2/06/2023

Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, February 6, 2023

                     

Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal march down JFK Blvd. past the Juanita Kidd Stout Center for Criminal Justice and City Hall, in Philadelphia, Friday, December 16, 2022. .Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer


Save the Date for Action to:


Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!

Thursday, February 16, 2023

This is the hour to fight for Mumia’s freedom. On Thursday, Feb. 16th, longshore workers in ILWU Local 10will shut down the Ports of Oakland and San Francisco to demand freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal.

 

Mumia was framed for killing a police officer. With Tyree Nichols’ murder, we know who the real criminals are!

 

Other actions are being organized for Feb. 16:

 

Unions in South Africa will demonstrate in Pretoria at the U.S. Embassy, and in Durban at the U.S. Consulate.

 

Railroad workers in Japan (in the Doro-Chiba union) will organize a demonstration for Mumia in front of the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo.

 

Bay Area teachers will also teach on Mumia’s case on February 16th.

 

We call on all Bay Area justice supporters to hold the date of Feb. 16 to join the ILWU action for Mumia’s freedom. More info will be sent out shortly.

 

Why now? Judge Lucretia Clemons of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas has ordered the Philadelphia District Attorney to turn over its files—up to 200 boxes—to Mumia’s defense team. His lawyers expect to findfurther evidence that he was framed, that police coerced and bribed witnesses, and that extreme racism andjudicial bias have permeated all the proceedings against him.

 

What you can do now: In addition to participating in the actions of Feb. 16, we can write letters to Judge Clemons to demand Mumia’s immediate release. Here is her address:

 

Judge Lucretia Clemons, Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County 1220 Criminal Justice Center

1301 Filbert St.

Philadelphia, PA 19107

 

Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal www.laboractionmumia.org

(415) 483-4428



Results of Mumia Abu-Jamal's Court Hearing 

December 16, 2022

 

In October, Common Pleas Court Judge Lucretia Clemons strongly signaled in a 30-page opinion that she is leaning toward dismissing the defense appeal.

However, she gave the two sides one last chance Friday, Dec. 16, 2022 to argue their positions. The lawyers did so in a courtroom filled with about 50 Abu-Jamal allies, as well as Faulkner’s widow, Maureen, and a smaller number of her supporters. Mumia Abu-Jamal was not present.

Clemons said she would rule within three months. Before ending the hearing, the judge asked the prosecutors and defense lawyers to make sure that Abu-Jamal’s lawyers had reviewed every scrap of evidence that the District Attorney’s Office could share.

“I do not want to do this again,” she said.

Mobilization4Mumia

Mobilization4Mumia.com

mobilization4mumia@gmail.com

Watch the live-stream of the Dec. 16 Court Rally at youtu.be/zT4AFJY1QCo.

The pivotal hearing follows a hearing Oct. 26 at which the Judge said she intended to dismiss Abu-Jamal’s appeal based on six boxes of evidence found in the District Attorney’s office in Dec. 2018. Clemons repeatedly used procedural rules – rather than allowing for an examination of the new evidence – in her 31-page decision dismissing Mumia Abu-Jamal’s petition for a new trial. (https://tinyurl.com/mtvcrfs4 ) She left the door open on Abu-Jamal’s appeal regarding the prosecution’s selection of jurors based on race.

Abu-Jamal’s attorneys Judith Ritter, Sam Spital  and Bret Grote filed a “ Petitioner’s Response to the Court’s Notice of Intent to Dismiss PCRA Petition” (https://tinyurl.com/mvfstd3w ) challenging her refusal to hold a hearing on the new evidence.

Just this week, the UN Working Group on People of African Descent filed an Amicus brief, a friend of the court document that reinforced the facts and arguments in Mumia's attorney's PRCRA filing. (https://tinyurl.com/587r633p ) They argued that no judicial time bar should be applied when the defendant is a victim of historic racial bias that may have tainted the possibility of a fair trial and due process.

At a press conference Dec. 13 announcing the Amicus brief, the Hon. Wendell Griffen, Division 5 judge of the 6th Judicial Circuit Court for Pulaski County, Arkansas said, “Clemons is only the second Black judge to hear any aspect of Abu-Jamal’s case. Will she have the courage to say that there are too many factors here that compel for Mumia to justify dismissing the motion? This evidentiary hearing is required, because exculpatory evidence was concealed.” (https://youtu.be/Xh38IKVc_oc )

Griffen clarified his statement on Dec 14 during a Democracy Now interview (https://youtu.be/odA_jjMtXQA): “Under a 1963 decision that every law student knows about, and every lawyer that does criminal law practice, in Brady v. Maryland, the Supreme Court of the U.S. held that due process of law is violated when the prosecution conceals evidence relevant to guilt or punishment from the bench. In this country, that kind of precedent should have required Mumia to be released and the Commonwealth decide whether or not to prosecute him based upon having revealed the right evidence. That hasn’t been done.”

More details on Abu-Jamal’s case can be found at 
https://tinyurl.com/ymhvjp8e and https://tinyurl.com/34j645jc.


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John Beadle (Screenshot)

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February 24-25 :: International Days of Action in Solidarity with Ukraine

On the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, activists throughout the world will be mobilizing for protests and education events in solidarity with the Ukrainian people and their struggle to liberate their country. 

The Ukraine Solidarity Network (U.S.) will be organizing actions and events. 

Connect with us!


Solidarity with Ukraine!

Ukraine Solidarity Network Mission Statement 

The Ukraine Solidarity Network (U.S.) reaches out to unions, communities, and individuals from diverse backgrounds to build moral, political, and material support for the people of Ukraine in their resistance to Russia’s criminal invasion and their struggle for an independent, egalitarian, and democratic country. 

The war against Ukraine is a horrible and destructive disaster in the human suffering and economic devastation it has already caused, not only for Ukraine and its people but also in its impact on global hunger and energy supplies, on the world environmental crisis, and on the lives of ordinary Russian people who are sacrificed for Putin’s war. The war also carries the risk of escalation to a direct confrontation among military great powers, with unthinkable possible consequences. 

It is urgent to end this war as soon as possible. This can only be achieved through the success of Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion. Ukraine is fighting a legitimate war of self-defense, indeed a war for its survival as a nation. Calling for “peace” in the abstract is meaningless in these circumstances. 

The Ukraine Solidarity Network (U.S.) supports Ukraine’s war of resistance, its right to determine the means and objectives of its own struggle—and we support its right to obtain the weapons it needs from any available source. We are united in our support for Ukraine’s people, their military and civilian defense against aggression, and for the reconstruction of the country in the interests of the majority of its population. We stand in opposition to all domination by powerful nations and states, including by the United States and its allies, over smaller ones, and oppressed peoples. 

We uphold the following principles and goals: 

1.     We strive for a world free of global power domination at the expense of smaller nations. We oppose war and authoritarianism no matter which state it comes from and support the right of self-determination and self-defense for any oppressed nation.

2.     We support Ukraine’s victory against the Russian invasion, and its right to reparations to meet the costs of reconstruction after the colossal destruction it is suffering. 

3.     The reconstruction of Ukraine also demands the cancellation of its debts to international financial institutions. Aid to Ukraine must come without strings attached, above all without crushing debt burdens. 

4.     We recognize the suffering that this war imposes on people in Russia, most intensely on the ethnic and religious minority sectors of the Russian Federation which are disproportionately impacted by forced military conscription. We salute the brave Russian antiwar forces speaking out and demonstrating in the face of severe repression, and we are encouraged by the popular resistance to the draft of soldiers to become cannon fodder for Putin’s unjust war of aggression. 

5.     We seek to build connections to progressive organizations and movements in Ukraine and with the labor movement, which represents the biggest part of Ukrainian civil society, and to link Ukrainian civic organizations, marginalized communities and trade unions with counterpart organizations in the United States. We support Ukrainian struggles for ensuring just and fair labor rights for its population, especially during the war, as there are no military reasons to implement laws that threaten the social rights of Ukrainians, including those who are fighting in the front lines.

 

Click here to read the complete list of USN Endorsements: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRbP5raef3Aq8-g61fPXUaA_mM_Ymf3HRRPzYDD1XWfEGJLZB082eWPuKDvedQQ4FbhhEsrCT9d8igm/pub

 

Please sign below to add your endorsement:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-ihmachMueK2DKP-lRmPoxURY_xXoG6NyjWi4AfBCbs/viewform?edit_requested=true&fbzx=-9116349616547434088


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SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE
Spring Action Week:  April 15 - 22, 2023
Holloman AFB, Southern New Mexico

Co-sponsored by CODEPINK & Ban Killer Drones

Mark your calendars & Join Us! 

Come for all or part of the week!


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Dear friends and supporters of Kevin Cooper, 

We are horrified by the terrible report put out by the Morrison Foerster (MoFo) law firm who were assigned to conduct an independent investigation of Kevin Cooper’s case. As Kevin’s chief attorney, Norman Hile, says: "In short, Mofo did not do an innocence investigation. Instead, they simply looked at the evidence the prosecution used and then hired some of their own experts to affirm what the prosecution said.”

Attached is a brief press statement issued by Kevin’s defense law firm. If you would like to receive the link to the MoFo report (over 200 pages) let me know and I will email it to you.

More analysis and information will follow soon.

An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:

Mr. Kevin Cooper

C-65304. 4-EB-82

San Quentin State Prison

San Quentin, CA 94974

 

Orrick

January 14, 2023

 

Kevin Cooper has suffered imprisonment as a death row inmate for more than 38 years for a gruesome crime he did not commit. We are therefore extremely disappointed by the special counsel’s report to the Board of Parole Hearings and disagree strongly with its findings.  Most fundamentally, we are shocked that the governor seemingly failed to conduct a thorough review of the report that contains many misstatements and omissions and also ignores the purpose of a legitimate innocence investigation, which is to independently determine whether Mr. Cooper’s conviction was a product of prosecutorial misconduct. The report failed to address that critical issue. The evidence when viewed in this light reveals that Kevin Cooper is innocent of the Ryen/Hughes murders, and that he was framed by the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department. 

 

The special counsel’s investigation ordered by Governor Newsom in May 2021 was not properly conducted and is demonstrably incomplete. It failed to carry out the type of thorough investigation required to explore the extensive evidence that Mr. Cooper was wrongfully convicted. Among other things, the investigation failed to even subpoena and then examine the files of the prosecutors and interview the individuals involved in the prosecution. For unknown reasons and resulting in the tragic and clearly erroneous conclusion that he reached, the special counsel failed to follow the basic steps taken by all innocence investigations that have led to so many exonerations of the wrongfully convicted. 

 

In effect the special counsel’s report says: the Board of Parole Hearings can and will ignore Brady violations, destruction of exculpatory evidence, planted evidence, racial prejudice, prosecutorial malfeasance, and ineffective assistance of trial counsel; since I conclude Cooper is guilty based on what the prosecution says, none of these Constitutional violations matter or will be considered and we have no obligation to investigate these claims.

 

Given that (1) we have already uncovered seven prosecutorial violations of Brady v. Maryland during Mr. Cooper’s prosecution, (2) one of the likely killers has confessed to three different parties that he, rather than Mr. Cooper, was involved in the Ryen/Hughes murders, and (3) there is significant evidence of racial bias in Mr. Cooper’s prosecution, we cannot understand how Mr. Cooper was not declared wrongfully convicted.  The special counsel specifically declined to address ineffective assistance of counsel at the trial or the effect of race discrimination.  We call on the governor to follow through on his word and obtain a true innocence investigation.


Anything But Justice for Black People

Statement from Kevin Cooper concerning recent the decision on his case by Morrison Forrester Law Firm

In 2020 and 2022 Governor Newsom signed in to law the “Racial Justice Act.” This is because the California legislature, and the Governor both acknowledged that the criminal justice system in California is anything but justice for Black people.

On May 28th, 2021, Governor signed an executive order to allow the law firm of Morrison Forrester (MoFo) to do an independent investigation in my case which included reading the trial and appellant transcripts, my innocence claims, and information brought to light by the 9th circuit court of appeals, as well as anything else not in the record, but relevant to this case.

So, Mr. Mark McDonald, Esq, who headed this investigation by Morrison Forrester and his associates at the law firm, went and did what was not part of Governor Newsom’s order, and they did this during the length of time that they were working on this case, and executive order. They worked with law enforcement, current and former members of the L.A. Sheriff’s department, and other law enforcement-type people and organizations.

Law enforcement is the first part of this state’s criminal justice system. A system that both the California legislature, and the Governor acknowledge to be racist, and cannot be trusted to tell the truth, will present, and use false evidence to obtain a conviction, will withhold material exculpatory evidence, and will do everything else that is written in those two racial justice act bills that were signed into law.

So, with the active help of those pro-police, pro-prosecutor, pro-death penalty people working on this case to uphold my bogus conviction we cannot be surprised about the recent decision handed down by them in this case.

While these results are not true but based on the decisions made in 1983 and 1984 by the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office, these 2023 results were not reached by following the executive orders of Governor Newsom.

They ignored his orders and went out to make sure that I am either executed or will never get out of prison.

Governor Newsom cannot let this stand because he did not order a pro-cop or pro-prosecutor investigation, he ordered an independent investigation.

We all know that in truth, law enforcement protects each other, they stand by each other, no matter what city, county, or state that they come from. This is especially true when a Black man like me states that I was framed for murder by law enforcement who just happened to be in the neighboring county.

No one should be surprised about the law enforcement part in this, but we must be outraged by the law firm Morrison Forrester for being a part of this and then try to sell it as legitimate. We ain’t stupid and everyone who knows the truth about my case can see right through this bullshit.

I will continue to fight not only for my life, and to get out of here, but to end the death penalty as well. My entire legal team, family and friends and supporters will continue as well. We have to get to the Governor and let him know that he cannot accept these bogus rehashed results.

MoFo and their pro-prosecution and pro-police friends did not even deal with, or even acknowledge the constitutional violations in my case. They did not mention the seven Brady violations which meant the seven pieces of material exculpatory evidence were withheld from my trial attorney and the jury, and the 1991 California Supreme court that heard and upheld this bogus conviction. Why, one must ask, did they ignore these constitutional violations and everything that we proved in the past that went to my innocence?

Could it be that they just didn’t give a damn about the truth but just wanted to uphold this conviction by any means necessary?

No matter their reasons, they did not do what Governor Gavin Newsom ordered them to do in his May 28, 2021, executive order and we cannot let them get away with this.

I ask each and every person who reads this to contact the Governor’s office and voice your outrage over what MoFo did, and demand that he not accept their decision because they did not do what he ordered them to do which was to conduct an independent investigation!

In Struggle and Solidarity

From Death Row at San Quentin Prison,

Kevin Cooper

 

Call California Governor Newsom:

1-(916) 445-2841

Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish, 

press 6 to speak with a representative and

wait for someone to answer 

(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)

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Ruchell is imprisoned in California, but it is important for the CA governor and Attorney General to receive your petitions, calls, and emails from WHEREVER you live! 

 

SIGN THE PETITION: bit.ly/freeruchell

 

SEND DIGITAL LETTER TO CA GOV. NEWSOM: bit.ly/write4ruchell

 

Call CA Governor Newsom:

CALL (916) 445-2841

Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish, 

press 6 to speak with a representative and

wait for someone to answer (Mon. - Fri., 9 AM - 5 PM PST / 12PM - 8PM EST)

 

Call Governor Newsom's office and use this script: 

 

"Hello, my name is _______ and I'm calling to encourage Governor Gavin Newsom to commute the sentence of prisoner Ruchell Magee #A92051 #T 115, who has served 59 long years in prison. Ruchell is 83 years old, so as an elderly prisoner he faces health risks every day from still being incarcerated for so long. In the interests of justice, I am joining the global call for Ruchell's release due to the length of his confinement and I urge Governor Newsom to take immediate action to commute Ruchell Magee's sentence."

 

Write a one-page letter to Gov Gavin Newsom:

Also, you can write a one-page letter to Governor Gavin Newsom about your support for Ruchell and why he deserves a commutation of his sentence due to his length of confinement (over 59 years), his age (83), and the health risks of an elderly person staying in California’s prisons. 

 

YOUR DIGITAL LETTER can be sent at bit.ly/write4ruchell

 

YOUR US MAIL LETTER can be sent to:

Governor Gavin Newsom

1303 10th Street, Suite 1173

Sacramento, CA 95814

 

Email Governor Newsom

GOV.CA.GOV/CONTACT

 

Navigation: 

Under "What is your request or comment about?", select "Clemency - Commutation of Sentence" and then select "Leave a comment". The next page will allow you to enter a message, where you can demand:

 

Commute the sentence of prisoner Ruchell Magee #A92051 #T 115, who has served 59 long years in prison. 

He was over-charged with kidnapping and robbery for a dispute over a $10 bag of marijuana, a substance that is legal now and should’ve never resulted in a seven-years-to-life sentence.  Ruchell is 83 years old, so as an elderly prisoner he faces health risks every day from still being incarcerated for so long.

 

Write to District Attorney Gascon

District Attorney George Gascon

211 West Temple Street, Suite 1200

Los Angeles, CA 90012

 

Write a one-page letter to D.A. George Gascon requesting that he review Ruchell’s sentence due to the facts that he was over-charged with kidnapping and robbery for a dispute over a $10 bag of marijuana, a substance that is legal now and should’ve never resulted in a seven-years-to-life sentence. Ruchell’s case should be a top priority because of his age (83) and the length of time he has been in prison (59 years).

 

·      Visit www.freeruchellmagee.org to learn more! Follow us @freeruchellmagee on Instagram!

·      Visit www.facebook.com/freeruchellmagee or search "Coalition to Free Ruchell Magee" to find us on Facebook!

·      Endorse our coalition at:

·      www.freeruchellmagee.org/endorse!

·      Watch and share this powerful webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u5XJzhv9Hc

 

WRITE TO RUCHELL MAGEE

Ruchell Magee

CMF - A92051 - T-123

P.O. Box 2000

Vacaville, CA 95696

 

Write Ruchell uplifting messages! Be sure to ask questions about his well-being, his interests, and his passions. Be aware that any of his mail can be read by correctional officers, so don’t use any violent, explicit, or demoralizing language. Don’t use politically sensitive language that could hurt his chances of release. Do not send any hard or sharp materials.

 

~Verbena

of Detroit Shakur Squad

 

The Detroit Shakur Squad holds zoom meetings every other Thursday. We educate each other and organize to help free our Elder Political Prisoners. Next meeting is Thurs, Jan 12, 2022.  Register to attend the meetings at tinyurl.com/Freedom-Meeting

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The writers' organization PEN America is circulating this petition on behalf of Jason Renard Walker, a Texas prisoner whose life is being threatened because of his exposés of the Texas prison system. 


See his book, Reports from within the Belly of the Beast; available on Amazon at:

https://www.amazon.com/Reports-Within-Belly-Beast-Department-ebook/dp/B084656JDZ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/protect-whistleblowers-in-carceral-settings

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Urgent support needed for cancer-stricken, imprisoned writer/artist, Kevin “Rashid” Johnson’s Legal Fund!

Fundraiser for an attorney to represent Rashid’s struggle for medical care
A campaign is underway to hire an attorney to represent Kevin Rashid Johnson’s struggle for medical care. The prison has denied this care to him, despite a cancer diagnosis discovered over one year ago for which no treatment has yet been provided.

Here is the donation link for Rashid’s legal fund: 
Please be as generous as you can.

***IMPORTANT UPDATE CONCERNING COMRADE RASHID***

Prostate cancer can be cured if discovered and treated before it spreads (metastasizes) beyond the prostate. But once it spreads it becomes incurable and fatal.

Rashid's prostate cancer was discovered over a year ago and diagnosed by biopsy months ago, before it had spread or any symptoms had developed. However, he has now developed symptoms that indicate it likely has metastasized, which would not have happened if he had begun receiving treatment earlier. Denied care and delayed hospital appointments continue, which can only be intended to cause spreading and worsening symptoms.

I just received word from Rashid through another prisoner where he is, that he was transported on October 25, 2022 to the Medical College of Virginia (MCV) hospital, which is a state hospital where Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) officials also work. MCV appears to have a nefarious relationship with the VDOC in denying prisoners needed treatment. Upon arrival to the hospital he was told the appointment had been rescheduled, which has now become a pattern.

The appointment was for a full body PET scan to determine if and to what degree his cancer has metastasized. When he met with a radiologist on October 4, 2022, after 3 prior re-schedulings, there was concern that his cancer may have spread because of symptoms he's begun developing. This is his fourth rescheduled hospital appointment which has delayed appointments for weeks to months, preventing him from receiving care.

Because of delayed testing and denied care Rashid has developed symptoms that continue to worsen, which include internal bleeding and pain. The passage of time without care is worsening his condition and making the likelihood of death from the spread of his cancer more certain.


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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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Tell Congress to Help #FreeDanielHale

 

I’m pleased to announce that last week our client, Daniel Hale, was awarded the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. The “Corner-Brightener Candlestick” was presented to Daniel’s friend Noor Mir. You can watch the online ceremony here.

As it happens, this week is also the 20th anniversary of the first drone assassination in Yemen. From the beginning, the drone assassination program has been deeply shrouded in secrecy, allowing U.S. officials to hide significant violations of international law, and the American Constitution. In addition to the lives directly impacted by these strikes, the program has significantly eroded respect for international law and thereby puts civilians around the world in danger.

Daniel Hale’s revelations threw a beam of light into a very dark corner, allowing journalists to definitively show that the government's official narrative was a lie. It is thanks to the great personal sacrifice of drone whistleblowers like Hale that public understanding has finally begun to catch up to reality.

As the Sam Adams Associates note:

 “Mr. Hale was well aware of the cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment to which other courageous officials have been subjected — and that he would likely suffer the same. And yet — in the manner of his famous ancestor Nathan Hale — he put his country first, knowing what awaited him at the hands of those who serve what has become a repressive Perpetual War State wreaking havoc upon much of the world.”


We hope you’ll join the growing call to pardon or commute Hale’s sentence. U.S. citizens can contact your representatives here.

Happy new year, and thank you for your support!

 

Jesselyn Radack
Director
Whistleblower & Source Protection Program (WHISPeR)
ExposeFacts

Twitter: @JesselynRadack

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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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Screenshot of Kevin Cooper's artwork from the teaser.

 

 “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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A Plea for the Compassionate Release of 

Leonard Peltier

Video at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWdJdODKO6M&feature=youtu.be

Screen shot from video.



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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The Moment

By Margaret Atwood*

 

The moment when, after many years 

of hard work and a long voyage 

you stand in the centre of your room, 

house, half-acre, square mile, island, country, 

knowing at last how you got there, 

and say, I own this, 

 

is the same moment when the trees unloose 

their soft arms from around you, 

the birds take back their language, 

the cliffs fissure and collapse, 

the air moves back from you like a wave 

and you can't breathe. 

 

No, they whisper. You own nothing. 

You were a visitor, time after time 

climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming. 

We never belonged to you. 

You never found us. 

It was always the other way round.

 

*Witten by the woman who wrote a novel about Christian fascists taking over the U.S. and enslaving women. Prescient!


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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: 

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. 

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 Jury Resistance Project

Katya Komisaruk

Movement for Black Lives Legal Resources

Tilted Scales Collective


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Articles

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1) After Gutting Youth Services, Can the U.K. Still Cut Youth Crime?

Poor neighborhoods that have been hit hardest by austerity have also seen violence among young people surge or remain stubbornly high. Residents say that’s no coincidence.

By Euan Ward, Feb. 4, 2023

Euan Ward obtained police data and interviewed dozens of families, social workers and officials to understand the convergence of austerity cuts and youth violence in London’s poorest neighborhoods.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/04/world/europe/london-austerity-youth-violence.html

The Marcus Lipton Youth Club in South London in August. The center used to count on hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in government funding. Now, it gets almost none.

The Marcus Lipton Youth Club in South London in August. The center used to count on hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in government funding. Now, it gets almost none. Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times


The Marcus Lipton Youth Club is the last dedicated youth center still standing in its pocket of South London. Every day, the center opens its steel security gates to an area of the city plagued by youth violence, where half the children live in poverty.

 

But Marcus Lipton is teetering. Nearly half of London’s youth centers have closed in the past decade as Britain has cut money for youth services, as well as for welfare, schools and drug and alcohol treatment, according to the most recent available data. Marcus Lipton used to count on hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in government funding. Now, it gets nearly zero.

 

“Just look around you,” said Ira Campbell, 55, the manager of the club, which offers counseling, warm meals and sports for young people. “This place is a safe haven.”

 

Marcus Lipton lies in the shadow of the vast Loughborough Estate public housing project, where two of the Conservative government’s longtime priorities — fighting crime and trying to reduce the budget deficit — collide.

 

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is building new prisons and recruiting more police officers as part of his party’s pledge to be tough on crime. He has also proposed a budget that would make deep spending reductions in the coming years, forcing officials to find savings in programs that have already been whittled to the bone during a decade of austerity.

 

Budget cuts during that decade, instituted in response to the global financial crisis of 2008, hit the poorest neighborhoods of Britain’s capital particularly hard, according to the Institute for Government, an independent research group in London. Those neighborhoods are also where serious youth violence, like homicide, has risen or remained disproportionately high after austerity, data from the office of London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, shows.

 

Annual knife violence involving teenage victims in the city increased by nearly 40 percent to 5,332 in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic began, from 3,809 in 2012, according to police figures obtained by The New York Times. (There was later a dip in serious youth violence during virus-related lockdowns, most likely because of reduced social contact.)

 

Residents of the Loughborough Estate, already frustrated by sharply rising utility bills and food costs, say that the government would rather pay to lock up young people than spend money on projects that might provide them with positive activities or help their parents to make ends meet.

 

With government funding effectively vanished, Mr. Campbell is no longer able to provide regular meals to children from the estate. The center receives occasional local government donations but is mostly self-funded and has been forced to cut the number of days it opens — three days, down from five on a good week.

 

It all leaves the youth center as one of the few places left trying to hold things together, he added. “We’re doing the dirty work that society doesn’t want to talk about,” he said. “You can’t jail your way out of this problem.”

 

He slowly counts on his fingers the teenagers from his youth center he has lost. Seven have been murdered over the past decade, he said. Teenage homicides in London reached a record peak in 2021, according to police data.

 

It is too soon to know whether a sharp drop in teenage homicides last year was a reversal of that trend or an anomaly. The relationship between crime and budget cuts is difficult to prove, particularly because money for policing was also cut during the same period. Further complicating things, crime rates in England and Wales have fallen steadily since the mid-1990s.

 

But under the austerity measures of the past decade, serious youth violence in London rose, as the figures from the mayor’s office point out. One analysis by a group of lawmakers found that areas of England where youth budgets had been cut most tended to have bigger increases in knife crime.

 

The government cut youth services in England by more than 1.1 billion pounds, about $1.35 billion, from 2010 to 2021 — a 74 percent decline. In recent years, the government has been promising to reverse £560 million of those cuts. But time and again, the money failed to materialize.

 

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the government office responsible for youth policy, said in a statement that the pledged money would soon be available, with funds to help refurbish or build 300 youth centers. “By 2025, every young person will have access to regular clubs and activities, adventures away from home and opportunities to volunteer,” the department said.

 

The Home Office, which oversees crime policy, said that it had committed £130 million to tackle serious violence in England and Wales. That money, it said, would pay for increased police patrols, weapons sweeps and early-intervention programs.

 

Mr. Sunak, speaking at the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia in November, acknowledged that poorer areas tended to experience greater levels of crime than wealthier areas.

 

“It’s often people who are in parts of the country that may feel that they’ve been looked over in the past, or that are from more disadvantaged backgrounds, that crime impacts the most,” he said.

 

He did not address how his party’s budget cuts might play into that analysis.

 

Past cuts have had a measurable effect on young people. Under austerity, since 2010, welfare money available to the poorest families dropped by an estimated £37 billion, nearly a quarter. As a result, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, an independent research group based in London, 4.3 million children were in relative poverty by the time the pandemic began. At 31 percent, that was the highest level since the financial crisis.

 

For Patrick Boyce, the talk of a new round of austerity cuts at the same time as a crackdown on crime shows that the government is out of touch. Mr. Boyce’s son Jamel died last year after being stabbed in South London in 2016. The attack, which occurred when he was 17, had left him in a vegetative state for years.

 

“They haven’t got a clue what it’s like to live here,” Mr. Boyce said of Britain’s leaders. “These kids are fending for themselves.”

 

The London mayor’s office has also pointed to hunger as an indicator for crime, noting that areas with high food insecurity were strongly associated with rates of serious youth violence.

 

In 2009, Britain’s largest network of food banks sent 41,000 boxes of emergency food supplies to families in need.

 

Last year, it sent 2.1 million.

 

Mimi Asher is a pastor at Word of Grace Ministries, a small evangelical church housed in a rented school hall across the railway bridge from the Marcus Lipton center.

 

“These children are being left out there in the wild,” she said during a recent sermon. “We need the resources as a community. We can’t keep losing them to jail and the grave.”

 

For years, Ms. Asher has offered her church as a de facto youth center. She has helped write résumés, given counseling and career guidance, organized day trips out of London and even housed some young gang members in her own home, winning an award from the local government for her efforts. That award is proof, she says, that a little investment of time, effort and resources can redirect young people toward a better future.

 

But Ms. Asher, too, says she is on the brink of failure. Her congregants were already struggling after the welfare cuts. Now, with the skyrocketing costs of food, energy and other essentials, people are increasingly skipping meals — and donations. Ms. Asher said that it was getting harder to cover the rent. She has cut back on counseling and other services, and she says many young people have stopped attending church.

 

“We’re heading down a very dangerous path,” she said.

 

Gideon Buabeng, 29, knows that path well. A former gang member, his torso is jagged with knife scars from an attack that finally persuaded him to turn his life around. Mr. Buabeng now provides youth mentoring services in impoverished areas such as his home neighborhood, Pollards Hill, in South London. Funding, he said, is always spotty.

 

Mr. Buabeng said that children who grew up surrounded by poverty saw drugs and robbery as their best chance to make money.

 

“If you have a young person who has not eaten for days, what do you expect him to do?” Mr. Buabeng said. “No one is born a monster.”


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2) Doctors Aren’t Burned Out From Overwork. We’re Demoralized by Our Health System.

By Eric Reinhart, Feb. 5, 2023

Dr. Reinhart is political anthropologist and physician at Northwestern University.  

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/05/opinion/doctors-universal-health-care.html

An exhausted doctor in blue scrubs, gloves and cap in an empty operating room.

Moment, via Getty Images


Doctors have long diagnosed many of our sickest patients with “demoralization syndrome,” a condition commonly associated with terminal illness that’s characterized by a sense of helplessness and loss of purpose. American physicians are now increasingly suffering from a similar condition, except our demoralization is not a reaction to a medical condition, but rather to the diseased systems for which we work.

 

The United States is the only large high-income nation that doesn’t provide universal health care to its citizens. Instead, it maintains a lucrative system of for-profit medicine. For decades, at least tens of thousands of preventable deaths have occurred each year because health care here is so expensive.

 

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the consequences of this policy choice have intensified. One study estimates at least 338,000 Covid deaths in the United States could have been prevented by universal health care. In the wake of this generational catastrophe, many health care workers have been left shaken.

 

“For me, doctoring in a broken place required a sustaining belief that the place would become less broken as a result of my efforts,” wrote Dr. Rachael Bedard about her decision to quit her job at New York City’s Rikers Island prison complex during the pandemic. “I couldn’t sustain that belief any longer.”

 

Thousands of U.S. doctors‌‌, not just at jails but also at wealthy hospitals, now appear to feel similarly. One report estimated that in 2021 alone, about 117,000 physicians left the work force, while fewer than 40,000 joined it. This has worsened a chronic physician shortage, leaving many hospitals and clinics struggling. And the situation is set to get worse. One in five doctors says he or she plans to leave practice in the coming years.

 

To try to explain ‌‌this phenomenon, many people have leaned on a term ‌‌from pop psychology for the consequences of overwork: burnout. Nearly two-thirds of physicians report they are experiencing its symptoms.

 

But the burnout rhetoric misses the larger issue in this case: What’s burning out health care workers is less the grueling conditions we practice under, and more our dwindling faith in the systems for which we work. What has been identified as occupational burnout is a symptom of a deeper collapse. We are witnessing the slow death of American medical ideology.

 

It’s revealing to look at the crisis among health care workers as at least in part a crisis of ideology‌‌ — that is, a belief system made up of interlinking political, moral and cultural narratives upon which we depend to make sense of our social world. Faith in the traditional stories American medicine has told about itself, stories that have long sustained what should have been an unsustainable system, is now dissolving.

 

During the pandemic, physicians have witnessed our hospitals nearly fall apart as a result of underinvestment in public health systems and uneven distribution of medical infrastructure. Long-ignored inequalities in the standard of care available to rich and poor Americans became front-page news as bodies were stacked in empty hospital rooms and makeshift morgues. Many health care workers have been traumatized by the futility of their attempts to stem recurrent waves of death, with nearly one-fifth of physicians reporting they knew a colleague who had considered, attempted‌‌ or died by suicide during the first year of the pandemic alone.

 

Although deaths from Covid have slowed, the disillusionment among health workers has only increased. Recent exposés have further laid bare the structural perversity of our institutions‌‌. For instance, according to an investigation in The New York Times, ostensibly nonprofit charity hospitals have illegally saddled poor patients with debt for receiving‌‌care to which they were entitled without cost and have exploited tax incentives meant to promote care for poor communities to turn ‌‌large profits. Hospitals are deliberately understaffing themselves and undercutting patient care while sitting on billions of dollars in cash reserves. Little of this is new, but doctors’ sense of our complicity in putting profits over people has grown more difficult to ignore.

 

Resistance to self-criticism has long been a hallmark of U.S. medicine and the industry it has shaped. From at least the 1930s through today, doctors have organized efforts to ward off the specter of “socialized medicine.” We have repeatedly defended health care as a business venture against the threat that it might become a public institution oriented around rights rather than revenue.

 

This is in part because doctors were told that if health care were made a public service, we would lose our professional autonomy and make less money. For a profession that had fought for more than a century to achieve elite status, this resonated.

 

And so doctors learned to rationalize a deeply unequal health care system that emphasizes personal, rather than public, moral responsibility for protecting health. We sit at our patients’ bed sides and counsel them on their duty to counteract the risks of obesity, heart disease and diabetes, for example, while largely ignoring how those diseases are tied to poor access to quality food because of economic inequities. Or, more recently, we find ourselves advising patients on how to modulate their personal choices to reduce their Covid risk while working in jobs with dismal safety practices and labor protections.

 

Part of what draws us into this norm is that doctors learn by doing — that is, via apprenticeship — in which we repeat what’s modeled for us. This is, to a degree, a necessary aspect of training in an applied technical field. It is also a fundamentally conservative model for learning that teaches us to suppress critical thinking and trust the system, even with its perverse incentives.

 

It becomes difficult, then, to recognize the origins of much of what we do and whose interests it serves‌‌. For example, a system of billing codes invented by the American Medical Association as part of a political strategy to protect its vision of for-profit health care now dictates nearly every aspect of medical practice, producing not just endless administrative work, but also subtly shaping treatment choices.

 

Addressing the failures of the health care system will require uncomfortable reflection and bold action. Any illusion that medicine and politics are, or should be, separate spheres has been crushed under the weight of over ‌‌1.1 million Americans killed by a pandemic that was in many ways a preventable disaster. And many physicians are now finding it difficult to quash the suspicion that our institutions, and much of our work inside them, primarily serve a moneymaking machine.

 

Doctors can no longer be passive witnesses to these harms. We have a responsibility to use our collective power to insist on changes: for universal health care and paid sick leave but also investments in community health worker programs and essential housing and social welfare systems.

 

Neither major political party ‌‌is making universal health care a priority right now, but doctors nonetheless hold considerable power to initiate reforms in health policy. We can begin to exercise it by following the example of colleagues at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx who, like thousands of doctors before them, recently took steps to unionize. If we can build an organizing network through doctors’ unions, then proposals to demand universal health care through use of collective civil disobedience via physicians’ control over health care documentation and billing, for example, could move from visions to genuinely actionable plans.

 

Regardless of whether we act through unions or other means, the fact remains that until doctors join together to call for a fundamental reorganization of our medical system, our work won’t do what were promised it would do, nor will it prioritize the people we claim to prioritize. To be able to build the systems we need, we must face an unpleasant truth: Our health care institutions as they exist today are part of the problem rather than the solution.


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3) In West Bank, Settlers Sense Their Moment After Far Right’s Rise

After a surge in violence, there are fears of a wider escalation in the occupied West Bank. Israeli settlers see an opportunity, and Palestinians fear what’s next.

By Patrick Kingsley and Raja Abdulrahim, Feb. 5, 2023

Mr. Kingsley and Ms. Abdulrahim, correspondents in The Times’s Jerusalem bureau, drove across the northern West Bank, interviewing Israeli settlers and Palestinians.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/05/world/middleeast/israel-palestine-settlers-west-bank.html

A road leading to settlements and Palestinian areas in the north of the West Bank. The signs were written in Hebrew, Arabic and English, but the Arabic has been erased.

A road leading to settlements and Palestinian areas in the north of the West Bank. The signs were written in Hebrew, Arabic and English, but the Arabic has been erased. Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times


The remains of Or Haim, an illegal settlement outpost, lie strewn across a windswept hilltop in the north of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Two dozen Israeli settlers erected a few flimsy huts there one night last month, and by morning, the Israeli Army had demolished them.

 

But the settlers plan to try again. The most right-wing government in Israel’s history, which includes settler leaders among its key ministers, entered office late last year, and the settler movement has been emboldened, sensing a window of opportunity to expand its enterprise faster than ever before.

 

“Now I expect things to go differently,” said Naveh Schindler, 19, a settler activist leading the effort to build the Or Haim outpost. “If I persevere enough,” Mr. Schindler said, “hopefully the government will build it themselves.”

 

Settlers like Mr. Schindler hope to build more Israeli settlements across the West Bank, which is illegal under international law, on land that Palestinians hoped would be the core of a future Palestinian state. Palestinians, meanwhile, are watching with fear and anxiety as the settlements expand, and as the number of attacks on Palestinians increase as more settlers come.

 

While previous Israeli governments and generals have built and protected hundreds of settlements, they have often opposed unauthorized outpost construction by settler activists. Now, open advocacy for settlements by government ministers and the growing ambitions of the settler movement, coupled with a recent surge of violence, are raising fears that it could help incite a coming explosion in the West Bank.

 

An unusually intense wave of settler violence against Palestinians and their property swept through parts of the territory last weekend. It followed a month of near daily Israeli military raids into Palestinians cities and towns that left at least 26 Palestinians dead. Palestinian violence against Israelis also continued to rise sharply, compounding the sense of a region on the brink.

 

United Nations officials documented at least 22 settler-led attacks and vandalism from Jan. 26 to Jan. 30, while Palestinian officials said the real number was roughly seven times higher. More than 70 settler attacks occurred throughout January, U.N. officials said — a rate that, if maintained throughout the year, would be the highest in at least a half-decade.

 

That capped a January in which the Israeli Army reported at least 59 Palestinian attacks in the West Bank, nearly twice as high as two months ago, causing several injuries but killing none. At least 35 Palestinians were killed during the same period, sometimes during those attacks. At least two were killed by civilian settlers, in circumstances that Israeli officials described as self-defense, but that Palestinians said was unclear.

 

Violence from both Israelis and Palestinians has long been routine in the territory, which was occupied by Israel during the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, in which Israel defeated several Arab states that were mobilizing against it. Hundreds of Israeli settlements have since been built there, impeding Palestinian hopes of sovereignty, and contributing to the creation of a two-tier legal system that tries settlers in civilian courts and Palestinians in military ones.

 

But now there are expectations of an even greater surge. Young settler activists, who believe the land in the West Bank has been promised to them by God, have been galvanized by the presence of their allies in the new government.

 

New groups of young Palestinian fighters have meanwhile emerged in response to the entrenchment of Israel’s occupation and the perceived corruption of their own leadership.

 

A surge of violence last week highlighted how ripe the situation was for further escalation. An Israeli Army raid in the northern West Bank killed 10 Palestinians after a gun battle erupted, before a Palestinian attacker shot dead seven civilians outside a synagogue in Jerusalem. Both episodes were the deadliest of their kind in years.

 

Less reported was a subsequent wave of settler attacks against Palestinians, in which settlers vandalized Palestinian shops, homes and cars.

 

In one attack, surveillance footage showed three masked men inside the Palestinian town of Turmusaya late last Saturday night.

 

Video showed them jumping over a fence and walking toward a home, then out of view of the camera. Seconds later, flames erupted from underneath the house’s red terra-cotta awning and the men fled back over the fence.

 

“They believe they are the only ones who have a right to this land,” said Awad Abu Samra, 57, a Palestinian who rushed to the house — owned by a Palestinian-American — after the attack. “It’s going to go from bad to worse, especially with this new government,” Mr. Abu Samra added.

 

In the village of Jeensafoot, in the northwest of the West Bank, Wissam Eid, 29, woke up on Wednesday morning to find that all four tires of her family’s black S.U.V. had been slashed. At least seven other neighbors found their tires slashed as well, and residents attributed all eightepisodes to settlers.

 

For years, Israelis from a nearby settlement have entered the village a few times a year, slashing tires, breaking windows and writing racist, anti-Palestinian graffiti, including on the village mosque, residents and local officials said. But never in Ms. Eid’s neighborhood.

 

“I was frozen with fear,” she said after they discovered the vandalized vehicle. “They could have climbed up and entered the house.”

 

Ms. Eid decided not to send her children to school that morning, and hours later, she was still shaken, wringing her hands and fidgeting with her phone.

 

“Their goal is to make us scared,” she said. “They want to send a message: ‘Stay afraid, stay anxious.’ And I am.”

 

Settlers acknowledge that the violence takes place, but say that it is carried out by a tiny minority, almost always in self-defense, and that if there were no Palestinian attacks — like the one in Jerusalem last Friday — there would be no settler response. Some portray life in the West Bank as one of uneasy coexistence between two national groups, disturbed mostly by acts of Palestinian violence.

 

Palestinians killed nine Israelis in the West Bank last year, and 21 more Israelis and foreigners inside Israel. The Israeli military says it has given up trying to record the number of attacks by Palestinians throwing rocks at Israelis in the West Bank because the number is in the thousands.

 

“So many cases begin with an aggressive act by Palestinians against Israelis,” said Mr. Schindler, who added that he personally did not approve of violence. “Then we respond — but the media never covers it that way.”

 

But to Palestinians, Israelis have not only a monopoly on violence — more than 170 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank last year, most of them by the Israeli security forces, in the highest toll for more than a decade and a half — but also do not acknowledge the deep power imbalance the settlement enterprise in the West Bank has created, as well as the restrictions the occupation imposes on Palestinians’ daily routines and freedoms.

 

Israeli settlements often straddle private Palestinian land; require the mobilization of a huge Israeli military force to protect them; and have led to the legal system in which Palestinians are prosecuted in military courts with a very high conviction rate, while Israelis are charged in civilian ones, if at all.

 

Data released this week by Yesh Din, an Israeli rights watchdog that monitors settler violence, found that only 3 percent of Israeli nationalist crimes against Palestinians since 2005 had resulted in a conviction.

 

The new Israeli government’s statement of guiding principles, published late last year, began with a direct assertion of the Jewish people’s exclusive right to both Israel and the West Bank.

 

Another coalition agreement promised to formally annex the West Bank and to legalize dozens of unauthorized settlements in the territory. It also gave a settler leader, Bezalel Smotrich, nominal control over a Defense Ministry department that oversees West Bank construction and demolition.

 

“We’re hoping that a window of opportunity has been opened,” said Yedaaya Stein, 22, another settler activist leading efforts to erect Or Haim, the destroyed settlement outpost in the northern West Bank. “We are going to demand more and more building,” Mr. Stein added.

 

Under pressure from allies, including the United States, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has avoided carrying out parts of the coalition agreement in full. For now, he is acting to restrain Mr. Smotrich.

 

When Mr. Smotrich pushed to let Or Haim stay standing, Mr. Netanyahu overruled him. And though Mr. Smotrich wanted to demolish a strategically located Palestinian community east of Jerusalem, the government ultimately decided to delay its demolition this week, amid fears it might cause a wider Palestinian backlash.

 

Within the settler movement, that has caused friction. Younger activists generally want to use this moment to build even more settlement outposts, regardless of the local or international fallout. But some older activists feel that more can be achieved by working quietly in the corridors of power to give settlers more long-term control over the West Bank, enabling more building in the future.

 

“We don’t have to change everything overnight,” said Yisrael Medad, a veteran settler activist.

 

“With enough below-the-radar work in planning and strategic direction,” he added, “we can get a lot more done.”

 

But to young settlers like Mr. Schindler and Mr. Stein, now is the time to build new sites like Or Haim. Every crisis over a new settlement outpost will increase the pressure on the government to turn its pro-settler ideals into practice.

 

Any backlash is inevitable and therefore pointless to worry about, Mr. Schindler said.

 

“It’s a national war between two peoples,” he said. “The conflict is over land, there is less and less land to claim, and so the war over that land will intensify,” Mr. Schindler added.

 

Gabby Sobelman, Hiba Yazbek and Myra Noveck contributed reporting.


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4) Erasing Black History Is Not the Role of the College Board

By Mara Gay, Feb. 4, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/04/opinion/black-history-desantis-college-board.html

A collage of photos of people and events in Black history set over a blue floral background.
Naila Ruechel for The New York Times; photographs by Getty Images and The New York Times.

In the nation’s capital, blocks from the White House, scores of sharply dressed Americans mingled Thursday night over cocktails and collard greens, a glittering coming-out party for the College Board’s first advanced placement course in African American Studies.

 

At the party, a formal affair of educators and donors held at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, jazz was played, and a woman in a gold dress sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” known as the Black national anthem. And then the topic on everyone’s mind came up.

 

Board officials tried to assure the crowd that they had not bent to censorious political pressure from the country’s increasingly brazen right wing. “If this were true, it would be a terrible stain on this country and on the College Board,” said the College Board’s C.E.O., David Coleman.

 

But in fact, when the College Board unveiled the final curriculum for the AP course the day before, it turned out that the board had removed from the core material a handful of vital Black thinkers and some important subject matter. They downgraded the study of Black Lives Matter, of reparations, of queer life and of incarceration. They removed prominent writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates and bell hooks, who have helped so many people understand the relationship between race, class and feminism.

 

Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida, had earlier vowed to ban the course, which the state’s Department of Education has said, “lacks educational value.” He had objected to much of the material the board removed. The board issued a statement denying that its action was in response to Mr. DeSantis, saying it determined on its own that the course was too dense and needed fewer secondary sources.

 

The College Board, though a nonprofit, is a fixture in the country’s education infrastructure. Taking its courses and succeeding on its exams has long been a way for savvy high school students to make themselves more attractive to the most selective colleges and, upon acceptance, win college credit.

 

The inclusion of Black history into this enterprise is a meaningful act.

 

The Black scholars who pioneered the teaching of Black history long before it was popular to do so understand this. “We have to tell the truth,” one of those scholars, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, a professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, said Thursday evening. “The truth is we helped to build this country.”

 

Those opposed to the re-centering of Black history at the heart of the nation’s story instead of its periphery understand it, too, which is why they have mobilized against it.

 

As we listened to the music and were held in thrall by Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard professor whose television show about tracing American ancestries has made him a household name, I thought about the students in dozens of states where books and other subject material, often recognizing the dignity of Black and transgender people, have been banned.

 

I thought about the teachers in Florida I had spoken to in recent days, who were being asked for the first time to document and report their Black History Month activities to administrators. I thought about the bravery of Kenneth McElroy, a Black middle-school civics teacher in the Tampa area, who told me he had no plans to stop sharing the truth of the nation’s history with his students, regardless of what the state law said.

 

“I come from Martin Luther King and Malcolm X,” Mr. Elroy said. “I’m not going to change how I teach.” Martha Elena Galindo, another Tampa-area educator, described an environment hostile to Black and transgender students. “‘Miss, we’re not bad people,’” she recalled a transgender student telling her one day. “It brought tears to my eyes,” she said.

 

The College Board could have sent a powerful message by standing with these Americans. Instead, its gestures at accommodation threw them under the bus, right along with bell hooks. A basic reading of the history board officials say they champion would make it clear that such accommodation will satisfy no one.

 

The question now is whether the majority of Americans in the middle, and at institutions like the College Board, are able to see the backlash clearly, not as some kind of culture war sideshow, but as the very lifeblood of the anti-democratic, sometimes violent political movement gaining currency in the United States.

 

Black history is a direct threat to this movement. It humanizes the enslaved and their descendants. It lays bare the terrible cost of white supremacy, not only to Black Americans, but to the nation. It opens the door for exactly the reckoning that makes interracial coalitions possible, giving life to democracy and pluralism and stripping would-be tyrants of their power.

 

The problem is that looking directly at this history is a prospect that terrifies many white Americans. Viewing the exhibits at the National Museum of African American History and Culture — which include the instruments played by enslaved people and shackles made for a small child — it’s not hard to understand why. But the way forward is to confront this history, not bend it to our will, or whitewash it, or wish it away.

 

It is no coincidence that the Black writers under assault, like Mr. Coates and Ms. hooks, have been militant in refusing to allow America to forget. “The time to remember is now,” Ms. hooks wrote. “The time to speak a counter hegemonic race talk that is filled with the passion of remembrance and resistance is now. All our words are needed.”

 

Until then, we may look away, but the history lives on, gnawing at our national sanity.


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5) Israeli Raid Kills at Least 5 Palestinians in West Bank

The Israeli Army said the deaths came during an operation to arrest gunmen accused of attempting an attack. Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, said the men were members of its armed wing.

By Patrick Kingsley, Feb. 6, 2023

Reporting from Jerusalem

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/06/world/middleeast/israel-west-bank-jericho-raids.html
Palestinians gathering at the scene on Monday where Israeli forces killed a number of armed fighters during a raid at a refugee camp near the city of Jericho in the West Bank.
Palestinians gathering at the scene on Monday where Israeli forces killed a number of armed fighters during a raid at a refugee camp near the city of Jericho in the West Bank. Credit...Mohamad Torokman/Reuters

Israeli military forces killed at least five Palestinian fighters near the city of Jericho in the occupied West Bank on Monday, during a firefight that the Israeli Army said began after soldiers sought to arrest gunmen accused of recently attempting an attack at a nearby Israeli settlement.

 

Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, later said that the five men were members of its armed wing, in a rare acknowledgment of the group’s armed activity inside the West Bank, where it has recently kept a low profile.

 

The deaths near Jericho brought the number of Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank since the start of the year to more than 40, most of them during gun battles that broke out during Israeli operations to arrest members of armed Palestinian groups.

 

That toll constitutes the deadliest start to a year for Palestinians in the West Bank in the past decade and a half, drawing comparisons with the violence of the early years of this century, when a Palestinian uprising, known as the second intifada, left roughly 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis dead.

 

Seven Israelis have also been killed since the start of the year, all during a mass shooting on Jan. 27 by a Palestinian attacker in East Jerusalem — the deadliest attack in the city since 2008.

 

Israeli officials have said that the Israeli death toll this year could have been far higher if two Palestinians, both carrying assault rifles, had not aborted an attempted attack a day later at a restaurant in an Israeli settlement south of Jericho, a Palestinian city in the east of the occupied West Bank, close to the border with Jordan.

 

Video circulating on social media of the episode appeared to show two men with assault rifles arriving at the restaurant before suddenly retreating; Israeli officials said one of their weapons malfunctioned.

 

The Israeli Army said that its raid on Monday morning on a Palestinian neighborhood adjacent to the settlement was an attempt to capture the two men and other members of their cell. At least five Palestinians were killed during an ensuing gunfight, an Israeli security official said.

 

Israeli soldiers took the bodies with them after the raid, later informing Palestinian officials of their identities.

 

The Palestinian Health Ministry said that three others were injured in the gun battle. The Israeli Army circulated a photograph of five assault rifles that it said Israeli soldiers had taken from Palestinians at the scene.

 

Tensions were already high in the West Bank amid rising Palestinian anger at the entrenchment of the Israeli occupation, which began when Israel captured the territory from Jordan during the Arab-Israeli War of 1967.

 

Hundreds of Israeli settlements have since been built there, curbing Palestinian hopes of sovereignty, and leading to the emergence of a two-tier legal system that tries settlers in civilian courts and Palestinians in military ones.

 

In response to that impasse, new groups of young Palestinian fighters have emerged in the past year, some of which have been unusually active in striking Israeli targets. Their members are angry at both Israel and their leaders in the Palestinian Authority, the semiautonomous body that administers Palestinian areas in the West Bank and which many Palestinians perceive as working too closely with Israeli officials.

 

Conscious of that perception, the authority partially suspended its coordination with the Israeli security establishment last month — a relationship that has helped to curb spasms of past violence.

 

After initially avoiding claiming direct connection to the incident, Hamas announced late Monday afternoon that the five slain fighters were members of its armed wing. Though dominant in Gaza, Hamas has in recent years kept a lower profile in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Palestinian areas like Jericho are dominated by Fatah, a secular political movement.

 

Amid the current surge of violence, Hamas has previously avoided claiming direct responsibility for attacks, leery of provoking Israeli reprisals on Gaza. But a direct connection between violence in the West Bank and the Hamas leadership could risk drawing Gaza into the fight.

 

Hiba Yazbek and Myra Noveck contributed reporting.


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6) Dancing With America Has Been a Curse for the Philippines

By Gina Apostol, Feb. 7, 2023

Ms. Apostol is a Philippine novelist. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/07/opinion/us-philippines-china-military-curse.html

Ferdinand Marcos, Sr., shaking hands with President Richard Nixon in 1969 in Manila.

Ferdinand Marcos, Sr., shaking hands with President Richard Nixon in 1969 in Manila. Credit...Bettmann/Getty Images


President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., of the Philippines shaking hands with the U.S. secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, in Manila last week.

President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., of the Philippines shaking hands with the U.S. secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, in Manila last week. Credit...Jamilah Sta Rosa-Pool/Getty Images


For Filipinos like me who grew up under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., the news that the U.S. military would expand its presence in the Philippines has been dizzying and wounding.

 

The image of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin shaking hands in Manila last week with the country’s fatuously smiling president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of the former despot, was like some tragic Groundhog Day. Mr. Marcos was elected in May. So Filipinos not only find themselves with another President Marcos, but also with another creeping occupation by the U.S. military under the guise of East Asian security.

 

The Philippine Senate put an end to the permanent basing of American forces three decades ago. But according to Mr. Austin, China’s growing shadow in the region makes a renewed American presence essential.

 

The Philippines’ proximity to China has long been seductive for the United States. For Filipinos, it’s a curse.

 

The 1898 U.S. annexation of the islands from the previous colonizer, Spain, after the Spanish-American War provided a foothold for American goods to get access to the real prize: China’s huge market. As Albert Beveridge, a senator from Indiana, put it in 1900, “The Pacific is our ocean …. Where shall we turn for consumers of our surplus? Geography answers the question. China is our natural customer.” The Philippines, he said, gave the United States a “base at the door of all the East.”

 

Filipino revolutionaries fighting for the nation’s freedom from 1899 to 1902 had no chance against U.S. forces. During the Philippine-American war more than 200,000 Filipinos were killed or died from famine or disease in a conflict that has been likened to genocide and the U.S. wars against Native Americans. What followed was the creation of a nation “in our image,” as the American historian Stanley Karnow described it.

 

American greed and geopolitics entrenched Philippine oligarchy as a matter of policy because it strengthened U.S. control. Taking on a feudal template laid down by the Spanish, a few powerful families prospered in the U.S. neocolonial orbit, consolidating land, resources and power through the Cold War and into the current era of China’s global ascendancy.

 

Scenes of abiding U.S.-Philippine relations are seared into our collective memory, like a form of trauma: Richard Nixon playing the piano as Imelda Marcos applauded, Ms. Marcos grooving with Gerald Ford, Mr. Marcos Sr. dancing closely with Nancy Reagan. As U.S. leaders waltzed with Mr. Marcos Sr., he imposed martial law from 1972 to 1981 — my childhood years. The tyrant thrived during the Cold War, using his U.S.-funded counterinsurgency campaign — which targeted communists — to consolidate power. He imprisoned, tortured or killed thousands and stole an estimated $5 billion to $10 billion until a people’s uprising in 1986 exiled him and his family to Hawaii.

 

China’s predations are another nightmare for the Philippines. Mr. Austin specifically cited China’s continued advancement of its “illegitimate claims” in portions of the South China Sea that are also claimed by the Philippines as a reason for the U.S. military’s return. And there is fear of a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which is just 93 miles from the Philippines’ northernmost island of Itbayat. The Philippines is not the only Southeast Asian country wary of getting caught in the cross-fire.

 

Chinese encroachment on the South China Sea, which has included building military installations, has been globally condemned. In 2016, an international tribunal ruled in the Philippines’s favor, rejecting China’s maritime claims. But the former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, who cozied up to Beijing in a desire for Chinese investments (“I need China,” he once declared. “I simply love Xi Jinping.”) dismissed the tribunal’s ruling in deference to China. He also frequently maligned the United States. But like all Philippine oligarchs, he danced with America, retaining a military pact with Washington.

 

The departure of the mercurial Mr. Duterte, whose murderous drug war has resulted in thousands of extrajudicial killings, is welcome. But his successor isn’t much different. Mr. Marcos Jr. won the presidency after a campaign powered by disinformation and has never disavowed his dictator father’s legacy of cronyism and corruption. His 28-year-old son, Sandro, a political neophyte, has been given a senior leadership position in the Philippine House of Representatives; Mr. Marcos’s cousin Martin Romualdez is speaker of the House. They were among the authors of a bill to facilitate a plan by the new Marcos government to take money out of social security systems and pump it into a sovereign investment fund, which drew a public outcry.

 

Mr. Marcos made himself agriculture secretary, a powerful position. Under his leadership, costs of basic food items are soaring, with the price of onions surpassing meat at one point recently. Drug-war killings and a culture of impunity continue. Indigenous activists, journalists, human rights defenders and others branded as communists are at risk. Mr. Marcos is fond of junkets, traveling to Davos with a large entourage. His government has not been transparent about the cost. What he does with the boondoggle of American military money is no fool’s guess. As it was with his father, American support will be used to deflect public criticism.

 

Mr. Duterte and Mr. Marcos are cut from the same cloth: Their families and cronies have profited from U.S. geopolitical and military interest in the Philippines and will continue to.

 

For all of the troubled history, President Biden has a chance to redeem the United States. Representative Susan Wild of Pennsylvania has urged her colleagues to sign the Philippine Human Rights Act, which would suspend security assistance to the Philippines “until violence against dissidents ceases and accountability against the perpetrators commences.” Ms. Wild and a bipartisan group of legislators also are calling for sanctions against Philippine human rights violators.

 

Until then, the long dance between Washington and Manila continues, to the recurring horror of the Filipino people.


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7) Why So Many People in France Are Protesting Over Pensions

President Emmanuel Macron is forging ahead with plans to raise the legal age of retirement to 64, from 62, despite a third day of strikes, wide public opposition and a fierce parliamentary battle.

By Aurelien Breeden, Feb. 7, 2023

Reporting from Paris

https://www.nytimes.com/article/france-pension-strikes-macron-explainer.html

Protesters in Nantes, France, during a nationwide strike in late January to voice anger over proposed changes to the pension system.
Protesters in Nantes, France, during a nationwide strike in late January to voice anger over proposed changes to the pension system. Credit...Loic Venance/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Strikes snarled public transportation and railway traffic in France on Tuesday for a third day of vigorous protests barely a month into the year against President Emmanuel Macron’s widely unpopular plans to raise the legal age of retirement to 64, from 62.

 

The continuing protests, which gathered over a million people for each previous march, have become a major test for Mr. Macron after his re-election last year, as recent public opinion polls show that over two thirds of French people oppose his proposal.

 

High-stakes debates over the pension bill are underway in the National Assembly, France’s lower house of Parliament, where Mr. Macron’s party and its allies do not have enough votes to pass the bill on their own.

 

The government will have to rely on the fickle support of mainstream conservatives and fend off thousands of amendments from left-wing lawmakers.

 

Mr. Macron and his government say they need to change France’s pension system to put it on a firmer financial footing as life expectancy rises and as the ratio of workers to retirees decreases.

 

Opponents, including a united front of labor unions, dispute the need for urgency. They say that Mr. Macron is attacking a cherished right to retirement and unfairly burdening blue-collar workers because of his refusal to increase taxes on the wealthy. Neither side has shown any sign of backing down.

 

Although overall disruptions have been limited, protests and intermittent walkouts by workers in schools, public transportation, fuel refineries and power plants have made clear the widespread discontent, putting growing pressure on Mr. Macron. He has said little publicly about the pension overhaul and left his government on the front lines of defending it. But he has staked much of his second-term legacy on getting it done.

 

Wait, why does this seem familiar?

 

The prospect of a pension overhaul has long been a third rail of French politics, prompting large protests in 1995 and 2010, long before Mr. Macron took office. This is the second time that Mr. Macron’s pension plans have met fierce resistance.

 

In 2019, during his first term, Mr. Macron’s effort to overhaul France’s generous pension system led to huge street protests and grinding strikes, including one of the longest transportation walkouts in the country’s history. The government shelved those plans after the coronavirus pandemic hit.

 

There is a key difference between what Mr. Macron did back then and what he is doing now: Mr. Macron’s initial project did not involve increasing the legal age of retirement. Instead, he was aiming for an across-the-board overhaul of the pension system’s dizzyingly complex architecture. The goal was to merge 42 different pension programs into what he said would be a fairer, unified system, using points that workers would accumulate and cash in upon retirement. But the plans left many confused and worried that their pensions would decrease.

 

So what is Macron doing this time?

 

The latest plans are a much more straightforward attempt to balance the system’s finances by making the French work longer, an effort that the government acknowledges will be difficult for some but that it insists is necessary.

 

France’s pension system relies on a pay-as-you-go structure in which workers and employers are assessed mandatory payroll taxes that are used to fund retiree pensions. That system, which has enabled generations to retire with a guaranteed, state-backed pension, will not change.

 

France has one of the lowest rates of pensioners at risk of poverty in Europe, and a net pension replacement rate — a measure of how effectively retirement income replaces prior earnings — of 74 percent, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, higher than the O.E.C.D. and European Union averages.

 

But the government argues that rising life expectancies have left the system in an increasingly precarious state. In 2000, there were 2.1 workers paying into the system for every one retiree; in 2020 that ratio had fallen to 1.7, and in 2070 it is expected to drop to 1.2, according to official projections.

 

Antoine Bozio, an economist at the Paris School of Economics, said that there was no short-term “explosion of the deficit” that needed to be addressed urgently. But “once you’ve said that the system isn’t in danger or on the verge of a catastrophe,” he said, “that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem” in the long term.

 

To keep the system financially viable without additional taxpayer money, the government wants to gradually raise the legal age of retirement by three months every year until it reaches 64 in 2030. It also wants to accelerate a previous change that increased the number of years that workers must pay into the system to get a full pension.

 

“This reform is indispensable,” Mr. Macron said on Monday evening during a visit to the Netherlands.

 

Why is the plan so unpopular?

 

Opponents say that Mr. Macron is exaggerating the threat of projected deficits and refusing to consider other ways to balance the system, like increasing worker payroll taxes, decoupling pensions from inflation or increasing taxes on the rich.

 

Making people work longer, opponents argue, will unfairly affect blue-collar workers, who often start their careers earlier and who have a shorter life expectancy, on average, than white-collar ones.

 

“Sixty-four isn’t possible,” Philippe Martinez, the head of the CGT labor union, France’s second-largest, told the BFM TV news channel last month. “Let them visit a textile factory floor, or a slaughterhouse, or the food-processing industry, and they will see what working conditions are like.”

 

Some worry about being forced to retire later because older adults who want to work but who lose their jobs often deal with age discrimination in the labor market.

 

The plan’s unpopularity also has much to do with pre-existing anger against Mr. Macron, who has struggled to shake off the image of an out-of-touch “president of the rich.”

 

By making pensions a cornerstone of his second term — he cannot run for a third consecutive one — Mr. Macron has also made them a referendum of sorts over his legacy.

 

“That’s why he has not only all the unions, but also a large part of public opinion against him,” said Jean Garrigues, a leading historian on France’s political culture. “By tying himself to the project, opposition to it is heightened, dramatized in a way.”

 

What comes next?

 

The government has announced measures intended to mollify opposition: a raise of the minimum monthly pension to 1,200 euros, or about $1,300; continued exemptions allowing those who begin working at younger ages to retire earlier; and other measures to help seniors stay employed.

 

But the government has shown no sign of backing down on raising the legal age of retirement, which Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne has said was not negotiable. Labor unions are digging in for continued, if not continuous, protests and strikes, while lawmakers, especially on the left and the far right, are waging a fierce battle against the pension bill.

 

Mr. Macron’s party, Renaissance, and its allies no longer enjoy an absolute majority in the National Assembly, and would struggle to pass the pension bill on their own. They will have to rely on France’s Republicans, the mainstream conservative party, whose leadership has said it could support the bill.

 

Mr. Macron is hoping to weather the protests and get the bill through turbulent debates in the lower house, much like Nicolas Sarkozy did as president in 2010, when he raised the retirement age to 62 from 60 despite huge demonstrations.

 

But some rank-and-file Republicans — and even members of Mr. Macron’s party — have expressed discomfort with the current version of the bill, meaning the vote could go down to the wire if protests from constituents push individual lawmakers to back out. Some French news outlets have already started counting the votes.

 

The government could use a rare constitutional tool to ram the bill through without a vote, a move that would expose the cabinet to a no-confidence motion and that Ms. Borne successfully used multiple times in the fall to get finance bills passed. But using it on a far more contentious and consequential piece of legislation could further inflame tensions on the streets.

 

Left-wing lawmakers have also filed over 10,000 amendments to the bill — if the lower house is unable to wade through them all by mid-February, the bill will automatically head over to the Senate.

 

Constant Méheut contributed reporting.


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