Kasim Hafeez is a man raised in a fundamentalist Muslim household to hate Jews and Israel, who had a complete reversal of sentiment, and now loves my people. He established StandWithUs 12 years ago, an NGO that educates people around the world about why Jews and Israel are worth supporting rather than bashing.
Why the TPP’s so bad, and why you should care
No matter what we might be duking out on United States soil in regards to what that means for People of Color, women, transgender folk and whatnot .. what would our lives be like if those rights were permanently taken away from all of us, permanently .. and control over them were given not even to foreign governments, but to major corporations instead of any government at all?
Cop openly admits to stopping man for looking him in the eye
As soon as he realizes a policeman he passed is tailing him, John Felton starts his camera’s video going. Which makes it all the more incredible when the cop openly tells Felton that the main reason he tailed him looking for a reason to stop him, is that Felton made eye contact with him. Oh boy 🙁
The David Pakman Show offers good coverage and clips from the video.
From the video:
“You’ve been tailing me for how long? You just needed a reason to pull me over,” Felton says. “No disrespect, I don’t have nothing against police officers, but all this sh*t that’s going on now? That’s some scary sh*t. To have a police officer just tail you, and then you pull me over, ’cause you said I didn’t signal — what? Do you know how it looks?”
Share your opinion at POP election forum Mon Aug 24
People’s Organization For Progress (POP) will hold a community forum on Monday 24 August on “The Obama Years and the 2016 Election.” This event is sponsored by POP and Marlo’s Cocktail Lounge. The program is free and open to the public.
Chairman Lawrence Hamm extends his personal invitation:
This is a community speakout. There are no guest speakers. Anyone in attendance who wants to give an opinion on the topic will be given an opportunity to do so. All are invited. Please make every effort to attend. Thank you. Power to the people!
Today – Support NYC bill abolishing grand juries in police killing cases at press conference
This message from Lawrence Hamm of the People’s Organization for Progress. Sounds like an excellent event to support.
Friends,
Assemblyman Charles Barron is going to have a press conference tomorrow 11:30 am to announce that he is going to introduce a bill to abolish grand juries in cases that involve the killing of unarmed civilians by police in the State of New York. He has invited POP to participate. I am asking that as many members, friends and supporters of the People’s Organization For Progress as possible attend this press conference, stand with him, and show our support for this piece of progressive legislation. The press conference will take tomorrow, Monday August 17 2015, 11:30am at New York City Hall, near 250 Broadway in New York City, New York. Get there early because it takes time to get through the security at the gate of the park in which the City Hall is located. The press conference will start promptly at 12 noon. Assemblyman Barron is sponsoring this bill because too often grand juries fail to indict officers who have killed unarmed civilians when there is clear evidence of wrongdoing. Also, I am proposing that we call for the introduction of similar legislation here in New Jersey. As you know Assemblyman Barron was a strong supporter of the Million People’s March that was recently held in Newark, NJ and has been a supporter of POP over the years. Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend so I need as many of you there as possible to represent the organization and show our support. Thank you. Power To The People!!!
When police become revenue agents to keep towns fiscally solvent
The community policing model becomes completely distorted when policeman – the civil servants you’re most likely to see and interact with in the course of a normal day – are turned into revenue producing instruments by the cities they work for. When a police officer’s job depends on whether s/he can generate enough revenue to keep his employer out of bankruptcy, a lot of people are going to be unhappy. And some of those unhappy people are going to be people grievously harmed, or excessively fined, for behaviour that shouldn’t be a big deal.
POTUS will lead in reversing climate change & healing the world
Speaking via live feed from the White House today, a visionary President Obama announced his administration’s new Clean Power Plan, which has been created to reverse climate change and help heal our world of the effects of global warming. The President joined Pope Francis in calling for global citizens and industry leaders to make immediate and sweeping changes in how we live, work and do business.
“There is such a thing as too late, when it comes to climate change,” the President commented, and pointed out that 14 of the hottest years in over 100 years of recorded history have occurred in the past 15 years.
Obama at Georgetown on breaking the cycle of poverty. Real talk.
At the Georgetown University #PovertySummit President Obama made some very real comments, tying his own background to modern society’s challenges in the areas of education and social investment; access to jobs, internet, transportation; mentoring, youth, fatherhood, families and community:
I am a black man who grew up without a father, and I know the cost that I paid for that. And I also know that I have the capacity to break that cycle, and as a consequence I think that my daughters are better off … For me to have that conversation does not negate my conversation about the need for early childhood education, or the need for job training, or the need for investment in infrastructure or jobs in low-income communities…
Exploitation by the light-skinned a tradition in the Dominican Republic and Ted Cruz’ Cuba
Sen. Ted Cruz is an elitist Cuban-American, representative of Cuban plantation owners who imported and exploited African slaves for generations. A lesson plan from PBS’ Black in Latin America feature shows that by persecuting Haitians the Dominican Republic is simply following Cuba’s tradition of persecuting dark-skinned workers once the workers have been exploited to breaking point. This is the Cuban history:
When revolution broke out in the French colony of Saint Domingue (later known as Haiti), sugar production there came to a virtual halt. This caused a sudden demand for sugar. Cuban plantation owners quickly stepped in to fill the gap created by neighboring Haiti, placing Cubans in a position to profit immensely. By the mid-1800’s, Cuba replaced Haiti as the world’s leading producer of sugar, making Cuban plantation owners very wealthy. Sugar is a very labor intensive and the increased pressure to fill market demand for this lucrative crop resulted in a high death rate among slaves. Plantation owners responded to the labor shortage by purchasing more slaves thereby reinvigorating the Transatlantic slave trade even after the British sought to curtail it.
Joint Economic Committee Releases National Report on Economic Challenges Facing African Americans
WASHINGTON – African Americans face an unemployment rate double that of white workers and are nearly three times as likely as white Americans to live in poverty, according to a new report by the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee (JEC) released today by Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), Ranking Democrat on the JEC, and Congressman G. K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).
The report reveals that African Americans continue to confront a range of economic challenges, including disproportionately high rates of poverty, unemployment and long-term unemployment as well as significantly lower incomes and slower wealth accumulation than white households. When examining various measures to determine economic well-being, the report finds black Americans lag far behind the white population.
Booker attempts to whitewash friend Cami’s black NPS record
Former Newark mayor Cory Booker, a close friend and former employer of Cami Anderson, did not resist the temptation to try to inject positive spin into Cami’s recent removal from Newark Public Schools. Anderson is the New Jersey appointed Newark Public Schools superintendent who just left Newark in the wake of widespread protests for all the damage she’s caused to the students and schools she was hired to serve and protect.
Asked about the politics surrounding Anderson vacating of the position, Booker said “I’m happy with her contributions, things we should all be appreciative of.”
Protect your home from Killer Guns
Guns actually do kill innocent people. A lot.
1 day left to comment to the USDA on GMOs. Pitch in!
Here’s my comment to the USDA about GMOs in less than the 1024 characters allowed. I hope you will add yours!
GMO plants:
1 Kill whole ecosystems.
2 Many GMO crops have pesticides in them. Insects that survive eating them become immune to pesticides and descend on other farmers’ land like locusts, consuming everything.
3 GMO seeds are patented and are bankrupting farmers. Seeds are investments for farmers and many do not understand that GMO seeds must be “re-purchased” every year. In India, every 30 minutes a bankrupted farmer drinks pesticide to commit suicide.
4 In silent GMO forests pesticides built into the trees’ DNA poison everything except the trees. Nothing else lives: no insects, birds, animals big or small. No undergrowth.
5 We do not know the long term effect that GMOs will have on human bodies.
The important US holiday not many people know about: Juneteenth
Happy belated Juneteenth! This little known holiday celebrates the announcement in Texas by Major-Gen. Granger’s statement on 19 June 1865 that slavery had come to an end.
On 20 June 2006, Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee made a statement to Congress about the importance of recognizing and celebrating this holiday. This is the text of her speech:
JUNETEENTH
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise to acknowledge the World Refugee Day as we keep the flame of hope alive, showing some 20.8 million internally displaced refugees fleeing persecution who are now looking to the world to ask for relief.
New report: Walmart has hidden 10s of $BILLIONS of revenue to evade taxes
Americans for Tax Fairness has published their findings of a Walmart tax evasion investigation. I’m not devious enough to quickly understand how Walmart is doing this, and I sure don’t know if what it’s legal, but I’m glad to know eyebrows are being raised.
Their scheme goes something like this: Walmart has lied in corporate earnings filings about how much money they’ve sent overseas. They have stashed that money in secret accounts, mostly in Luxembourg, to avoid paying United States taxes on it. An interesting sidebar is that they now Walmarts wants to bring a lot of that money back into the US in order to expand their operation – again, without paying taxes on the earnings it represents. This just stinks, don’t you think?