Monday, August 25, 2014

Latino Activist Killed by Salinas Police

Rally in Salinas Demands Justice for Frank Alvarado,

Killed by Salinas Police

Published on July 14, 2014 in Police, Race

Natalie Mendoza, Frank Alvarado’s niece: “Stop Police Brutality. Justice for my uncle!”

Update (7/15/14): Information on Donations to Frank’s Family

On July 10, 2014 at around 5 AM, officers with the Salinas Police Department reportedly shot and killed Frank Alvarado at a private home in East Salinas.

Frank was a member of Santa Cruz-based Sin Barras and spoke out against prison expansion at a rally in Santa Cruz on May 14. His killing was at least the fourth murder by Salinas Police Department cops since March 21, 2014. All four police killings have been of Latino men, and all have occurred in East Salinas.

At the May 14, 2014 rally in Santa Cruz, Frank spoke passionately about the need to budget state money for social programs instead of prison expansion. Frank also shared his personal experience of incarceration, and described his release from prison in July of 2013. He cautioned that building more prisons at the sacrifice of schools and parks will lead to devastating results for California. “You will have your hell if you build those prisons,” he said.

In response to the killing of Frank, the Direct Action Monterey Network called for a rally on Saturday, July 12, 2014 at the corner of S Sanborn Rd & Fairview Ave in East Salinas against police violence and to demand justice for Frank Alvarado.

Demonstrators, including friends and family of Frank from Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties, held signs with messages such as “Stop Police Brutality. Justice For My Uncle!,” “SPD Don’t Shoot Me. I’m On My Phone,” “Another Murder Brought To You By The SPD,” and “Stop Giving Cops Paid Vacation For Murder!”

Speakers at the July 12 rally included Frank Alvarado’s sister, Angélica Garza; Frank’s niece, Natalie Mendoza; as well as Courtney Hanson and Tash Nguyen of Sin Barras, a prison abolition group based in Santa Cruz.

Frank’s sister Angélica said she was born in Watsonville and Frank was born in Salinas. Angélica’s statements included, “I want justice for Frankie,” “He had a big heart,” and “I want to thank every single one of you from the bottom of my heart.”

Frank’s niece Natalie was calm, sad, well-spoken, and angry. She righteously proclaimed, “It’s not right. I’ve never had this much hate in my life for anything else. I’m sad, but I’m more angry than anything else because of how he was gunned down. There was no reason for how he was killed; no way to justify their actions. He wasn’t even armed. We just need justice for him, and everybody else, all the other cases that have gone like this. There needs to be justice, and SPD needs to have a taste of their own medicine.”

[Natalie Mendoza, Frank Alvarado’s niece. Video by Alex Darocy. Duration: 5:19]

Tash and Courtney read a bilingual statement by Sin Barras in memory of Frank Alvarado.

As we mourn Frank’s death and send warmth to his loved ones, we are thinking about how to address histories of racism, interpersonal, and state violence in a way that will move us toward a different society, where premature death doesn’t happen. All people, and particularly people who have experienced incarceration, need and deserve support. Because of criminalization, poverty, and tough-on-crime politicians and cops, law enforcement killing people of color has become a long-standing pattern. As an organization, we believe in holding individual people accountable for their actions, and that includes the police. But we see this as a problem that must be addressed collectively and on a systemic level. The police and prisons create cycles of trauma. These cops are not bad apples; they are taught to pull the trigger. If we want to stop the murder, we need to address the fact that police brutality is systemic and ongoing.

For more information, please see:

Police Officers Kill Fourth Person in East Salinas: Frank Alvarado (July 2014)
Peace Police and Counterinsurgency in Salinas (May 2014)
Families, Residents and Statewide Supporters Fight for Justice in Salinas(May 2014)

Updates (7/15/14):

Frank Miguel Alvarado: August 1, 1974 – July 10, 2014

Frank’s family has invited supporters and those who knew and loved Frank to his memorial today and tomorrow in Salinas.

Frank Miguel Alvarado, 39, native and lifelong resident of Salinas, passed away on July 10, 2014 in Salinas. He was born on August 1, 1974.

Frank is survived by his son, parents, sister, brother, maternal grandfather, paternal grandmother, along with numerous aunts, uncles, cousins and other loving family and friends.

He is preceded in death by his maternal grandmother.

Visitation will be held on Tuesday, July 15, 2014 1-9 pm with a Rosary vigil at 7 pm, all at Healey Mortuary 405 N. Sanborn Rd. Salinas, CA 93905.

A Funeral Mass will take place on Wednesday, July 16, 2014 10 am at the St. Mary of the Nativity Church 424 Towt St. Salinas, CA 93905.

Cremation to follow services.

Bradley Allen is a photographer, Indymedia volunteer, and website developer living in Santa Cruz, California. All content is free for non-commercial reuse, on non-commercial websites. For other use, please contact me. Photo credit and a link to this article is appreciated. Support local independent media.

Bill Gates Billion Dollar Blame Teachers Machine

The Gates Foundation Education Reform Hype Machine and Bizarre Inequality Theory
By Adam Bessie and Dan Carino, Truthout |

Special thanks for the scholarship and insight from: Diane Ravitch (Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools); Anthony Cody (The Educator and The Oligarch: A Teacher Challenges the Gates Foundation, forthcoming); Paul Thomas (Social Context Reform: A Pedagogy of Equity and Opportunity); Mercedes Schneider (A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Public Education); Joanne Barkan (See her must read investigative series in Dissent Magazine).
---
This comic accompanies a two-year long Truthout supported series illustrating the education reform debate from an alternative perspective, both ideologically and visually. For previous graphic essays on education by Adam Bessie, see also
"This School is Not a Pipe" (with Josh Neufeld); "The Disaster Capitalism Curriculum: The High Price of Education Reform" (with Dan Archer: "Part I: Washington D.C."; "Part II: New Orleans"; "Part III: Finland") and "Automated Teaching Machine: A Graphic Introduction to the End of Human Teachers" (with Arthur King).

Dan Carino

Dan Carino is a graphic journalist based in Los Angeles, California. He's also the founder of Co-Jo.US, a new media platform that combines the latest tech with handmade comics art. Want to explore graphic journalism? Contact Dan at dan @ co-jo.us | @Dan_CARINO | @CoJoUS

Adam Bessie

Adam Bessie is a professor of English at a Northern California community college and an essayist, most recently in comics form. Bessie is a regular Truthout contributor, and his writing has also appeared in The Washington Post, AlterNet, and in the Project Censored book series, among others. Follow him on Twitter: @adambessie.

Watts Rebellion Against Police Brutality. August 1965

Watts Rebellion (August 1965)

Back to Online Encyclopedia Index

103rd Street, Watts Riot, 1966

Image Ownership: Public Domain

Following World War II, over 500,000 African Americans migrated to West Coast cities in hopes of escaping racism and discrimination.

However they found both in the west. For many black Los Angeles residents who lived in Watts, their isolation in that community was evidence that racial equality remained a distant goal as they experienced housing, education, employment, and political discrimination. These racial injustices caused Watts’ African American population to explode on
August 11, 1965 in what would become the Watts Rebellion.

The rebellion began on August 11th when the Los Angeles Highway Patrol stopped black Watts resident Marquette Frye and his brother, alleging that they were speeding. Back-up was called from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) as a crowd of African Americans gathered to watch the scene. Since the incident was close to Frye’s home, his mother emerged to find her son resisting arrest. Fearful that his arrest may ignite a riot, one LAPD officer drew his firearm. Catching a glimpse of the gun, Mrs. Frye jumped onto the officer’s back, causing the crowd to begin cheering. Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers arrested all three of the Fryes. Enraged by the family’s arrests, Watts’ residents protested as the police cars drove away. Less than an hour later, black Angelenos took to the streets.

The five day revolt which involved some 30,000 people served as stark testimony to the inequality and poverty that dominated the lives of thousands of Watts’s residents.
Many of those engaged in the uprising looted items from local groceries and clothing stores, acquiring what they wanted and needed but often could not afford. Others battled the
LAPD which they held immediately responsible for their poverty and alienation.

By August 15 the riot ended when 14,000 National Guard troops arrived and patrolled the streets. The following day most African Americans retired to their homes. In the end, the Watts Rebellion took 34 lives. There were 1,032 injuries, nearly 4,000 arrests and $40 million dollars in property damage. In spite of the protest, the Watts Rebellion did not significantly improve the lives of the community’s black population. While the revolt inspired the federal government to implement programs to address unemployment, education, healthcare, and housing under Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” much of the money allocated for these programs was eventually absorbed by the Vietnam War. Today most of the population of Watts is Latino with many residents from the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Although the population has changed, many of the issues of poverty, alienation and discrimination still plague the community today.

Sources:
Gerald Horne. Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995); Josh, Sides. L.A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003; Governor’s Commission on the Los Angeles Riots. Violence in the City—an End or a Beginning? (Los Angeles: Governor’s Commission on the Los Angeles Riots, 1965).

Contributor:

Nichols, Casey

University of Washington

- See more at: http://www.blackpast.org/aaw/watts-rebellion-august-1965#sthash.0HmmVdN1.dpuf

Saturday, August 23, 2014

1% Corp Media Biased Against Russia

The Powerful "Groupthink" on Ukraine

Saturday, 23 August 2014 13:24By Robert Parry, Consortium News | News Analysis

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Vladimir Putin answers journalists' questions on the situation in Ukraine, March 4, 2014. (Photo:President of the Russian Federation)

When even smart people like economist Paul Krugman buy into the false narrative about the Ukraine crisis, it's hard to decide whether to despair over the impossibility of America ever understanding the world's problems or to marvel at the power of the U.S. political/media propaganda machine to manufacture its own reality.

On Monday, Krugman's New York Times column accepts the storyline that Russia's President Vladimir Putin instigated the Ukraine crisis and extrapolates from that "fact" the conclusion that perhaps the nefarious Putin did so to engineer a cheap land grab or to distract Russians from their economic problems.

"Delusions of easy winnings still happen," Krugman wrote. "It's only a guess, but it seems likely that Vladimir Putin thought that he could overthrow Ukraine's government, or at least seize a large chunk of its territory, on the cheap — a bit of deniable aid to the rebels, and it would fall into his lap. ...

"Recently Justin Fox of the Harvard Business Review suggested that the roots of the Ukraine crisis may lie in the faltering performance of the Russian economy. As he noted, Mr. Putin's hold on power partly reflects a long run of rapid economic growth. But Russian growth has been sputtering — and you could argue that the Putin regime needed a distraction."

Or you could look at the actual facts of how the Ukraine crisis began and realize that it was the West, not Russia, that instigated this crisis. Putin's response has been reactive to what he perceives as threats posed by the violent overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych and the imposition of a new Western-oriented regime hostile to Moscow and Ukraine's ethnic Russians.

Last year, it was the European Union that was pushing an economic association agreement with Ukraine, which included the International Monetary Fund's demands for imposing harsh austerity on Ukraine's already suffering population. Political and propaganda support for the EU plan was financed, in part, by the U.S. government through such agencies as the National Endowment for Democracy.

When Yanukovych recoiled at the IMF's terms and opted for a more generous $15 billion aid package from Putin, the U.S. government ratcheted up its support for mass demonstrations aimed at overthrowing Yanukovych and replacing him with a new regime that would sign the EU agreement and accept the IMF's demands.

As the crisis deepened early this year, Putin was focused on the Sochi Winter Olympics, particularly the threat of terrorist attacks on the games. No evidence has been presented that Putin was secretly trying to foment the Ukraine crisis. Indeed, all the evidence is that Putin was trying to protect the status quo, support the elected president and avert a worse crisis.

Moscow supported Yanukovych's efforts to reach a political compromise, including a European-brokered agreement for early elections and reduced presidential powers. Yet, despite those concessions, neo-Nazi militias surged to the front of the protests on Feb. 22, forcing Yanukovych and many of his officials to flee for their lives. The U.S. State Department quickly recognized the coup regime as "legitimate."

Since the new regime also took provocative steps against the ethnic Russians (such as the parliament voting to ban Russian as an official language), resistance arose to the Coup regime in the east and south. In Crimea, voters opted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia, a process supported by Russian troops stationed in Crimea under a prior agreement with Ukraine's government.

There was no Russian "invasion," as the New York Times and other mainstream U.S. news outlets claimed. The Russian troops were already in Crimea assigned to Russia's historic naval base at Sebastopol. Putin agreed to Crimea's annexation partly out of fear that the naval base would otherwise fall into NATO's hands and pose a strategic threat to Russia.

But the key point regarding Krugman's speculation about Putin provoking the crisis so he could seize territory or distract Russians from economic troubles is that Putin only annexed Crimea because of the ouster of Yanukovych. If Yanukovych had not been overthrown, there is no reason to think that Putin would have done anything regarding Crimea or Ukraine.

It's also true that the Feb. 22 Coup was partly engineered by the U.S. government led by Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who had been an adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and who is married to arch-neocon Robert Kagan, one of the intellectual authors of the U.S. Invasion and Occupation of Iraq.

Before the Ukraine Coup, Nuland, was caught in a phone conversation plotting with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine about who should replace Yanukovych. After the Coup, her choice "Yats" – or Arseniy Yatsenyuk – emerged as the new prime minister and then shepherded through the IMF austerity plan.

But resistance to Kiev's new rulers soon emerged in eastern Ukraine, which had been Yanukovych's political base and stood to lose the most from Ukraine's economic orientation toward Europe and reduced economic ties to Russia. Yet, instead of recognizing these understandable concerns of the eastern Ukrainians, the Western media portrayed the ethnic Russians as simply Putin's pawns with no minds of their own.

I'm told that Moscow has provided some covert support for the eastern Ukrainian rebels (mostly light weapons), but that Putin has favored a political settlement (similar to what has been proposed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel). The deal would grant eastern Ukraine more autonomy and accept Russia's annexation of Crimea in exchange for peace in the east and some financial support from Russia for the Kiev government.

Yet, whatever anyone thinks of Putin or the proposed peace deal, it is simply inaccurate to assert a narrative claiming that Putin provoked the current crisis in Ukraine. The opposite is much closer to the truth. It is thus misguided for Krugman or anyone else to extrapolate from this false premise to deduce Putin's "motives."

Krugman, who has been one of the few rational voices on issues of global economics in recent years, should know better than anyone how a mistaken "group think" can create assumptions that will lead inevitably to wrongheaded conclusions.

Labor Secy Tom Perez Inspects Crenshaw Transit

U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez tours Crenshaw

and LAX Transit Project

Metro CEO Art Leahy, Metro Board Member Jackie Dupont-Walker, LeDaya Epps, U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez and James Martinez at the Crenshaw/Expo Yard. Photo Luis Inzunza/Metro.

U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez yesterday visited the Crenshaw/LAX Transit Project as part of a nationwide tour leading up to Labor Day, 2014. Perez was welcomed by Metro Board Member Jackie Dupont-Walker, Metro CEO Art Leahy and two workers from the Walsh/Shea Corridor Construction (WSCC) apprenticeship program LeDaya Epps and James Martinez Safety Technician.

Also in attendance were U.S. Representative Maxine Waters; Ron Miller, Executive Secretary, Los Angeles/Orange Counties Building Trades Council; Lola Smallwood Cuevas, Project Director UCLA Labor Center/Los Angeles Black Worker Center; Erich Engler, Business Manager WSCC; Ernest Roberts, Executive Director PV Jobs; Jan Perry, General Manager, Economic & Workforce Development Department, City of Los Angeles; Nolan V. Rollins, President & CEO Los Angeles Urban League and Charles Beauvoir, Crenshaw/LAX Transit Project Director.
Perez praised Metro for implementation of the innovative Project Labor Agreement and Career Construction Project (PLA/CCP), the first for a transit agency led by Metro CEO Art Leahy.

The 8.5-mile Crenshaw/LAX Transit Project will connect the Green and Expo line with eight new stations that will run throughout the Crenshaw District, Inglewood and Westchester and will create jobs, development, and beautification that will eventually benefit residents of Los Angeles County.

A brief tour of the future site of the underground Crenshaw/Expo Station was led by LeDaya Epps and James Martinez. Perez witnessed the cutter soil mix process which is the first step for the underground station.

The visit ended with Epps and Martinez talking to Secretary Perez about the benefits of PLA/CCP and how they are benefitting from the construction of the light rail project. U.S. Labor Department representatives previously visited Metro to overview the workforce development initiative developed as a result of Metro’s groundbreaking PLA/CCP. Metro was selected as one of the five cities that U.S. Labor Department Secretary Perez is visiting before Labor Day.

Supremes Court Gays, but Cut Women's Rights

JUSTICE

Justice Ginsburg Wants ‘Equal Dignity’

for Women in Court Decisions

August 8, 2014

by Karin Kamp

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg poses for a photo in her chambers at the Supreme Court in Washington, July 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Supreme Court rulings on gay rights are progressively pushing forward, while decisions related to women’s equality are moving in the opposite direction, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says.

Last week, Ginsburg told an audience at Duke University that on gays rights, the court speaks of “equal dignity,” but for women, the court has yet to embrace “the ability of women to decide for themselves with what their destiny will be.”

Is the Supreme Court Out of Order?

In her blistering dissent on the recent Hobby Lobby decision — which allowed some employers to refuse to pay for insurance coverage for contraception on religious grounds — Ginsburg said the court “had ventured into a minefield.”

“The decision could lead to job discrimination against women. What of the employer whose religious faith teaches that it’s sinful to employ a single woman without her father’s consent or a married woman without her husband’s consent?” she asked. Ginsburg said the court’s five-justice male majority did not understand the challenges women face in achieving real equality.

It’s comments such as these that have contributed to an outpouring of adoration by young women and progressives for Ginsburg who have nicknamed her Notorious RBG, with a Tumblr dedicated to the justice.

“Most of it I think is very funny. There is a rap song, and there is one using the words from the Hobby Lobby dissent. I haven’t seen anything that isn’t either pleasing or funny on the website,” Ginsburg told Katie Couric in an interview.

Justice Ginsburg is not alone in observing that the court sees rights for women and rights for gay people differently, as Adam Liptak wrote this week in The New York Times. So why the disconnect?

Gay men and lesbians still have a long way to go before they achieve the formal legal equality that women have long enjoyed. But they have made stunning progress at the Supreme Court over the last decade, gaining legal protection for sexual intimacy and unconventional families with stirring language unimaginable a generation ago.

At the same time, legal scholars say, the court has delivered blows to women’s groups in cases involving equal pay, medical leave, abortion and contraception, culminating in a furious dissent last month from the court’s three female members.

Many forces are contributing to this divide, but the most powerful is the role of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the court’s swing vote. Legal scholars say his jurisprudence is marked by both libertarian and paternalistic impulses, ones that have bolstered gay rights and dealt setbacks to women’s groups.

A Sacramento lawyer and lobbyist who still lived in the house he grew up in when President Ronald Reagan nominated him to the Supreme Court in 1987, Justice Kennedy is the product of a placid middle-class existence in which most women stayed within traditional roles. Some of his judicial writing, Justice Ginsburg once wrote in dissent, reflected “ancient notions about women’s place in the family.”

But Justice Kennedy, 78, has long had gay friends, and his legal philosophy is characterized by an expansive commitment to individual liberty.

Read the full article at The New York Times.

Karin Kamp is a multimedia journalist and producer. Before joining billmoyers.com she helped launch The Story Exchange, a site dedicated to women's entrepreneurship. She previously produced for NOW on PBS and WNYC public radio and worked as a reporter for Swiss Radio International.

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