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.

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??

Some Good News Re: Mother Earth

Finally! An Obama action I can get pumped up over! Our president is taking action to protect millions (up to 58 million!) of acres of forest! Read a press release from the Wilderness Society about it here.

Also the horrendous and exploitative conglomerate Nestle is getting feedback on its destructive practices where it hurts - in the wallet! Food and Water Watch reported a 2.4 percent dip in sales of Nestle products - the company's water products (including Poland Springs, Deer Park, Arrowhead, etc.) dropped 3.7 percent, which is unprecedented! GO RESPONSIBLE CONSUMERS GO!

And the UN is considering legislating water as a human right, which would have considerable legal repercussions, especially in countries where water supplies are drained and the natural ability to produce clean water is stymied (think Fiji). Apparently PepsiCo and Connecticut Water have already adopted "fair water" practices that can set good examples for other corporations. (For the full article read here.)

Obama/Obama administration support of Bush programs - Will this madness really continue?

Obama apparently supports and is continuing Bush policies of targeted assassinations, wiretapping, torture, and military tribunals.

AWESOME.

The cool thing though, is:
Your mobile device could be your most effective weapon against police brutality. The NAACP’s “rapid response” system, unveiled at the group’s annual convention this week, retools the Copwatch concept for the Digital Age.

Through your mobile device, you can upload images and video footage of police misconduct incidents, enabling witnesses to broadcast local news about abusive cops to the NAACP’s central database and information network. Some of the documentation could be aired instantly to raise awareness and mobilize the public. The system also allows witnesses to feed background information to the organization, which could inform investigations into patterns of civil rights violations.

Announcing the launch of the program, NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said:

Research has shown that there are many barriers to reporting incidents of police misconduct, including intimidation at police departments and a lack of trust in the integrity of the system, among other reasons. This breakdown leads to an absence of public safety and a deterioration of the quality of life in many communities of color. But public safety is a civil and a human right; and so we want a more accurate count of these incidents .

Rapid Response builds on more ad-hoc forms of media activism. Earlier this year, the spontaneous cell phone video of the Oscar Grant shooting sparked national outrage and a grassroots movement. In addition to YouTube agitation, more comprehensive multimedia initiatives could take online organizing to a new level.

The Tactical Technology Collective presents some case studies of projects that fuse activism with interactive web tools. New media has enabled live tracking of violence in Kenya and the Google mapping of toxic clean-up sites. The image above comes from a mapping project documenting clashes between police and protesters in Brighton.

Powerful institutions have long wielded technology as a force of repression. Activism in the Information Age is generating new ways to bear witness to injustice, and maybe even stop it.

(From Racewire)

Let's resist!

Hunger and Farming

Last week, Anuradha Mittal, in a Commondreams article asked the question: What will the G8 Summit do, exactly, about hunger? She points out:

With hunger framed as a crisis of demand and supply, the proposed solutions have come to primarily focus on boosting agricultural production through technological solutions like genetic engineering (GE) and chemical inputs or/and on removing supply-side constraints to ensure access to food through liberalization of agricultural trade. This framework was used, for instance, to explain the 2008 food crisis and has permeated international efforts geared towards challenging hunger without questioning the policies promoted by the same donor countries and the multilateral institutions they control, over the last three-four decades that undermined food security in the developing countries in the first place. Their faulty analysis yields an incomplete understanding of the causes of world hunger and hence, broken solutions...
Assertion that free trade will help solve hunger is however based on amnesia. Liberalization of agricultural markets has yet to deliver on the promised or expected gains in growth and stability in the developing world. In a submission to the Commission of Sustainable Development (CSD) in May 2009, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, pointed to the multilateral trading system as being "heavily skewed in favor of a small group of countries, and in urgent need of reform." (TWN, 2009) He was referring to the heavily subsidized agriculture in the rich countries which has helped them secure markets by flooding developing countries with cheap farm imports, making subsistence farming uncompetitive and financially unstable.

Meanwhile, a USA Today article from yesterday talks about young people taking responsibly food production into their own hands and buying small plots of land to start small organic farms. Not exactly the fast lane to ending world hunger, but an interesting step towards responsible consumption and production.

Obama is asserting that accessible education is the primary way to fight social ills, with his proposed education plan that would help displaced workers go to college. His goal of spending $12 million to boost the U.S. network of community colleges, combined with new loan legislation, should help provide training for workers who are out of jobs and for young people entering a difficult job market, Obama says. For the complete article in the NYTimes, read here. I don't want to be cynical but I certainly want more information...

Lastly, I am really concerned about the continued controversy over mountaintop removal in Appalachia. An article in Tricities (which I read on Commondreams) talks about the film "Coal Country" that engages with the negative effects of coal mining in Appalachia. Mari-Lynn Evans, the executive producer of the film, asks the important question:
“Why are these people [in the Appalachian region] the poorest in the United States of America when they are living on land that is the richest in the United States of America? It seems obvious from that alone that there is a problem. ... We’ve got to figure out how Appalachia is going to flourish in a future that does not involve coal.”
This, in my mind, is directly connected to world hunger and poverty. How ironic (or predictable, depending on how you look at it) that some of the geographical areas richest in resources are the most impoverished and hungry? In the U.S. that clearly follows too. I just grew up knowing, accepting, that Appalachia was poor. Never once was I taught to ask why??!? WHY is it so poor when it has so much to offer?

A New Take on the Israel-Palestine Situation

In light of a Human Sciences Research Council report confirming the situation in the Occupied Territories as officially an apartheid and increasing tensions in the region, Russell Nieli has an idea. I'm still thinking about the implications but it is refreshing to hear someone with a plan - a new plan - that acknowledges some basic truths about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I found it here on Tikkun, but apparently it is the second part of a speeech he gave. The full talk can be accessed here. The Tikkun link also gives his thought process and basic premises he was working with in formulating this plan - worth checking out. I wonder whether Obama would consider such an idea or what his real vision for peace is. Michael Lerner at Tikkun writes about how Obama may be changing the message towards Israel from Bush's blank check, but he's not doing enough. He calls for some basic actions and for Obama to pack a tougher punch. I definitely agree... Obama has a responsibility to push for real change in the region. It feels to me, time and time again, that Israel is cutting off its nose to spite its face - how do these "world powers" not think that allowing basic resources and human rights to all people - giving all people a sense of security, a sense of community - will not be the most basic foundation to peace?!

Anyway here is the Nieli idea:

None of the major proposed solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian problem offers a way out of the continued bitterness, suspicion, violence, and ill-will between the two parties. To achieve a just and lasting settlement, we must find an outside-the-box alternative to the major peace proposals that have been considered so far.

After years of reflection, I have become certain that "two-state condominialism"-a solution involving a rigid political separation of two peoples within a unified, binational, settlement territory-offers the clearest vision of hope for both Palestinians and Jews.

I know there are immense problems and hurdles to be overcome to enable the realization of the condominial arrangement I describe here. But they are far less intractable, in my opinion, than those involved in the realization of a separationist scheme. The peoples, economies, natural resources, and infrastructures have become intimately intertwined in Palestine/Eretz Israel, so powerful irredentist feelings would inevitably emerge on both sides of any rigid territorial divide. A condominial arrangement would also be more easily realized than the increasingly popular "one-state solution," which I consider to be a complete non-starter politically for the Israelis, both now and in the foreseeable future.

The condominial formula I propose here would enable both peoples to realize simultaneously most of their respective national dreams. It is a win-win situation that gives both peoples powerful incentives to cooperate with one another to make the arrangement work.

Two States in a Single, Binational Settlement Community

The two-state condominial arrangement starts out with the creation of a democratic Palestinian state (composed of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem) much like that suggested in other two-state proposals with the boundaries of the Palestinian state roughly determined by the pre-1967 Green Line. The Palestinian state ("Palestine") would have most of the features of a democratic nation-state, but from the outset it would be an ethnically defined state, a state of the Palestinian people, whereby a close parallel was maintained to the definition of Israel as a state of the Jews. As part of the fundamental agreement, all current Israeli Arabs would be required to transfer their citizenship, national identity, and national voting rights-but not their residence-to the new Palestinian state. Israeli Arabs would retain their permanent right to live in Israel and they would also retain their current benefits under the Jewish welfare state (or be adequately compensated for the loss of them by another arrangement, such as a lump sum payment), but they would become citizens of-and permanent voting members of-the Palestinian state, not Israel.

Both Palestinians and Jews under the condominial proposal would be granted the right to settle anywhere within the territory of either state. Together the two states would thus form a single, binational settlement community. Palestinians would have the right to settle anywhere within Israel, just as Jews would have the right to settle anywhere within the territory of the Palestinian state. Regardless of which of the two states they live in, all Palestinians would be citizens of the Palestinian state, and all Jews would be citizens of Israel.

The states themselves, Israel and Palestine, would have the right-and, indeed, the moral obligation-to set up a dense network of support facilities to care for the economic, cultural, religious, and welfare needs of any citizens living in the territory of the neighboring state. Each state, in other words, would have extensive extra-territorial rights and obligations vis-à-vis its citizens in the neighboring state. The arrangement would be something like that which the U.S. government routinely maintains toward many of its government employees and other citizens living in foreign countries with an extensive American military and diplomatic presence (e.g. West Germany during the Cold War). The Palestinian state would have the obligation to care for its citizen population living in Israel, just as the Jewish state would have the obligation to do the same for Israeli citizens living in the Palestinian state. In any event, Palestinians moving into Israel and Jews living within the Palestinian state would have no claim to any of the welfare and other benefits provided by the territorial state wherein they reside.

As part of the fundamental agreement, the Palestinian state would be required to acknowledge the special Jewish character of the state of Israel, and Israel would be required to acknowledge the special Palestinian-Arab identity of the state of Palestine, with both states acknowledging the right of all Palestinians and all Israelis to reside anywhere within the joint settlement community formed by the combined territories of the two states.

This is just a rough sketch of what a condominial arrangement would entail. In the pages that follow, I lay out in more detail how such a solution could work, and address practical issues such as the settlement community's taxation structure and the sharing of water resources.

The Story Behind the Condominial Proposal

As a third-generation Italian American raised in the suburbs of New York City among many Jewish classmates, neighbors, and friends, I was deeply moved from an early age by what some call the "Jewish narrative"-like the Leon Uris/Otto Preminger version of Exodus. As a graduate student in Princeton's Politics Department in the 1970s, I began extensive readings about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Those readings were almost entirely in Jewish sources, but they nevertheless made me more understanding of, and more sympathetic toward, the Palestinian Arab viewpoint. This situation left me internally divided-torn between two seemingly irreconcilable narratives, each of which I knew to be of central importance to the peoples involved, both of whom have experienced more than their share of historical suffering and travail.

The result of my inner ferment was a series of proposals I made in print in the early 1990s that I originally called "two-state binationalism," but which I am now calling "two-state condominialism," a term which better captures their overall meaning and structure.

I encourage readers who finish this article to go to the Tikkun website and read my full talk to get a sense of the fatal weaknesses from which, in my view, the major competing peace proposals variously suffer.

Moving Beyond the Pessimism of Realpolitik

At its most basic, the Palestinian-Israeli dilemma can be stated very simply with two points:

1) As a final or end-game outcome, no solution to the conflict over historical Palestine will ever be acceptable to the Arab side if that solution denies to the Palestinians (especially to those who have suffered so long in Gaza and the refugee camps of the frontline states) a right of return to the land that is now Israel-a land which, in their view, was callously and unjustly taken from them by the convergent activities of British imperialists, Jewish settler-colonialists, reactionary Arab leaders and collaborators, and an American-supported Zionist army.

2) Within present political structures and under present conditions of politics and history, no Israeli government in its right mind would ever allow any sizable number of Zionist-hating Palestinians to re-enter Israel and become citizens of a democratic Jewish state.

This is the stark reality of the current situation. Thus stated, one can see why so many observers, and not just those on the fringes of the Kahanist right, believe the situation to be unsolvable. Several years ago, I was discussing this issue with Professor Robert Gilpin, who at the time was the chief international relations theorist in Princeton's Politics Department. After surveying with skepticism some of the more common proposals for peace in the Mideast, Bob turned to me and said, "You know, Russ, there just may not be a peaceful, long-term solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict." Bob's comment at the time struck me as terribly deflating and unduly pessimistic, but also, I must say, as possibly realistic given the track record of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks over the years.

Professor Gilpin is usually identified with the school of international relations associated with the term Realpolitik-a school which stresses the dominant role in the relations between nation-states of military power, economic interests, self-promoting and self-aggrandizing behavior, and national security concerns. Those in this school see themselves as hard-headed "realists" who seek to view the world as it is, not the way they might like it to be, or the way wishful thinking might conceive it to be. Such "realists" typically view their opponents as well-meaning but fuzzy-headed "liberals" or "idealists" ignorant of how the real world works.

Upon critical examination, it's true that the major proposed solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian problem appear doomed to failure. Saying this, however, does not mean that nothing will work. My alternative proposal requires a bit of creative thinking, but I have become ever more convinced that only a creative outside-the-box solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict offers any hope of long-range success.

Also, to read Michelle Chen at Racewire on the HSRC report on apartheid from June 11 click here.

Obama to ban workplace discrimination against federal trans workers!

The NYT reported yesterday that along with same-sex partner benefits for federal employees, his bill would protect trans federal employees against workplace discrimination. Read the full article here.

White Supremecists in the Army, Exploitation of Undocumented Immigrants, and Losses of Food Stamps to the Most Needy

Our country is struggles galore.

One of the scariest things I've read in a long time is this article on white supremecists in the US Army. People with tattoos of swastikas and other racist symbols are being encouraged to just "give an explanation" when they enlist. And, obviously, these groups are now having increased access to and recruitment success among psychologically vulnerable men and women in the US Armed Forces with expertise and training. One person in the article pointed out that this war is particularly conducive to recruitment for racist groups. "The military is attractive to white supremacists," Millard says, "because the war itself is racist."

The author of the article, Matt Kennard, tried posing as a potential Army recruit with racist tattoos, with interesting results:

In the spring, I telephoned at random five Army recruitment centers across the country. I said I was interested in joining up and mentioned that I had a pair of "SS bolts" tattooed on my arm. A 2000 military brochure stated that SS bolts were a tattoo image that should raise suspicions. But none of the recruiters reacted negatively, and when pressed directly about the tattoo, not one said it would be an outright problem. A recruiter in Houston was typical; he said he'd never heard of SS bolts and just encouraged me to come on in.

It's in the interest of recruiters to interpret recruiting standards loosely. If they fail to meet targets, based on the number of soldiers they enlist, they may have to attend a punitive counseling session, and it could hurt any chance for promotion. When, in 2005, the Army relaxed regulations on non-extremist tattoos, such as body art covering the hands, neck and face, this cut recruiters even more slack.

In other news, three men were arrested for posing as Christian pastors and promising hundreds of undocumented immigrants that they would get them green cards for a fee of anywhere between $6,000-$10,000 per person. Without reform to our incredibly flawed system of course already-vulnerable undocumented immigrants trying to make a living are going to continue to be exploited and taken advantage of by individuals eager to make a buck. I also think it is interesting that the NYTimes focuses on this case but makes no mention of comparable exploitation going on elsewhere every day, primarily by major corporations. (read the full article here)

Also, Obama's stimulus package cut food stamps for some of the most needy, the Huffington Post reported last week. They write,

Under the economic recovery plan, laid-off workers have seen a $25 weekly bump in their unemployment checks as part of a broad expansion of benefits for the poor. But the law did not raise the income cap for food stamp eligibility, so the extra money has pushed some people over the limit.

Laid-off workers and state officials are only now realizing the quirk, a consequence of pushing a $787 billion, 400-page bill through Congress and into law in three weeks.

.

What a mess.

Why is Israel the Obama Administration's Litmus Test?

The NYT reports that Charles Freeman Jr. was not appointed to a top intelligence post specifically because of his critical stance on Israel:

"Mr. Freeman had long been critical of Israel, with a bluntness that American officials rarely voice in public about a staunch American ally. In 2006, he warned that, “left to its own devices, the Israeli establishment will make decisions that harm Israelis, threaten all associated with them and enrage those who are not.”

I find the trend of Israel determining major decisions fascinating and disheartening - first the 2nd Conference on Racism, now this. Would Freeman's views on Israel really affect his ability to do his job? What does this mean in terms of the larger atmosphere of the administration and the country? It seems to me that the U.S. government feels that it can not criticize Israel at all, when I believe that criticism and guidance is exactly what Israel needs... Thoughts?

Nobama Nobama No

I'm feeling down today. Can't provide any more commentary than that.

The first workplace raid under Obama:

28 employees were arrested when over 70 ICE agents forcibly raided Yamato Engine Specialists in Bellingham, Washington.

Racewire's Hatty Lee quotes the President:
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I think it’s time for a president who won’t walk away from comprehensive immigration reform when it becomes politically unpopular.” President Obama's words from Sept. 2008. Maybe he needs to be reminded of these words.

What we can do:
• The Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) asks the president to stop raids
• The Campaign for Community Change asks us to call President Obama

Also, from Racewire, Tammy Johnson critiques Obama's racial coding:


In other not particularly uplifting news:

The NYT reports that:
Across the country, children are providing care for sick parents or grandparents — lifting frail bodies off beds or toilets, managing medication, washing, feeding, dressing, talking with doctors. Schools, social service agencies and health providers are often unaware of those responsibilities because families members may be too embarrassed, or stoic.
Reuters also wrote yesterday:
Prison inmates infected with the AIDS virus often stop taking life-saving drugs after being released, raising health risks for them and their communities, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
The researchers said the U.S. prison system has become an important front in efforts to curb the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV.

WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?! The implications are too overwhelming for me to think about right now

Obama's War on Terror

Obama's War on Terror may not be so different from Bush's it turns out. The NYT reported that in recent confirmation testimonies, Obama nominees supported:

*continuing the CIA program that transfers prisoners to other countries without legal rights and also detains terrorist suspects indefinitely without trials even if they were arrested far away from a war zone
*possibly resumming military commision trials
*pressuring allies to release information about alleged US torture practices

For the full article click here

Of course this shouldn't really be that surprising - Obama (and his administration) is (ful)filling a symbolic role and therefore needs to (re)present the hegemonic order as natural and worthy of protection. But it still hurts.

It's time for change - I'm feeling optimistic

In these most desperate of times change may be coming.

Attempts to control youth are failing!! Twelve young people in Mass juvenile prisons may be liberated after the Supreme Judicial Court "struck down a law that allowed the state to keep juvenile offenders in custody for three years after they turned 18, if officials believed they would be "physically dangerous to the public.'"(read more here)
Also, even though youth curfews exist in neighboring cities and towns, a youth curfew has been overturned in Oakland after massive resistance to the mass criminalization of young people. (News report here)

AND KIDS WILL GET HEALTHCARE!! And President Obama signed the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act, expanding the SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program ) health insurance program for children of low-income families and enabling states to provide an additional 4 million children with health insurance.

Senate: Yea-66, Nay-32

House: Yea-290, Nay-135

The bill awaits the president's signature.

In Philadelphia, public schools are considering a new "turnaround” strategy for "chronically underperforming schools, one based on Chicago’s controversial Renaissance 2010 project that closes existing schools and opens new ones under a different management structure." A big part of this proposal involves charter schools which are controversial, but it COULD provide immediate relief to some of the least-resourced schools in the country.
From "The Notebook:

At the proposed “contract schools,” outside managers would have more independence than the private managers currently operating schools under the District’s existing “diverse provider” model – they would be able to employ their own staff, for example.

In addition, some schools – to be called “innovation schools” – would be reconstituted from the ground up with new teachers and leadership, but managed by the District with union teachers.

“Performance schools” would not be reconstituted with new personnel, but like the others would be given more “autonomy” over school management in exchange for “greater accountability."
Complete article here

Women in Iran are protesting for rights and what makes me excited is that this is not imposed from a foreign organization but rather from "the people" themselves:
"Women’s rights advocates say Iranian women are displaying a growing determination to achieve equal status in this conservative Muslim theocracy, where male supremacy is still enscribed in the legal code. One in five marriages now end in divorce, according to government data, a fourfold increase in the past 15 years." (Full NYT article here)

The Obama administration named three people to posts in its intergovernmental affairs office on Friday, including Jodi Archambault Gillette, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The Lakota woman will serve as a deputy associate director in an office that functions as a mediator between the administration and state, tribal and local governments. This is a huge step and the highest position a Native person has held in the U.S. Details here

The Migration Policy Institute’s published a list of 36 recommendations for the Obama administration on immigration. These changes include reassessing the border fence, and ending the criminal prosecution of undocumented immigrants. The hope is that this would give the federal government a chance to look at the actual effectiveness of its enforcement mechanisms. .

From Racewire:
That pragmatism would be a great improvement over the ideologically-driven measures that immigration restrictionists have successfully pushed for the last eight years. The country could stop wasting both resources and human rights credentials in silly projects that distract us from focusing on more serious problems, like human trafficking and terrorism.

The report also recommends a number of changes that would bring due process to the immigration system, including steps that prevent indefinite, unlawful and unsafe detention of migrants. These are mostly administrative, bureaucratic changes, but they will provide relief to real human beings who are now having their border communities torn up by fence construction, being separated from their families, rounded up in raids, and held in detention centers where people are dying. One of the things we should assess is how much these practices generate racial profiling.

[...]

It’s unlikely that the Obama Administration, with enforcement-oriented Janet Napolitano at the helm of Homeland Security, will adopt most of them unless they hear from the call from US residents who aren’t ideologically tied to pushing out immigrants. Conservatives say that they only oppose undocumented immigration, but people on both sides of the debate know that the line between those with papers and without is very thin, that families and communities hold both, and that policies directed at undocumented immigrants inevitably affect the documented too.

LINK to the full RaceWire article

Boston cops may have escorted two gay porn stars to a nightclub - I'm skeptical but if so this might have beeen the most radical police action ... ever? Read about it here

AND MEXICO CITY'S MAYOR IS GIVING OUT VIAGRA TO 'POOR MEN' AGE 60 AND ABOVE. NYT Article here

Obama's first television interview in office

Obama said, among other things:

"[Peace between Israel & Palestine is] going to be difficult, it's going to take time. I don't want to prejudge many of these issues, and I want to make sure that expectations are not raised so that we think that this is going to be resolved in a few months. But if we start the steady progress on these issues, I'm absolutely confident that the United States -- working in tandem with the European Union, with Russia, with all the Arab states in the region -- I'm absolutely certain that we can make significant progress.going to be difficult, it's going to take time. I don't want to prejudge many of these issues, and I want to make sure that expectations are not raised so that we think that this is going to be resolved in a few months. But if we start the steady progress on these issues, I'm absolutely confident that the United States -- working in tandem with the European Union, with Russia, with all the Arab states in the region -- I'm absolutely certain that we can make significant progress."

He also said,

"Now, Israel is a strong ally of the United States. They will not stop being a strong ally of the United States. And I will continue to believe that Israel's security is paramount. But I also believe that there are Israelis who recognize that it is important to achieve peace. They will be willing to make sacrifices if the time is appropriate and if there is serious partnership on the other side."

[...]

"I think it is possible for us to see a Palestinian state -- I'm not going to put a time frame on it -- that is contiguous, that allows freedom of movement for its people, that allows for trade with other countries, that allows the creation of businesses and commerce so that people have a better life."

When will Guantanamo end?

January 13, 2009
New York Times

Obama’s Plan to Close Prison at Guantánamo May Take Year

President-elect Barack Obama plans to issue an executive order on his first full day in office directing the closing of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, people briefed by Obama transition officials said Monday.

But experts say it is likely to take many months, perhaps as long as a year, to empty the prison that has drawn international criticism since it received its first prisoners seven years ago this week. One transition official said the new administration expected that it would take several months to transfer some of the remaining 248 prisoners to other countries, decide how to try suspects and deal with the many other legal challenges posed by closing the camp.

People who have discussed the issues with transition officials in recent weeks said it appeared that the broad outlines of plans for the detention camp were taking shape. They said transition officials appeared committed to ordering an immediate suspension of the Bush administration’s military commissions system for trying detainees.

In addition, people who have conferred with transition officials said the incoming administration appeared to have rejected a proposal to seek a new law authorizing indefinite detention inside the United States. The Bush administration has insisted that such a measure is necessary to close the Guantánamo camp and bring some detainees to the United States.

Mr. Obama has repeatedly said he wants to close the camp. But in an interview on Sunday on ABC, he indicated that the process could take time, saying, “It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize.” Closing it within the first 100 days of his administration, he said, would be “a challenge.”

The president-elect drew criticism from some human rights groups Monday who said his remarks suggested that closing Guantánamo was not among the new administration’s highest priorities. But even if the detention camp remains open for months, the decision to address Guantánamo on the day after his inauguration seemed intended to make a symbolic break with some of the most controversial policies of the Bush administration.

[...]

In formulating their policy in recent weeks, Obama transition officials have consulted with a variety of authorities on legal and human rights and with military experts. Several of those experts said the officials had expressed great interest in alternatives to the military commission system, like trying detainees in federal courts, and appeared to have grown hostile to proposals like an indefinite detention law.

They also said the transition officials were intensely focused on new international efforts to transfer many of the detainees to other countries.

Several said the officials appeared concerned that a proposal for a new law authorizing indefinite detention would bring the new administration much of the criticism that has been directed at the Bush administration over Guantánamo. A former military official who was part of a series of briefings at the transition headquarters in Washington said the officials had spoken about the indefinite detention proposal as a way of creating a “new Guantanámo someplace else.”

“That is very much not the desire of the Obama team,” said the former military official, who insisted on anonymity because of his concerns about how the transition officials would react to public discussion of their comments.

Catherine Powell, an associate professor of law at Fordham, said transition officials appeared most interested at a meeting last month in showing international critics that they were returning to what they see as traditional American legal values.

“They are really looking for tools that we have in our existing system short of creating an indefinite detention system,” Ms. Powell said.

Mark P. Denbeaux, a Seton Hall law professor who has been a prominent lawyer for Guantánamo detainees, said that at a briefing he attended with senior officials of the transition last month the officials seemed to have decided to suspend the military commissions immediately.

“Their position is they’re a complete and utter failure,” Mr. Denbeaux said.

[...]

Some human rights groups said Monday that they were alarmed by Mr. Obama’s vague timetable and lack of specifics in his remarks Sunday. They said they worried that the administration might yield to pressure to display its toughness in dealing with terrorism in its detention policies.

“The devil is in the details,” said Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, who has been pressing the new administration to publicly commit to immediately close Guantánamo.

Mr. Romero said he had grown concerned because transition officials had provided details of their plans for dealing with the economic crisis, but had yet to provide details for how they will close Guantánamo, which has brought worldwide criticism.

“Just like we need specifics on an economic recovery package,” Mr. Romero said, “we need specifics on a ‘justice recovery package.’ ”

Full article here

Hilda Solis Secretary of Labor

Obama appointed Hilda Solis, Democratic Rep from California's 32nd Congressional District (including East LA) as Secretary of Labor on Friday.



Prior to her election to Congress, Solis served eight years in the California state legislature, where she made history in 1994 by becoming the first Latina elected to the State Senate. In August 2000, Solis became the first woman to receive the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for her pioneering work on environmental justice issues in California.

See her acceptance speech and thoughts on environmental justice here.

In 2003, Solis became the first Latina appointed to the powerful House Committee on Energy and Commerce where she is the Vice Chair of the Environment and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee and a member of the Health and Telecommunications Subcommittees.

The LA Times reports:

Rep. Hilda L. Solis (D-El Monte), a Congressional Hispanic Caucus leader considered to be one of the most reliably pro-union voices in the House, is President-elect Barack Obama's choice to head the Labor Department, a Democratic official said Thursday.

Solis, 51, would be the third Latino member of Obama's Cabinet, a measure of diversity that has garnered praise from this fast-growing slice of the electorate...

Elected to Congress in 2000 from a district that includes swaths of East L.A. and the San Gabriel Valley, Solis has consistently voted in support of labor's interests. A congressional voting analysis conducted by the AFL-CIO showed that she voted with organized labor 100% of the time last year.

She supported measures increasing the minimum wage, making it easier for workers to organize and preserving a ban on privatizing jobs at the Labor Department. Other labor groups that study congressional voting patterns gave her a 100% rating in 2005 and 2006.

J.P. Fielder, spokesman for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, suggested that Solis' voting record is overly weighted in labor's favor. "The business community recognizes that economic growth has happened in a number of non-unionized states. She has sided with the AFL-CIO in 97% of the votes that she has cast on the Hill," he said.

Solis also serves on the board of directors of American Rights at Work, which advocates for the right to form unions and bargain collectively. The chairman is former Rep. David Bonior of Michigan, who was also in the running for the Labor secretary post.

"I'm very excited," said Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. "This is an extraordinary moment for all women, but especially for the Latino community."

Durazo said Solis would be effective in the job because she is a "coalition-builder" who "doesn't walk in thinking everything has to be a battle with business."

Complete article here

Also, Affirmative Action Blog Spot reports that:
While Rep. Solis is most regarded for her environmental support, her record on civil rights is strong. She is rated 100% by the NAACP and reflects a "pro-affirmative action stance," according to the website "On the Issues." According to this site, Solis also voted:

YES on prohibiting job discrimination based on sexual orientation
NO on Constitutionally defining marriage as one-man-one-woman
Voted NO on making the PATRIOT Act permanent
Voted NO on Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex marriage
Co-sponsored a Constitutional Amendment for equal rights by gender
Rated 87% by the ACLU, indicating a pro-civil rights voting record
Issue a commemorative postage stamp of Rosa Parks
Co-sponsored the bill to Reinforce anti-discrimination and equal-pay requirements
http://www.ontheissues.org/CA/Hilda_Solis_Civil_Rights.htm

Dave Stein's link took me here

Dylan Rodriguez is not only a warm, wonderful person, but he is also absolutely brilliant. This piece made me think a lot so I wanted to share it - it is from RaceWire's archives - I always find that when I try to spend five minutes there I usually end up reading for at least an hour. I'd love to hear thoughts!

The Dreadful Genius of the Obama Moment

Inaugurating Multiculturalist White Supremacy
By Dylan Rodríguez

What happens to the politics of antiracism when the phenotype of white
supremacy “changes?” At the risk of being scolded for offending the
optimistic spirit of this historical moment, I offer these thoughts
with a different kind of hope: that the spectacle and animus of the
Obama campaign, election, and presidency fail, and fail decisively, to
domesticate, discipline, and contain a politics of radical opposition
to a U.S. nation-building project that now insists on the diversity of
the American “we,” while leaving so many for dead.

To be clear: the political work of liberation from racist state
violence—and everything it sanctions and endorses, from premature
death to poverty—becomes more complex, contradictory, and difficult
now. The dreadful genius of the multiculturalist Obama moment is that
it installs a "new" representative figure of the United States that,
in turn, opens "new" possibilities for history's slaves, savages, and
colonized to more fully identify with the same nation-building project
that requires the neutralization, domestication, and strategic
elimination of declared aliens, enemies, and criminals. In this
sense, I am less anxious about the future of the "Obama
administration" (whose policy blueprint is and will be relatively
unsurprising) than I am about the speed and effectiveness with which
it has rallied the sentimentality and political investment (often in
terms of actual dollar contributions and voluntary labor) of the
purported U.S. "Left."

Celebratory liberal multiculturalist patriotism, in whatever complex
and historically laden form it assumes, is a deadly compromise. I
recognize, with all due respect, that millions are moved to tears as
they recognize in Obama the promise of a fulfilled democratic
(Black/multicultural) citizenship—the national fraud that millions
have bled, died, and cried over, before and beyond the Civil Rights
Movement—while weeping joyfully at the possibility of (their children
and grandchildren) finally becoming human in a place that seems
obsessed with destroying, dehumanizing, and humiliating.

Living in a history of racism, genocide, and everyday suffering is a
heavy thing, and moments of optimism are preciously rare. This is why
the historical burden is multiplied for those who care to address the
euphoria with a different kind of urgency: to move against the
visceral sentimentality of the moment and insist, over and over again,
that optimism endorses terror when its premises are removed from—and
therefore unaccountable to—liberation struggle in all its wonderful
forms. It is worth restating that the historical point of departure
for liberation politics is uncompromising opposition to a
racist/colonialist/imperialist state (regardless of who leads it), and
a willingness to pursue wild but principled ambitions for the sake of
achieving the political fantasy of radical freedom. Herein, the
pending inauguration of an authentically multiculturalist white
supremacy entails, at best, a change of leadership for a mind-numbing
apparatus of normalized repression and mass-based social violence, the
one that capably imprisons well over 2.5 million people (most of them
poor, Black, and Brown) in cages all over the world and will kill well
over 2 million Iraqi, Afghanis and Palestinian civilians (through a
combination of blockades, bombs, and "diplomacy") in the span of less
than a generation. This apparatus is the one thing that will not
change, even as some entrust the Obama administration with the
arrogant hopes of a reduced global body count.

Putting aside, for the moment, the liberal valorization of Obama as
the less-bad or (misnamed) "progressive" alternative to the horrible
specter of a Bush-McCain national inheritance, we must come to terms
with the inevitability of the Obama administration as a refurbishing,
not an interruption or abolition, of the normalized violence of the
American national project. To the extent that the subjection of
indigenous, Black, and Brown people to regimes of displacement and
suffering remains the condition of possibility for the reproduction
(or even the reinvigoration) of an otherwise eroding American global
dominance, the figure of Obama represents a new inhabitation of white
supremacy's structuring logics of violence.

This is to say, Obama's ascendancy hallmarks the obsolescence of
"classical" white supremacy as a model of dominance based on white
bodily monopoly, and celebrates the emergence of a sophisticated,
flexible, "diverse" (or neoliberal) white supremacy as the heartbeat
of the American national form. The signature of the "post-civil
rights" period is precisely marked by such changes—compulsory and
voluntary—in the comportment, culture, and workforce of white
supremacist institutions: selective elements of police and military
forces, global corporations, and major research universities are
diversely colored, while their marching orders continue to mobilize
the familiar labors of death-making (arrest and justifiable homicide,
fatal peacekeeping, overfunded weapons research, etc.). While the
phenotype of white supremacy changes—and change it must, if it is to
remain viable under changed historical conditions—its internal
coherence as a socialized logic of violence and dominance is sustained
and redeemed.

Candidate Barack Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech, arguably the
definitive moment of his campaign for the U.S. presidency, provides a
useful elaboration of this change in the political structure of white
supremacy. Given that this was one of the few moments in the campaign
in which Obama actually addressed "race" as a political issue rather
than a descriptive matter-of-fact, a close attention to the oration
reveals something about the premises of the new multiculturalist,
nationalist optimism. Lifting its title from the opening sentence of
the U.S. Constitution, Obama's denunciation of Chicago pastor and
Black liberation theologian Jeremiah Wright begins with a backhanded
caricature of racial chattel slavery that replicates the classical
liberal denial of the nation's constitutive—in fact
Constitutional—patriarchal white supremacist conditions of
possibility:

"The document [the nation's founders] produced was eventually signed
but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original
sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the
convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave
trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any
final resolution to future generations."

Obama's condemnation of "original sin" begets the white Christian
nation's perpetual forgiveness and redemption, but also anticipates
the pessimism of those who would rightfully allege that white
supremacy's visceral structures of dominance are endemic to American
national reproduction. This attempts to erase the indelible: the
social and economic system that rests on the subjection of Africans as
racial chattel is not a compartmentalized or reconcilable event in the
American white racial destiny, but is the foundation of what legal
scholar Cheryl Harris has called the ongoing legal consolidation of
whiteness as property, a consolidation that can only occur at the
expense of those who are dispossessed and/or actually owned by the
white nation.

Thus, while Obama's otherwise stale re-narration of white supremacist
nation-building falls back on an allegory of the sinning-forgiven
white body politic, his comportment of "electability" proposes an
authoritative black/multiracial/multicultural patriotism that
rejuvenates the rhetorical matrix of contemporary white supremacy. He
is "presidential" precisely because he galvanizes admiration and
reverence through a paean to the historical imagination of the white
slaveholding nation. Obama fetishizes racist/slave "democracy" as a
piece of the American national mythology, a moral tale of vindication
that alleviates the white nation's guilty burdens of the racial
present. More importantly, it permanently defers the political
obligation of confronting an enduring and present white supremacist
social form.

"Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded
within our Constitution—a Constitution that had at its very core the
ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised
its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should
be perfected over time."

A vast and deep body of scholarly critique and radical social thought
has thoroughly refuted the common sense of the U.S. Constitution as a
magical and morally transcendent document that has timelessly valued
the "ideal of equal citizenship" within its philosophical
architecture. In fact, the most incisive critical race theorists
argue that the opposite is closer to the historical truth: it is the
ongoing racial-national project of determining which aliens and
nominal "citizens" are to be marginalized and excluded from the
entitlements of citizenship that sits at the heart of the
Constitution. Why, then, does the political integrity of Obama's
"race speech" rest on the foundations of such a flimsy, hackneyed
sense of history?

The genius of Obama's oration is not traceable to its racially marked
(and rather overstated) "eloquence" or any substantively original
content: rather, its profound resonance with a liberal
white/multiculturalist sensibility derives from the fact that it is an
authoritative 21st century doctrine of the "color line," a deforming
of the early 20th century DuBoisian wisdom that "the problem of the
Twentieth century is the problem of the color line," and "the social
problem of the twentieth century is to be the relation of the
civilized world to the dark races of mankind."

"On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my
candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's
based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial
reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former
pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express
views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but
views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our
nation; that rightly offend white and black alike."

While for DuBois, the color line would be understood as a primary site
of political antagonism in the emergent "American Century," Obama
posits the contemporary color line—his "racial divide"—as the terrain
of the American nation's neoliberal, post-civil rights perfection, the
culmination of its progressive national telos, and the place of
fulfillment for an authentic national culture of "unity." In this
context, his disavowal of Rev. Wright not only marked Obama's
electoral phobia of Black liberationist political affinities, it
clearly pronounced his solidarity with a liberal racist consensus:

"[Wright's comments] expressed a profoundly distorted view of this
country—a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates
what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with
America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted
primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of
emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

"As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive,
divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when
we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems—two
wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care
crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are
neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that
confront us all."

At the risk of some oversimplification, the political logic is clear:
some lives and destinies matter dearly, while others must be
neutralized, disciplined, or decisively ended; radical antiracism and
liberationist struggle are the bane of national unity, and can only
disturb the seamless progress of the diverse nation toward resolution
of its "monumental problems."

"This is the political condition of possibility for the opening lines
of the victory speech that arrived in storybook fashion just days ago:

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place
where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our
founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our
democracy, tonight is your answer."

The euphoria of the moment allowed far too many to happily surrender
any political and moral revulsion at this invocation of the Founding
Fathers, and pushed far too few to seriously consider what, exactly,
animated the founders' nation-building dream and what it might mean
for someone like Obama to valorize it. In the end, however, my
concern is not with Barack Obama the politician, but rather with the
emerging liberal multiculturalist common sense that assembles its
points of optimistic compromise and political enthusiasm in alliance
with the reforming and re-visioning of classical white supremacy that
the Obama campaign and administration represent.

While the historical trajectory and political structure of U.S. white
supremacist nation-building will not be substantively altered, its
explanatory rhetoric, institutional appearance, and resurfaced racial
personage has generated a sweeping political sentimentality and
popular cultural narrative of progress, hope, change, and racially
marked nationalist optimism. And what do these things mean, really,
in the age of Katrina, the prison industrial complex, and the War on
Terror?

At best, when the U.S. nation building project is not actually engaged
in genocidal, semi-genocidal, and proto-genocidal institutional and
military practices against the weakest, poorest, and darkest—at home
and abroad—it massages and soothes the worst of its violence with
banal gestures of genocide management. As these words are being
written, Obama and his advisors are engaged in intensive high-level
meetings with the Bush administration's national security experts.
The life chances of millions are literally being classified and
encoded in portfolios and flash drives, traded across conference
tables as the election night hangover subsides. For those whose
political identifications demand an end to this historical conspiracy
of violence, and whose social dreams are tied to the abolition of the
U.S. nation building project's changing and shifting (but durable and
indelible) attachments to the logic of genocide, this historical
moment calls for an amplified, urgent, and radical critical
sensibility, not a multiplication of white supremacy's "hope."