Mumia Abu-Jamal Is an Innocent Man-Cops, Congress Ax Nominee Over Mumia’s Case Workers Vanguard No. 1042	21 March 2014

Mumia Abu-Jamal Is an Innocent Man-Cops, Congress Ax Nominee Over Mumia’s Case

 

On March 5, the Senate sank Barack Obama’s nomination of Debo Adegbile as assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. What was supposed to be a done deal ran aground when seven Democrats joined the Republicans in opposing the selection. The kiss of death for Adegbile, the current senior counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, was his tenuous connection to black political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Adegbile had a leadership role in the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), which represented Mumia at the time that his death sentence was overturned in late 2011.

Our concern is not who fills what post under the attorney general, the top cop overseeing the apparatus of racist repression. Rather it is the renewed outpouring of the lies that have condemned Mumia, an innocent man, to three decades on death row and now life in prison. A former Black Panther, MOVE supporter and award-winning journalist, Mumia was framed up for the killing of a Philly cop and railroaded to death row in 1982 on the basis of his radical political views. The prosecution’s case against him rested on phony ballistics, a concocted “confession,” police intimidation of witnesses and racist jury rigging. The confession of another man, Arnold Beverly, that he was hired by the mob and cops to assassinate Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, whom Mumia was falsely accused of killing, has never been allowed into state or federal court.

In the article “Drive to Execute Mumia Halted” (WV No. 993, 6 January 2012), we observed: “The state forces that have tried for decades to silence this powerful voice for the oppressed are certainly not going to forget him.” Indeed, the campaign against Adegbile was spearheaded by the Fraternal Order of Police; Maureen Faulkner, the widow of the Philadelphia cop; and Philadelphia district attorney Seth Williams. Together with Pat Toomey, a Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, the Democrat Williams penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece (24 February) that not only slandered Mumia as a “cop killer” but condemned anybody challenging the racist bias inherent in the capitalist courts. Other Democrats, such as Senator Christopher Coons of Delaware, piled on to the smears of Mumia, attributing his vote to the issue of “respecting” law officers.

The Democratic Party machine in Philadelphia, of which Williams is a part, engineered the frame-up of Mumia from the start. Central to this effort was Ed Rendell, who was the local district attorney at the time Mumia was arrested and was later elected mayor and then Pennsylvania’s governor. On the national stage, Rendell went from being a prominent operative in Hillary Clinton’s failed bid for the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination to playing a key role in Obama’s electoral victory.

When Mumia was set to be executed in August 1995, protests of tens of thousands internationally helped stay the executioner’s hand. By the time Adegbile got involved in Mumia’s case, those mass mobilizations were a thing of the past. Contrary to the hallucinations of Toomey, Williams and others, Adegbile was no activist proclaiming Mumia’s innocence and fighting for his freedom. In fact, one response of liberal civil rights groups like the NAACP to the attack on Adegbile was to plead Mumia guilty: “The Senate failed to see through a shameful disinformation campaign that intentionally tries to hold Mr. Adegbile responsible for a terrible crime committed by a defendant when Mr. Adegbile was only 8 years old” (naacp.org, March 5).

As a lawyer, Adegbile simply contributed to an LDF appeal citing racial discrimination in Mumia’s jury selection and to a brief challenging jury instructions given at the hearing that sentenced Mumia to death. The federal court of appeals ruled twice that the sentencing instructions were unconstitutional, a decision that the Supreme Court under the conservative John Roberts refused to overturn. As Mumia noted in his March 6 broadcast, Adegbile came under attack “because he dared to do what defense lawyers are legally and constitutionally required to do: defend their clients.”

With consummate hypocrisy, Obama protested that the defeat of Adegbile’s nomination “solely based on his legal representation of a defendant runs contrary to a fundamental principle of our system of justice.” Quite the opposite, as Obama should know. Leftist attorney Lynne Stewart was convicted of providing “material support to terrorism” in 2005 on the basis of her outspoken defense of a client imprisoned on terrorism charges. At the urging of Obama’s Justice Department in 2010, the original sentence for Stewart was quadrupled to ten years. While now standing by Adegbile, in 2009 Obama gave the boot to “green jobs” adviser Van Jones when a media campaign unearthed his past advocacy for Mumia.

What gores the ox of the forces of racist reaction is that Mumia was and remains a powerful voice for the voiceless. As a 15-year-old spokesman for the Philadelphia Black Panther Party, Mumia exemplified those the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover had in mind when he declared: “The Negro youth and moderate[s] must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teaching, they will be dead revolutionaries.” Mumia survives and continues to speak out from prison hell on behalf of all the oppressed. While some may wring their hands over the defeat of Obama’s nominee, those fighting for Mumia’s freedom should seize this opportunity to expose the racist vendetta that has kept this innocent man under the shadow of the gallows and behind bars for over 32 years.

Florida: The Killing of Jordan Davis-The Dunn Verdict and Racist America Workers Vanguard No. 1042	21 March 2014

Florida: The Killing of Jordan Davis-The Dunn Verdict and Racist America

 

On February 15, a Florida jury reaffirmed that black life in America is cheap. Michael Dunn, a white racist thug, had come to trial for firing repeatedly into a car with four black youths inside and killing 17-year-old Jordan Davis. The jury found Dunn guilty of the attempted murder of the three who survived his rampage. But it deadlocked over whether the killing of Davis was murder, as three jurors embraced Dunn’s pretense that this coldblooded shooting was self-defense. The message was unmistakable: If Dunn had killed everyone in the car, he likely would not have been convicted on a single count. His sentencing is now postponed until after his retrial, which is slated to begin in May.

There was no ambiguity about what happened. Davis and his friends were listening to hip-hop in an SUV outside a convenience store in Jacksonville, Florida. Dunn drove up and parked beside them. After his fiancée went to buy chips and wine, Dunn demanded that Davis and his friends turn down the music. When they refused, Dunn took a 9mm pistol from his glove compartment and fired three shots that hit Davis in the SUV. As Davis’s friend Tommie Storns drove the SUV away, Dunn again fired on it. Business accomplished, Dunn went to his hotel room, where he ordered a pizza and chilled with a rum and coke. Jordan Davis’s anguished father declared after the trial that killing his son “was not just another day at the office.”

Dunn claimed that Davis threatened him and that he fired his pistol only after seeing Davis brandish a shotgun. No shotgun was found. Dunn’s fiancée testified that he never mentioned a weapon being pulled on him. In fact, Dunn’s defense was unsupported by any evidence other than his white skin. If the shooter had been black and the car filled with white teens blasting Lynyrd Skynyrd’s segregationist anthem “Sweet Home Alabama,” the outcome would not have been a hung jury but rather the gallows. Florida has been second only to Texas in carrying out racist legal lynchings in the last three years.

Dunn clearly was looking for an opportunity to mete out KKK-style “justice” to black youth who “dissed” him. He murdered Davis and nearly killed three others for crossing a line dating back to slavery, punishable by the lash and later the lynch rope. In so doing, Dunn was following in the footsteps of the greatest perpetrators of violence against the black population—the capitalist state and its killer cops for whom terrorizing black youth is just another day at the office. One witness reported hearing Dunn tell the teens, “You are not going to talk to me like that.” From his jail cell, Dunn wrote his family: “If more people would arm themselves and kill these fucking idiots when they’re threatening you, eventually they may take the hint and change their behavior.”

Davis’s shooting recalls the racist vigilante killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in February 2012. Dunn was even prosecuted by the same team that let Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, walk free. As we noted in a leaflet issued after Zimmerman was acquitted last July: “It wasn’t that the prosecution didn’t have a case. The truth is that this wasn’t their field of expertise, which is railroading black people to prison” (WV No. 1028, 9 August 2013).

What the prosecutors are pursuing with a passion is the relentless persecution of Marissa Alexander, a black mother in her 30s. Alexander was sentenced to 20 years for firing a warning shot into a wall when threatened by her husband, who had previously beaten her so badly she had to be hospitalized. An appeals court ordered a new trial. Now prosecutor Angela Corey—who was in charge of both Zimmerman and Dunn’s prosecutions—is seeking to increase Alexander’s sentence from 20 to 60 years!

“Stand Your Ground”: Open Season on Blacks

Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which set the backdrop for the killings of Martin and Davis, provides a license for vigilante murder. Passed in 2005 amid a campaign to “get tough on crime”—code for targeting black people—the Florida law became the model for similar laws in 22 other states, including all of the former Confederacy except Arkansas and Virginia. It supplanted an earlier Florida statute that required a person under attack to try to remove himself from immediate danger before using deadly force in self-defense.

Instead, Stand Your Ground allows for the use of deadly force by anyone who claims a “reasonable belief” that such force is necessary, without any attempt to disengage. And in this country, a young black man playing loud music or wearing a hoodie is enough for someone to claim “reasonable belief.” A 2013 study by the Urban Institute documented that in states with Stand Your Ground laws, shootings of black victims by whites are 281 percent more likely to be ruled justified than if the victims are white.

Democratic Party liberals and black politicians have attempted to steer outrage over Stand Your Ground into various gun control schemes. Such measures are a means of enforcing a monopoly of violence for the capitalist state, leaving guns in the hands of cops, criminals and racist vigilantes while the rest of the population is defenseless. The result is to make attacks like those on Martin and Davis more likely. Indeed, if Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis had been armed, they might still be alive today—although they would most likely be in prison.

Founded and maintained on a bedrock of black oppression, the American capitalist system paints targets on the backs of young black men and women. Zimmerman’s acquittal last July was followed by a rapid succession of racist atrocities. On September 14, Jonathan Farrell, a 24-year-old former college football star, was gunned down by a North Carolina cop while seeking assistance after a car wreck. On September 17, an appeals court tossed out the murder convictions of five New Orleans cops who killed two unarmed black men on Danziger Bridge during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Following an accident on November 2, 19-year-old Renisha McBride found herself on the porch of a white man in Dearborn, Michigan, who shot her dead.

The vilification of black youth seen every day in the press, on TV and on the Internet provides fertile soil for scum like Dunn. In the lead-up to the last Super Bowl, Seattle Seahawks’ black defensive back Richard Sherman was denounced as a “thug” for being brash and outspoken. A Stanford graduate, Sherman perceptively observed that “thug” is “the accepted way of calling someone the N-word nowadays.” Dunn himself ranted against “thug music,” according to his fiancée.

The omnipresent targeting of black youth through both legal repression and extralegal terror is endemic to American capitalism. In New York City, newly elected mayor Bill de Blasio rode into office vowing to rein in the NYPD’s “stop and frisk” racial profiling program that ensnared hundreds of thousands in its web over the past decade. Although the number of stops has dropped sharply, arrests for so-called crimes such as public drinking and begging in the subways have skyrocketed.

The multiracial working class is the only force with the social power and class interests to get rid of the system of capitalist exploitation in which the mass of the black population is forcibly segregated at the bottom. As our leaflet on Zimmerman’s acquittal stated:

“It took a bloody Civil War, the Second American Revolution, with 200,000 black troops, guns in hand, to smash the chains of black chattel slavery. But the promise of black freedom was soon betrayed by the Northern bourgeoisie, which allied with the Southern propertied classes against the aspirations of the black freedmen. It will take a third American Revolution—a proletarian socialist revolution that breaks the chains of capitalist wage slavery—to finish the Civil War.”

Then, and only then, will there be a measure of justice for Davis, Martin and the countless other victims of racist terror.

UAW Tops’ Class Collaboration Paved the Way-Defeat for Labor at Tennessee VW Plant-For a Class-Struggle Fight to Organize the “Open Shop” South! Workers Vanguard No. 1042	21 March 2014

UAW Tops’ Class Collaboration Paved the Way-Defeat for Labor at Tennessee VW Plant-For a Class-Struggle Fight to Organize the “Open Shop” South!

 

The United Auto Workers (UAW) narrowly lost a key representation election at the Volkswagen assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in February by a vote of 712-626. The stakes were high: if the UAW had won, it would have marked a victory for workers not just in Chattanooga but more broadly, creating a breach for the labor movement in the open shop South. There is no question that the UAW was up against a determined opposition that wanted to keep the plant non-union. But the UAW bureaucrats hamstrung the organizing effort by pledging the union to maintain company profitability, as codified in the “neutrality” agreement that supposedly committed VW to not interfere with the unionization campaign. UAW officials forswore not only “conflict” with the automaker but even the necessary legwork to bolster union support, such as door-to-door and barstool organizing.

Much stock was put in VW’s supposed tacit endorsement of the union. Nothing could be further from the truth. By September 2013, a majority of Chattanooga VW workers had signed cards authorizing the UAW to represent them in collective bargaining. Volkswagen could have accepted the results of the card checks and recognized the union. But the bosses were hardly going to allow the UAW free rein in the plant. Company officials made clear that the union would get through the door only if it ceded many of its duties and functions to a German-style works council, a body that would have been under the thumb of management while giving the appearance that workers have a say in running the company.

While UAW president Bob King lauded the planned works council as a marker of the union’s partnership with VW, his “partners” were not about to roll out the welcome mat. Even under their current class-collaborationist leaderships, unions are the basic organizations of the workers to fight for their economic needs against the bosses. Keeping unions out means massively greater profits for the corporations. In Chattanooga, supervisors roamed the plant, spreading the anti-union gospel. Meanwhile, the unionization campaign drew heavy fire from zealous anti-labor forces financed by the likes of the Koch brothers and spearheaded by right-wing hatchet man Grover Norquist and such Republican politicians as Tennessee governor Bill Haslam and U.S. Senator Bob Corker. Threats from state GOP politicians to cut off tax subsidies to VW if the union won the vote are now the subject of a UAW complaint begging the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to order a new election on the grounds of “outside interference.”

The anti-union campaign featured a heavy dose of racist divide-and-rule. Norquist’s “Center for Worker Freedom” erected billboards around Chattanooga showing the UAW’s name defaced to read “United Obama Workers” and the tagline: “The UAW spends millions to elect liberal politicans [sic], including BARACK OBAMA.” Particularly in states of the former Confederacy like Tennessee, such use of the “O” word is unmistakably racist code for the “N” word.

The intertwining of racist reaction and hostility toward unions was made explicit by one Matt Patterson, now executive director of Norquist’s center. According to the Nation (14 November 2013), Patterson ranted in an op-ed piece last May: “One hundred and fifty years ago an invading Union army was halted at Chattanooga by the Confederate Army of Tennessee.... Today Southeastern Tennessee faces invasion from another union—an actual labor union, the United Auto Workers.” One of the Confederate “heroes” of the Chattanooga battle was Nathan Bedford Forrest, a slave trader before the war and subsequently a founder of the Ku Klux Klan race-terrorists, an organization that has also served as shock troops for the bourgeoisie in spiking countless unionization drives.

All of this underscores that any attempt to organize the South must tackle head-on the anti-black racism that has long served the capitalists in dividing workers and weakening their struggles. And with the large number of Latino immigrants in the working class, union organizing cannot go forward without a fight against anti-immigrant bigotry. The labor movement must champion the struggle for black rights and demand full citizenship rights for everyone who has made it to the U.S.

Whether or not the UAW had won the vote at Chattanooga, the class collaboration of the union leadership is an obstacle to organizing more broadly. The fundamental starting point for a serious union organizing drive must be the understanding that this capitalist society is divided between two hostile classes whose interests are irreconcilably counterposed: the workers who have to sell their labor power and the capitalists who own the means of production and rake in massive profits by exploiting labor. Sowing illusions in a commonality of interests between the workers and their exploiters, the labor bureaucrats push reliance on the government agencies and political parties of the enemy class, from the NLRB to the Democrats. This strategy has led to one defeat after another for the labor movement.

As we wrote in “The Fight to Unionize the ‘Open Shop’ South” (WV No. 720, 1 October 1999):

“The last, feeble attempt by the CIO to organize the South following World War II, grotesquely called ‘Operation Dixie,’ was quickly shipwrecked on the shoals of the Cold War red purges, racism and the bureaucrats’ ties to the Democratic Party…. The union tops’ loyalty to the Democrats made them incapable of waging a fight against the Jim Crow white power structure, which was run by the Dixiecrats and their KKK auxiliaries.”

To transform the unions into bastions of class struggle requires a fight for a new leadership based on the political independence of the working class.

For Class Struggle, Not Class Collaboration

In the Chattanooga organizing drive, the UAW tops thought they could sneak into the South by presenting the union as dedicated to “labor-management cooperation.” The neutrality agreement committed the UAW to “maintaining and where possible enhancing the cost advantages and other competitive advantages” of Volkswagen. Thus, the union bureaucrats agreed in advance to shackle Chattanooga auto workers with the lower wages and substandard working conditions that are hallmarks of non-union plants. This was hardly going to inspire confidence in workers that joining the union would better their lot. But it did provide grist for the mill of the anti-union forces around the group “No 2 UAW,” which made an impact on some workers who had signed UAW cards last year but later voted against the union.

The centerpiece of the neutrality agreement was the formation of a class-collaborationist works council modeled on the German Betriebsräte. This body, which the German union IG Metall urged the UAW to accept, would exercise jurisdiction over various shopfloor issues, from safety to scheduling of overtime, and oversee at least the first stage of the grievance process. The effect would have been to undercut the union, whose purpose is supposed to be to defend workers against the company. This is a far cry from the UAW in its heyday, when union committeemen faced with shopfloor attacks would stop the assembly line until management relented.

The UAW also explicitly abandoned the many temporary contract workers in Chattanooga by agreeing to exclude them from any future bargaining unit. Organizing these workers, bringing them into the union and demanding full pay and benefits, is crucial to any serious attempt at unionization. Management at other Southern (and also some Northern) factories like the Nissan plant in Smyrna, Tennessee, has been replacing many full-time positions with temporary jobs. Pointing to the impact of the Chattanooga defeat on workers at the Smyrna Nissan plant, a 15 February Washington Post article observed: “The UAW lost a vote there in 2001, and while it still has organizers on the ground in Smyrna, workers will look to Chattanooga and wonder why so many thought the union was a bad idea.”

The anti-union forces in Chattanooga blamed the union for the devastated condition of Detroit, the former Motor City. But it was the auto bosses, with the complicity of the pro-capitalist union tops, who turned Detroit—an overwhelmingly black city that was once a UAW stronghold—into a bankrupt industrial wasteland at the cost of tens of thousands of decent-paying union jobs. The standard of living that auto workers in Detroit and elsewhere were able to enjoy for a couple of decades after World War II—when U.S. imperialism was economically dominant relative to its Japanese and German rivals—was made possible by the fierce class struggles that built the UAW and made it a powerhouse of organized labor. The seminal event was the 1936-37 sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan, a watershed in the class battles that gave rise to the CIO industrial unions. The Flint sitdown was preceded by a courageous strike at the Fisher Body plant in Atlanta, in which workers occupied the plant in November 1936 and maintained impassable picket lines for three months. In 1937, the UAW won national recognition.

Today, the union tops point to the panoply of the capitalists’ anti-union laws to justify diverting workers into futile lobbying of the Democrats instead of waging hard class struggle. But there were anti-union laws in the 1930s, too. Union militants were arrested and physically attacked by cops, National Guard and private strikebreakers. But these were the kind of battles out of which the industrial unions were forged. To revive the labor movement today will take nothing less than a return to the same militant methods that built the unions in the first place.

Break with the Democrats!

The Chattanooga VW plant is one of the newest of the so-called transplants: foreign-owned auto factories in the U.S., mostly non-union shops in the South. This trend took off after production started at the Marysville, Ohio, Honda factory in 1982 and the Smyrna Nissan plant a year later. Helping spur the growth of the transplants was the “buy American” protectionism of the UAW bureaucracy during the 1970s and 1980s. To avoid trade restrictions, Japanese and later German automakers relocated some production to the U.S. In turn, the UAW officialdom, whose protectionist tirades tied the union to the interests of the American exploiters, was incapable of waging the necessary struggle to unionize the transplants. Instead, Solidarity House agreed to concession after concession at the Big Three (GM, Ford and Chrysler) so that the bosses could “stay competitive” with the foreign-owned factories.

Decades of class collaboration culminated in the UAW leadership’s support to the 2009 bailout of the auto bosses by the Obama administration. The UAW tops accepted plant closures and massive wage and benefit cuts along with a six-year no-strike pledge in the name of saving some jobs. Between 2005 and 2013 foreign automakers opened seven plants, while the Big Three closed 21! From a peak in the 1960s of 1.6 million members, the UAW has been reduced to well under 500,000, and that includes tens of thousands who work in casinos and higher education. A measure of these setbacks is that starting pay at UAW-organized plants is as low as $15 per hour. And now even Michigan, long a center of union power, has become a “right to work” state.

Current UAW president Bob King played a key role alongside his predecessor Ron Gettelfinger in foisting the bailout on union members. King had hoped to burnish his legacy by organizing at least one foreign-owned assembly line in the South before retiring in June. UAW officials were already applying the same losing strategy they used in Chattanooga to a Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Alabama, where they hoped the parent company Daimler might accept a union if it came with a works council. Daimler now has little reason to play ball with King & Co.

A few years ago, the union officialdom placed great hopes on pressuring the Democrats to pass the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would have provided for union recognition when a majority of employees at a workplace signed union authorization cards. While the union bureaucrats saw the EFCA as another substitute for labor struggle, we supported this measure because it would ease the road to union recognition. Had it been enacted, the UAW would have been recognized at the Chattanooga plant last September. When he was U.S. Senator and the EFCA had no chance of passage, Barack Obama backed the bill. Once in the Oval Office, where he landed in no small part due to the huge financial and organizational support of the labor bureaucracy, Obama and the Democrats let the EFCA die. In this, Obama was simply doing his job as CEO of American capitalism.

The trade-union bureaucracy’s fealty to the Democratic Party, which no less than the openly labor-hating Republicans is a party of capital, is the political corollary of its “partnership” with the corporations. The working class can follow one of two paths. There is the bureaucracy’s acquiescence to what is possible under capitalism, which has led to disaster. Or there is the revolutionary strategy proposed by us Marxists. In the course of sharp class struggles and through patient education on the nature of capitalist society, the working class will become imbued with the consciousness of its own historic interests as a class fighting for itself and for all the oppressed. Such consciousness requires a political expression. That means breaking labor’s chains to the Democrats and forging a class-struggle workers party, whose purpose is not only to improve the present conditions of the working class but to do away with the entire system of capitalist wage slavery.

***The Fixer Man Cometh- George Clooney’s Ocean’s 13

 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Ocean’s 13, starring George Clooney, Brad Pitts, Al Pacino, Eliot Gould, 2007

Everybody likes to see a bad guy get his comeuppance. Nobody likes to see a guy screw his partner (not in the old days anyway maybe now things are different in the raw dog-eat-dog world). Everybody likes to see a bad guy from Vegas get his comeuppance in duplicate and that is the premise behind Danny Ocean’s action in this third of the modern Ocean series (the old Frank Sinatra-led pack in the 1960s or so being the “classic”). Danny (played by George Clooney) and Rusty (played by Brad Pitts) are once again called to right some Vegas wrongs in the film under review, Ocean’s 13.           

The plot line is simple-A friend, an old time casino owing friend and father figure for Danny and the boys (played by Eliot Gould) has been kicked the teeth by an up and coming Vegas hotel mogul (played by Al Pacino), and his partner, who wants to make Vegas a more upscale place where Mom and Pop might not feel so comfortable but where the international jet set might want to land for a few days. So out goes the old bargain basement casino-hotel and in comes the new. And that is the kick in the teeth that Danny and friends try to avenge. That bad act and old Eliot taking a heart attack over the notion that he was out of the business.

And avenge Danny and the guys (no women on this caper) do using all the high tech skills available to the motley crew of expert do-gooders. See, what they do is draw all the resources from the new hotel by hook or by crook, the money, naturally as the old master burglary Willie Sutton made us aware when asked about his thing for robbing banks. So between the individual hi-jinx necessary to pull the plot off and Danny’s thoughtful plan to gain revenge Brother Pacino has egg on his face, no question. Danny though juts keeps trucking on in the sultry Vegas night.  

 

Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare Correction: The message sent yesterday contained an incorrect time for the Fall River talk.  It will be tomorrow, Thursday, at 11 am at Bristol Community College's Jackson Arts Center, room H209/H210. Talks by Gareth Porter March 25, Northampton: Broadside Books, 247 Main St., 7pm. Sponsored by AFSC Western MA March 26, MIT: 1 Amherst St. (Bldg. E40), 4th floor conference room, Cambridge.  12 noon- 1:30 pm. A seminar sponsored by the Center for International Studies. March 26, Walpole: Public Library, 43 School St., 7pm. Sponsored by Walpole Peace & Justice Group March 26, Fall River: Bristol Community College, Jackson Arts Center, room H209/H210, 11am. March 27, Cambridge: Friends Meeting, 5 Longfellow Park (off Brattle St. near Harvard T), 7pm. March 29, WZBC 90.3 FM: Hear Gareth on "Sounds of Dissent", 11am-1pm Investigative reporter Gareth Porter unravels the whole web of lies and fabrications that have formed the basis of a false narrative about a lengthy and active pursuit by Iran of a clandestine nuclear weapons program. The Obama administration is demanding that as part of a final nuclear deal, Iran must 'resolve concerns' about claims that are based on falsified intelligence.  It's now more important for everyone to understand how and why the Iran nuclear crisis was pumped up and has been going on for so long. Watch a 30-minute video of Gareth's February talk in New York:  Sponsored by Massachusetts Peace Action, American Friends Service Committee and Jewish Voice for Peace.

Join Massachusetts Peace Action - or renew your membership today!   Dues are $40/year for an individual, $65 for a family, or $10 for student/unemployed/low income.  Members vote for leadership and endorsements, receive newsletters and discounts on event admissions.  Donate now and you will be a member in good standing through December 2014! Your financial support makes this work possible! Massachusetts Peace Action, 11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138 617-354-2169  • info@masspeaceaction.org • Follow us on Facebook or Twitter Click here to unsubscribe

There is something Chelsea wants you to know Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. As we enter the upcoming appeal process, help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea Manning's legal fees! Donate today. Chelsea Manning and her new attorney have a message for you By Chelsea Manning, March 17, 2014 I would like to thank all of you for your support. Without your efforts–including organizing, fundraising, and public education–my court martial would not have been nearly as visible to the public, and many of the serious issues in my case would have gone unnoticed. Currently I’m doing well. I spend most of my time working, but when I’m not working I’m either at the library doing legal research and drafting, reading books, magazines, newspapers, and your mail, or working out–running, calisthenics, and various cardio regimens. I’m currently waiting for the Convening Authority of the Military District of Washington, Major General Jeffrey Buchanan, to act on my case–including my clemency request, filed by my trial attorney David Coombs. If Major General Buchanan denies my request and approves the findings of my court martial, my case will be reviewed by the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year. In preparing for the appeals phase of my legal proceedings, I have worked with Courage to Resist and the Chelsea Manning Support Network to hire excellent civilian defense council, Nancy Hollander and Vincent Ward of the law firm Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Urias & Ward of Albuquerque, New Mexico. As we enter the upcoming appeal process, help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea Manning's legal fees! Donate today. I’ve spoken a few times with both Ms. Hollander and Mr. Ward over the phone and I met them in person last month. I feel they are a perfect fit for doing this case, and we’re all excited about working together. Both Ms. Hollander and Mr. Ward have achieved successes in complex, high profile, civil and criminal cases in the past, fighting to protect the U.S. Constitution, civil liberties, and social justice through work on Guantanamo, the Gulf Coast Oil Spill, and more. They are eager to represent me before the military court, federal court, and perhaps even the Supreme Court. I hope that you will continue supporting my fight for justice. My case impacts important issues that affect many, if not all Americans. These include the rights of an accused not to be subjected to harsh and unnecessary pretrial punishment, the right to a speedy trial, the right to timely and complete access to relevant evidence held by the government, and the right to a public trial. Your support for my case going forward can even help to define the limits of power held by the military’s convening authorities, the Executive Branch, and the US Government. Again, thank you for your overwhelming support thus far. I have stayed–and continued to be–optimistic throughout all of what has happened. I sincerely hope that we can continue working together to change history. Salutations with warm regards, CHELSEA E. MANNING US Disciplinary Barracks Fort Leavenworth, Kansas March 17, 2014 We are honored that Chelsea Manning has chosen us to represent her on appeal and we enter this case with our full commitment to it. As soon as we have the record of trial, we will turn every page and research all issues. We will not let fear or intimidation interfere with her constitutional rights. NANCY HOLLANDER Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Urias & Ward P.A. Albuquerque, New Mexico Last week we retained attorneys Nancy Hollander and Vincent Ward to represent Pvt. Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning moving forward into the appeals process. We simply can’t allow this outrageous 35 year prison sentence for sharing the truth to stand–while war criminals go free! We are now counting on your tax-deductible donation, of whatever you can afford, to cover the $50,000 retainer of Chelsea’s chosen appeals team. JEFF PATERSON Courage to Resist, Project Director Chelsea Manning Support Network, Steering Committee As we enter the upcoming appeal process, help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea Manning's legal fees! Donate today.

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In the last few days, I have been thinking back to where I was and what I was doing when the invasion of Iraq was launched on March 20, 2003. That day remains a forever reminder-- especially for those of us who have family in the military-- of why we must end a US foreign policy premised on wars and occupations. Peace Action is supporting the veterans and military families who are working with Iraqi civil society and trade unions to repair the damage of the Iraq war, the human and the economic trauma, which continue on. On Wednesday, March 26 from 6-9 PM Eastern, you can join an online live stream of the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) People's Hearing on the lasting impacts of the war in Iraq. RSVP here. Phil Donahue, co-producer of the film, Body of War, will host the March 26 event. The hearing is sponsored by the IVAW, the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq, the Federation of Worker's Councils and Unions in Iraq, Civilian Soldier Alliance, and the Center for Constitutional Rights. Our work also must continue to bring all the troops home from Afghanistan. Peace Action is joining Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) to launch a petition drive to keep the pressure on the White House for the “Zero Option”: leave no troops behind in Afghanistan. Please sign the petition. We are helping MFSO galvanize grassroots support for the “Zero Option.”  We will keep you updated on events and days for action. Join the campaign by signing the petition. As veterans and their families struggle to overcome the trauma of war, lend solidarity to the peoples of both Iraq and Afghanistan, they also continue the fight for accountability for crimes of war and for changing US foreign policy. Join the online live stream of the March People's Hearing on Wednesday, March 26 from 6-9 PM Eastern. RSVP now by clicking here. Power to the peaceful, Judith LeBlanc Field Director Peace Action P.S. If you are in the DC metro area, join the People’s Hearing in person at the Friends Meeting of Washington; 2111 Florida Avenue NW; Washington, DC 20008-1912 RSVP by clicking here. Take Action: Join a livestream or attend in person. Sign the Zero Option petition. CONNECT TO US:  Find us on Facebook  Follow us on Twitter  Read our blog  Contact us You are subscribed to Peace Action's Action Alert Network. You can unsubscribe here.

The Nation: “Why are students protesting Wendy’s and Publix?”… Answers to that question and more, with all the latest press from the Fair Food front! Even as we gear up for what is sure to be an exciting April — the month ahead is already overflowing with events, including the recently-announced screening of “Food Chains” at Tribeca, the CIW’s visit to Amsterdam to participate in Ahold’s annual shareholder meeting, and a trip to the University of California at Berkeley to take part in Michael Pollan’s popular lecture series there, among many other things — we don’t want to ignore the press that continues to roll out this month in the wake of the Now is the Time Tour!  So here below are three of the best articles from the most recent coverage of the CIW’s ongoing Campaign as well as the groundbreaking Fair Food Program. First up, hot off the presses, the Nation published a quick-hitting story on the CIW yesterday following up on the 10-day, 10-city Tour that hit both Columbus and Lakeland.  This piece is short and sweet, so we thought we’d share it in full: Why Are Students Protesting Wendy’s and Publix? The indefatigable Coalition of Immokalee Workers recently wrapped up its “Now is the Time” Tour—a ten-day, ten-city tour designed to pressure Wendy’s and Publix supermarkets—two of the remaining hold-out retailers–to embrace the highest standard of farm labor protections and increased pay in US agriculture, the Fair Food Program. Wendy’s now stands alone as the only major fast-food brand that has refused to join the FFP, a unique farmworker-driven initiative consisting of a wage increase supported by a price premium paid by corporate purchasers of Florida tomatoes, and a human-rights-based Code of Conduct, applicable throughout the Florida tomato industry. For the rest of this month's final media round-up, head over to the CIW website!

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Don't miss this event this week - in NYC and live on the web: April 2: Drones & Dirty Wars: Prelude to Drone Days of Action 2014 Wednesday 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm Community Church 40 E. 35th Street, NYC Click here to share the image above on Facebook A live program & international webcast in support of the Spring Days of Action – 2014, a coordinated campaign in April and May to End Drone Killing, Drone Surveillance and Global Militarization. Featuring: Madiha Tahir, film maker, Wounds of Waziristan An independent journalist reporting on conflict, culture and politics in Pakistan, she has followed the U.S. drone attacks there for years. Maria LaHood, Senior Staff Attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights who specializes in international human rights litigation, seeking to hold government officials and corporations accountable for torture, extrajudicial killings, and war crimes abroad. Carl Dix, Vietnam War resister & Revolutionary Communist Party. A leader of protests against police brutality, stop-and-frisk, & founder, with Cornel West, of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network. With information from the Granny Peace Brigade, kNOwdrones and World Can't Wait on what you can do to in your schools & communities to create a political situation where the U.S. is forced to back off from using targeted killing in our name. Sponsored by kNOwdrones & World Can't Wait, Action for Justice Committee / The Community Church of New York Unitarian Universalist More info: 866 973 4463 kNOwdrones.com / worldcantwait.net Flier in English Flier in Spanish Watch live: ustream.tv/stopmotionsolo ►Invite your friends via Facebook Monsters in the Sky: watch and share this video by Jill McLaughlin Announcing the “Chelsea Manning Support Network” (formerly the Private Manning Support Network) Messages from Chelsea Manning and attorney Nancy Hollander: How Chelsea sees herself, as interpreted by artist Molly Crabapple Chelsea Manning writes: “I would like to thank all of you for your support. Without your efforts–including organizing, fundraising, and public education–my court martial would not have been nearly as visible to the public, and many of the serious issues in my case would have gone unnoticed... “I hope that you will continue supporting my fight for justice.  My case impacts important issues that affect many, if not all Americans.  These include the rights of an accused not to be subjected to harsh and unnecessary pretrial punishment, the right to a speedy trial, the right to timely and complete access to relevant evidence held by the government, and the right to a public trial.  Your support for my case going forward can even help to define the limits of power held by the military’s convening authorities, the Executive Branch, and the US Government. “Again, thank you for your overwhelming support thus far.  I have stayed–and continued to be–optimistic throughout all of what has happened.  I sincerely hope that we can continue working together to change history.” Bereaved Yemenis to Launch National Drone Victims’ Organisation A group of people who have lost loved ones to US drone strikes in Yemen will next week (Tuesday April 1) launch a national organisation with the aim of supporting affected communities and highlighting the civilian impact of the covert programme. Protesting the “Elder Statesman” War Criminal Henry Kissinger From the Chicago Chapter of World Can't Wait: Henry Kissinger, one of the top war criminals in the world, was invited to Chicago to give the key note address at a March 20th fund raising dinner for the Illinois Holocaust Museum. “Humanitarian or War Criminal?” was the question posed by a broad coalition of groups, with World Can’t Wait Chicago among the core, that came together to say loudly, “War Criminal,” a man who deserves to be behind bars, not dishonoring the memory of all who perished in the Holocaust. Over 40 people came out to deliver that message, including Gay Liberation Network, Jewish Voice for Peace, 8th Day Center for Justice and more. Rabbi Brant Rosen, author of “Wrestling in the Daylight” and a member of the rabbinical counsel of Jewish Voice for Peace who could not be present, sent a message stating, "I cannot understand how a man who was the architect of our nation's war crimes in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, who was instrumental in the brutal coup in Chile and other acts of illegal international intervention around the world could possibly be considered an appropriate speaker at a gathering that celebrates humanitarianism.” Henry Kissinger has been dogged by protests any time he appears in public and many of us in Chicago were proud to continue that trend. Cheers to “The California Department of Corrections!” Thanks to the California Department of Corrections, which urges transparency in the treatment of Guantanamo prisoners. Or should we continue to allow the military to hide forced feeding and solitary confinement because the prisoners aren't "American?" Oh wait, they do that in California to "American" prisoners, too. See correctionsdepartment.org Share this message: Thursday April 3 World Can't Wait Conversation Invite your friends to the Facebook Event. We'll be joined by Ross Caputi of the Justice for Fallujah Project. Watch his film, Fear Not the Path of Truth... This documentary follows Ross Caputi, veteran of the 2nd siege of Fallujah, as he investigates the atrocities that he participated in and the legacy of US foreign policy in Fallujah, Iraq. We are collecting questions now, so that we can make the most use of our one hour conference call. Send your comments, questions, or a particular area you'd like to explore in the conversation. You can also post questions on the Facebook event for this call. Register for dial-in details. Upcoming Events Thursday April 3 Public Hearing: General David Petraeus & His Legacy in Iraq & Afghanistan 6:00 - 8:00 pm Facebook Event CUNY Graduate Center 356 5th Avenue NYC April 3-4 Stop Mass Incarceration Network Strategy Session to Plan an October 2014 month of resistance. John Jay College. Write for details. Fri/Saturday April 11-12 Emergency Actions to Stop the War On Women. Contact Stop Patriarchy. Save the date: Friday May 23 Guantanamo is Still NOT Closed Nation-wide protests on the year anniversary of President Obama's second promise to close it. World Can't Wait Needs YOU to Sustain Its Mission Renew your commitment to sustaining the movement putting humanity and planet the first; sustaining an organization that won’t stop until the crimes do. Hi, Debra -- Tho I often feel inundated ... underwater ... overloaded with email feeds on many issues in my stuffed email In Box, I just wanted to thank you for the accessible and readable and scannable email you sent "The State of the 'Union' from the Outside." Hope to join the February conference call, especially on extreme cognitive dissonance of Edward Snowden vs.blather about keeping America "safe" ... and the travesty of left-behinds and hunger strikers at Gitmo. Keep the flame hot! Regards, Marie M. Upstate NY Hi Debra, Thanks for the in-depth report on your encounter at the 'MSA West' conference. I was amused to find myself surprised that the Muslim students you described were as ignorant of the drone war as the average American student is (I suspect without real knowledge) and then realized I was stereotyping them with the expectation that, as Muslims (and therefore with a presumably bigger 'dog in the fight') they'd be far more aware of the issues than your article describes rather than seeing them as just another segment of the American student population. Nonetheless, it's evident that WCW did a great job of consciousness raising at that conference!  I appreciate the e-mails you (all) send and continue to be proud how you put my small contribution to work for 'the cause'. In solidarity, Rael Debra Sweet, Director, The World Can't Wait

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