8/04/2023

Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, August 5, 2023






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August 9: National Day of Protest to Drop the Charges on the Tampa 5!


Sign the Petition:

 

The Tampa 5—Gia Davila, Lauren Pineiro, Laura Rodriguez, Jeanie K, and Chrisley Carpio—are the five Students for a Democratic Society protesters at the University of South Florida who were attacked by campus police and are now facing five to ten years in prison for protesting Governor Ron DeSantis' attacks on diversity programs and all of higher education.

 

On July 12, 2023, the Tampa 5 had their second court appearance. At this pretrial hearing, they learned that a trial date will be set by the judge on August 9, at their next court appearance.

 

The Tampa 5 are still in the middle of the process of discovery, which means that they are obtaining evidence from the prosecution that is meant to convict them. They have said publicly that all the security camera footage they have seen so far absolves them, and they are eager to not only receive more of this evidence but also to share it with the world. The Tampa 5 and their supporters demand full transparency and USF's full cooperation with discovery, to which all of the defendants are entitled.

 

In spite of this, the charges have not yet been dropped. The case of the five SDS protesters is hurtling towards a trial. So, they need all of their supporters and all parties interested in the right to protest DeSantis to stay out in the streets!

 

On August 9, the Emergency Committee to Defend the Tampa 5 is calling on all member groups to declare a National Day of Protest! On July 12, we saw at least 15 cities pour out into the streets to say, "Drop the charges!"

 

We need to be out again on August 9 in even greater numbers. We need to demand that the DeSantis-appointed, unelected State Attorney Susan Lopez and Assistant Prosecutor Justin Diaz drop the charges.

 

We need to win this case once and for all and protect the right of the student movement—and all social movements in the United States—to exercise their First Amendment right to free speech and to protest.

 

All Out for July August 9 to Defend the Tampa 5!

 

State Attorney Susy Lopez, Prosecutor Justin Diaz, Drop the Charges!

 

Save Diversity in Higher Education!

 

Protesting DeSantis is Not a Crime!


How you you can help:

 

1. Host any or all of the Tampa 5 in your city or on your local campus as we conduct a speaking tour around the country

 

2. Sign your organization onto this petition and help us spread the word about the Tampa 5:

 https://peoplespetitions.org/tampa5

 

The Tampa 5 are students and workers who attended a Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society protest on March 6th to save diversity programs at the University of South Florida and to oppose Ron DeSantis' anti-education bill, HB999. They were attacked, arrested, and now charged with felonies by the University of South Florida Police Department. Their felonies and potential prison time were doubled by the unelected, DeSantis-appointed state attorney, Susan Lopez, and her underling, Justin Diaz. They now face five to ten years in prison for exercising their right to protest and freedom of speech. The students were suspended and one of the five, the campus worker, Chrisley Carpio, was fired from her job at the university.

 

On June 24th, over 130 attendees of an emergency defense conference founded a new organization: the Emergency Committee to Defend the Tampa 5, which is national in scope. We are embarking on a long-term defense campaign to get the charges dropped and to defend the right to free speech in the state of Florida, and we need your help!

 

Thanks so much for your solidarity and support so far, and we'll see you in the streets!


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No one is coming to save us, but us.

 

We need visionary politics, collective strategy, and compassionate communities now more than ever. In a moment of political uncertainty, the Socialism Conference—September 1-4, in Chicago—will be a vital gathering space for today’s left. Join thousands of organizers, activists, and socialists to learn from each other and from history, assess ongoing struggles, build community, and experience the energy of in-person gatherings.

 

Featured speakers at Socialism 2023 will include: Naomi Klein, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Robin D.G. Kelley, aja monet, Bettina Love, Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò, Sophie Lewis, Harsha Walia, Dina Gilio-Whitaker, Astra Taylor, Malcolm Harris, Kelly Hayes, Daniel Denvir, Emily Drabinski, Ilya Budraitskis, Dave Zirin, and many more.

 

The Socialism Conference is brought to you by Haymarket Books and dozens of endorsing left-wing organizations and publications, including Jacobin, DSA, EWOC, In These Times, Debt Collective, Dream Defenders, the Autonomous Tenant Union Network, N+1, Jewish Currents, Lux, Verso Books, Pluto Press, and many more. 

 

Register for Socialism 2023 by July 7 for the early bird discounted rate! Registering TODAY is the single best way you can help support, sustain, and expand the Socialism Conference. The sooner that conference organizers can gauge conference attendance, the bigger and better the conference will be!

 

Learn more and register for Socialism 2023

September 1-4, 2023, Chicago

https://socialismconference.org/?utm_source=Jacobin&utm_campaign=54423c5cc0-

 

Attendees are expected to wear a mask (N95, K95, or surgical mask) over their mouth and nose while indoors at the conference. Masks will be provided for those who do not have one.

 

A number of sessions from the conference will also be live-streamed virtually so that those unable to attend in person can still join us.

Copyright © 2023 Jacobin, All rights reserved.

You are receiving these messages because you opted in through our signup form, or at time of subscription/purchase.

 

Our mailing address is:

Jacobin

388 Atlantic Ave

Brooklyn, NY 11217-3399

 

Add us to your address book:

publicity@jacobinmag.com


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Free Julian Assange




Immediate Repeated Action Needed to Free Assange

 

Please call your Congressional Representatives, the White House, and the DOJ. Calls are tallied—they do count.  We are to believe we are represented in this country.  This is a political case, so our efforts can change things politically as well.  Please take this action as often as you can:

 

Find your representatives:

https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

 

Leave each of your representatives a message individually to: 

·      Drop the charges against Julian Assange

·      Speak out publicly against the indictment and

·      Sign on to Rashida Tlaib's letter to the DOJ to drop the charges: 

           202-224-3121—Capitol Main Switchboard 

 

Leave a message on the White House comment line to 

Demand Julian Assange be pardoned: 

             202-456-1111

             Tuesday–Thursday, 11:00 A.M.–3:00 P.M. EST

 

Call the DOJ and demand they drop the charges against Julian Assange:

             202-353-1555—DOJ Comment Line

             202-514-2000 Main Switchboard 



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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!

FREE HIM NOW!

Write to Mumia at:

Smart Communications/PADOC

Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335

SCI Mahanoy

P.O. Box 33028

St. Petersburg, FL 33733



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  Ruchell “Cinque” Magee Walks Free!

On July 28, he was released from prison after 67 years of being caged!



“Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today. It’s the same but with a new name.”

 

“My fight is to expose the entire system, judicial and prison system, a system of slavery…This will cause benefit not just to myself but to all those who at this time are being criminally oppressed or enslaved by this system.”

 

“You have to deal on your own tactics. You have a right to take up arms to oppose any usurped government, particularly the type of corruption that we have today.” – Ruchell Magee

 


We’re raising money to ease his transition to the outside and I’m writing to ask for your help by making a donation. We have launched a Fundrazr on-line to collect funds. Here is the link:  


https://fundrazr.com/82E6S2?ref=ab_fCEmqa

 

Will you help? And share, too?

✊🏽✊🏼✊🏾✊🏿


Thanks to Michael Schiffmann and Linn Washington Jr. Addressing the Issue of Political Prisoners in the United States: Mumia Abu-Jamal and Ruchell Magee

 

A more in-depth and recent article on Ruchell, “Slave Rebel or Citizen?” is very worthwhile by Joy James and Kalonji Jama Changa. Read it here: 

https://inquest.org/slave-rebel-or-citizen/

 

And more background – the “50th Anniversary of the Marin Courthouse Rebellion:”

https://freedomarchives.org/projects/the-50th-anniversary-of-the-august-7th-marin-county-courthouse-rebellion/

 

Also the 50th Anniversary of the Assassination of George Jackson—99 Books



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Previously Recorded

View on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeIfVB7IykQ

 

 

Featured Speakers:

 

Yuliya Yurchenko, Senior Lecturer at the University of Greenwich and author of Ukraine and the Empire of Capital: From Marketization to Armed Conflict.

 

Vladyslav Starodubstev, historian of Central and Eastern European region, and member of the Ukrainian democratic socialist organization Sotsialnyi Rukh.

 

Kirill Medvedev, poet, political writer, and member of the Russian Socialist Movement.

 

Kavita Krishnan, Indian feminist, author of Fearless Freedom, former leader of the Communist Party of India (ML).

 

Bill Fletcher, former President of TransAfrica Forum, former senior staff person at the AFL-CIO, and Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies.

 

Including solidarity statements from among others Barbara Smith, Eric Draitser, Haley Pessin, Ramah Kudaimi, Dave Zirin, Frieda Afary, Jose La Luz, Rob Barrill, and Cindy Domingo.


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Update on Ed Poindexter and Urgent Health Call-In Campaign

 

Watch the moving video of Ed's Niece and Sister at the April 26, 2023, UN EMLER Hearing in Atlanta: https://youtu.be/aKwV7LQ5iww

 

You can also watch Ed speaking about himself some years ago thanks to Sister Tekla, who was able to interview Ed and Mondo some years ago: https://youtu.be/sps0s4zeJxg.

More of these videos will be forthcoming.

 

Ed needs to be released to live the rest of his life outside of prison, with his family! (His niece Ericka is now 52 years old and was an infant when Ed was targeted, stolen from his home, jailed, framed, and railroaded.)

 

Friends and Comrades,

 

Thank you so very much for your phone calls and communications in support of Ed Poindexter’s health care!

 

We have learned from Ed’s family that a date has been set for Ed to go to an outside doctor to be evaluated for a hearing device. (Thank you, callers!) We have also learned that Ed will not be fitted for a prosthesis within the foreseeable future. The reason for this is that Ed is unable to sit up for more than a few seconds on his own. He is unable to get himself out of bed by himself. Ed cannot go to the restroom without substantial help. There is a fear of him falling.

 

The prison’s response has been to suggest that Ed try harder at physical therapy—so that he might be able to tie his own shoes again and perform basic self-care—but he cannot. Our position is that he is too weak because of the near daily kidney dialysis and multiple other health problems. As you know, he has lost sight in one eye, and is unable to hear. While he may have been weakened by being wheelchair bound for years, the fact that the institution amputated his left leg below the knee (without notice to the family) has made recovery of strength in his legs difficult. Add to this that Ed is extremely ill from kidney disease, and the near daily kidney dialysis artificially making his kidney’s function causes him to vomit his food and makes him ill overall. All of these combined illnesses have resulted in Ed not being able to even hold his frame upright for more than a few seconds.

 

Therefore, in protection of Ed’s basic rights as a human being to health care and human dignity, we demand that Ed be seen by an outside high ranking National Medical Association Certified geriatric physician or team of physicians who specialize in heart, kidney, and geriatric health. We demand the evaluation be by a physician connected to a reputable hospital so that Ed’s entire condition: eyes, heart (recall that Ed underwent triple bypass heart surgery in 2016) kidneys, neuropathy, amputated leg, serious inability to balance his frame, and hearing can all be evaluated as a whole.

 

It is the family’s belief that Ed is experiencing a diminishing quality of life that it is irreversible, and we demand an outside doctor also evaluate him for this obvious fact. If it is determined by a reputable doctor that Ed is experiencing a diminishing quality of life; we want his status changed at the prison to reflect this reality.

 

Please call the numbers below and write to demand that Ed be seen by an outside doctor at a state-of-the-art hospital facility—for the purpose of evaluation specifically as to whether his condition is diminishing and irreversible—taken as a whole.

 

Ed Support Committee and Family and Concerned Members of the Community

 

PLEASE CALL, EMAIL AND WRITE:

 

Acting Medical Director Jeff Kasselman, M.D.: 402-479-5931 jeffrey.kasselman@nebraska.gov

 

Warden Boyd of the Reception and Treatment Center: 402-471-2861

 

Warden: Taggart Boyd

Reception and Treatment Center

P.O. Box 22800

Lincoln, NE 68542-2800

Phone: 402-471-2861

Fax: 402-479-6100

 

Jeff Kasselman, M.D.

Acting Medical Director,

Nebraska Department of Corrections

Phone: 402-479-5931

Email: jeffrey.kasselman@nebraska.gov

 

Sample Message:

 

“I’m calling to urge that Ed Poindexter, #27767, be given appropriate medical care. I demand that be seen by an outside high ranking National Medical Association certified geriatric physician or team of physicians who specialize in heart, kidney, and geriatric health. I demand the evaluation include Ed’s entire condition: eyes, kidneys, diabetes, neuropathy, amputated leg, serious inability to balance his frame, and hearing. ”

 

You can read more about Ed Poindexter at:

https://www.thejerichomovement.com/profile/poindexter-ed

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Updates From Kevin Cooper 

March 23, 2023 

Dear Friends and Comrades, 

This is Kevin Cooper writing and sending this update to you in 'Peace & Solidarity'. First and foremost I am well and healthy, and over the ill effect(s) that I went through after that biased report from MoFo, and their pro prosecution and law enforcement experts. I am back working with my legal team from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.

'We' have made great progress in refuting all that those experts from MoFo came up with by twisting the truth to fit their narrative, or omitting things, ignoring, things, and using all the other tactics that they did to reach their conclusions. Orrick has hired four(4) real experts who have no questionable backgrounds. One is a DNA attorney, like Barry Scheck of the innocence project in New York is for example. A DNA expert, a expect to refute what they say Jousha Ryen said when he was a child, and his memory. A expect on the credibility of MoFo's experts, and the attorney's at Orrick are dealing with the legal issues.

This all is taking a little longer than we first expected it to take, and that in part is because 'we' have to make sure everything is correct in what we have in our reply. We cannot put ourselves in a situation where we can be refuted... Second, some of our experts had other things planned, like court cases and such before they got the phone call from Rene, the now lead attorney of the Orrick team. With that being said, I can say that our experts, and legal team have shown, and will show to the power(s) that be that MoFo's DNA expert could not have come to the conclusion(s) that he came to, without having used 'junk science'! They, and by they I mean my entire legal team, including our experts, have done what we have done ever since Orrick took my case on in 2004, shown that all that is being said by MoFo's experts is not true, and we are once again having to show what the truth really is.

Will this work with the Governor? Who knows... 'but' we are going to try! One of our comrades, Rebecca D.   said to me, 'You and Mumia'...meaning that my case and the case of Mumia Abu Jamal are cases in which no matter what evidence comes out supporting our innocence, or prosecution misconduct, we cannot get a break. That the forces in the so called justice system won't let us go. 'Yes' she is correct about that sad to say...

Our reply will be out hopefully in the not too distant future, and that's because the people in Sacramento have been put on notice that it is coming, and why. Every one of you will receive our draft copy of the reply according to Rene because he wants feedback on it. Carole and others will send it out once they receive it. 'We' were on the verge of getting me out, and those people knew it, so they sabotaged what the Governor ordered them to do, look at all the evidence as well as the DNA evidence. They did not do that, they made this a DNA case, by doing what they did, and twisted the facts on the other issues that they dealt with.   'more later'...

In Struggle & Solidarity,

March 28, 2023

"Today is March 28, 2023

I spoke to Rene, the lead attorney. He hopes to have our reply [to the Morrison Forster report] done by April 14 and sent out with a massive Public Relations blast.

He said that the draft copy, which everyone will see, should be available April 10th. 

I will have a visit with two of the attorneys to go over the draft copy and express any concerns I have with it.

MoFo ex-law enforcement “experts” are not qualified to write what they wrote or do what they did.

Another of our expert reports has come in and there are still two more that we’re waiting for—the DNA report and Professor Bazelon’s report on what an innocence investigation is and what it is not. We are also expecting a report from the Innocence Network. All the regional Innocence Projects (like the Northern California Innocence Project) in the country belong to the Innocence Network.

If MoFo had done the right thing, I would be getting out of here, but because they knew that, somewhere along the line they got hijacked, so we have to continue this fight but we think we can win."


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

 

Background on Kevin's Case

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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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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Sign the petition:

https://dontextraditeassange.com/petition/


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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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A Plea for the Compassionate Release of 

Leonard Peltier

Self Portrait by Leonard Peltier

Video at:

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


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

https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/

 

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:

 

National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811


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Articles

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1) Driver Plows Car Into Migrant Workers in ‘Intentional Assault,’ Police Say

The vehicle cut over a median and toward where the six workers were standing outside a Walmart in Lincolnton, N.C., the police said. The authorities were looking for the driver.

By Livia Albeck-Ripka, July 31, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/31/us/migrant-workers-lincolnton-crash.html

A dark S.U.V. is driving away through a parking lot area in a frame grab from video at the scene of the crash in Lincolnton, North Carolina.

All six of the workers struck in Lincolnton, N.C., were transported to Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, according to the police. Credit...Lincolnton Police Department


A man driving an S.U.V. plowed into a group of six migrant workers outside a Walmart in Lincolnton, N.C., on Sunday in an “intentional assault,” the police said.

 

The attack took place just after 1:15 p.m., when the man, who was behind the wheel of a midsize black S.U.V. with a luggage rack, steered toward the group, according to a statement released on Sunday evening by the Lincolnton Police Department. The episode was caught on video, and the department was asking the public for help in identifying the vehicle or the driver.

 

All six of the workers were transported to Atrium Health Lincoln with “various injuries” that were not life-threatening, the police said.

 

“None is in critical condition,” Maj. Brian R. Greene of the Lincolnton Police Department said by telephone. The police have reviewed the footage, he added, which appears to show the driver cutting over a median and into a grassy area between parking spaces, where the migrants were standing.

 

They were outside the Walmart in northeast Lincolnton, a city of less than 12,000 people about 30 miles northwest of Charlotte.

 

The police interviewed all of the migrants, Major Greene said, and they had no apparent connection with the driver of the vehicle. “We’re trying to locate the individual that did this,” he added. “Right now, we don’t have a lot.”

 

The attack follows a deadly crash in May in which the driver of a Range Rover barreled into a crowd of migrants in Brownsville, Texas, killing eight of them. That driver was arrested and charged with manslaughter and other charges.


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2) Putin’s Crackdown Leaves Transgender Russians Bracing for Worse

A new law underscores how Vladimir V. Putin is increasingly using the war in Ukraine as justification for greater restrictions on L.G.B.T.Q. life, portraying it as a consequence of deviant Western values.

By Neil MacFarquhar and Georgy Birger, Aug. 1, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/01/world/europe/russia-transgender-ban.html
Jan Dvorkin posing for a portrait in an undated photo.
Jan Dvorkin posing for a portrait in an undated photo. Credit...via Jan Dvorkin

Jan Dvorkin had raised and nurtured his adopted son in Moscow for seven years until, one day in May, the Russian authorities notified him they were revoking custody. A woman Mr. Dvorkin knew had filed an official complaint, saying that because he was transgender and gay, he was an unfit parent.

 

When Mr. Dvorkin asked the woman why she had reported him, she told him he had brought it on himself, and “that I could have easily avoided it by staying in the closet.”

 

He managed to find another family to take the boy, who is deaf, so that the child would not be sent to an orphanage.

 

Mr. Dvorkin’s experience underscores the increasingly repressive treatment gay and transgender people are subjected to across Russia — a hardship that seems certain to grow as the government leverages the war in Ukraine as justification for greater restrictions on L.G.B.T.Q. life.

 

The latest crackdown came last week when President Vladimir V. Putin signed a law that criminalized all surgery and hormone treatments used for gender transitions.

 

That law comes on top of a measure enacted last December prohibiting the representation of L.G.B.T.Q. relationships in any media — streaming services, social platforms, books, music, posters, billboards and film.

 

Critics, including legal and medical professionals and gay rights activists, view the campaign as an effort to distract from Russia’s military failings in Ukraine — by creating a boogeyman it can portray as a threat from a deviant and corrupt West.

 

“It is a common practice to look for internal enemies when their external enemy turns out to be tougher than expected,” Mr. Dvorkin, 32, said in an interview from Moscow. “With no success on the front line, Putin found an easy enemy, a vulnerable group whom he can defeat in Russia.”

 

As with many repressive measures, Mr. Putin himself seemed to have inspired the law.

 

Long before his invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Putin had scorned the idea of gay rights. But as his military stumbled, he began to rewrite the war as a Western attempt to undermine Russian security and “traditional values.”

 

He took aim at questions of gender identity as well as sexual orientation, regularly denigrated transgender people in his speeches, mocking the idea of “Parent No. 1 and Parent No. 2” instead of “mom and dad,” and suggested that the West sought to make the world adopt “dozens of genders.”

 

The new law bans all gender transitions as well as changing genders on official documents like passports. It became harsher as it proceeded in Russia’s Parliament; typically a rubber stamp for Mr. Putin’s favored legislation, it overwhelmingly passed the law. The final version annuls marriages when one spouse changes gender and bans adoptions by such couples.

 

The law essentially removes the ability of transgender people to control their own bodies, rights activists said, and even if people had the means to travel abroad seeking surgery, which many do not, they would not be allowed to update official documents. Having the wrong gender on identification papers would create hurdles in countless aspects of life such as employment and travel.

 

The new law also bans treatment with either estrogen or testosterone, which are typically taken before undergoing transition surgery. There are limited exceptions for people who had started the process and already changed documents.

 

Critics said the ban could lead to what is essentially a black market for the drugs. One transgender person in St. Petersburg said that a clandestine lab there was already attempting to make estrogen from over-the-counter drugs. Illicit testosterone was a bigger challenge, said the person, who insisted on anonymity to avoid retribution.

 

Surveys by the independent pollster Levada show that, over the last decade, the Kremlin’s propaganda campaign against the L.G.B.T.Q. community may have affected Russian attitudes: The percentage of respondents who said they viewed gay people with disgust or fear increased from 26 percent in 2013 to 38 percent in 2021.

 

In 2013, the first Russian law against disseminating “gay propaganda” was framed as protecting children. This time, with the war as a backdrop, the law banning gender transition was presented as a matter of national security.

 

“The war is not only on the front line, the war is going on in the minds and souls, and we want to protect our country from being destroyed from within,” Pyotr Tolstoy, a hard-line deputy speaker of Parliament, wrote on Telegram.

 

The concept of national security has become an increasingly fluid one, said Max Olenichev, a lawyer who defends  L.G.B.T. people. “It has become an ephemeral thing that can mean absolutely anything,” he said. “Whenever you do not want to give a reason, just say ‘national security.’”

 

The law also corresponds with Mr. Putin’s attempt to portray Russia as a bastion of what he calls “traditional family values,” a longstanding effort to appeal to conservative voters at home and abroad.

 

The hope is that support for his social agenda will extend to endorsing the war, said Alexander Kondakov, a sociologist at University College Dublin. “By targeting a group that is already marginalized, they amass support for the war and any other cause that the government wants,” he said.

 

For the L.G.B.T. Q. community, the law was yet another blow.

 

Mr. Dvorkin described the mood among transgender people as “dark and depressing,” with members bracing for more hate crimes. “There was already an increase in vocal hate groups, and since the law passed they have gone off the rails,” he said.

 

Violence against gay people surged after the 2013 law, said Mr. Kondakov, who studies the intersection of law and security for the L.G.B.T. community. Prosecutions  also jumped after the stricter version passed last December, according to a report by Novaya Gazeta Europe, an independent newspaper.

 

Mr. Dvorkin, who began transitioning at 28, is the founder of Center T,  which offers medical and other advice to thousands of transgender people. The government recently designated the organization a “foreign agent,” a label whose onerous requirements carry an automatic stigma, and he fears it will soon have to shutter or go underground.

 

Mr. Dvorkin began looking for a new home for his son not long after the stricter law passed last December. Repeated warnings from the children’s services office, which supervised the adoption, against discussing his gender identity and sexual orientation online, as well as a court-imposed fine, signaled that his custody was in jeopardy.

 

His son, now 10, also had a kidney disease. In June, Mr. Dvorkin struggled to locate a family willing to take him. He finally persuaded one to do so, then managed to convince officials not to return him to an orphanage.

 

Use of hormones and surgery for transgender people was first accepted in the Soviet Union in the 1970s, and by 2017 Russia had developed what many considered a rational approach, leaving the decision up to a panel of doctors and psychiatrists.

 

Gender transition had not been much of a political issue in Russia until now. Initially, the Ministry of Health questioned the need for any change, but it soon surrendered to browbeating by Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of Parliament, who accused  officials of pursing an American agenda by seeking to emulate “Sodom.”

 

Although overall numbers are not readily available, Mr. Volodin said that  2,700 people had currently been approved for gender transitions by the ministry; the source of the number was unclear. Russia’s population is more than 143 million.

 

In St. Petersburg, the person who described the clandestine lab, who uses the pronoun they, rushed to finish the process of being legally recognized as a woman before the law took effect. Describing it as “anarchistic escapism,” they said they invented a new, unusual first name whose spelling looks like someone smashed a keyboard with a fist. They said they assured the bureaucrat reading the application it was a traditional Siberian name.

 

“The best thing we can do is to resist this state by simply existing,” they said.

 

Milana Mazaeva contributed reporting.


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3) Listening to This Might Change You

By Maurice Chammah, Aug. 3, 2023

Mr. Chammah, a staff writer at the Marshall Project, is the author of “Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/03/opinion/prison-music-redemption.html
Daniel Barreto

One morning in 2019, Kenyatta Emmanuel Hughes was released from Fishkill Correctional Facility, in Beacon, N.Y., and traveled roughly 70 miles south to Carnegie Hall. That night he stood before a crowd — flanked by a horn section, a string quartet and backup singers — and sang words he’d written during his nearly quarter-century behind bars.

 

He’d been convicted of killing a cabdriver during a robbery in 1996, when he was 21 years old. “I had no value for life back then,” he once told a reporter — and that included his own life, which he tried to end while in prison. Now 45, he sang over a steady pulse of piano chords: “Can’t we agree there’s something wrong, if I feel the need to scream, ‘My life matters’? And why in the world, to you, does that feel like an accusation?”

 

Mr. Hughes had studied with conservatory-trained musicians at Musicambia and Carnegie Hall’s Musical Connections, two programs that teach composition and various instruments in prisons. As a criminal justice journalist and musician myself, I’ve long admired such arts programs for cultivating hope and dignity amid all the abuse and neglect, while reducing the chances that people will return to prison.

 

But focusing on rehabilitation misses the full picture. America has a long history of prison music, and its power goes beyond helping those inside: This music can transform us, changing how we think about the people who make it. When the right song hits you at the right moment, you can recognize something shared with the artist. “There are things you can identify in yourself that you can also identify in them, no matter what they did,” the formerly incarcerated rapper BL Shirelle told me. “You see them for the humans they are.”

 

Why should you care? Because Americans have reached an impasse when it comes to the criminal justice system. There remains some bipartisan agreement that the system is bloated, expensive, discriminatory and abusive, and that our prisons too often fail at their key goal of rehabilitation (when they’re not outright deadly). But at least 600,000 people leave prisons each year, and despite talk of “second chances,” the rest of us don’t do a great job of helping them restart their lives. People often refuse to rent to them and give them jobs, which then increases the likelihood they’ll end up in prison again.

 

It’s easy to blame individuals for their criminal actions, but we also know that when society’s treatment of people who commit crimes is too punitive and merciless, the result is often — ironically and tragically — more crime.

 

Artists who served time have told me they’ve seen how their work can break this cycle, cutting past prejudices and helping other people see them as capable of redemption. “If we experience the art being created in those spaces,” Mr. Hughes said, “we will know, ‘These are human beings, and we need to rethink whether we should be throwing them away.’”

 

There are, of course, some in prison who don’t appear to be contrite after harming others, but in my decade of visiting prisons, I’ve found they are the exception; American prisons are full of earnest attempts at redemption. Listening to and sharing music may sound like a soft, superficial way of changing a broken system, but you can’t get policy change if you haven’t paved the way with culture.

 

It also helps to look backward. The rich history of American prison music — especially before the rise of mass incarceration began 50 years ago — offers some vivid reminders of how we used to be more connected to people in prison.

 

In the 1930s, a Texas prison broadcast a weekly radio show in which men and women played country songs, blues, hymns and other genres to a live audience of visitors. “Thirty Minutes Behind the Walls” reached as many as five million listeners and received 100,000 fan letters each year, according to Caroline Gnagy’s book, “Texas Jailhouse Music: A Prison Band History.”

 

Public officials made guest speeches on the show that were striking in their empathy. “Before the advent of radio, prisoners were exiled; citizens outside paid little attention to them,” the governor of Texas, Wilbert Lee O’Daniel, said on the show in 1939. “But now you hear them talk; you hear them sing; you find out they are sons and daughters of good mothers. You find out they made mistakes, thus proving that they are human.”

 

Prisons were still brutal places — you can hear it in recordings of blues and work songs that Black prisoners sang as they hoed and picked cotton, just like their enslaved ancestors. And yet many wardens also saw how music could keep those inside more hopeful and tethered to the outside world ahead of release. In the 1950s, a doo-wop group called the Prisonaires were allowed to leave their Tennessee facility under armed guard and record at Sun Studio in Memphis. Elvis Presley was reportedly a big fan.

 

Into the 1970s, producers negotiated access to record funk gems like Ike White’s “Changin’ Times,” Edge of Daybreak’s “Eyes of Love” and The Escorts’ “All We Need Is Another Chance.” At the Texas Prison Museum, in Huntsville, I recently found and digitized vinyl records that musicians were allowed to produce themselves and sell to visitors at an annual prison rodeo well into the 1980s.

 

But violent crime had been on the rise, reaching a peak in 1991, and political rhetoric turned away from rehabilitation to punishment. For wardens running bigger and fuller prisons, letting in people and technology was one more avoidable security risk. The racial prejudice that underpinned the War on Drugs infected how a lot of prison music was perceived. Merle Haggard, a former prisoner, had climbed to country music stardom in the 1960s with applause lines like “I turned 21 in prison doing life without parole,” while some rappers found their lyrics used against them in court. Throughout the 1990s, a rising victims’ rights movement framed any creativity behind bars as a moral affront to crime survivors.

 

Much of society lost interest in hearing the voices of people inside prisons, but they didn’t stop creating and often they used music as a form of resistance. As incarceration and harsh policing became more common experiences for Black Americans throughout the 1990s, these themes became mainstays of hip-hop. Darrell Wayne Caldwell, who performed as Drakeo the Ruler, made a critically acclaimed album in 2020 while inside the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail, recording all his verses over the phone. He was hardly the first to do such a thing.

 

There are hopeful signs that our prison system could return to seeing music as a way to maintain hope inside — and prepare society to accept the people they’re going to release. In 2020, men at San Quentin State Prison were given clearance to release a stellar mixtape, while others were featured on “Ear Hustle,” the popular podcast made in the facility. One of the podcast’s hosts, Earlonne Woods, told me that a good prison artist, like the formerly incarcerated rapper Antwan “Banks” Williams, gives voice to the emotions that lots of people are experiencing inside.

 

Meanwhile, producers with Die Jim Crow Records are collecting instruments to send into prisons and building soundproof studios in prison gyms and janitorial closets out of PVC pipe and blankets. “Technology is so advanced now, you don’t actually need much to make it sound really good,” said BL Shirelle, the rapper who works as the label’s co-executive director.

 

These promising experiments suggest that there are far more opportunities waiting for music producers — along with book publishers, art galleries, DJs and other cultural gatekeepers — to discover, cultivate and promote the ocean of talent and creativity behind prison walls.

 

You could argue that they need us. But the truth is we need them.


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4) What Happens When New York’s Shelters Run Out of Room?

As migrants sleep on sidewalks outside a Midtown hotel, the city is struggling to avoid a homelessness crisis that resembles those in Los Angeles or San Francisco.

By Nicole Hong, Aug. 3, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/03/nyregion/nyc-migrant-homeless-crisis.html

People sit on the sidewalk and mill around outside the Roosevelt Hotel.

New York is legally obligated to provide shelter to all who want it, but an influx of nearly 100,000 migrants has strained that commitment. Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times


The crowds outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan this week would have been familiar in any number of American cities struggling to contain a crisis of homelessness: dozens of people languishing on sidewalks, camping out on flattened cardboard boxes day and night.

 

But for New York City, the scene — made up of migrants waiting for beds in the city’s overburdened shelter system — was unusual. And it raised a difficult question: Will this become a new normal?

 

New York has avoided the kinds of widespread encampments that are more common in cities on the West Coast, largely because of a unique legal agreement that requires the city to provide a bed for anyone who requests one. No other major city in America has a similar mandate, known as a “right to shelter.”

 

But what happens when a city that is obligated to provide shelter for everyone runs out of shelter?

 

This week, Mayor Eric Adams declared, in dire terms, that there was no more room left for migrants. His administration was coming up with a plan, Mr. Adams said, so that “we don’t have what’s in other municipalities where you have tent cities all over the city,” evoking images of homeless camps in places like San Francisco and Seattle on the streets of New York.

 

“We need help,” Mr. Adams said. “And it’s not going to get any better.”

 

Already, New York is home to thousands of people who are considered “unsheltered,” meaning they sleep on the streets or in the subways instead of opting for a shelter bed. But the vast majority of New York’s homeless population sleeps in shelters — in stark contrast to cities like Los Angeles. New York’s harsher winters also make large-scale outdoor encampments less feasible than on the West Coast.

 

“Tent cities are on the rise around the country because of an extreme and growing lack of affordable housing,” said Maria Foscarinis, founder of the National Homelessness Law Center, a nonprofit. “The reason they are not as prevalent in New York is the city’s legal right to shelter.”

 

That legal requirement should theoretically continue to keep New York’s homeless people sheltered, and city officials say there are other sites available to use, including ones that require federal approval. But the city is now struggling under the weight of nearly 100,000 migrants who have arrived since last year. More than 56,000 migrants still remain in the New York City’s shelters. And the pace has not slowed. Last week alone, 2,300 new migrants arrived.

 

New York City has opened 194 sites to house the newcomers in any usable facilities it could find — including hotel ballrooms, parking lots, former jails and an airport warehouse. The city’s homeless shelter population now exceeds 100,000 people, a record high.

 

That legal requirement should theoretically continue to keep New York’s homeless people sheltered, and city officials say there are other sites available to use, including ones that require federal approval. But the city is now struggling under the weight of nearly 100,000 migrants who have arrived since last year. More than 56,000 migrants still remain in the New York City’s shelters. And the pace has not slowed. Last week alone, 2,300 new migrants arrived.

 

New York City has opened 194 sites to house the newcomers in any usable facilities it could find — including hotel ballrooms, parking lots, former jails and an airport warehouse. The city’s homeless shelter population now exceeds 100,000 people, a record high.

 

During a news conference on Wednesday, Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom said the city has been a “guardian of the right to shelter,” but the system was buckling under pressure.

 

In response to questions about potential sites for sheltering migrants, including Randall’s Island and Central Park, she said all options were on the table. “People on the one hand cannot accuse us of not having enough space,” she said, “and then on the other hand tell us, ‘well, you can’t go here and you can’t go there.’” Some shelter sites have been delayed because of fierce opposition in neighborhoods where they would be located.

 

The city’s legal obligation stems from a class-action lawsuit that was filed in the late 1970s, which argued that a right to shelter existed under the New York State Constitution.

 

To settle the lawsuit, the city reached an agreement in 1981 to provide shelter for every homeless man who applies for it, which has since been expanded to women and families with children. The agreement also laid out the standards for care, including bed size and staff-to-resident ratios.

 

Despite repeated challenges by mayoral administrations to weaken the mandate, it has endured for four decades because “New Yorkers don’t want to see mass homelessness,” said Joshua Goldfein, a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society, which worked on the lawsuit that led to the 1981 agreement with the lawyer Robert Hayes, who founded the Coalition for the Homeless.

 

“They don’t want to see people living in the streets with their children,” he said.

 

In West Coast cities that have struggled with homeless encampments, the shelter infrastructure is much more limited than in New York, according to Dennis Culhane, a professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

 

In May, the Adams administration asked a New York court to relieve it from some obligations under the right-to-shelter agreement. The court proceeding is still ongoing.

 

This week, Legal Aid and the Coalition for the Homeless, which monitors conditions in shelters, said that if asylum seekers continue to be stuck without beds, “we will have no choice but to file litigation to enforce the law.”

 

For now, New York is taking steps to try and deter migrants from coming, including by distributing fliers at the southern border telling them that they will not be guaranteed services if they come to the city.

 

Advocates for migrants and homeless populations have argued that the Adams administration could be doing more to free up shelter space by expanding eligibility for housing vouchers and increasing staff to manage the logistics of helping migrants move on. Some migrants who want to move out of New York are unable to because of delays in securing their driver’s license, lawyers say.

 

The city has repeatedly urged the Biden administration to provide more aid and to expedite the federal process for migrants to legally work. On Wednesday, the city also announced a partnership with several universities to recruit student volunteers to help migrants fill out asylum applications.

 

Despite shelter capacity reaching its limits, Donovan Richards, the Queens borough president, said the prospect of tent cities popping up throughout New York is unlikely. There are still more emergency shelters that can be opened, he said, including a new site that can fit 1,000 people and is set to open soon in the parking lot of a psychiatric center in Queens.

 

“I get a ping on my phone at least twice or three times a week about a new hotel opening up or a new site being proposed,” Mr. Richards said. “That’s going to be the norm for a while, but that’s going to prevent people from sleeping on the sidewalk.”

 

Jeffery C. Mays contributed reporting.


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5) A Revolution Is Coming to Medicine. Who Will It Leave Out?

By James Tabery, Aug. 5, 2023

Dr. Tabery is a professor of philosophy at the University of Utah and the author of the forthcoming book “Tyranny of the Gene: Personalized Medicine and Its Threat to Public Health,” from which this essay is adapted.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/opinion/personalized-medicine-genes.html
Nicole Rifkin

On Aug. 16, 2011, my father woke up and couldn’t get out of bed. Until then, he was an avid outdoorsman, who cast for trout on the Delaware River and trained German wirehaired pointers to track and point pheasant. So after an ambulance ride to the emergency room and then hours of tests, the diagnosis shook our family: Stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer.

 

Scans revealed tumors all over his body — brain, ribs, pelvis, spine. The tumors on his vertebrae quietly grew until they had cut off nerve signals to his legs.

 

More people die of lung cancer in the United States every year than from prostate, colon and breast cancers combined. Our family received hope, however, when a biopsy revealed that my dad’s cancerous cells had a molecular marker on their surface making them an ideal candidate for erlotinib, a drug that could disrupt their growth. Just weeks after he received his first dose, my mother phoned with tears of joy in her voice to tell me that the tumors were shrinking.

 

Erlotinib is a textbook example of what physicians call “personalized medicine,” or sometimes “precision medicine.” In contrast to traditional, one-size-fits-all health care, personalized medicine uses molecular-genetic information about patients to deliver the right treatment, to the right patient, at the right time. Prominent medical geneticists, influential federal scientists, hospital system executives and even elected officials foresee cancer treatments as the leading edge of a genomic revolution, ushering in a new era of miracle cures and biomedical magic bullets, and fundamentally transforming the care of desperate patients.

 

As health care costs skyrocket, some proponents of personalized medicine envision a more affordable alternative to traditional treatments, one that tailors interventions from the beginning of treatment rather than sending patients off on a trial-and-error odyssey. This approach, they say, could decrease waste while increasing the quality of care. Moreover, the claim is that personalized medicine research that prioritizes the participation of marginalized communities will ensure these breakthroughs extend to everyone, combating racial and sociodemographic health disparities.

 

It’s hard not to get excited about a future guided by this medical revolution. But a closer look at lung cancer, and at my father’s experience specifically, paints a far gloomier picture than what the personalized medicine champions would have you believe.

 

There are some diseases for which genetics is truly saving lives; in particular, patients with rare diseases like spinal muscular atrophy and certain cancers such as chronic myelogenous leukemia may now be prescribed personalized medicine treatments that simply didn’t exist a couple of decades ago. For most patients with most diseases, though, the lofty promises have failed to materialize. Even more dangerously, the hype has distracted from alternative approaches to health care that are better suited to improving health for all of us.

 

One problem with personalized medicine is the cost. As the bills for his biopsies, surgeries and radiation piled up, we started to call my father the “million-dollar man.” The real eyepopper was the erlotinib, priced at over $5,000 for a one-month supply of the tiny pills. A number of other drugs for lung cancer have emerged in the years since — osimertinib, crizotinib and sotorasib, to name a few — in the $10,000-to-$20,000-per-month range. These, in fact, are on the affordable end of the spectrum; $50,000-per-month list prices aren’t uncommon for personalized medicines.

 

There’s a straightforward biological explanation for this. Personalized medicine works by carving patient populations into subgroups based on their molecular-genetic profiles. For lung cancer, there are a number of biological distinctions made, and those distinctions result in smaller pools of potential users for any given drug, which incline the pharmaceutical companies to drastically increase prices.

 

There is thus an inherent tension at the heart of personalized medicine. It purports to both tailor health care and drive down costs, but the more it succeeds at individualization, the higher go the prices. Patients, as a result, can now face an agonizing decision: forgo treatment or suffer financial ruin.

 

Our family was fortunate. My parents were financially stable, and they had good health insurance that covered the expensive drug. They lived only an hour’s drive to a major hospital network. My father had another thing going for him: the color of his skin. White patients with lung cancer are far more likely than Black patients to receive a diagnostic test indicating whether or not a drug like erlotinib is a good match, and patients from richer neighborhoods are more likely to get access compared with those from poorer neighborhoods.

 

My dad was ultimately able to leave the hospital and go home, where he continued receiving care, undergoing physical therapy and tying flies in the hopes that he’d one day again wade into the chilly spring waters of the Delaware. The following summer, however, a round of tests revealed that his tumors were growing again. He never regained the ability to stand, let alone cast a fly. On Sept. 23, 2012, a little over a year after he woke up paralyzed, my father died.

 

Media reports surrounding personalized medicine often forecast a future of health care revolutionized by the arrival of medical magic bullets and biomedical breakthroughs. Erlotinib, though, generally doesn’t cure cancer; it puts it on pause, and when it comes back, it often comes back with a vengeance. Oncologists today can respond by prescribing one of the newer, more expensive drugs. Still, for patients with advanced lung cancer like my dad, the chances of being alive five years after initial diagnosis are terrifyingly small.

 

Genetic information about patients can result in clinical treatments for certain diseases that are known to be caused by a fairly straightforward genetic mechanism; that’s what made conditions like spinal muscular atrophy and chronic myelogenous leukemia such good candidates for intervention. But those cases are the exception in medicine, not the norm. When we move to common and complex diseases like hypertension, Parkinson’s, diabetes or asthma, where, for a vast majority of patients, there’s no single gene causing the disease, the opportunity for a personalized medicine revolution that can benefit most patients is severely limited.

 

Taking steps to prevent the development of illness is both more effective and more cost-efficient than trying to eliminate disease after it arrives. Lung cancer is a prime example. Even though there is still no cure for metastatic lung cancer, age-adjusted death rates from lung cancer in the United States have been dropping steadily because of public health research and programs aimed at making our environments more lung-friendly, with asbestos abatement programs, antismoking campaigns and other efforts to control harmful chemicals.

 

People of color and those living in poverty are particularly susceptible to the harms of unhealthy environments. They tend to be the ones who are living closest to factories and highways and farthest from green spaces and fresh produce. It is abundantly clear that health disparities along racial and economic lines are largely caused by differences in our environments, not differences in our genes. That’s why the health and economic impact of addressing unsafe drinking water, food insecurity, exposure to heavy metals and countless other things is so important: Everyone benefits, not just the people with the right genes, the right skin color or the right bank account balance.

 

It’s impossible to specify how much time erlotinib added to the end of my father’s life, but there’s every reason to believe that he lived longer because of the drug. I’ll always cherish that period, just as I’m certain that the family members of lung cancer patients battling the disease today soak up every moment with their loved ones. Erlotinib, however, didn’t save him. For a very high price, the drug slowed his terminal disease down for a short time, and even that limited benefit is not available to everyone.

 

Improving health for us all, driving down the costs of health care and making the world a more equitable place are all noble goals. The most direct route, though, isn’t by way of orienting health care around the genetic differences between us. It’s by focusing it on the environments we share.



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