https://www.theenergyfair.org/
Celebrate the summer solstice at The 30th Anniversary Energy Fair on June 21-23, 2019! Organized by the Midwest Renewable Energy Association, The Energy Fair is the nation’s longest-running event of its kind and brings over 10,000 attendees together to learn about sustainability and clean energy, connect with others, and take action toward a sustainable future.
A Wake County District Court judge ordered the Garner Police Department to return an alarm clock, cell phones, and computers seized from the home of a black family two weeks ago during a late-night raid over an alleged noise ordinance violation that stemmed from a white neighbor’s complaint that they were playing Malcolm X speeches loudly.
As the INDY first reported, police originally charged Mikisa Thompson with violating the ordinance, a class C misdemeanor that carries a maximum $500 fine, in April after neighbor Don Barnette called 911 to complain about the speeches, which he referred to as “Islamic-Jihadist type messages” in an interview.
Police told Thompson to turn down her speaker and issued a citation. After she allegedly did not comply with their orders, they seized the $250 speaker from her backyard. (The police say the content of the noise had nothing to do with their actions—that would be unconstitutional—but the search warrant twice noted that she was playing Malcolm X.)
A few weeks later, on May 16, Barnette complained again. This time, eight or nine Garner officers—the town only had ten on duty at the time—executed a search warrant at Thompson’s house at 10:00 p.m. and seized all noise-producing devices, including a gray alarm clock, seven iPhones, a Mac laptop, an HP computer monitor, and a black HP laptop.
Police said the raid was necessary to “keep the peace” in the neighborhood. Thompson’s lawyer, T. Greg Doucette, believes it was meant to punish Thompson’s family.
On Tuesday, Judge William Lawton ordered those items returned to the family, noting that they “are not needed for the prosecution of these cases.” Four speakers, including the beFree speaker seized in April, are still in police custody.
Doucette calls the ruling “a small victory.” Thompson still plans to challenge the ordinance’s constitutionality at trial this summer—it relies entirely on an officer’s opinion of what is too loud, rather than an objective standard—and Doucette predicts the charges will be dismissed.
“We’re looking forward to cross-examining the Garner police,” Doucette says. “That’s going to be the highlight of the trial.”
Thompson is scheduled to appear in court June 11 and June 24. Doucette anticipates that the trial will take place in August.
Contact staff writer Leigh Tauss at ltauss@indyweek.com.
We issue this Call in a sense of outrage in the face of increasing racist violence and political repression towards working class and Black and Brown communities.
We are currently facing a national epidemic of state-sponsored violence perpetrated by police and vigilantes targeting the oppressed Black, Latinx, immigrant, indigenous, LGBTQ, non-binary, gender non-conforming, and gender fluid communities. Black Trans women are also being harassed and killed at record rates.
We are outraged that a detainment-to-deportation pipeline persists and grows, featuring local police working side-by-side with ICE to racially profile, hunt, and detain immigrants and then subject them to unlawful deportation with impunity. An unprecedented level of state violence has been unleashed on our Southern border with Mexico forcing masses of children, their parents and all adults to live in wretched concentration camp like conditions. Trans asylum-seekers and members of LGBTQ caravans have also been hurt and killed by border patrol police.
We see blatant police occupation in such major urban areas as Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New York, Oakland, St. Paul, St. Louis and Washington, D.C. with police being permitted by city government to commit unspeakable crimes against the people. Murders by the police, even when video-recorded, go unpunished.
We are witnessing and fighting against the institutionalization of a U.S. police state fusing local, state and federal law enforcement in the name of countering terror under the so-called “Patriot Act”. More money goes toward police budgets while the Black community suffers from severe underdevelopment.
We continue to struggle for our comrades who still languish in U.S. prisons after 40 years of incarceration or in exile, including: Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu Jamal, Jalil Muntaqim, Mutulu Shakur, Assata Shakur and Pete O’Neal, among others.
We continue to fight for the pardoning of all torture survivors who were framed and kidnaped by Chicago Police officers, tortured into “confessing” and wrongfully convicted.
In our forty-six years of existence, we have never dropped our banner demanding an end to police crimes and terror. In Chicago, our campaign for an all elected Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC) has become a mass demand of the people advancing the struggle for community control of the police like never before. In the City-wide elections recently held in the winter, we had 68 candidates running with a plank in their platform for community control of the police. In total, 17 pro-CPAC candidates were elected.
We continue to stand in unconditional solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, who is currently facing blatant racist repression through the attacks by the Department of Justice branding them “Black Identity Extremists.”
The Islamophobia unleashed across the country after September 11th is now being ramped up to new heights under Trump. His presidency is the domestic reflection of the so-called War on Terror. We have stood together with Arabs and Muslims here, including in defense of our Palestinian sister, Rasmea Odeh, against deportation; at the airports against the Muslim Ban; and we have rallied around Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib as they speak out against racism and Zionism.
Militarization of our Southern border with Mexico is no longer a question of policy debated back and forth between Democrats and Republicans. It is an accomplished fact that must be confronted and changed by our movement.
We continue to stand in unconditional solidarity with the national liberation movements of Palestine, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, as well as the anti-imperialist struggles of South Africa, Venezuela, and all progressive, democratic forces against imperialism.
Consequently, we are reaching out to you, our comrades in struggle, to join us in our renewed effort to create a Black-led, Left-led, multi-racial, multi-national movement to stop police crimes, mass incarceration and to end racist and political repression.
To endorse the call to refound the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, email contact@naarpr.org with the name of your organization and contact information.
The Wisconsin Assembly recently passed Assembly Bill 76, a reckless and dangerous bill to lower training hours required for Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs). The proposal to cut CNA training hours in half now heads to the Senate with Senate Bill 103.
CNAs should not be put in vulnerable situations, nor should patients, by starting a first day with nearly half of the current training standards.
Lowering training hours is the wrong prescription to address a worker shortage.
Improving pay and working conditions will help retain current CNAs and recruit new employees. The important jobs CNAs do should be valued at a higher rate by making improvements in pay, working conditions, and safe staffing.
Speak out for patient care. Speak out for safe CNA training standards. Speak out against Senate Bill 103.
Now is the time to contact your state senator and tell them not to cut CNA training hours in half.
In Solidarity,
Stephanie Bloomingdale, President
Dennis Delie, Secretary-Treasurer
Madison Membership Meeting / Junta de membresía de Madison
ENGLISH BELOW
Junta de Membresía
Centro Hispano
810 W Badger Rd
Madison, WI 53713
Abierta al público
Acompáñanos para nuestra junta de membresía mensual. Hablaremos sobre los próximos pasos en la lucha por las licencias de conducir.
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Membership Meeting
Centro Hispano
810 W Badger Rd
Madison, WI 53713
Open to the public
Join us for our monthly membership meeting! We’ll discuss the next steps in the fight to restore driver licenses for all in Wisconsin.
Here is a message posted by Pastor Betty Rendon, who landed yesterday in Bogotá after being deported from the United States. Not surprisingly, in the middle of her suffering, she is planning to launch a new ministry… please take the time to read:
“Thank you God and thank you to all of you who are praying for peace and justice.
These are the suitcases prepared by ICE for people arriving in their destination cities. The only items in these suitcases are papers…letters received by people we love, and the medicine we receive.
I think it is necessary to develop a Ministry in the Colombian consulate that provides better care and a better welcome to these people who arrive with broken hearts, without suitcases, without clothes, without possibilities of making a call and without money to eat and buy the passage to finish arriving at the destination place. Each person has felt violently attacked by ICE, either because they violently entered their home or were attacked at their place of work, on the street, or in their car. The prisons seem purgatory, a place you only hear the crying and the gnashing of teeth.
I am now in Bogota because I found a good Samaritan. A family that has given me solidarity and support. Thank you, Beautiful family for all your care.”
Pastor Betty Rendon
Estas son las maletas preparadas por ICE para las personas que llegan a sus ciudades de destino. Estas maletas contienen: sólo papeles, cartas recibidas por personas que amamos y la medicina que recibimos. Yo pienso que es necesario desarrollar un Ministerio en el consulado Colombiano que brinde mejor atención y de una mejor bienvenida a estas personas que llegan con el corazon roto, sin maleta, sin ropa, sin posibilidades de hacer una llamada y sin dinero para comer y comprar el pasaje para terminar de llegarl lugar de destino. Cada persona se ha sentido atacada violentamente por ICE, ya sea porque entraron violentamente a su casa o fueron atacados/as en su lugar de trabajo, en la calle o en su carro. Las cárceles parecen purgatorios dinde solo se escucha el llanto y el crujir de dientes. Yo ahora estoy en Bogota porque encontré un buen Samaritano. Una familia que me ha brindado solidaridad y apoyo. Gracias Familia hermosa por todos sus cuidados
More information: Racine Interfaith Coalition (RIC)
National Avenue and Cesar Chavez Dr. (16th Street), Milwaukee, 12 NOON
Sponsored by the End The Wars Committee
Sheryl McFarland, member of “Just Leadership USA” talks with Jerome Dillard about the efforts by that group to close the Milwaukee County Secure Detention Facility, a prison used primarily to house parole revoked, but released, ex-incarcerated individuals. The center has experienced 1 death per year of its 18 year existence, and the group is working with Governor Evers’ administration to move residents to community facilities.
Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement 