Wednesday, February 01, 2017

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2017


San Francisco, CA
https://www.facebook.com/events/1860032590936254/





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100,000 protest in San Francisco, CA

Pictures From Women's
Marches on Every Continent

Crowds in hundreds of cities around the world gathered Saturday
in conjunction with the Women's March on Washington.  JAN. 21, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/21/world/womens-march-pictures.html


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PLEASE SHARE!  (apologies for duplications)

Dear Friends,

Has the Great Uprising of 2017 begun? 

The last two days have been extremely inspiring.  Let's hope it's the beginning of a new era of progressive action!

Please join us on Thursday, February 9th,
as we take the battle to one of
the most controversial
corporations in San Francisco:
UBER! 

In November, Medea Benjamin called on local activists to draw attention to Uber's special relationship with Saudi Arabia. 

FACTS: Saudi Arabia is the only nation in the world that DOES NOT ALLOW women to drive. In recent months, Uber has accepted an unprecedented investment from the Saudi royal family of $3.5 billion. Even more important, 80% of Uber's customers in Saudi Arabia are women riders. 

An online petition set up by Code Pink -- linked below -- accuses Uber of directly profiting from the oppression of Saudi women and calls on its CEO to stand up for the right of women in Saudi Arabia to drive. 

On FEBRUARY 9TH AT 1PM, we will present this petition (currently at over four thousand signatures) to Uber and we are soooooo hoping you will be able to attend!

In the meantime, can you PLEASE HELP SPREAD THE WORD? 

Sign the petition! 
RSVP for the protest!
Further fascinating info: 
On the tail of Donald Trump's corporate takeover, this action seems perfectly timed. 

Please stand up for Saudi women and help RESIST THE CORPORATE COUP D'ETAT!

Michael Stone 
San Francisco

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Very Sad News from Amnesty International:

Native American Activist Leonard Peltier Denied Clemency


Native American activist Leonard Peltier was denied clemency by President Obama today after more than four decades in prison.
"We are deeply saddened by the news that President Obama will not let Leonard go home," said Margaret Huang, executive director of Amnesty International USA. "Despite serious concerns about the fairness of legal proceedings that led to his trial and conviction, Peltier was imprisoned for more than 40 years. He has always maintained his innocence. The families of the FBI agents who were killed during the 1975 confrontation between the FBI and American Indian Movement (AIM) members have a right to justice, but justice will not be served by Peltier's continued imprisonment."
"Leonard Peltier is 72 years old and in failing health. The failure to act may have condemned him to die in prison."
http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/press-releases/native-american-activist-leonard-peltier-denied-clemency

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Chelsea Manning Support Network
President Obama Commutes Chelsea's Sentence!
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President Obama Commutes Chelsea's Sentence!!!

Chelsea Manning Support Network
January 17, 2017
"Today's victory is a victory for all those who stood with Chelsea Manning."
President Obama has commuted all but four months of the remaining prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the former US Army Intelligence Analyst serving 35-years for releasing classified information. Chelsea's attorney Nancy Hollander, who spoke with President Obama's counsel earlier today, confirms that "Chelsea will walk out of Fort Leavenworth a free woman in four months, on May 17th."
The Chelsea Manning Support Network applauds this decision by outgoing President Barack Obama, and extends our heartfelt gratitude. A commutation can not be reversed by a future president.
"Today's fantastic news goes a long way to making amends for the brutal treatment Chelsea was illegally subjected to while awaiting trial at the Quantico Marine Brig. It's tragic that Chelsea had to spend 7-years imprisoned for releasing documents that should never have been classified in the first place, and were clearly in the public interest," stated Chelsea Manning Support Network co-founder Jeff Paterson. "All of us who worked on Chelsea's behalf are overjoyed."
The Chelsea Manning Support Network was founded in the weeks following Chelsea's arrest in Iraq in May 2010. The Network covered 100% of the legal fees associated with her pretrial hearing, court martial trial, and raised a significant amount toward the legal costs of her appeal. Many days during her trial, the courtroom was packed with supporters wearing "truth" shirts.
"Over the last few years, I've come to know Chelsea as a deeply intelligent, sensitive woman who doesn't deserve to spend decades in prison. I often feared that any more time behind bars would be devastating for Chelsea, or potentially even lethal, especially with President-Elect Trump taking office. Soon, she'll have a chance to live the life she's been denied for almost seven years," Rainey Reitman, co-founder of the Chelsea Manning Support Network.
In addition to fundraising, the organization worked to raise awareness of Chelsea's case. The Support Network held hundreds of rallies around the world, from San Francisco and London. Chelsea's supporters became regular participants in yearly pride parades the last several years. In addition, the Support Network placed billboards in Los Angeles and Kansas City, ran a full-page New York Times ad, and helped generate over one million petition signatures in support of Chelsea's release.
"In conversations Chelsea and I had while she was imprisoned, I learned that she's not only driven by principles, but that she believes in the foundations of America's government. She dreamed about attending graduate school, and helping to research ways that government could use technology to improve transparency and public participation. Whatever she chooses to do now, the world is better for having a bright young person free to pursue a meaningful life," noted former campaign manager Emma Cape.
"I believe that the support for Chelsea demonstrated that whistleblowers who oppose injustice will not face powerful government retribution alone," declared Rainey Reitman. "Today's victory is a victory for all those who stood with Chelsea Manning."






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BREAKING: 
BAD NEWS on Mumia Abu-Jamal:

ALERT:

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has filed the (predicted) appeal of Mumia's recent court victory, which granted his right to the curative drug for his Hepatitis-C infection. 

See Mumia"s comment below

Join the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal 
for MLK Day in Oakland:

_  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _
THE DOC APPEALS
[col. writ. 1/14/17] ©'17 Mumia Abu-Jamal

Several days ago, the Pa. DOC appealed the Jan. 3rd US District Court ruling that granted an injunction against the DOC's so-called 'protocol' covering hepatitis treatment (or should I say lack of treatment?).
The state waited almost 10 days to file an appeal saying they didn't have the time needed to obey a court order that gave them 2 weeks (14 days) to begin the process.
They also ignored the court's order that the DOC was enjoined from using its 'protocol'--they continue to use it, as if no court order was ever issued.
If that ain't contempt of court, what can it be called?
The State violates constitutional rights daily--because it can. What's another court order?
To them, it ain't worth the paper it's printed on.
From the very beginning the DOC has spit in the eye of the judge. They've filed false documents. They've made misleading claims. They tried to intimidate him.
Why should they now be any different?
And yet, the battle goes on, to save the lives of thousands of prisoners in Pa. dungeons.
--©'17maj.
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After last month's successful Mumia Action Coalition rally and march in Oakland, the Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal is calling all activists to join the labor contingent for the MLK march on Monday January 16. We will be gathering in front of the State Building at 16th St. & Clay in downtown Oakland at 10:45 AM and then moving to Oscar Grant Plaza around the corner to join the main march. We'll have a large Free Mumia banner and posters, but if you have your own bring that.  Let's make Mumia's recent courtroom victories a reality by organizing a spirited contingent demanding his immediate release from prison after 35 years on slow death row! 

For more info: call Gerald at 510-417-1252

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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"Labor Rising Against Trump"

Dear Friends,

Monday, January 16, 2017 was a success in the fight to reclaim Martin Luther King's legacy as we were joined by several thousand in the street in Oakland for the "Reclaim King's Radical Legacy March." To continue to build momentum in raising awareness about King's legacy, we invite you to join "Labor Rising Against Trump" to learn more about King's support for the Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike during the final days of his life in the Spring of 1968. This film explores King's historic links with labor as he believed that economic justice and organized workplaces were central to the liberation of African Americans and all working people during the Civil Rights movement.

The film will be shown on Wednesday (1/18/17) at the Omni Commons Disco Room (4799 Shattuck Avenue, Oakland) at 7pm. Requested Donation of $5 (no one turned away for lack of funds). Snacks and light refreshments will be provided.

The link to the Film Screening Event on IndyBay.org is found below:

https://www.indybay.org/ newsitems/2017/01/16/18795388. php

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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.
  

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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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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
Facebook
Twitter
Website
To give by check: 
PO Box 411074
San Francisco, CA
94141

Stock or legacy gifts:
Noelle Hanrahan
(415) 706 - 5222

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Committee to Stop FBI Repression (stopfbi.net)

Rasmea Defense Committee statement - December 21, 2016

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!


Background info

Statement from Tuesday, December 13


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:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN  55414

Add us to your address book



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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:

A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

B. ARTICLES IN FULL


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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

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Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin "Rashid" Johnson featuring exchanges with an Outlaw Kindle Edition

by Kevin Rashid Johnson (Author), Tom Big Warrior (Introduction), Russell Maroon Shoatz(Introduction)

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http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013RU5M4S



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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Major Battles On
For over 31 years, Major Tillery has been a prisoner of the State.
Despite that extraordinary fact, he continues his battles, both in the prison for his health, and in the courts for his freedom.
Several weeks ago, Tillery filed a direct challenge to his criminal conviction, by arguing that a so-called "secret witness" was, in fact, a paid police informant who was given a get-out-of-jail-free card if he testified against Tillery.
Remember I mentioned, "paid?"
Well, yes--the witness was 'paid'--but not in dollars. He was paid in sex!
In the spring of 1984, Robert Mickens was facing decades in prison on rape and robbery charges. After he testified against Tillery, however, his 25-year sentence became 5 years: probation!
And before he testified he was given an hour and a ½ private visit with his girlfriend--at the Homicide Squad room at the Police Roundhouse. (Another such witness was given another sweetheart deal--lie on Major, and get off!)
To a prisoner, some things are more important than money. Like sex!
In a verified document written in April, 2016, Mickens declares that he lied at trial, after being coached by the DAs and detectives on the case.
He lied to get out of jail--and because he could get with his girl.
Other men have done more for less.
Major's 58-page Petition is a time machine back into a practice that was once common in Philadelphia.
In the 1980s and '90s, the Police Roundhouse had become a whorehouse.
Major, now facing serious health challenges from his hepatitis C infection, stubborn skin rashes, and dangerous intestinal disorders, is still battling.
And the fight ain't over.
[©'16 MAJ  6/29/16]
Major Tillery Needs Your Help and Support
Major Tillery is an innocent man. There was no evidence against Major Tillery for the 1976 poolroom shootings that left one man dead and another wounded. The surviving victim gave a statement to homicide detectives naming others—not Tillery or his co-defendant—as the shooters. Major wasn't charged until 1980, he was tried in 1985.
The only evidence at trial came from these jailhouse informants who were given sexual favors and plea deals for dozens of pending felonies for lying against Major Tillery. Both witnesses now declare their testimony was manufactured by the police and prosecution. Neither witness had personal knowledge of the shooting.
This is a case of prosecutorial misconduct and police corruption that goes to the deepest levels of rot in the Philadelphia criminal injustice system. Major Tillery deserves not just a new trial, but dismissal of the charges against him and his freedom from prison.
It cost a lot of money for Major Tillery to be able to file his new pro se PCRA petition and continue investigation to get more evidence of the state misconduct. He needs help to get lawyers to make sure this case is not ignored. Please contribute, now.

HOW YOU CAN HELP
    Financial Support: Tillery's investigation is ongoing, to get this case filed has been costly and he needs funds for a legal team to fight this to his freedom!
    Go to JPay.com;
    code: Major Tillery AM9786 PADOC
    Tell Philadelphia District Attorney
    Seth Williams:
    Free Major Tillery! He is an innocent man, framed by police and and prosecution.
    Call: 215-686-8711 or

    Write to:
    Major Tillery AM9786
    SCI Frackville
    1111 Altamont Blvd.
    Frackville, PA 17931

      For More Information, Go To: Justice4MajorTillery/blogspot
      Call/Write:
      Rachel Wolkenstein, Esq. (917) 689-4009, RachelWolkenstein@gmail.com





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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: An Innocent Victim of Racist Frame-Up - from the Fact Sheet at: www.freekevincooper.org

        Kevin Cooper is an African-American man who was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 for the gruesome murders of a white family in Chino Hills, California: Doug and Peggy Ryen and their daughter Jessica and their house- guest Christopher Hughes. The Ryens' 8 year old son Josh, also attacked, was left for dead but survived.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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        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


        Updates from Team Lorenzo Johnson

        Dear Supporters and Friends,


        Show your support for Lorenzo by wearing one of our beautiful new campaign t-shirts! If you donate $20 (or more!) to the Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson, we will send you a t-shirt, while supplies last. Make sure to note your size and shipping address in the comment section on PayPal, or to include this information with a check.




        Here is a message from Lorenzo's wife, Tazza Salvatto:


        My husband is innocent, FREE HIM NOW!
        Lorenzo Johnson is a son, husband, father and brother. His injustice has been a continued nightmare for our family. Words cant explain our constant pain, I wish it on no one. Not even the people responsible for his injustice. 
        This is about an innocent man who has spent 20 years and counting in prison. The sad thing is Lorenzo's prosecution knew he was innocent from day one. These are the same people society relies on to protect us.

        Not only have these prosecutors withheld evidence of my husbands innocence by NEVER turning over crucial evidence to his defense prior to trial. Now that Lorenzo's innocence has been revealed, the prosecution refuses to do the right thing. Instead they are "slow walking" his appeal and continuing their malicious prosecution.
        When my husband or our family speak out about his injustice, he's labeled by his prosecutor as defaming a career cop and prosecutor. If they are responsible for Lorenzo's wrongful conviction, why keep it a secret??? This type of corruption and bullying of families of innocent prisoners to remain silent will not be tolerated.
        Our family is not looking for any form of leniency. Lorenzo is innocent, we want what is owed to him. JUSTICE AND HIS IMMEDIATE FREEDOM!!! 

                                  Lorenzo's wife,
                                   Tazza Salvatto
        Lorenzo is continuing to fight for his freedom with the support of his lead counsel, Michael Wiseman, The Pennsylvania Innocence Project, the Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice, and the Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson.
        Thank you all for reading this message and please take the time to visit our website and contribute to Lorenzo's campaign for freedom!
        Write: Lorenzo Johnson
                    DF 1036
                    SCI Mahanoy
                    301 Morea Rd.
                    Frackville, PA 17932
         Email: Through JPay using the code:
                      Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC
                                              or
                      Directly at LorenzoJohnson17932@gmail.com
                                             or
                      Directly on ConnectNetwork -- instructions here

        Have a wonderful day!
        - The Team 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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        B. ARTICLES IN FULL


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        1)  Felony Charges for Journalists Arrested at Inauguration Protests Raise Fears for Press Freedom
        By JONAH ENGEL BROMWICH JAN. 25, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/business/media/journalists-arrested-trump-inauguration.html?hp&action=c
        lick&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news




        2)  George Orwell's '1984' Is Suddenly a Best-Seller
        By KIMIKO de FREYTAS-TAMURA JAN. 25, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/books/1984-george-orwell-donald-
        trump.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region
        &pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard
        &contentPlacement=21&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.
        com&contentId=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2017%2F01%2F25%2
        Fbooks%2F1984-george-orwell-donald-trump.html&eventName=Watching-article-click




        3)  Thanks to Trump, the Doomsday Clock Advances Toward Midnight
        By LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS and DAVID TITLEY JAN. 26, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/opinion/thanks-to-trump-the-doomsday-clock-advances-toward-
        midnight.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-
        c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region




        4)  Clinics for World's Vulnerable Brace for Trump's Anti-Abortion Cuts
        By DIONNE SEARCEY, NORIMITSU ONISHI and SOMINI SENGUPTA JAN. 26, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/world/africa/clinics-health-care-cuts-abortion-trump.html?ref=world




        5)  Sent Home for Not Wearing Heels, She Ignited a British Rebellion
        By DAN BILEFSKY JAN. 25, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/world/europe/high-heels-british-inquiry-dress-codes-women.html?ref=world
        (See my NYT Comment to this article at:
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/world/europe/high-heels-british-inquiry-dress-codes-women.html?comments#permid=21239280
        —Bonnie Weinstein)




        6)  Troops Who Cleaned Up Radioactive Islands Can't Get Medical Care
        By DAVE PHILIPPS JAN. 28, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/us/troops-radioactive-islands-medical-care.html?rref=collection
        %2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=rank&module=package&version
        =highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront




        7)  White House Official, in Reversal, Says Green Card Holders Won't Be Barred
        By MICHAEL D. SHEAR JAN. 29, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/29/us/politics/white-house-official-in-reversal-says-green-card-holders-wont-
        be-barred.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-ab-top-
        region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0




        8)  Judge Blocks Trump Order on Refugees Amid Chaos and Outcry Worldwide
        By MICHAEL D. SHEAR, NICHOLAS KULISH and ALAN FEUER JAN. 28, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/us/refugees-detained-at-us-airports-prompting-legal-challenges-to-trumps-
        immigration-order.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=
        rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront




        9)  Who Hasn't Trump Banned? People From Places Where He's Done Business
        By RICHARD W. PAINTER and NORMAN L. EISEN JAN. 29, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/29/opinion/who-hasnt-trump-banned-people-from-places-where-hes-made-
        money.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region
        &region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region




        10)  Quebec Mosque Shooting Kills at Least 6, and 2 Suspects Are Arrested
        By IAN AUSTEN and CRAIG S. SMITH JAN. 29, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/29/world/americas/quebec-city-mosque-shooting-canada.html?hp&
        action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region&region=
        top-news&WT.nav=top-news




        11) What the World Needs Now is Socialism
        Democracy, economic and social equality for all on a world scale
        By Bonnie Weinstein
        http://www.socialistviewpoint.org




        12) Bankruptcy of the Liberal Establishment, and the (Stolen) Election of Donald Trump
        By Chris Kinder 
        http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/janfeb_17/janfeb_17_02.html




        13)  Wanted: Factory Workers, Degree Required
        By JEFFREY J. SELINGO JAN. 30, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/education/edlife/factory-workers
        -college-degree-apprenticeships.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&
        clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top
        -news&WT.nav=top-news




        14)  Rodrigo Duterte Says Drug War Will Go On as Police Plan Purge
        By FELIPE VILLAMOR


        15)  The Youth Group That Launched a Movement at Standing Rock
        In the fight over the Dakota Access Pipeline, Native American activists achieved one of the most galvanizing environmental victories in years — and it all began with a group of teenagers. 
        By Saul Elbein, January 31, 2017

        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/magazine/the-youth-group-that-launched-a-movement-at-standing-rock.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=sectionfront




        16)  'Jail Is for the Birds. No One Belongs There.’
        The Neediest Cases
        By  SANDRA E. GARCIA 
        egion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront







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        1)  Felony Charges for Journalists Arrested at Inauguration Protests Raise Fears for Press Freedom
        By JONAH ENGEL BROMWICH JAN. 25, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/business/media/journalists-arrested-trump-inauguration.html?hp&action=c
        lick&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

        At least six journalists were charged with felony rioting after they were arrested while covering the violent protests that took place just blocks from President Trump's inauguration parade in Washington on Friday, according to police reports and court documents.
        The journalists were among 230 people detained in the anti-Trump demonstrations, during which protesters smashed the glass of commercial buildings and lit a limousine on fire.
        The charges against the journalists — Evan Engel, Alexander Rubinstein, Jack Keller, Matthew Hopard, Shay Horse and Aaron Cantu — have been denounced by organizations dedicated to press freedom. All of those arrested have denied participating in the violence.
        "These felony charges are bizarre and essentially unheard of when it comes to journalists here in America who were simply doing their job," said Suzanne Nossel, the executive director of Pen America. "They weren't even in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were in the right place."
        Carlos Lauria, a spokesman and senior program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, called the charges "completely inappropriate and excessive," and the organization has asked that they be dropped immediately.
        "Our concern is that these arrests could send a chilling message to journalists that cover future protests," Mr. Lauria added.
        The arrests and charges were reported by The Guardian.
        Witnesses reported that sweeping arrests during the parade targeted rioters, protesters and journalists indiscriminately. A lawyer representing dozens of people arrested, Mark Goldstone, told The Associated Press that the police had "basically identified a location that had problems and arrested everyone in that location."

        The Metropolitan Police Department in Washington declined to comment Wednesday on why the journalists had been charged along with protesters.



        Anti-Trump protesters being pepper-sprayed in Washington on Jan. 20.Jewel Samad/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images 
        At least six journalists were charged with felony rioting after they were arrested while covering the violent protests that took place just blocks from President Trump's inauguration parade in Washington on Friday, according to police reports and court documents.
        The journalists were among 230 people detained in the anti-Trump demonstrations, during which protesters smashed the glass of commercial buildings and lit a limousine on fire.
        The charges against the journalists — Evan Engel, Alexander Rubinstein, Jack Keller, Matthew Hopard, Shay Horse and Aaron Cantu — have been denounced by organizations dedicated to press freedom. All of those arrested have denied participating in the violence.
        "These felony charges are bizarre and essentially unheard of when it comes to journalists here in America who were simply doing their job," said Suzanne Nossel, the executive director of Pen America. "They weren't even in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were in the right place."
        Carlos Lauria, a spokesman and senior program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, called the charges "completely inappropriate and excessive," and the organization has asked that they be dropped immediately.
        "Our concern is that these arrests could send a chilling message to journalists that cover future protests," Mr. Lauria added.
        The arrests and charges were reported by The Guardian.
        Witnesses reported that sweeping arrests during the parade targeted rioters, protesters and journalists indiscriminately. A lawyer representing dozens of people arrested, Mark Goldstone, told The Associated Press that the police had "basically identified a location that had problems and arrested everyone in that location."
        The Metropolitan Police Department in Washington declined to comment Wednesday on why the journalists had been charged along with protesters.
        Mr. Engel, a Brooklyn-based journalist who writes for Vocativ, a media and technology outlet, was among those charged with felony rioting and released. He said by email on Wednesday that he was unable to comment on the case since it was active, but that he was looking forward to the day he could say more.
        The document charging Mr. Rubinstein, who wrote for RT America, an affiliate of the Russian state-run television network, is identical to that charging Mr. Engel: While it says that protesters carrying "anarchist flags" were observed smashing large plate-glass windows at businesses and setting a limousine on fire, it does not accuse any individual journalist of criminal activity.
        Court documents for Mr. Keller — who works on the documentary series "Story of America" — and for Mr. Hopard, Mr. Horse and Mr. Cantu — who are independent journalists — included similar information.
        Jeffrey Light, a lawyer based in Washington who has been working on civil rights and first amendment related cases for about a decade, has filed a lawsuit on behalf of 51 plaintiffs arrested that day against officers from the police department and the park police. The suit accuses the police of surrounding and arresting "not only protesters who had engaged in no criminal conduct, but also members of the media, attorneys, legal observers and medics."
        Mr. Lauria, of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said it was all the more alarming that journalists had been arrested. "A car set on fire, windows broken in downtown businesses: I think that this is important information that the public needs to be informed about," he said.
        He said his organization was concerned about what he called "the sharp deterioration of press freedom in the U.S.," which he linked to Mr. Trump's campaign, noting that the candidate had "obstructed major news organization, vilified the press and attacked journalists by name with unrelenting hostility."
        All those actions were seen to contribute to a threatening climate for journalists covering the election.
        The committee had sought to meet with Vice President Mike Pence during the transition, Mr. Lauria said, but that meeting never took place. "We've been in touch with aides, and we're talking about the possibility of having this meeting in the future," he said.
        Ms. Nossel, of Pen America, also linked the charges to a climate fostered by Mr. Trump.
        "Obviously we were girded for worrisome and troubling developments," she said. "But the speed, pace and ferocity of the attacks on journalists, the purveying of falsehoods, the silencing of government and agencies that interface with the public — for all that to happen in a matter of days puts us on notice that some of the worst fears may not have been so far-fetched."
        Representatives of Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Wednesday.


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        2)  George Orwell's '1984' Is Suddenly a Best-Seller
        By KIMIKO de FREYTAS-TAMURA JAN. 25, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/books/1984-george-orwell-donald-
        trump.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region
        &pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard
        &contentPlacement=21&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.
        com&contentId=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2017%2F01%2F25%2
        Fbooks%2F1984-george-orwell-donald-trump.html&eventName=Watching-article-click

        George Orwell's classic book "1984," about a dystopian future where critical thought is suppressed under a totalitarian regime, has seen a surge in sales this month, rising to the top of the Amazon best-seller listin the United States and leading its publisher to have tens of thousands of new copies printed.
        Craig Burke, the publicity director at Penguin USA, said that the publisher had ordered 75,000 new copies of the book this week and that it was considering another reprint.
        "We've seen a big bump in sales," Mr. Burke said. He added that the rise "started over the weekend and hit hyperactive" on Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Since Friday, the book has reached a 9,500 percent increase in sales, he said.
        He said demand began to lift on Sunday, shortly after the interview Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to Donald J. Trump, gave on "Meet the Press."

        In defending a false claim by the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, that Mr. Trump had attracted the "largest audience ever to witness an inauguration," Ms. Conway used a turn of phrase that struck some observers as similar to the dystopian world of "1984."
        When asked on NBC's "Meet the Press" why Mr. Spicer had said something that was provably false, Ms. Conway replied airily, "Don't be so dramatic."
        Mr. Spicer, she said, "gave alternative facts."
        In the novel, the term "newspeak" refers to language in which independent thought, or "unorthodox" political ideas, have been eliminated. "Doublethink" is defined as "reality control."
        On social media and elsewhere on Sunday, the book's readers made a connection between Ms. Conway's comments and Orwell's language, and the attention on the book "kind of took a life of its own," Mr. Burke said.
        The dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster described the interview as "fraught with epistemological tension." The dictionary also reported that searches for the word "fact" spiked after Ms. Conway's comments, and then, as an apparent reminder, tweeted the dictionary's definition.
        Even outside the United States, interest in "1984" has grown. So far this year, sales have risen by 20 percent in Britain and Australia compared to the same period a year ago, according to Jess Harrison, a London-based editor at Penguin Books. The novel is usually a best-seller, she said, and it sold 100,000 copies last year in English-speaking countries outside the United States and Canada. "But we've definitely seen an uplift" in sales, she added.
        Dystopian novels are "chiming with people," Ms. Harrison said, adding that "The Man in The High Castle" by Philip Dick, an alternative history in which the Nazis defeated America to win World War II, is also selling well. A television series based on Mr. Dick's novel is now in its second season at Amazon.
        Penguin also published Sinclair Lewis's "It Can't Happen Here," about the rise of a demagogue, last Friday in Britain for the first time since 1935, "and we're already on to our third printing."
        On Wednesday, that book was also ranking among Amazon's best sellers, as was Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," another dystopian classic.
        Prof. Stefan Collini, a professor of intellectual history and an expert on Orwell at the University of Cambridge, said that readers see a natural parallel between the book and the way Mr. Trump and his staff have distorted facts.
        "Everyone remembers '1984' as containing various parodies of official distortions," he said.
        "That kind of unreality that is propagated as reality is what people feel reminded of, and that's why they keep coming back."


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        3)  Thanks to Trump, the Doomsday Clock Advances Toward Midnight
        By LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS and DAVID TITLEY JAN. 26, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/opinion/thanks-to-trump-the-doomsday-clock-advances-toward-
        midnight.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-
        c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

        It is now two and one-half minutes to midnight.
        Our organization, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, is marking the 70th anniversary of its Doomsday Clock on Thursday by moving it 30 seconds closer to midnight. In 2016, the global security landscape darkened as the international community failed to come to grips with humanity's most pressing threats: nuclear weapons and climate change.
        Making matters worse, the United States now has a president who has promised to impede progress on both of those fronts. Never before has the Bulletin decided to advance the clock largely because of the statements of a single person. But when that person is the new president of the United States, his words matter.
        This is the closest to midnight that the clock has been since 1953, when it was moved to two minutes to midnight after United States and the Soviet Union tested their first thermonuclear weapons within six months of one another.
        We understand that Mr. Trump has been in office only days, that many of his cabinet nominees are awaiting confirmation and that he has had little time to take official action.

        But Mr. Trump's statements and actions have been unsettling. He has made ill-considered comments about expanding and even deploying the American nuclear arsenal. He has expressed disbelief in the scientific consensus on global warming. He has shown a troubling propensity to discount or reject expert advice related to international security. And his nominees to head the Energy Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Office of Management and the Budget have disputed or questioned climate change.
        Last year, and the year before, we warned that world leaders were failing to act with the speed and on the scale necessary to protect citizens from the extreme dangers posed by climate change and nuclear war. During the past year, the need for leadership intensified but was met with inaction and brinkmanship.
        Other factors that led the committee to advance the Doomsday Clock included:
        • North Korea's continuing nuclear weapons development, the steady march of arsenal modernization programs in the nuclear weapon states, simmering tension between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, and stagnation in arms control. Russia is building new silo-based missiles, the new Borei class of nuclear ballistic missile submarines and new rail-mobile missiles as it revamps other intercontinental ballistic missiles. The United States is moving ahead with plans to modernize each part of its triad (bombers, land-based missiles and missile carrying submarines), adding capabilities, such as cruise missiles with increased ranges. As it improves the survivability of its own nuclear forces, China is helping Pakistan build submarine platforms. And Pakistan and India continue to update and expand their nuclear arsenals.
        •Doubt over the future of the Iran nuclear deal, which succeeded in accomplishing its goals during its first year, in the Trump administration.
        •Deteriorating relations between the United States and Russia, which possess more than 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons. This was reflected in disputes over Ukraine, Syria, ballistic missile defenses in Europe and election interference. There seems to be little prospect that negotiations to reduce nuclear arms will resume. Whether this will improve under President Trump is unclear.
        •Mixed results in global efforts to limit climate change. The Paris climate accord went into effect in 2016, and countries are taking some actions to bring down emissions of greenhouse gases. There are encouraging signs that global annual emissions were flat this past year, though there is no assurance this heralds a trend.
        These are all matters in which President Trump has signaled that he would make matters worse either because of a mistaken belief that the threats posed by nuclear weapons and climate can be ignored or that the words of a president of the United States do not matter to the rest of the world.

        Lawrence M. Krauss, a theoretical physicist at Arizona State University, is the chairman of the board of sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. David Titley, a retired rear admiral and former chairman of the Navy's Task Force on Climate Change, is a member of its science panel.


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        4)  Clinics for World's Vulnerable Brace for Trump's Anti-Abortion Cuts
        By DIONNE SEARCEY, NORIMITSU ONISHI and SOMINI SENGUPTA JAN. 26, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/world/africa/clinics-health-care-cuts-abortion-trump.html?ref=world

        DAKAR, Senegal — The clinic, tucked discreetly inside the student health center on the University of Dakar campus, prescribes birth control pills, hands out condoms and answers questions about sex that young women are nervous about asking in this conservative Muslim country.
        The clinic performs no abortions, nor does it discuss the procedure or give advice on where to get one. Senegal, by and large, outlaws abortion. But for other health services like getting contraceptives, said Anne Lancelot, the Sahel director at the organization that runs the clinic, "there is a very high demand."
        Now, under a Reagan-era policy revived by President Trump, the clinic may no longer be able to count on aid money from the United States Agency for International Development, part of a ban on providing abortion counseling overseas that could curtail a broad range of health services, including those that go well beyond abortion.

        Known as the Mexico City policy — and by its critics as the global gag rule — the abortion policy prohibits organizations abroad from using American aid to talk about abortion as a method of family planning. Anti-abortion groups like the Family Research Council have welcomed Mr. Trump's decision, saying it is consistent with "his campaign promise that he will protect taxpayers from having to pay for abortions."
        Direct American aid to carry out abortions was already prohibited, but the rule Mr. Trump revived goes further. It requires not only hospitals or clinics to refrain from providing advice or information on the benefits and availability of abortion. It also requires any international organizations supporting those clinics to stop promoting abortion or advocating abortion rights anywhere in the world — even if they use non-American money to do so.
        Experts say the rule has cut American aid to groups offering a wide range of services, not just abortion, during previous Republican administrations that have adopted the policy.
        But this time, they say, the impact could be much bigger.
        The wording in the Trump order extends the restrictions to all American global health aid, an $8.5 billion pot of money, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a research organization. More than half of that money goes to programs for H.I.V. and AIDS, including services for women of reproductive age, the analysis found. An additional 9 percent goes to maternal and child health care, which is partly aimed at promoting safe pregnancies.
        By contrast, the last time the rule was in place, under President George W. Bush, it applied only to family planning money, an amount that is currently around $520 million, the analysis found.
        As health providers braced for cuts from Washington, the Netherlands lost no time in casting itself as a defender of reproductive rights. Its Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that it would start an international fund "to make up as much as possible for this financial blow." It gave no specifics.
        A spokesman for U.S.A.I.D. said the agency was still reviewing Mr. Trump's presidential order to figure out how it would be enacted. But the language suggesting that it would be extended to all global health aid quickly sent a chill through the network of health providers that rely on American assistance to deliver a wide range of services in countries with fragile health care systems.
        In Swaziland, which has one of the world's highest H.I.V. infection rates, one private health care provider said its staff members provide abortion information to H.I.V.-infected women when necessary. Swaziland allows abortion only in cases of rape and incest, but patients can be referred to neighboring South Africa, where abortion is legal.
        "Our organization could definitely be affected, including our H.I.V. services, and you can imagine how detrimental that could be for a small country like Swaziland that's been heavily affected by H.I.V.," said Zelda Nhlabatsi, the executive director of the Family Life Association of Swaziland, which says it receives a quarter of its funding from the American government.
        In Lesotho, a landlocked nation surrounded by South Africa, Lerotholi Pheko, the executive director of the Lesotho Planned Parenthood Association, said he feared a hit to his operating budget even though his clinic does not provide abortion counseling.
        The reason: His clinic receives most of its funding from the International Planned Parenthood Federation, which has said that it will lose $100 million in American funding over the next four years under Mr. Trump's order.
        "If we are not able to increase the income we get locally," Mr. Pheko said, "it would mean that we would have to downsize."
        Here in Senegal, the small waiting room at the clinic on the busy University of Dakar campus was crammed with young women this week. Some cradled smartphones and tablets with headphone cords dangling from their ears.
        Students in their early 20s arrived with questions and confusion about options for pregnancy prevention in a nation where talking about contraception is still largely taboo. A box of condoms was on a shelf, and students can be tested for sexually transmitted diseases.
        "We are your brothers and sisters who listen without judging," read a banner at the center.
        Ms. Lancelot said the clinic does not provide abortion services or counseling. But the organization that runs it, Marie Stopes International, based in London, provides abortions and abortion counseling in other countries where it is legal, though not with money from the United States.
        Marjorie Newman-Williams, director of operations for Marie Stopes International, which received $30 million in American funding 2016, said her group could not accept the Trump administration's restrictions and would seek aid elsewhere.
        "There will be a huge void in service delivery, and unless we can make up that money really fast, the funding won't be there," Ms. Newman-Williams said.
        President Trump's decision drew support from opponents of abortion in the United States. Jim DeMint, the president of the Heritage Foundation, issued his congratulations to Mr. Trump on Twitter "for reinstating Reagan's #MexicoCityPolicy, preventing our tax dollars from funding abortion overseas."
        Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, echoed the sentiment, writing on Twitter, "Not one dime of taxpayer money should pay for abortion."
        The Mexico City policy has been in effect under every Republican administration since President Ronald Reagan announced it in 1984. And it has been revoked by every Democratic administration.
        The international groups affected by the prohibition usually provide a range of women's health services, including pregnancy tests, H.I.V. tests and screenings for sexually transmitted diseases. To continue to receive American aid, the groups would have to certify that they do not offer abortion counseling, refer patients to abortion services or advocate legal abortions in the countries where they work. The policy spells out some exceptions, including cases of rape and treating women who have had botched abortions.
        In Bogotá, Colombia, Marta Royo, who leads an organization called Profamilia, said she found the restrictions unacceptable.
        Colombia legalized abortion in 2006, so to be barred from talking about it with patients, Ms. Royo said, would be "going against the country rules and the rights of the country that we have fought for."
        "It would be such a contradiction," she said.
        Her group, which is part of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, does not use American funding for abortion services, she said, only for family planning.
        Research suggests that the policy has had a counterintuitive impact in the past. In countries that relied heavily on funding from the United States for reproductive health services, abortion rates rose when the Reagan-era policy was in place.
        Researchers cite a possible reason: The aid spigot dries up for the organizations that provide contraceptive services to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
        Avoiding such unintended pregnancies is what brought many of the young college students to the health clinic in Dakar. One 24-year-old student, Absa, who withheld her last name because her parents did not know she was sexually active, said she came to the clinic to ask about birth control after hearing a debate about contraception on television.
        Another, Raicha, who was also worried about being condemned by her parents, came to the clinic after her boyfriend refused to use a condom. She worried she would get pregnant, so the couple agreed to look into using other contraceptives.
        "I don't want to get pregnant," said Raicha, 22. "I want to finish my studies and be free to work."

        Follow Dionne Searcey @dionnesearcey, Norimitsu Onishi @onishinyt and Somini Sengupta @SominiSengupta on Twitter.
        Dionne Searcey reported from Dakar, Norimitsu Onishi from Johannesburg, and Somini Sengupta from the United Nations. Rick Gladstone contributed reporting from New York.


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        5)  Sent Home for Not Wearing Heels, She Ignited a British Rebellion
        By DAN BILEFSKY JAN. 25, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/world/europe/high-heels-british-inquiry-dress-codes-women.html?ref=world

        LONDON — When Nicola Thorp reported to work awhile back as a temporary receptionist in the financial center here, she was shocked when her temp supervisor said her flat shoes were unacceptable. She would need to get herself shoes with heels at least two inches high.
        When she refused, she was sent home from the accounting firm PwC without pay. But that was not the end of it. Five months later, Ms. Thorp, an actress originally from the northern seaside city of Blackpool, started a petition calling for a law that would make sure no company could ever again demand that a woman wear heels to work.
        The petition garnered more than 150,000 signatures, helped spur a popular backlash — dozens of professional women posted photographsof themselves on Twitter defiantly wearing flats — and prompted an inquiry overseen by two parliamentary committees.

        On Wednesday, more than two years after Ms. Thorp, now 28, strode into that office in her chic but sensible black flats, the committees released a report concluding that Portico, the outsourcing firm that had insisted she wear high heels, had broken the law. It added that existing law needed to be toughened to overcome outmoded and sexist workplace codes.
        During the investigation, the committees received hundreds of complaints from women whose companies had demanded that they "dye their hair blonde," "wear revealing outfits" or "constantly reapply makeup."
        "Discriminatory dress codes remain widespread," the report said.
        Ms. Thorp lauded the inquiry's conclusion, saying it was all the more imperative in the Trump era, when men around the world had a role model in the White House who had boasted about behaving badly toward women.
        "I refused to work for a company that expected women to wear makeup, heels and a skirt. This is unacceptable in 2017," she said. "People say sexism is not an issue anymore. But when a man who has admitted publicly to sexually harassing women is the leader of the free world, it is more crucial than ever to have laws that protect women."
        Ms. Thorp said her heel revolt, while a protest against sexism and discrimination, was also a matter of public health given the toll that high heels take on women's feet. "The company expected me to do a nine-hour shift on my feet escorting clients to meeting rooms," she said. "I told them that I just wouldn't be able to do that in heels."
        Portico on Wednesday said it had rewritten its code almost immediately after the issue was raised by Ms. Thorp, dropping the heel requirement, among others. Its old code had warned employees against such things as greasy or highly gelled hair or wearing flowers as accessories. It had also called for heel height to be two to four inches and for makeup to be "worn at all times" and "regularly reapplied," with a minimum of lipstick, mascara and eye shadow.
        PwC stressed that the dress code required by Portico in December 2015 was Portico's policy and had been enforced by a Portico supervisor. Nevertheless, it said it regretted that the inquiry was instigated by an incident at its offices, and it remained committed to equality at the workplace.
        In some spheres, Britain, a multicultural society, has been particularly sensitive about gender discrimination. Last summer the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, banned advertisementsshowing scantily clad women from the city's public transportation system, saying they promoted unhealthy or unrealistic body images.
        But legal experts and women's advocates say social and cultural conventions can be harder to change. When Prime Minister Theresa May was photographed recently wearing a $1,250 pair of "desert khaki" leather pants, she was criticized as being excessive and out of touch, even as her defenders argued that no one talked about Mr. Trump's far more expensive Brioni suits.
        Nevertheless, before she entered No. 10 Downing Street, Mrs. May herself may have played a role in reinforcing gender stereotypes. When she was the minister for women and equality in 2011, she said that "traditional gender-based workplace dress codes" had not held her back and argued that they encouraged "a sense of professionalism" in the workplace.
        In a sign of the challenges ahead, the British television host Piers Morgan inspired a Twitter storm on Wednesday when he insisted during an interview with Ms. Thorp that it was not unreasonable to expect a receptionist to wear stiletto heels. "Get Piers in Heels," roared The Sun's headline.
        Britain's 2010 Equality Act prohibits discrimination in the workplace on the basis of gender, age or sexual orientation. But women's advocates and legal experts said the law was unevenly applied.
        Emma Birkett, who works in retail, told the inquiry that her company encouraged her and her female colleagues to wear shorter skirts and unbutton more buttons on their blouses during Christmastime, "when a higher proportion of male shoppers was anticipated." Ruth Campion, a flight attendant, testified that she felt "prostituted" when ordered to wear heels, skirts and makeup.
        Sam Smethers, chief executive of the Fawcett Society, a leading women's rights organization in London that traces its roots to 1866, said sexist dress codes that objectified women or men had no place in the modern workplace. She noted that it took until last January for British Airways to allow female cabin crew members to wear trousers. She also lamented that it cost about $1,500 in Britain for a person to bring a case before an employment tribunal, and that even without this financial constraint, "some women don't want to be seen as troublemakers or risk losing their jobs."
        "Employers need to focus on what drives productivity and enables their staff to feel part of a team," she said, adding, "It isn't a pair of high heels."


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        6)  Troops Who Cleaned Up Radioactive Islands Can't Get Medical Care
        By DAVE PHILIPPS JAN. 28, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/us/troops-radioactive-islands-medical-care.html?rref=collection
        %2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=rank&module=package&version
        =highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

        RICHLAND, Wash. — When Tim Snider arrived on Enewetak Atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to clean up the fallout from dozens of nuclear tests on the ring of coral islands, Army officers immediately ordered him to put on a respirator and a bright yellow suit designed to guard against plutonium poisoning.
        A military film crew snapped photos and shot movies of Mr. Snider, a 20-year-old Air Force radiation technician, in the crisp new safety gear. Then he was ordered to give all the gear back. He spent the rest of his four-month stint on the islands wearing only cutoff shorts and a floppy sun hat.
        "I never saw one of those suits again," Mr. Snider, now 58, said in an interview in his kitchen here as he thumbed a yellowing photo he still has from the 1979 shoot. "It was just propaganda."

        Today Mr. Snider has tumors on his ribs, spine and skull — which he thinks resulted from his work on the crew, in the largest nuclear cleanup ever undertaken by the United States military.
        Roughly 4,000 troops helped clean up the atoll between 1977 and 1980. Like Mr. Snider, most did not even wear shirts, let alone respirators. Hundreds say they are now plagued by health problems, including brittle bones, cancer and birth defects in their children. Many are already dead. Others are too sick to work.
        The military says there is no connection between these illnesses and the cleanup. Radiation exposure during the work fell well below recommended thresholds, it says, and safety precautions were top notch. So the government refuses to pay for the veterans' medical care.
        Congress long ago recognized that troops were harmed by radiation on Enewetak during the original atomic tests, which occurred in the 1950s, and should be cared for and compensated. Still, it has failed to do the same for the men who cleaned up the toxic debris 20 years later. The disconnect continues a longstanding pattern in which the government has shrugged off responsibility for its nuclear mistakes.
        On one cleanup after another, veterans have been denied care because shoddy or intentionally false radiation monitoring was later used as proof that there was no radiation exposure.
        A report by The New York Times last spring found that veterans were exposed to plutonium during the cleanup of a 1966 accident involving American hydrogen bombs in Palomares, Spain. Declassified documents and a recent study by the Air Force said the men might have been poisoned, and needed new testing.
        But in the months since the report, nothing has been done to help them.
        For two years, the Enewetak veterans have been trying, without success, to win medical benefits from Congress through a proposed Atomic Veterans Healthcare Parity Act. Some lawmakers hope to introduce a bill this year, but its fate is uncertain. Now, as new cases of cancer emerge nearly every month, many of the men wonder how much longer they can wait.

        'Plutonium Problems'

        The cleanup of Enewetak has long been portrayed as a triumph. During the operation, officials told reporters that they were setting a new standard in safety. One report from the end of the cleanup said safety was so strict that "it would be difficult to identify additional radsafe precautions that could have been taken."
        Documents from the time and interviews with dozens of veterans tell a different story.
        Most of the documents were declassified and made publicly available in the 1990s, along with millions of pages of other files relating to nuclear testing, and sat unnoticed for years. They show that the government used troops instead of professional nuclear workers to save money. Then it saved even more money by skimping on safety precautions.
        Records show that protective equipment was missing or unusable. Troops requesting respirators couldn't get them. Cut-rate safety monitoring systems failed. Officials assured concerned members of Congress by listing safeguards that didn't exist.
        And though leaders of the cleanup told troops that the islands emitted no more radiation than a dental X-ray, documents show they privately worried about "plutonium problems" and areas that were "highly radiologically contaminated."
        Tying any disease to radiation exposure years earlier is nearly impossible; there has never been a formal study of the health of the Enewetak cleanup crews. The military collected nasal swabs and urine samples during the cleanup to measure how much plutonium troops were absorbing, but in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, it said it could not find the records.
        Hundreds of the troops, though, almost all now in their late 50s, have found one another on Facebook and discovered remarkably similar problems involving deteriorating bones and an incidence of cancer that appears to be far above the norm.
        A tally of 431 of the veterans by a member of the group shows that of those who stayed on the southernmost island, where radiation was low, only 2 percent report having cancer. Of those who worked on the most contaminated islands in the north, 20 percent report cancer. An additional 34 percent from the contaminated islands report other health problems that could be related to radiation, like failing bones, infertility and thyroid problems.

        Budget Cuts and the Cleanup

        Between 1948 and 1958, 43 atomic blasts rocked the tiny atoll — part of the Marshall Islands, which sit between Hawaii and the Philippines — obliterating the native groves of breadfruit trees and coconut palms, and leaving an apocalyptic wreckage of twisted test towers, radioactive bunkers and rusting military equipment.
        Four islands were entirely vaporized; only deep blue radioactive craters in the ocean remained. The residents had been evacuated. No one thought they would ever return.
        In the early 1970s, the Enewetak islanders threatened legal action if they didn't get their home back. In 1972, the United States government agreed to return the atoll and vowed to clean it up first, a project shared by the Atomic Energy Commission, now called the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense.
        The biggest problem, according to Energy Department reports, was Runit Island, a 75-acre spit of sand blitzed by 11 nuclear tests in 1958. The north end was gouged by a 300-foot-wide crater that documents from the time describe as "a special problem" because of "high subsurface contamination."
        The island was littered with a fine dust of pulverized plutonium, which if inhaled or otherwise absorbed can cause cancer years or even decades later. A millionth of a gram is potentially harmful, and because the isotopes have a half-life of 24,000 years, the danger effectively never goes away.
        The military initially quarantined Runit. Government scientists agreed that other islands might be made habitable, but Runit would most likely forever be too toxic, memos show.
        So federal officials decided to collect radioactive debris from the other islands and dump it into the Runit crater, then cap it with a thick concrete dome.
        The government intended to use private contractors and estimated the cleanup would cost $40 million, documents show. But Congress balked at the price and approved only half the money. It ordered that "all reasonable economies should be realized" by using troops to do the work.
        Safety planners intended to use protective suits, respirators and sprinklers to keep down dust. But without adequate funding, simple precautions were scrapped.
        Paul Laird was one of the first service members to arrive for the atoll's cleanup, in 1977. Then a 20-year-old bulldozer driver, he began scraping topsoil that records show contained plutonium. He was given no safety equipment.
        "That dust was like baby powder. We were covered in it," said Mr. Laird, now 60, during an interview in rural Maine, where he owns a small auto repair shop. "But we couldn't even get a paper dust mask. I begged for one daily. My lieutenant said the masks were on back order so use a T-shirt."
        By the time Mr. Laird left the islands, he was throwing up and had a blisterlike rash. He got out of the Army in 1978 and moved home to Maine. When he turned 52, he found a lump that turned out to be testicular cancer. A scan at the hospital showed he also had bladder cancer. A few years later he developed a different form of bladder cancer.
        His private health insurance covered the treatment, but co-payments left him deep in debt. He applied repeatedly for free veterans' health care for radiation but was denied. His medical records from the military all said he was not exposed.
        "When the job was done, they threw my bulldozer in the ocean because it was so hot," Mr. Laird said. "If it got that much radiation, how the hell did it miss me?"

        Scant Avenues for Help

        As the cleanup continued, federal officials tried to institute safety measures. A shipment of yellow radiation suits arrived on the islands in 1978, but in interviews veterans said that they were too hot to wear in the tropical sun and that the military told them that it was safe to go without them.
        The military tried to monitor plutonium inhalation using air samplers. But they soon broke. According to an Energy Department memo, in 1978, only a third of the samplers were working.
        All troops were issued a small film badge to measure radiation exposure, but government memos note that humid conditions destroyed the film. Failure rates often reached 100 percent.
        Every evening, Air Force technicians scanned workers for plutonium particles before they left Runit. Men said dozens of workers each day had screened positive for dangerous levels of radiation.
        "Sometimes we'd get readings that were all the way to the red," said one technician, David Roach, 57, who now lives in Rockland, Me.
        None of the high readings were recorded, said Mr. Roach, who has since had several strokes.
        Two members of Congress wrote to the secretary of defense in 1978 with concerns, but his office told them not to worry: Suits and respirators ensured the cleanup was conducted in "a manner as to assure that radiation exposure to individuals is limited to the lowest levels practicable."
        Even after the cleanup, many of the islands were still too radioactive to inhabit.
        In 1988, Congress passed a law providing automatic medical care to any troops involved in the original atomic testing. But the act covers veterans only up to 1958, when atomic testing stopped, excluding the Enewetak cleanup crews.
        If civilian contractors had done the cleanup and later discovered declassified documents that show the government failed to follow its own safety plan, they could sue for negligence. Veterans don't have that right. A 1950 Supreme Court ruling bars troops and their families from suing for injuries arising from military service.
        The veterans' only avenue for help is to apply individually to the Department of Veterans Affairs for free medical care and disability payments. But the department bases decisions on old military records — including defective air sampling and radiation badge data — that show no one was harmed. It nearly always denies coverage.
        "A lot of guys can't survive anymore, financially," said Jeff Dean, 60, who piloted boats loaded with contaminated soil.
        Mr. Dean developed cancer at 43, then again two years later. He had to give up his job as a carpenter as the bones in his spine deteriorated. Unpaid medical bills left him $100,000 in debt.
        "No one seems to want to admit anything," Mr. Dean said. "I don't know how much longer we can wait, we have guys dying all the time."


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        7)  White House Official, in Reversal, Says Green Card Holders Won't Be Barred
        By MICHAEL D. SHEAR JAN. 29, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/29/us/politics/white-house-official-in-reversal-says-green-card-holders-wont-
        be-barred.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-ab-top-
        region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

        WASHINGTON — A top White House official appeared to reverse a key part of President Trump's immigration order on Sunday, saying that people from the affected countries who hold green cards will not be prevented from returning to the United States.
        But the official, Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, also said that border agents had "discretionary authority" to detain and question suspicious travelers from certain countries. That statement seemed to add to the uncertainty over how the executive order will be interpreted and enforced in the days ahead.
        Part of the president's order gives preferential treatment to Christians who try to enter the United States from majority-Muslim countries. In a Twitter post on Sunday morning, Mr. Trump deplored the killings of Christians in the Middle East without noting the killings of Muslims, who have been killed in vastly greater numbers in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.
        Mr. Trump asserted last week that Christians had been "treated horribly" under previous administrations. "If you were a Muslim, you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible," he said Friday in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. "I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them."
        In a second Twitter message on Sunday, the president said that the United States needed strong borders and "extreme vetting" to protect itself from terrorists. He cited Europe and "indeed, the world" as evidence that the United States must shut its borders to potential threats.
        The president's order, enacted with the stroke of a pen at 4:42 p.m. Eastern on Friday, suspended entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days, barred Syrian refugees indefinitely and blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
        A series of rulings by federal judges across the country blocked part of the president's actions, preventing the government from deporting some travelers who found themselves ensnared by the presidential order. But the court decisions largely stopped short of letting them into the country or issuing a broader ruling on the constitutionality of Mr. Trump's actions.
        Lawyers for those denied entry said on Sunday that there was significant confusion and disagreement among border agents about who was affected by Mr. Trump's order.
        In a statement Sunday morning, the Department of Homeland Security said that agents would "continue to enforce all of President Trump's executive orders," and that "prohibited travel will remain prohibited." But it also said that the department "will comply with judicial orders."
        The confusion was evident in the handling of those who have valid green cards, making them legal permanent residents of the United States.
        On Saturday night, the Department of Homeland Security said that Mr. Trump's order did apply to green card holders who were traveling to the United States from the seven countries affected.
        White House officials reiterated that position in a briefing for reporters on Saturday afternoon, saying that green card holders from the seven countries would need a case-by-case waiver to return.
        Mr. Priebus appeared to change that position Sunday morning. "As far as green card holders, moving forward, it doesn't affect them," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press" program.
        He defended Mr. Trump's order, saying it had been carried out smoothly and was protecting Americans from terrorist threats. On Saturday, a day after the order was issued, airports were marked by scenes of confusion and protest as officials tried to interpret the order, including how to handle green card holders.
        Around the globe on Saturday, legal residents of the United States who hold valid green cards and approved visas were blocked from boarding planes overseas or detained for hours in American airports.
        Mr. Priebus said several times during the NBC interview that green card holders would not be subject to the order "going forward." But he repeatedly suggested that anyone, including American citizens, who traveled from any of the seven predominantly Muslim countries identified in the order would be subjected to additional scrutiny.
        "If you're an American citizen traveling back and forth to Libya, you are likely to be subjected to further questioning when you come into an airport," Mr. Priebus said. He added later, "There is discretionary authority that a customs and border patrol agent has when they suspect that someone is up to no good when they travel back and forth to Libya or Yemen."
        Mr. Priebus said that travelers from the seven countries would be "subjected, temporarily, with more questioning, until a better system is put in place."
        Mr. Trump — in office just a week — has found himself accused of constitutional and legal overreach with his executive order. Large crowds of protesters turned out at airports around the country to denounce Mr. Trump's ban.
        Lawyers who sued the government to block the White House order said the judge's decision could affect an estimated 100 to 200 people who were detained upon arrival at American airports.
        Judge Ann M. Donnelly of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama, ruled just before 9 p.m. Saturday that carrying out Mr. Trump's order by sending the travelers home could cause them "irreparable harm." She said the government was "enjoined and restrained from, in any manner and by any means, removing individuals" who had arrived in the United States with valid visas or refugee status.
        The ruling does not appear to force the administration to let in people otherwise blocked by Mr. Trump's order who have not yet traveled to the United States.
        The judge's one-page ruling came swiftly after lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union testified in her courtroom that one of the people detained at an airport was being put on a plane to be deported back to Syria at that very moment.
        Hundreds of people waited outside the courthouse chanting "Set them free!" as lawyers made their case. When the crowd learned that Judge Donnelly had ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, a rousing cheer went up in the crowd.
        Minutes after the judge's ruling in New York, another judge, Leonie M. Brinkema of Federal District Court in Virginia, issued a temporary restraining order for a week to block the removal of any green card holders being detained at Dulles International Airport.
        Throughout the day on Saturday, there were numerous reports of students attending American universities who were blocked from returning to the United States from visits abroad. One student said in a Twitter post that he would be unable to study at Yale. Another who attends the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was refused permission to board a plane. A Sudanese graduate student at Stanford University was blocked for hours from entering the country.
        Human rights groups reported that legal permanent residents of the United States who hold green cards were being stopped in foreign airports as they sought to return from funerals, vacations or study abroad.
        The White House said the restrictions would protect "the United States from foreign nationals entering from countries compromised by terrorism" and allow the administration time to put in place "a more rigorous vetting process." But critics condemned Mr. Trump over the collateral damage on people who had no sinister intentions in trying to come to the United States.
        White House aides said on Saturday that there had been consultations with State Department and homeland security officials about carrying out the order. "Everyone who needed to know was informed," one aide said.
        But that assertion was denied by multiple officials with knowledge of the interactions, including two officials at the State Department. Leaders of Customs and Border Protection and of Citizenship and Immigration Services — the two agencies most directly affected by the order — were on a telephone briefing on the new policy even as Mr. Trump signed it on Friday, two officials said.


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        8)  Judge Blocks Trump Order on Refugees Amid Chaos and Outcry Worldwide
        By MICHAEL D. SHEAR, NICHOLAS KULISH and ALAN FEUER JAN. 28, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/us/refugees-detained-at-us-airports-prompting-legal-challenges-to-trumps-
        immigration-order.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=
        rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront

        WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Brooklyn came to the aid of scores of refugees and others who were trapped at airports across the United States on Saturday after an executive order signed by President Trump, which sought to keep many foreigners from entering the country, led to chaotic scenes across the globe.
        The judge's ruling blocked part of the president's actions, preventing the government from deporting some arrivals who found themselves ensnared by the presidential order. But it stopped short of letting them into the country or issuing a broader ruling on the constitutionality of Mr. Trump's actions.
        The high-stakes legal case played out on Saturday amid global turmoil, as the executive order signed by the president slammed shut the borders of the United States for an Iranian scientist headed to a lab in Massachusetts, a Syrian refugee family headed to a new life in Ohio and countless others across the world.

        The president's order, enacted with the stroke of a pen at 4:42 p.m. Friday, suspended entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days, barred Syrian refugees indefinitely, and blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
        The Department of Homeland Security said that the order also barred green card holders from those countries from re-entering the United States. In a briefing for reporters, White House officials said that green card holders from the seven affected countries who are outside the United States would need a case-by-case waiver to return.
        Mr. Trump — in office just a week — found himself accused of constitutional and legal overreach by two Iraqi immigrants, defended by the American Civil Liberties Union. Meanwhile, large crowds of protesters turned out at airports around the country to denounce Mr. Trump's ban on the entry of refugees and people from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
        Lawyers who sued the government to block the White House order said the judge's decision could affect an estimated 100 to 200 people who were detained upon arrival at American airports.
        Judge Ann M. Donnelly of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama, ruled just before 9 p.m. that implementing Mr. Trump's order by sending the travelers home could cause them "irreparable harm." She said the government was "enjoined and restrained from, in any manner and by any means, removing individuals" who had arrived in the United States with valid visas or refugee status.
        The ruling does not appear to force the administration to let in people otherwise blocked by Mr. Trump's order who have not yet traveled to the United States.
        The judge's one-page ruling came swiftly after lawyers for the A.C.L.U. testified in her courtroom that one of the people detained at an airport was being put on a plane to be deported back to Syria at that very moment. A government lawyer, Gisela A. Westwater, who spoke to the court by phone from Washington, said she simply did not know.
        Hundreds of people waited outside of the courthouse chanting, "Set them free!" as lawyers made their case. When the crowd learned that Judge Donnelly had ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, a rousing cheer went up in the crowd.
        Minutes after the judge's ruling in New York City, another judge, Leonie M. Brinkema of Federal District Court in Virginia, issued a temporary restraining order for a week to block the removal of any green card holders being detained at Dulles International Airport.
        In a statement released early Sunday morning, the Department of Homeland Security said it would continue to enforce all of the president's executive orders, even while complying with judicial decisions. "Prohibited travel will remain prohibited," the department said in a statement, adding that the directive was "a first step towards re-establishing control over America's borders and national security."
        Around the nation, security personnel at major international airports had new rules to follow, though the application of the order appeared chaotic and uneven. Humanitarian organizations delivered the bad news to overseas families that had overcome the bureaucratic hurdles previously in place and were set to travel. And refugees already on flights when the order was signed on Friday found themselves detained upon arrival.
        "We've gotten reports of people being detained all over the country," said Becca Heller, the director of the International Refugee Assistance Project. "They're literally pouring in by the minute."
        Earlier in the day, at the White House, Mr. Trump shrugged off the sense of anxiety and disarray, suggesting that there had been an orderly rollout. "It's not a Muslim ban, but we were totally prepared," he said. "It's working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over."
        But to many, the government hardly seemed prepared for the upheaval that Mr. Trump's actions put into motion.
        There were numerous reports of students attending American universities who were blocked from returning to the United States from visits abroad. One student said in a Twitter post that he would be unable to study at Yale. Another who attends the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was refused permission to board a plane. A Sudanese graduate student at Stanford University was blocked for hours from entering the country.
        Human rights groups reported that legal permanent residents of the United States who hold green cards were being stopped in foreign airports as they sought to return from funerals, vacations or study abroad. There was widespread condemnation of the order, from religious leaders, business executives, academics, political leaders and others. Mr. Trump's supporters offered praise, calling it a necessary step on behalf of the nation's security.
        Homeland Security officials said on Saturday night that 109 people who were already in transit to the United States when the order was signed were denied access; 173 were stopped before boarding planes heading to America. Eighty-one people who were stopped were eventually given waivers to enter the United States, officials said.
        Legal residents who have a green card and are currently in the United States should meet with a consular officer before leaving the country, a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told reporters. Officials did not clarify the criteria that would qualify someone for a waiver, other than that it would be granted "in the national interest."
        But the week-old administration appeared to be implementing the order chaotically, with agencies and officials around the globe interpreting it in different ways.
        The Stanford student, Nisrin Omer, a legal permanent resident, said she was held at Kennedy International Airport in New York for about five hours but was eventually allowed to leave the airport. Others who were detained appeared to be still in custody or sent back to their home countries.
        White House aides claimed on Saturday that there had been consultations with State Department and homeland security officials about carrying out the order. "Everyone who needed to know was informed," one aide said.
        But that assertion was denied by multiple officials with knowledge of the interactions, including two officials at the State Department. Leaders of Customs and Border Protection and of Citizenship and Immigration Services — the two agencies most directly affected by the order — were on a telephone briefing on the new policy even as Mr. Trump signed it on Friday, two officials said.
        The A.C.L.U.'s legal case began with two Iraqis detained at Kennedy Airport, the named plaintiffs in the case. One was en route to reunite with his wife and son in Texas. The other had served alongside Americans in Iraq for a decade.
        Shortly after noon on Saturday, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, an interpreter who worked for more than a decade on behalf of the United States government in Iraq, was released. After nearly 19 hours of detention, Mr. Darweesh began to cry as he spoke to reporters, putting his hands behind his back and miming handcuffs.
        "What I do for this country? They put the cuffs on," Mr. Darweesh said. "You know how many soldiers I touch by this hand?"
        The other man the lawyers are representing, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, who was en route to Houston, was released Saturday night.
        Before the two men were released, one of the lawyers, Mark Doss, a supervising attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project, asked an official, "Who is the person we need to talk to?"
        "Call Mr. Trump," said the official, who declined to identify himself.
        While the judge's ruling means that none of the detainees will be sent back immediately, lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case expressed concern that all those at the airports would now be put in detention, pending a resolution of the case.
        The White House said the restrictions would protect "the United States from foreign nationals entering from countries compromised by terrorism" and allow the administration time to put in place "a more rigorous vetting process." But critics condemned Mr. Trump over the collateral damage on people who had no sinister intentions in trying to come to the United States.
        Peaceful protests began forming Saturday afternoon at Kennedy Airport, where nine travelers had been detained upon arrival at Terminal 7 and two others at Terminal 4, an airport official said. Similar scenes were playing out at other airports across the nation.
        An official message to all American diplomatic posts around the world provided instructions about how to treat people from the countries affected: "Effective immediately, halt interviewing and cease issuance and printing" of visas to the United States.
        Internationally, confusion turned to panic as travelers found themselves unable to board flights bound for the United States. In Dubai and Istanbul, airport and immigration officials turned passengers away at boarding gates and, in at least one case, ejected a family from a flight it had boarded.
        Seyed Soheil Saeedi Saravi, a promising young Iranian scientist, had been scheduled to travel in the coming days to Boston, where he had been awarded a fellowship to study cardiovascular medicine at Harvard, according to Thomas Michel, the professor who was to supervise the research fellowship.
        But Professor Michel said the visas for the student and his wife had been indefinitely suspended.
        "This outstanding young scientist has enormous potential to make contributions that will improve our understanding of heart disease, and he has already been thoroughly vetted," Professor Michel wrote to The New York Times.
        A Syrian family of six who have been living in a Turkish refugee camp since fleeing their home in 2014 had been scheduled to arrive on Tuesday in Cleveland. Instead, the family's trip has been called off.
        "Everyone is just so heartbroken, so angry, so sad," said Danielle Drake, the community manager for US Together, an agency that resettles refugees.
        A Christian family of six from Syria said in an email to Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania, that they were being detained on Saturday morning at Philadelphia International Airport despite having legal paperwork, green cards and visas that had been approved.
        In the case of the two Iraqis held at Kennedy Airport, the legal filings by his lawyers say that Mr. Darweesh was granted a special immigrant visa on Jan. 20, the same day Mr. Trump was sworn in as president.
        A husband and father of three, Mr. Darweesh arrived at Kennedy Airport with his family. Mr. Darweesh's wife and children made it through passport control and customs, but agents of Customs and Border Protection detained him.
        In Istanbul, during a stopover on Saturday, passengers reported that security officers had entered a plane after everyone had boarded and ordered a young Iranian woman and her family to leave the aircraft.
        Iranian green card holders who live in the United States were blindsided by the decree while on vacation in Iran, finding themselves in a legal limbo and unsure whether they would be able to return to America.
        "How do I get back home now?" said Daria Zeynalia, a green card holder who was visiting family in Iran. He had rented a house and leased a car, and would be eligible for citizenship in November. "What about my job? If I can't go back soon, I'll lose everything."

        Michael D. Shear reported from Washington, and Nicholas Kulish and Alan Feuer from New York. Reporting was contributed by Mark Mazzetti, Matthew Rosenberg, Ron Nixon and Adam Liptak from Washington; Thomas Erdbrink from Tehran; Manny Fernandez from Houston; Julie Bosman from Chicago; and Liam Stack, Russell Goldman, Joe Goldstein, Liz Robbins, Stephanie Saul and Sean Piccoli from New York.


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        9)  Who Hasn't Trump Banned? People From Places Where He's Done Business
        By RICHARD W. PAINTER and NORMAN L. EISEN JAN. 29, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/29/opinion/who-hasnt-trump-banned-people-from-places-where-hes-made-
        money.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region
        &region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

        President Trump's executive order banning travel to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries is being rightly challenged in the courts for, among other things, its unconstitutional interference with free exercise of religion and denial of due process. Overlooked in the furor is another troubling aspect of the situation: President Trump omitted from his ban a number of other predominantly Muslim nations where his company has done business. This adds further illegitimacy to one of the most arbitrary executive actions in our recent history, and raises significant constitutional questions.
        The seven countries whose citizens are subject to the ban are relatively poor. Some, such as Syria, are torn by civil war; others are only now emerging from war. One thing these countries have in common is that they are places where the Trump organization does little to no business.
        By contrast, other neighboring Muslim countries are not on the list, even though some of their citizens pose just as great a risk — if not greater — of exporting terrorism to the United States. Among them are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. A vast majority of people living in these countries, like the people living in the seven subject to the immigration ban, are peaceful and law abiding. But these three countries have exported terror to the United States in the past. They accounted for 18 of the 19 terrorists who perpetrated the Sept. 11 attack on American soil (an attack which was directed by another Saudi, Osama Bin Laden, with the assistance of an Egyptian, Ayman al-Zawahri).
        These countries, unlike those subject to the ban, are ones where Donald Trump has done business. In Saudi Arabia, his most recent government financial disclosure revealed several limited liability Trump corporations. In Egypt, he had two Trump companies registered. In the United Arab Emirates, he had licensed his name to a Dubai golf resort and a luxury residential development and spa. Some of these entities have since been closed, and others remain active.
        A look at other nations with large Muslim populations only reinforces this troubling pattern. Turkey, India and the Philippines could all pose similar risks as the banned countries of origin that concern the president. Yet Mr. Trump has done business in all three places. They, too, are omitted from his list.
        Our point is not, of course, that any of these other countries should be added. A country-specific ban, which experts say is an ineffective way to combat terrorism, should not exist. Our government should instead screen all immigrants for potential links to crime or terrorism, as it has long done. Discrimination based on national origin is a thinly veiled attempt to discriminate on the basis of religion. And indeed, President Trump has admitted that he wants to prioritize the settling of Christian refugees.
        The arbitrary and discriminatory nature of this order is bad enough; but if the president is also considering payoffs to the Trump organization, it's much worse.
        As we have pointed out in a lawsuit we have filed against the president in his official capacity, payments to the president are not only unethical but unconstitutional if they come from foreign governments or entities controlled by foreign governments, such as sovereign wealth funds and state owned banks. The Emoluments Clause of the Constitution prohibits anybody holding a position of trust with the United States government, including the president, from receiving economic benefits from business dealings with foreign governments.
        Without President Trump's tax returns and other information about his privately held businesses, we do not know the extent of the economic benefits he receives from governments of countries that pose a terrorism risk but are not on his immigration ban list. What we do know is that President Trump has generally refused to divest himself of his businesses, to disclose foreign government benefits coming into those businesses and to release his tax returns, and has insisted that simply because he is president, as opposed to some lower official, he "has no conflict of interest."
        And now, only a week into President Trump's term, we see the devastating consequences of this conflict of interest. It appears that immigrants from countries that can afford to do business with the Trump organization are free to come and go from the United States. Immigrants from countries that cannot afford such transactions may very well be detained at the airport and sent home, where some may perish.
        After the election we often heard the phrase "to the victor belong the spoils." But there are ethical and constitutional limits to that maxim. In this case, an already suspect immigration ban is subject to yet more doubt because President Trump may be looking to his business interests at the same time as he makes decisions about human beings who want to come to America to study, earn a living, avoid persecution and in some instances, to survive.
        Richard W. Painter, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, is the vice-chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, where Norman L. Eisen is the chair. They were chief White House ethics lawyers for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, respectively.



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        10)  Quebec Mosque Shooting Kills at Least 6, and 2 Suspects Are Arrested
        By IAN AUSTEN and CRAIG S. SMITH JAN. 29, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/29/world/americas/quebec-city-mosque-shooting-canada.html?hp&
        action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region&region=
        top-news&WT.nav=top-news

        OTTAWA — Gunmen opened fire in a mosque in the city of Quebec on Sunday night, killing six people and wounding eight others in what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a "terrorist attack on Muslims."
        Étienne Doyon, a spokesman for the Quebec police, told reporters at the scene that the attack on the mosque, the Islamic Cultural Center of Quebec, had occurred around 8 p.m. At a news conference early Monday the police confirmed the six fatalities and said that two suspects had been arrested.
        The attack shook Canada, a country where mass shootings are uncommon, and came as the country has become known as a beacon for refugees fleeing warfare and terrorism in Muslim-majority nations.
        Mr. Trudeau assailed what he called "this terrorist attack on Muslims in a center of worship and refuge."
        "It is heart-wrenching to see such senseless violence," he said in a statement early Monday. "Diversity is our strength, and religious tolerance is a value that we, as Canadians, hold dear."
        Christine Colombe, a spokeswoman for the Quebec Provincial Police, said the victims ranged in age from 35 to 70 and said that 39 people who were in the mosque were not hurt.
        The police had not yet identified a motive in the shootings, saying the investigation was just beginning. Ms. Colombe said that one of the two suspects was arrested at the scene of the shooting, while another was apprehended nearby on Île d'Orleans.
        The police said that some of those wounded in the shooting were seriously hurt.
        On Twitter, Martin Coiteux, the provincial minister of public safety, said that "the police systems for dealing with terrorist acts have been activated" in the wake of the shooting. "Ensuring the safety of the population is our priority," he wrote.
        Radio-Canada, the French-language service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, said the area surrounding the mosque had been sealed off by the police after the attack.
        Last June, a pig's head was left at the door of the mosque in the middle of Ramadan. Practicing Muslims regard pork as unclean and do not eat it.
        The president of the mosque, Mohamed Yangui, was interviewed on Ici RDI, a French Canadian broadcaster. He was not at the mosque during the shooting but said that people who were present had told him that one gunman was able to reload his weapon several times.
        He said he had been told by witnesses that the gunmen had entered on the ground floor and had gone to the second floor where women pray, but he did not know whether any women were in the mosque at the time.
        The attack came after Mr. Trudeau said that Canada stood ready to continue welcoming refugees from terrorism and war and as President Trump's executive order on immigration stranded people around the world and provoked condemnation that it was directed at Muslims.
        In the wake of the Quebec shooting, the New York City police stepped up protection of mosques, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Twitter.
        About 765,000 people live in the city of Quebec, and 6,760 of them identified themselves as Muslims during the last national census.
        Mr. Trudeau posted a message on Twitter on Saturday welcoming refugees to Canada and included a photograph of himself with a child under the hashtag #WelcomeToCanada. Since Mr. Trudeau took office in late 2015 the country has admitted nearly 40,000 refugees, many of them fleeing the war in Syria.
        Canada's warm embrace of Syrian refugees has won the country accolades at home and abroad, but is not without its domestic opponents. A survey in Ontario last summer found that while there was widespread support for accepting the refugees, only a third of respondents had a positive impression of Islam, and more than half felt its mainstream doctrines promoted violence.
        Anti-Muslim incidents have been on the rise in Canada, with several minor incidents reported in Quebec during the past year.
        A Montreal mosque and a Sept-Îles Muslim community center were slightly damaged in separate arson attempts in December, and the head of the Association of Muslims and Arabs for a Secular Quebec received online death threats the month before.
        The increasing tension led a member of Parliament, Iqra Khalid, to put forward a motion in the national House of Commons in December calling on the government to condemn Islamophobia and request a study on how the government could combat the trend. The motion will probably be voted on when the House returns to session this week.
        In the wake of Sunday night's attack, the premier of the province of Quebec, Philippe Couillard, said that solidarity rallies were planned on Monday for people to express their concern about the shootings.
        "We are with you. You are at home," he said, in words directed at the province's Muslim residents.
        Ian Austen reported from Ottawa, and Craig S. Smith reported from Toronto. Patrick Boehler contributed reporting from Hong Kong.


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        11) What the World Needs Now is Socialism
        Democracy, economic and social equality for all on a world scale
        By Bonnie Weinstein
        http://www.socialistviewpoint.org

        Lets get this straight; the USA was NEVER a democracy. This country was founded on the mass murder of tens-of-millions of native Indians that inhabited this land. U.S. capitalists fortressed this invasion on the backs of slaves captured from the African continent and forcefully put to work on the plantations owned by the white man; the annexation of most of Mexico's territory and the slaughter of its native inhabitants; all of Alaska and Hawaii; and on the backs of workers in the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa.
        The new, white rulers were all men. Their "democracy" was only among white, male property owners. Even white women didn't get the vote until 1920. African Americans were not allowed to somewhat-freely exercise their right to vote until August 6, 1965! And tens-of-thousands who have been convicted of a felony have lost the right to vote altogether. And those incarcerated still work as slaves for capitalist enterprise.
        Capitalism is a deadly military dictatorship
        According to the Washington Post's "Fatal Force" count, that is updated daily,1 963 people have been shot and killed by police in 2016! The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Our communities are occupied by a super-militarized police force. Our public schools are crumbling and overcrowded. Our healthcare and college education is un-affordable for most people. We have no say as to whether or not to use our precious resources to go to war and manufacture weapons of mass destruction. We have no say of what we must pay for housing, food, clothing, energy, water, access to the Internet, garbage pickup—everything we are charged is dictated by the wealthy, capitalist elite—including taxes! They make the laws that benefit them, at our expense. They don't pay the bulk of taxes, we do.
        It is a world built upon the enslavement of the working class. That's what capitalism is, the military-enforced enslavement of workers for the benefit of the capitalist class. That's who the capitalist candidates in every country represent and give their allegiance to. 
        Workers' power is based upon our unity and solidarity for a better world for all
        The capitalists promote class, racial, religious, ethnic, gender and educational divides to keep us fighting amongst each other, the purpose of which is to make us blind to our overwhelming common needs and interests. This is how they preserve their power and control over the profits we working people create with our labor.
        None of us have the right to vote for what we want; we only have the right to vote between the candidates the wealthy elite present to us—their candidates. 
        A real democracy is when working people get to decide the issues that affect our lives; like whether or not healthcare should be free and available to all; which, by the way, is what the majority of people in this country want! And all the other issues that effect our lives like wages, housing, education, maintaining a healthy environment on our land, in our homes, and in our workplaces, and bringing an end to the destructive wars that further divide and oppress us. 
        Capitalism is an irrational system designed to increase the rate of profits for the wealthy by any means necessary—including robbing us of our basic human rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 
        Under capitalism, workers are only entitled to what we can pay for. Our earnings are dictated only by how hard we fight for them. Nothing is given to us that we haven't had to fight for!
        The choices the American working class had in the so-called "democratic electoral process" have become the epitome of lesser-evil politics and the opposite of democracy. The capitalist class and their money dictate our electoral choices—insuring that we have no say in the decision-making that will actually control our lives. 
        The 2016 presidential electoral campaign had everything—a so-called Socialist contender, Bernie Sanders, who lead rebellious youth right back to the camp of Hillary Clinton; the Green Party campaign that led a reform campaign for capitalism that failed to bring about any reforms. And, in fact, the Green Party raised $7 million for a recount of the vote for Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania—firmly aligning them with the Democratic Party! 
        An independent, working class party can never align itself with the parties of the capitalist class! That is an oxymoron. 
        And what did we get? The election of Donald Trump, idiot and political "new-comer"—a demagogue that appealed to a populous sick and tired of the status quo, yet still divided along racial, religious, ethnic, gender, educational and class lines—those who still believe that what's good for capitalism is good for them. 
        Workers' future under capitalism is dismal
        According to a December 6, 2016 New York Times article by Patricia Cohen titled, "A Bigger Economic Pie, but a Smaller Slice for Half of the U.S.,"
        "Stagnant wages have sliced the share of income collected by the bottom half of the population to 12.5 percent in 2014, from 20 percent of the total in 1980. Where did that money go? Essentially, to the top one percent, whose share of the nation's income nearly doubled to more than 20 percent during that same 34-year period. Average incomes grew by 61 percent. But nearly $7 out of every additional $10 went to those in the top tenth of the income scale. Inequality has soared over that period. In 1980, the researchers found, someone in the top one percent earned on average $428,200 a year—about 27 times more than the typical person in the bottom half, whose annual income equaled $16,000. ...Today, half of American adults are still pretty much earning that same $16,000 on average—in 1980 dollars, adjusted for inflation—while members of the top one percent now bring home $1,304,800—81 times as much."
        Clearly we are in a life and death struggle. Our living conditions and the planet itself are being assaulted by the capitalist system from all directions—all to make a bigger profit! The planet is on the verge of catastrophic climate change due to capitalism's thoughtless plunder of the environment that will devastate the poorest among us first.
        Socialism—an economy based upon production for need and want, and not profit—is the only solution
        It is up to us to turn all this around because it is in the interests of the vast majority of humanity and the other co-habitants of our planet to do so. It's our only hope for the future. If we don't take charge of these things ourselves the capitalist system will continue along its inevitable path to environmental destruction. 
        The fact is, capitalism is a totally insufficient, dying system. It is chaotic and wasteful, both in human terms and the environment. Nothing is planned rationally according to what people and the planet need to thrive. Its only plan is to increase the rate of profit for the rich. All social needs under capitalism are an impediment to that goal. 
        But it doesn't have to be that way. There is an alternative to capitalism.
        Socialism is a rational alternative to capitalism—a real democratic alternative—that guarantees basic human rights to everyone on an equal basis. Guaranteeing that everyone has the right to food, housing, education and healthcare is paramount to democracy. In fact, economic and social equality is the essence of democracy and the antithesis of capitalism.
        Cuba and socialism
        This was brought home to me upon the death of Fidel Castro and the massive outpouring of the Cuban people to mourn him. 
        The U.S. mainstream media demonized Castro as a bloodthirsty dictator who ruled Cuba with an iron hand—a dictator who kept his people starving, without basic freedoms, and under strict military rule. 
        If you listened and believed this propaganda you would think the people of Cuba would be dancing in the streets upon his death. It happened in Miami among Cuban dissidents of the revolution, but that did not happen in Cuba. 
        In a December 3, 2016 New York Times photo essay by Thomas Munita, Mauricio Lima and Azam Ahmed titled, "A Nation in Mourning: Images of Cuba After Fidel Castro," one of the photos in particular struck me. It was a photo of Cuban military personnel standing on the side of the road waiting for Fidel's ashes to pass by. Hundreds-of-thousands of people did the same.
        But what really struck me was that the military personnel were completely unarmed! In fact, it occurred to me at that moment that in all the nine days of news photos of the masses of Cuban people out in the streets to morn the passing of Fidel you see no armed military or police; no armored tanks with sharp-shooters on their gun turrets as we've seen commonly on the streets of Baltimore, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Oakland—and on the plains of North Dakota! No police helicopters flying overhead! No riots! No shootouts!
        In fact, there has never been such a scene here in the U.S. Here the local police are armed to the teeth with military-grade armor and weapons watching us at all times! 
        Even the vehicle carrying the ashes of Fidel was open and unarmed! 
        The only way this could happen is that the Cuban people are overwhelmingly and fundamentally in support of their revolution. 
        The Cuban example
        Cuba is a very poor country. They have suffered over 50 years of a U.S. embargo that prevented them from trading for goods and services their tiny country could not provide on its own. Yet while the Cuban people are poor, Cuba manages to provide them with certain inalienable rights. Food, housing, healthcare and education are considered rights in Cuba. And their education is not limited to "common core" subjects. Cuban children can pursue the arts, sports, the sciences, free of charge from preschool to advanced University degrees. Cuba has one of the largest medical schools in the world with students from around the world as well as Cubans. Everyone is guaranteed housing. No one goes hungry or homeless.
        They have a different decision-making process than we do. They decide on policy and issues on the job, in their communities and at their schools. 
        The only way that hundreds-of-thousands of people can take to the streets of their own accord, without any armed military or police force towering over them, in mourning of the leader of their revolution, is if the Cuban people think of the government as their government—functioning for their common good, and in the interests of all Cubans. 
        One man or government cannot dictate over its people without a massive military and police force like the United States must have to keep the power in the hands of its wealthy elite. 
        The Cuban people respected Fidel because he fought to bring economic and social equality to his country as best they could under the circumstances. 
        The images of the massive, peaceful turnout of Cubans mourning the loss of Fidel speak for themselves! Clearly the "dictatorial" Cuban government didn't feel the need to bear arms against its own people!
        What we can do
        We can learn from the Cuban people. We can organize ourselves democratically to fight for economic and social equality and basic human rights for all. That's what the Cuban revolution was all about. We must begin to organize an independent party based upon the needs and rights of the masses of working people to the exclusion of capitalists. 
        This requires that we design and participate in a democratic decision-making process among ourselves. We have to come up with a way to educate ourselves, and come up with a plan of how we can use the profits of our labor to improve the quality of all our lives. We must organize society to satisfy people's needs and wants and restore the health of our planet—to hell with profits for the wealthy elite. 
        We need to form an independent, democratically organized, mass working class party that has the power to challenge the rule of the "one percent" not just here in the U.S., but across the globe. 
        We need a party that is based on solidarity and unity among workers in our fight for economic and social equality and justice—a party powerful enough to overthrow capitalism, and actually establish socialism—a party that understands that an injury to one is an injury to all. 
        Basically, economic and social equality is democracy. Only through the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism can we finally achieve democracy, true freedom, economic and social equality, and justice for all.
        We have nothing to lose but our chains and a world to win!

        1  https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2016/

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        12) Bankruptcy of the Liberal Establishment, and the (Stolen) Election of Donald Trump
        By Chris Kinder 
        http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/janfeb_17/janfeb_17_02.html

        U.S. politics took a sharp right turn in the elections of 2016, with ramifications that are still unraveling. The victory of a sexist and racist outsider like Donald Trump, brash and irreverent fraud that he is, was quite a comeuppance to the political establishment, both liberal and conservative. With virtually no support from any ruling-class power centers like Wall Street, the media or Republican bigwigs, and nothing to recommend him besides the appeal of his outrageous off-the-cuff diatribes and slanders, his campaign managed to upset the applecart of both Republican and Democratic Party complacency. Yet everything about this startling upset is based on misinformation and false analyses, as well as significant voter suppression. Such is the state of things in the capitalist/imperialist U.S. in the 21st Century.
        "Cholera vs. Gonorrhea"
        The choice, as Julian Assange of WikiLeaks said, was like picking between "cholera and gonorrhea." However, Trump's victory represented a rejection of the elites of both major bourgeois political parties. He swept away his would-be Republican rivals in the primary like so many flies off his back. His ready contempt for Clinton's ties to Wall Street and both parties' connection to devastating trade deals struck a chord with working people who have suffered from job loss and impoverishment since the 1970s. And Clinton and Obama's arrogant contempt for Trump's working class supporters as "deplorable," "irredeemable" and "wedded to their guns and religion," helped pave his way. In short, Trump correctly identified both party establishments as upper-class clubs in which contempt for the cast-off masses of lower middle-class and working people is rampant.
        But it would be a mistake to identify Trump's racist, sexist and reactionary big mouth as representing the views of most of those people. Given all those who didn't vote or were prevented from doing so by voter ID laws, voter suppression measures, and other means, Trump was actually only elected by about one quarter of all eligible voters. And while his victory has led to an ominous surge of bigoted activism and racist attacks—KKK honcho David Duke was ecstatic at Trump's win—this does not represent mass endorsement of Trump's policies. Racism runs deep in the U.S., but working people are generally not for a crackdown on Blacks or immigrants, nor are they yearning to prevent a minimum wage hike!
        Working class motivations
        A solid majority is for increasing the minimum wage; and a majority is against building a wall on the border with Mexico, and for allowing immigrants to stay with the right to apply for citizenship, a number which is up from earlier years. On the healthcare question, the details are tricky, since most national polls simply ask: are you for or against Obamacare? Most respond in the negative; and while most of those say they are for fixing it rather than abolishing it, this leaves open how to fix it. But Trump's privatization idea is a non-starter: support for a national health plan based on the principle of Medicare for all, as well as support for government responsibility to provide the poor with assistance for health insurance, is overwhelming! Requiring employers to provide sick and pregnancy leave also gets high marks. Finally, when asked about the Black Lives Matter movement, positive responses generally outweigh negative ones, even among whites.1
        If anything, this election showed that the U.S. has one political party, with two right wings (to paraphrase Gore Vidal.) The Democrats shot themselves in the foot with their arrogance. "America is already great" was their answer to Trump's chief slogan, and that does not go over with working people who have lost jobs, income and opportunities under the two capitalist parties. It was the Bill Clinton regime that virtually merged the Democratic program with that of the Republicans: neoliberalism, cut-backs to balance the budget, racist mass incarceration, and "abolish welfare as we know it." The Obama regime's real "legacy," despite the fine talk, was one of bailing out the bankers, passing a healthcare law that had no way to curb the outrageous drug price increases of Big Pharma, and presiding over declining conditions for working people, including in Black communities. Little wonder that all racial groups and young voters as well, swung to the Republicans in 2016, proof of the bankruptcy of a Democratic elite that ignored essential class issues.2
        Clinton and Sanders
        The Hillary candidacy terminated even the slightest nod to the working class, and Wall Street robber barons and super rich flocked to her side even more than for Obama. Clinton's phony rejection of the TPP trade deal, obviously made to appease Bernie Sanders' supporters after her lengthy record of supporting such deals, just added to the downfall. And the lies: She couldn't reveal the paid-for speeches to Wall Street—yes she could; she didn't request the payments for those speeches—yes she did (through her agent.) And the corruption: the pay-to-play deals benefitting the Clintons revealed in her emails, combined with her reliance on unelected super delegates and sabotage to beat Sanders in the primary. 
        Sanders himself was no help in this, as he had worked in the Democratic Caucus in the Senate for 20 years, and capitulated humiliatingly to Clinton at the convention, whereupon 700 of his supporters jeered him and walked out, some throwing their credentials over the fence. So much for the Sanders "political revolution." Bottom line: the Democratic Party cannot be reformed any more than can the Republican, and both must be swept away by a revolutionary working class, yet to form a political party.
        Blame-the-Russians run around
        Amid plaintive cries from liberals and many on the left that the Democratic Party needed to be reformed in order to fight the incoming Trump nightmare, the DNC establishment honed in on blaming the Russians for hacking Hillary's emails! Aside from the fact that it was the content of the emails (which were not faked or distorted by the way), not the hacking itself, that defeated Hillary, this Russian-baiting conspiracy theory was "fake news" from the beginning. No such hack took place, so it had to have been an insider leak, according to intelligence veterans, who posted their findings on Consortium News.3
        Assange said the Russians were not the source of the leak; and ex-British ambassador and whistle-blower Craig Murray said it was he who received the emails from a DNC operative who was disgusted "at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the tilting of the primary election playing field against Bernie Sanders."4 This information has been virtually ignored by the U.S. media, which is incensed that their candidate lost to the gropenfuhrer, a term originally tagged for Arnold Schwarzenegger for his acknowledged history of breast and booty grabbing, and here, referring to Trump. The blame-the-Russians scenario fit in nicely with hawk Hillary's plan to impose a no-fly zone over Syria, where Russian warplanes are actively aiding the Assad regime. This might have set up a showdown between Trump and the national security clique. This poses a danger of nuclear war, and would have made Clinton perhaps even more dangerous than Trump had she won.
        The fake news "fake news" scare
        Along with the blame-the-Russians hoax is the "fake news" scare, kicked off by anonymous "experts" given a bullhorn by the Washington Post (November 24, 2016), which has spread like wildfire through media and social media, with strong McCarthyite implications. The Post reported that a group called PropOrNot had a list of some 200 sites that were dealing in "fake news," i.e., stories that reflected Russian-planted lies or were otherwise out of line with what mainstream media wants to foist on us. 
        The mind boggles that, first of all, a supposedly reputable news source would publish such trash from a source who remained anonymous out of fear of...what, incarceration, torture, assassination? No: simply out of fear of being hacked by the Russians! Worse, this unnamed group soon published its list: a tally of web sites it deemed suspicious. These included Truth-out, Truthdig, volairnet.org, Counterpunch, WikiLeaks, antiwar.com, the Drudge Report, nakedcapitalism.com, opednews.com and consortiumnews.com, among many others!5
        With this, the Washington Post and its shady PropOrNot character assassins condemn some of the very reporters which have heroically exposed the actual fake news that the very same Washington Post, New York Times and other "reliable" sources have been pedaling for years, such as the "slam-dunk fact" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, justifying Bush's 2003 "shock and awe" invasion, which devastated Iraqi society, created sectarian civil war and caused millions of casualties and victims. Now these same fake news perps are hammering us that the Russians hacked the election, for which there is no proof! 
        Investigative journalist Robert Parry, now the editor of Consortium News, points to the fact that it was he who managed to break the Oliver North/Iran Contra conspiracy into the mainstream press when he worked for Newsweek. Other stories he is currently working on include the CIA's internal doubts over who really committed the sarin gas attack in Syria on August 21, 2013, the covered-up role of neo-Nazis in the Ukraine putsch of February 2014 that overthrew an elected government, and the mysterious shoot-down of the Malaysian airliner MH-17 over Ukraine; all issues in which there was a U.S. interest.6
        Voter fraud: going through the looking-glass
        What's behind the made-up saga of Russians having hacked the election—it's covered up by the official media—is the fact that the election was rigged, just not in the way that the DNC, or Trump alleged. "Voter fraud"—the idea that masses of illegal aliens, or felons, or others are voting "many, many times"—is a fake-news hoax, designed to throw you off the track of how elections are actually stolen. Fraud by voters is a felony, but no one is ever arrested for it because it doesn't exist. 
        Starting at the beginning, it should be seen by now that the U.S. is not a democracy, and never has been. At first, it was simple: only property-owning white males could vote. Slaves, poor whites, women, even property-owning Black freedmen (there were a handful) could not vote. Wow, problem solved to keep the elites in power! 
        But that wasn't enough: the Congress had to be rigged to give more weight to southern slave-holding states over the more populous northern states. They all had some slaves, but in most southern states, slaves outnumbered whites by big percentages, which would have meant an imbalance in the number of representatives the slavers could get in Congress. This would have been a deal-breaker in a country whose economy was based on slavery. Hence, the three-fifths rule: slaves could be counted as three-fifths of a person when calculating the number of representatives a state was entitled to have in the House (the Senate was of course also designed to equalize smaller and larger states.) And, lest we forget, the "framers" also invented the Electoral College, the sole purpose of which was to shield the elites from the possibly devastating effects of the popular vote—a bit of nonsense, unknown anywhere else, that we're still dealing with today.
        Flashing forward, we note that Blacks still couldn't vote (except briefly, during Reconstruction) in southern states for about a century after the Civil War, and women couldn't vote until the 1920s. That's a lot of history; but even after the Civil Rights laws and universal suffrage was in place, there was rampant vote rigging through all sorts of mechanisms, such as the infamous "graveyard vote," and the intimidation of Democratic Party machines such as Tammany Hall in New York, and Mayor Daley's corrupt regime in Chicago, which is what got JFK elected. While some of this is old news now, gerrymandering, or the rigging of elections by a party in power in a state by using sophisticated redistricting to isolate its opponents and ensure its success at the polls, is, after a century at least, still with us big time.
        Nixon's "treason" and the October surprise
        Gerrymandering and early 20th Century election rigging were outrageous, but they pale in comparison to the imperialist crimes that have been committed with the intent of influencing domestic U.S. politics. Certainly the Hearst newspaper campaign for war with Spain in the late 1890s set a precedent, but tricky Dick Nixon may have topped the dung heap with his conspiracy to steal the election of 1968. This fully-verified but little-known plot involved Nixon's back channel sabotage of on-going negotiations to end the war in Vietnam, which were in progress in Paris toward the end of LBJ's last term. Johnson hoped to seal a peace treaty before the election, which he hoped would aid Democrat Hubert Humphrey in the up-coming vote. 
        Nixon's campaign agents went behind Johnson's back to convince South Vietnam's U.S. puppet-president Nguyen van Thieu to torpedo the Paris peace talks by not showing up, on the promise that Nixon could get him a "better deal" in the talks when he was in office. Soon Johnson got wind of this plot, and privately referred to it as "treason." Yet on the advice of aides, he never went public, because, according to Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, such an exposure would be "inimical to our country's interests!" The plot worked and Nixon took office, only to radically escalate the bombing to no avail. The eventual peace deal was no different than what was on the table in 1968. Later, Nixon created his notorious team of "plumbers" (who were subsequently caught in the Watergate scandal,) to try to retrieve a missing White House file, which exposed his treason. Nixon's 1968 plot resulted in about one million more Vietnamese deaths over the four years, as well as almost 21,000 additional U.S. casualties.7
        The "October Surprise" caper cost no lives, but was just as devious. President Jimmy Carter was trying to get reelected in 1980, while also attempting to free the U.S. embassy hostages in Iran, who were trapped there following the overthrow of the Shah and the ascendance of the mullahs to power. Carter had earlier tried to free the hostages with a military operation that had failed. The reputation of U.S. imperialism was on the line, for both Democrats and Republicans! What to do? Ronald Reagan's campaign director William Casey, soon to be CIA Director, organized a clandestine effort to prevent the hostages' release until the U.S. Election Day, which ensured Reagan's victory, and sent Carter back to his peanut farm. What's the take-away? U.S. imperialism and its fake "democracy" are both part of the malicious machinations of the same den of thieves.8
        "Whites a minority?" Can't have that
        In the wake of the 1960s, Nixon pioneered the Republican "Southern Strategy," which focused on the take-over of the Southern States from the Dixiecrats, and morphed into a general Republican Party plan to achieve power in state capitols. This in turn has led to tactics by conservatives to deal with the "Browning of America," i.e., the idea that whites are becoming a minority in what the right wing thinks is their country, damnit! Gerrymandering has now become significant in Republican-controlled states such as Texas and Wisconsin, to name two, and it's all aimed at suppressing the vote of Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and poor people generally.
        Gerrymandering is just the oldest of today's many methods of voter suppression. Republicans managed to engineer a Supreme Court decision in 2013 that effectively eliminated key provisions of the Voting Rights Act: states and counties with a history of racial discrimination no longer needed Department of Justice approval to change local voting rules and practices. This led to a tsunami of restrictive measures, such as burdensome voter ID laws, which discriminate against vast numbers of poor and minorities. And that is just the beginning.
        Numerous artifices have been brought into play since 2000 to suppress the minority vote in addition to voter ID laws: purging and "caging" of voter rolls, discounting "spoiled" and provisional ballots, and "flipping" votes using privately-owned electronic voting machines. The evidence for this, developed by investigative reporters such as Jonathan Simon, Victoria Collier and Greg Palast, among many others, is staring the bourgeois media in the face, yet it is still ignored.9
        It started in 2000, with the famous "hanging chad" debacle, in which G. Dubya Bush, with the aid of a Republican Supreme Court, stole the election from Gore. Central to this was the purging of the voter rolls of supposed "felons," most of whom were no such thing. Also involved was the failure to complete the hand recount, which would have shown the intent of the voters whose hanging-chad ballots had been rejected. When the recount was heading toward a Gore victory, Antonin Scalia said it had to be halted because showing that Gore was gaining would "threaten irreparable harm to petitioner Bush, and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election!"10 Never mind irreparable harm to the legitimacy of U.S. elections that was already long gone! Gore's immediate acceptance of this travesty sealed the deal: both parties are in this together.
        Tricks of the trade
        "Caging" is another sneaky trick used to eliminate Black and Brown voters. A letter is sent to voters, no forwarding allowed, asking them to verify that they are registered to vote. Most know they are registered, and don't respond, but failure to respond means you get removed from the rolls without warning: you show up, and you can't vote! Likely you get a provisional ballot, but these are usually not counted. Then there is the "Interstate Crosscheck List," which is distributed by a Koch Brothers-funded program to states to allegedly eliminate thousands who have voted twice in separate states. Yet the common names of those on the list mostly don't match exactly, and when they do, they're still two different people! There is no notice given to those so arbitrarily removed from the rolls. Then there is the "spoiled ballot" factor, in which some inept machine rejects a ballot because of a stray mark or a bubble not filled in. The result of all this is that, for instance, 75,355 ballots were never counted in Michigan. These were mostly from the most populous and mostly Black cities of Flint and Detroit. 
        In all the elections since 2000, there has been a distinct "red shift" in the final vote count, i.e., a significant percentage of votes allegedly cast for the GOP candidates that were not there in the exit polls. In Obama's election and reelection, his totals, though declining, were enough to cancel out the red shift. This discrepancy however, which is always to the right, is statistically impossible without tampering. (Exit polls are accurate. The U.S. uses them to judge other countries' elections, when they're not rigging those elections themselves, of course.)
        A stymied recount
        The recount effort initiated by Jill Stein of the Green Party confirmed that these 75,000 were never counted, but in all three states she contested, the recount was subverted by establishment push-back. And in Michigan, this included the Democrats. While Clinton grudgingly joined the recount effort, she refused to pursue it at a critical point: when Stein was denied legal "standing" in the recount, since she could not have won from the result, Clinton, who could have won, and was an alleged ally in the recount effort, was nowhere to be found. 
        The recount effort was doomed by Clinton's non-participation, and by official state obstruction in all three states that were targeted (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.) In a strange way, that's a good thing, because it shows that the system circled its wagons to protect its secrets, which are many. But Stein's recount effort could never have exposed everything it needed to in the first place, due to the fact that electronic voting machines are privately owned, and can be privately rigged (votes can be "flipped" in off-site locations) with no public oversight possible in most cases. Stein's attempt at a recount, which she said would probably not change the result, but needed to be done to ensure "confidence" in the system, could easily have resulted in legitimizing the system, had it not been for the massive official obstruction.
        If the election had really been free, fair and honest—a utopian dream if there ever was one—Clinton would possibly have won. But that would not have been any sort of "victory," nor would it have changed the fact that the liberal establishment is bankrupt. Democrats have rigged U.S. elections just as much as Republicans over the years, and both parties in power have rigged, subverted and tampered with elections in neo-colonial countries for more than a century, not to mention overthrowing democratically elected governments everywhere. 
        What the imperialists do abroad
        The recent elections in Haiti were travesties rigged by the U.S. and its agents, the only difference being greater brazenness—and much bigger protests—in Haiti than here. In Cité Soleil, a huge impoverished neighborhood of Port-au-Prince which has long been overwhelmingly supportive of the Fanmi Lavalas movement of Jean Bertrand Aristide, the populist priest who was twice elected president only to be overthrown and banned from running again, hundreds of would-be voters frantically searched for their names on registration lists outside polling stations to no avail. Their names had been "hacked" out of existence Haitian style. Ballots are routinely found dumped in garbage bins in Haiti. In one large Cité Soleil precinct, only 59 votes were recorded, all for the handpicked successor of the current pro-U.S. president! The chief U.S. agent is Guy Phillippe, an ex-military drug-runner who is wanted by the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration,) but protected as an asset by the CIA, and so never gets arrested despite openly running for office. He has now "won" a seat in the Senate in this rigged election.11 What the imperialists will do abroad, they will do (and are doing) here.
        The 2016 U.S. elections are emblematic of the long, slow and agonizing decline of U.S. imperialism. The liberals and most of the left don't have a clue as to what is really going on. Most want to reform the Democratic Party, and/or defend U.S. "democracy" by somehow reclaiming its legitimacy. Certainly we should expose election fraud by voter suppression, but we must understand what is the real nature of this imperialist republic. That it is a capitalist and imperialist power is superficially clear to many, but how does it really work? It's a bourgeois democracy, right? We do have elections and rights, correct?
        What is bourgeois democracy?
        Yes this is a bourgeois democracy, but the point that is so often missed is that it is a "democracy" only for the ruling class itself. Voting by the masses is controlled by so many mechanisms that even a landslide for a "peoples choice" can produce only an intelligent fraud like Obama. The ruling elite—the bourgeoisie—controls everything; but even in their hallowed halls there is not the kind of "democracy" to which we are accustomed to imagine. There are no fairly-decided democratic decisions among them. And the ruling class is not a united conspiracy of rule; it doesn't even work like that under fascism (which this is not.) The wielders of power are a constantly boiling, frothing, fuming pot of conflicting factions, cliques and conspiracies, united against the working classes and their imperialist rivals, but desperately struggling for power among themselves. Just as the big corporations constantly compete with each other, always trying to dominate and monopolize, so the ruling class as a whole is just a bunch warring cliques. Think all the world's mafias, all competing for turf, and all on billionaire-enhanced steroids. 
        Only with this understanding can we truly know how the 2016 U.S. election really worked. Why did Trump win, when most if not all of the big ruling-class institutions were for Clinton? Of course voter disgust with the corrupt establishment was a factor. But ruling-class actors were playing both sides, and one right-wing faction was playing the racist rig-the-election card: the Koch brothers and their allies in the Republican right, some of whom have gobbled up and privatized the electronic voting machine market, came up with the winning hand this time! Note that the other side quickly fell in line with the winners: the stock market dipped on Trump's win for two days, and then rebounded big time; and the Republican establishment is now helping Trump construct a reactionary billionaire's cabinet like no other. There are some left-outs. But mostly, they're all in the same card game, they all want to grease the palm of the winner, and they all want their hand in for the next round!
        Just as there is an inevitable decline in the rate of profit—which will only get worse with the looming trend of robot-driven production—there is a concomitant decline of this whole boiling cesspool of imperialism that is the U.S. It can only get worse, except for one thing: working people fighting for their own liberation from all this endless rot. 
        Working people had a role to play in this election, as in the class struggle as a whole; but they were missing in action as a class force, as they have been for decades. Many working people and lower middle class elements swung the vote away from the two party establishments to Trump, but did they put forward their own interests? Obviously not. The much talked-about opposition to the incoming Trump regime needs to focus on construction of a revolutionary, working-class party, one which is committed to fighting for the rights of all working people, including immigrants, people of color, women and gays; and to ripping the power out of the hands of the capitalist ruling class. Workers must rule!

        1 See pollingreports.com, which reports on and summarizes dozens of national opinion polls.
        2 "The Myth of the Reactionary White Working Class," www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/11/12/pers-mi2.html
        3 "U.S. Intel Vets Dispute Russia Hacking Claims," December 12, 2016, www.consortiumnews.com. This report makes it clear that the emails had to have been leaked, not hacked. 
        4  www.dailymail.co.uk/news
        5 Glenn Greenwald, "Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist..." theintercept.com.
        6 Robert Parry, "Washington Post's 'Fake News' Guilt" 27 November 2016, www.consortiumnews.com.
        7  see "LBJ's 'X' File on Nixon's 'Treason,'" for the complete story, including quotes from taped White House recordings, at consortiumnews.com. 
        8  See "The Modern History of 'Rigged' US Elections," consortiumnews.com, for a good summary of Nixon's treason and the "October Surprise."
        9 See Jonathan D. Simon, Code Red, Computerized Election Theft and the New American Century, 2016, www.electiondefensealliance.org; Victoria Collier, "How To Rig an Election," Harper's Magazine, November 2012; Victoria Collier, "The 'Shocking' Truth About Election Rigging in the United States," Truth-out, September 5, 2016; and Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, 2016 edition. And see Greg Palast's movie of the same name. gregpalast.com.
        10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore
        11 See www.haitisolidarity.net, and this edition of Flashpoints, focusing on he Haitian elections: kpfa.org/episode/flashpoints-december-20-2016/


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        13)  Wanted: Factory Workers, Degree Required
        By JEFFREY J. SELINGO JAN. 30, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/education/edlife/factory-workers
        -college-degree-apprenticeships.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&
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        When the German engineering company Siemens Energy opened a gas turbine production plant in Charlotte, N.C., some 10,000 people showed up at a job fair for 800 positions. But fewer than 15 percent of the applicants were able to pass a reading, writing and math screening test geared toward a ninth-grade education.
        "In our factories, there's a computer about every 20 or 30 feet," said Eric Spiegel, who recently retired as president and chief executive of Siemens U.S.A. "People on the plant floor need to be much more skilled than they were in the past. There are no jobs for high school graduates at Siemens today."
        Ditto at John Deere dealerships, which repair million-dollar farming machinery filled with several dozen computers. Fixing tractors and grain harvesters now requires advanced math and comprehension skills and the ability to solve problems on the fly. "The toolbox is now a computer," said Andy Winnett, who directs the company's agricultural program at Walla Walla Community College in Washington.
        These are the types of good-paying jobs that President Trump, blaming trade deals for the decline in manufacturing, has promised to bring back to working-class communities. But according to a study by Ball State University, nearly nine in 10 jobs that disappeared since 2000 were lost to automation in the decades-long march to an information-driven economy, not to workers in other countries.
        Even if those jobs returned, a high school diploma is simply no longer good enough to fill them. Yet rarely discussed in the political debate over lost jobs are the academic skills needed for today's factory-floor positions, and the pathways through education that lead to them.
        Many believe that the solution is for more Americans to go to college. But the college-for-all movement, which got its start in the 1970s as American manufacturing began its decline, is often conflated with earning a bachelor's degree.
        Many high school students rush off to four-year campuses not ready for the academic work or not sure why they are there. Government data show that 44 percent of new graduates enroll directly in a four-year college, but based on recent trends, less than half of them will earn a degree within four years. And though two-year colleges have long been identified as the institutions that fill the job-training role, some 80 percent of community college students say they intend to go on for a bachelor's degree, or they leave with generic associate degrees that are of little value in the job market.
        Students in the United States are offered few feasible routes to middle-skill careers — jobs that require more education than a high school diploma but typically not a bachelor's degree. The National Skills Coalition, a nonprofit organization, calculates that middle-skill jobs — in computer technology, health care, construction, high-skill manufacturing and other fields — account for 54 percent of the labor market, but only 44 percent of workers are sufficiently trained.
        "The bachelor's degree is the gold standard, but the higher education system has to create ways for students to choose training and education in their own time and sequence," said Anthony P. Carnevale, the director of the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University. "Higher ed," he said, "needs to respect the dignity of labor."
        Faced with a skills gap, employers are increasingly working with community colleges to provide students with both the academic education needed to succeed in today's work force and the specific hands-on skills to get a job in their companies. John Deere, for example, has designed a curriculum and donated farm equipment to several community colleges to train technicians for its dealer network. About 15 to 20 students come through the program at Walla Walla each semester. Because they are sponsored by a John Deere dealership, where the students work for half the program, most graduate in two years with a job in hand. Technicians start at salaries just shy of $40,000, on average.
        Dr. Carnevale's research has found that 40 percent of middle-skills jobs pay more than $55,000 a year; some 14 percent pay more than $80,000 (by comparison, the median salary for young adults with a bachelor's degree is $50,000).
        Jobs like the ones John Deere offers are still associated in people's minds with students who performed poorly in high school, those considered "not college material." But to succeed in programs like those at Walla Walla, students need to take advanced math and writing in high school, academics typically encouraged only for those going on to four-year colleges.
        Persuading students and their parents to consider the apprenticeship track is a tough sell, especially because companies want students who have a strong academic background.
        Struggling to fill jobs in the Charlotte plant, Siemens in 2011 created an apprenticeship program for seniors at local high schools that combines four years of on-the-job training with an associate degree in mechatronics from nearby Central Piedmont Community College. When they finish, graduates have no student loans and earn more than $50,000 a year.
        "These are not positions for underachievers," said Roger Collins, who recruits apprentices for Siemens at 15 Charlotte-area high schools.
        Chad Robinson was one of those students. Ranked in the top 10 of his high school's senior class, with a 3.75 grade-point average, he had already been accepted to the engineering school at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte when he told his parents he wanted to shift course and apply for the Siemens apprenticeship.
        "They were very against it," he said, until they went to the open house. "A lot of my friends who majored in engineering in college told me they wish they had done the apprenticeship because my work experience will put me ahead of everyone else."
        IT is not uncommon to find executives in Europe who got their start in apprenticeships, which are seen as a respected path to a profession in a variety of fields, from hospitality to health care, retail to banking.
        In the United States, on the other hand, apprenticeships have long been associated with the construction trades and labor unions. That can be traced to a Depression-era labor shortage that led Congress to pass the National Apprenticeship Act. The act formalized standards and empowered the Labor Department to certify training, which was mostly in manual labor occupations. Unions took on the task, tightly controlling apprenticeship opportunities and passing them down through the generations.
        In the decades after World War II, registered programs expanded in number and type, with the addition of fields like firefighting and medical technician. But apprenticeships never caught on, relegated to a second-class career track as college enrollment ballooned in the 1960s and '70s, and more recently mirroring the falloff in the influence and membership of labor unions.
        The Department of Labor's registry now lists 21,000 programs with about 500,000 apprentices, which sounds impressive but represents only 1.5 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds in this country and is far short of demand. Still, participation is up 35 percent and the number of programs by 11 percent since 2013.
        Apprenticeships are making a comeback thanks in part to bipartisan support among lawmakers. In the last two years, Washington has allocated $265 million to spur programs. President Obama's secretary of labor, Thomas E. Perez, a strong proponent, attempted to rebrand apprenticeships to appeal to educators and parents. During his tenure, the department established a partnership between registered community colleges and sponsors that allowed on-the-job-training to count as academic credit toward a degree.
        "Apprenticeship is the other college, except without the debt," said Mr. Perez, who had a goal of doubling the number by 2018. Advocates are hopeful that the trend will continue with new leadership in Washington, given President Trump's familiarity with construction.
        While the building trades still dominate, the types of occupations offering internships have expanded to include jobs like pharmacy technician, I.T. project manager and insurance adjuster. Aon, the insurance and financial services company, last month announced a program in Chicago in which high school graduates get training in account management, human resources, financial analysis and information technology while earning an associate degree from Harold Washington College or Harper College.
        Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado wants to make apprenticeships ubiquitous in high schools around his state. Later this year, backed by $9.5 million from Bloomberg Philanthropies and JPMorgan Chase, Colorado will begin offering hands-on training, starting in high school, in financial services, information technology and health care as well as manufacturing. The goal is to make the program available to some 20,000 students at all academic and income levels within the next decade.
        "Apprenticeships can start with a job and end with a Ph.D.," said Noel Ginsburg, who heads up the program and is president and founder of Intertech Plastics in Denver. The initiative was inspired by a visit that Mr. Ginsburg and dozens of politicians and business and education leaders made to Switzerland in 2015. Although German apprenticeships are often held up as the model, Mr. Ginsburg preferred the Swiss approach, which involves a wider range of fields.
        In Switzerland, compulsory education ends after ninth grade, when students can choose either an academic or a vocational path. Between 20 percent and 30 percent of students choose the academic track, which focuses on the few professions, such as medicine and law, that require a university education; nearly 70 percent choose the vocational track, with programs for about 230 occupations.
        Beginning in 10th grade, students rotate among employers, industry organizations and school for three to four years of training and mentoring. Learning is hands-on, and they are paid. Switzerland's unemployment rate for the young is the lowest in Europe and about a quarter that of the United States'.
        ere in the United States, most students are offered a choice between college or a dead end. The college-for-all movement, it seems, has closed off rather than opened up career options. For working-class voters who feel left out in this economy to be able to secure meaningful jobs, educational pathways must be expanded and legitimized — in the process redefining and broadening what is meant by higher education.
        "The silver bullet comes by adding more training opportunities during and after high school," said Dr. Carnevale. "And whatever you do with training, you need to call it college. You want to make people feel good about the path they choose."
        Jeffrey J. Selingo is author of "There Is Life After College: What Parents and Students Should Know About Navigating School to Prepare for the Jobs of Tomorrow."


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        14)  Rodrigo Duterte Says Drug War Will Go On as Police Plan Purge
        By FELIPE VILLAMOR


        MANILA — The top police official in the Philippines said Monday that he would suspend police participation in the nation’s bloody drug war while he conducted a purge of rogue officers.
        But President Rodrigo Duterte said earlier on Monday that the crackdown would continue until “the last day of my term,” raising questions about whether a suspension would do anything to halt the violence.
        At least 3,600 people, and possibly thousands more, have been killed by the police or by vigilantes since Mr. Duterte came to power. Human rights groups have said the extrajudicial killings of drug dealers and users may have been ordered by the police, a charge officials have denied.

        The head of the Philippine National Police, Ronald dela Rosa, said at a news conference on Monday that the Drug Enforcement Agency would instead have the authority to pursue drug cases. He was responding to criticism after a South Korean businessman was strangled at Police Headquarters last year by officers who later extorted ransom money from his family under the pretense that he was alive.
        “Ready yourselves, you bad cops,” Mr. dela Rosa said. “We no longer have a war on drugs, but we now have a war on scalawags. We will clean house now.”
        His order came hours after President Duterte rejected calls to fire the police chief, who is one of his most loyal allies.
        Mr. dela Rosa said the suspension would last about a month, during which the antidrug units in the police, which has about 120,000 officers, would be dissolved and overhauled. He said he had already ordered the internal affairs service to submit a list of rogue police officers who had been cleared and for their cases to be reviewed again. He said that the purge would start in the capital, Manila, and the main island of Luzon.
        Mr. Duterte told an earlier news conference on Monday that rogue officers in the police force were committing crimes “on the pretext of doing the drug war.”
        He added: “They are now a new strain of the original big-time drug syndicates. And out of this was born corrupt officers who use warrants on the pretext that they are arresting you or searching you for drugs.”
        Some rights groups suggested that the suspension amounted to a public relations exercise and did not seek accountability for the thousands of deaths linked to the crackdown on drug dealers and addicts.
        Phelim Kine, deputy director for Asia of Human Rights Watch, said of Mr. dela Rosa: “His willful blind eye to those deaths constitutes a disgraceful betrayal of the public trust and is a telling indicator of his personal contempt for rule of law and the right to life of his fellow citizens.”
        Amnesty International said in a news release that the suspension, coupled with Mr. Duterte’s declaration that the crackdown would ultimately continue, ignored the root of the problem. “These contradictory statements offer little hope that the wave of extrajudicial executions that has claimed more than a thousand lives a month will end,” it said.
        Rights groups tied the killing of the South Korean businessman, Jee Ick-joo, 53, to Mr. Duterte’s antidrug campaign, saying that the officers had been emboldened by his promise to shield those involved in the crackdown from prosecution.
        During his election campaign, Mr. Duterte vowed a tough stance on crime, promising to kill 100,000 criminals in his first six months in office and dump so many bodies in Manila Bay that the “fish will grow fat.”
        But on Sunday, he indicated that he had underestimated the extent of the drug problem and that he would continue the campaign until the end of his tenure in 2022.


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        15)  The Youth Group That Launched a Movement at Standing Rock
        In the fight over the Dakota Access Pipeline, Native American activists achieved one of the most galvanizing environmental victories in years — and it all began with a group of teenagers. 
        By Saul Elbein, January 31, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/magazine/the-youth-group-that-launched-a-movement-at-standing-rock.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=sectionfront

        Jasilyn Charger was 19 when she learned her best friend had killed herself. Charger was Lakota Sioux, and she had left the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota for Portland, Ore., just a few months earlier. But in the summer of 2015, she flew home for her friend’s funeral. Then, two days later, while she was still in Eagle Butte — the largest town on the Cheyenne River Reservation with a population of 1,300 — another friend killed herself. Charger was shocked. “It hurt all of us because these were people who we thought we knew but really we had no idea what they were going through,” she said. “It really woke us up.”
        In the weeks that followed, more teenagers on the reservation killed themselves with belts, knives and handfuls of Benadryl. Native American teenagers and young adults are 1.5 times as likely to kill themselves as the national average, with suicides often clustering in epidemics that hit and fade. Suicide is so common on the reservation that Lakota youth don’t bother to say “committed suicide” or “attempted suicide.” They just say “attempted” or “completed.” By the end of that summer, Jasilyn told me, 30 Cheyenne River kids attempted and eight completed.
        “We said, ‘They committed suicide for a reason,’ ” Charger told me. In Eagle Butte, reasons weren’t hard to find. Their elders liked to talk about them as the future, but no one seemed to pay much attention to how their lives were hard, bordering on hopeless. Cheyenne River kids had families struggling with poverty and parents and relatives with serious drug-abuse problems. Often there was violence at home, to the point that many youths had nowhere safe to go at night. And amid all this, there was a hard-edged social pressure to drink or use drugs.
        Charger had seen all of this. Her father died before she was born; her mother, she said, “paid the bills and drank.” She and her twin sister, Jasilea, were incredibly close even if, by 13, they were also perfect foils: Jasilea, willowy and bookish, a good student; Jasilyn, chubby and wild, cutting school and running away on the weekends to do odd jobs — mowing lawns, babysitting, breaking horses, selling weed — that helped put food on the table. But her mother called her in as a runaway one too many times, and the South Dakota Division of Child Protection Services took both girls, sending them to group homes on opposite sides of the state.
        “It felt like something had been sawed off,” Charger said about her separation from Jasilea. She got so depressed she was moved to a psychiatric unit, where she often got into fights. She aged out of the system at 17, but when she returned to the ranch developments and trailer parks of Eagle Butte, she struggled with depression. She and Jasilea had gone “from knowing everything about each other to being strangers.” She fell into a monthslong cocaine binge, crashing in abandoned cars with other homeless kids. Her weight had dropped to 80 pounds by the time that her cousin, Joseph White Eyes, intervened. “He would say, ‘You’re killing yourself, and we need you,’ ” Charger recalled. “ ‘Don’t get high, let’s go to a sweat.’ He got me off drugs and into our culture.” She eventually found a job in Rapid City on the production team of the local Fox News affiliate but quit, she said, after her boss made one too many “cowboys and Indians” jokes in response to Native Americans’ being shot by the police. In early 2015 she moved to Portland, as far away as she could get. She hadn’t intended to return.
        But now she was home, amid a new plague of suicides, and she wanted to do whatever she could to help other teenagers on the reservation. Together with White Eyes and their friend, Trenton Casillas-Bakeberg, she formed a youth group. They raised money for basketball tournaments and for a youth trip to the Red Nation Film Festival in California, where the kids were able to see the ocean for the first time in their landlocked lives. They went to the tribal council, demanding and getting funds for a safe house for young people. Most of all they counseled young people, urging them to look out for one another and get involved. “Yeah, it looks all pretty on Facebook,” Charger remembered saying, “but really, what’s going on in real life? You can be busy getting on Snapchat while someone’s getting bullied.”
        As the suicide wave crested and broke, the youth group, now called the One Mind Youth Movement, turned to something more political. They spent that fall as part of the local campaign against the Keystone XL pipeline, whose route would cut under the Cheyenne River just upstream from the reservation that bears its name. And after the Obama State Department denied the Keystone XL permission to cross the U.S.-Canadian border in November 2015, they moved their focus to the neighboring Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, where the company Energy Transfer Partners was trying to build the Dakota Access Pipeline. That pipeline would move half a million barrels of oil a day beneath the Missouri River, the main source of drinking water for the Standing Rock Sioux, which is one of the cousin bands to Cheyenne River, as well as for other downstream Sioux reservations. The youths came to believe that the Dakota pipeline was not only a threat to their drinking water but also a harbinger of the larger environmental crisis their generation was set to inherit.
        Last April, Charger, White Eyes and a few One Mind teenagers and mentors helped establish a tiny “prayer camp” just off the Dakota Access route, on the north end of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Over the next six months that camp grew into an improbable movement that united conservative farmers with the old radicals of the American Indian Movement; urban environmentalists with the traditional chiefs of hundreds of tribes. As Donald Trump pushes forward with the Keystone XL and Dakota Access, he will face a movement emboldened by a victory on Dec. 4, 2016, when the Department of the Army denied an easement for the Dakota Access Pipeline and directed the Army Corps to consider an alternate route. It was a rare triumph for both the environmental and land rights movements, as well as for the American left in an otherwise dark moment. But little remarked upon at the time was the unlikely seed from which the movement had grown: an anti-suicide campaign among a tight-knit group of youths, most younger than 25, impelled by tragedy and guided by prophecy.
        At the start, the camp seemed like a quixotic undertaking. Lakota culture is effectively run by the old — traditionally young people are supposed to apologize before they even speak in front of elders — so for the youths to take it upon themselves to lead a movement was a radical act. In March, concerned citizens of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, frustrated with the lack of action from their tribal council, the body that functions as the tribe’s official, U.S.-recognized government, put out a call for help to the other Sioux reservations. One Mind Youth made the two-hour drive north to propose setting up a prayer camp modeled on the ones raised against the Keystone XL. The tribal council agreed to set up the camp but offered little other support, pessimistic about the effort. The youths were undeterred. In early April, a handful, joined by a few former Keystone activists, moved into tepees in a protected ravine beside the Cannonball River, on the extreme north end of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.
        Those days, the temperatures were in the 30s and there was still snow on the ground. The youths dubbed the camp Sacred Stone and lit the sacred fire. At first, they lived on little more than bologna sandwiches, potato chips and water. But then residents from the small reservation town of Cannon Ball, up the hill from Sacred Stone, began to bring donations: leftovers from dinner, cut-up wooden corrals for the campfires, a chain saw. Life in the prayer camp was supposed to be lived “in ceremony,” a sort of mindfulness or religious retreat in which all things are done with the intention of maintaining purity. Days began with a water ceremony; the sacred fire had to be regularly fed; meals began with prayer and a “spirit plate” served for the ancestors; alcohol and drugs were strictly forbidden.
        It was, in other words, the sort of safe place that the youths had been insisting was necessary for them. They needed a haven, Charger explained, to “regroup, figure out what you’re going to do and not worry about where you’re gonna sleep.” The previous fall, they rented a hotel room in Eagle Butte as an informal crash house for Cheyenne River youth, where sometimes as many as 20 teenagers stayed, sleeping and showering, safe from bullying or the lure of alcohol or drugs. The prayer camp at Standing Rock provided something similar. Members of One Mind would drive home every week to resupply and pick up youths who wanted to experience the camp.
        For Charger and other leaders, as important as the idea of the safe space was the idea that activism would teach children the skills to survive more immediate threats, like bullying and drug abuse. They hoped to pass on skills at the camp that they themselves had been taught by Keystone activists in their community. During the long campaign against the Keystone XL, groups like the Indigenous Environmental Network (I.E.N.) helped set up a “spirit camp” on the Cheyenne River Reservation, about 50 miles southwest of Eagle Butte, where activists prayed and taught the surrounding communities about civil disobedience. The I.E.N. paid for One Mind members to be trained as organizers — they sent Charger to Washington and White Eyes to network with aboriginal climate activists in Australia — and the teenagers and young adults were exposed to ideas and training that linked the pipeline fight to larger struggles in their society. Every direct-action training against the Keystone XL, for example, referenced the prophecy of the black snake, a figure out of Lakota myth that in recent times has been identified with pipelines. But it has a more general meaning: “It symbolizes a darkness, a sickness, whose only intention is to sow dysfunction and loss of life in our communities,” said Dallas Goldtooth, an I.E.N. organizer who worked with Charger and other One Mind members. The message was clear: The struggle against the pipeline was part of the same struggle against alcoholism, suicide and abuse.
        After weeks at the Standing Rock camp with minimal tribal support, the young people decided that they needed to carry out some sort of public action. “It was important to make the adults see that if you’re going to sit there and argue, we’re gonna go wake up our brothers and sisters,” Charger said. Bobbi Jean Three Legs, a young mother and long-distance runner from Standing Rock who had become active in the camp, had a vision. Her daughter woke her one night to ask for water, and she suddenly saw a day when, thanks to water pollution, there would be no water to give. Soon after that, she and White Eyes proposed a 500-mile relay run from the Sacred Stone Camp to Omaha to deliver a letter to the Army Corps of Engineers, asking it to deny the Dakota Access Pipeline permission to cross the Missouri River. The I.E.N. began a social-media campaign announcing the run and organized a blitz of calls and letters from tribal members on various reservations.
        Within days, far sooner than expected, an Army Corps representative from the Omaha district agreed to meet with members of the tribe. To some, this meant the youths could call off the run. But they insisted on going ahead. Not only did they still want support from the tribal council; they had also begun to believe that this run could bring together young people from all the Sioux reservations. The seven bands of the people commonly known as the Sioux had organized themselves in the Oceti Sakowin, or “the Seven Council Fires,” a tribal republic that spread out over a vast area, including the Dakotas, Minnesota, Kansas and Nebraska, until federal campaigns forced its members onto the scattered, tiny reservations they occupy now. One Mind saw water as an issue that could unify all Oceti Sakowin youth. And their run had rich cultural resonance: Before Europeans brought horses, long-distance messenger runners held the scattered tribes of Oceti Sakowin together. Three Legs, White Eyes and Charger mapped a route to pass through as many reservations as possible. The run would use a traditional method in which a messenger ran a short distance, about a mile, and then rested while another runner took his or her place. It allowed people who were not very good runners, like Charger, to go on a long-distance run.
        Three Legs insisted on bringing someone from each of the nine Oceti Sakowin bands, and the run quickly brought in people from reservations that hadn’t been involved with the Standing Rock camp. Daniel Grassrope, now 25, came from the Lower Brule, a band whose reservation lay down the Missouri from Cheyenne River. Grassrope, the second-youngest boy of 13 children, grew up disgusted by the abuse and dysfunction around him, “racist,” he said, “toward my own people.” As a child, he dreamed of being taken away from his family and adopted by whites, something he associated, vaguely, with having his own bedroom and a mother who came to his basketball games. He was getting wasted every night when he saw Three Legs’s Facebook posting asking someone to represent the Lower Brule on the run.
        The run immediately gave him what Standing Rock would later give many other youths: a sense of purpose he had been lacking. It also inspired something more radical, in a way, than antipipeline activism: the belief that a group of lost people from scattered nations could still find kinship. Grassrope wrote to Three Legs immediately. “I had been praying for something like this,” he said.
        On April 24, the runners set off south from the Sacred Stone Camp. They ran along the Cannonball River to Highway 1806, then down toward Cheyenne River, their first stop. Grassrope ran next to Charger, who was carrying a heavy staff that represented their ancestors. When she got too tired, Grassrope carried it. In doing so, according to Lakota belief, they were literally carrying all those who had come before. They stayed in churches and community centers and women’s lodges and private homes. At every reservation, they met not only with tribal leaders but also with reservation youths, whom they talked to just as they had in Cheyenne River, telling them about the old ways and the camp upriver where those ways were being revived. “It really caught them off guard,” Charger said, “that they saw youth like them doing it.” Because the Native American community has become heavily networked on social media as a modern means to keep the bands united, word spread far beyond the communities they visited. When the youths arrived in Omaha on May 3, a representative of the Army Corps of Engineers met with them on the steps of the office. They still felt motivated as they went back to Standing Rock. Grassrope quit his job in Lower Brule and settled into the camp with them.
        By then time seemed to be running out: The Army Corps of Engineers was still considering the Dakota Access Pipeline’s permit, and the Tribal Council still wasn’t offering much support. On July 9, through a video released on YouTube, Bobbi Jean Three Legs and several other runners announced an even more ambitious action: a run that would cover 2,000 miles to Washington, where they would deliver a petition to the Army Corps’ headquarters. “We need your help,” a young woman says in the video. Another woman, with glasses and a long black braid, says, “We’re going to be traveling through many of your towns.” On July 15, 30 runners set out from Sacred Stone, adding more as they made their way along their route. Jasilyn Charger’s estranged twin sister, Jasilea, was one. She was in bed asleep when Jasilyn, passing through Cheyenne River, ran into their house, threw her clothes into a bag and urged her onto their support van. Over the course of the next week or so, a dozen more joined.
        But on July 26, the runners learned the Army Corps of Engineers had approved the Dakota Access pipeline easements. The black snake was on its way. The runners decided to carry on to Washington, but the focus shifted back to the camp, as I.E.N. activists at Standing Rock urged people via Facebook messages to rise to the standard set by the youths. Across the great archipelago of North America’s Indian reservations and urban communities, people took notice. They loaded cars and buses and camper vans with donations and headed for Standing Rock.
        Twenty-six-year-old Eryn Wise moved to the camp in late August, at the beginning of what organizers called the big boom, when the population spiked from dozens to thousands. A native of Minneapolis, Wise was raised by her grandmother on the Jicarilla Apache Reservation after a suicide attempt at 11. On the reservation, she was picked on for excelling at school but was surrounded by her siblings, with whom she formed a close bond. But she returned to Minneapolis when she was 16 to care for her mother. When she read an article about the youth run she felt a pull and quit her job. She found her twin siblings, Alex and Lauren Howland, already at the camp.
        Wise arrived just as the elders began to claim more control over the movement the youths had started. The run, Goldtooth told me, had forced their support by transforming the Dakota Access pipeline from a regional Lakota issue into an international one. Standing Rock council members began to visit the camps and pay for emergency services, propane and portable toilets. The camp had expanded onto the floodplain across the river, and grass-roots activists and members of the unelected traditional leadership, which serves as a sort of parallel Oceti Sakowin government, erected a Council Lodge, a large tepee from the tribe’s past that the young people had only heard about. The Council Lodge was the traditional meeting place of the Oceti Sakowin in the 19th century, when the bands would gather on the Plains. The Council Lodge tepee at Standing Rock was a sign of a new political awakening, as the traditional chiefs and medicine men collaborated with grass-roots organizers — the youth and other Native American factions that had joined — to restore the old, unified tribal republic. It was part of a larger move toward formalizing the prayer camps under a council government. By then, the protests against the pipeline had, for the traditional leadership, become about far more: They had become a long-prophesied end to history.
        The black-snake, prophesy said, would only be overcome by the Seventh Generation, which would rise up and, as Charger explained, “bring balance to the Earth. Not just to its people. To the Earth.” Many of the youths that I spoke with took this to mean the Seventh Generation had a sort of messianic role to help restore order, on behalf of all beings, to a world thrown out of balance by modernity and greed.
        “The Seventh Generation is almost cliché in Indian communities,” Goldtooth, the I.E.N. organizer told me. Anyone born between 1980 and the 2000s, he said, “hears about it constantly. The hope that our generation will see a significant shift toward community renewal and nation building and the reminder that our communities expect big things of us.” The Seventh Generation tracks roughly with millennials of all races, but they share their own unique history. The generation between Goldtooth, 34, and Charger, now 20, is the first to have grown up free to be Indian. They are familiar with their ancestors’ scars but also fluent in mainstream American culture.
        At Standing Rock, the elders, once resistant to their movement, now insisted that the youths accept the responsibility that the prophecy had foretold. In early September, the Seven Council Fires and Chief Arvol Looking Horse, who, for the Lakota Sioux, is something like their head of religion, gave the youths a gift: a chanupa, the ceremonial pipe that is the most sacred element of the Plains religion, a symbol of the knitting together of the human community and nature, ancestors with the living. In a ceremony under the blazing sun, the council deputized the youths as akicita, a Lakota term that means something like “warriors for the people” or “police.” It is difficult to overstate the importance of this gesture. The youths, Looking Horse explained to me, “weren’t really ready for it, but we told them that they’re going to accept it and learn the traditions. We said they had to be of pure mind. They said, ‘We’ll try.’ ”
        After the ceremony, the youths, who had begun to call themselves the International Indigenous Youth Council, or I.I.Y.C., to symbolize their desire to unite all nations behind a traditional way of life, moved together into a tepee by the Cannonball River. “A lot of our first month or two living together,” Wise said, “was just having someone break down crying.” In her short time at the camp, Wise had become a sort of surrogate mother to the other young people — her nickname even became Ina, or “mother” — and she found herself in charge of a group of about 25 who were barely holding it together, despite the leadership they had assumed. The I.I.Y.C. was the first experience of family for many members. “A lot of them never had the opportunity to be kids, because they were always trying to take care of themselves or take care of their parents.” This process, one of the youth leaders told me, was “terribly beautiful,” an unburdening of the “historical trauma” that had defined their lives. “No one realizes what the repercussions of colonization have been, the repercussions of forced removal,” Wise said. It was hard, she stressed, to explain to people that these were things that had happened recently, to her generation’s parents and grandparents.
        “I don’t blame my mom,” Charger told me. “Her mother was murdered.” She shrugged. “The abuse lives in our blood.”
        Charger was referring to Native American history, not just what happened on the frontier but also in more recent decades. After federal campaigns reduced the Oceti Sakowin in the late 1800s, there were nearly 100 years of calculated assault as the state tried to force Native Americans to assimilate. The unified nation of Oceti Sakowin was broken into widely separated reservations, and after Congress privatized reservation land, many starving Lakota families had to sell off their property to white farmers, further cutting the size of reservations. The U.S. Government banned the Sundance, the Plains religions’ most sacred ceremony, with its days of fasting and ritual bloodletting; Native Americans could no longer openly practice their religions. But perhaps most devastating to their psychological health were the boarding schools, in which generations of Indians were sent to schools to be taught white culture. This system reached its nadir in the forced assimilation campaigns of the 1940s and 1950s, when the grandparents of many of the I.I.Y.C. youths were taught English literally under the lash.
        At Standing Rock, the youths felt they were developing the means to overcome that trauma. The key, as Charger explained it, was to let their history go, which they took as an almost holy responsibility: Forgive, and then take action to spare those who are coming in the future. “We don’t want our children to inherit this depression,” she said. The remarkable thing about this philosophy was that it was deeply practical: not just forgiving “the white man” but also the parent who beat you. For many, this provided a means to re-establish difficult relationships with parents or siblings. But it also helped bind them together into their own sort of family.
        In the final months of 2016, the camps at Standing Rock grew to more than 10,000, filling with indigenous peoples from hundreds of nations, climate-change activists, members of the Rainbow Family and Burning Man communities and those who simply felt a call. By that point, the role of the I.I.Y.C. had become a sort of advance guard, taking risks and pushing actions forward and winning new young converts to the cause.
        Thomas Tonatiuh Lopez Jr. was one. A 24-year-old Lakota and Latino from Denver, Lopez grew up the child of AIM and Chicano activists, and as the adopted grandson of the powerful medicine man Leonard Crowdog. He came to Standing Rock in September on a supply run and hadn’t intended to stay. Once he found himself at the camp, Lopez was touched by the message of activism and reconciliation. One afternoon, he was sitting with I.I.Y.C. members, rolling cigarettes for everyone in front of a fire, as Charger talked about the role of youth. “She said one thing that stuck with me: Who better to speak for the past than the voice of the future?” He thought about it as he drove home to Denver, and when he got there, he helped establish a local I.I.Y.C. chapter, drawing from local indigenous and Latino youths. In mid-November, the group took hundreds of Denver high-school students for a march through downtown to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline. Another new chapter, in Chicago, galvanized hundreds for Thanksgiving events that drew in members of other activist groups, including Black Lives Matter, which resulted in black community medics going to serve in Standing Rock’s volunteer medical corps.
        One factor that helped recruitment into the regional chapters and Standing Rock was the increasing violence by the police at the camps. The images of campers being maced or attacked by dogs spread anger across the country, and many brought that anger to Standing Rock. For traditional leadership, any violence was deeply concerning. Part of the matrix of prophecy that underlies their movement is the idea that should the Oceti Sakowin or their allies resort to violence, they could be wiped out. Among the Native Americans there were strict rules that the protest would have to be done in “peace and prayer.”
        The youths took this seriously, even as they found themselves under physical threat. Wise, the camp mom, remembers, for instance, watching on Facebook Live as her sister was maced. Furious, she raced to the scene and threw herself at the police. Suddenly there were six hands on her shoulders: I.I.Y.C. members, pulling her back. She saw her brother Alex, his face white with what appeared to be war paint. “He was pointing over my shoulder and shouting, ‘We’ll pray for you, we’ll pray for you!” His face, she realized, was covered in tear gas, “and he was still praying for them. That brought me back.”
        The youths also tried to reach out to the Morton County Sheriff’s Department, which in the larger camp had come to be seen as the enemy. After the Army Corps of Engineers withdrew permission for the camp in late November, protesters expected the sheriff’s department to violently clear campers off the land. But on Dec. 2, when the department posted on Facebook soliciting donations of granola bars, fruit soda and socks, the I.I.Y.C. showed up with large plastic containers filled with granola bars, warm clothing and water. Lopez, who had returned to the camp to stay in October, made a speech: “Though you have brutalized us, we will not brutalize you.” The station was on lockdown; after a while, an officer looking sheepish in his helmet, faceplate and full body armor, opened the door and accepted the containers. From the crowd, someone yelled for Lopez to explain to the officer why they hadn’t brought soda. Lopez half turned. “We want you to be healthy!” he yelled. “Mni wichoni! Water is life!”
        It was a small gesture, but one that prompted thanks from the officers and anger from some in the camps. “Why are you supporting them?” Wise remembers people asking. But prophecy was important to the youths; they worried that if the movement became too violent, it would ruin everything they had been trying to build.
        On Dec. 4, 2016, as thousands of military veterans from across the country crowded the camp in solidarity, the Department of the Army announced its decision to deny an easement for the Dakota Access Pipeline route. The decision was a shock and an unexpected triumph. That night, as a blizzard descended on the camp, David Archambault II, the chairman of the Standing Rock reservation’s official tribal government, presided over a ceremony around the main fire to thank the youths. “When the youth ran to D.C., that’s when this really got started,” Archambault told the crowd, as people lined up to shake the hands of the gathered runners. “We all came here to stand for something greater than whatever we did at home.” Now, with winter bearing down, he said, everyone could begin to go home.
        But the youths didn’t want to go home. For them, leaving was more complicated. They thought that the “victory” was too tentative. Energy Transfer Partners had announced it would ignore the Army’s decision, and the election of Donald J. Trump had put into office a president who vocally supported both the Dakota Access and Keystone pipelines. “Dave Archambault doesn’t speak for our entire generation,” Jasilyn Charger said. “When he dies, my grandchildren are going to be here, and nobody can speak for them but me.”
        There was also a more personal problem. Many of them had nowhere else to go. They had become dependent on the I.I.Y.C. for a support network and a place to live. Over their months spent in close quarters, the members of the youth council had bound themselves together not only as friends but as family. The stakes of dissolving the group had become obvious in a more immediate way, too: One of the youth runners had already attempted suicide and been rushed to the hospital in Bismarck. “It’s not safe for them to stay here,” Wise told me in mid-December, as temperatures remained below zero and the ground was covered with ice. “But I also don’t want that to happen to any of these kids.”
        As the camps emptied out, though, there were not enough resources for everyone to stay, and most of the young people dispersed for the winter, leaving behind a skeleton crew of 10. Wise went home to Minneapolis to begin a job as an organizer for Honor the Earth, an indigenous environmental activist group. Grassrope went back to Lower Brule. Charger was couch-surfing with friends in Eagle Butte. Tribal leaders of the Cheyenne River had found a property for the youth safe house that One Mind had fought for, but progress had stalled, and life for the reservation’s youths was as hard as it had been before. But the I.I.Y.C. were in the process of setting up a 501(c)(3), a nonprofit organization that would allow them to establish some formal order to what had been an ad hoc group.
        And in January, after a month apart, the I.I.Y.C. youths reunited in Washington for the mass protests against Donald Trump. They were still in Washington when the news came that he had signed executive orders allowing the Dakota Access and Keystone pipelines to proceed. After that, Jasilyn Charger made the trip back to Standing Rock. She planned to spend a couple of days there before heading south to Eagle Butte, where she would organize against the Keystone. “My sole purpose,” she said, “is to create for the youth what we did in Standing Rock at my home in Cheyenne River. To really challenge the youth in my community to follow in the lead of Standing Rock to fight for their own people, because if they don’t, this black snake will not die again.”
        All believed their work had to spread, not because they necessarily believed they could stop the pipeline but because the movement had connected, as Lopez told me, “youths who would otherwise never have had much interaction.” He offered a practical reason as well: In December, back home in Denver, he got a call from a young person on the verge of suicide. He felt helpless, but he stayed on the phone, “listening to hear, not listening to respond. All I could do was say: ‘You are loved, someone cares about you, not necessarily right where you are, but in your community at Standing Rock. Even if you feel no one loves you, no one cares about you, I love you, I care about you. I want to pray with you again. And if you kill yourself now, I won’t be able to do that.’ ”
        He paused. “And my brother is still alive today.”


        Saul Elbein is a journalist who has covered land use and energy in Southeast Asia, Latin America and the United States. He last wrote about the environmental organizer Jane Kleeb.



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        16)  'Jail Is for the Birds. No One Belongs There.’
        The Neediest Cases
        By  SANDRA E. GARCIA 
        egion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront

        Adalid DeJesus does not remember a lot about his childhood, but he knows this much: It was not a happy time for his family. “It was rough. It was bad,” he said.
        Mr. DeJesus arrived in the United States with his parents when he was 2, leaving the mountainous town of Utuado in Puerto Rico for a neighborhood in Brooklyn. They came in search of a better life, but all he remembers are disagreements between his parents and the presence of drugs.
        As he grew up, Mr. DeJesus saw drug runners from his apartment window and drug users in his building’s hallways, a temptation right outside his door. He got involved by making deliveries for dealers.
        “You could make $200 or $300 easy,” he said.
        Then he went from being a person in the supply chain to a user. “I was my best customer,” Mr. DeJesus said. When he was 30, he was arrested on drug charges and awaited trial at the Rikers Island jail for a year. He thought he would receive probation and not face serious time in prison, but he was wrong.
        He was convicted and spent three years at the Clinton Correctional Facility in northern New York.
        “It really scared me. Jail is for the birds. No one belongs there,” he said. “Prison scared me so deep that I stopped selling altogether.”
        Out of prison, Mr. DeJesus could not resist the lure of using drugs, trapped in the revolving door of rehab facilities — at least 15 stints that he can remember — and failing to sustain sobriety.
        “Every time I would come out of the facility, I had money, so it was easy for me to get the drugs,” he said. Finally, Mr. DeJesus said, it hit him: It was “time to grow up, time to live my life,” he said.
        “It took me 20 years to stop, and I am tired,” he said.
        Mr. DeJesus now lives in a so-called three-quarter house in Brooklyn, a branch of outpatient substance-abuse treatment for the poor, and does janitorial work there. He cleans the space and is in charge of unlocking the door in the morning and closing it at curfew.
        Mr. DeJesus said his focus was on trying to avoid trouble and the temptations of drugs. He He calls his sister every day just to stay connected.
        “She worries. She wants to make sure I am alive,” he said. “That helps.”
        As he is rebuilding, he is trying to experience the life he missed while he was on drugs and in prison. Mr. DeJesus recently visited his son in Florida and learned he is a grandfather.
        “It was amazing to watch her run around,” Mr. DeJesus said about his granddaughter. “I couldn’t believe it.”
        In order to build a life that includes them, Mr. DeJesus still has a lot of changes to make. He needs a job. But with limited income, he worried he did not have the proper clothing for a job interview.
        Mr. DeJesus receives $194 in food stamps and $123 in public assistance a month. He pays $215 a month in rent. With the help of Brooklyn Community Services, one of the eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, he received a $150 gift card to Burlington Coat Factory to buy clothes.
        With a newfound confidence for an interview and with hopes of moving into his own apartment, Mr. DeJesus looks forward to spending time with his family.
        “I spent a lot of time on myself,” he said. “Now it’s all about my family.”




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