National Call in Day to Eliminate Cocaine Disparity

From the Sentencing Project:
For the first time, crack cocaine sentencing reform legislation received a favorable vote in Congress when the House Judiciary Committee in July approved the Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act of 2009, H.R. 3245. To move the bill forward we need a vote on the bill by the entire House of Representatives.

Now is the time for advocates to contact their Representative to ask for support and co-sponsorship of H.R. 3245. Call the U.S. Capitol at (202) 224-3121 and ask to speak to your Representative right now.

The prospects for sentencing reform are the best advocates have seen since Congress passed this controversial law 23 years ago. Change cannot happen, however, without your support and continued pressure on members of Congress. Please use these talking points to tell your Representative to take action.

Talking Points:

Please support and co-sponsor H.R. 3245, the Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act of 2009. This legislation will:

* Restore federal law enforcement priorities. When Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 and 1988, the intended targets of mandatory minimums were "serious" and "major" traffickers. In practice, the law failed to live up to its promise. Mandatory penalties for crack cocaine offenses have been applied most often to individuals who are low-level participants in the drug trade, who comprise more than 60% of federal crack defendants.

* Save federal tax dollars and ease prison overcrowding. The Federal Bureau of Prisons estimates it costs $25,895 a year to house each prisoner. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, eliminating the sentencing disparity between powder and crack cocaine would reduce the prison population by over 13,000 in 10 years.

* Counter the perception of unfairness in the criminal justice system. African Americans account for 81.8% of defendants sentenced to federal prison for crack cocaine offenses. Crack cocaine sentences average 37 months longer than sentences for powder cocaine. This disparity has contributed to a damaging perception of race-based unfairness in our criminal justice system.

* Treat two forms of the same drug the same. Crack cocaine is pharmacologically the same as powder cocaine. Myths about crack cocaine, that have been dispelled since the sentencing law was passed 23 years ago, contributed to these out of proportion penalties.

Support Prisoner Families this Holiday Season!

From Thousand Kites:
Dear Friend,

Join the tenth annual CALLS FROM HOME holiday radio broadcast for
prisoners and their families.

The United States has 2.4 million people behind bars. Thousand Kites
wants you to lend your voice to a powerful grassroots radio broadcast
that reaches into our nation's prison and tells those inside they
are not forgotten.

Learn more at www.callsfromhome.org

We are asking you to call our toll-free line 877-518-0606 and speak
directly to those behind bars this holiday season. An answering
machine will record your message. Read a poem, sing a song, or just
speak directly from you heart. Speak to someone you know or to
everyone---make it uplifting.

We are making a special call to poets to support our project this year.
Poets click here.

CALLS FROM HOME will broadcast on over 200 radio stations across the
country and will be available for download on our website December 8th.
Call anytime (now through December 7) at 877-518-0606 and record your message.

Listen to calls here.

Learn how you can help blog, distribute, broadcast, or support this project.

CALLS FROM HOME is a project of Thousand Kites/WMMT-FM/Appalshop Campaign Center
and a national network of grassroots organizations working for criminal justice reform.

So call right now at 877-518-0606.

peace,
Thousand Kites Team
thousandkitesproject@gmail.com
www.thousandkites.org

Call Pres. Obama: End the War!

Call President Obama, Your Senators, and Member of Congress to Stop the Escalation and End the War in Afghanistan

An ad-hoc coalition of national peace advocacy organizations is calling on people from every corner of the country to inundate the White House on Monday (November 23rd) with phone calls against military escalation in Afghanistan.

The Obama Administration is on the verge of a major strategic decision regarding troop levels and US policy in Afghanistan. Ralph Nader recently lamented how Obama was possibly "insulating himself" - not unlike his predecessor - from expert and cautious advice as he considers this, his most perilous, foreign policy decision.

After eight years of war and occupation in Afghanistan it is now up to those Americans who have long counciled for peace and reconciliation to speak out louder than they ever have before. We take Obama's hesitation to commit more troops as a welcome sign, and see this not as presidential 'dithering', but as an opportunity.

Obama may not ever make the speech that Tom Engelhardt recently fantasized about, nor speak the truth that Howard Zinn so eloquently provides , but the peace movement must find its ground with this new President (and this Congress) to end the assault on the Afghan people, bring our troops home, and help bring peace to a region that has far too long known only war.

On Monday (11/23), take time from your day to call the White House - 202-456-1111 - and give President Obama the advise he so desperately needs. Tell him, We, the people of this nation, will not sit idly by and watch him turn our hope into a quagmire or our dreams of peace into the continued nightmare visited upon the nation of Afghanistan. When you're done, call your Senators and House members and relate to them the same.

If there is to be an escalation, let it be ours.
The groups supporting this Call-In Day include: Just Foreign Policy, United for Peace and Justice, the American Friends Service Committee, Peace Action, CodePink, Voters for Peace, Pax Christi, CommonDreams.org, Historians Against War, and the Institute for Policy Studies.

Don't Ask Don't Tell on Veteran's Day

Thanks Schuyzoo for sending this my way.

Dan Choi's powerful story as told in a Moth performance can be accessed here.

On this veteran's day I have a lot of questions and a lot of hope that we can do things better NOW. The way we're treating our soldiers and our veterans is unacceptable. Policies that invisibilize and silence, like DADT and the denial of the prevalence of rape in the military (for a great DN! segment on the troubles female servicemembers face click here), perpetuate cycles that MUST be broken. Statistics telling about how we have failed our veterans are overwhelming and prevalent in the news - for example, over 2000 veterans died from a lack of health care last year, and new studies are showing that soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq are disproportionately suffering from unemployment. And of course, the violence at Fort Hood recently is disturbing evidence of how broken our military is. I'm not sure what would make it all better, but I know that increased transparency, support and training for soldiers and veterans would be a start. Maybe also downsizing our military? (GASP!) I don't know -- more ideas?

Is Blackface Back Again?

Or should I ask, did it ever really leave? Racewire recently published an article on the resurgence of Blackface in the media, including on ANTM (vomit!) but also in W and Vogue magazines.

Obviously Halloween is quite the perfect time for racist costumes and blackface (Racewire also did an article on that) and my sister, who goes to Northwestern University, shared an open letter from one student to the NU community in the DailyNorthwestern. They wrote in response to some students wearing blackface and attempts to give them some historical grounding in her explanation of why blackface is racist and unacceptable. Let me repeat.. THEY HAD TO EXPLAIN THAT BLACKFACE IS RACIST AND UNACCEPTABLE. How folks don't figure things like that out for themselves... Anyway here's an excerpt:

Northwestern community: It is time we realize the significance of our actions. It is time every person becomes conscious of the effects his or her behavior has on an entire community of people. I am writing about the incessant and continuous racialized demonstrations of authority and dominance presented by the entire NU community and our society at large.

The most recent incident, the cause for this letter, was on the night of Oct. 31, Halloween, when certain white members of the NU community dressed up as black people. In an attempt to resemble a black person, someone painted his entire body black.

If you do not know the history of these actions, all you need to know is one word to understand the disgusting behavior this person embodied — that word is blackface. Blackface has, surprisingly enough, been on this campus before. Two years ago, a very similar incident occurred, pointing to the lack of insight of the people in the NU community to make a conscious movement toward combating race problems.

The full article is here. What upset me the most are the comments in response to the piece - but that's becoming a trend with on-line journalism, as well.

This reminds me of this one time when my friend Ruby was invited to a ridiculously racist costume party and the party-thrower just couldn't figure out what he was doing wrong..

Support the Goldstone Report! From Jewish Voices for Peace

www.SupportGoldstone.org


CLICK HERE to tell the Israeli government, the media, US Congress and Richard Goldstone:
I SUPPORT THE GOLDSTONE REPORT

Dear Friend,

Frankly, I've had enough of the lies and distortions surrounding the UN Goldstone Report. I've had enough of the maneuvering by Israel, the US, and other countries in order to dismiss the report and its authors and bury it altogether.

If you are as dismayed as I am, sign at SupportGoldstone.org, and we'll let key Israeli officials, members of Congress, and Goldstone himself know how many of you support the report.

What we need, instead of the smear campaigns, is discussion of the report's substance: the use of phosphorus that literally burned people alive (I saw the terrible impact with my own eyes on a recent trip to Gaza); or the use of metal darts called flechettes that twist when they enter the body; or the long term impacts of contaminated land and water.

Early next week the report heads to the floor of the US Congress and the UN General Assembly, and we're expecting continued pressure to have this important document roundly dismissed.

The continued attacks on the Goldstone Report prevent accountability for the civilian victims before, during and after the attack on Gaza -- both Palestinians and Israelis -- and shred the rule of law.

That's why we are asking you to say: I support the Goldstone Report. Once you sign, we'll tell you how to easily and quickly lobby Congress and your UN Ambassador in the next few days.

The truth is that the Goldstone Report is a well-researched, fair-minded report. It accuses both Israel and Hamas of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during the attack on Gaza, and it calls on Israel and Hamas to conduct credible, independent investigations or face the International Criminal Court.

I support the Goldstone Report.

Israel decided not to cooperate with the investigation and now claims that the report and its results are biased. Worse yet, Israel claims that the report negates its right to defend its population, when in reality, all the report does is insist that such a defense take place within the bounds of international law.

The United States and other countries are repeating the same lines, and have exerted great diplomatic pressure to kill the report.

The US Congress is getting ready to pass a resolution next week calling on President Obama to do everything he can to bury the Goldstone Report. The UN General Assembly will vote on it. Israel might launch its own investigation, if it is pressured enough to do so. And if it does, our task will be to ensure that the investigation is comprehensive, impartial, and aimed towards addressing, punishing and preventing future human rights abused - and not at changing the laws of war such that another blatant assault on civilian life and property as the Gaza war will ever become acceptable under international law.

Please join us in supporting the Goldstone Report now.

Thanks,



Cecilie Surasky
Jewish Voice for Peace

NYC No Longer a Sanctuary City

This week The Huffington Post reported:

Last year about 360,000 people were deported from the United States, nearly 100,000 deportations resulting from past criminal convictions, mostly for low-level non-violent convictions. It's a mockery of justice that someone can be punished twice for the same crime.

New York City, which claims to be a "sanctuary city," is supposed to encourage its residents to report crimes and seek social services without fear of deportation.
As the Huff Post put it,

Allowing ICE into its jails is a violation of this policy. Schiro must urgently implement the demands of Immigration Out of Rikers, a city wide coalition pushing to kick ICE out of the facility. A key first step would be to refuse ICE access to the two-thirds of Rikers detainees who are pre-trial. Letting immigration agents into city jails means that many families end up being needlessly ripped apart.

The inadequacy of our immigration system and the perpetual violence against immigrants in our country feels overwhelming to me. I'm excited to see the emergence of a coalition that seems to be asserting itself effectively! I couldn't find a website for them but I found this awesome article on Make the Road's website.

Racewire Reports on Whitening Hollywood

One of the things I love most about Racewire is their pop commentary - they have had hilarious analyses of Harry Potter, Disney princess movies, and other films. Most recently they posted a link to the top five most unintentionally racist films and then yesterday they released that a recent SAG report AG looked at casting reports from 2007-2008 and found that the number of people of color hired for film and television roles has dropped to 27.5% of total roles cast in 2008.

Blacks were the largest nonwhite group cast, according to SAG, but also lost the most roles in 2008, dropping from 14.8% to 13.3%. Latino roles decreased slightly, losing most in the lead role category. A Latino starred in 7.2% of features in 2007. Only 3.4% were the main characters in 2008. American Indians, despite their romance with the silver screen, had the fewest jobs, at 0.3% in both years.

For the full article click here.

I wonder what this says about our society - is Hollywood reflecting the increased tensions surrounding race in the US? Or where is this coming from... I wish I knew more about the process of what films and shows are made and why. It seems to me that this trend has been a long time coming because it takes a while to make a movie. But I'm not sure what it means although it's a disturbing trend and is also going to be increasingly misrepresentative of our society as it exists in reality, since we are quickly headed to a demographically majority-minority population. Any ideas for the implications?

EVENTS! NoCal, Phila, NY

Today is October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. For information about nation-wide events go to their website. For those of you in and around NY:
Calling all New Yorkers!
4:30 p.m. Washington Square Park -- Rally and March (assemble west of fountain)
6:30 p.m. Voices Against Police Brutality -- music and art protesting police brutality
at Gay and Lesbian Community Center, 208 West 13th Street
(7th Avenue and 13th St.)

Also coming up in Philly on Oct. 29: The University Community Collaborative of Philadelphia Presents "Survival and Success": Youth Identity in the Context of Urban Violence



And NYU Law is sponsoring a DO SOMETHING SOCIAL ACTION BOOTCAMP on Saturday, November 7th: Do Something is hosting a Social Action Boot Camp for 100+ amazing young people who are rocking their causes as activists or have started their own community action projects. The goal of the Boot Camp is to offer a platform for young world-changers
(25 and under) to learn, think big and share their passion for social
change with other like-minded peers. During the day, we offer 16
different sessions on topics ranging from "Recruiting and Managing
Volunteers" and "Public Relations" to "Building a Website" and
"Measuring Your Impact".

If you are in Northern California or want an excuse for a visit, consider going to the Engaging The Other conference in San Francisco (San Mateo to be precise) November 12-15. To register click here - to read more about it go to Tikkun's blog post about it!

Fighting the Crack/Coke Disparity

Congress is considering a bill that would close the crack/cocaine disparity (for some good links talking about the disparity read this Racewire article) by reducing penalties for crack cocaine. If passed the bill, dubbed the Fair Sentencing Act, will increase the amount of crack (to 500 grams) that would get you 5 years in prison to the same amount as is required now for selling powder cocaine. Obama has said in the past that he is committed to equalizing prison sentences for crack and coke but has been silent thus far on the Fair Sentencing Act.

It is worth noting that many conservatives want the punishment for cocaine to be increased rather than see a reduction in crack sentencing, but that lawmakers are citing economic reasons for avoiding that route - prisons are now being seen as an economic liability even if they are still considered necessary.

Along those lines -- I'm all about reducing or eliminating the disparity but in the Washington Post article about the bill they also mention that it would "stiffen penalties for large-scale drug traffickers and violent criminals." I'm just curious how this expansion of the prison system managed to finagle its way into the bill. Do the lawmakers who are purportedly about reducing or eliminating racist laws not understand the implications of ANY expansion of the PIC? Do they think that these "stiffened penalties" are going to equally affect all people? I'm just baffled at the lack of basic sense... who are we fighting here? Who are we protecting?

Bottled Water Injustice

I've become one of those weirdos who gets really upset when I see people doing something I consider irresponsible - drinking bottled water. I have so far held back on my ranting, but especially now that I live in NYC where tap water is so clean my tolerance is low and dipping.

The Irish Times reported on Penn Teller's mockumentary about bottled water consumption in the US. In it, a fancy restaurant serves different kinds of water including one called L’eau Du Robinet (French for “tap water”) and another one with a spider in it, purportedly straight from the Amazon - haven't you heard of the healing powers of spiders? The water was all served from the tap and no one knew the difference - in fact they paid a whole lot of money for that water. That also reminds me of the Minnie Driver film where she's a waitress at a dive-y restaurant and this mean woman who is with the man she loves is being bitchy asking for bottled water and Minnie (sassy lady that she is) fills a bottle with tap water and seals it and the woman doesn't even notice, obviously.

Anyway, the politics of bottled water upset me more. The article reports:

Last year, BBC television’s Panorama current affairs programme investigated the high environmental cost of our strange love affair with bottled water. Fiji Water is indeed sourced in Fiji, then shipped more than 10,000 miles to Europe and beyond.

Meanwhile, one in three Fijians doesn’t have access to safe drinking water, and illnesses and deaths from typhus and other waterborne diseases are common on the island. The extraction of huge amounts of water for export is draining the island’s aquifers, putting even more pressure on supplies for the islanders.

Globally, as we ship billions of bottles of water from exotic-sounding locales to assuage our new-found thirst for water as a lifestyle accessory, 3,000 children die each day as a direct result of drinking contaminated water.

Globally, bottled water requires the production of about 300 billion plastic bottles a year, of which maybe one in five is recycled. Transportation, packaging, distribution and dealing with the waste generates tens of millions of tonnes of carbon emissions – and for what exactly? About 40 per cent of all bottled water sold is simply municipal tap water put into plastic bottles by corporations such Pepsi (Aquafina) and Coca-Cola (Dasani) and then sold back to the public in plastic containers.

WE CAN DO BETTER! If you want filtered water, buy a Brita! I get it, tap water sometimes isn't safe. But get a Klean Kanteen or a Sigg or something - is it that hard?? OK I'm realizing this is me ranting -- to all my regular commenters (haha) feel free to share an alternate view.

Immigration Sensations

As it gets colder outside and people everywhere start worrying about making it through the winter, I shudder to think about what this year will bring for many families across the country. We are truly at a frightening time and the latest anti-immigrant hysteria has me feeling really pessimistic.

Despite the fact that many cities across the country are rejecting 287(g) (perhaps in response to the Hispanic Caucus' and around 520 other groups' call for immigration justice) and the UN report detailing how migrant workers give far more to the countries they move to than they take, we can't seem to make substantial changes.

Obama's new immigration plan which has been called "ambitious" primarily addresses the most grievous wrongs like the incredible neglect and abuse immigrants suffer in detention facilities. (For a link to the actual report click here.) What about real change? What about conversations regarding naturalization and legalization of undocumented workers?

I guess I should be happy that Obama is planning on making detention centers gentler and that the administration is aware of how broken the system is. Forgive me for not jumping up and down. I guess I just need to see substantial changes in the fundamental attitudes of Americans to get me going -- report after report and study after study show that the us citizens (especially us middle-class citizens - see here) end up benefiting substantially from immigration, so clearly these fears are not based on fact but rather symbolic definitions of value and humanity. I just don't know how to change those! Thoughts?

14th National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation

Oct. 22, 2009
14th National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation

4:30pm Rally and March at Washington Square Park (gather at west side of the fountain)
Subway: A/B/C/D/E/F/V to West 4th, N/R/W to 8th St, 6 to Astor, 1 to Christopher; Bus: M1/2/3/5/6/8
Voices Against Police Brutality
music * poetry * art * film * resistance
6:30pm at the LGBT Community Center
208 West 13th Street (btw Seventh and Eighth Aves)
Subway: 1/2/3 to 14th St & 7th Ave, A/C/E/L to 14th St & 8th Ave, F/V to 14th St & 6th Ave; Bus: M5/6/7/9/14/20

If you can be a legal observer, please call Susan Howard at (212) 679-6018

WHITOPIA

I just blatantly pulled this from Racewire (original post here) hoping maybe someone would read this that didn't see it there. I promise I'll do a 'real' post soon. I can't make it to this event but if you can, IT SOUNDS AWESOME.

Demos, the Applied Research Center, and The Nation Institute are proud to host the New York City book launch of Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey Into the Heart of White America, featuring author Rich Benjamin and Nation columnist Eric Alterman.

Between 2007 and 2009, Rich Benjamin, a Senior Fellow at Demos, packed his bags and embarked on a 26,909-mile journey throughout the heart of white America—some of the fastest-growing and whitest locales in the nation. Benjamin calls these enclaves “Whitopias.” To learn what makes Whitopias tick, and why and how they are growing, Benjamin lived in three of them for several months apiece.

In his book, Benjamin reveals the qualities that make a Whitopia, and explores the urgent social and political implications of this startling phenomenon. The glow of the historic 2008 election, argues Benjamin, should not obscure the racial and economic segregation still vexing America. Obama’s presidency, moreover, raises the stakes in a struggle between two versions of America: one that is broadly comfortable with diversity yet residentially segregated (“ObamaNation”) and one that does not mind a “little ethnic food, some Asian math whizzes, or a few Mariachi dancers—as long as these trends do not overwhelm the white dominant culture” (“Whitopia”).

The housing, social, lifestyle, and demographic trends Benjamin reveals are here for the long haul. Americans now have the chance to learn about and address these developments. What will we do next?

Please join us for an exciting and timely conversation featuring Rich Benjamin and prominent journalist Eric Alterman. The discussion will be followed by a wine and cheese reception.

Event info:
Date: Thursday, October 8th
Time: 6-8 pm
Place: Demos, 220 Fifth Ave., 5th Floor, New York 10001

RSVP: contact Jinny Khanduja at jkhanduja@demos.org or 212.389.1399.

Tikkun Interview with Richard Goldstone

If any of you have been following the latest UN report on the Gaza war and the outrageous crimes against humanity that Israel committed in Palestine, then I want to hear your thoughts!

For me, the report is not really what is surprising or interesting - the Goldstone element is what really fascinates me. Jewish South African former Supreme Court Judge Richard Goldstone is a self-professed Zionist and a political moderate who has been recently vilified by the Jewish mainstream media and political establishment (both in Israel and in the US) for overseeing and supporting the findings of the report. Goldstone actually refused to oversee the investigation unless Palestinian actions were also scrutinized but he stands by the results of the investigation and good for him! What I find so fascinating is how he is being marginalized because he is questioning the status quo and actually daring to dash the Israel-as-utopia myth (see Uri Avnery's opinions, published by Tikkun here).

If this becomes a trend I see the pro-Israel argument/lobby seriously entrenching itself further and alienating its current powerful base. I can't help but hope that it gets bad so it can get better... Maybe if many current Israel supporters see how extreme Israel's actions are and the extremism of many supporters of Israel can be they more mainstream and moderate folk will mobilize to insist on human rights and some form of justice in the region... Pipe dreams? Let me keep dreaming. Otherwise this entire debacle is just too disgusting and horrifying for words.

Tikkun did a pretty good interview with Goldstone that you can find here.

For the Democracy Now report on the UN Investigation click here.

David Foster Wallace Spitting Truth

David Foster Wallace committed suicide on Sept 12 this year... but Asher sent me this really interesting commencement address he gave in '05 to Kenyon College graduating seniors. One excerpt in particular gave me pause, not just because it talks about suicide but because of how he re-conceptualizes the act of thinking:

Probably the most dangerous thing about college education, at least in my own case, is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract arguments inside my head instead of simply paying attention to what's going on right in front of me. Paying attention to what's going on inside me. As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head. Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal-arts cliché about "teaching you how to think" is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: "Learning how to think" really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about "the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master." This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in the head. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger. And I submit that this is what the real, no-bull- value of your liberal-arts education is supposed to be about: How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default-setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out.

I don't know about the alone part but this really resonated with me in a way that spoke to the potential for re-conceptualizing activism as well. Wallace talks about how we automatically center ourselves partly as a function of how we look at the world - with ourselves at the center and everything literally going on around us - and partly as the product of how our society places value on the individual. It is important to de-center yourself in a way that is not necessarily how we're socialized. Wallace's point is that we need to be more conscious of others and their needs around us.. I would extend that to say that in an activist model we need to look at the collective as the way both to true unity/solidarity and to power. Can we learn to value the individual and not ignore needs of each member of a group while simultaneously drawing on the energy of a unified group as a vehicle to confront structural oppression/inequity?

Reflections for a New Year

This post is going to be a little different from my normal post something I find interesting and sometimes comment on it MO.

I want to write out some thoughts -- bear with me here, I know this might be rambling, but at this point in the Jewish calendar we are commanded to reflect, repent, and make amends. I always liked that we're required to make up with people, repay debts, apologize and fix relationships, and I love the idea of taking communal responsibility for sins - we chant a list of transgressions in unison, taking responsibility even if we, individually, may or may not have committed a particular act. But I also always found this Holy time to speak to internal reflection and a commitment to really challenging ourselves on a personal level to DO BETTER. Just do better! Care more! Make goals that are attainable and relevant and thoughtful! And then keep to them!

So my immediate resolutions for self-care this year were going to be: take my multivitamins, be more conscious of myself and my impact on those around me, and breathe more (as Eliza says, BREATHING IS GOOD!). But after a session last night with Rabbi David Rosenn, the Exec Director and Founder of AVODAH, I started thinking about what it means to reflect... how we tend to think of reflection as something to do once in a while instead of regularly, or something to do in free time rather than something we psychically need in order to survive. Rabbi Rosenn talked about how if we don't DEAL with challenges and dissonance through reflection we will accommodate those challenges into our existing frameworks and not actually learn or grow at all. Rather we need to deal with our discomfort and address it... And not just once a year.

I want this new year to culminate in a year's experience, not one day's experience 365 times.

I want to make a time for reflection, a set time, a purposeful time, and not to think of reflection time as a refuge from other times but rather to conceive of reflection as an ongoing dialogue and interaction between my consciousness and my (inter)active life. I hope that I make time to keep the theme of figuring out a way to forge/create/find common ground central to my existence. I need to find our humanity! At the MR 60th celebration the other night Rev Wright talked about putting the PEOPLE at the center.. if we keep the people at the center the world will look different. That seems so basic but is just ... not realized. I want this year to be a year of working towards putting the people at the center.

CT Action Event!

Thank you Lex!



You are invited to attend an Alliance Connecticut meeting

Friday, September 25, 2009

1:00pm – 3:00pm

Johnson Stewart Community Center

127 Martin Street, Hartford, CT 06120.

Please join us at the Alliance Connecticut meeting. Together we can create a stronger, safer and healthier Connecticut.

Drug Policies impinge on everyone in Connecticut from our children to our seniors. Resources are taken away from education, transportation, housing, treatment, prescription drug support and other areas to fund a public safety platform that ruins our communities and the lives of so many families. It’s time to do something new! It time for a holistic strategy for Connecticut!

Topic of discussion: Overdose Prevention-

What the law is now. What changes need to made.



This is a planning meeting to develop strategies around Overdose Prevention



Snacks will be provided. Please RSVP by September 21, 2009 with name(s) and contact information to LaResse Harvey laresseabwf@gmail.com or call 860-270-9585.

Basta!

This week, the CNN anchor broadcast his radio show from the conference of anti-immigrant hate group FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Founded by a white nationalist, FAIR was linked earlier this year to vigilantes in Arizona who brutally murdered 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father in their home.

The appearance at FAIR is just the latest example of Dobbs using his status as a CNN anchor to spread fear about Latinos and immigrants. It’s time we said ¡Basta! Enough is enough. Please join us in demanding that CNN drop Dobbs from its network:

BastaDobbs.com/Action

Dobbs’ network, CNN, calls itself “The Most Trusted Name in News.” But Dobbs has shown that the only thing he can be trusted to do is to spread dangerous, false myths about immigrants, to give airtime to extremists, and to use dehumanizing and disrespectful language towards our community.

For example, Dobbs has blamed Latino immigrants for an alleged leprosy epidemic that was widely debunked, and has insinuated high crime rates by Latinos falsely claiming “illegal aliens” make up a third of the prison population. Dobbs also regularly hosts extremist guests like FAIR, the Minutemen, and Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who he called “a model for the whole country.”

The Dobbs threat to Latinos is real. Here is how Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center described it to us:

How dangerous is Lou Dobbs? The rise in hate crimes against Latinos coincides almost exactly with the time Dobbs has been propagating false conspiracy theories about Latinos on the air. He’s not urging people to go hurt and kill - but that is the effect of what he does.

To fight back against Dobbs, Presente.org is launching a new campaign, working with dozens of leading Latino organizations and our allies in cities across the country — from Los Angeles to Phoenix to Orlando. We are joining together to demand that CNN no longer allow Dobbs to spew hate thinly disguised as “news.”

Please join us in saying “¡basta!” and ask your friends and family to do the same. It only takes a moment:

BastaDobbs.com/Action

Thank you and Adelante!
The Presente.org team

Bagram has been seriously and totally messed up for years, despite US denials of foul play. Numerous reports and documentaries talk about the horrors that go on there. I was so excited last week when the NYTimes recently reported on the Obama administration's plans to implement new (read: any) rights for detainees at Bagram:

The new Pentagon guidelines would assign a United States military official to each of the roughly 600 detainees at the American-run prison at the Bagram Air Base north of Kabul. These officials would not be lawyers but could for the first time gather witnesses and evidence, including classified material, on behalf of the detainees to challenge their detention in proceedings before a military-appointed review board.

Some of the detainees have already been held at Bagram for as long as six years. And unlike the prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba, these detainees have had no access to lawyers, no right to hear the allegations against them and only rudimentary reviews of their status as “enemy combatants,” military officials said.

An article from Al-Jazeera English quoted Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at City University of New York and attorney for a Bagram detainee, who said the move is just "window dressing".

"The whole thing was meant to pull the wool over the eyes of the judicial system,'' he told The Associated Press.

"These changes don't come anywhere near an adequate substitute for a real review."

Whatever I was still pumped about even the beginnings of a change until yesterday I read this in an ACLU press release:

The Obama administration has filed a brief with a federal appeals court in Washington arguing that the approximately 600 detainees in U.S. custody at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan are not entitled to have their cases heard in U.S. courts. Some of the detainees at Bagram have been held for up to six years with no meaningful opportunity to challenge their detention, and there are some prisoners there who are unconnected to the war in Afghanistan but who have been sent there from locations around the world.

WHY OBAMA WHY. I don't understand the madness. Is there any way to stop dehumanizing people? I am interested specifically in how the law systematically dehumanizes people and deprives them of their rights - I've been thinking about that a lot at my job at the NY Legal Assistance Group and as I'm studying for the LSATs. The law doesn't seem to account for humanity, and indeed seems to try to mask legal rights in obscure language and self-referential textual codes that prevent anyone from understanding a) how few rights they actually have and b) what those rights that they do have are. Is there a way to be a radical lawyer? Is there a way to redistribute information and access? Is it worthwhile or meaningful if it's to a system that is deeply flawed??