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Friday post
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The American way of life was designed by white supremacists in favor patriarchal white supremacy, who have had at least a 400 year head start accumulating wealth, out of generations filled with blood sweat and tears of oppressed people. The same people who are still on the front lines and in the crosshairs of patriarchal white-supremacist capitalism today. There's no such thing as equality without a united revolutionary front to dismantle capitalism and design a worldwide socialist society.
—Johnny Gould
(Follow @tandino415 on Instagram)
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20-City PFAS Contamination Tour
The Pentagon: Exposing the Hidden Polluter of Water
Military Fire-fighting Foam that is poisoning us all!
What in the world are they thinking?
March 7, Saturday – San Diego
7:00 – 9:00 pm
San Diego First Church of the Brethren.
3850 Westgate Pl., San Diego https://oasisforpeace.org/
The 20-City PFAS Contamination Tour will be held in collaboration with our sisters and brothers in the same struggle in Okinawa.
7:00 – 9:00 pm
San Diego First Church of the Brethren.
3850 Westgate Pl., San Diego https://oasisforpeace.org/
The 20-City PFAS Contamination Tour will be held in collaboration with our sisters and brothers in the same struggle in Okinawa.
March 8, Sunday
11:00 pm El Centro, Livestream at Naval Air Facility
2024 Bennett Rd, El Centro
1:00 Salton Sea, livestream at Naval Air Auxiliary Station
Salton City, CA
3:00 Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center
Twentynine Palms, California
March 9, Monday —Livestream from each location:
9:00 am George AFB near Victorville
11:00 am Norton AFB near San Bernardino
Santa Anna River where it crosses Alabama Avenue
just off the runway at Norton AFB near San Bernardino
1:00 pm March Air Reserve Base Visitor’s Center
2035 Graeber St. Building #2370
2:00 Lake Perris Recreation Area, Perris
17801 Lake Perris Dr., Perris
4:00 3M Corona Manufacturing Plant
18750 Minnesota Rd, Corona, CA
9:00 am George AFB near Victorville
11:00 am Norton AFB near San Bernardino
Santa Anna River where it crosses Alabama Avenue
just off the runway at Norton AFB near San Bernardino
1:00 pm March Air Reserve Base Visitor’s Center
2035 Graeber St. Building #2370
2:00 Lake Perris Recreation Area, Perris
17801 Lake Perris Dr., Perris
4:00 3M Corona Manufacturing Plant
18750 Minnesota Rd, Corona, CA
March 10, Tuesday—Santa Clarita TB
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara Friends Meeting
2012 Chapala St.
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara Friends Meeting
2012 Chapala St.
March 11, Wednesday – Monterey
6:30 doors open – 7:00 - 9:00
Monterey Peace and Justice Center
1364 Fremont Blvd, Seaside, CA
Organized by WILPF Monterey Branch
6:30 doors open – 7:00 - 9:00
Monterey Peace and Justice Center
1364 Fremont Blvd, Seaside, CA
Organized by WILPF Monterey Branch
March 12, Thursday – Santa Cruz
6:00 - 9:00 pm
Resource Center for Nonviolence Auditorium
612 Ocean St. Santa Cruz
Organized by WILPF Santa Cruz Branch
March 13, Friday - Radio, TV interviews
pat.elder@civilianexposure.org
All times PST - Current Availability - 8:00 am, 10:00 am, 1:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 4:30 pm, 5:30 pm
March 14, Saturday РSan Jos̩
2:00 – 4:30 pm
San Jose Peace and Justice Center, 48 South 7th St., San Jose
Organized by WILPF San Jose Branch
pat.elder@civilianexposure.org
All times PST - Current Availability - 8:00 am, 10:00 am, 1:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 4:30 pm, 5:30 pm
March 14, Saturday РSan Jos̩
2:00 – 4:30 pm
San Jose Peace and Justice Center, 48 South 7th St., San Jose
Organized by WILPF San Jose Branch
March 16, Monday - Fairfield
FMI: ratherbenyckeling@comcast.net
3:00 – 5:00 pm Travis AFB, Main Gate, Fairfield
The Main Gate is located at the Visitor Control Center
Air Base Pkwy, Travis AFB, Fairfield
Planned evening event - TBA
3:00 – 5:00 pm Travis AFB, Main Gate, Fairfield
The Main Gate is located at the Visitor Control Center
Air Base Pkwy, Travis AFB, Fairfield
Planned evening event - TBA
March 17, Tuesday - Fairfield/Marysville
8:00 am Press Conference
Press Contact: militarypoisons@wilpfus.org
3:00 – 5:00 pm Beale AFB - Marysville, Doolittle and Wheatland Gates.
5:30 Peace Encampment, Informal Presentation following potluck.
Schneider Gate, (“Main Gate”) East end of North Beale Rd.
Press Contact: militarypoisons@wilpfus.org
3:00 – 5:00 pm Beale AFB - Marysville, Doolittle and Wheatland Gates.
5:30 Peace Encampment, Informal Presentation following potluck.
Schneider Gate, (“Main Gate”) East end of North Beale Rd.
March 18, Wednesday - Marysville
South Beale Rd. & Ostrom Rd.
8:00 am Press Conference
8:00 am Press Conference
Press Contact: militarypoisons@wilpfus.org
8:30 am Potluck Breakfast and Presentation at Linda/Marysville residence
Mid-day - TBD -
Mid-day - TBD -
6:30 – 9:00 pm - Sacramento
WILPF Branch Potluck Supper and Talk
Southside Park Cohousing, 434 T St,
WILPF Branch Potluck Supper and Talk
Southside Park Cohousing, 434 T St,
March 19, Thursday - Fresno
7:00 pm Fresno City College
Old Administration Building (OAB), Room 251
Campus map
March 20, Friday - Berkeley - various meetings, organizing, etc.
March 21, Saturday - Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists 6:30 doors open, 7:00 - 9:00pm
March 22, Sunday - San Francisco - The Women's Building World Water Day 12:30 doors open, 1:00- 4:00pm
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San Francisco Bay Area Anti-War Coalition
rally and a march to oppose the impending
war on Iran, demand an end to U..S.
occupation in Iraq
San Francisco Federal Building
(90 7th Street, SF, CA 94103)
Thursday, March 19th @ 5PM
Oppose U.S. Imperialism and imperialism in all its forms
Join us as we rally and march to demand an end to the U.S. occupation in Iraq and all other countries and oppose an impending war with Iran on the Iranian New Year, Nowruz, as well as the tragic commemoration of the 17th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. For decades, the United States has sought to dominate the Middle East through economic and military means. Now is the time for us to come together to start a new anti war movement within the United States that is able to put an end to the U.S. war machine once and for all! We demand:
No War on Iran
No Sanctions on Iran
U.S. Out of Iraq
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Please forward widely
The Prosecution of Julian Assange and the Fight for Free Speech
Sunday, April 19, 2:00 - 5:00 pm Humanist Hall 390 27th Street, Oakland
Donation: $20 -$10 sliding scale; Student $5, No one turned away for lack of funds
Benefit for the Courage Foundation, for Julian Assange's defense
Join us for a panel discussion of leading attorneys, human rights defenders and social justice activists as the London trial of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is underway. If Assange is extradicted to the United States, he faces the first-ever charges under the Espionage Act of 1917 for the publication of truthful information in the public interest. Speakers will present the ctitical legal and policy issues involved as well as rebut government efforts to undermine the reputation and credibility of Assange. In these difficult times for civil liberties and democratic rights we demand: Free Julian Assange! Defend Free Speech and the First Amendment!
Panel Speakers: Jim Lafferty, Executive Director for three decades, National Lawyers Guild, Los Angeles
Representative, Bay Area National Lawyers Guild
Jennifer Robinson, Julian Assange's London attorney (message)
Joe Lombardo, National Coordinator, United National Antiwar Coalition
Nathan Fuller, Executive Director, Courage Foundation*
Nozomi Hayase, author, contributor to the new book, In Defense of Julian Assange
Margaret Kunstler, editor, In Defense of Julian Assange (tentative)
Moderator: Jeff Mackler, author, Obama's National Security State: The Meaning of the Edward Snowden Revelations
*Courage Foundation www.couragefound.org, an international whistleblower support network, campaigning for the public and legal defense of Julian Assange and for the protection of truthtellers and the public's right to know, internationally.
Sponsors: Bay Area Julian Assange Defense Committee • National Lawyers Guild Bay Area • Courage Foundation • United National Antiwar Coalition
Initial co-sponsors: CodePink Bay Area • Social Justice Center of Marin • Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, US Section • Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance, advisory board, Courage Foundation, past Steering Committee member Chelsea Manning Support Committee, Venezuelan Embassy defender • Marin Peace and Justice Center • Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
Contact information and to co-sponsor: Event coordinator, Jeff Mackler, jmackler@lmi.net
With video messages from Daniel Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky and Alice Walker
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
National Solidarity Events to Amplify Prisoners Human Rights
AUGUST 21 - SEPTEMBER 9th
To all in solidarity with the Prisoners Human Rights Movement:
We are reaching out to those that have been amplifying our voices in these state, federal, or immigration jails and prisons, and to allies that uplifted the national prison strike demands in 2018. We call on you again to organize the communities from August 21st - September 9th, 2020, by hosting actions, events, and demonstrations that call for prisoner human rights and the end to prison slavery.
We must remind the people and legal powers in this nation that prisoners' human rights are a priority. If we aren't moving forward, we're moving backward. For those of us in chains, backward is not an option. We have nothing to lose but our chains.
Some people claim that prisoners' human rights have advanced since the last national prison strike in 2018. We strongly disagree. But due to prisoners organizing inside and allies organizing beyond the walls, solidarity with our movement has increased. The only reason we hear conversations referencing prison reforms in every political campaign today is because of the work of prison organizers and our allies! But as organizers in prisons, we understand this is not enough. Just as quickly as we've gained ground, others are already funding projects and talking points to set back those advances. Our only way to hold our ground while moving forward is to remind people where we are and where we are headed.
On August 21 - September 9, we call on everyone in solidarity with us to organize an action, a panel discussion, a rally, an art event, a film screening, or another kind of demonstration to promote prisoners' human rights. Whatever is within your ability, we ask that you shake the nation out of any fog they may be in about prisoners' human rights and the criminal legal system (legalized enslavement).
During these solidarity events, we request that organizers amplify immediate issues prisoners in your state face, the demands from the National Prison Strike of 2018, and uplift Jailhouse Lawyers Speak new International Law Project.
We've started the International Law Project to engage the international community with a formal complaint about human rights abuses in U.S. prisons. This project will seek prisoners' testimonials from across the country to establish a case against the United States Prison Industrial Slave Complex on international human rights grounds.
Presently working on this legally is the National Lawyers Guild's Prisoners Rights Committee, and another attorney, Anne Labarbera. Members of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), Fight Toxic Prisons (FTP), and I am We Prisoners Advocacy Network/Millions For Prisoners are also working to support these efforts. The National Lawyers Guild Prisoners' Rights Committee (Jenipher R. Jones, Esq. and Audrey Bomse) will be taking the lead on this project.
The National Prison Strike Demands of 2018 have not changed.. As reflected publicly by the recent deaths of Mississippi prisoners, the crisis in this nation's prisons persist. Mississippi prisons are on national display at the moment of this writing, and we know shortly afterward there will be another Parchman in another state with the same issues. The U.S. has demonstrated a reckless disregard for human lives in cages.
The prison strike demands were drafted as a path to alleviate the dehumanizing process and conditions people are subjected to while going through this nation's judicial system. Following up on these demands communicates to the world that prisoners are heard and that prisoners' human rights are a priority.
In the spirit of Attica, will you be in the fight to dismantle the prison industrial slave complex by pushing agendas that will shut down jails and prisons like Rikers Island or Attica? Read the Attica Rebellion demands and read the National Prison Strike 2018 demands. Ask yourself what can you do to see the 2018 National Prison Strike demands through.
SHARE THIS RELEASE FAR AND WIDE WITH ALL YOUR CONTACTS!
We rage with George Jackson's "Blood in my eyes" and move in the spirit of the Attica Rebellion!
August 21st - September 9th, 2020
AGITATE, EDUCATE, ORGANIZE
Dare to struggle, Dare to win!
We are--
"Jailhouse Lawyers Speak"
NLG EMAIL CONTACT FOR LAWYERS AND LAW STUDENTS INTERESTED IN JOINING THE INTERNATIONAL LAW PROJECT: micjlsnlg@gmail.com
PRISON STRIKE DEMANDS: https://jailhouselawyerspeak.wordpress.com/2020/02/11/prisoners-national-demands-for-human-rights/
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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!
https://www.change.org/p/san-quentin-warden-ronald-davis-stop-kevin-cooper-s-abuse-by-san-quentin-prison-guards-2ace89a7-a13e-44ab-b70c-c18acbbfeb59?recruiter=747387046&recruited_by_id=3ea6ecd0-69ba-11e7-b7ef-51d8e2da53ef&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=petition_dashboard&use_react=false 
On Wednesday, September 25, Kevin Cooper's cell at San Quentin Prison was thrown into disarray and his personal food dumped into the toilet by a prison guard, A. Young. The cells on East Block Bayside, where Kevin's cell is, were all searched on September 25 during Mandatory Yard. Kevin spent the day out in the yard with other inmates.. In a letter, Kevin described what he found when he returned: "This cage was hit hard, like a hurricane was in here .. .... . little by little I started to clean up and put my personal items back inside the boxes that were not taken .... .. .. I go over to the toilet, lift up the seatcover and to my surprise and shock the toilet was completely filled up with my refried beans, and my brown rice. Both were in two separate cereal bags and both cereal bags were full. The raisin bran cereal bags were gone, and my food was in the toilet!" A bucket was eventually brought over and: "I had to get down on my knees and dig my food out of the toilet with my hands so that I could flush the toilet. The food, which was dried refried beans and dried brown rice had absorbed the water in the toilet and had become cement hard. It took me about 45 minutes to get enough of my food out of the toilet before it would flush." Even the guard working the tier at the time told Kevin, "K.C.., that is f_cked up!" A receipt was left in Kevin's cell identifying the guard who did this as A... Young. Kevin has never met Officer A...... Young, and has had no contact with him besides Officer Young's unprovoked act of harassment and psychological abuse... Kevin Cooper has served over 34 years at San Quentin, fighting for exoneration from the conviction for murders he did not commit. It is unconscionable for him to be treated so disrespectfully by prison staff on top of the years of his incarceration. No guard should work at San Quentin if they cannot treat prisoners and their personal belongings with basic courtesy and respect................. Kevin has filed a grievance against A. Young.. Please: 1) Sign this petition calling on San Quentin Warden Ronald Davis to grant Kevin's grievance and discipline "Officer" A. Young.. 2) Call Warden Ronald Davis at: (415) 454-1460 Ext. 5000. Tell him that Officer Young's behaviour was inexcusable, and should not be tolerated........ 3) Call Yasir Samar, Associate Warden of Specialized Housing, at (415) 455-5037 4) Write Warden Davis and Lt. Sam Robinson (separately) at: Main Street San Quentin, CA 94964 5) Email Lt. Sam Robinson at: samuel.robinson2@cdcr.......................ca.gov
On Wednesday, September 25, Kevin Cooper's cell at San Quentin Prison was thrown into disarray and his personal food dumped into the toilet by a prison guard, A. Young. The cells on East Block Bayside, where Kevin's cell is, were all searched on September 25 during Mandatory Yard. Kevin spent the day out in the yard with other inmates.. In a letter, Kevin described what he found when he returned: "This cage was hit hard, like a hurricane was in here .. .... . little by little I started to clean up and put my personal items back inside the boxes that were not taken .... .. .. I go over to the toilet, lift up the seatcover and to my surprise and shock the toilet was completely filled up with my refried beans, and my brown rice. Both were in two separate cereal bags and both cereal bags were full. The raisin bran cereal bags were gone, and my food was in the toilet!" A bucket was eventually brought over and: "I had to get down on my knees and dig my food out of the toilet with my hands so that I could flush the toilet. The food, which was dried refried beans and dried brown rice had absorbed the water in the toilet and had become cement hard. It took me about 45 minutes to get enough of my food out of the toilet before it would flush." Even the guard working the tier at the time told Kevin, "K.C.., that is f_cked up!" A receipt was left in Kevin's cell identifying the guard who did this as A... Young. Kevin has never met Officer A...... Young, and has had no contact with him besides Officer Young's unprovoked act of harassment and psychological abuse... Kevin Cooper has served over 34 years at San Quentin, fighting for exoneration from the conviction for murders he did not commit. It is unconscionable for him to be treated so disrespectfully by prison staff on top of the years of his incarceration. No guard should work at San Quentin if they cannot treat prisoners and their personal belongings with basic courtesy and respect................. Kevin has filed a grievance against A. Young.. Please: 1) Sign this petition calling on San Quentin Warden Ronald Davis to grant Kevin's grievance and discipline "Officer" A. Young.. 2) Call Warden Ronald Davis at: (415) 454-1460 Ext. 5000. Tell him that Officer Young's behaviour was inexcusable, and should not be tolerated........ 3) Call Yasir Samar, Associate Warden of Specialized Housing, at (415) 455-5037 4) Write Warden Davis and Lt. Sam Robinson (separately) at: Main Street San Quentin, CA 94964 5) Email Lt. Sam Robinson at: samuel.robinson2@cdcr.......................ca.gov*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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Sign Global Petition to Dismiss Charges Against Anti-Nuclear Plowshares Activists Facing 25 Years
US ATTORNEY GENERAL WILLIAM BARR
This is an urgent request that you join with distinguished global supporters including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, other Nobel laureates and many others by signing our global petition to dismiss all charges against the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 (KBP7).. They face 25 years in prison for exposing illegal and immoral nuclear weapons that threaten all life on Earth. The seven nonviolently and symbolically disarmed the Trident nuclear submarine base at Kings Bay, GA on April 4, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (View KBP7 reading their statement here.....) This petition is also a plea for us all to be involved in rebuilding the anti-nuclear weapons movement that helped disarm the world's nuclear arsenals from 90,000 down to 15,000 weapons in the 1980s... We must abolish them all. The KBP7 trial is expected to begin this fall in Georgia. Time is short. Please sign the petition and visit kingsbayplowshares7.......org. Help KBP7 by forwarding their petition to your friends, to lists, and post it on social media...... The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 have offered us their prophetic witness. Now it's up to us! In peace and solidarity, The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 Support Committee https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/sign-global-petition-to-dismiss-charges-against-anti-nuclear-plowshares-activists-facing-25-years?source=direct_link&
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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
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
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
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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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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 -- Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 863...................9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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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
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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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1) A Hail Mary Pass by Philly’s Fraternal Order of Police: A King’s Bench Petition to the PA Supreme Court
The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) promised big firms to fight Mumia’s freedom. They got George Bochetto, a pugilistic lawyer who owed the FOP a favor, and a weak petition full of vague inferences of bias. They are throwing random information up against the growing storm of accountability as a strategy of distraction.
By Noel Hanrahan, PrisonRadio.org
https://mailchi.mp/prisonradio/backgroundkingsbenchpetitionnov18-2019
George Bochetto, at FOP Lodge Five event.
In this latest legal filing the FOP tried and failed to create a narrative that the new evidence, which was suppressed for 37 years, is irrelevant. The new evidence is, in fact, game changing. You know the kind of evidence where a key witness writes a note to Joe McGill, the prosecutor, and asks him, “where is my money?” The Philadelphia Bulletin photographer’s pictures prove that this driver’s cab is not even at the scene. Yet somehow - after his testimony against Mumia - he is asking the prosecutor for the money he is owed. Sound bad? it is.
During an evidentiary hearing in the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, Joe McGill will try to spin this as an innocent request for “lunch money.”
It is all about credibility. That is why the PA and the U.S. Constitutions both call for new and previoulsy undisclosed evidence to be heard in open court. This King's Bench petition actually declares that the new DA Krasner should have colluded with McGill to bury the evidence.
Don’t forget: soon McGill will have to explain that he did not not suppress African American participation in Mumia Abu-Jamal’s trial during jury selection.
Good luck with that, Joe! Because the DA’s office was not less racist before the ADA Jack McMahon made the training tape instructing staff to strike Black jurors. In justifying keeping young African-Americans off the jury, Jack McMahon said ''The only way you're going to do your best is to get jurors that are unfair.'' McMahon, when asked, explained, ''That's not being racist -- that's being realistic.'' (See this YouTube video for examples of these tapes and this New York Times account for more on this story.)
It is all about credibility. That is why the PA and the U.S. Constitutions both call for new and previoulsy undisclosed evidence to be heard in open court. This King's Bench petition actually declares that the new DA Krasner should have colluded with McGill to bury the evidence.
Don’t forget: soon McGill will have to explain that he did not not suppress African American participation in Mumia Abu-Jamal’s trial during jury selection.
Good luck with that, Joe! Because the DA’s office was not less racist before the ADA Jack McMahon made the training tape instructing staff to strike Black jurors. In justifying keeping young African-Americans off the jury, Jack McMahon said ''The only way you're going to do your best is to get jurors that are unfair.'' McMahon, when asked, explained, ''That's not being racist -- that's being realistic.'' (See this YouTube video for examples of these tapes and this New York Times account for more on this story.)
Once you begin to look into the deep racism of Philly’s past DA's office and police practices, you will see why they are so desperate to try to petition their way out of a fair fight. The longstanding pattern and practice of stepping on the scales of justice is being revealed.
This November 12, Bochetto, backed by the FOP, filed a self-styled King’s Bench petition asking the PA Supreme Court to intervene on behalf of Maureen Faulkner in a pending appeal before the Superior Court. The request seeks to remove Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner from prosecuting Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case. This unusual procedural move is extremely unlikely to succeed. In the petition they argue that Paul George, a lawyer on Krasner’s current staff, was an attorney of record, local counsel for Mumia, and that this creates an impermissible bias. George, as is common practice for potential conflicts, has been screened off work on the case. They argue other more even more tenuous and desperate six-degrees-of-separation biases.
As FOP is losing ground, politicians are abandoning them. At their recent press conference, the only politicians there were two recent losers: ousted City Council member Allen Tauberberger (“Looks like I’m cleaning out my office” Taubenberger told WHYY, “Numbers are numbers”) and Jack O’Neil, who placed a distant sixth to Krasner in the last election.
As FOP is losing ground, politicians are abandoning them. At their recent press conference, the only politicians there were two recent losers: ousted City Council member Allen Tauberberger (“Looks like I’m cleaning out my office” Taubenberger told WHYY, “Numbers are numbers”) and Jack O’Neil, who placed a distant sixth to Krasner in the last election.
But remember, the FOP does not fight fair. Their members have been charged with hitting folks who are handcuffed. They are protecting decades of dirty cops and, yes, prosecutors who are guilty of misconduct and disbarrable offenses. Some of those folks who may be exposed are very well connected, like Ed Rendell and Ron Castille. So while the FOP are the foot soldiers, remember they represent and have been in bed with those who created and perpetuated the system of mass incarceration masquerading as justice.
Yes, Ed Rendell, former Mayor of Philadelphia and Governor of Pennsylvania, is in the same boat as the shock troops he allowed free reign to illegally arrest and incarcerate poor people of color in Philly for decades
How many scandals have to hit the front pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer before we all understand the prosecutors KNEW that cops routinely lied on probable cause? Lying why? Could be racism. And it could also be simply to increase their pay, padding their overtime. It is common knowledge in the courts and at city hall; everyone knows that is how the game of arrests and court appearances and police overtime is, and has been, played. They need an assembly line of black and brown bodies, vulnerable people, to pad their pay.
Voters are beginning to wonder: Who pays for that 6500-person majority-white police force with New Jersey mortgages and shore homes? Who is still paying for that? Who is paying now for all the indicted and un-indicted co-conspirator cops who are retired with full pay?
The protestations of the Fraternal Order of Police reflects their last futile effort and frustrations as they try to prevent justice from being done in Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case.
And they are losing. The FOP is losing the battle for public opinion, the battle in the courts, and the battle to keep the lid on the legacy of police corruption in Philadelphia.
The courts and the prosecution are finally open to hearing the crimes of the Frank Rizzo-led police force and the District Attorney’s office led by the likes of Ed Rendell, Lynne Abraham and Ron Castille.
Consider this: the real king makers in Philly need to cloud the issue try and frame the issue. Talking about Krasner’s bias is a distraction and a ploy. Ed Rendell and Castille need to turn the focus away from explicit police and prosecutorial corruption and their complicity.
At the same time, we must remember that Larry Krasner and the DA’s office will fight to uphold the conviction of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
At the same time, we must remember that Larry Krasner and the DA’s office will fight to uphold the conviction of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The truth is that Krasner is only going to petition the court for Mumia’s release when the case is already won, if then. This is not only because he is a “big L liberal” but because the evidence of Mumia’s innocence has been suppressed by the courts and prosecution for 37 years and it needs to be fully heard. It will take a whole lot more organizing and diligent, steadfast and brilliant lawyering for Mumia’s case to unravel as it sits before a very entrenched and unfavorable Philadelphia court system.
The new hearing in the Common Pleas Court will be an adversarial one, and it will test the new evidence and the credibility of the police and the prosecution.
“The bottom line is this. We are at the end of our line with our case,” said Maureen Faulkner in the Philadelphia Tribune and Harrisburg Capital Star.
The next step is freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal, his family and his supporters.
The next step is freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal, his family and his supporters.
Stay tuned. Because: When We Fight We Win!
Director, Prison Radio
Director, Prison Radio
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2) Immigrants Could Face Nearly $1,000 Charge to Appeal Deportation Orders
The Justice Department proposal would bring new obstacles to immigrants hoping to win legal status in the United States.
“It’s undermining the very idea of a fair hearing,” he said. “It’s like, ‘You can get a fair hearing, if you have enough money to pay for it.’”
By Vanessa Swales, February 27, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/immigration-court-deportation-appeals.html
Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times
Immigrants who hope to challenge their deportation orders could be charged nearly $1,000 to go to court under a proposed new regulation unveiled on Thursday, a nearly tenfold increase that immigration lawyers warn could make deportation appeals much more difficult to pursue.
The new fee schedule is the latest in a series of moves by the Trump administration to speed up deportations and discourage the arrival of immigrants. Under the same proposal, the administration wants to require asylum seekers to pay a $50 fee to have their cases heard in court; historically, the asylum process has been available to people fleeing persecution regardless of their ability to pay.
In proposing the new fees, the Executive Office for Immigration Review, an arm of the Justice Department, said asking immigrants to pay a greater share of costs would help make sure that court resources were available and would also assure “that U.S. taxpayers do not bear a disproportionate burden in funding the immigration system.”
The proposed fees are now open to public comment for a 30-day period. The fees were last increased in 1986, the agency said, and applicants would continue to be able to apply for waivers if they are unable to pay.
But lawyers representing immigrants said the proposed fees, especially those for asylum applicants, could violate the United States’ legal obligation to provide immigrants fleeing dangerous conditions to a full and fair hearing.
“I think that new proposed regulation is absolutely outrageous and will have draconian consequences on the ability of noncitizens in removal proceedings to be able to navigate and access the system that Congress put in place for the proceedings,” said Trina Realmuto, directing attorney at the American Immigration Council.
The proposed fee for asylum seekers is inconsistent with the concept of welcoming individuals fleeing persecution and torture and amounts to “putting a price tag” on asylum, Ms. Realmuto said.
Another branch of the government, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, has also proposed a sharp increase in fees for immigrants and visa applicants. Fees for permanent residence permits, known as green cards, would increase by $990, to a total of $2,750, and the cost for naturalization of new citizens would increase by $445, to $1,170.
Again and again, the Trump administration has made it more expensive to be an immigrant. The price of bonds for release from immigration detention have gone up for many. And on Monday, a rule went into effect that makes it difficult for immigrants to pursue permanent legal status if they have used public benefits, such as Medicaid and food stamps.
Lawyers who work in immigration courts said many of their clients are already deeply worried they will be unable to afford to fight deportation orders, even when they may have substantial justification for staying in the country.
“There’s just been a sense of panic,” said Matt Adams, legal director for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. “For many of our clients, it basically is an insurmountable obstacle.”
Immigrants who would be hit hardest by the hike are those in immigration detention, Mr. Adams said. Many were the primary breadwinners in their family before being locked up, and they may not even have the chance to file an appeal, he said.
“It’s undermining the very idea of a fair hearing,” he said. “It’s like, ‘You can get a fair hearing, if you have enough money to pay for it.’”
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3) Mother and Daughter Attacked for Speaking Spanish, Prosecutor Says
Officials filed felony hate-crime charges against two women accused of assault in a Boston neighborhood where more than half of the residents are Latino.
By Michael Levenson, February 29, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/us/east-boston-hate-crime-attack.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage
via Lawyers for Civil Rights
The mother and daughter were speaking Spanish while walking home from dinner in a Boston neighborhood where more than half of the residents are Latino, and more than half were born in another country.
Suddenly, two women attacked them on the street — punching, kicking and biting them, according to prosecutors and the mother.
The women yelled: “This is America! Speak English!” according to the mother, who asked to be identified only as Ms. Vasquez to protect the identity of her daughter, who is 15, and to prevent her from being harassed.
On Thursday, prosecutors filed felony hate-crime charges against the two women — Jenny Leigh Ennamorati and Stephanie M. Armstrong, both 25 and both of Revere, Mass. — in connection with the Feb. 15 assault in East Boston.
The episode sparked outrage in Boston, a city with a history of racial strife and violence.
“There is no place for hatred or bigotry in Suffolk County,” said Rachael Rollins, the county district attorney. “The sense of entitlement and privilege these defendants must have felt to utter these hateful and racist words, and then to physically attack a mother and her child for laughing and speaking Spanish is outrageous and reprehensible.”
Ms. Vasquez, 46, said on Saturday that she continued to have nightmares about the assault, and that her daughter remained in a neck brace.
“This was terrible — terrible,” said Ms. Vasquez, a South American immigrant who has lived in East Boston for five years. “Nobody expects to be walking down the street and attacked.”
Ms. Ennamorati and Ms. Armstrong are scheduled to appear in court on March 9 on charges that include two felony counts each of violation of constitutional rights with bodily injury, and two misdemeanor counts each of assault and battery.
There was no answer on Saturday at phone numbers listed for either of the women, and it was not immediately clear if they had lawyers.
Prosectors said both women told the police they had been drinking. A police report indicated that Ms. Ennamorati and Ms. Armstrong believed that Ms. Vasquez and her daughter had been making fun of them in Spanish, which they could not understand.
Ms. Ennamorati and Ms. Armstrong began shouting at the mother and daughter before attacking them, the report states.
A lawyer for Ms. Vasquez, Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, said that law enforcement officials filed charges only after the two of them held a news conference on Monday to draw attention to the case.
Mr. Espinoza-Madrigal said Ms. Vasquez had spoken to the police on the night of the attack, but then sought his legal help because she was frustrated with the slow response.
“Based on the details outlined in the initial police report that was done at the site of the incident, this should have been immediately flagged as a hate crime,” said Mr. Espinoza-Madrigal, the executive director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, a nonprofit based in Boston that fights discrimination on behalf of people of color and immigrants.
“The fact that it wasn’t raises serious questions about the process that law enforcement is using to identify hate crimes and resolve them,” he continued.
Mr. Espinoza-Madrigal said that after the news conference, his office heard from other Latino victims who had experienced racial violence in East Boston, and who said that their cases were not being properly investigated by the police.
East Boston’s foreign-born population has risen to more than 50 percent over the past several decades, and its Latino population has increased to 58 percent in 2015 from 1 percent in 1970, city data show.
“This family’s experience was not an isolated event,” said Janelle Dempsey, another lawyer from Lawyers for Civil Rights. “Acts of racism and xenophobia are alarmingly common in East Boston.”
Sgt. Detective John Boyle, a Boston Police spokesman, said on Saturday that investigators had responded to the attack on Ms. Vasquez and her daughter on the night that it happened.
“We referred this case to our own civil rights unit, which actively worked the investigation right away,” he said.
Sergeant Boyle added that residents in heavily immigrant neighborhoods like East Boston should report crimes, regardless of their immigration status. Boston is a so-called sanctuary city that limits the ability of local law enforcement to cooperate in handing over immigrants for deportation to the federal authorities.
“If they are undocumented, we will treat them as a victim and nothing else,” Sergeant Boyle said. “No one should be afraid to come to the police if they are a victim of a crime.”
Mr. Espinoza-Madrigal said the attack, which happened at about 8 p.m. near a train station, was captured on surveillance video from a nearby business.
The video shows a woman pointing and appearing to yell before punching another woman. Several people standing nearby also appear to be pushing and shoving one another before police officers arrived. Ms. Rollins, the district attorney, said several bystanders also stepped in to help.
Ms. Vasquez said that despite being badly shaken by the assault, she hoped the charges would encourage other immigrants, even if they are undocumented, to report crimes to the police.
“No one,” she said, “has the right to attack us.”
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4) In Tense Labor Standoff, Baristas Accuse Service Company of Abuse and Pay Gaps
A union representing employees at airport Starbucks locations says immigrant, transgender and black baristas have faced discrimination.
"In its survey, the union said that the median pay for black baristas was less than for white baristas, based on an analysis of wage data for more than 2,000 unionized employees."
By Maria Cramer, March 1, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/us/starbucks-discrimination-race.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage
Phelan M. Ebenhack for The New York Times
One transgender barista said his supervisors kept writing “Jessica” instead of Jay on his work schedule.
They stared at his stubble and frowned at his deepening voice. A manager even laughed when he told her to stop referring to him as “she,” said the barista, Jay Kelly, who works at a Starbucks at Orlando International Airport in Florida.
“It’s like a bullet to my heart,” he said. “They look at me like I’m disgusting or like I’m not human or a type of animal that doesn’t belong in that airport.”
Mr. Kelly, 25, is one of some 300 employees who responded to a union survey about conditions working for HMSHost, a travel food service company that has long operated Starbucks and other coffee shops in airports nationwide. His allegations and others’ — including that dozens of employees were told to speak English — were made in a report the union released amid tense negotiations with HMSHost, and as labor groups reach out to marginalized people to increase their membership.
HMSHost denied any discrimination and accused the union, UNITE HERE, of spreading false information to gain leverage at the bargaining table. “We do not discriminate against any associate based on race, ethnicity, national origin, L.G.B.T.Q. status or any other reason,” the company said in a statement. “Our fair treatment policy ensures an open and inclusive environment.”
Laura FitzRandolph, HMSHost’s chief human resources officer, said the company took complaints of discrimination seriously.
“If an issue comes to our attention, as in this case, we swiftly investigate and resolve it,” she said in a statement.
In its survey, the union said that the median pay for black baristas was less than for white baristas, based on an analysis of wage data for more than 2,000 unionized employees.
In its statement, HMSHost said the pay analysis was misleading and accused the union of using isolated complaints to undermine the company and unionize more shops. UNITE HERE has been organizing at Starbucks airport locations in Orlando, Denver and other cities.
“The union has deployed a well-known tactic of using the media to frame its false narrative to negotiate these agreements,” the company said. HMSHost declined to comment on specific allegations, employees or managers, citing privacy concerns.
Caught between the union and HMSHost is Starbucks, which does not employ the workers who wear its signature green aprons.
Adam Yalowitz, a research coordinator with UNITE HERE, said the union wanted Starbucks to pressure HMSHost to improve conditions for the employees and to emulate the more progressive policies of Starbucks, which has touted its support of gay marriage, adapted its computer system to reflect the preferred names of employees and added coverage of sex reassignment surgery to the company’s health benefits.
“Workers are publicly calling on Starbucks to fix the problems at these stores,” Mr. Yalowitz said.
A Starbucks spokesman referred questions to HMSHost.
The union’s focus on transgender issues is the latest effort by labor organizations to tap into social groups that have felt disempoweredto mobilize workers, said Jonathan Cutler, a sociology professor at Wesleyan University who has written about the labor movement.
“Organized labor often lives or dies by its ability to tap into broader social movements,” he said. “In this case, you’re seeing the most public effort to organize around transgender issues.”
The union said the employee data showed that 79 percent of workers were women and 64 percent were black or Latino. Many of them are gay or transgender, according to the union.
These are key demographics for unions like UNITE HERE, which tend to represent workers in low-wage industries, said Kate Bronfenbrenner, the director of labor education research at Cornell University.
“Women and people of color, those are the workers most likely to organize,” she said. Unions “have to be strategic and work with their community allies. And the L.G.B.T.Q. community, particularly the people of color in the L.G.B.T.Q. community, are often very good allies.”
UNITE HERE released the survey results in a report that featured photos and accounts by Mr. Kelly and other baristas around the country, including Martha Mendoza, a barista at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport who said her manager scolded her because she spoke English with an accent, and Connie Fong, a barista at Portland International Airport who said her supervisor chanted “build the wall” at her.
Several transgender employees asserted in the report that managers refused to use their correct pronouns, or had referred to them by their “dead names,” the names they were given at birth and no longer use.
The report also quoted a former barista in Orlando who said he believed he was fired because he tried to organize workers.
Ninety-six immigrants responded to the survey. More than a quarter of them said they were told to stop speaking foreign languages at work, according to the report.
HMSHost said the survey was based on a questionnaire that “contained deceptive and leading language.” The company noted that only 13 percent of unionized employees responded to it “despite the pressure some associates reportedly felt to complete the questionnaire.”
Union officials said they analyzed wage data for a nine-month period in 2019 and found that the median pay for black baristas was $1.85 an hour less than it was for white baristas working at Starbucks in 27 U.S. airports.
The company said the median pay figures the union reported did not account for where employees lived, since wages vary according to the cost of living around the country.
“All wage rates have been negotiated and agreed upon by the union during the collective bargaining process with HMSHost and these rates are not based on race,” the company said.
The union is pushing HMSHost to increase its hourly minimum wage to $15 and to provide benefits in line with what Starbucks offers its employees, like full tuition reimbursement.
Union officials said the survey found that many employees, who earn an average of $13.12 an hour, often had a difficult time paying their rent or paying for food. Some have had to sleep at the airport because they could not afford to take a taxi or Uber back home after a late shift, they said.
In 2018, after Starbucks employees in Philadelphia called the police on two black men who asked to use the store bathroom, Starbucks shut down its 8,000 stores for one day so employees could receive anti-bias training. HMSHost locations, as well as other Starbucks-licensed stores in supermarkets and hotels, did not offer the training at the time.
According to HMSHost, the company offers training on anti-discrimination, and harassment and nondiscrimination language has been written into collective bargaining agreements.
Lacreshia Lewis, 27, who works with Mr. Kelly in Orlando, said she and other workers regularly write in Mr. Kelly’s name for him on the schedule. She has confronted managers about their refusal to use the right pronouns.
“They say, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize it,’ or try to play it off,” she said. “I think they’re purposely trying to misgender him.”
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5) Justice Dept. Establishes Office to Denaturalize Immigrants
The department called the decision a move “to bring justice to terrorists, war criminals, sex offenders and other fraudsters,” but some lawyers there feared a broader crackdown.
By Katie Benner, February 26, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/us/politics/denaturalization-immigrants-justice-department.html?referringSource=articleShare
Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said Wednesday that it had created an official section in its immigration office to strip citizenship rights from naturalized immigrants, a move that gives more heft to the Trump administration’s broad efforts to remove from the country immigrants who have committed crimes.
The Denaturalization Section “underscores the department’s commitment to bring justice to terrorists, war criminals, sex offenders and other fraudsters who illegally obtained naturalization,” Joseph H. Hunt, the head of the Justice Department’s civil division, said in a statement.
“The Denaturalization Section will further the department’s efforts to pursue those who unlawfully obtained citizenship status and ensure that they are held accountable for their fraudulent conduct,” Mr. Hunt said.
The move promises to further expand a practice that was once used infrequently, but that the Trump administration has increasingly turned to as part of its immigration crackdown. It has raised alarms among some department lawyers who fear denaturalization lawsuits could be used against immigrants who have not committed serious crimes.
Critics say that the administration’s desire to prioritize denaturalizations underscores the idea that naturalized citizens have fewer rights than those born in the United States, and that immigrants should not assume that they cannot be deported even if they go through the naturalization process.
The new section will replace the team of immigration lawyers who have been asked to focus on cases that revoke citizenship from those who have been convicted of terrorism, war crimes, human rights violations and sex offenses.
The department has not announced who will lead the office, but several department officials and lawyers expected Timothy Belsan, who has taken the lead on the department’s denaturalization work, to assume that role. Mr. Belsan helped to revoke the citizenship rights of a Yugoslavian-born convicted war criminal who omitted from her naturalization application the fact that she had executed unarmed civilians during the 1990s Balkan conflicts.
The Justice Department under President Barack Obama also pursued denaturalizations, and it targeted people who had lied on their applications and committed other crimes.
But denaturalizations have ramped up under the Trump administration: Of the 228 denaturalization cases that the department has filed since 2008, about 40 percent of them were filed since 2017, according to official department numbers.
And over the past three years, denaturalization case referrals to the department have increased 600 percent.
From the earliest days of the Trump administration, officials including Stephen Miller, the White House aide who has driven much of President Trump’s immigration policy, said denaturalization could be used as part of a broad pushback on immigration.
Some Justice Department immigration lawyers have expressed worries that denaturalizations could be broadly used to strip citizenship, according to two lawyers who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
They cite the fact that the department can pursue denaturalization lawsuits against people who commit fraud, as it did against four people who lied about being related to become U.S. citizens. Fraud can be broadly defined, and include smaller infractions like misstatements on the citizenship application.
But a Justice Department official said the new section would prioritize people who have committed serious violations of law.
When the department announced the new section, it cited successful denaturalization cases including a naturalized citizen who had recruited for Al Qaeda in the United States and one who had sexually abused a 7-year-old family member.
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*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*6) We Represented the Whistle-Blower. The Law Needs Urgent Help.
Future whistle-blowers must be persuaded that while there are always risks, the system can protect them.
By Andrew P. Bakaj and Mark S. Zaid, March 1, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/opinion/whistleblower-intelligence-community.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Mark Ralston/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Whistle-blowers are needed now more than ever. They must be persuaded that while there are always risks, the system can protect them.
We served as the attorneys for the intelligence community whistle-blower, and every step of the way we sought to protect them from reprisal, threats and disclosure of their identity. The last six months have tested the boundaries of the integrity of our country’s whistle-blower protections, not just from the framework of the law but also with respect to public perception.
We were honored to represent the whistle-blower, who has smoothly transitioned to new counsel — but we will continue to work, as we have for years, to strengthen the intelligence community whistle-blower system for future whistle-blowers.
This case showed that the whistle-blower disclosure process can work, although there is much to be done to reinforce it. After the complaint was filed with the intelligence community’s inspector general in August 2019, it made its way to Congress for oversight. Though the White House and the Department of Justice sought to block its progress, pressure from the legal team, Congress and the public forced the system to work. Was this perfect? No. But it ensured the serious allegations of misconduct reached the right people.
Our former client faced, and still faces, a sustained public campaign of intimidation — including repeated tweets by President Trump and other senior figures that the whistle-blower must be publicly outed — despite having participated in an established and encouraged process that guaranteed them certain protections under the law. Even members of Congress, individuals within the very body that created the statutory protections that exist for whistle-blowers, sought to expose the whistle-blower for political purposes and created harmful doubts concerning the integrity of the system.
Joseph Maguire, until last week the acting director of national intelligence and himself an appointee of Mr. Trump, stated in public testimony last September that the whistle-blower “acted in good faith and followed the law every step of the way.” The whistle-blower demonstrated that one can ensure that legitimate oversight occurs within the confines of the law and the policies and procedures of the intelligence community.
Whistle-blowers play a particularly critical role in Congress’s ability to oversee the intelligence community. As the executive branch controls classified information, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are reliant on inspectors general and whistle-blowers to conduct their constitutionally mandated oversight over federal agencies and even the president of the United States.
In correspondence dated Oct. 22, 2019, the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, composed of dozens of appointees, made it clear that “whistle-blowers play an essential public service in coming forward” by reporting their reasonable belief of waste, fraud, abuse and misconduct — and that whistle-blowers “should never suffer reprisal or even the threat of reprisal for doing so.” Significantly, the letter quotes Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, chairman and a co-founder of the Senate’s Whistleblower Protection Caucus, who noted recently that whistle-blowers “ought to be heard out and protected” and “we should always work to respect whistle-blowers’ requests for confidentiality.”
Members of the intelligence community, whether they are federal employees or government contractors, must follow the law in disclosing their reasonable belief of a violation of law, rule, regulation or an abuse of authority. They cannot avail themselves of whistle-blower channels available to other federal employees because they deal almost exclusively with classified information, the unauthorized disclosure of which could cause grave harm to our national security. It is for these reasons that Congress created a specific process where members of the intelligence community may disclose such information lawfully through an Office of Inspector General.
So when certain members of Congress attack a lawful whistle-blower, as our former client is, they jeopardize their own constitutional right to conduct oversight over the executive branch and intelligence-related matters. Rather than weakening the system, members of Congress should seek to strengthen it so they can be effective in their constitutionally mandated oversight role. That could include, but not be limited to, imposing penalties for exposing or intimidating lawful whistle-blowers and their attorneys, broadening the definition of whistle-blower retaliation beyond employment-related actions and creating a more direct path for intelligence community employees to report wrongdoing to Congress involving White House officials and even the president. We are ready to work with congressional members on both the left and the right to strengthen the system.
We hope our former client’s moral courage and personal integrity will inspire others to follow the law and speak up when they see something they reasonably believe to be wrong. All government leaders should encourage the process: Protecting whistle-blowers should never be a partisan activity. Lawful whistle-blowers should always — always — be protected from reprisal. That is the foundation of our democracy.
Andrew P. Bakaj (@AndrewBakaj) and Mark S. Zaid (@MarkSZaidEsq) are lawyers in Washington who previously represented the intelligence community whistle-blower. They are affiliated with WhistleblowerAid.org, which provides pro bono representation to whistle-blowers.
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7) The Lasting Effects of Stop-and-Frisk in Bloomberg’s New York
The full impact of the policy goes well beyond crime, including clouding some of the prized parts of the former mayor’s legacy.
By Emily Badger, March 2, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/upshot/stop-and-frisk-bloomberg.html
Idris Solomon/Reuters
In the years since Michael Bloomberg left the mayor’s office in New York, the legacy of stop-and-frisk policing widely used during his administration has become clearer. Crime in the city continued to decline, suggesting that the aggressive use of police stops wasn’t so essential to New York’s safety after all.
And evidence has emerged of the harms created by the strategy. We now know that students heavily exposed to stop-and-frisk were more likely to struggle in school, that young men were more likely to experience symptoms of anxiety and depression, that this exposure fostered cynicism in policing and government writ large, and that it made residents more likely to retreat from civic life.
In effect, Mr. Bloomberg’s policing record — one of his greatest liabilities as voters begin to appraise him at the ballot box — may have clouded the other accomplishments that form the strongest case for his bid as president, in areas like education, public health and good government.
Data suggests that the vast majority of street stops made by the police in New York at the height of stop-and-frisk weren’t particularly helpful in fighting crime: Few led to arrests or uncovered weapons. But research has found that a small subset of stops, those based on specific suspicions by officers and not general sweeps or racial profiling, do appear to have helped reduce crime.
The problem with stop-and-frisk (and the legal objections to it in New York) lay with the much larger universe of essentially unproductive stops.
“Who’s being affected by that?” said John MacDonald, a professor of criminology and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s going to be people who, for example, may be likely voters, who are trying to go to school, who are afraid because they normally wouldn’t have interactions with police that are intrusive. That’s not your average offender. That’s your average citizen.”
For that group of people, who were disproportionately black and Hispanic in New York, the effects of stop-and-frisk didn’t end when individual police encounters did, or even as the policy wound down.
“It’s not just that a stop happens, and a minute later it’s all over, and it was a temporary nuisance,” said Andrew Bacher-Hicks, a doctoral candidate in public policy at Harvard. “There are in fact long-lasting effects of exposure to high levels of stop-and-frisk.”
Recent research by Mr. Bacher-Hicks and Elijah de la Campa found that black middle-school students exposed to more aggressive policing were more likely to later drop out of school and less likely to enroll in college.
The researchers looked at parts of New York that had many stops, not necessarily because those places had high crime or other correlated factors, but because they happened to be assigned a precinct commander who was more likely to advocate frequent stops. Within these neighborhoods, students may not have been stopped themselves. But they went to school in communities where this kind of policing was pervasive.
The negative effects on education appeared for girls, too, even though they were far less likely to be stopped by police than boys or young men. That implies, the researchers suggest, that something deeply embedded in the girls’ environment — like fear or distrust of authority that students learned from it — might have hindered their education. More police stops, the researchers found, were also associated with chronic absenteeism.
That study adds to other research in New York finding that black male students who were more exposed to stop-and-frisk had lower test scores. And other research using surveys about experiences with the police has found that students around the country who were arrested or stopped, or who witnessed these encounters or knew of others involved, had worse grades.
That these effects appear strongest for black students suggests that aggressive policing could worsen racial achievement gaps in school as well.
“All these kinds of disadvantages can accrue and build up,” said Aaron Gottlieb, a professor at the Jane Addams College of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who has studied policing and student grades. “Let’s say a police stop reduces the likelihood that you go to college. That’s going to impact your earnings in the long run.”
Other research shows that negative interactions with the police can shape how residents think about government and civic institutions, and even democracy more broadly.
“It teaches something really important — and something really negative — about what agents of the state and bureaucracies are supposed to be doing in your community, what role they play, what their character is,” said Amy Lerman, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley.
She and Vesla Weaver, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins, have found that even minor encounters with police can reduce the likelihood of voting, a pattern other research of stop-and-frisk in New York has documented as well. Ms. Lerman and Ms. Weaver have shown that aggressive stop-and-frisk tactics can even have a chilling effect on whether residents use a service like 3-1-1 to report issues that have nothing to do with crime at all.
In the speech Mr. Bloomberg gave on stop-and-frisk last November, when he first apologized for the practice before announcing his campaign for president, he suggested that he had come to understand some of these deeper consequences, including the ways that the policy had damaged faith in law enforcement and government.
“The erosion of trust bothered me — deeply,” he said at the time. “And it still bothers me. And I want to earn it back.”
As more voters have come to hear his mea culpa, it has grown shorter, less nuanced. On the debate stage, Mr. Bloomberg has framed it as a wrong decision in hindsight, now behind him. But that is not quite the right lesson, researchers say, either for the mayor who would be president, or for the public having a reckoning with stop-and-frisk, too.
The full consequences are not behind residents, or the city. And the question now, Mr. MacDonald said, isn’t really to stop-and-frisk or not to stop-and-frisk. More limited (and constitutional) police stops can still be effective at curbing crime and removing guns from streets. It’s the mass deployment — touching students on their way to school; citizens who need city services; likely voters — that produces few benefits and broader damage.
Mr. MacDonald cited an analogy from former New York City police commissioner Bill Bratton: Stop-and-frisk is like chemotherapy to treat cancer. A little of it can help. Too much can be fatal.
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8) Avoiding Coronavirus May Be a Luxury Some Workers Can’t Afford
A sick day? Remote work? Not so easy if your job is at a restaurant, a day care center or a construction site.
"The disparity could make the new coronavirus, which causes a respiratory illness known as Covid-19, harder to contain in the United States than in other rich countries that have universal benefits like health care and sick leave, experts say. A large segment of workers are not able to stay home, and many of them work in jobs that include high contact with other people. It could also mean that low-income workers are hit harder by the virus....In the United States, some 27.5 million people lack any form of health insurance."
By Claire Cain Miller, Sarah Kliff and Margot Sanger-Katz, March 2, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/upshot/coronavirus-sick-days-service-workers.html
Justin J Wee for The New York Times
Stay home from work if you get sick. See a doctor. Use a separate bathroom from the people you live with. Prepare for schools to close, and to work from home. These are measures the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended to slow a coronavirus outbreak in the United States.
Yet these are much easier to do for certain people — in particular, high-earning professionals. Service industry workers, like those in restaurants, retail, child care and the gig economy, are much less likely to have paid sick days, the ability to work remotely or employer-provided health insurance.
The disparity could make the new coronavirus, which causes a respiratory illness known as Covid-19, harder to contain in the United States than in other rich countries that have universal benefits like health care and sick leave, experts say. A large segment of workers are not able to stay home, and many of them work in jobs that include high contact with other people. It could also mean that low-income workers are hit harder by the virus.
“Very quickly, it’s going to circulate a lot faster in the poorer communities than the wealthiest ones,” said Dr. James Hadler, Connecticut’s former state epidemiologist and now a consultant to the state. His work has found that influenza infections tend to strike low-income neighborhoods more aggressively than affluent ones, and that poor families are more likely to live in close quarters with others, and to share bathrooms.
Unequal access to precautionary measures cuts along the same lines that divide the United States in other ways: income, education and race.
“It’s definitely an equity issue,” said Alex Baptiste, policy counsel for workplace programs at the National Partnership for Women & Families, a nonprofit advocacy group. “You have not just an economic disparity but also a racial disparity between who has that access and can take care of themselves and their families.”
Portia Green, 33, is a restaurant worker in New York. She has no paid sick leave or health insurance. If schools closed, as a single mother she’d have no child care. A day off work means losing around $100 in pay, she said, and if she had to take more than a few days off, losing her job. The restaurants she has worked for are too understaffed to call in backup workers easily, she said, and the expectation is that you show up unless you’re “green.”
“They’re going to push you to do it anyway,” said Ms. Green, who is a member of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United in New York, an advocacy group. “You go to work, pop a vitamin C and if you can do it, you do it.”
The biggest disparity for workers is access to health care: In the United States, some 27.5 million people lack any form of health insurance. That makes them less likely to seek medical care when they become ill or to have access to preventive health benefits that can help them stave off illness. The uninsured are disproportionately low income.
Workers also have unequal access to remote working. The government recommended that people work from home in a coronavirus outbreak, but just 29 percent of American workers can do so, according to Labor Department data. They are most likely to be highly educated and high earners.
On an average day, 35 percent of the highest earners and 8 percent of the lowest earners spend some time working from home. Managers and professionals are most likely to do so, and service industry and construction workers least likely. Nearly half of workers with a graduate degree do some of their work from home, as do a third of those with a college degree. Just 12 percent of those who didn’t attend college work from home.
For many workers, being sick means choosing between staying home and getting paid. One-quarter of workers have no access to paid sick days, according to Labor Department data: two-thirds of the lowest earners but just 6 percent of the highest earners. Just a handful of states and local governments have passed sick leave laws.
Only 60 percent of workers in service occupations can take paid time off when they are ill — and they are also more likely than white-collar workers to come in contact with other people’s bodies or food.
“When you’re talking about paid leave and who should stay home, it’s the ones who need it most that don’t have access to it, the ones showing up at work sick touching your food, touching your bags, coming into everyday contact with your direct life,” said Kris Garcia, 43, an airport worker in Denver.
He will not receive paid sick days until he works at his job half a year, and even then, plans to save them for dealing with a chronic disease, hemophilia. “I think people should stay home,” said Mr. Garcia, who is helping an advocacy group on issues like paid leave called Family Values at Work. “But I know I’d need my infusions, whereas if I’m coughing and have a fever, I could push through five hours.”
Evidence shows that paid sick time reduces the spread of illness. A working paper on state laws that require employers to offer paid sick leave found that statewide influenza infections fell 11 percent in the first year after enactment compared with places that made no such change. An earlier paper, on city laws, showed a similar, but smaller, effect. (There are differences between influenza and the new coronavirus, but the two diseases are transmitted in similar ways.)
“It’s very clear: When people don’t have access to sick leave, they go to work sick and spread diseases,” said Nicolas Ziebarth, an associate professor of economics at Cornell University, who was a co-author on both papers.
Still, paid sick time works only if people take it. Even when workers have paid sick leave, American culture often rewards going to work at all costs. In an average month, one in 10 workers said they needed to take leave but did not, and the most common reason was for their own illnesses, according to Labor Department data.
The top reasons for not taking it when they needed it: having too much work, fearing negative repercussions or being unable to afford a day off.
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