Hosted by CLOSEmsdf

2821 N 4th Street, Suite 108, Milwaukee, 6-7 P.M. 

The #CLOSEmsdf Campaign is now 38 organizations strong. Visithttps://closemsdf.org/ for information. Join us for the monthly #CLOSEmsdf Campaign Coalition meeting on Tuesday, February 20th at 6 pm.

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 athttps://twitter.com/CLOSEmsdf.

WHY CLOSE THE MILWAUKEE SECURE DETENTION FACILITY (MSDF)?
Conditions at Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (MSDF) are out of step with Wisconsin values. Not only have conditions at the prison been deplorable for years, but the very notion of locking up people struggling with parole and mental health issues is at odds with common sense approaches to justice. MSDF was built in 2001 as a temporary detention facility for people on parole, probation, and extended supervision who allegedly committed violations in their rules of supervision. In the last 16 years, thousands of individuals, convicted of no new crime, have been re-incarcerated at MSDF—over sixty percent of them black men. This practice of “crimeless revocations” exacerbates racial inequities in Milwaukee and Wisconsin, and the inhumane conditions at MSDF violate basic human rights and defy our notions of justice and freedom. The #CLOSEmsdf Campaign is led by EX-Prisoners Organizing (EXPO), a project of WISDOM, with the support of JustLeadershipUSA, community members, and local Wisconsin organizations. The campaign aims not only to close this facility, but reimagine how we invest in people caught in the penal system. MSDF is beyond reform and must be shuttered in order to build the stronger communities that Milwaukee and Wisconsin deserve.

PROBLEMS FACING PEOPLE INCARCERATED AT MSDF
• Human rights violations, including: Poor ventilation, extreme heat, no access to sunlight, no outdoor recreation, overcrowding in cells, 22 hours of lockdown per day, and no in-person visits.
• Excessive mistreatment and use of force against mentally ill people.
• Racial bias: African Americans were 12 times more likely to be sent to prison for crimeless revocation than whites in 2013.
• No due process: Revocation process gives significant discretion to DOC parole agents rather than criminal
courts, which makes it harder for people facing incarceration to fight that outcome.

SOLUTIONS
• Ending the practice of incarcerating people for minor rule violations of their supervision.
• Allow people facing revocation to remain in the community until their hearings.
• Shifting the “Alternatives to Revocation” beds to the community.
• Solve overcrowding issues in Wisconsin jails and prisons through policy changes such as bail reform and increased use of Treatment Alternatives and Diversion programs.
• Reinvest the excessive corrections spending toward workforce development training for formerly incarcerated
people and greater access to mental health professionals and clinics within the community

http://gabrielausa.org/2018/02/13/filipino-american-women-outraged-by-dutertes-misogynistic-remarks-and-call-for-international-solidarity/

Members of GABRIELA USA denounce President Duterte’s fascist and violent misogynistic order to “shoot female rebels in their vagina.” Duterte said, “If there is no vagina, it would be useless,” implying that women are useless without their genitals. From the beginning of his presidency, Duterte has made several misogynistic comments towards women, including rape jokes which encourage the Armed Forces of the Philippines to commit violence against women and use rape as a tool of war. This is utterly reprehensible and must be condemned.

Mumia – SF Labor Council Resolution LETTERHEAD Free Mumia adopted unanimously 02-12-18Res2FreeMumiaAbu

http://sflaborcouncil.org/

FREE MUMIA MARCH 24-27, 2018 EVENTS: http://www.freemumia.com/2018/02/march-24-27-events/

San Francisco Labor Council resolution- adopted unanimously Feb. 12, 2018

RESOLUTION TO FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL

Whereas, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the most prominent political prisoner in the U.S., has been defended by trade unions internationally, the European Parliament, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and

Whereas, Mumia, a former Black Panther, MOVE supporter, author, and past president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists is known worldwide for standing in solidarity, while on death row, with workers in struggle including the Liverpool dockers (1996), the striking Charleston, South Carolina longshore union (2000) and the locked out West Coast longshore workers of the ILWU (2002) and for his critique of the depredations of capitalism through racist repression, worker exploitation and imperialist war, and

Whereas, he is innocent of the charge of killing a police officer, framed up and  sentenced to death in 1982 by a racist judicial system without any corroborating physical evidence and on false testimony by coerced witnesses and by suppressing evidence of his innocence, including witnesses who said Mumia was not the shooter and the confession of a man that he, not Mumia, shot and killed the police officer, and

Whereas, Mumia Abu-Jamal since he was a 15 year old member of the Black Panther Party was targeted by the FBI’s counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO) and the notoriously corrupt Philadelphia police department, which was repeatedly investigated by the federal government, and

Whereas, Mumia’s 1981 trial before racist judge Sabo, known for sending more men to death row than any other judge in the U.S., who stated before Mumia’s trial that he was going “to help them fry the n—-r;” and a jury selected by excluding Black people; and

Whereas, Mumia remained on death row for nearly 30 years, saved from execution in 1995 and 1999 by international mass protest supported by trade unions and despite a December 2001 federal court ruling that Mumia’s death sentence was illegal, Mumia remained in solitary confinement on death row, until 2012 when he was re-sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, and

Whereas, in 2014 Mumia learned in prison he had been infected with the deadly hepatitis C virus by a tainted blood transfusion in 1981 after he was critically shot by police; and after Mumia went into diabetic shock in March 2015, the result of the prison’s medical malfeasance and secondary symptoms of hepatitis C, and despite Mumia being near death prison authorities refused to treat him with the life-saving anti-viral medication, and

Whereas, an international trade union campaign was waged that helped win this  life-saving medication for him and potentially for some 700,000 hepatitis C-infected prisoners in the United States, a campaign including Britain’s largest union the 1.4 million member UNITE, the International Dockworkers Union representing over 100,000 dockers in ports around the globe, the Brisbane, Australia wharfies’ union, Doro-Chiba, the Japanese railway union and National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, the largest union in South Africa, the 338,000 strong union which sent a powerful protest letter to Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf stating: “The refusal of health-care reminds us of the conditions we were put in under Apartheid prisons where sick detainees were allowed to die in very deplorable lonely conditions in solitary as part of the punishment for their role in the struggle.” and

Whereas, in 2016, a new legal action challenging Mumia’s conviction was filed based on a precedent-making U.S. Supreme Court decision that it is unconstitutional bias for a judge to decide an appeal in a case where he had previously been involved as a prosecutor, and since Ronald Castille, the District Attorney during Mumia’s appeal from 1986-1991 was a Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice denying all of Mumia’s post-conviction appeals from 1996-2014, this new legal action is an opening towards Mumia’s freedom that again requires a massive campaign of workers’ organizations worldwide, and

Whereas, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office has obstructed and covered up the evidence of Castille’s personal involvement in Mumia’s case, and stalled and denied the existence of memos and files showing that involvement, and whereas the Court has ordered an evidentiary hearing on January 17, 2018,

Therefore Be It Resolved that the San Francisco Labor Council demand full disclosure of all police and prosecutorial files relating to Mumia’s case by the Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office with all deliberate speed and moreover demand the immediate release of Mumia Abu-Jamal who has been imprisoned for 36 years for a crime which he did not commit, and

Be it Further Resolved, we will send a message stating our position to Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf and Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner.

http://sflaborcouncil.org/

FREE MUMIA MARCH 24-27, 2018 EVENTS: http://www.freemumia.com/2018/02/march-24-27-events/

Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

https://poorpeoplescampaign.org/

info@poorpeoplescampaign.org

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

Capitol Square, Madison, 1 P.M. 

AFSCME Wisconsin Council 32 

Fight for $15

Yesterday, Feb. 12, 2018,…was incredible! Fast-food workers from dozens of cities walked off the job to fight for fair pay, for union rights, for dignity, and for enough to live, echoing a battle cry we’ve been heralding for generations.

With the Poor People’s Campaign, we carried that same message yesterday as we marched the same path that Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Memphis sanitation workers marched 50 years ago.

We all deserve a chance at the American dream, the dream that Dr. King spoke of all those years ago. We deserve $15 an hour, union rights, and respect on the job regardless of race.

Days like yesterday, and like when Dr. King spoke 50 years ago, are about speaking truth to power, rising up together in ways that are so big and so bold that nobody can ignore us. That’s how we win. And we will win, Bryan . We. Will. Win.

Latierika Blair
McDonald’s Worker
Memphis, TN
Fight for $15 Fight for $15,

Fostering Inclusivity for Trans* Students in College

https://www.workers.org/2018/02/12/defend-durham-anti-racists/

By Workers World Durham, N.C., bureau posted on February 12, 2018

Defend Durham

Feb. 12 — The Durham, N.C., defendants invite all those who choose to side against racism and white supremacy to come here Feb. 19-20 to pack the court and show solidarity with ongoing struggles against monuments to racism. The defendants say: “Fighting white supremacy is not a crime!”

Takiyah Thompson and seven other anti-racist activists return on Feb. 19 to Durham district court to stand trial for their actions in toppling a Confederate monument in Durham last Aug. 14.

With Thompson climbing the statue, the #DoItLikeDurham freedom fighters’ removal of the Confederate monument took place during a vigil and rally with hundreds present. This was just three days after the violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., on Aug. 11. Dozens of anti-racist protesters, in Charlottesville to resist the neo-Nazis and white supremacists, were injured. Heather Heyer was killed when a white supremacist member of the American Vanguard Party drove his car into a crowd.

Each Durham defendant is facing three misdemeanor charges on Feb. 19: injury to real property, defacing a public monument and conspiracy to deface a public monument.

But due to a massive outpouring of local, national and international support, those charges are all that’s left of the original outrageous felony charges against the defendants.

Support for them has been wide ranging. On Aug. 17, the day when many defendants were scheduled to turn themselves in, hundreds lined up to do the same, each one saying, “Arrest me too!” because they were also fighting white supremacy…

200 E Main Street, Durham, 6 P.M. 

On February 19, Takiyah Thompson + 7 other anti-racist freedom fighters are going to trial to face charges connected to the toppling of a confederate monument in Durham. We’ll be packing the court all day in support of our folks — Pack the Courts to Defend Durham!

We invite the community to come out and join us in the evening for a solidarity march and rally to greet the defendants as they leave trial (it’ll be a long day!).

Local activists and community members will speak out against the real crimes of this society: gentrification and displacement, police killings and brutality, jail deaths and incarceration, deportations, and all of the countless attacks on people of color, LGBTQ people, women, and all working class people.

Join us in demanding that all charges against Takiyah Thompson and the 7 anti-racist defendants be DROPPED!

FIGHTING WHITE SUPREMACY IS NOT A CRIME!
DROP THE CHARGES!

Co-sponsors of February 19 #DefendDurham actions include:
Durham Solidarity Center
Youth Organizing Institute
Durham Beyond Policing
People’s Alliance
RedneckRevolt
Workers World Party

Wisconsin Bail Out The People Movement
…with more pending!

Get in touch if your organization would like to sign on as a co-sponsor!

Hosted by Workers World Party – Michigan

5920 Second Avenue, Detroit, 5-8 P.M. 

African American History Month Annual Public Forum for 2018

Event: African American History Month Annual Forum
Date: Sat. Feb. 24, 5:00-8:00pm
Location: 5920 Second Avenue at Antoinette, Detroit
Chair: Kelly Carmichael
Speaker: Abayomi Azikiwe, Editor of the Pan-African News Wire
URL: https://panafricannews.blogspot.com/
Speaker: Mond Sankara: Workers World Party youth leader
URL: http://workersworlddetroit.org/
Speaker: Yvonne Jones, Detroit Active & Retired Employees Association (DAREA) and Moratorium NOW! Coalition
Sponsor: Workers World Party Detroit Branch
Contact: 313-671-3715
Dinner Served: African American Cuisine
Admission: This event is free and open to the public. Donations are welcome.

Theme: Counterinsurgency, Rebellion and Revolution from 1968-2018

Workers World Party Detroit Branch is sending out this invitation to all people throughout the area to join us in our annual celebration of African American History Month.

This year represents the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr., the Civil Rights, Social Justice and Antiwar leader killed in Memphis on April 4, 1968 while working in solidarity with an African American sanitation workers’ strike demanding recognition as a labor union. Dr. King was mobilizing for the Poor Peoples Campaign when he was assassinated. The manifestation was aimed at occupying Washington, D.C., acting on the urgency for jobs, a guaranteed annual income, food, universal healthcare, political empowerment and the end to institutional racism.

In honor of the valiant history of the African American people we will examine some of the important historical and contemporary issues facing activists in the present period.

Topics Include:
–1968: The Year of the Heroic Guerrilla
–The Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Role of the
Federal Government
–Rebellions Erupt in 125 Cities After the Death of MLK
–Counterintelligence Program Black Nationalist Hate Groups
–Comparisons of the COINTELPRO Key Black Extremists of 1967-68 to the Black Identity Extremists FBI Memo of 2017
–The Poor People’s Campaign from 1968 to 2018
–Our Task Today in Building the African American Revolutionary Movement and Proletarian Internationalism

Also we will present film clips on the building of the Poor Peoples Campaign during the early months of 1968. In addition, we want to discuss some of the important Black historic sites in Detroit emphasizing the need to preserve the legacy of the Underground Railroad, Labor Movement, Civil Rights Movement, Rebellions and Political Empowerment efforts since the 19th century.

All African American comrades are encouraged to participate through presentations, art work, social media and other forms of outreach. The branch and the public as a whole can also assist through outreach and logistical support, streaming, etc.

African American History Month Annual Public Forum for 2018