8/16/2017

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, THURSDAY, AUGUST 17, 2017

 



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UNAC Alert!  No to Trump's Threat of Nuclear War on North Korea!



Today's more overt U.S. imperial warmonger-in-chief, President Donald Trump, threatened North Korea on August 8 with an apocalyptic nuclear "fire and fury like the world has never seen."  

Within hours, Trump's imperial threats from his Bedminster, N.J. golf course was backed to the hilt by Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and Trump's national security adviser Gen. H. R. McMaster. Both held open the "nuclear option" if the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK/North Korea) refused to terminate its deterrent intercontinental missile and nuclear weapons program. The DPRK has every reason to believe that Trump's threat to order a pre-emptive military strike is real.

Need we recall that Trump, the candidate, scored President Obama for not bombing Syria to smithereens when Syria was alleged to have crossed Obama's "red line" with regard to sarin gas? Trump, the president, followed through with his own "red line" pledge to bomb Syria, while 46 of the 47 major U.S. newspapers editorialized in support. Again, no proof was offered to confirm Trump's sarin gas allegations. 

In April, again with hyper warmongering bravado, Trump proclaimed,  "We are sending an armada [to North Korea]. Very powerful. We have submarines. Very powerful, far more powerful than the [USS Carl Vinson] aircraft carrier. That I can tell you." This was no idle boast. The U.S. Ohio-class Trident submarine is capable of launching 192 nuclear warheads able to simultaneously obliterate/incinerate scores of cities.
Similarly, the U.S. military's use of its Massive Ordinance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB, nicknamed "Mother of all Bombs") in Afghanistan was yet another signal that this most powerful U.S. non-nuclear weapon of mass destruction, capable of obliterating everything within a one-mile diameter, was aimed more at intimidating North Korea, if not China and Syria, than it was to destroy underground ISIS tunnels. Indeed, the MOAB was never designed for tunnel destruction.
In recent months, the Trump administration turned its attention to China, demanding that it either pressure the DPRK to cease its missile test or face dire economic consequences as well as another round of unilateral and massive U.S./South Korean coordinated military maneuvers off China's coastal waters. 
Last week's unanimous United Nations Security Council sanctions against the DPRK reflected this pressure. The unprecedented sanctions are aimed at crippling North Korea's economy, with its traditional trading partners now banned from purchasing mineral resources and seafood commodities that amount to one-third of its total GDP output. Such sanctions are nothing less than a U.S.-imposed and UN-approved act of war against the North Korean people.
Make no mistake, the demonization of North Korean President Kim Jon-un, as with U.S. imperialism's demonization of the presidents of Iraq, Libya and Syria, coupled with the invention of various pretexts to justify war and invasion, cannot be dismissed as the idle bluster of a rouge racist, sexist and warmongering president. 
Trump is not the first U.S. president to threaten North Korea with nuclear war. Presidents Obama, Clinton and others before them have done the same, albeit with more "diplomatic" or "presidential" language employed to cast a veneer of civility or rationality over U.S. foreign policy as compared to the crude imagery that would-be strongman Trump believes is a requirement when U.S. imperial interests are at stake. And U.S. long-term imperial interests in North Korea, as with Iraq and Libya, are real, with estimates of its vast and largely untapped natural resource and mineral wealth in the range of  $6 to $10 trillion according to the June 29, 2017 Business Insider. (See http://www.businessinsider. com/north-korea-stockpile- minerals-worth-trillions-2017- 6?international=true&r=US&IR=T ).

Trump, and Obama before him, preside over an unprecedented militarized state, with as many as 1,000 foreign military bases. The U.S. is engaged in simultaneous wars in seven nations as well as covert wars, sanction wars, secret "special operation" wars, and drone wars. 

President Obama approved one $trillion to update, over a period of 30 years, the U.S. nuclear weapons program, which already boasts 5,000 nuclear warheads. The annual U.S. war budget exceeds the combined military expenditures of most of the rest of the world.

Today's Hydrogen or H-bombs have a destructive power that exceeds by a factor of 5,000 the atomic bombs that were exploded by the U.S. over Hiroshima and Nagasaki 72 years ago, almost to the day. Scientists at that time warned that just 10 such bombs, hypothetically launched by the USSR in key urban areas across the U.S., would obliterate the majority of the population, not to mention bring on a life-destroying multiple hundred-years "nuclear winter," while reducing the country to an uninhabitable radioactive nightmare.

Yet this insanity is today routinely contemplated by U.S. imperialism's chief representatives, whether they be Bill Clinton, Barack Obama or today, Donald Trump – none of whom have declared that the use of these doomsday weapons is unthinkable.

Indeed, U.S. President Harry Truman, a "civilized" president from middle class lineage, authorized the dropping of the two A-bombs, nick-named "little boy" and "fat man," on Japan in 1945. 250,000 people, almost all civilians, were incinerated.

What is left out of today's U.S. warmongering hyperbole is the colonial history of Korea itself, including the U.S. post-WWII occupation where the vast majority of people in what became North and South Korea, opposed the U.S. occupier's slaughter of the social forces allied with the Korean Communist Party/Workers Party of Korea, who allied with the Soviet Union to defeat the Japanese occupation. 

During the Korean war, the U.S. and its allies may have killed as many as one-third of the Korean population and destroyed the bulk of the buildings in the country. 

Today, the US maintains a force of tens of thousands of troops in South Korea; it has installed Thaad missiles and conducts joint nuclear-armed military exercises in the region twice a year.  The DPRK justly sees these as practice for a U.S. invasion.   

As in Vietnam, where the ten-year U.S. war cost the lives of four million Vietnamese, the U.S. is today threatening yet another genocidal war, this time against North Korea, a nation that has never invaded another country. The United National Antiwar Coalition stands opposed to all U.S. wars and threats of war.

We call upon all peace and social justice groups to organize emergency actions against the U.S. war drive.  Please see a list of actions being organized and add your own action by going here: http://nepajac.org/ koreaevents.htm.

UNAC demands:
U.S. Hands Off North Korea!
The Immediate and Total Nuclear Disarmament of the U.S. War Machine as a Prelude to the Abolition of All Nuclear Weapons! 
No to U.S. Military Exercises Against North Korea and China!
No to the U.S. Military "Pivot to Asia"!
Remove THAAD Missiles and U.S. Bases from So. Korea!

Please contribute to UNAC:  https://www.unacpeace.org/donate.html
If your organization would like to join the UNAC coalition, please click here: https://www.unacpeace.org/join.html

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Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?


Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? (City Lights Open Media)
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
A Book Review by Robert Fantina

With the recent acquittal of two more police officers in the deaths of unarmed Black men, the question posed by the title of this book is as relevant as it ever was. Through a series of concise, clear essays, Mumia Abu-Jamal details the racism against Blacks, comparing today's behaviors with the lynchings that were common in the south prior to the decade of the sixties. He points out the obvious: The passage of Civil Rights legislation hasn't changed much; it simply changed the way racism operates.

The ways in which the white establishment has worked to oppress Blacks is astounding. After the Civil War, when slavery was no longer legal, "whites realized that the combination of trumped-up legal charges and forced labor as punishment created both a desirable business proposition and an incredibly effective tool for intimidating rank-and-file emancipated African Americans and doing away with their most effective leaders."

Abu-Jamal states that, today, "where once whites killed and terrorized from beneath a KKK hood, now they now did so openly from behind a little badge." He details the killing of Black men and women in the U.S. with almost complete impunity.

There are two related issues Abu-Jamal discusses. The first is the rampant racism that enables the police to kill unarmed Blacks, as young as 12 years old, for no reason, and the second is the "justice" system that allows them to get away with it.

One shocking crime, amid countless others, occurred in Cleveland, Ohio. In 2012; a police officer was acquitted in the deaths of two, unarmed Blacks, after leaping onto the hood of their car and firing 15 rounds from his semi-automatic rifle into the car's occupants. That is 137 shots, at point blank range, into the bodies of two unarmed people.

If this were an anomaly, it would be barbaric, but it is not: it is common practice for the police to kill unarmed Blacks, and, on the rare occasions that they are charged with a crime, for the judges and juries to acquit them.

In the U.S., Black citizens are disproportionally imprisoned. With for-profit prisons on the rise, this injustice will only increase.

Abu-Jamal relates story after story with the same plot, and only the names are different. An unarmed Black man is stopped by the police for any of a variety of reasons ranging from trivial (broken tail light), to more significant (suspect in a robbery). But too often, the outcome is the same: the Black man is dead and the police officer who killed him, more often than not white, is either not charged, or acquitted after being charged.

The Black Lives Matter movement formed to combat this blatant injustice, but it will be an uphill battle. As Abu-Jamal says, "Police serve the ownership and wealth classes of their societies, not the middling or impoverished people. For the latter, it is quite the reverse." As a result, people of color suffer disproportionately, too often winding up on the wrong side of a gun.

What is to be done? Abu-Jamal refers to the writings of Dr. Huey P. Newton, who calls not for community policing, but for community control of the police. Abu-Jamal argues forcefully for a new movement, "driven by commitment, ethics, intelligence, solidarity, and passions; for without passion, the embers may dim and die."

Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? is powerful, disturbing, well-written, and an important book for our day.

Robert Fantina is the author of Empire, Racism and Genocide: A History of U.S. Foreign Policy. His articles on foreign policy, most frequently concerning Israel and Palestine, have appeared in such venues as Counterpunch and WarIsaCrime.org.
New York Journal of Books, July 2017

http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/Black-lives

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Haiti: Stop the Repression. 
No impunity. NO NEW ARMY
 The people of Haiti need our solidarity in the face of the increasing violence of the fraudulently imposed government of Jovenel Moise

Thursday July 14, 2017, in Petionville, Haiti, near Port-au-Prince, a young book vendor was shot to death by a police officer in front of horrified witnesses. The police used tear gas and batons against a crowd outraged by the murder and the quick, forcible removal of the body in a perceived attempt at a cover up. This is the latest of recent extra-judicial killings by the Haitian police and paramilitary forces.

The brutal killing occurred as the occupation government of Jovenel Moise, installed in the fraudulent elections of November 2016, is pushing to restore the brutal and corrupt Haitian military, which was disbanded by then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1995. Moise has stated that he wants the Army back within two years. Haitians remember the US-supported bloody rampage by former members of this army that claimed thousands of lives during the period of the 2004 coup d'etat against the elected government. The US/UN forces and occupation governments subsequently integrated many of these killers into the Haitian police and government paramilitary units.  

This announcement takes place at a volatile moment in Haitian society. The Haitian police and other government paramilitary forces, accompanied by UN occupation forces, have carried out criminal attacks against protesting teachers, students, factory workers, market women, street vendors and others who are victims of government extortion, theft of land, money and merchandise.

On July 10 - 12, 2017, during three days of peaceful protest for an increase in the minimum wage, Haitian police attacked the workers from the industrial park in Port-au-Prince with tear gas, batons and cannons shooting a liquid skin irritant. One of the beaten workers is a woman who had recently returned to work from giving birth.

·      On June 12, the government-appointed rector of the Haitian State University used his car to hit and run over a protesting university student. The government prosecutor has ignored the complaint filed by the students against the rector and is instead pursuing the victim's colleagues in a blatant attempt to harass and intimidate them. 

·      In May 2017, units of the Haitian police and paramilitary forces again attacked the people of Arcahaie protesting the government's plan to remove the main revenue-generating district from the community, located about 30 miles northwest of Port-au-Prince.

·      In May 2017, a food vendor in Petionville was killed after he was deliberately hit and run over by a car of the municipal paramilitary forces according to outraged witnesses.

 ·      On March 20th, 2017, police officers were videotaped shooting at the car carrying President Aristide and Fanmi Lavalas presidential candidate Dr. Maryse Narcisse as they returned from court. The police officers were reportedly observed returning to the national palace; there was no condemnation of this blatant assassination attempt by the government.

Adding a newly organized Haitian Army to this mix is a sign that the Haitian government is planning on more repression. The Haitian military's purpose was to protect Haitian dictatorships and to attack any challenges by the Haitian people.  Whether under the Duvalier dictatorships from 1957-1986 or when the military overthrew the democratically elected Aristide government in 1991, leading to the killing of over 5000 people, the military has been a central anti-democratic institution in Haitian society. When then-President Aristide disbanded the narco-trafficking Haitian military in 1995, the Army was eating up 40% of the national budget in a country with fewer than two doctors per 10,000 people.

Now this infamous military is being restored just as the United Nations is said to begin a staged withdrawal of its troops. This is similar to what happened following the U.S. occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934, a period in which 20,000 Haitians were killed. As the U.S. forces withdrew, they left in place a neo-colonial army with Haitian faces to do their bidding and continue the repression of popular discontent.

Haitians are saying NO to the restoration of an additional repressive military force.  They are demanding an end to police terror and an end to impunity.  We join their call.

E-mail and phone-in campaign to:

·       Say No to the Restoration of the brutal Haitian military
·       Hold the US and UN occupation accountable for the terror campaign by the Haitian    police and security forces they train and supervise.
·       Say No to impunity for police terror in Haiti

Contact:
-  US State Department: HaitiSpecialCoordinator@state.gov
-  Your Member of Congress: 202-224 3121
- UN Mission in Haiti: minustah-info@un.org

Sent by Haiti Action Committee
@HaitiAction1 and on FACEBOOK

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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:


A) EVENTS, ACTIONS 
AND ONGOING STRUGGLES

B) ARTICLES IN FULL


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A) EVENTS, ACTIONS AND ONGOING STRUGGLES


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Stand with Rasmea at her sentencing 

August 17


All out for Detroit!
Thursday, August 17, at 1:30 EDT

(rally at 1:30 PM, hearing starts at 3 PM)

U.S. District Court, 231 W. Lafayette Blvd., downtown Detroit, Michigan

The Rasmea Defense Committee, Committee to Stop FBI Repression, and U.S. Palestinian Community Network are urging everyone to join us in Detroit, August 17, to show our love and support for Rasmea at her sentencing in federal court. The will be her last court appearance and Rasmea is planning to make a statement.
 
The plea agreement that has already been reached states that Rasmea will not get additional jail time – but she will have to leave the U.S.
 
Given the near daily attacks on Rasmea in the right-wing and pro-Israeli media, we expect that a fair amount of attention will be focused on the sentencing. It is critical that the courtroom be filled with her supporters.

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MILLIONS FOR PRISONERS HUMAN RIGHTS MARCH ON WASHINGTON - AUGUST 19, 2017






Millions For Prisoners Human Rights march and rally, Washington, DC, August 19, 2017
March participants are asked to meet at Freedom Plaza, located at the corner of 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW at 11:00 am, but may arrive as early as 9 am. The March will begin promptly at 11:30 am from Freedom Plaza to Lafayette Park where the Rally will begin at 12 noon and will continue until 5. Individuals who are unable to participate in the Marching demonstration can go straight to Lafayette Square, directly north of the White House on H Street, Pennsylvania Avenue NW and 16th Street NW. 
Millions for Prisoners Human Rights core demands for Action:

A) We DEMAND the 13th amendment ENSLAVEMENT CLAUSE of the United States Constitution be amended to abolish LEGALIZED slavery in America.

B) We DEMAND a Congressional hearing on the 13th Amendment ENSLAVEMENT CLAUSE being recognized as in violation of international law, the general principles of human rights and its direct links to:
  1. Private entities exploiting prison labor
  2. Companies overcharging prisoners for goods and services
  3. Private entities contracted by states/federal government to build and operate prisons. This would also include immigration detentions
  4. Racial disparities in America's prison population and sentencing
  5. Policing: the disproportionate (unaccountable) killings by police in the black and brown communities
  6. Felony Disenfranchisement laws
  7. Immigration and Customs Enforcement 34,000 detention quotas
  8. Producing the world largest prison population

There are multiple ways to get from Union Station to Freedom Plaza and Lafayette Park. The easiest way might be to walk or take a metrobus or train. Please visit WMATA to find the best option. Cars and other vehicles can utilize Union Station Parking Garage, 30 Massachusetts Ave NE, Washington, DC 20002. Buses can utilize Union Station – Bus & RV, 1st St NE, Washington, DC 20002. For specific parking fee information and to make reservations please visit https://www.ecolonial.com/

Supporters across the nation are planning solidarity events to coincide with the Millions for Prisoners Human Rights March on August 19th in Washington. Thus far events are being held in Riverside CA, San Jose CA, Asheville NC, Montgomery AL, Carrabelle FL, Kansas City MO, St Louis MO, Albuquerque NM, Duluth MN and Omaha NE. 

Visit iamweubuntu.com to stay connected or get involved.

LOC's (Local Organizing Committees) are being established in cities all throughout the country to bring awareness and promote the March on Washington!
Additional Support is need in the following areas:
– Lawyers – Legal Observer – Lobbyist – Public Relations – Event Planners – Fundraisers
Please contact us if you want to support us in these or other areas:
Email: millionsforprisonersmarch@gmail.com
Tel.: 803-220-4553
Website: www.iamweubuntu.com
Facebook: Facebook.com/groups/MillionsforPrisonersMarch/
Twitter: Twitter.com/milli4prisoners
Address:
iamWE
P.O Box 58201
Raleigh NC 27658​

Update 6-24-2017:
More details here.


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CODEPINK Fall Action at Creech:  
Oct. 5 to Oct. 12    (All welcome!)
(Oct. 7 is the 16th Anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan)

SHUT DOWN CREECH: Spring 2018: Apr. 8-14.  (National Mass Mobilization to Resist Killer Drones)


(Thanks to Sandy Turner, from Ukiah, CA, for sharing this link!)

The Pentagon and CIA now have Brett Velicovich, their own drone veteran and CEO of an "online drone retail store" (Dronepire, Inc. and Expert Drones) , to glorify drone killing. Shameful that NPR couldn't ask the very difficult and important questions.  Lots of public education is needed to help people separate fact from fiction!

Would love for someone to do research on this guy!

Please listen to this interview (filled with misinformation), and consider joining us at Creech in the fall and/or spring to be a voice against the slaughter.  
(Dates below).

Life As A 'Drone Warrior'


NPR interview "with Brett Velicovich about his memoir, Drone Warrior, which details his time hunting and killing alleged terrorists using drones in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places."


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/drone-warrior-author-brett-velicovich-hunting-terrorists/


PS:  We should have a massive letter writing and phone calling to NPR for this totally biased and dangerous misrepresentation!


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SIGN THE PETITION: DROP THE CHARGES AGAINST REALITY WINNER

https://couragetoresist.org/drop-charges-reality-winner/

Jun 8, 2017
Department of Justice:
Drop the changes against Ms. Reality L. Winner, the defense contractor who allegedly shared with the media evidence of attacks against US election systems by foreign agents. This information should not have been classified. Ms. Winner's prosecution appears politically motivated.
Courage to Resist will attempt to keep signers of the Reality Winners petition up-to-date with periodic news and alerts from her family and attorney. You will be able to opt out at any time.

WHY ALLEGED WHISTLE-BLOWER REALITY WINNER DESERVES SUPPORT

BY JEFF PATERSON, COURAGE TO RESIST. JUNE 8, 2017

Reality Winner is a 25-year-old Air Force veteran who was arrested in Augusta, Georgia on June 3rd. She allegedly released classified NSA documents to The Intercept, which were the basis for a story about Russian hacking efforts against US election systems leading up to last year's presidential election. Reality is currently in the Lincoln County Jail in Georgia, and faces up to ten years in prison.
Reality Winner—yes, that is her given legal name—did the right thing, and she should be defended.
Reality allegedly leaked information regarding attempted interference in an election, tampering that many believe assisted in Donald Trump's presidential win—despite earning nearly four million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. The documents published by The Interceptonly confirm earlier accounts of US election hacking attempts and, given the current administration's extreme antagonisms against facts, the release of these documents was clearly in the public interest. Like the vast majority of government documents that are hidden from public view, these reports should have been declassified by now anyway.
Now Trump's own Department of Justice has targeted Reality. It's a sinister move, but on the other hand, simply a continuation Obama's unprecedented zeal in prosecuting whistle-blowers. Trump inherited an atrocious War on Leaks, and Reality is the latest victim of that war. Her arrest is a signal to the world, and the four million other Americans with access to classified information: Only sanctioned leaks benefiting the government will be tolerated.
There's a striking hypocrisy to Trump's crackdown. Less than a month ago the President was criticized for carelessly leaking classified information to Russian officials during a White House meeting. We now know this information concerned a bomb that is being developed by ISIS. This is standard operating procedure: lawmakers have no issue leaking classified information if it somehow furthers their interest, but they aggressively prosecute citizens who expose actual wrongdoing.
I believe that Reality Winner's possible actions should be understood within the context of recent heroic whistleblowing. Shortly before leaving office, Barack Obama commuted the remaining sentence of US Army soldier Chelsea Manning, who was facing 27 more years in prison for exposing war crimes and corruption. Edward Snowden, who leaked information about our government's massive spying program, was granted asylum in Russia but faces espionage charges back home. Just like Manning, it seems that Reality was able to see the inner workings of the United States' war machine.
She served in the Air Force from 2013 until early this year, working as a linguist. Like Snowden, she would have had a better view than most as to how our security state works. Up until last week, she was a military defense contractor with the Pluribus International Corporation in the suburbs outside of Augusta, Georgia, and had Top Secret security clearance.
The US government has spent tens of millions of dollars in better auditing capabilities since the disclosures by Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. Those that would rather keep the public in the dark as to what their government is doing with their tax dollars and in their name, have redoubled their efforts to identify whistle-blowers much more quickly. Winner's arrest was facilitated by the government's increased ability to more easily identify the relatively small number of people that recently accessed documents in question as well as the yellow-colored, nearly-invisible micro dots that most color printers today use to include a printer's serial number and time stamp on each printed page. This appears to have contributed to the focus on Reality Winner.
Reality is expected to plead not guilty to charges against her today. We don't know exactly why she allegedly released the NSA documents to the press, but we do have some insight into her views about the world. Her social media accounts show a woman who, like a clear majority of Americans, is critical of Donald Trump. She has also voiced support for Edward Snowden, and opposition to the US fabricating a reason to attack Iran.
According to The Intercept, [Winner's leak] "ratchets up the stakes of the ongoing investigations into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives . . . If collusion can ultimately be demonstrated – a big if at this point – then the assistance on Russia's part went beyond allegedly hacking email to serve a propaganda campaign, and bled into an attack on U.S. election infrastructure itself."
We are talking about a potentially monumental story that might require prosecutions, but Reality Winner shouldn't be the one who ends up in jail. While the details of the story continue to unfold, by all indications she deserves our support, and the release of these documents should be celebrated.


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Solidarity Statement from the California Coalition for Women Prisoners

Friends,

CCWP sent the solidarity statement below expressing support with the hunger strikers at the Northwest County Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma Washington, one of the largest immigration prisons in the country.  People at NWDC, including many women, undertook the hunger strike starting at the beginning of April 2017 to protest the horrendous conditions they are facing.  Although the peak of the hunger strike was a few weeks ago, the strikers set a courageous example of resistance for people in detention centers and prisons around the country. 

Here is a link to a Democracy Now! interview with Maru Villalpando of Northwest Detention Center Resistance (http://www.nwdcresistance.org/) and Alexis Erickson, partner of one of the hunger strikers, Cristian Lopez.
For live updates, visit: 

California Coalition for Women Prisoners Statement

California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP) stands in solidarity with the hunger strikers, many of them women, detained by ICE at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC), a private prison operated by the GEO group contracted by ICE in Washington state.  We applaud the detainees at NORCOR, a county jail in rural Oregon, who recently won their demands after sustaining six days without meals. 

Since April 10th, those detained in NWDC have refused meals to demand changes to the abhorrent conditions of their detention, including poor quality food, insufficient medical care, little to no access to family visits, legal counsel or legal documents, and lack of timely court proceedings. Hunger strikes are a powerful method of resistance within prisons that require commitment and courage from prisoners and their families. We have seen this historically in California when tens-of-thousands of prisoners refused meals to protest solitary confinement in 2011 and 2013, and also currently in Palestine where over 1,500 prisoners are on hunger strike against the brutal conditions of Israeli prisons. 

As the Trump administration continues to escalate its attacks on Latinx/Chicanx and Arab/Muslim communities, deportations and detentions serve as strategies to control, remove, and erase people—a violence made possible in a context of inflamed xenophobia and increasingly visible and virulent racism. We stand with the families of those detained as well as organizations and collectives on the ground in Washington State struggling to expose the situation inside these facilities as well as confront the escalating strategies of the Trump administration.

CCWP recognizes the common struggle for basic human dignity and against unconstitutional cruel and inhumane treatment that people of color and immigrants face in detention centers, jails, and prisons across the United States. We also sadly recognize from our work with people in women's prisons the retaliatory tactics such as prison transfers and solitary confinement that those who fight oppression face. Similar abuses continue to occur across California at all of its prisons and  detention centers, including the GEO-run women's prison in McFarland, California.. CCWP sends love and solidarity to the hunger strikers in the Northwest. Together we can break down the walls that tear our families and communities apart. ¡ya basta! #Ni1Más #Not1More

    Northwest Detention Center Press Release May 4, 2017

Despite threats and retaliation, hunger strikers continue protest 

ICE ignores demands for improved conditions 

Tacoma, Washington/The Dalles, Oregon—Immigrants held at ICE facilities in two states—the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC), run by GEO Group, and NORCOR, a rural public jail—continued their hunger strike today, despite growing weakness from lack of food. The exponential growth of immigration detention has led ICE to contract the function of detaining immigrants out to both private prison companies and to county governments, with both treating immigrants as a source of profit. ICE has been using NORCOR as "overflow" detention space for immigrants held at NWDC, and is regularly transferring people back and forth from the NWDC to NORCOR. People held at NORCOR have limited access to lawyers and to the legal documents they need to fight and win their deportation cases. They are often transferred back to NWDC only for their hearings, then shipped back to NORCOR, where they face terrible conditions. Jessica Campbell of the Rural Organizing Project affirmed, "No one deserves to endure the conditions at NORCOR—neither the immigrants ICE is paying to house there, nor the people of Oregon who end up there as part of criminal processes. It's unsafe for everyone."

The strike began on April 10th, when 750 people at the NWDC began refusing meals. The protest spread to NORCOR this past weekend. Maru Mora Villalpando of NWDC Resistance confirmed, "It's very clear from our contact with people inside the facilities and with family members of those detained that the hunger strike continues in both Oregon and Washington State." She continued, "The question for us is, how will ICE assure that the abuses that these whistle-blowing hunger strikers have brought to light are addressed?"

From the beginning of the protest, instead of using the strike as an opportunity to look into the serious concerns raised by the hunger strikers, ICE and GEO have both denied the strike is occurring and retaliated against strikers. Hunger strikers have been transferred to NORCOR in retaliation for their participation. One person who refused transfer to NORCOR was put in solitary confinement. Just this week, hunger striking women have been threatened with forced feeding—a practice that is recognized under international law to be torture. In an attempt to break their spirit, hunger strikers have been told the strike has been ineffective and that the public is ignoring it.

Hunger striker demands terrible conditions inside detention center be addressed—including the poor quality of the food, the dollar-a-day pay, and the lack of medical care. They also call for more expedited court proceedings and the end of transfers between detention facilities.   Hunger strikers consistently communicate, "We are doing this for our families." Despite their incredibly oppressive conditions, locked away and facing deportation in an immigration prison in the middle of an industrial zone and in a rural county jail, hunger strikers have acted collectively and brought national attention to the terrible conditions they face and to the ongoing crisis of deportations, conditions the U.S. government must address.Latino Advocacy

Maru Mora Villalpando
For live updates, visit: 
News mailing list: News@womenprisoners.org


Activist Goes on Hunger Strike Outside the Northwest Detention Center
Maru Mora Villalpando Joins the Tacoma 12 and Adelanto 9 in Calling for an End to Human Rights Abuses in Immigrant Detention

Tacoma, WA - On Monday, June 19th, Maru Mora Villalpando, member of the NWDC Resistance, will begin  a hunger strike to call attention to the plight of up to 1,600 immigrants held in detention suffering human rights abuses at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC). On June 15, 2017, at least a dozen detainees went on hunger strike to call attention to inhumane detention conditions, refusing to eat for multiple days. By June 18, NWDC Resistance organizers received reports that more than 25 hunger strikers are calling on GEO Group to provide edible, nutritious food, on ICE to provide fair and timely hearings, and on civil society to step up and take action for the injustices in our communities. In response, Maru Mora Villalpando is going on hunger strike, and is joined by other members of civil society who are stepping up their solidarity.

As hunger strikers on the inside are discussing ceasing their strike on the inside, Maru will keep the hunger strike continuous by holding space on the outside. A female hunger striker in detention said: "I feel more deteriorated every day, more bad, more worse, because of what we are living through and what we are seeing inside. What we are suffering is horrible, horrible. Here they don't care what conditions we are living in… they don't care about anything." To listen to her story, go to: http://bit.ly/2sIyXzZ

GEO Group's human rights abuses are not a case of "bad apples." Just this week, GEO employees have refused to complete basic maintenance, such as repairing a broken air conditioner when projected temperatures are expected to reach 78 degrees. Likewise, people in detention have noted repeated problems with incorrect medications resulting in hospital visits, suicide attempts, and inadequate access to medical treatment -- even in diagnosed cases of malignant cancers.

There are also 9 asylum seekers on hunger strike at the GEO-owned Adelanto Detention Facility in Southern California. Rather than releasing asylum seekers pending their hearing, they were subjected to further trauma -- pepper spray, beating and solitary confinement. The #Adelanto9 continue on hunger strike to call attention to these blatant human rights abuses, meaning that people inside and outside detention centers are on hunger strike throughout the West Coast.

Call to Action: Hunger strikers and solidarity supporters are holding down a 24-7 encampment outside the Northwest Detention Center. Please join them to show people held in detention that they are not alone, and the state of Washington will no longer tolerate human rights abuses!

For live updates on the #Tacoma12 and solidarity hunger strikes, visithttps://www.facebook.com/ NWDCResistance/.

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NWDC Resistance is a volunteer community group that emerged to fight deportations in 2014 at the now-infamous Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, WA. NWDC Resistance is part of the #Not1More campaign and supported people detained who organized hunger strikes asking for a halt to all deportations and better treatment and conditions.

Contact: Maru Mora Villalpando, (206) 251 6658, maru@latinoadvocacy.org


#Tacoma12     #Adelanto9     #Not1More      #NoEstánSolos

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Labor Studies and Radical History

4444 Geary Blvd., Suite 207, San Francisco, CA 94118

415.387.5700

http://www.holtlaborlibrary.org/mayday.html

Hours

(call 415.387.5700 to be sure the library is open for the hours you are interested in. We close the library sometimes to go on errands or have close early) suggested)

7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Closed on all major holidays and May Day 
We can arrange, by request, to keep the library open longer during the day or open it on weekends. Just ask.

Services

  • Reference Librarian On-site
  • Email and Telephone Reference
  • Interlibrary Loan
  • Online Public Access Catalog 
  • Microfilm Reader/Printer
  • DVD and VCR players
  • Photocopier
  • Quiet well-lighted place for study and research 
For an appointment or further information, please email: david [at] holtlaborlibrary.org 

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Support:




CONTRIBUTE 
Thank you for being a part of this struggle.

Cuando luchamos ganamos! When we fight we win!

Noelle Hanrahan, Director
Facebook
Twitter
Website
To give by check: 
PO Box 411074
San Francisco, CA
94141

Stock or legacy gifts:
Noelle Hanrahan
(415) 706 - 5222

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MEDIA ADVISORYMedia contact: Morgan McLeod, (202) 628-0871
mmcleod@sentencingproject.org
NEW REPORT FINDS RECORD NUMBER OF PEOPLE SERVING
LIFE SENTENCES IN U.S. PRISONS
Washington, D.C.— Despite recent political support for criminal justice reform in most states, the number of people serving life sentences has nearly quintupled since 1984. 

A new report by The Sentencing Project finds a record number of people serving life with parole, life without parole, and virtual life sentences of 50 years or more, equaling one of every seven people behind bars. 


Eight states  Alabama, California, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New York, and Utah  have at least one of every five prisoners serving a life or de facto life sentence in prison. 
The Sentencing Project will host an online press conference to discuss its report Still Life: America's Increasing Use of Life and Long-Term Sentences, on Wednesday, May 3rd at 11:00 a.m. EDT.   
Press Conference Details
WHAT: Online press conference hosted by The Sentencing Project regarding the release of its new report examining life and long-term sentences in the United States. REGISTER HERE to participate. The call-in information and conference link will be sent via email.  
WHEN: 
Wednesday, May 3, 2017 at 11:00 a.m. EDT 
WHO: 

  • Ashley Nellis, The Sentencing Project's senior research analyst and author of Still Life: America's Increasing Use of Life and Long-Term Sentences
  • Evans Ray, whose life without parole sentence was commuted in 2016 by President Obama
  • Steve Zeidman, City University of New York law professor and counsel for Judith Clark—a New York prisoner who received a 75 year to life sentence in 1983
The full report will be available to press on Wednesday morning via email.

Founded in 1986, The Sentencing Project works for a fair and effective U.S. criminal justice system by promoting reforms in sentencing policy, addressing unjust racial disparities and practices, and advocating for alternatives to incarceration.

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When they knock on your front door: Preparing for Repression

BAY AREA ANTI-REPRESSION COMMITTEE

When they knock on your front door: Preparing for Repression
 BY 

Mothers Message to the NY/NJ Activist Community 

In order to effectively combat the existing opportunism, hidden agendas and to better provide ALL genuinely good willed social justice organizations and individuals who work inside of the New York and New Jersey metropolitan areas... with more concrete guidelines; 

The following "10 Point Platform and Justice Wish List" was adopted on Saturday, May 13, 2017    during the "Motherhood: Standing Strong 4 Justice" pre-mothers day gathering which was held     at Hostos Community College - Bronx, New York.......

"What We Want, What We Need" 

May, 2017 - NY/NJ Parents 10 Point Justice Platform and Wish List 

Point #1 - Lawyers and Legal Assistance:  Due to both the overwhelming case loads and impersonal nature of most public defenders, the Mothers believe that their families are receiving limited options, inadequate legal advise and therefore; WE WANT and NEED for community activists to help us in gaining access to experienced "pro-bono" and/or activist attorneys as well as the free resources provided by non-profit social justice and legal advocacy groups.

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Point #2 - First Response Teams: The Mothers felt that when their loved ones were either killed or captured by the police that they were left in the hands of the enemy and without any support, information or direction on how to best move forward and therefore; WE WANT and NEED community activists to help us develop independently community controlled & trained first response teams in every borough or county that can confirm and be on the ground within 24 hours of any future incident.

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Point #3 - Security and Support At Court Appearances: The Mothers all feel that because community activist support eventually becomes selective and minimal, that they are disrespected by both the courthouse authorities, mainstream media and therefore;   WE WANT and NEED community activists to collectively promote and make a strong presence felt at all court appearances and; To always provide trained security & legal observers... when the families are traveling to, inside and from the court house.

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Point #4 - Emotional/Spiritual Healing and Grief and Loss Counseling: After the protest rallies, demonstrations, justice marches and television cameras are gone the Mothers all feel alone and abandoned and therefore;                                                                             WE WANT and NEED for community activists to refer/help provide the families with clergy, professional therapy & cultural outlets needed in order to gain strength to move forward. 

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Point #5 -  Parents Internal Communication Network: The Mothers agreed as actual victims, that they are the very best qualified in regards to providing the needed empathy and trust for an independent hotline & contact resource for all of the parents and families who want to reach out to someone they can mutually trust that is able understand what they are going through and therefore;           WE WANT and NEED for community activists to help us in providing a Parents Internal Communication Network to reach that objective.

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Point #6 -  Community Offices and Meeting Spaces: The Mothers agreed that there is an extreme need for safe office spaces where community members and family victims are able to go to for both confidential crisis intervention and holding organizing meetings and therefore;                                                                                                                                                                                                 WE WANT and NEED for community activists to help us in securing those safe spaces inside of our own neighborhoods.   

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Point #7 - Political Education Classes and Workshop Training: The Mothers agreed in implementing the "each one, teach one"   strategy and therefore;                                                                                                                                                                                         WE WANT and NEEDfor community activists to help us in being trained as educators and organizers in Know Your Rights, Cop Watch, First Response, Emergency Preparedness & Community Control over all areas of public safety & the police in their respective neighborhoods.

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Point #8 - Support From Politicians and Elected Officials: The Mothers believe that most political candidates and incumbent elected officials selectively & unfairly represent only those cases which they think to be politically advantageous to their own selfish personal success on election day and therefore;                                                                                                                                WE WANT and NEED for community activists to help us in either publicly exposing or endorsing these aforementioned political candidates and/or elected officials to their constituents solely based upon the uncompromising principles of serving the people.

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Point #9 - Research and Documentation: The Mothers believe that research/case studies, surveys, petitions, historical archives, investigative news reporting and events should be documented and made readily available in order to counter the self-serving  police misinformation promoted by the system and therefore;                                                                                                                          WE WANT and NEED for community activists to help us by securing college/university students, law firms, film makers, authors, journalists and professional research firms to find, document & tell the people the truth about police terror & the pipeline to prison.

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Point #10 - Grassroots Community Outreach and Information: The Mothers believe that far too much attention is being geared towards TV camera sensationalism with the constant organizing of marches & rallies "downtown"  and therefore; WE WANT and NEED for community activists to provide a fair balance by helping us to build in the schools, projects, churches and inside of the subway trains and stations of our Black, brown and oppressed communities where the majority of the police terror is actually taking place. 



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My Heartfelt "Thank You!"

By Mumia Abu-Jamal

Several days ago I received a message from both of our lawyers, Bob Boyle and Bret Grote, informing me that the latest lab tests came in from the Discovery Requests.  

And they told me that the Hepatitis C infection level is at zero and as of today I'm Hepatitis C free. 

This is in part due to some fine lawyering by Bret and Bob who—remember—filed the suit while I was in the throes of a diabetic coma, unconscious and thus unable to file for myself.  
But it's also due to you, the people.  Brothers and sisters who supported our efforts, who contributed to this fight with money, time, protests and cramming court rooms on our behalf, who sent cards, who prayed, who loved deeply.  

I can't thank you all individually but if you hear my voice or read my words know that I am thanking you, all of you. And I'm thanking you for showing once again the Power of the People. 

This battle ain't over, for the State's cruelest gift is my recent diagnosis of cirrhosis of the liver. With your love we shall prevail again.  I thank you all. Our noble Dr.'s Corey Weinstein, who told us what to look for, and Joseph Harris who gave me my first diagnosis and who became the star of the courtroom by making the mysteries of Hep C understandable to all.  An internist working up in Harlem, Dr. Harris found few thrills better than telling his many Hep C patients that they're cured.  

This struggle ain't just for me y'all. 

Because of your efforts thousands of Pennsylvania prisoners now have hope of healing from the ravages of Hepatitis C. [singing] "Let us march on 'til victory is won." So goes the old Negro Spiritual, "The Black National Anthem." 

We are making it a reality. I love you all.

From Prison Nation,
This is Mumia Abu-Jamal

Prison Radio, May 27, 2017

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Court order to disclose DA files in Mumia Abu-Jamal's legal case [video]

This 9-minute video gives background on new revelations about conflict of interest -- an appeals judge who had previously been part of the prosecution team -- in upholding the 1982 conviction of journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal on charges of killing a police officer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17Tp5NlllLU

A ruling to implement a judge's recent order for "discovery" could be made on May 30.

Judge Tucker granted discovery to Mumia Abu-Jamal pursuant to his claims brought under Williams v Pennsylvania that he was denied due process because his PA Supreme Court appeals from 1998-2008 were decided by Ronald Castille, who had previously been the District Attorney during Mumia's 1988 appeal from his conviction and death sentence, as well as having been a senior assistant district attorney during Mumia's trial.

The DA is given 30 days—until May 30, 2017—to produce all records and memos regarding Mumia's case, pre-trial, trial, post-trial and direct appeal proceedings between Castille and his staff and any public statement he made about it. Then Mumia has 15 days after receiving this discovery to file amendments to his PCRA petition.

This date of this order is April 28, but it was docketed today, May 1, 2017.

This is a critical and essential step forward!

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Dear Friend,

For the first time- a court has ordered the Philadelphia DA to turn over evidence and open their files in Mumia's appeal.   In a complacency shattering blow, the District Attorney's office is finally being held to account.  Judge Leon Tucker of the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court ordered the DA to produce all of the documents relevant to former PA Supreme Court Justice's role in the case. Castille was first a supervisory ADA during Mumia's trial, then District Attorney, and finally as a judge he sat on Mumia's appeals to the PA Supreme Court. 

This broad discovery order follows just days after the arguments in court by Christina Swarns, Esq. of the NAACP LDF, and Judith Ritter, Esq. of Widner Univ.

During that hearing, Swarns made it clear that the District Attorney's practice of lying to the appellate courts would not be tolerated and had been specifically exposed by the U.S. Supreme Court.  In the Terrence Williams case, which highlights Ronald Castile's conflict, the Supreme Court in no uncertain terms excoriated the office for failing to disclose crucial evidence.  Evidence the office hid for years.  This is an opportunity to begin to unravel the decades long police and prosecutorial corruption that has plagued Mumia's quest for justice.  

In prison for over thirty six years Mumia Abu-Jamal has maintained his innocence in the death of Philadelphia Police officer Daniel Faulkner on Dec. 9th 1981.  

"The Commonwealth  must  produce  any  and  all  documents  or  records  in  the  possession  or  control  of  the Philadelphia  District  Attorney's  Office   showing   former   District   Attorney   Ronald   Castille's   personal   involvement   in the  above-captioned  case  ... and public statements during and after his tenure as District Attorney of Philadelphia."

It is important to note that the history of the District Attorney's office in delaying and appealing to prevent exposure of prosecutorial misconduct and the resulting justice.  At every turn, there will be attempts to limit Mumia's access to the courts and release.   it is past time for justice in this case.  
Noelle Hanrahan, P.I.


Prison Radio is a 501c3 project of the Redwood Justice Fund. We record and broadcast the voices of prisoners, centering their analyses and experiences in the movements against mass incarceration and state repression. If you support our work, please join us.

www.prisonradio.org   |   info@prisonradio.org   |   415-706-5222

Thank you for being a part of this work!

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Kevin "Rashid" Johnson Packed Off to Florida!

Rashid: I'm off to Florida and a new phase of reprisals for publicizing abuses in US prisons

July 14, 2017

Readers are urged to share this story widely and write to Rashid right away; mail equals support, and the more he gets, the safer he'll be: Kevin Johnson, O-158039, RMC, P.O. Box 628, Lake Butler FL 32054

by Kevin 'Rashid' Johnson
http://sfbayview.com/2017/07/rashid-im-off-to-florida-and-a-new-phase-of-reprisals-for-publicizing-abuses-in-us-prisons/

Packed off to Florida

Following Texas prison officials planting a weapon in my cell on March 26, 2017, then stealing most of my personal property on April 6, 2017, in an ongoing pattern of retaliation for and attempts to repress my writing and involvement in litigation exposing and challenging abuses in Texas prisons, including their killing prisoners, I was unceremoniously packed off to the Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) on June 22, 2017.
This transfer came as outside protests mounted against the abuses, and Texas officials became more and more entangled in a growing web of their own lies invented in their efforts to cover up and deny their reprisals against me, and also while a contempt investigation was imminent upon a motion I filed in a federal lawsuit brought by relatives of one of the prisoners they'd killed – a killing I'd witnessed and publicized.
Florida, notorious for its own extremely abusive prisons, readily signed on to take up Texas's slack. And being an openly corrupt system unaccustomed to concealing its dirt, FDC officials shot straight from the hip in expressing and carrying on efforts to repress and act out reprisals for my exposing and challenging prison abuses.

The Welcoming Committee

Following a four-hour flight from Texas to Florida, I was driven in a sweltering prison van from an airport just outside Jacksonville, Florida, to the FDC's Reception and Medical Center (RMC) in Lake Butler, Florida. I was forced to leave most all my personal property behind in Texas.
Upon reaching RMC, I was brought from the van, manacled hand and foot into an enclosed vehicle port, where I was met by a mob of white guards of all ranks. I was ordered to stand in a pair of painted yellow footprints on a concrete platform as the guards crowded around me.

I was ordered to stand in a pair of painted yellow footprints on a concrete platform as the guards crowded around me. "This is Florida, and we'll beat your ass! We'll kill you!" said the spokesman.

Their "chosen" spokesman, a tall goofy guard, R. Knight, stepped forward and launched into a speech consisting of threats and insults. He emphasized that I was "not in Virginia or wherever else" I'd been. That "this is Florida, and we'll beat your ass! We'll kill you!" He assured my "Black ass" that my tendency to protest "won't be tolerated here."
He went on and on, like an overseer explaining the plantation's code of decorum and the "place" to a newly arrived Black slave. The analogy is apt. "You will answer us only as 'no sir' and 'yes sir,' 'no ma'am' and 'yes ma'am.' You forget this and we'll kick your fucking teeth out," he barked.
I was then taken through the various stages of being "processed" in: fingerprinted, examined and questioned by medical staff etc. Knight took possession of my property and stole a number of documents and all my writing supplies (five writing tablets, four ink pens, 19 envelopes, stamps), all my hygiene supplies (deodorant, shampoo, two bars of soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, nail clippers) and so on.
All these items that I brought with me from Texas were inventoried and logged by Texas officials. Knight logged and inventoried me as receiving from him only my watch, some legal papers, 15 envelopes and my eyeglasses.
Next, I was taken into an office and sat before a Sgt. L. Colon, RMC's "gang (or STG, Security Threat Group) investigator." He proceeded in the same hostile terms. He explained that he knew all about me and his displeasure with my published articles about prison abuses, and he assured that FDC would put an end to it. He admitted his purpose was to put an STG profile on me, refer it to FDC's central office in Tallahassee to be upheld, and I would then be put on STG file, which in turn would be used to stop my writings.
He proceeded to ask about me being a "Black Panther leader" and, using a thoroughly amateur interrogation method, attempted to have me characterize myself and my party as a gang. When his efforts failed, he charged me with being a "bullshitter." I told him only that I am a member of a constitutionally protected, non-violent communist party and whatever false stigma he wanted to try and invent against me and us was typical of fascist governments and we'd address it publicly and in court. Our "interview" was terminated.

Another nurse did my medical history check, remarking that my blood pressure reading was extremely high, 145/103. Although she had all my medications sitting there in front of her, and I told her I had not received my dose that day, she refused to provide them and did nothing.

Upon arriving in Florida, I had not received my hypertension medications since the prior morning. The sweltering heat was aggravating my condition. During the intake process a routine blood pressure check was done and my reading was around 145/103. The nurse who did the reading passed me on to another nurse who did my medical history check, remarking that my reading was extremely high. Although she had all my medications sitting there in front of her, and I told her I had not received my dose that day, she refused to provide them and did nothing.

Barbaric housing

Following completing the intake process, I was walked a substantial distance across the prison yard carrying my bag of property in handcuffs and the sweltering midday heat, dizzy from my elevated blood pressure.
I was led to K-building, the solitary confinement unit, where I was put into a cell, K-3-102, which had no bunk in it and had a commode that had to be flushed by guards from outside the cell – often they would not flush it when it needed to be and I asked them to. The commode had otherwise been obviously left unflushed for long periods, because inside the bowl was and is a thick, yellowed layer of calcium and waste residue and it reeked of fermented urine and feces.
Just before I entered the cell, it was wet-mopped, not to sanitize it, but to cover the entire floor with water that would not, and did not, dry for over a day afterward due to the extreme humidity and lack of air circulation in the cells. There is no air conditioning in the cell blocks and, unlike in Texas, FDC prisoners may not have in-cell fans.
My cell was infested with ants which would find their way into my bed as I slept on the floor. I received numerous bites from them and I believe also roaches that frequently crawled into the cell. At night, in the pitch black cells – and even when the lights were on – mice and huge, two-inch-long cockroaches, along with the "regular" smaller breed of roaches, ran into and explored the cell.

My cell was infested with ants which would find their way into my bed as I slept on the floor. I received numerous bites from them. At night, even when the lights were on, mice and huge, two-inch-long cockroaches, along with the "regular" smaller breed of roaches, ran into and explored the cell.

The K-building lieutenant, Jason Livingston, posted a special note outside my cell door stating I was on a heightened security status, that I and the cell were to be specially searched any time I exited or entered the cell, that I was to be specially restrained and the ranking guards had to accompany me to and from any destination outside the cell. The pretense was that I was an extreme physical threat.
I was denied my hypertension medications until I briefly fell unconscious on the evening of June 24, 2017.
Following sending word out to an attorney and others about my conditions and experiences, who apparently raised complaints on my behalf, I was moved to a "regular" cell, K-1-204, on June 30, 2017, with a bunk and a commode I can flush. I was repeatedly confronted by various guards who've commented that I'm no dangerous person and they don't understand why I've been profiled or treated as though I am.
A week later FDC officials would come clean, exposing on the record their actual motives for my mistreatment, and "special" security status.

Solitary confinement for publicizing abuses

My readers and others will recall when, in January 2017, I was given a disciplinary infraction by Texas officials for a statement I wrote about suffering their abuses that was published online. When confronted about such retaliatory acts by a PBS reporter, Ms. Kamala Kelkar, TDCJ spokesman Jason Clark initially lied, denying that I received any such infractions, until Ms. Kelkar emailed him a copy of the charge I'd received. He then suddenly changed his story, lying yet again to claim the infraction had been overturned, then declined to answer any further questions.[i]
Clark knew enough to deny and try to cover up such acts of retaliation against a prisoner exercising his right to freedom of speech. Florida officials, however, have come right out admitting and exposing such actions.[ii]
On July 6, 2017, I was confronted by RMC classification officer Jeremy Brown, who notified me that I am to be formally reviewed for placement on Close Management I status, which is the FDC's name for solitary confinement. The reason he gave for this review was the exact STG pretext Sgt. L. Colon told me on my first day was going to be created to justify suppressing my writings about prison abuses.
Brown served me written notification stating my CMI review was based upon my alleged "documented leadership in a Security Threat Group that is certified by the Threat Assessment Review Committee in Central Office." Remember, this is the very same illegal basis upon which California prison officials were indefinitely throwing prisoners in solitary confinement which prompted three historic mass prisoner hunger strikes in 2011 and 2013 and was abolished upon the settlement of a class action lawsuit against the practice in 2015.

My assignment to solitary confinement is for "documented leadership in a Security Threat Group" … This is the very same illegal basis upon which California prison officials were indefinitely throwing prisoners in solitary confinement which prompted three historic mass prisoner hunger strikes in 2011 and 2013 and was abolished upon the settlement of a class action lawsuit against the practice in 2015.

But FDC officials went much further in supporting "comments" to state their true motives for devising to put me in solitary and for my mistreatment up to that point.
As Colon had threatened, an STG label was invented against the New Afrikan Black Panther Party, a party about which Colon admitted he and the FDC had no prior knowledge. The reason the party was designated an STG and gang was because (get this!) I'd written articles while in Oregon and Texas prison systems that were published online about abuses in the prisons which generated concern and perfectly legal protests from the public, which was characterized as my gang following that "caused disruption in the orderly operations" of the prisons.
The notice went on to admit, as I've long contended in my writings, that these writings are the actual reason I've been transferred from state to state – illegal retaliatory transfers – which was characterized as STG activities.
Passing mention was made that I'd received disciplinary infractions while in Oregon and Texas, but no attempt was made to show those infractions bore any connection to my party affiliation. In fact, those who have followed my writings and the series of official reprisals – which is now being admitted by FDC officials – know those infractions were fabricated retaliations, many of which I was prevented from contesting.
So, according to FDC officials, I am a confirmed gang leader because I publicize prison abuses through articles that are posted online and my gang members and followers are members of the public who read my articles and make complaints and inquiries of officials, which acts are characterized as presenting disruptions to prison operations – or in other words throwing a monkey wrench in their business-as-usual abuses.

According to FDC officials, I am a confirmed gang leader because I publicize prison abuses through articles that are posted online and my gang members and followers are members of the public who read my articles and make complaints and inquiries of officials, which acts are characterized as presenting disruptions to prison operations.

For this I am to be thrown into solitary, which means any future posting and publishing of writings by me about prison abuses will be characterized as my continuing to engage in STG or gang activities, and any legal public protests as my gang members threatening prison security.
I didn't make this up, it's all in writing; read it HERE (scroll down to "SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS"). This is where taxpayers' monies are going in financing these ubiquitous gang busting units. And should you protest, you will be labelled a gangster yourself. I won't belabor the point.
Dare to struggle, Dare to win!
All Power to the People!
[i] Kamala Kelkar, "Resistence Builds Against Social Media Ban in Texas Prisons," PBS NewsHour Weekend, Jan. 29, 2017, 5:23 p.m. EST
Send our brother some love and light – and share this urgent story widely. The more people who write to him now, the safer he'll be: Kevin Johnson, O-158039, RMC, 7765 S. Cr. 231, P.O. Box 628, Lake Butler FL 32054.

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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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Major Battles On
For over 31 years, Major Tillery has been a prisoner of the State.
Despite that extraordinary fact, he continues his battles, both in the prison for his health, and in the courts for his freedom.
Several weeks ago, Tillery filed a direct challenge to his criminal conviction, by arguing that a so-called "secret witness" was, in fact, a paid police informant who was given a get-out-of-jail-free card if he testified against Tillery.
Remember I mentioned, "paid?"
Well, yes--the witness was 'paid'--but not in dollars. He was paid in sex!
In the spring of 1984, Robert Mickens was facing decades in prison on rape and robbery charges. After he testified against Tillery, however, his 25-year sentence became 5 years: probation!
And before he testified he was given an hour and a ½ private visit with his girlfriend--at the Homicide Squad room at the Police Roundhouse. (Another such witness was given another sweetheart deal--lie on Major, and get off!)
To a prisoner, some things are more important than money. Like sex!
In a verified document written in April, 2016, Mickens declares that he lied at trial, after being coached by the DAs and detectives on the case.
He lied to get out of jail--and because he could get with his girl.
Other men have done more for less.
Major's 58-page Petition is a time machine back into a practice that was once common in Philadelphia.
In the 1980s and '90s, the Police Roundhouse had become a whorehouse.
Major, now facing serious health challenges from his hepatitis C infection, stubborn skin rashes, and dangerous intestinal disorders, is still battling.
And the fight ain't over.
[©'16 MAJ  6/29/16]
Major Tillery Needs Your Help and Support
Major Tillery is an innocent man. There was no evidence against Major Tillery for the 1976 poolroom shootings that left one man dead and another wounded. The surviving victim gave a statement to homicide detectives naming others—not Tillery or his co-defendant—as the shooters. Major wasn't charged until 1980, he was tried in 1985.
The only evidence at trial came from these jailhouse informants who were given sexual favors and plea deals for dozens of pending felonies for lying against Major Tillery. Both witnesses now declare their testimony was manufactured by the police and prosecution. Neither witness had personal knowledge of the shooting.
This is a case of prosecutorial misconduct and police corruption that goes to the deepest levels of rot in the Philadelphia criminal injustice system. Major Tillery deserves not just a new trial, but dismissal of the charges against him and his freedom from prison.
It cost a lot of money for Major Tillery to be able to file his new pro se PCRA petition and continue investigation to get more evidence of the state misconduct. He needs help to get lawyers to make sure this case is not ignored. Please contribute, now.

HOW YOU CAN HELP
    Financial Support: Tillery's investigation is ongoing, to get this case filed has been costly and he needs funds for a legal team to fight this to his freedom!
    Go to JPay.com;
    code: Major Tillery AM9786 PADOC
    Tell Philadelphia District Attorney
    Seth Williams:
    Free Major Tillery! He is an innocent man, framed by police and and prosecution.
    Call: 215-686-8711 or

    Write to:
    Major Tillery AM9786
    SCI Frackville
    1111 Altamont Blvd.
    Frackville, PA 17931

      For More Information, Go To: Justice4MajorTillery/blogspot
      Call/Write:
      Rachel Wolkenstein, Esq. (917) 689-4009RachelWolkenstein@gmail.com





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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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        B. ARTICLES IN FULL


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        1)   Teenagers' Arrests Are Unconstitutional, A.C.L.U. Lawsuit Says
         AUG. 11, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/nyregion/aclu-lawsuit-ms-13-teenager-arrests-.html?rref=
        collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fnyregion&action=click&contentCollection=nyregion&region=
        stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront

        With law enforcement officials aggressively pursuing gang members on Long Island after a recent spate of homicides by the transnational gang MS-13, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a class-action lawsuit on Friday that federal authorities had gone too far.
        The A.C.L.U. filed suit against Attorney General Jeff Sessions and several federal immigration agencies on behalf of three Long Island teenagers who, according to their lawyers, were being unlawfully detained on suspicion of being gang members without substantiation.
        "If you're Hispanic and in the Brentwood area here, and you're a young kid who came here recently, you're living in a police state," said Bryan Johnson, a lawyer for one of the teenagers. "Anything you do, you go to school, you're under investigation."
        Seventeen homicides in Suffolk County in the last 18 months have been attributed to MS-13, which has roots in Los Angeles and El Salvador. Last month, authorities in the county announced the arrest of more than nine people suspected of involvement in the most recent killings, of four young Latino men in April.
        The Suffolk County Police Department is not named as a defendant in the suit, and the police commissioner, Timothy D. Sini, declined to comment. But he has said that he would not apologize for the department's aggressive targeting of MS-13 members or its cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security.
        In remarks before President Trump visited the area in July, Mr. Sini said the police department's efforts were "laser-targeted" and focused on active gang members. "That's good for Suffolk County; that's good for Latino communities and undocumented residents as well, because we know M-13 targets them," he said.
        The class-action lawsuit, which amended a suit filed in June on behalf of one of the teenagers, was filed in the United States District Court of the Northern District of California because all three were transferred to detention facilities there.
        In response to the lawsuit, Ian Prior, a Justice Department spokesman, said that Mr. Sessions was told during a recent visit to El Salvador about the gang's recruitment of children. "We will absolutely defend the president's lawful authority to keep Americans safe and protect communities from gang violence," Mr. Prior said.
        The teenagers came to the United States from Central America in the last three years as unaccompanied minors and were approved by the government to live with a parent. When Mr. Sessions visited Suffolk County in April, he said that some gang members were entering the country as unaccompanied minors. Last month, when Mr. Trump visited, he urged police officers not to be "too nice" to suspects.
        Mr. Johnson's client, identified as F. E., 17, settled in Brentwood in 2014 after escaping death threats from gang members in El Salvador, according to the suit. Mr. Johnson said his client was suspended this spring for three days from Brentwood High School for scribbling in a notebook the El Salvador telephone code "503," which has been linked to MS-13. After that, the police frequently stopped him.
        On June 9, according to the lawsuit, F. E. was arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct. He was released on bail but was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. He has since been in three detention facilities from Virginia to California, and on Aug. 4, he was transferred to Lincoln Hall Boys' Haven in Lincolndale, N.Y.
        The court filing describes the arrest of another of the plaintiffs, J. G., a week after the four young men were found dead. According to the filing, J. G, 17, was arrested by Suffolk County police on suspicion of being in a gang because he was wearing a soccer jersey with El Salvador written on it. The police accused him of "killing someone," the suit said.
        The original plaintiff, identified as A. H., was arrested by ICE officers in June, the suit said. He had admitted to being in a gang, "which was untrue," it said, adding that the officers did not give him an opportunity to gather any belongings or to communicate with his mother or his lawyer.
        "Gang violence in our communities is real, and it must be addressed," said William S. Freeman, a lawyer for the A.C.L.U. of Northern California. But, he said, "we can't address gang violence by violating the Constitution."

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        2)  Why Women Had Better Sex Under Socialism
        By Kristen R. Ghodsee, August 12, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/opinion/why-women-had-better-sex-under-socialism.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region

        When Americans think of Communism in Eastern Europe, they imagine travel restrictions, bleak landscapes of gray concrete, miserable men and women languishing in long lines to shop in empty markets and security services snooping on the private lives of citizens. While much of this was true, our collective stereotype of Communist life does not tell the whole story.
        Some might remember that Eastern bloc women enjoyed many rights and privileges unknown in liberal democracies at the time, including major state investments in their education and training, their full incorporation into the labor force, generous maternity leave allowances and guaranteed free child care. But there's one advantage that has received little attention: Women under Communism enjoyed more sexual pleasure.
        A comparative sociological study of East and West Germans conducted after reunification in 1990 found that Eastern women had twice as many orgasms as Western women. Researchers marveled at this disparity in reported sexual satisfaction, especially since East German women suffered from the notorious double burden of formal employment and housework. In contrast, postwar West German women had stayed home and enjoyed all the labor-saving devices produced by the roaring capitalist economy. But they had less sex, and less satisfying sex, than women who had to line up for toilet paper.
        How to account for this facet of life behind the Iron Curtain?
        Consider Ana Durcheva from Bulgaria, who was 65 when I first met her in 2011. Having lived her first 43 years under Communism, she often complained that the new free market hindered Bulgarians' ability to develop healthy amorous relationships.
        "Sure, some things were bad during that time, but my life was full of romance," she said. "After my divorce, I had my job and my salary, and I didn't need a man to support me. I could do as I pleased."
        Ms. Durcheva was a single mother for many years, but she insisted that her life before 1989 was more gratifying than the stressful existence of her daughter, who was born in the late 1970s.
        "All she does is work and work," Ms. Durcheva told me in 2013, "and when she comes home at night she is too tired to be with her husband. But it doesn't matter, because he is tired, too. They sit together in front of the television like zombies. When I was her age, we had much more fun."
        Last year in Jena, a university town in the former East Germany, I spoke with a recently married 30-something named Daniela Gruber. Her own mother — born and raised under the Communist system — was putting pressure on Ms. Gruber to have a baby.
        "She doesn't understand how much harder it is now — it was so easy for women before the Wall fell," she told me, referring to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989. "They had kindergartens and crèches, and they could take maternity leave and have their jobs held for them. I work contract to contract, and don't have time to get pregnant."
        This generational divide between daughters and mothers who reached adulthood on either side of 1989 supports the idea that women had more fulfilling lives during the Communist era. And they owed this quality of life, in part, to the fact that these regimes saw women's emancipation as central to advanced "scientific socialist" societies, as they saw themselves.
        Although East European Communist states needed women's labor to realize their programs for rapid industrialization after World War II, the ideological foundation for women's equality with men was laid by August Bebel and Friedrich Engels in the 19th century. After the Bolshevik takeover, Vladimir Lenin and Aleksandra Kollontai enabled a sexual revolution in the early years of the Soviet Union, with Kollontai arguing that love should be freed from economic considerations.
        The Soviets extended full suffrage to women in 1917, three years before the United States did. The Bolsheviks also liberalized divorce laws, guaranteed reproductive rights and attempted to socialize domestic labor by investing in public laundries and people's canteens. Women were mobilized into the labor force and became financially untethered from men.
        In Central Asia in the 1920s, Russian women crusaded for the liberation of Muslim women. This top-down campaign met a violent backlash from local patriarchs not keen to see their sisters, wives and daughters freed from the shackles of tradition.
        In the 1930s, Joseph Stalin reversed much of the Soviet Union's early progress in women's rights — outlawing abortion and promoting the nuclear family. However, the acute male labor shortages that followed World War II spurred other Communist governments to push forward with various programs for women's emancipation, including state-sponsored research on the mysteries of female sexuality. Most Eastern European women could not travel to the West or read a free press, but scientific socialism did come with some benefits.
        "As early as 1952, Czechoslovak sexologists started doing research on the female orgasm, and in 1961 they held a conference solely devoted to the topic," Katerina Liskova, a professor at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic, told me. "They focused on the importance of the equality between men and women as a core component of female pleasure. Some even argued that men need to share housework and child rearing, otherwise there would be no good sex."
        Agnieszka Koscianska, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Warsaw, told me that pre-1989 Polish sexologists "didn't limit sex to bodily experiences and stressed the importance of social and cultural contexts for sexual pleasure." It was state socialism's answer to work-life balance: "Even the best stimulation, they argued, will not help to achieve pleasure if a woman is stressed or overworked, worried about her future and financial stability."
        In all the Warsaw Pact countries, the imposition of one-party rule precipitated a sweeping overhaul of laws regarding the family. Communists invested major resources in the education and training of women and in guaranteeing their employment. State-run women's committees sought to re-educate boys to accept girls as full comrades, and they attempted to convince their compatriots that male chauvinism was a remnant of the pre-socialist past.
        Although gender wage disparities and labor segregation persisted, and although the Communists never fully reformed domestic patriarchy, Communist women enjoyed a degree of self-sufficiency that few Western women could have imagined. Eastern bloc women did not need to marry, or have sex, for money. The socialist state met their basic needs and countries such as Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and East Germany committed extra resources to support single mothers, divorcées and widows. With the noted exceptions of Romania, Albania and Stalin's Soviet Union, most Eastern European countries guaranteed access to sex education and abortion. This reduced the social costs of accidental pregnancy and lowered the opportunity costs of becoming a mother.
        Some liberal feminists in the West grudgingly acknowledged those accomplishments but were critical of the achievements of state socialism because they did not emerge from independent women's movements, but represented a type of emancipation from above. Many academic feminists today celebrate choice but also embrace a cultural relativism dictated by the imperatives of intersectionality. Any top-down political program that seeks to impose a universalist set of values like equal rights for women is seriously out of fashion.
        The result, unfortunately, has been that many of the advances of women's liberation in the former Warsaw Pact countries have been lost or reversed. Ms. Durcheva's adult daughter and the younger Ms. Gruber now struggle to resolve the work-life problems that Communist governments had once solved for their mothers.
        "The Republic gave me my freedom," Ms. Durcheva once told me, referring to the People's Republic of Bulgaria. "Democracy took some of that freedom away."
        As for Ms. Gruber, she has no illusions about the brutalities of East German Communism; she just wishes "things weren't so much harder now."
        Because they championed sexual equality — at work, at home and in the bedroom — and were willing to enforce it, Communist women who occupied positions in the state apparatus could be called cultural imperialists. But the liberation they imposed radically transformed millions of lives across the globe, including those of many women who still walk among us as the mothers and grandmothers of adults in the now democratic member states of the European Union. Those comrades' insistence on government intervention may seem heavy-handed to our postmodern sensibilities, but sometimes necessary social change — which soon comes to be seen as the natural order of things — needs an emancipation proclamation from above.




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        3)  Killings of Blacks by Whites Are Far More Likely to Be Ruled 'Justifiable'
        "But killings of black males by whites are more than eight times as likely as all others combined to be labeled justifiable, a racial disparity that is hard to explain based solely on the circumstances reported in the police data and one that has persisted for decades"
        By     AUG. 14, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/upshot/killings-of-blacks-by-whites-are-far-more-likely-to-be-ruled-justifiable.html?rref=
        collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=
        us&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=sectionfront

        When a white person kills a black man in America, the killer often faces no legal consequences.

        In one in six of these killings, there is no criminal sanction, according to a new Marshall Project examination of 400,000 homicides committed by civilians between 1980 and 2014. That rate is far higher than ones for homicides involving other combinations of races.
        In almost 17 percent of cases when a black man was killed by a non-Hispanic white civilian over the last three decades, the killing was categorized as justifiable, which is the term used when a police officer or a civilian kills someone committing a crime or in self-defense. Over all, the police classify fewer than 2 percent of homicides committed by civilians as justifiable.
        The disparity persists across different cities, ages, weapons and relationships between killer and victim.
        To understand the gaps, The Marshall Project obtained dozens of data sets from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and examined various combinations of killer and victim. Two types of "justifiable homicide" are noted: "felon killed by private citizen" or "felon killed by police officer." (In a bit of circular logic, the person killed is presumptively classified as a felon, since the homicide could be justified only if a life was threatened, which is a crime.)
        The data were processed to standardize key variables and exclude more than 200,000 cases that lacked essential information or were homicides by the police. The resulting data detail the circumstances of each death: any weapons used; information on the killer's and victim's race, age, ethnicity and sex; and how police investigators classify each type of killing ("brawl due to the influence of alcohol," "sniper attack" or "lover's triangle," for example).
        Little large-scale research has examined the role of race in "justifiable" homicides that do not involve the police. The data examined by The Marshall Project are more comprehensive and cover a longer time period than other research into the question, much of which has focused on controversial Stand Your Ground laws.
        In the United States, the law of self-defense allows civilians to use deadly force in cases where they have a reasonable belief force is necessary to defend themselves or others. How that is construed varies from state to state, but the question often depends on what the killer believed when pulling the trigger.
        "If there are factors — even if they're stereotypes — that lead the defender to believe he's in danger, that factors in, whether it's a righteous cause or not," said Mitch Vilos, a Utah defense lawyer, gun rights advocate and the author of "Self-Defense Laws of All 50 States."
        Self-defense decisions by regular people, much like those involving the police, are made quickly and with imperfect information. As a result, a homicide can be ruled self-defense when the killer faced no actual threat but had a reasonable belief he or she did.
        That is where irrational fear can come into play. The police, prosecutors and juries may be apt to give killers the benefit of the doubt in situations when they were faced with someone who seemed "dangerous."
        "Tell me that it doesn't factor in if the person is black when they're approaching the suspect," Mr. Vilos said. "It contributes to the decision to pull the trigger because of the fear associated with the stereotype.
        "Right or wrong, that's what's happening, in my opinion."
        The vast majority of killings of whites are committed by other whites, contrary to some folk wisdom, and the overwhelming majority of killings of blacks is by other blacks.
        But killings of black males by whites are more than eight times as likely as all others combined to be labeled justifiable, a racial disparity that is hard to explain based solely on the circumstances reported in the police data and one that has persisted for decades.
        In comparison, when Hispanics killed black men, about 5.5 percent of cases were called justifiable. When non-Hispanic whites killed Hispanics, it was 3.1 percent. When blacks killed whites, the figure was just 0.8 percent. When black males were killed by other blacks, and when whites killed other whites, the figure was about 2 percent, the same as the overall rate.
        Although the data examined ends shortly after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, reform efforts since then have primarily focused on police shootings. That leaves these civilian cases largely forgotten.
        It is impossible to say to what extent the disparities — no matter how great — are due to racial prejudice by the police, prosecutors or juries. One possible explanation for the differing rates could lie in the different circumstances of the killings, including where they happened.
        "If, for instance, white-on-black homicides were mainly defensive shootings in a residence or business, and black-on-white shootings mainly occurred during the commission of a street crime, then the [racial] disparity would be warranted," wrote researcher John Roman in a 2013 Urban Institute study of justifiable homicides.
        Although the F.B.I.'s Supplementary Homicide Report tracks more than 100 details about each killing, the location of the death is not recorded. In addition, some police agencies, indeed some states, choose not to share some or all information on killings.
        Still, the disparities in how the police classify these cases remain across widely different circumstances and causes of death. Whether the killer and victim were married, lovers, neighbors or complete strangers, whether they were shot, stabbed or beaten, the trend holds. The killings of black men by whites were two to 10 times as likely to be called justifiable.
        Even after adjusting for the ages of the killer and victim, their relationship and the weapon used, the likelihood of a white-on-black-male case being called justifiable was still 4.7 times higher than in other cases.
        Beyond the police consideration of each case, there are three additional stages at which a killer can establish self-defense: A prosecutor can decide not to pursue charges, a grand jury can decline to indict, and a jury can find a killer not guilty.
        There is no national standard for how a prosecutor's office decides whether to prosecute a case.
        In Miami, for instance, an individual assistant state attorney can determine whether to take a homicide case to a grand jury or, with the approval of a supervisor, to decline to prosecute. In Phoenix, however, each case goes through a detailed review by a panel of prosecuting attorneys before a decision is made, according to officials there.
        The F.B.I. data may not reflect those determinations: Prosecutors are not generally required to collect and report their data. Despite these flaws, the data are the closest thing available to a comprehensive, nationwide accounting of homicides.
        Despite local customs and policies for how prosecutors approach self-defense cases, in the F.B.I.'s data almost every law enforcement agency, from Oakland, Calif., to Philadelphia, showed racial disparities in how they categorized killings as justified. The phenomenon is not peculiar to any state or region.
        In all cases and at each stage, the system depends on the reports and decisions of police investigators, which provide the record upon which conclusions are drawn. Melba Pearson, a former prosecutor, said that in her experience, personal preconceptions affect how those cases are policed and whether they are prosecuted.
        "The reality is every human being comes to the table with biases," said Ms. Pearson, former president of the National Association of Black Prosecutors. "That's human nature."
        She called that a larger problem than the smaller number of "straight-up racists."
        Personal experiences and cultural background mean even well-meaning prosecutors can succumb to stereotypes, said Ms. Pearson, who spent 14 years as a prosecutor in Miami and now works for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.
        She said this problem, part of what some call "implicit bias," can be overcome by training and policies to help achieve an objective analysis.
        Cyrus Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, adopted one such policy, an aggressive training program after a 2014 report by the Vera Institute of Justice found racial disparities in the outcome of prosecutorial decisions.
        When announcing the report, with which his office cooperated, Mr. Vance said he was "committed to implementing preventative strategies to reduce any unintended racial and ethnic disparities."
        The office requires every prosecutor and staffer to take multiple classes on recognizing "implicit bias" and combating its results.
        Without looking at prosecutors' and the police's unconscious prejudices, Ms. Pearson said, racially biased outcomes are inevitable.
        "Ignorance is not bliss," she said.


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        4)  In South Texas, Threat of Border Wall Unites Naturalists and Politicians
         AUG. 13, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/in-south-texas-threat-of-border-wall-unites-naturalists-and-politicians.html?rref=
        collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbusiness&action=click&contentCollection=
        business&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=6&pgtype=sectionfront

        MISSION, Tex. — Last month, Marianna Wright, the executive director of the privately owned National Butterfly Center here, discovered survey stakes on the property marking out a 150-foot-wide swath of land.
        Ms. Wright later encountered a work crew cutting down trees and brush along a road through the center. The workers said they had been hired by United States Customs and Border Protection to clear the land.
        "You mean my land?" Ms. Wright asked, before kicking them out.
        A few days after that encounter, she was visited by a border official who informed her that the crew had a right to be on the land and would be returning — next time accompanied by armed Border Patrol agents.
        She said she also learned, for the first time, that a section of the proposed wall on the border with Mexico — and a pair of parallel roads on either side of it — would run through the butterfly center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the conservation and study of wild butterflies.. The wall's placement would cut off two-thirds of the center's property, leaving a 70-acre no man's land between the wall and the Rio Grande.
        In response, the center started an online crowdfunding campaign to hire a legal team.

        The specter of a border wall has loomed over the Rio Grande Valley since 2006, when President George W. Bush signed the Secure Fence Act authorizing 700 miles of fencing along certain stretches of the southern border. But the election of Donald J. Trump, who made completing the wall a centerpiece of his campaign, has spurred renewed concern about the economic and environmental consequences of such a wall.
        Although Congress has yet to provide the money for Mr. Trump's wall, preparations for its construction are underway. Officials with Customs and Border Protection recently held a meeting in the valley at which they displayed a map of the wall's proposed route.
        A United States-Mexico treaty prohibits building a wall or levee in the Rio Grande floodplain, so the map shows the wall being built well north of the river. But that means it will slice through countless pieces of private property and bisect several major wildlife refuges. When asked about the map, officials emphasized that it was only a proposal, and that the wall's construction was dependent upon the federal budget for 2018.
        But that, as Ms. Wright and others have learned, does not mean that the officials tasked with building the wall cannot start making plans.
        Because of the anticipated resistance from private landowners, the first sections of the border wall most likely will be built on federal land. In the valley, that includes the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge near the city of Alamo, where officials and contractors have been taking soil samples.
        Known as the crown jewel of the national system, the lush, 2,088-acre refuge was established in 1943 and is one of the most popular bird-watching destinations in the country, attracting about 165,000 visitors a year.
        The threat to the area's natural habitats like the birdlands and butterfly haven has prompted letters to members of Congress, lawsuits and protests — the most recent of which was Saturday in this remote South Texas city in the Rio Grande Valley.
        The protesters began gathering before dawn at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church to demonstrate against President Trump's proposed border wall.
        Father Roy Snipes delivered a prayer in English and Spanish, then climbed into a station wagon — outfitted with a large figurine of the church's namesake strapped to the roof — to lead the approximately 1,000 protesters in a four-mile march to the Rio Grande.
        Ken Merritt, a former federal Fish and Wildlife Service official who oversaw Santa Ana from 1997 to 2008, said building an 18-foot-high wall through the refuge would most likely destroy it.
        "If you put the wall there, you basically cut off all the trails, all the habitat," he said. "The office might stay open, but I don't see how there could be any more public use of the refuge."
        Keith Hackland has operated nearby Alamo Inn B&B, which caters to bird-watchers, since 1999.
        "We put a lot of effort into getting the word out about the valley," he said. "Recently I've been getting calls from around the country asking what's going on. People have heard that Santa Ana's being bulldozed."
        The Rio Grande Valley is one of the most biologically diverse regions of the country. It is a major bird migration corridor, with over 500 species, more than half the total number in North America. It is also the last remaining habitat for the endangered ocelot, a medium-size spotted cat hunted nearly to extinction for its fur.
        For decades, naturalists have worked to build a corridor of public and private sanctuaries along the Rio Grande to allow the ocelot and other wildlife to roam semi-freely. That effort is now under threat.
        "If you take the habitat that was set aside for those animals and put walls across it, they can no longer find sufficient food, water and mates," said Scott Nicol, the co-chairman of the Sierra Club's borderlands campaign. "Drug smugglers can get over the wall. They just use ladders. Ocelots don't have ladders."
        Thanks to its natural riches, South Texas enjoys a robust ecotourism industry that pumps an estimated $350 million each year into one of the poorest parts of the country. But that, too, is now under threat.
        "If the wall is built through the refuge, that will be very bad publicity," said Mr. Hackland. "It will reduce nature tourism, no doubt about it."
        Representative Filemon Vela Jr., whose district includes a nearby section of the valley, made headlines last year when he wrote an open letter to Mr. Trump suggesting that the then-presidential candidate "take your border wall and shove it...."
        When contacted earlier this month, Mr. Vela, a Democrat, doubled down on his defiance. "I meant it, and I would repeat it," he said. The problem, he said, is that since Democrats are in the minority in Congress, "it could be the other way around."
        Saturday's protest march ended at La Lomita Chapel, which was built in the 19th century on a rise overlooking the Rio Grande. Father Snipes explained that it was originally intended as a sign of friendship between America and Mexico. But if the border wall is completed, the chapel will be equally inaccessible to both countries.
        "The chapel is a symbol of the call of God to be hospitable and neighborly," Father Snipes said. "With the wall between us and the chapel, it's just kind of obscene."

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        5)  What Jewish Children Learned From Charlottesville
        AUG. 15, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/opinion/jewish-charlottesville-anti-semitism.html?action=
        click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=
        opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0

        This dirty Jew remembers every penny thrown at him.
        The ones thrown from above, as we waited to be picked up from the public pool in my hometown on Long Island, our yarmulkes pinned to wet hair. By then, I was big enough to feel shame for the younger kids, who knew no better than to scurry around, as our local anti-Semites laughed.
        I remember walking home from synagogue at my father's side, in our suits and ties, and seeing a neighbor boy crawling on his hands and knees, surrounded by bullies, this time picking up pennies by force. I remember my father rushing in and righting the boy, and sending those kids scattering.
        I remember when, at that same corner, on a different day, those budding neo-Nazis surrounded my sister, and I raced home for help. I remember my parents running back, and my father and mother (all five feet of her) confronting the parents of one of the boys, who then gave him a winking, Trumpian chiding for behavior they didn't care to condemn. Even if it's "kids with horns," they told their son, he should leave other children alone.
        I'll never forget the shame of it. Nor any of the other affronts, from the swastika shaving-creamed on our front door on Halloween to the kid on his bike yelling, "Hitler should have finished you all." I remember every fistfight, every broken window, every catcall and curse. I remember them because each made me — a fifth-generation American — feel unsafe and unwelcome in my own home, just as was intended.

        I could, likewise, catalog every tough-Jew story of victory in the face of hatred. My favorite still: that of my bull-necked great-grandfather who worked for the railroads, who in response to the guy on the next barstool saying that there were "too many Jews" in the place, knocked the bum out with a single punch, without getting up from his perch.
        But my great-grandfather is history. My childhood is history.
        I live in Brooklyn now, where my father grew up. It was here, after watching people cheer Barack Obama's victory in the streets, after gay marriage became legal nationwide and after other evolutionary steps, that I was finally able to embrace the past as the past and look at our collective present in a new light.
        Secular now, I watch the younger religious Jews in awe. They don't slip their yarmulkes into their pockets out of fear. It hit me at, of all places, a Nets game. I was amazed by all the yarmulkes in the crowd, and the boys beneath them eating hot dogs from — who would have believed it — kosher concession stands.
        In a New York sports tradition, one of them was mouthing off at anyone and everyone who was rooting for the visiting team. I watched him razzing people, opening his mouth without thinking he'd be beaten to a pulp for drawing attention to himself. But no one said a single non-basketball-related, Jew-hating word.
        I can't tell you how much pride I took in that moment, the same syrupy pride I take when sitting on a subway car where no two faces, no two histories, seem alike, and feeling nothing but minding-our-own-business good will I felt the same watching all our children in the park, knowing that they must recognize difference but see nothing in it to fear. How great it must be, I thought, to grow up in that America, a place still flawed but striving to do better.
        I understood that, in my 40s, I was already part of history. That certain things I knew didn't need to be known anymore.
        And yet, in seven months of this presidency, in one single day in Charlottesville, Va., all of that is lost. A generation, and so much more, stolen away. There is the trauma of those assaulted by Nazis on American soil and the tragedy that is Heather Heyer's murder that belongs to her and her family alone. And then there is what all the rest of us share — the pain and violence and the lessons we draw from them. Because the children who witness a day like that, and a president like this, will not forget the fear and disrespect tailored to the black child, the Muslim child, the Jewish child.
        They will not forget the assault rifles that this government puts in these violent men's hands, nor the chants that black lives don't matter and that the Jews will not replace them — just as I will never not hear what that kid on the bike screamed or stop seeing my father helping a boy, crawling for pennies, off his knees.
        While harking back to my pious, head-covered days, I am reminded of a notion that our rabbis taught us: The theft of time is a crime like any other. Back then it was about interrupting class — one minute wasted was a minute of learning lost. But multiply that minute by everyone in the room, and it became 15, 20 minutes, half an hour's worth of knowledge that none of us could ever get back.
        Saturday in Charlottesville was just one day, but think of that one day multiplied by all of us, across this great country. Think of the size of that setback, the assault on empathy, the divisiveness and tiki-torched terror multiplied by every single citizen of this nation. It may as well be millions of years of dignity, of civility, of progress lost.
        Just from that one day.

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        6)  A Conversation With Native Americans on Race
        Op-Docs is The New York Times's Emmy-award-winning and Oscar-nominated short documentary series. 
        What does it mean to be a Native American today? ln our latest installment of The Times's Conversation on Race project, we set out to include as many perspectives on native identity as possible.
        And there are many perspectives indeed. For this film, we spoke to dark-skinned and light-skinned individuals. Those whose ancestry ranges from one-sixteenth to four-fourth. People younger and older. And those who follow their tribe's religion to those that follow Bible-based beliefs. We heard from people with backgrounds from as far as Arizona Navajo to the northeastern United States, and even interviewed Hawaiian and South American native individuals living in New York City.
        While there are naturally nuances to everyone's personal story, we saw a profound universality in their experiences. No matter who you are, if you are Native American, your opinions and experiences are marginalized to the point of invisibility in American society and culture. This project presents an opportunity to express some of the deeper debates that shape the journey shared by many Native Americans to personal liberation.
        One pervasive theme that emerged was the struggle of not feeling "native enough." There were a number of reasons for this, from imposed ideas of not having enough native blood to not having a stereotypical Indian look. But as one of our interviewees asked, What does being not native enough even mean? We are still contemplating.
        It was also inspiring to observe that despite these internalized feelings of oppression, people found their own sense of belonging and ways of being part of their Native nation or community, while at the same time maintaining a sense of individuality. Before filming these interviews, our co-director, Brian Young, had been struggling with his own sense of "nativeness." (He is a member of the Diné, or Navajo, nation.) By hearing how others negotiated those feelings, he could better understand and explore his own way of expressing his Native identity while living in New York City.
        Despite the broad spectrum of indigenous identities who participated in our conversation, they shared the experience of living away from their respective reservations and communities. We hope that this piece helps inspire more online and offline conversations that include an even wider range of Native voices living in, around and beyond reservation communities.

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        7)  Let Prisoners Learn While They Serve
        AUG. 16, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/opinion/prison-education-programs-.html?action=
        click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-
        region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

        Criminal justice officials across the country are struggling to break the recidivism cycle in which prisoners are released only to land right back behind bars. These prisoners are among the most poorly educated people in the country, and that fact holds the key to a solution. Decades of research has shown that inmates who participate in prison education programs — even if they fail to earn degrees — are far more likely to stay out of prison once they are freed.
        That prison education programs are highly cost effective is confirmed by a 2013 RAND Corporation study that covered 30 years of prison education research. Among other things, the study found that every dollar spent on prison education translated into savings of $4 to $5 on imprisonment costs down the line.
        Other studies suggest that prisons with education programs have fewer violent incidents, making it easier for officials to keep order, and that the children of people who complete college are more likely to do so themselves, disrupting the typical pattern of poverty and incarceration.
        Findings like these have persuaded corrections officials in both Democratic and Republican states to embrace education as a cost-effective way of cutting recidivism. But Republican legislators in New York — which spends about $60,000 per inmate per year — remain mired in know-nothingism and argue that spending public money on inmates insults taxpayers. They have steadfastly resisted Gov. Andrew Cuomo's common-sense proposal for making a modest investment in prison education programs that have already proved highly successful on a small scale in New York's prisons.

        The Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., stepped into the void left by the Legislature when he agreed l to pay for Governor Cuomo's prison education plan with more than $7 million in criminal forfeiture money secured from banks. Lauding what he described as a public safety measure, Mr. Vance said, "It makes no sense to send someone to prison with no pathway for them to succeed."
        The goal of the program is to expand the number of inmates taking college courses to about 3,500 across much of the system from 1,000. The curriculum will be broad, covering science, math, philosophy, the social sciences and art. Among the schools that will participate are Cornell University, New York University, Mercy College and Bard College, which has run a highly regarded program since 2001. The recidivism rate is 4 percent for inmates who participate in the program and a mere 2 percent for those who earn degrees in prison, compared with about 40 percent for the New York State prison system as a whole.
        Prison education programs were largely dismantled during the "tough on crime" 1990s, when Congress stripped inmates of the right to get the federal Pell grants that were used to pay tuition. The decision bankrupted many prison education programs across the country and left private donors and foundations to foot the bill for those that survived.
        Despite limited and unreliable funding, these programs have more than proved their value. New York lawmakers who continue to block funding for them are putting ideology ahead of the public interest.
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        8)  Why Confederate Monuments Must Fall
        AUG. 15, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/opinion/confederate-monuments-white-
        supremacy-charlottesville.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=
        story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-
        region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region

        Charlotte, N.C. — Activists in Durham, N.C., tired of waiting for local leaders to decide what to do about a statue of a Confederate soldier downtown, on Monday literally took matters into their own hands, yanking it off its pedestal and then kicking it, as if trying to beat it into submission. A North Carolina law passed in 2015 prohibits the removal of these monuments, yet the prospect of being prosecuted for doing just that was not a deterrent.
        Once again, we're having a national debate about the hundreds of Confederate monuments that stand across the South — inspired, this time, by last weekend's march in Charlottesville, Va., when white supremacists protested the city's plan to move a statue of Robert E. Lee.
        White supremacists aren't the only defenders of these monuments. President Trump on Tuesday criticized efforts to take them down. "This week, it is Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down," he told a news conference. "I wonder, is it George Washington next week?" Some say they are about heritage and history, not racism; others say we need to keep them in place to remind us of our dark past.
        Confederate apologists in the South and around the country have rallied behind such monuments since they first went up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They recast Confederate soldiers as heroes fighting not for the institution of slavery but for the "Lost Cause," the mythology of the Confederacy as a grand patriarchal civilization.

        Many of the monuments celebrate figures like Lee, who even today is defended as a critic of slavery who only grudgingly joined the Confederacy. More familiar than the Lee monument in Charlottesville is the one on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va. Less familiar is the monument to Lee in the United States Capitol. His figure is also carved into Stone Mountain, alongside Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis. He was, and remains, the most iconic of Confederate heroes.
        But the Charlottesville march, with its hundreds of neo-Nazis and white nationalists coming out to defend the memory of General Lee, puts the lie to the notion that, as the apologists say, these monuments are about "heritage, not hate."
        This is hardly new. Confederate monuments have always been symbols of white supremacy. The heyday of monument building, between 1890 and 1920, was also a time of extreme racial violence, as Southern whites pushed back against what little progress had been made by African-Americans in the decades after the Civil War. As monuments went up, so did the bodies of black men, women and children during a long rash of lynching.
        In the civil rights era, segregationists again sought to push back any attempt to challenge white male supremacy. Once again, they rallied under the banner of the Confederate battle flag. But this time, local and state officials from law enforcement and state agencies like the Sovereignty Commission in Mississippi joined them in their effort.
        Today, the battle for white male supremacy has expanded in scope. It is nativist, anti-feminist and anti-Semitic. It is also homophobic. As always, it is racist. And it has fully embraced the imagery of Nazism, from Adolf Hitler to swastika flags to the Nazi salute.
        Confederate "heritage," as a unifying theme for the white South, also obscures the way that white elites use the white working class to do their bidding by pitting them against those with whom they have more in common economically than those in power. The path for the rise of the Southern Democratic Party, known as the "White Man's Party," was paved with racial violence. White elites showed their thanks by erecting Confederate monuments.
        This isn't just a Southern problem. The president of the United States has unleashed a new generation of domestic terrorists. During the presidential campaign, and now from the seat of power in the White House, Mr. Trump's talk of building a wall, his denigration of women, his ban on transgender soldiers and his circle of nationalist advisers embolden the very people who showed up in Charlottesville chanting, "Jews will not replace us." Us, of course, are the dispossessed white, heterosexual men who long for a return to an imagined patriarchy where they have a seat at the head of the table, even though, in reality, those seats are reserved for white elites.
        And once again, rather than seeing clearly that Confederate monuments stand at the very center of the white-supremacist imagination, too many people are clouding the issue. Some of my fellow historians have naïvely suggested that we need to keep them to teach us the darker lessons of Southern history.
        But at what cost? What the events of this past weekend have made clear is that for several generations, the Lee monument and others like it have assisted the cause of white supremacy and the deadly violence that has accompanied it. This is why communities across the region have a moral obligation to take up the cause of removing them. Artifacts of hate will be lost, but their history and meaning will not.
        While what happened in Charlottesville is a stain on our nation, we should remain hopeful for the future. Those who gathered in the name of hatred and bigotry did so under the banners of defeated regimes. This does not bode well for their cause. Truly patriotic Americans, of all colors and creeds, can and should stand up to them as they did this past weekend. But we also need leadership at all levels of government to condemn not only their actions but also white supremacy itself.

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        9)  Baltimore Removes Confederate Statues in Overnight Operation
        AUG. 16, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/us/baltimore-confederate-statues.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=
        Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

        Statues dedicated to Confederate heroes were swiftly removed across Baltimore in the small hours of Wednesday morning, just days after violence broke out over the removal of a similar monument in neighboring Virginia.

        Beginning soon after midnight on Wednesday, a crew, which included a large crane and a contingent of police officers, began making rounds of the city's parks and public squares, tearing the monuments from their pedestals and carting them out of town.
        Small crowds gathered at each of the monuments and the mood was "celebratory," said Baynard Woods, the editor at large of The Baltimore City Paper, who documented the removals on Twitter.
        "The police are being cheerful and encouraging people to take photos and selfies," Mr. Woods said in an interview.
        The statues were taken down by order of Mayor Catherine Pugh, after the City Council voted on Monday for their removal. The city had been studying the issue since 2015, when a mass shooting by a white supremacist at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., prompted a renewed debate across the South over removing Confederate monuments and battle flags from public spaces.
        The police confirmed the removal.
        By 3:30 a.m., three of the city's four monuments had been removed. They included the Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson Monument, a double equestrian statue of the Confederate generals erected in 1948; the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument, erected in 1903; and the Roger B. Taney Monument, erected in 1887.
        Taney was a Supreme Court chief justice and Maryland native who wrote the landmark 1857 decision in the Dred Scott case, ruling that even free blacks had no claim to citizenship in the United States. Although Taney was never part of the Confederacy, the court's decision was celebrated by supporters of slavery.
        The fourth statue, the Confederate Women's Monument, was dedicated in 1917. Pictures showed that it too had been taken down early on Wednesday.
        One Twitter user, James MacArthur, live-streamed the removal of the Lee and Jackson monument as it was unceremoniously torn from its pedestal and strapped to a flatbed truck. At street level, lit by the harsh glare of police klieg lights, the two generals appeared small.
        Residents were seen celebrating on the pedestal, on which someone had spray-painted "Black Lives Matter."
        A team of police cars escorted the statues out of town. Ms. Pugh suggested on Monday that the statues might be relocated to Confederate cemeteries elsewhere in the state. (Although Maryland never seceded from the Union during the Civil War, there was popular support for the Confederacy in Baltimore and Southern Maryland, where Confederate soldiers are buried.)
        One city councilman said the statues should be destroyed, not just moved.
        "These people were terrorists. They were traitors. Why are we honoring them?" Councilman Brandon M. Scott said at a meeting on Monday.
        A group of protesters made up of so-called alt-right activists and white supremacists demonstrated against the removal of a Lee statue in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday, clashing with counter-protesters. One woman was killed when a driver rammed a car into a crowd of counter-protesters; the police have charged an Ohio man who has expressed far-right views. Two state troopers monitoring the event were also killed in a helicopter accident.
        Tensions were further inflamed on Saturday when President Trump refused to clearly denounce the protesters, some of whom carried Nazi banners and Confederate battle flags. Although he condemned the Ku Klux Klan, "neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups" in a statement on Monday, Mr. Trump said Tuesday that parties on "both sides" of the debate were to blame for the deadly violence.

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        10)  Taylor Swift Spoke Up. Sexual Assault Survivors Were Listening.
        AUG. 15, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/arts/music/taylor-swift-sexual-assault.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=
        Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

        She's sold millions of albums and heard stadiums full of fans chant her lyrics at sold-out concerts around the world. But the Taylor Swift line that might resonate the loudest now is "He grabbed my bare ass."
        Ms. Swift, the pop superstar, made that comment in a federal courtroom in Denver last week, as part of her testimony against David Mueller, a former radio host who sued her, claiming she falsely accused him of groping her during a backstage photo opportunity in 2013. Ms. Swift countersued for assault and battery.
        Her confident and blunt testimony swayed the jury — on Monday, she won her case, and Mr. Mueller lost his — and was shared widely across social media, where her responses were hailed as powerful. "I'm not going to allow you or your client to make me feel in any way that this is my fault," she testified while being questioned by Mr. Mueller's lawyer, who argued that his client lost his job as a result of the incident. "Here we are years later, and I'm being blamed for the unfortunate events of his life that are the product of his decisions — not mine."
        Among those paying attention to the trial: lawyers and others who work with sexual assault survivors, who found in Ms. Swift's moment on the stand a potent public example of how to persevere in a fraught situation, and perhaps a way to shift the national conversation around sexual assault.

        "Experiencing harassment is an all-too-common thing, experiencing blaming and shaming is an all-too-common thing, but seeing someone so effectively dismantle those arguments, that was exciting," said Fatima Goss Graves, the president and chief executive of the National Women's Law Center.
        Laura Dunn, the founder of SurvJustice, a nonprofit that works with survivors of sexual violence, said she was "deeply thankful" for Ms. Swift's testimony and shared it with others considering testifying. "She was strong and poised and unapologetic," she said.
        As a headline-making case, this was, for many survivors of sexual assault, a high-wattage mirror of their own experiences, and an illustration of what might happen at their own court dates.
        A 31-year-old woman who lives in Washington watched the trial unfold especially carefully. In April, she was raped by a co-worker, she said, and has not yet pursued criminal charges, in part because of the reaction when she told colleagues about what happened. "People didn't readily believe it," said the woman, who asked not to be identified. "They want to blame me."
        But tracking Ms. Swift's case, she said, and seeing the singer respond forcefully to the same doubts, felt "empowering," the woman said.
        "The language she used was really important," she added. "She didn't act submissive and polite like women often do. She was honest. The language she used was raw."
        In cross-examination, Ms. Swift lobbed back questions by Gabriel McFarland, Mr. Mueller's lawyer, that sought to sow doubt into her story — that Mr. Mueller had reached under her skirt and grabbed her backside while posing for a photo at a preconcert meet-and-greet alongside his girlfriend at the time. When Mr. McFarland told Ms. Swift that she could have stopped the event if Mr. Mueller's actions had been so disturbing, she replied, "And your client could've taken a normal photo with me."
        Ms. Swift called Mr. McFarland by his first name during her cross-examination — a creative move to undercut his authority, said Carly N. Mee, a lawyer who works with sexual assault survivors — and spoke in bold, unflinching language about the assault and its immediate effect on her. "It was like a light switched off in my personality," the singer said.
        Ms. Goss Graves said the examination was typical in a case like this, where the victim is often forced to defend her actions and blamed for the assault. "Right now, the playbook for people who report harassment and discrimination is all about, what else could you have done to prevent the harassment and discrimination," she said. "What were you wearing? What were your actions before and after?" Fear of reprisal or backlash is a major reason that sexual violence is underreported, she said.
        What was not typical in Ms. Swift's case, Ms. Goss Graves said, "was how effectively and persistently she reminded everyone of his conduct," in unfiltered language. It is not, she and other experts in the field said, an easy thing to do — and not an approach that all victims would feel comfortable adopting. But the fact that the assault happened to Ms. Swift, a wealthy and powerful young woman with the outsize self-assurance of a celebrity, is a reminder that harassment can strike anyone. "Your belief in yourself isn't a protective shield to someone's inappropriate conduct," Ms. Goss Graves said.
        The music industry, like many others, is rife with tales of boundaries crossed and bodies violated. "As a band we've sometimes ignored sexism, harassment, non consensual flirting + homophobia aimed at us...too embarrassed to call it out," the pop duo Tegan and Sara wrote on Twitter. "Even someone as powerful as @taylorswift13 lives within a system that pushes women to just ignore or put up with this" behavior.
        The singer Nelly Furtado tweeted that she, too, had been in meet-and-greets "where radio staff attempted to cross lines."
        Ms. Mee, the lawyer who represents survivors of sexual violence who is also the staff attorney at SurvJustice, said Ms. Swift also countered the idea that there is a "perfect victim" for assault. In court, women are often told to dress conservatively, or appear quiet and prim. Ms. Swift was nothing of the sort, and she still prevailed.
        In an email, Kelsey Misbrener, a 26-year-old from Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, said that Ms. Swift's victory "meant a great deal to me personally," adding, "It showed predators that there will be repercussions for harassment and groping."
        Ms. Misbrener has had firsthand experience with unwanted contact. Waiting in line at a music festival this summer, she said, a man passed by and "intentionally moved his hand to touch my butt. I could feel the spot where he touched me for hours afterward," she wrote. "Taylor Swift winning this battle showed me that the court system is beginning to trust women."
        For Ms. Swift, whose adoption of feminism as part of her public persona has been alternately applauded and questioned — she has given inspirational awards-show speeches and squabbled with other female singers — the trial provided a platform to support others. "I acknowledge the privilege that I benefit from in life, in society and in my ability to shoulder the enormous cost of defending myself in a trial like this," she said in a statement after the verdict was read. "My hope is to help those whose voices should also be heard." (She pledged to donate an unspecified sum to organizations that help sexual assault victims.)
        The Washington woman said Ms. Swift's case was a model for young fans who lack her resources. "If they can pick up a magazine and read what Taylor Swift said, she's showing you, it's not O.K. for someone to do this. I was lucky that I had support, but I hope this gives other people support."
        Terri Poore, policy director of the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence, said that, while more needs to be done to change institutions and attitudes, Ms. Swift's case, in combination with other discussions about harassment in the tech industryat Fox News, in the military and elsewhere, could begin to move the needle on what kind of behavior is no longer tolerated.
        "She said what a lot of women would want to say," Ms. Poore said, "if given the opportunity."

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        11)  Ferraris and Opera Were Urgent, but Grenfell Tower Risks Went Unheeded
        AUG. 15, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/world/europe/london-inequality-grenfell-tower-fire.html?hp&action=
        click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-
        news&WT.nav=top-news

        LONDON — The Ferraris were driving people batty in affluent South Kensington. Drivers revved their engines and ripped past Harrods. Residents were already irritated by the dust and noise from superrich neighbors building underground swimming pools and cinemas. Now came complaints about Middle Eastern "types" drag racing at night.
        Up in North Kensington, a part of London that is home to some of Britain's poorest residents, the complaints were more elemental. People were fighting plans to close a day care center, lease out a public library and demolish a community college. At one public housing project, Grenfell Tower, residents had complained about fire safety issues for years: power surges that blew up television sets and filled rooms with smoke, outdated fire extinguishers and the absence of a communal fire alarm.
        The very different complaints from the opposite ends of Kensington received very different responses from the 50-member council representing the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The Ferraris were debated in the council chamber. Fines of up to 1,000 pounds were imposed on revving engines. Underground construction projects were restricted.

        The concerns in North Kensington, particularly those of Grenfell Tower residents, were mostly ignored. By last November, one resident, Edward Daffarn, was so frustrated that he predicted "only a serious fire" resulting in a "serious loss of life" would make the council pay attention. The councilor in charge of housing, Rock Feilding-Mellen, dismissed him as a ''fantasist.''
        Seven months later, as a deadly blaze engulfed the building in the early morning hours of June 14, Mr. Daffarn fled his apartment on the 16th floor. Stumbling through the smoke-filled landing, he was found by a fireman and guided to safety. But at least 80 of his neighbors died.
        "This council does not represent the people of North Kensington," Mr. Daffarn said.
        Last year's referendum on whether Britain should leave the European Union, known as Brexit, exposed the deep resentment of working-class Britons outside London toward the elites in the wealthy, cosmopolitan capital. But the charred remains of Grenfell Tower have become a shocking symbol of inequality at the heart of the capital itself. They have changed the national narrative.
        If the Brexit vote was driven by a populist message that immigrants and Europe's open borders were to blame for the nation's malaise, the fire has brought back into focus how years of steep government cuts have disproportionately hit the poorest, amplifying the pain from stagnant wages after the financial crisis.
        "These are volatile and uncertain times," Alan Milburn, the chairman of the government's Social Mobility Commission, said last month after warning that social and economic divisions were dangerously widening. "Whole tracts of Britain feel left behind," he said. "The growing sense that we have become an us-versus-them society is deeply corrosive of our cohesion as a nation."
        Kensington and Chelsea is a microcosm of a divided Britain. The south is home to Kensington Palace Gardens, better known as Billionaires' Row, one of the most expensive streets in the country. Roman Abramovich, the Russian billionaire, owns a mansion there reportedly worth £125 million ($163 million). And Kensington Palace is where Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge will be raising their children.
        To the north, Golborne ranks as one of the two poorest wards in London. Victorian-era diseases like tuberculosis and rickets have made a comeback. Life expectancy in parts of North Kensington is 20 years lower than in South Kensington.
        In recent years, the council has spent millions of pounds subsidizing opera tickets and paying tax rebates to all except the poorest at a time when services for youths and toddlers were reduced, and free swimming classes for state-funded schools and older residents were canceled. The contempt directed at those raising concerns about fire safety at Grenfell Tower was not an exception, residents said, but the fire exposed the disconnect between an elitist council and poor residents in the north.
        "They don't know how the other side lives," said Monica Press, a Labour councilor from North Kensington.
        The council leader, Elizabeth Campbell, admitted last month that in her 11 years as a council member she had never set foot inside a high-rise housing project.
        Ms. Campbell, who took over as leader after the Grenfell fire, has vowed to rebuild trust. But local residents said the social contract between those who govern and those they purport to represent is broken. Police officers investigating the fire have told survivors that there were "reasonable grounds to suspect" that the council and the organization managing its social housing might have committed corporate manslaughter.
        On Tuesday, the head of the inquiry into the fire said it would examine the conduct of the local authorities but would not take into account the broader issues involving social housing, although Prime Minister Theresa May said she was "determined" to address those questions.
        Niles Hailstones, whose youngest son attended school with several children who died in the fire, said, "How do you think our children feel seeing people not care about their mothers, fathers, grandparents, uncles, aunties?"
        He added: "We watched the building burn down in front of our eyes."

        Of Earls and Ladies

        Today, the face of London is the Muslim son of a bus driver. Sadiq Khan, the city's directly elected mayor, in many ways represents how the city sees itself: multicultural, liberal and socially mobile.
        But much local governing authority is devolved to the councils that run London's 32 boroughs, which can look very different from that.
        Of the Kensington council's 50 members, 46 are white and 37 are Conservatives. The cabinet, led by Ms. Campbell, is entirely white. One of her fellow councilors is Lady Catherine Faulks. Another is Mr. Feilding-Mellen, the stepson of the Earl of Wemyss and March. Another is Prof. Sir Anthony Coates, known locally as a man of letters — the letters being those he lists after his name to highlight his credentials.
        Timothy Coleridge, one of several councilors who attended Eton, Britain's most exclusive private school, has served on the council since 1986, as did his father before him. Two years ago, he received an email from a distressed resident.
        Subject line: "Our borough is becoming a nightmare!!"
        Sports cars were speeding in his Knightsbridge neighborhood, one of the most expensive in London, the resident complained. Limousines hogged parking spaces outside his home.
        "The super car situation was ghastly during the last few summers, keeping us all awake in North Terrace," the resident wrote on June 2, 2015, demanding urgent action.
        Mr. Coleridge sympathized. "We totally agree with you, and our experiences as local residents matches yours," he replied, 14 hours after receiving the complaint. Lawyers were put to work. The police were consulted. Five months later, a Public Space Restriction Order imposing steep fines had been passed.
        Councilors representing the north of the borough acknowledged that in the lives of the rich, this was a legitimate concern. "But the alacrity with which they took it up was remarkable," said Robert Atkinson, a Labour councilor.
        Grenfell Tower residents were treated differently. The council kept deducting rent from a Grenfell survivor even after the fire, a mistake Lady Faulks called a "tiny" thing before backtracking. The council's former leader, Nicholas Paget-Brown, defended the body's decision not to install sprinklers, suggesting residents did not want them. And his deputy, Mr. Feilding-Mellen, a property developer, had insisted on keeping down the cost of the external cladding used in a £10 million renovation in 2014, according to a leaked email, resulting in the choice of what turned out to be highly flammable materials.
        Mr. Feilding-Mellen declined to be interviewed.
        With the national government pursuing policies of economic austerity, grants for local councils have been slashed by more than half since 2010. Yet the Kensington council routinely underspent its budget. It currently has £274 million in usable reserves — money that critics said should have been invested in the north.
        And a £100 tax rebate, for those who paid council tax in full before the 2014 local elections, was met with broad approval.
        Yet South Kensington has hardly been neglected. A recent enhancement of Exhibition Road outside the Victoria and Albert Museum featuring an inset granite diamond pattern cost nearly £30 million, with the council picking up roughly half the cost.
        Mr. Coleridge, until recently in charge of the arts, oversaw a £5 million grant to Holland Park Opera to make opera tickets more accessible. "The seats are very good value," he said, "only £60 to £65" ($78 to $84).
        Daniel Moylan, another Conservative councilor, blames welfare policy for the fraught relations between North Kensington residents and the council. "Social housing embeds disempowerment," he said. "I'm a big believer in private property."
        In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher, as prime minister, introduced "Right to Buy" — allowing established tenants in social housing to buy their homes at a discount. But soaring house prices have put Right to Buy out of reach for most.
        "If a flat costs £500,000, a £100,000 discount doesn't make it affordable," said Tony Auguste, a local campaigner who is disabled and relies on social housing. "It's an insult, really." A £500,000 apartment is equivalent to $650,000.

        Social Cleansing

        North Kensington Library, a stately Victorian building near Portobello market, is the rare place where children from the housing projects mix with those from Notting Hill Preparatory School and Chepstow House School, two private schools that cost more than £6,000 ($7,800) a term. But now the public library might have to move out so that one of the prep schools can move in.
        Mr. Feilding-Mellen negotiated a deal to lease the building to Notting Hill Preparatory School, which is getting a year rent-free so it can refurbish the building.
        The council says this arrangement is not unusual. Local critics say it is practically paying for the refurbishment. Mr. Feilding-Mellen's twins are on the waiting list for the school.
        Meanwhile, the council is spending over £18 million of public money on a new building in which the public section of the library will be limited to the ground floor, while students from Chepstow House will get their own access and separate floor.
        Mr. Feilding-Mellen's children are on the Chepstow House waiting list, too. At a council meeting on Oct. 19, 2016, he insisted that he did not have a conflict of interest, although he conceded that it might be "perceived" as such.
        "This council seems more interested in handing over public premises to prep schools than it is to provide homes for hard-pressed local families," said Mr. Atkinson.
        The library is just one flash point. Many North Kensington residents speak of "managed decline," a strategy to allow public institutions and spaces to fall into disrepair and then create a case for redeveloping them with a commercial motive.
        Social cleansing, they call it.
        Two years ago, the Maxilla day care center near Grenfell Tower was closed. More recently, plans to demolish and relocate Kensington and Chelsea College, a vocational school, and build an apartment block that will include commercial housing were announced.
        "This place is my success story," Drei Mullings, a young black man, said of the college at a recent public meeting. His course enabled him to go to the University of Northampton, he said.
        "We are market-led," a college representative told the crowd.
        "You should be community-led," a woman shouted back.
        Opposite the condemned college building, Wornington Green, once a public park, has already been turned into an apartment block. The whole street, once filled with social housing, is being redeveloped as "Portobello Square." 
        Conservative councilors argue that they have done their best to protect public services and have invested over £70 million in North Kensington infrastructure in recent years, including the ill-fated renovation of Grenfell Tower. They refute any suggestion of social cleansing.
        "Utterly not true," Mr. Coleridge said. "Some people live in a dream world of conspiracy theories."
        The council is creating more social housing — just not much of it inside the borough. Certain new housing developments are supposed to include a quota of social housing — but private developers often dodge the requirement by paying the council a fee instead. The council struck deals to receive £33.4 million in such fees in the year through September 2016.
        While the council has built only 336 new affordable housing units in the borough since 2011, instead of the 200 a year it had originally pledged, it has bought units in cheaper parts of London as alternatives.
        In the south of the borough, by contrast, thousands of apartments are routinely empty, the second, third and fourth homes of members of the global elite. Until four years ago, second-home owners even got a discount on council tax.
        Scores of Grenfell survivors have yet to be rehoused. Two weeks after the fire, the City of London Corporation bought 68 apartments in a new luxury block for that purpose. Some existing inhabitants, who enjoy a 24-hour concierge service, a swimming pool and a private cinema, were not happy.
        "My service charge bill, and this is a low one this year, is £15,500, and I would feel really resentful if someone got the same thing for free," said a woman named Donna who phoned in to LBC radio in June. "I feel sorry for those people, but my husband and I work very hard to be able to afford this."

        A Bitter Awakening

        One night in May 2013, the light in Mr. Daffarn's Grenfell Tower living room started flickering wildly. Soon his stereo stopped working and his television box blew up. Some of his neighbors reported sparks flying from their light fittings and smoke coming from their toasters.
        The complaints were mostly ignored until three weeks later, when entire rooms were filling with smoke. Residents marched to the tenant management office, and the electrical wiring was eventually repaired.
        Mr. Daffarn, a social worker who has lived in Grenfell Tower since 2001, has meticulously documented the grievances of residents in seven years of email correspondence with the council. Some 350 blog items he wrote with a fellow resident are being archived by the British Library.
        "I wanted to create a resource for anyone, who in 30 years' time wants to study how London ended up like this, with only rich people left," he said.
        But the Grenfell Tower fire has changed his motivation. "Now, it's evidence," Mr. Daffarn said, alluding to the criminal inquiry. He hopes the investigation will bring convictions and also document "the institutionalized contempt" for poor people.
        Some things have already changed.
        "People have woken up to the two extremes of Kensington," said Emma Dent Coad, the member of Parliament for Kensington. "Everyone now knows that Kensington is not just about cafes and museums and designer shops and fabulousness. That facade has dropped and we can see the rest of Kensington that has been betrayed by a very, very rich council refusing to spend what is pocket money to them on the things that help people better themselves."
        Since the fire, Ms. Campbell, the council leader, has promised to use the council's reserves to build more social housing. And she has put on hold all redevelopment projects, including North Kensington Library and Kensington and Chelsea College pending a review. But distrust remains.
        "Nothing has changed until they put it in black and white," Mr. Daffarn said. "They need to go, all of them," he added. "They're all implicated."

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        12)  Sperm Count in Western Men Has Dropped Over 50 Percent Since 1973, Paper Finds
        AUG. 16, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/health/male-sperm-count-problem.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=
        click&contentCollection=us&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=6&pgtype=sectionfront

        The sperm count of men in Western countries has been declining precipitously with no signs of "leveling off," according to new research, bolstering a school of thought that male health in the modern world is at risk, possibly threatening fertility.
        By examining thousands of studies and conducting a meta-analysis of 185 — the most comprehensive effort to date — an international team of researchers ultimately looked at semen samples from 42,935 men from 50 countries from 1973 to 2011.
        They found that sperm concentration — the number of sperm per milliliter of semen — had declined each year, amounting to a 52.4 percent total decline, in men from North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

        Total sperm count among the same group also tumbled each year for a total decline of 59.3 percent over the nearly 40-year period.
        Decreasing sperm count was first reported a quarter century ago, but the new analysis shows that "this decline is strong and continuing," said Dr. Shanna H. Swan, one of the study's authors and a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.
        And while this paper offers the most data yet on a subject of lengthy debate, it is far from settled, as the cause and the impact on fertility — and whether it has any real-life consequence — remain unknown.
        llan Pacey, a professor of andrology at the University of Sheffield in Britain — who wrote an article in 2013 questioning this sort of research— has been skeptical of studies that claim a recent decline in sperm count.
        He noted that a 52.4 percent decline in concentration "may sound a lot," but it represents a change from "normal (99 million sperm per milliliter) to normal (47 million sperm per milliliter)."
        Still, Professor Pacey conceded in a recent interview that the new paper piqued his interest and represented "a step forward in the clarity of the data, which might ultimately allow us to define better studies to examine this issue."

        Possible causes

        That the downtrend in sperm count is seen in Western countries suggests that "chemicals in commerce" are playing a role, Dr. Swan said.
        While this survey did not focus on the causes of these declines, its authors pointed to existing research that showed that exposure to cigarette smoke, alcohol and chemicals while in utero, as well as stress, obesity and age, were factors in the drop.
        "If the mother smokes, her son's sperm count is decreased — that's been shown in multiple studies," she said.
        2005 study, Dr. Swan said, showed that prenatal exposure to phthalates, also called plasticizers, affected the development of sons.
        Phthalates are a group of chemicals used to make plastics more flexible and harder to break. In several studies over the last two decades, they have been shown to disrupt the operation of male hormones like testosterone and have been linked to genital birth defects in male infants.
        Dr. Swan, who conducted a 2008 study about phthalate exposure, said that scientists have had the ability to measure exposure to plasticizers only since about 2000, via urine. That has led to a 20-year lag in the process since researchers cannot enroll men to produce sperm until they are in their 20s.
        That evidence is the "missing piece of the puzzle," she said.
        Professor Pacey cautions that while the changes in data may be driven by "greater exposure of pregnant women or adult men to more man-made chemicals," it is too soon draw a conclusion.
        No trend studies were performed in the first half of the 20th century, said Niels Skakkebaek, a reproduction researcher at the University of Copenhagen, but in the 1940s, fertility doctors claimed that men should have at least 60 million sperm per milliliter to be considered normal and that many had more that 100 million per milliliter.
        "Nowadays, average young men have 40-50 per milliliter," he said.
        Professor Skakkebaek, an author of a 1992 study that suggested chemicals play a role in the steady decline in semen quality, has since indicated that a rise in abnormal male reproductive systems may be linked to exposures to endocrine-disrupting chemicals.
        "We must find out which ones are to blame for the problems with male reproduction, including male infertility and testicular cancer," Professor Skakkebaek said.
        The website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the effects from low-level exposure to phthalates are unknown, but it acknowledges that some types of phthalates have affected the reproductive system of laboratory animals and that more research is needed. The agency declined to offer further comment.
        The National Institutes of Health also declined to comment on the research. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine did not respond to a request for comment.

        The practical effects

        Professor Skakkebaek pointed to Denmark and Germany as examples of how this course is playing out.
        "In Denmark, 8 percent of all children are now born after assisted reproduction," he said. "In spite of this activity, the birthrates have for 40 years been significantly below replacement level."
        "The number of young Germans have already declined 50 percent since the 1960s," he said, adding that a similar pattern has been seen in Japan, which while not a Western country, is a developed one.
        In the United States, he said, the fertility rate among white people is "below the levels where the population can be sustained."
        Data about assisted pregnancies has been linked to women having children later in life, and in developed nations, statistics have shown that more women are choosing to have fewer (or no) babies, which may also contribute to the fluctuations.

        Non-Western men

        In the recently released research, no significant decline in sperm quality was seen in men from non-Western countries, but this segment made up only about a quarter of the results.
        Dr. Hagai Levine, the head of the Environmental Health Track at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who led the team, said that one of the differences between Western and non-Western countries is that man-made chemicals like phthalates "became widespread much earlier in time" in developed nations.
        Professor Skakkebaek said that reproductive issues among African men were less common: "It is already known that Africans have significantly lower rates of another testicular problem: testicular cancer."
        A study published last fall that looked at samples from just over 30,600 Chinese men asserted that semen quality and sperm count in the men had declined over a 15-year period ending in 2015 — with the percentage of qualified donors at a Hunan clinic falling from 55.8 percent to 17.8 percent in that time. To qualify, donors need to meet acceptable semen parameters including sperm concentration, sperm motility and semen volume.
        "We urgently need international research collaboration to detect the causes," Professor Skakkebaek said.

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        13)  1 in 7 New York City Elementary Students Will Be Homeless, Report Says
        AUG. 15, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/nyregion/report-says-elementary-students-homeless-new-york.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fnyregion&action=click&contentCollection=nyregion&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

        There were 100,000 homeless students in New York City public schools during the 2015-16 school year, a number equal to the population of Albany.
        The daunting challenges that creates, both for individual children struggling to learn and for schools trying to improve performance, are laid out in a report to be released on Wednesday by the Institute for Children, Poverty, and Homelessness. If current trends continue, the report's authors say, one in every seven New York City public school students will be homeless at some point during elementary school.
        "In every school classroom, that's two or three kids," said Anna Shaw-Amoah, principal policy analyst at the institute. "And the challenges are not just about whether you're currently living in a shelter or a doubled up setting, but did they have that experience last year, or did they have this experience in kindergarten? The instability really travels with students. If you fall behind in one year, it's going to be harder to get on grade level the next year."
        Within the last six years, more than 140,000 New York City students have been homeless, the report said.
        The growing number of homeless children is part of the fallout of the city's housing crisis, which has seen a growing number of families in city shelters, as rents have risen, federal and state aid has dwindled, and a state rental assistance program ended. The de Blasio administration has struggled to slow the rising numbers, but with little success.
        Homelessness is difficult under any circumstances, but for children, the stress and physical dislocation can be like a tornado dropped into the school day. Students bounce from school to school as their family leaves home, perhaps staying with friends, before entering the shelter system, where they are often moved from place to place. Getting children to school each day becomes an enormous challenge, especially if families have recently moved across the city.
        The typical homeless elementary school student missed 88 days of school, according to the report, which is almost half of a school year.
        Families who have lost their home must make the wrenching choice of leaving a child in a school they know, or transferring them to a school closer to where they are staying. Moving to a new school may further the feeling of dislocation, but it makes it easier for the child to get to class. The report found that the typical homeless child transferred schools midyear at least two times during elementary school.
        Homeless children were more likely than those with stable housing to be on the wrong side of a huge array of indicators. They were more likely to to be suspended or drop out, more likely to face delays in being identified as needing special education services, and more likely to need services to help them learn English. Their proficiency rates on the state math and English exams for third through eighth graders were about 20 points lower than classmates'. And homeless students graduated at a rate of just 55 percent, while students with stable housing graduated at a rate of 74 percent.
        One in every six students identified as still learning English was classified as homeless, according to the report. Most of them were doubled up. Children learning English who were homeless were more likely to need services longer than their peers with a stable place to live.
        The institute relied on the city's data for its report. The definition used by the city for homelessness includes any child in "temporary housing" at some point during the school year. This can mean a student whose family is living in its car or in a motel, staying with extended family or friends, or living in shelters. The number of students in shelters during the 2015-16 school year was 33,000, according to the city's Independent Budget Office.
        "We recognize students in temporary housing face additional challenges and are providing more resources," Toya Holness, a spokeswoman for the city's education department, said in an email. She cited bus services for students in kindergarten through sixth grade who live in shelters, and said the city has hired more social workers in schools with large numbers of homeless students.
        The city has also made a push to register more homeless students for pre-K, an effort the report found to be working — the institute found a 17 percent increase in pre-K enrollment among homeless children from the 2014-15 school year to the 2015-16 school year. More broadly, the de Blasio administration has announced a plan to open 90 new sheltersto replace a makeshift network of hotels and temporary apartments scattered across the city and to try to allow families to stay closer to their home neighborhood and schools.
        Another crucial point in the report is how homeless students are distributed among the city's schools, with some schools and districts seeing intense concentrations, while others bear a relatively light burden. In Bayside, Queens, 823 students were homeless in the 2015-16 school year, while in District 10 in the Bronx, which includes neighborhoods like Fordham and Belmont, more than 10,000 students did not have a stable place to live.



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        Posted by: bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com

        Reply via web post Reply to sender Reply to group Start a New Topic Messages in this topic (1)

        Have you tried the highest rated email app?
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