Viva la revolución
Fidel Castro, Siempre Presente
Note: With the sad news of the passing of Fidel Castro I can't help but be reminded of seeing him on the stage in Pretoria, South Africa at the inauguration of Nelson Mandela in 1994. I was blessed to be there for the event. What an honor and thrill that was. In combination with the African National Congress and South African liberation movement, it was the Cuban troops that demoralized and defeated the South African military that then, finally, led to the downfall of the apartheid state. Castro was remarkable and defiant throughout it all. Here is Mandela referring to this in 1991 while in Cuba:"We come here with a sense of the great debt that is owed the people of Cuba ... What other country can point to a record of greater selflessness than Cuba has displayed in its relations to Africa?" (Mandela - Global Learning)Yes, countless South Africans wisely love him for his diligence and commitment in helping to end the painful apartheid system that oppressed the Southern African region altogether. Countless numbers of those of us involved in the anti-apartheid movement outside of South Africa also adore the great man. Not only did Cuba play a major role in the downfall of apartheid but in its aftermath, Cuba also assisted Africans in their advancement in education and in medicine. Here is some information about this:ELAM (Latin American School of Medicine) Cuba Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina (ELAM), formerly Escuela Latinoamericana de Ciencias Médicas (in Spanish; in English: Latin American School of Medicine (LASM), formerly Latin American School of Medical Sciences), is a major international medical school in Cuba and a prominent part of the Cuban healthcare system.Established in 1999 and operated by the Cuban government, ELAM has been described as possibly being the largest medical school in the world by enrollment with approximately 19,550 students from 110 countries reported as enrolled in 2013.[1] All those enrolled are international students from outside Cuba and mainly come from Latin America and the Caribbean as well as Africa and Asia. The school accepts students from the United States - 91 were reportedly enrolled as of January 2007. Tuition, accommodation and board are free, and a small stipend is provided for students ....Preference is given to applicants who are financially needy and/or people of color who show the most commitment to working in their poor communities.
(Wikipedia).
Below is an article by scholar Piero Gleijeses about Cuba's important role in Africa.
Thank you Fidel Castro and the Cuban people - we honor you for your service to freedom and justice.
Peace, Heather Gray
URL - Justice Initiative International
Piero GleijesesWhy South Africa Loves Cuba
Piero Gleijeses is a professor of American foreign policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. All quotes from the article are drawn from his latest book: Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991, The University of North Carolina Press, 2013.
January 14, 2014
Global Learning
While the American news media recently focused on "the handshake" between President Obama and Raúl Castro, it is worth pondering why the organizers of Nelson Mandela's memorial service invited Raúl Castro to be one of only six foreign leaders-of the ninety-one in attendance-to speak at the ceremony. Not only was Raúl Castro accorded that honor, but he also received by far the warmest introduction: "We now will get an address from a tiny island, an island of people who liberated us ... the people of Cuba," the chairperson of the African National Congress (ANC) said. Such words echo what Mandela himself said when he visited Cuba in 1991: "We come here with a sense of the great debt that is owed the people of Cuba ... What other country can point to a record of greater selflessness than Cuba has displayed in its relations to Africa?"
Many factors led to the demise of apartheid. The white South African government was defeated not just by the power of Mandela, the courage of the South African people, or the worldwide movement to impose sanctions. It was also brought down by the defeat of the South African military in Angola. This explains the prominence of Raúl Castro at the memorial service: it was Cuban troops that humiliated the South African army. In the 1970s and 1980s, Cuba changed the course of history in southern Africa despite the best efforts of the United States to prevent it.
In October 1975, the South Africans, encouraged by the Gerald Ford administration, invaded Angola to crush the leftwing Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). They would have succeeded had not 36,000 Cuban soldiers suddenly poured into Angola. By April 1976, the Cubans had pushed the South Africans out. As the CIA noted, Castro had not consulted Moscow before sending his troops (as is clear from later tense meetings with the Soviet leadership in the 1980s.) The Cubans, Kissinger confirmed in his memoirs, had confronted the Soviets with a fait accompli. Fidel Castro understood that the victory of Pretoria (with Washington in the wings) would have tightened the grip of white domination over the people of southern Africa. It was a defining moment: Castro sent troops to Angola because of his commitment to what he has called "the most beautiful cause," the struggle against apartheid. As Kissinger observed later, Castro "was probably the most genuine revolutionary leader then in power."
The tidal wave unleashed by the Cuban victory in Angola washed over South Africa. "Black Africa is riding the crest of a wave generated by the Cuban success in Angola," noted the World, South Africa's major black newspaper. "Black Africa is tasting the heady wine of the possibility of realizing the dream of total liberation." Mandela later recalled hearing about the Cuban victory in Angola while he was incarcerated on Robben Island. "I was in prison when I first heard of the massive aid that the internationalist Cuban troops were giving to the people of Angola. ... We in Africa are accustomed to being the victims of countries that want to grab our territory or subvert our sovereignty. In all the history of Africa this is the only time a foreign people has risen up to defend one of our countries."
Pretoria, however, had not given up: even after retreating from the Cubans, it hoped to topple Angola's MPLA government. Cuban troops remained in Angola to protect it from another South African invasion. Even the CIA conceded that they were "necessary to preserve Angolan independence." In addition, the Cubans trained ANC guerrillas as well as SWAPO rebels, who were fighting for the independence of Namibia from the South Africans who illegally occupied it. From 1981 to 1987, the South Africans launched bruising invasions of southern Angola. It was a stalemate-until November 1987, when Castro decided to push the South Africans out of the country once and for all. His decision was triggered by the fact that the South African army had cornered the best units of the Angolan army in the southern Angolan town of Cuito Cuanavale. And his decision was made possible by the Iran Contra scandal rocking Washington. Until the Iran-Contra scandal exploded in late 1986, weakening and distracting the Reagan administration, the Cubans had feared that the United States might launch an attack on their homeland. They had therefore been unwilling to deplete their stocks of weapons. But Iran Contra defanged Reagan, and freed Castro to send Cuba's best planes, pilots, and antiaircraft weapons to Angola. His strategy was to break the South African offensive against Cuito Cuanavale in the southeast and then attack in the southwest, "like a boxer who with his left hand blocks the blow and with his right-strikes."
On March 23, 1988, the South Africans launched their last major attack against Cuito Cuanavale. It was an abject failure. The US Joint Chiefs of Staff noted, "The war in Angola has taken a dramatic and-as far as the South Africans are concerned-an undesirable turn." The Cubans' left hand had blocked the South African blow while their right hand was preparing to strike: powerful Cuban columns were moving towards the Namibian border, pushing the South Africans back. Cuban MIG-23s began to fly over northern Namibia. US and South African documents prove that the Cubans gained the upper hand in Angola. The Cubans demanded that Pretoria withdraw unconditionally from Angola and allow UN-supervised elections in Namibia. The US Joint Chiefs of Staff warned that if South Africa refused, the Cubans were in a position "to launch a well-supported offensive into Namibia." The South Africans acknowledged their dilemma: if they refused the Cuban demands, they ran "the very real risk of becoming involved in a full-scale conventional war with the Cubans, the results of which are potentially disastrous." The South African military was grim: "We must do the utmost to avoid a confrontation." Pretoria capitulated. It accepted the Cubans' demands and withdrew unconditionally from Angola and agreed to UN supervised elections in Namibia, which SWAPO won.
The Cuban victory reverberated beyond Namibia and Angola. In the words of Nelson Mandela, the Cuban victory "destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor ... [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa ... Cuito Cuanavale was the turning point for the liberation of our continent-and of my people-from the scourge of apartheid."
https://justiceinitiativeinternational.wordpress.com/2016/11/26/honoring-fidel-casto-and-the-cubans-in-african-liberation/
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North Dakota: Stop Using Cold Water to Blast Unarmed Protestors in Sub-Freezing Temperatures
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International Committee
for Peace, Justice and Dignity
Message from the National Boricua Human Rights Network
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We are asking all organizations, communities, unions, churches, activists, political parties- to CALL ON THEIR INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS to sign this petition and spread the word- this is a time-sensitive request!
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Thanksgivings
by Glen Ford
"The "country" they claimed as their own was fathered by genocide and mothered by slavery...Those bastards burned the Pequot women and children, and ushered in the multinational business of slavery. These are facts. The myth is an insidious diversion – and worse...."Manifest Destiny" was born at Plymouth Rock and Jamestown, later to fall (to paraphrase Malcolm) like a rock on Mexico, the Philippines, Haiti, Nicaragua, etc."
This article originally appeared in the November 27, 2003, issue of The Black Commentator, which Glen Ford co-founded and edited.
http://blackagendareport.com/american_genocidal_thanksgivings
Nobody but Americans celebrates Thanksgiving. It is reserved by history and the intent of "the founders" as the supremely white American holiday, the most ghoulish event on the national calendar. No Halloween of the imagination can rival the exterminationist reality that was the genesis, and remains the legacy, of the American Thanksgiving. It is the most loathsome, humanity-insulting day of the year – a pure glorification of racist barbarity.
We at are thankful that the day grows nearer when the almost four centuries-old abomination will be deprived of its reason for being: white supremacy. Then we may all eat and drink in peace and gratitude for the blessings of humanity's deliverance from the rule of evil men.
Thanksgiving is much more than a lie – if it were that simple, an historical correction of the record of events in 1600s Massachusetts would suffice to purge the "flaw" in the national mythology. But Thanksgiving is not just a twisted fable, and the mythology it nurtures is itself inherently evil. The real-life events – subsequently revised – were perfectly understood at the time as the first, definitive triumphs of the genocidal European project in New England. The near-erasure of Native Americans in Massachusetts and, soon thereafter, from most of the remainder of the northern English colonial seaboard was the true mission of the Pilgrim enterprise – Act One of the American Dream. African Slavery commenced contemporaneously – an overlapping and ultimately inseparable Act Two.
The last Act in the American drama must be the "root and branch" eradication of all vestiges of Act One and Two – America's seminal crimes and formative projects. Thanksgiving as presently celebrated – that is, as a national political event – is an affront to civilization.
Celebrating the unspeakable
White America embraced Thanksgiving because a majority of that population glories in the fruits, if not the unpleasant details, of genocide and slavery and feels, on the whole, good about their heritage: a cornucopia of privilege and national power. Children are taught to identify with the good fortune of the Pilgrims. It does not much matter that the Native American and African holocausts that flowed from the feast at Plymouth are hidden from the children's version of the story – kids learn soon enough that Indians were made scarce and Africans became enslaved. But they will also never forget the core message of the holiday: that the Pilgrims were good people, who could not have purposely set such evil in motion. Just as the first Thanksgivings marked the consolidation of the English toehold in what became the United States, the core ideological content of the holiday serves to validate all that has since occurred on these shores – a national consecration of the unspeakable, a balm and benediction for the victors, a blessing of the fruits of murder and kidnapping, and an implicit obligation to continue the seamless historical project in the present day.
Nobody but Americans celebrates Thanksgiving. It is reserved by history and the intent of "the founders" as the supremely white American holiday, the most ghoulish event on the national calendar. No Halloween of the imagination can rival the exterminationist reality that was the genesis, and remains the legacy, of the American Thanksgiving. It is the most loathsome, humanity-insulting day of the year – a pure glorification of racist barbarity.
We at are thankful that the day grows nearer when the almost four centuries-old abomination will be deprived of its reason for being: white supremacy. Then we may all eat and drink in peace and gratitude for the blessings of humanity's deliverance from the rule of evil men.
Thanksgiving is much more than a lie – if it were that simple, an historical correction of the record of events in 1600s Massachusetts would suffice to purge the "flaw" in the national mythology. But Thanksgiving is not just a twisted fable, and the mythology it nurtures is itself inherently evil. The real-life events – subsequently revised – were perfectly understood at the time as the first, definitive triumphs of the genocidal European project in New England. The near-erasure of Native Americans in Massachusetts and, soon thereafter, from most of the remainder of the northern English colonial seaboard was the true mission of the Pilgrim enterprise – Act One of the American Dream. African Slavery commenced contemporaneously – an overlapping and ultimately inseparable Act Two.
The last Act in the American drama must be the "root and branch" eradication of all vestiges of Act One and Two – America's seminal crimes and formative projects. Thanksgiving as presently celebrated – that is, as a national political event – is an affront to civilization.
Celebrating the unspeakable
White America embraced Thanksgiving because a majority of that population glories in the fruits, if not the unpleasant details, of genocide and slavery and feels, on the whole, good about their heritage: a cornucopia of privilege and national power. Children are taught to identify with the good fortune of the Pilgrims. It does not much matter that the Native American and African holocausts that flowed from the feast at Plymouth are hidden from the children's version of the story – kids learn soon enough that Indians were made scarce and Africans became enslaved. But they will also never forget the core message of the holiday: that the Pilgrims were good people, who could not have purposely set such evil in motion. Just as the first Thanksgivings marked the consolidation of the English toehold in what became the United States, the core ideological content of the holiday serves to validate all that has since occurred on these shores – a national consecration of the unspeakable, a balm and benediction for the victors, a blessing of the fruits of murder and kidnapping, and an implicit obligation to continue the seamless historical project in the present day.
The Thanksgiving story is an absolution of the Pilgrims, whose brutal quest for absolute power in the New World is made to seem both religiously motivated and eminently human. Most importantly, the Pilgrims are depicted as victims – of harsh weather and their own naïve yet wholesome visions of a new beginning. In light of this carefully nurtured fable, whatever happened to the Indians, from Plymouth to California and beyond, in the aftermath of the 1621 dinner must be considered a mistake, the result of misunderstandings – at worst, a series of lamentable tragedies. The story provides the essential first frame of the American saga. It is unalloyed racist propaganda, a tale that endures because it served the purposes of a succession of the Pilgrims' political heirs, in much the same way that Nazi-enhanced mythology of a glorious Aryan/German past advanced another murderous, expansionist mission.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/subscribe02
Thanksgiving is quite dangerous – as were the Pilgrims.
Rejoicing in a cemetery
The English settlers, their ostensibly religious venture backed by a trading company, were glad to discover that they had landed in a virtual cemetery in 1620. Corn still sprouted in the abandoned fields of the Wampanoags, but only a remnant of the local population remained around the fabled Rock. In a letter to England, Massachusetts Bay colony founder John Winthrop wrote, "But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection."
Ever diligent to claim their own advantages as God's will, the Pilgrims thanked their deity for having "pursued" the Indians to mass death. However, it was not divine intervention that wiped out most of the natives around the village of Patuxet but, most likely, smallpox-embedded blankets planted during an English visit or slave raid. Six years before the Pilgrim landing, a ship sailed into Patuxet's harbor, captained by none other than the famous seaman and mercenary soldier John Smith, former leader of the first successful English colony in the New World, at Jamestown, Virginia. Epidemic and slavery followed in his wake, as Debra Glidden described in IMDiversity.com:
In 1614 the Plymouth Company of England, a joint stock company, hired Captain John Smith to explore land in its behalf. Along what is now the coast of Massachusetts in the territory of the Wampanoag, Smith visited the town of Patuxet according to "The Colonial Horizon," a 1969 book edited by William Goetzinan. Smith renamed the town Plymouth in honor of his employers, but the Wampanoag who inhabited the town continued to call it Patuxet.
The following year Captain Hunt, an English slave trader, arrived at Patuxet. It was common practice for explorers to capture Indians, take them to Europe and sell them into slavery for 220 shillings apiece. That practice was described in a 1622 account of happenings entitled "A Declaration of the State of the Colony and Affairs in Virginia," written by Edward Waterhouse. True to the explorer tradition, Hunt kidnapped a number of Wampanoags to sell into slavery.
Another common practice among European explorers was to give "smallpox blankets" to the Indians. Since smallpox was unknown on this continent prior to the arrival of the Europeans, Native Americans did not have any natural immunity to the disease so smallpox would effectively wipe out entire villages with very little effort required by the Europeans. William Fenton describes how Europeans decimated Native American villages in his 1957 work "American Indian and White relations to 1830." From 1615 to 1619 smallpox ran rampant among the Wampanoags and their neighbors to the north. The Wampanoag lost 70 percent of their population to the epidemic and the Massachusetts lost 90 percent.
Most of the Wampanoag had died from the smallpox epidemic so when the Pilgrims arrived they found well-cleared fields which they claimed for their own. A Puritan colonist, quoted by Harvard University's Perry Miller, praised the plague that had wiped out the Indians for it was "the wonderful preparation of the Lord Jesus Christ, by his providence for his people's abode in the Western world."
Historians have since speculated endlessly on why the woods in the region resembled a park to the disembarking Pilgrims in 1620. The reason should have been obvious: hundreds, if not thousands, of people had lived there just five years before.
In less than three generations the settlers would turn all of New England into a charnel house for Native Americans, and fire the economic engines of slavery throughout English-speaking America. Plymouth Rock is the place where the nightmare truly began.
The uninvited?
It is not at all clear what happened at the first – and only – "integrated" Thanksgiving feast. Only two written accounts of the three-day event exist, and one of them, by Governor William Bradford, was written 20 years after the fact. Was Chief Massasoit invited to bring 90 Indians with him to dine with 52 colonists, most of them women and children? This seems unlikely. A good harvest had provided the settlers with plenty of food, according to their accounts, so the whites didn't really need the Wampanoag's offering of five deer. What we do know is that there had been lots of tension between the two groups that fall. John Two-Hawks, who runs the Native Circle web site, gives a sketch of the facts:
"Thanksgiving' did not begin as a great loving relationship between the pilgrims and the Wampanoag, Pequot and Narragansett people. In fact, in October of 1621 when the pilgrim survivors of their first winter in Turtle Island sat down to share the first unofficial 'Thanksgiving' meal, the Indians who were there were not even invited! There was no turkey, squash, cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie. A few days before this alleged feast took place, a company of 'pilgrims' led by Miles Standish actively sought the head of a local Indian chief, and an 11 foot high wall was erected around the entire Plymouth settlement for the very purpose of keeping Indians out!"
It is much more likely that Chief Massasoit either crashed the party, or brought enough men to ensure that he was not kidnapped or harmed by the Pilgrims. Dr. Tingba Apidta, in his "Black Folks' Guide to Understanding Thanksgiving," surmises that the settlers "brandished their weaponry" early and got drunk soon thereafter. He notes that "each Pilgrim drank at least a half gallon of beer a day, which they preferred even to water. This daily inebriation led their governor, William Bradford, to comment on his people's 'notorious sin,' which included their 'drunkenness and uncleanliness' and rampant 'sodomy.'"
Soon after the feast the brutish Miles Standish "got his bloody prize," Dr. Apidta writes:
"He went to the Indians, pretended to be a trader, then beheaded an Indian man named Wituwamat. He brought the head to Plymouth, where it was displayed on a wooden spike for many years, according to Gary B. Nash, 'as a symbol of white power.' Standish had the Indian man's young brother hanged from the rafters for good measure. From that time on, the whites were known to the Indians of Massachusetts by the name 'Wotowquenange,' which in their tongue meant cutthroats and stabbers."
What is certain is that the first feast was not called a "Thanksgiving" at the time; no further integrated dining occasions were scheduled; and the first, official all-Pilgrim "Thanksgiving" had to wait until 1637, when the whites of New England celebrated the massacre of the Wampanoag's southern neighbors, the Pequots.
The real Thanksgiving Day Massacre
The Pequots today own the Foxwood Casino and Hotel, in Ledyard, Connecticut, with gross gaming revenues of over $9 billion in 2000. This is truly a (very belated) miracle, since the real first Pilgrim Thanksgiving was intended as the Pequot's epitaph. Sixteen years after the problematical Plymouth feast, the English tried mightily to erase the Pequots from the face of the Earth, and thanked God for the blessing.
Having subdued, intimidated or made mercenaries of most of the tribes of Massachusetts, the English turned their growing force southward, toward the rich Connecticut valley, the Pequot's sphere of influence. At the point where the Mystic River meets the sea, the combined force of English and allied Indians bypassed the Pequot fort to attack and set ablaze a town full of women, children and old people.
William Bradford, the former Governor of Plymouth and one of the chroniclers of the 1621 feast, was also on hand for the great massacre of 1637:
"Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so that they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire...horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy."
The rest of the white folks thought so, too. "This day forth shall be a day of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequots," read Governor John Winthrop's proclamation. The authentic Thanksgiving Day was born.
Most historians believe about 700 Pequots were slaughtered at Mystic. Many prisoners were executed, and surviving women and children sold into slavery in the West Indies. Pequot prisoners that escaped execution were parceled out to Indian tribes allied with the English. The Pequot were thought to have been extinguished as a people. According to IndyMedia, "The Pequot tribe numbered 8,000 when the Pilgrims arrived, but disease had brought their numbers down to 1,500 by 1637. The Pequot 'War' killed all but a handful of remaining members of the tribe."
But there were still too many Indians around to suit the whites of New England, who bided their time while their own numbers increased to critical, murderous mass.
Guest's head on a pole
By the 1670s the colonists, with 8,000 men under arms, felt strong enough to demand that the Pilgrims' former dinner guests the Wampanoags disarm and submit to the authority of the Crown. After a series of settler provocations in 1675, the Wampanoag struck back, under the leadership of Chief Metacomet, son of Massasoit, called King Philip by the English. Metacomet/Philip, whose wife and son were captured and sold into West Indian slavery, wiped out 13 settlements and killed 600 adult white men before the tide of battle turned. A 1996 issueof the Revolutionary Worker provides an excellent narrative.
In their victory, the settlers launched an all-out genocide against the remaining Native people. The Massachusetts government offered 20 shillings bounty for every Indian scalp, and 40 shillings for every prisoner who could be sold into slavery. Soldiers were allowed to enslave any Indian woman or child under 14 they could capture. The "Praying Indians" who had converted to Christianity and fought on the side of the European troops were accused of shooting into the treetops during battles with "hostiles." They were enslaved or killed. Other "peaceful" Indians of Dartmouth and Dover were invited to negotiate or seek refuge at trading posts – and were sold onto slave ships.
It is not known how many Indians were sold into slavery, but in this campaign, 500 enslaved Indians were shipped from Plymouth alone. Of the 12,000 Indians in the surrounding tribes, probably about half died from battle, massacre and starvation.
After King Philip's War, there were almost no Indians left free in the northern British colonies. A colonist wrote from Manhattan's New York colony: "There is now but few Indians upon the island and those few no ways hurtful. It is to be admired how strangely they have decreased by the hand of God, since the English first settled in these parts." In Massachusetts, the colonists declared a "day of public thanksgiving" in 1676, saying, "there now scarce remains a name or family of them [the Indians] but are either slain, captivated or fled."
Fifty-five years after the original Thanksgiving Day, the Puritans had destroyed the generous Wampanoag and all other neighboring tribes. The Wampanoag chief King Philip was beheaded. His head was stuck on a pole in Plymouth, where the skull still hung on display 24 years later.
This is not thought to be a fit Thanksgiving tale for the children of today, but it's the real story, well-known to the settler children of New England at the time – the white kids who saw the Wampanoag head on the pole year after year and knew for certain that God loved them best of all, and that every atrocity they might ever commit against a heathen, non-white was blessed.
There's a good term for the process thus set in motion: nation-building.
Roots of the slave trade
The British North American colonists' practice of enslaving Indians for labor or direct sale to the West Indies preceded the appearance of the first chained Africans at the dock in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. The Jamestown colonists' human transaction with the Dutch vessel was an unscheduled occurrence. However, once the African slave trade became commercially established, the fates of Indians and Africans in the colonies became inextricably entwined. New England, born of up-close-and-personal, burn-them-in-the-fires-of-hell genocide, led the political and commercial development of the English colonies. The region also led the nascent nation's descent into a slavery-based society and economy.
Ironically, an apologist for Virginian slavery made one of the best, early cases for the indictment of New England as the engine of the American slave trade. Unreconstructed secessionist Lewis Dabney's 1867 book "A Defense of Virginia" traced the slave trade's origins all the way back to Plymouth Rock:
The planting of the commercial States of North America began with the colony of Puritan Independents at Plymouth, in 1620, which was subsequently enlarged into the State of Massachusetts. The other trading colonies, Rhode Island and Connecticut, as well as New Hampshire (which never had an extensive shipping interest), were offshoots of Massachusetts. They partook of the same characteristics and pursuits; and hence, the example of the parent colony is taken here as a fair representation of them.
The first ship from America, which embarked in the African slave trade, was the Desire, Captain Pierce, of Salem; and this was among the first vessels ever built in the colony. The promptitude with which the "Puritan Fathers" embarked in this business may be comprehended, when it is stated that the Desire sailed upon her voyage in June, 1637. [Note: the year they massacred the Pequots.] The first feeble and dubious foothold was gained by the white man at Plymouth less than seventeen years before; and as is well known, many years were expended by the struggle of the handful of settlers for existence. So that it may be correctly said, that the commerce of New England was born of the slave trade; as its subsequent prosperity was largely founded upon it. The Desire, proceeding to the Bahamas, with a cargo of "dry fish and strong liquors, the only commodities for those parts," obtained the negroes from two British men-of-war, which had captured them from a Spanish slaver.
Thus, the trade of which the good ship Desire, of Salem, was the harbinger, grew into grand proportions; and for nearly two centuries poured a flood of wealth into New England, as well as no inconsiderable number of slaves. Meanwhile, the other maritime colonies of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and Connecticut, followed the example of their elder sister emulously; and their commercial history is but a repetition of that of Massachusetts. The towns of Providence, Newport, and New Haven became famous slave trading ports. The magnificent harbor of the second, especially, was the favorite starting-place of the slave ships; and its commerce rivaled, or even exceeded, that of the present commercial metropolis, New York. All the four original States, of course, became slaveholding.
The Revolution that exploded in 1770s New England was undertaken by men thoroughly imbued with the worldview of the Indian-killer and slave-holder. How could they not be? The "country" they claimed as their own was fathered by genocide and mothered by slavery – its true distinction among the commercial nations of the world. And these men were not ashamed, but proud, with vast ambition to spread their exceptional characteristics West and South and wherever their so-far successful project in nation-building might take them – and by the same bloody, savage methods that had served them so well in the past.
At the moment of deepest national crisis following the battle of Gettysburg in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln invoked the national fable that is far more central to the white American personality than Lincoln's battlefield "Address." Lincoln seized upon the 1621 feast as the historic "Thanksgiving" – bypassing the official and authentic 1637 precedent – and assigned the dateless, murky event the fourth Thursday in November.
Lincoln surveyed a broken nation, and attempted nation-rebuilding, based on the purest white myth. The same year that he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he renewed the national commitment to a white manifest destiny that began at Plymouth Rock. Lincoln sought to rekindle a shared national mission that former Confederates and Unionists and white immigrants from Europe could collectively embrace. It was and remains a barbaric and racist national unifier, by definition. Only the most fantastic lies can sanitize the history of the Plymouth Colony of Massachusetts.
"Like a rock"
The Thanksgiving holiday fable is at once a window on the way that many, if not most, white Americans view the world and their place in it, and a pollutant that leaches barbarism into the modern era. The fable attempts to glorify the indefensible, to enshrine an era and mission that represent the nation's lowest moral denominators. Thanksgiving as framed in the mythology is, consequently, a drag on that which is potentially civilizing in the national character, a crippling, atavistic deformity. Defenders of the holiday will claim that the politically-corrected children's version promotes brotherhood, but that is an impossibility – a bald excuse to prolong the worship of colonial "forefathers" and to erase the crimes they committed. Those bastards burned the Pequot women and children, and ushered in the multinational business of slavery. These are facts. The myth is an insidious diversion – and worse.
Humanity cannot tolerate a 21st Century superpower, much of whose population perceives the world through the eyes of 17th Century land and flesh bandits. Yet that is the trick that fate has played on the globe. We described the roots of the planetary dilemma in our March 13 commentary, "Racism & War, Perfect Together."
The English arrived with criminal intent - and brought wives and children to form new societies predicated on successful plunder. To justify the murderous enterprise, Indians who had initially cooperated with the squatters were transmogrified into "savages" deserving displacement and death. The relentlessly refreshed lie of Indian savagery became a truth in the minds of white Americans, a fact to be acted upon by every succeeding generation of whites. The settlers became a singular people confronting the great "frontier" - a euphemism for centuries of genocidal campaigns against a darker, "savage" people marked for extinction.
The necessity of genocide was the operative, working assumption of the expanding American nation. "Manifest Destiny" was born at Plymouth Rock and Jamestown, later to fall (to paraphrase Malcolm) like a rock on Mexico, the Philippines, Haiti, Nicaragua, etc. Little children were taught that the American project was inherently good, Godly, and that those who got in the way were "evil-doers" or just plain subhuman, to be gloriously eliminated. The lie is central to white American identity, embraced by waves of European settlers who never saw a red person.
Only a century ago, American soldiers caused the deaths of possibly a million Filipinos whom they had been sent to "liberate" from Spanish rule. They didn't even know who they were killing, and so rationalized their behavior by substituting the usual American victims. Colonel Funston, of the Twentieth Kansas Volunteers, explained what got him motivated in the Philippines:
"Our fighting blood was up and we all wanted to kill 'niggers.' This shooting human beings is a 'hot game,' and beats rabbit hunting all to pieces." Another wrote that "the boys go for the enemy as if they were chasing jack-rabbits .... I, for one, hope that Uncle Sam will apply the chastening rod, good, hard, and plenty, and lay it on until they come into the reservation and promise to be good 'Injuns.'"
Last week in northern Iraq another American colonel, Joe Anderson of the 101st Airborne (Assault) Division, revealed that he is incapable of perceiving Arabs as human beings. Colonel Anderson, who doubles as a commander and host of a radio call-in program and a TV show designed to win the hearts and minds of the people of Mosul, had learned that someone was out to assassinate him. In the wild mood swing common to racists, Anderson decided that Iraqis are all alike – and of a different breed. He said as much to the Los Angeles Times.
"They don't understand being nice," said Anderson, who helps oversee the military zone that includes Mosul and environs. He doesn't hide his irritation after months dedicated to restoring the city: "We spent so long here working with kid gloves, but the average Iraqi guy will tell you, 'The only thing people respect here is violence…. They only understand being shot at, being killed. That's the culture.' … Nice guys do finish last here."
Col. Anderson personifies the unfitness of Americans to play a major role in the world, much less rule it. "We poured a lot of our heart and soul into trying to help the people," he bitched, as if Americans were God's gift to the planet. "But it can be frustrating when you hear stupid people still saying, 'You're occupiers. You want our oil. You're turning our country over to Israel.'" He cannot fathom that other people – non-whites – aspire to run their own affairs, and will kill and die to achieve that basic right.
What does this have to do with the Mayflower? Everything. Although possibly against their wishes, the Pilgrims hosted the Wampanoag for three no doubt anxious days. The same men killed and enslaved Wampanoags immediately before and after the feast. They, their newly arrived English comrades and their children roasted hundreds of neighboring Indians alive just 16 years later, and two generations afterwards cleared nearly the whole of New England of its indigenous "savages," while enthusiastically enriching themselves through the invention of transoceanic, sophisticated means of enslaving millions. The Mayflower's cultural heirs are programmed to find glory in their own depravity, and savagery in their most helpless victims, who can only redeem themselves by accepting the inherent goodness of white Americans.
Thanksgiving encourages these cognitive cripples in their madness, just as it is designed to do.
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Black Children Punished for Anthem Protests
After young 11 and 12-year-boys of the Beaumont Bulls football knelt during the anthem to protest police violence against Black youth, their local executive board canceled their entire football season, suspended the coaching staff, and threatened to arrest their parents if they attended any future games, practices or events.
For these young Black kids, the plight of injustice in America is their own. Instead of supporting the boys and their protests, their executive board and league officials abandoned them. The board has decided to strip these kids of the team that they love to punish them for asking for basic rights and dignities. This is about the board reinforcing that police violence in our communities doesn't matter, that our issues aren't important and that speaking onthem makes you subject to punishment.
These kids are brave for refusing to give in to the executive board and for standing against injustice. We need to support the fight of these children and show them that their protest is heard.
To the Beaumont Bulls Executive Board,
Immediately reinstate the Beaumont Bulls coaching staff, apologize to the boys and their parents, and allow them to finish their season.
Sincerely,
We need to support the fight of these children and show them that their protest is heard.
http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/black-children-punished-anthem-protests/?sp_ref=239333099.176.176140.e.558213.2&referring_akid=6495.1114646.XlU2ME&source=em_sp
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After young 11 and 12-year-boys of the Beaumont Bulls football knelt during the anthem to protest police violence against Black youth, their local executive board canceled their entire football season, suspended the coaching staff, and threatened to arrest their parents if they attended any future games, practices or events.
For these young Black kids, the plight of injustice in America is their own. Instead of supporting the boys and their protests, their executive board and league officials abandoned them. The board has decided to strip these kids of the team that they love to punish them for asking for basic rights and dignities. This is about the board reinforcing that police violence in our communities doesn't matter, that our issues aren't important and that speaking onthem makes you subject to punishment.
These kids are brave for refusing to give in to the executive board and for standing against injustice. We need to support the fight of these children and show them that their protest is heard.
To the Beaumont Bulls Executive Board,
Immediately reinstate the Beaumont Bulls coaching staff, apologize to the boys and their parents, and allow them to finish their season.
Sincerely,
We need to support the fight of these children and show them that their protest is heard.
http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/black-children-punished-anthem-protests/?sp_ref=239333099.176.176140.e.558213.2&referring_akid=6495.1114646.XlU2ME&source=em_sp
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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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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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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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Support Chelsea's petition to reduce sentence to time served
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Support Chelsea's petition to Obama:
Reduce sentence to time served
"New York Times, November 14, 2016 -- Chelsea Manning, who confessed to disclosing archives of secret diplomatic and military documents to WikiLeaks in 2010 and has been incarcerated longer than any other convicted leaker in American history, has formally petitioned President Obama to reduce the remainder of her 35-year sentence to the more than six years she has already served."
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Sign the whitehouse.gov petition in
support of Chelsea's request today!
Official clemency application from Chelsea Manning.
November 10, 2016
Also coverage by the Guardian and the New York Times. November 14, 2016
Washington DC action this Saturday!The White House Committee to Pardon Chelsea Manning invites you to join them this Saturday, November 19th from noon to 2pm in front of the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC. They are calling on President Obama to pardon Chelsea Manning. Facebook page for more info.
Fort Leavenworth vigil this Sunday! The Kansas City Peace and Social Justice group is organizing a vigil for Chelsea this Sunday, November 20th at 2pm at the public right-of-way near the long driveway into Ft. Leavenworth, near Metropolitan & North 10th Street.
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Chelsea tried committing suicide
a second time in October
Chelsea has been informed that the Army will hold another disciplinary hearing on the second attempted suicide, which was prompted by the punishment given by the first disciplinary hearing following her initial suicide attempt.
New York Times
November 4, 2016
Chelsea Manning tried to commit suicide last month as she was starting a week of solitary confinement at the prison barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., her punishment for a previous attempt to end her life in July.
Ms. Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who is serving a 35-year sentence for leaking archives of secret documents to WikiLeaks, disclosed the attempted suicide, which took place Oct. 4, in a statement she dictated over the phone to a member of her volunteer support network. She asked that it be sent this week to The New York Times, according to members of the network who want to keep their identities private.
Chase Strangio, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer representing Ms. Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning, confirmed the attempt, which raised new questions about the military's handling of the troubled soldier, dating to when she was permitted to deploy to Iraq and kept at her post in a secure facility despite signs of erratic behavior.
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Sign the whitehouse.gov petition in
support of Chelsea's request today!
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Letter from a prisoner involved in the current prison strike:
Texas Prison Officials retaliate against me
for protesting prison slavery
By Keith "Malik" Washington
Keith "Malik" Washington Reports (Nov. 13, 2016):
TDCJ Has Transferred Me Again; the Struggle Must Continue
Revolutionary greetings, sisters and brothers;
On Nov. 10, 2016 the State of Texas transferred me and 43 other men to the Administrative Segregation Unit at the East Ham Unit in Lovelady, Texas.
East Ham is one of the oldest units in the state. The conditions there are much worse than at the Telford Unit. The most glaring issue for prisoners and guards alike is contaminated drinking water!! High levels of copper and lead have been found in the water supply. The water has a horrible stench to it, like the sulfuric smell you get from roadside excavation projects. And the taste? – Absolutely repulsive!
I will need the help of our environmentalist comrades at the Human Rights Defense Center's Prison Ecology Project as well as our comrades at Earth First! Journal. The situation here is similar to the one at Wallace Pack Unit, where there are high levels of arsenic in the water (See the exposés by Panagiotis Tsolas at https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/author/panagioti-tsolkas/).
The cells here are extremely small; outside recreation is limited to 2 or 3 times per week. A lieutenant who in 2012 unplugged the fans at the Estelle Unit during 100-degree weather is now a major here at East Ham. His job is to administer the Ad-Seg unit where I am housed. I described my experience with this officer (James Kent) in a 2014 article in SF Bay View (http://sfbayview.com/2014/03/panther-unleashed/).
Bright spots here are the food and the Muslim community. The food at East Ham is very good, as it was at the Pack Unit, but what is the sense in having good food if the pipes and plumbing have corroded to the point that the water supply is toxic?
The Muslim community here is full of conscious New Afrikan/Black men who stand firm on the square of righteousness. But I am isolated from the entire General Population, and it will only be through the pages of SF Bay View and Burning Spear that I will be able to communicate with the thousands of men and wimmin who have joined the movement to Abolish Prison Slavery and amend the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution.
Sisters and brothers, I would like to thank all of you who have sent me postcards and letters of support. Please note my new address below.
No matter what dirty tricks the state plays, I will not abandon this fight. Socialists of all creeds, colors and economic backgrounds must unite and form a party that can gain the trust and loyalty of the workers and oppressed masses.
I will need help contacting the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the EPA as I attempt to expose and correct the water problem. I still need legal aid and media help as we push forward the agenda of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee.
The election of Donald Trump should be used as a rallying point to all dedicated Servants of the People. During the Holiday Season please make a healthy financial donation to my favorite newspapers, San Francisco Bay View and Turning the Tide.
Dare to struggle, dare to win! All power to the people!
Keith H. Washington #1487958
East Ham Unit
2665 Prison Road #1
Lovelady, TX 75851
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Letter from a prisoner involved in the current prison strike:
Texas Prison Officials retaliate against me
for protesting prison slavery
By Keith "Malik" Washington
Keith "Malik" Washington Reports (Nov. 13, 2016):
TDCJ Has Transferred Me Again; the Struggle Must Continue
Revolutionary greetings, sisters and brothers;
On Nov. 10, 2016 the State of Texas transferred me and 43 other men to the Administrative Segregation Unit at the East Ham Unit in Lovelady, Texas.
East Ham is one of the oldest units in the state. The conditions there are much worse than at the Telford Unit. The most glaring issue for prisoners and guards alike is contaminated drinking water!! High levels of copper and lead have been found in the water supply. The water has a horrible stench to it, like the sulfuric smell you get from roadside excavation projects. And the taste? – Absolutely repulsive!
I will need the help of our environmentalist comrades at the Human Rights Defense Center's Prison Ecology Project as well as our comrades at Earth First! Journal. The situation here is similar to the one at Wallace Pack Unit, where there are high levels of arsenic in the water (See the exposés by Panagiotis Tsolas at https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/author/panagioti-tsolkas/).
The cells here are extremely small; outside recreation is limited to 2 or 3 times per week. A lieutenant who in 2012 unplugged the fans at the Estelle Unit during 100-degree weather is now a major here at East Ham. His job is to administer the Ad-Seg unit where I am housed. I described my experience with this officer (James Kent) in a 2014 article in SF Bay View (http://sfbayview.com/2014/03/panther-unleashed/).
Bright spots here are the food and the Muslim community. The food at East Ham is very good, as it was at the Pack Unit, but what is the sense in having good food if the pipes and plumbing have corroded to the point that the water supply is toxic?
The Muslim community here is full of conscious New Afrikan/Black men who stand firm on the square of righteousness. But I am isolated from the entire General Population, and it will only be through the pages of SF Bay View and Burning Spear that I will be able to communicate with the thousands of men and wimmin who have joined the movement to Abolish Prison Slavery and amend the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution.
Sisters and brothers, I would like to thank all of you who have sent me postcards and letters of support. Please note my new address below.
No matter what dirty tricks the state plays, I will not abandon this fight. Socialists of all creeds, colors and economic backgrounds must unite and form a party that can gain the trust and loyalty of the workers and oppressed masses.
I will need help contacting the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the EPA as I attempt to expose and correct the water problem. I still need legal aid and media help as we push forward the agenda of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee.
The election of Donald Trump should be used as a rallying point to all dedicated Servants of the People. During the Holiday Season please make a healthy financial donation to my favorite newspapers, San Francisco Bay View and Turning the Tide.
Dare to struggle, dare to win! All power to the people!
Keith H. Washington #1487958
East Ham Unit
2665 Prison Road #1
Lovelady, TX 75851
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Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin "Rashid" Johnson featuring exchanges with an Outlaw Kindle Edition
by Kevin Rashid Johnson (Author), Tom Big Warrior (Introduction), Russell Maroon Shoatz(Introduction)
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http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013RU5M4S
Join the Fight to Free Rev. Pinkney!
Click HERE to view in browser
http://www.iacenter.org/prisoners/freepinkney-1-28-15/
UPDATE:
Today is the 406th day that Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan
languishes in prison doing felony time for a misdemeanor crime he did not
commit. Today is also the day that Robert McKay, a spokesperson for the
Free Rev. Pinkney campaign, gave testimony before United Nations
representatives about the plight of Rev. Pinkney at a hearing held in
Chicago. The hearing was called in order to shed light upon the
mistreatment of African-Americans in the United States and put it on an
international stage. And yet as the UN representatives and audience heard
of the injustices in the Pinkney case many gasped in disbelief and asked
with frowns on their faces, "how is this possible?" But disbelief quickly
disappeared when everyone realized these were the same feelings they had
when they first heard of Flint and we all know what happened in Flint. FREE
REV. PINKNEY NOW.
Please send letters to:
Marquette Branch Prison
Rev. Edward Pinkney N-E-93 #294671
1960 US Hwy 41 South
Marquette, MI 49855
Please donate at http://bhbanco.org (Donate button) or send checks to BANCO:
c/o Dorothy Pinkney
1940 Union St.
Benton Harbor, MI 49022
BACKGROUND:
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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State Seeks to Remove Innocent PA Lifer's Attorney! Free Corey Walker!
The PA Office of the Attorney General (OAG) filed legal action to remove Corey Walker's attorney, Rachel Wolkenstein, in November 2014. On Tuesday, February 9, 2016 the evidentiary hearing to terminate Wolkenstein as Corey Walker's pro hac vice lawyer continues before Judge Lawrence Clark of the Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas in Harrisburg, PA.
Walker, assisted by Wolkenstein, filed three sets of legal papers over five months in 2014 with new evidence of Walker's innocence and that the prosecution and police deliberately used false evidence to convict him of murder. Two weeks after Wolkenstein was granted pro hac vice status, the OAG moved against her and Walker.
The OAG claims that Wolkenstein's political views and prior legal representation of Mumia Abu-Jamal and courtroom arrest by the notorious Judge Albert Sabo makes it "intolerable" for her to represent Corey Walker in the courts of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Over the past fifteen months the OAG has effectively stopped any judicial action on the legal challenges of Corey Walker and his former co-defendant, Lorenzo Johnson against their convictions and sentences to life imprisonment without parole while it proceeds in its attempts to remove Wolkenstein.
This is retaliation against Corey Walker who is innocent and framed. Walker and his attorney won't stop until they thoroughly expose the police corruption and deliberate presentation of false evidence to convict Corey Walker and win his freedom.
This outrageous attack on Corey Walker's fundamental right to his lawyer of choice and challenge his conviction must cease. The evidence of his innocence and deliberate prosecutorial frame up was suppressed for almost twenty years. Corey Walker must be freed!
Read: Jim Crow Justice – The Frame-up Of Corey Walker by Charles Brover
Go to FreeCoreyWalker.org to provide help and get more information.
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TAKE ACTION: Mumia is sick
Contact: Prison Radio (info@prisonradio.org)
Website:
Judge Robert Mariani of the U.S. District Court has issued an order in Mumia's case, granting Mumia's lawyers Bret Grote and Robert Boyle's motion to supplement the record. Hepatitis C is a progressive disease that attacks Mumia's organs, skin and liver. Unless the court orders the new hepatitis C treatment - one pill a day for 12 weeks, with a 95% cure rate - Mumia's health will remain at serious risk.
Take Action for MumiaCall prison officials to demand immediate treatment! |
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SUPPORTERS OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL, AND FREE QUALITY HEALTH CARE FOR ALL:
The Oasis Clinic in Oakland, CA, which treats patients with Hepatitis-C (HCV), demands an end to the outrageous price-gouging of Big Pharma corporations, like Gilead Sciences, which hike-up the cost for essential, life-saving medications such as the cure for the deadly Hepatitis-C virus, in order to reap huge profits. The Oasis Clinic's demand is:
PUBLIC HEALTH, NOT CORPORATE WEALTH!
WE DEMAND:
PUBLIC HEALTH, NOT CORPORATE WEALTH!
IMMEDIATE AND FREE TREATMENT FOR ALL HCV-INFECTED PRISONERS!
NO EXECUTION BY MEDICAL NEGLECT!
JAIL DRUG PROFITEERS, FREE MUMIA!
This message from:
Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610 • www.laboractionmumia.org
06 January 2016
Mumia Is Innocent! Free Mumia!
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Imam Jamil (H.Rap Brown) moved
Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown) was moved by bus from USP Canaan in Waymart, PA. to USP Tucson, Arizona. His mailing address is: USP Tucson United States Penitentiary P.O. Box Tucson, AZ. 85734 (BOP number 99974555)
Sign the Petition:
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, THE Bureau of Prisons, The Governor of Georgia
We are aware of a review being launched of criminal cases to determine whether any defendants were wrongly convicted and or deserve a new trail because of flawed forensic evidence and or wrongly reported evidence. It was stated in the Washington Post in April of 2012 that Justice Department Officials had known for years that flawed forensic work led to convictions of innocent people. We seek to have included in the review of such cases that of Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin. We understand that all cases reviewed will include the Innocence Project. We look forward to your immediate attention to these overdue wrongs.
ASAP: The Forgotten Imam Project
P.O. Box 373
Four Oaks, NC 27524
Signed,
Luqman Abdullah-ibn Al-Sidiq
https://www.causes.com/actions/1671495-the-forgotten-imam-jamil-abdullah-al-amin-h-rap-brown?utm_campaign=post_mailer%2Fcampaign_update.cb_71432&utm_medium=email&utm_source=causes
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Commute Kevin Cooper's Death Sentence
Sign the Petition:
http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/petition.php
Urge Gov. Jerry Brown to commute Kevin Cooper's death sentence. Cooper has always maintained his innocence of the 1983 quadruple murder of which he was convicted. In 2009, five federal judges signed a dissenting opinion warning that the State of California "may be about to execute an innocent man." Having exhausted his appeals in the US courts, Kevin Cooper's lawyers have turned to the Inter American Commission on Human Rights to seek remedy for what they maintain is his wrongful conviction, and the inadequate trial representation, prosecutorial misconduct and racial discrimination which have marked the case. Amnesty International opposes all executions, unconditionally.
"The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." - Judge William A. Fletcher, 2009 dissenting opinion on Kevin Cooper's case
Kevin Cooper has been on death row in California for more than thirty years.
In 1985, Cooper was convicted of the murder of a family and their house guest in Chino Hills. Sentenced to death, Cooper's trial took place in an atmosphere of racial hatred — for example, an effigy of a monkey in a noose with a sign reading "Hang the N*****!" was hung outside the venue of his preliminary hearing.
Take action to see that Kevin Cooper's death sentence is commuted immediately.
Cooper has consistently maintained his innocence.
Following his trial, five federal judges said: "There is no way to say this politely. The district court failed to provide Cooper a fair hearing."
Since 2004, a dozen federal appellate judges have indicated their doubts about his guilt.
Tell California authorities: The death penalty carries the risk of irrevocable error. Kevin Cooper's sentence must be commuted.
In 2009, Cooper came just eight hours shy of being executed for a crime that he may not have committed. Stand with me today in reminding the state of California that the death penalty is irreversible — Kevin Cooper's sentence must be commuted immediately.
In solidarity,
James Clark
Senior Death Penalty Campaigner
Amnesty International USA
Kevin Cooper: An Innocent Victim of Racist Frame-Up - from the Fact Sheet at: www.freekevincooper.org
Kevin Cooper is an African-American man who was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 for the gruesome murders of a white family in Chino Hills, California: Doug and Peggy Ryen and their daughter Jessica and their house- guest Christopher Hughes. The Ryens' 8 year old son Josh, also attacked, was left for dead but survived.
Convicted in an atmosphere of racial hatred in San Bernardino County CA, Kevin Cooper remains under a threat of imminent execution in San Quentin. He has never received a fair hearing on his claim of innocence. In a dissenting opinion in 2009, five federal judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals signed a 82 page dissenting opinion that begins: "The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." 565 F.3d 581.
There is significant evidence that exonerates Mr. Cooper and points toward other suspects:
The coroner who investigated the Ryen murders concluded that the murders took four minutes at most and that the murder weapons were a hatchet, a long knife, an ice pick and perhaps a second knife. How could a single person, in four or fewer minutes, wield three or four weapons, and inflict over 140 wounds on five people, two of whom were adults (including a 200 pound ex-marine) who had loaded weapons near their bedsides?
The sole surviving victim of the murders, Josh Ryen, told police and hospital staff within hours of the murders that the culprits were "three white men." Josh Ryen repeated this statement in the days following the crimes. When he twice saw Mr. Cooper's picture on TV as the suspected attacker, Josh Ryen said "that's not the man who did it."
Josh Ryen's description of the killers was corroborated by two witnesses who were driving near the Ryens' home the night of the murders. They reported seeing three white men in a station wagon matching the description of the Ryens' car speeding away from the direction of the Ryens' home.
These descriptions were corroborated by testimony of several employees and patrons of a bar close to the Ryens' home, who saw three white men enter the bar around midnight the night of the murders, two of whom were covered in blood, and one of whom was wearing coveralls.
The identity of the real killers was further corroborated by a woman who, shortly after the murders were discovered, alerted the sheriff's department that her boyfriend, a convicted murderer, left blood-spattered coveralls at her home the night of the murders. She also reported that her boyfriend had been wearing a tan t-shirt matching a tan t-shirt with Doug Ryen's blood on it recovered near the bar. She also reported that her boyfriend owned a hatchet matching the one recovered near the scene of the crime, which she noted was missing in the days following the murders; it never reappeared; further, her sister saw that boyfriend and two other white men in a vehicle that could have been the Ryens' car on the night of the murders.
Lacking a motive to ascribe to Mr. Cooper for the crimes, the prosecution claimed that Mr. Cooper, who had earlier walked away from custody at a minimum security prison, stole the Ryens' car to escape to Mexico. But the Ryens had left the keys in both their cars (which were parked in the driveway), so there was no need to kill them to steal their car. The prosecution also claimed that Mr. Cooper needed money, but money and credit cards were found untouched and in plain sight at the murder scene.
The jury in 1985 deliberated for seven days before finding Mr. Cooper guilty. One juror later said that if there had been one less piece of evidence, the jury would not have voted to convict.
The evidence the prosecution presented at trial tying Mr. Cooper to the crime scene has all been discredited… (Continue reading this document at: http://www.savekevincooper.org/_new_freekevincooperdotorg/TEST/Scripts/DataLibraries/upload/KC_FactSheet_2014.pdf)
This message from the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. July 2015
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CANCEL ALL STUDENT DEBT!
Sign the Petition:
http://cancelallstudentdebt.com/?code=kos
Dear President Obama, Senators, and Members of Congress:
Americans now owe $1.3 trillion in student debt. Eighty-six percent of that money is owed to the United States government. This is a crushing burden for more than 40 million Americans and their families.
I urge you to take immediate action to forgive all student debt, public and private.
American Federation of Teachers
Campaign for America's Future
Courage Campaign
Daily Kos
Democracy for America
LeftAction
Project Springboard
RH Reality Check
RootsAction
Student Debt Crisis
The Nation
Working Families
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Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson
|
Write: Lorenzo Johnson
DF 1036
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Rd.
Frackville, PA 17932
Email: Through JPay using the code:
Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC
or
Directly at LorenzoJohnson17932@gmail.com
freelorenzojohnson.org
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B. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Land Mine Casualties Jump 75% as Funding for Their Removal Declines
By RICK GLADSTONE NOV. 22, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/world/land-mine-casualties-annual-report.html?ref=world
Despite a global treaty that bans land mines, casualties from those weapons and other unexploded munitions lurking in current and past war zones rose sharply last year to the highest point in a decade, a monitoring group said Tuesday in its annual report.
The group, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, also said that financial contributions toward efforts to remove land mines plunged by nearly a quarter last year. It was the third consecutive annual decline in funding, imperiling a pledge by treaty members to complete mine clearance by 2025.
In another setback to the treaty's goals, the number of countries and areas where land mines are known to exist rose to 64 last year, from 61 in 2014, the report said. It attributed the increase to the use of antipersonnel mines in Nigeria, including improvised mines, and to new data on mines that had already been present in Palau and Mozambique.
The casualty increase was primarily because of the armed conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen, according to the report, which said better availability of data on victims was also a factor.
It said that 6,461 people were known to have been wounded or killed by land mines and other explosive remnants of war in 2015. That was a 75 percent increase from 2014 and the highest reported casualty total since 2006's figure of 6,573.
"The decade-high number of new casualties caused by land mines and unexploded ordnance, and the continued suffering of civilians, more than a third of whom were children, proves again that these indiscriminate weapons should never be used by anyone," said Loren Persi Vicentic, one of the editors of the annual report, Landmine Monitor 2016.
The land mine treaty, which took effect in 1999, bans the use of mines and other victim-activated explosive devices placed on or under the ground. They are designed to detonate when a person unwittingly walks over them or is nearby, and they can remain lethal even after lying dormant for many years.
Land mines have long posed a safety threat to civilians, particularly children, who step on the explosives or find them, sometimes well after a conflict has ended.
Landmine Monitor 2016 was released in advance of the 15th meeting of countries that have signed the treaty. The meeting is to begin Monday in Santiago, Chile. At least 162 countries have signed the treaty. Thirty-five countries remain outside the treaty, including China, Russia and the United States. Most of them do not use or produce land mines.
More than 50 countries manufactured land mines before the treaty, a number that has since dwindled to 11. The Landmine Monitor report said the most active producers were India, Myanmar, Pakistan and South Korea.
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2) Trump Foundation Won't Pay Any of $25 Million University Settlement
By MATTHEW GOLDSTEIN NOV. 21, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/business/dealbook/trump-foundation-wont-pay-any-of-25-million-
university-settlement.html?ref=business&_r=1&mtrref=www.nytimes.com
Donald J. Trump's charitable foundation will not be paying any of the $25 million settlement to resolve a series of lawsuits concerning Trump University, the president-elect's defunct for-profit education venture that drew customer complaints about price gouging.
Representatives for Mr. Trump sent a one-paragraph letter on Friday to Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York State attorney general, stating that no funding for the settlement would come from "any charitable foundation or other charitable entity."
A copy of the letter, from Alan Garten, executive vice president and general counsel for the Trump Organization, was reviewed by The New York Times. Mr. Garten did not respond to a request for comment.
In the past, Mr. Trump has used money from his charitable foundation, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, to settle lawsuits arising from his business and personal activities. Last month, in the heat of the presidential campaign, The Washington Post reported that more than a quarter of a million dollars from Mr. Trump's charity had been used to settle legal disputes.
"Given Mr. Trump's reported history of using his charity's money to fund his and his businesses' legal settlements, we demanded written assurance that the Trump University settlement would not be paid for by any charitable entity," said Amy Spitalnick, a spokeswoman for the state attorney general.
Mr. Schneiderman sued Trump University in 2013, and his office helped negotiate the settlement, which also resolved two class-action lawsuits filed in federal court in San Diego. One of those suits was scheduled to go to trial in a few days. The settlement foreclosed the possibility of a potentially embarrassing situation for Mr. Trump as he moves forward in putting together his administration.
During the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump said he did not like settling lawsuits and insisted that students found Trump University to be "wonderful" and "beautiful." He took to Twitter early Saturday to say: "The only bad thing about winning the presidency is that I did not have the time to go through a long but winning trial on Trump U. Too bad!"
The lawsuits said that Trump University, which was in business from 2004 to 2010, cheated students out of thousands of dollars in tuition through high-pressure sales tactics and deceptive claims about the program. About 7,000 students will be eligible to recoup some of the money they spent on tuition. The settlement still requires the court's approval.
Some Trump University students paid as much as $35,000 in tuition. One of them, Jeffrey Tufenkian told The New York Times in 2011 that his experience at Trump University "was almost completely worthless." He said the program had wiped out much of his and his wife's savings.
It was not known whether an insurance policy taken out by Trump University would cover any part of the settlement.
Customarily, settlements can be taken as a tax deduction by a business, and that appears to be the case in this situation. However, a $1 million penalty for violating state education laws in New York, which is part of the settlement package, may not qualify for a deduction.
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3) Mr. Trump: I Am an Immigrant With a Criminal Record
By LUNDY KHOY NOV. 24, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/opinion/mr-trump-i-am-an-immigrant-with
-a-criminal-record.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-
heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.
nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0
WASHINGTON — I arrived in the United States on Nov. 12, 1981, when I was 1. My parents had fled the Pol Pot genocide in Cambodia, in which over two million people were murdered. I was born in a refugee camp in Thailand before moving to California, and then Virginia.
None of these facts may seem important, but I assure you, they are. My parents and I were granted legal permanent resident status; my brother and sister, who were born here, are citizens. The three of us were typical American kids, eating Cheerios for breakfast and taking the bus to school. We went to Disneyland and religiously watched the Fourth of July fireworks from the beach. As a teenager I attended school dances in all of their crepe glory. I am not an American citizen, but there is no way I am not an American.
Donald J. Trump said that his administration will "get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million." He continued, "We are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate. But we're getting them out of our country."
I'm not a gang member. I'm not a drug dealer. But I have a criminal record, and I'm afraid.
My parents were very strict when I was growing up. We were expected to come straight home after school to do our homework and then start on our chores. No extracurricular activities. Although it was a happy home, I struggled to find independence.
I think that's partly why, when I started college at George Mason University, I was very naïve — and very foolish. My new friends introduced me to drugs. I had no idea of the consequences behind the choices I made.
In the spring of 2000, I was walking along the street with an American-born friend when we were stopped by a police officer. I was carrying seven tablets of Ecstasy. I was arrested for possession with intent to sell, which is a felony in Virginia. On the advice of my lawyer — and feeling that a trial would increase my family's suffering and embarrassment — I pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in jail. My sentence was suspended, so I spent only three months in the Virginia Department of Corrections. I then served four years on probation, and my level of supervision was gradually reduced as I demonstrated good behavior.
I used the freedom that was given to me to better myself. I moved back in with my parents, began working full time at a mortgage company, and enrolled at Northern Virginia Community College. I paid my taxes, contributed to society and tried to make my parents proud.
Then, in 2004, I went for what I thought was a routine visit to my probation officer. I had even brought along my most recent report card to show the growth I had made. What I encountered was a multitude of officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, instructing me to hand over my possessions and stand spread-eagle against the wall. As my probation officer gave me an apologetic look, they escorted me out of the office, handcuffed me and eventually took me to Hampton Roads Regional Jail, in southern Virginia.
I was dumbstruck. I had been following all the rules. I could not understand why I was being arrested again. Immigration officers eventually informed me that my conviction meant I would most likely be deported from the United States. For me this was a second punishment for the very same crime, and this one, though never discussed or even mentioned three years earlier when I pleaded guilty, was worse than the first.
If I was deported, I would be sent to Cambodia. But I had never even been to Cambodia! Our entire family had moved to the United States at this point; we knew no one there. I was terrified.
I was held in a detention center for nearly nine months before being released under the supervision of the immigration agency. I returned once again to college and started working at a university as an enrollment counselor. I married and had a son.
This spring, I received a pardon from the governor of Virginia that mentioned my "commitment to good citizenship." But immigration law is separate from criminal law, and my record still exists. Even though the state has forgiven my crime, the federal government could still decide to deport me. I am not eligible for citizenship.
Yes, I did make a mistake at a very young age. I fully understand that, but I have also embraced the tremendous consequences of that mistake. I served my time in jail without complaint. The only part of my punishment that I ask for leniency on is my deportation.
Deporting me may be within the authority of the law, but I implore Mr. Trump and his supporters to look past my mistakes. Every year I stay here is one more year I grow and acquire skills and knowledge that allow me to contribute more to this country. By giving me the tremendous opportunity to remain here, you would be allowing me to truly live how I've felt I've lived my entire life: as an American.
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4) In a California Valley, Healthy Food Everywhere but on the Table
By THOMAS FULLER NOV. 23, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/us/in-a-california-valley-healthy-food-everywhere-but-on-
the-table.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-
column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
SALINAS, Calif. — As Americans gather around Thanksgiving tables, chances are that the healthier parts of their menus — the tossed salads, broccoli casseroles or steaming bowls of roasted brussels sprouts — were grown here in the Salinas Valley.
A long strip of deep and fertile soil pinched by sharply rising mountains, the valley has more than doubled its output of produce in recent decades and now grows well over half of America's leaf lettuce.
Yet one place the valley's bounty of antioxidants does not often appear is on the tables of the migrant workers who harvest it.
Public health officials here describe a crisis of poverty and malnutritionamong the tens of thousands of farmworkers and their families who tend to the fields of lettuce, broccoli, celery, cauliflower and spinach, among many other crops, in an area called the salad bowl of the nation.
More than a third of the children in the Salinas City Elementary School District are homeless; overall diabetes rates are rising and projected to soar; and 85 percent of farmworkers in the valley are overweight or obese, partly because unhealthy food is less costly, said Marc B. Schenker, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who studies the health of farmworkers.
"The people who grow our food can't afford to eat it, and they are sicker because of it," said Joel Diringer, a public health specialist and advocate for farmworkers. "It's an incredible irony that those who work in the fields all day long don't have access to the fresh produce that they harvest."
For decades, the fields of the Salinas Valley have been a revolving door of migrants, from the Okies of John Steinbeck's writings to the Latin American immigrants who tend the fields today. Ninety-one percent of farmworkers in California are foreign born, primarily from Mexico, according to the United States Department of Labor.
While the valley's vegetables are reaching an ever-growing number of American households, public health officials say there are no signs of improvement in the living conditions and diets of farmworkers.
The popularity of sugary drinks and cultural preferences for filling but high-calorie foods like tacos and tamales contribute to the obesity of farmworkers and their families, public health officials say. Because an estimated half of agricultural workers in the Salinas Valley are in the country illegally, many do not have health insurance and go without treatment until symptoms become acute.
The combination of high rents and low incomes — wages typically fall in the range of $10 to $15 an hour — leaves farmworkers with minimal and often inadequate money for food and is a contributor to the housing crisis in Salinas.
Homelessness has risen so steadily in recent years that the Salinas City Elementary School District now has a liaison for students without permanent housing.
Cheryl Camany, the school district's homeless liaison, listed the types of dwellings where some farmworkers slept: "Tents, encampments, abandoned buildings," she said. "They could be living in a toolshed, a chicken coop."
Poverty and neglect among farmworkers is by no means new. Steinbeck, the valley's most famous native son, wrote in the 1930s about the "curious attitude toward a group that makes our agriculture successful."
"The migrants are needed, and they are hated," he wrote, a sentiment that residents here feel has been revived with the election of Donald J. Trump as president and his promises to deport undocumented workers.
At a diabetes and nutrition awareness class held at a nursery school in King City, overweight women from farmworker families were given a barrage of statistics on the dangers of poor diets, especially those excessive in sugar.
"Two in five Americans will develop diabetes," Lisa Rico, the instructor, told the class in Spanish. "But for us it's one in two."
The class was run by the Natividad Medical Foundation, a nonprofit that is part of Natividad Medical Center, a large hospital in Salinas.
Ms. Rico read to the class the findings of a survey of 1,200 young people in Monterey County, which includes Salinas: 72 percent of children under 10 years old and 83 percent of teenagers said they drank at least one soda a day; adolescents drank 4.5 times as many sugary drinks as water.
A study published in March by the U.C.L.A. Center for Health Policy Research reported that 57 percent of residents in Monterey County had diabetes or prediabetes, just slightly above the California average of 55 percent.
But Dr. Dana Kent, the medical director for health promotion and education at the Natividad Medical Foundation, said estimates among farmworkers might be low, especially among those who are undocumented and fearful to obtain medical services.
"We get a sense that there are a lot of people out there who are undiagnosed," Dr. Kent said.
On a recent afternoon, workers from Mexico and El Salvador harvested heads of iceberg lettuce in a field in Gonzales, a city in the heart of the Salinas Valley. The workers moved so quickly — slicing, trimming the outer leaves and putting the heads of lettuce into plastic bags — that they looked like actors in a film played at an accelerated speed.
Angelica Beltran, the supervisor, said her workers typically ate six to eight tacos while at work and had two or three sodas during their shift.
"No one drinks diet soda," she said. "It doesn't taste good."
Despite the frenetic pace of the work, farmworkers suffer from what Melissa Kendrick, the head of the Food Bank for Monterey County, calls the "obesity paradox of the poor."
"They are fat, yes, but they are malnourished because all they are eating is garbage," she said.
The consumption of cheap, starchy food has been a major contributor to the epidemic of obesity across America. But the rates among farmworkers here are significantly higher: 85 percent are overweight or obese compared with 69 percent nationally.
Some farmworkers in the Salinas Valley sleep next to the vegetables they cannot afford to buy.
In a row of dusty, barracks-style apartments straddled by railway tracks and vast fields of broccoli, Maria Hernandez, 60, pays $520 a month for two tiny rooms, each about 18 feet across. Her extended family are Mexican immigrants who have spent their lives farming and picking strawberries, celery and other crops. She became aware of the need to eat healthily when both her mother and her sister were diagnosed with diabetes.
"Although we are surrounded by it, we don't eat it because it's expensive," said Antonia Tejada, Ms. Hernandez's daughter, who works the night shift at McDonald's. "We will buy a big bag of beans instead of a little thing of broccoli for $2 that won't feed even one person."
Only an hour south of Silicon Valley, the Salinas Valley is a rural setting with urban prices.
Israel de Jesus, who works as an interpreter at the Natividad Medical Center in Salinas, crowded into a home that rented for $1,600 a month when he was doing farm work.
"There's no way to save money because of the bills and the rent," Mr. de Jesus said. "But you have to save money so you can make it through the winter."
Even when vegetables and other healthy foods are available or affordable, farmworkers sometimes opt for the satisfaction of comfort food.
Brigita Gonzalez rises every day at 3:30 a.m. to prepare food for her husband, who leaves for the fields an hour later. When she made him a salad once to accompany his tacos, he returned in the evening with the salad unfinished.
Ms. Gonzalez says her husband was needled by co-workers for eating a salad: "Everybody was like, 'What are you eating?'"
Ms. Kendrick of the food bank said demand was strong for healthy foods, cultural preferences notwithstanding. The food bank gives out about five million meals a year and is raising money to build a large food warehouse on a six-acre plot.
Ms. Kendrick, who previously worked in Silicon Valley, said she was motivated by the idea that malnutrition and hunger were fixable in a country with so much wealth.
"I've spent time in India, the Middle East, Southeast Asia — third world countries where poverty is everywhere," she said. "It's shocking when it's in your home state."
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5) Thanksgiving Turkeys May Have Been Tamed 1,500 Years Ago in Mexico
As Americans get ready to carve Thanksgiving turkeys, ponder this question: When was this famous fowl first tamed?
Archaeologists are not exactly sure, but recent research suggests that humans domesticated the big bird at least 1,500 years ago. The evidence comes from a clutch of intact eggs found in an old fortress in Oaxaca, Mexico. The researchers believe that the eggs, which date to between 400 and 500 A.D., were used by ancient people as some sort of ritualistic offering or sacrifice to their gods.
"Finding those eggs intact was mind-blowing," said Gary Feinman, an archaeologist from the Field Museum in Chicago. "I've been excavating for decades and I have never ever found intact eggs like that in that quantity ever."
Dr. Feinman and his colleagues uncovered several whole eggs buried together beneath two households in the Mitla Fortress in 2009. The fortress was once inhabited by the Zapotec people, a Mesoamerican civilization that was a neighbor of the Mayans, who lived there between 300 and 1,200 A.D. The Zapotecs were known to offer blood sacrifices, sometimes during important events such as burials, marriages and births, or for healing and agricultural rituals. Before constructing a new home, they would sometimes sacrifice a turkey hatchling, eat it and then bury its remains beneath the floors or within the walls.
"We were not surprised to find offerings per se, but we were surprised to find an offering of a cluster of turkey eggs," said Dr. Feinman.
They found four offerings and a grave that had turkey eggs and bones. The biggest offering contained five whole eggs and about seven baby turkey skeletons beneath the floor. The researchers said that in order for the residents to have both baby turkeys and turkey eggs within their houses, they must have been breeding and raising the birds nearby.
"It's the earliest solid evidence of domesticated turkey in southern Mexico that we have to date," Dr. Feinman said. He and his colleagues published their results in The Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports in a paper that was published online in July and will appear in print in an upcoming issue on turkey domestication.
Within the houses in Mitla Fortress, the team found several eggshells and more than 400 bones belonging to baby and adult turkeys. About a quarter of the bones were fashioned into tools or jewelry, but most appeared to have been discarded in trash pits. Turkeys weren't the only animals that the Mitla Fortress residents domesticated. They also raised dogs to eat and sacrifice.
Heather A. Lapham, an archaeologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the lead author of the study, analyzed the bones and showed they belonged to turkeys. She and the other researchers also confirmed with a scanning electron microscope that the eggs were from turkeys as well. The team is still awaiting DNA analysis of the bones to determine which of the three subspecies native to Mexico the remains belong to.
The findings are the earliest evidence of tamed turkeys in southern Mexico, moving back the oldest known signs that turkeys were being raised by people. The oldest examples in northern Mexico date to around 500 A.D., although most archaeological evidence in the region does not appear until 900 A.D., according to the authors. In the Southwest United States some of the earliest domestic turkey evidence comes from sites that date to around 600 A.D.
The authors note that there was an older turkey bone found in a cave in southern Mexico that is dated to 180 A.D., but they argue that the evidence from that lone bone is not enough to suggest that it was domesticated instead of wild.
Joel L. Cracraft, curator of the department of ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History, was not involved in the study and said the paper provided clear evidence of turkey domestication by the Zapotecs some 1,500 years ago.
"It seems that it pushes domestication back another 100 to 200 years," he said.
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6) Mothers in Prison
"Prison got me sober, but it didn't get me anywhere."
By NICHOLAS KRISTOF NOV. 25, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/opinion/sunday/mothers-in-prison.
html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module
=opinion-c-col-right-region®ion=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=
opinion-c-col-right-region
TULSA, Okla. — The women's wing of the jail here exhales sadness. The inmates, wearing identical orange uniforms, ache as they undergo withdrawal from drugs, as they eye one another suspiciously, and as they while away the days stripped of freedom, dignity, privacy and, most painful of all, their children.
"She's disappointed in me," Janay Manning, 29, a drug offender shackled to a wall for an interview, said of her eldest daughter, a 13-year-old. And then she started crying, and we paused our interview.
Of all America's various policy missteps in my lifetime, perhaps the most catastrophic was mass incarceration. It has had devastating consequences for families, and it costs the average American household $600 a year.
The United States has recently come to its senses and begun dialing back on the number of male prisoners. But we have continued to increase the number of women behind bars; two-thirds of women in state prisons are there for nonviolent offenses. America now incarcerates eight times as many women as in 1980, and only Thailand seems to imprison women at a higher rate.
And the situation may well worsen under the Trump administration; the president-elect's nominee for attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has in effect defended mass incarceration.
The global capital for female incarceration may be right here in Oklahoma, which incarcerates 142 out of every 100,000 women, about 10 times the rate of low-ranking states like Rhode Island and Massachusetts. I wouldn't argue that mass female incarceration is worse than mass male incarceration — they're both counterproductive — but the imprisonment of women has heartbreaking collateral damage, because women are disproportionately likely to be primary caregivers, and 60 percent of American women in state prisons have children under 18.
"There's a devastating impact on the children," said Amy Santee of the George Kaiser Family Foundation, which supports an alternative to imprisonment for women. "They're put in chaotic homes, they're more likely to be sexually abused, they're more likely to be imprisoned themselves."
Research shows that prison routinely fails at helping women straighten out their lives — although it does mess up their children.
"I felt my life was going to repeat my mom's, and it did," said Alisia Hunter, 37, who said her mother was imprisoned for financial offenses while she was a child. Hunter then ended up having a baby at age 16 by one of her father's buddies, and she soon began doing stints in prison for drug offenses.
"Prison got me sober, but it didn't get me anywhere," Hunter told me. Each time she went to prison, she would get clean, and then once out she would return to drugs.
She did try to get into a drug rehabilitation program. But the state, while willing to pay to imprison her, was unwilling to pay for drug rehab except for the most serious addicts; she didn't qualify.
One reason mass incarceration doesn't get fixed is that society regards felons with a mix of fear and contempt. In fact, the women should evoke sympathy; even more than male prisoners, they have been through the wringer.
A quarter of women in state prisons reported having been sexually abused as children, one 1999 Justice Department study found. A different study found that 43 percent of women in jails that were examined had serious mental health problems, and 82 percent had drug or alcohol problems.
Anessa Rabbit, 31, says she grew up in a family of addicts and was born with drugs in her system. I can't confirm her life story, but she told how she was molested by her father beginning when she was 7, began smoking methamphetamine daily when she was 11, moved in with a man when she was 13 and dropped out of school in the ninth grade.
Like many female felons, Rabbit seems to have gotten in trouble because of a boyfriend who manipulated her into committing crimes.
"He always put me in the position of doing the dirty work," Rabbit said, speaking of a boyfriend who used to choke and beat her when he wasn't coercing her to commit crimes. She says they committed robberies and other offenses, sometimes she at his behest; he ended up with a sentence of four years probation and she faced a possible sentence of 26 years in prison.
Prosecutors often understand what's going on but threaten the women with long sentences (sometimes based on conspiracy laws) to get them to testify against their men. That's how the criminal justice system works, but when the women refuse to cave, they go to prison for many years — and the guys then drop them.
When men are in prison, they seem to get visits frequently from girlfriends, who also add money into their commissary accounts so they can buy small items and make phone calls. But the prisoners and social workers I spoke to said that when women are imprisoned, they get fewer visitors and their accounts are often empty.
Mass incarceration also has an abysmal record. Recidivism is high, and imprisonment breaks up and impoverishes families. A newly published study from the Russell Sage Foundation found that incarceration of a family member is associated with a 64 percent decline in household assets, magnifying poverty and the race gap in America. And the 2.6 million American children who have a parent in prison or jail pay an enormous price — which, as Rabbit's story shows, isn't always necessary.
Rabbit was diverted from prison to a model program in Tulsa called Women in Recovery. (Hunter also is in the program.) It reduces the numbers of women in prison, saves money and has had remarkable success helping troubled women shake drugs and restart their lives.
It has a two-generation approach that works with both the women and their children. The program offers counseling, intensive support, coaching on budgeting and conflict resolution, and help getting high school equivalency diplomas, housing and jobs.
The upshot is that Rabbit has now been clean of drugs for nine months — the longest since she was a young child — and has a job in a warehouse with some prospects for promotion. She has custody on weekends of her son, 12, and daughter, 11, and is trying to rebuild relationships with them.
Women in Recovery programs last 17 months and cost $19,700 on average; after that, the woman is in a job, and recidivism over the next three years is just 4.9 percent. Without the program, the state might imprison the women for years at a much greater cost — and end up with a much higher recidivism rate.
So if we want to reduce female incarceration, we have a solution here in Tulsa that will also reduce crime and pay for itself.
I know some of you are glaring at this article and thinking: It's their own fault. If they don't want to go to prison, they shouldn't commit crimes!
That scorn derives partly from a misunderstanding of drug abuse, which is a central reason for mass female incarceration in America (and a major reason for mass incarceration of men as well, although to a lesser degree). As Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, the surgeon general, noted in releasing a major report this month: "It's time to change how we view addiction. Not as a moral failing but as a chronic illness." In short, we should think of drugs not primarily through the criminal justice lens but as a public health crisis.
If you think all this is just coddling criminals, consider for a moment Michelle Vavrick, 24. I can't independently verify her story, but her counselors believe it, and it tracks what many other women in her position have experienced.
Vavrick says she was raised in a chaotic and violent home with alcohol and drugs. Beginning at age 7, she says, a pedophile named Sean began picking her up at her house and taking her away to rape her on an almost daily basis. She responded by acting out, self-mutilating and becoming violent.
"At 10, I became uncontrollable," Vavrick remembered. "Sean and his friends would shoot me with heroin so they could do what they wanted to me. Six of them."
Vavrick self-medicated with alcohol and drugs, went through rehab programs that didn't work and ran away at 18. She lived on a park bench, sold sex, connected with a gang and robbed people. "I was a big ball of anger," she recalled. "I couldn't stand being in my own skin."
Last year she was finally arrested for drug running and faced a sentence of 15 years to life. Fortunately, she was diverted to Women in Recovery, underwent intensive cognitive processing therapy — and transformed. She has now been clean for 10 months and is warm and hopeful. Instead of sitting sullenly in a prison cell, she works in a bakery, loves it, and hopes to run her own bakery some day.
At one point when I was interviewing her about her past, she began crying. Alarmed, I quickly apologized, but she shushed me up. "This is progress," she said, beaming through her tears. She wants to let herself feel again.
Reporting these kinds of topics is often tough: I see people stuck in cycles of poverty, drugs and incarceration, with their children often headed in the same direction. Even well-meaning help is sometimes rejected, for we humans have an astonishing capacity for self-destructive behavior — just as society does, with policies like mass incarceration. That backdrop makes it exhilarating to see a program like Women in Recovery succeed, and an individual like Michelle Vavrick blossom through it into a new future.
"I know how precious my life is, and I never want to stick a needle in my arm again," she said. "I want to live."
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7) Donald Trump and the Lawsuit Presidency
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD NOV. 25, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/opinion/donald-trump-and-
the-lawsuit-presidency.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&click
Source=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=
opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=
0&mtrref=www.nytimes.com&assetType=opinion
Donald Trump will take office as president facing a tsunami of litigation over his business practices and personal behavior. He may have settled the fraud suits involving Trump University, but at least 75 other lawsuits are underway against him or his companies, according to USA Today. Its investigation found more than 3,500 lawsuits over the past three decades, ranging from contract disputes to real estate battles to harassment and discrimination claims.
In short, Mr. Trump could find himself in a near-constant stream of court fights while he tries to focus on running the country. Even in advance of any decisions, there is a degree of poetic justice here, since the scorched-earth approach has long been standard practice for Mr. Trump; as a businessman, he thrived on no-holds-barred legal conflict and hauled out the heavy artillery for even minor disputes. Less than three weeks before the election, he threatened to sue at least 11 women who had recently come forward with allegations that he sexually assaulted them.
Now consider all the potential conflicts of interest if this litigiousness should come to, or from, the Oval Office. What happens if there is litigation involving a building he leases from the federal government? Or if the Internal Revenue Service — an executive-branch agency — recommends civil or criminal penalties based on an audit of Mr. Trump's taxes?
The Trump University lawsuits — two class actions filed in a San Diego federal court and a state fraud case brought by the New York attorney general, representing about 7,000 plaintiffs in all — show that these conflicts would not be limited to the federal government. Court documents revealed a dishonest operation that was marketed as a way for regular people to make lots of money by following Mr. Trump's "secrets" to real estate investing.
But according to Trump University employees, Mr. Trump's investing techniques were never part of the program. Instead, salespeople were trained to exploit vulnerable "students" by pressuring them to pay thousands of dollars to attend seminars and "personal mentorship programs," many run by people with little or no experience in real estate. One sales manager called the entire business model a "fraudulent scheme."
Mr. Trump initially said he would never settle the suits, a claim he has often made in other cases. But in fact, Mr. Trump settles lawsuits quite often — in more than one-third of the cases whose outcome is on the public record, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Politics. As soon as he was elected, he changed his tune on the Trump University suits, surely realizing that it would not look good for a sitting president to take the stand in his own defense against charges of fraud and racketeering.
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Trump presented this latest settlement — which did not require him to admit liability — as a personal sacrifice in the national interest. "The ONLY bad thing about winning the Presidency," the president-elect tweeted on Saturday, "is that I did not have the time to go through a long but winning trial on Trump U. Too bad!"
It is as if Mr. Trump views the courts as a casino: You win some and you lose some. But luckily for him, even when he loses, he wins: Most of the $25 million settlement will be a tax write-off.
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8) Power Imbalance at the Pipeline Protest
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD NOV. 23, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/opinion/power-imbalance-at-the-pipeline-protest.html
When injustice aligns with cruelty, and heavy weaponry is involved, the results can be shameful and bloody. Witness what happened on Sunday in North Dakota, when law enforcement officers escalated their tactics against unarmed American Indians and allies who have waged months of protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline.
They drenched protesters with water cannons on a frigid night, with temperatures in the 20s. According to protesters and news accounts, the officers also fired rubber bullets, pepper spray, percussion grenades and tear gas. More than 160 people were reportedly injured, with one protester's arm damaged so badly she might lose it.
The confrontation happened at Backwater Bridge, on a highway linking the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and Bismarck, N.D. Burned-out trucks and a police barricade have made the bridge impassable. Protesters say this is a needless threat to public safety — forcing emergency vehicles to detour about 20 miles — as well as a spiteful attempt to keep them away from the pipeline construction site. The violence erupted after some of the protesters tried to remove the truck carcasses on Sunday.
"We're just not going to let people or protesters in large groups come in and threaten officers, that's not happening," said the Morton County sheriff, Kyle Kirchmeier. The Sheriff's Department's Facebook pagelinked to a video of the armed and armored officers, the water cannon drenching the crowd, and a rock flying overhead.
The pipeline, all but built, is meant to ship crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois. Built almost entirely on private property, the pipeline crosses ancestral lands of the Standing Rock Sioux, passing less than a mile from the tribal reservation. Tribe members fear contamination of their drinking water and damage to sacred sites. They are trying to persuade the federal government to deny permits allowing the pipeline to cross the Missouri River near their reservation.
The department's video was meant to portray the protesters as dangerous troublemakers, but the photos and videos in news reports suggest a more familiar story — an imbalance of power, where law enforcement fiercely defends property rights against protesters' claims of environmental protection and the rights of indigenous people. American Indians have seen this sort of drama unfold for centuries — native demands meeting brute force against a backdrop of folly — in this case, the pursuit of fossil fuels at a time of sagging oil demand and global climatic peril.
The Army Corps of Engineers has called for more study and input from the tribe before it decides on whether to grant a permit. The pipeline company has asked a federal judge to give it the right to proceed with its plan to lay pipe under the river. There is no firm timeline for either decision.
In the meantime, President Obama could step in to protect everyone's safety and pressure the sheriff's officers to stand down. Barring that, resolute protesters, a heavily militarized police force unwilling to budge, a company that refuses to consider an alternate route and an onrushing Great Plains winter — how can this possibly end well?
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9) Race and Marijuana Arrests
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD NOV. 25, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/opinion/race-and-marijuana-arrests.html?rref
=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fnyregion&action=click&contentCollection=
nyregion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=
4&pgtype=sectionfront&mtrref=www.nytimes.com&assetType=opinion
Mayor Bill de Blasio, who took office in 2014, has made some progress in cutting back on the unfair and sometimes illegal police practices under which thousands of New Yorkers are arrested every year for possessing trivial amounts of marijuana.
But despite research showing that whites and minority citizens use marijuana at similar rates, black and Latino New Yorkers are still far and away more likely to be singled out for low-level arrests that have little public safety value, but seriously damage their lives.
These petty possession cases are typically dismissed after the person stays out of trouble for a year. But during the waiting period, people with otherwise clean records can be denied jobs, housing or entry into the armed services.
This problem dates back to the 1970s, when affluent parents grew angry seeing the futures of their college-educated children ruined as a result of arrests for tiny amounts of marijuana. The New York Legislature responded to this anger by forbidding police officers from arresting people for small amounts of marijuana unless the drug was being smoked or displayed in public.
There were fewer than 1,000 such arrests in 1990. But eventually police officers began to illegally charge people with public display of marijuana after forcing them to remove the drug from their backpacks or pockets. In 2011, an astonishing 50,000 people were arrested on charges of public possession. The number began to plummet under Mayor Michael Bloomberg after the city instructed police officers to obey the state law.
There were just over 26,000 arrests in 2014 — the year Mr. de Blasio took office and introduced a policy under which people with tiny amounts of the drug were typically issued the equivalent of a traffic summons instead of being dragged through the legal system. Last year, there were about 16,600 such arrests.
But the racial disparity in arrests persists. A new analysis of state data by the Police Reform Organizing Project found that about 85 percent of those arrested over trivial amounts of marijuana in the first nine months of this year were black or Latino. It also shows that marijuana arrests edged up by about 12 percent in the first nine months of this year, as compared with the same period in 2015.
The Police Department attributes this racial disparity to the fact that black and Latino people tend to live in higher crime neighborhoods that are more heavily policed. But criminal defenders and police reform advocates have a different interpretation. They argue that, despite department policy, officers are still wrongly charging people with public possession, and that police officers turn a blind eye to marijuana use in affluent white areas while bearing down on it in minority communities.
The city's marijuana enforcement system is more sensible than it was five years ago. But the Police Department needs to get to the bottom of the racial disparity in arrests that continues to harm minority citizens and undermines faith in the fairness of the law.
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10) Wells Fargo Asks Court to Force Customers to Arbitration in Fake Accounts Cases
By REUTERS NOV. 24, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/business/wells-fargo-asks-court-to-force-customers-to-arbitration-in-fake-accounts-
cases.html?ref=business&_r=0&mtrref=www.nytimes.com
Wells Fargo has asked a Federal District Court to order dozens of customers who are suing the bank over the opening of unauthorized accounts to resolve their disputes in private arbitrations instead of court, according to legal documents.
The motion, filed in the United States District Court in Utah on Wednesday, is in response to the first-class action lawsuit filed against Wells since it agreed to pay $185 million in penalties and $5 million to customers for opening up to 2 million deposit and credit-card accounts in their names without their permission.
The scandal has shaken Wells, the third-largest American bank by assets. It has been put under tougher regulatory scrutiny, its chief executive, John Stumpf, has stepped down and its reputation has been damaged as it faces multiple inquiries.
Wells Fargo has begun an advertising campaign to win back customer loyalty in the wake of the scandal.
A spokesman for Wells Fargo declined to comment on the filing.
In a written response to questions from lawmakers, published last week, the bank said it would stand by its arbitration policy but is offering free mediation services to affected customers.
Mandatory arbitration rules inserted into account-opening agreements prohibit customers from joining class actions or suing Wells Fargo. Instead, the agreements require individual, closed-door arbitration.
Mandating arbitration when signing up for financial products has become standard practice after a Supreme Court decision in 2011 validated the practice. But customer advocates say it improperly denies customers the legal protections of court proceedings, such as the right to appeal, and helps to conceal corporate misconduct from the public and regulators because the related documents and hearings are not made public.
Customers trying to recover small sums of money are also unlikely to find lawyers to represent them in arbitration, critics say, and the cases do not set a legal precedent to help other affected individuals.
Last year, a court dismissed an earlier lawsuit against Wells Fargo, saying that customers had signed arbitration clauses when opening their accounts.
The bank has been criticized for its mandatory arbitration clauses from Democratic lawmakers in Congress, including Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is considering rules to prohibit banks, credit-card issuers and other companies from forcing customers to submit to arbitration and waive their right to join class-action lawsuits. But the bureau could find its powers scaled back by President-elect Donald J. Trump and a Republican-led Congress, according to members of both political parties, lobbyists and lawyers.
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Posted by: bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com
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