7/16/2015

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, THURSDAY, JULY 16, 2015

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En español abajo

March and Rally #Not1MoreInsult
Mexicans are the same Latin American blood!

Forward this email and Share Facebook event 
Sun. July 19, 1pm
Gather at 16th and Mission, march to SF City Hall
Everyone is welcome.

Knowing that our unity gives the strength needed to succeed in respect to our right to live, it is time to stop the DISCRIMINATION! We don’t accept the insults by national figures like Donald Trump, Ann Coulter or the large and growing list of rightwing Republicans who look to blame the Latino community for the problems of the country. Like in San Francisco, we are against the mass media that looks to use one crime of an undocumented person to criminalize the whole community. Finally, we are disgusted by the opportunist Democratic representatives like Hillary Clinton and Diane Feinstein who have criticized the politics of sanctuary cities and whose party has overseen the worst abuse of immigrant rights in a generation.

Now is the time to listen to us and have respect. Join the march and rally #Not1MoreInsult. The march will gather on Sun. July 19 at 1pm at 16th and Mission Sts. at the 16th BART station. After the rally, we will march to City Hall with the slogan “NOT ONE MORE INSULT.”

It will be a peaceful protest and we ask you to come in your work uniform to show all the white racists that our work is essential to move the U.S. economy forward. We will bring banners with positive slogans, “The fight is not over until our right to live is respected!”

More info: Edi Monterroso, 415-410-4724, 415-374-1647

Marcha y Campaña #Ni1InsultoMas
¡L@s Mexican@s somos de la misma sangre latinoamericana!

Suma su lista de organización en apoyo a la marcha. Comparte el evento de Facebook

Domingo, 19 de julio, 1pm
Calle 16 y Mission, marchando hacia la Alcaldía

¡Tod@s invitad@s!

Sabiendo que la unión nos da la fuerza necesaria para exigir que se respeten nuestros derechos de vivir, es hora de parar tanta ¡DISCRIMINACIÓN! No aceptaremos los insultos por figuras nacionales como Donald Trump, Ann Coulter, ni de la larga y creciente lista de derechistas y republicanos que buscan culpar a la comunidad latina por los problemas del país. Igual, en San Francisco, estamos en contra de los influentes medios que buscan usar un crimen por una persona indocumentada para criminalizar a toda la comunidad. Finalmente, incluidos en nuestro disgusto son los representantes Demócratas oportunistas como Hillary Clinton y Dianne Feinstein que han criticado a la política de ciudades santuarios y cuyo partido ha administrado el peor abuso de derechos inmigratorios en una generación.

Ya es hora que nos escuchen y por esta razón, nos haremos respetar. Únase a la marcha y campaña #Ni1InsultoMas. La marcha será el siguiente Domingo 19 de Junio comenzando a la 1pm sobre las calles 16 y Mission. Nos reuniremos en "La estación del BART de la 16 y calle Missión" San Francisco, CA. Después de un mitin, marcharemos rumbo a la municipalidad de esta ciudad con el lema, "NI UN INSULTO MÁS".

Sera una manifestación pacífica y se les pide que lleguen con el uniforme de trabajo, para demostrarle a todos los "RACISTAS ANGLOS" que nuestra mano de obra es tan importante para mover la economía de este país hacia adelante. Lleven pancartas con mensajes positivos, "Esta lucha no se termina hasta hacer que respeten nuestro derecho de vivir".

Para más información, Edi Monterroso 415-410-4724, 415-374-1647


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On Thursday, August 6, 2015 please join us for the Hiroshima commemoration, rally and nonviolent direct action, 8 AM at Livermore Lab, corner of Vasco Road and Patterson Pass Road in Livermore.

As we approach the 70th Anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, Daniel Ellsberg, Country Joe McDonald, Taiko drummers, A-bomb survivors and hundreds of peace advocates will gather at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab to shine light on the true cost of the nuclear age. On this major anniversary, we will confront the human, ethical, environmental, social and financial price that nuclear weapons are extracting from us – and, indeed, from all life on earth. And, together, we will act to change the future!

There will also be a pre-action organizing meeting in Berkeley on Saturday, July 11 at 10 AM.

For August 6 action and pre-action info…

We have downloadable fliers and more information on the web at:
http://www.trivalleycares.org/new/SaveDate.html

We have a Facebook page at:

August 6 Hiroshima Commemoration and Action at Livermore Lab


Please join us, let us know if your group would like to cosponsor the August 6 commemoration, and help us publicize the event with your members and friends.


More information, Tri-Valley CAREs, (925) 443-7148
www.trivalleycares.org
marylia@trivalleycares.org

Thanks!

###


http://www.care2.com the worlds largest community for good.
You care; We Care2.

Start a petition - we will help you win!

http://www.thePetitionSite.com/create.html


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Starting this September, Rising Tide North America is calling for mass actions to shut down the economic and political systems threatening our survival.

Already, hundreds of thousands are streaming into the streets to fight back against climate chaos, capitalism and white supremacy.

This wave of resistance couldn’t be more urgent. To stop climate chaos we need a phenomenal escalation in organizing, participation and tactical courage. We need a profound social transformation to uproot the institutions of capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy, the systems that created the climate crisis. And we need to link arms with allies fighting for migrant justice, dignified work and pay, and an end to the criminalization and brutal policing of black and brown bodies.

We need to #FloodTheSystem.

In the lead up to the United Nations climate talks in Paris, in December, we will escalate local and regional resistance against systems that threaten our collective survival. Together, we will open alternative paths to the failing negotiations of political elites.

This is not another protest. It is a call for a massive economic and political intervention. It is a call to build the relationships needed to sustain our struggles for the long haul. To build popular power along the intersections of race, class, gender and ability. To collectively unleash our power and change everything.

The Story So Far

Over the past year, hundreds of thousands of people have flowed into the streets to fight back.

Fast food workers in over a hundred cities went on strike, with thousands arrested demanding $15 an hour and a union. Young people in Ferguson, protesting the murder of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson, showed us the power of sustained action as they fought back against state violence for weeks, reinvigorating a national movement for Black liberation. Hundreds of thousands of climate activists marched at the People’s Climate March in New York, and the next day Flood Wall Street shut down the heart of New York’s financial district.

Across the country, and the world, powerful movements are using nonviolent direct action to to disrupt business as usual and demand lasting systemic change.

These moments show that broad mobilization and disruption are ways that we can transform our society. It is time we move beyond conventional strategies. Its time we connect across movements and #FloodTheSystem.

Rising Tide North America and its allies call on communities, networks, affinity groups and organizations across the continent to join together this Fall to rapidly escalate the pace and scale of the anti-capitalist climate justice movements.

We need to wash away the root causes of climate change -- capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and colonialism. These systems enable the domination of people and Earth. They place gains for the elite before the well being of our communities.

To build the scale of movements necessary to take on this challenge, we need everyone. Using sustained, coordinated direct action we can bring more people into a movement for radical social transformation than ever before.

The upcoming United Nations meeting of the Conference of the Parties in Paris (COP 21) at the end of the year provide us with an opportunity. Framed as climate negotiations they are really about capitalism and the corporate elites. We have an opportunity to focus the debate on capitalism itself as negotiators wedded to and benefiting from the status quo refuse to discuss the systems that drive the crisis. This is a natural moment to preemptively highlight community resistance and radical alternatives in advance of another colossal failure of international leadership. Through our combined action we can turn the failure of these critical talks into a moment in which the systemic nature of the crisis moves to the center and in which our movements begin to connect and collaborate.

In the past, the climate movement has repeatedly tried days of action and one-day marches. While these have built important relationships, they have not created the sustained movement swells we need. To lay the groundwork for exponential movement growth we are asking groups to convene Action Councils, like those forming in the Pacific Northwest, California, Montana, Northeast and elsewhere, with the intention of coming together to organize sustained actions beginning in late Summer, continuing through November and beyond.

With luck, waves of mobilizations breaking across the continent and world will build off each other to create a flood of resistance to fossil fuel extraction, capitalism and colonialism.

Vision

#FloodTheSystem invites the Rising Tide network, the larger climate justice movements, and other non-climate focused groups to create a flood of massive economic and political disruption of the systems that allow the climate and economic crisis to continue to escalate. This is not a simple call to action or day of action, it’s a long-term process. We want to organize a series of actions that would:
  • Build a more robust anti-capitalist movement that clearly defines climate change as a symptom of capitalism. Specifically, we hope to support and catalyze regional organizing networks and relationships to challenge extreme energy infrastructure and the systems of oppression that enable it.
  • Build long term local, regional and continental networks that can continue to coordinate, build connections between movements, and escalate these fights in 2016 and beyond.
  • Begin to work closely with other movements through the analysis of where our struggles intersect and through a commitment to anti-oppressive organizing practices.
  • Share, implement and gain experience in innovative models of horizontal movement structures and mass democracy in organizing that will serve radical forces for the long haul.
  • Create a flood of energy within regions that inspires others to join in with organic, spontaneous actions and organizing. Regional blocks of escalating action are already planned that will lead into, and play off, each other. More emerge everyday.
  • Preemptively highlight community resistance and real alternatives to the fossil fuel economy ahead of the inevitable colossal failure by global elites at the United Nations climate negotiations in Paris.

Principles

#FloodTheSystem will organize and act according to the following principles.
  • Anti-capitalism/colonialism/racism/patriarchy - We see the climate crisis as a symptom of hierarchical social systems based upon domination and exploitation of lands, and predominately people of color. Addressing the crisis at its roots means joining with and supporting those who are fighting for liberation from these and other oppressive systems, and for their replacement with relations based upon equity, mutual aid, and ecological stewardship.
  • Grassroots Led, NGOs in Support Role - Non-profits and NGOs often function to co-opt and defuse resistance into reform-based avenues which are amenable to the social systems we are ultimately seeking to dismantle and replace. The priorities of this mobilization should be driven by groups grounded in and accountable to the communities most impacted by white supremacy, capitalism, and settler colonialism, with NGOs in a support role -- not the other way around.
  • Community-Based Alternatives - Corporations, nation-states, and multilateral institutions like the United Nations are integral pillars upholding global capitalism and colonialism. We see alternatives to extreme energy and the climate crisis arising out of social struggles which challenge and seek to replace these institutions and their logics. However, we recognize that there may be important defensive struggles within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, such as fighting the expansion of carbon markets or advancing state recognition of Indigenous land rights.

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Free Albert Woodfox!

On June 8, 2015 a federal judge granted Louisiana prisoner Albert Woodfox unconditional release. Albert's conviction had already been overturned three times - most recently in 2013 - yet every time the state has appealed.

Today, Albert is still behind bars after spending four decades in cruel, unjust solitary confinement. He believes that he and fellow prisoners, Herman Wallace and Robert King, were first placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for their activism. All three men were members of the Black Panther Party. Together, they came to be known as the Angola 3.

It is time for the State of Louisiana to stop standing in the way of justice. Call on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to ensure Albert's cruel and unjust confinement is not his legacy. Learn more

http://act.amnestyusa.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1839&ea.campaign.id=35593&ea.tracking.id=Country_USA~MessagingCategory_PrisonersandPeopleatRisk&ac=W1506EAIAR2&ea.url.id=414689&forwarded=true

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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 Petition 

http://www.answercoalition.org/amnesty_for_all_those_arrested_demanding_justice_for_freddie_gray?utm_campaign=baltimore_amn1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=answercoalition

Amn3.pngMayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake
City 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]

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CANCEL ALL STUDENT DEBT!

Sign the Petition:

http://cancelallstudentdebt.com/?code=kos


Dear President Obama, Senators, and Members of Congress:


Americans now owe $1.3 trillion in student debt. Eighty-six percent of that money is owed to the United States government. This is a crushing burden for more than 40 million Americans and their families.

I urge you to take immediate action to forgive all student debt, public and private.

American Federation of Teachers
Campaign for America's Future
Courage Campaign
Daily Kos
Democracy for America
LeftAction
Project Springboard
RH Reality Check
RootsAction
Student Debt Crisis
The Nation
Working Families


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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:

A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

B. ARTICLES IN FULL


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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS


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More on Mumia's Medical Needs

Mumia Abu-Jamal's will to live and his commitment to telling the truth is matched by our collective resolve to see him well and free. 

Please take action again. Please know that your calls, letters, emails, and faxes (even the ones that they hang up on or seem to ignore) are the only reason that he was given diagnostic testing.  Mumia is still weak, in a wheelchair, and his legs are bandaged heavily. He has still not been given a diagnosis or a treatment plan. Mumia needs a plan that will address the underlying causes of his chronic and potentially life threatening conditions. Please know that his mind is clear, and his energy is returning. He sends his love and his understanding- that because you took action, he is alive.

Mumia spent nine days Geisinger Medical Center in Danville PA, and is now back in the infirmary at SCI Mahanoy. Our actions today will ensure that Mumia receives the urgent diagnosis and medical treatment.

In the latest outrage, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections is refusing to release Mumia's medical records. Their excuse- that Bret Grote from the Abolitionist Law Center and co-counsel Bob Boyle went to federal court to demand that his lawyers and family be allowed to advise and see him while he was hospitalized. Holding Mumia's medical records is simply retaliation for exercising his constitutional right to access to the courts.

And It is a direct attack on his ability to get expert advice and care. They are preventing Mumia and his doctor from seeing these critical records, at a time when his condition, while stable, remains serious.

Act Now.  

1. Call the Prison, the Governor, and the DOC. Demand that they release Mumia's medical records immediately (see numbers below).

2. Make a Gift to Prison Radio. We took a risk: we fronted $4K dollars so that we could place a full page Ad in The Nation Magazine. It appears in the June 1st issue. Stand with us as we amplify this message. Please give now. Then sign this important letter.

3. Make a gift to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Medical and Legal Fund. Help us get independent medical care for Mumia. We are still in need of funds for life sustaining advocacy and care. Click here to give.
Call, write and fax today!

John Kerestes, Superintendent SCI Mahanoy
Address: 301 Morea Road, Frackville, PA 17932
Phone: 570-773-2158 x8102
Fax: 570-783-2008

Secretary John Wetzel, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections
Address: 1920 Technology Parkway, Mechanicsburg, PA 17050
Phone:  717-728-4109, 717-728-2573
E-mail: ra-crpadocsecretary@pa.gov

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf
Address: 508 Main Capitol Building, Harrisburg, PA 17120
Phone:  717-787-2500
Fax: 717-772-8284
Email: governor@pa.gov
                      
Your support of Prison Radio allowed us to recently record: Mumia Abu-Jamal, Kenneth Hartman, Reverend Edward Pinkney, Shaka Zulu, Jane Dorotik, Bill Dunne, Bryant Arroyo, Troy Thomas, Mondo We Langa (David Rice), and more.

Mumia's and other commentators' searing truth is needed on the radio. Listen to these commentaries at prisonradio.org.

Mumia Abu-Jamal:
137 Shots (2:00)

Kenneth Hartman:
Stop Strip Searching My Mom (4:21)

Bryant Arroyo:
The Unconstitutional AEDPA (11:06)
As you know, we are pulling out all the stops to free Mumia and keep him alive. Together with International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal & the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC) we placed this full page Ad in The Nation Magazine. Please print it out and share it with friends. Please sign it at bit.ly/OpenLetterForMumia. Please help us print this Ad. It is costing $4K to design, print and motivate. Please take a moment to help Prison Radio make it happen, by sending a gift now.

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!
Support Prison Radio

To give by check:
Prison Radio/Redwood Justice Fund
PO Box 411074
San Francisco, CA
94141

Stock or legacy gifts:
Noelle Hanrahan
(415) 706 - 5222
Prison Radio is a project of the Redwood Justice Fund a CA 501c3 non profit.

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


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The  Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Mobilizes Support Internationally:
No Execution by Medical Neglect!

International Unions Demand Decent Medical Treatment for Mumia Abu-Jamal

June 2, 2015

Mumia Abu-Jamal was recently sent back to prison after having been hospitalized for the second time. There are some reports that his health is improving. He said to Suzanne Ross of the International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal that “if there had not been an international outcry about the lack of appropriate treatment, in fact AGAINST the 'treatment' that was bringing him so close to death, he was sure he would not be alive today”.

In some good news, he was also told by the prison doctor that his biopsy results came back negative.
However, neither Mumia nor his wife, lawyers or consulting doctors have been seen the actual medical reports detailing his condition. The Department of Corrections refuses to hand over his medical records, claiming that they don't have to hand them over because there is litigation to have them released! Denying Mumia and his family his medical records is an outrage!
We would like to inform you about some recent actions taken by unions around the world on behalf of Mumia.

- Unite, the largest union in the UK, representing over 1.4 million members, wrote letters to Governor Tom Wolf, Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel and Legal Counsel Theron Perez protesting Mumia's treatment.

- The International Dockworkers Council, representing 90,000 dockworkers from affiliated unions around the world, wrote an appeal to the labor movement calling for action on behalf of Mumia.
- The Inlandboatmen's Union of the Pacific sent a protest letter to Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel.

We hope that you will continue to take action on behalf of Mumia. Please call and email Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel and demand the following:

1) Mumia Abu-Jamal is an innocent man! He should be freed immediatel
2) Confirm what Mumia's medical condition is. Release his medical records to his family and lawyers!

3) Allow Mumia to be given medical treatment from a doctor of his choice. His doctor should be allowed to conduct an on-site medical examination, to communicate by phone with Mumia, and to communicate freely with prison medical staff.

4) Allow Mumia daily visits from his family, friends and lawyers!

5) Conduct an independent investigation of healthcare treatment inside the Pennsylvania prison system!DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, SECRETARY JOHN WETZEL 717 728 4109

We are also attaching a sample union resolution for you to use as a template. Please consider submitting it to your union and asking them to take action on behalf of Mumia. We would also be happy to work with you and make a presentation to your union or community group about his condition.

The Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jam


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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


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 Join the Fight to Free Rev. Pinkney!

Click HERE to view in browser

http://www.iacenter.org/prisoners/freepinkney-1-28-15/
   

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.

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COURAGE TO RESIST

 http://couragetoresist.org/

New Action--write letters to DoD officials requesting clemency for Chelsea!

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


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B. ARTICLES IN FULL


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1) Ohio: Court Rebuffs Group’s Effort to Charge Officers
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS




2) In Fiery Speeches, Francis Excoriates Global Capitalism
By and





3) Greece debt crisis: Bailout deal at a glance
By BBC News
July 13, 2015
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33504487




4) Deal on Greek Debt Crisis Exposes Europe’s Deepening Fissures
By




5) Alaska Starts Cleaning Up Debris From Japan Spread by 2011 Tsunami
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS




6) Rising Economic Insecurity Tied to Decades-Long Trend in Employment Practices
"According to a study by the economists Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney, most men were earning substantially less in 2009 than men of similar ages and education did in 1969, adjusted for inflation."
By NOAM SCHEIBER





7) Eric Garner Case Is Settled by New York City for $5.9 Million
By





8) In Texas, a Military Exercise Is Met by Some With Suspicion
By




9) Judge Orders Release of Video of 2013 Police Shooting in California
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS




10) Black Children in U.S. Are Much More Likely to Live in Poverty, Study Finds
"Black children were almost four times as likely as white children to be living in poverty in 2013....About 38.3 percent of black children lived in poverty in 2013, nearly four times the rate for white children, at 10.7 percent. About 30.4 percent of Hispanic children and 10.1 percent of Asian children live in poverty."
By




11) Eric Garner’s Family Says Settlement Will Not Stall Push for Police Reform
“It’s a buyout without justice,” ...“They pay us out without the justice. Where’s the justice at?” 
By and NIKITA STEWART





12) Puerto Rico, Running Short of Cash, Misses a Debt Payment
By




13) Video of 2013 Police Shooting of Unarmed Man Renews Familiar Questions
By








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1) Ohio: Court Rebuffs Group’s Effort to Charge Officers
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS



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2) In Fiery Speeches, Francis Excoriates Global Capitalism
By and

ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay — His speeches can blend biblical fury with apocalyptic doom. Pope Francis does not just criticize the excesses of global capitalism. He compares them to the “dung of the devil.” He does not simply argue that systemic “greed for money” is a bad thing. He calls it a “subtle dictatorship” that “condemns and enslaves men and women.”

Having returned to his native Latin America, Francis has renewed his left-leaning critiques on the inequalities of capitalism, describing it as an underlying cause of global injustice, and a prime cause of climate change. Francis escalated that line last week when he made a historic apology for the crimes of the Roman Catholic Church during the period of Spanish colonialism — even as he called for a global movement against a “new colonialism” rooted in an inequitable economic order.

The Argentine pope seemed to be asking for a social revolution.

“This is not theology as usual; this is him shouting from the mountaintop,” said Stephen F. Schneck, the director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic studies at Catholic University of America in Washington.

The last pope who so boldly placed himself at the center of the global moment was John Paul II, who during the 1980s pushed the church to confront what many saw as the challenge of that era, communism. John Paul II’s anti-Communist messaging dovetailed with the agenda of political conservatives eager for a tougher line against the Soviets and, in turn, aligned part of the church hierarchy with the political right.

Francis has defined the economic challenge of this era as the failure of global capitalism to create fairness, equity and dignified livelihoods for the poor — a social and religious agenda that coincides with a resurgence of the leftist thinking marginalized in the days of John Paul II. Francis’ increasingly sharp critique comes as much of humanity has never been so wealthy or well fed — yet rising inequality and repeated financial crises have unsettled voters, policy makers and economists.Left-wing populism is surging in countries immersed in economic turmoil, such as Spain, and, most notably, Greece. But even in the United States, where the economy has rebounded, widespread concern about inequality and corporate power are propelling the rise of liberals like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who, in turn, have pushed the Democratic Party presidential front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to the left.

Even some free-market champions are now reassessing the shortcomings of unfettered capitalism. George Soros, who made billions in the markets, and then spent a good part of it promoting the spread of free markets in Eastern Europe, now argues that the pendulum has swung too far the other way.

“I think the pope is singing to the music that’s already in the air,” said Robert A. Johnson, executive director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, which was financed with $50 million from Mr. Soros. “And that’s a good thing. That’s what artists do, and I think the pope is sensitive to the lack of legitimacy of the system.”

Many Catholic scholars would argue that Francis is merely continuing a line of Catholic social teaching that has existed for more than a century and was embraced even by his two conservative predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Pope Leo XIII first called for economic justice on behalf of workers in 1891, with his encyclical “Rerum Novarum” — or, “On Condition of Labor.”

Mr. Schneck, of Catholic University, said it was as if Francis were saying, “We’ve been talking about these things for more than one hundred years, and nobody is listening.”

Francis has such a strong sense of urgency “because he has been on the front lines with real people, not just numbers and abstract ideas,” Mr. Schneck said. “That real-life experience of working with the most marginalized in Argentina has been the source of his inspiration as pontiff.”

Francis made his speech on Wednesday night, in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, before nearly 2,000 social activists, farmers, trash workers and neighborhood activists. Even as he meets regularly with heads of state, Francis has often said that change must come from the grass roots, whether from poor people or the community organizers who work with them. To Francis, the poor have earned knowledge that is useful and redeeming, even as a “throwaway culture” tosses them aside. He sees them as being at the front edge of economic and environmental crises around the world.

In Bolivia, Francis praised cooperatives and other localized organizations that he said provide productive economies for the poor. “How different this is than the situation that results when those left behind by the formal market are exploited like slaves!” he said on Wednesday night.

It is this Old Testament-like rhetoric that some finding jarring, perhaps especially so in the United States, where Francis will visit in September. His environmental encyclical, “Laudato Si’,” released last month, drew loud criticism from some American conservatives and from others who found his language deeply pessimistic. His right-leaning critics also argued that he was overreaching and straying dangerously beyond religion — while condemning capitalism with too broad a brush.

“I wish Francis would focus on positives, on how a free-market economy guided by an ethical framework, and the rule of law, can be a part of the solution for the poor — rather than just jumping from the reality of people’s misery to the analysis that a market economy is the problem,” said the Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, which advocates free-market economics.

Francis’ sharpest critics have accused him of being a Marxist or a Latin American communist, even as he opposed communism during his time in Argentina. His tour last week of Latin America began in Ecuador and Bolivia, two countries with far-left governments. President Evo Morales of Bolivia, who wore a Che Guevara patch on his jacket during Francis’ speech, claimed the pope as a kindred spirit — even as Francis seemed startled when Mr. Morales gave him a wooden crucifix shaped like a hammer and sickle as a gift.

Francis’ primary agenda last week was to begin renewing Catholicism in Latin America and repositioning it as the church of the poor. His apology for the church’s complicity in the colonialist era received an immediate roar from the crowd. In various parts of Latin America, the association between the church and economic power elites remains intact. In Chile, a socially conservative country, some members of the country’s corporate elite are also members of Opus Dei, the traditionalist Catholic organization founded in Spain in 1928.

Inevitably, Francis’ critique can be read as a broadside against Pax Americana, the period of capitalism regulated by global institutions created largely by the United States. But even pillars of that system are shifting. The World Bank, which long promoted economic growth as an end in itself, is now increasingly focused on the distribution of gains, after the Arab Spring revolts in some countries that the bank had held up as models. The latest generation of international trade agreements includes efforts to increase protections for workers and the environment.

The French economist Thomas Piketty argued last year in a surprising best-seller, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” that rising wealth inequality is a natural result of free-market policies, a direct challenge to the conventional view that economic inequalities shrink over time. The controversial implication drawn by Mr. Piketty is that governments should raise taxes on the wealthy.

Mr. Piketty roiled the debate among mainstream economists, yet Francis’ critique is more unnerving to some because he is not reframing inequality and poverty around a new economic theory but instead defining it in moral terms. “Working for a just distribution of the fruits of the earth and human labor is not mere philanthropy,” he said on Wednesday. “It is a moral obligation. For Christians, the responsibility is even greater: It is a commandment.”

Nick Hanauer, a Seattle venture capitalist, said he believed Francis was making a nuanced point about capitalism, embodied by his coinage of a “social mortgage” on accumulated wealth — a debt to the society that made its accumulation possible. Mr. Hanauer said that economic elites should embrace the need for change both for moral and pragmatic reasons.

“I’m a believer in capitalism but it comes in as many flavors as pie, and we have a choice about the kind of capitalist system that we have,” said Mr. Hanauer, now an outspoken proponent of redistributive government policies like a higher minimum wage.

Yet what remains unclear is whether Francis has a clear vision for a systemic alternative to the status quo that he and others criticize. “All these critiques point toward the incoherence of the simple idea of free market economics, but they don’t prescribe a remedy,” said Mr. Johnson, of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

Francis acknowledged as much, conceding on Wednesday that he had no new “recipe” to quickly change the world. Instead, he spoke about a “process of change” undertaken at the grass-roots level.

“What can be done by those students, those young people, those activists, those missionaries who come to my neighborhood with the hearts full of hopes and dreams but without any real solution for my problems?” he asked. “A lot! They can do a lot.

“You, the lowly, the exploited, the poor and underprivileged, can do, and are doing, a lot. I would even say that the future of humanity is in great measure in your own hands.”

Jim Yardley reported from Asunción, and Binyamin Appelbaum from Washington. Laurie Goodstein contributed reporting from New York, and Simon Romero from Asunción.




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3) Greece debt crisis: Bailout deal at a glance
By BBC News
July 13, 2015
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33504487

After some 17 hours of summit talks eurozone leaders announced a new deal to rescue Greece - a third bailout.
There are still significant hurdles to clear, however. And after months of argument and delay between the Greek government and the lenders, the eurozone wants the new sense of urgency to be maintained.
The risk of Grexit - a Greek exit from the euro - has not gone away. So what are the key points of the deal? (You can read the full text of the agreement here.)
  • The Greek parliament must immediately adopt laws to reform key parts of its economy - by Wednesday. The reforms include: streamlining the pension system, boosting tax revenue - especially from VAT, liberalising the labour market, privatising the electricity network, extending shop opening hours
  • The eurozone agrees in principle to start negotiations on a loan package for Greece worth €82bn-86bn (£59bn-£62bn; $91bn-$96bn)
  • The loan will come mainly from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) - the eurozone bailout fund. But the International Monetary Fund will also be asked to make a contribution from March 2016
Greek ferry transport is among the sectors targeted for liberalisation
  • A new trust fund will be set up, managed by Greece, with €50bn of Greek assets. It is a mechanism for paying off part of the total ESM loan. Half of the €50bn will be used to fund recapitalisation of Greek banks, the other half will go towards reducing Greece's debt mountain - by privatising assets - and investing in Greece.
  • Greece will get short-term bridge financing to avoid bankruptcy - separate from the ESM. The amount is estimated to be €7bn by next Monday and another €5bn by mid-August
  • Out of the total ESM loan about €10bn will be used immediately to recapitalise Greek banks - but the banks may need €25bn in total
  • The European Central Bank and eurozone finance ministers will tightly monitor Greek compliance with the bailout conditions
  • Negotiations on the ESM bailout will begin only after the plan is approved by the parliaments of Finland, Germany and Greece
  • The eurozone is ready if necessary to extend the repayment period of Greek debt (by debt rescheduling), but debt will not be written off (so no "haircut")
  • The European Commission will try to mobilise €35bn - outside the ESM loan - to help Greece with growth and job creation.
What is the ESM?
  • Eurozone's only permanent bailout fund - financed by all 19 member states
  • Launched in Oct 2012, total lending capacity is €500bn
  • Only lends if borrowing country agrees to fulfil strict economic conditions
  • ESM made loans to rescue banks in Spain (€41.3bn) and Cyprus (€9bn)
  • Germany is biggest ESM contributor (€190bn)
  • Like IMF loans, ESM loans don't add to lenders' national debt
  • ESM bailout takes at least three weeks to organise



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4) Deal on Greek Debt Crisis Exposes Europe’s Deepening Fissures
By

LONDON — Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said about Greece on Sunday that “the most important currency has been lost: that is trust and reliability.” But many Germans think the most important currency that has been lost is the deutsche mark, the symbol of rectitude and confidence that embodied West Germany’s ascent from the ashes of World War II.

That same sense of solidity is badly lacking in the European Union as it confronts the limits of its ambitions, and Monday morning’s painful deal on Greece seems unlikely to restore it.

The latest effort to preserve Greek membership in the eurozone has only deepened the fissures within the European Union between north and south, between advanced economies and developing ones, between large countries and smaller ones, between lenders and debtors, and, just as important, between those 19 countries within the eurozone and the nine outside it.In the name of preserving the “European project” and European “solidarity,” the ultimatum put to Greece required something close to the surrender of the nation’s sovereignty. For all of Greece’s past sins, and for all of the gamesmanship and harsh talk of the governing Syriza party, this outcome arguably had elements of punishment as well as fiscal responsibility.

Whether this is good or bad for Greece, in the end, the Greeks will decide. But it averted an outcome that could have left Europe even more badly fractured. And it highlighted the willingness of some leaders to make a compelling case for unity over narrow national interest, especially President François Hollande of France, who played an important role in mediating between Germany and Greece.

Politically weak and yet contemplating another run for the presidency in 2017, Mr. Hollande displayed leadership and distanced himself from Ms. Merkel and German demands, which many in Europe, especially in France, saw as selfishness and even vindictiveness.

On Monday, Mr. Hollande said that “even if it was long, I think for Europe this was a good night and a good day.” That is true, given the alternatives.

But it will be even better if the European Union can now, after so many years, lift its head from its euro crisis and begin to concentrate on other critical issues: providing economic growth and jobs for its young people, a rational and unified policy on migration, a response to Russian ambitions and aggression in Ukraine and elsewhere, and a British vote on whether to leave the European Union.

A so-called Brexit — an exit by Britain, which is expected to overtake France as Europe’s second-largest economy and is one of Europe’s main military and diplomatic actors, with a seat on the United Nations Security Council — would be far more damaging to the European Union than the departure of tiny, difficult Greece.

Britain, which never joined the euro currency bloc, plans to hold a referendum on whether to remain a member of the European Union by the end of 2017, and Prime Minister David Cameron is negotiating now to change Britain’s terms of membership. The mess over Greece has hardly helped the reputation of the European Union inside Britain, but it may also help Mr. Cameron secure a better deal.

And the challenge to the post-Cold War order in Europe posed by a newly revanchist Russia is a bigger threat to European ideals of peace and stability than Brussels seems to understand.

Together with the migration crisis and Greece, these represent “the four horsemen” circling around Europe’s future, said Rem Korteweg of the Center for European Reform, a research institution based in London.

“The four horsemen threaten the E.U. precisely because they raise issues that can only be solved if governments prioritize a European solution over narrow national agendas,” he said. “If a European answer cannot be found, the horsemen will continue to promote chaos, instability and mutual recrimination” within the European Union.

As for Ms. Merkel, her reputation hangs in the balance, at home and in her role as Europe’s de facto leader. Having rejected a Greek exit from the eurozone three years ago in the name of European solidarity, she has again avoided that outcome. This time, she risked considerable cost to her political standing at home. But what would really damage her legacy is another expensive bailout for Greece that fails.

The crisis that played out over the weekend was just the latest in a series that traces back to the origins and nature of the currency union.

When Germany under Chancellor Helmut Kohl gave in more than two decades ago to the entreaties of President François Mitterrand of France and agreed to give up the deutsche mark for the new common currency, the euro, he did so for the same reason Mr. Kohl had agreed earlier to trade one East German mark for one West German mark: politics.

Economics was never the most important issue, and Mr. Kohl and Mr. Mitterrand, for that matter, ignored the voices that warned against a common currency without common financial institutions or fiscal policies in a set of widely varying economies.

Greece was allowed into the eurozone for largely the same reasons, wishful politics, that put ancient Greece, the core of European culture, at the heart of a European ideal built on civilization and peace. The fact that today’s Greece bears little relationship to the country of Socrates or Pericles was simply ignored. And so was clear evidence, well-known at the time in Brussels, that the Greeks were regularly faking their budgetary figures to qualify for the euro.

The magical thinking involved was that the euro, somehow shorn of politics, would bring all these different economies into closer balance. The last decade has proved that conclusion to be illusory. And Monday’s deal — if it is ratified by an angry Greek Parliament, and by an unhappy German Parliament, and not derailed by smaller countries like Finland whose coalition governments depend on the support of euroskeptic parties — will avert the debacle of a country leaving the common currency for the first time. But by itself, it will do little to strengthen the future of the euro, and it might simply prolong the agony and deepen the divisions.

For many in Europe, the euro’s economic benefits have been offset by the constraints it imposes. For the weaker economies in particular it has become a sort of prison, limiting the ability of elected governments to use budgetary policy to smooth out the ups and downs of the business cycle and eliminating the use of currency fluctuation to help manage national economies.

For Greece, the crisis five years ago was a chance to create a modern democratic capitalist state, which was one of the reasons to join the European Union in the first place. Many Greeks suffered, the debt mountain grew, and finally, as long predicted, the economic squeeze produced a political revolt — and just as Greece had finally seemed to turn an important corner and was running a primary surplus, in other words, financing its current budget and having something left over to pay its debts.

The victory in January of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his Syriza party led to the reversal of some critical economic overhauls demanded by creditors, threw the Greek economy backward and raised even higher the requirement for further loans. Mr. Tsipras bet big but lost. But so have the Greeks.

It is one thing to undergo changes when a government and a people have bought into them as necessary and hopeful — this is how the Baltic nations took the pill of economic austerity and overhaul, and this is largely how Ireland, Portugal and Spain saw matters, too, when faced with implosion.

But it is a far different thing to have further social changes and austerity shoved down one’s throat in an exercise of political power and domination, as many Greeks are no doubt interpreting the outcome of this deal. Carrying out these changes will feel like enforced labor to many Greeks, and especially to the leftist Syriza government, if it survives at all.

As Samuel Johnson said about second marriages, this prospective third bailout of Greece is a triumph of hope over experience. Even more so with Mr. Tsipras and Syriza, their protestations of mandates and sovereignty thrown back into their faces by European colleagues offended by Syriza’s moralizing, and even more, by its gamesmanship.





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5) Alaska Starts Cleaning Up Debris From Japan Spread by 2011 Tsunami
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

JUNEAU, Alaska — A large-scale cleanup is getting underway in Alaska, with tons of marine debris — some of it most likely from the 2011 tsunami in Japan — set to be airlifted from rocky beaches and taken by barge for recycling and disposal in the Pacific Northwest.

Hundreds of heavy-duty bags of debris, collected in 2013 and 2014 and stockpiled in Kodiak, will also be shipped out. The barge is scheduled to arrive in Kodiak by Thursday, before setting off on a roughly one-month venture.

The scope of the project, a year in the making, is virtually unheard-of in Alaska. It was spurred, in part, by the mass of material that has washed ashore — things like buoys, fishing lines, plastics and fuel drums — and the high cost of shipping small boatloads of debris from remote sites to port, said Chris Pallister, president of the cleanup organization Gulf of Alaska Keeper, which is coordinating the effort.The Anchorage landfill also began requiring that fishing nets and lines — common debris — be chopped up, a task described as impossible by Janna Stewart, the state’s tsunami marine debris coordinator.

Mr. Pallister estimates the cost of the project at up to $1.3 million, with the state contributing $900,000 from its share of the $5 million Japan provided for parts of the United States affected by tsunami debris. Crews in British Columbia will be able to add debris to the barge as it passes through, chipping in if they do. Mr. Pallister’s group has committed $100,000. Delays due to weather could drive up costs, which he said was a concern.

The cost to operate the barge is $17,000 a day, Ms. Stewart said.Many of the project sites are remote and rugged. Crews working in places like Montague Island in Prince William Sound, for example, get there by boat and sleep onboard. The need to keep moving down the shoreline as the cleanup progresses, combined with terrain littered with boulders and logs, makes it tough to set up a camp, Mr. Pallister said.

While relatively few people visit these sites, it is important to clean them, Ms. Stewart said. Foam disintegrates, and can seep into salmon streams or be ingested by birds, she said. There is concern, too, about the effect of broken-down plastic on marine life.

What is not picked up can get swept back out, she said.

“It’s like it never really goes away unless we get in there and actively remove it,” Ms. Stewart said.

Alaska has more coastline than any other state. And its cleanup operations often are expensive and dangerous, said Nikolai Maximenko, a senior researcher at the Hawaii-based International Pacific Research Center.

“Even without the tsunami, Alaska is well known for being polluted with all these buoys and other stuff from fisheries activity and from other human activities,” he said.

It can be hard to distinguish tsunami debris from the run-of-the-mill rubbish that has long fouled shorelines unless there are identifiable markings. But Mr. Pallister and others say the type and volume of debris that has washed up in Alaska are different since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which killed thousands in Japan.

Before the tsunami, a lot of old fishing gear would be on the beach. But afterward, the debris included an inundation of Styrofoam and urethane, Mr. Pallister said. Objects like property stakes and crates used by fishermen in coastal Japan have also begun showing up, he said.

Crews plan to do cleanup in the Gulf of Alaska this summer, which will add to the material that has already been cached in heavy-duty bags above the high-tide line. All this will be loaded onto the barge.

The logistics are complicated.

Dump trucks are expected to ferry the large white bags of debris from the Kodiak storage yard to the barge after it arrives. Tom Pogson of the Island Trails Network, which worked on debris removal in the Kodiak area, said that would be the easy part.

In other locations, the bags will be taken by helicopter to the barge, which Mr. Pallister expects will be “pretty maxed out” when the barge, roughly the size of a football field, is fully loaded.

Debris will be sorted for recycling in Seattle, with the remaining debris taken by train for disposal in Oregon, according to the State Department of Environmental Conservation.


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6) Rising Economic Insecurity Tied to Decades-Long Trend in Employment Practices
"According to a study by the economists Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney, most men were earning substantially less in 2009 than men of similar ages and education did in 1969, adjusted for inflation."
By NOAM SCHEIBER

When the California Labor Commissioner’s Office ruled last month that an Uber driver was an employee deserving of a variety of workplace protections — and was not, as the company maintained, an independent contractor — it highlighted the divided feelings many Americans have about what is increasingly being called the “gig economy.”

On one hand, start-ups like Uber, which is appealing the decision, and Lyft make it possible to conjure up rides on a smartphone in a few seconds’ time.

On the other, Uber — which directly employs fewer than 4,000 of the more than 160,000 people in the United States who depend on it for at least part of their livelihood — and similar companies pose a challenge to longstanding notions of what it means to hold a job.

As it happens, though, Uber is not so much a labor-market innovation as the culmination of a generation-long trend. Even before the founding of the company in 2009, the United States economy was rapidly becoming an Uber economy writ large, with tens of millions of Americans involved in some form of freelancing, contracting, temping or outsourcing.

The decades-long shift to these more flexible workplace arrangements, the venture capitalist Nick Hanauer and the labor leader David Rolf argue in the latest issue of Democracy Journal, is a “transformation that promises new efficiencies and greater flexibility for ‘employers’ and ‘employees’ alike, but which threatens to undermine the very foundation upon which middle-class America was built.”

Along with other changes, like declining unionization and advancing globalization, the increasingly arm’s-length nature of employment helps explain why incomes have stagnated and why most Americans remain deeply anxious about their economic prospects six years after the Great Recession ended.

Last year, 23 percent of Americans told Gallup they worried that their working hours would be cut back, up from percentages in the low to midteens in the years leading up to the recession. Twenty-four percent said they worried that their wages would be reduced, up from the mid- to high teens before the recession.

Even if the economy continues to improve, the lingering malaise will almost certainly be the central issue in next year’s presidential election.

On Monday, Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to give a speech outlining her vision for improving the economic fortunes of the middle class. Leading Republicans, like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, have framed their policy ideas as an attempt to solve economic insecurity and the erosion of middle-class incomes.

But the tidal wave sweeping through the American economy has already reshaped the political landscape — from the rise of an anti-Wall Street movement on the left to the Tea Party on the right — and is sowing frustration among a large mass of voters.

“Whether America will be America or not hinges on whether we have a downward spiral around wages,” said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, a think tank closely aligned with Mrs. Clinton. “People know things are changing. They don’t feel like anyone has a handle on it. There’s a yearning for a political vision that addresses that.”

In retrospect, the Uberization of the economy began innocently enough back in the late 1970s.

David Weil, who runs the Wage and Hour Division of the United States Labor Department, describes in his recent book, “The Fissured Workplace,” how investors and management gurus began insisting that companies pare down and focus on what came to be known as their “core competencies,” like developing new goods and services and marketing them.

Far-flung business units were sold off. Many other activities — beginning with human resources and then spreading to customer service and information technology — could be outsourced. The corporate headquarters would coordinate among the outsourced workers and monitor their performance.

Cost was unquestionably an advantage of the new approach: Workers were typically cheaper when off the corporate payroll than on it, and the arrangement allowed a company to staff up as needed rather than employ a full complement of workers at all times.

But simply cutting costs wasn’t the primary motivation. The real advantage was to enable the organization to focus on what it did best rather than distract itself with tasks for which it had little expertise and which were not especially profitable.

Since the early 1990s, as technology has made it far easier for companies to outsource work, that trend has evolved beyond what anyone imagined: Companies began to see themselves as thin, Uber-like slivers standing between customers on one side and their work forces on the other.

“In the past, firms overstaffed and offered workers stable hours,” said Susan N. Houseman, a labor economist at the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. “All of these new staffing models mean shifting risk onto workers, making work less secure.”

The hospitality industry has led the transformation. In the 1960s, according to data cited by Dr. Weil, only a small fraction of United States motels were franchised, meaning they weren’t owned and typically weren’t managed by the chains that branded and marketed them. As of 1986, the franchised figure was 68 percent worldwide for the top hotel chains, like Hilton and Marriott. By 2006, it was 78 percent.

The hotels are frequently owned by outside investors and run by separate management companies, which, in turn, contract out a variety of other functions, like housekeeping, maintenance and janitorial services. Industrywide, wages have fallen since 2000, and labor law violations are rampant.

Though the broader phenomenon of shifting work to nonemployees is difficult to quantify, data on contingent workers suggests rapid growth in the last decade.

The number for the category of jobs mostly performed by part-time freelancers or part-time independent contractors, according to Economic Modeling Specialists Intl., a labor market analytics firm, grew to 32 million from just over 20 million between 2001 and 2014, rising to almost 18 percent of all jobs. Surveys, including one by the advisory firm Staffing Industry Analysts of nearly 200 large companies, point to similar changes.

Apple is a vivid example of the trend toward relying on outsiders, directly employing fewer than 10 percent of the more than one million workers around the world who are involved in designing, making and selling all those iMacs and iPhones.

The leaner, more flexible workplace is unquestionably a boon to many workers. A company called HourlyNerd, based in Boston, connects alumni of top business schools and other specialized programs to companies with projects in need of completing, like market analysis or examinations of pricing strategy. The most sought-after experts enjoy a steady stream of work, earn well into six figures and can winter in Buenos Aires if they choose.

“I had an offer from another consulting firm, but I wanted more flexibility with my life,” said Carlos Castelán, who started taking on HourlyNerd projects while still at Harvard Business School and now plans to build his career around the platform. “I can work from home, have more control of my schedule.”

It is not just people with advanced degrees who can benefit. Corey Becker spent a few years working as an independent contractor for a company called Cascom, which in turn contracted with Time Warner Cable to install cable, Internet and phone service. Mr. Becker was paid by the task, not by the hour.

He was hard-working and efficient, and had no family obligations. He recalled that he made $1,000 to $1,500 in a typical 60-hour week, before taxes and expenses on tools, gas and vehicle upkeep, which he shouldered himself. “I thought it was a great deal,” Mr. Becker said.

But many of his colleagues did not fare so well. “Some of the techs were slow, not as good at it,” he said. “Or the home was a mess and you had to fix it — you’re working longer for the same result, same payout.”

Mr. Becker estimated that in some cases, these technicians’ hourly pay would fall below minimum wage. In 2009, the Labor Department sued Cascom for misclassifying workers as independent contractors; a judge ruled against the company in 2011 and later awarded some 250 installers nearly $1.5 million in back wages and damages.

Such arrangements can send even highly skilled workers into a precarious state. Unlike many of their colleagues in the fast-growing legal outsourcing and temping market, lawyers who work for Axiom, one of the industry’s leading players, receive health insurance, paid time off, 401(k)’s and money comparable to what they would make at a traditional firm or corporation. Yet many live with the uncertainty of not knowing how long they will go between assignments, during which time they earn no income from the company.

“When I’m done with this job, it could be a month, two months” before another one, said a lawyer who worked for Axiom until 2013 and requested anonymity to avoid drawing attention to her current employer. “It was a stress point for me. My family depends on me.” (An Axiom official said the company worked hard to minimize unwanted downtime, which he said had fallen significantly in the last few years.)

Contingent workers still represent a limited corner of the nation’s approximately $17.5 trillion economy. But even many full-time employees share an underlying anxiety that is a result, according to the sociologist Arne L. Kalleberg, author of “Good Jobs, Bad Jobs,” of the severing of the “psychological contract between employers and employees in which stability and security were exchanged for loyalty and hard work.”

All of which helps explain a discouraging trend in incomes. According to a study by the economists Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney, most men were earning substantially less in 2009 than men of similar ages and education did in 1969, adjusted for inflation.

Sara Horowitz, founder and executive director of the Freelancers Union, an advocacy organization, puts the scale of the dislocation on a par with that caused by the spread of railroads before and after the Civil War and the boom in the mass production of goods during the early 20th century.

“The economic argument is that those who have power in the labor market do better, and traditionally it’s been higher-skilled workers,” Ms. Horowitz said. “Today, it’s unclear who has the skills necessary to remain relevant amid all the disruptions.”


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7) Eric Garner Case Is Settled by New York City for $5.9 Million
By

New York City reached a settlement with the family of Eric Garner on Monday, agreeing to pay $5.9 million to resolve a wrongful-death claim over his killing by the police on Staten Island last July, the city comptroller and a lawyer for the family said.

The agreement, reached a few days before the anniversary of Mr. Garner’s death, headed off one legal battle even as a federal inquiry into the killing and several others at the state and local level remain open and could provide a further accounting of how he died.

Still, the settlement was a pivotal moment in a case that has engulfed the city since the afternoon of July 17, 2014, when two officers approached Mr. Garner as he stood unarmed on a sidewalk, and accused him of selling untaxed cigarettes. One of the officers used a chokehold — prohibited by the Police Department — to subdue him, and that was cited by the medical examiner as a cause of Mr. Garner’s death.The killing of Mr. Garner, 43, followed by the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., in August, set off a national debate about policing actions in minority communities and racial discrimination in the criminal justice system.

Mr. Garner’s final words — “I can’t breathe” — repeated 11 times, became a national rallying cry. A Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer who used the chokehold, Daniel Pantaleo, fueled weeks of demonstrations. The protests eased after two police officers in Brooklyn were fatally shot in December by a man who suggested he was avenging the deaths of Mr. Garner and Mr. Brown.

The killings of the officers shook the city anew, deepening tensions between the police and Mayor Bill de Blasio and slowing a push to enact a host of criminal justice reforms. Last year, Mr. Garner’s relatives, including his widow, Esaw Garner, and his mother, Gwen Carr, filed a notice of claim — a procedural step that must precede a lawsuit — against the city. In the notice, they said were seeking $75 million in damages. Since then, the family has been in talks with the comptroller’s office.

“Mr. Garner’s death is a touchstone in our city’s history and in the history of the entire nation,” the comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, said in a telephone interview late on Monday. “Financial compensation is certainly not everything, and it can’t bring Mr. Garner back. But it is our way of creating balance and giving a family a certain closure.”

The family had given the city a deadline of Friday, the anniversary of the death, to come to an agreement or the relatives would move forward with the lawsuit, Jonathan C. Moore, the lawyer for Mr. Garner’s family, said. (In wrongful-death cases, the claimants have two years to file suit.)

The agreement came after months of halting negotiations. It was among the biggest settlements reached so far as part of a strategy by Mr. Stringer, to settle major civil rights claims even before a lawsuit is filed. He has said the aim is to save taxpayers the expense, and families the pain, of a long legal process. He said five lawyers from his office were involved in the negotiations, which ended on Monday.

But the resolution of the legal claim against the city did not provide any greater clarity on the actions of the officers that day or on the policing strategies that have come under criticism in the year that has followed.The relatives of Mr. Garner, along with Mr. Moore, are expected to discuss the settlement at a news conference scheduled for Tuesday morning at the Harlem offices of the National Action Network, led by the Rev. Al Sharpton.

On Saturday, Mr. Garner’s family is expected to lead a rally outside the Brooklyn offices of the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York to call for a federal case to be brought against the officers involved in Mr. Garner’s death.

“This is not about people getting money,” Mr. Sharpton said on Monday. “This is about justice. We’ve got to restructure our police departments and how we deal with policing nationwide.”

The city medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, citing the chokehold and the compression of Mr. Garner’s chest by other officers who held him down.

Several inquiries into Mr. Garner’s death were still pending, including investigations by the United States attorney’s office, the Civilian Complaint Review Board and state health officials, who are looking into the actions of emergency medical responders in treating Mr. Garner.

The Police Department has concluded its internal investigation but has yet to say whether any officers would be disciplined.

The agreement with the city does not cover the private hospital that sent the responders, Richmond University Medical Center. As Mr. Garner lay on the ground, he was not given oxygen. While a hospital spokesman said there were no lawsuits against it over Mr. Garner’s death, Mr. Moore on Monday said the family had also reached a financial settlement with the hospital before a suit was filed; the amount of that agreement was confidential, he said.

“It’s not ‘mission accomplished,’ but at least it brings a measure of justice to the family,” Mr. Moore said.Mr. de Blasio, speaking to reporters shortly before the settlement was reached, said the anniversary of Mr. Garner’s death was on his mind. “I think it’s on the mind of many New Yorkers,” the mayor said. “I think we’ve come a long way, even in the last year, in terms of bringing police and community together.”After the settlement, Mr. de Blasio said in a statement that he hoped “the Garner family can find some peace and finality” from it.

In recent months, the comptroller’s office has reached major settlements in several cases without a suit being filed, effectively cutting out involvement by the city’s Law Department.

Mr. Stringer reached a $6.4 million deal with David Ranta, who was imprisoned for 23 years after a wrongful-murder conviction, and a $2.25 million settlement with the family of Jerome Murdough, who died in an overheated cell at the Rikers Island jail complex.

But while the approach spares the city and those hurt by it from protracted legal fights, it has come under criticism for sidelining experienced lawyers at the Law Department who might better gauge the city’s legal liability.

“The determination of appropriate damage levels is a complex, nuanced process,” said Victor A. Kovner, a former city corporation counsel. “The notion that the comptroller, without the benefit of that experience, seeks to make these resolutions on his own is in my experience grandstanding and against the city’s interest.”

Mr. Kovner said settlements in wrongful-death and police-brutality cases must take into account the pain and suffering of the person as well as future earnings and financial damage to the family. In the case of Mr. Garner, his apparent suffering in video images would have probably been a major factor in any settlement discussions.

In 2001, a suit brought by Abner Louima, a Haitian man tortured with a broomstick while in police custody at a Brooklyn precinct station house in 1997, was settled for $8.75 million.

That agreement was reached three years into the suit brought by Mr. Louima and came after federal trials in which several officers were convicted in the attack, including one who was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Nearly five years after the killing of Amadou Diallo in 1999, the city settled with his relatives for $3 million. The city settled a suit over the 2006 fatal shooting of Sean Bell for $3.25 million.

Mr. Stringer defended his approach in Mr. Garner’s case, saying it was appropriate in one of such magnitude and importance. “The work of our general counsel and the lawyers involved in this case and others has proved the quality and seriousness of the way we have looked at these cases,” he said. “We don’t settle every case that comes our way.”



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8) In Texas, a Military Exercise Is Met by Some With Suspicion
By

CHRISTOVAL, Tex. — The beige-metal community center on Main Street here next door to the fire station, the scene of 4-H Club meetings and family reunions, may never be the same. Jade Helm 15 begins today.

One resident said a friend of his, a Vietnam veteran, started burying some of his firearms to hide them. A farmer was rumored to have taken a different approach, by buying 20,000 rounds of ammunition. The superintendent of the school district thought he saw low-flying military cargo planes overhead. Members of the Christoval Volunteer Fire Department, which owns the community center, signed an agreement with military officials stating — oddly to some, suspiciously to others — that the Army will pay for any damage to the building after it uses it.

Sindy Miller, who runs a hair salon on Main Street, said fears of a military takeover have been the talk of this West Texas town, southeast of Midland.

“They’re worried that they’re going to come in and take their firearms away,” Ms. Miller said. “Martial law, basically. I try not to listen to all these conspiracy-theory-type people. All they’re worried about is their beer and their guns.”

Jade Helm 15, an eight-week military exercise that has generated paranoia for months fueled by conservative bloggers and Internet postings, begins Wednesday in Texas and six other states: Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Utah.

The Army’s Green Berets, Navy SEALs and other Special Operations troops will be conducting drills on private property, military bases and some public facilities. According to military documents, more than 1,200 service members will participate in the operation in Texas, in more than a dozen mostly small towns and rural counties.

Army officials say there is no cause for alarm.

“The public can expect little disruption in their day-to-day activities since much of the exercise will be conducted in remote areas,” the organizer of the exercise, the Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., said in a statement Monday.

But in a larger sense, Jade Helm 15 has already caused disruptions, particularly in Texas.

On the orders of Gov. Greg Abbott, the Texas State Guard will monitor Jade Helm 15 from Camp Mabry in Austin, the state capital. So will at least one national group of unofficial monitors and protesters that calls itself Counter Jade Helm. It plans to have teams of volunteers follow Army vehicles and post their locations to its website. Army planners and local elected officials have been busy answering questions from apprehensive residents and holding briefings for the Sheriffs’ Association of Texas, the San Angelo Tea Party and county commissioners.

Off-base training exercises involving role-playing are not new — candidates for the Army’s Special Forces take part in a four-week drill known as Robin Sage in rural North Carolina — but the size and scope of Jade Helm 15 make it unusual.

The military exercise will train Special Operations troops in what Army planners call “unconventional warfare.” The exercise is being conducted in rural Texas because the military needed “large areas of undeveloped land with low population densities with access to towns,” and wanted soldiers to adapt to unfamiliar terrain as well as social and economic conditions, according to Army documents.

In East Texas, near the Louisiana border, the troops have permission in Marion County to use their aircraft on a private runway. The community center in Christoval will be used for, as one local official described it, “an altercation site.” A nighttime helicopter “extraction” will unfold in Disaster City, a mock community in College Station where emergency responders train.

Local officials who have been briefed on the exercise say it is modeled after the French resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II. It calls for some military personnel to play the role of the occupiers and for others to work undetected as part of the resistance. Military maps show Texas and Utah as “hostile,” other states as “permissive,” and still others as uncertain but leaning hostile or friendly.

Much of the paranoia over Jade Helm 15 is the outgrowth of an anti-Obama sentiment that is widespread in Texas and parts of the Southwest.

“It stems from an absolute distrust with the Obama administration,” said Judge Stephen C. Floyd of Tom Green County, its top elected official. “I share a lot of their distrust of the Obama administration and their rule-making, but I have a great deal of confidence in the U.S. military.”

According to some right-wing bloggers and activists, the exercise is part of a secret plot by the Obama administration to impose martial law, confiscate firearms, invade red-state Texas or prepare for instituting “total population control.” A report on Infowars, a website operated by Alex Jones, a libertarian-leaning talk radio host from Texas, suggested Helm was an acronym for Homeland Eradication of Local Militants.

Military organizers have not explained the meaning of the exercise’s name, its slogan (“Master the Human Domain”) or its logo, which features a Dutch wooden clog at the center of two intersecting arrows and a sword.

The level of realism sought by Army planners, and uncertainty about whether troops will try to blend in with civilians during the exercise, have heightened the curiosity and unease among some Texans. The military has told local officials that fire extinguishers will be at each training site and that some personnel may carry weapons loaded with blank ammunition or paintball-style training cartridges. According to a PowerPoint presentation prepared by military organizers for Texas officials, some Jade Helm 15 participants “may conduct suspicious activities” as part of their training and others “will be wearing civilian attire and driving civilian vehicles.”In April, Mr. Abbott was criticized for giving legitimacy to conspiracy theorists when he ordered the Texas State Guard to monitor Jade Helm 15. The governor has been getting regular updates since then about the preparations for the exercise, but a spokesman for him said he has no concerns about it. “The Special Operations Command has assured Texas that this exercise poses no risk to anyone, and the governor sees no reason to worry or doubt them,” said the spokesman, John Wittman.

In Christoval, an unincorporated town of about 500, Scott Degenaer, 53, smoked a cigarillo outside his home and said he was not sure what to think about Jade Helm 15. But he had suspicions. Two flags flapped in the breeze on his porch: an American flag and a Confederate battle flag. Signs on his house and in the yard read, “Pray for America” and “Warning: The door you are about to break down is locked for your protection!”

Mr. Degenaer, a Navy veteran, said that he saw a Black Hawk helicopter flying over Christoval on Sunday, and that he understood the paranoia that would lead some people to bury firearms.

“With Obama being in there,” he said, “with the way he’s already stomped all over the Constitution, pushing his presidential authority to the max, it would only be just the stroke of a pen for him to do away with that. This man is just totally anti-U.S. I mean, he just signed a deal with Iran.”

Throughout the interview, Mr. Degenaer was skeptical whether the reporter and photographer who spoke with him were members of the news media and wondered if they were part of Jade Helm 15. “Spec Ops grows beards,” he said, referring to the photographer’s facial hair. “Y’all got a military ID?”

While much of the attention on Jade Helm 15 has focused on conspiracy theories, Army planners have spent months quietly persuading private property owners and small-town leaders to welcome them to their communities. Many local officials and ranchers have granted troops access to their land and buildings, without asking for compensation in return.

In the West Texas town of Eldorado, the local authorities gave the Army approval to use a vacant hospital for office space, although the Army did not ask to use it. And Eldorado’s longtime mayor, John Nikolauk, said he is allowing the troops to use his ranch.

“We’re a very patriotic part of the country and we think it’s great,” said Mr. Nikolauk, a former United States Air Force pilot.

Mr. Nikolauk and other local officials said they considered the Internet rumors about Jade Helm 15 far-fetched.

“If the government has an idea they can come in and take over, and take guns away, the stupidest place they could come is West Texas,” said Bill Ford, a commissioner in Tom Green County whose district includes Christoval. “There’s more guns and ammo here and more people willing to use them than any combat area they’ve fought in. Bad things aren’t going to happen here.”




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9) Judge Orders Release of Video of 2013 Police Shooting in California
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge ordered a suburban Los Angeles city on Tuesday to release video of the police fatally shooting an unarmed man two years ago.

The public should be able to see what led the city of Gardena to pay $4.7 million to settle a lawsuit with the family of the dead man and another wounded man, Judge Stephen V. Wilson said. His order was stayed by a federal appeals court late in the day, after the video was released and made public by the news media.

The Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg asked for the release.

Police car videos show the killing of Ricardo Diaz-Zeferino, who was stopped by the police investigating a bicycle theft .

Mr. Diaz-Zeferino, 34, was trying to help his brother find his stolen bike. He was shot when he did not obey officers’ commands to stand still with his hands in the air, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney in a report outlining why the office did not charge the officers. Witnesses said that Mr. Diaz-Zeferino was trying to tell officers that two other friends they had stopped were the wrong men. An autopsy found he was drunk and had methamphetamine in his system.


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10) Black Children in U.S. Are Much More Likely to Live in Poverty, Study Finds
"Black children were almost four times as likely as white children to be living in poverty in 2013....About 38.3 percent of black children lived in poverty in 2013, nearly four times the rate for white children, at 10.7 percent. About 30.4 percent of Hispanic children and 10.1 percent of Asian children live in poverty."
By

WASHINGTON — Black children were almost four times as likely as white children to be living in poverty in 2013, a new report has found, the latest evidence that the economic recovery is leaving behind some of the United States’ most vulnerable citizens.

The share of American children living in poverty fell to about 20 percent in 2013 from 22 percent in 2010, according to the report by the Pew Research Center, which analyzed data from the United States Census Bureau.

But the poverty rate remained stable for black children, while it fell for Hispanic, white and Asian children, a sign of just how pervasive and stubborn poverty has been for African-Americans, according to the report. About 38.3 percent of black children lived in poverty in 2013, nearly four times the rate for white children, at 10.7 percent. About 30.4 percent of Hispanic children and 10.1 percent of Asian children live in poverty.

For the first time since the federal government started collecting the data, the number of black children in poverty appears to have overtaken the number of poor white children, even though white children far outnumber black children in the American population, the report said. About 4.2 million black children were living in poverty in 2013, compared with 4.1 million white children, though researchers said the difference was not statistically significant.

A household in poverty in 2013 was defined as a family of four, two of whose members were children, living on an annual income of less than $23,624.

In actual numbers, there were still more Hispanic children in poverty, 5.4 million, than any other group, researchers said, a ranking the group has held since at least 2008. The Hispanic population is larger and younger than any other racial or ethnic group, and the child poverty rate is relatively high.

Eileen Patten, a research analyst who tracks social trends at the Pew Research Center, said she and a colleague had discovered the pattern while updating a routine graphic, and decided to bring it to light.

“The fact that the trajectory has been different for blacks than for these other groups, that caught our attention,” she said. “We were surprised the story had not been told like this since this data had been around for a while.”

The census data was released in the fall.

Researchers did not investigate the reasons black children were lagging. One possible driver was the unemployment rate, which has been consistently higher for African-Americans than for most other racial and ethnic groups, and which took longer to fall after the recession, Ms. Patten said.

The child poverty rate is closely related to the unemployment rate, as children are more likely to be poor if their parents are unemployed.




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11) Eric Garner’s Family Says Settlement Will Not Stall Push for Police Reform
“It’s a buyout without justice,” ...“They pay us out without the justice. Where’s the justice at?” 
By and NIKITA STEWART


The releases were signed by the relatives of Eric Garner and delivered late on Monday to the New York City comptroller — seven signatures on nearly identical two-page forms, line after line with none of the import of the moment apart from one number: $5.9 million.

It was the culmination of months of negotiations, punctuated by divisions among family members and a paternity test of a young child, that ended in what the comptroller’s office described as the largest settlement in the history of the city over a killing by police officers.

The amount showed “an appreciation by the city that there was wrongdoing,” said Jonathan C. Moore, the lawyer for the family, even if no wrongdoing was formally admitted.

But because the case was settled through the comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, before a lawsuit was ever filed, many questions remained unanswered, both for the family and for advocates of police reform.The releases contain no information on how the money should be divided, unlike in a formal settlement during a lawsuit, or any mention of the circumstances of Mr. Garner’s death. The comptroller does not have the power to compel changes in police practices, which Mr. Garner’s relatives have sought.


On Tuesday, his relatives were quick to distance themselves from the monetary figure, reached through a consideration of the pain Mr. Garner suffered during an officer’s chokehold on Staten Island and the lasting impact of his death on his widow, mother and surviving children.

In a subdued news conference alongside the Rev. Al Sharpton at the National Action Network headquarters, Mr. Garner’s family emphasized that the payment would not mute their push for police reform, nor would it soften their loss.

Mr. Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, said people had been congratulating her since the settlement was announced. “Don’t congratulate us; this is not a victory,” Ms. Carr said. “The victory will come when we get justice.”

The agreement, reached a few days before the anniversary of Mr. Garner’s death, comes as a federal inquiry and several other investigations into the killing continue. On Tuesday, relatives appealed to Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney general, to bring federal charges against the officers involved in Mr. Garner’s death. A rally is planned for Saturday in Brooklyn.

“We’re asking the federal government, which we’ve been asking them for a whole year, to come and take Eric Garner’s case,” Ms. Carr said at the news conference. “As you know, at the grand jury, we didn’t receive justice even though my son said he couldn’t breathe 11 times.”

Negotiations over the settlement were sometimes complicated by divisions among Mr. Garner’s relatives, Mr. Sharpton said in an interview after the news conference, describing a series of phone calls and meetings that were used to mend differences and reach an accord.

Family members who have experienced tragedy do not always see eye to eye, he said.

“Yeah, you had disagreements in the family on strategy and tactics,” he said, declining to go into detail, adding that every family member was committed to getting justice.

Plaintiff’s lawyers said the case of Mr. Garner’s death differed from other killings by the police because of video capturing his final pleas for breath and because of the number of children who could claim damages. Five are named in the release forms.

“I was dealing with someone who left no dependents and there was no conscious pain and suffering because he died instantly,” said Anthony H. Gair, the lawyer for the family of Amadou Diallo, killed in hail of police bullets in 1999. The city made no significant offer “until the very, very end,” he said, ultimately settling the case for $3 million.

Joel Berger, a former city lawyer who now represents plaintiffs in lawsuits against the police, said the city would have fought hard had the family pressed on with a suit. “The Law Department is notorious for dragging these things out,” Mr. Berger said. “It can be very emotionally draining for the family to have to go through all that.”

Mr. Berger said that even if a suit had gone forward, the Law Department “always takes the position that it has no power to compel the Police Department to do anything.” (A spokesman for the Law Department declined to comment on Tuesday except to say that Mr. Stringer had “exercised his discretion” in reaching a settlement.)

Indeed, one of Mr. Garner’s daughters, Emerald Garner, 23, who works in crisis management at the National Action Network, Mr. Sharpton’s organization, said in an interview that the family wanted to avoid having his death replayed publicly.

She said the family decided it was best to settle now “if we can avoid watching the video again in front of 50 million people.” The family’s comments on Tuesday, she said, were intended to correct the perception that they were money hungry.

Andrew G. Celli Jr., a civil rights lawyer with Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady, said many clients struggled with the idea of financial awards for the death of a loved one. Most want the officer involved jailed or fired, he said, and have to be convinced that, to some degree, “justice is measured by money going from the bank account of the City of New York to your bank account.”

Mr. Garner, 43, died on July 17, 2014, after an officer, Daniel Pantaleo, held him in a chokehold — a maneuver prohibited by the Police Department — and others helped wrestle him to the ground. Mr. Garner, who was unarmed, was suspected of selling untaxed cigarettes. The chokehold was cited by the medical examiner as a cause of Mr. Garner’s death.

Mr. Sharpton said the national movement over the killing of unarmed black men set off by the killing of Mr. Garner, and by the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., soon after, would not stop until “we have changed how policing goes.”

“Money is a recognition of the loss of the family,” he said, “but it does not deal with the criminal and other wrong done to this family and other families.”

The $5.9 million will be paid as a lump sum within 90 days of papers’ being filed with the Surrogate’s Court, which, because Mr. Garner did not have a will, is charged with deciding how to divide it among the relatives, based on state law. Some of the money may be taxable though how much is a complex calculation.

Jewel Miller, whose daughter with Mr. Garner was born a few months before his death, did not appear at the news conference. Their daughter, Legacy, will receive part of the city’s payment. (A paternity test was performed during the negotiations.)

In a phone interview on Tuesday, Ms. Miller echoed the calls for accountability.

“It’s a buyout without justice,” she said. “They pay us out without the justice. Where’s the justice at?”

Benjamin Mueller contributed reporting.


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12) Puerto Rico, Running Short of Cash, Misses a Debt Payment
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A financing unit of the Puerto Rican government failed to make a $93.7 million debt-service payment on Wednesday, underscoring recent warnings by Gov. Alejandro García Padilla that the commonwealth, which is seeking a “negotiated moratorium” on its $72 billion of debt, is fast running out of cash.

The unit, the Public Finance Corporation, was created to help with the central government’s chronic budget deficits. It has a little more than $1 billion in outstanding bonds.

The corporation’s bonds are backed by a promise that the Puerto Rican legislature will appropriate the cash needed to pay them down. But officials said that for this fiscal year, which began July 1, lawmakers did not appropriate the funds.

“In accordance with the terms of these bonds, the transfer was not made due to the non-appropriation of funds,” said Melba Acosta Febo, head of the Government Development Bank.Bonds backed by legislative appropriations are generally considered a weaker credit than general-obligation bonds, and defaulting on such debt is arguably less of a provocation. General-obligation debt is secured by the “good faith and credit” of the central government, and in Puerto Rico it is also backed by an unusual constitutional promise to pay such bonds before any other expenditures. So far Puerto Rico has been making its scheduled payments on its $13 billion of general-obligation bonds.

But Puerto Rico has other payments coming due soon, including $276 million by the end of September to a fund that collects cash to distribute to the general-obligation bondholders. And on Aug. 1, another arm of the government, the Government Development Bank, is scheduled to repay $140 million of principal.

Over the past year much of Puerto Rico’s general-obligation debt was acquired at deeply discounted prices by hedge funds, which stand to make a profit if other types of debt go unpaid, leaving more cash to pay the general-obligation bonds.

Bills have been introduced in both houses of Congress allowing Puerto Rico’s public enterprises access to the bankruptcy courts under Chapter 9; if that were enacted, Puerto Rico might be able to impair its revenue debts. But so far the bills have not won the support of congressional Republicans.

In June, Mr. García Padilla said in an interview with The New York Times that Puerto Rico was in “a death spiral” and he had no choice but to seek relief.

That raised questions about a $416 million revenue-bond payment coming due on July 1, from a large government power authority known as Prepa.

Mr. García Padilla had expressed concern about parting with so much money just before hurricane season, when Prepa was likely to need to marshal its resources for repairs.

But market sources said that at the last minute, monoline insurers that had guaranteed Prepa’s bonds provided enough cash to avoid a default. For them, a default would have triggered costly insurance claims.


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13) Video of 2013 Police Shooting of Unarmed Man Renews Familiar Questions
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A video of the fatal shooting by police officers of an unarmed man in Gardena, Calif., is once again raising unsettling questions about whether a police shooting was justified — and illustrating the power of video to dispute the accounts of officers.

The man, Ricardo Diaz-Zeferino, was leaving a bar with a group of friends on a Saturday night in June 2013 when they were stopped by the police, who were investigating a report of a robbery. During the encounter, officers fatally shot Mr. Diaz-Zeferino, 32, and wounded Eutiquio Acevedo Mendez.

Although the men were unarmed, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office cleared the police of wrongdoing. The City of Gardena, however, took the unusual step of agreeing to pay $4.7 million to the families before the start of a civil trial.The encounter was filmed on a police dashboard camera, but the Gardena Police Department, which has equipped its vehicles with such cameras for more than 10 years, opposed requests by news organizations to make the video public.

This week, though, a federal court ordered the video, which was compiled from the camera images from at least three squad cars, to be released. Now the district attorney’s decision is being questioned.

“None of these guys had ever been arrested; they were all hard-working guys trying to support their families and just doing what young men do on a Saturday night,” said R. Samuel Paz, a lawyer who represents Mr. Mendez and the family of Mr. Diaz-Zeferino. Mr. Paz also called for the Justice Department to conduct a civil rights investigation of the Gardena Police Department.

The men, who the responding police officers suspected had stolen a bicycle, were the brother and a friend of a man whose bicycle was stolen minutes earlier. Mr. Diaz-Zeferino and Mr. Mendez had set out to try to find it.

Jim Bueermann, the president of the Police Foundation, a Washington organization dedicated to improving the quality of policing, called the episode “an awful, yet lawful police use of force.”

He said the dispatcher’s initial mistake of calling the episode a robbery, a crime in which force or threat is used, when the unlocked bicycle had simply been ridden away, was a significant error because it put the officers on edge. He said the officers had also made a number of errors, including giving multiple commands and not seeking cover behind their squad cars.

“They call this ‘officer precipitated,’ meaning that the use of poor tactics makes it necessary for officers to have to use violence,” said Mr. Bueermann, a former police chief of Redlands, Calif.

The death of Mr. Diaz-Zeferino occurred more than a year before the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., last August, and attracted relatively little public attention before the release of the video.

That is in stark contrast to the recent series of deaths of other unarmed people killed by police officers and captured on video that have aroused public anger and prompted pledges of sweeping changes by police departments, including requiring officers to wear body cameras.

The police video in the Gardena case picks up after the group of men left the bar and were looking for the stolen bicycle. An officer is heard ordering Mr. Diaz-Zeferino, Mr. Mendez and a third man, Jose Garcia, to raise their hands. Mr. Mendez and Mr. Garcia, who had been riding bicycles, complied.Mr. Diaz-Zeferino initially raised his arms, then reached into his back pocket and appeared to drop something onto the ground.

As arriving officers shouted orders in English and in Spanish — at times they told the men to raise their hands, and at others to get on their knees and to lie on the ground — Mr. Diaz-Zeferino gestured as if confused.

Witnesses said he had been trying to tell officers that they had stopped the wrong people.

He is seen variously raising and dropping his arms. He took a few awkward steps into the street and removed a baseball cap he had been wearing. Then, as he appeared to be raising his arms again, the cap still in his hands, the officers opened fire.

Mr. Diaz-Zeferino was struck eight times. Mr. Mendez was struck once.

In their court depositions, the officers said they believed that Mr. Diaz-Zeferino had been reaching for a weapon.

In clearing the four officers, the district attorney’s office concluded, “They made a split-second decision and they were not required to hold fire in order to ascertain whether Diaz would, in fact, injure or kill them.”

A toxicology report found that Mr. Diaz-Zeferino had a blood alcohol level of 0.22 percent, significantly above the 0.08 percent level that qualifies as driving while impaired in California, and tested positive for methamphetamine.

Chief Ed Medrano of the Gardena Police Department said in a statement that since the shooting, the department had initiated new training procedures, “including the tactical use of cover techniques to slow down fast-moving events.”

He also said the department would soon equip all its officers with body cameras.


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