Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

When ICE Comes for Their Neighbors, These Community Defense Brigades Will Be Ready

Faced with president Donald Trump’s escalation of some of the country’s worst immigration policies—massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, the Muslim ban, and tearing migrant children from their families at the country’s southern border—activists and community organizers have rallied behind immigrant communities. One key element of the fightback is the community defense patrol, a rapid response tactic designed to quickly react to ICE activity. Following the recent mass workplace ICE raid in Mississippi, in which 680 people were arrested, the critical need for community education and rapid response to ICE is all the more evident.

Although the specifics of the tactic may vary at different times, community defense patrolling involves groups of activists walking, biking or driving around specific locations where people endure high risk of being arrested by ICE. With the threat of ICE ever-present in immigrant communities, patrol participants organize to monitor areas where raids and arrests may happen. Their physical presence in vulnerable locales facilitates a rapid response to help defend people targeted by ICE. Community defense patrols have been common historically, though new instances of these patrols are emerging again in response to Trump’s repeated threats of large-scale ICE raids this summer.

On July 14, after the Trump administration threatened massive ICE raids in major cities, locals patrolled neighborhoods the north and south sides of Chicago. In the Albany Park neighborhood, the office of 33rd Ward Alderwoman Rossana Rodríguez-Sanchez, a Democratic Socialist, and neighborhood groups such as Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD) and the Albany Park Defense Network, joined together to organize community defense brigades. In Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, local groups—among them Pilsen En Defensa and the Pilsen Alliance—also organized patrols. In each neighborhood, organizers created a volunteer schedule with three shifts, ensuring that crews patrolled the areas for most of the day.

Lilia Escobar, the neighborhood services coordinator for Rodríguez-Sanchez in the 33rd Ward, says that the office wanted to have an “immediate response to an attack” on people who live in the neighborhood. Locals who signed up to participate in the patrols were given a training hosted by the group 33rd Ward Working Families, divided into smaller groups, and sent to walk or bike around specific sections of the neighborhood to monitor for ICE activity. No verified ICE activity was spotted that day, but participants were instructed to record any incident involving ICE, alert the 33rd Ward Working Families Office and an Illinois hotline designated for reporting suspected ICE activity, and also to inform anyone being arrested of their rights if possible.

“The most immediate goals of the defense patrols is to inform the community of their rights and to build a trained network of community members on standby to monitor and respond to any potential ICE, Homeland Security Investigations or Customs and Border Protection activity as quickly as possible at all times,” Diego Morales, an organizing member of Pilsen En Defensa, tells In These Times. “We want to ease the fears of our undocumented neighbors by showing them that the community they live in has their backs.”

This tactic has also been used this summer in New York City. One organizer with the rapid response group OPERATION ICE POP, who wished to remain anonymous, says that they have been helping to put community defense patrols together to counter ICE acti­vity because “standing around and doing nothing is no longer an option” given the Trump administration’s heightened anti-immigrant policies.

In early June, the group had patrols monitoring for ICE activity in all five of the city’s boroughs. Members of the patrols used various means of transportation including driving in cars, riding on public transit, walking around the streets and even cruising around on skateboards. The organizer says that on one occasion during this time, ICE agents attempted to arrest people, but failed to do so because the targets of the arrest asserted their right not to allow ICE inside their residence. After the community was alerted to the presence of ICE, members of the New Sanctuary Coalition, a group that offers various kinds of support such as accompanying immigrants to court dates and rapid response, arrived to the scene to hand out flyers.

In the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago, Morales tells In These Times that “much of the inspiration for these patrols was taken from the cop-watching neighborhood patrols the Black Panther Party of Chicago organized in the 60’s to protect their people from racist police brutality.”

Indeed, community defense patrolling has been a popular tactic for marginalized groups under siege in the past. In the 1960s the Black Panther Party—originally named the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense—famously organized armed patrols in cities from Oakland, California and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to defend Black people against police brutality. Members of Queer Nation later created the Pink Panther Patrol of New York City, also inspired by the Black Panthers, to deter anti-gay violence in the city’s East and West Village neighborhoods in the 1990s. This patrol model spread to San Francisco as well.

Community patrolling has also lately been in use abroad in response to deportations. The Anti Raids Network in the UK facilitates an expanded version of community defense patrolling. Rather than using organized groups that take shifts patrolling specific locations, this model encourages vigilance against deportation forces at all times. The Network mainly consists of a website and a Twitter account, the latter of which is set up so that anyone who sees an immigration vehicle can alert the account, which then blasts the information out on social media. The Anti Raids Network has published a number of reports from bicyclists who have successfully thwarted deportation activity in the last few years.

Broad education around how to intervene during arrests or raids at any time is an important component for the sustainability of the community defense patrolling. It’s not necessarily feasible to always have large enough groups of people in every vulnerable area at all times, but it is possible to organize and educate communities so that a vast number of people will know what to do in the moment when raids or other arrests occur, announced or otherwise.

Chicago organizers have an eye toward expanding community defense in similar ways. Chris Poulos, the chief of staff for Rodríguez-Sanchez, explains that their office wants to grow the definition of neighborhood services so that it includes things like a rapid response to ICE activity. In the Pilsen neighborhood, Morales says that Pilsen En Defensa wants to increase the use of community patrolling to the extent that it becomes common practice whenever someone is out and about in a vulnerable area. “With a sizable amount of the community educated on rapid response as part of our network, a walk to the bodega becomes a patrol. A morning commute becomes a patrol. A barbecue at the park becomes a lookout,” he says.

While patrols aren’t ubiquitous at this point, various forms of rapid response have become more common in the Trump era in large cities, and smaller suburban and rural areas as well. Around the country, immigrant rights organizations have established hotlines that people can call if they are subjected to or witness ICE activity. In Washington State, the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network (WAISN), a coalition of immigrant rights organizations and activists, established a hotline for reporting ICE activity. Since the creation of the hotline, the coalition has trained people in verifying ICE activity and addressing the situation accordingly.

Ann Reeves, a board member of Pacific County Immigrant Support (PCIS) in southwest Washington, says that 28 members of the organization have participated in trainings with WAISN so that they can provide a rapid response to activities reported to the WAISN hotline. Beyond rapid response, PCIS supports immigrants and the families of immigrants who are suffering due to anti-immigration policies. The Trump administration’s ever-changing and accelerated attacks on immigrants has presented immigrant communities and their allies with significant challenges. But Reeves says, “Seeing the large outpouring of support and good wishes from the community gives us hope for the future.”

Disease-carrying mosquitoes push northern limits with time-capsule eggs

Invasive mosquitoes at the northern limit of their current range are surviving conditions that are colder than those in their native territory. This new evidence of rapid local adaptation could have implications for efforts to control the spread of this invasive species.

Plant protection: Researchers develop new modular vaccination kit

Simple, fast and flexible: it could become significantly easier to vaccinate plants against viruses in future. Scientists have developed a new method for this purpose. It enables the rapid identification and production of precisely tailored substances that combat different pathogens.

Taliban Peace Talks Must Not Ignore CIA-Funded Afghan Militias, Report Says

“If cut loose by the CIA,” the report notes, militias “may be reborn as private armies or ‘security guards’ in the service of powerful individuals.”

The post Taliban Peace Talks Must Not Ignore CIA-Funded Afghan Militias, Report Says appeared first on The Intercept.

Doomed to Repeat It

A news package looks back at the last 400 years of American history.

Suck It Up

How Republicans turn every single thing into a stupid scandal.

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders Are Leading the Democratic Candidates on Criminal Justice Reform

On Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren unveiled her plan to reform the criminal justice system, just two days after Sen. Bernie Sanders revealed his own. Both presidential candidates are proposing similar changes that would have been unimaginable several years ago—banning private prisons, and ending policies like mandatory minimum sentences, cash bail, solitary confinement, and the death […]

#Nasa mission to #Jupiter #moon #Europa moves step closer to launch | #Science | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/aug/20/nasa-mission-to-jupiter-moon-europa-moves-step-closer-to-launch

I’m Palestinian. Like Rashida Tlaib, I Am Barred From Seeing My Family.

Israel’s treatment of U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) has made Israel’s complete control over Palestinian lives clear. Rep. Tlaib, a Palestinian-American with family in the occupied West Bank, was forced to make a choice between her right to visit her grandmother and her right to political speech against Israeli oppression. She ultimately chose the collective over the personal: She refused Israel’s demeaning conditions that would have granted her a “humanitarian” exception to enter Palestine, so long as she refrained from advocating for a boycott of Israel during her visit. Rep. Tlaib explained in a press conference in Minneapolis on August 19, “My grandmother said it beautifully when she said I am her dream manifested. I am her free bird, so why would I come back and be caged?”

Rep. Tlaib’s experience is familiar to many Palestinians, including myself. I, too, was barred from seeing my family in Palestine because of my advocacy for freedom and justice for Palestinians. In May 2012, I traveled to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv to participate in an interfaith delegation and to attend my cousin’s wedding in Ramallah. I presented my U.S. passport to Israeli authorities. At least five Israeli interrogators asked for the names of my father and grandfather; the names likely sounded too “Arab” for the interrogators, who asked me numerous questions about where my father was born. I was taken aside and questioned at least five times.

At one point, an interrogator from Shin Bet turned his computer around and told me to log in to my email account. He threatened that if I didn’t comply, my employer would be contacted and would subsequently fire me. I was told that Israel and the U.S. have a close relationship and that I might not be allowed to go back home. After searching for information about me online, my interrogator asked me threateningly why I was “active.”

When I contacted the U.S. embassy to report my detention and ask for assistance, the embassy employee, whose official title I do not know, told me, “If you are not Jewish, there is nothing we can do to help you.” After eight hours, an Israeli woman I had never seen before verbally informed me that I was a threat to the security of Israel. I was taken to a detention center near the airport and kept in a cell overnight. The next day I was sent back to the United States.

Palestinians like myself have no access to our homeland except at Israel’s whim. Because of the state’s exclusionary policies, I have not seen my family in Palestine in over 10 years. A whole generation of my young cousins has grown up, gotten married and had children of their own. I only know them through photographs.

My own father, born and raised in the West Bank city of Ramallah, can only return to Palestine  as a “tourist” on his U.S. passport. Israel can deny his entry at any time. Millions of other Palestinians—whose parents and grandparents fled or were expelled from Palestine during the 1948 war—remain barred from returning home. They remain refugees. Meanwhile, any Jewish person anywhere, even those with no family connections in Israel, can travel to Ben Gurion airport and immediately acquire Israeli citizenship.

Israel’s exclusionary policies are not limited to keeping Palestinians out: They also deny return for thousands of Palestinians holding Israeli citizenship. Take the case of Salwa Copty, born in July 1948. Her family lived in the village of Ma’alul outside of Nazareth, but the village was occupied and destroyed by Israeli forces in 1948. Salwa and her family became refugees, internally displaced within the state of Israel.

Salwa’s father was killed by Israeli forces a few months before Salwa was born, and was buried near the village. That area is now the location of an Israeli military base. Since 2000, Salwa has repeatedly appealed to the Israeli authorities to allow her to visit her father’s grave inside the base. It was only after the intervention of the legal center Adalah that Salwa finally won her right to visit her father’s burial site just last week. (Full disclosure: I am the executive director of Adalah Justice Project. We are independent of Adalah the Legal Center, but we work closely to support its work.)

“Since 1948,” says Adalah’s general director Hassan Jabareen, “Israeli policy has been to prohibit Palestinian family unification, and to restrict Palestinians’ right to enter and leave their homeland freely. This policy has worked to fragment them, which has created a political disaster and a humanitarian crisis for the 12 million Palestinian people around the world.”

That policy applies as much to Rashida Tlaib and her living grandmother as it does to Salwa Copty and her deceased father. Indeed, Rep. Tlaib’s ordeal last week demonstrates that no Palestinian can escape Israel’s racism—not even an elected member of U.S. Congress.

This is what Israeli leaders mean when they call Israel a Jewish state. This racist ideology drives legislation like the Jewish Nation State Law, which declares that Jews alone have the right to self-determination in all land under Israeli control. Within this supremacist framework, Palestinians must be uprooted, disconnected and erased from the land and their identity as a people.

Despite the personal toll incurred, Israel’s latest blunder in banning Rep. Tlaib has elevated Palestinians' demands for their right of return into U.S. mainstream discourse and policy debates. Support is growing in the U.S. for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel to support Palestinian rights and self-determination. This growing support scares both Israeli and U.S. leaders who are committed to maintaining the status quo of Israel’s domination over Palestinians and further territorial expansion. In Israel, support for BDS is a civil offense, and international supporters of BDS can be barred from entry into the country under a law passed in 2017. Last month, the U.S. House overwhelmingly passed a resolution, H.R. 246, condemning BDS. Palestinians owe Rep. Tlaib gratitude for sticking to her political principles in order to bring the Palestinian collective struggle for return, freedom and equality into sharp focus.

On Trial in a Language You Don’t Speak

COOK COUNTY, ILL.—Morelia Orozco walks into the George N. Leighton Criminal Court Building at 8:30 a.m. holding a clipboard with her schedule for the day. As a full-time Spanish court interpreter in her 40s, she is swamped with seven courtrooms to cover. Just before her first case, Orozco receives an unexpected text message urgently calling her to another courtroom. She rushes over to help, leaving her assigned case unattended.

The client is a middle-aged man who has trouble expressing himself in English in a stressful court setting. At lightning speed, Orozco translates the judge’s words for her client and the client’s words to the court. About 30 minutes later, she hurries off to her next assignment.

“We are always running from one [courtroom] to another,” says Veronica Rivas, a per-session Spanish court interpreter for Cook County.

Court interpreters are in high demand in Cook County, home to 743,200 people with limited English proficiency—around 15% of the population. But in recent years, the number of full-time interpreters has decreased. In 2014, the county had 34 full-time interpreters; now, there are 29.

At the Daley Center, one of the busiest courts in Cook County, an average of 66 cases call for an interpreter daily. Only six Spanish interpreters and one Polish interpreter, including per-session interpreters, are regularly stationed there.

Advocates say the decline in full-time court interpreters means vulnerable, non-English-speaking communities may not be getting adequate legal support. The Chicago News Guild, a local of the Communication Workers of America (CWA) that represents court interpreters, has collected a list of incidents when no interpretation services were available in courts. (Full disclosure: In These Times’ staff is represented by CWA’s Washington-Baltimore News Guild.) The list, though not comprehensive, records 26 such cases since April 2018. For instance, on June 11, 2018, two Spanish-speaking parents were unable to get unsupervised visits for their child at the Juvenile Courthouse, and on November 7, 2018, the court ignored an Arabic-speaking defendant’s request for an interpreter. According to the list, the judge conducted proceedings “off the record,” and a friend of the defendant who speaks a little English attempted to help but did not interpret the court proceedings unless the Judge asked the defendant a question. At the end, the defendant was found guilty.

The unavailability of court interpreters often leads to long wait times, continuances or a family member or friend interpreting for the case.

“We clearly do not have enough interpreters,” says Craig Rosenbaum, executive director of the Chicago News Guild. “The courts are not being served.”

In 2018, around 58,000 interpretation sessions were conducted in Cook County courts, a drop of 31% from the 85,000 sessions in 2015, according to the Chief Judge’s office. The office maintains, however, that “the number of court interpreters is sufficient to meet demand, and interpreters are provided upon request,” according to Pat Milhizer, communications director at the office.

Interpretation services are a low priority within most court budgets nationwide, says Mike Ferreira, president of the California Federation of Interpreters Local 39000 (also a local of CWA). “When it comes to language access in the courts,” he says, the courts tend to do “whatever is the least expensive, minimum level of service to avoid appellate issues.”

A lack of court interpreters has caused problems across the country. A shortage of Mayan interpreters, for languages such as Mam, K’iche’ and Q’anjob’al, has caused delays in immigration courts. And in one Huntsville, Ala., case, a woman who knew only a few words of English unwittingly relinquished parental rights to her youngest son in 2016.

“There’s a constitutional obligation to provide everyone with access to the courts,” says Alan Mills, executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center in Cook County. “Providing an interpreter is a necessary part of that. It’s not optional.”

The Office of the Chief Judge is currently in the process of hiring more full-time interpreters. Meanwhile, 54 per-session interpreters have been enlisted, none of whom are eligible for employee benefits.

Claudia Perez, a single mother of four, has worked for Cook County as a per-session interpreter for over 12 years. She has no health plan, no sick pay and no paid vacation, despite working three to four full days per week. “I used to work almost every day when I first started,” Perez says. “Because the county doesn’t want to pay for health insurance, they limit my hours.”

In an ongoing contract negotiation with Cook County, the union is demanding 30 full-time Spanish interpreters, seven Polish, two Arabic, and sick pay for per-session interpreters.

The importance of interpreters should not be underestimated, says Elsa Prado, who worked as a per-session interpreter in Cook County from 1998 to 2013. “We are literally the voice, the eyes and the ears of people who cannot speak English.”

Don't Renew Section 215 Indefinitely

The New York Times reported that the Trump administration wants Section 215, the legal authority that allows the National Security Agency to collect Americans’ telephone records, renewed indefinitely. That’s despite earlier reports the NSA had shuttered its Call Details Record (CDR) Program because it ran afoul of the law, violated the privacy of scores of Americans, and reportedly failed to produce useful intelligence. In a letter to Congress, outgoing Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats argued for permanently reauthorizing the legal authority, which also allows the government to collect a vast array of “tangible things” in national security investigations, as well as other provisions of the Patriot Act that are set to expire in December.

For years, the government relied on Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act to conduct a dragnet surveillance program that collected billions of phone records documenting who a person called and for how long they called them—more than enough information for analysts to infer very personal details about a person, including who they have relationships with, and the private nature of those relationships.

In 2015, a federal appeals court held that NSA’s interpretation of Section 215 to conduct this surveillance dragnet was “unprecedented and unwarranted.” Despite the passage of the 2015 USA Freedom Act, which gave the government more limited authority to conduct the CDR program, the government continued to collect hundreds of millions of records. And in 2018, the NSA was compelled to delete millions of records after it learned that some of the data had been collected from phone service providers without legal authority or authorization.

If the program does not help ensure the safety of Americans, cannot stay within the law, and violates our privacy, then why should Congress reauthorize it? After all, as of now, the NSA isn’t even using it.

This December, rather than permanently renew the authorization that allows the NSA to use an invasive program, it’s important that we push Congress to end the Call Details Record program once and for all and enact other important reforms.

Take Action

Tell Congress to End the CDR Program

Related Cases:  Jewel v. NSA

Court Rules That “Patent Troll” is Opinion, Not Defamation

Free speech in the patent world saw a big win on Friday, when the New Hampshire Supreme Court held that calling someone a “patent troll” doesn’t constitute defamation. The court’s opinion [PDF] is good news for critics of abusive patent litigation, and anyone who values robust public debate around patent policy. The opinion represents a loss for Automated Transactions, LLC (ATL), a patent assertion entity that sued [PDF] more than a dozen people and trade groups claiming it was defamed.

EFF worked together with the ACLU of New Hampshire to file an amicus brief [PDF] in this case, explaining that the lower court judge got this case right when he ruled against ATL. That decision gave wide latitude for public debate about important policy issues—even when the debate veers into harsh language. We’re glad the New Hampshire Supreme Court agreed.

Last week’s ruling court notes that “patent troll” is a phrase used to describe “a class of patent owners who do not provide end products or services themselves, but who do demand royalties as a price for authorizing the work of others.” However, the justices note that “patent troll” has no clear settled definition. For instance, some observers of the patent world would exclude particular entities, like individual inventors or universities, from the moniker “patent troll.”

Because of this, when ATL’s many critics call it a “patent troll,” they are expressing their subjective opinions. Differences of opinion about many things—including patent lawsuits—cannot and should not be settled with a defamation lawsuit.

“We conclude that the challenged statement, that ATL is a well-known patent troll, is one of opinion rather than fact,” write the New Hampshire justices. “As the slideshow demonstrates, the statement is an assertion that, among other things, ATL is a patent troll because its patent-enforcement activity is ‘aggressive.’ This statement cannot be proven true or false because whether given behavior is ‘aggressive’ cannot be objectively verified.”

The court ruling also upheld tough talk about ATL’s behavior beyond the phrase “patent troll.” For instance, the court looked at statements referring to ATL’s actions as “extortive,” and rejected defamation claims on that basis, finding that was rhetorical hyperbole. Another ATL critic had complained that ATL’s efforts “cost them only postage and the paper their demand letters are written on.” This, too, was hyperbole, part of the give-and-take of a public debate.

This case has its origins in the patents of inventor David Barcelou, who claims he came up with the idea of connecting ATMs to the Internet. As Barcelou describes in his defamation lawsuit, he saw “his business efforts fail,” before he went on to transfer patent rights to ATL and create a patent assertion business.

ATL began suing banks and credit unions that were allegedly using Barcelou’s patents in their ATMs. In all, about 200 different companies paid ATL a total of $3 million in licensing fees to avoid litigation—that’s an average of $15,000 per company.

But when they were finally examined by judges, ATL’s patents failed to hold up. The Federal Circuit invalidated several patent claims owned by ATL, and further found that the defendants’ ATMs did not infringe the Barcelou patents.

After that court loss, ATL had a steep drop in licensing revenue. That’s when ATL launched its defamation lawsuit, blaming its critics for its setbacks.

For software developers and small business owners who bear the brunt of patent troll demands and lawsuits, the New Hampshire decision sends a clear message. If you’re upset about the abuses inherent in our current patent system, it’s okay to speak out by using the term “patent troll.” Calling out bad actors in the system is part and parcel of the debate around our patent and innovation policies.

Related Cases:  Abstract Patent Litigation

Jill Biden Tells Voters to Settle for Her Husband

Jill Biden has a message for voters reluctant to get behind her husband: settle or face another four years of hell. That’s essentially what the former second lady, in surprisingly blunt terms, told a group of teachers in New Hampshire on Monday, as she attempted to make the case for why Joe Biden is the […]

The NYPD Finally Fired the Cop Who Killed Eric Garner — but the Police Reaction Shows How Little Will Change

The decision will not alter the entrenched police ideology that allows for deaths like Garner’s — showing why reform will be slow and tough.

The post The NYPD Finally Fired the Cop Who Killed Eric Garner — but the Police Reaction Shows How Little Will Change appeared first on The Intercept.

Mike Pompeo Has Extreme Views on Muslims — and Liberals Don’t Seem to Care

A lengthy profile in the New Yorker conspicuously neglected to mention the secretary of state’s ties to notorious Islamophobes.

The post Mike Pompeo Has Extreme Views on Muslims — and Liberals Don’t Seem to Care appeared first on The Intercept.

Greenland’s New Deal

The year is 2042. The country is overrun by mutants. Thank god we bought Greenland!

Detective Trump in: The Conflict of Interest

Jeffrey Epstein is dead of an apparent suicide...time to get an extremely neutral party on the case!