Civil Rights & Justice

Help "7 Billion" go viral by Tweeting and reposting on FB and with a message about how a woman in your life has inspired you.

"7 Billion" reflects not only a message of global unity for environmental and social justice, but also acknowledges the struggle and everyday commitment their very own mothers and mothers around the world make to improve the lives of others.

On the Black Agenda Report website Jemima Pierre writes:

Clearly, and methodically, “the US government is preparing for domestic insurrection.”

.... In only three years, the Obama administration and its enablers have established, legitimized, and normalized a national security state apparatus that removes any doubt that domestic policing is a prelude to a totalitarian police state. This apparatus has surpassed the Bush administration’s attempts to expand executive power by crushing the civil liberties of US citizens. And it has done so boldly, with only a few prominent critics, and without so much as a whimper from so-called leftists.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, a physician and public health advocate:

“A win/win solution is within reach if we can just shake off the Bush/Obama past and embrace a rational, effective drug policy for the 21st century.”

At the 420 rally in Denver, Colorado, Dr. Stein addressed tens of thousands of marijuana reform advocates. Dr. Stein declared that one of her first actions as President would be to "order the DEA and the Justice Department to cease and desist all attempts to harass or prosecute medical marijuana clinics or other legitimate marijuana-related businesses that are operating under state laws."

Stein asserted that hundreds of thousands of patients who suffer from chronic pain and cancers are benefitting from medical marijuana. It has been deemed legal in 13 states.

Stein criticized Michele Leonhart, a Bush appointee who Obama has promoted to head of the DEA. Leonhart has been behind the “overzealous” attacks on medical marijuana.

The 190-page UC Davis Pepper Spray Report released at noon Wednesday concluded that the incident shouldn’t have taken place – and questions why pepper spray was used on students peacefully protesting in the student quad last November.

“The overriding conclusion can be stated briefly and explicitly. The pepper spraying incident that took place on November 18, 2011 should and could have been prevented,” the report stated.

In the immediate aftermath of the UC Davis incident, University of California President Mark G. Yudof announced the appointment of former California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso to chair the 12-member Task Force that released the report today.

The report blasted the breakdown in communication that occurred between Chancellor Linda Katehi, Police Chief Annette Spicuzza, and police officers throughout the pepper spray incident.

The report said Katehi failed "to express in any meaningful way her expectation that the police operation was to be sharply limited so that no use of force would be employed by police officers other than their demand that the tents be taken down."

The following are provocative excerpts from two columnists of Black Agenda Report calling out Obama and the black political class for not doing right on behalf of black Americans and, in particular, not being seriously committed to finding real justice and reform for such tragic cases as Trayvon Martin’s.

Margaret Kimberley in Freedom Rider: Obama and Trayvon Martin:

So Obama does what he has been doing for years now. He is the black but not so black man, and all black people are worse off because of his success. If there is justice for Trayvon it will be in spite of Barack Obama, not because of him.

snip

The “master of marketing and fakery” was compelled by circumstances to appear concerned about his least favored people: young Black males and their families. President Obama’s most loyal constituents, who usually ask nothing of him, were demanding both an emotional and a substantive response to the Trayvon Martin killing. This was “all very problematic for the president, whose political success is the result of distancing himself from black people at best, and vilifying them at his worst moments.”

"A Song for Trayvon" - Lyrics by Jasiri X
(based on "No Church in the Wild" by Jay-Z & Kanye West)

Lawrence Lessig & Jack Abramoff

Jack Abramoff is a former lobbyist who pleaded guilty in 2006 to charges of fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy to bribe public officials. Abramoff also worked as businessman, movie producer and writer. Abramoff's lobbying and the scandals and investigation are featured in a documentary movie "Casino Jack and the United States of Money" and a political satire movie titled "Casino Jack".

Lawrence Lessig is a law professor at Harvard. He has been the lead counsel in important cases concerning copyright laws for digital content. His current work concerns institutional corruption.
Source: Lawrence Lessig interviews Jack Abramoff

Play Program or Download(below the fold)

Legal Experts Destroy Rationale for Obama’s Assassination Policy … And Slam Democrats for Supporting It

Obama Expanding Program Started by Cheney

Attorney General Eric Holder announced at Northwestern University law school that the U.S. can assassinate U.S. citizens without any without disclosure of why they are even alleged to be baddies and without any review of any nature whatsoever by any judge, Congress or the American people.

Northwestern University’s law school professor Joseph Margulies said:

I defy anyone to read [Holder's] speech and show any differences between Obama and Bush on these issues, They both say we are in a war not confined to particular battlefield. … Both say we can target citizens without judicial oversight and that can happen anywhere in the world.

Columbia law school professor Scott Horton notes that this assassination strategy was created by Dick Cheney, and is being carried out by the Obama administration:

A lot of this seems to have been put in place under the tutelage of Dick Cheney. So here we see one of Dick Cheney’s ideas being ratified by Barack Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder.

The inevitable lawsuit contesting the brutal pepper spraying of UC Davis students last fall was filed on Wednesday, February 22.

Seventeen students and two recent graduates, represented by the ACLU of Northern California and cooperating attorneys, filed a federal lawsuit against UC Davis over the University’s treatment of protesters during a November 18 demonstration.

In a now-famous video that went viral on the internet, University police were caught dousing seated protesters with pepper spray. The video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4&utm_source=General&utm_campaign=f6cc05a348-Daily_Update_11_20_2011&utm_medium=email) has become a symbol of the police brutality imposed upon Occupy Wall Street protesters by police forces throughout the country in a national crackdown coordinated with the Department of Homeland Security and other federal law enforcement agencies.

Occupy Sacramento lawyers announced Friday afternoon they were "not surprised" UC Davis students arrested in the infamous "pepper spraying incident" in November were not charged by the Yolo County District Attorney - and they emphasized that it's time the police officers at UC Davis are prosecuted.

District Attorney Jeff Reisig announced today that there was "insufficient information" contained within the police reports submitted by the UC Davis Police Department to justify the filing of criminal charges against those individuals arrested during the November 18, 2011, confrontation with UC Davis Police during the “Occupy UC Davis” protest.

"Based on this determination the District Attorney will not be filing charges against the protesters," according to Reisig. "The District Attorney’s examination into the pepper spraying of the protesters is ongoing."

Jeff Kravitz, one of the many pro bono/volunteer lawyers working with Occupy Sacramento, said today's announcement by the Yolo County District Attorney follows a pattern of county DAs refusing to prosecute after arrests by police at Occupy events, including those in Sacramento.

"I am not surprised at all," said Kravitz. "These are peaceful, nonviolent demonstrators. In Sacramento, we have veterans, workers and students defending the First Amendment and being arrested. None of them should be prosecuted."

In the latest episode in the wave of police repression by the City of Sacramento against the Occupy Movement, Occupy Sacramento lawyers say that the City is using a “grudge vendetta” to find defendants guilty without trial, violating due process rights that are guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.

Lawyers for Occupy defendants – who had criminal charges dismissed in December – on January 5 made public a new, unconstitutional scheme by the City of Sacramento to penalize the same defendants without a trial and due process rights. This has NEVER been done before, according to the dozens of Occupy lawyers who specialize in criminal, civil and constitutional law.

The City is using “administrative penalties” to “convict” the same defendants whose misdemeanor criminal charges were dismissed “in the interest of justice” by the City the day before criminal trials were set to begin in December. Now the City is finding them guilty without a trial, according to Cres Vellucci, Occupy Sacramento spokesman.

Posted by Amanda Simon, ACLU Blog of Rights

President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) today, allowing indefinite detention to be codified into law. As you know, the White House had threatened to veto an earlier version of the NDAA but reversed course shortly before Congress voted on the final bill. While President Obama issued a signing statement saying he had “serious reservations” about the provisions, the statement only applies to how his administration would use it and would not affect how the law is interpreted by subsequent administrations.

The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.

Under the Bush administration, similar claims of worldwide detention authority were used to hold even a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil in military custody, and many in Congress now assert that the NDAA should be used in the same way again. The ACLU believes that any military detention of American citizens or others within the United States is unconstitutional and illegal, including under the NDAA. In addition, the breadth of the NDAA’s detention authority violates international law because it is not limited to people captured in the context of an actual armed conflict as required by the laws of war.