On September 19, 54 disability rights activists, most in wheelchairs, were arrested for filling the offices of Republican Congressmen Jeb Hensarling of Texas and Dave Camp of Michigan. The demonstrators are members of ADAPT, a national grassroots disability rights group that organizes nonviolent direct actions, including civil disobedience, to assure people with disabilities have the right to live in freedom. That week, hundreds of ADAPT members traveled to the nation’s capitol from all over the country for six days of ‘My Medicaid Matters!’ rallies and actions. Activists targeted Representatives Hensarling and Camp because they both favour Medicaid cuts and sit on the 12-person “Super Committee,” which is tasked with proposing even more drastic spending cuts to reduce the deficit. This committee will determine whether people with disabilities can live independently in their own communities and have access to health services. Medicaid, a healthcare program that relies on federal and state funding, allows 27-year-old Nichole Villavicencio to live in her own apartment in St. Paul, Minnesota. A passionate disability rights advocate, Villavicencio travelled to Washington DC to tell her story. Live like everybody else “Medicaid pays for my personal care attendants who help me get up, get dressed, help me with my food, and help me get to bed at night,” she says. “Medicaid pays for my prescriptions and allows me to go to the doctor. We just want to live like everybody else. We want to start families. We want to live in our homes and be independent.” Villavicencio has arthrogryposis, a rare condition that causes muscle weakness and stiff joints. Several of her arm muscles never fully formed so she uses a wheelchair and does everything with her feet. She receives food stamps, $674 a month in Social Security, which is also under threat, and lives in subsidised housing. The health insurance industry, which continues to post record profits, got a front-row seat during the 2009 healthcare debate. People with disabilities got arrested less than an hour after entering Rep. Hensarling’s office for simply wanting to express their views. Villavicencio was held in the Rayburn House basement from 4:30pm on Monday to 9am the next day. It was her first arrest. “I was surprised they held us so long,” she says. “They had a machine that was supposed to scan our hands for fingerprints, but it wasn’t working, so they did nothing for three or four hours. They gave us some baloney in the middle of the night and 20 minutes later, I had to puke it up.” The offices of Reps. Hensarling and Camp didn’t return my calls, but I did hear back from Sergeant Kimberly Schneider, spokeswoman with the Capitol police. Why were 54 citizens, most in wheelchairs, charged with unlawful entry? “They were asked to leave the office and refused,” she said. “Law enforcement had to be called.” ADAPT organisers told me that the quick arrests were unusual. When members usually occupy politician’s offices – and they do it often – they make their voices heard for several hours before the arrests begin. But this is our new reality. Speak your mind. Use your voice. Do it nonviolently. And you’ll get arrested, even if you’re in a wheelchair. This video shows a cop forcefully pulling a man in a wheelchair out of Rep. Hensarling’s office. For millions of low-income people living in one of the wealthiest countries on earth, this is a life or death issue. Medicaid recipients are being hit by budget cuts in every state across the country. Federal cuts on top of the state cuts would be devastating for the most vulnerable segments of our society. If it weren’t for Medicaid, nearly 60 million low-income Americans, including children and seniors, would be uninsured. If the Republican leadership had its way, Medicaid would be decimated. President Obama recently proposed $320bn in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. “Cutting Medicaid is all the rage. What most people don’t realise is that small changes can make a huge difference in someone’s life,” says Chris Hildebrant, a 35-year-old from Rochester, New York. When Hildebrant was 14, he had a spinal cord injury caused by a diving accident. He was the first person arrested in Representative Camp’s office. “This is about reform,” he says. “This system is institutionally biased. It’s flawed. So much money is spent on nursing facilities where people don’t want to be. That money can go a lot further in the community. We’ve been saying this for decades.” But who’s listening? When is the last time you’ve seen a person with disabilities interviewed on TV? Long-time ADAPT member and media outreach coordinator Janine Bertram told me that I was the only reporter who bothered to call to set up interviews with people who were arrested. Unlawful conduct On September 21, ADAPT teamed up with over 90 disability, aging and civil rights groups for the ‘My Medicaid Matters!’ rally. It was the largest gathering of disability advocates in the nation’s capitol since the Americans With Disabilities Act was signed in 1990, and yet it received scant media coverage in both the corporate and alternative media. “We are so used to them not covering us,” says Bruce Darling, ADAPT organiser in Rochester, New York. “We can do a lot because people look right through us. They don’t even see us. We can march into offices and they won’t see us until the entire place is filled. That’s what happened last Monday.” Part of the problem is that the disability rights community doesn’t fit the corporate media’s predictable left-right paradigm and these issues can’t be explained in 30-second sound bites. “Historically, we’ve focused on the institutional bias in nursing homes,” says Bruce Darling, ADAPT organiser in Rochester, New York. “The people on the right tend to own and invest in the facilities. They don’t want to get rid of them. And the people on the left tend to organise the unions that work in the facilities. I refer to us as collateral damage. I watch us get run over by both sides. We’re the land of the free unless you need personal assistance. Then you can be removed from your home and thrown in a building where people don’t have to look at you. If you did this to any other group, there would be outrage.” There is outrage and it deserves to be heard, not silenced. Rose Aguilar is the host of Your Call, a daily call-in radio show on KALW in San Francisco. She’s the author of “Red Highways: A Liberal’s Journey into the Heartland.” Follow Rose Aguilar on Twitter @roseaguilar The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent Al Jazeera’s editorial policy. Source: Al Jazeera

African American Arts and Culture Complex • Hall of Culture
762 Fulton Street, San Francisco, CA 94102
on

WOMEN, CULTURE, RACE AND POWER

Rose Aguilar, Host of ‘Your Call’ on KALW, will moderate the first of four Roundtables with a stellar panel:

CARYL ITO

Caryl Ito has been a passionate advocate and volunteer for women’s equity and participation at all levels of the community for over 30 years. She was one of the founding members of a national Asian pacific women’s movement in the late 80′s which resulted in the development of the local bay area group, pacific Asian American women bay area coalition(PAAWBAC). a 30 year old nonprofit organization.

Caryl served under 3 mayoral administrations, as president of the San Francisco commission on the status of women and helped to reconstitute this commission in 1989. She played an integral part of the citywide ballot measure to ensure that this commission was part of the city charter.

Caryl recently completed 3 terms as a San Francisco airport commissioner under both the Willie Brown and Gavin Newsom  Mayoral administrations.  She received the “Unsung Heroine Award”  at the March 8, 2011 International Women’s Day Summit, San Francisco

DEV MAJOR

Born and raised in California but traveling throughout the United States and Europe, Asia and parts of the Caribbean Devorah Major served as San Francisco Poet Laureate 2002 through 2006. In addition to being a poet she is a performer, lecturer, fiction and creative non-fiction writer, and editor. A trained actress and former dancer, she approaches poetry as both a written and performing art.

In 2009 she completed a historical novella and accompanying non-fiction essay Freedom’s Harvest: The Peter Smith Story that is now traveling the nation looking for a publisher.  2009 also saw the release of two new chapbooks, Black Bleeds into Green and Amour Verdinia/Verdinia Amour, a two-poet flip book with Opal Palmer Adisa.  That was also the year that she completed and gave her first performance of Black Classic: African American VOices from 19th Century  San Francisco. 

She finds talking about herself in the third person to be very tedious.  Although the bio slips back to 2005 in the next paragraph she in fact wrote, performed, traveled, loved and cared for friends and fmaily during each of the years from here til then.

 In 2005 Trade Routes, a symphony commissioned by the Oakland East Bay Symphony composed by Guillermo Galindo, with spoken word and chorus by devorah major was premiered at Oakland’s Paramount Theater.

devorah major has performed solo, with jazz musicians, and as a part of Daughters Yam with Opal Palmer Adisa. In 2006 ms. major participated in an International Poetry Festival and Conference in Sarajevo, Bosnia. In 2007 she made a fourth trip to Italy to be a part of an international poetry festival presented by Casa della Poesia, (http://www.casadellapoesia.com). In 2007 she was also featured poet in Miami-Dade’s Asili Poetry Festival. In 2004 she presented her one woman show The Logics of Love in AfroSolo’s Summer Arts Festival. In the Spring of 2004 she toured the Northeast United States and also performed in Jamaica’s annual Calabash International Literary Festival. In 2002 she performed at the Dodge Poetry Festival, Litquake, and the Webbies. She has performed in several venues in Southern Connecticut over the last four years. In September and October of 1996 major toured England and Wales as a performance poet. In Spring of 1990 she was an actress in the Eureka Theater’s production of Lewis Jordan’s “But Time Will Take You Out…”. In 1993 and 1994 she was the featured poet in the modern Afro-Cuban ballet Si Como No which was produced at several Northern California theaters. In 1995 she worked as a performance artist with Beatriz Ross Cultural Dance Ensemble’s production of Creative Visions of Ourselves. She also presented a one-woman show as a part of California State University’s 1995 Summer Arts Festival. Among the venues in which she has performed in the last three years are The Noh Space, National Poetry Week at Fort Mason, the Eureka Theater, Footworks Dance Studio, New Performance Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Life on the Water, the Intersection, Koncepts Cultural Gallery, Kimball’s, Great American Music Hall, The Upper Room, the Elbo Room, the Kennel Club, the Oakland Museum’s James Moore Theater, as well as a host of libraries, bookstores and university and college poetry centers around the country. In August of 2005 Daughters of Yam (a poetry performance duo with Opal Palmer Adisa) were featured at Lincoln Center’s La Casitas Festival. In April of 2003 they were featured at the San Francisco Jazz Festival. In January of 2001 Daughters of Yam wrote and presented “World Affairs”, a poetry performance ritual with music, at Venue 9. In May of 1996 Daughters of Yam wrote and starred in “Jump the Sun,” a full length poetry/drama presentation produced by the Oakland Ensemble Theater. devorah major is featured on a number of poetry recordings including Daughters of Yam’s Fierce//Love, and poetry compilations including Wild Poppies, Who Sane Who Sane and America Fears the Drum. She has also shared her work on radio and television stations in Northern and Southern California, Southern Connecticut, New York, New York, and Atlanta, Georgia.

ms. major continues to perform her work in clubs, theaters, and cultural centers. She is currently an adjunct professor at California College for the Arts and poet-in-residence at the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums .

CHARLIE TOLEDO

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We can’t get jobs, live in our homes, educate our kids. Get out of the way of the tornadoes. Or, apparently, influence substantially the policy decisions imposed by an increasingly vicious and mean-spirited minority.
n California advocacy has been reduced to documenting the rubble. Medicaid is cutting doctors’ visits to 7 a year, for the seriously chronically ill who can still manage to qualify. To his credit, I think, the Governor just vetoed a budget that has been a disaster for decades because no one can wrench control of the process from the 1/3 of the legislature whose most animating vision is to drown the government in a bathtub. We cannot add $70 a year to our car registration fees as a downpayment on staunching the demise. You might have missed this story because there was a sex scandal this week, and some baseball games. (I like baseball; not the point.)

Some other states are dealing with the crisis by fomenting mobs who probably do not quite get the biological links among contraception, pregnancy and abortion, but are convinced they’re against all of it, whatever it is.

Congress will not tax a cent of a billionaire’s gains from gambling on the stock market, but voted to cut the Women and Infant Children program that gets some minimum level of nutrition to indigent kids. The Administration of course is taking a strong lead in rallying the nation to hold off on arbitrary cuts to the Social Security benefits of the 50% of seniors who subsist on meager incomes, and to keep Medicare out of the clutches of the vampires in the insurance industry. Aren’t they? I thought they were; or intended to; or might at some point; or will promise to if re-elected.

Ok, it’s not their job; when the people lead the leaders will follow. We are the majority, who support the idea of having an actual society, will lend our neighbor a hand, believe in the right to reproductive health care, above all know there’s something terribly wrong when so many can’t find work while so few bask smugly in obscene excess. I’ll write again soon about the people, organizations and campaigns that are trying to corral us close enough to each other so that we can make a difference. We’re out here. But right now, it’s time to take a moment and call a travesty a travesty.

–
Ellen R. Shaffer, PhD MPH
Co-Director, Center for Policy Analysis/EQUAL/CPATH
San Francisco Presidio
P.O. Box 29586
San Francisco, CA 94129-0586
Phone 415-922-6204
www.centerforpolicyanalysis.org
www.cpath.org
cell: 415-680-4603

Are you standing by for this? Or are you calling your Congressional Representatives and Senators TODAY?
Pro-Choice Demonstrators Join Budget Battle Today
By WeNews staff – WeNews correspondent – Thursday, April 7, 2011

Pro-choice demonstrators and a variety of allied interests will demonstrate on April 7 as part of the major budget battle taking place in Washington. With a federal shutdown looming, GOP lawmakers are pressing a radical reshaping of health care policy.

(WOMENSENEWS)–More than 20 organizations are demonstrating today at the U.S. Capitol in a show of support for Planned Parenthood, the family-planning group in the crosshairs of the budget battle blazing in Congress, where a federal shutdown is looming.

Members of Congress, civil rights leaders and a broad coalition of groups are joining the Stand Up for Women’s Health rally. Executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union Anthony D. Romero will be among rally speakers, alongside Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. Ed Harris and Amy Madigan are among the actors scheduled to speak.

Access to abortion became a key bargaining chip in last-minute budget negotiations to avert a federal shutdown. The Republican one-week stop-gap funding measure declined by President Barack Obama on Tuesday included a policy amendment preventing Washington, D.C., from spending its own money on abortion services, according to The Washington Post’s blog.

In addition to protesting the Planned Parenthood defunding effort in the 2011 budget bill, protest organizers are also focused on other measures to ban private insurance coverage for abortion and grant hospitals permission to deny abortion care to women even in life-threatening circumstances.

GOP and Democratic lawmakers are divided by roughly $30 billion in cuts. The White House on Wednesday argued that Democrats had conceded to the initial figure for cuts demanded by Republicans and now the party was pushing too far in asking for cuts in the range of $60 billion.

While cuts to both national and international family planning were passed in the House, that’s far less likely in the Senate, Craig Lasher, government relations director of Population Action International, told Women’s eNews on Wednesday. Still, he says providers of family-planning services should all brace for some funding loss.

“What we’re concerned about is there not be disproportionate and ideological cuts to family planning,” said Lasher, whose Washington-based lobbying firm focuses on international reproductive health.

GOP 2012 Budget Plan Unveiled
In the middle of the standoff over the current budget, the House GOP unveiled its budget plan for 2012 Tuesday. It outlines other major losses for women in what is being widely described as a fundamental reshaping of the U.S. health care delivery system.

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Budget Committee chairman, is proposing cutting trillions to Medicare and Medicaid, programs upon which women disproportionately rely. He is also seeking to defund and dismantle the health reform law passed in 2010.

Ryan’s proposal drew plenty of media favor. “Tuesday, Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, released the most comprehensive and most courageous budget reform proposal any of us have seen in our lifetimes,” wrote New York Times columnist David Brooks.

In contrast, Robert Greenstein, president of the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, called the Ryan budget cowardly.

“Its proposals would produce the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history,” Greenstein wrote on the group’s Web site, “while increasing poverty and inequality more than any measure in recent times and possibly in the nation’s history.”

The Ryan budget would likely get about two-thirds of its more than $4 trillion in budget cuts over 10 years from low-income programs, including Medicaid and related health care programs, food stamps and low-income housing, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

“It would have a devastating impact on older women and especially those who are low income and in poverty,” Susan Rees, director of national policy for Wider Opportunity for Women, said in an interview with Women’s eNews on Wednesday. “The proposal would abolish Medicaid and replace it with a block grant to the states that would be funded at two-thirds the level that it is and that would inevitability cause states to have to reduce benefits and people eligible.”

Rees says that currently 12 percent of women ages 18-64 receive the Medicaid benefit, and 20 percent of women in this age group have no health insurance at all.

Proposal ‘Politically Driven’
The National Partnership for Women and Families called Ryan’s 2012 budget proposal politically driven. In an April 5 press statement the organization’s senior advisor Judith L. Lichtman said it would cause deep and painful harm to women, who live longer, earn less, rely more on Social Security and receive smaller Social Security benefits.

“The Ryan proposal ignores the fact that Medicare returns more in benefits per dollar than private health insurance,” Lichtman said in the statement. “While there is no question that Medicare could and should be more effective and efficient, turning it into a voucher program would put millions of future retirees — many of whom will have multiple chronic health conditions — at huge financial risk.”

Alan W. Houseman, executive director of CLASP, the Center for Law and Social Policy , called Ryan’s proposal cynical and Orwellian for describing itself as a way to strengthen the social safety net when it in fact slashes it.

“At the same time, the budget proposal cuts taxes for the richest households and sets an arbitrary cap on revenues below the levels needed to meet the nation’s priorities,” Houseman said in a press statement Tuesday.

Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, joined the outcry in an April 5 press statement. “Chairman Ryan’s slash and burn budget proposal is not a budget at all. It is an all out assault on children, seniors and the disabled. It is a distorted, dramatically lopsided proposal that fundamentally restructures programs that millions of Americans rely on while giving the corporations and the wealthy another tax break.”

Potential Global Family Planning Cuts
In addition, family planning cuts in the proposed GOP 2011 budget lop off roughly $200 million from $648 million in U.S. annual family-planning foreign aid, according to an April 1 press statement by the New York-based Guttmacher Institute research group. Guttmacher forecasts that the cuts would cause about 10,000 maternal deaths, 1.6 million more abortions and 2.8 million more unwanted pregnancies globally.

The United Nations Population Fund, which saw its U.S. funding cut under President George W. Bush, was happy to see it reinstated under Obama, organization spokesperson Abubakar Dungus told Women’s eNews April 6. Many nations rely on U.S. aid for family planning, maternal health, HIV prevention and poverty reduction, he added. These nations have looked up to the United States as a leader, following the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo, Egypt, in which participating nations concluded that maternal mortality reduction and access to reproductive health services and family planning should be a future goal for all, Dungus explained.

“We are hoping the United States will maintain its position as a leader in funding family planning,” he said.

Legal Momentum, the New York-based women’s advocacy group, is urging lawmakers to reject all such amendments or riders in subsequent 2011 spending bills, rather than negotiating one harmful rider against another.

“There have not been any hearings related to these extraordinarily far-reaching proposals,” the group wrote Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “This back-door means of legislating does not allow for adequate debate about the merits of such sweeping policy changes, which deserve full deliberation by both chambers in the course of the normal legislative process.”

The March 31 letter from Legal Momentum is signed by 154 organizations representing a coalition of groups that find themselves under common attack in the GOP’s budget version: worker-safety, consumer rights, civil rights, labor rights and environmental protection. Additional signatories include the AFL-CIO, 9 to 5, National Association of Working Women, the NAACP and Union of Concerned Scientists.

Republicans in the House of Representatives are mounting an assault on women’s health and freedom that would deny millions of women access to affordable contraception and life-saving cancer screenings and cut nutritional support for millions of newborn babies in struggling families. And this is just the beginning.

The budget bill pushed through the House last Saturday included the defunding of Planned Parenthood and myriad other cuts detrimental to women. It’s not likely to pass unchanged, but the urge to compromise may take a toll on these programs. And once the current skirmishing is over, House Republicans are likely to use any legislative vehicle at hand to continue the attack.

The egregious cuts in the House resolution include the elimination of support for Title X, the federal family planning program for low-income women that provides birth control, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and testing for H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted diseases. In the absence of Title X’s preventive care, some women would die. The Guttmacher Institute, a leading authority on reproductive health, says a rise in unintended pregnancies would result in some 400,000 more abortions a year.

An amendment offered by Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, would bar any financing of Planned Parenthood. A recent sting operation by an anti-abortion group uncovered an errant employee, who was promptly fired. That hardly warrants taking aim at an irreplaceable network of clinics, which uses no federal dollars in providing needed abortion care. It serves one in five American women at some point in her lifetime.

The House resolution would slash support for international family planning and reproductive health care. And it would reimpose the odious global “gag” rule, which forbids giving federal money to any group that even talks about abortions. That rule badly hampered family planning groups working abroad to prevent infant and maternal deaths before President Obama lifted it.

(Mr. Obama has tried to act responsibly. He has rescinded President George W. Bush’s wildly overreaching decision to grant new protections to health providers who not only will not perform abortions, but also will not offer emergency contraception to rape victims or fill routine prescriptions for contraceptives.)

In negotiations over the health care bill last year, Democrats agreed to a scheme intended to stop insurance companies from offering plans that cover abortions. Two bills in the Republican House would go even further in denying coverage to the 30 percent or so of women who have an abortion during child-bearing years.

One of the bills, offered by Representative Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania, has a provision that would allow hospitals receiving federal funds to refuse to terminate a pregnancy even when necessary to save a woman’s life.

Beyond the familiar terrain of abortion or even contraception, House Republicans would inflict harm on low-income women trying to have children or who are already mothers.

Their continuing resolution would cut by 10 percent the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, better known as WIC, which serves 9.6 million low-income women, new mothers, and infants each month, and has been linked in studies to higher birth weight and lower infant mortality.

The G.O.P. bill also slices $50 million from the block grant supporting programs providing prenatal health care to 2.5 million low-income women and health care to 31 million children annually. President Obama’s budget plan for next year calls for a much more modest cut.

These are treacherous times for women’s reproductive rights and access to essential health care. House Republicans mistakenly believe they have a mandate to drastically scale back both even as abortion warfare is accelerating in the states. To stop them, President Obama’s firm leadership will be crucial. So will the rising voices of alarmed Americans.

Original article posted here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/26/opinion/26sat1.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=war%20on%20women&st=cse

The Egyptian Revolution engenders values and a new social decade
Saturday 12 February 2011 by siawi

by Nawal El Saadawi

(Translated By Dr. Rabia Redouane, Dept of Modern Languages, Montclair State University)

I have lived to witness and participate in the Egyptian Revolution from Jan 25, 2011 until the moment of writing this essay in the morning of Sunday, Feb 6, 2011. Millions of Egyptians, men and women, Muslims and Christians, from all doctrines and beliefs, are united against the current oppressive and corrupt regime, against its revered top pharaoh who “still holds on to his throne even if shedding his people’s blood”, against its corrupt government and the ruling party which hire mercenaries to kill the youths, against its cheating and fake parliament whose members represent illegal properties, women, drugs, and bribes, against its elites who are called ‘the educated elites’ who sold their conscience and pens , destroyed education, public and private morals and culture, and misled the public and individual opinion to gain temporary interests and ruling positions, be small or big ones.

Young men and children, men and women have spontaneously gone out of their houses, led and protected by themselves , after the security and policemen have failed and the controlling elites of culture and media have crumpled down. After the collapse of the rich and powerful and the self-interested party leaders who have explicitly and implicitly supported the regimes of corrupt dictatorships for about 50 years, opportunism and double-standard and deceiving moral values have fallen down; such values have corrupted both the family and the individuals, spreading chaos under the name of safety, dictatorship under the name of democracy, poverty and unemployment under the name of improvement and prosperity, prostitution and marriage betrayal under the name of morals and freedom of choice, humiliation by and submission to the American and Israeli colonization under the name of aids, partnership, friendship and peace process…such a regime which has jailed those with sincere and creative pens inside cells to separate them and taint their reputation, or send them in to exile inside or outside the country.

Millions of Egyptian, men and women, went out in the streets in all provinces, cities and villages, in Aswan, Alexandria, Suez, Bour Said, and all parts of the homeland. In Cairo, the capital, we have encamped in Meidan al-Tahrir for 11 days, day and night till now. Meidan al-Tahrir has become our land and our camp. We settle on its asphalt and inside tents as a solid entity of men and women…we will never leave our place even though the police, disguised in civilian clothes, attack us and even if al-Meidan is attacked (like what happened on Feb 2) by mercenaries hired by the regime. Those were given bribes (50 EGP and a chick for a soldier, and the bigger one’s rank the bigger the bribe is).They stormed into al-Meidan riding horses and camels, armed with various weapons (red, yellow, and white ones). One of the horses was about to trample on me while I was standing in al-Meidan with the young men. They carried me away from this primitive attack; I saw them with my own eyes moving around in al-Meidan, shooting everywhere. Amid the dust and smoke which surrounded al-Meidan and its surrounding buildings, I saw firing flames flying in the sky, young men falling, and blood shedding. A semi-military war broke out between the regime’s henchmen and the peaceful Egyptian people who were calling for freedom, dignity and justice. But the defense committee of the revolutionary young men managed to fight back those mercenaries and captured some horses and camels and 100 mercenaries with their IDs, among them were state security officers, central security officers, policemen, and some of them were jobless and criminals who were released from prisons. Some of them confessed that they were bribed with 200 EGP and promised with 5000 EGP if they managed to scatter the youths in al-Meidan by using their swords and sharp weapons. They described the youths who led this revolution as “the kids who made the disturbance” using the language of Mubarak’s big heads who gave orders and money.

The young men built their tents in the square to get some rest. Women with their infants lied down on the ground in the cold and rain. Hundreds of ladies and girls, never harassed by anyone, walked proudly feeling freedom, dignity, and equality among their fellows. Christians are participating in the revolution side by side with Muslims. I was surrounded by some young men from Muslims Brotherhood: they said to me “We disagree with some of your opinions in your writings but we like and respect you because you have not acted hypocritically with any regime or force inside or outside the country.” During my walk in the square, people were coming to me, men and women, from different directions, embracing and hugging me saying “Dr. Nawal, we are the new generations who have read your books and inspired by your creativity, rebellion and revolution” I swallowed my tears and said “This is a happy occasion for all of us, a celebration of freedom, dignity, equality, creativity, rebellion, and revolution.”

A young woman, named Rania, “We ask for a new constitution, a civil one, which does not segregate between races, gender, and religion.” Another young man, a Christian named Butrus Dawood, said “We want a civil personal statute which does not segregate between people in terms of doctrine, gender or religion.” A young man named Tariq al-Dimiri declared, “The young men made the revolution and we have to select our interim government and a national committee to change the constitution.” A young man, Mohamed Amin, said “We want to open the People’s Assembly and Shura Council and proceed with honest elections to choose a new president and new popular councils.” A young man named Ahmed Galal said, “We are a popular revolution that puts a new social contract, not just demands, slogan of our revolution.” Free equality, and social justice, who makes revolution is one who puts the new government rules, chooses the transitional government, selects National Committee which changes the constitution, establishes a committee of governors of the revolution so that opportunists (the owners of wealth and power) are not imposed on us. Committees of governors did not participate with us in the revolution, but comes now to us by plane from Europe or America. Among the Egyptians who lived their lives outside or inside the country now come to become leaders of the revolution. We say: “Who did the revolution are the ones who are leading the revolution. Among us governors from young people of thirty years, forty or fifty years of age. We have competencies in all scientific political and economic fields. We are the ones who form a committee of our governors and our government in transition, and the National Committee to change the constitution and laws. A young Mohamed Said said “I feel proud for the first time in my life because I am Egyptian. Despair and depression were gone and defeat was turned into victory. We paid the price of freedom with the blood of our martyrs. There is no power to bring us back.

Al-Meidan turned to an entire city with its facilities, and in the hospital thereabout sleep injured and wounded, doctors and nurses from the masses of young people volunteered, residents volunteered with blankets, medicines, cotton and gauze, food and water, something like a dream and fantasy, I am living with the young men and women day and night. Committees were formed among these young men and women to handle all chores from sweeping the Meidan to transporting the injured to hospital, providing food and medicines, taking over the defense of the Meidan and responding to the lies of the system in the media to nominate the names of the Transitional Government and the Committee of governors, and others. Walls for the houses, institutions and taboos that distinguish between citizens, women and men, Muslim and Christians or others faded. We become one nation, no divisions on the basis of sex, religion or other, all demanding the departure of Mubarak and his trial and his men in the party and the government, the bloodshed on Wednesday, 2 February and all days since 25 January, corruption and tyranny over thirty years of rule […].

President Barack Obama is hoping to “mend ties” with big business by speaking to the US Chamber of Commerce (COC), Washington DC’s top lobbyist. That’s the frame we’re hearing in the corporate media even though the President has extended the Bush tax cuts, recently named JP Morgan Chase executive and former COC board member William Daley as his chief of staff, and chose General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to head the new “White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.”

Since 2009, GE has closed more than 25 manufacturing plants in the US and slashed thousands of jobs, according to the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. While GE has laid off at least 10,000 workers in the US, it has created more than 30,000 jobs in India over the past decade. The administration’s job czar runs a company that employs more workers overseas than it does in the US.

During his recent eight-hour floor speech on inequality, tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, and corporate greed, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) cited an investors’ meeting on December 6, 2002 at which Immelt said, “When I am talking to GE managers, I talk China, China, China, China, China. You need to be there. You need to change the way people talk about it and how they get there. I am a nut on China. Outsourcing from China is going to grow to $5 billion. We are building a tech center in China. Every discussion today has to center on China. The cost basis is extremely attractive.”

Since Immelt became CEO in 2001, he has been paid $90 million in salary, cash, and pension benefits, and like most multi-nationals, GE just posted better-than-expected fourth quarter and 2010 profits.

According to the Wall Street Journal, with about half of the largest corporations already reporting fourth-quarter profits, 2010 is expected to deliver the third-best full-year gain since 1998. Chevron’s fourth-quarter profits rose 72 percent. Dow Chemical’s profits rose a whopping 188 percent.

The banks that received $13 trillion in bailout money and subsidies with no strings attached are also posting record profits and paying their CEOs multi-million dollar salaries. According to the New York Times, 2010 was JPMorgan Chase’s most profitable year. CEO Jamie Dimon is expected to take home $17.5 million, while four of his top executives have been awarded stock worth more than $10 million each.

At the recent state dinner with Chinese President Hu Jintao, attendees included Boeing CEO James McNerney, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent, Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris and The Carlyle Group Co-Founder David Rubenstein. Even Henry Kissinger, the man who is facing international arrest warrants for war crimes, was there.

And yet The Washington Post claims that President Obama is speaking to the COC to “rebuild ties with corporate America?”

What most media outlets fail to mention is that many of the corporations that fund the COC are responsible for sending millions of jobs overseas and yet they present themselves as the saviors for job creation as long as they continue receiving tax breaks. “And that’s just wrong,” says Sasha Abramsky, a freelance journalist who is working on a book about the COC. “It’s a rewriting of history and the fact that they haven’t been called on it is a major failing among progressive politicians.”

Abramsky says the COC claims to speak for all American businesses and by extension, for all Americans, but it’s important to point out that it’s “got a very sectarian, very narrow agenda.”

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The COC used to claim that it represents “three million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions,” but a 2009 investigation by Mother Jones’ Josh Harkinson found that the number is closer to 200,000. A day after the story appeared, the COC quietly revised its membership number from three million to 300,000.

When most people think of the COC, images of their local Chamber and mom and pop shops come to mind, but according to the Mother Jones piece, “many state and local chambers don’t want the national body to speak for their members. Since 2006, when the Chamber offered to automatically enroll local members in the national group free of charge, only 354 of the nation’s 7,000 state and local chambers have signed up.”

“The US Chamber is the largest lobbying organization in the country,” says Kristy Setzer, communications director of the union-backed watchdog group, US Chamber Watch. “It is not lobbying on behalf of small business owners. It is lobbying to protect the handful of very large CEOs that fund its budget.”

According to the US Chamber Watch, the COC’s more than 100-member board includes CEOs from Dow Chemical, JP Morgan Chase, AT&T, and Caterpillar; just 16 corporations, including WellPoint, Cigna, Charles Schwab, and Hewlett Packard provide 60 percent of the COC’s $200 million budget.

The COC is not required to reveal specific contribution information, so it’s difficult to break down individual donations. In October, Politico reported that the News Corporation, whose holdings include the Fox News Channel and the Wall Street Journal, donated $1M to the COC.

“That’s probably the most disheartening thing about the Chamber’s business model. It is all so secret. It’s done that way by design,” says Setzer.

She says anonymous contributions allow major corporations to hide behind policy positions that might be unpopular with their customers and the public at large, including repealing the healthcare law, undermining climate legislation, and extending tax breaks to companies that send jobs overseas. Since President Bill Clinton signed NAFTA in 1993, American corporations have shut down 43,000 factories, resulting in the loss of 5.1 million manufacturing jobs, according to Public Citizen.

According to a Bloomberg report, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the health insurance lobby whose members include Humana, Aetna, WellPoint, and Cigna, gave the Chamber $86.2 million in 2009 to oppose real healthcare reform. The COC ran TV ads in over 20 states warning that a public option would lead to “expanded government control over your health.”

“By funneling the money through the Chamber,” says the report, “insurers were able to remain at the table negotiating with Democrats while still getting the bill criticized.”

At the March 5, 2009 White House Health Care Summit, where doctors and single payer advocates were arrested for standing up to ask why single payer reform was not on the table, AHIP president Karen Ignagni told President Obmaa he could count on her and the insurance industry. “We want to work with the members of Congress on a bipartisan basis here. You have our commitment. We hear the American people about what’s not working. We’ve taken that seriously,” she said. “You have our commitment to play, to contribute, and to help pass health care reform this year.”

President Obama responded by saying, “Good. Thank you, Karen. That’s good news. That’s America’s Health Insurance Plans.”

At today’s speech to 200 COC members, President Obama said, “I’m here today because I’m convinced we can and must work together.”

“It’s unclear what is more mortifying: President Barack Obama choosing the club of America’s notorious job-offshorers to talk about the importance of creating American jobs, or his rallying of his fiercest political opponents to help him overcome the majority of Americans who oppose more-of-the-same job-killing trade agreements and pass a NAFTA-style deal with Korea that the government’s own analysis shows will increase our trade deficit,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, in response to today’s speech.

“The US Chamber of Commerce audience must have been thrilled to have Obama push more of the trade agreements that both help them offshore American jobs and, given that most Americans oppose more of these job-killing trade pacts, can help them achieve their political goal of replacing Obama in 2012.”

The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement will cost 159,000 US jobs within the first seven years after it takes effect. Congress is expected to vote on the deal in the coming months.

Listen to Your Call’s recent show about the COC. We invited the COC and the California COC to join us, but both declined our invitations.

Guests:

Sasha Abramsky, freelance journalist who is working on a book about the COC

Christy Setzer, spokeswoman for US Chamber Watch

Original Article at http://www.alternet.org/news/149562/85-year-old-woman_arrested_for_bank_protest_–_6_revolts_the_tea_party-obsessed_corporate_media_overlooked_?page=entire

Some of the most undercovered stories of 2010 were actions taken by ordinary people standing up for a more just and equitable society. People are taking to the streets on a regular basis across the country, but unlike the corporate-sponsored Tea Party — whose spokespeople can’t answer basic questions about the deficit they claim to be so worried about — those who believe in health care, affordable housing, economic justice, education, a living wage, and a better life for all rarely, if ever, get the attention they deserve. Instead, the media, even the alternative media, spent the better part of last year obsessing over the Tea Party and manufactured personalities like Sarah Palin, while ignoring people like 85-year-old Julia Botello.

Last month, Botello was among 22 people arrested for blocking the doors of a Chase Bank branch in downtown Los Angeles. Over 200 people, many of them homeowners facing foreclosure and eviction, took part in the action organized by Home Defenders League and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment.

According to the Alliance, these families have never participated in an event or protest before, but they have exhausted all other options. Imagine if over 200 Tea Partiers took part in a similar action. Imagine if an 85-year-old Tea Party member was photographed being led away by two cops, one holding each arm. Not only would this video footage be shown over and over again on the cable shows, Julia Botello would be bombarded with interview requests, but because she’s standing in solidarity with people who are losing their homes, she’s only been contacted by two other reporters.

“If we’re united, we’re a better force. We need to stand together,” she says. “I use my voice for the people. I know all of the councilmen and councilwomen in my area. I’m not afraid to speak and ask for better conditions for my community.”

Botello found her voice 10 years ago after falling and hurting her knee on a routine walk home. Her South Central Los Angeles neighborhood was usually dark because the street lights rarely worked. “We usually had only one light that worked, so I went to local council meetings and raised my voice. Why are our streets dark? We need light. My neighborhood hasn’t been dark since.” She’s been going strong ever since. If there’s an action focusing on an issue she cares about, she will do whatever it takes to be there, even if it means rescheduling an overdue eye surgery. “I still have time and I want to keep going.”

In addition to the Chase Bank action last month, several other grassroots actions failed to receive the attention they deserve. These actions, no matter how small, should not be discounted. Let’s hope these voices and demands become too loud to ignore in 2011.

— On December 9, thousands of inmates in Georgia state prisons began a six-day strike to call attention to their treatment and to demand basic human rights: a living wage for work, educational opportunities, decent living conditions and health care, and an end to cruel and unusual punishment. It was largest prison strike in U.S. history, but the New York Times was one of the few mainstream outlets to cover it.

“Perhaps there was a larger hand at play—one that did not want the deplorable conditions of the Georgia prison system to surface,” writes Death and Taxes’ Joe Weber.

For extensive coverage, analysis and interviews with inmates, you had to turn to independent outlets like Facing South and the Black Agenda Report. “They want to break up the unity we have here,” said an anonymous strike leader in an interview with the Black Agenda Report. “We have the Crips and the Bloods, we have the Muslims, we have the head Mexicans, and we have the Aryans all with a peaceful understanding, all on common ground.”

By refusing to work or leave their cells, the inmates brought attention to prison labor and the growing prison-industrial complex, two issues that rarely get covered in the national media. In These Times ran a piece about Georgia’s hidden prison labor force and The Irish Times ran a piece about what prison life is actually like in Georgia, which has the highest prisoner-to-resident ratio in the U.S. with 60,000 prisoners and 150,000 people on probation. According to the piece, African Americans comprise 63 percent of the prison population, but only 30 percent of state residents.

“Even though reports are stating that the strike is effectively over, the momentum created by the activities of these inmates cannot be understated,” writes Boyce Watkins, founder of the Your Black World Coalition. “By coming together in such an amazing way, the individuals in the Georgia State correctional system have made a strong statement for human rights around the world.”

– On December 11, a few local media outlets in Waterville, Maine reported on an action organized by the Maine Fair Trade Campaign to call attention to President Obama’s decision to bring the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement to Congress for a vote. The group, which opposes NAFTA and CAFTA, rang a bell 31 times in honor of the more than 31,000 Maine-based jobs that have been outsourced since 2000. “People all over the state have suffered because of this,” said campaign board member Sarah Bigney in an interview with The Morning Sentinel. “We know what the impact of NAFTA has been. We must say no to this madness. We know it will continue to worsen the job crisis.” According to the Economic Policy Institute, the deal will increase the deficit with Korea by $16.7 billion, and cost 159,000 U.S. jobs within the first seven years after it takes effect.

Public Citizen says it’s up to Congress to make the “right decision and reject this deeply flawed, job-killing” deal, which is an expansion of the deals negotiated under the Bush administration. “As a Senator and then as a presidential candidate, President Obama opposed the deal,” says a statement on Public Citizen’s site. “He pledged to replace the damaging NAFTA model. In June 2010, President Obama said he would start renegotiating parts of the agreement in preparation for sending it to Congress. But he only focused on some modest changes to automobile trade issues. This came after over 100 members of Congress and over 500 unions, environmental, faith and other organizations called on him to meet his commitments and really fix Bush’s old text. The deal Obama is now pushing directly conflicts with his campaign commitments.”

Congress is expected to vote on the deal in February.

– On December 15, workers, union activists, and community supporters took part in more than 40 actions at Rite Aid stores in 11 states to raise awareness about low wages and health insurance cost increases. In These Times, one of the only outlets to report on the National Day of Action, ran a piece by AFL-CIO campaign coordinator Rand Wilson. He writes that the actions were “sparked by a rash of poor decisions by Rite Aid officials across the country.”

“In Lancaster, California, Rite Aid executives stalled talks with 500 warehouse employees for nearly two years. Now officials are proposing to gouge employees by ‘marking-up’ the cost of health insurance 28 times over the increases charged by insurers. In Rome, New York, Rite Aid is closing a distribution facility that pays family-sustaining wages and benefits and provides workers with a voice on the job. Work is being shifted to a nearby location that pays low wages with few benefits and no job rights.”

Watch a video of the action in Oakland, California.

– On December 16, 131 veterans and their supporters were arrested after chaining themselves to the White House fence during a snowstorm to demand an end to the ongoing occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. According to Veterans for Peace, it was the largest veteran-led demonstration in recent years, but just like Winter Soldier, the action was completely ignored by the corporate media. Dave Lindorff reports that it was blacked out of the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.

“None of us expected that these illegal wars of aggression would immediately stop due to our simple action, but we did hope that we would send a message — a message that there are citizens who do not support our government’s illegal wars and occupations; a message to the world that we are shamed by the actions of our government and we will do everything we can to stop it,” writes veteran and peace activist Leah Bolger. “It is our sincere hope that this action will be a spark that ignites the consciousness of others; that our refusal to obey and willingness to put our liberty on the line will give them the courage of their own convictions and they will also begin to act in resistance as well.”

In New York City, 75 veterans, members of Grandmothers Against the War, including two in their 90s, the Green Party, and other groups stood in solidarity with the activists in DC. Eleven people were arrested for blocking an intersection near the military recruiting station in Times Square. Joan Wile, founder of Grandmothers Against the War, writes, “It is hoped that the New York protest along with the big one in Washington served as a wake-up call to the American people about the tragedy of this hopeless and destructive war. Wake up, America!”

At another solidarity action in San Francisco, 26 people were arrested for taking part in a die-in and blocking the doors of the Federal Building.

– On December 20, six people were arrested for trespassing after they locked arms and climbed the steps to the Bank of America entrance in Clayton, St. Louis. According to organizers, some 80 people gathered in front of the bank to raise awareness about a pending foreclosure facing Mary and Mike Boehm. Mary Boehm says after her husband lost his job in 2009, she applied for the mortgage modification program designed to keep people in their homes. On November 8, 2009, Bank of America told her she qualified, but she needed to turn in additional paperwork in order to be officially approved. Even though the Boehms never missed a payment, they received a notice in November 2010 saying they were in default. The foreclosure proceedings began on December 26. The action was organized by the grassroots group Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment.

Watch KMOV’s coverage here. A class action lawsuit has since been filed in St. Louis federal court against Bank of America for allegedly refusing to participate in foreclosure prevention programs despite taking $25 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program money, according to the Courthouse News Service.

Original Article found here:

http://www.alternet.org/news/149562/85-year-old-woman_arrested_for_bank_protest_–_6_revolts_the_tea_party-obsessed_corporate_media_overlooked_?page=entire

Kim Deanne

Commutation statement from Schwarzenegger

SARA JESSIMY KRUZAN, W-59700

“If at the end of court procedures there is claimed to persist a miscarriage of justice, despite all the precautions of the law to the contrary, the ultimate remedy rests in an appeal to the Governor . . . .” (In re Horowitz (1949) 33 Cal.2d 534, 546.)

On March 10, 1994, 16-year-old Sara Kruzan shot and killed her former pimp, 37-year-old George Howard. In response to threats by James Earl Hampton, Ms. Kruzan went to a movie with Mr. Howard. After the movie, the pair went to a hotel. As they prepared to have sexual intercourse, she shot Mr. Howard to death. Ms. Kruzan was convicted of special circumstances first-degree murder (while lying in wait and during a robbery) with a firearm. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus four consecutive years for the use of a firearm. Ms. Kruzan appealed her conviction, but her sentence was upheld. Mr. Howard’s death is tragic, and I do not discount the gravity of the offense. But given Ms. Kruzan’s age at the time of the murder, and considering the significant abuse she suffered at his hands, I believe

Ms. Kruzan’s sentence is excessive. Accordingly, I commute Ms. Kruzan’s murder sentence to 25 years to life in prison with the possibility of parole.1

NOW, THEREFORE, I, ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, Governor of the State of California, in accordance with the authority vested in me by the Constitution and statutes of the State of California, hereby commute Sara Kruzan’s murder sentence to 25 years to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Great Seal of the State of California to be affixed this 31st Day of December, 2010.
_______________________________
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER

From the Free Sara Kruzan committee:
WHILE WE ALL HOPED AND PRAYED THAT SARA’S SENTENCE WOULD BE COMPLETELY VACATED THE COMMUTE IS A HUGE STEP. WE CAN NOW MOVE FORWARD WITH THE KNOWLEDGE THAT SARA WILL BE FREE.

THIS COMMUTE DOES NOT MEAN THAT SARA CANNOT GO BACK TO COURT SEEKING OTHER REMEDIES TO HER SENTENCE. I WILL CONTINUE TO KEEP EVERYONE UPDATED!!

WE THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!

TOGETHER WE STAND TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE!!!!!!!!!!

Happy New Year!!!

KIM DEANNE

email: kimdeanne@freesarakruzan.org

website: http/www.freesarakruzan.org