I have not written about the Marissa Alexander case on this blog though I have been closely following the developments in her trial. Well on Friday, Ms. Alexander was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

For those who are unfamiliar with the case, here is a very brief summary. Marissa Alexander is an African-American mother of 3 who tried to protect herself from an abusive husband by firing a warning shot into the ceiling after he had beat her up again. There is of course much more to the case including the fact that her attorney tried to use the infamous “Stand Your Ground” law as her defense and was prohibited from doing so by the judge in the case. You can read much more about the case here.

This is another example of the system re-victimizing survivors of violence and speaks to what I wrote about on Monday with respect to the inadequacy of the efforts to actually support survivors of rape and domestic violence. This case brings to mind countless other stories of battered women and rape survivors who I have known over the years. But there is also something more…

Danielle McGuire has written in her excellent book “At the Dark End of the Street” that there was a time in this country when it was presumed that black women could not be raped. The idea was that they were naturally promiscuous and that their bodies were inviolate. In other words, no never meant no for black and brown women (and some poor white women). This idea has carried over, I think, to the concept of “self-defense” as applied to women of color. If black women’s bodies can always be violated and if black women are easily killable, then the notion of self-defense can never apply. Black women do not have a “self” worth defending.

A poem by Toi Derricotte titled “On the Turning Up of Unidentified Black Female Corpses” is one of my favorites. It captures the idea that black women in our culture are so thoroughly devalued that our deaths go unnoticed and unpunished. One particular stanza is particularly moving for me:

a black woman, there is a question being asked
about my life. How can I
protect myself? Even if I lock my doors,
walk only in the light, someone wants me dead.

Read the entire poem if you have a moment, you won’t be sorry.

The Marissa Alexander case brings to mind another instance of self-defense by a survivor of sexual violence. Inez Garcia was a 30 year old Latina who had a child and was profoundly Catholic. Inez was an illiterate woman who had moved to California to be closer to her husband who was incarcerated in Soledad prison. In March 1974, she was beaten and raped by two men in California. She was tried for first degree murder for shooting and killing one of her rapists. A flyer created by her defense committee in the 70s describes the details of the incident.

Louis Castillo and Miguel Jimenez came to Inez’s house at 8 p.m., allegedly to talk to Fred Medrano, who was also renting the house [that Inez lived in]. While waiting for him, the two men started drinking and taunting Inez. When Fred arrived home, he was harassed and threatened and beaten up in the fight that followed. Inez, frightened, told Louis and Miguel to leave, and stepped outside to make sure they left. They forced her to come behind the house with them where, trapped, she was beaten, her clothes torn, and she was raped.

In a state of shock and hysterical from the attack, Inez went back inside and loaded her .22-caliber rifle. At this time she received a phone call from the two men who had just attacked her. They threatened to make it worse for her if she did not leave town. About one half hour later she found her attackers five blocks away, beating up Fred a second time. She saw Jimenez draw a knife and called out. Jimenez turned and threw the knife in her direction. Inez fired, killing Jimenez and missing Castillo completely.

Christa Donaldson Arrested at Inez Garcia Demonstration, San Francisco, 1975
Women’s rights advocates and others seized on the Garcia case as an example of the “justice” system run amok. Her Defense Committee(comprised of local feminists and other community members) maintained that it was unjust that Inez was accused of premeditated murder “for defending herself against brutal and senseless attack” while her rapist remained free. They added:

“Thousands upon thousands of women have been attacked and raped, and countless more live in fear of rape. Inez is one of the few to defend herself so bravely. Her case is an example to everyone, for until men stop attacking women, women must be free to defend themselves by whatever means necessary.”

Inez Garcia Marching in the Lesbian and Gay Freedom Parade, San Francisco, 1976

Inez Garcia was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to five years in prison. This sparked several “Free Inez” demonstrations. She spent two years behind bars until her conviction was reversed on appeal because the judge had instructed the jury not to consider her rape. Her case was retried in 1977 and she was acquitted. The Garcia case and the Joan Little case offer examples which illustrate that it matters what people on the outside do when unjust charges are brought against individuals. If you doubt this, I suggest that you read Vikki Law’s interview about three cases (including Garcia’s and Little’s) where outside pressure and activism helped to overturn convictions of women survivors of violence. Let’s hope that those fighting on behalf of Marissa Alexander will be successful in securing a reversal of her conviction on appeal.

From Anarchist News:

“Jeremy’s said he needs about $30 a week to pay for decent non-carnivorous food, stamps, sanitary supplies, and so on. Assuming a release date sometime in August, he’ll need somewhere near $500 all up from now til his release.

I’m assuming like roughly $100 will go to the ChipIn, Paypal, and jail percentages. We can minimize the amount of money wasted (and given to the state!) by donating it all at once.

So, put up some cash for our friend!”

Help make Jeremy’s time easier in jail by donating money so he can have phone privileges to call his family (collect!), write letters (paper & stamps cost dollars), and eat something vegetarian (mostly Cheetos & Ramen minus the flav packet).

I know he and all of his loved ones will really appreciate it.

http://jeremycommissary.chipin.com/mypages/view/id/00c7a462ca2f7222

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“Jeremy had his sentencing hearing today. The judge found it appropriate to comment on Jeremy’s political views as an anarchist, telling him that this ‘society is governed by laws’ and that he should rethink his affiliations. The prosecutor, Chris Toepp, felt it was necessary to defame Jeremy’s character, insisting ‘he shows no remorse’ for a crime he maintains he is innocent of. He also demanded Jeremy go straight to jail, despite the fact that Jeremy’s father testified that he was very closely involved with his family, and being Easter Weekend, he would like Jeremy to spend it with the family. The Commonwealth of VA got their wishes mostly, denying Jeremy’s request of work release, and only suspending 6 months of the jury’s recommended 12 months in jail. We did not even get to say goodbye to our friend before he was taken to be processed, for a nonviolent crime he did not commit.

About 20-25 people showed up to support Jeremy, including his mother and father. Many were Jeremy’s close friends, others were comrades in the struggle. Most of us are both.

So what is left to us now? We organize. Jeremy’s close friend Pablo will be setting up a commissary fund for Jeremy to be able to purchase the supplies he needs while he is serving time. Ellen and Janissa will be gathering the paperwork and rules regarding visitation and letter writing, and will be making small business cards to be made available to anyone who would like to send Jeremy literature, zines, or whatever else may be allowed. This blog will make sure to give timely updates on any developments, and allow anyone who wants to show Jeremy support to get the information they need to do so.

Until then, take care of each other, and don’t give up the fight. Jeremy hasn’t.”

From Don’t Frack NC

Join us in the capital to march through downtown Raleigh and raise awareness about the resistance to fracking in North Carolina.  We’ll be assembling near Nash Square around 11:30 a.m. and  around 12 noon marching to the Legislative Building at 16 West Jones Street.

We encourage folks to bring musical instruments: drums, violins, trumpets, colorful banners and signs, puppets… anything that will make this fun.  The march is family friendly and fully permitted.

If your group would like to officially sign onto the march as a co-sponsor contact us at dontfracknc@riseup.net or call 919-200-0061 for more details.  We encourage everyone to share this event on their facebook or on listserves they are on.  This date is within the legislative session that begins in May where legislators plan on disregarding public outcry by legalizing fracking and wastewater injection in our state.

It’s time to let them know we won’t let this happen here.  See you in the streets!

This event is also co-sponsored by Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League & Cumnock Preservation Association.

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012, Youngstown OH- OSP Hunger Strike Ends. After long negotiations with Warden David Bobby on Monday, May 7th, the hunger-striking prisoners at Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP) began eating again. Two of the men held out through Tuesday, unsatisfied with the agreement. The warden met with them separately, and they agreed to come off the strike. Warden Bobby reported that “by lunch time today, everyone was eating.” This was confirmed by two prisoner sources.

At this point, details on agreements are unclear, but sources inside say that the hunger strikers are satisfied and feel they achieved results. One source described the demands and the Warden’s response as “reasonable”. Without going into detail, the main concerns were in regards to commissary costs, state pay rates, phone costs, length of stay, and harsh penalties for petty conduct reports. The Warden said that he discussed “many things” at Monday’s meeting with strike representatives, “many things beyond the main demands” but he would not share any of the details.

The strikers are resting and recovering, but have mailed detailed information to outside supporters at RedBird Prison Abolition, which will be released to the public as soon as possible. The Warden admitted that one of the hunger-strikers was transferred to disciplinary segregation for an unrelated rule infraction, but stated that there were no reprisals or punishments for participating. One prisoner source agreed with this statement.

The hunger strike began on April 30th and was timed to align with May Day protests outside. Prisoners have stated an interest in “joining hands in struggle toward common goals” with protest and resistance movements like Occupy Wall Street.

As I begin to think about pulling together an exhibition about confinement and captivity in black life, I am re-reading several books and articles about slavery and emancipation.

In Alabama, even before the Civil War, prisoners were responsible for their own court and incarceration costs at the county level. After the Civil War, this continued with one day in prison costing thirty cents. If prisoners could not pay, they served extra time and labored to pay the fees. While Alabama state prisoners had always worked, the state had never made a profit off their labor. This changed in 1875 when the state began to lease out prisoners for their labor to coal mines and to railroad companies. This money was essential to Alabama as the state was broke in the 1870s and prisoner labor helped to fill its coffers.

Alabama like many other Southern states desperately needed laborers for the lease system to work and they used the criminal code as a tool of racial discrimination. One cannot understand the racial subordination of black people post Emancipation without also exploring its links to the need in the south for a cheap and stable labor supply. Adolph Reed (1996) has described the state post-Emancipation as a “collective slavemaster.” This is an important insight that underscores the link between slavery and the continued criminalization of black bodies.

Post-Emancipation the criminalization of black people found its best expression in the Black Codes. In his book “Worse Than Slavery” (which I think is a must read), David Oshinsky suggests that the goal of the Black Codes was:

to control the labor supply, to protect the freedman from his own “vices,” and to ensure the superior position of whites in southern life…The Black Codes listed specific crimes for the “free negro” alone: “mischief,” “insulting gestures,” “cruel treatment to animals,” and the “vending of spiritous or intoxicating liquors.” Free blacks were also prohibited from keeping firearms and from cohabitating with whites…At the heart of these codes were the vagrancy and enticement laws, designed to drive ex-slaves back to their home plantations. The Vagrancy Act provides that “all free negroes and mulattoes over the age of eighteen” must have written proof of a job at the beginning of every year. Those found “with no lawful employment…shall be deemed vagrants, and on conviction…fined a sum not exceeding…fifty dollars.” The Enticement Act made it illegal to lure a worker away from his employer by offering him inducements of any kind.

Another example of manipulating the criminal code to control and subordinate black people is Mississippi’s 1876 “Pig Law” which lowered the threshold for grand larceny and resulted in a quadrupling of convicts in the state in just a few years. The “Pig Law” is discussed in the excellent recent documentary “Slavery By Another Name.”

Watch Pig Laws and Imprisonment on PBS. See more from Slavery by Another Name.

Using the criminal code to steal free labor from black people allowed many Southern states to recover economically after the civil war. The convict lease system was brutal and the lessees had little incentive to safeguard the lives of prisoners. If one died, he/she could easily be replaced by another. The Lease system engendered a great deal of resistance from black people and their allies. For those who are interested, you can read Frederick Douglass’s words about the cruel system here. In the early 20th century, Alabama women were actively struggling to end convict leasing. I’ve written about some of those efforts here.

I will have more to say about the convict lease system in the coming weeks…

Monday May 7th, 2011, Youngstown OH- Prisoners at Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP) continue the hunger strike they started on Monday April 30th, in solidarity with May Day.

The number of prisoners refusing food has fluctuated from 24 to 48 over the last week, as some prisoners joined late. Communication with the super max prisoners has been limited since the beginning of the strike, but a clear list of grievances and demands has emerged from at least two sources.

The two primary demands are:
1. Improved commissary practices and increased state pay. The prison commissary can set prices at up to 35% mark-up on basic necessities like shampoo, food, and soap. These prices fluctuate unexpectedly, and are often prohibitive to prisoners without outside support, as state pay is only $9 a month.

2. A transparent and accountable security level classification process. OSP houses level 4 and 5 prisoners, the highest security level in Ohio. Once prisoners are classified at these levels and transferred to OSP, there is no clear process for how they can reduce their level and get transferred out of the facility. Prisoners can spend years in OSP without any negative conduct reports and still have no hope of their level being reduced.

Other grievances include:

1. Food portions and quality have been reduced due to austerity measures.

2. Inadequate medical care. Also due to austerity cuts, prison officials have stopped send prisoners to outside treatment centers for MRIs and EEGs unless their conditions are considered life threatening. They also often ignore doctor recommendations for pain medications.

3. Lack of enrichment programming. There are strict bans on many books and movies, and the institutional television channel has little variety. One prisoner said they run the same programs on a loop every six months.

The two sources for these demands are an open letter written to the local Youngstown paper, by prisoner Marcus Harris, and phone conversations with a trusted anonymous source inside the prison. This source also stated that at least one hunger striker has been punished for his participation, sprayed with mace in his cell and sent to disciplinary isolation. This report has not yet been confirmed.

Warden David Bobby met with hunger strike representatives for 3 hours on Wednesday May 2nd. He says he will “continue to communicate with the inmates and listen to their concerns”. Thus far, the Warden has called a committee to review commissary practices, comparing them with other Ohio Institutions.

He says that the security level classification system is not uniform because it takes the reasons a prisoner was transferred to OSP into account. One prisoner source was familiar with this argument. He described a situation where someone got sentenced to Level 5 at OSP for 48 months or less. He got no negative reports for those 48 months, but was still denied a security transfer because of “the reasons he was originally classified Level 5, but they already knew that when the brought him in and told him it’d be 48 months or less”. This prisoner also said that consequences for petty conduct reports, like refusing to cuff up or return a food tray, have recently increased, “someone who used to be sent to the hole for 16 days, now might be dropped a level from 4 to 5″. He considers these changes an attempt to keep OSP full of prisoners as “job security” for the Warden and Officers.

The Warden said OSP currently has the most prisoners it has since it opened in 1996. He also said the current hunger strike is the biggest hunger strike since he became warden 4 years ago. It is also the second hunger strike this year. In February, twenty-five prisoners went on hunger strike for 3 days. Two major demands from that hunger strike were: increased recreation time, to the court required minimum of five hours a week, and improved commissary practices. The recreation time demand was met, but the prisoners say the current hunger strike “follows directly” from the neglected commissary demand from February. The warden says he does not remember what the demands in February were, and that the recreation schedule has changed repeatedly since the transfer of death row from OSP to Chillicothe last December.

Prisoner Mark Harris’s letter ends: “in short, we are sensory deprived, underfed, isolated with little to no movement, unable to hug our children, family and friends, and we are stuck for an overly extended period of time, with limited programming”. He requests that people use “whatever resources [they] have to help spread the word of our cause, to call and check up on us and our health and also to look into these matters”.

Warden David Bobby 330-743-0700
ODRC Director Gary Mohr 614-752-1164

A few weeks ago I was with a few companions from Occupy Wall Street in Union Square when an old friend — I’ll call her Eileen — passed through, her hand in a cast.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

“Oh, this?” she held it up. “I was in Liberty Park on the 17th [the Six Month Anniversary of the Occupation]. When the cops were pushing us out the park, one of them yanked at my breast.”

“Again?” someone said.

We had all been hearing stories like this. In fact, there had been continual reports of police officers groping women during the nightly evictions from Union Square itself over the previous two weeks.

“Yeah so I screamed at the guy, I said, ‘you grabbed my boob! what are you, some kind of fucking pervert?’ So they took me behind the lines and broke my wrists.”

Actually, she quickly clarified, only one wrist was literally broken. She proceeded to launch into a careful, well-nigh clinical blow-by-blow description of what had happened. An experienced activist, she knew to go limp when police seized her, and how to do nothing that could possibly be described as resisting arrest. Police dragged her, partly by the hair, behind their lines and threw her to the ground, periodically shouting “stop resisting!” as she shouted back “I’m not resisting!” At one point though, she said, she did tell them her glasses had fallen to the sidewalk next to her, and announced she was going to reach over to retrieve them. That apparently gave them all the excuse they needed. One seized her right arm and bent her wrist backwards in what she said appeared to be some kind of marshal-arts move, leaving it not broken, but seriously damaged. “I don’t know exactly what they did to my left wrist—at that point I was too busy screaming at the top of my lungs in pain. But they broke it. After that they put me in plastic cuffs, as tightly as they possibly could, and wouldn’t loosen them for at least an hour no matter how loud I screamed or how much the other prisoners begged them to help me. For a while everyone in the arrest van was chanting ‘take them off, take them off’ but they just ignored them…”

On March 17, several hundred members of Occupy Wall Street celebrated the six month anniversary of their first camp at Zuccotti Park by a peaceful reoccupation of the park—a reoccupation broken up within hours by police with 32 arrests. Later that evening a break-away group moved north, finally establishing itself on the southern end of Union Square, two miles away, even sleeping in park—though the city government soon after decided to defy a century-old tradition and begin closing the park every night just so they would not be able to establish a camp there. Since then, occupiers have taken advantage of past judicial rulings to continue to sleep on sidewalks outside the park, and more recently, on Wall Street itself.

During this time, peaceful occupiers have been faced with continual harassment arrests, almost invariably on fabricated charges (“disorderly conduct,” “interfering with the conduct of a police officer”—the latter a charge that can be leveled, for instance, against those who try to twist out of the way when an officer is hitting them.) I have seen one protestor at Union Square arrested, by four officers using considerable force, for sitting on the ground to pet a dog; another, for wrapping a blanket around herself (neither were given warnings; but both behaviors were considered too close to “camping”); a third, an ex-Marine, for using obscene language on the Federal steps. Others were reportedly arrested on those same steps for singing a satirical version of the “Officer Krumpke” song from West Side Story. Almost no march goes by without one or two protestors, at least, being hurled against vehicles or have their heads bashed against the ground while being arrested for straying off the sidewalk. The message here is clear. Law has nothing to do with it. Anyone who engages in Occupy Wall Street-related activity should know they can be arrested, for virtually any reason, at any time.

Many of these arrests are carried out in such a way to guarantee physical injury. The tone was set on that first night of March 17, when my friend Eileen’s wrists were broken; others suffered broken fingers, concussions, and broken ribs. Again, this was on a night where OWS actions were confined to sitting in a park, playing music, raising one or two tents, and marching down the street. To give a sense of the level of violence protestors were subjected to, during the march north to Union Square, we saw the first major incident of window-breaking in New York. The window in question was broken not by protestors, but by police—using a protestor’s head. The victim in this case was a street medic named José (owing to the likelihood of physical assault and injuries from police, OWSers in New York as elsewhere have come to carry out even the most peaceful protests accompanied by medics trained in basic first aid.) He offered no resistance.

Here is a video of the incident. The window-breaking begins at 3:45.

Police spokesmen later claimed this incident was a response to a bottle that was hurled at a police vehicle used to transport arrestees. Such claims are made almost automatically when videos appear documenting police assaults on non-violent protestors, yet, despite the presence of cameras everywhere, including those wielded by the police themselves, no actual documentation of any such claims ever seems to appear. This is no exception. In fact numerous witnesses confirmed this simply isn’t true, and even if a bottle had been thrown at an armored vehicle, not even the police have suggested they had any reason to believe the medic whose head was smashed into the window was the one who threw it.

Arbitrary violence is nothing new. The apparently systematic use of sexual assault against women protestors is new. I’m not aware of any reports of police intentionally grabbing women’s breasts before March 17, but on March 17 there were numerous reported cases, and in later nightly evictions from Union Square, the practice became so systematic that at least one woman told me her breasts were grabbed by five different police officers on a single night (in one case, while another one was blowing kisses.) The tactic appeared so abruptly, is so obviously a violation of any sort of police protocol or standard of legality, that it is hard to imagine it is anything but an intentional policy.

For obvious reasons, most of the women who have been victims of such assaults have been hesitant to come forward. Suing the city is a miserable and time-consuming task and if a woman brings any charge involving sexual misconduct, they can expect to have their own history and reputations—no matter how obviously irrelevant—raked over the coals, usually causing immense damage to their personal and professional life. The threat of doing so operates as a very effective form of intimidation. One exception is Cecily McMillan, who was not only groped but suffered a broken rib and seizures during her arrest on March 17, and held incommunicado, denied constant requests to see her lawyer, for over 24 hours thereafter. Shortly after release from the hospital she appeared on Democracy Now! And showed part of a handprint, replete with scratch-marks, that police had left directly over her right breast. (She is currently pursuing civil charges against the police department):

I’d like to emphasize this because when I first mention this, the usual reaction, from reporters or even some ordinary citizens, is incredulity. ‘Surely this must be a matter of a few rogue officers!’ It is difficult to conceive of an American police commander directly telling officers to grope women’s breasts—even through indirect code words. But we know that in other countries, such things definitely happen. In Egypt, for example, there was a sudden spate of sexual assaults by security forces against protestors in November and December 2011, and followed a very similar pattern: while women activists affirmed there had been beatings, but relatively few specifically sexual assaults during the height of the protests, starting in November, there were dozens of reports of women being groped or stripped while they were being beaten. The level of the violence in Egypt may have been more extreme, but the circumstances were identical: an attempt to revive a protest movement through re-occupation is met by a sudden ratcheting up of tactics by the security forces, and in particular, the sudden dramatic appearance of a tactic of sexual attacks on women. It is hard to imagine in either case it was a coincidence. In Egypt, no serious observer is even suggesting that it was.

Of course we cannot how such decisions are made, or conveyed; in fact, most of us find it unpleasant even to contemplate the idea of police officials ordering or encouraging sexual assault against the very citizens they are sworn to protect. But this seems to be precisely what is happening here.
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For many, the thought of police officials ordering or condoning sexual assault—even if just through a nod or a wink—seems so shocking that absolute proof would be required. But is it really so out of character? As Naomi Wolf has recently reminded us, the US security apparatus has long “used sexual humiliation as a tool of control.” Any experienced activist is aware of the delight police officers so often take in explaining just how certainly they will be raped if placed in prison. Strip searches—which the Supreme Court has recently ruled can be deployed against any citizen held for so much as a traffic violation—are often deployed as a tool of humiliation and punishment. And one need hardly remark on well-documented practices at Guantanamo, Bagram, or Abu Ghraib. Why target women in particular? No doubt it’s partly simply the logic of the bully, to brutalize those you think are weak, and more easily traumatized. But another reason is, almost certainly, the hope of provoking violent reactions on the part of male protestors. I myself well remember a police tactic I observed more than once during the World Economic Forum demonstrations in New York in 2002: a plainclothes officer would tackle a young female marcher, without announcing of who they were, and when one or two men would gallantly try to come to her assistance, uniforms would rush in and arrest them for “assaulting an officer.” The logic makes perfect sense to someone with military background. Soldiers who oppose allowing a combat role for women almost invariably say they do so not because they are afraid women would not behave effectively in battle, but because they are afraid men would not behave effectively in battle if women were present—that is, that they would become so obsessed with the possibility of women in their unit being captured and sexually assaulted that they would behave irrationally. If the police were trying to provoke a violent reaction on the part of studiously non-violent protestors, as a way of justifying even greater brutality and felony charges, this would clearly be the most effective means of doing so.

There’s a good deal of anecdotal evidence that would tend to confirm that this is exactly what they are trying to do. One of the most peculiar incidents took place on a recent march in New York where police seem to have simulated such an assault, arresting a young women who most activists later concluded was probably an undercover officer (no one had seen her before or has seen her since), then ostentatiously groping her as she was handcuffed. Reportedly, several male protestors had to physically restrained (by other protestors) from charging in to help her.

Why is all this not a national story? Back in September, when the now famous Tony Bologna arbitrarily maced several young women engaged in peaceful protest, the event became a national news story. In March, even while we were still hearing heated debates over a single incident of window-breaking that may or may not have been by an OWS activist in Oakland four months earlier, no one seems to have paid any significant attention to the first major incident of window-breaking in New York—even though the window was broken, by police, apparently, using a non-violent protestors’ head!

I suspect one reason so many shy away from confronting the obvious is because it raises extremely troubling questions about the role of police in American society. Most middle class Americans see the primary role of police as maintaining public order and safety. Instances when police are clearly trying to foment violence and disorder for political purposes so fly in the face of everything we have been taught that our instinct is to tell ourselves it isn’t happening: there must have been some provocation, or else, it must have just been individual rogue cops. Certainly not something ordered by the highest echelons. But here we have to remember the police are an extremely top-down, centralized organization. Uniformed officers simply cannot behave in ways that flagrantly defy the law, in full public view, on an ongoing basis, without having at least tacit approval from those above.

In this case, we also know precisely who those superiors are. The commander of the First Precinct, successor to the disgraced Tony Bologna, is Captain Edward J. Winski, whose officers patrol the Financial District (that is, when those very same officers are not being paid directly by Wall Street firms to provide security, which they regularly do, replete with badges, uniforms, and weapons). Winski often personally directs groups of police attacking protestors:

Winsky’s superior is Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, former director of global security of the Wall Street firm Bear Stearns:

And Kelly’s superior, in turn, is Mayor Michael Bloomberg – the well-known former investment banker and Wall Street magnate. The 11th richest man in America, he has referred to the New York City Police Department as his own personal army:

One of the great themes of Occupy Wall Street, of course, is the death of US democracy—the near-total capture of our political system by Wall Street firms and the financial power of the 1%. In the beginning the emphasis was on political corruption, the fact that both parties so beholden to the demands of Wall Street and corporate lobbyists that working within the political system to change anything has become simply meaningless. Recent events have demonstrated just how much deeper the power of money really goes. It is not just the political class. It is the very structure of American government, starting with the law and those who are sworn to enforce it—police officers who, as even this brief illustration makes clear, are directly in the pay of and under the orders of Wall Street executives, and who, as a result, are willing to systematically violate their oaths to protect the public when members of that public have the temerity to make a public issue out of exactly these kind of arrangements.

As Gandhi revealed, non-violent protest is effective above all because it reveals how power really operates: it lays bare the violence it is willing to unleash on even the most peaceful citizens when they dare to challenge its moral legitimacy. And by doing so, it reveals the true moral bankruptcy of those who claim authority to rule us. Occupy Wall Street has demonstrated this time and time again. What the current spate of assaults shows is just how low, to what levels of utter moral degradation, such men are really willing to sink.

By David Graeber is a Reader in Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and an author and activist currently based in New York

Chrishaun “CeCe” McDonald Accepts Plea Agreement to Reduced Manslaughter Charge

Racism, Transphobia in Legal System Continued Assault McDonald Survived, Supporters Charge

Minneapolis, MN (May 2, 2012) – Earlier today, Ms. Chrishaun “CeCe” McDonald accepted a plea agreement to a reduced charge of manslaughter in the second degree in the criminal case resulting from the racist, transphobic assault she survived last June that left one of her attackers dead. The prosecution had originally charged her with felony murder in the second degree. However, after entering into plea negotiations this morning, the defense and the prosecution settled on the reduced charge. McDonald will be sentenced on June 4th at 1:30pm under Hennepin County Judge Daniel Moreno to 41 months in prison. The executed sentence will be reduced by one third, for “good time” and credit for the time McDonald has served pending this resolution.

The plea agreement comes nearly a year after McDonald was arrested, interrogated, denied adequate medical care for a laceration she suffered during the attack and held in solitary confinement for a month for being a transgender person. During the pre-trial proceedings, supporters raised world-wide support for the charges against McDonald to be dropped. Last month, supporters delivered to Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman a petition for dropping the charges with over 15,000 signatures and dozens of letters of support for McDonald from organizations and prominent individuals from around the globe.

Freeman consistently failed to exercise his professional discretion and take a stand against racism and transphobia by dropping the charges.

“Freeman’s aggressive prosecution of CeCe was a continuation of the racist, transphobic assault that led to her being charged and resulted in the tragic death of one of the assailants,” said Kris Gebhard of the CeCe McDonald Support Committee. “We’ve been proud to stand with CeCe as she fought this unjust prosecution and will continue to stand with her as she fights for justice as a trans woman of color within the prison system.”

In a press conference after the plea agreement was accepted in court, Katie Burgess of the Trans Youth Support Network addressed the crowd of supporters filling the steps outside the Hennepin County Courthouse. Burgess said:

“Over the past 10 months I have witnessed the legal system isolating and attacking another young trans woman of color in our community, CeCe McDonald. And over the past 10 months, I have also witnessed our community say very clearly, ‘You are not alone, CeCe! And we have had enough!’

“With the whole world watching, Freeman’s office consistently chose not to take the opportunity to stand up against racism and transphobia. Freeman himself said, and I quote, ‘The criminal justice system is not built for, nor is it necessarily good at, solving a lot of society’s problems.’

“We know that this system is not designed to deliver justice to young trans women of color. We are going to continue to support CeCe as she goes through this process and continue to stand for justice for all trans people and people of color so that this is the last time a young trans woman of color has to go through this.”

Supporters will pack the courtroom for the sentencing on June 4th and continue to rally support for McDonald and to demand justice for all trans people and people of color.

For further updates, visit http://supportcece.wordpress.com and follow @Free_CeCe.

We, the Prison Books Collective of Chapel Hill, write to you in a time of crisis.

After more than six years of workdays, meetings, planning, and package-filling at our North Graham Street location, the Collective is losing that space. The landlord that owns the property has decided to kick out the current tenants and drastically raise the rent. By joining a long line of property owners’ gentrification of the Northside neighborhood, his profit-seeking is not just hurting one group of tenants, but entire communities on the other side of the prison walls.

Now in its 7^th year, the Collective has sent tens of thousands of books, pamphlets, and resource guides into prisons throughout the South. We’ve published prisoners’ news, essays, fiction, and poetry; and spread word of their struggles and strategies to hundreds of different facilities in an effort to break down the isolation and indignity of prison. We’ve helped prisoners learn to read in a country where the education system has utterly failed them. We’ve sent legal materials to prisoners in prisons whose law libraries have been completely dismantled. We’ve helped prisoners form study groups that encouraged gang truce efforts and became the backbone of organizing efforts on the inside. We’ve organized demonstrations and solidarity efforts for prisoners punished for their own organizing. We’ve encouraged political prisoner letter-writing across the country. In a society that increasingly treats prisoners as mere objects: thrown away and forgotten, we’ve organized teach-ins and outreach on the outside to remind people about what happens on the inside.

All of the Collective’s work has been managed with few resources and no paid staff. We have depended only on the elbow grease of volunteers and the generous donations of a supportive network of friends and comrades. However, this project has always been made possible by our free garage space on N. Graham Street. Without it, our limited resources would have never permitted us to house a library that is perpetually depleted and renewed and the workspace we need to get reading materials and information to the inside.

This is where the Collective stands: we have until July to find a new space in which to continue our organization’s work. This obstacle will not stop our efforts to support prisoners, but we will need your help to continue.

If you believe in the work that the Collective does, but haven’t been able to participate, this is your time! We are desperately searching for a roughly 4-500 square foot space in which to house our library and workspace. We are also desperately soliciting monetary donations to help us in the transition and to pay any potential rents or deposits at a new location. You can go to our website at prisonbooks.info to make a one-time donation or become a monthly sustainer.

So if you have a garage that you’re not really using, or that you could share; if you have a piece of land large enough to build a structure on; if you work at a nonprofit or commercial building with more space than you can use; please get in touch with us. A space that was already heated and cooled would be ideal, but we are both thrifty and flexible: we installed insulation, gutters, and air conditioning in our current garage, and we could do it again if we had to.

If you don’t have a space or money to spare, then please help us spread the word. Pass this request for support on to every activist group, friends group, facebook group, and listserv you know of. You can also show up to workdays every Sunday to help us get ahead of the backlog of prisoners’ book and ‘zine requests that will likely result from this transition.

Along with this plea for help, we also want to take this opportunity to say thank you to all the people who helped the collective make it this far. There is no way we could do this work without you. Every prisoners’ letter we receive that thanks us for the books or tells of struggle on the inside, is a testament to your generosity and support.

Until Every Cage is Empty,

The Internationalist Prison Books Collective of Chapel Hill

A United Nations investigator probing discrimination against Native Americans has called on the US government to return some of the land stolen from Indian tribes as a step toward combatting continuing and systemic racial discrimination.

James Anaya, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, said no member of the US Congress would meet him as he investigated the part played by the government in the considerable difficulties faced by Indian tribes.

Anaya said that in nearly two weeks of visiting Indian reservations, indigenous communities in Alaska and Hawaii, and Native Americans now living in cities, he encountered people who suffered a history of dispossession of their lands and resources, the breakdown of their societies and “numerous instances of outright brutality, all grounded on racial discrimination”.

“It’s a racial discrimination that they feel is both systemic and also specific instances of ongoing discrimination that is felt at the individual level,” he said.
Anaya said racism extended from the broad relationship between federal or state governments and tribes down to local issues such as education.

“For example, with the treatment of children in schools both by their peers and by teachers as well as the educational system itself; the way native Americans and indigenous peoples are reflected in the school curriculum and teaching,” he said.

“And discrimination in the sense of the invisibility of Native Americans in the country overall that often is reflected in the popular media. The idea that is often projected through the mainstream media and among public figures that indigenous peoples are either gone or as a group are insignificant or that they’re out to get benefits in terms of handouts, or their communities and cultures are reduced to casinos, which are just flatly wrong.”

Close to a million people live on the US’s 310 Native American reservations. Some tribes have done well from a boom in casinos on reservations but most have not.

Anaya visited an Oglala Sioux reservation where the per capita income is around $7,000 a year, less than one-sixth of the national average, and life expectancy is about 50 years.

The two Sioux reservations in South Dakota – Rosebud and Pine Ridge – have some of the country’s poorest living conditions, including mass unemployment and the highest suicide rate in the western hemisphere with an epidemic of teenagers killing themselves.

“You can see they’re in a somewhat precarious situation in terms of their basic existence and the stability of their communities given that precarious land tenure situation. It’s not like they have large fisheries as a resource base to sustain them. In basic economic terms it’s a very difficult situation. You have upwards of 70% unemployment on the reservation and all kinds of social ills accompanying that. Very tough conditions,” he said.

Anaya said Rosebud is an example where returning land taken by the US government could improve a tribe’s fortunes as well as contribute to a “process of reconciliation”.

“At Rosebud, that’s a situation where indigenous people have seen over time encroachment on to their land and they’ve lost vast territories and there have been clear instances of broken treaty promises. It’s undisputed that the Black Hills was guaranteed them by treaty and that treaty was just outright violated by the United States in the 1900s. That has been recognised by the United States supreme court,” he said.

Anaya said he would reserve detailed recommendations on a plan for land restoration until he presents his final report to the UN human rights council in September.

“I’m talking about restoring to indigenous peoples what obviously they’re entitled to and they have a legitimate claim to in a way that is not divisive but restorative. That’s the idea behind reconciliation,” he said.

But any such proposal is likely to meet stiff resistance in Congress similar to that which has previously greeted calls for the US government to pay reparations for slavery to African-American communities.

Read more from The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/04/us-stolen-land-indian-tribes-un