Posts are written by bloggers who are members of various organizations including Democratic Socialists of America, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Willamette Reds, and others in Oregon.
You are responsible for an organization that claims to be the 'oldest civil rights organization in America'. However, recent actions by the NRA demonstrate not only a complete disregard for the lives of black and brown people in America – your fellow citizens – but appear to be a direct endorsement of violence against these citizens exercising their constitutional right to protest.
In light of this, we call on the NRA to take the following actions:
1. Immediately remove the recent irresponsible and dangerous propaganda videos narrated by conservative talk radio host Dana Loesch.
2. Issue an apology to the American people for the video you sponsored, which bears your name and logo, as it suggests armed violence against communities of color, progressives and anyone who does not agree with this Administration's policies.
3. Make a statement to defend Philando Castile's right as a gun owner and demand the Department of Justice indict the police officer who killed him for violating his Second Amendment rights. This call is clearly in line with the mission and purpose of the NRA as an organization that purports to be the lobby and defender of the right to bear arms.
Mr. LaPierre, before the Second Amendment was the First Amendment.
The advertisement released by the NRA is a direct attack on people of color, progressives and anyone who exercises their First Amendment right to protest. At a time when our nation is seeing a rise in racially charged incidents and violence motivated by hate speech, it is unconscionable for a powerful organization like yours to unashamedly peddle an "us versus them" narrative. You are calling for our grassroots, nonviolent resistance movement to be met with violence.
Friday, June 30, will mark two weeks since Officer Yanez was acquitted for shooting and killing Philando Castile in Minnesota. In that time, the NRA has failed to make any statement defending the civil rights of Mr. Castile, a law-abiding gun owner who can be heard in video footage clearly notifying the officer that he was carrying a licensed firearm.
Your organization claims to stand for the Second Amendment rights of all Americans, but instead of affirming Mr. Castile's constitutional right to carry his gun, you released this vicious and incendiary video calling for armed conflict.
As a black woman, as a mother, as someone directly impacted by gun violence, as an American citizen, I am traumatized and alarmed, and so are my sisters and siblings who are part of the Women's March. It is clear that your organization does not value the constitutional rights nor the human rights of any of us. Unless the NRA takes immediate action, the Women's March will exercise our First Amendment rights by calling for a mass mobilization.
We will not be intimidated into silence.
Sincerely,
Tamika D. Mallory, Co-President, Women’s March Inc
Come out on Friday June 30 at 5:30pm to hearing stories of queer migration. The panelists will address the affects colonization and white supremacy have on migration, gender oppression and the continued genocide of gender queer, black and brown bodies in our present time.
This important panel is with Resilient Connections members, a Unite Oregon program for Refugee/Immigrant Trans and Queer people.
Unite Oregon is bringing back their monthly Last Friday events. The month of June they are celabrating PRIDE. Come join them for an evening panel with Resilient Connections members, a Unite Oregon program for Refugee/Immigrant Trans and Queer people.
Panelists will address the affects colonization and white supremacy have on migration, gender oppression and the continued genocide of gender queer, black and brown bodies in our present time.
Allies: this is a space for you to learn by bearing witness. If you have questions, contact Oscar Guerra-Vera, End Profiling Legislative Campaign Manager, oscar@unitoregon.org.
Friday at 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM Unite Oregon 700 N Killingsworth St, Portland, Oregon
On June 28, 1918 the revolutionary government of the Soviet Union adopted a decree that nationalized major industries in the country. This was an act to deprive the capitalist class the benefits of the wealth that they exploited from the working and poor people.
The wealth generated from these enterprises was then used to transform one of the most backward and poorest regions in the world into a society with a well-developed and advance economic system.
Imagine what can be done in the United States with an abundance of wealth created by the working class.
"Once again in the US, I feel compelled to call out a cycle of abuse that seems to occur over and over again. One which involves white America expecting solidarity from black people in regards to white life and how it is valued over black life, clearly. It’s similar to how after Dylan Roof walked into a black church, murdered nine black people, got the police to buy him Burger King … the press then immediately asked the black community for forgiveness. Because black people have to forgive over and over and over again regardless of the cost to our bodies, lives and humanity. For the death of Otto Warmbier has caused a ripple in the much divided union. So much that Donald Trump himself issued a statement over his death, all while blithely ignoring the verdict of Philando Castile which was dropped on black folks less than a week previously. Because to exist as black in America is to know good and well that the law and the state is very much never on your side and your skin color can very often be a death sentence."
And some context: The Boston Herald reports:
It was announced Friday that Lisa Durden, a former adjunct professor at Essex County College in New Jersey, would be let go from her job following a heated argument on the June 6 episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight. While speaking about an “all-black Memorial Day celebration” hosted by a Black Lives Matter group, Durden, who is black, told the host “you white people are angry because you couldn’t use your white privilege card” to attend the event.
The former professor, who taught communications and pop culture classes as an adjunct according to the Newark Star-Ledger, also called America a “racist society.”
“The college was immediately inundated with feedback from students, faculty and prospective students and their families expressing frustration, concern and even fear that the views expressed by a college employee (with influence over students) would negatively impact their experience on the campus,” newly appointed Essex County College President Anthony Munroe said in a statement, according to NJ.com. “I fully believe that institutions of higher learning must provide a safe space for students… The character of this institution mandates that we embrace diversity, inclusion, and unity. Racism cannot be fought with more racism.” What people need to come to terms with here is the contradiction between the rhetoric of this country being a safe and free place, and institutions of higher learning being places for free inquiry and learning, and the reality that Black people understand a very different set of circumstances, have analyses of the situation and face repression when trying to formulate those analyses and take mass democratic action. It has been quite awhile since we could talk reasonably about a healthy social consensus in the U.S., and the oppression of nationally oppressed peoples and the conditions of bourgeois rule now make healthy and fully inclusive social consensus here impossible. For those of us at the bottom, at the grassroots, our task is to push the old to the breaking point while birthing the new; it becomes less a matter of choice and more a matter of necessity every day.
Quoted from a Q&A with Asad Haider, founding editor and member of the “militant research collective” Viewpoint Magazine, on talking about politics which is not about a social structure, but the recognition of an individual or a particular group’s identity, and the fracturing of the the left, in Seattle Weekly. Read the entire article here.
Aurora Cedillo absolutely nails it when she speaks from her perspective as a retired Salem educator. Read the entire article here. Too few people in Salem are prepared to acknowledge the truth of Ms. Cedillo's words, or perhaps it's just easier to turn away or, more troubling, to make the issues she raises abstract so that her points get lost. Our youth are suffering just at those points where race, class, gender and inequality intersect. Those conditions can be changed through organizing collective political action. It really is that simple. Those are our points, not Ms. Cedillo's, but she says:
It is not uncommon for my students to come from homes where their parents were working two or three jobs to make an honest living. Older siblings might be their caretakers because their parents are often getting home very late at night — unintentionally compounding the stress on their young, bilingual children. The kids might come to school hungry and often without enough sleep. Sadly, my students might be the ones answering the phone when I called their home to check in. Teachers are already strained as it is, and there is no time built into their schedules for getting to know their students’ families. Understanding of their home life leads to a much better understanding of the child. We need to humanize our students and public education. They are not just a number and a name on a list. They are human beings.
and say: You asked, we answered: Medicare for all!
I'm calling to urge Mr. Walden to rethink his devotion to party and to the money from his corporate sponsors in order to once again be useful to his constituents in District 2. I understand that from his point of view this is a lot to ask. Money and power are huge rewards, whereas the needs of ordinary people are more easily ignored.
When Mr. Walden asked at several recent town halls who approves of a single payer Medicare for all health system, there have been wild cheers and applause and approval. Why is this!?? Certainly he understands it's because all of us here in the district, in fact in the country, need healthcare. Healthcare without price gouging, healthcare without gender discrimination, healthcare without regard to pre-existing conditions, healthcare actually for all people.
A single-payer Medicare-for-all types of health system would not produce tax breaks for the wealthy, or generous corporate donations. But if Mr. Walden has the least bit of interest in doing what is needed and wanted in terms of healthcare by his constituents in district 2, he should make good on the messages he has gotten from his town halls - Give us a single payer Medicare-for-all type health system!
Mr. Walden is responsible for getting us into the AHCA mess that we have now. He does have an opportunity though to try to create something other than a tax-break-for-the-rich legacy by coming out in support of the healthcare-for-all movement and bills today.
--Taken from Gorge Resisters, a great group in the Gorge doing the kind of vital organizing work that is needed everywhere.
On 1 June 2017, an extraordinary session of Cuba’s National Assembly of Peoples’ Power approved important documents which define the character, objectives and strategy of Cuban socialism into the post-Castro era. Since 2011, a programme of ‘updating’ the Cuban economic and social system has been underway, and these documents aim to establish the parameters within which those developments will take place.
Such measures are imperative given the greater space being opened up for market relations: private ownership and business, self-employment and foreign investment. Establishing social welfare and national development priorities will be essential to prevent market forces asserting a capitalist logic over Cuban development. Raul Castro will step down as President of the Council of State in February 2018,1 and the Cuban leadership is working to strengthen the institutional basis of socialism to help safeguard its future when Cuba is no longer led by the ‘historic generation’ who carried out the Revolution.
The National Assembly is the highest decision-making body in Cuba, with half of its 614 delegates voted up from Municipal and Provincial Assemblies, and the other half representing the mass, grassroots organisations. The documents approved are: Conceptualisation of the Economic and Social Model of Cuban Socialist Development (Conceptualisation) and the Guidelines of the Social and Economic Policy of the Party and the Revolution (the Guidelines). There was also discussion about a third key document, Basis for the Plan of Economic and Social Development up till 2030: Vision of the Nation, Axes and Strategic Sectors (Plan 2030).
All three documents have been through a collective process of writing, analysis, modification and approval: consensus building practices which strengthen unity and commitment to socialist development. President Raul Castro described them as ‘the most studied, discussed and rediscussed documents in the history of the Revolution’. That is indicative of their importance.
Some needed context for those of us in North America can be found in another post by Helen Jaffe on the broad topic of the market economy and Che Guevara:
‘I didn’t know Che had any economic ideas’ has been a frequent reply I’ve received when telling people about the topic of my research and my book. It reflects the caricature of Guevara as a romantic guerrilla fighter with idealist notions of how human beings are motivated and how social change is brought about. The consequence is to overlook his contribution to Cuba’s economic development and socialist political economy debates and hence to lose any lessons that can be drawn from his endeavours.
It censors the complexity of economic decisions and debates within the Cuban Revolution, as if the revolutionaries who seized power on 1 January 1959 were chaotic adventurers whose economic policies were based on a naïve ideological agenda and not reflecting concrete conditions and constraints in the process of development. For example, Cuba’s incorporation into the socialist bloc’s trade relations, its continued dependence on sugar as a principal export and the importation of ‘backward’ technology from the socialist countries, are viewed as political preferences – with little recognition made of the limits placed on Cuba’s development path by the imposition of the US blockade or the denial of credit from the Western countries. It also plays into the interpretation that sees Fidel Castro as synonymous with the Revolution, so that all policies were generated by this one omnipresent individual according to his whims, psychological traits and struggle for domination.
Today HB 3464 passed Oregon's House, now on to the Senate! If passed, HB 3464 would protect the privacy of immigrant families by limiting the collection and sharing of information for the purpose of immigration enforcement. Thanks to Representatives Teresa Alonso and Diego Hernandez, the bill's chief sponsors, for leading the effort.
HB 3464 provides clarity on what information can be shared and increases privacy for Oregonians from federal anti-immigration actions.“In Oregon, over and over again, we have answered the call to uphold the values of our constitution and the values of inclusivity, equal protection and diversity,” Rep. Diego Hernandez said. “I believe this bill is good policy. It follows federal law, it creates clarity and consistency for all of our public bodies, it protects the privacy of Oregonians, it protects our limited resources and reaffirms our values as an inclusive state.”
“Over the last few months, leaders in the communities that I represent and statewide have come to me asking for help and asking for guidance,” State Representative Teresa Alonso Leon added. “I have heard from teachers, principals and educators who do not know what to do to protect their students if ICE comes asking for information, I have heard from city employees and local elected officials who want to know what they can do to make people feel safe, and I have heard from our immigrant communities and their allies asking what it is we are doing to protect their families, friends and neighbors.”
Representative Alonso Leon has won a fully-deserved reputation for keeping her fingers on the pulse of our community, responding to the people, keeping an open door and an open mind, learning and managing the ropes of being in the legislature quickly, and taking on hard fights.
This is a serious blow to the far-right, racist, anti-immigrant forces in Oregon. It is possible that they will again attempt to put together a high-pressure racist campaign in the closing weeks of the legislative sessions. This victory in the House also challenges other liberal and progressive forces to fight the far-right, do a better job and to follow the lead of Representatives Hernandez and Alonso Leon. Can we count on legislative allies to do the right thing? Can we maintain unity in the face of a likely right-wing challenge? Can we win this victory and turn it into a successful pushback against the right-wing's Initiative Petition #22, which seeks to overturn Oregon's Sanctuary Statute?
El día 16 de Junio, según se había anunciado, Donald Trump visitó la ciudad de Miami y pronunció un discurso ante una audiencia formada por lo peor del exilio cubano, que se había congregado en el Teatro Manuel Artime, para conocer de las nuevas medidas que se implantarían contra Cuba.
Es interesante analizar el ambiente en que se desarrolló el acto y los resultados concretos del mismo.
Trump, siguiendo el patrón de todo discurso presidencial estadounidense, tuvo alguien que se lo escribiera y esa persona, se encargó de resaltar en el mismo algunos nombres y situaciones, que además de agregar torpeza, permiten definir la falta de conocimiento de Trump sobre Cuba.
Dentro de las cosas que leyó el presidente, estuvo el llamar “heroicos” a los mercenarios de la Brigada 2506, que se rindieron en menos de 72 horas.
El discurso tocó una amalgama de hechos que en vez de beneficiar a Estados Unidos, lo denigra, como la Operación Peter Pan, organizada por la CIA y repudiada por la mayoría de los que llegaron a Estados Unidos forzados por la misma.
Habló de desaparición de personas, de asesinatos por parte de la policía, lo cual nos hace recordar los tiempos de Batista, el dictador que gracias al apoyo de Estados Unidos estuvo mal gobernando Cuba hasta que triunfó la Revolución.
Hablo de las personas que son detenidas cuando se encaminan a rezar en templos e iglesias. De la no existencia de libertades ni respeto a los derechos humanos. Del peligro que Cuba tuviera armas atómicas, algo que se refiere a los años 60 del siglo pasado y de que Cuba ha enviado armas a Corea, lo cual nos siembra la duda, de que el señor Trump sepa dónde está Corea.
Es evidente que aquel no fue precisamente un discurso en Miami, sino un discurso para Miami, lleno de demagogia, mentiras y tergiversaciones, que resultara agradable a los oídos de los que fueron al teatro para ver correr la sangre.
No podía faltar en aquel desbarrar la referencia a Venezuela y como Cuba la ayudaba en sus planes contra el pueblo de dicho país.
Según Trump, Estados Unidos son los campeones de la libertad, la democracia, el país donde no se comenten violaciones a los derechos humanos, donde no existen presos políticos y donde sus fuerzas armadas ayudan a otros pueblos del mundo para que se mantengan libres.
Sus acciones sobre Cuba estarán encaminadas en ese sentido, para liberar al pueblo cubano y que los exilados puedan regresar a sus hogares, además de reclamar lo que fueron sus propiedades, ahora con nuevos propietarios, el pueblo cubano.
Todo esto lo dice como si fuera verdad, o al menos parece estar convencido de lo que expone, aunque pudiera estar engañado, lo que implica que es fácil engañar, como a un tonto, al presidente de Estados Unidos.
Lo principal no estuvo en la retórica, la demagogia y las frases que dijo para que algunos se sintieran felices. Muchos besos, abrazos, apretones de mano, aplausos, señalar supuestos “héroes” que estaban en la audiencia, regalo de plumita a algunos de ellos, todo eso formaba parte del espectáculo.
Lo principal estuvo en la orden ejecutiva que firmó y si la misma realmente implica un cambio en las relaciones que se llevan a cabo entre Cuba y Estados Unidos, según los “acuerdos” llegados durante la administración Obama.
Podemos decir que hay algunos cambios y novedades, pero que de algunas, cosas ni se habló. Según comunicación de fecha 16 de junio emitida por la Oficina de Prensa de la Casa Blanca sobre la orden ejecutiva tenemos lo siguiente:
Si no firma otra orden mañana, los viajes a Cuba de las personas de origen cubano siguen igual, lo mismo podemos decir de las remesas y los viajes a Estados Unidos para visitar familiares y otros motivos, todo de forma ordenada y mediante visa.
De las línea aéreas que viajan a Cuba procedente de Estados Unidos y los Trasatlánticos turísticos, nada nuevo.
En relación con el alojamiento de estadounidenses en Cuba, se plantea en la orden no realizarlo con establecimientos ni hoteles bajo la dirección del Grupo de Administración Empresarial, por considerarlo vinculado a las fuerzas armadas cubanas.
Se ratifica, lo ya establecido desde hace mucho tiempo, de no permitir que estadounidenses viajen a Cuba con fines turísticos. Los visitantes del sector académico, artístico y otros, deberán viajar en grupos, no individualmente como fue autorizado por Obama.
Cómo un cambio de política, dentro de la indicaciones emitidas por Trump, está el incremento del comercio con el Sector Privado. Aquí no dice a cuál sector privado se refiere, pero en la agricultura cubana tenemos un fuerte sector privado y el Secretario de Agricultura, nombrado por Trump, es partidario del comercio con el mismo.
También se ratifica la política del bloqueo a Cuba y se opone a las gestiones que se puedan realizar en las Naciones Unidas y otros Organismos Internacionales para la terminación del mismo. En septiembre veremos cómo votan la resolución contra el Bloqueo en Naciones Unidas.
Se dice que el mejoramiento de las relaciones entre Cuba y Estados Unidos dependerá de la acción del gobierno cubano en función de incrementar el cumplimiento de las leyes, el modo de vida del pueblo, el respeto a los derechos humanos y el incremento de libertades políticas, económicas y religiosas. Todo lo cual será Estados Unidos el que lo determine.
En la orden se orienta a los Departamentos de Comercio y Tesoro para que establezcan las regulaciones correspondientes en un plazo de treinta días, para poner a funcionar la misma. Este proceso, según los expertos, pudiera demorar varios meses en los cuales seguirán vigentes las regulaciones actuales.
Hasta aquí lo mencionado en la orden ejecutiva, lo que no se mencionó, por el momento queda igual.
Cómo podrán ver, estas regulaciones a quienes afectan es a los estadounidenses, qué pueden, o no pueden hacer, según las mismas.
El cambio de política hacia Cuba, se ha reducido al cambio de lo que el “país de la libertad” permite que sus ciudadanos realicen en relación con Cuba.
Era evidente que esta actividad no estaba dirigida a Cuba ni a los cubanos, sino a los estadounidenses de origen cubano que participaban en la misma. Ni una sola vez se mencionó el nombre de Martí, Maceo o alguno de nuestros próceres. La muchedumbre gritaba U S A… U S A…. U S A… y para terminar, un émulo de Ferruccio Burgos, interpretó en solo de violín, el Himno de Estados Unidos.
Este era un discurso para Miami. No resiste ser pronunciado en otro lugar del mundo. Considero que Trump se burló de los asistentes.
At its quarterly meeting the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) General Executive Board adopted the following statement on the Trump administration's plans to renegotiate NAFTA. Besides agreeing with the possition taken by the union's leadership, I think that UE is an outstanding union, and has been from its earliest days. If you're in an oppressive workplace environment and need a union, contact UE. UE organizes and represents all kinds of workers.
RENEGOTIATION OF THE NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT (NAFTA)
United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) June 2, 2017
Three years ago, on the 20th anniversary of NAFTA’s passage, North American labor, environmental groups, human rights organizations, and other citizen watchdogs—united to call out the terrible impact of this trade agreement on working people and our communities. As attention returns to NAFTA, now that President Trump has notified Congress officially of his intention to renegotiate, we caution against any belief that his administration will seek a deal benefitting people and the planet. NAFTA benefits corporations and those who have an interest in the free flow of capital, rather than improving the lives of workers, our communities, or the environment. Past attempts to appease concerns from labor and environmentalists have not been meaningful. .
We see the consequences of this failed treaty vividly: Across the continent, workers and families have been hit hard, as evidenced by persistent unemployment, wage stagnation, and record wealth and income inequality. There continues to be a decline in good-paying, union manufacturing jobs, as well as a loss of high-paying jobs in smaller businesses. In those pockets where manufacturing has expanded, the jobs created have been mostly low wage with little attention to worker health and safety. In Mexico, the jobs that have emerged have been at such low rates of pay that poverty rates have risen—not fallen—since 1994. Mexico has experienced a loss of jobs in agriculture, where heavily-subsidized US corn, sugar, and other commodities led to the collapse of the Mexican farm economy. Since the implementation of NAFTA, workers in the three countries have suffered, while wealthy investors and big corporations have seen their profits balloon.
Communities of North America continue to suffer under NAFTA as corporations continue to exploit our shared environment for profit and pollute our land, air, and water as governments are unable or unwilling to force corporations to clean up hazardous mistakes created by negligence. This is evident from the St. Lawrence River in Québec, which is threatened by fracking from Lone Pine Resources, to the Midwestern plains, where oil leaks from the TransCanada-owned Keystone Pipeline, to the hills of Guadalcázar, where residents pray they have seen the last child born with birth defects from the toxic waste MetalClad has refused to clean up. Corporate profits continue to grow while the health of our communities and environment suffers.
NAFTA enables the unrestricted flow of capital causing misery for working people, including: the forced migration of people looking for jobs; increased rates of homelessness; mental health problems associated with dislocation; higher rates of diabetes and other ailments linked to cheap high fructose corn syrup; and rising violence, particularly against women. NAFTA devastated the Mexican economy, particularly agriculture and family farms by allowing US corporations to dump cheap corn and other staples into Mexico. It is a key reason why millions upon millions of Mexican workers have been forced to migrate north to the US looking for better work.
President Trump says he wants to renegotiate this “bad deal,” but his vague plans are anchored in building a wall for workers and tearing down walls for capital. He makes a xenophobic argument for renegotiation, and we reject its racist and nationalistic orientation. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue have stated that the rejected and discredited Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) would be the starting point for a renegotiated NAFTA. Unionists and environmentalists rejected TPP for good reasons and to have that as the administration’s starting point is very troubling.
The Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism in NAFTA infringes on sovereignty and citizens’ rights to self-governance by allowing corporations to sue governments who restrain profit-making opportunities. This would have been made more powerful under TPP. TPP would have weakened US health and safety standards, including those that ensure safe pharmaceuticals and food. TPP attacked net neutrality and a free and open Internet. NAFTA was negotiated in the early 1990’s and the internet was not included in the original NAFTA. We expect this to be a major target of the administration’s renegotiation.
We reject the corporate-led vision for a renegotiation of NAFTA and call for a new set of trade policies that prioritize workers common interests and relies on international solidarity as its cornerstone. Any renegotiation of NAFTA must be oriented around the improvement of workers’ lives and protection of the environment focused on those regions of the continent where conditions are the most desperate.
We call for the end of the ISDS protections NAFTA offers to corporations to exploit working people and the environment. As we said three years ago, 20 years after the passage of NAFTA, any new treaty must “strengthen governments’ ability to protect social, environmental and labor rights, particularly for migrants.”
We demand, as required by the UN International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions 87 and 98, an end to laws that allow employers to prevent workers from choosing their own unions or from exercising their rights to assemble, organize, and represent workers without any employer interference. This includes an end to attacks in the U.S against unions seeking to negotiate union security clauses with employers.
We demand government investment to create good-paying jobs in our communities, to build affordable housing, accessible public transportation, and green energy production, with quality food, education, and healthcare for all, and with improved access to clean air and water, public parks, and green recreation spaces. All trade negotiations must be opened to civil society participation, which includes prior publication of the texts and the construction of mechanisms for information sharing, social participation and deliberation, while avoiding the imposition of any “fast track”. A renegotiated NAFTA treaty must include effective mechanisms to protect human, labor, and environmental rights with meaningful sanctions and enforcement provisions to assure the supremacy of human rights over corporate privilege.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine denounced the repeated Zionist attacks against the city of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque and collective punishment that has escalated over the last few days and hours, and the besieging of the village of Deir Abu Mashaal. Zionist forces have launched a campaign of attacks and arrests against the people of the village. These raids against the village will not extinguish the flame of resistance and will only intensify the determination of the Palestinian people to defend their rights, principles and holy sites.
The Front condemned the heavily armed forces of the Israeli police that stormed the courtyards of al-Aqsa Mosque, attacking worshippers and imposing closure on the Damascus Gate area. This military stranglehold is a retaliatory attack meant to divert attention from the clear failure of its military forces in preventing the heroic Jerusalem operation, which hit Zionist occupation forces in the holy city. These criminal practices reflect the essence of Zionist policy.
The Front denounced the prime minister of the Zionist enemy Netanyahu as a war criminal. His threats to take unprecedented action against the city of Jerusalem and the village of Deir Abu Mashaal and the orders to demolish the homes of the families of the strugglers who carried out the Jerusalem operation are empty baloons directed at the Zionist population after failing once more in Jerusalem and in an attempt to again cover up the corruption charges that have arisen once more. The demolition of homes and the policy of collective punishment by the occupation and its soldiers have never succeeded in smothering the spirit of resistance or breaking the popular support of the masses of our people. Instead, these attacks only fuel the flame of intifada and resistance.
The PFLP saluted the steadfastness of the Paletinian people in occupied Jerusalem and Deir Abu Mashaal village who continue to act to confront the crimes of the occupation. It called on the Palestinian masses to support their steadfastness by acting to break the siege on the city and the village, calling on all to turn any home demolitions into a battle with the enemy to prevent and stop this policy and expose it before the world. The aim of this policy is an attempt to break the will of the masses and weaken their embrace of resistance.
The Front also urged the Palestinian, Arab and international media to display the images of repression, abuse and closure on the steadfast village of Deir Abu Mashaal.
The Front warned the Zionist enemy that for every demolished home in Deir Abu Mashaal, Palestinian fighters will emerge from the rubble of these homes to respond to the crime as occurred in the courageous Promise of al-Buraq operation.
The PFLP emphasized its deepest greetings of pride for the families of the martyrs, their mothers in particular, for their steadfastness and national and human pride and strength.
Various sectors across the United States, including agriculture and tourism, are already feeling the strains of Donald Trump’s xenophobic agenda, while millions of immigrant families are currently living in fear of being torn apart by Trump’s “unshackled” immigration enforcement officers.
My parents, for example, could be taken from me if they were caught driving without a driver’s license, and, despite staying out of trouble with the law and paying their taxes, they could be sent back to a country that is currently experiencing extreme political and economic unrest.
Yes, I spent the first couple of months of the Trump Administration in fear that the DACA program could be terminated the next day, or the day after that, or the week after that. But today, on the fifth anniversary of the DACA program, I remain committed to fighting for my undocumented community more than ever before.
The challenges that immigrants will face under the Trump Administration will not be easy, but we cannot allow ourselves to sit down and give up. We didn’t win DACA or local pro-migrant policies at the state and local level by cowering in fear; we won them by standing up for what was right and just, for the hard work that immigrants, from all backgrounds, continue to do all across the country we call our home.
Let DACA’s fifth anniversary serve as a reminder of what the program has allowed DREAMers like me accomplish, and what it will do for thousands of young immigrants who are currently in school studying to become the next lawyer, doctor, or entrepreneur that our country needs to become stronger.
"When they write about rural areas in the US, they do not seem to understand that today there are also many people of color and migrants who are also affected by the closure of large factories. In addition, you must see how racism is a part of how people are exploited by capitalism. If you do not look at all this, you get an analysis of identity politics that excludes people. To avoid this, a critique of identity politics must be about an analysis of power."
"If Syrians flee from a country in which they belong to the middle or higher class, we can not describe their position in Europe as ‘privileged’. We must develop a complicated analysis of how class and migration work within the current crisis. It is our job as the left to see things like class, race, gender and migration as matters that are related and not as separate issues."
"When my comrades and I criticized gay marriage, our work could hardly get published and we couldn’t organize anything at a university. But people are now seeing how gay marriage has made the demand for universal health care more difficult. Now everyone must marry for health care because everyone can get married. The left needs a better imagination to not repeat this kind of failure."
The following is a somewhat edited and pessimistic take on things. We cribbed it from a very helpful article in Northwest Labor Press and added a few points of our own. Bill Post remains hopelessly reactionary and Brian Clem moves further backwards, as we have noted here previously. Five good ideas from Labor that need to make it through Oregons legislature in the time remaining…
1. Bargain over class size: Parents and students hate large classes. So do teachers. HB 2651, sponsored by Tigard State Representative Margaret Doherty, would make school class size a mandatory subject of collective bargaining.
2. Rent control: The most effective response to an affordable housing emergency HB 2001, sponsored by House Speaker Tina Kotek, would repeal the statewide ban on local rent control ordinances AND cap rent increases statewide at 5 percent through July 1, 2018.
3. Put lawless contractors on notice: Tired of seeing businesses that break the law continue to get public contracts? HB 2670, sponsored by Portland State Rep. Rob Nosse, bidders on public contracts of over $100,000 to disclose whether in the last three years they’ve been found to have violated labor laws like the National Labor Relations Act and laws on minimum wage, overtime, and the prevailing wage.
4. Pay prevailing wage on construction projects funded with tax breaks: Why are Oregon building trades workers paid the area prevailing wage when the state spends money on construction, but not when the state funds construction via tax subsidies? HB 2194 and SB 291would expand the prevailing rate requirement to include public works funded via tax credits or tax abatements.
5. Require non-profit hospitals to do something to deserve their tax-exempt status: Hospital bills are a key reason health care is so expensive, yet most of the Oregon hospitals charging sky-high prices are “non-profit” institutions that pay no taxes, and the law is very vague about the charitable and educational service they must provide. HB 2115, sponsored by State Rep. Mitch Greenlick, would lay out stricter requirements for nonprofit hospitals health systems to be exempt from taxation.
Three bad ideas which need to be stopped right now...
1. Privatize liquor sales: When the State of Washington privatized liquor sales, hundreds of union members lost their jobs, and liquor prices soared. Now a bill from Salem State Rep. Brian Clem would pave the way to privatization in Oregon. HB 2032 would set up a task force to develop proposals for privatizing the sale of distilled liquors and phasing out the role of the Oregon Liquor Control Commission.
2. Keep young workers poor: HB 2378, sponsored by Keizer State Rep. Bill Post, would allow employers to pay 85 percent of minimum wage to employees under 21 years of age for the first 90 days of employment.
3. Public subsidy for private payroll: HB 2375, sponsored by Grants Pass State Rep. Carl Wilson, would give employers an income tax credit — if they pay employees wages greater than the minimum wage.
Seven ideas which should have been on the forefront of labor's political agenda from the beginning...
1. Establishing paid family medical leave for all Oregon workers
2. Ending “no cause” evictions and the ban on rent control (see below)
3. Ending racial profiling by police
4. Ensuring health coverage for all Oregon kids
5. Extending reproductive health services to all Oregon residents, not just citizens
6. Taping grand jury hearings
7. Public entities should not be sharing details of a person's citizenship status with anyone unless clearly required to do so by federal law
The Fair Shot For All alliance has been working on most these, but a stronger push from all of Labor was needed.
Portland Tenants United has this to say about HB 2004:
What happens when the same democrats who amended tenant protection bill HB 2004 take money from the PAC created to kill the bill?
THE BILL MAKES REGULATIONS OPTIONAL FOR LANDLORDS!! AND EITHER OPTION COSTS TENANTS MORE MONEY!
If this bill passes as-is then TENANTS SHOULD NOT SIGN LEASES! And if the landlord will only offer month-to-month for hundreds more a month? Well, the amendments took out the ability for us to do anything about that too.
Sign our petition to demand the Oregon Senate #Restore2004 and come to our rally at the state Capitol on Tuesday!
Rebecca Solnit has an article in The Guardian reviewing the current political crises in the United States. It will be most helpful to people who need to catch up with the news and take, or regain, a long view of where we're at. Really, as Solnit says, we're not only not losing, but we're also moving forward. Many of us can't see the forward motion because we're so busy making it happen, and others can't see it because they give in to the despair and powerlessness propagated by society's leading institutions--the government, the media, religious institutions, political leadership, cultural figures. Our progress is fragile and unsteady, but it's real and it's reflected through and across the political spectrum.
All of this is to say that there is tremendous opposition from many kinds of groups, institutions, and individuals, here and abroad. This doesn’t mean there isn’t suffering and loss. I’ve heard from great organizers who are heartbroken and exhausted; I know Muslims who are fearful; an undocumented woman whose father has been imprisoned by Ice. I am horrified by the defunding of programs to prevent Aids internationally, which could result in a million deaths. And the brutality is real.
I’ve also talked to everyday citizens who have become activists and longtime organizers who are doing extraordinary things, and who are exhilarated by the solidarity and the possibility – of what we have become together, and of what they themselves have become.
Taking action is the best cure for despair. I’ve listed a little of what officials in the judiciary and legislative branch are doing, the shifts in the media, the response overseas. But it’s the residents of the United States whose response will matter most in the end.
Civil society awoken and arisen is a power adequate to counter the power of an increasingly isolated, confused, frightened and bumbling administration.
Many are organizing now to change the direction of the country in the midterm elections. In Utah, Mormon women have organized in solidarity with undocumented families. Philadelphians are training to disrupt deportation raids on undocumented immigrants.
In Southern California, a Latino-Muslim alliance started a project called Taco Trucks at Every Mosque, timed to coincide with the holy month of Ramadan. The group Common Defense unites veterans and military families for civil rights and against the Trump agenda. Queer, trans, and feminist groups have proliferated. Earlier this year, Muslims raised $100,000 to repair a Jewish cemetery in St Louis.
There are far more generous-hearted such project than I can list, strengthening ties far beyond tolerance, restating the case for environmental protection and social justice including feminism, trans rights, immigrant rights. And there is a level of engagement with electoral politics the likes of which I have never seen, pushing on legislation and pressuring politicians, supporting progressive candidates, including many people of color and women running for the first time.
First-time candidate Danica Roem, a transgender journalist, beat three other candidates to win a Democratic primary in Virginia and may beat a Republican homophobe for a seat in the state assembly. This activism needs to be sustained, and it needs to be strategic. It needs to address voting rights, and midterm elections, and it needs to remember all the powers and possibilities that lie in activism beyond electoral politics as well. So far so good.
Greenpeace USA executive director Annie Leonard told me that they don’t have to try to recruit or inform people anymore, that they can’t “answer the phones fast enough”; that people are showing up ready to try to change the world. She said everything groups like hers have been doing for decades “was all practice for this moment”.
People like to predict the future, often a dismal future, but the future is not written. It is ours to write. In this moment of utter turmoil, civil society must be the counter to a rogue administration, one whose victory is a surprise equaled by its myriad defeats ever since.
A crisis, says one dictionary, is “the point in the progress of a disease when a change takes place which is decisive of recovery or death; also, any marked or sudden change of symptoms, etc.” This crisis could be the death or the recovery of a more democratic, more inclusive, more generous America. Where we go from here is up to us.
The problem is that after all of this hope, and after her great layout of objective facts which can't be contested and her justifiable warnings, Solnit really isn't telling us how to "deal the final blow." She is giving us places to start from---but then what? If the forces she mentions don't unite in some kind of common front, if that front isn't led by women and people of color and LGBTQIA+ people and people from the working class, if there isn't an inside/outside strategy which is moved from the streets and the communities and the workplaces, then we will likely win some compromises and then be hard put upon by the forces of reaction and experience a defeat. This isn't inevitable--nothing is. But if we're talking about dealing a "final blow" to the enemies of social progress then we need the maximum amount of unity, leadership from the aforementioned groups, and political instruments---a common front, a party, organizations which can manage power at the very base of society where it matters most---to see this through.
Trump's recent policy shift and his comments on Cuba reminds us again of the case of Assata Shakur and the persistent drive by imperialist and racist forces to force Cuba to surrender Shakur and the drive by these imperialists to stamp out any memory or thought of opposition and revolution. Many people---and particularly many young people---are not familiar with Assata Shakur's case or the context surrounding it. We present some important details here and we recommend that readers go to the Assata Shakur Speaks! website. Defending revolutionary Cuba and defending Assata Shakur are one task, and we can do this best by building a united front with national and international allies.
An Open Letter From Assata
Assata: Exile since 1979
On May 2 1973, Black Panther activist Assata Shakur (fsn) JoAnne Chesimard, was pulled over by the New Jersey State Police, shot twice and then charged with murder of a police officer. Assata spent six and a half years in prison under brutal circumstances before escaping out of the maximum security wing of the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey in 1979 and moving to Cuba.
Assata: In her own words
My name is Assata (she who struggles) Olugbala (for the people) Shakur (the thankful one), and I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the US government's policy towards people of color. I am an ex political prisoner, and I have been living in exile in Cuba since 1984. I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the U.S. government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one. In the 1960s, I participated in various struggles: the black liberation movement, the student rights movement, and the movement to end the war in Vietnam. I joined the Black Panther Party. By 1969 the Black Panther Party had become the number one organization targeted by the FBI's COINTELPRO program. because the Black Panther Party demanded the total liberation of black people, J. Edgar Hoover called it "greatest threat to the internal security of the country" and vowed to destroy it and its leaders and activists.
Political Prisoner to Exiled
On May 2, 1973 I, along with Zayd Malik Shakur and Sundiata Acoli were stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike, supposedly for a "faulty tail light." Sundiata Acoli got out of the car to determine why we were stopped. Zaydand I remained in the car. State trooper Harper then came to the car, opened the door and began to question us. Because we were black, and riding in a car with Vermont license plates, he claimed he became "suspicious." He then drew his gun, pointed it at us, and told us to put our hands up in the air, in front of us, where he could see them. I complied and in a split second, there was a sound that came from outside the car, there was a sudden movement, and I was shot once with my arms held up in the air, and then once again from the back. Zayd Malik Shakur was later killed, trooper Werner Forester was killed, and even though trooper Harper admitted that he shot and killed Zayd Malik Shakur, under the New Jersey felony murder law, I was charged with killing both Zayd Malik Shakur, who was my closest friend and comrade, and charged in the death of trooper Forester. Never in my life have I felt such grief. Zayd had vowed to protect me, and to help me to get to a safe place, and it was clear that he had lost his life, trying to protect both me and Sundiata. Although he was also unarmed, and the gun that killed trooper Forester was found under Zayd’s leg, Sundiata Acoli, who was captured later, was also charged with both deaths. Neither Sundiata Acoli nor I ever received a fair trial. We were both convicted in the news media way before our trials. No news media was ever permitted to interview us, although the New Jersey police and the FBI fed stories to the press on a daily basis. In 1977, I was convicted by an all- white jury and sentenced to life plus 33 years in prison. In 1979, fearing that I would be murdered in prison, and knowing that I would never receive any justice, I was liberated from prison, aided by committed comrades who understood the depths of the injustices in my case, and who were also extremely fearful for my life.
New Jersey Police & the Pope
The U.S. Senate's 1976 Church Commission report on intelligence operations inside the USA, revealed that "The FBI has attempted covertly to influence the publics perception of persons and organizations by disseminating derogatory information to the press, either anonymously or through "friendly" news contacts." This same policy is evidently still very much in effect today. On December 24, 1997, The New Jersey State called a press conference to announce that New Jersey State Police had written a letter to Pope John Paul II asking him to intervene on their behalf and to aid in having me extradited back to New Jersey prisons. The New Jersey State Police refused to make their letter public. Knowing that they had probably totally distort the facts, and attempted to get the Pope to do the devils work in the name of religion, I decided to write the Pope to inform him about the reality of’ "justice" for black people in the State of New Jersey and in the United States.
NBC Television Network Distorts Facts
In January of 1998, during the pope's visit to Cuba, I agreed to do an interview with NBC journalist Ralph Penza around my letter to the Pope, about my experiences in New Jersey court system, and about the changes I saw in the United States and it's treatment of Black people in the last 25 years. I agreed to do this interview because I saw this secret letter to the Pope as a vicious, vulgar, publicity maneuver on the part of the New Jersey State Police, and as a cynical attempt to manipulate Pope John Paul II. I have lived in Cuba for many years, and was completely out of touch with the sensationalist, dishonest, nature of the establishment media today. It is worse today than it was 30 years ago. After years of being victimized by the "establishment" media it was naive of me to hope that I might finally get the opportunity to tell "my side of the story." Instead of an interview with me, what took place was a "staged media event" in three parts, full of distortions, inaccuracies and outright lies. NBC purposely misrepresented the facts. Not only did NBC spend thousands of dollars promoting this "exclusive interview series" on NBC, they also spent a great deal of money advertising this "exclusive interview" on black radio stations and also placed notices in local newspapers.
In an NBC interview Gov. Whitman was quoted as saying that "this has nothing to do with race, this had everything to do with crime." Either Gov. Whitman is completely unfamiliar with the facts in my case, or her sensitivity to racism and to the plight of black people and other people of color in the United States is at a sub-zero level. In 1973 the trial in Middlesex County had to be stopped because of the overwhelming racism expressed in the jury room. The court was finally forced to rule that the entire jury panel had been contaminated by racist comments like "If she's black, she's guilty." In an obvious effort to prevent us from being tried by "a jury of our peers the New Jersey courts ordered that a jury be selected from Morris County, New Jersey where only 2.2 percent of the population was black and 97.5 percent of potential jurors were white. In a study done in Morris County, one of the wealthiest counties in the country, 92 percent of the registered voters said that they were familiar with the case through the news media, and 72 percent believed we were guilty based on pretrial publicity. During the jury selection process in Morris County, white supremacists from the National Social[ist] White People's Party, wearing Swastikas, demonstrated carrying signs reading "SUPPORT WHITE POLICE." The trial was later moved back to Middlesex County where 70 percent thought I was guilty based on pretrial publicity I was tried by an all white jury, where the presumption of innocence was not the criteria for jury selection. Potential jurors were merely asked if they could "put their prejudices aside, and "render a fair verdict." The basic reality in the United States is that being black is a crime and black people are always "suspects" and an accusation is usually a conviction. Most white people still think that being a "black militant" or a "black revolutionary" is tantamount to being guilty of some kind of crime.
The current situation in New Jersey's prisons, underlines the racism that dominates the politics of the state of New Jersey, in particular and in the U.S. as a whole. Although the population of New Jersey is approximately 78 percent white, more than 75 percent of New Jersey's prison population is made up of blacks and Latinos. 80 percent of the women in Jersey prisons are people of color. That may not seem like racism to Gov. Whitman, but it reeks of racism to us.
The NBC story implied that Governor Christie Whitman raised the reward for my capture based on my interview with NBC. The fact of the matter is that she has been campaigning since she was elected into office to double the reward for my capture. In 1994, she appointed Col. Carl Williams who immediately vowed to make my capture a priority. In 1995, Gov. Whitman sought to "match a $25,000 departmental appropriation sponsored by an "unidentified legislator." I watched a tape of Gov. Whitman's "testimony" in her interview with NBC. She gave a very dramatic, exaggerated version of what happened, but there is no evidence whatsoever to support her claim that Trooper Forester had "four bullets in him at least, and then they got up and with his own gun, fired two bullets into his head." She claimed that she was writing Janet Reno for federal assistance in my capture, based on what she saw in the NBC interview. If this is the kind of "information" that is being passed on to Janet Reno and the Pope, it is clear that the facts have been totally distorted. Whitman also claimed that my return to prison should be a condition for "normalizing relations with Cuba". How did I get so important that my life can determine the foreign relations between two governments? Anybody who knows anything about New Jersey politics can be certain that her motives are purely political. She, like Torrecelli and several other opportunistic politicians in New Jersey came to power, as part time lobbyists for the Batista faction - soliciting votes from right wing Cubans. They want to use my case as a barrier for normalizing relations with Cuba, and as a pretext for maintaining the immoral blockade against the Cuban people.
In what can only be called deliberate deception and slander NBC aired a photograph of a woman with a gun in her hand implying that the woman in the photograph was me. I was not, in fact, the woman in the photograph. The photograph was taken from a highly publicized case where I was accused of bank robbery. Not only did I voluntarily insist on participating in a lineup, during which witnesses selected another woman, but during the trial, several witnesses, including the manager of the bank, testified that the woman in that photograph was not me. I was acquitted of that bank robbery. NBC aired that photograph on at least 5 different occasions, representing the woman in the photograph as me. How is it possible, that the New Jersey State Police, who claim to have a detective working full time on my case, Governor of New Jersey Christine Whitman, who claimed she reviewed all the "evidence," or NBC, which has an extensive research department, did not know that the photograph was false? It was a vile, fraudulent attempt to make me look guilty. NBC deliberately misrepresented the truth. Even after many people had called in, and there was massive fax, and e-mail campaign protesting NBC's mutilation of the facts, Ralph Penza and NBC continued to broadcast that photograph, representing it as me. Not once have the New Jersey State Police, Governor Christine Whitman, or NBC come forth and stated that I was not the woman in the photograph, or that I had been acquitted of that charge.
The Hands Off Assata Campaign is a coming together of organizations and individuals who are outraged by the heightened attempts by the federal government, congress of the united states and the state of new jersey to illegally force thru kidnapping a return of Assata Shakur from Cuba to the plantation United States.
We know that Assata Shakur is a bona fide political exile living in the island nation of Cuba. She was persecuted for her political beliefs and tortured while in prison. We support the international human rights and Geneva conventions, which enabled her to seek and secure political asylum in Cuba, and we support the right of the Cuban people to grant it to her. We are shocked by the actions of new jersey and the department of justice, who has issued a $1 million dollar bounty on head of Assata Shakur.
Doing such a thing is tantamount to a call to "soldiers of fortune" to kidnap and kill Ms. Shakur and for them to engage in international espionage against the sovereign nation of Cuba.
We are shocked by the activities of the United States House of Representatives, which in September 1998 passed House Resolution 254, calling on the Cuban Government to extradite Assata Shakur. Given that there is no binding extradition treaty between Cuba and the United States, such a request is outside the context of international law. In addition, we call on the Congress of the United States to hold public hearings on the past and current impact of FBI's Counter Intelligence Program known as COINTELPRO.
Given that Assata Shakur was not the only one politically persecuted for her political beliefs, we demand that a full airing take place on that program. And finally are calling on the United States end its hostility towards the tiny nation of Cuba by normalizing relations with the Island and ending the US economic blockade Assata Shakur: Sister, Woman, Exile, Mother, Grand mother
ASSATA SHAKUR is an African woman. She is a social justice activist, a poet, a mother and a grandmother. She has lived in Cuba since the early 1980s. During the heady days of the 1960s and 1970s, she found herself a victim of both racial profiling and political targeting. After being spotted on the New Jersey turnpike on May 2, 1973, (DWB) driving while Black, it was discovered that she and her two companions were known members of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. Like Martin Luther King, Jr. Malcolm X, Leonard Peltier and many members of the Civil Rights and American Indian Movements, Assata and her companions had been watched, their phones tapped, their families monitored, their organizations infiltrated, and widespread disinformation campaigns waged against them. They were like many activists of the day targets of the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). In fact, Assata was wanted, not for anything she had actually done, but for a variety of crimes that government and state officials were trying to pin on her. This was common in the 1970s: discredit the voice of activists by painting them as criminals, trumping up indictments, tying them up in courts and if possible jailing them. In the mid 1970s, The Church Committee of the Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations and the Domestic Intelligence Subcommittee, headed by Senator Walter Mondale, provided incontrovertible documentation of a government sponsored conspiracy against the civil and human rights of all sorts of political activists.
THUS ON THAT DAY IN MAY, Assata was a marked woman. And after police stopped them, a shoot out occurred. When the smoke cleared one police officer, and one of Assata's companions, Zayd Shakur lay dead. Assata, shot in the back and dragged from the car, lay wounded. Only belatedly taken to the hospital, Assata was then chained to her bed, tortured and questioned while injured. In fact, she never received adequate medical attention even though she had a broken clavicle and a paralyzed arm. Nonetheless, she was quickly jailed, prosecuted and incarcerated over the next few years for the series of trumped up cases. Interestingly, in five separate trials, and with majority white juries, charges were dismissed because of lack of evidence or she was acquitted of all charges ranging from bank robbery to murder. As the manager of one bank said at trial - she is just not the one who robbed my bank. Only in the final trial in 1977, where she was charged with the Turnpike killings, was she found guilty. This even though forensic evidence taken that day showed that she had not fired a weapon. She was sentenced to life + 33 years in prison. In 1979, and after nearly six years behind bars, she escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey and some time later emerged in Cuba where she applied for and received political asylum. Since being in Cuba, she has continued her college education, published an autobiography, and writes on global issues facing women, youth, and people of color.
DURING THE 1990S, rightist politicians and police bodies - this time in conjunction with conservative members of the Cuban-American community - reinvigorated their attempts to pursue Assata Shakur. They did this even though Assata has not tried to re-enter the United States and is, according to international law, a political exile who should be left alone. Linking "fear of crime" rhetoric with anti-Cuban sentiment, New Jersey governor Christine Todd-Whitman issued a bounty which was $100,000, on the head of Assata Shakur. She even went as far as to announce her bounty on Radio Marti, the US government radio station which beams anti-Castro propaganda into the Caribbean. To do such a thing put Assata in danger because it is tantamount to encouraging any opportunists to kidnap and/or kill her for pay. In addition, in 1998, Congressmen Franks and Menendez from New Jersey and Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart of Florida introduced and got passed - House Resolution 254 - which calls for the Cuban government to extradite Assata Shakur as a condition to normalizing US-Cuba relations. Interestingly, while Assata and Cuba are portrayed as "criminal", a terrorist bombing campaign - thought to be sponsored by ultra-rightist forces in the United States - has been launched against Cuba, killing and injuring Cuban citizens and foreign tourists alike.
What can you do?
Add your organization's name to our list of endorsers/Take petitions.
Contact your Congressperson. Demand that he/she rescind House Resolution #254 and ask them to support congressional hearings on COINTELPRO. You can use a Congressional email service to look up your rep's email: http://www.house.gov/writerep
Download and print the "Hands Off Assata Shakur" Flyer
Plan a showing of the film Eyes of the Rainbow (1997). This film portrays the life and current struggles of Assata Shakur. Download and View: Eyes Of The Rainbow
Keep visiting www.assatashakur.org for current HOA-Campaign Info.
Organize a The Hands Off Assata Shakur Campaign Rally and Teach In in your respective cities and towns
Send contributions: The Talking Drum Collective, P.O. Box 1921, Stone Mountain, Ga. 30086
Any questions, contact us at www.assatashakur.org using the contact us form. Link to this site.
Get an Hands off Assata Action Alert RSS Feed
Also participate in the monthly Action Alert
Oregon's renters are in grave DANGER of being betrayed by state Democrats, who are taking landlord lobby money in exchange for opposing real and desparately needed solutions to the housing crisis.
The legislative session ends soon, and devestating cuts have already been made to HB 2004 which leave remove critical protections and create huge loopholes for others: the provision that would have made rent stabilization legal has been removed, while the provision that makes no-cause evictions illegal is loophole-ridden.
This bill should protect ALL tenants, not offer generous loopholes to landlords! Without BOLD AND DECISIVE ACTION, Oregon's rent crisis will continue to push families into poverty and into homelesness.
✪ We DEMAND that Democrats take REAL action on the housing crisis, by either restoring HB 2004 to its originally-written version, and/or limiting rent increases be to 3% statewide! (House Speaker Tina Kotek proposed 5%).
Join us in Salem to demand that lawmakers offer REAL solutions to renters: we will not settle for fake solutions to a devastating housing crisis. Tenants are voters too, and politicians must be accountable to the many, not the few.
On this day in 1932, 24-year-old Italian anarchist coalminer Angelo Pellegrino Sbardellotto was executed by a fascist firing squad in Italy, having admitted his plan to assassinate Mussolini. His final words were "Viva anarchia!" ("Long live anarchy!").
When I go to my local Post Office there is usually a long line, one or two unhappy people working at the counter and lots of stress. The carrier who delivers my mail is walking at a super-fast pace and I often get mail for other households. The cost of stamps is increasing while services and service levels are dropping. It's too easy to blame all of this on the Internet and Amazon and leave it at that. For instance, Netflix shipments get preferential treatment because they're a large corporation, and private business get to raid and take over some postal services, and outfits like DHL and the chains of "private post offices" make money when postal services fail or are cut or outsourced. This is not the Post Office I grew up with: that Postal Service had limited banking services, Post Offices were fully staffed, the carriers knew the people on their routes, and the Postal Service hired people of women, color and veterans and provided secure employment. A mail carrier job was a job you wanted. Here is an union article providing some context for what's going on.
"(Union) Locals are already getting into the fight on the streets. The Baltimore APWU Local held an informational picket at the Main Post Office in Baltimore on June 10 that was attended by postal workers and community members. Other Locals are also preparing for similar actions. Locals wishing to conduct informational pickets should contact the Clerk Craft Division to receive assistance."
American Postal Workers Union (APWU) Geared Up to Fight Back Against USPS Reductions in Service and Jobs
06/16/2017 - Throughout the country, the Postal Service has launched an all-out assault on our jobs and is blatantly violating the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) in their staffing of post offices. The USPS is reducing service to the community and disrupting the lives of postal workers by reducing duty assignments (reversions and abolishments) and issuing excessing notices potentially affecting hundreds of post offices and thousands of employees.
Postal Service is Blatantly Violating the Contract
The APWU and the USPS agreed in Article 37.3.A.1 of the CBA that, “Every effort will be made to create desirable duty assignments from all available work hours for career employees to bid.” This includes hours worked by PSEs. This provision was part of an overall agreement for more APWU jobs.
However, the Postal Service is now ignoring that part of the agreement and instead of utilizing “all available work hours” to create duty assignments, the USPS is now attempting to utilize what they call “earned hours” and “earned duty assignments” to determine the number of duty assignments. “Earned duty assignments” is what the USPS would prefer the number of duty assignments to be and has no basis in the contract.
“We are gearing up for a large fight,” said President Dimondstein. “I know that if we stick together and stay united, then – just like the Stop Staples and contract campaigns – we will be victorious.”
USPS Actions are an Attack on Service
The Postal Service is reducing duty assignments and issuing excessing notices despite the fact that Postal Service is already understaffed as evidenced by the following issues, taking place in many offices around the country:
Long lines for postal customers at the window
Delayed mail
Thousands of Postal Support Employees averaging over 30 hours a week
High amounts of overtime
One worker instead of the agreed upon two or three workers staffing DBCS machines
As postal workers and postal customers know from experience, in most offices, the Postal Service is seriously understaffed and causing poor service to the community. Some installation heads are acting with integrity and resisting the unreasonable reductions in duty assignments and service, but many are going along despite the harm to postal workers and the community.
APWU members and supporters protest service and job cuts in Baltimore, MD.
APWU is Fighting Back
The APWU has been implementing a plan to fight back that includes meetings with management at every level, informational pickets to inform the community, and utilization of the grievance procedure.
“I salute the National Clerk Craft Officers for taking the lead on this, with assistance from the Regional Coordinators and the National Business Agents,” said President Dimondstein
Meetings at the national level, including meetings with Postmaster General Megan Brennan, have emphasized the blatant reduction of duty assignments across the country when the duty assignments are clearly needed and also the unprecedented nature of the amount of excessing notices at one time.
Locals are already getting into the fight on the streets. The Baltimore APWU Local held an informational picket at the Main Post Office in Baltimore on June 10 that was attended by postal workers and community members. Other Locals are also preparing for similar actions. Locals wishing to conduct informational pickets should contact the Clerk Craft Division to receive assistance.
The APWU has been conducting Max Duty Assignment Tool (MDAT) training across the country on how to demonstrate new duty assignments whenever management tries to eliminate duty assignments or excess employees. We have designated National Business Agents (NBAs) in each area that are working under the direction of the National Clerk Craft Officers to work with Local and State organizations to develop strong grievances, coordinate our actions, and put our best foot forward in addressing these issues.
A Call to Action
As postal workers we must fight together against the Postal Services ongoing willingness to blatantly violate the contractual agreements they made with us. It is important that postal workers attend their local union meetings where we can learn from each other and work on strategies to slow or stop management’s plans to reduce service to the community and disrupt the workforce. If we come together in an organized manner, we can win a better Postal Service and a better workplace.
For More Information
If you would like to receive information directly from the APWU by text or email, please sign-up at http://www.apwu.org/stay-connected. Check back on apwu.org for more details about this ongoing fight.
On June 13, Cuba denounced the continuation of the United States economic, commercial, financial blockade and its extraterritorial reach, an example of which was the fine recently levied against American Honda Finance Corporation’s (AHFC) Canadian subsidiary.
Prensa Latina, citing a press release by the island’s permanent mission to the United Nations, reported that the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed a fine of 87,255 dollars on the company for violating blockade regulations regarding Cuba.
According to the diplomatic delegation, the sanction comes after the subsidiary approved and financed 13 agreements linked to car rentals by the Cuban Embassy in Canada from a Honda dealership in Ottawa, between February 2011 and March 2014.
This is the first such a fine has been imposed under the government of Donald Trump who arrived to the White House on January 20, where his predecessor, Barack Obama previously announced the start of a process of rapprochement between the two countries, in December of 2014.
Over the last two and half years, the U.S. government has imposed more than 2,842,000 dollars worth of fines against a total of 11 entities - six from the U.S. and four international - according to the Cuban mission.
The delegation also highlighted that the latest fine is another on the long list of unilateral measures applied under the blockade, which after more than 50 years remains in force.
Regarding the recent fine, the measure not only impacts the work of Cuban diplomats in third countries but also harms Canadian citizens and companies, noted the mission.
