“You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."
—Malcolm X
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Legal Filing in Mumia’s Case
By Johanna Fernández
[The following statement was issued January 4, 2022, regarding new legal filings by attorneys for Mumia Abu-Jamal.]
Campaign to Bring Mumia Home
In her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston wrote, “There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.”
With continued pressure from below, 2022 will be the year that forces the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and the Philly Police Department to answer questions about why they framed imprisoned radio journalist and veteran Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal. Abu-Jamal’s attorneys have filed a Pennsylvania Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) petition focused entirely on the six boxes of case files that were found in a storage room of the DA’s office in late December 2018, after the case being heard before Judge Leon Tucker in the Court of Common Pleas concluded. (tinyurl.com/zkyva464)
The new evidence contained in the boxes is damning, and we need to expose it. It reveals a pattern of misconduct and abuse of authority by the prosecution, including bribery of the state’s two key witnesses, as well as racist exclusion in jury selection—a violation of the landmark Supreme Court decision Batson v. Kentucky. The remedy for each or any of the claims in the petition is a new trial. The court may order a hearing on factual issues raised in the claims. If so, we won’t know for at least a month.
The new evidence includes a handwritten letter penned by Robert Chobert, the prosecution’s star witness. In it, Chobert demands to be paid money promised him by then-Prosecutor Joseph McGill. Other evidence includes notes written by McGill, prominently tracking the race of potential jurors for the purposes of excluding Black people from the jury, and letters and memoranda which reveal that the DA’s office sought to monitor, direct, and intervene in the outstanding prostitution charges against its other key witness Cynthia White.
Mumia Abu-Jamal was framed and convicted 40 years ago in 1982, during one of the most corrupt and racist periods in Philadelphia’s history—the era of cop-turned-mayor Frank Rizzo. It was a moment when the city’s police department, which worked intimately with the DA’s office, routinely engaged in homicidal violence against Black and Latinx detainees, corruption, bribery and tampering with evidence to obtain convictions.
In 1979, under pressure from civil rights activists, the Department of Justice filed an unprecedented lawsuit against the Philadelphia police department and detailed a culture of racist violence, widespread corruption and intimidation that targeted outspoken people like Mumia. Despite concurrent investigations by the FBI and Pennsylvania’s Attorney General and dozens of police convictions, the power and influence of the country’s largest police association, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) prevailed.
Now, more than 40 years later, we’re still living with the failure to uproot these abuses. Philadelphia continues to fear the powerful FOP, even though it endorses cruelty, racism, and multiple injustices. A culture of fear permeates the “city of brotherly love.”
The contents of these boxes shine light on decades of white supremacy and rampant lawlessness in U.S. courts and prisons. They also hold enormous promise for Mumia’s freedom and challenge us to choose Love, Not PHEAR. (lovenotphear.com/) Stay tuned.
Pa. Supreme Court denies widow’s appeal to remove Philly DA from Abu-Jamal case
Abu Jamal was convicted by a jury of first-degree murder of Faulkner in 1982. Over the past four decades, five of his appeals have been quashed.
In 1989, the state’s highest court affirmed Abu-Jamal’s death penalty conviction, and in 2012, he was re-sentenced to life in prison.
Abu-Jamal, 66, remains in prison. He can appeal to the state Supreme Court, or he can file a new appeal.
KYW Newsradio reached out to Abu-Jamal’s attorneys for comment. They shared this statement in full:
“Today, the Superior Court concluded that it lacked jurisdiction to consider issues raised by Mr. Abu-Jamal in prior appeals. Two years ago, the Court of Common Pleas ordered reconsideration of these appeals finding evidence of an appearance of judicial bias when the appeals were first decided. We are disappointed in the Superior Court’s decision and are considering our next steps.
“While this case was pending in the Superior Court, the Commonwealth revealed, for the first time, previously undisclosed evidence related to Mr. Abu-Jamal’s case. That evidence includes a letter indicating that the Commonwealth promised its principal witness against Mr. Abu-Jamal money in connection with his testimony. In today’s decision, the Superior Court made clear that it was not adjudicating the issues raised by this new evidence. This new evidence is critical to any fair determination of the issues raised in this case, and we look forward to presenting it in court.”
https://www.audacy.com/kywnewsradio/news/local/pennsylvania-superior-court-rejects-mumia-abu-jamal-appeal-ron-castille
Demand Mumia's Freedom:
Governor Tom Wolf -1(717) 787-2500 Fax 1 (717) 772-8284
Office of the Governor
508 Main Capitol Building
Harrisburg, PA 17120
After calling the governor, send an online communication about our concerns. https://www.governor.pa.gov/contact/#PhoneNumber
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For Immediate Release
Press Contact: Herb Mintz (415) 759-9679
LaborFest 2022 presents
1934 San Francisco General Strike
Walk and Presentation by Gifford Hartman
Sunday, July 3rd at 12 noon PDT
LaborFest 2022 continues its 29th annual festival with a labor history walk and presentation by Gifford Hartmann that highlights the remarkable history of the San Francisco General Strike of 1934.
Participants will meet at the Harry Bridges Plaza Tower to the south, Embarcadero at Market in San Francisco.
No registration is necessary. Admission is free.
Eighty-eight years ago, a great battle took place between striking workers and the police and National Guard along the waterfront alongside the piers of San Francisco’s Embarcadero. We will look at the causes of the 1934 General Strike, why it was successful, and how the issues from that strike are still relevant to working class people today. The current movement against police murder of black and brown people can draw lessons from the way strikers invited black workers into their ranks to prevent racist exclusion from breaking their strike. We explain how an 83-day West Coast Waterfront Strike exploded into the 4-day General Strike that paralyzed all commerce in San Francisco. This tour will visit the sites of those events.
This two-hour free event is a walk around downtown San Francisco on Sunday, July 3rd, beginning at 12 noon PDT. Please dress appropriately.
For more information: https://laborfest.net/event/1934-san-francisco-general-strike-walk-presentation-by-gifford-hartman/
Events are subject to change or cancellation due to COVID-19 related issues. Check our website at https://laborfest.net/ prior to each event or for a calendar of all events.
LaborFest is the premier labor cultural arts and film festival in the United States. LaborFest recognizes the role of working people in the building of America and making it work even in this time of COVID-19. The festival is self-funded with contributions from unions and other organizations that support and celebrate the contributions of working people.
Find LaborFest on Facebook here:
https://www.facebook.com/laborfest1/
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Olivia Rodrigo - F*** You
(feat. Lily Allen) (Glastonbury 2022)
Lyrics:
https://genius.com/Olivia-rodrigo-fuck-you-lyrics
Fuck You
With Olivia Rodrigo and Lily Allen
[Verse 1: Lily Allen]
Look inside, look inside your tiny mind
Then look a bit harder
'Cause we're so uninspired, so sick and tired
Of all the hatred you harbour
So you say it's not okay to be gay
Well, I think you're just evil
You're just some racist who can't tie my laces
Your point of view is medieval
[Chorus: Lily Allen]
Fuck you, fuck you very, very much
'Cause we hate what you do
And we hate your whole crew
So please, don't stay in touch
Fuck you, fuck you very, very much
'Cause your words don't translate
And it's getting quite late
So please, don't stay in touch
[Verse 2: Olivia Rodrigo, Lily Allen & Olivia Rodrigo]
Do you get, do you get a little kick out of being small minded?
You want to be like your father, it's approval you're after
Well, that's not how you find it
Do you, do you really enjoy living a life that's so hateful?
'Cause there's a hole where your soul should be
You're losing control of it
And it's really distasteful
[Chorus: Olivia Rodrigo, Lily Allen & Olivia Rodrigo]
Fuck you, fuck you very, very much
'Cause we hate what you do
And we hate your whole crew
So please, don't stay in touch
Fuck you, fuck you very, very much
'Cause your words don't translate
And it's getting quite late
So please, don't stay in touch
[Bridge: Crowd]
Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you
Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you
Fuck you
[Verse 3: Lily Allen]
You say you think we need to go to war
Well, you're already in one
'Cause it's people like you that need to get slew
No one wants your opinion
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Doctors for Assange Statement
Doctors to UK: Assange Extradition
‘Medically & Ethically’ Wrong
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/06/12/doctors-to-uk-assange-extradition-medically-ethically-wrong/
Ahead of the U.K. Home Secretary’s decision on whether to extradite Julian Assange to the United States, a group of more than 300 doctors representing 35 countries have told Priti Patel that approving his extradition would be “medically and ethically unacceptable”.
In an open letter sent to the Home Secretary on Friday June 10, and copied to British Prime Minster Boris Johnson, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Robert Buckland, the Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, the doctors draw attention to the fact that Assange suffered a “mini stroke” in October 2021. They note:
“Predictably, Mr Assange’s health has since continued to deteriorate in your custody. In October 2021 Mr. Assange suffered a ‘mini-stroke’… This dramatic deterioration of Mr Assange’s health has not yet been considered in his extradition proceedings. The US assurances accepted by the High Court, therefore, which would form the basis of any extradition approval, are founded upon outdated medical information, rendering them obsolete.”
The doctors charge that any extradition under these circumstances would constitute negligence. They write:
“Under conditions in which the UK legal system has failed to take Mr Assange’s current health status into account, no valid decision regarding his extradition may be made, by yourself or anyone else. Should he come to harm in the US under these circumstances it is you, Home Secretary, who will be left holding the responsibility for that negligent outcome.”
In their letter the group reminds the Home Secretary that they first wrote to her on Friday 22 November 2019, expressing their serious concerns about Julian Assange’s deteriorating health.
Those concerns were subsequently borne out by the testimony of expert witnesses in court during Assange’s extradition proceedings, which led to the denial of his extradition by the original judge on health grounds. That decision was later overturned by a higher court, which referred the decision to Priti Patel in light of US assurances that Julian Assange would not be treated inhumanely.
The doctors write:
“The subsequent ‘assurances’ of the United States government, that Mr Assange would not be treated inhumanly, are worthless given their record of pursuit, persecution and plotted murder of Mr Assange in retaliation for his public interest journalism.”
They conclude:
“Home Secretary, in making your decision as to extradition, do not make yourself, your government, and your country complicit in the slow-motion execution of this award-winning journalist, arguably the foremost publisher of our time. Do not extradite Julian Assange; free him.”
Julian Assange remains in High Security Belmarsh Prison awaiting Priti Patel’s decision, which is due any day.
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Sign the petition:
https://dontextraditeassange.com/petition/
If extradited to the United States, Julian Assange, father of two young British children, would face a sentence of 175 years in prison merely for receiving and publishing truthful information that revealed US war crimes.
UK District Judge Vanessa Baraitser has ruled that "it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America".
Amnesty International states, “Were Julian Assange to be extradited or subjected to any other transfer to the USA, Britain would be in breach of its obligations under international law.”
Human Rights Watch says, “The only thing standing between an Assange prosecution and a major threat to global media freedom is Britain. It is urgent that it defend the principles at risk.”
The NUJ has stated that the “US charges against Assange pose a huge threat, one that could criminalise the critical work of investigative journalists & their ability to protect their sources”.
Julian will not survive extradition to the United States.
The UK is required under its international obligations to stop the extradition. Article 4 of the US-UK extradition treaty says: "Extradition shall not be granted if the offense for which extradition is requested is a political offense."
The decision to either Free Assange or send him to his death is now squarely in the political domain. The UK must not send Julian to the country that conspired to murder him in London.
The United Kingdom can stop the extradition at any time. It must comply with Article 4 of the US-UK Extradition Treaty and Free Julian Assange.
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Dear friends,
Recently I’ve started working with the Coalition to Free Ruchell Magee. On March 17, Ruchell turned 83. He’s been imprisoned for 59 years, and now walks with a walker. He is no threat to society if released. Ruchell was in the Marin County Courthouse on August 7, 1970, the morning Jonathan Jackson took it over in an effort to free his older brother, the internationally known revolutionary prison writer, George Jackson. Ruchell joined Jonathan and was the only survivor of the shooting that ensued. He has been locked up ever since and denied parole 13 times. On March 19, the Coalition to Free Ruchell Magee held a webinar for Ruchell for his 83rd birthday, which was a terrific event full of information and plans for building the campaign to Free Ruchell. (For information about his case, please visit: www.freeruchellmagee.org.)
Below are two ways to stream this historic webinar, plus
• a petition you can sign
• a portal to send a letter to Governor Newsom
• a Donate button to support his campaign
• a link to our campaign website.
Please take a moment and help.
Note: We will soon have t-shirts to sell to raise money for legal expenses.
Here is the YouTube link to view the March 19 Webinar:
https://youtu.be/4u5XJzhv9Hc
Here is the Facebook link:
https://fb.watch/bTMr6PTuHS/
Sign the petition to Free Ruchell:
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/governor-newsom-free-82-year-old-prisoner-ruchell-magee-unjustly-incarcerated-for-58-years
Write to Governor Newsom’s office:
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/free-82-year-old-prisoner-ruchell-magee-unjustly-incarcerated-for-58-years?source=direct_link
Donate:
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=GVZG9CZ375PVG
Ruchell’s Website:
www.freeruchellmagee.org
Thanks,
Charlie Hinton
ch.lifewish@gmail.com
No one ever hurt their eyes by looking on the bright side
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Tell Congress to Help #FreeDanielHale
U.S. Air Force veteran, Daniel Everette Hale has recently completed his first year of a 45-month prison sentence for exposing the realities of U.S drone warfare. Daniel Hale is not a spy, a threat to society, or a bad faith actor. His revelations were not a threat to national security. If they were, the prosecution would be able to identify the harm caused directly from the information Hale made public. Our members of Congress can urge President Biden to commute Daniel's sentence! Either way, Daniel deserves to be free.
https://oneclickpolitics.global.ssl.fastly.net/messages/edit?promo_id=16979
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Laws are created to be followed
by the poor.
Laws are made by the rich
to bring some order to exploitation.
The poor are the only law abiders in history.
When the poor make laws
the rich will be no more.
—Roque Dalton Presente!
(May 14, 1935 – Assassinated May 10, 1975)[1]
[1] Roque Dalton was a Salvadoran poet, essayist, journalist, political activist, and intellectual. He is considered one of Latin America's most compelling poets.
Poems:
http://cordite.org.au/translations/el-salvador-tragic/
About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roque_Dalton
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“In His Defense” The People vs. Kevin Cooper
A film by Kenneth A. Carlson
Teaser is now streaming at:
https://www.carlsonfilms.com
Posted by: Death Penalty Focus Blog, January 10, 2022
https://deathpenalty.org/teaser-for-a-kevin-cooper-documentary-is-now-streaming/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=1c7299ab-018c-4780-9e9d-54cab2541fa0
“In his Defense,” a documentary on the Kevin Cooper case, is in the works right now, and California filmmaker Kenneth Carlson has released a teaser for it on CarlsonFilms.com
Just over seven months ago, California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered an independent investigation of Cooper’s death penalty case. At the time, he explained that, “In cases where the government seeks to impose the ultimate punishment of death, I need to be satisfied that all relevant evidence is carefully and fairly examined.”
That investigation is ongoing, with no word from any of the parties involved on its progress.
Cooper has been on death row since 1985 for the murder of four people in San Bernardino County in June 1983. Prosecutors said Cooper, who had escaped from a minimum-security prison and had been hiding out near the scene of the murder, killed Douglas and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, and 10-year-old Chris Hughes, a friend who was spending the night at the Ryen’s. The lone survivor of the attack, eight-year-old Josh Ryen, was severely injured but survived.
For over 36 years, Cooper has insisted he is innocent, and there are serious questions about evidence that was missing, tampered with, destroyed, possibly planted, or hidden from the defense. There were multiple murder weapons, raising questions about how one man could use all of them, killing four people and seriously wounding one, in the amount of time the coroner estimated the murders took place.
The teaser alone gives a good overview of the case, and helps explain why so many believe Cooper was wrongfully convicted.
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New Legal Filing in Mumia’s Case
The following statement was issued January 4, 2022, regarding new legal filings by attorneys for Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Campaign to Bring Mumia Home
In her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston wrote, “There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.”
With continued pressure from below, 2022 will be the year that forces the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and the Philly Police Department to answer questions about why they framed imprisoned radio journalist and veteran Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal. Abu-Jamal’s attorneys have filed a Pennsylvania Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) petition focused entirely on the six boxes of case files that were found in a storage room of the DA’s office in late December 2018, after the case being heard before Judge Leon Tucker in the Court of Common Pleas concluded. (tinyurl.com/zkyva464)
The new evidence contained in the boxes is damning, and we need to expose it. It reveals a pattern of misconduct and abuse of authority by the prosecution, including bribery of the state’s two key witnesses, as well as racist exclusion in jury selection—a violation of the landmark Supreme Court decision Batson v. Kentucky. The remedy for each or any of the claims in the petition is a new trial. The court may order a hearing on factual issues raised in the claims. If so, we won’t know for at least a month.
The new evidence includes a handwritten letter penned by Robert Chobert, the prosecution’s star witness. In it, Chobert demands to be paid money promised him by then-Prosecutor Joseph McGill. Other evidence includes notes written by McGill, prominently tracking the race of potential jurors for the purposes of excluding Black people from the jury, and letters and memoranda which reveal that the DA’s office sought to monitor, direct, and intervene in the outstanding prostitution charges against its other key witness Cynthia White.
Mumia Abu-Jamal was framed and convicted 40 years ago in 1982, during one of the most corrupt and racist periods in Philadelphia’s history—the era of cop-turned-mayor Frank Rizzo. It was a moment when the city’s police department, which worked intimately with the DA’s office, routinely engaged in homicidal violence against Black and Latinx detainees, corruption, bribery and tampering with evidence to obtain convictions.
In 1979, under pressure from civil rights activists, the Department of Justice filed an unprecedented lawsuit against the Philadelphia police department and detailed a culture of racist violence, widespread corruption and intimidation that targeted outspoken people like Mumia. Despite concurrent investigations by the FBI and Pennsylvania’s Attorney General and dozens of police convictions, the power and influence of the country’s largest police association, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) prevailed.
Now, more than 40 years later, we’re still living with the failure to uproot these abuses. Philadelphia continues to fear the powerful FOP, even though it endorses cruelty, racism, and multiple injustices. A culture of fear permeates the “city of brotherly love.”
The contents of these boxes shine light on decades of white supremacy and rampant lawlessness in U.S. courts and prisons. They also hold enormous promise for Mumia’s freedom and challenge us to choose Love, Not PHEAR. (lovenotphear.com/) Stay tuned.
—Workers World, January 4, 2022
https://www.workers.org/2022/01/60925/
Pa. Supreme Court denies widow’s appeal to remove Philly DA from Abu-Jamal case
Abu Jamal was convicted by a jury of first-degree murder of Faulkner in 1982. Over the past four decades, five of his appeals have been quashed.
In 1989, the state’s highest court affirmed Abu-Jamal’s death penalty conviction, and in 2012, he was re-sentenced to life in prison.
Abu-Jamal, 66, remains in prison. He can appeal to the state Supreme Court, or he can file a new appeal.
KYW Newsradio reached out to Abu-Jamal’s attorneys for comment. They shared this statement in full:
“Today, the Superior Court concluded that it lacked jurisdiction to consider issues raised by Mr. Abu-Jamal in prior appeals. Two years ago, the Court of Common Pleas ordered reconsideration of these appeals finding evidence of an appearance of judicial bias when the appeals were first decided. We are disappointed in the Superior Court’s decision and are considering our next steps.
“While this case was pending in the Superior Court, the Commonwealth revealed, for the first time, previously undisclosed evidence related to Mr. Abu-Jamal’s case. That evidence includes a letter indicating that the Commonwealth promised its principal witness against Mr. Abu-Jamal money in connection with his testimony. In today’s decision, the Superior Court made clear that it was not adjudicating the issues raised by this new evidence. This new evidence is critical to any fair determination of the issues raised in this case, and we look forward to presenting it in court.”
https://www.audacy.com/kywnewsradio/news/local/pennsylvania-superior-court-rejects-mumia-abu-jamal-appeal-ron-castille
Questions and comments may be sent to: info@freedomarchives.org
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Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier.
https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition
Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603
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How long will he still be with us? How long will the genocide continue?
By Michael Moore
American Indian Movement leader, Leonard Peltier, at 77 years of age, came down with Covid-19 this weekend. Upon hearing this, I broke down and cried. An innocent man, locked up behind bars for 44 years, Peltier is now America’s longest-held political prisoner. He suffers in prison tonight even though James Reynolds, one of the key federal prosecutors who sent Peltier off to life in prison in 1977, has written to President Biden and confessed to his role in the lies, deceit, racism and fake evidence that together resulted in locking up our country’s most well-known Native American civil rights leader. Just as South Africa imprisoned for more than 27 years its leading voice for freedom, Nelson Mandela, so too have we done the same to a leading voice and freedom fighter for the indigenous people of America. That’s not just me saying this. That’s Amnesty International saying it. They placed him on their political prisoner list years ago and continue to demand his release.
And it’s not just Amnesty leading the way. It’s the Pope who has demanded Leonard Peltier’s release. It’s the Dalai Lama, Jesse Jackson, and the President Pro-Tempore of the US Senate, Sen. Patrick Leahy. Before their deaths, Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa and Bishop Desmond Tutu pleaded with the United States to free Leonard Peltier. A worldwide movement of millions have seen their demands fall on deaf ears.
And now the calls for Peltier to be granted clemency in DC have grown on Capitol Hill. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI), the head of the Senate committee who oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs, has also demanded Peltier be given his freedom. Numerous House Democrats have also written to Biden.
The time has come for our President to act; the same President who appointed the first-ever Native American cabinet member last year and who halted the building of the Keystone pipeline across Native lands. Surely Mr. Biden is capable of an urgent act of compassion for Leonard Peltier — especially considering that the prosecutor who put him away in 1977 now says Peltier is innocent, and that his US Attorney’s office corrupted the evidence to make sure Peltier didn’t get a fair trial. Why is this victim of our judicial system still in prison? And now he is sick with Covid.
For months Peltier has begged to get a Covid booster shot. Prison officials refused. The fact that he now has COVID-19 is a form of torture. A shame hangs over all of us. Should he now die, are we all not complicit in taking his life?
President Biden, let Leonard Peltier go. This is a gross injustice. You can end it. Reach deep into your Catholic faith, read what the Pope has begged you to do, and then do the right thing.
For those of you reading this, will you join me right now in appealing to President Biden to free Leonard Peltier? His health is in deep decline, he is the voice of his people — a people we owe so much to for massacring and imprisoning them for hundreds of years.
The way we do mass incarceration in the US is abominable. And Leonard Peltier is not the only political prisoner we have locked up. We have millions of Black and brown and poor people tonight in prison or on parole and probation — in large part because they are Black and brown and poor. THAT is a political act on our part. Corporate criminals and Trump run free. The damage they have done to so many Americans and people around the world must be dealt with.
This larger issue is one we MUST take on. For today, please join me in contacting the following to show them how many millions of us demand that Leonard Peltier has suffered enough and should be free:
President Joe Biden
Phone: 202-456-1111
E-mail: At this link
https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland
Phone: 202-208-3100
E-mail: feedback@ios.doi.gov
Attorney General Merrick Garland
Phone: 202-514-2000
E-mail: At this link
https://www.justice.gov/doj/webform/your-message-department-justice
I’ll end with the final verse from the epic poem “American Names” by Stephen Vincent Benet:
I shall not rest quiet in Montparnasse.
I shall not lie easy at Winchelsea.
You may bury my body in Sussex grass,
You may bury my tongue at Champmedy.
I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass.
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee.
PS. Also — watch the brilliant 1992 documentary by Michael Apted and Robert Redford about the framing of Leonard Peltier— “Incident at Oglala”
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Union Membership—2021
Bureau of Labor Statistics
U.S. Department of Labor
For release 10:00 a.m. (ET) Thursday, January 20, 2022
Technical information:
(202) 691-6378 • cpsinfo@bls.gov • www.bls.gov/cps
Media contact:
(202) 691-5902 • PressOffice@bls.gov
In 2021, the number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions continued to decline (-241,000) to 14.0 million, and the percent who were members of unions—the union membership rate—was 10.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The rate is down from 10.8 percent in 2020—when the rate increased due to a disproportionately large decline in the total number of nonunion workers compared with the decline in the number of union members. The 2021 unionization rate is the same as the 2019 rate of 10.3 percent. In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent and there were 17.7 million union workers.
These data on union membership are collected as part of the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly sample survey of about 60,000 eligible households that obtains information on employment and unemployment among the nation’s civilian noninstitutional population age 16 and over. For further information, see the Technical Note in this news release.
Highlights from the 2021 data:
• The union membership rate of public-sector workers (33.9 percent) continued to be more than five times higher than the rate of private-sector workers (6.1 percent). (See table 3.)
• The highest unionization rates were among workers in education, training, and library occupations (34.6 percent) and protective service occupations (33.3 percent). (See table 3.)
• Men continued to have a higher union membership rate (10.6 percent) than women (9.9 percent). The gap between union membership rates for men and women has narrowed considerably since 1983 (the earliest year for which comparable data are available), when rates for men and women were 24.7 percent and 14.6 percent, respectively. (See table 1.)
• Black workers remained more likely to be union members than White, Asian, or Hispanic workers. (See table 1.)
• Nonunion workers had median weekly earnings that were 83 percent of earnings for workers who were union members ($975 versus $1,169). (The comparisons of earnings in this news release are on a broad level and do not control for many factors that can be important in explaining earnings differences.) (See table 2.)
• Among states, Hawaii and New York continued to have the highest union membership rates (22.4 percent and 22.2 percent, respectively), while South Carolina and North Carolina continued to have the lowest (1.7 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively). (See table 5.)
Industry and Occupation of Union Members
In 2021, 7.0 million employees in the public sector belonged to unions, the same as in the private sector. (See table 3.)
Union membership decreased by 191,000 over the year in the public sector. The public-sector union membership rate declined by 0.9 percentage point in 2021 to 33.9 percent, following an increase of 1.2 percentage points in 2020. In 2021, the union membership rate continued to be highest in local government (40.2 percent), which employs many workers in heavily unionized occupations, such as police officers, firefighters, and teachers.
The number of union workers employed in the private sector changed little over the year. However, the number of private-sector nonunion workers increased in 2021. The private-sector unionization rate declined by 0.2 percentage point in 2021 to 6.1 percent, slightly lower than its 2019 rate of 6.2 percent. Industries with high unionization rates included utilities (19.7 percent), motion pictures and sound recording industries (17.3 percent), and transportation and warehousing (14.7 percent). Low unionization rates occurred in finance (1.2 percent), professional and technical services (1.2 percent), food services and drinking places (1.2 percent), and insurance (1.5 percent).
Among occupational groups, the highest unionization rates in 2021 were in education, training, and library occupations (34.6 percent) and protective service occupations (33.3 percent). Unionization rates were lowest in food preparation and serving related occupations (3.1 percent); sales and related occupations (3.3 percent); computer and mathematical occupations (3.7 percent); personal care and service occupations (3.9 percent); and farming, fishing, and forestry occupations (4.0 percent).
Selected Characteristics of Union Members
In 2021, the number of men who were union members, at 7.5 million, changed little, while the number of women who were union members declined by 182,000 to 6.5 million. The unionization rate for men decreased by 0.4 percentage point over the year to 10.6 percent. In 2021, women’s union membership rate declined by 0.6 percentage point to 9.9 percent. The 2021 decreases in union membership rates for men and women reflect increases in the total number of nonunion workers. The rate for men is below the 2019 rate (10.8 percent), while the rate for women is above the 2019 rate (9.7 percent). (See table 1.)
Among major race and ethnicity groups, Black workers continued to have a higher union membership rate in 2021 (11.5 percent) than White workers (10.3 percent), Asian workers (7.7 percent), and Hispanic workers (9.0 percent). The union membership rate declined by 0.4 percentage point for White workers, by 0.8 percentage point for Black workers, by 1.2 percentage points for Asian workers, and by 0.8 percentage point for Hispanic workers. The 2021 rates for Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics are little or no different from 2019, while the rate for Asians is lower.
By age, workers ages 45 to 54 had the highest union membership rate in 2021, at 13.1 percent. Younger workers—those ages 16 to 24—had the lowest union membership rate, at 4.2 percent.
In 2021, the union membership rate for full-time workers (11.1 percent) continued to be considerably higher than that for part-time workers (6.1 percent).
Union Representation
In 2021, 15.8 million wage and salary workers were represented by a union, 137,000 less than in 2020. The percentage of workers represented by a union was 11.6 percent, down by 0.5 percentage point from 2020 but the same as in 2019. Workers represented by a union include both union members (14.0 million) and workers who report no union affiliation but whose jobs are covered by a union contract (1.8 million). (See table 1.)
Earnings
Among full-time wage and salary workers, union members had median usual weekly earnings of $1,169 in 2021, while those who were not union members had median weekly earnings of $975. In addition to coverage by a collective bargaining agreement, these earnings differences reflect a variety of influences, including variations in the distributions of union members and nonunion employees by occupation, industry, age, firm size, or geographic region. (See tables 2 and 4.)
Union Membership by State
In 2021, 30 states and the District of Columbia had union membership rates below that of the U.S. average, 10.3 percent, while 20 states had rates above it. All states in both the East South Central and West South Central divisions had union membership rates below the national average, while all states in both the Middle Atlantic and Pacific divisions had rates above it. (See table 5 and chart 1.)
Ten states had union membership rates below 5.0 percent in 2021. South Carolina had the lowest rate (1.7 percent), followed by North Carolina (2.6 percent) and Utah (3.5 percent). Two states had union membership rates over 20.0 percent in 2021: Hawaii (22.4 percent) and New York (22.2 percent).
In 2021, about 30 percent of the 14.0 million union members lived in just two states (California at 2.5 million and New York at 1.7 million). However, these states accounted for about 17 percent of wage and salary employment nationally.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic Impact on 2021 Union Members Data
Union membership data for 2021 continue to reflect the impact on the labor market of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Comparisons with union membership measures for 2020, including metrics such as the union membership rate and median usual weekly earnings, should be interpreted with caution. The onset of the pandemic in 2020 led to an increase in the unionization rate due to a disproportionately large decline in the number of nonunion workers compared with the decline in the number of union members. The decrease in the rate in 2021 reflects a large gain in the number of nonunion workers and a decrease in the number of union workers. More information on labor market developments in recent months is available at:
www.bls.gov/covid19/effects-of-covid-19-pandemic-and- response-on-the-employment-situation-news-release.htm.
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
- Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
- San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
- Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
Know Your Rights Materials
The NLG maintains a library of basic Know-Your-Rights guides.
- Know Your Rights During Covid-19
- You Have The Right To Remain Silent: A Know Your Rights Guide for Encounters with Law Enforcement
- Operation Backfire: For Environmental and Animal Rights Activists
WEBINAR: Federal Repression of Activists & Their Lawyers: Legal & Ethical Strategies to Defend Our Movements: presented by NLG-NYC and NLG National Office
We also recommend the following resources:
Center for Constitutional Rights
Civil Liberties Defense Center
- Grand Juries: Slideshow
Grand Jury Resistance Project
Katya Komisaruk
Movement for Black Lives Legal Resources
Tilted Scales Collective
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1) 3 N.Y.C. Detainees Die in Less Than a Week, Bringing Year’s Total to 9
The deaths came just a week after a judge gave New York City until the fall to come up with a plan for fixing Rikers to avoid a federal takeover.
By Jonah E. Bromwich and Jan Ransom, June 22, 2022
In the week since a federal judge granted New York City at least another six months to reform its troubled jail system, three people who had recently been held at the troubled Rikers Island jail complex have died.
Anibal Carrasquillo, 39, died on Monday, the city’s Department of Correction said. The cause was suspected to be a drug overdose, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. Albert Drye, 52, died on Tuesday at the Bellevue Prison Hospital Ward, according to the Legal Aid Society, which was representing him. The cause of death is unknown.
The third incarcerated person, Antonio Bradley, 28, died on June 18, three days after being granted compassionate release from Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, according to the Department of Correction.
The fatalities bring the number of people who have died after being held by the city this year to nine, three more than had died at this time last year. The deaths all came in the week after the judge, Laura T. Swain, had scheduled a status conference about the Rikers Island jail complex for November, likely forestalling any federal takeover of the troubled facility until the winter or later.
Mayor Eric Adams, in a statement last week, celebrated the judge’s order, saying that his administration had “a strategy to aggressively untangle the dysfunction that has plagued the jails and set them on a path of real enduring reform.” Shortly before Mr. Bradley’s death was reported, the mayor announced that he would tour two jails on Rikers Island Wednesday afternoon.
Members of a jail oversight agency said the growing death toll on Rikers should compel the judge to reconsider and appoint an independent leader to run the correction system. Last year, 16 people died after being held in New York City’s jails, the highest toll since 2013.
“The tragedies of the past days on Rikers Island should be of concern to every New Yorker,” said Dr. Robert Cohen, a member of the board. “Thoughts and prayers are important but they are not enough. The City of New York, despite their best efforts, is not capable of maintaining a minimally safe environment for people in custody.”
The Department of Correction did not immediately respond to requests for comment on staff shortages or actions leading up to the deaths.
Mr. Drye had been held since May 17 on assault, harassment and weapons charges in Manhattan and the Bronx, had been seriously ill and hospitalized for several weeks. Before he was hospitalized, he had been detained at the Eric M. Taylor Center, a facility on Rikers Island where new detainees are held and assessed before being permanently housed.
The city was held in contempt last month by a state judge for its failure to administer proper medical care to those in its custody. In April, the month before Mr. Drye was arrested, 11,789 medical appointments were missed in city jails, according to city data, thousands of them because correction officers were not available to escort incarcerated people to the clinic.
On Sunday night, just two days before Mr. Drye’s death, Mr. Carrasquillo, who had been held at another Rikers facility on a $50,000 bail on charges including robbery, drug possession and assault, was last seen alive shortly after 10 p.m., a person with knowledge of the incident said. Shortly before 1 a.m. on Monday, a jail supervisor found Mr. Carrasquillo unresponsive in his cell, the person said.
A second official with knowledge of the matter said that jail staff had not adequately toured the housing area between when Mr. Carrasquillo was last seen alive and when he was discovered. Mr. Carrasquillo was pronounced dead at 1:31 a.m.
Earlier this month, on June 10, before Mr. Carrasquillo’s death, Mr. Bradley was in a Bronx courthouse eight miles away. His lawyer, Bruce Klein, had just informed him that the judge on his firearms case was out sick and that the next court date would be in two weeks. During that conversation, Mr. Klein said his client did not give any indication that he was suicidal.
Soon after, Mr. Bradley, who had been held at Rikers since October, was returned to the courthouse holding pen, which is managed by correction officers, where he hanged himself.
Video evidence suggests that Mr. Bradley was unsupervised in the cell for six to nine minutes before staff found him hanging, according to a person familiar withan investigation into his death.
Mr. Bradley was cut down by correction officers, who administered CPR, and was taken to the hospital, where he was put on life support, according to the Department of Correction. The department did not respond to a question about the circumstances of his death.
“He was a decent human being,” Mr. Klein said. “It’s a tragedy.”
Mr. Bradley was released from custody on June 15 to the hospital, where he died. His death was first reported by The New York Daily News.
“It is very disheartening to hear about the passing of Mr. Bradley,” Louis A. Molina, the Correction Department commissioner, said in a statement, offering condolences and prayers to his family.
After months of similar episodes, the United States Attorney in Manhattan in April raised the possibility of a federal court takeover. Judge Swain required the city to file a plan last month, indicating how it would turn things around at Rikers. That plan was met with frustration by a Legal Aid lawyer, Mary Lynne Werlwas, who told the court that she would seek an order of contempt and the appointment of an outside official to take over the jails or some other appropriate remedy.
Judge Swain denied her request to set a timetable for those actions at least until Nov. 17, when there will be a status conference about whether the city’s plan has been implemented successfully. The judge wrote that only at that point would she consider whether setting such a schedule was warranted.
Federal court takeovers of jails and prisons are unusual, and judges are obligated to demonstrate that several factors make such remedies necessary. Among those tests are that there are no lesser alternatives to a so-called receivership, and that the government is acting in bad faith and will not comply with court orders.
“It’s important for the judge to show that she has tried everything and everything that she has tried has come up short,” said Hernandez D. Stroud, counsel of the Justice Program of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. “It is reserved for when the court reaches the end of the road with nowhere to turn.”
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Today, Justice Alito ruled that you have constitutional rights, but no right to know what they are.
By By Elie Mystal, June 24, 2022
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/supreme-court-miranda-rights/
In 1966, the Supreme Court created the now famous “Miranda warnings,” in the seminal case Miranda v. Arizona. The Constitution had arguably always protected the right against self-incrimination in the Fifth Amendment, but the white men who wrote the Constitution never provided practical protections of that right. In Miranda, Earl Warren invented, out of whole cloth, a set of instructions the government would be required to give people in order to protect their rights against self-incrimination, and their right to an attorney (which is found in the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution). Everybody has heard of these warnings: “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you?” Before the decision in Miranda, police would routinely arrest people and bully them into making incriminating statements without allowing them to talk to an attorney. Ernesto Miranda himself was questioned at his home, “voluntarily” taken to the police station, placed in a lineup, and eventually convinced to sign a confession, without his ever once talking to a lawyer. The idea was to end the practice of law enforcement tricking people out of their constitutional rights.
Today, in a case called Vega v. Tekoh, the Supreme Court rejects that idea. According to the conservative majority, the Constitution still protects people from incriminating themselves. But now, if cops trick or coerce or threaten or brutalize people into giving up their constitutional rights without telling them they have a right to make the intimidation stop, there’s no way to sue the government for the failure to inform victims of their rights. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for a 6-3 conservative majority, might as well have channeled Agent Smith’s famous line from The Matrix: “What good is a phone call if you are unable to speak?”
In Vega, Alito argues that the failure to give Miranda warnings does not result in a Section 1983 cause of action against the government. Section 1983 is the main vehicle for people to sue the government when government actors violate constitutional rights. Alito argues that the Miranda warnings are not a constitutional “right”; they’re just a thing cops can say if they feel like it. If cops violate constitutional rights under the Fifth or Sixth Amendments, victims can still sue the government (if they can somehow prove a violation occurred), or move to have the evidence unconstitutionally obtained against them at trial excluded. But Alito rejects Miranda’s presumption that constitutional rights are violated if law enforcement fails to give the warning. Essentially, Alito argues that you have constitutional rights, but no right to know what those are.
I couldn’t invent a better example of the difference between a Supreme Court controlled by conservatives versus one controlled by liberals than the one given by the court in its decisions in Vega versus Miranda. People often forget that the Miranda case itself was a 5-4 decision over conservative objections. Here, Vega is 6-3, functionally overturning Miranda with all the conservatives in lockstep. If you want robust protections of people’s rights, there is simply no substitute for having liberals control the court. If you want robust protections of gun rights and corporate rights and Jesus rights, by all means, continue allowing the current conservative majority to rule over all.
Now, most people reading already understand that the current court is more conservative and reactionary than the court in 1966. But the opinion in Vega shows how radical and extremist conservatives are even compared to the conservative court of the 2000s. That’s because Vega also functionally overturns Dickerson v. United States, a 2000 case that upheld Miranda warnings. That case was decided 7-2, by the very same court who would go on to anoint George W. Bush as president of the United States later in the year. Ultraconservative William Rehnquist even wrote the majority opinion defending Miranda warnings.
Oh, Rehnquist only grudgingly upheld Miranda. He didn’t give Miranda a ringing endorsement. Instead, he upheld it simply because it was precedent, and that precedent was simply too popular to overturn. He wrote: “Miranda has become embedded in routine police practice to the point where the warnings have become part of our national culture.”
In her dissent in Vega, Justice Elena Kagan doesn’t spend as much time defending Miranda as she does defending Dickerson. “Dickerson v. United States tells us in no uncertain terms that Miranda is a ‘constitutional rule,’” she writes. Kagan points out that we know the Miranda warnings are part of the constitutional protections enshrined in the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, because courts have turned back legislative attempts to weaken Miranda, including the federal attempt that was at issue in the Dickerson case.
But Alito and the conservative majority (which included Justice Clarence Thomas, who was one of the two dissenters in Dickerson) simply don’t care. Alito recasts the Dickerson opinion as upholding Miranda warnings as an option, not a requirement.
That is the essential difference between the conservatives on the court 20 years ago and the ones appointed this century. They used to do everything they could to bend or break the law toward the Republican Party outcomes they desired, but felt somewhat constrained by prior Supreme Court precedent and overwhelming popular will. Now, they push the law toward their preferred conservative outcomes without regard for past precedent or popular opinion. They have the votes, they have the power, to do what they want when they want to.
The practical effect of this decision will be to unleash already brutal American cops to use even more intimidation and coercion to secure (potentially false) confessions than they already do. Paradoxically, this ruling will do more to deny the constitutional rights of people who are innocent than to infringe those of people guilty of crime. That’s because professional criminals, for the most part, know their constitutional rights. They know they shouldn’t talk to the cops; they know the only word they should say to the police is “lawyer.” You don’t have to tell a street-level drug dealer what to do if he gets held by the cops; he already knows. And you don’t have to tell a banker or a person accused of “white collar” crime what to do either: Those folks have their lawyers on speed dial.
Alito and conservative legal media will hide behind the fact that the Fifth and Sixth amendments still exist. They’ll say people still have the right to remain silent. And that will be true for their rich friends and for people with enough “street smarts” to know how the system works.
But the whole point of Miranda is that constitutional rights should not be tied to whether you have the education and training to know they exist. My kids will know not to talk to cops, because I tell them that every time we see one (I warn my kids about the cops the way other parents warn their kids about taking candy from strangers). But what about kids who don’t have lawyers for parents? Do those kids get less Constitution than mine?
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Large, simultaneous heat waves are growing more common. China, America, Europe and India have all been stricken recently, and scientists are starting to understand why certain far-flung places get hit at once.
By Raymond Zhong, June 24, 2022
Millions of Americans are once again in the grips of dangerous heat. Hot air blanketed Europe last weekend, causing parts of France and Spain to feel the way it usually does in July or August. High temperatures scorched northern and central China even as heavy rains caused flooding in the country’s south. Some places in India began experiencing extraordinary heat in March, though the start of the monsoon rains has brought some relief.
It’s too soon to say whether climate change is directly to blame for causing severe heat waves in these four powerhouse economies — which also happen to be the top emitters of heat-trapping gases — at roughly the same time, just days into summer.
While global warming is making extreme heat more common worldwide, deeper analysis is required to tell scientists whether specific weather events were made more likely or more intense because of human-induced warming. (A team of researchers who studied this spring’s devastating heat in India found that climate change had made it 30 times as likely to occur.)
Even so, concurrent heat waves seem to be hitting certain groups of far-flung places with growing frequency of late, for reasons related to the jet stream and other rivers of air that influence weather systems worldwide.
Studies have shown that parts of North America, Europe and Asia are linked this way. Scientists are still trying to determine how these patterns might change as the planet warms further, but for now it means simultaneous heat extremes will probably continue affecting these places where so much of the world’s economic activity is concentrated.
“To have a heat wave, we need the heat, and we need the atmospheric circulation pattern that allows the heat to accumulate,” said Daniel E. Horton, a climate scientist at Northwestern University. With global warming, he said, “we’re definitely getting more heat.” But climate change may also be affecting the way this heat is distributed around the world by globe-circling air currents, he said.
Simultaneous weather extremes in numerous locations aren’t just meteorological curiosities. Individual heat waves can lead to illness and death, wildfires, and crop failures. Concurrent ones can threaten global food supplies, which have been under perilous strain this year because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
While heat waves are shaped by complex local factors such as urbanization and land use, scientists no longer have much doubt about whether climate change is making them worse. Soon, the world’s most devastating heat waves may simply have no historical analogue from the time shortly before humans starting pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, some scientists argue, rendering obsolete the question of whether climate change is a main driver.
The warming of recent decades has already made it hard for scientists to know what to call a heat wave and what to treat as simply a new normal for hot weather, said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University.
If the threshold for a heat wave is just the mercury exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit for days in a row, for instance, then it’s “not at all unexpected,” Dr. Dessler said, to see them occurring more regularly in several regions at once. “As time goes on, more and more of the planet will be experiencing those temperatures, until eventually, with enough global warming, every land area in the mid-latitude Northern Hemisphere would be above 100 degrees,” he said.
Yet even when scientists look at how often temperatures exceed a certain level relative to a moving average, they still find a big increase in the frequency of simultaneous heat waves.
One recent study that did this found that the average number of days between May and September with at least one large heat wave in the Northern Hemisphere doubled between the 1980s and the 2010s, to around 152 from 73. But the number of days with two or more heat waves was seven times higher, growing to roughly 143 from 20. That’s nearly every single day from May to September.
The study also found that these concurrent heat waves affected larger areas and were more intense by the 2010s, with peak temperatures that were almost one-fifth higher than in the 1980s. On days when there was at least one large heat wave somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere, there were 3.6 of them happening per day on average, the study found.
These “dramatic” increases came as a surprise, said Deepti Singh, a climate scientist at Washington State University and an author of the study.
Dr. Singh and her co-authors also looked at where concurrent heat waves occurred most frequently during those four decades. One pattern stood out: Large simultaneous heat waves struck parts of eastern North America, Europe, and central and eastern Asia increasingly often between 1979 and 2019 — “more than what we would expect simply by the effect of warming,” Dr. Singh said.
The study did not try to predict whether heat waves along this pattern will become more frequent as global warming continues, she said.
Scientists are working to pin down how the meandering of the jet stream, which has long shaped weather patterns for billions of people, might be changing in this warming era. One factor is the rapid warming of the Arctic, which narrows the difference in temperatures between the northern and southern bands of the Northern Hemisphere. How exactly this might be affecting extreme weather is still a matter of debate.
But those temperature differences are key forces driving the winds that keep weather systems moving around the planet. As the temperature differences narrow, these air currents may be slowing down, said Kai Kornhuber, a climate scientist with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. That means extreme events like heat waves and heavy downpours are likely to last longer.
“The longer a heat wave lasts, the more you push natural and societal systems to the edge,” Dr. Kornhuber said.
Climate change already means the world will see more extreme weather events, and more extremes occurring simultaneously, he said. “These circulation changes, they will act on top of it,” he said, “and would make extremes even more severe and even more frequent.”
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Held in the infamous torture prison for 14 years, Mansoor Adayfi says his experience is nothing like the sanitised images released from the camp by the US June 23, 2022
By Mansoor Adayfi, June 23, 2022
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220623-its-time-the-us-released-pictures-of-guantanamos-children-the-waterboarding-the-blood-stained-walls-of-cells-where-prisoners-were-killed/
![US Army Military Police drag a detainee to his cell January 11, 2001 in Camp X-Ray at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba [Petty Officer 1st class Shane T. McCoy/U.S. Navy/Getty Images]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/GettyImages-903041.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1)
US Army Military Police drag a detainee to his cell January 11, 2001 in Camp X-Ray at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba [Petty Officer 1st class Shane T. McCoy/U.S. Navy/Getty Images]
Over the last 20 years, Guantanamo has represented many different things to the world. It is not only the site of one of the most infamous prisons in the 'War on Terror' but joins the ranks of Alcatraz and Robben Island as one of the most notorious in history. Outside observers may know it as a symbol of torture, rendition and indefinite detention without charge or trial; for me however, it was my home for 14 years. Every inch and crevice of the Camp has seared itself into my mind, the images of that brutal reality will forever remain firmly embedded in my mind's eye.
That's why I looked on with interest as a series of secret, never-before-released photos of the original detainees arriving at the detention camp were published.
The images, posted by the New York Times Sunday, show scenes of men in shackles, blindfolds, and ear protectors as they arrived at Guantanamo in 2002. Most of what was done to us there was kept safely out of the glare of the public eye, and the NYT points out that the only images ever leaked from the prison were put out by WikiLeaks in 2011. Why were they taken? Apparently to give Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and other leaders in Washington a look at the start of the wartime detention and interrogation. Perhaps even to comfort them that the "worst of the worst" were being treated how they deserved. One of the first things I did was to share the NYT article with a WhatsApp group I share with former Guantanamo prisoners, asking if they could identify with what they saw in the photos. I knew already it would be triggering, but I needed to hear and know what they thought. The majority reacted the same way I did, and some could not even look, let alone comment. The trauma was too fresh.
What were the reactions? The sentiments ranged from: "I wish I was treated like that", to "Is this a sick joke?". We then spoke about the things that really happened and how they happened. We also floated what the real narrative would sound like, if it were ever to be reported: "We kidnapped them, abused them, tortured them, set their life on fire, released them without charge or trial. Now we are going to sugarcoat what we did to them and use photos to lie to the world."
I personally know the story of each of the men who make up this group of survivors, I lived, prayed and suffered with them. We were all part of each other's stories- like jigsaw pieces in a cursed puzzle. Yet, I always want to hear them again. I want to know about their lives now. I want to understand the impact of those years on the kind of life they're trying to live today. It is a grim reality. We may technically be far from the shores of Cuba, but we are all still imprisoned in many open and hidden ways. The conditions of our release and the choking restrictions on our lives mean we are all living what can only be called "Guantanamo 2.0".
One of the brothers' messaged, he has just read the article. "They can lie to the world here in this life, but a day will come where justice will be served in the Hereafter. And there, in a Divine Court, there will be no lying. It is not over yet."
The photos you see today would have us all looking like pampered terrorists. Look at us clothed in our clean, pressed orange jumpsuits, being cradled like babies, fed and provided the best healthcare. Oh, look at all the freedom to practice religion we've been given as we kneel in prayer, it's almost heartwarming.
Except, those of us who have lived it know the truth of our experiences. Our experiences are unanimous.
"My ribs were broken there, and I still live with the pain of it today" says one. "I still have the scars on my head and body, and I can't explain to my children why," says another.
Then one brother chimes in: "Thankfully I can't even look at the photos since – as you all know – I lost sight in one eye in Guantanamo while being tortured. The vision in my other eye is so weak that I am clinically blind."
Another takes a more reflective approach: "It is one thing to destroy a man, his family and his future… it's another to then release sanitized and misleading images to the world to cover up the evil of what you did."
For me, I have questions. Questions I would like to ask the photographers: How could they bear watching the atrocities that they did while they stood with a wide-angle lens? How could they position themselves to take the perfect pictures while human torture was taking place in front of them? How can they live with themselves?
My call to the public is to dig deeper, and not allow yourselves to be fooled by powerful PR. When a global superpower has access to media resources and the power to control the narrative, go straight to the people on the receiving end and truly open yourself up to all sides of the story. Consider how tightly controlled and censored any public information was about Guantanamo since it opened its doomed doors in 2001. The US military reviewed and had to sign off every single photo taken by pre-approved photographers. The press themselves were not allowed to leave the base until their work was authorised for public consumption. The prisoners were not the only ones not to be free there. The only images of Guantanamo released to the world were vetted and manipulated by the US government, keen to whitewash crimes under the familiar refrain of "fighting terrorism".
There are some photos that will never make it to your screens, however. You will never see the images of the 60 children held in cages, including a three-month-old baby. A glorified human zoo of vulnerable children. You will never see the photo of the 105-year-old prisoner who was beaten so badly that blood poured down his aged and decrepit frame. You will not see the force-feeding. You will not see prisoners sat naked, cold and hungry in the long nights, forced to defecate and sit in their own excrement. You will never see the men who lost their life and had their killings covered up as "suicides". You will not see the photos of the brothers who had their organs removed and their dehumanised bodies gutted from the inside out. You will not see the body bags shipped out of the facility – with just an ISN barcode – back to families who were offered no explanation, let alone remorse or reparation.
No, the Americans torture and kill first and ask questions later. Heck, they don't even bother asking questions. They just release pretty photographs to demonstrate their humanity in the face of our barbarism. The CIA has already destroyed thousands of photographs and videos that attest to the torture that has taken place at CIA black sites across the world.
Here for you now is just one image of our journey to Guantanamo. One stop on the road to Hell. Most of us were wishing the plane would crash and we would die there are then. Nobody sat on those planes. We were gagged, hooded, shackled and chained to the floor. I myself was sporting a sign around my neck saying "BEAT ME". The soldiers enacted the command and then posed for photos with my heaving, bloodied body. They were fond of photography, for sure. They slammed their boots down on our heads. They rode us like animals. Choked us. They pulled down our underwear and took photos while elbowing one another in delight. They carried out their infamous "cavity searches" which involved taking a deep, long look into our anuses. "You like that, huh? Do you want us to do it again?" I will never stop hearing their laughter in my head, they enjoyed nothing more than humiliating us.
We were dragged naked to our cage where we had to wait for hours to be given the infamous orange jumpsuit. This was the first stop in our journey. And the journey was long and brutal.
So now we make a request.
We ask the Pentagon to release the photos of prisoners who died in Guantanamo. The Guantanamo children. The waterboarding. The force-feeding. The blood-stained walls of cells where prisoners were killed. The prisoners who left the cursed facility in wheelchairs because they had their backs literally broken during interrogations. Release the pictures of us when we were kept naked and cold in metal cells for weeks and months in solitary confinement.
Even then, we prisoners produced art. We painted, we drew, we wrote, we sketched. Instead of these photographs, we ask the Pentagon to release the Guantanamo art that we created while detained. Since 2017, lawyers have been petitioning the US government to return it, yet they have refused. Our art is "a threat to American national security." Our art is dangerous … because it tells the truth.
Even after all this, I feel the first victims of the American government are its people. They are being lied to and deceived. They are being fed false tales of the American Dream, freedom, democracy and justice. They are being misled and abused by the powers they have entrusted to safeguard their interests. This is the slow rot of America that is killing it from within.
Without accountability, acknowledgement and openness, the world will never know the truth. Americans will never know the reality of their government, of their country, of the lies which are veiled in plain sight.
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By Michele Goodwin, June 26, 2022
Ms. Goodwin is a chancellor’s professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of “Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood.”
Black women’s sexual subordination and forced pregnancies were foundational to slavery. If cotton was euphemistically king, Black women’s wealth-maximizing forced reproduction was queen.
Ending the forced sexual and reproductive servitude of Black girls and women was a critical part of the passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments. The overturning of Roe v. Wade reveals the Supreme Court’s neglectful reading of the amendments that abolished slavery and guaranteed all people equal protection under the law. It means the erasure of Black women from the Constitution.
Mandated, forced or compulsory pregnancy contravenes enumerated rights in the Constitution, namely the 13th Amendment’s prohibition against involuntary servitude and protection of bodily autonomy, as well as the 14th Amendment’s defense of privacy and freedom.
This Supreme Court demonstrates a selective and opportunistic interpretation of the Constitution and legal history, which ignores the intent of the 13th and 14th Amendments, especially as related to Black women’s bodily autonomy, liberty and privacy which extended beyond freeing them from labor in cotton fields to shielding them from rape and forced reproduction. The horrors inflicted on Black women during slavery, especially sexual violations and forced pregnancies, have been all but wiped from cultural and legal memory. Ultimately, this failure disserves all women.
Overturning the right to abortion reveals the court’s indefensible disregard for the lives of women, girls and people capable of pregnancy, given the possible side effects and consequences of pregnancy, including gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, hemorrhaging, gestational hypertension, ectopic pregnancy and death. State-mandated pregnancy will exacerbate what are already alarming health and dignity harms, especially in states with horrific records of maternal mortality and morbidity.
To understand the gravity of what is at stake, one need only turn to the Supreme Court’s own recent history. In 2016, Justice Stephen Breyer noted in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt that women are 14 times more likely to die by carrying a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion. The United States bears the chilling distinction of being the most dangerous place in the industrialized world to give birth, ranking 55th overall in the world.
Disproportionately, those who will suffer most are poor women, especially Black and brown women. Black women are over three times as likely to die by carrying a pregnancy to term than white women. In Mississippi, a Black woman is 118 times as likely to die by carrying a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion. According to the Mississippi Maternal Mortality Report, from 2013 to 2016, Black women accounted for “nearly 80 percent of pregnancy-related cardiac deaths” in that state. At present, there is only one clinic in the entire state of Mississippi to serve hundreds of thousands of women that might need to terminate a pregnancy.
In 1942, in a unanimous decision delivered by Justice William Douglas in Skinner v. Oklahoma, the court explained that “This case touches a sensitive and important area of human rights,” because Oklahoma sought to sterilize a man who committed petty crimes, including stealing chickens, under its “Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act.”
Justice Douglas wrote that reproductive autonomy and privacy, associated with “marriage and procreation” are “fundamental,” and a state’s interference with such rights “may have subtle, far-reaching and devastating effects.” The justices were concerned about the inequality at the heart of the law, which singled out poor and vulnerable classes of American men.
Now, 80 years later, Mississippi has already made a “clear, pointed, unmistakable discrimination,” as if it has “selected a particular race or nationality for oppressive treatment,” which the court specifically struck down and condemned in Skinner.
What today’s Supreme Court strategically overlooks, legal history reminds us with stunning clarity, specifically the terrifying practices of American slavery, including the stalking, kidnapping, confinement, coercion, rape and torture of Black women and girls. In a commentary reprinted in The New York Times on Jan. 18, 1860, slavery was described as an enterprise that “treats” a Black person “as a chattel, breeds from him with as little regard for marriage ties as if he were an animal, is a moral outlaw.”
Such observations were hardly unique or rare; the Library of Congress offers a comprehensive collection of newspapers, almanacs, daguerreotypes, illustrations, and other materials that comprise the “African-American Mosaic: Influence of Prominent Abolitionists.” Laws that date back to the 1600s expose the sexual depravity and inhumanity of American slavery. In 1662, the Virginia Grand Assembly enacted one of its first “slave laws” to settle this point, expressing, “Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a Negro woman should be slave or free, be it therefore enacted and declared by this present Grand Assembly, that all children born in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother.”
Thomas Jefferson kept copious receipts and documents related to the births of enslaved children at his Monticello plantation, including those who were ultimately discovered to be his own. Not surprising, at the heart of abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude in the 13th Amendment was the forced sexual and reproductive servitude of Black girls and women. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, who led the effort to prohibit slavery and enact the 13th Amendment, was nearly beaten to death in the halls of Congress two days after giving a speech that included the condemning of the culture of sexual violence that dominated slavery.
Black women also spoke out about their reproductive bondage. In 1851, in her compelling speech known as “Ain’t I a Woman,” Sojourner Truth implored the crowd of men and women gathered at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, to understand the gravity and depravity of American slavery on Black women’s reproductive autonomy and privacy. Reported by newspapers and recorded through history, Ms. Truth stated that she had borne 13 children and seen nearly each one ripped from her arms, with no appeal to law or courts. Wasn’t she a woman, too? By the accounts of those gathered, including famed feminist abolitionist Frances Gage, the room stood still and then erupted in applause.
Similarly, in “Incidents In The Life of A Slave Girl,” published in 1861, Harriet Jacobs describes the herculean efforts made to avoid the inevitable sexual assault and rape by her captor. She wrote, “I saw a man forty years my senior daily violating the most sacred commandments of nature. He told me I was his property; that I must be subject to his will in all things.”
And yet, slavery’s vestiges persisted in Southern states, including within the domains of privacy, child rearing and marriage. The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, better known as the “Freedmen’s Bureau,” founded March 1865, collected letters written by Black mothers despairing over vile “apprenticeships” whereby their children were kidnapped and returned to bondage under the guise of traineeships.
Congress followed in 1868 with the ratification of the 14th Amendment, which further secured the interests of Black women who had been subjected to cruelties inflicted on them physically, reproductively, and psychologically.
The 14th Amendment opens with the sentence, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States … are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” and as such would be protected by the laws of the United States. Such language applied to infants born to Black women, changing the provisions of law that had long denied Black children citizenship and the protection of laws. Lawmakers were understandably concerned about overturning states laws that had denied children the dignity of personhood.
Justice Samuel Alito’s claim, that there is no enumeration and original meaning in the Constitution related to involuntary sexual subordination and reproduction, misreads and misunderstands American slavery, the social conditions of that enterprise and legal history. It misinterprets how slavery was abolished, ignores the deliberation and debates within Congress, and craftily renders Black women and their bondage invisible.
It is no hyperbole to say that the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs case is in league with some of the darkest rulings — Plessy v. Ferguson, which opened the floodgates to “separate but equal” laws that ushered in Jim Crow, and Buck v. Bell, which sanctioned states’ eugenics laws permitting forced sterilization of poor women.
The court’s central role — and sadly its complicity — in the harms that predictably will result from this decision cannot be overlooked. The court will be giving its imprimatur to states set to “trigger” laws that will criminally and civilly punish girls and women who want and need to end pregnancies, including victims of rape and incest, while ignoring the deadly traps in which most of those states have historically placed Black women.
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The discovery in San Antonio led to the arrest of three people. It comes as authorities are struggling with a migration surge at the southern border.
By James Dobbins, J. David Goodman and Daniel Victor
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/06/28/us/texas-migrants-dead
Investigators at the scene where dozens of migrants were found dead Monday in or near a tractor-trailer in San Antonio. Credit...Lisa Krantz for The New York Times
At least 16 people from the overheated tractor-trailer were taken to hospitals, where several died.
SAN ANTONIO — The death toll from a scorching-hot tractor-trailer found in the Texas sun rose to at least 50 on Tuesday morning, with three victims confirmed dead at a hospital in San Antonio. The authorities were working to identify the victims and were searching surrounding fields for other passengers who might have jumped or fallen from the truck before it came to a stop.
The bodies of at least 46 people believed to be migrants were found on Monday in and around the abandoned tractor-trailer on the outskirts of San Antonio, officials said. At least 16 others, including children, were taken to hospitals alive but suffering from apparent heat exhaustion and dehydration. Three later died at Baptist Medical Center, a spokeswoman confirmed. Where the 50th victim died was not immediately clear.
Mexico’s foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said on Twitter on Tuesday that the dead included 22 Mexicans, seven Guatemalans and two Hondurans. Others have not yet been identified.
At least three bodies were found strewn along the roadway, with the farthest about 75 yards from the truck, according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. It was possible, the official said, that those found outside had died inside the truck and fallen out when its door opened.
Officials did not identify a cause of death, but suggested that extreme heat most likely contributed. The truck did not have operating air-conditioning, officials said, and the temperature reached 101 degrees in San Antonio on Monday.
The city’s fire chief, Charles Hood, said the people who were transported to hospitals were “hot to the touch.” An employee from a nearby business discovered the truck around 6 p.m. after hearing a cry for help, William McManus, the chief of the San Antonio Police Department, said on Monday.
Border crossings are always dangerous, with hundreds of migrants often packed into vehicles, sometimes without water, fresh air or food. Many have been killed in crashes, while others have overheated. All of the victims on Monday were believed to have crossed into the United States illegally from Mexico.
In other developments:
· Three people have been taken into custody, the police said. It was not yet known if the driver, whom the police were searching for after the truck was abandoned near railroad tracks and auto salvage yards southwest of downtown, was among those detained.
· The Department of Homeland Security was expected to take over the investigation. Agents from Homeland Security Investigations, a unit specialized in smuggling, were collecting evidence inside the trailer on Monday, officials said.
· President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico said his country’s government was ready to support the investigation into the migrant deaths. “I want to express my deepest condolences to the families of Mexican, Guatemalan and Honduran migrants who died yesterday asphyxiated in a trailer,” he said, “a tremendous misfortune.”
· Mayor Ron Nirenberg of San Antonio called the deaths “a horrific human tragedy.” Immigrants making their way to places across the United States often pass through San Antonio, as tens of thousands have done in recent months, according to immigrant advocates. “The plight of migrants seeking refuge is always a humanitarian crisis,” the mayor said.
· The deaths came as state officials are bracing for a new surge in illegal crossings. Federal officials have recorded a record number across the southern border for this point in the year, with more than 44,000 last month just in the area around Del Rio and Eagle Pass, the border closest to San Antonio, which is about 150 miles away. In May, agents apprehended a record high of more than 239,000 migrants along the entire border.