Category: Advocacy

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23 yo is handcuffed, shot, sat on by police until he becomes late


Sad day for the United States as a young Los Angeles man is shamefully murdered by two police who shoot him repeatedly after handcuffing him, then sit on him while he writhes in pain crying for help until he ascends to meet his ancestors. In his lust to kill 23 year old Noel Aguilar, one of the policeman shoots his partner.

A bystander captured the whole episode on video but be warned: it is graphic, sad and extremely disturbing.

May the blessings of God cover us all in holy light and peace. Please Lord, bring comfort to the soul and family of Noel and enfold them in your loving embrace. With God’s help, let us act to end the violence raging out of control in the beautiful world that is His gift to us. read more

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Must watch: black South Africans speak against the false labeling of Israel as an apartheid state (video)

misusing apartheid to delegitimize Israel
Source: Israel Collective’s “Israel and South African Apartheid” video
Black South Africans speak out against the false labeling of Israel as an apartheid state. Olga Meshoe, CEO of DESHI International puts it wonderfully:

When I hear that Israel is an apartheid state … depending on the mood I’m in I either pack out laughing or I get really, really angry. Because it’s an absolute lie … To incite violence and encourage the destruction of a people just because you don’t like them, that’s disgusting. You are making what our parents went through – you’re making the struggle – a mockery… read more

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List of safe Big Box companies that don’t let armed people through the door

Kroger-Moms-Demand-Action-1
Courtesy: Moms Demand Action
I’m not much for supporting Big Box companies. I also don’t shop for a hobby – or even window shop, and I can count on my fingers the number of times in a decade that I set foot in a mall. But I do occasionally shop in a grocery store or watch a movie, so this list is useful even for me. Because I’d rather support a business any day that’s serious about keeping patrons safe, than one that enables “armed creeps”. Wouldn’t you?

Charlie Self, who composed the list, says: read more

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Release of video showing 17 yo Laquan being killed have Chicago police all jittery

Chi police on high alert pending shooting video release
Facebook post by Cynthia OneDay Flood
Facebook wouldn’t let me share Cynthia Flood‘s post about Chicago police gearing up for a high-alert, increased police presence in readiness for today’s release of the patrol car dashboard cam video footage of 17 year old Laquan McDonald being fatally shot 16 times by a police officer on 20 October 2014. A judge ordered the video to be released by Wednesday.

Poor boy. He was apparently high on PCP but exhibited no violent behaviour.

The officer who mercilessly and without provocation executed Laquan is being charged with murder. I wish for Laquan’s mother, family, friends and community – peace, comfort and healing. read more

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Herramienta para combatir a los rumores, racismo y el perjuicio contra los inmigrantes

proyecto antirumores
Fuente: antirumores.com
Los nuevos inmigrantes afrentan el desafío significante de establecer nuevas vidas en un país extraño. Tampoco puede ser fácil para los residentes indígenas a acomodar no sólo un influjo de estranjeros y sus necesidades sino también aceptar a sus diferencias en costumbre, ideología y perspectivo.

De todas maneras, la asimilación de nuevos inmigrantes se hace mucho más fácil cuando los retos que cada grupo social afrenta son retos prácticos y no miedos basados en el rumor.

Antirumores Getxo read more

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Exonerees robbed in prison of decades of their lives now work to free others

true-conviction film
True Conviction Film
After watching the “True Conviction” trailer I put my head down on my desk and cried. What a terrible story – wrongfully convicted men exonerated after decades in jail, having lost the chance to raise and help their children – and to develop as members of society. This nightmare juxtaposed by the love for humanity this team embodies, men who have refused to turn their backs on others wrongfully imprisoned by a brutal and oppressive penal system. They call themselves Freedom Fighters and are led by Christopher Scott. Tambay A. Obenson writes: read more

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Breaking: TPP text released – and it’s every bit as bad as we feared. Opposition surfaces.

WikiLeaks_TPP shut up and swallow
Source: Wikileaks. Shut Up and Swallow
A Citizen’s Trade Campaign email was waiting for me this morning, with the breaking news that the TPP text has finally been released:

Text for the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was finally released in the wee hours of this morning, and after years of waiting, we now know why negotiators insisted on keeping it a secret for so long. This pact is a disaster for the economy, the environment and public health.

See the full TPP text http://www.mfat.govt.nz/Treaties-and-International-Law/01-Treaties-for-which-NZ-is-Depositary/0-Trans-Pacific-Partnership.php read more

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I can’t stop crying, thinking about police brutalizing girls in classrooms. We must vote.

SC police officer brutalizes student
From video on CNN website
I just read José Luis Vilson’s piece giving his opinion on why adult complicity through inaction – sitting quietly by while big, strong, heavily armed policemen brutalize girls in school classrooms – is inexcusable. And I started crying again. This time I haven’t been able to stop, tears are running down my face as I’m writing.

Edited to add: I just learned that the assault victim is a girl who was recently orphaned.

Where did we go wrong, my friends and neighbors? I want to ask, to scream, to demand answers. How did we get to the point where we not only allow armed law enforcement officers into our children’s schools to serve as para-security guards … but beyond that point, to where we are today: where the same men who shoot pudgy grown men in the back because they failed to pay child support and band together to choke the life right out of a New Yorker for selling loose cigarettes, are let loose in our babies’ classrooms to brutalize, terrorize and humiliate them and after they do haul them off, no doubt, to lock them up in jails or detention schools or juvenile halls – to make them look the wrongdoers. read more

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The People won prison phone justice today – thanks FCC!

We won phone justice
Graphic by Jermaine Chambers
What kind of a nation would lock up 10% of its adult population long term for minor crimes like smoking a marijuana joint or stealing a jacket … and on top of that, make calling home so expensive for prisoners it became virtually impossible?

Well, that would be the United States of America – until this morning, that is, when the FCC voted to make prison calls affordable. Thank you for heading up this valuable initiative Commissioner Mignon Clyburn.

Today (Thursday, 21 October 2015), the Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to cap the rates and fees companies charge those families struggling to keep in touch with incarcerated relatives by phone. That change came as a direct result of mounting pressure from groups across the country. read more

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Ayuda grátis y de bajo costo con solicitudes de DACA

DACA 3 anos

Recursos para aplicar ó renovar su solicitud de la Acción Diferida – DACA

El programa DACA se ha expandido y algunos de las reglamentaciones se han cambiado. Aprenda más.

El primer paso para todo solicitante sería registrarse con la red nacional DACA Renewal Network. Esto es un proyecto de United We Dream, una organización fundado por jovenes indocumentados para ayudar a la comunidad de los DREAMers. El grupo brinda ayuda a nivel nacional con identificar abogados y programas que ofrecen asistencia con las solicitudes DACA grátis ó a bajo costo. También informa sobre cambios en el programa DACA y el progreso de la propuesta DREAM Act legislación. read more

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Google tracks everything you do, but you can stop them

stop spying on usGoogle tracks every place you go and records every search you make. They also store voice recordings of every interaction you have with ‘Google Now’. If you feel this is kinda creepy or just like privacy, checks out these posts and learn how to turn off Google’s tracking and delete your stored history items:

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SCOTUS to hear free speech case of Paterson PO demoted over political sign

first amendment for everyone
Art courtesy of My First Freedoms website
Paterson Police Officer Jeffrey Heffernan’s discipline case is going to the Supreme Court. The 1st Amendment provides for employees to support the political candidates of their choosing, but lower courts found that Heffernan couldn’t invoke this legal protection because he had no intention of participating in a campaign when he picked up a fallen sign that his mother wanted. He also isn’t a Paterson resident.

But still, Heffernan was demoted because city officials perceived him to be engaged in “overt involvement in a political election”. So, the heart of this matter remains free speech rights. NorthJersey.com reports: read more

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Don’t let the door smack you too hard on the way out, Traitor Duncan

Arne Duncan cartoon
Caricature Credit: DonkeyHotey
Good news today for people who care about students and the state of public education in America. As HuffPost put it: Arne Duncan Resigns Amid Legacy-Threatening Student Debt Crisis. And this summer, the Center for Media and Democracy wrote this about Duncan’s failed initiative to replace public schools with charters: Charter Program Expansion Looms Despite Probes into Mismanagement and Closed Schools.

Developer-owned charter schools are publicly funded but managed privately, without the obligation to provide any public accountability for either their teaching methods or financial expenditures. Not surprising that they’re a virtual breeding ground for a level of corruption so exaggerated that it turned GW Bush’s former Assistant Secretary of Education, Diane Ravitch, into one of the country’s leading public education advocates. read more

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Kafkaesque police capture boy & grill him for not saying his clock is a bomb

Ahmed and his clock
Photo composite courtesy wtvr.com
In a Kafka novel, a man is accused by the police of a crime that’s too top-secret for them to discuss or reveal which government department has brought charges against him – and that’s the whole novel. In a similar circumstance, 14 year old Ahmed Mohammed from Irving, Texas brings a home-made clock to school to show his engineering teacher and she accused him of making a bomb to threaten her. The police arrive to handcuff, arrest and then grill him for hours because Ahmed wouldn’t say that his clock was something other than a clock. Because it’s a clock. read more