Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

10 Years of Death by Border Patrol

In 1994, Border Patrol implemented its “Prevention Through Deterrence” strategy, ramping up enforcement at popular entry points along the U.S.-Mexico border and funneling migrants into more dangerous desert areas. This strategy intensified under President George W. Bush with a hiring surge of roughly 8,000 Border Patrol agents from 2006 to 2009.

As a direct result, significantly fewer of those who cross into the United States from Mexico have lived to tell the tale: An untold number have died of thirst trying to traverse the deserts that flank the border. Responding to this crisis, the Tucson-based group No More Deaths began organizing brigades of volunteers to leave jugs of water in the Sonoran Desert for dehydrated migrants.

As In These Times reported in September 2009, what is lifesaving liquid for migrants is a crime against the state for others. In “Litterers or Life-Savers?” Kari Lydersen wrote: 

Walt Staton faces up to a year in prison and a $10,000 fine for littering.

Though he doesn’t expect to actually get jail time, the 27-year-old Tucson web designer still thinks the charges are ironic and disproportionate. Staton says that when he was cited in December 2008, he was actually picking up trash while also leaving full water jugs in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge along the Mexican border.

Staton is a member of No More Deaths/ No Más Muertes, a border activism group that leaves water along trails for migrants crossing through the harsh, unforgiving Sonoran Desert. About 50,000 migrants cross through the wildlife refuge each year, down from about 250,000 since a seven-mile stretch of a 12-foot-tall fence was built along the border there, according to refuge manager Michael Hawkes. ...

In February 2008, No More Deaths volunteer Daniel Millis found the body of a 14-year-old Salvadoran girl. (The cause of death is unclear.) Two days later he was cited for littering while leaving water jugs on trails. He refused to pay the $175 ticket. ...

In early August, a judge sentenced Staton to one year of “unsupervised probation.” During that period, he “must complete 300 hours of community service focusing on trash removal from public lands.”

Fast forward to 2019. In These Times reported that, on January 18, federal magistrate judge Bernardo Velasco found four more No More Deaths volunteers guilty of littering, or, as he put it, defiling “pristine nature.” One of the so-called litterers, Zaachila Orozco, testified during the trial: “I didn’t understand that humanitarian aid was criminal.”

Apparently it is. Separating children from their parents and locking them up in cages, however, is perfectly legal.

Every American Should Be Guaranteed a Job. The Green New Deal Could Make That Happen.

fed•er•al jobs guar•an•tee

noun

1. A government policy to provide a job for anyone who wants one

We’ve been talking about this for a while, right?

Yes! President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a “second Bill of Rights” in his 1944 State of the Union, a list of economic and social rights including “the right to a useful and remunerative job.” 

“Full employment” has been the official goal of the U.S. government since 1978, with the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act following advocacy from labor groups as well as Coretta Scott King. Early versions of the bill included an actual jobs guarantee, which was cut out of the final legislation.  A jobs guarantee was also part of Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential platform.

Are any of this year’s presidential candidates supporting a jobs guarantee?

Several! Cory Booker (N.J.) introduced a Senate bill—co-sponsored by Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Kamala Harris (Calif.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.)—to create a three-year pilot program in up to 15 “high-unemployment communities” to provide jobs with at least a $15 wage.

Bernie Sanders (Vt.) arguably goes further, invoking FDR’s call for a second Bill of Rights and a full jobs guarantee.

If the point is to keep people out of poverty, why not just give people money or provide better social services?

Why not all of the above? A universal basic income is preferred by some, but there’s no need to choose just one policy to answer economic inequality. Jobs advocates argue there is plenty of fulfilling work to be done and that a jobs guarantee would strengthen the bargaining position of workers in the private sector. The Sanders campaign website, for example, suggests childcare, elder care and green infrastructure as areas to emphasize.

Speaking of which, isn’t a jobs guarantee part of the Green New Deal?

That’s right—a Green New Deal could fund millions of jobs to dramatically scale up clean energy production, build and run public transportation, and prepare communities to adapt to the realities of a warming planet. While a jobs guarantee is already popular—52% of Americans support it, according to a poll by Civis Analytics—polling commissioned by the Sunrise Movement indicates that a jobs guarantee focused on green jobs and climate protection is even more popular.

Saving the planet and ending poverty at the same time? Certainly sounds worth a try! 

Asian carp capable of surviving in much larger areas of Lake Michigan than previously thought

Asian carp are capable of surviving and growing in much larger portions of Lake Michigan than scientists previously believed and present a high risk of becoming established, according to a new modeling study.

All the talk about GDPR making identity theft easier, but people fail to see that companies shouldn't have the data in the first place. And if a company leaks your data because of a takeout request, is that the fault of GDPR or just shoddy security?

Trump Urges Unity vs. Racism

In the wake of the El Paso shooting it’s clear Trump inspires mass shootings.

The Second a Teenager Gets Their First Phone

Protected from having an online presensce since she was born, it’s time to log on.

The Real Fascism

America’s big problem: violent white nationalists or Antifa milkshakes?

On the Heels of Another Massacre, Texas Is Loosening Gun Laws

New, looser gun laws will go into effect in the state of Texas in September, just before the one-month anniversary of the mass shooting that killed 22 people in an El Paso Walmart. Texas already has some of the least restrictive gun laws in the nation. But for Republican lawmakers during the state’s last legislative […]

Border Patrol Arrest Reports Are Full of Lies That Can Sabotage Asylum Claims

The Intercept found erroneous or fabricated information, inconsistencies, and boilerplate language included on forms filled out by immigration officials.

The post Border Patrol Arrest Reports Are Full of Lies That Can Sabotage Asylum Claims appeared first on The Intercept.

Expanding the Powers of the FBI Is Not the Solution to White Supremacist Violence

On August 3, a white supremacist attacked a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, killing at least 22 and wounding dozens more. Espousing racist conspiracy theories about a “Hispanic invasion,” the killer’s murderous rampage was cold-blooded—and appeared to target Latinx people. It’s only the latest high-profile act of white supremacist violence. And it comes at a time when Donald Trump and other Republican politicians are mainstreaming racist rhetoric.

Faced with this climate, many well-meaning people are looking for a way to counter the very real danger of white supremacist violence. Some Washington Post columnists, CNN guests, the FBI Agents Association and presidential hopeful Joe Biden are touting one particular "solution": to create a new law countering “domestic terrorism.”

The argument is simple: Due to a lack of a domestic terrorism statute, the FBI is somehow powerless to stop these acts of violence. Such a law would grant the FBI more surveillance powers. A new domestic terrorism statute would allow the agency to investigate and prosecute far-right violence.

But this approach is misguided—and dangerous. First of all, the FBI is not an ally in the fight against racism. It has, in fact, often thwarted racial justice advocates and continues to be defined by deep-seated institutional racism. With many activists rejecting the carceral state or counterterrorism framework, and embracing police and prison abolition, whether a law enforcement agency can ever counter white supremacy is a subject of debate.

What is extremely clear is that the FBI has extraordinary tools at its disposal. It operatesundertheloosest guidelines at any point since the post-Hoover era reforms. These current guidelines allow the FBI to investigate an individual without any factual predi­cate that the person has committed a crime or poses a threat to national security. The FBI is allowed to attend public meetings without disclosing its participation. The FBI has conducted counterterrorism investigations into nonviolent leftwing groups, including civil rights organizations. In other words, the FBI is hardly powerless to investigate and surveil activities it labels “domestic terrorism.” The FBI’s history of abuse, in fact, raises a troubling likelihood: A domestic terrorism law would almost certainly be used to silence leftwing dissent.

Sweeping powers

In addition to having the power to investigate domestic terrorism, the FBI also has plenty of statutes it can rely on. While it is true that “domestic terrorism” is not a stand-alone offense under U.S. law, neither is “international terrorism.” It is a crime to provide material support to a State-Department-designated “Foreign Terrorist Organization”—a statute frequently invoked by those claiming the FBI is powerless to fight domestic terrorism.

This, however, is not the only terrorism-related law. Dozens of laws apply to domestic terrorism, making the claims about the lack of domestic terrorism laws specious. One statute makes it a crime to provide material support for the commission of “federal crimes of terrorism.” This statute explicitly lists 57 preexisting laws as federal crimes of terrorism. An analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice found that, of these 57 federal crimes of terrorism, “51 of them, or 89 percent, are applicable to both international and domestic terrorism.” This is on top of multiple hate crimes statues and numerous other basic criminal laws, like those against racketeering or conspiracy, that clearly would apply to white supremacist violence.

There also exists a highly specific domestic terrorism law, which illustrates how such legislation can be designed specifically to thwart dissent. Congress passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which makes it illegal to damage or interfere with an animal enterprise causing it to lose profits. This law has been used to prosecute animal rights activists who free mink destined to be slaughtered on commercial fur farms.

Making up the rules

In order to understand how the FBI conducts investigations, it’s important to realize that the Bureau plays by its own rules. There is no charter from Congress defining how much evidence is required for the FBI to open an investigation. While some of the most intrusive surveillance techniques, like wiretaps or national security letters, are regulated by statute, Congress has little else to say about when and why the FBI can use specific investigatory techniques. Although a statute authorizes the FBI to investigate crime, many of its national security powers instead come from executive orders. For the last four decades, the questions of when, why and how the FBI conducts investigations have been largely regulated by the Attorney General. While this move was ostensibly intended as a reform, leaving such authority to the Attorney General has allowed for a gradual expansion of FBI powers.  

In the mid-1970s, the public, the media, Congress and even the Comptroller General of the United States, began to scrutinize the FBI’s use of its domestic intelligence authorities to surveil and even disrupt lawful, political activity. As part of an effort to rein in the FBI’s political surveillance and stave off public criticism, in 1976 Attorney General Edward H. Levi issued guidelines to regulate the FBI’s investigatory powers. Levi’s guidelines have since been succeeded by new guidelines promulgated by subsequent Attorneys General. However, the Attorney General Guidelines remain the main mechanism for defining and regulating the scope of the FBI’s authorities.

As part of a these reforms ostensibly meant to move the FBI away from broad “political intelligence” investigations and reorient it towards investigations of violations of the federal code, the FBI in 1976 moved the responsibility for investigating domestic terrorism from the FBI’s Intelligence Division to its Criminal Investigation Division. International terrorism, on the other hand, was considered to be a “foreign counter intelligence” matter. Until 2008, there existed separate guidelines for general crime, racketeering and domestic security/terrorism investigations on the one hand, and foreign counterintelligence investigations on the other hand. In other words, domestic and international terrorism were to be treated differently. Since the foreign counterintelligence guidelines were supposedly largely meant to deal with foreign spies, saboteurs and terrorists, they were less protective of civil liberties and partially classified.

When it comes to spying on dissent, the FBI is remarkably resourceful and inventive—and it has used its powers to violate civil liberties in foreign terrorism cases to crack down domestically. Take, for example, the FBI’s surveillance of opponents of Ronald Reagan’s Central American policy. In the 1980s, the FBI surveilled the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador’s (CISPES). Even though CISPES was a domestic group, involved in domestic political activity, and the investigation took place entirely in the U.S., the FBI argued that CISPES might be connected to armed groups in El Salvador’s civil war. As a result, the FBI classified its investigation as an international terrorism investigation and used the looser guidelines (no connection to terrorism was ever discovered).

Attorney General William French Smith under Ronald Reagan and Attorney General John Ashcroft under George W. Bush both rewrote the guidelines to make them significantly less protective of civil liberties. The most dramatic changes came in 2008, when in the waning months of the Bush Administration, Attorney General Michael Mukasey created radically new guidelines—which remain in place today. Explicitly arguing for the need to “eliminate the remnants of the old ‘wall’ between foreign intelligence and domestic law enforcement," Mukasey issued a unitary set of guidelines for general crime, national security and foreign counterintelligence operations. Thus, the FBI agents no longer operated under differing standards for opening and carrying out domestic terrorism versus international terrorism investigations. (The internal structure of the FBI has also been reorganized since the reforms of the 1970s. Both international and domestic terrorism are now handled by the Counterterrorism Division, which is part of the FBI’s National Security Branch.)

The current Mukasey guidelines create two overarching types of FBI investigations of individuals: predicated investigations and assessments. While predicated investigations require having a factual reason to think the subject has some nexus to criminal activity or a national security threat, an assessment requires no such justification. Thanks to the Mukasey guidelines, the FBI can investigate people without any evidence of a crime.

In addition to the current loose standards for opening an investigation in general, the FBI's own domestic terrorism investigations show how easily the agency manipulates the term, in stark contrast to those who say the FBI lacks enough authority. Using its domestic terrorism authorities, the FBI has surveilled both Occupy Wall Street and the School of Americas Watch, even though it acknowledged both groups were nonviolent or had peaceful intentions. The FBI reasoned that a future, hypothetical “lone offender” or “militant group” could infiltrate the movements to carry out unspecified threats. The FBI’s domestic terrorism investigation of School of the Americas Watch carried on for 10 years. A 2010 Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report looked at FBI monitoring of domestic advocacy groups from 2001 to 2006, including PETA, Greenpeace and the Catholic Worker movement.

One of the terrorism investigations reviewed involved a 2003 incident where an alleged member of the Catholic Worker movement smashed a glass window and threw red paint at a military recruitment station. An email claiming responsibility stated the act was carried out “on behalf of the people of Iraq who suffered under Saddam Hussein and now suffer under the United States.” The OIG decided that since the act involved a “use of force or violence” (throwing red paint and smashing window) to achieve a political goal it, was—under FBI policy—proper to investigate it as domestic terrorism.

The OIG made a similar conclusion about a 2004 act of civil disobedience at a military recruitment station, determining that protesters spilling blood on the walls, an American flag and pictures constituted a use of force or violence for political ends.

The FBI is hardly hamstrung in investigating domestic terrorism. Instead, the FBI has overly broad powers that it routinely relies on to surveil dissent.

Institutional racism

During a 2016 rally organized by the white supremacist Traditionalist Worker Party, white supremacists stabbed counter-protesters with the civil rights group By Any Means Necessary (Bamn). The FBI responded by opening up a domestic terrorism investigation—into Bamn. Additionally, the FBI misidentified Traditionalist Worker Party as the Ku Klux Klan and considered opening an investigation into Bamn for conspiring to violate the rights of the Ku Klux Klan. The FBI’s documents describe the Ku Klux Klan as a group that “consisted of members that some perceived to be supportive of a white supremacist agenda.”

That the FBI would respond to an incident of white supremacist violence by investigating the victims as terrorists doesn’t merely illustrate how the FBI doesn’t need any new powers to investigate terrorism. It illustrates how the FBI uses those powers to police political activism and has a deep-seated problem with institutional racism.

The Bamn investigation is part of a much larger picture. The FBI issued an outrageous and baseless intelligence assessment in August of 2017 on the threat of “Black Identity Extremism.” According to this analysis, African-American perceptions of racism are likely to lead to violence against police officers. By treating opposition to racism as a precursor to violence, this analysis is inherently criminalizing of Black dissent. Former FBI Director James Comey publicly touted the Ferguson Effect, an entirely debunked theory arguing that protests against police brutality lead to an uptick of crime. Historically, while the FBI had tasked informants with infiltrating and disrupting the Ku Klux Klan, it knew in advance about planned violence against the Freedom Riders and took no action.

The FBI’s institutional racism is further demonstrated by its own distinction between domestic and international terrorism. Federal statutes define domestic terrorism and international terrorism as identical, except for one key difference. Domestic terrorism takes place in the US, international terrorism does not. The FBI, however, ignores these statutory definitions. Instead, the FBI classifies as international terrorism any acts inspired by “foreign ideologies.” The FBI considers Jihadist ideology to be a foreign ideology. Therefore, nearly any terrorist act in which the alleged perpetrator is Muslim is classified as international terrorism. This is true even if the alleged perpetrator is a U.S. citizen, has no contacts outside the country, and carries out the alleged act in the U.S.

Hatem Abudayyeh is the executive director of the Arab American Action Network, a social justice organization based in Chicago. He tells In These Times, “If more funding goes to the feds, that expansion of the state is going to go after us. It's going to come down on our communities—Arab, Muslim, Latinx, Black, Native—all the social justice organizers around the country who come under attack by law enforcement because we're resisting Trump's policies and trying to build a better world.”

Abudayyeh has reason to be concerned. Donald Trump has tweeted that Antifa should be labeled a terrorist organization, and Ted Cruz has sponsored a nonbinding resolution urging that Antifa be declared a domestic terrorism organization. Antifa, which is short for Anti-Fascism, is an ideology, not the name of an organization. Further, technically speaking, no mechanism exists to classify domestic groups as terrorist organizations. The Obama Administration cited this when responding to a WhiteHouse.Org petition urging it to classify Black Lives Matter as a terrorist organization. While this may not be a statutory designation, politicians and law enforcement conflating political movements with terrorism is far from harmless. It demonizes these movements, greenlights repression, and chills people from engaging in protected political activity for fear of being associated with terrorism. In the past, when the FBI declared animal rights and eco-terrorists the number one domestic terrorist threat, this contributed to a climate of repression, surveillance and aggressive prosecution.

White supremacist violence is real. It threatens some of the most vulnerable communities amongst us. But expanding the powers of the FBI or creating a new domestic terrorism law is not a solution. Contrary to the handwringing of cable news guests, reviews of existing statues or the FBI’s own domestic terrorism investigations show the claim that the FBI is lacking in powers is patently false. New laws aren’t only unnecessary, they would be actively harmful. The FBI has a long history of acting as the political police, including against civil rights groups. A new domestic terrorism law will only be used further repress these groups.

In the words of Fatema Ahmad, deputy director of the Muslim Justice League, a civil rights organization, "We need to get serious about addressing violence by starting at the root causes, like white supremacy, rather than attempting to predict individual instances or expanding the power of institutions that have long upheld white supremacy.”

We Talked with One of the Central Park Five About Netflix’s “When They See Us”

Yusef Salaam: the name may not automatically ring a bell, but his story likely does—especially if you have seen When They See Us. Last month the miniseries directed by Oscar-nominated director Ava DuVernay snagged 16 Emmy nominations and currently reigns as the most-watched U.S. series in Netflix history. Salaam, 45, was just 15 years old when his life was turned upside down. He and four other African American and Latino teens were falsely accused and later convicted in connection with New York’s infamous “Central Park Jogger” case, in which a 28-year-old white woman was assaulted and raped while jogging in the park in 1989. A central focus of the case and the miniseries is that, after prolonged periods of police interrogation, NYPD officers asserted that the accused boys had admitted to "wildin’" at the park on the night of the attack, supposedly a teen slang term that meant acting crazy or violent.

“The Central Park Five,” as they came to be known, spent between five and 13 years in prison before serial rapist Matias Reyes confessed to the crime in 2002; DNA evidence ultimately exonerated Salaam and the four others. Salaam and his wife, Sanovia, who have 10 children, relocated to the metro Atlanta area after he and his cohorts won a $41 million settlement from the state of New York in 2014. He recently spoke with In These Times’ Leonard Goodman Institute for Investigative Reporting Fellow Chandra Thomas Whitfield about the impact of the wildly popular Netflix miniseries, life after exoneration, what helped him through the hardest times while doing hard time, and the role that former New York-businessman-turned-President-of-The-United-States Donald Trump played in nearly taking his life.

Chandra Thomas Whitfield:Wow, DuVernay’s series is provocative, emotional and also covers a lot of ground. What do you personally want people to know about how this case affected your lives?

Yusef Salaam: There were over 400 articles written about us when this first happened. That tsunami of media reports really did a devastating job. They were painting this picture about who we were. The pointing of the finger caused everybody who had an opinion–especially a person like Donald Trump–to say, “Let me take out a full-page ad in New York City newspapers. Let me put my money where my mouth is: These folks need to be executed.” A bounty was placed on our heads.

I want people to know the depth of what [the prosecutors and New York Police Department] did. This was the so-called criminal justice system. In reality, it was the criminal system of injustice. They inserted me and the rest of the five into this horrific experience. We wanted the American dream, but as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, Malcolm X said, we woke up to the American nightmare.

Chandra: Your friend Korey Wise was the focus of the final episode of the miniseries. He endured a particularly hellish ordeal, and you two are closely intertwined in this case. How did seeing Korey’s experience unfold in film form affect you? 

Yusef: One of the most magical components of our story is this young man changed his name from Kharey to Korey. If you ever get an opportunity to speak to him, he says things like, “This is [my] life after death.” That young man died in prison. I’m fighting for folks like him who didn’t have someone like me to fight for him.

Our brotherhood switched from a brotherhood to a sacred brotherhood because [of the film.]

One of the best things about this film is that we didn’t know each other’s story; we found out just like everybody else found out in When They See Us. We didn’t know what Raymond [Santana] was going through: that at home his stepmom was calling him a rapist. He was scared to death, he didn’t even want to be at home with her alone; she might say he touched her. This is the reality that was placed upon [him], and a lot of [us] were going through similar types of things.

Chandra: Many fans of When They See Us have said it does an amazing job of covering the many hardships you all endured, particularly while in prison. What were some sources of inspiration that you leaned on during the toughest parts of your ordeal?

Yusef: I wrote this book of poetry called Words of a Man: My Right to Be. Most of the poetry was written while I was incarcerated between 1989 and 1997. From the unbelievable accusations from the start, to the “wildin’” convictions of the media, to Donald Trump’s full-page ad calling for the state to kill us, to the final judgement and imprisonment; the system wasn’t treating me like I was a man. So, because I knew I was a man, a human being and a son of God, I had to remind myself, and these words were a big part of that. I had to grow up very, very fast, but I wanted [people] to know, that if you ever find yourself in so-called dark places, there’s always a light somewhere in the darkness. And even if that light is inside you, you could illuminate your own darkness. Shine your light on the world. Young people need to know without a shadow of a doubt that they were born on purpose, and that they were born with a purpose.

Chandra:What was the media reaction to your exoneration?

Yusef: It was almost disrespectful, the way I came home. [My release after seven years got] little to no attention, which was a good thing in a way. I didn’t want nobody looking for me now that I was out.

But 13 years after we were accused and convicted of the crime, they found out we didn’t do it. My mother testified in City Hall that [the coverage of the exoneration] was a whisper juxtaposed in comparison to 1989. She wondered if the rats in New York City had heard. Even to this day, there are folks that’ll be like, “Who’s the Central Park 5?” I’ve been places and people are like, “Are you guys a part of a music group?”

Chandra:You’ve been speaking about your case and systemic flaws in the American criminal justice system for 20 years now. Have you been able to utilize DuVernay’s miniseries and  Ken Burns’ The Central Park Five documentary on your case as a teaching tool?

Yusef: One of the things that I loved about it was that these young people [who portrayed us in the movie] are able to give our future generation a seed of understanding [about] where they need to be in this life. [One time] in California we were about to [screen Ken Burns’] The Central Park Five documentary and a young woman stepped up and says, “I’m 13, I’m a cadet [and] I want to be a cop. What advice can you give me?”

Now, I’m in a room full of folks that have had some experiences, right? And so, in my mind I’m like, “Get out, get out, get out! Abort mission!”

And then something just popped into my head, which was crazy, it was like, “Tell her about what you’ve seen as it relates to the criminal justice system.” And very quickly and succinctly, I said to her, “You know, as I’ve travelled around the nation on the side of cop cars you have these words; in almost every single city I’ve been in, it says ‘to serve and protect.’ That sounds honorable. In New York City, they go a step further: on the door; it [also] says ‘courtesy, professionalism and respect.’ We’ve all watched Eric Garner get his life snuffed out by [New York Police Department officers] on TV; he was in Staten Island in New York State. He kept saying [to those officers] ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.’”

So, I tell this young lady, “I submit to you, that they didn’t give that young man the first letters off of those three ideals on the cops’ door. They didn’t give him CPR. My advice to you, is that you do your job. We all know that there are bad apples, but there’s only a small, minute [number] of those. The reality is that if you do your job, you’ll be one of the best cops out there. And we need that.”

Chandra:This movie sheds light on the persistent systemic flaws of the criminal justice system that activists have called out for decades. What do you want people to know about this system that they may not?

Yusef: This film brings to light that there are so many facets to the criminal justice system. You’ve got the jurors. When you get that letter in the mail that says you have been called to serve on a jury, many of us say, “Man, I’m trying to get out of this,” right? They tell you you’re going to be judged by a jury of your peers. I swear when I heard that, I looked up [in that courtroom] and I said, “Where’s my man Bobo and Raheem at? I don’t know these folks.” You see what I’m saying? We need people to understand that non-participation is participation, even in the voting process. Non-participation is participation.

Chandra: There’s a lot to unpack in this miniseries. When it is all said and done, what do you want people to know about you all, now known as the Exonerated Five?

Yusef: The truth about what happened to us. I want folks to look at us and understand we survived. A lot of people are just finding out about the Central Park Jogger case through this film. But this is 30 years later. We had to deal with all of this that went on and we were [eventually] able to get the recognition of a superpower like Ava DuVernay—who once had a T-shirt on that said, “I am my ancestor’s wildest dreams.” With the tremendous work that she’s doing and she will do, for her to say, “I want to do this [film],” was beyond our wildest imagination. 

Cut Off the Head, Not the Tail

Owen argues that a carbon tax and dividend could cut carbon emissions while contributing to the general welfare, but the model is deeply flawed. Indeed, any carbon tax—whether the revenue is redistributed as dividend or not—would be both ineffective and regressive. We should shift our energies toward climate solutions that eliminate fossil fuels altogether.

For starters, actually existing carbon taxes from Canada to the Netherlands have, at best, reduced carbon emissions only modestly. Look at British Columbia: In 2008, the Canadian province implemented a carbon tax with revenues returned through dividends and income tax rate reductions. While the province’s emissions declined in the program’s first year, they rose again in subsequent years.

The environmental group Food and Water Watch (FWW) indicates that the type of emissions subject to the tax actually increased in British Columbia between 2011 and 2014, while untaxed emissions went down. As a result, FWW concluded, “It appears that the British Columbia carbon tax has had no beneficial long-term impact on greenhouse gas emissions.” The report speculates that a lack of adequate public transit (meaning individuals rely on cars regardless of the increased price of gas) and the promise of a dividend and lower taxes (which meant people and businesses didn’t mind paying slightly higher energy prices) contributed to the policy’s failure.

But the problems run deeper. Market-based approaches such as a carbon tax are accepted by the fossil fuel industry because they do not actually threaten the ongoing and continuous extraction of oil and gas. In a statement on the 2015 United Nations climate talks in Paris, ExxonMobil endorsed a carbon tax as “the best option” to address climate change while “let[ting] the market drive the selection of solutions.” But the market by itself cannot set in motion a process of reducing carbon emissions toward zero, nor address the larger structural inequalities that are becoming ever more apparent.

According to Basav Sen, climate justice project director at the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies, “A price on carbon is like a sales tax—it doesn’t make polluters pay for greenhouse gas pollution. It makes end users pay.” By contrast, he says, “A regulator solution that phases out fossil fuel extraction and use can be designed to penalize those who are responsible for the problem, not everyone else.” This direction is where we need to go.

Owen argues that the financial burden of a carbon tax could be outweighed by a dividend, while others propose that carbon tax revenues should be used to implement climate solutions in frontline communities. But, as Sen points out (and Owen concedes), if a carbon tax were actually effective, revenues would decline as emissions decrease. The tax itself is not a reliable source of funds for either idea.

There is no evidence that the fossil fuel industry, with its powerful lobby in Washington, would permit a carbon tax to be set high enough to actually compensate for the vast harm the industry has done (and continues to do) across the globe, especially in communities near the sites of extraction.

The belief that a tax-driven process is possible distracts from the more complex and deep-reaching political changes necessary to drastically cut carbon emissions, such as regulating against the extraction and use of fossil fuels and seeking the best and most inclusive ways of transitioning toward a regenerative economy—one that doesn’t leave vulnerable people and communities behind. For instance, governments worldwide provide an estimated $775 billion to $1 trillion annually in subsidies to fossil fuel corporations (not including the social costs that get shifted onto the poor by climate and health impacts and such externalities as military interventions). It can be argued that the fossil fuel industry would not be viable if it were forced to adhere to a strict business model without subsidies and tax breaks.

Ending subsidies would be a start. But a carbon tax is not the answer.

Democratic Candidates Flake on Detroit Environmental Justice Forum

Marathon Petroleum Corporation’s refinery lurches across 250 acres of Southwest Detroit like a low-rise steel city of silvery pipes and smokestacks. It looms over Kemeny Recreation Center, where neighborhood children play, getting exposed to pollution with every breath and every turn on the grass outside. The refinery, part of the Ohio-based Marathon’s oil and gas exploration and production empire, has a long history of exceeding legal limits on toxic emissions, contributing to what makes this ZIP code—48217—Michigan’s most polluted.

“We’re on the front lines of climate change right here,” says retired auto plant worker-turned-community activist Theresa Landrum, emphatically ticking off a list of industrial pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, ozone (which creates smog) and other toxic chemicals that have too often been released here in quantities that exceed the legal limits, putting the community at risk for respiratory diseases, cancer and other ailments and developmental delays in children that can be linked to pollution exposure. Landrum, a cancer survivor, said she’s seen too many friends and loved ones die of cancer and other pollution-linked causes.

Detroit’s 48217 could be the poster child for the “frontline communities” bearing the brunt environmental exposures from heavy industry—communities often invoked by this year’s Democratic presidential candidates.

So a coalition of Detroit and national environmental justice activists threw down the gauntlet in advance of the Democratic presidential debates and invited the 20 candidates to skip a few posh fundraisers and visit 48217 instead to see “the frontlines” for themselves. A team of activists even crashed an Elizabeth Warren campaign event in Detroit to urge her to come.

After weeks of pressure, Julián Castro, Jay Inslee, Beto O’Rourke and Warren said they would attend. The Bernie Sanders campaign promised to send an emissary, Harvard Professor and racial justice activist Cornel West.

But only one candidate was there at the Kemeny Recreation Center on July 31 to meet with residents and activists: Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who has centered his entire campaign around the need address climate change.

O’Rourke, Castro and West had pulled out at the last minute. Warren had waffled and eventually canceled.

The fact that only one candidate showed up is “quite frankly unacceptable and unstrategic,” says Anthony Rogers-Wright, policy coordinator with Climate Justice Alliance, a national umbrella group of climate and environmental justice organizations around the country. Climate Justice Alliance helped push candidates to attend, as did Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and the Sunrise Movement (which also joined the local organizations that spearheaded the Frontline Detroit pre-debate rally and march on July 30.)

Inslee not only attended the meeting on July 31, he visited the neighborhood three times, unveiling his Community Climate Justice Plan in a July 29 press conference outside the Kemeny Recreation Center, with the Marathon refinery as the backdrop. He also took a tour of the 48217 ZIP code. Once the area was home to even more industry, before the auto industry’s decline prompted many companies to pull out, leaving polluted land behind.

Life in 48217

More than 8,000 people live in the 48217 ZIP code, predominantly working-class people of color living amid industrial properties in government-financed housing and single-family Craftsman bungalows. Many have nicely tended gardens out front and children’s bikes lying on the lawns. This ZIP code and other highly polluted ones nearby were settled decades ago by African Americans who moved into this isolated area on Detroit’s southwestern limits from the Jim Crow South.

Growing up here, Theresa Landrum watched as a family gas station expand into the mammoth Marathon refinery that processes 140,000 barrels of crude oil into gasoline and other products each day. Environmental justice activists have sounded the alarm for years. Nevertheless, Marathon has continued to grow with the blessing of state and local officials, while activist demands go unattended.

Marathon, which staunchly defends its operating record and says its refinery contributes just 3% to area emissions, is one of 26 industrial operations residents live with every day, according to a report by the the 48217 Monitoring Group. Within 48217 and its neighboring ZIP codes sit steel mills, a salt mine, a Marathon tank farm and DTE Energy Co’s coal-fired plant, complete with the kind of coal ash storage ponds that have burst their banks and contaminated water supplies with arsenic, mercury, selenium and other compounds in North Carolina and other states. The 48217 ZIP code is home to more than half of those operations, with the rest dotting both sides of Detroit’s Southwest city limits.

Heavy trucks traverse neighborhood streets night and day, carrying away the tar sands oil from the Marathon refinery, slag from steel mills, and industrial waste from the myriad other polluting operations. An industrial stench permeates the air, a testament to the pollution people breathe in night and day. In addition to residents’ reports of high cancer rates, a Michigan state report asthma rates are off the charts in Detroit, compared to the rest of Michigan; a fact Landrum and her neighbors know all too well through firsthand experience.

“This community mirrors communities across the nation,” Landrum says. “Black and brown people are being exposed to an enormous amount of chemicals.”

Walking the talk

The 2020 race has seen unprecedented talk by would-be presidents about climate justice and making a “just transition” off of fossil fuels that will protect workers and vulnerable communities of color. But the lack of follow through sends the opposite message, says Rogers-Wright of the Climate Justice Alliance.

“It continues the trope that maybe black and brown communities’ health is not as important [to the candidates] as their votes, he says. “We’ve seen some of these candidates easily go into coal country in West Virginia and majority white states and counties” so, he asks: Why couldn’t they take 30 minutes out of their schedules to meet with those on Detroit’s frontlines?

“The optics alone [of last week’s no-shows] don’t look very good at a time when we are coming to grips with the fact that we have an epidemic of white supremacy and nationalism in our country,” said Rogers-Wright, who says ignoring frontline communities feeds into a familiar narrative that poor and vulnerable communities are not a priority.

Nevertheless, environmental justice campaigners say it’s exciting to see many of the candidates competing for the mantel of environmental justice champion this election cycle. The mere fact that so many candidates are not only talking about climate change but climate justice this election cycle is unprecedented.

Nick Leonard, executive director of the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center in Detroit, says he is grateful that the choice to hold debates in Detroit called attention to the environmental justice issues facing the city. But he cautions that a just transition “can mean a lot of things,” including who will get the jobs created to build a new renewable energy economy. While frontline communities are disproportionately burdened with the industrial operations and pollution, they seldom get the jobs created in their communities by those same industries. Whether that will change under a new president remains to be seen, he says.

Reclaiming “Send Her Back”: A Call for Black Americans to Voyage to Africa

When it comes to being Black, queer and immigrant in America, there is no safety. The countless violent attacks on people of color, the lack of action against guns after repeated mass shootings and the unrelenting excuses for assailants who are predominantly white and male point to a sinister truth about America: Violence and murder founded this nation and remain deeply entrenched in the state ideology. The president has reinforced this ideology by inciting anti-Black and anti-immigrant sentiment through the call for ICE raids and a border wall and shouts for American-born, non-white government officials to go back to their countries.

While the president’s comment was undoubtedly meant as an insulting erasure of the foundational legacy and heritage of Indigenous, Black and Latinx people in America, the recent mass shootings have convinced me that some of us should return to our origin country—but not for the reason Trump suggests. As a Black American, I had no idea what traveling to the motherland would mean for my life. Now that I’ve gone, it is my sincerest belief that we as people of the diaspora in America owe it to ourselves to travel to Africa, to touch the land where our people were ripped from the shore, to experience what it’s like to live in a place where Blackness is celebrated, without fear and racism.

When I became a mother in America, my sense of fear was heightened because I was now living from the lens of a Black woman with a sensitive and wildly curious Black son. I remember watching the case of Trayvon Martin closely; my son Akeim was only 10 months old the day George Zimmerman was acquitted for Trayvon’s death, and it broke me down into a haze of heartache and rage. At the time, I was in the first months of building BYP100, a political organization for young Black people dedicated to fighting for the liberation of all Black people, with several of my comrades including Charlene Carruthers, Rose Afriyie, Malcolm London and Jasson Perez. Even while grieving, we knew that centering ourselves in joy was the medicine for the evil that trailed us throughout our American experience. We decided our first event would be a celebration of life for Trayvon at our headquarters on the south side of Chicago. Such events were the balm for the moments of anguish brought on with each shooting of an unarmed Black woman, child, trans person and man. We understood our joy was a major tool in resisting despair and continuing the fight to live freely.

Out of this understanding, BYP100 member Jonathan Lykes founded the Black Joy Experience Ensemble, a cultural production and performance group utilizing old tools of movement, such as chants and songs, to politicize and honor our spirit as resilient and creative people of the sun. As members of the Ensemble, Jonathan and I were invited to join an international delegation to Ghana where we would attend their annual Pan-African festival PANAFEST during the historic Year of Return, a decree made by the Ghanian government to commemorate the 400 years since the first documented African was brought to Jamestown, Va. as a slave. I spent two weeks building relationships with youth, elders, government officials, activists and artists, sharing collective stories about our experience as Black people and what it means to have Black joy across the diaspora.

The welcoming I felt in Ghana was like nothing I’d ever experienced in my twenty-something years as a Black American. For two nights I was hosted in Lomé, Togo, by a dear friend Dossé-Via Trenou-Wells, founder of Magic and Melanin, and one night we had an intergenerational and multilingual conversation with Black people from America, Togo, Ghana, Senegal, France and London, on how we experience joy to combat oppression. We talked about the importance of being in a warm climate, the presence of music in the streets, the pleasure of a stranger smiling and saying hello to you and the familiar energy we immediately felt upon meeting each other. In thinking about how to strengthen our bond as people of the diaspora, there were some critical realizations around our forced separation. I was amazed that many of my continental African kin were not made aware of the enslavement of African Americans. And likewise, I hold a surface-level knowledge of the colonization of the different African nations. As we talked and ate and translated across Ewe, French, Mina and English, our bond as a group grew closer. One brother from Togo said it was his first time being a room where a group was talking about Blackness and it made him feel thirsty for more. I believe this kind of happening was able to take place because we had the luxury of being together unhindered by violence and overt racism by white people.

Days before I returned home from Ghana, a sister of mine back in Chicago sent me a report of two mothers from the anti-violence group MASK killed in a drive-by shooting while monitoring their community. The news jolted me out my serene time in Ghana and drew me back home to Chicago and my concern for my son and daughter. As I called my children’s fathers, all I could think about was getting me and my babies somewhere, anywhere safe to live. On the last day of the trip, my fellow comrade announced to our group that there had been a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, with 22 people murdered and 26 others injured, some of whom wouldn’t go to the hospital out of fear because they are undocumented. Before I could process El Paso, we got word of yet another mass shooting with nine more murdered and 27 injured in Dayton, Ohio, not far from my hometown of Cleveland, where 12-year-old Tamir Rice was murdered in 2014.

The news of these recent shootings provoked a deep anxiety in me, mainly because I was not surprised at all to hear it. I am still reeling from the deaths of the The Charleston 9 and those killed and harmed at Pulse nightclub. But it’s deeply unsettling to realize that in the past 10 years I have grown wary but accustomed to the targeted murder of people of color and Black people by police and vigilantes with white supremacist agendas.

I was not eager to return to America. In Ghana, I noticed a striking difference as I was walking around Osu or Cape Coast: Everywhere I went, I had no fear of being harassed or suffering from the demoralizing effects of constant microaggressions, because I was a part of the majority. The concept of “Black love” or “Black hair” or Black anything holds no resonance with locals because it would be redundant. My Blackness was at ease on the continent. I felt safe in a way I didn’t know existed, and now I know this is how I am supposed to feel all the time.

After hearing about the shootings, I went to social media to see the same discourse I knew too well: We should send thoughts and prayers, the shooters are mentally unstable and were apprehended without incident. I saw another post about a Black man who was pistol whipped around the same time without any mainstream media attention. When the singer Ari Lennox went live on Instagram to express her anxiety around living in America, the fear of being in a movie theater or taking her nephew to daycare, it hit me again how blessed I’d been to shed this fear for my personal safety for a couple of weeks. I was struck by how Ari Lennox or my friend Jonathan or myself are otherwise full of joy and life but are constantly disrupted by the hatred of white supremacy.

In returning to the motherland I found so much opportunity to settle into a place of Black joy, and I’m encouraged by how rapidly this joy has been spreading into Black America as well. When Black Panther came out I remember all the viral videos of Black Americans adorned in kente and dashikis dancing as they left the theaters. I felt the same energy with the release of the live-action The Lion King and Beyoncé’s love letter to Africa with her production of the movie's soundtrack, The Gift. The celebrated performances of Burna Boy and Mr. Eazi at Coachella, Tobe Nwigwe, a first generation Nigerian-American repping Houston, are all examples of a widely increasing afro-fusion.

On both sides of the Atlantic, we are realizing we’re more familiar than we may have thought. And this cross-cultural exchange is not only possible but critical to our continued resistance to a global attack on Blackness.

I am not romanticizing a neat transition into a Pan-African world; it is extremely difficult for our continental relatives to get to the states and the cost of travel even for Black Americans with blue passport books can be prohibitive. However, with social media to connect us and a will to learn, we can begin to heal our distance from our kin. And there are organizations being created for the sole purpose of granting scholarships for people of the diaspora to return home. I invite all my Black people to learn about W.E.B. Du Bois’ sojourn to Ghana and his relationship to Ghana’s first prime minister, the great Kwame Nkrumah, and how Du Bois’ renounced his American citizenship to remain in Ghana. To take the time to learn some Twi and most importantly get in right relationship with the land we were stolen from and begin a process of healing our lost kinship.

So yes, we should all go back. Not because white supremacists don’t want us here but because of our own self-love and self-determination. We need to debunk the myth that our places of origin are third-world shitholes and reclaim our legacy as the richest, most generative and creative beings on this earth. We come from the bastion of the world’s natural resources and our collective melanin is just the vibranium we need to heal ourselves and continue the fight for Black people all over the world.

Some good news. I hope this lawsuit happens. #deletefacebook

https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/08/facebook-could-face-billions-in-potential-damages-as-court-rules-facial-recognition-lawsuit-can-proce/

Report: Apple Has Activated Software Locks on iPhone Batteries to Discourage Third-Party Repairs
https://gizmodo.com/report-apple-has-activated-software-locks-on-iphone-ba-1837053225 #librem5