Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, September 10, 2023

  

September 12th, in front of the White House from 12:00-2:00 P.M. EST.

 

We’re off! Today, the Free Leonard Peltier: 79th Birthday Action caravan departs from Rapid City, South Dakota to Washington D.C. On September 12th, Leonard’s 79th Birthday, the caravan of supporters, NDN Collective, & Amnesty International will hold a nonviolent direct action in front of the White House from 12-2 PM EST.

Greetings Relatives, 

 

Ahead of the journey, we opened with ceremony at the Jumping Bull Ranch, where the shootout took place back on June 26, 1975 and the false allegations against Leonard Peltier followed. This ceremony and prayer will guide us on a safe journey as we work to secure Leonard Peltier’s freedom. 

 

Leonard Peltier is a Native American activist and citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians (ND), who is now in his 48th year of incarceration. Leonard’s imprisonment has been recognized globally as the product of a flawed prosecution, trial, and conviction by national and international human rights organizations, leading voices on criminal justice issues, dignitaries from around the world, and many current and former members of Congress. 

 

Enough is enough! We call on President Biden to #FreeLeonardPeltier

 

Can't Make it to Washington D.C? Here is How You Can Help #FreeLeonardPeltier

Sign the Petition to Free Leonard Peltier:

 

https://actionnetwork.org/forms/sign-to-demand-president-biden-free-native-activist-leonard-peltier/?source=group-native-organizers-alliance&referrer=group-native-organizers-alliance&redirect=https://secure.actblue.com/donate/leonard_peltier_action&link_id=3&can_id=51747ed9c5bd24e7ea78bb9f4fdf30c7&email_referrer=email_1845947&email_subject=re-sign-now-release-leonard-peltier-from-prison&refcodeEmailReferrer=email_1845947

📲 Call the White House at (202) 456-1111, email at whitehouse.gov/contact (Click here for Talking Points)

✍ Write to your representative to ask them to contact President Joe Biden in support of the release of Leonard Peltier.

📲 Share this action information on your socials by tagging us: @ndncollective and using hashtags: #FromSDtoDC #FreeLeonardPeltier 

📲 Share the X Spaces conversation featuring Holly Cook Macarro and Nick Tilsen co-hosted by Amnesty International and NDN Collective 

✉️ Write to Leonard Peltier for his Birthday: Leonard Peltier #89637-132 USP Coleman I P.O. Box 1033 Coleman, FL 33521

In Solidarity,

NDN Collective

“... The whole purpose [of the Free Leonard Peltier: 79th Birthday Action] is that we’re going to be applying pressure onto this Administration so that people do not forget about Leonard Peltier’s struggle and … to bring pressure on the powers that be so that we can continue to call for the clemency and the release of all of our of a relative, Leonard Peltier.”

~Nick Tilsen, President & CEO, NDN Collective

Connect with us on Socials:

Instagram  |  Facebook | Twitter | TikTok | YouTube

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National Tour of Ukrainian and Russian Leftists Against the War in Ukraine

By Howie Hawkins

Image Image by Candice Seplow.

San Francisco Bay Area:

Wednesday, September 13, 5:00 P.M. – Hanna Perekhoda and Ilya Matveev speak at the University of California at Berkeley, in Dwinelle Hall, Room 370.

The Ukraine Solidarity Network (U.S.) is sponsoring a national tour of Ukrainian and Russian anti-war socialists opposed to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The tour will take place in Chicago, New York, and the San Francisco Bay Area, from September 3 to 13, 2023.

 

While the narratives of Western and Russia imperialism have dominated commentary on the war, this tour will amplify the voices of progressive Ukrainians and Russians who have experienced first-hand the ravages of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and his effort to silence anti-war and democratic opposition in Russia. The speakers will discuss the nature of the war, why progressives should support Ukraine’s just resistance, and the need for a progressive rather than neoliberal reconstruction of Ukraine.

Tour Speakers

 

Hanna Perekhoda is an ethnic Ukrainian who grew up in the Russian-speaking the city of Donetsk in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. A researcher at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, she studies the political imagination of Ukrainian and Russian national narratives. She is a founder of the Swiss-based Committee of Solidarity with the Ukrainian People and with the Russian Opponents of the War. She is a member of the Ukrainian democratic socialist organization Sotsialnyi Rukh (“Social Movement”). Her articles and interviews have appeared in Democracy Now!, Green Left, Jacobin, New Politics, Open Democracy, OpenLeft.ru, Zabrona, and other publications.

 

“Americans need to know,” Perekhoda says, “that, regardless of political disagreements, all of Ukrainian society is united in the view that the Russian invaders must be expelled from their territory. Unfortunately, even as they defend themselves from an external enemy, Ukrainian workers are facing attacks from their own government. Ukrainians need solidarity in both of these struggles!”

 

Denys Bondar, a native of Ukraine, is a professor of physics at Tulane University. He is involved in a variety of initiatives to help Ukraine, including solar technology. He is also a member of Sotsialnyi Rukh, for which he co-authored their statement, “The Left View on the Prospects for Peace.” He also co-authored an article on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant crisis that appeared in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

 

Bondar says, “The responsibility for the fact that peace negotiations are not currently underway lies entirely with the Russian Federation, which has not provided any public proposals that the majority of Ukrainians could even hypothetically accept.”

 

Ilya Budraitskis is a Moscow-based historian, political writer, and spokesperson for the Russian Socialist Movement. He went into exile shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and crackdown on domestic dissent. He is a co-founder of Posle (“After”), an online journal by Russians who oppose the war against Ukraine. His book Dissidents Among Dissidents (Verso, 2022) is a study of the Left in post-Soviet Russia. His articles and interviews on the war have appeared in CounterPunch, Jacobin, LeftEast, Spectre, Tempest, and other publications.

 

It is Budraitskis’ view that, “The Putin regime is unreformable. The only hope for rebuilding a peaceful, democratic Russia lies with the Russians, exiled or jailed, who spoke out against the war.”

 

Ilya Matveev is also a recently exiled Russian socialist who was a political scientist in St. Petersburg. He is a founding editor of OpenLeft.ru, an editor of Posle, and currently a visiting research scholar at the University of California at Berkeley. His articles and interviews have appeared in Green Left, Jacobin, LeftEast, Open Democracy, Posle, Socialist Register, and other publications.

 

Matveev says, “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was an act of imperialism, which needn’t be a simple extension of capitalism to be deserving of opposition. It was an act of violence and domination driven by an unaccountable political class and, as usually is the case, its victims are predominantly the working classes – both in Russia and Ukraine.”

Tour Schedule

Chicago, Illinois:

 

Sunday, September 3, 3:30 p.m. – A panel featuring Hanna Perekhoda, Ilya Budraitskis, and Denys Bondar at the Socialism 2023 Conference (https://socialismconference.org).

 

Tuesday, September 5, 6:30 p.m. – Hanna Perekhoda, Ilya Budraitskis, and Denys Bondar speak at Loyola University’s Lakeshore Campus (6511 North Sheridan Road) in the Damen Student Center Cinema.

 

New York City:

 

Saturday, September 9, 7:00 p.m. – Hanna Perekhoda, Ilya Budraitskis, and Denys Bondar speak at the LGBT Community Center on Saturday, 208 West 13th St. (between 7th & 8th Avenues). This event will be livestreamed and available online afterwards. For details, go to https://linktr.ee/ukrainesolidaritynetwork.

 

San Francisco Bay Area:

 

Wednesday, September 13, 5:00 P.M. – Hanna Perekhoda and Ilya Matveev speak at the University of California at Berkeley, in Dwinelle Hall, Room 370.

 

Ukraine Solidarity Network (U.S.)

 

The tour is being organized by the Ukrainian Solidarity Network in the U.S., an independent group of progressive activists from the labor, peace, feminist, and civil rights movements. The network builds moral, political, and material support for the people of Ukraine in their resistance to Russia’s invasion and their struggle for independence, democracy, and social justice. It fosters links between progressive labor and social organizations in Ukraine and the U.S.

 

The Ukraine Solidarity Network statement of principles, information on the tour, and links to writings and interviews by the speakers and other Ukraine solidarity activists is available at https://linktr.ee/ukrainesolidaritynetwork.

 

CounterPunch, August 29, 2023

https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/08/29/national-tour-of-ukrainian-and-russian-leftists-against-the-war-in-ukraine/

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Join the March to End Fossil Fuels!

September 17th, 1-4:00 P.M., NYC and Everywhere!

Register an Action Anywhere:

https://fightfossilfuels.net/#act

 

On September 17th, People Vs. Fossil Fuels—a broad coalition of over 1,200 climate and environmental justice groups, is planning a massive demonstration during the United Nations Climate Action Summit.

 

"The United Nations is calling on world leaders to take real steps to lead us off fossil fuels to protect people and the planet. On September 20th in New York, the UN Climate Ambition Summit will gather world leaders to commit to phasing out fossil fuels."Thousands of us will take to the streets before the summit to demand President Biden take bold action to end fossil fuels. Other direct actions are being planned all week in the lead up to the march and across the country!

 

Sign Up:

 https://actionnetwork.org/forms/march-end-fossil-fuels?referrer=group-beyond-extreme-

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Drop the Charges on the Tampa 5!

Sign the Petition:

https://peoplespetitions.org/tampa5

 

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. 

 

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!

 

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.

 

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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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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AMERIKA THE LIE (2023)

By Kevin ''Rashid'' Johnson

Everything in Amerika is inverted

Every ideal it professes perverted

Take for example the name department of defense

Which makes absolutely no sense

Its only role invasions

and infiltrations of weaker nations

And the department of justice

Targets just us

The poor, powerless and people of color

But protects those wealthy others

Who commit the real crimes

And undermine

World peace and stability

Because they have the ability

And exercise it

Killing and robbing multitudes but few realize it

Because the system shields

The power they wield

Through corporate monopolies

But call it a free market society

Promoting deporting huge portions

Of marginalized groups while opposing abortions

And birth control

Assuming the role

Of policing women's bodies

While claiming it's a free society

And the lie of an economy that trickles down

But grinds the poor and workers into the ground

While the rich few are exempt from taxation

And drive up the cost of living with inflation

With cops who swear to serve and protect us

But only kill maim and disrespect us

Everything about Amerika is inverted

Every value it claims to uphold perverted

With euphemisms its rulers disguise

A society sustained by lies

Like the claimed land of the free and home of the brave

But steeped in racism and built by slaves

Write to Kevin “Rashid” Johnson:

Kevin Johnson #1007485

Sussex 1 State Prison                                  

24414 Musselwhite Drive

Waverly, VA 23891

Visit Rashid’s website at:

www.rashidmod.com

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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) Can Kenya Bring Order to Haiti? Doubts Are Swirling.

The African country has volunteered to put boots on the ground in the Caribbean nation by the end of the year. But the plan is facing pushback even as Haiti’s security crisis spirals out of control.

By Simon Romero, Andre Paultre and Abdi Latif Dahir, Sept. 5, 2023

Reporting from Mexico City, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and Nairobi, Kenya

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/05/world/americas/haiti-kenya-force-gangs.html

A demonstrator confronting the police during a protest against insecurity in Port-au-Prince last month. Credit...Odelyn Joseph/Associated Press

Every day, Vélina Élysée Charlier drives past barricaded neighborhoods and frequently sees dead bodies lying on the street, she said, a result of score-settling between gangs and vigilantes in Haiti’s capital.

 

After dusk, she never leaves home for fear of being killed or kidnapped. When her 8-year-old daughter got appendicitis one evening, Ms. Charlier said, the family waited until morning to get her medical care since driving to a hospital was out of the question.

 

“Port-au-Prince looks like something out of hell these days,” said Ms. Charlier, 42, a prominent anticorruption activist in the city and mother of four who lives in a hillside area of the capital.

 

As gangs were seizing control of one part of Haiti’s capital after another, the country’s fragile government issued a plea nearly 12 months ago for foreign troops to step in and assert order in the crisis-racked Caribbean nation. After that desperate appeal, a force led by Kenya finally seems close to materializing in what would be the first time an African country leads such a mission in one of the Americas’ most unstable places.

 

But as Haiti’s security conditions spiral further out of control, manifested by a rise in killings around Port-au-Prince as heavily armed gangs try to quell a citizen-led vigilante movement, many in the country disparage the plan as too meager and too late. The criticism underscores deep-seated anxieties in Haiti over foreign interventions, as well as mistrust of Kenyan security forces over their record of human rights abuses and graft.

 

Ms. Charlier voiced doubt that the Kenyan-led force would be large enough to make headway against the gangs, which are thought to control roughly 80 percent of the capital. The plan calls for the deployment of 1,000 Kenyan police officers and several hundred officers or soldiers from Caribbean countries.

 

“Fighting the gangs will require going into shantytowns, hillsides, terrain that you need to know very well,” said Ms. Charlier. She said that money going to an outside force would be better spent on strengthening Haiti’s own depleted police forces.

 

Before the Kenyan force even secures the approval it needs from the United Nations Security Council for the mission, the scale of Haiti’s crisis is raising doubts about what the Kenyans can accomplish.

 

The plan for a force of fewer than 1,500 compares to a 1994 intervention force led by the United States of 21,000 and another force, led by Brazil about a decade later, that numbered 13,000 at its peak.

 

So far, the United States and Brazil, the two largest countries in the Americas, are reluctant to intervene with their own forces. That wariness reflects doubts over large deployments two years after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the fatigue that many governments in the hemisphere have about the nearly perpetual crises in Haiti, especially after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021 created a power vacuum in the already volatile nation.

 

Scenes of anarchic violence have many in Port-au-Prince on tenterhooks. In late August, gang members opened fire on protesters organized by an evangelical church leader, killing at least seven; earlier in the month, gang members burned alive seven people from the same family, apparently in retaliation for a relative’s support of a citizens self-defense movement.

 

Amid the latest outbursts of gang violence, the United States repeatedly urged its citizens over the summer to leave Haiti as soon as possible. From April to June, at least 238 suspected gang members, including some seized from police custody, were killed in lynchings, according to the United Nations. Some were stoned, mutilated or burned alive.

 

The vigilante movement, largely comprising ordinary Haitians in Port-au-Prince, coalesced earlier this year. Its members often carry machetes instead of guns, and are known for brutally meting out retribution on the streets.

 

While the outbreak of mob justice caused abductions and killings by the gangs to decline temporarily, the resurgence in recent weeks has led to a new phase of unrest. Nearly 200,000 people are displaced across the country, according to the International Organization for Migration; the highest concentration of these internal refugees is in Port-au-Prince, where thousands are languishing in shelters.

 

Esther Pierre, 33, was selling food on the streets of her neighborhood, Savane Pistache, before she fled her home in mid-August. Since then, she and her two children have been living in a camp for displaced people in a Port-au-Prince gymnasium.

 

“I saw armed men arriving in our neighborhood,” Ms. Pierre said. “Those who wanted to fight them were raped, killed, burned.”

 

Ms. Pierre said her family left with the clothes on its back.

 

The Biden administration supports the Kenyan plan. Discussions about Kenya’s offer to deploy a multinational police force in Haiti began about two years ago but began solidifying only this year, Kenya’s foreign minister, Alfred N. Mutua, said.

 

Both the United States and the Bahamas asked the East African nation this year if it would consider leading a force to help restore order. Haiti’s prime minister, Ariel Henry, also reiterated a similar request to Kenya’s president when the two met on the sidelines of the climate finance summit in Paris in June.

 

Kenya was also motivated to step in order to inspire Pan-African unity and show solidarity with the people of Haiti, where enslaved people ousted the French in a revolution, said Mr. Mutua.

 

While specific operational details were yet to be finalized, he said he expected the Kenyan police to train their Haitian counterparts, patrol with them and protect “key installations.” He said he hoped the Kenyan officers would deploy to Haiti by the end of the year.

 

“It’s not a matter of whether we are going to Haiti or not — we are going,” Mr. Mutua said in an interview. “We are convinced.”

 

Kenya’s security forces have long participated in troop deployments abroad, serving in countries like Lebanon, Sierra Leone and South Sudan. Kenya has 445 personnel currently serving with United Nations peacekeeping missions, according to U.N. data. Kenyan troops also serve as part of the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia and under a new regional force deployed in the volatile eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

 

But domestically and internationally, Kenyan security forces have come under scrutiny for their actions.

 

In Somalia, the Kenyan military, a key ally of the United States in the fight against Islamist extremism, has been accused of facilitating and profiting from illicit exports of charcoal and sugar.

 

Kenyan law enforcement officers have also been condemned by rights groups, which have accused them of excessive force, carrying out extrajudicial killings and conducting arbitrary arrests. This was in stark display during the pandemic, when their police were accused of killing dozens of people while enforcing lockdowns. The Kenyan police also killed at least 30 people during antigovernment protests this year, according to Amnesty International.

 

Given that record, activists and human rights groups in Kenya and beyond have criticized the decision to deploy the Kenyan police to Haiti. Many have voiced their concerns to the U.N. Security Council and the U.S. and other governments, and have urged them to drop their support for the deployment.

 

“Kenyan police are going to export brutality to Haiti,” said Otsieno Namwaya, the East Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

 

Mr. Mutua, Kenya’s foreign minister, dismissed those concerns as “hot air” and said he was confident that the Kenyan force would help bring stability to Haiti.

 

“There’s a reason why the United States, Canada, the whole of the Caribbean nations, many nations in this world are asking Kenya to take the lead,” he said. “It is because they have faith in the professional nature of the Kenyan police.”

 

U.S. officials say they are focused on not repeating mistakes made in previous stabilization missions in Haiti. The Biden administration does not want the multinational force to engage in constant firefights with gangs but rather to ensure humanitarian aid can safely be sent to the nation, said two U.S. officials who were familiar with the matter but were not authorized to speak publicly.

 

Still, many Haitians echo the concerns of Kenyan rights groups, highlighting recent interventions as evidence of how they harm the country. Trust in the United Nations plummeted in Haiti after investigations showed that poor sanitation by U.N. peacekeepers after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake had caused one of the deadliest cholera outbreaks of modern times, killing at least 10,000 people.

 

Gédéon Jean, executive director of the Center for Analysis and Research in Human Rights, an independent Haitian organization, noted that the U.N. peacekeeping mission, which ended in 2017, sometimes spent hundreds of millions of dollars per year on its operations.

 

Afterward, Mr. Jean said, it “left behind a police force that didn’t even have a helicopter or good armor.”

 

Given the proposed size of the Kenyan force, there are also concerns that it could be outgunned. “These guys have .50-caliber rifles mounted to pickup trucks,” Daniel Foote, the Biden administration’s former special envoy to Haiti, who resigned in 2021 over the deportations of Haitian migrants, said about the gangs awaiting the Kenyans. “You can’t do it with unqualified people, and you can’t fix it with rookies going in.”

 

Mr. Foote added that while he was “theoretically” opposed to an intervention because of past mistakes made in such missions, he believed that the United States had a responsibility to help Haiti and to allow Haitians to guide how such an intervention could work.

 

“The U.S. should lead a peacekeeping mission,” Mr. Foote said. “They don’t need to send 10,000 troops. They need to send Special Forces guys who go down and figure out how to open up the arteries and go after the gangs.”

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2) California’s Hot Labor Summer Is Not Over Yet

A coalition of 85,000 Kaiser Permanente employees, most of whom are based in California, have begun voting on whether to authorize a strike.

By Soumya Karlamangla, Sept. 5, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/05/us/california-unions-kaiser-permanente.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=US%20News

Interns and volunteers created strike banners at the Unite Here Local 11 office near downtown Los Angeles in June in anticipation of a walkout. Credit...Philip Cheung for The New York Times

Summer may be on its last legs, but California’s hot labor summer certainly isn’t.

 

It’s been an exceptionally busy few months for labor actions in the Golden State, with dozens of strikes since May across a wide range of occupations, including housekeepers, Los Angeles city workers, McDonalds employees and dockworkers. The walkouts by tens of thousands of Hollywood actors and writers — together, the nation’s biggest strike in years — are still going strong.

 

And soon the list could get even bigger.

 

A coalition of a dozen local unions representing 85,000 pharmacists, nursing assistants, occupational therapists and other Kaiser Permanente employees have begun voting on whether to authorize a strike, as their current contract approaches its expiration at the end of September. Though the workers are in several states, the great majority (78 percent) are in California, according to coalition data.

 

Union leaders are calling for higher wages, and they have said that a staffing shortage at Kaiser hospitals and clinics is making it impossible to provide adequate care to patients.

 

“Kaiser is facing chronic understaffing, because workers can’t afford to live in L.A. on the low wages they pay us,” Miriam de la Paz, a unit secretary who works at Kaiser Permanente in Downey, said in a statement.

 

If all 85,000 workers covered by the contract were to walk out, it would be the largest strike by health care workers in U.S. history, according to the coalition. The soonest a strike would happen is Oct. 1.

 

On Labor Day, the union that represents most of the workers, S.E.I.U.-United Healthcare Workers West, organized a demonstration outside of Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center in Hollywood to highlight its call for improved working conditions, officials said. In a planned act of civil disobedience, protesters sat in the middle of Sunset Boulevard, and 25 of them were arrested by the police, LAist reported.

 

Kaiser Permanente said in a statement that it was confident that an agreement would be reached before the current contract expired, and that the strike authorization vote “does not reflect any breakdown in bargaining, nor does it indicate a strike is imminent or will happen at all.”

 

“It is a disappointing action, considering our progress at the bargaining table,” the statement added.

 

Labor actions are surging across the country: More workers were on strike in the United States in July than at any time since at least January 2021, according to the Cornell-ILR Labor Action Tracker. There were 205,000 U.S. workers on strike in July, the tracker says; a year earlier there were just 8,000.

 

“Strike activity has very much been driven by workers in Southern California,” Johnnie Kallas, who runs Cornell’s tracker, said. “There seems to me to be an intimate connection between these strikes and the really high cost of living in the L.A. area.”

 

As my colleagues have reported, 2023 has brought an unprecedented level of cross-sector solidarity among unions in Los Angeles. The high cost of living and growing income inequality in Southern California appear to have fostered common ground among millions of residents.

 

Kallas said it was difficult to estimate exactly how many workers in California had gone on strike since May, because many of the actions involved unions with members in other states. Roughly 37,000 workers have walked out in California-only strikes that began on or after May 1, he said, but the bulk of the striking workers in the state are among the roughly 171,000 writers and actors who are striking against the film studios.

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3) In Detroit, a Tiny Home Generates a Big Controversy

A program that rents homes to low-income residents, and helps them build equity as homeowners, was rocked when one of the initial participants was evicted.

By Allan Lengel, Sept. 4, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/04/realestate/tiny-homes-detroit.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Real%20Estate

Tiny Home resident Taura Brown was locked in a bitter eviction battle for 25 months. Cass Community Social Services said it wasn’t her primary home. Ms. Brown insisted it was. Credit...Sarah Rice for The New York Times

On Detroit’s west side, near a commercial strip lined with vacant lots, empty shops, storefront churches and motorcycle clubs, sits a cluster of relatively new, micro-size houses — 225 to 470 square feet — residences that look more like seasonal cottages in a resort town.

 

The Tiny Homes, as they’re known, were built by a nonprofit group and have marble shower stalls, granite kitchen countertops and solar panels. They are intended for low-income residents who pay monthly rent of $1 per square foot, plus electricity, with the option to own the home outright after seven years.

 

To date, there are 25 in a three-block area, occupied by residents that include seniors and people formerly homeless and incarcerated, and who earn as little as $7,000 annually. The first set opened in 2017, and construction is slated to begin this fall on a half dozen or so houses on a patch of empty land nearby. The project, which is owned and operated by Cass Community Social Services of Detroit, has been built through fund-raising from foundations and private donors, including rocker Jon Bon Jovi.

 

It’s the kind of story that pulls at heartstrings: From the scars of the July 1967 uprising rose a community where people who never thought they would become homeowners now have a chance to build some wealth.

 

But in early April, the first-ever eviction of a Tiny Homes resident underscored what a hot-button issue affordable housing has become in places like Detroit, one of the country’s poorest big cities. It pitted well-intentioned community activists against a well-established do-gooder. It also was a reminder that benevolent, low-income programs often come with rules and restrictions that can result in conflicts and ugly disputes. In this case, the founder of the program, who is white, was accused of racism.

 

With TV cameras rolling, more than two dozen community activists from a group called Detroit Eviction Defense defended the resident, Taura Brown, 45, locking arms, putting up barriers of discarded tires, chicken wire, and barrels, and blocking the front door of her house on Monterey Street, near the John C. Lodge Freeway.

 

The group was trying to prevent court bailiffs from carrying out the final eviction order to remove Ms. Brown from the house.

 

As she fought the eviction, Ms. Brown, who is Black, repeatedly referred publicly to the Rev. Faith Fowler, who is white and runs the program, as a “poverty pimp,” and displayed a sign attacking Ms. Fowler in her front yard.

 

Ms. Fowler contends the eviction was triggered by Ms. Brown living elsewhere more than 50 percent of the time, contrary to the intent of the program, which requires tenants to make the homes their primary residence. Ms. Fowler said new residents, including Ms. Brown, signed agreements in December 2020 that the houses would be their primary residences.

 

“I’m not anti-Miss Brown,” she said, adding later, “I just want someone living in the house full time, that’s all.”

 

The agency said Ms. Brown’s name was on the lease at her boyfriend’s $2,000-plus a month apartment on the Detroit riverfront. Cass Community Social Services initially didn’t renew her annual lease, but she refused to move, so the nonprofit moved to evict. Ms. Brown offered to pay rent, but the agency declined, telling her they wanted her gone to make way for someone who would make it their primary residence.

 

Ms. Brown said in an interview that the eviction was in retaliation after she began speaking up on behalf of residents about her concerns, like slow repairs, and because she was critical of the program and Ms. Fowler.

 

She said she lives on disability and worked part-time for her boyfriend’s engineering consulting business out of his apartment. She said she did not live with him and had her name on his lease only so she’d have easy access to the secure building and its amenities, which include a swimming pool. She said she never paid him rent and spent the majority of her time at Tiny Homes.

 

Laying a Foundation

 

After seven years, Tiny Homes renters can own their houses outright and pay only utilities, upkeep and property taxes. Once taking ownership, they are free to sell it at market rate, use it as collateral for a loan or leave it as an inheritance.

 

To date, four residents besides Ms. Brown are no longer part of the program. One died from illness, and another was murdered. Another moved to Memphis to be closer to family and one moved into her deceased husband’s house. The agency has renewed everyone else’s annual lease since the inception, except for Ms. Brown’s.

 

Over seven years, Ms. Brown would have paid $26,628 in rent for the 317-square-foot house before taking ownership. Zillow, the real estate website, currently values the house at about $90,000.

 

Ms. Brown was one of 122 people who filed an application for the homes in 2016, while the first one was being built. For about the next five years, the agency used those applications to fill the homes as they became available. In 2022, the agency took 36 more applications for five houses.

 

In September 2024, three residents expect to be the first to achieve ownership, including Carolyn Hobbs, 72.

 

“I didn’t think I would ever own a home,” Ms. Hobbs said. “It’s really a well-rounded program. They help you with a job or clothing and try to help get you on your feet.”

 

“It was kind of sad that it happened,” she said of Ms. Brown’s eviction.

 

Coming to Grips With ‘Affordable”

 

“Affordable housing” is a broad term, but essentially refers to what households can afford to pay and still have money left over for food, health care and transportation. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development defines it as paying no more than 30 percent of household income for housing costs, including utilities.

 

The needs are great in a country in which more than 11 percent of the population lives in poverty, according to a 2022 U.S. Census report. In Detroit, on any given night, about 1,280 people are homeless, according to the latest 2023 figure from the Home Action Network of Detroit.

 

Amy Hovey, executive director of the Michigan State Housing Development Authority, said the affordable housing supply in the state “has decreased so much that it has driven up the cost of housing in Michigan and really made housing not affordable for a much larger percentage of our population.”

 

“We’re in a crisis that is very quickly becoming an emergency,” Ms. Hovey said.

 

Spreading the Wealth

 

Ms. Fowler, 64, was born in Detroit and grew up there and in suburban Royal Oak. Her father was a Detroit Public Schools teacher, her mother held different jobs, the last as a cashier at a grocery chain where she became a union representative. In 1994, Ms. Fowler, who has a master’s degree in theology from Boston University, became affiliated with Cass Community United Methodist Church in Detroit’s Cass Corridor, which provided help for seniors, developmentally disabled and homeless. In 2002, it established a separate nonprofit agency, Cass Community Social Services, to expand its programs, and Ms. Fowler became the executive director.

 

In 2013, Ms. Fowler’s mother died, leaving her an inheritance, including a house — an experience that led to the creation of the Tiny Homes project as she looked for a way to make it possible for people with low incomes to receive some infusion of wealth to move out of poverty.

 

She said she raised more than $2 million from foundations and private donors for the initial 25 homes, including the one at 1553 Monterey Street where Ms. Brown lived. Each home costs about $100,000.

 

A Mutual Lack of Trust

 

Ms. Brown moved into her Tiny Home in January of 2020. She had been working for a property management company and living in a two-bedroom apartment in the Detroit Downriver suburb of Ecorse. But she said her health was declining, the result of polycystic kidney disease, a hereditary illness that enlarges the kidney, which gradually loses function. She eventually went on disability and required dialysis. (She received a kidney transplant May 8 of this year.)

 

At a meeting in December of 2020, Ms. Brown and other residents signed an agreement that their homes would be their primary residences, Ms. Fowler said.

 

She said other residents came to her to complain about Ms. Brown’s absence. Ms. Brown countered by sending an email to Ms. Fowler questioning why the security staff was scrutinizing her comings and goings. Shortly after, Ms. Fowler said the agency decided not to renew her annual lease. Ms. Brown was given a March deadline to move, which was later extended to August. Ms. Brown continued to battle her case in court, slowing her eviction.

 

Differing Conclusions

 

Both Ms. Brown and Ms. Fowler have their defenders. 

 

Tristan Taylor, one of the founders of Detroit Will Breathe, which emerged during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, is also part of the Detroit Eviction Defense and was there blocking the door on the day of Brown’s eviction.

 

“The main charge that Cass Community Social Services has against her is that she didn’t live in the house enough,” Mr. Taylor said in a telephone interview. “I’ve never heard of this where a person who is paying rent and maintaining a house was ever kicked out for not living in it enough.”

 

Ms. Brown is currently dividing her time between her boyfriend’s apartment and her sister’s, and she said she is weighing her options to continue fighting the eviction.

 

The Cass Agency has painted, cleaned and repaired Ms. Brown’s former home and a new tenant moved in on Aug. 15.

 

Neisha Smith, president of the Webb Street Association in the neighborhood, said she couldn’t speak about the attacks on Ms. Fowler “without tearing up.”

 

“She’s nothing but positivity,” said Ms. Smith, 54, the third generation to live in the neighborhood, who is the manager of a chemical company. “For someone to say she’s racist; are you kidding me?”

 

Phillip Watson, 66, who lived across the street from Ms. Brown, praises Ms. Fowler and the program. While standing on his front porch, he’s reluctant to say much about the eviction, only that, “I’m glad it’s over. It makes the neighborhood look bad.”

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4) As Abortion Laws Drive Obstetricians From Red States, Maternity Care Suffers

Some doctors who handle high-risk pregnancies are fleeing restrictive abortion laws. Idaho has been particularly hard hit.

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Sept. 6, 2023

Sheryl Gay Stolberg interviewed obstetricians about abortion laws and visited a medical clinic in McCall, Idaho.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/us/politics/abortion-obstetricians-maternity-care.html

Dr. Gustafson, a family doctor who also delivers babies, has been practicing in Idaho for 20 years. Credit...Angie Smith for The New York Times

One by one, doctors who handle high-risk pregnancies are disappearing from Idaho — part of a wave of obstetricians fleeing restrictive abortion laws and a hostile state legislature. Dr. Caitlin Gustafson, a family doctor who also delivers babies in the tiny mountain town of McCall, is among those left behind, facing a lonely and uncertain future.

 

When caring for patients with pregnancy complications, Dr. Gustafson seeks counsel from maternal-fetal medicine specialists in Boise, the state capital two hours away. But two of the experts she relied on as backup have packed up their young families and moved away, one to Minnesota and the other to Colorado.

 

All told, more than a dozen labor and delivery doctors — including five of Idaho’s nine longtime maternal-fetal experts — will have either left or retired by the end of this year. Dr. Gustafson says the departures have made a bad situation worse, depriving both patients and doctors of moral support and medical advice.

 

“I wanted to work in a small family town and deliver babies,” she said. “I was living my dream — until all of this.”

 

Idaho’s obstetrics exodus is not happening in isolation. Across the country, in red states like Texas, Oklahoma and Tennessee, obstetricians — including highly skilled doctors who specialize in handling complex and risky pregnancies — are leaving their practices. Some newly minted doctors are avoiding states like Idaho.

 

The departures may result in new maternity care deserts, or areas that lack any maternity care, and they are placing strains on physicians like Dr. Gustafson who are left behind. The effects are particularly pronounced in rural areas, where many hospitals are shuttering obstetrics units for economic reasons. Restrictive abortion laws, experts say, are making that problem much worse.

 

“This isn’t an issue about abortion,” said Dr. Stella Dantas, the president-elect of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “This is an issue about access to comprehensive obstetric and gynecologic care. When you restrict access to care that is based in science, that everybody should have access to — that has a ripple effect.”

 

Idaho doctors operate under a web of abortion laws, including a 2020 “trigger law” that went into effect after the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade last year. Together, they create one of the strictest abortion bans in the nation. Doctors who primarily provide abortion care are not the only medical professionals affected; the laws are also impinging on doctors whose primary work is to care for expectant mothers and babies, and who may be called upon to terminate a pregnancy for complications or other reasons.

 

Idaho bars abortion at any point in a pregnancy with just two exceptions: when it is necessary to save the life of the mother and in certain cases of rape or incest, though the victim must provide a police report. A temporary order issued by a federal judge also permits abortion in some circumstances when a woman’s health is at risk. Doctors convicted of violating the ban face two to five years in prison.

 

Dr. Gustafson, 51, has so far decided to stick it out in Idaho. She has been practicing in the state for 20 years, 17 of them in McCall, a stunning lakeside town of about 3,700 people.

 

She sees patients at the Payette Lakes Medical Clinic, a low-slung building that evokes the feeling of a mountain lodge, tucked into a grove of tall spruces and pines. It is affiliated with St. Luke’s Health System, the largest health system in the state.

 

On a recent morning, she was awakened at 5 a.m. by a call from a hospital nurse. A pregnant woman, two months shy of her due date, had a ruptured membrane. In common parlance, the patient’s water had broken, putting the mother and baby at risk for preterm delivery and other complications.

 

Dr. Gustafson threw on her light blue scrubs and her pink Crocs and rushed to the hospital to arrange for a helicopter to take the woman to Boise. She called the maternal-fetal specialty practice at St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center, the group she has worked with for years. She did not know the doctor who was to receive the patient. He had been in Idaho for only one week.

 

“Welcome to Idaho,” she told him.

 

In rural states, strong medical networks are critical to patients’ well-being. Doctors are not interchangeable widgets; they build up experience and a comfort level in working with one another and within their health care systems. Ordinarily, Dr. Gustafson might have found herself talking to Dr. Kylie Cooper or Dr. Lauren Miller on that day.

 

But Dr. Cooper left St. Luke’s in April for Minnesota. After “many agonizing months of discussion,” she said, she concluded that “the risk was too big for me and my family.”

 

Dr. Miller, who had founded the Idaho Coalition for Safe Reproductive Health Care, an advocacy group, moved to Colorado. It is one thing to pay for medical malpractice insurance, she said, but quite another to worry about criminal prosecution.

 

“I was always one of those people who had been super calm in emergencies,” Dr. Miller said. “But I was finding that I felt very anxious being on the labor unit, just not knowing if somebody else was going to second-guess my decision. That’s not how you want to go to work every day.”

 

The vacancies have been tough to fill. Dr. James Souza, the chief physician executive for St. Luke’s Health System, said the state’s laws had “had a profound chilling effect on recruitment and retention.” He is relying in part on temporary, roving doctors known as locums — short for the Latin phrase locum tenens, which means to stand in place of.

 

He likens labor and delivery care to a pyramid, supported by nurses, midwives and doctors, with maternal-fetal specialists at its apex. He worries the system will collapse.

 

“The loss of the top of a clinical pyramid means the pyramid falls apart,” Dr. Souza said.

 

Some smaller hospitals in Idaho have been unable to withstand the strain. Two closed their labor and delivery units this year; one of them, Bonner General Health, a 25-bed hospital in Sandpoint, in northern Idaho, cited the state’s “legal and political climate” and the departure of “highly respected, talented physicians” as factors that contributed to its decision.

 

Other states are also seeing obstetricians leave. In Oklahoma, where more than half of the state’s counties are considered maternity care deserts, three-quarters of obstetrician-gynecologists who responded to a recent survey said they were either planning to leave, considering leaving or would leave if they could, said Dr. Angela Hawkins, the chair of the Oklahoma section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

 

The previous chair, Dr. Kate Arnold, and her wife, also an obstetrician, moved to Washington, D.C., after the Supreme Court overturned Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. “Before the change in political climate, we had no plans on leaving,” Dr. Arnold said.

 

In Tennessee, where one-third of counties are considered maternity care deserts, Dr. Leilah Zahedi-Spung, a maternal-fetal specialist, decided to move to Colorado not long after the Dobbs ruling. She grew up in the South and felt guilty about leaving, she said.

 

Tennessee’s abortion ban, which was softened slightly this year, initially required an “affirmative defense,” meaning that doctors faced the burden of proving that an abortion they had performed was medically necessary — akin to the way a defendant in a homicide case might have to prove he or she acted in self-defense. Dr. Zahedi-Spung felt as if she had “quite the target on my back,” she said — so much so that she hired her own criminal defense lawyer.

 

“The majority of patients who came to me had highly wanted, highly desired pregnancies,” she said. “They had names, they had baby showers, they had nurseries. And I told them something awful about their pregnancy that made sure they were never going to take home that child — or that they would be sacrificing their lives to do that. I sent everybody out of state. I was unwilling to put myself at risk.”

 

Perhaps nowhere has the departure of obstetricians been as pronounced as in Idaho, where Dr. Gustafson has been helping to lead an organized — but only minimally successful — effort to change the state’s abortion laws, which have convinced her that state legislators do not care what doctors think. “Many of us feel like our opinion is being discounted,” she said.

 

Dr. Gustafson worked one day a month at a Planned Parenthood clinic in a Boise suburb until Idaho imposed its near-total abortion ban; she now has a similar arrangement with Planned Parenthood in Oregon, where some Idahoans travel for abortion care. She has been a plaintiff in several lawsuits challenging Idaho’s abortion policies. Earlier this year, she spoke at an abortion rights rally in front of the State Capitol.

 

In interviews, two Republican state lawmakers — Representatives Megan Blanksma, the House majority leader, and John Vander Woude, the chair of the House Health and Welfare Committee — said they were trying to address doctors’ concerns. Mr. Vander Woude acknowledged that Idaho’s trigger law, written before Roe fell, had affected everyday medical practice in a way that lawmakers had not anticipated.

 

“We never looked that close, and what exactly that bill said and how it was written and language that was in it,” he said. “We did that thinking Roe v. Wade was never going to get overturned. And then when it got overturned, we said, ‘OK, now we have to take a really close look at the definitions.’”

 

Mr. Vander Woude also dismissed doctors’ fears that they would be prosecuted, and he expressed doubt that obstetricians were really leaving the state. “I don’t see any doctor ever getting prosecuted,” he said, adding, “Show me the doctors that have left.”

 

During its 2023 session, the Legislature clarified that terminating an ectopic pregnancy or a molar pregnancy, a rare complication, would not be defined as abortion — a move that codified an Idaho Supreme Court ruling. Lawmakers also eliminated an affirmative defense provision.

 

But lawmakers refused to extend the tenure of the state’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee, an expert panel on which Dr. Gustafson served that investigated pregnancy-related deaths. The Idaho Freedom Foundation, a conservative group, testified against it and later called it an “unnecessary waste of tax dollars” — even though the annual cost, about $15,000, was picked up by the federal government.

 

That was a bridge too far for Dr. Amelia Huntsberger, the Idaho obstetrician who helped lead a push to create the panel in 2019. She recently moved to Oregon. “Idaho calls itself a quote ‘pro-life state,’ but the Idaho Legislature doesn’t care about the death of moms,” she said.

 

Most significantly, the Legislature rejected a top priority of Dr. Gustafson and others in her field: amending state law so that doctors would be able to perform abortions when the health — not just the life — of the mother is at risk. It was almost too much for Dr. Gustafson. She loves living in Idaho, she said. But when asked if she had thought about leaving, her answer was quick: “Every day.”

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5) In Jail, Writing in Short Bursts as Therapy and Performance Art

A former prosecutor found solace and renewal in a writing process he teaches to inmates in Minnesota.

By Ernesto LondoñoPhotographs by David Guttenfelder, Sept. 6, 2023

Reporting from Minneapolis.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/us/jail-free-writing.html

Nate Johnson, right, a former prosecutor, leads a writing class at the Hennepin County Jail in Minneapolis.

Before handing pencil and paper to a group of inmates who attended one of his recent writing workshops in jail, Nate Johnson shared three things about his past.

 

He is a recovering alcoholic.

 

He has battled depression and anxiety for much of his life.

 

“And I used to be a prosecutor,” Mr. Johnson disclosed, adding a quick caveat. “I didn’t like that kind of work, and I didn’t do it for very long.”

 

Then came instructions for free writing, a technique Mr. Johnson brings to jails in the Minneapolis area some 40 times per month, tapping into what he has come to see as an extraordinary pool of literary talent brimming with insights about the criminal justice system.

 

Immediately after hearing a simple prompt, inmates were told to write furiously, without interruption, for five minutes. The prose didn’t have to make sense. It needn’t be good. The only goal was to turn the sequence of thoughts generated by each prompt into a string of sentences without stopping to think.

 

The first of three prompts was “patience.” Then came “hard times.” And finally, “this city.”

 

After each burst of writing, the inmates took turns reading their compositions out loud. Some spoke sheepishly, barely above a murmur. Others, like Aaron Schnagl, delivered their work with theatrical flair.

 

“Patience — sometimes I think we’re patients of the system, like good genes and good luck maybe missed us,” Mr. Schnagl, 39, read. “Home of the brave, where you’re born a slave, and your own country treats you like an infidel.”

 

Rapturous applause followed each reading. Some were whimsical. Several took jabs at the bleakness of their ward, where dozens of men breathe the same musty air and get only hints of sunlight through tiny frosted windows.

 

Recent workshops were attended by inmates awaiting trial on a range of charges that included sex offenses, drug crimes and acts of violence. Given the setting at a county jail rather than a prison where inmates often serve sentences for years or decades, those taking the class were still well connected to the world outside and anxious about their fate in the courts.

 

There were multiple allusions to racism, commentary about the ways crime gets punished in America and reflections on how poverty and privilege dictate life trajectories.

 

“When it’s over, they’re left with this document they’ve produced, this piece of art, this confessional,” Mr. Johnson said. “It works the way having a good cry works.”

 

Over the course of a life with more stumbles than triumphs, Mr. Johnson, 44, has experienced a fair amount of heartache. Which is how he came to see writing in short bursts as a therapeutic intervention, a means to take a hard look within and make peace with a turbulent mind.

 

He was born and raised in small towns in southwestern Minnesota, where his outlook was shaped by conservative relatives and hours spent listening to right-wing talk radio. At the urging of an uncle who was a Republican congressman, Mr. Johnson studied political science and later enrolled in law school at the University of Iowa.

 

During those years, he was crippled by depression and a nagging sense of dread, Mr. Johnson said, which drove him to drink heavily and led him to graduate near the bottom of his law school class in 2005.

 

After law school, Mr. Johnson worked on a failed Republican gubernatorial campaign in Oregon, which made him realize politics was not his thing. Seeking adventure and a sense of purpose, in 2006 he joined the Navy but was injured two years later while training for a deployment to Afghanistan, which prevented him from going. That effectively ended his military career.

 

Mr. Johnson stopped drinking in late 2011 after joining Alcoholics Anonymous. After four failed attempts,he passed the bar exam in 2014. Four years later, he took a job as prosecutor in Waseca, a small town south of Minneapolis, thinking the position might allow him to steer other people with substance abuse and mental health issues to treatment rather than prison. He found the work soul-crushing and quit after just six months.

 

Shortly afterward, he attended a workshop at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, where he got his first taste of free writing. It was taught as a tool to overcome writer’s block and to quickly knock out a rough draft. But Mr. Johnson found himself free writing frequently in his spare time, finding in the practice peace, clarity and inspiration.

 

The idea of turning free writing into a career came to him in 2019 while visiting a friend from Alcoholics Anonymous in jail. Seeking to lift the friend’s spirits, Mr. Johnson guided him through a prompt-based writing session, which became a habit to break the tedium of days behind bars.

 

This City

 

By Tyrone Stanifer

In the fall of 2019, Mr. Johnson approached the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, which runs the largest jail in the state, and asked if he could teach free writing to inmates. Sheriff Dawanna S. Witt loved the idea. Having watched a brother go to prison, she had long felt jails and prisons needed to do more to help inmates overcome trauma and turn their lives around.

 

“Not everybody who does horrific things are monsters,” said Sheriff Witt, the first woman and Black person to serve in the role. “We should be thinking about how we can save people from going deeper down that hole.”

 

After the classes became popular in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, Mr. Johnson founded a nonprofit organization called FreeWriters and trained a handful of instructors. They run workshops in jails in neighboring Ramsey and Anoka Counties.

 

Tyrone Stanifer, a regular at Mr. Johnson’s classes, credited free writing with building camaraderie among inmates. During a recent class, he wrote about the pain of losing his mother while he was incarcerated, which prompted an outpouring of support from other inmates. He has come to see writing as the only form of therapy available to him, Mr. Stanifer, 36, said.

 

“I just let whatever goes through my mind go on the paper,” he said. “That’s where the magic happens.”

 

During a recent workshop in the Hennepin County women’s jail, Desiree Thin Elk, 42, teared up while reading a dispatch about things she missed on the outside. She yearned to hear church bells, she said, to explore parks with her husband, and to eat ice cream from Dairy Queen. What she wouldn’t do for a “large Blizzard or a banana split,” she wrote.

 

Kortney Roe, 34, wrote about people who sleep in parks at night “fighting internal demons that stem from some kind of hurt in the past.” She continued: “Wish I could be a mentor or something to help them talk and show them some love, and that this, too, shall pass.”

 

Since 2019, Mr. Johnson has heard and read tens of thousands of dispatches from inmates. He has come to view this ever-expanding literary collection as an indictment of the criminal justice system. Too often, he said, the nation’s understaffed and underfunded jails drive people deeper into despair, making recidivism more likely.

 

Several prisons have writing programs that have generated critically acclaimed work and provided intimate glimpses into life behind bars in the United States, which has the largest population of incarcerated people in the world. But few jails, which tend to be transient, have programs like Free Writers.

 

Mr. Johnson said he is under no illusions that free writing will fix systemic problems in the criminal justice system. But he is confident it can alleviate suffering and has the potential to change perceptions about people charged with crimes.

 

“There are so many people in jail who are of above-average intelligence and even brilliant,” he said. “I wish we could stop thinking of these folks as a cancer on the body politic and recognize they can be an asset.”

 

Ernesto Londoño is a national correspondent based in the Midwest who keeps a close eye on drug use and counternarcotics policy in the United States. More about Ernesto Londoño

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6) Dozens of ‘Cop City’ Activists Are Indicted on Racketeering Charges

Opponents of a police training facility in Atlanta say they are engaged in legitimate acts of protest. Prosecutors accuse them of taking part in a sprawling criminal enterprise.

By Rick Rojas and Sean Keenan, Sept. 5, 2023

Reporting from Atlanta

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/05/us/cop-city-atlanta-indictment.html

Opponents of the planned Atlanta Public Safety Training Center protesting in June. Credit...Erik S Lesser/EPA, via Shutterstock

More than 60 activists who challenged a planned Atlanta police and fire training complex have been indicted by a Georgia grand jury in a sprawling racketeering case, accused of engaging in violence, intimidation and property destruction as part of a campaign to stall construction of the facility known by its critics as Cop City.

 

The Georgia attorney general was pursuing the activists under the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, better known as RICO — a powerful tool that has been employed by prosecutors to target street gangs and public corruption. Atlanta prosecutors also used a RICO indictment against former President Donald J. Trump and his allies for their attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.

 

In this case, prosecutors have sought to portray the fight against the training facility — officially known as the Atlanta Public Safety Center — as a criminal enterprise. In an 109-page indictment, which had been handed up last week and was released on Tuesday, prosecutors accused those involved in the effort of arson, domestic terrorism and money laundering and outlined instances in which activists were accused of throwing Molotov cocktails and fireworks at police officers, firefighters and emergency workers.

 

“Looking the other way when violence occurs is not an option in Georgia,” Christopher M. Carr, the Republican attorney general, said in a news conference on Tuesday. “If you come to our state and shoot a police officer, throw Molotov cocktails at law enforcement, set fire to police vehicles, damage construction equipment, vandalize private homes and businesses and terrorize their occupants, you can and will be held accountable.”

 

The American Civil Liberties Union and other critics said the indictment reflected the relentlessly aggressive approach officials had taken to cracking down on protests and pushing forward with building the facility, which has included prosecuting dozens of activists on domestic terrorism charges.

 

“We are extremely concerned by this breathtakingly broad and unprecedented use of state terrorism, anti-racketeering and money laundering laws against protesters,” said Aamra Ahmad, senior staff attorney with American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project.

 

The $90 million project, which would be built on a stretch of forested land in DeKalb County, just outside Atlanta, has been a source of tension in the city for two years.

 

Supporters say the complex will provide the Atlanta Police Department with upgraded facilities to train officers to go about their work in a large and challenging city. It would include areas to practice driving techniques and mock setups of a convenience store, a home and a nightclub, allowing trainees to learn in simulations of circumstances they could encounter in the field.

 

But critics have said that the money could be better spent elsewhere and that the center would lead to a more militarized police force, worsening the friction between law enforcement personnel and minority communities in the city. There was also resistance to developing a stretch of urban forest, an old prison farm that had been reclaimed by nature.

 

The opposition to the facility escalated into a confrontation between law enforcement officers and activists who planted themselves in the wooded area to thwart construction. Those clashes led to the fatal shooting of an activist and the wounding of a state trooper, also by gunfire.

 

In May, officers raided the house that served as the headquarters of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which paid bail and provided legal support for protesters. Three people involved in the fund — Marlon Kautz, Adele MacLean and Savannah Patterson — were charged with money laundering and charity fraud.

 

Activists and other elected officials raised concerns about the arrests, painting it as retaliation for lawful protest. But Gov. Brian Kemp argued that the activists had “facilitated and encouraged domestic terrorism,” and other state officials have argued that many of those trying to stop the facility were agitators from outside Georgia.

 

In the RICO indictment, prosecutors traced the roots of the campaign back to almost a year before city officials announced the leasing of the land to build the training center — to May 25, 2020, the day George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a Minneapolis police officer, touching off demonstrations across the country, including some in Atlanta. Those tensions only intensified after Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old Black man, was fatally shot by the Atlanta police outside a fast-food restaurant.

 

“Anti-government anarchists in Atlanta recognized an opportunity to rally against the law enforcement,” the indictment said.

 

Prosecutors described the movement to interfere with the construction, called Defend the Atlanta Forest, as broad, decentralized and autonomous. But in the indictment, prosecutors claimed that it had “evolved into a broader anti-government, anti-police and anti-corporate extremist organization.”

 

Prosecutors have relied on the RICO law because it enables them to stitch together seemingly disparate accusations and an array of people linked by their association to a criminal conspiracy or enterprise.

 

“They’re all working in some way, shape or form toward the same goal,” John Fowler, the deputy attorney general leading the prosecution division, said Tuesday.

 

Among the 61 people named in the indictment, 42 activists have already been charged under Georgia’s domestic terrorism statute.

 

But activists in the city have challenged the prosecutors’ portrayal. “In actuality, protesters against Cop City constitute a broad swath of society including racial and environmental justice advocates, faith groups, abolitionists, artists, students and people from all over the city and the country,” the Atlanta Solidarity Fund said in the past to describe the diversity of their effort.

 

Some legal observers found it unusual that prosecutors also gave a detailed definition and criticism of anarchism as an ideology. “It seems like an indictment of an ideological disposition as much as identifiable criminal acts,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law expert at Georgia State University.

 

For months, another effort has been underway to collect signatures to put the decision to construct the facility before voters, but city officials have won a temporarily halt to that move through a legal challenge.

 

Activists say they will press ahead, but the indictment only added to their fears.

 

“This is meant to send a message,” said Kamau Franklin, an organizer for Stop Cop City. “‘Be scared.’”

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7) Grim Reality in Maui: Hundreds Still on Missing List a Month After Inferno

The F.B.I. says more than 380 people remain unaccounted for. Many residents have begun to accept that their loved ones will not be coming back, and survivors wonder what comes next.

By Tim Arango and Lisa L. Schell, Sept. 8, 2023

Tim Arango spent two weeks reporting in Hawaii and is writing from Los Angeles. Lisa L. Schell reported this week from West Maui.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/us/lahaina-fire-families.html

Crosses have been placed in Lahaina to honor the victims of the deadly Lahaina fire. Credit...Go Nakamura for The New York Times

It has been one month since a wind-whipped wildfire engulfed the historic Hawaiian town of Lahaina, and the authorities are still trying to determine exactly how many people died in the nation’s deadliest conflagration in more than a century.

 

Nearly all of Lahaina has now been searched by teams of rescuers, cadaver dogs and anthropologists trained to detect fragments of human remains, yet the official death toll has stood at 115 people for more than two weeks.

 

That has meant an agonizing wait for the families of more than 380 people whose names populate a list that the F.B.I. says it is still trying to reconcile, even as many loved ones have begun to accept the grim reality of loss.

 

Kimberly Buen said that only in the last week did she lose hope that her missing father could have survived the fire, after an F.B.I. agent visited her home in Southern California to take a DNA sample.

 

“Every phone call I get, I think I’m getting that call, the call to tell me that they’ve matched my dad’s DNA, that they found him deceased,” Ms. Buen said. “Before, I was answering every call, ‘Oh, did they find him? Did they find him?’ And now, I’m in the mode, ‘Did we recover him?’”

 

Ms. Buen’s father, Maurice Buen, was a sport fisherman and would have turned 80 on Sept. 2. She said she had spent the last month calling, again and again, the F.B.I., the Red Cross, FEMA, the Maui Police Department, the hospital in Honolulu that received burn victims, and the public housing authority that managed the building where her father lived.

 

In the chaos of the early days following the fire that raced down the hillsides to the shore of the Pacific Ocean, consuming neighborhoods and all manner of buildings, numerous survivors were stranded without cellphone service. With families desperately searching for loved ones, the list of the missing at one point swelled to more than 2,000.

 

But the F.B.I. — after collecting various lists from shelters, the Red Cross and the Maui Police Department and cross-referencing them — whittled the number down to 385 people at last count. The figure included two victims whose remains have since been confirmed to be among the dead. At the same time, the Maui Police Department said it was actively investigating 41 missing persons cases and had asked relatives of those on the F.B.I.’s list to also file missing persons reports if they had not already.

 

The authorities have said they had confirmed 115 deaths, either by collecting sets of remains analyzed by DNA or through the discovery of bodies that were mostly intact; 55 of those have been identified and their names announced. Five more people have been identified, but their names have not yet been released because the authorities have not been able to notify their families.

 

The last time the death toll changed was on Aug. 21, the day that President Biden visited Lahaina, a span of time that reflects the new phase of the recovery effort, as well as the likelihood that many people’s bodies were reduced to unrecoverable ash.

 

The actual death toll is unlikely to be determined for weeks or months. The lack of new information about the death count at this stage is similar to the aftermath of other disasters like the Camp fire, the 2018 Northern California blaze in which 85 people died, said Stephen Meer, the chief information officer of ANDE, a Colorado-based company whose rapid DNA technology has been used to identify victims in Lahaina.

 

He said that ANDE’s technicians have left Maui, and that determining the final death toll would now largely rely on slow-paced detective work — for instance, interviewing the family and friends of those missing to determine if they were in Lahaina that day and where. The authorities will have to determine whether their investigative results are sufficient to declare those still missing as dead.

 

“This is a very common thing,” Mr. Meer said. “This is exactly what we’d expect to see.”

 

Authorities still field calls from those who believe they have spotted someone on the list of missing people. The tips, while confusing, hearten family members who post continuously on social media and comb through Facebook posts.

 

“We’re still hoping to find them alive even though there’s a lot of news saying there’s no more chance,” said Manuel Ceralde, 52, whose mother-in-law and sister-in-law were last seen at their rented house on Mela Street in Lahaina when the fires broke out.

 

Mr. Ceralde said Revelina Baybayan Tomboc, 82, and her stepdaughter Bibiana Tomboc Lutriana, 59, immigrated from the Philippines about three decades ago. After a stint in California, they settled on Maui and had lived in Lahaina for about seven years. Ms. Tomboc had been a housekeeper but was retired, and Ms. Lutriana worked as a clerk at a retail store.

 

The two lived only a couple blocks from Mr. Ceralde and his wife, Claire, whose home burned. The couple now watch over their two children in tiny rooms at separate hotels, as they wait for news.

 

“It’s really hard,” Mr. Ceralde said. “Our beautiful house became ashes. And with them still missing, everything is lost for us.”

 

Lahaina today is a place of harsh contrasts, the burned out areas resembling the ash-filled ruins of Pompeii, down the road from a lush, manicured resort. One moment, the air is still acrid and smoky; the next, filled with the sweet scent of plumeria. Everywhere are makeshift memorials, with signs reading “Lahaina Strong” or “Pets are Family Members, too.”

 

Lahaina residents who survived the fires have been thrust into uncertainty, with nearly 7,000 people now living in hotels or Airbnb units after staying at shelters or in the homes of friends and family soon after the fire.

 

“Everyone’s going to struggle and suffer in this period, but we have to house people, we have to get them through to the next phase,” Gov. Josh Green of Hawaii said on Wednesday. The government’s priority is getting people out of temporary housing and, with public assistance, into long-term rentals, he said.

 

The heart of Lahaina is still closed to the public — only searchers and workers from various government agencies have been allowed in. But Darryl Oliveira, the interim administrator with the Maui Emergency Management Agency, said the county had moved closer toward allowing people to return and inspect their properties before the Army Corps of Engineers begins bulldozing and clearing debris.

 

Mr. Oliveira said the county wanted to let people who were “looking for closure” go back so they could see for themselves what happened, and so they could look for personal items that may be lying amid the dust and debris.

 

Eric Lee, 40, a guide with Maui Off-Road Adventures, lost his home in the fire, as did his mother, who lived on Front Street, along the ocean where some people died in their cars while stuck in evacuation traffic. For 48 hours after the fire, Mr. Lee had no idea where his mother was. “I was freaking out for two days and finally found her,” he said on Thursday, his voice shaking with emotion.

 

Mr. Lee is living in a vacation rental, with the help of the Red Cross, and is making a point to keep enjoying what he loves about Maui, like the ocean.

 

“I have hope because I love this place,” he said. “I love Lahaina. It is everything that I know. It’s the people that I see in this place, smiling and together.”

 

In the weeks after the fire, Maui felt as if it were in a state of suspended animation, with traumatized residents seeking out information and trying to comprehend the scale of the loss. Last Friday, the process of communal grieving began, with sunrise ceremonies held in locations across Maui, Molokai, the island of Hawaii, Oahu and Kauai.

 

Pastor John Crewe went to the vigil because he wanted to be in the presence of those praying for Maui. His church, Lahaina United Methodist Church, had burned, but he said everyone in his congregation had made it out safely.

 

“What encourages me is seeing everybody together,” Mr. Crewe said. “There is a theme of gratitude and connectedness. And to rebuild after this, we’re going to need that.”

 

Corina Knoll contributed reporting.

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8) The Half-Truth of America’s Past Greatness

By Esau McCaulley, Sept. 10, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/10/opinion/small-town-racism.html

Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, circa 1940. Credit...Archive Photos/Getty Images

Many of us are familiar with “the talk.” I have in mind the African American version in which we outline for our kids how to engage with law enforcement. This is not an instruction on the nuances of legal rights. Instead, Black children receive tools to survive the moment.

 

But there is another talk that exists largely in the states of the former Confederacy. It’s a lesson in Southern geography.

 

I knew two maps as a teenager. One revealed the quickest way from, say, Huntsville, Ala., where I lived, to Jackson, Miss., where I sometimes visited family and friends for the weekend. But overlaying that map was a racial one depicting the detours we had to make as we journeyed through the land of Dixie in Black bodies.

 

My mother informed me of this second map the first time I planned a trip outside the confines of our hometown. She explained that I needed to fill up my gas tank before leaving and was not to stop in any small towns. “Under no circumstances are you ever to go to Cullman, Arab or Boaz,” she said.

 

Her advice transcended this particular journey, transforming it into a lesson on the nature of Black life in the South. During those years, I never heard of any official Green Book directing Black travelers to safe stops in the South. This was just local knowledge passed down from mother to son. I vowed to obey her on all my journeys, to make sure that I never crossed into those forbidden hamlets.

 

I was an adult when I finally did some research into the places she outlawed. I learned that Cullman, Ala., was said to be a sundown town even in the 1980s, a place where Black people were not allowed to live or be found after dark. Cullman schools remained segregated into the 1970s, the years of my mother’s childhood.

 

The racism that plagued those places is not merely a remnant of a long-forgotten past. Their history still haunts them. In 2021, a video of two Cullman High School students spewing white power slogans and threats of violence against African Americans was posted online.

 

Of course, not every small town in the South is racist. Small and Southern does not mean evil. The wealthy often show equal disdain toward white small-town poverty and Black urban poverty. There is a kinship and possible cooperation born of shared suffering that is yet to be actualized. When Wendell Berry speaks of small-town life, I can lament with him about what has been lost. When John Denver sings of country roads, I can envision a land we can share.

 

People unfamiliar with the idea of a racial map may have been surprised by Black responses to Jason Aldean’s country song “Try That in a Small Town,” which became a hit this summer. The song describes stomping on the flag, disrespecting the police and armed robbery. If you try those things in a small town, the song goes, “See how far you make it down the road / Around here, we take care of our own.” Later in the song Mr. Aldean warns that he’s got a gun and that small towns are “full of good ol’ boys, raised up right / If you’re looking for a fight.”

 

The suggestion that this song could be deeply problematic received the expected condemnation from certain quarters as another example of woke cancel culture. But the song’s story of “good ol’ boys” taking the law into their own hands stirs up a particular history for me and many Black listeners. I wonder how often vigilante groups were formed to protect Black Southerners from harm rather than inflict it upon them.

 

Aldean strongly disagreed that there were any racial undertones to his song. After all, the song doesn’t mention African Americans or race at all. According to Mr. Aldean, it is simply about the traditional values of small-town America. Some people think this set of values is drifting away in a rapidly changing country.

 

Where can African Americans find this lost golden age? Do we discover it during the first centuries of the Republic when slavery was the law of the land? Do we fast forward to the Red Summer, Jim Crow laws and “strange fruit” hanging from poplar trees?

 

The small-town song, in the end, is about a return to a glorious past that existed only for some. It is a fresh creation cobbled together from a mishmash of half-truths and long-cherished myths. It is a 1950s with a booming economy and picket fences but no whites-only water fountains. It leaves out the rampant racism, tosses aside rural and urban poverty and focuses on manners without examining the threat of violence lingering underneath the surface.

 

It is the same kind of false remembering that makes a plantation wedding sound picturesque when in reality it’s marriage at a site of horrors. Small Southern towns, in this mythic America, are all sweet tea and thank you, ma’ams.

 

Black history and the legacy of slavery remain contested, not because we lack information about what occurred in America, but because it’s all too real. And it has the power to destroy false nostalgia.

 

A path remains open for this country, but it is rarely trod. We can fully own our national sins, a pursuit of a genuine reconciliation rooted in truth and the righting of wrongs. Following such a course might allow for a genuine miracle: a truly multicultural society marked by understanding and forgiveness. To create that America, we are going to have to learn to sing better songs.

 

One summer in the late 1990s when I was on my way home from college in Mississippi, I stopped in a small town to buy gas. My mother’s instructions had slipped my mind. The gas station had a hamburger spot attached to it. After I stepped inside, I noted that everyone was white and that all their faces turned toward me with expressions of surprise and hostility.

 

Black Southerners know the meaning of certain looks and the best way to survive when we have wandered into places bubbling with danger. Rather than fill up, I said to the guy behind the counter, “Can I have $15 on number four, please?” I handed him a $20 bill and told him to keep the change. Fifteen dollars would buy enough fuel to take me to a major town and a safer exit.

 

I returned to my car calmly but quickly and began pumping the gas. As I was finishing, a few people came out of the gas station and got in their pickups. They turned on their engines but did not move until I got into my car. As I pulled out, they followed close behind until I returned to the highway. My heart raced until I reached the safety of being among other travelers on the interstate.

 

There will undoubtedly be some who question my interpretation of this interaction, if I was really at risk. No one at the gas station mentioned race, and the Confederate flag on the license plates could have simply been a matter of Southern pride rather than outright racism.

 

But that instinctive feeling of doubt that arises in the hearts of so many Americans is a fear that recognizes that some forms of nostalgia must finally be put to rest.

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