On September 20th, Mychal Bell--the first of the Jena 6 to be convicted--is scheduled for sentencing. If the District Attorney has his way, Mychal will face 22 years in prison. It's a horrifying moment for Mychal, his parents, and the rest of the Jena 6 families. It's also a perfect time for those who can to come to Jena, in person, and stand with them.
Bus from Charlotte, NC, click here.
Background: Last fall, when two Black high school students sat under the "white" tree on their campus, white students responded by hanging nooses from the tree. When Black students protested the light punishment for the students who hung the nooses, District Attorney Reed Walters came to the school and told the students he could "take [their] lives away with a stroke of [his] pen."
Racial tension continued to mount in Jena, and the District Attorney did nothing in response to several egregious cases of violence and threats against black students. But when a white student--who had been a vocal supporter of the students who hung the nooses--taunted a black student, allegedly called several black students "nigger", and was beaten up by black students, six black students were charged with second-degree attempted murder. Last month, the first young man to be tried, Mychal Bell, was convicted. Later this month, he will be sentenced to up to 22 years in prison for a school fight.
The Call to Action:
On September 20th, Mychal Bell--the first of the Jena 6 to be convicted--is scheduled for sentencing. If the District Attorney has his way, Mychal will face 22 years in prison. It's a horrifying moment for Mychal, his parents, and the rest of the Jena 6 families. It's also a perfect time for those who can to come to Jena, in person, and stand with them. We know it's a serious time and financial commitment, but we wanted to give you the opportunity to join the hundreds of people who have already emailed us to say that they will come. If you can join us, please click on the link below to RSVP:
http://colorofchange.org/jena/rsvp.html
Our presence in Jena--in large numbers--will help focus media attention on the situation in Jena, escalate pressure on Louisiana public officials, and most importantly, show the families of the Jena 6, especially Mychal Bell and his parents, that we will stand with them in the face of this injustice.
On July 31st, with only a few days to prepare, 300 people from across the country rallied at the Jena Courthouse. We delivered a petition signed by 43,000 ColorOfChange.org members to the District Attorney demanding that he drop the charges against the Jena 6. It was a powerful day that made it clear that the Jena 6 and their families won't have to fight on their own. Since then, more than 100,000 people have taken action and contacted the Governor, media attention to the case has grown, and we have an even bigger opportunity to make a profound impact.
As we plan for this event, we want to get a sense of how many people can commit to coming to Jena. Below are some details about getting there, so you can figure out if you'll be able to join us.
Details
If you're flying to Louisiana, the closest airports to Jena are Alexandria (45 minute drive) and Monroe (1.5 hour drive). You can also fly to Lafayette (2.25 hour drive), Shreveport (2.75 hour drive), Baton Rouge (3 hour drive), New Orleans (4.25 hour drive), or Houston (about a 5 hour drive). The closest hotels are in Pineville and Alexandria. As they fill up, we'd recommend staying at hotels near the airports above.
If travelling from out of town, you'll want to get to Louisiana the night before, as things will start early in the morning, probably by 8am or 9am. Organizers will meet you when you arrive at a central location in Jena and get you situated for the day. We will be providing maps, organizers' cell phone numbers, and other information closer to the day-of; you will be able to reach someone in case you have any problems, need directions, or have questions along the way.
RSVP
Once you're confident you can come, please RSVP at the following:
http://colorofchange.org/jena/rsvp.html
If you have questions, you can send them to jena@colorofchange.org.
If you can't come, don't worry. We'll be sending emails soon with more ways to take action between now and the 20th. Whatever your participation, we thank you for your ongoing commitment to justice for the Jena 6. It continues to be our privilege to be part of such a powerful community of support for these young men.
Thanks and Peace,
-- James Rucker
Executive Director, www.ColorOfChange.org
We won! Governor Perry Grants Clemency to Kenneth Foster
Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, Aug. 30, 2007
Perry spares inmate set to die today
Victory rally at the Governor's Mansion in Austin, --- 5:00 pm
Thank you very much to the more than 5,000 people who wrote Governor Perry, the Board of Pardons and Paroles and every member of the Texas Legislature. Thank you to the many members of the Foster family, lawyers and activists around the world in the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign who have worked on this case and saved Kenneth's life. You have made a difference! You have made history! Extra thank you to the Campaign to End the Death Penalty in Austin who worked very hard for Kenneth.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By MICHAEL GRACZYK
Associated Press
HUNTSVILLE - Gov. Rick Perry accepted a recommendation from the state parole board and said today he would spare condemned prisoner Kenneth Foster from execution and commute his sentence to life.
Foster had been scheduled to die tonight.
"After carefully considering the facts of this case, along with the recommendation from the Board of Pardons and Paroles, I believe the right and just decision is to commute Foster's sentence from the death penalty to life imprisonment," Perry said in a statement.
"I am concerned about Texas law that allowed capital murder defendants to be tried simultaneously and it is an issue I think the Legislature should examine."
The seven-member parole board had voted 6-1 to recommend the commutation.
Perry did not have to accept the highly unusual recommendation from the board whose members he appoints.
Foster was the getaway driver and not the actual shooter in the slaying of a 25-year-old man in San Antonio 11 years ago.
Foster acknowledged he and his friends were up to no good as he drove them around San Antonio in a rental car and robbed at least four people 11 years ago before the slaying of Michael LaHood Jr.
"It was wrong," Foster, 30, said recently from death row. "I don't want to downplay that. I was wrong for that. I was too much of a follower. I'm straight up about that."
Another execution, the first of five scheduled for September in Texas, is set for next week when South Carolina native Tony Roach faces injection Wednesday for the strangling of an Amarillo woman, Ronnie Dawn Hewitt, 37, during a burglary of her apartment nine years ago.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
13 Texas legislators wrote clemency letters.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram wrote an editorial today in which they mention the letters by Rep Harold Dutton and other state reps urging clemency for Kenneth Foster. The editorial says Perry should listen to Texans, and now he has.
If your representative is Harold Dutton, Jessica Farrar, Elliot Naishtat , Mike Villareal, Terri Hodge, Sylvester Turner, Donna Howard, Alma Allen, Eddie Rodriguez, Helen Giddings, Ruth Jones McClendon, Dora Olivo, or Lon Burnam, you should call them and say thank you. They helped when we needed them.
You can also send an email to Governor Perry, saying THANK YOU!
Donate to To Help Us Stop Executions in Texas
Kenneth Foster will live now, but the fight goes on. There are five executions in Texas in September. Please consider making a donation to help us stop all executions in Texas.
You can donate online through PayPal.
Or on our secure website donation page through Democracy in Action
Or you can send a check to:
Texas Moratorium Network
3616 Far West Blvd, Suite 117, Box 251
Austin, Texas 78731
Thank you for your support!
There are five executions scheduled in Texas in September, so we will have our hands busy protesting.
In October, don't forget about the 8th Annual March to Stop Executions, which is being held in Houston for the first time this year. The March to Stop Executions, has been held each October since 2000 in cooperation with several Texas and national anti-death penalty organizations, including Texas Moratorium Network, the Austin chapter of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, Texas Students Against the Death Penalty and the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
Regular organizing meetings are held in Houston's Third Ward at SHAPE Community Center, 3815 Live Oak
Contact Njeri Shakur at 713-237-0713 to get involved or email abolition.movement@hotmail.com.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EJUSA Chooses Texas for Special Anti-Death Penalty Retreat in Texas
As many of you know, a group of Texas organizations working against the death penalty recently put together a team to apply for a retreat sponsored by Equal Justice USA in order to strategize about a way forward to stop executions in Texas. Thank you to those people who wrote EJUSA on our behalf. We received some good news from EJUSA. An excerpt from their email follows:
Dear friends in Texas,
After looking through the application from Texas and seeing your unique situation, EJUSA wants to give you all some special attention and offer your team a different opportunity than this year's Training and Strategy retreat. We'd like to tailor a special strategy, skill-building, and planning meeting/retreat specifically for the movement in Texas. This will allow more people than just the five of you to be involved and will also give us the opportunity to adapt an agenda specifically for your needs.
We hope that this will be 'more bang for your buck' so to speak and will really allow us all to make progress in building both capacity and support in Texas.
I'm really looking forward to working with you all and learning more about the movement and possibilities in Texas!
on behalf of the entire EJUSA staff,
Sarah Craft
Texas Moratorium Network
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
email: admin@texasmoratorium.org
phone: 512-302-6715
web: http://www.texasmoratorium.org
Perry spares inmate set to die today
Victory rally at the Governor's Mansion in Austin, --- 5:00 pm
Thank you very much to the more than 5,000 people who wrote Governor Perry, the Board of Pardons and Paroles and every member of the Texas Legislature. Thank you to the many members of the Foster family, lawyers and activists around the world in the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign who have worked on this case and saved Kenneth's life. You have made a difference! You have made history! Extra thank you to the Campaign to End the Death Penalty in Austin who worked very hard for Kenneth.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By MICHAEL GRACZYK
Associated Press
HUNTSVILLE - Gov. Rick Perry accepted a recommendation from the state parole board and said today he would spare condemned prisoner Kenneth Foster from execution and commute his sentence to life.
Foster had been scheduled to die tonight.
"After carefully considering the facts of this case, along with the recommendation from the Board of Pardons and Paroles, I believe the right and just decision is to commute Foster's sentence from the death penalty to life imprisonment," Perry said in a statement.
"I am concerned about Texas law that allowed capital murder defendants to be tried simultaneously and it is an issue I think the Legislature should examine."
The seven-member parole board had voted 6-1 to recommend the commutation.
Perry did not have to accept the highly unusual recommendation from the board whose members he appoints.
Foster was the getaway driver and not the actual shooter in the slaying of a 25-year-old man in San Antonio 11 years ago.
Foster acknowledged he and his friends were up to no good as he drove them around San Antonio in a rental car and robbed at least four people 11 years ago before the slaying of Michael LaHood Jr.
"It was wrong," Foster, 30, said recently from death row. "I don't want to downplay that. I was wrong for that. I was too much of a follower. I'm straight up about that."
Another execution, the first of five scheduled for September in Texas, is set for next week when South Carolina native Tony Roach faces injection Wednesday for the strangling of an Amarillo woman, Ronnie Dawn Hewitt, 37, during a burglary of her apartment nine years ago.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
13 Texas legislators wrote clemency letters.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram wrote an editorial today in which they mention the letters by Rep Harold Dutton and other state reps urging clemency for Kenneth Foster. The editorial says Perry should listen to Texans, and now he has.
If your representative is Harold Dutton, Jessica Farrar, Elliot Naishtat , Mike Villareal, Terri Hodge, Sylvester Turner, Donna Howard, Alma Allen, Eddie Rodriguez, Helen Giddings, Ruth Jones McClendon, Dora Olivo, or Lon Burnam, you should call them and say thank you. They helped when we needed them.
You can also send an email to Governor Perry, saying THANK YOU!
Donate to To Help Us Stop Executions in Texas
Kenneth Foster will live now, but the fight goes on. There are five executions in Texas in September. Please consider making a donation to help us stop all executions in Texas.
You can donate online through PayPal.
Or on our secure website donation page through Democracy in Action
Or you can send a check to:
Texas Moratorium Network
3616 Far West Blvd, Suite 117, Box 251
Austin, Texas 78731
Thank you for your support!
There are five executions scheduled in Texas in September, so we will have our hands busy protesting.
In October, don't forget about the 8th Annual March to Stop Executions, which is being held in Houston for the first time this year. The March to Stop Executions, has been held each October since 2000 in cooperation with several Texas and national anti-death penalty organizations, including Texas Moratorium Network, the Austin chapter of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, Texas Students Against the Death Penalty and the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
Regular organizing meetings are held in Houston's Third Ward at SHAPE Community Center, 3815 Live Oak
Contact Njeri Shakur at 713-237-0713 to get involved or email abolition.movement@hotmail.com.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EJUSA Chooses Texas for Special Anti-Death Penalty Retreat in Texas
As many of you know, a group of Texas organizations working against the death penalty recently put together a team to apply for a retreat sponsored by Equal Justice USA in order to strategize about a way forward to stop executions in Texas. Thank you to those people who wrote EJUSA on our behalf. We received some good news from EJUSA. An excerpt from their email follows:
Dear friends in Texas,
After looking through the application from Texas and seeing your unique situation, EJUSA wants to give you all some special attention and offer your team a different opportunity than this year's Training and Strategy retreat. We'd like to tailor a special strategy, skill-building, and planning meeting/retreat specifically for the movement in Texas. This will allow more people than just the five of you to be involved and will also give us the opportunity to adapt an agenda specifically for your needs.
We hope that this will be 'more bang for your buck' so to speak and will really allow us all to make progress in building both capacity and support in Texas.
I'm really looking forward to working with you all and learning more about the movement and possibilities in Texas!
on behalf of the entire EJUSA staff,
Sarah Craft
Texas Moratorium Network
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
email: admin@texasmoratorium.org
phone: 512-302-6715
web: http://www.texasmoratorium.org
Sept 29 Stop The War Against Women at Home & Abroad
Unite against sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia!
Unite against economic exploitation!
Unite to win everything we need!
The U.S. claims "liberation of women" as it bombs & kills women, men, children, & the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, & the world. But U.N. studies show women surviving in Iraq & Afghanistan are far worse off since the Pentagon assaults began.
Inside the U.S. women–most notably Katrina survivors–are losing jobs, housing, health care, day care; are rounded up in immigrant raids & locked up in prison for acts of survival, self-defense & drug addiction; are denied reproductive and economic justice; forced into debt to get an education; raped & battered as domestic shelters are closed down; are losing their loved ones, children & families through police brutality, to the military poverty draft, to racist attacks, gender-phobic attacks, attacks on lesbian, bisexual, transgender & transsexual women.
Poor women & women of color are most at risk.
And the U.S. is spending $140,000 a minute on its wars. A Nobel prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, says the total cost of the Iraq war alone may ultimately be $2 trillion.
Stop the War against Women at Home & Abroad
End the wars! Use the money to provide —
• Jobs at a living wage with pay equity, equal access, no discrimination
• Free, universal, sensitive, accessible health care for all
• Free education–from day care through adult training to life-long learning
• Affordable housing & safe homes for everyone
• Reproductive justice for all women–ob-gyn services, paid maternity leave & job protection, safe contraception, no forced sterilization, full access to abortion, positive sex education, all the social & economic resources needed to raise healthy children
• Centers for shelter & self-defense against sexual & domestic violence, for independent living for disabled people and seniors, for recovery from addiction, with an end to racist, sexist incarcerations
• Full rights & services for all undocumented workers & an end to ICE raids
• Rebuilding the infrastructure of New Orleans & Gulf Coast to bring Hurricane Katrina & Rita survivors home
• Cancellation of all student loan debt with support services for young people
• A national campaign against racism, sexism & anti-LGBT bigotry
Politicians won't stop the war -
only the people will stop the war
Sept. 29 National March on the White House -
Sept. 22-29 Encampment in Front of Congress
Buses from across the U.S., find one near you
For details, flyers, & to endorse, click here
Issued by the Nat'l Women's Fightback Network, 55 W. 17th St., 5th Fl., NYC
The Women's Fightback Network is a grassroots alliance of poor and working women of all nationalities, immigrants, disabled activists, students, elders and youth, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual and transgender women–all standing together to protest budget cuts, racism, sexism, homophobia and war.
For info. call: 212-633-6646. E-mail: NYWomenFightback@action-mail.org.
Unite against economic exploitation!
Unite to win everything we need!
The U.S. claims "liberation of women" as it bombs & kills women, men, children, & the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, & the world. But U.N. studies show women surviving in Iraq & Afghanistan are far worse off since the Pentagon assaults began.
Inside the U.S. women–most notably Katrina survivors–are losing jobs, housing, health care, day care; are rounded up in immigrant raids & locked up in prison for acts of survival, self-defense & drug addiction; are denied reproductive and economic justice; forced into debt to get an education; raped & battered as domestic shelters are closed down; are losing their loved ones, children & families through police brutality, to the military poverty draft, to racist attacks, gender-phobic attacks, attacks on lesbian, bisexual, transgender & transsexual women.
Poor women & women of color are most at risk.
And the U.S. is spending $140,000 a minute on its wars. A Nobel prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, says the total cost of the Iraq war alone may ultimately be $2 trillion.
Stop the War against Women at Home & Abroad
End the wars! Use the money to provide —
• Jobs at a living wage with pay equity, equal access, no discrimination
• Free, universal, sensitive, accessible health care for all
• Free education–from day care through adult training to life-long learning
• Affordable housing & safe homes for everyone
• Reproductive justice for all women–ob-gyn services, paid maternity leave & job protection, safe contraception, no forced sterilization, full access to abortion, positive sex education, all the social & economic resources needed to raise healthy children
• Centers for shelter & self-defense against sexual & domestic violence, for independent living for disabled people and seniors, for recovery from addiction, with an end to racist, sexist incarcerations
• Full rights & services for all undocumented workers & an end to ICE raids
• Rebuilding the infrastructure of New Orleans & Gulf Coast to bring Hurricane Katrina & Rita survivors home
• Cancellation of all student loan debt with support services for young people
• A national campaign against racism, sexism & anti-LGBT bigotry
Politicians won't stop the war -
only the people will stop the war
Sept. 29 National March on the White House -
Sept. 22-29 Encampment in Front of Congress
Buses from across the U.S., find one near you
For details, flyers, & to endorse, click here
Issued by the Nat'l Women's Fightback Network, 55 W. 17th St., 5th Fl., NYC
The Women's Fightback Network is a grassroots alliance of poor and working women of all nationalities, immigrants, disabled activists, students, elders and youth, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual and transgender women–all standing together to protest budget cuts, racism, sexism, homophobia and war.
For info. call: 212-633-6646. E-mail: NYWomenFightback@action-mail.org.
Protesters target BofA fees, layoffs
Effects on the working class and economy concern labor union
RICK ROTHACKER, Charlotte Observer, Aug. 28, 2007
Bank of America Corp.'s gargantuan size has caught the attention of a national labor union that's worried about the impact of the bank's fees and layoffs on the working class.
The Service Employees International Union launched a Web site last week -- www.bankofamericabadforamerica.org -- and on Monday handed out leaflets in Charlotte and other cities. The fliers, bearing the visage of chief executive Ken Lewis, targeted a recent increase in ATM fees and planned layoffs in Chicago as part of the bank's pending LaSalle Bank acquisition.
The union, which represents a small number of people who work with LaSalle subcontractors, has targeted the bank largely because of its major role in an economy that officials say increasingly favors the wealthy over the working class, said Stephen Lerner, assistant to the president with SEIU.
"They are so enormous that everything they do has an outsized affect on the country," said Lerner, whose union represents about 1.9 million hospital workers, public employees, building workers and others. "The question is how are they accountable for their impact on the country as a whole."
A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment.
The union is part of a coalition of community groups and religions leaders in Chicago that last week protested expected job losses from the LaSalle deal, which is expected to receive final Federal Reserve Board approval soon. The SEIU also has launched a Web site that questions the impact of the recent buyout binge -- www.behindthebuyouts.org.
Several protesters handed fliers to lunchtime walkers Monday at Trade and Tryon streets. Others distributed leaflets in Chicago, Boston and New York.
The protest comes at a time when Bank of America, the nation's largest consumer bank and credit card issuer, has gained renewed attention for its importance in the financial world. The bank last week invested $2 billion in struggling mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. and joined other big banks in making a withdrawal from the Federal Reserve to help buoy turbulent credit markets.
Lerner said the union will continue to raise questions about the bank and the economy as a whole as it looks to represent its membership.
"We're trying to take the debate out of the board room and into the living room," he said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Staff Writer Binyamin Appelbaum contributed
RICK ROTHACKER, Charlotte Observer, Aug. 28, 2007
Bank of America Corp.'s gargantuan size has caught the attention of a national labor union that's worried about the impact of the bank's fees and layoffs on the working class.
The Service Employees International Union launched a Web site last week -- www.bankofamericabadforamerica.org -- and on Monday handed out leaflets in Charlotte and other cities. The fliers, bearing the visage of chief executive Ken Lewis, targeted a recent increase in ATM fees and planned layoffs in Chicago as part of the bank's pending LaSalle Bank acquisition.
The union, which represents a small number of people who work with LaSalle subcontractors, has targeted the bank largely because of its major role in an economy that officials say increasingly favors the wealthy over the working class, said Stephen Lerner, assistant to the president with SEIU.
"They are so enormous that everything they do has an outsized affect on the country," said Lerner, whose union represents about 1.9 million hospital workers, public employees, building workers and others. "The question is how are they accountable for their impact on the country as a whole."
A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment.
The union is part of a coalition of community groups and religions leaders in Chicago that last week protested expected job losses from the LaSalle deal, which is expected to receive final Federal Reserve Board approval soon. The SEIU also has launched a Web site that questions the impact of the recent buyout binge -- www.behindthebuyouts.org.
Several protesters handed fliers to lunchtime walkers Monday at Trade and Tryon streets. Others distributed leaflets in Chicago, Boston and New York.
The protest comes at a time when Bank of America, the nation's largest consumer bank and credit card issuer, has gained renewed attention for its importance in the financial world. The bank last week invested $2 billion in struggling mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. and joined other big banks in making a withdrawal from the Federal Reserve to help buoy turbulent credit markets.
Lerner said the union will continue to raise questions about the bank and the economy as a whole as it looks to represent its membership.
"We're trying to take the debate out of the board room and into the living room," he said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Staff Writer Binyamin Appelbaum contributed
Victim of 12 years of racism by Charlotte hospital
by Ron A. Virmani, M.D.
On September 1, 1995, Presbyterian hospital called me to their imposing corporate Board Room in Charlotte, NC and dropped a bomb on me. They said they were summarily suspending my hospital privileges at 4 pm that day!
Suspension from a hospital is a kiss of death for any physician! I knew that I would never be able to deliver any more babies nor take care of women who needed gynecologic surgery. I could not stop myself from crying.
I knew that they had been reviewing my charts for several months now. But I had no idea that they would not even give me a chance to present my side of the story with regard to any of those charts before taking such Draconian action. This was truly a stab in the back.
"We do not have to tell you what the charts are." Said then CEO of Presbyterian hospital Mr. Paul Betzold and chief of ob-gyn Dr. Ronald Brown. They simply stated that I had 24 "problematic" charts, as determined by the peer review committee.
I had received my M.D. from New Jersey Medical School in 1985 and finished my ob-gyn residency from Temple University hospital in 1989. I had come to Charlotte in 1990 and become a member of Presbyterian hospital medical staff as an ob-gyn physician.
On December 1994, I had a surgical mishap. Inadvertently, I punctured the external iliac artery in a patient during laparoscopy. This was unfortunate but a known complication of such a procedure. I immediately proceeded to laparotomy and summoned Dr. John Hollenbeck (general surgeon) and Dr. Scott Andrews (cardiovascular surgeon) to assist me. We repaired the injury and the patient went home after a few days stay in the hospital. My malpractice insurance company as well as several independent reviewers determined that I met the standard of care in this case. However, citing business reasons, the insurance company later decided to settle the lawsuit for 300K.
Following the incident, Presbyterian hospital went on a fishing expedition of my charts from over a two year period. Most of these charts had been filed in the hospital archives as having had no problems with them. Anyway, a departmental "peer review" committee headed by Dr. James Hardy somehow managed to label 24 of them "problematic" out of my 102 charts reviewed.
Did Dr. Hardy have more experience than I as an ob-gyn? No, we both finished medical school and residency in same years. The difference is that he is a good old Southern boy trained at Chapel Hill while I am India born, with my residency from Philadelphia. He was later promoted to the position of the chief of the ob-gyn department.
Although I repeatedly asked the hospital for an independent external review of my charts, the hospital did not grant that simple request. The Medical Board of North Carolina asked an experienced ob-gyn physician from Charlotte, Dr. Kenneth Chambers to review my cases. He as well as several other reviewers found my charts to be within the standard of care.
According to a letter circulated by Dr. Jared Schwartz in October 1998 among the hospital's medical staff, I was the first physician to be suspended in 20 years at Presbyterian hospital!
Was it just a coincidence that I was the first ob-gyn physician of Indian origin at Presbyterian hospital?
I decided to do a little research starting with the local courts. I found out the following facts, which are true to the best of my knowledge.
Dr. W. Wortman injured a patient's bladder while performing laparoscopy. The jury found him negligent and awarded the Plaintiff $100,000. (92-CVS-16674)
Dr. Kenneth Baker performed a laparscopic surgery in October 1993 at Union Memorial Hospital. An injury to the intestine was not recognized at this time. Patient presented later with abdominal abscess and died. (Union County 95 CVS 01325) Dr. Baker performed another laparoscopy in November 1994 at which time a bowel perforation was not recognized. She died of sepsis. (Union County, 96 CVS 00992) Presbyterian hospital had no problem subsequently giving Dr. Baker privileges in ob-gyn department.
Dr. Whitesides performed a laser laparoscopy on a patient in 1995 (99- CVS-5141). The patient complained of abdominal pain on December 2 and 3, the physician prescribed stool softener. On December 4, she fell down and the husband had to carry her. An exploratory laparotomy and hemicolectomy was done. Suit also named Nalle clinic.
Dr. C. Ellington performed a laser laparoscopy in September 1991 on a patient and perforated her small bowel. She underwent multiple subsequent surgeries and became unable to eat and drink. She was placed on TPN (intravenous nutrition). The suit also named Bradford Clinic and PHAC. (94-CVS-11679)
Dr. John Tidwell performed a laparoscopy on a patient who died from overwhelming sepsis six days later. (97-CVS-1707) Dr. Tidwell also failed to respond to nurse's pages for another patient in labor in August 1989. The infant suffered severe physical and neurological injuries. (92-CVS-11209)
Dr. A J Lewis failed to manage fetal distress during labor in 1992, the parties named (Dr. Lewis and Mintview ob-gyn) settled for $5M in May 1995.
Drs. M. Torres and K Stephens were performing a hysterectomy at Presbyterian hospital, while managing a labor patient at Carolinas Medical Center in September 1995. They failed to respond to fetal distress in time. The baby was born with zero apgars and died 16 hours after birth.(96-CVS-9576)
Dr. W. McDonald failed to assess fetal distress in February 1987. The result was severe physical and neurological injuries. (96-CVS-7927).
Dr. Alice Teague delayed performing a c/section after unsuccessful vacuum extraction of a baby with much fundal pressure. The baby was born with birth asphyxia and skull fracture. The jury awarded Plaintiff 23.2 million. The hospital settled separately for $6M. (95-CVS-13212)
These cases are only the tip of the iceberg of adverse events involving Presbyterian physicians. I know of no disciplinary action against these physicians by the hospital. They kept on practicing at Presbyterian hospital. Some are still there. In fact, some of them sat in my judgment.
First, I filed a state court case for breach of the by-laws. The hospital adroitly dodged the intent of the court order. When I filed a discrimination case in the federal court, the hospital attorneys dragged the case for several years during which the original judge died. A new judge was assigned.
However, out of nowhere, Judge Mullen, apparently sympathetic to the hospital, appeared and grabbed the case. He stopped it from going to trial citing convoluted technical grounds and not its merits. So much for spending eleven long years in the courts and a million dollars in legal fees! My career has been destroyed for ever. I have been thrown to the sidelines to wither away. Nobody, not even the media, gives a damn. I will never get justice in this country because of my national origin. Even though North Carolina Medical Board found my cases meeting the standard of care and said they would help me, they never did.
In this state and the country, an undercurrent of racism exists in the medical field. Bad physicians of the politically correct persuasion are allowed to practice based on their political clout. Good physicians, who are not part of the "good old boys club" and not approved by the club, are disciplined and thrown to dogs. The "peer review" system is used by the physicians to protect their own and destroy the disenfranchised. This does not bode well for the health care of the citizens of this country.
RON A. VIRMANI, M.D.
Board Certified Obstetrician and Gynecologist
4626 Charlestown Manor Drive
Charlotte NC 28211
704-362-2240 (Phone)
704-362-5702 (Fax)
RVBABY1@AOL.COM
On September 1, 1995, Presbyterian hospital called me to their imposing corporate Board Room in Charlotte, NC and dropped a bomb on me. They said they were summarily suspending my hospital privileges at 4 pm that day!
Suspension from a hospital is a kiss of death for any physician! I knew that I would never be able to deliver any more babies nor take care of women who needed gynecologic surgery. I could not stop myself from crying.
I knew that they had been reviewing my charts for several months now. But I had no idea that they would not even give me a chance to present my side of the story with regard to any of those charts before taking such Draconian action. This was truly a stab in the back.
"We do not have to tell you what the charts are." Said then CEO of Presbyterian hospital Mr. Paul Betzold and chief of ob-gyn Dr. Ronald Brown. They simply stated that I had 24 "problematic" charts, as determined by the peer review committee.
I had received my M.D. from New Jersey Medical School in 1985 and finished my ob-gyn residency from Temple University hospital in 1989. I had come to Charlotte in 1990 and become a member of Presbyterian hospital medical staff as an ob-gyn physician.
On December 1994, I had a surgical mishap. Inadvertently, I punctured the external iliac artery in a patient during laparoscopy. This was unfortunate but a known complication of such a procedure. I immediately proceeded to laparotomy and summoned Dr. John Hollenbeck (general surgeon) and Dr. Scott Andrews (cardiovascular surgeon) to assist me. We repaired the injury and the patient went home after a few days stay in the hospital. My malpractice insurance company as well as several independent reviewers determined that I met the standard of care in this case. However, citing business reasons, the insurance company later decided to settle the lawsuit for 300K.
Following the incident, Presbyterian hospital went on a fishing expedition of my charts from over a two year period. Most of these charts had been filed in the hospital archives as having had no problems with them. Anyway, a departmental "peer review" committee headed by Dr. James Hardy somehow managed to label 24 of them "problematic" out of my 102 charts reviewed.
Did Dr. Hardy have more experience than I as an ob-gyn? No, we both finished medical school and residency in same years. The difference is that he is a good old Southern boy trained at Chapel Hill while I am India born, with my residency from Philadelphia. He was later promoted to the position of the chief of the ob-gyn department.
Although I repeatedly asked the hospital for an independent external review of my charts, the hospital did not grant that simple request. The Medical Board of North Carolina asked an experienced ob-gyn physician from Charlotte, Dr. Kenneth Chambers to review my cases. He as well as several other reviewers found my charts to be within the standard of care.
According to a letter circulated by Dr. Jared Schwartz in October 1998 among the hospital's medical staff, I was the first physician to be suspended in 20 years at Presbyterian hospital!
Was it just a coincidence that I was the first ob-gyn physician of Indian origin at Presbyterian hospital?
I decided to do a little research starting with the local courts. I found out the following facts, which are true to the best of my knowledge.
Dr. W. Wortman injured a patient's bladder while performing laparoscopy. The jury found him negligent and awarded the Plaintiff $100,000. (92-CVS-16674)
Dr. Kenneth Baker performed a laparscopic surgery in October 1993 at Union Memorial Hospital. An injury to the intestine was not recognized at this time. Patient presented later with abdominal abscess and died. (Union County 95 CVS 01325) Dr. Baker performed another laparoscopy in November 1994 at which time a bowel perforation was not recognized. She died of sepsis. (Union County, 96 CVS 00992) Presbyterian hospital had no problem subsequently giving Dr. Baker privileges in ob-gyn department.
Dr. Whitesides performed a laser laparoscopy on a patient in 1995 (99- CVS-5141). The patient complained of abdominal pain on December 2 and 3, the physician prescribed stool softener. On December 4, she fell down and the husband had to carry her. An exploratory laparotomy and hemicolectomy was done. Suit also named Nalle clinic.
Dr. C. Ellington performed a laser laparoscopy in September 1991 on a patient and perforated her small bowel. She underwent multiple subsequent surgeries and became unable to eat and drink. She was placed on TPN (intravenous nutrition). The suit also named Bradford Clinic and PHAC. (94-CVS-11679)
Dr. John Tidwell performed a laparoscopy on a patient who died from overwhelming sepsis six days later. (97-CVS-1707) Dr. Tidwell also failed to respond to nurse's pages for another patient in labor in August 1989. The infant suffered severe physical and neurological injuries. (92-CVS-11209)
Dr. A J Lewis failed to manage fetal distress during labor in 1992, the parties named (Dr. Lewis and Mintview ob-gyn) settled for $5M in May 1995.
Drs. M. Torres and K Stephens were performing a hysterectomy at Presbyterian hospital, while managing a labor patient at Carolinas Medical Center in September 1995. They failed to respond to fetal distress in time. The baby was born with zero apgars and died 16 hours after birth.(96-CVS-9576)
Dr. W. McDonald failed to assess fetal distress in February 1987. The result was severe physical and neurological injuries. (96-CVS-7927).
Dr. Alice Teague delayed performing a c/section after unsuccessful vacuum extraction of a baby with much fundal pressure. The baby was born with birth asphyxia and skull fracture. The jury awarded Plaintiff 23.2 million. The hospital settled separately for $6M. (95-CVS-13212)
These cases are only the tip of the iceberg of adverse events involving Presbyterian physicians. I know of no disciplinary action against these physicians by the hospital. They kept on practicing at Presbyterian hospital. Some are still there. In fact, some of them sat in my judgment.
First, I filed a state court case for breach of the by-laws. The hospital adroitly dodged the intent of the court order. When I filed a discrimination case in the federal court, the hospital attorneys dragged the case for several years during which the original judge died. A new judge was assigned.
However, out of nowhere, Judge Mullen, apparently sympathetic to the hospital, appeared and grabbed the case. He stopped it from going to trial citing convoluted technical grounds and not its merits. So much for spending eleven long years in the courts and a million dollars in legal fees! My career has been destroyed for ever. I have been thrown to the sidelines to wither away. Nobody, not even the media, gives a damn. I will never get justice in this country because of my national origin. Even though North Carolina Medical Board found my cases meeting the standard of care and said they would help me, they never did.
In this state and the country, an undercurrent of racism exists in the medical field. Bad physicians of the politically correct persuasion are allowed to practice based on their political clout. Good physicians, who are not part of the "good old boys club" and not approved by the club, are disciplined and thrown to dogs. The "peer review" system is used by the physicians to protect their own and destroy the disenfranchised. This does not bode well for the health care of the citizens of this country.
RON A. VIRMANI, M.D.
Board Certified Obstetrician and Gynecologist
4626 Charlestown Manor Drive
Charlotte NC 28211
704-362-2240 (Phone)
704-362-5702 (Fax)
RVBABY1@AOL.COM
Urgent: Stop the execution of Kenneth Foster
Texas, the state that has executed 400 people, has three executions scheduled for this week. One of these men, Kenneth Foster, is innocent based on indisputable evidence. Even the state of Texas admits that he killed no one.
Kenneth was convicted because of Texas' law of parties, although what happened doesn't even fall under this law since Kenneth did not plan or conspire to commit the murder that took place. And he could not have foreseen what happened. Under the Texas Law of Parties a person can be found responsible for a crime committed by another person if they encouraged, aided or conspired to commit the crime or if they could have anticipated the crime was to be committed. Texas is the ONLY state that a person can be sentenced to death if they intended to kill or anticipated that someone would be killed.
So on August 30 Texas wants to execute a man who never touched the gun, who killed no one, and who was 80 feet away in a car with the windows rolled up and the radio blaring while a man was shot by another young man who has already been executed.
Kenneth Foster's case is important not just because he is innocent; not just because the death penalty targets people of color and the poor. Kenneth is also an activist and a leader on death row. He help found the DRIVE Movement which has held numerous hunger strikes and protests on death row. Right now he and Johnny Amador, who is also scheduled to be executed this week, are both on a hunger strike. Neither will go willingly to their death and neither will cooperate with the executioners.
Please go to www.freekenneth.com and click on the third "HERE" where it says:
"Write Governor Perry, Members of the Board of Pardons and Paroles and Members of the Texas Legislature to Stop the Execution of Kenneth HERE"
Make phone/fax calls to Gov. Rick Perry's Office: Call 800-252-9600 (Texas callers) or 512-463-1782 (Austin and out of state), and send faxes to 512-463-1849 . Governor's Citizen's Assistance and Opinion Hotline: (512) 463-1782 Office of the Governor Main Switchboard: (512) 463-2000 [office hours are 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. CST]
Contact the Texas Board of Pardons & Paroles and tell them to grant Kenneth Foster clemency: Phone (512) 406-5852 Fax (512) 467-0945
Kenneth was convicted because of Texas' law of parties, although what happened doesn't even fall under this law since Kenneth did not plan or conspire to commit the murder that took place. And he could not have foreseen what happened. Under the Texas Law of Parties a person can be found responsible for a crime committed by another person if they encouraged, aided or conspired to commit the crime or if they could have anticipated the crime was to be committed. Texas is the ONLY state that a person can be sentenced to death if they intended to kill or anticipated that someone would be killed.
So on August 30 Texas wants to execute a man who never touched the gun, who killed no one, and who was 80 feet away in a car with the windows rolled up and the radio blaring while a man was shot by another young man who has already been executed.
Kenneth Foster's case is important not just because he is innocent; not just because the death penalty targets people of color and the poor. Kenneth is also an activist and a leader on death row. He help found the DRIVE Movement which has held numerous hunger strikes and protests on death row. Right now he and Johnny Amador, who is also scheduled to be executed this week, are both on a hunger strike. Neither will go willingly to their death and neither will cooperate with the executioners.
Please go to www.freekenneth.com and click on the third "HERE" where it says:
"Write Governor Perry, Members of the Board of Pardons and Paroles and Members of the Texas Legislature to Stop the Execution of Kenneth HERE"
Make phone/fax calls to Gov. Rick Perry's Office: Call 800-252-9600 (Texas callers) or 512-463-1782 (Austin and out of state), and send faxes to 512-463-1849 . Governor's Citizen's Assistance and Opinion Hotline: (512) 463-1782 Office of the Governor Main Switchboard: (512) 463-2000 [office hours are 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. CST]
Contact the Texas Board of Pardons & Paroles and tell them to grant Kenneth Foster clemency: Phone (512) 406-5852 Fax (512) 467-0945
Raids in our North Carolina Communities
MORE ATTACKS ON IMMIGRANT WORKERS AND FAMILIES
from El Pueblo
Aug. 28, 2007:
Take Action!
Following the failure of federal immigration reform, we have seen many manifestations of desperation due to the lack of a comprehensive solution to the immigration issue. Federal enforcement agencies were waiting to see what was going to be offered by Congress; now The Department of Homeland Security and federal authorities have announced that they are going to increase immigration enforcement efforts through an escalation of raids. This is what happened in one of our North Carolina communities last week:
As a targeted enforcement operation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided homes in Shannon, St. Pauls, Rennert, Lumberton, Hope Mills and Raeford, as well as Smithfield Packing Co. in Tar Heel, looking for individuals suspected of committing identity theft. Richard Rocha, a spokesman for ICE, said that there were 28 individuals taken into custody, mostly Mexican nationals, 13 women and 15 men. The raids started around 3:40 am through 5 am, when ICE agents went to suspects' residences, and relentlessly knocked on people's doors. Many were already on their way to work; others woke up to their trailers shaking due to the intensity of the knocking by ICE agents. Many of these individuals were taken into custody in the presence of their children, and were quickly asked to decide who they wanted to leave their children with, forcing them to leave them with neighbors and babysitters in order to avoid the threat of being turned over to the Department of Social Services. These children, many of them American citizens, lived through the drama of having their parents ripped away from them as if they were criminals, crying without understanding why their families had to separate. One woman taken into custody was still breastfeeding her child, and another one is six months pregnant. Detainees were not fed for 24 hours, as most of the females were moved to Mecklenburg County detention facilities, and men were transferred to Alamance County.
Standing in solidarity with these families who are victims of the broken immigration system and in partnership with the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights' Day of Action, we have suggestions on what YOU CAN DO TO HELP.
1. Donate money to help the families affected by the raid
Several months ago, local clergy and Interfaith Worker Justiceestablished the "Smithfield Worker Justice Fund" to help Smithfieldworkers and their families during times of crisis, wrongful termination,or disability. We are trying to raise $15,000 for this fund in the nextfew weeks to help Smithfield families that are in need. We are askingchurches and individuals to write a check to support the fund. Allproceeds will go directly to Smithfield families in need.
To help, please send a check for any amount to:Interfaith Worker Justice - Smithfield Worker Justice Fund1020 W. Bryn Mawr Ave., 4th Fl.Chicago, IL 60660
Contribute online through a secure server athttps://www.chi-cash-advance.com/sforms/Appeal457/contribute.asp
from El Pueblo
Aug. 28, 2007:
Take Action!
Following the failure of federal immigration reform, we have seen many manifestations of desperation due to the lack of a comprehensive solution to the immigration issue. Federal enforcement agencies were waiting to see what was going to be offered by Congress; now The Department of Homeland Security and federal authorities have announced that they are going to increase immigration enforcement efforts through an escalation of raids. This is what happened in one of our North Carolina communities last week:
As a targeted enforcement operation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided homes in Shannon, St. Pauls, Rennert, Lumberton, Hope Mills and Raeford, as well as Smithfield Packing Co. in Tar Heel, looking for individuals suspected of committing identity theft. Richard Rocha, a spokesman for ICE, said that there were 28 individuals taken into custody, mostly Mexican nationals, 13 women and 15 men. The raids started around 3:40 am through 5 am, when ICE agents went to suspects' residences, and relentlessly knocked on people's doors. Many were already on their way to work; others woke up to their trailers shaking due to the intensity of the knocking by ICE agents. Many of these individuals were taken into custody in the presence of their children, and were quickly asked to decide who they wanted to leave their children with, forcing them to leave them with neighbors and babysitters in order to avoid the threat of being turned over to the Department of Social Services. These children, many of them American citizens, lived through the drama of having their parents ripped away from them as if they were criminals, crying without understanding why their families had to separate. One woman taken into custody was still breastfeeding her child, and another one is six months pregnant. Detainees were not fed for 24 hours, as most of the females were moved to Mecklenburg County detention facilities, and men were transferred to Alamance County.
Standing in solidarity with these families who are victims of the broken immigration system and in partnership with the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights' Day of Action, we have suggestions on what YOU CAN DO TO HELP.
1. Donate money to help the families affected by the raid
Several months ago, local clergy and Interfaith Worker Justiceestablished the "Smithfield Worker Justice Fund" to help Smithfieldworkers and their families during times of crisis, wrongful termination,or disability. We are trying to raise $15,000 for this fund in the nextfew weeks to help Smithfield families that are in need. We are askingchurches and individuals to write a check to support the fund. Allproceeds will go directly to Smithfield families in need.
To help, please send a check for any amount to:Interfaith Worker Justice - Smithfield Worker Justice Fund1020 W. Bryn Mawr Ave., 4th Fl.Chicago, IL 60660
Contribute online through a secure server athttps://www.chi-cash-advance.com/sforms/Appeal457/contribute.asp
2. Contact your Senators and Representatives and tell them:
"Enforcement measures do not replace inaction regarding Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Stop separating families and conducting traumatizing raids in our communities"
Click here to find your representative's contact information
3. Stay Informed, and help to raise awareness
Injustices surrounding the immigrant community are not widely published, and it is important to let the public know what is going on in our communities. Write a Letter to the Editor of your local newspaper condemning the inaction of our leaders, and exposing the suffering of our immigrant families.
Suggestions of some of the arguments you can include in the Letter to the Editor:
Detention destroys families and communities: Children are separated from their parents, husbands from wives, making it very difficult for them to cope financially and emotionally.
Raids create fear in our immigrant communities: The fear of facing detention and deportation makes many immigrants hesitate to contact law enforcement to cooperate or report crimes. These views trickle-down to children who are U.S citizens and thus will grow up in a culture of distrust towards law enforcement officials.
Inadequate Use of Tax Dollars and Erosion of State Rights: Tax dollars funneled to increased local enforcement officials activities of enforcing federal law, along with the cost of building detention centers, are dollars that are not spent addressing the real source of the issues facing America today.
Intimidation through Raids and Deportations do not replace inaction: Our leaders failed to come up with a federal solution to the immigration issue, so now they have stepped up enforcement operations. Those operations are not a substitute for comprehensive immigration reform. The real source needs to be addressed.
Click here find the contact information of media and press in your area.
4. Smithfield Action
The Smithfield Justice Campaign will be protesting outside the Smithfield's Foods Annual Shareholders Meeting in Williamsburg, Virginia. To learn how you can participate click here .
5. Statewide Collaboration
El Pueblo will continue to stand in solidarity with the families affected by the raid, as well as support local organizations, such as the Eastern North Carolina Workers Center, that are trying to do everything in their power to assist their local communities. El Pueblo will also continue to work in partnership with advocates in the statewide level to increase the level of preparedness for emergency situations such as the raids that occurred last week. You can read more about how to prepare for Raids and Deportation by clicking here.
***********************************
SEPT 29: National March on Washington
SEPT 22-29: Encampment in Front of Congress to STOP the War -
Parallel Encampment and Demo in Los Angeles
70 Organizing Centers in 32 States - 100 buses -
find one near you!
Stop the War at Home and Abroad!
Troops Out Now!
Impeach Bush & Cheney for War Crimes!
End All Occupations -- from Iraq to Palestine to Haiti to the Philippines!
Same Struggle Same Fight!
Let's act in unity with many movements and struggles raising demands including:
* No War against Iran
* End all occupations now - from Iraq to Palestine, the Philippines, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and Afghanistan
* Support The Right to Return - from Palestine to New Orleans
* No to U.S. intervention - Hands off Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Zimbabwe, and the Sudan
* Stop the raids against immigrant workers -- Full rights for undocumented workers<
* Justice for Katrina survivors - End racist police terror - Stop the war against Muslims
* Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, the Cuban Five, and all political prisoners
* Money for health care, jobs and education, not endless war
For details, flyers, buses, to volunteer & more see http://www.troopsoutnow.org/.
Action Center For Justice
http://www.charlotteaction.org/
704.492.8527
Release Jose Maria "Joma" Sison!
BAYAN USA News Release, Aug. 28, 2007
RELEASE JOMA SISON!!! --- BAYAN USA
Fil-Am Alliance Condemns Dubious Arrest of NDF Political Consultant
The US Chapter of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, or BAYAN USA, an alliance of over 12 Filipino organizations in the US, vehemently condemned the arrest of the National Democratic Front Chief Political Consultant Jose Maria Sison last night by the Dutch Police on false charges of multiple murders.
The alliance further condemned the raiding of homes by the Dutch police of the NDF personnel.
Sison was arrested last night for multiple murders of Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara. Police say Sison ordered the murders from the Netherlands back in 2003. Sison will be put on trial in the Netherlands, not the Philippines.
While the New People's Army has already come forward with admittance to the killings, Sison maintains he is not in the leadership of the NPA nor the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).
BAYAN USA maintains the real reasons for Sison's arrest are political not criminal. Emergency actions will also be set at Dutch consulates across the country calling for Sison's immediate release.
"Behind the actions of the Dutch police is the Arroyo government, which since its ascendency has been in pursuit of Joma Sison and worked tirelessly to subdue his meaning to the people," states BAYAN USA Chair Chito Quijano.
The alliance, a member of the International League of Peoples Struggle, an international organization of which Sison serves as Chair, has been calling for a de-listing of Sison from the US and EU terrorist lists.
"It is in every interest of the US and Arroyo governments to confine Professor Sison for his politics. As the Chief Political Consultant to the organization that comprises one half of the stalled NDF-GRP peace negotiations, the Arroyo government is declaring to the world it is not interested in resuming peace talks," Quijano added.
BAYAN USA has also supported the resumption of peace talks between the NDF and GRP. The Arroyo administration just recently called to intensify the all-out war in Mindanao under the auspices of the US War on Terror as a measure to raise its annual pork barrel of military aid from the US government.
BAYAN USA also asserted it's been a year of hot water for the Arroyo administration, with isolation from human rights watchdogs such as the UNHRC, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and even a US Senate hearing that may influence US military aid to the Philippines. Sison, a political refugee in the Netherlands for nearly 20 years, has been one of the most famous and vocal critics of the Arroyo regime.
Earlier this year, a European court nullified Sison's terrorist listing. Since his listing of 2001, Sison had his assets frozen and right to work stripped. Sison remains on the US State Department's terrorist list.
For more information, contact BAYAN USA at info @ bayanusa.org.
EMERGENCY ACTION ALERT!!!!
Release Jose Maria "Joma" Sison!!!
Arrested Last Night!!!
Condemnation Picket in Front of the Dutch Consulate in New York
Wednesday, August 29th, 4pm
11 Rockefeller Center in Manhattan
Trains: B/D/F/V/N/R to Rockefeller Plaza
please bring your statements and placards
DEFEND JOSE MARIA SISON and ALL FILIPINO PROGRESSIVES!
organized by Committee Defend in New York, NY Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines, and BAYAN USA
RELEASE JOMA SISON!!! --- BAYAN USA
Fil-Am Alliance Condemns Dubious Arrest of NDF Political Consultant
The US Chapter of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, or BAYAN USA, an alliance of over 12 Filipino organizations in the US, vehemently condemned the arrest of the National Democratic Front Chief Political Consultant Jose Maria Sison last night by the Dutch Police on false charges of multiple murders.
The alliance further condemned the raiding of homes by the Dutch police of the NDF personnel.
Sison was arrested last night for multiple murders of Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara. Police say Sison ordered the murders from the Netherlands back in 2003. Sison will be put on trial in the Netherlands, not the Philippines.
While the New People's Army has already come forward with admittance to the killings, Sison maintains he is not in the leadership of the NPA nor the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).
BAYAN USA maintains the real reasons for Sison's arrest are political not criminal. Emergency actions will also be set at Dutch consulates across the country calling for Sison's immediate release.
"Behind the actions of the Dutch police is the Arroyo government, which since its ascendency has been in pursuit of Joma Sison and worked tirelessly to subdue his meaning to the people," states BAYAN USA Chair Chito Quijano.
The alliance, a member of the International League of Peoples Struggle, an international organization of which Sison serves as Chair, has been calling for a de-listing of Sison from the US and EU terrorist lists.
"It is in every interest of the US and Arroyo governments to confine Professor Sison for his politics. As the Chief Political Consultant to the organization that comprises one half of the stalled NDF-GRP peace negotiations, the Arroyo government is declaring to the world it is not interested in resuming peace talks," Quijano added.
BAYAN USA has also supported the resumption of peace talks between the NDF and GRP. The Arroyo administration just recently called to intensify the all-out war in Mindanao under the auspices of the US War on Terror as a measure to raise its annual pork barrel of military aid from the US government.
BAYAN USA also asserted it's been a year of hot water for the Arroyo administration, with isolation from human rights watchdogs such as the UNHRC, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and even a US Senate hearing that may influence US military aid to the Philippines. Sison, a political refugee in the Netherlands for nearly 20 years, has been one of the most famous and vocal critics of the Arroyo regime.
Earlier this year, a European court nullified Sison's terrorist listing. Since his listing of 2001, Sison had his assets frozen and right to work stripped. Sison remains on the US State Department's terrorist list.
For more information, contact BAYAN USA at info @ bayanusa.org.
EMERGENCY ACTION ALERT!!!!
Release Jose Maria "Joma" Sison!!!
Arrested Last Night!!!
Condemnation Picket in Front of the Dutch Consulate in New York
Wednesday, August 29th, 4pm
11 Rockefeller Center in Manhattan
Trains: B/D/F/V/N/R to Rockefeller Plaza
please bring your statements and placards
DEFEND JOSE MARIA SISON and ALL FILIPINO PROGRESSIVES!
organized by Committee Defend in New York, NY Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines, and BAYAN USA
CANDLELIGHT VIGIL IN MEMORY OF IMMIGRATION DETAINEE
Victoria’s Family Speaks Out On Their Loss and Demands Answers
Los Angeles, CA –Victoria’s family will hold a candlelight vigil in memory of Victoria Arellano, a Latina transgender woman who was living with HIV and died after being denied basic medical attention at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in San Pedro, California. Medical attention to Victoria came too late and only after her cellmates organized a protest to demand medical attention.
“Sadly, Victoria Arellano’s death is not the only one. In the past three weeks, other immigrants have died in either federal or local immigration custody, including a pregnant woman in El Paso and a Rhode Island man whose sister’s request to deliver him prescribed medication was rejected,” said MALDEF President and General Counsel John Trasviña. “The federal government must enforce basic standards for detention and Congress must use its oversight authority to make sure the Department of Homeland Security does so.”
We request that the House Judiciary Committee, Immigration Subcommittee conduct an oversight hearing into the circumstances of Victoria’s death, as well as the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) detention standards and procedures regarding the policies for the treatment of LGBT detainees and for the medical care for all detainees.
"Victoria's death is a human rights violation. Today people living with HIV/AIDS can live a long and healthy life as long as they are taking their medication in a consistent manner. This beautiful young woman, of only 23 years of age, was allowed to die in such an unjust manner simply because the authorities in charge failed to provide her with basic medical attention." said Oscar De La O, President of BIENESTAR.
WHO: The Arellano Family
WHAT: Candlelight Vigil
WHEN: Monday, August 27, 2007
6pm – 9pm
WHERE: Federal Building - Downtown Los Angeles
300 N. Los Angeles Street
Victoria’s family will make a statement to the press and community present. The candlelight vigil will be held in both English and Spanish. A community altar in memory of Victoria will commemorate her life as daughter, sister, friend and community activist.
BIENESTAR is the largest Latino community-based organization in the United States committed to meeting the needs of people living with HIV/AIDS. BIENESTAR enhances the health and well-being of Latinos through community education, prevention, mobilization, advocacy, and the provision of direct social services. For more information visit www.bienestar.org.
Founded in 1968, MALDEF, the nation’s leading Latino legal organization, promotes and protects the rights of Latinos through litigation, advocacy, community education and outreach, leadership development, and higher education scholarships. For more information on MALDEF, please visit: www.maldef.org.
Los Angeles, CA –Victoria’s family will hold a candlelight vigil in memory of Victoria Arellano, a Latina transgender woman who was living with HIV and died after being denied basic medical attention at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in San Pedro, California. Medical attention to Victoria came too late and only after her cellmates organized a protest to demand medical attention.
“Sadly, Victoria Arellano’s death is not the only one. In the past three weeks, other immigrants have died in either federal or local immigration custody, including a pregnant woman in El Paso and a Rhode Island man whose sister’s request to deliver him prescribed medication was rejected,” said MALDEF President and General Counsel John Trasviña. “The federal government must enforce basic standards for detention and Congress must use its oversight authority to make sure the Department of Homeland Security does so.”
We request that the House Judiciary Committee, Immigration Subcommittee conduct an oversight hearing into the circumstances of Victoria’s death, as well as the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) detention standards and procedures regarding the policies for the treatment of LGBT detainees and for the medical care for all detainees.
"Victoria's death is a human rights violation. Today people living with HIV/AIDS can live a long and healthy life as long as they are taking their medication in a consistent manner. This beautiful young woman, of only 23 years of age, was allowed to die in such an unjust manner simply because the authorities in charge failed to provide her with basic medical attention." said Oscar De La O, President of BIENESTAR.
WHO: The Arellano Family
WHAT: Candlelight Vigil
WHEN: Monday, August 27, 2007
6pm – 9pm
WHERE: Federal Building - Downtown Los Angeles
300 N. Los Angeles Street
Victoria’s family will make a statement to the press and community present. The candlelight vigil will be held in both English and Spanish. A community altar in memory of Victoria will commemorate her life as daughter, sister, friend and community activist.
BIENESTAR is the largest Latino community-based organization in the United States committed to meeting the needs of people living with HIV/AIDS. BIENESTAR enhances the health and well-being of Latinos through community education, prevention, mobilization, advocacy, and the provision of direct social services. For more information visit www.bienestar.org.
Founded in 1968, MALDEF, the nation’s leading Latino legal organization, promotes and protects the rights of Latinos through litigation, advocacy, community education and outreach, leadership development, and higher education scholarships. For more information on MALDEF, please visit: www.maldef.org.
Sept. 20 Crisis of Young Black Males in Charlotte Town Hall Meeting
7:00 - 9:00 pm
E.E. Waddell High School
7030 Nations Ford Rd
Charlotte, NC
For info: www.creative-interchange.com 704-537-1533
E.E. Waddell High School
7030 Nations Ford Rd
Charlotte, NC
For info: www.creative-interchange.com 704-537-1533
Sept. 15 When Gen. Petraeus Reports on Iraq "Surge" - March on Washington
The ANSWER Coalition has called for a March on Washington timed to coincide with Gen Petraeus' report to Congress on Bush's Iraq "surge".
Transportation from Charlotte: We will organize van/carpool caravan and/or buses depending on interest. Contact us ASAP so we can make appropriate plans.
Action Center For Justice
www.CharlotteAction.org
bringthemonhome@yahoo.com
704.492.8527
A Two-Month Surge of Resistance Against the War at Home and Abroad
The next two months will see many acts of protest and resistance against the war. We encourage you to organize, mobilize, and support as many of these actions as you can. Let's answer Bush's surge with a surge of resistance.
August 25 - March Against the the war at home and abroad - Newark - http://www.peaceandjusticecoalition.org
August 25 - Protest the war criminals - Kennebunkport Maine http://www.kportprotest.org
August 27 - Stop the War Against Women - http://iacenter.org/images/womennyc082707a.pdf
August 29 - September 2, 2007 - International Tribunal on
Hurricanes Katrina & Rita - http://internationaltribunal.org
September 11 - "Day of Outrage" against police terror - NYC - called by the D12 Movement http://troopsoutnow.org/sept11.html
September 15 - March Against the War - Washington DC - called by the ANSWER Coalition http://www.answercoalition.org
September 22 - 29 - Encampment to Stop the War in Washington - http://www.troopsoutnow.org
September 29 - March against the war at home and abroad - http://www.troopsoutnow.org
October 27 - Regional antiwar protest around the country - called by United for Peace & Justice - http://www.unitedforpeace.org
Transportation from Charlotte: We will organize van/carpool caravan and/or buses depending on interest. Contact us ASAP so we can make appropriate plans.
Action Center For Justice
www.CharlotteAction.org
bringthemonhome@yahoo.com
704.492.8527
A Two-Month Surge of Resistance Against the War at Home and Abroad
The next two months will see many acts of protest and resistance against the war. We encourage you to organize, mobilize, and support as many of these actions as you can. Let's answer Bush's surge with a surge of resistance.
August 25 - March Against the the war at home and abroad - Newark - http://www.peaceandjusticecoalition.org
August 25 - Protest the war criminals - Kennebunkport Maine http://www.kportprotest.org
August 27 - Stop the War Against Women - http://iacenter.org/images/womennyc082707a.pdf
August 29 - September 2, 2007 - International Tribunal on
Hurricanes Katrina & Rita - http://internationaltribunal.org
September 11 - "Day of Outrage" against police terror - NYC - called by the D12 Movement http://troopsoutnow.org/sept11.html
September 15 - March Against the War - Washington DC - called by the ANSWER Coalition http://www.answercoalition.org
September 22 - 29 - Encampment to Stop the War in Washington - http://www.troopsoutnow.org
September 29 - March against the war at home and abroad - http://www.troopsoutnow.org
October 27 - Regional antiwar protest around the country - called by United for Peace & Justice - http://www.unitedforpeace.org
Sept 7 Searching for Enemy Combatants in the War on terror: US Policies of Extraordinary Rendition and Detainment
7:00-9:00 pm
St. John's Baptist Church
300 Hawthorne Lane, Charlotte, NC
(free) Panel Discussion followed by Q & A featuring:
Attorney George Daly, currently representing a Guantanamo prisoner
Attorney Azadeh Shahshahani, Muslim/Middle East Coordinator for ACLU NC Legal Fndtn
Hassan El Menyawi, Visiting Professor of Poli Sci at Davidson College
Moderated by: Attorney Jim Gronquist
Sponsored by Amnesty International, Charlotte Chapter
For more info: 704.334.2007
St. John's Baptist Church
300 Hawthorne Lane, Charlotte, NC
(free) Panel Discussion followed by Q & A featuring:
Attorney George Daly, currently representing a Guantanamo prisoner
Attorney Azadeh Shahshahani, Muslim/Middle East Coordinator for ACLU NC Legal Fndtn
Hassan El Menyawi, Visiting Professor of Poli Sci at Davidson College
Moderated by: Attorney Jim Gronquist
Sponsored by Amnesty International, Charlotte Chapter
For more info: 704.334.2007
Urgent: Defend our rights! - don't let the gov't silence antiwar protest
Endorse - Donate - Volunteer - Let us know you're coming to the Encampment The Government is trying to silence antiwar resistance in September
Defend our right to erect antiwar tents on the Capitol Mall!
Stop the War at Home & Abroad - Stop the War Against the Movement
SIGN THE PETITION ONLINE
Three months ago, the Troops Out Now Coalition applied to the National Parks Service for permits to erect an anti-war tent city on the Mall across from the Capitol in Washington DC from September 22 to September 29, as a build up to the March against the war at home and abroad on September 29.
As some of you might recall, we organized a tent city (encampment) on this same area last spring, as a part of the fight to end all war funding.
In a meeting with representatives of the National Parks Service, on Thursday, August 23, we were informed for the first time that we would not be allowed to erect the tents because suddenly, it had been decided that all of the areas on the Mall where tents could be erected would be fenced off and would under go "re-soding" at the very time that we planned to use the mall.
We don't believe that it's a coincidence that the Mall area closest to the Capitol is suddenly off limits to protest during the very time when Congress will again be voting to spend another $145 billion dollars on the war and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Everyone knows that September is going to be a crucial month for the struggle to end this criminal war. The anti-war movement has been mobilizing all summer for the fall.
Momentum for the September 22-29 Encampment to Stop the War and the September 29 March on Washington is growing, with more than 70 organizing centers and 32 states across the U.S. actively mobilizing. Every day we learn of new cities that are organizing buses, car caravans, and vans. Every day, activists are calling and emailing to let us know that they will be joining the Encampment.
Apparently, the government has also been preparing for the fall, preparing to silence mass resistance to the war unless we do something about it. Recently the ANSWER Coalition was hit with $10,000 fines for postering for the Sept. 15 march. And now, we learn that the Mall is off limits. Make no mistake about it, the efforts on behalf of the government to squelch resistance to the empire are real and dangerous, but they will not work if we unite and fight back.
WE ARE CONFIDENT THAT WE WILL WIN WITH YOUR SUPPORT
What you can do:
1. Join us in a campaign to let the politicians in Washington D.C. know that we will not be silenced. Please sign the petition online at http://www.troopsoutnow.org/grantencampmentpermit.shtml
2. Please call Mary A. Bomar, Director of the National Park Service at (202) 208-6843 and Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorne at (202) 208-6416
3. Make a donation to help us with the enormous costs of organizing for the Encampment to Stop the War and the March on Washington. In addition to printing hundreds of thousands of leaflets, organizing buses, purchasing or renting equipment for the Encampment, we now face the expenses of mounting a political and legal challenge to stop Washington's attempt to silence dissent. You can donate online at http://troopsoutnow.org/donate.shtml
With your continued help and support, we are continuing to organize and mobilize for the Encampment to Stop the War and the September 29 March on Washington. If you haven't made plans to participate, please contact a local organizing center at www.troopsoutnow.org/sept2907orgcents.shtml.
For details, flyers & more see http://www.troopsoutnow.org/ or call (212) 633-6646.
Thurs., Aug 30 "Prisoners Of Katrina" film screening
7:30 pm
Charlotte Energy Solutions
337 Baldwin Ave
Charlotte, NC 28204
On the anniversary of Katrina.
About the film:
Prisoners Of Katrina
By Olenka Frenkiel, BBC News
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, while thousands fled New Orleans, the city's prisoners were trapped. Fresh eye-witness accounts reveal what really happened to those left behind, and how crucial forensic evidence was simply washed away.
In September 2005, long after most people had fled a devastated city, inmates of Orleans Parish Prison - many of them shackled - were still waiting to be rescued from the blazing heat and the stinking floods.
"They basically abandoned the prison," says Vincent Norman, a chef arrested for an unpaid fine who found himself locked in a cell for days.
Norman should have been there no more than a week. Instead, abandoned without food, drink or sanitation as the waters rose, he was in prison for 103 days.
"We were just left there to die," said Cardell Williams, a prisoner who spent two months in jail without ever being charged.
In the days before the hurricane, when other citizens of New Orleans were ordered to leave, city leaders were asked: "What about the prisoners in the jail?"
"The prisoners will stay where they belong," replied Marlin Gusman, the criminal sheriff in charge of the city jail.
But it was a gamble he would regret.
Break out
Some of those in Orleans Parish Prison had been arrested for minor misdemeanours, like unpaid fines, or jay-walking. Some had never even been charged.
A third of the inmates were awaiting trial, innocent until proven guilty.
On the night of Sunday 29 August, as Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, they found themselves with violent convicts transferred from other low-lying jails.
The food and drinking water ran out.
Many were in windowless cells in soaring heat.
They began to riot.
Andrew Joseph said he saw a body floating in the water with a rat sitting on its chest
Terrified staff who had brought their families with them to the jail for safety, now found themselves trapped surrounded by floodwater, without phones or radio contact.
Deputy Rhonda Ducre, alone on her wing, had only a torch with fading batteries to keep order in the darkness, as panicked inmates began to break out.
She recalls: "They were shaking on the bars, they were setting fires, they were screaming, they were popping out of their cells. It was dangerous."
Body bags
By Monday night, Sheriff Gusman was forced to change his mind.
But now the evacuation of 7,000 prisoners would be infinitely harder.
They would have to be ferried by boats, six at a time.
In the chaos some were left behind, forgotten, and some inmates reported seeing prisoners who had drowned.
Andrew Joseph said he saw a body floating in the water with a rat sitting on its chest.
There were reports too of other deaths.
A member of the prison staff made a sworn statement that he had removed two body-bags containing the bodies of female deputies who had died, asphyxiated by smoke from burning mattresses.
But with hundreds of bodies already piling up in the morgue, and with so many of New Orleans citizens missing or still displaced, those claims have never been verified.
Legal rights
Prisoners were dispersed and held throughout the state... their court cases unheard for months
The sheriff maintained no prisoners died and none escaped, but later it emerged that arrest warrants had been issued for 14 escaped inmates.
All were recaptured, but not before one of them was re-arrested for another murder while on the run.
Months after the hurricane many were still suffering the consequences of a system peculiar to Louisiana - that of funding public defence lawyers partly from traffic violations revenue.
When the city flooded and the traffic stopped, the money ran out, depriving the poor of their legal rights to a defence.
At one time, the city was reduced to just four defence lawyers, each with an unmanageable caseload.
Prisoners were dispersed and held throughout the state, their charges delayed, their court cases unheard for months.
Destroying the evidence
For those convicted of serious crimes and hoping for a reprieve, however, there were graver consequences still.
Forensic evidence stored in the courthouse basement was destroyed, dashing hopes of justice for those wrongly convicted of rape and murder.
Lawyer Dwight Doskey represents clients on death row.
"There will be people - and I've got one in particular that I'm worried about - who may have been exonerated by DNA if the evidence had been stored in a safe place. Those are the people that I feel sorriest for," he says.
New Orleans is notorious both for its low murder clear-up rate and its wrong convictions.
But for those at the bottom of the social heap - the poorest prisoners in one of America's poorest states - Katrina brought a justice system already near to collapse, to a standstill.
This World: Prisoners of Katrina was broadcast on Sunday 13 August, 2006, at 2200 BST on BBC Two.
For info on the Charlotte Aug. 30 screening contact:
Action Center For Justice at 704.492.8527 or see www.CharlotteAction.org.
Charlotte Energy Solutions
337 Baldwin Ave
Charlotte, NC 28204
On the anniversary of Katrina.
About the film:
Prisoners Of Katrina
By Olenka Frenkiel, BBC News
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, while thousands fled New Orleans, the city's prisoners were trapped. Fresh eye-witness accounts reveal what really happened to those left behind, and how crucial forensic evidence was simply washed away.
In September 2005, long after most people had fled a devastated city, inmates of Orleans Parish Prison - many of them shackled - were still waiting to be rescued from the blazing heat and the stinking floods.
"They basically abandoned the prison," says Vincent Norman, a chef arrested for an unpaid fine who found himself locked in a cell for days.
Norman should have been there no more than a week. Instead, abandoned without food, drink or sanitation as the waters rose, he was in prison for 103 days.
"We were just left there to die," said Cardell Williams, a prisoner who spent two months in jail without ever being charged.
In the days before the hurricane, when other citizens of New Orleans were ordered to leave, city leaders were asked: "What about the prisoners in the jail?"
"The prisoners will stay where they belong," replied Marlin Gusman, the criminal sheriff in charge of the city jail.
But it was a gamble he would regret.
Break out
Some of those in Orleans Parish Prison had been arrested for minor misdemeanours, like unpaid fines, or jay-walking. Some had never even been charged.
A third of the inmates were awaiting trial, innocent until proven guilty.
On the night of Sunday 29 August, as Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, they found themselves with violent convicts transferred from other low-lying jails.
The food and drinking water ran out.
Many were in windowless cells in soaring heat.
They began to riot.
Andrew Joseph said he saw a body floating in the water with a rat sitting on its chest
Terrified staff who had brought their families with them to the jail for safety, now found themselves trapped surrounded by floodwater, without phones or radio contact.
Deputy Rhonda Ducre, alone on her wing, had only a torch with fading batteries to keep order in the darkness, as panicked inmates began to break out.
She recalls: "They were shaking on the bars, they were setting fires, they were screaming, they were popping out of their cells. It was dangerous."
Body bags
By Monday night, Sheriff Gusman was forced to change his mind.
But now the evacuation of 7,000 prisoners would be infinitely harder.
They would have to be ferried by boats, six at a time.
In the chaos some were left behind, forgotten, and some inmates reported seeing prisoners who had drowned.
Andrew Joseph said he saw a body floating in the water with a rat sitting on its chest.
There were reports too of other deaths.
A member of the prison staff made a sworn statement that he had removed two body-bags containing the bodies of female deputies who had died, asphyxiated by smoke from burning mattresses.
But with hundreds of bodies already piling up in the morgue, and with so many of New Orleans citizens missing or still displaced, those claims have never been verified.
Legal rights
Prisoners were dispersed and held throughout the state... their court cases unheard for months
The sheriff maintained no prisoners died and none escaped, but later it emerged that arrest warrants had been issued for 14 escaped inmates.
All were recaptured, but not before one of them was re-arrested for another murder while on the run.
Months after the hurricane many were still suffering the consequences of a system peculiar to Louisiana - that of funding public defence lawyers partly from traffic violations revenue.
When the city flooded and the traffic stopped, the money ran out, depriving the poor of their legal rights to a defence.
At one time, the city was reduced to just four defence lawyers, each with an unmanageable caseload.
Prisoners were dispersed and held throughout the state, their charges delayed, their court cases unheard for months.
Destroying the evidence
For those convicted of serious crimes and hoping for a reprieve, however, there were graver consequences still.
Forensic evidence stored in the courthouse basement was destroyed, dashing hopes of justice for those wrongly convicted of rape and murder.
Lawyer Dwight Doskey represents clients on death row.
"There will be people - and I've got one in particular that I'm worried about - who may have been exonerated by DNA if the evidence had been stored in a safe place. Those are the people that I feel sorriest for," he says.
New Orleans is notorious both for its low murder clear-up rate and its wrong convictions.
But for those at the bottom of the social heap - the poorest prisoners in one of America's poorest states - Katrina brought a justice system already near to collapse, to a standstill.
This World: Prisoners of Katrina was broadcast on Sunday 13 August, 2006, at 2200 BST on BBC Two.
For info on the Charlotte Aug. 30 screening contact:
Action Center For Justice at 704.492.8527 or see www.CharlotteAction.org.
Statement on Arrest of Elvira Arellano
PUEBLO SIN FRONTERAS press release, Los Angeles, CA
Aug. 19, 2007
On Aug. 19, at approximately 1:30 p.m., Elvira Arellano was arrested by some 15 ICE agents and taken into custody. At the time of her arrest she was calm and steady and concerned for the safety and state of mind of her son Saulito. She showed great dignity and courage during her arrest. We have been unable to contact I.C.E. to find out her status and we are concerned. We are calling on I.C.E. to give her son, her Pastor and her organization the opportunity to speak with her and verify her safety.
Elvira Arellano left her sanctuary church in Chicago, where she has been for the last year, and was moving from one sanctuary church to another across the country, beginning in L.A. She had announced on Wednesday, August 15th, that she could no longer sit by in safety and watch thousands of families being destroyed by our current broken immigration laws. Elvira had announced that she would make her way to Washington D.C. on September 12th for a day of prayer in front of the Congress. "If they are going to arrest me and separate me from my U.S. citizen son, then let them do it in front of the men and women who have failed in their responsibility to fix this broken law." Elvira's faith, her love for her son and her love for her people led her to act where others had failed to act. Her courage and her witness to the hypocrisy and inhumanity of the immigration laws of this country and the political cowardice of those in Congress charged with fixing these laws.
We will not and we cannot ignore her call to action. We cannot ignore the bond of love between a mother and a child that cries out for justice. We will continue the journey that Elvira Arellano started. We will hold the national Day of Prayer on September 12th and we will gather before the Congress in Washington D.C. We call for peaceful, determined mobilization, beginning tomorrow, in every city and state in this country as we build toward December 12th. Let everyone, let every mother or father who loves their children, say with courage and faith and conviction that say "I am Elvira Arellano." Let them say it with the same courage and faith, love and conviction, that Elvira Arellano has shown the world. Elvira Arellano told the world that she would do what she had to do to make this government see what they did not want to see, the terrible destruction of families that is sweeping this country. Let them see it now, in Saulito's broken heart.
We call again for immediate contact with Elvira Arellano and an immediate report from I.C.E on her condition and on what action I.C.E. plans to take in respect to her situation. We call on the U.S. Congress to move immediately on either of the two private bills which have been languishing in committee for over a year, private bills that, if advanced in the Congress, would have stayed her deportation pending their outcome. We call on Senator Durbin to immediately introduce a private bill in her behalf, as he once did, but failed to reintroduce in the Democratically controlled Senate.
Elvira Arellano is not a criminal or a terrorist. She is a mother – and she is a symbol of the failure of this government and this nation to take responsibility for the system of undocumented labor it has run for decades, to take responsibility for the families that were formed here and the children that were born here.
For more information contact: Anita Rico 773-553-0555, 773-671-1727
Aug. 19, 2007
On Aug. 19, at approximately 1:30 p.m., Elvira Arellano was arrested by some 15 ICE agents and taken into custody. At the time of her arrest she was calm and steady and concerned for the safety and state of mind of her son Saulito. She showed great dignity and courage during her arrest. We have been unable to contact I.C.E. to find out her status and we are concerned. We are calling on I.C.E. to give her son, her Pastor and her organization the opportunity to speak with her and verify her safety.
Elvira Arellano left her sanctuary church in Chicago, where she has been for the last year, and was moving from one sanctuary church to another across the country, beginning in L.A. She had announced on Wednesday, August 15th, that she could no longer sit by in safety and watch thousands of families being destroyed by our current broken immigration laws. Elvira had announced that she would make her way to Washington D.C. on September 12th for a day of prayer in front of the Congress. "If they are going to arrest me and separate me from my U.S. citizen son, then let them do it in front of the men and women who have failed in their responsibility to fix this broken law." Elvira's faith, her love for her son and her love for her people led her to act where others had failed to act. Her courage and her witness to the hypocrisy and inhumanity of the immigration laws of this country and the political cowardice of those in Congress charged with fixing these laws.
We will not and we cannot ignore her call to action. We cannot ignore the bond of love between a mother and a child that cries out for justice. We will continue the journey that Elvira Arellano started. We will hold the national Day of Prayer on September 12th and we will gather before the Congress in Washington D.C. We call for peaceful, determined mobilization, beginning tomorrow, in every city and state in this country as we build toward December 12th. Let everyone, let every mother or father who loves their children, say with courage and faith and conviction that say "I am Elvira Arellano." Let them say it with the same courage and faith, love and conviction, that Elvira Arellano has shown the world. Elvira Arellano told the world that she would do what she had to do to make this government see what they did not want to see, the terrible destruction of families that is sweeping this country. Let them see it now, in Saulito's broken heart.
We call again for immediate contact with Elvira Arellano and an immediate report from I.C.E on her condition and on what action I.C.E. plans to take in respect to her situation. We call on the U.S. Congress to move immediately on either of the two private bills which have been languishing in committee for over a year, private bills that, if advanced in the Congress, would have stayed her deportation pending their outcome. We call on Senator Durbin to immediately introduce a private bill in her behalf, as he once did, but failed to reintroduce in the Democratically controlled Senate.
Elvira Arellano is not a criminal or a terrorist. She is a mother – and she is a symbol of the failure of this government and this nation to take responsibility for the system of undocumented labor it has run for decades, to take responsibility for the families that were formed here and the children that were born here.
For more information contact: Anita Rico 773-553-0555, 773-671-1727
Let us mobilize our people. Let us not be afraid. Let us say with faith and dignity, "I am Elvira Arellano!"
U.S. to Expand Domestic Use Of Spy Satellites
By ROBERT BLOCK, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 15, 2007
The U.S.'s top intelligence official has greatly expanded the range of federal and local authorities who can get access to information from the nation's vast network of spy satellites in the U.S.
The decision, made three months ago by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, places for the first time some of the U.S.'s most powerful intelligence-gathering tools at the disposal of domestic security officials. The move was authorized in a May 25 memo sent to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff asking his department to facilitate access to the spy network on behalf of civilian agencies and law enforcement.
Until now, only a handful of federal civilian agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey, have had access to the most basic spy-satellite imagery, and only for the purpose of scientific and environmental study.
According to officials, one of the department's first objectives will be to use the network to enhance border security, determine how best to secure critical infrastructure and help emergency responders after natural disasters. Sometime next year, officials will examine how the satellites can aid federal and local law-enforcement agencies, covering both criminal and civil law. The department is still working on determining how it will engage law enforcement officials and what kind of support it will give them.
Access to the high-tech surveillance tools would, for the first time, allow Homeland Security and law-enforcement officials to see real-time, high-resolution images and data, which would allow them, for example, to identify smuggler staging areas, a gang safehouse, or possibly even a building being used by would-be terrorists to manufacture chemical weapons.
Overseas -- the traditional realm of spy satellites -- the system was used to monitor tank movements during the Cold War. Today, it's used to monitor suspected terrorist hideouts, smuggling routes for weapons in Iraq, nuclear tests and the movement of nuclear materials, as well as to make detailed maps for U.S. soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Plans to provide DHS with significantly expanded access have been on the drawing board for over two years. The idea was first talked about as a possibility by the Central Intelligence Agency after 9/11 as a way to help better secure the country. "It is an idea whose time has arrived," says Charles Allen, the DHS's chief intelligence officer, who will be in charge of the new program. DHS officials say the program has been granted a budget by Congress and has the approval of the relevant committees in both chambers.
Wiretap Legislation
Coming on the back of legislation that upgraded the administration's ability to wiretap terrorist suspects without warrants, the development is likely to heat up debate about the balance between civil liberties and national security.
Access to the satellite surveillance will be controlled by a new Homeland Security branch -- the National Applications Office -- which will be up and running in October. Homeland Security officials say the new office will build on the efforts of its predecessor, the Civil Applications Committee. Under the direction of the Geological Survey, the Civil Applications Committee vets requests from civilian agencies wanting spy data for environmental or scientific study. The Geological Survey has been one of the biggest domestic users of spy-satellite information, to make topographic maps.
Unlike electronic eavesdropping, which is subject to legislative and some judicial control, this use of spy satellites is largely uncharted territory. Although the courts have permitted warrantless aerial searches of private property by law-enforcement aircraft, there are no cases involving the use of satellite technology.
In recent years, some military experts have questioned whether domestic use of such satellites would violate the Posse Comitatus Act. The act bars the military from engaging in law-enforcement activity inside the U.S., and the satellites were predominantly built for and owned by the Defense Department.
According to Pentagon officials, the government has in the past been able to supply information from spy satellites to federal law-enforcement agencies, but that was done on a case-by-case basis and only with special permission from the president.
Even the architects of the current move are unclear about the legal boundaries. A 2005 study commissioned by the U.S. intelligence community, which recommended granting access to the spy satellites for Homeland Security, noted: "There is little if any policy, guidance or procedures regarding the collection, exploitation and dissemination of domestic MASINT." MASINT stands for Measurement and Signatures Intelligence, a particular kind of information collected by spy satellites which would for the first time become available to civilian agencies.
According to defense experts, MASINT uses radar, lasers, infrared, electromagnetic data and other technologies to see through cloud cover, forest canopies and even concrete to create images or gather data.
Tracking Weapons
The spy satellites are considered by military experts to be more penetrating than civilian ones: They not only take color, as well as black-and-white photos, but can also use different parts of the light spectrum to track human activities, including, for example, traces left by chemical weapons or heat generated by people in a building.
Mr. Allen, the DHS intelligence chief, said the satellites have the ability to take a "multidimensional" look at ports and critical infrastructure from space to identify vulnerabilities. "There are certain technical abilities that will assist on land borders...to try to identify areas where narcotraficantes or alien smugglers may be moving dangerous people or materials," he said.
The full capabilities of these systems are unknown outside the intelligence community, because they are among the most closely held secrets in government.
Some civil-liberties activists worry that without proper oversight, only those inside the National Application Office will know what is being monitored from space.
"You are talking about enormous power," said Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel and director of the Project on Freedom, Security and Technology for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit group advocating privacy rights in the digital age. "Not only is the surveillance they are contemplating intrusive and omnipresent, it's also invisible. And that's what makes this so dangerous."
Mr. Allen, the DHS intelligence chief, says the department is cognizant of the civil-rights and privacy concerns, which is why he plans to take time before providing law-enforcement agencies with access to the data. He says DHS will have a team of lawyers to review requests for access or use of the systems.
"This all has to be vetted through a legal process," he says. "We have to get this right because we don't want civil-rights and civil-liberties advocates to have concerns that this is being misused in ways which were not intended."
DHS's Mr. Allen says that while he can't talk about the program's capabilities in detail, there is a tendency to overestimate its powers. For instance, satellites in orbit are constantly moving and can't settle over an area for long periods of time. The platforms also don't show people in detail. "Contrary to what some people believe you cannot see if somebody needs a haircut from space," he says.
James Devine, a senior adviser to the director of the Geological Survey, who is chairman of the committee now overseeing satellite-access requests, said traditional users of the spy-satellite data in the scientific community are concerned that their needs will be marginalized in favor of security concerns. Mr. Devine said DHS has promised him that won't be the case, and also has promised to include a geological official on a new interagency executive oversight committee that will monitor the activities of the National Applications Office.
Mr. Devine says officials who vetted requests for the scientific community also are worried about the civil-liberties implications when DHS takes over the program. "We took very seriously our mission and made sure that there was no chance of inappropriate usage of the material," Mr. Devine says. He says he hopes oversight of the new DHS program will be "rigorous," but that he doesn't know what would happen in cases of complaints about misuse.
The U.S.'s top intelligence official has greatly expanded the range of federal and local authorities who can get access to information from the nation's vast network of spy satellites in the U.S.
The decision, made three months ago by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, places for the first time some of the U.S.'s most powerful intelligence-gathering tools at the disposal of domestic security officials. The move was authorized in a May 25 memo sent to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff asking his department to facilitate access to the spy network on behalf of civilian agencies and law enforcement.
Until now, only a handful of federal civilian agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey, have had access to the most basic spy-satellite imagery, and only for the purpose of scientific and environmental study.
According to officials, one of the department's first objectives will be to use the network to enhance border security, determine how best to secure critical infrastructure and help emergency responders after natural disasters. Sometime next year, officials will examine how the satellites can aid federal and local law-enforcement agencies, covering both criminal and civil law. The department is still working on determining how it will engage law enforcement officials and what kind of support it will give them.
Access to the high-tech surveillance tools would, for the first time, allow Homeland Security and law-enforcement officials to see real-time, high-resolution images and data, which would allow them, for example, to identify smuggler staging areas, a gang safehouse, or possibly even a building being used by would-be terrorists to manufacture chemical weapons.
Overseas -- the traditional realm of spy satellites -- the system was used to monitor tank movements during the Cold War. Today, it's used to monitor suspected terrorist hideouts, smuggling routes for weapons in Iraq, nuclear tests and the movement of nuclear materials, as well as to make detailed maps for U.S. soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Plans to provide DHS with significantly expanded access have been on the drawing board for over two years. The idea was first talked about as a possibility by the Central Intelligence Agency after 9/11 as a way to help better secure the country. "It is an idea whose time has arrived," says Charles Allen, the DHS's chief intelligence officer, who will be in charge of the new program. DHS officials say the program has been granted a budget by Congress and has the approval of the relevant committees in both chambers.
Wiretap Legislation
Coming on the back of legislation that upgraded the administration's ability to wiretap terrorist suspects without warrants, the development is likely to heat up debate about the balance between civil liberties and national security.
Access to the satellite surveillance will be controlled by a new Homeland Security branch -- the National Applications Office -- which will be up and running in October. Homeland Security officials say the new office will build on the efforts of its predecessor, the Civil Applications Committee. Under the direction of the Geological Survey, the Civil Applications Committee vets requests from civilian agencies wanting spy data for environmental or scientific study. The Geological Survey has been one of the biggest domestic users of spy-satellite information, to make topographic maps.
Unlike electronic eavesdropping, which is subject to legislative and some judicial control, this use of spy satellites is largely uncharted territory. Although the courts have permitted warrantless aerial searches of private property by law-enforcement aircraft, there are no cases involving the use of satellite technology.
In recent years, some military experts have questioned whether domestic use of such satellites would violate the Posse Comitatus Act. The act bars the military from engaging in law-enforcement activity inside the U.S., and the satellites were predominantly built for and owned by the Defense Department.
According to Pentagon officials, the government has in the past been able to supply information from spy satellites to federal law-enforcement agencies, but that was done on a case-by-case basis and only with special permission from the president.
Even the architects of the current move are unclear about the legal boundaries. A 2005 study commissioned by the U.S. intelligence community, which recommended granting access to the spy satellites for Homeland Security, noted: "There is little if any policy, guidance or procedures regarding the collection, exploitation and dissemination of domestic MASINT." MASINT stands for Measurement and Signatures Intelligence, a particular kind of information collected by spy satellites which would for the first time become available to civilian agencies.
According to defense experts, MASINT uses radar, lasers, infrared, electromagnetic data and other technologies to see through cloud cover, forest canopies and even concrete to create images or gather data.
Tracking Weapons
The spy satellites are considered by military experts to be more penetrating than civilian ones: They not only take color, as well as black-and-white photos, but can also use different parts of the light spectrum to track human activities, including, for example, traces left by chemical weapons or heat generated by people in a building.
Mr. Allen, the DHS intelligence chief, said the satellites have the ability to take a "multidimensional" look at ports and critical infrastructure from space to identify vulnerabilities. "There are certain technical abilities that will assist on land borders...to try to identify areas where narcotraficantes or alien smugglers may be moving dangerous people or materials," he said.
The full capabilities of these systems are unknown outside the intelligence community, because they are among the most closely held secrets in government.
Some civil-liberties activists worry that without proper oversight, only those inside the National Application Office will know what is being monitored from space.
"You are talking about enormous power," said Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel and director of the Project on Freedom, Security and Technology for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit group advocating privacy rights in the digital age. "Not only is the surveillance they are contemplating intrusive and omnipresent, it's also invisible. And that's what makes this so dangerous."
Mr. Allen, the DHS intelligence chief, says the department is cognizant of the civil-rights and privacy concerns, which is why he plans to take time before providing law-enforcement agencies with access to the data. He says DHS will have a team of lawyers to review requests for access or use of the systems.
"This all has to be vetted through a legal process," he says. "We have to get this right because we don't want civil-rights and civil-liberties advocates to have concerns that this is being misused in ways which were not intended."
DHS's Mr. Allen says that while he can't talk about the program's capabilities in detail, there is a tendency to overestimate its powers. For instance, satellites in orbit are constantly moving and can't settle over an area for long periods of time. The platforms also don't show people in detail. "Contrary to what some people believe you cannot see if somebody needs a haircut from space," he says.
James Devine, a senior adviser to the director of the Geological Survey, who is chairman of the committee now overseeing satellite-access requests, said traditional users of the spy-satellite data in the scientific community are concerned that their needs will be marginalized in favor of security concerns. Mr. Devine said DHS has promised him that won't be the case, and also has promised to include a geological official on a new interagency executive oversight committee that will monitor the activities of the National Applications Office.
Mr. Devine says officials who vetted requests for the scientific community also are worried about the civil-liberties implications when DHS takes over the program. "We took very seriously our mission and made sure that there was no chance of inappropriate usage of the material," Mr. Devine says. He says he hopes oversight of the new DHS program will be "rigorous," but that he doesn't know what would happen in cases of complaints about misuse.
Pentagon to give spy records to FBI, but will save them also
Pentagon to Suspend Anti-Terror Database
By ROBERT BURNS, AP, August 21, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon said Tuesday that it will shut down an anti-terror database that has been criticized for improperly storing information on peace activists and others whose actions posed no threat.
It will be closed on Sept. 17 and information collected subsequently on potential terror or security threats to Defense Department facilities or personnel will be sent by Pentagon officials to an FBI database known as Guardian, according to Army Col. Gary Keck, a Pentagon spokesman.
Keck said the Pentagon database is being shut down because "the analytical value had declined," but not because of public criticism of how it was used. Eventually the Pentagon hopes to create a new system -- not necessarily a database -- to "streamline such threat reporting," according to a brief statement issued Tuesday.
Keck said that after the TALON database is shut down in September, a copy of the data it contains will be maintained at the Pentagon for record-keeping purposes but not for further analytical use.
The decision to end the program, which had been recommended in April by the Pentagon's new intelligence chief, James R. Clapper, Jr., was approved by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Keck said.
The American Civil Liberties Union, a chief critic of the program, applauded the Pentagon's announcement.
"It was high time for this program to be shut down," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU. "There should be no place in a free democratic society for the military to be accumulating secret data on peaceful demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights."
The program, known as TALON, was created after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and was designed to maintain a base of information on reported potential threats to military facilities and personnel.
In December 2005 it was disclosed that the system included data on anti-military protests and other peaceful demonstrations.
Anti-war groups and other organizations, including a Quaker group _ the American Friends Service Committee _ protested after it was revealed that the military had monitored anti-war activities, organizations and individuals who attended peace rallies.
Pentagon officials have said the program was productive and had detected international terrorist interests in specific military bases. But they also acknowledged that some officials may not have been using the system properly.
The TALON reports _ collected by an array of Defense Department agencies including law enforcement, intelligence, counterintelligence and security _ are kept in a large database and analyzed by an obscure Pentagon agency, the Counterintelligence Field Activity. CIFA is a three-year-old outfit whose size and budget are secret.
Last year, a Pentagon review found that as many as 260 reports in the database were improperly collected or kept there. At the time, the Pentagon said there were about 13,000 entries in the database, and that less than 2 percent either were wrongly added or were not purged later when they were determined not to involve real threats.
By ROBERT BURNS, AP, August 21, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon said Tuesday that it will shut down an anti-terror database that has been criticized for improperly storing information on peace activists and others whose actions posed no threat.
It will be closed on Sept. 17 and information collected subsequently on potential terror or security threats to Defense Department facilities or personnel will be sent by Pentagon officials to an FBI database known as Guardian, according to Army Col. Gary Keck, a Pentagon spokesman.
Keck said the Pentagon database is being shut down because "the analytical value had declined," but not because of public criticism of how it was used. Eventually the Pentagon hopes to create a new system -- not necessarily a database -- to "streamline such threat reporting," according to a brief statement issued Tuesday.
Keck said that after the TALON database is shut down in September, a copy of the data it contains will be maintained at the Pentagon for record-keeping purposes but not for further analytical use.
The decision to end the program, which had been recommended in April by the Pentagon's new intelligence chief, James R. Clapper, Jr., was approved by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Keck said.
The American Civil Liberties Union, a chief critic of the program, applauded the Pentagon's announcement.
"It was high time for this program to be shut down," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU. "There should be no place in a free democratic society for the military to be accumulating secret data on peaceful demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights."
The program, known as TALON, was created after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and was designed to maintain a base of information on reported potential threats to military facilities and personnel.
In December 2005 it was disclosed that the system included data on anti-military protests and other peaceful demonstrations.
Anti-war groups and other organizations, including a Quaker group _ the American Friends Service Committee _ protested after it was revealed that the military had monitored anti-war activities, organizations and individuals who attended peace rallies.
Pentagon officials have said the program was productive and had detected international terrorist interests in specific military bases. But they also acknowledged that some officials may not have been using the system properly.
The TALON reports _ collected by an array of Defense Department agencies including law enforcement, intelligence, counterintelligence and security _ are kept in a large database and analyzed by an obscure Pentagon agency, the Counterintelligence Field Activity. CIFA is a three-year-old outfit whose size and budget are secret.
Last year, a Pentagon review found that as many as 260 reports in the database were improperly collected or kept there. At the time, the Pentagon said there were about 13,000 entries in the database, and that less than 2 percent either were wrongly added or were not purged later when they were determined not to involve real threats.
Mayor McCrory refuses to turn over public records
Your right to know: getting records
Matthew Eisley, Staff Writer, News & Observer, Aug. 21, 2007
Q: How forthrightly do government officials respond to citizen and news media requests for copies of public records?
A: That varies widely, depending on the agency and the person. As a general rule, bigger local governments are more responsive than smaller ones. That's not necessarily true of state government, however, and certainly not of the federal government. What's more, even veteran public servants in big cities sometimes chafe at scrutiny.
When The Charlotte Observer asked last month to see all the official e-mail messages of Mayor Pat McCrory and council members, the mayor balked.
"Who's going to pay us to find the staff to do this?" McCrory asked. He also asked how much it would cost. "A lot," the city attorney told the mayor then, though the expense later proved to be minimal.
McCrory turned to an Observer reporter and said, "Y'all have lost it."
But state law is clear: Most e-mail messages about city business are public records, and anyone is entitled to copies of them upon request.
Ed Williams, the Observer's editorial page editor, responded with a column that concluded: "McCrory is right on this point: Our public records law can be expensive, intrusive and annoying. But that's a cost of making government responsible to the people."
To read Williams' entire column, you can go online to:
www.charlotte.com/409/story/215630.html
("Your right to know" offers a quick lesson on public records and meetings. Go to share.triangle.com to check out entries and to post your own questions and experiences. Look for the "Your right to know" link. Staff writer Matthew Eisley can be reached at matthew.eisley@newsobserver.com, 829-4538 or The News & Observer, 215 S. McDowell St., Raleigh, N.C. 27602.)
Matthew Eisley, Staff Writer, News & Observer, Aug. 21, 2007
Q: How forthrightly do government officials respond to citizen and news media requests for copies of public records?
A: That varies widely, depending on the agency and the person. As a general rule, bigger local governments are more responsive than smaller ones. That's not necessarily true of state government, however, and certainly not of the federal government. What's more, even veteran public servants in big cities sometimes chafe at scrutiny.
When The Charlotte Observer asked last month to see all the official e-mail messages of Mayor Pat McCrory and council members, the mayor balked.
"Who's going to pay us to find the staff to do this?" McCrory asked. He also asked how much it would cost. "A lot," the city attorney told the mayor then, though the expense later proved to be minimal.
McCrory turned to an Observer reporter and said, "Y'all have lost it."
But state law is clear: Most e-mail messages about city business are public records, and anyone is entitled to copies of them upon request.
Ed Williams, the Observer's editorial page editor, responded with a column that concluded: "McCrory is right on this point: Our public records law can be expensive, intrusive and annoying. But that's a cost of making government responsible to the people."
To read Williams' entire column, you can go online to:
www.charlotte.com/409/story/215630.html
("Your right to know" offers a quick lesson on public records and meetings. Go to share.triangle.com to check out entries and to post your own questions and experiences. Look for the "Your right to know" link. Staff writer Matthew Eisley can be reached at matthew.eisley@newsobserver.com, 829-4538 or The News & Observer, 215 S. McDowell St., Raleigh, N.C. 27602.)
Authentic Films About African-American Life playing in Charlotte this weekend
Greetings,
Filmmaker Charles Burnett brings himself and five of his films to Charlotte this weekend. Mr. Burnett has dared to make films that serve as social commentary and promise to take the viewer from one end of the Black consciousness spectrum to the other. Film has long been a medium of relaying messages that call the viewer to think critically and then act. I think Burnett's films do exactly that. But hey, don't take my word for it. Come on out and see for yourself. Note details below.
To Your Journey!
Ahmad Daniels, Creative Interchange
3-DAY FILM RETROSPECTIVE
Charlotte turns spotlight on director
LAWRENCE TOPPMAN, Charlotte Observer, Aug. 20, 2007
Movie Critic
Odds are, you don't know Charles Burnett.
The Library of Congress does: It preserved his 1977 "Killer of Sheep" as a "national treasure."
The Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment of the Arts and Rockefeller Foundation all do: He's gotten filmmaking dough from The Big Three.
The MacArthur Foundation handed him a "genius grant" of $275,000 over five years, so he could pay bills while establishing himself as the leading independent black director of his time.
Now it's Charlotte's turn to meet him. The Light Factory, NoDa Film Festival and Reel Soul will host screenings and Q-and-A's, as "Charles Burnett: A Retrospective" runs Friday through Sunday all over the city.
The 63-year-old Burnett has never had a commercial hit. Yet the restored "Killer of Sheep" is now getting a theatrical run in big cities, the newly edited "His Brother's Wedding" is about to open in New York and Los Angeles -- after its Charlotte screening -- and Burnett has just finished a drama about Namibian independence that needs a distributor.
"It's strange," he says quietly. "People know about you and give you respect. They let you come into the office, but they do other things while they talk to you. Or they'll look very serious but say `We pass' when you're done.
"They ask, `Can you speak to this generation?' They figure older people aren't listening. Older people, who don't rush out to see a film the first weekend, desperately want (thoughtful) movies. But there's nothing for them."
The NoDa festival's Jeff Jackson, who first pushed to bring Burnett, calls him "the least well-known great American filmmaker. The nuances of his characters, the issues he talks about -- race, social justice -- he makes those complex and artful and entertaining. His films aren't like eating your vegetables: They're warm and funny and humane."
The Light Factory's Wendy Fishman and Reel Soul's Dennis Darrell ran with Jackson's idea.
Fishman sought venues and funds, and the Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscar folks) obliged with $6,000, its first grant to the Charlotte region. Darrell talked up the event in the black community and supplied his list of moviegoers, most of them African American professionals who'd form a core audience for Burnett's work.
The shy Mississippi native should feel at home here. He considers himself part Southerner, though his family left Vicksburg for the economically diverse Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in the 1940s.
"Everyone in my neighborhood was from the South," he says. "There were a lot of values and folkways you had to tend to. It was sort of a conflict situation: My mother hated it and said she'd never go back, but my grandmother really wanted to go back and had family there.
"When anyone came in from the South, there was a sharing of news: who died, what happened to Miss So-and-so. My uncle was a preacher, so there was talk about church members. It became like a myth, stories of people you wished you'd known."
Burnett vowed to tell those stories when he entered UCLA's film school, after studying electronics at Los Angeles Community College. UCLA wanted people of color; classmates included future directors Julie Dash and Haile Gerima. But in Hollywood, black directors were being asked to do "Shaft" and "Superfly."
"We were concerned about making narratives that represented the black experience," he says of his class. "None of us had a clue about finding work. I never thought I'd go to Hollywood to make features; I thought I'd make small films, get them into the community, and have another job to support myself."
He nearly had to quit his craft a decade later. The MacArthur grant came in 1988, when he was "at rock bottom. I didn't know what I was going to do: scruff around, get a job at McDonald's. I'd been to the unemployment office and been told, `You have to show us you're going to look for a real job.' It's hard to be poor in this country. I can see how it's easy to become homeless."
Luckily, Burnett plugged on. He made "To Sleep With Anger," his best-known picture, in 1990, with Danny Glover as a rural Southerner disrupting the lives of blacks who've relocated to Los Angeles. He then carved out a dozen more films, many for TV, without having to stand in the unemployment line again.
He's worried about finding a home for "Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation." It's 161 minutes, it's an educational piece about that country's independence in the 1960s, it has no famous actors, and "we don't know how it's going to affect audiences. The mood of the country is very patriotic, and lots of things the U.S. did (there) put us in a bad light."
Burnett won't let go of controversy: He's preparing "Red Soil," a drama about forced child labor in the cocoa fields of West Africa. He'll talk about these socially responsible films when he meets local students Saturday at the Afro-American Cultural Center.
"A lot of people look at film as entertainment only," he says. "Making Hollywood movies is OK, but I like it when people tell their own stories. I want to explain how to do that with cameras and editing systems people can get together and afford.
"In Namibia, there's a tribalism where the dominant class monopolizes everything, so people in the underclass need to help one another by telling their own stories. If I can get that across in Charlotte, (that idea of) helping the community, I'll be happy."
Charles Burnett Retrospective
Friday: 8 p.m., the local premiere of "Killer of Sheep," Phillips Place Cinemas, Fairview Road between Colony and Sharon, $12. A father in 1970s Watts tries to hold his family together, despite a dehumanizing job in a slaughterhouse, financial troubles and disassociation from the people around him.
Saturday: 1 p.m., "Nightjohn," Afro-American Cultural Center, Myers and Seventh streets, $8 for adults and $5. for students. A 12-year-old girl in the antebellum South is taught to read and write by a runaway slave, an act that has consequences for everyone on the plantation. 3 p.m., student forum with Burnett, Afro-American Cultural Center, free to students.
8 p.m., "To Sleep With Anger," Spirit Square, 345 N. College St., $10. Danny Glover plays a Southern trickster who moves in with a prospering family in Los Angeles, reminding them of their roots in ways that sew discord everywhere.
Sunday: 2 p.m., the local premiere of "My Brother's Wedding," Neighborhood Theatre, 511 E. 36th Street, $5. A Los Angeles man, who seems to be devoted to others at the expense of his own needs, must decide whether to attend his best friend's funeral or the wedding of his upwardly mobile brother.
5 p.m., "The Glass Shield," Neighborhood Theatre, $5. Michael Boatman plays a rookie and the first black member of the L.A. sheriff's department, where he finds endemic racism and sexism.
To buy tickets, go to www.lightfactory.org or www.godfatherofblackcinema.org or call 704-333-9755.
Filmmaker Charles Burnett brings himself and five of his films to Charlotte this weekend. Mr. Burnett has dared to make films that serve as social commentary and promise to take the viewer from one end of the Black consciousness spectrum to the other. Film has long been a medium of relaying messages that call the viewer to think critically and then act. I think Burnett's films do exactly that. But hey, don't take my word for it. Come on out and see for yourself. Note details below.
To Your Journey!
Ahmad Daniels, Creative Interchange
3-DAY FILM RETROSPECTIVE
Charlotte turns spotlight on director
LAWRENCE TOPPMAN, Charlotte Observer, Aug. 20, 2007
Movie Critic
Odds are, you don't know Charles Burnett.
The Library of Congress does: It preserved his 1977 "Killer of Sheep" as a "national treasure."
The Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment of the Arts and Rockefeller Foundation all do: He's gotten filmmaking dough from The Big Three.
The MacArthur Foundation handed him a "genius grant" of $275,000 over five years, so he could pay bills while establishing himself as the leading independent black director of his time.
Now it's Charlotte's turn to meet him. The Light Factory, NoDa Film Festival and Reel Soul will host screenings and Q-and-A's, as "Charles Burnett: A Retrospective" runs Friday through Sunday all over the city.
The 63-year-old Burnett has never had a commercial hit. Yet the restored "Killer of Sheep" is now getting a theatrical run in big cities, the newly edited "His Brother's Wedding" is about to open in New York and Los Angeles -- after its Charlotte screening -- and Burnett has just finished a drama about Namibian independence that needs a distributor.
"It's strange," he says quietly. "People know about you and give you respect. They let you come into the office, but they do other things while they talk to you. Or they'll look very serious but say `We pass' when you're done.
"They ask, `Can you speak to this generation?' They figure older people aren't listening. Older people, who don't rush out to see a film the first weekend, desperately want (thoughtful) movies. But there's nothing for them."
The NoDa festival's Jeff Jackson, who first pushed to bring Burnett, calls him "the least well-known great American filmmaker. The nuances of his characters, the issues he talks about -- race, social justice -- he makes those complex and artful and entertaining. His films aren't like eating your vegetables: They're warm and funny and humane."
The Light Factory's Wendy Fishman and Reel Soul's Dennis Darrell ran with Jackson's idea.
Fishman sought venues and funds, and the Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscar folks) obliged with $6,000, its first grant to the Charlotte region. Darrell talked up the event in the black community and supplied his list of moviegoers, most of them African American professionals who'd form a core audience for Burnett's work.
The shy Mississippi native should feel at home here. He considers himself part Southerner, though his family left Vicksburg for the economically diverse Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in the 1940s.
"Everyone in my neighborhood was from the South," he says. "There were a lot of values and folkways you had to tend to. It was sort of a conflict situation: My mother hated it and said she'd never go back, but my grandmother really wanted to go back and had family there.
"When anyone came in from the South, there was a sharing of news: who died, what happened to Miss So-and-so. My uncle was a preacher, so there was talk about church members. It became like a myth, stories of people you wished you'd known."
Burnett vowed to tell those stories when he entered UCLA's film school, after studying electronics at Los Angeles Community College. UCLA wanted people of color; classmates included future directors Julie Dash and Haile Gerima. But in Hollywood, black directors were being asked to do "Shaft" and "Superfly."
"We were concerned about making narratives that represented the black experience," he says of his class. "None of us had a clue about finding work. I never thought I'd go to Hollywood to make features; I thought I'd make small films, get them into the community, and have another job to support myself."
He nearly had to quit his craft a decade later. The MacArthur grant came in 1988, when he was "at rock bottom. I didn't know what I was going to do: scruff around, get a job at McDonald's. I'd been to the unemployment office and been told, `You have to show us you're going to look for a real job.' It's hard to be poor in this country. I can see how it's easy to become homeless."
Luckily, Burnett plugged on. He made "To Sleep With Anger," his best-known picture, in 1990, with Danny Glover as a rural Southerner disrupting the lives of blacks who've relocated to Los Angeles. He then carved out a dozen more films, many for TV, without having to stand in the unemployment line again.
He's worried about finding a home for "Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation." It's 161 minutes, it's an educational piece about that country's independence in the 1960s, it has no famous actors, and "we don't know how it's going to affect audiences. The mood of the country is very patriotic, and lots of things the U.S. did (there) put us in a bad light."
Burnett won't let go of controversy: He's preparing "Red Soil," a drama about forced child labor in the cocoa fields of West Africa. He'll talk about these socially responsible films when he meets local students Saturday at the Afro-American Cultural Center.
"A lot of people look at film as entertainment only," he says. "Making Hollywood movies is OK, but I like it when people tell their own stories. I want to explain how to do that with cameras and editing systems people can get together and afford.
"In Namibia, there's a tribalism where the dominant class monopolizes everything, so people in the underclass need to help one another by telling their own stories. If I can get that across in Charlotte, (that idea of) helping the community, I'll be happy."
Charles Burnett Retrospective
Friday: 8 p.m., the local premiere of "Killer of Sheep," Phillips Place Cinemas, Fairview Road between Colony and Sharon, $12. A father in 1970s Watts tries to hold his family together, despite a dehumanizing job in a slaughterhouse, financial troubles and disassociation from the people around him.
Saturday: 1 p.m., "Nightjohn," Afro-American Cultural Center, Myers and Seventh streets, $8 for adults and $5. for students. A 12-year-old girl in the antebellum South is taught to read and write by a runaway slave, an act that has consequences for everyone on the plantation. 3 p.m., student forum with Burnett, Afro-American Cultural Center, free to students.
8 p.m., "To Sleep With Anger," Spirit Square, 345 N. College St., $10. Danny Glover plays a Southern trickster who moves in with a prospering family in Los Angeles, reminding them of their roots in ways that sew discord everywhere.
Sunday: 2 p.m., the local premiere of "My Brother's Wedding," Neighborhood Theatre, 511 E. 36th Street, $5. A Los Angeles man, who seems to be devoted to others at the expense of his own needs, must decide whether to attend his best friend's funeral or the wedding of his upwardly mobile brother.
5 p.m., "The Glass Shield," Neighborhood Theatre, $5. Michael Boatman plays a rookie and the first black member of the L.A. sheriff's department, where he finds endemic racism and sexism.
To buy tickets, go to www.lightfactory.org or www.godfatherofblackcinema.org or call 704-333-9755.
Financial job cuts soar on housing woes
By Jonathan Stempel, Aug. 21, 2007
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A deepening U.S. housing slump has caused an alarming surge in job losses at U.S. financial services companies, and the end is nowhere in sight, consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said on Tuesday.
The industry has announced 87,962 job cuts so far this year, 75 percent more than the 50,327 recorded for all of 2006, Challenger said. Nearly one-fourth of this year's cuts have been announced in August alone.
Of this year's cuts, 35,830, or 41 percent, were tied to housing market troubles, including riskier subprime mortgages. Job cuts by real estate and construction firms totaled 21,620, more than twice the number for all of 2006, Challenger said.
"Many companies expected the mortgage situation to implode; they've just been wondering when the bubble would burst," Chief Executive John Challenger said in an interview. "But many are stopping on a dime, shutting down operations.
"Companies are not surprised by what's happening, but the reality of the situation and the speed with which it occurred is shocking," Challenger added. He said it could be months before housing-related job cuts peak.
In the last week, investment bank Bear Stearns Cos, credit card issuer Capital One Financial Corp and mortgage lenders Countrywide Financial Corp and First Magnus Financial Corp announced 8,640 mortgage-related job cuts, Challenger said.
Another 2,400 cuts were announced by SunTrust Banks Inc as part of the bank's existing cost-cutting program.
Many companies exposed to the housing market have struggled with rising delinquencies and foreclosures as mortgage rates have reset higher and housing price appreciation has slowed.
Meanwhile, credit conditions have tightened as investors have grown unwilling to buy home loans once thought safe, starving many lenders of cash they need to operate normally. Dozens of mortgage lenders have quit the industry this year.
April has been the year's busiest month for financial job cuts, Challenger said. That month, companies announced 33,789 cuts, including 17,000 by Citigroup Inc and 3,200 by bankrupt mortgage lender New Century Financial Corp.
Job cuts are mounting as credit losses widen.
On Tuesday, the government's Office of Thrift Supervision said troubled assets, or loans at least 90 days past due, rose at savings and loans it regulates to $14.2 billion in the second quarter from $9.5 billion a year earlier.
Meanwhile, home foreclosure filings in July surged 93 percent from a year earlier and rose 9 percent from June, to 179,599, according to a Tuesday report by research firm RealtyTrac.
John Challenger said it's understandable for mortgage workers to feel whipsawed. Countrywide, for example, cut 500 jobs last week after having added 6,931 jobs from January to July, with increases in every calendar month.
"It's devastating (for morale)," he said. "It's hard to keep morale up, given the boom-bust nature of the mortgage sector."
(Additional reporting by John Poirier and Patrick Rucker in Washington, D.C.)
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A deepening U.S. housing slump has caused an alarming surge in job losses at U.S. financial services companies, and the end is nowhere in sight, consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said on Tuesday.
The industry has announced 87,962 job cuts so far this year, 75 percent more than the 50,327 recorded for all of 2006, Challenger said. Nearly one-fourth of this year's cuts have been announced in August alone.
Of this year's cuts, 35,830, or 41 percent, were tied to housing market troubles, including riskier subprime mortgages. Job cuts by real estate and construction firms totaled 21,620, more than twice the number for all of 2006, Challenger said.
"Many companies expected the mortgage situation to implode; they've just been wondering when the bubble would burst," Chief Executive John Challenger said in an interview. "But many are stopping on a dime, shutting down operations.
"Companies are not surprised by what's happening, but the reality of the situation and the speed with which it occurred is shocking," Challenger added. He said it could be months before housing-related job cuts peak.
In the last week, investment bank Bear Stearns Cos, credit card issuer Capital One Financial Corp and mortgage lenders Countrywide Financial Corp and First Magnus Financial Corp announced 8,640 mortgage-related job cuts, Challenger said.
Another 2,400 cuts were announced by SunTrust Banks Inc as part of the bank's existing cost-cutting program.
Many companies exposed to the housing market have struggled with rising delinquencies and foreclosures as mortgage rates have reset higher and housing price appreciation has slowed.
Meanwhile, credit conditions have tightened as investors have grown unwilling to buy home loans once thought safe, starving many lenders of cash they need to operate normally. Dozens of mortgage lenders have quit the industry this year.
April has been the year's busiest month for financial job cuts, Challenger said. That month, companies announced 33,789 cuts, including 17,000 by Citigroup Inc and 3,200 by bankrupt mortgage lender New Century Financial Corp.
Job cuts are mounting as credit losses widen.
On Tuesday, the government's Office of Thrift Supervision said troubled assets, or loans at least 90 days past due, rose at savings and loans it regulates to $14.2 billion in the second quarter from $9.5 billion a year earlier.
Meanwhile, home foreclosure filings in July surged 93 percent from a year earlier and rose 9 percent from June, to 179,599, according to a Tuesday report by research firm RealtyTrac.
John Challenger said it's understandable for mortgage workers to feel whipsawed. Countrywide, for example, cut 500 jobs last week after having added 6,931 jobs from January to July, with increases in every calendar month.
"It's devastating (for morale)," he said. "It's hard to keep morale up, given the boom-bust nature of the mortgage sector."
(Additional reporting by John Poirier and Patrick Rucker in Washington, D.C.)
Anti-War Group Fined for Free Speech - Take Action
AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL!!
Unity and solidarity in the face of government repression and right wing threats is our greatest strength and our best defense..
The ANSWER Coalition has put out an alert regarding the heavy fines in Washington DC for postering and the threats by right-wing and fascist organizations against anti-war march scheduled for Sept 15 and other actions taking place in DC. These threats are not only a danger to ANSWER Coalition but to the whole progressive movement.
Troops Out Now, who is organizing a major March in DC on Saturday, September 29 and a week-long Encampment in front of Congress from Sept 22 to 29, calls upon the movement to take the threats on the ANSWER Coalition seriously and to respond with demands to end to the fines, harassment and repression on the anti-war movement.
ANSWER in their e-mails and on their web site: www.answercoalition.org has stated that: “the best way to take action is to call the Director of Department of Public Works, William O. Howland, Jr. at 202-673-6833, and the Mayor of DC, Adrian Fenty, at 202-724-8876
They suggests saying something along the lines of: "I am writing to protest the fines levied against the ANSWER Coalition for putting up posters for the September 15th March on Washington. The government does not fine politicians who put up campaign posters, or commercial and business interests that plaster Washington, DC with posters. It is outrageous that the city, in concert with FOXNews, are attempting to suppress the antiwar movement. Stop the harassment. Stop the fines."
ANSWER's latest email sent out today states:
The ANSWER Coalition today filed a major Free Speech lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia challenging anti-postering regulations that have been used to fine the organization. ANSWER has been hit with $10,000 fines in the last week.
Stepping up its politically targeted harassment campaign, as we were announcing the lawsuit, the government served fines for posters against the landlord of the building housing ANSWER's office. This is an unprecedented campaign against First Amendment speech and associational rights.
The lawsuit was announced at a press conference held today at the offices of constitutional rights attorneys at the Partnership for Civil Justice (PCJ). The lawsuit can be read in its entirety by clicking this link.
The Free Speech lawsuit asserts that:
The challenged regulations create a hierarchy of speech, allowing broad freedom to post on subjects related to elections or crime prevention, but sharply restricting -- and penalizing with massive fines -- those who post on grassroots political issues. The legal challenge arose in response to the issuance of fines against the ANSWER Coalition for $10,000 because that anti-war organization had used posters urging the public to "March to Stop the War" and to attend the national September 15, 2007, march in Washington, called by ANSWER and led by Iraq war veterans.
The press conference was an example of the broad support for the September 15 March on Washington DC which will be led by Iraq war veterans and their families.
In this email you can watch and listen to the presentations of the speakers and the see some of the extensive media coverage of this unfolding fight.
The government's attempt to disrupt the organizing for September 15 has backfired. Support is coming in from all over the country. More than ninety organizing centers are bringing people from their area to Washington DC. Go to www.Sept15.org.
Read the rest of ANSWER's email, click here
Unity and solidarity in the face of government repression and right wing threats is our greatest strength and our best defense..
The ANSWER Coalition has put out an alert regarding the heavy fines in Washington DC for postering and the threats by right-wing and fascist organizations against anti-war march scheduled for Sept 15 and other actions taking place in DC. These threats are not only a danger to ANSWER Coalition but to the whole progressive movement.
Troops Out Now, who is organizing a major March in DC on Saturday, September 29 and a week-long Encampment in front of Congress from Sept 22 to 29, calls upon the movement to take the threats on the ANSWER Coalition seriously and to respond with demands to end to the fines, harassment and repression on the anti-war movement.
ANSWER in their e-mails and on their web site: www.answercoalition.org has stated that: “the best way to take action is to call the Director of Department of Public Works, William O. Howland, Jr. at 202-673-6833, and the Mayor of DC, Adrian Fenty, at 202-724-8876
They suggests saying something along the lines of: "I am writing to protest the fines levied against the ANSWER Coalition for putting up posters for the September 15th March on Washington. The government does not fine politicians who put up campaign posters, or commercial and business interests that plaster Washington, DC with posters. It is outrageous that the city, in concert with FOXNews, are attempting to suppress the antiwar movement. Stop the harassment. Stop the fines."
ANSWER's latest email sent out today states:
The ANSWER Coalition today filed a major Free Speech lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia challenging anti-postering regulations that have been used to fine the organization. ANSWER has been hit with $10,000 fines in the last week.
Stepping up its politically targeted harassment campaign, as we were announcing the lawsuit, the government served fines for posters against the landlord of the building housing ANSWER's office. This is an unprecedented campaign against First Amendment speech and associational rights.
The lawsuit was announced at a press conference held today at the offices of constitutional rights attorneys at the Partnership for Civil Justice (PCJ). The lawsuit can be read in its entirety by clicking this link.
The Free Speech lawsuit asserts that:
The challenged regulations create a hierarchy of speech, allowing broad freedom to post on subjects related to elections or crime prevention, but sharply restricting -- and penalizing with massive fines -- those who post on grassroots political issues. The legal challenge arose in response to the issuance of fines against the ANSWER Coalition for $10,000 because that anti-war organization had used posters urging the public to "March to Stop the War" and to attend the national September 15, 2007, march in Washington, called by ANSWER and led by Iraq war veterans.
The press conference was an example of the broad support for the September 15 March on Washington DC which will be led by Iraq war veterans and their families.
In this email you can watch and listen to the presentations of the speakers and the see some of the extensive media coverage of this unfolding fight.
The government's attempt to disrupt the organizing for September 15 has backfired. Support is coming in from all over the country. More than ninety organizing centers are bringing people from their area to Washington DC. Go to www.Sept15.org.
Read the rest of ANSWER's email, click here
Aug. 23 "Kill 'em All" film screening
7:30pm
Charlotte Energy Solutions
337 Bladwin Ave
Charlotte, NC 28204
Kill 'em All': The American Military in Korea
By Jeremy Williams
In September 1999 an investigative team from the Associated Press broke a story that shocked America. Fifty years before, they claimed, refugees caught up in the Korean War were shot and strafed by US forces. Jeremy Williams explores the repercussions of a brutal episode in Cold War history.
The Forgotten War
The Korean War was a bloody conflict. It left Korea, North and South, with several million dead and the UN forces involved in the fighting with over 100,000 casualties. But despite fighting as intense and as violent as any other conflict since World War Two, Korea has always been history's 'Forgotten War'.
'...US commanders repeatedly, and without ambiguity, ordered forces under their control to target and kill Korean refugees caught on the battlefield.'
While atrocities conducted both by North and South Korean forces have already been documented, recently a much darker side to the US involvement in the Korean War has begun to emerge. It casts a shadow over the conduct of US forces during the conflict, particularly of officers and generals in command. Declassified military documents recently found in the US National Archives show clearly how US commanders repeatedly, and without ambiguity, ordered forces under their control to target and kill Korean refugees caught on the battlefield. More disturbing still have been the published testimonies of Korean survivors who recall such killings, and the frank accounts of those American veterans brave enough to admit involvement.
The Korean War began on 25 June 1950 when communist North Korea invaded the South with six army divisions. These North Korean forces, backed by impressive Soviet equipment including tanks, made quick gains into the territory. The United States decided to intervene in the defence of the South and, taking advantage of the Soviet absence from the UN Security Council, proceeded to press for UN resolutions condemning the invasion. Days later a resolution was passed calling upon member countries to give assistance to South Korea to repulse the attack. General Douglas MacArthur, then in charge of US forces in the Pacific and of the occupation of Japan, was appointed commander of the joint forces.
Read the rest & view photos...
Charlotte Energy Solutions
337 Bladwin Ave
Charlotte, NC 28204
Kill 'em All': The American Military in Korea
By Jeremy Williams
In September 1999 an investigative team from the Associated Press broke a story that shocked America. Fifty years before, they claimed, refugees caught up in the Korean War were shot and strafed by US forces. Jeremy Williams explores the repercussions of a brutal episode in Cold War history.
The Forgotten War
The Korean War was a bloody conflict. It left Korea, North and South, with several million dead and the UN forces involved in the fighting with over 100,000 casualties. But despite fighting as intense and as violent as any other conflict since World War Two, Korea has always been history's 'Forgotten War'.
'...US commanders repeatedly, and without ambiguity, ordered forces under their control to target and kill Korean refugees caught on the battlefield.'
While atrocities conducted both by North and South Korean forces have already been documented, recently a much darker side to the US involvement in the Korean War has begun to emerge. It casts a shadow over the conduct of US forces during the conflict, particularly of officers and generals in command. Declassified military documents recently found in the US National Archives show clearly how US commanders repeatedly, and without ambiguity, ordered forces under their control to target and kill Korean refugees caught on the battlefield. More disturbing still have been the published testimonies of Korean survivors who recall such killings, and the frank accounts of those American veterans brave enough to admit involvement.
The Korean War began on 25 June 1950 when communist North Korea invaded the South with six army divisions. These North Korean forces, backed by impressive Soviet equipment including tanks, made quick gains into the territory. The United States decided to intervene in the defence of the South and, taking advantage of the Soviet absence from the UN Security Council, proceeded to press for UN resolutions condemning the invasion. Days later a resolution was passed calling upon member countries to give assistance to South Korea to repulse the attack. General Douglas MacArthur, then in charge of US forces in the Pacific and of the occupation of Japan, was appointed commander of the joint forces.
Read the rest & view photos...
Aug. 25 Salute to Dr. King - Unity Walk in Charlotte
Saturday, Aug. 25, 2007
Gather at 10:30 am (walk starts at 11am)
S. McDowell & DR MLK Blvd
Charlotte, NC 28202
A SALUTE TO DR. MARTIN L. KING, Jr.
A CALL FOR 1000 CITIZENS TO UNITE TO
"STOP THE KILLING"
--A UNITY WALK UPTOWN—
CHARLOTTE'S MURDER RATE HAS INCREASED!!
For Additional info: Rev. James Barnett 704 333-6471
Gather at 10:30 am (walk starts at 11am)
S. McDowell & DR MLK Blvd
Charlotte, NC 28202
A SALUTE TO DR. MARTIN L. KING, Jr.
A CALL FOR 1000 CITIZENS TO UNITE TO
"STOP THE KILLING"
--A UNITY WALK UPTOWN—
CHARLOTTE'S MURDER RATE HAS INCREASED!!
For Additional info: Rev. James Barnett 704 333-6471
Local job picture is gloomy in Florida
Weaknesses in housing market and manufacturing weigh on region's economy
STAFF REPORT, HeraldTribune.com, Aug. 18, 2007
You would have to go back, way back -- past the 2004 hurricanes, past 9/11, past the first election of George W. Bush to the presidency, even before the election of the first George Bush -- to find out when this last happened.
Unemployment across Manatee, Sarasota and Charlotte counties is worse than the state average.
It seems a sure sign that the impact of the suffering housing market and recent layoffs at some of Southwest Florida's manufacturing companies is making itself known at the unemployment office.
According to statistics released Friday by the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation, Charlotte County had the region's highest rate at 5.5 percent and the ninth-highest rate in Florida last month. Its rate was up 0.8 percentage points from June and 1.7 percentage points from this time last year.
Sarasota County's unemployment rate was 4.4 percent -- the second-highest in the region -- and up 0.6 percentage points from last month and 1.2 percentage points from July 2006.
Manatee County had a rate of 4.2 percent, 0.5 percentage points higher than last month and up a full percentage point from this time last year.
Meanwhile, Florida's seasonally adjusted total rose from 3.5 percent in June to 3.9 percent in July. That still placed the Sunshine State as the lowest of the 10 most populous states.
The national unemployment rate was 4.6 percent.
"For a number of months, declines in the construction industry have had an effect on Florida's job market," said Monesia T. Brown, director of the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation. "National markets, in addition to Florida, are feeling the impacts of declines in construction, tightening financial markets and higher gas prices."
Florida's annual job growth rate reflected a slight increase in July. The state's 1.6 percent job growth was higher than the national rate of 1.4 percent.
The state is now ranked third in job growth among the nation's 10 most populous states, behind Texas and California.
From July 2006 through last month, job growth was led by education and health services, which gained 38,100 jobs. The state has had 59 straight months of growth.
Charlotte had the ninth highest unemployment rate among Florida's 67 counties; Sarasota was No. 28; and Manatee was No. 37.
The highest unemployment rate was in Hendry County, southeast of Charlotte County near Lake Okeechobee, at 9.9 percent, while the lowest was in Walton County, in the Florida Panhandle, at 2.4 percent.
Traditionally, the job market in Charlotte, Manatee and Sarasota counties has shown low unemployment relative to the rest of Florida because of the region's tourism and service industries.
But layoffs in recent months in the region's manufacturing industry have compounded continuing job losses in the home building and real estate sector.
Manatee County's CFI Manufacturing-Carter Grandle Furniture, for example, cut 100 employees at the beginning of the year after filing for bankruptcy protection.
Wellcraft Marine, also in Manatee, has trimmed 70 jobs; Honeywell International is cutting 125 manufacturing jobs from its Sarasota County plant; and Cooper Industries is closing its WPI Interconnect Products plant in Manatee County, cutting 99 workers.
STAFF REPORT, HeraldTribune.com, Aug. 18, 2007
You would have to go back, way back -- past the 2004 hurricanes, past 9/11, past the first election of George W. Bush to the presidency, even before the election of the first George Bush -- to find out when this last happened.
Unemployment across Manatee, Sarasota and Charlotte counties is worse than the state average.
It seems a sure sign that the impact of the suffering housing market and recent layoffs at some of Southwest Florida's manufacturing companies is making itself known at the unemployment office.
According to statistics released Friday by the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation, Charlotte County had the region's highest rate at 5.5 percent and the ninth-highest rate in Florida last month. Its rate was up 0.8 percentage points from June and 1.7 percentage points from this time last year.
Sarasota County's unemployment rate was 4.4 percent -- the second-highest in the region -- and up 0.6 percentage points from last month and 1.2 percentage points from July 2006.
Manatee County had a rate of 4.2 percent, 0.5 percentage points higher than last month and up a full percentage point from this time last year.
Meanwhile, Florida's seasonally adjusted total rose from 3.5 percent in June to 3.9 percent in July. That still placed the Sunshine State as the lowest of the 10 most populous states.
The national unemployment rate was 4.6 percent.
"For a number of months, declines in the construction industry have had an effect on Florida's job market," said Monesia T. Brown, director of the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation. "National markets, in addition to Florida, are feeling the impacts of declines in construction, tightening financial markets and higher gas prices."
Florida's annual job growth rate reflected a slight increase in July. The state's 1.6 percent job growth was higher than the national rate of 1.4 percent.
The state is now ranked third in job growth among the nation's 10 most populous states, behind Texas and California.
From July 2006 through last month, job growth was led by education and health services, which gained 38,100 jobs. The state has had 59 straight months of growth.
Charlotte had the ninth highest unemployment rate among Florida's 67 counties; Sarasota was No. 28; and Manatee was No. 37.
The highest unemployment rate was in Hendry County, southeast of Charlotte County near Lake Okeechobee, at 9.9 percent, while the lowest was in Walton County, in the Florida Panhandle, at 2.4 percent.
Traditionally, the job market in Charlotte, Manatee and Sarasota counties has shown low unemployment relative to the rest of Florida because of the region's tourism and service industries.
But layoffs in recent months in the region's manufacturing industry have compounded continuing job losses in the home building and real estate sector.
Manatee County's CFI Manufacturing-Carter Grandle Furniture, for example, cut 100 employees at the beginning of the year after filing for bankruptcy protection.
Wellcraft Marine, also in Manatee, has trimmed 70 jobs; Honeywell International is cutting 125 manufacturing jobs from its Sarasota County plant; and Cooper Industries is closing its WPI Interconnect Products plant in Manatee County, cutting 99 workers.
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