https://fighting-words.net/2018/12/19/moving-forward-in-defense-of-our-lives/

By Fighting Words Staff

The following is a statement from In Defense of our Lives, a coalition that stands united to fight against austerity, white supremacy and the neo-fascist threat in the United States. Communist Workers League supports this movement and looks forward to working with IDOL in the coming months.

In Defense of Our Lives

Let us build a unified movement against white supremacist/fascistic forces and for a People’s Platform and a mass 2019 spring mobilization to declare our new unity!

… At the root of all these issues is the system of capitalism. And, only a grand struggle can push back the fascist threat, unite working people of all nationalities against war and for a working peoples’ program for our needs. Without principled political unity, one built around programmatic demands and one determined to uproot the fascist and white supremacist threat, such a struggle is impossible. It is up to all progressive and revolutionary people and organizations to fight through the morass and political differences to begin to forge what is necessary.

To begin this, let us strategize, build in every corner and community to inaugurate a new era of struggle.

Let us not fail to recognize the current threat.

Let us not fall into the void, nor should we resign ourselves to defeat and become demoralized.  We can win but not without struggle, not without unity.

Venceremos! All Power to the People!

Follow In Defense of our Lives on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Contact: indefenseofourlives@gmail.com

https://fighting-words.net/2018/12/19/peoples-struggle-wins-conviction-of-berta-caceress-murderers/

Berta Cáceres, an indigenous Lenca woman, co-founded the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) in 1993 to address the growing threats posed to Lenca communities by illegal logging, fight for their territorial rights and improve their livelihoods.

In the aftermath of the U.S.-favored military coup in 2009 that ousted the reformist President Zelaya, huge corporate megaprojects were spawned in resource-rich Honduras, covering 30 percent of the country. Imperialist-financed DESA, without the consent of the Lenca people, began the giant Agua Zarca Dam project across the sacred Gualcarque River. Cáceres led a popular campaign against the dam.

“In April 2013, Cáceres organized a road blockade to prevent DESA’s access to the dam site. Using a carefully organized system of alerts to keep everyone in the loop, the Lenca people maintained a heavy but peaceful presence, rotating out friends and family members for weeks at a time. For well over a year, the blockade withstood multiple eviction attempts and violent attacks from militarized security contractors and the Honduran armed forces… To date, construction on the project has effectively come to a halt.” In 2015, Berta Cáceres was awarded the Goldman Prize for her environmental and pro-people activism…

Bertita Zúñiga, who is Berta Cáceres’ daughter, told a reporter that the U.S. policies ignored the Honduran public following the coup. This effectively legitimized an illegal takeover within the government. She said, “Since then, we’ve lived with the militarization of our society, serious violence and the criminalization of social protest. My mum wanted to build a better Honduras, but that hope died with the coup.”

https://bit.ly/2A5ktwa

By Abayomi Azikiwe

Global Research, December 19, 2018

Saturday December 15 marked the fifth consecutive week where thousands of people have held marches and engaged in various forms of civil disobedience throughout France.

Sparked by the imposition of a fuel tax, the “gilet jaunes” (Yellow Vest) movement has exposed the negative impact of the neo-liberal policies of the ruling La Republique en Marche President Emmanuel Macron. Even after the president announced the suspension and eventual elimination of the fuel tax along with other reforms related to minimum wages and pensions, demonstrations still took place the following week albeit in smaller numbers.

The rationale for the fuel tax imposed by Macron was ostensibly to reduce the usage of fossil fuels. This supposed “green energy policy” which includes the reduction in the speed limit disproportionately affects motorists who live outside the central metropolitan areas…

These political developments which are influenced by the economic crisis gripping the western capitalist states could result in both rightward and leftward tilts in the character of the responses by the working and middle classes. Nonetheless, the adoption of a purported “populist” stance on the failure of the neo-liberal governance model provides no solution to the majority of working and oppressed peoples within the capitalist countries.

Western industrialized nations are experiencing limited growth rates with a widening gap between the rich and poor. Attacks on migrants and the nationally oppressed cannot guarantee higher wages and better living conditions for the previously more stable working and middle classes.

Imperialist wars in the last three decades in Iraq, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and other geo-political regions have drained the national wealth of the western countries. The global recession after 2007 and the large-scale governmental bailouts of the international financial institutions along with the industrialists have further weakened the social fabric of world capitalist system.

Only a movement to genuinely empower the workers and oppressed on a non-capitalist basis provides the potential for moving beyond the present crisis in Europe, North America and the rest of the world.

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. https://panafricannews.blogspot.com/

Mint Press News

https://bit.ly/2QCUA0V

Listen to the Sun. Dec. 16, 2018 special edition of the Pan-African Journal: Worldwide Radio Broadcast hosted by Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire. The program features our regular PANW report with dispatches on the visit by Republic of Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to Syria; South Sudanese deputy President Reik Machar has called for national reconciliation after the resolution of a five year conflict with President Salva Kiir; Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta says he and opposition leader Raila Odinga want the best for this East African state; and a Hepatitis A outbreak is causing alarm in the southern United States state of Kentucky. In the second and third hours we continue our tribute leading up to the 90th birthday of the martyred Civil Rights and Antiwar leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Detroit Martin Luther King Day demonstration through Downtown Detroit on January 15, 2007. The march draws upon the legacy of Dr. King’s peace and social justice work. (Photo: Robert Akrawi)., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

https://www.teachersagainstchilddetention.org/

Teachers Against Child Detention

Record numbers of immigrant children are being held in detention facilities around
the United States, under conditions that are harmful to their development and well-
being. The largest such facility is a complex of tents located on a military base in
Tornillo, Texas. The Tornillo facility was originally designed to hold 400 children for
a few weeks in June, but is now projected to hold at least 3,800 children on a near-
indefinite basis. The average length of stay at Tornillo is reported to be double or
triple that permitted under the Flores settlement, which allows the government to
detain immigrant children for no longer than 20 days at a time.

The population of children held at Tornillo is greater than that in the largest prison
operated by the federal government. The Tornillo facility is unregulated by child
welfare agencies, and the staff at Tornillo has been made specially exempt from FBI
fingerprint background checks, increasing the risk that someone with a criminal
history could have direct access to these children. Schooling is not required at the
Tornillo facility. The children there endure frequent dust storms and triple-degree
temperatures. While federal policy requires migrant youth centers to have one
mental health clinician for every 12 children, there is reportedly only one clinician
for every 100 children at Tornillo.

Experts agree: incarceration of children significantly hurts their ability to learn,
even after the incarceration has ended.

Teachers Against Child Detention (TACD) was formed by a group of teachers led
by Mandy Manning, the 2018 National Teacher of the Year. Teachers are mandatory
reporters, required under U.S. law to report suspected child abuse to responsible
authorities. TACD calls on all educators to act as mandatory reporters and speak out
against the atrocities being perpetrated against the children in detention at Tornillo.
TACD is an alliance between teachers, immigrant rights organizations and other
citizens concerned about the welfare of children at Tornillo. TACD demands that its
teachers be given access to the children at Tornillo, to offer them classroom
instruction, and to deliver them a message of hope and love. TACD also demands
that these children be released from incarceration. They are being punished not out
of a sense of what is just and right, but to promote a political agenda that ignores
their rights and potential as human beings.

All children deserve to be in school.

All children deserve to be free.

We demand the release of our children.

https://bit.ly/2LtWQlH

Listen to the Dec. 15, 2018 edition of the Pan-African Journal: Worldwide Radio Broadcast hosted by Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire. The program features our regular PANW report with dispatches on the continuing demonstrations in France over the cost of living and the tenure of President Emmanuel Macron; the Central African Republic is facing a looming crisis due to ongoing internal conflict; refugees from southern Ethiopia are fleeing to Kenya resulting from ethnic conflict; and a former al-Shabaab leader in Somalia has been arrested by the government amid an electoral campaign. In the second hour we look back at the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. leading up to the celebration of his 90th birthday. Finally we examine why MLK was assassinated by the United States Government in 1968.

CLOSEmsdf Picket (December)

901 N 9th Street, Milwaukee, 11:30 A.M. – 1:30 P.M.

Why do we picket?
1. To educate people on the inhumane conditions at MSDF
2. To memorialize the 17 people who have died in MSDF since it opened.
3. To let WI taxpayers know that each day someone spends in MSDF for a crimeless rule violation it costs us $100.84 vs $40 to treat that person in the community where their job, housing & support systems stay secure.
4. Former Governer Tommy Thompson has said building MSDF was a mistake. Its time the state corrects that error.

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Please join us during the lunch hour on December 20 on the 10th Street side of the courthouse. Partway through the picket we might march over to the state office building on 6th and Wells, where the DOC has offices.

Parking is metered or nearby public lots. If you don’t mind walking a couple blocks, its often easier to find free parking on the other side of the freeway.

We’ve been holding down this monthly picket since the spring of 2017. A coalition of Milwaukee organizations have joined up to shut down MSDF. This facility is a building within a building, where captives have no access to fresh air or sunlight. They are triple bunked in lockdown cells for over 20 hours a day. There is no outdoor rec. The facility was built and is run using funds that should be used for diversionary programs to keep people out of jail, instead it’s being used to keep them on supervision under arbitrary and vindictive probation and parole officers.

We are organizing this protest on every 23rd (unless that lands on a weekend, when there’s less foot traffic). The National Religious Campaign Against Torture has called for actions on the 23rd of every month (to bring attention to 23 hour a day lockdowns). http://www.nrcat.org/about-us/take-action-current-legislation/563-together-to-end-solitary

Can’t come?

SIGN THE PETITION!!!!

If you haven’t signed the petition yet yourself, please do here: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/its-time-to-close-milwaukee-secure-detention-facility-msdf