The SIXTIES

Thousands celebrate 40th anniversary of Alcatraz occupation

2009-12-23T13:04:00.007-08:00

Thousands celebrate 40th anniversary of Alcatraz occupation

http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/76290047.html

By Shadi Rahimi, Today correspondent
Nov 27, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO It began and ended like any other prayerful sunrise
ceremony on Alcatraz Island. Crowds bundled in layers of clothing
huddled onto ferries. Drummers sang as the boats took turns floating
more than 3,500 people across icy waters. Dancers pounded bare feet
across the cool floor of the island turned prison turned museum.

But this year, memories of the youthful spirit that painted in red
the declaration "Indians Welcome; Indian Land" around the island's
United States Penitentiary sign took precedence. This sunrise
ceremony on Un-Thanksgiving Day was a celebration of the 40th
Anniversary of the Occupation of Alcatraz a day when a group of
Natives took a leap into history.

The paint remains, but few could personally recall Nov. 20, 1969,
when 79 Natives landed to reclaim the island under a loose
interpretation of a treaty that dictated the return of unused federal
land to the Natives from whom it was acquired. And few could remember
a time when physical and armed confrontation, and the loss of lives,
was almost a required part of the civil rights struggle for Natives.

For those who could, the day was a powerful reminder.

"Alcatraz was to put your life on the line, it was a struggle; it was
a sacrifice. We were ridiculed and put down but we didn't care
because we knew we were right," said Lakota Harden, 52,
Minnecoujou-Yankton Lakota and HoChunk. "We knew what we were doing
was powerful. This taught us all not to give up."

Harden was 12 and in boarding school at the time of the occupation,
which was a successful third attempt after the two others lead by
Native San Francisco State students and a small group of Sioux. It
lasted 19 months and along with a forceful wave of American Indian
activism that followed influenced the federal government's decision
to end its policy of termination and pass the Indian
Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975.

Harden was a young representative of the American Indian Movement's
"We Will Remember" Survival School on the Pine Ridge Reservation,
which was established out of the 1973 Wounded Knee occupation. She
has since worked with organizations including the International
Indian Treaty Council, Women of All Red Nations and the Black Hills
Alliance, and was the ceremony emcee.

Her cousin and aunt joined the Alcatraz occupiers in 1969, and Harden
could remember a time on the reservation when it was "powerful to
look Indian, with long hair and braids, jeans and AIM symbols. You
could get shot at.

"This was the birthplace of everything after this, everything changed."

For J.R. Laiwa, a California Pomo and Wailaki who joined the Alcatraz
occupiers in his 20s, the island was a place of personal change. He
had returned from serving in a war he opposed in Vietnam and was
haunted by the realization that Natives faced similar circumstances
to the Vietnamese under U.S. military occupation.

"I look back and have a lot of happy memories of being here. But I
don't think of it as a legacy; I see it as a beginning. We still have
to ask for everything, we still have to beg for everything. I walk
the streets and I don't see more than one indigenous person. We still
have to struggle."

That sentiment was echoed by the honored speakers Bill Means, IITC
founder and U.N. Working Group on Indigenous Populations co-founder,
and Clyde Bellecourt, one of the AIM founders and a participant in
the occupations of Wounded Knee and a BIA building in 1972.

Bellecourt mentioned the excitement felt across the world when
President Obama took office, and his own warning to "be vigilant and
watchful. We've had promises before." He watched as industries and
Wall Street were bailed out, while Native people continue to wait for
what is theirs to be returned.

In his talk, Means referred to the struggles of indigenous people
south of the U.S. border and repeated several times to loud cheers,
"There are no immigrants, only migrants."

Means said there is a worldwide indigenous movement that is 375
million strong. But "we have to reignite the flame," sparked by Alcatraz.

The nurture and care of the radical soul

2009-12-23T13:04:00.005-08:00

The nurture and care of the radical soul

http://lastfreevoice.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/the-nurture-and-care-for-the-radical-soul/

by Donald Meinshausen
December 18, 2009

I have been involved in radical politics for over 40 years. I have
studied movements that were left, right and libertarian and green.
Single issue, ideological, local as well as international have been
areas of involvement for me. My involvement also includes cultural,
theological and technological focuses to try to cure social problems.
There are many problems in handling any of these approaches. One of
the worst is burnout.

Anger or concern will only get you so far. These problems don't go
away because of an election victory as we are finding out now. One
way of burning yourself out forever is working hard for something,
getting it and it isn't what you wanted. The system is good at
putting their bad solutions wrapped in nice rhetoric packages that
end up as traps. So how do you avoid this mistake and not get fooled
again? (Listen to the song from the Who: We won't get fooled again)
Or is it worse never seeing a glimpse of what you want to accomplish?

Radicalism to me means having a positive vision and plan that is so
clear in your mind that you cannot be suckered out of it. This
positive vision is also a way of balancing all the negativity that we
deal with. This is the bad news; the inevitable critiques of
everything that inundate us that can turn us into cynics and
pessimists. Some would call it a balance of yin and yang. This
negativity can be balanced in a number of ways. Politics is power
based upon a community that shares a vision. Real change is based on
communities that are based on this commonality and the nurturance of it.

Culture is a way of doing this. In the 60's we developed a
counter-culture. Out of this vision came new ideas, designs and
innovations. This happened in music, literature, all types of
entertainment, food, relationships, fashion, design and technology
etc. This also happened in spirituality and psychology as well. When
people ask me to evaluate an idea, whether political or theological,
I ask them to show me an example of its culture as novel, play or
film. It need not be high culture. I need not entirely agree with it.
But it should be interesting in evoking new approaches, solutions and
archetypes.

I remember the Stalinoids that used to try and feed off of our energy
and recruit us. They ridiculed the counterculture, which, was a
source of our well-being. They had little, if any, culture and what
they had was rigidly politically correct and quite boring. This is
one of the reasons that they are now an endangered species. This is
why that I have no long-term fear of Islamic extremism or
fundamentalism in general. Those without creative vision stagnate or
grab someone else's.

But how can you put together a personal worldview that integrates
what you like culturally and see it solve problems? How can you see
it work its way in the world and play in it as well? The best
literature of ideas is science fiction. Many of the technical,
political and cultural aspects of the present day were first
described in science fiction. Here people learned in technology and
social trends explain these factors affecting our future in a new
mythology with new archetypes.

I once had an opportunity to talk to someone who did his PhD thesis
on utopian literature who was also involved in the Citizen's Party.
While he had to wade through a lot of crap, weirdness and boring
rants he found that fictional portrayals of ideas are more widely
read than heavy tomes on politics and economics by a factor of 10-1.
Therefore these fictional depictions were very influential among
average citizen and opinion maker alike as well as those in between.

The two examples that he gave were Looking Backwards by Edward
Bellamy based on Karl Marx and Ayn Rand and various works on
libertarianism. He said that utopian literature today is almost
exclusively green, feminist, pagan, libertarian or anarchist and much
of that is a combination of those ideas. Anti-utopian literature was
also a part of his thesis. The ratio of anti-utopian novels to
utopian ones increased dramatically after the Communists took over Russia.

People also express some of the best critiques of a system through
humor. This is more healthy and effective on average than either
utopianizing or academic explanations. From Swift to Mark Twain,
Lenny Bruce to Jon Stewart, Steve Colbert and PJ O'Rourke have
exploded hypocrisies and evil through laughter. Beware of any
ideologian or theocrat that cannot laugh, especially at themselves.
Humor is tragedy turned inside out. You, as a social critic, can get
away with more as a humorist. It also feels good to laugh and is good
for you. Humor is a way of deflating egotism with less hurting of
people's feelings.

Of course you can still remain politically active and not read
fiction or like humor and not burn out. Then you can run the risk of
burning out or boring your friends and acquaintances by talking about
nothing but politics. Grimness is a turnoff. That is why the Puritans
died out. Even if you read and listen to only political books, music,
films exclusively you become too narrow and boring. Is enough of your
life enjoyable that has no political context at all? If not, then how
can you relate to the many who do not have politics as their focus?
How can you study technology and other politically neutral parts of
life unless you can enjoy non-political knowledge and the simple
pleasures of life for what they are?

There is one answer available for all activists and theoreticians no
matter what their talents or inclination. Whenever you get a chance
to visit an alternative world, do so. For example live or visit
foreign countries. Some parts of the US are like foreign countries to
us and travel to them is an adventure. Do this within reasonable
precautions for health and safety and observe and ask questions,
politely. An activist is an ambassador and an explorer as well as instigator.

Imagination and on line worlds such as Second Life can be interesting
laboratories of social experiment. I'm looking for any feedback on
what people have learned from organizing in these worlds. Communes
are what we did in the 60's and there are still many of these
experimental communities if you want to join or investigate them.

But also consider the world of Temporary Autonomous Zones. This
theory by left anarchist theoretician and Sufi poet Peter Lamborn
Wilson can put practice in your theory. The idea here is if you put
together a temporary and large enough event that you outnumber the
Man so that your energy has room to bloom. I have seen several and
you can do and see some cutting edge entertainment, art and people.

The most interesting one that I have discovered is Burning Man. There
is a good book about it by Brian Doherty called "This is Burning
Man". Here you have radical self-reliance, complete artistic freedom
and environmental respect for an invulnerable flat desert
environment. This attracts some of the weirdest, creative people in
the country and has done so for decades. This is a community of over
30,000 people that assembles a town for about 10 days and becomes the
5th largest city in Nevada. It even has a Department of Mutant
Vehicles to handle the safety of the art cars, sailing ships, whales
and dragons that operate as its transportation system. You meet some
every interesting people here as Silicon Valley closes for this extravaganza.

Also check out Rainbow Gatherings to see a real 60's be-in with over
10,000 hippies in a national forest. Like Burning Man it has security
without a police state and health emergency services without expense.
Both events appreciate participants rather than tourists. So when you
go be self-sufficient, share and help out where you can. Be an
entertainer or a facilitator. After all, these events are a way to
build a new community. Yes, these events are an ordeal, to weed out
gawkers and others who do not participate. They are quite cheap as
vacations and there is car-pooling.

If you want something more comfortable and artsy-craftsy try Oregon
Country Fair, which is held around Eugene and is like a Renaissance
Fair with a 60's motif. Unlike the other events mentioned food, arts
and crafts are sold here and there are many cool craftsman as well as
avant garde entertainment. So it is more of fair although you could
go there to sell things.

The state does try to hassle, control or stop these events, which
should give you an idea of how important they are in learning new
ideas. But don't let that stop you very few are ever really bothered.
At all of these events there are children who are enjoying themselves
and are escorted by their parents.

Pagan events are also a TAZ. Some radicals have a strong spiritual
life that nurtures them along with other things. Paganism is
spirituality with roots in the 60's as well as ancient ones as well.
Here we there are more group ceremonies, more workshops, and more of
a spiritual focus. I like the positive and creative aspects to
balance and inspire me. There are so many traditions within this
world that most pagans consider themselves eclectic and some combine
Buddhism and Christianity with their Paganism. Some Pagan events
attract 60's counter cultural figures and people as entertainment as
well as attendees.

So holidays and holy days are alike as vacations and vocations are
similar. This vacation allows you to vacate the problems and see
another world where politics is not so important. Being with fellow
visionaries in a relaxed, celebratory mode can allow discussion and
experimentation of ideas on a short-term basis. It allows a
nurturing, spiritual energy that we politicos need to recharge our
batteries. They are also fun. And living well is the best revenge.

Reflections on the Black Panther Party

2009-12-23T13:04:00.003-08:00

On 40th anniversary of the assassination of Fred Hampton

Reflections on the Black Panther Party

http://www.workers.org/2009/us/bpp_1224/

Published Dec 20, 2009

Text of a talk given Dec. 11 to a meeting of the New York branch of
Workers World Party by Naomi Cohen.

On this occasion we want to reflect on some of the history of the
Black Panther Party and how Workers World Party and its youth group
at the time, Youth Against War and Fascism, related to the Panthers.
While some groups in the movement distanced themselves from the
militant tactics and revolutionary ideology of the BPP, we recognized
their struggle as a genuine expression of the fight for liberation
and self-determination. We not only wrote about the BPP in our
newspaper, but we tried to find every avenue to collaborate with them
and show solidarity in their struggle for liberation and against repression.

Formed in Oakland, Calif., in 1966 as the Black Panther Party for
Self-Defense, the party had a revolutionary 10-point program and took
bold initiatives in the struggle against racist police brutality in
the Black community. But the Panthers were thrust into national
prominence and grew rapidly following the May 1967 armed
demonstration led by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale at the State Capitol
in Sacramento to declare the right of armed self-defense for the
Black community. Part of their program was to monitor the police
activity in the Black community and document the racist brutality
that characterized the police occupation of the communities.

Shortly after the 1967 demonstration, Huey Newton was framed up on
murder charges and a long struggle to "Free Huey" followed. Our party
and its youth group, YAWF, were part of that campaign to "Free Huey"
in every city where we had members. And he was eventually freed after
a nationwide mass campaign.

The growth of the Black Panther Party took place in the midst of the
turbulent 1960s, when revolutionary movements around the world and in
the U.S. were growing -- especially under the impetus of the Vietnam
War, the Cuban and Chinese revolutions and the liberation struggles in Africa.

By 1968, the BPP had grown to about 5,000 members and their newspaper
had a weekly circulation of 100,000. Some reports indicate that at
their height they had 250,000 readers. They were the inspiration for
many revolutionary groups like the Young Lords Party, American Indian
Movement, I Wor Kuen (an Asian revolutionary group) and others. They
also took vanguard positions on such issues as gay liberation,
women's rights, and support for the National Liberation Front in
Vietnam and the Palestinian struggle.

At the same time, the FBI and police nationwide began to target the
BPP, labeling it a threat to national security. The infamous Counter
Intelligence Program, known as COINTELPRO, was initiated under J.
Edgar Hoover to assassinate leaders such as Fred Hampton and George
Jackson, frame up members, and disrupt the organization from within.
But even with all that, in January 1969, it was estimated that the
BPP free breakfast program fed 10,000 children every day. The
Panthers also organized free health clinics in cities around the country.

As the repression deepened, the Panthers called a conference in
Berkeley, Calif., in 1969 to found the National Committee to Combat
Fascism. We mobilized most of the membership of the party to be there
in solidarity, including our chairperson, Sam Marcy, and worked in
the local NCCF chapters.

In 1969, the police arrested 21 leaders of the BPP in New York City
in pre-dawn raids on their homes. They were to become known as the
Panther 21. YAWF joined with the New York chapter of the Panthers,
the Young Lords Party and other anti-racist and anti-imperialist
forces to work on their defense committee and demonstrate for their
freedom. The women's caucus of YAWF demonstrated repeatedly at the
Women's House of Detention, which was in Greenwich Village at the
time, demanding freedom for Afeni Shakur and Joan Byrd, two of the
Panther prisoners, and Angela Davis, who was also imprisoned there a
year later.

On May Day of 1970 we mobilized to attend a demonstration of about
15,000 in New Haven, Conn., to protest against the arrest of Erica
Huggins and Bobby Seale on trumped-up murder charges. They were freed
after a hung jury ended the bogus case in a mistrial. The Panther 21
were also acquitted of all charges and freed in May 1971.

In September 1970 we attended the Revolutionary People's
Constitutional Convention, organized by the BPP in Philadelphia at
Temple University to draft a new Constitution to serve the needs of
the people. The Philadelphia police, headed at that time by an
infamous racist named Frank Rizzo, tried to disrupt the convention by
raiding the local offices of the Panthers and arresting their
members. The police brutalized the Panthers and stripped them naked
in public, letting the press photograph them, as if this were a slave
auction. But the tactic was so outrageous and racist that it created
a groundswell of anger. A multinational crowd of between 10,000 and
15,000 people gathered in Philadelphia to support the Panthers and
participate in the process of drafting a people's revolutionary
Constitution that would be the basis for organizing. (Mumia Abu-Jamal
was a member of the Philadelphia chapter of the Panthers at the time
and was later targeted by the police for his activism.)

Some of the program of the RPCC included the idea that the people
should control the means of production and social institutions. Black
and Third World people were guaranteed proportional representation in
the administration of these institutions, as were women. The right of
national self-determination was guaranteed to all oppressed peoples.
Sexual self-determination for women and gays and lesbians was
affirmed. A standing army was to be replaced by a people's militia,
and the Constitution was to include an international bill of rights
prohibiting U.S. aggression and interference in the internal affairs
of other nations...The present racist legal system would be replaced
by a system of people's courts where one would be tried by a jury of
one's peers. Jails would be replaced by community rehabilitation
programs. Adequate housing, health care, and day care would be
considered Constitutional rights, not privileges.

As the government repression against the Panthers continued, they
formed chapters of the National Committee Against Fascism in a number
of cities, which we participated in. It was a true, multinational
rainbow coalition. When Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were assassinated
in Chicago in 1969, we joined thousands of activists nationwide who
hit the streets in protest. And again when George Jackson was killed
by prison guards at San Quentin in August 1971, we joined with our
comrades from the Young Lords Party and other revolutionary forces to
express our bitter outrage at his assassination and determination to
carry on the struggle.

But we did not merely protest. In those years, the Women's Caucus of
YAWF in New York City had worked to form the Women's Bail Fund, which
raised funds to bail out poor women from the House of Detention and
campaigned to free the women Panther prisoners held there. We also
organized the Prisoners Solidarity Committee (PSC) in those years,
which provided buses to transport families from New York City to the
many far-away prisons upstate which housed their sons and daughters.
Many of these families were too poor to visit their relatives otherwise.

It was because of this work of the PSC that when the Attica prisoners
rebelled in September of 1971 (partly sparked by the murder of George
Jackson a month earlier), the PSC was asked to send a representative
to Attica to be part of the observers' committee there. Thus, a
Puerto Rican comrade and leader of the PSC went to Attica to witness
that historic uprising and was there until Governor Nelson
Rockefeller sent in troops to slaughter both prisoners and guards and
wipe out the multinational solidarity and leadership that was
developed there, much of it inspired by the work of the Black Panther Party.

I'd like to end with a quote from George Jackson, who joined the
Panther Party in prison in California. This short excerpt is from his
book "Soledad Brother."

"The first time I was put in prison, it was just like dying. Just to
exist at all calls for some very heavy psychic adjustment. Being
captured was the first of my fears. It may have been an acquired
characteristic built up over centuries of black bondage.... (Then) I
met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels, and Mao ... and they redeemed me.
For the first four years, I studied nothing but economics and military ideas."

For us the struggle of the BPP not only affirms the courage and
potential of the human spirit to fight oppression in the face of the
most horrendous brutality, but as significant was the fact that
Marxism is the tool that the oppressed have turned to over and over
in history to find a path to liberation -- from Czarist Russia to
China, Vietnam, Korea and Cuba, Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau.
The Black Panther Party recognized that nowhere have the oppressed
found the road to liberation without smashing the state of the
capitalist class and building for a socialist future.

Long live the spirit of the Black Panther Party. All power to the people.

A Response From UFW to Marc Cooper

2009-12-23T13:04:00.001-08:00

A Response From UFW to Marc Cooper

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20091113_response_from_ufw_to_marc_cooper/

Nov 13, 2009
By Marc Grossman

Editor's note: This essay is a response to Marc Cooper's book review
posted on Nov. 13.
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/20091112_marc_cooper_on_the_fate_of_cesar_chavezs_dream/
--

I'm "the heavy-handed UFW press relations chief who had to quietly
resign," the one to whom Marc Cooper refers in his latest attack on
Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers ("Marc Cooper on the Fate of
Cesar Chavez's Dream," Truthdig, Nov. 13). Like most of the rest of
his article, this claim is false. I'm proud of 40-plus years with the
UFW and the more than 20 years I served as Cesar Chavez's spokesman,
speechwriter and personal aide, most of them spent making $5 a week
(later raised to $10 a week)the same "pay" Cesar accepted. I'm also
still proud to be associated with the UFW and the farmworker movement
as it works hard every day to carry on Cesar's dream of transforming
the lives of farmworkers and other poor Latino working families.
Let's examine just a few of the other falsehoods Cooper offers.

• The UFW began mobilizing in response to the heat deaths of
California farmworkers after Asuncion Valdivia was fatally stricken
in a Central Valley Giumarra Vineyards Corp. table grape vineyard in
2004. As four more farmworkers died from the heat in 2005, the UFW
organized a mass, grass-roots drive involving tens of thousands of
Central Valley farmworkers and urban supporters, and pushed reform
legislation at the state Capitol. It was this UFW campaign and the
union's bill, by then-Assemblymember Judy Chu, which was moving
forward, that convinced Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to issue the first
state regulation in the nation to try to prevent farm and all outdoor
workers from dying or becoming ill from the heat. Reporter Mark Arax,
based in the Central Valley, thoroughly documented these events,
which he personally witnessed, through a series of stories in the Los
Angeles Times in 2004 and 2005. (The UFW and the ACLU are suing the
Schwarzenegger administration over failure to enforce the heat
regulation and other legal protections for farmworkers. For more,
click here and here.)

• The heat-related deaths helped spark a major organizing drive among
Giumarra grape workers, 75 percent of whom signed petitions asking
for UFW representation that, seven days later, triggered a union
election in summer 2005. The UFW barely lost with 49 percent of the
vote; it wasn't "soundly defeated" as Cooper claims. The following
year, the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board overturned the
election results, citing illegal conduct by company owners and
foremen whose gross threats and intimidation against a largely
undocumented work force proved effective. The Giumarra
electionduring which the union went from 75 percent support to 49
percent in several daysis a classic example of the crying need for
labor law reform: the Employee Free Choice Act pending before
Congress and a similar UFW bill in California that has been approved
by the Legislature and vetoed three times by Gov. Schwarzenegger. For
more, follow this link.

• Cooper's claim in Truthdig, parroting Pawel's allegations in her
2006 L.A. Times series, that the UFW "simply did not organize farm
workers" and that there is "barely any significant UFW presence in
the fields" is belied by simple facts: The UFW has won recent union
contracts protecting thousands of farmworkers, including agreements
with California's largest rose, strawberry and vegetable companies,
its biggest winery, 75 percent of the state's mushroom industry,
Washington state's largest winery and the biggest dairy in the U.S.
While the UFW does not represent the number of farmworkers necessary
to make the industrywide changes farmworkers deserve, the union
represents under contract about the same percentage of the California
farm labor work force as is represented by unions across the country
in the private sector.

All California farmworkers benefit from recent landmark UFW-won laws
and regulations, including protections from extreme heat
(Schwarzenegger's 2005 state standards) and letting farmworkers use
mediators to gain union contracts when growers won't negotiate. The
UFW's historic and broadly backed federal AgJobs bill would let
immigrant farmworkers earn the right to permanently stay in the U.S.
by continuing to work in agriculture. The UFW's medical plan has paid
out about $120 million in health benefits to farmworkers and its
pension fund has paid out approximately $106 million.

Separate nonprofit organizations related to the UFW aid farmworkers
and members of other poor Latino working families from California to
Texas by having built more than 4,000 units of high-quality
affordable housing in four states, bringing innovative and
interactive educational Spanish-language programming to half a
million daily radio listeners through a nine-station network in three
states and helping thousands of farmworker children receive
after-school and weekend instruction and tutoring.

• Finally, Cooper appears unaware that claims from 2006his in the
L.A. Weekly and Pawel's in the L.A. Timesabout the farmworker
movement becoming "a Chavez family business" and "rampant Chavez
family nepotism" were soundly refuted following a thorough, nearly
yearlong investigation by the state attorney general's office unit
regulating charitable and nonprofit groups. A 12-page letter from the
California Department of Justice concluded, "The [Pawel L.A. Times]
articles, on their face, appeared to raise serious questions
regarding certain transactions. A closer review revealed that all of
the allegations deemed by our office to require investigation were,
in the end, found to be without merit." The entire attorney general's
report can be viewed here.

Cooper has a perfect right to express the hostility he so clearly
feels toward the UFW and the Chavez family. But he shouldn't twist
the facts and misrepresent reality in order to do so.
--

Marc Grossman still serves as a spokesman for the United Farm Workers
of America.

Shocking Revelations from the Rosenberg Grand Jury Files

2009-12-23T13:03:00.010-08:00

[2 items]

Shocking Revelations from the Rosenberg Grand Jury Files

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/roots3.1.1.html

by Roger Roots
November 18, 2009

The executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953 have gotten a
fresh look in the past two years. An association of historians and
journalists have unearthed the long-secret grand jury transcripts
from the Rosenberg case after years of litigation. Their findings
have been released by trickles on a website and in a few short news
articles in America's daily papers.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20080911/index.htm

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/22/rosenberg.hearing/ [See below.]

Most living Americans probably don't know much about the Rosenberg
case. Perhaps all they know is that it was a case of a man and wife
accused of spying or leaking some of America's atomic secrets to the
Soviet Union during the Cold War. Most who know that much are
probably aware that there has been controversy surrounding the case
for decades. Since the 1950s, opinions about the Rosenberg executions
have tracked closely with peoples' political views. Those on the Left
have long thought the Rosenberg prosecution represented bare-knuckled
McCarthyesque hysteria, while those on the right have generally
viewed the Rosenberg case to have been a soundly proven case of espionage.

The recent grand jury revelations provide fodder for both positions.
On the one hand, they shatter all doubts about whether Julius
Rosenberg was a Communist spy. He was. His own sons, Michael and
Robert Meeropol, who have long been champions of their parents'
exonerations, have partially recanted and resigned themselves to the
reality that at least their father really was a committed Communist
spy in common cause with the Soviet Union. It is now undeniable that
Julius Rosenberg and Martin Sobell forwarded certain military
information to the Soviets (although not the atomic secrets that
allowed Russia to produce atomic bombs those secrets were
transmitted by high-ranking U.S. government officials, including the
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury). On the other hand, the
transcripts reveal that Ethel Rosenberg was almost certainly innocent
of the crimes she was executed for committing. It appears that
Ethel's conviction was the result of perjured testimony by two
government witnesses her brother- and sister-in-law, David and Ruth
Greenglass who both testified at trial that Ethel Rosenberg had
typed up notes regarding U.S. military systems provided by David
Greenglass from the U.S. National Laboratory at Las Alamos. In her
recently unearthed 1950 grand jury testimony, Ruth Greenglass
admitted it was she (Greenglass) and not Ethel Rosenberg who
transcribed the notes, and in handwritten form.

The differing versions of events described in the 1950 grand jury
hearings (which were secret) and the 1951 trial proceedings cannot be
reconciled. Ruth Greenglass changed her story between the grand jury
hearings and the trial so as to falsely implicate Ethel Rosenberg. We
know from several accounts that lawyers for the Justice Department
coerced, threatened and coached the witnesses for days before the
Rosenberg trial. The government's star witness, Harry Gold, had been
prepped by four hundred hours of coaching by prosecutors and FBI
agents. The Feds apparently charged Ethel solely to coerce Julius
into confessing which he refused to do. Prosecutors then fabricated
the story that Ethel had typed up some atomic secrets from notes
provided by David Greenglass in order to bolster their otherwise
shoddy case against her. The prosecutor said in closing arguments
that Ethel "sat at that typewriter and struck the keys, blow by blow,
against her country" the words that are most remembered from the trial.

Lost in the discussion of the transcripts has been their astounding
revelations regarding the grand jury process itself. How could it
take 50 years to reveal these government lies? How could the
government conceal for half a century evidence that material
testimony in one of the most closely watched trials of the twentieth
century was perjured? The grand jury revelations highlight the fact
that the grand jury process in the United States especially at the
federal level has been hijacked by the government.

Ironically, the recent release of the Rosenberg grand jury
transcripts is a major break from contemporary practice. It is highly
unusual for federal courts to order federal grand jury transcripts to
be made public especially after cases are closed. Federal courts
have even punished a reporter for airing the names of witnesses who
testified three decades earlier in Jim Garrison's grand jury
investigation of President Kennedy's assassination.

The grand jury is an ancient common law institution whose original
purpose was to protect people from the prosecutorial power of the
government. Under the Fifth Amendment, the Constitution's Framers
intended that no criminal charges could ever be initiated by the
government alone. A citizen panel of 23 people (more or less) was
supposed to act as an obstacle to prosecutors and ensure that any
prosecution be preapproved by common people. Yet today most
commentators agree that the government can get any grand jury to
"indict a ham sandwich." Federal "indictment rates" greater than 99
percent have been reported in some years. In 2001, federal grand
juries declined to indict in only 21 cases nationwide. "These numbers
suggest that, whatever the reason, the federal grand jury now
exercises very little power as a shield between the government and
its citizens."

The story of how this once-proud institution fell under the control
of the very prosecutors it was supposed to control is a long and
tragic one. During the nineteenth century, all three branches of
government joined together to silence and deaden the institution.
Over time, it became common for government prosecutors to be present
in grand jury hearings (a practice strictly forbidden at the time of
the Founding), and eventually prosecutors became managers of the
proceedings. In 1946, all three branches approved the Federal Rules
of Criminal Procedure, which purported to codify for the first time
the common law rules that govern criminal procedure at the federal
level. The rules pertaining to grand jury practice, however, were
deliberately altered to evade the plain language of the Fifth
Amendment ("No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or
otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a
Grand Jury").

A presentment is an independent statement of a grand jury not
necessarily approved by a prosecutor. For centuries before the
enactment of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, grand juries
would issue presentments exposing government misconduct or accusing
people of crimes known to the grand jurors themselves. Occasionally,
grand juries issued presentments that openly proclaimed a person's
innocence in defiance of the government's allegations. The government
rule-makers in 1946 deliberately and calculatingly eliminated the
possibility of a federal grand juries issuing non-government-approved
statements or conclusions of any kind. Since 1946, any publicized
presentments by federal grand jurors have been prohibited as
violations of grand jury "secrecy" rules. Indeed, grand jurors that
release statements of any kind are now subject to possible five-year
prison sentences.

By the time of the Rosenberg case, the grand jury process had been
transformed into a rubber stamp for the government. Federal
prosecutors now dispense all evidence, witnesses and testimony to
grand jurors, who then retire to a deliberation room to vote on
whether to issue indictments. Because the grand jurors are only given
the government's version of events and are generally unable to
investigate matters on their own (like grand juries did from the
Founding period through the end of the nineteenth century), they
almost always vote according to the Justice Department's wishes. In
rare instances when grand juries refuse to indict, federal
prosecutors simply present their same claims to a second (or third,
fourth or fifth) grand jury until an indictment is issued. In such
cases, prosecutors have been known to lie to the later grand juries
by falsely telling them that the first grand jury wanted to indict
but ran out of time, etc. There is never any punishment meted out for
such lies.

And there is more. The Federal Rules strip grand jurors of their
rightful control over the recordings of grand jury testimony, notes,
and "any transcript prepared from those notes." Rule 6(e) places all
grand jury transcripts in the hands of the U.S. Attorneys Office,
giving an awesome power to the government never known under the
common law. Even federal judges don't have easy access to the
transcripts. In recent decades, prosecutors have perfected the
practices of granting immunity to selected witnesses, denying it to
others, concealing inconvenient testimony or evidence from the public
and generally leveraging facts and accusations into an overwhelming
advantage over targeted defendants. Defense attorneys, not even aware
of what is said in the transcripts, are usually unable to challenge them.

What's more, the U.S. Supreme Court has assured that this machine of
tyranny can virtually never be challenged. In two cases since the
1970s, the Court has held that grand jury improprieties are never
appealable after conviction and can only be challenged in the most
unusual circumstances via interlocutory appeal (an extremely rare and
disfavored pretrial device). Of course, defense lawyers are
systematically deprived of the means to make such challenges because
the prosecutors keep all evidence of the improprieties in their own
hands, and courts of appeals almost never grant hearings for
interlocutory appeals in criminal cases even if by miracle some
evidence of grand jury misconduct surfaces.

It is noteworthy that the very grand jury secrecy that now prevents
grand jurors from revealing prosecutorial misconduct the same
secrecy that kept the Ruth Greenglass perjury in the Rosenberg case
concealed from the public for 50 years now operates as a mockery of
the original intent behind grand jury privacy. Under the common law,
grand jury secrecy was a protection for grand jurors from
intimidation by the government. It is said to have first arisen in
England in 1681 when the King demanded that a grand jury indict his
rivals the Earl of Shaftesbury and Steven Colledge for treason.
The grand jury won the right to hold its proceedings in secret away
from the watchful eyes of the Crown prosecutor. For two and a half
centuries afterward, grand juries had the right to operate in secret
but to waive secrecy and issue public presentments when they
concluded their investigations. Today, however, the Federal Rules
place the prosecutor directly within the grand jury room and expose
any grand jurors who expose governmental improprieties to possible
five-year prison sentences.

If the Justice Department's libraries of grand jury transcripts were
ever thrown open to public scrutiny, they would speak of
prosecutorial misconduct on a massive scale. We know this because
those few cases such as the Rosenberg case in which grand jury
proceedings have been unsealed have revealed a level of misconduct
and abuse by prosecutors that can only be described as systematic and
pervasive. One federal judge recently wrote that in twenty-three
years of occasionally examining grand jury transcripts to resolve
pretrial motions, he had never once seen a case where prosecutors
gave grand juries accurate legal instructions.

For all its infamy and notoriety, the Rosenberg case is fairly
typical of the systematic injustice that federal criminal law has
degenerated into. As with so many other federal cases, the most
guilty and loathsome characters (e.g., Ruth and David Greenglass)
went unpunished or were given light sentences, while minor players
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were prosecuted to the max. The
government's most fearsome prosecutions were and are reserved for
those who refused to ally themselves with the state. David
Greenglass, who was caught red-handed and quickly became a government
witness to save his own skin, watched as his own lies sent his
innocent sister to the electric chair. And, of course, the federal
prosecutors who suborned perjury in the same case were lauded as
great heroes. One of them became a justice on the New York Supreme Court.

--------

58 years later, records unsealed in Rosenberg spy case

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/22/rosenberg.hearing/

By Ronni Berke
July 22, 2008

NEW YORK (CNN) -- After 58 years, historians and journalists will
have a chance to examine the secret grand jury testimony of witnesses
in the espionage case against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

The couple was investigated in 1950, tried in 1951 for conspiracy to
commit espionage and convicted and sentenced to death in 1953.

Cold War scholars are hoping the grand jury transcripts will shed
light on some nagging questions about the case -- primarily, just how
strong the case was against Ethel Rosenberg.

The National Security Archive, the American Historical Association,
the Georgetown University Law Center and others have petitioned to
have the transcripts of 46 witnesses released to the public.

In an unusual move, federal authorities have said that because of the
historic significance of the case, they do not oppose releasing the
transcripts of testimony from witnesses who have died or who do not
object to their release.

Of the 46 grand jury witnesses, 36 are either deceased or do not
object to releasing the transcripts. Three others are thought to have
died; four have not been located.

In a partial ruling Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein
denied a request to release the testimony of three other witnesses,
including one of the most controversial -- David Greenglass, Ethel
Rosenberg's brother and a pivotal witness who testified against the couple.

Greenglass' attorney sent Hellerstein two letters asking that his
testimony not be released. He offered to provide information to
support that request, but stipulated that that information be sealed.

"The circumstances that led to the testimony of Mr. Greenglass before
the grand jury in 1950 were complex and emotionally wrought," his
attorney wrote in one letter to the judge.

"Mr. Greenglass and his family were thrust into an ... unwanted
spotlight which has dogged their lives ever since," the other letter said.

In the 1940s, Greenglass was an Army sergeant working at the
Manhattan Project, the atomic bomb project, in Los Alamos, New
Mexico. He eventually confessed to being a spy recruited by Julius
Rosenberg and agreed to testify against the couple at trial.
Greenglass' wife, Ruth, had also been under investigation and was
threatened with indictment.

Ruth Greenglass, who died earlier this year at age 84, told
investigators she had seen Ethel Rosenberg type up her brother's notes.

At the trial, Greenglass confirmed his wife's account.

Before that testimony, however, the case against Ethel Rosenberg was
considered much weaker than that against her husband.

According to New York Times reporter Sam Roberts, who interviewed
Greenglass for his book, "The Brother: The Untold Story of the
Rosenberg Case," Greenglass said he lied on the stand in the case and
in fact did not clearly remember whether it was Ethel or his wife who
had typed his notes.

David Vladeck, representing the petitioners, argued for the release
of Greenglass' grand jury testimony, saying the witness had
compromised himself by discussing the case in the Roberts book and on
the CBS news program "60 Minutes."

Vladeck said Greenglass has told others he was pushed by the
government to change his story before testifying.

"He points an accusing finger at the U.S. attorney's office and said
the government pressured him to lie," Vladeck said.

Hellerstein rejected that argument. "He may be a scoundrel, he may be
a liar," the judge said, but the facts "don't override my judgment on
the value of grand jury secrecy."

Although he sided with the government on the Greenglass matter,
Hellerstein urged officials to locate the remaining witnesses to
obtain consent for releasing the documents.

"Time is precious to those who research," he said. "The public
interest is best satisfied by the prompt and proper release of information."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McNeela said the government was not
arguing that the transcripts never be disclosed, but that they
"should not be disclosed at this time."

Hellerstein instructed McNeela to report back to court on August 26
after making a last push to find the remaining witnesses.

One former defendant in a related case, Miriam Moskowitz, is opposed
to having her grand jury testimony disclosed, and Hellerstein
therefore denied the petitioners' request to release it.

Moskowitz was convicted in 1950 of conspiracy to obstruct justice by
allegedly helping her business partner, Abe Brothman, deceive the grand jury.

Now 92, she expressed relief that the transcripts would not make it
into the hands of the Cold War historians, "because I know they will
not write the truth."

First U.S. marijuana cafe opens for business in Portland

2009-12-23T13:03:00.009-08:00

First U.S. marijuana cafe opens for business in Portland

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/first-u-s-marijuana-cafe-opens-for-business-in-portland/19239775/

TOM JOHANSMEYER
11/15/09

Cancel your flight to Amsterdam the U.S. just got its first
marijuana cafe on Friday. Located in Portland, Ore., the Cannabis
Cafe shows how attitudes have changed since the Obama administration
moved into the White House. A month ago, President Barack Obama told
federal attorneys to ease off medical marijuana prosecutions.

The widening use of medicinal marijuana has forced governments into a
tenuous legal balancing act, according to a Reuters report. Some
states passed legislation to allow it, starting with California in
1996. Nonetheless, a federal ban remains in place. The operation of
businesses like the Cannabis Cafe, as well as marijuana
establishments in California, has been possible as long as federal
authorities have chosen not to pursue them. Unlike the shops in
California, though, the Portland establishment is the first in the
U.S. where certified medical marijuana users can both acquire and
consume their marijuana, as long as they stay out of public view.

Madeline Martinez, executive director of the National Organization
for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in Oregon, says that the Cannabis
Club "represents personal freedom, finally, for our members." NORML
supports legislation to legalize marijuana.

"Our plans go beyond serving food and marijuana," Martinez continues.
"We hope to have classes, seminars, even a Cannabis Community
College, based here to help people learn about growing and other uses
for cannabis."

The Food is For Sale, but the Pot is Free

The Cannabis Cafe's new home is a two-story building with an
interesting past. Once upon a time, it was occupied by a speakeasy,
and later, an adult entertainment club called Rumpspankers. The
Cannabis Cafe is a private club, but any Oregon resident who is a
member of NORML and has an official medical marijuana card can gain entry.

Members pay $25 a month for use of the cafe, which has a capacity of
100. The product offered is not sold. Rather, it's provided free over
the counter from the "budtenders" employed by the establishment.
Food, of course, is available for purchase, but the club doesn't have
a liquor license. (Why bother?)

The potential market for the Cannabis Cafe is small, but likely
committed. Approximately 21,000 patients are registered to use
medical marijuana in Oregon, with doctors prescribing the drug for a
wide range of illnesses, among them Alzheimer's, diabetes, multiple
sclerosis and Tourette's syndrome.

Eric Solomon, the proprietor, says he still just runs a coffee shop
and events venue, as he did before he converted it to the current
format, but he says, "now it will be cannabis-themed." Film festivals
and dances are expected for the second floor ballroom, not to
mentioned marijuana-themed weddings.

Neighboring businesses have mixed feelings about the new cafe, but
they are hopeful that it will benefit them, too. David Bell, who
works at a nearby boutique, is "withholding judgment." He notes,
"There's no precedent for it. We don't know what to expect. But it
would great if it brought some customers into our store."

William Kunstler Documentary

2009-12-23T13:03:00.007-08:00

[5 articles]

Emily and Sarah Kunstler, Filmmakers

http://gothamist.com/2009/11/13/william_kunstler_lawyer.php

By Jake Dobkin
November 13, 2009

William Kunstler was one of America's most famous radical lawyers. In
the 1960s and 1970s, he defended civil rights protesters, Martin
Luther King, Jr., and The Chicago Seven. He was called in by the
inmates during the Attica prison uprising, and defended members of
the American Indian Movement during their 71-day standoff with the
federal government at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Later in his
career, he took on a string of controversial cases, including
defending clients accused in the Central Park Jogger beating, the
murder of Meir Kahane, and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade
Center. Tonight, "William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe" opens at
theaters in New York and Boston, with a national expansion to follow.
It was directed by his daughters, Emily and Sarah we asked them some
questions about their father's controversial life.
--

Your dad grew up in an upper middle class family here in New York,
went to Yale and Columbia, and was awarded a Bronze star for his
service in the Pacific during World War II. He seems to have had a
thoroughly normal American upbringing was there anything there that
would have predicted the radical leftist lawyer he was to become?

Emily: Dad used to tell us a story about a featherweight boxing
champion named Sam Langford with whom he corresponded while he was in
high school. After a few months of letters back and forth, the boxer
asked dad to come watch him train at his gym. There was only problem:
the boxer was black and his gym was in Harlem. Dad's parents wouldn't
let him visit the gym, which was less than a mile from their
apartment on Central Park West. He never wrote to the boxer again.
His shame for not having the courage to stand up to his parent's
fears stayed with him for the rest of his life. Dad always kept a
photo of Sam Langford framed on his desk, I think to remind him to
have the courage to speak his mind and do what he thought was right.
That same photo is on the wall of my editing room today.

Most of America got to know Bill Kunstler in 1969, for his role in
the Chicago Seven Trial. But by then he was 50, and had been a lawyer
for almost twenty years. How did a white lawyer living in Westchester
get involved in the Civil Rights movement, and end up defending
Freedom Riders, MLK, and Malcolm X?

Sarah: Emily and I don't really know the answer to this. I know that
dad always wanted to do something important, and that he had a
profound sense of injustice and empathy for oppressed peoples.
Lately, we've been wondering if it had anything to do with growing up
Jewish during the first half of the 20th century. When dad graduated
from law school in 1948, none of the top law firms would higher
Jewish lawyers. Most Jewish lawyers from that period started their
own firms or went into private practice. I think that on some level,
being treated as an outsider made dad think more creatively about
what to do with his law degree. Conforming just wasn't an option. So
when the ACLU asked him to go to the South to observe the arrests of
Freedom Riders, he leapt at the chance. There is definitely a Jewish
tradition of social action in this country. Jews made up half of the
young people who participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964.

During the Chicago 7 Trial, your father invented a style of
lawyering that had never been seen before in America a blend of
street theater and public relations that turned the courtroom into a
circus. Why was trial so important- why is it still talked about today?

Emily: As much as we'd like to give him credit for it, what happened
in that Chicago courtroom wasn't all of our father's making. Dad
learned a lot from defendants Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, Yippies
who were already using humor and guerilla theater as part of their
political activism. Hoffman and others had already attempted to
levitate the Pentagon to exorcise its demons, and had caused a frenzy
at the New York Stock Exchange by throwing dollar bills from the
balcony onto the trading floor. So the Yippies taught dad how to use
humor and emboldened him to use it. But something else was happening,
too - Dad was becoming completely disillusioned with the American
government. During the trial, Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was
murdered by the Chicago Police Department. And Dad realized that the
government would stop at nothing to destroy people it viewed as its
enemy. More than anything else, I think it was Hampton's death that
radicalized him. He just didn't care about the propriety of the
courtroom anymore. He was going to do what he needed to do and say
what he needed to say on behalf of his clients.

Sarah: I don't know that the trial itself was all that important. It
was symbolic, because it felt to many like the counterculture and
America's youth were being put on trial. I think what was important
about it ultimately was the image of Bobby Seale bound and gagged in
the courtroom. It was a powerful and shocking illustration of
American racism, and it was seen around the world. Dad's theatrics,
the defendants theatrics, they were of a time and a place. It hasn't
really ever been replicated. But I think, in a way, it changed the
way young progressive lawyers practiced law. They learned not to be
afraid of a courtroom or a judge. And to fight like hell for their clients.

After the Chicago 7, your dad's first marriage broke down he left
his wife and two daughters in Westchester and hit the road, touring
the country as a kind of radical leftist celebrity. That seems like
the first of many times he put his work before his family life. Did
he ever reconcile with his first family? Did he ever learn to put his
family before his work? What kind of dad was he- did he remember your
birthdays and come to your school plays?

Emily: His marriage never recovered, but he always had a good
relationship with our older sisters, Karin and Jane. Sarah and I were
born when dad was pushing 60, so he had definitely slowed down, which
was to our benefit. He was home a lot more. And his office was in the
basement of our house. But he worked constantly. When I close my
eyes, I see him with a stack of papers and a yellow legal pad. That's
who he was. But he loved to have us around. He used to call Sarah and
me his life insurance policy, he thought that we kept him young.

Sarah: We don't have any abandonment issues or psychological traumas
to share with your readers. When he could show up for something, he
showed up. When he couldn't, he didn't. Sometimes it was worse when
he did show up. He was a really embarrassing person - when we were
teenagers, Emily and I were continually mortified by him.

Sarah, you were born in 1976, the same year your dad married
Margaret Ratner, a civil rights lawyer, and Emily, you came along in
1978. Right around that time your father seems to have switched the
focus of his professional work. He stopped defending leftists and
political protesters, and started defending more controversial
figures, like the mobster John Gotti and El-Sayyid Nosair, who was
accused of murdering Meir Kahane, the radical Jewish leader. What
caused that shift?

Sarah: Emily and I have been trying to answer this question for as
long as I can remember. We just spent the past five years making a
movie about it. There isn't an easy answer. Dad started out as a
movement lawyer - defending people who were a part of movements he
agreed with. The strength of the social movements in the 1960s and
70s waned over time. So Dad had to take different kinds of cases.
What bothered Emily and me when we were kids was that he had a choice
of whom he represented, and we didn't understand why he wanted to
represent people charged with terrible crimes. It just seemed so far
away from standing with Martin Luther King Jr. or the Chicago Seven
or the Attica inmates.

Emily: When we were kids, we really wanted our father to be
consistent. I think all kids are like that - incredibly moralistic,
seeing everything as black and white, right and wrong. But I think if
you asked Dad, he would probably tell you that he was being
completely consistent. For him, representation of the most hated
members of our society was important civil rights work. Dad believed
that the government demonized criminal defendants so that society
would rush to judgment without evidence and before trial. He used to
talk about Goldstein, a fictional character in George Orwell's
Nineteen Eighty-Four, who was imprisoned to justify Big Brother's
repressive government. Dad told us that the government was always
creating Goldsteins to scare the public and justify the rollback of
civil rights.

Sometimes your dad seemed to seek the spotlight for its own sake,
taking roles in movies, and cases for financial gain. How much of his
motivation was driven by a true desire to fight for justice, versus
the need to satisfy his own ego? At bottom, was he driven by
principle or self-interest?

Emily: The financial gain part is wrong. Dad rarely took cases for
money. He made a living largely through speaking engagements. But
there were a few clients who paid. Dad represented Raymond Patriarca,
a Rhode Island crime boss. Jimmy Breslin told Sarah and me that
clients like Patriarca put food on the table.

Sarah: Dad definitely loved the spotlight. Back in the stone age of
the early 1990s, his nightly ritual was to walk our dog around the
corner to the newsstand so he could buy the evening edition of all
the local papers to look for his name. But I don't think he was ever
driven exclusively by self-interest. He knew how to use the media,
and recognized that by taking a case, he would elevate the profile of
that case. He used his fame to bring attention to cases that would
have otherwise gone on without the benefit of public scrutiny.
Justice was very important to dad. He saw it as something that you
strive for but never reach. We talked about justice all the time. Dad
wanted us to understand that law and justice were not the same thing,
and that it was our obligation to fight for what was right.

Your dad seems like a good example of the conjunction of a man and
his times a bigger-than-life personality for a crazier-than-normal
age. But we live in different times times in which a black man can
become President, the Secretary of State is a woman, and state and
national laws have been extended to protect racial minorities, women,
and gays. Is there any cause still worth becoming a radical about? If
he were alive today, what cases would your Dad be working on?

Emily: Sarah and I were at the Sundance Film Festival premiering our
film during the inauguration of President Obama. On Main Street in
Park City, Utah, we heard people talking about how the election of a
black president meant that we had "moved beyond race." Dad would have
been horrified. This nation still bears the scars of slavery, civil
war, Jim Crow, lynchings, riots, and the assassinations of countless
black leaders and activists. Racism is alive and well. There is still
plenty of reason for outrage, and plenty of reason for activism.

Sarah: If Dad were alive, he would be representing Guantanamo
detainees, and anti-war, environmental and anti-globalization
protesters. He would be fighting for the release of Leonard Peltier
and Mumia Abu Jamal. And he would be saying outrageous things to the
press to get his name in the paper.

Sarah, what kinds of cases are you working on today? Are you
interested in carrying on your dad's work?

I am a criminal defense lawyer practicing in federal court in
Manhattan and Brooklyn. I work with Elizabeth Fink, a colleague of my
father's who represented the Attica inmates in a landmark civil
lawsuit. Liz is the most fearless person I've ever met. But I'm not
interested in carrying on my dad's work. I wouldn't even know how to
start. It's time for the next generation of lawyers to determine the
course of progressive lawyering.

Emily, what do you want to do next?

Sarah and I are looking forward to making a movie that isn't about
our family. Our next film is going to be about racism in America.

--------

EUR FILM REVIEW:
William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe

http://www.eurweb.com/story/eur57384.cfm

Bio-Pic Chronicles the Life and Times of Late Civil Rights Lawyer

By Kam Williams
(November 12, 2009)

*William Kunstler (1919-1995) was one of the most reviled figures
of the 20th Century. For he was an attorney who not only represented
controversial causes and unpopular people, but his approach in the
courtroom involved exposing the racism and classicism permeating the
legal justice system.

Always ahead of his time, Kunstler's lifelong commitment to
civil rights began when he went to Mississippi to defend Freedom
Riders being arrested for trying to integrate lunch counters and
other public accommodations.

No hypocrite, he cared just as much about equality in his
hometown of Rye, New York, where he successfully sued on behalf of a
black couple trying to move into the lily-white enclave in 1960.

Over the course of his career, his services were retained by
everyone from Malcolm X to Dr. Martin Luther King to H. Rap Brown to
Stokely Carmichael to Abbie Hoffman to the American Indian Movement
to Adam Clayton Powell to the Berrigan brothers. But he really first
became a household name in his own right during the trial of the
Chicago 8 arrested in the wake of the 1968 Democratic National
Convention. That's when he grew his hair long to match the manes of
the hippies being railroaded, and when he was held in contempt of
court for calling the judge a bigot.

Kunstler hated racism, and fundamental to his political
philosophy was the notion that "lawyers shouldn't be immune from the
oppression" affecting their clients. Consequently, he gave his all,
and was willing to put his own life on the line. Unfortunately, this
approach took a toll on his family, especially his daughters, Emily
and Sarah, the co-directors of William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe.

In this bittersweet bio-pic they not only recount their
father's exploits, but how they had to grow up with the specter of
daily death threats and demonstrations in front of their home. Sadly,
their father would only be posthumously vindicated for his spirited
representation of innocent Harlem teens accused of raping the Central
Park jogger.

But it is of little comfort to the African-American defendants
that their names were belatedly cleared only after they'd already
served lengthy prison terms. There had been a rush to judgment at the
time of the trial which had the boys tried and convicted in the court
of public opinion by everyone from Mayor Koch to Donald Trump who
called for the death penalty in a full page ad in the New York Times.

A very moving tribute to an underappreciated hero who spent his
life as a tireless defender of the defenseless.

To see a trailer for William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe,
visit: http://www.disturbingtheuniverse.com/Trailer.html

--------

Documentary screens at Bossone

http://media.www.thetriangle.org/media/storage/paper689/news/2009/11/13/ArtsEntertainment/Documentary.Screens.At.Bossone-3832020.shtml

Ari Melman
Issue date: 11/13/09

The police commander led soldiers into New York's Attica Prison
belting, "We certainly don't want to see any white people hurt" while
trying to quell rioting prisoners. The prisoners were fighting for
better living conditions; to be treated as human beings rather than
caged animals. In 1971, the prisoners took over the prison, creating
a tremor throughout the country between the government and the
renegades of society. William Kunstler, a freedom-fighting civil
rights lawyer, fought vigorously for the prisoners until the police
swarmed the prison. This movie could have been entirely about any one
of the cases that Kunstler battled over his long career, from
defending the Black Panthers, to the Lakota Indians, or even Larry
Davis, who killed six cops to gain status in his community. Instead,
Sarah and Emily Kunstler, the directors and daughters of the
documentary's hero, touch briefly on many cases but focused on
emotion over fact and opinion over direct storytelling. The
documentary paints a picture of an incredible man with a multitude of
compelling stories, but bogs it down with unclear case studies,
unnecessary personal elements, and pointless, hokey interviews.

Kunstler challenged the justice system at its core, frequently
calling judges racist, inspiring riots across the country with his
radical opinions on government corruption. He became famous during
the Chicago Conspiracy Trial, in which he got four years imprisonment
for contempt of court. 15,000 people convened outside the 1968
Democratic National Convention to protest the Vietnam War, and eight
were arrested on charges of inciting the riot. That included Bobby
Seale, co-founder of the Black Panthers, who upon insulting the judge
during the trial, was bound and gagged in the courtroom. Kunstler
redefined courtroom etiquette by calling writers, poets, and liberal
radicals to the stand, transforming professionalism into theatre.
However, the film shows this with simple sketches, rough audio, and
bland interviews. It hovers on the surface without capturing the
passion of the antiwar movement that made Kunstler so interesting in
the first place. None of the thrill of a dramatic criminal court made
it into the movie, and we're just left with dry summary.

Attempting to make it more personable with video clips of the
directors as kids talking to their father, the filmmakers then move
on to the Attica riots, and later, Kunstler's role in the American
Indian Movement. The local Oglala Lakota Indians took over the town
of Wounded Knee, claiming the land from old treaties by the U.S.
government. The film blurs the story of the 1890 massacre and the
1973 siege in an attempt to falsely expand the story. They then spend
15 minutes on interviews that do nothing to push the story forward.
AIM won in court after Kunstler revealed that the FBI suppressed
evidence, used the military illegally, and spied without a warrant.
Once again, the film managed to summarize an incredible story,
removing the intrigue.

After fighting for AIM, Kunstler settled down in New York and
switched from a civil rights activist to a criminal defense attorney.
He defended less honorable people, including flag burner Larry Davis,
and the "Wolf Pack," accused of raping and murdering a central park
jogger. He believed we are blind to the depth of our own prejudice,
and that public opinion before a trial should not determine the
outcome. However, his views lost support as he took on worse and
worse cases. He knew that legality has a powerful psychological
effect even if the law is wrong and so, he dedicated his life to
improving the lives of the defenseless. His story is powerful, and
his radical life defined hippie activism in America, but the muddled
storytelling throughout will keep the audience from understanding the
scope of his achievements.

--------

William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe: Movie Review

http://www.bigpicturebigsound.com/William-Kunstler-Disturbing-the-Universe.shtml

By David Kempler
2009-11-12

Attica! Attica! Attica!

Very few men and women make a difference of epic proportion in their
chosen field. William Kunstler was one of those men. He was arguably
the most influential trial attorney of the second half of the
twentieth century. In "William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe",
his daughters Emily and Sarah explore the life of their father,
trying to view him as an outsider might but also letting us know what
went on behind the scenes. However, since both ladies were very young
during his heyday, their journey is also educational for them. They
learn by viewing archived footage and by interviewing the main
players in their father's life.

Kunstler was an "ordinary" attorney, living a relatively peaceful
life in a suburb of New York City. He knew he wanted more but it
crystallized for him when he flew to Mississippi to help with the
fight of the Freedom Riders. It was on this trip that he dealt with
the fact that justice was more important than the law. This consumed
the rest of his life. If there was a large-scale political trial in
those times, much more than likely, he was in the thick of it. After
the Freedom Riders came his defense of the "Chicago 8", activists who
protested against the Vietnam War. When the inmates took over Attica
prison, he was there negotiating for the prisoners to get what they
wanted. When a tribe of American Indians in South Dakota requested he
come to help, he did, and enthusiastically. He always went where he
thought he was needed, if he felt it was a case of huge import that
might play a major impact in the public eye.

In the latter stage of his career he derailed a bit, fighting more
for publicity cases then the causes behind them. Because of this he
lost the adoration of the Liberals who loved him. He had gone from
crusader against government corruption to a seeker of fame. He lost
his way, but he never lost his ability as an attorney. He won cases
that were thought by everyone to be unwinnable, including getting an
acquittal for a man who killed multiple New York City policemen.

Some of the interviews were fascinating to see, partially for what
was said but also because of who they were. Father Daniel Berrigan,
who broke into government property and destroyed draft records. Bobby
Seale, the American civil rights activist who co-founded the Black
Panther Party along with Dr. Huey P. Newton. Many other big names are
interviewed here and all offer pieces that help us understand the whole man.

"William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe" has no fat on it. Every
scene counts. It is clearly and interestingly presented and is
directed with a firm hand by his daughters. The editing is
first-rate, as well. There is nothing fancy here. It is to the point
and tries to be honest about what made the man special. He makes a
point near the end that is extremely powerful:

"I suspect," says Kunstler talking to a crowd during the Chicago 8
trial, that more people "have gone to their deaths through a legal
system than through all the illegalities in the history of man: 6
million people in Europe during the Third Reich. Legal. Sacco and
Vanzetti. Legal. The hundreds of great trials throughout the South
where black men were condemned to death. All legal. Jesus. Legal.
Socrates. Legal. All tyrants learn that it is far better to do this
thing through some semblance of legality than to do it without that pretense."

--------

Film Review: "William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe"

http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=7564

by Peter Wong‚
Nov. 18‚ 2009

Many thematic bridges are built in the course of the new documentary
"William Kunstler: Disturbing The Universe." The main bridge connects
the gap between the father filmmakers Emily and Sarah Kunstler grew
up with and the man eventually known as the most hated lawyer in
America. But the film's other emotional and intellectual spans
between the past and present also matter. The Sixties' struggles are
re-fought in the Oughties. An armchair observer can transition to
active revolutionary. The chasm between American political idealism
and American political realities must not remain unbridged.

Ironically, the Kunstler daughters' perceptual divide arose out of
their loving attempt to develop a "single unified theory" of their
famed father's life. The tenets of that theory held that their father
represented only innocent clients and fought only for justice and
freedom in the courtroom. That description certainly accounted for
Kunstler's Sixties' representation of clergymen who protested the
Vietnam War and American Indian activists who wanted to hold the
American government accountable for its history of broken promises.

But the theory's truthfulness collapsed when the daughters considered
their father's Eighties' representation of the decidedly
non-progressive property owner Leona Helmsley and accused Islamic
fundamentalist killer El Sayiid Nosair. At the time, the two
teenagers felt their father traded radical heroism for the dubious
benefits of continued public notoriety.

With the blessings of time and emotional distance, Emily and Sarah
Kunstler use this documentary to reassess their late father's life
and career. The daughters' disagreements with their father's actions
does not mean "William Kunstler: Disturbing The Universe" is a
political version of a Christopher Ciccone biography of Madonna. The
inclusion of home movie clips and a semi-critical film narration
reaffirms the two sisters' love for their father as a person. But in
their examination of the more controversial aspects of their father's
career, the two women seek to understand how this man they loved
could willingly advocate for some personally objectionable clients.

The filmmakers' path to understanding involves chronologically
tracing their father's life. That sensible if familiar decision
starts off by considering Kunstler's apparently conformist pre-1960s
life. The man's lifepath of marriage, military service, and working
to pay the bills didn't distinguish Kunstler from his fellow
Americans. Yet even during that early period, some stirrings of a
progressive sensibility existed. Despite receiving a bayonet wound in
the Pacific War, the future radical became an opponent of war instead
of an embittered racist supporter. His representation of Paul and
Orial Redd in a housing discrimination case impressed on him that
racial discrimination was not strictly a phenomenon of the South.

What sparked those stirrings into something more was a confrontation
during a trip to Jackson, Mississippi. Kunstler had gone at the
ACLU's behest to provide legal support for the Freedom Riders. While
there, he was confronted by a civil rights activist and asked to step
up and be more than just a mere observer. Was that eventual decision
to step up what the famed lawyer called the moment of daring when you
do something to jeopardize yourself?

What Kunstler spoke of was not the seductive disincentive of working
for change within the system, with its "reasonable" patina of keeping
only the system's best features while discarding the system's
ineffective parts. Taking that path meant implicitly accepting all
the assumptions the current system operated under. In law, that meant
blindly accepting the legal system's assumptions of authority and its
being the best medium for resolving disputes. Kunstler may have
accepted using the medium of the legal system for disputes, but he
didn't necessarily bind himself to solely using its mechanisms. As
Father Daniel Berrigan notes, Kunstler understood "that the law of
the land is not one with justice and can very easily be its mortal
opponent. The only absolute is justice, not law."

As one watches film footage of the Sixties' various protests, one
senses that Kunstler's attitude made his gravitation towards the
Yippies and the American Indian Movement a natural progression.
Seeing anonymous cops beat up protestors also demonstrated the truth
of law as justice's opponent. In that context, Kunstler was probably
not intimidated by drawing from the odious Judge Julius Hoffman the
longest contempt of court charge ever imposed on an American lawyer.
That 40 month sentence was probably a badge of honor to him.

Skeptics who question the effectiveness of Kunstler's courtroom
flamboyance have not encountered Jean Fritz. This Republican small
businesswoman was one of the Chicago Conspiracy Trial jurors who held
out for acquitting Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden, and their compatriots.
Kunstler's work led her to feel sickened by Judge Hoffman's very
un-American public gagging of Bobby Seale.

Yet Kunstler's idealistic dedication to justice over law sometimes
had damaging consequences. His overoptimistic belief in the
righteousness of the Attica prisoners' cause prevented him from
offering a necessary reality check regarding the trigger-happy cops
surrounding the prison. Attica prisoners' attorney Elizabeth Fink
felt the subsequent bloody Attica shootout could have been prevented
had Kunstler spoken up.

One could also reasonably argue Kunstler's idealistic advocacy for
justice also accounted for his controversial defenses of the
Eighties. When public revulsion mixes in with prosecution of a
person, the temptation exists to use the law to channel the public's
worst impulses under the guise of punishment. As convicted rapist
Yusef Salaam noted, people wanted him and his fellow defendants
"hanging from the trees by the end of the day."

Filmmakers Emily and Sarah Kunstler eventually come to an acceptance
of their father's legacy. But their journey to that acceptance
inspires the viewer to continue the Sixties' struggles against those
who would deny equality to the undocumented or the LGBT community and
to fight those calling for the return of Mc Carthyism.

Kunstler's favorite sculpture showed David caught in the moment
before he jeopardized himself trying to slay Goliath. That anecdote,
one of many from this valuable documentary, hopefully inspires
viewers to be new Davids.

4-year-old sticks to guns in hair fight

2009-12-23T13:03:00.005-08:00

'Tater Tot' sticks to guns in hair fight

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/bizarre/6773519.html

4-year-old in Balch Springs wants to keep his locks

Associated Press
Dec. 17, 2009

BALCH SPRINGS Taylor Pugh has been suspended from pre-kindergarten
because he likes his hair a little on the floppy side.

The four-year-old sat with a teacher's aide in a suburban Dallas
school library Wednesday while his friends played and studied
together in a classroom.

"They kicked me out that place," said Taylor, who prefers the
nickname Tater Tot. "I miss my friends."

Taylor's locks long on the front and sides, covering his earlobes
and shirt collar violate the school district's dress code. He has
been punished with in-school suspension since late last month.

His parents say the boy plans to eventually cut his hair and donate
it to a charity that makes wigs for cancer patients. And they are not
happy with the district's rules.

The school district appears "more concerned about his hair than his
education," said Taylor's father, Delton Pugh. "I don't think it's
right to hold a child down and force him to do something ... when
it's not hurting him or affecting his education."

Pugh, a tattoo artist, said he used to shave his own head but that
his son "made me pinky promise I would let my hair grow long with him."

The follicle fight came to a head last month when Taylor's parents
received a signed letter from Floyd Elementary School's principal,
threatening to withdraw the boy from school if his hair didn't comply
with district standards.

When Taylor's parents didn't budge, their son was suspended.

When the boy returned, his hair was longer than ever. But school
officials decided suspension was too harsh and changed the punishment.

"They still have regular classroom work, but in an isolated
environment," Mesquite Independent School District spokesman Ian
Halperin said of the modified in-school suspension that Taylor is
serving. "We expect students ... to adhere to the code of conduct."

According to the district dress code, boys' hair must be kept out of
the eyes and cannot extend below the bottom of earlobes or over the
collar of a dress shirt. Hairstyles "designed to attract attention to
the individual or to disrupt the orderly conduct of the classroom or
campus (are) not permitted," the policy states.

The district is known for standing tough on its dress code. Earlier
this year, a seventh-grader in the district was sent home for wearing
black skinny pants. His parents chose to home-school him.

On its Web site, the district defends its code, saying "students who
dress and groom themselves neatly, and in an acceptable and
appropriate manner, are more likely to become constructive members of
the society in which we live."

A persistent violator could face additional suspensions, but such
issues are handled on a case-by-case basis, Halperin said.

Pugh said the issue is about more than hair. He said his son is being
singled out, and that he has seen other male students in the district
with hair much longer than Taylor's.

"Nobody wants to meet in the middle. It's all or nothing," Pugh said.
"He's my son. I love him. I will back him to the end."

David Lynch to shoot film about Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

2009-12-23T13:03:00.003-08:00

David Lynch to shoot film about TM guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India

http://www.bombaynews.net/story/566812

Wednesday 18th November, 2009 (ANI)

Oscar nominated David Lynch will make a film about Transcendental
Meditation (tm) guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, according to reports.

He will reportedly visit India next month in this connection.

This documentary film about the life and teachings and knowledge of
Maharishi will involve interviews with people, including a 97-year
man associated with Maharishi, reports suggest.

David Keith Lynch, 63, has been attempting to introduce TM in schools
globally. The Guardian, British daily newspaper from London,
described Lynch as "the most important director of this era."

Welcoming Lynch to India for this new venture, acclaimed
Indo-American statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA)
today, urged world filmmakers to explore many finer and deeper things
India offered, instead of just focusing on poverty and crime.

Zed, who is chairperson of Indo-American Leadership Confederation,
pointed out that planet's most multidimensional country India had
snowcapped mountains, palm-fringed and sun-washed beaches, glorious
temples, colourful festivals, rich philosophy and spirituality,
abundant historical sites, wildlife safaris, recharging treks,
historic trade routes, cultural wealth, etc.

Maharishi, who died last year at an age of about 91, introduced TM
technique worldwide, and wished to change the world with it.

He initiated 'The Beatles' and was associated with various
celebrities like American rockers 'The Beach Boys', musician Mick
Jagger, hairdresser Vidal Sassoon, Golden Globe winner Mia Farrow
(Rosemary's Baby), etc.

He reportedly established about one thousand TM centres worldwide and
had about four million followers.

Obama participated in socialist party

2009-12-23T13:03:00.001-08:00

[2 articles]

Anti-Semitism chief was anti-war activist

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=117501

Husband worked with founder of socialist party in which Obama participated

November 29, 2009
By Aaron Klein

President Obama's new anti-Semitism czar was a 1960s anti-war
activist and community organizer whose husband worked with the
founder of a socialist party, of which, according to documentary
evidence, Obama was a member.

Hannah Rosenthal, a former Health Department regional director under
the Clinton administration, started her position last week as the
State Department's new special envoy to monitor and combat
anti-Semitism. She previously headed the Jewish Council for Public
Affairs, an umbrella U.S. Jewish organization.

Rosenthal was a community organizer who became involved in the
anti-war and civil-rights movements in the 1960's.

Her husband, Richard Phelps, is a former three-term local Wisconsin
executive. In Madison, with 1.5 percent unemployment, Phelps worked
with University of Wisconsin professor and socialist activist Joel
Rogers to create a pilot program through the blue-ribbon Economic
Summit Council to train workers and match skills with jobs.

That same year, while running for a seat in the Illinois Senate as a
Democrat, Obama in 1996 actively sought and received the endorsement
of the socialist New Party, according to confirmed reports during
last year's presidential campaign. Rogers was founder of the New Party.

The New Party worked alongside the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. The New Party's aim was to
help elect politicians who espoused its policies. Among New Party
members was linguist and radical activist Noam Chomsky.

Obama's campaign last year denied the thenpresidential candidate was
ever an actual member of the New Party.

But the New Zeal blog dug up print copies of the New Party News, the
party's official newspaper, which show Obama posing with New Party
leaders, listing him as a New Party member and printing quotes from
him as a member.

The party's spring 1996 newspaper boasted: "New Party members won
three other primaries this Spring in Chicago: Barack Obama (State
Senate), Michael Chandler (Democratic Party Committee) and Patricia
Martin (Cook County Judiciary)."

The paper quoted Obama saying, "These victories prove that small-'d'
democracy can work."

The newspaper lists other politicians it endorsed who were not
members but specifies Obama as a New Party member.

New Ground, the newsletter of Chicago's Democratic Socialists of
America, reported in its July/August 1996 edition that Obama attended
a New Party membership meeting April 11, 1996, in which he expressed
his gratitude for the group's support and "encouraged (New Party
members) to join in his task forces on voter education and voter
registration."

A former top member of the New Party recounted in a WND e-mail
interview Obama's participation with his organization. [See below.]

"A subcommittee met with (Obama) to interview him to see if his stand
on the living wage and similar reforms was the same as ours,"
recalled Marxist activist Carl Davidson.

"We determined that our views on these overlapped, and we could
endorse his campaign in the Democratic Party," Davidson said.

Davidson was a Chicago member and activist within the New Party. He
told WND he handled some of the New Party member databases and
attended most of the party's meetings.

Davidson is also a notorious far-left activist and former radical
national leader in the anti-Vietnam movement. He served as national
secretary for the infamous Students for a Democratic Society anti-war
group, from which the Weatherman domestic terrorist organization
later splintered.

Davidson remembers Obama attending one New Party meeting to thank
attendees for voting for him.

Davidson said that to his knowledge Obama was not a member of the New
Party "in any practical way" using qualifying language.

Becoming a New Party member required some effort on behalf of the
politician. Candidates must be approved by the party's political
committee and, once approved, must sign a contract mandating they
will have a "visible and active relationship" with the party.

Asked whether Obama signed the New Party contract, Davidson replied
there was "no need for him to do so."

"At the end of our session with him, we simply affirmed there was no
need to do so, because on all the key points, the stand of his
campaign and the New Party reform planks were practically the same,"
Davidson told WND.

The socialist-oriented goals of the New Party were enumerated on its
old website. Among the New Party's stated objectives were "full
employment, a shorter work week and a guaranteed minimum income for
all adults; a universal 'social wage' to include such basic benefits
as health care, child care, vacation time and lifelong access to
education and training; a systematic phase-in of comparable worth and
like programs to ensure gender equity."

The New Party stated it also sought "the democratization of our
banking and financial system including popular election of those
charged with public stewardship of our banking system, worker-owner
control over their pension assets [and] community-controlled
alternative financial institutions."

Many of the New Party's founding members were Democratic Socialists
of America leaders and members of Committees of Correspondence, a
breakaway of the Communist Party USA.

The New Party, established in 1992, took advantage of what was known
as electoral "fusion," which enabled candidates to run on two tickets
simultaneously, attracting voters from both parties. But the New
Party went defunct in 1998, one year after fusion was halted by the
Supreme Court.

According to DSA documents, the New Party worked with ACORN to
promote its candidates. ACORN, convicted in massive, nationwide
voter-fraud cases, has been a point of controversy for Obama over the
presidential candidate's ties to the group.

In 1995, the DSA's New Ground newsletter stated, "In Chicago, the New
Party's biggest asset and biggest liability is ACORN.

"Like most organizations, ACORN is a mixed bag," the newsletter said.
"On one hand, in Chicago, ACORN is a group that attempts to organize
some of the most depressed communities in the city. Chicago
organizers for ACORN and organizers for SEIU Local 880 have been
given modest monthly recruitment quotas for new New Party members. On
the other hand, like most groups that depend on canvassing for
fundraising, it's easy enough to find burned out and disgruntled
former employees. And ACORN has not had the reputation for being
interested in coalition politics until recently and, happily, not
just within the New Party."

Aside from founding the New Party, Rogers also was co-founder of the
Apollo Alliance, a group of U.S. business, labor, environmental, and
community leaders which reportedly aided in the drafting of Obama's
stimulus and cap and trade bills.

Rosenthal on 'pro-Hamas' board

Rosenthal, meanwhile, serves on the board of J Street, a lobby group
that is mostly led by left-leaning Israelis and that receives funds
from Arab and Muslim Americans.

J Street brands itself as pro-Israel. It states on its website it
seeks to "promote meaningful American leadership to end the
Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts peacefully and diplomatically."

J Street, however, also supports talks with Hamas, a terrorist group
whose charter seeks the destruction of Israel. The group opposes
sanctions against Iran and is harshly critical of Israeli offensive
anti-terror military actions.

Even the Israeli government has been distancing itself from J Street,
with its ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, refusing to attend
its annual dinner last month. Israeli Embassy spokesman Yoni Peled
told the Jerusalem Post his government has some "concern over certain
[J Street] policies that could impair Israel's interests."

The Powerline blog previously documented how far-leftist Israelis are
influential in the J Street leadership, including former Knesset
Speaker Avrum Burg, who generated controversy when he stated, "To
define the State of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end."

Another key J Street member, Mideast expert Henry Siegman, has
compared Israel to apartheid South Africa.

Rosenthal had also previously penned an opinion piece in The New York
Jewish Week in which she claimed a mainstream Israel-solidarity rally
in Washington, D.C., was being "dominated by narrow,
ultraconservative views of what it means to be pro-Israel."

In a letter criticizing Rosenthal's depiction of the event,
Anti-Defamation League chairman Abe Foxman noted that rally, which
took place at the height of the Palestinian intifada, or terrorist
war, included speakers Sen. Harry Reid, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani
and Israeli minister Natan Sharansky. Foxman pointed out the speakers
lobbied for peace:

At the rally, Reid called on "all who share our vision and hopes to
continue to spread a message of peace: shalom, salaam, peace."

Sharansky declared, "Real peace, dear friends, depends on us."

Giuliani proclaimed, "All of us, all of you good people who have come
here today, all of us wish for peace. We pray for it."

The Weekly Standard, meanwhile, took note of quotes in which
Rosenthal seemed to imply Israeli policies were to blame for anti-Semitism.

"I'll tell you point-blank: I have two grown daughters, and I didn't
think that my kids were going to have to deal with some of the same
anti-Semitism that I did as the daughter of Holocaust survivors,"
Rosenthal said. "It's a scary time, with people losing the ability to
differentiate between a Jew, any Jew, and what's going on in Israel."

--------

Obama participated in socialist party

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=107731

Activist recalls president's time with radical Chicago political group

August 23, 2009
By Aaron Klein

JERUSALEM President Obama participated in a controversial 1990s
political party with a socialist agenda, recalls a major member of
the organization known as the New Party.

WND previously reported on newspaper evidence showing Obama was a
member of the New Party, which sought to elect members to public
office with the aim of moving the Democratic Party far leftward to
ultimately form a new political party with a socialist agenda.

Now a former top member of the New Party recounted in a WND e-mail
interview Obama's participation with his organization.

"A subcommittee met with (Obama) to interview him to see if his stand
on the living wage and similar reforms was the same as ours,"
recalled Marxist activist Carl Davidson.

"We determined that our views on these overlapped, and we could
endorse his campaign in the Democratic Party," Davidson said.

Davidson was a Chicago member and activist within the New Party. He
told WND he handled some of the New Party member databases and
attending most of the party's meetings.

Davidson is also a notorious far-left activist and former radical
national leader in the anti-Vietnam movement. He served as national
secretary for the infamous Students of a Democratic Society antiwar
group, from which the Weatherman domestic terrorist organization
later splintered.

Davidson remembers Obama attending one New Party meeting to thank
attendees for voting for him.

Davidson said that to his knowledge Obama was not a member of the New
Party "in any practical way" - using qualifying language.

Becoming a New Party member requires some effort on behalf of the
politician. Candidates must be approved by the party's political
committee and, once approved, must sign a contract mandating they
will have a "visible and active relationship" with the party.

Asked whether Obama signed the New Party contract, Davidson replied
there was "no need for him to do so."

Davidson denied the New Party was specifically a socialist party,
claiming, "The vast majority of active members were low- and
middle-income blacks in the inner city fighting for their immediate demands."

But the socialist-oriented goals of the New Party were enumerated on
its old website.

Among the New Party's stated objectives were "full employment, a
shorter work week, and a guaranteed minimum income for all adults; a
universal 'social wage' to include such basic benefits as health
care, child care, vacation time and lifelong access to education and
training; a systematic phase-in of comparable worth and like programs
to ensure gender equity."

Many of the New Party's founding members were Democratic Socialists
of America leaders and members of Committees of Correspondence, a
breakaway of the Communist Party USA.

Obama attended several DSA events and meetings, including a
DSA-sponsored town hall meeting Feb. 25, 1996, entitled "Employment
and Survival in Urban America." He sought and received an endorsement
from the DSA.

Asked by WND whether he thinks Obama has socialist leanings, Davidson
stated, "The truth is that Obama was and is a liberal Democrat and an
Alinskyist community organizer which if you know much about
Alinsky, is just militant liberalism."

"Obama was never a man of the left, either in his views or in being a
member of an actual socialist organization," added Davidson.

While running for the Illinois state Senate in 1996 as a Democrat,
Obama actively sought and received the endorsement of the New Party,
according to confirmed reports during last year's presidential campaign.

The New Party worked alongside the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. The New Party's aim was to
help elect politicians who espoused its policies.

Among New Party members was linguist and radical activist Noam Chomsky.

Obama's campaign last year denied the thenpresidential candidate was
ever an actual member of the New Party.

The paper quoted Obama saying, "These victories prove that small 'd'
democracy can work."

The newspaper lists other politicians it endorsed who were not
members but specifies Obama as a New Party member.

New Ground, the newsletter of Chicago's Democratic Socialists of
America, reported in its July/August 1996 edition that Obama attended
a New Party membership meeting April 11, 1996, in which he expressed
his gratitude for the group's support and "encouraged NPers (New
Party members) to join in his task forces on voter education and
voter registration."

According to DSA documents, the New Party worked with ACORN to
promote its candidates. ACORN, convicted in massive, nationwide voter
fraud cases, has been a point of controversy for Obama over the
presidential candidate's ties to the group.

In 1995, the DSA's New Ground newsletter stated, "In Chicago, the New
Party's biggest asset and biggest liability is ACORN.

'Old' Black Panthers denounce 'new' group

2009-12-22T12:22:00.007-08:00

'Old' Black Panthers denounce 'new' group

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2009/11/16/Old-Black-Panthers-denounce-new-group/UPI-27941258385571/

Nov. 16, 2009

PHILADELPHIA, D.C., Nov. 16 (UPI) -- The heirs of the original U.S.
Black Panther Party say a new group going by the name are
"exploiting" the group's name and history.

In an undated statement posted on its Web site Monday, the Huey P.
Newton Foundation says that two militants claiming to belong to the
New Black Panther Party who appeared at a Philadelphia polling place
in November -- one of whom holding a billy club -- have no connection
to the 1960s revolutionary group.

"As guardian of the true history of the Black Panther Party, the
Foundation, which includes former leading members of the party,
denounces this group's exploitation of the party's name and history,"
the statement said. "Failing to find its own legitimacy in the black
community, this band would graft the party's name upon itself, which
we condemn."

The Philadelphia Daily News reported that a federal lawsuit against
three New Black Panther party members was dropped in May.

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility has
launched an inquiry into why the lawsuit was dismissed, but Reps.
Lamar Smith R-Texas, and Frank Wolf, R-Va., have sent a letter to
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder questioning the sincerity of the
effort, The Washington Times reported.

Bread and Puppet and The Return Of Protest Theater

2009-12-22T12:22:00.005-08:00

Bread and Puppet and The Return Of Protest Theater

http://thefastertimes.com/newyorktheater/2009/11/10/bread-and-puppet-and-the-return-of-protest-theater/

November 10, 2009
Jonathan Mandell

The Bread and Puppet Theater, which is best known for its large,
haunting and daunting papier-mache puppets and its vivid street
theater protests, is doing yet again what it has done every year for
decades presenting two new works of theater at the Theater for a
New City in December. After people see these shows, "they will
overthrow the government, overthrow the reigning religions, and start
a new life growing potatoes and garlic," says Peter Schumann, clearly
a mischief-maker, but also a sculptor, singer, dancer, baker,
stilt-walker, painter, protester, fiddler and founder almost half a
century ago of arguably one of the most influential theaters in America.

It is certainly among the most influential when it comes to puppets.
Schumann does not seem to have gone to a Broadway show since 1967
(the show he saw then he critiques now as "disappointing, simplistic,
produced with piles of gold"), so has not seen "The Lion King" nor
even heard of the forthcoming "Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark." But the
director and creative force behind both, Julie Taymor, was Schumann's
student in his theater in Vermont. Schumann does not own a
television, has heard only vaguely of The Muppets and knows nothing
of the Muppet spoof/spin-off "Avenue Q." But he does remember the
"nice guy" named Jim Henson who "came and performed in our loft in
New York. It was very funny; he had a frog he had just invented."
"Do you mean Kermit?!" I asked.
"I guess," Peter Schumann answered. (This was years before "Sesame
Street" which is today November 10th, 2009 celebrating its 40th
anniversary.)

An appreciation of Peter Schumann and his theater published in the
New York Times two years ago cited him as "one of the great artists
of the twentieth century…who has kept faith with the redemptive
politics of the everyday." Schumann's "Bread and Puppet continues,
more than 40 years on, to live an ideal of art as collective
enterprise, a free or low-cost alternative voice outside the profit
system." It says something that the author of the piece was Holland
Carter, who is a Times art critic, not a theater critic.

Puppets Prejudice

There are complicated reasons for Bread and Puppet being seen as
outsider art, and largely outside of theater. One reason is that the
art forms that are at best "stepchildren" (as Schumann puts it) in
most theater sculpture, dance, even music are "the prime elements
in our theater." Another reason is probably because of his avowed
anti-commercial and self-declared radical mission. A third is because
of the pieces' non-linear presentation (but of course Richard Foreman
is also non-linear and visual, and nobody questions his place in the
theater.) But the primary reason, I suspect, are those puppets.
"Being a puppet theater, people automatically assume it's a kiddie
show," Schumann said.

This is not the way puppetry was treated in the rest of the world.
Ancient and sacred in Asia, puppet shows in Europe were initially put
on in churches "with hellfire, angels flying through the cathedral
and so forth." But the productions became increasingly "rude
fornications, etc. So they were kicked out of the churches, and in
the 16th century they moved to the marketplace in front of the
churches." Thus was born Punch and Judy, as well as the serious
Italian and German forms of puppet art.

"When I came to the States," said Schumann, who immigrated as a young
man from Silesia, "puppetry was like Disney imitations." Much of it
still is and this is not limited to the United States. "Even the
ancient religious puppet theater in Taiwan is in danger of being
cutesified because TV picks it up as kiddie theater."

The shows in December are called "Tear Open the Door To Heaven" and
"Dirt Cheap Money Circus," one for adults, the other for children.
One of the new works is described as, among other things, exposing
the illogic of the United States health care system, "interspersed
with appearances by Karl Marx, who confronts the 2009 economic
situation with his existential thoughts about money and our
relationship to it." That's the one for children.

"All our stuff is political; the kids get it better than their
parents," says Schumann.

Political Theater Making A Comeback
The way Peter Schumann sees it, the political theater of the 1960's
has all but disappeared. The few remaining explicitly political (or
protest) theater companies have turned from attack to entertainment.
"They don't bite; they caress."

Will the Great Recession politicize the theater, as the Great
Depression did in the 1930s?

"I expect it to happen," Schumann said. "All of a sudden the
financial backers believe you can live without the arts. Artists will
be much more on their own, no longer cushioned by the bourgeoisie. So
what are the artists going to do?"

"Maybe they'll become accountants," I suggested.

"A theater done by accountants would be wonderful," he said. But some
artists, he added, can't help but be artists. "Right now they can
live on making jingles," he said, using jingles (I suspect) as a
metaphor. "They will have to occupy themselves with the matters at
hand with the bailouts and wars and the explosions. They will have
to become meaningful."

Notes from The Weather Underground [Mark Rudd]

2009-12-22T12:22:00.003-08:00

Notes from The Weather Underground

http://www.kansan.com/news/2009/nov/10/weather-undergound/

By Zach White
Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Speaking to more than 1,000 KU students, Mark Rudd demanded a "mass
democratic movement to overthrow America's ruling class, which
perpetuates racism, diploma factory education and other exploitations."

That was 1969.

With 40 years of experience, including dodging the FBI for most of
the '70s, Rudd returned to campus to speak Friday night.

The Ecumenical Christian Ministries hosted a potluck dinner and a
screening of the documentary "The Weather Underground." The film
covered the extremist anti-war group of the same name, which Rudd
helped found in the late '60s. The Weather Underground organized
campus protests, riots and bombings of government buildings
nationwide before eventually surrendering.

The screening was followed by a Q&A session with Rudd, in which he
presented a new message. He emphasized the greater effectiveness of
political organization rather than the violence his group had
previously endorsed.

"We had the wrong idea," Rudd said. "We went from good organizing on
campus, to bad organizing with militancy, to worse organizing with
The Weather Underground."

Rudd said his tactics had been too stubborn and self-assured. He said
real organizing was "going to people that disagree and starting a dialogue."

This was certainly not his approach while running from the FBI from
1970 to 1977. He was wanted on charges of bombing and conspiracy.
When Rudd turned himself in, the charges were dropped because of the
FBI's questionable investigation in which they kidnapped people to
gather evidence.

A year later he moved to Albuquerque and became a math teacher at
Central New Mexico Community College where he taught until 2007.

Rudd's first visit to the University 40 years ago filled the Kansas
Union Ballroom to its 1,000 person capacity. Friday's visit gathered
close to 60 people, many of whom were old enough to have attended the
first event. Even so, Rudd made an effort to reach out to the younger
members of the crowd. He initially refused questions from anyone
older than 30, raising the age limit incrementally as comments dried up.

Considering similarities between today and Rudd's college days
unpopular war, economic hardship, national discontent Rudd laid out
what he considered to be three essential differences:

No draft means no reason to pay attention. Without the looming threat
of involuntary military service, no one cares.

Entertainment culture has intellectually infantilized students,
meaning the focus on keeping entertained has dulled interest in more
serious areas.

Young people who are aware have no model. Rudd and his comrades took
their cue from the civil rights movement they grew up with.

Reanna Putnam, Salina junior and event coordinator for the ECM,
reinforced that last sentiment in her one criticism of the talk.

"I feel he didn't talk enough about corporations and the government,"
Putnam said. "Even if you got progressive Democrats in office it
wouldn't really change the way things happen."

Lee Ann Stone, Salina senior, left the event sympathetic.

"I'd never heard about any of that before," Stone said. "I can see
why they did it."

Black Student Union celebrates 40 years

2009-12-22T12:22:00.001-08:00

Happy Anniversary BSU!

http://media.www.wcuquad.com/media/storage/paper676/news/2009/11/16/News/Happy.Anniversary.Bsu-3833189.shtml

Black Student Union celebrates 40 years of excellence

Jennifer Halligan
11/16/09

This academic year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of
West Chester University's Black Student Union.

The Black Student Union was established as a place where
African-American students could connect and support other
African-Americans on campus. One of the founders is Larry Dowdy, who
now works as the Executive Deputy to the President and the Government
Relations Officer.

Their mission statement states that the organization seeks to
"motivate, inspire, and unify the multicultural campus on- and off-campus".

However, according to Kiera Smalls, vice-president of the group, this
isn't the case in regards to the aim of their appeal to certain
individuals on campus.

"We don't really stand by our title as 'Black Student Union.' We
definitely branch off while raising awareness about the
African-American community," said Smalls.

"We want to make it more diverse. Sometimes we ask people who aren't
minority to come to BSU, but they fear that they'll be the minority.
But they really won't, we treat everybody like it's a family."

In addition to Kiera Smalls, there are 13 other executive board
members. It is no wonder that they boast a membership of
approximately 90 to 200 members at every meeting.

"We fill the [Sykes] theater every week," said Smalls.

In the past, BSU has done numerous programs and collaborations with
other organizations, ranging from Student Activities Council, Student
Government Association, the Women's Center and the Women's Center
Club and Office of Multicultural Affairs, among many others.

Last year, BSU brought Black Panther Party to campus, a revolutionary
African-American organization that led the Black Power movement
during the 1960s and 70s, which, according to their website,
"operated on the love for black people, not hatred of white people."

They have had programs surrounding sex education, history, current
events and more. They frequently hold dances and events that engage
and include not only the African-American community, but all
individuals on campus.

Not only does BSU hold entertainment events, but they are also
heavily involved in recognizing phenomenal African-American
individuals on campus. They have events titled "Phenomenal Women" and
"Men Appreciation," which celebrates individuals who achieve a certain GPA.

This year they are organizing an awards ceremony titled "The Black
Carpet Affair", which will showcase all of the minority leadership
positions, organizations, and programs on campus. They are also
working on establishing a scholarship to present to an individual at
this ceremony.

On top of all of this, they also volunteer within the community,
donate money to local organizations and send individuals to the Black
Leadership Conference every year. The BSU is focused on fostering
leadership and excellence among the African-American community at
West Chester University.

"We try to balance fun and educational programs," President Danielle
Gilliam said.

The organization is especially involved in the month of February, for
Black History Month. They will be conducting community service every
weekend and holding events throughout the week.

In addition to Black History Month events, they will be collaborating
with SGA for Martin Luther King Day of Service. They are bringing
African dancers to teach their members native African dance routines,
and the 2nd Annual Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Douglass leadership pageant
will also occur next semester.

For the fans of the Sadie Hawkins dance that occurred last year,
there will be another next semester. There is a comedy show
scheduled, and the organization plans on presenting the play titled,
"The Pocketbook Monologues," which invites women of color to discuss
sexual responsibility.

The BSU truly attempts to appeal to all individuals, even going as
far as to have a freshmen representative on their executive board,
whose sole position is to recruit first-year students. This year the
position is held by Debbie Pierre.

Besides the freshmen representative, the group also reaches out to
Student Activities Council and Student Government Association by
employing a representative for each organization, positions currently
held by Brittani Ferris and Kiarrah Newsome, respectively.

Lalynda Sowell is the president of the Street Team, a group of
individuals that advertise BSU events across campus by distribution
of flyers and word of mouth.

Interested students can contact Black Student Union in a variety of
ways. They could visit their website at www.iws.wcupa.edu/bsu, e-mail
them at wcupabsu@yahoo.com, or visit their office at 234 Sykes.

They are also on Facebook under the group name "WCU'S BLACK STUDENT
UNION," and a fan page at "Black Student Union WCU."

What began as a few African-American individuals has grown into a
hardworking and dedicated 14-member executive board.

The promise of friendship and the vision of inclusion and community
are the reasons as to why the Black Student Union has celebrated 40
phenomenal years at West Chester University.

The Black Student Union holds true to West Chester University's
mission: Expect Excellence.
--

Jennifer Halligan is a third-year student majoring in elementary
education and minoring in Spanish and women's studies. She can be
reached at JH653435@wcupa.edu.

Tower of films to recall Alcatraz takeover

2009-12-22T12:21:00.011-08:00

Tower of films to recall Alcatraz takeover

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/15/BAKK1AJ8TH.DTL

Rachel Gordon
Sunday, November 15, 2009

Coit Tower will be turned into a huge outdoor movie screen to
commemorate the 40th anniversary of the American Indian Movement's
occupation of Alcatraz Island.

Projectors will be used to cast digital images on the 210-foot
concrete tower that sits atop Telegraph Hill.

At least five films will be shown, one after another, on the evenings
of Nov. 25 and 26. The two-night event is titled "Indigenous Renewal:
Alcatraz Occupation Remembrance + Ohlone Presence Celebrated."

KPOO radio station, 89.5 FM, will run a live program accompanying the
show, which also can be accessed online at www.coitlive.com. The
viewings, scheduled to run from about 6 to 11 p.m. Nov. 25 and
starting again at dusk on Thanksgiving Day through 7 a.m. Friday,
will be postponed in the event of rain or heavy fog, said David Mark,
an organizer.

This is the fourth time that the Art Deco landmark has been used as a
projection screen. The filmmakers also had showings in 2004 and 2008
that focused on American Indians. In 2006, the topic was the Great
Earthquake and Fire that occurred 100 years before.

"The unique thing about Coit Tower is that it's visible to hundreds
of thousands of people," Marks said. Among the best viewing spots,
organizers say, will be Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 31, the Coit Tower
parking lot and Washington Square.

Ayers draws applause, protests

2009-12-22T12:21:00.009-08:00

[3 articles]

One year later, Ayers make Nebraska appearance

http://journalstar.com/news/local/article_6adfa198-d197-11de-8a8b-001cc4c002e0.html

By MELISSA LEE
November 14, 2009

OMAHA - A kindergartner once asked William Ayers:

Why does a ball bounce?

Ayers - noted scholar, author, education advocate - was momentarily stumped.

And that wasn't the only question he heard: Why do some people have
different-colored skin? Why is the sky blue?

Ayers may not have had all the answers, but he believes more citizens
need to follow children's inquisitive leads.

"In a democracy, we search, we find, we investigate, we interrogate,"
Ayers said Saturday in Omaha.

Later he added: "Democracy is a culture, and it's a tone ... and,
frankly, we're far from it."

Ayers, a former radical and now education professor at the University
of Illinois-Chicago, was the featured speaker at the annual meeting
of the Academic Freedom Coalition of Nebraska.

The coalition pointedly invited Ayers after the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, citing security concerns, canceled an Ayers speech
that was to have taken place a year ago today.

Ayers was a co-founder of the Weather Underground, a group that
claimed responsibility for bombings of public buildings in protest of
the Vietnam War. News of his invitation to UNL last fall sparked an
immediate outcry, including criticism from the state's political leaders.

Several e-mails, phone messages and blog posts inspected by UNL
security experts contained explicitly violent language. UNL
Chancellor Harvey Perlman has said he was acting in the best interest
of the campus in disinviting Ayers.

But critics alleged a sacred value in academia had been breached.

"The academic freedom of those students and faculty (who invited
Ayers) was violated," Dwayne Ball, president of the Academic Freedom
Coalition, said before Ayers took the podium.

Ayers, speaking to a crowd of about 90, said he felt for the students
and faculty who had wanted to hear his speech but lost the opportunity.

And he said the cancellation offered a lesson: "Small, noisy
minorities often make things happen."

Ayers called on the University of Nebraska to re-invite him, saying
he still wants to speak on campus and that a re-invitation would be
"the only fair thing."

His remarks were warmly received inside, drawing head nods, jokes
during lighter moments and, when he finished, a standing ovation.

The protesters lining the street outside the hotel were far less welcoming.

"It's wrong that he should be here," said Park Blaine, 58, a
commercial electrician from Elkhorn.

Blaine carried a sign that read "Bill Ayers = Unrepentant Terrorist"
and had his "protest dog," a Jack Russell terrier named Micki, in tow.

"I don't like where the country is going," he said.

Other signs read "Bill Ayers Still Hates America" and "Bill Ayers:
Once a Terrorist, Always a Terrorist."

Bill Sole Sr., a 54-year-old industrial engineer from Omaha, said
Ayers never should have been invited to Nebraska - not even by a
privately funded group like the Academic Freedom Coalition.

"We're just American citizens that can tell the difference between
right and wrong," Sole said of the protesters.

Ayers said he's been disinvited before and warned such cancellations
have a chilling effect on academic freedom. Now, invitations to
controversial speakers sometimes aren't made at all for fear of a
backlash, he said.

He urged academic and political leaders to instead stand up for
academic freedom. After all, he said, schools, both at the K-12 and
postsecondary levels, play a key role in a democracy.

Young people must be taught to think for themselves, Ayers said, so
society can enjoy a "robust, vital dialogue."

He hailed the election of President Barack Obama but speculated some
in his audience likely were disappointed in how much progress the
Obama administration has made in areas like health care or the war in
Afghanistan.

Ayers urged his listeners to work for change from the ground up.

Yes, there's power in the White House, he said.

But there's also power in communities, in schools, in universities, he said.

"And it's that power that we're responsible for."
--

Reach Melissa Lee at 473-2682 or mlee@journalstar.com.

--------

Controversial Speaker Finally Getting Voice Heard in Nebraska

http://www.kptm.com/Global/story.asp?S=11504146

Posted: Nov 13, 2009
by Todd Unger

A little more than a year ago, UNL yanked an invite for controversial
education figure Dr. Bill Ayers to speak at an education conference.

Saturday, though, the man who became embroiled in last year's
presidential race will speak in Nebraska.

The Academic Freedom Coalition of Nebraska, or AFCON, says their
annual meeting this weekend will address last year's predicament.

"We felt the main academic freedom issue of 2008 was the
disinvitation," says David Moshman, the group's public policy coordinator.

Close to 100 folks have preregistered for the Saturday morning forum
at The Holiday Inn at 72nd and Grover, according to organizers.

Ayers, a onetime radical who founded the group Weather Underground,
is the keynote speaker.

The organization claimed responsibility for bombing several
government buildings in the 1960's and 1970's.

Over the past couple of decades, Ayers has become a prominent urban
education spokesperson, and has spoken at more than 70 universities
about the topic.

He was invited to speak at UNL well before his relationship with then
candidate Barack Obama became a focal point of last year's
presidential race, but UNL officials eventually still canceled Ayers'
speech because they claimed it posed too much of a threat.

"Whatever diminishment of academic freedom that occurred because of
this cancellation seemed to be worth it so out kids had a safe
environment," said Chancellor Harvey Perlman at the time.

The public isn't invited to Saturday's event unless they preregistered.

Omaha police say they will step up their presence in the area, and
have a contingency plan in place if any disturbances develop.

--------

Ayers draws applause, protests

http://www.omaha.com/article/20091114/NEWS01/911149977

November 14, 2009
By Rick Ruggles

Former 1960s radical William Ayers would have spoken at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln exactly a year ago today, and he still
would like that opportunity.

The cancellation of his Nov. 15, 2008, appearance at UNL compelled
the Academic Freedom Coalition of Nebraska to give Ayers the podium
Saturday at its annual meeting in Omaha.

Ayers received a standing ovation in the meeting room at the Holiday
Convention Centre, and protests outside.

At least a dozen people held signs on the sidewalk, conveying
messages that Ayers "still hates America" and that this nation needs
to "stand for American values."

"Practice responsible free speech," said the green placard held by
Janice Rustia of Omaha. "What would Reagan do?" was the messaage on
the sign belonging to Park Blaine of the Elkhorn area.

Ayers encouraged his audience of about 85 to question, challenge,
engage in dialogue and think for oneself.

"In a democracy, we search, we find, we investigate, we interrogate,"
Ayers, 65, told the audience.

More than 40 years ago, Ayers helped lead the Weather Underground,
which protested the Vietnam War by bombing public buildings such as
the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol.

OBIT: Leon Tabory, owner of the hippie hot spot The Barn

2009-12-22T12:21:00.007-08:00

As the owner of the hippie hot spot The Barn, Leon Tabory planted a
flag for the counterculture in quiet Scotts Valley

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_13787097

By WALLACE BAINE
Posted: 11/14/2009

SCOTTS VALLEY -- Despite its reputation as a natural wildlife
preserve for 1960s-style hippies and similarly free-spirited
lifestyle rebels, Santa Cruz County was once, in fact, a quiet,
conservative, decidedly un-hip place.

If anyone were ever to draw up a list of those most responsible for
turning Santa Cruz from the latter to the former, among the top five
names would certainly be Leon Tabory.

Tabory, who died in September a week before turning 84, will be
remembered at a memorial service on Sunday for a life that reads like
a grand 20th century novel. But in the cultural history of the
county, Tabory stands, for good or ill, as a pioneer in establishing
the '60s counterculture in this area. He brought in the Day-Glo
colors where once had been only red, white and blue.

For a few crucial years in the mid-1960s, Tabory was the
owner/operator of The Barn, a landmark off Highway 17 in Scotts
Valley that, for a brief moment, was the local epicenter of the
flower-power movement. In the middle of tranquil, bucolic Scotts
Valley, Tabory attracted droves of young longhairs where few had been
seen before. A psychologist by training, Tabory presided over a
vibrant weekend scene that featured some of the earliest rock light
shows as well as live musical acts including such iconic figures as
Janis Joplin and Country Joe & the Fish.

"The Barn was my first experience in Santa Cruz County," said Ralph
Abraham, a longtime friend of Tabory and a leading figure in an
online project called the Hip Santa Cruz History Project. "Leon was
the reason I moved here."

Abraham said Tabory used The Barn as a kind of incubator of what was
then radical new era values of community and human potential.

"Those light shows, he really took seriously," he said. "He used
psychedelics as therapy."

Coincidentally, the city of Scotts Valley was first incorporated the
same year Tabory took control of The Barn -- 1966. The Barn wasn't
the first outpost of the counterculture in the area -- the Hip Pocket
Bookstore and the old Catalyst in downtown Santa Cruz had opened
earlier, providing a welcoming atmosphere for the politically
conscious beat-generation vibe that had flourished in San Francisco
in the 1950s. He wasn't even the first to bring a new cultural scene
to The Barn. Fabled beat figure Eric "Big Daddy" Nord opened a coffee
shop in The Barn in 1964.

But it was Tabory who first brought the full-blown hippie aesthetic
to the county, and it was Tabory who found himself in a long,
draining battle with the newly established city. The Scotts Valley
Planning Commission approved Tabory's first application to open The
Barn as a community center, but warned him with a "no beatniks" rule.

The Barn opened with its light shows, its live concerts, its colorful
crowds and its eye-popping guest list, which often featured not only
Janis Joplin and Country Joe McDonald, but beat generation luminaries
Neal Cassady and Ken Kesey, both Tabory friends.

The appalled Scotts Valley City Council ordered The Barn closed,
citing Tabory's lack of a license to host live entertainment. Tabory
refused to change and was arrested for ignoring a court order. Thus
began a long series of trials pitting Tabory against the city, most
personally against then-Mayor Bill Graham, who said to the Sentinel
in the middle of Tabory's contempt-of-court trial: "He doesn't get
the picture he's not wanted around here."

Tabory later sued Graham for slander.

"He was very mellow and very sweet," said Tabory's daughter, Ramah
Hinde of Santa Cruz. "I wouldn't call him a combative person, but he
had very strong opinions and ideals and he had a passion for that movement."

Tabory was an unlikely figure to lead the hippie hordes into Santa
Cruz. A native of Lithuania, he had spent his early life living under
the occupation of both the Soviets and the Nazis, the latter of whom
sent him to the Dachau concentration camp. After the war, thanks to
the help of an American relative, Tabory came to the U.S. where he
attended college in Michigan and Wisconsin to pursue a doctorate in psychology.

He first came to the West Coast to establish a new therapeutic
program at the penitentiary at San Quentin, where he met and
befriended Cassady. He first came to Santa Cruz County to take a job
as a staff psychologist at General Hospital now Dominican Hospital.
He took an active interest in the emerging cultural scene at the Hip
Pocket and at Esalen Institute in Big Sur.

At The Barn, Tabory and his then-wife Kathy welcomed visitors to a
coffee shop and art gallery, along with a vast dance room where bands
played live and psychedelic light shows danced on the walls. The Barn
was even featured in Tom Wolfe's Merry Pranksters saga "The Electric
Kool-Aid Acid Test."

"Leon was always there at the door," said Holly Harman, who is
writing a book about her experiences growing up in a hippie commune
in the Santa Cruz Mountains. "It was $1.25 at the door for live music
and light shows. The Barn really brought a lot of people in that
particular culture together."

In his battles with Scotts Valley, Tabory claimed that the music and
light shows were not merely entertainment but, in fact, a form of
therapy, and thus the city's ordinances didn't apply. Eventually, the
constant arrests and legal wranglings forced Tabory to sell The Barn
in 1969, at which point the hippie generation had achieved critical
mass across the country. Tabory, in his later years, indulged an
interest in computers and worked at the computer lab at Cabrillo College.

Santa Cruz's Marq Lipton was a Tabory relative -- Tabory and Lipton's
mother were first cousins. Once a month for several years, Lipton and
Tabory lunched together. Lipton said those encounters enriched his
understanding not only of Tabory, but of bigger issues in his own life.

"It was amazing, considering all he had gone through," said Lipton,
"but he was still a very optimistic guy. He had this certain
exuberance and positive outlook and he always had an interest to find
out why people treat other people the way they do."

In the summer of 1966, when the new city planning commission was
deciding whether to grant Tabory's wish to open The Barn, he was
asked whether he planned to cater to a "beatnik clientele."

Tabory was not about to acquiesce to such a suggestion.

"I hope the day never comes," he replied, as quoted in the Sentinel's
reports of the meeting, "when I turn my face away from anyone that
shows me friendliness."

Stewart Brand looks ahead - with caution

2009-12-22T12:21:00.005-08:00

Innovator and writer looks ahead - with caution

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/11/15/MN8N1AFUB7.DTL

Peter Hartlaub
Sunday, November 15, 2009

This does not look like a Whole Earth kind of meal.

Stewart Brand walks into his neighborhood diner in Sausalito and his
waiter already knows the order: burger with bleu cheese, milk shake,
chips and guacamole. The lone vegetable is a helpless-looking portion
of red onion. Brand attacks most of the above with a salt shaker, as
if the sodium can't shower down on his plate fast enough.

"There was one angry person in Portland, a shouter," Brand says,
recalling a recent book-tour stop. "'Do you eat meat?' she said.
'Yes,' I told her. 'At every possible opportunity!' "

The founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, co-founder of the Global
Business Network and associate of the late Ken Kesey has always been
more of an ecological thinker than an eco-warrior. The tugboat that
he lives on has a shrubbery on top and solar panels in front of the
steering wheel. And yet, as his friend Peter Schwartz confirms, "he
eats like a truck driver," with no apologies to the cow he just
washed down with a frosty cup of milk, ice cream and vanilla extract.

Brand's new book, "Whole Earth Discipline," thrusts him in the middle
of the global climate debate, and not in an easily digestible way.
Calling himself an "eco-pragmatist," Brand sees bad times ahead; his
suggestions to avoid an all-out climate cataclysm include more
nuclear power, and food growing in skyscrapers as well as farms. He
believes environmentalists must radically change their thinking.

The book, arguably Brand's most important and certainly his most
urgent, comes as the futurist is about to turn 71. He's a spry
septuagenarian, still showing the passion that fueled his 1960s
campaign for NASA to release a photo of the Earth from outer space.
(The iconic image, which graced the Whole Earth Catalog, is on the
cover of his book.) If anything, Brand's mind may be racing faster
than ever before.

Dry docked

Brand's office in Sausalito looks like the cataclysm already hit.

The work space he rents includes an unremarkable building filled with
books, next to a very remarkable fishing boat, the Mary Heartline,
which has been on dry land for a generation. The deteriorating white
hull is covered with bougainvillea. In this battle between technology
and nature, nature is winning.

"I try to keep the leaks at bay and the raccoons at bay," Brand
explains. "(The boat) will fall down in one of these earthquakes, but
it won't fall down very far."

Trying to list all of Brand's projects over the years is almost
futile. A sampling: After graduating from Stanford, spending two
years active duty as an infantry officer and tripping with the Merry
Pranksters, Brand in 1968 published his first Whole Earth Catalog - a
compendium of handy products meant for commune dwellers. The catalog
became a phenomenon and a cultural touchstone; Steve Jobs described
it in his 2005 Stanford University commencement address as "sort of
like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along."

Forming corporate strategy

Other resume builders: founded the CoEvolution Quarterly, served as
adviser to then-Gov. Jerry Brown and co-founded the Whole Earth
'Lectronic Link (the WELL), one of the first online communities.
Brand also co-founded the corporate strategy firm Global Business
Network, and the Long Now Foundation, based in San Francisco, a group
that promotes long-range thinking. Among other things, Long Now
endeavors to put a clock in Nevada that will tick once a year for
10,000 years.

Hanging out with Brand can be intimidating. Less than an hour into
our first meeting, this reporter tried to dazzle Brand with some
trivia: The oft-used term "drinking the Kool-Aid" is wrong, because
Jim Jones gave his Jonestown followers Flavor Aid during their mass
suicide in Guyana.

"I think 'drinking the Kool-Aid' predates Jim Jones to Ken Kesey -
'Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' and all that," Brand politely corrects.
"Drinking Kool-Aid actually had a very different meaning then. It
meant 'Are you on the bus or off the bus? Are you in or are you out?'
All it meant is are you trusting Neal Cassady. And why would you do that?"

He should know. He was there. Tom Wolfe wrote about Brand in "The
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," and thanked him in the author's note.

Brand is lanky, looking much taller from a distance than his 6 feet,
and has a bright-eyed nerdiness that comes from a lifetime of picking
function over fashion. He can seem awkward but laughs very easily - a
full-body laugh that makes it impossible to doubt his sincerity.

He talks fondly about his friends, and speaks frequently of his wife
of more than two decades, Ryan Phelen. (Brand has an ex-wife, and his
31-year-old son Noah is a writer.) Unlike many writers of his
intellect, Brand admits enjoying almost everything about his fame.

"There's almost no downside being well-known for a long time," Brand
says. "Nobody is going to steal my identity. Old friends lead to new
friends and one recycles people into new functions over time."

Phelen tells the story of Brand's 70th birthday last December. What
kind of gift do you get a man who hates big parties and gets the
latest gadget before everyone else? Phelen set up a Web site and
filled it with passionate discussions from his closest friends. "I
gave him words. Words and thoughtful conversation," she says.

Brand was thrilled.

The Whole Earth Catalog hasn't published in a decade, but Brand is
still a well-researched consumer.

Hiking in Marin

He aggressively hikes the back country of Marin County, brewing his
own coffee in the middle of nowhere. When asked how this is possible,
he bounds to the next room and emerges with two cool tools - a newer
gadget with a propane tank and a much older one that uses a small fan
to turn a hockey puck-size titanium pot into a blast furnace. Brand's
uniform is the 5.11 "tactical shirt," with its pen holder in the
shoulder and pouches in its pouches. He has 10 of them, in different colors.

But nothing reflects Brand's personality like his second boat, the
Mirene, a nearly century-old tugboat bought in the 1980s. Brand and
Phelen spent either six figures (his estimate) or seven figures
(hers) to turn the boat into their main living space. He proudly
points out each design innovation - windows that slide sideways into
the wall, a kitchen counter that collapses on a piano hinge.

"Oh God, this was such a joy. We had a zero bank account for years
there," Brand says, as if the poverty was part of the fun. "We'd get
a little bit of salary and it would go into the tugboat."

It's hard to describe the Global Business Network without using words
like "scenario planning" and "strategic tools." So just call it the
league of extraordinary futurists.

Heavyweight thinkers including Brand and author/consultant Schwartz
founded the organization, whose clients include the U.S. government
and some of the world's larger corporations. Members have included
science fiction author William Gibson and musician Peter Gabriel.

At GBN, Schwartz says Brand is distinguished by his capacity to ask
the right questions.

"In all the kinds of work that we do, figuring out the right question
is the hardest part. He makes me very uncomfortable all the time and
that's his job," Schwartz says. "It goes all the way back to the
question, 'Why haven't we seen a picture of the whole Earth yet?' It
really is about getting the questions right, and he makes sure that
we avoid easy answers. And that's what I think he did with his book."

Stirring vigorous debate

"Whole Earth Discipline" is filled with influences from GBN. Among
other observations, he worries that some climatologists aren't
telling everything they know about the seriousness of our future. He
also admits that some of his old ideas were wrong.

"There was some sense of urgency," Brand says. "This book (reflects)
that I had veered far enough off from the environmental mainstream
that I had something to say in that regard."

"Whole Earth Discipline" seems designed to stir aggressive debate.

Dire scenarios - the Earth slimming to a population of 1.5 billion is
one of the less chilling possibilities - are followed by bold
solutions, including a chapter on geo-engineering: a sort of
hotwiring of the planet, where mankind does things like shooting
sulfur particles into the stratosphere to cool the climate. Darkly
dry humor runs throughout the book. An ecosystem engineering chapter
is called "It's All Gardening."

Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope hasn't yet read the book,
which contradicts the club's position that nuclear power isn't ready
for worldwide use. But even though Brand challenges
environmentalists, Pope is glad he has a platform.

"I think (Brand) provides a very important ingredient to the public
dialogue," Pope says. "And I'm thrilled he's still out there doing it."

Brand doesn't have an optimistic outlook about the planet's future.
But he talks at length about mankind's capacity to respond heroically
to crises and thinks this one could bring out our best. Brand uses
World War II as an example, where death tolls were high, but many who
survived say the period was the time of their lives.

"It was the time when everyone was pointed in the same direction,
doing amazing and impossible things with astonishing stories being
told," Brand says, before the humor surfaces again. "Everybody got
laid all the time."

Brand's Web site is web.me.com/stewartbrand.
--

E-mail Peter Hartlaub at phartlaub@sfchronicle.com.

Former Vietnam POW fights to restore moral nation

2009-12-22T12:21:00.003-08:00

Former Vietnam POW fights to restore his idea of moral nation

http://hamptonroads.com/2009/11/former-vietnam-pow-fights-restore-his-idea-moral-nation

By Bill Sizemore
The Virginian-Pilot
November 11, 2009

Jeremiah Denton Jr. had endured nearly eight years of confinement and
torture in a Vietnam prisoner-of-war camp, but it wasn't until his
recuperation at Portsmouth Naval Hospital in 1973 that he finally snapped.

As part of their therapy, Denton and other POWs were shown a film
illustrating the cultural changes that had rocked the nation since
the Navy aviator's A6 Intruder was shot down in 1965.

As he watched scenes of the 1969 Woodstock music festival, showing
"hippies fornicating publicly, high on drugs," Denton wrote later, he
became physically ill and threw up. That was enough, he told the
therapists: He couldn't watch any more.

"To me, it was a nightmare," he wrote. "This nation, firmly founded
as One Nation under God, was in the process of becoming a pagan
nation with a shocking degeneration of national integrity."

That scene is from the updated version of Denton's book, "When Hell
Was in Session," which is being released today in honor of Veterans Day.

Co-written by Ed Brandt, a former Virginian-Pilot editor, and
originally published in 1975, the book tells the story of Denton's
captivity during what was, until then at least, America's longest
war. Throughout his imprisonment, his wife, Jane, and seven children
lived in Virginia Beach.

The book includes a well-known episode in which Denton, in a TV
interview, blinked his eyes in Morse code to spell out the word "torture."

The updated version picks up the story after his release and details
his subsequent engagement in another kind of combat: the culture war.

It's a war he is still fighting today, at 85.

After his release, Denton became commandant at the Armed Forces Staff
College, now the Joint Forces Staff College, in Norfolk. He retired
from the Navy as a rear admiral in 1977 and went into politics,
serving six years as a U.S. senator from Alabama during Ronald
Reagan's presidency.

"I wanted to go help Reagan out, because I thought he was my
brother," Denton said in an interview. "And he turned out to be that."

He looks back with pride on his efforts to advance Reagan's agenda,
including supporting the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua and
opposing the nuclear freeze movement.

Always known as an uncompromising conservative, Denton, who now lives
in Williamsburg, shows no signs of mellowing.

Here, for instance, is his take on President Barack Obama: "Our
present president is not qualified by experience or knowledge to be a
commander in chief. Unless he will listen to the inputs of those who
are qualified in the arts of warfare and statesmanship, we'll remain
in increasing danger every day."

Denton favors beefing up military spending to meet today's security
threats. But even more important, he has come to believe, is rescuing
the nation from its slide into moral degeneracy.

The signs are everywhere, he writes in his book: abortion,
pornography, drug abuse, pre marital sex, gay marriage.

"In this world of weapons of mass destruction, yes, we could get
wiped out tomorrow," he said.

"But I think the decline in our culture is a surer poison. Every
nation that has gone the same route has disappeared within 200 years.
I'm trying to draw our national attention to that."

This is a man who believes God once spoke to him, out loud.

It was 1967, two years into his captivity. He was pacing in his cell,
shackled in irons, on the brink of despair. The prison was quiet
except for an occasional scream from the torture room.

In his super-conscious sensitive state, he heard a soft voice -
authoritative, kind, well-modulated: "Say, 'Sacred heart of Jesus, I
give myself to you.' "

It was a prescription for prayer, Denton said: "He meant, 'Don't
sweat it. You can't control anything. Just give your thoughts,
yourself, to me.' "

Can the cultural tide be turned? Denton doesn't know. All he can do is try.

"If I can help get God's will done before I die, I want to," he said.
"I don't have any choice. My dear wife died two years ago, and I
don't have anything else to do that's better than this."
--

Bill Sizemore, (757) 446-2276, bill.sizemore@pilotonline.com

Havens in Woodstock all over again

2009-12-22T12:21:00.001-08:00

Havens in Woodstock all over again

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20091112/FEATURES17/911120333

By Josh O'Gorman
November 12, 2009

Something about this town sounds familiar to singer-songwriter Richie Havens.

"I've been in five different Woodstocks, and one of them was in
Germany," said Havens, who opened up the three-day Woodstock Music
and Art Fair in 1969 and who will bring his message of peace and love
to the Historic Town Hall Theatre at 7:30 p.m. Friday.

Havens had already made a name for himself before Woodstock. A
veteran of the Greenwich Village coffee house scene, Havens had
released three albums, toured Europe and played the Newport Folk
Festival twice before taking the stage before 500,000 people Aug. 15,
1969, in Bethel, N.Y.

"I got pushed to the stage because my friend Michael (festival
producer Michael Lang) was freaking out and he had nobody to go on,"
Havens recalled. The roads were jammed with people traveling to the
show and he and the other acts were stranded six miles away. Since
Havens had the least amount of gear to carry just an acoustic
guitar and a voice that is both fiery and poignant Lang tapped him
to ride by helicopter to the festival stage.

"They flew us over and I looked at that crowd and I said, 'My God,
look at all these people!'" Havens said, before taking the stage for
nearly three hours. With nobody in the wings to play and the crowd
roaring for more, Havens returned to the stage for one last encore, a
performance immortalized in the concert film.

"I just started singing 'Freedom' because in my mind, I thought,
'This is the message we need to hear. This is what we've achieved
already, with everyone attaching themselves to each other with
hugs,'" Havens said.

Havens' performance of "Freedom" and "Motherless Child" a song he
hadn't sung since his days in doo-wop groups 15 years earlier set
the tone for the festival that in turn defined the Woodstock
generation, and during his Voice of Woodstock 40th Anniversary Tour,
Havens is finding the spirit of that time is alive and well and
spanning generations.

"Every summer, the places I play, the teenagers are all lined up and
it's amazing because they are so sincere and they so understand what
this is all about," Havens said. "And then, I have people who stop me
at the airport and they tell me, 'I had hair down to here,' and then
they hand me a card and they're a lawyer."

Friday's concert is a benefit for the Upper Valley Haven and the
Woodstock Community Food Shelf. Tickets are $33 and $50 (director's
circle tickets benefit the Upper Valley Haven) and may be reserved by
calling the Pentangle Arts Council box office at 457-3981 or online
at www.pentanglearts.org.

Patrons are also encouraged to support The Woodstock Community Food
Shelf with donations of nonperishable food items that will be
collected at the door the night of the concert.
--

josh.ogorman@rutlandherald.com

UMass to allow bomber to speak

2009-12-21T13:13:00.007-08:00

[2 articles]

UMass to allow bomber to speak

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1210805

By Michele McPhee and Dave Wedge
November 10, 2009

A fuming Gov. Deval Patrick is taking on University of Massachusetts
officials who now say they must allow a convicted terror bomber to
speak on campus because of "academic freedom" - even after angry cops
thought the event had been stopped.

"Gov. Patrick is outraged and extremely disappointed at reports that
the University of Massachusetts has again extended a speaking
invitation to Raymond Luc Levasseur," said Patrick spokesman Joe Landolfi.

The governor last night called on UMass brass to "review" the abrupt
about-face.

Levasseur, now under federal parole in a Maine halfway house, was the
radical leader of United Freedom Front, a violent anti-government
group linked to some 20 bombings, including one at the Suffolk County
Courthouse in 1976.

Because the group's rage resulted in the slaying of a New Jersey
state trooper and attempted assassination of two Bay State troopers,
cops strongly protested and the speech at UMass-Amherst was called
off last week - until news yesterday that it was still being planned
for Thursday night on the publicly funded campus.

"It's truly unbelievable," said Rick Brown, president of the State
Police Association of Massachusetts, who added that cops from around
the nation are prepared to protest the event. "If the governor told
UMass not to bring this terrorist to a taxpayer-funded campus, it
should not be happening."

But several free-speech groups, including the American Civil
Liberties Union, have asked UMass officials to reconsider.

Now UMass officials say anti-censorship rules leave them no choice
but to let Levasseur speak, even in a campus building.

"I am opposed to convicted terrorist Raymond Luc Levasseur speaking
at the University of Massachusetts," college President Jack Wilson
said. "The University of Massachusetts stands squarely against the
outrageous actions he has committed in the past. As a university, we
defend the principles of free speech and of academic freedom.
However, we deplore the example Levasseur sets for our students and
the University community."

Patrick put his foot down last week after the Herald delivered a
personal plea from Donna Lamonaco of New Jersey, whose trooper
husband Phil was shot dead by members of the United Freedom Front in
1981. She plans to travel to UMass to protest on Thursday.

"Oh my God," Lamonaco said yesterday. "Two weeks of effort to shut
this down. Calling the governor. Getting calls from police groups
from all over the place. We finally succeed in the cancellation, and
the school decided to do it in a sneaky way."

Landolfi said that "While the governor recognizes the fundamental
right to freedom of speech, he believed then and believes now that
this event should not go forward on a public campus out of respect
for the families of (Levasseur's) victims and law enforcement."

Law enforcement sources said the event will take place in a campus
building. Separate sources said the event is being sponsored by the
Department of Social Thought and Political Economy, a progressive
campus group, and that a UMass professor extended the invitation to
Levasseur. Attempts to reach that group last night were unsuccessful.

--------

University Claims 'Academic Freedom' in Inviting Convicted Bomber

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,573619,00.html

November 11, 2009
By Joshua Rhett Miller

A terror bomber who served 18 years in federal prison will be allowed
to speak at the University of Massachusetts on Thursday after his
speech had been canceled because a group of faculty members decided
to invite him and the university maintains it must fulfill its
commitment to "academic freedom."

Raymond Luc Levasseur, the former leader of the revolutionary group
United Freedom Front, was released from federal prison in 2004 after
serving 18 years for his role in the group, which plotted a series of
bombings and bank robberies along the East Coast between 1976 and 1984.

He could have spent more time behind bars, but he was acquitted of
sedition and racketeering charges in 1989 following the longest
criminal trial in Massachusetts history. He remains under federal
parole in a Maine halfway house.

Rick Brown, president of the State Police Association of
Massachusetts, said school officials should be "ashamed" to grant a
forum to the former leader of a group which fatally shot a New Jersey
state trooper and attempted to kill two Massachusetts state troopers.

"He shouldn't be allowed to talk to any students," Brown told
FoxNews.com. "Why give this man any credibility to speak in an
academic environment? He has no remorse and who knows if he's out to
recruit. UMass should be ashamed of themselves for even inviting this
man on campus."

Brown said members of his organization will protest Thursday's event.

"We'll be out there to show our displeasure," he said. "I'm disgusted
by the fact that UMass would even consider doing this. We don't think
it's appropriate."

The University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries canceled the event
last week after "strong reaction" from Gov. Deval Patrick to the
scheduled speech, but Levasseur's appearance was rescheduled for
Thursday because of the school's anti-censorship rules.

"The university administration does not in any way support the
presentation by Ray Luc Levasseur and was very clear in supporting
the library's recent decision to cancel its talk," a statement
released by school officials Wednesday read. "The university
administration did not invite this speaker and would not invite him.
A group of faculty members has decided to invite him.

"Although the university administration questions the wisdom and
common sense of this judgment, the institution must respect academic
freedom. As repugnant as we find this invitation, the
administration's commitment to academic freedom must be honored.
While the university administration does not approve, endorse or
support the decision to invite this individual to campus, academic
freedom must be paramount for the university community."

But on Nov. 5, when the event was initially cancelled, school
officials said it would be unable to create a "meaningful exchange"
among participants.

"The UMass Libraries developed this forum as an opportunity to focus
on terrorism, one of the most difficult social issues confronting the
country," said Robert Cox, head of Special Collections and University
Archives. "However, it is now clear that given the strong reaction
generated by this event, we can no longer achieve the kind of
meaningful exchange intended. Continuing with this talk would be
counterproductive, but the Libraries will continue to seek avenues to
explore significant issues in social change."

The decision to go ahead with the speech enraged the Massachusetts
governor, who sought the initial cancellation of the speech.

"Governor Patrick is outraged and extremely disappointed at reports
that the University of Massachusetts has again extended a speaking
invitation to Raymond Luc Levasseur," a statement from Patrick's
office read. "When the Governor first learned of his scheduled
appearance last week, the Administration contacted the university to
express serious concerns and the appearance was swiftly and
appropriately cancelled."

Donna Lamonaco, of New Jersey, told the Boston Herald she plans to
travel to the school on Thursday to protest Levasseur's speech. Her
husband, Phil, a state trooper, was fatally shot by members of the
United Freedom Front in 1981.

"Oh my God," Lamonaco told the newspaper. "Two weeks of effort to
shut this down. Calling the governor. Getting calls from police
groups from all over the place. We finally succeed in the
cancellation, and the school decided to do it in a sneaky way."

Levasseur was one of three people scheduled to speak at the Amherst
Libraries' fifth annual Colloquium on Social Change. Along with
writers Todd Gitlin and Raymond Mungo, Levasseur was to represent the
social unrest of the late 1960s.

The FBI conspiracy against H. Rap Brown

2009-12-21T13:13:00.005-08:00

[In 3 Parts]

Rabble rouser: The FBI conspiracy against H. Rap Brown

http://www.michigancitizen.com/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=106&twindow=Default&mad=No&sdetail=8008&wpage=1&skeyword=&sidate=&ccat=&ccatm=&restate=&restatus=&reoption=&retype=&repmin=&repmax=&rebed=&rebath=&subname=&pform=&sc=1070&hn=michigancitizen&he=.com

By Paul Lee
Special to the Michigan Citizen
[November 2009]

On Oct. 28, 2009, Imam Luqman Abdullah, formerly Christopher Thomas,
the 53-year-old leader of Masjid Al-Haqq, a mostly African American
Muslim congregation on Detroit's near West Side, was shot and killed
by a joint task force led by the Detroit field office of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Abdullah was reportedly shot at least 18 times after allegedly
failing to surrender and shooting a police dog.

With the exception of The Michigan Citizen the alternative and
radical press and, surprisingly, Detroit's Fox 2 News television, the
local, national and international news media accepted the FBI's
version of Abdullah's killing, as well as its characterization of
Abdullah as a violent extremist, his masjid as a group engaged in
criminal activity and its version of Abdullah as a violent extremist
and his masjid as engaged in violent crime. (See Diane Bukowski, "FBI
murders Detroit Imam, targets Muslims nationally," The Michigan
Citizen, Nov. 8th-Nov. 14, 2009.)

However, much of the Metro Detroit area Muslim community, which is
ethnically, racially and religiously diverse, rose up in an
unprecedented show of unity and began coordinating its efforts with a
growing number of community and political organizations, including
the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War and Injustice (MECAWI),
the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality (DCAPB) and the Green
Party of Michigan.

On Nov. 6, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) organized
a well-attended town hall meeting at The Muslim Center, 1605 W.
Davison, where spokespersons for this new coalition and one of
Abdullah's sons called for an independent investigation into
Abdullah's killing.

They also countered the FBI's portrayal of Abdullah and his masjid
with moving personal testimonies and raised troubling questions about
the FBI's version of events and its two-year-old investigation of
Masjid Al-Haqq, suggesting that the latter is part of a national
pattern of government repression against U. S. Muslims in a climate
of post-9/11 hysteria.

Given the FBI's historic lack of understanding of African Americans
and Muslims, and its documented hostility toward African American
Muslims that it considered "extremist," The Michigan Citizen believes
that it is legitimate to ask if the bureau has gone from its
obsession with a "Red (Communist) Scare" from the 1920s-'50s to a
"Black Scare" from the 1950s-'70s to a "Green (the traditional color
of Islam) Scare" today.

Therefore, we are printing a revised, updated version of a two-part
series on the FBI conspiracy against Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin,
known during the 1960s as the fiery Black Power advocate H. Rap
Brown, by Michigan Citizen historical features writer Paul Lee, which
originally appeared in the April 7th-April 13th and April 14th-April
20th, 2002, issues. Mr. Lee has also added new photos and a link to
an online video of Al-Amin.

This series is not only germane as a carefully documented example of
how the FBI has responded to black and Islamic radicalism in the
past, but also because the bureau has sought to link Abdullah with
Al-Amin. In an Oct. 28 news release, the Detroit FBI asserted:

"Abdullah was the leader of part of a group which calls themselves
Ummah ('the brotherhood'), a group of mostly African-American
converts to Islam, which seeks to establish a separate Sharia-law
governed state within the United States. The Ummah is ruled by Jamil
Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rapp Brown, who is serving a
state sentence … for the murder of two police officers in Georgia."

In fact, Al-Amin's ummah, or religious community, advocates no such
thing; he has been under a 23-hour lockdown at perhaps the
highest-security prison on earth, where he is in no position to
"rule" anything or anyone; and the former "H. Rapp [sic] Brown" was
convicted of murdering one person, who was a deputy sheriff, not a
policeman, for which he continues to maintain his innocence.

However, as this series documents, such carelessness and character
assassination have a long history in the FBI one that is worth
bearing in mind as the case against Masjid Al-Haqq develops. Ed.
--

Part I of III

Rap who?

Despite the fact that today's most popular form of music is known as
rap/hip hop, few of its young fans know anything about a 1960s black
revolutionary who was known as H. Rap Brown because of his singular
ability to articulate the pain, anger and hopes of African Americans,
particularly the most oppressed and marginalized.

The writer's attention was first drawn to this fact by the man,
himself, when we spoke at a forum on the African American Muslim and
nationalist leader Malcolm X at the University of Michigan in March
1993. Except for his looming, six-foot, five-inch height, he bore
little physical or philosophical resemblance to the iconic figure of
three decades earlier.

A young questioner stood and asked if he approved of rap music.
"Well, you know," he replied softly, after chuckling to himself,
"that was my name Rap!"

His full given name, Hubert Geroid Brown, had been little known, even
by his friends and activist colleagues.

Many who cherished the distinctive images of the firebrand H. Rap
Brown black beret and sunglasses, bushy Afro, droopy moustache,
blue denim jacket and jeans and the inevitable white socks and
sneakers, with his right fist raised defiantly in the Black Power
salute were saddened by the circumstances that brought him back
into the news on March 9, 2002, under yet another name: Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin.

Sporting a crimson moustache and beard and wearing wire-frame
glasses, a white kufi skullcap, a full-length white jalabiya shirt
and, given the circumstances, an oddly serene expression, Al-Amin,
now a Muslim imam or cleric, sat in a Fulton County, Ga., courtroom
as he was found guilty of killing a sheriff's deputy and wounding
another in a shootout at Atlanta's historically black West End on
March 16, 2000.

Supermax

He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In October 2007, Al-Amin was transferred to the U. S. Penitentiary
Administrative Maximum Facility at Florence, Colo., better known as
"Supermax" or "The Alcatraz of the Rockies," because, according to
Georgia corrections officials, his high-profile status presented
"unique issues."

It is the highest-level federal prison in the U. S., and is
considered to be the most secure prison in the world.

Three other notable African American inmates at Supermax, considered
political prisoners by their supporters, are Imam Abdullah Malik
Ka'bah, formerly Jeff Fort, co-founder of the El Rukn tribe, which
began as the Blackstone Rangers Chicago street gang; Larry Hoover,
chairman of Growth and Development (GD), formerly the Gangster
Disciples, which also started as a Windy City gang; and Sekou Odinga,
formerly Nathaniel Burns, a formerly of the underground Black
Liberation Army (BLA).

"Unabomber" Theodore (Ted) Kaczynski, Oklahoma City bombing
conspirator Terry Nichols, 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and
former senior FBI agent Robert Hanssen, convicted of conducting
espionage for the former Soviet Union (Russia), are also housed at Supermax.

Odyssey

Al-Amin's long odyssey from admired and feared Black Power leader,
hunted fugitive, convicted robber, respected Muslim leader, hunted
fugitive again and finally convicted murderer all under the
watchful eyes of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began
when he joined the shock troops of the modern civil-rights movement,
the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced
"Snick"), in 1963.

Ironically, the young man called "Rap" was more typically a listener.
However, when moved to speak, whether to an individual or before an
audience of hundreds or thousands, he had a rare ability to make deep
feelings, complex realities and challenging political concepts clear
and compelling.

"[I]n terms of public speaking, Rap stands out," Chicago freelance
writer and teacher Kiarri Cheatwood wrote in a May 1975 Black World
magazine review of SNCC's Rap: H. Rap Brown (Flying Dutchman, 1970),
a long-playing record album of Al-Amin's speech at Long Island
University on Oct. 22, 1969.

He "does so," Cheatwood continued, "because he proceeds methodically,
without …meaningless rhetorical excesses, flipness, and general
foolishness." By so doing, Al-Amin became one of that era's
preeminent advocates of Black Power, or the belief that black people
should determine their own destiny and control their own affairs.

James Forman, SNCC's former executive secretary, observed in his
indispensable 1972 memoir, The Making of Black Revolutionaries: A
Personal Account, "His [Al-Amin's] way of speaking, his whole style,
has a grass-roots quality that gave him mass appeal."

Al-Amin's conviction and continued claim to be an innocent man
victimized by an ongoing governmental conspiracy offer an opportunity
to examine the FBI's "counterintelligence" efforts to "disrupt,
frustrate, and discourage" his black liberation activities.

'A baaaad man'

The May 1966 election of Al-Amin's friend Kwame Ture, then still
known as Stokely Carmichael, as chair of SNCC did not initiate the
transformation of that group from a nonviolent, multi-racial
organization to an all-black "revolutionary vanguard" movement that
advocated "armed struggle." It reflected the new mood and gave it a
national voice.

For several years, many of SNCC's black field workers had chaffed at
the cultural blindness of the white university students who bravely
joined them in the dangerous direct-action desegregation and
voter-registration campaigns throughout the Deep South.

They also felt frustrated at the political timidity and opportunism
of John F. Kennedy's and Lyndon B. Johnson's administrations, which
coveted new black Democratic voters, but recoiled at supporting the
fundamental changes the SNCC workers came to believe were necessary
if political and economic justice was finally to be brought to poor
and powerless African Americans.

Expressing the new mood of many blacks to gain control of the
political, economic and cultural institutions that governed their
lives, Ture called for Black Power, setting off a firestorm of
controversy that accelerated the philosophical and tactical split
between movement groups seeking integration and those desiring some
measure of racial autonomy.

Ture's stormy tenure as SNCC chair lasted only a year. Upon
introducing his successor, an unknown, 23-year-old Green County,
Ala., field organizer named H. Rap Brown, at an Atlanta, Ga., news
conference on May 12, 1967, Ture teased the assembled reporters:
"He'll take care of you all he's a baaaad man."

Long, hot summer

Al-Amin soon proved Carmichael right, not because of his temperament,
but in response to a spiraling cycle of "long, hot summer" violence
at home and an open-ended, undeclared war in Vietnam, which was
sapping the resources of President Johnson's promised "Great Society."

In a July 1967 interview with black writer William Gardner Smith for
his 1970 book Return to Black America, Al-Amin confessed, "This is a
new generation, and it's bad…. Hell, man, nobody is leading these
black people today. … We're running like hell and we still haven't caught up."

Instead, he, Ture, and other SNCC organizers sought to redirect the
exploding anger and frustration of urban blacks into uncertain,
untested forms of "revolutionary" action.

Predictably, J. Edgar Hoover, the powerful, anti-black director of
the FBI, saw their efforts differently, particularly after the
president, Congress, local officials and an alarmed citizenry began
demanding answers to the unprecedented wave of urban "riots" sweeping the U. S.

The worst uprising occurred at Newark, N. J., from July 12-17, 1967,
spreading through 10 of the city's 23 square miles and claiming at
least 23 lives. But this was quickly topped by the worst urban
disorder of the decade, when Detroit's racial powder keg finally
erupted a few days later, from July 23-27.

Costing at least 43 lives, the Detroit "rebellion," as young blacks
defiantly called it, was only quelled by the intervention of National
Guardsmen and federal troops, creating the surreal contrast on
evening news broadcasts of tanks rolling down smoldering Detroit
streets as U. S. forces fought in South Vietnam.

Scapegoat

On July 24, the day after the Detroit eruption, the political
establishment found a convenient scapegoat for the carnage after
fires were set following a typically incendiary speech by Al-Amin at
Cambridge, Md.

While touring the damaged area the next day, Maryland Gov. Spiro T.
Agnew ignored the history of the city's explosive race relations and
instead focused on Al-Amin. "I hope they pick him up soon, put him
away and throw away the key," Agnew declared a remark that
catapulted him into national prominence.

After African Americans at Baltimore exploded in the wake of Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination on April 4, 1968, Agnew
scolded them for not denouncing Al-Amin and Ture as "apostles of
anarchy." Later that year, he was elected Richard Nixon's vice president.

In Washington, D. C., Hoover promptly widened his vendetta against
the hated Ture to include Al-Amin, casting them as the pied pipers of
urban strife.

In a report to Attorney General Ramsey Clark on July 27, Hoover
blamed the spreading violence on the "exhortations of 'Black Power'
advocates Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown," which, he claimed,
sparked "volatile situations … into violent outbreaks."

In a phone conversation with President Lyndon B. Johnson that same
day, it was clear that there was no need to persuade him to Hoover's
view. As Hoover, who early recognized the power of keeping complete
records, memorialized Johnson's opinion: "The President … stated he
noticed this Rap [Brown] outfit [sic] said he was going to get a gun
and shoot Lady Bird," the president's wife.

The FBI director played into the president's fears that he "was
besieged in hostile territory," according to Richard Gid Powers in
his 1987 study, Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover. This,
no doubt, strengthened Hoover's hand in his efforts.

The following day, Johnson appointed a National Advisory Commission
on Civil Disorders (known as the Kerner Commission after its chair,
Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner) to investigate the origins of the "riots"
and make recommendations to prevent their repetition.

On Aug. 1, Hoover testified before the new body. Typically, he
glossed over the social conditions that gave rise the disorders and
instead pointed to the "catalytic effect of extremists," singling out
the "vicious rhetoric" of Ture, Al-Amin and, for good measure, his
old nemesis, Dr. King. He damned them as "vociferous firebrands who
are very militant in nature and who at times incite great numbers to activity."

When asked his opinion about proposed federal "anti-riot"
legislation, Hoover assumed the role of social physician: "…any law
which allowed law enforcement the opportunity to arrest militant and
vicious rabble-rousers like Carmichael and Brown would be healthy to
have on the books."

Congress agreed. After the Cambridge incident, it bestowed upon
Al-Amin the dubious honor of quickly passing a law bearing his name,
the "H. Rap Brown law," making it a federal offense to cross state
lines with the intent to incite a riot. (It was later struck down in
the courts.)

Target

Away from the glare of the television spotlights, Hoover stepped up
his secret efforts to undermine black radicalism, which he broadly
defined to include any perceived threat to the status quo.

By the end of the month, on Aug. 25, the bureau established a new
"Counterintelligence Program," or COINTELPRO, against "Black
Nationalist-Hate Groups," which was designed to "expose, disrupt,
misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" black nationalist
groups. (The first COINTELPRO was established in 1956 against the
Communist Party of the United States of American [CPUSA].)

The program's targets lumped in Dr. King's nonviolent Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) with the radical SNCC and
Elijah Muhammad's conservative, quasi-Islamic, black-centered Nation
of Islam (NOI).

"Intensified attention under this program should be afforded to the
activities of such groups as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee…," the initiating memo directed. "Particular emphasis
should be given to extremists who direct the activities and policies
of revolutionary and militant groups such as Stokely Carmichael, H.
'Rap' Brown" and others.

On March 4, 1968, the program was expanded from 23 to 41 FBI field
offices. One of its goals was to "Prevent the rise of a 'messiah' who
could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement."
The memo nodded to the martyred Malcolm X as a potential "messiah,"
had he lived, and noted that Ture "has the necessary charisma to be a
real threat in this way."

SNCC again led the list of targeted organizations, and FBI offices
handling the cases of its organizers, including "H. Rap Brown of
SNCC," were tasked to "be alert for counterintelligence suggestions."

Panthers

Ironically, another radical black group was not included the Black
Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP), which, as its name suggested,
both advocated and practiced armed self-protection, including against
police officers, along with its then-modest community programs.

Co-founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby G. Seale at Oakland, Calif.,
in October 1966, the BPP had been inspired by the Lowndes County
Freedom Organization (LCFO), an independent, mostly black rural
Alabama political party, which Kwame Ture and other SNCC organizers
helped organize in 1965.

However, the LCFO was better known as the Black Panther Party, whose
name and symbol of a leaping panther were adopted by Newton's and
Seale's group.

The FBI's omission of the Oakland BPP is curious because, only two
weeks before it expanded its COINTELPRO against black nationalists,
Al-Amin had been "drafted" as the BPP's "minister of justice," former
SNCC chair Ture as its "honorary prime minister" and former SNCC
executive secretary James Forman as its "minister of foreign affairs"
at a huge rally at the Oakland Coliseum.

The Feb. 17 rally was part of a nationwide campaign to "Free Huey"
Newton, in jail on a charge of murdering a policeman, wounding
another and kidnapping a bystander.

BPP minister of information Eldridge Cleaver had delighted the
audience but surprised SNCC by announcing the appointments as part of
a "merger" of the two organizations which he did without prior
authorization of SNCC's central committee, or even the three
draftees. Cleaver's action planted seeds of distrust that would grow
along the lines of divergent ideologies and personalities, but also
be exacerbated by the now-alert FBI.

By September 1968, Hoover would more than compensate for his
oversight in neglecting to target the Oakland BPP, whose shaky
alliance with SNCC had dissolved in acrimony the previous month. The
FBI director labeled the BPP "The greatest threat to the internal
security of the Country."

Ridiculing Rap

The following month, the "Racial Matters Squad" (Section 43) of the
FBI's New York field division made its first counterintelligence
recommendations regarding Al-Amin, who maintained an office at Harlem.

Special Agent John J. Dunleavy, who had previously investigated the
moribund, post-Malcolm X Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU),
advised, "STOKELY CARMICHAEL and H. RAP BROWN … should of course be
included on the Rabble Rouser list."

The Rabble Rouser Index, soon renamed the Agitator Index, listed
"racial agitators and individuals who have demonstrated a propensity
for fomenting racial discord," according to an Aug. 3, 1967, FBI
headquarters memo. Originally compiled in response to a Kerner
Commission request for a tally of known agitators, the index became a
convenient list of primary targets for COINTELPRO dirty tricks.

"In order to effectively neutralize these groups," Dunleavy
suggested, "it appears that current membership must be disenchanted
and that future membership must be dissuaded." In his view,
membership in "nationalist and hate groups" was divided between "the
intelligentsia and the unintelligent." Therefore, different methods
of ridiculing the group's leaders were required.

"For the first who spend endless hours discussing ways and means to
effect their 'revolution,'" Dunleavy offered, "a subtle middle class
type publication can be used. For the latter a comic book type
publication can be utilized."

Implicitly conceding Al-Amin's appeal to black youth, Dunleavy noted
that, for the benighted, "plain cartoons and simple ghetto language
should be the rule in the publication aimed at the follower and the
potential member in his early teens." He recommended the title Culla
Me H. Rap Brown, a take-off on the popular 1964 Color Us Cullud
coloring book, produced by Harlem artist and black nationalist Elombe Brath.

The book, Dunleavy continued, "could contain various data regarding
BROWN[']S early life, his speaking fees, bank account and other
facets of his life that show him to be other than a sincere black
nationalist." However, he emphasized, "Factual data is not necessary:
the only goal is effect."

As an example, he suggested an accusation that he knew was untrue
that Al-Amin was "a coward among the 'revolutionary' groups. …" This
could be portrayed by "a series of scenes showing BROWN alighting
from an airplane, speaking to a group, then sneaking abroad a plane. …"

The enterprising agent even composed a "jingle" to accompany the caricatures:

Ole Rap Brown
Came to town
With his shades
Hanging down
He hollored [sic] fight
Take what's right
Then he flew, man
In the night

(Hoover, himself, might have inspired this fabrication. In his Kerner
Commission testimony, he referred to "rabble-rousers who initiate
action and then disappear," citing Dr. King, Al-Amin and Ture, among others.)

Dunleavy concluded: "The appeal to children, prospective members of
such groups, would be the greatest perhaps. If the youth of the
ghetto rejects black nationalism as ludicrous then the neutralization
of such attitudes and doctrines can more readily be effected."

Available documentation does not indicate whether or not FBI
headquarters approved this proposal. However, it is important to note
that it was made on April 4, 1968 the day that Dr. King was
assassinated at Memphis, Tenn. There is no evidence that Dr. King's
murder in any way slowed the black nationalist counterintelligence
program against Al-Amin, or the movement. In fact, the FBI stepped it up.
--

Video rap

Whatch a fully contextualized 19-second color video clip of Imam
Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin when he was still known as the young firebrand
H. Rap Brown as he addresses a news conference at the Washington, D.
C., headquarters of the militant Student Non-violent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) on YouTube.com here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scYQGiybJbY

--------

Rabble rouser: The FBI conspiracy against H. Rap Brown

http://www.michigancitizen.com/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=106&twindow=Default&mad=No&sdetail=8014&wpage=1&skeyword=&sidate=&ccat=&ccatm=&restate=&restatus=&reoption=&retype=&repmin=&repmax=&rebed=&rebath=&subname=&pform=&sc=1070&hn=michigancitizen&he=.com

By Paul Lee
Special to the Michigan Citizen

The following is the second part of a revised, updated version of an
article on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) conspiracy
against Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, known during the 1960s as the
firebrand Black Power advocate H. Rap Brown, which originally
appeared in The Michigan Citizen in the April 7th-April 13th and
April 14th-April 20th, 2002, issues.

We are presenting it to our readers as necessary background on how
the FBI has historically related to African American and Islamic
radicalism in light of the Oct. 28, 2009, killing of Detroit Imam
Luqman Abdullah, the 53-year-old spiritual leader of Masjid Al-Haqq,
by a task force led by Detroit FBI special agents. PL.
--

Part II of III

A 'new type' of black threat

Two reports from the FBI's Inspection Division in 1967 and '68 make
it clear that the bureau had moved to a war footing against radical
black activists, chief among them Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, then known
as H. Rap Brown, chairman of the black nationalist Student
Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

The aim, the reports show, was "neutralizing" these individuals and
their organizations under the umbrella of the FBI's
Counterintelligence Program, better known as COINTELPRO.

In an Oct. 27, 1967, report, Assistant Director William Mark Felt,
Sr., head of the bureau's Inspection Division and a favorite of
Director J. Edgar Hoover (who later elevated Felt to associate deputy
director, a new number-three spot), nevertheless mildly contradicted
his boss's position of scapegoating black militants by locating a
"new type" of black threat within the tinderbox of U. S. race relations:

"Today, with the appearance of the new type of militant agitator, who
has evolved from unsettled racial and social conditions," Felt
advised, "new problems have appeared, which parallel the dangers
presented by the pure communist elements" that had preoccupied the
FBI and its predecessor, the Bureau of Investigation, for the
previous half-century.

"Primary targets of these investigations should be the
semi-professional hate-mongers and rabble rousers who spend much of
their time teaching the ghetto's youth, unemployed, and other
receptive individuals doctrines of hate," Felt declared.

"Investigations and counterintelligence techniques specifically
designed to disrupt, frustrate, and discourage the work of these
individuals would undoubtedly have far-reaching effects toward
achieving the objective of controlling racial violence in your
territory," he noted.

In a May 17, 1968 report, Felt commended the New York division for
several unspecified successes portions of the report were withheld
from release while directing it to beef up its infiltration of informers.

"New York has executed a number of effective counter-intelligence
measures," Felt noted. "Every opportunity should be taken to expose
to public scrutiny such groups as SNCC where this might have a
neutralizing effect as well as to impede efforts in consolidating or
recruiting youthful adherents," he urged.

Government buzzsaw

Felt then confirmed something about the government's actions toward
Al-Amin that had been suspected by many of his SNCC colleagues,
including former executive secretary James Forman.

"During the summer of 1967," Forman wrote in his 1972 memoir, The
Making of Black Revolutionaries, "the repression of SNCC chairman H.
Rap Brown had begun its steady climb toward the point at which Brown
had to go underground to survive. …

"[H]e found himself in some fourteen courts in fourteen different
parts of the United States, facing every kind of charge and legal
harassment. …" "It had become clear," Forman continued, "that the
government would go all the way to eliminate Rap Brown from the scene. …"

"Rap caught everything," recalled former SNCC member Omali Yeshitela,
formerly Joseph Waller, now chairman of the St. Petersburg,
Fla.-based African People's Socialist Party (APSP), in a Jan. 23,
2002, story by Mara Shalhoup in the Atlanta-based Creative Loafing
alternative newspaper.

"He caught the stuff that [the government] missed Stokely for. Rap
ran into just a virtual buzzsaw of federal and local government
attacks, [and] frame-ups … because they were terrified that the civil
rights movement was no longer being contained by moderates and that
this split mobilized millions of young African people," Yeshitela said.

FBI Assistant Director Felt recommended just such an onslaught in his
1968 report: "Agents handling Racial Matters should be constantly
solicited for ideas and suggestions for further implementation of
this program. No opportunity must be lost to develop prosecutive
cases, federal or local against these agitators in order to reduce
their activities to an absolute minimum."

I Spy

Felt communicated the belief at FBI headquarters that only black
informers could supply certain kinds of information. Several months
earlier, the FBI's "Top Level Informant Program," or TOPLEV, was
renamed the "Black Nationalist Informant Program," or BLACKPRO,
designed to develop "quality non-organizational sources … for the
purpose of expeditiously infiltrating militant black nationalist
organizations," according to a March 12, 1968, memo to the heads of
FBI field offices.

"BLACKPRO agents," Felt advised, "should devote their entire
attention to the penetration of Black Nationalists [sic] groups and
development of quality sources in a position to furnish high level
information concerning individuals such as BROWN, [former SNCC
chairman Stokely] CARMICHAEL, and FORMAN rather than in the
development of Ghetto informants. These agents," he concluded, "are
not to be given other investigative assignments in accordance with
Bureau [FBI headquarters] instructions and should work exclusively on
BLACKPRO."

War at home

In February 1968, SNCC briefly "merged" with the Oakland,
Calif.-based Black Panther Party (BPP), led by Huey P. Newton, Bobby
Seale and Eldridge Cleaver.

Or, as Newton more precisely put it in his 1973 autobiography,
Revolutionary Suicide, SNCC's most prominent members were drafted
into the BPP leadership, with Kwame Ture (Carmichael) becoming the
"honorary prime minister," Al-Amin the "minister of justice" and
James Forman the "minister of foreign affairs."

On June 26, 1968, New York FBI Special Agent John J. Dunleavy, author
of a COINTELPRO proposal to fabricate a fake coloring book to
ridicule Al-Amin among his young admirers, was quick to spot the
chance to undermine this fragile alliance.

"It is noted," he wrote to headquarters, "that … the Black Panther
organization now occupies desk space in the New York office of SNCC.
… During our continued investigation and scrutiny into the SNCC
organization, we may … learn more concerning the affiliation between
these two organizations. In that event," Dunleavy advised, "every
opportunity will be seized to disrupt their seemingly harmonious relationship."

In fact, there was little harmony between SNCC and the BPP, and their
alliance only served to facilitate the targeting of Al-Amin and his
SNCC colleagues. By September, Hoover characterized the BPP as "The
greatest threat to the internal security of the Country."

Hoover thus gave official sanction to the full-scale war then
emerging against the BPP, coordinated by federal and military
intelligence agencies and state, county, and local police.

The fact that the SNCC-BPP alliance had dissolved the month before
did nothing to lessen the heat on Al-Amin and SNCC.

On April 17, 1969, Hoover appeared before the House Appropriations
Committee, traditionally used by him to justify and stump for
ever-greater funding for his reactionary policies. He declared,
"under the leadership of former National Chairman Stokely Carmichael
and H. Rap Brown, [SNCC] has developed into a full-blown all-Negro
revolutionary organization," a characterization calculated to incite
the worst fears of a nervous Congress and confused electorate.

Special Agent Tom

In a tribute to the success of the FBI's campaign against Al-Amin,
Hoover noted, "Brown has been sentenced to 5 years in prison and
fined $2,000 for violation of the Federal Firearms Act. He has been
indicted on a charge of assaulting and intimidating a Federal officer
and obstruction of justice. Brown also has been indicted by the State
of Maryland on a charge of inciting arson. He is free on bond
awaiting appeal or trial on various charges."

The "Federal officer" was an "ol' Negro FBI agent," as Al-Amin
described him in his 1969 autobiography, Die Nigger Die! His name was
William H. Smith, Jr., a San Francisco special agent, who claimed
that Al-Amin threatened him during a court recess at New Orleans,
La., on Feb. 21, 1968.

Smith had testified that he observed Al-Amin at a "Free Huey!" rally
at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena on Feb. 18, 1968, the day
after a similar rally at Oakland.

Federal District Court Judge Lansing L. Mitchell had ordered Al-Amin
not to leave southern New York without the court's permission while
he was under a federal indictment. Al-Amin claimed that he hadn't
violated his bond because he went to California to consult with his
legal counsel.

There are at least three versions of the exchange between Al-Amin and Smith.

With only minor differences, the Associated Press (AP) and United
Press International Report (UPI) wire services reported on Feb. 22,
1968, that Al-Amin told Smith, "We'll get you. You better get your
hat 'cause I'm going to beat you back to the Coast. We better not
find out where your house is. If you have any kids [or children]
we'll get them too."

The Los Angeles Times reported Al-Amin as saying, "Look chump, we'll
get you… If you have any kids, we'll get them too."

The only agreement between these accounts and Al-Amin's is that the
Black Power leader referred to the special agent's children: "I hope
your children don't grow up to be a Tom like you are."

Judge Mitchell charged Al-Amin with intimidation and "set $50,000 on
that charge," Al-Amin noted.

According to a Sept. 27, 1968 AP report, Judge Mitchell excused
himself from Al-Amin's trial because he was "once an FBI agent."

Phony

Many black activists concluded that the government was intent on
killing the movement by decapitating it.

On March 9, 1970, Al-Amin was scheduled to attend a pretrial hearing
at Bel Air in Harford County, Md., on the three-year-old Cambridge
riot and incitement-to-riot charges and a new arson charge added by
William B. Yates 2d, the state's attorney for Dorchester County,
where Cambridge is located.

According to an article in the Baltimore Afro-American on Jan. 23,
1971, Richard L. Kinlein, the prosecutor of Howard County, Md., where
Al-Amin's trial would eventually be transferred, said that Yates
admitted to him during a lunch conversation in April 1970 that he'd
added the arson charge, which he "didn't have evidence to support,"
to open the way for FBI intervention.

In Maryland, riot and incitement to riot were misdemeanors, but arson
was a felony, which would allow the FBI to issue a fugitive warrant
for Al-Amin if he failed to appear for trail.

Kinlein said that he would "rather defend than prosecute" Al-Amin
because of the "phony indictment," reported The New York Times on Nov. 7, 1973.

Yates denied the charge and Kinlein was convicted of contempt of
court and fined $350 for making "extrajudicial statements" against a
court order, but the arson charge was withdrawn.

Bomb

Two SNCC associates and close friends of Al-Amin's drove down from
Washington, D. C., to Bel Air: Former program secretary Ralph E.
Featherstone, then the manager of the Drum and Spear bookstore, which
SNCC members founded in the heart of the black community that was
burned-out after the April 4, 1968, assassination of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr., and William H. (Che) Payne, a veteran of the
SNCC-organized Black Panther Party at Lowndes County, Ala.

Featherstone's and Payne's friends later speculated that the pair
"had driven to Bel Air to survey the town and arrange for the safe
entry" of Al-Amin, as reported in the Baltimore Afro-American on
March 21, 1970.

A quarter-mile outside of Bel Air, while returning to Washington on
Highway 1, the car that Featherstone had borrowed earlier that
evening was blasted apart by dynamite at 11:42 p.m. The smoking
remains of two African American males were found amid the widely
scattered debris.

Featherstone's identity was readily established, partly through his
personal effects, but it was initially difficult to determine who the
second passenger was. His lower face had been shattered and his hands
and feet had been blown off. "He did not have a bone in his body that
was intact," said deputy state medical examiner (and later Wayne
County, Mich., chief medical examiner) Dr. Werner U. Spitz.

"For several hours this morning," Bigart reported from Baltimore,
"rumors spread that the unidentified man was the defendant, Mr.
Brown." Nelson and Jackson noted the police department's "concern
that violence might erupt."

The local authorities quickly claimed that the bomb was being carried
by Featherstone and Payne, and apparently went off "accidentally."

The FBI lent weight to this claim when Director J. Edgar Hoover
stated in a telegram, released by Maryland Gov. Marvin Mandel, that
"residues typical of and consistent with those solid deposits
remaining after detonation of dynamite" were found in the wreckage,
along with fragments of a clock and one or more batteries that "could
represent an electrical firing system for a bomb."

A FBI report concluded that the dynamite had been "resting" on the
right front floor of the car, where Payne sat.

Unconvinced, 20 black political leaders, including Mayor Charles
Evers of Fayette Miss., Mayor Richard G. Hatcher of Gary, Ind., and
Georgia state representative and former SNCC communications director
Julian Bond (now NAACP chairman), issued a statement through the
office of Rep. John J. Conyers, Jr. (D., Mich.), also a cosigner.

The statement, quoted in the April 2, 1970, issue of Jet magazine,
declared, "Nothing short of a full-scale, impartial investigation
will satisfy the black community."

It pointedly noted: "Almost before the wreckage … was cool, the
Maryland authorities were certain that they had the answer. Ralph
Featherstone 'was fooling around with explosives.' Those of us who
knew him are sufficiently convinced of his level-headedness to be
desirous of a better explanation of his death."

James Forman, voicing the opinion of many in SNCC and the black
freedom movement, later charged in his memoir that it was "almost
surely planted by some government agency."

On March 21, 1970, the Baltimore Afro-American reported more specific
suspicions held by some African Americans. "They believe it [the
bombing] was a malicious and violent act planned by Maryland local
and state police officials for the sole purpose of murdering" Al-Amin.

Famed radical attorney William M. Kunstler, who was representing
Al-Amin, told The Washington Post upon his arrival at Washington, D.
C.'s National Airport to attend Featherstone's funeral on March 14:
"I'm always suspicious of the official story. … I don't trust the FBI
on matters involving black people."

Scribbling while Rome burns

All of the foregoing had good reason to be suspicious of or cynical
about the government, and particularly the FBI, because of the
latter's casual attitude toward violence directed at black people.

In the early- and mid-1960s, many activists had witnessed, often as
victims, what became a virtual movement ritual: civil-rights workers
in Southern racial battlegrounds being brutally attacked by white
bigots, some in police uniforms, while FBI special agents calmly took
notes rather than action against their assailants.

However, these activists had no way of knowing how deeply the FBI's
lackadaisical view of violence against black people ran, although
many wouldn't have been surprised if they had. It went from ignoring
intra-racial violence to actively encouraging it.

For example, during the 1964-65 conflict between Elijah Muhammad's
Nation of Islam (NOI) and Malcolm X, after the latter had broken with
the group, the FBI had both factions under a pervasive blanket of
intrusive surveillance techniques.

These ran the gamut from electronic surveillance (telephone taps and
room bugs) to informers (paid and unpaid) to mail coverage
(intercepts, or copying the information from envelopes, and openings)
to physical and photographic surveillance to trash covers (where
special agents rummaged through garbage cans).

Despite this extraordinary level of penetration into and coverage of
both factions, there is no record of the FBI making any serious
effort to prevent or assist local police departments in preventing
Malcolm X's assassination at a public New York meeting by members
of the well-infiltrated Newark NOI mosque, beyond perfunctory
advisories whose chief purpose was to protect the reputation of the
bureau rather than the besieged Muslim and nationalist leader.

Incitement

However, the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations
with Respect to Intelligence Operations (known as the Church
Committee after its chair, Idaho Sen. Frank Church) established
during its 1975-76 investigation that the FBI did more than stand
idly by in the face of internecine conflicts between black groups.

Though "charged with investigating crimes and preventing criminal
conduct," the committee's final report concluded, the FBI "engaged in
lawless tactics and responded to deep-seated social problems by
fomenting violence and unrest" (my emphasis).

The committee detailed FBI efforts to pit the Illinois BPP against
the Blackstone Rangers street gang (later known as the Almighty Black
P. Stone Nation and now the El Rukin tribe of the Moorish Science
Temple of America).

Only the maturity of Fred A. Hampton, Sr., the charismatic,
21-year-old Illinois BPP deputy chairman, prevented bloodshed.

However, the Church committee documented that the FBI did succeed in
promoting violent clashes between several Southern California BPP
chapters and Maulana (then Ron) Karenga's cultural nationalist
organization, US, as well as promoting rifts and factions within the
BPP, itself.

'Where's Rap?'

The toll on the black freedom movement, and particularly the BPP, was
heavy. On Dec. 4, 1969, Illinois BPP "Chairman Fred," as he was
called, who was reportedly slated for a national leadership position,
and Mark Clark, the 22-year-old defense captain of the Peoria, Ill.,
chapter, were assassinated in a pre-dawn raid coordinated by the FBI
and a special unit of the Illinois State's Attorney's office composed
of Chicago police officers.

Reading the handwriting on the wall after the Maryland bombing, "H.
Rap Brown was nowhere to be found," James Forman recalled in his
memoir. He had "disappeared from the face of the earth," William
Kunstler, Al-Amin's attorney, said to The Washington Post. "He could
be dead, he could be missing, he could be held" somewhere against his will.

On May 5, 1970, the FBI placed Al-Amin on its "Ten Most Wanted"
fugitives list, "the first black political-civil rights activist to
be added," according to the Baltimore Afro-American on May 16. A
notice and posters were circulated to post offices throughout the
country, warning that Al-Amin "should be considered armed and dangerous."

A year after Al-Amin's disappearance, Detroiter Sala Andaiye (Lula
Adams), who had recently become active in the Black Power movement
through the city's Shrine of the Black Madonna, and her then husband,
Taliq (William) Adams, attended a concert by singer, pianist and
composer Nina Simone, the stage name of Eunice Kathleen Waymon, at
the State University of New York at Albany.

Both vividly recall that "The High Priestess of Soul" (the title of a
1966 record album by Simone, although the classically trained pianist
actually hated being pigeonholed into one genre) punctuated her
socially conscious set with a question then on the minds and lips of
black people throughout the country.

"I … remember the excitement," Andaiye says, "and hearing Nina Simone
asking (like a chant), 'Where's Rap?'"

"Along with constantly asking about Rap," Adams adds, "she commented
on how she and others were being followed by the FBI, how their
phones were being tapped, their friends harassed."

"It was the first time many of us in the audience heard that …
entertainers were being hounded because of the messages they were delivering."

Although the fact has not yet appeared in published histories of the
movement, Al-Amin had fled to the East African nation of Tanzania,
where several SNCC members had settled.

But, as he explained to William (Bill) Sutherland, an African
American expatriate who had earlier assisted Malcolm X during his
1964 visit, Al-Amin wouldn't wish his rough-and-tough SNCC "boys" on
Tanzania, as Sutherland told this writer. He reentered the U. S. as
secretly as he had left it.

Back

In the wee hours of Oct. 16, 1971, a New York City policeman shot an
African American man on a rooftop following an alleged robbery of a
West Side Manhattan bar. Three black men from St. Louis, Mo., were
arrested with the wounded man, who identified himself as Roy Williams.

However, the police and the FBI established that his fingerprints
matched those of Hubert Geroid Brown, better known as H. Rap Brown,
who had been missing for 17 months. The three defendants were charged
with robbing the bar's patrons and the attempting to murder three
policemen, one of whom was wounded. Al-Amin didn't testify at his
trial, but maintained that he was innocent of the charges.

"Truth crushed into earth will rise again," he said when offered an
opportunity to speak at the conclusion of his 10-week trial,
paraphrasing a quotation by William Cullen Bryant often used by Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thomas A. Johnson, the first black New York Times reporter, suggested
an alternative to the prosecution's version of Al-Amin's motives. An
investigation by the Times, Johnson reported on Jan. 23, 1972,
revealed that "some community sources believe that" Al-Amin "was
involved in a vigilante anti-narcotics campaign during the time that
he dropped from public view."

"One community source," Johnson continued, "contends that 'if'
[Al-Amin] was involved in the robbery of the Red Carpet Lounge on
West 85th Street…, it was 'to convince' certain customers suspected
of dealing in heroin and cocaine 'that they should stop.'"

This coincided with the burgeoning traffic in cocaine, which was
beginning to supplant heroine as the drug of choice and was
increasingly being promoted by a new breed of black drug kingpins.
This scourge was not only decimating African American communities
throughout the county, but also sapping the remaining energies of the
fracturing black liberation movement.

Al-Amin was found guilty, although the jury was "hopelessly
deadlocked" on the attempted murder charge, and sentenced to five to
17 years in prison rather than the maximum of 25 years.

"I'm taking into account," the famously independent-minded State
Supreme Court Justice Arnold G. Fraiman told Al-Amin on May 9, 1973,
"that you have done much to help your people. You have devoted much
of your life to helping your fellow man."

--------

Rabble rouser: The FBI conspiracy against H. Rap Brown

http://www.michigancitizen.com/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=106&twindow=Default&mad=No&sdetail=8066&wpage=1&skeyword=&sidate=&ccat=&ccatm=&restate=&restatus=&reoption=&retype=&repmin=&repmax=&rebed=&rebath=&subname=&pform=&sc=1070&hn=michigancitizen&he=.com

By Paul Lee
Special to the Michigan Citizen

The following is the conclusion of a revised, updated version of an
article on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) conspiracy
against Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, known during the 1960s as the
firebrand Black Power advocate H. Rap Brown, which originally
appeared in The Michigan Citizen in the April 7th-April 13th and
April 14th-April 20th, 2002, issues.
--

Part III of III

Dirty tricks

In July 1974, while former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC) chairman Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, then still known to the
public as H. Rap Brown, was serving a five-to-15-year sentence for
robbing a West Side Manhattan bar which he claimed to be innocent
of and facing a complex web of additional charges at Maryland and
New Orleans, his attorney William M. Kunstler filed an affidavit with
the New Orleans Federal Court.

It asked that Al-Amin's sentence be set aside on the grounds that the
FBI had set out to destroy him and other black leaders, beginning in 1967.

Kunstler was referring to the FBI's long-secret Counter-intelligence
Program (COINTELPRO) against "Black Nationalist-Hate Groups," which
had become known through documents released to NBC News reporter Carl Stern.

"The F. B. I. instructions to its field offices," The New York Times
summarized the affidavit as stating, "said that agents should use
fabrications and other devices, including the arrest-upon-arrest
technique on any conceivable charge, to stop the spread of 'black
hate group's and to prevent the creation of a 'Mau Mau' in the United
States," referring to the black Kenyan guerilla movement that helped
free that East African nation from British colonialism.

Amin, the Times' summary of the petition continued, "had been
harassed unceasingly by the local police and agents of the F. B. I.
from 1967 until he was driven underground. … "Local police and the F.
B. I. used the technique of 'piling charge upon charge' in an effort
to exhaust [Al-Amin's] resources for bail money. …"

The latter included a 1968 federal gun-control indictment and the
complex tangle of Maryland charges. The federal indictment was
eventually dismissed after New Orleans patent attorney James W. Lake,
Jr., revealed in an April 1974 letter to Kunstler that Lansing L.
Mitchell, the New Orleans federal judge who was to hear Al-Amin's
case, told Lake that he would maintain his health because he was
going to "get that nigger" (Al-Amin).

Al-Amin was paroled on Oct. 21, 1976.

By this time, SNCC was no more, and many of Al-Amin's former comrades
were dead, in prison, self-exiled or burned-out. Some managed to
channel their commitment into new outlets, reinvigorating old and
innovating new organizations and social movements. Some did something
that many of them had once considered unthinkable: They started families.

Pilgrim's progress

H. Rap Brown had changed, too. He had embraced traditional Islam
while in prison in 1971 and become Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin.

Following in the footsteps of his 1960s hero, Malcolm X (whose Muslim
name was El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz), Al-Amin made the hajj, or
pilgrimage, to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holy city of Islam, which is
obligatory for all Muslims who are able to make it.

"There is a refrain that you hear everywhere you go when you enter
the holy precincts around Mecca," he recalled in his little-known
1993 book, Revolution By the Book: The Rap Is Live.

"It is the sound of the servants reporting for duty: Labbaika
Allahumma labbaik, Here I am, O Allah. At your service! Everywhere,
day and night, the pilgrims keep chanting their readiness for
service, and praising their Lord … An army of believers, two, three,
four million people believing in, bowing, submitting to the same God."

Many of those who knew Al-Amin as H. Rap Brown would scarcely have
recognized him in these words. However, to the man, himself, the way
of life that he found in Islam was the true essence of the
revolutionary struggle that he had committed his life to as a young
man. Indeed, it was "a continuation of a lifestyle," he said, only at
a deeper level of understanding.

"It became evident that to accomplish the things we talked about in
the struggle, you would need a practice," Al-Amin told John Lewis of
Baltimore's alternative City Paper in 1992, on the 25th anniversary
of the Cambridge uprising. "Allah says He does not change the
condition of a people until they change that which is in themselves.
That is what Islam does, and it points out right from wrong. It
points out truth from falsehood."

Revolution by the book

In Revolution By the Book, he offered a description of that
"practice" salaat, or prayer, the second of Islam's "Five Pillars"
which could apply to his own internal revolutionary process.

"Prayer is a practice, a program, that begins to make you aware, that
makes you conscious of the Creator; it makes you fear Allah, and that
brings about within you a transformation, a change that is necessary
to throw off that whole system that you have become accustomed to. It
is the beginning of a revolution in which expands to aspects of your reality."

While his perspective had been transformed, there were certain
fundamental constants: He remained gentle and soft-spoken in private;
fiery and eloquent on the platform; thoughtful and methodical in his
thinking; prepared to defend himself and his loved ones, if
necessary; and, most of all, still consumed with a passion for
justice, or right over wrong, truth over falsehood.

The Prophet Muhammad, Al-Amin told a Washington Post reporter in
August 1978, "said expect a mountain to move before the character of
a man. Life is simply one step after another."

The lens was new; the man was essentially the same, but matured.

There were at least two important changes other than the obvious
change in name, dress and lifestyle: He exhibited a certainty in the
truth of his beliefs that some saw as rigidity and he became
exceptionally disciplined. As Al-Amin explained in his last book:

"Islam is something that Allah has given us, to take us from the
level of degradation, from the level where we have been crushed, to a
level where Allah is satisfied with us and grants us success.

"It deals with training. It deals with discipline. It deals with
submission, to the point where it becomes automatic; where we don't
give a second thought about doing things that are good, to enjoining
what is right and forbidding what is wrong."

Renewal

Al-Amin settled in the traditionally black West End neighborhood of
Atlanta, where he co-founded the Community Mosque of Atlanta, a
small, mostly African American ummah, or Muslim community.

This mosque served as the basis for the formation in 1983 of the
National Community, a coalition of some 30 U. S. and Caribbean
masajid, or mosques, which reportedly sought to revive the defunct
Dar ul-Islam movement. Representatives of this movement had
introduced al-Amin to Islam at New York's Rikers Island jail in 1971.

The Dar, as it was often called, was a predominantly black Sunni
Muslim federation founded at Brooklyn in 1963, an offshoot of Shaykh
Daoud Faisal's Islamic Mission of America, Inc., composed of African
American and emigrant Muslims.

Despite being targeted by the FBI, the Dar flourished in the late
1960s and '70s, becoming a rival to Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam
in some cities and prisons.

It sought to channel the black nationalist upsurge of that era into a
revitalized traditional Islam that could lead to a cultural renewal
based upon the principles of the Qur'an, the Muslim holy book.
However, in the mid-1970s, the Dar devolved into factionalism and was
formally disbanded in 1980.

Al-Amin's mosque, deeply committed to spiritual regeneration,
organized neighborhood patrols, programs for Muslim youth and
converted drug users to Islam and helped them break their habit. He
and his followers were also credited with virtually eliminating
prostitution in the area around the mosque.

Continuing conspiracy

However, according to Al-Amin and his supporters, some things hadn't
changed. "I realize I'm under constant observation," he told The
Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1993. According to that paper, the
FBI had "amassed a 40,000-page file on the imam," and local police
sought to implicate him in a murder, gunrunning and an assault.

On March 16, 2000, a Fulton County, Ga., sheriff's deputy was killed
and another wounded in a shootout in the West End. The authorities
implicated Al-Amin.

He fled to White Hall, Ala., where he had worked as a SNCC field
organizer 35 years before. When he was apprehended, FBI Special Agent
Ron Campbell, without provocation, assaulted the handcuffed Al-Amin,
according to the trial testimony of Lowndes County, Ala., Sheriff
Willie Vaughner.

"He kicked him, he spat on him and he called him a scumbag cop
killer," Vaughner said.

As he had done in 1971, Al-Amin maintained his innocence and charged
that he was the victim of an ongoing conspiracy.

On March 9, 2002, Al-Amin was found guilty on 13 counts and later
sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

"The facts as alleged are completely out of character for the man we
knew in the civil rights movement and now know as a religious leader
in the Muslim community," declared an advertisement placed in an
Atlanta newspaper two days later.

Among the 250 signatories were many of Al-Amin's former colleagues in
SNCC and the BPP, as well as others who had shouldered side-by-side
with him in the civil-rights, Black Power, anti-War and Muslim movements.

"As a civil rights activist and chairman of the Student Non-Violent
Coordinating Committee … Al-Amin … worked tirelessly in the struggle
of disenfranchised communities in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi to
gain the right to vote. As SNCC national Chairman, he spoke out
against the war in Vietnam and championed the rights of oppressed
people in the US and abroad.

"Since then," the statement continued, "Al-Amin has been a devout
spiritual teacher and a public-spirited local leader. We know Imam
Al-Amin as a principled and compassionate man, committed to justice
for all oppressed people and devoted to the moral welfare of his community. …

"During the sixties, H. Rap Brown was hounded by authorities for his
militant defense of black protest. This pattern of harassment has
continued. Over the past twenty years, authorities have made over
thirty attempts to charge him with a variety of crimes. All charges
were found to be baseless and were dismissed for lack of evidence.

"In light of the discrepancies in the accounts of the current case,"
the statement concluded, "and our knowledge of Imam Al-Amin's
character, we urge a suspension of judgement until all the facts are
heard. We also call for a fair and impartial trial."

Al-Amin is continuing to appeal his murder conviction.

Epilogue, 2009

J. Edgar Hoover died on May 2, 1972, after serving nearly a
half-century as the FBI's director. In 1977, a new political climate
swept into Washington, D. C., with the election of President Jimmy Carter.

Under the new dispensation, W. Mark Felt, who briefly served as the
associate director, or second-in-command, under Hoover's successor,
and Edward S. Miller, former assistant director of the FBI's
Intelligence Division, which ran the Counter-intelligence Program, or
COINTELPRO, against "extremist" groups and individuals, were
convicted of conspiracy to violate the civil rights of friends and
relatives of the mostly white Weatherman, later known as the Weather
Underground Organization (WUO).

This radical, anti-Vietnam war "New Left" group had been implicated
in the bombing of government facilities. (The only fatalities that
the WUO admitted to were three of its own members, although it is
suspected that at least one other person was inadvertently killed.
Presumably, the latter would've been considered collateral damage.)

Felt, first as assistant director of the Inspection Division and then
as associate deputy director, and Miller, whose Intelligence Division
oversaw the New York office's Squad 47, or counterintelligence unit,
had ordered illegal break-ins (called "black bag jobs"), wiretaps and
mail intercepts at the homes of relatives and friends of the
Weatherman fugitives, supposedly in an effort to head off future bombings.

Pardon

However, no one in the FBI was held accountable for similar and worse
excesses directed against black groups such as SNCC, the Black
Panther Party, Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam, Muhammad Ahmad's
(formerly Max Stanford) mostly underground Revolutionary Action
Movement (RAM), the separatist Republic of New Africa (later Afrika,
RNA), Maulana Karenga's US organization and dozens of others, not to
mention the bureau's now-infamous campaign against Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

On April 15, 1981, President Ronald Reagan pardoned Felt and Miller
on the grounds that their zeal was a "good-faith" effort to "preserve
the security interests of our country."

"They have never denied their actions," Reagan's statement correctly
noted, "but, in fact, came forward to acknowledge them publicly in
order to relieve their subordinate agents from criminal actions."

The next day, fellow Republican and former law-and-order President
Richard M. Nixon sent them a bottle of champagne.

'Deep Throat'

On May 31, 2005, Felt confessed to being "Deep Throat," the
mysterious Watergate whistleblower, after denying it for three
decades. (The pseudonym was taken from the title of a popular 1972
pornographic movie starring Linda Lovelace.)

Felt had secretly provided critical leads to the investigation of
young Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein into
the very kind of illegal activity that he, himself, had ordered
specifically, the 1972 break-in of Democratic National Committee
headquarters at Washington, D. C.'s Watergate Complex.

A five-man "Plumbers" team, so named because it was originally formed
in the White House in 1971 to plug leaks of government information,
conducted the botched burglary. With the approach of an election
year, the Plumbers and their contract operatives were directly and
indirectly connected to the Committee to Reelect the President,
abbreviated CRP and pronounced "Creep."

The Watergate operation proved to be only the tip of an iceberg of
wide-ranging governmental and extra-governmental abuses initiated or
sanctioned by President Nixon. This investigation sparked
Congressional impeachment hearings that led to Nixon's resignation in
1974 and the imprisonment of six of his key aides.

In the July 2005 Vanity Fair article that "outed" Felt, John J.
O'Conner, Felt's attorney and later the ghostwriter of his revised
2007 memoir, "A G-Man's Life," stated: "I believe that Mark Felt is
one of America's greatest secret heroes" because of his role in
exposing the Watergate scandal.

Similar, if less effusive, encomiums followed Felt's death on Dec.
18, 2008. However, few recalled his role, during those very same
years, as an unrepentant violator of the civil rights of 1960s and
'70s organizations and activists, including Al-Amin, who had
committed and, in some cases, gave their lives to right historic wrongs.

Jane Fonda: Sex is better at 71

2009-12-21T13:13:00.003-08:00

Jane Fonda: Sex is better at 71

http://www.nowmagazine.co.uk/celebrity-news/430297/jane-fonda-sex-is-better-at-71/1/

Actress still having fun in the bedroom

15 November 2009

Jane Fonda is having the best sex of her life.

The actress, 71, reckons keeping active in the bedroom helps her
maintain her youthful looks.

'I owe 30 per cent to genes, 30 per cent to good sex, 30 per cent
because of sports and healthy lifestyle with proper nutrition and for
the remaining 10 per cent - I have to thank my plastic surgeon,' she says.

Jane, who had a knee replacement operation in June, says love-making
gets better with age.

'I'm happier,' she tells German newspaper Bild. 'The sex is better
and I understand life better. I don't want to be young again.'

Vets face memories, former enemies in Vietnam

2009-12-21T13:13:00.001-08:00

Vets face memories, former enemies in Vietnam

http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/6412840/

Nov. 13, 2009
Reporter: David Crabtree
Photographer: Greg Clark
Web Editor: Anne Johnson

Raleigh, N.C. Vietnam War veterans from the Triangle dined with a
former enemy, helped orphans and learned new lessons about war during
a 12-day trip to the country where they fought and saw comrades die.

"We had a lot of apprehension about going back, all the things we
were going to see," veteran Bill Dixon said. "I was a helicopter
pilot, and we flew combat missions every day. We were shot at most every day."

The veterans also remembered the shots they took when they came home.

"We weren't exactly welcomed, coming back from a war that was
unpopular," said Dixon, adding that the dangers are as real, even in
an unpopular war. "The threat is there every day."

Bob Matthews, who went to war in Vietnam at age 21, organized the
trip as a healing experience for the veterans.

The veterans have been telling Wake County students about their war
experiences for years. It was time, they decided, for them to face
their memories. They dubbed the trip "The Bridge Back."

They visited a museum at the site of the former Hanoi Hilton, the
infamous prison where American POWs where held and sometimes
tortured. They saw Truc Bach Lake where future Sen. John McCain was
shot down before being held at Hanoi Hilton for nearly six years.

The veterans also visited a former Viet Cong captain and his wife,
who worked in the underground in Saigon. The one-time enemies dined
at the couple's house on the Mekong River.

"We shared stories for hours and hours and hours," veteran Dave Samuels said.

The veterans also reached out to help children in the country where
they once waged war.

The group donated bikes to 40 orphans who walk eight miles to school
each day. They brought donated school and medical supplies to a
Vietnamese high and a school for the blind.

Samuels said the visit with the Viet Cong captain and the outreach to
children taught him a new lesson about the nature of war.

"It can be forgotten. It can be worked out," he said.
--

Slideshow: Vets' trip to Vietnam
http://www.wral.com/news/local/image_gallery/6412886/

Health timebomb hits baby boomers

2009-12-21T13:12:00.010-08:00

Health timebomb hits baby boomers:
Over-60s suffer more illnesses caused by bad diet and lack of exercise

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1227670/Health-timebomb-hits-baby-boomers-Over-60s-suffer-illnesses-caused-bad-diet-lack-exercise.html

By Fiona Macrae
14th November 2009

They were the first to enjoy free health care, and had the time of
their lives in the Swinging Sixties.

But the post-war 'baby boomers' are now paying the price.

Today's 60-year-olds are the first modern generation to be less
healthy than their immediate predecessors.

Despite improvements in medicine and standards of living, they are
more likely to be blighted by problems from aching knees and creaking
hips to diabetes, asthma and strokes.

Even simple tasks such as getting in and out of bed or climbing ten
steps without a rest prove a challenge.

And with fast food, lack of exercise and a growing reliance on
computers and other technology, the future could be even bleaker.

Researcher Teresa Seeman said: 'The baby boomers, whatever health
benefits they've enjoyed up until now, may not enjoy such a rosy old age.'

Professor Seeman compared the health of thousands of men and women in
their 60s, 70s and 80s with data on different people of the same age
collected ten years earlier.

She found that one in five of the 60-somethings polled needed help
with basic day-to-day activities - up more than 50 per cent on a
decade earlier.

Those just over 60 are 70 per cent more likely to have difficulty
walking from room to room, getting in and out of bed and eating or dressing.

Their problems did not end there. They were also 50 per cent more
likely to have trouble walking a quarter of a mile or climbing ten
steps without a rest.

Stooping, crouching, kneeling and getting up from a chair proved 40
per cent more troublesome, the American Journal of Public Health reports.

Although the data was collected in the U.S., the researchers say
there is no reason to believe the UK is not similarly affected.
British adults, for instance, are the second fattest in the developed
world after the U.S.

Professor Seeman, of the University of California, warned that as
more baby boomers enter their 60s and 70s, the trend will have
'significant and sobering' implications.

'The growing number of individuals aged 60 and older will place
ever-growing demands on the health care system. Increased levels of
disability, particularly among the youngest of older adults, may also
negatively affect economic productivity.'

She said younger people could also lose out if they have to 'compete
with older people for scarce resources in an overburdened healthcare system'.

British experts echoed the warning. Cary Cooper, professor of health
psychology at Lancaster University, said our ever-growing reliance on
technology is harming our health.

And he warned that the impact will be even greater in years to come,
with the pensioners of the future having spent many more years
sitting in front of a computer than those of today.

Professor Cooper, who is in his 60s, said: 'The public health message
is to be active, climb the stairs, don't take lifts. It sounds
trivial but it is not.

'Being active is good for psychological as well as physical health
because you are relating to people in some way other than through a screen.'

Earlier this week, research suggested that those born in 1948 in
Britain were the' lucky generation' because they benefited hugely
from the end of National Service, the right to free education and
healthcare and the property boom.

But the U.S. study suggests that much of those advantages have been
squandered by today's 61-year-olds.

Dr Ian Campbell, a GP and medical director of the charity Weight
Concern, said that many people were stuck in a vicious circle.
Growing waistlines make exercise more difficult, making it harder to
lose weight. Some advances in healthcare could also be to blame for
the backward trend.

'We have been lulled into a false sense of security that
pharmaceuticals are the answer to our health problems,' he said.

'So we get statistics saying that the number of deaths from heart
disease is falling but that is because we are keeping people alive with drugs.

'That is admirable but it would be far better if we could cut the
amount of heart disease in the first place.'