ICE out of MKE

Milwaukee City Hall, 200 E Wells Street, 4:30-6:30 P.M.

Join us Thursday, October 3 at City Hall to urge the Fire and Police Commission to immediately consider policy changes to include non-collaboration between the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) and ICE.

The Policy Commission previously postponed their initial vote in face of mounting community pressure. We need to send the message that there can not be further delay.

This is important to all community members because we propose (unless in the case of a judicial warrant) MPD:
* Will not assist in ICE raids.
* Will not use any resources for immigration enforcement.
*Will not report people, share info with, or collaborate with ICE.
* Officers won’t investigate immigration status at any point.
*Officers will not comply with warrantless requests from ICE to detain someone or transfer someone to custody

Contact the Voces office if you need transportation or have questions: 414-643-1620

Find policy FAQ’s at: http://bit.ly/2kd4OGz
Sign the continued petition at: https://vdlf.org/iceoutofmke/

Photo Credit: WI BOPM
___________________________________________________

Únase a nosotros el 3 de Octubre a las 4:30 de la tarde para insistir que la Comisión de Bomberos y Policía considera las politicas sobre la colaboración entre el departamento de policía e ICE.

Considere asistir a nuestro evento y trae a un amigo o a un familiar.

Llama la oficina de Voces para planear transporte o con preguntas a: 414-643-1620

Firma la petición a: https://vdlf.org/iceoutofmke/

https://bit.ly/2nFdqaM

The latest casualties in the war on the environment in Palestine were 450 olive trees destroyed last week by Israeli army bulldozers. The destruction of the Palestinian-owned trees took place in the villages of Bardala, in the Jordan Valley, and Yatta in the southern West Bank. Dozens more were also destroyed by illegal Jewish settlers.

It is a myth that only Zionist Israel “made the desert bloom.” On the contrary, since its establishment on the ruins of more than five hundred Palestinian villages and cities that it has destroyed and wiped off the map, Israel has done the exact opposite. The land inhabited by Palestinian Muslims, Christians and Jews for thousands of years has been disfigured beyond belief by Israel in the matter of a few decades.

“Palestine contains vast colonisation potential which the Arabs neither need nor are qualified to exploit,” wrote one of Israel’s founding fathers and first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, to his son Amos in 1937.

• Like our page on Facebook
• Follow us on Twitter

Zionist Israel, however, has done more than just “exploit” that “colonisation potential”; it has also subjected historic Palestine to a relentless and cruel campaign of destruction that is yet to cease. This is likely to continue as long as Zionism prevails as a racist, hegemonic and exploitative ideology.

Since its very early days, in the mid and late 19th century, political Zionism has misled its followers in its depiction of historic Palestine. To encourage Jewish migration to Palestine and by way of providing a semblance of moral justification for Jewish settlements, Zionism constructed myths which remain a central theme to this day. According to early Zionists, for example, Palestine was a “land without a people for a people without a land”. It was also said to be an arid desert, awaiting Jewish colonialists from Europe and elsewhere with the urgent mission to “make it bloom”.

What the Zionists have done to Palestine, though, is rather inconsistent with their intellectual discourse, as racist, colonialist and exclusivist as it always has been. The land of Palestine, around 10,425 square miles from the River Jordan in the east to the Mediterranean Sea, became the subject of a cruel experiment, starting with the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and the destruction of their villages, land and crops in 1948. This exploitation of the land and its people has grown with intense fervour through subsequent generations.

Uprooting trees, burning orchards ….

Havana will again serve as a meeting place for those who defend peace, solidarity, and justice, November 1-3, 2019

https://lowwagecapitalism.com/

By Fred Goldstein

The impeachment struggle against Trump poses many contradictions.

On the one hand hundreds of millions of people around the world would like to see Trump brought down in the hope that this will alleviate his administration’s oppressive, racist, and corrupt rule.

On the other hand, the impeachment struggle is, at bottom, a struggle by various factions of the ruling class to keep Trump from undermining the strength of U.S. imperialism at home and abroad.

Tens of million have suffered from Trump’s various forms of reaction. From the gag rule against abortion counseling, to immigrant families separated from their children, to Muslims and immigrants whom he has vilified, to Iranians suffering under sanctions, to Venezuelans and Cubans under threat from all sides, to Palestinians under Israeli occupation, to Zimbabweans under U.S. sanctions,  and environmentalists watching the administration allow the extreme pollution of the air, drinking water, land and oceans. Trump has cultivated the ultra-right and fascist elements with his racist defense of killer cops as well as attacks on African and Caribbean countries.

On the other hand, Trump has antagonized sections of the ruling class as well. He has weakened the NATO alliance, pulled out of the U.S.-sponsored Transpacific Partnership, pulled out of the Paris Peace Accords, abused the Mexican government, the Canadian government, the German government, sided with the Brexit forces in Britain, and done numerous things to offend the allies of U.S. imperialism and to damage the military and diplomatic structure built up by Washington over decades.

Three hundred so-called “national security” experts have supported the articles of impeachment. What are “national security” officials? They are CIA, NSC, FBI and all the agents of sabotage, subversion, special operations, and dirty tricks, whose job it is to undermine, remove or destroy all obstacles to the advancement of U.S. capitalist and imperialist interests at home and abroad.

Trump’s corruption ….

https://www.afge.org/

September 30, 2019

Good Shepherd Collective

“This year there has been an alarming spike in demolitions. So far in 2019 the Israeli military carried out 196 demolitions, destroying 411 structures – 41 of which were donor-funded. The onslaught of demolitions – ranging from a widespread attack on Palestinian water infrastructure, agricultural equipment and homes impacted some 49,477 Palestinians. In 2018, during this same time frame, the Israeli military carried out 143 raids on Palestinian property, resulting in the destruction of 305 structures – 32 of which were donor-funded, impacting 5,822 people.

https://bit.ly/2mspzPE

Revolutionaries destroyed police headquarters, attacked residences of government officials, and burned a jail and courts to the ground in different parts of Haiti on Friday.

Insurgents are fighting to overthrow the corrupt right-wing regime of Jovenel Moise, who is backed by the US. Four people died in clashes in recent days, with many reports of injuries.

In June, judges of Haiti’s High Court of Auditors said in a report that Moise was at the center of an “embezzlement scheme” that had siphoned off Venezuelan aid money intended for road repairs, laying out a litany of examples of corruption and mismanagement.

The aid money came through Venezuela’s PetroCaribe program, which had allowed Haiti to buy petroleum products at discount and on credit.

However, the program has now been suspended for more than a year because of the interests of US imperialism, which backs the Haitian regime and has supported coup attempts to install a right-wing regime in Venezuela.

The suspension has meant that Haiti’s long-suffering people have been faced with an extra burden: an ever-worsening fuel shortage that has resulted in closed service stations, rising prices and long lines to buy petrol.

In the wealthy suburb Petion Ville, entire blocks were set ablaze.

RELATED CONTENT: Shooting at Haitian Parliament Surprises Few as Anti-Government Protests Continue

Protesters successfully drove the police out of Cité Soleil, Port-au-Prince’s poorest neighborhood. Revolutionaries completely destroyed the UDMO/police headquarters. Heavily armed units of police abandoned it after hours of attacks by residents with molotov cocktails and showers of rocks.

The UDMO (Departmental Unit for the Maintenance of Order), who have murdered many Haitian people to protect the corrupt Moise regime in power, have been trained by the US state in Austin, Texas where an “Executive Leadership” training course was set up for Haitian security forces….

https://bit.ly/2o0CCZ6

Confronting Climate Change and Forced Migration in El Salvador

Hear from Felicia Mijango president of UCRES-CRIPDES
(the Association of Unity of Rural Community of El Salvador ) &
Zulma Tobar of the El Salvador staff of US-El Salvador Sister Cities.

Restoring people’s eyesight is one of the benefits of Cuba-Venezuela economic solidarity. Photo: Operation Milagro

https://bit.ly/2nUlmVl

By Cheryl LaBash, September 28, 2019

A Sept. 16 Business Insider headline alerted readers: “Grocery stores would run out of food in just 3 days if long-haul truckers stopped working.” Scary thought? But what if they stopped working because they had no fuel — and they had no fuel because a powerful neighbor had blocked oil and gasoline deliveries?

Isn’t that what Cuba is facing today? On Sept. 24, the U.S. Department of the Treasury doubled down on its economic war against the Republic of Cuba by blocking four shipping companies based in Cyprus and Panama–countries outside of the United States–and four tanker ships that deliver fuel to Cuba.

The Treasury Department press release used heavily coded wording to assert the source of the oil shipments is Venezuela, another independent, sovereign country suffering from Washington-instigated coup plots and U.S. economic, political and even threatened military assaults.

On the same day, at the United Nations, the U.S. representative again and again lauded defense of sovereignty as a supreme goal while shamelessly undermining and assaulting Cuba’s sovereign right to trade without extraterritorial interference.

Why Cuba buys oil from Venezuela

Cuba and Venezuela initiated the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our America-Trade Treaty of the People (ALBA-TCP) in 2004 as a “political, economic, and social alliance in defense of independence, self-determination and the identity of peoples comprising it.”

An offshoot of the ALBA-TCP cooperative association is PetroCaribe, a program to “provide low-interest oil sales to nearby countries facing expensive imports” from imperialist-dominated oil monopolies.

Can Cuba buy oil from the United States? No, by U.S. law, Cuba can only buy food and medicine from the U.S. Even those purchases are often impossible because international banks are fearful of being fined for conducting legal financial transactions.

What about other Western Hemisphere oil producers? Mexico, Brazil and Colombia all depend on business relationships with the U.S. Even if they had the will to sell oil to Cuba, their partnership with U.S. multinational corporations prevents it.

Cuba’s oil deliveries will continue to arrive. Because of the unilateral U.S. economic, financial and commercial blockade, the fuel will cost more, taking resources from other needs of the Cuban people.

Behind U.S. government slanders

Big Oil wants to keep prices high and seeks to control Venezuela’s oil and other natural resources to keep it that way. But for Venezuela, promoting a solidarity economy by providing low-cost oil to small neighbors, and giving voices and inclusion to the Indigenous, Afro-descendents, workers, women and poor farmers, is important.

By building and providing 2.8 million homes so the poorest Venezuelan families have dignity, while in the U.S. developers gentrify cities and force working families to live on the street, Venezuela shows another world is possible.

Working with Cuba’s advanced medical capabilities and development brings Cuban doctors to Venezuelans who had never had health care, and builds medical schools to train more doctors. It includes partnering with Cuba to restore sight to nearly 50,000 people through Operation Milagro surgeries.

It means teaching everyone to read. Illiteracy was eliminated in 2005, as certified by UNESCO.

Venezuela’s oil profits partnered with Cuba’s medical and educational strength have helped millions of people lead better lives.

The corporate press uses code words like “dictator,” “corruption” and “tyrant” to hide these truths that can be very appealing to workers and oppressed nations inside the U.S., where, for many, life is not so great, and getting worse.

The union adage “an injury to one is an injury to all” and “solidarity” live in Cuba and Venezuela. But in the U.S., schools teach self-marketing and individual achievement, plus the false wonders of a “free market” where wealth and benefits go to the already wealthy.

The climate catastrophe threatening all life on earth moved hundreds of thousands of youth into the streets on Sept. 20. Many already understand that the profit-before-people capitalist system perpetuates climate deniers and blocks changes that are needed now, not later. International cooperation and socialism, where humanity is the priority, are becoming a realistic and necessary alternative in the eyes and hearts of many.

Solidarity and unity are Cuba’s secret weapons. Solidarity is Venezuela’s shield against the multiple U.S.-inspired coup attempts this year alone. Both of these sovereign and independent countries are resisting the economic war waged by the huge U.S. economic bully that is cruelly attempting to starve people into embracing capitalism. We have only to look at Haiti and Puerto Rico to see the real “wonders” promised by capitalist exploitation.

On Nov. 6 and 7, Cuba’s resolution to end the U.S. blockade will come before the United Nations General Assembly. The people of the world will vote to #UnblockCuba as they have annually since 1992.

It is up to us in the U.S. to #UnblockCuba. Plan now to come to New York or organize in your community. Together we can do it.