In Boston Support The School Bus Drivers

Chris Hedges Writes About "The Most Dangerous Women in America" Watch Kshama Speak About Why She Runs as a Socialist Donate Today! Kshama Sawant Needs YOUR Support to Get Reelected Sunday, May 31st 6:00 PM 1157 Lexington Ave. New York, New York Come out and support the reelection of the most prominent socialist in the US, Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant. Her campaign is important not just for Seattle but the entire country. Working people must continue the fight against corrupt, corporate politics.   While in office Kshama has led the fight to make Seattle the first major city in the country to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour! This year she is organizing the fight against sky-rocketing rents. Working people need a representative that understands their daily struggles and that is why Kshama Sawant takes only the wage of an average worker.     Activist and journalist Chris Hedges will be speaking along with the Green Party's 2014 candidate for New York State Governor Howie Hawkins will be speaking at the event as well!     Get your tickets here today!       Your financial support is crucial. The election of Kshama Sawant  and the successes of 15 Now prove that when we organize, when everyone pitches in, we can take on corporate power and win. But it requires sacrifice and sustained effort. Do your part by digging deep and giving what you can today!

From The Left-Wing Archives -The United Nation Anti-War Coalition And The Struggle Against The Endless American Wars

Boston-Park Street Station Weekly Vigil-May 30th-Five Years In Jail Is Enough, More Than Enough- President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!

 

Boston vigil details:

1:00-2:00 PM Saturday, May 30, 2015
Park Street Station Entrance on the Boston Common

Chelsea Manning’s Five Years Of Confinement

Taken into Army MP custody on May 27, 2010 and later held for months under torturous conditions at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia Chelsea Manning was tried and sentenced in a military court-martial at Fort Meade in Maryland to 35 years in August 2013 for releasing many military secrets through Wikileaks about U.S. crimes in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan among other revelations. If this sentence stands she will be out in 2045. We cannot let this happen– we have to get her out! Join us on May 30^th and encourage others to attend. Sign the on-line petition for a presidential pardon from President Barack Obama at the Chelsea Manning Support Network website- http://www.chelseamanning.org/. We will not leave our sister behind.  

Save The Post Office 

 

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Musicians’ Corner

In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing business in the world. Yes the artists of every school the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists/Constructivists, Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements (hell even the hide-bound Academy filled with its rules, or be damned, spoke the pious words of peace, brotherhood and the affinity of all humankind when there was sunny weather), those who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society in its squalor, it creation of generations of short, nasty, brutish lives just like the philosophers predicted and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other saw that building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems; writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty would put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling cousins; writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gazebo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin, neat trick, maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress and strife of the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair of another man, putting another man to ground or laying their own heads down for some imperial mission.

They all professed loudly (and those few who did not profess, could not profess because they were happily getting their blood rising, kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the course. 

And then the war drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, beautiful poets like Wilfred Owens who would sicken of war before he passed leaving a beautiful damnation on war, its psychoses, and broken bones and dreams, and the idiots who brought humankind to such a fate, like e. e. cummings who drove through sheer hell in those rickety ambulances floors sprayed with blood, man blood, angers, anguishes and more sets of broken bones, and broken dreams, like Rupert Brooke all manly and old school give and go, as they marched in formation leaving the ports and then mowed down like freshly mown grass in their thousands as the charge call came and they rested, a lot of them, in those freshly mown grasses, like Robert Graves all grave all sputtering in his words confused about what had happened, suppressing, always suppressing that instinct to cry out against the hatred night, like old school, old Thomas Hardy writing beautiful old English pastoral sentiments before the war and then full-blown into imperium’s service, no questions asked old England right or wrong, like old stuffed shirt himself T.S. Eliot speaking of hollow loves, hollow men, wastelands, and such in the high club rooms on the home front, and like old brother Yeats speaking of terrible beauties born in the colonies and maybe at the home front too as long as Eliot does not miss his high tea. Jesus what a blasted night that Great War time was.  

And as the war drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, artists, beautiful artists like Fernand Leger who could no longer push the envelope of representative art because it had been twisted by the rubble of war, by the crashing big guns, by the hubris of commanders and commanded and he turned to new form, tubes, cubes, prisms, anything but battered humankind in its every rusts and lusts, all bright and intersecting once he got the mustard gas out of his system, once he had done his patria duty, like speaking of mustard gas old worn out John Singer Sargent of the three name WASPs forgetting Boston Brahmin society ladies in decollage, forgetting ancient world religious murals hanging atop Boston museum and spewing trench warfare and the blind leading the blind out of no man’s land, out of the devil’s claws, like Umberto Boccioni, all swirls, curves, dashes, and dangling guns as the endless charges endlessly charge, like Gustav Klimt and his endlessly detailed gold dust opulent Asiatic dreams filled with lovely matrons and high symbolism and blessed Eve women to fill the night, Adam’s night after they fled the garden, like Joan Miro and his infernal boxes, circles, spats, eyes, dibs, dabs, vaginas, and blots forever suspended in deep space for a candid world to fret through, fret through a long career, and like poor maddened rising like a phoenix in the Spartacist uprising George Grosz puncturing the nasty bourgeoisie, the big bourgeoisie the ones with the real dough and their overfed dreams stuffed with sausage, and from the bloated military and their fat-assed generals stuff with howitzers and rocket shells, like Picasso, yeah, Picasso taking the shape out of recognized human existence and reconfiguring the forms, the mesh of form to fit the new hard order, like, Braque, if only because if you put the yolk on Picasso you have to tie him to the tether too.          

And do not forget when the war drums intensified, and the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they, other creative souls made of ordinary human clay as it turned out sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for humankind, of course, their always fate ….           

The Blues Aint Nothing But Lucille On Your Mind- With B.B. King’s Lucille In Mind 

 

 

 

Here is the drill. I started out life listening to singer like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby (and his brother Bob), Miss Patti Page, Miss Rosemary Clooney, Miss Peggy Lee, the Andrew, McGuire, Dooley sisters, and all the big swing bands from the 1940s like Harry James, Tommy Dorsey (and his brother Jimmy who had his own band) as background music on the family radio in the 1950s which my mother had always during the day to get her workaday daytime household world and on Saturday night when my father joined in. Joined in so they could listen to Bill Marlin on local radio station WJDA and his Memory Lane show from seven to eleven where they could listen to the music that got them (and their generation) through the “from hunger” times of the 1930s Great Depression and then when they slogged through (either in some watery European theater or Pacific one take your pick) or anxiously waited at home for the other shoe to drop during World War II. I am not saying that they should not have had their memory music after all of that but frankly that stuff then (and now although less so) made me grind my teeth. But I was a captive audience then and so to this day I can sing off Rum and Coca Cola, Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree (the Glenn Miller version not the Andrew Sister) and Vera Lynn’s White Cliffs of Dover from memory. But that was not my music, okay. 

Then of course since we are speaking about the 1950s came the great musical break-out, the age of classic rock and roll which I “dug” seriously dug to the point of dreaming my own jailbreak dreams about rock futures (and girls) but that Elvis-etched time too was just a bit soon for me to be able to unlike my older brother, Prescott, call that the music that I came of age to. Although the echoes of that time still run through my mind and I can quote chapter and verse One Night With You (Elvis version, including the salacious One Night Of Sin original), Sweet Little Sixteen (Chuck Berry, of course), Let’s Have A Party ( the much underrated  Wanda Jackson), Be-Bop-a-Lula (Gene Vincent in the great one hit wonder night but what a hit), Bo Diddley (Bo, of course), Peggy Sue (Buddy Holly) and a whole bunch more.   

The music that I can really call my own is the stuff from the folk minute of the 1960s which dovetailed with my coming of chronological, political and social age (that last in the sense of recognizing, if not always acting on, the fact that there were others, kindred, out there beside myself filled with angst, alienation and good will to seek solidarity with which I did not connect with until later after getting out of my dinky hometown of Carver and off into the big cities and campus towns where just at that moment there were kindred by the thousands with the same maladies and same desire to turn  the world upside down). You know the mountain tunes of the first generation of the Carter Family coming out of Clinch Mountain, Buell Kazell (from Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music times), Jimmy Rodgers the Texas yodeler who found fame at the same time as the Carters in old Podunk Bristol, Tennessee, the old country Child ballads (Northwest Europe old country collected by Child in Cambridge in the 1850s and taken up in that town again one hundred years later in some kind of act historical affinity), the blue grass music (which grabbed me by the throat when Everett Lally, a college friend and member of the famed Lally Brothers blue grass band let me in on his treasure trove of music from that genre), and the protest songs, songs against the madnesses of the times, nuclear war, brushfire war in places like Vietnam, against Mister James Crows midnight ways, against the barbaric death penalty, against a lot of what songwriter Malvina Reynolds called the ticky-tack little box existences we were slated for by the likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Dave Von Ronk and Phil Ochs. The latter songs being what drove a lot of my interest once I connected their work with the Harvard Square coffeehouse scene (and the adjacent hanging out at the Hayes-Bickford Cafeteria which I have written plenty about elsewhere where I hung on poverty nights, meaning many nights).

 

A lot of the drive toward folk music was to get out from under the anti-rock and rock musical counter-revolution that I kept hearing on my transistor radio during that early 1960s period with pretty boy singers and vapid young female-driven female singer stuff. (Of course being nothing but one of those alienated teenagers whom the high-brow sociologists were fretting about like we were what ailed the candid world I would not have characterized that trend that way it would take a few decades to see what was what then the music just gave me a a headache). Also to seek out roots music that I kept hearing in the coffeehouses and on the radio once I found a station (accidently) which featured such music and got intrigued by the sounds. Part of that search, a big search over the long haul, was to get deeply immersed in the blues, mainly at first country blues and later the city, you know, Chicago blues. Those country guys though intrigued me once they were “discovered” down south in little towns plying away in the fields or some such work and were brought up to Newport to enflame a new generation of aficionados. The likes of Son House the mad man preacher-sinner man, Skip James with that falsetto voice singing out about how he would rather be the devil than to be that woman’s man, Bukka White (sweating blood and  salt on that National Steel on Aberdeen Mississippi Woman and Panama Limited of course Creole Belle candy man Mississippi John Hurt.

But those guys basically stayed in the South went about their local business and vanished from big view until they were “discovered” by folk aficionados who headed south looking for, well, looking for roots, looking for something to hang onto  and it took a younger generation like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and the guy whose photograph graces this sketch, B.B. King, to move north, to follow the northern star to the big industrial cities (with a stop at Memphis going up river) to put some electric juice in those old guitars and chase my blues away just by playing like they too had made their own pacts with the devil. And made a lot of angst and alienation just a shade more bearable.  Praise be.               

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

 

Tuesday, June 9

Justice Reinvestment Act: Rally and Public Hearing
12:30pm, At the State House in Boston

The Justice Reinvestment Act will improve justice and safety, reduce incarceration and invest millions of $ to create jobs for struggling families. A key component of the Justice Reinvestment Act is to end mandatory minimum sentencing for drugs, the topic of the June 9 hearing. Massachusetts is struggling with two diseases: drug addiction and economic exclusion.  It’s time we stand up for healing!  Download a Justice Reinvestment Fact Sheet Here

For more info please contact: Steve O’Neill of EPOCA
(508) 410-7676 steve@exprisoners.org

 

The State Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on Tuesday, June 9, 1pm, at the State House (Gardner Auditorium) , on two important bills - (1) An Act eliminating mandatory minimum sentences related to drug offenses [H.1620, S.786] and (2) An Act reforming pre-trial Process (Pre-trial and bail reform) [H.1584, S.802].  This is the first step in moving these bills forward to a floor vote.

 

The Fire This Time: Black Youth and the Spectacle of Postracial Violence

As the traditional social welfare state is transformed into the corporate state, those democratic public spheres that support public goods are under attack. As the social contract and the democratic values and ideals that uphold it are replaced by a regime of neoliberalism that celebrates privatization, commodification and self-interest, inequality in wealth and power grows exponentially, destroying the healthy social structures necessary for a democracy and the requisites for embracing citizenship as a matter of political, ethical and social responsibility. Citizenship is now reduced to consumerism and politics is emptied of any wider sense of community and respect for the common good… While the killing of unarmed Black people may represent this violence in one of its most lethal forms, this killing is part of a larger structure of violence aimed at destroying the promise of a democracy in the "postracial" era, which includes a mass incarceration system in which even young children are now arrested for minor infractions.  More

 

Cleveland cops shot at 2 unarmed black people 137 times. No one is going to prison

The high-speed chase at times reached more than 100 miles per hour and spanned 22 miles, more than 100 officers, and more than 60 police vehicles. It ended when the fleeing pair's car rammed into a police vehicle at a middle school parking lot, where police then fired 137 shots into the car, hitting Russell and Williams each more than 20 times. The prosecution in the case argued only 15 shots allegedly fired by Brelo weren't justified, CNN's Jason Hanna, Ralph Ellis and Greg Botelho reported. After Brelo's colleagues stopped firing, he purportedly stood on the hood of the car and fired the last shots downward into the windshield, inflicting fatal wounds, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGlinty said. Brelo said he thought the couple was armed, posing a danger to him and his partner. Judge John O'Donnell ruled that Brelo's actions were justified because it wasn't clear that any perceived threat was over when Brelo fired the final shots.  More

 

16 states have more people in prisons and jails than college housing

In 16 states, there are more people in prisons and jails than college housing.  This map by MetricMaps shows which states (blue) have more people in college housing and which states (red) have more people in correctional facilities… . Mass incarceration in the US long ago hit diminishing returns that make it an ineffective crime-fighting tool; an analysis by the Pew Public Safety Performance Project found that the 10 states that shrunk incarceration rates the most over the past five years saw bigger drops in crime than the 10 states where incarceration rates most grew.  More

 

See the map above: not surprisingly, most of the states (in red) are in the South, with the notable exception of California, which has a politically powerful prison-industrial complex

 

How the prison-industrial complex is corrupting American elections

Today, literacy tests and poll taxes are banned (though voter ID laws are often essentially poll taxes), but states can still disenfranchise felons. Because of race and class disparities in the criminal justice system, the impact of disenfranchisement hits communities of color and low-income communities the hardest… Many disenfranchised felons face a second blow: prison-based gerrymandering. In this practice, prisoners (who can’t vote) count toward the population of the area where they are incarcerated which affects how districts are drawn.  More

 

Senate could take up $612 billion defense policy bill in June

The Senate could take up its version of the fiscal defense policy bill as soon as next month. “Schedule permitting, the committee is ready to go to the floor in June,” a Senate Armed Services Committee aide told The Hill on Monday. The panel unveiled its draft of the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) last week. The $612 billion policy blueprint sets spending limits for all Defense Department programs and initiatives.  More

 

All the Mass House members voted against the bill, but pressure is needed for a vote against the final version that comes back from the Senate. Help us put a an end to outrageous Pentagon waste.  Click here to send a note to your congressional representatives today! (Good talking points and background here) Sign a petition here

 

 

 

 

If U.S. Military Spending Returned to 2001 Level

In 2001, U.S. military spending was $397 billion, from which it soared to a peak of $720 billion in 2010, and is now at $610 billion in 2015…  If U.S. military spending were merely returned to 2001 levels, the savings of $213 billion per year could meet the following needs:

End hunger and starvation worldwide — $30 billion per year.
Provide clean drinking water worldwide — $11 billion per year.
Provide free college in the United States — $70 billion per year (according to Senate legislation).
Double U.S. foreign aid — $23 billion per year.
Build and maintain a high-speed rail system in the U.S. — $30 billion per year.
Invest in solar and renewable energy as never before — $20 billion per year.
Fund peace initiatives as never before — $10 billion per year.

That would leave $19 billion left over per year with which to pay down debt.   More

 

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Bomb, Bomb Iran, Ignore, Ignore Israel. . .

GIVE WAR A CHANCE?

 

US rejects nuclear disarmament document over Israel concerns

The United States on Friday blocked a global document aimed at ridding the world of nuclear weapons, saying Egypt and other states tried to “cynically manipulate” the process by setting a deadline for Israel and its neighbors to meet within months on a Middle East zone free of such weapons… Since adopting a final document requires consensus, the rejection by the United States, backed by Britain and Canada, means the entire blueprint for global nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation for the next five years has been blocked after four weeks of negotiations. The next treaty review conference is in 2020. That has alarmed countries without nuclear weapons, who are increasingly frustrated by what they see as the slow pace of nuclear-armed countries to disarm.  More

 

Netanyahu thanks US for blocking UN measure

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday for preventing a U.N. measure that could have forced full disclosure of Israel’s nuclear arms capabilities.  Had the treaty passed, according to The Times of Israel, it would have convened a U.N. conference by March and appointed a special emissary for ensuring the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.  That official may have forced Israel into revealing its full nuclear abilities.The U.S. rejected the measure late Friday, as did Canada and the U.K.  More

 

Blocking a Nuclear-Free Mideast

The more fundamental roadblock was the same one that has been decisive every time the subject of a MENWFZ has come up. Israel doesn’t like the idea, and the United States, acting as Israel’s lawyer (Israel itself, not being a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, was only an observer and not a full participant in the review conference), blocked approval of the draft statement that was on the table… Israel’s official position regarding a conference is that discussion of nuclear weapons can only take place amid a discussion of “the broad range of security challenges in the region,” and it says it would consider joining the NPT only if Israel were at peace with the Arab states and Iran. That position is, of course, a formula for putting off the subject of a MENWFZ indefinitely, given that the Israeli government has sworn eternal hostility toward Iran and is determined — all the more so in the Israeli government’s latest post-election configuration — not to settle its conflict with the Palestinians and therefore will not be at peace with most Arab states either.   More

 

What Israel's Chief of Staff Is Worried About — No, It's Not Iran

Two members of Congress from New York, a Democrat and a Republican, are calling on President Obama to provide Israel with massive, 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, capable of penetrating Iran’s fortified underground nuclear facilities. They also want to send B-52 long-range bombers that can carry the huge devices… Though the lawmakers seem unaware of it, their proposal comes immediately on the heels of a weeklong media blitz by heads of the Israel Defense Forces, detailing in speeches and interviews the military’s view of the main strategic threats facing Israel in the foreseeable future and its plans to meet them. Oh — in case you’re wondering: No, Iran isn’t on the list.   More

 

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NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

 

Friend of DPP Lou Pierro writes from over the Milton Line:

Dear friends from Milton and surrounding communities.  I hope you will join me at what promises to be a very exciting and interesting forum with top quality speakers about the Guantanamo Detention Center.  And please forward this and the attached flyer along to anyone who might be interested.

 

Milton High School Amnesty International Club together with Milton for Peace will be presenting a forum on Wed evening June 10^th at Keyes Community Room at Milton Public Library entitled “Guantanamo - What is the Truth?  Detention, Interrogation and Judicial Practices of the US Government” with speakers Terry Rockefeller documentary film producer of September 11^th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows; Matthew Allen, Public Advocacy Coordinator for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts; Margaret Ashur of International Law Journal at Boston University; and Peace and Justice Activist Susan McLucas.  There will be time for questions and answers after the presentation.  Snacks will be provided by Bent’s Cookie Factory.  The event starts at 6:45.

 

Pentagon Report Predicted West's Support for Islamist Rebels Would Create ISIS

The newly declassified DIA document from 2012 confirms that the main component of the anti-Assad rebel forces by this time comprised Islamist insurgents affiliated to groups that would lead to the emergence of ISIS. Despite this, these groups were to continue receiving support from Western militaries and their regional allies… The revelation from an internal US intelligence document that the very US-led coalition supposedly fighting 'Islamic State' today, knowingly created ISIS in the first place, raises troubling questions about recent government efforts to justify the expansion of state anti-terror powers… Yet the new Pentagon report reveals that, contrary to Western government claims, the primary cause of the threat comes from their own deeply misguided policies of secretly sponsoring Islamist terrorism for dubious geopolitical purposes.  More

 

NYT Trumpets US Restraint against ISIS, Ignores Hundreds of Civilian Deaths

The article claims that “the campaign has killed an estimated 12,500 fighters” and “has achieved several successes in conducting about 4,200 strikes that have dropped about 14,000 bombs and other weapons.” But an anonymous American pilot nonetheless complains that “we have not taken the fight to these guys,” and says he “cannot get authority” to drone-bomb targets without excessive proof that no civilians will be endangered. Despite the criticisms, Schmitt writes, “administration officials stand by their overriding objective to prevent civilian casualties.” But there’s one rather glaring omission in this article: the many hundreds of civilian deaths likely caused by the U.S.-led bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria.  More

 

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ISRAEL, PALESTINE AND THE US

 

TAKE ACTION:

Urge Congressional Offices to Attend an Important Briefing on Capitol Hill (June 2)

Every year, hundreds of Palestinian children - some as young as 7 years old - are detained and arrested in an Israeli military detention system where ill treatment and abuse is widespread.  Many are taken from their families in night raids, held without charges or due process, and subjected to abuse or poor conditions while in custody.  

The "No Way to Treat a Child" campaign, organized by the Chicago Faith Coalition, is aimed at bringing attention to Israel's routine mistreatment of Palestinian children. Now, the coalition needs your help to make sure these important voices are heard by Members of Congress and their staff. Please click here to read a description of the upcoming briefing.

When we ask Congressional staff why they come to these Congressional briefings, they frequently respond "because constituents asked us to attend." Your calls and emails are critical to ensuring these important voices are heard on Capitol Hill, so please take action today. 

 

Israel asking US for 50% increase in next defense package

Israel reportedly wants the US to increase its annual defense assistance package by half, to an average $4.5 billion. Defense News reported this weekend that Israel and US officials have in recent months begun negotiations on the next 10-year aid package…  Defense News quoted “US and Israeli experts” as saying that the amount would be separate from any package the United States offered Israel as compensation for the Iran nuclear deal now being negotiated between Iran and the major powers.Like the defense assistance package currently in place, it is also separate from the $1.2 billion in materiel the United States stores in Israel and which under certain conditions is available for Israeli use, and from the approximately $500 million in US funds provided to Israeli anti-missile development each year.  More

 

 

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OTHER EVENTS

 

Thursday, May 28: Harvard Graduation Day Demo for Palestine,  4:00 – 6:00 pm, (Holyoke Center/Harvard Square)
JOIN US!  People from all around the US and world attend the graduation.   We will ask them to oppose Israel’s accelerated settlement drive and demand freedom for Palestinians. Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights

 

Tuesday, June 2: The Olympics: More Than a Game -- with Dave Zirin and Kade Crockford, 7:00pm, Hope Central in JP in Jamaica Plain. Surveillance, Displacement, and the Other Olympic 'Legacies' That Boston 2024 Won't Tell You About.  Dave Zirin, sports editor at The Nation Magazine and author of "Brazil's Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, The Olympics, and the Struggle for Democracy," and Kade Crockford, Director for the Technology for Liberty Project at the ACLU Massachusetts, will discuss the Olympic legacies of displacement, surveillance, militarization, and more.

 

Tuesday, June 2: CHRIS HEDGES:  The Moral Imperative of Revolt, 7-8:30pm, First Church JP. The Jamaica Plain Forum <http://www.jamaicaplainforum.org> welcomes back Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges, as he discusses what it takes to be a rebel in modern times. Popular uprisings in the United States and around the world are inevitable in the face of environmental destruction and wealth polarization. From South African activists who dedicated their lives to ending apartheid, to contemporary anti-fracking protests in Alberta, Canada, to whistleblowers in pursuit of transparency, Wages of Rebellion shows the cost of a life committed to speaking the truth and demanding justice. <https://www.facebook.com/events/799158853526466/>

 

Wednesday, June 3: Benefit for Palestinian House of Friendship, 6:30-8:30pm, First Parish in Cambridge, Unitarian Universalist 3 Church Street, Harvard Square.  Mohammed Sawalha, Director of the Palestinian House of Friendship, is persistent in his creative resistance to the occupation and in finding ways to bring learning and joy to the lives of young people.  He has a visa this year and will be with us along with his son, Majed, a college student and rapper.  Come and hear about the new playground in Asira al Shamaliya and the development of distance learning programs.  Find details on Facebook. Directions.  Please RSVP by May 29th (see poster).  Co-sponsored by the Middle East Eduction Group at First Parish in Cambridge, Unitarian Universalist, the Palestine Israel Task Team of First Church in Cambridge, Congregational UCC

 

Thursday, June 4: What Next for the Nuclear Abolition Movement?  7:30 pm

First Church in Cambridge, 11 Garden St - Hastings Room.  Report from the NPT Review Conference and Discussion on the Way Forward with Joseph Gerson, Peace & Disarmament Coordinator, American Friends Service Committee

John Loretz, Program Director, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

Moderator: Elaine Scarry, Professor, Harvard University

 

Wednesday June 10: Guantanamo - What Is the Truth? Detention, Interrogation and Judicial Practices of the US Government, 6:45-8:30 PM, Milton Public Library, 476 Canton Ave. ( Keyes Community Room). A forum presented by Milton High School Amnesty International Club and Milton for Peace about Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility and the Detention and Interrogation Practices of the US Government - with speakers  •  Terry Rockefeller – September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, and documentary film producer;   Matthew Allen - Public Advocacy Coordinator for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts;   Margaret Ashur - International Law Journal at Boston University;  Susan McLucas - Peace and Justice Activist

 

Monday, June 15: Risky Business or Economic Boost?: The Real Cost of the Boston Olympics, 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm, First Church JP, 6 Eliot St, Jamaica Plain. Papercuts JP and the Jamaica Plain Forum welcome Andrew Zimbalist, author of Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup. Zimbalist will discuss his new book in relation to Boston’s bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games.  Andrew Zimbalist is an international expert on the financing of big-league and global sports events. His latest book explores the economic impact of hosting the Olympics and the World Cup. 

In Boston- Save the Date!

Sunday, June 7

DORCHESTER DAY PARADE!

Please join us for the parade. . . and the cookout after

 

Dorchester People for Peace will be marching again this year in the Dorchester Day Parade on June 7 -- along with our friends and allied organizations.  Together we bring our vision and our values to thousands of people along the four-mile route. Join us this year!

 

Our message will focus on building a neighborhood-based movement to resist wars and military interventions abroad – while opposing racism, dispossession and budget cuts at home; reducing excessive military spending; and funding urgent needs in our communities.  Thousands of marchers and parade watchers will see our banners and get our anti-war flyers.  Marchers will gather around Noon in Dorchester Lower Mills (Richmond St.) with the parade kick-off about 1pm. 

 

We’ll have our after-Parade barbeque and celebration at Jeff Klein’s house, 123 Cushing Ave. from about 3:30pm. Please come to that, even if you can’t march in the parade.  More details as we get them.