4/10/2024

Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, April 11, 2024



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No Taxes for War and Genocide!

We oppose our taxes being used to kill innocent Gazans!! 

No business as usual on April 15. 

Immediate ceasefire; humanitarian aid to Gaza NOW!

Monday, April 15, Noon

Rally at UN Plaza, Market St. and Hyde St., San Francisco

The UN Plaza, so named for the founding of the UN in 1945, is where the Universal Declaration of Human Rights originated. Article 1 of the Declaration: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” 

Parade 12:30 P.M.

Parade to IRS Office at 450 Golden Gate Ave. 

Family-friendly parade; banners, posters, streamers, drums, kazoos. Activist dogs invited! 

Musicians, dancers, actors, artists, poets, clowns: join the parade and the action at the IRS!

At IRS: tax refusal teach-in, street theater, bannering, children’s activities, sidewalk chalking, ceasefire postcards, music, snacks, sit-in.

·      Divest from the War Economy! 

·      Defund the Pentagon! 

·      Stop paying for wars, occupations and sanctions on Gaza, Cuba, Haiti, Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen! 

Over 50 percent of our taxes go to fund the Pentagon’s forever wars. Profits are up 60 percent for the “Merchants of Death:” Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon (RTX), Grumman, etc.  We pay for 800 U.S. Military Bases Worldwide.

·      Invest in a Peace Economy! 

We want our taxes to fund healthcare, housing, education, clean energy, child and elder care, transportation, clean air and water, student debt relief, safe bridges and roadways, libraries-- not war, fear, and misery.

We’ll stop the U.S. war machine when we stop funding it! Tens of thousands of innocent Gazans have been killed by the Israeli military with U.S. weapons we paid for. We have spent billions of dollars on weapons for the Israeli military. We supply 60 percent of the weapons Israel is using to kill innocent civilians in Gaza. We demand that Congress and President Biden stop funding weapons to Israel, call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, no additional funding, and halting weapons “already in the pipeline.” 

Hosted by CODEPINK Bay Area. Endorsers (list in formation):  SF Gray Panthers, Extinction Rebellion Peace, ANSWER Coalition, Veterans for Peace, (more will be added as they come in!)

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Family housing in Rafa.

See Gaza Strip Access Restrictions.pdf since 2007 at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gaza_Strip_Access_Restrictions.pdf

Palestinians killed and wounded by Israel:
As of April 11, 2024the total number of Palestinians killed by Israel is now over 33,545,* 76,049 wounded, and more than 456 Palestinians have been killed and 4,600 wounded by Israel in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.***  The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) and the Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs Commission released a new tally of Palestinians detained by "Israel", revealing that the number of Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank has risen to more than 6,115.

Israel lowers its estimated October 7 death toll from 1,400 to 1,139—604 Israeli soldiers killed since ground invasion, 6,800 wounded**


Gaza’s Ministry of Health confirmed this figure on its Telegram channel on April 9, 2024. Some rights groups estimate the death toll to be much higher when accounting for those presumed dead.

** This figure is released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.”


*** The death toll in West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. According to PA’s Ministry of Health on April 5, this is the latest figure.


Source: mondoweiss.net

 
FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!
END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL!
FOR A DEMOCRATIC, SECULAR PALESTINE!

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Boris Kagarlitsky is in Prison!

On February 13, the court overturned the previous decision on release and sent Boris Kagarlitsky to prison for five years.

Petition in Support of Boris Kagarlitsky

We, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison.

Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles.

The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested.

On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release.

The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison.

The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences.

There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering.

Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course.

We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally.

We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest.

Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitsky

https://freeboris.info

The petition is also available on Change.org

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*Major Announcement*

Claudia De la Cruz wins

Peace and Freedom Party primary in California!




We have an exciting announcement. The votes are still being counted in California, but the Claudia-Karina “Vote Socialist” campaign has achieved a clear and irreversible lead in the Peace and Freedom Party primary. Based on the current count, Claudia has 46% of the vote compared to 40% for Cornel West. A significant majority of PFP’s newly elected Central Committee, which will formally choose the nominee at its August convention, have also pledged their support to the Claudia-Karina campaign.

 

We are excited to campaign in California now and expect Claudia De la Cruz to be the candidate on the ballot of the Peace and Freedom Party in November.

 

We achieved another big accomplishment this week - we’re officially on the ballot in Hawai’i! This comes after also petitioning to successfully gain ballot access in Utah. We are already petitioning in many other states. Each of these achievements is powered by the tremendous effort of our volunteers and grassroots organizers across the country. When we’re organized, people power can move mountains!

 

We need your help to keep the momentum going. Building a campaign like this takes time, energy, and money. We know that our class enemies — the billionaires, bankers, and CEO’s — put huge sums toward loyal politicians and other henchmen who defend their interests. They will use all the money and power at their disposal to stop movements like ours. As an independent, socialist party, our campaign is relying on contributions from the working class and people like you.

 

We call on each and every one of our supporters to set up a monthly or one-time donation to support this campaign to help it keep growing and reaching more people. A new socialist movement, independent of the Democrats and Republicans, is being built but it will only happen when we all pitch in.

 

The Claudia-Karina campaign calls to end all U.S. aid to Israel. End this government’s endless wars. We want jobs for all, with union representation and wages that let us live with dignity. Housing, healthcare, and education for all - without the lifelong debt. End the ruthless attacks on women, Black people, immigrants, and LGBTQ people. These are just some of the demands that are resonating across the country. Help us take the next step: 

 

Volunteer: https://votesocialist2024.com/volunteer

 

Donate: https://votesocialist2024.com/donate

 

See you in the streets,

 

Claudia & Karina

 

Don't Forget! Join our telegram channel for regular updates: https://t.me/+KtYBAKgX51JhNjMx

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We are all Palestinian

Listen and view this beautiful, powerful, song by Mistahi Corkill on YouTube at:

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

Greetings,

Here is my new song and music video, We are all Palestinian, linked below. If you find it inspiring, please feel free to share with others. All the best!

Mistahi

Thousands at stadium sing, "You'll Never Walk Alone," and wave Palestinian flags in Scotland.


We are all Palestinian


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Labor for Palestine

Thousands of labor representatives marched Saturday, December 16, in Oakland, California. —Photo by Leon Kunstenaar

Video of December 16th Labor rally for Palestine.

 

Bay Area Unions and Workers Rally and March For Palestine In Oakland

https://youtu.be/L9k79honqIA


For More Information:

bayarealabor4palestine@gmail.com

Production of Labor Video Project

www.labormedia.net

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0ad3mEylwY

Just Like The Nazis Did

By David Rovics

 

After so many decades of patronage

By the world’s greatest empire

So many potential agreements

Were rejected by opening fire

After crushing so many uprisings

Now they’re making their ultimate bid

Pursuing their Final Solution

Just like the Nazis did

 

They forced refugees into ghettos

Then set the ghettos aflame

Murdering writers and poets

And so no one remember their names

Killing their entire families

The grandparents, women and kids

The uncles and cousins and babies

Just like the Nazis did

 

They’re bombing all means of sustaining

Human life at all

See the few shelters remaining

Watch as the tower blocks fall

They’re bombing museums and libraries

In order to get rid

Of any memory of the people who lived here

Just like the Nazis did

 

They’re saying these people are animals

And they should all end up dead

They’re sending soldiers into schools

And shooting children in the head

The rhetoric is identical

And with Gaza off the grid

They’ve already said what happens next

Just like the Nazis did

 

Words of war for domestic consumption

And lies for all the rest

To try to distract our attention

Among their enablers in the West

Because Israel needs their imports

To keep those pallets on the skids

They need fuel and they need missiles

Just like the Nazis did

 

They’re using food as a weapon

They’re using water that way, too

They’re trying to kill everyone in Gaza

Or make them flee, it’s true

As the pundits talk of “after the war”

Like with the Fall of Madrid

The victors are preparing for more

Just like the Nazis did

 

But it’s after the conquest’s complete

If history is any guide

When the occupying army

Is positioned to decide

When disease and famine kills

Whoever may have hid

Behind the ghetto walls

Just like the Nazis did

 

All around the world

People are trying to tell

There's a genocide unfolding

Ringing alarm bells

But with such a powerful axis

And so many lucrative bids

They know who wants their money

Just like the Nazis did

 

There's so many decades of patronage

For the world's greatest empire

So many potential agreements

Were rejected by opening fire

They're crushing so many uprisings

Now they're making their ultimate bid

Pursuing their final solution

Just like the Nazis did

  Just like the Nazis did

    Just like the Nazis did


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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 


Sign the petition:

https://dontextraditeassange.com/petition/


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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


Join the Fight for Mumia's Life


Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.

Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024

Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.

Send to:

 Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio

P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103

Prison Radio is a project of the Redwood Justice Fund (RJF), which is a California 501c3 (Tax ID no. 680334309) not-for-profit foundation dedicated to the defense of the environment and of civil and human rights secured by law.  Prison Radio/Redwood Justice Fund PO Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94141


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Leonard Peltier “Why?” (Henry CrowDog)


Leonard Peltier Update—Experiencing the Onset of Blindness

 

Greetings Relatives,

Leonard is in trouble, physically. He is experiencing the onset of blindness. He is losing strength in his limbs. His blood sugar is testing erratically. This, on top of already severe conditions that have become dire. Leonard has not seen a dentist in ten years. His few remaining teeth are infected. He is locked down, in pain.

As always, Leonard’s fortitude remains astonishing. He is not scared of dying. He does not want to die in lockdown.

Our legal team has an emergency transfer underway. They are going to extraordinary lengths. We must get a top ophthalmologist to him. Thanks to your calls, the BOP did see him. They told him a specialist would be 8 - 10 weeks out.

Leonard does not have eight to ten weeks. He needs emergency care immediately.

If you can, please donate to this GoFundMe. Every penny matters. If you cannot, please share. If you are so inclined, go to www.freeleonardpeltiernow.org and contact the officials listed.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-leonard-peltier-get-medical-care-freedom?utm_campaign=p_cp+fundraiser-sidebar&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_source=customer

As always, thank you for your support.

 

Dawn Lawson

Personal Assistant Leonard Peltier

Executive Assistant Jenipher Jones, Esq.

Secretary Leonard Peltier Ad Hoc Committee

1-800-901-4413

dawn@allfiredup.blue

www.freeleonardpeltiernow.org




Leonard Peltier Update - Not One More Year

 

Coleman 1 has gone on permanent lockdown.

The inmates are supposed to be allowed out two hours a day. I have not heard from Leonard since the 18th. 

The last time I talked to Leonard, he asked where his supporters were. He asked me if anyone cared about these lockdowns.

Leonard lives in a filthy, cold cell 22 to 24 hours a day. He has not seen a dentist in ten years. I asked him, “On a scale of 1 to 10, is your pain level at 13?” He said, “Something like that.” Leonard is a relentless truth-teller. He does not like it when I say things that do not make sense mathematically. 

That is why Leonard remains imprisoned. He will not lie. He will not beg, grovel, or denounce his beliefs. 

Please raise your voice. Ask your representatives why they have abdicated their responsibility to oversee the Bureau of Prisons and ensure they adhere to Constitutional law.

Uhuru, The African People’s Socialist Party, has stepped up for Leonard. NOT ONE MORE YEAR.

 

Fight for Free Speech – YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM8GDeGv90E

 

Leonard should not have spent a day in prison. Click “LEARN” on our website to find out what really happened on that reservation: 

www.freeleonardpeltiernow.org


Self Portrait by Leonard Peltier


Write to:

Leonard Peltier 89637-132

USP Coleman 1

P.O. Box 1033

Coleman, FL 33521

Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.

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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Updates From Kevin Cooper 

A Never-ending Constitutional Violation

A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee

 

      On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.

      On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.

      On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.

      On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.

      These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.

      The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.

      It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.

But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?

      This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.

      Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?

      Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?


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

 

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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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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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) Under U.S. pressure, Israel said more aid would go to Gaza. Is that happening?

By Matthew Mpoke Bigg, April 9, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/04/09/world/israel-gaza-war-news-hamas

A man carries three large boxes while people behind him unload a truck and a small child looks on.

A Palestinian carries boxes of aid distributed before Eid al-Fitr holiday in Deir al Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on Monday. Credit...Ramadan Abed/Reuters


Four days after Israel promised to enable a major increase in aid reaching the Gaza Strip, it was unclear on Monday whether much had changed, or when it might, amid widely divergent claims about the amount of food and other vital supplies entering the territory.

 

Israeli airstrikes a week ago killed seven aid workers who had been delivering food in Gaza, renewing the international focus on the hunger crisis there. Under pressure from President Biden, the Israeli government, which insists on inspecting all supplies to Gaza, said last Thursday that it would take steps to increase aid deliveries, though it gave no date for the changes.

 

The Israeli unit that supervises aid deliveries into Gaza, COGAT, said on Monday that 322 trucks carrying humanitarian supplies were inspected and transferred to the territory on Sunday and that more than 70 percent of them carried food. That figure was the highest since the start of the war, it said.

 

But UNRWA, the primary United Nations agency aiding Palestinians, said that 103 aid trucks crossed into Gaza on Sunday.

 

The two sources often disagree on the volume of aid reaching the enclave, but the latest discrepancy was especially striking, and the reasons for it were unclear.

 

Until now, almost all aid for Gaza has entered through two southern border crossings, at Rafah and Kerem Shalom. Israel has recently allowed limited use of a third crossing farther north. Aid groups accuse Israel of restricting deliveries, which Israel denies; COGAT said Sunday on social media, “There is no limit to the amount of aid that can be facilitated for the civilians in Gaza,” repeating a line it has used for month.

 

Israel said last week that it would use the Erez border crossing into northern Gaza and the Israeli port of Ashdod, around 20 miles northeast of Gaza, to allow supplies to reach the territory. The threat of famine is most acute in the north.

 

The United States hopes that 350 aid trucks will enter Gaza each day by later this week, the State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said on Monday, adding that the Biden administration expects Israel to ensure “a sustained” increase in aid deliveries to the territory.

 

Speaking at a daily news briefing, Mr. Miller said that Israel had taken “initial positive steps over the past few days” after President Biden warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that U.S. policy toward Israel could change if more is not done to feed and protect the people of Gaza.

 

Aid workers caution that any solution to the hunger crisis, which the United Nations says borders on famine, requires a sustained increase in the amount of aid that enters the territory as well as more medical staff trained in how to treat the effects of malnutrition. They also say it is unwise to look at a single day’s figures, given daily fluctuations, and that, above all, a cease-fire is needed so that civilians and humanitarian staff can operate in safety.

 

Before the conflict, around 500 commercial and aid trucks entered Gaza each day. Since Oct. 7, when Israel announced a siege of the territory, the number of trucks has varied but on average around 106 have entered Gaza each day, according to the U.N. data. For its part, COGAT’s figures show an average of around 115 trucks entering per day.

 

Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for UNRWA, said that Gaza needs 500 trucks of aid each day, for weeks and months, to remedy the crisis.

 

In the short term, the situation in north Gaza could worsen. The seven aid workers killed last week worked for World Central Kitchen and had been working to deliver hundreds of tons of aid that had arrived by ship to northern Gaza. The organization has since suspended its operations in Gaza, and the World Food Program said it only managed to get 47 trucks of aid to north Gaza, something it called a “drop in the ocean of need.”

 

The United States Central Command said it had airdropped aid to northern Gaza by parachute on Sunday. Several governments have conducted airdrops over Gaza in recent weeks but aid officials say that they are less efficient than overland deliveries.

 

Michael Crowley contributed reporting.


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2) Haniyeh said the killing of his children and grandchildren would not soften Hamas’s positions.

By Cassandra Vinograd, April 10, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/04/10/world/israel-gaza-war-news-hamas

Ismail Haniyeh, with close-cropped gray hair and beard, is photographed wearing a suit jacket.

Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, in Beirut in 2021. Credit...Aziz Taher/Reuters


The political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, said in an online statement on Wednesday that an Israeli strike had killed three of his sons and some of his grandchildren in Gaza.

 

The Israeli military said it was looking into reports about the strike, which Hamas-affiliated media said took place in the northern part of the enclave and killed six people in total.

 

Mr. Haniyeh called his sons martyrs in an statement on the group’s official Telegram account, and said they had remained in the Gaza Strip, while he heads Hamas’s political bureau from exile.

 

Hamas’s critics have accused the organization’s leadership of living luxurious lifestyles abroad as the people in Gaza suffer under Israeli bombardment and increasingly dire humanitarian conditions. But Mr. Haniyeh, who has long shuttled between Qatar and Turkey, likened his pain to that of all Gazans on Wednesday and cast his loss in the broader context of Palestinian suffering.

 

“All our people and the families of Gaza residents have paid a heavy price with the blood of their children, and I am one of them,” he said in the statement. He added that “the blood of my sons is not more precious” than the blood of others killed in the enclave. Gazan health authorities say about 32,000 people have been killed in Israeli bombardments and ground operations.

 

He also expressed defiance, saying that the killings would not change the positions held by Hamas, which has been negotiating with Israel through international mediators seeking to broker a cease-fire and secure the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip.

 

“What the enemy failed to extract through killing, destruction and annihilation, he will not take in the negotiations,” the statement said.

 

Aaron Boxerman and Adam Rasgon contributed reporting.


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3) There are few signs of progress despite Israeli pledges to help boost aid to Gaza.

By Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Vivian Yee and Lauren Leatherby, April 10, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/04/10/world/israel-gaza-war-news-hamas

Boxes covered in plastic flank three people standing on the bed of a truck. A small group in the shade stands in the foreground.

Aid was unloaded at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza on Saturday. Credit...Mahmoud Issa/Reuters



Nearly a week after Israel pledged to increase aid to Gaza by reopening a border crossing and accepting aid shipments at an Israeli port, neither the crossing nor the port has been put to the promised use, and there is no apparent sign of preparations to use them.

 

Facing international condemnation after an Israeli airstrike killed seven workers for an international aid group, Israel said it would reopen the Erez crossing between Israel and northern Gaza for aid delivery. But satellite imagery taken on Tuesday shows that the road leading to Erez on the Gaza side remains blocked by rubble from a destroyed building, a crater and other damage.

 

The damage was also seen in satellite imagery last month and again last Friday. Though there may be other ways for aid trucks to pass at Erez, there is no apparent sign in the latest imagery that repairs are being carried out to make the main road passable. Before Israel closed it at the start of the war, the crossing was used by pedestrians, not supply trucks.

 

Shimon Freedman, a spokesman for COGAT, the Israeli agency that oversees policy for the Palestinian territories, declined to comment on when the Erez crossing or the port at Ashdod, around 20 miles northeast of Gaza on Israel’s Mediterranean coast, would be opened for aid deliveries.

 

The United Nations says that a man-made famine is looming in Gaza, and many experts say that conditions in northern Gaza — which has mostly been cut off from aid deliveries since early in the war — already meet the criteria for a famine to be declared there. In that part of the territory, a few hundred thousand people are surviving on an average of 245 calories a day, according to Oxfam, an aid group.

 

Aid groups, the United Nations and a growing number of governments blame Israel for restricting aid into Gaza. U.N. figures show that an average of about 110 aid trucks have entered each day since Oct. 7. Though the daily average has risen since February, it is still far lower than the 500 trucks of commercial goods and aid that arrived in Gaza each day before the war.

 

Israel maintains that aid agencies have failed in their responsibility to distribute the aid. The groups say Israel has not created safe conditions that would allow them to distribute aid effectively.

 

The count of aid trucks Israel has allowed into Gaza recently has also been the subject of contention, raising questions about how to gauge the results of another pledge Israel made after the deadly airstrike against aid workers, which was to boost the number of trucks being screened at two existing crossings into southern Gaza.

 

Israel says the number has spiked, with COGAT writing in a social media post on Wednesday that an average of 400 trucks had entered per day over three recent days. The agency also posted photographs of street vendors selling cucumbers, potatoes and juice with the caption “market scenes in northern Gaza.”

 

People in northern Gaza have said in interviews that the little food available in street markets has long been out of reach for most, with many items priced at several times their original cost.

 

By contrast, U.N. data shows that a total of 533 aid trucks entered Gaza in the three days after Saturday. More broadly, U.N. figures show no increase in the daily average of trucks going into Gaza in the first week of April, compared to the previous week.

 

The reasons for the discrepancy are not clear, but one is the differing methods Israel and the United Nations use to track trucks, said Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the U.N. humanitarian office.

 

Trucks screened — and counted — by Israel at the two working border crossings usually enter Gaza only half full, after Israeli inspectors prohibit some of their contents, said Mr. Laerke. Once inside Gaza, they are unloaded, repacked as full trucks and sent to warehouses operated by the United Nations, which counts the number of full trucks that arrive, likely leading to a lower tally.

 

Other complications also mean that trucks often don’t pass through a crossing and arrive at a warehouse in the same day, meaning the daily counts at crossings and the warehouses often do not match, he said.

 

In a statement on Wednesday, COGAT criticized the U.N.’s “flawed counting method,” which it called “an attempt to conceal their logistical distribution difficulties.”

 

Previous Israeli promises to scale up aid have not greatly increased deliveries. Under U.S. pressure in mid-December, Israel reopened one crossing to Gaza, Kerem Shalom, for aid trucks, committing to permit 200 trucks a day to enter. But aid agencies say that stringent Israeli inspections have kept the numbers far lower than what is needed.

 

And Mr. Laerke and other aid officials said enormous challenges remain to distributing the aid inside Gaza, particularly to the north, where Israel has denied access for UNRWA, the main U.N. relief agency working in the territory.


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4) Which countries are the biggest suppliers to Israel’s military?

By Victoria Kim, April 10, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/04/10/world/israel-gaza-war-news-hamas

Three soldiers in combat gear stand next to a military vehicle in a dusty landscape.

Israeli soldiers in Gaza last month. Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times


Mounting international condemnation of the civilian suffering wrought by Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has put a spotlight on countries that are the biggest suppliers of funding and arms to Israel’s armed forces.

 

In the United States, by far Israel’s biggest military supplier, Democratic lawmakers are putting increasing pressure on President Biden to condition future military aid on Israel doing more to protect Gaza’s civilians. Germany, the second-largest arms supplier to Israel, this week defended itself at the United Nations’ highest court against allegations that its weapons sales made it complicit in genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

 

Even governments that account for a far smaller portion of aid or weapons sales to Israel are facing heated domestic debates and legal challenges over those supplies — with parliamentary votes or court orders putting a stop to exports in some countries.

 

Here is a look at the biggest suppliers to Israel’s military:

 

United States

 

The United States has a long history of sending aid to Israel, stretching back to the 1940s. In recent decades, most of the assistance has been in the form of military aid. In 2016, the Obama administration signed a 10-year agreement to supply Israel with $3.8 billion annually, most of that in foreign military financing grants, which allow Israel to buy American weaponry.

 

From 2019 to 2023, the United States supplied 69 percent of Israel’s arms imports, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks the global weapons trade. President Biden has also been pushing for $14 billion in additional spending for Israel and for U.S. military operations in the Middle East, though approval for the funding remains stalled in Congress.

 

While support for Israel once had reliable bipartisan support in Washington, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has prompted a chorus of Democrats in Congress to urge Mr. Biden to leverage American weapons sales to try to change Israel’s decision making in the war.

 

“My concern is that particularly when those bombs are coming from this country, we have a responsibility as well,” Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine, said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday.

 

The State Department said in March that it had received written assurances from Israel — as the United States requires of all countries that receive American arms — that the supplied weapons would be used in accordance with international humanitarian law.

 

Germany

 

In 2023, Germany approved sending military equipment to Israel valued at about $353 million, according to data from the country’s economics ministry, roughly 10 times more than what was approved the previous year. From 2019 to 2023, German exports made up 30 percent of the arms bought by Israel, according to the Stockholm institute.

 

In the past, Germany’s leaders have considered support for Israel to be a historic duty to atone for the Holocaust. In hearings this week at the International Court of Justice, a U.N. court in The Hague, lawyers for Germany pushed back against arguments that it was abetting genocide in Gaza by arguing that most of Germany’s military exports to Israel since the war began in October were nonlethal, including protective gear and communications equipment.

 

Other countries

 

From 2019 to 2023, Italy was the third-largest seller of arms to Israel, according to the Stockholm institute, though it accounted for just 0.9 percent of Israel’s military imports.

 

Since the war in Gaza began, those sales have been a source of contention.

 

Italy’s foreign minister in January told reporters that all weapons shipments to Israel had been suspended since Oct. 7. The defense minister, however, told the country’s Parliament that exports had continued, but that only previously agreed-upon orders were being sent, according to news reports.

 

Britain, whose defense exports to Israel totaled about $53 million in 2022, has said it will not suspend those sales despite growing pressure from opposition lawmakers. Foreign Secretary David Cameron, at a news conference alongside Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in Washington, said on Tuesday that based upon the “most recent advice” about Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, Britain’s position on military exports was “unchanged.”


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5) Power cites ‘credible’ assessments that famine has begun in northern Gaza.

By Liam Stack reporting from Jerusalem, April 11, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/04/11/world/israel-gaza-war-news-hamas

A child in a hospital bed has multiple tubes and wires attached.

A child being treated for malnutrition at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza last week. Credit...Mahmoud Issa/Reuters


The director of the U.S. Agency for International Development told lawmakers this week that a famine is underway in northern Gaza, which has been devastated by six months of Israeli military operations and is the part of the territory most cut off from aid.

 

The director, Samantha Power, is the first senior American official to say publicly that famine has begun in the Gaza Strip, where aid agencies and global experts have warned for months that nearly all 2.2 million Palestinians would soon face extreme hunger.

 

Northern Gaza, which was the first part of the territory that Israeli forces invaded last October, has been heavily damaged by the war and is far from the two open border crossings in the south through which nearly all aid is arriving.

 

Aid agencies say that it has become all but impossible to deliver relief supplies to the north as fighting continues. UNICEF said on Thursday that one of its vehicles waiting to enter northern Gaza this week had been “hit by live ammunition,” and that it had raised the matter with the Israeli authorities. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to questions about the report.

 

Ms. Power’s comments came during her congressional testimony on Wednesday, when she was asked by Representative Joaquin Castro, Democrat of Texas, about reports that her agency had sent a cable to the National Security Council saying famine had begun in parts of the Gaza Strip. The cable was first reported by HuffPost.

 

Ms. Power said a famine appeared to have begun according to an assessment by the global Integrated Food Security Phase Classification initiative, an group of U.N. agencies and relief agencies also known as the I.P.C., whose methodology she described as sound. She did not specify what assessment she was referring to.

 

“That is their assessment, and we believe that assessment is credible,” Ms. Power said.

 

“So famine is already occurring there?” Mr. Castro replied.

 

“That is — yes,” Ms. Power said.

 

The I.P.C. said last month that famine was imminent in northern Gaza. The body usually declares a famine when at least 20 percent of households face an extreme lack of food, when at least 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition and when at least two adults or four children for every 10,000 people die each day from starvation or disease linked to malnutrition.

 

Ms. Power said later in her testimony that the rate of severe malnutrition among Gazan children had become “markedly worse” since Oct. 7, when a Hamas-led terrorist attack prompted Israel to launch its military offensive in Gaza.

 

“In northern Gaza, the rate of malnutrition prior to Oct. 7 was almost zero, and it is now one in three kids,” she said. She added: “In terms of actual severe acute malnutrition for under-5s, that rate was 16 percent in January and became 30 percent in February. We’re awaiting the March numbers, but we expect it to continue.”

 

In interviews, people in northern Gaza have described severe food shortages. Even in Beit Lahia, once known as Gaza’s breadbasket, people’s diets sometimes amount to little more than boiled bitter weeds, said Yousef Sager, 24, a farmer.

 

“I never thought we would be talking about famine here,” he said.

 

In the early months of the war, he said he ate only a small plate of rice each day, with breakfast and dinner replaced by tea or coffee. When rice, tea and coffee ran out, he and many other Gazans turned to khobeza, a leafy green that grows in early spring.

 

But the khobeza is starting to run out, he said, so he now lives off of a soup of hot water and stinging nettles. Before the war, not even farm animals ate that, he said.

 

“I had to close my nose and just swallow it to survive,” he said.

 

Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting.


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6) Israel announces a new operation against Hamas, a day after killing a top leader’s sons.

By Cassandra Vinograd reporting from Jerusalem, April 11, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/04/11/world/israel-gaza-war-news-hamas

Mr. Haniyeh on a street, waving to someone out of frame.

Ismail Haniyeh during a visit to Tehran last month. Credit...Vahid Salemi/Associated Press


The Israeli military announced what it called a precise operation to kill members of Hamas in Gaza on Thursday, a day after a strike there killed relatives of one of the group’s most senior leaders.

 

Ismail Haniyeh, who leads the political wing of Hamas from exile, said three of his sons had been killed in the Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza on Wednesday. Hamas-affiliated media reported that three of Mr. Haniyeh’s grandchildren also were killed in the attack.

 

On Thursday, Israel’s military said that its forces had carried out a “precise, intelligence-based operation” in central Gaza overnight with fighter jets and ground troops to “eliminate terrorist operatives and strike terrorist infrastructure.”

 

It was not immediately clear whether the operation was related to the strike a day earlier against Mr. Haniyeh’s sons, who the Israeli military said had been “on their way to carry out terrorist activities in central Gaza.” It did not provide further details, and the military’s claims could not be verified.

 

The Israeli military said that the three Haniyeh sons it killed — Amir, Mohammad and Hazem — were active in Hamas’s military operations, Amir as a cell commander and his brothers as lower-level operatives. One of the brothers was also involved in holding hostages, the Israeli military said, without specifying which one.

 

The strike came as international negotiators worked to broker a cease-fire in Gaza and to secure the release of hostages held in the enclave. Those talks have stalled over disagreements about the details, with a senior Hamas official saying Wednesday that the group did not have 40 living hostages who met the criteria for an exchange under the proposal being discussed.

 

While Mr. Haniyeh is one of Hamas’s most senior officials, analysts said that his sons were less integral to the operation — and that their killings appeared mainly aimed at sending a message to the group’s leadership amid cease-fire negotiations.

 

“His son’s names are not usually floated around when you talk about seniority in Hamas, whether it’s the political or military wing,” said Tahani Mustafa, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, a think tank.

 

Ms. Mustafa said that the timing of the strike made it seem like an effort to derail the talks.

 

But Bilal Saab, an associate fellow in the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, said the strike may have been intended to placate a domestic audience after six months of war, or to give Israel leverage in the talks.

 

“It’s a political win for Israel more than anything else,” Mr. Saab said, adding: “This was a hit meant to pressure Hamas to make concessions on the hostage negotiations.”

 

Mr. Haniyeh said Wednesday that Israel was “delusional if it thinks that by killing my children, we will change our positions” in negotiations.

 

Active fighting in Gaza has ebbed to its lowest point since November. Israel withdrew troops from southern Gaza over the weekend, but said the military would stay in other parts of Gaza to preserve its “freedom of action and its ability to conduct precise intelligence-based operations.”

 

The military’s stated emphasis on precision comes as international criticism of the war in Gaza intensifies over the rising Palestinian death toll and warnings of famine.

 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has said that a date has been set for a ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza, an operation U.S. officials have warned would be catastrophic for civilians. Some analysts have suggested that his threats are bluster or attempts at gaining leverage in the cease-fire negotiations.

 

The Biden administration has urged Mr. Netanyahu to shelve the invasion plans and focus on “alternative approaches that would target the key elements of Hamas.”


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7) Many Patients Don’t Survive End-Stage Poverty

By Lindsay Ryan, April 11, 2024

Dr. Ryan is an associate physician at the University of California, San Francisco, department of medicine.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/opinion/doctor-safety-net-hospital.html

In the upper right hand corner, two hands reach out for each other across a net; in the middle, a broken caduceus, one wing of which has fallen off; at the bottom, two faceless people sitting on the ground.

Miki Lowe


He has an easy smile, blue eyes and a life-threatening bone infection in one arm. Grateful for treatment, he jokes with the medical intern each morning. A friend, a fellow doctor, is supervising the man’s care. We both work as internists at a public hospital in the medical safety net, a loose term for institutions that disproportionately serve patients on Medicaid or without insurance. You could describe the safety net in another way, too, as a place that holds up a mirror to our nation.

 

What is reflected can be difficult to face. It’s this: After learning that antibiotics aren’t eradicating his infection and amputation is the only chance for cure, the man withdraws, says barely a word to the intern. When she asks what he’s thinking, his reply is so tentative that she has to prompt him to repeat himself. Now with a clear voice, he tells her that if his arm must be amputated, he doesn’t want to live. She doesn’t understand what it’s like to survive on the streets, he continues. With a disability, he’ll be a target — robbed, assaulted. He’d rather die, unless, he says later, someone can find him a permanent apartment. In that case, he’ll proceed with the amputation.

 

The psychiatrists evaluate him. He’s not suicidal. His reasoning is logical. The social workers search for rooms, but in San Francisco far more people need long-term rehousing than the available units can accommodate. That the medical care the patient is receiving exceeds the cost of a year’s rent makes no practical difference. Eventually, the palliative care doctors see him. He transitions to hospice and dies.

 

A death certificate would say he died of sepsis from a bone infection, but my friend and I have a term for the illness that killed him: end-stage poverty. We needed to coin a phrase because so many of our patients die of the same thing.

 

Safety-net hospitals and clinics care for a population heavily skewed toward the poor, recent immigrants and people of color. The budgets of these places are forever tight. And anyone who works in them could tell you that illness in our patients isn’t just a biological phenomenon. It’s the manifestation of social inequality in people’s bodies.

 

Neglecting this fact can make otherwise meticulous care fail. That’s why, on one busy night, a medical student on my team is scouring websites and LinkedIn. She’s not shirking her duties. In fact, she’s one of the best students I’ve ever taught.

 

This week she’s caring for a retired low-wage worker with strokes and likely early dementia who was found sleeping in the street. He abandoned his rent-controlled apartment when electrolyte and kidney problems triggered a period of severe confusion that has since been resolved. Now, with little savings, he has nowhere to go. A respite center can receive patients like him when it has vacancies. The alternative is a shelter bed. He’s nearly 90 years old.

 

Medical textbooks usually don’t discuss fixing your patient’s housing. They seldom include making sure your patient has enough food and some way to get to a clinic. But textbooks miss what my med students don’t: that people die for lack of these basics.

 

People struggle to keep wounds clean. Their medications get stolen. They sicken from poor diet, undervaccination and repeated psychological trauma. Forced to focus on short-term survival and often lacking cellphones, they miss appointments for everything from Pap smears to chemotherapy. They fall ill in myriad ways — and fall through the cracks in just as many.

 

Early in his hospitalization, our retired patient mentions a daughter, from whom he’s been estranged for years. He doesn’t know any contact details, just her name. It’s a long shot, but we wonder if she can take him in.

 

The med student has one mission: find her.

 

I love reading about medical advances. I’m blown away that with a brain implant, a person who’s paralyzed can move a robotic arm and that surgeons recently transplanted a genetically modified pig kidney into a man on dialysis. This is the best of American innovation and cause for celebration. But breakthroughs like these won’t fix the fact that despite spending the highest percentage of its G.D.P. on health care among O.E.C.D. nations, the United States has a life expectancy years lower than comparable nations—the U.K. and Canada— and a rate of preventable death far higher.

 

The solution to that problem is messy, incremental, protean and inglorious. It requires massive investment in housing, addiction treatment, free and low-barrier health care and social services. It calls for just as much innovation in the social realm as in the biomedical, for acknowledgment that inequities — based on race, class, primary language and other categories — mediate how disease becomes embodied. If health care is interpreted in the truest sense of caring for people’s health, it must be a practice that extends well beyond the boundaries of hospitals and clinics.

 

Meanwhile, on the ground, we make do. Though the social workers are excellent and try valiantly, there are too few of them, both in my hospital and throughout a country that devalues and underfunds their profession. And so the medical student spends hours helping the family of a newly arrived Filipino immigrant navigate the health insurance system. Without her efforts, he wouldn’t get treatment for acute hepatitis C. Another patient, who is in her 20s, can’t afford rent after losing her job because of repeated hospitalizations for pancreatitis — but she can’t get the pancreatic operation she needs without a home in which to recuperate. I phone an eviction defense lawyer friend; the young woman eventually gets surgery.

 

Sorting out housing and insurance isn’t the best use of my skill set or that of the medical students and residents, but our efforts can be rewarding. The internet turned up the work email of the daughter of the retired man. Her house was a little cramped with his grandchildren, she said, but she would make room. The medical student came in beaming.

 

In these cases we succeeded; in many others we don’t. Safety-net hospitals can feel like the rapids foreshadowing a waterfall, the final common destination to which people facing inequities are swept by forces beyond their control. We try our hardest to fish them out, but sometimes we can’t do much more than toss them a life jacket or maybe a barrel and hope for the best.

 

I used to teach residents about the principles of internal medicine — sodium disturbances, delirium management, antibiotics. I still do, but these days I also teach about other topics — tapping community resources, thinking creatively about barriers and troubleshooting how our patients can continue to get better after leaving the supports of the hospital.

 

When we debrief, residents tell me how much they struggle with the moral dissonance of working in a system in which the best medicine they can provide often falls short. They’re right about how much it hurts, so I don’t know exactly what to say to them. Perhaps I never will.


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8) It’s Time to End the Quiet Cruelty of Property Taxes

By Andrew W. Kahrl, April 11, 2024

Dr. Kahrl is a professor of history and African American studies at the University of Virginia and the author of “The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/opinion/property-taxes-racism-inequality.html

A black and white photograph of a beaten up dollhouse sitting on rocky ground beneath an underpass.

Eli Durst


Property taxes, the lifeblood of local governments and school districts, are one of the most powerful and stealthy engines of racism and wealth inequality our nation has ever produced. And while the Biden administration has offered many solutions for making the tax code fairer, it has yet to effectively tackle a problem that has resulted not only in the extraordinary overtaxation of Black and Latino homeowners but also the worsening of disparities between wealthy and poorer communities. Fixing these problems requires nothing short of a fundamental re-examination of how taxes are distributed.

 

In theory, the property tax would seem to be an eminently fair one: The higher the value of your property, the more you pay. The problem with this system is that the tax is administered by local officials who enjoy a remarkable degree of autonomy and that tax rates are typically based on the collective wealth of a given community. This results in wealthy communities enjoying lower effective tax rates while generating more tax revenues; at the same time, poorer ones are forced to tax property at higher effective rates while generating less in return. As such, property assessments have been manipulated throughout our nation’s history to ensure that valuable property is taxed the least relative to its worth and that the wealthiest places will always have more resources than poorer ones.

 

Black people have paid the heaviest cost. Since they began acquiring property after emancipation, African Americans have been overtaxed by local governments. By the early 1900s, an acre of Black-owned land was valued, for tax purposes, higher than an acre of white-owned land in most of Virginia’s counties, according to my calculations, despite being worth about half as much. And for all the taxes Black people paid, they got little to nothing in return. Where Black neighborhoods began, paved streets, sidewalks, and water and sewer lines often ended. Black taxpayers helped to pay for the better-resourced schools white children attended. Even as white supremacists treated “colored” schools as another of the white man’s burdens, the truth was that throughout the Jim Crow era, Black taxpayers subsidized white education.

 

Freedom from these kleptocratic regimes drove millions of African Americans to move to Northern and Midwestern states in the Great Migration between 1915 to 1970, but they were unable to escape racist assessments, which encompassed both the undervaluation of their property for sales purposes and overvaluation of their property for taxation purposes. During those years, the nation’s real estate industry made white-owned property in white neighborhoods worth more because it was white. Since local tax revenue was tied to local real estate markets, newly formed suburbs had a fiscal incentive to exclude Black people, and cities had even more reason to keep Blacks confined to urban ghettos.

 

As the postwar metropolis became a patchwork of local governments, each with its own tax base, the fiscal rationale for segregation intensified. Cities were fiscally incentivized to cater to the interests of white homeowners and provide better services for white neighborhoods, especially as middle-class whites began streaming into the suburbs, taking their tax dollars with them.

 

One way to cater to wealthy and white homeowners’ interests is to intentionally conduct property assessments less often. The city of Boston did not conduct a citywide property reassessment between 1946 and 1977. Over that time, the values of properties in Black neighborhoods increased slowly when compared with the values in white neighborhoods or even fell, which led to property owners’ paying relatively more in taxes than their homes were worth. At the same time, owners of properties in white neighborhoods got an increasingly good tax deal as their neighborhoods increased in value.

 

As was the case in other American cities, Boston’s decision most likely derived from the fear that any updates would hasten the exodus of white homeowners and businesses to the suburbs. By the 1960s, assessments on residential properties in Boston’s poor neighborhoods were up to one and a half times as great as their actual values, while assessments in the city’s more affluent neighborhoods were, on average, 40 percent of market value.

 

Jersey City, N.J., did not conduct a citywide real estate reassessment between 1988 and 2018 as part of a larger strategy for promoting high-end real estate development. During that time, real estate prices along the city’s waterfront soared while their owners’ tax bills remained relatively steady. By 2015, a home in one of the city’s Black and Latino neighborhoods worth $175,000 received the same tax bill as a home in the city’s downtown worth $530,000.

 

These are hardly exceptions. Numerous studies conducted during those years found that assessments in predominantly Black neighborhoods of U.S. cities were grossly higher relative to value than those in white areas.

 

These problems persist. A recent report by the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy found that property assessments were regressive (meaning lower-valued properties were assessed higher relative to value than higher-valued ones) in 97.7 percent of all U.S. counties. Black-owned homes and properties in Black neighborhoods continue to be devalued on the open market, making this regressive tax, in effect, a racist tax.

 

The overtaxation of Black homes and neighborhoods is also a symptom of a much larger problem in America’s federated fiscal structure. By design, this system produces winners and losers: localities with ample resources to provide the goods and services that we as a nation have entrusted to local governments, and others that struggle to keep the lights on, the streets paved, the schools open and drinking water safe. Worse yet, it compels any fiscally disadvantaged locality seeking to improve its fortunes to do so by showering businesses and corporations with tax breaks and subsidies while cutting services and shifting tax burdens onto the poor and disadvantaged. A local tax on local real estate places Black people and cities with large Black populations at a permanent disadvantage. More than that, it gives middle-class whites strong incentives to preserve their relative advantages, fueling the zero-sum politics that keeps Americans divided, accelerates the upward redistribution of wealth and impoverishes us all.

 

There are technical solutions. One, which requires local governments to adopt more accurate assessment models and regularly update assessment rolls, can help make property taxes fairer. But none of the proposed reforms being discussed can be applied nationally because local tax policies are the prerogative of the states and, often, local governments themselves. Given the variety and complexity of state and local property tax laws and procedures, and how much local governments continue to rely on tax reductions and tax shifting to attract and retain certain people and businesses, we cannot expect them to fix these problems on their own.

 

The best way to make local property taxes fairer and more equitable is to make them less important. The federal government can do this by reinvesting in our cities, counties and school districts through a federal fiscal-equity program, like those found in other advanced federated nations. Canada, Germany and Australia, among others, all direct federal funds to lower units of government with lower capacities to raise revenue.

 

And what better way to pay for the program than to tap our wealthiest, who have benefited from our unjust taxation scheme for so long. President Biden is calling for a 25 percent tax on the incomes and annual increases in the values of the holdings of persons claiming more than $100 million in assets, but we could accomplish far more by enacting a wealth tax on the 1 percent. Even a modest 4 percent wealth tax on people whose total assets exceed $50 million could generate upward of $400 billion in additional annual revenue, which should be more than enough to ensure that the needs of every city, county and public school system in America are met. By ensuring that localities have the resources they need, we can counteract the unequal outcomes and rank injustices that our current system generates.


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