Dear readers, many of the events and actions scheduled have been cancelled due to the Coronavirus. Please check websites listed to check on cancellations.

—Bonnie Weinstein

------------------------------------------------------*

I tried to circulate this post on Facebook but it was determined to "Go against our Community Standards on spam"

—Bonnie Weinstein

How Cuba is Leading the World in the Fight Against Coronavirus
As Cuba sends doctors around the world to fight coronavirus, a Cuban antiviral drug is helping stem the tide of the outbreak.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/cuba-leading-world-fight-against-coronavirus/265771/

------------------------------------------------------*

New 48 Hours tv show on Kevin Cooper, this Saturday, March 21, 10pm

------------------------------------------------------*

https://myemail.constantcontact.com/3-16-2020---anniversary-of-betrayal-of-Al-Amin.html?soid=1109359583686&aid=pWjZtJNlqg8

JUSTICE INITIATIVE

March 16, 2020, is the 20th Anniversary

of the killing in Atlanta that led to the unconscionable imprisonment of Jamil Al-Amin

_____

About Jamil Al-Amin,
the former H. Rap Brown

Heather Gray

March 16, 2020

Justice Initiative

(Link to article)

Foreword


H. Rap Brown (now Jamil-Al-Amin)

I had first sent out this article below in 2018 about Jamil Al-Amin. Given this is the 20th anniversary of the March 16, 2000 killing of Atlanta Deputy Sheriff Ricky Kinchen, which led to accusations about Al-Amin as the killer, I am sending this out yet again. All of this insane case of accusations against Al-Amin, when Otis Jackson admitted to the killing, is, to me, an indication that the federal government has anxiously wanted to get profound and influential leaders, such as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, assassinated or, in Jamil Al-Amin's case, away from the masses by having him in prison.

This is a partial update of his important history. But, to grasp the importance of his case, this early history is essential. There will be more updates, including about the recent Atlanta hearing in the court on his case and the subsequent legal decisions and considerations.

Being involved in the civil rights movement in the 'South', in the 1960s, means that you would know and/or hear about the great H. Rap Brown (now known as Jamil Al-Amin) in his early organizing work for justice, such as in Alabama. This was prior to his remarkable activism north of the Mason Dixon line. Yes, Brown and others were challenging Alabama's Governor George Wallace and the prevailing white supremacy that denied Blacks virtually everything in terms of what is referred to as democratic rights. The unjust and racist system was entrenched in the South and in the country as a whole, resulting in H. Rap Brown, along with his Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) colleagues, challenging it all.

The activism in the Brown family is and remains remarkable. H. Rap Brown's older brother, the late Ed Brown, was also engaged in every conceivable movement for justice across the South. Originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Ed was ultimately living in Atlanta where he served as the head of the Voter Education Project and other leadership roles. Throughout his on-going career, wherever there was an issue of injustice to be addressed, Ed Brown was there on the front lines, which included, of course, the South African anti-apartheid movement. He was a very dear friend of mine.

H. Rap Brown ultimately took the name of Jamil Al-Amin and, as a Muslim leader, was the influential Imam in Atlanta's West End where he consistently attempted, among other missions, to end the drug invasion in the West End community. Then, in 2000, as mentioned, the Atlanta Deputy Sheriff Ricky Kinchen was killed and Al-Amin was accused of this crime, yet, to repeat, all the indications are that he was not the killer. In fact, as from the 'Fact Sheet' below, "Evidence that an individual, Otis Jackson, confessed to being the shooter on the evening of March 16, 2000, was never introduced at trial by the prosecution or defense-Otis Jackson continues to maintain that he was the assailant."

When Jamil Al-Amin was first in prison in Atlanta for this alleged crime, I visited him briefly along with Alabama attorney J.L. Chestnut. Chestnut had been defending Al-Amin for years while Al-Amin was engaged in the civil rights movement in Alabama.

During the 2002 trial, that ended in the conviction of Jamil Al-Amin, we consistently held radio shows on WRFG-Atlanta, along with Al-Amin's brother Ed Brown, regarding updates of the trial and many of us, including myself, were observers in the courtroom.

Al-Amin is now in the United States Prison (USP) in Tucson, Arizona where he is housed in the general population. He continues to declare his innocence.

In fact, tonight on WRFG-Atlanta (89.3FM) at 6 PM on the Just Peace program, that I host, along with co-producer Ernest Dunkley, we will interview one of Al-Amin's attorney's, Musa Dan-Fodio, along with Bilal Sunni Ali who is a long time colleague of Jamil Al-Amin. We will explore with them, the history of Jamil Al-Amin as well as an update of his on-going legal case.

FACT SHEET ON THE CASE OF

JAMIL ABDULLAH AL-AMIN

Jamil Al-Amin

WHO IS JAMIL AL-AMIN?

Imam Jamil Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, was sentenced to life without parole in the Georgia prison system. He became involved in the civil/human rights movement primarily in the southern part of the United States as early as 1962. As a result of his participation, speech-making, and subsequent election as Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), in May 1967, the United States government targeted him in its illegal surveillance and entrapment programs, specifically COINTELPRO, initiated by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.


	*"We Protest the Violation of Imam Jamil's Basic Rights"* Ed Brown in the center wearing a white shirt - Photo: Heather Gray (2006)

During his earlier years, the United States government and its state and local branches charged and imprisoned him for counseling to arson, inciting to arson and riot, federal firearms violations, and bond violations. These charges were fabricated and unfounded. By 1968 while under house arrest, U.S. Congress members, and governors were calling for law enforcement to arrest him, and "slam the doors" of the prisons behind him. On April 11, 1968, the "Rap Brown" Federal Anti-Riot Act passed as an amendment to fair housing law. This law against dissent made it illegal to travel from one state to another, write a letter, make a telephone call, or speak n radio or television with the "intent" to encourage any person to participate in a riot. By 1970, Imam Jamil was placed on the FBI's "10 Most Wanted List," simply for failing to appear for trial on the fabricated 'inciting to arson and riot' charges.

From 1971 until 1976, Imam Jamil was imprisoned in the State of New York on charges related to eradicating drug activity in African American communities. Upon his release, he relocated to Atlanta, Georgia, where he immediately began to establish and organize a Muslim community. He devoted years to traveling throughout the United States, the Sudan, Pakistan, India, the West Indies, and Saudi Arabia. He also served on boards of major Islamic organizations with a national and international agenda. After 24 years, he was arrested on March 20, 2000, and charged with the death of one and the assault of another Fulton County Georgia Sheriff's deputy.

FACT SHEET ON THE CASE OF
JAMIL ABDULLAH AL-AMIN

The Case of Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin


	Al-Amin with his son

In January 2002, the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia summoned a jury pool of approximately 1500 residents of the county to be considered to serve as jurors in the case against Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin. Charged with 13 counts, including the murder of one Fulton County sheriff's deputy and the wounding of another deputy on the evening of March 16, 2000, Imam Jamil retained a team of four attorneys to present his defense. The jury of nine African Americans, two Caucasians, and one Hispanic took less than 10 hours to reach its verdict in the three-week trial. The sentencing phase began on March 11, 2002, with relatives of the deputies reading victim impact statements. For three days, Imam Jamil's defense team called 20 character witnesses. On March 14, 2002, the same jury that found Imam Jamil guilty of all 13 counts of the indictment, pronounced the sentence of life without the possibility of parole on the murder and felony murder counts. In addition, the presiding judge imposed an additional 30 years to the sentence as punishment on the remaining 11 counts.

The jury declined to pronounce the death penalty. Imam Jamil immediately was moved to Georgia's maximum security state prison in Reidsville, Georgia. He remained in Reidsville in a 23-hour involuntary lock-down until Georgia turned him over to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. On August 1, 2007, with no federal charges or convictions, Imam Jamil was moved to the Supermax ADMAX USP in Florence, Colorado.


Photo: Heather Gray (2006)

As a Georgia state prisoner, Imam Jamil was transferred into federal custody based on a March 1990 Agreement between Georgia and the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) to house an inmate for the state, Georgia turned Imam Jamil over to the FBOP after determining that Muslin Georgie inmates wanted him to serve as the Imam for all Georgia state inmates. The Department of Corrections, along with the FBI, maintained that this "solidarity movement" would be a "threat" to the security of the Georgia prison system. With the prompting of the FBI, Georgia conceded to the transfer, although Georgia maintained that it was not recommending any particular prison for Imam Jamil to be held.

Imam Jamil remained at the Florence ADX in solitary conﬁnement for seven years. His status at Florence as a state prisoner prevented him from participating in the institution's step-down program. As a result, he remained in limbo while other federal inmates had the capability to work their way out of solitary confinement to another federal institution.

APPEALING THE CONVICTION

Rally in support of Jamil Al-Amin in Atlanta, GA

Photo: Heather Gray (2006)

Imam Jamil continues to challenge his Georgia conviction. There is consensus that Imam Jamil was convicted well before the jury announced its verdict. Contradictions highlighted during the trial and comments made by the prosecution smacked at First Amendment rights. Moreover, Imam Jamil's history as a civil/human rights leader at the time of the trial spanned nearly 35 years of government surveillance and harassment. Additionally, before the trial ended, the trial judge ruled that the Imam's initial May 31, 1999 stop, search, and arrest by the Cobb County police officer indeed was an illegal and unjustified stop.

Supporters continue to raise the following issues that surfaced during the trial:

* Prosecution almost systematically eliminated older African American women who could have been expected to have some knowledge of the FBI's COINTELPRO program, which targeted African American leaders.

* Deputies stated that one or even both deputies had shot the assailant.

* The surviving deputy was emphatic when describing the assailant as having grey eyes - Imam's eyes are brown.

* The crime scene contained blood on the street and in a neighboring abandoned house, however, the blood was discounted.

* The deputies offered conflicting accounts of the description of the assailant and clothing worn - the description did not match the Imam.

* The testimony of 911 tapes confirming reports of a wounded person in the area of the Imam's store on the night of the shooting was not admitted into evidence.

* The Imam's fingerprints were not found on any firearm associated with the crime.

* Pieces of evidence relating to the sheriff's vehicle were either lost or destroyed prior to court proceedings.

* FBI agent Ron Campbell who admitted to kicking and spitting on the Imam during the White Hall, Alabama arrest, escaped total scrutiny as to his role in the case; and local residents refuted the account of the U.S. Marshals who claimed the lmam shot at them in White Hall.

* Evidence that an individual, Otis Jackson, confessed to being the shooter on the evening of March 16, 2000, was never introduced at trial by the prosecution or defense-Otis Jackson continues to maintain that he was the assailant.

Imam Jamil's federal habeas addresses discrepancies as well as constitutional errors that occurred during the Georgia trial that resulted in his conviction. His federal appeal will continue, during 2018, before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, asserting among other issues that the prosecutor's closing argument and actions were not "harmless error," therefore, the conviction should be overturned.

AN UPDATE


Free Jamil Al-Amin Photo: Heather Gray (2006)

In 2013, lmam Jamil became ill with a dental problem that ultimately caused two abscesses that the Florence FBOP ADX medical staff ignored. As a result of a major campaign by family members, human rights activists, organizations, supporters and ultimately Congressional reps, the Imam received tests that indicated the presence of a stage of multiple myeloma, cancer of the plasma cells, which required a bone marrow biopsy. After further public pressure urging the FBOP to stop the "execution by medical neglect" of the Imam, he was moved on July 15, 2014, from the Florence supermax prison to the federal Butner Medical Center, in North Carolina.

On July 23, 2014, at the Butner FMC, Imam Jamil received medical results that he had smoldering myeloma, an intermediate pre-cursor stage of multiple myeloma, which needed to be monitored. He was moved from Butner, in October 2014, to the USP Canaan federal prison, in Waymart, PA, where he was placed in the general population after 14 years of being subjected to administrative and solitary confinement.

Supporters continue to urge the FBOP to monitor the Imam's medical condition and to provide quality treatment at a facility in a warmer climate, Imam Jamil subsequently was moved, in December 2015, from Waymart to the USP, in Tucson, Arizona where he is housed in the general population. He continues to declare his innocence, and supporters are advocating for his return to a Georgia facility where he will be able to assist his legal team is appealing his conviction.

# # #

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

To unsubscribe contact: http://freedomarchives.org/mailman/options/ppnews_freedomarchives.org

------------------------------------------------------*

Chelsea Manning Ordered Free From Prison

Natasha Lennard - March 12, 2020

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/12/chelsea-manning-judge-order-released/

Chelsea Manning, photographed in Washington, D.C., in January 2018.

Photo: Jesse Dittmar/Redux

On Thursday afternoon,a District Court judge in Virginia ordered that Chelsea Manning be released from jail, where she has been held since last May for refusing to testify before a grand jury.

The ruling itself is striking in what it fails to recognize. “The court finds Ms. Manning’s appearance before the Grand Jury is no longer needed, in light of which her detention no longer serves any coercive purpose,” the judge noted. The fact that the coercive purpose of Manning’s detention had long been shown to be absent — Manning has proven herself incoercible beyond any doubt — was not mentioned. Nor was the fact that on Wednesday, Manning attempted suicide. It was the most absolute evidence that she could not be coerced: She would sooner die.

She endured months of extreme suffering, driving her to near death, but never wavered on her principled refusal to speak.

While Manning’s release is vastly long overdue and most welcome, the framing and timing of the decision are galling. On Friday, Manning was scheduled to appear at a court hearing on a motion to end her continued imprisonment, predicated on her unshakeable resistance proving coercion to be impossible, and her incarceration therefore illegal. She endured months of extreme suffering, driving her to near death, but never wavered on her principled refusal to speak.

The day before this hearing — and the day after she made an attempt on her own life — the judge ruled that Manning is “no longer needed” by the grand jury. The court did not recognize that she is incoercible, nor that her detainment had become punitive. Indeed, a profoundly punitive element of her treatment will remain, even after her release: The judge denied a motion to vacate the exorbitant fines Manning faces. She owes the state $256,000, which she is expected to pay, even though the fines were only accrued on the condition that they might coerce her to speak.

Again and again, Manning and her legal team showed that her imprisonment was nothing but punitive, and thus unjustifiable under the legal statutes governing federal grand juries. Yet for nearly a year, Manning has been caged and fined $1,000 per day. Ever since she was subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury, which is investigating WikiLeaks, Manning has also insisted that there was never any justifiable purpose to asking her to testify.

As her support committee noted in a statement last May, “Chelsea gave voluminous testimony during her court martial. She has stood by the truth of her prior statements, and there is no legitimate purpose to having her rehash them before a hostile grand jury.”

For the court to admit, after nearly a year of torturous treatment, that further testimony from her is unnecessary adds insult to very real injury.

The government’s treatment of Manning has been putrid and continues to be — especially as she remains under the yoke of state-enforced financial ruin. For her unwavering resistance to government oppression, in the name of social justice struggle and press freedom, Manning is owed our deepest admiration and all the support we can muster.

------------------------------------------------------*

Chelsea Manning Supporters Raise A Quarter Million Dollars In Two Days

by Caitlin Johnstone

In the likely event that you need some news to give you a bit of faith in humanity today, you should know that supporters of whistleblower Chelsea Manning have raised over a quarter million dollars to pay the cruel, draconian fine that was heaped upon her for her principled stand against testifying at corrupt secret grand jury proceedings.

In just two days after Manning was released from prison, more than six thousand donors banded together to pay off the $258,000 fine assigned at a thousand dollars a day by a federal judge on top of imprisonment to coerce her to testify. Fundraising was so enthusiastic that it had overshot the goal and reached $267,002 before the GoFundMe was closed.

Those of us who support Manning have been looking at this more as a fine on us than on her, because of course we were never going to let a heroic whistleblower spend the rest of her life under crushing debt. The fact that the money came together so quickly and easily, though, says a lot about the beauty of humans in my opinion.

Now we are shifting to raise funds so @xychelsea can get back on her feet and thrive. This means paying for the storage for all her belongings this past year, and raising funds for rent and utilities. You can find this fundraiser here: https://t.co/sIPhmPGxPk

Please Share!

— Kelly Wright (@anarchakelly) March 14, 2020

Now there's a much humbler task of raising funds for Manning's living expenses, which is a GoFundMe for a trust of $30,000. This fundraiser is just hours old and as of this writing it's at $6,870, so we should have her set up with that in no time.

I am so in awe of all the wonderful people who've helped protect this legendary figure, both with their donations and with their efforts to draw attention to the fundraisers, from the stress and financial burden that this vicious regime tried to heap upon her. In times like this it's very comforting to see the higher nature of human beings prevailing over sociopathy and authoritarianism.

So there's your money, you disgusting imperialist pigs. You brutalized a heroic whistleblower, you tortured her, you tried to snuff her out, and now you get to steal a quarter million dollars from her as well. Whatever. We don't care. It's done now. She's free, and she's under our protection now. Our higher nature prevailed, and now she doesn't have to worry about any of that anymore.

Now you leave her alone. Forever.

______________________________

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics onTwitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon orPaypalpurchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Caitlin Johnstone | March 15, 2020 at 2:51 am | Tags: chelsea manning, fundraiser, gofundme, news, supporters, whistleblower | Categories: Article, News | URL: https://wp.me/p9tj6M-24t

Comment

------------------------------------------------------*

Coronavirus, Epidemics and Capitalism:

The Bugs Are in the System

Radical Women supports and recommends this thoughtful analysis of the novel coronavirus by our sister organization, the Freedom Socialist Party. The statement raises excellent demands to protect workers, women, the poor, and people of color being scapegoated for the crisis.

Governments around the globe have had since December to prepare for the novel coronavirus. And while some countries have done better than others with their response, here in the U.S. the for-profit medical industry is practically ensuring that more people catch the virus and more die from it. As with other disasters and emergencies, capitalism makes things worse.

Billionaire White House occupant Donald Trump shot us all in the foot when he fired his pandemic response team in 2018. A year later, his administration scaled back the Centers for Disease Control’s pandemic prevention teams in several countries, including China. His 2021 budget proposal includes a 16% cut in the CDC’s budget, this after the department endured over a decade of budget cuts going back to the Obama administration. Now in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., Trump visited the CDC and asked, “Who would have thought?” (New York Times, 3/8/20).

Coronavirus has so far claimed more than 4,600 lives worldwide. Cases of people with COVID-19 have been confirmed in 114 countries, including the United States, with the disease reported in 42 states so far. Washington state is the initial epicenter with over 330 cases confirmed and possibly 1,000 or more undetected.

On one hand, there is a constant drumbeat from corporate media outlets that invites panic. On the other, elected leaders are too concerned with the economic disruption to take this threat seriously enough. Testing for the virus is a good example of this. Initial kits from the CDC were faulty and the agency was slow to remove senseless restrictions on who could be tested. In Washington state, the insurance commissioner directed insurance companies not to charge any co-pays for the tests — but those without insurance still have to pay. This guarantees greater suffering for homeless people and the lowest-paid and most marginalized workers, meaning women, immigrants and people of color.

And there are still shortages of test kits, letting the virus continue to spread. Congress passed an $8.3 billion anti-coronavirus spending package on March 4, which should buy more testing kits. But if a tenth of that money had been spent years ago developing a coordinated, international strategy of prevention we might not be in this fix. Not to mention Trump’s ridiculous revolving-door Cabinet that has included four different Secretaries of Health and Human Services and his appointment of Vice President Mike Pence as his coronavirus czar. Pence is famous for his slow response to an outbreak of the AIDS virus as governor of Indiana, a delay that caused it to spread far and wide.

Trump and his fellow far-right world leaders are using the virus as an excuse to double down on xenophobic nationalism, upping the rhetoric and shutting down borders. Racist bigots everywhere are following their example. Violence against Asian people has escalated, as witnessed in London and on a New York City subway last month. Asian-owned businesses across the U.S. have been shunned and hotels have turned away customers because of their race.

It doesn’t help matters that 24% of all U.S. workers and 58% of those in the service industry receive no paid sick leave. That leaves them to choose between being getting fired or potentially causing their co-workers and customers to fall ill. The Healthy Families Act would give everyone at least a week’s sick leave, but even if it becomes law it won’t be enough. Many serious illnesses are contagious for more than a week and many workers, especially women, need to care for sick family members.

Like other epidemics before it, coronavirus is a threat compounded by capitalist greed and callousness. As disease ecologist Peter Daszak recently put it, “Unprecedented road-building, deforestation, land clearing and agricultural development, as well as globalized travel and trade” make pandemics likelier than ever, especially when “between outbreaks, the will to spend money on prevention wanes.” Global warming and nuclear proliferation have shown that capitalists will always trade tomorrow’s welfare for today’s dollar if we let them.

Now is the time to mobilize our unions and community organizations, along with small businesses to insist on immediate and effective action to protect public health.

To address this crisis, the Freedom Socialist Party raises these demands:

A universal, free, nonprofit, nationalized medical industry, including pharmaceuticals, managed by healthcare workers and patients
Free testing, treatment and vaccines
International cooperation on the virus treatment and vaccine research; outlaw profit-making from the crisis
Unlimited paid sick leave for all workers, with government assistance as necessary plus full compensation for lost wages due to closures or quarantines
Free laptops and Wi-Fi at home and free lunch programs for all students when schools close; free childcare for parents who have to work
Emergency financial assistance for small businesses hurt by the epidemic, including subsidies for paid sick leave
Increase public and private staffing levels to perform the intensified cleaning required
Train all at-risk workers and provide proper protective equipment
Stop the racist scapegoating of Chinese and all Asian and immigrant communities
No abridgement of civil liberties
Redirect military spending and border wall funding to coronavirus response, prevention and cure

You can find fiery Radical Women writings on the RW webpage. Learn more about RW through The Radical Women Manifesto, an exhilarating exploration of Marxist feminist theory and organizing methods. Buy a copy or read it on Google Books.
Donations are appreciated! As a grassroots group, Radical Women is sustained by support from people like you. Please contribute online or mail a check, payable to Radical Women, National Office 5018 Rainier Ave S Seattle, WA 98118 USA.

Check out the Freedom Socialist newspaper, a bi-monthly socialist feminist newspaper with news and analysis from around the globe. It also features book reviews, irreverent political cartoons, movement news and letters-to-the-editor. You can read or listen to articles online. Subscribe online or send $10 for one year or $17 for two to Freedom Socialist, 5018 Rainier Ave. S., Seattle WA 98118. (Students $8 for one year, strikers and unemployed $5.)


Mailing Address: Radical Women, National Office 5018 Rainier Ave. S. Seattle, WA 98118 Add us to your address book For more information Phone: 206-722-6057 RadicalWomenus@gmail.com www.RadicalWomen.org
Forward to a friend \| Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe to RW emails. Change email address \| Unsubscribe from this list

------------------------------------------------------*

Friday post

------------------------------------------------------*

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)

------------------------------------------------------*

The Military is Poisoning Us!

20-City PFAS Contamination Tour

The Pentagon: Exposing the Hidden Polluter of Water

The Military is Contaminating California's Water, Soil, and Air

Military Fire-fighting Foam that is poisoning us all!

What in the world are they thinking?

Pat Elder, who has done extensive research on the U.S. Military’s use of a fire-fighting foam containing high concentrations of very toxic PFAS chemicals, is doing a 20 city Educational Tour throughout California in March. PFAS poisoning has been linked to high rates of miscarriages, cancers and other serious illnesses in military personnel and civilian populations living on or near U.S. bases, here and abroad! Please support this tremendous effort to educate us all about this horrific crisis and help us uncover the Pentagon’s grotesque and reckless cover-up. www.MilitaryPoisons.org

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

-Attend one of the presentations/forums scheduled in California.

Note: Bay Area events, March 14 - 22, are highlighted in PINK below.

-Join a Military Base Protest at Travis and/or Beale AFB (March 16-18)

We need to help get this critical story out. A large presence at the military bases can help with media coverage, as well as help us better educate military personnel about how they are victims of these reckless military practices that poison us all, causing life-threatening and chronic illnesses. This is also a great way to help military folks to come over on the side of peace.

FMI on these important base actions:

Please contact Toby - ratherbenyckeling@comcast.net

Organized by:

Co-sponsors/endorsers:

More details HERE. Scroll down for full tour details.

Bay Area events, March 14 - 22, are highlighted in PINK.

March 17, Tuesday - Fairfield/Marysville

FMI: ratherbenyckeling@comcast.net

6:00 – 8:00 am Travis AFB, Main Gate, Fairfield

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.

March 18, Wednesday - Marysville

FMI: ratherbenyckeling@comcast.net
6:00 - 8:00 am Beale AFB, Wheatland Gate,

South Beale Rd. & Ostrom Rd.
8:00 am Press Conference

Press Contact: militarypoisons@wilpfus.org

8:30 am Potluck Breakfast and Presentation at Linda/Marysville residence
Mid-day - TBD -

6:30 – 9:00 pm - Sacramento
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

------------------------------------------------------*

View in your browser

Due to COVID-19 crisis many SanctionsKill events this weekend are postponed.
Several others have moved online.
Don't miss this important Webinar TODAY with speakers from across the country:

Sanctions Kill Forum and Webinar
with the Alliance For Global Justice

TODAY Saturday, March 14
2:30PM PDT/5:30pm EDT

Watch online at the
Sanctions Kill FB Page
OR
Register to watch via
ZOOM video conference

EXPANDED Speakers list will include:

Elane Spivak Rodriguez, Alliance For Global Justice,
Rhonda Ramiro, BAYAN USA
Omowale Clay, December 12 Movement,
Sara Flounders, SanctionsKill Campaign,
Pierre Labossiere, Haiti Action Committee
Bilal Mafundi Ali, Black Alliance for Peace
Teresa Walsh and Nesbit Crutchfield, Venceremos Brigade
K.J. Noh, Scholar, Writer and Peace Activist
Jeff Mackler, United National Anti-War Coalition
David Paul, Embassy Protection Collective
David Welsh, Delegate, San Francisco Labor Council
Judy Greenspan, International Action Center

**Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this event will NOT take place at Restore Oakland, and will only be viewable online via Facebook or Zoom**

POSTPONED
NYC Rally to End U.S. Sanctions and Economic War
New Date To Be Announced

International Days of Action Against Sanctions and Economic War
March 13 – 15

Click here to view the growing list 60+ events

*Due to the Coronavirus crisis many organizations are reshaping or rescheduling events. Check with local organizers for updates.

As the Coronavirus pandemic continues to spread, it is crucial to raise the role of U.S. sanctions in depriving millions of people around the world of access to medicine and medical supplies. According to reports by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Korea Peace Now, sanctions are responsible for the deaths of 40,000 people in Venezuela over two years, and 4,000 people in North Korea in 2018, primarily due to lack of access to medicine. In Zimbabwe, Western sanctions handicapped the countries response to Cholera outbreaks and last year's devastation from Cyclone Idai. The impact of U.S. sanctions on access to healthcare threatens to thwart attempts to contain COVID-19. U.S. sanctions have severely hampered Iran's efforts to respond to the Coronavirusand accelerated it's spread by limiting access to medical supplies, test kits and information about the virus.

Now more than ever we must organize and educate to raise consciousness of the criminal sanctions imposed by the U.S. and it's junior partners, responsible for innumberable deaths and suffering every year in 39 countries-1/3 or the world population. Join us March 13-15 to denounce U.S. imposed sanctions and to continue building a movement to defeat them.

Video from emergency press conference Wednesday, connecting the Coronavirus pandemic to U.S. imposed sanctions.

#SanctionsKill Social Media Campaign

Want to participate in the Days of Action through social media? Take a selfie with one of pictures above from CODEPINK, and post to your social media accounts with a brief message and the hashtag #SanctionsKill. Or use one of the pictures as your profile image.

Write your own message, or use one of the samples below as a template:

End U.S. Sanctions on 39 Countries - 1/3 of the world!
#SanctionsKill

Sanctions withhold medicine, spread Coronavirus
#SanctionsKill

U.S. Sanctions Killed 40,000 Venezuelans in 2 years
#SanctionsKill

U.S. Sanctions Killed 4,000 Koreans in 2018
#SanctionsKill

End U.S. & Zionist Sanctions on Gaza! Free Palestine!
#SanctionsKill

Sanctions: Spreading COVID-19 in IRAN and around the world
#SanctionsKill

End Western Sanctions on Zimbabwe
#SanctionsKill

¡Cuba sí, bloqueo no!
#SanctionsKill

Want to learn more about sanctions? Visit sanctionskill.org/resources-2 for fact sheets, articles, books, videos, chant sheets, press releases, placards, banners, union resolutions, social media campaigns, translations and more!

Unsubscribe

147 W 24th St.
2nd Floor
New York City, NY 10011

------------------------------------------------------*

Cancelled:

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

------------------------------------------------------*

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

------------------------------------------------------*

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/

------------------------------------------------------*

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

------------------------------------------------------*

Meet the Candidates

Endorse

Presidential candidate Gloria La Riva denounces Trump's new Iran sanctions

Campaign tweet of La Riva at anti-war protest speaking on the human impact of U..S. sanctions

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

Questions? Comments? Contact us. This email was sent to caroleseligman@sbcglobal.net. To stop receiving emails, click here. Created with NationBuilder, the essential toolkit for leaders.

Meet the Candidates

Endorse

La Riva / Peltier 2020 Campaign
10-Point Program

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

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

------------------------------------------------------*

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

------------------------------------------------------*

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.....

------------------------------------------------------*

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

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Mobilization4Mumia M4B4NPhPzWJt87DARVR5-kdDE-Zg2kjzd9P8nMAFdnq1BkTLxJK1Xa51LKuxjKkeEz-kux6VKGqePHOFaWubSaquw7k5tBjwuV6BgOokFROdNa14U07z2Ec-zMrrLptAlmM8JoO4

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

------------------------------------------------------*

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.....

* * * * *

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!

* * * * *

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..

* * * * *

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

Mass Movement Needed To Free Mumia!

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

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

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

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

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

Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

www.laboractionmumia...........org

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

November 2019

"There is no time for despair, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language.. This is how civilizations heal." -Toni Morrison

Follow on Twitter | Friend on Facebook

unsubscribe from this list | update subscription preferences

------------------------------------------------------*

Board Game

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

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

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

Spread the word!!

By Dr.... Nayvin Gordon

------------------------------------------------------*

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/

------------------------------------------------------*

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

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Celebrating the release of Janet and Janine Africa

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

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

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

Call: 1-518-474-8390 Email Gov.Cuomo with this form Tweet at @NYGovCuomo

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

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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!

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*------------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Get Malik Out of Ad-Seg

Keith "Malik" Washington is an incarcerated activist who has spoken out on conditions of confinement in Texas prison and beyond: from issues of toxic water and extreme heat, to physical and sexual abuse of imprisoned people, to religious discrimination and more... Malik has also been a tireless leader in the movement to #EndPrisonSlavery which gained visibility during nationwide prison strikes in 2016 and 2018.. View his work at comrademalik.com or write him at:

Keith H. Washington

TDC# 1487958

McConnell Unit

3001 S............ Emily Drive

Beeville, TX 78102 Friends, it's time to get Malik out of solitary confinement. Malik has experienced intense, targeted harassment ever since he dared to start speaking against brutal conditions faced by incarcerated people in Texas and nationwide--but over the past few months, prison officials have stepped up their retaliation even more. In Administrative Segregation (solitary confinement) at McConnell Unit, Malik has experienced frequent humiliating strip searches, medical neglect, mail tampering and censorship, confinement 23 hours a day to a cell that often reached 100+ degrees in the summer, and other daily abuses too numerous to name.. It could not be more clear that they are trying to make an example of him because he is a committed freedom fighter. So we have to step up.
Who to contact: TDCJ Executive Director Bryan Collier Phone: (936)295-6371 Email: exec.director@tdcj.texas.....gov Senior Warden Philip Sinfuentes (McConnell Unit) Phone: (361) 362-2300

------------------------------------------------------*

1) U.S. Health Experts Say Stricter Measures Are Required to Limit Coronavirus’s Spread

With more than 500 cases in almost three dozen states, officials worry that containment efforts aren’t enough.

By Denise Grady, March 9, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/08/health/coronavirus-spread-united-states.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times

As the coronavirus gained a foothold in the United States, thousands of employees from Seattle to Silicon Valley were told to work from home. Public school districts in several states have shut down, universities are moving classes to online only, and even churches are limiting services or prayer meetings. A global health conference in Orlando, Fla., planned for Monday, which President Trump was supposed to address, will no longer happen.

Off the California coast, another cruise ship with infected passengers is waiting for a place to dock. The State Department on Sunday advised Americans, especially those with underlying health conditions, not to travel on cruise ships.

As the coronavirus spread to two-thirds of the states, Americans began to grasp the magnitude of the threat facing them. The weekend’s case tally ballooned, veering toward nearly 600 cases and close to 20 deaths.

In Washington State, with the epicenter in the Seattle area, Gov. Jay Inslee said on Sunday that he was considering mandatory measures to help keep people apart. Federal public health officials also signaled that the degree of community spread — new cases popping up with no known link to foreign travel — indicated that the virus was beyond so-called containment in some areas and that new, stricter measures should be considered.

It’s a concept in public health known as shifting from containment of an outbreak to “mitigation,” which means acknowledging that the tried-and-true public health measures of isolating the sick and quarantining their contacts are no longer enough. So steps must be taken to minimize deaths from the disease and to slow its spread so that hospitals are not overwhelmed.

“You don’t want to alarm people, but given the spread we see, you know, anything is possible,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Fox News on Sunday. “And that’s the reason why we’ve got to be prepared to take whatever action is appropriate to contain and mitigate the outbreak.”

No one in the United States wants to use the word “lockdown,” in the manner of what Italy is doing in its northern regions to try to control the spread of the disease.

But the specter of isolation — of telling people in affected areas not to go out — is hovering in big cities where the infection has taken hold.

In an interview, Dr. Fauci said, “I don’t think you want to have folks shutting down cities like in northern Italy. We are not at that level. That is a hot spot. Social distancing like in Seattle is the way to go. I’m not talking about locking down anything. There’s a big difference between voluntary social distancing and locking anything down.”

If community spread is being detected now, that means it began, unseen, weeks ago. The greatest concern is for older people, particularly those who have underlying conditions like diabetes, heart disease, lung problems and weakened immunity.

“Don’t go to crowded places, think twice before a long plane trip, and for goodness sake don’t go on any cruises,” Dr. Fauci said.

For people who are particularly vulnerable, he said: “Don’t wait for community spread. Now is the time to do social distancing, whether there is spread in your community or not.”

If community spread has already started, as in Seattle, he said, everyone should practice social distancing.

“Everybody is going to be thinking about this, and trying to adapt it to their own circumstances,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University. “‘Maybe I can attend this meeting virtually.’ A family that’s religious will think about being reverent at home rather than attending services with the rest of the congregation. Maybe we don’t go to the movies.”

One goal of mitigation is at least to slow down an epidemic, he said, adding, “If you can stretch things out long enough, you buy more time for the development of the vaccine and the research to be done for treatments.”

The cruise ship stranded off the coast of California will be allowed to dock on Monday in the port of Oakland at an as-yet-undecided time, the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said at a news briefing on Sunday.

The site was chosen in part because of the ability to cordon off an 11-acre containment area at the port where the ship’s 2,421 passengers will disembark.

California residents, who make up around 40 percent of the passengers, will be transferred for a 14-day quarantine at military bases across the state, including the nearby Travis Air Force Base, where evacuees from China were quarantined last month. Passengers who are not from California will be flown to military bases in Texas and Georgia, the governor said.

Last week, 45 people were tested for coronavirus on the ship and 21 tested positive, 19 of them crew members.

Testing of the remaining passengers will be done in their quarantine areas, where they will remain for two weeks, officials said.

Foreign passengers will be sent home on charter flights from a section of Oakland International Airport where they can avoid contact with the general public, officials said at the briefing.

On Sunday afternoon advance medical teams were boarding the ship, Grand Princess, which is about 10 miles offshore, to assess the general health of passengers.

Most of the more than 1,000 crew members will remain onboard the cruise ship, which will leave the San Francisco Bay within about three days, Mr. Newsom said.

Oakland’s mayor, Libby Schaaf, said she had sought assurances that the ship would leave quickly and that there would be no local spread of the virus as a result of the ship’s docking at the Oakland port.

“This is a community that has suffered decades of environmental racism and injustice,” Ms. Schaaf said. “No one will be quarantined in Oakland or released to our community.”

Along with New York and Washington, California has the highest numbers of people infected with the virus.

Mr. Newsom said fewer than 1,000 people had been tested for the coronavirus in California and about 120 had tested positive. As the state ramps up its testing capabilities in the coming days, he expects the number of people confirmed to have the virus to increase.

In Washington State, the nursing home that has faced the brunt of the coronavirus outbreak thus far in the United States said on Sunday that it had seen some residents go from no symptoms to death in just a matter of a few hours.

Tim Killian, a spokesman for the nursing home, Life Care Center of Kirkland, said its medical staff had found the coronavirus to be troubling, volatile and unpredictable.

“It was surprising and shocking to us that we have seen that level of escalation from symptoms to death,” Mr. Killian said. He said the center was still in triage mode as it worked to get a handle on the issue for its remaining 55 residents.

On Sunday, health officials raised the death toll in Washington to 18, with 16 of those linked to Life Care, including 15 residents. Mr. Killian said other residents were in the process of getting test results, and six of them were ill.

Seventy of the center’s 180 staff members were out sick, but there weren’t enough test kits yet for them, he said. Three staff members have been hospitalized, one of whom has tested positive for the virus.

Some former government officials pointed out that the Trump administration was not acting quickly enough to stop the virus from spreading. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said on “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the federal government needed to step in quickly.

“There’s no systematic plan of when a city should close school, when they should tell businesses that they have to telework, when they should close movie theaters and cancel large gatherings,” he said. “We leave these decisions to local officials, but we really should have a comprehensive plan in terms of recommendations to cities and in some support from the federal government for cities that make that step, make that leap, if you will.”

Mike Baker, Thomas Fuller and Mitch Smith contributed reporting.

My New York Times comment:

"Tens-of-millions of people can't stay home, can't work from home, have no healthcare. childcare and no sick leave. If they don't work, they can't eat or pay their bills. Short of incarcerating everyone (and who would you get to work in these jails?) this "self-containment" is completely irrational because it already is not working and can't work. What's needed is massive, free healthcare coverage for everyone in every community—including distribution of food and a total moratorium on evictions and debt repayment for the duration of the epidemic—with no accumulated debt to be repaid. And, most of all, if this is really a deadly epidemic, all our resources—worldwide—should be devoted to finding a cure and vaccinations against it, instead of spending trillions of dollars on war and weapons of mass destruction. The government handling of this whole thing is irrational, ineffective and suspicious. We're not being told the truth because none of it makes any sense at all!" —Bonnie Weinstein

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/08/health/coronavirus-spread-united-states.html#commentsContainer&permid=105706712:105706712

------------------------------------------------------*

2) W.N.B.A. Star Maya Moore Helped Overturn His Conviction. ‘She Saved My Life.’

A judge in Missouri overturned the ruling against Jonathan Irons, who Moore and others said was wrongfully sent to prison for burglary and assault.

By Kurt Streeter, March 9, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/09/sports/basketball/maya-moore-jonathan-irons.html

Credit...Nina Robinson for The New York Times

A Missouri inmate whose appeal of his 50-year sentence for burglary and assault has been backed by the W.N.B.A. star Maya Moore had his conviction overturned by a state judge on Monday.

Before a packed courtroom in Jefferson City, Judge Daniel Green capped months of review by issuing a ruling that vacated the guilty verdict of the victim, Jonathan Irons, and ordered that he be released from the maximum security prison where he has been behind bars for the last 23 years.

Tears welled in Moore’s eyes as she sat in the front row, surrounded by nearly 20 members of her family and friends. “It felt so surreal,” she said, describing the moment in a brief interview shortly after the hearing was over. “We finally have justice. I was just thinking, ‘Did this really happen? Did it?’”

Moore — who in early 2019 stunned the basketball world byannouncing a hiatus from her career in large part to help Irons — was quick to note that the case is not over. The Missouri attorney general’s office and prosecutors in St. Charles County, where the crime took place, now have roughly 45 days to decide whether to appeal or retry the case. In that time, Irons’s lawyer will seek to have him released on bond.

The Missouri Attorney General’s office declined to comment on the case.

Whenever he gets out, Moore plans to be there. In January, the 30-year-old star of the Minnesota Lynx, one of the best players in basketball, announced that she was extending her leave from the game for at least another year, skipping another season for the Lynx and a chance to play in the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

She reiterated Monday that she did not regret taking a break from basketball. “It is so sweet to see the redemption that came from stepping away and giving what I had to this case,” Moore said. “It feels like we are holding up that Final Four trophy, but there are still a couple of steps.”

Irons, now 40, grew close to members of Moore’s family through their volunteer prison work and ministry in the early 2000s. Moore met Irons in 2007, when she was about to begin what would be a stellar career at Connecticut, where she led her team to a pair of N.C.A.A. titles.

The two have been close friends ever since and share a sibling-like bond. Moore began speaking out for Irons’s release over the last several years.

Irons, born into severe poverty, was 16 when the crime for which he was convicted occurred. He was prosecuted for burglarizing a home in a St. Louis suburb and assaulting the homeowner with a gun. There were no corroborating witnesses, fingerprints, DNA, or blood evidence connecting Irons to the crime. Prosecutors claimed that Irons admitted to breaking into the victim’s home. Irons and his lawyers denied any such admission. The officer who interrogated Irons did so alone and failed to record the conversation.

Irons, who is African-American, was tried as an adult and found guilty by an all-white jury.

Judge Green’s decision Monday hinged on fingerprint evidence that had not been divulged by prosecutors in Irons’s initial trial. The fingerprints, found inside a door that would have been used to exit the house, did not belong to Irons or to the crime’s victim. Kent Gipson, Irons’s lawyer, argued that the state had withheld that evidence, which could have shown someone else was responsible for the crime.

Speaking over the phone from prison, Irons said he began crying, jumping and shouting as soon as he’d heard the news. “It feels like I can just breathe, like the weight of the world is off of me, like I have the chance to live.”

Asked about Moore, he was succinct: “She saved my life. I would not have this chance if not for her and her wonderful family. She saved my life and I cannot say it better than that.”

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

------------------------------------------------------*

3) Italy Announces Restrictions Over Entire Country in Attempt to Halt Coronavirus

All of Italy’s 60 million people are coming under restrictions that had earlier applied to the northern part of the country.

By Jason Horowitz, March 10, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/09/world/europe/italy-lockdown-coronavirus.html

Credit...Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images

ROME — Italy on Monday became the first European country to announce severe nationwide limits on travel as the government struggled to stem the spread of a coronavirus outbreak that has hobbled the economy, threatened to overwhelm public health care and killed more people than anywhere outside China.

The measures, announced in a prime time news conference by the country’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, sought to adopt the kind of drastic limits that may be working to control the virus in China, an authoritarian regime.

But the scope of the clampdown in Italy, applied to roughly 60 million people — from islands in the south to the Alps in the north — immediately raised the question of whether an entire modern European nation protective of its individual freedoms would make the necessary sacrifices.

The broader restrictions came just hours after the authorities announced that 9,172 people had been infected by the virus, 1,598 more than the day before. Deaths climbed to 463 people, the majority of whom are overwhelmingly elderly and sick people. There were 97 more deaths since Sunday.

As of Tuesday, permission would be necessary for Italians who sought to move around the country for reasons of work, health or extenuating circumstances. The same criteria would be applied for Italians looking to leave the country, but Mr. Conte suggested that foreigners could still come to Italy.

More concretely, he said that schools and universities would remain closed as a result until at least April 3. Decrees banned jail visits and day-release programs for inmates, setting off riots across the country at 27 prisons. Guards were held hostage, and several inmates died in Modena.

All sports events and outdoor gatherings would now be forbidden. A 6 p.m. curfew on bars, currently in place in the northern areas, would be extended to the whole country. The days of young people gathering at outdoor events and pubs were over, he said.

“We all have to renounce something for the good of Italy,” said Mr. Conte, announcing that the government would enact stronger, more stringent rules than had been introduced just over a day earlier to the country’s wealthy north. He said the classifications between levels of threat in different regions and provinces would be replaced by a blanket restriction on nonessential movement across the country that he called “Italy, protected zone.”

As he attempted to rally Italians to abide by the measures, Mr. Conte emphasized that the outbreak, Europe’s worst, presented an existential threat to the country’s elderly population — the Continent’s oldest — and to the health care system that served them.

The sudden expansion of travel restrictions reflected the government’s effort to catch up to the spread of a virus that has consistently outpaced its efforts to contain it.

After the virus first appeared more than two weeks ago, the government first locked down 11 towns, but deaths and cases continued to spike.

Early Sunday, it announced that it would restrict the movement of about a quarter of Italy’s population, locking down the region of Lombardy and risking its northern economic heart for the health of the entire country and the survival of an overwhelmed health care system.

But those measures, already enormous in scope, have not stalled the virus’s toll. Instead, they have prompted confusion and anxiety as vague instructions from officials undercut the government’s assertions of control and authority.

Different regions had enforced different measures, politicians offered different definitions of what “movement” meant, and internet rumors spread unsubstantiated — and, the authorities said, false — accounts of overburdened hospitals denying care to anyone over 60. Riots broke out in 27 prisons, with guards held hostage and several inmates dying, in part because the decree had banned jail visits and day-release programs for inmates.

Residents in and out of the locked-down areas of the north expressed bewilderment at what they could or could not do, or should do, to protect themselves.

“We are hearing too many things, and people don’t really get what’s going on,” said Laurence Paretti, 56, who window-shopped in Milan, where she taught yoga. She said she assumed it was fine to take a walk around the city but said that the government’s explanations “aren’t clear at all.”

Mr. Conte acknowledged that a change was necessary on Monday night, as he introduced what he called stronger and broader restrictions. “We have to do it immediately,” he said.

Giovanni Rezza, director of the infective illness department at the National Health Institute, called the decision “necessary” and suggested that European neighbors such as France and Germany should follow suit.

He said Italy was essentially faced with two choices, a Wuhan-style lockdown in which people could not leave their towns, including in the economic capital of Milan, or the option the government took, imposing partial travel restrictions and social distancing by closing bars and sporting events and thus keeping people away from one another.

Mr. Rezza, who on Monday morning raised the alarm of the virus hitting Rome, said he believed the government feared an epidemic in the less developed south. “There is a huge scare that the virus spreads to southern regions,” where the health care system is much inferior to the one in the north, he said.

In Milan, the police stopped cars and asked drivers to fill out forms explaining where they were going and why, but it was not immediately clear how broadly, or seriously, the new measures would be applied or enforced.

In a reflection of how the spread of the virus had evolved into a national emergency, the government’s decree received support across the political spectrum.

Matteo Salvini, the opposition leader of the nationalist League party, who had pressed Mr. Conte earlier in the day to expand the restrictive measures to the whole country, responded with measured approval. But he also said Mr. Conte needed to be clearer, and that it was necessary “to close everything and immediately, without leaving space for doubts or interpretations.”

Matteo Renzi, a former prime minister, had criticized the government’s failure to effectively communicate the importance of the previous restrictions. He too said he had urged the government to expand the measures to all of Italy to stop the virus from spreading across the country and deeper into Europe. He said in an interview on Monday night that he thought Italians would now better obey the new decree “because now it’s all of Italy. It’s not one part divided from the other. You have to do it for everybody.”

Mr. Conte, a former ally of Mr. Salvini, was until two years ago a little known law professor. Now he finds himself leading the country during its greatest challenge in recent history. He has a circular and legalistic speaking style and a habit for complimenting himself on his clarity.

But on Sunday and Monday, he confused many Italians by citing the language in the decree limiting movement in the north, speaking about an “obligation for all the physical persons who enter or exit the area” to “avoid every movement.” It sounded draconian but allowed for plenty of wiggle room.

Travel continued in and out of the north by car, train and plane. The country’s response remained fragmented. Regions in the middle and south developed their own restrictions, some of them significantly tougher than those on the north.

To help explain the decree, the Interior Ministry published “auto-certification” forms that anyone traveling from or to the locked-down areas needed to fill out and present when asked by the authorities to attest that they needed to travel for work, or health or “other necessities.”

In the towns around Milan, Italy’s economic and cultural capital, that had suffered the largest outbreaks and been strictly sealed, Sunday’s restrictions had actually eased the local lockdowns.

Even some of the mayors of the towns were confused on Monday afternoon and lamented soldiers leaving the checkpoints.

“I am a bit worried because the effort we did during the quarantine could be wasted,” said Elia Delmiglio, the mayor of Casalpusterlengo, where quarantine rules were lifted. “If you do not have a circumscribed area anymore, some positive people could bring the virus around and infect other people.”

Massimo Galli, who heads a team of doctors who identified the Italian strain of the virus last month at the Biomedical Research Institute of Milan, has said reopening those towns was “crazy.”

The measures introduced on Sunday, he said in an interview, were “not enough” for areas that had been quarantined red zones.

“What they did in Wuhan is far more drastic than what we did,” he said, adding that he worried about “fire brewing under the ashes, that in other parts of the country you can have the surprise of epidemics that circulated for a time, without giving any signs.”

But other virologists believed Italy had on Monday night done what it needed to do.

Roberto Burioni, one of Italy’s leading virologists, said that Italy had underestimated the contagiousness of the virus, so the government needed to act decisively and Italians needed to respond responsibly.

“The only way to contain this virus, is to betray our culture which is social,” he said, adding “the virus is exploiting these characteristics, and we have to do everything we can to stop it.”

Mr. Conte clearly counted on, and appealed to, Italy’s sense of civic duty, saying “everyone must do their part” to stop the spread of the virus. “The right decision is to stay home.”

Not long before Mr. Conte spoke, Paola De Caria, 60, returned to her home in Milan from visiting her 90-year-old mother and fighting with a friend who took the virus too lightly. She said she wasn’t “really sure” what the rules were but “it all comes down to common sense. I have an aging parent, I shop for her and bring her food, avoid cafes and places like that.”

Anna Momigliano contributed reporting from Milan, and Emma Bubola and Elisabetta Povoledo from Rome.

------------------------------------------------------*

4) Going to Work With Danger, and Maybe Death, Every Day

By Julia Rothman and Shaina Feinberg, March 12, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/business/construction-death.html

Julia Rothman is an illustrator. Shaina Feinberg is a writer and filmmaker. Both live in Brooklyn.

------------------------------------------------------*

5) The Companies Putting Profits Ahead of Public Health

As the coronavirus spreads, the public interest requires employers to abandon their longstanding resistance to paid sick leave.

By The Editorial Board, March 14, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-paid-sick-leave.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Most American restaurants do not offer paid sick leave. Workers who fall sick face a simple choice: Work and get paid or stay home and get stiffed. Not surprisingly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2014 that fully 20 percent of food service workers had come to work at least once in the previous year “while sick with vomiting or diarrhea.”

As the new coronavirus spreads across the United States, the time has come for restaurants, retailers and other industries that rely on low-wage labor to abandon their parsimonious resistance to paid sick leave. Companies that do not pay sick workers to stay home are endangering their workers, their customers and the health of the broader public. Studies show that paying for sick employees to stay home significantly reduces the spread of the seasonal flu. There’s every reason to think it would help to check the new coronavirus, too.

A number of large companies in recent days have announced one-time changes in policy, promising paid sick leave to workers who catch the coronavirus, or who are quarantined. House Democrats announced an agreement with the White House Friday evening on legislation that would let some workers affected by the coronavirus take up to 10 days of paid sick leave, partially at public expense — an emergency corrective that is urgently necessary to slow the spread of the virus as well as to limit the resulting economic damage.

But such a temporary change in the law is also grossly insufficient. It would amount to a brief suspension of the harsh and dangerous reality that most low-paid workers cannot afford to stay home when they are sick. What happens when the next pandemic arrives?

The only adequate remedy is to permanently require paid sick leave for all workers.

Throughout history, outbreaks of infectious diseases have often served as catalysts for overdue changes in the social compact, including the creation of public health authorities and water and sewer systems. Congress needs to take the broader lesson from this pandemic and pass legislation mandating that every worker can earn up to seven days of paid sick leave.

Corporate executives need not await a change in the law. Plenty of profitable companies already offer paid sick days, making a mockery of arguments about the untenable expense.

And Americans looking for a place to eat or shop can protect their health, and encourage executives to do the right thing, by shunning businesses that refuse to provide paid leave.

Companies have long sought to obscure the details of their sick leave policies, but The Times has obtained new data from The Shift Project, a nationwide survey of tens of thousands of retail workers conducted by the sociologists Daniel Schneider of the University of California, Berkeley; and Kristen Harknett of the University of California, San Francisco. While the federal government reports aggregate data on benefits, the Shift Project data — from its most recent surveys in 2018 and 2019 — provides a look at the benefits offered by individual corporations, published here for the first time. This makes it possible to name names.

The vast majority of workers at large restaurant chains report they do not get paid sick leave, except in the minority of states and cities where it is required by law. The list of malefactors includes the giants of fast food, like McDonald’s, Subway and Chick-fil-A, as well as sit-down restaurants like Cracker Barrel, Outback Steakhouse and the Cheesecake Factory.

And it’s not just restaurants. The data also shows most workers at the supermarket chains Wegmans, Kroger, Meijer and Giant Eagle reported that they did not get paid sick leave. So did workers at retailers including American Eagle, Victoria’s Secret and the Gap.

Some major retailers, though, like Costco, Home Depot and the supermarket chain Aldi, have long offered paid sick leave as a standard benefit. Since the coronavirus arrived in the United States, however, only one major retailer, Darden Restaurants, which owns chains including Olive Garden and Longhorn Steakhouse and employs 170,000 hourly workers, has taken the lesson and announced that it will henceforth provide paid sick leave on a permanent basis.

After an employee at a Canton, Georgia, Waffle House tested positive for the coronavirus, the company said it would continue to pay the employee and quarantined co-workers. But a spokeswoman, Njeri Boss, said the company would not commit to offering similar benefits to other workers affected by the coronavirus. The company declined to comment on its existing paid sick leave policy, but 99 percent of surveyed Waffle House workers said that they don’t get paid sick days. Asked whether customers might reasonably be concerned about eating at a restaurant that refuses to pay sick workers to stay at home, Ms. Boss said the company expected sick workers to stay at home. And would Waffle House commit to paying workers for acting responsibly? “That’s a matter between us and our associates,” she said.

Importantly, large numbers of workers at companies that offer paid sick leave reported that they did not get paid sick leave. At Chipotle, for example, workers are eligible to take up to three paid sick days beginning the day they are hired, but 20 percent of surveyed Chipotle workers said they could not take paid sick days. Walmart, by far the nation’s largest private employer, extended paid sick leave to all employees in February 2019, but only 73 percent of the Walmart workers surveyed since then said that they could take paid sick days.

Mr. Schneider and Ms. Harknett said that workers often are unaware of sick leave policies, or feel unable to take advantage of them. Managers exercise considerable power over scheduling and hours, and the researchers said that workers, in interviews, often expressed concern about the consequences of requesting a sick day. Chipotle conceded in 2017 that a norovirus outbreak centered on a Chipotle in Sterling, Va., was caused by a sick employee who should have been sent home. New York sued Chipotle last year for violating worker protections, including the city’s sick leave law, at five locations in Brooklyn. In February, New York fined Chipotle for firing a worker who took three sick days. “It’s not enough to have an official policy,” Ms. Harknett said. “It has to be a policy that people feel they can use.”

Chipotle said in a statement that its sick leave policy is the best in the fast-food industry, that it is committed to following the law and that it works hard to encourage compliance, including by paying bonuses to employees who follow the company’s food safety procedures.

A federal law mandating paid sick leave is necessary because the coronavirus is just an instance of a broader problem. Norovirus, a major cause of food poisoning cases, sickens some 20 million Americans each year, and kills several hundred. Outbreaks often are traced back to sick food service workers, prompting the C.D.C. to recommend paid leave as a corrective. The spread of seasonal flu and other diseases is also greatly exacerbated by sick workers.

Paid sick leave is standard in other developed nations, and 13 U.S. states, beginning with Connecticut in 2011, have passed laws requiring employers to offer paid sick leave. Some large cities have too, including New York City, Chicago and Washington. That has allowed researchers to examine the real-world costs and benefits. The results set to rest many of the arguments long made by retailers, restaurant owners and other low-wage employers.

Paid sick leave is effective: A recent study found that requiring paid sick leave reduced cases of influenza by 11 percent in the first year after a new law took effect. It’s also relatively inexpensive: In another recent study, researchers calculated that providing paid sick leave cost employers an average of 2.7 cents per hour of paid work. They also found no evidence that the laws led employers to hire fewer workers or to reduce wages or other benefits.

Perhaps the most powerful counterpoint to the industry’s dire predictions is the simple fact that some profitable companies provide paid sick leave. While most fast food companies insist they can’t afford to pay sick workers to stay home, it is a standard benefit at In-n-Out Burger. Alongside the supermarket chains that effectively encourage sick workers to report for work are those that pay sick workers to stay home, like Fred Meyer, Stop & Shop and Safeway.

Democrats initially proposed including a permanent paid sick leave requirement in the coronavirus package. But business groups raised their eyebrows and Republicans insisted on its removal. It is a decision for which Americans should hold businesses accountable.

“If we work sick, then you get sick,” Chipotle workers chanted during a recent protest.

They’re right — and companies have a duty to make sure that stops happening.

------------------------------------------------------*

6) I Deliver Your Food. Don’t I Deserve Basic Protections?

Like emergency income support, for starters.

By Mariah Mitchell, March 17, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-food-delivery-workers.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

SEATTLE — I’m a single mother, and I’ve worked hard to stay in this city, where I grew up. I graduated from the University of Washington, but no employer would give me the flexibility I needed to care for my three girls. That’s why I started delivering food for Caviar five years ago. Now I do the same for Postmates, DoorDash, Uber Eats and Instacart. I also drive for Lyft.

Gig work like this has kept me alive, but it’s extremely time-consuming and pays next to nothing. I wake up at 4:30 in the morning for the breakfast orders, then switch to Lyft to drive people to work. Next, I drop my children off at school and get back online for the lunch rush. In the afternoon, I take a break to pick up the children and try to find time to feed them without missing the dinner rush from 5 to 9. Some days, I have to work 16 hours to make ends meet.

That was before the coronavirus.

Since then, most work has slowed considerably. While driving for Lyft for five hours on Friday, I picked up only three riders. Normally, I would have gotten 15. People aren’t going to work. There aren’t airport pickups; no one is flying. Food delivery has been OK, but restaurants are closing. If they don’t keep online orders going, there’s no work for me.

On Postmates, the orders are coming in fast, but the company isn’t paying more. Instead, they’re recruiting new workers. Last week, they sent out a notification offering us bonuses if we help them do so — and with so many people out of work, this will be easy for them.

On top of that, the state shut down schools, so my children are at home. Luckily, I don’t have to worry about child care, like many other workers. My youngest daughter can stay home with her sister, who’s 17. Or, I can take her with me while I make deliveries. But my children got free breakfast and lunch at school, and now we have to go there to pick up a food sack during lunchtime — right when I should be making deliveries.

In Seattle, leaders have taken some helpful steps. They’ve stopped electricity and water shut-offs and announced a temporary moratorium on evictions for tenants who can’t make rent. That’s good, because the weather has gotten really cold. Plus, we don’t need to add to our homelessness crisis — many gig workers who are losing incomes are probably facing this dilemma.

While the governor expanded eligibility for paid leave and unemployment insurance for regular employees, this should extend to gig workers who are classified as independent contractors. We need emergency income support too. I can’t get unemployment benefits if I lose work because of the coronavirus. There are so many unknowns for us, and I need to know I’ll still have an income if everything shuts down, or if someone in my family gets sick.

But that can’t happen. I can’t self-quarantine because not working is not an option. If I don’t make enough money, I can’t feed my children for the next six weeks. I’m not stopping, fever or no fever. And that’s what most other gig workers would do too, because none of us makes enough money to save up for an emergency like this.

The gig companies should get us through this crisis. We deserve emergency income support so we can stay afloat — and gig workers need minimum pay standards for the long run, so we have something saved before the next crisis comes. That’s why I’ve been working with the Pay Up campaign to pass laws that would protect tips, set a pay floor to ensure we make at least $15 an hour plus the expenses of driving and allow workers to know what they’re getting paid for a job and why.

Gig companies should provide pay for workers even when we can’t work. If they want to prevent us from spreading the virus, they need to pay us a basic income to stay home. They should also provide supplies like sanitizer to prevent exposure while mandating no-contact deliveries to keep workers safe. It would also be safer to go into a restaurant and not have any contact with the staff.

We needed these protections before the crisis hit, and we need them now more than ever. In a way, gig workers are acting as first responders — making sure people can go to the doctor, and get food and supplies if they need to stay home. When you support gig workers, you’re doing the same for our communities.

Mariah Mitchell is a member of the Pay Up campaign with the organization Working Washington.

My NYT Comment:

"There are compelling reasons to stay at home during this pandemic. But there are more compelling reasons that force people to keep working. Even with moratoriums on evictions and utility bills—giant bills that will come due if and when this pandemic is over—that make it impossible for people to comply who have no paid sick leave, no healthcare, and inadequate food supplies, not to speak of the credit obligations that fall heaviest on the poorest among us—car loans, credit cards, etc. These kinds of obligations effect the overwhelming majority of people—all except the 0.01-to-1 percent of the population who have more wealth than they can spend in multiple lifetimes—including those in their families. This is the fundamental problem with human society in the world today—the system of capitalism that ravages the world with war, racism and oppression—to keep filling the coffers of the elite. We're doomed if we can't survive capitalism itself and build a socialist world of democracy, justice and equality—especially economic equality". —Bonnie Weinstein

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/us/coronavirus-fatality-rate-white-house.html#commentsContainer&permid=105866093:105866093

------------------------------------------------------*

7) Stop Saying That Everything Is Under Control. It Isn’t.

Tackling the pandemic will require a new, collective way of thinking about public health and society as a whole.

By The Editorial Board, March 17, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/war-crononavirus-trump-production.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Credit...Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

In 1941, with war tearing through Europe and Asia and America on the precipice of joining the conflict, President Franklin D. Roosevelt compelled and inspired industries and individuals to rally for the greater good. Food was rationed without rioting, and car plants all but stopped producing automobiles in favor of tanks and fuselages. By 1944, American factory workers were building nearly 100,000 warplanes a year — or about 11 per hour.

The United States is again faced with a crisis that calls for a national response, demanding a mobilization of resources that the free market or individual states cannot achieve on their own. The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 180,000 people around the globe, and claimed more than 7,000 lives already. Based on what they know about the virus so far, experts say that between two million and 200 million people could be infected in the coming weeks and months, in the United States alone. If the worst came to pass, as many as 1.7 million of our neighbors and loved ones could die. How many people are affected depends on the actions that we as a nation take right now.

Understandably, many American leaders have been focused on shoring up an economy that’s hemorrhaging money and trust. Many of the measures being advanced by Congress, like paid sick leave, are crucial. But the best hope for the economy, and the nation as a whole, is a strong public health response to the coronavirus.

Confusion has reigned, among health care professionals and laypeople alike, over when or whether to test patients, quarantine the exposed and isolate the sick — even over how worried to be. Part of the problem is a supply shortage that is already growing dire in some places. But another problem is the lack of consistent messages from leaders, President Trump in particular. For weeks now, clear statements — for example, that the worst is yet to come — have been undercut by blithe assurances that everything is under control.

It isn’t.

Wartime Production

Much of the country is facing a grave shortage of ventilators, intensive care beds, the equipment and chemicals needed for testing and all manner of medical supplies, including gloves, masks, swabs and wipes. More space is also needed to put these supplies to use healing patients. That means isolation wards for the sick and quarantine facilities for people who are exposed to the coronavirus.

A number of hospitals and state and local governments are working to secure those resources. Some cities and states have purchased hotels and turned them into quarantine facilities. Others are in bidding wars with one another for ventilators, I.C.U. beds and other essential equipment. If the current projections hold — and if countries in Europe and cities in China are any indication — neither these siloed efforts, nor the nation’s federally maintained stash of medical supplies, will be enough to face what’s coming.

Worse still, pitting states against each other for limited and essential supplies leaves poorer states at the mercy of the rich ones, and the states hit first against those that will be hard hit in the coming weeks. Yet on Monday, Mr. Trump told a group of governors desperate for equipment like ventilators, “Try getting it yourselves.”

Instead, the federal government needs to step in to dramatically ramp up production of all these goods, just as it ramped up production of munitions during World War II. That will likely necessitate the use of the Defense Production Act, a law that enables the president to mobilize domestic industries in times of crisis. President Trump has not demonstrated the democratic instincts or administrative competence to inspire the confidence that he ought to be trusted with even more executive authority. But he’s the only president America’s got, and this crisis requires White House action. It’s not hard to imagine, with proper organization and support, American factories producing ventilators, masks, hand sanitizer, coronavirus tests and other medical equipment at a scale that would meet what the crisis demands. But it won’t happen overnight, and it certainly won’t happen without leadership.

“We could increase production fivefold in a 90- to 120-day period,” Chris Kiple, chief executive of Ventec Life Systems, a Washington State firm that makes ventilators used in hospitals, homes and ambulances, told Forbes last week. Kiple estimated that current worldwide production capacity for ventilators is about 40,000 a year.

The government will also need to deploy the National Guard or the Army to convert facilities like convention centers, hotels and parking lots into testing sites, isolation units and humane quarantines.

In the absence of government leadership, companies can still take it upon themselves to help the effort. In France, for example, LVMH, which owns luxury brands like Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior, announced Sunday it was repurposing perfume production lines to make hand sanitizer and other anti-viral products.

Front-Line Fighters

Once supplies and space are secured, human capacity will need to be addressed. There are not enough health care workers who are trained and equipped to treat emergent, contagious lung infections in intensive care units. If those workers fall ill and are themselves quarantined and isolated — as some of them almost certainly will be, given the present lack of protective equipment — more will have to be trained and prepared.

That challenge will be exacerbated by the fact that large conferences and training sessions are likely to be verboten in the months ahead. The federal government can help by conveying the urgency of the need — and calling on health care workers to volunteer for such training — and then by creating the necessary virtual modules and webinars.

Federal leaders can also help by calling on states to waive licensing requirements for out-of-state medical workers, as Massachusetts has already done. There will not be one giant outbreak here in the United States, but rather many smaller ones that will vary in scope, size and duration. That means some parts of the country will have much greater need than others. The ability of any worker to deploy quickly from a low-need area to a high-need one will save valuable time as the number of confirmed cases surges in the days ahead.

Public Works for Public Health

During World War II, housewives, students, retirees and the unemployed moved into the labor force to help build tanks, planes and armaments. It was a full-scale national effort — and something similar is called for today.

This will take some creativity. In Spain, final year medical studentsare being pulled into clinics and hospitals for more routine tasks to allow staff to focus on critical cases. In the United States, retired hospital workers are being urged back into the work force to provide needed expertise.

But the larger community can also pitch in. The government could train America’s newly unemployed to sanitize hospital equipment or to deliver food to the elderly and the immune-compromised. Child care for hospital workers on the front lines is desperately needed. Through a new public works program, corps of people could implement infection control in nursing homes and other high-risk facilities — or teach workers of all kinds how best to protect themselves. There could even be a network of individuals tasked with making phone calls to combat loneliness for people in nursing homes and prisons while they’re unable to receive visitors.

These are just a few possibilities for putting people to work confronting the crisis, to be sure. Any such programs stand a much better chance of success if the federal government encourages them and directs them through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A Clear, Strong Call to Action

In recent days, the president has begun calling on industry leaders to help: to develop vaccines, diagnostic tests and treatments for the virus, to develop websites that might clarify and expedite testing and to cede their parking lots to the needs of the public.

It’s time for him to call on the rest of the country as well. Not just to scrub hands and forego basketball games, Broadway shows and the local bar — but to meet this moment with urgency and altruism. Many Americans are anxious to help their fellow citizens. Would they ration their own consumption to help save them, if that’s what things came to?

During World War II, the American government raised corporate and personal income taxes, pushed the business community onto a wartime footing, drafted millions into the military or civilian defense forces, rationed civilian goods in service of military goals and drastically reorganized society by offering jobs to women and minorities who had long been excluded from them. The society that emerged from the war was different — stronger — than the one that went into it.

It is remarkable what the country can do when the lives of its citizens are in peril, and the final outcome is uncertain. What it takes is leadership to summon that spirit to act in the national interest.

------------------------------------------------------*

8) What Does It Mean to ‘Shelter in Place’?

Tuesday: Bay Area residents are now living under some of the nation’s tightest restrictions. Also: Lawmakers act; and a call for pet pics.

By Jill Cowan, March 17, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/us/shelter-in-place-order-bay-area.html

Credit...Jason Henry for The New York Times

Monday was another difficult day in California as leaders in the Bay Area issued some of the tightest restrictions yet to keep coronavirus cases from surging and overwhelming the health care system.

In six counties — San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Marin, Contra Costa and Alameda Counties — officials ordered residents to shelter in place starting on Tuesday. On Monday evening, Santa Cruz County leaders joined them.

Like in Los Angeles, where officials on Monday expanded restrictions from the city to encompass the entire county of more than 10 million people, gyms, movie theaters and lots of other businesses in the Bay Area will have to close.

But unlike in L.A., residents of the affected counties will also be mostly barred from leaving home except for “essential” activities and travel.

What does that all mean? Here’s what you need to know:

How many people are affected?

The counties that ordered residents to shelter in place have a combined population of roughly 7 million. For comparison, Los Angeles County has about 10 million residents, as we mentioned above, and Orange County’s population is about 3 million.

But the Bay Area counties have been among the hardest hit by the virus, with more than 273 confirmed cases and four deaths attributed to the virus.

And how long will this last?

The order went into effect at 12:01 a.m. It’s set to last until April 7, but officials could extend or shorten that time.

I get that I’m supposed to stay home and most businesses are supposed to close but can I still …

Go to work? Not unless you work for what’s considered an essential business or service provider. (More on that below.) You’re also not supposed to travel — including “on foot, bicycle, scooter, motorcycle, automobile or public transit” — unless it’s to do one of those essential things. Of course, if you’re already working from home, then that’ll probably continue.
Go outside? Yes, but only if you can stay at least six feet away from any people you don’t live with. That applies to shared outdoor space, say, at your apartment complex, and parks.
Go to restaurants? No, except for takeout. Restaurants are considered essential businesses and officials are encouraging them to stay open, but only for pick up or delivery. If you can, call your favorite local restaurant to see what steps they’re taking. (Here in L.A., there are restaurants offering pickup specials or adding extra provisions to their menus.) Schools that feed students are also supposed to send the food home with them.
Hang out with friends at their houses or at my house? Alas, not really. The order says that, “all public and private gatherings of any number of people occurring outside a single household or living unit are prohibited,” and that any time you leave your house, even for essential reasons, you should be able to stay at least six feet away from others.

Are there exceptions to all this?

Definitely. There is a long list of exemptions — you can find them written out in full here, starting on Page 5 — and they’re largely ones you’d expect.

Among them: You can leave your home to buy groceries, for instance, and supermarkets will still be open.

You can do anything you have to do that’s essential to the “health and safety” of you or anyone in your household, including pets. That means doctor visits, trips to pharmacies and mental health appointments.

You can get supplies you need to work from home.

People who are working at any of the aforementioned places, or who provide other essential government or utility functions, including people who work at airports, pick up garbage, maintain electrical systems and deliver mail or packages, will also able to go to work. So will those who deliver food and provide home health care.

Is there punishment for those who don’t follow the order?

There could be. Failure to comply with the order, it says, “is a misdemeanor punishable by fine, imprisonment or both.”

According to SFGate, San Francisco’s police chief, Bill Scott, said the agency would be taking a “compassionate, common sense approach” to enforcement.

What are people supposed to do if they don’t have a home?

Well, that’s not terribly clear. But the region’s more than 30,000 homeless people are exempt from the order.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Sunday that the state was working to buy hotels and trailers to move people out of densely populated homeless encampments and into shelter. However, getting people off the streets has long been the state’s most intractable problem.

California lawmakers unanimously approved an aid package of up to $1.1 billion to offset the cascading effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Legislators are also pursuing other proposals to help, including ones that would halt evictions statewide. [The San Francisco Chronicle]

Also, Mr. Newsom issued an executive order allowing local jurisdictions to stop evictions and utility shut-offs.

Economists at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that the coronavirus pandemic will trigger a recession. [The Desert Sun]
Here’s a helpful primer on California’s lockdown of people over 65 and the chronically ill. [CalMatters]
A new study suggested that for every known coronavirus case, another five to 10 are undetected. [The New York Times]
If you missed it, this simulator is the best way to learn why it’s so important to stay away from other people right now. [The Washington Post]
Universal Pictures said it would no longer give theaters an exclusive period of roughly 90 days to show new movies, becoming the first old-line studio to become more like Netflix in its movie releases. The move was prompted by the pandemic, but could have lasting effects. [The New York Times]
Here’s how you can help your community, while still social distancing. [Wirecutter]

And Finally …

If you’re working from home, perhaps your office has an email thread a little like the one our National desk editor, Marc Lacey, started on Monday.

He sent a photo of himself with his dog co-worker, Sandy. He asked if anyone could best her in “overall cuteness.” I’m not going to judge the many submissions, but I think I can safely say we human journalists were the real winners.

So, in that spirit, if you’re sharing your home work space with an animal friend, send us a picture of said buddy, along with their name, your name and city where you live, and we’ll publish some responses.

I, personally, would benefit from a CAtoday@nytimes.com inbox full of adorable and hilarious pet photos, so please, think of your friendly newsletter writer in these trying times.

Hope you’re all safe and well.

California Today goes live at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com. Were you forwarded this email? Sign up for California Today here and read every edition online here.

Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, graduated from U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter, @jillcowan.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.

------------------------------------------------------*

9) I’m a Doctor in Britain. We’re Heading Into the Abyss.

How many people will die because we’ve been working on the brink of collapse for too long?

By Jessica Potter, March 18, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/opinion/coronavirus-uk-nhs.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Credit...Isabel Infantes/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

LONDON — Ten days ago, I was asked to see a patient. I’m a respiratory specialist in an intensive-care unit at a hospital in London, so it wasn’t surprising that the patient needed a ventilator. It seemed fairly typical. But the patient turned out to have the coronavirus — our hospital’s first case and one of nearly 2,000 people who have so far tested positive in Britain. I hadn’t worn a mask. Soon I developed a cough.

Though I experienced neither fever nor breathlessness, I was told to self-isolate for 14 days. That’s where I am now, in self-isolation. And I’m not the only one from my hospital. After just one patient with Covid-19, a quarter of our junior staff are off with coughs and sniffles we would normally work through. A single case of the coronavirus has wreaked havoc in our hospital.

It’s a microcosm of what may come. Britain has fewer intensive-care beds than most other European countries. Occupancy rates are high, and there’s a daily struggle to discharge enough people to make space for new patients. Even when a bed is available, we do not have the nurses to staff it. A decade of cuts and underfunding has left us dangerously exposed. This is the perpetual winter of the N.H.S.

For the past week I have been watching from the sidelines. Watching while my colleagues gear up for the long road ahead, resting when they can, shoring up procedures for managing infected patients, training one another, and making plans for illness and ways to isolate themselves from their families. Watching while plans are made to cancel nonemergency care and move staff members to the front line.

It’s all hands on deck. Rotations to new departments and hospitals have been canceled: I will stay on in intensive care, and doctors in other departments will come join me on the front line. My plans to work part-time have gone out of the window. But this is my vocation — we are never not doctors. When we are called upon to step up, there is only one answer.

As people with the coronavirus flood our corridors, hospitals will be pushed to the breaking point. Britain is a rich country and may fare better than others. But the N.H.S. is creaking at the seams after years of underfunding. A decade of cuts by successive Conservative governments has stripped the service of resources. Staff morale is low and retention is poor. We are already working at capacity.

When our hospitals are overwhelmed and we have to decide how to allocate scarce resources, how do we choose whom to ventilate and whom not to? Italy is nearly at that point, and its health service has many more intensive-care beds per person than Britain’s. Will I have to tell someone we can’t treat a loved one because we’re out of ventilators, oxygen, tubes, masks, hospitals, staff? Will we then impose an age limit, as some hospitals in Italy are considering, or will some notion of “deservingness” come into play?

The government’s strategy centers on flattening the peak of the epidemic while ensuring the public doesn’t give up on self-isolation at just the wrong moment and head outside into the eye of the storm. So unlike some other countries, we are not yet in full shutdown. After a week of cabin fever, I can understand not wanting to enforce isolation sooner than necessary.

But I worry about how we know where we are on the epidemic curve. Have we tested enough people? What if lockdown comes too late? Will we be overwhelmed too soon? Across the N.H.S. this winter there have been patients in corridors and canceled surgeries. How many people will die because we’ve been working on the brink of collapse for too long?

I am not an epidemiologist. I do not pretend to know the right strategy. But if Britain experiences anything like what we’ve seen elsewhere, we’re on our way to tragedy.

What’s certain is that with 100,000 job vacancies already, the N.H.S. will not survive this crisis without protecting and respecting its staff. In 2018, two-thirds of doctors in their second year of training chose not to pursue specialty jobs. We are being asked to do more with little compensation while colleagues are hung out to dry because the system failed them. To add insult to injury, we have been provided with out-of-date masks with which to protect ourselves.

We already know that our counterparts in Italy, China and elsewhere have given their lives to the vocation they chose. For years, health care workers have been raising the alarm that the N.H.S. is in crisis — calling on the government for better funding for our hospitals and better working conditions for ourselves.

As the coronavirus crisis intensifies, we must be given the means to protect ourselves and our patients, particularly those most vulnerable. We deserve transparency. We demand honesty. Without that, I don’t know how many people will stick around after this is all over.

And right now, it feels like we’re heading into the abyss.

------------------------------------------------------*

10) Cuba’s Contribution to Combatting COVID-19

By Helen Yaffe, March 17, 2020

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/17/cubas-contribution-to-combatting-covid-19/

Photograph Source: NatalieMaynor – CC BY 2.0

COVID-19 surged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late December 2019 and by January 2020 it had hit Hubei province like a tidal wave, swirling over China and rippling out overseas. The Chinese state rolled into action to combat the spread and care for those infected. Among the 30 medicines the Chinese National Health Commission selected to fight the virus was a Cuban anti-viral drug Interferon Alpha 2b. This drug has been produced in China since 2003, by the enterprise ChangHeber, a Cuban-Chinese joint venture.

Cuban Interferon Alpha 2b has proven effective for viruses with characteristics similar to those of COVID-19. Cuban biotech specialist, Dr Luis Herrera Martinez explained that ‘its use prevents aggravation and complications in patients, reaching that stage that ultimately can result in death.’ Cuba first developed and used interferons to arrest a deadly outbreak of the dengue virus in 1981, and the experience catalysed the development of the island’s now world-leading biotech industry.

The world’s first biotechnology enterprise, Genetech, was founded in San Francisco in 1976, followed by AMGen in Los Angeles in 1980. One year later, the Biological Front, a professional interdisciplinary forum, was set up to develop the industry in Cuba. While most developing countries had little access to the new technologies (recombinant DNA, human gene therapy, biosafety), Cuban biotechnology expanded and took on an increasingly strategic role in both the public health sector and the national economic development plan. It did so despite the US blockade obstructing access to technologies, equipment, materials, finance and even knowledge exchange. Driven by public health demand, it has been characterized by the fast track from research and innovation to trials and application, as the story of Cuban interferon shows.

Interferons are ‘signalling’ proteins produced and released by cells in response to infections which alert nearby cells to heighten their anti-viral defences. They were first identified in 1957 by Jean Lindenmann and Aleck Isaacs in London. In the 1960s Ion Gresser, a US-researcher in Paris, showed that interferons stimulate lymphocytes that attack tumours in mice. In 1970s, US oncologist Randolph Clark Lee, took up this research.

Catching the tail end of US President Carter’s improved relations with Cuba, Dr Clark Lee visited Cuba, met with Fidel Castro and convinced him that interferon was the wonder drug. Shortly afterwards, a Cuban doctor and a haematologist spent time in Dr Clark Lee’s laboratory, returning with the latest research about interferon and more contacts. In March 1981, six Cubans spent 12 days in Finland with the Finnish doctor Kari Cantell, who in the 1970s had isolated interferon from human cells, and had shared the breakthrough by declining to patent the procedure. The Cubans learned to produce large quantities of interferon.

Within 45 days of returning to the island, they had produced their first Cuban batch of interferon, the quality of which was confirmed by Cantell’s laboratory in Finland. Just in time, it turned out. Weeks later Cuba was struck by an epidemic of dengue, a disease transmitted by mosquitos. It was the first time this particularly virulent strand, which can trigger life-threatening dengue haemorrhagic fever, had appeared in the Americas. The epidemic affected 340,000 Cubans with 11,000 new cases diagnosed every day at its peak. 180 people died, including 101 children. The Cubans suspected the CIA of releasing the virus. The US State Department denied it, although a recent Cuban investigation claims to provide evidence that the epidemic was introduced from the US.

Cuba’s Ministry of Public Health authorised the use of Cuban interferon to halt the dengue outbreak. It was done at great speed. Mortality declined. In their historical account, Cuban medical scientists Caballero Torres and Lopez Matilla wrote: ‘It was the most extensive prevention and therapy event with interferon carried out in the world. Cuba began to hold regular symposia, which quickly drew international attention’. The first international event in 1983 was prestigious; Cantell gave the keynote speech and Clark attended with Albert Bruce Sabin, the Polish American scientist who developed the oral polio vaccine.

Convinced about the contribution and strategic importance of innovative medical science, the Cuban government set up the Biological Front in 1981 to develop the sector. Cuban scientists went abroad to study, many in western countries. Their research took on more innovative paths, as they experimented with cloning interferon. By the time Cantell returned to Cuba in 1986, the Cubans had developed the recombinant human Interferon Alfa 2b which has benefited thousands of Cubans since then. With significant state investment, Cuba’s showpiece Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) was opened in 1986. By then Cuba was submerged in another health crisis, a serious outbreak of Meningitis B, which further spurred Cuba’s biotechnology sector.

Cuba’s Meningitis Miracle

In 1976, Cuba was struck by meningitis B and C outbreaks. Since 1916 only a few isolated cases had been seen on the island. Internationally, vaccines existed for Meningitis A and C, but not for B. Cuban health authorities secured a vaccine from a French pharmaceutical company to immunise the population against type C Meningitis. However, in the following years, cases of type B Meningitis began to rise. A team of specialists from different medical science centres was established, led by a woman biochemist, Concepción Campa, to work intensively on finding a vaccine.

By 1984 Meningitis B had become the main health problem in Cuba. After six years of intense work, Campa’s team produced the world’s first successful Meningitis B vaccine in 1988. A member of Campa’s team, Dr Gustavo Sierra recalled their joy: ‘this was the moment when we could say it works, and it works in the worst conditions, under pressure of an epidemic and among people of the most vulnerable age.’ During 1989 and 1990, three million Cubans, those most at risk, were vaccinated. Subsequently, 250,000 young people were vaccinated with the VA-MENGOC-BC vaccine, a combined Meningitis B and C vaccination. It recorded 95% efficacy overall, with 97% in the high-risk three months to six years age group. Cuba’s Meningitis B vaccine was awarded a UN Gold Medal for global innovation. This was Cuba’s meningitis miracle.

‘I tell colleagues that one can work 30 years, 14 hours a day just to enjoy that graph for 10 minutes,’ Agustin Lage, Director of the Centro for Molecular Immunology (CIM) told me, referring to an illustration of the rise and sudden fall of Meningitis B cases in Cuba. ‘Biotechnology started for this. But then the possibilities of developing an export industry opened up, and today, Cuban biotechnology exports to 50 countries.’

Since its first application to combat dengue fever, Cuba’s interferon has shown its efficacy and safety in the therapy of viral diseases including Hepatitis B and C, shingles, HIV-AIDS and dengue. Because it interferes with viral multiplication within cells, it has also been used in the treatment of different types of carcinomas. Time will tell if Interferon Alfa 2b proves to be the wonder drug as far as COVID-19 goes.

This article draws on material in my new book, We Are Cuba! How a revolutionary people have survived in a post-Soviet world. Chapter 5 deals with ‘The curious case of Cuba’s biotech revolutionary’. Available here.

------------------------------------------------------*

tion: none; } #ygrp-sponsor #ov li { font-size: 77%; list-style-type: square; padding: 6px 0; } #ygrp-sponsor #ov ul { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 8px; } #ygrp-text { font-family: Georgia; } #ygrp-text p { margin: 0 0 1em 0; } #ygrp-text tt { font-size: 120%; } #ygrp-vital ul li:last-child { border-right: none !important; } -->

__._,_.___

Posted by: Bonnie Weinstein <bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com>

•

•

•

•

Messages in this topic (2)

VISIT YOUR GROUP

• Privacy • Unsubscribe • Terms of Use

__,_._,___

3/17/2020

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, TUESDAY, MARCH 17, 2020

Dear readers, many of the events and actions scheduled have been cancelled due to the Coronavirus. Please check websites listed to check on cancellations.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Chelsea Manning Ordered Free From Prison

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

New post on Caitlin Johnstone

Chelsea Manning Supporters Raise A Quarter Million Dollars In Two Days

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

The Bugs Are in the System

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

—Johnny Gould

(Follow @tandino415 on Instagram)

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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

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

Contact information and to co-sponsor: Event coordinator, Jeff Mackler, jmackler@lmi.net

With video messages from Daniel Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky and Alice Walker

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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 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.

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.

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/

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Podcast: “I would not carry a weapon anymore” – Ray Cage

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

Sunday, April 19, 2:00 - 5:00 pm  Humanist Hall 390 27th Street, Oakland

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*

------------------------------------------------------*