An Injury to One is An Injury to All:
A Conference in Defense of Civil Liberties and to End Indefinite Detention

Featuring:

Glen Greenwald - Author and Guardian Columnist

Sahar F. Aziz - Civil Rights Legal Scholar

Shahid Buttar - Executive Director, Bill of Rights Defense Committee

Steve Downs - Executive Director, National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms

Nancy Murray - Director of Education, ACLU of Massachusetts

Ruth Wilson Glimore - Scholar, Activist and Prison Abolitionist

John Woodruff - International Representative of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE)

And many others!


Saturday December 8, 2012
Semesters Hall, Student Center
Central Connecticut State University
New Britain, CT


Dear Friends,

Our movements and our communities are under assault. Rarely a week goes by without the passage of a new repressive law, grand jury subpoena, raid, sentencing, or court ruling targeting our movements. No minute goes by without new deportations, arrests, illegal frisks, frame-ups and prison sentences that divide and repress immigrant, African American, Latino, Muslim, Arab, South Asian and other communities targeted by our government. The repressive apparatus is strengthened daily. "Secure Communities" or S-Comm, which connects local police forces to federal immigration authorities, has been implemented in nearly every state and will be universal by 2013. The right of the president to detain anyone (including U.S. citizens) without trial has been codified into law, and is now being defended in the courts. The NSA's right to spy on our e-mails and phone-calls without even suspicion of wrong-doing was just approved once again by the House.

Deportations have grown to roughly 400,000 a year - between 1.5 and 2 times the rate during 2001-2008. 1 out of every 8 people in prison on planet earth is African American. (about one in four is American) In the last four years double the number of whistle-blowers have been prosecuted under the WWI Espionage act than in all previous years combined.

The last few months alone are stunning:

• In April, 2012 Tarek Mehanna began serving a 17 and one half year sentence for writings he placed online and a trip to Yemen.
• Between August and October, 2012 federal courts jailed three young Pacific Northwest anarchists for refusing to testify in grand-jury fishing operations. All three have spent significant time in solitary confinement. One of them - Leah Plante - was told she would be in solitary for her entire sentence of 18 months.
• On August 28, 2012 Dr. Shakir Hamoodi, an Iraqi-American engineer who spoke out against the invasion of Iraq, began serving a three year sentence for sending money to his family in Iraq which they needed for food and medicine during the U.S. sanctions regime.
• On Monday, October 29, 2012 the Supreme Court declined to hear the case of the Holy Land Five - five leaders of what had been the largest Muslim charitable organization in the U.S. - who are serving sentences ranging between 15 and 65 years for giving charity to Palestinians.

But on December 8th residents and activists from Connecticut and the region will meet in New Britain to learn about each others struggles and make connections necessary to mount a serious response to this many-sided offensive. December 8th can be a critical step in building a movement capable of defending our brothers and sisters when they are targeted for their speech, their political activity, race, religion, or nation of origin; that can prevent deportations; that can expose and challenge racial profiling and the mass-incarceration of generations; that can defend workers organizing in their work-places; that can overturn reactionary laws that restrict our basic civil freedoms.

There is now one month before the December 8th conference. We are at a critical moment where we need to buy plane tickets for our speakers and finish gathering the funds to bring this event together. (Sahar Aziz is coming from Texas and Glen Greenwald is coming all the way from Brazil!) Between transportation, speaker Honoraria, and publicity we need an estimated $6,500. This is also an ideal time to get the word out far and wide. Please contact us if you can contribute financially or in any other way.

To endorse, contribute, help out, or for more information contact Dan at 860-985-4576 ordaniel.adam.piper@gmail.com

Send advanced registration fee, lit table fees or contributions to:

C/O of Dan Piper

103 Elizabeth street

Hartford, CT 06105

Make checks payable to: "CT Coalition to Stop Indefinite Detention"

For more information see:
http://ctstopindefinitedetention.wordpress.com/
or http://www.facebook.com/StopIndefiniteDetention?fref=ts

Endorsing organizations (in formation):
Bill of Rights Defense Committee; National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms; Project SALAM; New England United; United National Anti-war Coalition; Committee to Stop FBI Repression; Connecticut Green Party; National Lawyers Guild-CT; American Friends Service Committee, Western MA; Muslim Student Association of CCSU; Stop the Raids, Trinity College; We Refuse to Be Enemies; West Hartford Citizens for Peace and Justice; CT United for Peace; Hartford Catholic Workers; Latin American Students Organization of CCSU; Connecticut Coalition for Peace and Justice-Hartford; Bethlehem (NY) Neighbors for Peace; Middle East Crisis Committee; Central Connecticut Chapter of Veterans for Peace; Occupy Hartford; Manchester Peace Coalition; Greater Hartford Coalition on Cuba.

Hosted by CCSU YSA

Initiated by the Connecticut Coalition to Stop Indefinite Detention

(Contact Marilyn (marilynl@alumni.neu.edu) if you are interested in carpooling from Boston area)