Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, September 24, 2023

     

SF ANSWER office suffers major fire damage. Your support needed!

 

DONATE:

https://www.answercoalition.org/sf_donate?utm_campaign=2023_09_17_lc_fundraiser&utm_medium=email&utm_source=answercoalition

 

Dear Friends and Supporters of the ANSWER Coalition,

 

An early morning fire on Thursday, Sept. 14 caused massive damage to our offices on Mission Street. It appears that the fire started in the lot next to our building, turned into a two-alarm blaze, and took fire-fighters more than three hours to fully extinguish. Thanks to their skill and courageous action our building was not completely destroyed. But it will take at least several months to restore it to use. We are awaiting an investigation and assessment of what if any of the contents – our several-thousand-book library, a very large collection of historical materials, computers and other office equipment, etc.– are salvageable.

 

This disaster occurred just as we were in the midst of reconstructing and refurbishing the building, painting the main meeting room, installing a new ramp, doors and entryway for disabled persons, redoing the storefront windows and the marquee.

 

Multiple organizations are now using our office for activities and we were about to announce a new name for the building: the Mission Liberation Center. Such centers are now operating in cities across the country. That will of course have to be put on hold.

 

The loss of the use of our building for an extended period of time creates a serious problem for carrying out our work, but we have no intention of being sidelined. From opposing the blockade of Cuba and providing critically needed humanitarian aid, to support for the many labor struggles taking place from coast-to-coast, to resisting the U.S. war drive against Russia and China, to fighting toxic racism in the Bayview, and much more, ANSWER will continue our work on vital international, national and local issues.

 

We are asking everyone who values our work to express your solidarity at this time of greatest need. While many of the costs of repair will be covered by insurance, not everything will. If you are able to help with a donation, you can make a tax-deductible donation to the Progress Unity Fund.

 

Thank you in advance for your solidarity,

 

Richard Becker

Western Region Coordinator, ANSWER Coalition

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Zaid Abdulnasser, the coordinator of Samidoun Network’s chapter in Germany, and member of the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, is currently being threatened by the German state that his residency as a Palestinian refugee born in Syria will be revoked due to his political engagement in Samidoun and Masar Badil.

 

In the face of this attack, more than 130 international organisations, unions, and political parties, have expressed their absolute refusal of Germany’s ever increasing repressive measures against Palestinian refugees and their fundamental right to struggle for their liberation and return.

 

We call for organisations to join us by signing the statement under the following link:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSffcsikMQR1lwvPqukzYCQpCzSZwLy28RXY8tYdGNxzlgugOA/viewform

 

To financially support the legal defence of Zaid and other Palestinians in Germany bearing the brunt of the state’s repressive measures against Palestine, you can make a donation to the following account:

 

Name: Rote Hilfe e.V.

IBAN: DE55 4306 0967 4007 2383 17

BIC: GENODEM1GLS

Note: Palaestina gegen Repression

 

We, in Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, declare that all attacks against us by the zionist occupation, its organisations abroad, and by Western imperialist countries and right-wing, racist media, have not and will not change our absolute commitment to defending and supporting the Palestinian prisoners movement, and to struggle for the liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.

Sign the statement!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSffcsikMQR1lwvPqukzYCQpCzSZwLy28RXY8tYdGNxzlgugOA/viewform

Download the poster, take a selfie or group photo, and send it to us at: 

samidoun@samidoun.net

@samidounnetwork (Instagram) 

@SamidounPP (Twitter/X)!

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Leonard Peltier’s Letter Delivered to Supporters on September 12, 2023, in Front of the Whitehouse

 

Dear friends, relatives, supporters, loved ones:

 

Seventy-nine years old. Mother Earth has taken us on another journey around Grandfather Sun.  Babies have taken their first breath. People have lived, loved, and died. Seeds have been planted and sent their roots deep below red earth and their breath to the Stars and our Ancestors.

 

I am still here.

 

Time has twisted one more year out of me. A year that has been a moment.  A year that has been a lifetime. For almost five decades I’ve existed in a cage of concrete and steel.  With the “good time” calculations of the system, I’ve actually served over 60 years.

 

Year after year, I have encouraged you to live as spirit warriors. Even while in here, I can envision what is real and far beyond these walls.  I’ve seen a reawakening of an ancient Native pride that does my heart good.

 

I may leave this place in a box. That is a cold truth. But I have put my heart and soul into making our world a better place and there is a lot of work left to do – I would like to get out and do it with you.

 

I know that the spirit warriors coming up behind me have the heart and soul to fight racism and oppression, and to fight the greed that is poisoning our lands, waters, and people. 

 

We are still here.

 

Remember who you are, even if they come for your land, your water, your family. We are children of Mother Earth and we owe her and her other children our care.

 

I long to turn my face to the sky. In this cage, I am denied that simple pleasure. I am in prison, but in my mind, I remain as I was born: a free Native spirit.

 

That is what allows me to laugh, keeps me laughing. These walls cannot contain my laughter – or my hope.

 

I know there are those who stand with me, who work around the clock for my freedom. I have been blessed to have such friends.

 

We are still here and you give me hope. 

 

I hope to breathe free air before I die. Hope is a hard thing to hold, but no one is strong enough to take it from me. 

 

I love you. I hope for you. I pray for you. 

 

And prayer is more than a cry to the Creator that runs through your head.  Prayer is an action.

 

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse

DOKSHA, 

LEONARD PELTIER

Write to:

Leonard Peltier 89637-132

USP Coleman 1

P.O. Box 1033

Coleman, FL 33521

Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.

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Drop the Charges on the Tampa 5!

Sign the Petition:

https://peoplespetitions.org/tampa5

 

The Tampa 5—Gia Davila, Lauren Pineiro, Laura Rodriguez, Jeanie K, and Chrisley Carpio—are the five Students for a Democratic Society protesters at the University of South Florida who were attacked by campus police and are now facing five to ten years in prison for protesting Governor Ron DeSantis' attacks on diversity programs and all of higher education.

 

On July 12, 2023, the Tampa 5 had their second court appearance. 

 

The Tampa 5 are still in the middle of the process of discovery, which means that they are obtaining evidence from the prosecution that is meant to convict them. They have said publicly that all the security camera footage they have seen so far absolves them, and they are eager to not only receive more of this evidence but also to share it with the world. The Tampa 5 and their supporters demand full transparency and USF's full cooperation with discovery, to which all of the defendants are entitled.

 

In spite of this, the charges have not yet been dropped. The case of the five SDS protesters is hurtling towards a trial. So, they need all of their supporters and all parties interested in the right to protest DeSantis to stay out in the streets!

 

We need to demand that the DeSantis-appointed, unelected State Attorney Susan Lopez and Assistant Prosecutor Justin Diaz drop the charges.

 

We need to win this case once and for all and protect the right of the student movement—and all social movements in the United States—to exercise their First Amendment right to free speech and to protest.

 

Defend the Tampa 5!

 

State Attorney Susy Lopez, Prosecutor Justin Diaz, Drop the Charges!

 

Save Diversity in Higher Education!

 

Protesting DeSantis is Not a Crime!

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Free Julian Assange

Immediate Repeated Action Needed to Free Assange

 

Please call your Congressional Representatives, the White House, and the DOJ. Calls are tallied—they do count.  We are to believe we are represented in this country.  This is a political case, so our efforts can change things politically as well.  Please take this action as often as you can:

 

Find your representatives:

https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

 

Leave each of your representatives a message individually to: 

·      Drop the charges against Julian Assange

·      Speak out publicly against the indictment and

·      Sign on to Rashida Tlaib's letter to the DOJ to drop the charges: 

           202-224-3121—Capitol Main Switchboard 

 

Leave a message on the White House comment line to 

Demand Julian Assange be pardoned: 

             202-456-1111

             Tuesday–Thursday, 11:00 A.M.–3:00 P.M. EST

 

Call the DOJ and demand they drop the charges against Julian Assange:

             202-353-1555—DOJ Comment Line

             202-514-2000 Main Switchboard 

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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!

FREE HIM NOW!

Write to Mumia at:

Smart Communications/PADOC

Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335

SCI Mahanoy

P.O. Box 33028

St. Petersburg, FL 33733

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Update on Ed Poindexter and Urgent Health Call-In Campaign

 

Watch the moving video of Ed's Niece and Sister at the April 26, 2023, UN EMLER Hearing in Atlanta: https://youtu.be/aKwV7LQ5iww

 

You can also watch Ed speaking about himself some years ago thanks to Sister Tekla, who was able to interview Ed and Mondo some years ago: https://youtu.be/sps0s4zeJxg.

More of these videos will be forthcoming.

 

Ed needs to be released to live the rest of his life outside of prison, with his family! (His niece Ericka is now 52 years old and was an infant when Ed was targeted, stolen from his home, jailed, framed, and railroaded.)

 

Friends and Comrades,

 

Thank you so very much for your phone calls and communications in support of Ed Poindexter’s health care!

 

We have learned from Ed’s family that a date has been set for Ed to go to an outside doctor to be evaluated for a hearing device. (Thank you, callers!) We have also learned that Ed will not be fitted for a prosthesis within the foreseeable future. The reason for this is that Ed is unable to sit up for more than a few seconds on his own. He is unable to get himself out of bed by himself. Ed cannot go to the restroom without substantial help. There is a fear of him falling.

 

The prison’s response has been to suggest that Ed try harder at physical therapy—so that he might be able to tie his own shoes again and perform basic self-care—but he cannot. Our position is that he is too weak because of the near daily kidney dialysis and multiple other health problems. As you know, he has lost sight in one eye, and is unable to hear. While he may have been weakened by being wheelchair bound for years, the fact that the institution amputated his left leg below the knee (without notice to the family) has made recovery of strength in his legs difficult. Add to this that Ed is extremely ill from kidney disease, and the near daily kidney dialysis artificially making his kidney’s function causes him to vomit his food and makes him ill overall. All of these combined illnesses have resulted in Ed not being able to even hold his frame upright for more than a few seconds.

 

Therefore, in protection of Ed’s basic rights as a human being to health care and human dignity, we demand that Ed be seen by an outside high ranking National Medical Association Certified geriatric physician or team of physicians who specialize in heart, kidney, and geriatric health. We demand the evaluation be by a physician connected to a reputable hospital so that Ed’s entire condition: eyes, heart (recall that Ed underwent triple bypass heart surgery in 2016) kidneys, neuropathy, amputated leg, serious inability to balance his frame, and hearing can all be evaluated as a whole.

 

It is the family’s belief that Ed is experiencing a diminishing quality of life that it is irreversible, and we demand an outside doctor also evaluate him for this obvious fact. If it is determined by a reputable doctor that Ed is experiencing a diminishing quality of life; we want his status changed at the prison to reflect this reality.

 

Please call the numbers below and write to demand that Ed be seen by an outside doctor at a state-of-the-art hospital facility—for the purpose of evaluation specifically as to whether his condition is diminishing and irreversible—taken as a whole.

 

Ed Support Committee and Family and Concerned Members of the Community

 

PLEASE CALL, EMAIL AND WRITE:

 

Acting Medical Director Jeff Kasselman, M.D.: 402-479-5931 jeffrey.kasselman@nebraska.gov

 

Warden Boyd of the Reception and Treatment Center: 402-471-2861

 

Warden: Taggart Boyd

Reception and Treatment Center

P.O. Box 22800

Lincoln, NE 68542-2800

Phone: 402-471-2861

Fax: 402-479-6100

 

Jeff Kasselman, M.D.

Acting Medical Director,

Nebraska Department of Corrections

Phone: 402-479-5931

Email: jeffrey.kasselman@nebraska.gov

 

Sample Message:

 

“I’m calling to urge that Ed Poindexter, #27767, be given appropriate medical care. I demand that be seen by an outside high ranking National Medical Association certified geriatric physician or team of physicians who specialize in heart, kidney, and geriatric health. I demand the evaluation include Ed’s entire condition: eyes, kidneys, diabetes, neuropathy, amputated leg, serious inability to balance his frame, and hearing. ”

 

You can read more about Ed Poindexter at:

https://www.thejerichomovement.com/profile/poindexter-ed

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Updates From Kevin Cooper 

March 23, 2023 

Dear Friends and Comrades, 

This is Kevin Cooper writing and sending this update to you in 'Peace & Solidarity'. First and foremost I am well and healthy, and over the ill effect(s) that I went through after that biased report from MoFo, and their pro prosecution and law enforcement experts. I am back working with my legal team from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.

'We' have made great progress in refuting all that those experts from MoFo came up with by twisting the truth to fit their narrative, or omitting things, ignoring, things, and using all the other tactics that they did to reach their conclusions. Orrick has hired four(4) real experts who have no questionable backgrounds. One is a DNA attorney, like Barry Scheck of the innocence project in New York is for example. A DNA expert, a expect to refute what they say Jousha Ryen said when he was a child, and his memory. A expect on the credibility of MoFo's experts, and the attorney's at Orrick are dealing with the legal issues.

This all is taking a little longer than we first expected it to take, and that in part is because 'we' have to make sure everything is correct in what we have in our reply. We cannot put ourselves in a situation where we can be refuted... Second, some of our experts had other things planned, like court cases and such before they got the phone call from Rene, the now lead attorney of the Orrick team. With that being said, I can say that our experts, and legal team have shown, and will show to the power(s) that be that MoFo's DNA expert could not have come to the conclusion(s) that he came to, without having used 'junk science'! They, and by they I mean my entire legal team, including our experts, have done what we have done ever since Orrick took my case on in 2004, shown that all that is being said by MoFo's experts is not true, and we are once again having to show what the truth really is.

Will this work with the Governor? Who knows... 'but' we are going to try! One of our comrades, Rebecca D.   said to me, 'You and Mumia'...meaning that my case and the case of Mumia Abu Jamal are cases in which no matter what evidence comes out supporting our innocence, or prosecution misconduct, we cannot get a break. That the forces in the so called justice system won't let us go. 'Yes' she is correct about that sad to say...

Our reply will be out hopefully in the not too distant future, and that's because the people in Sacramento have been put on notice that it is coming, and why. Every one of you will receive our draft copy of the reply according to Rene because he wants feedback on it. Carole and others will send it out once they receive it. 'We' were on the verge of getting me out, and those people knew it, so they sabotaged what the Governor ordered them to do, look at all the evidence as well as the DNA evidence. They did not do that, they made this a DNA case, by doing what they did, and twisted the facts on the other issues that they dealt with.   'more later'...

In Struggle & Solidarity,

An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:

Mr. Kevin Cooper

C-65304. 4-EB-82

San Quentin State Prison

San Quentin, CA 94974

 

 

Call California Governor Newsom:

1-(916) 445-2841

Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish, 

press 6 to speak with a representative and

wait for someone to answer 

(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)

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The writers' organization PEN America is circulating this petition on behalf of Jason Renard Walker, a Texas prisoner whose life is being threatened because of his exposés of the Texas prison system. 

See his book, Reports from within the Belly of the Beast; available on Amazon at:

https://www.amazon.com/Reports-Within-Belly-Beast-Department-ebook/dp/B084656JDZ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/protect-whistleblowers-in-carceral-settings

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Sign the petition:

https://dontextraditeassange.com/petition/

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Tell Congress to Help #FreeDanielHale

 

I’m pleased to announce that last week our client, Daniel Hale, was awarded the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. The “Corner-Brightener Candlestick” was presented to Daniel’s friend Noor Mir. You can watch the online ceremony here. As it happens, this week is also the 20th anniversary of the first drone assassination in Yemen. From the beginning, the drone assassination program has been deeply shrouded in secrecy, allowing U.S. officials to hide significant violations of international law, and the American Constitution. In addition to the lives directly impacted by these strikes, the program has significantly eroded respect for international law and thereby puts civilians around the world in danger. Daniel Hale’s revelations threw a beam of light into a very dark corner, allowing journalists to definitively show that the government's official narrative was a lie. It is thanks to the great personal sacrifice of drone whistleblowers like Hale that public understanding has finally begun to catch up to reality. As the Sam Adams Associates note:  “Mr. Hale was well aware of the cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment to which other courageous officials have been subjected — and that he would likely suffer the same. And yet — in the manner of his famous ancestor Nathan Hale — he put his country first, knowing what awaited him at the hands of those who serve what has become a repressive Perpetual War State wreaking havoc upon much of the world.” We hope you’ll join the growing call to pardon or commute Hale’s sentence. U.S. citizens can contact your representatives here.

Happy new year, and thank you for your support! Jesselyn Radack Director Whistleblower & Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) ExposeFacts Twitter: @JesselynRadack

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Laws are created to be followed

by the poor.

Laws are made by the rich

to bring some order to exploitation.

The poor are the only law abiders in history.

When the poor make laws

the rich will be no more.

 

—Roque Dalton Presente!

(May 14, 1935 – Assassinated May 10, 1975)[1]

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[1] Roque Dalton was a Salvadoran poet, essayist, journalist, political activist, and intellectual. He is considered one of Latin America's most compelling poets.

Poems: 

http://cordite.org.au/translations/el-salvador-tragic/

About: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roque_Dalton

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A Plea for the Compassionate Release of 

Leonard Peltier

Self Portrait by Leonard Peltier

Video at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWdJdODKO6M&feature=youtu.be

Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier.

 

https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition

 

Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info

Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603

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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression

https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/

 

Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests. 

 

The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page. 

 

Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.

 

Emergency Hotlines

If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities. 

 

State and Local Hotlines

If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for: 

 

Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312

San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org

Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963

National Hotline

If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:

 

National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811

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Articles

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1) U.A.W. Extends Walkouts to More Plants, but Cites Progress in Ford Talks

The union designated 38 parts distribution factories as additional strike targets at G.M. and Stellantis.

By Neal E. Boudette, Sept. 22, 2023

“‘The question is, can the union maintain solidarity and keep everyone together if this continues for several more weeks,’ he said. Earlier in the week, workers demonstrating at Stellantis’s North American headquarters in Auburn Hills, Mich., said they were energized and ready to join the walkout, if called to do so. ‘President Fain has got fight,’ said Marnice Alford, who works in the paint shop at a Stellantis plant in Sterling Heights, near Detroit. ‘I like that.’”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/22/business/uaw-strike-general-motors-stellantis.html

A United Automobile Workers union rally in Detroit on Sept. 15. The union expanded its strike on Friday. Credit...Cydni Elledge for The New York Times

The United Automobile Workers union on Friday significantly raised the pressure on General Motors and Stellantis, the parent of Jeep and Ram, by expanding its strike against the companies to include all the spare parts distribution centers of the two companies.

 

Shawn Fain, the union’s president, said Friday that workers at 38 distribution centers, which provide parts to dealerships for repairs, at the two companies would walk off the job at noon. He said talks with two companies had not progressed significantly, contrasting them with Ford Motor, which he said had done more to meet the union’s demands.

 

“We will shut down parts distribution centers until those two companies come to their senses and come to the bargaining table,” Mr. Fain said.

 

The union said it was not striking more facilities at Ford in recognition of the gains it has achieved in talks with that company.

 

“To be clear, we are not done at Ford,” he said. “We have serious issues to work through, but we do want to recognize that Ford is serious about reaching a deal.”

 

Tensions between the union and the automakers had flared up even before Mr. Fain announced the expansion of the strike. On Thursday, private messages sent by a union communications manager via X, formerly known as Twitter, seemed to suggest that the union leaders were pleased that the strike appeared to be hurting the three manufacturers.

 

Jonah Furman, who was hired to direct the U.A.W.’s media relations after Mr. Fain took office this year, wrote in the messages that the strike was causing the automakers to suffer “reputations damage and operational chaos.”

 

The contents of the messages were revealed in The Detroit News.

 

G.M. said in a statement that the leaked messages showed a “callous disregard for the seriousness of what is at stake” in the strike.

 

“It’s now clear that the U.A.W. leadership has always intended to cause monthslong disruption, regardless of the harm it causes to its members and their communities,” the company added.

 

The expansion of the stoppage heightens the stakes for both sides, and could force other plants owned by the automakers and their suppliers to halt production.

 

The union is paying striking workers $500 per week each from its $825 million strike fund, while the manufacturers are faced with losing tens of millions of dollars in revenue every day that the affected plants remain idled.

 

A week ago, the union called on workers to strike at a G.M. pickup truck plant in Wentzville, Mo.; a Ford factory in Michigan that makes the Bronco sport-utility vehicle; and a Jeep plant in Toledo, Ohio, owned by Stellantis.

 

The union is seeking a substantial increase in wages, noting that the automakers have reported strong profits in the last 10 years and have raised the pay of their chief executives. The union initially demanded a 40 percent increase; the companies have offered about 20 percent over four years.

 

The U.A.W. also wants more workers to qualify for pensions, company-paid retiree health care, shorter working hours and job security for workers if the manufacturers close plants in the future. It also wanted to end a wage system in which new hires start at about $17 an hour, and must stay on the job eight years to climb up to the top wage of $32 an hour.

 

Peter Berg, a professor of employment relations at Michigan State University, said the U.A.W.’s strategy of limiting strikes to certain locations eases the cost of supporting workers from its strike fund, but hurts the manufacturers because those plants make some of their most profitable vehicles.

 

“The question is, can the union maintain solidarity and keep everyone together if this continues for several more weeks,” he said.

 

Earlier in the week, workers demonstrating at Stellantis’s North American headquarters in Auburn Hills, Mich., said they were energized and ready to join the walkout, if called to do so.

 

“President Fain has got fight,” said Marnice Alford, who works in the paint shop at a Stellantis plant in Sterling Heights, near Detroit. “I like that.”

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2) One Day on the Border: 8,900 Migrants Arrested, and More on the Way

A sudden surge of people from around the globe is showing up at the southern border, despite dangers and deportations. ‘If you don’t take risks, you cannot win,’ said one man who traveled from Peru.

By Miriam Jordan, Jack Healy and Eileen Sullivan, Sept. 22, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/22/us/migrant-crisis-border-surge.html

People crossed the Rio Grande on Friday to turn themselves in to law enforcement in Eagle Pass, Texas. Credit...Verónica G. Cárdenas for The New York Times

They come from Brazil, Burkina Faso, Uzbekistan, India and dozens of other countries, a moving global village of hundreds of thousands of people crossing the Rio Grande and slipping through gaps in the border wall at a pace of nearly 9,000 people a day, one of the highest rates of unlawful crossings in months.

 

Despite new border barriers and thickets of razor wire, risk of deportation and pleas for patience, a resurgent tide of men, women and children is not waiting. Driven by desperation, families and individuals are pushing across the southern border and past new efforts by the Biden administration to keep migrants waiting until they secure hard-to-get appointments to enter the nation with permission.

 

The influx is creating a humanitarian and political crisis that stretches from packed migrant processing facilities in border states to major American cities struggling to house and educate the new families. Though many get through, thousands are being sent back across the border or on flights to their home countries. But from Texas to California, more than two dozen migrants who have entered illegally in recent days said they could not afford to wait.

 

“If you don’t take risks, you cannot win,” said Daniel Soto, 35, who crossed with his mother on Tuesday after they sold their car, restaurant and house in Lima, Peru, betting their entire fortune of $25,000 on a weeklong journey to the border near Tijuana.

 

Surges in migration at the southern border, while motivated by poverty, violence and hunger, are also tied to weather patterns, policy changes and personal circumstances. The pace of unlawful crossings dropped sharply in the spring amid uncertainty surrounding the end of a pandemic-era measure that allowed the government to quickly deport migrants. But numbers rebounded over the summer, and are now nearly double the 4,900 unlawful crossings a day that were recorded in mid-April.

 

The Biden administration opened new pathways for entry, including an app to allow migrants to make appointments to cross into the United States in an orderly way, and started a program this summer to enable certain people to apply to immigrate at new processing centers in other countries. Around 1,500 migrants a day enter the country using the app, which is meant to help control and organize the flow of migrants into the country.

 

The Biden administration also allowed nearly 500,000 Venezuelan migrants who are already in the country to seek work permits and protection from deportation. The administration yielded to pressure from leaders in New York, where the recent arrival of more than 100,000 migrants in New York City has overwhelmed shelters and strained resources. Though the Biden program doesn’t apply to new arrivals, it touched off debate about whether the action would encourage more people to migrate.

 

Yet those moves are not enough to meet the tremendous demand, and they cannot compete with the misinformation spread by smuggling networks — a multimillion-dollar industry — or the messages sent home from other migrants who made it into the United States.

 

Migrants like Mr. Soto and his mother are arriving on a tailwind of stories of friends and relatives who reached New York or Chicago months earlier. Many also believe false claims from smugglers and social media that migrants would definitely be able to remain in the United States if they could make it in.

 

“The smuggling organizations are spreading misinformation with a global reach that they couldn’t do before,” said John Modlin, the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector chief, who is coordinating the response to border crossings in Arizona and California. “In the past, at best, they could talk to the village they were in, or a small region. Through social media, they can hit people all around the world.”

 

Mr. Modlin said border agents are “recovering bodies almost every day of people not making it.”

 

Thousands of migrants who do cross the border successfully are being deported shortly after they arrive, based on factors that include their home countries, available flights, and the discretion of border officials. But others file asylum claims when they face deportation in immigration court, and are allowed to remain in the United States while they wait for their cases to wind through immigration court, a process that can take years.

 

Some people will not show up for their court proceedings, and continue to live and work in the United States along with millions of other undocumented immigrants.

 

Some migrants who arrive using the government app are eligible for permission to stay in the country and work for two years, but may still eventually be ordered deported.

 

“It will work out,” said Diego Santos, a 23-year-old Brazilian who was heading to Philadelphia after being released by border authorities in San Diego. Ahead of him lay the hope of construction work, but also deportation proceedings that he now has to fight.

 

“I’ll do what I can to stay,” he said.

 

As new arrivals swamp processing facilities and strain the capacity of shelters, the Border Patrol has begun dropping off many migrants outside churches, supermarkets and gas stations, transforming border cities into scenes of confusion and triage.

 

In San Diego, the Border Patrol released thousands of people in the last week near a hub for trolleys and buses, many of them with little money or idea where they were.

 

Mamadou Barry, 19, who had traveled from Guinea, carried paperwork from U.S. authorities saying he had “failed to provide address” of his final destination. Officials had scheduled his first deportation court hearing in Los Angeles. But he knew no one there, or anywhere.

 

In the border city of Nogales, Ariz., local officials and nonprofit groups have scrambled to arrange for buses to take newly released migrants to a shelter in Tucson, an hour’s drive north. But one evening this week, immigration vans released 30 people in Nogales three hours after the day’s last bus to Tucson had left.

 

“Where are we going to sleep?” asked Liliana Quishpe, 44, who had arrived from Guatemala with her 17-year-old daughter. “They just left us here.”

 

The surge shows little sign of ebbing, according to Brandon Judd, the head of the Border Patrol union, who said that 8,900 people were arrested on Wednesday and another 8,360 on Thursday.

 

Officials in Panama say that even more migrants are now on their way north. Already this year, some 381,000 people bound for the United States have crossed the Darién Gap — a treacherous jungle bottleneck between South and Central America — and there could be a surge in October, the most popular month for crossings there.

 

In interviews, many newly arrived migrants said they made plans to travel to the United States as soon as they had cobbled together the money to pay for the trip. Most did not plan to stay at the border, and with the aid of a network of nonprofit groups on the U.S. side, quickly set off for other cities where jobs, relatives or the promise of space in a shelter awaited them.

 

In Texas, Yosnavys Venta, a 23-year-old from Venezuela, said he spent six months in Mexico trying again and again to get an appointment using the new mobile app. Some who have used the app said they were able to secure appointments right away, others said they could not get one for months.

 

Mr. Venta finally gave up earlier this month and decided to take his chances in joining thousands of migrants who sloshed across the Rio Grande and into the overwhelmed city of Eagle Pass, Texas.

 

So many migrants have poured in to the city that on Thursday, the mayor authorized law enforcement officers to arrest people for trespassing if they clamber onto the banks of a city-owned riverside park. Mayor Rolando Salinas, a Democrat, said his small city can’t sustain thousands of migrants coming into the community.

 

Gov. Katie Hobbs of Arizona, a Democrat, joined border law-enforcement officials and mayors in criticizing the Biden administration for what she called haphazard releases of migrants. “Arizona is being overwhelmed,” she said Friday.

 

Even places with more resources, like Pima County, Ariz., are struggling.

 

“It’s been really hectic,” said Mark Evans, a spokesman for Pima County, which runs buses that collect migrants from small border towns and take them to a large shelter in Tucson. “We shouldn’t be doing this. There’s an entire federal agency designed to provide this kind of shelter, and that’s FEMA.”

 

Blas Nuñez-Neto, an assistant secretary of Homeland Security, said the influx of migrants from countries beyond Mexico and Central America had put “an incredible amount of pressure” on the system.

 

The Biden administration has expanded the number of appointments available to migrants who use the mobile app, scheduling some 43,000 appointments a month.

 

Demand still far outstrips available slots, though, and many migrant families who are stranded in fetid, dangerous makeshift tent encampments along the Mexican side of the border have given up trying to use the app, preferring to brave a perilous crossing across the Rio Grande and often paying cartels that control the river.

 

“They are tired of waiting,” said Juan Fierro Garcia, a pastor in the El Buen Samaritano migrant shelter, in Juarez, Mexico. “They are more desperate.”

 

In Arizona, Walter Garcia, a 26-year-old firefighter from Guatemala, is among many migrants who barely even considered the legal route. Like many people making their way to the U.S., he had never heard of the new app.

 

His mother had managed to slip into the United States through the desert a year ago, so Mr. Garcia figured that he could do the same. He paid a smuggler $3,000 last week to take him to a gash in the border wall in Arizona, and on Wednesday, Mr. Garcia was freed from immigration custody and waiting at the Tucson airport for a flight to New Jersey to meet his mother.

 

“Two days in immigration, and we’re out,” he said. “It was easy.”

 

Migrant shelters in Texas, Arizona and California say they are struggling to find cots and hotel rooms to house the hundreds of new families and single adults who arrive every day, and local governments have scrambled to keep up with the pace of migrants being released onto the streets.

 

Outside a community center in San Diego, Ender Pirela, a 23-year-old from Venezuela, recalled how he had almost given up waiting for an appointment to enter the United States.

 

Mr. Pirela’s older brother had used the new app to enter six months ago, and ended up in Dallas. He worked at construction and saved $2,500 so that Ender could make the same journey.

 

Mr. Pirela said he and two traveling companions spent six weeks in Monterey, Mexico, where they were harassed and robbed and forced to sleep on the street when they ran out of money. Many other migrants, fearing for their safety, gave up waiting and crossed illegally, he said, but he waited.

 

“When our date arrived,” Mr. Pirela said, “there were tears everywhere.”

 

Reporting was contributed by Julie Turkewitz, Edgar Sandoval, J. David Goodman, Reyes Mata III and Rob D’Amico.

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3) Tyson and Perdue Are Facing Child Labor Investigations

The Labor Department has opened inquiries into whether migrant children were working inside slaughterhouses owned by the poultry-processing giants.

By Hannah Dreier, Sept. 23, 2023

Hannah has spent the past year and a half covering the resurgence of child labor in the United States.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/23/us/tyson-perdue-child-labor.html

Marcos Cux was sanitizing a deboning area in a Perdue plant last year when his arm was mangled in a conveyor belt. Credit...Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

Tyson Foods and Perdue Farms, which together produce a third of the poultry sold in the United States, are under federal investigation into whether they relied on migrant children to clean slaughterhouses, some of the most dangerous work in the country.

 

The Labor Department opened the inquiries after an article in The New York Times Magazine, published this past week, found migrant children working overnight shifts for contractors in the companies’ plants on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Children as young as 13 were using acid and pressure hoses to scour blood, grease and feathers from industrial machines.

 

Meat processing is among the nation’s most hazardous industries, and federal law bans minors from working in slaughterhouses because of the high risk of injury. The Times article focused on one child, Marcos Cux, whose arm was mangled in a conveyor belt last year as he sanitized a deboning area in the Perdue plant. He was in the eighth grade.

 

The investigations are a rare instance of two major consumer brands facing federal scrutiny over child labor. Many meat-processing companies outsource cleaning to sanitation firms, which technically employ the workers. After another Labor Department investigation recently found more than 100 children cleaning plants around the country, one firm, Packers Sanitation Services Inc., paid a $1.5 million fine. But the national corporations that benefited from the children’s work, including Tyson, did not come under investigation.

 

Seema Nanda, the Labor Department’s chief legal officer, said in an interview that the Biden administration is now examining whether large corporations can be considered employers even when children enter their factories through contractors.

 

“We are long past the day when brands can say that they don’t know that they have child labor in their supply chain,” Ms. Nanda said. “The intention is to make sure that those higher up in the supply chain are holding their subcontractors and staffing agencies accountable.”

 

Representatives for Perdue and Tyson declined to comment on the Labor Department investigations. The companies, which have policies prohibiting underage labor, said they had not known children were working in their Virginia plants.

 

Tyson said it was now directly employing cleaners at 40 percent of its slaughterhouses and aimed to bring more of this work in house. Perdue said it had hired an outside auditor to suggest new policies. “We recognize the systemic nature of this issue and embrace any role we can play in a solution,” a Perdue spokeswoman, Andrea Staub, said in a statement.

 

The Labor Department has also opened investigations into the companies that have been running the cleaning shifts for Perdue and Tyson in Virginia: Fayette Industrial, which works with Perdue, and QSI, which works with Tyson and is part of a conglomerate, the Vincit Group.

 

Fayette hired Marcos at age 13 after he arrived in Virginia from his village in Guatemala. In February last year, he was cleaning deep inside a conveyor belt at the Perdue plant when it suddenly came to life and pulled him across the floor, tearing open his arm. He underwent three surgeries, but his arm remained limp at his side, his hand frozen in a claw.

 

He is one of thousands of Mexican and Central American children who have come to the United States alone since 2021 and ended up in dangerous, grueling jobs, The Times has reported in a series of articles this year.

 

On Wednesday, the Labor Department took the additional step of sending out an alert to hundreds of investigators nationwide about a child labor “enforcement action” against QSI. The alert outlined a clearinghouse system for tips about the company that will be run through the department’s Tennessee office, where the sanitation company is based.

 

Fayette and QSI said they had policies against child labor and were not aware of the federal investigations. Tyson said it planned to end its relationship with QSI at several plants, while Perdue has told Fayette that it may end its contract.

 

While the Labor Department has fewer than 750 investigators for more than 11 million workplaces, another federal agency — the Agriculture Department — sends inspectors into the nation’s slaughterhouses every day. The Times reported this past week that food safety inspectors regularly encountered minors working in the Virginia plants but did not believe it was their role to report child labor violations. The inspectors said they knew the children had to work to pay rent and send money back to desperate families.

 

A spokesman for the Agriculture Department said the agency was retraining the nation’s nearly 8,000 food inspectors to quickly report child workers to the Labor Department.

 

“The use of illegal child labor — particularly requiring that children undertake dangerous tasks — is inexcusable,” said the spokesman, Allan Rodriguez.

 

Lawmakers called on companies and the Biden administration to do more to get children out of slaughterhouses. Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, sent a letter to the chief executive of Tyson Foods, Donnie King, asking the company to commit to an independent child labor audit.

 

Several Democrats, including Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Representative Hillary Scholten of Michigan, said they would push for legislation and increased funding to hold companies accountable.

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4) Mother Who Gave Abortion Pills to Teen Daughter Gets 2 Years in Prison

Jessica Burgess had pleaded guilty to violating Nebraska’s abortion law. Her daughter, who was 17 when she ended her late-term pregnancy last year, was sentenced in July to 90 days in jail.

By Jesus Jiménez, Sept. 22, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/22/us/jessica-burgess-abortion-pill-nebraska.html

Protesters gathered at the Nebraska Capitol in Lincoln in May as the Legislature approved a 12-week abortion ban. Credit...Margery Beck/Associated Press

A Nebraska woman who acquired abortion pills that her teenage daughter used to end her pregnancy last year was sentenced on Friday to two years in prison.

 

The woman, Jessica Burgess, 42, was charged after the police found her private Facebook messages, which revealed plans she had with her daughter to end the pregnancy and “burn the evidence.”

 

Prosecutors said that Ms. Burgess ordered the pills online and gave them to her daughter, Celeste Burgess, in April 2022, when her daughter was 17 and in the third trimester of her pregnancy. The Burgesses later buried the fetal remains, the authorities said.

 

Ms. Burgess pleaded guilty in July to violating Nebraska’s abortion law, furnishing false information to a law enforcement officer and removing or concealing human skeletal remains. Celeste Burgess was sentenced in July to 90 days in jail and two years of probation after she pleaded guilty in May to removing or concealing human skeletal remains.

 

Jessica Burgess, who faced up to five years in prison, was sentenced to two years, with her terms for false reporting and removal of skeletal remains running concurrently.

 

Brad Ewalt, a lawyer for Ms. Burgess, asked Judge Mark A. Johnson of Madison County District Court on Friday to sentence his client to probation. The judge denied the request, saying that Ms. Burgess had treated the fetal remains “like yesterday’s trash,” The Norfolk Daily News reported.

 

Celeste Burgess, who was released from jail on Sept. 11, sat near the back of the courtroom on Friday and wiped tears from her face when her mother was sentenced, The Daily News reported.

 

Mr. Ewalt and the Madison County prosecutor who tried the case did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.

 

A police investigation into the Burgesses began before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. The case has fueled fears that people who end their pregnancies in the post-Roe era, and those who help them, could be prosecuted for having abortions and that their private communications could be used as evidence against them.

 

The investigation began in late April 2022, when the police in Norfolk, Neb., began looking into whether a 17-year-old girl had given birth prematurely to a stillborn baby, and whether the girl and her mother had buried it, according to court documents.

 

At the time, abortion was banned in Nebraska after 20 weeks from conception. This May, Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican, signed a 12-week ban into law.

 

The Burgesses were initially charged with concealing a stillbirth. But according to court documents, a detective later asked Celeste Burgess for the exact date her pregnancy ended. When she said she needed to check her Facebook messages to remember, the detective obtained a warrant for messages she had exchanged with her mother.

 

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, complied with the warrant. The detective found evidence of a medically induced abortion, according to court documents, allowing the authorities to file additional charges.

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5) This Alaska Mine Would Destroy the World’s Largest Salmon Fishery

By Carl Safina and Joel Reynolds, Sept. 24, 2023

Dr. Safina is a marine ecologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Mr. Reynolds is a senior lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, where he directs the organization’s efforts in the American West. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/24/opinion/alaska-salmon-mine-court.html

Christopher Miller

For decades, a Canadian company has sought to excavate an enormous open pit mine at the headwaters of the 40,000 square mile Bristol Bay watershed in southwest Alaska. Called the Pebble Mine, it would destroy the planet’s most productive salmon fishery and impoverish the communities the fishery sustains.

 

How bad would this be? The breadth of the opposition offers an idea. The entire Alaska congressional delegation opposes the project. The Trump administration denied it a permit in 2020, and this year the Environmental Protection Agency issued a rare veto, effectively blocking the mine. The project is opposed by a consortium of Alaska Native tribes that represent about 80 percent of the people who live in the region. In 2016 it was condemned by a near unanimous vote of the World Conservation Congress of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

 

All of the project’s major mining partners walked away a decade ago, leaving the scheme to its financially challenged Canadian owner, Northern Dynasty Minerals.

 

And yet this project to extract copper, gold and molybdenum has refused to die. Alaska’s governor, Mike Dunleavy, Northern Dynasty’s inexplicably loyal disciple, is trying to revive it again.

 

This summer, at Gov. Dunleavy’s direction, the state bypassed the normal appeals process by going directly to the United States Supreme Court to challenge the E.P.A. veto. It’s no mystery why: Since last year, the Supreme Court has gut-punched the E.P.A. twice, first on climate change regulation and then, this spring, on clean water protection. The Dunleavy administration and the mining company are clearly hoping for another bolt of deregulatory lightning.

 

A changing climate, a changing world

 

 

Climate change around the world: In “Postcards From a World on Fire,” 193 stories from individual countries show how climate change is reshaping reality everywhere, from dying coral reefs in Fiji to disappearing oases in Morocco and far, far beyond.

 

The worst climate risks, mapped: In this feature, select a country, and we'll break down the climate hazards it faces. In the case of America, our maps, developed with experts, show where extreme heat is causing the most deaths.

 

The court should decline the invitation.

 

While Gov. Dunleavy claims to be representing the interests of Alaskans, he has for years supported the development of the Pebble Mine over the strong objections of Alaskans. In fact, a recent poll found that 74 percent of Alaska’s voters are still concerned that the E.P.A.’s rejection of the project won’t do enough to protect the Bristol Bay watershed from large-scale mining. The initial petitions that led to the E.P.A.’s veto were filed by six Bristol Bay tribes and later joined by a consortium of other federally recognized tribes.

 

They have been actively supported by a diverse consensus of businesses, commercial fishermen and processors, anglers and lodges, chefs and restaurant owners, hunters, conservationists and many others, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, where one of us is a senior lawyer. “Gov. Dunleavy’s lawsuit,” Alannah Hurley, the executive director of United Tribes of Bristol Bay, said in August, “is another example he is willing to waste state resources to try and save a failing foreign mining company.”

 

The project is on state land, and the governor said earlier this year in comments leading up to the filing of the lawsuit that “my job is to make sure that we take advantage of every opportunity.” Apparently unfazed by the project’s singular risks, he added: “I believe we have the best environmental standards in the world.”

 

What hangs in the balance is the greatest remaining commercial, recreational and subsistence salmon fishery on Earth, and the sustainable lifeblood of the region and its residents. Last summer alone, this single fishery produced a record run of nearly 80 million fish, surpassing a succession of annual record runs year after year. It is a natural wonder of global proportions.

 

The E.P.A.’s decision was based on over a dozen years of transparent review, including extensive peer-reviewed science, broad public participation and public comment — and vigorous engagement in the process by Northern Dynasty and the Dunleavy administration. Having compiled this comprehensive record, the agency concluded that the Pebble Mine would violate the Clean Water Act and cause the watershed’s globally important aquatic resources to suffer “unavoidable adverse impacts.”

 

The state’s complaint, on the other hand, is high on rhetoric and low on substance. It attacks the veto as a strike “at the heart of Alaska’s sovereignty” and asks the court to find that the E.P.A. has taken state “property without just compensation.” It cites no actual language to support its claim, and it ignores the Supreme Court’s unanimous 2019 decision that, in Alaska, “state, Native and private land (and waters)” do “of course remain subject to all the regulatory powers they were before, exercised by E.P.A., the Coast Guard and the like.”

 

Bizarrely, the state asserts with emphasis that “there is nothing the State can now do with these lands for economic purposes.” The annual salmon runs are an economic engine that generates half of the world’s sockeye salmon, yielding more than $2.2 billion a year in revenue and supporting over 15,000 jobs. The Bristol Bay watershed’s staggering economic value and job creation, all generated by the streams and waters where the salmon spawn, are exactly what the E.P.A.’s veto is intended to protect.

 

The E.P.A.’s action is consistent both with its legal authority and with what Alaskans have requested and overwhelmingly support. The Dunleavy administration has a right to appeal through the established appellate process for review of complex, fact-based agency action. But its attempt to bypass that process — and to get the Supreme Court to ignore its own precedent — should be rejected.

 

The state’s lawsuit highlights the need for federal legislation to permanently protect Bristol Bay from the mining company that has relentlessly stalked the region’s communities for a generation. Despite all prior efforts to preserve the unparalleled generosity of the region’s sustainable fisheries, the only future certainty for the communities of Bristol Bay is the inevitable pressure for catastrophic large-scale mining in its headwaters. That is, unless Congress provides permanent protection for this national treasure, unruined.

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6) Incarcerated for Life, an Inmate Is Left Behind by Prison Reforms

Bonnie Erwin, a disabled Black inmate who has served 39 years, fell just outside the reach of a recent law’s “compassionate release.” His former lawyer became a Republican congressman who voted against it.

By Robert Draper, Sept. 24, 2023

Reporting from Tyler, Texas

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/24/us/politics/erwin-prison-reform-trump-gohmert-texas.html

“I’ve seen people charged with a whole lot worse crimes, and they’ve moved on,” said Bonnie Erwin, seen here in prison in the 1990s.

Federal inmate number 14289-077 is baffled whenever the television in his Texas prison blares out assertions from supporters of Donald Trump that the former president has been victimized by a two-tiered system of justice.

 

“I’ve heard all these Republicans say, ‘Well, we don’t care if Mr. Trump did wrong, we’re going to support him anyway,’” Bonnie Erwin said in a recent phone conversation from prison. “What kind of system is that? I don’t mean any disrespect to his people. There’s two justice systems, all right. And if I was a white man, I’d have been out of here a long time ago.”

 

Mr. Erwin, 81, has been incarcerated for 39 years, spread across 11 different facilities. For the past three years, his home has been the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, in a minimum-security unit with other disabled inmates. Partially paralyzed on his right side from a stroke a decade ago, Mr. Erwin relies on other inmates to push his wheelchair and to type his emails.

 

Mr. Erwin is both a reflection of an earlier era’s draconian prison sentences and an example of how recent reforms can miss their mark. He was convicted by an all-white jury two years before the Supreme Court forbade the racial pruning of jury pools. He was sentenced three years too early to qualify for “compassionate release” under the terms of a law, the First Step Act, signed by President Trump in 2018.

 

And though a murder charge against him was overturned in 1987, his court-appointed attorney on that appeal was Louie Gohmert, a young trial lawyer who would add another chapter to Mr. Erwin’s story. As a far-right Republican congressman from Texas, Mr. Gohmert, now retired, voted against the First Step Act and later contended that the real victims in the criminal justice system were Trump supporters.

 

“Now, I don’t agree with Mr. Gohmert,” said Mr. Erwin. “But at least he tried to help me.”

 

“Listen, even if I’m guilty of everything they charged me with,” he said, isn’t “39 years long enough to be in prison? I’ve seen people charged with a whole lot worse crimes, and they’ve moved on.”

 

Mr. Erwin’s nearly four decades of incarceration began in 1984, when he and 10 other Black defendants were found guilty by an all-white jury in Dallas federal court of participating in a drug ring that distributed mostly painkiller and weight-loss pills. As the leader of the drug conspiracy, Mr. Erwin was an early test case of a newly codified “kingpin” provision in federal law that enabled the presiding judge to sentence him to life without parole, plus 120 years.

 

His sentence was emblematic of a decade of tough-on-crime politicking that has come to be seen by members of both parties as a misguided era of mass incarceration. It took a particular toll on Black men like Mr. Erwin.

 

In his 1984 trial, an Erwin associate who had been granted immunity testified that he had watched Mr. Erwin torture and kill an underling for stealing drug profits. Two months later, a separate state jury, also all white, convicted Mr. Erwin of murder and sentenced him to death.

 

But the verdict was later reversed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which ruled that testimony that might have exonerated Mr. Erwin was excluded from the state trial. His lawyer in that case, Mr. Gohmert, would later write of defendants in the Jan. 6 trials that “sadly, two systems of justice exist in America today: one for former President Trump along with those who support or don’t hate him, and the other for everyone else.”

 

Those sympathetic to Mr. Erwin say his experiences would seem to suggest otherwise.

 

“He’s the worst-case scenario in all the highly racialized policies that were enacted in the eighties,” said Dr. Ashley Nellis, co-director of research for the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization that studies inequalities in the American criminal justice system.

 

Ms. Nellis was referring to Mr. Erwin’s status as among the less than 1 percent of roughly 158,000 inmates in the custody of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons who are serving a life sentence for drug-related offenses. The vast majority of them are Black. Most of them can apply for what is known as “compassionate release” under the First Step Act.

 

Mr. Gohmert, who did not respond to requests for comment, was among the 36 House members who voted against it.

 

Paradoxically, some of the longest-serving federal inmates are the least likely to be released early under the act. Any inmate who was convicted before the law took effect on Nov. 1, 1987, cannot qualify for early release.

 

“I believe it was simply an oversight when they wrote the law,” said Charles Weisselberg, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has written extensively on the subject. “If I had to guess, I would say we’re talking about maybe one hundred inmates.”

 

‘A born leader’ falls into trouble

 

Mr. Erwin was born in 1942 in Tyler, Texas, where the Black community lived on the north side of town, the whites lived on the south side and Black people did not cross Front Street after sundown. “There was no mixing at all,” said Ann Levin, a reporter for The Tyler Morning Telegraph in the early 1980s who is white and grew up in the Northeast. “It felt like living in the distant past.”

 

The Erwins were community mainstays on the north side. Mr. Erwin’s grandfather, one of the pre-eminent sweet potato growers in East Texas, owned more than 300 acres of farmland. Old-timers recall that the family drove nice cars and that seven grandchildren worked hard in the family’s sweet potato and watermelon fields, including the second-eldest, Bonnie.

 

“A watermelon is a truly beautiful thing,” Mr. Erwin said during several hours of phone conversations from his prison in Fort Worth. Still, he did not see his family’s labors as a path to prosperity and instead sold his grandfather’s melons off the books, sometimes directly to grocers, pocketing the profits.

 

In 1966, the family lost the farm to taxes. Mr. Erwin followed his older brother to a job in an Omaha meatpacking plant, gambled when he was supposed to be working, ran games on paydays at the military bases in Omaha and Lincoln, then brought his talents back to Tyler’s pool halls. His stature in the neighborhood grew, and he freely gave out money and meals to poorer residents.

 

“I was a bad boy, but also a born leader,” Mr. Erwin said. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s his illicit constellation widened to include prostitutes, pimps and drug dealers, and then he further expanded into deputizing young women to sell drugs out of low-income apartments in south Dallas. The drugs were mainly from Los Angeles, leading the Drug Enforcement Administration to monitor Mr. Erwin’s activities. In June 1984, federal and local officers arrested nearly two dozen of Mr. Erwin’s accomplices. By the time they tracked Mr. Erwin himself down, in Phoenix in August, several of his associates had cut deals with the Justice Department to avoid prison time.

 

On the eve of his trial, federal prosecutors succeeded in striking from the jury pool every Black potential juror. Over the course of the three-week trial, one government witness testified that he saw Mr. Erwin kidnap, torture and murder an underling, though a different witness fingered the first witness as the actual killer — an account that yet another witness said she corroborated to the prosecutors before trial.

 

After six hours of deliberation, the jury found Mr. Erwin and 10 of 11 co-conspirators guilty of multiple drug-related crimes. Under the 1984 kingpin statute to enhance penalties for drug organization ringleaders, Judge Robert Porter sentenced Mr. Erwin to life without parole plus 120 years, the harshest among the defendants.

 

Two months later Mr. Erwin stood trial again, this time on state charges for the kidnapping and murder of the underling. The judge denied a request by Mr. Erwin’s attorney to locate the witness who testified at the federal trial that another witness had been the murderer. Absent such exculpatory testimony, it took less than three hours for the all-white jury to convict Mr. Erwin, who was sent to death row.

 

Mr. Erwin, who said he briefly thought of starving himself to death, was disheartened to learn that his court-appointed attorney for his appeal was Mr. Gohmert, then a relatively inexperienced 33-year-old former Boy Scout, R.O.T.C. cadet, assistant district attorney and Baptist church deacon.

 

But Mr. Gohmert proved himself up for the challenge. His appellate brief argued that the trial judge had “misstated facts” in dismissing the request for a witness to provide exculpatory testimony. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed with Mr. Gohmert and ordered a retrial.

 

But that never happened. A Smith County district attorney, Jack Skeen Jr., filed a motion to the presiding state district judge claiming that a retrial would constitute a needless expense because the kidnap and murder of the underling was considered by the federal court in assessing Mr. Erwin’s life sentence. By the time of Mr. Skeen’s motion in 1989, Mr. Erwin was already two years into his sentence at Fort Leavenworth.

 

‘A matter of common decency’

 

Mr. Erwin describes his decades behind bars as time spent mainly in prison law libraries, punctuated by occasional fights with gang members and, more recently, the vagaries of advancing decrepitude. In 2017, he applied to the Bureau of Prisons for compassionate release but was turned down, partly because he had not served half of his 120-year sentence and also because what an internal prison memo described as “the seriousness of his offense.”

 

Since 1999, Mr. Erwin has been the only member of his former drug confederation to remain in prison. Several key players in his legal saga — both trial judges, his federal trial attorney, his wife, and several witnesses — are now dead.

 

In 1992, four years after serving as Mr. Erwin’s state appellate attorney, Mr. Gohmert was elected as a state district judge. In his campaign he declared his support for capital punishment and for legalizing castration to punish rapists, but he did not run on having removed a Black drug dealer from death row. In 2004, he was elected to Congress in a deeply conservative district, where he cemented his reputation as a molasses-tongued arch-conservative until his retirement earlier this year.

 

Efforts led by Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, to widen the First Step Act’s reach to include pre-1987 inmates like Mr. Erwin have stalled in committee. Advocates for granting early release to lifers who have fallen through the legislative cracks are left grappling for a solution.

 

“There must be a way smart lawyers doing clemency work and people of good will in the Bureau of Prisons and the Biden administration can get this done,” said Barry Scheck, a professor at Cardozo School of Law and co-founder of the Innocence Project. “It’s a matter of common decency.”

 

In the meantime, Mr. Erwin continues to send out petitions for compassionate release from his Fort Worth cell, undeterred by the legal obstacles. “I’m a gangster redeemed by God,” he said. “And I’m waiting on the real judge.”

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