CLOSEmsdf Coalition Meeting

2821 N Vel R. Phillips Avenue, Suite 108, Milwaukee, 6-7 P.M.

Join us on Tuesday, August 20th at 6 pm to get involved with the efforts to decarcerate Milwaukee, #CLOSEmsdf, and #buildCOMMUNITIES.

This venue is wheelchair accessible.

The #CLOSEmsdf Campaign is now over 50 organizations strong. Visit https://closemsdf.org/ for information.

Sign the #CLOSEmsdf petition at https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/its-time-to-close-milwaukee-secure-detention-facility-msdf.

Like us on facebook at CLOSEmsdf. Follow us on twitter at https://twitter.com/CLOSEmsdf.

Demands from the #CLOSEmsdf Campaign Based on Newly Released Parole & Probation Report from Justice Lab at Columbia University:

The Wisconsin Community Corrections Story

On January 22, 2019, the Justice Lab at Columbia University released a scathing report commissioned by #CLOSEmsdf Campaign partner JustLeadershipUSA, entitled The Wisconsin Community Corrections Story. This vital report adds quantitative and qualitative analysis to support what directly impacted people and low income and people of color, especially Black and Native American, have known for decades: there is deep harm, and racial and economic injustice embedded in Wisconsin’s probation and parole policies which exemplify and fuel incarceration.

10 KEY FINDINGS FROM JUSTICE LAB AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

In Wisconsin:

*1-in-8 Black men, and 1-in-11 Native American men, are under supervision.
*Black women are supervised at 3 times the rate of white women.
*Native American women are supervised at 6 times the rate of white women.
*MSDF imprisons white people 12 percentage points lower, and Black people 24 percentage points higher, than the Wisconsin average.
*Wisconsin incarcerates Black people at 11.5 times the rate of white people, ranking Wisconsin’s imprisonment racial disparities fifth in the nation.
*Wisconsin’s post-prison supervision rates, average lengths of stay on post-prison supervision, and rates of incarceration for technical violations are much higher than the national average and set Wisconsin as an outlier in the Great Lakes region.
*Across the country and particularly in Wisconsin, mass supervision fuels mass incarceration. As of 2017, people who had previously been under community supervision made up over half of the total adult incarcerated population in Wisconsin.
*Over one-fifth of all adults incarcerated in Wisconsin prisons were incarcerated without a new conviction.
*This massive expansion of Wisconsin’s criminal legal system resulted from truth in sentencing laws that cost Wisconsin taxpayers $1.8 billion.
*All of this harm is the product of deliberate policy choices over the past three decades.

#CLOSEmsdf DEMANDS SUPPORTED BY REPORT FINDINGS

https://bit.ly/311r4mp

Assessing his contributions amid uprisings in North Africa and ongoing national oppression in the Diaspora

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Frantz Fanon, a revolutionary thinker and practitioner who has had a tremendous impact politically on the African liberation struggle both on the continent and in the Diaspora. The recent outbreaks of strikes, mass protests and rebellions in Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt requires a reassessment of the significance of the events that Fanon participated in during his lifetime as well as the views expressed through a series of articles and books published in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Fanon’s views on the nature of the psychology of the oppressed, which he studied systematically in France and in North Africa, his analysis of social class formations in colonial societies, attempting to gage the response of these classes to the developing revolutionary struggle against imperialism and for the construction of a socialist society, and his impact on continuing political movements that have arose since his death, such as the African American movement of the 1960s and 1970s, should be extended into the current period in examining the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the political upheavals in North Africa related to the influence and presence of United States military forces in the region, as well as the escalating struggles of Africans in the Diaspora, who are battling daily against intensified oppression, exploitation and racism.

Before we can make the case for not only a re-examination of Fanon’s works, but a broadening of his influence within the African world community, we have to look at both the political context under which Fanon produced his most significant theoretical formulations and how this context represents a continuation of struggles against U.S. and European imperialist domination in North Africa and the Arab Peninsula.

Also we must examine the extension of that same struggle of fifty years ago to events taking place today on a global level. Even though the form of struggle has changed, the underlying causes for the intensification of military interventions by western imperialism, is clearly an effort to re-gain the perceived losses of the anti-colonial period beginning with the close of World War II.

Fanon’s Time in History

Born in the Caribbean island of Martinique in 1925, Fanon was a social product of French colonialism. During the post-World War I period there was a monumental upsurge in political violence throughout the colonized world. In the Caribbean and the United States, the influence of Marcus Garvey was paramount….

2nd Anniversary of Charlottesville: Act Against White Supremacy

Protest Chick-fil-A

3775 W College Avenue, Appleton, WI, 10 A.M. – 8 P.M. 

Stand up against hate and intolerance, show Chick-fil-A that we do not support them and do not welcome their hate!

If You Really Love LGBTQ People, You Just Can’t Keep Eating Chick-fil-A: https://bit.ly/2yeXCNz

Crusaders Of Justicia

CrusadersOfJusticia@gmail.com

Photo: WI BOPM

Crusaders Of Justicia

CrusadersOfJusticia@gmail.com

Black Arts Fest mke

Join us for the second Black Arts Fest mke in celebrating the magnificence of the African and African American culture! The festival features various music genres, traditional and contemporary African dance, food, wares, textiles and cultural activities for children. The festival will be held on Saturday, August 3 at the Henry Maier Festival Park (Summerfest grounds).

https://bit.ly/2yir6ds

The July 26, 1953, events in Santiago de Cuba and Bayamo changed forever the direction of an entire country, and opened a new stage in the history of Our America.

Author: Juan Diego Nusa Peñalver | internet@granma.cu

july 24, 2019 19:07:17

Photo: Marcelino Vázquez (AIN)

History cannot be forgotten. At a time when U.S. imperialism and its regional allies are intent upon eliminating the idea that “a better world is possible,” the Cuban Revolution and its heroic people are resisting at all costs, convinced of the justness of their ideals, and celebrating the 66th anniversary of the assaults on the Moncada in Santiago de Cuba, and the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Garrison in Bayamo.

These glorious events changed forever the direction of an entire country, their greatness recognized beyond the nation’s borders, opening a new stage in the history of Our America.

The justness of their revolutionary ideas led the generation of Martí’s centenary, led by Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro Ruz, to risk their lives to plant the seed of this historic change, which despite the failure of the military action would bear fruit a few years later.

The daring attack on the cruel U.S. backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, allowed the population to gain consciousness of the need for armed struggle to transform the nation’s dire circumstances, with which Cubans retook the road to full independence, that given its projections and significance, became an example for Caribbean and Latin American countries, also battling to win their “second and definitive” independence, as José Martí said.

The armed action was based on a progressive program, in which the most important aspirations for socio-economic and political transformation at that time were outlined masterfully by Fidel in his historic ​​self-defense during the spurious trial that followed the frustrated assault, October 16, 1953, when the Comandante en Jefe ended with the celebrated phrase: “Condemn me, it doesn’t matter, history will absolve me.”

The group’s action and program reflected a Marxist-Leninist analysis of the prevailing objective and subjective conditions in Cuba, which had matured extraordinarily following Batista’s pro-imperialist coup, on March 10, 1952, in order to prevent a majority party, of a reformist orientation, from coming to power through an electoral process, convened within the framework of “representative democracy, ” which the bourgeois regime itself, dependent on the United States, did not respect.The tactical setback suffered on July 26, 1953, when the military objectives foreseen in the action were not achieved, did not modify the historical results of the events, which were definitively inserted into the annals of Cuba’s revolutionary history….

Picket CapTel for a living wage

310 W Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee, 4-6 P.M.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/puerto-ricans-demonstrate-how-to-oust-a-corrupt-leader/https://www.truthdig.com/articles/puerto-ricans-demonstrate-how-to-oust-a-corrupt-leader/

Sonali Kolhatkar

The movement that forced Ricardo Rosselló to step down as governor of Puerto Rico is one of the largest in the island’s history. It unified people across the ideological and political spectrum toward a common purpose: ending the governor’s corrupt regime. On Monday, hundreds of thousands of people gathered in San Juan to demand “Ricky Renuncia.”

Traveling to her native Puerto Rico to witness what was unfolding, political activist and journalist Rosa Clemente told me in an interview that rumors had spread on Monday that Rosselló was readying his resignation. But then, she said, “He doubled down again by giving a horrific interview on Fox News, and that made especially young people more angry and agitated and ready to stay in the streets.” Rosselló told Fox News’ Shepard Smith that while he wouldn’t seek re-election, he also would not resign on the same day that half a million of the island’s people were demanding he step down….

Today, July 24, 2019, outside of the Pennsylvania Corrections Department protesting the refusal to treat the serious health problems of Mumia Abu Jamal who could lose his eye sight. Officials refused to take petitions.

Mobilization4Mumia

Photos: Baltimore Harriet Tubman Solidarity Center