As of May 1, 2015, 387 people have been killed by police since January 1, 2015 (that's a total of 120 days.) That's 3.225 people per day, on average.
http://killedbypolice.net/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Amnesty for all those arrested demanding justice for Freddie Gray!
Amnesty for ALL those arrested
demanding justice for Freddie Gray!
Sign and distribute the petition to drop the charges!
Spread this effort with #Amnesty4Baltimore
"A riot is the language of the unheard"
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
An
estimated 300 people have been arrested in Baltimore in the last two
weeks. Many have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in
the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested
include journalists, medics and legal observers.
One
individual arrested for property destruction of a police vehicle is now
facing life in prison and is being held on $500,000 bail. That's
$150,000 more than the officer charged with the murder of Freddie Gray.
The
legal system has made it clear that they care more about broken windows
than broken necks; more about a CVS than the lives of Baltimore's Black
residents.
They showed no hesitation in arresting Baltimore's
protesters and rebels, and sending in the National Guard, but took 19
days to put a single one of the killer cops in handcuffs. This was the
outrageous double standard that led to the Baltimore Uprising.
Sign the petition to drop the charges on all who have been arrested.
Petition to Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake
Download PDF of Petitionhttp://www.answercoalition.org/amnesty_for_all_those_arrested_demanding_justice_for_freddie_gray?utm_campaign=baltimore_amn1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=answercoalition
Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-BlakeCity Hall, Room 250,
100 North Holliday St.,
Baltimore, MD 21202
Dear Mayor Rawlings-Blake:
I stand in solidarity with those in Baltimore who are demanding that all charges be dropped against those who rose up against racism, police brutality, oppressive social conditions and delay of justice in the case of Freddie Gray. The whole world now recognizes that were it not for this powerful grassroots movement, in all its forms, there would be no indictment.
It is an outrage that peaceful protesters have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested include journalists and legal observers.
Even the youth who are charged with property destruction and looting should be given an amnesty. There is no reason a teenager -- provoked by racists and justifiably angry -- should be facing life in prison for breaking the windows of a police car.
The City of Baltimore should work to rectify the conditions that led to this Uprising, rather than criminalizing those who took action in response to those conditions. Drop the charges now!
Sincerely,
[add your name below]
I stand in solidarity with those in Baltimore who are demanding that all charges be dropped against those who rose up against racism, police brutality, oppressive social conditions and delay of justice in the case of Freddie Gray. The whole world now recognizes that were it not for this powerful grassroots movement, in all its forms, there would be no indictment.
It is an outrage that peaceful protesters have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested include journalists and legal observers.
Even the youth who are charged with property destruction and looting should be given an amnesty. There is no reason a teenager -- provoked by racists and justifiably angry -- should be facing life in prison for breaking the windows of a police car.
The City of Baltimore should work to rectify the conditions that led to this Uprising, rather than criminalizing those who took action in response to those conditions. Drop the charges now!
Sincerely,
[add your name below]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
CANCEL ALL STUDENT DEBT!
Sign the Petition:
http://cancelallstudentdebt.com/?code=kos
Dear President Obama, Senators, and Members of Congress:
Americans now owe $1.3 trillion in student debt. Eighty-six percent of that money is owed to the United States government. This is a crushing burden for more than 40 million Americans and their families.
I urge you to take immediate action to forgive all student debt, public and private.
American Federation of Teachers
Campaign for America's Future
Courage Campaign
Daily Kos
Democracy for America
LeftAction
Project Springboard
RH Reality Check
RootsAction
Student Debt Crisis
The Nation
Working Families
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. ARTICLES IN FULL
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Mumia Needs Medical Care
Dateline May 13th 2015: Philadelphia, PA
A SCI Mahanoy prison nurse called Wadiya Jamal Mumia's wife at 8:50 pm last night May 12th and told her that Mumia had been moved to the hospital. This is a disturbing development and is cause for grave concern. There are reports that he had a fever, and that he has open wounds and sores on his legs. HIs attorney Bret Grote visited him on Friday. He was engaged, alert, yet he was in pain in his knees and leg.
We will be working to gather more information as the day goes on. His hospital conditions will be abhorrent: he will be chained to the bed. He could, as they did before, be arbitrarily and systematically denied visitors. The last time we were in the ICU they did not let his familly or lawyers see him, or give them any information for 24hrs. Even though they were the ICU waiting room just a few feet from Mumia's bed..
Clearly Mumia's chronic conditions remain undiagnosed and unsuccessfully treated. Mumia was given a skin biopsy on Monday of this week, and had been in the infirmary following that procedure.
Mumia's legal team of Bret Grote of the Abolitionist Law Center, has been augmented with the addition of attorney Bob Boyle. Mumia's doctor has been speaking directly with Mumia, even though the time he has been allowed for the phone in the infirmary was limited. There is no phone at the hospital. Mumia's expert medical team has been advising Mumia on the tests and the medications that have been done. This advice has been critical, and is now not possible.
As we noted in our last update oversight and close monitoring of any tests, especially the diagnostic tests are crucial. The prison is preventing Mumia and Mumia's doctors from adequate oversight and input. Because communication is being limited by prison officials Mumia does not have access quickly enough to information he needs to advocate for his own care. We are clear that Inadequate testing, delays, and any deviation from the medically necessary course of treatment, will be challenged.
Obtaining a diagnosis is of paramount importance at this moment.
Mumia remains seriously ill. Public pressure has been key every step of the way, and remains extremely important. Please keep up the calls, emails and faxes. Demand that (1) Adequate diagnostic testing be done (2) That Mumia's doctor is able to communicate freely and regularly with the prison infirmary physicians who are delivering Mumia's medical care (3) His doctor has meaningful and regular phone access with Mumia. (There are no phones in the hospital, in the infirmary, his calls are limited to 15 mins and and he has limited access to the day room where the phones are). (4) And allow Mumia's chosen doctor to conduct an onsite medical examination. And as many have said, it is past time for Mumia to be released from prison.
p.s. May 13th is the 30th Anniversary of the MOVE bombing in Philadelphia. Please see Mumia's commentary "May 13th at Thirty" (2:37) recorded (4/26/2015) for this event. Prison Radio has recorded other U.S. political prisoners for this occasion as well.
Noelle Hanrahan, P.I. Director Prison Radio
https://www.indiegogo.com/individuals/585261
Take Action Now!
Demand that the Department of Corrections permit Mumia to have an examination by his doctor! Click here to call and fax the Prison and State officials and state our demands.
http://www.prisonradio.org/sites/default/files/letters/pdf/Eyes%20on%20Mumia_1.pdf
Mumia needs his own physician specialists! Please donate now to help make this possible. Please got to the web site below and give as generously as you can.
Donate at:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mumia-abu-jamal-needs-medical-care-now
and…
Sign the petition
to help save—and free—Mumia.
Go to:
https://www.change.org/p/john-e-wetzel-pa-secretary-of-corrections-tom-wolf-pa-governor-stop-the-medical-execution-of-mumia-abu-jamal-by-neglect-and-malpractice-3
Also,
We need to keep up the pressure
with phone calls:
Let SCI Mahanoy Superintendent John Kerestes and Secretary of Corrections John Wetzel know we insist that Mumia have medical specialists of his own choosing, and that they have daily access rights to examine and treat him. Also let them know that Mumia’s family needs regular and frequent visitation rights.
SCI Mahanoy
Superintendent John Kerestes
(570) 773-2158
SCI Mahanoy
Chief Health Care Administrator Steinhardt
(570) 773-2158
Christopher Oppman
Director, PA Department of Corrections Health Care Services
(717) 728-5309
John Wetzel
Secretary, PA Department of Corrections
(717) 728-4109
NO EXECUTION BY MEDICAL NEGLECT!
SAVE MUMIA'S LIFE!
Mumia is Innocent! Free Mumia Now!
This message by:
Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
20 April 2015
Call now to demand freedom and medical care for Mumia:
Often when we call in, prison and state officials have taken their lines off the hook. Know that every action matters, even when they don't pick up. If they don't answer, please leave a voicemail:
John Wetzel, PA Secretary of Corrections: 717-728-4109
Governor Tom Wolf: 717-787-2500
SCI Mahanoy: 570-787-2500
For a full list of addresses and faxes, visit prisonradio.org
Support Prison Radio
$35 to become a member.
$50 to become a member and receive a beautiful tote bag. Or call us to special order a yoga mat bag.
$100 to become a member and receive the DVD "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary."
$300 to become a member and bring one essay to the airwaves.
$1,000 (or $88 per month) will make you a member of our Prison Radio Freedom Circle. Thank you!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Prison Radio has recorded Mumia and other political prisoners for over 25 years, and we are pulling out all the stops to keep these voices on the air.
Please donate today to amplify prisoners' voices far and wide beyond the bars:
Support Prison Radio: prisonradio.org/donate
Defeat SB 508: bit.ly/defendfreespeech
Copyright © Prison Radio
www,prisonradio.org 415-706-5222
Our mailing address is:
Prison Radio PO Box 411074, SF CA 94141
http://us10.campaign-archive2.com/?u=247585f092e945ff55b9a1bb2&id=e113d0b6d0&e=0107d76ccd
Donate Now
$35 is the yearly membership.
$50 will get you a beautiful tote bag (you can special order a yoga mat bag, just call us).
$100 will get the DVD "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary"
$300 will bring one essay to the airwaves.
$1000 (or $88.83 per month) will make you a member of our Prison Radio Freedom Circle. Take a moment and Support Prison Radio
Luchando por la justicia y la libertad,
Noelle Hanrahan, Director, Prison Radio
PRISON RADIO
P.O. Box 411074 San Francisco, CA 94141
www.prisonradio.org
info@prisonradio.org 415-706-5222
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson
Lorenzo Speaks Concerning Prosecution's Brief:
JANUARY 1, 2015—The prosecutor has run away from (almost) every issue raised in my PCRA by begging the Court to dismiss everything as “untimely”. When they don’t do this, they suggest that me and my lawyers were “defamatory” towards either my former prosecutor Christopher Abruzzo or Detective Kevin Duffin, in our claims they withheld, misused or hid evidence of my Innocence, in order to secure an unjust conviction in this case. If I charged, a year ago, that about a dozen AGs (attorneys general) were involved in circulating porno via their office computers, people would’ve laughed at me, and seen me as crazy.
But, guess what? During 2014, we learned that this was the truth. How can it be defamatory to speak the truth? Notice the OAG (Office of Attorney General), never said the obvious: That AG Abruzzo didn’t inform the Defense about the relationship between his Motive Witness and his head detective (Victoria Doubs and Det. Duffin); that Det. Duffin doesn’t deny Doubs was his god-sister, and that she lived in his family home, or that he assisted her whenever she got into trouble.
Why not? Because it is true. How can you defame someone who defames himself? Mr. Christopher Abruzzo, Esq., when a member of the higher ranks of the OAG, sent and/or received copious amounts of porno to other attorneys general and beyond. What does this say about his sense of judgment? He thought enough about his behavior to resign from his post in the Governor’s Cabinet. If he thought that his behavior was okay, he’d still be sitting in the Governor’s cabinet, right? The OAG cannot honestly oppose anything we’ve argued, but they try by seeking to get the Court to do their dirty work, how? By denying an Evidentiary Hearing to prove every point we’ve claimed.
The prosecution is trying desperately to avoid dealing with the substance of my claims in Com. v. Lorenzo Johnson. So, they slander my Legal Team and blame them for defaming the good AG’s and Cops involved with this case. They try to do what is undeniable, to deny that they hid evidence from the Defense for years. They blamed me for daring to protest the hidden evidence of their malfeasance and other acts to sabotage the defense. They claim that they had an “Open File” policy with my trial counsel. But “Open File” is more than letting an attorney read something in their office. If it’s a search for the truth it must include what is turned over to the attorney, for how do we really know what was shown to her?
They say it is inconceivable that an attorney would read a file, beginning on page nine (9), and not ask for the preceding eight (8) pages. Yet, it is conceivable if trial counsel was ineffective for not demanding the record of the first eight pages. Pages that identify the State’s only witness as a “SUSPECT” in the murder for which her client was charged! How could such an attorney fail to recognize the relevance of such an issue, barring their sheer Ineffectiveness and frankly, Incompetence.
By seeking to avoid an evidentiary hearing, the prosecution seeks to avoid evidence of their wrongdoing being made plain, for all to see. If they believe I’m wrong, why not prove it? They can’t. So they shout I filed my appeal untimely, as if there can ever justly be a rule that precludes an innocent from proving his innocence! Not to mention the fact that the prosecution has failed to even mention the positive finger prints that ay my trial they said none existed. Don’t try to hide it with a lame argument about time. When isn’t there a time for truth? The prosecution should be ashamed of itself for taking this road. It is unworthy of an office that claims to seek justice.
After the trial verdict The Patriot-News (March 18, 1997) reported, “Deputy Attorney General Christopher Abruzzo admitted there were some serious concerns about the strength of the evidence against Johnson and praised the jury for doing a thorough job.” I guess he forgot to mention all of the evidence he left out to show Innocence.
Now, more than ever, Lorenzo Johnson needs your support.
Publicize his case; bring it to your friends, clubs, religious
and social organizations.
SIGN LORENZO JOHNSON'S FREEDOM PETITION
http://www.freelorenzojohnson.org/sign-the-petition.html
CONTRIBUTE TO LORENZO'S CAMPAIGN FOR FREEDOM!
http://www.freelorenzojohnson.org/how-can-i-help.html
Write: Lorenzo Johnson, DF 1036
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Rd.
Frackville, PA 17932
Email: Lorenzo Johnson through JPAY.com code:
Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Join the Fight to Free Rev. Pinkney!
Click HERE to view in browser
http://www.iacenter.org/prisoners/freepinkney-1-28-15/
On December 15, 2014 the Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan was thrown into prison for 2.5 to 10 years. This 66-year-old leading African American activist was tried and convicted in front of an all-white jury and racist white judge and prosecutor for supposedly altering 5 dates on a recall petition against the mayor of Benton Harbor.
The prosecutor, with the judge’s approval, repeatedly told the jury “you don’t need evidence to convict Mr. Pinkney.” And ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE WAS EVER PRESENTED THAT TIED REV. PINKNEY TO THE ‘ALTERED’ PETITIONS. Rev. Pinkney was immediately led away in handcuffs and thrown into Jackson Prison.
This is an outrageous charge. It is an outrageous conviction. It is an even more outrageous sentence! It must be appealed.
With your help supporters need to raise $20,000 for Rev. Pinkney’s appeal.
Checks can be made out to BANCO (Black Autonomy Network Community Organization). This is the organization founded by Rev. Pinkney. Mail them to: Mrs. Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union Street, Benton Harbor, MI 49022.
Donations can be accepted on-line at bhbanco.org – press the donate button.
For information on the decade long campaign to destroy Rev. Pinkney go to bhbanco.org and workers.org(search “Pinkney”).
We urge your support to the efforts to Free Rev. Pinkney!Ramsey Clark – Former U.S. attorney general,
Cynthia McKinney – Former member of U.S. Congress,
Lynne Stewart – Former political prisoner and human rights attorney
Ralph Poynter – New Abolitionist Movement,
Abayomi Azikiwe – Editor, Pan-African News Wire<
Larry Holmes – Peoples Power Assembly,
David Sole – Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice
Sara Flounders – International Action Center
MESSAGE FROM REV. PINKNEY
I am now in Marquette prison over 15 hours from wife and family, sitting in prison for a crime that was never committed. Judge Schrock and Mike Sepic both admitted there was no evidence against me but now I sit in prison facing 30 months. Schrock actually stated that he wanted to make an example out of me. (to scare Benton Harbor residents even more...) ONLY IN AMERICA. I now have an army to help fight Berrien County. When I arrived at Jackson state prison on Dec. 15, I met several hundred people from Detroit, Flint, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids. Some people recognized me. There was an outstanding amount of support given by the prison inmates. When I was transported to Marquette Prison it took 2 days. The prisoners knew who I was. One of the guards looked me up on the internet and said, "who would believe Berrien County is this racist."
Background to Campaign to free Rev. Pinkney
Michigan political prisoner the Rev. Edward Pinkney is a victim of racist injustice. He was sentenced to 30 months to 10 years for supposedly changing the dates on 5 signatures on a petition to recall Benton Harbor Mayor James Hightower.
No material or circumstantial evidence was presented at the trial that would implicate Pinkney in the purported5 felonies. Many believe that Pinkney, a Berrien County activist and leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO), is being punished by local authorities for opposing the corporate plans of Whirlpool Corp, headquartered in Benton Harbor, Michigan.
In 2012, Pinkney and BANCO led an “Occupy the PGA [Professional Golfers’ Association of America]” demonstration against a world-renowned golf tournament held at the newly created Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course on the shoreline of Lake Michigan. The course was carved out of Jean Klock Park, which had been donated to the city of Benton Harbor decades ago.
Berrien County officials were determined to defeat the recall campaign against Mayor Hightower, who opposed a program that would have taxed local corporations in order to create jobs and improve conditions in Benton Harbor, a majority African-American municipality. Like other Michigan cities, it has been devastated by widespread poverty and unemployment.
The Benton Harbor corporate power structure has used similar fraudulent charges to stop past efforts to recall or vote out of office the racist white officials, from mayor, judges, prosecutors in a majority Black city. Rev Pinkney who always quotes scripture, as many Christian ministers do, was even convicted for quoting scripture in a newspaper column. This outrageous conviction was overturned on appeal. We must do this again!
To sign the petition in support of the Rev. Edward Pinkney, log on to: tinyurl.com/ps4lwyn.
Contributions for Rev. Pinkney’s defense can be sent to BANCO at Mrs Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union St., Benton Harbor, MI 49022
Or you can donate on-line at bhbanco.org.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
COURAGE TO RESIST
http://couragetoresist.org/
New Action- write letters to DoD officials requesting clemency for Chelsea!
November 24, 2014 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network
Secretary of the Army John McHugh
President Obama has delegated review of Chelsea Manning’s clemency appeal to individuals within the Department of Defense.
Please write them to express your support for heroic WikiLeaks’ whistle-blower former US Army intelligence analyst PFC Chelsea Manning’s release from military prison.
It is important that each of these authorities realize the wide support that Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning enjoys worldwide. They need to be reminded that millions understand that Manning is a political prisoner, imprisoned for following her conscience. While it is highly unlikely that any of these individuals would independently move to release Manning, a reduction in Manning’s outrageous 35-year prison sentence is a possibility at this stage.
Take action TODAY – Write letters supporting Chelsea’s clemency petition to the following DoD authorities:
Secretary of the Army John McHugh
101 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-0101
The Judge Advocate General
2200 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-2200
Army Clemency and Parole Board
251 18th St, Suite 385
Arlington, VA 22202-3532
Directorate of Inmate Administration
Attn: Boards Branch
U.S. Disciplinary Barracks
1301 N. Warehouse Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-2304
Suggestions for letters send to DoD officials:
The letter should focus on your support for Chelsea Manning, and especially why you believe justice will be served if Chelsea Manning’s sentence is reduced. The letter should NOT be anti-military as this will be unlikely to help.
A suggested message: “Chelsea Manning has been punished enough for violating military regulations in the course of being true to her conscience. I urge you to use your authorityto reduce Pvt. Manning’s sentence to time served.” Beyond that general message, feel free to personalize the details as to why you believe Chelsea deserves clemency.
Consider composing your letter on personalized letterhead -you can create this yourself (here are templates and some tips for doing that).
A comment on this post will NOT be seen by DoD authorities–please send your letters to the addresses above
This clemency petition is separate from Chelsea Manning’s upcoming appeal before the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year, where Manning’s new attorney Nancy Hollander will have an opportunity to highlight the prosecution’s—and the trial judge’s—misconduct during last year’s trial at Ft. Meade, Maryland.
Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea’s legal fees at this critical stage!
Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
B. ARTICLES IN FULL
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) Baltimore: Thousands of Suspects Arrive Too Injured to Go to Jail, Records Show
May 11, 2015
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/baltimore-thousands-suspects-arrive-too-injured-go-jail-records-show?akid=13094.229473.9AUvaE&rd=1&src=newsletter1036189&t=5
Correctional officers at the Baltimore City Detention Center refused to admit nearly 2,600 detainees who were in police custody between June 2012 and April 2015 because their injuries were too severe, the Associated Press reports.
The records, obtained by the Baltimore Sun through a Maryland Public Information Act request, did not detail how the detainees were injured. It did state that the arresting officers either ignored the injuries or didn’t notice them. All detainees are constitutionally guaranteed medical treatment.
The records show that 123 detainees had visible head injuries. Some even had bones, facial trauma and high blood pressure. The Sun also reported that most of the police vans lacked safety belts.
The Baltimore Police Department is under intense scrutiny after 25-year-old Freddie Gray was arrested in April and suffered fatal injuries while in custody. Gray’s death set off protests in the mid-Atlantic city that drew thousands of people to the streets. The six officers involved in his arrest were criminally charged May 1.
The City of Baltimore has paid out more than $5.7 million in settlement money over the past four years to victims alleging police brutality.
The U.S. Justice Department announced Friday that it was opening an investigation into the BPD. The DOJ’s findings may lead to an outside federal police monitor overseeing any recommended changes it suggests.
Correctional officers at the Baltimore City Detention Center refused to admit nearly 2,600 detainees who were in police custody between June 2012 and April 2015 because their injuries were too severe, the Associated Press reports.
The records, obtained by the Baltimore Sun through a Maryland Public Information Act request, did not detail how the detainees were injured. It did state that the arresting officers either ignored the injuries or didn’t notice them. All detainees are constitutionally guaranteed medical treatment.
The records show that 123 detainees had visible head injuries. Some even had bones, facial trauma and high blood pressure. The Sun also reported that most of the police vans lacked safety belts.
The Baltimore Police Department is under intense scrutiny after 25-year-old Freddie Gray was arrested in April and suffered fatal injuries while in custody. Gray’s death set off protests in the mid-Atlantic city that drew thousands of people to the streets. The six officers involved in his arrest were criminally charged May 1.
The City of Baltimore has paid out more than $5.7 million in settlement money over the past four years to victims alleging police brutality.
The U.S. Justice Department announced Friday that it was opening an investigation into the BPD. The DOJ’s findings may lead to an outside federal police monitor overseeing any recommended changes it suggests.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) Instead of Protecting Women from Violence, We're Throwing Them in Jail
May 6, 2015
www.alternet.org/gender/instead-protecting-women-violence-were-throwing-them-jail?akid=13094.229473.9AUvaE&rd=1&src=newsletter1036189&t=7
Domestic violence is more visible today than ever before, and, according to Department of Justice studies, far more infrequent than it was a decade or two ago. Between 1994 and 2010, the rate of domestic violence in the United State decreased by 64%. It is estimated that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men will, at some point in their lives, experience domestic violence, which may be perpetrated by family members, intimate partners, or roommates.
At first glance, this looks like progress, and in some ways it is, the endgame of a hard-fought battle waged by feminists who, beginning in the 1970s, launched waves of campaigns to raise awareness about domestic violence and passed laws to correct rampant police negligence in handling such cases.
However, many initiatives that were proposed under the pretense of protecting mothers and their children or appearing tough on domestic abusers, have backfired onto victims.
Dual arrests codify a practice of arresting both people mired in the altercation, and have resulted in an uptick in victim arrests.
Mandatory arrests, now on the books in 23 states, provide an ironclad and violent state solution to problems that would better be solved with health care, financial resources, and other kinds of non-carceral counseling.
Background checks on domestic violence victims are also not unheard of, and mean that victims stand a chance of being hauled off to jail for previous charges, by police who are supposedly called upon to help them.
Fetal homicide laws, which criminalize women who don’t carry their fetuses to term, have become a signature, outrage-inducing liberal talking point. Little-acknowledged is that in creating these laws, many legislators believed they would lower instances of domestic violence.[1] Addressing domestic violence is, of course, another popular liberal platform.
Fetal homicide laws originated in the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (UVVA), signed by President Bush in 2004. This law recognizes that fetuses can be legal victims of violent crimes, and was ratified under the pretense that it would protect domestic violence victims (pregnant women), and, to a lesser extent, drunk drivers. In the ensuing years it has been noted repeatedly that the UVVA has been misapplied and manipulated by right-wingers who want to outlaw or significantly curb abortion.
To boot, many women have fallen through the cracks when it coms to the implementation of these laws. Or else they have fallen instead on the double-edged sword of enforcement, which is that more women, than ever before, are being locked up for being tied to domestic violence situations, even in cases where they are not the perpetrators of that violence.
Women of color and transgender women are disproportionately represented among domestic abuse survivors. These are the same populations that bear the brunt of state violence against women across the board. According to the Sentencing Project, in 2010, black women were incarcerated at close to three times the rate of white women, and Hispanic women were incarcerated at 1.6 times the rate of white women.
Violence against women is a social sickness, but so is the state response. Jeanne Flavin in her 2008 book Our Bodies, Our Crimes puts it nicely, “At root, the answers to complex social problems will not be found in laws and court rulings alone but, rather, in broad-based measures that strengthen women’s economic status, education, choice-making, autonomy, sexual power, and health care.”[2]
Between 1980 and 2012, the number of women in state and federal prison grew 646%, according to The Sentencing Project. Just how many women are incarcerated by domestic violence policing policies are unknown, because there has been no major study done on the subject to date. The statistics and stories documented so far are all we have to go on, and they’re plenty. Here are just a few stories of women who have been put behind bars due to over policing of domestic violence or misapplication of laws intended to protect domestic violence victims.
Purvi Patel
On March 30, Indiana resident Purvi Patel was sentenced to 20 years in prison for feticide and neglect of a dependent. According to the state, Patel had taken abortion pills and the fetus was born alive (some contradiction there, fellas?), though they presented no proof and Patel insists she miscarried. In other words, when all is said in done, Patel is being sent to jail for failing to give birth to a surviving child. Though many women have been arrested and charged with a crime for terminating her pregnancy, this case marks the first time a woman has been charged, convicted of feticide, and sentenced for attempting to terminate her pregnancy.
After Patel was found guilty Lynn Paltrow, president of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, an organization that has been watching the case closely and filed an amicus brief on Patel’s behalf, wrote for The Public Eye magazine, “To many observers, it was a shocking new application of Indiana’s feticide law, which was intended to criminalize ‘knowing or intentional termination of another’s pregnancy.’ Turning this law into one that can be used to punish a woman who herself has an abortion is an extraordinary expansion of the scope and intention of the state’s law.”
This shift in application of the law that Paltrow mentions is a nod to fetal homicide laws, originating from the UVVA.
As Flavin notes in her book, “Under the terms of the UVVA, if someone harms a pregnant woman and causes the death of her fetus while violating any of 68 existing federal criminal laws, he or she can be charged for causing the mother’s harm or death and face a second charge for killing the ‘unborn victim.” However, “It is unclear how fetal homicide laws are supposed to have a deterrent effect on domestic abusers, since one can’t hurt a fetus without also hurting a woman, and it’s already illegal to dot that.”[3]
In the case of Patel, the state has employed this seemingly ineffectual law to destroy the life of a woman.
Marissa Alexander
In 2012, Marissa Alexander, a black mother of three was found guilty on three counts of aggravated assault. Her sentence was 20 yeas in prison for firing a warning shot in the direction of her estranged ex-husband, Rico Gray, and his two children, in 2010. The special prosecutor for the case, Angela Corey, sought a 60-year minimum sentence for Alexander, and the 20-year sentence she was handed was already overblown by mandatory minimum laws. When the Florida mother argued self-defense under her state’s now infamous Stand Your Ground law, but the pretrial judge dismissed her claim, saying that she could have left her house, the one her ex-husband was assaulting her in.
Alexander was released on January 27 after three years in prison and is now serving two years of house arrest as part of a plea deal, which probably would never happened had the case not received such high-profile media coverage. As Victoria Law put it in The Nation, “The criminalization and continued prosecution of Marissa Alexander is the norm, not the exception, in how abuse survivors are treated. What’s exceptional is the amount of publicity—and ensuing outrage and organizing—Alexander’s case has engendered.”
Arlena Lindley
In 2006, Arlena Lindley’s boyfriend, Alonzo Turner, murdered her 3-year-old son, Titches in a violent rage typical of the chronic abuser. Turner had been beating Lindley and her son for months before his outbursts became deadly.
Turner was sentenced to life in prison for the horrific crime, but he wasn’t the only one slammed with a sentence. Lindley got 45 years in prison for failing to protect her child from her murderous boyfriend, which the court said constituted abuse by “omission.”
Lindley’s brutal brush with the law was first reported by Buzzfeed’s Alex Campbell in a long investigative piece that turned up 28 cases across 11 states where mothers had been sentenced for at least 10 years for similar crimes of not being able to protect their children from their abusive partners.
Kelly Savage
On August 3, 1995, Kelly Savage was making plans to take herself and her two young children away from her abusive husband in California’s Central Valley the very next day. Today she’s in prison for life, and what transpired in between is a cruel and vicious story, versions of which occur again and again in America.
While Savage was out purchasing supplies she needed for her escape, her husband Mark called to say her three-year-old son Justin was not breathing. Mark had beaten the young boy to death, for which both Mark and Kelly were arrested, found guilty of his murder, and sentenced to life without parole. Kelly was 23 at the time of her arrest.
Savage’s story was originally reported by Victoria Law for Truthout and picked up months later by The Atlantic. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, 186 women were serving life without parole in California prisons in July 2013.
NOTES
[1] Tsao, Alison. “Fetal Homicide Laws: Shield Against Domestic Violence Or Sword to Pierce Abortion Rights?” Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly 25, no. 457 461.
[2] Flavin, Jeanne. Our Bodies, Our Crimes: The Policing of Women’s Reproduction in America. New York: New York University Press, 2008. 189
[3] Flavin, 99
Domestic violence is more visible today than ever before, and, according to Department of Justice studies, far more infrequent than it was a decade or two ago. Between 1994 and 2010, the rate of domestic violence in the United State decreased by 64%. It is estimated that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men will, at some point in their lives, experience domestic violence, which may be perpetrated by family members, intimate partners, or roommates.
At first glance, this looks like progress, and in some ways it is, the endgame of a hard-fought battle waged by feminists who, beginning in the 1970s, launched waves of campaigns to raise awareness about domestic violence and passed laws to correct rampant police negligence in handling such cases.
However, many initiatives that were proposed under the pretense of protecting mothers and their children or appearing tough on domestic abusers, have backfired onto victims.
Dual arrests codify a practice of arresting both people mired in the altercation, and have resulted in an uptick in victim arrests.
Mandatory arrests, now on the books in 23 states, provide an ironclad and violent state solution to problems that would better be solved with health care, financial resources, and other kinds of non-carceral counseling.
Background checks on domestic violence victims are also not unheard of, and mean that victims stand a chance of being hauled off to jail for previous charges, by police who are supposedly called upon to help them.
Fetal homicide laws, which criminalize women who don’t carry their fetuses to term, have become a signature, outrage-inducing liberal talking point. Little-acknowledged is that in creating these laws, many legislators believed they would lower instances of domestic violence.[1] Addressing domestic violence is, of course, another popular liberal platform.
Fetal homicide laws originated in the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (UVVA), signed by President Bush in 2004. This law recognizes that fetuses can be legal victims of violent crimes, and was ratified under the pretense that it would protect domestic violence victims (pregnant women), and, to a lesser extent, drunk drivers. In the ensuing years it has been noted repeatedly that the UVVA has been misapplied and manipulated by right-wingers who want to outlaw or significantly curb abortion.
To boot, many women have fallen through the cracks when it coms to the implementation of these laws. Or else they have fallen instead on the double-edged sword of enforcement, which is that more women, than ever before, are being locked up for being tied to domestic violence situations, even in cases where they are not the perpetrators of that violence.
Women of color and transgender women are disproportionately represented among domestic abuse survivors. These are the same populations that bear the brunt of state violence against women across the board. According to the Sentencing Project, in 2010, black women were incarcerated at close to three times the rate of white women, and Hispanic women were incarcerated at 1.6 times the rate of white women.
Violence against women is a social sickness, but so is the state response. Jeanne Flavin in her 2008 book Our Bodies, Our Crimes puts it nicely, “At root, the answers to complex social problems will not be found in laws and court rulings alone but, rather, in broad-based measures that strengthen women’s economic status, education, choice-making, autonomy, sexual power, and health care.”[2]
Between 1980 and 2012, the number of women in state and federal prison grew 646%, according to The Sentencing Project. Just how many women are incarcerated by domestic violence policing policies are unknown, because there has been no major study done on the subject to date. The statistics and stories documented so far are all we have to go on, and they’re plenty. Here are just a few stories of women who have been put behind bars due to over policing of domestic violence or misapplication of laws intended to protect domestic violence victims.
Purvi Patel
On March 30, Indiana resident Purvi Patel was sentenced to 20 years in prison for feticide and neglect of a dependent. According to the state, Patel had taken abortion pills and the fetus was born alive (some contradiction there, fellas?), though they presented no proof and Patel insists she miscarried. In other words, when all is said in done, Patel is being sent to jail for failing to give birth to a surviving child. Though many women have been arrested and charged with a crime for terminating her pregnancy, this case marks the first time a woman has been charged, convicted of feticide, and sentenced for attempting to terminate her pregnancy.
After Patel was found guilty Lynn Paltrow, president of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, an organization that has been watching the case closely and filed an amicus brief on Patel’s behalf, wrote for The Public Eye magazine, “To many observers, it was a shocking new application of Indiana’s feticide law, which was intended to criminalize ‘knowing or intentional termination of another’s pregnancy.’ Turning this law into one that can be used to punish a woman who herself has an abortion is an extraordinary expansion of the scope and intention of the state’s law.”
This shift in application of the law that Paltrow mentions is a nod to fetal homicide laws, originating from the UVVA.
As Flavin notes in her book, “Under the terms of the UVVA, if someone harms a pregnant woman and causes the death of her fetus while violating any of 68 existing federal criminal laws, he or she can be charged for causing the mother’s harm or death and face a second charge for killing the ‘unborn victim.” However, “It is unclear how fetal homicide laws are supposed to have a deterrent effect on domestic abusers, since one can’t hurt a fetus without also hurting a woman, and it’s already illegal to dot that.”[3]
In the case of Patel, the state has employed this seemingly ineffectual law to destroy the life of a woman.
Marissa Alexander
In 2012, Marissa Alexander, a black mother of three was found guilty on three counts of aggravated assault. Her sentence was 20 yeas in prison for firing a warning shot in the direction of her estranged ex-husband, Rico Gray, and his two children, in 2010. The special prosecutor for the case, Angela Corey, sought a 60-year minimum sentence for Alexander, and the 20-year sentence she was handed was already overblown by mandatory minimum laws. When the Florida mother argued self-defense under her state’s now infamous Stand Your Ground law, but the pretrial judge dismissed her claim, saying that she could have left her house, the one her ex-husband was assaulting her in.
Alexander was released on January 27 after three years in prison and is now serving two years of house arrest as part of a plea deal, which probably would never happened had the case not received such high-profile media coverage. As Victoria Law put it in The Nation, “The criminalization and continued prosecution of Marissa Alexander is the norm, not the exception, in how abuse survivors are treated. What’s exceptional is the amount of publicity—and ensuing outrage and organizing—Alexander’s case has engendered.”
Arlena Lindley
In 2006, Arlena Lindley’s boyfriend, Alonzo Turner, murdered her 3-year-old son, Titches in a violent rage typical of the chronic abuser. Turner had been beating Lindley and her son for months before his outbursts became deadly.
Turner was sentenced to life in prison for the horrific crime, but he wasn’t the only one slammed with a sentence. Lindley got 45 years in prison for failing to protect her child from her murderous boyfriend, which the court said constituted abuse by “omission.”
Lindley’s brutal brush with the law was first reported by Buzzfeed’s Alex Campbell in a long investigative piece that turned up 28 cases across 11 states where mothers had been sentenced for at least 10 years for similar crimes of not being able to protect their children from their abusive partners.
Kelly Savage
On August 3, 1995, Kelly Savage was making plans to take herself and her two young children away from her abusive husband in California’s Central Valley the very next day. Today she’s in prison for life, and what transpired in between is a cruel and vicious story, versions of which occur again and again in America.
While Savage was out purchasing supplies she needed for her escape, her husband Mark called to say her three-year-old son Justin was not breathing. Mark had beaten the young boy to death, for which both Mark and Kelly were arrested, found guilty of his murder, and sentenced to life without parole. Kelly was 23 at the time of her arrest.
Savage’s story was originally reported by Victoria Law for Truthout and picked up months later by The Atlantic. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, 186 women were serving life without parole in California prisons in July 2013.
NOTES
[1] Tsao, Alison. “Fetal Homicide Laws: Shield Against Domestic Violence Or Sword to Pierce Abortion Rights?” Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly 25, no. 457 461.
[2] Flavin, Jeanne. Our Bodies, Our Crimes: The Policing of Women’s Reproduction in America. New York: New York University Press, 2008. 189
[3] Flavin, 99
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
3) When the Catholic Church owns your doctor: The insidious new threat to affordable birth control
Eight of the largest health systems in America are now Catholic-owned. More and more won't prescribe conraception
PATRICIA MILLER
MONDAY, MAY 11, 2015 02:58 AM PDT
HTTP://WWW.SALON.COM/2015/05/11/WHEN_THE_CATHOLIC_CHURCH_OWNS_YOUR_DOCTOR_THE_INSIDIOUS_NEW_THREAT_TO_AFFORDABLE_BIRTH_CONTROL/?SOURCE=NEWSLETTER
Angela Valavanis had already had one bad encounter with the Catholic health care system when St. Francis Hospital, the hospital in Evanston, Ill., where she delivered her second baby, refused to allow her OB/GYN to tie her tubes because of Catholic restrictions on the procedure. When she went to her doctor’s office for a check-up after the birth and asked about going back on the Pill, since she hadn’t gotten the sterilization she wanted, she got another shock: “My doctor told me that she couldn’t prescribe birth control because she had sold her practice to a Catholic health system,” said Angela. “My mouth dropped open. I was so confused to hear those words coming out of the mouth of an OB/GYN.”
An OB/GYN who can’t prescribe birth control? It’s not some bad joke. It could be a reality if your doctor’s practice is purchased by a Catholic health system that then imposes the Ethical & Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, a set of rules created by the U.S. Bishop’s Conference that prohibits doctors from doing everything from prescribing the Pill to performing sterilizations or abortions.
And Angela’s experience may be just the tip of the iceberg. Driven by health-care economics and incentives in the Affordable Care Act, health systems, which are a collection of hospitals and ancillary services, are acquiring physician practices at anunprecedented rate. The percentage of doctors who were employees of health systemsincreased from 20 percent to 26 percent between 2012 and 2013 alone; more than 40 percent of primary care doctors like OB/GYNs are now employed by health systems directly, and experts don’t see the trend slowing.
And with Catholic hospital systems accounting for eight of the 10 of the largest nonprofit health systems in the U.S., these hospitals are poised to become major owners of doctors’ offices, which could severely impede access to contraceptives if doctors are forced to follow the Directives. “The more we see these Catholic systems buying up these practices, the more we are going to see what Angela saw,” predicted Lorie Chaiten, director of the Illinois ACLU’s Reproductive Rights Project, who notes that such refusals are legal under Illinois’ Health Care Right of Conscience Act.
“Angela went to the same provider for 15 years and all of the sudden she couldn’t get birth control. This could have a huge impact on women,” Chaiten said.
Last year, Ascension Health system, a Catholic system, and the largest nonprofit health system in the country, attracted national attention when it reportedly told doctors at an Oklahoma hospital that they couldn’t prescribe birth control. Ascension quickly backed down, deciding that it would “tolerate,” but not “approve, condone or permit,” the prescription of contraception by physician employees.
Now it appears that the largest system in Illinois, Presence Health, is also prohibiting doctors from providing contraceptives. Presence was created by the merger of two smaller Catholic systems, Resurrection Health Care, which was the system that bought Angela’s doctor’s practice, and Provena Health. Today, Presence Health owns 11 hospitals and dozens of doctor’s offices.
These health systems are merging, and gobbling up doctors’ practices, because of incentives in the ACA for systems to coordinate care across the range of services that patients need, from doctor’s visits to in-patient hospital procedures, and because of health care economics, that make it prohibitively expensive for doctors to maintain solo practices.
Asked directly whether its doctors in Evanston and elsewhere in Illinois were prevented from providing contraception, Presence said in a statement, “We abide by the Ethical & Religious Directives, and there are certain services which we do not provide. It is our expectation that all physicians associated with Presence Saint Francis Hospital share with their patients the options that are available in accessing the care they seek.”
But telling women about their options isn’t a solution when they are denied access to contraception, says Chaiten. “Even if they tell you what your options are, you have to have a second appointment with another doctor to get birth control. This seems inconsistent with whole idea of OB/GYN practice.”
Not only do women have to face the inconvenience of making—and paying—for another doctor’s appointment to get one of the most basic gynecological services, but there’s also a bigger problem: “The more we stigmatize and silo reproductive health care, the more it seems like it’s OK to treat it as not basic health care,” says Chaiten.
In fact, when Angela went back to her doctor after giving birth in mid-2013, the doctor indicated to Angela that she would provide her with a prescription for birth control if Angela would just make up a non-contraceptive reason, like severe menstrual bleeding or bad acne. But Angela refused to lie.
“I felt so betrayed that a doctor would essentially sell out her patients by selling her practice to an entity that won’t allow her to provide the same level of care. I haven’t been back to her,” she says.
But for some women, changing doctors may not be an option. Health insurers are becoming increasingly restrictive about which hospitals and doctors a patient is allowed to use and may charge a steep penalty for going out of the network of preferred providers. Smaller towns and rural areas may not have a large selection of OB/GYNs. The ACLU is backing a measure in the Illinois Legislature that would require health systems to tell patients beforehand what services they don’t provide and where they can get them. Chaiten also encourages women who have been denied reproductive health services for religious reason to report it to the ACLU, which is tracking this trend.
Ironically, Angela’s experience with her OB/GYN wasn’t her last run-in with Catholic health care. After she was refused a tubal ligation and a prescription for birth control, Angela’s husband decided to get a vasectomy. His doctor, who was also part of the Catholic system, said his practice couldn’t do the procedure or make a referral. “The whole situation is so unbelievable to me. I had no idea these limitations occurred,” she says. “When I tell my friends about it, they say it’s medieval. We have to worry that if they keep buying up all these practices, it will get harder and harder to find someone who can prescribe birth control.”
Patricia Miller is the author of “Good Catholics: The Battle Over Abortion in the Catholic Church.” Her work on politics, sex and religion has appeared in the Atlantic, the Nation, Huffington Post, RH Reality Check and Ms. Magazine.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) 'Climate Denial, Plain and Simple': Feds Approve Shell's Arctic Drilling Plan
"Not
only does it put the Arctic's pristine landscapes at a huge risk for
oil spills and industrial development but it's utterly incompatible with
President Obama's rhetoric to address the climate crisis."
Monday, May 11, 2015
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/05/11/climate-denial-plain-and-simple-feds-approve-shells-arctic-drilling-plan
"Arctic drilling is climate denial, plain and simple," Jamie Henn, co-founder of climate activist organization 350.org, tweeted after the announcement. "Shameful decision by [President Barack Obama] to allow Shell to drill."
Abigail Ross Hopper, director of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said in a statement on Monday, "As we move forward, any offshore exploratory activities will continue to be subject to rigorous safety standards."
However, environmental activists have long warned that there is no way to fully protect against the dangers of offshore drilling, particularly in areas that are hard to reach by emergency vessels. Not only does fossil fuel exploration harm endangered species which rely on the Arctic's pristine ecosystems to survive, but an accident in those remote waters could be more devastating than the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill which killed 11 workers and poured millions of barrels of oil into the Atlantic Ocean, activists say.
Furthermore, green groups point out that the only way to avoid climate catastrophe is to leave untapped reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas unexploited.
Calling Shell's drilling scheme "the largest, loudest and dirtiest exploration plan ever proposed in the American Arctic Ocean," Friends of the Earth said the Interior Department's approval "is unconscionable given that the latest science says Arctic oil must be kept in the ground in order to have a chance at keeping the planet safe."
The White House first granted drilling approval to Shell in the summer of 2012, but that project was derailed by numerous safety and operational problems. According to the New York Times, the Interior Department’s new approval (pdf) of the plan "was conditional on Shell’s receiving approval of a series of remaining drilling permits for the project."
That was of little comfort to environmental groups which say that the oil giant has not demonstrated it can drill safely in the ecologically delicate region.
"Once again, our government has rushed to approve risky and ill-conceived exploration in one of the most remote and important places on Earth," Susan Murray, a vice president of Oceana, told the Times. "Shell's need to validate its poorly planned investment in the U.S. Arctic Ocean is not a good reason for the government to allow the company to put our ocean resources at risk. Shell has not shown that it is prepared to operate responsibly in the Arctic Ocean, and neither the company nor our government has been willing to fully and fairly evaluate the risks of Shell's proposal."
Henn later tweeted, "Giving Shell 'conditional' permission to drill in the Arctic is like giving a drunk keys to your car and asking them to please drive safe."
"It's deeply troubling to see the Obama administration give the oil industry the green light to drill in the Arctic," Rebecca Noblin, Alaska director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement on Monday. "Not only does it put the Arctic's pristine landscapes at a huge risk for oil spills and industrial development but it's utterly incompatible with President Obama's rhetoric to address the climate crisis."Noblin continued:
The Interior Department bent over backward to rush Shell’s permit through the regulatory process so it could move its drillships into the Arctic this summer. Considering Shell ran its drillship aground in Alaska in 2012, it’s hard to fathom how the federal government can rationalize rubber-stamping Shell’s second try at Arctic drilling.Erik Grafe, a staff attorney with environmental legal nonprofit Earthjustice, added, "This decision places big oil before people, putting the Arctic's iconic wildlife and the health of our planet on the line. The agency should not be approving such threatening plans based on a rushed and incomplete environmental and safety review. Ultimately, Arctic Ocean drilling is far too risky and undermines the administration's efforts to address climate change and transition to a clean energy future. These fossil fuels need to remain in the ground."
Arctic drilling is a step in the exact wrong direction. Scientists tell us that if we want to avoid the worst effects of climate change, we need to keep Arctic oil in the ground. Arctic drilling gives us a 75 percent chance of an oil spill and a 100 percent chance of climate catastrophe. Interior should send Shell packing.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
5) NY Governor Orders Emergency Protections for Nail Salon Workers
In wake of New York Times exposé on exploitations in NY nail salons, Governor Andrew Cuomo orders task force to inform workers of their rights
May 11, 2015
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/05/11/ny-governor-orders-emergency-protections-nail-salon-workers
Days after a New York Times investigation exposed widespread wage theft, health code violations, and other workplace abuses at nail salons throughout the state, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Sunday enacted emergency measures to protect exploited salon workers.
The order, effective immediately, will assemble a task force to conduct salon-by-salon investigations, launch a six-language rights education campaign for workers, and institute new health standards to protect manicurists from toxic chemicals.
Further, salons that are unlicensed or refuse to back-pay workers will be shut down.
"New York State has a long history of confronting wage theft and unfair labor practices head on, and today, with the formation of this new Enforcement Task Force, we are aggressively following in that tradition," Cuomo said in a statement Sunday. "We will not stand idly by as workers are deprived of their hard-earned wages and robbed of their most basic rights."
Among the agencies represented on the task force is the state Health Department, which will determine best safety practices and change the emergency rules as needed, over time, to reflect those standards.
Because many salon workers are undocumented immigrants, the task force will not inquire as to their status in the country, in order to encourage them to speak up about exploitation they may face. No matter if they are in the country legally, workers have the right to be compensated fully, the governor's office said.
However, as Miriam Yeung, the executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF) said on Monday, the governor has overlooked other factors in the education campaign and the targeting of individual salons.
"We of course really applaud the governor and others who have taken attention to this issue. At the heart of it, these workers are suffering and we need to lift that up," Yeung told Common Dreams. However, she added, "We have deep concerns that advocacy organizations [like NAPAWF]... haven't been fully engaged in the process of developing these emergency measures."
NAPAWF published a report on the lack of worker protections in nail salons in 2011. In that report, entitled Removing the Topcoat: Understanding Federal Oversight of Nail Salons (pdf), the organization recommended stronger regulations of the cosmetics industry in addition to employee outreach and education. "[E]fforts to improve and streamline regulatory authority and oversight within the federal agencies become increasingly important. Focusing on feasible, impactful regulatory recommendations allows us to support the relevant agencies to move closer to providing safe and healthy environments for hair and nail salon workers," the report states.
Particularly worrying for NAPAWF are the salon-by-salon investigations. "In my mind, I had 'raid,'" Yeung said. "The word raid is particular, because in immigrant communities, which are already vulnerable, government visits can be seen as raids. We've seen in the past [with these types of investigations] assurances that immigration would not be called, and then they were called."
Moreover, she said, "Shutting down salons does not need to be the first step. We'd much rather see a collaborative process that allows the lifting of standards" rather than punitive measures. "In the past what we've seen is measures that result in rapid closures [of salons]," leaving workers whose wages are used to feed their families "immediately out of earnings."
"The solution can't just be, 'shut it down,'" Yeung said.
In addition, Cuomo's emergency measures must not ignore the cosmetics industry in favor of targeting individual salons, Yeung said. "There's no oversight of the cosmetics industry. If we started really testing chemicals that go into these products... that would affects workers and consumers. The problem is really clear and the solution is really clear."
The measures are set to become permanent in the coming months.
Days after a New York Times investigation exposed widespread wage theft, health code violations, and other workplace abuses at nail salons throughout the state, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Sunday enacted emergency measures to protect exploited salon workers.
The order, effective immediately, will assemble a task force to conduct salon-by-salon investigations, launch a six-language rights education campaign for workers, and institute new health standards to protect manicurists from toxic chemicals.
Further, salons that are unlicensed or refuse to back-pay workers will be shut down.
"New York State has a long history of confronting wage theft and unfair labor practices head on, and today, with the formation of this new Enforcement Task Force, we are aggressively following in that tradition," Cuomo said in a statement Sunday. "We will not stand idly by as workers are deprived of their hard-earned wages and robbed of their most basic rights."
Among the agencies represented on the task force is the state Health Department, which will determine best safety practices and change the emergency rules as needed, over time, to reflect those standards.
Because many salon workers are undocumented immigrants, the task force will not inquire as to their status in the country, in order to encourage them to speak up about exploitation they may face. No matter if they are in the country legally, workers have the right to be compensated fully, the governor's office said.
However, as Miriam Yeung, the executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF) said on Monday, the governor has overlooked other factors in the education campaign and the targeting of individual salons.
"We of course really applaud the governor and others who have taken attention to this issue. At the heart of it, these workers are suffering and we need to lift that up," Yeung told Common Dreams. However, she added, "We have deep concerns that advocacy organizations [like NAPAWF]... haven't been fully engaged in the process of developing these emergency measures."
NAPAWF published a report on the lack of worker protections in nail salons in 2011. In that report, entitled Removing the Topcoat: Understanding Federal Oversight of Nail Salons (pdf), the organization recommended stronger regulations of the cosmetics industry in addition to employee outreach and education. "[E]fforts to improve and streamline regulatory authority and oversight within the federal agencies become increasingly important. Focusing on feasible, impactful regulatory recommendations allows us to support the relevant agencies to move closer to providing safe and healthy environments for hair and nail salon workers," the report states.
Particularly worrying for NAPAWF are the salon-by-salon investigations. "In my mind, I had 'raid,'" Yeung said. "The word raid is particular, because in immigrant communities, which are already vulnerable, government visits can be seen as raids. We've seen in the past [with these types of investigations] assurances that immigration would not be called, and then they were called."
Moreover, she said, "Shutting down salons does not need to be the first step. We'd much rather see a collaborative process that allows the lifting of standards" rather than punitive measures. "In the past what we've seen is measures that result in rapid closures [of salons]," leaving workers whose wages are used to feed their families "immediately out of earnings."
"The solution can't just be, 'shut it down,'" Yeung said.
In addition, Cuomo's emergency measures must not ignore the cosmetics industry in favor of targeting individual salons, Yeung said. "There's no oversight of the cosmetics industry. If we started really testing chemicals that go into these products... that would affects workers and consumers. The problem is really clear and the solution is really clear."
The measures are set to become permanent in the coming months.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
6) François Hollande of France Meets Fidel and Raúl Castro in Cuba
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
7) G.M.’s Ignition Switch Death Toll Hits 100
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
8) Ex-C.I.A. Officer Sentenced in Leak Case Tied to Times Reporter
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
9) Judge’s Ruling Against 2 Banks Finds Misconduct in ’08 Crash
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
10) No Justice, No ... Anything
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
11) Wisconsin Protesters Vow to Stage Walkout Over Decision Not to Charge Officer
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/14/us/madison-wisconsin-shooting-protests.html?ref=us
Protesters in Madison, Wis., who have been demanding that a police officer face charges in the fatal shooting of an unarmed biracial man during a scuffle vowed to walk out of jobs, schools and businesses on Wednesday, a day after the Dane County district attorney said the officer would not face prosecution.
Large demonstrations swept across the city for a week after the man, Anthony T. Robinson Jr., was fatally shot by the officer, Matthew Kenny, on March 6.
More than 1,000 people had signed up on Facebook to attend a protest and walkout on Wednesday organized by the Young, Gifted and Black Coalition. It was expected to begin at 9 a.m. at the apartment on Williamson Street where Mr. Robinson was shot, and to proceed to the State Capitol.
“It is time to move into spring and grow by demonstrating resistance and resilience against the assault on black people in Madison and across the country,” the group said in a statement announcing the protest.
Officer Kenny was put on paid administrative leave during an investigation of the events, but protesters have called for him to be fired. The Madison police chief, Michael C. Koval, said the officer would remain on leave until an internal review of the shooting determined whether he had violated procedures when responding to the call that ended in Mr. Robinson’s death.
Chief Koval said he expected the internal review to be finished in about a week.
The shooting happened amid a national debate over police conduct, and was one of a string of police killings of unarmed civilians that have fueled the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The decision by the Dane County district attorney set off concerns about possible unrest like the riots in Baltimore last month that erupted after Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man, died from a spinal injury he sustained while in police custody. Several businesses in Baltimore were looted and burned, prompting officials to declare a state of emergency, put in place a curfew and deploy thousands of police officers and National Guard troops to restore calm.
Six police officers involved in Mr. Gray’s arrest have been charged in connection with his death.
Chief Koval said he was indebted to Mr. Robinson’s family for urging the protesters to remain peaceful.
Witnesses said that Mr. Robinson was shot after he assaulted at least two people and jumped in and out of traffic. According to the police, Officer Kenny forced his way into an apartment building after hearing an altercation, and Mr. Robinson punched him in the face. The police said Officer Kenny feared for his life and shot Mr. Robinson seven times.
At a news conference on Tuesday, the Dane County district attorney, Ismael Ozanne, said the shooting had been justified and that the officer would not face criminal charges.
Mr. Ozanne, who is biracial, said that he understood the issues of racial profiling and inequality. But he said that his decision was based on the facts presented to him, not on his emotions.
The outcome disappointed Mr. Robinson’s family and activists who had hoped the investigation would lead to an indictment. They questioned why the police had not responded more carefully after Mr. Robinson’s friend called 911 and told a dispatcher that he was under the influence of drugs. (Toxicology tests found traces of hallucinogenic mushrooms, marijuana and Xanax in Mr. Robinson’s system.)
On Tuesday, protesters gathered at the apartment building where Mr. Robinson was shot and marched downtown, where hundreds of people circled the State Capitol before returning to the apartment building. The crowd represented a wide range of ages and ethnicities, and religious leaders were present.
Dressed in a red robe with a black sash adorned with two gold crosses, the Rev. Everett Mitchell, 38, the pastor of Christ the Solid Rock Baptist Church in Madison, addressed the crowd on Williamson Street.
“This has got to change,” he said. “And we have got to be the moral force to make sure that that happens.”
Mr. Mitchell added, “We will make sure that we will hold every last official accountable to those decisions.”
The aim of the demonstrations and shutdowns on Wednesday is to change policies on the use of force and to reduce disparities in rates of incarceration in Dane County for different racial groups, he said.
On the way back to the apartment building on Tuesday, the crowd stopped at Grace Episcopal Church, where Mr. Robinson’s mother, Andrea Irwin, stood on the steps and addressed them.
“Today is the day that we are going to change history and not be the ones to be put down and killed anymore,” she said. “This is not over.”
Her comments drew applause. Instructed to repeat Ms. Irwin’s words, the crowd chanted, “This is not over.”
David Callender contributed reporting from Madison. *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
12) Honeybees’ Mysterious Die-Off Appears to Worsen
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
