BAUAW NEWSLETTER, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18, 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.

Stay Healthy!

—Bonnie Weinstein

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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/

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New 48 Hours tv show on Kevin Cooper, 

this Saturday, March 21, 10pm

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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.    # # #

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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.

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New post on Caitlin Johnstone 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    See all comments Unsubscribe to no longer receive posts from Caitlin Johnstone. Change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions.  Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/03/15/chelsea-manning-supporters-raise-a-quarter-million-dollars-in-two-days/

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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

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Friday post   

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The American way of life was designed by white supremacists in favor patriarchal white supremacy, who have had at least a 400 year head start accumulating wealth, out of generations filled with blood sweat and tears of oppressed people. The same people who are still on the front lines and in the crosshairs of patriarchal white-supremacist capitalism today. There's no such thing as equality without a united revolutionary front to dismantle capitalism and design a worldwide socialist society.

—Johnny Gould

(Follow @tandino415 on Instagram)

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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 

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View in your browser 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 

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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

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Please forward widely

The Prosecution of Julian Assange and the Fight for Free Speech

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

Donation: $20 -$10 sliding scale; Student $5, No one turned away for lack of funds

Benefit for the Courage Foundation, for Julian Assange's defense

Join us for a panel discussion of leading attorneys, human rights defenders and social justice activists as the London trial of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is underway. If Assange is extradicted to the United States, he faces the first-ever charges under the Espionage Act of 1917 for the publication of truthful information  in the public interest. Speakers will present  the ctitical  legal and policy issues involved as well as rebut  government efforts to undermine the reputation and credibility of Assange. In these difficult times for civil liberties and democratic rights we demand: Free Julian Assange! Defend Free Speech and the First Amendment!

Panel Speakers: Jim Lafferty, Executive Director for three decades, National Lawyers Guild, Los Angeles

Representative, Bay Area National Lawyers Guild

Jennifer Robinson, Julian Assange's London attorney (message)

Joe Lombardo, National Coordinator, United National Antiwar Coalition

Nathan Fuller, Executive Director, Courage Foundation*

Nozomi Hayase, author, contributor to the new book, In Defense of Julian Assange

Margaret Kunstler, editor, In Defense of Julian Assange (tentative) 

Moderator: Jeff Mackler, author, Obama's National Security State: The Meaning of the Edward Snowden Revelations

*Courage Foundation www.couragefound.org, an international whistleblower support network, campaigning for the public and legal defense of Julian Assange and for the protection of truthtellers and the public's right to know, internationally.

Sponsors: Bay Area Julian Assange Defense Committee • National Lawyers Guild Bay Area • Courage Foundation  • United National Antiwar Coalition

Initial co-sponsors: CodePink Bay Area • Social Justice Center of Marin • Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, US Section • Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance, advisory board, Courage Foundation, past Steering Committee member  Chelsea  Manning Support Committee, Venezuelan Embassy defender • Marin Peace and Justice Center • Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

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

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

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 

National Solidarity Events to Amplify Prisoners Human Rights 

AUGUST 21 - SEPTEMBER 9th

To all in solidarity with the Prisoners Human Rights Movement:

We are reaching out to those that have been amplifying our voices in these state, federal, or immigration jails and prisons, and to allies that uplifted the national prison strike demands in 2018. We call on you again to organize the communities from August 21st - September 9th, 2020, by hosting actions, events, and demonstrations that call for prisoner human rights and the end to prison slavery.

We must remind the people and legal powers in this nation that prisoners' human rights are a priority. If we aren't moving forward, we're moving backward. For those of us in chains, backward is not an option. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

Some people claim that prisoners' human rights have advanced since the last national prison strike in 2018. We strongly disagree. But due to prisoners organizing inside and allies organizing beyond the walls, solidarity with our movement has increased. The only reason we hear conversations referencing prison reforms in every political campaign today is because of the work of prison organizers and our allies! But as organizers in prisons, we understand this is not enough. Just as quickly as we've gained ground, others are already funding projects and talking points to set back those advances. Our only way to hold our ground while moving forward is to remind people where we are and where we are headed.

On August 21 - September 9, we call on everyone in solidarity with us to organize an action, a panel discussion, a rally, an art event, a film screening, or another kind of demonstration to promote prisoners' human rights. Whatever is within your ability, we ask that you shake the nation out of any fog they may be in about prisoners' human rights and the criminal legal system (legalized enslavement).

During these solidarity events, we request that organizers amplify immediate issues prisoners in your state face, the demands from the National Prison Strike of 2018, and uplift Jailhouse Lawyers Speak new International Law Project.

We've started the International Law Project to engage the international community with a formal complaint about human rights abuses in U.S. prisons. This project will seek prisoners' testimonials from across the country to establish a case against the United States Prison Industrial Slave Complex on international human rights grounds.

Presently working on this legally is the National Lawyers Guild's Prisoners Rights Committee, and another attorney, Anne Labarbera. Members of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), Fight Toxic Prisons (FTP), and I am We Prisoners Advocacy Network/Millions For Prisoners are also working to support these efforts. The National Lawyers Guild Prisoners' Rights Committee (Jenipher R. Jones, Esq. and Audrey Bomse) will be taking the lead on this project.

The National Prison Strike Demands of 2018 have not changed.. As reflected publicly by the recent deaths of Mississippi prisoners, the crisis in this nation's prisons persist. Mississippi prisons are on national display at the moment of this writing, and we know shortly afterward there will be another Parchman in another state with the same issues. The U.S. has demonstrated a reckless disregard for human lives in cages.

The prison strike demands were drafted as a path to alleviate the dehumanizing process and conditions people are subjected to while going through this nation's judicial system. Following up on these demands communicates to the world that prisoners are heard and that prisoners' human rights are a priority.

In the spirit of Attica, will you be in the fight to dismantle the prison industrial slave complex by pushing agendas that will shut down jails and prisons like Rikers Island or Attica? Read the Attica Rebellion demands and read the National Prison Strike 2018 demands. Ask yourself what can you do to see the 2018 National Prison Strike demands through.

SHARE THIS RELEASE FAR AND WIDE WITH ALL YOUR CONTACTS!

We rage with George Jackson's "Blood in my eyes" and move in the spirit of the Attica Rebellion!

August 21st - September 9th, 2020

AGITATE, EDUCATE, ORGANIZE

Dare to struggle, Dare to win!

We are--

"Jailhouse Lawyers Speak"  

NLG EMAIL CONTACT FOR LAWYERS AND LAW STUDENTS INTERESTED IN JOINING THE INTERNATIONAL LAW PROJECT: micjlsnlg@gmail.com

PRISON STRIKE DEMANDS:  https://jailhouselawyerspeak.wordpress.com/2020/02/11/prisoners-national-demands-for-human-rights/  

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Courage to Resist Newsletter March 5, 2020 Podcast: “I would not carry a weapon anymore” – Ray Cage Appeals court heard arguments on draft registration Join the Pilgrimage to Close the Camps, June 5-7, DC Resister who dumped human dung on draft files Podcast: “I would not carry a weapon anymore” – Ray Cage Ray Cage is a combat vet and Agent Orange vet. He deployed to Vietnam in 1969 and later participated in the illegal invasion of Cambodia. "I just started to have some misgivings about what I was doing as a human being. ... There was a big movement of that going on all amongst the ranks in the war machine in Vietnam, that people were refusing to participate.” Listen to Ray's story Appeals court heard arguments on draft registration, congressional report coming March 25th As Congress prepares to debate the issue of the military draft, Courage to Resist and other anti-draft activists and organizations are calling on Congress to enact legislation to end draft registration entirely. Learn more Join the Pilgrimage to Close the Camps, June 5-7, Washington DC Courage to Resist is a proud endorser of the National Pilgrimage to Close the Camps, “A chance to join thousands of Japanese Americans and other communities for programs, protest, and healing together,” lead by Tsuru for Solidarity. Learn more "No regrets" for resister who dumped human dung on draft files Nearly forgotten history: At his draft board, they asked where Barry’s other ten brothers were. When Barry and his parents got home they thought about what had happened. “Oh, you mean rest, as in residue? Like what’s left behind in a bathroom stall?" The family could oblige, they decided. For the next few days, all of the brothers collected their business in a pail. Learn more The above Courage to Resist podcast was produced in collaboration with the Vietnam Full Disclosure effort of Veterans For Peace — “Towards an honest commemoration of the American war in Vietnam.” This year marks 50 years of GI resistance, in and out of uniform, for many of the courageous individuals featured. If you believe this history is important, please ... DONATE NOW to support these podcasts

COURAGE TO RESIST ~ SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT!
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, California 94610 ~ 510-488-3559
www.couragetoresist.org ~ facebook.com/couragetoresist

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

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

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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

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Eddie Conway's Update on Forgotten Political Prisoners

November 19, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COURAGE TO RESIST ~ SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT! 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, California 94610 ~ 510-488-3559 www.....................couragetoresist..org ~ facebook.com/couragetoresist 

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Mobilization4Mumia215-724-1618 Mobilizatio4Mumia.com   mobilization4mumia@gmail.com PRESS RELEASE Contact Sophia Williams 917-806-0521, Ted Kelly 610-715-6924 or Joe Piette 610-931-2615

Philadelphia, Jan. 30 - Mumia Abu-Jamal has always insisted on his innocence in the death of police officer Daniel Faulkner, blaming police, judicial and prosecutorial misconduct for his politically-tainted conviction. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is expected to announce his response this week to the legal briefs for Post Conviction Relief Act hearings and the request to remand Abu-Jamal's case back to Common Pleas court, filed by his attorneys in early September 2019. Abu-Jamal's supporters will rally outside DA Krasner's office at 4:30 on Friday, January 31, whether or not he challenges Mumia's appeals. We call for Mumia's release...

Recent exonerations of 10 Philadelphia residents unfairly convicted for crimes they did not commit reveal a simple truth - the Philadelphia police, courts and prosecutors convicted innocent Black men based on gross violations of their constitutional rights. The same patterns of constitutional violations plague the case of Abu-Jamal. Since Jan. 2018, Sherman McCoy, James Frazier, Dwayne Thorpe, Terrance Lewis, Jamaal Simmons, Dontia Patterson, John Miller, Willie Veasey, Johnny Berry and Chester Holmann III have all been exonerated by DA Larry Krasner's Conviction Integrity Unit.  Philadelphia is not alone. The National Registry of Exonerations counted 165 exonerations last year. The registry has tallied 2,500 wrongful convictions since 1989, costing defendants more than 22,000 years of incarceration. Seven of the ten men released in Philadelphia were convicted by longtime district attorney Lynne Abraham, a "tough-on-crime" prosecutor who regularly sought maximum punishments and death spentences. Abraham as Common Pleas Court Judge arraigned Abu-Jamal in 1981and years later as District Attorney fought his post conviction relief hearings... Ineffective counsel, false witness testimony, witness coercion and intimidation, phony ballistics evidence, prosecution failure to turn over evidence to the defense as required by law, racist jury selections -- these and other legal errors led to the exoneration of these innocent defendants after decades in prison.. These are the same police, judicial and prosecutorial misconduct practices Abu-Jamal's attorneys and supporters have been citing since 1982. In the late 1970s and early 80s, Abu-Jamal was a daily radio reporter for WHYY and NPR who earned acclaim for his award-winning reporting. As a journalist who reported fairly on the MOVE organization's resistance against state repression, he drew the ire of the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police and the notoriously racist Police Commissioner and later Mayor Frank Rizzo. On Dec. 9, 1981, while driving a cab to supplement his income, Abu-Jamal happened upon his brother in an altercation with Faulkner. Faulkner was killed. Abu-Jamal, who was shot and severely beaten by police, was charged in Faulkner's death, even though witnesses reported seeing another man, most probably the passenger in Abu-Jamal's brother's car, running from the scene. Imprisoned for nearly four decades, Abu-Jamal has maintained his innocence. He successfully won his release from Pennsylvania's death row in 2011.. In December 2018 he won the right to appeal his 1982 conviction because of biased judicial oversight by PA Supreme Court Justice Ronald Castille In early January 2019, DA Krasner reported finding six boxes of previously undisclosed evidence held by prosecutors in the case and allowed Abu-Jamal's attorneys to review the files. In September 2019 Abu-Jamal's lawyers filed new appellate briefs, including a request that the case be returned for a hearing before the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court based on finding of concrete evidence of prosecutorial misconduct by the DA's office in his 1982 trial. A Sept.. 9, 2019 Abu-Jamal's attorneys Judith Ritter and Sam Spital filed a brief in PA Superior Court to support his claim that his 1982 trial was fundamentally unfair and violated the Constitution. They argue the prosecution failed to disclose evidence as required and discriminated against African Americans when selecting the jury. And, his 1982 lawyer did not adequately challenge the State's witnesses.                                                                                               The attorneys also filed a motion revealing new evidence of constitutional violations such as promises by the prosecutor to pay or give leniency to two witnesses. There is also new evidence of racial discrimination in jury selection. Attorney Ritter contends that the new evidence shows Abu-Jamal's trial was "fundamentally unfair and tainted by serious constitutional violations." https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZgI0jvcWY5soAh_DXKdNnJJZSY0HEftuRwthQMurgd8/edit?usp=sharing

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Mumia Abu-Jamal: New Chance for Freedom

Police and State Frame-Up Must Be Fully Exposed!

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

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

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

Time is up! FREE MUMIA NOW!

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DA's Hidden Files Show Frame-Up of Mumia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mass Movement Needed To Free Mumia! 

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

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

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

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

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

Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

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

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

November 2019

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

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Board Game

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

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

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

Spread the word!!

By Dr.... Nayvin Gordon

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50 years in prison:  ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!! FREE Chip Fitzgerald  Grandfather, Father, Elder, Friend former Black Panther                

Romaine "Chip" Fitzgerald has been in prison since he was locked up 50 years ago...... A former member of the Black Panther Party, Chip is now 70 years old, and suffering the consequences of a serious stroke. He depends on a wheelchair for his mobility. He has appeared before the parole board 17 times, but they refuse to release him.. NOW is the time for Chip to come home! In September 1969, Chip and two other Panthers were stopped by a highway patrolman..... During the traffic stop, a shooting broke out, leaving Chip and a police officer both wounded. Chip was arrested a month later and charged with attempted murder of the police and an unrelated murder of a security guard. Though the evidence against him was weak and Chip denied any involvement, he was convicted and sentenced to death. In 1972, the California Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty.......... Chip and others on Death Row had their sentences commuted to Life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. All of them became eligible for parole after serving 7 more years...... But Chip was rejected for parole, as he has been ever since.  Parole for Lifers basically stopped under Governors Deukmajian, Wilson, and Davis (1983-2003), resulting in increasing numbers of people in prison and 23 new prisons. People in prison filed lawsuits in federal courts: people were dying as a result of the overcrowding.. To rapidly reduce the number of people in prison, the court mandated new parole hearings: ·        for anyone 60 years or older who had served 25 years or more; ·        for anyone convicted before they were 23 years old; ·        for anyone with disabilities  Chip qualified for a new parole hearing by meeting all three criteria. But the California Board of Parole Hearings has used other methods to keep Chip locked up. Although the courts ordered that prison rule infractions should not be used in parole considerations, Chip has been denied parole because he had a cellphone.......... Throughout his 50 years in prison, Chip has been denied his right to due process – a new parole hearing as ordered by Federal courts. He is now 70, and addressing the challenges of a stroke victim. His recent rules violation of cellphone possession were non-violent and posed no threat to anyone. He has never been found likely to commit any crimes if released to the community – a community of his children, grandchildren, friends and colleagues who are ready to support him and welcome him home. The California Board of Parole Hearings is holding Chip hostage..... We call on Governor Newsom to release Chip immediately. What YOU can do to support this campaign to FREE CHIP: 1)   Sign and circulate the petition to FREE Chip. Download it at https://www.change.org/p/california-free-chip-fitzgerald Print out the petition and get signatures at your workplace, community meeting, or next social gathering. 2)   Write an email to Governor Newsom's office (sample message at:https://docs..google.com/document/d/1iwbP_eQEg2J1T2h-tLKE-Dn2ZfpuLx9MuNv2z605DMc/edit?usp=sharing 3)   Write to Chip:   Romaine "Chip" Fitzgerald #B27527, CSP-LAC P.O. Box 4490 B-4-150 Lancaster, CA 93539 -- Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 863...................9977 https://freedomarchives.org/

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On Abortion: From Facebook

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

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Celebrating the release of Janet and Janine Africa  

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

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

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

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

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Funds for Kevin Cooper

https://www.gofundme.....com/funds-for-kevin-cooper?member=1994108 For 34 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California..  Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .....  In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered  limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov..... Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison..  The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings ......... Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, paper, toiletries, supplementary food, and/or phone calls........ Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!

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Don't extradite Assange!

To the government of the UK Julian Assange, through Wikileaks, has done the world a great service in documenting American war crimes, its spying on allies and other dirty secrets of the world's most powerful regimes, organisations and corporations. This has not endeared him to the American deep state.......... Both Obama, Clinton and Trump have declared that arresting Julian Assange should be a priority... We have recently received confirmation [1] that he has been charged in secret so as to have him extradited to the USA as soon as he can be arrested.  Assange's persecution, the persecution of a publisher for publishing information [2] that was truthful and clearly in the interest of the public - and which has been republished in major newspapers around the world - is a danger to freedom of the press everywhere, especially as the USA is asserting a right to arrest and try a non-American who neither is nor was then on American soil. The sentence is already clear: if not the death penalty then life in a supermax prison and ill treatment like Chelsea Manning... The very extradition of Julian Assange to the United States would at the same time mean the final death of freedom of the press in the West.....  Sign now! The courageous nation of Ecuador has offered Assange political asylum within its London embassy for several years until now. However, under pressure by the USA, the new government has made it clear that they want to drive Assange out of the embassy and into the arms of the waiting police as soon as possible... They have already curtailed his internet and his visitors and turned the heating off, leaving him freezing in a desolate state for the past few months and leading to the rapid decline of his health, breaching UK obligations under the European Convention of Human Rights. Therefore, our demand both to the government of Ecuador and the government of the UK is: don't extradite Assange to the US! Guarantee his human rights, make his stay at the embassy as bearable as possible and enable him to leave the embassy towards a secure country as soon as there are guarantees not to arrest and extradite him........... Furthermore, we, as EU voters, encourage European nations to take proactive steps to protect a journalist in danger... The world is still watching. Sign now! [1] https://www..nytimes.com/2018/11/16/us/politics/julian-assange-indictment-wikileaks.....html [2] https://theintercept.com/2018/11/16/as-the-obama-doj-concluded-prosecution-of-julian-assange-for-publishing-documents-poses-grave-threats-to-press-freedom/ Sign this petition: https://internal.diem25.....org/en/petitions/1 

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Words of Wisdom  

Louis Robinson Jr., 77 Recording secretary for Local 1714 of the United Auto Workers from 1999 to 2018, with the minutes from a meeting of his union's retirees' chapter.

"One mistake the international unions in the United States made was when Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. When he did that, the unions could have brought this country to a standstill...... All they had to do was shut down the truck drivers for a month, because then people would not have been able to get the goods they needed. So that was one of the mistakes they made. They didn't come together as organized labor and say: "No.... We aren't going for this......... Shut the country down." That's what made them weak. They let Reagan get away with what he did. A little while after that, I read an article that said labor is losing its clout, and I noticed over the years that it did.. It happened... It doesn't feel good..." [On the occasion of the shut-down of the Lordstown, Ohio GM plant March 6, 2019.........] https://www.......nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/01/magazine/lordstown-general-motors-plant...html

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

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1) 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.

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2) Need a Coronavirus Test? Being Rich and Famous May Help

A shortage in testing has left sick people and health care workers around the U.S. without answers. Yet the list of celebrity patients grows every day, raising questions about privileged access.

By Megan Twohey, Steve Eder and Marc Stein, March 18. 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/us/coronavirus-testing-elite.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

The Brooklyn Nets managed to arrange tests for its entire roster. Four were positive, and one exhibited symptoms.Credit...Mary Altaffer/Associated Press

Politicians, celebrities, social media influencers and even N.B.A. teams have been tested for the new coronavirus. But as that list of rich, famous and powerful people grows by the day, so do questions about whether they are getting access to testing that is denied to other Americans.

Some of these high-profile people say they are feeling ill and had good reason to be tested. Others argue that those who were found to be infected and then isolated themselves provided a good example to the public.

But with testing still in short supply in areas of the country, leaving health care workers and many sick people unable to get diagnoses, some prominent personalities have obtained tests without exhibiting symptoms or having known contact with someone who has the virus, as required by some testing guidelines. Others have refused to specify how they were tested.

Such cases have provoked accusations of elitism and preferential treatment about a testing system that has already been plagued with delays and confusion, and now stirred a new national debate that has reached the White House — with President Trump being asked at a Wednesday news conference whether “the well-connected go to the front of the line.”

“You’d have to ask them that question,” he replied, suggesting that should not be the case. “Perhaps that’s been the story of life. That does happen on occasion, and I’ve noticed where some people have been tested fairly quickly.”

Inside the N.B.A., where eight entire teams have been tested, there are differing views. Bob Myers, the president of basketball operations for the Golden State Warriors, said his team thought it would be unfair for its players to seek special access.

“We’ve been told that the testing is in short supply,” Mr. Myers said in a conference call on Tuesday, explaining that no Warriors coach, player or staff member would test until symptomatic — and only then in accord with government guidelines. “We’re not better than anybody, not worse. Just a basketball team.”

The same day, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, in a post on Twitter, chided the Brooklyn Nets, which managed to arrange tests for its entire roster. Four were positive, with one exhibiting symptoms.

“We wish them a speedy recovery,” Mr. de Blasio wrote. “But, with all due respect, an entire NBA team should NOT get tested for COVID-19 while there are critically ill patients waiting to be tested. Tests should not be for the wealthy, but for the sick.”

Access has proved uneven across the country, even as guidelines for who qualifies have broadened and the laboratories conducting tests have expanded, from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to state health departments and then to hospitals and private labs.

In areas of the country where the virus has been slow to appear, people have been able to obtain tests easily. But in New York, California, Washington State and Massachusetts, where the virus has spread rapidly and demand for tests is most high, it is very difficult.

The New York City Health Department has directed doctors only to order tests for patients in need of hospitalization. People with mild symptoms are being told to quarantine themselves at home. Even health care workers, at high risk of contracting the virus and transmitting it, have struggled to get tested.

In New Rochelle, a community north of Manhattan where the virus has spread, a sick mother was told she could not get tested because she hadn’t been to a global “hot spot.” In Boston, an employee at Biogen, a tech company where many dozens tested positive after a conference, was turned away because he didn’t have symptoms. On Twitter, the hashtag #CDCWontTestMe has been circulating for weeks.

In the eyes of some doctors, prominent figures appeared to be moving to the front of the line.

“As predicted, #COVID19 is exposing all of the societal inequities,” Dr. Uché Blackstock, an urgent care doctor in Brooklyn, wrote on Twitter. “It’s upsetting for me to 1) have to ration out #COVID19testing to my patients, then 2) have to wait 5-7 days for the results, when celebrities are getting tested with ease and quick turnaround times.”

Police chiefs across the country are growing concerned that they cannot get their hands on tests.

“What’s frustrating is to continue to hear that there aren’t testing kits available, and my rank and file have to continue to answer calls for service while professional athletes and movie stars are getting tested without even showing any symptoms,” said Eddie Garcia, the police chief of San Jose, Calif., on a conference call with law enforcement officials across the country.

The Hollywood elite — stars, agents, studio and network executives — have concierge doctors on speed dial during the best of times and are used to receiving preferential treatment at Los Angeles medical centers like Cedars-Sinai and Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. Many A-listers use LifeSpan, a private practice.

Over the past few days, however, some celebrities — even ones with symptoms — have expressed frustration about an inability to get tested because of a shortage of kits. Heidi Klum, the TV personality and model, posted a video on Instagram on Friday from Los Angeles in which she claimed to have tried two doctors without luck. “I just can’t get one,” she said.

The video may have helped her gain access. A day later, she returned to Instagram to say she was “finally” able to get tested. The result was negative. Representatives for Ms. Klum did not respond to queries.

But generally, celebrities of all kinds appear to have had a far easier time getting diagnoses. On Monday, Arielle Charnas, a social media influencer in Manhattan with more than 1.3 million Instagram followers, posted that she’d had a sore throat and a fever for the “past two days.” She was told that she did not meet the criteria for testing and that she should treat her symptoms at home.

But after posting to Instagram, she said she was flooded with fan messages asking her to get screened for Covid-19. She tagged a friend, Dr. Jake Deutsch, founder of Cure Urgent Care, who agreed to test her.

She was swabbed from her car, documenting the procedure online. She tagged both Dr. Deutsch’s Instagram account and that of his practice, thanking them. On Wednesday morning, she posted a statement letting her followers know the results were positive. “I realize that there are many individuals, both in New York City, and nationwide, who do not have the ability to receive immediate medical care at the first sign of sickness, and access to care is #1 priority in a time like this,” she wrote.

Dr. Deutsch said he was partnering with two private labs, BioReference and Lenco, to offer testing. In the past three days, he said, his clinic screened nearly 100 patients, half of whom came back positive.

On Capitol Hill, where four senators and nearly a dozen House members have chosen to self-quarantine after possible exposure to the virus, patterns seemed to emerge.

Those who consulted their own doctors or the attending physician of Congress were by and large advised against testing if they were asymptomatic.

“Each of the physicians that I consulted with advised me that since I have no symptoms, since I’m not sick, they said testing was medically ineffective,” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, said on Saturday in an interview with ABC News.

Some who obtained tests were close allies of the president — Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a frequent golfing partner of Mr. Trump; Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina and the incoming White House chief of staff; and Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, who learned he had been exposed to the virus as he boarded Air Force One last week to fly back to Washington with Mr. Trump. Their tests came back negative.

Spokesmen for both Mr. Meadows and Mr. Graham declined to answer emailed questions about the circumstances of their testing, including who ordered it and where it was done.

Mr. Gaetz said on Twitter that White House medical officials had told him he was being tested not “because I am in Congress — but because I had been in close contact with President Trump over several days.”

On Wednesday, it was announced that two congressman had tested positive: Representatives Ben McAdams, Democrat of Utah, and Mario Diaz-Balart, Republican of Florida. (Another Florida politician, Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami, has also tested positive.)

The N.B.A. has been at the center of the debate since two players on the Utah Jazz tested positive. The number of known positive results leaguewide has now grown to seven, including Kevin Durant of the Nets. But dozens more have been tested.

Adam Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner, acknowledged the criticism in an interview on Wednesday with ESPN. But he insisted the league sought tests at the direction of public health officials.

“Let me begin with the situation in Oklahoma City last Wednesday night,” Mr. Silver said. “The Utah Jazz did not ask to be tested. The Oklahoma public health official there on the spot not only required that they be tested, but they weren’t allowed to leave their locker room, which was for at least four hours after the game, where they had to stay, masks on.”

The league has disclosed few details on how it gained access to the tests.

Wendy Bost, a spokeswoman for Quest Diagnostics, one of the country’s largest commercial laboratories, said a variety of organizations had asked for help testing their employees, noting that Quest provided “an exceedingly small percentage of our overall collection kits to a small number of sports teams.” She said the company agreed to do so only for teams with at least one diagnosed case.

Quest, as well as LabCorp, another major diagnostic company, said tests were processed in the order they were received.

The N.B.A. on March 7 instructed all teams to identify a nearby facility they could enlist to conduct testing, according to a private memorandum obtained by The New York Times. But approaches by teams have varied, and some say they have not screened their players.

A spokeswoman for the Nets said the tests were obtained through a private company, to avoid using public resources. The testing took place after the team “noticed that several of our players and staff had symptoms,” she said.

The team pushed back on criticism that it had received unfair access, saying, “If we had waited for players to exhibit symptoms, they might have continued to pose a risk to their family, friends and the public.” 

Other sports leagues have faced questions about testing practices.

According to a statement from Major League Baseball, “players are only being tested under certain circumstances if they exhibit symptoms, and the tests are being administered by the same doctors treating the general public.” 

The Yankees were the first baseball team with a known positive test: a minor league pitcher. An estimated 150 to 200 Yankees minor leaguers and staff members have been in self-quarantine, and the minor league complex, which underwent a deep cleaning, is closed until March 25.

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3) A New York Doctor’s Coronavirus Warning: The Sky Is Falling

Alarmist is not a word anyone has ever used to describe me before. But this is different.

By Cornelia Griggs, March 19, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/opinion/coronavirus-doctor-new-york.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

A health care worker prepares to tend to patients at a drive-in testing center in Jericho, N.Y.Credit...Bruce Bennett/Getty Images

I’ve had hard conversations this week. “Look me in the eye,” I said to my neighbor Karen, who was spiraling to a dark place in her mind. “I make this personal promise to you — I will not let your children die from this disease.” I swallowed back a lump in my throat. Just the image of one of our kids attached to a tube was jarring. Two weeks ago our kids were having a pizza party and watching cartoons together, running back and forth between our apartments. This was before #socialdistancing was trending. Statistically, I still feel good about my promise to Karen because children do not seem to be dying from Covid-19. There are others to whom I cannot make similar promises.

A few days later, I got a text from another friend. She has asthma. “I’m just saying this because I need to say it to someone,” she wrote. She asked that if she gets sick and has a poor prognosis, to play recordings of the voice of Josie, her daughter. “I think it would bring me back,” she said. Josie is my 4-year-old’s best friend.

Today, at the hospital where I work, one of the largest in New York City, Covid-19 cases continue to climb, and there’s movement to redeploy as many health care workers as possible to the E.R.s, new “fever clinics” and I.C.U.s. It’s becoming an all-healthy-hands-on-deck scenario.

The sky is falling. I’m not afraid to say it. A few weeks from now you may call me an alarmist; and I can live with that. Actually, I will keel over with happiness if I’m proven wrong.

Alarmist is not a word anyone has ever used to describe me before. I’m a board-certified surgeon and critical care specialist who spent much of my training attending to traumas in the emergency room and doing the rounds at Harvard hospitals’ intensive care units. I’m now in my last four months of training as a pediatric surgeon in New York City. Part of my job entails waking in the middle of the night to rush to the children’s hospital to put babies on a form of life support called ECMO, a service required when a child’s lungs are failing even with maximum ventilator support. Scenarios that mimic end-stage Covid-19 are part of my job. Panic is not in my vocabulary; the emotion has been drilled out of me in nine years of training. This is different.

We are living in a global public health crisis moving at a speed and scale never witnessed by living generations. The cracks in our medical and financial systems are being splayed open like a gashing wound. No matter how this plays out, life will forever look a little different for all of us.

On the front lines, patients are lining up outside of our emergency rooms and clinics looking to us for answers — but we have few. Only on Friday did coronavirus testing become more readily available in New York, and the tests are still extremely limited. Right next to my office in the hospital, a lab is being repurposed with hopes of a capability to run 1,000 tests a day. But today, and likely tomorrow, even M.D.s do not have straightforward access to testing across the country. Furthermore, the guidelines and criteria for testing are changing almost daily. Our health care system is mired in situational uncertainty. The leadership of our hospital is working tirelessly — but doctors on the ground are pessimistic about our surge capacity.

Making my rounds at the children’s hospital earlier this week, I saw that the boxes of gloves and other personal protective equipment were dwindling. This is a crisis for our vulnerable patients and health care workers alike. Protective equipment is only one of the places where supplies are falling short. At our large, 4,000-bed New York City hospital, we have 500 ventilators and 250 on backup reserve. If we are on track to match the scale of Covid-19 infections in Italy, then we are likely to run out of ventilators in New York. The anti-viral “treatments” we have for Covid-19 are experimental and many of them are hard to even get approved. Let me repeat. The sky is falling.

I say this not to panic anyone but to mobilize you. We need more equipment and we need it now. Specifically gloves, masks, eye protection and more ventilators. We need our technology friends to be making and testing prototypes to rig the ventilators that we do have to support more than one patient at a time. We need our labs channeling all of their efforts into combating this bug — that means vaccine research and antiviral treatment research, quickly.

We need hospitals to figure out how to nimbly and flexibly modify our existing practices to adapt to this virus and do it fast. Doctors across the globe are sharing information, protocols and strategies through social media, because our common publishing channels are too slow. Physician and surgeon mothers are coming together on Facebook groups to publish advice to parents and the public, to amplify our outrage, and to underscore the fear we feel for our most vulnerable patient populations, as well as ourselves and our families.

Please flatten the curve and stay at home, but please do not go into couch mode. Like everyone, I have moments where imagining the worst possible Covid-19 scenario steals my breath. But cowering in the dark places of our minds doesn’t help. Rather than private panic, we need public-spirited action. Those of us walking into the rooms of Covid-19-positive patients every day need you and your minds, your networks, your creative solutions, and your voices to be fighting for us. We might be the exhausted masked face trying to resuscitate you when you show up on the doorstep of our hospital. And when you do, I promise not to panic. I’ll use every ounce of my expertise to keep you alive. Please, do the same for us.

Cornelia Griggs is a mother, writer and pediatric surgery fellow in New York.

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4) My Life Is More ‘Disposable’ During This Pandemic

The ableism and ageism being unleashed is its own sort of pestilence.

By Elliot Kukla, March 19, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/opinion/coronavirus-disabled-health-care.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Katherine Lam

Like many people all over the world, I am not leaving the house now. For me, though, staying home is nothing new. I am in bed as I write this, propped up by my usual heap of cushions, talking to other sick and disabled people all day on my laptop about how the hell we’re going to care for one another in the coming weeks with a gnawing feeling of dread in my belly.

The news doesn’t look good: There are more people sick; less relief is coming. The “reassuring” public service announcements are no better. Countless messages from my dentist, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and from my child’s playgroups tell me not to worry because it’s “only” chronically ill people and elders that are at risk of severe illness or death. More than one chronically ill friend has quipped: “Don’t they know sick and old people can read?”

The pestilence of ableism and ageism being unleashed is its own kind of pandemic. In Italy, they’re already deciding not to save the lives of chronically ill and disabled people, or elders with Covid-19. The rationale is twofold: We are less likely to survive, and caring for us may take more resources. This is not an unusual triage decision to make in wartime or pandemics; our lives are considered, quite literally, more disposable.

I am a chronically ill rabbi who offers spiritual care to those with illness, and elders coming to the end of life. Almost no one in my personal or professional world would “earn” care if the United States were to come to a scenario like Italy. Not my 102-year-old client with brilliant blue eyes and ferocious curiosity who survived Auschwitz; not my friend who is a wickedly smart writer, activist, and wheelchair user currently recovering from major surgery; nor me, with my immune system that doesn’t work well, or works too hard, attacking my own tissues.

In the United States, most of my disabled and sick friends believe we are racing to a similar situation as Italy. We have a perfect storm brewing of a large population without health insurance, many people without paid sick leave, and an already overburdened health care system. This virus is merciless. It travels through the young to attack the old; through the healthy to assault the chronically ill.

The way to save our lives is clear, according to public health experts: If you possibly can, stay home. Especially since we are surrounded by people who don’t have that option, including migrant workers; unhoused, incarcerated and institutionalized people; and health care workers. And yet young, healthy, affluent people are still taking advantage of cheap airplane tickets and using their “time off” to go to restaurants while they remain open. Taken together, the stark message to chronically sick, disabled people and elders is that we are “acceptable losses.”

The feeling of being disposable is not new to me. It is knitted into my bones and sinews. It lives in my cells and the parasites in my gut. I already knew that for many of the doctors and policymakers that my health depends on, that my transgender, fat, disabled body is simply worth less than others’ bodies. This is even more true for my black, brown, poor, disabled and ill friends.

Each message of disposability in this pandemic, rings like a bell in the hollows of my body, surfacing memories. In 1990, when I was 15 years old, I came out as queer into a pandemic, as AIDS was ravaging communities across the globe. My first Pride parades were not joyful celebrations, but rageful protests as we demanded health care, medicine, witnessing. My queer uncles died before I was 20, but taught me on the way out not to trust governments or doctors, and that marginalized people must take care of one another. My first lesson in adulthood was that love is our only source of security.

The Nazis called chronically ill and disabled people “useless eaters,” and killed us first. This used to seem like ancient history to me, but as I age, the scope of time shrinks. My father hid from Nazis as a child in Belgium, and I was born just 33 years later. His history was as recent to my early childhood, as George Michael at the top of the charts, is to today. Scientists now believe that there are cellular changes in the DNA of the children of Holocaust survivors that most likely impact our health. My father’s story lives in my overactive immune system, and thus my body’s response to this pandemic right now.

Today my father has Parkinson’s disease and dementia, and lives in a skilled nursing facility. Even before Covid-19, it was a struggle for people to act as if his life was still worth protecting. They speak about him in the past tense, using language like “no quality of life.” The term “useless eater” hangs just beyond what’s said aloud. I am terrified of how Covid-19 will hit him, and everyone I care for with dementia in my hospice program.

As a disabled, Jewish, second-generation Holocaust survivor, the words “useless eater” are practically in my DNA. I can taste the tang of them in my mouth as I read the news, in the bitterness of Italy’s policies, in this country’s callous health care, in affluent people refusing to listen to sick and disabled voices and stay home when they can afford to, in the dismissive internet comments that only the sick and old need to worry, so who cares?

My cells remember other things, too. That to survive illness and trauma, whether individual or communal, we need one another, including strangers. When my father was two years old, hiding from Nazis in a Christian foster home, he developed a loud case of whooping cough. He was dropped unceremoniously at the doors of a Belgian nunnery. These women nursed him back to health, and returned him a few months later, fully recovered. I wish I knew their names. These faceless women to whom I owe my existence, who cared for him, bathed him, changed him, powdered him.

In this moment, one of the best ways you can show up and save the lives of fellow human beings is by withdrawing physically. Staying away from other people contradicts our image of what saving lives looks like. We are used to heroes rushing in. But disabled and sick people already know that stillness can be caring. We know that immune systems are fragile things, and homes can’t always be left. Rest is disability justice, and right now it is one of our most powerful tools to keep one another alive.

I have spent years of my life rarely leaving home. Being stuck at home due to illness often sucks, but sometimes it is other things, too. Calm. The kinds of connection that can only come from profound slowness, from borrowing down instead of stretching out. Even as we withdraw physically, our emotional and spiritual need for others has never been more visible. I already knew that we needed one another in intimate ways that go beyond the capacity of our bodies to connect. Disabled people are experts in deep, luscious intimacy without touch. We are used to being creative. As the Disability Justice performance project Sins Invalid says, “We love like barnacles,” sticking to one another wherever, and however we can.

Jewish mysticism holds that the letters of a Torah scroll are black fire on the white fire of the parchment. In this moment, we must find a way to make the spaces between us holy. In this pandemic it is the white fire that will hold our abundant love, our exquisite care, and our unwavering belief that each of our lives is worth saving.

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5) We Must Help One Another or Die

Let this crisis motivate us to see through the fog of fake individualism.

"But things change when your — or your grandparents’ — life really does depend directly on the experts, and when you realize that no gated community can keep a virus out. As Jonathan D. Quick, former chair of the Global Health Council, has argued, one is only ever as safe as the least safe place. That sounds like a version of the motto of the Wobblies, the radical trade union, that “an injury to one is an injury to all.” Nobody can buy immunity, let alone immortality; nobody can wash his hands of conditions that make the United States look more like a failed state than a functioning democracy."

By Jan-Werner Muller, March 19, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/opinion/coronavirus-politics.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Volunteers and National Guard troops on Wednesday assembling meals for distribution in New Rochelle, N.Y., the site of a one-mile radius coronavirus containment area. Credit...John Moore/Getty Images

It’s a commonplace that emergencies can bring people together. But the imperative issued right now by experts, governments and businesses seems to suggest the very opposite: The sign that you care is that you engage in “social distancing.”

Rather than looking after others — and possibly infecting them — the best you can do for society is to look after yourself in digitally connected isolation. And yet it would be wrong to think that the coronavirus outbreak will only reinforce the selfishness from which Western societies already suffer. Like the Spanish flu of 1918 and other previous shared experiences of vulnerability, this pandemic can pave the way for the collective insight that we absolutely need a public infrastructure — and not just in health care.

The feeling that there is less and less social cohesion in today’s democracies is justified. A recent survey in France showed that 35 percent of people think they have absolutely nothing in common with their fellow citizens. Today, the wealthiest are seceding into gated communities; some are even contemplating escapes into outer space or to remote locations (think about the fantasies spun out by Silicon Valley billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk). Meanwhile, the poorest hardly participate in society at large — and certainly not in elections, a trend that has long been clear in the United States, but is now affecting other democracies, too.

There are larger reasons behind such trends. After the end of the Cold War, it became ever less obvious for what exactly we need our fellow citizens: with the globalization of supply chains, it seemed that we could do without them as workers; with free trade, we have no need of them as consumers; and, with the shift away from mass conscript armies, we also don’t really need them as soldiers.

Institutions that used to unite citizens for a collective purpose declined: Churches, trade unions, political parties have all hemorrhaged members. Why feel solidarity, or care about inequality in the absence of any sense of interdependence — the notion that, ultimately, we need one another and are all in this together?

There is nothing sentimental about solidarity. It means mutual help in cases of calamity, and it is not quite the same as equality. The depressing argument from historians is that only large-scale violence or other catastrophes — including pandemics — have ever brought about comprehensive leveling.

One reason that these calamities brought about more equality was that they wiped out wealth, an effect also emphasized by the French economist Thomas Piketty. But apart from sheer destruction, crises could lead to something more constructive: a commitment to mutual aid, a sense, to paraphrase W.H. Auden, that we must assist one another or die.

A common affliction demonstrates that our feeling of individualism is illusory. Digitally connected isolation is predicated on fellow citizens producing and delivering food, and anyone along the delivery chain, forced to work because they live paycheck to paycheck, could be contagious. What the legal scholar Jed Purdy has called the “power to withdraw” depends on the pressure workers feel to deliver.

World War II played a crucial role in motivating the push for the National Health Service in Britain. After aristocrats and workers fought together, it was much harder to deny the latter basic shared benefits.

It is less well known that the Spanish flu had already created a sense in the interwar period that proper disease surveillance and free effective treatments were desperately needed. Eugenicists had claimed that the irresponsible poor and immigrants were to blame for succumbing to disease, but it became clear that unhealthy environments and underdeveloped states were the problem.

In Sweden, the pandemic revealed the squalor in which the poor lived. Sick children were found on the floor in homes without beds. The welfare state — called “folkhemmet,” or people’s home — was to end such conditions once and for all; it not so much leveled citizens (Swedish capitalists lived very comfortably in the folkhemmet) as enabled a people to protect themselves from collective risks.

Of course, not all crises bring people together. Some divide us, with climate change an obvious example. But the current experience of shared vulnerability is so visceral that political entrepreneurs who usually profit from polarization might have a hard time convincing citizens that this is all hoax, or partisan warfare.

True, competence can always be recoded as just one side in the culture wars, and experts are suspected of being condescending “liberal elites”; anti-vaxxers and populists have managed to reduce citizens’ trust in government health advice to dangerously low levels in Italy and the United States.

But things change when your — or your grandparents’ — life really does depend directly on the experts, and when you realize that no gated community can keep a virus out. As Jonathan D. Quick, former chair of the Global Health Council, has argued, one is only ever as safe as the least safe place. That sounds like a version of the motto of the Wobblies, the radical trade union, that “an injury to one is an injury to all.” Nobody can buy immunity, let alone immortality; nobody can wash his hands of conditions that make the United States look more like a failed state than a functioning democracy.

A decade ago, the historian Tony Judt wrote, “If social democracy has a future, it will be a social democracy of fear.” To be sure, fear can always be turned against foreigners — something right-wing populists are busy trying to do now. But it can also motivate us to see through the fog of fake individualism and realize that interdependence requires proper infrastructure: from a public health system to an informational infrastructure where platforms like Facebook are forced to remove falsehoods that cost lives.

A large economic stimulus, as the White House is proposing, is all well and good, but structural change is what’s desperately needed; charity is appreciated, but will never make up for a dysfunctional government; and business, which by definition, is in it for profit (and now bailouts), cannot be relied on to take care of us.

Jan-Werner Müller teaches at Princeton and is the author of the forthcoming “Democracy Rules.”

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6) Coronavirus Halts Street Protests, but Climate Activists Have a Plan

By Shola Lawal, March 19, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/climate/coronavirus-online-climate-protests.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage

Greta Thunberg, protesting in Brussels this month, is now calling for digital strikes.Credit...Johanna Geron/Reuters

The coronavirus outbreak has prompted climate activists to abandon public demonstrations, one of their most powerful tools for raising public awareness, and shift to online protests.

This week, for example, organizers of the Fridays for Future protests are advising people to stay off the streets and post photos and messages on social media in a wave of digital strikes.

“We are people who listen to the scientists and it would be hypocritical of us to not treat this as a crisis,” said Saoi O’Connor, a 17-year-old Fridays for Future organizer from Cork, Ireland.

Greta Thunberg, the 17-year-old Swedish activist who inspired the Friday youth protest group, last week stayed at home and tweeted a photo of herself and her two dogs, with a message calling on protesters to “take it online.”

Similarly, a coalition of climate movements had planned huge protests around commemorations for the 50th annual Earth Day in April. Those have now been canceled or moved online. One group, Earth Initiative and March for Science New York City, plans to live-stream speakers and performers at an online event.

Dominique Palmer, 20, a Fridays for Future organizer in Britain, acknowledged the challenges of protesting online. Hashtags and snappy videos are good, she said, but really making an impact will require more work. Twitter protests in which activists send out messages aimed directly at selected officials, and phone-banking, in which they telephone them en masse, are two of the ideas under consideration.

The new strategy marks a sharp turnaround for climate activists. A year ago this month, more than a million youth activists took to the streets worldwide in a global day of climate action.

It also comes at a crucial time. With a presidential election in the United States this year, activists had hoped to raise the profile of climate change on the public agenda. And, just days after the election, world leaders are scheduled to gather in Glasgow for United Nations-led climate talks where presidents and prime ministers will face pressure to get more ambitious about reining in greenhouse gas emissions.

Fridays for Future called preliminary online protests last week a success. Activists posted from bedrooms, gardens and balconies overlooking empty streets. Families joined in. In one video posted on TikTok, a father tucked his daughter into bed, leaving her alone with a climate monster in her closet.

Some experts, however, said reaching world leaders and the general public would be more difficult now as the pandemic shuts down large parts of public life.

“What you’re going to end up doing is amplifying within an echo chamber, which is really different from what the movement wants,” said Dana Fisher, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland whose research focuses on activism. Twitter hashtags, like #ClimateStrikeOnline and #DigitalClimateStrike, are far less visible than huge crowds in the streets, she said.

Still, Dr. Fisher noted, the young people leading climate protests are highly effective at using social media to build their movement.

That was echoed by Ms. O’Connor, the Irish activist, who said she had noticed new faces in online protests messages that she hadn’t seen at her group’s weekly gatherings in Cork. She said Fridays for Future organizers were adaptable and prepared to adjust strategy as necessary. “Intersecting crises will be a feature of our times,” Ms. O’Connor said. “We can’t let one stop action on the other.”

Ms. Palmer said she hoped public demonstrations would resume before the United Nations conference in November. If not, she said, respecting advice to stay off the streets for the sake of older people, for whom coronavirus exposure is especially dangerous, would still come first.

“And that’s also how we want the older generation to feel toward young people,” Ms. Palmer said. “We want them to make the effort to save the planet for us in that same way.”

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7) ‘We’re Petrified’: Immigrants Afraid to Seek Medical Care for Coronavirus

Trump administration policies that discourage immigrants from coming forward could hamper efforts to contain the epidemic.

By Miriam Jordan, March 18, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/us/coronavirus-immigrants.html

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Tukwila, Wash. The agency said on its website that seeking treatment or preventive services for the virus would not adversely affect green card applicants.Credit...Jason Redmond/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

LOS ANGELES — The coronavirus was not on the agenda when a legal-aid group two months ago invited farmworkers who toil in the date groves, lemon orchards and vineyards of California’s Coachella Valley to an information session about immigration issues.

But when Luz Gallegos and her team showed up over the weekend, they were cornered by people who peppered them with questions about the virus. On Monday, public health authorities announced the first two deaths from the virus in this part of Southern California, both in the Coachella Valley.

“There’s a new layer of fear in the immigrant community right now created by Covid-19,” said Ms. Gallegos, a director of TODEC Legal Center, who stood with immigrants in the parking lot of the Hemet town library, which had abruptly closed as a result of the pandemic. “We believe that some members will be afraid to seek the care they need,” she said.

Among the questions the farmworkers had: If I go to the hospital, is it going to hurt my chances of becoming a legal permanent resident? If I’m undocumented, could seeking treatment make me vulnerable to deportation? If I miss work as more people are forced to stay home, how will I feed my family and make the rent?

As the coronavirus sweeps across the United States, immigrants may be among the least able to self-isolate and seek the medical care that is essential to protecting their health and slowing the spread of the disease.

The Trump administration on Wednesday closed the border with Canada to all but essential traffic and was also considering shutting the southern border to those without legal authorization, hoping to check the spread of the virus. But many of the unauthorized immigrants already in the United States face the same threat from the virus as everyone else — and are less equipped to protect themselves.

Some of those without health insurance fear that going to a public hospital or clinic will ruin their chances of getting a green card under the Trump administration’s tough new public assistance regulations for immigrants. Other immigrants fear putting themselves in the cross-hairs of Immigration and Customs Enforcement if they step forward for help.

ICE agents over the past week have continued to make arrests in some of the regions hardest hit by the virus, including California and New York.

“The fear that this administration has fueled in immigrant communities is thwarting efforts to protect the public health of everybody,” said Tanya Broder, an attorney who specializes in health care access for immigrants at the National Immigration Law Center.

Immigrants who are just scraping by often live cheek-by-jowl, making them vulnerable to the spread of illness, especially in cities where housing costs are high. In East Los Angeles, Latino immigrants often crowd an entire family into a single bedroom in a house. In the San Gabriel Valley, east of Los Angeles, thousands of Asian workers live in overcrowded apartments called “boarding houses.”

They work at jobs that often do not offer paid sick leave, nor the luxury of being able to self-quarantine in the event that they are exposed to the virus.

“Unfortunately, these immigrants face a very tough choice during this crisis: risk exposure or risk homelessness,” said Louise McCarthy, president of the Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles. “A low-income worker can’t just take a day off — losing a day’s pay can mean losing your housing.”

Felix Aguilar, chief medical officer at Chinatown Service Center, which has four clinics in greater Los Angeles, said that it has stepped up screening for the coronavirus, in person and over the phone. “It’s a matter of time. We are getting ready. We know the onslaught is coming,” he said.

Among all immigrants, 23 percent of those who are lawfully in the country and 45 percent of those who are undocumented lack health insurance, according to a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

In most states, community clinics serve people who require medical care, regardless of their status and ability to pay. And some states, such as California, Massachusetts, New York and Illinois, among others, cover medical care costs for undocumented children.

But because of the Trump administration’s so-called public charge rule, Ms. Broder said, “Even when services are available, immigrants may be afraid to seek the care that they need.”

The People’s Community Clinic in Austin, Texas, a city with a handful of confirmed coronavirus cases, had already been struggling to manage spikes in no-shows among undocumented patients intimidated by recent ICE arrest activity, as well as by the public charge rule, when the first cases began to appear.

“I know there are people reticent but what we’ve tried to do is reassure them,” said Regina Rogoff, the clinic’s chief executive officer, “We’re here to serve patients regardless of what their paperwork says. I’m hoping that’s how our patients continue to see us.”

Even before the coronavirus arrived in the United States, having a large population that feels disenfranchised from the mainstream medical community heightened the risk for transmission of infectious diseases, said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University and adviser to the World Health Organization.

“The first rule of public health is to gain people’s trust to come forward: People who don’t seek care cannot be tested or treated, and their contacts won’t be traced,” he said.

“The last thing immigrants want to do in this political environment is tell health officials about their friends who are also unlawfully here,” Mr. Gostin said.

More than 450 public health and legal experts signed an open letter early this month to Vice President Mike Pence and other federal, state and local leaders demanding a “fair and effective” response to the virus, which would include a declaration that medical facilities are immigration enforcement-free zones, as occurred after recent hurricanes and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

ICE classifies medical facilities as “sensitive locations” where enforcement is avoided, though exceptions can be made.

On Friday, after President Trump announced a national health emergency, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, which screens green-card applications, appeared to signal that it was suspending enforcement of the public charge rule. A statement posted on its website said that seeking treatment or preventive services for the virus would not adversely affect applicants applying for permanent residence.

“If the alien is prevented from working or attending school, and must rely on public benefits for the duration of the Covid-19 outbreak and recovery phase, the alien can provide an explanation and relevant supporting documentation,” the agency said.

The administration has not publicized the change, and absent a clear shift in enforcement, many immigrants are likely to remain reluctant to seek government-subsidized medical care.

“People who are fearful are not going to be reading the fine print of policy, and if in doubt they will stay away from being tested and treated,” said Mr. Gostin of Georgetown University.

For more than 25 years, the better part of their lives, Maria and Francisco Garcia have worked as undocumented field workers, picking and packing cauliflower, peppers and dates in the low desert of the Coachella Valley.

They recently became eligible to apply for a green card through an American-born child who turned 21. But with coronavirus cases on the rise in the area where they live, the couple have grown increasingly anxious about falling ill and jeopardizing their chance of become lawful residents.

It was the reason their daughter, Mariana, attended the event in the parking lot in the Coachella Valley. “My mom is panicked about getting the Covid-19. If she goes to the hospital, she thinks that will make her a public charge,” said Ms. Garcia.

Ms. Garcia was relieved to learn about the exception but doubted it would assuage her mother’s concerns.

Her parents, who live paycheck to paycheck, also worry about not making the $500-monthly rent on their mobile home if they get sick.

Sandy Cobarrubias, 46, another undocumented immigrant, said in an interview that, “We’re petrified.” Even after learning that seeking medical help for the virus would not jeopardize her chances of qualifying for a green card, she did not feel reassured. “This president says one thing one day and does another the next,” she said.

Caitlin Dickerson and Annie Correal contributed reporting from New York.

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8) Automakers to Close Factories in North America

G.M., Ford Motor and Fiat Chrysler were under pressure from the autoworkers union to shut down plants in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

By Neal E. Boudette, March 18, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/business/economy/gm-ford-fiatchrysler-factories-virus.html

Fiat Chrysler and other U.S. automakers said they would shut down production in North America until at least March 30 to protect workers and clean factories.Credit...Jeff Kowalsky/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

With fear of infection rising among factory workers, and few customers shopping for cars, several automakers on Wednesday decided to idle their plants in the United States, Canada and Mexico for at least a week. The decisions will put tens of thousands of people out of work and add to the coronavirus outbreak’s growing economic toll.

The country’s largest automakers — General Motors, Ford Motor and Fiat Chrysler — decided to close plants after the United Auto Workers union pressured them to do so to protect workers. That pressure intensified after it was revealed on Wednesday that a worker at a Ford truck plant in Dearborn, Mich., had tested positive for the virus.

In addition to G.M., Ford and Fiat Chrysler, Honda, Toyota and Nissan also said they would idle their North American factories. The shutdown of car plants will force hundreds of companies that produce parts and components to follow suit over the coming days.

“This is another big blow to the economy,” said Patrick Anderson, president of Anderson Economic Group in East Lansing, Mich.

Although some autoworkers will be eligible for sick pay, many will get only a portion of their income and others will have to rely on unemployment insurance.

“This is going to mean a significant loss in income,” Mr. Anderson said. “Workers are really going to be hurt if there’s not some kind of sustained program to help them.”

Ford, which has 55,000 U.A.W. employees, said those with at least one year of service would receive 75 percent of their regular pay through a combination of unemployment benefits and supplements paid by the company. G.M. is discussing a similar plan with the U.A.W., a company spokesman said.

Ford said in a statement that it would shut down factories after the end of Thursday evening shifts. G.M. said it would stagger plant closings to “ensure that production stops in a safe and orderly fashion.” Fiat Chrysler said it would begin shutting down production on Wednesday. All three companies said they would idle their plants until at least March 30. G.M. employs 47,000 U.A.W. members and Fiat Chrysler 49,000.

Earlier on Wednesday, Honda said it would close its plants for six days beginning March 23, with plans to restart production on March 31. It said it would provide full pay for the 27,000 employees in North America affected by the decision. Nissan told its dealers it will shut down its North America plants Friday and keep them idle until at least early April.

More than one million people are employed in automobile and auto parts manufacturing in the United States, and 1.3 million work for auto dealerships, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“We have been taking extraordinary precautions around the world to keep our plant environments safe and recent developments in North America make it clear this is the right thing to do now,” G.M.’s chief executive, Mary T. Barra, said in a statement.

The company also said sales had been slowing, a trend it expects to continue as more people confine themselves to their homes to avoid contracting or spreading the virus.

Some auto dealers said their showroom traffic fell sharply starting on Tuesday. “We had four customers cancel deliveries because of the virus,” said Wes Lutz, owner of Extreme Dodge in Jackson, Mich., about 80 miles west of Detroit. “They are afraid they will lose their jobs.”

Mr. Lutz and other dealers said customers were still bringing cars in for maintenance and repairs, but the dealers are worried that service visits could drop off soon as social distancing sharply reduces the number of miles people normally drive.

“If you don’t leave the house, your car isn’t going to need an oil change for a while,” said Adam Silverleib, owner of Silko Honda in Raynham, Mass.

Automakers went into the week hoping to keep their plants running and employees safe by altering shift schedules to leave more time for sanitizing plants and reducing contact between workers. On Monday, G.M.’s Chevrolet division began offering zero-percent loans to lure consumers into dealerships. Hyundai offered to let customers return recently purchased cars if had they lost their jobs.

At the same time the U.A.W. was pressing the three companies based in and around Detroit to halt production for two weeks. On Tuesday G.M., Ford and Fiat Chrysler agreed to take steps short of shutting down production.

Then on Wednesday morning Honda announced its plans to stop production, and the news about the Ford worker in Dearborn was made public. In response, Ford halted work at the final assembly section of the plant while continuing production in the stamping and body shop areas.

Just hours later, all three of the large U.S. automakers reversed course and said they would idle their factories.

In Europe, auto manufacturing has been at a virtual standstill after Daimler, Ford Motor and Nissan joined Volkswagen and most other major carmakers in shutting down.

In California, Tesla, the luxury electric carmaker, has cut staffing at its Fremont factory from 10,000 to about 2,500 after local officials issued a shelter-in-place order, according to Ray Kelly, a spokesman for Alameda County.

Under the order, nonessential businesses like Tesla are permitted to continue “minimum basic operations” as long as employees do their best to stay at least six feet away from one another, according to the county.

“Spirit of the law goes a long way,” Mr. Kelly said. “We’re doing things that we would never do before.” Tesla may very well reduce its work force further, he said, based on a conversation Wednesday with a senior Tesla executive. The automaker did not respond to a request for comment and its chief executive, Elon Musk, has criticized the public reaction to the outbreak on Twitter.

Niraj Chokshi contributed reporting.

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9) Under COVID-19 Lockdown in Coleman Prison

By Leonard Peltier

—Orinoco Tribune, March 18, 2020

https://orinocotribune.com/under-covid-19-lockdown-in-coleman-prison-leonard-peltier/?fbclid=IwAR1Kgo76jrChmUzOj8Dmk3vKTalnfnRmwSljP2L9Os0cetUjPPsZA-8csg

We were notified this afternoon, that we are going on a lockdown, the whole institution, and the lockdown will be for at least 30 days. We were told we would be given 500 minutes for the phone, which is 200 minutes more than usual, so it doesn’t sound like we will be in our cells. I don’t know if we will be able to write letters or receive mail. I will not be visiting anyone if I survive that is for at least 30 days and the virus doesn’t get into Coleman I.

As far as I know no one has the virus in USP Coleman complex.

I keep getting conflicting information, but we were allowed to go outside for the evening, and we are now on the inside flats. Maybe it is just visiting that has been cancelled and there is no contact with outside peoples. We, or most of us anyway, agree this needs to be done, because no one it seems knows if they have contacted the virus or not.

So, I will send you updates as long as I can, I want to tell all of you to be safe out there as this virus is not racist and anyone can get it. If at all possible please look out for the people in the Native Nations, if you know our history in these sorts of pandemics, Native people are the last to get help and I have babies (grandchildren) out there.

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10) Coronavirus Has Arrived at Rikers Island: Inside New York City Jails, Where the Pandemic Is Set to Explode

Nick Pinto, March 18, 2020

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/18/coronavirus-rikers-island-jail/?fbclid=IwAR2eNU3t22wrxqD4iSaoWa9EXuEKTejbahOPjLEM5VNl0Xwxk9pyoGhZ7DM

Rikers Island emergency services personnel walk through one of many gates inside the jail complex in New York on July 31, 2014.

As New York City, like the rest of the United States, plunges into a public health crisis expected to be worse than anything in living memory, city residents have finally begun to heed the advice of medical professionals on how to limit exposure: Wash your hands often, disinfect surfaces, practice social distancing.
For the New Yorkers held in city jails on Rikers Island, though, these basic prescriptions — if they’ve even been made aware of them — are not within their power to follow.

They are locked in filthy intake rooms with dozens of other people for days on end, confined to housing units or dorm-style sleeping areas with scores of other people, dependent on staff for soap and on correction officers for permission and an escort to visit a medical clinic. The roughly 5,400 men and women detained in city jails on Rikers Island don’t have the agency to protect themselves from the disease, even as they are constantly exposed to the contagions of the outside world through the constant churn of three daily shifts of corrections officers and staff.

A New York City Department of Corrections employee died on Tuesday after being diagnosed with the coronavirus. A departmental press release cautioned that the dead man had only “limited contact” with people in custody. Officials said that, as of Tuesday, there had been no confirmed cases of Covid-19 inside city jails. On Wednesday, a news report said the first cases of coronavirus at the jail had been confirmed: one incarcerated person and a prison guard who worked at the jail complex’s gate.

“You have a situation where all the protocols that are coming out of the Centers for Disease Control cannot be enacted.”

The restricted ability of people locked on Rikers to protect themselves is a problem because many of them, due to age or underlying health conditions, are at higher risk of getting very sick or dying from the disease. It’s also a problem because the officials tasked with making sure incarcerated people are safe have so far refused to release any comprehensive plan for handling an outbreak. Despite growing calls to release vulnerable people from the Petri dish of Rikers, officials have taken no steps to do so.

“We know that there literally is no way to ensure the health and well-being of people incarcerated on Rikers in this type of crisis,” said Justine Olderman, executive director of Bronx Defenders, a public defender organization. “It is an incubator for the spread of disease and viruses, and this virus is unlike anything that anyone has ever seen. You have a situation where all the protocols that are coming out of the Centers for Disease Control cannot be enacted: There are broken sinks, there’s no hand sanitizer, people don’t have access to soap, and at a time we’re all being asked to do social distancing, you have an environment where people are sleeping 100 to a room. In a situation like that, the only moral thing to do is release them.”

The accounts that are trickling out from Rikers are not encouraging. Last week, a man with a medical history that makes him especially vulnerable to contracting coronavirus, housed in a special-housing unit in one Rikers jail, called a social worker twice in one day to report that he was exhibiting symptoms of disease. Others in his special housing unit were coughing and exhibiting flu-like symptoms, the man told the social worker, who relayed the account to a lawyer who asked that they all remain anonymous to avoid reprisals. The men in the unit were told that there were not enough correction officers to transport them to the health clinic.

Kelsey de Avila, director of jail services for Brooklyn Defender Services, another public defender organization, said she spoke with two incarcerated people on Monday who described both a lack of information and the absence of basic sanitation. “Of the two men I spoke to, one said no one had come to talk to him about what’s happening at all, and he hadn’t seen any posters in his housing area or the halls he’s walking in,” de Avila said. “The other man said someone had come in and told people they should wash their hands and cover their mouth when they cough.”

One of the people de Avila spoke to said someone on his unit had been coughing all day. “We don’t know what it is, if he just has a cough, if he’s seen medical staff or not,” she said. “But that’s part of the point: Our client doesn’t have any information, and he’s nervous.” The man asked a correction officer if they could move their beds, he told de Avila. “The CO said, ‘Yeah, do whatever you want.’ It’s not really the level of response we need in this situation.”

Especially concerning is incarcerated people’s limited access to sanitation. Those in jail can buy soap from the commissary, if they can afford it. Otherwise, they’re dependent on the general-issue soap. The man de Avila spoke with in dorm housing said his unit had about 30 to 40 people in it, with an attached bathroom with eight to 10 sinks. “Each sink has its own bar of soap, which you’re sharing with 30 or 40 people,” she said. “He went to the bathroom this morning, and every bar of soap was missing. Did someone throw them out? Was someone hoarding them? We don’t know. But, as of noon that day, no one had replaced them.”

“This is how it spreads. This is why it’s going to spread.”

The Legal Aid Society of New York City, another public defender organization, spoke on March 12 with five people held on Rikers who described a similar disregard for sanitation and public health there. One person with underlying medical conditions told Legal Aid that his housing unit had no soap. When he asked a captain whether there were plans to get some, he got no answer. Another said he was issued industrial laundry soap but told that he’d have to buy bar soap to wash himself. A third person, housed on a unit for people requiring intensive medical care, said his unit didn’t have adequate cleaning supplies. A fourth man, who is immunocompromised, said his unit has no soap and that the common areas and showers are not being cleaned daily.

A fifth person described spending several days in a dirty intake room, in close quarters with dozens of people, some of whom had been coughing, only to be moved into a housing unit with no cleaning supplies, where correction officers told him that if he wanted disinfectant, he could buy it from the commissary.

At a time when public health officials are urging frequent hand-washing as one of the top ways to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, denying people access to soap is especially dangerous, de Avila said. “This is how it spreads,” she said. “This is why it’s going to spread.”

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