses who were driving near the Ryens' home the night of the murders. They reported seeing three white men in a station wagon matching the description of the Ryens' car speeding away from the direction of the Ryens' home.
These descriptions were corroborated by testimony of several employees and patrons of a bar close to the Ryens' home, who saw three white men enter the bar around midnight the night of the murders, two of whom were covered in blood, and one of whom was wearing coveralls.
The identity of the real killers was further corroborated by a woman who, shortly after the murders were discovered, alerted the sheriff's department that her boyfriend, a convicted murderer, left blood-spattered coveralls at her home the night of the murders. She also reported that her boyfriend had been wearing a tan t-shirt matching a tan t-shirt with Doug Ryen's blood on it recovered near the bar. She also reported that her boyfriend owned a hatchet matching the one recovered near the scene of the crime, which she noted was missing in the days following the murders; it never reappeared; further, her sister saw that boyfriend and two other white men in a vehicle that could have been the Ryens' car on the night of the murders.
Lacking a motive to ascribe to Mr. Cooper for the crimes, the prosecution claimed that Mr. Cooper, who had earlier walked away from custody at a minimum security prison, stole the Ryens' car to escape to Mexico. But the Ryens had left the keys in both their cars (which were parked in the driveway), so there was no need to kill them to steal their car. The prosecution also claimed that Mr. Cooper needed money, but money and credit cards were found untouched and in plain sight at the murder scene.
The jury in 1985 deliberated for seven days before finding Mr. Cooper guilty. One juror later said that if there had been one less piece of evidence, the jury would not have voted to convict.
The evidence the prosecution presented at trial tying Mr. Cooper to the crime scene has all been discredited… (Continue reading this document at: http://www.savekevincooper.org/_new_freekevincooperdotorg/TEST/Scripts/DataLibraries/upload/KC_FactSheet_2014.pdf)
This message from the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. July 2015
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CANCEL ALL STUDENT DEBT!
Sign the Petition:
http://cancelallstudentdebt.com/?code=kos
Dear President Obama, Senators, and Members of Congress:
Americans now owe $1.3 trillion in student debt. Eighty-six percent of that money is owed to the United States government. This is a crushing burden for more than 40 million Americans and their families.
I urge you to take immediate action to forgive all student debt, public and private.
American Federation of Teachers
Campaign for America's Future
Courage Campaign
Daily Kos
Democracy for America
LeftAction
Project Springboard
RH Reality Check
RootsAction
Student Debt Crisis
The Nation
Working Families
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Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson
Write: Lorenzo Johnson
DF 1036
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Rd.
Frackville, PA 17932
Email: Through JPay using the code:
Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC
or
Directly at LorenzoJohnson17932@gmail.com
freelorenzojohnson.org
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Sign the Petition:
http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/petition.php
"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 is an African-American man who was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 for the gruesome murders of a white family in Chino Hills, California: Doug and Peggy Ryen and their daughter Jessica and their house- guest Christopher Hughes. The Ryens' 8 year old son Josh, also attacked, was left for dead but survived.
Convicted in an atmosphere of racial hatred in San Bernardino County CA, Kevin Cooper remains under a threat of imminent execution in San Quentin. He has never received a fair hearing on his claim of innocence. In a dissenting opinion in 2009, five federal judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals signed a 82 page dissenting opinion that begins: "The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." 565 F.3d 581.
There is significant evidence that exonerates Mr. Cooper and points toward other suspects:
The coroner who investigated the Ryen murders concluded that the murders took four minutes at most and that the murder weapons were a hatchet, a long knife, an ice pick and perhaps a second knife. How could a single person, in four or fewer minutes, wield three or four weapons, and inflict over 140 wounds on five people, two of whom were adults (including a 200 pound ex-marine) who had loaded weapons near their bedsides?
The sole surviving victim of the murders, Josh Ryen, told police and hospital staff within hours of the murders that the culprits were "three white men." Josh Ryen repeated this statement in the days following the crimes. When he twice saw Mr. Cooper's picture on TV as the suspected attacker, Josh Ryen said "that's not the man who did it."
Josh Ryen's description of the killers was corroborated by two witnesses who were driving near the Ryens' home the night of the murders. They reported seeing three white men in a station wagon matching the description of the Ryens' car speeding away from the direction of the Ryens' home.
These descriptions were corroborated by testimony of several employees and patrons of a bar close to the Ryens' home, who saw three white men enter the bar around midnight the night of the murders, two of whom were covered in blood, and one of whom was wearing coveralls.
The identity of the real killers was further corroborated by a woman who, shortly after the murders were discovered, alerted the sheriff's department that her boyfriend, a convicted murderer, left blood-spattered coveralls at her home the night of the murders. She also reported that her boyfriend had been wearing a tan t-shirt matching a tan t-shirt with Doug Ryen's blood on it recovered near the bar. She also reported that her boyfriend owned a hatchet matching the one recovered near the scene of the crime, which she noted was missing in the days following the murders; it never reappeared; further, her sister saw that boyfriend and two other white men in a vehicle that could have been the Ryens' car on the night of the murders.
Lacking a motive to ascribe to Mr. Cooper for the crimes, the prosecution claimed that Mr. Cooper, who had earlier walked away from custody at a minimum security prison, stole the Ryens' car to escape to Mexico. But the Ryens had left the keys in both their cars (which were parked in the driveway), so there was no need to kill them to steal their car. The prosecution also claimed that Mr. Cooper needed money, but money and credit cards were found untouched and in plain sight at the murder scene.
The jury in 1985 deliberated for seven days before finding Mr. Cooper guilty. One juror later said that if there had been one less piece of evidence, the jury would not have voted to convict.
The evidence the prosecution presented at trial tying Mr. Cooper to the crime scene has all been discredited… (Continue reading this document at: http://www.savekevincooper.org/_new_freekevincooperdotorg/TEST/Scripts/DataLibraries/upload/KC_FactSheet_2014.pdf)
This message from the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. July 2015
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*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
CANCEL ALL STUDENT DEBT!
Sign the Petition:
http://cancelallstudentdebt.com/?code=kos
Dear President Obama, Senators, and Members of Congress:
Americans now owe $1.3 trillion in student debt. Eighty-six percent of that money is owed to the United States government. This is a crushing burden for more than 40 million Americans and their families.
I urge you to take immediate action to forgive all student debt, public and private.
American Federation of Teachers
Campaign for America's Future
Courage Campaign
Daily Kos
Democracy for America
LeftAction
Project Springboard
RH Reality Check
RootsAction
Student Debt Crisis
The Nation
Working Families
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Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson
|
DF 1036
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Rd.
Frackville, PA 17932
Email: Through JPay using the code:
Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC
or
Directly at LorenzoJohnson17932@gmail.com
freelorenzojohnson.org
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B. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Workers at Boeing's South Carolina Plant Reject Union
FEB. 15, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/02/15/business/15reuters-boeing-machinists.html
2) Steven Mnuchin Is Confirmed as Treasury Secretary
FEB. 13, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/us/politics/steven-mnuchin-confirmed-treasury-secretary.html?ref=business
3) An Immigrant Mother in Denver Weighs Options as Deportation Looms
FEB. 15, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/an-immigrant-mother-in-denver-weighs-options-as-deportation-looms.html?hp&_r=0
Jeanette Vizguerra on Tuesday with her children, from left, Zury, Luna and Roberto.Ryan David Brown for The New York Times
4) Bookstores Stoke Trump Resistance With Action, Not Just Words
FEB. 15, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/bookstores-stoke-trump-resistance-with-action-not-just-
words.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us®ion
=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront
5) Who Will Watch the Agents Watching Our Borders?
By Linda Greenhouse
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/opinion/who-will-watch-the-agents-watching-our-borders.html?_r=0
6) Day Without Immigrants to Hit Washington in the Stomach
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B. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Workers at Boeing's South Carolina Plant Reject Union
FEB. 15, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/02/15/business/15reuters-boeing-machinists.html
2) Steven Mnuchin Is Confirmed as Treasury Secretary
FEB. 13, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/us/politics/steven-mnuchin-confirmed-treasury-secretary.html?ref=business
3) An Immigrant Mother in Denver Weighs Options as Deportation Looms
FEB. 15, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/an-immigrant-mother-in-denver-weighs-options-as-deportation-looms.html?hp&_r=0
Jeanette Vizguerra on Tuesday with her children, from left, Zury, Luna and Roberto.Ryan David Brown for The New York Times
4) Bookstores Stoke Trump Resistance With Action, Not Just Words
FEB. 15, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/bookstores-stoke-trump-resistance-with-action-not-just-
words.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us®ion
=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront
5) Who Will Watch the Agents Watching Our Borders?
By Linda Greenhouse
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/opinion/who-will-watch-the-agents-watching-our-borders.html?_r=0
6) Day Without Immigrants to Hit Washington in the Stomach
FEB. 15, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/politics/immigration-restaurant-strike-trump.html?
rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us®ion=
stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=10&pgtype=sectionfront
7) On a 'Day Without Immigrants,' Workers Show Their Presence by Staying Home
FEB. 16, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/nyregion/day-without-immigrants-boycott-trump-policy.html?rref=collection%2
Fsectioncollection%2Fnyregion&action=click&contentCollection=nyregion®ion=rank&module=package&version=
highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront
8) When Lies Overruled Rights
A charcoal drawing by Miné Okubo, who was incarcerated in the Topaz internment camp in Utah at the same time as Fred Korematsu. Okubo studied fine art at Berkeley and in Europe, and worked on government art projects (including a W.P.A. mural with Diego Rivera) before the government interned her and other Japanese-Americans on the West Coast. In 1946 she included hundreds of her drawings in a memoir, “Citizen 13660.” Miné Okubo; Topaz Museum, Delta, Utah
9) Two N.Y.P.D. Officers Are Charged With Lying About a Suspect
Reward=CTM&recp=1&moduleDetail=recommendations-1&action=click&contentCollection=Fashion
%20%26%20Style®ion=Footer&module=WhatsNext&version=WhatsNext&contentID=
WhatsNext&src=recg&pgtype=oak
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1) Workers at Boeing's South Carolina Plant Reject Union
FEB. 15, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/02/15/business/15reuters-boeing-machinists.html
FEB. 15, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/02/15/business/15reuters-boeing-machinists.html
SEATTLE/NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — Boeing Co handily defeated a union drive by workers at the company's aircraft factory in South Carolina on Wednesday, as almost three-quarters of workers at the plant who voted rejected union representation.
The secret ballot vote, conducted by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) at polling locations throughout the North Charleston plant, was the first for Boeing and a high-profile test for organized labor in the nation's most strongly anti-union state.
The NLRB said 74 percent of the 2,828 workers who cast ballots voted against joining the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM).
"We will continue to move forward as one team," Joan Robinson-Berry, vice president in charge of Boeing South Carolina, said in the post.
In a statement, IAM lead organizer Mike Evans said: "We're disappointed the workers at Boeing South Carolina will not yet have the opportunity to see all the benefits that come with union representation."
The results come just before U.S. President Donald Trump is due to visit Boeing's South Carolina plant on Friday, as the world's largest planemaker rolls out the first completed 787-10, the largest version of its Dreamliner.
Any remarks Trump makes at the factory could bring into sharper focus his views on organized labor before he chooses appointees to fill vacant seats on the five-member NLRB.
"I think he will cheer the 'no' vote," said Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California Berkeley specializing in labor and the global economy.
"I think he's going to make the case that he wants to see the plant succeed and do everything to create a more competitive environment."
MORALE BLOW
The loss was not seen as a surprise in a state with a strongly anti-union culture. South Carolina is one of 28 states that bar unions from requiring workers to join up as a condition of employment, and has the lowest proportion of union workers, at 1.6 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. New York is highest with 23.6 percent.
"It's a blow, but largely to morale more than anything practical," said Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst at the Teal Group in Fairfax, Virginia.
The vote preserves the status quo on the factory floor at Boeing in South Carolina and is unlikely to alter relations with the 30,000 IAM members at Boeing's factories near Seattle, Shaiken said.
Boeing ran a hardball campaign against the IAM in South Carolina, which has been trying to organize about 3,000 workers at one of two plants where Boeing makes 787 Dreamliners. The other, in Washington state, has long been unionized by the IAM.
The IAM canceled a vote at the Boeing plant in April 2015, claiming political interference from state officials. Former Governor Nikki Haley, who is now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was among those who voiced strong opposition to the union in 2015.
"Haley said South Carolina doesn't want or need unions," said Shaiken. "That creates an atmosphere where to vote 'yes' - in the minds of many workers - puts them at risk."
The 26 percent of workers who supported the union showed the IAM had established a foothold, he added. "Can they build on it? That will be their challenge going forward."
Under NLRB rules, the union must wait a minimum of 12 months before petitioning for another election.
Boeing said the union was not needed because it is divisive, picks fights with management, makes promises it cannot keep and leads workers out on costly strikes.
President of the Seattle-area IAM local, Jon Holden, said Boeing's anti-union campaign was not a surprise and followed a strategy they had seen before.
The Chicago-based company produced videos that aired heavily on local TV stations and were also shown in break rooms at the plant, mechanic Elliott Slater, 57, who supports the union, told Reuters in an interview.
Boeing invested $750 million to build the South Carolina factory after a costly machinists strike in 2008 that shut down production in Washington. It spent $1 billion more to expand aircraft engine casing and interiors production. Its employment in the state peaked at 8,400 in 2014 and has since fallen by 10 percent.
(Reporting by Harriet McLeod in Charleston and Alwyn Scott in Seattle; Editing by Bill Rigby)
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2) Steven Mnuchin Is Confirmed as Treasury Secretary
FEB. 13, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/us/politics/steven-mnuchin-confirmed-treasury-secretary.html?ref=business
2) Steven Mnuchin Is Confirmed as Treasury Secretary
FEB. 13, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/us/politics/steven-mnuchin-confirmed-treasury-secretary.html?ref=business
WASHINGTON — The Senate confirmed Steven T. Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs banker and Hollywood film financier, to be Treasurysecretary on Monday, putting in place a key lieutenant to President Trump who will help drive the administration's plans to overhaul the tax code, renegotiate trade deals around the world and remake financial regulations.
By a vote of 53 to 47, the Senate confirmed Mr. Mnuchin, who was Mr. Trump's top campaign fund-raiser. During a long debate over Mr. Mnuchin's credentials, Democrats argued that his experience on Wall Street exemplified corporate malpractice that led to the 2008 financial crisis.
The new Treasury secretary will have little time to celebrate. He will be under pressure to help finalize the Trump administration's tax plan, accelerate the rollback regulations and raise the government's borrowing limit. The administration has said it will release a comprehensive plan to rewrite the tax code in the coming weeks, and it will have to deal with the debt ceiling next month.
While Mr. Mnuchin's financial acumen has been praised by Mr. Trump and Republicans in Congress, Democrats have argued forcefully that he is not up to the job. They have painted him as a symbol of everything that is wrong with corporate America.
"He was part of the cadre of corporate raiders that brought our economy to its knees," Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, said on the Senate floor on Monday.
There was also no shortage of name-calling. Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, referred to Mr. Mnuchin at the "foreclosure king." Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, described him as "greedy" and "unethical" while arguing the case against him.
"Whether illegally foreclosing on thousands of families, skirting the law with offshore tax havens or helping design tactics that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis, Steve Mnuchin made a career — and millions of dollars — pioneering increasingly deceptive and predatory ways to rob hardworking Americans of their savings and homes," Ms. Duckworth said.
At a prickly confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee last month, Mr. Mnuchin was scolded by Democrats for failing to disclose nearly $100 million in assets and for not revealing his role as a director of an investment fund based in the Cayman Islands, a well-known tax haven.
After the hearing, Democrats on the committee accused Mr. Mnuchin of lying for saying that OneWest Bank had not engaged in the controversial foreclosure practice of "robo-signing" when he was its chief executive. The Democrats on the committee twice boycotted a vote on his confirmation, leading Republicans to breach protocol and push Mr. Mnuchin's vote to the full Senate on their own.
Just one Democrat, Senator of Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, broke with his party and supported Mr. Mnuchin. In a sign of the backlash that Democrats will face for siding with any part of Mr. Trump's agenda, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee warned that Mr. Manchin's vote would not go unnoticed.
"We will ensure that Joe Manchin hears from his West Virginia constituents who disapprove of his voting with Wall Street against working families," the group said in a statement after the vote.
For Republicans, the resistance was chalked up to political theater.
On Monday, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the Republican chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, accused Democrats of making Mr. Mnuchin a political pawn and described their concerns as a stall tactic.
"Under any objective standard, Mr. Mnuchin has ample experience, credentials and qualifications for this important position," Mr. Hatch said. "My colleagues have done all they can under the rules — even to the point of casting aside some longstanding customs and traditions of the Senate — in order to delay his confirmation."
While Mr. Mnuchin struggled to show fluency with some aspects of the job during his confirmation hearing, Republicans and Democrats generally agreed that he was well versed on economic issues. He also struck a more moderate tone than Mr. Trump on issues such as trade and dealing with China. And Mr. Mnuchin left some experts dumbfounded after suggesting that "there would be no absolute tax cut for the upper class" — a promise that appears to be at odds with plans presented by Mr. Trump and House Republicans.
Mr. Mnuchin was not the only member of Mr. Trump's cabinet to be confirmed on Monday night. The Senate also voted in favor of David Shulkin to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs. A holdover from the Obama administration, Dr. Shulkin is currently the department's under secretary of health and was approved by a unanimous vote.
Mr. Mnuchin was the latest member of Mr. Trump's cabinet to edge through the confirmation process on a largely party-line vote. Last week, Tom Price was approved as secretary of health and human services and Betsy DeVos narrowly won confirmation to lead the Education Department.
Things could become more complicated on Thursday, however, when Andrew Puzder, Mr. Trump's choice for labor secretary, faces a committee hearing. Several Republicans on the committee have declined to support Mr. Puzder, a fast-food chain executive who critics say promotes policies that are harmful to workers.
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3) An Immigrant Mother in Denver Weighs Options as Deportation Looms
FEB. 15, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/an-immigrant-mother-in-denver-weighs-options-as-deportation-looms.html?hp&_r=0
Jeanette Vizguerra on Tuesday with her children, from left, Zury, Luna and Roberto.Ryan David Brown for The New York Times
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3) An Immigrant Mother in Denver Weighs Options as Deportation Looms
FEB. 15, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/an-immigrant-mother-in-denver-weighs-options-as-deportation-looms.html?hp&_r=0
Jeanette Vizguerra on Tuesday with her children, from left, Zury, Luna and Roberto.Ryan David Brown for The New York Times
DENVER — In the basement of a white stone church here on Tuesday night, Jeanette Vizguerra gathered up her three youngest children, slipped them into pajamas and asked herself perhaps the hardest question of her life.
Should she present herself to the immigration authorities on Wednesday morning for a scheduled check-in, risking deportation?
Or should she stay in the church, one of the few places federal agents do not go, almost surely resigning herself to months or years trapped inside?
"Tonight I have to think," Ms. Vizguerra said. "Because I promised my children — and it was a promise — that it was going to be very difficult to remove me from this country. I have already fought so long to be here, now is not the time to give up."
It's been a difficult week for Ms. Vizguerra, 45, one of millions of undocumented immigrants contending with an uncertain future in the Trump administration. After she was convicted several years ago of using fake documents, Ms. Vizguerra, who has spent 20 years working in the United States, was ordered out of the country. But she was granted three postponements of deportation, and in December, her lawyer, Hans Meyer, asked for a fourth.
Nothing happened. She was due for a regular check-in at the local office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Wednesday, and as the day crept closer, Ms. Vizguerra realized she would have to present herself without legal protection, leaving open the possibility of being whisked onto a plane and separated from her three American-born children: Zury, 6, Roberto, 10, and Luna, 12.
Their care would fall to her husband, Salvador, 45, who works long hours as a driver for a tile company, and an older daughter, Tania, 26, a preschool teacher with three children of her own.
The last week or so has thrust the family into a state of extended emergency. On Feb. 5, Ms. Vizguerra called a family meeting over dinner, banning electronics from the table to convey the seriousness of the matter. The family cats, Miranda and Zayra, meowed as she explained the plan.
If officials were to come to the home in the days before the meeting at the I.C.E. office, no one should answer the door, she said. If they gained entry, Luna, a reedy middle schooler with braces, should use her phone to film the events. Roberto should open the emergency contact list in his phone and begin to call family friends and advocates. And Zury, the youngest, should go straight to her parents' bedroom, close the door and stay there. "I told them, 'I know it's going to be difficult for you,' " Ms. Vizguerra said. "'I want you to be brave.'"
Three days later, the packing began, with the children stuffing their mother's leggings, sweaters and shampoos into suitcases and boxes. Terrified by the prospect of familial separation, Ms. Vizguerra began to seriously contemplate taking refuge at the First Unitarian Society church in Denver, whose congregants previously gave sanctuary to another immigrant.
She reminded Luna which drawers belonged to which child, and told her it would be her job to make sure her siblings dressed properly. She showed her where the extra soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste were kept.
Then Ms. Vizguerra stocked the refrigerator with microwave dinners, something even a 6-year-old could make.
Tania, the oldest daughter, has began contemplating caring for three more children. "I completely understand his side," she said of President Trump. "But he grew up entitled. He's never lived in poverty. He's never lived in fear."
"I just think if he walked an immigrant's life," she added, "he'd change his mind."
Ms. Vizguerra came to the United States from Mexico in 1997. She worked as a janitor and a union organizer, and later owned a moving and cleaning business. In 2009, she was caught with fake identification that her lawyer said she had acquired in order to work. She pleaded guilty to a third-degree misdemeanor, setting off a chain of events that led to the deportation order. In the Denver area, she is a well-known advocate for immigration reform.
On Tuesday night, she planned to sleep in the church basement with her three youngest children, to avoid the risk of arrest at home.
Near midnight, Ms. Vizguerra said that she still had not decided whether she would present herself to I.C.E. on Wednesday morning — her meeting is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. local time — or stay at First Unitarian, but that she was leaning toward staying in the church. Many of her allies have pledged to show up the I.C.E. office in a Denver suburb, to show support.
"My intuition," Ms. Vizguerra said, "tells me that if I go in, I'm not coming out."
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4) Bookstores Stoke Trump Resistance With Action, Not Just Words
FEB. 15, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/bookstores-stoke-trump-resistance-with-action-not-just-
words.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us®ion
=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront
4) Bookstores Stoke Trump Resistance With Action, Not Just Words
FEB. 15, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/bookstores-stoke-trump-resistance-with-action-not-just-
words.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us®ion
=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront
A hundred people packed a bookstore in Brooklyn to write postcards to elected officials and, as the invitation urged, "plot next steps." In St. Louis, bookstore owners began planning a writer-studded event to benefit area refugees. At a bookshop in Massachusetts, a manager privately asked his senior staff members how the store should respond to the Trump presidency.
"Go hard," they told him.
In the diffuse and suddenly fierce protest movement that has sprung up on the left since President Trump took office, bookstores have entered the fray, taking on roles ranging from meeting place to political war room.
Many stores have distributed information for customers who are mobilizing against Mr. Trump's actions: his cabinet choices, his threat to cut off funding for sanctuary cities and his immigration bans on refugees and many Muslims. At City Stacks, a bookstore in Denver, employees printed out forms with elected officials' contact information in a gentle nudge to customers. On Inauguration Day, Broadway Books in Portland, Ore., handed out free copies of "We Should All Be Feminists," a book-length call to arms by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the novelist.
All over the country, independent bookstores have filled their windows and displays with "1984," by George Orwell; "It Can't Happen Here," by Sinclair Lewis; and other books on politics, fascism, totalitarianism and social justice. Booksellers have begun calling the front table devoted to those titles the #Resist table.
"A lot of people are saying, 'We've turned our store over to the revolution,'" said Hannah Oliver Depp, the operations manager for Word, which has bookstores in New Jersey and New York. "I do think that it is going to fundamentally change bookstores and book selling."
Now, she said, "people are just trying to figure out: 'How far can we push it? How high can we turn up the heat?'"
Some stores, including large chains like Barnes & Noble, with customers from across the spectrum, have steered away from the political realm. Some stores say they have worked to keep the latest book displays balanced — with titles from the left and the right.
"My taste comes into play," said Cathy Langer, the director of buying for the Tattered Cover in Denver, "but my politics do not, ever."
But many places have become buzzing hubs of protest, like Women & Children First in Chicago, which last month hosted a forum on "Art and Resistance," a craft circle to knit pink "pussyhats", and a gathering with customers for coffee and doughnuts on the morning after the inauguration, before they all rode the "L" to join in the downtown Women's March.
"Let's raise our voices together and let the incoming administration know that they do not speak for us," the store wrote to customers in an email before the rally.
Political organizing is perhaps a natural extension of what bookstores have done for centuries: foster discussion, provide access to history and literature, host writers and intellectuals.
"All bookstores are mission-driven to some degree — their mission is to inspire and inform, and educate if possible," said Elaine Katzenberger, publisher and executive director of City Lights in San Francisco, a store with a long history of left-wing activism.
"When Trump was elected, everyone was just walking around saying: 'What do I do. What do we do?'" she added. "One of the places you might find some answers is in books, in histories, in current events, even poetry."
For many booksellers, the urge to join a protest movement is new. Several who were interviewed said they had never before tried to mobilize their customers politically; many are, for the first time, making their own political views crystal clear.
"In the past, we hadn't really been like, 'O.K., here's where we stand,'" said Lacy Simons, the owner of Hello Hello Books in the seaside town of Rockland, Me. Ms. Simons said she was jolted into action the day after the election, when customers began drifting into the store, not to buy books, exactly, but in search of solace.
"This is just one of the places where people went," she said. "If they were gutted from the election, people just came in to pet the books."
Her plans to push back against Mr. Trump's policies are just beginning: Later this month, the store's new social justice reading and action group will meet for the first time (suggested reading: "What We Do Now: Standing Up for Your Values in Trump's America"). She also intends to distribute political leaflets and other materials to customers, on the model of bookstores that handed out mimeographed resistance newspapers during the Vietnam War.
Stephanie Valdez, an owner of Community Bookstore in Brooklyn, has already hosted a postcard-writing event, and lately she has paged through books on political organizing, looking for guidance for getting her store more involved.
"I think bookstores are a place where people go to understand the world," she said. "And I think we're just one of many places that will become a center of activism."
Gayle Shanks, a co-owner of Changing Hands in Phoenix, said her store's Facebook page had gone political, as staff members filled it with articles about national politics and First Amendment issues. At the suggestion of one of her young employees, staff members began piecing together a display of books written by authors from the seven majority-Muslim countries from which Mr. Trump suspended immigration.
Ms. Shanks took her regular email newsletter in December, usually a chatty vehicle for suggesting new books or sharing publishing-industry news, to write about her sorrow over Mr. Trump's election and the "cronies" he had selected to serve in his cabinet.
More than 50 recipients wrote back with praise, thanking her for airing her views. One man did not. "Shut up and sell books," he wrote.
And some stores have been more muted, conscious of alienating more conservative customers.
"A lot of bookstores kind of want to be everything to all people," said Josh Christie, an owner of Print, a bookstore in Portland, Me. "They want to be apolitical and carry everything from every viewpoint. People are worried about losing that sale." (Print announced that in light of Mr. Trump's immigration ban, it was donating all profits from sales on the first Saturday this month to the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine.)
Ann Patchett, a novelist and an owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, said she had simply embraced the notion of her bookstore as a place where anyone could come, get information and exchange ideas.
"I have written on the bookstore website about the election and the importance of reading and community and how more than ever we need to," Ms. Patchett said. "That is outwardly as political as we've gotten."
She echoed one of the biggest blows of Mr. Trump's election for people in the literary world: the realization that the new president is not much of a reader. That is a stark contrast to former President Barack Obama, a devoted reader, writer and frequent visitor of independent bookstores while he was in office.
"Now more than ever, books are so important," Ms. Patchett said. "The only way we're going to get out of this in the larger sense is through education."
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5) Who Will Watch the Agents Watching Our Borders?
By Linda Greenhouse
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/opinion/who-will-watch-the-agents-watching-our-borders.html?_r=0
5) Who Will Watch the Agents Watching Our Borders?
By Linda Greenhouse
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/opinion/who-will-watch-the-agents-watching-our-borders.html?_r=0
Whom do federal immigration agents despise more: former President Barack Obama, or the immigrants whose lives are in their hands?
That uncomfortable question came to mind as I read articles over the past week of the growing numbers of raids, roundups, the knocks on the door, the flooding of "target-rich environments," a phrase an anonymous immigration official used in speaking to The Washington Post. What's a target-rich environment? "Big cities," the official explained, "tend to have a lot of illegal immigrants."
Clearly, with President Trump's executive orders having expanded the category of immigrants deemed worth pursuing and deporting, the gloves are off. There's been plenty of news coverage of this development, but few reminders of the context in which the pursuers have been freed from previous restraints.
So it's worth noting that the union representing some 5,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents actually endorsed Mr. Trump in September, the first time the union endorsed a candidate for president.In an inflammatory statement posted on the Trump campaign's website, Chris Crane, president of the union, the National ICE Council, complained that under President Obama, "our officers are prevented from enforcing the most basic immigration laws." The statement went on to say that while Mr. Trump had pledged in a meeting to "support ICE officers, our nation's laws and our members," Hillary Clinton's immigration plan was "total amnesty plus open borders."
That everything in that statement except for the reference to Mr. Trump was untrue is not the point. (Far from failing to enforce the law, the Obama administration deported more than 400,000 unauthorized immigrants a year, and Mr. Trump's Democratic rival endorsed neither total amnesty nor open borders.) Rather, the statement is evidence of how openly these law enforcement officers have been chafing at the bit to do their jobs as they please.
And chafing for a long time: back in 2012, Mr. Crane was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Obama administration's deferral of deportation for immigrants brought to the United States as children. The claim was that the program put agents in a position of either failing to enforce immigration law as written or suffering reprisals at work for not adhering to the new policy. The plaintiffs were represented by Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state. An anti-immigration activist who joined the Trump transition team as an adviser on immigration, Mr. Kobach is an originator of the false "massive voter fraud" rationale for voter ID requirements and has exported anti-immigrant legislation to states around the country, most notably Arizona.
A federal district judge in Dallas dismissed Mr. Crane's lawsuit against the deferral program. Mr. Crane also showed his disdain for President Obama by refusing to allow members to participate in a course aimed at training immigration agents in carrying out the Obama administration's policy that gave priority to deporting high-risk offenders rather than immigrants with clean records and deep roots in the country. Last month, after President Trump issued his immigration orders, Mr. Crane's union and the union representing Border Patrol officers issued a joint statement declaring that, in case anyone asked, "morale among our agents and officers has increased exponentially" as a result of the president's promised actions.
Why does any of this matter — aside from the irony of these public employee unions having achieved pride of place in the conservative firmament, while Republican governors and legislatures are moving quickly to disable public employee unions they find troublesome?
It matters because along with entrusting our immigration enforcers to keep us safe, in the president's often-tweeted phrase, we also entrust them with the responsibility of treating unauthorized immigrants not as prey but as human beings entitled to dignity, even if only minimally to due process.
Not everyone shares that view. I get that, and I'm reminded of it every time I write about immigration. Reader comments on articles about immigration, including the gripping one last week about Guadalupe García de Rayos, the Phoenix woman and mother of two American children who was abruptly deported when she dutifully showed up for her routine check-in at the local ICE office, run to "if she wasn't illegal in the first place, she wouldn't have been deported."
Right. I'd like to think we're better than that. A month ago, we were.
In what may be an early warning of what's to come, last Friday immigration agents in Seattle took a 23-year-old Mexican into custody despite his paperwork proving that he had been granted work authorization under the deferred-deportation program, which for now remains in effect.
"It doesn't matter, because you weren't born in this country," one of the immigration enforcement agents told the man, Daniel Ramírez Medina, according to a petition for habeas corpus filed on his behalf in Federal District Court in Seattle. Mr. Ramírez was brought to this country at age 7 and twice qualified for the deferral program, most recently with a renewal last May. On Tuesday, a federal magistrate judge gave the federal government until Thursday to explain the basis for the detention.
This column is usually about the Supreme Court, and this one is, too. Next Tuesday, the justices' first day back from a monthlong recess, the court will hear an important case on whether a Border Patrol officer can be required to pay damages to the family of a Mexican boy he killed with a bullet fired across the dry bed of the Rio Grande, the international border that separated the two by only yards. The facts of the case, Hernández v. Mesa, sound highly unusual, but they aren't; there have been 10 cross-border shootings in recent years in addition to several dozen others along the border.
This case raises important questions about the extraterritorial reach both of the Constitution and the damages remedy that is available to United States citizens whose constitutional rights are violated on American soil by a federal official. Sergio Hernández, the unarmed 15-year-old killed seven years ago by the Border Patrol agent, Jesus Mesa Jr., was not an American citizen, and the bullet reached him in Mexico. He and his friends had been playing in a dry culvert, daring each other to run up the opposite bank and touch the barbed-wire fence on the American side. The F.B.I. report initially claimed that the boys were throwing rocks at the agent, but cellphone videos showed Sergio hiding under a railroad trestle in the last minutes of his life. He was shot when he stuck his head out from his hiding place.
The Justice Department investigated but declined to prosecute Mr. Mesa. Mexico charged the agent with murder, but the United States refused to extradite him. Sergio's parents sued for damages, but lost when the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that even if Sergio had constitutional rights that were violated by the shooting, the existence of any right was sufficiently unclear as to entitle Mr. Mesa to "qualified immunity," a legal shield extended to official defendants when the relevant law is deemed uncertain. Because the case has never gone to trial, the eventual Supreme Court decision won't resolve the conflicting accounts or establish the motive for the agent's fatal shot. But presumably the law will be clear, one way or another, the next time such an incident occurs.
On the chaotic night last month when Mr. Trump fired the acting attorney general, Sally Yates, for refusing to defend his immigration order, he made another personnel change that got less attention. Without explanation, he replaced the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Daniel Ragsdale, with Thomas Homan, a career employee who had been serving in the agency's top enforcement position. Last April, when Mr. Homan received the government's highest Civil Service award, a profile in The Washington Post began: "Thomas Homan deports people. And he's really good at it."
In the Post profile, Mr. Homan declined to answer questions about policy, or whether he might be supporting Donald Trump's presidential candidacy. "Sorry, I can't say what I think," he told the reporter.
The Roman poet Juvenal asked: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guardians? We need to ask that question now, urgently. I fear the answer.
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6) Day Without Immigrants to Hit Washington in the Stomach
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7) On a 'Day Without Immigrants,' Workers Show Their Presence by Staying Home
FEB. 16, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/nyregion/day-without-immigrants-boycott-trump-policy.html?rref=collection%2
Fsectioncollection%2Fnyregion&action=click&contentCollection=nyregion®ion=rank&module=package&version=
highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront
6) Day Without Immigrants to Hit Washington in the Stomach
FEB. 15, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/politics/immigration-restaurant-strike-trump.html?
rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us®ion=
stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=10&pgtype=sectionfront
WASHINGTON — In a city where expense account meals are a central part of power players' lives, some of Washington's best-known restaurants will close their doors on Thursday in solidarity with a national campaign to draw attention to the power and plight of immigrants.
The campaign, spread on social media and messaging apps, has called for a "day without immigrants." It asks foreign-born people nationwide, regardless of legal status, not to go to work or go shopping in a demonstration of the importance of their labor and consumer spending to the United States' economy.
Activists and groups in cities across the country have picked up the call, reposting fliers found online, and in some cases organizing demonstrations to coincide with the event. Several activists said that they did not know how the campaign began or how many people would heed it, and that as far as they knew, there was no national organization behind it.
But the dining scene in Washington, where the new Trump administration is taking a hard line on immigration and deportation, took notice. At least a few dozen restaurants in and around the Beltway have committed to staying closed on Thursday. Others have said they would offer limited service in the expectation that many of their employees would be out for the day. Some restaurants in other cities, including several of the Blue Ribbon restaurants in New York, have joined in.
José Andrés, the famed Spanish-born chef who has tangled publicly with President Trump before, said his restaurants Zaytinya and Oyamel, and three Jaleo restaurants, all in the Washington area, would be closed for the day. In 2015, after Mr. Trump made disparaging comments about Mexican immigrants, Mr. Andrés pulled out of an agreement to open a restaurant in Mr. Trump's new hotel near the White House, and they have since sued each other over the dispute.
Andy Shallal, a native of Iraq, said his popular Busboys and Poets chain of six restaurants in the Washington area would also close on Thursday, and he noted that he is among the more than 40 million people in the United States who came from other countries. "As an immigrant I am proud to stand in solidarity w/ my brothers & sisters," he wrote on Twitter.
His daughter, Laela Shallal, who manages finance and marketing for the company, said employees could choose between using some of their paid leave on Thursday, or going to work to clean or organize the restaurants and offices.
"We think that this is really something that a lot of our staff feels really passionate about," she said. "We're taking their side, so that they feel the company they work for is living up to their values."
Amaya Sales, a kitchen manager at the Busboys and Poets restaurant in the Brookland neighborhood of Washington, said workers first approached management early this week about taking part. "It's just to, like, show most of America how much important we are to do the hard work in the United States," Mr. Sales said.
In a city with more than 2,000 restaurants, the day of closures and absences may not be enough to prevent anyone from getting a table. But given the upscale, popular businesses involved, it will be noticed.
An immigrant advocacy group, Cosecha (the Spanish word for harvest), has been planning a day without immigrants on May 1. Maria Fernanda Cabello, a Cosecha organizer, said it was not behind Thursday's campaign, but viewed it as something of a dry run, and was working with some local groups that were promoting it.
"We don't know where this started, and as far as we know, there isn't anyone putting it all together," Ms. Cabello said. "We started seeing messages about it in different cities a few weeks ago, and it's really picked up in the last couple of days."
Adding to the uncertainty, a variety of fliers and Facebook pages were used online to promote the campaign, some announcing demonstrations or urging people to patronize immigrant-owned businesses, while others did not.
Owners of some smaller businesses said that they supported the idea but that the campaign was too hastily organized to justify closing. Josh Phillips, a co-owner of Espita Mezcaleria in Washington, said that rather than close, he wanted to donate a portion of his restaurant's proceeds on Thursday to the organizers of the campaign. But, he said, "we still don't know who's organizing it."
Each dinner receipt, Mr. Phillips said, will be inscribed with the phrase, "This meal was made possible by immigrants."
Ivan Iricanin, who owns Ambar, a Balkan restaurant with locations in Washington and Arlington, Va., said that after meeting with his staff on Monday, he decided to keep the restaurants open. But, he said, about seven of his 100 employees chose not to work on Thursday.
"It's kind of a lot of questions that were unanswered," Mr. Iricanin, 39, said, "and that's why I think that some people are all for it and some are in between."
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7) On a 'Day Without Immigrants,' Workers Show Their Presence by Staying Home
FEB. 16, 2017
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It first spread on social media, rippling through immigrant communities like the opposite of fear and rumor: a call to boycott. In the New York region, many carpenters, plumbers, cooks, cleaners and grocery store owners decided to answer it and not work on Thursday as part of a national "day without immigrants" in protest of the Trump administration's policies toward them.
The protest called for immigrants to stay home from work or school, close their businesses and abstain from shopping. People talked about it in restaurant staff meetings and on commuter buses, but the movement spread mostly on Facebook and via text message.
"It's like the Arab Spring," said Manuel Castro, the executive director of NICE, the New Immigrant Community Empowerment, which works primarily with Hispanic immigrant day laborers in Jackson Heights, Queens. "Our members were coming to us, asking what the plan was. Frankly, it kind of came out of nowhere."
But the action was not limited to Hispanic immigrants: In Midwood, Brooklyn, Pakistani store owners said they would close on Thursday.
The driver of a discount shuttle bus outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Sam Ahmad, originally from Egypt, said on Wednesday night that he was not going to work on Thursday and many members of his mosque in New Jersey would not, either. Asked why, Mr. Ahmad, 57, said, "Because that crazy guy," he said, referring to President Trump. "Because I'm Muslim and I got a lot of family here. They can get separated, and it's not right. Our children are born here and grow up here."
In Queens, construction workers gathered at the end of the workday on Wednesday at a large job site in Astoria.
"The supervisor asked us if we were going to work," a 28-year-old carpenter from Cuenca, Ecuador, said in Spanish, giving only his first name, Santiago.
He said about 500 people from several companies were working at the site, including carpenters, electricians and plumbers.
"From Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil. Some wanted to work, others didn't. They talked among themselves," he said. "We decided we wouldn't, we'd support the cause. The supervisor said, 'That's fine, no one works tomorrow.'"
Santiago, who has lived in the country for 13 years, said he felt it was an important cause.
"If we don't do something, they're going to send us back."
Angel, 44, an electrician from Quito, Ecuador, who also gave only his first name, said the 30 or so people at his job site in Astoria had also decided not to go to work, either.
"We've talked among us and we say, 'Yes, there are some people who have made mistakes and committed crimes,' but just because of a few, we're all going to pay?"
Angel said that he would not only sit out the workday but also avoid spending any money. "If we're going to participate, we're going to participate — no shopping."
Around the country, restaurants, which often employ many immigrants, were planning to close in support of the action, including the Washington restaurants owned by José Andrés, the famed Spanish-born chef who has tangled publicly with Mr. Trump before. In Phoenix, the chef Silvana Salcido Esparza, a James Beard Award semifinalist, was planning to close three of her restaurants for the day.
In New York City, the high-end Blue Ribbon restaurant group posted a statement on Facebook and its web site that it would be closing the majority of its restaurants. "We stand 100 percent behind our employees — whether they are immigrants or born in America, back of house or front of house," the group said.
Mr. Castro, of the day laborers' center in Queens, said that he and his members planned to attend City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito's State of the City speech in Brooklyn on Thursday afternoon.
"We're at a stage where we're like, what else is there to do except organize and boycott?" he said.
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8) When Lies Overruled Rights
A charcoal drawing by Miné Okubo, who was incarcerated in the Topaz internment camp in Utah at the same time as Fred Korematsu. Okubo studied fine art at Berkeley and in Europe, and worked on government art projects (including a W.P.A. mural with Diego Rivera) before the government interned her and other Japanese-Americans on the West Coast. In 1946 she included hundreds of her drawings in a memoir, “Citizen 13660.” Miné Okubo; Topaz Museum, Delta, Utah
8) When Lies Overruled Rights
A charcoal drawing by Miné Okubo, who was incarcerated in the Topaz internment camp in Utah at the same time as Fred Korematsu. Okubo studied fine art at Berkeley and in Europe, and worked on government art projects (including a W.P.A. mural with Diego Rivera) before the government interned her and other Japanese-Americans on the West Coast. In 1946 she included hundreds of her drawings in a memoir, “Citizen 13660.” Miné Okubo; Topaz Museum, Delta, Utah
When President Trump signed an executive order temporarily banning travel from seven majority Muslim countries, he hurled us back to one of the darkest and most shameful chapters of American history. Executive orders that go after specific groups under the guise of protecting the American people are not only unconstitutional, but morally wrong. My father, and so many other Americans of Japanese descent, were targets of just such an order during World War II.
Seventy-five years ago on Sunday, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, all people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast were forced to leave their homes and report to incarceration camps. Two-thirds were American citizens. Fred Korematsu, my father, then 23, refused to go. A proud and loyal citizen, he had tried to enlist in the National Guard but was rejected and was wrongly fired from his job as a welder in an Oakland, Calif., shipyard He was arrested and tried for defying the executive order. Upon conviction, he was held in a horse stall at a hastily converted racetrack until he and his family were moved to a desolate camp in Topaz, Utah. My father told me later that jail was better than the camp.
He appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court. In his case, and in cases brought by Minoru Yasui and Gordon Hirabayashi — among the most infamous cases in American legal history — the court in 1944 upheld the executive order. Justice Frank Murphy vehemently opposed the majority decision, writing in a dissenting opinion, “Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life.” In the hysteria of war and racialized propaganda, my father’s citizenship did not protect him. For him and the 120,000 other Japanese-Americans incarcerated during World War II, there was no attempt to sort the loyal from the disloyal.
In 1982, almost 40 years after my father’s conviction, evidence was discovered proving that the wartime government suppressed, altered and destroyed material evidence while arguing my father’s, Yasui’s and Hirabayashi’s cases before the Supreme Court. The government’s claims that people of Japanese descent had engaged in espionage and that mass incarceration was necessary to protect the country were not only false, but had even been refuted by the government’s own agencies, including the Office of Naval Intelligence, the F.B.I. and the Federal Communications Commission.
With that evidence, my father reopened his case. In November 1983, he stood before a Federal District Court judge, Marilyn Hall Patel, and said, “As long as my record stands in federal court, any American citizen can be held in prison or concentration camps without a trial or a hearing.” Judge Patel overturned my father’s conviction, declaring that his case “stands as a caution that in times of distress the shield of military necessity and national security must not be used to protect governmental actions from close scrutiny and accountability.”
Around that time, the federal Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians declared that the Korematsu case had been “overruled in the court of history” and found that my father’s incarceration was based on “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.”
Although his conviction was vacated, my father was keenly aware that his case was never formally overturned, even though it was widely discredited by scholars and even the courts. He was a quiet, soft-spoken man, but he spent the rest of his life speaking around the country about the government misconduct that led to incarceration, in hopes of preventing it from occurring again. In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom for the brave stand he took against an unjust government action.
In 1991, President George H. W. Bush declared, “The internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry was a great injustice, and it will never be repeated.” But it can happen again. Since my father’s death in 2005, I have taken on his work to remind Americans what happens when our Constitution is ignored in the name of national security. We need to scrutinize Mr. Trump’s executive orders and any other attempts to single out groups for repression. Let us come together to reject discrimination based on religion, race or national origin, and to oppose the mass deportation of people who look or pray differently from the majority of Americans.
“Stand up for what is right,” my father said. “Protest, but not with violence. Don’t be afraid to speak up. One person can make a difference, even if it takes 40 years.”
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9) Two N.Y.P.D. Officers Are Charged With Lying About a Suspect
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9) Two N.Y.P.D. Officers Are Charged With Lying About a Suspect
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The two police officers returned from an arrest describing the kind of encounter that officers fear most, prosecutors said. A man had threatened someone with a gun, and when the officers confronted him, they later told prosecutors, the weapon was loaded and resting in the waistband of his pants.
But more than two years after the episode, the case against the man has been dismissed after an investigation by the Police Department and prosecutors concluded that the officers had fabricated details about the circumstances of the arrest in 2014.
The officers, Detectives Sasha Cordoba and Kevin Desormeau, were arrested on Thursday and appeared in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Both were charged with first-degree offering a false instrument for filing, and Detective Cordoba was also charged with first-degree perjury and making a punishable false written statement. The two detectives, both 33, pleaded not guilty to the charges and were released without bail.
Prosecutors said the detectives had made the false claims to prosecutors and in official paperwork. Detective Cordoba is also accused of repeating the account in a Criminal Court complaint, a search warrant application that was signed by a judge, and before a grand jury, which led to the indictment of a man in connection with the arrest in question.
The man, who was 38 at the time, was not identified in documents filed on Thursday.
Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, said the charges against the detectives were a “gross violation of their training, N.Y.P.D. protocol and the law.”
“When members of law enforcement commit misconduct,” he added, “they threaten the credibility of our work and the safety of the citizens whom we are sworn to protect.”
In a statement on Thursday, the Police Department said the detectives, who were assigned to the gang squad in southern Queens, had been suspended. Detective Cordoba has been with the department since 2007; Detective Desormeau joined in 2006.
James M. Moschella, a lawyer for the Detectives Endowment Association, said the detectives maintained their innocence, and that the charges were “just allegations at this point — nothing more.”
“They’re going to fight the charges,” he added. “They’re going to go to court every time. And ultimately, we expect them to be vindicated in the case.”
Prosecutors said the false statements stemmed from the arrest on Nov. 6, 2014 of a man on suspicion of gun possession in an apartment building on West 175th Street in the Washington Heights neighborhood.
The detectives told a sergeant in the 33rd Precinct that they had encountered a man standing in a hallway holding a gun, according to court records. Detective Cordoba told an assistant district attorney that she then pulled a gun from the man’s waistband and handed it to Detective Desormeau, who removed several bullets.
Detective Cordoba later told a grand jury that the man had opened an apartment door with the gun visible in the waistband of his pants.
“I kind of grabbed his hand to cuff him cause he had a gun,” she said, according to a transcript of the testimony included in the criminal complaint. “I didn’t know what state of mind he was in. I cuffed him. I took the gun. I gave it to my partner.”
But prosecutors said that the gun had been found in another room in the apartment, not in the man’s waistband. An investigation by the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau found witness interviews, surveillance camera footage and text messages from Detective Desormeau that conflicted with the detectives’ account.
There have been similar cases in recent years of members of the Police Department being prosecuted for making false statements.
In 2012, a former police officer was convicted of lying under oath and filing false information to obtain a search warrant in an apparent effort to hide illegal vehicle searches, and a former sergeant pleaded guilty to lying in court about why he performed illegal searches of cars and an apartment, according to prosecutors.
In 2010, another former officer was found guilty of lying about a confrontation with a bicyclist. The officer said in a criminal complaint that a man had knocked him down by intentionally steering his bicycle into him, but a video shared widely online showed that the officer had not fallen.
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Posted by: bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com
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