ACLU to discuss their defense of Citizens United this Saturday in Columbus

The ACLU supported the Citizens United vs Federal Elections Commission (FEC) decision handed down by the US Supreme Court in January. Their support took the form of the filing of an Amicus Brief, which is a document submitted by a person or group with strong views or interest in the case but not a direct party to it.

The Ohio ACLU holds its statewide membership conference this weekend in Columbus
www.acluohio.org/Conference2010

Among the workshops will be this one on Saturday afternoon from 3:30-4:30 PM

Pay to Play: Repercussions of Citizens United
The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has many people dismayed, believing the ruling allows corporations to contribute to political campaigns. Join a lively discussion about the outcome of the decision and why the ACLU supported Citizens United.
Speakers include Scott Greenwood and Daniel Tokaji.

If anyone is planning to attend the conference (or lives near Columbus and could attend), please consider attending the workshop.

The ACLU needs to understand Citizens United wasn’t about free speech but rather about corporate personhood. The unelected, appointed-for-lifers of the Supreme Court falsely framed the case between limiting speech to have fair and free elections vs. approving corporate-dominated political influence to preserve free speech. This false frame evaporates if corporate personhood — the notion that corporations have constitutional “rights” -- is renounced. As corporate anthropologist Jane Anne Morris has said, “Only if we pretend that corporations are ‘persons’ under the Constitution, is limiting corporate ‘speech’ a constitutional infringement.”

If you can’t attend the conference but are a member of the Ohio (and/or national) ACLU, contact them and express your concerns.

Letter to Senator Sherrod Brown on BP and IEL

26. July. 2010

Sherrod Brown
United States Senate
Washington, DC

Re: Uniontown IEL Superfund Site

Dear Senator Brown,

Thank you for your leadership in speaking out and calling for the British Petroleum Corporation to be held responsible and liable for their role in the horrific ecological and economic disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

There is yet another disaster connected to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig - a political disaster. The British Petroleum Corporation acquired the authority in the past up to the present time to define the terms of drilling, oversight of the well, capping of the exploded well, and cleanup of the well.

This political disaster of the British Petroleum Corporation being in charge of these functions is due to political campaign investments (misnamed "contributions"), political lobbying, and influence over regulatory agencies (ie, Mineral Management Services, MMS, a part of the US Department of the Interior). The root of the problem is acquired constitutional rights that the BP Corporation and other business corporations have acquired over time.

These constitutionally granted rights have usurped the power of citizens to control their communities, nation, and natural world. The fundamental problem is not corporate power as it is corporate rule.

Your public statements to the media and your constituents concerning accountability of the British Petroleum Corporation is laudable. I hope they intensify to include issues of corporate rule or governance.

A somewhat similar environmental and political disaster exists closer to home in connection to the Industrial Excess Landfill (IEL) in Uniontown, Ohio. The corporate polluters here have also been put in charge of the so-called "cleanup." The regulatory agency here, the EPA, has been compliant to the wishes of the corporate polluters. A real cleanup of IEL has not take place. Those responsible and accountability for the damages, cost and liability have not been brought to justice.

In the case of the Uniontown IEL, each of the three major cleanup components - the groundwater pump & treat system (that was to operate "in perpetuity"), the multi-layered cap to prevent rainfall infiltration of the waste, the expansion of the gas interception control system - have been replaced in favor of continued flushing the site into the area's drinking water system.

Formal public hearings, legal comment periods and EPA written responsiveness summaries were conducted by US EPA per Superfund law prior to the first two components being legally removed from the EPA's amended Record of Decision (ROD). Local citizens opposed both changes to the ROD. Citizens had no input, no due process, however, prior to the ending of the gas control system. This change occurred reportedly at the behest of a corporate polluter.

Shocked and dismayed by this apparent illegality by US EPA, Concerned Citizens of Lake Township (CCLT) turned to your office last year on this issue as well as the serious questions pertaining to radiation /Plutonium issues at IEL. CCLT asked your office to contact investigators and scientists who have provided critical information to the citizens group.

I was therefore very concerned to recently learn that your office had informed CCLT that EPA will not answer the Senator's questions on these basic points regarding when such a hearing/comment period/summary might have taken place on the gas issue, perhaps unbeknownst to the citizens' group.

Experts have cited at least 150 tons of toxic gases generated yearly at IEL. The Agency on Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR - an agency of the Center for Disease Control) expressed health concerns in a 1989 report connected to offsite migration of soil gases at IEL. The report stated: “Significant concentrations of soil-gas may be migrating offsite continually or periodically, but not detected by the present monitoring system…” and “An improved MVS system could intercept all significant quantities of migrating soil-gas.”

I appreciate your staff taking the time to continue pursuing the answers to these questions and others, which affected citizens, certainly deserve. Uniontown’s citizens have long since expressed many of the same concerns now being heard around the country regarding the BP Corporation and compliant regulatory agencies. Perhaps those concerns held are now better understood.

Please continue to raise concerns about the lack of accountability of the BP Corporation and the need for more assertive oversight. The same is called for in our own back yard at the Uniontown IEL and its corporate polluters.

I hope you'll agree the rights and heath of citizens are the most important priorities.

Respectfully,


Greg Coleridge
Director
Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee

Opening Remarks at United National Action Conference

Saturday, July 23, 2010

Greetings! Good Morning!

My name is Greg Coleridge with the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee and Northeast Ohio Antiwar Coalition

On behalf of the 31 cosponsoring organizations that comprise the United National Antiwar Conference, I welcome you to this historic national conference to bring the troops home now!

Our deepest thanks go out to the Albany area antiwar, peace and justice community who are our hosts, facilitated by Joe Lombardo.

There are roughly 600 of you in this space and thousands more who are watching the live stream of these proceedings from coast to coast and border to border…and beyond.

Those of us who are physically gathered here in Albany have a unique and privileged opportunity over the next 36 hours
- To actively listen to and learn from each other,
- To grapple together on some difficult issues, and
- Hopefully by early Sunday, to have democratically and inclusively agreed on an action plan addressing issues, approaches and strategies that can be taken back to national, regional and local organizations for their feedback and endorsement to end all US wars and occupations NOW!

This is the third national antiwar conference over the last 3 summers (Pittsburgh last year, Cleveland in 2008). There are a few common threads. Each has been larger in attendance than the preceding one. Each has built on the institutional successes and lessons learned from the last one. Each has served to establish and deepen relationships among activists from broad sectors of the peace and justice community. And each has taken place at a time of rapidly deteriorating political, economic, military and social conditions across the Middle East and rising and creating grassroots protests and resistance in the US and the world to the wars, occupations, attacks and planned assults in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Iran and beyond.

This last point is significant. Many of you here and no doubt many more watching on their computers have been in the forefront of the varied protests and resistance against the unsustainable US policies toward the Middle East.

Policies of: More troops. More deaths. More money. More debt. More bombs. More injuries. More corruption. More occupations. More drones. More bases. More privatization. More advisors. More dehumanization. More blockades. More environmental destruction. More excuses. More myths. More delusions. More lies. Endless more. When is endless more sustainable?

In response, this past year people here and people watching have organized
- Rallies and marches to immediately end the Iraq occupation in all its forms
- Protests and sit-ins to end funding for the war and occupation in Afghanistan
- Boycotts and blockades of Israeli manufactured goods
- Calls to prevent attacks on Iran
- Flotillas to break the seize of Gaza
- Resolutions declaring that true security comes from spending money on jobs and education, not wars and occupations
- Campaigns to amend the US Constitution to abolish corporate personhood and the legal doctrine that money equals speech.
- And diverse forms of protests and resistance from diverse people who wear everything from military uniforms to keffiyahs to buttoned downed business suits to button plastered hats to marching shoes to anything colored pink.

It is you in this room, hearing this message and others who are not yet activists who are increasingly realizing the madness of it all. The tide is turning. Through actions and campaigns like those just mentioned, these unsustainable wars and occupations will end. They will end. And it will be because of what you have already accomplished added to what strategies and actions that will emerge from this conference

So welcome. Let us begin. Let us engage. Let us grapple. Let us do it with love and respect. But let us not forget our responsibility. To those abroad. To those here at home. To those not yet born who will have to inherit more violence, destruction and waste if we fail to force the politicians and militarists to do what they have not done on their own.

Let us unite. Nationally. As antiwar, peace and justice forces. In this conference. To end the wars and occupations in the Middle East NOW!

Tuli and Harvey Are Gone!

Tuli Kupferberg, beat poet, singer-songwriter and member of the legendary Fugs died July 12 at 86. Harvey Pekar, author of American Splendor and many other works, left us at age 70 today.

What a loss. See:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/arts/music/13kupferberg.html

http://mollymew.blogspot.com /

Pure Evil! - More G8-20 Horrors

John Pruyn, a 57 year old amputee was brutally attacked by police while watching the demonstration. Of all the attacks, this is the most cowardly and cruel. Anyone that would do this is evil, through and through.

In came a line of armoured police, into an area the city had promised would be safe for peaceful demonstrations during the summit. They closed right in on John and his daughter and the two others and ordered them to move. Pruyn tried getting up and he fell, and it was all too slow for the police.



As Sarah began pleading with them to give her father a little time and space to get up because he is an amputee, they began kicking and hitting him. One of the police officers used his knee to press Pruyn’s head down so hard on the ground, said Pruyn in an interview this July 4 with Niagara At Large, that his head was still hurting a week later.



Accusing him of resisting arrest, they pulled his walking sticks away from him, tied his hands behind his back and ripped off his prosthetic leg. Then they told him to get up and hop, and when he said he couldn’t, they dragged him across the pavement, tearing skin off his elbows , with his hands still tied behind his back. His glasses were knocked off as they continued to accuse him of resisting arrest and of being a “spitter,” something he said he did not do. They took him to a warehouse and locked him in a steel-mesh cage where his nightmare continued for another 27 hours.

See this account for further information

Thanks to Dr Dawg for this story

Buy Local Week - Voluntary vs Mandatory

July 1-7 was "Buy Local Week" in many communities in Ohio and across the nation.
Buying local promotes not only economic self-sufficiency but political self-determination.

Voluntary purchasing of local products or from local merchants unfortunately cannot be coupled with mandatory purchases by municipalities or states of local products or from local merchants. Preferential treatment against big box stores or transnational corporations violates the 14th amendment to the constitution the moment corporations gained corporate constitutional “rights” in the 19th century.

Such assaults against economic self-sufficiency and political self-determination will continue forever until corporate “personhood” is eliminated. The Supreme Court over the last century granted corporations 1st, 4th, 5th and other constitutional amendment protections. The recent Citizens United vs FEC decision permitting corporations first amendment “rights” to invest money from corporate treasuries for political expenditures is merely the latest attack on what’s left of our democracy.

Move to Amend (movetoamend.org) seeks to change the US Constitution to abolish corporate personhood. Corporations are not people. As a member of its national Steering Committee, I invite anyone interested in supporting this cause to join over 85,000 Americans who have signed up to join the effort.

Vancouver Statement of Support for Toronto G8/G20 Arrestees

Background

We, a broad-based network of Vancouver civil society organizations and individuals, call for the immediate release of all those currently being held as part of the G8/G20 Summit police operations, and for all charges against community organizers to be dropped.

Long-time organizers, many of whom were pre-emptively arrested before the protests even began, are being particularly targeted; all must be freed immediately.

The government wants to have the power to crack down on dissent because the G8/G20 policies are going to create it.

While G8/G20 leaders met behind a steel cage and an unprecedented 1-billion dollar police state operation, on Saturday June 26th and Sunday June 27th, we witnessed police violence in the city of Toronto on a scale never before experienced. Pre-emptive arrests and mass roundups led to a total of nearly 1000 people arrested, the largest number in any protest in Canadian history. This weekend revealed to us all the daily violence of police and prisons as they are experienced every day for Indigenous communities, people of colour, low income neighbourhoods, street-involved youth, queer and trans people.

According to news reports, video, and firsthand accounts, protest participants, journalists, and random passersby experienced indiscriminate arrests, police beatings that led to broken bones and hospitalizations, illegal searches and seizures, threats of gang rape, physically invasive body cavity “searches” conducted on young women by male officers, lack of food, water, adequate heating or medical care for serious injuries, denial of access to legal council, and extended random detentions. Several community organizers were pre-emptively arrested while asleep in their beds and were nowhere near the protests.

Pre-emptive arrests and mass roundups are indicative of a heightened Orwellian police state seeking to justify a bloated security budget. In addition to freeing those currently detained and dropping all charges, an impartial public inquiry into the conduct of the police is essential.

Tens of thousands of labour, anti war, feminist, migrant justice, Indigenous rights, anarchist, environmental justice, anti-oppression, anti capitalist, socialist, student, and community-based activists took to the streets to stand up to the criminal policies of the G8/G20. The reasons they did so – Indigenous self determination; environmental justice; a world free of militarization; income equity and community control over resources; migrant justice; gender, queer, disability, and reproductive rights – are just as relevant today and tomorrow as they were this past weekend.

The Harper government knows that the new G8/G20 austerity measures are bound to cause unrest, and seeks to quell public dissent in advance by increasing draconian state powers.

This was the largest security operation in Canadian history, and the largest bill for summit security yet. To put the security costs in context: The Pittsburgh G20 Summit security budget was 30 million dollars in 2009. In Toronto, 1 billion was spent to keep the people of Canada under tight police control as world leaders decided to let banks off scot-free and steal from the public instead.

As the lessons of history show us, dissent is expected given the goals and outcomes of G8/G20 meetings: further erosion of basic rights, and increased divide between rich and poor via austerity measures. Police PR and media attempt to distract us from the real violence: cutting deficits in half while letting banks off the hook.

Naomi Klein writes, “How else can we interpret the G20’s final communiqué, which includes not even a measly tax on banks or financial transactions, yet instructs governments to slash their deficits in half by 2013. This is a huge and shocking cut, and we should be very clear who will pay the price: students who will see their public educations further deteriorate as their fees go up; pensioners who will lose hard-earned benefits; public-sector workers whose jobs will be eliminated. And the list goes on. These types of cuts have already begun in many G20 countries including Canada, and they are about to get a lot worse.”

The G8/G20 countries and their criminal corporations manufacture most of the weapons on the planet, profit from war, subsidize oil corporations such as BP, and are responsible for displacing millions from their homes and lands into poverty each year.

The government is being heavily criticized from all sides both for the violent policies of the G8/G20 and for this unprecedented security budget that turned Toronto into a rights-free zone. The government wants to deflect blame onto those who stood up to protect communities from the daily violence of G8/G20 policies. We stand in support of all of the brave people who protested the G8/G20 in Toronto, including the organizers being targeted via pre-emptive and targeted arrests, who are our allies and friends.

As we saw in the streets of Toronto, in preventative arrests of respected long-time organizers, and in mass roundups and police violence, the state wants to expand its power against the people. The government is targeting community organizers, including several people of colour. These targeted arrests and politically motivated, malicious charges are intended to make us afraid to speak up, and to silence the dissent the state knows will follow from the undemocratic decisions and austerity measures passed at the G20 meetings that will affect us all.

VANCOUVER STATEMENT OF SUPPORT FOR TORONTO G8/G20 ARRESTEES

· We call for the immediate release of all those being held, most notably of the much-loved and nationally respected community organizers who are being targeted by politically motivated, pre-emptive, and malicious arrests.

· We call for all these politically motivated charges against long-time organizers to be dropped immediately.

· Police state tactics such as pre-emptive arrests, targeted arrests, and mass roundups, seek to quash dissent against G8/G20 policies that affect us all; Vancouver stands in support with all those being held in Toronto.

Statements of Support:

Ian Angus, Professor of Humanities, former Director of Canadian Studies at Simon Fraser University, author of books on Canadian political culture A Border Within (1997) and Identity and Justice (2009):

“Canada is unravelling. The social and economic security net that was constructed by the struggles of working people and community organizations is being dismantled by the neo-liberal global economy that the G8/G20 represents. Homelessness, unemployment and marginalization are on the increase. Canadian society wants to be able to debate these matters, to have full information available to them, and to be able to present their views to the wider public. Without such a national and international debate, citizens are held captive by the private interests of wealthy corporations. The role of the police in this situation is significant. Recent events in Toronto suggest that the police are acting solely to protect the agenda of the wealthy few and the Harper government that is their tool. Canadians must stand together with their international allies to oppose the use of police repression to silence the exploration of alternative socio-economic forms and policies.”

Rita Wong, Writer and Associate Professor, Emily Carr University:

“These arbitrary mass arrests are unconstitutional. Furthermore, mass roundups and pre-emptive arrests serve a very unethical political purpose: to deflect attention from the systematic and widespread violence caused by the G20 policy decisions, which aim to slash public, social, educational, and health infrastructure around the world instead of holding the private financial sector responsible for its own errors and corruption. Those being held should be immediately released, and the focus of our attention should be to refuse the damage that the G20 attempts to inflict on democratic public spaces and networks.”

Dr. Stephen Collis, Professor, Simon Fraser University:
“The pattern post economic crisis is becoming clear—not a move away from a failing neoliberalism, but an unprecedented extension of its policies: privatization and cuts; meet any dissent with billy clubs, pre-emptive arrests and mass roundups. What we must do is just as clear: resist with all our might; stand together in solidarity. Free all Toronto G20 arrestees now!”

Charles Demers, Author of Vancouver Special and Comedian:
“The same government that pleads powerlessness and poverty when it comes to saving our environment, looking after retirees or ensuring that our health and education needs are met seems to discover new virility and incredibly deep pockets when it comes to cracking heads in defense of the most powerful people in the world. It's a shame.”

Dr. Dave Diewert, Streams of Justice (a faith-based social justice group in Vancouver), former Graduate Professor of Theology:
"The death of democracy is upon us. The brutal criminalization of dissent and the vicious police assault on protestors at the G8/20 reveals how state-sanctioned violence is employed to protect the ruling elite from hearing the legitimate concerns of people whose lives are deeply impacted by decisions made behind the steel fence. When a massive security apparatus aggressively shields the leaders from the people, and punishes them for attempting to make their voices heard, we have an untenable political system.”

Endorsed by: Brad Cran, poet laureate of Vancouver; Council of Canadians (Delta/Richmond chapter); Vancouver Status of Women; Ian Angus, Professor of Humanities, former Director of Canadian Studies at Simon Fraser University, author of books on Canadian political culture A Border Within (1997) and Identity and Justice (2009); Jerry Zaslove, Professor and founding faculty member of Simon Fraser University, Meredith Quartermain, award-winning BC poet; Gillian Jerome, Professor at University of British Columbia and award-winning author; Samir Gandesha, Professor and Graduate Chair of Humanities at SFU; Anthony Fenton, Independent Journalist and member, Canadian Freelance Union; Larissa Lai, Professor at the University of British Columbia and award-winning author, Stephen Collis, SFU Professor and award-winning poet, Dave Diewert, Streams of Justice organizer and former Graduate Professor of Theology; , Jeff Derksen, SFU Professor, critic, and award-winning poet, Simon Fraser University Teaching Support Staff Union(TSSU) Social Justice Committee; Rita Wong, Professor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and award-winning poet,Mark Leier, Professor of History at SFU, Charles Demers, Author and Comedian, Sid Shniad of Independent Jewish Voices BC, Clint Burnham, Professor at Simon Fraser University, Peter Quartermain, Emeritus Professor of English, University of British Columbia

None of us is free until all of us are free!

For more info, email: vansolidarity@gmail.com

How you can help: Support the Toronto 1000: Till every last one is free and all charges are dropped.

Please send individual and group endorsements and short statements of support to: vansolidarity@gmail.com
Please include titles or institutional affiliations, and indicate group or individual endorsement where appropriate

You can send bail/legal support funds via paypal by clicking on the 'support us!' link at the bottom right of this page: http://g20.torontomobilize.org/

Short video: David Cobb on Abolishing Corporate Personhood

This was produced at the US Social Forum last week in Detroit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocKsGNLjMVk

Declaration of Independence from Corporate Rule

Ohio Speaking Tour of David Cobb
(Executive Committee Member, Move to Amend; Program on Corporations Law & Democracy (POCLAD) principal; Green Party Presidential Candidate, 2004)
Cobb will discuss the growing national movement to amend the constitution to abolish corporate personhood and create real democracy

Dates: June 28 – July 3
Monday, June 28 / Youngstown
Tuesday, June 29 / Columbus
Wednesday, June 30 / Athens
Thursday, July 1 / Wooster
Friday, July 2 / Cleveland
Saturday, July 3 / Akron

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Monday, June 28: Youngstown
7:00 PM, Talk, Lemon Grove Café, 122 W. Federal St.
Contact: Jacob Harver, 330-301-0282, jacob@lemongrovecafe.com

Tuesday, June 29: Columbus
7:00 PM, Talk, First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus, 93 W. Weisheimer Rd
Lodging in Columbus
Contacts: Doug Todd, dougsftc@yahoo.com; Karen Hansen, klh.ohio@gmail.com; Michael Greenman, 614-898-5825, mgreenman@wowway.com

Wednesday, June 30: Athens
7:00 PM, Talk, Christ-the-King Church, 75 Stewart St.
Contacts: John Howell, 740-592-5789, howell@frognet.net; Dick Hogan, 740-664-4028, greenfirecenter@gmail.com

Thursday, July 1: Wooster
7:00 PM, Talk, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 3186 Burbank Rd.
Contact: Dave Sears, 330-262-WNET (9638), RenDave@raex.com

Friday July 2: Cleveland
7:00 PM, Talk, Unitarian Universalist Society, 2728 Lancashire Rd., Cleveland Heights
Contacts: Lois Romanoff, 216-231-2170, loisromanoff@gmail.com; Greg Coleridge, 330-928-2301 gcoleridge@afsc.org

Saturday July 3: Akron
10:00 AM, Talk, Maple Valley Branch Public Library, 1187 Copley Rd., Akron
Contact: Mary Nichols-Rhodes, 330-957-6167, pdaohio@gmail.com; Greg Coleridge, 330-928-2301, gcoleridge@afsc.org