Singing, I can hear them singing, when the rain had washed away all these scattered dreams

A week after returning home from the trial I had another dream of my Aunt.

We were having a family dinner out at a restaurant.  Everything felt comfortable and familiar.  I was home in Sonoma County, everyone in the family was there, we were having a good time.  I was seated next to my Aunt and near my Grandma (her mother, who died the year before my Aunt Robin did).  We were talking, I was so happy and thought to myself that I never thought I would get to have moments like this again... and I realized I must be dreaming.  The look on my Aunty's face told me I was right, I was dreaming, and I burst into tears and hugged her tightly.  She cried too.  All the grief I've felt over the years came out and I sobbed.

Once I caught my breath we talked.  I don't remember what was said but the emotions passing back and forth were ones of sorrow and grief and anger and love -- that weird mix of things when someone is taken away from you, that mix of things that chokes your throat and is kind of impossible to find the words for.   And I got back from her sadness, that she missed us, missed being alive, but also that she was OK.  She felt peaceful, and light; she wasn't weighed down by all this shit anymore.  She'd figured some things out, and was happy.

Dinner was over and we got up to walk out, still talking.  Now we were talking happily, but again it was more feelings passing between us and I don't remember the words.  She took my Grandma's hand, and loving feelings passed between all of us as we walked out of the restaurant chatting together.  The doors opened into blinding daylight and the dream was over.

This time when I woke up all I felt was joy.  We had told each other the things we needed to.  It was OK.  For the first time since I lost her, I think, I felt like it would actually be ok -- that healing would actually be possible.  I felt connected to her again.

My Grandma has visited me since she died, but Robin never had.  Not until these couple of weeks.  I'm so grateful for both visits, because I think the first made the second possible, and paired together they are honest to my experience of this horrible thing that happened.   It's been almost a month and while various feelings have come up, I have felt more at peace about things than I did over the last 7 years.  It's not over, and I need to not always keep it to myself, but what remains is the sense that healing is possible, and is happening.  My ancestors are with me, even when I can't feel them, and for that I am incredibly grateful.

As I look at next week, and the final sentencing hearing, I hope I close the door on David Frostick and use all I've been through productively in my life.  He's ruled more of my life than I ever wanted.  That's just a reality.  And maybe I'll feel differently if he ever comes up for parole.  But for now, I want that to come to an ending.  He is a vampire, siphoning the life off of those around him, and I don't need to feed him anymore.  He can take back everything that's his.  I'm keeping what's mine, and that's my Aunt, my family and my future.

The Archers, Steven Avery, OJ Simpson and the DV death of my Aunt - some thoughts

Hi all, it's been a while. Thank you, if you're still around. If you've followed my blog for a while now you will know about the death of my aunt, and something about her experiences of domestic violence. Well, my priorities have changed re: writing and online activist participation, but this does seem like the place to write about "serious stuff" -- and it doesn't get much more serious than the trial of her accused murderer. If you don't know (see previous post) it has been 7 years that we have waited for this, as the accused used every available tool to prolong this process with no apparent care to the ways in which he was re-victimizing us (unsurprising really). So we've all had a lot of time at this point to sit with what happened, to process a lot of our feelings, to learn about domestic violence and the court system.

In the last year or so I've gotten into law/crime based podcasts such as Serial (season 1), Undisclosed, Truth and Justice, and Real Crime Profile. I think it has really helped me prepare for what's about to happen, and to understand what these lawyers are doing (because, no matter what prosecutors tell you, they are NOT trying to get justice for YOU and it's not the TRUTH they're trying to get to -- they're answerable to THE STATE and they're trying to PROVE AN ARGUMENT, it's a scored debate more than anything else.... anyway). Below you will find some stuff I've been thinking about that I thought was worth sharing. At the moment, my step-mother and I are sitting outside the courtroom where jury selection is happening in our trial and I have my laptop, hoping I would feel inspired to write something new...but I don't. So enjoy this instead....

Trigger/Content Warning: some graphic description of domestic violence/death.

Renisha McBride's Life Matters

RIP Andy Lopez

Post by Melanie Cervantes.

There is a march tomorrow in Santa Rosa to honor Lopez' life and call for police accountability.  Please consider attending!

after the verdict poem

Black mother in line in front of me

at McDonald's

after the protest

probably my age

three kids

oldest son maybe 12

he's clearly used to responsibility

he keeps the other two out of trouble

yells at an angry drunk who kicks their bags

his mother turns and asks the woman of color behind us

"what happened over there?"

pointing to the rally spot we just came from

the other woman says

"Zimmerman verdict"

and the mother says, "oh, that was today?"

she does not ask

and the other woman does not tell her

that the verdict was Not Guilty

and I watch her oldest son trying so hard

and I look at his mother's eyes

and I know why she didn't have to ask

19.7.2013

Four Years

In a couple days it will be four years since my aunt was murdered.  It has been almost four years since I wrote this post.   FOUR.   YEARS.

Her accused murderer sits in a jail cell awaiting trial.  A trial I am quite sure he knows damn well he is unlikely win.  For a crime I am quite sure he is still running from, still blaming her for and still refusing to feel any responsibility about.

Four years of limbo, waiting for this thing to finally be over.  Four years of waiting for a "justice system" I don't even believe in to do its thing, so I can finally move on.  Four years of moving on only to be yanked back every six months to be told there is yet another delay, that he has fired his lawyer again, that he has taken us right to the edge and pulled us back and there's nothing the courts will do about it.

Four years of being reminded how little my aunt's life matters to the state.

To the court system.

To the DA.

And to her murderer.

Four years of knowing the trial won't bring me any closure.  Four years of this PROCESS of the trial preventing my closure.  Four years of wondering if this time will be different.

Four years of missing my aunt.

Three Mother's Days where I want to just celebrate my mom.  My grandmas.  My great grandmas.  My Ancestors.  My mother friends.  Three Mother's Days where I pretend that is all I'm doing.  Three Mother's Days of hiding the pain searing through me as wounds barely healed are ripped back open.

Four years of watching my family age faster in those four years than we did in the preceding ten.

Myself included.

I found my first grey hair last night.  It isn't grey so much as silver.  Bright.  Shining.  Almost glittery.  I'm not yet 30 but I don't mind that hair.  I think it's beautiful, actually.  But it is also, I think, a by-product of that aging.  An aging that has happened so quickly.  An aging brought on by pain and loss and no closure and the seemingly endless limbo of the USian court system.

Will we get to five? Six? Seven?

Will it ever be over?

Will it even mean anything in the end?

I am a prison abolitionist.  I know this system is broken.  I know it doesn't work.  As surely as I know that if he is not locked up that he will hurt more women.  Like all the other women he hurt in the past.  But because I am a prison abolitionist, I know there will be no resolution in putting him on trial. Because I am a feminist/anti-racist I have no faith my aunt's life will be treated with respect in that court room.  And I have no real faith he will be found guilty of what he did.  I have no faith that even such a conviction would mean anything to him.  I have no faith that JUSTICE means anything here.

But I stand witness to the process, because it is the last thing I can do for her.  I couldn't help her.  I couldn't save her.  I couldn't even help her cat.  And I can't rehabilitate him.  I can't make him accept what he's done.  I can't make him accountable to us or use the rest of his life trying to make sure other men don't do what he did.  All I can do is stand witness.  Face him in the only provided framework sanctioned by the state and not let him forget that we know what he did.

And I will do that.  For whatever it is worth.

And I will remember her.  Often.  I will light the candles on my altar for her.  I will remember her when the veil is thin and the dead come back to visit us.  I will remember her on Mother's Day.

I will try and live the lessons that she taught me.

It's all I can do.

On Gaza

Watching Israel's latest bombing of Gaza has been heart breaking.

Watching friends and former friends of mine defend it has been sometimes worse.

But, I refuse to be silent, because I think genocide must be opposed under all circumstances.

Even when the victims of genocide aren't "perfect victims," even when their elected governments do things I also think are wrong, like send rockets into populated areas.

As a Jewish Anti-Zionist friend of mine said as we sat lesson planning over dinner, when we both wanted to be out in the streets instead: "yes, rockets are REAL," the VIOLENCE of them is real and that cannot be ignored or minimized... But, without dismissing their violence, let's also recognize that this violence has cost very few people their lives.  Let us also acknowledge that the lives lost to them (as this same friend pointed out) are largely those of the marginalized classes of Israeli society: the poor, the Mizrahi.  That Israel pushes these people outwards as a buffer for its more valued citizens against this violence, as have so many militarized/colonialist societies before them.

And this kind of exploitation and violence practiced on less valued human beings (on both sides of the border) is why (I think) groups like Gaza Youth Breaks Out have said not only "fuck Israel" but "fuck Hamas."  And it is with such groups that I align myself as well.

So yes, the rocket attacks need to end, this bombing has to end, the occupation needs to end.  A free Palestine must emerge.  And I have faith that it will.  I pray that it will.  I pray to the Mother that we will not continue to ignore the genocide of the Palestinian people, as so many other genocides have been and continue to be practiced and validated by governments around the world (including the US...which you'll hear more about in my Thanksgiving post!).

Free Palestine!  Decolonize Everything!

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. A time set aside to acknowledge/mourn those we have lost because their bodies and lives as trans people are still so hated in our societies.

Light a candle, say a prayer, take a moment of silence, whatever it is you do.

And don't forget.

♥

The names of those we have lost this year can be read here:  http://www.transgenderdor.org/memorializing-2012

Brandy Martell

Location: Oakland, California

Cause of Death: Gunshot

Date of Death: April 29th, 2012

Brandy was 37 years old.

Rest in Peace.

Rest in Power.

Must Read: "Notes from an Occupation 14: Shock and Awe! Or: How I learned to stop loving the motherfucking Police and start loving Oakland (part 1?)"

I think this is a pretty important post to read when thinking about what happened on Saturday...
File under: Things that made whatsername almost cry reading

First off, as I said on facebook, the only way I can really start this out is by saying “Fuck the Police!” And I well and truly mean it. I know many of you who have known me for years, and even a lot of my brothers and sisters in the Occupy movement, who have only known me for a few months, will probably be shocked that I’m at this point, and frankly, I am too. I’m torn up about it. I might laugh when I say it, but it’s that uncomfortable “Oh God.” laugh, because I’m really split about it. 

I’m very much in the nonviolence/no property destruction camp, and I was also one of those Occupiers who would argue “but the police are our friends!” and I was one of their first defenders, “oh they’ve got such a shitty job!” or “oh they’re caught between a rock and a hard place.” Hell, I’m sure I’ve tweeted and blogged about it in the past at some point. I still believe that right now, but at the same time, fuck that bullshit. Really. There comes a time when your orders are so wrong, so unjust, so ill conceived, poisonous and odious that you must refuse. You have to do it, for yourself, and for those people who you are about to cause harm to. That point has come and gone, more times in just the last few months during the police vs. occupy movement alone, setting aside, for a moment, all the decades of police brutality and oppression in certain neighborhoods and against certain races in our cities. Today, these Oakland cops were batshit insane, and were going buck wild all over town. Good people were hurt, good people were arrested, and many innocent people, both marchers and pedestrians, were put in harm’s way, for no justifiable reason. 

It’s not like I’m “new” to police brutality or I didn’t know it happens. I’ve read about it, written about it, and been an activist against it in the past. That said, there’s a distinct and jarring difference between seeing and knowing it on paper, and seeing people ridden down by motorcycle cops, or seeing people get their heads smashed into the pavement and all the other lovely, grisly things police like to do to assert the little power they’re given. I mean, sure, we can dress it all up nicely and call it “training” and “tactics” and whatnot, but really, Police are just a gang. A gang employed by the state, but a gang nonetheless. Enforcing laws, regardless of whether that law is right or not, and using their force of arms and the backing of the criminal justice system to keep us in line and make sure we follow our marching orders.  

Must Read: "The US schools with their own police"

File under "things that piss whatsername off"
From The Guardian

A few highlights:

The charge on the police docket was "disrupting class". But that's not how 12-year-old Sarah Bustamantes saw her arrest for spraying two bursts of perfume on her neck in class because other children were bullying her with taunts of "you smell".

"I'm weird. Other kids don't like me," said Sarah, who has been diagnosed with attention-deficit and bipolar disorders and who is conscious of being overweight. "They were saying a lot of rude things to me. Just picking on me. So I sprayed myself with perfume. Then they said: 'Put that away, that's the most terrible smell I've ever smelled.' Then the teacher called the police."

In 2010, the police gave close to 300,000 "Class C misdemeanour" tickets to children as young as six in Texas for offences in and out of school, which result in fines, community service and even prison time. What was once handled with a telling-off by the teacher or a call to parents can now result in arrest and a record that may cost a young person a place in college or a job years later.

"Zero tolerance started out as a term that was used in combating drug trafficking and it became a term that is now used widely when you're referring to some very punitive school discipline measures. Those two policy worlds became conflated with each other," said Fowler.

Children with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to the consequences of police in schools. Simpkins describes the case of a boy with attention deficit disorder who as a 12-year-old tipped a desk over in class in a rage. He was charged with threatening behaviour and sent to a juvenile prison where he was required to earn his release by meeting certain educational and behavioural standards.

"But he can't," she said. "Because of that he is turning 18 within the juvenile justice system for something that happened when he was 12. It's a real trap. A lot of these kids do have disabilities and that's how they end up there and can't get out. Instead of dealing with it within school system like we used to, we have these school police, they come in and it escalates from there."

According to the department's records, officers used force in schools more than 400 times in the five years to 2008, including incidents in which pepper spray was fired to break up a food fight in a canteen and guns were drawn on lippy students.

Chief Brian Allen, head of the school police department for the Aldine district and president of the Texas school police chiefs' association, is having none of it.

"There's quite a substantial number of students that break the law. In Texas and in the US, if you're issued a ticket, it's not automatically that you're found guilty. You have an opportunity to go before the judge and plead your case. If you're a teacher and a kid that's twice as big as you comes up and hits you right in the face, what are you going to do? Are you going to use your skills that they taught you or are you going to call a police officer?"

Read it all, there were too many priceless quotes to pull them all out.

Why can't we see that we're slowly but surely destroying ourselves with this ever-growing prison industrial complex??? Let's observe that these programs are particularly common in communities with high numbers of people of color, immigrants and poor working classes. In other words, groups of people who are already criminalized in mainstream USian discourse. Coincidence? I doubt it. Is it going to take this coming to white middle class suburbs before we take seriously how increased policing exacerbates and spreads the violence these police are supposed to be curtailing?? And if it does... by then will it be too late?

#DecolonizeOakland Saturday, November 19th! Day of Action to Expand the #Occupy Movement

Via hella ♥ east bay:

Decolonize Oakland October 10th #occupywallstreet

Via Dignidad Rebelde

Why have I titled this post "Decolonize Oakland"?  Because of this Open Letter to the Occupy Wall Street Activists and other similar critiques I've been reading this week.  I am sharing this event with you in particular because 1) it is local and that has always been a focus for me here and 2) it seems to acknowledge the important linkages between decolonization, indigenous resistance and this emerging "occupation" movement.

For more information on the event check out Occupy Oakland's Twitter account. Next planning meeting is TOMORROW.

Must Read Link: Obama’s Department of Homeland Security Makes It Clear that Secure Communities Was Always Mandatory

Via VivirLatino:

"If there was any question about whether the Secure Communities deportation program was voluntary, we are one step closer to a clearer answer. On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the roll out of the program would be continuing and that all Memoranda Of Agreement (MOAs) with states that have implemented the program are terminated. In other words, the intentions of the administration are crystalline. States that have “opted out” like Illinois, New York and Massachusetts really never were meant to have that option and no one in the future will have that option. Deportation is the Obama’s administration’s commitment to the the immigration reform process."

Read the rest at the link!

Read This: On the London Riots

From Penny Red: Panic on the streets of London.

"Violence is rarely mindless. The politics of a burning building, a smashed-in shop or a young man shot by police may be obscured even to those who lit the rags or fired the gun, but the politics are there. Unquestionably there is far, far more to these riots than the death of Mark Duggan, whose shooting sparked off the unrest on Saturday, when two police cars were set alight after a five-hour vigil at Tottenham police station. A peaceful protest over the death of a man at police hands, in a community where locals have been given every reason to mistrust the forces of law and order, is one sort of political statement. Raiding shops for technology and trainers that cost ten times as much as the benefits you’re no longer entitled to is another. A co-ordinated, viral wave of civil unrest across the poorest boroughs of Britain, with young people coming from across the capital and the country to battle the police, is another.

Months of conjecture will follow these riots. Already, the internet is teeming with racist vitriol and wild speculation. The truth is that very few people know why this is happening. They don’t know, because they were not watching these communities."

Please go to Penny Red and read the rest.

Justice for Palestine: A Call to Action from Indigenous and Women of Color Feminists

I received this in my email today.

Please distribute widely:

Between June 14 and June 23, 2011, a delegation of 11 scholars, activists, and artists visited occupied Palestine. As indigenous and women of color feminists involved in multiple social justice struggles, we sought to affirm our association with the growing international movement for a free Palestine. We wanted to see for ourselves the conditions under which Palestinian people live and struggle against what we can now confidently name as the Israeli project of apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Each and every one of us—including those members of our delegation who grew up in the Jim Crow South, in apartheid South Africa, and on Indian reservations in the U.S.—was shocked by what we saw. In this statement we describe some of our experiences and issue an urgent call to others who share our commitment to racial justice, equality, and freedom.

During our short stay in Palestine, we met with academics, students, youth, leaders of civic organizations, elected officials, trade unionists, political leaders, artists, and civil society activists, as well as residents of refugee camps and villages that have been recently attacked by Israeli soldiers and settlers. Everyone we encountered—in Nablus, Awarta, Balata, Jerusalem, Hebron, Dheisheh, Bethlehem, Birzeit, Ramallah, Um el-Fahem, and Haifa—asked us to tell the truth about life under occupation and about their unwavering commitment to a free Palestine. We were deeply impressed by people’s insistence on the linkages between the movement for a free Palestine and struggles for justice throughout the world; as Martin Luther King, Jr. insisted throughout his life, “Justice is indivisible. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Traveling by bus throughout the country, we saw vast numbers of Israeli settlements ominously perched in the hills, bearing witness to the systematic confiscation of Palestinian land in flagrant violation of international law and United Nations resolutions. We met with refugees across the country whose families had been evicted from their homes by Zionist forces, their land confiscated, their villages and olive groves razed. As a consequence of this ongoing displacement, Palestinians comprise the largest refugee population in the world (over five million), the majority living within 100 kilometers of their natal homes, villages, and farmlands. In defiance of United Nations Resolution 194, Israel has an active policy of opposing the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their ancestral homes and lands on the grounds that they are not entitled to exercise the Israeli Law of Return, which is reserved for Jews.

In Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood in eastern occupied Jerusalem, we met an 88-year-old woman who was forcibly evicted in the middle of the night; she watched as the Israeli military moved settlers into her house a mere two hours later. Now living in the small back rooms of what was once her large family residence, she defiantly asserted that neither Israel’s courts nor its military could ever force her from her home. In the city of Hebron, we were stunned by the conspicuous presence of Israeli soldiers, who maintain veritable conditions of apartheid for the city’s Palestinian population of almost 200,000, as against its 700 Jewish settlers. We crossed several Israeli checkpoints designed to control Palestinian movement on West Bank roads and along the Green Line. Throughout our stay, we met Palestinians who, because of Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem and plans to remove its native population, have been denied entry to the Holy City. We spoke to a man who lives ten minutes away from Jerusalem but who has not been able to enter the city for twenty-seven years. The Israeli government thus continues to wage a demographic war for Jewish dominance over the Palestinian population.

We were never able to escape the jarring sight of the ubiquitous apartheid wall, which stands in contempt of international law and human rights principles. Constructed of twenty-five-foot-high concrete slabs, electrified cyclone fencing, and winding razor wire, it almost completely encloses the West Bank and extends well east of the Green Line marking Israel’s pre-1967 borders. It snakes its way through ancient olive groves, destroying the beauty of the landscape, dividing communities and families, severing farmers from their fields and depriving them of their livelihood. In Abu Dis, the wall cuts across the campus of Al Quds University through the soccer field. In Qalqiliya, we saw massive gates built to control the entry and access of Palestinians to their lands and homes, including a gated corridor through which Palestinians with increasingly rare Israeli-issued permits are processed as they enter Israel for work, sustaining the very state that has displaced them. Palestinian children are forced through similar corridors, lining-up for hours twice each day to attend school. As one Palestinian colleague put it, “Occupied Palestine is the largest prison in the world.”

An extensive prison system bolsters the occupation and suppresses resistance. Everywhere we went we met people who had either been imprisoned themselves or had relatives who had been incarcerated. Twenty thousand Palestinians are locked inside Israeli prisons, at least 8,000 of them are political prisoners and more than 300 are children. In Jerusalem, we met with members of the Palestinian Legislative Council who are being protected from arrest by the International Committee of the Red Cross. In Um el-Fahem, we met with an Islamist leader just after his release from prison and heard a riveting account of his experience on the Mavi Marmara and the 2010 Gaza Flotilla. The criminalization of their political activity, and that of the many Palestinians we met, was a constant and harrowing theme.

We also came to understand how overt repression is buttressed by deceptive representations of the state of Israel as the most developed social democracy in the region. As feminists, we deplore the Israeli practice of “pink-washing,” the state’s use of ostensible support for gender and sexual equality to dress-up its occupation. In Palestine, we consistently found evidence and analyses of a more substantive approach to an indivisible justice. We met the President and the leadership of the Arab Feminist Union and several other women’s groups in Nablus who spoke about the role and struggles of Palestinian women on several fronts. We visited one of the oldest women’s empowerment centers in Palestine, In’ash al-Usra, and learned about various income-generating cultural projects. We also spoke with Palestinian Queers for BDS [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions], young organizers who frame the struggle for gender and sexual justice as part and parcel of a comprehensive framework for self-determination and liberation. Feminist colleagues at Birzeit University, An-Najah University, and Mada al-Carmel spoke to us about the organic linkage of anti-colonial resistance with gender and sexual equality, as well as about the transformative role Palestinian institutions of higher education play in these struggles.

We were continually inspired by the deep and abiding spirit of resistance in the stories people told us, in the murals inside buildings such as Ibdaa Center in Dheisheh Refugee Camp, in slogans painted on the apartheid wall in Qalqiliya, Bethlehem, and Abu Dis, in the education of young children, and in the commitment to emancipatory knowledge production. At our meeting with the Boycott National Committee—an umbrella alliance of over 200 Palestinian civil society organizations, including the General Union of Palestinian Women, the General Union of Palestinian Workers, the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel [PACBI], and the Palestinian Network of NGOs—we were humbled by their appeal: “We are not asking you for heroic action or to form freedom brigades. We are simply asking you not to be complicit in perpetuating the crimes of the Israeli state.”

Therefore, we unequivocally endorse the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Campaign. The purpose of this campaign is to pressure Israeli state-sponsored institutions to adhere to international law, basic human rights, and democratic principles as a condition for just and equitable social relations. We reject the argument that to criticize the State of Israel is anti-Semitic. We stand with Palestinians, an increasing number of Jews, and other human rights activists all over the world in condemning the flagrant injustices of the Israeli occupation.

We call upon all of our academic and activist colleagues in the U.S. and elsewhere to join us by endorsing the BDS campaign and by working to end U.S. financial support, at $8.2 million daily, for the Israeli state and its occupation. We call upon all people of conscience to engage in serious dialogue about Palestine and to acknowledge connections between the Palestinian cause and other struggles for justice. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.


Rabab Abdulhadi, San Francisco State University*
Ayoka Chenzira, artist and filmmaker, Atlanta, GA
Angela Y. Davis, University of California, Santa Cruz*
Gina Dent, University of California, Santa Cruz*
G. Melissa Garcia, Ph.D. Candidate, Yale University*
Anna Romina Guevarra, author and sociologist, Chicago, IL
Beverly Guy-Sheftall, author, Atlanta, GA
Premilla Nadasen, author, New York, NY
Barbara Ransby, author and historian, Chicago, IL
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Syracuse University*
Waziyatawin, University of Victoria*
*For identification purposes only 

For press inquiries, please contact feministdelegation@gmail.com

We Are One: April 4 Day of Action

From the site: "On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, where he had gone to stand with sanitation workers demanding their dream: The right to bargain collectively for a voice at work and a better life. The workers were trying to form a union with AFSCME.

Beginning with worship services over the April 1 weekend, and continuing through the week of April 4, unions, people of faith, civil and human rights activists, students and other progressive allies will host a range of community- and workplace-focused actions.

Join us in solidarity with working people in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and dozens of other states where well-funded, right-wing corporate politicians are trying to take away the rights Dr. King gave his life for: the freedom to bargain, to vote, to afford a college education and justice for all workers, immigrant and native-born. It’s a day to show movement. Teach-ins. Vigils. Faith events. A day to be creative, but clear:

See the link for your local action!!

List of Bay Area events current as of April 1 below the cut:

Rally Against Gang Injunction TODAY March 4 in Oakland

From the Facebook Event page:

*****PROGRAM******:
In addition to listening to organizers of all ages from all over Oakland, including Angela Davis, speak out against gang injunctions, there will be theater and performances (Including Boots Riley from The Coup) at the rally. Free Childcare will be provided*

OUR STRUGGLES ARE LINKED: fighting against the injunctions throughout the state of California is directly linked to fighting for affordable housing, more jobs, better education, free, relevant and empowering programs for youth and formerly incarcerated people, and free health care. As money and resources are squeezed out of the basic services our communities need for survival, health, and sustainability, money continues to be funneled into institutions of social control, like policing and imprisonment. As part of this trend, gang injunctions specifically have been used throughout the United States since the late 1980's as a major suppression tactic by police forces (over 30 injunctions were enacted in Los Angeles County alone from 1993-2000). Gang injunctions have been enacted in Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Orange County.

Fighting injunctions is a local, statewide and national issue.

How You Can Support:

* If you/your organization is located outside of Oakland, please come to town and/or holler at us for support in getting here.
* Announce these events at any upcoming meetings and invite members of your organizations in person, by email, text, facebook and every other means possible.
* If you work with young people or in schools, you can help expand our Day of Education on Wed March 2nd by talking about the injunctions with your students/participants (Contact us for more information).

By working together we can stop the spread of gang injunctions in our
communities!

FOR MORE INFO, EMAIL US: stoptheinjunction@gmail.com

White Supremacist Shawna Forde Sentenced To Death For Double Murder In Arizona

Link: "Shawna Forde, whom a jury convicted last week of murdering nine-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father, Raul Flores, was sentenced to death by an Arizona jury on Tuesday. The unanimous jury ruling is binding.

The court found that Forde led a group of anti-immigrant vigilantes in a March 2009 raid on the Flores home, where they posed as immigration agents and pushed their way through the door.
[...]
The case was not designated as a hate crime, despite Forde's long history with anti-immigrant organizations. She once maintained a Tea Party blog, was a member of Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and has presented herself as a representative of Federation for American Immigration Reform. (All three have since distanced themselves from her.) After being cast out from the Minuteman group due to erratic behavior, she formed her own vigilante group, called Minutemen American Defense, which also patrolled the United States-Mexico border trying to detect illegal immigration."

Being as I don't believe in the death penalty and being as this is hardly going to change the situation for un/documented Latin@s in this country I have very...mixed...feelings about this. But there it is.

An update on Oscar Grant's Murderer and the Protests Which Followed: Newsflash, the OPD is Still Fucked Up

So Friday night a friend of mine was arrested at the protests against Police Brutality in response to the verdict in the Johannes Mehserle case (a pitiful 2 years with time taken out for time already served).  I was on the outside trying to get whatever information about her that I could to friends and family (social networking was extremely helpful here, friends and family communicated on Facebook while I gathered info via Twitter and on the latter point I owe a big thank you to Mark who managed to get info from the Sheriff's office that was invaluable, THANK YOU!).

While I could not have possibly been more polite on the phone I was treated with extreme rudeness and condescension by the person I spoke with.  This echoes other experiences my husband and I have had with the Oakland PD, who apparently think it is perfectly OK to be pissed off with someone who is requesting them to perform the duties they are paid to perform.

Well, apparently it only gets worse if they are forced to respond to something as extraordinary as a protest march (/sarcasm).  Just as in the July protests (and with even LESS provocation) the Oakland PD decided the best thing to do in this situation was to force a confrontation with largely peaceful protesters and in many cases treat them with extreme disrespect.

But don't take my word for it!  Listen to someone who was on the inside.

A sample:

This process (of even getting us into the cars) took an hour. The man cuffed in front of me had a renal liver issue, and was about to pass out. The police offer partnered with him was informed of this, and refused to steady him or allow him to sit. He then started to collapse and was allowed to temporarily sit on the ground.

Throughout this process, police were making countless jokes to each other about us, and directly to our faces, including laughing hysterically as they told us that we were all being booked on felonies, an outright lie that they knew was a lie as they had already filled out our booking papers with the misdemeanor of “unlawful assembly.” As water bottles were passed out to the police, many of us requested water. Not only were we were refused, even those of us with medical conditions, but a policeman near me even poured out a bottle of water on the ground in front of someone who had requested water, and laughed in the person’s face.

When I was finally put into a paddy wagon with 12 others, the driver deliberately drove in an erratic and irresponsible manner, slamming on the brakes suddenly for no reason and swerving just to make us bounce around and hit the hard sides. It was the single most nauseating ride of my life, and that’s no coincidence.

Read it all: Police Brutality at the Oscar Grant Protest on November 5th, 2010

Must Read: Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law

Last year, two men showed up in Benson, Ariz., a small desert town 60 miles from the Mexico border, offering a deal.

Glenn Nichols, the Benson city manager, remembers the pitch.

"The gentleman that's the main thrust of this thing has a huge turquoise ring on his finger," Nichols said. "He's a great big huge guy and I equated him to a car salesman."

What he was selling was a prison for women and children who were illegal immigrants.

"They talk [about] how positive this was going to be for the community," Nichols said, "the amount of money that we would realize from each prisoner on a daily rate."

But Nichols wasn't buying. He asked them how would they possibly keep a prison full for years — decades even — with illegal immigrants?

"They talked like they didn't have any doubt they could fill it," Nichols said.

That's because prison companies like this one had a plan — a new business model to lock up illegal immigrants. And the plan became Arizona's immigration law.

Read the story at NPR