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The biggest block from having society in harmony with the universe is the belief in a lie that says it’s not realistic or humanly possible. —Johnny Gould (Follow @tandino415 on Instagram)
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When faced with the opportunity to do good, I really think it’s the instinct of humanity to do so. It’s in our genetic memory from our earliest ancestors. It’s the altered perception of the reality of what being human truly is that’s been indoctrinated in to every generation for the last 2000 years or more that makes us believe that we are born sinners. I can’t get behind that one. We all struggle with certain things, but I really think that all the “sinful” behavior is learned and wisdom and goodwill is innate at birth.  —Johnny Gould (Follow @tandino415 on Instagram)
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Register for Thursday, April 9th Virtual Conference
COVID-19 Pandemic: Cuba Shows That International
Solidarity is the Answer!
Please join us for a special solidarity webinar to learn about the example Cuba is setting of putting human needs ahead of profits in the fight against COVID-19. Panelists will discuss Cuba’s history of medical internationalism; how Cuba is fighting COVID-19 on the Island based on providing health care as a right; learn how Cuba is developing effective new medications such as Interferon Alpha 2-B; and how Cuba is sending medical teams to Italy, the Caribbean and dozens of countries.
https://mailchi.mp/b103a4a00a4c/thank-you-for-endorsing-the-call-6437738?e=99431d0db8
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View complete list of endorsers here:We Call for the Immediate Release of the Political Prisoner and Afrobolivian Leader, Irene Elena Flores Torrez
April 14, 2020
We call for all the de facto government's charges against Elena Flores to be dropped immediately and for Flores, Choque, Hermosa, and all political prisoners to be released.
Elena Flores, the elected union president of Adepcoca (the Departmental Association of Coca Producers) and the beloved eldest sibling in her family, has been harassed and jailed without cause by the racist, misogynist and anti-labor coup regime of Jeanine Añez.
She has been imprisoned for more than a month under deplorable conditions. The regime has subjected her to a smear campaign with continued threats of violence.
The de facto government is responsible for stealing a presidential election and ordering 36 deaths and at least 890 illegal detentions. They have carried out forced disappearances, rape by military and police, and three massacres in Sacaba, Senkata, and Ovejuyo. The Añez government censures media, attacks, and tortures journalists, and celebrates the violence of white supremacists who are granted immunity from prosecution.
In the Yungas where the majority of Afrobolivians live, US interventionism disguised as anti-narcotics, together with illegal gold mining operations, has sown paramilitary violence.
Who is Elena Flores?
Elena Flores is a highly respected Afrobolivian and union leader. She began union work in her youth, carrying out many leadership roles in the Association of 35,000 coca leaf farmers of the Yungas, 5,000 feet below the city of La Paz. Flores says she always dreamed of leading the Association, which since 1983 had been led only by men. When she was elected in August last year, she won on a platform of ousting paramilitaries and uniting the three regions of the Inquisivi and the North and South Yungas. She is a strong labor leader and profoundly dedicated to the wellbeing of women.
Flores is the eldest of four siblings. They care for her elderly mother who is unwell and a brother has a severe disability. She would, of course, want to be protecting her family during the dangerous times of the coup regime and the coronavirus pandemic.
She denounced the criminality of the former union leadership, who are trained in paramilitary tactics and bankrolled by the Bolivian right and the U.S. The former union leaders refused to leave office or hold elections. They created cocaine networks, and ran vast corruption schemes using the considerable income of the union.
More recently, Flores’ enemies have served as paramilitaries under the direction of the army and police of the Añez regime. They enter the city of La Paz as one contingent of the right-wing "shock groups" and "pititas", made up of mobs of conservative neighbors. Añez calls them heroes and has taken smiling photos with them.
Since the coup, Flores has been at the forefront of denouncing the Añez regime's militarisation, harsh repression and disregard for democracy. She vows to protect and unify her unionised, campesino, Indigenous and Afrobolivian region.
The current situation of women political prisoners
Since March 4th Elena Flores has been imprisoned at the Centro de Orientación Femenino de Obrajes or Centre for Women's Guidance.
María Eugenia Choque Quispe is also detained there, the 60-year-old president of the Supreme Electoral Board who was falsely accused by the coup regime of committing fraud (she is also a social worker and professor of Indigenous women's histories).
Another Indigenous woman in that prison is Patricia Hermosa, a lawyer, and notary for Evo Morales. Hermosa has been imprisoned ever since she tried to file the formal papers for Evo's candidacy for the Senate. His candidacy is entirely legal but has been blocked by the de facto government.
Numerous other political prisoners have been jailed since the November 10th coup that brought to power Jeanine Añez.
The so-called crimes of Elena Flores
Flores led a takeover of a Health Centre, el Centro de Especialidades de Atención Integral, which rightfully belongs to the union of which Elena Flores is the elected president.
The clinic had fallen under right-wing paramilitary control thanks to the previous union leader, Franklin Gutierrez. He installed corrupt networks and refused to hold elections, in complete contempt of Adepcoca's governing statutes.
Elena Flores has been targeted by the regime because she is a Black woman leader, a key union organizer, and an elected leader in the coca-growing region. She appeared at the side of Evo Morales repeatedly during the months leading up to October elections. The Yungas has always been a strong base of the Movement toward Socialism (MAS).
The coup government’s false charges
The regime’s court imprisoned Elena Flores for aggravated robbery, harming public property, forced entry, and preventing the State from exercising its services.
They charge her for an offense they allege took place in July, 2019. More than six months later, the coup regime filed against her. Strangely, the legal team presented photographs taken in November as evidence, and the coup judge accepted them. Flores' lawyer argues that she was not given adequate notice of these charges and has been denied due process.
The coup regime
The coup regime was launched by the United States, working with racist oligarchs and Luis Almagro's Organization of American States (OAS). They aim to protect multinational business interests and return the country to neoliberalism, racism and general misery.
The civilian shock groups who built a climate of chaos for years before the coup, in 2019 attacked Indigenous women and cut off their braids, likewise tearing at Afrobolivian women's afros.
In the months following the coup, the de facto government has institutionalized their hatred of women by dismantling social programs that were destined for young mothers. They have destroyed public health care that in the last 14 years had tremendously decreased infant and maternal mortality.
Within days of the coup, Añez made evident her misogynist goals through systematic rape of women and girls by the security forces, including after they had murdered them.
The Añez regime must release Elena Flores. She must return to her family, community, region and union work. Her people have been robbed of her leadership.
We call for all the de facto government's charges against Elena Flores to be dropped immediately and for Flores, Choque, Hermosa, and all political prisoners to be released.
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Launching Tomorrow!
Join activists, experts, and artists in conversation about the challenges we are all facing today. Share ideas about building working-class power on the front lines. Strategize together about how to put people over profits during and after this crisis.
Scroll down for individual show details
Find real ways to support each other. Help us come through this crisis safe, sane, and stronger than we were before. Together.
We will hear from artists, musicians, educators, poets, and other visitors as we respond to the crisis with solace, clarity, and hope.
Dates: Thursday evenings, 5:00 - 6:00 PM EST
Where to Watch or Participate :
Join us via video chat or phone, www.ShelterAndSolidarity.org/join
Watch shows via www.ShelterAndSolidarity.org /videos
Real-time Audience Participation. Join the conversation!Help us online by:
liking the Facebook page
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Inviting friends to talk with Johanna Fernandez and Kevin Rashid Johnson (on our first show)
How you can connect and what you can do: each episode ends
We welcome your ideas for topics & guests!
Email: joe@shelterandsolidarity.org
Join SHELTER & SOLIDARITY for the first in our weekly hour-long on-line conversations on confronting the COVID crisis:
EPISODE #1 "The Urgent Public Health Crisis in Jails, Prisons, and ICE Detention Centers"
Featured Guests:
Johanna Fernandez, author, radio host, and organizer http://sdonline.org/66/locking-up-black-dissidents-and-punishing-the-poor-the-roots-of-mass-incarceration-in-the-us-2/
José Saldana, Director of the RAPP (Release Aging People in Prison) campaign in NY. http://rappcampaign.com/
Kevin Rashid Johnson, Minister of Defense, New Afrikan Black Panther Party, currently incarcerated inside an Indiana state prison). http://rashidmod.com/?p=2770
Frontline Report from inside Rikers Island Jail, facilitated by Mike Nugent of It’s Up to Us to End Mass Incarceration https://www.facebook.com/NoCriminalization/
Copyright © 2020 encuentro5, All rights reserved.
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April 14 Day of Work Stoppage in
Maquiladoras Along the US-Baja
California Border (over unsafe
conditions at work)
Please re-post widely!Dear Sisters and Brothers,Mexico's National Association of Maquiladora Manufacturers (the employers' association) has refused to close the maquiladora sweatshops along the U.S. border, in violation of the March 30 decree by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) demanding that all non-essential factories must close — with full wages paid to lock-downed workers — to prevent COVID-19 from spreading. The maquiladoras were on the list of non-essential industries.The maquiladora bosses in Mexico announced that they have orders to fill from U.S. parent corporations and that they have no choice but to fill those orders. Many have opened up a small portion of their production (less than 5% of operations, we are told), to make cloth masks, thus becoming "essential" industries. Workers in some of the plants have exposed this attempt by the bosses to circumvent the federal decree.The AMLO administration, however, has not clamped down on the maquiladora bosses -- any more than it has clamped down on corporations like BerryMex (a subsidiary of Driscoll's) that refuse to sign collective-bargaining agreements with truly independent unions (as in San Quintin), or who otherwise violate Mexico's new labor legislation. The workers fired in Matamoros, Tecate (Rockwell) and Silao (GM) for organizing a new union, a right enshrined in Mexico's new labor law, are the ones left to suffer, as there is no implementation of the new law.[NAFTA 2.0, just like its predecessor, looks good on paper when it comes to labor rights, but the reality on the ground is altogether different.]A growing number of workers in the maquiladoras along the entire border have spoken out against the crowded workplace conditions that are the breeding ground for COVID-19, and against the lack of proper protective equipment. Many are being fired just for demanding masks and proper factory cleaning.On April 9, the local chapter of the Organization of Workers and People (OPT), together with numerous labor and community organizations, announced an April 14 work stoppage in the maquiladoras of Baja California. Workers will be walking out to protest the refusal by management to shut down production, with no layoffs of firings, and workers' wages paid at 100%. The work stoppage was called in coordination with the Baja California section of the new independent trade union federation, the Nueva Central de Trabajadores, a federation launched by the Mexican Electrical Workers union (SME).You will find below the press release issued on April 9 — in English.The struggle of these maquiladora workers is our struggle; after all, U.S. corporations are the ones demanding more production, and more profits, from their affiliates in Mexico, even as hundreds in the border region are dying. We need to demand that Rockwell and all the other maquiladora corporations not fire — or victimize in any other way — workers who walk out on April 14 simply because they don't want to get infected and possibly die.Also, if any of these workers were to be victimized by the bosses for demanding that management abide by AMLO's March 30 decree, we will need your help circulating widely a petition to the companies and to the federal and state authorities in Mexico, demanding that the workers be reinstated immediately.We will keep you posted,In solidarity,Alan BenjaminOn behalf of the editorial boardof The Organizer newspaper* * * * * * * * * * *April 9, 2020
— FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE —
CALL TO DEFEND LABOR RIGHTS, HEALTH AND LIVES OF WORKERS IN BAJA CALIFORNIA (BC)
To: BC Governor Jaime Bonilla ValdezTo: BC Secretary of Labor Sergio MoctezumaTo: Federal Delegate Alejandro Ruiz UribeTo: Baja California's mediaTo: maquiladora workers and citizens in generalWe are addressing you to demand compliance with the Federal Decree issued on March 30 declaring a State of Health Emergency at the national level, a decree that cannot be evaded or circumvented by any local authority, much less by any corporation.We have seen how, since this decree was issued, corporations in Baja California, mainly maquiladoras, have tried to evade and avoid the decrees on the grounds that their company, their branch of production, is essential, when this is totally false. We assert this fact having seen proof, testimonies, videos and messages from workers all over the state of Baja California.We issue this cry for help to the pertinent authorities, to demand that they force these companies to comply with the law, and to sanction them — or to shut them down — if they continue with this illegal activity. We also call upon the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) to audit employers to see if they are in compliance with NOM-035-STPS-2018.
TO ALL WORKERS WHOSE PRODUCTION IS NOT AN ESSENTIAL ACTIVITY, WE ISSUE THIS MOST ENERGETIC CALL TO STOP WORK COLLECTIVELY UNTIL THE AUTHORITIES COME TO THE CORPORATION AND IMPOSE THE MONITORING AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE FEDERAL DECREE REGARDING THE CLOSURE OF NON-ESSENTIAL INDUSTRIES.
We will not stand by as the maquiladora companies keep placing at risk the lives of the workers and their families — and through them, the lives of people across all of Baja California. Forcing the workers to go to work in unsafe conditions exposes them — given the unsafe conditions on the job — to the contagion of COVID-19.We will not stand by and allow these corporations to get away with placing their profits over the lives of their workers.The atrocities that have been committed these recent days only reveal the true face of the maquiladora corporations, which demonstrate a lack of ethics and commitment to the citizenry, since they are mostly export industries whose owners are based abroad, sheltered in their comfortable and spacious homes. It seems that those who manage the maquiladora industry find themselves in another reality, very different and apart from the reality experienced by Baja Californians who go to work every day.
That is why we, the organizations, unions, collectives and citizens, signatories of this urgent appeal, are issuing this urgent appeal. If the maquiladora corporations are not forced to shut down, these maquiladoras and their parent corporations, as well as the state and federal authorities, will be primarily responsible for what happens to the working class and our families in Baja California. If these factories remain open, we hold the Governor and the Secretary of Labor of Baja California responsible for the deaths of workers by omission for the crimes of attempted murder and injury, abuse of authority, bribery and corruption.
Sincerely,
Nueva Central de Trabajadores B.C.Nueva Central de Trabajadores - Junta Promotora de TijuanaLic. Alfonso Cortez RamírezPPSMAsamblea Popular de TijuanaOPT Mexicali— Mexicali, B.C. April 9, 2020
Contact information:Mexicali: 686 323 7519 /opt.baja@gmail.com Tijuana: 664 6167842 / nct.tijuana2020@gmail.comTecate: 665 393 2677 / 665 129 0296 / glira33@hotmail.com
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Message to the People
A voice from inside Pennsylvania’s gulag
I trust everyone is well, healthy, and safe. I just got news that the federal judge denied my appeal to modify my federal sentence. I don’t classify the news of denial as either good or bad; it simply is what it is, a denial. It neither sets me back or pushes me forward. I am at the same spot that I’ve been at before that federal appeal, and that is, very close to being released from prison. Remember, we were simply trying to “expedite” release from prison. And that hasn’t change not one bit. The judge’s denial of my appeal is just a reminder of how most of the status quo view us—as less than—less than human, less than citizens, less than themselves, less than...you can fill in the rest.
People may be wondering how I’m feeling, so let me tell you all how I pretty much always feel and view situations like this one. I always have momentary mixed feelings of disappointment, anger, and sadness, but as quick as it comes it goes. Because my view in life is 1) they can’t keep a good person down for long, 2) be thankful for what you have, 3) always look at the positive in things that appear bad and take that positive position, and 4) have faith in the universal laws at play in the world. So, the way I see this situation is that I’m a good brother; I’m thankful for being near release from prison and for even getting the opportunity to have my federal appeal heard before a court because that rarely happens. I see the positives as being heard, meeting new friends, bringing family closer to me, and new paths revealing themselves to me; and I have unwavering faith in the law of cause and effect—that what we put into the world is what we get out of the world. Well I put in good works.
So, keep your eyes on the prize and fight like hell to get it! I know I will. And know of a surety, that in the end, we will win freedom, justice, equality, peace, happiness, family, good homes, health, and heaven on earth while we live. Stay safe.
Write to Shakaboona:
Smart Communications/PA DOC
Kerry Shakaboona Marshall #BE7826
SCI Rockview
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
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Addameer's Sahar Francis live on the web April 17th
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#PalestinianPrisonersDay April 17th: USPCN hosts virtual teach-in with Addameer’s Sahar Francis & social media storm to #FreeOurPrisoners
On Friday, April 17th, 2020, the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) and the entire world will mark the International Day of Solidarity with Palestinian Political Prisoners. Join us on the 17th at 1 PM Central / 2 PM Eastern / 9 PM in Palestine for a special live teach-in with Sahar Francis, Director of Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, the most important political prisoner advocacy institution in Palestine.
Francis will discuss the current state of Palestinian prisoners, their organizing demands, and what can be done to support them. Immediately following her talk on the 17th, we ask all to join us from 2-4 PM Central / 3-5 PM Eastern for a Twitter and other social media storm using the hashtags #PalestinianPrisonersDay and #FreeOurPrisoners.
USPCN’s defense of Palestinian political prisoners is a defense of the right to resist occupation and colonization, a defense of the right to self-determination, a defense of the struggle for national liberation. And regardless of the allegations against them, ALL political prisoners are national heroes to the Palestinian people and our supporters.
Currently, there are over 5,000 Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli jails – including 180 children, 700 who are ill, 200 with chronic diseases, and 430 administrative detainees, the latter imprisoned without charge by the apartheid state.
All these prisoners live in unhealthy and unsanitary conditions, and are regularly subjected to psychological and physical torture. And although Israel and its U.S. benefactor are fully responsible for the health and safety of all our people living under Israel’s occupation and colonization, political prisoners are the most vulnerable sector of Palestinian society in the time of the coronavirus, when Covid-19 will almost certainly spread dangerously fast in Israeli prisons. This is especially why we raise the call to #FreeOurPrisoners now.
As an organization based in the U.S., we understand the importance of also demanding that U.S. authorities release its own prisoners, who are disproportionately Black and Latinx – especially political prisoners, the infirm, those held pretrial because they cannot afford bail, survivors of police torture, and others who were wrongfully convicted.
Just as we defend Palestinian political prisoners, we defend the right of Black, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Native, and other oppressed people and nationalities in the U.S. to independence, self-determination, sovereignty, and liberation. Together with the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR), USPCN calls to #FreeThemAll – from Palestine to the U.S.
Take Action on Friday, April 17th, 2020:
- Selfie in Support of Prisoners
- Take a selfie with the hashtag #FreeOurPrisoners and post it on your social media with a short statement supporting Palestinian political prisoners.
- Do the same with #FreeThemAll and a short statement supporting Black, Latinx, and other people in U.S. prisons.
- Tag @USPCN, @Addameer, and @CAARPRNow in your posts.
- Social Media Tool Kit
- Check out our social media tool kit at https://bit.ly/USPCNPrisonersDay2020 for sample tweets and art you can use for the social media storm.
Until Liberation and Return,
U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN)******************************************
Support USPCN's work by making a tax-deductible donation to USPCN (c/o the WESPAC Foundation)!
USPCNc/o WESPAC Foundation77 Tarrytown Road, Suite 2WWhite Plains, NY 10607Want to change how you receive these emails?You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list
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You can watch the film here:
iTunes - https://itunes.apple.com/gb/movie/we-are-many/id1118498978
Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/We-Are-Many-Damon-Albarn/dp/B01IFW0WX4
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United National Antiwar Coalition
If your organization would like to join the UNAC coalition, please click here:https://www.unacpeace.org/join.html
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Virus-free. www.avast.com
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LETTERS NEEDED FOR
LEONARD PELTIER
Dear Friends, Supporters, and Family,
In light of the provisions of the CARES Act meant to decrease the risk to prisoner heath, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Attorney General has delegated to the Director of the Bureau of Prisons the authority to release certain vulnerable prisoners to home confinement. Currently, the process for identifying appropriate candidates for home confinement have not been solidified but we believe it may help to write to the BOP Director and Southeast Regional Director and ask that Leonard be immediately considered and transitioned to his home on the Turtle Mountain Reservation.
Your letters should be addressed to:
Michael CarvajalDirector320 First Street NWWashington, DC 20534
J.A. KellerSoutheast Regional DirectorFederal Bureau of3800 Camp Crk Prk SW, Building 2000Atlanta, GA 30331
We have not drafted a form letter or correspondence. Your pleas should come from your heart as an individual who has supported Leonard for so many years. Say what you would like but we have put together some talking points that will assist you in your letter writing. Below are some helpful guidelines so your letter touches on the requirements of the Attorney General’s criteria for releasing inmates like Leonard to home confinement
OPENING• Point out that Leonard is an elder and is at risk for example.” Mr. Peltier is 75 years old and in very poor health; his only desire is to go home to the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation and live out the remainder of his years surrounded by his family.”
MEDICALThe AG and CDC guidelines for releasing inmates requires the health concerns cause greater risk of getting the virus. Leonard has the following conditions you can list in your letter• Diabetes• Spots on lung• Heart Condition (has had triple by-pass surgery)• Leonard Peltier suffers from a kidney disease that cannot be treated at the Coleman1facility and impacts as an underlying condition if contracting the virus.
RISK TO COMMUNITYTo qualify for release to home confinement we must show that Leonard poses no risk to the community.
COMMUNITY SUPPORT/RENTRY PLANTo qualify for release to home confinement we must show that Leonard has a reentry plan. Leonard has support from the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Band and has family land on the reservation where he can live.
RISK OF COVID 19To qualify for the release to home confinement must show that Leonard is at reduced risk to exposure of COVID 19 by release than he is at Coleman 1. Currently Rolette County, ND has no cases of COVID 19, Sumter County has at least 33 cases.Questions and comments may be sent to info@freedomarchives.org
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Dear Readers, this is a very important list of demands crafted by the group, Socialist Resurgence, that appears at the end of their statement on the COVID-19 pandemic. The article itself is quite long but the most comprehensive statement I've seen and well worth reading at the URL below. Please circulate widely.
—Bonnie Weinstein
STATEMENT BY SOCIALIST RESURGENCE
ON COVID-19
https://socialistresurgence.org/2020/03/24/statement-by-socialist-resurgence-on-covid-19/
A program of action and solidarity
Capitalism stands totally disgraced. Even amidst a global pandemic and the coming ecological collapse, the ruling class in every country is trying to save its own profits at the expense of humanity. Workers have nothing at all to gain from supporting the capitalists, their programs, or their parties. Instead, working people must put forward our own solutions to the crisis and struggle with every weapon we have to achieve them. We call for:
- Centralized, international commissions of doctors and engineers to coordinate a global response to the pandemic!
- Retool all non-essential production to provide medical and safety equipment and begin a massive build-out of green infrastructure!
- No bans, no walls, amnesty for all immigrants and refugees, with full citizenship rights now!
- Democratic decision-making carried out through public discussion on all restrictions of movement!
- Free housing, food, and medical care throughout the crisis! Pay for it through the military budgets, with 100% tax on all income over $250,000!
- Hazard pay of at least 200% for all workers and full implementation of workplace safety measures! Completely free child care now! Stop all foreclosures, freeze all rents and mortgages, and stop all evictions for the duration of this crisis!
- Evacuate the prisons! Free all non-violent, immuno-compromised, and elderly prisoners, and provide quality housing!
- Drastically increase funding for domestic violence resources and education! No one stuck in quarantine with an abuser!
- Decrease hours without a decrease in pay for all who must work! All the necessities for those who are not working!
- Abortion is an essential service! Free and safe access for all who need it!
- Aid, not sanctions! Reparations for colonized countries now! Cancel all imperialist debt!
- Removal of all imperialist troops from the neo-colonial world; re-assign them for immediate use in aid efforts!
- No bailouts for big business or the banks! Nationalize production and finance under democratic workers’ control!
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To the initiators of the “Letter of
Dissent”: Antiwar Commemoration of the
Kent State Massacre, May 4, 2020
Dissent”: Antiwar Commemoration of the
Kent State Massacre, May 4, 2020
March 24, 2020
To the initiators of the “Letter of Dissent”
Dear Friends,
Much has happened since last September when we initiated the Open Letter Calling for an ANTI-WAR COMMEMORATION of the KENT MASSACRE, May 4, 2020. It’s an entirely new world - and not the most copacetic of times.
Yet even in the midst of the unfolding social and economic crisis, it’s heartening to see an organic, working-class solidarity begin to emerge. People are pitching in to help one another and are beginning to organize - demanding that human needs come before corporate profits.
Ultimately, overcoming the ongoing disasters will require all of society’s means – and for that we must dismantle the insatiable war machine and use those vast resources to heal the planet. We must continue the fight to end US wars, occupations and sanctions.
This letter goes out to the 59 original signers of the Letter of Dissent. Over 1000 additional antiwar activists have signed, making our initiative an authoritative statement from the antiwar community.
The KSU administration refused to respond to our concerns, proceeding instead with a corporate, celebrity-filled program designed to cover up the truth of the massacres and the war. The university has now cancelled the official planned program. An online event is being developed, but it will undoubtedly have the same sanitized character.
As antiwar activists under quarantine, we cannot use traditional marches, pickets and rallies - we will need to create new forms of struggle. That has already begun, with protests of empty shoes, spaced out picket lines, car caravans and internet actions.
I’m writing to ask you to help form an online commemoration of the massacres at Kent, Augusta and Jackson.
We can encourage groups and individuals to initiate memorial events or include May ‘70 in other planned actions. Some sites already exist, notably the Kent State Truth Tribunal, which has carried on activities for years and created a large video collection of personal narratives about May 4. They are here: https://www.truthtribunal.org/about
For my part, using a previously established blog, there is now a temporary site for individuals to contribute written experiences from May 1970, the national student strike, the GI antiwar movement and similar antiwar experiences.
This is an open venue for anyone and everyone to help write our rich history. You can share your stories on the Kent Massacre Wall (Click on Share Your Stories): https://kentmassacre.wordpress.com/author/mikealewitz/
Most importantly, this letter is also an invitation to help begin a new Facebook group, KENT MASSACRE ONLINE ANTIWAR COMMEMORATION – a place to post news of events, photos, articles, videos, comments and discussion related to the 50-year commemoration. Please join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2850853628362946/
Today’s social media discussions are focused on issues of staggering importance, such as the elections, pandemics and mass extinctions. But the civil rights, labor, antiwar and other great movements of the past contain valuable lessons of how to fight and win. We need to spread the collective consciousness and history of the massacres, the national student strike and the antiwar movement.
Humanity faces unprecedented challenges in the times ahead - but we know that the creative power of the working class is a mighty force when it is unleashed.
In Solidarity,
Mike Alewitz
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A slightly altered version of this letter will go out to the 1000+ signers on the Change.org site: http://chng.it/QTLkTvX6
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MIKE ALEWITZ
Professor Emeritus
Art Department / Mural ProgramCentral CT State University
1615 Stanley Street/ New Britain, CT 06050
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Art Department / Mural ProgramCentral CT State University
1615 Stanley Street/ New Britain, CT 06050
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Red Square
116 Federal Street
New London, CT 06320
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New London, CT 06320
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Mobile: 860.518.4046
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alewitz@gmail.com
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Chiapas: EZLN Closes Caracoles Due to
Coronavirus and Calls on People to Continue Struggle
https://sipazen.wordpress.com/2020/03/19/chiapas-ezln-closes-caracoles-due-to-coronavirus-and-asks-to-continue-struggle/
On March 16th, 2020, the EZLN published a communiqué about the actions that they are going to take against the Coronavirus and a strong call not to give up the struggle:
“CONSIDERING THE REAL, SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN THREAT TO HUMAN LIFE THAT COVID-19, ALSO KNOWN AS “CORONAVIRUS” PRESENTS;
CONSIDERING THE FRIVOLOUS IRRESPONSIBILITY AND THE LACK OF SERIOUSNESS OF THE BAD GOVERNMENTS AND OF THE POLITICAL CLASS IN ITS ENTIRETY, THAT MAKE USE OF A HUMANITARIAN PROBLEM TO ATTACK EACH OTHER, INSTEAD OF TAKING THE NECESSARY MEASURES TO CONFRONT THE LIFE-THREATENING VIRUS, WHICH ENDANGERS EVERYONE IRREGARDLESS OF NATIONALITY, GENDER, RACE, LANGUAGE, RELIGIOUS BELIEF, POLITICAL AFFILIATION, SOCIAL CONDITION OR HISTORY;
CONSIDERING THE LACK OF TRUE AND TIMELY INFORMATION ABOUT THE SCOPE AND GRAVITY OF THE VIRUS, AS WELL AS THE ABSENCE OF A REAL PLAN TO CONFRONT THE THREAT;
CONSIDERING THE ZAPATISTA COMMITMENT IN OUR FIGHT FOR LIFE;
WE HAVE DECIDED:
FIRST.- DECLARE A RED ALERT IN OUR VILLAGES, COMMUNITIES AND NEIGHBORHOODS, AND IN ALL THE ZAPATIST ORGANIZATIONAL BODIES.
SECOND.- TO GOOD GOVERNMENT COUNCILS AND AUTONOMOUS REBEL ZAPATISTA MUNICIPALITIES, WE RECOMMEND THE TOTAL AND IMMEDIATE CLOSURE OF THE CARACOLES AND CENTERS OF RESISTANCE AND REBELLION.
THIRD.- WE RECOMMEND THE SUPPORT BASES AND ALL THE ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE TO FOLLOW A SERIES OF SPECIAL RECOMMENDATIONS AND HYGIENE MEASURES THAT WILL BE SENT TO THE ZAPATIST COMMUNITIES, TOWNS AND NEIGHBORHOODS.
FOURTH.- IN THE ABSENCE OF THE BAD GOVERNMENTS, WE URGE EVERYONE, IN MEXICO AND THE WORLD, TO TAKE THE NECESSARY WITH SCIENTIFICALLY-BASED SANITARY MEASURES THAT WILL ALLOW US TO SURVIVE THIS PANDEMIC.
FIFTH.- WE CALL ON YOU NOT TO CEASE THE STRUGGLE AGAINST FEMICIDAL VIOLENCE, TO CONTINUE THE STRUGGLE IN DEFENSE OF TERRITORY AND MOTHER EARTH, TO KEEP UP THE STRUGGLE FOR THE DISAPPEARED, MURDERED, AND IMPRISONED, AND KEEP THE FLAG OF THE FIGHT FOR HUMANITY RAISED HIGH.
SIXTH.- WE CALL ON YOU NOT TO LOSE HUMAN CONTACT, BUT TO TEMPORARILY CHANGE THE WAYS WE RELATE TO EACH OTHER AS COMRADES, SISTERS, BROTHERS, SISTERS.
THE WORD, THE EAR, AND THE HEART, HAVE MANY ROADS, MANY WAYS, MANY CALENDARS AND MANY GEOGRAPHIES TO MEET. THIS FIGHT FOR LIFE MAY BE ONE OF THEM.”
For more information in Spanish:
POR CORONAVIRUS EL EZLN CIERRA CARACOLES Y LLAMA A NO ABANDONAR LAS LUCHAS ACTUALES, Enlace Zapatista, 16 de marzo de 2020
EZLN decreta “alerta roja” por coronavirus y cierra sus centros de autogobierno en Chiapas, Aristeguinoticias, 17 de marzo de 2020
EZLN cierra sus centros de reunión, por COVID-19, Chiapasparalelo, 16 de marzo de 2020
EZLN decreta “alerta roja” en sus pueblos, comunidades por Covid-19, La Jornada, 17 de marzo de 2020
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High Court Declines Case of 60s Black Militant H. Rap Brown
By The Associated Press, April 6, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/04/06/us/politics/ap-us-supreme-court-h-rap-brown.html
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is declining to take the case of a 1960s black militant formerly known as H. Rap Brown who is in prison for killing a Georgia sheriff’s deputy in 2000.
As is usual, the justices didn't comment Monday in turning away Brown's case. Brown had argued his constitutional rights were violated at trial.
Brown converted to Islam and now goes by the name Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin. He gained prominence more than 50 years ago as a Black Panthers leader and was at one point the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
In 2002, Al-Amin was convicted of murder in the death of Fulton County sheriff’s Deputy Ricky Kinchen and the wounding of Kinchen’s partner, Deputy Aldranon English. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Al-Amin had argued that a prosecutor violated his right not to testify by directly questioning him during closing arguments in a sort of mock cross-examination.
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Chelsea Manning Ordered Free From Prison
Chelsea Manning, photographed in Washington, D.C., in January 2018.
Photo: Jesse Dittmar/Redux
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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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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
 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 ...
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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
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, California 94610 ~ 510-488-3559
www.couragetoresist.org ~ facebook.com/couragetoresist
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Stop Kevin Cooper's Abuse by San Quentin Prison Guards!
https://www.change.org/p/san-quentin-warden-ronald-davis-stop-kevin-cooper-s-abuse-by-san-quentin-prison-guards-2ace89a7-a13e-44ab-b70c-c18acbbfeb59?recruiter=747387046&recruited_by_id=3ea6ecd0-69ba-11e7-b7ef-51d8e2da53ef&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=petition_dashboard&use_react=false 
On Wednesday, September 25, Kevin Cooper's cell at San Quentin Prison was thrown into disarray and his personal food dumped into the toilet by a prison guard, A. Young. The cells on East Block Bayside, where Kevin's cell is, were all searched on September 25 during Mandatory Yard. Kevin spent the day out in the yard with other inmates.. In a letter, Kevin described what he found when he returned: "This cage was hit hard, like a hurricane was in here .. .... . little by little I started to clean up and put my personal items back inside the boxes that were not taken .... .. .. I go over to the toilet, lift up the seatcover and to my surprise and shock the toilet was completely filled up with my refried beans, and my brown rice. Both were in two separate cereal bags and both cereal bags were full. The raisin bran cereal bags were gone, and my food was in the toilet!" A bucket was eventually brought over and: "I had to get down on my knees and dig my food out of the toilet with my hands so that I could flush the toilet. The food, which was dried refried beans and dried brown rice had absorbed the water in the toilet and had become cement hard. It took me about 45 minutes to get enough of my food out of the toilet before it would flush." Even the guard working the tier at the time told Kevin, "K.C.., that is f_cked up!" A receipt was left in Kevin's cell identifying the guard who did this as A... Young. Kevin has never met Officer A...... Young, and has had no contact with him besides Officer Young's unprovoked act of harassment and psychological abuse... Kevin Cooper has served over 34 years at San Quentin, fighting for exoneration from the conviction for murders he did not commit. It is unconscionable for him to be treated so disrespectfully by prison staff on top of the years of his incarceration. No guard should work at San Quentin if they cannot treat prisoners and their personal belongings with basic courtesy and respect................. Kevin has filed a grievance against A. Young.. Please: 1) Sign this petition calling on San Quentin Warden Ronald Davis to grant Kevin's grievance and discipline "Officer" A. Young.. 2) Call Warden Ronald Davis at: (415) 454-1460 Ext. 5000. Tell him that Officer Young's behaviour was inexcusable, and should not be tolerated........ 3) Call Yasir Samar, Associate Warden of Specialized Housing, at (415) 455-5037 4) Write Warden Davis and Lt. Sam Robinson (separately) at: Main Street San Quentin, CA 94964 5) Email Lt. Sam Robinson at: samuel.robinson2@cdcr.......................ca.gov
On Wednesday, September 25, Kevin Cooper's cell at San Quentin Prison was thrown into disarray and his personal food dumped into the toilet by a prison guard, A. Young. The cells on East Block Bayside, where Kevin's cell is, were all searched on September 25 during Mandatory Yard. Kevin spent the day out in the yard with other inmates.. In a letter, Kevin described what he found when he returned: "This cage was hit hard, like a hurricane was in here .. .... . little by little I started to clean up and put my personal items back inside the boxes that were not taken .... .. .. I go over to the toilet, lift up the seatcover and to my surprise and shock the toilet was completely filled up with my refried beans, and my brown rice. Both were in two separate cereal bags and both cereal bags were full. The raisin bran cereal bags were gone, and my food was in the toilet!" A bucket was eventually brought over and: "I had to get down on my knees and dig my food out of the toilet with my hands so that I could flush the toilet. The food, which was dried refried beans and dried brown rice had absorbed the water in the toilet and had become cement hard. It took me about 45 minutes to get enough of my food out of the toilet before it would flush." Even the guard working the tier at the time told Kevin, "K.C.., that is f_cked up!" A receipt was left in Kevin's cell identifying the guard who did this as A... Young. Kevin has never met Officer A...... Young, and has had no contact with him besides Officer Young's unprovoked act of harassment and psychological abuse... Kevin Cooper has served over 34 years at San Quentin, fighting for exoneration from the conviction for murders he did not commit. It is unconscionable for him to be treated so disrespectfully by prison staff on top of the years of his incarceration. No guard should work at San Quentin if they cannot treat prisoners and their personal belongings with basic courtesy and respect................. Kevin has filed a grievance against A. Young.. Please: 1) Sign this petition calling on San Quentin Warden Ronald Davis to grant Kevin's grievance and discipline "Officer" A. Young.. 2) Call Warden Ronald Davis at: (415) 454-1460 Ext. 5000. Tell him that Officer Young's behaviour was inexcusable, and should not be tolerated........ 3) Call Yasir Samar, Associate Warden of Specialized Housing, at (415) 455-5037 4) Write Warden Davis and Lt. Sam Robinson (separately) at: Main Street San Quentin, CA 94964 5) Email Lt. Sam Robinson at: samuel.robinson2@cdcr.......................ca.gov*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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Eddie Conway's Update on Forgotten Political Prisoners
November 19, 2019
https://therealnews........com/stories/eddie-conway-update-forgotten-political-prisoners
EDDIE CONWAY: I'm Eddie Conway, host of Rattling the Bars. As many well-known political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal continue to suffer in prison…
MUMIA ABU JAMAL: In an area where there is corporate downsizing and there are no jobs and there is only a service economy and education is being cut, which is the only rung by which people can climb, the only growth industry in this part of Pennsylvania, in the Eastern United States, in the Southern United States, in the Western United States is "corrections," for want of a better word. The corrections industry is booming. I mean, this joint here ain't five years old.
EDDIE CONWAY: …The media brings their stories to the masses.. But there are many lesser-known activists that have dropped out of the spotlight, grown old in prison, or just been forgotten.............. For Rattling the Bars, we are spotlighting a few of their stories........ There was a thriving Black Panther party in Omaha, Nebraska, headed by David Rice and Ed Poindexter...... By 1968, the FBI had began plans to eliminate the Omaha Black Panthers by making an example of Rice and Poindexter. It would take a couple of years, but the FBI would frame them for murder..
KIETRYN ZYCHAL: In the 90s, Ed and Mondo both applied to the parole board. There are two different things you do in Nebraska, the parole board would grant you parole, but because they have life sentences, they were told that they have to apply to the pardons board, which is the governor, the attorney general, and the secretary of state, and ask that their life sentences be commuted to a specific number of years before they would be eligible for parole.
And so there was a movement in the 90s to try to get them out on parole...... The parole board would recommend them for parole because they were exemplary prisoners, and then the pardons board would not give them a hearing. They wouldn't even meet to determine whether they would commute their sentence..
EDDIE CONWAY: They served 45 years before Rice died in the Nebraska State Penitentiary. After several appeals, earning a master's degree, writing several books and helping other inmates, Poindexter is still serving time at the age of 75.
KEITRYN ZYCHAL: Ed Poindexter has been in jail or prison since August of 1970. He was accused of making a suitcase bomb and giving it to a 16-year-old boy named Duane Peak, and Duane Peak was supposed to take the bomb to a vacant house and call 911, and report that a woman was dragged screaming into a vacant house, and when police officers showed up, one of those police officers was killed when the suitcase bomb exploded............
Ed and his late co-defendant, Mondo we Langa, who was David Rice at the time of the trial, they have always insisted that they had absolutely nothing to do with this murderous plot, and they tried to get back into court for 50 years, and they have never been able to get back into court to prove their innocence. Mondo died in March of 2016 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and Ed is going to turn 75 this year, I think............. And he has spent the majority of his life in prison... It will be 50 years in 2020 that he will be in prison..
EDDIE CONWAY: There are at least 20 Black Panthers still in prison across the United States.. One is one of the most revered is H. Rap Brown, known by his Islamic name, Jamil Al-Amin.
KAIRI AL-AMIN: My father has been a target for many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many years of the federal government, and I think him being housed these last 10 years in federal penitentiaries without federal charges show that the vendetta is still strong. The federal government has not forgotten who he was as H.. Rap Brown, or who he is as Imam Jamil Al-Amin...
JAMIL AL-AMIN: See, it's no in between.. You are either free or you're a slave. There's no such thing as second-class citizenship.
EDDIE CONWAY: Most people don't realize he's still in prison. He's serving a life sentence at the United States Penitentiary in Tucson...
KAIRI AL-AMIN: Our campaign is twofold.. One, how can egregious constitutional rights violations not warrant a new trial, especially when they were done by the prosecution........ And two, my father is innocent. The facts point to him being innocent, which is why we're pushing for a new trial.. We know that they can't win this trial twice... The reason they won the first time was because of the gag order that was placed on my father which didn't allow us to fight in the court of public opinion as well as the court of law... And so when you don't have anyone watching, anything can be done without any repercussion..
EDDIE CONWAY: Another well-known political prisoner that has been forgotten in the media and in the public arena is Leonard Peltier. Leonard Peltier was a member of the American Indian Movement and has been in prison for over 40 years and is now 75 years old..
SPEAKER: Leonard Peltier represents, in a very real sense, the effort, the struggle by indigenous peoples within the United States to exercise their rights as sovereign nations, recognized as such in treaties with the United States.. For the government of the United States, which has colonized all indigenous peoples to claim boundaries, keeping Leonard in prison demonstrates the costs and consequences of asserting those rights.
EDDIE CONWAY: Leonard Peltier suffers from a host of medical issues including suffering from a stroke... And if he is not released, he will die in prison...
LEONARD PELTIER: I'll be an old man when I get out, if I get out.
PAULETTE D'AUTEUIL: His wellbeing is that he rarely gets a family visit. His children live in California and North Dakota. Both places are a good 2000 miles from where he's at in Florida, so it makes it time consuming as well as expensive to come and see him. He is, health-wise, we are still working on trying to get some help for his prostate, and there has been some development of some spots on his lungs, which we are trying to get resolved....... There's an incredible mold issue in the prison, especially because in Florida it's so humid and it builds up. So we're also dealing with that...
EDDIE CONWAY: These are just a few of the almost 20 political prisoners that has remained in American prisons for 30 and 40 years, some even longer. Mutulu Shakur has been in jail for long, long decades.... Assata Shakur has been hiding and forced into exile in Cuba......... Sundiata has been in prison for decades; Veronza Bower, The Move Nine........... And there's just a number of political prisoners that's done 30 or 40 years.
They need to be released and they need to have an opportunity to be back with their family, their children, their grandchildren, whoever is still alive. Any other prisoners in the United States that have the same sort of charges as those people that are being held has been released up to 15 or 20 years ago. That same justice system should work for the political prisoners also.
Thank you for joining me for this episode of Rattling the Bars. I'm Eddie Conway.....
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Letters of support for clemency needed for Reality Winner
Reality Winner, a whistleblower who helped expose foreign hacking of US election systems leading up to the 2016 presidential election, has been behind bars since June 2017. Supporters are preparing to file a petition of clemency in hopes of an early release... Reality's five year prison sentence is by far the longest ever given for leaking information to the media about a matter of public interest.............. Stand with Reality shirts, stickers, and more available. Please take a moment to sign the letter SIGN THE LETTER Support Reality Podcast: "Veterans need to tell their stories" – Dan Shea Vietnam War combat veteran Daniel Shea on his time in Vietnam and the impact that Agent Orange and post traumatic stress had on him and his family since... Listen now This Courage to Resist podcast was produced in collaboration with the Vietnam Full Disclosure effort of Veterans For Peace — "Towards an honest commemoration of the American war in Vietnam." This year marks 50 years of GI resistance, in and out of uniform, for many of the courageous individuals featured.. If you believe this history is important, please ... DONATE NOW to support these podcasts |
COURAGE TO RESIST ~ SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT! 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, California 94610 ~ 510-488-3559 www.....................couragetoresist..org ~ facebook.com/couragetoresist
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Mobilization4Mumia
215-724-1618 Mobilizatio4Mumia.com mobilization4mumia@gmail.com PRESS RELEASE Contact Sophia Williams 917-806-0521, Ted Kelly 610-715-6924 or Joe Piette 610-931-2615
215-724-1618 Mobilizatio4Mumia.com mobilization4mumia@gmail.com PRESS RELEASE Contact Sophia Williams 917-806-0521, Ted Kelly 610-715-6924 or Joe Piette 610-931-2615
Philadelphia, Jan. 30 - Mumia Abu-Jamal has always insisted on his innocence in the death of police officer Daniel Faulkner, blaming police, judicial and prosecutorial misconduct for his politically-tainted conviction. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is expected to announce his response this week to the legal briefs for Post Conviction Relief Act hearings and the request to remand Abu-Jamal's case back to Common Pleas court, filed by his attorneys in early September 2019. Abu-Jamal's supporters will rally outside DA Krasner's office at 4:30 on Friday, January 31, whether or not he challenges Mumia's appeals. We call for Mumia's release...
Recent exonerations of 10 Philadelphia residents unfairly convicted for crimes they did not commit reveal a simple truth - the Philadelphia police, courts and prosecutors convicted innocent Black men based on gross violations of their constitutional rights. The same patterns of constitutional violations plague the case of Abu-Jamal. Since Jan. 2018, Sherman McCoy, James Frazier, Dwayne Thorpe, Terrance Lewis, Jamaal Simmons, Dontia Patterson, John Miller, Willie Veasey, Johnny Berry and Chester Holmann III have all been exonerated by DA Larry Krasner's Conviction Integrity Unit. Philadelphia is not alone. The National Registry of Exonerations counted 165 exonerations last year. The registry has tallied 2,500 wrongful convictions since 1989, costing defendants more than 22,000 years of incarceration. Seven of the ten men released in Philadelphia were convicted by longtime district attorney Lynne Abraham, a "tough-on-crime" prosecutor who regularly sought maximum punishments and death spentences. Abraham as Common Pleas Court Judge arraigned Abu-Jamal in 1981and years later as District Attorney fought his post conviction relief hearings... Ineffective counsel, false witness testimony, witness coercion and intimidation, phony ballistics evidence, prosecution failure to turn over evidence to the defense as required by law, racist jury selections -- these and other legal errors led to the exoneration of these innocent defendants after decades in prison.. These are the same police, judicial and prosecutorial misconduct practices Abu-Jamal's attorneys and supporters have been citing since 1982. In the late 1970s and early 80s, Abu-Jamal was a daily radio reporter for WHYY and NPR who earned acclaim for his award-winning reporting. As a journalist who reported fairly on the MOVE organization's resistance against state repression, he drew the ire of the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police and the notoriously racist Police Commissioner and later Mayor Frank Rizzo. On Dec. 9, 1981, while driving a cab to supplement his income, Abu-Jamal happened upon his brother in an altercation with Faulkner. Faulkner was killed. Abu-Jamal, who was shot and severely beaten by police, was charged in Faulkner's death, even though witnesses reported seeing another man, most probably the passenger in Abu-Jamal's brother's car, running from the scene. Imprisoned for nearly four decades, Abu-Jamal has maintained his innocence. He successfully won his release from Pennsylvania's death row in 2011.. In December 2018 he won the right to appeal his 1982 conviction because of biased judicial oversight by PA Supreme Court Justice Ronald Castille In early January 2019, DA Krasner reported finding six boxes of previously undisclosed evidence held by prosecutors in the case and allowed Abu-Jamal's attorneys to review the files. In September 2019 Abu-Jamal's lawyers filed new appellate briefs, including a request that the case be returned for a hearing before the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court based on finding of concrete evidence of prosecutorial misconduct by the DA's office in his 1982 trial. A Sept.. 9, 2019 Abu-Jamal's attorneys Judith Ritter and Sam Spital filed a brief in PA Superior Court to support his claim that his 1982 trial was fundamentally unfair and violated the Constitution. They argue the prosecution failed to disclose evidence as required and discriminated against African Americans when selecting the jury. And, his 1982 lawyer did not adequately challenge the State's witnesses. The attorneys also filed a motion revealing new evidence of constitutional violations such as promises by the prosecutor to pay or give leniency to two witnesses. There is also new evidence of racial discrimination in jury selection. Attorney Ritter contends that the new evidence shows Abu-Jamal's trial was "fundamentally unfair and tainted by serious constitutional violations." https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZgI0jvcWY5soAh_DXKdNnJJZSY0HEftuRwthQMurgd8/edit?usp=sharing
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Mumia Abu-Jamal: New Chance for Freedom
Police and State Frame-Up Must Be Fully Exposed!
Mumia Abu-Jamal is innocent. Courts have ignored and suppressed evidence of his innocence for decades.... But now, one court has thrown out all the decisions of the PA Supreme Court that denied Mumia's appeals against his unjust conviction during the years of 1998 to 2012!
This ruling, by Judge Leon Tucker, was made because one judge on the PA Supreme Court during those years, Ronald Castille, was lacking the "appearance of impartiality." In plain English, he was clearly biased against Mumia. Before sitting on the PA Supreme Court, Castille had been District Attorney (or assistant DA) during the time of Mumia's frame-up and conviction, and had used his office to express a special interest in pursuing the death penalty for "cop-killers." Mumia was in the cross-hairs. Soon he was wrongly convicted and sent to death row for killing a police officer.....
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is an award-winning and intrepid journalist, a former Black Panther, MOVE supporter, and a critic of police brutality and murder. Mumia was framed by police, prosecutors, and leading elements of both Democratic and Republican parties, for the shooting of a police officer.. The US Justice Department targeted him as well... A racist judge helped convict him, and corrupt courts have kept him locked up despite much evidence that should have freed him. He continues his commentary and journalism from behind bars. As of 2019, he has been imprisoned for 37 years for a crime he did not commit.
Time is up! FREE MUMIA NOW!
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DA's Hidden Files Show Frame-Up of Mumia
In the midst of Mumia's fight for his right to challenge the state Supreme Court's negative rulings, a new twist was revealed: six boxes of files on Mumia's case--with many more still hidden--were surreptitiously concealed for decades in a back room at the District Attorney's office in Philadelphia. The very fact that these files on Mumia's case were hidden away for decades is damning in the extreme, and their revelations confirm what we have known for decades: Mumia was framed for a crime he did not commit!
So far, the newly revealed evidence confirms that, at the time of Mumia's 1982 trial, chief prosecutor Joe McGill illegally removed black jurors from the jury, violating the Batson decision. Also revealed: The prosecution bribed witnesses into testifying that they saw Mumia shoot the slain police officer when they hadn't seen any such thing.... Taxi driver Robert Chobert, who was on probation for fire-bombing a school yard at the time, had sent a letter demanding his money for lying on the stand....... Very important, but the newly revealed evidence is just the tip of the iceberg!
All Evidence of Mumia's Innocence Must Be Brought Forward Now!
Mumia Abu-Jamal's trial for the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner was rigged against him from beginning to end........ All of the evidence of Mumia's innocence--which was earlier suppressed or rejected--must now be heard:
• Mumia was framed - The judge at Mumia's trial, Albert Sabo, was overheard to say, "I'm gonna help 'em fry the n____r." And he proceeded to do just that.... Mumia was thrown out of his own trial for defending himself! Prosecution "witnesses" were coerced or bribed at trial to lie against Mumia.. In addition to Chobert, this included key witness Cynthia White, a prostitute who testified that she saw Mumia shoot Faulkner... White's statements had to be rewritten under intense pressure from the cops, because she was around the corner and out of sight of the shooting at the time! Police bribed her with promises of being allowed to work her corner, and not sent to state prison for her many prostitution charges.
• Mumia only arrived on the scene after Officer Faulkner was shot - William Singletary, a tow-truck business owner who had no reason to lie against the police, said he had been on the scene the whole time, that Mumia was not the shooter, and that Mumia had arrived only after the shooting of Faulkner. Singletary's statements were torn up, his business was wrecked, and he was threatened by police to be out of town for the trial (which, unfortunately, he was)...
• There is no evidence that Mumia fired a gun - Mumia was shot on the scene by an arriving police officer and arrested. But the cops did not test his hands for gun-powder residue--a standard procedure in shootings! They also did not test Faulkner's hands. The prosecution nevertheless claimed Mumia was the shooter, and that he was shot by Faulkner as the officer fell to the ground. Ballistics evidence was corrupted to falsely show that Mumia's gun was the murder weapon, when his gun was reportedly still in his taxi cab, which was in police custody days after the shooting!
• The real shooter fled the scene and was never charged - Veronica Jones was a witness who said that after hearing the shots from a block away, she had seen two people fleeing the scene of the shooting.... This could not have included Mumia, who had been shot and almost killed at the scene. Jones was threatened by the police with arrest and loss of custody of her children. She then lied on the stand at trial to say she had seen no one running away.
• Abu-Jamal never made a confession - Mumia has always maintained his innocence. But police twice concocted confessions that Mumia never made. Inspector Alfonso Giordano, the senior officer at the crime scene, made up a confession for Mumia. But Giordano was not allowed to testify at trial, because he was top on the FBI's list of corrupt cops in the Philadelphia police force... At the DA's request, another cop handily provided a second "confession," allegedly heard by a security guard in the hospital......... But at neither time was Mumia--almost fatally shot--able to speak.. And an earlier police report by cops in the hospital said that, referring to Mumia: "the negro male made no comment"!
• The crime scene was tampered with by police - Police officers at the scene rearranged some evidence, and handled what was alleged to be Mumia's gun with their bare hands... A journalist's photos revealed this misconduct. The cops then left the scene unattended for hours.. All of this indicates a frame-up in progress....
• The real shooter confessed, and revealed the reason for the crime - Arnold Beverly came forward in the 1990s. He said in a sworn statement, under penalty of perjury, that he, not Mumia, had been the actual shooter. He said that he, along with "another guy," had been hired to do the hit, because Faulkner was "a problem for the mob and corrupt policemen because he interfered with the graft and payoffs made to allow illegal activity including prostitution, gambling, drugs without prosecution in the center city area"! (affidavit of Arnold Beverly).
• The corruption of Philadelphia police is documented and well known - This includes that of Giordano, who was the first cop to manufacture a "confession" by Mumia... Meanwhile, Faulkner's cooperation with the federal anti-corruption investigations of Philadelphia police is strongly suggested by his lengthy and heavily redacted FBI file......
• Do cops kill other cops? There are other cases in Philadelphia that look that way. Frank Serpico, an NYC cop who investigated and reported on police corruption, was abandoned by fellow cops after being shot in a drug bust. Mumia was clearly made a scape-goat for the crimes of corrupt Philadelphia cops who were protecting their ill-gotten gains.
• Politicians and US DOJ helped the frame-up - Ed Rendell, former DA, PA governor, and head of the Democratic National Committee--and now a senior advisor to crime-bill author Joe Biden--is complicit in the frame-up of Mumia. The US Justice Department targeted Mumia for his anti-racist activities when he was a teenager, and later secretly warned then-prosecutor Rendell not to use Giordano as a witness against Mumia because he was an FBI target for corruption..
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All this should lead to an immediate freeing of Mumia! But we are still a ways away from that, and we have no confidence in the capitalist courts to finish the job. We must act! This victory in local court allowing new appeals must now lead to a full-court press on all the rejected and suppressed evidence of Mumia's innocence!
Mass Movement Needed To Free Mumia!
Mumia's persecution by local, state and federal authorities of both political parties has been on-going, and has generated a world-wide movement in his defense... This movement has seen that Mumia, as a radio journalist who exposed the brutal attacks on the black community by the police in Philadelphia, has spoken out as a defender of working people of all colors and all nationalities in his ongoing commentaries (now on KPFA/Pacifica radio), despite being on death row, and now while serving life without the possibility of parole (LWOP)...
In 1999, Oakland Teachers for Mumia held unauthorized teach-ins in Oakland schools on Mumia and the death penalty, despite the rabid hysteria in the bourgeois media. Teachers in Rio de Janeiro held similar actions. Letters of support came in from maritime workers and trade unions around the world.. Later in 1999, longshore workers shut down all the ports on the West Coast to free Mumia, and led a mass march of 25,000 Mumia supporters in San Francisco................
A year later, a federal court lifted Mumia's death sentence, based on improper instructions to the jury by trial judge Albert Sabo.. The federal court ordered the local court to hold a new sentencing hearing... Fearing their frame-up of Mumia could be revealed in any new hearing, even if only on sentencing, state officials passed. Much to the chagrin of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP)--which still seeks Mumia's death--this left Mumia with LWOP, death by life in prison..
Mumia supporters waged a struggle to get him the cure for the deadly Hepatitis-C virus, which he had likely contracted through a blood transfusion in hospital after he was shot by a cop at the 1981 crime scene. The Labor Action Committee conducted demonstrations against Gilead Sciences, the Foster City CA corporation that owns the cure, and charged $1,000 per pill! The Metalworkers Union of South Africa wrote a letter excoriating Governor Wolf for allowing untreated sick freedom fighters to die in prison as the apartheid government had done. Finally, Mumia did get the cure.. Now, more than ever, struggle is needed to free Mumia!
Now is the Time: Mobilize Again for Mumia's Freedom!
Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
www.laboractionmumia...........org
Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal | Mumia Abu-Jamal is an I.....
November 2019
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Board Game
https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/race-for-solidarity
Solidarity against racism has existed from the 1600's and continues until today
An exciting board game of chance, empathy and wisdom, that entertains and educates as it builds solidarity through learning about the destructive history of American racism and those who always fought back. Appreciate the anti-racist solidarity of working people, who built and are still building, the great progressive movements of history.. There are over 200 questions, with answers and references.
Spread the word!!
By Dr.... Nayvin Gordon
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50 years in prison: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!! FREE Chip Fitzgerald Grandfather, Father, Elder, Friend former Black Panther
Romaine "Chip" Fitzgerald has been in prison since he was locked up 50 years ago...... A former member of the Black Panther Party, Chip is now 70 years old, and suffering the consequences of a serious stroke. He depends on a wheelchair for his mobility. He has appeared before the parole board 17 times, but they refuse to release him.. NOW is the time for Chip to come home! In September 1969, Chip and two other Panthers were stopped by a highway patrolman..... During the traffic stop, a shooting broke out, leaving Chip and a police officer both wounded. Chip was arrested a month later and charged with attempted murder of the police and an unrelated murder of a security guard. Though the evidence against him was weak and Chip denied any involvement, he was convicted and sentenced to death. In 1972, the California Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty.......... Chip and others on Death Row had their sentences commuted to Life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. All of them became eligible for parole after serving 7 more years...... But Chip was rejected for parole, as he has been ever since. Parole for Lifers basically stopped under Governors Deukmajian, Wilson, and Davis (1983-2003), resulting in increasing numbers of people in prison and 23 new prisons. People in prison filed lawsuits in federal courts: people were dying as a result of the overcrowding.. To rapidly reduce the number of people in prison, the court mandated new parole hearings: · for anyone 60 years or older who had served 25 years or more; · for anyone convicted before they were 23 years old; · for anyone with disabilities Chip qualified for a new parole hearing by meeting all three criteria. But the California Board of Parole Hearings has used other methods to keep Chip locked up. Although the courts ordered that prison rule infractions should not be used in parole considerations, Chip has been denied parole because he had a cellphone.......... Throughout his 50 years in prison, Chip has been denied his right to due process – a new parole hearing as ordered by Federal courts. He is now 70, and addressing the challenges of a stroke victim. His recent rules violation of cellphone possession were non-violent and posed no threat to anyone. He has never been found likely to commit any crimes if released to the community – a community of his children, grandchildren, friends and colleagues who are ready to support him and welcome him home. The California Board of Parole Hearings is holding Chip hostage..... We call on Governor Newsom to release Chip immediately. What YOU can do to support this campaign to FREE CHIP: 1) Sign and circulate the petition to FREE Chip. Download it at https://www.change.org/p/california-free-chip-fitzgerald Print out the petition and get signatures at your workplace, community meeting, or next social gathering. 2) Write an email to Governor Newsom's office (sample message at:https://docs..google.com/document/d/1iwbP_eQEg2J1T2h-tLKE-Dn2ZfpuLx9MuNv2z605DMc/edit?usp=sharing 3) Write to Chip: Romaine "Chip" Fitzgerald #B27527, CSP-LAC P.O. Box 4490 B-4-150 Lancaster, CA 93539 -- Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 863...................9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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On Abortion: From Facebook
Best explanation I've heard so far......., Copied from a friend who copied from a friend who copied..................., "Last night, I was in a debate about these new abortion laws being passed in red states. My son stepped in with this comment which was a show stopper. One of the best explanations I have read:, , 'Reasonable people can disagree about when a zygote becomes a "human life" - that's a philosophical question.... However, regardless of whether or not one believes a fetus is ethically equivalent to an adult, it doesn't obligate a mother to sacrifice her body autonomy for another, innocent or not..., , Body autonomy is a critical component of the right to privacy protected by the Constitution, as decided in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), McFall v.. Shimp (1978), and of course Roe v. Wade (1973).. Consider a scenario where you are a perfect bone marrow match for a child with severe aplastic anemia; no other person on earth is a close enough match to save the child's life, and the child will certainly die without a bone marrow transplant from you.. If you decided that you did not want to donate your marrow to save the child, for whatever reason, the state cannot demand the use of any part of your body for something to which you do not consent..... It doesn't matter if the procedure required to complete the donation is trivial, or if the rationale for refusing is flimsy and arbitrary, or if the procedure is the only hope the child has to survive, or if the child is a genius or a saint or anything else - the decision to donate must be voluntary to be constitutional.... This right is even extended to a person's body after they die; if they did not voluntarily commit to donate their organs while alive, their organs cannot be harvested after death, regardless of how useless those organs are to the deceased or how many lives they would save...., , That's the law.., , Use of a woman's uterus to save a life is no different from use of her bone marrow to save a life - it must be offered voluntarily.............. By all means, profess your belief that providing one's uterus to save the child is morally just, and refusing is morally wrong............ That is a defensible philosophical position, regardless of who agrees and who disagrees....... But legally, it must be the woman's choice to carry out the pregnancy..., , She may choose to carry the baby to term..... She may choose not to. Either decision could be made for all the right reasons, all the wrong reasons, or anything in between... But it must be her choice, and protecting the right of body autonomy means the law is on her side... Supporting that precedent is what being pro-choice means....", , Feel free to copy/paste and re-post., y Sent from my iPhone
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Celebrating the release of Janet and Janine Africa 
Take action now to support Jalil A. Muntaqim's release
Jalil A...... Muntaqim was a member of the Black Panther Party and has been a political prisoner for 48 years since he was arrested at the age of 19 in 1971. He has been denied parole 11 times since he was first eligible in 2002, and is now scheduled for his 12th parole hearing... Additionally, Jalil has filed to have his sentence commuted to time served by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Visit Jalil's support page, check out his writing and poetry, and Join Critical Resistance in supporting a vibrant intergenerational movement of freedom fighters in demanding his release. 48 years is enough. Write, email, call, and tweet at Governor Cuomo in support of Jalil's commutation and sign this petition demanding his release. http://freedomarchives.org/Support...Jalil/Campaign.html
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Funds for Kevin Cooper
https://www.gofundme.....com/funds-for-kevin-cooper?member=1994108 For 34 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.. Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here ..... In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov..... Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.. The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings ......... Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, paper, toiletries, supplementary food, and/or phone calls........ Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
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Don't extradite Assange!
To the government of the UK Julian Assange, through Wikileaks, has done the world a great service in documenting American war crimes, its spying on allies and other dirty secrets of the world's most powerful regimes, organisations and corporations. This has not endeared him to the American deep state.......... Both Obama, Clinton and Trump have declared that arresting Julian Assange should be a priority... We have recently received confirmation [1] that he has been charged in secret so as to have him extradited to the USA as soon as he can be arrested. Assange's persecution, the persecution of a publisher for publishing information [2] that was truthful and clearly in the interest of the public - and which has been republished in major newspapers around the world - is a danger to freedom of the press everywhere, especially as the USA is asserting a right to arrest and try a non-American who neither is nor was then on American soil. The sentence is already clear: if not the death penalty then life in a supermax prison and ill treatment like Chelsea Manning... The very extradition of Julian Assange to the United States would at the same time mean the final death of freedom of the press in the West..... Sign now! The courageous nation of Ecuador has offered Assange political asylum within its London embassy for several years until now. However, under pressure by the USA, the new government has made it clear that they want to drive Assange out of the embassy and into the arms of the waiting police as soon as possible... They have already curtailed his internet and his visitors and turned the heating off, leaving him freezing in a desolate state for the past few months and leading to the rapid decline of his health, breaching UK obligations under the European Convention of Human Rights. Therefore, our demand both to the government of Ecuador and the government of the UK is: don't extradite Assange to the US! Guarantee his human rights, make his stay at the embassy as bearable as possible and enable him to leave the embassy towards a secure country as soon as there are guarantees not to arrest and extradite him........... Furthermore, we, as EU voters, encourage European nations to take proactive steps to protect a journalist in danger... The world is still watching. Sign now! [1] https://www..nytimes.com/2018/11/16/us/politics/julian-assange-indictment-wikileaks.....html [2] https://theintercept.com/2018/11/16/as-the-obama-doj-concluded-prosecution-of-julian-assange-for-publishing-documents-poses-grave-threats-to-press-freedom/ Sign this petition: https://internal.diem25.....org/en/petitions/1
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Words of Wisdom 
Louis Robinson Jr., 77 Recording secretary for Local 1714 of the United Auto Workers from 1999 to 2018, with the minutes from a meeting of his union's retirees' chapter.
"One mistake the international unions in the United States made was when Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. When he did that, the unions could have brought this country to a standstill...... All they had to do was shut down the truck drivers for a month, because then people would not have been able to get the goods they needed. So that was one of the mistakes they made. They didn't come together as organized labor and say: "No.... We aren't going for this......... Shut the country down." That's what made them weak. They let Reagan get away with what he did. A little while after that, I read an article that said labor is losing its clout, and I noticed over the years that it did.. It happened... It doesn't feel good..." [On the occasion of the shut-down of the Lordstown, Ohio GM plant March 6, 2019.........] https://www.......nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/01/magazine/lordstown-general-motors-plant...html
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Articles:
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1) I Was Fired Because of the Coronavirus
Domestic workers need your help. And you need ours.
By Melissa L. St. Hilaire, April 13, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/opinion/coronavirus-domestic-workers.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Melissa L. St. Hilaire is a home care aide.Angel Valentin for The New York Times
MIAMI — For the past year, I have cared for a 95-year-old woman. I went to her family’s home, watched TV with her, talked to her and gave her medication. We shared stories. I made her food: bread with butter or peanut butter. Noodle soup was her favorite. We made each other laugh.
On March 16, when I arrived at work, the woman’s daughter opened the door and pulled me aside to talk.
“I don’t want anybody to bring the virus into my house,” she said. “Friday will be your last day of work.”
She told me that she needed to have control over her home, her children and her mother.
“I don’t want any strangers coming in,” she said. That included me.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“When everything is under control, I’ll call you,” she said. I haven’t heard from her since.
I considered myself to be part of her family. It hurt. My boss viewed me as an outsider — as a risk to her own health.
I live with my son, Emanuel, who is 6. Right now, we are just trying to survive. In my job, I made $80 per day. My hours were flexible. Sometimes I worked three days a week, sometimes four or five. When the family called me, I would go.
I never made enough to have savings. And I don’t know how I will find another job now. Very few businesses in Miami are hiring. Restaurants are open only for takeout and have laid off many of their workers. A friend told me that working for Amazon might be a possibility. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that working in a big warehouse with lots of other people could be a bad idea during a pandemic. I don’t have any health insurance and I can’t afford to get sick. Who would care for my son, especially now that his school has shut down? It just seemed too risky.
Rent for my apartment is $870 a month. It was due on April 1, but I wasn’t able to pay. I’ve never missed a payment before, and fortunately, my landlord has been understanding. She said that she would give me free time and I can pay her back when I find a job.
My family’s health is more important than anything right now. I am trying to stay positive, but I don’t know how much longer I will be able to live like this.
Last week I ran out of food. A friend who distributes food for domestic workers at the Miami Workers Center told me to come by. Now my son and I are eating canned soup, some small bags of rice, chicken and cans of tuna. They gave me milk, water and spaghetti. This food will last us for a week. It is just enough to get by.
The National Domestic Workers Alliance is raising money to support domestic workers who have lost their jobs because of the coronavirus. Many of us do not qualify for the federal stimulus that is sending out checks to workers because we are not United States citizens. The alliance’s goal is to raise $4 million for 10,000 care workers, which will amount to $400 per person. Hopefully this money will arrive within a week. While this is a help, it won’t last long. First I’ll buy food, then use whatever is left over to pay part of my rent to my landlord.
The virus highlights how much domestic workers need protections, just like everyone else. Nannies, house cleaners and other domestic workers are not entitled to severance pay, paid sick leave, health and unemployment insurance or other benefits that would help us survive this pandemic.
Every day I wake up and worry about what will happen the next day, the next week. I don’t know how I will make it through. For now, I am living day to day.
But I keep faith. Everything happens for a reason. Maybe the coronavirus will teach us that we need to change the system that views domestic workers like me as disposable. We still have time to change.
We need everyone to treat domestic workers like human beings. We deserve respect and a seat at the table. Our work has value. Without us, you cannot do your jobs. Just as we need you to survive, you need us.
Melissa L. St. Hilaire is a home care aide. Devi Lockwood (@devi_lockwood) is a fellow in the Times Opinion section.
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2) The Brother Killer
Many factors make blacks, especially black men, particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus.
By Charles M.Blow, April 12, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/opinion/coronavirus-black-men.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press
A few weeks ago, Hannah Sparks of The New York Post reported on “a morbid — and chillingly astute — new slang term for the coronavirus pandemic: boomer remover,” because the virus has proved particularly deadly for the elderly.
But, because it is also disproportionately deadly for men and for African-Americans, I worry about how it will affect black men in particular, and have come to use another chilling term to characterize it: a “brother killer.”
And I fear that the worst may be yet to come, at least until treatments are developed and a vaccine discovered. There are silent populations of black men, largely removed from public view and public consciousness, who will remain vulnerable long after we “open the country back up,” whatever that looks like, and return to some semblance of normalcy.
For these men, the devastating effects of this virus may be as much about pre-existing social conditions as pre-existing medical ones.
These are the people living on the edge of society, existing in the shadows, our own iteration of untouchables, exempt from America’s sympathies — the homeless, the incarcerated, those living with H.I.V./AIDS.
According to the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, “people living on the streets, in shelters or in their cars are more vulnerable to an outbreak of highly communicable diseases like Covid-19.” The group attributes that vulnerability in part to “close quarters, compromised immune systems and an aging population” as well as the fact that “without adequate, permanent and stable housing, people lack a restroom for frequent hand washing, laundry facilities, and personal hygiene.”
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, a total of 552,830 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in 2018. And while black people were only 13 percent of the population, they made up 40 percent of the homeless population.
Furthermore, men are 70 percent of the homeless among individual adults.
Who will even test this population for the virus? People with homes and jobs are finding it hard to get tests, and some are being outright refused.
As the Pew Research Center pointed out last year, at the end of 2017 there were nearly a half a million people in federal and state prisons, and a plurality of those prisoners were black.
Nine out of 10 inmates are male.
There were nearly three-quarters of a million Americans held in local jails in 2018, and about a third of them were black, according to the Bureau of Prison Statistics. In fact, the rate at which black people were jailed was nearly three times the rate at which white people and Hispanics were jailed.
The Cook County Jail in Chicago has emerged as a hot spot for the coronavirus and Covid-19, with more than 300 inmates and more than 200 employees testing positive for the virus. Seventy-three percent of the people in that jail are black and 93 percent are men.
And, to add insult to injury, national data show that 70 percent of the people in local jails are not yet convicted of any crime. Many simply can’t afford to post bail, so they wait in jail on a trial for the charge or until they enter a plea to it.
People living with compromised immune systems are also at risk. H.I.V./AIDS can lead to such a compromised system, particularly among those not in treatments and whose virus hasn’t been suppressed. Black men have the highest rate of new diagnoses of H.I.V.
The H.I.V. prevalence rate for black people is eight times the rate for white people and nearly three times the rate for Hispanics.
There are over a million Americans living with H.I.V. Nearly half a million of those are black. Only 61 percent of those black people received treatment for the virus in 2016 and only about half were able to suppress the virus.
And H.I.V. is now heavily linked to poverty. In 2013, there were 282,100 Medicaid beneficiaries with H.I.V., according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and they were “more likely to be male (56 percent vs. 42 percent), or black (50 percent vs. 22 percent)” than the Medicaid population overall.
Add to this the fact that poverty rates are highest among black people and blacks have the highest prevalence of disabilities, and you have a very real problem brewing.
History has shown that we are callously comfortable averting our gaze away from men like these. We construct racialized rationales that allow us not to care, to say that they courted their fate, that pathology is at play, that one reaps what one sows.
But, that can’t stand. These are human beings, with stories and souls, who love and are loved, who deserve, like all others, a fair chance to survive and prosper.
Were it not for your accident of birth, these brothers could be your brothers.
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3) The Coronavirus Stimulus Is Playing Hard to Get
Why do we make it so difficult for people to receive unemployment and other forms of relief?
By Pamela Herd and Donald P. Moynihan, April 13, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/opinion/coronavirus-stimulus-relief.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Kaula Carr’s job in Arizona disappeared in March when the restaurant where she worked laid off staff members in response to the coronavirus crisis.
She and her young daughter are eligible for public assistance, ranging from food stamps to Medicaid, to help soften the blow. But after Ms. Carr spent hours filling out forms and uploading dozens of documents, the online system crashed. “I want to cry,” she texted her aunt. “They make it impossible to actually get assistance.”
Ms. Carr is one of millions of Americans discovering the gap between the promise of public programs and the reality of their design, which makes it hard to get help. The short-term result will be unmet needs, a stymied economic recovery and profound frustration. The long-term result should be a reconfiguration of how we administer the safety net in the United States.
We have previously documented administrative burdens in government programs, and it is all too apparent to us that a crisis response built on the existing system will fall short. The $2.2 trillion CARES Act relies on state unemployment systems that were immediately overloaded, leaving many people spending hours on hold or online only to face disconnected calls or crashing websites.
At the best of times, unemployment insurance processes are difficult to navigate. Even before the coronavirus hit, one out of four people who were eligible did not receive benefits. Demanding eligibility rules exclude many more.
Florida’s unemployment benefit system exemplifies the problem. An adviser to Gov. Ron DeSantis described the system, designed by his predecessor, Senator Rick Scott, as intended to make “it harder for people to get benefits” and to keep unemployment numbers low enough “to give the governor something to brag about.”
One unemployed Floridian noted, “It’s very obvious that this is a weaponized system to keep you from using your benefits.” Florida is no outlier: Some applicants in New York were forced to faxdocuments as part of the process there.
For too long, administrative processes have been designed to prevent claimants from incorrectly receiving benefits, rather than ensuring that those in need get help. The red tape and delays we place on people, onerous before the coronavirus outbreak, have become catastrophic in the midst of a pandemic. Just witness the 10,000 people waiting for hours at a San Antonio food bank.
What’s the solution? We need to flip the script. States should authorize unemployment benefits first and seek complete eligibility verification later. The government has extraordinary powers to claw back money improperly claimed.
States could also reduce administrative burdens by relaxing weekly documentation of employment status. This would help relieve overloaded administrative systems, freeing up time to process new claims.
Some may get money they shouldn’t, but a national crisis compels us to prioritize helping millions of Americans put food on their tables.
Small-business owners face burdens similar to the unemployed, including broken websites, confusing instructions and the sense that the government doesn’t really want to help. The recently created Paycheck Protection Program promises $349 billion in relief, but requires business owners to provide documentation of payroll, mortgage interest and rent payments, as well as utility costs for the eight-week period following the loan.
Additional complexity comes from private banks administering the loans. Concerned about being responsible for verifying eligibility, many banks are helping just existing small business customers, not also new clients.
Only businesses with the connections and capacity to manage the paperwork stand to receive the limited funds.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Many European governments simply guaranteed payroll for employers so that businesses would stay afloat and workers would keep their jobs. The United States could still do the same thing. For example, Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington State, has proposed that the Treasury Department use previous tax return data to estimate three months of employer wage costs, and provide that money in the form of a grant to businesses that would continue to pay their workers.
Employers would receive aid quickly, workers would keep getting their paychecks and state unemployment insurance systems would be less overwhelmed.
Even the direct relief dollars allocated by Congress will exclude many who should be getting the money. Those $1,200 checks? Almost everyone who qualifies and files a tax return or gets a Social Security benefit will receive a direct deposit into his or her bank account. But many workers don’t file a tax return because their earnings are too low, meaning they won’t receive a direct deposit. Even if they figure out that they are eligible, and how to file for the benefit, relief may take as long as five months.
Lisa Cook, an economist at Michigan State, offers a solution: use mobile payments to reach these people.
If Congress wants to quickly deliver aid to the people who need it the most, expanding food stamps, officially now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, makes sense. Beneficiaries need not jump through any new hoops; the money simply appears on their beneficiary card.
SNAP is a strikingly effective stimulus in a slowing economy. It helps individuals in need who spend the money quickly. Every additional dollar spent on SNAP generated $1.74 in economic activity during the early stages of the Great Recession.
Congress can also protect SNAP by blocking a rule Trump proposed last year that will make it harder to receive benefits. Currently, 43 states use administrative data from other welfare programs to make enrollment in SNAP quick and easy. The Trump policy would limit how states use this “categorical eligibility” technique. In addition to immediately removing 3.1 million people from SNAP who have more than $2,250 in assets, the rule will cause additional benefit losses when 17.2 million households encounter a far more burdensome application process.
Making coronavirus relief difficult is a political choice, one based on the assumption that administrative complexity is a virtue and ease of access a vice. Programs like Social Security reflect an alternative approach, delivering benefits with minimal burdens and minimal fraud.
The costs of a dysfunctional administrative system are easy to ignore when they are imposed on other people. If there is a silver lining to this crisis, a public newly aware of administrative burdens will demand something better. Will our political leaders reconstruct the administrative state to deliver the help that we have been promised?
Pamela Herd (@pamela_herd) and Donald P. Moynihan (@donmoyn) are professors at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University and the authors of “Administrative Burden: Policymaking by Other Means.”
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4) Think This Pandemic Is Bad? We Have Another Crisis Coming
Addressing climate change is a big-enough idea to revive the economy.
"In three of the states with the highest number of Covid-19 cases — Illinois, Michigan and Louisiana — African-Americans made up 40 to 70 percent of deaths from the disease, far outpacing the percentage of black people in each state. Many of the black communities ravaged by Covid-19 are “front-line communities” — where residents live adjacent to heavily polluting industries. If you’re black or Latinx — and especially if you’re poor — it is difficult not to live in a front-line community. Oil, gas and petrochemical industries have concentrated so heavily in low-income, majority-black-and-brown areas that black people are 75 percent more likely to live near industrial facilities than the average American."
By Rhiana Gunn-Wright, April 15, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/opinion/climate-change-covid-economy.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Emily Kask for The New York Times
On the last Friday in March, I lost hope.
I have always believed in America: not in our inherent goodness — I am too black for that — but in our sheer animal will to survive. Crisis after crisis, our country has evolved to meet the moment, even if that meant changing the way we thought the world worked or striving to upend the imbalance of power. But on that Friday, I was on my couch working when the messages started to pour in. Friends sent me video after video of Republican senators debating stimulus measures to address the coronavirus crisis, standing in the Senate chamber, saying that the Green New Deal — a proposal that I helped create — was the reason millions of Americans would not receive the help that they need.
I was furious. Of the nearly $2 trillion in aid proposed in that first version of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, known as the CARES Act, $500 billion went toward a business-relief fund with little to no oversight. Fifty-eight billion of this was earmarked for airlines, and a lax definition of eligible businesses created a loophole for oil and gas. The bill included no climate protections, so the claim that it was being held up over Green New Deal provisions was absurd. And the changes proposed by Democrats — emissions reductions for airlines, limiting bailouts for fossil fuel industries, protections for airline workers — were modest.
The senators I saw did not mention those things. Nor did they mention that the airlines had requested $50 billion after spending $45 billion on stock buybacks over the past five years. They did not mention that emissions reductions requested would not be required until 2025 or that when they were, the reductions would be less than 3 percent per year. And no one stood up and asked why corporations should be exempt from loan terms when the rest of us are not. Why is it “opportunism” when we try to design policy that would address more than one problem at a time, but it’s “efficiency” when businesses do the same? (The final version of the CARES Act does not provide targeted funding for fossil fuels and reduced the aid for passenger airlines to $25 billion. None of the climate policies mentioned were included in the final version of the bill.)
Covid-19 and the economic collapse it has caused have laid bare how connected our problems are. Congress and the Federal Reserve are not going to lay out trillions of dollars, over and over, in perpetuity. Refusing to include measures related to climate and environmental justice in economic stimulus packages related to the coronavirus is not neutral when there is no guarantee of other opportunities to do so later. We need to design the stimulus not only to help the U.S. economy recover but to also become more resilient to the climate crisis, the next multitrillion-dollar crisis headed our way.
Pandemics like the coronavirus may occur more often when climate change is unabated. Warming and changing weather patterns shift the vectors and spread of disease. Heavily polluting industries also contribute to disease transmission. Studies have linked factory farming — one of the largest sources of methane emissions — to faster-mutating, more virulent pathogens. The same corporations that exacerbated the climate crisis are literally helping to create deadlier diseases, more quickly, in a world that keeps changing how they spread.
Similarly, the same populations that are bearing the brunt of the health and economic effects of the coronavirus are the same populations that bear the brunt of fossil fuel pollution — which, in turn, makes them more vulnerable to serious complications.
In three of the states with the highest number of Covid-19 cases — Illinois, Michigan and Louisiana — African-Americans made up 40 to 70 percent of deaths from the disease, far outpacing the percentage of black people in each state. Many of the black communities ravaged by Covid-19 are “front-line communities” — where residents live adjacent to heavily polluting industries. If you’re black or Latinx — and especially if you’re poor — it is difficult not to live in a front-line community. Oil, gas and petrochemical industries have concentrated so heavily in low-income, majority-black-and-brown areas that black people are 75 percent more likely to live near industrial facilities than the average American.
Metro Detroit, the epicenter of Michigan’s Covid-19 outbreak, is home to steel mills, waste-processing plants and the only oil refinery in the state — all in or near low-income, black and Latinx neighborhoods. The people most likely to die from toxic fumes are the same people most likely to die from Covid-19. It’s like we are watching a preview of the worst possible impacts of the climate crisis roll right before our eyes.
Leaders on both sides of the aisle have argued that folding policies to address climate and environmental injustice into coronavirus-related legislative packages would distract from efforts to provide immediate relief. But addressing climate change and environmental injustice will not diffuse efforts to address the virus and its economic fallout if we apply intersectional policies such as the Green New Deal. They are designed to address connected issues in a way that protects the most vulnerable while building a more just and sustainable economy.
Some states have already begun to connect the coronavirus to climate action. New York, for example, passed the Accelerated Renewable Energy Growth and Community Benefit Act on April 3. The legislation comes on the heels of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act — sometimes referred to as New York’s Green New Deal. And if New York’s response is any indication, none of this appears to have detracted from efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Addressing climate change doesn’t have to slow down the economic recovery, either. In fact, it can push it forward. No one knows the depth of the recession, but it is hard to see how we will put the 16 million people who have filed for unemployment back to work without significant public investment.
If history is any indication, rebounding from an economic disruption this large requires an equally large spike in demand and production. Outside of war, climate change is the only issue large enough to provide such a spike. Now is the time to create policies that provide immediate relief to communities, such as federal assistance to transition homes and businesses to renewable energy; give “green” fiscal aid to states; and fuel economic recovery with the creation of federally funded green jobs. But none of this can happen so long as our leaders keep convincing themselves that the greatest country in the world cannot walk and chew gum at the same time.
A climate-focused economic recovery — much less a coronavirus response that acknowledges the climate crisis — could require a new Congress and a new president, a tall order in an America this divided. But maybe it is time to stop acting as though politics is a force of nature when we are facing actual and deadly forces of nature. It’s past time to elect leaders who are fit to handle the crises we face, instead of hoping for problems small enough to fit the leaders we have.
The Americans I know would like to survive, even if it means our country has to evolve — which many of us have been ready for long before the pandemic.
Rhiana Gunn-Wright (@rgunns) is the director of climate policy at the Roosevelt Institute.
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5) I Harvest Your Food. Why Isn’t My Health ‘Essential’?
We sacrifice so much for a country that doesn’t value our lives.
By Alma Patty Tzalain, April 15, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/opinion/covid-farmworkers-paid-leave.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Libby March for The New York Times
I am one of the thousands of farmworkers across the country making sure there is still food to put on your tables. Since I came to New York from Guatemala 11 years ago, I have cleaned cabbage in a packing shed, milked cows on dairy farms, trimmed apple trees in orchards and wrapped and pruned tomatoes in a greenhouse.
If I get sick with Covid-19, I’m afraid of what it will mean for my children, my compañeros and my community. But unlike many other workers in the United States, my workplace has not shut down. Farmworkers are considered essential, and yet we are left out of government support.
A few weeks ago I started to have a headache and fever. The symptoms got worse, with a sore throat and coughing. I called a health clinic, concerned that I had the coronavirus. The doctor told me that I should stay home for a week, and since there is no cure, there was no reason to come in for a checkup. But I was able to get tested for the virus.
I didn’t know what to do. I was so worried: One week at home without a paycheck? I support three daughters in Guatemala and a young son here, and I’m on my own. If I told management, what would happen? How would I feed my children or pay my rent?
I called my supervisor to relay what the doctor told me. She agreed that I should go home. But she didn’t say anything about sick pay or assure me I would still have a job when I felt better. For many farmworkers like me, being sick has always meant choosing between going to work sick and staying home with no pay, which could mean getting fired.
My employer’s policy is to withhold our pay if we stay home sick. If employees take too many days off, we lose points, which leads to deductions from a small yearly bonus. So we have continued to work even if we are sick or injured.
But since I am a leader of Alianza Agrícola, a grass-roots organization that is an advocate for immigrant farmworkers in Western New York, I knew my rights. New York had passed legislation before I got sick that requires employers with more than 10 employees to provide paid sick leave to workers who must stay home because of coronavirus concerns.
I might not have known about my rights before joining the organization. I’ve gone through so many hard times in this country and the group has given me the strength to fight to improve the lives of people in my community.
So I received the paid leave I was entitled to, the first time in 11 years as a farmworker I was paid while ill. But after my test result came back negative, my employer stopped paying me, even though I was still feeling sick.
Agriculture is a multibillion-dollar industry in New York, and the state is the country’s top producer of yogurt, cottage cheese and sour cream and the second-biggest apple producer. Immigrant workers are the backbone of our state’s farming industry. Many are undocumented or work with temporary guest worker visas.
We have always lived and worked isolated from the rest of society, invisible to most. This leaves our community even more vulnerable now.
And while I don’t live in employer-provided housing, which can be tight quarters, many farmworkers do, making it nearly impossible to fully quarantine for sickness. Employers are sharing very little information about how to protect ourselves. It’s unclear what the plan is to keep us safe, but I’d bet our bosses are mostly focused on their bottom line, not our health. I have heard of farms that practically prevent workers from leaving because they are concerned that if we get sick, the work won’t get done.
Many farmworkers don’t have health insurance and aren’t sure how to afford medical care or support families if we can’t work. If we get sick, what will happen to us? Will we be fired because we’re no longer useful to the farm and are now a threat to the business?
Recently, a fellow Guatemalan dairy worker in the region died from the coronavirus — our worst fear. And despite the pandemic, detention and deportation of undocumented workers is still a threat.
Meanwhile, the federal government is leaving my community behind. The federal recovery bill excludes people without a Social Security number from receiving a $1,200 check, even if they pay taxes. And undocumented workers can’t apply for unemployment insurance.
It’s hard to be in a country that isn’t ours, and in this crisis, it is even harder. We put food on everyone’s table, but we struggle to feed ourselves and our families.
Amid of all this, we hear that the Trump administration wants to lower farmworkers’ pay to help our employers. I wonder if these people in charge have ever worked a 12-hour shift in the burning heat inside a greenhouse. Or been exposed to deadly chemicals or worked with dangerous machines. I wonder if they have ever had a job that consists of repetitive manual labor, but had no access to health care. And all of this for wages that barely cover our bills.
All workers, regardless of immigration status, deserve emergency income and health care. The next recovery package must include us. New York should set up emergency funds for all workers excluded from federal benefits and provide unemployment benefits to undocumented people and guest workers.
For those of us still on the job, we need enforceable health and safety protections and hazard pay — not lower wages — to compensate us for the risks we are taking to protect our country’s food supply. Workers across the food chain are standing up for these protections.
But I am still worried. I’m back at work and more co-workers are going home sick. I still don’t know what precautions my employer is taking to prevent the virus’s spread among the workers. We need protections now and for the long-term. The world we create during and after this crisis has to be one where we are no longer invisible, and where we will be safe and healthy and can hug our children tight.
Alma Patty Tzalain is a farmworker and a leader of the grass-roots organization Alianza Agrícola.
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6) Stop Talking About Inequality and Do Something About It
This virus is poised to rip through black neighborhoods like mine.
By Jeremiah Bey Ellison, April 15, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/opinion/coronavirus-african-americans-inequality.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Jeremiah Ellison, a member of the Minneapolis City Council, fears for his neighborhood.
MINNEAPOLIS — The 12-hour drive to Detroit is always a chore, but on the last day of March, the pandemic gave a sinister hue to even the most banal elements of a Midwest road trip. Every time we used a bathroom, grabbed a gas pump or bought a snack was an opportunity to get infected. Making things worse, Detroit was seeing an explosion of coronavirus cases.
My grandmother had just died unexpectedly at the age of 82 — raised on a farm in Louisiana, she had always been healthy; to me, she seemed indestructible. Nana raised us — not just my dad and uncles, but nearly the whole family. Skipping her funeral didn’t seem like an option.
Nana was so beloved. She could have easily packed Gesu Catholic Church under normal circumstances. Instead, we sat in the James H. Cole Funeral Home, a beautiful little spot near the Motown Museum, but not where I would have imagined having her funeral. All in attendance sat six feet apart and in every other row; nearly everyone wore a face mask. Funerals have, all of a sudden, become tricky — dangerous even.
As unusual as it all seemed, the history of Detroit could have helped you predict its future when it came to this crisis.
I hope it won’t surprise anyone to hear that Detroit has a history of racial violence — interpersonal, economic and institutional. The short version goes something like this: Black people began to make incremental economic and political gains; white Michiganders became incensed, fled as fast as possible into the surrounding area and bled the city for every drop of wealth on their way out. There’s more, but that’s really a story for native Detroiters to tell.
Given that history, it’s no wonder Detroit — and places like it — are underwater in this crisis. Milwaukee, Chicago and New Orleans have all seen black people absorbing the full force of the outbreak. This virus is poised to rip through every black neighborhood in America.
Quietly, on the north side of Minneapolis, sits one of those neighborhoods.
I represent Ward 5 on the Minneapolis City Council, but where I’m from, people just call it the Northside. The short version, again, goes like this: Our corner of the city has always been plagued by flooding and weak soils, so naturally, it’s where the city parked its “undesirable” populations. In the early part of the 20th century, that population was Jewish, then black, then Southeast Asian.
Today the Northside is about half black, a quarter Hmong and a quarter everything else. It’s a neighborhood challenged by low wealth and some violence, but we’re not defined by that.
The Northside is where Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis created the Minneapolis Sound that Prince would later make famous. The Northside was the home of the underappreciated but behemoth civil rights figure and union organizer Nellie Stone Johnson. It’s the place my parents were told was “the hood” when they arrived, but coming from Detroit, it was the only place in the city where they felt comfortable raising us.
In 2015, an Atlantic article called “The Miracle of Minneapolis” said that “no other place” in America “mixes affordability, opportunity and wealth so well.” But that wealth has always eluded Northsiders. And by eluded, I, of course, mean, it has been denied.
Minneapolis is not unique in its use of redlining and restrictive covenants that kept blacks from owning property. Minneapolis is not unique in using the construction of highways to annihilate black neighborhoods. Minneapolis is not unique in placing its worst polluters in and near its black and brown neighborhoods. And unfortunately, we are also not unique in our failure to seriously seek a remedy to these harms.
Minneapolis hosts some of the worst disparities between black and white success in America. Educational outcomes, wealth and wages and homeownership gaps shouldn’t be this wide, much less in a place so prosperous for white people. It should be noted that disparities between whites and Latinos, and whites and Southeast Asians, are also incredibly pronounced here. And it should be doubly noted that Native Americans are the poorest residents in the city. Black people are not the only ones left behind in the “miracle of Minneapolis.”
During every crisis, well-meaning white people here make a ritual of acknowledging the city’s steep inequities, but we’ve been hearing the same “woe is you” sentiment for a long time. It’s as if people think the mere acknowledgment is the work. But as North Minneapolis prepares to brace ourselves for the grim future Detroit and Milwaukee have shown us, the death tolls suggest that acknowledgments don’t mean a thing. I want to take us back to this notion of remedy.
When I joined the City Council two years ago, I focused on housing stability and environmental justice. Last year we became the first city in the country to end single-family zoning, making more housing units possible. We passed inclusionary zoning, which requires a percentage of affordable housing on every project. The Council president and I rewrote our housing-inspections approach to focus more on creating livable conditions, not just issuing citations. This allowed us to keep renters in place while holding their landlords accountable for safe, dignified conditions — a proposition that had previously been an either-or deal.
I stood with my constituents to fight a major polluter in the neighborhood, Northern Metals. It had been caught lying about its emissions — spewing lead, cobalt, chromium, nickel and other dangerous particulates that can cause asthma.
The courts seemed determined to give the company a soft landing. It had been given years to shut down, but when the deadline came, the company asked for an extension and kept operating. Then it was caught lying about its emissions again. Finally, on Sept. 23, 2019, more than 30 months after it had first been caught, Northern Metals was sent packing.
Northern Metals paid nearly $3 million in fines to the state, but just a fraction of that went to the people most harmed. Given their lifelong health issues, it was pennies when fortunes are owed.
We’re now learning that underlying conditions like asthma can be a death sentence for people of any age if they come down with Covid-19. Staring down the barrel of this threat, it feels like we’re too late. The real fight isn’t won by defeating Northern Metals. The real fight is won when the air is clean — an ask that is always made to feel far-fetched.
Discrimination shouldn’t just end; the inequity it causes should be remedied.
In “The Case for Reparations,” Ta-Nehisi Coates chronicled the carefully designed circumstances that have placed black people, by and large, in a position of low wealth in America. It’s not a force of nature, it’s not even a puzzle — the how we got here is known and the path out is knowable.
In modern American politics, the concept of reparations is still more fantasy than viable policy option. Name-dropping it may get you applause from certain crowds, but the discussion typically ends there. We should have found a way to pay out reparations long ago. Now this pandemic is bringing forward the full horror of our inability to reckon with America’s history of racial terror. For many black people experiencing the disproportionate impact of this crisis, any solution will come too late; the consequences of our inaction are too final.
Leaving Detroit, I thought about the disproportionate number of black folks dying from the coronavirus because they had asthma, diabetes or hypertension. Because they had limited access to affordable, healthy food. Because they lived near factories. Because they couldn’t afford to visit a doctor or because they couldn’t afford to miss work. Because their blood pressure was perpetually too high from a lifetime of being stressed out by all of the above.
I thought about how predictable this all was. How preventable.
Remembering the funeral, the absence of hugs, the absence of a full church and the absence of Nana, I pictured all the funerals happening — or being postponed — in New Orleans, Chicago, Milwaukee and elsewhere.
Last week, I learned that Nana had tested positive for the coronavirus, and knowing that makes me angrier — as though she didn’t truly pass but was snatched from us.
In my last conversation with Nana, about a month ago, she called to tell me she’d seen a clip of me on CNN giving a speech at a Bernie Sanders rally: “Guess who just saw your black behind on TV all the way from here in Detroit?”
She teased me, about my shirt and my facial hair, and told me they didn’t actually play any of the audio from my speech, but that she was excited anyway. Before hanging up, she took on her serious tone, where her voice gets just a little deeper but you can still tell she’s smiling ear to ear: “I’m proud of you, kid. Keep doing great work.”
It’s a simple instruction. And no matter how futile the work can feel, I’m not going to let those words leave my mind.
Jeremiah Bey Ellison is a City Council member in Minneapolis.
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7) For Black Men, Fear That Masks Will Invite Racial Profiling
African-American men worry that following the C.D.C. recommendation to cover their faces in public could expose them to harassment from the police.
By Derrick Bryson Taylor, April 14, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/us/coronavirus-masks-racism-african-americans.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage
Brittainy Newman/The New York Times
When Allen Hargrove leaves his Brooklyn apartment to get groceries, he does so with an underlying feeling of worry. It’s not just the coronavirus pandemic: As a black man, he fears he could draw unwanted attention by wearing a mask in public.
“I have a sense of anxiety wearing the mask,” said Mr. Hargrove, 33, who described himself as having a “football build,” at 220 pounds. “It makes me more aware of how I’m being perceived.”
Mr. Hargrove is not alone. As the coronavirus continues to spread, infecting and killing African-Americans at disproportionately high rates, black men find themselves facing two concerns: the virus and those who see their covered faces as threatening.
In the days since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged all Americans to wear a cloth face covering when they leave their homes, black men have expressed concern that following the recommendation could expose them to racial profiling and harassment by the police.
A day after the C.D.C.’s announcement on April 3, Aaron Thomas, who lives in Ohio, said on Twitter that he did not feel safe wearing a handkerchief or anything else over his nose and mouth that “isn’t clearly a protective mask” because he is black. “I want to stay alive but I also want to stay alive,” he wrote in the message, which has been retweeted more than 17,000 times.
Mr. Hargrove, who works in a shop that rents audiovisual equipment, received an N95 respirator mask through his job before nonessential businesses were ordered to close. He has vowed to wear it, no matter how he might be perceived in public.
Wearing the mask “makes me a feel a little bit on edge that anyone can say this man did X, Y and Z just because of the way that I look or the clothes that I have on,” Mr. Hargrove said. “It makes me feel a little uncomfortable at times.”
In March, before the C.D.C. issued its recommendation, two black men in surgical masks filmed themselves as a police officer was kicking them out of a Walmart in Wood River, Ill. In the video, which has been viewed more than 250,000 times on YouTube, the officer can be seen following them.
“He just followed us from outside, told us that we cannot wear masks,” one of the men says. “This police officer just put us out for wearing masks and trying to stay safe.”
Chief Brad Wells of the Wood River police said in a news release that the officer in the video “incorrectly” told the men that a city ordinance prohibited masks.
“This statement was incorrect and should not have been made,” Chief Wells said. “In fact, I support the wearing of a nonsurgical mask or face covering when in public during the Covid-19 pandemic period.” The men have since filed a complaint, and an internal investigation is underway.
The video received widespread attention, including in Atlanta, where Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said on Twitter that she was “appalled” by the incident. She said she had signed an order directing the Atlanta police not to enforce a state law that prohibits the wearing of face masks in public. The order, which expires after 60 days, ensures that people who are complying with the C.D.C.’s recommendation are able to do so without fear of citation or arrest.
Nikema Williams, a Georgia state senator, wrote a letter to Gov. Brian Kemp on Friday asking him to temporarily suspend the state’s mask law. While she is recovering from Covid-19, her husband, Leslie Small, has been doing their shopping. Both are African-American. Ms. Williams said that Mr. Small, who is 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighs about 300 pounds, “was telling me how uncomfortable it was to wear a mask in stores because folks get intimidated and look at him like he’s up to no good.”
The N.A.A.C.P. is calling on states to indefinitely suspend their mask laws. “No person should be fearful of engaging in lifesaving measures due to racialism,” Marc Banks, the group’s national press secretary, said in a statement.
The coronavirus pandemic arrived after years of raw video footageof unarmed African-Americans being shot or beaten by police officers gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. A 2019 study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesfound that African-Americans, and black men in particular, were much more likely than their white peers to be killed by the police.
It is unclear how many profiling incidents there have been since the C.D.C. issued its recommendation earlier this month. Melanye Price, a political-science professor at Prairie View A&M University, a historically black university in Texas, said the pandemic and the C.D.C.’s mask recommendation, however well-intentioned, could put African-Americans at greater risk.
“I think in the end we are asking a lot from people who are asked to be safe by putting these masks or bandannas on,” Ms. Price said. “If somebody called the police on them, they could lose their life over policing before the coronavirus could ever get to them.”
Kevin Gaines, the Julian Bond professor of civil rights and social justice at the University of Virginia, said the recent episodes of racial profiling were not surprising.
“Black people are profiled by police on a regular basis,” Mr. Gaines said. “And actually, the problem, at least recently, has become even larger than that.”
Some black men modify how they dress in order to appear less threatening to others, Mr. Gaines said, adding that the behavior is a product of a segregated society. “Many whites are just uncomfortable encountering many black people, pandemic or no pandemic, masks or no masks,” and those fears may manifest in ways that lead to profiling, he said.
“You would think,” Mr. Gaines said, “that people would understand, with the context of the pandemic, why the masks are needed and why it’s important for everyone.”
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8) 'Beyond Predatory': Trump Treasury Department Gives Banks Green Light to Seize $1,200 Stimulus Checks to Pay Off Debts
"The Treasury Department is pointing out opportunities for banks and debt collectors to steal Americans' relief checks out from under them."
By Jake Johnson, April 14, 2020
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/14/beyond-predatory-trump-treasury-department-gives-banks-green-light-seize-1200?cd-origin=rss&utm_term=AO&utm_campaign=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_content=email&utm_source=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_medium=Email
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin asks the media for social distancing before delivering remarks on the coronavirus relief package after the Senate Republican Policy luncheon in Russell Building on Tuesday, March 17, 2020. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
President Donald Trump's Treasury Department has given U.S. banks a green light to seize a portion or all of the one-time $1,200 coronavirus relief payments meant to help Americans cope with financial hardship and instead use the money to pay off individuals' outstanding debts—a move consumer advocates decried as cruel and unacceptable
"The Treasury Department effectively blessed this activity on a webinar with banking officials last Friday," The American Prospect's David Dayen reported Tuesday.
In an audio recording from the webinar obtained exclusively by the Prospect, Ronda Kent, chief disbursing officer at the Treasury Department's Bureau of the Fiscal Service, told bankers that "there's nothing in the law that precludes" financial institutions from seizing a person's payment and using it to pay off the individual's debts.
"After a third of U.S. renters couldn't make rent this month, the Treasury Department is pointing out opportunities for banks and debt collectors to steal Americans' relief checks out from under them," Jeremy Funk, spokesperson for consumer advocacy group Allied Progress, said in a statement responding to Kent's comments.
"It's the middle of a pandemic," said Funk. "This money should be going toward food, rent, and medicine—it's not the time to hand out favors to debt collection industry donors or pad some big bank's bottom line," said Funk. "Secretary Mnuchin needs to ensure that these $1,200 checks go straight into Americans pockets where they belong."
Americans with direct deposit information on file with the Internal Revenue Service are expected to begin receiving the $1,200 payments in their bank accounts this week, provided that their banks do not opt to seize the money.
Those for whom the government does not have direct deposit information—a group that is disproportionately low-income—could be forced to wait up to five months to receive paper checks in the mail.
The direct payments were authorized under the CARES Act, a massive coronavirus stimulus package President Donald Trump signed into law last month.
As Dayen explained, Congress explicitly exempted the one-time stimulus payments from collection under the CARES Act "if the debt is owed to federal or state agencies, unless the debt involves a child support payment."
"But Congress did not extend this exemption to private debt collection," Dayen wrote. "The payments are defined as tax credits and not federal benefits, making them subject to 'garnishment,' in which a debt collector that wins a judgment in court can seize anything of value held by the debtor."
"Congress did give Treasury the authority under Section 2201(h) of the CARES Act to write rules exempting the payments from private debt collectors," Dayen noted, but the Treasury Department—headed by former Goldman Sachs executive Steve Mnuchin—has thus far refused to exercise that authority despite pressure from Democratic members of Congress and state attorneys general.
On Monday, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey issued guidance stating that the $1,200 payments "are exempt from seizure or garnishment by creditors under Massachusetts law."
"These payments are supposed to help individuals and families put food on the table during this crisis, not enrich debt collectors," Healey said in a statement. "With this guidance... my office is putting the debt collection industry on notice that these payments are off limits."
Healey on Monday also signed onto a letter (pdf) led by New York Attorney General Letitia James urging Mnuchin to issue "a regulation or guidance designating CARES Act payments as 'benefit payments' exempt from garnishment." The letter was signed by 25 state attorneys general.
"During this public health and economic crisis, the states do not believe that the billions of dollars appropriated by Congress to help keep hard-working Americans afloat should be subject to garnishment," the letter states.
Dayen noted that "legally speaking, banks have the right to 'offset' any deposits to pay off delinquent loans, overdraft fees, or other charges."
"Banks have more immediate access to the coronavirus checks by virtue of having them deposited into accounts at their institutions," Dayen wrote. "They're also in front of the line for repayment of debts ahead of other private debt collectors."
The possibility that banks could seize individuals' relief payments as millions of people across the U.S. face layoffs, pay cuts, and reductions in work hours sparked outrage on social media.
"This is beyond predatory," tweeted finance expert and investigative journalist Nomi Prins.
Jess Scarane, a progressive running to unseat Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), tweeted that "this 'stimulus' gets worse and worse for working people every day."
"Even the meager help we thought individuals would get can end up in the hands of banks," said Scarane, "while people continue to struggle to put food on their tables and survive."
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