11/05/2017

bauaw2003 BAUAW NEWSLETTER, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2017

 











Addicted to War:


And this does not include "…spending $1.25 trillion dollars to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and $566 billion to build the Navy a 308-ship fleet…"    

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/18/funding-for-war-vs-natural-disasters/




Dear Comrades, attached is some new art, where Xinachtli really outdid himself some.













Kaepernick sports new T-shirt:




Love this guy!



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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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Dr. Mustafa Barghouti Direct from Palestine

November 6 in Berkeley

The Middle East Children's Alliance Presents

Nobel Peace Prize Nominee

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI

Speaking on

100 Years after the Balfour Declaration:

The Anti-Colonial Struggle in Palestine

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2017 – 7pm

First Congregational Church of Berkeley

2345 Channing Way @ Dana

(near downtown Berkeley BART)

Mustafa Barghouti is General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative & President of the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees

Introduced by Professor Khalil Barhoum, Stanford University

$100 ticket includes seats reserved up front

If you want to avoid the service charge, tickets will be available soon directly from MECA; $15 tickets will be at local bookstores soon

Benefit for the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees

Wheelchair Accessible

For info: 510-548-0542, meca@mecaforpeace.org

Cosponsored by KPFA 94.1 FM


Save the Dates
Joining Hands and MECA's Annual Palestinian Crafts Bazaar

Saturday, December 9 and Sunday, December 10 in Berkeley

Join us for another year of supporting Palestinian artisans and cooperatives! We will have beautiful crafts from Palestine, delicious Arabic food, and fun activities! 

Saturday, December 9, 10am-5pm
Sunday, December 10, 11am-3pm

More details coming soon!





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Union Time: Film screening and director talk

Thursday, November 9, 2017, 6:00 - 8:00 P.M.

UC Berkeley Labor Center

2521 Channing Way, Berkeley


Union Time: Fighting for Workers' Rights tells the story of one of the greatest union victories of the 21st century—the fight to organize Smithfield Foods' pork processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina. From 1993 to 2008, workers struggled against dangerous working conditions, intimidation, and low pay. They were organized by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, whose "Justice for Smithfield Workers" campaign brought national attention to the plight of the plant workers. The victory led to the formation of UFCW Local 1208 and fair working conditions for 5,000 workers.


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​Plan to attend these important events to demonstrate that the American people do not another war in Korea, do not want to escalate tensions on the Korean Peninsula, and do not want a president who conducts foreign policy by Twitter and trashtalk. Additional details will be forthcoming as they become available 

Please share with your networks


Averting U.S. War on North Korea: What Progressives Must Know and Do Now

Start: November 10, 2017 7:00 PM

End: November 10, 2017 9:00 PM

Location:First Congregational Church2501 Harrison Street, Oakland, CA 94612


The U.S. and North Korea are on a dangerous path towards a military confrontation that could kill millions and engulf the world in a nuclear holocaust. Trump has threatened, "to totally destroy North Korea," and the United States has shifted massive military assets to Guam and Okinawa in preparation for a military first strike. North Korea is on track to launch a long-range missile with the capacity to strike Washington, DC, and Pyongyang has responded that it has the right to shoot down U.S. strategic bombers – even outside their airspace for self-defense.

As part of our War & Liberation series, Center for Political Education is proud to host a discussion with leading Korea peace activists and experts on the historical roots of this conflict. The panel will discuss what peace and social justice movements are doing and must do locally, nationally and internationally to avert war. This movement includes Korean American activists whose families and friends live directly in the line of fire in North and South Korea.

Speakers:

Christine Ahn, Women Cross DMZ

Ellen Choy, HOBAK

Kevin Gray, University of Sussex

Co-sponsored by Hella Organized Bay Area Koreans (HOBAK) and Women Cross DMZ. 

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Korea Peace Walk

Start: November 11, 2017 1:00 PM

End: November 11, 2017 4:00 PM

Location:Telegraph AveRoute currently being finalized, Oakland, CA 94609

Host Contact Info: Paul Liem info@kpolicy.org

Korea Peace Walk through Historic Oakland Koreatown

Co-sponsored by Korea Policy Institute and HOBAK

Saturday, November 11, 2017, 1:00pm to 4:00pm, Oakland, Telegraph Ave corridor

In view of heightened tensions between the U.S. and North Korea stemming from U.S. threats to destroy North Korea, this year's walkathon is a Korea Peace Walk jointly sponsored by KPI and HOBAK traversing approximately 20 blocks of Telegraph Avenue populated with Korean business and historic sites of labor and Black Panther Party activism. We will stop along the way, leafleting, drumming and chanting as we go, winding up with a rally at Koryo Place, 44th Street and Telegraph Avenue.


We are still finalizing the route, and will send out details next week. But please save the date 11/11, 1-4pm.


HOBAK stands for Hella Organized Bay Area Koreans, a dynamic and creative collective of Korean American activists working on peace an social justice issues in the Bay Area since 2009.

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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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Prison Radio UPDATE:


Please sign this petition:


Release all the records and files regarding Mumia Abu-Jamal's legal case!

https://diy.rootsaction.org/petitions/release-mumia-abu-jamal-case-record

A ruling to implement Judge Leon Tucker's recent order to release Mumia's court documents could be made as soon as May 30, 2017. Please call or e-mail the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office now to pressure them to follow the court's order to release all the records and files regarding Mumia Abu-Jamal's legal case.

Phone: 215-686-8000

Judge Orders DA to Produce Complete File for Mumia's Case

Dear Friend,


This just in! Judge Leon Tucker of the Common Pleas Court of Philadelphia has ordered the District Attorney of Philadelphia to produce the entire case file for Cook v. the Commonwealth- the case file in Mumia Abu-Jamal's criminal conviction, by September 21st.


The DA's office has to produce the entire file for "in camera" review in Judge Tucker's chambers. This mean Judge Tucker thinks that a thorough review of all the relevant files is in order! Or in other words, what has been produced under court order from the DA'a office has been woefully deficient.


Judge Tucker worked as an Assistant District Attorney in the late 90's, so he knows what is in -and not in- files. Cook v. the Commonwealth comprises at least 31 boxes of material held by the DA. Will they turn over "all information and the complete file" for Mumia's case, as Judge Tucker has ordered?


This in camera review by Judge Tucker himself means that an independent jurist will personally inspect the documents the DA produces. See the order here.  Stay tuned for more information following September 21. This is just one step in a long walk to freedom. It is a step that has never been taken before.


OPEN the files. Justice Now!

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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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FREE OUR BROTHERS

Campaign to Stop Modern Day Slavery in Colorado, Demanding Equal Rights to the Under Represented


http://freeourbrothers.com


Petitioning Denver FBI & US Department of Justice

Stop Slavery in Colorado




On May 29, 2008 at approximately 10:00 p.m. Omar Gent was driving in his car headed to the gas station; however was pulled over by local police for what was stated to be a "traffic violation". Omar was then arrested on scene and taken to be identified as the suspect of a local robbery. The victim was shown a photo of Omar Gent (which is illegal) and then was taken to the traffic stop where Omar was already handcuffed in the back of the police car and a one-on-one show up was held at a distance of approximately 20-30 feet; the victim  was unable to identify Omar as the suspect during the first show up.  After given a second show up the victim believed he was 90% sure Omar was the suspect.

Coworkers #1 and #2  were not present at the time of the robbery but were used as witnesses to help identify the suspect. Coworker #1 was also taken to the one-on-one show up and was asked to identify Omar as the suspect and he could not as he stated "I have astigmatism" and was not 100% sure Omar was the man.  Coworker #2 positively identified Omar Gent as the suspect because he stated, "there aren't that many black men in Parker Colorado." At the pretrial suppression of ID/photo line up the victim picked three other black men all with different builds and heights; although prior the victim was "90% sure" he had identified the right man. In addition, Coworker #1 stated during the trial that he was angry when he made the ID because he was ready to go home and coworker #2  told him that it was Omar.

Omar's car was illegally searched without consent or warrant. After his arrest and enduring many hours of integration, Omar asked for an attorney, yet all he received were more questions and did not receive the legal representation requested.  During interrogation, the police tried to coerce Omar to confess to the robbery or else they would throw his family out of their home.  Omar maintained his innocence and did not confess to the crime and as a result the police kept their word. Four Colorado Police Officers forcefully entered Omar's home  and began to search his home without a warrant or consent; Omar's family was present and told police that they were not given permission to enter. The police forced Omar's family out of their home into the Colorado winter night. The police took what they wanted during the illegal search of Omar's home. Omar's family filed a complaint against the city because of the illegal search of their home.  In efforts to conceal the police officers' wrongdoing, the presiding Judge sealed the legit complaint. In addition, the video interrogation showing Omar requesting to have legal representation and police threats to throw his family out of their home unless he confessed was deemed inadmissible in court.

Omar has written proof that he requested a preliminary hearing to challenge the charges of probable cause but he was illegally denied the right--without Omar's knowledge and approval the public defender waived his rights to a preliminary hearing.  Omar was then charged with an infamous felony yet never received a grand jury indictment (which is required by Colorado Bill of Rights for felony charges). Due to the fact that Omar was never indicted, he was subsequently denied his sixth Amendment right (to confront and cross examine witnesses). Omar has been fighting his case by seeking justice for the violation of his civil rights. Help us stop illegal imprisonment in Colorado.

  • This petition will be delivered to:
    • Denver FBI & US Department of Justice 


"Please help us by stopping the mass incarceration in Colorado! Basic civil rights are being violated and we need your help to shed light on this issue." 

Sign this petition at: 

https://www.change.org/p/u-s-department-of-justice-and-denver-fbi-stop-slavery-in-colorado


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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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stand with reality winner

patriotDoes Reality hate America? Or does the government just hate Reality?Announcing that Reality would be denied bail a second time, judge Brian Epps cited as his justification that Reality Winner "hates America" and "plotted against the government".

This statement is an outrageous slander against a young woman who's spent her entire adult life serving this country, right up to the day she was arrested.

In this way of thinking, to want America to be better is to hate it. To spend your entire adult life working hard and making sacrifices for America is to hate it. To be so outraged by a threat to America that you'd risk your career and your freedom to stop it is to hate it.

And it makes no sense. What does it mean to say that Reality "hates America," and why is it important to the prosecution that the public believes this?

What is this really about?

The real reason is the text of the Espionage Act. The 100-year-old law has been used since its passage as a loophole to deny Americans their rights to a free press, free speech, and whistleblower protections. The Espionage Act doesn't mention "classified information" at all -- the law is intended to punish people who transmit information with an intent to harm the United States or aid its enemies.

The document Reality is charged with releasing contains information about threats to our election integrity, which is still being covered up by the government. Voters and election officials have a right to know about these threats so they can take action to fix them. Having this information in the open is critically important, and the idea that releasing it "harmed America" is so absurd it's barely worth dignifying with a response.

The idea is so absurd that Reality's prosecutors are doing everything they can to avoid having to argue for it, because they would absolutely lose. Instead, they're trying to put Reality's politics on trial.

Read our full article on Reality's unjust prosecution here.

Reality's defense team intends to not only prove her innocence, but to turn the tables on this outrageously unjust prosecution, and put the Espionage Act on trial. We have the chance to permanently end this tactic, and to force the government to honor whistleblower protections, but only if we have the resources for the fight. We're up against the unlimited resources of Trump's justice department, and all we have is each other. Please donate today and help us win.


TAKE ACTION: Reality will be sitting in jail for another 5 months as she awaits trial. We need to let her know we have her back. Can you write her a letter of support? Visit StandWithReality.org for instructions on how to write her and let her know you're thinking of her!


art-bannerNew gallery of Reality's artwork onlineWe recently posted a gallery of Reality's drawing and paintings, including a few she's sent her mom from jail. Check it out here!

STAND WITH REALITY WINNER ~ PATRIOT & ALLEGED WHISTLEBLOWERc/o Courage to Resist, 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610 ~ 510-488-3559

standwithreality.org ~ facebook.com/standwithreality


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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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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 TILLERY: Still Rumbling!


October 22—Major Tillery's challenge to his 1985 conviction for a 1976 murder and assault goes to a Pennsylvania Superior Court appeals panel on October 31. Tillery's case is about actual innocence. It highlights Philadelphia's infamous culture of police and prosecutorial misconduct. The only so-called evidence against him was from lying jailhouse informants who were threatened with false murder prosecutions, and plea and bail deals on pending cases. A favorite inducement for jailhouse informants in the early 1980's was "sex for lies." Homicide detectives brought the informants and their girlfriends to police headquarters for private time in interview rooms for sex.


This is Major Tillery's 34th year in prison on a sentence of life without parole. Over twenty of those years were spent in solitary confinement in some of the harshest federal and state "control units."


"Major Tillery, for many years known as the jailhouse lawyer who led the 1990 Tillery v. Owens prisoners' rights civil case, spawned from unconstitutional conditions at the state prison in Pittsburg, is still rumbling these days, this time for his life as well as his freedom."    —Mumia Abu-Jamal, Major: Battling On 2 Fronts, 9/17/17


This past year the PA Department of Corrections (DOC) acknowledged that Major Tillery has hepatitis C, which has progressed to cirrhosis of the liver. The DOC nonetheless refused to provide treatment, ignoring the federal court ruling in Abu-Jamal v. Wetzel that the DOC's hep-C protocols violate the constitutional requirement to provide prisoners adequate medical care. With the help of the Abolitionist Law Center, Major Tillery is now receiving the anti-viral treatment.

Tillery has been doubly punished in prison for his activism in support of fellow prisoners. His 1990 lawsuit, Tillery v. Owens resulted in federal court orders to the PA Department of Corrections to provide medical and mental health treatment and end double-celling. He challenged the extreme conditions of solitary confinement in the NJ State prison in Trenton, Tillery v. Hayman (2007). His advocacy for Mumia Abu-Jamal in February 2015 helped save Mumia's life. Major Tillery filed grievances for himself and other prisoners suffering from painful and debilitating skin rashes. For these acts of solitary with other prisoners, just months after he re-entered general population from a decade in solitary confinement, Tillery was set up with false prison misconduct charges and given four months back in "the hole." Major Tillery filed a federal retaliation lawsuit against the DOC. Recently, Major succeeded in getting a program for elderly prisoners established at SCI Frackville.


For his appeals and continuing investigation, Major Tillery now has the pro bono representation of Philadelphia criminal defense attorney Stephen Patrizio:


"I took on Major Tillery's defense, which exposes prosecutorial misconduct in convicting Major Tillery of a nine-year old murder based solely on the testimony of jailhouse informants. This testimony was recanted in the informants' sworn statements that detail the coercion and favors by homicide detectives and prosecutors to manufacture false trial testimony.


"Now the DA's office wants to uphold the unconstitutional application of 'timeliness' restrictions applied to post-conviction petitions to dismiss Major Tillery's petition, arguing he is too late in uncovering that the DA's office knowingly put a lying witness on the stand."


Major Tillery's appeal is to win his "day in court" on his petition based on his innocence and misconduct by the police and prosecution. At the same time, the investigation continues to further uncover the evidence of this misconduct.


Although Major Tillery has pro bono legal representation there are still substantial costs to appeal and to conduct additional investigation..  Please help with a donation.



How You Can Help


Financial Support—Major Tillery needs funds for a lawyer in his appeal to overturn his conviction.


Go to PayPal


Go to JPay.com;

code: Major Tillery AM9786 PADOC

Or send a check/money order to: Major Tillery or Kamilah Iddeen, U.S. Post Office,

2347 N. 7th St., PO Box 13205, Harrisburg, PA 17110-6501


Have a fund-raising event! Thanks to Dr. Suzanne Ross, International Spokesperson for the International Concerned Family and Friends for Mumia Abu-Jamal for $1000 gifted during her 80th Birthday celebration.



Tell Philadelphia District Attorney:

Free Major Tillery! He is an innocent man, framed by police and and prosecution.

Call: 215-686-8711 or  Email: DA_Central@phila.gov


Write to:

Major Tillery AM 9786, SCI Frackville, 1111 Altamont Blvd., Frackville, PA 17931


For More Information, To read the new appeal, Go To: JusticeForMajorTillery

Kamilah Iddeen (717) 379-9009, Kamilah29@yahoo.com

Rachel Wolkenstein (917) 689-4009, RachelWolkenstein@gmail.com



www.JusticeForMajorTillery.org





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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)  A.C.L.U. Sues Trump Administration Over Detention of 10-Year-Old Immigrant

     NOV. 1, 2017

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/us/aclu-trump-lawsuit-immigrant.html?rref=

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    The American Civil Liberties Union sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over its detention of a 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who was stopped by Border Patrol agents in Texas last week on her way to surgery.

    The girl, Rosa Maria Hernandez, had been living in Laredo, Tex., with her parents, where she was brought illegally from Mexico when she was 3 months old.

    Her case became a new flash point in a national debate over the administration's hard-line immigration policies, eliciting outcries from members of Congress as well as the American Academy of Pediatrics, an advocacy group.

    The A.C.L.U. argues in its suit that Border Patrol agents illegally and erroneously detained Rosa Maria, who was traveling to a hospital in Corpus Christi to have gallbladder surgery, under the pretext that she is an "unaccompanied minor." The lawsuit, filed in a United States District Court in San Antonio, further argues that the government violated Rosa Maria's constitutional rights by separating her from her parents without due process. The A.C.L.U. asked the court for a temporary restraining order against the government to allow her immediate release.

    "This case is shocking," Michael Tan, an A.C.L.U. lawyer working on Rosa Maria's case, said in a phone interview on Tuesday evening. "And all of us who do immigration work are concerned that this is the new normal."

    A spokesman for Customs and Border Protection said on Tuesday night that the agency would not comment on pending litigation, and a representative for the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is holding Rosa Maria, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Both agencies are listed as defendants in the lawsuit, among several others.

    Rosa Maria was stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint at 2 a.m. on Oct. 24 while traveling in an ambulance. At the request of her parents, who have no legal status in the United States, she had been accompanied by her cousin, Aurora Cantu, 34, an American citizen.

    Ms. Cantu has said that border agents at the checkpoint asked for her and Rosa Maria's papers and escorted them to their destination at Driscoll Children's Hospital. There, they waited outside Rosa Maria's room during her surgery, taking her into custody immediately upon discharge.

    She was subsequently transferred to the Baptist Children's Home Ministries in San Antonio, a center for unaccompanied minors — which Mr. Tan said never should have happened.

    "If I send my kid to soccer practice with a neighbor, or to school on a school bus, the mere fact that I'm not with my kid does not mean that I relinquish my parental rights," he said.

    Under a 2002 law, the Office of Refugee Resettlement is authorized to take custody of children under 18 who have no parent or legal guardian either present or available in the country.

    In an interview with The New York Times last week, Rosa Maria's mother, Felipa de la Cruz, said she and her partner had risked coming to the United States for the chance to obtain life-changing health care for their daughter.

    Mr. Tan said he was hopeful the case would go before the district court in San Antonio as early as this week.


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    2)  Exxon Will Pay $2.5 Million for Pollution at Gulf Coast Plants

     OCT. 31, 2017

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/climate/exxon-fine.html?rref=

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    WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice announced Tuesday that Exxon Mobil will pay $2.5 million in fines for flaring gases at eight plants along the Gulf Coast. Agency officials said the announcement was evidence of the Trump administration's commitment to enforcing the nation's environmental laws.

    Exxon will spend about $300 million as part of the settlement to install gas recovery and other new monitoring and pollution control technologies at the petrochemical plants in Louisiana and Texas, according to agency officials.

    The agencies also settled a second case involving air pollution violations with PDC Energy, a Colorado oil and gas company whose storage tanks were found to be leaking smog-forming compounds. The company also was fined $2.5 million, which will be shared by Colorado and the federal government.

    "We will be enforcing environmental laws in this administration and that's not just my message, it's the message straight from the top," said Patrick Traylor, the E.P.A. deputy assistant administrator for enforcement. The agency, Mr. Traylor said, is "emphasizing the rule of law in this administration, specifically at E.P.A."

    The announcements came as Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the E.P.A., has been denying accusations by environmental advocates that he is weak on enforcement. A recent study by the Environmental Integrity Project, based on documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, found the Trump administration had collected 60 percent less in civil penalties from polluters through July 31 than the previous three administrations over a similar period.

    But in a recent interview with Bloomberg, Mr. Pruitt vowed to crack down on polluters, saying, "They don't know me."

    Jeffrey H. Wood, acting assistant attorney general for environment and natural resources, said that since January the environment division has imposed more than $1.7 billion worth of civil penalties and $2.9 billion in criminal fines.

    Tuesday's settlements resolve allegations that Exxon and PDC Energy violated the federal Clean Air Act by releasing harmful pollutants.

    In the case of PDC, the company has agreed to spend about $18 million to upgrade systems. The Exxon settlement is expected to reduce releases of volatile organic compounds by more than 7,000 tons per year and reduce toxic air pollutants like benzene by more than 1,500 tons per year, Mr. Wood said. The settlement also requires the company to spend $1 million to plant trees in Baytown, Tex.

    Exxon's Baytown operation came under scrutiny during Hurricane Harvey this year for releasing toxic pollutants during the storm, which battered refineries and other chemical facilities along Houston's coastline. In one case, a sinking tank roof at Exxon's Baytown facility resulted in the release of hazardous gases — including volatile organic compounds and benzene — above permitted levels.

    "These investments, which include flare monitoring equipment and flare gas recovery systems, will help improve flare efficiency at these chemical facilities, which are among the largest petrochemical complexes in the world," Aaron Stryk, an Exxon spokesman said in a statement. "Exxon Mobil complies with environmental laws, regulations and permits."



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    3) In CIA We Trust

    By Glen Ford, November 2, 2017

    https://www.blackagendareport.com/cia-we-trust


    More than a year after the Democrats began blaming Hillary Clinton's campaign problems on Russia, the allegations of massive Kremlin interference in U.S. elections are still based on the "high confidence" – but evidence-free – CIA assertion that Vladimir Putin ordered the hacking of the Democratic National Committee. One cannot imagine a less credible authority than the agency headquartered in Langley, Virginia: an organization specializing in disinformation, mass psychological manipulation, false flag operations, assassination, and regime change. No single entity in modern history, foreign or domestic, has told more lies -- and been caught bloody-handed, during or after the fact -- than the CIA.

    Only a fool, or a willing accomplice, would believe a word from the CIA's mouth. Yet, the agency has arguable reached the all-time height of its influence over U.S. domestic affairs as the key player in the unfolding decapitation of the U.S. government, while the imperial war machine plays nuclear "chicken" with a range of demonized adversaries.

    The Mother of All Liars is deemed the arbiter of truth. The CIA first conjures and then ritually deciphers both the crisis in domestic governance (the Russians did it) and the crisis (also Russia-based) of shrinking U.S. influence in the world. That the CIA continues to command such respect and authority, after all these years of ceaseless lying, is testament to the depth of the crisis of legitimacy that wracks U.S. ruling circles at this stage of capitalist decay.

    We are inflicted with the spectacle of the Black political class -- worthless misleaders -- clucking that Russians are the root of escalating white supremacist outrages in the U.S. The Kremlin, supposedly on a social media budget of about a hundred thousand dollars, has replaced (or absorbed) the Republican White Man's Party as the wily villains of U.S. voter suppression, if you believe Atlanta Black Rep. John Lewis. Los Angeles Congresswoman Maxine Waters has forgiven the CIA for bringing crack cocaine to the ghetto; she now blames the Russians for sowing social "dissension," putting Black lives in danger. Waters revels in being called "auntie" by mostly white "liberal" crowds of Democratic "resisters" against Trump, and rants about "the Kremlin Klan " that pulls the strings in the White House, while a majority of her colleagues on the Congressional Black Caucus cast their votes for the Orange Menace's gargantuan war budget -- thus guaranteeing the further gutting of social programs for their constituents.

    The logic is clear: if the Russians have taken command of Trump's brain, and harnessed Attorney General Jeff Sessions' deep-fried racism to their own ends, then war with Moscow is the only path to racial justice in the United States. Eighty-four percent of U.S. cops supported Trump , according to a survey by Police magazine. That makes them dupes for the Kremlin -- which is, therefore, retroactively responsible for police violence in Black communities. There is a Russian behind every nightstick.

    The CIA has pulled off one of the greatest psychological ops of all time, converting the bulk of elected officials representing the most left-leaning, anti-war constituency in the U.S. -- Black people -- into rabid Russia-haters.

    It's a good bet that the recent release of nearly 3,000 previously classified documents detailing the CIA's history of domestic and international terrorism, false flag operations and regime change schemes, will have little political effect on the agency's credibility on all things Russian. Although the CIA has become, if anything, more murderous with time, the imperial populace is immensely forgiving of crimes against weaker peoples. Most politically aware Americans already knew the CIA waged biological warfare against Cuban crops, and attempted scores of times to assassinate Fidel Castro; that one of Eisenhower's last acts was to order the death of Congolese president Patrice Lumumba; and that the CIA considered the 1953 overthrow of Iran's elected leader a great feat. The new batch of documents, related to the assassination of President John Kennedy, details a CIA scheme to stage bombings in Miami and even sink a "boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida" and blame it on Castro, at the risk of killing innocent people. However, it is well known that CIA operatives actually did carry out lethal bombings in Cuba, and destroyed a Cuban airliner full of passengers. The CIA killed 50,000 Vietnamese in Operation Phoenix and collaborated in the slaughter and disappearance of tens of thousands of Latin Americans. In league with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the CIA literally created the international jihadist network that became al Qaeda and its off-shoots around the world, resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands. And almost every sentient American knows the CIA gave thumbs up to "intelligence" claiming Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction.

    To compile a list of the CIA's crimes, is to describe U.S. foreign policy since the agency's founding in 1947. The CIA has never been a law unto itself. It is the clandestine arm of U.S. foreign policy, and carries out the objectives of the U.S. ruling class -- or various factions of that class. Its mission is maintenance and expansion of an empire that is not subject to the laws that constrain other nations. That is the meaning of American "exceptionalism."

    Those Americans that regularly "forgive" CIA crimes understand that it acts in service of U.S. empire. The problem is not that these people are so enamored of the CIA and its dark works, but that they identify with U.S. power in the world, and lack solidarity with the rest of humanity. This applies to millions of folks that think of themselves as "progressive," as well as Trump's "delplorables."

    That's why Maxine Waters can't shake the imperialist disease.

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    4) Democratic Party Affiliation in Mississippi "A Compromise Made in Error" Says Cooperation Jackson's Kali Akuno

    By Bruce A. Dixon, November 2, 2017

    https://blackagendareport.com/democratic-party-affiliation-mississippi-compromise-made-error-says-cooperation-jacksons-kali-akuno


    It was natural enough. To be white in Mississippi is to be a Republican, to be black is to be a Democrat. So when the leaders of the Malcolm X Grassroots Organization, heir to organizational efforts in Jackson Mississippi since the early 1970s considered running candidates for local office they did what looked like the sensible thing. They ran Chokwe Lumumba and his son Chokwe Antar as Democrats. Kali Akuno, a former member of the MXGM leadership team now says that joining the Democrats was a strategic compromise "made in error."

    Becoming Democrats was supposed to have been a compromise, Akuno observed at the Movement School for Revolutionaries held October 21 in Jackson MS. It was to have been a temporary thing while MXGM built its own independent political organization to fight for the kind of thoroughgoing social and economic change outlined in what became the Jackson Kush Plan, or if that didn't work might try to building the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party that kind of political arm. But neither were much tried. Effectively the MXGM crew simply suspended their own views to enlist as Democrats. They did this so successfully that after running four local campaigns in ten years a great deal of black Jackson which voted for its candidates doesn't know about Jackson Kush or the principles the MXGM stands for. In Akuno's book he said "that's not a victory."

    Adofo Minka and Kali Akuno said they both advised Chokwe Antar not to run for mayor this time, for similar reasons. When Chokwe Lumumba ran for mayor in 2012 the city of Jackson had a budget surplus. Now the new mayor is confronted with what Akuno called a kind of Syriza Trap. Its central business district under state control, the privatization of its schools and water the razing of several black neighborhoods nearly imminent, and an emergency management regime coming to strip elected city government of the ability to do much of anything without approval from bankers. The Lumumba administration is already working with advisors from the Gates Foundation, perhaps trying to choose its own emergency managers before these are chosen by somebody else. Governing in 2017 means having to manage capitalism's crises without questioning capitalism. It means being the black faces who administer the cuts and austerity and gentrification. It means giving up the right to criticize other Democrats who take orders from their contributors/investors, and giving up the right to oppose the permanent wars too. This isn't what some signed up for.

    A national narrative is out there, said Minka in which Bernie Sanders gets credit for electing Chokwe Antar and some talk up their supposed ability to recreate the electoral success of Jackson around the country without the least idea of what underlies it.

    "Antar is having to figure out every day... where can I compromise with these folks and where can I fight them," said Kali Akuno. Mississippi tea party types hold the governor's chair and a supermajority in the state legislature, emboldened by Trump in the White House. State lawmakers have responded to mere discussion of some sustainability and human rights initiatives with bills to outlaw them.

    It's a set of crises that can't be addressed, Akuno asserts, by electing more Democrats. Something else has to happen. Chokwe Antar may hold office, but he can really neither build nor fight effectively. That requires something quite different from another campaign for office.

    It requires organizing which prefigures the kind of society and people we will have to become in a post-capitalist world. That something else is promoting the transition to a solidarity economy in which workers have rights on the job, where economic justice and sustainability at home and peace abroad are priorities. Four years ago Akuno and others founded Cooperation Jackson to do just those things.

    Cooperation Jackson is about taking as much land off the speculative market as possible. It's about founding and fostering cooperative enterprises in every economic niche to train working class people to run their own world, to demand and to achieve economic democracy. There's a long game and a short game and a short game, observes Akuno. Short term compromises with the Democrats don't advance our long game.


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    5) Puerto Rico in the Dark

    By Ed Morales, November 4, 2017

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/opinion/sunday/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria.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&_r=0#

    Photographer Joseph Rodríguez captures the isolation of a storm-ravaged island.


    Like most members of the Puerto Rican diaspora, I couldn't reach my family and friends on the island for more than a week after Hurricane Maria made landfall on Sept. 20. All I had to work with was a quick phone call my mother's neighbor had made to my sister. The neighbor said that my mother and my aunt had ridden out the storm together, that they were basically fine. My mother's home, made of sturdy concrete, was intact.

    My sister, her husband and I spent several days booking flights to San Juan that wound up being canceled. We were finally able to get one in early October. I'd been poring over media images of the destruction, but I was still shaken by what I confronted as we drove the 25 miles or so from the capital to my mother's home near the El Yunque rain forest.

    Everywhere were dystopic vistas of piled debris: pieces of zinc roofs, cracked porcelain fixtures, discarded mattresses and an uninterrupted line of tropical trees stripped, snapped and splintered like matchsticks.

    The catastrophic effects of the storm, which have arguably been exacerbated by the slow and indifferent response of the federal government, left the island and its residents battered yet defiant. They are facing a yearslong process of recovery.

    Many of Puerto Rico's existing problems — its $72 billion municipal bond debt, archaic and brittle electrical energy infrastructure and health care collapse — have accelerated in a scary fashion because of the hurricane. While hundreds of thousands are predicted to move to the mainland United States, there are many who can't or won't, and they are holding on tightly to a tradition of community-based acts of survival. Listening to those stories of survival, told in the particular singsong that characterizes the island accent, resonated with me as if they were my own.

    María Maldonado, who lives in Alto del Cabro barrio, just a few minutes' walk from the tony Condado tourist district, lost the roof of her house. She's in the process of submitting a loan application to the government but first must prove that the ownership of the house she grew up in has passed hands from her father, who is no longer living, to her.

    "I had spent years repairing the roof, spent $4,000 on it, but Maria came in and tore open the zinc like the lid off a tin can," she told me. FEMA declared her house a total loss.

    Ilda Sánchez and Alberto Luquis found a crocodile in their flooded house in Caño Martín Peña, a Santurce neighborhood of the working poor who settled along a canal that once nourished mangroves.

    The neighborhood was precarious before the storm; people feared displacement by tourism developments, as had happened in the 1980s in a nearby neighborhood. The hurricane's destruction will encourage people to move along even faster, leaving behind a community that came to exist because of rural displacement after hurricanes in the early 20th century.

    Just as the hurricanes did then, this storm exposed the dividing lines between well-off Puerto Ricans and those in need. In the San Juan metro area, cafes, bars and restaurants are running at half-speed with diesel generators. Just an hour's drive into the countryside, communities are cut off from sustainable supplies of food, water and medication.

    Near Mameyes, the town at the foot of the mountains that are home to El Yunque rain forest, I saw people washing their clothes by hand in the Espiritu Santo River, returning to a 19th-century reality that didn't depend on electrical appliances. Up the road, a brigade of workers struggled to restore fallen lines. The grid, already in trouble before the storm, had been shattered. Everyone, no matter their political orientation or desire for statehood or independence, had been plunged into the darkness of no cellular signal or internet. They knew about as much about their relatives elsewhere on the island as people stateside did.

    As I drove around the island, I kept seeing Puerto Ricans who had pulled over on the side of the road, standing in just the right spot where a stray signal could be caught, and a few precious words with a loved one could be stolen from the trauma of extreme weather dislocation.

    I gave my mother a smartphone a few years ago, in an effort to edge her closer to tech savviness. She was a bit reluctant then, but now, I saw sadness in her eyes over not being able to reach anyone or anything with her phone. We'd come down with the intent to bring her back to New York, at least for a few months, and after a brief moment of regret, she finally agreed.

    With so much loss, there was a gain, though. The community organized so quickly, with brigades clearing the roads and tending to the elderly, the sick and those who'd lost the roof over their heads. Some time may pass before cell towers restore the virtual community, but now, more than ever, the actual community is resoundingly "presente."




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    6) Ex-Leader of Catalonia Turns Himself In to Police in Brussels

    NOV. 5, 2017

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/world/europe/carles-puigdemont-brussels-arrest.html?rref=

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    The deposed Catalan leader, Carles Puigdemont, and other former officials at a news conference in Brussels last month. CreditAurore Belot/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


    BRUSSELS — The former president of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, and four former members of his regional government turned themselves in to the Belgian police on Sunday morning, a spokesman for the Brussels prosecutor's office said.

    The spokesman, Gilles Dejemeppe, said that they would be questioned over the next 24 hours by an investigative judge.

    A Spanish judge issued an international arrest warrant on Friday for Mr. Puigdemont and the four former members of his cabinet, who left Catalonia for Brussels. The warrant was sent to the Belgian federal prosecutor.

    Mr. Puigdemont told RTBF, a Belgian television broadcaster, on Friday that he was "completely available to cooperate" with the Belgian court system, which he called "the real justice."


    "At this point there are no guarantees of getting a just and independent trial which could escape the enormous pressure and influence of politics on the judicial powers in Spain," Mr. Puigdemont said.

    In total, the Spanish authorities are seeking to prosecute 20 politicians on rebellion and other charges for declaring Catalonia's independence from Spain last month. Several former members of the Catalan regional government were jailed without bail last this week, pending trial.

    A Belgian judge will be able to question Mr. Puigdemont and the other four detainees before deciding whether to apply the international arrest warrant. Even if formally arrested at that point, the five could be released with conditions, such as house arrest. The question of extradition will be decided separately.

    Mr. Puigdemont's Belgian lawyer, Paul Bekaert, could not be reached for comment on Sunday, but he said last week that his client would cooperate fully. "If the extradition is approved, then we will definitely go the whole way," he said.

    The whole procedure, including several possibilities for appeal, could take up to two months, Mr. Bekaert said.


     


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    7)  When Susan B. Anthony's 'Little Band of 9 Ladies' Voted Illegally

    NOV. 5, 2017

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/us/womens-rights-suffrage-susan-b-anthony.html?rref=

    collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=

    rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront


    On Nov. 5, 1872, nearly 50 years before the 19th Amendment granted women in the United States the right to vote, Susan B. Anthony and a small group of women cast their ballots for president in Rochester, N.Y., days after she had persuaded election inspectors to register them.

    The move, which resulted in arrests and a trial — in which Anthony was found guilty — was an act of defiance and audacity that helped propel the long, slow march to women's suffrage.

    The New York Times covered the moment, sort of. One paragraph ran inside the paper the next morning, Nov. 6. The news was deemed insignificant in no uncertain terms — it was published under the heading "Minor Topics."

    The item recognized that the event could lead to a momentous shift, acknowledging that Anthony was "leading to the polls the advance guard of the coming squadrons of female voters." At the same time, it captured the dismissive misogyny of the era, referring to the women as "a little band of nine ladies."

    The tone might seem shocking today, but it shouldn't, said Louise Bernikow, an expert on American women's history and a speaker on women's political movements.

    Newspapers at the time paid little attention to the push for women's suffrage. "It was not a massively popular movement in 1872," she said.

    This brief item in The Times was only one example of how the paper reported on the efforts. An article published a decade later, on Oct. 16, 1882, was written in terms that would be deemed unquestionably sexist today.

    "Literal people may ask, Why, then, does not woman have the right of suffrage?" it stated. "The answer is easy. She does not want it. Of course, it must be admitted that women, or some women, think they want the ballot. But they do not really want it."

    It continued: "Philosophers have observed that the female desire is invariably kindled by that which is, or seems to be, unattainable."

    The article — which examined a debate between Anthony and Edward Rosewater, a Republican politician and newspaper editor from Omaha — shot down Anthony's assertion that disenfranchisement was akin to degradation. To be "disfranchised," it stated, one would have to be robbed of a right "he (or she) already holds."

    It then reinforced a central argument made by those who opposed women's suffrage: that it would lead to the destruction of the traditional home. "To give woman the ballot, provided woman wanted it, would be to bring desolation and distraction into multitudes of happy homes."

    Ms. Bernikow, whose current work focuses on the effort to achieve women's suffrage in New York City, said The Times and its editors were "speaking to the status quo."

    "They're entrenched white men," she said. "The main boogeyman that they've come up with is home life."

    It took another generation for the movement to gain a wider audience, Ms. Bernikow said. Harriot Stanton Blatch, a daughter of the women's rights pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton, broadened the movement from its initial focus on morality — that it was immoral to believe that women were not citizens.

    Blatch's method: Appeal to the court of public opinion by holding open-air meetings, speaking from soapboxes on street corners, and holding parades and marches with banners and pins.

    This next iteration of the movement also benefited from a vast network of suffrage-focused media. "They had magazines, ways of distributing information that didn't depend of the mainstream press, tons of it," Ms. Bernikow said. "That made a huge difference."

    The earlier revolutionaries were meeting in churches and petitioning the state and federal governments, but not enough citizens were paying attention. Anthony's 1872 vote and the subsequent trial had a very small audience.

    "Until the turn of the 20th century, that's the kind of movement it was," Ms. Bernikow said. "You were basically speaking to the converted."

    Women's activists in the early 1900s also gained support by appealing to working women who were persuaded that having the vote would improve conditions. "That's a huge number, particularly in New York City — the garment workers," Ms. Bernikow said.

    And marchers took to the streets, "extremely organized in military ranks," Ms. Bernikow said, disproving stereotypes that were common about women at the time — that they couldn't be organized and had no discipline.

    "By the turn of the century, you had, in New York City, 30,000 marchers and half a million onlookers," she said. "It's incredible."


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    8)  What the Climate Report Says About the Impact of Global Warming

    NOV. 3, 2017

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/climate/climate-change-impacts.html?rref=

    collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbusiness&action=click&contentCollection=business&region=

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    The same, only worse.

    Global warming is affecting the United States more than ever, and the impacts — on communities, regions, infrastructure and sectors of the economy — are expected to increase.

    That's the gist of Volume II of the National Climate Assessment, a draft report made public on Friday that focuses on the current and future impacts of climate change. The draft will eventually accompany a report on the science of climate change that was unveiled by 13 federal agencies in its final form on the same day.

    In addition to comments by members of the public, Volume II is being reviewed by an expert committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. After revisions by the agencies involved it is expected to be published in December 2018.

    Like the scientific report, the draft of Volume II contains many of the same findings cited in the previous National Climate Assessment, published in 2014. But reflecting some of the impacts that have been felt across the country in the past three years, some of the emphasis has changed.

    Here's a look at some of what's new in the draft assessment.

    Predicted impacts have materialized

    More and more of the predicted impacts of global warming are now becoming a reality.

    For instance, the 2014 assessment forecast that coastal cities would see more flooding in the coming years as sea levels rose. That's no longer theoretical: Scientists have now documented a record number of "nuisance flooding" events during high tides. In 2014, nearly half of residents in Hampton Roads, Va., could not get out of their neighborhoods at least once because of tidal flooding.

    Meanwhile, as the oceans have warmed, disruptions in United States fisheries, long predicted, are now underway. In 2012, record ocean temperatures caused lobster catches in Maine to peak a month earlier than usual — and the distribution chain was unprepared.

    A focus on air quality

    While much of the discussion of climate change looks at the role of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in warming the planet, the draft report puts a renewed emphasis on the impacts of other atmospheric pollutants like ozone and smoke, which can cause respiratory problems and lead to premature death.

    The draft notes with "high confidence" that climate change will increase ozone levels, as rising temperatures and changes in atmospheric circulation affect local weather conditions. But the increases will not be uniform; by near the end of the century the worst ozone levels will be found across a wide expanse of the Midwest and Northern Great Plains, while levels are expected to improve, at least somewhat, in parts of the Southeast.

    The report reiterates what residents of the West have learned from hard experience: that warmer springs, longer dry seasons in the summer and other impacts are lengthening the fire season. The smoke from fires affects not only health, the report says, but visibility.

    Adaptation, adaptation, adaptation

    Since 2014, more detailed economic research has estimated that climate change could cause hundreds of billions of dollars in annual damage, as deadly heat waves, coastal flooding, and an increase in extreme weather take their toll. Unless, that is, communities take steps to prepare beforehand.

    The previous assessment warned that few states and cities were taking steps to adapt to the impacts of climate change. That's slowly changing, the new draft finds. More and more communities are taking measures such as preserving wetlands along the coasts to act as buffers against storms.

    But outside of a few places in Louisiana and Alaska, few coastal communities are rethinking their development patterns in order to avoid the impacts from rising seas and severe weather that the report says are surely coming.

    Beyond borders

    The United States military has long taken climate change seriously, both for its potential impacts on troops and infrastructure around the world and for its potential to cause political instability in other countries.

    The draft report cites these international concerns, but goes far beyond the military. Climate change is already affecting American companies' overseas operations and supply chains, it says, and as these impacts worsen it will take a toll on trade and the economy.

    Global warming and natural disasters are also affecting development in less affluent countries. That, the draft says, puts additional burdens on the United States for humanitarian assistance and disaster aid.

    It's all tied together

    The draft report suggests a different approach to assessing the effects of climate change, by considering how various impacts — on food supplies, water and electricity generation, for example — interact with each other.

    "It is not possible to understand the full extent of climate-related impacts in the United States without considering these interactions," the report says.

    It gives several examples, including recent droughts in California and elsewhere that, in combination with population changes, affects demand for water and energy. The draft also cites Hurricane Sandy, five years ago, which caused cascading impacts on interconnected systems in the New York area, some of which had not been anticipated. Flooding of subway and highway tunnels, for example, made it more difficult to repair the electrical system, which suffered widespread damage.


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