People Before Profit blog

Mixed verdict, mixed response in Bradley Manning case

Wed, 31 Jul 2013 12:33:00 +0000

FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) - It is now up to a military judge to determine if Army Pfc. Bradley Manning will spend the rest of his life in prison even after being acquitted of the most serious charge against him for his release of thousands of documents to the website WikiLeaks.

The sentencing phase of the soldier's court-martial began Wednesday. He faces up to 136 years in prison, though his attorneys have asked the military judge to merge two of his espionage convictions and two of his theft convictions. If Army Col. Denise Lind agrees to do so, he would face up to 116 years in prison.

The former intelligence analyst was convicted of 20 of 22 charges for sending hundreds of thousands of government and diplomatic secrets to WikiLeaks, but he was found not guilty of aiding the enemy, which alone could have meant life in prison without parole.

"We're not celebrating," defense attorney David Coombs said. "Ultimately, his sentence is all that really matters."

Military prosecutors said they would call as many as 20 witnesses for the sentencing phase. The government said as many as half of the prosecution witnesses would testify about classified matters in closed court. They include experts on counterintelligence, strategic planning and terrorism.

The judge prohibited both sides from presenting evidence during trial about any actual damage the leaks caused to national security and troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, but lawyers will be allowed to bring that up at sentencing.

The release of diplomatic cables, warzone logs and videos embarrassed the U.S. and its allies. U.S. officials warned of dire consequences in the days immediately after the first disclosures in July 2010, but a Pentagon review later suggested those fears might have been overblown.

The judge also restricted evidence about Manning's motives. Manning testified during a pre-trial hearing he leaked the material to expose U.S military "bloodlust" and diplomatic deceitfulness, but did not believe his actions would harm the country. He didn't testify during the trial, but he could take the stand during the sentencing phase.

Lisa Windsor, a retired Army colonel and former judge advocate, said the punishment phase would focus on Manning's motive and the harm that was done by the leak.

"You're balancing that to determine what would be an appropriate sentence. I think it's likely that he's going to be in jail for a very long time," said Windsor, now in private practice in Washington.

The judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, deliberated three days before reaching her verdict in a case involving the largest leak of documents in U.S. history. The case drew worldwide attention as supporters hailed Manning as a whistleblower and the U.S. government called him an anarchist computer hacker and attention-seeking traitor.

The verdict denied the government a precedent that freedom of press advocates had warned could have broad implications for leak cases and investigative journalism about national security issues.

Whistleblower advocates and legal experts had mixed opinions on the implications for the future of leak cases in the Internet age.

The advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said the verdict was a chilling warning to whistleblowers, "against whom the Obama administration has been waging an unprecedented offensive," and threatens the future of investigative journalism because intimidated sources might fall quiet.

However, another advocate of less government secrecy, Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, questioned whether the implications will be so dire, given the extraordinary nature of the Manning case.

"This was a massive hemorrhage of government records, and it's not too surprising that it elicited a strong reaction from the government," Aftergood said.

"Most journalists are not in the business of publishing classified documents, they're in the business of reporting the news, which is not the same thing," he said. "This is not good news for journalism, but it's not the end of the world, either."

Glenn Greenwald, the journalist, commentator and former civil rights lawyer who first reported Edward Snowden's leaks of National Security Agency surveillance programs, said Manning's acquittal on the charge of aiding the enemy represented a "tiny sliver of justice."

But WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose website exposed Manning's spilled U.S. secrets to the world, saw nothing to cheer in the mixed verdict.

"It is a dangerous precedent and an example of national security extremism," he told reporters at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, which is sheltering him. "This has never been a fair trial."

Federal authorities are looking into whether Assange can be prosecuted. He has been holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden on sex-crimes allegations.

The material WikiLeaks began publishing in 2010 documented complaints of abuses against Iraqi detainees, a U.S. tally of civilian deaths in Iraq, and America's weak support for the government of Tunisia - a disclosure Manning supporters said helped trigger the Middle Eastern pro-democracy uprisings known as the Arab Spring.

To prove aiding the enemy, prosecutors had to show Manning had "actual knowledge" the material he leaked would be seen by al-Qaida and that he had "general evil intent." They presented evidence the material fell into the hands of the terrorist group and its former leader, Osama bin Laden, but struggled to prove their assertion that Manning was an anarchist computer hacker and attention-seeking traitor.

Photo: Pfc. Bradley Manning. U.S. Army/Wikimedia Commons

City College of San Francisco: 99% vs. corporate education reform

Mon, 29 Jul 2013 16:36:00 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - The California Federation of Teachers recently labeled the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) a "rogue college accreditation commission."

The teachers union and the Save CCSF (City College of San Francisco) coalition believe that the agency is following a corporate agenda in the fight over accreditation of the San Francisco college.

Business-oriented education reform is a familiar topic to those following trends in K-12 public education. Higher education has not been immune to similar trends, with corporate reformers laying out strategies which tend to embrace a more business-type model for colleges. Free-market think-tanks like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are working in parallel with funders such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Lumina Foundation, increasingly gaining ground in crafting education policy.

Last year the ACCJC, the body that yanked the accreditation of CCSF this July, was one of the recipients of a $1 million Lumina Foundation grant.

Lumina and other foundations use the lofty-sounding goal of 60 percent degree attainment for students to slash programs and define classroom outcomes that it deems extraneous to that goal. This agenda is being touted as a job-creation program via the logic that a higher number of degree-holders will result in higher employment.

While it is true that college degrees often correlate with higher employment levels, there is little evidence that a higher number of degree-holders creates jobs. Legislative policies have nevertheless been pushed through in several states that would tie state funding to graduation rates.

The Lumina Foundation is second only to the Gates Foundation in bestowing grants for the purpose of business-model-based education reform. ALEC and Lumina have had close ties since the formation of the Lumina Foundation, which emerged in the dissolution of USA Group student loan corporation in 2000. At that time USA Group sold its student loan assets to the Sallie Mae student loan company, transformed its corporate giving program into the main thrust of its existence, rebranded as Lumina, and began life again with nearly a billion dollars from the Sallie Mae sale. Blogger Badger Democracy reported last year that Lumina gives ALEC $300,000 a year and was a high-level sponsor of the ALEC national conference in 2011.

ACCJC currently has 25 percent of colleges in the California community college system under some form of sanction that could threaten their accreditation. Last year a report by the Treasury Department showed a clear correlation between cuts to community colleges and a rise in enrollment in for-profit colleges like the University of Phoenix. Since its loss of accreditation in July, CCSF has seen its enrollment drop by 14.9 percent, even though it still retains accreditation status through this academic school year. For-profit colleges are several orders of magnitude more costly than credits obtained at California's community colleges, which are often priced at under $50 per unit. Private for-profit colleges are also notorious for saddling students with high levels of student loans to pay for their thousands of dollars in tuition fees, with a default rate of 25 percent.

The CFT, at its convention in March, passed a resolution demanding that accreditation bodies divest from foundations that push a politically-driven business model on academia, calling such a relationship "a 'regulatory capture' of a public-mandated agency by corporate forces." This, the resolution observed, would reduce the influential accrediting agency to being nothing more than "a willing pawn in a strategic business plan driven by corporate power on a national and global scale."

Meanwhile, a participant in the ALEC/Lumina partnership is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, featured recently in The Chronicle of Higher Education, in an article highlighting the outsize influence the foundation has in changing the mission of higher education. The Gates Foundation has also been working to foster a culture of higher completion rates, with the goal of eliminating non-credit remedial classes that students may need before they can begin earning college credit.

The Chronicle reports: "At the center of that effort, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has financed studies that argue for broad-scale changes aimed at pushing more students, more quickly, toward graduation. Working alongside the Lumina Foundation through intermediaries like Complete College America and another nonprofit, Jobs for the Future, the Gates foundation has helped influence higher-education policy at the state level to a degree that may be unprecedented for a private foundation."

The Western Association of Schools and Colleges, the umbrella accreditation body that governs the ACCJC, was also the recipient of a grant for $1.5 million from the Gates Foundation.

Photo: Banner at a Save City College of San Francisco (CCSF) rally in Burlingame, Calif., at the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) panel hearing in June. Michelle Kern/PW

Across generations: Nation’s students continue progressive fight

Mon, 29 Jul 2013 13:50:00 +0000

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. - The United States Student Association held its 66th annual National Student Congress at the Hotel Heldrich here July 19-24. Although I was only able to attend the July 22 issues plenary, the Congress gave me a feeling of renewed hope for progressive forces in the United States.

The USSA calls itself "the country's oldest and largest student-run organization." I was impressed by the Congress breadth of interests and involvements. On Saturday and Sunday, workshops centered on such issues as training for student-labor organizing; expelling Wall Street from campus and ending student debt; responding to the crisis affecting millions of undocumented immigrant students; and learning how to participate in meetings, how to use Robert's Rules of Order. While a conservative student caucus also had its meetings, the agenda and virtually all of the comments from the elected delegates, many leaders of student governments throughout the country, reflected and combined the outlook of people's movement organizations.

Nat Sowinski, a student who introduced an important resolution for a Comprehensive Joint Report on Surveillance against Students (which was passed unanimously) told me that the USSA understood the need to organize, to gain grassroots power, in order to advance students' rights, which couldn't be separated from the rights of labor, people of color, and women. Another speaker, addressing this issue, mentioned its significance for students of Muslim background in the U.S., who have been special targets of surveillance and harassment in violation of traditional civil liberties and legal principles of probable cause, due process, and equal protection under the law.

While the National Women's Student Coalition, National People of Color Student Coalition, and National Queer Student Coalition held their own meetings, there was much more unity here then I remembered from my days as a graduate student at the University of Michigan, where divisions between various groups of left political activists, counter-culture radicals, and separatist-oriented ethnic groups played a significant role in failing to really advance the opportunities for progressive social change in the U.S. that the civil rights movement, especially, had through its victories opened up for a brief time.

These students were far less naïve, far more sophisticated in coordinating in an inclusive way the struggles of working class students, students of color, LGBT students, and of course all students who face a bleak world of debt peonage in a system of higher education which forces students to face a lifetime of repaying student loans as best they can in an economy producing fewer and fewer jobs worthy of their education.

In that regard, I had an interesting discussion with Jon Ferreira, a student in the U.S. from Brazil who had introduced a resolution defending the rights of undocumented students. He mentioned that in Brazil, with all of its problems, the system of higher education is both free and at least as good as the in U.S. In the U.S., he has already acquired a very substantial debt to pay for his education at a public university.

When I mentioned that large numbers of people put up with this because of the abundance of comparatively cheap consumer goods made by cheap labor abroad, what I call the "Walmart State" as against a real Welfare State, he agreed, mentioning that his relatives who come to the U.S. praise the availability of cheap consumer goods here while he tries to convince them of the destructive effects of an education system increasingly out of reach for millions of students.

The conference continued during the week with more workshops and planning sessions and concluded on Wednesday. My brief report only gives a few of the highlights. Others included action items to end sexual violence on campus, and to stop the "systematic eradication of student of color organizations" through defunding and other maneuvers (something that has been part of right-wing Republican governors' and legislatures' general attack on higher education and all public sector activities and unions).

At the session which I attended, the USSA adopted unanimously a resolution call for a bi-annual National Diversity and Social Justice Conference, which would bring together many of these issues.

Although the music and the dancing I saw was new to me (and I was in no shape to join in anyway) the best of my own student generation - the call for a participatory democracy, focused activism - was present at this congress from students who had already learned a great deal from their history, even if many of the politicians and government and university officials and at least some of the faculty who teach them had not.

Photo: United States Student Association Facebook page

Rep. Steve King's idiot remarks are serious problem

Fri, 26 Jul 2013 14:03:00 +0000

The comments of Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, which stereotype undocumented immigrants as drug smugglers, have embarrassed his own Republican Party. He has also been excoriated by Democrats and by Latino and immigrant leaders and activists.

In remarks opposing the DREAM Act, which would give legal status to young undocumented immigrants brought into this country as children, King claimed that for every high school valedictorian who would get legal status that way, "there's another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert."

The statement and a great many others like it from King, other politicians and talk show and print commentators, are so over the top that we might be tempted to mutter, "What a stupid, ignorant jerk." But we can't discount the possibility that, far from being rooted in stupidity and ignorance, these slurs are part of a clever plan.

The plan would be to convince U.S. voters that the country is endangered by a mass invasion of dangerous people, who are bringing drugs, terrorism and disease to our peaceful communities. Former CNN commentator Lou Dobbs was famous for claiming, against all evidence, that immigrants from poor countries coming to the United States were causing a "sudden" epidemic of leprosy. Public health experts quickly pointed out that Dobbs' information was totally false, noting in fact that leprosy is exceedingly uncommon in the U.S. and the numbers have been falling as immigration has been rising.

The overall impression such slanders are designed to create is that immigrants are dangerous and that the border must be "sealed" before anything else. But the border has more security under the Obama administration than it ever has had in the nation's history, with more agents, more electronic surveillance and more fences. The Senate immigration bill, which Republican politicians claim does not do enough, in fact would add hugely to this false "security" overkill.

And all these agents and gizmos don't stop drugs from coming over the border. Since the start of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on January 1, 1994, regular cross-border trade has skyrocketed. Drug smugglers quickly figured out that the best way to move drugs across the border would be not to load them onto the backs of undocumented immigrants, but to conceal the drugs in the cargos of 18-wheelers. This is done sometimes by putting a gun to the driver's head, or in more sophisticated ways such as infiltrating or taking over import-export companies.

The size of trade under NAFTA is such that border authorities cannot inspect more than a tiny fraction of the huge, heavily laden trucks that go across the border every day. And some inspectors on both sides of the border have been bribed.

There are other ways NAFTA and related U.S. policies contribute to the drug trade. Drug gangs have taken advantage of lax U.S. firearms laws to import powerful weapons into Mexico, where they allow drug mafias to outgun such local police as dare to challenge them. Then there is the fact that the United States is where vast amounts of drugs are purchased. With such a huge demand, someone will supply.

But more than anything, the impact of NAFTA on Mexican agriculture and on the Mexican rural economy in general has forced Mexican grain farmers, unable to compete with imported wheat and maize subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, to find other sources of survival. Some have left the countryside for Mexico's teeming cities, where work is hard to come by and miserably underpaid. Many have themselves become undocumented immigrants in the United States. For some, cultivating marijuana has seemed like a solution. The millions of unemployed young men in Mexico who cannot otherwise survive, because neoliberal trade policies have wiped out legitimate sources of employment, are a ready source of recruits for the Zetas, the Sinaloa Cartel, la Familia Michoacana, the Templars and other criminal gangs.

The United States and Mexico have tried to deal with this by quasi-military methods. Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon's idea of sending the army into the streets and the U.S. financial boondoggle of the "Merida Initiative" have both failed after costing tens of thousands of lives.

Undocumented immigrants hoping to gain the right to live and work legally in this country should not be held hostage to these "security" schemes which, at most, fill the pockets of wealthy and influential government contractors. Republicans have been the main offenders in trying to convince the people of the United States that immigrants are coming to kill us and that the only way to prevent this is by creating a hig-tech Great Wall of China on our southern border.

Democrats, including the Obama administration, have gone along with this also, getting on the "wall" bandwagon even before the 2008 elections, and now find that whenever they try to move on the legalization issue (in response to pressure from Latinos, organized labor and the immigrants' rights movement), people like Steve King pop up and say "Aha! The border isn't secure against drug smugglers with cantaloupe-sized thighs! No legalization until it is," which will be never.

To break out of this trap, the first step has to be to educate U.S. voters about the real dynamics of immigration, trade and drug smuggling. Getting our people not to use drugs would also help.

Photo: Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, speaks in front of a tea party banner, March 2011. Mark Taylor CC 2.0

Immigration reform lifts up all workers, says civil rights leader

Fri, 26 Jul 2013 13:42:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - A top civil rights leader has restated the value of comprehensive immigration reform to all U.S. workers, documented and undocumented. But the tea party-run GOP House majority may not be listening to him, or anyone else.

In a July 23 press conference with youthful undocumented people, assembled by United We Dream - the coalition that is the face of the 3.5 million undocumented youth - Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights renewed his group's position for a path to legalization and citizenship not just for the Dreamers, but their parents, too. The AFL-CIO is part of the Leadership Conference.

"There must be an earned path to citizenship for everybody," Henderson declared, referring to the Dreamers and the 7.5 million undocumented adults in the U.S.

"Fear of deportation among long-term residents...has a toxic effect on us all," he said. "When immigrants don't report crime because of that fear, we are all in trouble. When workers are not able to report abuses on the job because of fear, then all workers are harmed. And if there is a 2-caste system in this country, democracy is harmed."

The Dreamers took the same stand at the press conference, repeatedly emphasizing the Republican House majority must not try to split them from their parents by passing the GOP-authored Kids Act, a more-restrictive version of the Dream Act, while continuing to leave their parents and other adults in the shadows.

"We're here to send a strong message to the GOP about its so-called Kids Act: We decided unanimously to fight for all undocumented people in the U.S. - for our parents, for our siblings, for our uncles, for our sisters and for our brothers," said United We Dream Director Cristina Jimenez. "As we hear from the GOP that they want to provide legalization only for young people, how could we leave our parents, who have sacrificed everything for us, behind?"

Legalizing the adults, not just the kids, is important to workers. That's because venal and vicious employers exploit undocumented adults, underpaying them, refusing to pay overtime, working them in abominable conditions and then threatening them with deportation when they speak up. Employers also use the threat of hiring undocumented adults to force other workers to accept cuts in pay, benefits and worker protections.

The lawmakers, all of them Democrats, who joined the group, crowded into a basement room in the Capitol to agree with the Dreamers. But the GOP, in a work session of the House Judiciary Committee the same afternoon, did not. It campaigned for the Kids Act, and ignored any solution for the undocumented adults. Few Republican lawmakers heeded the Dreamers' testimony later that afternoon.

Photo: A sign from a march of undocumented workers. Unions rallied for immigrant rights on April 10 in Washington D.C. Sam Felder/Flickr (CC)

President Obama lays out his vision for the economy

Thu, 25 Jul 2013 15:48:00 +0000

CHICAGO - Launching a series of speeches on the economy at Knox College in Gatesburg, Ill. yesterday, President Obama - whether by calling for raising the minimum wage or by describing an America where universal pre-school would be taken for granted - laid out his vision for the future, exposing Republicans as near-sighted and small-minded by comparison.

The president was returning to the college yesterday, the place where he had come to deliver the commencement address for the class of 2005. It was his first major speech back then after having been newly elected as a U.S. senator from Illinois.

The president framed the economic tasks ahead of the country as one of fixing structural problems that go well beyond the current financial crisis which, he said, was only exacerbating fundamental problems that have been going on for decades. He framed the battle ahead as one that would have to "reverse the forces that have conspired against the middle-class for decades - that has to be our project.

"Even though our businesses are creating new jobs and have broken record profits, nearly all the income gains of the past 10 years have continued to flow to the top one percent," Obama declared. "The average CEO has gotten a raise of nearly 40 percent since 2009, but the average American earns less than he or she did in 1999. And companies continue to hold back on hiring those who have been out of work for some time."

Obama made a strong case for his belief that such inequality is more than just "morally wrong," but that it is also, on a practical level, "bad economics."

"When middleclass families have less to spend," the president explained, "businesses have fewer customers. When wealth concentrates at the very top, it can inflate unstable bubbles that threaten the economy. When the rungs on the ladder of opportunity grow further apart, it undermines the very essence of the country."

The president argued that strengthening the middle class would require many things, not the least of which was a higher minimum wage and higher wages generally. His list included affordable education for all, government created jobs to fix infrastructure, massive worker training programs, universal broadband, and mortgage refinancing, among other things.

The speech drew a sharp contrast with Republican policies, centered as they are around trumped-up political scandals, spending cuts and phony debt ceiling crises.

"If you ask some of these Republicans about their economic agenda, or how they'd strengthen the middle class, they'll shift the topic to 'out of control' government spending. Short term thinking and stale debates are not what this moment requires," Obama said. "I say to these members of Congress: I am laying out my ideas to give the middle class a better shot. Now it's time for you to lay out yours."

Obama is seen, because of yesterday's speech, as rising above the fray as Republicans continue their insistence on more budget cuts in advance of the fall, the time for the next budget and debt-ceiling battle. Economists have already said that Republican threats to shut down the government in several months pose an immediate threat to the economy.

"They want to shut government down, I want to make it work for you," the president said to sustained applause yesterday.

"Repealing Obamacare and cutting food stamps is not an economic program," the president said at another point, again to sustained applause.

The Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, tried to brush off Obama's speech yesterday. "Americans aren't looking for more speeches," he said. "They're looking for jobs."

"Don't believe any Republican when he tells you he is concerned about jobs," said Sara Williams, a cashier at a Bridgeport supermarket here. "When they got in all over the country in 2010, after campaigning for jobs, they showed that all they really cared about was attacking a woman's right to choose."

Photo: President Obama speaks at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois on July 24. Susan Walsh/AP

Inmates & advocates press for changes as prison hunger strike continues

Thu, 25 Jul 2013 15:30:00 +0000

A hunger strike by California prison inmates protesting prolonged solitary confinement is now well into its third week, despite harassment of strikers including moving strike leaders into even deeper isolation.

The strike, which started July 8, resumed protests begun two years ago when inmates held two three-week-long hunger strikes . This time some 30,000 inmates across the California prison system started refusing meals - the largest prisoner protest ever in the state. As of July 22, prison officials said over 700 were still on strike in 10 prisons.

Over 3,000 inmates are reportedly in solitary confinement in California; some are serving specific terms for particular offenses while others are confined for an indefinite period.

Nearly all inmates who land in solitary confinement in Secure Housing Units, or SHUs, are there because of alleged ties to prison gangs, including being seen talking with gang members, having gang-related tattoos or reading materials.

Though the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) says a program it started last fall eases the criteria for assuming gang ties and sets up a path to move out of solitary confinement, inmates say the main way to get out of the SHU is still "debriefing," or informing on another inmate.

While the new procedures do offer a path out of the SHU without snitching, the process is still tortuous, Laura Magnani, program director for healing justice with the American Friends Service Committee's San Francisco office, said in a telephone interview.

Prison authorities "are holding hearings on everyone, but so slowly that most inmates in solitary confinement don't feel it," she said. "Half those who have been interviewed are transferred to the general population. But at the current rate it would take eight years to get through the whole population. They feel they've heard the more difficult cases and the pace will pick up."

Magnani said two big problems remain: CDCR "still has tremendous discretion" in how gang association is defined, and there is still no limit on the number of years someone can be held in solitary.

The prisoners say placing them in prolonged isolation - in some cases for over 20 years - amounts to torture. Their "core demands" include ending group punishment, changing the way inmates are determined to be gang members, ending long-term solitary confinement, providing enough nutritious food, and providing more constructive programs and activities for SHU inmates.

Early in the strike, 14 inmates publicly identified as protest leaders were moved into deeper isolation in "Administrative Segregation." Attorneys said authorities had taken legal papers from some of them. One attorney was barred from meeting with inmates.

Security Housing Units were set up in 1989 and were originally intended for punishments of no more than 180 days. But at Pelican Bay State Prison, about 500 inmates have been in SHUs for over 10 years, about 80 of them for over 20 years. Each SHU is a windowless 80 square foot cell with a meal slot in its perforated steel door. Beds and desks are formed from concrete slabs molded to the wall. Inmates exercise alone in a tiny concrete pen. Occasional visitors provide the only human contact.

Amnesty International issued a report last year detailing conditions in the SHUs.

State legislators have also expressed concern. Earlier this year, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, who chairs the Assembly's Public Safety Committee, held a hearing on solitary confinement. In a statement, he urged prison officials "to make more progress in establishing fair and humane policies."

The Coalition for Constitutional Rights has filed a lawsuit on behalf of 10 SHU inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison who among them have spent over 200 years in solitary confinement.

Inmate advocates are urging calls and a petition to California Governor Jerry Brown, to press CDCR to negotiate an end to the strike. Their petition is posted on the web site of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition, along with updates including support actions around the state.

Photo: Rossana Cambron/PW

Danville, Va., marches for Trayvon Martin and against violence

Thu, 25 Jul 2013 15:18:00 +0000

DANVILLE, Va. - Hundreds of residents of this Southern city showed up for a peaceful march July 20 to remember the life, and tragic killing, of Trayvon Martin. Danville is a 50 percent African-American town in the middle of the Virginia-North Carolina border.

The march was peaceful, but its message was clear.

"What do we want?" "Justice!" "When do we want it?" "Now!"

An all-white jury acquitted Martin's killer George Zimmerman of murder charges earlier this month, sparking outrage from African American communities across the country.

Danville resident Twyla Grasty felt that racial profiling and injustice are alive in this city as well as in the Martin case, but also urged everyone to work on reversing violence.

"We need to come to come together as a city to do what we need to do to stop the violence," Grasty said.

Leaniqua Jackson's son, Lamonte "CoCo" Stone, was shot and killed in 2009. She organized the march in memory of her son and the injustice that followed his death. Her son's killer was convicted of voluntary manslaughter rather than first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Jackson said the outcome of Zimmerman's trial was also an injustice.

"Children are being labeled and profiled and killed on the street," Jackson said. "We need to stand up for each other."

Organizers also wanted to put a face on the number of African Americans who have been the victims of violence in Danville.

Tim Griffin knows a lot of friends who have lost loved ones to violence, but he never thought it would strike his family. Griffin's 22-year-old daughter, Jordan Yasmine Sade Griffin, was shot eight times in 2011.

Tamika Mayo's son was shot in the head, and doctors said he would never walk or talk again.

"They said he'd be a vegetable, but he speaks," Mayo said. "He said to tell you 'I didn't die; God has another plan for me."

The Rev. William Avon Keen, state president of the Southern Christian Leadership Council, spoke out against "stand your ground" laws, but said the best way to resist that law is by not breaking the law.

Photo: G Laury CC 2.0

Florida’s Dream Defenders convene their own legislative session

Thu, 25 Jul 2013 14:00:00 +0000

TALLAHASSEE, Fl. - After Florida's governor refused to call legislators back to hold a special session to discuss the state's Stand Your Ground law last week, the youth and students who have been occupying the state capital, decided to convene their own.

The Dream Defenders, a multi-racial human rights organization of youth who confront inequality with nonviolent direct action and coalition building, began their takeover of the Florida Statehouse last week. They demanded a meeting with Republican tea party Gov. Rick Scott and a special session of the Florida Legislature to address the "circumstances that led to the killing of Trayvon Martin over a year ago: the school-to-prison pipeline, stand your ground vigilantism, and racial profiling."

The vice president of the Dream Defenders at the University of Central Florida, Marie Paul, said, "In the state of Florida, young black and brown and poor children aren't safe. We have parents fearing for their young and babies fearing for their lives, and they have every right to be unsettled. They are being criminalized and penalized and stigmatized negatively and at alarming rates by a system that seems to be protecting everyone's rights but theirs. That's a problem.

"We're calling our own special session because lives are at stake and idleness will not be tolerated. The Scott administration seems to be more focused on their reputation than actually finding solutions," Paul said. "On their end, there has been nothing but talk up to this point; enough talk. We know what the issues are, and being that he is the governor, he too should be aware of the concerns plaguing his constituency---so what else do we have to discuss?"

The Dream Defenders plan to continue their takeover of the statehouse while holding their mock legislative session and to introduce a bill named "Trayvon's Law" to address Florida's Stand Your Ground, racial profiling and the school-to-prison pipeline.

Photo: AP

Attorney General launches new voting rights battle

Thu, 25 Jul 2013 13:33:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) - Attorney General Eric Holder announced Thursday the Justice Department is opening a new front in the battle for voting rights in response to a Supreme Court ruling that dealt a major setback to voter protections.

In a speech to the Urban League in Philadelphia, the attorney general said the Justice Department is asking a federal court in San Antonio to require the state of Texas to obtain approval in advance before putting future voting changes in place.

This requirement to obtain "pre-approval" from either the Justice Department or a federal court before making changes to voting laws is available when intentional voting discrimination is found.

It is the department's first action to protect voting rights following the Supreme Court's decision on June 25, "but it will not be our last," Holder said in prepared remarks.

"Even as Congress considers updates to the Voting Rights Act in light of the court's ruling, we plan, in the meantime, to fully utilize the law's remaining sections to ensure that the voting rights of all American citizens are protected."

Holder said that based on evidence of intentional racial discrimination presented last year in the redistricting case in Texas, "we believe that the state of Texas should be required to go through a preclearance process whenever it changes its voting laws and practices."

In Texas, there is a history of "pervasive voting-related discrimination against racial minorities," Holder added.

The Supreme Court, on a 5-4 vote, threw out the most powerful part of the landmark Voting Rights Act, the law that became a major turning point in black Americans' struggle for equal rights and political power.

The attorney general called the Voting Rights Act "the cornerstone of modern civil rights law" and said that "we cannot allow the slow unraveling of the progress that so many, throughout history, have sacrificed so much to achieve."

Photo: Matt Rourke/AP

ALEC: Behind the scene in 2014!

Wed, 24 Jul 2013 16:22:00 +0000

As we deal with a barrage of state-funded legislative battles, such as Voter ID attacks on voting rights, destruction of public education by diverting taxpayer funding to private, for-profit charter schools, abolition of public sector unions, environmental protections and common sense gun laws, etc., it is important that we understand exactly who is behind them.

The answer? The American Legislative Council, known as ALEC. ALEC is an outfit controlled and financed by some of the biggest corporate financial barons who three times a year bring together their think tank operators (such as the Heritage foundation), a number of key political and legislative leaders, and CEOs from a number of the largest corporations.

They lavish high cost entertainment and perks on everyone present, then get down to business; their business being to fashion federal and state laws, which they intend to have passed, and commit millions of dollars to the politicians who introduce and campaign for passage of these laws.

They have been concentrating on state campaigns with considerable success.

State legislators return from ALEC meetings and bring back "model bills" to their home legislatures, introducing them as their own bills.

More than 98 percent of ALEC's revenue comes from corporations, their trade groups, and foundations. ExxonMobil gave $1.4 million in "grant money" to ALEC from 1998-2009. Corporate members donated $4 million to send lawmakers on trips.

Groups have begun to expose ALEC. Two years ago, on April 29, 2011, hundreds gathered to protest ALEC for the first time outside the group's spring meeting in Cincinnati.

People for the American Way says ALEC is a "right wing public policy organization, with an agenda for privatizing public services, restricting government regulations on corporations and finance capital."

ALEC was founded in September 1973 by a small group of legislators and policy makers including Lou Barnett, a veteran of Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign, Illinois Representative Henry Hyde, together with a handful of others, including the infamous oil barons Charles and David Koch, who were feted for their family's role in founding the hate group, John Birch Society.

Included in this list of right wing conspirators is John Kasich, who made use of ALEC's millions in corporate funds to win the governorship of Ohio.

A bright light of peoples' democratic rights needs to shine on and expose the threatening shadow ALEC is casting over the 2014 elections in Ohio and elsewhere, and all other functions of our democratic way of life.

Photo: ALEC and corporate interests have a monopoly on many right-wing state lawmakers. (RJ // CC 2.0)

The root causes of undocumented immigration

Wed, 24 Jul 2013 14:37:00 +0000

New plans for "sealing" the border between Mexico and the U.S., insisted on by Republicans as a condition for their support of immigration reform, do nothing to deal with the root causes of undocumented immigration and are doomed to fail, while increasing suffering and deaths at the border.

The right has portrayed undocumented immigration as an "invasion" of revolutionaries and criminals, orchestrated by the Mexican government; this is nonsense.

The reasons behind labor immigration from Latin America and the Caribbean are eloquently presented by Puerto Rican journalist and historian Juan Gonzalez in his book "Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America (Revised edition 2011, Penguin)," and in other studies.

Successive U.S. military interventions in Latin America have had a major influence in stimulating mass immigration to the U.S. The 1954 overthrow of the progressive elected government of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz by the Eisenhower administration, motivated by a desire to protect the interests of the United Fruit Company, led to a civil war that lasted until the 1990s and killed more than 200,000 people, most at the hands of the U.S. allied military and right-wing death squads.

Thousands fled across the border into Mexico and some ended up in the U.S. The continuing social instability created by the war combines with economic factors to stimulate current Guatemalan immigration.

The Contra War in Nicaragua, in which the U.S. teamed up with right-wing death squads to overthrow the left-wing Sandinista government, forced many to leave. In El Salvador, U.S. allied troops and paramilitaries created another bloodbath. Ironically, there was really nowhere for people to go except to the U.S. itself. U.S. support for the Salvadoran ultra-right, including vicious death squads, also meant that there was no way that Salvadorans refugees could get legally recognized as such. So like the others, they came in "undocumented."

In the Dominican Republic, the U.S. supported dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo for many years. When he was finally overthrown (with CIA help), the U.S. worked to prevent the coming to power of a left-wing government. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson sent troops to squash a left-wing uprising from restoring the legally elected president, Juan Bosch, who had been overthrown by the military. The return of repressive right-wing rule led to increased emigration of Dominicans, mostly to New York.

In Haiti, the U.S. supported right-wing, repressive governments for many years. In 1994 the Clinton administration helped to restore the legally elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide, to power. However, this came with a price: Aristide had to agree to unfavorable trade arrangements which enriched the U.S. rice industry while undercutting Haitian rice growers. In 2004, the Bush administration connived with France, Canada, and the Haitian elites to overthrow Aristide again, after he had called for France to pay reparations for harm to the Haitian economy in the 19th century. Again people fled, many to the U.S.

Accompanying all of these interventions is the factor of unequal trade relations.

Starting from before the initiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) among the U.S., Mexico, and Canada in 1994, and the subsequent Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) all the countries of the region except Cuba were squeezed into trade deals that highly favor transnational corporations and undercut the position of workers, small farmers and small scale businesses.

In Mexico, several million grain farmers have been driven off the land by unfair competition from U.S. and Canadian agribusiness. Jobs that were supposed to materialize in other areas of the Mexican economy have not. Claims in the U.S. media that immigration from Mexico is down because Mexico is no longer poor should be taken with a grain of salt. In many villages and small towns in Mexico, there are virtually no young men left who could migrate, and remaining inhabitants live on the $24 billion which Mexican immigrants in the U.S. send back to them every year.

There are increases in undocumented immigration from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, in spite of publicity about the fact that drug trafficking gangs are now waylaying immigrants on their way through Mexico to the United States, kidnapping them for ransom and sometimes murdering them.

People who are willing to risk these depredations are not going to be deterred by a wall, especially if they already have spouses and children in the U.S. to whom they are trying to return. They will rely even more on immigrant smugglers, increasingly controlled by the criminal gangs, to bring them through even more dangerous border areas, where more and more immigrants are dying every year.

Nor will they respond to losing their jobs because of E-verify; they will end up working for less money under worse conditions, for cash under the table.

The U.S. should recognize its own role in undocumented immigration, and make available sufficient numbers of legal immigrant visas (green cards, not temporary worker visas) to eliminate the "illegal" part. If it does not want this mass labor immigration at all, it should radically change its relationship with neighboring countries. This would mean no more C.I.A., no more subsidies to right-wing political groups, and no more efforts to protect U.S. corporate interests at the expense of millions of ordinary people in Latin America and the Caribbean.

None of the Republican politicians, and only a few of Democrats, are even able to grasp this. Therefore, those who want to see progressive immigration reform without undesirable "trade-offs" and concessions have to also work for a change in U.S. international policy.

I'm not saying that will be easy.

Photo: "Undocumented and Unafraid," reads a sign held by demonstrators rallying for immigration reform. M. Spencer Green/AP

Audio: Texas abortion law sure to face court challenge

Wed, 24 Jul 2013 14:28:00 +0000

HOUSTON - After weeks of bitter fighting, Texas conservatives claim a significant victory in the fight over who controls women's health in Texas.

Photo: Texans display support for Wendy Davis during her filibuster, June 25, Austin, Texas. fejsez CC 2.0

Moral Mondays and misestimated mandates

Wed, 24 Jul 2013 11:07:00 +0000

If you haven't heard about them already, "Moral Mondays" is the name given to a new protest movement in North Carolina. Moral Mondays protests address a myriad of issues such issues as reproductive rights, austerity measures, the Trayvon Martin verdict, cuts to unemployment insurance, voter ID proposals, and the rejection of Medicaid expansion and Obamacare. They are taking place in North Carolina, near the North Carolina Legislative Building in Raleigh. Moral Mondays draw a surprising variety of people in large numbers, week after week.

Initially organized by the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP and its president, Dr. Rev. William Barber, Moral Mondays are the result of careful organization and coalition style politics. According to Barber himself, "Moral Mondays are the result of seven years of progressive organizing for a new Southern 'fusion politics'- a new multi-ethnic, multi-religious coalition with an anti-racist, anti-poverty agenda."

Fusion politics seem akin to traditional popular and united front strategies. Moral Mondays are now in their third month, and thousands of people have participated, with nearly a thousand having been arrested. The protests are highly organized, with protesters sorted before the protests into groups according to who is and is not willing to be arrested. Participants are also given hours of training about what to expect and how to act in various situations. Almost all the protestors in the Moral Mondays movement are being carefully courteous and compliant, and are being scrupulously polite to the police.

Pat McCrory, the governor of North Carolina, has insinuated that the protestors at Moral Mondays are people from out of state. Then the conservative think tank and political machine cog Civitas Institute "dropped docs" (published information) on the arrestees in a way reminiscent of intimidation tactics used during the Civil Rights era - apparently almost all of them are residents of North Carolina, contrary to McCrory's assertions. About 80 percent are white, and the average age is mid-50s. Approximately 20 percent are unemployed, and the group includes teachers, professors, doctors, students, etc. The numbers are quite close to the state's average demographics, signifying the broad popular appeal of the movement. McCrory has now moved on to complaining about the moral character of the protesters instead.

Recently, Moral Mondays have begun to capture national media attention. There are a few preconditions for Moral Mondays' success so far. For one thing, the political climate in North Carolina is very complicated at the moment. North Carolina is considered part of the South, but it's not the Deep South, and it's considered a swing state. High-tech economic growth in the last decade or so has brought some highly educated and highly paid professionals to North Carolina recently. Gerrymandering pushed through after Obama's first election and millions of dollars of money from a very wealthy businessman after the Citizens United decision allowed the Republicans in North Carolina to gain control of both houses of the state legislature for the first time in 100 years. This legislature, aided by Republican governor Pat McCrory, has passed some of the worst legislation possible.

According to Benjamin Jealous, president of the NAACP, "In the space of a few months, lawmakers rejected $700 million in federal unemployment benefits and passed up federal funds to expand Medicaid for half a million people. At the same time, they voted to raise taxes on 900,000 poor and working class people; slash funding for pre-school and kindergarten; and spend time pursuing wildly unpopular proposals, like a bill that would let legislators receive gifts from lobbyists. Then, following a pattern we have seen across the country, they tried to cement their agenda by suppressing the vote. Rather than convince the public to vote for them on merit, legislators introduced a voter ID bill that would disenfranchise nearly 500,000 voters, and planned to roll back early voting, same-day registration and Sunday voting."

They have also attacked abortion rights, which the governor had previously promised not to do. The long and short of all this appears to be that because the Republican government has flagrantly outraged so many people, Moral Mondays have a broad popular appeal they didn't even have to craft -- the insanely reactionary government of North Carolina did it for them, making possible broad coalitions than might otherwise not be functional.

Reactionary Republicans have seen the writing on the wall - the country as a whole is shifting to the left even as they pull further to the right. North Carolina's current political environment is a microcosm of a changing country. The genie is out of the bottle, and no matter how hard the Republicans try, they cannot stuff it back in. The more extremist they become, the more voters they alienate.

So far, these protests have been confined to a single state, but some are calling for Moral Mondays to be expanded to other areas of the country. There are certainly other areas of the country where state governments controlled by Republicans and their allies are acting far in excess of their mandates, readying the political climate for unusually large coalitions like the one being created in North Carolina. But whether or not the movement spreads, there can be no doubt that the Moral Mondays movement has captured the notice and interest of North Carolinians -- the movement is raising class consciousness and awareness of both the gross excesses of the legislature and also the strong resistance to them.

If Moral Mondays keep drawing crowds, this could be a powerful tool in the 2014 election year.

Photo: Moral Monday demonstration in North Carolina. AP

Oakland's Trayvon Martin rally: "Keep fighting" for justice

Tue, 23 Jul 2013 17:28:00 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. - Communities in Oakland held vigils July 20 in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. The vigils were part of the National Action Network's countrywide event - the "Justice For Trayvon" National Day of Action. A crowd of about 200 assembled to hear speakers at the foot of the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building here in parallel with other activities held in over 100 cities.

A number of Oakland youth took leadership of the event, spotlighting the effects of the shooting and verdict on their fellow young people, who took turns before the crowd to speak movingly of their reactions to hearing of the death of Martin. Ranging in age from 11 to 19, African American youth joined with other speakers to give voice to their feelings about Trayvon Martin and their feeling they could easily be the next Black youth to be killed by a stranger who might view them with suspicion.

Speakers from local activist organizations discussed the need to change the "stand your ground" laws that created legal loopholes for racist vigilantes to claim self-defense when killing Black people. Family and friends of victims of police violence also drew parallels between this vigilantism and the lack of value placed on the deaths of people of color when gunned down by law enforcement personnel, often with excessive force.

Oakland District Three Councilmember Lynette Gibson McElhaney also addressed the vigil, lending her support to the peaceful crowd. Gibson spoke of the need to build a movement against racist violence that should be "about loving ourselves more than other people hate us."

Mayor Jean Quan of Oakland also took to the stage, intending to speak on her thoughts about the verdict, but was heckled by disruptors in the back of the crowd who were then, in turn, hushed by the rest of the crowd, who wished to keep the event focused on Trayvon Martin.

The Reverend Lennox Yearwood Jr., also known as "President of the Hip-Hop Caucus," followed up Quan, speaking from beside the mayor as he related his experience meeting Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin. "She gave me strength," Yearwood said. He said Fulton told him, "Whatever you do, tell people to keep fighting."

"Stand your ground" laws have received heightened scrutiny and criticism since Trayvon Martin's death last year in Sanford, Fla., at the hands of George Zimmerman. Although this law was not directly invoked by the defense in Zimmerman's trial, these laws have such influence that the law's content was embedded into the instructions to the jury, as PRWatch reports. The jury was told:

"If George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in any place where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony."

Zimmerman initiated contact with Martin when he pursued him on foot against the advice of the emergency dispatchers. But the "stand your ground" law was in his favor if he, a civilian on his own, deemed the contact required deadly force because he feared for his safety in the situation.

This year the U.S Commission on Civil Rights will investigate if "stand your ground" laws contain racial bias. Last year, the Tampa Bay Times studied nearly 200 Florida "stand your ground" cases. The study found that "Defendants claiming 'stand your ground; are more likely to prevail if the victim is black. Seventy-three percent of those who killed a black person faced no penalty compared to 59 percent of those who killed a white."

The U.S. Department of Justice has had an open case on the shooting of Trayvon Martin since it happened last year. Public support for an investigation of the killing of Martin as a hate crime soared immediately in the wake of the not-guilty verdict for Zimmerman A petition on the NAACP's website urging the DOJ to launch a civil rights investigation was so overwhelmed with responses in the first 24 hours that the website crashed. Within three days the petition garnered 1.5 million signatures.

Photo: Justice For Trayvon rally in Oakland, Calif., July 20. Marilyn Bechtel/PW

Residents say poverty wages will not resurrect Detroit

Tue, 23 Jul 2013 14:41:00 +0000

DETROIT - Only blocks from city hall, a Friday afternoon picket line at the Crowne Plaza Hotel symbolizes the fight taking place in this city.

Janeé Ayers, Recording Secretary of Unite Here, Local 24, said the Crowne Plaza, a former long-time union hotel known as the Pontchartrain, went into bankruptcy, switched hands and is now a non-union facility.

She and others said corporate greed was the problem. "Our industry, the hotel industry, is not dying, or on a downward spiral," she said.

Ayers said the union represents workers across the street at Cobo Hall, around the corner at the Westin Book Cadillac and down the block at the Marriott where workers have contracts, pensions, benefits, and are making a sustainable wage.

She's concerned that a minimum-wage facility in the middle of all that could jeopardize past gains. "We can't allow them to come in paying eight dollars, almost fifty percent less than what other members make. It could completely destroy the standard we fought so hard to get."

Hilda DeJesus has been a general room attendant at the Marriott for eleven years and agrees. She said her union wage and benefits allows her to support her family. "We'd be in trouble. We wouldn't be able to support our family on minimum wages," she said.

A number of local and state labor leaders came to pledge support including Metro Detroit AFL-CIO President Christos Michalakis and Michigan State AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Daryl Newman. Michalakis said Detroit may be facing bankruptcy, "but that doesn't mean the workers in Detroit have to face bankruptcy."

The picket lines are held on Wednesdays and Fridays and a near one hundred degree day did not deter them. Detroit airport worker and Unite Here member Maureen Pickar said a morning picket line had drawn 200 people with many different unions coming out in support.

Pickar said everyone is talking about a rebirth of Detroit but is worried that workers and residents are not going to be treated fairly in that process.

"A minimum wage is not only a threat to union members; it is not going to benefit the community in the long run."

As Ayers said, "This is a union town. We built the middle class. We fought for that. It is not okay to let it go."

Photo: Picketing in front of the Crowne Plaza. April Smith/PW

Court strikes down anti-immigrant housing law in Texas

Tue, 23 Jul 2013 12:17:00 +0000

NEW ORLEANS - In a 9-5 ruling July 22, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit struck down a discriminatory, anti-immigrant ordinance in Farmers Branch, Texas, that would have prohibited landlords from renting to immigrants that the city considered unlawfully present, and authorized arrest and prosecution of landlords and tenants found in violation of the law.

Under the ordinance, all prospective renters would have been required to provide information about their immigration status and obtain a rental license from the city building inspector, who would be responsible for determining immigration status. It would also have authorized the city of Farmers Branch to revoke the rental license of anyone found to be unlawfully present in the U.S. based on verification of immigration status with the federal government.

The controversial housing ordinance never went into effect, having been blocked by the federal district court and a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit before reaching the full en banc Fifth Circuit Court.

"By a large margin, the judges of the Fifth Circuit properly ruled that Famers Branch's anti-immigrant housing ordinance is fundamentally unconstitutional," said Omar Jadwat, attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants' Rights Project. "Their ruling will prevent municipal governments from investigating and discriminating against immigrants and people of color. This law now joins many others of its kind that have been discredited and abandoned to history's scrapheap through a series of court rulings."

Beginning in 2006, the city of Farmers Branch, Texas, passed a series of housing ordinances designed to prevent undocumented immigrants from being able to rent apartments or homes. The ordinances were part of an effort to drive immigrants from the city by making life as difficult as possible. Each of the ordinances has been blocked by the federal courts as the result of litigation brought by the ACLU, the ACLU of Texas, and MALDEF.

"The en banc court got it right in concluding that this inhumane and wasteful ordinance is unconstitutionally inconsistent with the federal immigration enforcement scheme," said Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of MALDEF. "Other cities that may be considering similar laws should take note of this important outcome."

In its ruling, the court said the Farmers Branch ordinance was unconstitutional because it conflicted with federal immigration law. The court relied on guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court's 2012 decision invalidating provisions of Arizona's SB 1070, and emphasized that allowing city "officers to arrest an individual whom they believe to be not lawfully present would allow the [city] to achieve its own immigration policy and could be unnecessary harassment of some aliens ... whom federal officials determine should not be removed."

A concurring opinion in the decision issued Monday noted that because the "purpose and effect" of the ordinance was "the exclusion of Latinos from the city of Farmers Branch," "legislation of [this] type is not entitled to wear the cloak of constitutionality." Nine judges held the ordinance unconstitutional, while only five judges would have upheld it.

"All of Texas benefits from the contributions of immigrants who live and work in our state," said Rebecca L. Robertson, legal and policy director of the ACLU of Texas. "We fervently hope that this case marks the end of the anti-immigrant laws that target our friends, our neighbors, and our family members for harsh treatment."

Photo: Pepe Lozano/PW

Baltimore and Philly marchers honor Trayvon Martin

Mon, 22 Jul 2013 15:36:00 +0000

BALTIMORE - Led by African American children and youth, protesters marched through downtown Baltimore July 20 to voice their anger at the murder in Florida of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old Black youth. "No justice, no peace," they chanted. "Not another funeral!"

It was one of 100 demonstrations in cities across the nation protesting the acquittal of Martin's killer, George Zimmerman, who claimed self-defense in chasing down and shooting the Black teenager. The all-white jury swallowed Zimmerman's self-defense claim, rationalized under the state's notorious "stand your ground" law.

The Rev. Jamal Harrison-Bryant, pastor of the Empowerment Temple drew cheers here, urging the crowd to remember Martin and all the other victims including 120 children and youth who have died in Baltimore due to gun violence. "If in fact we really value life, it cannot just be a life in Sanford, Florida," he said through a bullhorn. "It's got to be lives on North Ave. Every life has got to be of some value." He announced that his church is sponsoring a gun "buyback" in August to help reduce the lethal tide of people killed by gunfire in Baltimore.

The minister also urged the crowd not to be satisfied with one march. He led the crowd in chanting, "It's a movement, not a moment."

Tessa Hill-Aston, president of the Baltimore NAACP, told the People's World she was at the NAACP national convention in Orlando, Fla., when the Zimmerman acquittal was announced in nearby Sanford. "Quite naturally the whole convention atmosphere changed as a result of that verdict," she said. "We were all asked to go back to our respective chapters across the nation to follow through on our stand to get the Justice Department to become involved."

Hill-Aston denounced the "stand your ground" laws that encourage armed gunman like Zimmerman to escalate confrontations to deadly force rather than seek to avoid violence. "A citizen is supposed to call 911 and then stand down and let police handle these situations," she said. "In this case, a teenager with a can of soda in his hand was shot dead for no reason at all."

She praised President Obama's unscripted 17-minute speech on the Trayvon Martin case in the White House news room a day earlier. "I think it was a wonderful speech," she said. "He spoke as the president of all the people yet before he became president, he was a Black American. He knows from his own personal experience what young Black men go through."

She added, "All NAACP presidents are being asked to participate in the August 24 March on Washington, to build that march. This is not a one-time event. It's a continuation of the struggle."

Former Maryland state Senator Larry Young said the NAACP, the Baltimore Action Network, and other groups fighting for racial equality will meet next week to launch a drive to fill buses to join the huge march in Washington to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Young told the People's World, "We're going to continue to build this movement up. I'm expecting close to 300,000 people at the August 24 march."

He said leaders of the mass organizations will meet in Baltimore from all across the state of Maryland to plan their participation in the march. The goal is to mobilize 20,000 participants in the march from throughout Maryland.

"Yes, we have made a lot of progress since 1963," Young added. "The fact that Barack Obama was reelected proves that. It was a bold step for President Obama to deliver that speech on the Trayvon Martin case. America must recognize the problem of racial injustice. Congress has to be more responsive to the inequality."

The July 20 march here began at the federal courthouse with protesters carrying signs that read, "We Are All Trayvon Martin" and "Boycott Florida." It ended a few minutes later with the crowd of demonstrators gathered near the statue of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, a Baltimorean who fought lynchings and argued the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation case before the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile in Philadelphia, thousands rallied in front of the Federal Court Building in Center City, protesting the acquittal of Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin, and calling for federal action in the case.

There was a sense of anger at the egregious miscarriage of justice, as shown by a variety of signs, along with a spirit that "this isn't the end of it." Those attending filled Market Street, the full width of the wide roadway and both sidewalks. They were mostly African American, with a significant minority of whites and a number of Asian Americans, all standing together for justice.

John Vago contributed to this article.

Photo: Marchers honor Trayvon Martin and protest the acquittal of his murderer, George Zimmerman, in Baltimore, July 20. Tim Wheeler/PW

President Obama: Trayvon Martin could have been me (video)

Fri, 19 Jul 2013 19:26:00 +0000

"Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago," President Obama said Friday. He made that comment in remarks at the White House Press Briefing Room about the killing of the African American teenager and this week's acquittal of his killer, George Zimmerman.

Clearly moved by the tragedy, Obama said it was important for the country to reflect on the "context and how people have responded to it and how people are feeling." The nation's first African American president said, "I think it's important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn't go away."

As no other president before him could have, Obama discussed the harsh experiences of Black young men and Black people in general in confronting racism in many forms, experiences that, he noted, he had shared. But the question now, he said, is "where do we take this? How do we learn some lessons from this and move in a positive direction?"

The president offered several practical steps he said his administration and others in positions of leadership could take. These included:

* beefed up training of law enforcement officers in order to reduce racial profiling and "mistrust"
* "examination" of state and local laws such as Florida's "stand your ground" law that may feed conflict and violence rather than resolve them;
* new and expanded programs to "bolster and reinforce" African American boys and young men.

"And for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these 'stand your ground' laws, I'd just ask people to consider, if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?"

Obama said. "And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman who had followed him in a car because he felt threatened? And if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, then it seems to me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws."

Watch the 17-minute remarks below, or read the text here.

Detroit's bankruptcy problem rooted in capitalism

Fri, 19 Jul 2013 16:31:00 +0000

DETROIT - It is the "culmination of sixty years of downward decline," said Republican Governor Rick Snyder at the press conference today announcing Detroit's filing for bankruptcy. The 60-year part I agree with but the blame for that decline, and solutions Snyder and his appointed Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr proposed in today's press conference, left key players in that decline blameless.

Snyder said Detroit's "political class" is the last major obstacle to righting this city. He echoes Republican and Tea Party claims the Democratic Party (that has long governed the city) along with the city's labor unions bear the onus for the current situation.

Many criticisms of the city harbor a large unhealthy dose of racism that implies the city's main problem is a large minority population expecting government handouts.

Talk about living on the public trough. Exxon Mobil made $45 billion in profits in 2009 but paid zero in taxes. General Electric made $10.3 billion and received a $1.1billion dollar rebate; Wells Fargo had profits of $19 billion and received tax credits of $19 billion after the purchase of Wachovia Bank. The bank-caused, tax loss inducing foreclosure crisis resulted in a huge loss of tax base and population for the city. One could go on and on but those lost tax dollars could end Detroit's and other municipalities' problems once and for all.

It is no surprise Detroit has a financial problem. It is a one-industry city that went from twelve auto plants to one. Globalization, automation and the seeking of ever greater profits caused all auto companies, domestic and foreign, to move production. All contributed to Detroit losing almost 90 percent of its jobs and tax base. No city could survive such a loss.

If there is a political class to blame for corruption or dysfunction, Snyder should look no further than his own Republican Party and its endless list of extremist, authoritarian actions and anti-democratic policies.

Today, Emergency Manager Orr said "we can't kick the can down the road any further."

I agree with those words, but not Orr's intent. Instead of trying to reign in pensions and public spending, we should rein in corporate profiteering and tax evasion. The capitalist system, based on profits before people, has accumulated huge riches from the labor of people, Detroit's workers in the first place.

It is right to expect all elected officials to act in the public's interest. But the main problem facing Detroit, other urban, suburban and rural areas is not corruption or labor unions seeking decent wages and benefits.

The main problem we face as a nation is not a lack of money; it is too much money in too few hands. Growing inequality, not budget deficits, are the country's number one problem. Until that problem is solved, others will not go away.

Photo: United Autoworkers members protest extreme wealth gap and corporate greed. (PW/John Rummel)