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From Business Insider 2018
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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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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.MarÃa 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.
View complete list of endorsers here:
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Mumia Abu-Jamal Update
Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mobilization4Mumia
215-724-1618
mobilization4mumia@gmail.com
PRESS ALERT
Contact: Sophia Williams 917-806-0521, Pam Africa 267-760-7344 or Joe Piette 610-931-2615
PA DOC cruel hoax
that Abu-Jamal was ill with COVID19
Breaking News: At 5:04pm on Wednesday, April 15th, a prison official inside the SCI Mahanoy Superintendents’ Office told a concerned advocate for Mumia on an official DOC phone that Mumia was being transported by ambulance for evaluation of COVID 19 symptoms and had trouble breathing. After hours of supporters repeatedly calling prison officials to demand an opportunity to speak with Mumia, they allowed him a call at almost 9PM. Mumia confirmed that the official report was false. “I am fine,” he said, “What I need is freedom.”
This is of grave concern because the COVID-19 pandemic imposes a death sentence on the incarcerated, including 66 year-old Mumia, who already suffers from cirrhosis of the liver. More striking is this whole incident points to how the Pennsylvania DOC response to the COVID 19 pandemic is doomed to failure. As of April 15th there have been a total of 53 tests out of 45,000 inmates with a 17% positivity rate and already we have seen one death. There simply are not enough tests to understand the full transmission of the virus. The prison reduction mitigation efforts are not at all commensurate with the epidemic. In the last month there has only been a reduction of 474 out of 45,000 prisoners.
It is time to release thousands of prisoners, especially the elderly and immunocompromised, like respected journalist and internationally recognized political prisoner, Mumia Abu Jamal, that have homes, and caring families and are no risk to the community.
--
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
Questions and comments may be sent to info@freedomarchives.orgFreedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
To unsubscribe contact: http://freedomarchives.org/mailman/options/ppnews_freedomarchives.org
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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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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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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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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.”
MEDICAL:The 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 COMMUNITY:To qualify for release to home confinement we must show that Leonard poses no risk to the community.
COMMUNITY SUPPORT/RENTRY PLAN:To 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 19:To 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
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
___________________________________
New London, CT 06320
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Mobile: 860.518.4046
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alewitz@gmail.com
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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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Board Game
https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/race-for-solidarity
Solidarity against racism has existed from the 1600's and continues until today
An exciting board game of chance, empathy and wisdom, that entertains and educates as it builds solidarity through learning about the destructive history of American racism and those who always fought back. Appreciate the anti-racist solidarity of working people, who built and are still building, the great progressive movements of history.. There are over 200 questions, with answers and references.
Spread the word!!
By Dr.... Nayvin Gordon
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50 years in prison: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!! FREE Chip Fitzgerald Grandfather, Father, Elder, Friend former Black Panther
Romaine "Chip" Fitzgerald has been in prison since he was locked up 50 years ago...... A former member of the Black Panther Party, Chip is now 70 years old, and suffering the consequences of a serious stroke. He depends on a wheelchair for his mobility. He has appeared before the parole board 17 times, but they refuse to release him.. NOW is the time for Chip to come home! In September 1969, Chip and two other Panthers were stopped by a highway patrolman..... During the traffic stop, a shooting broke out, leaving Chip and a police officer both wounded. Chip was arrested a month later and charged with attempted murder of the police and an unrelated murder of a security guard. Though the evidence against him was weak and Chip denied any involvement, he was convicted and sentenced to death. In 1972, the California Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty.......... Chip and others on Death Row had their sentences commuted to Life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. All of them became eligible for parole after serving 7 more years...... But Chip was rejected for parole, as he has been ever since. Parole for Lifers basically stopped under Governors Deukmajian, Wilson, and Davis (1983-2003), resulting in increasing numbers of people in prison and 23 new prisons. People in prison filed lawsuits in federal courts: people were dying as a result of the overcrowding.. To rapidly reduce the number of people in prison, the court mandated new parole hearings: · for anyone 60 years or older who had served 25 years or more; · for anyone convicted before they were 23 years old; · for anyone with disabilities Chip qualified for a new parole hearing by meeting all three criteria. But the California Board of Parole Hearings has used other methods to keep Chip locked up. Although the courts ordered that prison rule infractions should not be used in parole considerations, Chip has been denied parole because he had a cellphone.......... Throughout his 50 years in prison, Chip has been denied his right to due process – a new parole hearing as ordered by Federal courts. He is now 70, and addressing the challenges of a stroke victim. His recent rules violation of cellphone possession were non-violent and posed no threat to anyone. He has never been found likely to commit any crimes if released to the community – a community of his children, grandchildren, friends and colleagues who are ready to support him and welcome him home. The California Board of Parole Hearings is holding Chip hostage..... We call on Governor Newsom to release Chip immediately. What YOU can do to support this campaign to FREE CHIP: 1) Sign and circulate the petition to FREE Chip. Download it at https://www.change.org/p/california-free-chip-fitzgerald Print out the petition and get signatures at your workplace, community meeting, or next social gathering. 2) Write an email to Governor Newsom's office (sample message at:https://docs..google.com/document/d/1iwbP_eQEg2J1T2h-tLKE-Dn2ZfpuLx9MuNv2z605DMc/edit?usp=sharing 3) Write to Chip: Romaine "Chip" Fitzgerald #B27527, CSP-LAC P.O. Box 4490 B-4-150 Lancaster, CA 93539 -- Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 863...................9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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On Abortion: From Facebook
Best explanation I've heard so far......., Copied from a friend who copied from a friend who copied..................., "Last night, I was in a debate about these new abortion laws being passed in red states. My son stepped in with this comment which was a show stopper. One of the best explanations I have read:, , 'Reasonable people can disagree about when a zygote becomes a "human life" - that's a philosophical question.... However, regardless of whether or not one believes a fetus is ethically equivalent to an adult, it doesn't obligate a mother to sacrifice her body autonomy for another, innocent or not..., , Body autonomy is a critical component of the right to privacy protected by the Constitution, as decided in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), McFall v.. Shimp (1978), and of course Roe v. Wade (1973).. Consider a scenario where you are a perfect bone marrow match for a child with severe aplastic anemia; no other person on earth is a close enough match to save the child's life, and the child will certainly die without a bone marrow transplant from you.. If you decided that you did not want to donate your marrow to save the child, for whatever reason, the state cannot demand the use of any part of your body for something to which you do not consent..... It doesn't matter if the procedure required to complete the donation is trivial, or if the rationale for refusing is flimsy and arbitrary, or if the procedure is the only hope the child has to survive, or if the child is a genius or a saint or anything else - the decision to donate must be voluntary to be constitutional.... This right is even extended to a person's body after they die; if they did not voluntarily commit to donate their organs while alive, their organs cannot be harvested after death, regardless of how useless those organs are to the deceased or how many lives they would save...., , That's the law.., , Use of a woman's uterus to save a life is no different from use of her bone marrow to save a life - it must be offered voluntarily.............. By all means, profess your belief that providing one's uterus to save the child is morally just, and refusing is morally wrong............ That is a defensible philosophical position, regardless of who agrees and who disagrees....... But legally, it must be the woman's choice to carry out the pregnancy..., , She may choose to carry the baby to term..... She may choose not to. Either decision could be made for all the right reasons, all the wrong reasons, or anything in between... But it must be her choice, and protecting the right of body autonomy means the law is on her side... Supporting that precedent is what being pro-choice means....", , Feel free to copy/paste and re-post., y Sent from my iPhone
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Celebrating the release of Janet and Janine Africa 
Take action now to support Jalil A. Muntaqim's release
Jalil A...... Muntaqim was a member of the Black Panther Party and has been a political prisoner for 48 years since he was arrested at the age of 19 in 1971. He has been denied parole 11 times since he was first eligible in 2002, and is now scheduled for his 12th parole hearing... Additionally, Jalil has filed to have his sentence commuted to time served by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Visit Jalil's support page, check out his writing and poetry, and Join Critical Resistance in supporting a vibrant intergenerational movement of freedom fighters in demanding his release. 48 years is enough. Write, email, call, and tweet at Governor Cuomo in support of Jalil's commutation and sign this petition demanding his release. http://freedomarchives.org/Support...Jalil/Campaign.html
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Funds for Kevin Cooper
https://www.gofundme.....com/funds-for-kevin-cooper?member=1994108 For 34 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.. Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here ..... In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov..... Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.. The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings ......... Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, paper, toiletries, supplementary food, and/or phone calls........ Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
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Don't extradite Assange!
To the government of the UK Julian Assange, through Wikileaks, has done the world a great service in documenting American war crimes, its spying on allies and other dirty secrets of the world's most powerful regimes, organisations and corporations. This has not endeared him to the American deep state.......... Both Obama, Clinton and Trump have declared that arresting Julian Assange should be a priority... We have recently received confirmation [1] that he has been charged in secret so as to have him extradited to the USA as soon as he can be arrested. Assange's persecution, the persecution of a publisher for publishing information [2] that was truthful and clearly in the interest of the public - and which has been republished in major newspapers around the world - is a danger to freedom of the press everywhere, especially as the USA is asserting a right to arrest and try a non-American who neither is nor was then on American soil. The sentence is already clear: if not the death penalty then life in a supermax prison and ill treatment like Chelsea Manning... The very extradition of Julian Assange to the United States would at the same time mean the final death of freedom of the press in the West..... Sign now! The courageous nation of Ecuador has offered Assange political asylum within its London embassy for several years until now. However, under pressure by the USA, the new government has made it clear that they want to drive Assange out of the embassy and into the arms of the waiting police as soon as possible... They have already curtailed his internet and his visitors and turned the heating off, leaving him freezing in a desolate state for the past few months and leading to the rapid decline of his health, breaching UK obligations under the European Convention of Human Rights. Therefore, our demand both to the government of Ecuador and the government of the UK is: don't extradite Assange to the US! Guarantee his human rights, make his stay at the embassy as bearable as possible and enable him to leave the embassy towards a secure country as soon as there are guarantees not to arrest and extradite him........... Furthermore, we, as EU voters, encourage European nations to take proactive steps to protect a journalist in danger... The world is still watching. Sign now! [1] https://www..nytimes.com/2018/11/16/us/politics/julian-assange-indictment-wikileaks.....html [2] https://theintercept.com/2018/11/16/as-the-obama-doj-concluded-prosecution-of-julian-assange-for-publishing-documents-poses-grave-threats-to-press-freedom/ Sign this petition: https://internal.diem25.....org/en/petitions/1
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Words of Wisdom 
Louis Robinson Jr., 77 Recording secretary for Local 1714 of the United Auto Workers from 1999 to 2018, with the minutes from a meeting of his union's retirees' chapter.
"One mistake the international unions in the United States made was when Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. When he did that, the unions could have brought this country to a standstill...... All they had to do was shut down the truck drivers for a month, because then people would not have been able to get the goods they needed. So that was one of the mistakes they made. They didn't come together as organized labor and say: "No.... We aren't going for this......... Shut the country down." That's what made them weak. They let Reagan get away with what he did. A little while after that, I read an article that said labor is losing its clout, and I noticed over the years that it did.. It happened... It doesn't feel good..." [On the occasion of the shut-down of the Lordstown, Ohio GM plant March 6, 2019.........] https://www.......nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/01/magazine/lordstown-general-motors-plant...html
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1) 'Biggest Coronavirus Stimulus of All': Richest Man in the World Jeff Bezos Now $24 Billion Richer Amid Pandemic
"Our society cannot sustain itself when so few have so much, while so many have so little," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
By Jessica Corbett, April 15, 2020
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/15/biggest-coronavirus-stimulus-all-richest-man-world-jeff-bezos-now-24-billion-richer?cd-origin=rss&utm_term=AO&utm_campaign=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_content=email&utm_source=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_medium=Email
CEO and founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos participates in a discussion during a Milestone Celebration dinner September 13, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Amplifying fresh critiques of wealthy inequality that have mounted throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—the world's richest man—has added nearly $24 billion to his already massive fortune in 2020 as virus-related lockdowns across the globe have forced people to stay inside and fueled increased e-commerce demand.
Explaining the source of a nearly 5% jump in Bezos' net worth Tuesday, Forbes reportedthat Amazon stock surged 5.3%, "hitting a new record close of $2,283 per share. The stock is now up over 20% so far this year, outpacing the benchmark index (the S&P 500 is down over 12%)."
Bezos was worth $138 billion as of Tuesday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He is Amazon's CEO and president, and owns an 11.2% stake in the e-commerce giant, which has come under fire for how it has treated workers during the outbreak.
While Bezos tops the index, Fortune noted that the 18th spot now belongs to his ex-wife MacKenzie, "who was left with a 4% stake in Amazon as part of the couple's recent divorce settlement. Her net worth has climbed $8.2 billion to $45.3 billion."
The index updates followed a Forbes report from Saturday about how "market gains led to a combined $51.3 billion boost for 10 of the world's billionaires since the market closed a week ago, on April 2." Bezos gained $6.8 billion in that time, an increase second to only that of Amancio Ortega of the Spanish fast-fashion retailer Inditex.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime labor rights advocate and foe of millionaires and billionaires, tweeted the Forbes report Wednesday and highlighted how the wealth increases of Bezos and other billionaires contrast with the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs because of the ongoing public health crisis.
As Common Dreams reported last week, U.S. unemployment claims during the pandemic have soared to 16.8 million, which one economist noted "is a mind-boggling 2,500% increase over the pre-virus period."
That contrast between U.S. billionaires and the nation's newly unemployed was also pointed out on Twitter Wednesday by Public Citizen, which cited the Forbes report.
While millions of people across the United States have lost their incomes due to COVID-19, Amazon has filled 100,000 new jobs since March and plans to add 75,000 more "to help meet customer demand and assist existing employees fulfilling orders for essential products," according to a blog post on the company's website. The retailer has "increased pay for hourly employees by $2/hour in the U.S., C$2/hour in Canada, and €2/hour in many E.U. countries."
Amazon has "made over 150 process updates to help protect employees—from enhanced cleaning and social distancing measures to piloting new efforts like using disinfectant fog in our New York fulfillment center," the blog post said. The company is also building a lab to test its front-line workers for COVID-19 and has "distributed personal protective gear, such as masks for our employees, and implemented temperature checks across our operations worldwide."
However, workers at Amazon warehouses and Whole Foods Market—the grocery chain acquired by Amazon in 2017—have expressed fear and frustration about working conditions, and accused the company of not doing enough to protect employees. Just this week, Amazon also elicited condemnation for firing three workers who publicly criticized the company's pandemic response and treatment of employees.
"Instead of firing employees who want justice," Sanders tweeted Tuesday, "maybe Jeff Bezos—the richest man in the world—can focus on providing his workers with paid sick leave, a safe workplace, and a livable planet."
The safety of Amazon facilities in the midst of a pandemic has raised particular alarm. According to Business Insider:
More than 74 U.S. warehouses alone have now reported cases of the virus, and concerns from workers about safety and sanitation have ballooned, leading to employee walkouts and protests.
On Tuesday, Business Insider broke the news that Amazon had seen its first warehouse worker death, an operations manager who worked at the company's Hawthorne, California warehouse. The man died on March 31.
Some Amazon employees told Business Insider that they feel they have to choose between paying their bills and risking the health of themselves and vulnerable family members.
"I was grateful at first for the unlimited [unpaid time off] and $2 increase, but as things got worse and the virus was spreading more and more, it didn't matter. I don't want to be there, but I need the income," said one worker who cares for an elderly relative. "The stress of bringing it home to him makes me physically ill."
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Migrant workers and children view a performance by Magician Rajkumar at a shelter home during ... [+] HINDUSTAN TIMES VIA GETTY IMAGES
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2) Straggling in a Good Economy, and Now Struggling in a Crisis
The coronavirus pandemic has shown how close to the edge many Americans were living, with pay and benefits eroding even as corporate profits surged.
"In less than two decades, the share of income paid out in wages and benefits in the private sector shrank by 5.4 percentage points, a McKinsey Global Institute study found last year, reducing compensation on average by $3,000 a year, adjusted for inflation. The result is that a job — once the guarantor of income security — no longer reliably plays that role. ...Employers who pay low wages and don’t offer benefits have in effect been subsidized through programs providing publicly funded medical insurance, rent money and food stamps to their workers. ...Airlines — now being propped up with emergency government aid — used billions of dollars in profits to buy back their stock, he said, instead of investing in employees and productive capacity or building up reserves to withstand a downturn. In 2018 alone, companies in the S&P 500 — flush from windfalls resulting from steep cuts in corporate taxes — spent $806 billion repurchasing their own shares at boom-time prices in search of quick profits."
By Patricia Cohen, April 16, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/business/economy/coronavirus-economy.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
Margaret Bourke-White/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
An indelible image from the Great Depression features a well-dressed family seated with their dog in a comfy car, smiling down from an oversize billboard on weary souls standing in line at a relief agency. “World’s highest standard of living,” the billboard boasts, followed by a tagline: “There’s no way like the American Way.”
The economic shutdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic has suddenly hurled the country back to that dislocating moment captured in 1937 by the photographer Margaret Bourke-White. In the updated 2020 version, lines of cars stretch for miles to pick up groceries from a food pantry; jobless workers spend days trying to file for unemployment benefits; renters and homeowners plead with landlords and mortgage bankers for extensions; and outside hospitals, ill patients line up overnight to wait for virus testing.
In an economy that has been hailed for its record-shattering successes, the most basic necessities — food, shelter and medical care — are all suddenly at risk.
The latest crisis has played out in sobering economic data and bleak headlines — most recently on Thursday, when the Labor Department said 5.2 million workers filed last week for unemployment benefits.
That brought the four-week total to 22 million, roughly the net number of jobs created in a nine-and-a-half-year stretch that ended with the pandemic’s arrival.
Certainly, the outbreak and attempts to curb it have created new hardships. But perhaps more significantly, the crisis has revealed profound, longstanding vulnerabilities in the economic system.
“We built an economy with no shock absorbers,” said Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel-winning economist. “We made a system that looked like it was maximizing profits but had higher risks and lower resiliency.”
Well before the coronavirus established a foothold, the American economy had been playing out on a split screen.
On one were impressive achievements: the lowest jobless rate in half a century, a soaring stock market and the longest expansion on record.
On the other, a very different story of stinging economic weaknesses unfolded. Years of limp wage growth left workers struggling to afford essentials. Irregular work schedules caused weekly paychecks to surge and dip unpredictably. Job-based benefits were threadbare or nonexistent. In this economy, four of 10 adults don’t have the resources on hand to cover an unplanned $400 expense.
Even middle-class Americans, once snugly secure, have become increasingly anxious in recent decades about their own fragile finances and their children’s prospects.
Since the recession’s end, the economy has pumped out enormous wealth. Workers, though, have gotten a smaller slice of those rewards. Companies prioritized short-term gains and stockholder returns at the same time that employee bargaining power was eroding.
In less than two decades, the share of income paid out in wages and benefits in the private sector shrank by 5.4 percentage points, a McKinsey Global Institute study found last year, reducing compensation on average by $3,000 a year, adjusted for inflation.
The result is that a job — once the guarantor of income security — no longer reliably plays that role.
“For many working families, wage growth has not been strong enough to allow them to meet their basic needs on their own,” the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston concluded in a report last year.
Work is available — but it is often unsteady and poorly paid.
Roughly seven of 10 people enrolled in public health care in New England were employed, the bank study found. So were nearly half of those who qualified for temporary cash assistance from the government.
Now individual employees with few resources — rather than companies or partners — are compelled to absorb some of the routine risks and uncertainties of running a business. Scheduling software that constantly changes a worker’s daily shifts to match an unexpected slowdown or rush improves a business’s bottom line but can ruin a household’s by causing wages to fluctuate widely from one week to the next. Such shifting not only scrambles family life, but also makes it more difficult to schedule other paid work.
At large companies, employees have seen their spending on health care — because of higher deductibles, premiums and co-payments — increase twice as fast as their wages over the past decade, according to the Peterson-Kaiser Health System Tracker.
At the same time, the cost of other necessities like housing has shot up. Millions of renters spend more than half their incomes on housing. Middle-income households, too, have been hit by escalating housing costs. Since 2000, a steadily growing share of this group has spent more than a third of earnings on rent.
For years, households have strained to navigate this cut-to-the bone economy with varying success. The coronavirus shock has made the economic precariousness — usually seen in scattershot fashion — evident everywhere at once.
“A lot of the people in the economy are living at the edge, and you have an event like this that pushes them over,” Mr. Stiglitz said. “And we are unique in the advanced world in having people at the edge without a safety net below them.”
Powerful forces like advancing technology and globalization are partly to blame for workers’ economic instability. But Mr. Stiglitz also criticized the short-term mind-set prevalent in corporate America. Airlines — now being propped up with emergency government aid — used billions of dollars in profits to buy back their stock, he said, instead of investing in employees and productive capacity or building up reserves to withstand a downturn.
In 2018 alone, companies in the S&P 500 — flush from windfalls resulting from steep cuts in corporate taxes — spent $806 billion repurchasing their own shares at boom-time prices in search of quick profits.
When the outbreak began to shutter the economy, many of these companies laid off millions of workers, ending their health insurance.
“Employer-based health insurance is a wrecking ball,” the Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton wrote this week in The New York Times. The couple, the authors of “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism,” argue that over time this system has “destroyed the labor market for less educated workers.”
The patched social service network that runs through individual states is now struggling to handle the millions of unemployment claims that have poured in as well as a flood of new applicants trying to tap existing programs. But assistance doesn’t necessarily arrive quickly. In Louisiana, for example, the backlog of applications for food stamps filed since businesses were closed in mid-March already exceeds 87,000.
In the meantime, nongovernmental organizations are trying to meet the demand. Fulfill, a food bank that operates in Monmouth and Ocean Counties in New Jersey, has served an additional 364,000 meals in the last three weeks, a 40 percent spike.
“We went from 0 to 60 in five seconds,” said Kim Guadagno, Fulfill’s chief executive and president. Hurricane Sandy in 2012 was devastating, she said, but this is worse because “the need is widespread, with no end in sight.”
Last year, before the pandemic, Feeding America, the nation’s largest network of food banks, fed 40 million individuals, many of them children, said Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, the chief executive. “It does underscore the fact that so many people in our country live on a precipice,” she said.
Housing also feels less secure. A recent survey by SurveyMonkey and Apartment List, an online rental marketplace based in San Francisco, showed that a quarter of renters paid only part or none of their rent this month.
“These numbers are extremely worrying,” said Igor Popov, the chief economist at Apartment List. “In a typical economic downturn, when incomes take a hit, many families can downsize or move in together to minimize their rent payments. At a time when we’re sheltering in place, even moves to downgrade housing are difficult.”
Those who have been squeezed the most can expect to be squeezed even more.
Before the coronavirus outbreak, Destination: Home, a Silicon Valley nonprofit that works to prevent homelessness, was on track to give $7 million in financial assistance to about 1,000 families. In March, the organization raised an additional $11 million for coronavirus relief, but was overwhelmed with demand — 4,500 requests in three days — and stopped accepting applications. The waiting list has close to 10,000 people and is growing each day.
“I thought there was nothing that I haven’t been involved in when it comes to homelessness, said Jennifer Loving, chief executive of Destination: Home, “but this is incomprehensibly catastrophic.”
In a report on the economic impact of the coronavirus, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond warns that the largest burdens will fall on people who are already the most vulnerable — people in low-paying, insecure jobs.
That is also a group with an outsize share of minorities and immigrants.
As a McKinsey report released this week noted, the “unfolding public-health and economic disaster” resulting from the pandemic “will disproportionately impact black Americans.”
It is another echo of Bourke-White’s “American Way” photo, where the contented family in the car is white and the grim faces waiting for aid are black and brown.
Conor Dougherty and Nelson D. Schwartz contributed reporting.
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3) Over 43,000 US millionaires will get ‘stimulus’ averaging $1.6 million each
"At least 43,000 American millionaires who are too rich to get coronavirus stimulus checks are getting a far bigger boost — averaging $1.6 million each, according to a congressional committee. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act trumpeted its assistance for working families and small businesses, but it apparently contains an even bigger benefit for wealthy business owners, the committee found. The act allows pass-through businesses — ones taxed under individual income, rather than corporate — an unlimited amount of deductions against their non-business income, such as capital gains, the Washington Post said. They can also use losses to avoid paying taxes in other years.
That gives the roughly 43,000 individual tax filers who make at least $1 million a year a savings of $70.3 billion — or about $1.6 million apiece, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation."
By Leo Brown, April 16, 2020
https://nypost.com/2020/04/16/43k-us-millionaires-will-get-stimulus-averaging-1-6m-each/?fbclid=IwAR28NjCLwNEDjOmNv52hzOL6tGuUVLzdJ8kwd9GTOHhVPbgYbNs7qxZR3Pc
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At least 43,000 American millionaires who are too rich to get coronavirus stimulus checks are getting a far bigger boost — averaging $1.6 million each, according to a congressional committee.
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act trumpeted its assistance for working families and small businesses, but it apparently contains an even bigger benefit for wealthy business owners, the committee found.
The act allows pass-through businesses — ones taxed under individual income, rather than corporate — an unlimited amount of deductions against their non-business income, such as capital gains, the Washington Post said. They can also use losses to avoid paying taxes in other years.
That gives the roughly 43,000 individual tax filers who make at least $1 million a year a savings of $70.3 billion — or about $1.6 million apiece, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
Hedge-fund investors and real estate business owners are “far and away” the ones who will benefit the most, tax expert Steve Rosenthal told the Washington Post.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) called it a “scandal” to “loot American taxpayers in the midst of an economic and human tragedy.”
Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) claimed that “someone wrongly seized on this health emergency to reward ultrarich beneficiaries.”
“For those earning $1 million annually, a tax break buried in the recent coronavirus relief legislation is so generous that its total cost is more than total new funding for all hospitals in America and more than the total provided to all state and local governments,” he stressed in a statement.
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4) U.N.: Coronavirus Depression Could Kill Hundreds Of Thousands Of Children This Year
By Carlie Porterfield, April 16, 2020
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2020/04/16/un-coronavirus-depression-could-kill-hundreds-of-thousands-of-children-this-year/#1b443bd63e16
TOPLINE
THE UNITED NATIONS WARNED THURSDAY THAT THE ECONOMIC DOWNTURN CAUSED BY THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC MAY BE MORE DANGEROUS THAN THE VIRUS ITSELF FOR THE WORLD’S CHILDREN, CLAIMING THAT IN 2020 HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS COULD DIE AND TENS OF MILLIONS MORE BE PLUNGED INTO POVERTY.
KEY FACTS
-WITH THE WORLD POSSIBLY FACING THE WORST ECONOMIC DECLINE SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION, U.N. OFFICIALS SAY THE FINANCIAL EFFECTS OF THE PANDEMIC COULD HAVE DEVASTATING EFFECTS ON THE WORLD’S CHILDREN BY LIMITING FAMILIES’ ABILITY TO AFFORD ESSENTIAL FOOD AND HEALTHCARE.
-THE U.N. ESTIMATES THAT BETWEEN 42 MILLION AND 66 MILLION CHILDREN COULD FALL INTO POVERTY AS A RESULT OF CORONAVIRUS—IN ADDITION TO THE ESTIMATED 386 MILLION CHILDREN LIVING IN EXTREME POVERTY LAST YEAR—AND COULD LEAD TO MALNUTRITION AND AN INCREASE IN PREVENTABLE DISEASES IN CHILDREN.
-THIS COULD CAUSE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF ADDITIONAL CHILD DEATHS BEFORE THE END OF THE YEAR, THE U.N. SAID, AND REVERSE THE PROGRESS MADE OVER THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS IN REDUCING INFANT MORTALITY.
-ACCORDING TO THE U.N., THE STRAIN ON HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS CAUSED BY CORONAVIRUS HAS ALSO PREVENTED FAMILIES FROM BEING ABLE TO ACCESS STANDARD CARE AND IMMUNIZATIONS AGAINST DISEASES LIKE POLIO, MEASLES AND OTHER DEADLY DISEASES THAT KILL CHILDREN.
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5) Amid Pandemic, Hong Kong Arrests Major Pro-Democracy Figures
Rarely have so many prominent pro-democracy figures — over a dozen — been arrested at once. The arrests signaled a broader crackdown on the antigovernment movement that roiled the semiautonomous city last year.
By Elaine Yu and Austin Ramzy, April 18, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/world/asia/hong-kong-arrests.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage
Anthony Kwan/Getty Images
HONG KONG — More than a dozen leading pro-democracy activists and former lawmakers in Hong Kong were arrested on Saturday in connection with the protests that raged in the city last year, the biggest roundup of prominent opposition figures in recent memory.
The arrests signaled a broader crackdown on the antigovernment movement that roiled the semiautonomous city last year, one of the most significant challenges to Communist Party rule in decades. Beijing and pro-government supporters in the city have called for lawmakers to pass national security laws that residents worry would allow the mainland authorities to further encroach upon the territory’s civic freedoms.
The high-profile arrests were made as Hong Kong battled to contain the coronavirus outbreak, which has helped quiet down the huge street protests but fueled further distrust of the authorities. The virus has halted protests around the world, forcing people to stay home and giving the authorities new laws for limiting public gatherings and detaining people with less fear of public blowback while many residents remained under lockdowns or observing limits on their movement.
But the arrests on Saturday in Hong Kong, along with a renewed push for national security legislation in the city, could anger protesters and reinvigorate mass demonstrations that had tapered off.
Fifteen activists between 24 and 81 years old were rounded up on suspicion of organizing, publicizing or taking part in several unauthorized assemblies between August and October and will face prosecution, the police said on Saturday without disclosing their names, following protocol.
The arrested democratic heavyweights included the veteran lawyers Martin Lee and Margaret Ng, the media tycoon Jimmy Lai and the former opposition legislators Albert Ho, Lee Cheuk-yan and Leung Kwok-hung, political parties and aides said.
While opposition politicians have been included among the thousands of protest-related arrests over the past year, rarely have so many prominent pro-democracy figures been arrested at once.
Lau Siu-kai, vice president of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies, a powerful Beijing advisory group, said that the arrests on Saturday represented an early step toward a broader crackdown by Beijing on the Hong Kong opposition.
The arrests reflect an assessment by Beijing that protests in Hong Kong over the past year pose such a threat to national security that it is worthwhile to defy American threats of retaliation if a crackdown takes place, he said.
“Now Beijing is calling the U.S.’s bluff and taking the initial steps against the Hong Kong opposition, and there will be more steps to shrink their space,” said Mr. Lau, who was also a senior Hong Kong government official in the years immediately after Britain’s return of the city to Chinese sovereignty.
A Communist Party gathering late last year in Beijing, the so-called fourth plenum, set a new tone for policy in Hong Kong that will be carried out this year, Mr. Lau said. “This is the time to end the chaos in Hong Kong,” he said. “After the fourth plenum, Beijing is determined to end the chaos in Hong Kong once and for all.”
The arrests followed calls from China’s central government in recent days for Hong Kong to enact a package of national security laws that was last put forward in 2003, but shelved after a mass protest.
Luo Huining, Beijing’s top representative in Hong Kong, said this past week that national security has always been a “prominent shortcoming” since the former British colony’s return to Chinese control in 1997. He called for urgent work on the “legal system and enforcement mechanism to safeguard national security,” a contentious issue in the city.
Legal experts and critics of Beijing have warned against perceived increased interference in Hong Kong’s local affairs by the Chinese government. The central government’s liaison office in Hong Kong has recently criticized filibustering by pro-democracy legislators, raising concerns that it was violating the “one country, two systems” principle.
The Hong Kong Bar Association called on the Chinese authorities to exercise restraint and said the comments by Beijing’s representatives “could easily be perceived as interference” in contravention of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the local Constitution. Late Friday the liaison office responded that as Beijing’s designated representative in the city, the prohibitions on departments of China’s central government interfering in Hong Kong affairs did not apply.
The roundup on Saturday drew condemnation from other activists and others.
“When all countries are now busy combating #coronavirus, the authoritarian regime of #China is now clamping down on democracy movements in #HongKong,” tweeted Joshua Wong, a well-known pro-democracy activist in the city.
“This is not the rule of law. This is what authoritarian governments do,” said Chris Patten, Hong Kong’s last colonial governor. “It becomes ever more clear, week by week and day by day, that Beijing is determined to throttle Hong Kong. The world should make clear how this further undermines any residual trust that we still have in the Chinese Communist dictatorship.”
Mr. Patten described the Beijing officials’ reasoning that they were right to weigh in on local affairs as “ludicrous” and “a reckless argument” that shows that Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, “is determined to abandon the policies pursued by his predecessors, even at the cost of destroying Hong Kong’s way of life.”
Some of those arrested on Saturday represented an older generation of pro-democracy figures who advocated peaceful methods even as the protests grew increasingly violent last year, and to some extent were dismissed by younger activists as too moderate. Convictions could bar some of them from seeking office this year, when Hong Kong holds legislative elections in September.
Mr. Lee, 81, is often called the “Father of Democracy” in Hong Kong, and helped draft the Basic Law in the 1980s. He has long represented activists in court, and said on Saturday after he was released on bail that he had “no regrets” in joining them as a defendant himself.
“I am proud to finally have a chance to continue on this path to democracy with these fine young people of Hong Kong,” he said.
Ms. Ng, who like Mr. Lee is also a former lawmaker, was photographed carrying a copy of a recent book titled “China’s National Security: Endangering Hong Kong’s Rule of Law?” as she entered the police station.
Mr. Lai, 72, a media baron who publishes a popular pro-democracy newspaper and is known for his ardent opposition to China, is already facing charges on allegations of participating in another protest and intimidating a reporter from a rival pro-Beijing outlet.
More than 7,000 demonstrators have been arrested since June, as protests calling for greater democracy and police accountability increasingly spiraled into violent clashes with riot officers.
Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Beijing, and Ezra Cheung from Hong Kong.
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6) Is the Virus on My Clothes? My Shoes? My Hair? My Newspaper?
We asked the experts to answer questions about all the places coronavirus lurks (or doesn’t). You’ll feel better after reading this.
By Tara Parker-Pope, April 17, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/well/live/coronavirus-contagion-spead-clothes-shoes-hair-newspaper-packages-mail-infectious.html?algo=identity&fellback=false&imp_id=483537997&imp_id=523332325&action=click&module=Smarter%20Living&pgtype=Homepage
iStock
When we asked readers to send their questions about coronavirus, a common theme emerged: Many people are fearful about tracking the virus into their homes on their clothes, their shoes, the mail and even the newspaper.
We reached out to infectious disease experts, aerosol scientists and microbiologists to answer reader questions about the risks of coming into contact with the virus during essential trips outside and from deliveries. While we still need to take precautions, their answers were reassuring.
Should I change my clothes and shower when I come home from the grocery store?
For most of us who are practicing social distancing and making only occasional trips to the grocery store or pharmacy, experts agree that it’s not necessary to change clothes or take a shower when you return home. You should, however, always wash your hands.While it’s true that a sneeze or cough from an infected person can propel viral droplets and smaller particles through the air, most of them will drop to the ground.
Studies show that some small viral particles could float in the air for about half an hour, but they don’t swarm like gnats and are unlikely to collide with your clothes. “A droplet that is small enough to float in air for a while also is unlikely to deposit on clothing because of aerodynamics,” said Linsey Marr, an aerosol scientist at Virginia Tech. “The droplets are small enough that they’ll move in the air around your body and clothing.”
Why is it that small droplets and viral particles don’t typically land on our clothing?
I asked Dr. Marr to explain further, since we’re all getting a mini lesson in aerodynamics.
“The best way to describe it is that they follow the streamlines, or air flow, around a person, because we move relatively slowly. It’s kind of like small insects and dust particles flowing in the streamlines around a car at slow speed but potentially slamming into the windshield if the car is going fast enough,” said Dr. Marr.
“Humans don’t usually move fast enough for this to happen,” Dr. Marr continued. “As we move, we push air out of the way, and most of the droplets and particles get pushed out of the way, too. Someone would have to spray large droplets through talking — a spit talker — coughing or sneezing for them to land on our clothes. The droplets have to be large enough that they don’t follow the streamlines.”
So, if you’re out shopping and somebody sneezes on you, you probably do want to go home, change and shower. But the rest of the time, take comfort that your slow-moving body is pushing air and viral particles away from your clothes, a result of simple physics.
Is there a risk that the virus could be in my hair or beard?
For all the reasons outlined above, you should not be worried about viral contamination of your hair or beard if you are practicing social distancing. Even if someone sneezed on the back of your head, any droplets that landed on your hair would be an unlikely source of infection.
“You have to think through the process of what would have to happen for someone to become infected,” said Dr. Andrew Janowski, instructor of pediatric infectious diseases at Washington University School of Medicine St. Louis Children’s Hospital. “You have someone who sneezes, and they have to have X amount of virus in the sneeze. Then there has to be so many drops that land on you.”
“Then you have to touch that part of your hair or clothing that has those droplets, which already have a significant reduction in viral particles,” Dr. Janowski said. “Then you have to touch that, and then touch whatever part of your face, to come into contact with it. When you go through the string of events that must occur, such an extended number of things have to happen just right. That makes it a very low risk.”
Should I worry about doing laundry and sorting clothes? Can I shake viral particles loose from my clothes and send them into the air?
The answer depends on whether you’re doing routine laundry or cleaning up after a sick person.
Routine laundry should not cause worry. Wash it as you normally would. While some types of viruses, like the norovirus, can be tough to clean, the new coronavirus, like the flu virus, is surrounded by a fatty membrane that is vulnerable to soap. Washing your clothes in regular laundry detergent, following the fabric instructions, followed by a stint in the dryer is more than enough to remove the virus — if it was even there in the first place.
“We do know that viruses can deposit on clothing (from droplets) and then be shaken loose into the air with movement, but you would need a lot of viruses for this to be a concern, far more than a typical person would encounter while going for a walk outdoors or going to a grocery store,” Dr. Marr said.
The exception is if you are in close contact with a sick person. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that you wear gloves when cleaning up after someone who is sick, and take care not to shake laundry and bedding. Use the warmest water setting possible and dry completely. You can mix laundry from an ill person with the rest of the household load. But just leaving laundry to sit for a while also reduces risk, because the virus will dry out and decay. “We know these types of viruses tend to decay faster on fabric than on hard, solid surfaces like steel or plastic,” said Dr. Marr.
So how long can the virus remain viable on fabric and other surfaces?
Most of what we know about how long this novel coronavirus lives on surfaces comes from an important study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in March. The study found that the virus can survive, under ideal conditions, up to three days on hard metal surfaces and plastic and up to 24 hours on cardboard.
But the study did not look at fabric. Still, most virus experts believe that the cardboard research offers clues about how the virus probably behaves on fabric. The absorbent, natural fibers in the cardboard appeared to cause the virus to dry up more quickly than it does on hard surfaces. The fibers in fabric would be likely to produce a similar effect.
A 2005 study of the virus that causes SARS, another form of coronavirus, provides further reassurance. In that study, researchers tested increasingly large amounts of viral samples on paper and on a cotton gown. Depending on the concentration of the virus, it took five minutes, three hours or 24 hours for it to become inactive. “Even with a relatively high virus load in the droplet, rapid loss of infectivity was observed for paper and cotton material,” the researchers concluded.
Should I be concerned about the mail, packages or the newspaper?
The risk of getting sick from handling mail or packages is extremely low and, at this point, only theoretical. There are no documented cases of someone getting sick from opening a package or reading a newspaper.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take precautions. After handling mail or packages or reading the newspaper, dispose of the packaging and wash your hands. If you still feel especially anxious about it, take guidance from the New England Journal study and just let mail and packages sit for 24 hours before handling them.
How much should I worry about contamination if I go outside to walk the dog or exercise?
Your chances of catching the virus when you go outdoors is extremely low, provided you’re keeping a safe distance from others.
”Outdoors is safe, and there is certainly no cloud of virus-laden droplets hanging around,” said Lidia Morawska, professor and director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.
“Firstly, any infectious droplets exhaled outside would be quickly diluted in outdoor air, so their concentrations would quickly become insignificant,” Dr. Morawska said. “In addition, the stability of the virus outside is significantly shorter than inside. So outside is not really a problem, unless if we are in a very crowded place — which is not allowed now anyway. It is safe to go for a walk and jog and not to worry about the virus in the air, and there is no need for an immediate washing of the clothes.”
I’ve read that when I get home from a trip outside I should remove my shoes and wipe them down. Should I waste my precious disinfectant wipes on my shoes?
Shoes can harbor bacteria and viruses, but that doesn’t mean they are a common source of infection. A 2008 study commissioned by Rockport Shoes found a lot of gross stuff, including fecal bacteria, on the soles of our shoes. A recent study from China found that among health care workers, half had coronavirus detected on their shoes, which is not unexpected since they worked in hospitals with infected patients.
So what should we do about our shoes? If your shoes are washable, you can launder them. Some readers asked about cleaning the soles of their shoes with a wipe. That is not recommended. Not only does it waste a good wipe (they are still in short supply), but it brings germs that would stay on the sole of your shoe or on the ground directly to your hands.
You can try not to think about what’s lurking on your shoes — or you can have a conversation with your family about becoming a shoe-free household. We covered the pros and cons of shoeless living in our article, “Should You Take Your Shoes Off at Home?” If you have a child who crawls or plays on the floor, a family member with allergies, or someone with a compromised immune system, a shoe-free home might be a good idea for general hygiene.
Dr. Janowski said shoes are not a big worry for contracting coronavirus, but it might make you squeamish if you think about where your shoes have been. “If you want to talk about bacteria, we know bacteria love to live on shoes,” Dr. Janowski said. “You never know what you stepped in.”
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7) Jobless Claims by Uber and Lyft Drivers Revive Fight Over Labor Status
California’s move to aid gig workers may break federal rules. But the state said it had few options after the ride-hailing companies resisted other benefits.
“The states are caught in a hard place,” said Brian Chen, a lawyer who focuses on the rights of economically insecure workers at the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group. “They’re trying to do the right thing. But this is what happens when ultrapowerful app companies with an army of well-paid lobbyists and lawyers are saying they’re going to fight to the bitter end against workers’ ability to demand rights under the law.”
By Noam Scheiber, April 17, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/business/economy/coronavirus-uber-lyft-unemployment.html
Mario Tama/Getty Images
California has been in a standoff with the ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft over their drivers’ status under the law: whether they are contractors or employees. Now the coronavirus crisis has put a spotlight on a related question: Who is responsible for helping those drivers when there is no work?
The companies are urging their drivers nationwide to apply for emergency unemployment benefits that federal legislation established last month for the self-employed. But there’s a catch in California: The state doesn’t typically consider them self-employed.
Nonetheless, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order on Wednesday directing the state’s unemployment agency to help workers like Uber and Lyft drivers collect benefits under the federal program, known as Pandemic Unemployment Assistance.
That may put the state at odds with the rules of the federal program. U.S. Labor Department officials have emphasized that only workers ineligible for traditional unemployment benefits can receive the federal pandemic assistance. And under a state law passed last year and some previous determinations, the drivers are considered employees in California and should be able to draw traditional unemployment benefits.
Recourse to such assistance has been hampered, however, by the companies’ refusal to provide routine documentation to the state as they fight the law in court.
The circumstances effectively forced the state to provide unemployment assistance to drivers that they may not be legally entitled to receive, employment experts said.
“The states are caught in a hard place,” said Brian Chen, a lawyer who focuses on the rights of economically insecure workers at the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group. “They’re trying to do the right thing. But this is what happens when ultrapowerful app companies with an army of well-paid lobbyists and lawyers are saying they’re going to fight to the bitter end against workers’ ability to demand rights under the law.”
The California labor secretary, Julie A. Su, said in an interview that she believed the state’s move to help drivers under the federal program was legal because the government had “emphasized flexibility” in administering the emergency aid.
The U.S. Labor Department did not provide comment for this article.
Allowing drivers to receive the new federal benefits rather than traditional unemployment assistance could help gig-economy companies like Uber and Lyft avoid significant costs in the future. Employers in California and other states are required to contribute to state unemployment trust funds on behalf of employees who might claim benefits.
While employers are not required to make contributions to fund pandemic-related claims, they will have to make contributions after the crisis. In effect, allowing the drivers to claim the federal benefit helps the companies avoid conceding that they are on the hook for funding state benefits.
An Uber spokesman said, “Congress fully funded Pandemic Unemployment Assistance for gig workers so that every state, many of which face historic deficits, could give these workers immediate financial support at no cost to their own funds.”
Uber has also pointed out that the state’s recent law doesn’t make drivers eligible for unemployment benefits on its own. It creates a test that state agencies must apply before granting benefits, and which they have yet to do in many drivers’ cases. Most experts believe that drivers will be deemed employees under the test.
Lyft declined to comment for this article.
California’s action appears to reflect a shift by state officials. Early this month, the state seemed to be trying to process benefits for Uber and Lyft drivers under the traditional unemployment system. On a website listing frequently asked questions by workers applying for benefits during the pandemic, it instructed gig workers to “list your gig employer as your last employer.” Workers who have employers would typically be eligible for traditional unemployment benefits and therefore ineligible for federal pandemic assistance for the self-employed.
Last week, Uber, Lyft and another gig company, DoorDash, sent an email to government officials asking the state agency overseeing unemployment insurance to remove that sentence from its website and to help gig workers apply for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance.
“Many self-employed ride-share and delivery drivers intend to apply for loans and other federal relief available to independent contractors,” the companies wrote, and they “worry that making an inaccurate representation that they are employees” could preclude that, the email said.
Ms. Su, the state labor secretary, said the purpose of the new approach was to ensure that struggling gig workers could begin to receive benefits rapidly. While some Uber and Lyft drivers had successfully claimed regular unemployment benefits in California before the executive order, the process took months because the companies refused to submit income data needed to verify eligibility.
“People are in very dire straits,” Ms. Su said. “They need these benefits. We’ve made it a priority to get them out.”
Andrew Stettner, an expert on unemployment insurance at the Century Foundation, a liberal think tank, said that the U.S. Labor Department could order California to desist but that it was unlikely to require the state to pay back money it had given to drivers.
States are sometimes tempted to push boundaries because the Labor Department “hasn’t always stood up to them,” Mr. Stettner added. “It’s not a very aggressive oversight agency.”
Some groups, like the California Labor Federation, had pressed the state to expedite traditional unemployment benefits for gig workers, an approach that experts like Mr. Stettner said they believed the state could take.
But Ms. Su said there was no way to expedite unemployment benefits for drivers under the traditional program without income data from Uber and Lyft. By contrast, under the rules of the pandemic assistance program, the self-employed and other eligible workers can begin receiving assistance quickly, even before documenting their income.
Ms. Su said that she had spoken with representatives from Uber and Lyft about the state’s approach but that the companies did not directly make the case for the action the state took.
In addition to California, at least three states — Illinois, New York and New Jersey — have deemed at least some Uber and Lyft drivers eligible for regular unemployment insurance. But Uber and Lyft are contesting these decisions in many states and are not paying into the state unemployment insurance funds.
If drivers in these states receive federal pandemic assistance rather than traditional unemployment benefits, it could help reduce the financial liabilities of companies like Uber and Lyft by tens of millions of dollars after the crisis passes.
Mr. Newsom did take some steps at odds with the positions of Uber and Lyft. His executive order made clear that the state law effectively requiring gig companies to classify drivers as employees still applied, entitling drivers to all protections of employment, like minimum-wage rules, overtime pay, workers’ compensation and paid sick leave.
He also said that the companies must hand over income data for their drivers, though it was unclear how he planned to enforce that demand.
“We don’t take any enforcement options off the table,” Ms. Su said when asked about the possibility of litigation.
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8) San Francisco Mayor London Breed orders residents to wear masks as other counties announce their own face-covering rules
By Rachel Swan, April 17, 2020
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Area-counties-to-announce-mask-requirement-15208106.php
Photo: Yalonda M. James / The Chronicle
Bay Area residents must wear face coverings in public starting this weekend, a practice that likely will become ingrained as leaders look to ease restrictions on social and commercial life.
Mayor London Breed announced the rules for San Francisco on Friday, which will apply to people riding transit, working at essential businesses, doing construction, grocery shopping, standing in line at a store or doing anything else that puts them near others.
“Any time you’re indoors or within close proximity of others within an essential business, you will be required to wear a mask,” Breed said during her afternoon briefing. She stressed that face coverings will not replace the 6 feet of separation that experts have recommended for social distancing.
The order is part of a regional effort that will require residents of several counties to wear cloth coverings.
Health directors of Marin, Alameda, San Mateo and Contra Costa counties released similar mandates Friday, following the lead of Sonoma County, which delivered the first order early this week.
Santa Clara County stopped short of issuing a health order to require face masks. Instead, health officers on Friday issued expanded guidance “strongly urging” all individuals to wear face coverings when performing essential duties in public. The county said in a statement the guidance is meant to “achieve the same goals” as other counties that issued enforceable requirements.
San Francisco’s order, issued by City and County Health Officer Dr. Tomás Aragón, takes effect at 11:59 p.m. Friday night, though the city will wait until 8 a.m. on Wednesday to enforce it.
Residents will not be required to wear protective gear to simply walk down the street, jog, hike or a ride a bicycle.
Breed characterized face masks as a “new normal” to which residents will have to acclimate. City Public Health Director Dr. Grant Colfax echoed that sentiment.
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9) Supreme Court Bans Non-Unanimous Jury Verdicts for Serious Crimes
The badly fractured decision, affecting defendants in two states, continued a debate among the justices over the power of precedent.
By Adam Liptak, April 20, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/us/politics/supreme-court-unanimous-verdicts.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage
Doug Mills/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the Constitution banned non-unanimous jury verdicts in cases involving serious crimes. The decision will affect defendants and prisoners in Louisiana and Oregon, the only two states that have allowed such verdicts in recent years.
The decision was badly fractured, with the justices sharply debating whether to adhere to an earlier decision.
The case concerned Evangelisto Ramos, a Louisiana man who was convicted in 2016 of killing a woman in New Orleans. The jury’s vote was 10 to 2, which was enough under the state’s law at the time. Louisiana has since amended its State Constitution to bar non-unanimous verdicts, but the move came too late to help Mr. Ramos, as it applies only to crimes committed after 2018.
Oregon is the last state that allows non-unanimous verdicts in criminal cases.
The case, Ramos v. Louisiana, No. 18-5924, was in one sense mere constitutional housekeeping. The Supreme Court has long held that non-unanimous verdicts are forbidden under the Sixth Amendment in federal criminal trials.
While the Bill of Rights originally restricted the power of only the federal government, the Supreme Court has ruled that almost all of its protections apply to the states under the 14th Amendment, one of the post-Civil War amendments. It would seem a small step, then, to conclude that the Sixth Amendment bars non-unanimous verdicts in state criminal trials, too.
But a confusing 1972 decision, Apodaca v. Oregon, complicated matters. The vote in the case was 4 to 1 to 4, and only Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., who cast the controlling vote, said federal and state cases could be treated differently.
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, writing for the majority on Monday, said the Louisiana and Oregon laws were rooted in racism.
In 1898, after the Supreme Court ruled that states could not exclude black people from juries, Louisiana held a constitutional convention whose purpose, as the chairman of its judiciary committee put it, was “to establish the supremacy of the white race in this state to the extent to which it could be legally and constitutionally done.”
The State Constitution adopted at that convention replaced a unanimity requirement with one that said the votes of nine jurors out of 12 were enough to convict defendants of noncapital felonies. The point, Justice Gorsuch wrote, quoting an earlier decision, was “to ensure that African-American juror service would be meaningless.” (In 1973, the Constitution was amended to require 10 jurors to agree.)
“Courts in both Louisiana and Oregon have frankly acknowledged that race was a motivating factor in the adoption of their states’ respective non-unanimity rules,” Justice Gorsuch wrote.
In dissent, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and, for the most part, Justice Elena Kagan, said the majority’s discussion of race was part of a trend in “too much public discourse today” that “attempts to discredit an argument not by proving that it is unsound but by attacking the character or motives of the argument’s proponents.”
Justice Alito wrote that the Apodaca decision deserved respect and that overruling it would lead to “a potential tsunami of litigation.” In Oregon alone, he wrote, more than 1,000 defendants with pending appeals may be able to challenge their convictions, to say nothing of post-conviction challenges that may be available in both Louisiana and Oregon.
Justice Gorsuch said that burden, whatever its magnitude, was not a good enough reason to keep the Louisiana and Oregon laws in place. “The dissent would have us discard a Sixth Amendment right in perpetuity rather than ask two states to retry a slice of their prior criminal cases,” he wrote. “Whether that slice turns out to be large or small, it cannot outweigh the interest we all share in the preservation of our constitutionally promised liberties.”
The clashing opinions were mostly a debate over respect for precedent, a topic that has recently consumed and divided the justices as they prepare to confront a potential case on the fate of the constitutional right to abortion established in 1973 in Roe v. Wade. The upshot was a remarkably tangled set of opinions.
As summarized by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh in a concurring opinion, it appeared that “six justices treat the result on Apodaca as a precedent” and “a different group of six justices concludes that Apodaca should be and is overruled.”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer joined all of Justice Gorsuch’s opinion, including a passage that said the Apodaca decision was not entitled to be treated as precedent. In addition to Justice Kavanaugh, Justices Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor each filed separate concurring opinions.
Justice Thomas wrote that he agreed with Justice Gorsuch’s bottom line but would have applied a different provision of the 14th Amendment to reach the result.
Justice Sotomayor wrote that “while overruling precedent must be rare, this court should not shy away from correcting its errors where the right to avoid imprisonment pursuant to unconstitutional procedures hangs in the balance.”
Justice Kavanaugh contributed an 18-page concurring opinion in which he set out an extensive analysis of when overruling precedents is appropriate. He said every current member of the court had voted to overrule constitutional precedents, and he listed major decisions that had overruled earlier cases, including ones on school segregation, gay rights and abortion.
The Apodaca decision, he wrote, should also be overruled.
“Why stick by an erroneous precedent,” he asked, “that is egregiously wrong as a matter of constitutional law, that allows convictions of some who would not be convicted under the proper constitutional rule, and that tolerates and reinforces a practice that is thoroughly racist in its origins and has continuing racially discriminatory effects?”
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10) Senate Passes $484 Billion Interim Relief Package. Here’s What’s In It—And What’s Missing
By Sarah Hansen, April 21. 2020
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahhansen/2020/04/21/senate-passes-484-billion-interim-relief-package-heres-whats-in-it-and-whats-missing/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailydozen&cdlcid=5d1670531802c8c524c36492#385ed0c53e34
KEY FACTS
The bill includes an additional $310 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program, with $60 billion of that money reserved for smaller businesses without existing banking relationships.
Another $60 billion ($50 billion in loans and $10 billion in grants) is also set aside for the Economic Injury Disaster Loan fund, which is administered directly by the Small Business Administration rather than banks. Farms and other agricultural programs are now eligible for those funds.
The bill will also provide another $75 billion for cash-strapped hospitals and healthcare providers to help them cover the massive costs associated with responding to the virus.
The bill allocates $25 billion for coronavirus testing—a major sticking point for both Democrats and Republicans during late-night negotiations on Monday. $11 billion of that money is earmarked for states and local governments to expand their testing capacity.
Under the terms of the legislation, the federal government is required to develop a “strategic plan related to providing assistance to states for testing and increasing testing capacity.” State and local governments must also submit their testing plans for review.
Notably absent from the agreement is more funding for state and local governments, which had been a key priority for Democrats.
Democrats had also pushed for expanded funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—Republicans blocked that provision in the final bill, The Hill reports.
KEY BACKGROUND
Lawmakers have been scrambling to pass supplemental economic rescue legislation after the Paycheck Protection Program, one of the cornerstones of the $2 trillion CARES Act, exhausted its $350 billion in funding last Thursday after less than two weeks. Negotiations lasted for nearly a week after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin requested another $250 billion for the PPP. Republican lawmakers, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, wanted to quickly approve the additional $250 billion for the program and save other provisions for future relief legislation while Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, pushed for additional provisions like expanding funding to hospitals, nutrition programs, and state and local governments. Talks stalled on Monday over how to structure a national testing plan, as Democrats pushed for the federal government to take the lead while Republicans wanted to leave that authority to the states.
BIG NUMBER
Altogether, the interim bill is worth $484 billion.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
The House could vote on the legislation as soon as Thursday, after which it will be signed into law by President Trump. After that, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are expecting to begin negotiating on another round of stimulus legislation—that would be the fourth major economic rescue bill.
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