I Stand In Total Solidarity With The Georgia Prisoners Now On Strike

An Open Letter to the Left Establishment

This letter is a call for active support of protest to Michael Moore, Norman Solomon, Katrina van den Heuvel, Michael Eric Dyson, Barbara Ehrenreich, Thomas Frank, Tom Hayden, Bill Fletcher Jr., Jesse Jackson Jr., and other high profile progressive supporters of the Obama electoral campaign.

With the Obama administration beginning its third year, it is by now painfully obvious that the predictions of even the most sober Obama supporters were overly optimistic. Rather than an ally, the administration has shown itself to be an implacable enemy of reform.

It has advanced repeated assaults on the New Deal safety net (including the previously sacrosanct Social Security trust fund), jettisoned any hope for substantive health care reform, attacked civil rights and environmental protections, and expanded a massive bailout further enriching an already bloated financial services and insurance industry. It has continued the occupation of Iraq and expanded the war in Afghanistan as well as our government’s covert and overt wars in South Asia and around the globe.

Along the way, the Obama administration, which referred to its left detractors as “f***ing retarded” individuals that required “drug testing,” stepped up the prosecution of federal war crime whistleblowers, and unleashed the FBI on those protesting the escalation of an insane war.

Obama’s recent announcement of a federal worker pay freeze is cynical, mean-spirited “deficit-reduction theater”. Slashing Bush’s plutocratic tax cuts would have made a much more significant contribution to deficit reduction but all signs are that the “progressive” president will cave to Republican demands for the preservation of George W. Bush’s tax breaks for the wealthy Few. Instead Obama’s tax cut plan would raise taxes for the poorest people in our country.

The election of Obama has not galvanized protest movements. To the contrary, it has depressed and undermined them, with the White House playing an active role in the discouragement and suppression of dissent – with disastrous consequences. The almost complete absence of protest from the left has emboldened the most right-wing elements inside and outside of the Obama administration to pursue and act on an ever more extreme agenda.

We are writing to you because you are well-known writers, bloggers and filmmakers with access to a range of old and new media, and you have in your power the capacity to help reignite the movement which brought millions onto the streets in February of 2003 but which has withered ever since. There are many thousands of progressives who follow your work closely and are waiting for a cue from you and others to act. We are asking you to commit yourself to actively supporting the protests of Obama administration policies which are now beginning to materialize.

In this connection we would like to mention a specific protest: the civil disobedience action being planned by Veterans for Peace involving Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, Joel Kovel, Medea Benjamin, Ray McGovern, several armed service veterans and others to take place in front of the White House on Dec. 16th.

Should you commit yourselves to backing this action and others sure to materialize in weeks and months ahead, what would otherwise be regarded as an emotional outburst of the “fringe left” will have a better chance of being seen as expressing the will of a substantial majority not only of the left, but of the American public at large. We believe that your support will help create the climate for larger and increasingly disruptive expressions of dissent – a development that is sorely needed and long overdue.

We hope that we can count on you to exercise the leadership that is required of all of us in these desperate times.

Best Regards,

Sen. James Abourezk
Michael Albert
Rocky Anderson
Jared Ball
Russel Banks
Thomas Bias
Noam Chomsky
Bruce Dixon
Frank Dorrel
Gidon Eshel
Jamilla El-Shafei
Okla Elliott
Norman Finkelstein
Glen Ford
Joshua Frank
Margaret Flowers M.D.
John Gerassi
Henry Giroux
Matt Gonzalez
Kevin Alexander Gray
Judd Greenstein
DeeDee Halleck
John Halle
Chris Hedges
Doug Henwood
Edward S. Herman
Dahr Jamail
Louis Kampf
Allison Kilkenny
Jamie Kilstein
Joel Kovel
Mark Kurlansky
Peter Linebaugh
Scott McLarty
Cynthia McKinney
Dede Miller
Russell Mokhiber
Bobby Muller
Christian Parenti
Michael Perelman
Peter Phillips
Louis Proyect
Ted Rall
Michael Ratner
Cindy Sheehan
Chris Spannos
Paul Street
Sunil Sharma
Jeffrey St. Clair
Len Weinglass
Cornel West
Sherry Wolf
Michael Yates
Mickey Z
Kevin Zeese

Please sign the Open Letter to the Left Establishment.

God Bless the youth of England and God Bless Bernie Sanders....

The military is one of the last bastions of patriarchy...and is exemplary of patriarchy falling apart at the seams.... You have Bradley Manning, a disgruntled, homosexual soldier maligned in the military with DADT and other discriminations and fed up with the acrimony involved in U.S. foreign policy who decided to leak classified information for the world to know....the U.S. military is also loosing in Afghanistan and is stretched and pulled to the max....Oh Rome?...

RIP Elizabeth Edwards

Julius Assange...Angela Davis...Harriet Tubman....

What a Glorious Find!

The Story of Thanksgiving

Most of us associate the holiday with happy Pilgrims and Indians sitting down to a big feast. And that did happen - once.

The story began in 1614 when a band of English explorers sailed home to England with a ship full of Patuxet Indians bound for slavery. They left behind smallpox which virtually wiped out those who had escaped. By the time the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts Bay they found only one living Patuxet Indian, a man named Squanto who had survived slavery in England and knew their language. He taught them to grow corn and to fish, and negotiated a peace treaty between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Nation. At the end of their first year, the Pilgrims held a great feast honoring Squanto and the Wampanoags.

But as word spread in England about the paradise to be found in the new world, religious zealots called Puritans began arriving by the boat load. Finding no fences around the land, they considered it to be in the public domain. Joined by other British settlers, they seized land, capturing strong young Natives for slaves and killing the rest. But the Pequot Nation had not agreed to the peace treaty Squanto had negotiated and they fought back. The Pequot War was one of the bloodiest Indian wars ever fought.

In 1637 near present day Groton, Connecticut, over 700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe had gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival which is our Thanksgiving celebration. In the predawn hours the sleeping Indians were surrounded by English and Dutch mercenaries who ordered them to come outside. Those who came out were shot or clubbed to death while the terrified women and children who huddled inside the longhouse were burned alive. The next day the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared "A Day Of Thanksgiving" because 700 unarmed men, women and children had been murdered.

Cheered by their "victory", the brave colonists and their Indian allies attacked village after village. Women and children over 14 were sold into slavery while the rest were murdered. Boats loaded with a many as 500 slaves regularly left the ports of New England. Bounties were paid for Indian scalps to encourage as many deaths as possible.

Following an especially successful raid against the Pequot in what is now Stamford, Connecticut, the churches announced a second day of "thanksgiving" to celebrate victory over the heathen savages. During the feasting, the hacked off heads of Natives were kicked through the streets like soccer balls. Even the friendly Wampanoag did not escape the madness. Their chief was beheaded, and his head impaled on a pole in Plymouth, Massachusetts -- where it remained on display for 24 years.

The killings became more and more frenzied, with days of thanksgiving feasts being held after each successful massacre. George Washington finally suggested that only one day of Thanksgiving per year be set aside instead of celebrating each and every massacre. Later Abraham Lincoln decreed Thanksgiving Day to be a legal national holiday during the Civil War -- on the same day he ordered troops to march against the starving Sioux in Minnesota.

This story doesn't have quite the same fuzzy feelings associated with it as the one where the Indians and Pilgrims are all sitting down together at the big feast. But we need to learn our true history so it won't ever be repeated. Next Thanksgiving, when you gather with your loved ones to Thank God for all your blessings, think about those people who only wanted to live their lives and raise their families. They, also took time out to say "thank you" to Creator for all their blessings.

Our Thanks to Hill & Holler Column by Susan Bates susanbates@webtv.net

I've seen The Blindside about five times now. I must say I very much like it.

Three cheers for my cousin, Betty Deramus, whose latest book, Freedom By Any Means, was tagged as a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award!

Free the Scott Sisters

The tragic case of the Scott sisters
By Monica Moorehead
Published Apr 29, 2010 8:21 PM

Anyone who still believes that the U.S. is the most democratic and just country in the world has only to examine the shocking case of the Scott sisters to be disabused of that erroneous notion. While this case is becoming more and more well-known by word of mouth, mainly on the Internet, the 16-year-old case has never received the national and international media attention that it so richly deserves. The facts of the case will explain the reason why.
Gladys Scott

Gladys Scott

Who are the Scott sisters?

Jamie and Gladys Scott are African-American sisters who lived in the small town of Forest, Miss., when they were arrested on Dec. 24, 1993, on a charge of armed robbery of two Black men. The amount involved in the robbery was $11 and nobody was injured. In October 1994, both sisters were found guilty and received double-life sentences. They are not eligible for parole until they spend at least 20 years in prison.

Their sentence is very reminiscent of the life sentence, without the possibility of parole, given to the martyred Black Panther and Soledad Brothers prisoner, George Jackson, in the early 1960s. Jackson was convicted of stealing $70.
Jamie Scott

Jamie Scott

Three teenagers, who eventually admitted that they had committed the robbery, recanted the false testimony they gave during the Scott sisters’ trial. These teenagers stated before the judge and jury that they were forced by local authorities to implicate the sisters, with the promise of a lenient sentence. Even the robbery victims said that the sisters had nothing to do with the robbery. Neither Jamie nor Gladys had a prior record before this outrageous conviction and life sentence.

At the time of their arrest, conviction and sentencing, Gladys was 19 years old and pregnant with her second child; Jamie was a 22-year-old with three young children. Their children are being raised by Jamie and Gladys’ mother, Elaine Rasco. Despite having to move to Florida due to years of emotional stress, Ms. Rasco remains active in fighting for her daughters’ freedom.

The state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have refused to hear the Scotts’ appeals. Since being in prison, Jamie has developed almost complete kidney failure due to poor diet and inhumane prison medical care. She is receiving irregular dialysis treatments and has gone into shock numerous times. If it were not for the pressure and local attention that community, legal and political activists have put on the prison authorities, Jamie Scott could have easily died.

How to get involved

There is a growing grassroots movement to broaden awareness around the Scott sisters’ case, including a letter-writing campaign demanding that Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder release them. The campaign also includes getting petitions signed and getting press releases sent to local, state and national press on the case.

The Scott sisters’ case has put another human face on the constant racist repression that is woven within the very fabric of U.S. capitalist society. In an Aug. 19 article, Jamie Scott wrote: “The injustices that have occurred are patterns within this county and their police departments. This type of injustice and exploitation has been done to many African Americans who have lived in this county for many years. They have been very successful in destroying many lives.”

Jamie continued: “This is a time we show Americans what really occurs in most small towns in the state of Mississippi. We are convinced that once this chain of events is exposed and unraveled, the events that occurred, the lives that have been destroyed, the pain and suffering the citizens of Scott County have endured; everyone will be utterly amazed, astonished and compelled to assist us in our plight for freedom.”

Go to freethescottsisters.blogspot.com to read Jamie’s entire article, find out more information about the case and get involved.
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

This is Important Information From the Southern Center for Human Rights

Debtors' Prisons

Contrary to what many people may believe, there are debtors' prisons throughout the United States where people are imprisoned because they are too poor to pay fines and fees.



The United States Supreme Court in Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U.S. 660 (1983), held that courts cannot imprison a person for failure to pay a criminal fine unless the failure to pay was “willful.” However, this constitutional commandment is often ignored.



Courts impose substantial fines as punishment for petty crimes as well as more serious ones. Besides the fines, the courts are assessing more and more fees to help meet the costs of the ever-increasing size of the criminal justice system: fees for ankle braclets for monitoring; fees for anger management classes; for drug tests, for crime victims’ funds, for crime laboratories, for court clerks, for legal representation, for various retirement funds, and for private probation companies that do nothing more than collect a check once a month.



People who cannot afford the total amount assessed may be allowed to pay in monthly installments, but in many jurisdictions those payments must be accompanied by fees to a private probation company that collects them. A typical fee is $40 per month. People who lose their jobs or encounter unexpeced family hardships and are unable to maintain payments may be jailed without any inquiry into their ability to pay or the willfulness of their failure to pay.



There are more fees for those in jails or prisons. There are high costs for telephone calls. Fees are charged fees for medical services. A new trend is “room and board” fees in prisons and jails. Ora Lee Hurley spent nearly a year at the Georgia Department of Corrections, Atlanta Diversion Center due to her inability to pay a $705 fine from a 15-year-old drug conviction because she was charged for staying there. A court had ordered Ms. Hurley imprisoned until her fine was paid. While held at the Diversion Center, Ms. Hurley was employed full-time at a restaurant which sent her paycheck directly to the Department of Corrections. Although Ms. Hurley never missed a day of work and earned over $7,000, the Department took nearly every penny of her earnings. Left with only $23 per month to buy food, toiletries, and pay her fine, Ms. Hurley was being confined in perpetuity. She was released only after the Center filed a habeas petition on her behalf. For a copy of the habeas petition, click here. To view the Atlanta Journal Constitution article click here.


The Center Ends Jail Fees for Pre-Trial Detainees

In some cases, jails have even charged people room and board fees for people detained on charges but not convicted of any crime. For seventeen years, the Clinch County Jail in Homerville charged those in its custody a daily room and board fee. Even though Georgia law did not authorize – and in fact prohibited – such charges, the Clinch County Sheriff charged inmates $18 per day. Many people were too poor to pay the fees upon their release. The Sheriff and his deputies required them to sign notes promising to pay the fees in installments, or return to jail. On several occasions, the Sheriff charged people thousands of dollars, failing to return the money even when criminal charges were dismissed. A lawsuit filed by the Center, ultimately settled, required the Sheriff to return the illegal fees. For a copy of the Complaint, click here. For a copy of the Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment, click here. For a copy of newspaper articles related to the case, click here. To hear a report by National Public Radio on Clinch County Jails, click here.


The Center ends Debtors' Prison in Gulfport, Mississippi

The Municipal Court in Gulfport, Mississippi was one such court. In an effort to crack down on people who owed misdemeanor fines, the City of Gulfport employed a fine collection task force. The task force trolled through predominately African-American neighborhoods, rounding up
people who had outstanding court fines. After arresting and jailing them, the City of Gulfport processed these people through a court proceeding at which no defense attorney was present or even offered. Many people were jailed for months after hearings lasting just seconds. While the City collected money, it also packed the jail with hundreds of people who couldn’t pay, including people who were sick, physically disabled, and/or limited by mental disabilities. SCHR filed suit to stop these illegal practices. For a copy of the Complaint, Tclick here. For related news coverage, click here.


Other financial distortions

Debtors prisons are but one example of financial incentives that have a distorting effect on the criminal justice system. Criminal justice policies - how many prison beds to build, whether to arrest someone or cite them, what sentences to impose - should be primarily concerned with making us more safe. But the profit motive is increasingly distorting the system.



Many counties throughout the South, for example, are committing scarce dollars to building larger jails in anticipation of securing a lucrative contract with the federal government to house detainees for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the United States Marshals Service or even prisoners from other counties or other states. As another example, the design of work release programs - something that should be focused on developing skills and reducing recidivism - is often driven primarily by an interest in collecting as much moneyas possible from the prison er-workers. The privatization of probation, imprisonment, and other parts of the criminal justice system create incentives for expanding the criminalization of poor people.



Financial distrortions in the criminal justice system include the practice of funding government slush funds by adding to someone's sentence. By making it more difficult for people to take care of their basic needs, these additional financial obligations compromise rather than improve public safety.


Southern Center for Human Rights | 83 Poplar St. NW, Atlanta, GA 30303 | p.404.688.1202 | f.404.688.9440

An Essay I am Working On

The old sage beggar addressed it when he called out to the gawking public, “what are you looking at?! Act you ain’t never seen this before!” As Nina and Bulworth appear as a couple in the film Bulworth. J.A. Rogers addressed it in his Sex and Race series, making particular commentary on the compulsion of German women to lose their panties whenever Africans came into town with the P.T. Barnum Circus. Interracial mixing is a wild and radical growth that is native to American soil whose roots run very deep into the American fabric. Its very existence challenges the stalwart conservatism that runs rampant in America today. This vegetation stands testament to the integrity of the American fabric; it shadders the myth of white supremacy and exposes to all the connections that the handlers of America have failed to draw time and time again as a means of maintaining their dominance in a social order beneficial to them. These connections are seen when America lifts the folds of her skirts. Ann Soetoero was not the first white woman to introduce children into the America with footholds inside disparate cultures. Ann Soeteoro, the mother of Barack Obama, fits inside a huge legacy, the trajectory of which continues into the present day as new multiracial alliances are formed, legitimately and illegitimately, and as new casts are molded from the melting pot and served into the American populace. Most folks are aware that the people known today as Afro-Americans have ties to the white male American establishment that run as deep as blood and legacy. The point that must be underscored however, that which must be pointed out, is that the legacy of the illegitimate slave begotten by the master is not the only narrative woven into America’s racial past. There is a legacy of white women having children for men of color, such as my great-great-great grandmother, Caroline Roper. The daughter of a white Methodist minister, she bore seven children for a mulatto slave and bore two more completely white in the decade before the Civil War. During Reconstruction there was a resurgence of white female cohabitation with Black men, particularly in the south where the landscape was devastated, Black men possessed a new found power, and white women were left with few economic resources as their husbands, fathers, and brothers either were killed or mutilated in the Civil War. In the colonial era, racial mixing was such a common practice that laws were passed against it with severe penalties for both the white women who bore biracial children and for the children themselves. Usually, the women were forced into indentured servitude, given a certain number of years to work off their debt and the child was sold completely into bondage. Such cases were found well up until the resolution of the Civil War. These children, and the families created and disavowed within the American social fabric, planted radical and potent seeds within the United States, particularly as such racial mixing included revolts and rebellions and other contestations of white supremacy. The very existence of this biracial population shredded the legitimacy of whiteness and was a threat to the white male power structure. The element of this biracial phenomenon that was grounded in the poor, working class, and enslaved populations of this country made this even more of a threat. This called for even stricter policing of racial boundaries, drawing of racial lines, and stronger penalties for racial mixing. When you add in such information as Noel Ignatiev’s conclusion that the majority of white people who exist as such in the United States today are racially mixed and don’t fit neatly inside the defined lines of white supremacy, the entire foundation for America’s hidden racial habit is nullified, with severe implications for American imperialism, American exceptionalism, and much of the American way of life as defined by this nations fathers over the past two hundred and fifty years. Today, we are compelled to carry out this revolution in the way we think and exist in this country that was begun by our forefathers who clung together across boundaries of race, class, and sex to see a new harmony filled with equality and dignity for all overtake the world.

Why Conservative Christians So Often Fail the Common Good? via the Huffington Post

Simple answer: because they are going to bust hell wide open. However, read the article.

By Pat Fry

With the threat of grand jury subpoenas served within the next couple of days on anti-war activists in Minneapolis and Chicago, a standing room-only national meeting the Committee to Stop FBI Repression (CSFR) was held Saturday evening, November 6, at St. Mark’s Church in the lower east side of Manhattan.

Several of the targeted activists spoke to more than 200 people about their ordeal on September 24th when the FBI staged coordinated raids on the homes and offices of 14 activists in Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan. Everything from computers, mailing lists and books to children’s drawings were confiscated. Thirteen of those targeted – all of whom have been active in movements critical of U.S. foreign policy in Colombia and the Middle East – were served with subpoenas ordering them to appear before a grand jury in Chicago. After all refused to comply, citing their right to remain silent, the government withdrew the subpoenas. Last week, however, the Justice Department announced that it intends to enforce the subpoenas on three of the activists and will require their appearance before a grand jury.

Bruce Nestor, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and lead attorney representing the subpoenaed activists, said that it is expected that three will be subpoenaed sometime this week. None have been arrested or charged with any crime. Failure to comply with a grand jury subpoena can lead to imprisonment, loss of jobs, and homes.

The federal law that was cited in the search warrants prohibit, “providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorists organizations.” The law was first passed under the Clinton Administration in 1996 and further expanded with the Patriot Act under the Bush Administration to include provisions to prosecute for speech if it is deemed to be coordinated with a designated foreign terrorist organization. According to Nestor, “what you run the risk of is that even if you state your own independent views about U.S. foreign policy, but those views somehow reflect a group that the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization, you can be accused of coordinating your views and face, if not prosecution, at least investigation, search warrants, or being summoned to a grand jury to talk about your political allies and who your political friends are.”

In June, the Supreme Court rejected a free speech challenge to the law brought by humanitarian aid groups that said its provisions would lead to prosecutions for talking about non-violence to groups designated by the U.S. to be terrorists.

Ten of the fourteen who were raided by the FBI are members and leaders of trade unions. Several union bodies have responded by passing resolutions condemning the FBI raids, including the American Federation of State, County, Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 5 in Minnesota, the Duluth Central Labor Body, and the San Francisco AFL-CIO. At the Saturday meeting a member of the Central Labor Council of the Detroit AFL-CIO reported that a resolution introduced before a well attended meeting last week was adopted unanimously.

Religious organizations are also responding to condemn the raids including the American Friends Service Committee of Chicago, the Chicago Faith Coalition Middle East Policy, Fellowship of Reconciliation, First Chicago Church of the Brethren, and Witness for Peace – Great Lakes Region.

Members of the Illinois State Legislature are circulating a “Dear Colleague” letter opposing the FBI actions, which has thus far garnered signatures from a third of the legislators, it was reported on Saturday. A similar Dear Colleague Letter in the U.S. Congress is under discussion with Congressional delegations in Illinois and Minnesota.

The New York chapter of the National Lawyers Guild is training lawyers and legal workers for defense work in the case. A petition soon to be circulated among academics was announced at the meeting.

Numerous peace, international solidarity and socialist political organizations were represented at Saturday’s meeting, mainly from Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, and New York. Hundreds of statements condemning the raids and the grand jury subpoenas can be viewed on the web site: www.stopFBI.net

Local committees have been formed in several cities and a speakers’ bureau has been organized. All AFL-CIO central labor councils in the country have been sent mailings about the case.

A large banner hanging in the front of the room Saturday listed three key demands: Stop FBI Repression, Stop the Grand Jury, Return Our Stuff. On a side wall, the names of dozens of mainly Middle Eastern Americans jailed as “Victims of Preemptive Prosecution” were listed, identified with organizations such as the Holy Land Foundation. The daughter of one of the founders of the charitable Holy Land Foundation serving a 65 year sentence under the repressive law spoke at the meeting about the case. She said Palestinians and Arabs have been the main targets thus far of the law but now it has been expanded to others, and a movement is being organized. Jimmy Carter himself could be prosecuted under this law,” she said.

The meeting concluded with adoption of an organizational structure and a National Coordinating Committee of the “Committee Against FBI Repression." The committee will meet via telephone conference every two weeks or as needed. Organizations and local groups that are working on the issue are invited to participate with a representative. A national office has been set up in the Twin Cities.

Over $12,000 was raised in a fundraising pitch at the meeting. The NY CCDS contributed $100. The immediate need is for protests when the grand jury subpoenas are handed down sometime this week. Some 62 protests have already been organized in front of FBI offices around the country and one in front of the U.S. embassy in Vancouver CANADA. end

A Desperate Mother Whose Welfare Benefits Had Been Cut Seeks to End Her Life and Those of Her Children

There is a grave injustice inherent in this story,indicative of what is the very worst and is the most intolerable in the state of Alabama and within the larger United States. Give this woman assistance!

I believe that you're great, that there's something magnificent about you. Regardless of what has happened to you in your life, regardless of how young or how old you think you might be, the moment you begin to think properly, there's something that is within you, there's power within you, that's greater than the world. It will begin to emerge. It will take over your life. It will feed you. It will clothe you. It will guide you, protect you, sustain your very existence, if you let it. Now, that is what I know for sure. - Michael Beckwith