hupcollective

NOT ONE MORE, WAR!

hupcollective — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 00:38:51 GMT

Please re-post this far and wide!

NOT ONE MORE, WAR

by Clare Bayard, March 25 2008
Last night, I stood over a thousand candles on the lawn in front of San Francisco’s City Hall. Veterans for Peace had organized a vigil to mark the official 4,000 U.S. soldier killed in Iraq, which technically happened Sunday, March 24th. As people began reading the last 1,000 names aloud, my whole body suddenly wracked with mourning. My chest was exploding and I knew it wasn’t a coronary or panic attack, but grief saturated me so thoroughly I could barely stand. Loved ones held me up as we mourned together; I could hardly let go of a former Marine friend who chose military jail instead of Iraq, and I had never felt such frantic, choking relief to have him standing alive beside me. I can’t imagine the world without him now.

I say “technical count” because we don’t even have the numbers to do the math, which means the full picture is beyond our grasp:

4,000 official U.S. servicemembers killed

1-6,000 U.S. servicemember suicides- inadmissible as war casualties

over a thousand nonmilitary contractors, civilians, etc.

how many debilitating injuries?

Plus how many deeply affected partners, parents, family members, friends, lovers in the life of each one of these tens of thousands? The children they might have had, and the ones some already did?

…and, echoing in barely broken silence, the deaths of 650,000 to over a million Iraqis.
A Presbyterian minister, who participates in a similar annual vigil for the deaths of San Francisco’s homeless people, began the ritual with a nondenominational invocation. She spoke of the tremendous loss of so many humans with all their talents and creativities, everything they might have brought to their communities.
I feel lucky to be alive today, walking in the spring sun and holding the fierce grief of so many deaths. I feel lucky that my father, a Vietnam Vet, is alive instead of a name on the black granite Wall in D.C., lucky that I was born.

But war doesn’t play duck-duck-goose, bypassing most people entirely and just taking a scatter of heads. No one in Iraq lives separate from the war, and in a dramatically different way neither do we in the U.S.

War defines daily reality in occupied lands. Where wars are being fought in the streets and skies, where depleted uranium underfoot rises in plumes of dust and a sudden noise might be the last thing you hear, war is everything from the toxic air to the mined soil. In the U.S. there is a myth that war is just happening “over there” where bombs are vaporizing houses and human bodies. As if war was not already here, and as if the multi-variant violence of militarism does not return in the body of every veteran, alive or dead.

My perspective on this is profoundly shaped by being raised by a veteran father; the war on Vietnam lived in my house every day when I was growing up. I was lucky enough to be born. To be housed. 1 in 4 homeless people in my city are veterans. My dad’s class and race privilege and my mom’s waged and unwaged work kept us housed and together, even though the war has never let him go. And in a way, I have come to understand myself as lucky to be the child of a war veteran, in the ways that it helps me to keep my heart alive during the crushing numbness of this “endless war.” I cannot see, or feel myself as disconnected from war—either from those murdered by U.S. occupation, or those within the ranks of our military who are struggling to stay human.

War comes into homefront communities in many ways. It is the wartime economy, where every bomb explodes twice: once shattering lives in Fallujah, Karbala, Basra; then burning up our schools and universities, healthcare, levees, social system. It is the racist dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims that inflames hate crimes of street violence and hate crimes of state legislature. It is where “security” means genocide, and none of us are made at all safer by U.S. empire expanding. And war comes into our families, our neighborhoods, our workplaces and social spaces, cloaked in the silent roar of a taboo topic: how veterans return from war carrying the violence of militarism. Some kill themselves quickly, with a bullet or a rope, and even when these deaths occur on a base they are not part of the official tally. These 4,000 recognized deaths are the tip of the iceberg of U.S. war casualties. Domestic violence murders, almost entirely women, don’t qualify even when under the clearest circumstances. Other vets die slowly, self-medicating with drugs or alcohol, often on the streets. Many strain enough healing through gritted teeth to put their life back together, supported by their loved ones, not by their government, not by the drivers of SUVs decorated with yellow ribbons, and largely not by the peace movement.

I do not mourn these 4000 deaths (and the other invisibilized U.S. deaths) any more than the uncounted Iraqi lives, nor any less. The judgment that some lives are disposable is part of what we are struggling against, in demanding justice and peace. I don’t hold these 4000 accountable for engineering this war, nor do I excuse them for participating. To do so would remove their agency in the situation, and dishonor the choices that many U.S. soldiers are making every day to refuse orders, resist compliance with occupation. I won’t devalue the choices that the majority of young people in this country are making to not enlist at all, despite the outrageous lack of options facing them, especially working-class kids and youth of color. Every day, people act to resist the U.S. military, from around the world, from within its ranks. And how do we know how many of those names read out last night belong to resisters? How many were carrying an unloaded weapon, like Agustin Aguayo did for a year while the Army denied his conscientious objector status? How many were considering going AWOL? How many were pursuing, if they knew the option existed, a conscientious objector status? How many had done something recently to stand up to racism, misogyny, or some random violence within their unit?
Mostly we’ll never know because now their mouths are filled with dirt and their stories will be carried only by those surviving them. The singers among them, the writers, the kid who was so good at math, the girl with the fierce will, the boy who protected his best friend from queerbashers, the dreamers, the confused, the 20 year old with a 2 year old daughter, the one who died so homesick, the one who learned Arabic to talk to the neighborhood kids, all the ones you and I will never meet, who died in a country that’s losing millions of its people to death and escape.

We do not stop organizing. We can’t. But as we keep organizing, we do also need to mourn. It keeps us human to mourn, to truly recognize the grievous loss of millions of people, to stand with their loved ones in remembrance and in defiance—to spit in the face of war. We say: no more lives, war, we will not feed you. All of us are needed, and war, we shall starve you.

Clare Bayard heads the Anti-War program of Catalyst Project, organizing to connect work against wars abroad with domestic racial and economic justice struggles, and building the G.I. resistance support movement. Clare serves on the National Committee and Organizing Task Force of the War Resisters League, an organization that seeks to end all wars and the root causes of war.
Catalyst Project: www.collectiveliberation.org

War Resisters League: www.warresisters.org, notyoursoldier.org
Check out the brand new Iraq Veterans Against the War’s Winter Soldier hearings archive at: warcomeshome.org
Please bring your political and financial support to organizations that are supporting antiwar veterans and troops who refuse to fight.

www.ivaw.org-- Iraq Veterans Against the War

www.servicewomen.org-- Servicewomen’s Action Network

www.couragetoresist.org-- Courage to Resist

there's a request to call obama's campaign

hupcollective — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 04:34:04 GMT

THE UN SAYS:

Israel is allowing only 41% of Gaza's food requirements
Israel grants only 1 in 7 patients access to urgent treatment outside Gaza
Israel denies medication and hospital supplies to Gaza
Israel is not allowing enough fuel to treat and pump clean water in Gaza
Israel's cruelty has caused more than 70 deaths of untreated Gaza patients since June
BARACK OBAMA SAYS:
"We have to understand why Israel is forced (sic) to do this"
PLEASE CALL THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN TO SAY YOU ARE OUTRAGED!

(866) 675-2008

TALKING POINTS:
Denying food to 1.5 million civilians is a crime! It is irresponsible for Obama to encourage it.
Denying medicine to sick and dying people is a crime. It is NOT self defense.
Israel's actions are collective punishment. Why does Obama not condemn it?
Denying food, medicine and other essential supplies does nothing to harm fighters or the Hamas government in Gaza. It only harms civilians, one half of whom are children. Does Obama consider them disposable?
Obama's callous defense of Israel's cruelty deserves your action.
Presidential candidates are sensitive to criticism. Your calls have the potential
to make Palestinian rights an issue. Now is the time.

Following is the text of Obama's letter to the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad. A photocopy of the signed letter is at http://jewishstandard.net//content_images/ObamaLetterbig.jpg

1.23.2008

Dear Ambassador Khalilzad,

I understand that today the U.N. Security Council met regarding the situation in Gaza, and that a resolution or statement could be forthcoming from the Council in short order.

I urge you to ensure that the Security Council issue no statement and pass no resolution on this matter that does not fully condemn the rocket assault Hamas has been conducting on civilians in Southern Israel for over two years.

All of us are concerned about the impact of closed border crossings on Palestinian families. However, we have to understand why Israel is forced to do this. Gaza is governed by Hamas, which is a terrorist organization sworn to Israel’s destruction, and Israeli civilians are being bombarded by rockets on an almost daily basis. That is unacceptable and Israel has a right to respond while seeking to minimize any impact on civilians.

The Security Council should clearly and unequivocally condemn the rocket attacks against Israel, and should make clear that Israel has the right to defend itself against such actions. If it cannot bring itself to make these common sense points, I urge you to ensure that it does not speak at all.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama
United States Senator

Urgent Action needed TODAY for affordable housing in Bayview (san francisco specific)

hupcollective — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:55:45 GMT

¡¡¡URGENT ACTION ALERT FROM POWER!!!

POWER and the Stop Lennar Action Movement need your help—RIGHT NOW.

Call or email Board of Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval
RIGHT NOW
and urge him to sponsor Affordable Housing Initiative!

Lennar is placing an initiative on the ballot to get control of 700 more acres of land in Bayview Hunters Point. You might recognize Lennar as the developer who is currently poisoning children, elderly and low-income families in Bayview Hunters Point.

In response, POWER and the Stop Lennar Action Movement are attempting to place our own initiative on the ballot to block Lennar’s efforts. Specifically, our initiative would require that 50% of the planned 8,500 to 10,000 housing units that Lennar would build be affordable to SF residents. Of those units, our initiative would require that at least 1/3 be affordable at 30% AMI, 1/3 be affordable at 60%AMI, and 1/3 be available to 80% AMI. This would be a landmark decision, opening up TRULY affordable housing to working class San Francisco.

We need 4 supervisors to sign on to this in order for it to qualify for the June 2008 election. However, 2 of the 4 supervisors who were with us are now being pressured by Lennar NOT to sign the initiative. These supervisors have stood with us before, demanding accountability for Lennar, but when the heat is turned up,
THE SILENCE IS DEAFENING.

Call or email Sandoval RIGHT NOW!
(415) 554-6975
Gerardo.Sandoval@sfgov.org

also call Tom Ammiano to let him know how important his signature and his support is
(415) 554-5144

Call these Supervisors RIGHT NOW and urge them to sign and sponsor the Bayview Affordable Housing Initiative!

The deadline for the Supervisors to sign the ordinance in 5pm TODAY – Tuesday Jan. 15, 2008

Thank you for your solidarity and Support!!

CALL TO ACTION re: NOLA housing demolitions

hupcollective — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 20:34:03 GMT

here is an update from Ingrid of the Catalyst Project, followed by an update and appeal from the Coalition to Stop the Demolitions:

Hello friends and family, 12-18-07

Clare Bayard and I have just returned back to Oakland after 2 weeks in
New Orleans. We were there as part of our ongoing Catalyst Project New
Orleans Solidarity Program.

I am so happy to be able to share with you some victories from just
this last week in New Orleans. The struggle to stop the demolition of
4,600 low income public housing units is far from over but the
Coalition to Stop the Demolitions has had some victories this week
that have slowed them down. Hopefully the victories and some more time
will help us build a stronger force for the ongoing struggle for
justice and the right of return of all residents.

Below my email is a letter from the Coalition to Stop the Demolitions,
which lists a bunch of ways national solidarity is needed!

Links to short films from this last week and more:
http://bravenewfilms.org/blog/22079-the-battle-over-new-orleans-
http://bravenewfilms.org/blog/21862-new-orleans-police-attack-

Just this last week in New Orleans…

Monday 12-10-07

Around 75 residents of public housing and allies pack a meeting of the
Housing Conservation Review Committee. This committee was to take a
vote on whether to approve or deny permits for the demolition of the 4
major public housing developments. After hours of residents and allies
speaking, such as the Episcopalian Bishop Charles Jenkins, the
committee took a vote on 3 of the developments. They approved
demolition permits for C. J. Pete and Cooper and denied permits for
Lafitte. They refused to vote on St. Bernard where the majority of
residents in the meeting lived before the storm. We went in thinking
we would lose on all 4, so even getting them to deny demolition
permits for 1 major development was a victory.

A banner made of a large sheet was hung in support of the campaign to
save public housing off the side of Saks Fifth Avenue on Canal St. on
Monday at 5pm reading "We need more affordable housing" and "Stop the
demolitions." The banner was very visible from Canal St, the main
artery through the central business district. It was not taken down
until sometime Tuesday morning.

There were also protest posters that were put up the night before all
over town in support of stopping the bulldozing. There were several
different posters that went up. Unfortunately the media latched on to
the one poster which had messaging that was not coming from the
residents—the declaring "for every unit of public housing bulldozed, a
condo will be destroyed."

That night local organizers and residents of public housing met with
50 people who came in from around the country to participate in the
coming weeks direct actions to stop the bull dozing.

Tuesday 12-11-07

Around 75 people participate in direct action training to prepare for
the coming week of actions.

A call comes in that afternoon that they have started removing the
metal barricades that have been coving the doors and windows of all
the units of Lafitte sense soon after the storm. Lafitte had very
little flooding and the metal barricades have kept residents from
being able to return home or retrieve their belongings. This however
was a sign that they were preparing to move forward with demolition
and Lafitte residents were concerned that their belongings would be
stolen. There was a quick response and we got a dozen of our folks out
as well as a bunch of local media and independent film makers. Work
stopped and within the next two days all the barricades were back up.
This was a show of force that they could not move forward as planned
preparing for demolition. For the rest of the week we had teams doing
24 hour bulldozer watches at Lafitte and St. Bernard developments.

Wednesday 12-12-07

Bulldozing began at Cooper. Residents and allies were mobilized
immediately. With high energy and lots of media people blockaded the
entrance way to Cooper for 4 hours holding out a large wrecking crane
and halting demolition for the rest of the night. That day a number
of people snuck in and occupied Cooper to try and stop it from being
demolished.

Thursday 12-13-07

A couple hundred residents, faith based leaders and allies marched
from city hall to the HUD office in downtown New Orleans, at some
points taking up all 4 lanes of traffic. At HUD there was a show of
force as people attempted to get into the office.

Friday 12-14-07

A major day of victories!

7:30am – With the support of local organizers, 4 allies of public
housing residents (folks involved in the Anti-Racism Work Group and
Catalyst Project) locked themselves together and shut down the Housing
Authority of New Orleans headquarters (HANO). Dressed in pajamas with
bulldozers crossed out on them, Santa hats and bells on their shoes,
they used lock boxes covered with cardboard houses to attach to each
other and block the main entrance into the building. Attached to the
gates behind them was a banner that read "Homes for the Holidays,"
large stockings stuffed with fake money that read "Nagin", "Alphonso
Jackson" and "Vitter," large red bows, and a white Christmas tree.
They, along with a bunch of supporters sang songs calling for a stop
to the demolitions to the tune of Christmas carols. They shut down
the HANO headquarters for over 4 hours, until they were cut out of the
lock boxes and taken to jail. They were released early the next
morning from Orleans Parish Prison with a few misdemeanor charges.
They have lawyers who will be working with them to get the charges
dropped.

10:00 am - Court hearing and ruling calling for an injunction delaying
the demolition of C.J. Pete, Lafitte and St. Bernard. The court ruled
that the city council must vote to approve all demolitions on public
property and that there must be and opening biding process and
contracts for these demolitions. The city council will meet this
Thursday at 10 am to vote on whether to approve the demolitions. We
have to turn up the pressure on them!!! As of a week ago it did not
look like we had a majority on our side. They need to feel the
pressure locally and nationally! This is a really important point of
intervention!

City Council announced it will take this matter up on Thursday
December 20, 2007.

Please contact New Orleans City Council Members and ask them to stop
the demolitions:

Arnie Fielkow - (504) 658-1060 AFielkow@cityofno.com
Jacquelyn Clarkson - (504) 658-1070 JBClarkson@cityofno.com
Stacy Head - (504) 658-1020 SHead@cityofno.com
Shelley Midura - (504) 658-1010 SMidura@cityofno.com
James Carter - (504) 658-1030 JCarter@cityofno.com
Cynthia Hedge-Morrell - (504) 658-1040
Cynthia Willard-Lewis - (504) 658-1050 CWLewis@cityofno.com

Sometime on Friday - There was a federal lawsuit filed by St. Bernard
residents and the AFL-CIO calling for an injunction and halting of
demolition of St. Bernard. The US District Court in Washington DC
ruled in our favor halting the demolition of St. Bernard until
Thursday and transferring the case to NOLA for additional hearings.
Others on the federal level are working against us and trying to get
the motion overturned so we have to keep the pressure on at that level
as well.

Also during that day – There were multiple banner hangs in support of
the campaign to save public housing on freeway overpasses around New
Orleans.

5:00 pm-- There was a well-attended candlelight prayer vigil on
Orleans Avenue at Lafitte housing development. Several ministers,
including Rev. Lois Dejean, Rev. Charles Duplessis, and Rev. Marshall
Truehill led the crowd in prayers, scripture, and song.

7:00pm – U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to President Bush asking that
he immediately stop the demolitions for 60 days to allow a
congressional remedy.

Saturday 12-15-07

The day demolitions were scheduled to begin at C.J. Pete, Lafitte and
St. Bernard. No bulldozers!!! A tent city is erected at St Bernard.
A couple hundred people turn up for a Second Line, brass band and
food. People danced in the streets and the mood was good until the
police started a confrontation and arrested 3 people. People then
moved to the jail and rallied there for the release of those arrested.
2 people were released immediately and the last late that night.

Folks on the ground are fierce and working so hard, under hard
circumstances and intense police surveillance. There has been so much
organizing around opening public housing that has been going on for
the last two years and will continue. I encourage you to show our
folks on the frontlines some love and solidarity. Below is a letter
from the Coalition to Stop the Demolitions that has a bunch of ways
you can support this struggle.

With much love and appreciation,

Ingrid
Ingrid@collectiveliberation.org
Catalyst Project
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From the Coalition to Stop the Demolitions

The Coalition to Stop the Demolitions would like to thank all of our allies and supporters throughout the United States and the world who came and stood with us in New Orleans or took action on the streets your city, or who called, emailed, or faxed the New Orleans City Council, Mayor Ray Nagin, Senator Vitter, the Senate Banking Committee members, etc. Your support played a pivotal role in helping us attain the victories we accomplished last week in halting the demolition of three of the four major public housing locations in New Orleans.

However, the fight is far from over and we still need your help. Despite our victories in both State and Federal Courts last Friday, we recognize that it is quite possible that we might lose the City Council vote on Thursday, December 20th by a decision of four to three (or perhaps even five to two). We are fairly certain that at least three of the white City Council members are going vote against us, including Jacquelyn Clarkson, Stacy Head, and Shelley Midura. There is a possibility that Arnie Fielkow, the current Council President, might vote in favor or abstain in order to not lose favor with a sector of the Black electorate whom he will need to fulfill his Mayoral aspirations. As for those who may stand with us, there are likely only two members who are solid. These are James Carter and Cynthia Willard-Lewis. The third Black Council member, Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, is definitely a critical swing vote. We need to put pressure on each and every one of these City Council members between now and the 20th (please stress outreach to Internally Displaced Persons in your area and encourage them to call as a priority).

In addition, the Federal lawsuit filed on behalf of the residents of the St. Bernard was transferred from Washington, D.C. to the US District Court – Easter District of Louisiana. Based on his past behavior, we do not expect this judge will do anything to stop the demolitions.

What this means is that by Friday, December 21st we may realistically be engaging in our second wave of mass non-violent civil disobedience action. Should this be the case, we are going to need all of our allies and supporters everywhere to be ready yet again to take decisive action to stop these inhumane demolition orders.

Things we foresee as being critical this week:
1. We need to blitz the City Council of New Orleans and demand

a. That they vote NO to the demolitions, and
b. That they hold a public hearing on the demolitions in the evening so that more working class people can participate. Information on how to contact the City Council is provided below.

2. We need for as many people who can come down to come down to

a. Pack City Council on Thursday, December 20th,
b. Be prepared to engage in non-violent civil disobedience in line with the residents council principles and the coalitions pledge of resistance statement (see www.peopleshurricane.org for both documents). To engage in this initiative you must register with the coalition at action@peopleshurricane.org .
c. We would also like to encourage Black and other oppressed nationality organizers to come down and help us with outreach, base building, and coalition building work over the course of the next several weeks.

3. We need to continue pressuring Senator David Vitter with calls, faxes, and emails demanding that he support Senate Bill 1668 and allow the bill to move from the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee to the Senate for a vote.
4. We need to pressure Senator Mary Landrieu to demand that the Federal government via President George W. Bush and the Justice Department suspend the demolitions until the Federal investigation of Alphonso Jackson is complete.
5. We need to seize these next three days to reframe the struggle to stop the demolition based on the demands of the Coalition (see below). To this end we need everyone to

a. Write letters to the editor for your local news outlets,
b. Blitz the major newsprint, TV, and cable media networks and demand that they cover the issue, and
c. To write articles on the issue based on the Coalitions demands and post them to as many listserves, blogs, and websites as you possibly can.

Finally, we need some resources to carry out this work. Some of the things we need resources for include:
1. The "Stop Da Demolitions" Mixtape made by Sess 4 – 5, Nuthinbutfire Records, and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement for the Coalition the Stop the Demolition. We need $1,400 to produce and print 2,000 CD's for youth outreach and education.
2. We also need resources to help with transportation, food, and accommodations for both residents and volunteers.
3. We need resources the cover the Coalitions cell phone expense.
4. We need resources to cover printings (flyers and posters).
5. Finally, we need resources materials to produce banners and other mobilization props.

Donations can be made out to the Mississippi Disaster Relief Coalition (MDRC) and mailed to P.O. Box 31762 Jackson, MS 39286. Please indicate on your donation "Coalition to Stop Demolitions". All donations are tax-deductible.

Our Demands
I. City Council needs to vote NO on demolition. The Council meeting should be moved to an evening time to accommodate people's schedules and allow a full public hearing on demolition before taking a vote.

II. The mayor needs to meet with the faith leaders who have requested a meeting with him about the housing crisis in the city

III. No Demolitions – reopen the existing units and rebuild dignified housing at former public housing sights.

IV. Guaranteed one-to-one replacement for all public housing residents.

V. All available public housing units should be made available for the homeless and those likely to face homelessness from the pending loss of rent vouchers and trailer recalls.

VI. The Federal government needs to suspend demolition until the investigation of Alphonso Jackson and the contraction process is completed.

VII. Rent Control to provide deeply affordable housing so that all will be able to return to the city.

VIII. Stop the privatization and gentrification of the City.

Resident Principles
I. All Actions should be non-violent.

II. There should be no weapons or drugs at any actions, and no alcohol or drug or weapon possession at any action.

III. No destruction or defacement of resident property.

IV. No coalition meetings without resident knowledge and input.

V. No media without residents or resident knowledge.

VI. Focus on defending public housing and affordable housing in the city for all.

City Council Contact Information
Arnie Fielkow 504.658.1060 afielkow@cityofno.com
Jacquelyn Clarkson 504.658.1070 jbclarkson@cityofno.com
Stacy Head 504.658.1020 shead@cityofno.com
Shelly Midura 504.658.1010 smidura@cityofno.com
James Carter 504.658.1030 jcarter@cityofno.com
Cynthia Hedge-Morrell 504.658.1040 chmorrell@cityofno.com
Cynthia Willard-Lewis 504.658.1050 cwlewis@cityofno.com

Monday, December 17, 2007

The Intifada Will Not Be Funded

hupcollective — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 21:12:13 GMT

This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060605/sherman

Target Ford

by SCOTT SHERMAN

[from the June 5, 2006 issue of The Nation]

On October 16, 2003, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, a New York-based wire service that serves Jewish newspapers worldwide, launched a scorching four-part series on the Ford Foundation. Written by investigative reporter Edwin Black, the series, "Funding Hate," alleged that Ford had provided financial support to several Palestinian nongovernmental organizations accused of anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic behavior at the United Nations World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa, in late summer 2001. A Ford spokesman denied the thrust of Black's allegations: "We have seen no indication that our grantees in Durban or elsewhere engaged in anti-Semitic speech or activities."

One month later, after a political onslaught from members of Congress and some prominent Jewish organizations, Ford reversed itself. In a letter to Jerrold Nadler, a Democratic Congressman from Manhattan's Upper West Side, Susan Berresford, the president of Ford, declared that her institution was "disgusted by the vicious anti-Semitic activity seen at Durban" and that "having reassessed our own information on the Durban Conference...we now recognize that we did not have a complete picture of the activities, organizations and people involved.... We deeply regret that Foundation grantees may have taken part in unacceptable behavior." Berresford reiterated those sentiments in a letter to the Wall Street Journal, which had published an editorial extolling the JTA series, lashing Ford and, sounding an old conservative refrain, lamenting the existence of "a foundation priesthood funded into perpetuity and insulated from public accountability."

To some extent, the 2003 attack on Ford--the worst crisis to hit the foundation since 1969--could be regarded as an example of the increased political scrutiny that US nonprofits have faced since 9/11. Under Presidential Executive Order 13224, enacted in late September 2001, the government obtained broad new power to freeze the assets of any US foundation or charitable organization that is deemed to have provided financial or humanitarian support to "terrorist" organizations. Moreover, the government has encouraged grant-makers and nonprofits to regularly consult a series of computerized terror watch lists maintained by various federal and international agencies--watch lists that are full of dubious aliases, generic names and "false positive" matches. The vague, sweeping language surrounding these regulations and the ways they have put new burdens on charities and foundations have provoked considerable anxiety and confusion throughout the nonprofit sector.

The offensive against Ford, however, has deeper roots. It was a brazen attempt to punish a foundation that since the 1950s has disbursed more than $13 billion to more than 13,000 educational, environmental, human rights, social justice and other organizations in the United States and abroad. Under enormous pressure, and fearful that the accusations might trigger increased government oversight of the entire US foundation sector, Ford made a series of concessions to its critics. One of them--a pledge to alter the language in its standard grant-agreement letter, a decision that has powerful civil liberties implications--has left some of the foundation's traditional allies simmering with displeasure and unease. "Historically, Ford's best quality has been its willingness to take some risks and fund some controversial things," says Pablo Eisenberg, a senior fellow at Georgetown's Public Policy Institute and a columnist for The Chronicle of Philanthropy. "But I think Berresford and Ford caved in unnecessarily to Nadler." Many people in the foundation world agree with Eisenberg, but few will say so publicly.

Two weeks before 9/11, 18,000 people from more than 160 countries descended on Durban for the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. Racial and caste discrimination, along with the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism, were at the top of the agenda, and the conference attempted to build common ground among a very wide range of groups, from the Roma to Australia's Aborigines to Argentina's and Chile's Mapuche Indians. There were some notable successes at Durban--the large Dalit contingent embarrassed the Indian government by drawing attention to the plight of India's 160 million "untouchables," and the human rights of migrants received international recognition--but the conference became mired in controversy over Israel and Palestine.

Some organizations at Durban complained bitterly about anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic rhetoric and behavior. Commentary described pamphlets featuring "hooknosed Jews grinning over the blood-soaked bodies of Palestinians" and leaflets that expressed admiration for Hitler. At a press conference held at Durban and sponsored by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, Michael Posner, executive director of the Lawyers Committee, declared: "Anti-Semitic sentiments expressed at the conference are repugnant and reprehensible." Supporters of Israel were especially infuriated by the final text of the official NGO declaration, a controversial document that blamed Israel for "acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing"; demanded the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories; and called for the imposition of a "policy of complete and total isolation of Israel as an apartheid state."
In the wake of Durban, Black noted, Jewish organizational leaders singled out one Palestinian NGO--the Palestinian Committee for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment (LAW)--for much of the anti-Israel agitation at the conference. In his series Black alleged that LAW staffers occupied leadership positions on key steering committees; conducted workshops at which Israel was pilloried; and gave South African delegates a preconference tour of Gaza and the West Bank to highlight the similarities between apartheid and the Israeli occupation. LAW, Black noted, was a Ford grantee--having received $1.1 million since 1997. (Another group at Durban, the Palestinian NGO Network, which had received more than $1.4 million from Ford, was also targeted by pro-Israel forces.) Black's stark, tendentious series had one principal objective: to tar the Ford Foundation with the brush of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. One might have expected Ford to respond energetically to accusations of this sort, but at no point did the foundation provide a detailed public rebuttal to the allegations in Black's series--allegations that still hang in the air. This past April the Detroit News proclaimed that Ford has a "reputation for backing causes tied to terrorism and anti-Semitism." More than two years later, Ford is still very reluctant to confront Black's reporting. Spokesperson Marta Tellado will only say this: "We did not, and do not today, believe that he accurately portrayed our grant-making."

The reporting by Black--a blustery muckraker who has written extensively about the Holocaust and Zionism--was not limited to the events at Durban; it was also a deeper assault on Ford's grant-making. Black obtained a sixty-page audit of LAW by the accounting firm Ernst & Young that had been commissioned by some of LAW's thirty or so European and American donors--many of which, like Ford, had developed deep concerns about LAW's fiduciary practices. According to Black, the audit showed that LAW had mismanaged several million dollars. Today LAW no longer exists, and none of its former executives could be located.
Black's series had powerful reverberations. A few days after it concluded, the American Jewish Congress called on lawmakers in Washington to examine the tax-exempt status of foundations like Ford--on the grounds that Ford, through its Palestinian grantees, may have financed "terrorists and terror-related activities." Shortly thereafter Berresford received a letter from Representative Nadler and nineteen members of Congress demanding that Ford "investigate these allegations fully and expeditiously." On November 13, 2003, Senator Rick Santorum also requested a formal investigation of Ford, and Senator Charles Grassley, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, expressed his concerns about the allegations directed at the foundation.

Ford's critics included two of the most powerful members of the American Jewish establishment: Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League and Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Also critical were New Republic editor in chief (and Jewish Telegraphic Agency board member) Martin Peretz, who insisted that Ford "wanted to squeeze Israel, and they allied themselves with despicable people to do so"; the New York Sun, which printed the JTA series and subsequently asked for Berresford's resignation in an editorial; and David Horowitz's FrontPage Magazine. A month after Black's series, the JTA reported that Ford "seems to be in disarray over its next move."

On November 17, 2003, Ford issued its response to Nadler: a detailed and deferential letter in which Berresford announced that Ford had decided to stop funding LAW; that it had "engaged the international accounting firm KPMG to create a risk matrix" to establish which Ford grantees will be audited; and that the foundation would soon turn its attention and resources to the "alarming rise of anti-Semitism around the world."

Perhaps most significant, Berresford announced that Ford's standard grant-agreement letter would be overhauled. Seven weeks later, Ford unveiled the new language in a brief memo to its 5,000 grantees: "By countersigning this grant letter, you agree that your organization will not promote or engage in violence, terrorism, bigotry or the destruction of any state, nor will it make sub-grants to any entity that engages in these activities." Moreover, the prohibition "applies to all of the organization's funds, not just those provided through a grant from Ford." [Emphasis added.] Georgetown's Pablo Eisenberg, a singular maverick in the tight-lipped foundation world, calls this a "most unusual" and "excessive" stipulation. Says Eisenberg, "Who is Ford to say what an organization can do with Soros money, for example?"

Berresford's announcement triggered indignation and dismay from some Ford staffers who felt she had capitulated to outside critics by instituting grant language that is vague and open-ended, on the one hand, yet unmistakably direct in its unstated reference to Israel, on the other. "Susan is very tough and principled," a former Ford staffer says, "so they must have really twisted her arm to get her to put in that new grant language." Other foundation executives share that dismay. Says one: "This is the kind of language that, had it been from the government, the ACLU would have to sue." (Ford is not the only private foundation whose grant language has been criticized. The Rockefeller Foundation's language, while less problematic, was also debated, as was the language of other foundations.)

In a ten-minute phone interview that Berresford granted to The Nation, she defended her decision to alter Ford's grant letter and denied it was done under duress. "We wanted to make very explicit and clear what our values were," Berresford said. "We don't want to support organizations that promote or engage in violence, terrorism, bigotry or the destruction of any state. Those are our values. I think that's what the public expects of us. I'm very proud to state those values clearly."

Nadler hailed the agreement with Ford as a "critical new chapter in the fight against anti-Semitism and the delegitimization of Israel's right to exist." But other critics in Congress remained dissatisfied with Ford's written response to Nadler: Santorum and Grassley expressed their desire to push ahead with hearings about the practices of American foundations, and the Wall Street Journal urged them to proceed with such an inquiry. Nadler's own allies were somewhat divided about what to do next: Some Jewish leaders wanted a full Congressional investigation, while Abraham Foxman of the ADL declared himself against hearings. Nadler, for his part, feared that an investigation could unfairly target liberal foundations. A JTA story from early 2004 bluntly outlined some of the potential hazards of applying excessive pressure on the Ford Foundation: "Certainly, there are things for the Jewish community to gain from good relations with a foundation as big as Ford." Foxman himself informed the JTA: "At the end of the day, I assume they will fund some project submitted to them by a mainstream Jewish organization."

"The Ford Foundation," Dwight Macdonald wrote in 1956, "is a large body of money completely surrounded by people who want some." Established in Michigan in 1936 by Edsel Ford, the foundation formally separated itself from Ford family control in 1950. (Over the past year, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, a Republican, has waged a bare-knuckled offensive to pressure Ford to increase its spending in the state where it was chartered.) In 1955 the foundation made a decision to sell 10 million shares of auto company stock, for which it received $641 million, the bulk of which it promptly distributed to 600 colleges and universities, 3,500 nonprofit hospitals and 44 medical schools. In the 1950s and early '60s Ford provided substantial funding for burgeoning area studies research at leading universities and for ambitious international projects involving population control and agricultural production in the developing world. Ford had close ties to the government in those years; according to The Cultural Cold War by Frances Stonor Saunders, Ford collaborated with the CIA.

Amid the political turbulence of the 1960s and '70s, Ford, under the leadership of McGeorge Bundy, deepened its commitment to human rights, poverty reduction and racial justice. It gave major grants to the NAACP and helped to establish the Public Broadcasting Service, the National Council of La Raza, the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Urban Institute, the Native American Rights Fund and public-interest law centers in the United States, to name just a few of its grantees from that heady era. Today, from its headquarters on East 43rd Street, which rises from a lush atrium and is decorated with works by Picasso and Chagall, Ford, the second-largest foundation in the United States, with assets of $11.6 billion, remains ambitious in its grant-making: In 2004 it gave away nearly $500 million to 2,000 grantees, ranging from the Steve Biko Foundation of South Africa ($150,000 for activities commemorating the life and work of Biko) to the Navsarjan Trust of India ($200,000 to support the human rights of Dalits in the violence-prone state of Gujarat) and the Apollo Theater Foundation of Harlem ($250,000 to help restore the historic theater).
Right-wing assaults have been a recurring motif in Ford's history. Westbrook Pegler, the midcentury syndicated columnist, dubbed Ford a "front for dangerous communists," and in the early 1950s Ford was the subject of two separate Congressional investigations into subversive and Communist-influenced activity among foundations.

In 1969 critics of the foundation sector exacted their revenge. In the tumultuous days after Robert Kennedy's assassination in 1968, Bundy had arranged fellowships totaling $131,000 for eight members of Kennedy's staff. The following year, the House Ways and Means Committee opened hearings on the activities of American foundations, and Bundy was a star witness. He vigorously defended Ford and the entire foundation sector, but his arrogance infuriated his Congressional antagonists, who went on to enact legislation forcing all private foundations to pay a 4 percent excise tax on net annual investment income and to distribute 6 percent of their assets each year. The 1969 legislation was viewed as draconian by a foundation sector that--then as now--opposed any type of government oversight. Indeed, many foundation leaders held Bundy personally responsible for what they saw as a debacle; but other observers viewed the 1969 legislation as an essential step toward public accountability.

Ford watchers insist that the trauma of 1969 remains, to this day, embedded in the DNA of top Ford executives. (Berresford began her career at Ford in 1970, when she was 27, and worked her way to the top.) "Ford lives with the legacy that Bundy's arrogance cost the field," says Emmett Carson, president of the Minneapolis Foundation and a leading figure in the philanthropic sector. Meanwhile, prominent conservatives maintained a keen interest in the foundation. "The Ford Foundation," presidential aide Patrick Buchanan wrote in a memo to Richard Nixon in 1972, "has become the Exchequer and Command Post for the entire American Left." Buchanan had fantasies of his own. Attempts to expose Ford's ties to liberal organizations might well, he suggested to Nixon, "produce a cornucopia of Ford funds for Republican and Conservative causes--to spare Ford from being taken apart by the Congress at some future tax reform hearings."
Historically, criticism of foundations has not been the exclusive province of the right. The principal critic of the sector in the 1960s, Representative Wright Patman of Texas, was a Democrat. Likewise, in 2003 Ford's primary antagonist was Jerrold Nadler, a stalwart progressive who is also a powerful supporter of Israel. In a recent interview Nadler noted that antifoundation sentiment was rising within the Senate Finance Committee in 2003, and especially among Grassley and Santorum. To some extent, that sentiment flowed from newspaper reports about lavish salaries and perks for foundation executives. Black's series thrust the foundation sector under a harsh glare once again. In Nadler's words, a "well-orchestrated campaign to destroy the sector...a Republican jihad" was gathering force, and it became his duty to discipline the Ford Foundation in order to save it. "My principal concern," Nadler says, "was with the anti-Semitism that was being tolerated by some of these nonprofits on the left. And I didn't want this to be used as a weapon with which to destroy very essential institutions like the Ford Foundation." (Nadler boasts that his maneuvering was successful: Santorum and Grassley never held the promised hearings because "we cut the ground out from under them.") Some foundation experts contend that Nadler overstates the extent to which the sector was under siege by Republicans in 2003 and that he conflates "destruction" with regulation. Says Pablo Eisenberg, "I never heard anything about any 'jihad,' or that they had a vengeance against foundations."

Nadler's office worked closely with Ford to draft the new grant language. Berresford declined to elaborate on the specific ways the new language was formulated, and the full extent to which outside parties contributed to the final text. But it was clearly a collaborative effort. Says Nadler: "It was a back-and-forth negotiation between my office and Ford and some of the Jewish groups." In late 2003 the Forward named the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League as groups that were deeply involved in the Ford negotiations. Berresford insists that the grant language was "not forced on us in any way, shape, or form."

Ford's grantees, many of whom are dependent on the foundation's largesse, were hardly in a position to contest the new grant language. But a handful of grantees did resist--beginning with the nation's top universities. On April 27, 2004, Ford received a letter signed by nine university provosts, from Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, Harvard, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, MIT, Yale and Cornell. These are some of Ford's most distinguished grantees, with whom it has a lengthy history. In 1965, for instance, Harvard established its John F. Kennedy Institute of Politics with a $2 million Ford grant.

In their letter, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, the provosts expressed their "serious concerns" about the new language, on the grounds that it attempts to "regulate universities' behavior and speech beyond the scope of the grant." "It is difficult to see," they wrote, "how this clause would not run up against the basic principle of protected speech on our campuses." For instance, if Columbia University, a major Ford grantee, were to sponsor a Palestinian film festival--as it did in 2003--all of Columbia's Ford grants could theoretically be jeopardized if a film in that series was deemed to be supportive of "violence, terrorism, bigotry or the destruction of any state." Pro-Israel critics at Columbia assailed the film festival on those very grounds.

In mid-2004 Ford responded to the provosts with a "side letter" affirming that the foundation had no desire to interfere with the speech "in classrooms, faculty publications, student remarks in chat rooms, or other speech that express the views of the individuals." The grant letter, Ford insisted, applies only "to the official speech and conduct of the university and to speech or conduct that the university explicitly endorses." The unity of the nine universities collapsed when Harvard accepted Ford's side letter in the summer of 2004. (Harvard's provost, Steven Hyman, and its president, Lawrence Summers, declined to be interviewed.) Some people close to the negotiations between Ford and the provosts are convinced that if the nine elite universities had maintained their unity, they might, in the end, have pressured Ford to change the language. (In their letter, the provosts had offered a proposed revision that Ford found unacceptable.)
If Harvard was particularly eager to settle with Ford, Stanford held out the longest before reluctantly accepting the side letter in late 2004. But the issue remains somewhat controversial at Stanford. At a meeting of its academic council on January 20, 2005, Provost John Etchemendy informed the faculty about Ford's "official speech...of the university" clause and declared, "Unfortunately they would not clarify exactly what that meant." Etchemendy warned the faculty that Stanford's administration could not protect their Ford grants. Today, Stanford administrators are quick to acknowledge that they are still concerned about the lack of clarity in the side letter and still unclear about the limits of the "official speech" clause. Does it cover the speech of professors? Does it cover Stanford University Press (which has a distinguished list in Middle East Studies)? Does it cover the Stanford alumni magazine? Says vice provost Stephanie Kalfayan: "Those are great questions. You should ask Ford." Susan Berresford says, "This is something we worked out with the universities. The side letters are clear. I don't see the value of going further into this."

In 2004 one other Ford grantee, the Drug Policy Alliance, joined the elite universities in contesting Ford's grant language. DPA is led by Ethan Nadelmann, executive director, and the tenacious Ira Glasser, DPA's president and the former head of the ACLU. On June 18, 2004, Nadelmann and Glasser dispatched a blunt letter to Berresford: "We believe that on its face, the overbreadth and vagueness of your language sweeps within its ban speech and advocacy that are critical to our work." They went on, as the provosts did, to request a minor revision in Ford's grant language: "a simple, supplementary sentence making clear that the ban...does not extend to advocacy or speech, but only to lawless, violent or discriminatory conduct." [Emphasis in original.] And they warned Berresford that an ominous precedent was being established:
The infamous blacklists of the 1950s were similarly imposed by the private sector (in response, as here, to pressure from government officials) and similarly implemented their restrictions through economic, not criminal, sanctions.... Today, everyone wonders how those blacklists got started, how they became so entrenched, why so few (except the victims) protested. This is how it begins: with restrictions on speech and advocacy that would be unconstitutional if the state imposed them, imposed instead by private sector funding, with the government lurking in the background.
In the end Ford and DPA could not agree, and in late 2004 DPA returned a $200,000 grant to the Ford Foundation. "Some of DPA's supporters have told me that we should just take the money, regardless of the way the grant letter is worded," Nadelmann wrote in a 2004 letter to his membership. "But this is a fight about fundamental principles from which we could not walk away."

In late June 2004 DPA's letters to Berresford were released to the ACLU national board, several of whose members had, six weeks earlier, scrutinized the Wall Street Journal article about Ford's conflict with the elite universities and wondered why an ACLU spokesman quoted therein neglected to criticize Ford's restrictions. Two gadflies on the ACLU board, Wendy Kaminer and Michael Meyers, immediately questioned executive director Anthony Romero's decision in early 2004 to accept a grant from Ford, which had been a generous benefactor: Between 1999 and 2004, the ACLU Foundation received $17 million from Ford. Romero, who spent ten years as a high-ranking Ford executive, was soon forced to admit to his board that not only had he advised Ford on the new language but that he had urged the foundation to "just parrot back language in existing federal law"--i.e., the Patriot Act, which the ACLU was then contesting with considerable vigor. In October 2004 the ACLU refused several Ford grants, which totaled more than $1 million.
Today Romero is contrite about his 2003 advice to Ford. "I made a mistake," he says. "I was too slow to understand the broader context. I didn't connect the dots." And he is blunt about his former employer: "Ford made a big mistake with the grant language," Romero says. "I think it has created a pall over the foundation and its grantees. It has only emboldened its critics. And it has cast a shadow over the work of one of the most important foundations at a very critical time."

Some ACLU board members wish that Romero had used whatever influence he had with Berresford, of whom he is something of a protégé, to forestall the new grant language. "Because he was consulted by Berresford privately, before the new grant restrictions were written in stone, Anthony had a unique opportunity to advise her how to prohibit grantees from engaging in activities related to terrorism without restricting or chilling their speech," says Kaminer. "We can't know if his advice would have been followed, but we do know that he squandered the opportunity to give it." Kaminer adds: "The advocacy rights of all Ford grantees have been chilled. The censorious efforts of private groups angered by Ford's funding policies--and the intimidation of Ford by elected officials enlisted by these groups--have been rewarded."

Nadler denies that he coerced Ford, and says he has no misgivings about the foundation's new grant language. He insists that Ford, as a private-sector institution with no constitutional obligations, can do as it wishes. "It's not a restriction on speech," Nadler says of the new language. "It's an agreement not to engage in terrorism. It hasn't restricted anybody's speech."

But some leading experts on philanthropy are much less sanguine than Nadler. "Nadler is certainly technically correct. The First Amendment is a limitation on government, not private, action," says Princeton's Stanley Katz, president emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies. "So strictly speaking Ford cannot be criticized for violating a constitutional right. But Ford has set itself up as a liberal philanthropic foundation, and the issue is whether it is violating its own freedom-of-expression principles. I think it has, and I would be surprised if Susan Berresford and others there were not keenly conscious of a tension between what they felt forced to do and what they truly believe in. Ford would not fund a private organization it knew to be systematically violating the freedom of expression, and it ought not to engage in such practices itself."
" 'Violence, terrorism, bigotry or the destruction of any state' is very problematic" grant language, says Professor Michael Olivas of the University of Houston Law Center, who closely monitors the nonprofit sector. Olivas wonders why Ford included vague and open-ended terminology like "bigotry" in its grant letter when it could simply have stated that it will not fund any organization proscribed by the State Department.

Why did Ford agree to alter its grant language? Berresford is reticent on the subject, as is one Ford trustee who met with Nadler. But one reason behind Ford's action may have been its desire to prevent additional government regulation of the foundation sector. In May 2003, five months before the JTA series, the sector--in which Berresford is very much a leader--was jolted by legislation proposed by Roy Blunt and Harold Ford Jr. that was designed to stimulate charitable giving. Federal law now requires foundations to pay out 5 percent of their assets annually, and the legislation would have required that the mandatory minimum payout exclude administrative costs such as rent and salaries--a provision that could have forced foundations to spend more money. The Ford Foundation (and the Council on Foundations, which represents 2,000 grant-makers) strenuously opposed the provision. Indeed, the foundation was involved in the sector's decision to hire Bill Paxon, the former Republican Congressman, currently a lobbyist for Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, to represent its interests before Congress.

Some foundation experts insist that the foundation overreacted to what it saw as a higher payout requirement. According to Pablo Eisenberg, who advocates higher foundation payout rates, "Susan Berresford, whose Eleventh Commandment is 'Thou Shalt Not Increase the Payout,'" privately argued that "this was an attack by the right wing to do away with liberal foundations like the Ford Foundation, which is total nonsense."
The Congressional effort to exclude administrative costs was eventually beaten back by the foundations, but suspicion toward the sector lingered in the minds of some in Congress. And then Black's series appeared in the JTA. People close to Berresford say that, faced with massive pressure from Nadler, Jewish organizations and newspapers like the New York Sun, she recalled the events of 1969 and the political price the entire sector could, once again, pay if Black's series reignited the campaign for a higher payout or other regulatory measures.

It's too early to determine how the events of 2003 have influenced Ford's overall grant-making, and the possible extent to which program officers and trustees are distancing themselves from grantees that undertake controversial and politically risky work. What seems clear is that Ford has turned its attention to anti-Semitism, as it promised Nadler it would. And the foundation has done it in part by funding some of its chief antagonists from 2003. In 2004 Ford gave $361,000 to Abraham Foxman's Anti-Defamation League for its World of Difference Institute, whose mission is to "combat racism, anti-Semitism and all forms of prejudice and bigotry," followed by an additional $1.1 million in 2006 for the same project. (ADL's last Ford grant was in 1967, and Foxman declined to be interviewed.) The American Jewish Committee received $400,000 in 2006, its first grant since 1998. David Harris, head of the AJC, did not return phone calls. In 2004 Ford also gave $625,000 to the Simon Wiesenthal Center--which chaired the delegation of Jewish organizations at Durban--to develop a tolerance and diversity training program for New York's criminal justice community, the first grant the Wiesenthal Center has received from Ford.

ADL still has Ford under a microscope, and has heavily criticized recent actions by the foundation, including its decision to fund a conference on academic boycotts sponsored by the American Association of University Professors in Bellagio, Italy. The conference was eventually canceled.
"Large foundations," Dwight Macdonald observed in 1956, "are timid beasts." To compare Berresford's response to the crisis of 2003 with McGeorge Bundy's response to the events of 1969, when he was dragged before Congress, is to realize that Macdonald's quip is largely but not completely accurate. In The Color of Truth, his fine biography of McGeorge and William Bundy, Kai Bird noted that in response to the political assault from conservative critics in 1969, Bundy "essentially refused to back off." Under his direction, Ford defiantly stepped up its funding of a wide range of antipoverty and social justice groups. In his last annual report as president, in 1978, Bundy urged his colleagues at Ford not to "shy away from controversial activity."

By instituting the new grant language in 2004, Berresford undoubtedly believed that she was acting in the best interests of both Ford and the foundation sector. Emmett Carson of the Minneapolis Foundation says that Ford may have seen the grant language as "a compromise they could live with." Carson adds: "In hindsight, ten or twenty years from now, we may be prepared to say it was a very shrewd decision, a very modest compromise, at a time when the field lacked the voice, lacked the courage, lacked the sophistication to have the level of debate that was necessary."

The historical evidence is beginning to accumulate, and not in a way that honors Ford. In one of their letters to Berresford, Nadelmann and Glasser wrote, "On the day the government decides to use your restriction as a precedent and model for its own, it will be too late to say you're sorry. Do not do this, Susan." That day arrived on February 7, 2005, when the Justice Department approvingly (and repeatedly) cited Ford's new grant language--along with the grant language of the Rockefeller and Charles Stewart Mott foundations--in its motion to dismiss in American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, et al. v. Office of Personnel Management, et al.

In 2004 the ACLU and a dozen other organizations sued the OPM, a government agency, to prevent it from forcing nonprofits to certify that they do "not knowingly employ individuals or contribute funds to organizations" on terrorist watch lists before receiving any of the $250 million donated annually through the Combined Federal Campaign, which allows federal employees to allocate funds to various charities and nonprofits. Berresford's response to the Justice Department's citation of Ford? "The government finds its own language to express its own standards and views," she says, "and they're free to do that in whatever way they see fit." Wendy Kaminer of the ACLU laments the fact that "the Bush Administration has invoked Ford's restrictions as a model for its own restrictions on US charities."

In recent months, however, the Rockefeller Foundation has distanced itself from Ford. Rockefeller has changed its grant language for 2006 in a way that satisfies groups like the ACLU and in a way that is consistent with what the elite universities requested of Ford in 2004. Indeed, Rockefeller's president, Judith Rodin, was the president of the University of Pennsylvania in 2004 when that institution challenged Ford. Susan Berresford insists she has no plans to alter Ford's grant language. "Ford," says Anthony Romero of the ACLU, "really stands alone at this point."

Jena articles round up (In Progress)

hupcollective — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 04:48:49 GMT

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3304/restoring_classroom_justice/

Restoring Classroom Justice
Restorative justice in schools has picked up steam in response to “zero tolerance” policies, which lead to “schoolhouse-to-jailhouse tracking”
By Lewis Wallace

When the Chicago School Board passed a Student Code of Conduct on June 27 that made “restorative justice” a central approach to school discipline, a coalition of Chicago students, parents and educators celebrated a step forward in a four-year-long organizing campaign.

“Young people were being expelled and arrested for everything from throwing a pencil in class to pushing a teacher,” says Yusufu Mosley, an organizer for the prison-abolition group Critical Resistance. Restorative justice programs focus on using community networks and dialogue to reconcile the offender to the community. “It’s about trying to find resolution rather than being punitive,” says Mosley.

The growing movement for restorative justice in schools is partially a response to “zero tolerance” policies that require students to be suspended or expelled for certain violations. Such policies grew popular after the 1999 Columbine massacre, despite multiple studies that show violence in schools decreased between 1992 and 2004. Zero tolerance, say critics, comes down hardest on black and Latino youth.

“Students in some schools complain that if there’s a fight, the first thing teachers do is call the police,” says Martine Caverl, an organizer at Blocks Together, a Chicago community organization that worked on the campaign. Caverl says it is important to find conflict resolution options that circumvent the criminal justice system. “It’s about a shift from seeing students as criminals to seeing them as people who have to be engaged.”

Parent activists in Chicago call the draconian discipline trend “schoolhouse-to-jailhouse tracking.” A study released in 2005 by the Advancement Project found that in 2003, more than 8,000 students were arrested in Chicago public schools, including four 7-year-olds. Black students constituted 50 percent of the student body, but more than 77 percent of arrests, and the city spent $53 million on armed guards and metal detectors, which are now installed in every school.

A group called Parents Organized to Win, Educate and Renew—Policy Action Council (POWER-PAC) formed in 2003 and began lobbying the city’s board of education to eliminate zero tolerance, reinstitute recess (which most Chicago public schools have cut in recent years), and reduce suspensions and arrests.

Two years later, POWER-PAC created the Austin Peace Center at Brunson Elementary School on the city’s west side. The center allows students faced with suspensions to speak with an adult “peacemaker” or attend an after-school program twice a week where they receive personal attention from parent volunteers and participate in “talking circles” with other youth.

Lynn Morton, mother of a 12-year-old student and co-chair of POWER-PAC, says the Austin Peace Center creates disciplinary alternatives that involve parents and teachers. “We have students who started out in the office in trouble, five days a week,” Morton says. “They went from five days a week to no days a week. When students start to get to know each other, they are less likely to hurt each other.”

POWER-PAC and their allies succeeded in eliminating zero tolerance from Chicago Public Schools in 2006, and this year’s new Student Code of Conduct lists community service, mediation and peer juries as alternatives to suspension and arrest. However, the district has not yet allocated funding for these initiatives, so the burden will remain on nonprofit organizations and parent volunteers.

Restorative justice has a proven track record. A 2001 study by the Minnesota Department of Children, Families and Learning found that restorative justice programs in Minnesota successfully decreased the number of out-of-school suspensions, in some schools by 50 percent. Morton visited Minneapolis in 2005 with a group of parents to observe its program. “I was kind of shocked,” she says. “I walked into this building, I didn’t see any metal detectors and I didn’t see a security guard. The kids, when they had a difference, they asked for a talking circle.”

Nationally, Madison, Wis., Los Angeles and Boston have restorative justice programs in elementary and high schools. And community organizations are pushing for programs in community centers, penal systems and even public housing.

“Restorative justice gives people the means to control their own destinies,” says Mosley. “We are all relatives, and we can respond to each other as relatives, not enemies.”

The Justice that Jena Demands
by Xochitl Bervera
Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children (FFLIC)

I want to tell you about Emmanuelle Narcisse. He was a tall, slim, handsome young man who was killed by a guard at the Bridge City Correctional Center for Youth – a Louisiana juvenile prison – in 2003. Apparently, he was "fussing" in line, talking back to a guard. The guard punched him in the face, one blow, and Emmanuelle went down backwards, slamming his head on the concrete. He took his last breath there behind the barbed wire of that state run facility. The guard was suspended with pay during the investigation. No indictment was ever filed against him.
There is also Tobias Kingsley,[1] sentenced when he was 15 to two years in juvenile prison for sneaking into a hotel swimming pool (his first offense). Tobias endured physical and sexual abuse inside the prison. He said that guards traded sex with kids for drugs and cigarettes, and sometimes set kids up to fight one another, making cash bets on the winner. His mama said he was never the same after he came home. She said the nightmares, the violence, the paranoia persisted years after the private lawyers helped him come home early. His battles with addiction and depression are not yet over.

And there is Shareef Cousin, who was tried as an adult and sent to death row in the state of Louisiana for a murder that he didn't commit. Shareef spent from age 16 to age 26 behind bars, the majority of those years isolated in Angola's Death Row, because an over zealous prosecutor didn't care that the evidence didn't really add up. After all, it was only a young Black man's life on the line.

These are young Black men who have encountered Louisiana's criminal justice system who I know because their mothers have become proud members of Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children (FFLIC), the organization I have worked for over the last 7 years. These stories are about young men who have experienced incredible injustice, not unlike the Jena 6, only the national spotlight has never shined on them.

There are hundreds more. Thousands. Every day in the state of Louisiana (and in most states in this nation), injustices of epic proportions are taking place in our criminal and juvenile justice systems. We, those of us who live here, fight here, and organize here, know hundreds of families and young people – often our own - who've endured almost inconceivable levels of violence, abuse, neglect. And despite efforts to get someone, anyone to care and to act, these young people most often end up statistics in somebody's dismal report, or an anecdote in an article just like this. Because people don't care. Because these young people are not just poor, they are not just Black, they are criminals.

Hallelujah, someone noticed!

So, Hallelujah! Almost overnight it seems, the nation is looking deep into the heart of Louisiana's criminal justice system and seeing what we've been shouting about all these years! The racism, the blatant and unaccountable abuse of power masquerading as "justice." The slavery-like, Jim Crow-like, Bush-era prejudice and exploitation that has been the bedrock of white supremacy here and all over the Deep South for decades. Young people of color and mothers across the country are rising up saying "We wont take it anymore! We demand justice!" The myth that the goal of the criminal justice system is protecting public safety is slowly unraveling as youth in Philadelphia, DC, Oakland and mothers in Chicago, Jackson, and Birmingham make that most important of realizations, "that could have been me," "that could have been my child."

Many are asking, "why now?" Why, of all the horrific incidents we've seen and exposed, is this the one that set off this fire of hope? Our young people have been shot and killed by police in every city in this nation, left to die of dehydration in local jails, railroaded by white juries and judges into serving 20, 30, 40 years in the prison plantations we call Angola, Parchment, and Sing Sing...

Let me tell you what my heart tells me. What really matters is not why, but what we plan to do with this moment now that it has arrived. What will the leaders, the youth, the elders of our movement do now?

Demanding Justice for Us All

Of course we must relentlessly and persistently demand justice for the Jena 6. But we must demand justice, not only in the form of dropping the charges against these specific youth, but in the systematic and thorough rooting out of racism from all wings of the criminal justice systems across the United States of America.

Justice in Jena requires justice for all the others as well – for all those who have suffered (and some who have died) silently behind bars and for their families who have fought without benefit of TV cameras and news reporters. It requires understanding that we will not, we can not achieve racial justice in this country if we do not fight against the criminal justice system, not just in individual instances, but in its institutionalized, systemic form. If we do not understand this – and understand it deeply – then this newly discovered energy, this tidal wave of outrage, this beautiful, intergenerational protesting isn't going to mean a damn thing past next week's news.

Justice in Jena requires all of us across the country to rise up against the racism and exploitation of the criminal justice system in all the places where we've come to see it and grown to accept it whether that's allowing for an abysmal public defender office in your county or turning away when you see a police officer trample the rights, and perhaps the body, of a fellow citizen. We must cast off once and for all, the fundamental lie that the system has anything to do with criminals or justice or public safety. We must not back down, as so many movements have, when we are "crime-baited," accused of defending rapists and murderers, accused of defending crime itself. We must not make excuses for some parts of the system while protesting others. Similar to opposing the war, the whole war, and not simply certain battles or certain strategies, we must oppose the system in its entirety. We must dismiss, once and for all, the urge to discuss what's wrong with the system – what's broken and needs to be fixed.

There is nothing broken in this system. In fact, usually (when it is not disrupted by 50,000 protestors), it is quite efficient at doing precisely what it was created to do. In the Deep South, the criminal justice system as we know it was built after the abolition of slavery, as part of the terror machine which destroyed the briefly federally protected Reconstruction era. Without nuance or subtlety, the system was created by wealthy, land owning whites to keep Blacks "in line," on the plantation, and working for next to nothing. Thanks to the Thirteenth Amendment which abolished slavery "except as a punishment for crime," laws and codes were invented that criminalized the very existence of Black people, police were hired to "enforce" those laws, and courts were mandated to send these newly created "criminals" to jail, or better yet, to be leased out to the very plantation owners they had been "freed" from just months before. The "justice" that was once meted out by slave owners who were "masters" of their property, was now taken care of by the law. The word "slave" was replaced by the word "criminal."

"Its not about race, it's about crime"

And yet, even with this history known, the stigma of criminality has remained so strong that our own movements have turned their backs on this issue over the years. Too many of our movements today want to dismiss, minimize, or overlook the necessity for a racial justice movement to prioritize organizing around criminal justice. Too often, our members meet others – even those who should be allies – who hold the entrenched belief that if a child is in prison, he must be "bad," he must have done something wrong. Even in progressive circles, organizations prefer to focus on the school children who need an education, the families who want affordable housing, the victims of street violence and drive-by shootings. These people are portrayed as "innocent" and deserving while currently and formerly incarcerated people are "guilty" - of something.

Of course, it's a false dichotomy. Everyone knows that the same communities, the same people, who are most impacted by violence, the lack of health care, education, and housing are those most brutally impacted by policing and prisons. But the idea of the dichotomy has been essential to maintaining the stigma which justifies the system. And it's been a handy and effective tool to explain away a great deal of racial injustice in this country.

In Jena, when asked about the incident which led to the arrests of the Jena 6, a white librarian confidently explained to the NPR reporter, "It's not about race. It's about crime." Crime -- the ultimate proxy for race, the ultimate justification for racism.

What the future holds

I believe that this moment in history can be a pivotal one if we make it so. Up to 50,000 people marched in the streets of Jena yesterday – the majority of them Black, many were from the South. All were outraged by the blatant racism evidenced by the criminal justice system. This could be the beginning of the end for a system that should have been dismantled years ago.

But what we fight for and how we fight will make all the difference. The most obvious principle is that we cannot fight for the system to expand – in any way. Asking for the white kids who hung the nooses to be charged, calling for Hate Crime Legislation -- these "solutions" just strengthen the system and give the same players – the DA, the judge, the jury – more powers and more validation. If we understand that the system, at its core, is not designed to promote justice, then why would we ask for anything that expands its reach or powers? At the very least, we must only call for things which shrink the system – closing prisons, freeing prisoners, cutting correction budgets, eliminating the death penalty and Life Without Parole, prohibiting juvenile transfers, and implementing sentencing reform.

We can also call for accountability from our elected officials. DAs and judges who perpetuate injustice, state representatives who are in bed with the corrections department and private prison companies – these people should not be allowed to hold office. They should be ousted whether by recall, regular elections, or public pressure to step down.

But we can – and should - also call for the redirection of funds into a real public safety system. We must make it clear that the issue of public safety is fundamentally distinct from the issue of the criminal justice system. The only thing they have in common is rhetoric. Developing a public safety system which is prevention orientated, based on principles of restorative or transformative justice, prioritizes making the victim and community whole, and creatively resolving conflict is a powerful and noble goal and our communities should know more about these models and fight for them. A public safety system includes community based programs, quality education and the elimination of racism.

The families of the Jena 6 are ahead of the crowd in the list of demands they have made public: 1. Drop (or fairly reduce) All Charges; 2. Reinstate School Credits; 3. No Juvenile Records; 4. Investigate "Noose" Incident of September 1, 2006; 5. Remove Reed Walters from the District Attorney's Office; 6.Conduct Undoing Racism Workshops for Staff, Faculty, Administrators, Students, Parents and Community Members.

These are good demands for Jena. What will you demand in your hometown or city?

FFLIC is a membership based organization consisting primarily of mothers and grandmothers. These mothers and grandmothers have seen all sides of the farce known as the criminal justice system. They have been victims of sexual and physical violence who have either kept quiet or endured the humiliation and neglect of the DA's office and the so-called victim's advocates. They have been forced to call the police on their children when mental illness or addiction has made them violent and no other services exist. They have visited their children in prison and seen boot marks on their faces. They have walked home alone through dark streets in poor neighborhoods where there are no programs, no services, no activities to keep young men busy and hopeful. They have seen their children beat by police officers, by prison guards, sometimes even by judges and district attorneys.

Standing on both sides of the system, these mothers will tell you that justice exists nowhere in the vicinity. It may sound radical, but its time we start listening to those who have been through it all and tear down the disgrace that is the U.S. criminal justice system.

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

Note:

[1] Name has been changed for purposes of confidentiality

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

Xochitl Bervera is co-director of Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children (www.fflic.org). She can be reached at xochitl@fflic.org.

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

Resources:

New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE) and Network of Teacher Activist Groups (TAG) have developed: Revealing Racist Roots: The 3 R's for Teaching About the Jena 6, a curriculum guide for teachers to address what's happening in Jena. Download the resource guide in PDF Version or Word Version for free at: www.nycore.org OR www.t4sj.org.

Donate to support the legal defense fund:
Jena 6 Defense Committee
PO BOX 2798
Jena, LA 71342

Sign the petitions at: http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/

For more information or to offer concrete support, email:
jena6defense(at)gmail.com

The Jena Six and the School To Prison Pipeline: http://naacpldf.org/content.aspx?article=1208

If you are in nyc and want to get involved Jena Six Support, email: da_bla2@yahoo.com.
In New Orleans, email: neworleans@leftturn.org.

Support Organizations:
http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/
http://www.colorofchange.org
http://www.millionsmoremovement.com
http://www.laaclu.org/
http://www.fflic.org

Please support independent media! Subscribe to Left Turn Magazine. http://www.leftturn.org .

report from Jena

hupcollective — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 21:18:08 GMT

Jena Ignites a Movement
By Jordan Flaherty
September 21, 2007

Six courageous families in the small Louisiana town of Jena sent out a call for justice that has now been amplified around the world. Yesterday's mass protests in Jena were unlike anything I have seen in my life, a beautiful and enormous outpouring of energy and outrage that may have the potential to ignite a movement.

The basic facts of the case are by now widely known. In this 85% white town, where the high school yard was segregated by race, a Black student asked to sit under a tree that had been reserved for white students only. The next day, three nooses hung from the tree. The white students who hung the nooses received only a mnor punishment, and more importantly, no one in the white power structure of LaSalle Parish, where Jena is located, seemed to take the nooses seriously as racial incident. There were no lectures to the students on the meaning of the nooses, or the legacy of racism, slavery and Jim Crow in the rural south. Instead, the Parish's district attorney told protesting Black students that he could take away their lives, "with a stroke of my pen." He then proceeded to attempt to do just that, charging six students with attempted murder after a schoolyard fight later that year.

In the nine months since their children were charged with attempted murder, the family members of the Jena Six organized meetings, hosted rallies, sent out press releases and letters and made phone calls – whatever they could think of. They were determined to not let this stand. For months, they stood nearly alone, accompanied by solidarity visits from activists from nearby towns and cities in Louisiana and Texas. Many of their friends and neighbors were afraid to speak out, and some reported having their jobs threatened. One white couple who spoke out said they felt pressured to leave town. But, in the face of what seemed like overwhelming obstacles, and with no organizing experience or friends in high places, the people of Jena continued to struggle. After months of silence from the media and from mainstream civil rights organizations, the first media stories began appearing, which were widely forwarded by mail, and amplified by homemade videos. After Mychal Bell's conviction at the end of June, and stories on Democracy Now and in the Final Call newspaper, support started growing exponentially, with hundreds of letters bringing tens of thousands of dollars in donations. By September, it became a movement that even the corporate media could not ignore.

At 5:00am, the buses were already arriving. A full bus from Chicago emptied out, some people brushing their teeth as they stepped into the slightly cold pre-dawn air. They seemed exhausted, but also charged and energized. Next came buses from Baton Rouge, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. By 7:00am, reports were coming in that hundreds of buses were lined up outside of town, some having been briefly prevented by State police from entering. Meanwhile, hundreds of people, from cars and buses and motorcycles, were pouring into Jena, while many thousands more were gathering in the streets outside the Jena courthouse. As simultaneous rallies began in the two locations, thousands of more people streamed into the city. By 9:00am, there were, by some estimates, up to 50,000 people in this town of 2,500. Almost every business in town was shut down, many roads were closed by police checkpoints, and a sea of protest filled the city for miles.

This demonstration was not initiated by any one national organization, and there was little coordination between some of the major organizations involved. The initial call came from the families themselves, and most people had heard about the demonstration through local Black radio stations, especially on syndicated shows like the Michael Baisden and Steve Harvey shows, as well as through blogs and youtube (one activist-made youtube video, recommended by Baisden, has already been seen well over a million times) as well as on social networking sites like myspace. As Howard Witt has pointed out in the Chicago Tribune, "Jackson, Sharpton and other big-name civil rights figures, far from leading this movement, have had to scramble to catch up. So, too, has the national media, which has only recently noticed a story that has been agitating many black Americans for months."

This decentralization was beautiful, although sometimes chaotic. As thousands gathered at the rally at the ball field, which was sponsored by the NAACP, thousands more demonstrators marched from the courthouse to the Jena High School, and tens of thousands continued to arrive and fill the streets around downtown Jena. Because this movement was without central leadership, there were many agendas, and also some confusion, as people were unsure when the march began, or if there was a march, and also unsure about parallel events, such as an afternoon hiphop concert at the ball field, which was mostly attended by people from the local community. People seemed unconcerned about the lack of clarity, however, and marched on their own schedule, which led to a more democratic feel to the day, unlike the more controlled, and sometimes disempowering, marches that some mainstream groups have organized in the past.

The t-shirts on display reflected the lack of central control – every community had made their own t-shirt, literally hundreds of variations on the theme of Free The Jena Six, many personalized to reflect their school or community. Hours of speakers delivered messages of solidarity and calls to action, from Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to performers such as Mos Def and Sunni Patterson, while the enormous crowds marched and chanted, and also simply basked in a truly historic outpouring of activism. Participants varied from children and teens at their first demonstration to civil rights movement veterans. Many people who had never before been to a demonstration ended up organizing a delegation or booking a bus for this journey.

While the vast majority of the white community of Jena chose to stay either indoors or out of town, hundreds of Black Jena residents proudly displayed their "Free The Jena Six" shirts, and continued to gather in the ball field hours after most out of town visitors had left. White activists from across the US also largely stayed away from this historic event – perhaps 1 to 3 percent of the crowd was white, in what amounts to a disturbing silence from the white left and liberals. This silence indicates that the US Left is divided by race in many of the same ways this country is.

Yesterday's march, however, was not about division. It was a generational moment – the kind of watershed event that could signal a turning point in our movements. But what does the gigantic crowd in Jena mean? For some supporters, it felt like a fulfillment of those months that the families stood alone – a moment where the world stood with them, and the power structure backed down. In the last week Mychal Bell's convictions have been overturned, and most of the other students saw their charges lessened. Yesterday was also a moment for grassroots independent media, who built this story, and kept it alive until the 24 hour news channels could no longer ignore it. It was a moment for historically black colleges and universities to shine - Student activists organized bus convoys – five or more buses arrived from many southern schools - which were quickly filled by a broad range of students.

Yesterday was a moment for the unaffiliated left, for people everywhere concerned about a criminal justice system that has locked up two million and keeps growing. It was a moment for those concerned about school systems in the US, and especially the policing of our schools, what activists have called the School to Prison Pipeline. It was a moment for those that feel that the US has still not dealt with our history of slavery and Jim Crow, and our present realities of white supremacy. Perhaps that is where the power in yesterday's demonstration lies; if this undirected and uncontrolled outrage can be directed towards real societal change, if outrages like Jena can finally bring about the conversation on race in this country that we were promised after Katrina, if this united movement to support these six kids can show that we can unite for justice and win, then Jena will truly have been a victory.

As writer Andre Banks asked yesterday, "What would happen if every person who wore a t-shirt today or handed out a flyer or wrote a blog post woke up tomorrow and looked for the Mychal Bell in their own backyard? He, or she, won't be hard to find. What if our outrage, today directed at the small Louisiana town of Jena, extended to parallel injustices in Detroit or Cincinnati or Sacramento or Miami? What if we viewed this mobilization not as the end of a successful, innovative campaign, but as the moment that catalyzes us into broader and deeper action in every place where we are?" If this happens, we can say that it all began with six families in Jena, Louisiana, who refused to stay silent.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jordan Flaherty is an editor of Left Turn Magazine , a journal of grassroots resistance. His May 9, 2007 article from Jena was one of the first to bring the case to a national audience. His previous articles from Jena are online at http://www.leftturn.org. To contact Jordan, email: neworleans@leftturn.org. On myspace: http://www.myspace.com/secondlines.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Resources:

New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE) and Network of Teacher Activist Groups (TAG) have developed: Revealing Racist Roots: The 3 R's for Teaching About the Jena 6, a curriculum guide for teachers to address what's happening in Jena. Download the resource guide in PDF Version or Word Version for free at: www.nycore.org OR www.t4sj.org.

Donate to support the legal defense fund:
Jena 6 Defense Committee
PO BOX 2798
Jena, LA 71342

Sign the petitions at: http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/

For more information or to offer concrete support, email:
jena6defense(at)gmail.com

Coverage from The Final Call newspaper: http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_3937.shtml

Andre Banks' Blog: http://writewhatilike.typepad.com/

The Jena Six and the School To Prison Pipeline: http://naacpldf.org/content.aspx?article=1208

If you are in nyc and want to get involved Jena Six Support, email: da_bla2@yahoo.com.
In New Orleans, email: neworleans@leftturn.org.

Support Organizations:
http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/
http://www.colorofchange.org
http://www.millionsmoremovement.com
http://www.laaclu.org/

Please support independent media! Subscribe to Left Turn Magazine. http://www.leftturn.org.

Jena 6 vigil

hupcollective — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:12:50 GMT

Last Friday's initial victory for the Jena 6 made it clear that the growing, national awareness about what's happening in Jena is making a difference. But the fight is just beginning. You can help make sure the word continues to spread by attending or hosting a vigil or rally in your community on September 19th or 20th.
Click below to find or create one, near you:

http://colorofchange.org/jena/event_find.html?id=1749-62943

The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana surprised everyone on Friday when it ruled that Mychal Bell shouldn't have been tried as an adult and nullified his conviction. It's a huge win, but the fight is not over. District Attorney Walters is appealing to the state Supreme Court, and if that fails, he'll almost certainly try Mychal and the others as juveniles.

Most people believe that the court's decision to move so quickly was a direct result of hundreds of thousands of voices speaking out and bringing pressure at all levels of the state. That's why it's critical that we keep building awareness and focusing national attention on the injustice unfolding in Jena.

Rallies and vigils are a great way to introduce others to this issue locally, in addition to being educational and personally fulfilling. Even a dozen people gathering on an issue will usually get the attention of local press, especially when it connects to a national story as it does in this case. If a rally or vigil doesn't yet exist in your community, create one. It's easy. We'll give you the materials you need and suggestions on how to make it a success.

National day of action

The rallies, vigils and other activities of the national day of action are planned to coincide with the rally in Jena. We're also giving people a way to download flyers to post in their communities and make phone calls into state officials on the 20th. Learn more and sign up for other activities, here:

http://colorofchange.org/jena/action.html?id=1749-62943

Thank you again for standing up and using your voice to defend these young men. We hope that you'll find a way to step things up further this week in your community, in Jena, or wherever you'll be.

Thank You and Peace,

-- James, Van, Gabriel, Clarissa, Mervyn, and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
September 18th, 2007

Lynne Stewart on the SF 8

hupcollective — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 05:01:36 GMT

Support of the San Francisco 8

An open call to all my friends and comrades and political cohorts,

...the Movement

After a lazy summer, I was called back to action
by the fact of the tremendous victory that was
won by the lawyers for the San Francisco 8, in
state court in San Francisco, when the Judge
against the strong opposition of the government
(California Attorney General Jerry Brown (!)) set
bail. In my 45 year experience as an activist
and as an attorney, they just don???t set bail in
a case that involves the murder of a cop??? -not
in the police state . They especially don???t
set bail when the defendants are activist black men.

To capsulize the case ??? the state has accused 8
men, all with Black Panther, or other activist
ties in the past, almost 40 years after the
event. For all of them except Herman and Jalil,
they have lived public lives for nearly all of
that time. The crucial point, I believe, is
that the state???s proof consists of confessions
made under torture???which were disallowed as
coerced and unreliable in legal proceedings in
the 1970s. Now, with repression ever looming,
they are resurrecting this case to feed the
salacious police state, the racism that is
flourishing unabated AND, most importantly, to
legitimize torture on the home front.

I am assuming your support of the San Francisco 8
and I am asking you to go one step further. We
all know how to demonstrate and leaflet and hold
events. This is a call from me to all of you,
who are able, to act above and beyond by
committing your Property and to stand as surety
for this bail or to help with the expenses to
secure property commitments from others.

It is a tremendous advantage to be free on bail
during trial. It enables one to live in a
positive, healthy manner and to ORGANIZE. It
communicates to the jury and the public that they
have nothing to fear and should do absolute justice.

I have spoken with members of the Defense
Committee and I can assure you that there is
virtually no risk involved. (Indeed, even the
Judge so stated when he set the amounts). All of
the 6 men have deep family and community
roots. Your property will be pledged without any
cost to you and minimal hassle. While smaller
properties can be used and put together as a
package, the Committee???s best hope is
for California progressives who invested wisely
(!) back in the day to come forward. I can tell
you that my husband, Ralph Poynter, has offered
the equity ($100,000) in the country house and
property he owns in upstate NY. As for me, as
Judge Koeltl said at sentencing, I am
???destitute????but only financially. I still
have the energy and the will to try to organize,
and yes, guilt trip everyone into taking a deep
breath and doing something concrete, to demonstrate commitment.

In 1983, in one of my earliest political trials
the wife of my client was held as a grand jury
resister. She was 8 ++ months pregnant and to
enable her to deliver the baby in relative
freedom and spend the months necessary to nurture
her child???the Judge set a bail. Ralph put up
that bail ??? to the frantic concern of his
silent partners. My client was ultimately
acquitted and this summer at a Boston event
celebrating the Rosenberg fund, we met the
???baby??? who was born 24 years ago and is now a
vibrant and lovely young woman.

Back when our hemlines were much shorter and our
hair much longer, Oscar Brown,jr sang:

???Brother, where are you????

Times haven???t really changed. We still need to stand up for the
political brothers and sisters who are caught up
in the legal system. Give them a fighting chance
by allowing them to deal with the case from the
outside. We need to answer the ???brothers??? call???.

I will. Will you ?

Lynne F. Stewart

Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
350 Broadway, Suite 700, New York, New York 10013
tel: (212) 625-9696 fax: (212) 625-3939
<http://www.lynnestewart.org/>www.lynnestewart.org

Advisory Committee

Amiri and Amina Baraka
Terry Bisson
Paul Chevigny, Esq.
Noam Chomsky
Kathleen Cleaver
Elizabeth M. Fink, Esq.
Arthur Kinoy, Esq. (deceased)
Clark Kissinger
Barbara Lubin, M.E.C.A.
Father Lawrence Lucas
Jeff Mackler
Robert Meeropol, Esq.
Michael Ratner, Esq.
Hon. Bruce Mcmn Wright (deceased)
Howard Zinn

Iraq Moratorium

hupcollective — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 02:47:45 GMT

Friday Septe4mber 21: the Iraq Moratorium kick off!

from the SF Bay Area Iraq Moratorium website

The Iraq Moratorium is a community based nationwide campaign to organize public displays of opposition to the war in Iraq on the third Friday of each month, starting on September 21.

Our goals are simple: ending the US occupation of Iraq, bringing the troops home now, and funding human needs here at home. The SF Bay Area Iraq Moratorium exists to encourage diverse individuals, communities and organizations to demonstrate their opposition to the war each month in as many different ways as they find useful and possible.

Read the rest of the call:

IRAQ MORATORIUM CAMPAIGN
Third Friday of the Month: September 21, October 19, November 16

Now, 70% of Americans are against the war in Iraq. While the political process is moving
very slowly, we must find new ways to end American military involvement in Iraq.

It is time to take our country back to the traditional roots of the democratic process, and
demand our leaders listen to the people and end this tragic war. Our country’s treasure
in human lives, resources and reputation is at a critical point. Americans of all political
persuasions are encouraged to join a campaign with one goal: To end US military
involvement in the war in Iraq and bring our troops home. Points of unity are:

1. The Call: “Out of Iraq Now – Stop Funding the War - Fund Human Needs”
2. Hallmark: Wear and distribute black ribbons and dress in black.
3. Outreach: Contact representatives in Congress and repeat the Call.

The idea is simple: On September 21 and on the subsequent third Friday of each month,
Americans in communities across the country will break from their daily routine to take
concrete steps to participate in activities where they live, work, and study.

The hallmark will be wearing ribbons and/or dressing in black, in mourning for all those
who have died in this illegal and immoral occupation. Participants can choose from a
variety of activities regarding what steps to take alone or with others on September 21
and continuing thereafter.

Friday, September 21 is United Nations International Peace Day.

The Iraq Moratorium is not an organization. It is a project to strengthen the work of
peace and democracy. We hope the clear and simple message, the local focus, and the
variety of activities the Moratorium embraces will bring participation by those who have
not yet taken action against the war. We encourage organizations and individuals to join
the Iraq Moratorium as an endorser.

San Francisco Bay Area Iraq Moratorium
*Website: www.iraqmoratorium-sfbay.org
*Email: sf_bayiraqmoratorium@yahoo.com *Phone: 415-861-1438

Representatives affiliated with the following organizations organizing the SF Bay Area Iraq Moratorium
(partial list): Declaration of Peace – SF & Oakland, Veterans for Peace, Gold Star Families Speak
Out, San Francisco Friends Meeting, Unitarian Universalists for Peace, Network of Spiritual
Progressives, Ecumenical Peace Inst./CALC, Temple United Methodist Church, Peace Action West,
U.S. Labor Against the War, Crabgrass, Grandmothers Against the War, Code Pink, Raise Hell for
Molly Ivins, Senior Action Network, Oakland ACORN, Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, Oakland
Education Assn, United Educators of SF and Church Women United-NoCal/Nevada.

For a list of the many, many events in observation of the moratorium kick off, please check the calendar In San Francisco, note the noon gathering a Civic Center, and the 5 -6 pm vigil at Dianne Feinstein's office.

articles about the Moratorium:

What's a Moratorium?
By Mark Rudd & Doug Viehmeyer

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/14/3838/

Iraq Moratorium:The THIRD FRIDAY of every month beginning Friday
September 21st
By Bill Fletcher, Jr.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/243/243_iraq_moratorium_fletcher_ed_bd.ht
ml

"A Moratorium Wired to Stop the War," by JEREMY BRECHER & BRENDAN SMITH:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070702/brechersmith

Hearts on Fire: The Strugggle for Justice in New Orleans

hupcollective — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 18:33:21 GMT

Hearts On Fire:
The Struggle for Justice in New Orleans
Reflections on anti-racist organizing, solidarity and collective liberation

by Ingrid Chapman

“The people of New Orleans will not go quietly into the night,
becoming the homeless of countless other cities while our own homes
are razed to make way for mansions, condos, and casinos. We will join
together to defend our claim and we will rebuild our home in the image
of our own dreams!"
(People’s Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Coalition)

Introduction

I hope that this article speaks to people who have gone to the Gulf Coast
to work in solidarity and those organizing in solidarity around the
country. I hope that it clarifies for my allies and friends from and
living in New Orleans why I was there and why this struggle and all of you
have so deeply inspired me.

This reflection was written over the past year upon my return from New
Orleans in the Fall of 2006. This article briefly contextualizes New
Orleans before and after Katrina. It gives my reasons for going to New
Orleans, the organizations I worked with and some of their strategies for
organizing the year following Katrina. It addresses some of the struggles
residents and social justice organizations were and are up against. In
particular I focus on how racism hinders the work of social justice
organizers, activists and volunteers in the relief and reconstruction
effort and how that racism creates barriers for movement building. I look
more deeply at the racism internal to one of the organizations I worked
with and our strategies and attempts at challenging it. I then get into
more detail about the particular work I was involved with over the course
of two 3-month periods in New Orleans in the spring and summer of 2006.
In particular, I highlight anti-racist organizing with other white people
and the Black led struggle for justice in the Lower Ninth Ward. I then
share some of the key lessons I drew from this experience and why I am
deeply committed to the struggle against racism and for collective
liberation.

To Read More:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=30&ItemID=13721

NOLA: 2 years on article compilation

hupcollective — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 05:26:22 GMT

Like most of you, two years ago I spent several days watching in horror and grief as the City of New Orleans was first hit by a fierce hurricane, then flooded, then abandoned by a racist, corrupt government.

Two years on, thousands of residents are still displaced, many neighborhoods are still without services like water and electricity, opening schools is a huge struggle, and the eye of the nation has turned elsewhere. A blogger friend recently pointed out the discrepancy between the amount of mainstream media coverage of the 10th anniversary of the death of Diana Princess of Wales in comparison with the amount of mainstream media coverage of the two year anniversary of Katrina. It’s sickening.

We have a responsibility to remember, to refuse to forget what happened in New Orleans and what is ongoing in New Orleans; to keep our eyes open, to demand the right of return for displaced residents and the rebuilding of New Orleans. In September we’ll be posting a list of grassroots organizations working for justice for New Orleans and the gulf coast, which a comrade is currently compiling; for now, please check out this compilation of articles written about New Orleans and the aftermath of Katrina on this second anniversary .

In solidarity,

Rahula Janowski
For the Heads Up Collective

And Still They Rise: Confronting Katrina by Dave Zirin

New Orleans Hit By Another "Hurricane of Racism, Greed and Corruption" - Community Activist Malik Rahim on Democracy Now!

Two years ago, Hurricane Katrina made its devastating landfall on the Gulf Coast.

Today, much of the region’s infrastructure remains in ruin. In New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina caused damage to 300,000 housing units, of which 71% were low-income housing. Most of the city’s public housing received no or moderate damage, but approximately 1,300 out of 5,146 units have been reopened (the rest remain boarded up awaiting demolition). There is a severe shortage of affordable housing in the post-Katrina New Orleans housing market, which has meant the continued displacement of predominantly low-income African Africans two years after the storm.

Advancement Project pledges to persist in the fight for people’s right to return home. We recently partnered with Brave New Foundation to distribute a short video, When the Saints Go Marching In, to raise awareness of the ongoing housing crisis in New Orleans. During the making of this video, the filmmakers heard the story of the Aguilar family who lost their home to storm and only received $4,000 in payments from their insurance company. They met Mr. Washington, an 87- year-old man and former carpenter, who owned three homes prior to the storm. He is still living in a FEMA trailer today. And they met Julie, who could have returned to her job and normal life, if the government had opened up the public housing unit that she had lived in prior to the storm.

You can watch their stories at: http://whenthesaints.org

You can also view Advancement Project’s documentary about the fight for public housing in New Orleans, This Is My Home, at: www.advancementproject.org.

There is something you can do to help. Please sign the petition urging the Senate to pass the Gulf Coast Recovery Bill of 2007 (S. 1668). The bill is expected to come to a vote after Labor Day. Its passage will be an important step toward rebuilding the infrastructure in the Gulf Coast region.

Please sign the petition at: http://whenthesaints.org

A Farewell Letter on the Second Anniversary of Katrina A Message from an Organizer to the Left and Progressive Forces inside the USA by Curtis Muhammad

SPECIAL REPORT: Billions in Katrina aid mis-spent; blueprint for Gulf recovery outlined

DURHAM, N.C. -- Two years after the onslaught of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, much of the Gulf Coast is still in crisis -- and billions of federal recovery money remains bottled up or has been squandered due to red tape, failures of oversight and misguided priorities.

That's the conclusion of Blueprint for Gulf Renewal, a new report from the Institute for Southern Studies.

A full version of the report is available at: http://www.southernstudies.org/gulfblueprint.pdf

The study, published in collaboration with Oxfam America and the Jewish Funds for Justice, looks at 80 statistical indicators and draws on interviews with more than 40 Gulf Coast leaders to identify roadblocks to recovery, and ways federal leaders can tackle critical needs in the region like housing, jobs and coastal protection.

"In September 2005, President Bush pledged to 'do what it takes, and stay as long as it takes,' to rebuild after Katrina," says Chris Kromm, director of the Institute and co-author of the report. "But thousands of lives are still in limbo and miles of the Gulf still lie in ruins -- the recovery is failing."

The study also features "Where did the Katrina money go?" -- an in-depth analysis of federal Katrina spending since 2005. The Institute reveals that, out of the $116 billion in Katrina funds allocated, less than 30% has gone towards long-term rebuilding -- and less than half of that has been spent, much less reached those most in need.

"The President says he's written a 'big check' for the Gulf Coast, but the over 60,000 families still in FEMA trailers must be wondering if the check bounced," says Jeffrey Buchanan of the RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights and co-author of the spending analysis.

The report also offers a set of practical solutions, gleaned from interviews with 40 Gulf Coast community leaders, for our nation's leaders to turn the situation around.

"Two years after Katrina, our nation has an opportunity to change course and demonstrate its sincere commitment to those being left behind in the faltering recovery," says Sue Sturgis, a co-author of the full report. "Only strong national leadership can build a better future for the region, because only Washington has the resources necessary to ensure an equitable and just reconstruction."

"It's well past time for the federal government to make good on its promises to the people of the Gulf," adds Sturgis.

The report is already making a splash in the media, with national coverage by the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, Gannet, The Los Angeles Times and McClatchy News. The report has also been featured on over 50 TV and radio broadcasts nation-wide, including MSNBC, National Public Radio, PBS "NewsHour" and XM satellite radio.

The Institute for Southern Studies launched Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch to track the Katrina recovery in October 2005, and has since published several widely-followed reports including A New Agenda for the Gulf Coast (February 2007), One Year after Katrina (August 2006) and The Mardi Gras Index (February 2006).

For a copy of the report and more of the Institute's ongoing coverage of the crisis in the Gulf, visit:
www.southernstudies.org/gulfwatch

Two Years Post Katrina: Racism and Criminal Justice”

Colorlines has a special section on their website for this anniversary

This week ColorLines.com honors the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina with a special multimedia issue that reviews the continued struggles in the Gulf Coast after the devastating storm.

A Return to New Orleans: A video on the housing struggle facing Black residents of New Orleans.

Locked Up in New Orleans: From the Nation Magazine, a look at the increasing imprisonment of young men of color without reprieve.

ColorLines Gulf Coast Discussion Guide : A guided tour of our past articles on race and rebuilding.

Images - New Immigrants in New Orleans: An original audio slideshow documenting the wave of Latino immigrants arriving in the two years after Hurricane Katrina.

Two years ago, we were struggling to comprehend what was happening in New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina had hit, and just as it seemed that the worst was over, the levees broke. We watched in horror as people were left to drown in their homes. In the weeks that followed, we came to understand the callousness that led to the tragedy, and heard promises that the Gulf would be rebuilt.

Today, we can see how empty those promises were. New Orleans is still half its former size, and people have become so desperate and discouraged that crime is on the rise. Families are still living in FEMA trailers, which we have learned contain toxic levels of formaldehyde. Public housing units that were unharmed by the flood have remained empty.

Ella Baker Center has partnered with Brave New Foundation to promote their new video about Katrina survivors. It tells the heartbreaking stories of good people unable to return home, like the Aguilar family, who lost their home and received only $4,000 in payments from their insurance company. When the Saints Go Marching In also tells the story of Mr. Washington, an 87-year-old former carpenter, who owned three homes prior to the storm. He is still living in a FEMA trailer today. And there's Julie, who could have returned to her job and normal life if the government had opened up the public housing units where she lived prior to the storm.

Our people must not be forgotten. Watch the video here:http://www.ellabakercenter.org/page.php?pageid=16&contentid=315

Then, take the next step. Please sign the petition urging the Senate to pass the Gulf Coast Recovery Bill of 2007 (S1668). The bill is expected to come up for a vote after soon after Labor Day. Its passage will be an important step toward rebuilding the infrastructure in the Gulf Coast region.

Sign the petition at: http://whenthesaints.org

One of our partner organizations, ColorOfChange.org, has also launched a new project to broadcast the stories of Katrina survivors, told in their own words. Voices From the Gulf presents the stories of 10 survivors, with plans to add hundreds more as survivors who want to tell their stories are connected to volunteers armed with only a video camera and an Internet connection. Please check out the videos today, and if you can, volunteer to help share more survivors' stories.

Forward ever,

Jakada Imani
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights

New Orleans After 24 Months By Greg Palast

Catalyst Project organized a panel at this year’s National Conference on Organized Resistance, featuring Mayaba Liebenthal, Amber McZeal, and Maya Dempster, who discussed their lives and political work post-Katrina, in New Orleans and as evacuees, from the challenges of survivor organizing to their visions for justice in the Gulf Coast. This is an excerpt from that forum, which was moderated by Ingrid Chapman, transcribed by Dee Ouellette & Jen Collins, and edited by Molly McClure.

Ingrid: Where are you living, and what work are you doing now?

Mayaba: I live in New Orleans and work with INCITE: Women of Color against Violence and Critical Resistance [CR]. INCITE seeks the liberation of women of color by challenging domestic violence and recognizing that the state is often the perpetrator of much of the violence against women, women of color especially. CR is a prison abolition group working against the prison industrial complex and modern-day slavery. We’re trying to figure out what it actually looks like to have true community accountability.

Amber: I work with Survivors for Survivors in the Bay Area, which started in 2005 by an evacuee/journalist/historian from New Orleans, C.C. Campbell Rock. Survivors for Survivors assists with the unmet needs of the 2,000 families still displaced in the Bay Area, currently 16,000 displaced overall in California. We deal with requests anywhere from a food card to an electricity bill to a cell phone bill to rent. Survivors for Survivors started a work-for-hire catering company called “A Taste of New Orleans” intended to help provide self-sustenance for evacuees. I also work with a play of stories from the Katrina Diaspora called “Stardust and Empty Wagons” that was staged in San Francisco.

Maya: I’m living in New York City and working with the Solidarity Coalition of Katrina and Rita Survivors. We had about 5000 displaced individuals to the New York City area. We have weekly meetings and a monthly united front meeting, which is a platform for all of the other not –for-profits in New York City area to get together and focus on basic needs of survivors still not being met. We’re focusing more on media now because it’s a way for us to touch more individuals. I also work with Ghetto Dreams Movement, which is a music/movie/entertainment organization, originally based in New Orleans, that we use to bring awareness to survivors’ issues in New York City Area. Ghetto Dreams Movement also creates jobs for displaced individuals.

Mayaba: CR is working on an amnesty campaign for prisoners of Katrina. When OPP [Orleans Parish Prison] got flooded all of the evidence got washed away, and thousands of people’s cases never went to trial. We’re trying to get amnesty for people still inside, and all charges dropped. INCITE initiated a project called the Women’s Health and Justice Initiative [WHJI] which is opening a women’s clinic, a multidimensional project that sees service as part of a larger reproductive justice model. In our approach, the clinic is part of a political process, so if you test positive for lead poisoning, there’s also a space for you to organize around the fact that the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] didn’t clean up the lead. We want the healthcare at the clinic to be a space to take action, so you can create a sense of agency around your body and a holistic sense of self, for yourself and for your community.

Ingrid: What are some of the major issues facing the communities you organize?

Amber: One of the biggest issues is getting in touch with everyone to organize them. Within my community itself, the 2000 people in the Bay Area, we still don’t have a list of those people. We put up posters and go to church events where survivors gather, but it’s pretty much word of mouth and few people will come to those events because they’re not looking for consolation from a priest right now. They’re looking for the basic three: jobs, shelter, food. And they’re looking for justice.

Mayaba: What happened with Katrina and what’s going on with the land grab in New Orleans are like a microcosm of the overall state of the US today. You can go into every inner city community and they are suffering the same way. I go to Detroit and they are having the same problems that we are having in New Orleans, and they didn’t have a natural disaster, right? We’re losing affordable housing. We’ve lost affordable housing. Our communities are over-policed. We’re policed up and it doesn’t make us any safer. We can’t get public education. We’re being denied access to health care. Workers’ rights are being stepped on all over the place and the breakdown of our communities is huge. So what are the issues facing us? We’re being stomped. We’re trying to rebuild at a time where no one really wants us to rebuild.

Amber: They brought police and enforcement to New Orleans before they started bringing other resources to actually sustain life. That doesn’t promote safety --- that says to the people of New Orleans that you are a threat. After I evacuated, Maya (Amber?): I wanted desperately to return to the city. A few of us were lucky enough to have a hotel room in the city [paid for by FEMA]. When that was taken away, there was nothing put in place of it. It was about a two-month period of “this is going to be the last day that FEMA will pay for your hotel.” Not knowing where you’re going to sleep at night leaves you in a very confused, clouded state of mind. I do believe that it was purposeful. There was no incentive to return home. There still isn’t. Our hearts are home but there’s no incentive there. And what we have to do is create incentives to return home and a way to return home.

Maya: In New York, similar to everywhere there are displaced people, the feeling towards evacuees at first was welcoming, but when the cameras stopped rolling that’s when the help stopped. Keeping your head clear is very important just to be able to function, because there was never a time we had to actually cry over our city. We just kept running, kept going, kept going and all of a sudden it was a year had passed and we were still moving, still trying to find housing, still trying to just live. Those things were interrupted greatly. Life has not returned to normal, there is no sense of normalcy. We’re still not OK.

Ingrid: How does gender play into the challenges facing your communities and the people that you work with?

Mayaba: Women of color bear the brunt of disasters: natural disasters, state-inflicted disasters, state-enforced disasters. Women of color are at the intersection of sexism and racism, and this perspective is often times ignored or separated, like you walk into one area and you’re a woman and you go over here and you’re black and somehow never the twain shall meet. The lack of gender analysis is particularly problematic in the organizing work in terms of trying to transform society into a way that we want to live our lives. We need that analysis of racism and sexism to develop community accountability strategies for a functional stateless society. We need to be able to ask: why are women of color affected like this? Why are we the highest rising HIV population, the fastest growing population in prisons? We know that domestic violence goes up after disasters. Yet few services have actually been put in place to help to change this or alleviate any of these conditions.

Black women are loved in theory but not in practice. There is a lack of visibility of us as women of color, outside of symbolic imagery. You saw Black women crying on TV during the flood, disempowered, the most disenfranchised person you could find. Organizations will work “on your behalf” but when you say what you need yourself it doesn’t matter. At the INCITE clinic, nearly 90 percent of our funding has come from individual donors and people who support us. Foundations? Not into it. Non-profits? Not into it. Yet they have all been asking what we need and what we want to do, and when we finally say it we’re ignored.

Ingrid: What would justice in the Gulf Coast, and justice for displaced Katrina survivors look like to you?

Maya: A good start would be some admittance to the neglect, to the government failing their citizens. It wouldn’t change what happened but it’s a good start. The treatment of people of African descent by the government, national guard, state police, and other states’ police is dehumanizing and unacceptable. I had eight sheriffs hold shotguns to my head at about 9:30 at night. This was while the curfew was still in effect. The curfew was for midnight but nevertheless that still occurred. Imagine just leaving your house, getting in your car, and eight sheriffs jump out, put shotguns to your head, and tell you to get on the ground. Focusing on Mardi Gras parties is not important when there are numerous murders on a daily basis. The focus needs to change so the city can heal.

Amber: New Orleans is where my home was and my heart is. Maya hit on something when she said “New Orleanians are not new to neglect.” That is a problem. The hundreds of thousands who are displaced are accustomed to being neglected. Which is why giving voice to survivors through “Stardust and Empty Wagons” is crucial. We’re used to being told to shut up, or being killed in order to be silenced. The government moves like molasses, like we say in the south, and molasses moves very, very slow. And slow is not going to work right now. As fast as the hurricane hit and the levees blew and the people were out, that’s as fast as we needed to move to be back in. Since it’s all knocked down let’s rebuild it the right way. We can start to curb our addiction to oil and electricity now by switching over to solar paneling on all the houses. Then New Orleans can be a model for the rest of the country.

Ingrid: What do you feel inspired about?

Maya: I find this forum to be extremely inspiring, and also very healing. Every time we get to speak and share these stories with different people it helps the healing process, and helps to invoke change.

Amber: You can’t kill the spirit and that’s what New Orleans culture is about. That’s what second lines are about. We don’t die. It doesn’t matter what you do to my body. I will still carry joy.

Ingrid: What is the role of allies in the struggle for justice in the Gulf Coast and for survivors?

Mayaba: When allies come to New Orleans, it’s really important to do work in your own communities as well, especially to undo the racism that we’ve been taught and that’s reinforced with every breath and step we take. We had a rally about ending the violence in New Orleans that felt like a Klan rally---it was the most pro-police white thing that I’ve ever seen in my life. A woman had a sign saying “Thugs are Terrorists.” What I want is for people to look into your own communities and organize around that kind of mentality. You don’t need to come to New Orleans to do that.

Amber: Allies can leverage the resources they have to the ends that we need, like connecting organizations to technical support. Allies can act as liaisons connecting us to opportunities like this to tell the truth as we see it. If you fight the same issues of housing and gentrification in your own town, make the connections to what’s happening in New Orleans. We need tangible sustainability. Stop giving your money to the Red Cross, to these corporations who run commercials with Aaron Neville songs and sad pictures. That is not what we look like. Do I look like that to you? New Orleanians don’t like pity. We’re a very proud people. Demand that the U.S. adhere to the U.N. guidelines for internally displaced peoples. Police the U.S. on the grounds of crimes against humanity because that’s what’s going on. Demand that Blanco release the LRA [Louisiana Recovery Authority] funds that she’s been sitting on and accruing interest for the past year. These funds are for the Road Home program, which has no incentive for renters, which all of us happen to have been. The majority of New Orleanians were renters, but these funds would only allocate a hundred and fifty thousand dollar grant to every homeowner whose property was damaged or lost to rebuild their home. Become knowledgeable of what’s going on, like Big Easy money profiteering. The same companies in Iraq right now are the companies doing recovery efforts and getting the no-bid contracts in New Orleans.

Ingrid: How does the struggle in New Orleans impact the broader struggle for justice in this country?

Mayaba: We’re at a very remarkable moment to be able to change the entire framework that we use to talk about injustice. We can talk about what happened in Katrina as human rights issues, which gives the US an international context and an international language. We’re actually at a time where we can align our social movements in this country with the human rights and social movements of everywhere else.

Maya: Katrina was the largest migration of African-Americans since slavery. I can’t help but think that had that not been the case we might have gotten a little bit more of a dignified response from the media, from the government. Aid wouldn’t have taken so long, and not arrived. Most hurricane survivors didn’t even receive the $2000 that was supposed to aid in your immediate needs let alone monies for personal property loss or any kind of personal assistance. Most people got nothing but leaving their homes and never returning.

Amber: 9-11 was a disaster with a one-mile radius. Katrina hit a hundred and forty miles of coastline. 9-11 directly affected a few thousand people. Throughout the Gulf we’re talking over a million people directly affected, between the two hurricanes from Lake Charles to the Mississippi and further north. Yet you see in the news a lot of attention placed on “oh he bought a car with his FEMA money” for those who did receive the personal property money, a lot of judgment about what they did with it. It’s these little things that hurt after a while.

Ingrid: How can people support your particular organizations?

Amber: Bring “Stardust and Empty Wagons” out for a performance or for a reading--- all the proceeds go to the immediate needs of evacuees. If you know evacuees in your area, connect them to either resources or technology to be connected with other evacuees. It’s huge, it’s crucial. Community was a big factor for New Orleans and the pain that we feel right now is the unraveling of our culture. Culture is our life.

Mayaba: The New Orleans Women’s Clinic is opening, any and all fundraising is appreciated. CR has a video called “I Won’t Drown on that Levee and You Ain’t Gonna Break my Back.” We need to raise awareness about what happened in the prison, what’s still happening. Get the word out about organizing on the ground, because the news is not getting out about how much grassroots activity is happening there. If people knew that, it would undermine every intention and plan that the government has for the city.

Maya: We have a collaboration of different musicians from New Orleans that make up the Ghetto Dreams Movement, ready to do shows and perform. We have media for sale, there are two albums. They are songs of inspiration, and days before hurricane Katrina. This music is very healing to us, so if you see that, support it.

Amber: We need reparations. You can even change the name, because the needs have changed. I don’t need a mule. I don’t know where I would put a mule.

Mayaba: Would the mule now be a Honda? I’d like a hybrid.

Mayaba Liebenthal is a Black feminist anarchist and human rights advocate committed to creating projects institutions that support self-determined and sustainable communities development. A New Orleans resident, she is a member of various community based organizations including INCITE: Women of Color Against Violence, and Critical Resistance. She is a contributor to the South End anthology, What Lies Beneath Katrina: Race and the State of the Nation.

Amber McZeal is a native New Orleanian by way of Lafayette, Louisiana. She currently resides in Berkeley, California where she is a volunteer public and community relations director with the social justice activist group Survivors for Survivors, a survivor initiated non-profit organization assisting hurricane survivors with needs still unmet by the national recovery agencies. Prior to Katrina she was a student of jazz performance at Southern University in New Orleans. She is continuing her studies in sound therapy in California.

Maya Dempster is a writer artist and activist. She is a New Orleans resident via New York City right now. As a survivor of Katrina and Rita she now works closely with New York Solidarity Coalition of Katrina/Rita Survivors to aid evacuees in the struggle for social justice.

Catalyst Project (www.collectiveliberation.org) is a center for political education and movement building based in the San Francisco Bay Area, committed to anti-racist work in majority white sections of left social movements with the goal of building multiracial left movements for liberation. Since Katrina, Catalyst has made solidarity with the Gulf Coast a major part of our work.

From color of change comes this:

Introducing Voices from the Gulf

There are thousands of untold stories from Katrina survivors.
Watch them, and help them be told through Voices from the Gulf.

We all know the headlines dominating the public conversation around Hurricane Katrina: politicians making declarations but doing very little, levees not being rebuilt, and thousands of people who want to return home but can't.

But we rarely get a chance to hear Katrina survivors speaking in their own words, talking about where they are today and how they are moving forward to rebuild their lives. On the second anniversary of Katrina, we wanted to connect folks around the country, as directly as possible, to Katrina survivors -- creating a window into their lives. And we wanted to provide a platform for Katrina survivors to make their stories heard, now and into the future.

The result is VoicesFromTheGulf.com. Check it out and participate here:

http://www.colorofchange.org/vfg/?id=1969-46679

VoicesFromTheGulf.com launches today with stories from ten different individuals and families, each with a unique perspective and experience. But that's just the start. In the coming weeks and months, we hope to add hundreds more stories, as survivors who want to share their stories are connected to volunteers who have a video camera and Internet connection. The site makes it easy. Survivors and videographers fill out a simple form and, based on geography, are put in contact with one another. They then get together, shoot their video, and upload it to the VoicesFromTheGulf.com website.

If you have a video camera, and you'd like to interview a Katrina survivor, sign up here:

http://www.colorofchange.org/vfg/camera.html?id=1969-46679

If you're a Katrina survivor and want to share your experiences, sign up here:

http://www.colorofchange.org/vfg/survivor.html?id=1969-46679

As the media moves on to other stories, a living collection of testimony is critical. It puts the stories of survivors at the center of the dialogue around a just rebuild. And it informs those of us who want to support Katrina survivors with knowledge about who they are and what they need.

The failures during Hurricane Katrina were a failure of America as a community. But the stories of people reaching out, connecting, and helping one another during and immediately after the storm showed Americans at our best. If America doesn't want to fail the Gulf Coast again -- if we want to help -- we have to stay connected. VoicesFromTheGulf.com is about making this connection happen.

We hope you'll join us in sharing and hearing these stories.

Thank You and Peace,

-- James, Van, Gabriel, Clarissa, Mervyn, and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
August 24th, 2007

Another resource is cws.workshop.org/katrinareader which will eventually have a whole bunch of second commemoration materials up.

Hurricane Katrina: The Black Nation’s 9-11! By Saladin Muhammad

Gulf South Allied Funders invite you to

A blow-out New Orleans style party to honor the activists who are
bringing the spirit of hope to their communities and to benefit the
Twenty-First Century Foundation's Hurricane Katrina Initiative

featuring:
Master of Ceremonies Van Jones

Author and Performance Poet Michael Otieno Molina

Henry Clement & the Gumbo Band

The Food & Spirits of New Orleans

Wednesday, September 19th
6pm till much later
The Park Chalet
1000 Great Highway at Ocean Beach
San Francisco

Visit Twenty-First Century's Hurricane Katrina Initiative
Buy Tickets! More information Email us at risingup@fusionconsultants.org
The Twenty-First Century Foundation presents an interactive,
multi-media Funders Briefing on the victories and challenges of
rebuilding the Gulf Coast sponsored by The Gulf South Allied Funders
(GSAF)

Wednesday, September 19, 2007
2 to 5 pm
Tides Center
The Presidio, San Francisco

Join five outstanding Gulf Coast activists for an in depth analysis of
the challenges and opportunities of rebuilding the Gulf Coast, the
approaches that are working, and the strategies that are still needed.

Presenters
Steve Bradbury, Louisiana ACORN
Judith Browne-Dianis, The Advancement Project
Derrick Evans, Turkey Creek Community Initiative
Derrick Johnson, NAACP of Mississippi
Patricia Jones, Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association
Jason Sanders, Tides Foundation
Rev. John H. Vaughn, Twenty-First Century Foundation

The Gulf South Allied Funders include Resource Generation, Women
Donors Network, Threshold Foundation, Tides Foundation, and individual
donors.

RSVP at risingup@fusionconsultants.org

Two Years Post-Katrina:Racism and Criminal Justice in New Orleans

hupcollective — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 05:14:40 GMT

Two Years Post-Katrina:
Racism and Criminal Justice in New Orleans
By Jordan Flaherty
August 29, 2007

Two years after the devastation of New Orleans highlighted racism and
inequality in the US, the disaster continues. New Orleans' health care
and education systems are still in crisis. Thousands of units of
public housing sit empty. Nearly half the city's population remains
displaced. A report released this week by the Institute for Southern
Studies reveals that, out of $116 billion in federal Katrina funds
allocated, less than 30% has gone towards long-term rebuilding—and
half of that 30% remains unspent.

The city's criminal justice system, already rated among the worst in
the nation by human rights organizations pre-Katrina, continues to be
in crisis. After the storm, thousands of prisoners were abandoned in
Orleans Parish Prison as the water was rising. In the days after
Katrina, mainstream media depicted the people of New Orleans as
looters and criminals, and a makeshift jail in a bus station was the
first city function to re-open, just days after the storm.

For Robert Goodman, an activist for criminal justice reform who was
born and raised in the schools and prisons of Louisiana, this
demonizing and criminalization of the survivors was no surprise. He
tells me that the primary crisis of New Orleans is a discriminatory
and corrupt criminal justice system, adding that, "every time a black
child is born in Louisiana, there's already a bed waiting for him at
Angola State Prison.".

On May 9, 2006, Robert Goodman's brother was killed in an encounter
with the New Orleans police. This was another death in a long list of
civilian deaths at police hands, a list that also includes three
deaths in Orleans Parish Prison this year. Advocates say these deaths
have not received proper investigation, and point to larger, systemic
problems.

A Broken System

For poor Black kids growing up in New Orleans, the education system
functions as a school to prison pipeline. In New Orleans, 95% of the
detained youth in 1999 were Black. In 2004, Louisiana spent $96,713 to
incarcerate each child in detention, and $4,724 to educate a child in
the public schools. "When I went to prison, I was illiterate,"
Goodman tells me. "I didn't even know anything about slavery, about
our history."

New Orleans' public defense system is in such poor shape that Orleans
Parish Criminal District Court Judge Arthur Hunter recently complained
that, "indigent defense in New Orleans is unbelievable,
unconstitutional, totally lacking the basic professional standards of
legal representation, and a mockery of what a criminal justice system
should be in a Western civilized nation."

Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate of any state in the US –
if Louisiana were a country, it would have the highest incarceration
rate in the world. Orleans Parish Prison, the city jail, was -
pre-Katrina - the eighth largest jail in the US. Advocates complain
that there is no forum for oversight over the jail or Marlin Gusman,
the criminal Sheriff who oversees it. "We've suffered under a policy
where the city builds a huge jail that is then required to be filled
with human beings, or else it's a waste of money," states civil rights
attorney Mary Howell.

Robert Goodman is fighting to change the system that took away his
brother, as part of a grassroots organization called Safe Streets
Strong Communities. Safe Streets is struggling not just to reform the
entire system, from policing and public defense to prison, but also to
reframe the debate around these issues.

Safe Streets began as a coalition of grassroots activists and
organizers from a number of organizations who came together
post-Katrina to respond to the immediate crisis. "Our first priority
was to help those individuals who had been in Orleans Parish Prison
prior to Katrina, many of whom were being held illegally for minor,
non-violent offenses," explains co-director Norris Henderson. "In the
early days, right after the storm, Safe Streets was basically
performing triage for a broken system."

In the transition from the crisis of Katrina to the long-term
catastrophe that the city is still in, Safe Streets focused their
energy on building their base, ensuring that people in communities
most affected were shaping the priorities and making the decisions of
the organization.

The organization has been a vital leader in the struggle for a just
recovery for New Orleans. Shortly after Safe Streets began pressuring
on the issue, the city's indigent defense board was completely
reconstituted and now includes people that actually care about poor
people receiving a fair trial. After they turned their focus to
issues around policing, the city approved and funded an office of the
independent monitor to oversee the police. In addition, the city
council has begun looking at downsizing Orleans Parish Prison, as well
as reducing the sheriff's budget, and tying it to reform and greater
accountability – also a part of Safe Street's strategy.

More importantly, they affected the debate around criminal justice in
the city. Within a few months after the storm, instead of talk of
more prisons, journalists and politicians were looking at the system,
and the roots of the problems. Evidence of widespread police
misconduct and people locked up for months without charges began to be
reported.

For those that have been victimized by law enforcement violence,
organizing and talking about what they have faced has already been
transformative. "I can't imagine where my family would be if it
weren't for Safe Streets," Goodman tells me. "We would have been
pushed to the side. This organizing inspired my mother to live another
day."

-------------------------------------------
Jordan Flaherty is an editor of Left Turn Magazine, a journal of
grassroots resistance. His previous articles from New Orleans are
online at http://www.leftturn.org. To contact Jordan, email:
neworleans@leftturn.org. On myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/secondlines .

A version of this story originally appeared in the July/August issue
of ColorLines Magazine. See a special online collection of
Katrina-related reporting at http://www.colorlines.com/.
-----------------------------------------
For more information on some of the organizations and resources
mentioned in this article:

Safe Streets Strong Communities: http://www.safestreetsnola.org/
Institute For Southern Studies Report:
http://www.southernstudies.org/facingsouth/

Other Resources for information and action:
People's Institute for Survival and Beyond - http://www.pisab.org
INCITE Women of Color Against Violence - http://www.incite-national.org
A Fighting Chance - http://www.a-fighting-chance.org
People's Organizing Committee: http://www.peoplesorganizing.org
Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund - http://www.peopleshurricane.org
Justice for New Orleans - http://www.justiceforneworleans.org
Common Ground - http://www.commongroundrelief.org
Black Commentator - http://www.blackcommentator.com

Letter From New Orleans Grassroots:
http://leftturn.mayfirst.org/?q=node/573

Please support independent media! Subscribe to Left Turn Magazine.
www.leftturn.org.

defend artistic expression:mural under attack by zionists!

hupcollective — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 05:37:22 GMT

the Mission youth group HOMEY is painting a mural at 24th and Capp streets which depicts struggles of indigenous communities and includes imagery of Palestine. ADL and the JCRC have organized to demand that the mural be altered. Please read the below message from AROC (Arab Resource and Organizing Committee), the sample letter (and send a letter of your own!) and listen to the KPFA coverage. and finally, make sure to swing by and take a look at the mural. I'll post updates ehre as I hear them...

Message from AROC:

We are writing to ask for your support for a mural on 24th and Capp St
that is under attack by Zionists. The mural depicts related images of
struggle by indigenous communities against forces of imperialism,
racism, and economic oppression. Its major theme is breaking down
walls—those in Mexico, Palestine, Iraq—and the physical and social
walls in our own communities here.

The Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Community Relations Council
are asking the youth artists from HOMEY to censor their work, and
remove or alter the portion of the mural depicting Palestinian
resistance. We stand behind the artists' creativity and conviction,
and insist that Palestine hold its place on this mural amongst other
struggles for liberation.

Please take the time to go see the mural and support the artists.
You can see pictures of a small part of the amazing mural at
www.araborganizing.org/mural

Write the Arts Commission expressing your support for this mural and
the freedom of expression of the artists.

Sign on below or use as a sample letter. Please include your personal
feelings on the mural, if you live or work in the area, as well as any
community or organizational affiliations you have.

In Struggle,
Arab Resource and Organizing Center (arabamericanlegal@gmail.com)

Please send a copy of all letters of support to admin@homeysf.org .

******************************************************************

Ellen Shershow ellen.shershow@sfgov.org
Jill Manton jill.manton@sfgov.org

Public Art Program, SF Arts Commission
25 Van Ness Ave, Suite 240
San Francisco, CA 94103

Dear SF Arts Commission,

I am writing to express my support of the mural on 24th and Capp in
its entirety, including the positive images of Palestinian liberation
struggles. I applaud the SF Arts Commission for their encouragement
of self-expression and youth leadership development, and want to
ensure that the Commission continues to allow for and insist on the
artistic freedom of the HOMEY artists.

This mural represents the united struggles of people of color in the
Mission, including the Palestinian and Arab community working with,
living amongst, and supporting the young people of this neighborhood.
The mural depicts self-determination for all and breaking down
barriers as major themes. Just as residents of the Mission are
fighting displacement locally and walls separating them from their
homelands, so too are Palestinians.

As artists, you know the importance of freedom of creativity and the
right to express strongly your beliefs and experiences. The muralist
tradition has always been rooted in its depiction of popular history
and struggle as experienced by the artist and the community the mural
is being made in. To censor this narrative dismisses the central
function, purpose, and power of the medium and the communities it
speaks to. I hope this mural can not only visually represent
self-determination, but also embody the self-determination of young
artists and Mission residents through your help maintaining the
integrity of the mural and the traditions and lived experiences which
have inspired it.

Sincerely,
**********************

KPFA covered the topic of the mural on this week's LA Raza Chronicles......
I've gotten hella emails and phone calls in support of the mural
project. Thanks to everyone for the love....
~Nancy

http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=21873

defend native lands

hupcollective — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 05:36:00 GMT

hi folks,

you may get stuff like this all the time in your inboxes, but i
strongly encourage you to sign this online petition about stopping a
mining project that would destroy ancestral native lands in arizona.
i had the chance to meet some of the people whose lands will be
affected by this bill last summer, and they are asking for support to
help defeat these two potentially devastating and unprecedented mining
projects.

another huge thing would be to edit and fax the sample letters at the
bottom to members of the committees responsible for voting on the
bill, as well as your local senators and representatives. even one
letter can help! the turn-around time is quick--- trying to get the
letters in by august 22. you can send them as an individual or from
an organization.

thanks, and let me know if you have any questions.
-molly

Sign now to stop the mining of Sacred Tribal Land!

[please forward widely]

The San Carlos Apache Tribe in Southeast Arizona is leading a fight
against a proposed land exchange that would give the rights of
ancestral and sacred lands to a subsidiary of a multinational mining
corporation, Resolution Copper, and they are asking for our immediate
and urgent support.

Take Action Now!
1. First, Sign the petition stating that you are against the proposed
land exchange bill. Go to http://www.petitiononline.com/coop2468/
2. Send a letter to the chairman and ranking members of the Senate and
House Committees where the bills are sitting to be voted for passage
stating your opposition to the land exchange bill. A sample letter is
at available at the bottom of this email - a formatted version is also
attached.
3. Send a letter to your own representative and senator doing the
same. Feel free to use the same sample letter.
Use their local address. Scroll to bottom for California senator and
representative information.

To look up who your Congressional representatives are...

For Senate...
Others: go to www.senate.gov
On the homepage in the upper left hand corner there will be a
"SENATORS" button. Click it, and that takes you to another page that
lists all of them.
For the House of Representatives...
Go to http://www.house.gov/writerep/
This is a little more complicated because you need the zip code, and
sometimes the entire address if an area code has more than one
representative. When that happens a screen will come up that sees you
need that four digit number that comes after the five-digit zip code.
It will direct you to the US Postal Service Website (www.usps.gov)
that can give you that number. Then you just go back to the
http://www.house.gov/writerep/ page and put in that number, and it'll
give you the name and district.

Every Senator and Representative has a homepage, and it's very easy to
find the contact information for each of them. It's important to use
their local address - not their Washington DC office. All of them
have more than one local office, but generally, there is one on top of
the list that you can just use.

Background
On July 24, 2007 Senators Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and John McCain (R-AZ)
introduced bill S. 1862, the Southeast Arizona Land Exchange and
Conservation Act of 2007, in the US Senate. A related bill, H.R. 3301,
was introduced in the House of Representatives by Representative
Pastor (D-AZ) on August 1, 2007. The proposed bills would, among other
things, convey federally-owned land
known as Oak Flat, Devils Canyon, and Apache Leap near Superior,
Arizona, to Resolution Copper Mining. The land sought by Resolution
Copper is believed to be worth an estimated $65 billion. That land,
however, contains sites and artifacts that are of deep spiritual,
cultural, and historic significance to the Apache and other tribes in
the region.

Resolution Copper and its parent company are responsible for other
well-documented environmental devastation and public health disasters
all over the world. In addition to destroying and desecrating land
sacred to the Apache, Yavapai, Hopi, O'Odham tribes, the proposed
mining would cause disastrous environmental damage, contaminate scarce
water supplies, destroy habitat for endangered species, and cause
massive surface damage. It would also greatly exacerbate health
problems for communities, which already include cancer clusters and
respiratory illnesses due to the surrounding mines.

The stakes are high – the passage of the bill would establish a
precedent, allowing private interests to seize land sacred to native
peoples with impunity, contributing to the cultural extinction of
Native Americans that began hundreds of years ago – solely for profit
and at great cost to the people and the environment. However, if the
bill is defeated, a different kind of precedent would be set for
Native Americans' rights to the preservation of their land, history,
sacred and religious sites, and culture and traditions.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

SAMPLE LETTER
The Honorable Jeff Bingaman, Chairman
United States Senate, Energy and Natural Resources Committee
625 Silver Avenue, SW Suite 130
Albuquerque, NM 87102
Fax: 505-346-6780

The Honorable Pete Domenici, Ranking Member
United States Senate, Energy and Natural Resources Committee
Albuquerque Plaza
201 3rd Street, NW Suite 710
Albuquerque, NM 87102
(505) 346-6720 Fax

Dear Chairman Bingaman and Ranking Member Domenici:

I am writing to voice my strong opposition bills S. 1862 and H.R.
3301, captioned the Southeast Arizona Land Exchange and Conservation
Act of 2007. These bills would allow for a land exchange between
Resolution Copper and the United States Forest Service. The land
exchange would convey lands to Resolution known as Oak Flat, Apache
Leap, and Devil's Canyon near Superior, Arizona, to build and
construct an unprecedented block-caving mining operation.

The Oak Flat, Apache Leap, and Devil's Canyon areas are ancestral
lands of the Apache, Yavapai, Hopi, and O'Odham Native tribes. The
proposed mining would result in the destruction, violation, and
desecration of these sacred lands. The land exchange would prevent
these tribes from continuing important practices of religion and
culture; and, once desecrated, they can never be restored.

Resolution Copper is a subsidiary of a foreign owned company, Rio
Tinto PLC and BHP Biliton, Ltd – both of which have long and
well-documented histories of environmental abuse all over the world.
The proposed mining would deplete and contaminate already limited
water resources in the area. The areas that would be conveyed to
Resolution Copper also provides habitat for many different types of
plants, animals, and songbirds.

The proposed land exchange is opposed by six tribes in Arizona, and
unanimously opposed by the City Council of Superior because of short
term and long term devastation to their people and future generations.

We urge you to oppose S. 1862 and H.R. 3301 and any other legislation
that would convey these sacred areas to mining interests. Please take
action now to preserve the public interest of the people of Superior
and the cultural and religious heritage of Native peoples.

Sincerely,

Name

Address

Please send the same letter to the following in the House of Representatives:

The Honorable Nick J. Rahall, Chairman
U.S. House of Representatives
House Committee on Natural Resources
301 Prince St.
Beckley, WV 25801
Fax: 304-252-9803

The Honorable Don Young, House Ranking Member
U.S. House of Representatives
House Committee on Natural Resources
Peterson Tower Building
510 L St, Suite 580
Anchorage, Alaska 99501-1954
(907) 271-5950 Fax

California senator and House of Representative information:
Sen. Barbara Boxer, 1700 Montgomery St., Suite 240, San Francisco, CA
94111, FAX 415-956-6701
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, One Post St, Suite 2450, San Francisco, CA
94104, FAX 415-393-0710

In Oakland and Berkeley, our representative is Barbara Lee:
Barbara Lee, 1301 Clay St., Suite 1000-N, Oakland, CA 94612, FAX 510-763-0370

In San Francisco, our representative is Nancy Pelosi:
Nancy Pelosi, 450 Golden Gate Ave., 14th fl., San Francisco, CA 94102,
FAX 415-861-1670

Bail reduced for the SF8!

hupcollective — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 05:22:48 GMT

lease support these courageous brothers!

Begin forwarded message:

From: SF-8 case <cdhrsupport@freedomarchives.org>
Date: August 22, 2007 10:53:35 PM PDT
To: cdhrsupport@freedomarchives.org
Subject: [Freethe SF8] Wednesday 8/22 Court Report: bail, discovery, DNA
Reply-To: FreetheSF8@riseup.net

Bail Reduced!

Addressing a tense courtroom packed with both supporters and police,
Judge Philip Moscone electrified supporters when he announced major
bail reductions for the six bailable defendants in the SF 8 case.

Ray Boudreaux: $ 385,000

Richard Brown: $ 420,000

Hank Jones: $ 600,000

Richard O'Neal: $ 200,000

Harold Taylor: $ 350,000

Francisco Torres: $ 660,000

Moscone noted that "danger to public safety" was not an issue in his
decision, and arrived at the varying amounts based on 1) the
seriousness of allegations against each individual in the Ingleside
charge and the overt acts of the conspiracy charge, and 2) likelihood
of appearance, noting that all the men have had stable residences for
a long time and have strong family and community ties.

Moscone preceded his announcement with the statement that "not
everyone" would be happy with what he was going to do. Following the
bail announcement, scores of police, including Detective Erdelatz (the
SFDP zealot who has pursued the men for three decades) left the
courtroom.

Family members and supporters stated that they expected to be able to
raise the reduced bails. Supporters who wish to discuss offering their
property as collateral towards bail should call for an explanation of
the process: (415) 226-1120.

Problems with discovery compliance

The rest of the morning addressed discovery issues.

Stuart Hanlon, attorney for Herman Bell, summarized a major problem:
Although the prosecution has turned over the equivalent of more than
200,000 pages, the documents are so disorganized it is as if those
pages were strewn on the floor randomly. After months of effort by 20
workers over hundreds of hours, the defense still cannot locate the
documents it needs. In addition, countless portions of the documents,
including contact information for every single witness, have been
blacked out.

Hanlon also argued that the basis of the current prosecution was
supposed to be "new" evidence relating to DNA and ballistics. But
where was the evidence?

DNA

Michael Burt, attorney for Ray Boudreaux, added that the prosecution
denied having DNA reports for over a year, but when reports were
provided a few days ago, it was clear the government had had them
since 2006 - and they were still incomplete. "We need every test that
they have done," Burt said. The defense noted that the partial DNA
reports released by the state recently not only show no matches to any
of the eight, one of them matches the profile of one of the state's
experts, indicating contamination of evidence.

Hanlon added that instead of ballistics reports the prosecution has
given them statements by police. "Declarations don't mean a thing,"
Hanlon asserted. "After 25 years of seeing police lie outright in the
case of Geronimo Pratt, I want to see evidence, not declarations."

Next court date

Moscone ordered the discovery issues to continue on Tuesday, August
28. He will meet with the attorneys alone at 9:30, and the official
court hearing will begin at 1:30. Motions about timeliness and
prosecutorial delay will be filed after discovery is resolved.
_______________________________________________
Please support these brothers by sending a donation. Make checks
payable to CDHR/Agape and mail to the address below or donate on line:

www.freethesf8.org/donate.html

Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CDHR)
PO Box 90221
Pasadena, CA 91109
(415) 226-1120
FreetheSF8@riseup.net

Support the Tyendinaga Mohawks

hupcollective — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 05:19:27 GMT

This is an e-mail from the Tyendinaga Support Committee which is a group in
Toronto that has quickly come together to gather support to Free Shawn
Brant.

In this e-mail...

********************************************************

1. August 29: Public Meeting to Demand the Release of Shawn Brant

2. Sign the Petition: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/supporttmt

3. Free Shawn Brant Website: http://www.ocap.ca/supporttmt.html

4. What you can do

5. Next Tyendinaga Support Committee Meeting

6. Join the Free Shawn Brant group on Facebook

7. Join the E-Mail List

********************************************************

1. TAKING A SERIOUS STAND:
PUBLIC MEETING TO DEMAND THE RELEASE OF SHAWN BRANT

Public Meeting
Wednesday August 29th, 2007
7pm
Steelworkers' Hall - 25 Cecil Street
Admission: Pay what you can

Speakers:

Natercia Coelho, wife of prisoner Gary Freeman
Naomi Klein, author
and
Featuring: Sue Collis, Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory

Shawn Brant, spokesperson for the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte (Tyendinaga
Mohawk Territory), was denied bail for the second time earlier this month.
Shawn is currently imprisoned in Quinte Detention Centre, Napanee.

Shawn Brant is the only person facing charges for his role in two major
blockades carried out by members of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte during
the past four months, as part of the struggle for their land.

Clearly, Brant's real 'crime' has been to take a serious stand against the
theft of the land, the denial of sovereignty and the impoverishment and
abuse of his People.

The Mohawks of Tyendinaga, and Shawn Brant as a spokesperson for the
community, have carved out a national platform to expose Canada's complicity
in the suffering of First Nations peoples. Given Brant's refusal to live as
a victim of the Canadian state's systemic violence, he poses too great a
threat to a country built on the backs of First Nations peoples. That is
why he is still in jail, and why, if convicted, he will face federal
penitentiary time. The government of Canada is trying to send a brutal
message to First Nations people committed to resisting centuries of genocide
and colonialism.

As supporters, allies, and people who live on and profit from stolen land –
even through our mere existence – we bear a serious responsibility to
understand the struggle in Tyendinaga, to support the Mohawks of the Bay of
Quinte, and to participate in the fight for Shawn Brant's freedom. If we
sit back and allow this act of criminalization to imprison Shawn at length,
if we allow Shawn Brant's family to be torn apart, we too are participating
in the on-going war against the original people of this land.

We invite you to come out and hear directly from Sue Collis, Shawn Brant's
wife, about the struggle against the Canadian government, a force that is
determined to continue its colonial project ruthlessly and at age-old high
cost. It is vital that we shift the balance of forces by building a movement
of solidarity around Shawn Brant and, by extension, First Nations' struggle
for justice, respect, and the land.

Hosted by the Tyendinaga Support Committee.
For more information, please contact: support.tmt@gmail.com

********************************************************

2. Sign the Petition: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/supporttmt

Please sign the following petition at the website above:

We, the undersigned, believe that Shawn Brant, spokesperson from Tyendinaga
Mohawk Territory, should be released from jail and have all current
criminal charges against him stayed. Given unresolved land claims, polluted
drinking water, overwhelming poverty and suicide rates in First Nations
communities across this country, it comes as no surprise to us when First
Nations people create physical impediments to halt the extraction of
resources and wealth from their land. Therefore, we believe that First
Nations peoples have the right to refuse to live in these conditions and
that the exploitation of their land should cease.

********************************************************

3. Website: http://www.ocap.ca/supporttmt.html

A website has been started. Please check back frequently for updates about
Shawn's court case and what you can do to support. In the following week we
will be posting support letters from various organizations, a more thorough
booklet of information and analysis about Shawn's situation and the struggle
for land in Tyendinaga more generally as well as information about how to
donate to the legal fund.

********************************************************

4. What you can do

For now we are asking people to sign the petition, come to the public
meeting on August 29th in Toronto and spread the word about Shawn's
continuing imprisonment. We are in the process of setting up a legal fund
for the cost of the trial and will be asking for donations in the near
future. We are also asking for organizations to write letters of support
for Shawn that can be distributed and posted on-line. If you are part of a
union, community group, political organization, church congregation or
otherwise, please consider drawing up a letter of support from your
organization and e-mail it to support.tmt@gmail.com. If you are in Toronto,
come to the next meeting of the Tyendinaga Support Committee...

********************************************************

5. Next meeting of the Tyendinaga Support Committee

Will be on Wednesday, Septemeber 5 at a location to be announced. If you
are interested in coming to this meeting keep checking the website and a
location should be posted there at least a week before the meeting.

********************************************************

6. Join the Free Shawn Brant Group on Facebook

Why not? There's already 680 members.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2407903830

********************************************************

7. Join the E-Mail List

To join the Tyendinaga Support Committee e-mail list (if you are not on it
already) please go to:
http://masses.tao.ca/lists/listinfo/tyendinaga_support

Thanks for Reading
-Tyendinaga Support Committee
http://www.ocap.ca/supporttmt.html
support.tmt@gmail.com

Jena Six update

hupcollective — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 00:09:56 GMT

Racism and Resistance:
The Struggle to Free The Jena Six
By Jordan Flaherty
August 14, 2007

Almost a year ago, in the small northern Louisiana town of Jena, a group of white students hung three nooses from a tree in front of Jena High School. This set into motion a season of racial tension and incidents that culminated in six Black youths facing a lifetime in jail for a schoolyard fight.

The story that has unfolded since is one of racism and injustice, but also of resistance and solidarity, as people from around the world have joined together with the families of the accused, lending legal and financial support, adding political pressure, and joining demonstrations and marches.

The nooses were hung after a Black student asked permission to sit under a tree that had been reserved by tradition for white students only. In response to the three nooses, nearly every Black student in the school stood under the tree in a spontaneous and powerful act of nonviolent protest. The town's district attorney quickly arrived, flanked by police officers, and told the Black students to stop making such a big deal over the nooses, which school officials termed to be a "harmless prank." Walters spoke in a school assembly, which like the schoolyard where all of this had begun was divided by race, with the Black students on one side and the white students on the other. Directing his remarks to the Black students, District Attorney Reed Walters said, "I can make your lives disappear with a stroke of a pen."

The white students who confessed to hanging the nooses never received any meaningful punishment. Nor did the white students who months later beat up a Black student at a school party, nor did the white former student who threatened two Black students with a shotgun. But, after these incidents, when Black students got into a fight with a white student, six Black youths were charged with attempted murder, and now face a lifetime in prison. The white student was briefly hospitalized, but had no major injuries and was socializing with friends at a school ring ceremony the evening of the fight. The accused students may not have been involved in the fight, but they were known to be organizers of the protest under the tree. They were also star athletes in the school football team, and had no history of discipline problems.

The Black students were arrested immediately after the fight, in December of last year. School officials and police officials took statements from at least 44 witnesses. The statements do not paint a clear picture of who was in the fight. Statements from white students refer to a group of "Black boys," but most testimonies are unclear as to the identities of who was involved. Some of the arrested youths are not implicated in the fight at all.

Despite this, when Mychal Bell, the first youth to go to trial, refused to take a deal in exchange for testifying against his friends, he was quickly convicted by an all-white jury. Bell's public defender Blane Williams, visibly angry at Bell and his parents because the youth did not take the deal, called no witnesses and gave no meaningful defense. This attorney's behavior gives a vivid example of our nation's broken and underfunded public defender system. Some have called Jena a throwback to the past, but in fact Jena presents a clear vision of the current state of our criminal justice system.

In Paris Texas, a white teenager burns down her family's home and receives probation, while a Black student shoves a hall monitor and gets 7 years in prison. Genarlow Wilson, in Atlanta, is sentenced to ten years in prison for participating in consensual oral sex with a 15 year old when he was 17. Like these and many other cases, the case in Jena is textbook proof that there are still two systems of justice functioning in this country, one for Black people, and one for white. The unpunished incidents in the days and months leading up to the fight clearly demonstrate that the students of Jena would never have faced charges if white students had beaten a Black student.

Local Resistance

Immediately after the arrests, parents of the accused began organizing. Their call, "Free the Jena Six," was initially heard by activists from other parts of Louisiana, such as the Lafayette public access TV show, "Community Defender," which was the first media from outside their immediate area to give coverage of the case. Noncorporate media has been vital in spreading word of the case, beginning with blogs and YouTube videos, which then led to articles in grassroots publications and high profile stories on Democracy Now and in The Final Call.

LaSalle parish, where Jena is located, is 85% white. The town is still mostly segregated - from the white barber who refuses to cut Black hair to the white and Black parts of town, separated by an invisible line. LaSalle is also one of Louisiana's most wealthy parishes, with small oil rigs in many back yards contributing to area wealth. The parish is a major contributor to Republican politicians, and former klansman David Duke received a solid majority of local votes when he ran for governor in 1991 - in fact, he received a higher percentage of votes in LaSalle parish than in any other part the state. Jena was also the former site of a notoriously brutal youth prison, which was closed after years of lawsuits and negative media exposure. The prison is now scheduled to be reopened as a private prison for the growth business of immigrant detentions.

Only one church in town has allowed the parents to hold meetings. There has been local pressure on family members and their allies to stay quiet. However, in the face of opposition, their voice has grown louder. Without an infrastructure of support, without any paid organizers, this struggle was initiated and is still led by six courageous families.

Three hundred supporters, most from the immediate region, but some from as far away as California, Chicago and New York, descended on Jena on July 31 to protest District Attorney Reed Walters' conduct and call for dismissal of all charges. The largest groups included Millions More Movement delegations from Houston, Monroe and Shreveport, and nearly fifty members of Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children from Lake Charles and New Orleans. Other delegations from across Louisiana included members of INCITE Women of Color Against Violence, Critical Resistance, Common Ground and Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. The demonstration marched through downtown Jena - reported to be the biggest civil rights march the town of 2,500 residents has ever seen - and delivered a petition with 43,000 signatures to the District Attorney's office.

In the two weeks since the demonstration, more major allies have begun to come on board. The Congressional Black Caucus - representing 43 members, including Senator Barack Obama - issued a statement calling for charges to be dropped, while the city of Cambridge Massachusetts passed a resolution in support of the families of the Jena Six. Al Sharpton and other national leaders have visited Jena, while Jesse Jackson brought the support of members of the state legislative Black caucus.

ColorOfChange.org, which has coordinated much of the outside support, has gathered 60,000 signatures on a petition to Louisiana Governor Blanco, calling for her to pardon the accused, and investigate District Attorney Reed Walters.

Blanco, a Democratic governor elected with the overwhelming support of Black residents of Louisiana, responded with a condescending statement, tersely informing petitioners, "The State Constitution provides for three branches of state government - Legislative, Executive, and Judicial - and the Constitution prohibits anyone in one branch from exercising the powers of anyone in another branch." This is the same governor who, as Katrina approached, urged gulf coast residents to "pray the hurricane down" to a level two. When New Orleans was flooded and people were trapped in the New Orleans Superdome and convention center, she informed the nation that she was sending in National Guard troops, and "They have M-16s and they're locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, and I expect they will." More recently, Blanco created a program to bring federal money to homeowners rebuilding after Katrina – the "Road Home" – that has been a dismal failure on every level.

Mychal Bell's sentencing is currently scheduled for September 20. The families are planning another demonstration for that date, and also have assembled a legal team for Bell and the other youths. National organizations such as Southern Poverty Law Center and NAACP joined initial supporters such as Friends of Justice (from Tulia, Texas) and ACLU of Louisiana. Legal expenses for the youths could be hundreds of thousands of dollars, and funding is still needed. Except for Mychal Bell, who has a bail hearing scheduled for September 4, all of the youths are out on bail.

The case of Jena Six has served as a wake-up call on the state of US justice. It shows vividly the racial bias still inherent to our system. But is has also shown something else. That this group of families refuses to be silent in the face of injustice, and that hundreds of thousands of other people around the world have chosen to stand with them. Together they have said that we are drawing the line, here, in Jena Louisiana.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jordan Flaherty is a New Orleans-based journalist and an editor of Left Turn Magazine. His May 9, 2007 article from Jena was one of the first to bring the case to a national audience. Please see http://www.leftturn.org and http://www.freethejena6.org/ for more coverage of the Jena case.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Resources:

Donate to support the legal defense fund:
Jena 6 Defense Committee
PO BOX 2798
Jena, LA 71342

Donate online at: https://secure.colorofchange.org/jena_fund/
Sign the petition at: http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/

For more information or to offer concrete support, email:
jena6defense(at)gmail.com

Media coverage:
The Final Call:
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_3753.shtml
NPR (News and Notes):
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11756302
Democracy Now:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/10/1413220

Mychal Bell, who has been behind bars since December of 2006, has asked to receive letters from supporters. Please write to:

Mychal Bell
Inmate, A-Dorm
LaSalle Correctional Center
15976 Highway 165
Olla, LA 71465-4801

Congressional Black Caucus resolution:
http://www.congressionalblackcaucus.net/

Cambridge, MA, city council resolution:
http://www.cambridgema.gov/cityClerk/PolicyOrder.cfm?action=search&item_id=18831

New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE - http://www.nycore.org ) is teaming up with other teacher activist groups across the country to develop a curriculum guide for teachers to address what's happening in Jena. Contact breebree@mindspring.com or arianamangual@gmail.com.

Support Organizations:
http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/
http://www.colorofchange.org
http://www.millionsmoremovement.com
http://www.laaclu.org/

YouTube videos in support of the Jena Six:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpOBKTwkIoo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebGY2XONJVM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuoiZnr4jLY

Please support independent media! Subscribe to Left Turn Magazine. www.leftturn.org.

Mumia Abu Jamal on Jena

hupcollective — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 05:39:17 GMT

Of 'White Trees', Black Boys and Jena, Louisiana
[col. writ. 7/21/07] (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal

I you asked me two weeks ago if I've ever heard the name of a little
town in Louisiana called 'Jena', I would've drawn a blank.

Jena? Never heard of it.

It made me think of the ill-fated Palestinian village called Jenin, that
Israel crushed into oblivion several years ago.

I think the incumbent president's daughter has that name (with and
additional 'n').

But, that's it.

When a friend sent me several internet articles about recent events
there, I was, quite frankly, flabbergasted.

I was astonished to learn that today, in the first decade of the 21st
century, in Jena High School, there is still a 'white tree', called that not
because the leaves are white, but because it is a generous giver of shade,
and only white students sit under it.

In Sept. 2006, a young student named Kenneth Purvis asked the school
principal for permission to sit under the 'white tree.' The principal
answered that he could sit where he liked.

So, they did.

The next day, the 'white tree' was festooned with three nooses, in
school colors.

In the South (or the North, for that matter), nooses have one clear
meaning -- they are threats of death.

People naturally got riled up, angry, or scared.

Jena's High School principal looked into the matter, found the three
white students responsible, and recommended that they be expelled.

The school superintendent felt otherwise, rescinded the expulsion, and
instead recommended a 3 - day suspension. Speaking to the Chicago Tribune,
the superintendent said, " Adolescents play pranks. I don't think it was a
threat against anybody."

(Perhaps he meant anybody important - or white)

For Jena's Black community, this was but the latest slap in the face.

Black students at the high school decided to resist by holding a sit-in
under the 'white tree' to protest the light suspensions given to the 3 white
noose-hangers.

When word got out about the pending sit-in, the local DA came to a Jena
school assembly, with several cops to threaten the students who dared to
think they could do what people did some 40 years ago throughout the South
(before the so-called 'New South'). He told them if they didn't stop making
a fuss about this 'prank' he could be "your worst enemy." To make the point
plain, he told the teen gathering, " I can take away your lives with a
stroke of a pen."

Several days later, a white Jena student, who reportedly made racist
taunts, including calling Black students 'niggers', got knocked down,
punched and kicked. The boy was taken to the hospital, treated and released.
That very night, he was well enough to attend a public event.

Within days six Black Jena students were arrested and charged with
attempted second degree murder. All six were also immediately expelled.

The 6 teens were given bails set from $70,000 to $139,000.

Bail at these ranges could've just as easily been set at $1 million, for
they were at rates that none of the local parents could afford. That meant,
of course, that all of the accused were held in jail for months, awaiting
trial.

And if money for bail was out of reach, what about money for attorneys?

Again -- out of the question.

That meant that public defenders were appointed by the court.

For one of the accused, Mychal Bell, this meant little better than no
counsel at all, for his trial was soon decided by an all-white jury, who
promptly convicted him of aggravated second degree assault, battery and
conspiracy.

Bell now awaits sentencing which may put the teenager in prison for the
next 22 years.

The public defender never challenged the all-white jury pool, put on no
evidence, and didn't call a single defense witness.

The law of aggravated assault requires the use of a deadly weapon. What
was the weapon?

Tennis shoes.

Families and friends of the Jena 6 are organizing against this case, and
are also being threatened by the local establishment. One woman told
Louisiana ACLU member, Tory Pegram, "We have to convince more people to come
rally with us.....What's the worse that could happen? They fire us from our
jobs? We have the worst jobs in the town anyway. They burn a cross on our
lawns or burn down my house? All of that has happened to us before. We
have to keep speaking out to make sure it doesn't happen to us again, or our
children will never be safe."

To contact the Jena 6 Defense Committee, write:
P.O. Box 2798
Jena, Louisiana 71342

Or on the web: jena6defense@gmail.com.

--(c) '07 maj

[Sources: Quigley, Bill, "Injustice in Jena: Black Nooses Hanging From the
'White' Tree", July 3, '07; Quigley@loyana.edu.; Mangold, Tom, " 'Stealth
racism' stalks deep South", BBC News, 5/24/07 online]

Nooses and a legal lynchng in Jena

hupcollective — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:25:02 GMT

Last fall in Jena, Louisiana, the day after two Black high school students sat beneath the "white tree" on their campus, nooses were hung from the tree. When the superintendent dismissed the nooses as a "prank," more Black students sat under the tree in protest. The District Attorney then came to the school accompanied by the town's police and demanded that the students end their protest, telling them, "I can be your best friend or your worst enemy... I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen."1

A series of white-on-black incidents of violence followed, and the DA did nothing. But when a white student was beaten up in a schoolyard fight, the DA responded by charging six black students with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

It's a story that reads like one from the Jim Crow era, when judges, lawyers and all-white juries used the justice system to keep blacks in "their place"--but it's happening today. The families of these young men are fighting back, but the odds are stacked against them. Together, we can make sure their story is told, that this becomes an issue for the Governor of Louisiana, and that justice is provided for the Jena 6. It starts now. Please add your voice:

http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=1749-62943

The noose-hanging incident and the DA's visit to the school set the stage for everything that followed. Racial tension escalated over the next couple of months, and on November 30, the main academic building of Jena High School was burned down in an unsolved fire. Later the same weekend, a black student was beaten up by white students at a party. The next day, black students at a convenience store were threatened by a young white man with a shotgun. They wrestled the gun from him and ran away. While no charges were filed against the white man, the students were arrested for the theft of the gun.2

That Monday at school, a white student, who had been a vocal supporter of the students who hung the nooses, taunted the black student who was beaten up at the off-campus party and allegedly called several black students "nigger." After lunch, he was knocked down, punched and kicked by black students. He was taken to the hospital but was released and was well enough to go to a social event that evening.3

Six Black Jena High students, Robert Bailey (17), Theo Shaw (17), Carwin Jones (18), Bryant Purvis (17), Mychal Bell (16) and an unidentified minor, were expelled from school, arrested and charged with second-degree attempted murder. Bail was set so high -- between $70,000 and $138,000 -- that the boys were left in prison for months as families went deep into debt to release them.4

The first trial ended last month, and Mychal Bell, who has been in prison since December, was convicted of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery (both felonies) by an all-white jury in a trial where his public defender called no witnesses. During his trial, Mychal's parents were ordered not to speak to the media and the court prohibited protests from taking place near the courtroom or where the judge could see them.

Mychal is scheduled to be sentenced on July 31st, and could go to jail for 22 years.5 Theo Shaw's trial is next. He will finally make bail this week.

The Jena Six are lucky to have parents and loved ones who are fighting tooth and nail to free them. They have been threatened but they are standing strong. We know that if the families have to go it alone, their sons will be a long time coming home. They will lose precious years to Jena's outrageous attempt to maintain a racist status quo. But if we act now, we can make a difference.

Please add your voice to the voices of these families in Jena, and help bring Mychal, Theo, Robert, Carwin, and Bryant home. By clicking below, you can demand that Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco get involved to make sure that justice is served for Mychal Bell, and that DA Reed Walters drop the charges against the 5 boys who have not yet gone to trial.

http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=1749-62943

Thank You and Peace,

-- James, Van, Gabriel, Clarissa, and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
July 17th, 2007

References:

1. "Injustice in Jena as Nooses Hang From the ‘White Tree,'" truthout, July 3, 2007
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070307B.shtml

2. "Racial demons rear heads," Chicago Tribune, May 20, 2007
http://tinyurl.com/yvh7t5

3. See reference #1.

4. See reference #1.

5. "'Jena Six' defendant convicted," Town Talk, June 29, 2007
http://tinyurl.com/ysxtgg

Other resources:

NPR: Searching for Justice in Jena 6 Case (streaming audio)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11756302

Democracy Now! - The case of the Jena Six ...
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/10/1413220

Too Sense: Free The Jena Six Now
http://halfricanrevolution.blogspot.com/2007/07/free-jena-six-now.html

While Seated: Jena Six
http://www.whileseated.org/photo/003244.shtml

Nooses, attacks and jail for black students in Jena Louisiana
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/6/28/144445/384

Justice In Jena, by Jordan Flaherty
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=12783§ionID=30

The Perpetrator becomes the Prosecutor (and other related entries)
http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/blog/

'Stealth racism' stalks deep South
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/6685441.stm

Help Dr. Mona el Farra reach her dying mother in Gaza

hupcollective — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:23:24 GMT

Dear friends,

Below is an urgent message from Dr. Mona, a dear friend to many of us. Her situation is both outrageous and tragic. However, multiply that by 6,000, because that is how many Palestinians have been waiting for up to five weeks on the Egyptian border to get to their homes in Gaza. Twenty-eight of them have died from heat, exhaustion, stress and their own delicate condition.

Please call AND write your members of Congress (or other elected representatives outside the U.S.), and demand their intervention to get Israel and Egypt to open the borders. Be sure to copy Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on your messages at eulmert@knesset.gov.il. Go to www.congress.org to find your senators or representatives. Call the Congressional switchboard at 1-800-839-5276 and ask for your member of Congress.

Paul

Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 06:39:02 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: Marhaba..are you back?
From: "mona El-farra" <mona@gaza-health.org>

sorry i canot write more , can you circulate this to friends
and supporters
love
mona Sunday, July 15, 2007

My mother is in her last moments and I cannot cross the borders

My mother is in the hospital at the moment. She is severely ill. She was
admitted to hospital 3 days ago. I cannot reach her.

I finished my 45 day speaking tour in the USA. Everywhere across the USA
and in each lecture I told the audience about our suffering, living in
this big prison called Gaza. I told them about the borders closure and
about the patients who passed away while waiting to cross.the borders .

Now it is my personal story, like the daily stories of 1.4 million people
in GAZA under siege and occupation.poverty , lack of resources , killing
shooting violence etc....

I cannot cross the borders, I cannot cross the Rafah crossing. I badly
need to be next to my mother. I badly need to be there with her to help
her, to do whatever I can for her.to say good bye mum , I was always there
for my patients and many people, to help and try to alleviate their
suffering.in her last hours i canot be there my hands are tied, I am
helpless, I can do nothing, I just have to wait and wait and wait.my
throat is dry my are eyes full of tears .
this is unjust, unhuman . it is the occupation , how come to be just and
fair ,when it is mainly based on injustice , agression and cruelity .

Can somebody help me to go home? I badly need to be at home next to my
mother in her last moments.
Good bye mum ,hpoe you rest in peace , peace we donot enjoy in Gaza

The borders have been closed for more than 5 weeks , 28 patients died
while waiting to crossthe Rafah crossing .the only crossing between gaza
and egypt , all other exits are completely sealed by the Israeli army
The border was opened 70 times in one year

love and solidarity

[Dr. Mona Elfarra]

7/24: Benefit for SWAN: Sir! No Sir!

hupcollective — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 05:02:26 GMT

Tuesday, July 24th 8pm Sharp

Showing the film "Sir! No Sir!"

to benefit SWAN (Servicewomen's Action Network)

This event is part of an ongoing monthly series showcasing radical films
to benefit local organizing. Films shown on the patio at El Rio. Event is
free but donations gladly accepted. 21 and over. Space is wheelchair
accessible but bathrooms are not.

For more information please contact us at radfilms@lycos.com

See you there!

"Sir! No Sir"

In the 1960's an anti-war movement emerged that altered the course of
history. This movement didn't take place on college campuses, but in
barracks and on aircraft carriers. It flourished in army stockades, navy
brigs and in the dingy towns that surround military bases. It penetrated
elite military colleges like West Point. And it spread throughout the
battlefields of Vietnam. It was a movement no one expected, least of all
those in it. Hundreds went to prison and thousands into exile. And by 1971
it had, in the words of one colonel, infested the entire armed services.
Yet today few people know about the GI movement against the war in
Vietnam.

SIR! NO SIR! aims to change all that. The film does four things: 1) Brings
to life the history of the GI movement through the stories of those who
were part of it; 2) Reveals the explosion of defiance that the movement
gave birth to with never-before-seen archival material; 3) Explores the
profound impact that movement had on the military and the war itself; and
4) Tells the story of how and why the GI Movement has been replaced with
the myth of the spat-upon veteran.

the Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness

hupcollective — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 04:59:47 GMT

from the Nation magazine comes this incredible, and incredibly disturbing article. they spent months interviewing soldiers about their time in iraq.

Over the past several months The Nation has interviewed fifty combat veterans of the Iraq War from around the United States in an effort to investigate the effects of the four-year-old occupation on average Iraqi civilians. These combat veterans, some of whom bear deep emotional and physical scars, and many of whom have come to oppose the occupation, gave vivid, on-the-record accounts. They described a brutal side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts.

Their stories, recorded and typed into thousands of pages of transcripts, reveal disturbing patterns of behavior by American troops in Iraq. Dozens of those interviewed witnessed Iraqi civilians, including children, dying from American firepower. Some participated in such killings; others treated or investigated civilian casualties after the fact. Many also heard such stories, in detail, from members of their unit. The soldiers, sailors and marines emphasized that not all troops took part in indiscriminate killings. Many said that these acts were perpetrated by a minority. But they nevertheless described such acts as common and said they often go unreported--and almost always go unpunished.

the entire article is too long to post here, but you can find it at

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/hedges

Another world is possible...read all about it

hupcollective — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 23:44:11 GMT

Here's a compilation of articles about the United States Social Forum that I've been able to find so far. Hopefully more will come, because there was so much to refelct on, and I hope the discussion, the dialogue, keeps moving. We've got our work cut out for us, but I have more hope for the future than I did a month ago. By that I mean, the movment Heads Up seeks to help to build, that is, a multi racial revolutionary movment led by people of color and working class people, with strong leadership from other traditionally oppressed communities, such as queers and women...in Atlanta I saw that that movement is not only possible but that it *exists*. Which is thrillling.

--Rahula, for Heads Up

USSF articles

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070716/berger

An Even Newer Left
by DAN BERGER
[posted online on June 30, 2007]
Atlanta

At first sight, the only applicable description of the first US Social Forum would be chaos. Utterly overwhelming. Ten thousand people mill about the Atlanta Civic Center and its environs, trying to choose between dozens of workshops, issue-themed tents, merchandise and information tables, meetings, and plain old socializing.

It is a scene perhaps best captured in fragments rather than full sentences. Organizers. Housing. Immigrant workers. Vision. Prison abolition. Puppets. Speeches, newspapers, fliers, banners, flags, books, shirts. Laughter. Dance parties. Water. Media. Fundraisers. Collaboration. Resisting state and interpersonal violence. Imagining.

Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, Cuba, Puerto Rico, ghetto, barrio, reservation. The city. Youth. Networking. Strategy.
It is people running into old friends from across the country as they roll into Atlanta in buses from the Southwest to the Northeast. It is the sweaty hugs and warm handshakes of new friends collaborating on old projects, of people meeting others doing the exact same work across the country or complimentary work across town. It is a place of impassioned and often impromptu speeches. Spirited marches, ad hoc press conferences, and clever street theater seem as ubiquitous as the 1,000 panels taking place. The social forum is a gathering of veterans--of wars and of movements.

The forum can easily feel like just another conference, only supersized. The schmoozing, the talking heads, the exchanging of cards and brochures--it's all here, just on a bigger scale. People trying to call attention to their cause or organization pass out flyers announcing the workshops they are organizing. There are many different workshop tracks to choose from, both from themes the forum organizers decided upon or the self-organized tracks groups have collaborated on to organize. It would be easy to pick a track and only see people interested in workers rights, urban community organizing, Palestine, transformative justice, or rebuilding the Gulf Coast. In that, the Social Forum is a conference of conferences for a movement of movements.

A bird's eye view of the social forum would reveal an energy and excitement for something more. That desire is not just for an alternative to the Bush regime's sinking ship. At its best, the desire stretches for a new way of conducting politics and social movement based on but not duplicative of what has come before. It is a call to build a left that is grassroots and democratic, visionary and strategic, a left that manages to have unity without sacrificing its political principles. If, as the World Social Forum slogan puts it, Another World Is Possible, the US Social Forum proclaims that Another US is Necessary.
There are surely problems: the pockets of people for whom politics consists of haranguing the public with conspiracy theories or tired ideas of Bolshevism. More pressing is the propensity for the forum's size and excitement to outpace its ability. While less so than forums in the resource-strapped Global South, the US Social Forum is not exempt from the confusion of facilitators without panels or panels without rooms. The Ida B. Wells Media Justice Center has provided an impressive model of collaborative journalism, but its community newsroom started out in what seemed like a bathroom closet. The competition for, or at least confusion over, space and attention is apparent--even if it takes place in an atmosphere of inspiring cooperation.

The necessity for another America, one that, in Langston Hughes' famous words, has never existed, permeates the forum. Indeed, the forum is in no short supply of proscriptions for a radical remaking of this country, and therefore the world. Panel after panel, table after table, conversation after conversation, meeting after meeting--each one makes apparent the need for another society, and what the ingredients of it must be. A sometimes too-quick-to-applaud audience cheers on as speakers denounce injustice and celebrate what Martin Luther King once described as a revolution in values.
The energy is kinetic and infective. Still, the real test is not what happens here but what emerges from it. And there are already reasons to hope: numerous urban community organizing groups from across the country sponsored a workshop track, parties, and meetings to solidify a Right to the City network. Under the auspices of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, the marginalized left voices within the immigrant rights movement had a chance to make their position known through workshops and a national press conference. A pre-forum gathering sponsored by Queers for Economic Justice and Southerners on New Ground took first steps toward building the infrastructure for a Queer Left, while another pre-forum gathering--strengthened throughout the week--brought together queer, feminist, and antiracist groups to envision solutions to state and interpersonal violence that don't involve the sprawling prison-industrial complex.
These examples show that a mass movement is slowly beginning to cohere. It is far too early to predict its success, failure, or specific forms. But the forum presents a picture of movements in motion, a chance to glimpse and above all participate in building the world we want to see. After years of patient organizing, the grassroots centers of social movements are beginning to burst through soil corroded by years of neo-liberalism and an impoverished dominant political culture. The consciousness, vision, and strategy emanating from the social forum is uneven and developing--and it may just be our best hope to have both democratic processes and liberating politics.

Photos of the opening march

http://indybay.org/newsitems/2007/07/05/18433450.php

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/sherman040707.html

Achievements and Limits of the First United States Social Forum
by Steve Sherman

The first US Social Forum wrapped up on Sunday, July 1 in Atlanta, Georgia. That it happened at all seems almost miraculous. It is hard to remember any previous comparable gathering of diverse currents of US social movements. This is not a particularly dynamic moment in their history -- the anti-war movement is bland and harmless, labor is largely flat on its back, student movements are weak and isolated, and the immigrant movement -- the most assertive in years in terms of taking to the streets -- has been weakened by the pervasive climate of fear. For that matter, in the eyes of many, the World Social Forum process has peaked (or at least is currently in a bit of a trough in terms of energy and creativity).
Yet the US social forum was a dramatic success in several important ways. Most significant was its diversity. Reportedly, about 9,000 people were registered as participants in the forum. Of that group, roughly half appeared to be people of color (it was difficult to accurately assess this, since I was not at the opening march -- for that matter, neither were many of the participants -- and there was no other moment when one could be confident that a large portion of the participants in the forum were present). Latinos and African Americans were highly visible, as were Asian Americans and indigenous people, in terms of both plenary speakers (who functioned as the self representation of the forum to itself) and participants. As the organizers had sought, large numbers of participants appeared to be the members or organizers of people-of-color, community-based organizations. The white people who made up the other half of the participants also appeared to be predominantly from activist groups. A considerable portion of the participants were youthful (under 25) flaunting a somewhat "anarchist" style of piercings, butch haircuts, tank tops, army caps. Particularly among the youth, it seemed obvious that the center of gravity of the left in the US is queer, much in the way that the center of gravity of the socialist left in Europe and the US once was Jewish. Broadly speaking, the white people present resembled the crowds of direct action protesters at the WTO meeting in Seattle back in 1999, while, as anthropologist Jeff Juris commented to me, the racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity was the result of a conscious and strategic effort to address the critique in Seattle epitomized by the famous question: "Where Was the Color in Seattle?" At the same time, the major labor unions that marched in Seattle did not show up in large numbers in Atlanta (most labor activists present appeared to be with the smaller, more grassroots efforts such as workers' centers and campaigns to organize day laborers).

What do people do at a social forum? Go to workshops and plenaries. Listen to the many bands. Visit the various tables and tents staffed by members of organizations. And talk to each other. One of the pleasures of an event like this is just striking up conversation with strangers, during which you can often learn more than at official workshops. Virtually all the workshops appeared to be "self organized" by interested groups. The plenaries focused on several themes (Katrina, war and militarism, indigenous peoples, immigration, sexuality and gender, workers) and, to as great an extent as possible, featured speakers from those groups most adversely affected by current dynamics. None of the current "celebrities" of the left (Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, et al.) were featured as plenary speakers. That the program did not list the speakers at each workshop, only the title and the sponsoring group, further tended to de-emphasize existing hierarchies on the left (some groups distributed fliers offering more details on the panels they sponsored, but good luck finding these before the panels took place). On the final day of the forum, there was a "people's assembly" that, in theory, would make decisions about how to move forward. In reality, little was decided (apparently one can now submit resolutions until September 1st -- it's not clear what will be done with them). About half of the people's assembly was a mini-plenary focused on "new paradigms of social change," while the other half was devoted to people briefly stating the reasoning behind resolutions they were proposing.

As sociologist Marina Karides commented, protest aimed at the forum is practically a tradition in the World Social Forum, but it was relatively subdued in Atlanta, perhaps because the principal organizing groups were close to the grassroots, rather than well-funded NGOs or political parties that have been central to the WSF. The most notable controversy occurred around Thursday evening's plenary session, when Yifat Susskind of MADRE described the situation in Israel/Palestine, and ended by attacking Hamas, stating that their rise had complicated images of "good Palestinians vs. evil Israelis." She went on to say that we should find those among the Palestinians who share our values. Her comments were met with both applause and catcalls. This isn't really the space to analyze this position, but we can speculate about what Palestinians and their firmest supporters in the Middle East and elsewhere were thinking at this point: here is a social forum that is "right on" about every possible struggle -- African Americans, Latinos, indigenous, LGBTT, etc. and yet, as always seems to happen on the American left, when the issue of Palestine comes up, suddenly things get complicated. The next night, following the indigenous people's plenary, the National Planning Committee stated they had made a mistake by inviting someone to speak on this issue who was not Palestinian (Susskind is Israeli, although this was not clear on Thursday night) and then a Palestinian woman spoke, offering an impassioned denunciation of Susskind as a supporter of imperialism and Islamophobia, before concluding that the Palestinians appropriately felt welcome on indigenous people's night. I suspect the apology and insertion of this speaker "preemptively" warded off a protest. At the people's assembly, one speaker referred to exclusionary practices of the "media justice" tent, but it was difficult to determine the specifics of this charge. And Medea Benjamin of Code Pink and Global Exchange was "pied" for alleged shortcomings of Global Exchange, an incident that was denounced by the National Planning Committee as being at odds with the values of the forum. Finally, at the people's assembly, a speaker (an Ecuadoran indigenous activist) had the microphone taken away when he spoke past his allotted time. After everyone had spoken, he was given the mike to finish what he had to say. This was followed by a Lakotan activist stating that what he had seen was insulting and racist. He delivered a lengthy denunciation of the crowd at the forum (many of whom had booed and yelled "let him speak" when the microphone incident first occurred) as being fake friends of indigenous struggles, which ended the event on a little sour note.

Limits of the United States Social Forum

Before I mention some of my reservations about the social forum in Atlanta, it is important to state that I think the forum overall was highly successful. It brought together diverse groups of activists in a way no other strategy at present can. Familiar critiques of the social forum model as ineffectual and dominated by non-profits strike me as irrelevant to this case. These sorts of events produce alchemical effects that cannot be determined in the short term, so it would be silly to fret much about the lack of clear next steps (this goal always struck me as unrealistic, in any case). Far from being dominated by the wealthier arm of progressive non-profits, such groups were typically pushed off to the sidelines. I criticize the social forum in the spirit of trying to improve something which is already very good.

In a nutshell, I think the weakness of the forum was its anti-intellectualism. Although this was often dressed up with vaguely radical notions like "popular education" and "having the people most affected by global problems speak," it in fact dovetails with the anti-intellectualism pervasive in American life. It was visible in a number of forms -- the tendency on plenaries to conflate capitalism and racism, class and race ; the priority given to "popular education" (indistinguishable from the sorts of games and group activities widely promoted by the educational establishment in the US as an alternative to the demanding and sometimes unpleasurable activities of reading and listening) over analysis and debate in workshops; and, perhaps most significantly, the exclusion of any academic voices from the plenaries.

As noted above, the speakers at the plenaries were typically promoted as the people most directly affected by the problems they spoke about (although this policy was at first abandoned around the Palestinian issue and no Americans of Middle Eastern descent were invited to speak about the repression and surveillance enveloping the Muslim American community and its most outspoken supporters). Not only did this mean that academic voices were ignored; it also meant that the speakers possessed an aura that made criticism difficult (in any case, the plenary sessions did not typically include a period for questions from the audience). Additionally, since each speaker was talking about the problems specific to their community, criticisms of each other was difficult. Notwithstanding, a speaker from the Strategy Center in Los Angeles on the final day made several highly salient points (gently put, to be sure) -- the discussion at the plenaries, she noted, struck some as lacking depth. She added that the relationship of the forum to the global left, and to the historical legacy of the US left, was never broached, although both are highly relevant. For example, it was Venezuela and Cuba that sent the first medical aid to New Orleans after Katrina. And the bus workers she organizes often remark that we need a new group comparable to the Black Panthers.

The form of selecting the plenary speakers seemed to be heavily influenced by American notions of multiculturalism, in which everyone authentically speaks from the place of their cultural identity. This fits uneasily with the anti-corporate politics of social forums, since the latter requires alliances. Notably, the only alliance mentioned much during the plenaries was the "black-brown" alliance, apparently to be rooted in a joint experience of racist marginalization. Any discussion of how marginalized groups might ally with the middle class on some issues in response to the escalating wealth and power of the top 1% of American society was foreclosed with this approach. The concept of authenticity at work here can also obscure ways in which speakers enact power, a point made in numerous "intersectionality" and "post-colonial" critiques of multiculturalism.

Perhaps we are expecting too much of the plenaries, an opportunity for forum participants to come together to celebrate the struggles underway. Fine. But then the National Planning Committee should make some effort to open space up at the forum for debate about substantive issues -- to mention one that is becoming particularly prominent: is the dependence of most social justice groups on foundation funding jeopardizing their ability to wage uncompromised struggles? (The aforementioned pie-attackers of Medea Benjamin invoked "the non-profit industrial complex" in their press release.) It is not enough to say that there was at least one workshop on this topic, and others that touched on many other relevant debates (is socialism a useful concept? The left?). With over 900 workshops to choose from, they simply get lost in the shuffle. An alternative would be to have the National Planning Committee organize a handful of highlighted panels, thereby focusing the attention of Forum participants on these major issues. Such panels might also provide an opportunity to fruitfully mix up issues and perspectives on social change (i.e., combine labor and queer activists in the same panel) to combat the tendency of practically everyone at the social forum to both organize and attend panels within our respective "comfort zones," which at least partially contains the experience of diversity.

And these debates would greatly benefit from the participation of left academics. I know why the organizers are so suspicious of academics. They can be arrogant, obscurantist, competitive, oblivious to alternative ways of talking about realities (it is probably relevant here for me to mention that I have dropped out of academia and have no short-term plans to return). Academics frequently use the experience of activists as fodder to advance their careers. This does not, however, mean that they are irrelevant. In fact, academia is the major institutional site in the US where one can still talk using left concepts (imperialism, marxism, exploitation, etc.) relatively freely, although in significant ways this is under attack (and the social forum should be open about solidarity to maintain academic freedom). As a result, academia is a crucial site for the politicization of young people. Academics can often bring to the discussion historical and theoretical perspectives otherwise lacking. This does not mean turning discussions at the social forum into academic debates; rather it means complementing experiential perspectives of activists with those developed by academics (we should also note that many left academics consider themselves "academic activists," often with links to the World Social Forum).

A useful model for how academics can contribute to discussions and debates at the social forum can be found in a book on a topic alluded to above, The Revolution will not be Funded: Beyond the Non-profit Industrial Complex. The book sprang out of an a conference held at UC-Santa Barbara (among other things, academics often have institutional resources that can be redirected for such purposes). It is edited by a group that participated in the social forum (INCITE! Women of Color against Violence) and includes contributions from several others (including Project South and Sista II Sista). Several academics also make contributions, offering longer-term and theoretical perspectives. In this way they deepen, rather than obscure, the argument being made. It is precisely the sort of intellectual/activist engagement that should be central to the social forum. I suspect that such engagements would not only amplify the political effectiveness of the social forum; they might also help to revitalize the academic left, which, when isolated from social movements, tends to pursue theoretical curlicues for their own sake.

The remarkable accomplishment of the United States Social Forum was to bring together the largely white activists whose touchstone was the direct action at the WTO protests in Seattle with community and labor activists who mostly come from communities of color. This was all the more remarkable given the de facto racial segregation endemic on the US left for the last thirty years. I think it's fair to say that, by the end of the forum, the confidence of both groups that they belong together and can work with each other had increased. This new left can only get stronger if it fruitfully engages with the academic left and foregrounds the theoretical and historical questions we must deal with to move forward.

Steven Sherman is a sociologist who lives in Carrboro, North Carolina. He maintains the website lefteyeonbooks.org. He can be reached at threehegemons@hotmail.com.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38397

POLITICS: U.S. Social Forum Forges Common Ground
By Matthew Cardinale

ATLANTA, Jul 2 (IPS) - In all, the crowds were huge, the workshops passionate and inspiring, and participants made ideological, relational and personal gains, both large and small.

The U.S. Social Forum wrapped up Sunday in the southern city of Atlanta with a People's Assembly, where civil society and native leaders read declarations on the meeting's main issues: Gulf Coast reconstruction in the post-Katrina era; militarism and the prison industrial complex; indigenous, sexual and immigrant rights; and labour struggles in the global economy.

Atlanta videographer Judy "Artemis" Condor said it was the youthfulness of the crowd that inspired her. "Usually, it's just us old folks at these marches and it takes all our energy just to get from point A to point B," she said.

The youth, on the other hand, were making music, singing, shouting, carrying huge puppets, and some even walking on stilts.

USSF Director Alice Lovelace said many participants were looking to possibly hold their own regional Social Forums in the months and years ahead.

In January 2008, there will be International Days of Action, Lovelace said. Next year will also feature a Social Forum of the Americas, and the USSF will send delegates. World Social Forums should resume in 2009, she said.

The Assembly did not go off without a hitch, as members of the Native American delegation rose in protest when a USSF organiser grabbed the microphone out of one of their speaker's hands because he went "over time." After backstage negotiations, the speaker was able to finish his comments and the Native Americans also held a "healing drum circle" to restore the speaker's dignity.

Still, according to two USSF organisers, some seasoned delegates to the World Social Forum walked away very impressed with the whole event.

"We hit 10,000 [participants], Lovelace said. "The sessions were brilliant. People made a lot of connections. We had proclamations and declarations. It was an extraordinary gathering."

"Members of the [World Social Forum] International Council were here. They said this presented a great challenge to them because it was the best Social Forum they ever saw. They said it raised the bar across the board in terms of diversity. The sessions were focused on the future, on vision, on strategies. They were going to have to step up their game to match what we did," Lovelace told IPS.

It was still vague by what process the USSF participants will be able to endorse the various resolutions.

"There was a decision to extend the process," of submitting resolutions to the Assembly, said USSF organiser Ruben Solis. It "would continue to be organised once people got back home so they would include more people that did not have the opportunity to be here in Atlanta physically at the USSF. All of July and August will be dedicated to that."

"The final adoption [of resolutions] will probably happen in September," Solis said.

The adoption process would involve both the Internet and the next Planning Committee Meeting. "Get them out to all the delegates, give us a process of consultation, adoption, and voting them in, and a process. Because it was a social experiment that has never been done -- even at the World Social Forum -- this was really groundbreaking. This made history in that sense as well," Solis said.

And despite the bitter dispute that erupted when one of their speakers was cut off, the Native American contingent also saw gains from their participation in the USSF.

"This was really an awesome opportunity for the indigenous people of the U.S. to develop family with indigenous people from the South, delegations from Guatemala, from Chile and Argentina who were here... It really provided us an opportunity to develop a family," said Tom Goldtooth, a leader with the Cherokee Nation.

"We're willing to share some of our knowledge," he added. "The Water Ceremony [at the USSF] was our opportunity to help inform all people about the unification of water."

"It was announced on the USSF website to bring water from their homeland, whether contaminated or not. This was a ceremony for all people to pray for the water of life. People brought water from all four directions. We had an indigenous woman named Josephine Mandamin, the Water Walker or the Water Keeper, she's walked around each of the Great Lakes," Goldtooth said.

Kimberly Richards from the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond in New Orleans, Louisiana departed feeling ecstatic on the People's Caravan. Richards joined hundreds of others on a caravan of several buses that came from the Western U.S., went through New Orleans, Mississippi, and Alabama, to join the USSF. Now she was returning home.

"I think there was a lot of progress made. People from the Gulf Coast were able to see oppressive and repressive systems in housing and health care. Atlanta's Katrina was the Olympics. The Olympics displaced people and increased homelessness just as Katrina. For Detroit it was the closing of the auto mills. For North Carolina it was the textile factories," Richards said.

"People are [now] able to understand the intensity of the human rights violations. People's don't [typically] understand the U.S. has signed on to the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. The evacuation was: get in your car and leave. People who didn't have cars were discriminated against. That's a human rights violation. We have to understand what our human rights are in order to protect and defend them," she told IPS.

Richards said the biggest benefit for the New Orleans delegation was the raising of consciousness.

"To organise, people have to have all those things. To have the action, you have to have the awareness. We don't need unconscious people to take an action. Those parts are critical to effective action, to effective organising. We do need to do something, but we need to do it with consciousness," she said.

Meanwhile, public housing advocates from across the country at the USSF were able to make connections and have planted the seeds of starting a national organisation to protect public housing, said Carl Hartrampf of the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless.

After the People's Assembly, a delegation of about 50 public housing residents and advocates marched and delivered an "eviction notice" to the Atlanta Housing Authority, which they taped on the office's front door.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38388

RIGHTS-US: Native Americans and Immigrants Share Common Struggle
By Jonathan Springston

ATLANTA, Jul 1 (IPS) - One group has lived here for millennia, while the other has just arrived. But Native Americans and immigrants have much in common, particularly the alienation and oppression they experience in U.S. society, activists and community leaders said on day three of the U.S. Social Forum (USSF) Friday.

The USSF, which concludes Sunday, has drawn about 10,000 civil society activists from around the United States to discuss their work on issues like gender, native and gay rights, immigration, and the anti-war movement.

"Indigenous rights are the foundation of human rights in this country and we have to come to terms with that," said Julie Fishel of the Western Shoshone Defence Project at a Plenary Session on "Indigenous Voices: From the Heart of Mother Earth."

Fishel joined Native American and indigenous speakers who spoke of indigenous heritage, gradual encroachment on indigenous land, and the lasting ill effects of U.S. oppression of indigenous peoples.

"We have experienced many things that have been passed down through generations," said Patty Grant-Long of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. "Because of our spirit, our relationship with our creator, and our relationship with our ancestors, we are still here."

Grant-Long was born to parents brought up in Native American boarding schools where they were forced to give up their identities.

"It is an amazing testament to resilience that indigenous people are still here," noted Ikaika Hussey of the Aloha Anina Society based in Hawaii. "That says a lot about strength and the ability to withstand in the face of all those struggles."

Hussey spoke of the militarisation of Hawaii, which has lasted for so long and become so prevalent that many visitors do not even recognise it as a problem.

The Aloha Anina Society is leading a charge to demilitarise Hawaii "because it helps the people of Hawaii and because it is part of taking apart the U.S. empire," Hussey said.

Faith Gemmill of the REDOIL Network in Alaska said 95 percent of indigenous land there is open for oil and gas mining.

"It is my hope that in my lifetime I will see our land returned to its rightful owners," Gemmill said. "People must change the way they are living. We must give Mother Earth time to repair and heal itself."

"Our Mother Earth is not for sale," Enei Begaye of the Black Mesa Water Coalition told the audience.

Begaye's organisation is a collective of Navajo and Hopi Native Americans that fight to keep corporations from destroying their land to extract natural resources and from polluting the water.

"There is a path toward peace," she said. "It will take all of us... stand[ing] together."

Native American perspectives were also shared in several of 900 workshops offered throughout the USSF.

"Ninety-eight percent of indigenous people died during the East to West movement," said Carrie Dann, a Western Shoshone Native American. "Why doesn't America want to talk about it?"

Dann spoke at a workshop called, "Where Have All the Indians Gone?", where attendees learned more about the plight of Native Americans as pioneers moved west during the 19th Century.

The Western Shoshone still own land in Nevada where there have been 1,000 nuclear bomb tests and where companies conduct dangerous and destructive strip mining for gold.

"They are destroying the land while exploiting it for money," Dann said. "The Earth should be taken care of and it isn't happening."

"So little attention is paid to indigenous peoples," agreed Ward Churchill, whose family is Cherokee.

It is important people have their attention drawn to the destructive practices that are destroying the Western Shoshone land, Churchill said.

"We take a lot of people to the United Nations because rallying indigenous people internationally is important," Alberto Saldamando, General Counsel for the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC), told attendees at a workshop about international efforts to mobilise indigenous peoples. The workshop was called, "Holding the U.S. accountable for discrimination against Native Americans."

The IITC works on all levels to build grassroots participation from indigenous peoples in order that they might address their concerns and work together to achieve their goals.

"We're all oppressed, just in different ways," Shauna Larson of the Indigenous Environmental Network said. "It takes everybody working together to achieve our goals."

The IITC is interested in working with groups who focus on environmental justice and women's rights because those issues overlap, Salamando said.

During "Defending Immigrant Rights," a workshop conducted in Spanish and English, presenters discussed the history of immigration in the United States, positive and negative immigration legislation, and activists' efforts in Florida to mobilise Spanish-speaking immigrants.

One presenter spoke of a five-part, three-year plan to move from defensive to offensive organising strategies focusing on local and state levels. Hispanics should work with African-Americans because of their history of struggle and oppression, she added.

"There is one objective: to respect all human beings as human beings," said Herman Martinez of the American Friends Service Committee.

"The only way to forge lasting alliances is to understand each other," said Gerald Lenoir of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration during the Immigrant Rights Plenary Session Friday. "African-Americans can no longer look at civil rights as a black and white issue."

"We are the testing ground for all the repressive issues you all face at home," said Alexis Mazon of the Coalicion de Derechos Humanos.

It is crucial for trade unions to include immigrants in the fold of organised labor and that both groups should work together to achieve their rights, said Ed Ott of the New York Central Labour Council.

"We have shown the power of people in the streets," Ruben Solis of the Southwest Workers Union said. "We want a world where everybody can fit."

"We are making history because we are making a new world," noted Glory Kilanko of Women Watch Afrika. "We want to build a network that challenges the oppressors."

"If we begin to allow the oppressors to build walls, then we are allowing them to win," Kilanko said.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38374

POLITICS-US: "We're Living a Nightmare Called Katrina"
By Matthew Cardinale
ATLANTA, Jun 29 (IPS) - Under the banner, "If another world is possible, another U.S. is necessary," 10,000 civil society activists gathered in Atlanta, Georgia Wednesday for the beginning of the first U.S. Social Forum.

A spin-off of the annual World Social Forum, the USSF aims to "send a message to other people's movements around the world that there is an active movement in the U.S. opposing U.S. policies at home and abroad", according to organisers.

During the first plenary session on the ongoing impacts of Hurricane Katrina, held in a large auditorium at Atlanta's Civic Centre Thursday, Jerome Scott of Project South said, "The whole question of the [U.S.] Gulf Coast and the response the government had... pulled the covers on all the evil things that exist in this country."

A few thousand people attended the first plenary, and at one point several hundred Hurricane Katrina victims stood up to show their presence.

"We thought this was one of the most important issues we could have here at the first U.S. Social Forum," said Scott, whose group educates and trains community leaders.

"They've got the media saying Gulf Coast recovery is slow. It's not slow. It's a massive privatisation scheme," added Monique Harden of Advocates for Environmental Human Rights.

"The only people locked out of homes not damaged were public housing residents," Harden said of New Orleans, Louisiana, after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, killing at least 1,836 people and causing more than 81 billion dollars in damages.

"We have to understand our history," stressed Mwalimu Johnson, 70, of the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana.

Johnson spoke of the influential economist from the U.S. Revolutionary War era, Adam Smith, who said "Civil government is instituted as protection for the rich against the poor," in his book, "Wealth of Nations".

"That's important because... the areas I was dealing with, how could the government allow this to occur? The idea is, the government is responsible to the elite. You don't have to wonder why the government allowed it to happen," Johnson told IPS.

"They systematically performed genocide behind the guise of a disaster," Johnson said.

"The hurt that I feel for New Orleans, point blank murder," Sharon Harshaw of the Mississippi group Coastal Women for Change said at the meeting.

Speakers and audience members emphasised that Hurricane Katrina is also symbolic of so many other problems people face in the U.S. and around the world, day to day.

"If you're working in criminal justice, you're talking about Katrina. If you're talking about health care, you're talking about Katrina. If you're talking about housing, you're talking about Katrina. We're living in a nightmare called Katrina. The source is a backwards, capitalist, racist system," one audience member said in public remarks.

The first day of the USSF began with a massive parade throughout downtown Atlanta under a scorching hot sun.

Hundreds of organisations were represented in the march, and equally, hundreds of issues cropped up on banners and signs, including workers rights, sexual orientation equality, peace, impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, compassion for immigrants, and preserving public housing, just to name a few. Large street puppets also made appearances.

The march route was changed just weeks before the Forum, when the City of Atlanta and police denied the requested permit. USSF organisers and the city came to an agreement which kept the protesters marching on downtown's visible Peachtree Street, but gave in to the city's wish to not go by City Hall.

A hundred public housing residents and advocates from Atlanta and Chicago still held a rally, however, at City Hall, one hour prior to the USSF parade. Just yards away, thousands of USSF attendees stood around during that hour, oblivious to the public housing residents -- only a short block away -- who were pleading to save their homes.

Despite removing the City Hall action from the original USSF march route, USSF organisers made little effort to publicise the public housing issue being addressed only metres away.

The march kicked off with several speeches, including by civil rights movement veteran Joseph Lowery of Atlanta.

"Our national dilemma today is not technical retardation but moral deficiency. We have a moral deficiency in establishing priorities when putting our technological advances to work for the common good," said Rev. Lowery.

"We continue as a nation to put corporate greed above social needs and we insist on relying on militaristic solutions to political and moral challenges," Lowery said.

"We have sacrificed the ideals that could make us great, on the altar of our ambition that can make us big; but big is not the same as great," Lowery said.

"We have sown the wind of mean-spiritedness toward the poor, and lack of humaneness toward the stranger at our door. There is something terribly wrong with our system of economics and values when we have disparities, when any handful of people have more than they'll ever need while millions have less than they will always need," Lowery said.

"We are torn asunder by the erosion of our civil liberties," he added. "We are damaged by the misconception that might makes right and that we can resolve every conflict by sending smart bombs on dumb missions."

Several marchers told IPS they were excited about the Social Forum, which runs through Jul. 1.

"I've never seen any diversity like this [at any other event]. It's not just white folks. I want to see groups like this keep coming together and growing. The diversity in this crowd is like nothing I've seen in another march. The more mixing the better," said Randy Aronov, an Atlanta area activist.

However, diversity of agendas also presents some challenges to having concrete gains come out of the USSF.

"It's a difficult thing to get these people, very passionate about specific issues, to organise around a single focus. It would be good... [to have some goals with a] smaller focus," said Rev. Lauren Cogswell of Atlanta's Open Door Community.

"It can bring hope, you're not alone. Especially in the South, in the city of Atlanta. It's [usually] that same 40 people that show up to every protest," Cogswell said.

No link for this one yet…

Another U.S. is Starting to Happen
By Judy Rebick

After spending five weeks in Bolivia this summer, I was convinced that the new paths out of this destructive, hateful morass we call neo-liberalism would come from those most marginalized by its greed and violence. Little did I imagine that one of the strongest signs of this direction would come from the belly of the beast itself. Ten thousand people, overwhelmingly poor and working class, majority people of colour, at least half women, and including a massive number of youth gathered in Atlanta Georgia at the end of June for the US Social Forum (USSF) signaling what could be the birth of the most powerful social movement the U.S. has ever seen.

“Never in my wildest imagination, did I think I would ever see something like this in the United States,” Carlos Torres, a Chilean refugee now living in Canada told me half way through the forum. The sentiment was repeated again and again by Latin American visitors who were there as emissaries from the World Social Forum (WSF). It was radical, it was militant, it was feminist, it was anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist, it was queer, it was loud and lively and it was brimming with love, kindness and a deep sense of solidarity. The slogan of the USSF was “Another World is Possible, Another US is necessary.” It was interpreted both as another U.S. and another “us” meaning the left has to reinvent itself.

And it was a major step forward for the World Social Forum movement. The idea of a U.S. social forum came from a couple of people who went to the 2001 WSF in Brazil and then brought a few more with them in 2002. They formed a group called Grassroots Global Justice and began the process of organizing a U.S. Social Forum, firmly in the WSF spirit. One of them Fred Ascarate, then with Jobs for Justice, now with the AFL-CIO, explained to the opening plenary that “It took this long because we wanted to do it right by building the necessary relationships among the grass roots organizations and ensuring the right outcomes.”

The idea came from the WSF but they took it further than anyone else except perhaps the WSF in Mumbai. In Nairobi, poor people demanded a significant place in the WSF planning process and in Atlanta, they had one. The National Planning Committee represented what they call national and regional “base-building” groups, whose base is mostly poor and working class people. It seemed to me that the forum shifted the balance of power on the American left to the poor and oppressed from the middle class. Time will tell what impact this will have.

Every plenary focused on building alliances among the myriad of grass roots movements across the United States. Most emphasis was on a “black-brown” alliance to combat the racism that divides African Americans from their Latino and immigrant brothers and sisters. But there was a lot of focus on student/labour alliances and environmental issues were completely linked to social justice issues. Support for gays, lesbians and transgendered people who have been major targets of the Bush administration seemed universal. The forum ended in a People’s Movements Assembly, where various regional and issue caucuses presented their resolutions. Several new national networks were formed and the bonds of solidarity were deeply forged among those who are usually divided. People left with the commitment to organize social forums in their regions, cities and neighbourhoods. Over the course of the week, the social forum became a synonym for creating a movement of movements everywhere.

“People are asking me when Atlanta has ever seen something like this “Jerome Scott of Project South and veteran Atlanta activist speaking of the opening march. “I’ve been reflecting on that and my answer is Atlanta has never seen anything like this. The Civil Rights movement was mostly African American and last year’s May 1st (immigration rights) demo was mostly Latinos but this march was the most multi-national action I have ever seen. It was beautiful.”

Most of the 900 workshops over four days were filled to the brim with activists sharing strategies on everything from food security to community/labour alliances to a new taking back our cities movement against gentrification. Women, people of colour, and young people were in majority in the plenary speakers. There was not a single left-wing star among them. In a culture obsessed with celebrity, the organizing committee decided they didn’t need any, even the good ones. None of the big NGO’s in the United States were on the planning committee. There is a big debate in the United States about what they call the NGO-industrial complex. The idea that foundation-funded, majority white, centrist and Washington dominated NGO’s and think tanks have hijacked the left was present throughout the forum. These groups were welcome to participate but not in a leadership capacity.

Another extraordinary feature of the forum was the role of indigenous people who led the opening march and participated on several panels as well as their own plenary. Much of the vision came from them. After talking about the melting of the glaciers, Faith Gemmill from the REDOIL (Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Land) in Alaska said, “Our people have a prophesy that there will come a time in the history of humanity when people are in danger of destroying ourselves. When that time comes, a voice will arise from the North to warn us. That time is now. I was sent here to give you part of our burden to speak up now against the greed.”

And Tom Goldtooth who represents the Indigenous Environmental Network on the national planning committee said, “"We must talk from the heart and shake hands with one another. A prayer has taken place that this spirit is going to grow. No matter who we are we must demand not reform of a broken system but transformation. We need to organize from the grassroots." And many did speak from the heart.

The plenary on Katrina was stunning. If the first American Revolution was started by a callous colonial power dumping tea into Boston Harbour, the second one might be caused by a callous, racist, arrogant government thinking it could wipe out the hard fought place of Afro-Americans in New Orleans after a storm provided them the opportunity. Monique Hardin from Advocates for Environmental Human Rights opened the forum saying, “New Orleans is a man-made disaster. Bush is the man and Bush is the disaster. Reconstruction on the Gulf Coast is a massive privatization scheme to destroy people of colour and poor white people.” Dr. Beverley Wright speaking from the floor said, “our parents and our grandparents fought to buy a house to pass on to their family and they are trying to take that away from us when they talk about turning the place we lived in East New Orleans into a green space. They’re not talking about turning the place rich white folks live into green space. “ Another community leader said, “Katrina is both a reality and a symbol. If you work in justice, if you work in health care, if your work in housing, you are in Katrina.”

One of the most powerful speeches was from Javier Gallardo from the New Orleans Workers Centre[1], A guest work from Peru, he explained that when African Americans were displaced, hundreds of workers, like him, had been brought in from Latin America for Gulf Coast reconstruction and their employers names are on the passports. Their ability to stay in the U.S. is dependent on the employer. He said that there is now a practice that when the employer is finished with the workers, he sells them to another employer for $2,000 each. “What is that?,” he asked. “We call it modern day slavery. They want to divide us but the old slaves and the new slaves can join together and together we can defeat them,” he continued to thunderous applause. The old slaves/new slaves metaphor wove its way through the rest of the forum in the powerful idea of a black-brown alliance, that veteran activists said would transform left-wing politics in the United States and especially in the South where the vast majority of the working class is now black and brown.

Another impressive feature of the forum was the handling of conflict. When the Palestinian contingent objected that they were the only group not permitted to speak for themselves in the anti-war plenary, the organizers read their letter of protest to the next plenary. When the report of the indigenous caucus was stopped at the end of their allotted time by the moderator of the Peoples Movement Assembly by removing their mike, they took grave offense and felt silenced. Within ten minutes most of the indigenous people in the room were on the stage with the consent of the organizers. What could have been an explosive divisive moment with a lot of anger and hurt was handled with incredible skill by both permitting the protest and making sure it was interpreted in a way that created unity rather than division. I had the feeling that a new culture of solidarity was being born, one we tried for in the feminist movement but never quite accomplished.

Of course there were weaknesses in the forum. While strongly rooted in the traditions of the Civil Rights movement by the symbolic location in Atlanta and the presence of veteran civil rights activists, there was less discussion of working class or even feminist history. Yet the impact of those movements were strongly felt in the powerful female leadership present everywhere and the strong emphasis on workers issues and organizing. None of the big environmental groups were present. While the issue of the war and U.S. imperialism had pride of place, the mainstream anti-war movement had little presence. The forum organizers bent the stick towards poor, working class, indigenous, queer and people of colour groups and perhaps this was necessary to create the kind of movement really capable of making change in the United States.

In her famous speech at the 2002 World Social Forum in Brazil, Arundhati Roy famously said, “Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing. “
It wasn’t a quiet day in Atlanta but I could hear her shouting there, “What do we want? Justice. How will we get it? People Power.”

Judy Rebick is a long-time socialist feminist from Toronto. She holds the Canadian AutoWorkers Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy at Ryerson University and is the founder of rabble.ca. Her latest book is an oral history of the Canadian Women’s Movement called Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution (Penguin).

And, here’s a couple blog entries I’ve found about the USSF:

http://www.mwsocialforum.org/node/1248

http://thirdwavefoundation.blogspot.com/

---please post links to other blogs or articles about the ussf so I can update this compilation!

edited to add:

this indybay page has links to several different articles, blogas, and radio shows:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/06/29/18431645.php

and here's a new article, which I ahven't read yet...hope it's good!
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/07/the-us-social-forum-creating-an-alternative-world/

The US Social Forum: Creating an Alternative World
by Jason Del Gandio / July 9th, 2007

The first US Social Forum occurred this past week, meeting in Atlanta, Georgia from June 27th to July 1st. Approximately ten thousand people participated in hundreds of events addressing all kinds of issues, concerns, strategies, and visions. Immigration rights and Gulf Coast rebuilding were obviously major topics. Indigenous rights, movement building, and US imperialism received much attention. And issues of race, class, sexuality, and gender (particularly transgender) were very notable. These are all important and necessary for creating a different, more humane United States. But from my personal perspective, the US Social Forum cut across issues and highlighted something else: the possibility of creating an alternative world within the already existing world.

The slogan, “Another World is Possible!” probably seems cliché by now. We are all too familiar with this ear-popping phrase and its evocation of local-and-global justice. But is another world really possible? Does this phrase really point to something different? Are we really capable of creating something new, fresh, and exciting? After attending the US Social Forum, I say yes, yes, and yes.

It was on the third day of the Forum when it hit me: this Forum points to something different. But in that moment I also realized something else — that changing the entire world is probably not possible. The world seems too big, too complex, and too far away to change entirely. But creating an alternative world within the already existing world does seem possible. My realization is not really new or original. Plenty of people have made similar arguments throughout the ages: We are capable of creating our own separate world, of creating a fully functioning alternative society, of creating an autonomous community within a larger community. The US Social Forum affirms this possibility and that’s why it was so powerful for me personally. It allowed me to sense the future, to see the alternative, to touch the intangible.

In the span of a few days, thousands of people from across the country came together under a common goal — to discuss the state of the world and strategize for change. But this common goal did not erase or negate our diversity. While we talked, shared, and communicated with one another, we also argued and debated. Forum operations were often criticized, workshops got heated, and one prominent organizer was even cream-pied (for something she allegedly did eight years ago). All this unity/and/friction highlights our individual and collective ties. We are individuals with particular biases, concerns, needs, wants, and visions. But we are also part of a collective, bound together by an inter-communal vision of a better day: a day when the world is no longer controlled by war, profit, competition, occupation, exploitation, narrow minded “isms,” top-down paternalisms, and deeply ingrained fears of a truly open, planetary existence.

The US Social Forum stands in contradistinction to such unpleasantries. We seek to usurp this empire of empires and implant new realities. Sure, we all have our own agendas and our own ideas about the best approach. But there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it seems natural to the human species. Our personal experiences cultivate our personal concerns. But our individual views do not have to compete with one another. We can stand side by side and co-exist peacefully … even as we argue. We can have dialogue and debate. And we can even help one another achieve our goals and dreams. There is political space for all of us.

That’s the message of the US Social Forum: we are capable of creating mutually shared space even as we disagree over the specifics of our politics. Rather than having one world, we can have many worlds. And these many worlds can link up, crisscross, and create networks of people, places, ideas, and ways of life. In doing so, we give birth to a twenty-first century, global alternative. Does this change the whole world entirely? No, not necessarily. But does it create an active, self-creating world of participatory values and agendas? Yes, and this new world can exist (antagonistically) within the already existing world.

The US Social Forum occurred in Atlanta amongst all the capitalism, consumerism, apathy, indifference, and personal and cultural tensions of any major city. But it occurred nonetheless, and successfully so. We came together amidst the world we are against and still affirmed not only our vision but also our ability to create an alternative reality. For five days we systematically practiced our values of open, inclusive, participatory democracy. The Forum was far from perfect. But such imperfection is part of the twenty-first century alternative. We no longer look for a perfect world. Instead, we actively move toward a better world, one in which each individual is given the opportunity to contribute to our collective creation. That was achieved (however imperfectly) in Atlanta.

I realize that my description may suffer from romanticization. But a vision without romance is lifeless, hopeless, and boring. I also realize that my description is not very instructive. What else needs to be done? What more must we do? What’s the next step? Such questions are far too complicated for this brief essay. But I can say this: I know what I experienced and I know that I’m hopeful about the future. In the days and years to come we will understand the US Social Forum as another episode of liberation — Zapatismo, Bolivarianism, the Battle of Seattle, Genoa, the other Forums, etc. We will then understand these brief and fleeting moments as the building blocks of our newly created world of interconnected participatory democracies. We will then realize that the future was already created and it only took time for it to become reality.

Jason Del Gandio is a writer and activist, and lecturer at Temple University (Philadelphia). He specializes in social commentary, global justice issues, and the philosophy of human communication. He's also working on a book entitled Rhetoric for Radicals: A Handbook for Twenty-First Century Activists. He can be reached at rhetoric4radicals@gmail.com .

and, well, of course at the ussf website there's some stuff...here's a link to photos from the forum
http://movementphotos.org/main.php

and Max from the editorial collective of Left Turn recently posted this account:
http://ideasforaction.blogspot.com/

Max's account is long, but really good reading, I recomend it. (I couldn't post it here because this post is too long!!)

A report on a GI Resistance meeting at the USSF
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/327/1/

and here's a blog post from the Student/Farmworker Alliance
http://www.sfalliance.org/2007ussf.html