No War No Torture

Rupert Coville, spokesman for the UN high commissioner siad in a report published by Agence France Presse that the UN “‘bases its stance on that of the World Medical Association” which, declared in 1991 that forcible feeding is ‘never ethically acceptable’”.

The World Medical Association states:

“Even if intended to benefit, feeding accompanied with threats, coercion, force or use of physical restraints is a form of inhuman and degrading treatment. Equally unacceptable is the force feeding of some detainees in order to intimidate or coerce other hunger strikers to stop fasting.”

The prisoners have reported to their lawyers that they are restrained painfully as well as having thick tubes forced down their noses.

Restraint Chair Used in Forcing Food Down Prisoners’ Noses

“If it’s perceived as torture or inhuman treatment—and it’s the case, it’s painful—then it is prohibited by international law,” said Coville.    See article here.

The US has committed many crimes against these prisoners; this torture is just a continuation of an eleven year history of torture in addition to indefinite imprisonment without charge.  The time may come when this country will have to pay a very high price for these crimes against humanity.

Glenn Greenwald writes:

“Needless to say, Tsarnaev is probably the single most hated figure in America now. As a result, as Bazelon noted, not many people will care what is done to him, just like few people care what happens to the accused terrorists at Guantanamo, or Bagram, or in Yemen and Pakistan. But that’s always how rights are abridged: by targeting the most marginalized group or most hated individual in the first instance, based on the expectation that nobody will object because of how marginalized or hated they are. Once those rights violations are acquiesced to in the first instance, then they become institutionalized forever, and there is no basis for objecting once they are applied to others, as they inevitably will be (in the case of the War on Terror powers: as they already are being applied to others). As Bazelon concludes:

“‘No one is crying over the rights of the young man who is accused of killing innocent people, helping his brother set off bombs that were loaded to maim, and terrorizing Boston Thursday night and Friday. But the next time you read about an abusive interrogation, or a wrongful conviction that resulted from a false confession, think about why we have Miranda in the first place. It’s to stop law enforcement authorities from committing abuses. Because when they can make their own rules, sometime, somewhere, they inevitably will.’

“Leave aside the fact that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been convicted of nothing [nor have the prisoners at Guantanamo and the black sites] and is thus entitled to a presumption of innocence. The reason to care what happens to him is because how he is treated creates precedent for what the US government is empowered to do, including to US citizens on US soil. When you cheer for the erosion of his rights, you’re cheering for the erosion of your own.”  Emphasis mine  You can read constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald’s full article here.

Can we not see that we must resist this erosion of legal protections for the good of all?  The framers of the US constitution were not fearful people; they wanted liberty and justice.  Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

To what extent are the people of the US already without liberty or safety?

“What is obviously clear by the public reaction, and by the incessant grandstanding by a handful of officials at multiple press briefings, was that the people of Boston had been conditioned to believe that an overwhelming police and military show of force in Boston was necessary in order to ‘make them feel safe’.”  This from Patrick Henningsen, whose full article can be read on Global Research here.  Henningsen goes on to say that martial law operated in Boston:

“The city of Boston was effectively closed down under military-style dictum that included the closure of the city MBTA public transport system, Taxis taken off the road, restricted curfews, bank closures, business closures, police taking over public areas for ‘staging’, door to door searches of homes, and something which was not reported, and unsurprisingly so, the military commandeering of Boston police scanner communications in the early hours of Friday morning. Drivers heading in and out of city arteries could see the signs which read in bright letters, ‘Shelter-in-place in effect in Boston’, which was an order to stay indoors.”

Martial law in Boston cheered by many throughout the country.  What have we come to?  What is allowed to be done to any of us can be done to all of us.  What can we do now to bring about different conditions and a better world?

The current president of the US, the same one who said of Bradley Manning long before any trial much less any verdict that ” he broke the law”, is quoted by the Guardian as saying tonight,’Why did young men who grew up and studied here as part of our communities and our country resort to this violence?’

A feature of the Obama regime is the declaration of who should be murdered because they are determined to be “guilty” by Obama himself, not by the judges and juries that are required by the US Constitution.  Of course, that is, as his predecessor famously said, “just a piece of paper.”  One might, however, have expected a different attitude and behavior from a constitutional lawyer than an ignorant man like Bush.

When we walked into an Upper East Side diner this evening for a late supper, we were greeted at the door by the owner’s glee that the guilty party was in custody.  I suspect most people in the US have embraced this.

Here is a part of the statement of the president of the Republic of Chechnya, which was reported by Le Monde after the murder of the first of the brothers and before the capture of the second:

“Today, as indicated by some media, a certain Tsarnaev was killed in the course of an attempt to apprehend him.  If he had been arrested, and an inquest had followed its course, it would have been possible to clear up the circumstances of his degree of culpability.  Apparently, the special forces needed a result, no matter what, in order to appease society.”

That is a very great condemnation from a country that most people in this one would find backward, not so free as the US.  Alas, it is the US which is backward, in fact it has regressed to the Middle Ages before the Magna Carta, when the dictator/monarch was law.

Normon Solomon wrote this after the bomb explosion at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013:

“Every news report about the children killed and injured at the finish line in Boston, every account of the horrific loss of limbs, makes me think of a little girl named Guljumma. She was seven years old when I met her at an Afghan refugee camp one day in the summer of 2009.

“At the time, I wrote: ‘Guljumma talked about what happened one morning last year when she was sleeping at home in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Valley. At about 5 a.m., bombs exploded. Some people in her family died. She lost an arm.’

“In the refugee camp on the outskirts of Kabul, where several hundred families were living in squalid conditions, the U.S. government was providing no help. The last time Guljumma and her father had meaningful contact with the U.S. government was when it bombed them.

“War thrives on abstractions, but Guljumma was no abstraction. She was no more or less of an abstraction than the children whose lives have been forever wrecked by the bombing at the Boston finish line.

“But the same U.S. news media that are conveying the preciousness of children so terribly harmed in Boston are scarcely interested in children like Guljumma.”

I am interested in the children like Guljumma.  I am interested in seeing that not another child, woman, nor man dies from US bombs.  Not the least of the reasons I demand the end to all US wars is because of the children who are maimed, killed, and bereft of their loved ones and those who care for them.

To those who find the kind of bomb deployed at the Boston marathon diabolical, which it is, I also want to recall that the US uses bombs like that on innocent people in several places in the world.

Solomon mentions a report by Paul Watson of the LA Times who quoted Dr.Grbic of Yugoslavia during cluster bombing there : “I have been an orthopedist for 15 years now, working in a crisis region where we often have injuries, but neither I nor my colleagues have ever seen such horrific wounds as those caused by cluster bombs.” He added: “They are wounds that lead to disabilities to a great extent. The limbs are so crushed that the only remaining option is amputation. It’s awful, awful.”

These are almost exactly the words we read now from the surgeons in Boston who are treating the people injured there.

The US has dropped cluster bombs in Afghanistan and fired cluster munitions in Iraq.

Solomon continues:

“Today, the U.S. State Department remains opposed to outlawing those weapons, declaring on its official website: ‘Cluster munitions have demonstrated military utility. Their elimination from U.S. stockpiles would put the lives of its soldiers and those of its coalition partners at risk.’

“The State Department position statement adds: ‘Moreover, cluster munitions can often result in much less collateral damage than unitary weapons, such as a larger bomb or larger artillery shell would cause, if used for the same mission.’ Perhaps the bomber(s) who stuffed nails and ball bearings into pressure cookers for use in Boston had a similarly twisted rationale.

“But don’t expect explorations of such matters from the USA’s daily papers or commercial networks — or from the likes of NPR’s ‘Morning Edition’ and ‘All Things Considered,’ or the PBS ‘NewsHour.’ When the subject is killing and maiming, such news outlets take as a given the presumptive moral high ground of the U.S. government.”

You can read the full article here.

No War No Torture: No More Corporate Empire

Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay continue their hunger strike into a third month.

“Criminal defense attorney Marjorie Cohn shares this account by Guantánamo detainee Yousef Al Shehri, detailed in a statement by attorney Julia Tarver:

“Yousef was the second detainee to have an NG [nasal gastric] tube inserted into his nose and pushed all the way down his throat and into his stomach, a procedure which caused him great pain. Yousef was given no anesthesia or sedative for the procedure; instead, two soldiers restrained him – one holding his chin while the other held him back by his hair, and a medical staff member forcefully inserted the tube in his nose and down his throat. Much blood came out of his nose. Yousef said he could not speak for two days after the procedure; he said he felt like a piece of metal was inside of him. He said he could not sleep because of the severe pain.

“When Yousef and others ‘vomited up blood, the soldiers mocked and cursed at them, and taunted them with statements like ‘look what your religion has brought you,’  Tarver wrote.

“She notes that the feeding continued for two weeks and, after pausing for a few days, the guards began to insert larger, thicker tubes— ‘the thickness of a finger.’ According to Tarver, these tubes ‘were viewed by the detainees as objects of torture.’”  Read the full article here.

Adel Bin Ahmed Bin Ibrahim Hkiml, another prisoner on hunger strike for at least 43 days there, is said to have attempted suicide.  What has happened to him is not clear, though his death has not been reported by US officials.  Cori Crider, the legal director of Reprieve, according to an account on Huffington Post that you can read here, says she has not heard from him and that fellow prisoners do not know where he is, much less how he is doing.

More about Adel Hakimi,  a variant on the name of Adel Bin Ahmed Bin Ibrahim Hkiml:

According to Andy Worthington, Adel Hakimi, a Tunisian, went to Pakistan to marry and was living in Jalalabad in Afghanistan which is near Pakistan and close to his wife’s family when the US invaded.  The US claims that he was at a military training camp near there, but there is no evidence that he was and he has always denied any involvement with al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

When the US invaded, he tried to get to Pakistan and was seized at the border and sold for bounty as so many people, especially Arabs, who were fleeing the US violence were, eventually arriving in Guantanamo.

Before he went to Pakistan, he had worked in Italy as a chef’s assistant at a number of hotels in Bologna and lived among the Italians whom he said treated him “as a brother”.  This European stay involved him a plan that never materialized to send him to Belgium, where he had been tried in abstentia based on US accusations, which have never been substantiated.

Adel Hakimi was, like so many of these prisoners still languishing in Guantanamo today, cleared for release during the Bush regime, which challenged that decision and the Obama regime continues to refuse to release him.  A hunger strike is the only way these prisoners have to resist.   The US, with disregard for international law and US laws against torture, brutally force feeds them.  More from Andy Worthington about this strike.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee says that violent force feeding of prisoners is torture.  The International Committee of the Red Cross guidelines also state that under no circumstances should doctors participate in force feeding of prisoners because it can be considered torture.

From Lauren McCauley:

“Lawyers representing the hunger striking prisoners say that most of the 166 prisoners being held are participating in the strike which began around February 6. Though the military only acknowledges 42 of those individuals as ‘hunger strikers,’ they reported that, of those, 11 were being force fed, according to detention center spokesman Navy Capt. Robert Durand.”  Read the full account here.

US tax payer money provides the staff, equipment, and all resources of the prison at Guantanamo where these crimes against humanity are committed.  What are we doing to make it clear that we are not complicit in this ongoing torture and indefinite detention of men?  The lawyers I have heard and whose words I have read say again and again that the prisoners are not tried because the US has no case against them. The only just thing to do, then, is release them with reparations and abject apologies to them, their families, and the world.  Fair and just trials of all the US officials who have had any part in this atrocity must also take place in order to hold them accountable.  What are we doing to bring these just actions about?

Once again, many of the remaining prisoners at Guantanamo are on hunger strike.  Having been imprisoned for over eleven years without trial and tortured, with evidence of continuing mistreatment at the torture center in Guantanamo Bay, the only way they have to protest is to refuse food.  In prison, without means of any other kind, they have banded together again to resist in the only way they can.

Here is a link to an article on Andy Worthington’s website and here is another to an article by Lauren McCauley.

Andy Worthington quotes from the letter written by lawyers for the prisoners to the officials in charge  of the prison, which states, “camp authorities have been confiscating detainees’ personal items, including blankets, sheets, towels, mats, razors, toothbrushes, books, family photos, religious CDs, and letters, including legal mail; and restricting their exercise, seemingly without provocation or cause.”   A copy of that letter is available here.

Another section of the lawyers’ letter says:

“As their health has deteriorated, we have received reports of men coughing up blood, being hospitalized, losing consciousness, becoming weak and fatigued, and being moved to Camp V for observation. Detainees have also expressed feeling increased stress, fear, and despair. It is clear that the their health will only worsen unless and until the hunger strike ends, which requires taking immediate steps to address the reasons for their protest.”

Being moved to Camp V for observation is a very bad sign.  It was there that Adnan Latif was “found dead in his cell” though there is supposed to be constant monitoring of the prisoners there.

Let us not forget that the vast majority of the men there have done no harm to anyone, much less anyone in the US.  What would it be like to be rounded up, tortured and imprisoned without charge for eleven years? Many of these men have been cleared for release by various US authorities over the years.  Andy says only thirty-eight of them might be dangerous men.  Ramzi Kassem, the CUNY law professor who represents some of the prisoners and signed the letter cited and linked above, says that the US should either charge all of them or release them.  The US government has said that there is not sufficient evidence to charge them.  It is clear then that the prisoners should be set free.

I for one cry out for their release.  I cry out for the release of all prisoners in US black sites around the world.  I cry out, as well, for indictments of US officials who authorized this and those who continue to imprison the men at Guantanamo and imprison and torture others around the world.

A joint investigation of the Guardian and the BBC led to a documentary released earlier this month that makes the connections between the US military and high government officials with torture in Iraq.  You can see it and read about it here.  It is clear that torture and indefinite imprisonment without charge are now standard US policy.   US tax payers’ money pays these perpetrators of war crimes while they are in office or in the military and the US government protects them when they retire, resign, or complete terms of office.  I cry out against that as well.

“Today, the European court of human rights delivered a measure of justice to [Kaled] el-Masri, [a German national seized by the CIA and tortured]. It vindicated his account of his ill-treatment, and unanimously found that Macedonia [to which he was taken by the CIA for part of his torture] had violated his rights under the European Convention, including by transferring him to US custody in the face of a risk of ill-treatment, and facilitating and failing to prevent his being subjected to CIA ‘capture shock’ at Skopje airport.

“This is the first court to comprehensively and specifically find that the CIA’s rendition techniques amounted to torture. The decision stands in sharp contrast to the abject failure of US courts to deliver justice to victims of US torture and rendition.”

Read about this here  and also  here .

I hope this is the first of many legal condemnations of US torture and crimes against humanity and that the tide of US immunity from legal consequences of its torture will soon be at an end.

Though he recognizes that there is much working against justice any time soon, Andy Worthington writes about other events which show eroding immunity for US torture and crimes against humanity.  He writes:

“While Khaled El-Masri was securing his victory in Strasbourg, another victim of ‘extraordinary rendition’ and torture, Sami al-Saadi, a Libyan and a former opponent of the former dictator Muammar Gaddafi, secured an important victory in the UK, when the British government agreed to pay him £2.23 million ($3.5 million) in an out-of-court settlement relating to the key role played by the UK, working with the US and Libya, in kidnapping Mr. al-Saadi and his family and rendering them to Col. Gaddafi, who then imprisoned and tortured him.”

Sami al-Saadi

Worthington continues:

“Again, the US is not directly implicated, but the reverberations from the settlement cannot be wished away by the US, and, it seems, there will be more to come in the case of Abdel Hakim Belhaj, who said of al-Saadi, ‘When my friend Sami al-Saadi was freed from Abu Salim prison on 23 August 2011, he weighed seven stone. He was close to death. It is a miracle he survived his ordeal and is home with his family’”

And Worthington remarks on a third event that shows some change in the status of US torture, the 6000 page report by the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.  He quotes Senator Dianne Feinstein as follows:

“’The report uncovers startling details about the CIA detention and interrogation program and raises critical questions about intelligence operations and oversight.’ She also stated, ‘I strongly believe that the creation of long-term, clandestine “black sites” and the use of so-called ‘enhanced-interrogation techniques’ were terrible mistakes. The majority of the Committee agrees.’”

Worthington concludes:

“… the best response, while repeatedly highlighting the case of Khaled El-Masri and the shame of rendering political opponents to Col. Gaddafi to secure his support and his oil, will be for President Obama and Congress to make sure that the Senate’s comprehensive torture report is released, and not hidden away, so that the torturers cannot continue to evade accountability for their crimes.

“Without accountability, the toxic virus of torture in America’s body politic will continue to infect the whole country with its poison. It is time for the denial to end.”

How many of us are in denial about the toxic virus of torture in the US?  How can you know you are not in denial about it?  What are you doing to stop it? If you are serious, there are things you can do.  Organizations like World Can’t Wait, organize resistance to US torture.  You can join with others to make your resistance known.  Click here to go to the World Can’t Wait website for information on what you can do to stop the crimes of the US government.

Police can and do make errors and give orders that are not legal, sometimes accidentally like every other human being and sometimes on purpose. It is chilling that a judge, who is supposed to be impartial and not a tool of the police, would tell someone that he has to do what the police tell him.  The moment that we citizens allow the police to think for us, we live in a police state and when judges back that up, we are in real trouble.

It appears from the following incident in the Bronx court today that we are in real trouble. Below is a report from that court room today:

“Josh [Norkin, attorney for Noche Diaz, activist against the Stop and Frisk police, see more here and here] went in front of the judge, who immediately started lecturing Noche that when a cop tells him something, he has to do it.  She went on at length speculating that, whatever Noche had done, he didn’t want to obey the cop, or tell the court what he was doing.  Josh took her on in a loud clear voice.  ‘We know exactly what was going on. The police were beating a man terribly in the street, and a crowd gathered.  Noche was in the crowd, observing.’ The judge said Noche had to follow the police order to move.  Josh said no, he didn’t.  ‘It wasn’t a lawful order.’

Noche Diaz, Stop and Frisk activist

“The judge didn’t like this at all.  ‘I suppose he wants to stand on his constitutional rights, but he doesn’t have them here.’  She asked the DA if they would offer an ACD (adjournment in contemplation of dismissal).  They did offer it.  Josh told the court, “‘We will refuse an ACD’

“Hell, yeah.  The whole point of defending ourselves against these unjust arrests is to establish that people have the right to observe and document police abuse.  Just because the NYPD arrests you while doing it, doesn’t mean they’re right.  It’s great to have attorneys on our side who see this, and who are just as outraged as we are.”  See the rest of Debra Sweet’s report here.

Are you outraged at the way the NYPD treat people of color in this city?  Are you outraged that the judge lectured Noche and wonder if she would lecture a Wall St criminal?

If you are, what are you doing about this?  Go the Stop Mass Incareration website, learn more and sign the resoultion.  Go to the fundraiser on Thursday for legal expenses for these defendentants who are standing up to police abuse in this city and to a policy that targets black and brown persons.  If you can’t make the party, you can still contribute online.  Link that site to your facebook page and other social media.  Go to a hearing yourself if you are in NYC.

Stop Stop and Frisk protesters are making an impact.  Though the corporate media don’t give this very much attention, alternative media in this city do.  Maybe most importantly,  the people in the courtrooms where these hearings are held, many of them from the populations being targeted, are getting to see resistance for a change.  They may be gaining some hope for a better world.

WE WON’T STOP TILL WE STOP STOP AND FRISK

My work in black and Latino neighborhoods of this city lately has brought forcibly to my attention the conditions of life for many of my sisters and brothers in this city and country. I am acutely aware today of my privileges as a white educated person–even though I am comparatively poor in this society.  Millions of New York City inhabitants would find my life a paradise compared to theirs.

Here are reports in alternative media about the realities of life for black and brown people in New York right now. Just a demographic note, the resident population of Lower Manhattan is among the poorest in the city of New York–in close proximity to the “Financial Capitol of the World” where rich bankers, many of whom notoriously use cocaine and other drugs as well as rob the world of its wealth, are free of any threat of prosecution, much less persecution or even discomfort.

“… residents in some housing developments that lost power and were inundated with water were not told to evacuate by the city, or even warned that they were in a flood-prone area.

“At other developments where New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) staff were sent to door-to-door to urge people to evacuate, many residents refused, fearing unsafe conditions in city shelters or looting in their absence.

“Some were unable to comply even if they had wanted to because of age or infirmity.  NYCHA offered no services to provide for special needs.”

“World Socialist Web Site reporters visited the Baruch houses, home to over 5,000 people on Houston Street, to discuss their experiences with the storm and its aftermath. Many were skeptical that even if they had complied with the evacuation order, there would be enough room to hold all of the residents there. During the storm, water rose four feet above the ground, engulfing cars.

“The water supply at the buildings has been cut off because pumps have failed due to the lack of electricity. Residents told us that there was no heat in the buildings with temperatures expected to drop into the 40s Fahrenheit at night. No one knew when electricity would be back on.

“Residents were filling buckets and containers with water from an opened fireplug in the street and carrying them up in some cases over a dozen flights of stairs.”

People collecting water to carry upstairs

According to Mariam Capo, a resident of the Baruch houses, “‘Elderly people have had to walk up several flights of stairs with buckets. Where is the help? The city is doing nothing.

“We have no emergency lights in the building. I have been lighting candles trying to help myself and others get up and down the stairs. It’s ridiculous. And no one wants to report on this. I don’t see any news people down here.’”

“Shontel Srooks, a transit dispatcher, had worked a 24-hour shift the previous night attempting to run test trains through the subway system. Wednesday she stayed home to care for her son.

“’Different classes get taken care of differently,’ she said. She recalled that during the last blackout her train had stopped on the more affluent Upper West Side. ‘After we got everyone evacuated we saw the Red Cross out there taking care of people. Needless to say, when I got back down here after my shift it was different story.’”

All of the quotations above are from the World Socialist Website report which you can read in full  here.

Here is more from persons interviewed in poor neighborhoods by Revolution:

Report from a project in Brooklyn:

“It immediately became clear that people are facing a life-threatening situation.There is no running water, no power and no heat in increasingly cold days and nights. Medicines were destroyed in the flood when water came in. And if you have no extra money after your supplies have run out, nobody is coming to help. A couple people said they wanted to stop and talk but they were too hungry and thirsty and wanted to get the store to see what they had left. This was about a mile walk from where we were, if not more [many very poor areas of NYC have virtually no street level commerce, so residents go far to find a grocery store--all the time not just during a storm]. A tall Black man in his late 20s paused to talk to a friend who was talking to us to say he was being forced to sell his new phone to get food and water for his hungry kids. The main demands are food, water, medicine, heat and transportation…”

The scene at a homeless shelter:

“As I got closer to the shelter, I realized it was dark and all the doors were closed, so unless you knew it was an evacuation center, you would miss it completely.  Finally when I found an open door I was first greeted by 7 to 8 NYPD cops. Who ask what the hell I was doing there… I said I wanted to volunteer at the shelter, they said they wanted my ID and to search my backpack and jacket. I felt that any moment they were going to throw me against the wall, pat me down and finger print me….”.

Read more first hand reports here in Revolution.

Many people in the US would say that quotations from socialist and communist publications are “just propaganda.”  Let me assure you that I have been in some of these neighborhoods and seen what happens there first hand.  I spoke recently with an intelligent and eloquent man in Harlem who has a degree from the University of Virginia and who, like many people in the US, cannot get work.  Being a black man means his chances of employment are even lower than those of the millions of unemployed white people.  He was desperate and suicidal.  Since I left that neighborhood, I have wondered if he is still alive.  In that neighborhood, it is common for the young men to be targeted by the police and stopped repeatedly without warrants, manhandled and abused, though not arrested because they are doing nothing wrong except walking while black and young.  The old people I met, many of them veterans of the civil rights movement, all said, “Things have gone crazy here.”  Indeed things are crazy here.   Only a few alternative media report on conditions in these places.

Here is a report by Sarah Seltzer from AlterNet.org which also substantiates the previous reports with quotations from residents of Lower Manhattan.  She adds this quotation from a Reuters source:

“Inequality here [in lower Manhattan] rivals parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Last year the wealthiest 20 percent of Manhattan residents made $391,022 a year on average, according to  census data . The poorest 20 percent made $9,681. ”

And  Seltzer  reported this from Gothamist:

“I did not witness a single Red Cross Truck or FEMA Vehicle or[sic] in lower Manhattan. Recall the assistance these agencies provided after 9/11 – this is NOT HAPPENING. There are bound to be hundreds of elderly people, rich and poor, who live on the upper floors of buildings with elevators that are now disabled. IF POWER IS NOT RESTORED, THIS WILL MOVE FROM BEING AN ECONOMIC DISASTER TO A HUMANITARIAN DISASTER.”

This already is a humanitarian disaster; it was before the storm.

Unless you are one of those people in the US who would call Seltzer and AlterNet “commie” just for publishing such information, this is from a source that cannot be classified as “propaganda”.  There is no connection with any political party.  This is just factual information which mainstream media will not publish.

Are you comfortable right now, with lights, heat, running water?  I know that there is real suffering in this city by people of all colors and races.  I also remember that of the millions of people do not have those amenities, the population which is also black  or Latino and poor is hardly mentioned in mass media among those who are suffering–not in this case, not ever.

I must resist racist, classist policies that make these conditions real.  I do rage against the dying of the light.

Jamel in Harlem on 13 September

Below is part of a statement by Jamel Mims, one of the new freedom fighters working to stop the New York Police Department  Stop and Frisk policy that victimizes our young black and brown people in New York City:

“The stakes of this case are undoubtedly high. This is the second mass trial resulting from the civil disobedience campaign that has sparked citywide resistance to the stop-and-frisk policy.  The Queens District Attorney added a serious misdemeanor charge to our case last month, and re-wrote our charges last week so that we are being charged as ‘acting in concert’ rather than as individuals.

“If anyone thinks this is just ‘business as usual’ and that authorities won’t convict us or send us to jail, let me reiterate — the DA has twice bumped up the charges, and has made it very clear that the prosecutorial apparatus intends to place us behind bars.”

Read the entire article here.  There is video of the march and protest where Jamel and others were arrested as well as Jamel’s text.

Carl and some of the students leading the march through the neighborhood on the day for which a group including Jamel are being tried.

Wed Oct 24, Court Support
9:30am Trial (Day #2)
Queens Criminal Court (11/19/11 arrests at 103rd Precinct: Jamel Mims, Carl Dix, Bob Parsons, Morgan Rhodewalt)

125-01 Queens Blvd. near Hoover Avenue & 82nd Avenue. The Summons Part is located across the street in the Borough Hall Building.

Directions
Take the E or F train to the Union Turnpike Station. The Q60, Q37, Q74 and Q46 buses all have stops in close proximity to the Courthouse.

And, read about my experience that day here.

Jamel is a Fullbright Scholar, multimedia artist, and arts educator in New York City.  His courage and determination inspire me.  I am glad to know him and ask everyone wherever you are to telephone the District Attorney, 718 286 6000, to demand that all charges against him and the other defendants be dropped.   If you live in New York and can go to the court on Wednesday at the address above at 9am to support Jamel and the others.