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Major George Tillery

MAJOR TILLERY FILES NEW LEGAL PETITION SEX FOR LIES AND MANUFACTURED TESTIMONY

April 25, 2018-- The arrest of two young men in Starbucks for the crime of "sitting while black," and the four years prison sentence to rapper Meek Mill for a minor parole violation are racist outrages in Philadelphia, PA that made national news in the past weeks. Yesterday Meek Mills was released on bail after a high profile defense campaign and a Pa Supreme Court decision citing evidence his conviction was based solely on a cop's false testimony. These events underscore the racism, frame-up, corruption and brutality at the core of the criminal injustice system. Pennsylvania "lifer" Major Tillery's fight for freedom puts a spotlight on the conviction of innocent men with no evidence except the lying testimony of jailhouse snitches who have been coerced and given favors by cops and prosecutors. Sex for Lies and Manufactured Testimony For thirty-five years Major Tillery has fought against his 1983 arrest, then conviction and sentence of life imprisonment without parole for an unsolved 1976 pool hall murder and assault. Major Tillery's defense has always been his innocence. The police and prosecution knew Tillery did not commit these crimes. Jailhouse informant Emanuel Claitt gave lying testimony that Tillery was one of the shooters. Homicide detectives and prosecutors threatened Claitt with a false unrelated murder charge, and induced him to lie with promises of little or no jail time on over twenty pending felonies, and being released from jail despite a parole violation. In addition, homicide detectives arranged for Claitt, while in custody, to have private sexual liaisons with his girlfriends in police interview rooms. In May and June 2016, Emanuel Claitt gave sworn statements that his testimony was a total lie, and that the homicide cops and the prosecutors told him what to say and coached him before trial. Not only was he coerced to lie that Major Tillery was a shooter, but to lie and claim there were no plea deals made in exchange for his testimony. He provided the information about the specific homicide detectives and prosecutors involved in manufacturing his testimony and details about being allowed "sex for lies". In August 2016, Claitt reaffirmed his sworn statements in a videotape, posted on YouTube and on JusticeforMajorTillery.org. Without the coerced and false testimony of Claitt there was no evidence against Major Tillery. There were no ballistics or any other physical evidence linking him to the shootings. The surviving victim's statement naming others as the shooters was not allowed into evidence. The trial took place in May 1985 during the last days of the siege and firebombing of the MOVE family Osage Avenue home in Philadelphia that killed 13 Black people, including 5 children. The prosecution claimed that Major Tillery was part of an organized crime group, and falsely described it as run by the Nation of Islam. This prejudiced and inflamed the majority white jury against Tillery, to make up for the absence of any evidence that Tillery was involved in the shootings. This was a frame-up conviction from top to bottom. Claitt was the sole or primary witness in five other murder cases in the early 1980s. Coercing and inducing jailhouse informants to falsely testify is a standard routine in criminal prosecutions. It goes hand in hand with prosecutors suppressing favorable evidence from the defense. Major Tillery has filed a petition based on his actual innocence to the Philadelphia District Attorney's Larry Krasner's Conviction Review Unit. A full review and investigation should lead to reversal of Major Tillery's conviction. He also asks that the DA's office to release the full police and prosecution files on his case under the new  "open files" policy. In the meantime, Major Tillery continues his own investigation. He needs your support. Major Tillery has Fought his Conviction and Advocated for Other Prisoners for over 30 Years The Pennsylvania courts have rejected three rounds of appeals challenging Major Tillery's conviction based on his innocence, the prosecution's intentional presentation of false evidence against him and his trial attorney's conflict of interest. On June 15, 2016 Major Tillery filed a new post-conviction petition based on the same evidence now in the petition to the District Attorney's Conviction Review Unit. Despite the written and video-taped statements from Emanuel Claitt that that his testimony against Major Tillery was a lie and the result of police and prosecutorial misconduct, Judge Leon Tucker dismissed Major Tillery's petition as "untimely" without even holding a hearing. Major Tillery appealed that dismissal and the appeal is pending in the Superior Court. During the decades of imprisonment Tillery has advocated for other prisoners challenging solitary confinement, lack of medical and mental health care and the inhumane conditions of imprisonment. In 1990, he won the lawsuit, Tillery v. Owens, that forced the PA Department of Corrections (DOC) to end double celling (4 men to a small cell) at SCI Pittsburgh, which later resulted in the closing and then "renovation" of that prison. Three years ago Major Tillery stood up for political prisoner and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal and demanded prison Superintendent John Kerestes get Mumia to a hospital because "Mumia is dying."  For defending Mumia and advocating for medical treatment for himself and others, prison officials retaliated. Tillery was shipped out of SCI Mahanoy, where Mumia was also held, to maximum security SCI Frackville and then set-up for a prison violation and a disciplinary penalty of months in solitary confinement. See, Messing with Major by Mumia Abu-Jamal. Major Tillery's federal lawsuit against the DOC for that retaliation is being litigated. Major Tillery continues as an advocate for all prisoners. He is fighting to get the DOC to establish a program for elderly prisoners. Major Tillery Needs Your Help: Well-known criminal defense attorney Stephen Patrizio represents Major pro bonoin challenging his conviction. More investigation is underway. We can't count on the district attorney's office to make the findings of misconduct against the police detectives and prosecutors who framed Major without continuing to dig up the evidence. Major Tillery is now 67 years old. He's done hard time, imprisoned for almost 35 years, some 20 years in solitary confinement in max prisons for a crime he did not commit. He recently won hepatitis C treatment, denied to him for a decade by the DOC. He has severe liver problems as well as arthritis and rheumatism, back problems, and a continuing itchy skin rash. Within the past couple of weeks he was diagnosed with an extremely high heartbeat and is getting treatment. Major Tillery does not want to die in prison. He and his family, daughters, sons and grandchildren are fighting to get him home. The newly filed petition for Conviction Review to the Philadelphia District Attorney's office lays out the evidence Major Tillery has uncovered, evidence suppressed by the prosecution through all these years he has been imprisoned and brought legal challenges into court. It is time for the District Attorney's to act on the fact that Major Tillery is innocent and was framed by police detectives and prosecutors who manufactured the evidence to convict him. Major Tillery's conviction should be vacated and he should be freed. Major Tillery and family HOW YOU CAN HELP Financial Support—Tillery's investigation is ongoing. He badly needs funds to fight for his freedom. Go to JPay.com; code: Major Tillery AM9786 PADOC Tell Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner: The Conviction Review Unit should investigate Major Tillery's case. He is innocent. The only evidence at trial was from lying jail house informants who now admit it was false. Call: 215-686-8000 or Email: justice@phila.gov Write to: Major Tillery AM 9786 SCI Frackville 1111 Altamont Blvd. Frackville, PA 17931 For More Information, Go To: JusticeForMajorTillery.org Call/Write: Kamilah Iddeen (717) 379-9009, Kamilah29@yahoo.com Rachel Wolkenstein (917) 689-4009, RachelWolkenstein@gmail.com

Obtain Updates: www.justice4majortillery.info

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Free Leonard Peltier!

On my 43rd year in prison I yearn to hug my grandchildren.

By Leonard Peltier

Art by Leonard Peltier

Write to:

Leonard Peltier 89637-132 

USP Coleman I 

P.O. Box 1033 

Coleman, FL 33521

Donations can be made on Leonard's behalf to the ILPD national office, 116 W. Osborne Ave, Tampa, FL 33603

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1) Top Cancer Researcher Fails to Disclose Corporate Financial Ties in Major Research Journals
By Charles Ornstein and Katie Thomas, September 8, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/health/jose-baselga-cancer-memorial-sloan-kettering.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=10&pgtype=sectionfront

Dr. José Baselga, the chief medical officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, in 2015.

This article was reported and written in a collaboration with ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative journalism organization.

One of the world's top breast cancer doctors failed to disclose millions of dollars in payments from drug and health care companies in recent years, omitting his financial ties from dozens of research articles in prestigious publications like The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet.

The researcher, Dr. José Baselga, a towering figure in the cancer world, is the chief medical officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He has held board memberships or advisory roles with Roche and Bristol-Myers Squibb, among other corporations, has had a stake in start-ups testing cancer therapies, and played a key role in the development of breakthrough drugs that have revolutionized treatments for breast cancer.

According to an analysis by The New York Times and ProPublica, Dr. Baselga did not follow financial disclosure rules set by the American Association for Cancer Research when he was president of the group. He also left out payments he received from companies connected to cancer research in his articles published in the group's journal, Cancer Discovery. At the same time, he has been one of the journal's two editors in chief.

At a conference this year and before analysts in 2017, he put a positive spin on the results of two Roche-sponsored clinical trials that many others considered disappointments, without disclosing his relationship to the company. Since 2014, he has received more than $3 million from Roche in consulting fees and for his stake in a company it acquired.

Dr. Baselga did not dispute his relationships with at least a dozen companies. In an interview, he said the disclosure lapses were unintentional.

He stressed that much of his industry work was publicly known although he declined to provide payment figures from his involvement with some biotech startups. "I acknowledge that there have been inconsistencies, but that's what it is," he said. "It's not that I do not appreciate the importance."

Dr. Baselga's extensive corporate relationships — and his frequent failure to disclose them — illustrate how permeable the boundaries remain between academic research and industry, and how weakly reporting requirements are enforced by the medical journals and professional societies charged with policing them.

A decade ago, a series of scandals involving the secret influence of the pharmaceutical industry on drug research prompted the medical community to beef up its conflict-of-interest disclosure requirements. Ethicists worry that outside entanglements can shape the way studies are designed and medications are prescribed to patients, allowing bias to influence medical practice. Disclosing those connections allows the public, other scientists and doctors to evaluate the research and weigh potential conflicts.

"If leaders don't follow the rules, then we don't really have rules," said Dr. Walid Gellad, director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Policy and Prescribing at the University of Pittsburgh. "It says that the rules don't matter."

The penalties for such ethical lapses are not severe. The cancer research group, the A.A.C.R., warns authors who fill out disclosure forms for its journals that they face a three-year ban on publishing if they are found to have financial relationships that they did not disclose. But the ban is not included in the conflict-of-interest policy posted on its website, and the group said no author had ever been barred.

Many journals and professional societies do not check conflicts and simply require authors to correct the record.

Officials at the A.A.C.R., the American Society of Clinical Oncology and The New England Journal of Medicine said they were looking into Dr. Baselga's omissions after inquiries from The New York Times and ProPublica. The Lancet declined to say whether it would look into the matter.

Christine Hickey, a spokeswoman for Memorial Sloan Kettering, said that Dr. Baselga had properly informed the hospital of his outside industry work and that it was Dr. Baselga's responsibility to disclose such relationships to entities like medical journals. The cancer center, she said, "has a rigorous and comprehensive compliance program in place to promote honesty and objectivity in scientific research."

Asked if he planned to correct his disclosures, Dr. Baselga asked reporters what they would recommend. In a statement several days later, he said he would correct his conflict-of-interest reporting for 17 articles, including in The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and the publication he edits, Cancer Discovery. He said that he did not believe disclosure was required for dozens of other articles detailing early stages of research.

"I have spent my career caring for cancer patients and bringing new therapies to the clinic with the goal of extending and saving lives," Dr. Baselga said in the statement. "While I have been inconsistent with disclosures and acknowledge that fact, that is a far cry from compromising my responsibilities as a physician, as a scientist and as a clinical leader."

The corporate imprint on cancer research

Dr. Baselga, 59, supervises clinical operations at Memorial Sloan Kettering, one of the nation's top cancer centers, and wields influence over the lives of patients and companies wishing to conduct trials there. He was paid more than $1.5 million in compensation by the cancer center in 2016, according to the hospital's latest available tax disclosures, but that does not include his consulting or board fees from outside companies.

Many top medical researchers have ties to the for-profit health care industry, and some overlap is seen as a good thing — after all, these are the companies charged with developing the drugs, medical devices and diagnostic tests of the future.

Dr. Baselga's relationship to industry is extensive. In addition to sitting on the board of Bristol-Myers Squibb, he is a director of Varian Medical Systems, which sells radiation equipment and for whom Memorial Sloan Kettering is a client.

In all, Dr. Baselga has served on the boards of at least six companies since 2013, positions that have required him to assume a fiduciary responsibility to protect the interests of those companies, even as he oversees the cancer center's medical operations.

The hospital and Dr. Baselga said steps had been taken to prevent him from having a say in any business between the cancer center and the companies on whose boards he sits.

The chief executive of Memorial Sloan Kettering, Dr. Craig B. Thompson, settled lawsuits several years ago that were filed by the University of Pennsylvania and an affiliated research center. They contended that he hid research conducted while he was at Penn to start a new company, Agios Pharmaceuticals, and did not share the earnings. Dr. Thompson disputed the allegations. He now sits on the board of Merck, which manufactures Keytruda, a blockbuster cancer therapy.

Ms. Hickey said the cancer center cannot fulfill its charitable mission without working with industry. "We encourage collaboration and are proud that our work has led to the approval of novel, lifesaving cancer treatments for patients around the world," she said.

Some disclosures are required; others aren't

After the scandals a decade ago over lack of disclosure, the federal government began requiring drug and device manufacturers to publicly disclose payments to doctors in 2013.

From August 2013 through 2017, Dr. Baselga received nearly $3.5 million from nine companies, according to the federal Open Payments database, which compiles disclosures filed by drug and device companies.

Dr. Baselga has disclosed in other forums investments and advisory roles in biotech start-ups, but he declined to provide a tally of financial interests in those firms. Companies that have not received approval from the Food and Drug Administration for their products — projects still in the testing phases — do not have to report payments they make to doctors.

Serving on boards can be lucrative. In 2017, he received $260,000 in cash and stock awards to sit on Varian's board of directors, according to the company's corporate filings.

ProPublica and The Times analyzed Dr. Baselga's publications in medical journals since 2013, the year he joined Memorial Sloan Kettering. He failed to disclose any industry relationships in more than 100, or about 60 percent of the time, a figure that has increased with each passing year. Last year, he did not list any potential conflicts in 87 percent of the articles that he wrote or co-wrote.

Dr. Baselga compiled a color-coded list of his articles and offered a different interpretation. Sixty-two of the papers for which he did not disclose any potential conflict represented "conceptual, basic laboratory or translational work," and did not require one, he said. Questions could be raised about others, he said, but he added that most "had no clinical nor financial implications." That left the 17 papers he plans to correct.

Early-stage research often carries financial weight because it helps companies decide whether to move ahead with a product. In about two-thirds of Dr. Balsega's articles that lacked details of his industry ties, one or more of his co-authors listed theirs.

In 2015, Dr. Baselga published an article in the New England Journal about a Roche-sponsored trial of one of the company's drugs, Zelboraf. Despite his financial ties to Roche, he declared that he had "nothing to disclose." Fourteen of his co-authors reported ties to Roche.

Dr. Baselga defended the articles, saying that "these are high-quality manuscripts reporting on important clinical trials that led to a better understanding of cancer treatments."

The guidelines enacted by most major medical journals and professional societies ask authors and presenters to list recent financial relationships that could pose a conflict.

But much of this reporting still relies on the honor system. A study in August in the journal JAMA Oncology found that one-third of authors in a sample of cancer trials did not report all payments from the studies' sponsors.

"We don't routinely check because we don't have those kind of resources," said Dr. Rita F. Redberg, the editor of JAMA Internal Medicine, who has been critical of the influence of industry on medical practice. "We rely on trust and integrity. It's kind of an assumed part of the professional relationship."

Jennifer Zeis, a spokeswoman for The New England Journal of Medicine, said in an email that it had now asked Dr. Baselga to amend his disclosures. She said the journal planned to overhaul its tracking of industry relationships.

The American Association for Cancer Research said it had begun an "extensive review" of the disclosure forms submitted by Dr. Baselga.

It said that it had never barred an author from publishing, and that "such an action would be necessary only in cases of egregious, consistent violations of the rules."

Among the most prominent relationships that Dr. Baselga has often failed to disclose is with the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche and its United States subsidiary Genentech.

In June 2017, at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago, Dr. Baselga spoke at a Roche-sponsored investor event about study results that the company had been counting on to persuade oncologists to move patients from Herceptin — which was facing competition from cheaper alternatives — to a combination treatment involving Herceptin and a newer, more expensive drug, Perjeta.

The results were so underwhelming that Roche's stock fell 5 percent on the news. One analyst described the results as a "lead balloon," and an editorial in The New England Journal called it a "disappointment."

Dr. Baselga, however, told analysts that critiques were "weird" and "strange."

This June, at the same cancer conference, Dr. Baselga struck an upbeat note about the results of a Roche trial of the drug taselisib, saying in a blog post published on the cancer center website that the results were "incredibly exciting" while conceding the side effects from the drug were high.

That same day, Roche announced it was scrapping plans to develop the drug. The news was another disappointment involving the class of drugs called PI3K inhibitors, which is a major focus of Dr. Baselga's current research.

In neither case did Dr. Baselga reveal that his ties to Roche and Genentech went beyond serving as a trial investigator. In 2014, Roche acquired Seragon, a cancer research company in which Dr. Baselga had an ownership stake, for $725 million. Dr. Baselga received more than $3 million in 2014 and 2015 for his stake in the company, according to the federal Open Payments database.

From 2013 to 2017, Roche also paid Dr. Baselga more than $50,000 in consulting fees, according to the database.

These details were not included in the conflict-of-interest statements that are required of all presenters at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference, although he did disclose ownership interests and consulting relationships with several other companies in the prior two years.

ASCO said it would conduct an internal review of Dr. Baselga's disclosures and would refer the findings to a panel.

Dr. Baselga said that he played no role in the Seragon acquisition, and that he had cut ties with Roche since joining the board of a competitor, Bristol-Myers, in March. As for his presentations at the ASCO meetings in the last two years, he said he had also noted shortcomings in the studies.

The combination of Perjeta with Herceptin was later approved by the F.D.A. for certain high-risk patients. As for taselisib, Dr. Baselga stands by his belief that the PI3K class of drugs will be an important target for fighting cancer.

Charles Ornstein is a senior editor at ProPublica.

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2) Colin Kaepernick Will Not Be Silenced
By Dave Zirin, September 7, 2018
https://www.thenation.com/article/colin-kaepernick-will-not-be-silenced/

Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick on January 1, 2017.

With a new ad by Nike, and new recriminations from the amoral White House, Colin Kaepernick has been the leading topic of conversation as the NFL season gets underway. But lost in the debates about his Nike campaign—and people setting fire to their own sneakers—is what is new about his collusion case against the NFL.

On Thursday of last week, NFL franchise owners were dealt a serious blow when their efforts to dismiss Kaepernick's collusion case were denied by independent arbitrator Stephen Burbank. In his statement, released by Kaepernick's attorney Mark Geragos, Burbank wrote, "On August 28, 2018, the System Arbitrator denied the NFL's request that he dismiss Colin Kaepernick's complaint alleging that his inability to secure a player contract since becoming a free agent in March 2017 has been due to an agreement among team owners and the NFL that violates Article 17, Section 1 of the collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and the NFLPA [union]."

The significance of the ruling is not only that the NFL's efforts were stymied. The collective-bargaining agreement is central to the labor question in the arbitrator's ruling. As NFL veteran Russell Okung tweeted, "What started as a protest to highlight systemic injustice, continues to evolve & now encompass a legit labor dispute. Encouraged by the System Arbitrator's level headed interpretation of the CBA & decision to deny the NFL's request to dismiss @Kaepernick7's case. Huge! #ImWithKap"

If NFL owners were savvy, rather than mostly legacy billionaires who live in fear of Donald Trump's tweets, they would make every effort at this point to settle with Kaepernick. Geragos and his investigators have now been sanctioned to dig even deeper, to depose owners and executives and excavate the shadowy corners of the league that NFL owners seem to think is their birthright to keep hidden— that means e-mails, phone records, text messages. In addition, if found guilty of collusion—if Geragos can summon smoking-gun evidence, a whistle-blower or some tangible proof—the verdict could invalidate the league's collective-bargaining agreement with the players' union two and a half years before it is due to expire in 2021. With the season about to get underway, the NFL Players Association would have the ownership over the proverbial barrel.

But NFL owners' settling this case would be more surprising than a Cleveland Browns Super Bowl run. This is a predominantly conservative ownership fraternity that has a reservoir of cultural capital invested in making an example out of Colin Kaepernick. They need him to be a ghost story, a cautionary tale that can be used against any player who even dreams of using the NFL as a political platform to speak out against racism.

Already, this strategy has proven to be disastrous. Kaepernick has instead become first a martyr, someone whose memory inspired players to keep protesting last season, and then an icon of resistance, the kind of person who gets standing ovations at the US Open.

Even if NFL owners come to their senses and offer a settlement, Colin Kaepernick is not going to settle. He clearly believes that this is about more than money. It is about police violence and being vocal for those who don't have a voice. It is about standing up to this idea that billionaires seem to have that they can silence whomever they want without repercussions. This is so much bigger than the NFL. We are about to witness a case that will determine whether the powerful can treat free speech as a privilege. Colin Kaepernick is determined to define it as a right.

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3)  Don’t Let Migrant Kids Rot
By The Editorial Board, September 9, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/09/opinion/editorials/dont-let-migrant-kids-rot.html

Undocumented immigrants at a bus station in McAllen, Tex.

For all the human brain’s mysteries, its development is quite well understood. Early childhood and adolescence are crucial times of unparalleled neural growth. Just as trust and stability can enhance that growth, fear and trauma can impede it. Institutionalization, in particular, can have profound and deleterious effects, triggering a range of developmental delays and psychiatric disorders from which recovery can be difficult, if not impossible. 

In light of that knowledge, the Trump administration’s latest move against immigrant children is especially troubling. On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security proposed new regulations that would allow the government to detain migrant children indefinitely. Officials are now prohibited from detaining such minors for more than 20 days by an agreement known as the Flores settlement, which has been in place since 1997. The new rules would end that settlement and would likely open the door to an expansion of detention centers across the country.

D.H.S. says that by eliminating Flores, officials will deter illegal immigration, reasoning that undocumented adults will be less likely to enter the country to begin with if they know they can’t avoid long-term detention simply by having a child in tow. Immigration activists say the proposed rule’s true aims are both simpler and more diabolical than that: “They want to strip away every last protection for detained immigrant children,” says Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.

Even with Flores in place, those protections have proved thin. Youth migrant shelters — there are roughly 100 such facilities housing more than 10,000 minors across the country — have been cited for a long list of abuses, including physical abuse, sexual abuse, blatant medical neglect, the forcible injection of antipsychotic medications, the unlawful restraint of children in distress and harsh rules that prohibit even siblings from hugging one another. The shelters in question, several of which are facing lawsuits, are part of a network that has received billions of federal dollars in the past four years alone. That money has continued to pour in even as abuse allegations have multiplied.

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4) Looking Our Racist History in the Eye

By Margaret Renkl, September 10, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/10/opinion/looking-our-racist-history-in-the-eye.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

A boy and his mother hold hands as they walk to school on the first day of desegregation in Nashville’s public schools, Sept. 9, 1957. An exhibit of photographs at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville shatters the civic myth that the city peacefully accepted racial integration.

NASHVILLE — In 1960, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech in this city, which was emerging as a training center for nonviolent protest. “I came to Nashville not to bring inspiration,” he said, “but to gain inspiration from the great movement that has taken place in this community.”

That movement was the work of people who later became some of the most influential figures in the national struggle for civil rights: James Lawson, John Lewis, Z. Alexander Looby, Diane Nash. When people today think of the civil rights era in the South, they think of Birmingham, Ala. They think of Little Rock, Ark. They think of Forsyth County, Ga., which warned African-Americans passing through not “to let the sun go down on your head.” They don’t think of Nashville.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. prepares to address an audience at Fisk University in Nashville in 1960 following the bombing of the home of a prominent civil rights attorney.

But this was the first major city in the South to desegregate public facilities, lunch counters and movie theaters. It developed a calm, one-year-at-a-time approach to integrating city schools. When Ms. Nash, confronting Mayor Ben West, asked if it was wrong “to discriminate against a person solely on the basis of color,” Mr. West answered, simply, “Yes.”

These are the stories Nashville tells itself again and again: We aren’t like the rest of the South. Dr. King said so.

The problem with civic memory is that it is both true and deeply false. Some layer of reality inevitably undergirds a public fairy tale. A myth always contains enough truth to make it seem like the final word. But there’s no such thing as the final word. That’s because any history is a narrative construction, one that files off the roughest edges of the story. The past itself is shaggy, troubled, unruly. It will not be contained. William Faulkner said it best: “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.”

Here’s what’s true: Nashville did not attack its own children with fire hoses, as Birmingham did. Tennessee did not call out the National Guard to integrate its universities, as Mississippi did. There is no “Bloody Sunday” in our history, as there is in the history of Selma, Ala. But our stories about the orderly desegregation of schools and the peaceful desegregation of lunch counters and the benign treatment of black people by the white people in power? That’s all a myth.

“We Shall Overcome: Civil Rights and the Nashville Press, 1957-1968,” a set of photographs assembled by the Frist Art Museum, exposes such mythmaking for what it is. The collection features work by photographers at Nashville’s two daily newspapers, The Tennessean and the now-defunct Nashville Banner, taken during the African-American struggle for civil rights in the city. Very few of these images were published; only a handful were seen by people of the time.

Part of the collection is on display in the museum’s ground-level public gallery, through which virtually all visitors pass. The full collection appears in a companion book just released by Vanderbilt University Press. Because of the violence depicted in them, the most troubling images appear only in the book. “As a mother of young children, I very conscientiously attempted to address the dark moments of the history, but without the images that may be viewed as most disturbing, especially for a family unprepared for what they were going to see or even participants in the movement who may still be traumatized by their experience,” said exhibit curator Kathryn Delmez.

Z. Alexander Looby, a civil rights attorney and Nashville City Council member, right, survived an early dawn bombing that destroyed his home in 1960. The remains of his house, left.

One 1957 photo depicts a crowd gathered in the middle of the night outside the newly integrated Hattie Cotton School, which had been bombed shortly after midnight. A photo from 1960 shows the aftermath of a bomb set off at the home of Mr. Looby, an attorney who defended sit-in demonstrators in court. Another, from 1962, depicts the Rev. Cephus Coleman standing in front of his own house as it burns to the ground. Two 1963 photos show a girl — all of 15 — lying unconscious in the street, beaten by a police officer with a club. In another photo from 1963, an effigy of Dr. King is hung by the neck in the headquarters of the Nashville police.

The civil rights era in Nashville, in other words, was “peaceful” only in the context of the even greater brutality of our neighbors to the south.

Rev. Cephus C. Coleman (center), a minister, watches as his home burns. In a predominantly white neighborhood it was the third blaze to break out in the same night, Aug. 7, 1962.

And to the north and west, too. People in other parts of the country like to imagine that their own histories contain nothing like the dark shame of racism that haunts the South, but that belief, too, is a myth. In 1964, the year the Civil Rights Act passed, there were protests and violence in Chicago; St. Augustine, Fla.; Tulsa, Okla.; New York City; Rochester, N.Y.; Philadelphia and Jersey City. In Cambridge, Md., National Guard troops — bayonets drawn — surrounded black people kneeling in prayer.

For some time now, Nashville’s civic institutions have been issuing correctives to the persistent myth of peaceful integration here. The astonishing Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library tells the whole story of African-Americans’ struggle for full civil rights in Nashville. The nonprofit organization Historic Nashville offers a tour of civil rights landmarks in the city. Last year, The Tennessean published a series of unvarnished stories about the conflicts of that time. In 2016, when Representative Lewis returned to Nashville to accept the Nashville Public Library Literary Award for his National Book Award-winning graphic memoir, “March: Book Three,” the mayor gave him prints of his first police mug shots, taken after his arrest at the lunch counter sit-ins and long believed to be lost to history. In Nashville, we no longer want our ugliest moments to be lost to history.

The photography exhibit at the Frist closes Oct. 14, but this record of Nashville’s past will endure: Copies of the companion volume to the photography exhibit will be distributed to all branches of the Nashville Public Library and to every public school in the city, and all members of the Tennessee General Assembly will receive a copy to deliver to the public libraries in their own communities. Here’s hoping they pause to take a look first. There’s a truth in these photographs that many of them have likely never seen before.

Margaret Renkl is a contributing opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South.

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5) Rich Nations Vowed Billions for Climate Change. Poor Countries Are Waiting.
By Mike Ives, September 9, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/09/world/asia/green-climate-fund-global-warming.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=7&pgtype=sectionfront

Farmers on a parched field in Bang Pla Ma district, north of Bangkok, in 2015.

HONG KONG — When industrialized nations pledged in 2009 to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 to help the poorest countries deal with climate change, it won over some skeptics in the developing world who had argued that rich nations should pay up for contributing so much to the problem.

But the money has been slow to materialize, with only $3.5 billion actually committed out of $10.3 billion pledged to a prominent United Nations program called the Green Climate Fund. President Trump’s decision last year to cancel $2 billion in promised aid did not help.

At a climate change conference in Thailand this past week, some delegates reached by telephone said that the setting — the heart of Southeast Asia, a region where challenges relating to warming are readily apparent — was grimly fitting. They described the United Nations program’s shortcomings as a symbol of a broken promise.

“The fund of hope is becoming a fund of hopelessness,” said Meena Raman, legal adviser to the Third World Network, an advocacy group in Malaysia, and a former nonvoting member of the Green Climate Fund’s board.

The meeting in Bangkok of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is a prelude to a larger one in December in Poland, where countries will try to set rules for carrying out the 2015 Paris climate accord.

The Bangkok meeting did not specifically address financing to mitigate climate change. But it came two months after disagreements among the Green Climate Fund’s board members prevented the fund from approving new projects at a routine meeting.

Activists demonstrating in front of the United Nations building on Friday in Bangkok, where a climate change conference was being held.

Some observers say the fund’s funding shortfall and bureaucratic malaise have dimmed expectations for the talks in Poland, which were already bound to be difficult.

“The lack of real money coming through is really undermining trust in the negotiations” around how to put the Paris accord in place, said Brandon Wu, the director of policy and campaigns at ActionAid USA, an advocacy group that monitored the Bangkok meeting. “That’s a big part of the logjam.”

The Green Climate Fund was designed to help developing countries prepare for climate disasters and develop low-fossil-fuel economies. It was part of a larger plan, led by Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state in 2009, to put together $100 billion a year for poor economies through a combination of government contributions and private investments.

Many academics see contributions to the fund by wealthy countries as a moral imperative, arguing that the developing world is most vulnerable to the effects of climate change but least responsible for causing them.

“Certainly, the richer countries should bear more of the burden in the G.C.F. because they have more means and more at stake,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, referring to the fund by its initials. “Richer countries also have benefited from wealth accumulated over decades when climate issues were not at the forefront.”

The Obama administration delivered $1 billion of a $3 billion pledge to the program. But last year, Mr. Trump, while announcing plans to exit the Paris accord, said the United States would no longer pay into the Green Climate Fund. He explained his decision by saying that the contributions could eventually cost the United States “billions and billions and billions” of dollars.

Ms. Raman said that while she still hoped to see other developed nations “step up” by contributing more to the fund, they had not yet made their exact commitments clear.

An Indonesian woman and child walking through a thick haze shrouding the city of Palangkaraya, Indonesia, in 2015.

“We’re very horrified by the stance taken by the United States, but it’s not the only one,” she said. “All the developed countries are united around the United States in not making any progress on finance.”

World leaders vowed in Paris to avoid a warming of 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), a threshold that they deemed unacceptably risky. Yet there are widely varying estimates of how much money is being spent on fighting climate change in poor economies. One reason for the discrepancy is that there is no consensus over which contributions should be counted in the tally.

And critics of the Green Climate Fund have questioned why much of the money it is distributing has been channeled through large development banks, or private-sector enterprises led by global investment firms. They argue that more climate aid should go directly to governments in the developing world, or the communities at risk.

“We want money, but we’re hard-pressed to give our full blessing to the projects coming on board,” said Lidy Nacpil, the coordinator of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, a regional alliance of nonprofits and community groups.

But even critics of the fund worry about the shortfall, saying it poses risks for people in poor regions where governments are either unable or unwilling to spend more on climate mitigation and adaptation.

The initial, Obama-era goal of securing $100 billion in climate finance and investment per year by 2020 “was the amount needed by the countries to implement their ambitions,” said Neha Rai, an expert on climate finance at the International Institute for Environment and Development, a think tank in Britain. “But at the same time, irrespective of the amount, it gives a policy signal that climate-relevant investments are important.”

Southeast Asia is a case in point.

People who live in the Asia-Pacific region are “particularly vulnerable” to the effects of a changing climate, the Asian Development Bank said last year in a report, which projected Southeast Asia to be “most affected by heat extremes” in the wider area by the end of the century.

Rowing boats through the streets of Hanoi after floods last month. Vietnam said state investments could provide only 30 percent of what it needs to adapt.

Of 74 approved Green Climate Fund projects worth $3.5 billion, three are in Southeast Asia and they have a combined value of nearly $156 million, according to data provided by the program. Nineteen others in the program’s pipeline directly target the region and are worth $904 million.

Ms. Nacpil said climate finance was important in Southeast Asia partly because so many cities are in coastal areas that are vulnerable to sea-level rise and must adapt. And because the number of coal-fired power plants in the region is expected to increase, she added, governments should be encouraged to bend national policies toward investments in renewable energy.

Jenty Kirsch-Wood, a climate specialist with the United Nations Development Program, defended the Green Climate Fund by pointing to its benefits in Vietnam, where part of a $30 million grant from the program has funded the distribution of free, storm-resistant housing to people in typhoon-prone coastal areas.

“The Green Climate Fund has revitalized hope for countries like Vietnam that they can meet their Paris agreement targets — embracing the green energy revolution, but also helping their citizens to adapt to climate change,” Ms. Kirsch-Wood said.

But $30 million goes only so far in a country of 93 million people with an economy worth more than $200 billion and a long, exposed coastline. And in a 2015 climate plan submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention, Vietnam said that state investments could provide only 30 percent of what it needs to adapt.

“Many developing countries have made clear that they will not be able to reach their Paris agreement targets without international climate finance,” said Oyun Sanjaasuren, the Green Climate Fund’s director of external affairs.

“For its part, G.C.F.’s pipeline of climate projects in developing countries shows that demand for climate finance already exceeds supply,” she said.

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6) Dallas Officer Charged With Manslaughter After Killing Neighbor in His Apartment
By Sarah Mervosh and Matt Stevens, September 9, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/09/us/amber-guyger-dallas-police-shooting.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront

Officer Amber Guyger, 30, was arrested on Sunday on a charge of manslaughter.

A Dallas police officer was arrested on Sunday, three days after she shot and killed a neighbor in his apartment, claiming she mistook the unit for her own and the man for an intruder, the authorities said.

The officer, Amber R. Guyger, 30, was charged with manslaughter and booked into the Kaufman County jail. She was freed on $300,000 bail on Sunday night.

Her arrest followed days of rising tensions in the community, accusations of preferential treatment for the police and questions about what role race may have played in a deadly encounter between a white police officer in uniform and a black man startled in his own home.

Officer Guyger went home from work in her police uniform late Thursday night and tried to enter the apartment, where she encountered and shot Botham Shem Jean, the police said.

Mr. Jean, 26, was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Officer Guyger was placed on administrative leave but was not immediately arrested, and the Dallas Police Department handed the investigation over to the Texas Rangers, the state’s top law enforcement agency. The Texas Rangers announced the arrest on Sunday night but declined to provide details about the case.

A lawyer for Officer Guyger could not be reached for comment on Sunday. The Dallas Morning News reported that she could be heard on a 911 call crying and apologizing. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

Lee Merritt, a lawyer for Mr. Jean’s family, said in an interview late Sunday that Officer Guyger’s arrest was a “step in the right direction.” But he questioned why the authorities had waited, saying, “We don’t want it lost on anyone that, had this been a regular citizen, she would have never left the crime scene.”

Officials have not said how Officer Guyger may have mistaken the apartment for her own, or what interaction she had with Mr. Jean just before the shooting.

In an interview with CNN on Sunday, Mayor Mike Rawlings of Dallas called the case “bizarre” and “confusing to all of us.” He said that Officer Guyger apparently parked her car on the wrong floor of the building’s parking lot and then walked to the apartment. “We don’t know how she got into that door,” he said. “We have to get to the bottom of this for everybody.”

Ben Crump, another lawyer for the family, said that Mr. Jean had been unarmed when Officer Guyger arrived and shot him in the chest.

Botham Shem Jean, shown at the college he attended, was fatally shot at his Dallas apartment by a police officer who said she mistook the apartment for her own, the authorities said.

“You know, we’re still dealing in an America where black people are being killed in some of the most arbitrary ways: Driving while black, walking while black — and now, we have to add living while black,” he said Sunday at a news conference.

Mr. Jean, he said, “went to his grave never knowing why the police came through his door and shot him.”

Office Guyger has been a member of the Dallas Police Department for four years. She was involved in a shooting last year, when she shot and injured a suspect after he grabbed a police Taser during a confrontation. She was not indicted in that episode, The Dallas Morning News reported.

On Thursday night, after working a full shift, she returned home to her apartment complex, South Side Flats, the police said. The complex is less than a quarter-mile from the Dallas Police Department headquarters.

Officer Guyger called 911 at about 10 p.m. to report the shooting.

Alyssa Kinsey, 29, who lives next door to Mr. Jean’s apartment, said she was sitting with her back to the tenants’ shared wall when she heard a gunshot, followed by a commotion. She said she ran to her door to listen and heard a female voice calling 911.

Staring through her peephole, Ms. Kinsey said she saw a police officer pacing and heard her “hyperventilating.”

To get to Mr. Jean’s apartment, Officer Guyger would have had to walk past 15 to 20 apartments — many of which have distinct wreaths, doormats and trash cans, Ms. Kinsey said. Mr. Jean, for instance, had a red doormat outside his apartment.

“It doesn’t look the same,” she said. “So my main question is: What was she doing?”

Mr. Merritt, the lawyer, said that that the officer and Mr. Jean did not know each other but that she lived in a unit below Mr. Jean, who had received noise complaints from a downstairs neighbor. He said the apartment complex uses electronic keys, which blink red when used incorrectly. Officer Guyger’s key was found in the doorway of Mr. Jean’s apartment, he said.

Mr. Jean was born in the Caribbean and later moved to the United States, where he graduated in 2016 from Harding University in Arkansas. He then moved to Dallas, where he worked for the accounting firm PwC.

He was from a prominent family in St. Lucia, his home country. Mayor Rawlings said he planned to meet with the prime minister of St. Lucia this week.

At the apartment complex, people had left flowers, a balloon and photos near Mr. Jean’s door, Ms. Kinsey said. She said that the lights in his apartment were still on, his patio furniture still outside.

“This is the last person I ever thought this would happen to — and this is the last place,” Ms. Kinsey said. “It’s so secure here. The Police Department is a block away.”

Sandra E. Garcia contributed reporting.

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7)  Players and Fans See Sexism in Serena Williams’s Treatment at U.S. Open
By Melissa Gomez, September 9, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/09/sports/serena-williams-tennis-sexism-carlos-ramos.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=10&pgtype=sectionfront

At the trophy ceremony after the United States Open final, Serena Williams, right, consoles Naomi Osaka, who defeated Williams, 6-2, 6-4.

The United States Open final between the tennis legend Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka, a rising star in her own right, could have been a celebration of talent and determination, regardless of the outcome.

Instead, the match on Saturday will be remembered for what Williams charged were “sexist” code violations against her by the chair umpire, who penalized her for verbal abuse after she called him a “thief.”

Osaka went on to win the game in two sets, 6-2, 6-4, but she was also upset and apologized to the crowd and Williams’s fans.

Reactions on social media largely focused on the umpire, Carlos Ramos, for penalizing Williams for behavior that critics said would ordinarily result in just a warning for other players.

On Sunday, Williams was fined $17,000 for three code violations, The Associated Press reported.

Chris Evert, a former top tennis player, tweeted that Ramos should have warned Williams about the verbal abuse violation before penalizing her. During the game, Andy Roddick, who retired from the sport in 2012, wrote on Twitter, “Worst refereeing I’ve ever seen ...... the worst !!!”

James Blake, a retired tennis star, tweeted that he had said worse things on the court and did not get penalized.

“And I’ve also been given a ‘soft warning’ by the ump where they tell you knock it off or I will have to give you a violation,” he wrote. “He should have at least given her that courtesy. Sad to mar a well played final that way.”

Billie Jean King, a tennis legend and a pioneer for women in the sport, congratulated Osaka in a tweet before thanking Williams in a separate one for calling out a double standard between men and women in the sport.

✔

(2/2) When a woman is emotional, she’s “hysterical” and she’s penalized for it. When a man does the same, he’s “outspoken” & and there are no repercussions. Thank you, @serenawilliams, for calling out this double standard. More voices are needed to do the same.

The actress Reese Witherspoon and the TV host Ellen DeGeneres thanked Williams on Twitter for standing up for women’s rights. The actress Gabrielle Union called her “the best athlete the world has ever seen” and said Osaka demonstrated “#BlackGirlMagic & fierce determination.”

Sally Jenkins, in her column in The Washington Post on Sunday, wrote, “Ramos took what began as a minor infraction and turned it into one of the nastiest and most emotional controversies in the history of tennis, all because he couldn’t take a woman speaking sharply to him.”

There were some who criticized Williams for the way she reacted, going as far as calling it a “meltdown.”

At a news conference after the match, Williams was asked if there was anything she would have changed about the game. She stood by her statements to call Ramos a “thief,” adding that she would continue to fight for women’s equality.

She said her experience was an example for future players who want to express themselves and be strong women.

“They’re going to be allowed to do that because of today,” she said. “Maybe it didn’t work out for me, but it’s going to work out for the next person.”

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