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Join the International Days of Action against Sanctions and Economic War March 13-15, 2020

Sanctions Kill! Sanctions are War! End Sanctions Now!

Organize an event in your area against U.S. imposed sanctions! Help build a Global Movement with hundreds of actions around the world March 13-15

info@sanctionskill....org

US imposed sanctions impacts a third of humanity in 39 countries... Join a mobilization against this dire form of economic warfare.. Imposing starvation and disease on millions of defenseless civilians is a violation of international law and a crime against humanity.  This intentional economic destabilization has awakened a growing movement of opposition. Within a week over 1,000 organizations and individuals added their support to the International Call to Action. Volunteers translated the Call to Action into 10 languages. Endorse the campaign as an organization or individual at: sanctionskill..org Organize an action in your area! Send details to: info@SanctionsKill.org Groups are discussing plans for local actions. Activists are reaching out to their networks.  Each action encourages others to act. Many organizations have been mobilizing against Sanctions and Economic War on individual countries. NOW is an opportunity to combine efforts to raise consciousness on this crucial issue. This broad campaign will include protests and demonstrations, lobbying, petition drives and all forms of educational efforts.. As an initial step for this campaign we encourage mobilizations and educational efforts during the March 13-15 International Days of Action against US imposed Sanctions and Economic War.  Send details of action in your area to: info@SanctionsKill......org   Sanctions and economic blockades against Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Russia and China are well known........... But the devastating impacts of U.S. sanctions on occupied Palestine — or on already impoverished countries such as Mali, Zimbabwe, Central African Republic, Fiji, Nicaragua and Laos — are not even on the radar screen of human rights groups.. Most U.S. imposed sanctions are intentionally hidden; they don't generate even a line of news..  Countries around the world have had all their assets and bank accounts seized by Wall Street banks. Suddenly even imports of food, essential medicines and basic spare parts are blocked..... Calculated U..S.. government efforts undermine development of social programs in order to impose economic restructuring that benefits U.S. corporate power.

Help expose this war crime against people of the world. Add your endorsement at: https://sanctionskill..org/ List events and contact info at: info@SanctionsKill.org

Sanctions Kill! Sanctions are War! End Sanctions Now!

Please add your endorsement and help spread the word

Sign on - click here

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Meet the Candidates Sign Up Endorse Presidential candidate Gloria La Riva denounces Trump's new Iran sanctions Campaign tweet of La Riva at anti-war protest speaking on the human impact of U..S. sanctions "Sanctions are a silent killer that have already had devastating effects in Iraq and Iran. I denounce Mike Pompeo's and Steven Mnuchin's announcement of more sanctions on Iran, which are solely intended to create suffering on the Iranian people," said Gloria La Riva, 2020 presidential candidate and longtime anti-war activist. "It is clear that the Trump administration is not backing down from its belligerence. In fact, Trump is forcefully pursuing further confrontation, and is all the more reason for us to remain mobilized against a new war on Iran." Join the Sat. Jan. 25 – Global Day of Protest – No War On Iran! "Sanctions are an act of war," she continued, "I traveled three times to Iraq during the 1990's when the United States government imposed a total blockade of the country for more than 12 years. I witnessed the human toll, thousands of people dying every month from the blocking of food, medicine, and infrastructure materials after the 78-day U.S.. military bombing of 1991." La Riva produced the 1998 award-winning documentary, Genocide by Sanctions: The Case of Iraq, based on her investigative work there... "And now President Trump, via executive order, is virtually tightening a noose on Iran." In the Friday address Treasury Secretary Mnuchin announced that Trump's sanctions included penalties that would be applied to any individual or governments trading with or involved with Iranian construction, manufacturing, textiles or mining industries. "Sanctions are designed to destabilize a country's society, they are part of a larger war drive," La Riva said. "They hit the most vulnerable people first, the sick, young children, elderly and the poor because they lose access to necessary items. In Iran the prices of potatoes have already increased over 300% from previous sanctions. The costs of rice and chicken and many other goods have gone up... The point of sanctions is to create suffering—with these kinds of acts it is no wonder Iran and the Iraqi Parliament have called for the expulsion of the U.S. military from the region. "There is no justification for these sanctions. In fact United Nations resolutions state that there is no justification for policies that target a whole population.. Such an act of aggression is recognized as genocide." Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that Iranian general Qassem Soleimani was behind imminent threats to Americans but when asked for specifics, he only cited the death of a U.S.. contractor killed in Iraq. However, that was weeks prior to the killing of Soleimani. La Riva said, "by logic and definition a past occurrence does not constitute not an imminent threat. What we know instead is that with Trump's abrogation of the JCPOA, he embarked a while ago on an offensive that the people of the United States and worldwide are extremely worried about.." La Riva has been in the streets of San Francisco with thousands of other people demanding No New War on Iran.. She is running nationally for the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and in California she is seeking the Peace and Freedom Party nomination. Her vice-presidential candidate is Leonard Peltier, Native political prisoner unjustly held in federal prison now for 43 years. Point five of La Riva's Presidential 10 Point Program reads, "Shut down all U.S. military bases around the world—bring all the troops, planes & ships home.. U.S. foreign policy uses the pretext of national security to enforce the imperialist interests of the biggest banks and corporations. That is what is behind the endless wars and occupations. Use the $1 trillion military budget instead to provide for people's needs here and worldwide. Abolish nuclear weapons.. Stop U.S. aid to Israel. Self-determination for the Palestinian people, including the right of return. End the U.S. blockade of Cuba and sanctions against Venezuela, Iran and all countries..... Independence for Puerto Rico and cancel its debt!" Questions? Comments? Contact us. This email was sent to caroleseligman@sbcglobal.net. To stop receiving emails, click here. Created with NationBuilder, the essential toolkit for leaders.

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Meet the Candidates Sign Up Endorse La Riva / Peltier 2020 Campaign 10-Point Program The 10-Point Program of the La Riva/Peltier 2020 Campaign is a fighting program that represents the interests and needs of the vast majority of people of the United States and extends international solidarity to the peoples of the world. Our campaign will reach to every corner of the U.S. with the message that only socialism can solve the crises of climate change, racism, poverty and war. It will take a people's movement for real, lasting and sustainable change. We hope you will join us! Donate to our campaign today! ★ 1 | Make the essentials of life constitutional rights The U..S. has more than enough so that all the essentials of life — food, housing, water, education, health care and a job or basic income can be guaranteed rights — rather than distributed only for profit. Create a completely free and public healthcare system.. Make education free—cancel all student debt. Fully fund rebuilding of the infrastructure in transport, water and utility systems. Stop all foreclosures and evictions. End all discrimination based on ability/disability. ★ 2 | For the Earth to live, capitalism must be replaced by a socialist system Global warming, pollution, acidified and depleted oceans, fracking, critical drought, plastics choking the seas, nuclear weapons and waste — it is clear that capitalism and production for profit are destroying the planet and threatening all life. The crisis is already here, with the most vulnerable and oppressed areas of the U.S. and Global South bearing the brunt. Using truly sustainable energy and seizing the oil and coal companies to stop fossil fuel pollution, are urgent steps needed to reverse climate change. Ultimately, only the socialist reorganization of society can assure the future of the people and the planet. ★ 3 | End racism, police brutality, mass incarceration. Pay reparations to the African American community Mass incarceration and racist policing are symptomatic of the 400 years of brutal repression meted out to African-descended peoples in the U.S. Reparations must be paid! More than 2.2 million people are behind bars in the largest prison complex in the world. End mass incarceration of all oppressed and working-class people. Fully prosecute all acts of police brutality and violence. Free Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal and all political prisoners! ★ 4 | Full rights for all immigrants Abolish all anti-immigrant laws. Stop the raids and deportations and demonization of immigrants....... Shut down ICE and the concentration camps and reunite families. The government's war on immigrants must end. The border wall must be dismantled. Amnesty and citizenship for those without documents... Full rights for all! ★ 5 | Shut down all U.S.. military bases around the world—bring all the troops, planes & ships home U.S. foreign policy uses the pretext of national security to enforce the imperialist interests of the biggest banks and corporations. That is what is behind the endless wars and occupations. Use the $1 trillion military budget instead to provide for people's needs here and worldwide. Abolish nuclear weapons... Stop U.S... aid to Israel.. Self-determination for the Palestinian people, including the right of return. End the U.S. blockade of Cuba and sanctions against Venezuela, Iran and all countries. Independence for Puerto Rico and cancel its debt! ★ 6 | Honor Native treaties.. Free Leonard Peltier now Both major parties have continued to allow the destruction and theft of Native lands by mining and corporate agricultural interests in blatant disregard of indigenous sovereign rights. 33% of Native children live in poverty and many of the poorest U..S.. counties are reservations... The crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and the over-incarceration of Native peoples shows the bankruptcy of capitalism from its earliest inception in the Americas until today.. ★ 7 | Full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people Fight back against anti-LGBTQ discrimination and violence... Defend marriage equality. Full equality in all matters governed by civil law, including employment, housing, healthcare and education. No to "religious exemption" laws that allow discrimination against LGBTQ people! ★ 8 | Equality for women and free, safe, legal abortion on demand Stop the attack on women's reproductive rights and defend Roe v. Wade... Women must have the fundamental right to choose and to control their own bodies. Women still earn 22 percent less than men, and the gap is even more severe for Black and Latina women. Close the wage gap and end the gender division of labor.... ★ 9 | Defend and expand our unions Support the right of all workers to have a union. Fight back against the attacks on collective bargaining.... Require employers to recognize card check union votes. Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act. Focusing on low-wage worker organizing, rebuild a fighting labor movement. ★ 10 | Take over the stolen wealth of the giant banks and corporations – Jail Wall St.. criminals The vast wealth of the giant banks and corporations is created by workers labor and the exploitation of the world's diminishing natural resources. The billionaires looted and destroyed the economy. It is time to seize their assets and use those resources in the interests of the vast majority. Power must be taken out of the hands of the super rich, and Wall Street criminals must be jailed.

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https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/sign-the-petition-free-chelsea-manning-now?clear_id=true&referrer=group-fight-for-the-future&source=direct_link

Chelsea Manning just spent another birthday behind bars.

Sign the Petition: Free Chelsea Manning Now

Judge Anthony Trenga

In 2010, former military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning disclosed earth-shattering information about the nature of asymmetric warfare and U.S. handling of global affairs. And she paid dearly for it. Chelsea was incarcerated for years, including long stretches in solitary confinement, under conditions that the United Nations condemned as torture.

After millions of people around the world spoke out and demanded her release, Chelsea's sentence was commuted. But the US government did not stop persecuting her.

Now, Chelsea has been back in jail for nine months, and faces nine more. Not because she has committed any crime, but because of her conscientious objection to participating in a secretive grand jury investigation into the publication of her 2010 disclosures.

Between their original forensic investigation and Chelsea's detailed statement at court martial, the government gained exhaustive knowledge about her role in the disclosures. They have no need for her testimony—they obtained at least one indictment a full year before she was called to testify before the grand jury, and disclosed another two months after she was jailed for her refusal to do so.

Chelsea's refusal to participate in this process is part of a long history of resistance to grand juries, which are routinely used to harass and entrap activists, journalists, and truth tellers. In a shocking move, the judge in the case has imposed massive fines on Chelsea, charging her $1,000 per day while the US government holds her in "coercive confinement," ostensibly to convince her to agree to their demand that she give testimony to the grand jury.

We know Chelsea Manning's name because she is a principled and fearless advocate for her beliefs. She is prepared to spend another nine months in confinement, and to bear the crushing debt of these unprecedented fines.... Senior U.S... officials, including the Secretary of State and the President himself have publicly expressed their hostility toward her. It could not be more clear that the government wishes to punish Chelsea further for her 2010 disclosures. It could not be more clear that she will never comply with the grand jury.

Chelsea has already served half of the 18 month maximum that the government can hold her. She's about to spend another birthday in a jail cell. The US government has no legal justification for continuing to imprison her. This must stop. Sign the petition now to send the following letter to Judge Trenga demanding Chelsea Manning's immediate release.

To: Judge Anthony Trenga 
From: 

Dear Honorable Judge Trenga,

I am writing to ask you to recognize that continuing to keep Chelsea Manning behind bars is both futile and cruel. She is known to the world as a principled advocate, and everything she does and says demonstrates her strong will and commitment to her ideals. Her testimony in this grand jury is not needed, and her current incarceration appears to be an attempt to punish her further for past offenses. As she will never be convinced to betray her principles, even by jail time or burdensome fines, her imprisonment does not serve the interests of the grand jury, the government, the court, or the law.

Please make the right decision and order her release so that she may return to her community and heal in peace.

Questions and comments may be sent to info@freedomarchives...org

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Stop Kevin Cooper's Abuse by San Quentin Prison Guards!

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Sign Global Petition to Dismiss Charges Against Anti-Nuclear Plowshares Activists Facing 25 Years

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Support the return of Leonard Peltier's Medicine Bundle

^{November 1, 2019}

Dear Friends and supporters,

We need your help in getting Leonard Peltier's- (89637-132) Medicine Bundle returned to him. His Medicine Bundle includes: Pipe bowel, Pipe stem, Eagle feathers, sage and cedar. Leonard is at USP Coleman1, in Coleman FL. which has been locked down since mid-July. This lockdown has led to many "shakedowns" that is where the guards go in to a cell and check it for weapons. Leonard said in a legal letter,  that on"10/22/2019 the shakedown crew came to his cell and destroyed it. They came in and tore apart everything and threw out everything they could–just because they could. The most painful, and what caused me the most anger was when they took my religious items, myPipe (Chunapa) in myMedicine Bundle, use in my prayers."

Leonard's lawyer was immediately on top of the situation and asked us to hold off until he could reach Leonard's counselor and get the Bundlereturned.  I heard from the attorney last night and he said the prison has not returned Leonard his Medicine Bundle nor give them any reason for itbeing taken. 

Leonard Peltier as a citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, a federally recognized American Indian Nation is afforded all the legalprotections and rights pursuant to the American Indian Freedom of Religion Act codified at Title 42 United States Code 1996 et.seq.

I am asking if today you would send e-mails to Coleman I SR. Attorney J.C. DiNicola jcdinicola@bop.gov, public relations officer-COA/Publicinformation@bop.gov and to thenBOP-Southwest Regional office SERO/ExecAssistant@bop..gov requesting the return of Leonard Peltier 89637-132, Medicine Bundle... 

This lockdown has been extremely hard on Leonard and his Medicine Bundle is his way to help him maintain his relationship to his Creator!

Miigwech

Paulette Dauteuil ILPDC National Office

Sheridan Murphy- President of the ILPDC Board

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Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 863......9977 https://freedomarchives..org/

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Leonard Peltier's 2019 Thanksgiving Message: "Walking on Stolen Land"

by Levi Rickert

Published November 23, 2019

https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/leonard-peltiers-2019-thanksgiving-message-walking-on-stolen-land/?fbclid=IwAR1_g3mLBJUJ1mD1yYFJlUE3GO0gjY63qEfCHisulNhbKpaSIF67qRX2zyI

COLEMAN, FLORIDA – Leonard Peltier, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, who is incarcerated at the U.S. Penitentiary in Coleman, Florida, for his 1977 conviction in connection with a shootout with U.S.............. government forces, where two FBI agents and one young American Indian lost their lives........

Peltier, who is considered a political prisoner of war by many, released this statement on Thanksgiving through the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee:

The year of 2019 is coming to a close and with it, comes the day most Americans set aside as a day for Thanksgiving. As I let my mind wander beyond the steel bars and concrete walls, I try to imagine what the people who live outside the prison gates are doing, and what they are thinking. Do they ever think of the Indigenous people who were forced from their homelands? Do they understand that with every step they take, no matter the direction, that they are walking on stolen land? Can they imagine, even for one minute, what it was like to watch the suffering of the women, the children and babies and yes, the sick and elderly, as they were made to keep pushing west in freezing temperatures, with little or no food? These were my people and this was our land... There was a time when we enjoyed freedom and were able to hunt buffalo and gather the foods and sacred medicines.. We were able to fish and we enjoyed the clean clear water! My people were generous, we shared everything we had, including the knowledge of how to survive the long harsh winters or the hot humid summers. We were appreciative of the gifts from our Creator and remembered to give thanks on a daily basis... We had ceremonies and special dances that were a celebration of life.

With the coming of foreigners to our shores, life as we knew it would change drastically. Individual ownership was foreign to my people............ Fences?? Unheard of, back then. We were a communal people and we took care of each other. Our grandparents weren't isolated from us! They were the wisdom keepers and story tellers and were an important link in our families.. The babies? They were and are our future! Look at the brilliant young people who put themselves at risk, fighting to keep our water and environment clean and safe for the generations yet to come.. They are willing to confront the giant, multi-national corporations by educating the general public of the devastation being caused...... I smile with hope when I think of them.. They are fearless and ready to speak the truth to all who are willing to listen... We also remember our brothers and sisters of Bolivia, who are rioting, in support of the first Indigenous President, Evo Morales. His commitment to the people, the land, their resources and protection against corruption is commendable. We recognize and identify with that struggle so well..

So today, I thank all of the people who are willing to have an open mind, those who are willing to accept the responsibility of planning for seven generations ahead, those who remember the sacrifices made by our ancestors so we can continue to speak our own language, practice our own way of thankfulness in our own skin, and that we always acknowledge and respect the Indigenous linage that we carry..

For those of you who are thankful that you have enough food to feed your families, please give to those who aren't as fortunate. If you are warm and have a comfortable shelter to live in, please give to those who are cold and homeless, if you see someone hurting and in need of a kind word or two, be that person who steps forward and lends a hand. And especially, when you see injustice anywhere, please be brave enough to speak up to confront it.

I want to thank all who are kind enough to remember me and my family in your thoughts and prayers. Thank you for continuing to support and believe in me..... There isn't a minute in any day that passes without me hoping that this will be the day I will be granted freedom. I long for the day when I can smell clean fresh air, when I can feel a gentle breeze in my hair, witness the clouds as their movement hides the sun and when the moon shines the light on the path to the sacred Inipi. That would truly be a day I could call a day of Thanksgiving.

Thank you for listening to whomever is voicing my words. My Spirit is there with you.

Doksha,

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,

Leonard Peltier

Editor

Levi Rickert, a tribal citizen of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, is the publisher and editor of Native News Online. Previously, he served as editor of the Native News Network...... He is a resident of Grand Rapids, Michigan....

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Eddie Conway's Update on Forgotten Political Prisoners

November 19, 2019

https://therealnews......com/stories/eddie-conway-update-forgotten-political-prisoners

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EDDIE CONWAY: I'm Eddie Conway, host of Rattling the Bars. As many well-known political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal continue to suffer in prison…

MUMIA ABU JAMAL: In an area where there is corporate downsizing and there are no jobs and there is only a service economy and education is being cut, which is the only rung by which people can climb, the only growth industry in this part of Pennsylvania, in the Eastern United States, in the Southern United States, in the Western United States is "corrections," for want of a better word. The corrections industry is booming. I mean, this joint here ain't five years old.

EDDIE CONWAY: …The media brings their stories to the masses.. But there are many lesser-known activists that have dropped out of the spotlight, grown old in prison, or just been forgotten....... For Rattling the Bars, we are spotlighting a few of their stories.... There was a thriving Black Panther party in Omaha, Nebraska, headed by David Rice and Ed Poindexter..... By 1968, the FBI had began plans to eliminate the Omaha Black Panthers by making an example of Rice and Poindexter. It would take a couple of years, but the FBI would frame them for murder.

KIETRYN ZYCHAL: In the 90s, Ed and Mondo both applied to the parole board. There are two different things you do in Nebraska, the parole board would grant you parole, but because they have life sentences, they were told that they have to apply to the pardons board, which is the governor, the attorney general, and the secretary of state, and ask that their life sentences be commuted to a specific number of years before they would be eligible for parole.

And so there was a movement in the 90s to try to get them out on parole.... The parole board would recommend them for parole because they were exemplary prisoners, and then the pardons board would not give them a hearing. They wouldn't even meet to determine whether they would commute their sentence..

EDDIE CONWAY: They served 45 years before Rice died in the Nebraska State Penitentiary. After several appeals, earning a master's degree, writing several books and helping other inmates, Poindexter is still serving time at the age of 75.

KEITRYN ZYCHAL: Ed Poindexter has been in jail or prison since August of 1970. He was accused of making a suitcase bomb and giving it to a 16-year-old boy named Duane Peak, and Duane Peak was supposed to take the bomb to a vacant house and call 911, and report that a woman was dragged screaming into a vacant house, and when police officers showed up, one of those police officers was killed when the suitcase bomb exploded...........

Ed and his late co-defendant, Mondo we Langa, who was David Rice at the time of the trial, they have always insisted that they had absolutely nothing to do with this murderous plot, and they tried to get back into court for 50 years, and they have never been able to get back into court to prove their innocence. Mondo died in March of 2016 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and Ed is going to turn 75 this year, I think........... And he has spent the majority of his life in prison... It will be 50 years in 2020 that he will be in prison.

EDDIE CONWAY: There are at least 20 Black Panthers still in prison across the United States. One is one of the most revered is H. Rap Brown, known by his Islamic name, Jamil Al-Amin.

KAIRI AL-AMIN: My father has been a target for many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many years of the federal government, and I think him being housed these last 10 years in federal penitentiaries without federal charges show that the vendetta is still strong. The federal government has not forgotten who he was as H.. Rap Brown, or who he is as Imam Jamil Al-Amin..

JAMIL AL-AMIN: See, it's no in between.. You are either free or you're a slave. There's no such thing as second-class citizenship.

EDDIE CONWAY: Most people don't realize he's still in prison. He's serving a life sentence at the United States Penitentiary in Tucson...

KAIRI AL-AMIN: Our campaign is twofold.. One, how can egregious constitutional rights violations not warrant a new trial, especially when they were done by the prosecution.... And two, my father is innocent. The facts point to him being innocent, which is why we're pushing for a new trial. We know that they can't win this trial twice... The reason they won the first time was because of the gag order that was placed on my father which didn't allow us to fight in the court of public opinion as well as the court of law.. And so when you don't have anyone watching, anything can be done without any repercussion.

EDDIE CONWAY: Another well-known political prisoner that has been forgotten in the media and in the public arena is Leonard Peltier. Leonard Peltier was a member of the American Indian Movement and has been in prison for over 40 years and is now 75 years old.

SPEAKER: Leonard Peltier represents, in a very real sense, the effort, the struggle by indigenous peoples within the United States to exercise their rights as sovereign nations, recognized as such in treaties with the United States.. For the government of the United States, which has colonized all indigenous peoples to claim boundaries, keeping Leonard in prison demonstrates the costs and consequences of asserting those rights.

EDDIE CONWAY: Leonard Peltier suffers from a host of medical issues including suffering from a stroke... And if he is not released, he will die in prison...

LEONARD PELTIER: I'll be an old man when I get out, if I get out.

PAULETTE D'AUTEUIL: His wellbeing is that he rarely gets a family visit. His children live in California and North Dakota. Both places are a good 2000 miles from where he's at in Florida, so it makes it time consuming as well as expensive to come and see him. He is, health-wise, we are still working on trying to get some help for his prostate, and there has been some development of some spots on his lungs, which we are trying to get resolved....... There's an incredible mold issue in the prison, especially because in Florida it's so humid and it builds up. So we're also dealing with that...

EDDIE CONWAY: These are just a few of the almost 20 political prisoners that has remained in American prisons for 30 and 40 years, some even longer. Mutulu Shakur has been in jail for long, long decades... Assata Shakur has been hiding and forced into exile in Cuba...... Sundiata has been in prison for decades; Veronza Bower, The Move Nine........ And there's just a number of political prisoners that's done 30 or 40 years.

They need to be released and they need to have an opportunity to be back with their family, their children, their grandchildren, whoever is still alive. Any other prisoners in the United States that have the same sort of charges as those people that are being held has been released up to 15 or 20 years ago. That same justice system should work for the political prisoners also.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of Rattling the Bars. I'm Eddie Conway.....

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Letters of support for clemency needed for Reality Winner Reality Winner, a whistleblower who helped expose foreign hacking of US election systems leading up to the 2016 presidential election, has been behind bars since June 2017. Supporters are preparing to file a petition of clemency in hopes of an early release.. Reality's five year prison sentence is by far the longest ever given for leaking information to the media about a matter of public interest............ Stand with Reality shirts, stickers, and more available. Please take a moment to sign the letter SIGN THE LETTER Support Reality Podcast: "Veterans need to tell their stories" – Dan Shea Vietnam War combat veteran Daniel Shea on his time in Vietnam and the impact that Agent Orange and post traumatic stress had on him and his family since... Listen now This Courage to Resist podcast was produced in collaboration with the Vietnam Full Disclosure effort of Veterans For Peace — "Towards an honest commemoration of the American war in Vietnam." This year marks 50 years of GI resistance, in and out of uniform, for many of the courageous individuals featured.. If you believe this history is important, please ... DONATE NOW to support these podcasts

COURAGE TO RESIST ~ SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT!

484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, California 94610 ~ 510-488-3559

www.............couragetoresist.org ~ facebook.com/couragetoresist

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Mobilization4Mumia

215-724-1618

Mobilizatio4Mumia.com

  mobilization4mumia@gmail.com

PRESS RELEASE

Contact Sophia Williams 917-806-0521, Ted Kelly 610-715-6924 or Joe Piette 610-931-2615

Philadelphia, Jan. 30 - Mumia Abu-Jamal has always insisted on his innocence in the death of police officer Daniel Faulkner, blaming police, judicial and prosecutorial misconduct for his politically-tainted conviction. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is expected to announce his response this week to the legal briefs for Post Conviction Relief Act hearings and the request to remand Abu-Jamal's case back to Common Pleas court, filed by his attorneys in early September 2019.

Abu-Jamal's supporters will rally outside DA Krasner's office at 4:30 on Friday, January 31, whether or not he challenges Mumia's appeals. We call for Mumia's release.

Recent exonerations of 10 Philadelphia residents unfairly convicted for crimes they did not commit reveal a simple truth - the Philadelphia police, courts and prosecutors convicted innocent Black men based on gross violations of their constitutional rights. The same patterns of constitutional violations plague the case of Abu-Jamal.

Since Jan. 2018, Sherman McCoy, James Frazier, Dwayne Thorpe, Terrance Lewis, Jamaal Simmons, Dontia Patterson, John Miller, Willie Veasey, Johnny Berry and Chester Holmann III have all been exonerated by DA Larry Krasner's Conviction Integrity Unit. 

Philadelphia is not alone. The National Registry of Exonerations counted 165 exonerations last year. The registry has tallied 2,500 wrongful convictions since 1989, costing defendants more than 22,000 years of incarceration.

Seven of the ten men released in Philadelphia were convicted by longtime district attorney Lynne Abraham, a "tough-on-crime" prosecutor who regularly sought maximum punishments and death spentences. Abraham as Common Pleas Court Judge arraigned Abu-Jamal in 1981and years later as District Attorney fought his post conviction relief hearings..

Ineffective counsel, false witness testimony, witness coercion and intimidation, phony ballistics evidence, prosecution failure to turn over evidence to the defense as required by law, racist jury selections -- these and other legal errors led to the exoneration of these innocent defendants after decades in prison. These are the same police, judicial and prosecutorial misconduct practices Abu-Jamal's attorneys and supporters have been citing since 1982.

In the late 1970s and early 80s, Abu-Jamal was a daily radio reporter for WHYY and NPR who earned acclaim for his award-winning reporting. As a journalist who reported fairly on the MOVE organization's resistance against state repression, he drew the ire of the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police and the notoriously racist Police Commissioner and later Mayor Frank Rizzo.

On Dec. 9, 1981, while driving a cab to supplement his income, Abu-Jamal happened upon his brother in an altercation with Faulkner. Faulkner was killed. Abu-Jamal, who was shot and severely beaten by police, was charged in Faulkner's death, even though witnesses reported seeing another man, most probably the passenger in Abu-Jamal's brother's car, running from the scene.

Imprisoned for nearly four decades, Abu-Jamal has maintained his innocence. He successfully won his release from Pennsylvania's death row in 2011. In December 2018 he won the right to appeal his 1982 conviction because of biased judicial oversight by PA Supreme Court Justice Ronald Castille

In early January 2019, DA Krasner reported finding six boxes of previously undisclosed evidence held by prosecutors in the case and allowed Abu-Jamal's attorneys to review the files.

In September 2019 Abu-Jamal's lawyers filed new appellate briefs, including a request that the case be returned for a hearing before the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court based on finding of concrete evidence of prosecutorial misconduct by the DA's office in his 1982 trial.

A Sept.. 9, 2019 Abu-Jamal's attorneys Judith Ritter and Sam Spital filed a brief in PA Superior Court to support his claim that his 1982 trial was fundamentally unfair and violated the Constitution. They argue the prosecution failed to disclose evidence as required and discriminated against African Americans when selecting the jury. And, his 1982 lawyer did not adequately challenge the State's witnesses.                                                                                              

The attorneys also filed a motion revealing new evidence of constitutional violations such as promises by the prosecutor to pay or give leniency to two witnesses. There is also new evidence of racial discrimination in jury selection.

Attorney Ritter contends that the new evidence shows Abu-Jamal's trial was "fundamentally unfair and tainted by serious constitutional violations."

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZgI0jvcWY5soAh_DXKdNnJJZSY0HEftuRwthQMurgd8/edit?usp=sharing

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Mumia Abu-Jamal: New Chance for Freedom

Police and State Frame-Up Must Be Fully Exposed!

Mumia Abu-Jamal is innocent. Courts have ignored and suppressed evidence of his innocence for decades. But now, one court has thrown out all the decisions of the PA Supreme Court that denied Mumia's appeals against his unjust conviction during the years of 1998 to 2012! 

This ruling, by Judge Leon Tucker, was made because one judge on the PA Supreme Court during those years, Ronald Castille, was lacking the "appearance of impartiality." In plain English, he was clearly biased against Mumia. Before sitting on the PA Supreme Court, Castille had been District Attorney (or assistant DA) during the time of Mumia's frame-up and conviction, and had used his office to express a special interest in pursuing the death penalty for "cop-killers." Mumia was in the cross-hairs. Soon he was wrongly convicted and sent to death row for killing a police officer...

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Mumia Abu-Jamal is an award-winning and intrepid journalist, a former Black Panther, MOVE supporter, and a critic of police brutality and murder.  Mumia was framed by police, prosecutors, and leading elements of both Democratic and Republican parties, for the shooting of a police officer. The US Justice Department targeted him as well.. A racist judge helped convict him, and corrupt courts have kept him locked up despite much evidence that should have freed him. He continues his commentary and journalism from behind bars. As of 2019, he has been imprisoned for 37 years for a crime he did not commit. 

Time is up! FREE MUMIA NOW!

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DA's Hidden Files Show Frame-Up of Mumia

In the midst of Mumia's fight for his right to challenge the state Supreme Court's negative rulings, a new twist was revealed: six boxes of files on Mumia's case--with many more still hidden--were surreptitiously concealed for decades in a back room at the District Attorney's office in Philadelphia. The very fact that these files on Mumia's case were hidden away for decades is damning in the extreme, and their revelations confirm what we have known for decades: Mumia was framed for a crime he did not commit!

So far, the newly revealed evidence confirms that, at the time of Mumia's 1982 trial, chief prosecutor Joe McGill illegally removed black jurors from the jury, violating the Batson decision. Also revealed: The prosecution bribed witnesses into testifying that they saw Mumia shoot the slain police officer when they hadn't seen any such thing... Taxi driver Robert Chobert, who was on probation for fire-bombing a school yard at the time, had sent a letter demanding his money for lying on the stand... Very important, but the newly revealed evidence is just the tip of the iceberg! 

All Evidence of Mumia's Innocence Must Be Brought Forward Now!

Mumia Abu-Jamal's trial for the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner was rigged against him from beginning to end........ All of the evidence of Mumia's innocence--which was earlier suppressed or rejected--must now be heard:

• Mumia was framed - The judge at Mumia's trial, Albert Sabo, was overheard to say, "I'm gonna help 'em fry the n____r." And he proceeded to do just that.. Mumia was thrown out of his own trial for defending himself! Prosecution "witnesses" were coerced or bribed at trial to lie against Mumia.. In addition to Chobert, this included key witness Cynthia White, a prostitute who testified that she saw Mumia shoot Faulkner... White's statements had to be rewritten under intense pressure from the cops, because she was around the corner and out of sight of the shooting at the time! Police bribed her with promises of being allowed to work her corner, and not sent to state prison for her many prostitution charges.

• Mumia only arrived on the scene after Officer Faulkner was shot - William Singletary, a tow-truck business owner who had no reason to lie against the police, said he had been on the scene the whole time, that Mumia was not the shooter, and that Mumia had arrived only after the shooting of Faulkner. Singletary's statements were torn up, his business was wrecked, and he was threatened by police to be out of town for the trial (which, unfortunately, he was)...

• There is no evidence that Mumia fired a gun - Mumia was shot on the scene by an arriving police officer and arrested. But the cops did not test his hands for gun-powder residue--a standard procedure in shootings! They also did not test Faulkner's hands. The prosecution nevertheless claimed Mumia was the shooter, and that he was shot by Faulkner as the officer fell to the ground. Ballistics evidence was corrupted to falsely show that Mumia's gun was the murder weapon, when his gun was reportedly still in his taxi cab, which was in police custody days after the shooting!

• The real shooter fled the scene and was never charged - Veronica Jones was a witness who said that after hearing the shots from a block away, she had seen two people fleeing the scene of the shooting.... This could not have included Mumia, who had been shot and almost killed at the scene. Jones was threatened by the police with arrest and loss of custody of her children. She then lied on the stand at trial to say she had seen no one running away. 

• Abu-Jamal never made a confession - Mumia has always maintained his innocence. But police twice concocted confessions that Mumia never made. Inspector Alfonso Giordano, the senior officer at the crime scene, made up a confession for Mumia. But Giordano was not allowed to testify at trial, because he was top on the FBI's list of corrupt cops in the Philadelphia police force... At the DA's request, another cop handily provided a second "confession," allegedly heard by a security guard in the hospital.... But at neither time was Mumia--almost fatally shot--able to speak.. And an earlier police report by cops in the hospital said that, referring to Mumia: "the negro male made no comment"!

• The crime scene was tampered with by police - Police officers at the scene rearranged some evidence, and handled what was alleged to be Mumia's gun with their bare hands... A journalist's photos revealed this misconduct. The cops then left the scene unattended for hours.. All of this indicates a frame-up in progress...

• The real shooter confessed, and revealed the reason for the crime - Arnold Beverly came forward in the 1990s. He said in a sworn statement, under penalty of perjury, that he, not Mumia, had been the actual shooter. He said that he, along with "another guy," had been hired to do the hit, because Faulkner was "a problem for the mob and corrupt policemen because he interfered with the graft and payoffs made to allow illegal activity including prostitution, gambling, drugs without prosecution in the center city area"! (affidavit of Arnold Beverly).

• The corruption of Philadelphia police is documented and well known - This includes that of Giordano, who was the first cop to manufacture a "confession" by Mumia. Meanwhile, Faulkner's cooperation with the federal anti-corruption investigations of Philadelphia police is strongly suggested by his lengthy and heavily redacted FBI file...

• Do cops kill other cops? There are other cases in Philadelphia that look that way. Frank Serpico, an NYC cop who investigated and reported on police corruption, was abandoned by fellow cops after being shot in a drug bust. Mumia was clearly made a scape-goat for the crimes of corrupt Philadelphia cops who were protecting their ill-gotten gains.

• Politicians and US DOJ helped the frame-up - Ed Rendell, former DA, PA governor, and head of the Democratic National Committee--and now a senior advisor to crime-bill author Joe Biden--is complicit in the frame-up of Mumia. The US Justice Department targeted Mumia for his anti-racist activities when he was a teenager, and later secretly warned then-prosecutor Rendell not to use Giordano as a witness against Mumia because he was an FBI target for corruption.

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All this should lead to an immediate freeing of Mumia! But we are still a ways away from that, and we have no confidence in the capitalist courts to finish the job. We must act! This victory in local court allowing new appeals must now lead to a full-court press on all the rejected and suppressed evidence of Mumia's innocence!

Mass Movement Needed To Free Mumia! 

Mumia's persecution by local, state and federal authorities of both political parties has been on-going, and has generated a world-wide movement in his defense.. This movement has seen that Mumia, as a radio journalist who exposed the brutal attacks on the black community by the police in Philadelphia, has spoken out as a defender of working people of all colors and all nationalities in his ongoing commentaries (now on KPFA/Pacifica radio), despite being on death row, and now while serving life without the possibility of parole (LWOP)..

In 1999, Oakland Teachers for Mumia held unauthorized teach-ins in Oakland schools on Mumia and the death penalty, despite the rabid hysteria in the bourgeois media. Teachers in Rio de Janeiro held similar actions. Letters of support came in from maritime workers and trade unions around the world.. Later in 1999, longshore workers shut down all the ports on the West Coast to free Mumia, and led a mass march of 25,000 Mumia supporters in San Francisco........... 

A year later, a federal court lifted Mumia's death sentence, based on improper instructions to the jury by trial judge Albert Sabo.. The federal court ordered the local court to hold a new sentencing hearing... Fearing their frame-up of Mumia could be revealed in any new hearing, even if only on sentencing, state officials passed. Much to the chagrin of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP)--which still seeks Mumia's death--this left Mumia with LWOP, death by life in prison.. 

Mumia supporters waged a struggle to get him the cure for the deadly Hepatitis-C virus, which he had likely contracted through a blood transfusion in hospital after he was shot by a cop at the 1981 crime scene. The Labor Action Committee conducted demonstrations against Gilead Sciences, the Foster City CA corporation that owns the cure, and charged $1,000 per pill! The Metalworkers Union of South Africa wrote a letter excoriating Governor Wolf for allowing untreated sick freedom fighters to die in prison as the apartheid government had done. Finally, Mumia did get the cure.. Now, more than ever, struggle is needed to free Mumia!

Now is the Time: Mobilize Again for Mumia's Freedom!

Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

www.laboractionmumia.....org

Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal | Mumia Abu-Jamal is an I.....

November 2019

"There is no time for despair, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language.. This is how civilizations heal." -Toni Morrison Follow on Twitter | Friend on Facebook  unsubscribe from this list | update subscription preferences

Board Game

https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/race-for-solidarity

Solidarity against racism has existed from the 1600's and continues until today

An exciting board game of chance, empathy and wisdom, that entertains and educates as it builds solidarity through learning about the destructive history of American racism and those who always fought back. Appreciate the anti-racist solidarity of working people, who built and are still building, the great progressive movements of history.. There are over 200 questions, with answers and references.

Spread the word!!

By Dr. Nayvin Gordon

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Action Alert for Shaka Shakur

Urgent Action Alert: Stop Prison Officials from Blocking Shaka Shakur's Access to Educational and Vocational Services

Shaka Shakur is a politically active, incarcerated, New Afrikan who was transferred on December 18th, 2018, from the Indiana Department of Corrections (IDOC) to the Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) as part of campaign to neutralize his activism by prison officials. This transfer was done in violation of his due process rights as a prisoner. He is currently incarcerated at the Sussex 1 State Prison in Waverly, Virginia..... His VA DOC # is 135647.............  Since being held there, his right to access educational and vocational programs has been violated. Below is a summary of these violations in Shaka's own words:

"1) i was moved out of the state of Indiana against my will in violation of Indiana Code and due process.. i was never afforded any form of hearing where i was informed as to why i was being shipped out of state nor allowed to present evidence challenging the decision to move me...

2) Upon my arrival to the prison system in Virginia, i was never given any form of orientation... I've never been informed as to what my rights are, nor informed as to how i can go about challenging any decision made by the state of Va. I've only been informed that the state of Va has custody of my body and that all decisions pertaining to my classification, security level and placement was being determined and controlled by the state of Indiana and its Department of Corrections (IDOC).

3) There is supposed to be an IDOC liaison that oversees my placement in Va and communicates with an official in the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) named Ms. Collins. She has refused to respond to any and all efforts to contact her by myself or any outside sources..... Any questions i've had pertaining to video visits, security level, placement, and classification have gone unanswered except for being told that it is up to Indiana.

4) Per Indiana Code i am supposed to be afforded the same rights and privileges as if i was still in Indiana. That includes jobs, programming, religious services etc......s To deny me such is a const violation and discrimination.... In fact, it denies me equal protection under the law.. I am not being allowed to find a job outside of the housing unit.. i'm being told that i'm not going to be allowed to drop my security level even though my points will drop as low as 10 points in Va and less than 15 in indiana. Both of which would qualify me for a level 3 security level placement.

5) The counselor Ponce falsified my classification review/progress report by lying and saying that i had assaulted a staff member within the last 12 months. This was in order to justify my continued placement at a level 4/5 prison. When this was brought to her attention, she pretended that she had corrected it and instead further falsified the report and then blamed it on Indiana.. i have copies of these documents and my lawyer have the originals [see images posted in event below]."

Furthermore:

6) The doctors at Sussex 1 have not been provided with Shaka's medical records past 2014... Shaka experiences nerve and other issues due to a degenerative disc on which he has been operated. Without these records he cannot be provided with the necessary care for his chronic condition.

7)There is no appeals process available to Shaka or any other out-of-state inmate. Indiana code establishes the sender state [Indiana] as having unchallenged authority in cases of interstate transfer. Having access only to internal grievance procedures in Virginia, Shaka is unable to appeal decisions made in Indiana

You can read about Shaka's long history of activism and rebellious activity in Indiana prisons here and here..

What You Can Do to Support Shaka:

On Monday, 11/11, call  the Indiana DOC Executive Director of Classification Jack Hendrix at (317) 232-2247. Leave a message with whoever you are able to speak to, or a voicemail. You can also email Jack Hendrix at jdhendrix@idoc.in....gov..

Please tell them to drop Shaka's  security level dropped to a level 3 for which he qualifies so that he can access vocational and educational programs, or to authorize Shaka's lateral transfer to a facility where he can be allowed to participate in vocational and educational programs.............

As Shaka stated:

"How am i supposed to work my way back to Indiana if i'm not being allowed to participate in anything positive or constructive?"

To make a donation to Shaka Shakur's legal defense fund and for more info on his case, go to https://www.....gofundme..com/f/shaka-shakur-legal-defense-fund

For more information, contact Seth Donnelly at sethdonnelly2000@yahoo..com.......

https://facebook.com/events/492764134658398/?ti=icl

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50 years in prison: 

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!

FREE Chip Fitzgerald 

Grandfather, Father, Elder, Friend

former Black Panther 

              

Romaine "Chip" Fitzgerald has been in prison since he was locked up 50 years ago...... A former member of the Black Panther Party, Chip is now 70 years old, and suffering the consequences of a serious stroke. He depends on a wheelchair for his mobility. He has appeared before the parole board 17 times, but they refuse to release him..

NOW is the time for Chip to come home!

In September 1969, Chip and two other Panthers were stopped by a highway patrolman..... During the traffic stop, a shooting broke out, leaving Chip and a police officer both wounded. Chip was arrested a month later and charged with attempted murder of the police and an unrelated murder of a security guard. Though the evidence against him was weak and Chip denied any involvement, he was convicted and sentenced to death.

In 1972, the California Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty..... Chip and others on Death Row had their sentences commuted to Life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. All of them became eligible for parole after serving 7 more years...... But Chip was rejected for parole, as he has been ever since. 

Parole for Lifers basically stopped under Governors Deukmajian, Wilson, and Davis (1983-2003), resulting in increasing numbers of people in prison and 23 new prisons. People in prison filed lawsuits in federal courts: people were dying as a result of the overcrowding.. To rapidly reduce the number of people in prison, the court mandated new parole hearings:

·        for anyone 60 years or older who had served 25 years or more;

·        for anyone convicted before they were 23 years old;

·        for anyone with disabilities 

Chip qualified for a new parole hearing by meeting all three criteria.

But the California Board of Parole Hearings has used other methods to keep Chip locked up. Although the courts ordered that prison rule infractions should not be used in parole considerations, Chip has been denied parole because he had a cellphone.......

Throughout his 50 years in prison, Chip has been denied his right to due process – a new parole hearing as ordered by Federal courts. He is now 70, and addressing the challenges of a stroke victim. His recent rules violation of cellphone possession were non-violent and posed no threat to anyone. He has never been found likely to commit any crimes if released to the community – a community of his children, grandchildren, friends and colleagues who are ready to support him and welcome him home.

The California Board of Parole Hearings is holding Chip hostage.....

We call on Governor Newsom to release Chip immediately.

What YOU can do to support this campaign to FREE CHIP:

1)   Sign and circulate the petition to FREE Chip. Download it at https://www.change.org/p/california-free-chip-fitzgerald

Print out the petition and get signatures at your workplace, community meeting, or next social gathering.

2)   Write an email to Governor Newsom's office (sample message at:https://docs..google.com/document/d/1iwbP_eQEg2J1T2h-tLKE-Dn2ZfpuLx9MuNv2z605DMc/edit?usp=sharing

3)   Write to Chip: 

 Romaine "Chip" Fitzgerald #B27527,

CSP-LAC

P.O. Box 4490

B-4-150

Lancaster, CA 93539

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Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 863...........9977 https://freedomarchives.org/

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Support Chuck Africa for Parole

Michael Africa Jr. started this petition to Pennsylvania Governor

On Abortion: From Facebook

Best explanation I've heard so far....., Copied from a friend who copied from a friend who copied............., "Last night, I was in a debate about these new abortion laws being passed in red states. My son stepped in with this comment which was a show stopper. One of the best explanations I have read:, , 'Reasonable people can disagree about when a zygote becomes a "human life" - that's a philosophical question.. However, regardless of whether or not one believes a fetus is ethically equivalent to an adult, it doesn't obligate a mother to sacrifice her body autonomy for another, innocent or not..., , Body autonomy is a critical component of the right to privacy protected by the Constitution, as decided in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), McFall v.. Shimp (1978), and of course Roe v. Wade (1973).. Consider a scenario where you are a perfect bone marrow match for a child with severe aplastic anemia; no other person on earth is a close enough match to save the child's life, and the child will certainly die without a bone marrow transplant from you. If you decided that you did not want to donate your marrow to save the child, for whatever reason, the state cannot demand the use of any part of your body for something to which you do not consent... It doesn't matter if the procedure required to complete the donation is trivial, or if the rationale for refusing is flimsy and arbitrary, or if the procedure is the only hope the child has to survive, or if the child is a genius or a saint or anything else - the decision to donate must be voluntary to be constitutional... This right is even extended to a person's body after they die; if they did not voluntarily commit to donate their organs while alive, their organs cannot be harvested after death, regardless of how useless those organs are to the deceased or how many lives they would save..., , That's the law.., , Use of a woman's uterus to save a life is no different from use of her bone marrow to save a life - it must be offered voluntarily............ By all means, profess your belief that providing one's uterus to save the child is morally just, and refusing is morally wrong....... That is a defensible philosophical position, regardless of who agrees and who disagrees...... But legally, it must be the woman's choice to carry out the pregnancy..., , She may choose to carry the baby to term... She may choose not to. Either decision could be made for all the right reasons, all the wrong reasons, or anything in between... But it must be her choice, and protecting the right of body autonomy means the law is on her side.. Supporting that precedent is what being pro-choice means....", , Feel free to copy/paste and re-post., y

Sent from my iPhone

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Celebrating the release of Janet and Janine Africa

Take action now to support Jalil A.... Muntaqim's release

Jalil A.... Muntaqim was a member of the Black Panther Party and has been a political prisoner for 48 years since he was arrested at the age of 19 in 1971. He has been denied parole 11 times since he was first eligible in 2002, and is now scheduled for his 12th parole hearing. Additionally, Jalil has filed to have his sentence commuted to time served by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Visit Jalil's support page, check out his writing and poetry, and Join Critical Resistance in supporting a vibrant intergenerational movement of freedom fighters in demanding his release.

48 years is enough. Write, email, call, and tweet at Governor Cuomo in support of Jalil's commutation and sign this petition demanding his release.

http://freedomarchives.org/Support.Jalil/Campaign.html

Write: The Honorable Andrew M. Cuomo Governor of the State of New York Executive Chamber State Capital Building Albany, New York 12224 Michelle Alexander – Author, The New Jim Crow; Ed Asner - Actor and Activist; Charles Barron - New York Assemblyman, 60th District; Inez Barron - Counci member, 42nd District, New York City Council; Rosa Clemente - Scholar Activist and 2008 Green Party Vice-Presidential candidate; Patrisse Cullors – Co-Founder Black Lives Matter, Author, Activist; Elena Cohen - President, National Lawyers Guild; "Davey D" Cook - KPFA Hard Knock Radio; Angela Davis - Professor Emerita, University of California, Santa Cruz; Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz - Native American historian, writer and feminist; Mike Farrell - Actor and activist; Danny Glover – Actor and activist; Linda Gordon - New York University; Marc Lamont Hill - Temple University; Jamal Joseph - Columbia University; Robin D.G. Kelley - University of California, Los Angeles; Tom Morello - Rage Against the Machine; Imani Perry - Princeton University; Barbara Ransby - University of Illinois, Chicago; Boots Riley - Musician, Filmmaker; Walter Riley - Civil rights attorney; Dylan Rodriguez - University of California, Riverside, President American Studies Association; Maggie Siff, Actor; Heather Ann Thompson - University of Michigan; Cornel West - Harvard University; Institutional affiliations listed for identification purposes only. Call: 1-518-474-8390 Email Gov.......... Cuomo with this form Tweet at @NYGovCuomo

Any advocacy or communications to Gov. Cuomo must refer to Jalil as: ANTHONY JALIL BOTTOM, 77A4283, Sullivan Correctional Facility, P.O. Box 116, Fallsburg, New York 12733-0116

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Funds for Kevin Cooper

https://www.gofundme.....com/funds-for-kevin-cooper?member=1994108

For 34 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.. 

Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here ... 

In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered  limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov.... Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.. 

The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings ........ Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, paper, toiletries, supplementary food, and/or phone calls...

Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!

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Don't extradite Assange!

To the government of the UK

Julian Assange, through Wikileaks, has done the world a great service in documenting American war crimes, its spying on allies and other dirty secrets of the world's most powerful regimes, organisations and corporations. This has not endeared him to the American deep state......... Both Obama, Clinton and Trump have declared that arresting Julian Assange should be a priority... We have recently received confirmation [1] that he has been charged in secret so as to have him extradited to the USA as soon as he can be arrested. 

Assange's persecution, the persecution of a publisher for publishing information [2] that was truthful and clearly in the interest of the public - and which has been republished in major newspapers around the world - is a danger to freedom of the press everywhere, especially as the USA is asserting a right to arrest and try a non-American who neither is nor was then on American soil. The sentence is already clear: if not the death penalty then life in a supermax prison and ill treatment like Chelsea Manning... The very extradition of Julian Assange to the United States would at the same time mean the final death of freedom of the press in the West.... 

Sign now!

The courageous nation of Ecuador has offered Assange political asylum within its London embassy for several years until now. However, under pressure by the USA, the new government has made it clear that they want to drive Assange out of the embassy and into the arms of the waiting police as soon as possible... They have already curtailed his internet and his visitors and turned the heating off, leaving him freezing in a desolate state for the past few months and leading to the rapid decline of his health, breaching UK obligations under the European Convention of Human Rights. Therefore, our demand both to the government of Ecuador and the government of the UK is: don't extradite Assange to the US! Guarantee his human rights, make his stay at the embassy as bearable as possible and enable him to leave the embassy towards a secure country as soon as there are guarantees not to arrest and extradite him... Furthermore, we, as EU voters, encourage European nations to take proactive steps to protect a journalist in danger.. The world is still watching.

Sign now!

[1] https://www..nytimes.com/2018/11/16/us/politics/julian-assange-indictment-wikileaks....html

[2] https://theintercept.com/2018/11/16/as-the-obama-doj-concluded-prosecution-of-julian-assange-for-publishing-documents-poses-grave-threats-to-press-freedom/

Sign this petition:

https://internal.diem25...org/en/petitions/1

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Words of Wisdom

Louis Robinson Jr., 77

Recording secretary for Local 1714 of the United Auto Workers from 1999 to 2018, with the minutes from a meeting of his union's retirees' chapter.

"One mistake the international unions in the United States made was when Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. When he did that, the unions could have brought this country to a standstill...... All they had to do was shut down the truck drivers for a month, because then people would not have been able to get the goods they needed. So that was one of the mistakes they made. They didn't come together as organized labor and say: "No.... We aren't going for this..... Shut the country down." That's what made them weak. They let Reagan get away with what he did. A little while after that, I read an article that said labor is losing its clout, and I noticed over the years that it did. It happened.. It doesn't feel good..."

[On the occasion of the shut-down of the Lordstown, Ohio GM plant March 6, 2019...]

https://www.....nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/01/magazine/lordstown-general-motors-plant..html

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Get Malik Out of Ad-Seg Keith "Malik" Washington is an incarcerated activist who has spoken out on conditions of confinement in Texas prison and beyond:  from issues of toxic water and extreme heat, to physical and sexual abuse of imprisoned people, to religious discrimination and more...  Malik has also been a tireless leader in the movement to #EndPrisonSlavery which gained visibility during nationwide prison strikes in 2016 and 2018..  View his work at comrademalik.com or write him at: Keith H. Washington TDC# 1487958 McConnell Unit 3001 S......... Emily Drive Beeville, TX 78102 Friends, it's time to get Malik out of solitary confinement. Malik has experienced intense, targeted harassment ever since he dared to start speaking against brutal conditions faced by incarcerated people in Texas and nationwide--but over the past few months, prison officials have stepped up their retaliation even more. In Administrative Segregation (solitary confinement) at McConnell Unit, Malik has experienced frequent humiliating strip searches, medical neglect, mail tampering and censorship, confinement 23 hours a day to a cell that often reached 100+ degrees in the summer, and other daily abuses too numerous to name..  It could not be more clear that they are trying to make an example of him because he is a committed freedom fighter.  So we have to step up. Who to contact: TDCJ Executive Director Bryan Collier Phone: (936)295-6371 Email:  exec.director@tdcj.texas...gov Senior Warden Philip Sinfuentes (McConnell Unit) Phone: (361) 362-2300

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MAJOR TILLERY FILES NEW LEGAL PETITION SEX FOR LIES AND MANUFACTURED TESTIMONY

April 25, 2018-- The arrest of two young men in Starbucks for the crime of "sitting while black," and the four years prison sentence to rapper Meek Mill for a minor parole violation are racist outrages in Philadelphia, PA that made national news in the past weeks. Yesterday Meek Mills was released on bail after a high profile defense campaign and a Pa Supreme Court decision citing evidence his conviction was based solely on a cop's false testimony... These events underscore the racism, frame-up, corruption and brutality at the core of the criminal injustice system. Pennsylvania "lifer" Major Tillery's fight for freedom puts a spotlight on the conviction of innocent men with no evidence except the lying testimony of jailhouse snitches who have been coerced and given favors by cops and prosecutors....... Sex for Lies and Manufactured Testimony For thirty-five years Major Tillery has fought against his 1983 arrest, then conviction and sentence of life imprisonment without parole for an unsolved 1976 pool hall murder and assault.......... Major Tillery's defense has always been his innocence.... The police and prosecution knew Tillery did not commit these crimes.... Jailhouse informant Emanuel Claitt gave lying testimony that Tillery was one of the shooters.. In May and June 2016, Emanuel Claitt gave sworn statements that his testimony was a total lie, and that the homicide cops and the prosecutors told him what to say and coached him before trial. Not only was he coerced to lie that Major Tillery was a shooter, but to lie and claim there were no plea deals made in exchange for his testimony. He provided the information about the specific homicide detectives and prosecutors involved in manufacturing his testimony and details about being allowed "sex for lies".. In August 2016, Claitt reaffirmed his sworn statements in a videotape, posted on YouTube and on JusticeforMajorTillery...org. Major Tillery has Fought his Conviction and Advocated for Other Prisoners for over 30 Years Major Tillery Needs Your Help: HOW YOU CAN HELP Financial Support—Tillery's investigation is ongoing..... He badly needs funds to fight for his freedom... Go to JPay...com; code: Major Tillery AM9786 PADOC Tell Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner: The Conviction Review Unit should investigate Major Tillery's case. He is innocent.. The only evidence at trial was from lying jail house informants who now admit it was false. Call: 215-686-8000 or Email: justice@phila.gov Write to: Security Processing Center Major Tillery AM 9786 268 Bricker Road Bellefonte, PA 16823 For More Information, Go To: JusticeForMajorTillery.org Call/Write: Kamilah Iddeen (717) 379-9009, Kamilah29@yahoo.com Rachel Wolkenstein (917) 689-4009, RachelWolkenstein@gmail..com Obtain Updates: www.justice4majortillery.info

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1) Trump Administration Moves to Ease Rules Against Killing Birds

By Lisa Friedman, January 30, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/climate/trump-bird-deaths.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage

Since 1918, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act has helped restore the populations of birds like the great egret, and covers more than 1,000 species.Credit...Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration will move on Thursday to weaken a century-old law protecting migratory birds by dropping the threat of punishment to oil and gas companies, construction crews and other organizations that kill birds "incidentally" in the course of their operations.

The proposed regulation, if finalized, would cement a legal opinion that the Department of Interior issued in 2017.. The agency's top lawyer argued that previous administrations had interpreted the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 too broadly, and that only actions explicitly intended to kill birds should be forbidden under the federal law. The death of a bird from an oil slick, the blade of a wind turbine or the spraying of illegal pesticides would no longer trigger penalties.

That interpretation has already had significant consequences for thousands of migratory birds. According to internal agency documents recently obtained by The New York Times, the Trump administration has discouraged local governments and businesses from taking simple precautionary measures to protect birds, and federal wildlife officials have all but stopped investigating most bird deaths.

With the outcome of November's presidential election uncertain, the Trump administration is moving quickly to finalize dozens of regulatory rollbacks and other actions to weaken environmental protections viewed as burdensome by industry.

In recent weeks, the administration has scrapped a clean water regulation aimed at protecting streams and wetlands, and blocked an effort to require Americans to use energy-efficient light bulbs. Within the next month the administration plans to weaken vehicle emissions standards and a rule restricting mercury, a toxic chemical emitted from coal-burning power plants. Completing the rule curtailing the Migratory Bird Treaty Act before the November presidential election will be difficult, but the agency has indicated it will push aggressively to do so.

"It's a race against the clock," Bob Dreher, senior vice president of conservation programs at Defenders of Wildlife, an environmental organization, said of the proposed regulation.

Any legal guideline, like the one now governing bird-death enforcement, can be easily overturned; the 2017 opinion on "incidental" avian deaths reversed guidelines written by the Obama administration to enshrine the government's ability to fine and prosecute those who accidentally kill migratory birds. Mr. Dreher noted that codifying the opinion into regulation, as the Trump administration is trying to do, would make it harder for a future Democratic president to issue a quick reversal.

"They're trying to entrench this as much as they can, and get stuff locked into place," he said, but added, "We're going to fight it."

Six conservation groups and eight states have already sued to block the underlying legal opinion.. Last week, a group of former Interior Department officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations filed an amicus brief in support of the lawsuit.

Oil industry officials argued that they have worked voluntarily to protect birds and will continue to do so. They also accused the Obama administration of abusing the law by singling out oil and gas companies for prosecution. The new rule, several business leaders said, brings regulatory certainty to companies worried that bird deaths would make them criminally liable for millions of dollars.

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act makes it illegal "by any means or in any manner" to hunt, take, capture or kill birds, nests or eggs from listed species without a permit. Beginning in the 1970s, federal officials used the act to prosecute and fine companies up to $15,000 per bird for accidental deaths on power lines, in oil pits, in wind turbines and by other industrial hazards.

In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon disaster killed 11 people and spewed more than 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.. Hundreds of thousands of birds were killed, and BP agreed to pay $100 million for criminal violations under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Under the current legal guidance and the proposed regulatory changes, that incident would no longer trigger criminal liability because the birds were killed unintentionally. Illegal acts are also protected under the plan. For example, a farmer who sprayed a banned pesticide that killed birds would not be held liable as long as the birds were not the "intended target."

My NYT Comment:

"There is only one reason to "roll back" protections for birds and other wildlife caused by careless corporate construction, production or distribution of products from skyscrapers to factories, farms and oil pipelines and that's to maximize profits—to hell with everything and everyone else. The profits aren't shared. They are hoarded by the wealthy elite ever in search of ways to grab more wealth. This is capitalism's end-game. "More money for me. No food for you!" We, the overwhelming majority of human and all other life on the planet must fight for scraps of bread to eat or shelters to keep warm in. We do the work, but we get the bare minimum while the wealthy have morel then they can spend in a hundred lifetimes. Capitalism—production for private profit—is ruining the planet. Socialism—production for want, need and environmental health—is the only system that will save all of us."  —Bonnie Weinstein

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2) The Supreme Court's Collapsing Center on Religion

A case over vouchers threatens to breach the wall separating church and state.

By Linda Greenhouse, January 30, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/opinion/supreme-court-religion.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

People lined up outside the Supreme Court to hear oral arguments in a case about religious freedom and school choice.Credit...Lawrence Hurley/Reuters

Every Supreme Court case tells a story. Both sides vie to persuade the justices — and, in big cases, the public as well — to see the issues through one particular narrative lens. Heading into last week's argument on whether Montana was obliged by the federal Constitution to keep subsidizing religious-school tuition under a scholarship program that violated the state Constitution, it was easy to see which story line was winning. "School Choice Battle May Boost Religious Freedom" was the headline on USA Today's preview of the argument.

That is indeed the narrative put forward by lawyers for the school-choice movement, which seeks to use this case to break through the barriers that in many states have prevented parents from using school tuition vouchers for parochial school tuition. The libertarian Institute for Justice, long a leading proponent of vouchers, is framing its appeal, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, as a case about religious freedom. (It's worth noting that this is not a religion case brought by the religious right; conservative religious groups, along with the Trump administration, are riding the Institute for Justice's libertarian coattails in a symbiosis of convenience.)

The state, defending its high court's decision to shut down the scholarship program for all private schools, secular and religious, has no correspondingly snappy one-liner to offer. It argues that religious freedom is enhanced rather than threatened by preventing the flow of public money to religious institutions. That argument gained no traction last week with a Supreme Court majority determined to lower the constitutional barrier between church and state. That this odd case is a glaringly defective vehicle for reaching that goal only shows the depth of the majority's determination.

The case is also a perfect vehicle for showing something else: the contradiction at the heart of the religious claims being pressed on increasingly receptive federal courts. Those making these claims say that religion and nonreligion must be treated equally. "The rule is religious neutrality," Richard D. Komer, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice, told the justices. So if parents are able use publicly financed scholarships for secular private school tuition, this argument goes, there should be no difference when it comes to religious school tuition.

When pressed, however, as they are in this case, religion advocates seek something more than equal treatment. It turns out that what they want is special treatment. That's this case. The plaintiffs are claiming a continued entitlement to scholarships for their parochial school tuition despite the fact that the state court ended the scholarship program for religious and secular schools alike. No one gets the money.

It's not enough that all parents are being treated the same, no matter where they choose to enroll their children. It's different from the invitingly simple "religious freedom" story line, more complex, with deep implications for how Americans will live in an increasingly diverse society.

Montana's Constitution, which the voters ratified in 1972, carried forward the principle of no aid to religious schools that was part of the state's original 1889 Constitution. The current Article X prohibits using state money "for any sectarian purpose or to aid any church, school, academy, seminary, college, university, or other literary or scientific institution, controlled in whole or in part by any church, sect, or denomination."

The one exception was something new in the state's Constitution: an exception for money from federal grants "provided to the state for the express purpose of distribution to nonpublic education," which may pass through the state's hands and into the coffers of religious schools. This exception won the Montana Catholic Conference's support for the new Constitution. A brief filed by a majority of the surviving constitutional convention delegates cites the Catholic support to refute the allegation — offered forcefully in the briefs and during the argument — that the no-aid clause reflects anti-Catholic bigotry.

In 2015, following a model used in other states, the Montana Legislature established a tax credit of up to $150 for taxpayers who donated to a "student scholarship organization.." That organization in turn would use the pooled money to offer need-based scholarships to parents for use at any private school. As in most states, the majority of Montana's private schools are religious; in Montana, all the religious schools are Christian. (No non-Christian religion claims more than 1 percent of Montana's population.) Thirteen schools participated in the program, of which 12 were religious; the single secular school serves children with disabilities.

Parents who were using the scholarships at religious schools sued in state court after the state's Department of Revenue issued a rule requiring the program to conform to the Constitution's no-aid clause. The Montana Supreme Court, declaring itself bound by the clause, invalidated the entire tax-credit program; there are no more scholarships for use at any private school, religious or secular.

"And the consequence of this decision is that there is no discrimination," Justice Elena Kagan told Mr. Komer. "Neither set of parents is getting what they want," she went on. "Now, you might say, well, both should get what they want, and maybe that would be a better world. Maybe. But the constitutional harm that it seems that you have to allege here is the discrimination. And there is no discrimination."

Exactly..

When the clock ran out on Mr. Komer, the administration's principal deputy solicitor general, Jeffrey Wall, picked up the plaintiffs' argument. It was a question, Mr. Wall said, of the religious school parents' constitutional right to free exercise of religion. "Their free exercise is being penalized," he said.

There is so much about this case that is simply backward. The administration argues in its brief that "the constitutional violation in this case is especially egregious because it involves the education of children." But to the contrary, that's exactly where the wall of separation has to be maintained with the greatest care.. Religious education serves a purpose, inculcating religious values and preserving religious traditions. A parochial school is not just another neighborhood school down the block.

Certainly, parents are constitutionally entitled to choose a religious education for their children. And under a 2002 Supreme Court decision, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, states are free to offer parents the choice of using vouchers to help pay for religious education. That was a bitterly fought 5-to-4 decision. The administration now would go further: not only that a state mayinclude religious schools in a voucher program, but that it must include them, if it wants to have a voucher program at all.

And where is the stopping point of that argument? Justice Stephen Breyer pressed that question on Deputy Solicitor General Wall. Cities and states support public schools, Justice Breyer observed, asking: "If I decide for you, am I saying that they have to give money — same amounts, proportionate — to the parochial school?"

Mr. Wall deflected the question, instead pointing to the court's decision three years ago that a state program in Missouri to enhance playground safety couldn't exclude the playgrounds of church-run schools.

"The court said you can't deny a generally available public benefit to an entity that's otherwise qualified based solely on its religious character or nature," Mr. Wall said of that 2017 ruling.

In fact, the court both did and didn't say that in the decision. Chief Justice John Roberts's opinion in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer contained a footnote: "This case involves express discrimination based on religious identity with respect to playground resurfacing. We do not address religious uses of funding or other forms of discrimination."

"That rule applies equally to schools as to playgrounds," Mr. Wall nonetheless asserted.

Does it? Will it? How can it not, now?

The footnote in the Trinity Lutheran case was extremely odd. It provoked an objection from Justice Neil Gorsuch that the Supreme Court rules on general principles rather than specific facts, and that "general principles here do not permit discrimination against religious exercise — whether on the playground or not."

Chief Justice Roberts no doubt included the footnote as a necessary play to the center to satisfy some member or members of a majority more fragile than the eventual 7-to-2 vote made it appear. Justice Kagan? Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose seat is now filled by Justice Brett Kavanaugh? The chief justice himself?

"The center cannot hold," Yeats wrote in "The Second Coming." He didn't have the United States Supreme Court in mind when he wrote that line. That doesn't mean it doesn't fit.

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3) 12 Deaths in Mississippi Tell a Grim Story

The only way to "fix" a problem like the American prison system is to end it.

"The history of Parchman is a prime example of how dehumanization and neglect are intrinsic to separating people from their freedom."

By Jamelle Bouie, January 31, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/opinion/mississippi-prison-deaths.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Demonstrators alarmed by deaths at Mississippi prisons protested at the State Capitol in Jackson last week..Credit...Rogelio V. Solis/Associated Press

Twelve people have died in Mississippi state prisons since the start of the new year. Nine deaths occurred in the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. At least one was a suicide. Most were a result of violence between inmates: beatings, stabbings and other fatal altercations.

State officials have promised to stop the violence. After news of two of those deaths broke last week, Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican who took office earlier this month, said he would work "around the clock" with the state Department of Corrections to "respond immediately" and prevent new incidents "going forward."

What's striking about this situation is how little of it is new.. The Parchman prison, which dates to 1904, has a long and infamous history of violence and abuse. It also has a history of reform. But no amount of change has been able to break the cycle of brutality. And why would it? The history of Parchman is a prime example of how dehumanization and neglect are intrinsic to separating people from their freedom.

The Mississippi of the late 19th century was a rigid apartheid state, its criminal justice system defined by cruel, gratuitous punishment. Black suspects bore the brunt of state violence. Often arrested for petty crimes like theft, gambling and "vagrancy" — traveling without a work permit or evidence of a job — black Mississippians were given hefty fines and lengthy sentences. They were then leased out to private companies for de facto slave labor on railroads and plantations. Conditions were abysmal.

"The prisoners ate and slept on bare ground, without blankets or mattresses, and often without clothes," writes the historian David Oshinsky in "Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice." "Convicts dropped from exhaustion, pneumonia, malaria, frostbite, consumption, sunstroke, dysentery, gunshot wounds, and 'shackle poisoning' (the constant rubbing of chains and leg irons against bare flesh)." In the 1880s, Oshinsky notes, the annual mortality rate for Mississippi's convict population ranged from 9 percent to 16 percent.

Convict leasing was on the wane by the turn of the last century, but Mississippi's white elite was still obsessed with "Negro crime." Enter Gov. James K. Vardaman. Elected in 1903 on a demagogic platform of rural chauvinism and white supremacy — he promised to tax the planters, give aid to the (white) poor and turn back "social equality" — Vardaman was a kind of reformer. He opposedconvict leasing as a public giveaway to wealthy landowners and an oppressive burden on impoverished offenders, including blacks.

"Vardaman would spend a lifetime fighting to deny blacks political rights and social equality," explains Oshinsky, "Yet he also believed that Negroes who accepted their lowly place in the human order should be protected from abuse."

Vardaman wanted a prison that would socialize black criminals into, as Oshinsky paraphrases the idea, "proper discipline, strong work habits, and respect for white authority." He also wanted it to turn a profit. Under his leadership, the state cleared thousands of acres near the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta in an area called Parchman place, named after the family that had owned it for years.. Workers planted crops and constructed prison buildings. The Parchman Penitentiary was born. By the 1910s it was self-sufficient, operating on the same principles as an antebellum plantation, with black convict laborers supervised by white overseers, although the share of white prisoners would increase with time.

Prisoners of the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, equipped with hoes, marching to work in the cotton fields in 1939.Credit....Associated Press

Parchman would, in short order, become notorious for its hard labor and brutality. (The blues musician Bukka White immortalized his experience of the prison in a 1940 song, "Parchman Farm Blues.") Inmates slept on dirt floors. Violence was common. In 1954 officials added a maximum security unit where one prisoner recalled, "they just beat the living crap out of you." Serious reform would come after the Civil Rights movement with Gates v. Collier, a class-action lawsuit filed in 1971 on behalf of four inmates but constructed with testimony from hundreds of prisoners. They attested to murders, rapes, beatings and tortures — one inmate, Danny Bennett, died after he was shocked with cattle prods and left unconscious under the sun in 100-degree heat. They also spoke to poor conditions, from open sewage and polluted water supplies to "kitchens overrun with insects, rodents, and the stench of decay." A federal judge would describe the prison as "unfit for human habitation."

Decided for good in 1974, Gates would essentially create minimum standards for incarceration in the United States. At Parchman, this meant desegregation and civilian guards, freedom of worship, minimum living space and an end to forced labor. It also spurred the state of Mississippi to create a Department of Corrections to oversee its penal facilities.

But reform had limits. New facilities and professional staff doesn't change the fact that prisons are a place of confinement, where society isolates many of its least-wanted and most vulnerable members. By the 1990s, according to a report from the American Civil Liberties Union, death row prisoners at Parchman — renamed Mississippi State Penitentiary — reported "profound isolation, unrelieved idleness and monotony, denial of exercise, intolerable stench and pervasive filth, grossly malfunctioning plumbing, and constant exposure to human excrement." H.I.V. positive prisoners in the general population told lawyers from the A.C.L.U. that they "were living in squalor, categorically segregated from the rest of the prison population, and barred from all prison educational and vocational programs and jobs." Assaults between inmates, often part of rival gangs, remained common.

Parchman is hardly alone in its history of violence and neglect. If anything, it's just an extreme example of conditions that occur throughout American prisons. Even so, there's worse. Last year, the Department of Justice released a 56-page report on the Alabama prison system, where guards are few and far between and where prisoners experience high rates of homicide and sexual assault, where — The New York Times reported — "One prisoner had been dead for so long that when he was discovered lying face down, his face was flattened." The nation's jails — local facilities where arrestees are placed pending trial or sentencing — aren't much better. According to the most recent data, a 2015 report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1,053 people died in local jails in 2014. The leading cause, suicide, accounted for 35 percent of those deaths.

Change, for Parchman and other facilities, will almost certainly come. We should understand, however, that reform is only ever temporary. There's only so much you can do within the paradigm of incarceration. A prison may or may not be humane, but it will always be dehumanizing. The isolation, the lack of liberty — the separation from family and community — are antithetical to human life. In which case, the only way to "fix" a problem like the American prison system is to end it. But for an unequal, racially stratified country like ours, that destination is on the far horizon, if it's on the horizon at all.

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4) Greece's Answer to Migrants, a Floating Barrier, Is Called a 'Disgrace'

Rights groups have condemned the plan, warning that it would increase the dangers faced by asylum seekers.

By Niki Kitsantonis, February 1, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/world/europe/greece-migrants-floating-barrier.html

Migrants arriving by rubber raft on the Greek island of Lesbos in 2015.. The number of arrivals remains far below the peak that year, but it has begun to rise again.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

ATHENS — As Greece struggles to deal with a seemingly endless influx of migrants from neighboring Turkey, the conservative government has a contentious new plan to respond to the problem: a floating net barrier to avert smuggling boats.

But rights groups have condemned the plan, warning that it would increase the perils faced by asylum seekers amid growing tensions at camps on the Aegean Islands and in communities there and on the mainland. The potential effectiveness of the barrier system has also been widely questioned, and the center-right daily newspaper Kathimerini dismissed the idea in an editorial on Friday as "wishful thinking."

Moreover, the main opposition party, the leftist Syriza, has condemned the floating barrier plan as "a disgrace and an insult to humanity."

The authorities aim to install a 1..7-mile barrier between the Greek and Turkish coastlines that would rise more than 19 inches above the water and display flashing lights, according to a description posted on a government website this past week by Greece's Defense Ministry.

Citing an "urgent need to address rising refugee flows," the 126-page submission invited private contractors to bid for the project that would cost an estimated 500,000 euros, or more than $554,000, including the cost of four years of maintenance. The government is expected to assign the job in the next three months, though it is unclear when the barrier would be erected..

Greece's defense minister, Nikolaos Panagiotopoulos, told Greek radio on Thursday that he hoped the floating barrier would act as a deterrent to smugglers, similar to a barbed-wire fence that the Greek authorities built along the northern land border with Turkey in 2012.

"In Evros, physical barriers had a relative impact in curbing flows," he said. "We believe a similar result can be achieved with these floating barriers."

The construction will be overseen by the Defense Ministry, which has supervised the creation of new reception centers on the Greek islands and mainland in recent months, and will be subject to "nonmilitary specifications" to meet international maritime standards, the submission noted.

A spokesman for Greece's government, Stelios Petsas, said the barrier system would have to be tested for safety.

But rights activists warn that the measure would increase the dangers faced by migrants making the short but perilous journey across the Aegean. Amnesty International's research director for Europe, Massimo Moratti, condemned the proposal as "an alarming escalation in the Greek government's ongoing efforts to make it as difficult as possible for asylum-seekers and refugees to arrive on its shores."

He warned that it could "lead to more danger for those desperately seeking safety."

The head of Amnesty International's chapter in Greece, Gavriil Sakellaridis, questioned whether the Greek authorities would respond to an emergency signal issued by a boat stopped at the barrier.

The European Commission has expressed reservations and planned to ask the authorities in Greece, which is a member of the European Union, for details about the proposal. Adalbert Jahnz, a commission spokesman, told reporters in Brussels on Thursdaythat any Greek sea barriers to deter migrants must not block access for asylum seekers..

"The setting up of barriers is not in and of itself against E.U. law," he said. "But physical barriers or obstacles of this sort should not be an impediment to seeking asylum which is protected by E.U.. law," he said, conceding, however, that the protection of external borders was primarily the responsibility of member states.

The barrier was proposed amid an uptick in migrants from Turkey. The influx, though far below the thousands of daily arrivals at the peak of the crisis in 2015, has put an increasing strain on already intensely overcrowded reception centers..

According to Greece's migration minister, Notis Mitarakis, 72,000 migrants entered Greece last year, compared with 42,000 in 2018.. The floating barrier will help curb arrivals, Mr. Mitarakis said.

"It sends out the message that we are not a place where anything goes and that we're taking all necessary measures to protect the borders," he said, adding that the process of deporting migrants who did not merit refugee status would be sped up.

"The rules have changed," he said.

Greece has repeatedly appealed for more support from the bloc to tackle migration flows, saying it cannot handle the burden aloneand accusing Turkey of exploiting the refugee crisis for leverage with the European Union.

Repeated threats by Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to "open the gates" to Europe for Syrian refugees on his country's territory have fueled fears that an agreement signed between Turkey and the European Union in 2016, which radically curbed arrivals, will collapse.

Growing tensions between Greece and Turkey over energy resources in the Eastern Mediterranean and revived disputes over sovereignty in the Aegean have further undermined cooperation between the two traditional foes in curbing human trafficking, fragile at the best of times.

The Greek government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is also under growing pressure domestically since it came to power last summer on a pledge to take a harder line on migration than that of his predecessor, Alexis Tsipras of Syriza.

Plans unveiled in November to create new camps on the Aegean Islands have angered residents, who staged mass demonstrations last month, waving banners reading, "We want our islands back."

Rights groups have also warned of the increasingly dire conditions at existing camps on five islands hosting some 44,000 people, nearly 10 times their capacity.

Tensions are particularly acute on the sprawling Moria camp on Lesbos, with reports of 30 stabbings in the past month, two fatal.

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5) U.S. Strikes at Leader of Qaeda in Yemen

American officials believe they may have killed the terrorist leader, Qassim al-Rimi, but have not confirmed his death.

By Rukmini Callimachi, Eric Schmitt and Julian E. Barnes, January 31, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/world/middleeast/qaeda-yemen-alrimi.html

Graffiti in Sana, Yemen, protesting American drone operations there.Credit...Yahya Arhab/EPA, via Shutterstock

The United States has carried out an airstrike against the leader of Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen after months of tracking him by using aerial surveillance and other intelligence, according to three current or former American officials.

The officials expressed confidence that the Qaeda leader, Qassim al-Rimi, was killed in a January airstrike in Yemen but were awaiting confirmation before making a public announcement.

If confirmed, his death could represent a significant blow to the Qaeda affiliate, which remains one of the most potent branches of the terrorist group. The Yemen branch, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has tried to attack the United States and Europe and is thought to still want to.

The group's ability to orchestrate or attack targets in the West has atrophied in recent years, as American airstrikes have targeted their bomb-makers and English-language propagandists. But the group, American officials have previously said, remains a dangerous one.

Qaeda and Islamic State leaders have been targeted in the past by American military or C.I.A. drone strikes, only for United States officials to learn later that the militants had survived. That has made American officials more cautious about declaring these kind of strikes successful.

Military officials said they were not aware of any strikes. The C.I.A. and the National Security Council declined to comment.

The C.I.A. learned of Mr. al-Rimi's location from an informer in Yemen in November, according to a United States official who was briefed on the strike. That information allowed the government to begin tracking him through surveillance drones.

Local news reports in Yemen said that a drone strike this month killed two militant suspects in the area of Wadi Abedah in central Yemen. The reports did not identify the people killed in the strike.

Mr. al-Rimi, 41, is among the few Qaeda leaders whose terrorist pedigree traces to the era before the Sept.. 11 attacks.

A veteran of Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan, Mr. al-Rimi later returned to his native Yemen, where he was sentenced to five years in prison for plotting to kill the American ambassador there. He broke out of jail a year later, and quickly rose through the ranks of the Qaeda affiliate.

The State Department offered a $5 million bounty for information leading to Mr. al-Rimi's capture, and later doubled the reward to $10 million, as he was linked to numerous plots against American interests.

According to the State Department, he is believed to have played a role in the 2008 attack on the American Embassy in Sana, which killed 10 guards and four civilians, as well as the 2009 plot by the Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to take down a Detroit-bound flight with explosives concealed in his underwear.

In the first major military operation authorized by President Trump, Chief Petty Officer William (Ryan) Owens, a member of the Navy's SEAL Team 6, was killed in Yemen in 2017 trying to kill or capture Mr. al-Rimi.

"He was an Al Qaeda veteran whose career started in the camps in pre-9/11 Afghanistan," said Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. "After he was busted out of prison, he was part of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's relaunch management team, becoming their military commander."

Mr. Joscelyn said that Mr. al-Rimi was one of just four Qaeda officials who appeared in a video announcing the group's relaunch in 2009.

Analysts said that numerous Qaeda leaders have been killed in similar strikes. "These strikes are necessary to degrade the group, but not sufficient to destroy it," Mr. Joscelyn said.

The affiliate in Yemen was for a time considered the most capable of striking American interests, but it hasn't pursued a plot targeting the United States in years.

Bruce Riedel, a 30-year veteran former C..I.A. officer, said he had heard about the strike but added that it was unclear whether Mr. al-Rimi had been killed.

"Al-Rimi is an important target, probably more dangerous to Yemen and Saudi Arabia than for Americans given the group's diminished capabilities during the Yemen war," he said.

The strike against Mr. al-Rimi came at roughly the same time the American military unsuccessfully tried to kill a senior Iranian military official in Yemen, Abdul Reza Shahlai. The attempted strike against Mr. Shahlai came on the same day an American drone killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran's most powerful commander.

Saeed al-Batati and Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.

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6) Americans Demand a Rethinking of the 'Forever War'

The United States must stop its involvement in endless wars, say bipartisan critics of both President Trump's actions and Washington policymakers.

"In a searing 1967 speech on Vietnam, Martin Luther King Jr. said: 'If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read 'Vietnam.' It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.'"

By Edward Wong, February 2, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/02/us/politics/trump-forever-war.html

American troops preparing to depart to the Middle East from Fort Bragg, N.C., in January.Credit...Bryan Woolston/Reuters

WASHINGTON — Nearly two decades after the fall of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon, American troops continue to wage war in Iraq, Afghanistan and lesser-known corners of the globe. President Trump almost opened another frontlast month when he approved the killing of Iran's most powerful general.

"We took one of the world's deadliest terrorists off the battlefield for good," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said recently, justifying the drone strike on Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.

In other words, in the "war on terror," the Iranian leader was fair game.

Last week, Democrats and some Republicans in the House voted to repeal one of two longstanding war authorizations that have helped justify all manner of American military action abroad. It was a challenge not only to President Trump's ability to take military action against Iran, but also to the thinking in Washington that has sustained the war-fighting since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

For more than 18 years, the war on terrorism — the "forever war" or "endless war," as many call it — has been used as the basis for an ever-expanding range of military actions: an invasion of Iraq that, by one count, has left nearly 300,000 dead; airstrikes in Afghanistan that have sometimes unintentionally killed scores at wedding parties as well as Qaeda leaders; and now the Suleimani drone strike. Mr. Trump said the general, who had helped arm anti-American militias in the Iraq war, had been plotting new "imminent and sinister attacks."

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump is expected to articulate the direction of American foreign policy in his State of the Union address. Weeks after the United States and Iran nearly went to war, many Americans still want to know not just whether an attack was really "imminent," the question that consumed Washington. 

They are asking whether the United States should continue fighting these wars at all, when the presence and actions of American troops ignite hostility and can sometimes heighten risks rather than limit them or deter enemies, critics say.

The sheer length of the conflicts has clarified for many Americans a stark moral question: whether any of the wars are still justified given the tolls — psychological, physical and spiritual — they have exacted on the United States and many other nations.

The concerns have come from both ends of the political spectrum. In condemning the killing of General Suleimani, Tucker Carlson, the conservative Fox News host, said the situation created by the Iraq war was "immoral" and that "we should leave, immediately." Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a Democratic presidential candidate, said in a televised debate in January, "We should stop asking our military to solve problems that cannot be solved militarily."

"Our keeping combat troops there is not helping," she said of the Middle East.

That most politicians in Washington last month instead debated "imminence" reveals the enduring consensus over foreign policythat justifies the wars. The premise is that aggressive intervention abroad, forward deployments and fighting perceived enemies "over there" keep the United States safe. And besides protecting Americans, so it goes, these policies are necessary for the United States to carry out its mission as a shield against evil in the world.

In explaining last month why the United States would not discuss a troop withdrawal from Iraq — as demanded by Iraqi leaders furious over the drone strike on their soil — the State Department turned to that rationale, saying, "America is a force for good in the Middle East." And in a recent speech on Iran policy, Mr. Pompeo invoked American exceptionalism: "America is a truly special place."

But more Americans now believe that military adventurism after the Sept. 11 attacks has created greater dangers to the nation.

In a USA Today/Ipsos poll, 52 percent of respondents said the killing of General Suleimani had made the United States less safe. Online searches for "World War III" and "draft" surged in the days afterward. American citizens around the world received emails from embassies warning them of greater risks.

"The escalation over the past month is likely not over, especially now that we've crossed the line from proxy conflict to a direct confrontation between the United States and Iran," said Dalia Dassa Kaye, an Iran expert at RAND Corporation, a research group. "We're in a vicious cycle where escalation leads to more force presence, but more force presence may make the potential for escalation higher."

In January, more than 16 years after President George W. Bush ordered an invasion of Iraq on false premises, the State Department renewed a code-red travel alert for the country because of "terrorism, kidnapping and armed conflict." About 5,200 Americans troops remain.

Many Americans in Iraq at the height of that war could foresee the outcome. The American military occupation helped fuel an insurgency and a civil war. The invasion is now considered by some historians and national security experts to be the greatest policy disaster of the United States since the Vietnam War: hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and nearly 4,500 American troops killed, trillions of dollars spent and a destabilized Middle East that both strengthened Iran and gave birth to Al Qaeda in Iraq and its successor, the Islamic State.

Decades earlier, the Vietnam War spiraled into an expansive conflict with alarming ease, and inflamed furious debate across American society. As the war intensified in the late 1960s and '70s, American officials carpet bombed Laos and Cambodia and tortured and assassinated Vietcong leaders in the name of defeating Communism. But, because of the draft, that war generated a moral debate in the United States that is absent today. In a searing 1967 speech on Vietnam, Martin Luther King Jr. said: "If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read 'Vietnam.' It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over."

Afghanistan was supposed to be the "good war," because Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda had their base there, protected by the Taliban.. But 18 years after the United States toppled the Taliban, 13,000 troops remain, propping up an embattled Afghan government. More than 2,400 American service members and more than 38,000 Afghan civilians have died, in a war costing the United States at least $2 trillion.

In September, Mr. Trump called off peace talks with the Taliban, dimming hopes of a withdrawal, though negotiations have since restarted.

Despite his denunciations of endless wars, Mr. Trump's policies and actions have gone in the opposite direction. In December, he ordered 4,500 troops to the Middle East, adding to the 50,000 already there. In the last two years, the American military dropped bombs and missiles on Afghanistan at a record pace. In April, Mr. Trump vetoed a bipartisan congressional resolution to end American military involvement in Yemen's devastating civil war.

Perhaps most significant, Mr. Trump withdrew in 2018 from a landmark nuclear containment deal with Iran and reimposed sanctions, setting off the chain of events that led to the killing of General Suleimani and a retaliatory missile strike by Iran that caused traumatic brain injuries to at least 64 American service members.

"The policies aren't changing; in some ways, they're getting worse," said Stephen Wertheim, a historian and the co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a new research group in Washington financed by prominent billionaires — George Soros, a liberal, and Charles Koch, a conservative — who advocate American military restraint.

In some corners, though, there has been pushback against the notion that a lower troop presence leads to greater security. Proponents of the forever war point to President Barack Obama's withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 as paving the way for the rise of the Islamic State in 2014.

But that ignores a whole set of circumstances, including the formal withdrawal agreement Mr. Bush had previously reached with the Iraqi government because the Iraqis wanted the Americans out, and the role of the Syrian civil war in creating the Islamic State. Most important, it ignores the lack of political will among American citizens for continuing the war.

Some lawmakers are trying to revoke the war authorizations of 2001 and 2002 — the first used for fighting Sept. 11-related terrorism and the second for invading Iraq — and looking for other ways to constrain Mr. Trump's ability to expand the wars. In January, senators in the Republican-led chamber sponsoring legislation to limit military action against Iran said they had enough votes to pass the bill, the War Powers Resolution. The Democratic-led House passed a similar measure last month.

"I think the Suleimani killing and the escalation with Iran have clarified the stakes for some people who hadn't been paying attention to the ongoing wars," Mr. Wertheim said. "We very nearly got into another major war in the Middle East that's not warranted by U.S. interests, and we still might."

Even some hawkish foreign policy officials have begun to advocate a drawdown in the Middle East and Central Asia because of what they call the opportunity costs to America's mission.

"One of the very odd pathologies of Washington and the defense establishment is this enthrallment with the Middle East, which just isn't that important," said Elbridge Colby, a former senior Pentagon official in the Trump administration. "America has become energy independent. And we're not very good at achieving our preferred outcomes in the Middle East."

Mr. Colby was the main author of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, which recommended turning America's war-fighting focus to the "revisionist powers" of China and Russia.

Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed reporting.

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