BreaktheChains.info

Occupy Oakland: Police Teargas Protesters, Use Flash Grenades

2012-01-29T12:00:00.000-08:00

OAKLAND, Calif. — Police were in the process of arresting about 100 Occupy protesters for failing to disperse Saturday night, hours after officers used tear gas on a rowdy group of demonstrators who threw rocks and flares at them and tore down fences.

Police Sgt. Christopher Bolton said the arrests came after protesters marched through downtown Oakland a little before 8 p.m. Saturday, with some of them entering a YMCA building.

Meanwhile, about 100 police officers surrounded City Hall while others were swept the inside of the building to see if any protesters broke in.

More help from other police agencies was also on the way, with busloads of Alameda County sheriff's deputies arriving in the downtown area late Saturday.

The nighttime arrests came after 19 people were taken into custody in Occupy Oakland protests hours earlier.

Police used tear gas and "flash" grenades on the group Saturday afternoon after some demonstrators threw rocks and other objects at them. Police said three officers were hurt, but they released no details.

Police said the group assembled at a downtown plaza Saturday morning, with demonstrators threatening to take over the vacant Henry Kaiser Convention Center. The group then marched through the streets, disrupting traffic.

The crowd grew as the day wore on, with afternoon estimates ranging from about 1,000 to 2,000 people.

The protesters walked to the vacant convention center, where some started tearing down perimeter fencing and "destroying construction equipment" shortly before 3 p.m., police said.

Police said they issued a dispersal order and used smoke and tear gas after some protesters pelted them with bottles, rocks, burning flares and other objects.

Most of the arrests were made when protesters ignored orders to leave and assaulted officers, police said. By 4 p.m., the bulk of the crowd had left the convention center and headed back downtown.

The demonstration comes after Occupy protesters said earlier this week that they planned to move into a vacant building and turn it into a social center and political hub. They also threatened to try to shut down the port, occupy the airport and take over City Hall.

In a statement Friday, Oakland City Administrator Deanna Santana said the city would not be "bullied by threats of violence or illegal activity."

Interim police Chief Howard Jordan also warned that officers would arrest those carrying out illegal actions.

Oakland officials said Friday that since the Occupy Oakland encampment was first established in late October, police have arrested about 300 people.

The national Occupy Wall Street movement, which denounces corporate excess and economic inequality, began in New York City in the fall but has been largely dormant lately.

Oakland, New York and Los Angeles were among the cities with the largest and most vocal Occupy protests early on. The demonstrations ebbed after those cities used force to move out hundreds of demonstrators who had set up tent cities.

In Oakland, the police department received heavy criticism for using force to break up earlier protests. Among the critics was Mayor Jean Quan, who said she wasn't briefed on the department's plans. Earlier this month, a court-appointed monitor submitted a report to a federal judge that included "serious concerns" about the department's handling of the Occupy protests.

Feb 4 - International Day of Solidarity with Leonard Peltier

2012-01-29T11:57:00.000-08:00

Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee

The Courts may not be able to act but Barack Obama, as President,
can. Please join with us to free an innocent man. On February 4,
2012, tell Obama to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier.

Solidarity events will be held in various locations around
the world. Please plan to attend a scheduled event near
you. See or
.

Take a few minutes out of your busy day to write to the President,
too:

President Barack H. Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500
Fax: 202-456-2461
E-Mail:

For guidance in writing to the President in favor of clemency,
see .

Thank you for all you do on behalf of Leonard Peltier.

-------

Background: Native American activist Leonard Peltier was wrongfully
convicted in connection with the deaths of two agents of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Despite the courts' acknowledgment
of FBI and prosecutorial misconduct in the case, Peltier has been
imprisoned since 1976, currently at the U.S. Penitentiary at Coleman,
Florida.

The evidence shows that the FBI was the aggressor in the firefight
that occurred on June 26, 1975. From 1973 to 1976, Indigenous
People on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota were
victims of beatings, drive-by shootings, and stabbings carried out
by local vigilantes who collaborated with the FBI. Peltier and
other Indigenous activists were forced into a defensive posture
to protect not only their lives, but the lives of others who
were present-elders, women, and children. Indeed, Mr. Peltier's
co-defendants, tried separately, were acquitted on grounds of
self-defense.

The evidence also clearly shows that the U.S. government's goal
was to orchestrate Mr. Peltier's conviction by any means-including
falsifying extradition documents and intentionally committing fraud
on a Canadian court, as well as suppressing evidence of Mr. Peltier's
innocence during his trial. By the government's own admission,
the critical part of the prosecution's case against Mr. Peltier
was the ballistics testimony which, years after his conviction,
was discovered to be false.

You can help to free an innocent man. Learn more about the Peltier
case at www.whoisleonardpeltier.info.

Lauched into cyberspace by the
Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee
PO Box 7488, Fargo, ND 58106
http://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info

Mumia Transferred to General Prison Population

2012-01-29T11:56:00.001-08:00

As of 1/27/12, Mumia Abu-Jamal has officially been transferred to
General Prison Population after being held in Administrative Custody
("The Hole" or Solitary Confinement) at SCI Mahanoy, Frackville, PA
for seven weeks. This is the first time Mumia has been in General
Population since his arrest in 1981.

This comes within hours of the of delivery of over 5,500 signed
petitions to Department of Corrections headquarters in Camp Hill, PA
and a compliant filed with United Nations Special Rapporteur on
Torture, Juan Mendez.

PLEASE NOTE that while this is a victory in transferring Mumia out of
the torturous Restricted Housing Unit (RHU), we call upon the closure
of ALL RHU's! Furthermore, we call upon the IMMEDIATE RELEASE of
Mumia Abu-Jamal and are not disillusioned by this transfer. FREE MUMIA NOW!

More at: http://www.freemumia.com/?p=867

Write to Mumia to send him some love!

MAILING ADDRESS FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL:
Mumia Abu-Jamal
#AM8335
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, NYC
P.O. Box 16, College Station, NY, NY 10030
212-330-8029, www.FreeMumia.com, info@FreeMumia.com

Lynne Stewart about her appeal

2012-01-29T11:54:00.000-08:00

(email Jan. 26, 2012)

About the Court Argument on the 29th of February
By Lynne Stewart

After the disaster in July 2010, when Judge Koeltl, following the
directives of the Second Circuit increased my sentence from 28 months
to 10 years, our righteous indignation fueled this appeal. The
government's argument will center on my testimony at trial and the
alleged perjury. All of those facts were before the Court at the
time of the 28 month sentence and were not the basis then of a
double digit sentence.

Our Brief attacks the increased sentence on two different fronts
--one on a doctrine of "substantive unreasonableness" meaning it's
just too much of an increase, five fold -- given the circumstances.
Secondly, we argued that the only "new" information before the Judge
were my statements after my first sentence in October of 2008 and
remarks I made on the Courthouse steps before I surrendered to
prison. We contend strongly that this is protected speech under the
First Amendment of the Constitution, and cannot be used to increase
or as a basis for sentencing. (even if they hate it !!!)

The same group of 3 Judges that heard and decided the original appeal
will also hear the arguments on the 29th. The government is not
asking for more time; they are satisfied with their pound of flesh
but it is not likely that this Court will take any action that will
help me. The times are askew for prisoners and their lawsuits. ( The
Brief is available at my web site lynnestewart.org)

The lawyers that argued in July of 2010 will be on board with the
addition of Herald Price Fahringer, an eminent attorney in the First
Amendment field (the win in the Larry Flynt Hustler case in the US
Supreme Court was his. He was also in the line of fire (no injuries)
when the shooting took place.) He will enthusiastically present our
case. I will not be present --not unusual once imprisoned. But my
spirit will be there to inspire !!!

Of course, my case has always been government firing warning
shots to Lawyers, that a vigorous defense,of certain clients, if not
conforming to government specifications, will be punished severely
. This chill effect in these days that we are confronted with Grand
Jury investigations and dismantling of Occupations is not something
we should contemplate with anything less than alarm. I have just
finished David Gilbert's book (Love Struggle) and the intercession of
lawyers when there are arrests of designated enemies of the "state"
are the only meaningful protection available.

A Large Outpouring of Support in Foley Square and Tom Paine Park and
in the Courtroom will signal to these arbiters of "Justice" that
attention must be paid, the 99% are watching them with suspicion and
tallying up the roads not taken.

Man spends 2 years in solitary after DWI arrest

2012-01-29T11:51:00.000-08:00

A man in New Mexico has been awarded $22 million after being tossed in solitary confinement for 2 years following a DWI arrest. KOB-TV's Marissa Torres reports.

Jan. 25, 2012 By Elizabeth Chuck, msnbc.com

A New Mexico man who said he was forced to pull his own tooth while in solitary confinement because he was denied access to a dentist has been awarded $22 million due to inhumane treatment by New Mexico's Dona Ana County Jail.

Stephen Slevin was arrested in August of 2005 for driving while intoxicated, then thrown in jail for two years. He was in solitary at Dona Ana County Jail for his entire sentence and basically forgotten about and never given a trial, he told NBC station KOB.com Tuesday night.

"[Jail guards were] walking by me every day, watching me deteriorate," Slevin said. "Day after day after day, they did nothing, nothing at all, to get me any help."

Slevin's medical problems extended beyond his dental issues, he said. His toenails started curling around his foot because they were so long, he told KOB.com. And his countless requests to see a doctor for depression medication were ignored, he said.

He said his lawsuit "has never been about the money. I've always wanted this to make a statement."

The $22 million, awarded by a federal jury Tuesday, is one of the largest prisoner civil rights settlements in U.S. history, according to KOB.com.

"I wanted people to know that there are people at The Dona Ana County Jail that are doing things like this to people and getting away with it," said Slevin, who now suffers from PTSD and believes he will have to take medication for life as a result. "Why they did what they did, I have no idea."

The mistreatment started from the moment his client was arrested, Slevin's attorney, Matt Coyte, told msnbc.com.

"He was driving through New Mexico and arrested for a DWI, and he allegedly was in a stolen vehicle. Well, it was a car he had borrowed from a friend; a friend had given him a car to drive across the country," Coyte said.

NBC News

Slevin was depressed at the time, Coyte explained, and wanted to get out of New Mexico. Instead, he found himself in jail.

"When he gets put in the jail, they think he's suicidal, and they put him in a padded cell for three days, but never give him any treatment."

Nor did they give him a trial, Coyte said. Slevin said he never saw a judge during his time in confinement.

After three days in a padded cell, jail guards transferred Slevin into solitary confinement without explanation.

"Their policy is to then just put them in solitary" if they appear to have mental health issues, Coyte told msnbc.com.

Dona Ana County officials were tight-lipped about the case, refusing to answer questions about whether any jail employees were reprimanded or fired over Slevin's treatment.

"We do not discuss personnel issues," Jess Williams, Dona Ana County's public information director, told msnbc.com.

Williams also wouldn't comment on whether the $22 million the county was ordered to pay would come from taxpayer money, saying only, "Dona Ana County will appeal the verdict."

He said no county officials would answer questions about why Slevin was held for so long without going to trial, or any other questions related to the legal parts of the case.

'Insanity builds'
While in solitary confinement, a prisoner is entitled to one hour per day out of the cell, but often times, Slevin wasn't even granted that, Coyte said. He was deprived of showers and grew fungus underneath his skin. He lost his will to even want to get out and live in the outside world, Coyte told msnbc.com.

"Your insanity builds. Some people holler or throw feces out their cell doors," he said. "Others rock back and forth under a blanket for a year or more, which is what my client did."

By the time Slevin got out of jail, his hair was shaggy and overgrown, his beard long, and his face pale and sunken, a drastic contrast from the clean-shaven booking photo taken of him when he was arrested two years prior.

"Without that picture, we couldn't have gotten where we were," Coyte said of the lawsuit.

Slevin has support from friends and his sister, Coyte said.

"That's very helpful to him. He does have people to look after him."

While Slevin spoke very briefly on-camera to KOB.com after the jury awarded him his verdict, his attorney said he is hoping for some privacy now.

"Hs life has been devoted to survival [since his release from solitary]," Coyte told msnbc.com. "He is totally inequipped; he is hollow. They've removed his humanity from him."

His suffering hasn't been in vain though, Coyte said.

"He's a brave guy. When he says it's not about the money, he really means it. He wants no one to go through what he went through. And people do, in New Mexico and across this country."

Feeling death at our heels: An update from the frontlines of the struggle

2012-01-26T13:04:00.000-08:00

January 25, 2012 SF BayView

from the NCTT Corcoran SHU

“Death is impossible for us to fathom; it is so immense, so frightening that we will do almost anything to keep from thinking about it. Society is organized to make death invisible, to keep it several steps removed. That distance may seem necessary for our comfort, but it comes with a terrible price: the illusion of limitless time, and a consequent lack of seriousness about daily life. As a warrior in life, you must turn this dynamic around: Make the thought of death something not to escape but to embrace. Your days are numbered. Will you pass them halfhearted or will you live with a sense of urgency? Cruel theaters staged by a czar are unnecessary; death will come to you without them. Imagine it pressing in on you, leaving you no escape, for there is no escape. Feeling death at your heels will make all your actions more certain, more forceful. This could be your last throw of the dice: Make it count.” – Robert Greene, bestselling author of “The 48 Laws of Power”

“This photo was taken a few days after the first hunger strike ended. I was about 178 pounds; I’d lost 42 pounds,” Heshima Denham wrote on the back. He added these wise words: “Progress requires sacrifice; give up your life for the people.”

Written Jan. 8, postmarked Jan. 18, 2012 – Greetings, brothers and sisters: A firm, warm and solid embrace of revolutionary love and solidarity is extended to each of you from each of us.

Since the last hunger strike ended, we have weathered wave after wave of retaliation from the state’s prison administrators that continues unabated to this day. But before I catalog these manifestations of weakness on the part of state prison administrators, we feel it’s necessary to recount why this struggle began and the nature of our resolve to see the five core demands realized.

We have been consigned to ever more aggressive sensory deprivation torture units for 10, 20, 30 and in some cases 40 years, based on an administrative determination that we are members or associates of a “gang” – a term that encompasses leftist ideologies, political and politicized prisoners, jailhouse lawyers and most anyone who in the opinion of Institutional Gang Investigations (IGI) is not passively accepting his role as a commodity in the prison industrial complex.

“Gang” is a term that encompasses leftist ideologies, political and politicized prisoners, jailhouse lawyers and most anyone who in the opinion of Institutional Gang Investigations (IGI) is not passively accepting his role as a commodity in the prison industrial complex.

These administrative determinations are not due to some overt act of misconduct or pattern of rules violations. No, these “validations” are based most often on the reforms, words or accounts of debriefers, rats, informants and other broken men who will say and do ‘most anything their IGI and ISU (Investigative Services Unit) handlers instruct them to, to avoid confinement in the SHU (Security Housing Unit) or carry some other favor from their masters.

After decades of fruitless legal challenges, after years of suffering the deprivations of conditions so inherently evil, inhumane and psychologically torturous that most of you simply cannot comprehend the reality behind these words, most of us came to realize an immutable truth: that the state’s mantra of “the only way out of the SHU is to parole, debrief or die” was something that they not only meant, but was in fact a key feature in developing a subservient and passive pool of prisoner commodities upon which the orderly fleecing of taxpayer dollars could be based.

Thirty years of successful propaganda, of dehumanizing underclass communities and the imprisoned, of lobbying that’s led to the dominance of the CCPOA (California Correctional Peace Officers Association) in judicial and political elections and appointments – all to mislead an ill-informed public into submitting greater control of their lives and society to an industrial interest that runs counter to the public safety concerns they were vested to protect. Many of us watched this state of affairs progress unchallenged as our protestations fell on deaf ears, year after year, decade after decade, until advanced age and the decimation of our communities forced us onto “death ground,” where you may survive if you can resist, but you will most surely perish if you do not.

We took up a strategy which would pull back the curtain on the state’s practice of domestic torture which has been so well hidden from the people for so long, a strategy in which some of us may yet die: THE HUNGER STRIKE. We would rather starve ourselves, to risk inevitable death, than to be indefinitely subjected to the deprivations of the torture unit.

We took up a strategy which would pull back the curtain on the state’s practice of domestic torture which has been so well hidden from the people for so long, a strategy in which some of us may yet die: THE HUNGER STRIKE.

What must be understood is that existence here is, in many ways, a fate worse than death; and when advancing age brings that mortality into stark focus, the words of Napoleon Bonaparte, “Death is nothing, but to live defeated is to die every day,” resonate. This simple observation defines our resolve in realizing our five core demands.

To say this is a protracted struggle is an understatement; this is a struggle in which we will win or we will die in the effort. Our actions thus far, and the awareness of this international community of their inherent righteousness, has made this adamantine resolve clear, so why then would CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) officials resort to petty retaliatory actions? The answer lies in the very nature of the tyranny and authoritarian power they represent.

Aggression is deceptive; it inherently hides weakness. Aggressors possess poor emotional control and little patience for challenges to their interests. The first waves of retaliation from these types of aggressors may seem strong to some; this is why so many non-SHU general population prisoners dropped out of the second hunger strike as those waves struck them. But, of course, we were unmoved; and the longer such attacks go on, the clearer their underlying weaknesses and insecurity become. It is an act of irrational desperation, but one they pursue out of sheer rote.

Since the second hunger strike ended, we experienced perpetual retaliation – some overt, some carefully disguised – all designed to erode the minds and wills of those committed to resist. We were denied any medical treatment for our starvation and when we filed emergency 602s to receive renutrition treatment and hunger strike-related injuries, they were not responded to until some 40 days later.

For example, during the first hunger strike, I (Heshima) passed out due to malnutrition and dehydration; the account was detailed in a previous statement. But simply put, their own guilt and fear caused them to assemble some 26 officers before opening my cell and piling on top of my unconscious form in order to shackle my arms and legs in chains and put me in an ambulance.

Their own guilt and fear caused them to assemble some 26 officers before opening my cell and piling on top of my unconscious form in order to shackle my arms and legs in chains and put me in an ambulance.

Mind you, according to witnesses, they casually, even jokingly, left me lying on my cell floor for 35 minutes before jumping on my body. Since then I’ve had a sharp, constant pain in my right side at the base of my ribcage. Though I’ve filed two medical appeals, as of this writing I have still not been treated or even diagnosed for this.

Zaharibu’s cholesterol, blood oxygen levels and blood pressure are so far outside of normal range he is at chronic risk for stroke, heart attack and diabetes – the nurses routinely “forgetting” to bring or administer his insulin when indicated.

Shortly after the second hunger strike ended, we were told, “One of the two pumps that delivers hot water to the institution is broken and we should have the part to fix it in two days.” That was over 50 days ago and we’ve had hot water for a total of three of those 50-plus days. In that intervening time, “due to the lack of hot water” we’ve been fed on paper trays, which ensures all meals arrive cold and grossly under-portioned. Because all we have to wash or shower with in these freezing cells is cold or lukewarm water, 80 percent of us housed in this 4BIL-C-Section short corridor have contracted a cold, upper respiratory tract infection or flu.

Because all we have to wash or shower with in these freezing cells is cold or lukewarm water, 80 percent of us housed in this 4BIL-C-Section short corridor have contracted a cold, upper respiratory tract infection or flu.

Despite numerous appeals and motions to the court, they have not run law library for any of us since August, making it impossible to access legal research, copying service or verified legal mailing, thus jeopardizing the viability of numerous legal pleadings in the courts.

We have often expounded upon the fundamental unreliability of reforms as nothing more than temporary pacification measures that can be repealed at the whim of administrators, and this analysis was again proven only weeks after the second hunger strike ended. Former Undersecretary of Corrections Scott Kernan made a big to-do about the concessions being made to improve the material conditions in SHU, including giving us action at a single special purchase order to purchase newly approved cold weather items by Dec. 31 – or those items would have to be included in annual packages.

Things like watch caps, thermals, tennis shoes etc. were all “approved” for SHU. Memos trumpeting this and Operational Procedure (OP) update chronos were issued to us all, only to be followed by a memo stating the warden of CSP-Corcoran-SHU was effectively repealing the single special purchase order for cold weather items without explanation. This was soon followed by another memo stating tennis shoes orders to SHU would not be allowed until after “Sacramento” made changes to the property matrix, something that was done by Scott Kernan back in October via emergency memo.

The warden of CSP-Corcoran-SHU was effectively repealing the single special purchase order for cold weather items without explanation.

Rolling power outages have suddenly become routine here. The mailroom suddenly devised new regulations directing any phony orders to be directed to one post office box, while letters go to another, making it more difficult and confusing for those who care to see to the welfare of their loved ones here. Not to be left out, CDCR trust account officials have raised processing fees on electronic trust deposits called “J-Pays,” some 500 percent, from $1 to $5, increasing the financial burden on underclass families while maximizing their own profiteering.

All of those things are designed to fuse with the daily mental struggles of the reality of indefinite sensory deprivation confinement to have the cumulative effect of eroding the psychology of resistance, and if this were a situation where there was some psychological threshold to breach, they may well have found some here who capitulate. But that simply is not the reality.

This is not a situation where multi-spectrum retaliation – or coercive force of any kind – will somehow diminish the resolve of those of us committed to ending the perpetual torture inherent in these indeterminate SHU units. In fact, quite the opposite is true; such actions only serve to crystallize in our minds the simple fact that we cannot lose. The alternative is simply more unpleasant than the relatively quick sacrifice of death by starvation. They can ratchet up the intensity on these petulant retaliation moves a hundredfold and it will have no other effect than increasing our resolve a thousandfold.

This is not a situation where multi-spectrum retaliation – or coercive force of any kind – will somehow diminish the resolve of those of us committed to ending the perpetual torture inherent in these indeterminate SHU units. In fact, quite the opposite is true; such actions only serve to crystallize in our minds the simple fact that we cannot lose.

We must win this struggle not simply because it is morally correct, upholds international standards of humanity, opposes governmental collusion in corporate exploitation of underclass people, and serves the interests – social, political and economic – of society as a whole, but also because it’s necessarily our survival. We are men in earnest; consequences have little meaning in the face of such conditions.

Some of you reading these words are no doubt grappling with the reality behind them, attempting to find some point of relatability, some common experience from which to draw a correlation. Unless you’ve experienced this firsthand, such an attempt is an effort in futility. But for the sake of this discussion, I challenge you to run an experiment: Go to your bathroom and close the door. Imagine that you will never leave that room. Your tub and shower, that’s your bed. Yes, your toilet is only a step or two away from where you lay your head. Your food will be brought to you here twice a day.

Stay there as long as you can. How long do you last? Twenty minutes? An hour? Six hours? Imagine you sit in that bathroom for a year, 10 years, 24 years, 40 years. You will never leave that bathroom unless you are released from prison, agree to be an agent for the same people who stuck you in that bathroom, or you die of old age and infirmity. How long would you last? How strong is your will?

Would you submit to snitchery, kowtow to your torturers and become a tool to condemn others to that same fate? Or would you fight, resist to the bitter end, give your life to expose such evil, greedy, draconian hypocrites for what they really are? Hold the mirror of social reality up to the face of every man and woman in U.S. society and force them to confront the human misery being carried to sicker and more depraved depths every day in their names? What would you do?

Would you submit to snitchery, kowtow to your torturers and become a tool to condemn others to that same fate? Or would you fight, resist to the bitter end, give your life to expose such evil, greedy, draconian hypocrites for what they really are?

Some would characterize our effort as insane, as crazy. In “Hagakure: The door of the Samurai,” Yamamoto Tsunetomo quotes Lord Naoshige as saying the way of the warrior (samurai) is in desperateness. Ten or more cannot kill such a man. Common sense will not accomplish great things. Simply become insane and desperate.

None of us want to die, but all of us are prepared to do so to realize these five core demands. History dictates no less.

So we wait. We have been told the revisions and changes to the status quo in these torture units will be done this month or by February, but the relentless retaliatory blows we are absorbing as the sobering reminder of what we are dealing with: An entrenched labor aristocracy and political patronage of corporate speculators, who’ve grown rich and powerful off extorting billions from hapless taxpayers and criminalizing underclass people and communities, will resist any effort to curtail their wealth, privilege and socio-political status quo.

These vile and greedy people are extracting more of your tax dollars for their exclusive use than many nations’ gross national product by using us as scapegoats to frighten the people – when in fact many of us are servants of the people, political progressives who would willingly lay down our lives to advance the cause of freedom, social justice and economic equality in the nation.

In the case of the NCTT and those of like mind, ironically that’s why we were validated and consigned to these torture units in the first place. A common practice of corrupt political interests is to criminalize dissent and criticism. Who will care? We are prisoners; who will know these truths? They have already succeeded in lobbying to have media access to prisoners banned unless they consent to who will be interviewed. Again, who will care, who will know?

A common practice of corrupt political interests is to criminalize dissent and criticism. Who will care? We are prisoners; who will know these truths?

If you’re reading these words, you now know the only question that remains is: Do you care? Do you care that the very people who you’ve entrusted with ensuring public safety are in fact intentionally working against that interest to maintain a bloated prison industrial complex on your tax dollars and our souls? Do you care that the U.S., which is so vocally condemning other nations, is ignoring its U.N. treaty obligations and maintaining its own expansive domestic torture program in U.S. Supermax SHU prisons across this nation? Do you care that these evils, this blatant hypocrisy is being carried out in your name? Do you care? And if you don’t, exactly what type of society is this we’ve allowed to emerge?

If you are reading these words, you can no longer claim ignorance; to stand idly by now would be complicity. A wise man once said, “All that is necessary for evil men to prevail is for good men to do nothing.” We are under no illusions. The ultimate arbiter of our fate – and this society’s fate – is the people. YOU. YOU must rise up against this injustice and inhumanity. YOU must let the state know that substantive change at every level of society is something the people demand.

The ultimate arbiter of our fate – and this society’s fate – is the people. YOU.

We have supported, and will continue to support, progressive people’s movements, from the Dream Act to the Occupy Movement, because we recognize the inherent unity of purpose in this single political motive force, the reality that we do not represent disparate social interests but a single determined democratic imperative to put an end to the stranglehold that this greedy elite and its tools currently have on every area of people’s activity in the U.S., to put an end to these exploitive relationships that diminish and impoverish the many for the aggrandizement of the few.

To treat us this way is wrong, evil and unsustainable socially. Stand with us. Lend your voices, your labor, and your ideas to this historical work. We can win, but only with you all by our sides. In the final analysis, this is a struggle to determine the nature of humanity itself. We are on the right side of history; we encourage you all to stand on this same side with us. Our love, loyalty and solidarity to all those who cherish freedom, justice and human rights and fear only failure. Until we win or don’t lose.

For more information on the California prison hunger strikes or the NCTT, contact:

• Zaharibu Dorrough, D-83611, CSP-COR-SHU, 4BIL-53, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212

• J. Heshima Denham, J-38283, CSP-COR-SHU, 4BIL-46, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212

• Kambui Robinson, C-82830, CSP-COR-SHU, 4BIL-49, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212.

Read these brothers’ previous stories: “California prison hunger strikers propose ‘10 core demands’ for the national Occupy Wall Street Movement,” “A brief hunger strike update from the front lines of the struggle: Corcoran-SHU 4B 1L C-section Isolation Unit” (second story in that post), “From the front lines of the struggle,”and “We dare to win: The reality and impact of SHU torture units.” This story was typed by Adrian McKinney.

Report on Carlos Montes court day hearing of January 25, 20012

2012-01-26T12:59:00.000-08:00

www.stopfbila.ne t

Today there was an extremely serious development in Carlos' case. LA
County Superior Court Judge Lomeli denied the motion to dismiss the 6
felony charges, setting the stage for trial later this year.
Prosecutors have stated in the press that Carlos may face about five
years in prison. The fight is on!

Today we had a good turnout of support with people who packed the
courtroom. Carlos and his attorney had presented a motion to drop the
charges on the grounds of insufficient evidence. Specifically
challenging the state's claim that Carlos has a felony conviction
from his 1969 persecution for leading a student strike demanding
Chicano/a Studies and Black Studies at ELA College. During the
student strike of Chicano and Black students, the LA County Sheriff's
Department invaded the college campus during a rally. The Sheriffs
confronted students beating and arresting some. Carlos was arrested
and charged with assaulting a Sheriff's Deputy. The legal record does
not support the DA contention that Carlos has a felony conviction.
The DA and court continue to move forward with this unjust
prosecution based on a 42 year old case. This is really about Carlos'
deep and long involvement in the antiwar, migrants' rights and
solidarity movements that challenge US empire. Carlos needs your support!

The state via the DA and Judicial system wants to put Carlos in jail
for his political activism. We need to continue to build on the
support Carlos has and get ready for a full trial, where Carlos
believes that a jury of his peers will find him not guilty, but we
have to fight!

The next court date is February 8, were Carlos and team will continue
the discovery process on the Sheriffs to get ready for trial! Please
see our web site for further details on time and location for an
emergency meeting in Los Angeles, on Saturday, February 11, 2012.

Committee to Stop FBI Repression

www.stopfbila.net
(626) 532-7164

Correction: Rare Admission of Mistake in Mumia Case

2012-01-26T12:54:00.000-08:00

Jan 25, 2012 This Can't Be Happening

by Linn Washington Jr.

I made a mistake.

An article I wrote recently for TCBH about the Pennsylvania prison system’s latest punitive assault on now ex-death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal (unnecessarily continuing his solitary confinement) contained a factual misstatement.

Most journalists consider any inaccuracy an error, regardless of how small.

The Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists calls for admitting “mistakes” and correcting them promptly.

This journalist’s inaccuracy-as-error standard contrasts with court systems, where appellate courts too often dismiss mistakes made during trials by prosecutors and judges without correction by using the court-invented legalistic term: harmless error.

The Abu-Jamal case is fraught with such misconduct and mistakes that appellate courts have not only not corrected, but have allowed to fester and get worse. But you won't see the courts or the prosecutors ever admitting those things.

In my article, I inaccurately listed Pennsylvania state prison officials as being the prime movers in keeping Abu-Jamal on death row instead of transferring him into general prison population after a federal judge had voided his death sentence in a December 2001 ruling converting that sentence to a life in prison.

Pennsylvania prisoners are put in "the Hole" for their politics, for protesting prison conditions, and for racist reasons

In that article I stated prison authorities kept Abu-Jamal on death row in 2001 “as a courtesy to Philadelphia’s District Attorney’s Office…”

Yes, keeping Abu-Jamal on death row arose from a courtesy…a courtesy that kept him on death row ten years after that 2001 ruling.

And yes, Philly’s DA (and others) did want Abu-Jamal to rot on death row.

But, no, Pennsylvania prison authorities did not extend that "courtesy."

That "courtesy" came from William Yohn, the federal District Court judge who voided Abu-Jamal’s death sentence after finding errors in the 1982 jury deliberations resulting in Abu-Jamal receiving the death penalty.

Yohn granted a request from Philadelphia’s then District Attorney Lynne Abraham, who wanted to keep the outspoken author/activist in solitary death row confinement during her appeal of Yohn’s ruling.

Author J. Patrick O’Connor, in his probative book “The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal, wrote that Abraham, “in a particularly spiteful maneuver,” requested that Yohn stay his order lifting Abu-Jamal’s death sentence and, “incredibly,” Yohn agreed.

With that "courtesy" Yohn allowed Abu-Jamal to suffer death row deprivations despite his judicial determination that Abu-Jamal had unjustly spent nearly twenty-years in solitary confinement due to that legally flawed sentence.

Abraham, in the wake of Yohn’s ruling, had blasted him.

An angry Abraham, in December 2001, said she was “completely dismayed” that Yohn had granted “any relief whatsoever.”

Abraham’s reaction ignored the fact that federal district and appellate courts in Philadelphia had cited penalty phase errors (the same failing Yohn found in Abu-Jamal’s case) in two of the four death sentences those courts voided between May and November 2001.

Maureen Faulkner, the widow of slain Officer Daniel Faulkner, had also blasted Yohn, calling him a “sick and twisted person,” despite Yohn dismissing 28 of the 29 appeal claims raised by Abu-Jamal, including all claims regarding his conviction, which if accepted could have led to a new trial for Abu-Jamal, possibly leading to his release.

While my article inaccurately assigned that "courtesy" off keeping Abu-Jamal on death row to prison authorities instead of Yohn, the article did accurately account for the wasted costs of that "courtesy."

Keeping Abu-Jamal on death row for an additional decade cost Pennsylvania taxpayers at least $100,000 because the state's prison system spends at last an extra ten thousand dollars per year over the cost of incarcerating ordinary prisoners to handle each death row inmate.

In early December 2011, prison authorities finally shifted Abu-Jamal from death row into more harshly restrictive Administrative Custody (a/k/a The Hole) hours after Philadelphia’s DA announced he would not seek reinstatement of a death sentence.

Yohn’s 2001 ruling required the DA to either hold a mini-trial in an effort to obtain a new death sentence from a new jury, or to accept a sentence of life imprisonment. The federal Third Circuit Appeals Court twice upheld Yohn’s ruling and the U.S. Supreme Court finally ended appeals of Yohn’s ruling last fall.

One of the many problems with the Abu-Jamal case is the refusal of police, prosecutors, prison authorities and judges to acknowledge mistakes or worse, misconduct -- both things that are not harmless.

Yohn, for example, made “several” mistakes in that 2001 ruling “on questions of constitutional rights central to commonly held concepts of justice,” as my TCBH colleague Dave Lindorff put it in his seminal book Killing Time: An Investigation Into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Lindorff presented a disturbing, thorough analysis of Yohn’s flawed dismissal of Abu-Jamal’s jury selection discrimination appeal claims in his 2003 book.

The Third Circuit rejected Abu-Jamal’s jury discrimination appeal in 2008 despite the Third Circuit's having granted relief to other death row inmates he had raised identical jury discrimination claims.

In another mistake by Yohn that escaped scrutiny and correction by federal appellate judges, the respected jurist brushed-off Abu-Jamal’s claims that his attorney during the 1982 trial was legally ineffective because that lawyer was inexperienced in death penalty law, undercapitalized and lacked adequate support staff during that 1982 trial.

Yohn seized upon erroneous state court findings that attorney Anthony Jackson “had tried approximately twenty” first-degree murder cases. Pennsylvania state courts had twisted the exact testimony Jackson gave during a 1995 Post-Conviction Relief Actl hearing about his capital case experience.

During three days of testimony in July 1995, Jackson had repeatedly told Abu-Jamal’s appellate attorney Leonard Weinglass that he had tried "one or two" capital murder cases, serving as lead counsel only once.

According to transcripts from 1995, Jackson first told Abu-Jamal’s appeal attorney that he had tried one or two first-degree murder cases. On cross-examination by the prosecutor, Jackson did say he tried twenty murder cases but stressed that only “one or two” of those cases were death penalty cases…testimony the prosecutor did not challenge with contrary evidence. On re-direct from Abu-Jamal’s attorney, Jackson again said he had only handled one or two capital cases.

Jackson, also during that 1995 testimony, said he had received inadequate funding from the courts for his defense efforts, that he had no paralegals and investigators to assist him, that a Philadelphia judge rejected his request for another lawyer to assist him and at the time of Abu-Jamal’s trial he only had a part-time secretary because he had returned to private practice only months earlier.

Yohn and lower Pennsylvania state court judges rejected Jackson’s admission that he was “ineffective” during Abu-Jamal’s 1982 trial, arguing that Jackson’s defense effort was legally sufficient.

Yohn asserted that “even were I to assume that Jackson was inexperienced, undercapitalized and lacked adequate support, [Abu-Jamal did not] demonstrate that there is a reasonable probability that but for these [conditions] the result of the proceeding would have been different.”

While Pennsylvania prison officials kept Abu-Jamal in solitary confinement for ten unnecessary years on Judge Yohn’s orders, his current continued solitary confinement is solely the responsibility of those prison officials.

As I reported in my article, the draconian Administrative Custody confinement rammed on Abu-Jamal by prison authorities evidences violations of the prison system’s own written regulations, because that placement does not meet any of the 11 specific circumstances listed in Pennsylvania Department of Corrections regulations used to justify administrative custody placement.

The “current rationales offered by prison officials for [Abu-Jamal’s] placement in solitary confinement do not withstand scrutiny, which lends further support to the inference that he is continuing to be targeted,” said Bret Grote, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Human Rights Coalition, during a recent interview.

Typical of Abu-Jamal’s selflessness, he directs his supporters to fight not just against his unjust confinement but also to assist the scores of other people the state's Department of Corrections unjustly holds in solitary confinement on a daily basis, according to data from HRC, a prison-monitoring organization.

Grote said prison authorities improperly use Administrative Custody to penalize inmates for their political activism, for complaining about conditions, for their roles as jailhouse lawyers and often simply for racist reasons.

How George Wright Became a "Convicted Murderer" Without having Committed the Crime

2012-01-26T12:52:00.000-08:00

George Pumphrey, Berlin, Germany
October 23, 2011

When news broke that, at the request of the US government, Portugal had
arrested George Wright (Jose Luis Jorge dos Santos), a Portuguese citizen,
for consideration of his extradition to the United States for having
escaped prison, there was an air of the spectacular in the news articles.
The accent in many articles was on the arrest of a "convicted murderer,"
who had been a fugitive for 40 years.

George Wright had escaped from the Bayside State Prison in Leesburg, N.J.,
in 1970, where he had served more than seven years of a 15 – 30 year prison
sentence for murder.

It was also reported – almost in passing – that Wright and four other
Afro-Americans had hijacked a Delta Airlines jet from the US to Algeria in
1972 with a ransom of $1 million destined to the foreign section of the
Black Panther Party located in Algeria.

But the demand for his extradition is allegedly merely to return Wright to
prison to "finish his time."

Back to the Source

Some of the earlier articles had referred to Wright being a "convicted
murderer." Some European journals understandably believe this to mean that
George Wright had taken someone's life – "understandable," that is, when
one considers the source of this information.

FBI Special Agent, Bryan L. Travers, announcing Wrights arrest, wrote in
his press release (September 27, 2011) that

"On November 23, 1962, George Wright and three associates were involved in
the commission of multiple armed robberies. During the second of these
robberies, Wright and an associate shot and killed Walter Patterson, a
World War II veteran and Bronze Star recipient, during the robbery of the
Collingswood Esso gas station in Wall, New Jersey."[1] <#_ftn1>

The FBI special agent then explains:

Wright was arrested two days later and was indicted on state charges along
with his associates on December 13, 1962. On February 15, 1963, Wright
entered a plea of “no defense” to the charge of murder. Wright was
subsequently sentenced to 15 to 30 years’ incarceration.[2] <#_ftn2>

For European journalists, unfamiliar with the US penal system, a
translation of the background to these allegations may prove useful.

Is George Wright a Murderer?

Special Agent Travers writes that "Wright AND an associate shot and killed
Walter Patterson," while press reports from New Jersey – where Special
Agent Travers is stationed – and elsewhere tell a different story about the
incident:

"One of [the robbers], Walter McGhee, had a revolver, according to police
records. McGhee fired two shots at Patterson and ran off with $70. (...)
McGhee was sentenced to life in prison. Wright, as one of the holdup men,
was also charged with murder. He changed his plea from innocent to no
defense to evade a jury trial that could have resulted in the death penalty
if he were found guilty, according to news accounts. Wright, at age 19, was
sentenced to 15 to 30 years in prison, where he served time until his
escape in 1970."[3] <#_ftn3>

And another journalist adds more details:

Wright, armed with a sawed-off 22- caliber rifle, and McGhee, armed with a
32-caliber pistol, were both wearing women’s pantyhose over their faces
when they assaulted Patterson and fired at least one shot during the
robbery. Patterson was shot once in the abdomen before the four got away
with $70 in cash. Police later determined it was a shot from McGhee’s
pistol that led to Patterson’s death.[4] <#_ftn4>

It must have been clear – even to the FBI – that though Wright had
participated in the holdup and that though Wright had been armed, it was
not Wright, but McGhee, who was the murderer. The FBI certainly had access
to the same police records as the journalists quoted above. Nevertheless,
the FBI deliberately falsified its version of events to make George Wright
appear dangerous.

"No Defense"

There is a second aspect that may be particularly alien to Europeans about
the US system. George Wright was "convicted" of a murder that police,
prosecutor and judge all knew he was innocent of. Whereas the FBI press
release merely states "Wright entered a plea of 'no defense' to the charge
of murder," the journalists quoted above say why.

McGhee, the actual killer, was sentenced to life in prison. Nevertheless,
Wright, charged with the murder, everyone knew he had not committed, was
forced to change his plea from "innocent" to "no defense," thereby waiving
his right to a trial by jury. It was clear that if he was found guilty in
that trial, he would have received the death penalty for a crime everyone
knew him to be innocent of.

(September 21, 2011, despite pleas for clemency from around the world,
including the European Parliament, the Council of Europe and the Pope, the
state of Georgia executed Troy Anthony Davis for a murder it was evident he
had not committed. Seven of the nine witnesses against him retracted and
recanted their testimonies before the court, declaring in written
statements that they had been pressured by police and prosecution to lie in
court accusing Davis of murder. One of the 2 witnesses who has not recanted
is believed to be the actual murderer. The US Supreme Court refused to
allow the new evidence of Davis' innocence to be admitted, which would have
resulted not only in the liberation of Davis but in a new trial. This could
have also been the fate of George Wright.)

Where is the justice?

Under US law, if a more grave crime occurs – for example murder – in the
course of the commission of a lesser crime – in this case robbery – the
participants committing the lesser crime can also be charged with the
graver crime, even though it is clear that, another had actually committed
it.

Following his arrest, George Wright, having no means to hire his own
lawyer, had to therefore rely on the services of a court appointed lawyer.
These are usually inexperienced, underpaid by the court and disinterested
in cases that will do little to further their careers.

The prosecutor, who then put Wright under pressure to obtain another rapid
conviction for a serious crime, additionally charged Wright with this
murder. Wright insisted on his innocence, which meant he had a right to a
jury trial. However, jury trials cost the state money and the prosecution
would be forced to prepare his case. The court appointed defense lawyer
would also lose time on a non-paying client, time (s)he would rather spend
on a high-profile or, at least, a better paying case. So not being
interested in going to trial, the court appointed lawyer would advise
his/her client to take a "plea bargain", meaning one of the versions of not
contesting the charges, so that a guilty verdict can be pronounced by the
judge, without having to go through the normal trial procedure. Wright
pleaded that he was making "no defense" against the charges against him.

Allen N. Cowling, a private investigator specializing in cases of persons
falsely charged with crimes, explains, that "although a plea [bargain] has
many names; nolo contendere, (no contest) or an Alford, (no admission of
guilt), regardless of what it is called, it is still an admission of guilt
by an accused to an offense that they may not have committed."[5] <#_ftn5>

A "plea bargain" is an official extortion of a "guilty" plea from a
defendant, regardless of his innocence, in exchange for a promised – but
not always held – specific sentence.

The case of George Wright is a good example of how this works. Wright was
probably threatened that if he insisted on pleading innocent – meaning that
a jury would have to determine his guilt for murder – then he would have
the entire system against him. Not only the prosecution and judge – for
forcing them to take the "long road" to a conviction – but even his
"defense" lawyer would be against him. Wright's insistence on his right to
justice would have cost his defense lawyer precious time and therefore
money with a non-paying client. It is the latter that is most important
because (s)he is in a position to take revenge and sabotage his chances to
be objectively heard by the jury. Therefore, it would have been almost
certain that he would be convicted of a crime he had not committed.

Paul Craig Roberts,[6] <#_ftn6> explains:

"In the US the wrongful conviction rate is extremely high. One reason is
that hardly any of the convicted have had a jury trial. No peers have heard
the evidence against them and found them guilty. In the US criminal justice
(sic) system, more than 95% of all felony cases are settled with a plea
bargain."

And warns:

"Before jumping to the conclusion that an innocent person would not admit
guilt, be aware of how the process works. Any defendant who stands trial
faces more severe penalties, if found guilty, than if he agrees to a plea
bargain. Prosecutors don’t like trials because they are time consuming and
a lot of work. To discourage trials, prosecutors offer defendants reduced
charges and lighter sentences than would result from a jury conviction. In
the event a defendant insists upon his innocence, prosecutors pile on
charges until the defendant’s lawyer and family convince the defendant that
a jury is likely to give the prosecutor a conviction on at least one of the
many charges and that the penalty will be greater than a negotiated plea."
[7] <#_ftn7>

In principle, more than 95% of the inmates in US prisons are innocent,
simply because their guilt has not been proven – beyond a reasonable doubt
– in a trial. A plea of guilty – regardless of guilt or innocence – had
been extorted from them.

The theory behind plea-bargaining is "the confession of the defendant is
considered solving the conflict and rendering the judicial procedure
(particularly the analysis of the evidence) superfluous. This is why as
soon as there is a confession, the judge pronounces the
sentence'."[8]<#_ftn8>

"There is one snag in the whole plea-bargaining deal: once you plead
guilty, you cannot appeal your case or change your plea to not guilty. This
is another way that the American judicial system accounts for its high
percentage of Blacks in prison."[9] <#_ftn9>

Plea bargaining has robbed the US criminal justice system of its middle
name. With plea bargaining, the question of guilt and innocence – the
prerequisite for justice – play no longer a role. Through the plea
bargaining technique, the government mass-produces convictions, most of
which are Black, Hispanic and poor, sending them to prison, without ever
having had the benefit of a trial, "because it is obvious that they are
guilty. They pled guilty, didn't they?" is the reasoning usually given.

On the other hand, official propaganda, as the FBI shows above, can conjure
up a "murderer" by constantly pointing to his "conviction."

This is how George Wright became the "convicted murderer" without having
committed the crime.

------------------------------

[1] <#_ftnref1> Travers, Bryan L., International Fugitive Captured After
More Than 40 Years, FBI Newark September 27, 2011
http://www.fbi.gov/newark/press-releases/2011/international-fugitive-captured-after-more-than-40-years

[2] <#_ftnref2> ibid

[3] <#_ftnref3> Grant, Jason, "A fugitive's quiet life in Portugal:
Seaside village, friendly neighbors," The Star-Ledger, September 29, 2011,
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/09/a_fugitives_quiet_life_in_port.html(See
also: Ferreira, Leonardo, Após 40 anos, fugitivo norte-americano de
New Jersey é preso em Portugal, Brazilian Voice, 06/10/2011,
http://www.brazilianvoice.com/bv_noticias/bv_comunidade/41731-Aps-anos-fugitivo-norte-americano-New-Jersey-preso-Portugal.html
)

[4] <#_ftnref4> Webster, Charles, "A promise made, a promise kept" Asbury
Park Press, Oct. 1, 2011,
http://www.app.com/article/20110930/NJNEWS/309300132/Fugitive-s-arrest-brings-relief-to-the-family-of-WWII-veteran-killed-in-Wall

[5] <#_ftnref5> Cowling, Allen N., "Falsely Accused and Plea Bargains,"
http://www.allencowling.com/plea.htm

[6] <#_ftnref6> Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the
Treasury in the Reagan administration, Associate Editor of the Wall Street
Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review.

[7] <#_ftnref7> Roberts, Paul Craig, "America’s Injustice System Is
Criminal," December 12, 2006,
http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts187.html

[8] <#_ftnref8> Nikiforov, Boris, "Etat Actuel de la Justice aux Etats
Unis," ed. Revue Trimestrielle de la section des Sciences Sociales de
l'Academie des Sciences de l'URSS, Nr. 4, (34) 1978, pg. 221

[9] <#_ftnref9> Brown, George, Nous Noirs Americains, Evadés du Ghetto,
Seuil, Paris, pg. 217 – 218

Socialist International supports self-determination of Puerto Rico and the release of Oscar López Rivera

2012-01-26T12:21:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, January 25, 2012 claridadpuertorico.com

San Juan, Jan. 25 (INS).- The World Council of
the Socialist International, which just met in
Costa Rica, adopted a resolution supporting the
self-determination of Puerto Rico and the release
of political prisoner Oscar López Rivera,
according to today's report from the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP).

PIP spokesperson, Calixto Rivera Negrón,
explained that the resolution of the Socialist
International (SI) endorses the current call of
the United Nations Special Committee on
Decolonization that the General Assembly examine
the colonial case of Puerto Rico and the demand
for the release of the Puerto Rican patriots in
United States prisons, in particular López Rivera
who this year will have served 31 years behind bars.

The SI, the oldest and largest organization of
political parties in the world, also endorsed
efforts led by the PIP leadership to grant the
Puerto Rican independence movement observer
status in the recently created Community of
States of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAC, by its Spanish initials).

Leaders of social democratic and socialist
parties from every continent attended the meeting in Costa Rica.

The PIP was represented by a delegation comprised
of its president, Rubén Berríos Martínez; former
senator and executive president Fernando Martín;
the candidate for governor of Puerto Rico, Juan
Dalmau, and the candidate for resident
commissioner in Washington, Juan Manuel Mercado.

Former senator Berríos Martínez is the honorary
president of the Socialist International.

Internacional Socialista favorece autodeterminación de Puerto Rico y excarcelación Oscar López Rivera

Por InterNews Service
Publicado: miércoles, 25 de enero de 2012 claridadpuertorico.com

San Juan, 25 ene (INS).- El Consejo Mundial de la
Internacional Socialista, que acaba de sesionar
en Costa Rica, emitió una resolución en apoyo a
la autodeterminación de Puerto Rico y la
excarcelación del prisionero político Oscar López
Rivera, informó hoy el Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño (PIP).

El portavoz del PIP, Calixto Rivera Negrón,
explicó que la resolución de la Internacional
Socialista (IS) respalda el llamamiento vigente
del Comité Especial sobre Descolonización de
Naciones Unidas para que la Asamblea General
examine el caso colonial de Puerto Rico y el
reclamo por la liberación de los patriotas
puertorriqueños en cárceles de los Estados
Unidos, en particular López Rivera, quien cumplirá 31 años de presidio.

La IS, la organización más antigua y grande de
partidos políticos en el mundo, respaldó además
las gestiones que encamina el liderazgo del PIP
para que se otorgue el rango de observador al
independentismo puertorriqueño en la Comunidad de
Estados de América Latina y el Caribe (CELAC), de reciente creación.

Al cónclave realizado en Costa Rica asistieron
dirigentes de partidos socialdemócratas y socialistas de todos los continentes.

El PIP estuvo representado por una delegación
integrada por su presidente, Rubén Berríos
Martínez; el exsenador Fernando Martín,
presidente ejecutivo; el candidato a la
gobernación de Puerto Rico, Juan Dalmau, y el
aspirante a delegado en Washington, Juan Manuel Mercado.

El exsenador Berríos Martínez es presidente de
honor de la Internacional Socialista.

New Zealand authorities shut down 'Occupy' camps

2012-01-26T12:19:00.000-08:00

Associated Press – Jan. 22, 2012

AUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP) — Authorities have effectively shut down the
Occupy movement in New Zealand's largest city after more than 100 days of
protest.

Auckland Council officers and police Monday confiscated cars, tents and
camping gear from more than 50 protesters at four sites in Auckland. The
raid came after a local court ruled authorities could remove property from
people who were illegally camping.

Police arrested three people in Aotea Square during the raids.

Occupy encampments remain in other New Zealand cities. Protesters in this
country joined the movement that began last September in New York as a
protest against social and financial inequality.

Auckland Council spokesman Glyn Walters said protesters can return to the
sites but are no longer allowed to camp there.

Billy Silvia and Marco on hunger strike

2012-01-25T13:37:00.000-08:00

ELP Information Bulletin (25th January 2012) Dear friends ELP has just received the
following e-mail.

> Switzerland – Marco, Silvia and Billy on hunger strike against the WEF

This is a flyer that has been distributed during the demo against the World Economic Forum in Bern (Switzerland) on the 21st of January 2012. We are translating the communiques of Marco, Silvia and Billy about the strike, they will be available soon.

“The three green anarchist prisoners held in the swiss jails decided to join the week of mobilization against the World Economic Forum, which will be held in Switzerland during these days. Marco and Silvia went on hunger strike for 10 days, since 20th to 30th of january 2012. Billy is abstaining from prison food and refusing to work (working is compulsory in swiss jails), against the WEF but also as a response to their prison conditions, more precisely for the liberation of Marco Camenisch in may 2012 and against the presence of divisory glass in the visits of friends.

Marco Camenisch was incarcerated in Switzerland in 1991, he's always been active in green anarchist struggles; Silvia and Billy were arrested, along with Costa, in april 2010 in Zurich for having tried to attack with explosives the newly built nanotechnology research center of
IBM.

We're not surprised by the fact that this year in the schedule of WEF they will also deal with nanotechnologies, because, as with all the technological systems and even more the new technologies (nanotechnologies, biotechnologies and cybernetics), they are not neutral but subjected to the ones who manage economics, and a further tool in the hands of those who hold power.

While the state and corporations bosses meet with each other to impose the new world economic developments, in the labs experts and researchers study to create new means with which to increase social control, strengthen the soldiers, try to make our lives even more artificial and automized, till the point of manipulating the living. Manipulations that provoke devastating and irreversible effects in the earth equilibriums and on human and non human animals.

We will always fight against those who are turning the earth into a land of plastic and concrete, commodities and technologies, industries and offices: a world devoid of life. Against the State and capital which, with their dominating and exploitative logics want human beings to be slaves, the animals to be good, and the planet to be an infinite source of things to sack. The WEF event cannot but increase our anger and desire to keep on struggling, in and outside jails. Solidarity with the prisoners on hunger strike!

Solidarity to Marco, Silvia, Billy and Costa.”

++++++ Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network
BM Box 2407LondonWC1N 3XXEngland
Find us on Facebook by searching for "Earth Liberation Prisoners"

The Gray Box: An investigative look at solitary confinement

2012-01-25T13:34:00.000-08:00

Dart Society Spring 2012

A few weeks ago, on the fifteenth anniversary of his first day in prison, Osiel Rodriguez set about cleaning the 87 square feet he inhabits at ADX, a federal mass isolation facility in Colorado.

“I got it in my head to destroy all my photographs,” he writes in a letter to me. “I spent some five hours ripping each one to pieces. No one was safe. I did not save one of my mother, father, sisters. Who are those people anyway?”

Such is the logic of the gray box, of sitting year after year in solitude.

Whether Rodriguez had psychological problems when he robbed a bank, burglarized a pawn shop and stole some guns at age 22, or whether mental illness set in during the eight years he has spent in seclusion since trying to walk out of a federal penitentiary in Florida – it’s academic. What’s true now is that he’s sick, literally, of being alone, as are scores of other prisoners in extreme isolation.

Among the misperceptions about solitary confinement is that it’s used only on the most violent inmates, and only for a few weeks or months. In fact, an estimated 80,000 Americans — many with no record of violence either inside or outside prison — are living in seclusion. They stay there for years, even decades. What this means, generally, is 23 hours a day in a cell the size of two queen-sized mattresses, with a single hour in an exercise cage, also alone. Some prisoners aren’t allowed visits or phone calls. Some have no TV or radio. Some never lay eyes on each other. And some go years without fresh air or sunlight.

“One time I kept a single green leaf alive for a few weeks. I had grasshopper for a pet. I made a guitar out of milk cartons, and it played quite well. I have done a thousand and one things to replicate ordinary life, but these too are now gone.”

Solitary is a place where the slightest details can mean the world. Things like whether you can see a patch of grass or only sky outside your window – if you’re lucky enough to have a window. Or whether the guy who occupies cells before you in rotation has a habit of smearing feces on the wall. Are the lights on 24/7? Is there a clock or calendar to mark time? If you scream, could anyone hear you?

In the warp of time and space where Rodriguez lives, the system not only has stripped him of any real human contact, but also made it unbearable to be reminded of a reality that has become all too unreal. It’s ripping him apart.

“Looking at photos of the free world caused me so much pain that I just couldn’t do it any more,” writes Rodriguez, 36. “Time and these conditions are breaking me down.”

This is what our prisons are doing to people in the name of safety. This is how deeply we’re burying them.

* * *

I got my first letter from solitary in 2008 while working as a newspaper columnist in Colorado. Mark Jordan — then at ADX on convictions for bank robbery and a prison murder – wrote asking me to cover a trial in which he’d be arguing for access to reading materials that seemed a reasonable way to cope inside a concrete box. The Federal Bureau of Prisons had banned, for instance, D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers and Anaïs Nin’s books, which Jordan had already ordered. Officers in the mailroom wouldn’t pass along his issues of The New Yorker, either, because some of the cartoons depict nude figures.

Intrigued, I went to hear Jordan represent himself in federal court by a live video feed from prison. Though he was shackled as he made his case, his arguments were as skilled as those of the most seasoned trial attorneys I had seen. He lost.

Solitary confinement slipped from my mind after I covered Jordan’s case and moved on to my next deadline. But the subject became a preoccupation months later while I was hospitalized for septic pneumonia, with an “ISOLATION” sign outside my door. Partly it was the stale air in my hospital room and the view of a brick wall out my window. Partly it was the anxiety of losing my autonomy and voice. I’d lie there pressing a buzzer to get a glass of water or to have my tubes unhooked so I could get out of bed, and nobody would answer. I’d buzz and buzz again, complaining bitterly once nurses finally showed up. I’d see them roll their eyes and hear them dissing me in the hallway. Being sick wasn’t as bad as being stuck. I remember thinking about Jordan and wondering how people who were imprisoned in solitary were able to survive it. It occurred to me then that isolation – the non-medical, punitive, indefinite kind – could crack you in about a week. Powerlessness is its own centrifugal force.

* * *

Plenty of corrections officers might tell you that offenders doing time in solitary don’t deserve the roofs over their heads or the meals shoved through their food slots. To be sure, many of these prisoners have done heinous, unforgivable things for which we lock them up tightly. Just how tightly is no small question. Yet, as a matter of public policy, the question hardly comes up. Compared to how much we as a nation have debated capital punishment, a sentence served by a small fraction of the incarcerated, we barely discuss how severely we’re willing to punish nearly everyone else.

“When the door is locked against the prisoner, we do not think about what is behind it,” Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy once said.

Solitary confinement started in the U.S. as a morally progressive social experiment in the 1820s by Quakers, who wanted lawmakers to replace mutilations, amputations and the death penalty with rehabilitation. The hope was that long periods of introspection would help criminals repent.

After touring a Pennsylvania prison in the 1840s, Charles Dickens described prolonged isolation as a “slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain immeasurably worse than any torture of the body.” He also wrote, “There is a depth of terrible endurance in it which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom.”

Some of his contemporaries shared that view. “It devours the victims incessantly and unmercifully,” Alexis de Tocqueville reported from a prison in New York in the 1820s. “It does not reform, it kills.”

Most prisons suspended the practice in the mid- to late-1800s once it became clear the theory didn’t work. The U.S. Supreme Court punctuated that point in 1890 when it freed a Colorado man who had been sentenced to death for killing his wife, recognizing the psychological harm isolation had caused him.

“This matter of solitary confinement is not … a mere unimportant regulation as to the safe-keeping of the prisoner,” the court ruled in the case of James Medley. “A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community.”

“To be,” writes sociologist Joan Martel, “one has to be somewhere.”

Solitary confinement was largely unused for about a century until October 1983 when, in separate incidents, inmates killed two guards in one day at the U.S. Penitentiary in Marion, Ill., which had replaced Alcatraz as home to the most dangerous federal convicts. The prison went into lockdown for the next 23 years, setting the model for dozens of state and federal supermaxes – prisons designed specifically for mass isolation — that since have been built in the name of officer safety. “Never again,” promised Reagan-era shock doctrinarians who set out at great cost to crack down on prison violence.

“Whole prisons have been built, people have gotten funding for supermax facilities based on the act of a single (inmate),” says Michael Randle, former director of the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Administered by corrections officials, not judges, solitary confinement is a punishment beyond incarceration, removing prisoners not only from the rest of society, but also from each other and staff. It’s now practiced routinely in federal penitentiaries, state prisons and local jails under a number of bureaucratic labels: “lockdown,” “protective custody,” “strip cells,” “control units,” “security housing units,” “special management units” and “administrative segregation.” Federal justice officials say the different classifications prevent them from keeping track of how many people are being isolated. What is acknowledged even in official records is that the vast majority are men and that rates of pre-existing mental illness exceed the higher-than-average levels in general prison populations.

Prisoners who have assaulted staff often get sent straight to solitary. Those who have killed other inmates or escaped from prison — or attempted to — also take priority. Corrections officials eager to please officers’ unions and weary of public criticism tend to place difficult prisoners in solitary as an easy default.

“These become career decisions that administrators have to struggle with, knowing if a person does kill again, that you basically will get massacred in the media, massacred by the opposition, massacred by your governor’s party,” Randle says. “These are determinations that can make or break your career.”

Meantime, an analysis of prison budgets by the Urban Institute shows that taxpayers are shelling out about $75,000 a year to house a single prisoner in solitary confinement – more than twice as much as spent housing prisoners in general population. Staffing is more expensive because two or more officers usually are required to escort prisoners any time they leave their cells, and because the cooking and cleaning work, which in other prisons would be performed by inmates, must be done by paid staff. As a rule, prisoners in isolation aren’t allowed to work.

For reasons of prison safety, short periods of confinement may make sense for the most violent inmates. Yet the so-called “worst of the worst” are, by definition, the exception rather than the rule. States vastly overestimated the need for supermax space to contain high-risk offenders, and have filled it with relatively low-risk prisoners, many of whom pose no apparent risk or have no record of violence. Anyone even loosely labeled to have ties with terrorists gets put into isolation as a matter of course. Juveniles are secluded for what is officially deemed to be their own protection. Mentally ill prisoners who are prone to rage or agitation are isolated for convenience. And, all too often, having a gang affiliation, writing grievances or cussing out a guard can land you in solitary for the long haul. Bad behavior – or merely a corrections officer’s allegation of it – can add years to your time in isolation. Some prisoners have spent a decade or two asking why they’re still there, without getting an official answer.

“These are extraordinary, I believe often needless and indefensible, risks to take with the human psyche and spirit,” writes Craig Haney, a psychology professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Anthony Gay had a low-level assault charge in Illinois for punching another kid, stealing a dollar from him and swiping his hat. A parole violation on his seven-year suspended sentence ultimately landed him in a state supermax where he has cut himself hundreds of times with shards of glass and metal, and eats his own flesh. He has racked up a 97-year sentence for throwing urine and feces out his food slot – behavior that’s fairly typical for severely mentally ill prisoners in solitary.

Gay passes his time at the Tamms Correctional Center writing anyone who will receive his letters.

“I’ve been trapped for approximately nine years. The trap, like a fly on sticky paper, aggravates and agitates me,” he writes. “America, can you hear me? I love you America, but if you love me, please speak out and stand up against solitary confinement.”

* * *

In months of trading letters with prisoners, and in a few dozen interviews with men who’ve gotten out, I hear the same descriptions of solitary: that it’s starkly sterile, unremittingly monotonous and numbingly idle.

“I’ve been waiting like 20-something years to say all this.”

“Ninety percent of the time you hear nothing but the sound of air from the ventilation. The silence can drive you crazy. Makes you feel as if the world has ended but you somehow survived and are tripped,” Jeremy Pinson writes from ADX, the crown jewel of the federal system once described by its warden as a “clean version of hell.”

“The world outside is like another planet,” writes Jack Powers, also from ADX. “I feel like I am trapped within a disease.”

Prisoners pace their cells like caged felines at a zoo.

“I walked and walked and walked some more,” says Darrell Cannon, who did nine years in solitary in Illinois. “I’d walk in circles – always to the left, for some reason – for six, maybe seven hours a day.”

Almost everyone in isolation spends at least some time counting. They count the steps they take, the cinder blocks on the walls, the tiles on the ceiling, their sneezes and coughs, and how many times the furnace kicks in or the plumbing sloshes.

“If I remember correctly, there are 412 holes in (the cell door). I would count them daily,” Joe Sorrentino, now serving time in a general population prison, recalls of his cell at Tamms. “At the back of the cell, close to the ceiling there’s a window approx. 30 inches long and 10 inches high with a square bar going through the middle … My window faced the tunnel, so my view for my first seven years there were of a blue wall. For years, I wondered what other guys could see out their windows.”

Some prisoners pass their time praying, meditating or talking to themselves. Some read voraciously, though often they’re limited to only a few books a month. Some take whatever enrichment classes are broadcast over their TVs. The Bureau of Prisons has offered courses on Hitler, Sparta, Animals of the World, Legends of the Silver Screen and Robert E. Lee and his High Command.

Out of limited supplies, prisoners create art. They lodge bits of sponges into ballpoint cartridges to make paintbrushes. For paint, they mix water with Nescafe grinds or dye from candy they can buy from the commissary. M&Ms – plain, not peanut – work best. For deep reds, they fold red dye in with ground powder from vitamins. Navy blue takes a three-step process mixing royal blue candy coating with blue and black ink from pens. The color purple is best achieved from Skittles.

Prisoners strike up relationships with the critters that crawl in through their air vents. One man used his own hairs to try to repair a moth’s injured wing in hopes of facilitating its escape. Mohammed Saleh — convicted of having co-conspired in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing — lost his daily hour of outdoor recreation for three months at ADX because he saved bread crumbs to feed blackbirds in his exercise pen.

Defiance can kill time in solitary. Some prisoners kick the walls or bang their cups against their doors. Some flood their cells by clogging their toilets with toilet paper, or break light bulbs and set their mattresses on fire. Some write up their grievances; some sue over them; and some sue some more on behalf of guys on their units. Those feeling especially resistant stop eating or drinking. Brian Nelson starved himself regularly at Tamms, where he spent 12 years in seclusion. He once refused food and water for 40 days, he says, to try to prod the prison to treat a guy on his unit for cancer.

“(Fasts) become addicting … You feel clean, but it’s also your body eating your body,” says Nelson. “My last hunger strike, I was on a gurney and there was no vital signs, and I went into shock.”

A hunger strike by 5,000 prisoners last fall shed light on solitary confinement conditions at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison. The strike ended when the state agreed to consider letting prisoners make phone calls and buy calendars. Months later, no substantive changes have been made on those modest demands. There have been reports that strike leaders have faced disciplinary action and that three strikers have committed suicide.

* * *

Many of us flirt with isolation. We tune out in all sorts of ways – cranking up our headphones or holing up in little rooms to write. From “Walden” to “Into the Wild,” generations have idealized solitude, wondering how long we could last on our own. Fox Reality Channel’s show “Solitary” kept contestants in voluntary round-the-clock confinement competing for $50,000 in prize money. The goal was to be the last player to quit by hitting the panic button. Boredom.com, a video game maker, has virtualized lockdown with “Escape 3D: The Jail.” You can feign confinement in the comfort of your home or office, or, thanks to a handy smart phone app, idle in solitary on the subway or in line at the DMV.

Still, we know from all manner of solo expeditions, behavioral tests, biological experiments and psychological studies that we’re not wired to be alone. Early in the space age, cosmonauts training to fly Soviet rockets were put into isolation chambers without any way of knowing how much time was ticking by. Some gave up within hours. One, Andrian Nikolayev, earned hero status and the nickname “Iron Man” after setting a four-day record before pressing a buzzer to be released.

The human brain needs social contact like our lungs need air. Social needs are so basic that they drive family structures, religions, urban design, governments, economies and legal systems worldwide. We honor these needs even with pets and zoo animals, generally acknowledging the inhumanity of caging them for long periods of time alone or in tight spaces. New federal guidelines on the use of laboratory animals require relatively more space, sensory stimulation and environmental enrichment than we afford people in confinement. The revised rules put forth by the National Academy of Sciences call for significantly more square footage to house a head of cattle, for example, than prisons provide in solitary.

Convicts in the U.S. are not afforded such concern. We push some of them into seclusion with little to no programmatic support, basically giving up on them.

“Anyone who spends more than three years in a place like this is ruined for life,” Powers writes. “Two or three hundred years from now people will look back on this lockdown mania like we look back on the burning of witches.”

In 2006, a bipartisan national task force convened by the Vera Institute for Justice called for ending solitary confinement beyond periods of about ten days. The report by the Commission on Safety and Abuse in American Prisons found practically no benefits from supermax conditions either for prisoners or the public. It cited studies showing that solitary confinement impairs brain function and can cause psychosis and serious depression. It also cited a number of reports showing that long-term isolation doesn’t curb prison violence and makes it highly likely that prisoners will commit more crimes when released.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, is calling to end the use of isolation on juveniles and the mentally ill. For everyone else, he is pushing a worldwide limit of 15 days. Mendez personally endured three days in solitary under the rule of a junta in Argentina – an experience he describes as “the darkest days of my life.” So far, he has been unable to gain access to investigate state and federal prisons in the U.S.

“Let’s just say it has been a challenge,” he says.

U.S. courts have rejected most 8th Amendment claims against isolation, ruling that some psychological harm to certain prisoners doesn’t make the entire practice cruel or unusual. In many cases, corrections officials have persuaded judges that isolation is a misnomer because prisoners glean brief interactions with guards – exchanges that are at best perfunctory and at worst hostile, degrading and cruel. They’ll also argue that prisoners shouting to each other between cellblocks, across exercise cages or down drainpipes constitute meaningful forms of social interaction.

In solitary, concentration wanes, revenge fantasies fester and voices echo in people’s heads. Idiosyncrasies grow into obsessions. Prisoner after prisoner writes of becoming enraged by slight noises or tweaks in their routines.

* * *

For every hunger striker, jailhouse lawyer and cellblock arsonist, there are many more people in solitary who’ve folded up quietly into themselves.

“I became increasingly withdrawn at ADX to the point where the only people I interacted with were the television characters on ‘Seinfeld.’ I watched ‘Seinfeld’ four times a day. Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer became my best friends. I felt like part of their family. They were the only friends I had,” Anthony McBayne wrote in a legal declaration.

Some prisoners say they forget what day, month or year it is, partly because keeping track can be too painful.

“Time is the enemy, a constant reminder that your life is being wasted and there is no redemptive solution. Paying close attention to time will in short order drive you to misery and despair at what you’ve lost,” Jeremy Pinson writes.

Concentration wanes, revenge fantasies fester and voices echo in people’s heads. Idiosyncrasies grow into obsessions about the tiniest details of physical space. Prisoner after prisoner writes of becoming enraged by slight noises or tweaks in their routines.

Some describe losing their senses of self, physically and emotionally. Mirrors, if available, are stainless steel plates that reflect only blurs. You can go years without an accurate picture of your own aging. Basic biographical facts – your age, your birthday – can get lost in a fog.

“This is difficult to explain, but my memories were no longer mine,” Mark Jordan writes of his years at ADX. “I questioned whether or not I really had a past or history at all, whether the memories were real or false. … It was as though none of it was real. I was born into this life of isolation and the memories not memories at all. Confabulations.”

We in the free world know who we are by interacting with each other. We make sense of ourselves largely through our relationships. Legal sociologist Joan Martel described the loss of identity in isolation. “To be,” she writes, “one has to be somewhere.” Without normal grounding in space or time, isolated prisoners lose their understanding of themselves and their own histories.

“After 14 years, those people are strangers to me; as I must be to them,” Osiel Rodriguez wrote about the family members whose portraits he destroyed. “My parents will be dust if/when I ever get out of prison. My three sisters will be in their mid-70’s to late 60’s. So what was I doing holding on to photos of moments I was not a part of, or know nothing about?”

In his mind, Stephen Slevin spent two months in solitary confinement after being arrested on a drunk driving charge and booked into New Mexico’s Doña Ana County Detention Center. In real time, it was 20 months before the charge was dropped and, ungroomed and delusional, he was released. Those 18 months are still missing somewhere inside him, he now says. Yesterday, a jury awarded him $22 million in damages associated with his time in solitary.

* * *

Covering solitary is an exercise in inaccessibility.

Reporters’ visits and phone calls are out of the question.

State and county prisoners usually can be glimpsed only by their mug shots. The federal system makes no photos available of the people it locks up or the spaces they inhabit.

Family members can pass along information – if a prisoner chooses not to shield them from what isolation is really like.

“My philosophy is, I don’t care if you have a knife stuck in your back, you tell your mom that you’re okay,” Sorrentino writes. “Seeing how they looked at me on visits, handcuffed, shackled, chained to the floor and behind glass, killed me inside.”

Prison officials don’t help much with transparency or public accountability. They cite pending lawsuits and security risks for refusing to be interviewed. They have scoffed when I’ve asked if they’d consider passing a disposable camera or hand-held recorder to a man who hasn’t been seen or heard from in years. (“What do you think we are — bellhops at the Hyatt Regency?”) Officers are dispatched to berate journalists, even off grounds, for aiming lenses toward their prisons.

“The inmates housed at the ADX pose the greatest threat within the Federal Bureau of Prisons to staff, other inmates, visitors, and the public, and may be extreme escape risks,” Warden Blake R. Davis wrote to me. “Accordingly, permitting a film crew to take video footage of the exterior of the institution would negatively affect the security and orderly operation of the facility.”

Years ago, while assigned to cover Area 51 in Nevada, I had better access to a federal airbase that didn’t officially exist.

* * *

Letters from isolation are always handwritten (supermaxes don’t provide access to computers, which some long-timers have never even used). They arrive on government-issue loose-leaf paper in government-issue white envelopes, often quilted with 1-cent and 5-cent postage stamps bartered somehow between cells.

Some – especially those from prisons allowing showers only once a week — come smelling like confinement.

Certain prisoners struggle with their writing.

“Miz Greene. Weyre traped. Police help us,” reads one letter, start to finish, from a man named Paz at Pelican Bay.

Others write so well that it hurts.

“I miss being around people. I miss being able to run on the track or walk on grass or feel the sun on my face,” reads one of Jack Powers’ letters. “One time I kept a single green leaf alive for a few weeks. And one time I had grasshopper for a pet. And one time I made a dwarf tree out of yarn from a green winter hat, paper and dried tea bags. I made a guitar out of milk cartons, and it played quite well. I invented a perfect family – mom, dad and sister – so that we could interact and love one another. One time I wanted to take a bath, so I got into a garbage bag and put water in it and sat there. For a while I made vases out of toilet paper and soap and ink from a pen. I have done a thousand and one things to replicate ordinary life, but these too are now gone.”

From solitary, I’ve received marriage proposals, tomes of legal documents and a Christmas card crafted out of a Wortz Cheese Crackers box. One man mailed three weeks’ worth of daily manifestos about Yahweh. People in confinement have criticized me for my grammar and syntax, cursed me for not writing more often and advised me to go lock myself in my bathroom to deepen my understanding of their plight.

Some letters are angry rants. Others are full of longing.

A prisoner in Virginia wrote 16 pages on behalf of the guy howling night and day in a cell down the hall, never once using the word “I.” Another in Illinois wrote a regretful 22-page essay about the man he had killed half a lifetime ago, imagining what might have happened to them each if he hadn’t pulled the trigger.

From the cutters, I’ve been given step-by-step accounts of their attempts to feel something, anything, in the tedium. Anthony Gay seems to want me and all of America to understand exactly how he’s hurting himself.

“When my anxiety becomes overwhelming … I’ll pull out my cutting instrument, pull off my boxer shorts, sit on my toilet and cut a gash in my thigh,” Gay writes. “If I happen to become extremely anxious, I’ll slice my penis like a hot dog or my testicle like a tomato.”

A man who tried to hang himself in his cell asked for my help reimbursing the state of Illinois $56 for a torn bed sheet. Attempted suicide in solitary often is treated as a disciplinary problem.

“When I’m put on a suicide watch, I’m all alone and stripped naked and may see a mental health staff for 3-4 minutes a day. So I wonder dam how is this pose to help me. It don’t,” Bobby Boyd writes from Tamms.

Some prisoners recognize their mental health problems. Others write around them.

More often than I’ll ever know, my letters haven’t reached the men I’ve mailed them to. Some have come back to me marked that they were rejected by prisoners I’m sure didn’t reject them. Even more often, their letters to me don’t make it past the mailroom.

Between the lines of the ones that do, most letters from solitary say the same thing: That we’re all higher than the lowest things we’ve ever done. For most of the so-called “worst of the worst” who bother writing, there seems to be at least some capacity for redemption.

* * *

It’s no small thing to ask someone who has spent years without social contact to sit and tell his story. I learned this waiting at a Kmart café in Denver, a donut shop in Chicago and Union Station in Washington, D.C., for men who had recently been released but didn’t show up for interviews as they agreed. Saying no — or that they were scared to leave home or just not up to talking — apparently didn’t seem like an option.

Some who did show up had trouble shaking my hand or looking me in the eye or crying in front of me.

“I’m gonna push through my nerves, see, because I’ve been waiting like 20-something years to say all this,” Vincente Rodriguez told me when we met in his living room in Chicago.

Rodriguez’s seven months in the free world haven’t been easy. Like lots of guys, he curls up in a corner of his apartment, blinds drawn, alone. He says he likes it that way, and it worries him.

Robert Felton retreats to his bedroom in Danville, Ill. His wife and young kids wonder why he won’t hang out or cuddle in front of the TV. He can’t bring himself to tell them that he now finds such closeness intolerable.

These are the guys next door, the men refereeing your kids’ basketball games, the hothead in line at the Conoco who freaks when someone brushes against him.

In the 18 months Brian Nelson has been out of solitary, he has found a job, a girlfriend and a car. He drives when he’s anxious, and is anxious often. Nelson curses himself when he loses his way on the streets of Chicago, the city he knew well until age 17 when a murder conviction landed him a 28-year sentence.

“I’m here, but I’m not here, if that makes any sense,” he says from behind the wheel of his Jeep Compass, disoriented on the South Side. “People ask me what hurts. I say the box, the gray box. I can feel those walls and I can taste them every day of my life. I’m still there, really. And I’m not sure when I’m ever gonna get out.”

Nelson — whose lawsuits from isolation improved conditions for prisoners in Illinois — works in a law office as an advocate for prisoners he left behind in confinement. Compared to other guys who’ve been released, he is doing well. Yet he’s flailing. He’s facing a DUI charge while on parole. He recently gave himself a black eye. The experience of being interviewed on camera sent him back into a box emotionally for weeks.

Anthony McBayne, the “Seinfeld” fan, realized after his release from prison that he’d never recover from his years in solitary. Once faced with social situations, he says he would speak so fast that he’d stutter. He came to avoid people and wouldn’t look at them.

“Later on, when I did look, it was only to read their lips, as it’s how I remember to ‘hear’ from when prisoners would talk through the thick glass at ADX when one prisoner was in a rec cage and I was in my cell,” reads his legal declaration. “I found myself doing this all the time after my release and it became so annoying that I had to lie and tell people that I was deaf and needed to read lips to hear.”

McBayne robbed a bank after his release. He’s now doing time at U.S. Penitentiary Big Sandy in Kentucky.

Joe Sorrentino, who is serving life on a murder conviction, remembers passing time in Tamms by drawing blueprints of a house he’ll never be able to build. All his designs included secret passages and hidden rooms where he could go to be alone. He has since been transferred out of solitary into a general population prison in Stateville.

“I have a huge sense of guilt for not being at Tamms,” he writes. “I feel completely empty and purposeless now. Plus, I hate being around people, period. I have a good cellmate, but I can’t stand being this close to another human being. I get frustrated very easily and the littlest things irk me. When I first arrived here, I attempted to make contact with mental health to try to get a one-man cell. She basically told me to ‘get over it,’ then asked if I wanted medication – which I don’t want. What I really want, deep inside, is to go back.”

* * *

Some words are uncomfortable to write.

“Trauma” is one of them, especially when used about people who have traumatized others. “Torture” is another. In the moral balance of crime and punishment, the word risks discounting the suffering convicts have brought their own victims.

Nothing is black and white in a gray box. Lines can blur between the good guys and the bad ones. It’s far easier to label the secret police in some foreign dictatorship as torturers than to lob the word at prison guards in the next county.

It isn’t news that solitary confinement hurts people. Dickens, de Tocqueville and the Supreme Court — they all knew it generations ago. But our memory is disturbingly short. What’s considered cruel and unusual under the 8th Amendment pivots on the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” Our continuing reliance on solitary confinement as a default for difficult prisoners raises the question of how much, if at all, we as a society have progressed.

Jack Powers, now in his 11th year at ADX, mentions in almost all his letters that every day is a struggle not to lose what’s left of his free will.

“I could lie back, watch TV, eat chips and jack off all day and say to hell with it. But I cannot because there is some force of principle in my mind that will not allow me to do so,” he writes. “I am a voice crying out in a place where no one can hear me. I am saying, ‘Wait! We have it all wrong! We can do better than this!’ But maybe we cannot. Maybe we are just stuck with what it is. Maybe I am afraid of the world and of being human and of lacking love. Maybe we all are. Maybe this is all we are capable of.

“I hope not. But maybe it is.”

PP/POW Updates and Announcements - 17 Jan 2012

2012-01-22T17:12:00.000-08:00

From: "NYC ABC"
Date: Tue, January 17, 2012

PDF version here:

http://zinelibrary.info/files/updates%20-%2017%20jan%202012.pdf

Hey:

Here's the latest compilation of every other week updates. We've mailed
hard copies to Sundiata Acoli, Joe-Joe Bowen, David Gilbert, Marie Mason,
Eric McDavid, Daniel McGowan, and Sekou Odinga. Please feel free to share
this link:

http://www.mediafire.com/?164met2y9i1ivv7

NYC ABC
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Free all Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War!
For the Abolition of State Repression and Domination!

Swiss police press charges against anti-Davos protesters

2012-01-22T17:09:00.000-08:00

Jan. 22, 2012 Reuters

ZURICH - Swiss police will charge more than 100 demonstrators
with breaching the peace after they rallied in Bern Saturday to protest
against the World Economic Forum that holds its annual meeting in Davos
this week.

The protesters, some wearing masks, began an unauthorized demonstration
but were stopped by police in Bern, 270 km (170 miles) west of the Davos
ski resort, where the global elite will gather for the forum which opens
Wednesday.

Some protesters threw fire crackers and missiles at police but caused no
material damage, police said in a statement.

Swiss police Wednesday arrested two men suspected of throwing red paint
and scrawling "Smash WEF" in black graffiti on the walls of the Swiss
National Bank in Zurich.

Anger against income inequality and the perceived greed of the rich and
powerful has fed the Occupy Wall Street Movement that spurned copy-cat
protests in cities in the United States and elsewhere, including Zurich.

Occupy protesters are building an igloo camp in Davos, but few
demonstrations are likely at the ski resort given stringent security
measures, including exclusion zones around the main congress center and
air patrols by armed fighter jets.

(Reporting by Silke Koltrowitz; Editing by Sophie Hares)

Outlawing dissent: Rahm Emanuel's new regime

2012-01-22T17:05:00.000-08:00

On the pretext of policing upcoming G8 and Nato summits, Chicago's mayor has awarded himself draconian new powers

Bernard Harcourt guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 January 2012

Former White House chief of staff and now Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Photograph: Aude Guerrucci/POOL/EPA

It's almost as if Rahm Emanuel was lifting a page from Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine – as if he was reading her account of Milton Friedman's "Chicago Boys" as a cookbook recipe, rather than as the ominous episode that it was. In record time, Emanuel successfully exploited the fact that Chicago will host the upcoming G8 and Nato summit meetings to increase his police powers and extend police surveillance, to outsource city services and privatize financial gains, and to make permanent new limitations on political dissent. It all happened – very rapidly and without time for dissent – with the passage of rushed security and anti-protest measures adopted by the city council on 18 January 2012.

Sadly, we are all too familiar with the recipe by now: first, hype up and blow out of proportion a crisis (and if there isn't a real crisis, as in Chicago, then create one), call in the heavy artillery and rapidly seize the opportunity to expand executive power, to redistribute wealth for private gain and to suppress political dissent. As Friedman wrote in Capitalism and Freedom in 1982 – and as Klein so eloquently describes in her book:

"Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When the crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function … until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable."

Today, it's more than mere ideas that are lying around; for several decades now, and especially since 9/11, there are blueprints scattered all around us.

Step 1: hype a crisis or create one if there isn't a real one available. Easily done:with images from London, Toronto, Genoa, and Seattle of the most violent anti-G8 protesters streaming on Fox News and repeated references to anarchists and rioters, the pump is primed. Rather than discuss the peaceful Occupy Chicago protests over the past three months, city officials and the media focus on what Fraternal Order of Police President Michael Shields calls "people who travel around the world as professional anarchists and rioters" and a "bunch of wild, anti-globalist anarchists". The looming crisis headlines Rahm Emanuel's draft legislation, now passed: "Whereas, Both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ("Nato") and the Group of Eight ("G8") summits will be held in the spring of 2012 in the City of Chicago" and "whereas, the Nato and G8 Summits continue to evolve in terms of the size and scope, thereby creating unanticipated or extraordinary support and security needs …" The crisis calls for immediate action.

Step 2: rapidly deploy excessive force. Again, easily done: Emanuel just gave himself the power to marshal and deputize – I kid you not, look at page 3 – the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the United States Department of Justice's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), and the entire United States Department of Justice (DOJ); as well as state police (the Illinois department of state police and the Illinois attorney general), county law enforcement (State's Attorney of Cook County), and any "other law enforcement agencies determined by the superintendent of police to be necessary for the fulfillment of law enforcement functions".

As one commentator suggests, the final catch-all allows Emanuel to hire "anyone he wants, be they rent-a-cops, Blackwater goons on domestic duty, or whatever. For a city that has great problems keeping its directly sworn officers in check, this looser authority is an even greater license for abuse." Thanks to the coming G8 meeting, the Chicago police department has just gotten a lot bigger! According to Fox News, "there will be hundreds, perhaps thousands of federal agents here."

Not just that, but Emanuel has also given himself the power to install additional surveillance, including video, audio and telecommunications equipment. And not just for the period of the G8 and Nato summits, but permanently. These new provisions of the substitute ordinance apply "permanently": there is no sunset provision on either the police expansion or the surveillance. On this second, the new ordinance reads:

"The superintendent is also authorized to enter into agreements with public or private entities concerning placement, installation, maintenance or use of video, audio, telecommunications or other similar equipment. The location of any camera or antenna permanently installed pursuant to any such agreement shall be determined pursuant to joint review and approval with the executive director of emergency management and communications." [my emphasis]

Thanks to the mobilization of the Occupy movement (including their funeral for the Bill of Rights) and other groups like the ACLU, some of Emanuel's other draconian provisions were scaled back. Emanuel dropped his proposals to increase seven-fold the minimum fine for resisting arrest (including for passive resistance) from $25 to $200, to double the maximum fine for resisting arrest from $500 to $1,000, and to double the maximum fine for violations of the parade ordinance from $1,000 to $2,000. But the rest of his proposals – including the three-fold increase in the minimum fine for a violation of the parade ordinance – passed the City Council Thursday.

Step 3: privatize the profits and socialize the costs. In Chicago, that translates into Emanuel outsourcing city services to private enterprises, but making sure the public will indemnify those private companies from future law suits. This is a two-part dance with which we have become all too familiar.

First, city services are outsourced, often to circumvent labor and other regulations, and the income side of the public expenditures are shifted over to private enterprise and employees. Under the ordinance (see page 4):

"The mayor or his designees are authorized to negotiate and execute agreements with public and private entities for good, work or services regarding planning, security, logistics, and other aspects of hosting the Nato and G8 summits in the city in the Spring of 2012 … and to provide such assurances, execute such other documents and take such other actions, on behalf of the city, as may be necessary or desirable to host these summits."

Second, the agreements can be entered "on such terms and conditions as the mayor or such designees deem appropriate" and these terms include, importantly, "indemnification by the city". In other words, any lawsuits will fall on the city taxpayers. The public will be left holding the bag if there is, for instance, police abuse or other mismanagement by private employers.

Step 4: use the crisis to expand executive power permanently and repress political dissent. Most of the ordinance revisions, it turns out, do not sunset with the departure of the G8 or Nato delegates. To be sure, there's a sunset provision for those contracts that specifically involve "hosting the Nato and G8 summits." That provision expires on 31 July 2012; but not the expanded police powers, nor the increased video surveillance, nor the other changes to the protest permit requirements.

The new rules affecting permits for protests and marches include details that impose onerous demands on dissent. As noted earlier, the minimum fine for a violation of the parade ordinance will increase from $50 to $200. On the parade permit applications, the protest organizers now must provide a general description of any sound amplification equipment that is on wheels or too large for one person to carry and/or any signs or banners that are too large for one person to carry. These may sound like small details, but they are precisely the kinds of nitpicking regulations that empower and expand police discretion to arrest and fine, and that make it harder to express political opinions.

It's another glaring example of what I have called The Illusion of Free Markets and the paradox of "neoliberal penality": the purported liberalization of the economy (here, the privatization of city services) goes hand-in-hand with massive policing. Scott Horton captured the idea well in Harper's, under the rubric "The Despotism of Natural Law". Notice the neoliberal paradox: the fact that the city claims to be incompetent or unable to performs its ordinary functions implies that we need to both outsource city services and augment city police powers.

It was accomplished so quickly and seamlessly – passed practically overnight – that few seem to have noticed or had time to think through the long-term implications. There's not a mention in the New York Times and only a small story in the Chicago Tribune. The crisis and fear of outside agitators, professional anarchists and rioters – splashed on the TV screens direct from London, Toronto, Genoa, Rome, or Seattle – is enough to create a permanent state of exception.

To make matters worse, this cookbook implementation of mini shock treatment follows on the heels of a severe crackdown on the Occupy Chicago movement that resulted in the arrest of over 300 Occupy protesters in Grant Park in October 2011. The prosecutions are still ongoing today and the effect on political dissent has been chilling.

In those 300 arrests, Rahm Emanuel and his police chief rigidly enforced a park curfew without finding reasonable ways to accommodate the political speech interests of the protesters, and beyond any semblance of a legitimate governmental interest. The massive arrests raise a clear first amendment problem – one that has been raised by the Occupy protesters and will be heard en masse at the Daley Center on 15 February. (Ironically, Emanuel and his police will effectively "Occupy the Daley Center".)

The first amendment argument is compelling, especially when you consider the disparate treatment that political expression receives in Chicago. Recall, for instance, how different things were in Grant Park on election night 2008. Huge tents were pitched, commercial sound systems pounded rhythms and political discourse, enormous TVs streamed political imagery. More than 150,000 people blocked the streets and "occupied" Grant Park – congregating, celebrating, debating and discussing politics. That evening, President-elect Barack Obama would address the crowds late into the night and the assembled masses swarmed the park to the early morning hours. It was a memorable moment, perhaps a high point in political expression in Chicago.

Well, that was then. The low point would come three years later, almost to the day. On the evening of 15 October 2011, thousands of Occupy protesters marched to Grant Park and assembled at the entrance to the park to engage, once again, in political expression. But this time, the assembled group found itself surrounded by an intimidating police force, as police wagons began lining up around the political assembly. The police presence grew continually as the clock approached midnight.

Within hours, at the direction, ironically, of President Obama's former chief-of-staff (was Rahm Emanuel at Grant Park after hours, a few years earlier?), the Chicago Police Department began to arrest the protesters for staying in Grant Park beyond the 11pm curfew in violation of a mere park ordinance.

Emanuel could have ordered his police officers to issue written citations and move the protesters to the sidewalk. In fact, that's precisely what the police would do a few weeks later at a more obstreperous protest by senior citizens at Occupy Chicago. On that occasion, 43 senior citizens who stopped traffic by standing or sitting in the middle of a downtown street were escorted by police officers off the street without being handcuffed, and were merely issued citations to appear in the department of administrative hearings. (Those arrests, however, took place under the watchful eye of Democratic Senator Dick Durbin and Democratic Representatives Danny Davis, Jan Schakowsky and Mike Quigley.)

But not on 15 October or the following Saturday night. Instead of issuing citations, the Chicago police arrested over 300 protesters, placed them in handcuffs, treating the municipal park infractions as quasi-criminal charges, booked them, fingerprinted them and detained them overnight in police holding cells, some for as many as 17 hours. They are now aggressively prosecuting these cases in criminal court.

That's precisely the type of practice that chills political expression. The inconsistent treatment of political dissent in Grant Park or at the Chicago board of trade reflects the colossal amount of discretion that mayors and police chiefs have over political discourse today. Police discretion is wide, political expression is fragile.

Rahm Emanuel's message on the G8 and Nato meetings has been loud and clear – and chilling: the DEA, FBI, ATF, DOJ, state police and many other law enforcement agencies will be out in force; it will be harder to comply with the protest laws; and any deviations or errors will be costlier and punished. What's really troubling is that the G8 and Nato will come and go, but these reforms are with us in Chicago to stay. Chicago's mayor seems to be following in the footsteps of other municipal officials (recall Rudy Giuliani's idea of staying on as mayor for an extra three months), who, with a touch of Potus-envy and perhaps a small Napoleonic complex, begin to act like minor tyrants.

It'll be interesting to follow the first amendment litigation brought by the Occupy protesters. Their cases have been joined – there are about 100 of them in the challenge now – and their free speech claims will be heard by the chief judge at the Daley Center on 15 February 2012.

SF - Sun 1/29 - New David Gilbert Book Launch - Love and Struggle

2012-01-22T17:01:00.000-08:00

Join us for a Book Launch & Celebration of

Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond
By David Gilbert

"Gilbert adds heart and bone to the stuff of history." - Mumia Abu Jamal

January 29th, 4-6pm
518 Valencia

this event is free and wheelchair accessible

with readers/panelists:

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, historian and author of Outlaw Woman and Red Dirt
Terry Bisson, editor of Love and Struggle
Molly McClure, anti-racist organizer with Catalyst Project
Sanyika Bryant, organizer with Malcolm X
Grassroots Movement and Causa Justa::Just Cause
moderated by Claude Marks, Freedom Archives

About the Book (available now from PM Press and at the event)

A nice Jewish boy from suburban Boston—hell, an Eagle Scout!—David Gilbert arrived at Columbia University just in time for the explosive Sixties. From the early anti-Vietnam War protests to the founding of SDS, from the Columbia Strike to the tragedy of the Townhouse, Gilbert was on the scene: as organizer, theoretician, and above all, activist. He was among the first militants who went underground to build the clandestine resistance to war and racism known as “Weatherman.” And he was among the last to emerge, in captivity, after the disaster of the 1981 Brinks robbery, an attempted expropriation that resulted in four deaths and long prison terms. In this extraordinary memoir, written from the maximum-security prison where he has lived for almost thirty years, David Gilbert tells the intensely personal story of his own Long March from liberal to radical to revolutionary.

Today a beloved and admired mentor to a new generation of activists, he assesses with rare humor, with an understanding stripped of illusions, and with uncommon candor the errors and advances, terrors and triumphs of the Sixties and beyond. It’s a battle that was far from won, but is still not lost: the struggle to build a new world, and the love that drives that effort. A cautionary tale and a how-to as well, Love and Struggle is a book as candid, as uncompromising, and as humane as its author.

Praise:

"Gilbert adds heart and bone to the stuff of history." —Mumia Abu Jamal

"Required reading for anyone interested in the history of radical movements in this country. An honest, vivid portrait of a life spent passionately fighting for justice. In telling his story, Gilbert also reveals the history of left struggles in the 1960s and 70s, and imparts important lessons for today's activists." —Jordan Flaherty, author of Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six

“David’s is a unique and necessary voice forged in the growing American gulag, the underbelly of the 'land of the free,' offering a focused and unassailable critique as well as a vision of a world that could be but is not yet—a place of peace and love, joy and justice.” —Bill Ayers, author of Fugitive Days and Teaching Toward Freedom

“Like many of his contemporaries, David Gilbert gambled his life on a vision of a more just and generous world. His particular bet cost him the last three decades in prison, and whether or not you agree with his youthful decision, you can be the beneficiary of his years of deep thought, reflection, and analysis on the reality we all share. If there is any benefit to prison, what some refer to as ‘the involuntary monastery,’ it may well look like this book. I urge you to read it.” —Peter Coyote, actor, author of Sleeping Where I Fall

"This book should stimulate learning from our political prisoners, but more importantly it challenges us to work to free them, and in doing so take the best of our history forward." —Susan Rosenberg, author of An American Radical

About the Author:

One of America’s most celebrated political prisoners since his appearance in the Academy Award nominated film, The Weather Underground, David Gilbert is also the author of No Surrender, a book of essays on politics and history. He can be reached at NY’s Auburn Correctional Facility as 83-A-6158.

About Boots Riley (foreword):

A popular leader in the progressive struggle for radical change through culture, Boots Riley is best known as the leader of The Coup, the seminal hip-hop group from Oakland, CA. Billboard Magazine declared the group "the best hip-hop act of the past decade." Riley recently teamed with Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine) to form the revolutionary new group, Street Sweeper Social Club.

Product Details:

Author: David Gilbert
Foreword by Boots Riley
Publisher: PM Press
ISBN: 978-1-60486-319-2
Published: January 2012
Format: Paperback
Size: 9 by 6
Page count: 352 Pages
Subjects: Autobiography, Politics-Activism

Corcoran prisoner about changing public attitudes on prisoners & torture

2012-01-22T16:59:00.000-08:00

Exerpted Letter from Zaharibu Dorrough (Corcoran)

Dec. 8, 2011

I honestly believe that there will not be a
better time to challenge the legality of
warehousing people in isolation than now.

As a result of the hunger strike and the
efforts "the magnificent efforts" of people like
you, the public is now aware of how their tax
dollars are being wasted. ...That has to be the
context in which it is framed to the larger
public. How their tax dollars are being wasted is
the one thing that every citizen out there has in
common with one another. Regardless of how they
might feel about humanity of citizens in
prison/isolation. Strategically that has to be
the starting point for progressives to build around.

Historically, injustice has had a tremendous
headstart....we are always playing catch-up, we
must work that much harder to not let citizens
forget. To constantly strengthen our relationships with one another.

Forging coalitions with like-minded
progressives. Putting faces to the stories of torture and abuse.

There are human beings dying "being driven to
suicide" as a result of the isolation that they
are being subjected to. That people are being
housed under such conditions would be shameful
under any circumstance. That it happens in what
is referred to as the world's greatest
democracy...is appalling. Conditions that are
responsible for literally driving people crazy
and to suicide is what isolation is intended to accomplish.

...there is still a lot of work to be done in the
nation educating itself in a way that will allow
us to develop the kind of strategies and tactics
that will make it possible to effectively and
permanently deal with the abuses and
disrespecting of humanity that is an all too
common part of this nation's history. Hate and
indifference (and it goes by many names: racism,
sexism, homophobia, poverty, religious bigotry,
classism) are the tools that are used by those in
positions of authority to maintain power....

Hate and indifference is so entrenched in our
cultural psyche that we actually believe that,
personally and institutionally, [we can still be]
fair and just. We believe this because we have
never been taught or encouraged to consider that
our growth and development, individually,
collectively, and institutionally, has occurred
within the same racist, sexist, homophobic,
classist... hateful and indifferent circumstance
n which we have lived. It is who and what many of us are.

... we are taught that the beauty of the free
market economy is that everyone is given equal
access to the market to compete for jobs and
economic prosperity. But...we compete against one
another for the smallest portion of the economic
pie. Hate and indifference is responsible for
the fierce and extreme competition...

Torture is a form of violence that has always
been used by totalitarian governments to
subordinate the larger society to its will.

...In order for this to succeed, it is necessary
for th larger society to be convinced that their
interest and the interest of those who are in
positions of power are one and the same.

Hate and indifference has robbed us of our
ability to look at each other and see a
reflection of ourselves. We see slave, homeless,
whore, faggot, red or blue, inmate,
prisoner...alien! These are a few of the objects
that we designate for one another. Our silence
sends a clear message of our acceptance of this.

The protests (of which the hunger strike is a
part) that are taking place throughout the
country and world is a demonstration that many of
us are determined to not only hold onto our own
humanity, but to reclaim it collectively.

We are on a course in which hate and indifference
will not define who we are. ...There is a
renewed sense of hope. And after more than 23
years in isolation, hope is what has kept me amongst the living.

There are things that have to do with simple
human honor. To resist and not surrender!

Blessings.

Michael (Zaharibu) Dorrough

Via -
Marilyn McMahon
Executive Director
California Prison Focus
www.prisons.org

China sentences activist to 10 years over writings

2012-01-22T16:24:00.000-08:00

By GILLIAN WONG | Associated Press – Jan. 18, 2012

BEIJING — A court has sentenced a democracy activist in central China
to 10 years' imprisonment for subversion, a family member said Thursday.
It's the third lengthy jail term handed down to a dissident in less than a
month.

Li Tie was sentenced by a court in Wuhan city to 10 years in jail on
Wednesday after being convicted of subversion based on articles that he
had written, said the relative, who did not want to be named due to fear
of official retaliation.

Li said in court he is innocent because the Chinese constitution protects
citizens' freedom of expression, the Hong Kong-based Chinese Human Rights
Defenders group said in a statement. The group said Li was arrested in
September 2010 and his trial was held in April.

Wang Songlian, a researcher with the group, said Li's case is similar to
those of Chen Wei and Chen Xi, rights activists who were separately
sentenced late last month to nine and 10 years in prison, respectively,
for posting essays on the Internet that the government deemed subversive.

"They are all activists with a long track record of promoting democracy in
China, who have refused to bend despite severe persecution," Wang said.
"Their sentences are the Chinese government's response to the Arab Spring:
Freedom and democracy are dirty words, and anyone advocating for them will
be punished harshly."

Communist leaders launched a sweeping effort to crush dissent early last
year in response to anonymous online calls urging Chinese to imitate
protests that toppled governments in North Africa and the Middle East.

In Wednesday's case, the Wuhan Intermediate Court refused to allow Li to
be represented by an attorney of his choice and instead appointed a lawyer
to defend him, the relative said.

"From the beginning to the end, it has been all nonsense," said the family
member. "The question of subverting state power does not exist."

Li will appeal the sentence if the family is able to hire a lawyer, the
relative said.

A man at the Wuhan court office who answered the phone hung up as soon as
he heard the caller was from The Associated Press. Subsequent calls rang
unanswered.

According to Chinese Human Rights Defenders, prosecutors said that because
Li wrote articles critical of the government and participated in
discussions on "reactionary" websites, it should be presumed that he would
engage in anti-government actions.

Chinese dissident to stand trial for poem

By Sui-Lee Wee | Reuters – Tue, Jan 17, 2012

BEIJING - Chinese authorities have indicted veteran dissident
Zhu Yufu on subversion charges for writing a poem urging people to gather
to defend their freedoms, his lawyer said on Tuesday, the latest activist
faced with such charges in a tightening clampdown.

The Foreign Ministry, however, stoutly defended China's human rights
record, rejecting an assessment by U.S. ambassador Gary Locke that the
human rights situation was deteriorating.

"Such statements are not true," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin
told a regular briefing. "The Chinese side attaches great importance to
promoting and protecting the fundamental rights and interests of people of
all ethnic groups, including the freedom of expression and of religion."

Locke made the statements at an interview with U.S. talk show host Charlie
Rose on Monday.

"As for some people who have dealt with the law, it's not because their
freedom of expression and freedom of religion have been suppressed," Liu
said. "It's because they have violated Chinese laws and regulations and so
should be punished by the law. It has nothing to do with so-called human
rights."

Zhu, 60, from the eastern city of Hangzhou, was arrested last April for
"inciting subversion of state power," a charge often used against critics
of the ruling Communist Party. No trial date has been set, the lawyer, Li
Dunyong, said by telephone.

"The main reason for the indictment was a poem he had written calling for
people to gather. He had written the poem around the same time there was
chaos (in the Middle East)," Li said. "He believes in the freedom of
expression."

Li collected the indictment on Monday from a Hangzhou court and met Zhu.
He described him as being "in a good condition."

Calls to the Hangzhou Intermediate Court were unanswered.

The authorities disclosed the decision to prosecute Zhu nearly a year
after he wrote the poem, entitled "It's time."

A verse reads: "It's time, Chinese people!/ The square belongs to
everyone/the feet are yours/it's time to use your feet and take to the
square to make a choice." Zhu's lawyer said the poem had been published on
the Internet.

But Li said that Zhu had nothing to do with online calls for "Jasmine
Revolution" rallies inspired by Middle East uprisings.

Police rounded up dozens of dissidents in response to the calls. The
attempted rallies were tiny, with participants quickly outnumbered by
hundreds of police and security guards.

Li said he would defend Zhu on the basis of freedom of expression, but
believed prospects for victory looked bleak.

"You can't be optimistic about anything in China," he said. "In this
country, he'll be punished harshly."

The Communist Party is preparing for a leadership handover late this year,
when its determination to fend off political challenges to its rule is
likely to intensify.

CLAMPDOWN

Chinese courts meted out lengthy sentences to two other dissidents in
December on subversion charges.

Like both dissidents, Zhu has been jailed twice before for pro-democracy
activism -- in 1999 for seven years and in 2007 for two years, according
to the Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

Activist artist Ai Weiwei, whose 81-day detention last year sparked an
international outcry, said he was interrogated for five hours on Sunday
for throwing stones at and making a rude gesture to surveillance cameras
outside his home.

Police told Ai that he had to be questioned because he was suspected of
"damaging public property," Ai said by telephone.

Ai said the stones did not hit the 10 cameras outside his house and he did
not think he would face charges.

"They said to me: 'This is a warning because you have to behave'," Ai
said. "I said: 'I'll behave. I take your warning seriously. But I'm human,
I have to show my attitude. It's just a gesture. You're so powerful, how
can I destroy you?'"

A third dissident, Hu Jia, said he was taken in for questioning on
Tuesday, as has happened several times since police raided his home and
took two computers.

Hu said police investigators asked about his motives for urging citizens
to seek the freedom of detained rights advocates Chen Guangcheng and Gao
Zhisheng.

"I think they were exploring my views to see what I'm planning to do this
year," he said. "They told my wife I could be regularly questioned. I
think it's a kind of pressure to ensure my silence."

(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley; Editing by Ken Wills and Ron Popeski)

Revealed: The FBI's Secretive Practice of "Blackballing" Files

2012-01-22T16:23:00.001-08:00

Tuesday 17 January 2012

by: Jason Leopold, Truthout | Report

(Photo: kalavinka; Edited: JR / TO)

Have you ever filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FBI and received a written response from the agency stating that it could not locate records responsive to your request?

If so, there's a chance the FBI may have found some documents, but for unknown reasons, the agency's FOIA analysts determined it was not responsive and "blackballed" the file, crucial information the FBI withholds from a requester when it issues a "no records" response.

The FBI's practice of "blackballing" files has never been publicly disclosed before. With the exception of one open government expert, a half-dozen others contacted by Truthout said they were unfamiliar with the process of "blackballing" and had never heard of the term.

Trevor Griffey learned about "blackballing" last year when he filed a FOIA/Privacy Act request with the FBI to determine whether Manning Marable, a Columbia University professor who founded the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, sought the FBI's files on Malcolm X under FOIA. At the time of his death last April, Marable had just finished writing an exhaustive biography on the late civil rights activist. Griffey filed the FOIA hoping he would receive records to assist him with research related to a long-term civil rights project he has been working on.

In a letter the agency sent in response to his FOIA, the FBI told Griffey that it could not locate "main file records" on Marable responsive to his request. Last November, in response to a FOIA request Truthout filed with the FBI for a wide-range of documents on the Occupy Wall Street, the agency also said it was unable to "identify main file records responsive to [our] FOIA," despite the fact that internal FBI documents related to the protest movement had already been posted on the Internet. The FBI has been criticized in the past for responding to more than half of the FOIA requests the agency had received by claiming it could not locate responsive files.

Griffey, who also teaches US history at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and is co-editor of the book, "Black Power at Work: Community Control, Affirmative Action and the Construction Industry," was baffled. He found it difficult to believe that Marable would not have filed a FOIA for Malcolm X's FBI file. So, he sent an email to an FBI FOIA analyst asking for clarification.

The FBI FOIA analyst responded to Griffey in an email, asking him to supply additional "keywords" to assist in a search of the agency's main file records for documents on Marable responsive to his FOIA request. The analyst then disclosed to Griffey, perhaps mistakenly, that a search for previous requests for records on Marable turned up a single file that was "blackballed" per the agency's "standard operating procedure."

So last May, Griffey again turned to FOIA, this time to try and gain insight into the blackballing process. He filed a FOIA request with the FBI seeking a copy of the agency's standard operating procedure for "blackballing" files.

Two months later, he received five pages from an untitled and undated PowerPoint presentation that outlined procedures for blackballing files from FOIA requests. The FBI cited three exemptions under the law to justify withholding a complete and unredacted copy of the PowerPoint:

(b)(6) Personnel and medical files and similar files, the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.

(b)(7) Records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that the production of such law enforcement records or information:

C. Could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy;

E. Would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions if such disclosure could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law ...

Griffey appealed the FBI's decision to withhold information contained in the PowerPoint under the (b)(7)(E) exemption, but it was denied.

Still, the PowerPoint pages the FBI did turn over to Griffey provide insight into the "blackballing" process. On a page titled, "Blackball Files," it says files identified as 190 and 197 "main files," which are FBI classifications pertaining to FOIA/Privacy Act requests for files on people and civil litigation, are blackballed unless "specifically ask[ed] for" by the requester when an initial FOIA request is made.

Moreover, the agency deems certain "control files," "separate files which relate to a specific matter and is used as an administrative means of managing, or 'controlling' a certain program or investigative matter," that pop up and are unresponsive to a FOIA to be ripe for blackballing. However, a FOIA analyst must first get permission from a supervisor before a "control file" can be blackballed.

Finally, according to the PowerPoint, some files are automatically blackballed by an FBI FOIA analyst, but the public is not permitted to know the classification of files that fall into that category because the FBI redacted that part of the PowerPoint, claiming disclosure would reveal "techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations and procedures."

"Not only are we not told when the FBI withholds material from FOIA requests, but we are not even allowed to know all of the kinds of material it withholds," Griffey told Truthout. "The law itself and not just its enforcement, is now effectively secret."

But Bill Carter, an FBI spokesman, told Truthout in an interview that "blackballing" is not about secrecy nor is the process used in any way to conceal responsive records, which the Justice Department revealed it has been doing for more than two decades in certain cases.

"Blackball is a term of art used by the [FBI's] FOIA section people in the records management division," he said. "It's an unfortunate term. It applies to people and events. It means that we pulled a file that initially looked responsive but after a review it turned out it wasn't because the file didn't match the requesters' specific request" for records.

Carter sent Truthout an email that contained an explanation of the blackballing process as provided to him by Dennis Argall, the assistant section chief of the Record/Information Dissemination Section, FBI's Records Management Division:

"[B]lackball" is a term we typically use to describe a file (not a request) that initially looked responsive but upon review we find it's for a different guy or event. It can also be used to describe a file that we won't process because, i.e., a guy makes a request for his "FBI file" in 2005 and [we] process it for him. When he makes another request for his "FBI file" in 2011, we will only process his "records" but will not process the file that was created to respond to the 2005 FOIA request, which is 190 file series [the classification the FBI uses for files requested on people].

That's exactly how the FBI described the blackballing process to attorney Kel McClanahan, executive director of Arlington, Virginia-based National Security Counselors, a public interest law firm.

McClanahan told Truthout in an email interview that he first learned about blackballing when the term was used in a set of FBI "processing notes" he requested from the agency to determine how FBI FOIA analysts had handled one of his FOIA requests.

Although McClanahan believes there is "definitely a place for blackballing in the FOIA process" he said the way the FBI "does blackballing leaves a lot to be desired."

"First of all, even though [the FBI] may blackball 50 records and release 3, they never tell the requester about the 50," McClanahan said, hitting on Griffey's main complaint about blackballing. "They never mention word one about 'and we found other records that we deemed non-responsive.' The requester is left to wonder why the FBI only found 3 records about the subject in question and he will never know that they found 50 others that they ultimately deemed non-responsive unless he has the foresight to FOIA the FBI's processing notes for his request. Knowledge like that is very important when a requester is trying to decide whether or not to tie up [the Justice Department's's Office of Information Policy] with an administrative appeal, let alone litigation."

McClanahan said his concerns would largely be addressed if the FBI "only blackballed records for good reasons."

"If I could trust the FBI only to blackball things that were clearly non-responsive, I don't need to know that they found completely unrelated records," he added. "However, that's not what the FBI does. I have seen it blackball records because they 'weren't FBI records,' even though they were in FBI files (they were FBI copies of other agencies' records, which any FOIA person worth his salt knows are still responsive to a FOIA request made to FBI). I've seen it blackball records because the request asked for 'internal FBI records' and the records in question were sent outside of the FBI, based on a strained interpretation of the word 'internal.'"

The FBI will be forced to make a choice "if it wants to apply FOIA correctly," McClanahan said.

"The agency can either limit its blackballing to records that nobody would think are responsive (e.g. different people with the same name, records outside a set time frame); or it can tell requesters in the administrative stage that it determined that certain records were non-responsive and why," he said. "Failing to do either, however, is bad FOIA."

An interview with Russell Maroon Shoats on Democracy, Matriarchy, Occupy Wall Street, and Food Security

2012-01-22T16:18:00.000-08:00

January 18, 2012 russellmaroonshoats.wordpress.com

Interviewer: How would you define democracy?

Maroon: In it’s broadest sense – to me – democracy is the ability of the individual to exercise self-determination in the core areas of economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex, war and peace; taking under consideration the need to both support and guide children until they can responsibly exercise those things on their own.

If one falls victim to believing what Marimba Ani calls “rhetorical ethics,” (the practice that has held sway surrounding the word democracy) then you would dismiss my definition as superfluous. Nowadays, however, more of the masses, globally, are accepting the fact that except for a small minority, democracy is something they do not exercise in any of those core areas.

So the question we must ask ourselves is “How do we construct societies where the individual is able to broadly exercise self-determination?

Interviewer: Do you find the concept of democracy to be useful to popular movements?

Maroon: For the already mentioned reasons, the exercise of democracy/self-determination is paramount at every stage of a popular movement, and for such an effort to remain true to the word “popular.” After all, individuals usually feel a need to look out for their own interest, and to promote and support democracy/self-determination goes hand in hand with that need. If a popular movement deviates from that, then it too will fall into the practice of utilizing rhetorical ethics if it continues to call itself popular.

Interviewer: What was the relationship between democracy and the Black Panther Party?

Maroon: Here I’ll have to step on a lot of toes.

The Black Panther Party (BPP) – of which the Philadelphia Black Unity Council (my parent group) merged with in 1969 – was never a democratically run organization. It too used rhetorical ethics to justify its methods, both internally and to the public at large. It championed the Leninist vanguard party concept that had been used during the Russian struggle against the czar. Subsequent to that, close copies of those practices have spread throughout the world before the BPP adopted it. And I’ve been researching and studying those instances for about 40 years, and have yet to find a single vanguard party that really exercised what I have defined as democracy/self-determination.

Such groups have and continue to champion the establishing of popular movements – as I’ve defined them – but their motives are to try to control such movements and use them as a battering ram to weaken or defeat the state in order to give the vanguard party a chance to try to “seize state power,” and then set themselves up as a new ruling elite. The histories of vanguard parties leaves no doubt about that.

The BPP, however, was a youthful formation that served a historical service of giving youth of color – and later youth in general – an introduction to a form of radical politics that was little known to them. Little did they know that the methods they chose to use were contradictory to the ends they sought. Thus early on they began to experience the friction developed from members believing the rhetorical ethics the leadership relied on, and the leadership’s failure to act towards the rank-and-file democratically, within the traditional vanguard party “democratic centralist” organizational rules.

That force the BPP leaders to resort to using naked terror and violence – both internally and within the communities (see what the womyn BPP head wrote in her book: “A Taste of Power,” by Elaine Brown). Eventually that and the struggle to keep the state from destroying them (see the FBI’s COINTELPRO program of unlawful actions against the BPP), along with their youthful inexperience caused the original BPP to disintegrate, leaving members in prison, exiled, disillusioned and with shattered lives. Only a fraction of those former BPP members remain active in ways that justify their earlier sacrifices and efforts.

Unfortunately, newer BPP formations have not been provided with enough insight into this subject to help them fully weigh both the strengths and weaknesses of the original BPP. Indeed, some of the newer formations are hostile to any real critiques of the original BPP, a practice held in common with most Leninist vanguard parties historically.

To the rescue has come the multiple popular movements that the Arab Spring has thrown up: the Wisconsin state workers, Georgia and California prisoners’ actions, and Occupy Wall Street. Here we’re witnessing a promising trend that contains the seeds that can develop into a much-needed popular movement, that can be democratic and self-determining, and capable of challenging the minority for control in the already mentioned core areas.

Interviewer: Would you say you are a latecomer to the feminist movement?

Maroon: Yes! In fact, although I’ve been a committed activist since before the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, it has only been in the last 6 years that I’ve been awakened to the best of what feminism is, and the history of that movement. Moreover, I’m ashamed to admit that in that area I too have long practices a rhetorical ethic in paying lip service to the idea that since before 1968 I was struggling fro the uplift and freedom of all, while never fully grasping that my entire worldview was steeped in, and rested on patriarchal/male supremacist ideas, notions and practices, feminism’s opposite and mortal enemy.

My New York based comrade Fred Ho is the first person to put it all together for me. In the transcript of a speech I read, he had made an excellent case of how the ancient practice of matriarchy was once a widespread and egalitarian phenomenon, and why today we must again study how we can utilize some of those principles in order to address the ills that humynkind face today.

Nonetheless, I was so stuck-on-stupid until I continued in my male supremacist ways, incorporating Fred Ho’s ideas in a rhetorical ethic to hide my psychological conditioning, which I’ll explain.

It took the writings of Stan Goff, a former career military man (Special Forces, Rangers, Delta Team; Vietnam, Grenada, Somalia and other operations veteran) who had rejected the oppressive policies that he had spent his life defending, and adopted a form of radical politics and activism to get my full attention: such machismo is venerated within the patriarchal/male supremacist worldview. He was “my kind of guy.”

In Goff’s third book, Sex and War, he really got my interest by offering long and insightful quotes to bolster the points he was making, quotes by radical and feminist writers and activists. Passages so full of meaning until they stimulated me to begin to research the full works of the wimmin mentioned. Powerful feminists like Maria Mies, Vandana Shiva and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen; activists, scholars and grassroots organizers, with groundbreaking books like Ecofeminism (Mies and Shiva), Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women and the International Division of Labor (Mies), and The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalised Economy (Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen and Maria Mies). Critiques that I’ve learned more from than most of what I thought the previous 25 years of study and activism had taught me. More importantly, those works and further study, reflection and discussions caused me to radically alter my worldview and political views.

Thus, when comrade Fred Ho and I recently go together, I was finally ready to join his efforts, which you too can examine by e-mailing prefiguration@gmail.com.

Interviewer: What were the primary obstacles – psychological, social, or otherwise – to your being receptive to the feminist movement?

Maroon: Psychologically and socially – like most males – from birth I was conditioned and socialized to accept and even seek violent solutions to most problems: the pirates, cowboys and Indians, war movies, James Bond, gangsters, boxing, football, martial arts, hunting, and on and on. . . . Little boys get toy guns, toy soldiers, football gear and then “graduate” to get (or want) real guns and to go to war – with “somebody!”

Fred Ho and Maria Mies point out that for thousands of years men first bamboozled wimmin out of acquiring and maintaining the knowledge and tools (weapons) of the martial arts, before going on to subsequently use that knowledge and those weapons to totally subjugate wimmin and nature – the foundations upon which patriarchy rest.

Unknowingly, I became a member of that patriarchal cabal almost from birth, and remained a loyal member even after I thought I was struggling in the Black Panthers and Black Liberation Army for egalitarian ends. An effort that was destined to leave patriarchy/male supremacy in place, even if we were otherwise successful.

It is depressing to know that it took me over 60 years to stumble upon a feminist who had the kind of “credentials” I could trust, in order to pay proper attention to: “macho” Stan Goff. Therefore, I believe that men – the more respected the better – were the best advocates to win other men over to feminist ideas and practices (Fred Ho and his comrades more correctly use the word matriarchy/matriarchal, but for this piece I’ll continue using feminist).

Finally, it’s my opinion that the leading feminist/matriarchy thinkers and activists are heads and shoulders above all others in offering up a worldview that we can utilize to help rescue ourselves and the environment from this worsening crisis we’ve allowed ourselves to be manipulated into. You too need to look into their ideas and programs.

Interviewer: What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Occupy Wall Street Movement?

Maroon: Occupy Wall Street (OWS) has brilliantly changed the narrative and relationships of opposing forces – not by the “occupations,” which by themselves could be equaled or even eclipsed by a number of other street demonstrations from the right and left (let’s not forget that Tea Party activists “occupied” venues for a while too). That’s not to belittle the beautiful and inspiring people of the OWS inspired occupations and related on-going actions.

OWS’s strategica strength and paradigm shifting breakthrough is encompassed in the awesome “We are the 99%” slogan. That alone instantly won to our side 99% of the inhabitants of the globe! A master stroke that forced the ruling minority into a defensive position that it will be extremely hard for them to get out of. Indeed, the ruling elites only responses have been to use police force, which leaves the OWS movement in control of the narrative, and those inspired by them are themselves thinking of ways that they too make their grievances known.

It’s like the rebellions (so-called “riots”) during “The long hot summers” of the 1960s: each rebellion fueled later rebellions, because the underlying conditions were so widespread until there was simply not enough police/national guards to fully repress them. The genie was only coaxed back into the bottle after billions of dollars were spent on social programs, with President Johnson’s “Great Society” being the best known.

Today, however, the ruling minority will be both unwilling and (finally) unable to fully co-opt the 99% financially, unless they commit “class suicide”; meaning, they would have to agree to reorder the system so radically, and give back so much of the wealth they’ve stolen until in the end they would have “killed the goose that laid the golden egg.”

The ruling minority won’t even accept the pleas of their more farsighted like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, who see the handwriting on the wall, and are begging them to at least act like they care by paying their taxes . . . which is roundly ignored and ridiculed, the U.S.’s ruling elites equivalent to when Queen Marie Antoinette was told that the Paris masses ad no bread, responded “Then let them eat cake.” Or – nowadays – “Go to the mall and buy a flat-screen TV.”

Control of the narrative will continue to be the main strength of the OWS movement for the foreseeable future. But in order to effectively be more proactive OWS must address a glaring weakness. Namely the present physical disconnect between it’s activists and the exploited and super-exploited people of color – numbering in the tens of millions in the U.S. alone. A segment of this country that have always suffered more (per capita) than the rest of its 99%. I’ll not address how the global 99% breaks down in that regard, except to say that the global South has historically been at the bottom of the barrel in most respects. But I know the U.S. better, so I’ll address things here, and leave it to others to breakdown the situation elsewhere.

In the U.S. the people of color – except for a minority of rich and “middle class” individuals – are worse off than the rest of the 99% (per capita) in every category: homelessness, jobless, home foreclosures, lack of health insurance, newly diagnoses with HIV, deportations, immigrants homes broken up and separated, children in foster care, drug and crime ridden communities, imprisonment, probation or parolees, loss of voting rights and access to local, state and federal social welfare programs, horrible schools, forced to live in toxic communities, and the list goes on.

What’s important is OWS’s moral strength really rests on its avowed pledge to rescue this country’s vast “middle class” from further sliding backwards – into the poverty that the majority of the people of color find themselves in already. Yet, the middle class itself is not yet ready to take the steps that are necessary to pursue a protracted struggle to reach those ends. And the people of color have yet to see that it’s in their interests to hit the streets in mass in order to alter the class composition and goals of this movement. Most people of color view OWS as a “white thing,” or so I’ve been told, not recognizing that their mass participation is needed to help OWS mature into a true mass movement.

To complicate this lack of participation by the people of color is the failure of their traditional “leaders” to mobilize them behind OWS. A failure – I believe – is a product of these leaders’ egos: they feel a deep sense of jealousy and envy towards this young upstart movement, who have accomplished more in weeks than they have in the last three decades. And the hostility of OWS to the old charismatic leadership style – the “leaders” believe – threatens to make them useless; an extremely shortsighted calculation! In fact, their accumulated knowledge and experience could be invaluable if they would control their egos and begin to see themselves more as organic intellectuals than as the old style leaders that there was “some” justification for prior to the spread of modern communications, that the Arab Spring demonstrates makes that style superfluous, reactionary, and a drag on forward progress.

That said, it’s my belief that OWS and those traditional influential personalities within the people of color communities still desperately need each other!

In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon tells us that during the Algerian independence struggle the forward elements of that effort initially believed they could bypass the traditional leaders amongst the oppressed and go directly to the masses with their compelling logic and arguments against the French colonial system. They failed, however, and were isolated, killed, exiled and imprisoned.

After studying things while in prison, they decided to seek the help of those leaders as a necessary compromise on their release; a position that later bore fruit, although both elements – the forward thinking fighters and the traditional leaders – continued to struggle to control the dynamics of the independence movement.

OWS – I believe – must pursue a similar strategy in order to acquire help in mobilizing the masses amongst the people of color in the United States. Simply because an influx (beyond the relatively small numbers we see) of people of color into the OWS movement will provide a bridge between the forward elements in OWS and that vast middle class that’s needed to be successful, but who have to be given time to realize they too must hit the streets. And the people of color will benefit by being in a position to educate OWS to the necessity of putting their needs and concerns “on the front burner” because they are the proverbial “canary in the coal mine”; meaning, whatever kills the canary will later kill the coal miners – if not attended to.

OWS must seek out not only the known influential individuals in the people of color communities, but also the smaller groups who are working for change. OWS can also launch their own initiatives in those communities – wherever that’s deemed possible and useful.

Interviewer: What are economic alternatives to the current domination of big banks, war profiteers, and the profit-drive system?

Maroon: On November 25^,,2011, on Democracy Now! “Occupy Everywhere: Michael Moore, Naomi Klein on the Next Steps for the Movement Against Corporate Power,” a similar question was raised: “How does the OWS movement move from the ‘outrage phase’ to ‘the hope phase,’ and imagine a new economic model?” Both Michael Moore and Naomi Klein addressed that, but I just want to comment on a few things Naomi Klein said. Namely, that after the Seattle protests and the later hysteria, war and repression following 9/11, many radical activists had to “put their heads down and started building the economic alternatives to that model we were protesting in Seattle, Washington, in Genoa and around the world. . . . Now we have 10 years of those experiences.” She goes on to tick off many of them that I would encourage you to read about at: http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/25/occupy_everywhere_michael_moore_naomi_klein

One aspect of the prefigurative work that strikes me as the bedrock is working towards food security. There’s no need to detail how fragile most people’s food acquisition is, as that relates to healthy food and terrible eating habits and subsequent poor health in this country. Suffice it to state that the majority of the 99% are on shaky ground there. Primarily because we are prisoners of the large corporations that dominate everything we eat. And they actually mass produce, process and sell foods that have been proven – over and over – to be like slowly drinking poison – profitable (for them) poison.

Thus, food security is designed to lessen our dependency on those corporations, making us healthier and saving money and bringing us back to a respect for nature in the process. After all, we can’t struggle as much as is needed if we are as sick as most of us find ourselves to be. Such an effort is already being carried out by the parent group of the prefigurative initiative that Fred Ho is a part of: Scientific Soul Sessions (SSS); at www.scientificsoulsessions.com. On of their guides to food security rests on the practice of Mel Bartholomew’s “square foot gardening.” (www.squarefootgardening.com)

SSS writes, “According to Bartholomew, for urban settings, four square feet is all that is needed to grow vegetable gardens to feed two adults year-round. Rooftops, sidewalks, parks, front and backyards; common areas of buildings could all become food growing sources with minimal alteration and costs. Indeed, children and the elderly could be organized to tend to such gardens, and thus enhance the curriculum of math, science and other fields in the tasks of farming.”

It is imperative, however, that one does not start to believe that such prefigurative efforts, or others not mentioned here, are “the answer” to what all will be needed to bring about the deep and broad-based changes needed in the 21^st century. Such mistakes were made after the high tide of the 1960s/1970s era. And those who made that mistake allowed the exploiting minority a chance to study how better to hold on to their ill-gotten power and wealth, and now we all face a much more ruthless and sophisticated foe.

Thus, prefiguration must work hand-in-hand with broad-based movements to bring about the changes needed, and OWS is on the cutting edge of that side of the equation.

Support Carlos as he goes to court on January 24th

2012-01-22T16:15:00.000-08:00

Jan. 18, 2012 Committee to Stop FBI Repression

Event Information

Date:

Tue, 2012-01-24 (All day)

Organized by:

Los Angeles Committee to Stop FBI Repression

Location:

Criminal Courts Bldg.

211 W Temple St. (corner with Broadway) Dept. 123 on the 13th floor.

Los Angeles, CA 90012

United States

See map: Google Maps

Carlos Montes appears in court
Tuesday, January 24.

Join the national call-in day to

President Obama at 202-456-1111

Attorney General Holder at 202-514-2001

Demand: “Dismiss the charges against Carlos Montes. There is no evidence!”

Contact us and let us know how your calls went: info@stopFBI.net

Chicano antiwar activist Carlos Montes’ next court hearing is Tuesday, January 24. Attorney Jorge Gonzalez will present and argue a legal motion to dismiss all charges on the grounds of insufficient evidence. This hearing will deal with the FBI-instigated Sheriffs raid, arrest, and prosecution of Carlos. Carlos Montes has declared himself “not guilty” on 6 felony charges, dealing with an alleged 42-year old arrest and firearms code violations. Montes’ arrest is part of the FBI attack on 23 other antiwar and solidarity activists.

If you are in the L.A. area...

Join us and Occupy the Court!
Tuesday, January 24 at 8:00 a.m.

Criminal Courts Bldg., 211 W Temple St.
Los Angeles, CA
Dept. 123 on the 13th floor.

Carlos Montes will appear in court on January 24, where his legal team will present and argue a legal motion to dismiss all charges on the grounds of insufficient evidence. The current felony charges stem from a Chicano student protest Carlos led over 40 years ago. Students were demanding Chicano and Black Studies at East Los Angeles Community College. Back in 1968, the LA County Sheriffs entered the college campus to put down the student strike. The current District Attorney is alleging Carlos was arrested and convicted for assaulting a Sheriff deputy in 1968 during the police attack on protesters. The six current charges stem from Carlos buying 3 guns at the local sporting goods store, which the District Attorney alleges is a violation.

Montes, along with 23 anti-war and international solidarity activists targeted by the FBI, organized the protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention. Prior to this, Carlos traveled to Colombia and denounced the U.S. dirty war there known as “Plan Colombia”. Carlos met Colombian union activists, artists, and people targeted by death squads of the Colombian military. At Fort Benning, Georgia - also known as the School of the Americas, the U.S. government trains the Colombian military in death squad tactics. We cannot allow the FBI and the U.S. government to stop international solidarity work with the Palestinian and Colombian people!

The FBI instigated the Sheriff's swat team to raid and arrest Carlos Montes on May 17, 2011. At 5 a.m., heavily armed police bashed in his front door and ransacked his home. Please join us in solidarity with Carlos Montes.

Support Actions:

After a hugely successful conference on November 5 in Chicago, 150 activists and organizers committed to organizing solidarity with Carlos Montes. So across the country, activists and defenders of human rights are mobilizing to support Carlos Montes.

Please take the following steps to the support Carlos Montes and the 23 Midwest activists facing FBI repression:
Sign the national petition supporting Carlos Montes
Sign the Pledge to Resist FBI and Grand Jury Repression
Join a local support committee of the CSFR or organize one in your town
Donate to the legal defense fund
Encourage your organization, religous group, elected official or union to write a Solidarity Statement for Carlos Montes and the rest of the 24.

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The Cases of Alan Gross and the Cuban Five

2012-01-22T16:10:00.000-08:00

Jan. 17, 2012 Center for International policy

By Salim Lamrani, with contributions from Wayne Smith

The way may be opening for increased U.S.-Cuban ties. The United States has removed all restrictions on Cuban-American travel from the U.S. to Cuba and all limitations on Cuban-American remittances to families on the island. Coming at a time when the Cuban government is encouraging the establishment of small private enterprises, this opens the way for importantly increased ties between the two communities-as one observer put it: “for an inflow of capital from the U.S. to Cuba.”

There is, however, the proverbial “fly in the ointment” and that is the case of Alan Gross, arrested on December 3 of 2009 and since then representing a major obstacle to improved relations–along with the case of the Cuban Five on the other side (but more on that later).

Who is Alan Gross?

Alan Gross is a 61 year-old Jewish U.S. citizen from Potomac, Maryland who is an employee of Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), a subcontractor of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) which itself is a dependency of the State Department. In December 2009, when Gross was about to leave Cuba with a simple tourist visa–after his fifth visit that year–Cuban state security authorities detained him at the International Airport in Havana. An investigation discovered links between him and the internal opposition to the Cuban government. Gross had been distributing among the opposition portable computers and satellite telephones as part of the State Department program for “promoting democracy in Cuba.” [1]

A long-distance communications technology expert, Gross has great experience in the field. He has worked in more than 50 nations and set up satellite communications systems during the military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan to circumvent channels controlled by local authorities. [2]

Possession of a satellite phone is strictly forbidden in Cuba for national security reasons and telecommunications are a state monopoly with competition forbidden. [3]

Aid for the Cuban Jewish Community?

The State Department, demanding the release of the detainee declared, “Gross works for international development and traveled to Cuba to assist the members of the Jewish community in Havana to connect with other Jewish communities in the world.” According to Washington, Gross’ activities were legitimate and did not violate Cuban legislation.[4]

In October 2010, during the annual session of the UN General Assembly, Arturo Valenzuela, then assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, met with Bruno Rodríguez, Cuban minister for foreign affairs, to discuss Gross. This was the most important diplomatic meeting between representatives from both nations since the beginning of Obama’s era. [5]

Alan Gross’ family also said that his frequent trips to the island were to allow the Jewish community in Havana to gain access to the Internet and to communicate with Jews all over the world.[6] His lawyer, Peter J. Kahn, endorsed their words, “His work in Cuba had nothing to do with politics; it was simply aimed at helping the small, peaceful, non-dissident Jewish community in the country. [7]

Gross doubtless had contact with some members of the Jewish community in Cuba. Leaders of the Jewish community in Havana, however, contradict the official U.S. version of his relationship. In fact, leaders of the community affirm they did not know Alan Gross, and had never met with him despite his five visits to Cuba in 2009. Adela Dworin, president of the Beth Shalom Temple, rejected Washington’s statements. “It’s lamentable […]. The saddest part is that they tried to involve the Jewish community in Cuba which has nothing to do with this.”

Mayra Levy, speaker of the Sephardic Hebraic Center, declared she didn’t know who Gross was and added he had never been to her institution. The Associated Press said “the leaders of the Jewish community in Cuba denied the American contractor Alan Gross […] had collaborated with them.” [8] In like manner, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that “the main Jewish groups in Cuba had denied having any contracts with Alan Gross or any knowledge of his project.” [9]

Reverend Oden Mariachal, secretary of the Consejo de Iglesias de Cuba (CIC) [Cuban Council of Churches] which includes the [non-Catholic] Christian religious institutions and the Jewish community in Cuba, confirmed this position at a meeting with Peter Brennan, State Department coordinator for Cuban Affairs. On the occasion of the General Assembly of Churches of Christ in the U.S., held in Washington in 2010, the religious leader rejected Gross’ allegations. “What we made clear is what the Cuban Jewish Community, a member of the Cuban Council of Churches, told us, ‘We never had a relationship with that gentleman; he never brought us any equipment.’ They denied any kind of relationship with Alan Gross.”[10]

In fact, the small Cuban Jewish community, far from isolated, is perfectly integrated in society and has excellent relations with the political authorities in the Island. Fidel Castro, although very critical of Israeli policy in the occupied territories, declared to American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg that in history “no one has been as slandered as the Jews. They were exiled from their land, persecuted and mistreated everywhere in the world. The Jews had a more difficult existence than ours. Nothing can compare to the Holocaust,” he said. [11]

Cuban President Raúl Castro attended the religious ceremony for Hanukkah-the Festival of Lights–at the Shalom Synagogue in Havana, in December 2010. The visit was broadcast live on Cuban TV and published in the front page of newspaper Granma. He took the opportunity to greet “the Cuban Jewish community and the fabulous history of the Hebrew people.” [12]

Moreover, the Cuban Jewish community has all the technological facilities needed to communicate with the rest of the world, thanks to the assistance of other international Jewish entities such as the B’nai Brith and the Cuban Jewish Relief Project, the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC), the World ORT, the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) or the United Jewish Committee (UJC); all of it endorsed by the Cuban authorities. [13]

Arturo López-Levy, B’nai Brith secretary for the Cuban Jewish community between 1999 and 2001, and today a professor at Denver University, is also skeptical about the U.S. version of the Gross case. On the subject, he stated, “Gross was not arrested for being Jewish or for his alleged activities of technological aid to the Cuban Jewish community which already had an informatics lab, electronic mail and Internet access before he got to Havana. [The Jews in Cuba] do not gather at a synagogue to conspire with the political opposition because this would jeopardize their cooperation with the government which is needed for their activities: the emigration to Israel program, the Right by Birth project–through which young Cuban Jews travel to Israel every year–or to deal with humanitarian aid. To protect the most important they detach themselves as much as possible from the U.S. programs of political interference on Cuban internal affairs. Gross travelled to Cuba not to work with any Jewish organization but for USAID.” [14]

Wayne S. Smith, chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba from 1979 to 1982 and director of Cuba Program of the Center for International Policy in Washington, said that “in other words, Gross was involved in a program whose intentions were clearly hostile to Cuba, because its objective is nothing less than regime change.” [15]

Illegal Activities According to Cuban Authorities

Cuban authorities suspected Gross of espionage and internal subversion activities. [16]Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban Parliament, declared he had violated the country’s legislation. “He violated Cuban laws, national sovereignty, and committed crimes that in the U.S. are most severely punished.”[17]

Gross, a USAID employee was providing sophisticated communications equipment. The distribution and use of satellite phones is regulated in Cuba and it is forbidden to import them without authorization. On the other hand, Article 11 of Cuban Law 88 reads that, “He who, in order to perform the acts described in this Law, directly or through a third party, receives, distributes or takes part in the distribution of financial means, material or of other kind, from the Government of the United States of America, its agencies, dependencies, representatives, officials, or from private entities is liable to prison terms from 3 to 8 years.” [18]

This severity is not unique to Cuban legislation. U.S. law prescribes similar penalties for this type of crime. The Foreign Agents Registration Act prescribes that any un-registered agent “who requests, collects, supplies or spends contributions, loans, money or any valuable object in his own interest” may be liable to a sentence of five years in prison and a fine of 10,000 dollars. [19]

French legislation also punishes this type of action. According to Article 411-8 of the Penal Code, “the act of exercising on behalf of a foreign power, a foreign company or organization or company or organization under the control of a foreign agent, any act aimed at supplying devices, information, procedures, objects, documents, informatics data or files whose exploitation, spreading, or gathering can by nature attempt against the fundamental interests of the nation is punishable with ten years of imprisonment and a fine of 150,000 Euros.”[20]

On February 4, 2011, the prosecutor of the Republic of Cuba formally accused Alan Gross of “acts against the integrity and independence of the nation,” and demanded a jail sentence of 20 years. On March 12, 2011 Gross was finally sentenced to 15 years imprisonment after his trial.[21] The lawyer for the defense, Peter J. Kahn, expressed his regret that his client was “caught in the middle of a long political dispute between Cuba and the United States.” [22]

The New York Times remembers that Gross “was arrested last December during a trip to Cuba as part of a semi-clandestine USAID program, a service of foreign aid of the State Department destined to undermine the Cuban Government,” The New York paper also indicated that “U.S. authorities have admitted that Mr. Gross entered Cuba without the appropriate visa and have said he distributed satellite telephones to religious groups. [23]

Since 1992 and the adoption of the Torricelli Act, the U.S. openly admits its objective towards Cuba is “regime change” and one of the pillars of this policy is to organize, finance and equip an internal opposition. [24]

USAID, which is in charge of the implementation of the plan, admits that, as part of this program, it finances the Cuban opposition. According to the Agency for the 2009 fiscal year the amount destined for aid to Cuban dissidents was of 15.62 million dollars. Since 1996 a total of 140 million dollars have been dedicated to the program aimed at overthrowing the Cuban government. “The largest part of this figure is for individuals inside Cuba. Our objective is to maximize the amount of the support that benefits the Cubans in the Island.”[25]

The government agency also stresses the following, “We have trained hundreds of journalists in a ten year period and their work is seen in mainstream international media.” Formed and paid by the U.S., they represent, above all, the interests of Washington whose objective is a “regime change” on the island. [26]

From a juridical point of view, this reality in fact places the dissidents who accept the emoluments offered by USAID in the position of being agents at the service of a foreign power, which constitutes a serious violation of the Cuban Penal Code. The agency is aware of this reality and simply reminds all that “nobody is obliged to accept or be part of the programs of the government of the United States.” [27]

Judy Gross, the wife of Alan Gross, was authorized to visit him in prison for the first time in July 2010. [28]She took the occasion to send a letter to Cuban President Raúl Castro in which she expressed her repentance and apologized for the acts of her husband. “I understand today the Cuban Government does not appreciate the type of work Alan was doing in Cuba. His intention was never to hurt your government.” [29]

Judy Gross also accuses the State Department of not having explained to her husband that his activities were illegal in Cuba. If Alan had known that something would happen to him in Cuba, he would not have done that. I think he was not clearly informed about the risks.” [30]

A Way Out?

Clearly, Alan Gross violated the law. Of that there can be no doubt. On the other hand, he seems to have done little harm. His continued incarceration results in no important benefits to the U.S. His release, on the other hand, could be a major step toward improved U.S.-Cuban relations, especially if in the process he were prepared to apologize for his actions.

There is another side to the matter, however, and that has to do with the so-called Cuban Five. Just as the U.S. seems unwilling to move ahead in relations unless there is some movement in the Gross case, so do the Cubans seem reluctant to move without progress in the case of the Cuban Five, who were incarcerated in 1998. They were sent up to the U.S. by the Cuban government to penetrate and develop information about the anti-Castro terrorists groups in Florida after a sequence of bomb attacks against tourist centers in Havana. The idea was then to provide that information to the FBI so that it could take action to halt the exile terrorists. A meeting between representatives of the FBI and the Cubans was held in Havana over several days in June of 1998 and some forty folders of evidence were turned over to the FBI. The Cubans then waited for the U.S. to take action against the terrorists. But none was taken; rather, shortly thereafter, the FBI began arresting the Cuban five. In other words, they arrested those who had provided the evidence rather than the terrorists themselves. The Five were arrested, tried and convicted, though “tried” is not the right word for the trial was a sham. The prosecutors had no real evidence and so fell back on the old standby of trying them for “conspiracy” to commit illegal acts. No evidence, and they were tried in Miami where anti-Castro sentiment had reached such a level with the Elian Gonzalez case that there was no chance of empanelling an impartial jury. Defense lawyers requested a change of venue, but, incredibly, it was denied.

Worst of all was the case of Gerardo Hernandez, who was accused of “conspiracy” to commit murder and given two consecutive life sentences plus fifteen years–this in connection with the shoot down of the two Brothers to the Rescue planes in February of 1996. Never mind that there was no evidence that he was in any way responsible. But there, behind bars, he remains today, mostly in solitary confinement and after all these years not allowed a single visit from his wife.

The injustice in these cases contradicts the reputation of the U.S. for dedication to the rule of law. It must be corrected. Holding these men year after year without real evidence of any crime other than being the unregistered agents of a foreign power was one thing during the Cold War–though unjustified even then. But now, with the Cold War over and every possibility of beginning a new U.S.-Cuba relationship, it becomes morally unjustifiable and counterproductive. It is time surely to undertake a process of reviewing all these cases and then allowing these men to return to their families. One, René Gonzalez, has already been released from prison to serve out his remaining three years on parole, but at the same time, incredibly, not allowed to return to Cuba to be with his wife, who he has not seen in all these years. That, allowing his return, should perhaps be the first step in the process.

And it goes without saying that as the U.S. begins to move in the cases of the Cuban Five, Cuba should release Alan Gross to return to his family.

It should be noted that Alan Gross himself suggested there should be some reciprocal movement in these cases. “Following the recent exchange of the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, Gross was clear that he wants the United States and Cuba to make a similar gesture for him and the Cuban Five,” explained Rabbi David Shneyer, who had visited Gross in Havana. [31]

Salim Lamrani, PhD in Iberian and Latin American Studies of the Paris Sorbonne-Paris IV University, is a professor in charge of courses at the Paris-Sorbonne-Paris IV University and the Paris-Est Marne-la- Vallée University. He is a French journalist, and specialist on the Cuba-United States relations. He has recently published: Etat de siege. Les sanctions economiques des Etats-Unis contre Cuba with a prologue by Wayne S. Smith.

Wayne S. Smith, now director of the Cuba Project at the Center for International Policy, was chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, 1979-1982, and is the author of The Closest of Enemies, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1987).

End Notes

[1] Jeff Franks, <>, Reuter, October 24, 2010.

[2] Phillip J. Crowley, <>, op. cit.; Saul Landau, <>, Counterpunch, July 30, 2010. http://www.counterpunch.org/landau07302010.html (site consulted on February 18, 2011).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Phillip J. Crowley, <>, op. cit

[5] Paul Haven, <>, The Associated Press, October 18, 2010

[6] Anthony Broadle, <>, Reuters, October 24, 2010.

[7] Juan O. Tamayo, <>, El Nuevo Herald, February 5, 2011.

[8] Andrea Rodríguez, <>, The Associated Press, December 2, 2010.

[9] Jewish Telegraphic Agency, <>, February 6, 2011.

[10] Andrea Rodrígues, <>, The Associated Press, December 2, 2010.

[11] Jeffrey Goldberg, <> The Atlantic, December 7, 2010. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/09/castro-no-one-has-been-slandered-more-than-tthe-jews/62566/ (site consulted on February 18, 2011).

[12] The Associated Press, <>; Juan O. Tamayo, <>, El Nuevo Herald, December 6, 2010.

[13] Comunidad Hebrea de Cuba, <>. http://www.chcuba.org/espanol/ayuda/quienes.htm (site consulted on February 18, 2011).

[14] Arturo López-Levy, <>, August 2010. http://www.thewashintonnote.com/archives/2010/08freeing_alan_gr/ (site consulted on February 18, 2011).

[15] Wayne S. Smith, <>, Center for International Policy, March 2011. http://ciponline.org/pressroom/articles/030411_Smith_Intelligence_Brief_Gross.htm (site consulted on March 13, 2011).

[16] Paul Haven, <>, The Associated Press, February 19, 2010.

[17] Andrea Rodriguez, <>, The Associated Press, December 11, 2010.

[18] Ley de protección de la independencia nacional y la economía de Cuba (LEY N˚. 88), Artículo 11.

[19] U.S. Code, Title 22, Chapter 11, Subchapter II, § 611, iii <>, § 618, a, 1 <>.

[20] Code Penal, Partie legislative, Livre, Titre Ier, Chapitre I, Section 3, Article 411-8.

[21] William Booth, <>, The Associated Press, February 4, 2011.

[22] Paul Haven <>, The Associated Press, February 4, 2011.

[23] Ginger Thompson, <>, The New York Times, October 24, 2010.

[24] Cuban Democracy Act, Titulo XVII, Artículo 1705, 1992.

[25] Along the Malecon, <>, October 25, 2010. http://alongthemalecon.blogspot.com/2010/10/exclusive-q-with-usaid.html (site consulted on October 26, 2010); Tracey Eaton, <>, El Nuevo Herald, December 3, 2010.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Jessica Gresko, <>, The Associated Press, October 26, 2010.

[29] Anthony Boadle, <>, op. cit. ; Jeff Frank, <>, Reuters, October 24, 2010.

[30]Anthony Boadle, <>, op. cit EFE, <>, February 8, 2011.

[31] Agence France Presse, <> November 8, 2011.

Richmond Anarchist Jeremy Hawthorne, Felony Trial Feb. 1st

2012-01-22T16:09:00.000-08:00

Jan. 18, 2012 Anarchist News

Jeremy Hawthorne, arrested September 5th, 2011 while on a Copwatch patrol,
is going on trial before a jury for allegedly slashing 7 tires on Virginia
Commonwealth University vehicles, including two police cars. The charge is
Destruction of State Property > $1,000, a Class 6 Felony.

The case is clearly politically motivated; as a part of Richmond Copwatch,
Jeremy is one of several who have been targeted by Richmond police in past
months for their work against police brutality and poor jail conditions in
the city. The notoriously heavy-handed RPD and its officers, ever the
subject of much controversy, have bristled and taken a particularly
antagonistic attitude with activists, protestors, and copwatchers,
reacting in a consistently aggressive, violent, and reckless manner.
Accountability, on the other hand, has been elusive.

The “evidence” used to indict Jeremy is insubstantial, and many details
surrounding testimonies evidence gathering, and the circumstances leading
to Jeremy’s arrest, are questionable at best.

Commonwealth Attorney Christopher Toepp is handling the case per his
personal request, intent on a full conviction. Toepp has had a long year
of high-profile cases, having been on the prosecution for the Monroe Park
Occupation, and the African burial ground demonstration. If Chris Toepp
has his way, Jeremy would face 5 years in prison.

The description of the person depicted in the so-far unreleased
surveillance footage is incredibly mundane: a beard, a hat (maybe camo,
brown, or black?), tattoos, a black sleeveless or rolled-up shirt, a bag,
and a step-thru frame bike. In Richmond, this could easily be thousands of
people. The alleged acts occurred on August 23rd, the Monday proceeding
Best Friends Day, meaning hundreds more out-of-town hipster look-alikes
were wild in the streets.

We encourage all those who think they may roughly fit this description to
come to the hearing, inside the courtroom and out, as part of a “beard
bloc.”

Folks who wish to come out in support- the hearing will be in courtroom
305 of the John Marshall Court Building, 400 N. Ninth St., Richmond,
Virginia; 9:30AM Wednesday, February 1st.

For more information, you can contact rvaabc@gmail.com and check
richmondlegalsupport.wordpress.com for updates.
We ask all to donate to his legal fund, via the Richmond Anarchist Black
Cross (2005 Barton Avenue, Richmond, VA 23222).

Thanks to a Vindictive Prison System, Mumia's Still in the Hole

2012-01-22T16:07:00.000-08:00

January 18, 201 counterpunch.org

Sadism in the Cell

by LINN WASHINGTON, Jr.

Those intent on tormenting now ex-death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal have done it again, this time perhaps even exceeding their past efforts to painfully harass this man widely perceived as a political prisoner.

The latest punitive slap involves Pennsylvania prison authorities throwing Abu-Jamal into “Administrative Custody,” more commonly known as ‘The Hole.’

The draconian constraints of AC placement surpass the harsh restrictions of the death row isolation Abu-Jamal has endured for over a quarter century.

A jury sentenced Abu-Jamal to death following a controversial July 1982 conviction for killing a Philadelphia policeman.

No surprise that this latest punitive assault against Abu-Jamal has his worldwide support movement in an uproar. Supporters see AC placement as retaliation by those incensed that Abu-Jamal is no longer facing execution.

Energizing supporters is the opposite of what Philadelphia’s District Attorney Seth Williams said he desired when he announced last month that his office would not seek reinstitution of Abu-Jamal’s death sentence. At the time, DA Williams said he hoped avoiding a rehearing on the death sentence would consign Abu-Jamal to obscurity.

Pennsylvania’s governor and the president of Philadelphia’s police union also used the word obscurity when voicing their hopes that the life sentence for Abu-Jamal would decimate his cause célèbre status among death penalty abolitions worldwide.

Prison authorities removed Abu-Jamal from death row mere hours after the Philadelphia DA’s December announcement, transferring him to an Administrative Custody cell block inside the same super-max Greene prison located more than 300-miles from Philadelphia in southwest Pennsylvania.

Prison officials rejected the standard procedure of placing Abu-Jamal in general population, the status for all inmates not sentenced to death.

Significantly, inmates in general population have full privileges to visitation (contact, not conjugal contact), telephone and commissary, along with access to all prison programs and services.

Administrative Custody restrictions, on the other hand, are punitive in nature, including a limited number of visits, no telephone calls (except legal or emergency) and limitations on access to legal materials needed for appeals.

Sue Bensinger, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, declined comment on Abu-Jamal’s case citing the Department’s “security and privacy” regulations.

Bensinger did confirm that authorities now hold Abu-Jamal in Mahanoy, a medium security prison about 100 miles from Philadelphia in central Pennsylvania. Mahanoy, by Department regulation, cannot hold death row prisoners.

DoC personnel moved Abu-Jamal to Mahanoy from Greene prison during an unannounced pre-dawn transfer on December 14, 2011.

Abu-Jamal’s December removal from death row was in belated compliance with federal court rulings voiding Abu-Jamal’s death sentence. That sentence launched Abu-Jamal’s decade’s long grind on Pennsylvania’s death row – an ordeal that a string of federal court rulings since 2001 have declared to have been reached illegally and unconstitutionally.

When a federal District Court judge voided Abu-Jamal’s death sentence in December 2001, converting it to a life sentence, Pennsylvania prison authorities refused to remove him from death row. Authorities justified their refusal to transfer Abu-Jamal into general population from death row in 2001 as extending a “courtesy” to Philadelphia’s District Attorney’s Office, to that city’s police union (the Fraternal Order of Police) and to the widow of the slain officer.

The FOP, the widow and the DA’s Office, including Williams and his predecessor Lynne Abraham, actively lobbied year after year for Abu-Jamal’s continuance on death row during their unsuccessful appeals of that 2001 ruling ending his capital sentence.

Those malicious demands for Abu-Jamal’s continued death row confinement sought to inflict increased suffering through keeping Abu-Jamal mired in the deprivations of death row isolation.

That “courtesy” also cost taxpayers at least $100,000, because it costs Pennsylvania’s prison system an extra ten thousand dollars per year to handle each death row inmate, according to prison system spokespersons.

That “courtesy” cost adds to the enormous expenditures Philadelphia prosecutors have made fighting in courts to block Abu-Jamal’s efforts to win a retrial where a jury could hear what that 1982 jury did not: evidence of innocence withheld by police and prosecutors.

As an example of the addional restrictions administrative custody imposes on Abu-Jamal, the acclaimed prison author/journalist now has no access to books, a radio and a typewriter – all items he utilized on death row for his writings.

A federal appeals court in 1998 stated Abu-Jamal had a First Amendment right to write while imprisoned. That ruling derailed efforts by detractors to bar Abu-Jamal’s writing.

Legal experts familiar with Abu-Jamal’s plight say some of those current Administrative Custody restrictions – particularly those blocking his ability to write – arguably violate that 1998 appeals court ruling.

Under current AC status, authorities force Abu-Jamal to wear shackles during the limited visits he’s permitted. Under administrative custody restrictions, his visits are actually less frequent and of shorter duration than were his highly restrictive death row visitations.

Prison authorities had stopped shackling Abu-Jamal during death row visits a few years ago, following complaints from Noble Peace Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. Tutu, during a visit to the famous inmate, refused to see him until the shackles, which Tutu declared were a gratuitous torture, were removed.

In an interesting twist, Maureen Faulkner, the slain officer’s widow, expressed her desire in December for having Abu-Jamal placed in general population where, she said, he would live among the “criminals that infest” Pennsylvania’s prisons. Faulkner has been at the forefront of past punitive efforts against Abu-Jamal, including the legal rights-robbing onslaught that led to the 1998 federal appeals court ruling.

That 1995 onslaught was retaliation for the publication of Abu-Jamal’s book Live From Death Row, and it substantially sabotaged his pivotal hearing that year appealing his conviction. The book features essays on prison life Abu-Jamal had prepared for an NPR program that detractors successfully intimidated NPR into cancelling before it could air.

This perverse Administrative Custody confinement, the latest link in the chain of injustices lashing Abu-Jamal since his 1981 arrest, is just the latest violation by the Department of Corrections of the Pennsylvania prison system’s own written regulations for placing inmates into that harsh disciplinary status.

Abu-Jamal does not meet any of the 11 specific circumstances listed in Pennsylvania Department of Corrections regulations for justifying administrative custody placement.

A model prisoner, Abu-Jamal does not constitute “a threat” to life, property, himself, staff, other inmates, the public or orderly prison operations as the policy declaration for AC placement states.

Indeed, prison staff evaluations of Abu-Jamal since his December death row removal list him as “polite [and] respectful.” Those positive evaluations hardly offer evidence of incorrigibility or other serious misbehavior which usually triggers AC placement.

Among the ever-changing rationales prison authorities advance for keeping Abu-Jamal in AC is their curious and Kafkaesque claim that they are awaiting legal clarification that the courts have formally replaced Abu-Jamal’s death sentence with life in prison.

That claim contradicts the Department of Corrections’ own documents specifically acknowledging that federal courts have vacated the death sentence (requiring a life sentence) and that the Philadelphia’s DA has dropped appeals to reinstate the death sentence and is accepting the life imprisonment.

Since DoC documents clearly reference a vacated death sentence, how can prison officials also claim they need clarification for what is objectively obvious, unless they are using that need-for-clarification explanation to cover-up continued punitive harassment?

The mammoth legal battles raging around Abu-Jamal’s conviction obscure the smaller little-known skirmishes Abu-Jamal constantly has to fight over mundane matters like the types of food he can eat, what newspapers he can read and the permissible length of his dreadlock hair style.

In 2003 Abu-Jamal and other inmates at Greene prison asked authorities for healthier diets, prompting hundreds of activists from Germany and other countries to send letters to prison authorities supporting that dietary request which arrived containing garlic cloves in the envelopes. Activists used garlic because it is widely recognized for its medicinal properties and it makes a pungent statement.

Abu-Jamal’s current AC status once again limits his ability to obtain food from the prison commissary which he needs for his vegetarian diet.

In the late 1980s Abu-Jamal mounted an unsuccessful lawsuit against prison authorities for barring his death row receipt of a newspaper published by a socialist organization.

Prison authorities barred that newspaper by speciously deeming it a “danger” to prison security, despite their allowing non-isolation-cell inmates to receive white racist hate literature and pornography.

Those racist and pornographic publications approved for general population inmates clearly threatened security by spurring interracial tensions and homosexual rapes – unlike a leftist newspaper sent to one inmate in death row isolation.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, prison authorities disciplined Abu-Jamal for refusing to cut his dreadlocks (citing religious reasons). Authorities ultimately relented, allowing him to leave his locks uncut.

Authorities now cite Abu-Jamal’s hair length as a reason for keeping him in punitive isolation, though suspiciously, they only first offered that excuse five long weeks after his December AC placement.

While Abu-Jamal’s detractors indignantly dismiss all claims of his being a political prisoner, his post-arrest ordeals provide a compelling case of a person specifically targeted by authorities for being who he is politically more than for the crime he is supposedly serving time for.

Linn Washington, Jr. is a founder of This Can’t Be Happening and a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. He lives in Philadelphia.

Prosecutors aim new weapon at Occupy activists: lynching allegation

2012-01-22T16:04:00.000-08:00

Jan. 17, 2012 MSNBC

http://youtu.be/8UAj4Ohsce4

Screen grab from youtube video showing the arrest of Occupy LA activist Sergio Ballesteros on Thursday, Jan. 12. Ballesteros, 30, was released on $50,000 bail early Tuesday. He is charged with "lynching"--a felony charge originally drafted to deal with vigilante mobs.

By Kari Huus, msnbc.com

Sergio Ballesteros, 30, has been involved in Occupy LA since the movement had its California launch in October. But this week, his activism took an abrupt turn when he was arrested on a felony charge — lynching.

Under the California penal code, lynching is “taking by means of a riot of any person from the lawful custody of any peace officer," where "riot" is defined as two or more people threatening violence or disturbing the peace. The original purpose of the legal code section 405(a) was to protect defendants in police custody from vigilante mobs — especially black defendants from racist groups.

Whether the police allegation in this case will be pursued by by California’s courts is uncertain. But the felony charge — which carries a potential four-year prison sentence — is the kind of accusation that can change the landscape for would-be demonstrators.

Occupy protesters bring their discontent to Congress

"Felonies really heighten the stakes for the protesters," said Baher Azmy, legal director at Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. "I think in situations where there are mass demonstrations and a confrontation between protesters and police, one always has to be on the lookout for exaggerated interpretations of legal rules that attempt to punish or squelch the protesters."

Apparent smoke bomb tossed at White House

Ballesteros, a teacher-turned-social-activist, was one of two people arrested during an "art walk" in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday. He and other Occupy LA activists — maybe 200, he said — had joined the procession to bring their message about social injustice to the thousands of gallery-goers.

Adam Alders, a protester who was playing a drum was arrested after stepping off the curb into the street. Ballesteros said that in doing so, the drummer was joining hundreds of other people who could not fit on the crowded sidewalk.

Occupy protesters underwhelmed by senator's staff

Ballesteros said he was across the street when he saw the arrest — which he said looked excessively rough -- and it was “startling.” Under legal advice, Ballesteros is not providing additional detail, but apparently he objected — in some fashion — to the arrest. A video of the crowded scene posted on YouTube shows Ballesteros on the ground, being handcuffed.

The police report says officers called for backup when Ballesteros pulled Alders out into the crowd, which was "hostile."

A video of the event shows the crowd chanting "let him go!"

He was booked into jail on a felony charge, the Los Angeles Police department confirmed, and released on $50,000 bail early Tuesday morning.

'I can't go out and express myself'
Ballesteros is not the first protester to face this 1933 California law.

Occupy Oakland activist Tiffany Tran, 23, was arrested Dec. 30 and charged with "lynching." At an arraignment four days later, prosecutors opted not to file the charges, the San Francisco Bay Guardian reported. They could change their decision until the one-year statute of limitations expires.

"Now I feel I can’t go out and express myself as I should be able to," Tran told the paper.

Houston DA turns up the heat on Occupy activists

In the handful of protest cases in which lynching has been used as a charge in the past, it later has been dropped. However, in one case, a court concluded that “lynching” could include “a person who takes part in a riot leading to his escape from custody."

Many states have laws against lynching — largely drafted to prevent white supremacists and other vigilante groups from using violence against African Americans and white people who supported them. Hundreds of lynchings of this sort took place in the late 1800s through the mid-1900s.

Ballesteros' lawyer said use of this law was perhaps less appealing to the District Attorney than to the police.

Ballesteros is an activist outside the Occupy movement -- building homes through Habitat for Humanity during his spring breaks, aiding at a children's camp for the poorest kids in the Appalachians during the summer, and acting as mentor for disadvantaged kids in the Los Angeles area.

"Whether the District Attorney has the stomach to charge this model young man with a felony is questionable," saidd Mieke ter Poorten, an LA criminal defense attorney who is handling this case pro bono.

Trying to silence?
Ballesteros, who spoke to msnbc.com on Tuesday, said that he does not believe he will be convicted of lynching.

“They don’t have much,” he said of the case against him.

He also faces a misdemeanor charge for his arrest Nov. 30, when he was among more than 200 people who defied eviction from an encampment on the grounds of Los Angeles' City Hall. There was an arraignment for protesters arrested that day, but they were told no charges yet had been filed.

“They have a year to do so,” said Ballesteros. "Now they certainly will. It’s obvious. It’s all political.”

Ballesteros took part in a live video forum between Occupy movement activists and Tea Party activists just a day before his arrest. Click here to hear the discussion.

Marking 10 years of Injustice at GTMO: Seeking Accountability for Torture & Unjust U.S. Detentions (in San Francisco / Bay Area)

2012-01-20T14:31:00.000-08:00

Location

San Francisco, CA
See map: Yahoo! Maps

January 19, 2012

WHEN: Thursday, January 19, 2012 @ 7:00pm

WHERE: 518 Valencia: Eric Quesada Center for Culture & Politics, 518 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA

WHO:

Vincent Warren, Executive Director, Center for Constitutional Rights

Almerindo Ojeda, principal investigator for the Guantánamo Testimonials Project at UC Davis, the founding director of the university's Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas, and the author of the article Death in Guantanamo: Suicide or Dryboarding? which raises more questions about the three 2006 deaths at Guantánamo, the families of two of whom are represented by CCR

James A. Nickovich, attorney who represents men detained at Guantanamo before federal courts and military commissions. Represented Sudanese national Mohammed Noor Uthman.

Jeffrey Kaye, a psychologist and writer active in the anti-torture movement. He works clinically with torture victims at Survivors International in San Francisco, CA. His blog is Invictus, and he also regularly blogs at Daily Kos, Docudharma, American Torture, Progressive Historians, and elsewhere. In August he released a report titled "Despite New Denials by Rumsfeld, Evidence Shows US Military Used Waterboarding-Style Torture"
Leili Kashani, Advocacy Program Manager, Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative, Center for Constitutional Rights

WHY: In the month marking the shameful tenth anniversary of Guantánamo's opening, the Center for Constitutional Rights presents a panel discussion on Guantánamo, the lack of accountability for US torture practices, and the broader system of unjust U.S. detentions. Join us, and together let’s grow a movement to close Guantanamo and end all unjust US detentions.

This event is FREE and OPEN to the public.

Please RSVP and invite your friends on our Facebook event page.

Co-sponsored by: Center for Constitutional Rights, Berkeley No More Guantanamos, Codepink Women for Peace, Freedom Archives, National Accountability Action Network, World Can't Wait

04 February: International Day of Solidarity with Leonard Peltier

2012-01-20T14:30:00.001-08:00

The Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee
calls on supporters worldwide to protest against
the injustice suffered by Indigenous activist
Leonard Peltier. Gather on February 4, 2012, at
every federal court house and U.S. embassy or
consulate worldwide to demand the freedom of a
man wrongfully convicted and illegally imprisoned for 36 years!

Leonard Peltier is a Native American activist
wrongfully accused in 1975 in connection with the
shooting deaths of two agents of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Government
documents show that, without any evidence at all,
the FBI decided from the beginning of its
investigation to 'lock Peltier into the case'.

U.S. prosecutors knowingly presented false
statements to a Canadian court to extradite Mr.
Peltier to the U.S. The statements were signed by
a woman who was forced by FBI agents to say she
was an eyewitness. The government has long since
admitted that the woman was not present during the shootings.

Meanwhile, in a separate trial in Cedar Rapids,
Iowa, Mr. Peltier's co-defendants were acquitted
by reason of self defense. Had Leonard been tried
with his co-defendants, he also would have been acquitted.

Unhappy with the outcome of the Cedar Rapids
trial, prosecutors set the stage for Mr.
Peltier's conviction. His trial was moved to an
area known for its anti-Indian sentimentFargo,
North Dakota. The trial judge had a reputation
for ruling against Indians, and a juror is known
to have made racist comments during Mr. Peltier's trial.

FBI documents prove that the U.S. government went
so far as to manufacture the so-called murder
weapon, the most critical evidence in the
prosecution's case. A ballistics test proved,
however, that the gun and shell casings entered
into evidence didn't match. The FBI hid this fact
from the jury. Mr. Peltier was convicted and
sentenced to two consecutive life terms.
According to court records, the United States
Attorney who prosecuted the case has twice
admitted that no one even knows who fired the
fatal shots. Although the courts have
acknowledged evidence of government
misconductincluding forcing witnesses to lie and
hiding ballistics evidence reflecting his
innocenceMr. Peltier has been denied a new trial on a legal technicality.

An accomplished author and artist, Mr. Peltier is
renowned for his humanitarian achievements. A
six-time Nobel Prize nominee, Leonard Peltier is
67 years old and in poor health.

Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, 55 Members of
Congress and othersincluding a judge who sat as
a member of the court in two of Mr. Peltier�s
appealshave all called for his immediate release.

The Courts may not be able to act but Barack
Obama, as President, can. Please join with us to
free an innocent man. On February 4, 2012, tell
Obama to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier.

Host an event or plan to attend a scheduled event
near you. View our online
calendar.

LP-DOC - PO Box 7488 - Fargo, ND 58106
Phone: 701/235-2206; Fax:701/235-5045
www.whoisleonardpeltier.info

******************************************
Updates

Call to Action

In late 2011, the National Congress of American
Indians, representative of 500+ Indigenous
Nations, passed an historic resolution on
Leonard's behalf. If you are a U.S. supporter,
please print a copy of the
Resolution
(PDF) and send it to your Members of
Congress. Urge them to advocate with President
Obama for Leonard's release. Other supporters
around the world may send a copy to President
Obama or a nearby U.S. embassy or
consulate. Also encourage the Assembly of First
Nations in Canada as well as other Indigenous
assemblies/organizations worldwide to pass
similar resolutions to help secure freedom for
Leonard Peltier. You may view current and past
expressions of support for Leonard Peltier
here.

Honors

Leonard Peltier has been widely recognized for
his humanitarian works, winning
honors
including but not limited to:

1986 Human Rights Commission of Spain International Human Rights Prize;

1993 North Star Frederick Douglas Award;

2003 Federation of Labour (Ontario, Canada) Humanist of the Year Award;

2004 Silver Arrow Award for Lifetime Achievement;

2009 First Red Nation Humanitarian Award;

2010 Kwame Ture Lifetime Achievement Award; and

2010 Fighters for Justice Award.

Most recently, Leonard was awarded the first
International Human Rights Prize by the Mario
Benedetti Foundation in Uruguay. Last week,
after a long journey, the award arrived at our
international headquarters in Fargo, North Dakota.

Nigeria fuel strike ends with soldiers in streets

2012-01-20T14:17:00.000-08:00

By JON GAMBRELL | Associated Press – Jan. 16, 2012

LAGOS, Nigeria — Labor unions ended a crippling nationwide strike
Monday in Nigeria after the country's president partially restored
subsidies that keep gasoline prices low, though it took soldiers deployed
in the streets to stop demonstrations in Africa's most populous nation.

Union leaders claimed a victory for labor, saying this would allow its
leaders to guide the country's policy on fuel subsidies in the future. But
the newly agreed price of about $2.27 a gallon (60 cents a liter) is still
more expensive than the previous price of $1.70 per gallon (45 cents per
liter), putting additional economic strain on those living in a nation
where most earn less than $2 a day and few see the rewards of being a
major oil exporter.

And to force the compromise and stop popular protests, President Goodluck
Jonathan ordered soldiers to take over security in the country's major
cities, something unseen since the nation abandoned military rule for an
uneasy democracy in 1999. The move raises new questions about freedom of
speech in a nation where government power still appears absolute.

"This is a clear case of intolerance and shutting of the democratic space
against the people of Nigeria which must be condemned by all
democracy-loving people around the world," read a statement from the Save
Nigeria Group, which has organized massive demonstrations in Lagos.

The six-day strike began after fuel prices more than doubled to at least
$3.50 per gallon (94 cents per liter) following a Jan. 1 decision by
Jonathan's administration to end the government-sponsored subsidies. Low
gasoline prices, something Nigeria has been accustomed to since 1973,
remain one of the only benefits the average Nigerian sees from the nation
producing 2.4 million barrels of crude oil a day. Gasoline also powers the
small generators that provide shops and homes electricity in a nation with
a failed national power grid.

Many protesters also joined the growing demonstrations to speak out
against a culture of government corruption in a nation where lawmakers
earn pay packages of $1 million a year and states have budgets larger than
neighboring countries. Under the hash-tagged slogan of "Occupy Nigeria,"
many used social media to criticize the nation's poor roads and failing
hospitals amid the excesses of the country's elite.

The government tried to persuade the nation to its side, promising the
estimated $8 billion saved a year by ending the subsidies would go toward
needed public work projects. That failed to win popular support as tens of
thousands joined in protests across the country.

In the last two days, government authorities began warning that
provocateurs wanted to exploit the rallies to cause unrest in a nation
with a long history of coups.

"It has become clear to government and all well-meaning Nigerians that
other interests beyond the implementation of the deregulation policy have
hijacked the protest. ... These same interests seek to promote discord,
anarchy and insecurity to the detriment of public peace," President
Jonathan said in a speech aired Monday morning on the state-run Nigerian
Television Authority.

Jonathan gave no further explanation to his remarks. Opposition
politicians did sometimes lead demonstrations, but they were not connected
to the violence that killed at least 10 people and wounded more than 600
others during strikes.

The Nigeria Labor Congress and the Trade Union Congress told journalists
on Monday they chose to abandon the strike "in order to save lives and in
the interest of national survival." They previously met with Jonathan late
Sunday night, who made the same claims about security concerns.

"We are sure that no government or institution will take Nigerians for
granted again," said Abdulwaheed Omar, the president of the Nigeria Labor
Congress.

That did not appear the case as soldiers and armored personnel carriers
moved in overnight to occupy a park in Lagos where tens of thousands had
gathered to protest. Soldiers also took over major highways and road
junctions throughout Lagos, home to 15 million people, and in Kano,
Nigeria's second-largest city.

Labor organizers had urged workers to stay home on Monday after Jonathan's
appeal Sunday night. At the Lagos headquarters of the Nigeria Labor
Congress, some 50 protesters gathered anyway. Lawyer Bamidele Aturu led
the crowd in chants and cheers, comparing the president to military rulers
of the past who used soldiers to suppress dissent.

"It's very clear the revolution has begun!" Aturu shouted. However, those
gathered looked warily at passing pickup trucks filled with soldiers.

The protesters began to march, passing soldiers who slung their assault
rifles over their shoulders, allowing them to walk on. But as they drew
closer to the surrounded Lagos park, around 20 soldiers arrived in two
pickup trucks to cut them off, with bayonets affixed to their assault
rifles. They told the protesters to go back and some of them began to turn
around.

Soldiers fired into the air and tear gassed the crowd to disperse it,
leaving protesters running through a stinging white cloud as gunshots
echoed down the highway.

Meanwhile, authorities also targeted some foreign media outlets in Lagos.
Officers of the State Security Service, Nigeria's secret police, raided an
office compound Monday used by the BBC and CNN, witnesses said. Marilyn
Ogar, a secret police spokeswoman, said she had no information about the
raid.

Though an oil workers association threatened to cut Nigeria's crude oil
production, they held off. Such a shutdown could have shaken oil futures,
as Nigeria is the fifth-largest crude supplier to the U.S.

Meanwhile, an offshore rig being run for a Chevron Corp. subsidiary near
Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta caught fire and officials tried to
account for all the workers there, the oil company said. Chevron spokesman
Scott Walker said the fire started early Monday morning. Government
officials blamed the fire on an industrial accident.

___

Associated Press writers Bashir Adigun and Lekan Oyekanmi in Abuja,
Nigeria; Ibrahim Garba in Kano, Nigeria; and Yinka Ibukun in Lagos
contributed to this report.

Nigerian unions call off national strike

Decision comes after President Jonathan said he would bring down fuel
price hikes that have sparked protests.

Last Modified: 16 Jan 2012 Al Jazeera

Union leaders in Nigeria have called off a week-long nationwide strike
that has been paralysing the country's economy, following a decision by
President Goodluck Jonathan to roll back fuel-price increases.

Jonathan announced on Monday that he would reduce fuel prices in response
to protests and strikes that sprang up after his government withdrew fuel
subsidies at the beginning of January.

But his announcement failed to quell all of the protests, and soldiers
reportedly used force to shut down demonstrations in Lagos, the country's
commercial capital.

Under Goodluck's new plan, the Nigerian government will reduce fuel prices
by 30 per cent, to around $2.75 per gallon, by restoring some of the
subsidies. That price is still considerably higher than the roughly $1.70
per gallon Nigerians paid before the subsidies were removed.

Tear gas in Lagos

The strike cancellation came after an announcement by the unions, early on
Monday morning, that they would halt street protests.

The unions feared that "people outside organised labour may try to hijack"
the demonstrations, said Abdulwahed Omar, the head of Nigeria Labour
Congress.

Still, security forces opened fire into the air and used tear gas on
Monday to disperse protesters who came out in Lagos.

An AFP news agency correspondent said soldiers first shot into the air to
disperse the protesters before police fired tear gas, forcing them to
flee. No injuries were reported.

'Protests hijacked'

Though the subsidy reductions prompted immediate public anger, the
government's supporters argue the move was necessary.

Jide Olateju, a former adviser to the Nigerian finance minister, told Al
Jazeera that the problem was poor communication between the government and
the people, not the policy.

"The policy is inherently good for the economy and the people," he said.
"Nigeria imports more than 90 per cent of its refined product and this
happens because there was a crippling of its refineries."

The subsidy system encourages corruption, since importers earn 70 cents
per litre and inflate the amount they are importing, Olateju said.

"Once you remove subsidies, there's an incentive for investors to come in
... and refine oil on Nigerian soil," he said.

Jonathan warns of "anarchy"

In an address on national television on Sunday, Jonathan said provocateurs
had hijacked the protests and demonstrations, in which tens of thousands
of people marched in cities across the nation.

"It has become clear to government and all well-meaning Nigerians that
other interests beyond the implementation of the deregulation policy have
hijacked the protest,'' he said.

"This has prevented an objective assessment and consideration of all the
contending issues for which dialogue was initiated by government. These
same interests seek to promote discord, anarchy, and insecurity to the
detriment of public peace.''

The nationwide unrest had brought much of Nigeria, Africa's most populous
country, to a standstill.

While the strike had been suspended for the weekend, labour leaders warned
it would resume on Monday if a deal had not been reached. An earlier
threat to shut down oil production was shelved.

Roots of crisis

Unions launched the strike after the government deregulated the downstream
petroleum sector and ended fuel subsidies on January 1, which more than
doubled petrol prices overnight, angering many who saw the subsidies as
one of the few public benefits of the country's oil wealth.

The costs of food and transportation also largely doubled in a nation
where most people live on less than $2 a day.

At least 10 people have died as a result of the violence, while Red Cross
volunteers have treated more than 600 people injured, officials said.

Jonathan and other government officials had argued that removing the
subsidies, which were estimated to cost $8bn a year, would allow the
government to spend money on badly needed public projects across a country
that has pot-holed roads, little electricity and a lack of clean drinking
water in many areas.

However, many remain suspicious of government as military rulers and
politicians have plundered government budgets since independence from
Britain in 1960.

Arresting Alex Sanchez: Part 10 – Judge Manual Real is Removed

2012-01-20T14:05:00.000-08:00

January 13th, 2012 by Celeste Fremon witnessla.com

On Wednesday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals made the surprising decision to remove controversial Judge Manual Real from the federal RICO case that involves Alex Sanchez.

This news shocked nearly everyone who is closely tracking the Sanchez matter. Yanking a federal judge from a case is anything but business as usual.

As most longtime WitnessLA readers know, Alex Sanchez is the Salvadoran-born, former MS-13 gang member turned highly respected gang violence reduction activist who has been accused of a long list of Federal racketeering and conspiracy charges. According to the government’s case, the supposedly reformed Sanchez never reformed at all, but remained, in reality, a MS-13 shot caller who ordered at least one murder.

(For the rest of the backstory click here and then scroll down a bunch and read from the bottom up.)

The judge assigned to his case, U.S. District Court Judge Manual Real, was appointed to the federal bench in 1966 by Lyndon Johnson.

At nearly 88 (his birthday is Jan. 27), Real is what we used to call a character. He has spent 45 years on the same bench and, in his court room, he projects an image that combines the demeanor of an irascible uncle who mutters loudly and tyrannically over his soup at Thanksgiving dinner, with that of a glowering bird of prey.

Yet, unlike your irascible uncle, Real wields enormous power over the lives of those who come before him. According to his critics, who are many and varied, he is a bully on the bench who often makes up his mind on a case before it goes to trial and then may visibly telegraphs his opinion to all in the courtroom. He once threatened to throw then California Attorney General Dan Lungren into jail for contempt and used to be known for telling lawyers “This isn’t Burger King. We don’t do it your way here.”

Real’s reversal rate is estimated to be 10 times the average for sitting federal judges.

He has had at least ten cases outright snatched away from him by appeals courts.

In 2006, there was serious talk of impeaching him.

Even in the Sanchez case, it took four separate hearings and the interference of the 9th Circuit, before Real would allow Sanchez’ attorney to fully present arguments for setting bail for Sanchez. (However, to Real’s credit, in January of 2010 Real called for a special closed door hearing, after which he did set Sanchez’s bail at $2 million, an amount that friends and supporters had already raised in the form of surities and property.)

Since Sanchez was originally arrested on the RICO charges in June 2009, this means, had thee been no bail he would have spent, as of this writing, 2 years and 7 months in jail, with no trial as yet in sight.

The change in judges will, of course, push Sanchez’ trial back still further.

Yet, with the alarming wild card presence of Judge Real now removed, no one in either the Sanchez or the prosecution camps, appears to be complaining.

NOTE: In the interest of transparency, it’s important that I tell those of you new to this story that I consider Alex Sanchez a respected and valued friend. This means that while I work very hard to give readers the most factual possible information on the issue, I also have strong feelings about this case.

Posted in Arresting Alex Sanchez, FBI, Gangs | 1 Comment »

Ed Humes Examines the Case Against Alex Sanchez

February 15th, 2011 by Celeste Fremon

When California Lawyer Magazine contacted Pulitzer-winning author/journalist, Edward Humes, to write something about the case of Alex Sanchez (published in their February issue), Humes said he first took the story assignment because he was intrigued by the notion that someone as beloved as gang intervention leader Sanchez was said to be living an elaborate double life.

“That becomes the HBO movie, right?” he said.

But as Humes delved into the details of the case and began going to Sanchez’ hearings in federal court, presided over by Judge Manual Real (a character so extravagantly quirky that he begs to be incorporated into a novel), Humes says he began to wonder if perhaps the real story wasn’t something quite different than the tale he first imagined.

As most WitnessLA readers know, Alex Sanchez is a former MS-13 gang member turned highly respected gang violence reduction activist who has been accused of a long list of Federal racketeering and conspiracy charges. According to the government’s case, the supposedly reformed Sanchez never reformed at all, but remained, in reality, a MS-13 shot caller who ordered at least one murder.

Since most LA media outlets have all but ignored the story, I wanted to know more about how and why Humes became interested. Hence our conversation.

Humes told me that one of the things that first caught his attention when he began to get into the case was the fact that bulk of the evidence that the federal lawyers presented against Sanchez focused on four wire-tapped conversations in which Sanchez took part. “But you have these dueling interpretations of the main quotes.” Humes said. As he writes in his article, the government’s interpretation is provided by an LAPD gang expert named Frank Flores. The defense had the conversations independently translated by gang intervention and recovery expert Father Greg Boyle.

I asked Humes what he thought of the discrepant interpretations. “Frankly, Father Boyle’s version of the conversations make a lot more sense in context,” he said

After looking at the dueling translations, Humes said he began to wonder why the government’s interpretation of conversations and events seemed all to require an assumption of guilt.

“The Supreme Court is very clear that the prosecution’s job is-–not to win—but to see that justice is done. So one of the questions I still want answered is why are they so convinced that he [Sanchez] is dirty since they haven’t produced convincing evidence so far? There may be a lot more at the trial, but based on what they’ve produced so far….”

As to whether he has a gut feeling about Alex Sanchez guilt or innocence himself, Humes won’t commit. “Let’s just say that basically I have a lot of questions about the government’s case. And they need to be answered.”

Humes’ willingness to ask questions has produced an even-handed, thought-provoking and informative look at the case thus far.

Below you’ll find a clip from the story’s opening. But be sure to read the whole article from beginning to end. it’s more than worth your time.

[FIRST, ONE SMALL NOTE: The Sanchez trial was supposed to have begun yesterday, on Valentine's Day. It has now been delayed until September 2011, at the earliest. With the ever-receding trial date in mind, it is worth remembering that, had Sanchez' attorney and supporters not managed to get the presiding judge to reverse himself and grant Sanchez a $2 million bail (and even that only after four bail hearings and the intervention of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals), the defendant---whether guilty or innocent---would have remained in jail from June 2009 until....whenever.]

The four phone calls that put Alex Sanchez in jail—and in the middle of a massive federal racketeering and conspiracy case—were angry, profane, and seemingly illuminating. They opened a rare window not only onto the brutal, secretive, backstabbing world of one of America’s most notorious street gangs, but also on the life of Sanchez himself, a nationally prominent anti-gang activist in Los Angeles credited with steering hundreds of young people away from lives of crime and violence.

What Sanchez didn’t know in 2006 when he participated in those calls was that the FBI was listening in. Nor could he have guessed that the words he spoke would help convince a federal-local investigative task force that Sanchez was leading a double life, publicly opposing gangs in his day job, then moonlighting after hours as a leader or “shot-caller” of the Los Angeles street-gang-turned-international-crime-syndicate known as Mara Salvatrucha—MS-13.

The feds characterized one conversation in particular as a smoking gun. It was a conference call with several known members of MS-13, who continually referred to Sanchez as Rebelde, Spanish for rebel, his old nickname from the gang life he’d supposedly left behind 15 years before. The men on the tape debated what to do about an El Salvador – based gangster known as Camarón (the Shrimp), whom Sanchez accused of falsely branding him a police informant—a veritable death sentence in these circles. Sanchez wanted to turn the tables: “He has to face the consequences,” he urged. “We have said it, we go to war.”

Little more than a week after that exchange, the lifeless corpse of Camarón, whose real name was Walter Lacinos, was found shot through the head in La Libertad, El Salvador, a hotbed of MS-13 activity.

Had the FBI just heard Sanchez’s alter ego, Rebelde, order a hit on Camarón? That was the story the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles offered at a press conference in June 2009 to announce a historic racketeering indictment against Sanchez and 23 named MS-13 members.

“Today in Los Angeles, where the MS-13 gang was formed, we are holding its leaders accountable for the violence and intimidation they have used to bring terror to the citizens living and working within the gang’s territory,” then-U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O’Brien told reporters. The indictments marked the latest assault in a nine-year war on MS-13 by the FBI, which had used 21 court-ordered wiretaps to monitor thousands of phone conversations.

The wiretaps had already helped build an earlier state case against the alleged top shot-caller for MS-13 in Los Angeles. (It also appears that the FBI had made informants out of the alleged “CEO” of MS-13’s worldwide operations, as well as his second-in-command.) Now the recordings were being used in an effort to bring down Sanchez, a poster boy for the gang-prevention efforts that many law enforcement officials reflexively distrusted.

The latest indictments charged that the defendants had conspired to engage in extortion, drug dealing, robbery, witness intimidation, and seven murders. The complaint also described a failed conspiracy to assassinate one of the government’s top gang experts, Detective Frank Flores of the Los Angeles Police Department.

This was a major breakthrough in the fight against MS-13, proclaimed then-LAPD Chief William Bratton, speaking at O’Brien’s press conference. He branded the gang “a cancer … that lacks a single redeeming quality.” And yet no aspect of the story drew as much attention as the charges against Sanchez.

Read on.

The video is from March 2009 at UCLA where Alex Sanchez was on a panel examining “Global Perspectives of Youth and Violence.” Three months later, Sanchez would be arrested by the FBI for racketeering and conspiracy, charges that could get him sentenced to life in prison.

From Sundiata Acoli - Birthday, Transfer and OWS

2012-01-20T13:58:00.000-08:00

Via Kiilu Nyasha

I'm in email contact with Sundiata, and he sent me this email to share:

Birthday, Transfer and OWS
by Sundiata Acoli- 1/14/2012

Thank each of you for such warm Birthday (Jan. 14th) greetings,
they brightened my day immensely but frankly it's hard for me to
fully comprehend that i'm actually 3/4 of a Century old. That is old
by any standard!

i was transferred from FCI Otisville, NY because they're
supposedly converting it into a "Sex-Offenders and
Debriefed-Gang-Members" prison. Otisville population stands at around
1200 prisoners. Staff said they planned to transfer out 500
prisoners, mostly gang members and replace them with sex offenders
and debriefed gang members, i.e., prisoners who have gotten out of
the gang and off the prison's gang list as a result of them
debriefing by telling what they know of their gang's operations and
pointing out other unknown gang members to the staff.

Otisville had transferred out approximately 20 gang members (1
bus load) each week for a month or more when they added "convicted
murderers" to the transfer list. i departed Otisville on the 2nd
busload of prisoners convicted of murder. At each stop along the way,
MDC Brooklyn, NY and FDC Philly, PA the prisoners there were very
welcoming and helpful altho federal men's prison are so overcrowded
that there's a widespread chronic shortage of the most basic
supplies, prisoners are literally stacked atop each other and as soon
as any prisoner transfers out, another moves into his bed space that
same day or the next.

At MDC Brooklyn i received a much welcomed visit from each of
my long time attorneys: Florence, Soffiyah, Marisa and Joan.
Attorneys can simply show up at the Detention Center and visit. Not
so for family or friends, they must be on a new visit list created at
the Center. None of my family or friends were able to get on my list
before the week or so lapsed by which time i was long gone to the
next detention center.

The same visit rules were in effect at FDC Philly, PA. After a
week or so there our bus departed on a round-about trip to FCI
Schuykill, PA, our final destination. The first stop was Harrisburg
International Airport, PA which looked every bit like a modern day
slave market. 40 to 50 bus and van loads of prisoners, mostly Black
and Brown with a splash of White and smaller splashes of Red and
Yellow, chained hand and foot, sat along the runway of a "Con Air"
transport jet disgorging hordes of cuffed hobbling prisoners from
it's entrails. Empty, and refilling its belly with just as many new
prisoners from the buses/vans until finally sated, it turned, waddled
down the runway , belched, and lurched into the horizon.

Other buses and vans mixed and matched, switched and
swapped prisoners till each bus was loaded only with prisoners going
to the same destinations across the Northeast: NY, NJ, PA, DE, MD,
VA, WV; the whole operation was surrounded by a cordon of federal
marshals, prison guards, state troopers and county sheriffs.

It was here that all the prisoners on my bus were switched to a
bus bound for FCI Schuykill...except me. Shortly, a guard i vaguely
recognized from long ago came, took me off the bus and escorted me to
another filled with different prisoners. Once seated i asked where
they were headed. They said "Cumberland." My property and traveling
papers continued on to Schuykill. We arrived at FCI Cumberland and i
was immediately put in SHU (the Hole) because they had no papers for
me. I did 10 days semi-incommunicado in "the hole" until my papers
arrived and was then let out into general population. i thank all
those who expressed concern about my welfare during the transfer,
particularly Mumia Abu-Jamal, Pam Africa, the Jericho Movement and
numerous others. i've since learned that at least 5 convicted
murderers who left Otisville on the bus with me were rerouted back to
FCI Otisville before reaching their transfer destination. They were all White.

i and SAFC support the OWS/OCCUPY MOVEMENT and i thank them for
the evolving mutual support they've shown at various times and places
for the Jericho Movement, the Black Movement and other Movements of
People of Color and the Oppressed.

Update on Jalil Muntaqim

2012-01-20T13:57:00.000-08:00

NYC Jericho

Three of us went to Attica on Saturday, January 14, 2012 to visit
Jalil. We had an excellent visit and have a brief update from Jalil.

First of all, he thanks everyone who took the time to make the calls
to Superindent Bradt and Commissioner Brian Fischer.
The most important thing he wants people to know is that on Friday,
January 13th, at 1 p.m. all Muslims were searched while on the way to
Juma. The COs took Korans and threw them on the ground during the
search in a blatant attempt to provoke a confrontation, but "nobody jumped."

Also, Jalil's Tier 3 hearing for "unauthorized organization" was held
on January 13th in the morning. Jalil requested that Sergeant Cochran
of Gang Intel be a witness, as he was the officer who processed
Jalil's possessions when he arrived at Attica, but the Sergeant declined.

Jalil showed Officer Krumph, the hearing officer, the programs from
the Cetewayo, Shasha and Karim Memorials, all of which have BPP/BLA
logos, and asked why these items had not also been confiscated if
they are considered to be "gang material."

Jalil also requested Counselor Schiffer as a witness. Jalil
reiterated that, if these items had been approved by the mailroom,
there was no reason for them to subsequently be considered "contraband."

Officer Krumph proceeded to call the correspondence dept., and the
officers there informed him that, since correspondence had approved
the mail, there was no reason why the photos should have been
confiscated in the first place.

The hearing has now been postponed until sometime this week, as
Officer Krumph is to interview Sergeant Cochran and Counselor Schiffer.

As always, Jalil sends revolutionary greetings to the righteous at heart.

Anne
NYC Jericho

10 Years in Prison, 10 Years of Struggle: On the Anniversary of the Abduction of Ahmad Sa'adat

2012-01-20T13:50:00.000-08:00

Jan. 15, 2012 freeahmadsaadat.org

January 15, 2012 is the 10th anniversary of the abduction of Palestinian political leader Ahmad Sa'adat by the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah at the hands of the PA intelligence services headed by Tawfiq Tirawi. Sa'adat, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, has been imprisoned for ten years - first by PA security, then under US and British guard in a PA prison in Jericho, and now, for the past six years, inside Israeli jails alongside thousands of other Palestinian political prisoners after a siege on Jericho and the kidnapping of Sa'adat and his comrades in 2006.

The kidnapping of Ahmad Sa'adat on January 15, 2002, was emblematic of the deep damage of the crime of "security cooperation" to the Palestinian people and their national cause. "Security cooperation" has meant nothing but attacks on the Palestinian resistance at the behest of Israel, committed by Palestinian Authority hands. The abduction of Ahmad Sa'adat, and his imprisonment - and that of his comrades - in the PA prison in Jericho, under U.S. and British guard, was a clear example of the PA's status as fundamentally beholden to the interests of Israel, the U.S. and other international powers, at the expense of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian resistance.

The abduction of Ahmad Sa'adat has come to symbolize the thousands of Palestinians who have gone through the jails of the PA because of their loyalty to the Palestinian people, cause and resistance, and the impunity of PA officials - like Tawfiq Tirawi - who continue to find lucrative and influential positions within the Authority despite their shameless acts of betrayal, imprisoning, and abducting Palestinian leaders and activists.

This complicity with Israeli demands for the subjugation and suppression of the Palestinian people led directly to the Israeli assault on Jericho prison in 2006, where Ahmad Sa'adat and his comrades were immobilized in the face of Israeli occupation aggression. Sa'adat had never been charged with a crime throughout his four years in PA prison; his release had been ordered by the PA's highest court. Yet the PA refused to release Sa'adat, respecting the dictates of Israel, the US and Britain above Palestinian legitimacy; it claimed that it "could not guarantee his safety" outside the prison. Yet it simultaneously guaranteed that he and his comrades could not be safe from Israeli aggression, their locations known at all times by Israel and under the watchful eyes of U.S. and British guards, directly in collusion with Israel. (It should be noted that, forewarned of the attack, the U.S. and British guards absented Jericho prison at the request of the Israeli occupation army.)

Since his second kidnapping, from a PA prison to the heart of the occupation's jails, Ahmad Sa'adat has remained a leader of the prisoners' movement. Today, he has spent nearly three full years in isolation at the hands of the occupation. He was an inspiration - and his release from isolation a key demand of the prisoners' hunger strike that galvanized the Palestinian prisoners' movement and the prisoners' cause in October 2011.

Just as Sa'adat's kidnapping is a symbol of the crime of security cooperation, Sa'adat's imprisonment in the hands of the occupation is a symbol of the steadfastness of the nearly 5,000 prisoners inside the jails of the occupation - like his fellow prisoners, resisting isolation, refusing rights violations, and not allowing their will and strength to be broken by the actions of the occupation jailers.

Ten years after the abduction of Ahmad Sa'adat, this anniversary is a reminder that we must continue to organize, act, and demand the freedom of Ahmad Sa'adat and all Palestinian political prisoners, and expose the complicity of the U.S., British, Canadian and other international governments in the enforcement of "security cooperation" and the abuse and mass imprisonment of Palestinian political leaders and activists. While the Quartet pushes the Palestinian Authority to return to bogus negotiations with the occupation (while the occupation continues settlement expansion, ethnic cleansing, land confiscation, home demolitions, isolation, solitary confinement, and mass imprisonment), it is urgent that we form an international popular basis of support for the Palestinian people and their activists and leaders inside the jails of the occupation, rather than those complicit with the occupation at the table of negotiations.

Take Action!

1. Picket, protest or call the Israeli embassy or consulate in your location and demand the immediate freedom of Ahmad Sa'adat and all Palestinian political prisoners.

2. Distribute the free downloadable Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat flyer in your community at local events.

3. Write to the International Committee of the Red Cross and other human rights organizations to exercise their responsibilities and act swiftly to demand that prisoners' rights are recognized. Email the ICRC, whose humanitarian mission includes monitoring the conditions of prisoners, at JER_jerusalem@icrc.org, and inform them about the urgent situation of Ahmad Sa'adat. Make it clear that isolation is a human rights violation and a form of torture, and that the ICRC must stand up and play its role to defend prisoners' rights.

4. Email the Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat at campaign@freeahmadsaadat.org with announcements, reports and information about your local events, activities and flyer distributions.

WHO IS AHMAD SA'ADAT?

Ahmad Sa'adat, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was elected to his position in 2001 following the assassination of the previous General Secretary, Abu Ali Mustafa, on August 27, 2001 by a U.S.-made Apache missile shot from an Israeli military helicopter as he sat in his office in Ramallah. PFLP fighters retaliated by assassinating Rehavam Ze'evi, the racist extremist Israeli tourism minister and head of the Moledet party, notorious for his political platform based on the "transfer" or ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, on October 17, 2001.

Sa'adat was abducted by Palestinian Authority security forces after engaging in a meeting with PA officials under false pretenses in February 2002, and was held in the Muqata' PA presidential building in Ramallah until April 2002, when in an agreement with Israel, the U.S. and Britain, he and four of his comrades were held in the Palestinian Authority's Jericho prison, under U.S. and British guard.

He remained in the PA jails, without trial or charge, an imprisonment that was internationally condemned, until March 14, 2006, when the prison itself was besieged by the occupation army and he and his comrades were kidnapped. While imprisoned in the PA jail in Jericho, he was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council. Since that time, he has been held in the prisons of the occupation and continually refused to recognize the illegitimate military courts of the Israeli occupation. He was sentenced to thirty years in prison on December 25, 2008 solely for his political activity, and has spent nearly three years in isolation at the present time.

Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat

Mandy Hiscocks Sentenced to 16 Months

2012-01-16T13:52:00.000-08:00

Jan. 13, 2012 Guelph ABC

“White supremacy is wrong, it’s violent and dangerous, whether it’s at the hands of a fringe group like the KKK or an accepted institution like the criminal justice system.”

“…This is why we, myself and the people in the other room, don’t have decorum in this system.”

-Mandy Hiscock’s statement to the courts

On Friday (January) the 13th 2012, Mandy Hiscocks was sentenced to 20-24 month for 1 count of Counseling to Commit Mischief and Counseling to Obstruct Police. With 31 days in pretrial custody and harsh bail conditions taken into account, Mandy’s remaining time to serve is 16 months.

With the courthouse filled with supporters, more than could even fit in the courtroom, Mandy delivered an awesome speech chastising the justice system and enlightening the judge as to why exactly, her desires have not been deterred by her sentence.

The Judge took it upon himself to try and engage her on many of the points she brought up, defending the state and capital, and even at one point announcing that he is also apart of the “99%”. Warm cheers and chants from supporters for Mandy’s words brought threats of contempt charges and removing all her supporters from the courtroom.

if you would like to stay up to date on Mandy’s incarceration, check out the support blog set up for her, or check back in with Guelph ABC for relevant updates. Mandy’s Blog: http://boredbutnotbroken.tao.ca/

If you want to write Mandy, you can send your letters, fan mail and Battle Star Galactica fan fiction to:

Amanda Hiscocks

c/o Vanier Centre for Women
665 Martin Street
Milton, Ontario L9T 5E6
Canada

-Guelph Anarchist Black Cross (GAyBC)

Mandy’s Statement to the Courts Below:

It’s not every day you get the opportunity to speak directly to a judge, and I have a lot to say. This is my first opportunity to speak since this entire process started last June so I hope you’ll hear me out until the end.

I plan to take about ten to fiteen minutes at most.

I don’t know you as a person or as a judge, so my comments are directed at the legal system in general.

I want to address some of the things you said on this matter in earlier sentencing hearings, particularly your references to the KKK.

When you sentenced Peter, Adam, Erik and Leah to jail, you stated that this is not political, it is about our tactics. You mentioned the KKK, and compared their actions to those of the non-violent civil disobedience protesters of the 60s. I agree with you that the tactics used by the KKK are reprehensible. I disagree with you that that kind of violence against people is anything remotely like the property damage that occurred on the streets of Toronto during the G20 summit.

Regardless, by focusing on the KKK’s tactics and not their politics you’ve missed the point entirely. The problem with the KKK isn’t only their tactics. It’s the fact that they’re a white supremacist group.

White supremacy is defined as “an historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations and peoples of color by white peoples and nations; for the purpose of establishing, maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power and privilege.”

I don’t think you disagree with me that there is a system of wealth, power and privilege in this country. I benefit from this system every day, and so do you. We benefit on the backs of others, most of whom are people of colour.

Systemic oppression is widespread in the legal system. Racial profiling affects who gets arrested in the first place, who gets charged and who gets sent home, whose charges the Crown decides to proceed with and whose they drop, who gets bail and who doesn’t. It’s not a secret that if you’re in custody during your trial, your chances of conviction are higher. And even if you do get out on bail, who gets compliance checks and who doesn’t means some people end up back in jail on a breach while others don’t. Who in this is more likely to plead guilty right away because they don’t have the time, tools or money to defend themselves?

The fact is that lawyers are expensive and your chance of conviction depends on how much time your lawyer is willing to put into your case. Most judges are white, and the jury selection process means that if you’re poor you’ll almost certainly not end up with a jury of your peers. And finally, sentencing relies on privilege (your education level, your chance of employment, your income, prior run-ins with the law, and so on.)

I don’t have proper statistics for all of the above, and anyway I know you know this stuff. I just want you to be aware that I know it too, and so do most of the people in this room today and in the video room.

However, here are some statistics that I do have: According to the federal correctional investigator, over the past decade there has been a 52 per cent leap in the proportion of black offenders in federal incarceration. Black people make up roughly 2.5 per cent of Canada’s population but 9.12 per cent of federal prisoners. In Ontario, 20 per cent of the federal prison population is black. Keeping in mind that people of colour have been hardest hit by the economic downturn and the conservative policies of our current government, and keeping in mind all the ways in which the legal system disadvantages people of colour, is it really any wonder?

My point is that a few broken windows and burned police cars at a protest will not lead us down the path of the KKK. The KKK targeted black people with overt violence and terror, and this system targets them with institutionalized racism, which is just a more subtle form of violence. In fact this legal system is doing the work of the KKK more than any anti-G20 protester ever could. It’s very telling that the KKK was comprised in large part of wealthy businessmen and lawmakers – the kinds of people our society and our legal system hold up as the best of the best. Perhaps this is why in 1987 Weatherman Linda Evans was sentenced to 40 years for using false ID to get a firearm and harbouring a fugitive, despite the average sentence for that being 2 years. In the same year, a KKK leader named Don Black, who was planning an invasion of Dominica with a boatload of explosives and automatic weapons, was sentenced to 8 years, 5 of which were suspended, so that he ended up serving 3.

White supremacy is wrong, it’s violent and dangerous, whether it’s at the hands of a fringe group like the KKK or an accepted institution like the criminal justice system.

**********

It’s not always what the “justice” system does that causes the problems, sometimes it’s what it doesn’t do. The courts simply do not consider systemic oppression and inequality.

In a book called The Red Lily, Anatole France stated that “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” The book was written in 1894 in France, but that statement still applies here, today.

A crime is a crime, you say, regardless of who committed it, and what leads people to crime doesn’t matter.

In 1999 the Supreme Court of Canada tried to address systemic injustice in their ruling on Regina vs Gladue. They stated that we need to acknowledge the circumstances of Indigenous people, the reasons they may wind up in the justice system, and the racist treatment and attitudes they encounter there. They recommended alternatives to prison sentences that mesh more with Indigenous cultures.

According to people who work in the field, many Indigenous accused still don’t know about Gladue reports or how to get them, and they aren’t always informed by their lawyers. Judges continue to resist the sentencing principles outlined at the conclusion of the Gladue case.

According to Statistics Canada, in 2008/2009, 10 years after the ruling, Aboriginal women represented 28% of all women remanded and 37% of women admitted to sentenced custody. Today Aboriginal women, though less than two per cent of the Canadian population, make up 34 per cent of female federal inmates.

My point being, I don’t have the power to change what happens in this legal system. I’m trying to indicate why I don’t respect this legal system.

**********

The crown wants this sentence to be a deterrent. It won’t be. Please take a second to have a good look around the room. When i get taken out of here do you think you’ll have increased anyone’s faith in the system?

I am certainly not deterred, I’m just angry.

No matter what my sentence is today, it won’t be about justice. Your system is not about justice. If it was, don’t you think we would have come to you when the G20 decided to set foot here to pursue their obviously unjust austerity agenda? Don’t you think we would have asked for your help when the police started to put up their fences and cages, and randomly arrest whoever they felt like so they could systematically abuse them in the detention centre?

If this system was about righting wrongs, don’t you think we would come to you to hold the rich to account for their abuses against the poor, immigration officials to account for their abuses against people without status, and settlers to account for our abuses against Indigenous people?

We didn’t and don’t come to you. We won’t ever come to you.

A court of real justice would defend people against aggressors. In this society, the privileged are the aggressors, but time after time you choose to protect their privilege and their property against people who are struggling to survive. You’re doing it wrong. Let’s not debate. The obvious answer to the violence and the chaos is the cops brought that. I’m going to try and finish.

This legal system that we have here is not equal, it’s not fair and its not just. And a lot of people out there believe that it is. What I would like to impart to you is that I don’t buy it and the statistics dont support it.

You speak of dignity, that everyone should be treated with dignity. I agree with you. But you can’t treat someone with dignity, or expect to be treated with dignity in return, while one person is up high and the other person is down low, while your boot is on their neck.

This is why we, myself and the people in the other room, don’t have decorum in this system.

Throughout this farcical legal process that’s coming to an end today the accused have been told that our actions were an attack on the rule of law, which is at the heart of our society. Well good. Our society is racist and colonial, its rooted in wealth and power, and so is the rule of law that upholds it.

And I’m going to leave this court room today, to quote Chilean anarchist Diego Rios:

“I am carrying all my hatred and contempt for power, its laws, its authority, its society, and I have no room for guilt or fear of punishment.”

-Mandy Hiscocks

6 Years - A Note from Eric McDavid's Partner

2012-01-16T13:48:00.000-08:00

From: sacprisonersupport@riseup.net
Date: Fri, January 13, 2012

Dear friends,

Today marks the 6th year of Eric's arrest and incarceration. I'm not
quite sure why I always feel compelled to commemorate this day – the
memories it awakens bring so much pain, anger and frustration. It is not
something I really want to remember. It is also something I can never
forget. That day forever altered the course of Eric's life – and the
lives of all his loved ones.

But I also know that it is our responsibility to remember. To remember
why Eric was arrested in the first place – not because anything burned
down or was damaged, but because he dared to think he could change things.
And that he didn't have to wait for permission from those who would never
give it. Eric was arrested – and sentenced to an inordinate amount of
time – because of his politics

We also must remember what it really means to show solidarity – with Eric
and all of our other comrades behind bars. We must remember that they are
still here. They are all still a part of our movements and we need to act
– every day – to include them. And, most importantly, we must carry on
the struggles for which they have given so much.

And we need to remember that sometimes things do change overnight.
Sometimes our loved ones are ripped from us. There is no way to really
prepare for such a heartwrenching experience, but what we can do is
remember to use the time we have now to be good to each other. Love
fearlessly. Never take for granted the time we share with each other. It
is a precious gift.

Recently, Eric and I had something returned to us that was taken 6 years
ago. I have no one to thank. It should never have been taken in the
first place. But I cannot tell you how overjoyed I was at its return. On
November 21st, during our visit at Terminal Island, Eric reached across
the “coffee table” sitting between us and grabbed my hands. Eric and I
had not been allowed to sit and hold hands in almost 6 years. Human touch
is such an integral part of leading a healthy, happy life. Not being able
to touch the people you love is tortuous. It is cruel and inhumane.
(Imagine watching a loved one cry and not being able to wipe away their
tears, or hold their hand...) Touch deepens our connections with each
other – it moves beyond language into a realm that words cannot contain or
explain. Of course, the powers that be know all of this, which is
probably why it was denied us for so long. We are acutely aware that it
could be taken away again at any moment. But for now we are reveling in
every second of it.

And so I remind myself of this, too – don't ever take these things for
granted.

Eric and I both would like to express our heartfelt thanks to all of you.
It is abundantly clear that so many people have not forgotten. Eric
continues to get mail from people all across the globe – please keep it
coming! He loves hearing from you. You are his connection to the outside
world – to the movements and places and ideas he cares about. Keeping
those connections is incredibly important to him.

And to all of you who have donated to Eric's support fund – you have no
idea how grateful we are. These donations not only help Eric with things
like stamps, food and personal items from commissary and time on the
telephone – they also help fund visits for him and his loved ones. These
visits are key to keeping everyone sane. It would be impossible for us to
visit as often as we do without your help.

Eric and I feel your support on a daily basis. “Thank you” could never be
enough...

Eric is 6 years into an almost 20 year sentence. Sometimes that thought
is almost overwhelming. But then I remember. I remember Eric and who he
is and how he has held onto that throughout this whole ordeal. I remember
all of you and how much love and support we have felt coming from all
directions. And I remember that we can do this.

With so much love,
jenny (eric's partner)

PS
Please remember our other friends, too! Marie Mason is turning 50 this
month. Visit her website: www.supportmariemason.org for more details on
how to send her a birthday card or a note of support.

Crowds greet famous Myanmar activist after release

2012-01-16T13:42:00.000-08:00

Jan. 14, 2012 Associated Press

PYAY, Myanmar (AP) — Few convicts leave prison with their heads held high.
Political detainees, like the several hundred released Friday under a
presidential pardon in Myanmar, are a different matter. Unrepentant for
the most part, they often leave jail toughened, if not energized.

Min Ko Naing is another case altogether.

His real name is Paw U Tun, but he is better known by his pseudonym, which
means "Conqueror of Kings."

Joyous crowds greeted the nearly legendary leader of a failed 1988
pro-democracy uprising after he was released from prison in Thayet, 345
miles (545 kilometers) north of Yangon, Myanmar's biggest city and former
capital.

At frequent stops during his journey back to his home in Yangon on Friday
and Saturday, Min Ko Naing rallied his supporters, saying he would not
give up the fight for democracy and freedom he launched 24 years ago.

A year ago, such scenes would have been unlikely. But Myanmar is a
different place now, with freedom starting to take root since the
installation of a military-backed but elected government that has embarked
on a series of reforms. An independent but censored press is flourishing,
and front pages of newspapers feature once-taboo news of the country's
democracy movement and its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

Calendars, T-shirts and other paraphernalia of Suu Kyi's National League
for Democracy party are sold openly on the streets of Yangon.

But the adoring reception Min Ko Naing received as he traveled to Yangon
was the kind one might encounter on a campaign trail of a sure winner,
with crowds of up to 1,000 people turning out along the route and tying up
traffic.

After a ferry ride on the Irrawaddy River, he set out from Pyay, also
known as Prome, 180 miles (280 kilometers) north of Yangon, in a brown,
12-seat van with family and relatives. Serving as an escort was a pickup
truck carrying youths from Suu Kyi's party, flying the party flag of a
fighting peacock gazing at a white star. Nearly 50 horn-honking
motorcycles ran on ahead.

Along the route, many shouted "Good health" and "Long live Min Ko Naing."
They came out of their houses to give bouquets of flowers to the student
leader, with loud cheers and applause erupting whenever Min Ko Naing came
out of his van to greet the crowds.

Addressing a group of about 200 people near Shwe Myet Hman pagoda in Shwe
Taung town, about 170 miles (270 kilometers) north of Yangon, Min Ko Naing
shouted through a loudspeaker that the students who fought for democracy
and freedom in 1988 will continue their struggle, and asked for their
support.

"I was given 65 years' imprisonment. If I have to serve all the 65 years,
I will have to continue to serve them in my next life," he said to the
cheering crowd. "I'm now free because of the support of the people."

Myint Kyi came on his bicycle to see Min Ko Naing paying respects at a
temple in Pyay.

"I have heard a lot of good things about Min Ko Naing and I want to see
him in person. I am very proud of him and I can call it my day after I've
seen him," said the 67-year old retired lawyer.

It is unlikely the generals who still are the ultimate arbiters of power
in Myanmar see things the same way. Elections and reforms notwithstanding,
they don't react well to their rivals' shows of popularity.

When Suu Kyi drew vast, enthusiastic crowds during a political tour of
central Myanmar in 2003, pro-government thugs ambushed her entourage,
killing several of her supporters, and she spent the next seven years
under house arrest.

Min Ko Naing rose to prominence when, as a university student majoring in
zoology, he was president of the clandestine Universities Student Union of
Burma (Myanmar), as students spearheaded the popular rebellion against the
26-year autocratic rule of strongman Gen. Ne Win.

His bold speeches fired up the public — but also assured that he would be
targeted by the military when it gained the upper hand. Arrested in March
1989, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for having delivered
anti-government speeches and agitating unrest. His sentence was later
commuted to 10 years under a general amnesty, but he was kept behind bars
anyway until 2004.

On his release, he and his comrades, collectively known as the "88
Generation Student Group," plunged right back into political organizing,
and in short order were sent back to prison in 2007 after he led a rare
protest against massive fuel price hikes and economic hardship. The small
protests helped spark the bigger — but failed — "Saffon Revolution"
demonstrations later that year. He was given a 65-year prison sentence.

Min Ko Naing doesn't have quite the prestige as Suu Kyi, the daughter of
independence hero Gen. Aung San and holder of the Nobel peace prize. But
he is only 49 years old, in a country led by much older men.

He and his comrades are the face of Myanmar's future — if the military is
agreeable.

Thein Sein, who took office last year, has initiated a series of reforms,
including the start of a dialogue with Suu Kyi, legalizing labor unions
and the signing of a cease-fire agreement in a long-running campaign
against Karen insurgents. Friday's prisoner release won them a
long-coveted prize: Washington's announcement that it would upgrade
diplomatic relations to posting an ambassador again in Myanmar. The last
U.S. envoy was withdrawn after the violent crushing of the 1988 uprising.

Myanmar still wants to see a lifting of economic and political sanctions
by the United States and other Western nations. Meanwhile, for all the
reform efforts, underlying Thein Sein's government is a constitution
ensuring that the military retains ultimate political power.

Suu Kyi has described the president as sincere, but in an interview with
The Associated Press last week, she acknowledged that the reforms are not
"unstoppable" and will succeed only if the powerful military accepts the
changes.

Min Ko Naing shares both Suu Kyi's optimism and her caution.

The reforms that are currently taking place in the country are
encouraging, but "there are elements that do not want reforms," he told
the AP in an interview Saturday morning in Pyay. "We are willing to work
with anyone for democracy, but there could also be challenges from those
who are keen to backtrack."

He said that the government has shown its eagerness to be accepted by the
international community, but that it still must free whatever political
prisoner remain behind bars and make further efforts for peace and
stability with the ethnic minorities who continue to struggle for greater
autonomy.

___

Associated Press writer Grant Peck in Bangkok contributed to this report.

DOC wants Mumia to cut his hair to get out of solitary

2012-01-14T12:47:00.000-08:00

In a statement issued late Thursday, January 12, an attorney for
Mumia Abu-Jamal reported that he has been given a new reason for his
continued solitary confinement - his long dreadlocks.

Prison authorities at SCI Mahanoy claim Abu-Jamal will be held in the
Restricted Housing Unit on disciplinary custody until he cuts his
hair. This is an old tactic that was used against Mumia when he was a
death row prisoner. He spent 8 years on disciplinary status in death
row until he was removed from that status--without getting a
haircut--in the early 1990s.

It has taken prison officials five weeks to invent this new pretext
for continuing the 30-year-long solitary confinement torture of
Abu-Jamal. Mumia and his supporters are calling for his immediate
release to general population and the shut down of all of the
solitary units in PA.

Sign a petition to transfer Mumia out of the hole.

Read and forward this press release from the National Lawyers Guild:
"After death row transfer, NLG VP Mumia Abu-Jamal languishes in solitary"

Contact Department of Corrections officials and let them know you are
not fooled and will not tolerate efforts to silence and torture Mumia:

1) Write, Phone, and email the Secretary of Corrections: Demand that
Mumia be transferred to General Population! And demand the shutdown
of RHU (Restricted Housing Unit) Torture Blocks!
John Wetzl, Secretary Department of Corrections
2520 Lisburn Road, P.O. Box 598, Camp Hill, PA
17001-0598 (717) 975-4928 Email:
ra-contactdoc@pa.gov

2) Write, Phone, and email the Superintendent:
John Kerestes, Superintendent
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932
(570) 773-2158 Fax: (570) 783-2008

3) Write, Phone, and email the Philadelphia DA. Demand that they
petition the court to free Mumia, based on suppression of evidence.
They have buried evidence and the truth for 30 years. The police
corruption and the frame up of
Mumia must be exposed.
Seth Williams, DA Philadelphia
Three South Penn Square
Philadelphia, PA 19107-3499
(215) 686-8000 Email:
DA_Central@phila.gov

and finally, send Mumia a note or a card:

Mumia Abu-Jamal
AM 8335
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932

New Year Message from the Berenson Family

2012-01-14T12:41:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,

We want to express how happy we were to have had Lori and Salvador
home during this past holiday season.

Lori really enjoyed this opportunity to see relatives and old friends
and to introduce them to Salvador and we enjoyed each precious moment
playing with Salvador. In compliance with stipulations in the travel
permit, Lori and Salvador have now returned to Peru. Noncompliance
would have resulted in her arrest and imprisonment.

Although other foreign parolees of terrorism-related crimes have, in
the past, been permitted to visit their home countries on a regular
basis, negative reaction to Lori's visit resulted in the Peruvian
Congress passing a law that prohibits such foreign parolees from
traveling outside Peru in the future. Thus, Lori will not be able to
return home until her sentence is completed. We are, however,
grateful to have had at least this wonderful visit

All best wishes to you and your loved ones. May 2012 be a year of
joy and peace.

Rhoda and Mark Berenson

FREE MARTIN & JOHAN

2012-01-13T11:27:00.000-08:00

ELP Information Bulletin (12th January 2012) Dear Friends ELP has been sent the
following e-mail concerning two journalists investigating eco-destruction and human
rights abuses in the Horn of Africa.

Swedish journalist Martin Schibbye and Swedish press photographer
Johan Persson had entered the Ogaden region in the Horn of
Africa during mid 2011 to document and report the human rights
abuses and environmental destruction caused and triggered by the
dealings of the oil and gas industry - especially Swedish owned
LUNDIN OIL and Lundin's conglomerate of in-transparent companies
like AFRICA OIL etc. - but were deceived and busted, and since then
suffer first in detention and now in an absolutely inhumane jail.

The Ogaden is the traditional homeland of mainly one Somali clan,
the Ogaden people, whose area was occupied with changing fortunes at
first by colonial forces from Britain, Italy and to a lesser extent
France - fighting against each other and the local people - during
the scramble for Africa and was then handed over by the colonial
overlords to Ethiopia, which illegally occupies the vast land until
today. Ethiopia clings to it especially due to interests in the
substantial oil and gas reserves of the zone. Somalia fought a war
against Ethiopia to bring this land, which is also called
West-Somalia, back to the Somali state during the 70s, but lost due
to changing alliances of foreign powers during those cold-war days.
The Somali people and the subsequent Somali governments have
continued to demand that the Ogaden must be returned to Somalia. But
the dictatorial regime of Meles Zenawi holds the land and its
rightful owners with an iron and often deadly grip. Numerous
atrocities against the local population to "provide security" for
the foreign carbon industries now operating in the Ogaden, which
they call Zone 5 of Ethiopia and the oil blocks, which are "secured"
by Ethiopian military as precondition to the foreign investment of
the oil and gas barons.

FREE MARTIN & JOHAN

IT'S ALSO A MATTER OF PRESS FREEDOM

An Ethiopian court, on December 27th 2011, sentenced Swedish journalists Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye to 11 years in prison on charges of unlawful entry into Ethiopia and support of terrorist activity. Amnesty International has pronounced the two journalists as prisoners of conscience.

The international community strongly criticized the verdict. Representatives from the United States and the EU, shortly after the sentence, expressed their grave concern. The Swedish government and department of foreign affairs continue in their
effort to secure the release of Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye as soon as possible.

Committee to Protect Journalists, about the case.

The fight for press freedom and the release of Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye continues. You can support this fight by a donation (click on “donations” for details) or by sending letters to Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye in English at the following address:

Johan Persson/Martin Schibbye

Kality Prison, Zone 7

Addis Abeba Prison Administration

P.O Box 2436

Addis Abeba

Ethiopia

Please do note that letters need to be written in English in order to be screened by the prison authorities.

Through their relatives, Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye send a New Year Greeting:

Thank you, everyone who is following our case. Your support keeps us strong. Enjoy your freedom and take care. Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson.

++++++ Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network
BM Box 2407 London WC1N 3XX England

Oscar López Rivera: circumstances of an incarceration

2012-01-13T11:22:00.000-08:00

By Noel Colón Martínez claridadpuertorico.com
Tuesday, January 10, 2012

The unjust incarceration of our dear friend and
compañero Oscar López Rivera will have lasted for
31 years as of 2012. As with Don Pedro, he was
accused of seditious conspiracy, which is a type
of catchall where a lot of acts and circumstances
are put together to justify a long sentence.
Since it has to do with an accusation for alleged
acts committed to challenge state power, the
state acts as if it were the aggressor seeking
vengeance against the offender who has challenged
it and denied its legitimacy. If circumstances
point to the fact that many people are also
challenging in some fashion its legitimacy and
power, then the conspiracy is to mercilessly
punish the accused, because he represents the
advance stage of a far broader and far more
dangerous threat. That's how I measure the
circumstances that brought the judges to impose
absurd sentences on all the Puerto Rican patriots
who, in the decade of the 80's of the last
century, on various occasions, challenged the
legitimacy of the alleged power and authority of
the United States over our nation.

In the decade of the 80's the contradictions
between the capitalist and socialist worlds
heightened. In the case of the United States, it
saw its national interests threatened in many and
various places. The Soviet Union's support for
those who confronted U.S. power at times when
nuclear proliferation had not resolved the
problem, observed in the Cuban missile crisis in
1962, put the United States on permanent national
security alert. Cuba, 90 miles from Florida, had
decided to continue making good on the history of
solidarity with those who struggled for the
independence of Puerto Rico and, through this
solidarity, Puerto Rico became a permanent
accusation against colonialism put into practice
in the very United Nations. Soviet and Cuban
support made it possible for us to take to the
most diverse stages the just cause of our
freedom. Two years before Oscar was sentenced, in
Mexico, with the decisive support of Cuba and the
Soviet Union, there was a second conference in
solidarity with our struggle for independence
which emphasized the anger of our allies, who
listened to and helped our struggle.

At the time, the struggle within Puerto Rico and
in the United States appeared with a new vigor.
The Puerto Rican Socialist Party was considered
by the United States as an ally of subversion due
to its close ties with the victorious Cuban
Revolution, and there, six years before Oscar was
sentenced, the most successful international
conference in solidarity with our struggle was
held. In the diaspora appeared a new political
militancy that the United States characterized as
terrorist and persecuted with the viciousness
demonstrated by the accusations against the group
that accompanied Oscar to federal prison.

In 1980, Carlos Romero Barceló was re-elected
governor of Puerto Rico, a man who very broad
sectors of our country have held responsible for
the assassinations of Cerro Maravilla and for the
entire conspiracy of the police of Puerto Rico
with the local office of the FBI, dedicated to
carrying out or covering up several
assassinations of militants of the independence
movement, and in the case of Chagui Mari
Pesquera, for the purpose of punishing the militancy of Juan Mari Brás.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan became president of the
United States, a conservative anti-communist who
became the author of a policy destined to combat
progressive forces throughout the world, but
especially in Central America. Those emerging
forces in our region fought fiercely against
autocratic, dictatorial regimes that not only
seized political power from the people but
subjected the region to profound repression,
exploitation and poverty. Amnesty International
reported that in 1981 in Guatemala, over 100,000
Guatemalans had been assassinated by official and
paramilitary forces. To contain those liberation
struggles, the contras were created to detain
popular forces in Nicaragua, Honduras, San
Salvador and Guatemala. The CIA agreed to create
alliances with important collaborating drug
traffickers to hide from Congress an unauthorized
act and at the same time silence the popular
Central American offensive, which finally managed
to take over when the Central American states
decided to put an end to wars induced from the
outside, and in Contadora took the destiny of
their countries into their own hands.

These abuses and injustices were a lesson for
Latin America. From these innumerable abuses and
violations of the peoples of our America has
emerged the new democratic revolution with its
emphasis placed on recuperating that which the
United States impeded for so many dozens of years
without consideration for the methods or the
social and human consequences. Oscar López Rivera
is today living proof of this policy, which
internally within the U.S. has not been revised
or corrected; Oscar has been a worthy fighter for
the freedom of his country, an anti-imperialist,
an anti-colonial fighter who gives honor to the
principles that guided the General Assembly of
the United Nations in approving Resolution 1514
(XV) en 1960, 21 years before he was convicted of
fighting to put an end to colonialism, which is
precisely what is set forth in said Resolution.

The year 2012 commenced with important activities
to coalesce a campaign to finally achieve Oscar's
release. Aside from whatever effort is carried
out on other levels, Oscar's return to his
country cannot and should not come without
achieving the broadest support for his release
from his people acting above and beyond their
political affiliations. Now we speak in
humanitarian terms. Oscar will have served 31
years in prison. I am not aware of any political
prisoner held in custody for a longer period of
time [there are examples of Native American and
Black Liberation Movement leaders who have done
more time in US prisons]. Although the crimes
committed by the United States in its so-called
war against terrorism will be severely judged by
history (Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, Iraq,
Afghanistan), that country has announced that it
will significantly reduce its armed forces,
because its decline is evident. For imperialism
to take such action is much more difficult than
to recognize the injustice of this long and unusual captivity.

It is possible that the United States may arrive
at the conclusion that the vengeful acts it has
committed against so many Puerto Rican fighters,
and which are demonstrated by the arbitrary
sentences, were dictated by historical situations
that no longer exist. That is what President
Clinton understood at the time. The new president
still doesn't seem to have understood it, or he
feels weaker in the face of a deeply rooted
racist opposition such that he will readily lend
himself to disemboweling at any moment that mix
of fear, prejudice and power that has led to so
many and such mistaken historical decisions by the U.S.

It is up to us to present Oscar as he is:
exceptional proof of the crimes of imperialism,
and from that perspective achieve the
rectification that Oscar and our struggle
deserve. The good will that is being felt in
Puerto Rico, outside of our struggles, is
indicative of an understanding that the
arbitrariness of a judicial sentence should not
necessarily lead to a total dehumanization. We
must all be disposed to contribute in accord with
our efforts so that this year will be the end of
his imprisonment, and we can have our friend and
compañero sharing with his family in our country.

----------------------------------------

Oscar López Rivera: circunstancias de una encarcelación
Por Noel Colón Martínez
Publicado: martes, 10 de enero de 2012 Claridad

La injusta encarcelación del querido amigo y
compañero Oscar López Rivera se habrá extendido
por 31 años durante el 2012. Como Don Pedro, fue
imputado de conspiración sediciosa, que es una
especie de nasa grande donde se juntan muchos
actos y circunstancias para justificar una larga
sentencia. Como se trata de una acusación por
supuestos actos cometidos retando la autoridad
del estado, éste actúa como el agredido que se
venga del ofensor que lo ha retado y le ha negado
legitimidad. Si las circunstancias apuntaran a
que muchos a la vez también retan de alguna
manera su legitimidad y su poder entonces todo
conspira para castigar impiadosamente al imputado
porque él representa la avanzada de una amenaza
mucho más amplia y mucho más peligrosa. Así mido
las circunstancias que llevaron a los jueces a
imponer sentencias absurdas a todos los patriotas
puertorriqueños que en la década del ochenta del
pasado siglo, en una u otra ocasión, retaron la
legitimidad del supuesto poder y autoridad de
Estados Unidos sobre nuestra nación.

En la década del ochenta se acentuaron las
contradicciones entre el mundo capitalista y el
mundo socialista. En el caso de Estados Unidos,
éste se vio amenazado en sus intereses nacionales
en muchos y diversos lugares. El apoyo de la
Unión Soviética a aquellos que confrontaban el
poder de los americanos en momentos en que no se
había resuelto el problema de la proliferación
nuclear, que se atisbó en la crisis de los
misiles en Cuba en 1962, puso a Estados Unidos en
un permanente alerta de seguridad nacional. Cuba,
a 90 millas de Florida, había decidido continuar
haciendo buena la historia de solidaridad con los
luchadores por la independencia de Puerto Rico y
mediante esa solidaridad Puerto Rico se convertía
en una acusación permanente contra el
colonialismo que se practicaba en las barbas de
Naciones Unidas. Con el apoyo soviético y cubano
nos fue posible llevar a los más diversos
escenarios la causa justa de nuestra libertad.
Dos años antes de ser sentenciado Oscar, en
Méjico, con el apoyo decisivo de Cuba y la Unión
Soviética, se celebró una segunda conferencia de
solidaridad con nuestra lucha independentista que
acentuó el enojo con los aliados que le prestaban
oídos y auxiliaban nuestra lucha.

Para entonces, la lucha al interior de Puerto
Rico y dentro de Estados Unidos se manifestaba
con un nuevo vigor. El Partido Socialista
Puertorriqueño era considerado por Estados Unidos
como un aliado de la subversión en virtud de sus
estrechos lazos con la victoriosa Revolución
Cubana y allí, seis años antes de ser sentenciado
Oscar, se había celebrado la más exitosa
conferencia internacional en solidaridad con
nuestra lucha. En la diáspora se manifestó una
nueva militancia política que Estados Unidos
caracterizó como terrorista y persiguió con la
saña que demostraron las acusaciones contra el
grupo que acompañó a Oscar hasta las prisiones federales.

En 1980 revalidó como gobernador de Puerto Rico
Carlos Romero Barceló, a quien sectores muy
amplios de nuestro país lo hemos hecho
responsable de los asesinatos de Cerro Maravilla
y de toda aquella conspiración de la policía de
Puerto Rico con la oficina local del FBI,
dedicados a realizar o encubrir varios asesinatos
contra militantes del movimiento independentista
y en el caso de Chagui Mari Pesquera, con el
objeto de castigar la militancia de Juan Mari Brás.

En 1980 asumió la presidencia de Estados Unidos
Ronald Reagan, un conservador anticomunista que
se convirtió en el artífice de una política
destinada a combatir las fuerzas progresistas en
el mundo, pero sobretodo en Centro América. Esas
fuerzas emergentes en nuestra región combatían
con mucha fuerza unos regímenes autocráticos,
dictatoriales que no sólo les arrebataban el
poder político a los pueblos sino que sumergían
la región en profunda represión, explotación y
pobreza. Amnistía Internacional informaba que en
1981 en Guatemala se habían asesinado más de
100,000 guatemaltecos por fuerzas oficiales y
paramilitares. Para contener esas luchas de
liberación se crearon los contras, para detener
fuerzas populares en Nicaragua, Honduras, San
Salvador y Guatemala. La CIA estuvo de acuerdo en
crear alianzas con importantes narcotraficantes
colaboradores para ocultarle al Congreso una
acción no autorizada y a la vez acallar la
ofensiva popular centroamericana, que finalmente
logró imponerse cuando los estados
centroamericanos decidieron poner fin a unas
guerras inducidas desde el exterior y en
Contadora tomaron el destino de sus países en sus manos.

Fue de esas arbitrariedades e injusticias que
aprendió su lección América Latina. De los
incontables atropellos contra los pueblos de
nuestra América es que ha surgido la nueva
revolución democrática con el énfasis puesto en
las reivindicaciones que Estados Unidos, por
tantas decenas de años impidió, sin poner reparos
en métodos y consecuencias sociales y humanas.
Oscar López Rivera es hoy una evidencia viva de
esa política, que a nivel interno en Estados
Unidos no ha sido revisada ni corregida pues
Oscar ha sido un digno luchador por la libertad
de su país, un antiimperialista, un luchador
anticolonial que le hace honor a los principios
que guiaron a la Asamblea General de Naciones
Unidas a aprobar la Resolución 1514 (XV) en el
año 1960, veintiún años antes de ser convicto
Oscar por luchar para poner fin al colonialismo,
que es justamente aquello que se proclama en dicha
Resolución.

El año 2012 se inició con actividades importantes
para coagular una campaña que logre finalmente la
excarcelación de Oscar. Aparte de cualquier
gestión que se realice a otros niveles, no puede
y no debe producirse el retorno de Oscar a su
país sin que se logre el más amplio apoyo a esa
excarcelación por parte de su pueblo actuando más
allá de afiliaciones políticas. Ahora hablamos el
lenguaje humanitario. Oscar habrá de cumplir 31
años en prisión [hay ejemplos de los nativos
americanos y los líderes del Movimiento de
Liberación Negro que no han hecho más tiempo en
cárceles de EE.UU.] . No conozco un preso
político de mayor antigüedad en reclusión. Aunque
los crímenes cometidos por Estados Unidos en su
llamada lucha contra el terrorismo serán
duramente enjuiciados por la historia (Abu Graib,
Guantánamo, Irak, Afganistán), ese país ha
anunciado que reducirá de forma importante sus
fuerzas armadas porque su declinación es
evidente. Para el imperialismo tomar esas
acciones es mucho más difícil que reconocer la
injusticia de este largo e inusitado cautiverio.

Es posible que Estados Unidos pueda llegar a la
conclusión de que los actos de venganza que
realizó contra tantos luchadores puertorriqueños
y que se manifestaron en sentencias arbitrarias
fueron dictadas por situaciones históricas ya
superadas. El Presidente Clinton lo entendió así
en su momento. El nuevo presidente no parece
haberlo entendido aún o se siente más débil
frente a una oposición de profunda raíz racista
que está muy presta a desentrañar en cualquier
momento esa mezcla de temor, prejuicio y poder
que ha conducido a tantas y equivocadas decisiones
históricas a ese país.

A nosotros nos corresponde presentar a Oscar como
lo que es: evidencia excepcional de los crímenes
del imperialismo y desde esa perspectiva lograr
la rectificación que se le debe a Oscar y a
nuestra lucha. La buena voluntad que se está
dejando sentir en Puerto Rico, al exterior de
nuestras luchas, son indicativas de que se está
entendiendo que la arbitrariedad de una sentencia
judicial no debe llevar necesariamente a la total
deshumanización. Todos debemos estar en
disposición de aportar en la medida de nuestros
esfuerzos para que cese este año el encierro y
podamos tener al amigo y compañero compartiendo con
su familia en nuestro país.

Why California's prisoners are starving for solitary change

2012-01-13T11:12:00.000-08:00

Californian prisoners have repeatedly gone on hunger strike over the solitary confinement in which some spend decades

by Sadhbh Walshe Wednesday 11 January 2012 guardian.co.uk

Corcoran State Prison, California, where prisoners have been hunger striking to protest solitary confinement conditions. Photograph: Ben Margot/AP

On 19 December 2011, three prisoners at Corcoran State Prison wrote a letter to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) threatening to go on hunger strike if improvements were not made to their living conditions. Evidently, they received no response from the CDCR: the hunger strike began on 28 December.

This latest hunger strike, the third in less than six months, is small potatoes compared to the previous two, which were state-wide and involved thousands of inmates. According to Terry Thornton, a CDCR spokeswoman, it may already be over. But the fact that Californian prisoners have once again resorted to starving themselves to protest the conditions of their confinement does suggest that something is rotten in the Golden State's penal system.

The first hunger strike began on 1 July 2011, and ended three weeks later when the CDCR agreed, in theory at least, to address the participants' five core demands, which amounted to better living conditions, adequate food and clothing, an end to group punishments and most importantly, an end to the gang validation policy that sentences inmates to endless terms in solitary confinement cells, known as SHUs.

One of my correspondents, Anthony, who has an indeterminate SHU sentence (meaning, there's no end in sight), described to me in a letter what it is about the SHU environment he and his fellow inmates find hard to tolerate.

"We're entitled to receive 10 hours of 'outdoor exercise' a week, but lucky if we get half that. At times, we're cooped up an entire week in our cells before the opportunity of expanding our lungs with fresh air. 'Outdoor exercise' consists of being placed in a dog kennel-like cage, no bigger than our cells. We're prohibited from all recreational and exercise equipment, compelling most to pace idly back and forth.
"Blinding bright lights remain on 24 hours a day within our (windowless 8ft x 10ft) cells as we have been denied control over them. Our lavatories are electronically installed, allotting each cell two flushes every 15 minutes."

The SHU residents are not alone in finding these conditions intolerable. On 18 October 2011, after inspecting such facilities, Juan Mendez, a United Nations expert on torture, called for all countries to ban the use of solitary confinement except in exceptional circumstances, and even then, for no longer than 15 days.

Personally, I don't think I'd get through 15 hours locked up in a concrete box, with no window, bright lights glaring 24/7 and a toilet that won't stop flushing, but 15 days would certainly be an improvement on 15 years, which is about the average length of time the men who have been writing to me from California's SHUs have been locked up in these sensory deprivation units.

The CDCR's Thornton confirmed that many inmates have spent several decades in the SHU (the record so far that I know of is 35 years), but made the point that most inmates earned their stay for acts of violence from which prisoners in the general population deserve to be protected. A valid argument, certainly, but how can you tell if an inmate is still a threat to the mainline population after he's been locked in a box by himself for 20 plus years?

The problem for SHU inmates is that once they get sent to the box, it's almost impossible to work their way out of it. Their options are to either "debrief, parole or die", which as it turns out are non-options. Debriefing, or "snitching", on other prisoners can provoke retaliation; parole is rarely granted and dying … well, suicides are certainly not rare in solitary confinement, but it turns out many SHU inmates still have the will to live.

The first hunger strike, which involved more than 6,000 inmates, brought little meaningful reform. After three weeks of starvation, the prisoners found that what they had gained amounted to little more than the right to purchase sweatpants and coloring pencils. Less than two months later, despite threats of disciplinary action by the CDCR (pdf), the hunger strike resumed with almost double the number of original participants (pdf). It all got a bit ugly for a while: mail and visiting privileges were suspended; attorneys for the hunger strikers were banned from entering the prison; participants received behavior violation write-ups; and according to several testimonies, the alleged leaders of the hunger strike were placed in freezing cold cells without proper clothing and forced to remain there for 15 days.

Eventually, a deal was reached, with promises from the CDCR to address the prisoners' demands and to set about instigating a "step down" program, which would allow alleged gang members to earn their release from the SHU – without having to debrief. Laura Magnani, a member of the mediation team representing the prisoners, says the CDCR appear to be negotiating in good faith and progress is being made.

If this turns out to be the case, it's good news. If not, more hunger strikes seem inevitable as does the possibility that deaths will occur. One would hope it will not take the creation of martyrs to bring about the changes that anyone with a conscience knows are overdue.

National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners February 20th

2012-01-11T11:43:00.000-08:00

Last night the Occupy Oakland General Assembly passed the proposal below to have a National
Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners on Monday February 20th. In the Bay Area there will be a demonstration at San Quentin.

Hopefully there will be many, many others all
around the country. Please spread the word.

for more info go to: www.occupy4prisoners.org

********************************

Proposal to Occupy Oakland General Assembly

This is the proposal that was passed at the
Occupy Oakland General Assembly, on Monday,
January 9th, and a list of endorsers in formation.

For more information and/or to endorse, email
occupy4prisoners [at] gmail [dot] com.

ENDORSERS (list in formation)

Angela Davis
California Coalition for Women Prisoners
Campaign to End the Death Penalty
Jack Bryson
Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu Jamal
Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu Jamal
National Committee to Free the Cuban Five
Occupied Oakland Tribune
Oscar Grant Committee Against Police Brutality and State Repression
Prison Activist Resource Center
Prison Watch Network
San Francisco Bay View Newspaper
Stanley Tookie Williams Legacy Network

PROPOSAL

Summary

We are calling for February 20th, 2012 to be a “National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners.”

In the Bay Area we will “Occupy San Quentin,” to stand in solidarity with the people confined within its walls and to demand the end of the incarceration as a means of containing those dispossessed by unjust social policies.

Reasons

Prisons have become a central institution in American society, integral to our politics, economy and our culture.

Between 1976 and 2000, the United States built on average a new prison each week and the number of imprisoned Americans increased tenfold.

Prison has made the threat of torture part of everyday life for millions of individuals in the United States, especially the 7.3 million people—who are disproportionately people of color—currently incarcerated or under correctional supervision.

Imprisonment itself is a form of torture. The typical American prison, juvenile hall and detainment camp is designed to maximize degradation, brutalization, and dehumanization.

Mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow. Between 1970 and 1995, the incarceration of African Americans increased 7 times. Currently African Americans make up 12 % of the population in the U.S. but 53% of the nation’s prison population. There are more African Americans under correctional control today—in prison or jail, on probation or parole—than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

The prison system is the most visible example of policies of punitive containment of the most marginalized and oppressed in our society. Prior to incarceration, 2/3 of all prisoners lived in conditions of economic hardship. While the perpetrators of white-collar crime largely go free.

In addition, the Center for Economic and Policy Research estimated that in 2008 alone there was a loss in economic input associated with people released from prison equal to $57 billion to $65 billion.

We call on Occupies across the country to support:

1. Abolishing unjust sentences, such as the Death Penalty, Life Without the Possibility of Parole, Three Strikes, Juvenile Life Without Parole, and the practice of trying children as adults.

2. Standing in solidarity with movements initiated by prisoners and taking action to support prisoner demands, including the Georgia Prison Strike and the Pelican Bay/California Prisoners Hunger Strikes.

3. Freeing political prisoners, such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Lynne Stewart, Bradley Manning and Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, a Black Panther Party member incarcerated since 1969.

4. Demanding an end to the repression of activists, specifically the targeting of African Americans and those with histories of incarceration, such as Khali in Occupy Oakland who could now face a life sentence, on trumped-up charges, and many others being falsely charged after only exercising their First Amendment rights.

5. Demanding an end to the brutality of the current system, including the torture of those who have lived for many years in Secured Housing Units (SHUs) or in solitary confinement.

6. Demanding that our tax money spent on isolating, harming and killing prisoners, instead be invested in improving the quality of life for all and be spent on education, housing, health care, mental health care and other human services which contribute to the public good.

Bay Area

On February 20th, 2012 we will organize in front of San Quentin, where male death-row prisoners are housed, where Stanley Tookie Williams was immorally executed by the State of California in 2005, and where Kevin Cooper, an innocent man on death row, is currently imprisoned.

At this demonstration, through prisoners’ writings and other artistic and political expressions, we will express the voices of the people who have been inside the walls. The organizers of this action will reach out to the community for support and participation. We will contact social service organizations, faith institutions, labor organizations, schools, prisoners, former prisoners and their family members.

National and International Outreach

We will reach out to Occupies across the country to have similar demonstrations outside of prisons, jails, juvenile halls and detainment facilities or other actions as such groups deem appropriate. We will also reach out to Occupies outside of the United States and will seek to attract international attention and support.

We have chosen Monday, February 20, 2012 at San Quentin, because it is a non-weekend day. Presidents’ Day avoids the weekend conflict with prisoners’ visitation, which would likely be shut down if we held a demonstration over the weekend.

The Guantánamos Next Door

2012-01-11T11:40:00.000-08:00

January 11, 2012 Solitary Watch

by Jean Casella and James Ridgeway

: LA County Jail

The U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay turns 10 today, and activists are marking the anniversary with protests and petitions, reports and retrospectives. A decade after its founding, Guantánamo remains a dark stain on the national soul.

Even today, while the worst instances of torture may have ceased under the Obama Administration, prisoners are still subjected to solitary confinement and other forms of deprivation and abuse. According to a February 2009 report from the Center of Constitutional Rights: “The descriptions of ongoing, severe solitary confinement, other forms of psychological abuse, incidents of violence and the threat of violence from guards, religious abuse, and widespread forced tube-feeding of hunger strikers indicate that the inhumane practices of the Bush Administration persist today at Guantánamo.”

Then there’s the fact that the prisoners at Guantánamo have been deprived of their liberty without any semblance of due process. Over the last decade, 779 prisoners have been held at Gitmo; 171 remain. Only six have ever been convicted of a crime.

When it comes to depriving people of their human and civil rights, Guantánamo stands as an unprecedented extreme. But it is far from the only place where these things happen. Today, in our cities and towns, in every state in America, there are places where individuals are incarcerated without trial, and where they suffer deprivation and abuse. They are our local jails.

Take the issue of pre-trial detention. According to the Pre-Trial Justice Institute, a full 61% of U.S. jail inmates–nearly half a million in all–have not yet been convicted of any crime. Many have not even been accused of a violent crime. The majority of them are in jail because they cannot afford the modest bail required for their release. A 2010 study by Human Rights Watch looked at defendants in New York City arrested on nonfelony charges. ”Most were accused of nonviolent minor crimes such as shoplifting, turnstile jumping, smoking marijuana in public, drug possession, trespassing, and prostitution.” It found that “87 percent were incarcerated because they were unable to post the bail amount at their arraignment,” even though bail had been set at $1,000. These defendants faced weeks, months, or years in pre-trial confinement for no reason other than poverty.

While awaiting trial, these individuals face appallingly overcrowded conditions, inadequate food–and far worse. On New York City’s Rikers Island, nearly one in twelve prisoners is held in solitary confinement at any given time; the jail maintains two isolation units specifically for inmates with mental illness, and another for juveniles. Pre-trial solitary is routinely used on underaged inmates, to separate from the adult jail population; one report out of Texas found juveniles in the Harris County Jail spending a year or more in complete isolation. In the most extreme cases–such as that of Syed Fahad Hashmi, pre-trial detainees are held under “Special Administrative Measures” that constitute acute sensory deprivation.

Solitary confinement is not the only form of torment that detainees face in local jails. A recent report by the ACLU’s National Prison Project showed a pattern of brutal abuse, carried out by sheriff’s deputies, in the Los Angeles County jail system: “In the past year, deputies have assaulted scores of non-resisting inmates…Deputies have attacked inmates for complaining about property missing from their cells. They have beaten inmates for asking for medical treatment, for the nature of their alleged offenses,and for the color of their skin. They have beaten inmates in wheelchairs. They have beaten an inmate, paraded him naked down a jail module, and placed him in a cell to be sexually assaulted. Many attacks are unprovoked. Nearly all go unpunished: these acts of violence are covered up by a department that refuses to acknowledge the pervasiveness of deputy violence in the jail system.”

“America’s criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace,” said Senator Jim Webb, using a phrase that has often been applied to Guantánamo Bay. But just as it has thwarted any attempts to close Gitmo, the U.S. Congress has blocked all of Webb’s attempts to propel the kinds of domestic criminal justice reforms that might have kept local jails from remaining Gitmos in our own backyards.

Guantánamo Prisoners Stage Peaceful Protest and Hunger Strike on 10th Anniversary of the Opening of the Prison

2012-01-11T11:37:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, 10 January 2012 World Can't Wait

Prisoners in Camp 4 at Guantanamo in 2009 line up for morning prayers. These are some of the prisoners regarded as cooperative or not significant -- perhaps amongst the 89 who have been cleared for release, but are still held (Photo: Michelle Shephard/The Toronto Star).

by Andy Worthington

Today, prisoners at Guantánamo will embark on a peaceful protest, involving sit-ins and hunger strikes, to protest about their continued detention, and the continued existence of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, three years after President Obama came to office promising to close it within a year, and to show their appreciation of the protests being mounted on their behalf by US citizens, who are gathering in Washington D.C. on Wednesday to stage a rally and march to urge the President to fulfill his broken promise.

Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York, and one of the attorneys for Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, said that his client, who is held in isolation in Camp 5, told him on his last visit that the prisoners would embark on a peaceful protest and hunger strike for three days, from Jan. 10 to 12, to protest about the President’s failure to close Guantánamo as promised.

He explained that the men intended to inform the Officer in Charge ahead of the protest, to let the authorities know why there would be protests, and added that the prisoners were encouraged by the “expression of solidarity” from US citizens planning protests on Jan. 11, the 10^th anniversary of the opening of the prison.

Kassem also said that another of his clients, in Camp 6, where most of the prisoners are held, and where, unlike Camp 5, they are allowed to socialize, stated that prisoners throughout the blocks were “extremely encouraged” by reports of the protests in Washington D.C.

The prisoner, who does not wish to be identified, also said that banners and signs had been prepared, and that there would be peaceful sit-ins in the communal areas. He added that the prisoners were concerned to let the outside world know that they still reject the injustice of their imprisonment, and feel that it is particularly important to let everyone know this, when the US government, under President Obama, is trying to persuade the world that “everything is OK” at Guantánamo, and that the prison is a humane, state of the art facility.

He also explained that the prisoners invited the press to come to Guantánamo and to request interviews with the prisoners, to hear about “the toll of a decade” of detention without charge or trial, and said that they “would like nothing more” than to have an independent civilian and medical delegation, accompanied by the press, be allowed to come and talk to the 171 men still held.

In Camp 5, Shaker Aamer and the other men still held there will not be able to stage a sit-in, as they are unable to leave their cells, but they will participate in the protests by refusing meals.

No one knows how the authorities will respond to the protests, especially as the new commander of Guantánamo, Navy Rear Adm. David Woods, has gained a reputation for punishing even the most minor infractions of the rules with solitary confinement.

According to Kassem, prisoners have complained that the new regime harks back to the worst days of Guantánamo, between 2002 and 2004, when punishments for non-cooperation were widespread.

Of the 171 men still held at Guantánamo, 89 were “approved for transfer” out of Guantánamo by a Task Force of career officials and lawyers from the various government departments and the intelligence agencies, and yet they remain held because of Congressional opposition and President Obama’s unwillingness to tackle his critics. 36 others were recommended for trials, and 46 others were designated for indefinite detention without charge pr trial, on the basis that they are too dangerous to release, but that there is insufficient evidence against them to put them on trial.

That is a disgraceful position for the government to take, as indefinite detention on the basis of information that cannot be used as evidence indicates that the information is either tainted by torture, or is unreliable hearsay. It remains unacceptable that President Obama approved the indefinite detention of these men in an executive order last March, even though he also promised that their cases would be subject to periodic review.

Just as disgraceful, however, is the fact that all of the 171 prisoners still at Guantánamo face indefinite detention, as none of them can leave the prison given the current restrictions. That ought to trouble anyone who cares about justice and fairness, and the protests by the prisoners, on the 10^th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, ought to convey, more eloquently than any other method, why the pressure to close the prison must be maintained.

Note: For further information, to sign up to a new movement to close G, and to sign a new White House petition on the “We the People” website calling for the closure of Guantánamo, visit the new website, “Close Guantánamo.”

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison.

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“Gang” is a term that encompasses leftist ideologies, political and politicized prisoners, jailhouse lawyers and most anyone who in the opinion of Institutional Gang Investigations (IGI) is not passively accepting his role as a commodity in the prison industrial complex.

We took up a strategy which would pull back the curtain on the state’s practice of domestic torture which has been so well hidden from the people for so long, a strategy in which some of us may yet die: THE HUNGER STRIKE.

Their own guilt and fear caused them to assemble some 26 officers before opening my cell and piling on top of my unconscious form in order to shackle my arms and legs in chains and put me in an ambulance.

Because all we have to wash or shower with in these freezing cells is cold or lukewarm water, 80 percent of us housed in this 4BIL-C-Section short corridor have contracted a cold, upper respiratory tract infection or flu.

The warden of CSP-Corcoran-SHU was effectively repealing the single special purchase order for cold weather items without explanation.

Would you submit to snitchery, kowtow to your torturers and become a tool to condemn others to that same fate? Or would you fight, resist to the bitter end, give your life to expose such evil, greedy, draconian hypocrites for what they really are?

A common practice of corrupt political interests is to criminalize dissent and criticism. Who will care? We are prisoners; who will know these truths?

The ultimate arbiter of our fate – and this society’s fate – is the people. YOU.

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Los Angeles, CA
Dept. 123 on the 13th floor.