NEWSGRASSROOTS ACTIVISM

The image of Iraq Veteran Scott Olsen being carried by protestors during the Occupy Oakland protests after he was critically injured by Oakland Police Department is one that people all over the world have seen. For many, Scott became the face of the 99% and his injury an example of police brutality.

Now, Scott is asking the Department of Defense to allow UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez to have a private interview with Bradley Manning to discuss the conditions of his detainment.

Bradley Manning, is accused of stealing and leaking over a quarter million classified documents that were published online by Wikileaks while he was serving as an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2009 and 2010.

The ongoing debacle of California’s death penalty took a few dramatic turns last week: in the span of just a few days a new poll showed a shift in public opinion in favor of cutting the death penalty, Gov. Jerry Brown took the first step towards doing just that by cutting plans for a new death row, and the department of corrections announced that the state’s hold on executions will last at least through the year if not longer.

At the same time, the California Democratic Party pushed even farther in their advocacy against the death penalty.

All told, it’s got people asking: Is California finally ready to dump the death penalty?

California’s budget debacle is more dire than ever, so it’s no surprise that Governor Jerry Brown is hunkering down in search of solutions as he approaches the California Democratic Party’s state convention at the end of the month. But some of his fellow Democrats and a growing number of other organizations around the state are staring one budget solution in the face and just want Jerry to open his eyes: CUT THIS!

The state’s death penalty is an ineffective waste of tax dollars that we simply can’t afford, yet while the Governor and Assembly slash everything from preschool to geriatric care, the state remains poised to spend $1 billion on the death penalty over the next five years.

That’s a billion dollars that can be saved with a few strokes of the Governor’s pen – all he has to do is convert the death sentences of those awaiting execution to life without parole, and POOF! The death penalty is cut from the budget and California saves $1 billion without releasing a single prisoner.

While he’s been acting oblivious to this fact, plenty of others around the state aren’t. The ACLU, the League of Women Voters, and leaders in the California Democratic Party are alerting the Governor to this solution.

From February 28th -- March 2nd, Alabama will play host to formerly incarcerated activists from across the country as they convene in an effort to organize what may well be our nation's next major civil rights movement.

The conference, which is being organized by a steering committee comprised of prisoner rights and criminal justice reform activist leaders, will draft a campaign platform calling for the restoration of civil rights, a halt to prison expansion, the elimination of excessive punishments, and the protection of the rights and dignity of family members of the incarcerated. Conference events, which are slated to occur in Montgomery, Dothan, and Selma, will include a backwards march over Edmund Pettis Bridge.

Who better to lead this movement than those who have first-hand experience of the dehumanizing, unjust nature of our prison system? They know all too well the inequities that exist within the system, the abuses that occur behind prison walls, the suffering that families of prisoners must endure, and the struggle that those returning from prison face in the search for housing, jobs, and a sense of belonging.

The Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) was born in 1975 at Green Haven Prison in upstate New York. A group of prisoners concerned about increasing numbers of young offenders in the criminal justice system sought the support of local Quakers and began developing a program to teach youth about nonviolent conflict resolution. Together the volunteers and the prisoners created the first AVP workshop.

Since then, AVP has grown exponentially. Today, AVP workshops are held in prisons in 41 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as in more than 50 other nations around the world. Last year some 14,400 people participated in AVP workshops in correctional facilities, communities, and schools.

According to the AVP manual, AVP is a voluntary process of “seeking and sharing, and not of teaching.” Working to empower people to lead nonviolent lives through affirmation, respect, community building, cooperation and trust, AVP encourages every person's innate power to positively transform themselves and the world. This belief, termed “transforming power,” affirms that each of us can choose to respond to conflict in a positive, nonviolent way. This notion can be empowering to incarcerated people because it reminds them that they have the power to break the cycle of violence that landed them behind bars -- and reminds them that they deserve a life free from the pain of violence.

Yeah, sure, coal-fired power might be one of the leading contributors to climate change, but don't expect politicians to do anything about it. Even in Europe, where efforts to combat global warming are further along than in the U.S., rather than phase out carbon-intensive coal, lawmakers have chosen to continue subsidizing it with billions of dollars of their constituents' money.

Concerned inaction could ultimately destroy the planet, and with a load of scientific data to back them up, a group of British activists decided to do something about it. And no, I don't mean politely asking their elected officials to stop spending taxpayer dollars helping multinational corporations mine and burn evermore coal – they already tried that. I mean direct action: taking power into their own hands.

As Zachary Shahan reports on the Environment blog, climate activists in the U.K. decided to try to shut down the country's third largest coal plant, owned by German firm E.ON. But in Minority Report-esque move, British police in April 2009 pre-emptively arrested 114 activists on suspicion that they were planning to trespass on private property – property that, again, E.ON was able to secure with the help of lucrative state subsidies, to go along with its immunity from financial responsibility for the environmental cost of its product.

At trial, 20 of the activists were convicted of “conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass,” a charge that could have seen them subjected to significant prison time. But in a Wednesday ruling, Judge Jonathan Teare – describing the activists as “honest” and “conscientious” – spared them, instead sentencing the climate campaigners to probation and community service.

Airline pilot Charlie Liu saw what he viewed as a major flaw in the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) safety procedures at San Francisco International Airport: while pilots and flight attendants have to go through pat-downs and X-ray machines, the ground crew is able to bypass security with nothing more than the swipe of a card. So, using his cell phone, he decided to record what he saw and upload it to YouTube.

"As you can see, airport security is kind of a farce,” he said in one of the videos, since removed from the site. “It's only smoke and mirrors so you people believe there is actually something going on here.”

The government wasn't very happy.

As Sacramento's local ABC affiliate reports, days after Liu posted the video, four federal air marshals and two sheriff's deputies showed up at his door and demanded that the Army Reserve officer who once ran missions for the United Nations hand over both his gun and his concealed-carry permit. The sheriff's office says the permit will “be reevaluated following the outcome of [a] federal investigation,” according to the station.

The mass media is reporting that the prisoner protest in Georgia is over, but those who listen keenly to reports coming from independent media sources know otherwise: many striking prisoners continue to hold their ground, refusing to perform their jobs until their demands are acknowledged.

The strike, which began on Thursday, December 9 and is the largest in U.S. history, has included thousands of prisoners who have banded together to fight for their common humanity. According to a striking prisoner who spoke with Black Agenda Report, “We have the Crips and the Bloods, we have the Muslims, we have the head Mexicans, and we have the Aryans all with a peaceful understanding, all on common ground.” Prison authorities, seeing the potential strength of this kind of cohesion, have reacted with violence and intimidation.

In addition to destroying prisoners’ personal property, depriving them of heat and hot water, and brutally beating some protest participants, prison authorities are utilizing divide and conquer tactics to break down the foundation of the protest. Numerous prisoners have been sent to isolation cells, while some who are believed to be protest organizers have been moved to other facilities. Other leaders are sure to step up, though, and the authorities may find that their actions have strengthened the resolve of those who are most committed.

Let’s face it, California’s economy is back-asswards. Unemployment’s through the roof, more Californians than ever are struggling to get by, and every social service agency in the state is underfunded. Still, the solutions proposed in Sacramento are the same old right-wing tactics: cut, cut, cut. But no one -- not the governor, legislators or even supposed-lefty Governor-elect Jerry Brown -- is talking about cutting one of the biggest wastes of taxpayer dollars: the state's death penalty.

Under the guise of “tough on crime” rhetoric, California leads the country in death sentences and has the largest death row in the country by far, even while its death penalty system is the country's most costly and ineffective. California is poised to spend $1 billion in the next five years on the death penalty – but you can join me in telling the governor and the legislative leadership: Cut This!

People from all walks of life in California are demanding that -- before we cut funding for hospitals and nurses, police officers and fire fighters, sick children and working families -- we cut this broken and wasteful system that helps no one. A few of them appear in the video below: folks like Judy Kerr, whose brother was brutally murdered, want to cut the death penalty because it spends mountains of money on a small handful of killers while cold cases like her brother’s are left unsolved; Tom Parker, a former FBI agent, sees the death penalty as an ineffective drain on public safety funding; while Gloria Killian wants to cut the death penalty because it almost killed her for a crime she didn’t commit.

Conferences aren’t typically spaces for spontaneous outbursts of creative expression. But the Community Justice Network for Youth (CJNY) National Conference, held last weekend in DC, wasn’t your average conference. The event brought together hundreds of energized organizers and advocates from across the country to join in a weekend of collaboration, creation and action.

Perhaps most inspiring, reflects CJNY's Malachi Garza, was that amidst the many workshops -- ranging from "Know Your Rights! Deportation 101" to "Hip Hop Not Cop Stops -- Combating the Criminalization of Our Youth" -- “there was an open space policy,” allowing those who had the urge to grab the mic, express themselves and be heard. This provided youth, who made up three-fourths of the participants, the space to be themselves. If the mood struck, anyone who wanted to could share a poem, sing a song, start a cipher, show a video or perform a dance routine. And when someone did share, he or she was embraced by a room full of love, acceptance and appreciation.

It is this kind of welcoming environment that enables Garza to call CJNY “more of a family than an organization.” Made up of 140 community-based programs, grassroots organizations, service-providing agencies, residential facilities and advocacy groups in 23 states, CJNY’s goal is to “Stop the Rail to Jail” -- also known as the “school to prison pipeline” -- by supporting organizers and practitioners that work with youth who are at risk or already involved in the juvenile justice system.