WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

2 Out of 3 Oppose Increasing U.S. Military Spending, the U.S. Is Boosting It to Record Levels

Early in February, the Republican-controlled Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed new federal budget legislation that increased U.S. military spending by $165 billion over the next two years. Remarkably, though, a Gallup public opinion poll, conducted only days before, found that only 33 percent of Americans favored increasing U.S. military spending, while 65 percent opposed it, either backing reductions (34 percent) or maintenance of the status quo (31 percent).  What is even more remarkable for a nation where military spending has grown substantially over the decades, is that, during the past 49 years that Gallup has asked Americans their opinions on U.S. military spending, in only one year (1981) did a majority of Americans (in that case, 51 percent) favor increasing it. During the other years, clear and sometimes very substantial majorities opposed spending more on the military.    More

If We Want to Support Refugees, We Need To End the Wars That Create Them

With the administration creating such a hostile atmosphere, the role of sanctuary to protect vulnerable communities has become even more critical. But in the long term, sanctuary has to mean more than just providing refuge, or filing legal briefs on behalf of the displaced, though these services are vital…  The Costs of War project estimates that 76 countries are now part of Washington's “War on Terror”—many of which were named in various iterations of Trump's Muslim Ban. In effect, the administration is once again trying to ban migrants from the very countries where the United States is dropping bombs, selling arms, supporting dictators or otherwise contributing to instability and repression.  In an inspiring show of solidarity, airport rallies and subsequent mobilizations opened their arms to immigrants and refugees from the Muslim world. But in something of a contrast with the movements of the 1980s, which directly connected the refugee crisis to U.S.-backed wars in Latin America, fewer contemporary voices have raised questions about why refugees might have left their countries, or what role U.S. violence might've played in displacing them.     More

West Virginia Teachers and the Working-Class Revolt

Faced with jobs that don’t pay enough to make ends meet, health-care costs that break the budget, and public services exposed to countless rounds of cutbacks despite a growing economy, working people will push back. And, like the teachers across the state of West Virginia who walked out on strike for nine days and won meaningful raises and a freeze in health costs for all the state’s public employees, working people who push back sometimes win. The simple message that it’s possible to fight back and win is powerful. It is surely resonating with teachers in Oklahoma, who, like their counterparts in West Virginia, are among the most underpaid in the nation: They are preparing for their own statewide rebellion against the funding cuts that have harmed the education of Oklahoma’s children and left their teachers struggling to get by.    More

BUILDING POWER BEYOND THE FIGHT FOR $15

There's no question that the Fight for $15 has been transformative: In the last five years, more than 19 million US workers have won a total of $62 billion in raises. In Ontario, Canada, another 1.7 million workers just saw pay boosts of up to 21 percent.  That's great, but consider this: Trump's December tax bill enriched the wealthiest 1 percent of US households by $1.2 trillion. In one fell swoop, Congress and Trump offset, by a multiple of 20, the income wrested from corporations by low-wage US workers through years of struggle, walkouts, civil disobedience, marches, organizing and political advocacy…  That's because at the root, the problem isn't income inequality; it's power inequality under capitalism -- the yawning gap in political, economic, and cultural authority and control maintained by big business and finance elites at the expense of the rest of us…  The leaders of today's Poor People's Campaign are quick to emphasize the need to build unity across race, gender and gender identity, and immigration status…  Today, Rev. Barber told YES! Magazine recently, "We have to begin by refusing the labels that have been used to divide us. The key to helping poor white people see through the lie is to show them how the politicians who play to their racial fears actually hurt them the most."     More

THE MISSING MILLIONS OF OBAMA VOTERS

Trump voters who previously voted for Mr. Obama are the subject of intense fascination because they are viewed as providing critical insights into the racial and class dynamics that helped determine the outcome of the election. On the other side, many analysts see Romney voters who flipped to Mrs. Clinton as an illustration of how the Democratic Party now survives in significant part by appealing to more upscale voters.  Frustratingly, however, these perspectives play down the importance of a crucial group of disaffected voters: those who voted for Mr. Obama in 2012 but then failed to go to the polls in 2016. Because this group is disproportionately young and black, this erasure is racially tinged.  Our analysis shows that while 9 percent of Obama 2012 voters went for Mr. Trump in 2016, 7 percent — that’s more than four million missing voters — stayed home. Three percent voted for a third-party candidate. We would hardly urge Democratic strategists to abandon Obama-to-Trump voters. However, Obama-to-nonvoters are a relatively liberal segment of the country who have largely been ignored.    More

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NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong

A DANGEROUS ISLAMOPHOBIC WARMONGER AND A CIA TORTURER

SHOULD NOT BE CONFIRMED BY THE SENATE

Trump’s proposed elevation of current CIA directory to Secretary of State, and his replacement by his CIA deputy Gina Haspels should be raising alarm bells from one end of the country to the other.  Mike Pompeo, who has made numerous bigoted statements about Muslims is also an ultra-hawk on Iran and fierce critic of the Iran nuclear deal.  An admirer of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Pompeo also has a "hawkish history" on Israel. His views on Israel and Iran are interrelated, since Israel’s number-one foreign policy priority has been to promote hostile confrontation between the US and Iran. Needless to say, Pompeo’s proposed elevation to Secretary of State is being celebrated by the rightwing in Israel and by Israel’s lobbyists in the US. Haspels was in charge of CIA “black sites” where kidnapped suspects were illegally transferred for torture;  she was also responsible for destroying the CIA torture tapes before they could be viewed by Congressional investigators.

SPRINGTIME FOR IRANO/ISLAMOPHOBES

Pompeo’s Islamophobia is well documented, and any questions about it should be answered by Tuesday’s excellent recap by Dean Obeidallah in The Daily Beast,“Mike Pompeo’s Disturbingly Consistent Friendships with Anti-Muslim Bigots.”In 2016, Pompeo reportedly accepted the “National Security Eagle Award” from ACT for America, which, according to the Anti-Defamation League, “propagates the hateful conspiracy theory that Muslims are infiltrating US institutions in order to impose Sharia law [and] stokes irrational fear of Muslims via a number of false claims that headscarves are a sign of radicalization, and that 25 percent of Muslims approve of terrorism.”  … Videos of Pompeo speaking to church groups suggest that his animosity towards to Islam is rooted in a belief that Islam and Christianity are at war.  “This threat to America,” Pompeo told a Wichita church group in 2014 (and first reported by The Intercept’s Lee Fang in November 2016), is from a minority of Muslims “who deeply believe that Islam is the way and the light and the only answer.”  … Since becoming CIA director, he has kept up his extremely hostile rhetoric against Iran, quite possibly in an attempt to provoke Tehran to renounce the JCPOA and/or to strengthen hardline forces in the Islamic Republic opposed to rapprochement with the West.    More

Trump’s and Pompeo’s Path to Nuclear Crisis

The prospective replacement of Rex Tillerson with Mike Pompeo clears one of the last apparent hurdles between Donald Trump and his destruction of a significant diplomatic achievement that has been squarely in the interests of the United States, of nuclear nonproliferation, and of the containment of conflict in the Middle East…  . Pompeo also has a long record of Islamophobia and Iranophobia that is more visceral than cognitive. The extreme to which Pompeo is willing to go to act on his obsession about Iran is perhaps best illustrated by his tendentious and irregular effort—taking a page from the playbook of those who sold the Iraq War to the American public—to conjure up an alliance between Iran and al-Qaeda, even though no such alliance has existed and those two players are on opposite sides of most sectarian and geopolitical divides that matter.    More

Gina Haspel Should Be Answering for Her Torture Crimes, Not Heading the CIA

Gina Haspel is not considered some extremist in the CIA community. In fact, President Obama’s director of central intelligence, John Brennan, was on MSNBC all throughout the day yesterday singing her praises. In fact, at one point, an MSNBC anchor asked John Brennan—or said to John Brennan, “Now, you demoted her when you were at the CIA.” And he goes, “No, no, no, no, no. I didn’t demote her. In fact, she’s wonderful and has all this integrity. And she was tasked with very difficult operations, you know, and persevered and did it with gusto.” And, you know, then you have James Clapper, same thing. It was a lovefest on the so-called like opposition media yesterday throughout the day…  Gina Haspel does not belong as head of the CIA. She belongs in front of a judge, answering to what she was doing, running a torture operation at a black site in Thailand and destroying evidence.    More

The “Just Following Orders” Defense for CIA Director-Designate Gina Haspel

During the Nuremberg Trials after World War II, several Nazis, including top German generals Alfred Jodl and Wilhelm Keitel, claimed they were not guilty of the tribunal’s charges because they had been acting at the directive of their superiors. Ever since, this justification has been popularly known as the “Nuremberg defense,” in which the accused states they were “only following orders.”  The Nuremberg judges rejected the Nuremberg defense, and both Jodl and Keitel were hanged. The United Nations International Law Commission later codified theunderlying principle from Nuremberg as “the fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”  This is likely the most famous declaration in the history of international law and is as settled as anything possibly can be.  However, many members of the Washington, D.C. elite are now stating that it, in fact, is a legitimate defense for American officials who violate international law to claim they were just following orders.    More

Torture-Tainted CIA and State Nominees Recall Failure to Prosecute Bush-Era Abuses

What the “debate” over bringing back torture highlighted, and what the current nominations of torture advocates to lead the State Department and CIA drive home, is why prosecutions of the Bush-era CIA torture program were essential, and why it was so damaging that the Obama administration shirked its responsibilities in this regard for eight years.   As human rights advocates have long maintained, prosecuting Bush administration and CIA officials involved with the torture of terrorism suspects in the post-9/11 period is needed so that torture is not repeated in the future by subsequent administrations who may consider themselves above the law. But clearly, by blocking criminal investigations into the policy’s architects, Obama did very little in a practical sense to ensure that those methods are not used again. And now that we are faced with the prospect of torture-tainted heads of the CIA and State Department, we are reminded once again of the importance of upholding the laws of the land.   https://consortiumnews.com/2018/03/14/torture-tainted-cia-and-state-nominees-recall-failures-to-prosecute-bush-era-abuses/More

END AMERICA’S WAR IN YEMEN

Of all the facets of our cherished democracy that have begun to erode, few erosions are more horrifying than Congress’ abdication of its duty to debate and vote on whether or not we go to war. Of all the people that have suffered the consequences of this erosion, few have suffered them more acutely than the people of Yemen, residents of a country where unauthorized U.S. military action has helped give rise to the worst humanitarian disaster in the world. Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) introduced legislation last week aimed at confronting this erosion and its consequences in Yemen—legislation to end the U.S. military’s role in Yemen’s civil war unless and until Congress authorizes it.   More

The bill number is S.J.Res 54: Introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders [I-VT]; Cosponsors so far Sen. Elizabeth Warren and now Ed Markey, [D-MA];   Sen. Lee, Mike [R-UT], Sen. Murphy, Christopher [D-CT]; Sen. Booker, Cory A. [D-NJ], Sen. Durbin, Richard J. [D-IL]; Sen. Leahy, Patrick J. [D-VT]; Sen. Feinstein, Dianne [D-CA]

GOP Senator Long Critical Of Yemen War Now Helping Trump Block Debate On It

Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) spent much of 2017 urging greater accountability for the American role in the civil war in Yemen ― presenting himself as one of few GOP critics of the Trump administration’s policies and aligning with prominent critics of U.S.-backed Saudi-United Arab Emirates operations in Yemen, like Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and a bevy of national security experts on the left and right.  Now he is trying to undercut the clearest shot war skeptics have of forcing the U.S. to change course.

Young and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) on Thursday quietly filed new legislation, first reported by HuffPost, in response to a bill unveiled last week by Murphy and Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah)…  The Young-Shaheen camp maintains that its bill is a pragmatic alternative given the Defense Department’s view that the War Powers Resolution does not apply in the case of Yemen and the likelihood that Trump would veto the original Yemen resolution.    More

Pentagon to Congress: You Can’t Stop Us from Fueling Saudi Arabia’s War in Yemen

On February 28, Senators Mike Lee (R-UT), Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced Senate Joint Resolution 54, a resolution that seeks to end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. Even before the resolution was introduced, the Department of Defense responded with the extraordinary claim that Congress lacked the legal authority to “override the President’s determination as Commander in Chief” and end the United States’ involvement in the conflict… It is bad enough the extent to which the Defense Department has treated Congressional silence as a blank check to wage war wherever and whenever it wants. The Pentagon’s claim that Congress lacks the power to limit U.S. involvement in the Yemeni civil war is an even more serious encroachment on Congress’s constitutional authority over the military.     More

Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is planning a visit to the United States early this year, in order to seek more US investment and military collaboration. 

Bin Salman is scheduled to make a stop at MIT, an institution which has worked closely with Saudi Arabia on issues such as cybersecurity and higher education. We call on MIT to revoke its invitation to MBS, a power hungry autocrat who has made bloocy war in Yemen and provoked regional instability.

Massachusetts Peace Action and our allies are planning to protest MBS during his visit at MIT, expected in late March or early April. Please join us in order to show bin Salman that his violent actions in Yemen are not acceptable, and to show MIT and the US government that we will not accept their collaboration with the Saudi absolute monarchy. See more information here. Please sign this petition to protest MBS at MIT.

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THE FOG OF WAR IN AMERICA

Overseas, the United States is engaged in real wars in which bombs are dropped, missiles are launched, and people (generally not Americans) are killed, wounded, uprooted, and displaced. Yet here at home, there’s nothing real about those wars.  Here, it’s phony war all the way. In the last 17 years of “forever war,” this nation hasn’t for one second been mobilized. Taxes are being cut instead of raised.  Wartime rationing is a faint memory from the World War II era.  No one is being required to sacrifice a thing…  We are, in fact, kept isolated from Washington’s wars, even as America’s warriors traverse a remarkable expanse of the globe, from the Philippines through the Greater Middle East deep into Africa.  As conflicts flare and sputter, ramp up and down and up again, Americans have been placed in a form of behavioral lockdown…  Keeping the people deliberately demobilized and in the dark about the costs and carnage of America’s wars follows a pattern of governmental lying and deceit that stretches from the Vietnam War to the Iraq Wars of 1991 and 2003, to military operations in Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere today.     More

THE IRAQ DEATH TOLL 15 YEARS AFTER THE U.S. INVASION

Of the countries where the U.S. and its allies have been waging war since 2001, Iraq is the only one where epidemiologists have actually conducted comprehensive mortality studies based on the best practices… Two such reports on Iraq came out in the prestigious The Lancet medical journal, first in 2004 and then in 2006. The 2006 study estimated that about 600,000 Iraqis were killed in the first 40 months of war and occupation in Iraq, along with 54,000 nonviolent but still war-related deaths…  A 2015 report by Physicians for Social Responsibility, Body Count: Casualty Figures After 10 Years of the “War on Terror”, found the 2006 Lancet study more reliable than other mortality studies conducted in Iraq, citing its robust study design, the experience and independence of the research team, the short time elapsed since the deaths it documented and its consistency with other measures of violence in occupied Iraq…  In June 2007, a British polling firm, Opinion Research Business (ORB), conducted a further study and estimated that 1,033,000 Iraqis had been killed by then… from July 2007 to the present using revised figures from Iraq Body Count, we estimate that 2.4 million Iraqis have been killed since 2003 as a result of our country’s illegal invasion, with a minimum of 1.5 million and a maximum of 3.4 million.    More

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ISRAEL, PALESTINE, GAZA. . . and the US

Israeli Parliament Advances 'Jewish Nation-State Bill'

After seven years of delays, the Israeli governing parties have agreed the final terms of controversial new legislation that would define Israel exclusively as "the nation-state of the Jewish people".  The bill is now expected to be fast-tracked through the Israeli parliament and on to the statute books in the coming weeks. Approval by the parliament's justice committee this week of the Basic Law, which carries much greater weight than normal legislation, marks a dangerous turning-point for Palestinians, according to analysts. Amir Ohana, the committee's chair, called it the "law of all laws", while a government minister termed it "Zionism's flagship bill". It effectively blocks any chance for Israel's large Palestinian minority - one in five of the population - to reform Israel in the future into a normal, Western-style democracy.   More

Politicians Campaign on Free Speech While Voting to Penalize Boycotts of Israel

Politicians around the country are seizing upon highly publicized episodes of conservatives faced with harassment and heckling on college campuses by responding with a wave of legislation supposedly aimed at preserving free speech rights for campus speakers. But that commitment, while draped in the mantle of a principled defense of the First Amendment, does not always extend to speakers who criticize Israel and its policies…  In Congress, a bipartisan group of lawmakers have sponsored a series of resolutions and hearings to highlight the threat to free speech on college campuses, while many of the same members have sponsored efforts go even further than state-level anti-BDS laws, pushing to impose criminal and civil penalties on organizations that engage in BDS activism.   More

U.S., Israeli troops train together in mock Mideast village

The Israeli military hosted U.S. Marines this week for an urban combat drill in a mock-up of a generic Middle East village, sharing know-how and signaling the allies’ shared interests as their leaders close ranks on a host of regional issues.   “We are willing to work and train together, and if God wills it, if we ever need to be side by side, then we will,” Lieutenant-Colonel Marcus Mainz of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit told Reuters during the exercise at Israel’s Zeelim base.  His troops joined Israeli special forces regiments to practise battle formation, helicopter deployment and medical evacuations in a mock-up village in the desert, complete with Arabic graffiti and a fake mosque.    More

HOW STEPHEN HAWKING SUPPORTED THE PALESTINIAN CAUSE

Hawking, who had motor neurone disease, made headlines in May 2013 when he decided to boycott a high-profile conference inIsrael where he was scheduled to speak.  The physicist was working at the Cambridge University in the UK at the time.  The Presidential Conference, an academic event held in Jerusalem, was being hosted by the late Israeli President Shimon Peres.  In aletter Hawking sent to the organisers on May 3, he said the "policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster". "I accepted the invitation to the Presidential Conference with the intention that this would not only allow me to express my opinion on the prospects for a peace settlement but also because it would allow me to lecture on the West Bank. "However, I have received a number of emails from Palestinian academics. They are unanimous that I should respect the boycott. In view of this, I must withdraw from the conference.  "Had I attended, I would have stated my opinion that the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster," the letter read.     More

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OTHER EVENTS

Sunday, March 18:  Prayer Vigil at the ICE Detention Center, 2-3pm, South Bay House of Corrections

20 Bradston Street, Boston.  Please join us for the next in our series of Prayer Vigils at the ICE Detention Center in Boston. At these vigils, we come together as a visible symbol to our siblings in ICE detention, to tell them that they are not forgotten. At the same time, we come together as a visible symbol of our frustration with an immigration system that is designed to separate families and deny people their humanity.  We also come together to commit to taking real, meaningful action for change. The vigil will be an opportunity to learn about the many ongoing projects and campaigns that need our support, as together we build a more just society.

Tuesday, March 20: US-Russian Relations: What's Next? 4:30pm to 6:00pm, Building E25, 111 45 CARLETON ST, Cambridge.  Speakers: Barry Posen (MIT), Angela Stent (Georgetown) and Andrei Kozyrev (Russia's first Foreign Minister)  Co-sponsors:  MIT Center for International Studies, MIT Security Studies Program, MIT-Russia Program

Wednesday, March 21: Catherine E. Lhamon: “Children Can’t Wait: Why Congress Should Declare a Federal Right to Public Education” 12:00-1:15pm, Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East, Harvard Law School, CambridgeWith an introduction by Harvard Law School Dean John F. Manning.  Doors open at 11:45 AM. Lunch provided.  Catherine E. Lhamon is the Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. President Obama appointed Lhamon to a six-year term on the Commission on December 15, 2016, and the Commission unanimously confirmed the President’s designation of Lhamon to chair the Commission on December 28, 2016. Lhamon also litigates civil rights cases at the National Center for Youth Law, where she has been Of Counsel since October 2017.

Wednesday March 21: The Women’s March: Stories of Energy, Unity, and Activism,  6:00 PM - 8:00 PM Main Library Lecture Hall, 449 Broadway, Cambridge. Documentary film and discussion, including DPP’s Hayat Imam.

Get directions Screening of the new documentary Women’s March (30 mins) exploring democracy, human rights, and what it means to stand up for your values in today’s America. Following the film, we will have a panel discussion with local women who are creating powerful movements in our community.

Thursday, March 22 : 'The Arc of Water Injustice from Palestine to Standing Rock: A Forum on the Threat to Indigenous Water Resources'    6:30 pm, Encuentro 5  (9 A Hamilton Place - off Tremont Street across from Park Street Station) Speakers: Nidal al Azraq A Palestinian refugee from the Aida Refugee camp who is now Executive Director of1for3.org, a US-based organization focused on water, health and environmental work in West Bank refugee camps; Chung-Wha Hong The Executive Director of Grassroots International which partners with communities building power to protect their rights to land, food and water; Mahtowin Munro

Co-leader of United American Indians of New England (UAINE) and the lead organizer for Indigenous Peoples Day Massachusetts;Mark Kenneth Tilsen An Ogala Lakota poet and educator from Porcupine, South Dakota who served as a non-violent direct action trainer and police liaison at Standing Rock. The forum will be preceded by a Stand Out for Water Justice at Downtown Crossing from 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm.  Your signs and water issues are welcome.

Monday, March 26: Richard Rothstein: “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America”  12:00-1:00pm, Wasserstein Hall, Milstein 2036 East A, Harvard Law School

In The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein argues with exacting precision and fascinating insight how segregation in America—the incessant kind that continues to dog our major cities and has contributed to so much recent social strife—is the byproduct of explicit government policies at the local, state, and federal levels. The Color of Law was designated one of ten finalists on the National Book Awards’ long list for the best nonfiction book of 2017. Lunch provided.

Monday, March 26: Occupation of the American Mind - film screening and remarks from recent visitors to Palestine, 6-8:30, Cambridge Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge.  The Occupation of the American Mind critically examines the role of the Israeli government, the U.S. government, and the pro-Israel lobby in shaping media narratives about Israel/Palestine. A powerful insight into how the media shapes/is shaped to act as a public relations campaign for Israel. Accompanied by recent returnees to Cambridge from the West Bank. Co- sponsored by UUJME , First Parish Cambridge- Middle East Education Group, JVP, MAPA, Alliance for Water Justice, the NLG MA,  CBPPP and AFSC.

Wednesday, March 28,: Incarcerated Children in Palestine: Making the US Connections, 5-7:30  PM, Ticknor Lounge  in Boylston Hall 1279 Massachusetts Ave (across from JP Licks in the Harvard Quad).  Remarks from  Zeiad Abbas Shamrouch of The Middle East Children’s Alliance with comments from Carl Williams ACLU staff attorney and Boston activist Cambridge-Bethlehem Coffee House - Coffee and light fare served -

Wednesday, March 28:  WOMEN ON THE RISE: On Intersectional Leadership in Boston, 7:30am  Continental Breakfast & Networking , 8:00 to 9:00am, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Morris Auditorium, 600 Atlantic Avenue, Boston. In honor of Women's History Month, YW Boston will be joined by all six Councilwomen to discuss the rise of women in government, and leading with an intersectional lens. During this critical time of change, we are excited to hear from leaders who are committed to increasing racial and gender diversity in government and beyond. We hope you will join us for this important conversation!  Reserve your free ticket!

Thursday, March 29: Tribal Justice: Film Screening and Discussion,  5:30-7:30 pm Ames Courtroom, Austin Hall, Harvard Law School, Cambridge.  In Tribal Justice, two Native American judges reach back to traditional concepts of justice in order to reduce incarceration rates, foster greater safety for their communities and create a more positive future for youth. By addressing the root causes of crime, they are modeling restorative systems that are working. Mainstream courts across the country begin to take notice.

Saturday, March 31: A TEACH-IN ON POVERTY, 10 am to 3 pm, Where: Harvard Science Center, Cambridge.                 Poverty is the biggest single issue facing us today in the struggle for justice.          Come to a day of truth, learning and change. Learn more about the challenges before us, as well as legislative and community efforts. Let’s organize for action. For more information contact the Union of Minority Neighborhoods: umnunity@gmail.com Sponsored by the Union of Minority Neighborhoods &  the Phillips Brooks House Association

Monday, April 2: Linda Gordon: “The Second Coming of the KKK”  12:00-1:00pm, Wasserstein Hall, Milstein 2036 East A, Harvard Law School.  A new Ku Klux Klan arose in the early 1920s, a less violent but equally virulent descendant of the relatively small, terrorist Klan of the 1870s. Unknown to most Americans today, this “second Klan” largely flourished above the Mason-Dixon Line―its army of four-to-six-million members spanning the continent from New Jersey to Oregon, its ideology of intolerance shaping the course of mainstream national politics throughout the twentieth century. As prize-winning historian Linda Gordon demonstrates, the second Klan’s enemies included Catholics and Jews as well as African Americans.

Wednesday, April 4: 22^nd Annual IMIGRANTS Day at the State House, from 10am to 2pm, and we can’t wait to see you all there!  We have a great set of speakers for our program, all on the theme “Immigrants Get the Job Done,” including multiple immigrant voices. But that’s just part of IDSH – our biggest impact comes from fanning out across the State House to visit legislators and advocate for immigrant rights and for investments in English classes, adult education, workforce development and more. RSVP today to organize a group, to volunteer, or just to commit to joining us for this show of force at the State House! And if you can help us promote, here are flyers in English, Spanish and Portuguese (or all together as a PDF).

Saturday, April 7: CAIR Ambassadors Training: Responding to Islamophobia, 2 PM - 4 PM, Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC), 100 Malcolm X Blvd, Roxbury Crossing.  "All Muslims aren't terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim." "The Quran is more violent than the Bible." "Sharia law is coming to take over our country." "We need to keep out Muslims to stop terrorism."  Too many of us have heard these and similar statements not just in the media, but from friends, co-workers, or even family members. This workshop will examine some of the most common misconceptions about Islam and Muslims, and work with participants to develop strategies for responding to them using research-based messaging. The goal is to be able to counter this negative messaging on the local and human level, and to change hearts and minds about Islam. NOTE: This workshop is open to both Muslims and allies, with people of all backgrounds extremely welcome!

Saturday, April 7:  Film: HARVEST OF EMPIRE, 4:00 p.m. 4-6 Eagle Square, East Boston.   At a time of heated and divisive debate over immigration, Centro Presente is proud to present a free showing of HARVEST OF EMPIRE, a feature-length documentary that examines the direct connection between the long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America and the immigration crisis we face today.  From the wars for territorial expansion that gave the U.S. control of Puerto Rico, Cuba and more than half of Mexico, to the covert operations that imposed oppressive military regimes in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador, HARVEST OF EMPIRE unveils a moving human story that is largely unknown to the great majority of citizens in the U.S.RSVP bay sending an email to pmontes@cpresente.org