Organize the South

May come as a shock, but I haven’t always worked for nonprofits. I have 8 years’ experience as a freelance writer, with five years’ experience in résumé writing. I learned my craft working for a national job-search firm and wrote thousands of résumés for executives all across the country in scores of industries. Now that experience is available for you.

In a short interview, a few days, and a low price I can make sure you have the best résumé possible. You can check out more on my website at www.seremoslibre.com/resume.htm.

I started writing book reviews for Left Turn magazine, below is my first. I plan on continuing since it’s a way to get free books and to get published.

LEFT TURN REVIEW: AMERICAN METHODS

Kristian Williams’ American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination is the latest from the author of Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America. Williams has produced a well-documented and extremely readable, if also extremely disturbing, piece of work. In this work Williams seeks to lay out the idea that torture works. It is not something used to get information or punish, it is a system designed to control populations and is a base characteristic of state power. He says, “Torture doesn’t represent a system of failure; it is the system.”

Williams begins with and spends a lot of time on Abu Ghraib. He then takes us on a trip around the world and back in time. Williams talks in detail about present-day prison conditions in Guantanamo and Afghanistan, and he also details the torture systems of US allies beginning with Israel. He takes us to Chicago, New York, California, Hawaii, and across the US. He goes back as far as the Monroe Doctrine, but he doesn’t stay there long. Throughout it all he avoids passing moral judgment on any individual from those soldiers convicted at Abu Ghraib to Jon Burge, the Chicago cop responsible for torturing scores of people, on through war criminals like Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Yet Williams leaves no doubt that in a just world Rumsfeld’s deliberate decisions to allow torture would be prosecuted as a war crime. Williams, it seems, believes people are good and bad so it’s best to focus on how power is used.

The highlights of the book are sections where Williams lays out the legal framework on what is torture and why it’s illegal. In the section “Defining Torture” Williams’ presents a definition that is intentionally broad and designed to force one to consider what he calls “the question of humanity” first. He holds to this standard throughout the work. Williams devotes an entire chapter to examining whether or not torture is ever justified and concludes that for the sake of humanity the answer must be no. In my favorite part, “Torture Warrants and the Banality of Evil,” he intellectually trounces Alan Dershowitz, the defense attorney who sold his soul for a Harvard professorship and a national reputation. Dershowitz has become a fan of “torture warrants.” Williams rightly exposes the absurdity of Dershowitz and moves on.

In “The Centrality of Rape” section he does a good if limited job of showing the reader how to view torture through a gender lens. I read statements like, “Rape is…the model around which torture is organized” and “To be feminized, to be emasculated, is to be put in a subordinate position. It is to be labeled a candidate for abuse. It may be a humiliation; it is definitely a threat” and was eager to see him show how patriarchy serves to structure power under capitalism. Williams approaches the topic, but he doesn’t go through the door. As the penultimate chapter Williams comes to the subject too late. It would have been better to truly explore the notion while defining torture.

More than anything else Williams’ work lacks a grounding in true human rights history. Williams views human rights as a strictly legalistic framework. This is reflected throughout the book. Williams rightly documents US attacks on international law. He explains the concept of US exceptionalism. He writes about Jeane Kirkpatrick, former US ambassador to the UN under Reagan, referring to the Universal Declaration of Human rights as a “letter to Santa Claus.” What he doesn’t write about is why and how the concept of human rights came about. We are left with the idea that international law and human rights agreements are imaginings of diplomats, lawyers and scholars. Human rights as an organizing strategy of the oppressed to not only curb state power but to restructure power is invisible. He mentions Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as partial instruments for change today, but not the All-Colonial People’s Conference or the Fifth Pan-African Congress as places where the concept of human rights was shaped. Ironically, restructuring power and particularly curbing state power is what Williams prescribes as the strategy for ending torture. Even a brief background on the grassroots history of human rights would illuminate how to fill Williams’ prescription.

Despite the shortcoming Williams’ book is exceptional. Someone had to confront the idea that horror of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, or the local police precinct. Williams took up the challenge and answered it well.

Anger grows over police slaying of elderly victimBy SAEED AHMED, ADRIANNE MURCHISONThe Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionPublished on: 11/29/06
Calling the fatal shooting of Kathryn Johnston one of the worst tragedies the city has experienced, Mayor Shirley Franklin pledged to an angry crowd Tuesday night that the investigation into the death of the 88-year-old woman will be "fair, honest and transparent."
In her first public comments about the Nov. 21 confrontation, Franklin also said she would stand by police Chief Richard Pennington.
"To some folks, that's not good enough, and I have to apologize for that," she said.
Franklin spoke to a crowd gathered for a community meeting at the Lindsay Street Baptist Church, located off Joseph E. Lowery Boulevard not far from the house where Johnston was shot.
Pennington appeared at the meeting earlier, as did various City Council members and state politicians.
"My mother is 85, and I am blessed to still have her," Franklin said. The Johnston family, she said, expected that of their kin as well.
"There is no question that the tragedy you've experienced and we've experienced is one of the worst the city's experienced," she said. "All of us felt it personally."
During the four-hour-long meeting, the crowd — which at times swelled to more than 300 — angrily recounted stories about drug raids into their homes when officers knocked down doors, armed with warrants that were unsigned.
They also demanded to know why the officers involved in Johnston's death were still being paid by their tax dollars while they were on administrative leave. Franklin urged the crowd to be patient as the investigation took its course.
"Some folks have asked me, 'Why weren't you in front of the police chief?' [in the days following the shooting]," she said. She said that when she recruited Pennington she knew he would be fair and honest.
"I am going to stand beside him and ensure the police are held to the highest possible standard," she said.
At the meeting Pennington said he became concerned after community response to the shooting.
When he learned that the information he received conflicted with what a confidential informant told the Internal Affairs Unit, he brought in the FBI to lead the investigation, he said.
"I am not new to police misconduct," he said. "I've worked in Washington and New Orleans. I've made this move based on law enforcement and my gut feeling."
Earlier in the evening, about 70 residents gathered outside Johnston's home, some holding placards condemning police, others venting angrily about the botched narcotics raid.
"I'm enraged," said Walterine Jones, 50. "I mean, my God, if they can do this to an elderly woman like her, what does it mean for the safety of the rest of us." Marchers to the church carried signs that mocked the police, passed around by rally organizers, the New Black Panther for Self-Defense.
"Warning taxpayers & black citizens. Don't dial 911. The police will kill you," said one.
Another was a cartoon of a smiling uniformed officer holding a phone, with the caption: "They gave me administrative leave ... with pay. Kill a black citizen and get paid."
The message was a reference to Pennington's decision to place on paid leave the sergeant and seven detectives who are part of the narcotics unit.
Even without the signs, there was plenty of anger to go around among those who gathered in front of a makeshift memorial outside the now boarded-up house where Johnston died in a gun battle with officers.
Residents said that while crime is rampant in the area, the stretch of Neal Street where Johnson lived alone for almost two decades was home to other elderly residents.
"There's crime that needs to be tackled here, that's true. But this road right here, there's never been any drug dealing here," said Michael Jaye, 46, who has lived in the area since he was 4.
"But the police don't come here to fight crime. They come to knock heads," he added.
Johnny Colbert, 27, echoed many of the suspicion that police made up the description of "Sam," who they said was the man who sold drugs to an undercover informant.
"There are a lot of 'Sams' around here. They are all make-believe by the police," he said.
As some of the people in attendance pumped fists into the air and shouted "Black Power" at the exhortation of the organizers, a few stoic GBI and FBI agents stood by watching.
On a nearby porch, an elderly woman leaned on the railing, straining to catch what was happening.
She too would have walked down and shown her support, she said. But she was too feeble, she said.
The meeting at Lindsay Street Baptist Church was organized by State Sen. Vincent Fort and Rep. "Able" Mabel Thomas, both Democrats from Atlanta.
"I just don't understand how you bust in someone's house and don't know who lives there," said Mary Thomas, an usher at the church. "My daughter and I said this could be any of us."
Joe Cobb, who works in the neighborhood, said he never believed Johnston or anyone else sold drugs at the house.
"What's unfolding just reinforces what I first thought: the police lied," he said.
Civil rights activist the Rev. Markel Hutchins, the family's designated spokesman, has established a confidential hotline for tips from people with information.
The number is: 404-838-9645. The e-mail address is: justiceforkathrynjohnston

This is a working document meant to express general thoughts brought up in recent political conversation within Bring the Ruckus. This document does not represent a final view of thought on this subject and is meant only to further our understanding.

Family is a central part of society. A free family, therefore, is a central part of a free society. Bring the Ruckus proposes that to create a free society we must look to the struggles to create a free family, a liberatory family.

The family, particularly in the feminist context, has come under considerable critique, and justifiably so. For this reason we make it clear we are not talking about the patriarchal family but the liberatory family. The liberatory family is the form taken by those who, for strategic as well as moral reasons, recognize struggle against white supremacist capitalist patriarchy as a totality. Simply put, the liberatory family is the struggle of the oppressed to maintain close social relations and have those relations recognized. The family cannot and should not be defined by the state. The struggle to define oneself and one’s relation to others against the pressures of capitalism is the struggle for the liberatory family. These efforts often incorporate all the elements of a liberatory family: non- patriarchal leadership, prison abolition, fights for a living wage, a focus on health care, the call to recognize extended families as legitimate, and the recognition that women are the one’s who keep the family together. We propose this struggle as the basis from which any movement for freedom and justice will develop its most successful structures.

We see family struggles as feminist struggle even though mainstream feminists often argue against the family unit. For example, attacks on reproductive freedom do not simply affect those seeking abortion rights, but also those seeking to have families at all. LGBT families, for example, are often engaged in struggles to have and maintain family units. The attack on reproductive freedom does not only include the right to have a pregnancy terminated, but also the right to create healthy families. To attack reproductive freedom is to attack the liberatory family, especially those families who are not seen as legitimate by the state or who have been living under state encroachment.

The United States is structured by race and class. Thus, it should be no surprise that we often see this struggle to build a free family coming from women of color, who frequently act as bulwarks against social control. Their struggles to keep families together in the face of mass incarceration, invasive policing, or repressive immigration policies are struggles for a liberatory family.

The idea of liberatory family is an idea we in Bring the Ruckus are still struggling to flesh out. It came from observing and participating in two struggles: one working against social control and one focused on workplace organizing. We hope in developing the concept of the liberatory family we will help identify where radicals need to focus their struggles for a free society.

Work, Social Control & the Family
Struggles around work and against social control are at the heart of the struggles for the liberatory family. We recognize that women are key political agents for social change because women have been and continue to be key targets of oppression.

Women are often at the centers of campaigns against social control because the state has always had a gendered view of social control and it has always been aimed at containing people of color. During chattel slavery, there were essentially no gender distinctions between men and women of color. A Black woman could be whipped just as heinously as a Black man because they weren’t considered to be men or women- just property. After abolition, systems of social control changed in order to keep the newly freed population in line. and These systems treated men and women of color differently. For example, prisons were designed to lock up Black men in order to do two things. First, they "protected" white women because it was believed that the newly freed Black man endangered white women’s "virtue." Thus things like miscegenation laws were enacted to prevent race mixing while prisons and lynch laws were aimed at keeping Black men off the streets and "in their place." However, these systems of social control recognized the usefulness of Black female domestic labor even as they took many Black men out of the labor market. States couldn’t lock up Black women like Black men because they were doing all the domestic labor. These systems of social control ultimately preserved Black domestic labor while it systematically locked up 1/2 of the Black population. The legacies of these systems of racialized social control continue today.

Social control systems have had a direct impact on wages, particularly for families of color. The earning power of all women in the workplace has always been below men. During the time of the welfare state, when social programs kept extreme poverty within limits, this impact was somewhat muted. Today, neoliberalism has ended the family wage pact. The result is that more women of color are now often forced into the workplace at substandard wages while other family members are incarcerated. This has made entire populations superfluous to society.

Since the days of chattel slavery, the role function of the family under capitalism in the United States has not been the same for people of color as it has for white folks. While white women have been struggling to emancipate themselves from a family system that subordinated them to their fathers and husbands, women of color have been struggling to be able to even have a family and have it recognized as legitimate. Whereas in the days of slavery Black women married men in secret and struggled to keep their families together as they faced the prospect of having their partners or children being sold off, today women of color are consumed with struggles to keep their families together as they face the prospect of their partners or children being sent to prison and/or deported. As part of this struggle, many women of color have in practice expanded the nuclear family to include extended families and partnerships.

If we are going to do radically feminist work, we must begin by re-imagining and reconstructing the family in the ways that women of color are already doing. We must support the struggles of these women to redefine, legitimate, and keep their families together. To challenge the structures of social control that break the family up leads to a different type of radical feminist politics and in fact is a more radical form of politics than is being done today.

A radical feminist praxis focused on the systems of social control can help to link the struggles against prisons and police with struggles in the workplace. Rather than competing areas of struggle they can be viewed as connected. For example, the activist-scholar Ruthie Gilmore has done excellent work in showing how patriarchy is the primary system used to determine who is a danger to society and who must be protected. Focusing on women in the workplace and why they are there could lead to a greater and more complete understanding of capitalism’s pressures on the family.

What Needs to be Done
In discussing the liberatory family one thing becomes very apparent: we have a lot of work to do. We must define and flesh out what the liberatory family is and how it compares to our common understanding of family. We should further define “what is a family” and “what is a liberatory family.” We must also further define gender and how the construction of gender is significant to the family and the liberatory family. In terms of expanding our feminist praxis and family discussions we must also develop a new framework that engenders the notion of freedom, not choice as most feminist literature does. This new framework of freedom must include a discussion around families and health as well as politics.

Studying the family and developing feminist praxis around the liberatory family must look at and understand how communities are struggling to maintain their families in the face of state intervention. It must also dive deeper into the connections of our work around systems of social control (e.g. prisons, police & immigration) and the workplace through the lens of feminist praxis. We must understand what women in the workforce means for the perpetuation of capitalism. We must look at the different roles that women of color have played in the workforce. After all, they have always been a park of the working class. How does this historical fact change our understanding of workplace organizing? How does this relate to our understanding of race and the workplace? How does it change our examination of all our political work? Ultimately, what is the relationship between the racial patriarchy and capitalism? These are only some of the questions we must examine more closely.

But engaging in study is only half of our task. We must also engage in work. Because systems of social control have been developed and refined in the South, Bring the Ruckus feels the southern region of the US is vital to revolutionary change. Having first-hand experience in the region will help in understanding the multitude of ways systems of social control function. Furthermore, it will help us to understand and engage in the already existing work around radical feminist praxis, and see how people are struggling to establish forms of the liberatory family.

Revolutionaries must continue to examine current work through the lens of feminist praxis. If we truly seek to build a free society, we must have a theory and engage in work that fully incorporates a radical feminist praxis that ultimately struggles for the liberatory family.

Key Questions:

1. What has it meant for capitalism to have women in the workforce? How has women’s racially differentiated experience in the workforce impacted capitalism?


2. What is the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism?


3. Is globalization changing the relationship between patriarchy & capitalism? If so, how?


4. How do we define family? How do we define the liberatory family?


5. How might a theory of the liberatory family challenge existing constructions of gender and sexuality?

The US and the western media back protests over controversial elections when it suits them, but are silent over those in Mexico
Mark AlmondTuesday August 15, 2006The Guardian
A couple of years ago television, radio and print media in the west just couldn't get enough of "people power". In quick succession, from Georgia's rose revolution in November 2003, via Ukraine's orange revolution a year later, to the tulip revolution in Kyrgyzstan and the cedar revolution in Lebanon, 24-hour news channels kept us up to date with democracy on a roll.

Triggered by allegations of election fraud, the dominoes toppled. The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, was happy with the trend: "They're doing it in many different corners of the world, places as varied as Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan and, on the other hand, Lebanon ... And so this is a hopeful time."

But when a million Mexicans try to jump on the people-power bandwagon, crying foul about the July 2 presidential elections, when protesters stage a vigil in the centre of the capital that continues to this day, they meet a deafening silence in the global media. Despite Mexico's long tradition of electoral fraud and polls suggesting that Andrés Manuel López Obrador - a critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) - was ahead, the media accepted the wafer-thin majority gained by the ruling party nominee, Harvard graduate Felipe Calderón.

Although Mexico's election authorities rejected López Obrador's demand for all 42m ballots to be recounted, the partial recount of 9% indicated numerous irregularities. But no echo of indignation has wafted to the streets of Mexico City from western capitals.

Maybe Israel's intervention in Lebanon grabbed all the attention and required every hack and videophone. Back in 2004 CNN and the BBC were perfectly able to cover the battle for Falluja and the orange revolution in the same bulletins. Today, however, even a news junkie like me cannot remember a mainstream BBC bulletin live from among the massive crowds in Mexico City. Faced by CNN's indifference to the growing crisis in Mexico, only a retread of an old saying will do: "Pity poor Mexico, so far from Israel, so close to the United States."

Castro's failing health gets more airtime than the constitutional crisis gripping America's southern neighbour, which is one of its major oil suppliers. Apparently, crowds of protesters squatting in Mexico City for weeks protesting against alleged vote-rigging don't make a good news story. Occasionally commentators who celebrated Ukrainians blocking the main thoroughfares of Kiev condescend to jeer at Mexico's sore losers and complain that businessmen are missing deadlines because dead-enders with nothing better to do are holding up the traffic. Ukraine's Viktor Yushchenko was decisive when he declared himself president, but isn't López Obrador a demagogue for doing the same?

The colour-coded revolutionaries of the former Soviet Union had a pro-western agenda - such as bringing Georgia and Ukraine into Nato and the EU - but in Latin America radicals question the wisdom of membership of US-led bodies such as Nafta and the WTO. The crude truth is that Washington cannot afford to let Mexico's vast oil reserves fall into hands of a president even half as radical as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.

But didn't the western observers certify the Mexican polls as "fair", while they condemned the Ukrainian elections? True, but election observers are not objective scientists. The EU relies on politicians, not automatons, to evaluate polls. Take the head of its observer mission, the MEP José Ignacio Salafranca: as a Spanish speaker in Mexico, Salafranca had a huge advantage over many of the MEPs in Ukraine who draped themselves in orange even while en mission - but he is hardly neutral. His rightwing Popular party is an ally of Calderón's Pan party, which is in power in Mexico. Calderón was immediately congratulated by Salafranca's colleague Antonio López-Istúriz on the "great news".

The days of leftwing fraternalism may be over, but the globalist right has its own network, linking the Spanish conservatives, American Republicans and Calderón's Pan party - and they provided the key observer. To paraphrase Stalin: "It doesn't matter who votes, it matters who observes the vote."

Salafranca has a track record as an election observer. In Lebanon's general elections in 2005 he had no problem with the pro-western faction sweeping the board around Beirut with fewer than a quarter of voters taking part and nine of its seats gained without even a token alternative candidate. "It is a feast of democracy," he declared. His mood changed when the democratic banquet moved to areas dominated by Hizbullah or the Christian maverick General Aoun. Suddenly, "vote-buying" and the need for "fundamental reform" popped up in the EU observation reports.

Unanimity on the scale seen across Lebanon suggests that the cedar revolution - despite the hype - did nothing to promote real democratic pluralism. Hizbullah's hold on the south is the most controversial aspect of the sectarian segmentation of Lebanese society, but everywhere local bosses dominate their fiefdoms as before. Similarly, more scepticism about Ukraine's revolution would have left people better informed than the orange boosterism that passed for commentary 18 months ago.

But Mexico is different because it is so under-reported. The cruel reality is that "people power" has become a global brand. But like so many global brands it is owned by Americans. Mexicans and any other "populists" who try to copy it should beware that they're infringing a copyright. No matter how many protesters swarm through Mexico City or how long they protest, it is George Bush and co who decide which people truly represent The People. People power turns out to be about politics, not arithmetic.
· Mark Almond is a history lecturer at Oriel College, Oxford
mpalmond@aol.com

Critical Resistance is fighting for amnesty for people arrested because of the storm, for example, individuals arrested for "looting" and people whose cases were impacted by the storm – such as those held beyond release dates or cases where evidence has been destroyed.

If you, or someone you know fits into these categories, please call

504-304-3784 (collect if needed) or write

Critical Resistance
PO Box 71553,
New Orleans, LA 70172

Or email crnational@criticalresistance.org


We may be able to help.

If your sickened by the Israeli invasion, by the deaths in Gaza, the scores of children dead, then hop over to this website and make a donation. My friends at Atlanta Palestine Solidarity (www.atlanta4palestine.org) did a benefit for this organization. The Middle East Children’s Alliance (www.mecaforpeace.org) works in Palestine and Gaza and is working on emergency relief in Lebanon. Given Israeli intentional destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure (can you say “war crime”?) they’ll need every penny to get relief distributed. Their links page alone is worth the trip.

A special shout out to Ali Abunimah (www.abunimah.org). His blog was a great resource for info on the Middle East. He has co-founded 2 new sites where his posts will be made. The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net) and Electronic Iraq (www.electroniciraq.net) are a must see.

UK Guardian

Whatever we think of Israel's assault on Lebanon, all of us seem to agree about one fact: that it was a response, however disproportionate, to an unprovoked attack by Hizbullah. I repeated this "fact" in my last column, when I wrote that "Hizbullah fired the first shots". This being so, the Israeli government's supporters ask peaceniks like me, what would you have done? It's an important question. But its premise, I have now discovered, is flawed.

Since Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, there have been hundreds of violations of the "blue line" between the two countries. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) reports that Israeli aircraft crossed the line "on an almost daily basis" between 2001 and 2003, and "persistently" until 2006. These incursions "caused great concern to the civilian population, particularly low-altitude flights that break the sound barrier over populated areas". On some occasions, Hizbullah tried to shoot them down with anti-aircraft guns.

In October 2000, the Israel Defence Forces shot at unarmed Palestinian demonstrators on the border, killing three and wounding 20. In response, Hizbullah crossed the line and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers. On several occasions, Hizbullah fired missiles and mortar rounds at IDF positions, and the IDF responded with heavy artillery and sometimes aerial bombardment. Incidents like this killed three Israelis and three Lebanese in 2003; one Israeli soldier and two Hizbullah fighters in 2005; and two Lebanese people and three Israeli soldiers in February 2006. Rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel several times in 2004, 2005 and 2006, on some occasions by Hizbullah. But, the UN records, "none of the incidents resulted in a military escalation".

On May 26 this year, two officials of Islamic Jihad - Nidal and Mahmoud Majzoub - were killed by a car bomb in the Lebanese city of Sidon. This was widely assumed in Lebanon and Israel to be the work of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. In June, a man named Mahmoud Rafeh confessed to the killings and admitted that he had been working for Mossad since 1994. Militants in southern Lebanon responded, on the day of the bombing, by launching eight rockets into Israel. One soldier was lightly wounded. There was a major bust-up on the border, during which one member of Hizbullah was killed and several wounded, and one Israeli soldier wounded. But while the border region "remained tense and volatile", Unifil says it was "generally quiet" until July 12.

There has been a heated debate on the internet about whether the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizbullah that day were captured in Israel or in Lebanon, but it now seems pretty clear that they were seized in Israel. This is what the UN says, and even Hizbullah seems to have forgotten that they were supposed to have been found sneaking around the outskirts of the Lebanese village of Aita al-Shaab. Now it simply states that "the Islamic resistance captured two Israeli soldiers at the border with occupied Palestine". Three other Israeli soldiers were killed by the militants. There is also some dispute about when, on July 12, Hizbullah first fired its rockets; but Unifil makes it clear that the firing took place at the same time as the raid - 9am. Its purpose seems to have been to create a diversion. No one was hit.

But there is no serious debate about why the two soldiers were captured: Hizbullah was seeking to exchange them for the 15 prisoners of war taken by the Israelis during the occupation of Lebanon and (in breach of article 118 of the third Geneva convention) never released. It seems clear that if Israel had handed over the prisoners, it would - without the spillage of any more blood - have retrieved its men and reduced the likelihood of further kidnappings. But the Israeli government refused to negotiate. Instead - well, we all know what happened instead. Almost 1,000 Lebanese and 33 Israeli civilians have been killed so far, and a million Lebanese displaced from their homes.

On July 12, in other words, Hizbullah fired the first shots. But that act of aggression was simply one instance in a long sequence of small incursions and attacks over the past six years by both sides. So why was the Israeli response so different from all that preceded it? The answer is that it was not a reaction to the events of that day. The assault had been planned for months.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that "more than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and thinktanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail". The attack, he said, would last for three weeks. It would begin with bombing and culminate in a ground invasion. Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, told the paper that "of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared ... By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board".

A "senior Israeli official" told the Washington Post that the raid by Hizbullah provided Israel with a "unique moment" for wiping out the organisation. The New Statesman's editor, John Kampfner, says he was told by more than one official source that the US government knew in advance of Israel's intention to take military action in Lebanon. The Bush administration told the British government.

Israel's assault, then, was premeditated: it was simply waiting for an appropriate excuse. It was also unnecessary. It is true that Hizbullah had been building up munitions close to the border, as its current rocket attacks show. But so had Israel. Just as Israel could assert that it was seeking to deter incursions by Hizbullah, Hizbullah could claim - also with justification - that it was trying to deter incursions by Israel. The Lebanese army is certainly incapable of doing so. Yes, Hizbullah should have been pulled back from the Israeli border by the Lebanese government and disarmed. Yes, the raid and the rocket attack on July 12 were unjustified, stupid and provocative, like just about everything that has taken place around the border for the past six years. But the suggestion that Hizbullah could launch an invasion of Israel or that it constitutes an existential threat to the state is preposterous. Since the occupation ended, all its acts of war have been minor ones, and nearly all of them reactive.

So it is not hard to answer the question of what we would have done. First, stop recruiting enemies, by withdrawing from the occupied territories in Palestine and Syria. Second, stop provoking the armed groups in Lebanon with violations of the blue line - in particular the persistent flights across the border. Third, release the prisoners of war who remain unlawfully incarcerated in Israel. Fourth, continue to defend the border, while maintaining the diplomatic pressure on Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah (as anyone can see, this would be much more feasible if the occupations were to end). Here then is my challenge to the supporters of the Israeli government: do you dare to contend that this programme would have caused more death and destruction than the current adventure has done?

www.monbiot.com

Last week 2 representatives from the Racial Justice Campaign (www.stopoperationmethmerchant.org) attended the United Nations meeting of the Human Rights Committee. They went with a delegation which included a lawyer from the People’s Law Office, they have been working on the Burge case for a long time. Burge is a Vietnam Vet that learned to torture while in Southeast Asia. He brought those “skills” to Chicago and used them to force confessions from 100’s of people, including some sent to death row. Check out the RJC website for more information on what the Human Rights Committee says.



Torture by Chicago police reported
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Don Babwin
Associated Press
Chicago - Special prosecutors investigating allegations that police tortured nearly 150 black suspects in the 1970s and '80ssaid Wednesday that they had found evidence of abuse but that any crimes are too old to prosecute.
In three of the cases, the prosecutors said the evidence was strong enough to have warranted indictments and convictions.
"It is our judgment that the evidence in those cases would be sufficient to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt," Robert Boyle and Edward Egan wrote.
The four-year investigation focused on allegations that 148black men were tortured in Chicago police interrogation rooms in the 1970s and '80s.
The men claimed that detectives under the command of Lt. Jon Burge beat them, used electric shocks, played mock Russian roulette and started to smother at least one to elicit confessions.
No one has ever been charged, but Burge was fired after a police board found he had abused a suspect in custody. His attorney has said Burge never tortured anyone.
In about half the cases reviewed, Boyle and Egan said they found evidence of abuse.
Their report concluded that then-police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek was guilty of “dereliction of duty" and did not act in good faith in an investigation into claims of torture involving Burge.
They also faulted procedures followed by the Cook County state’s attorney's office and the police department at the time, saying they were "inadequate in some respects" but had since improved.
Mayor Richard M. Daley was the state's attorney during part of the period investigated, but Boyle dismissed any notion that Daley knew about the torture.
Daley delegated responsibilities to other people in his office, and his only mistake was "perhaps relying on the judgment of others," Boyle said.
Daley's office and a police spokeswoman did not immediately return calls seeking comment Wednesday.
The statute of limitations for criminal charges from the allegations is three years.

Kidnapped By Israel
The British Media And The Invasion Of Gaza
by Jonathan Cook; Media Lens; July 07, 2006

Few readers of a British newspaper would have noticed the story. In the Observer of 25 June, it merited a mere paragraph hidden in the "World in brief" section, revealing that the previous day a team of Israeli commandos had entered the Gaza Strip to "detain" two Palestinians Israel claims are members of Hamas.

The significance of the mission was alluded to in a final phrase describing this as "the first arrest raid in the territory since Israel pulled out of the area a year ago". More precisely, it was the first time the Israeli army had re-entered the Gaza Strip, directly violating Palestinian control of the territory, since it supposedly left in August last year.

As the Observer landed on doorsteps around the UK, however, another daring mission was being launched in Gaza that would attract far more attention from the British media - and prompt far more concern.

Shortly before dawn, armed Palestinians slipped past Israeli military defences to launch an attack on an army post close by Gaza called Kerem Shalom. They sneaked through a half-mile underground tunnel dug under an Israeli-built electronic fence that surrounds the Strip and threw grenades at a tank, killing two soldiers inside. Seizing another, wounded soldier the gunmen then disappeared back into Gaza.

Whereas the Israeli "arrest raid" had passed with barely a murmur, the Palestinian attack a day later received very different coverage. The BBC's correspondent in Gaza, Alan Johnstone, started the ball rolling later the same day in broadcasts in which he referred to the Palestinian attack as "a major escalation in cross-border tensions". (BBC World news, 10am GMT, 25 June 2006)

Johnstone did not explain why the Palestinian attack on an Israeli army post was an escalation, while the Israeli raid into Gaza the previous day was not. Both were similar actions: violations of a neighbour's territory.

The Palestinians could justify attacking the military post because the Israeli army has been using it and other fortified positions to fire hundreds of shells into Gaza that have contributed to some 30 civilian deaths over the preceding weeks. Israel could justify launching its mission into Gaza because it blames the two men it seized for being behind some of the hundreds of home-made Qassam rockets that have been fired out of Gaza, mostly ineffectually, but occasionally harming Israeli civilians in the border town of Sderot.

So why was the Palestinian attack, and not the earlier Israeli raid, an escalation? The clue came in the same report from Johnstone, in which he warned that Israel would feel compelled to launch "retaliations" for the attack, implying that a re-invasion of the Gaza Strip was all but inevitable.

So, in fact, the "escalation" and "retaliation" were one and the same thing. Although Johnstone kept repeating that the Palestinian attack had created an escalation, what he actually meant was that Israel was choosing to escalate its response. Both sides could continue their rocket fire, but only Israel was in a position to reinvade with tanks and ground forces.

There was another intriguing aspect to Johnstone's framework for interpreting these fast-moving events, one that would be adopted by all the British media. He noted that the coming Israeli "retaliation" -- the reinvasion -- had a specific cause: the escalation prompted by the brief Palestinian attack that left two Israeli soldiers dead and a third captured.

But what about the Palestinian attack: did it not have a cause too? According to the British media, apparently not. Apart from making vague references to the Israeli artillery bombardment of the Gaza Strip over the previous weeks, Johnstone and other reporters offered no context for the Palestinian attack. It had no obvious cause or explanation. It appeared to come out of nowhere, born presumably only of Palestinian malice.

Or as a Guardian editorial phrased it: "Confusion surrounds the precise motives of the gunmen from the Islamist group Hamas and two other armed organisations who captured the Israeli corporal and killed two other soldiers on Sunday. But it was clearly intended to provoke a reaction, as is the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel." ('Storm over Gaza,' 29 June 2006)

It was not as though Johnstone or the Guardian had far to look for reasons for the Palestinian attack, explanations that might frame it as a retaliation no different from the Israeli one. In addition to the shelling that has caused some 30 civilian deaths and inflicted yet more trauma on a generation of Palestinian children, Israel has been blockading Gaza's borders to prevent food and medicines from reaching the population and it has successfully pressured international donors to cut off desperately needed funds to the Palestinian government. Then, of course, there was also the matter of the Israeli army's violation of Palestinian-controlled territory in Gaza the day before.

None of this context surfaced to help audiences distinguish cause and effect, and assess for themselves who was doing the escalating and who the retaliating.

That may have been because all of these explanations make sense only in the context of Israel's continuing occupation of Gaza. But that context conflicts with a guiding assumption in the British media: that the occupation finished with Israel's disengagement from Gaza in August last year. With the occupation over, all grounds for Palestinian "retaliation" become redundant.

The Guardian's diplomatic editor, Ewen MacAskill certainly took the view that Israel should be able to expect quiet after its disengagement. "Having pulled out of Gaza last year, the Israelis would have been justified in thinking they might enjoy a bit of peace on their southern border." ('An understandable over-reaction,' Comment is Free, 28 June 2006)

Never mind that Gaza's borders, airspace, electromagnetic frequencies, electricity and water are all under continuing Israeli control, or that the Palestinians are not allowed an army, or that Israel is still preventing Gazans from having any contact with Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Meetings of the Palestinian parliament have to be conducted over video links because Israel will not allow MPs in Gaza to travel to Ramallah in the West Bank.

These factors might have helped to explain continuing Palestinian anger, but in British coverage of the conflict they appear to be unmentionables.

Arrested, Detained Or Kidnapped?
There was another notable asymmetry in the media's use of language and their treatment of the weekend of raids by the Palestinians and the Israelis. In the Observer, we learnt that Israel had "detained" the two Palestinians in an "arrest raid". These were presented as the legitimate actions of a state that is enforcing the law within the sphere of its sovereignty (notably, in stark contrast to the other media assumption that the occupation of Gaza is over).

So how did the media describe the Palestinians' seizure of the Israeli soldier the next day? According to Donald MacIntyre of the Independent, Corporal Gilad Shalit was "kidnapped" ('Israel set for military raid over kidnapped soldier, Independent,' 27 June 2006). His colleague Eric Silver considered the soldier "abducted" ('Israel hunts for abducted soldier after dawn raid by militants,' 26 June 2006). Conal Urquhart of the Guardian, referred to him as a "hostage" ('Palestinians hunt for Israeli hostage,' Guardian, 26 June 2006). And BBC online believed him "abducted" and "kidnapped" ('Israel warns of "extreme action",' 28 June 2006)

It was a revealing choice of terminology. Soldiers who are seized by an enemy are usually considered to have been captured; along with being killed, it's an occupational hazard for a soldier. But Britain's liberal media preferred to use words that misleadingly suggested Cpl Shalit was a victim, an innocent whose status as a soldier was not relevant to his fate. The Palestinians, as kidnappers and hostage-takers, were clearly not behaving in a legitimate manner.

That this was a deviation from normal usage, at least when applied to Palestinians, is suggested by the following report from the BBC in 2003, when Israel seized Hamas political leader Sheikh Mohammed Taha: "Israeli troops have captured a founder member of the Islamic militant group Hamas during an incursion into the Gaza Strip." This brief "incursion" included the deaths of eight Palestinians, including a pregnant woman and a child, according to the same report. ('Israel captures Hamas founder,' BBC online, 3 March 2003).

But one does not need to look back three years to spot the double standard being applied by the British media. On the Thursday following Sunday's Palestinian attack on Kerem Shalom, the Israeli army invaded Gaza and the West Bank to grab dozens of Palestinian leaders, including cabinet ministers. Were they being kidnapped or taken hostage by the Israeli army?

This is what a breaking news report from the Guardian had to say: "Israeli troops today arrested dozens of Hamas ministers and MPs as they stepped up attempts to free a soldier kidnapped by militants in Gaza at the weekend. The Israeli army said 64 Hamas officials, including seven ministers and 20 other MPs, had been detained in a series of early morning arrests." (David Fickling and agencies, 'Israel detains Hamas ministers,' 29 June 2006).

BBC World took the same view. In its late morning report, Lyse Doucet told viewers that in response to the attack in which an Israeli soldier had been "kidnapped", the Israeli army "have been detaining Palestinian cabinet ministers". In the same broadcast, another reporter, Wyre Davies, referred to "Thirty Hamas politicians, including eight ministers, detained in the West Bank", calling this an attempt by Israel at "keeping up the pressure". (BBC World news, 10am GMT, 29 June 2006)

"Arrested" and "detained"? What exactly was the crime committed by these Palestinian politicians from the West Bank? Were they somehow accomplices to Cpl Shalit's "kidnap" by Palestinian militants in the separate territory of Gaza? And if so, was Israel intending to prove it in a court of law? In any case, what was the jurisdiction of the Israeli army in "arresting" Palestinians in Palestinian-controlled territory?

None of those questions needed addressing because in truth none of the media had any doubts about the answer. It was clear to all the reporters that the purpose of seizing the Palestinian politicians was to hold them as bargaining chips for the return for Cpl Shalit.

In the Guardian, Conal Urquhart wrote: "Israeli forces today arrested more than 60 Hamas politicians in the West Bank and bombed targets in the Gaza Strip. The moves were designed to increase pressure on Palestinian militants to release an Israeli soldier held captive since Sunday." ('Israel rounds up Hamas politicians,' 3.45pm update, 29 June 2006)

The BBC's Lyse Doucet in Jerusalem referred to the "arrests" as "keeping up the pressure on the Palestinians on all fronts", and Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen argued that the detention of the Hamas MPs and ministers "sends out a very strong message about who's boss around here. The message is: If Israel wants you, it can get you." (BBC World News, 6pm GMT, 29 June 2006)

Siding With The Strong
So why have the British media adopted such differing terminology for the two sides, language in which the Palestinians are consistently portrayed as criminals while the Israelis are seen as law-enforcers?

Interestingly, the language used by the British media mirrors that used by the Israeli media. The words "retaliation", "escalation", "pressure", "kidnap" and "hostage" are all drawn from the lexicon of the Israeli press when talking about the Palestinians. The only Israeli term avoided in British coverage is the label "terrorists" for the Palestinian militants who attacked the army post near Gaza on 25 June.

In other words, the British media have adopted the same terminology as Israeli media organisations, even though the latter proudly declare their role as cheerleading for their army against the Palestinian enemy.

The replication by British reporters of Israeli language in covering the conflict is mostly unconscious. It happens because of several factors in the way foreign correspondents operate in conflict zones, factors that almost always favour the stronger side over the weaker, independently of (and often in opposition to) other important contexts, such as international law and common sense.

The causes of this bias can be divided into four pressures on foreign correspondents: identification with, and assimilation into, the stronger side's culture; over-reliance on the stronger side's sources of information; peer pressure and competition; and, most importantly, the pressure to satisfy the expectations of editors back home in the media organisation.

The first pressure derives from the fact that British correspondents, as well as the news agencies they frequently rely on, are almost exclusively based in Israeli locations, such as West Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, where they share the daily rituals of the host population. Correspondents have Israeli neighbours, not Palestinian ones; they drink and eat in Israeli, not Palestinian, bars and restaurants; they watch Israeli, not Palestinian, TV; and they fear Palestinian suicide attacks, not Israeli army "incursions".

Another aspect of this assimilation - this one unmentionable in newsrooms - is the long-standing tendency, though admittedly one now finally waning, by British media organisations to prefer Jewish reporters for the "Jerusalem beat". The media justify this to themselves on several grounds: often a senior Jewish reporter on the staff wants to be based in Jerusalem, in some cases as a prelude to receiving Israeli citizenship; he or she may already speak some Hebrew; and, as a Jew living in a self-declared Jewish state, he or she is likely to find it easier to gain access to officials.

The obvious danger that Jewish reporters who already feel an affinity with Israel before their posting may quickly start to identify with Israel and its goals is not considered an acceptable line of inquiry. Anyone raising it is certain to be dismissed as an anti-Semite.

The second pressure involves the wide range of sources of information foreign correspondents come to rely on in their daily reporting, from the Israeli media to the Israeli army and government press offices. Most of the big Israeli newspapers now have daily editions in English that arrive at reporters' doors before breakfast and update all day on the internet. The Palestinians do not have the resources to produce competing information. Israeli officials, again unlike their Palestinian counterparts, are usually fluent in English and ready with a statement on any subject.

This asymmetry between Israeli and Palestinian sources of information is compounded by the fact that foreign correspondents usually consider Israeli spokespeople to be more "useful". It is, after all, Israeli decision-makers who are shaping and determining the course of events. The army's spokesperson can speak with authority about the timing of the next Gaza invasion, and the government press office knows by heart the themes of the prime minister's latest unilateral plans.

Palestinian spokespeople, by contrast, are far less effective: they usually know nothing more about Israeli decisions than what they have read in the Israeli papers; they are rarely at the scene of Israeli military "retaliations", and are often unreliable in the ensuing confusion; and internal political disputes, and a lack of clear hierarchies, often leave spokespeople unsure of what the official Palestinian line is.

Given these differences, the Israeli "version" is usually the first one to hit the headlines, both in the Israeli media and on the international TV channels. Which brings us to the third pressure.

News is not an independent category of information journalists search for; it is the information that journalists collectively decide is worth seeking out. So correspondents look to each other to determine what is the "big story". This is why reporters tend to hunt in packs.

The problem for British journalists is that they are playing second fiddle to the largest contingent of English-language correspondents: those from America. What makes the headlines in the US papers is the main story, and as a result British journalists tend to follow the same leads, trying to beat the American majors to the best lines of inquiry.

The effect is not hard to predict: British coverage largely mirrors American coverage. And given the close identification of US politicians, business and media with Israel, American coverage is skewed very keenly towards a pro-Israel agenda. That has direct repercussions for British reporting. (It does, however, allow for occasional innovation in the British media too: for example, whereas American reporters were concerned to promote the largely discredited account by the Israeli army of how seven members of a Palestinian family were killed during artillery bombardment of a beach in Gaza on 9 June, their British colleagues had a freer hand to investigate the same events.)

Closely related to this sympathy of coverage between the British and American media is the fourth pressure. No reporter who cares about his or her career is entirely immune from the cumulative pressure of expectations from the news desk in London. The editors back home read the American dailies closely; they imbibe as authoritative the views of the major American columnists, like Thomas Friedman, who promote Israel's and Washington's agenda while sitting thousands of miles away from the events they analyse; and they watch the wire services, which are equally slanted towards the American and Israeli interpretation of events.

The reporter who rings the news desk each day to offer the best "pitch" quickly learns which angles and subjects "fly" and which don't. "Professional" journalists of the type that get high-profile jobs, like Jerusalem correspondent, have learnt long ago the predilections of the desk editors. If our correspondent really believes in a story, he or she will fight the desk vigorously to have it included. But there are only so many battles correspondents who value their jobs are prepared to engage in.


Collective Punishment

Within this model for understanding the work of British correspondents, we can explain the confused sense of events that informs the recent reporting of the Independent's Donald MacIntyre.

He points out an obvious fact that seems to have eluded many of his colleagues: Israel's reinvasion of Gaza, its bombing of the only electricity station, and disruption to the water supply, its bombing of the main bridges linking north and south Gaza, and its terrifying sonic bombs over Gaza City are all forms of collective punishment of the civilian Palestinian population that are illegal under international law.

Derar Abu Sisi, who runs the power station in Gaza, tells MacIntyre it will take a "minimum of three to six months" to restore electricity supplies. ('Israeli missiles pound Gaza into a new Dark Age in "collective punishment", 29 June 2006). The same piece includes a warning that the petrol needed to run generators will soon run out, shutting off the power to hospitals and other vital services.

This is more than the Guardian's coverage managed on the same day. Conal Urquhart writes simply: "Israel reoccupied areas of southern Gaza yesterday and bombed bridges and an electricity plant to force Palestinian militants to free the abducted soldier." Blithely, Urquhart continues: "In Gaza there was an uneasy calm as Israeli aircraft and forces operated without harming anyone. Missiles were fired at buildings, roads and open fields, but ground forces made no attempt to enter built-up areas." ('Israel rounds up Hamas politicians,' 11.45am, 29 June 2006)

In MacIntyre's article, despite his acknowledgment of Israel's "collective punishment" of Gaza (note even this statement of the obvious needs quotation marks in the Independent's piece to remove any suggestion that it can be attributed directly to the paper), he also refers to a Hamas call for a prisoner swap to end the stand-off as an "escalation" of the "crisis", and he describes the seizure of a Hamas politician by Israel as an "arrest" and a "retaliation".

In a similarly indulgent tone, the Guardian's Ewen MacAskill calls Israel's re-invasion of Gaza "an understandable over-reaction": "Israel has good cause for taking tough action against the Palestinians in Gaza" - presumably because of their "escalation" by firing Qassam rockets. MacAskill does, however, pause to criticise the invasion, pointing out that "Israel has to allow the Palestinians a degree of sovereignty." ('An understandable over-reaction,' Comment is Free, www.guardian.co.uk, 28 June 2006)

Not full sovereignty, note, just a degree of it. In MacAskill's view, invasions are out, but by implication "targeted assassinations", air strikes and artillery fire, all of which have claimed dozens of Palestinian civilian lives over the past weeks, are allowed as they only partially violate Palestinian sovereignty.

But MacAskill finds a small sliver of hope for the future from what has come to be known as the "Prisoners' Document", an agreement between the various Palestinian factions that implicitly limits Palestinian territorial ambitions to the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. "The ambiguous document agreed between Hamas and Fatah yesterday does not recognize Israel's right to exist but it is a step in the right direction," writes MacAskill. (ibid)

A step in which direction? Answer: Israel's direction. Israel has been demanding three concessions from the Palestinians before it says it will negotiate with them: a recognition of Israel's right to exist; a renunciation of violence; and a decision to abide by previous agreements.

A Guardian editorial shares MacAskill's assessment: "Implicit recognition [of Israel] coupled with an end to violence [by the Palestinians] would be a solid basis on which to proceed." ('Storm over Gaza,' 29 June 2006)

If the Palestinians are being faulted for their half-hearted commitment to these three yardsticks by which progress can be judged, how does Israel's own commitment compare?

First, whereas the long-dominant Palestinian faction Fatah recognised Israel nearly 20 years ago, and Hamas appears ready to agree a similar recognition, Israel has made no comparable concession. It has never recognised the Palestinians right to exist as a people or as a state, from Golda Meir's infamous dictum to Ehud Olmert's plans for stealing yet more Palestinian land in the West Bank to create a series of Palestinian ghettos there.

Second, whereas the Palestinians have a right under international law to use violence to liberate themselves from Israel's continuing occupation, the various factions are now agreeing in the Prisoners' Document to limit that right to actions within the occupied territories. Israel, meanwhile, is employing violence on a daily basis against the general population of Gaza, harming civilians and militants alike, even though under international law it has a responsibility to look after the occupied population no different from its duties towards its own citizens.

Third, whereas the Palestinians have been keen since the signing of the Oslo accords to have their agreements with Israel honoured -- most assume that they are their only hope of winning statehood -- Israel has flagrantly and consistently ignored its commitments. During Oslo it missed all its deadlines for withdrawing from Palestinian territory, and during the Oslo and current Road Map peace negotiations it has continued to build and extend its illegal settlements on Palestinian land.

In other words, Israel has not recognised the Palestinians, it has refused to renounce its illegitimate use of violence against the population it occupies, and it has abrogated its recent international agreements.

Doubtless, however, we will have to wait some time for a Guardian editorial prepared to demand of Israel an "implicit recognition [of the Palestinians] coupled with an end to violence as a solid basis on which to proceed."


Jonathan Cook is a former journalist with the Observer and Guardian newspapers, now based in Nazareth, Israel. He has also written for the Times, the International Herald Tribune, Le Monde diplomatique, and Aljazeera.net. His book "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State" was recently published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

Over the next few months, Communities United will be shutting our doors. This will be a total shutdown and will include the termination of all program work. This decision wasn’t made lightly. We’ve built an organization that has done and is doing good work. However, doing good work isn’t enough to justify the existence of an organization.

In June 2005 the Communities United Steering Committee held a strategic planning retreat and planned the development of a volunteer Organizing Collective comprised of people most affected by the Prison Industrial Complex and agreed to be an interim Steering Committee until we could hold a Strategy Session in November.

In November 2005, we held a strategy session with organizations from around the State of Georgia working on different aspect of the Prison Industrial Complex. Our goal was that a critical number would join a permanent Steering Committee and others would become actively involved in Communities United. PIC related organizations in Georgia, particularly outside of Atlanta, did not join the steering committee.

After a deep program evaluation period we’ve come to the conclusion that Communities United has not built a representative constituency and has not launched a campaign in accordance to its strategic plan. We believe that a critical lack of capacity among organizations in the state is preventing participation in a coalition structure. While building capacity is a goal, the primary reason Communities United was formed was to wage state campaigns. Rather than change the reason for being, we will be exploring other ways to structure campaigns so that low-capacity organizations can be involved.

Throughout the history of Communities United many people have contributed to the its process. Staff (paid & volunteer), steering committee members, volunteers and friends have worked hard to think, act and evaluate how to address the unjust Georgia Criminal Justice system. We are committed to continuing that work after Communities United is fully closed.

In the shutting down of this organization, we will be documenting all the factors that led us to this decision. Georgia is a state where economic exploitation reigns supreme and no one know the effects of this exploitation more then those affected by the PIC. We hope these lessons learned will aid and advance the work currently being done in this State and will guide any future coalition work.

I lived in Orlando for 12 years. While I don’t think much of the Food Not Bombs strategy, I can’t remember the last time I fed someone who was hungry. Well, I did buy flan for a colleague at lunch, but I don’t think that counts.

My point is I’m disappointed in Patty Sheehan. I remember when she was first running as the only openly gay candidate for city council. There was some controversy because she viciously opposed the building of a shelter for homeless youth in her neighborhood. It appears she now is opposing FNB food sharing in the park because the businesses don’t like it. The lesson here is that we shouldn’t hate people because they are gay, we should hate them because they are poor. Thanks Patty, that clears a lot up.

For more information on Orlando’s attempt to starve homeless people.
http://orlandofoodnotbombs.org/

The main campaign I'm on right now is the Racial Justice Campaign Against Operation Meth Merchant (www.stopoperationmethmerchant.org). It's a campaign against the racial targeting of the South Asian community in North Georgia for the meth problem. The authorities there are scapegoating South Asians for meth. What better way to make the point then with our very own scapegoat. Here's a link to the statement made by Methi the Government Scapegoat.

http://www.atomicavenger.com/jyoti/methi/methi.html

Just fyi, methi is a green leafy vegetable similar to spinach. Some of the defendants didn't know what meth was and thought the authorities were talking about cooked vegetables. Sad, but true. If you have a moment, stop by and view the video. It's a bit large so if you don't have a higher speed connection it could be a problem. I really do encourage you to look. This is funny stuff in not so funny times.

It would also help the campaign if you forward the link. The more media on the Racial Justice Campaign the better.

The weekend of June 16-18 was a historic moment for the US. The Southeast Social Forum was held in Durham, NC, and about 500 people from around the South and the country came together. The social forum was a conference of those struggling against corporate globalization. That last sentence shows some issues with the event, but not enough to say the weekend was anything but wonderful.

The US Social Forum website (www.ussf2007.org) states, “The US Social Forum is more than a conference, more than a networking bonanza, more than a reaction to war and repression – The USSF is the next most important step in our struggle.” The Southeast Social Forum was, in my opinion, a conference. It was a great conference, but it was a conference. I don’t understand what it would mean for it to be more than that. The website also says, “The USSF will provide spaces to build relationships, learn from each other’s experiences, share our analysis of the problems our communities face, and begin to vision and strategize how to reclaim our world.” The Southeast Social Forum did that, at least for me. I met people I hadn’t seen in 10+ years. I had a great opportunity to talk to people engaging in a wide range of struggle. Because of the forum I’m thinking about organizing, particularly the Racial Justice Campaign (www.stopoperationmethmerchant.org) in new ways. This isn’t more than a conference, it’s what a good conference is suppose to do.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have never been to a social forum before. I didn’t go to Brazil, India, Kenya, or Venezuela. I wasn’t really interested in attending either. It seemed like a lot of money to go to a conference that looked like it was about space for Global South organizers to come together. I did go to the first national weekend planning meeting of the US Social Forum in Atlanta last year. I was skeptical, and still am, of the social forum process given how little experience US citizens have in democratic process. At the end of the weekend I pulled out of the planning process, given the workload with launching a new organization I didn’t think it was wise to spread myself out. While I was excited to attend the Southeast Social Forum, and will be attending the US Social Forum, I won’t be working on it.

The format for the Southeast forum was typical conference. Plenary in the morning, workshops, lunch, plenary, workshop, plenary, dinner, plenary, party. It’s a tried and true format that has it’s strengths and weaknesses. One strength I found was that I could skip out on a plenary and spend that time talking to folks outside. I have a very difficult time sitting still for most plenary sessions. After working at Project South (www.projectsouth.org), I just don’t have it in me to be talked at for more than 10 minutes. I have to get up.

There were an amazing number of workshops. The first session on Saturday had 18 not including the spontaneous sessions. This was repeated again on Saturday and on Sunday. The Racial Justice Campaign did a workshop on Saturday with 6 people. Not a big turnout at all, but it was a great space for conversation since 2 of the folks were from Georgia and the others do racial justice work. I was thrilled with the result.

By far the most talked about dynamic all weekend was building an alliance between Black and Latino communities. I estimate about 40-50% of the attendees were Black, about 30% Latino, 20% white (maybe 30%), and 10% everyone else but mostly South Asian. Given the mass mobilizations in the last couple of months this makes sense. However, there seemed to be more to this than just a response. Folks in North Carolina have been organizing around Black/Brown alliance in a serious way since the late 1990s. Black Workers for Justice and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee have a long, successful history of intercultural organizing. Other groups like The Miami Workers Center (www.miamiworkerscenter.org) and the Tenant and Workers Organizing Committee were also present and sharing the challenges and opportunities they have faced in doing this type of organizing. While I was present at many of these discussions, I didn’t learn about any new principles that would provide a magic bullet. Rather, the conversations were more about honestly stating what the problems were and are, and why overcoming those problems is so crucial. Frankly, I think not pretending we have answers is a mark of a good conference.

I will be making some dramatic changes in my professional life very soon. I'm hoping these changes will mean more time for writing and keeping up with this blog. In any case I want to keep the posts more updated so not every post will be an essay. They may just be questions I have about what's going on.

In other news, look for a personal website to be launched soon. Details to come.

By Jordan Flaherty and Tamika Middleton
From Colorlines Magazine (http://www.colorlines.com)
February 2006

When hurricane Katrina hit, there was no evacuation plan for 7,000 prisoners in the New Orleans city jail, generally known as Orleans Parish Prison (OPP), or the approximate 1,500 prisoners in nearby jails. According to first-hand accounts gathered by advocates, prisoners were abandoned in their cells while the water was rising around them. They were subjected to a heavily armed "rescue" by state prison guards that involved beatings, mace and being left in the sun with no water or food for several days, followed by a transfer to state maximum security prisons. Although their treatment brought national attention to the condition of prisoners in Louisiana, and comparison to prison abuse scandals from Attica to Abu Ghraib, local government officials have attempted to dodge accountability and continue with business as usual.

Raphael Schwartz, a 26-year-old Missouri man arrested and imprisoned for public intoxication in New Orleans on August 27, was sprayed with mace and abandoned by officers in a locked cell with seven other prisoners. According to papers filed by the ACLU of Louisiana, the man had no ventilation and nothing to eat or drink for four days.

Quintano Williams, a 31-year-old office manager picked up on marijuana charges just before the storm hit, testified in ACLU papers to being abandoned for days and then relocated to Hunts Correction Facility, a rural Louisiana maximum security prison, where he was left with thousands of detainees on a football field. There, he witnessed stabbings, but, he said, prison staff "did not interfere with anything that was going on as long as people did not try to get out of the area."

Rachel Francois was arrested in mid-August, and as far as her family was able to discover never had charges filed against her. "We tried to bail her out," her mother, Althea Francois, said. "It was the day before Katrina, and the bail bonds places were all closed. If they had been open, she would have been released that day. Instead, we could not get her released until two months later." Francois, a prisoner-rights advocate, searched for two weeks before she found out where her daughter was being held.

Rachel and other women were taken to Hunts and then Angola, an all-male prison. "When I found out she was at Angola prison, just the idea really broke my heart," her mother said. "She didn't have a bed until the last few days she was there. She had no food for four days. She saw them throw food at the men like they were animals, but even then they didn't give the women anything. The women were having panic attacks and were in fear for their lives. "

Most of the people trapped in this brutal web of governmental abuse and neglect would have been released within a few weeks even if convicted. However, as of this writing several months later, many remain locked in maximum security prisons such as Angola, Louisiana's notorious former slave plantation.

The flooding of New Orleans showed vividly the results of local, state and federal governments' misplaced priorities, as well as the privatizing and militarizing of relief. In the months after the disaster, while the people of New Orleans wanted to return and rebuild their city, what they got instead was "security." Hundreds of National Guard troops, as well as police forces from across the U.S. and private security forces including Blackwater, Wackenhut and an Israeli company called Instinctive Shooting International began patrolling the nearly empty city.

Long before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was hit by hurricanes of disinvestment, deindustrialization, corruption and neglect. Louisiana has the highest rate of incarceration in the country-816 sentenced prisoners per 100,000 state residents. By comparison, Texas comes in a distant second place with 694 per 100,000. Although Blacks make up 32 percent of Louisiana's population, they constitute 72 percent of the state's prison population. Pre-Katrina, New Orleans industry had already left, and most remaining work involved low-paying, transient, insecure jobs in the service economy.

Orleans Parish Prison was the eighth largest jail in the country, made up of several buildings located in Midcity New Orleans. The population of the jail was predominantly people from the city's many low-income communities and communities of color. The jail also rented out cells to the federal government to house immigration detainees and other federal prisoners. However, most of the prisoners left behind as the jail flooded had not been convicted of any crime, but were being held pre-sentencing. Lawyers and researchers working on behalf of the prisoners say that most were accused of misdemeanors, such as minor drug possession, parking violations and public drunkenness.

Mary Howell is a civil rights lawyer who has been active in defense of prisoners from OPP for years. "Last year, 80,000 people came into OPP as arrestees," she said. "Very few were eligible for rehabilitation programs. This prison has mostly been warehousing people. We've suffered under a policy where the city builds a huge jail that is then required to be filled with human beings, or else it's a waste of money."

"Being a sheriff in Louisiana is one of the most powerful positions in the state," adds Howell.  " There's virtually no oversight. At the time of the hurricane they had about 1,200 employees under the Sheriff in Orleans Parish. Those employees, under state law can also be used by the sheriff for political campaigns. That adds up to a political empire and a patronage empire."

Ursula Price is a staff investigator for A Fighting Chance, a nonprofit organization that works for indigent defense in Louisiana, as well as a part of Safe Streets Strong Communities, a coalition dedicated to transforming New Orleans' criminal justice system. She has been working around the clock since the hurricane hit, despite losing everything she owned in the flooding of New Orleans. "Investigating what happened to these prisoners and where they are is not supposed to be our job. This should be the city's concern," she said.

Initial reports gathered from testimony of both inmates and guards put the number of inmates unaccounted for anywhere between a dozen and several hundred. Sheriff Marlin Gusman has been sticking with an official statement that, "all inmates housed in Orleans Parish were safely evacuated from our 10 facilities by boat and transported to state and parish facilities by bus." He also suggested to media that reports of abuse come from "disgruntled" inmates who "lie." Human Rights Watch and ACLU responded that these reports are consistent from many different prisoners and also match with reports from interviews with guards at OPP. In late November, Gusman's office quietly put out arrest warrants for 14 inmates, while still denying that any were missing, other than two who had been recaptured.

The defense of these prisoners has been managed by just a few organizations and individuals. Phyllis Mann, a lawyer from rural Alexandria, Louisiana, found that many of the OPP prisoners had been moved to a prison near her, and she started visiting them. According to Price, Mann dropped everything in her private practice to dedicate herself to their legal defense-and had 12 former prisoners living in her house.

Official negligence is just the beginning of the obstacles advocates have faced. "Immediately after the flooding, the governor issued an order suspending the clock on court proceedings," Price said. The state no longer had a time limit-formerly 60 days-under which to present charges or release prisoners. "It's stopped due process," Price continued. "Almost all of the public defenders have been laid off. There are only seven left in Orleans Parish. Meanwhile, in trying to defend these folks, we have massive travel costs and almost no funding."

For the prisoners, there are other hardships. "These are Katrina survivors, but they're not getting their FEMA money or Red Cross aid or food stamps," said Price. " They've lost contact with their families; many have children and they don't know where they are."

Ross Angle, who has since been released, told Human Rights Watch, "Picture waking up everyday in a prison somewhere-you don't even know where you are-knowing you were supposed to be free, not knowing how long they were going to keep you there. Not knowing if it would ever end. After they moved me, I kept asking for someone to look at my case, and they just kept telling me, 'We're waiting on the DOC guys, we don't know anything.' If my lady wasn't seven months pregnant, calling them everyday and yelling, then I would probably still be there.It made me feel worthless."

After the hurricane, the incarceration of suspected "looters" was the first city function to restart. Due process and civil liberties were almost nonexistent for new arrestees, who were put in cages in a makeshift prison at a Greyhound bus station, with no access to phones or lawyers. When ACLU attorney Katie Schwartzmann went to observe proceedings, a sheriff's deputy at first refused her access, as well as taking and reading her notepad.

According to advocates and recently released prisoners, new arrestees are offered a choice-either plead guilty and be put to work on city cleanup crews, or plead not guilty and face months in Angola prison with no access to a lawyer.

>From the initial images broadcast around the world, demonizing the people of New Orleans as "looters," and criminals, there have been two very different visions struggling for the future of the city. One vision is a vision of "security," exemplified by Governor Blanco bringing in National Guard troops with the words, "They have M-16s and they are locked and loaded...These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so if necessary, and I expect they will." This is a vision of corporate security and restructuring, handing the city over to Blackwater Security's armed guards and Halliburton's disaster profiteers, while "redeveloping" Black neighborhoods into golf courses and luxury housing.

The other vision is of justice and human rights. This vision involves restoring jobs, health care and housing for New Orleans, rather than offering minimum wage dead-end jobs, crumbling infrastructure and more prisons. It is a vision supported by the work of countless activists and organizers from around the US, as well as the overwhelming majority of the people of New Orleans.

"Despite all of the horror we are seeing daily, my hope is this is an opportunity for change," Price said. "OPP corruption is being laid bare-people being held past their time is nothing new in this system, it's just more extreme now. This is something to organize around and fight against."

(This article has been slightly altered from the version appearing in Colorlines Magazine) =====================================
Tamika Middleton is the Southern Regional Coordinator for Critical Resistance and a member of the People's Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Coalition.
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Jordan Flaherty is a resident of New Orleans, an organizer with New Orleans Network and an editor of Left Turn Magazine. His previous articles from New Orleans are at
http://www.leftturn.org/articles/SpecialCollections/katrina.aspx

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GRASSROOTS, PEOPLE OF COLOR-LED GULF COAST ORGANIZATIONS TO DONATE TO:
http://www.leftturn.org/Articles/Viewer.aspx?id=689&type=W

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