text:
BAUAW NEWSLETTER, FRIDAY, JULY 31, 2015
Why come out ?
Why stop what you are doing and throw into this?
Because police STILL kill Black and Brown children for playing with toy guns and choke Black men to death in Staten Island and Mississippi and then curse them at their last dying breath, because cops disappear a young Black woman into a Texas county jail and "somehow" she doesn't come out alive, because 26 of these mad dogs stomp a young man for riding his bike the wrong way in Philly, because they shoot down and murder Latinos who have their hands in the air in LA or maybe throw a rock in Washington state while backing up... and it's all on video and NOTHING IS DONE, still NOTHING IS DONE...
Why October 24? Because politicians now promise the moon while the system STILL keeps millions in prisons that bulge like the slave ships, and lock down and pen up whole communities... and there's STILL one chance in three that the Black baby boy born today will end up in those cages... and talk is cheap but NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE...
Why October 24? Because you know it now, you've seen it, and you can't be neutral, you can't sit this out. Because last year people rose up and said NO MORE and that was great, that was fresh air at last. But it was all just a start and now they are trying to snuff this out with more murders and more lies, with jail terms and sweet talk and crumbs and snark—or else they try to change the subject to anything but police terror and the righteous struggle against it. And meanwhile the plague still rages... meanwhile the machinery of genocide grinds on, tearing and chewing up thousands each day, draining or wearing away, or blowing away the lives of tens of millions more over decades.
We have to either go forward—
taking the resistance to another level—
or we will surely go backwards...
On Thursday, August 6, 2015 please join us for the Hiroshima commemoration, rally and nonviolent direct action, 8 AM at Livermore Lab, corner of Vasco Road and Patterson Pass Road in Livermore.
As we approach the 70th Anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, Daniel Ellsberg, Country Joe McDonald, Taiko drummers, A-bomb survivors and hundreds of peace advocates will gather at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab to shine light on the true cost of the nuclear age. On this major anniversary, we will confront the human, ethical, environmental, social and financial price that nuclear weapons are extracting from us – and, indeed, from all life on earth. And, together, we will act to change the future!
There will also be a pre-action organizing meeting in Berkeley on Saturday, July 11 at 10 AM.
For August 6 action and pre-action info…
We have downloadable fliers and more information on the web at:
http://www.trivalleycares.org/new/SaveDate.html
We have a Facebook page at:
August 6 Hiroshima Commemoration and Action at Livermore Lab
Please join us, let us know if your group would like to cosponsor the August 6 commemoration, and help us publicize the event with your members and friends.
More information, Tri-Valley CAREs, (925) 443-7148
www.trivalleycares.org
marylia@trivalleycares.org
http://www.care2.com the worlds largest community for good.
You care; We Care2.
Start a petition - we will help you win!
http://www.thePetitionSite.com/create.html
Starting this September, Rising Tide North America is calling for mass actions to shut down the economic and political systems threatening our survival.
Already, hundreds of thousands are streaming into the streets to fight back against climate chaos, capitalism and white supremacy.
This wave of resistance couldn't be more urgent. To stop climate chaos we need a phenomenal escalation in organizing, participation and tactical courage. We need a profound social transformation to uproot the institutions of capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy, the systems that created the climate crisis. And we need to link arms with allies fighting for migrant justice, dignified work and pay, and an end to the criminalization and brutal policing of black and brown bodies.
We need to #FloodTheSystem.
In the lead up to the United Nations climate talks in Paris, in December, we will escalate local and regional resistance against systems that threaten our collective survival. Together, we will open alternative paths to the failing negotiations of political elites.
This is not another protest. It is a call for a massive economic and political intervention. It is a call to build the relationships needed to sustain our struggles for the long haul. To build popular power along the intersections of race, class, gender and ability. To collectively unleash our power and change everything.
Over the past year, hundreds of thousands of people have flowed into the streets to fight back.
Fast food workers in over a hundred cities went on strike, with thousands arrested demanding $15 an hour and a union. Young people in Ferguson, protesting the murder of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson, showed us the power of sustained action as they fought back against state violence for weeks, reinvigorating a national movement for Black liberation. Hundreds of thousands of climate activists marched at the People's Climate March in New York, and the next day Flood Wall Street shut down the heart of New York's financial district.
Across the country, and the world, powerful movements are using nonviolent direct action to to disrupt business as usual and demand lasting systemic change.
These moments show that broad mobilization and disruption are ways that we can transform our society. It is time we move beyond conventional strategies. Its time we connect across movements and #FloodTheSystem.
Rising Tide North America and its allies call on communities, networks, affinity groups and organizations across the continent to join together this Fall to rapidly escalate the pace and scale of the anti-capitalist climate justice movements.
We need to wash away the root causes of climate change -- capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and colonialism. These systems enable the domination of people and Earth. They place gains for the elite before the well being of our communities.
To build the scale of movements necessary to take on this challenge, we need everyone. Using sustained, coordinated direct action we can bring more people into a movement for radical social transformation than ever before.
The upcoming United Nations meeting of the Conference of the Parties in Paris (COP 21) at the end of the year provide us with an opportunity. Framed as climate negotiations they are really about capitalism and the corporate elites. We have an opportunity to focus the debate on capitalism itself as negotiators wedded to and benefiting from the status quo refuse to discuss the systems that drive the crisis. This is a natural moment to preemptively highlight community resistance and radical alternatives in advance of another colossal failure of international leadership. Through our combined action we can turn the failure of these critical talks into a moment in which the systemic nature of the crisis moves to the center and in which our movements begin to connect and collaborate.
In the past, the climate movement has repeatedly tried days of action and one-day marches. While these have built important relationships, they have not created the sustained movement swells we need. To lay the groundwork for exponential movement growth we are asking groups to convene Action Councils, like those forming in the Pacific Northwest, California, Montana, Northeast and elsewhere, with the intention of coming together to organize sustained actions beginning in late Summer, continuing through November and beyond.
With luck, waves of mobilizations breaking across the continent and world will build off each other to create a flood of resistance to fossil fuel extraction, capitalism and colonialism.
#FloodTheSystem invites the Rising Tide network, the larger climate justice movements, and other non-climate focused groups to create a flood of massive economic and political disruption of the systems that allow the climate and economic crisis to continue to escalate. This is not a simple call to action or day of action, it's a long-term process. We want to organize a series of actions that would:
Build a more robust anti-capitalist movement that clearly defines climate change as a symptom of capitalism. Specifically, we hope to support and catalyze regional organizing networks and relationships to challenge extreme energy infrastructure and the systems of oppression that enable it.
Build long term local, regional and continental networks that can continue to coordinate, build connections between movements, and escalate these fights in 2016 and beyond.
Begin to work closely with other movements through the analysis of where our struggles intersect and through a commitment to anti-oppressive organizing practices.
Share, implement and gain experience in innovative models of horizontal movement structures and mass democracy in organizing that will serve radical forces for the long haul.
Create a flood of energy within regions that inspires others to join in with organic, spontaneous actions and organizing. Regional blocks of escalating action are already planned that will lead into, and play off, each other. More emerge everyday.
Preemptively highlight community resistance and real alternatives to the fossil fuel economy ahead of the inevitable colossal failure by global elites at the United Nations climate negotiations in Paris.
#FloodTheSystem will organize and act according to the following principles.
Anti-capitalism/colonialism/racism/patriarchy - We see the climate crisis as a symptom of hierarchical social systems based upon domination and exploitation of lands, and predominately people of color. Addressing the crisis at its roots means joining with and supporting those who are fighting for liberation from these and other oppressive systems, and for their replacement with relations based upon equity, mutual aid, and ecological stewardship.
Grassroots Led, NGOs in Support Role - Non-profits and NGOs often function to co-opt and defuse resistance into reform-based avenues which are amenable to the social systems we are ultimately seeking to dismantle and replace. The priorities of this mobilization should be driven by groups grounded in and accountable to the communities most impacted by white supremacy, capitalism, and settler colonialism, with NGOs in a support role -- not the other way around.
Community-Based Alternatives - Corporations, nation-states, and multilateral institutions like the United Nations are integral pillars upholding global capitalism and colonialism. We see alternatives to extreme energy and the climate crisis arising out of social struggles which challenge and seek to replace these institutions and their logics. However, we recognize that there may be important defensive struggles within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, such as fighting the expansion of carbon markets or advancing state recognition of Indigenous land rights.
Commute Kevin Cooper's Death Sentence
Sign the Petition:
https://act.amnestyusa.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1839&ea.campaign.id=40574&ea.tracking.id=Country_USA~MessagingCategory_DeathPenalty~MessagingCategory_PrisonersandPeopleatRisk&ac=W1507EADP1&ea.url.id=432762&forwarded=true
Urge Gov. Jerry Brown to commute Kevin Cooper's death sentence. Cooper has always maintained his innocence of the 1983 quadruple murder of which he was convicted. In 2009, five federal judges signed a dissenting opinion warning that the State of California "may be about to execute an innocent man." Having exhausted his appeals in the US courts, Kevin Cooper's lawyers have turned to the Inter American Commission on Human Rights to seek remedy for what they maintain is his wrongful conviction, and the inadequate trial representation, prosecutorial misconduct and racial discrimination which have marked the case. Amnesty International opposes all executions, unconditionally.
"The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." - Judge William A. Fletcher, 2009 dissenting opinion on Kevin Cooper's case
Kevin Cooper has been on death row in California for more than thirty years.
In 1985, Cooper was convicted of the murder of a family and their house guest in Chino Hills. Sentenced to death, Cooper's trial took place in an atmosphere of racial hatred — for example, an effigy of a monkey in a noose with a sign reading "Hang the N*****!" was hung outside the venue of his preliminary hearing.
Take action to see that Kevin Cooper's death sentence is commuted immediately.
Cooper has consistently maintained his innocence.
Following his trial, five federal judges said: "There is no way to say this politely. The district court failed to provide Cooper a fair hearing."
Since 2004, a dozen federal appellate judges have indicated their doubts about his guilt.
Tell California authorities: The death penalty carries the risk of irrevocable error. Kevin Cooper's sentence must be commuted.
In 2009, Cooper came just eight hours shy of being executed for a crime that he may not have committed. Stand with me today in reminding the state of California that the death penalty is irreversible — Kevin Cooper's sentence must be commuted immediately.
Senior Death Penalty Campaigner
Amnesty International USA
Death Row Stories
Kevin Cooper's case will be the subject of a new episode of CNN's "Death Row Stories" airing on Sunday, July 26 at 7 p.m. PDT. The program will be repeated at 10 p.m. PDT. The episode, created by executive producers Robert Redford and Alex Gibney, will explore how Kevin Cooper was framed by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department and District Attorney. Viewers on the east coast can see the program at 10 p.m. EDT and it will be rebroadcast at 1 a.m. EDT on July 27. Viewers in the Central Time zone can see it at 9 p.m. and midnight CDT. Viewers in the Mountain Time zone can see it at 8 p.m. and ll p.m MDT. It will be aired on CNN again during the following week and will also be able to be viewed on CNN's "Death Row Stories" website.
Kevin Cooper: An Innocent Victim of Racist Frame-Up
- from the Fact Sheet at: www.freekevincooper.org
Kevin Cooper is an African-American man who was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 for the gruesome murders of a white family in Chino Hills, California: Doug and Peggy Ryen and their daughter Jessica and their house- guest Christopher Hughes. The Ryens' 8 year old son Josh, also attacked, was left for dead but survived.
Convicted in an atmosphere of racial hatred in San Bernardino County CA, Kevin Cooper remains under a threat of imminent execution in San Quentin. He has never received a fair hearing on his claim of innocence. In a dissenting opinion in 2009, five federal judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals signed a 82 page dissenting opinion that begins: "The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." 565 F.3d 581.
There is significant evidence that exonerates Mr. Cooper and points toward other suspects:
 The coroner who investigated the Ryen murders concluded that the murders took four minutes at most and that the murder weapons were a hatchet, a long knife, an ice pick and perhaps a second knife. How could a single person, in four or fewer minutes, wield three or four weapons, and inflict over 140 wounds on five people, two of whom were adults (including a 200 pound ex-marine) who had loaded weapons near their bedsides?
 The sole surviving victim of the murders, Josh Ryen, told police and hospital staff within hours of the murders that the culprits were "three white men." Josh Ryen repeated this statement in the days following the crimes. When he twice saw Mr. Cooper's picture on TV as the suspected attacker, Josh Ryen said "that's not the man who did it."
 Josh Ryen's description of the killers was corroborated by two witnesses who were driving near the Ryens' home the night of the murders. They reported seeing three white men in a station wagon matching the description of the Ryens' car speeding away from the direction of the Ryens' home.
 These descriptions were corroborated by testimony of several employees and patrons of a bar close to the Ryens' home, who saw three white men enter the bar around midnight the night of the murders, two of whom were covered in blood, and one of whom was wearing coveralls.
 The identity of the real killers was further corroborated by a woman who, shortly after the murders were discovered, alerted the sheriff's department that her boyfriend, a convicted murderer, left blood-spattered coveralls at her home the night of the murders. She also reported that her boyfriend had been wearing a tan t-shirt matching a tan t-shirt with Doug Ryen's blood on it recovered near the bar. She also reported that her boyfriend owned a hatchet matching the one recovered near the scene of the crime, which she noted was missing in the days following the murders; it never reappeared; further, her sister saw that boyfriend and two other white men in a vehicle that could have been the Ryens' car on the night of the murders.
Lacking a motive to ascribe to Mr. Cooper for the crimes, the prosecution claimed that Mr. Cooper, who had earlier walked away from custody at a minimum security prison, stole the Ryens' car to escape to Mexico. But the Ryens had left the keys in both their cars (which were parked in the driveway), so there was no need to kill them to steal their car. The prosecution also claimed that Mr. Cooper needed money, but money and credit cards were found untouched and in plain sight at the murder scene.
The jury in 1985 deliberated for seven days before finding Mr. Cooper guilty. One juror later said that if there had been one less piece of evidence, the jury would not have voted to convict.
The evidence the prosecution presented at trial tying Mr. Cooper to the crime scene has all been discredited… (Continue reading this document at: http://www.savekevincooper.org/_new_freekevincooperdotorg/TEST/Scripts/DataLibraries/upload/KC_FactSheet_2014.pdf)
This message from the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. July 2015
Free Albert Woodfox!
On June 8, 2015 a federal judge granted Louisiana prisoner Albert Woodfox unconditional release. Albert's conviction had already been overturned three times - most recently in 2013 - yet every time the state has appealed.
Today, Albert is still behind bars after spending four decades in cruel, unjust solitary confinement. He believes that he and fellow prisoners, Herman Wallace and Robert King, were first placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for their activism. All three men were members of the Black Panther Party. Together, they came to be known as the Angola 3.
It is time for the State of Louisiana to stop standing in the way of justice. Call on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to ensure Albert's cruel and unjust confinement is not his legacy. Learn more
http://act.amnestyusa.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1839&ea.campaign.id=35593&ea.tracking.id=Country_USA~MessagingCategory_PrisonersandPeopleatRisk&ac=W1506EAIAR2&ea.url.id=414689&forwarded=true
Amnesty for all those arrested demanding justice for Freddie Gray!
Amnesty for ALL those arrested
demanding justice for Freddie Gray!
Sign and distribute the petition to drop the charges!
Spread this effort with #Amnesty4Baltimore
"A riot is the language of the unheard"
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
An estimated 300 people have been arrested in Baltimore in the last two weeks. Many have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested include journalists, medics and legal observers.
One individual arrested for property destruction of a police vehicle is now facing life in prison and is being held on $500,000 bail. That's $150,000 more than the officer charged with the murder of Freddie Gray.
The legal system has made it clear that they care more about broken windows than broken necks; more about a CVS than the lives of Baltimore's Black residents.
They showed no hesitation in arresting Baltimore's protesters and rebels, and sending in the National Guard, but took 19 days to put a single one of the killer cops in handcuffs. This was the outrageous double standard that led to the Baltimore Uprising.
Sign the petition to drop the charges on all who have been arrested.
Petition to Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake
Download PDF of Petition
http://www.answercoalition.org/amnesty_for_all_those_arrested_demanding_justice_for_freddie_gray?utm_campaign=baltimore_amn1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=answercoalition
Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake
City Hall, Room 250,
100 North Holliday St.,
Dear Mayor Rawlings-Blake:
I stand in solidarity with those in Baltimore who are demanding that all charges be dropped against those who rose up against racism, police brutality, oppressive social conditions and delay of justice in the case of Freddie Gray. The whole world now recognizes that were it not for this powerful grassroots movement, in all its forms, there would be no indictment.
It is an outrage that peaceful protesters have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested include journalists and legal observers.
Even the youth who are charged with property destruction and looting should be given an amnesty. There is no reason a teenager -- provoked by racists and justifiably angry -- should be facing life in prison for breaking the windows of a police car.
The City of Baltimore should work to rectify the conditions that led to this Uprising, rather than criminalizing those who took action in response to those conditions. Drop the charges now!
[add your name below]
CANCEL ALL STUDENT DEBT!
http://cancelallstudentdebt.com/?code=kos
Dear President Obama, Senators, and Members of Congress:
Americans now owe $1.3 trillion in student debt. Eighty-six percent of that money is owed to the United States government. This is a crushing burden for more than 40 million Americans and their families.
I urge you to take immediate action to forgive all student debt, public and private.
American Federation of Teachers
Campaign for America's Future
LeftAction
Project Springboard
RootsAction
Student Debt Crisis
Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. ARTICLES IN FULL
More on Mumia's Medical Needs
Mumia Abu-Jamal's will to live and his commitment to telling the truth is matched by our collective resolve to see him well and free.
Please take action again. Please know that your calls, letters, emails, and faxes (even the ones that they hang up on or seem to ignore) are the only reason that he was given diagnostic testing. Mumia is still weak, in a wheelchair, and his legs are bandaged heavily. He has still not been given a diagnosis or a treatment plan. Mumia needs a plan that will address the underlying causes of his chronic and potentially life threatening conditions. Please know that his mind is clear, and his energy is returning. He sends his love and his understanding- that because you took action, he is alive.
Mumia spent nine days Geisinger Medical Center in Danville PA, and is now back in the infirmary at SCI Mahanoy. Our actions today will ensure that Mumia receives the urgent diagnosis and medical treatment.
In the latest outrage, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections is refusing to release Mumia's medical records. Their excuse- that Bret Grote from the Abolitionist Law Center and co-counsel Bob Boyle went to federal court to demand that his lawyers and family be allowed to advise and see him while he was hospitalized. Holding Mumia's medical records is simply retaliation for exercising his constitutional right to access to the courts.
And It is a direct attack on his ability to get expert advice and care. They are preventing Mumia and his doctor from seeing these critical records, at a time when his condition, while stable, remains serious.
Act Now.
1. Call the Prison, the Governor, and the DOC. Demand that they release Mumia's medical records immediately (see numbers below).
2. Make a Gift to Prison Radio. We took a risk: we fronted $4K dollars so that we could place a full page Ad in The Nation Magazine. It appears in the June 1st issue. Stand with us as we amplify this message. Please give now. Then sign this important letter.
3. Make a gift to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Medical and Legal Fund. Help us get independent medical care for Mumia. We are still in need of funds for life sustaining advocacy and care. Click here to give.
Call, write and fax today!
John Kerestes, Superintendent SCI Mahanoy
Address: 301 Morea Road, Frackville, PA 17932
Secretary John Wetzel, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections
Address: 1920 Technology Parkway, Mechanicsburg, PA 17050
E-mail: ra-crpadocsecretary@pa.gov
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf
Address: 508 Main Capitol Building, Harrisburg, PA 17120
Email: governor@pa.gov
Your support of Prison Radio allowed us to recently record: Mumia Abu-Jamal, Kenneth Hartman, Reverend Edward Pinkney, Shaka Zulu, Jane Dorotik, Bill Dunne, Bryant Arroyo, Troy Thomas, Mondo We Langa (David Rice), and more.
Mumia's and other commentators' searing truth is needed on the radio. Listen to these commentaries at prisonradio.org.
Mumia Abu-Jamal:
137 Shots (2:00)
Kenneth Hartman:
Stop Strip Searching My Mom (4:21)
Bryant Arroyo:
The Unconstitutional AEDPA (11:06)
As you know, we are pulling out all the stops to free Mumia and keep him alive. Together with International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal & the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC) we placed this full page Ad in The Nation Magazine. Please print it out and share it with friends. Please sign it at bit.ly/OpenLetterForMumia. Please help us print this Ad. It is costing $4K to design, print and motivate. Please take a moment to help Prison Radio make it happen, by sending a gift now.
Support Prison Radio
$35 to become a member.
$50 to become a member and receive a beautiful tote bag. Or call us to special order a yoga mat bag.
$100 to become a member and receive the DVD "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary."
$300 to become a member and bring one essay to the airwaves.
$1,000 (or $88 per month) will make you a member of our Prison Radio Freedom Circle. Thank you!
To give by check:
Prison Radio/Redwood Justice Fund
Stock or legacy gifts:
Noelle Hanrahan
Prison Radio is a project of the Redwood Justice Fund a CA 501c3 non profit.
Prison Radio has recorded Mumia and other political prisoners for over 25 years, and we are pulling out all the stops to keep these voices on the air.
Please donate today to amplify prisoners' voices far and wide beyond the bars:
Support Prison Radio: prisonradio.org/donate
Defeat SB 508: bit.ly/defendfreespeech
Copyright © Prison Radio
www,prisonradio.org 415-706-5222
Prison Radio PO Box 411074, SF CA 94141
http://us10.campaign-archive2.com/?u=247585f092e945ff55b9a1bb2&id=e113d0b6d0&e=0107d76ccd
$35 is the yearly membership.
$50 will get you a beautiful tote bag (you can special order a yoga mat bag, just call us).
$100 will get the DVD "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary"
$300 will bring one essay to the airwaves.
$1000 (or $88.83 per month) will make you a member of our Prison Radio Freedom Circle. Take a moment and Support Prison Radio
Luchando por la justicia y la libertad,
Noelle Hanrahan, Director, Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074 San Francisco, CA 94141
www.prisonradio.org
info@prisonradio.org 415-706-5222
The Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Mobilizes Support Internationally:
No Execution by Medical Neglect!
International Unions Demand Decent Medical Treatment for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mumia Abu-Jamal was recently sent back to prison after having been hospitalized for the second time. There are some reports that his health is improving. He said to Suzanne Ross of the International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal that "if there had not been an international outcry about the lack of appropriate treatment, in fact AGAINST the 'treatment' that was bringing him so close to death, he was sure he would not be alive today".
In some good news, he was also told by the prison doctor that his biopsy results came back negative.
However, neither Mumia nor his wife, lawyers or consulting doctors have been seen the actual medical reports detailing his condition. The Department of Corrections refuses to hand over his medical records, claiming that they don't have to hand them over because there is litigation to have them released! Denying Mumia and his family his medical records is an outrage!
We would like to inform you about some recent actions taken by unions around the world on behalf of Mumia.
- Unite, the largest union in the UK, representing over 1.4 million members, wrote letters to Governor Tom Wolf, Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel and Legal Counsel Theron Perez protesting Mumia's treatment.
- The International Dockworkers Council, representing 90,000 dockworkers from affiliated unions around the world, wrote an appeal to the labor movement calling for action on behalf of Mumia.
- The Inlandboatmen's Union of the Pacific sent a protest letter to Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel.
We hope that you will continue to take action on behalf of Mumia. Please call and email Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel and demand the following:
1) Mumia Abu-Jamal is an innocent man! He should be freed immediatel
2) Confirm what Mumia's medical condition is. Release his medical records to his family and lawyers!
3) Allow Mumia to be given medical treatment from a doctor of his choice. His doctor should be allowed to conduct an on-site medical examination, to communicate by phone with Mumia, and to communicate freely with prison medical staff.
4) Allow Mumia daily visits from his family, friends and lawyers!
5) Conduct an independent investigation of healthcare treatment inside the Pennsylvania prison system!DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, SECRETARY JOHN WETZEL 717 728 4109
E-mail ra-contactdoc@pa.gov
Wetzel's secretary: secyra-crpadocsecretary@pa.gov
We are also attaching a sample union resolution for you to use as a template. Please consider submitting it to your union and asking them to take action on behalf of Mumia. We would also be happy to work with you and make a presentation to your union or community group about his condition.
The Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jam
Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson
Lorenzo Speaks Concerning Prosecution's Brief:
JANUARY 1, 2015—The prosecutor has run away from (almost) every issue raised in my PCRA by begging the Court to dismiss everything as "untimely". When they don't do this, they suggest that me and my lawyers were "defamatory" towards either my former prosecutor Christopher Abruzzo or Detective Kevin Duffin, in our claims they withheld, misused or hid evidence of my Innocence, in order to secure an unjust conviction in this case. If I charged, a year ago, that about a dozen AGs (attorneys general) were involved in circulating porno via their office computers, people would've laughed at me, and seen me as crazy.
But, guess what? During 2014, we learned that this was the truth. How can it be defamatory to speak the truth? Notice the OAG (Office of Attorney General), never said the obvious: That AG Abruzzo didn't inform the Defense about the relationship between his Motive Witness and his head detective (Victoria Doubs and Det. Duffin); that Det. Duffin doesn't deny Doubs was his god-sister, and that she lived in his family home, or that he assisted her whenever she got into trouble.
Why not? Because it is true. How can you defame someone who defames himself? Mr. Christopher Abruzzo, Esq., when a member of the higher ranks of the OAG, sent and/or received copious amounts of porno to other attorneys general and beyond. What does this say about his sense of judgment? He thought enough about his behavior to resign from his post in the Governor's Cabinet. If he thought that his behavior was okay, he'd still be sitting in the Governor's cabinet, right? The OAG cannot honestly oppose anything we've argued, but they try by seeking to get the Court to do their dirty work, how? By denying an Evidentiary Hearing to prove every point we've claimed.
The prosecution is trying desperately to avoid dealing with the substance of my claims in Com. v. Lorenzo Johnson. So, they slander my Legal Team and blame them for defaming the good AG's and Cops involved with this case. They try to do what is undeniable, to deny that they hid evidence from the Defense for years. They blamed me for daring to protest the hidden evidence of their malfeasance and other acts to sabotage the defense. They claim that they had an "Open File" policy with my trial counsel. But "Open File" is more than letting an attorney read something in their office. If it's a search for the truth it must include what is turned over to the attorney, for how do we really know what was shown to her?
They say it is inconceivable that an attorney would read a file, beginning on page nine (9), and not ask for the preceding eight (8) pages. Yet, it is conceivable if trial counsel was ineffective for not demanding the record of the first eight pages. Pages that identify the State's only witness as a "SUSPECT" in the murder for which her client was charged! How could such an attorney fail to recognize the relevance of such an issue, barring their sheer Ineffectiveness and frankly, Incompetence.
By seeking to avoid an evidentiary hearing, the prosecution seeks to avoid evidence of their wrongdoing being made plain, for all to see. If they believe I'm wrong, why not prove it? They can't. So they shout I filed my appeal untimely, as if there can ever justly be a rule that precludes an innocent from proving his innocence! Not to mention the fact that the prosecution has failed to even mention the positive finger prints that ay my trial they said none existed. Don't try to hide it with a lame argument about time. When isn't there a time for truth? The prosecution should be ashamed of itself for taking this road. It is unworthy of an office that claims to seek justice.
After the trial verdict The Patriot-News (March 18, 1997) reported, "Deputy Attorney General Christopher Abruzzo admitted there were some serious concerns about the strength of the evidence against Johnson and praised the jury for doing a thorough job." I guess he forgot to mention all of the evidence he left out to show Innocence.
Now, more than ever, Lorenzo Johnson needs your support.
Publicize his case; bring it to your friends, clubs, religious
and social organizations.
SIGN LORENZO JOHNSON'S FREEDOM PETITION
http://www.freelorenzojohnson.org/sign-the-petition.html
CONTRIBUTE TO LORENZO'S CAMPAIGN FOR FREEDOM!
http://www.freelorenzojohnson.org/how-can-i-help.html
Write: Lorenzo Johnson, DF 1036
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Rd.
Frackville, PA 17932
Email: Lorenzo Johnson through JPAY.com code:
Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC
Join the Fight to Free Rev. Pinkney!
Click HERE to view in browser
http://www.iacenter.org/prisoners/freepinkney-1-28-15/
On December 15, 2014 the Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan was thrown into prison for 2.5 to 10 years. This 66-year-old leading African American activist was tried and convicted in front of an all-white jury and racist white judge and prosecutor for supposedly altering 5 dates on a recall petition against the mayor of Benton Harbor.
The prosecutor, with the judge's approval, repeatedly told the jury "you don't need evidence to convict Mr. Pinkney." And ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE WAS EVER PRESENTED THAT TIED REV. PINKNEY TO THE 'ALTERED' PETITIONS. Rev. Pinkney was immediately led away in handcuffs and thrown into Jackson Prison.
This is an outrageous charge. It is an outrageous conviction. It is an even more outrageous sentence! It must be appealed.
With your help supporters need to raise $20,000 for Rev. Pinkney's appeal.
Checks can be made out to BANCO (Black Autonomy Network Community Organization). This is the organization founded by Rev. Pinkney. Mail them to: Mrs. Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union Street, Benton Harbor, MI 49022.
Donations can be accepted on-line at bhbanco.org – press the donate button.
For information on the decade long campaign to destroy Rev. Pinkney go to bhbanco.org and workers.org(search "Pinkney").
We urge your support to the efforts to Free Rev. Pinkney!Ramsey Clark – Former U.S. attorney general,
Cynthia McKinney – Former member of U.S. Congress,
Lynne Stewart – Former political prisoner and human rights attorney
Ralph Poynter – New Abolitionist Movement,
Abayomi Azikiwe – Editor, Pan-African News Wire<
Larry Holmes – Peoples Power Assembly,
David Sole – Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice
Sara Flounders – International Action Center
MESSAGE FROM REV. PINKNEY
I am now in Marquette prison over 15 hours from wife and family, sitting in prison for a crime that was never committed. Judge Schrock and Mike Sepic both admitted there was no evidence against me but now I sit in prison facing 30 months. Schrock actually stated that he wanted to make an example out of me. (to scare Benton Harbor residents even more...) ONLY IN AMERICA. I now have an army to help fight Berrien County. When I arrived at Jackson state prison on Dec. 15, I met several hundred people from Detroit, Flint, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids. Some people recognized me. There was an outstanding amount of support given by the prison inmates. When I was transported to Marquette Prison it took 2 days. The prisoners knew who I was. One of the guards looked me up on the internet and said, "who would believe Berrien County is this racist."
Background to Campaign to free Rev. Pinkney
Michigan political prisoner the Rev. Edward Pinkney is a victim of racist injustice. He was sentenced to 30 months to 10 years for supposedly changing the dates on 5 signatures on a petition to recall Benton Harbor Mayor James Hightower.
No material or circumstantial evidence was presented at the trial that would implicate Pinkney in the purported5 felonies. Many believe that Pinkney, a Berrien County activist and leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO), is being punished by local authorities for opposing the corporate plans of Whirlpool Corp, headquartered in Benton Harbor, Michigan.
In 2012, Pinkney and BANCO led an "Occupy the PGA [Professional Golfers' Association of America]" demonstration against a world-renowned golf tournament held at the newly created Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course on the shoreline of Lake Michigan. The course was carved out of Jean Klock Park, which had been donated to the city of Benton Harbor decades ago.
Berrien County officials were determined to defeat the recall campaign against Mayor Hightower, who opposed a program that would have taxed local corporations in order to create jobs and improve conditions in Benton Harbor, a majority African-American municipality. Like other Michigan cities, it has been devastated by widespread poverty and unemployment.
The Benton Harbor corporate power structure has used similar fraudulent charges to stop past efforts to recall or vote out of office the racist white officials, from mayor, judges, prosecutors in a majority Black city. Rev Pinkney who always quotes scripture, as many Christian ministers do, was even convicted for quoting scripture in a newspaper column. This outrageous conviction was overturned on appeal. We must do this again!
To sign the petition in support of the Rev. Edward Pinkney, log on to: tinyurl.com/ps4lwyn.
Contributions for Rev. Pinkney's defense can be sent to BANCO at Mrs Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union St., Benton Harbor, MI 49022
Or you can donate on-line at bhbanco.org.
http://couragetoresist.org/
New Action--write letters to DoD officials requesting clemency for Chelsea!
Secretary of the Army John McHugh
President Obama has delegated review of Chelsea Manning's clemency appeal to individuals within the Department of Defense.
Please write them to express your support for heroic WikiLeaks' whistle-blower former US Army intelligence analyst PFC Chelsea Manning's release from military prison.
It is important that each of these authorities realize the wide support that Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning enjoys worldwide. They need to be reminded that millions understand that Manning is a political prisoner, imprisoned for following her conscience. While it is highly unlikely that any of these individuals would independently move to release Manning, a reduction in Manning's outrageous 35-year prison sentence is a possibility at this stage.
Take action TODAY – Write letters supporting Chelsea's clemency petition to the following DoD authorities:
101 Army Pentagon
The Judge Advocate General
2200 Army Pentagon
Army Clemency and Parole Board
251 18th St, Suite 385
Arlington, VA 22202-3532
Directorate of Inmate Administration
Attn: Boards Branch
U.S. Disciplinary Barracks
1301 N. Warehouse Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-2304
Suggestions for letters send to DoD officials:
The letter should focus on your support for Chelsea Manning, and especially why you believe justice will be served if Chelsea Manning's sentence is reduced. The letter should NOT be anti-military as this will be unlikely to help.
A suggested message: "Chelsea Manning has been punished enough for violating military regulations in the course of being true to her conscience. I urge you to use your authorityto reduce Pvt. Manning's sentence to time served." Beyond that general message, feel free to personalize the details as to why you believe Chelsea deserves clemency.
Consider composing your letter on personalized letterhead -you can create this yourself (here are templates and some tips for doing that).
A comment on this post will NOT be seen by DoD authorities–please send your letters to the addresses above
This clemency petition is separate from Chelsea Manning's upcoming appeal before the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year, where Manning's new attorney Nancy Hollander will have an opportunity to highlight the prosecution's—and the trial judge's—misconduct during last year's trial at Ft. Meade, Maryland.
Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea's legal fees at this critical stage!
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
couragetoresist.org
1) Ohio: Transit Officer on Desk Duty After Pepper Spray Was Used
By ASHLEY SOUTHALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/28/us/cleveland-transit-officer-on-desk-duty-after-pepper-spray-was-used.html?ref=us
2) Woman Found Dead in Holding Cell in Westchester County
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/nyregion/woman-found-dead-in-holding-cell-in-westchester-county.html?ref=nyregion
3) The Videos That Are Putting Raceand Policing Into Sharp Relief
By DAMIEN CAVE and ROCHELLE OLIVER
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/30/us/police-videos-race.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
4) A Psychologist as Warden? Jail and Mental Illness Intersect in Chicago
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/us/a-psychologist-as-warden-jail-and-mental-illness-intersect-in-chicago.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
5) Mexican President's Ties to Contractor Raise Questions
By PAULINA VILLEGAS and FRANCES ROBLES
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/world/americas/mexican-presidents-ties-to-contractor-raise-questions.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
6) Ruling That Denied Release of Grand Jury Evidence in Garner Case Is Upheld
By J. DAVID GOODMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/nyregion/ruling-that-denied-release-of-grand-jury-evidence-in-garner-case-is-upheld.html?ref=nyregion
7) Millennials Less Likely to Leave the Nest, a Pew Study Finds
By DIONNE SEARCEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/business/millennials-less-likely-to-leave-the-nest-a-pew-study-finds.html?ref=business
8) Glare of Video Is Shifting Public's View of Police
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA and TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/us/through-lens-of-video-a-transformed-view-of-police.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
9) The DuBose Family: Grieving, but Determined
By Charles M. Blow
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/opinion/charles-blow-the-dubose-family-grieving-but-determined.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region
10) U.S. Paychecks Grow at Record-Slow Pace
JULY 31, 2015, 9:31 A.M. E.D.T.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/07/31/us/politics/ap-us-employments-costs.html?ref=business
A transit police sergeant who deployed pepper-spray into a crowd in Cleveland has been placed on administrative duty until an investigation of the incident is completed, officials at the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority said Monday. Sgt. Robert Schwab, a 25-year-veteran, used the spray to push back a crowd that was blocking a police cruiser carrying an intoxicated 14-year-old boy, officials said. The incident, which was recorded on cellphone video by a bystander, occurred during a national conference at Cleveland State University that was intended to draw attention to police brutality and race relations.
MOUNT VERNON, N.Y. — Officials in New York are investigating the death of a woman who waited two days in a holding cell for arraignment on a shoplifting arrest.
Mayor Ernest Davis of Mount Vernon said the woman, Raynette Turner, was found dead Monday afternoon.
Police officials said Ms. Turner, 42, was arrested Saturday at a wholesale food store and was being held for an arraignment. They said that on Sunday night she reported not feeling well and was taken by ambulance to a hospital, then returned to her cell a few hours later.
The officials said Ms. Turner was found dead at 2 p.m. Monday, when she was to be arraigned.
An autopsy is pending.
The death in Texas this month of Sandra Bland, a jailed woman, has drawn national attention. The authorities there have ruled that death a suicide.
Raw video has thoroughly shaken American policing. Grainy images of questionable police behavior, spread through social media, have led to nationwide protests, federal investigations and changes in policy and attitudes on race.
"A lot of white people are truly shocked by what these videos depict; I know very few African-Americans who are surprised," said Paul D. Butler, a law professor at Georgetown University and a former prosecutor. "The videos are smoking-gun evidence," he added, "both literally because they are very graphic, which generates outrage, and figuratively, because people believe their own eyes."
These videos include graphic scenes of violence.
Samuel Dubose
July 19 University of
Cincinnati campus Related Article »
Officer Ray Tensing's body camera captured the moment when he shot Samuel Dubose, 43, during a traffic stop involving a missing front license plate. Officer Tensing, who is white, has been charged with the murder of Mr. Dubose, a black man.
July 10 Prairie View, Tex. Related Article »
Dashboard camera video revealed that the white Texas State trooper who pulled over Sandra Bland, 28, threatened her with a stun gun as their encounter escalated, partly because of her apparent unwillingness to snuff out a cigarette. Ms. Bland, a black woman, was arrested and later found dead in a jail cell.
A Teenager and a Pool Party
June 5 McKinney, Tex. Related Article »
Cellphone video showed a white police officer, David Eric Casebolt, pointing a gun at teenagers in bathing suits and shoving a black girl's face into the ground.
April 12 Baltimore Related Article »
Freddie Gray, 25, suffered a spinal injury while in police custody. He died a week later. The six officers involved in his arrest, a mix of black and white, were charged with crimes that included murder and manslaughter.
Walter L. Scott
April 4 North Charleston, S.C. Related Article »
A bystander recorded a white officer, Michael T. Slager, shooting an unarmed black man, Walter L. Scott, 50, in the back as he ran away. The video showed Mr. Slager firing eight times then casually walking over to Mr. Scott, who was pronounced dead at the scene.
Antonio Zambrano-Montes
Feb. 10 Pasco, Wash. Related Article »
A video shot by a bystander showed an Hispanic man, Antonio Zambrano-Montes, 35, running from three police officers after being accused of throwing rocks at cars and officers. His hands were in the air when the police fired. Two of the officers were white; one was Hispanic.
Nov. 22, 2014 Cleveland Related Article »
Surveillance video showed Officer Timothy Loehmann, who is white, hopping out of a police cruiser and immediately firing two shots at Tamir Rice, 12, killing him at close range. Before the shooting, Tamir, who was black, had been using a fake gun that looked strikingly like the real thing.
Aug. 9, 2014 Ferguson, Mo. Related Article »
A bystander's video showed Michael Brown, 18, lying in the middle of the street after being shot and killed by a white officer named Darren Wilson. His body stayed in the street for hours. He was unarmed. Mr. Wilson was not indicted.
July 17, 2014 Staten Island Related Article »
Eric Garner, 43, died after police officers tried to arrest him for the illegal sale of cigarettes. He was wrestled to the ground and placed in a chokehold. A cellphone camera held by a friend recorded the struggle as Mr. Garner told the police multiple times, "I can't breathe."
Ricardo Diaz-Zeferino
June 2, 2013 Gardena, Calif. Related Article »
Ricardo Diaz-Zeferino, 34, was trying to help his brother find his stolen bike. Dashboard camera videos (which the police in Los Angeles tried to keep secret) later showed that he was shot when he was mistaken for the thief, and did not keep his hands still in the air as instructed. The three officers involved were not charged.
CHICAGO — Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia, who runs the sprawling Cook County Jail here, has an indelible childhood memory of police officers pounding on the aluminum walls of the family's double-wide trailer home in North Carolina, rifling through cupboards and drawers, and arresting her father on charges of selling marijuana.
Dr. Jones Tapia, then 8, had to call her mother home from work.
Over the next several years, other relatives, including two brothers, and a number of friends also spent time in jail. She says she might have ended up there, too.
Instead, she became captivated by psychology and earned a doctorate. She began working at Cook County Jail in 2006, and this spring became its unlikely warden when she was promoted to executive director — one of the first clinical psychologists to run a jail, underscoring how much the country's prisons have become holding centers for the mentally ill."It's a national disgrace how we deal with this," said Sheriff Thomas Dart, who appointed Dr. Jones Tapia to the post and who refers to the jail, a place notorious for its history of violence and overcrowding, as the largest mental institution in the country. He said that as many as one-third of the jail's 8,600 inmates were mentally ill.
As she sat in a cellblock one day recently, Dr. Jones Tapia, 37, reflected: "I know all too well what it's like to hope that your loved ones make better decisions. And I think about my own life and how I was probably one bad decision away from being in a correctional institution myself."
As Congress embarks on a rethinking of the criminal justice system — including giving judges greater discretion in sentencing — jails and prisons are also confronting myriad problems in dealing with the mentally ill. There are now 10 times as many mentally ill people in the nation's 5,000 jails and prisons as there are in state mental institutions, according to a study last year by the National Sheriffs' Association and the Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit group that supports expanded access to treatment. Such inmates are far more likely to be kept in solitary confinement and to be beaten by guards and other inmates, corrections officials say.
Some wardens complain that their jails have become little more than makeshift mental asylums, and that they lack the money and expertise needed to deal with the problem.
Three of the nation's largest jails — Rikers Island in New York, the county jail in Los Angeles and Cook County Jail here in Chicago — are operating under federal oversight, in part because of the mistreatment of the mentally ill. But Cook County has become a model of sorts for other troubled institutions in how to deal with the mentally ill, and it recently hosted delegations from Rikers Island and Los Angeles County.
Before becoming warden, Dr. Jones Tapia oversaw health care at the jail, and under her guidance, Cook County began offering services that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. All inmates upon arrival now see a clinician who collects a mental health history to ensure that anyone who is mentally ill is properly diagnosed and receives medication. The jail then forwards that information to judges in time for arraignments in the hope of convincing them that in certain cases, mental health care may be more appropriate than jail.
The jail also enrolls arriving inmates in health insurance plans, then helps arrange basic case management upon their release."We've started to focus on the entirety of the system, from the point of arrest through discharge, and really forcing the whole system to take a look at the people that we're incarcerating," Dr. Jones Tapia said.
Officials have also discussed using a Sheriff's Department van staffed with a therapist to perform house checks on former inmates, and if necessary, drive them to medical appointments to ensure that prescriptions are refilled on time, in an attempt to prevent them from turning to illegal drug use or other crimes that would send them back to jail.
Sheriff Dart, who has led the push for change here, says the jail has become a dumping ground for people who should not be locked up.
"The person isn't choosing to be schizophrenic," he said. "The vast majority of mentally ill people are here for nonviolent crimes, like stealing food to survive or breaking into places, usually looking for somewhere to sleep, or getting caught with drugs because they are self-medicating. How is it different than us locking up diabetics? Jails were never meant to be mental health hospitals."
To press ahead with the jail's overhaul, Sheriff Dart promoted Dr. Jones Tapia in May.
"We were looking for someone who could do the baseline things," he said, "but who also had this other vision."
Still, she is an unusual choice. Sheriff Jim McDonnell of Los Angeles County said a warden's job was typically focused on security, although he acknowledged that having psychological expertise might prove useful.
"I certainly think the more tools you bring to the table, the better," Sheriff McDonnell said. "But you are running a giant operation, and you need to keep things moving, to focus on security, to keep the staff motivated."
Dr. Jones Tapia said that the whole time she worked at the jail as a psychologist, she had made a point of hanging out with corrections officers, and that had eased the transition to her new post.
"I think they welcomed the opportunity to share their world, and many of them, when they see me today, say, 'I know you're going to be all right because we taught you well,'" she said.
She also ended up marrying a corrections officer, Angel Tapia, a 12-year veteran of the jail.Cook County Jail, though determined to improve conditions, remains a difficult place for inmates. Like nearly every large jail or prison in the country, it is riven by the same gang rivalries that plague the streets. The most violent and dangerous inmates are separated from others as they await trials or transfers to prison.
While the jail is far less crowded today than a few years ago, inmates — both those who are mentally ill and others who are not — complain that they have too little personal space and too little time to exercise, and that courts take too long to resolve their cases, many of which are for minor drug, traffic or theft charges. The vast majority of inmates are African-American or Latino.
Some portions of the jail date to the 1920s, and are falling apart in places. Leaking ceilings are dealt with by placing clumps of rags on the floor to absorb water. Walls and floors are cracking, and paint is peeling. In bathrooms, long rows of toilets a few feet apart lack partitions for privacy. Inmates have little to do all day, so they stand in front of television sets watching game shows and the news, or lie in their bunks and sleep.
For Dr. Jones Tapia, the path to becoming warden was not direct. After earning an undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of North Carolina, she said, she had no clear idea what to do next. She worked as a receptionist and in community mental health care before beginning to take more specialized psychology courses and going on to earn a doctorate from the Virginia Consortium Program in Clinical Psychology.
The program she is most proud of — and the centerpiece of efforts to overhaul the jail — is the mental health transition center, which started last August and was run by Dr. Jones Tapia before she became warden.
Five days a week, a group of about 15 inmates with mental illnesses, from depression and bipolar disorder to schizophrenia, receive cognitive behavioral therapy, job readiness skills and extra recreation.
The warden said such inmates who were released without such services were often back within weeks as they amassed dozens, even hundreds, of arrests for petty crimes like shoplifting and drug possession because they were unable to obtain the prescription drugs needed to treat their condition. Many are rearrested just to receive treatment, so upon their release inmates are now given a two weeks' supply of medication.
"If somebody doesn't have access to the basic tools to survive, they're more likely to recommit a crime and come back," Dr. Jones Tapia said. "So we know it's not just a mental health problem. It's more of a well-being problem."
None of the 43 former inmates who attended the program before being released have been rearrested, said Ben Breit, a jail spokesman.
One of those former inmates, Demetrius Members, 23, who has been arrested 18 times, mostly for selling drugs, said he had recently been told that he had a severe case of depression in which he had nearly constant thoughts of suicide.
Mr. Members said that he had frequently used PCP and alcohol, which helped chase away negative thoughts, but that now, with the help of medication and counseling, he had enough confidence to envision a day when he would be able to open his own business, get married and become a homeowner.
"I hate I had to come to jail to learn this," he said, "but who would have thought a program like this would be in a jail?"
SAN FRANCISCO XOCHICUAUTLA, Mexico — Armando García has filed lawsuits, joined protests and gotten arrested trying to stop a highway from slicing through his hilly backyard in a nature reserve.
But even with a court order on his side, bright green pines have been stripped away and tree stumps dot the hillside. Parts of protected forest have been slashed, exposing the path of a 20-mile highway to the new airport in Mexico City that is demolishing swaths of Mr. García's indigenous community in its wake.
Mr. García and his neighbors fighting it say they never really stood a chance. After all, they are not battling ordinary construction crews. They are taking on a businessman so well connected that Mexicans have long called him the president's "favorite contractor."After years of demonstrations and court battles, President Enrique Peña Nieto signed an executive order this month expropriating 91 acres of what many here consider sacred land. And is it any wonder he did, residents argue. The same contractor carving through their land has held the title to the president's family mansion, provided a house to the finance minister for zero profit and does billions of dollars in deals with the government.
"We knew the president's political grip in this state goes back for years and years," Mr. García said. "We just didn't know it would end up affecting us directly, so badly."
Mr. Peña Nieto's relationship with the contractor is one of several recent scandals that have raised tough questions for the president, tainting his legacy and further eroding the public's already shaky faith in the country's governing institutions.
All around Mexico, people are busy debating another blow to the administration: how one of the world's most notorious drug lords, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, managed to sneak out of a maximum-security prison this month by building a mile-long tunnel right under the nose of the authorities. How was that possible without the help of someone in power, many Mexicans are asking.
Residents in the path of the highway say their battle against the government raises troubling questions, too. How did a friend of the president's who started out selling office supplies like Post-it notes wind up running an empire that collects billions of dollars in government contracts, getting the green light to pave through a protected forest and winning bids to build hospitals and trains?
The president and his inner circle have not been charged with any wrongdoing in either case. The findings of a government inquiry into the president's family mansion are imminent. A separate investigation is examining Mr. Guzmán's escape.
But while the two cases have important differences, they have caused widespread frustration, tapping into a broad sentiment that despite Mr. Peña Nieto's claims that Mexico and his Institutional Revolutionary Party have changed, some of the country's most fundamental problems have not.
"It's evident that this issue with El Chapo and the issue of the contracts is the same: corruption," said Manuel Huerta, an opposition congressman who wrote a book detailing the contracts. "It shows the incompetence, impunity and corruption of this government."
The company building the highway is owned by Juan Armando Hinojosa Cantú, a government contractor with close ties to the president that date back to when Mr. Peña Nieto was an ambitious young aide in the State of Mexico.
Newly obtained records show that Mr. Hinojosa's companies and its affiliates have secured at least $2.8 billion in business with government agencies, through more than 80 contracts, which opposition legislators and other critics contend are the result of a decades-long relationship between the two men.
Mr. Hinojosa's close ties with Mr. Peña Nieto were a source of contention even before local journalists discovered late last year that the president and his wife were buying a 15,000-square-foot house that Mr. Hinojosa had built to their specifications on unusually favorable terms.
The first lady, a former soap opera star, said she was purchasing the house on credit for $4 million. Mr. Peña Nieto also used a second home owned by one of Mr. Hinojosa's companies as an office during his presidential campaign and before he took office in 2012.
After a torrent of accusations that the president and his finance minister, Luis Videgaray, were receiving special favors from a contractor who wins lucrative government deals, Mr. Peña Nieto defended himself, saying there was no conflict of interest. The first lady, Angélica Rivera, has said that she paid off nearly a third of the house with her own money, and that she would sell her rights to the purchase.
Still, the president acknowledged "that the allegations have generated the appearance of something improper." He then named one of the finance minister's longtime friends to investigate, causing more consternation among critics.
Mr. Peña Nieto canceled a government contract for a $3.7 billion train, a signature project being built by a consortium that included one of Mr. Hinojosa's companies.
But other major deals involving Mr. Hinojosa have continued, including the highway, the cost of which was originally expected to be $132 million but has swelled to $207 million, budget records show. Beyond that, Mr. Hinojosa's companies have won a $74 million no-bid contract to renovate the presidential airplane hangar; a $104 million road-widening project that has grown to $127 million; and a 37 percent stake in an enormous aqueduct plan to bring water to Monterrey.
The aqueduct deal has become particularly contentious. One of the companies involved confirmed that the project is expected to cost $3.5 billion in construction, maintenance and operations over 30 years. Under those terms, Mr. Hinojosa's share comes close to $1.3 billion.
Only collusion between the federal government and its contractors could explain such a soaring price tag, contended Jaime Rodríguez, the governor-elect of Nuevo León, where the aqueduct will be built. He is vowing to kill the deal, adding to the chorus of complaints about the president and his corporate partners.
"The president has said he does not meddle in contracts, and that he did not participate in the request for bids," said Haydeé Pérez, the executive director of Fundar, a research group in Mexico City. "That is not true: If he can verbally cancel a contract when there is no institutional mechanism for that, then he is also able to deliver those contracts."
Mr. Peña Nieto's office declined to answer questions about his relationship with the contractor, citing the investigation that the "president ordered to be carried out, with the objective to not influence the direction or hinder its course."
The finance minister did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the head of Mr. Peña Nieto's party or the state agency in charge of the highway project. Mr. Hinojosa's personal assistant said he was "too busy" to respond.
Mexican legislators and officials said that the contracts awarded to Mr. Hinojosa's various companies over the years, including his conglomerate known as Grupo Higa, cover a wide array of enterprises, spanning asphalt, publicity, construction, air transport, concrete, real estate and highways.
Despite his tremendous influence, Mr. Hinojosa remains something of an enigma. He has never spoken publicly about the home he built for the president and his wife, even though the arrangement was first reported eight months ago.
By all accounts, Mr. Hinojosa, a native of the State of Tamaulipas, arrived in the State of Mexico, Mr. Peña Nieto's home state, in the 1980s. He got small contracts for government printing and publicity projects, making inroads with the tightknit political clan that the president, his party and some of his relatives have built to maintain a grip on power, jobs and business deals in the state for generations.
In 2000, Mr. Hinojosa gave tens of thousands of dollars in a donation to Mr. Peña Nieto's powerful party, known as the PRI, records show. His companies eventually billed the government for everything from stoves to gentleman's shirts, according to records on government transparency websites.
The business relationship started under the state's former governor, Arturo Montiel. And it blossomed under his young, ambitious protégé — Mr. Peña Nieto — who began as the governor's private secretary and later occupied state cabinet positions with access to influence contracts.
"There was evidence that the power that Grupo Higa had descended from Peña Nieto, but nobody wanted to see it," said Francisco Cruz, who has written several books about the president and his influential friends. "In 2011, I asked for all the contracts his company had just in the State of Mexico, and they added up to 23 billion pesos," or about $1.8 billion at the time.
Some of the most disputed projects happened after Mr. Peña Nieto became governor of the State of Mexico in 2005. One of Mr. Hinojosa's companies built a $509 million hospital that cost several times as much as other new hospitals in the country. Another big project in which he had a major stake — a performing arts center — was built in such a far-flung location that it was criticized as a white elephant.
Other contractors balked, saying they were getting shut out of public projects.
"Juan Armando Hinojosa arrived here with nothing; it seemed like he became a millionaire in a matter of days," said José Altamirano, a former government official who is now representing construction firms with legal disputes against the government.
When Mr. Peña Nieto ran for president, one of Mr. Hinojosa's companies ferried him around in a helicopter free, the Mexican news media reported. The president was also widely reported to have been the witness at the wedding of Mr. Hinojosa's son, also named Juan Armando. Then the junior Hinojosa died in a late-night helicopter crash three years ago, after a dinner to celebrate Mr. Peña Nieto's 46th birthday.
When Mr. Peña Nieto won the presidency, the contracts grew, including the hotly debated aqueduct.
Experts agree that it is not unusual for every presidential administration to have its favorite contractors, but they said that Mr. Hinojosa's variety of contracts and the amounts were astonishing.
"They are used to working with a little impunity," said Edna Jaime, the executive director of México Evalúa, a good-government civic organization. "They figured the way things were done in the State of Mexico could be repeated here in the capital."
Fausto Hernández, an economist at the Center for Economic Research and Education in Mexico City, said that having a conglomerate control so many government contracts generally increases the price, particularly because markups to cover up kickbacks are routine.
"The message is: It doesn't matter how talented, how innovative, how capable you are as a businessperson. The only thing that really matters is your political connections," he said.
Here in Xochicuautla, the president's eminent domain decree ordered that the community be compensated nearly $715,000. But the protests have continued, including another one this week.
"We are invisible to the Mexican State," said José Luis Fernández, 54, a construction worker who lives here.
A New York State appeals court on Wednesday denied the release of evidence presented to a Staten Island grand jury that decided not to indict a New York City police officer after the death of Eric Garner last year.
Affirming a March decision in State Supreme Court, a four-judge panel of the Appellate Division in Brooklyn ruled unanimously against releasing the information, sought by a variety of parties including the city's public advocate, the Legal Aid Society and the New York Civil Liberties Union. The panel said the secrecy that protects state grand juries trumped the arguments in favor of disclosure.
"The Supreme Court properly determined that the public interest in disclosure was outweighed by the dangers inherent in violating the secrecy of the grand jury process," three judges wrote in a majority opinion. (A fourth judge concurred with the ruling but disagreed on a side issue regarding the role of the public advocate.)
The case emerged out of Mr. Garner's death on July 17, 2014, and the subsequent grand jury decision in December not to indict the officer, Daniel Pantaleo, who used a chokehold — banned by Police Department rules — on Mr. Garner. The Staten Island district attorney sought a limited release of information, such as the number of witnesses; the district attorney's office has since fought against releasing transcripts and other evidence.
The grand jury's decision set off weeks of protests over the killing of unarmed black men by police officers, and prompted calls for reform of the grand jury process, which rarely results in indictments against officers.
The appeals court found in the Garner case that the independence of the grand jury process, as well as the "very real or potential danger that disclosure might present" to the grand jurors and witnesses "all militate in favor of maintaining grand jury secrecy." The court also found that releasing records could "negatively interfere" with the federal investigation into Mr. Garner's death.
The New York Civil Liberties Union, the Legal Aid Society and New York's public advocate said they planned to appeal.
During the recession near the end of the last decade, many young adults facing a dreadful job market moved in with their parents to save money.
Now, jobs may be more plentiful and the economy has improved, but many members of the millennial generation have yet to leave the nest, according to a new study. In fact, even more of them are living at home now.
An analysis of census data by the Pew Research Center has found that 18- to 34-year-olds are less likely to be living apart from family members than they were even during the depths of the recent recession, the worst economic downturn since the 1930s.
"Young adults were the age group that was hardest hit by the Great Recession," said Richard Fry, a senior researcher at Pew. "They're not fully healed from the damages."In 2010, according to the study, 69 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds lived independently. During the first four months of this year, just 67 percent of that same age group was living independently. From 2010 to April 2015, the share of young adults living in their parents' homes has increased to 26 percent from 24 percent, the study said.
In terms of sheer numbers, there are more young adults today than when the recession hit: The 18- to 34-year-old population has grown by nearly three million since 2007. But the number of them heading their own households has not increased, the study said.
In the meantime, the national unemployment rate for young adults declined to 7.7 percent in the first four months of this year, down from 12.4 percent in 2010. While people with college degrees are more inclined to secure higher-paying jobs, the study found that even college-educated young adults were more likely to live with their families today than in 2010.
Many housing analysts have been counting on young people to help lift the still-restrained housing market by buying their own condos or houses, moving out of rental apartments or their family home.
Homeownership in America is at its lowest point since 1967, at 63.4 percent, according to government data reported this week. Home sales are clearly on the rebound, but they remain lower than before the recession despite the increased population. One of the main reasons is that not as many people are entering the pipeline as first-time home buyers.
"We need the millennials to start leaving their parents' homes and start out on their own for the housing market to normalize," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. "This is going to be a problem if it continues."
Mr. Zandi said he was optimistic that young adults would set out on their own eventually and noted that his analysis of other sets of data showed this slowly starting to happen. "My sense is that millennials are forming households," he said, "but this is going almost entirely into rentals."
But rents are rising, particularly in popular cities like San Francisco, Denver and New York, and there are fewer apartments on the market. Vacancy rates recently hit their lowest level in 30 years.
For young people moving into apartments, these higher costs limit spending elsewhere and make it harder to save for a down payment for a future home.
From 2003 to 2013, the share of renters 25 to 34 who had so-called cost burdens — meaning they spent more than 30 percent of their incomes on housing — increased to 46 percent from 40 percent, according to a report released last month by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard. The share that spent more than half their income on housing also increased, to 23 percent from 19 percent.During roughly the same period, the share of renters in that same age group with student loan debt jumped to 41 percent in 2013 from 30 percent in 2004, with the average amount of debt up 50 percent, to $30,700, the Harvard report said.
Some economists say that higher student debt loads may be partly to blame for so many young adults living at home. A staff report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in November concluded: "A substantial portion of the persistent increase in co-residence with parents among recent youth cohorts can be explained by increasing student debt balances."
The Pew study identified another group finding it hard to leave home: people 25 to 34 without any formal education beyond high school. They may not have heavy student debts but they are also the ones facing the greatest difficulties in the job market.
Regardless of the reasons, the living-at-home phenomenon seems to be growing as an accepted part of popular culture. The dating site Match.com offers tips on maintaining a social life while living at home with an article titled, "Dating at Mom and Dad's House."
Other sites offer T-shirts, in both newborn and grown-up sizes, that say, "I still live with my parents." Blog posts from millennials discussing living at home abound.
Clarissa Wei, 24, moved into her parents' home in Arcadia, Calif., just over a year ago after quitting her full-time job to become a freelance food and travel writer. Her main reason for moving back? "Money," she said.
The house is big enough that she does not feel cramped by her parents, and it allows her to pursue her adventures, serving as a base for travel overseas from time to time. She said she was not sure how long she would stay at her parents' house.
"I haven't really thought about it that far ahead," Ms. Wei said.
They began as workaday interactions between the police and the public, often involving minor traffic stops in places like Cincinnati; North Charleston, S.C.; and Waller County, Tex. But they swiftly escalated into violent encounters. And all were captured on video.
Those videos, all involving white officers and black civilians, have become ingrained in the nation's consciousness — to many people, as evidence of bad police conduct. And while they represent just a tiny fraction of police behavior — those that show respectful, peaceful interactions do not make the 24-hour cable news — they have begun to alter public views of police use of force and race relations, experts and police officials say.Videos have provided "corroboration of what African-Americans have been saying for years," said Paul Butler, a professor at Georgetown University Law School and a former prosecutor, who called them "the C-Span of the streets." On Thursday, the family of Samuel DuBose, an unarmed black man who was shot to death by a University of Cincinnati police officer on July 19, said the officer would never have been prosecuted if his actions had not been captured by the body camera the officer was wearing.
To the police, that poses a new challenge in trying to regain public confidence. "Every time I think maybe we're past this and we can start rebuilding, it seems another incident occurs that inflames public outrage," said James Pasco, the executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police. "Police officers literally have millions of contacts with citizens every day, and in the vast majority of those interactions, there is no claim of wrongdoing, but that's not news."
Some polling bolsters such concerns. In a Gallup national survey conducted in June, 52 percent of people said they had "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the police, down from 57 percent two years earlier, and 64 percent in 2004. In 2007, 37 percent of Americans had high confidence that their local police would treat blacks and whites equally, the Pew Research Center found, but last year that was down to 30 percent.
At the same time, video may be changing the way prosecutors handle cases in which the police are accused of misconduct. Not only can video contradict an officer's account of what happened, it can also create immense public pressure for action against officers.
Such was the case with fatal police shootings in North Charleston and Cincinnati, and with the arrest in Baltimore of Freddie Gray, who died of injuries he sustained while in police custody. In all three cases, prosecutors brought rare murder charges against officers within days — remarkable speed for a process that in the past could take weeks or months. Those swift actions have been applauded by many African-Americans.
But some prosecutors have raised concerns that the public outcry generated by video can also put pressure on prosecutors to file charges. "We don't want to rush to judgment simply because of what the video shows," said Peter Weir, the district attorney for Jefferson and Gilpin counties in Colorado, who says he believes police body cameras enhance public trust in the system.
In the Cincinnati case, video from a camera worn by a University of Cincinnati police officer, Ray Tensing, provided crucial evidence, and contradicted the officer's official account, in the July 19 shooting death of Mr. DuBose. A grand jury indicted Mr. Tensing, who was fired by the university police department on Wednesday, on charges of murder and manslaughter. He pleaded not guilty on Thursday in Hamilton County Municipal Court, and Judge Megan E. Shanahan set his bail at $1 million.
Mr. Tensing later made bail and was released.
There are no definitive figures, but officials say that most police forces do not use body cameras, or use them on a very limited basis. But according to a 2013 survey by the Police Executive Research Forum, a research group, about one in four of its member forces regularly used body cameras. And the number is rising quickly as the federal government provides grants for cameras, said Lindsay Miller, a senior research associate at the group.
San Diego has equipped hundreds of its police officers with cameras and is expanding that program, and Los Angeles recently decided to put cameras on all of its patrol officers but has not yet done so. New York, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia and other cities have trial programs.
Dashboard cameras are far more prevalent — more so among state police and highway patrol forces than among local police forces — but experts say they know of no national tally of those, either.
Yet despite the growing use of police video cameras, evidence is mixed about what effect they are having on police behavior. Experts say that cameras probably change for the better how the police and the public treat each other, but they do not know how much. And the fact that one viral video after another surfaces, showing officers treating civilians harshly, demonstrates the limits of that change.
Recent studies showed that when officers in Rialto, Calif., and in Mesa, Ariz., wore body cameras, complaints against the police fell sharply. But body camera advocates and skeptics alike say they do not know how much that reflects a real decline in police misconduct, and how much was a drop in spurious civilian complaints; it may be that both groups behave better when they are on camera.
"Over all, body cameras and dashboard cams deter police misconduct, but at this point, it's hard to know how much, and there are officers whose behavior is not going to be changed," Professor Butler said.The proliferation of video has coincided with a paradox: Public views of the police have grown worse, yet experts say police use of force has probably been lower in the last few years than in generations. (There is, however, no precise accounting of the number of people killed by police officers each year.)
Polls show overwhelming public support for police body cameras — 92 percent in a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted April 30 to May 3. But law enforcement officials warn against unrealistic expectations of a simple transition that will provide a kind of impartial witness to every interaction.
Routine use of cameras raises multiple questions for police departments: how to pay for them, how much discretion to give officers in turning cameras on and off, how long to store recordings, when to make them public, and how to safeguard the privacy of people, like crime victims, who might turn up on video.
"The benefit of being able to hold police accountable in many situations where they are now largely immune is probably worth the cost alone," said Jonathan Simon, the director of the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the University of California, Berkeley. "But even more so when you consider how often the same cameras will provide damning evidence against criminal suspects as well."
Police commanders and prosecutors generally support camera use, arguing that they provide useful evidence, and will usually show the officers conducting themselves professionally. Views among officers and the unions representing them are more mixed, varying from place to place.
"A negative is that police might say, 'We just won't put ourselves in bad situations,' that they say, 'We are not going to jeopardize our lives because if we make a good-faith mistake, it is going to look like a crime, and we're going to get prosecuted for murder,' " said Francis T. Cullen, a professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati.
Another drawback, experts say, is that the public may have too much faith in video. It can give an incomplete, even misleading, picture, they say, and it cannot really put the viewer in the shoes of an officer having to make split-second decisions under pressure.
"Body cameras are helpful, but they are not the magic elixir," said Sim Gill, the district attorney of Salt Lake County, Utah. "What a camera sees is not necessarily what the officer sees. It's not always going to be conclusive."
CINCINNATI — Terina DuBose Allen had just gotten out of the shower when she answered the phone. It was her brother Aubrey DuBose.
Aubrey warned Terina, "You need to sit down."
"I'm not sitting down," Terina responded, sensing something wrong, and worrying maybe something had happened to their mother.
Aubrey said, "Sam is dead."
Terina recalled to me over lunch Thursday in downtown Cincinnati, "I just screamed," and she said she dropped to the floor. "Everything in my body went numb." She continued, "I couldn't get off the floor for three hours."
Samuel DuBose was her brother, the second of five siblings. Terina is the oldest. Sam — no one called him Samuel, Terina explained — was a 43-year-old, unarmed Cincinnati man shot in the head and killed on July 19 by a University of Cincinnati police officer, Ray Tensing.Terina struggled to explain the enormity of her and her family's loss and her reaction to it: "I broke down because we had just lost a really good person, a person in the universe who always had your back."
I spent much of the day Thursday with the DuBose family, "embedded," as their lawyers called it. I went with them as they made the media rounds; I sat with them in the courtroom during the arraignment as they saw the man who killed Sam in the flesh for the first time; I ate with them; I was there when they laughed and when they cried uncontrollably in a hotel hallway. Grief comes in waves that keep crashing to shore.
I have had the honor and the solemn duty to be around many families with similar losses in the last couple of years, and there is something of an unsettling sameness: The feeling of being thrust into a harsh spotlight when you'd rather quietly grieve; being motivated by a sense of mission to fight for the person who is lost, all the while emotionally and physically running on empty; resisting the pull of a world trying desperately to reduce the man or woman you loved into a martyr it can champion or, conversely, a menace it can despise.
Tensing's lawyer, Stew Mathews, said of Tensing: "He's devastated by this, as is his family, and he is currently lodged in the Hamilton County Justice Center."
Actually, if you want to see devastation, look no further than the DuBose family. As Terina said at the courthouse, "I wish my brother was in jail and not dead."
But in addition to the staggering sense of loss is also a steel-spined determination, and no one in that family typifies that more than Terina. She has emerged as something of a spokeswoman and a warrior.
As she spoke to one of the lawyers on the sidewalk, I heard a man say over my shoulder, "She's strong as hell," to which a woman responded, "She's my new idol."
For instance, she has become a strong advocate for body cameras, although they are not perfect solutions. As she put it, in her brother's case, they didn't prevent the crime, but they prevented the cover-up.
Terina's sister, Cleshawn DuBose, said of her: "We call her 'Get-Right-Terina.'"
I got the sense of that statement immediately: If you were in the wrong, Terina would get you right.
Terina, who said she holds a graduate degree in strategic leadership and owns her own corporate consulting company, wanted to correct some of the "lies" about her brother.
According to both sisters, Sam wasn't violent, and he wasn't a heavy drinker. But, Terina said, "he wasn't a monk" either.As Terina said, "I'm trying to give you the real." Cleshawn chimed in, "We don't want Sam to be misrepresented." Terina added, "for the better or the worse."
Terina summed it up: Sam had been arrested dozens of times on traffic violations. Also, he smoked marijuana, and had years ago served time for selling it.
But as Terina put it, "That was the worst of it."
Not only are none of those reasons to kill a man, or to say that he "deserved it," none of those reasons have anything whatsoever to do with the incident that led to Sam's death.
Sam was a human being — a man, a son, a brother and a father. "Sam was loved and Sam loved, hard," Terina said.
Midway through the day, Sam's mother, Audrey DuBose, joined the rest of the family on their rounds.
She was visibly drained, but still spiritually moored. She insisted that Terina and Cleshawn pray with her during one of our car rides: "We need to pray; we need the strength."
I noticed the way she drew long breaths, the way the water in the bottle she was holding vibrated because her hand was trembling, the way she closed her eyes for long stretches, even when talking. It was the familiar fatigue that hangs on the mothers of killed children.
She confessed to me in a quiet moment: "All I want to do is just shut my door and cover up and never open it again."
That is what devastation feels like.
WASHINGTON — U.S. wages and benefits grew in the spring at the slowest pace in 33 years, stark evidence that stronger hiring isn't lifting paychecks much for most Americans. The slowdown also likely reflects a sharp drop-off in bonus and incentive pay for some workers.
The employment cost index rose just 0.2 percent in the April-June quarter after a 0.7 increase in the first quarter, the Labor Department said Friday. The index tracks wages, salaries and benefits. Wages and salaries alone also rose 0.2 percent.
Both measures recorded the smallest quarterly gains since the second quarter of 1982.
Salaries and benefits for private sector workers were unchanged, the weakest showing since the government began tracking the data in 1980.
The disappointing figures come after the index had been pointing to a pickup in wage growth after nearly two years of steady hiring. The index rose just 2 percent in the second quarter compared with a year earlier. That is down from a 2.6 percent increase in the first quarter, which was the biggest in six and a half years.
The slowdown suggests that companies are still able to find the workers they need without boosting pay, a sign the job market is not yet back to full health. That could cause some Federal Reserve officials to push for a delay in any increase in the short-term interest rate they control.
"Despite a tighter labor market, and all of the stories about pay increases at various large firms, wage growth is not picking up meaningfully," said Jennifer Lee, an economist at BMO Capital Markets. "This may not sit well with (Fed) policymakers."
Employers have added nearly 3 million jobs in the past year, lowering the unemployment rate to 5.3 percent in June, down from 6.1 percent 12 months earlier. Most economists have expected those gains to force businesses to raise pay to attract and keep employees.
The Federal Reserve watches the employment cost index closely for signs that healthy hiring is pushing up wages. Strong increases could lead companies to raise prices for their goods to cover higher labor costs, boosting inflation. That would make the Fed more likely to raise the short-term interest rate it controls. Consumer prices have been tame in the past year, though in recent months they have moved higher.
In some occupations where bonuses are common, compensation fell sharply after spiking in the first quarter. Those include sales, professional services such as law and accounting, and management.
The employment cost index figures now match the sluggish pace of growth reported in the average hourly pay data that's part of the monthly jobs report. Average hourly wages were up just 2 percent in June from a year earlier, the Labor Department said earlier this month.
Yet another measure of pay, compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, shows wages are accelerating. Hourly pay for a typical employee rose 3.2 percent in June from 12 months earlier, according to the Atlanta Fed. While that is double the annual pace of 1.6 percent in February 2010, it is still below the pre-recession levels of about 4 percent.
Posted by Bonnie Weinstein at 10:21 AM


text:
Q: PHP How to insert multiple checkbox value into database UPDATE -
Problem has been solved due to a typo mistake at $param_keyword
I have created a form which accepts multiple checkbox value to insert to the database. My database connection is working fine i can insert name, but not checkboxes. I am not sure where the problem is because there is no error and i can see the string of the checkboxes.
After clicking the submit button, i print the keywordArr to see the values:
housekeeping,chemical and dangerous material Something went wrong. Please try again later.
PHP Query
<?php
require_once("includes/dbConfig.php");

// get input when form is submitted, using the clean functon to clean inputs
if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") {

//name validation
if (empty(clean($_POST["name"]))) {
    $nameErr = "Name is required";
} else {
    $name = clean($_POST["name"]);
    // check if name only contains letters and whitespace
    if (!preg_match("/^[a-zA-Z ]*$/", $name)) {
        $nameErr = "Only letters and white space allowed";
    }
}

$keyword = $_POST["keyword"];
echo $keywordArr = implode(",", $keyword);

// check input erros before inserting in database
if (empty($nameErr)) {

    // Prepare a INSERT statement
    $sql = "INSERT INTO site (name,keyword) VALUES (?,?)";

    if ($stmt = mysqli_prepare($conn, $sql)) {
        // Bind variables to the prepared statement as parameters
        mysqli_stmt_bind_param($stmt, "ss", $param_name, $param_keyword);

        // Set parameters
        //$param_id = $id;
        $param_name = $name;
        $parm_keyword = $keywordArr;

        if (mysqli_stmt_execute($stmt)) {

            // Alert to redirect
            echo ("");
        } else {
            echo "Something went wrong. Please try again later.";
        }
    }
    // Close statement
    mysqli_stmt_close($stmt);
    }
    // Close connection
    mysqli_close($conn);
}
?>

HTML Form
<form method="post" action="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]); ?>">

<input type="checkbox" class="custom-control-input" id="customCheck1"
value="housekeeping" name="keyword[]">
Housekeeping

<input type="checkbox" class="custom-control-input" id="customCheck2"
value="procedure" name="keyword[]">
Procedure (PTW,JSA,
Inspection)

<input type="checkbox" class="custom-control-input" id="customCheck3"
value="chemical and dangerous material" name="keyword[]">
Chemical & Dangerous
Material

<input type="checkbox" class="custom-control-input" id="customCheck4"
value="confined space" name="keyword[]">
Confined
Space

<input type="checkbox" class="custom-control-input" id="customCheck5"
value="scaffolding" name="keyword[]">
Scaffolding

<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

A: The name of the checkboxes could be different as they are not radio button for each of the input tag.Then in your PHP file get each value using $_POST["keyword1"],$_POST["keyword2"] and so on then check if it is selected by the following code
If($_POST["keyword1"]=='on'){
// Your Code
}

Similarly check for each checkbox create whatever string you want and insert it into DB.

A: I will be deleting this post as it was a typo mistake here $param_keyword
As i am unable to delete the post, this problem has already been solved and the insertion of values into database works well

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