A Public Forum on and Fundraiser for Haiti
Sunday, July 31, 2011, 1:30-4pm Southern California Library, 6120 S. Vermont Avenue, LA 90044
Chaired by Margaret Prescod, host of “Sojourner Truth” on KPFK, Women of Color/GWS Updates and Reports on:
childcare lwheelchair accessible l Spanish translation Called by the Haiti Working Group/LAKPFK Pacifica radio 90.7FM is the media sponsor Co-sponsors to date: Alexandria House; Every Mother is a Working Mother Network; Global Women’s Strike/LA; Haiti Action Committee; North East LA Radical Neighbors; Women of Color in GWS Endorsers to date: Blase and Theresa Bonpane, Directors Office of the Americas; CALIF; DCFS Give Us Back Our Children; International Action Center/LA; Pat Alviso, Jeff Merri ck, Rossana and Arturo Cambron, Military Family Members;Topanga Peace Alliance For info 323-276-9833 l [email protected]For more information on supporting the Haitian grassroots: www.haitisolidarity.netwww.haitiemergencyrelief.org, www.globalwomenstrike.net * * * Un Foro Público y Recaudador defondos para Haití Domingo, Julio 31, 2011, 1:30-4pmSouthern California Library, 6120 S. Vermont Avenue, LA 90044 Danny Glover, Actor y Activista Pierre Labossiere, Co-fundador del Comité Acción de Haití Robert Roth, Miembro de Junta del Fondo de Alivio de Emergencia de Haití Lidereibugu Garifuna Ensemble Tamborero & Baile Presidido por Margaret Prescod, anfitrión de “Sojourner Truth” en KPFK, Mujeres de Color/GWS Actualizaciones e Informes en:
guarderia l accesible a silla de ruedas l traducción a Español Llamado por el Grupo de Trabajo Haití /LA KPFK Pacifica radio 90.7FM como patrocinador de medios Co-patrocinado por de momento: Alexandria House; Every Mother is a Working Mother Network; GlobalWomen’s Strike/LA; Haiti Action Committee; North East LA Radical Neighbors: Women of Color in GWS.Endosantes: Blase and Theresa Bonpane, Directors Office of the Americas; CALIF; DCFS Give Us Back Our Children; International Action Center/LA; Pat Alviso, Jeff Merrick, Rossana and Arturo Cambron, Military Family Members;Topanga Peace Alliance. Para info 323-276-9833 l [email protected]Para más información de como apoyar la gente de base Haitiana: www.haitisolidarity.netwww.haitiemergencyrelief.org, www.globalwomenstrike.net This was sent to us from ActionLA and a few of us where going to be attending some of the workshops. See some of you there maybe?
------------------------------------------------------- HELP BUILD AND STRENGTHEN YOUR MOVEMENT BY ATTENDING: Artful Activism & Effective Organizing for Human Rights 3 DAYS OF FREE WORKSHOPS (come to part or all) Friday, June 24, through Sunday, June 26 *sponsored by: Martin Luther King Coalition* for Jobs, Justice and Peace <http://www.mlkcoalitionforjobsjusticeandpeace.org/> Daytime workshops held at: Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research 6120 South Vermont Avenue Los Angeles CA 90044 Evening events held at: Kwazi’s House Echo Park *SUPPORT A GREEN PLANET - IF POSSIBLE BRING EATING AND DRINKING CULTERY* *THIS EVENT IS WHEELCHAIR ACESSIBLE AND DISABILITY AFFIRMATIVE. * * IF YOU HAVE ANY SPECIFIC ACCOMODATIONS, PLEASE CONTACT US * CALL 213.250.3986 OR 213.884.5190 FOR DIRECTIONS SCHEDULE FOR THE 3 DAY WORKSHOPS Friday, June 24 10:00 am-4:00 pm: SO CA LIBRARY Advanced Strategy & Creative Tactics Intensive for Artful Activism Boston’s “Shield, Sword & Offer Strategy” for Post-Foreclosure Eviction Protection and Buy-Back 6:00 PM-9:00 pm: Location Kwazi’s in Echo Park Community-Building Potluck w/ Victory Stories from Around the Country Saturday Saturday, June 25 10:00 AM-12:30 AM: SO CA LIBRARY Art Track: Giant Banner Building 12:30 PM-1:30 PM: SO CA LIBRARY Lunch (POTLUCK) Roundtable: Building A Movement That Makes a Difference in Peoples’ Lives 1:30 PM-3:30 PM: SO CA LIBRARY§ Intro to Creative Tactics: The New ART of Organizing (Bill Moyer) The Boston Strategy: Sword & Shield 3:30 PM-6:30PM: SO CA LIBRARY Art Track: Drumming for Demonstrations, and The New “Flash Mob” Propaganda Technique (Design and implementation, EXPERIENCES TO DATE) Organizing Track: Sword & Shield (Fighting the Corporations and Banks, defending our communities 6:30 PM-7:30 PM: ***Kwazi’s in Echo Park POTLUCK DINNER WITH REFLECTION AND SHARING ABOUT LOCAL AND NATIONAL STRUGGLES 7:30-9:00 PM: ***Kwazi’s in Echo Park Talent Share: Music, Acting, Singing, Spoken Word and Stories About Creative APPROACHES TO Organizing Sunday, June 26 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM: SO CA LIBRARY Creative Tactics Track (DEVELOPING AND IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE NEW APPROACHES & TECHNIQUES FOR THE STRUGGLES IN FRONT OF US) The Boston Strategy: Sword & Shield ( CONTINUED) 10:00 am-1:00 pm: SO CA LIBRARY Art Track: using Giant Helium Powered SIGNS & Overpass Banner Build, Planning an L.A FLASH MOB ACTION Organizer Track: APPROACHES TO Campaign Planning, Leading Mass Meetings AND ACTIONS 1:00 PM-2:00 PM: SO CA LIBRARY WORKING LUNCH (POTLUCK): PLANNING FOR ROLE PLAY 2:00 PM-3:30 PM: SO CA LIBRARY ROLE PLAY ACIVITIES: THINKING-ON-YOUR-FEET USING WHAT WE’VE LEARNED 3:30 PM – 4:00 PM: SO CA LIBRARY CLEAN-UP, HOB-NOBBING BIO SKETCHES Bill Moyer (the political artist-activist, not Bill Moyers the journalist!) is the Executive Director and co-founded the Backbone Campaign in 2003. Bill has had a dual and intersecting path as both an activist and artist. Bill's involvement with social change work stretches back to the 80's, when as a student he was deeply involved in the anti-nuclear movement and the anti-interventionist movement, lived at Big Mountain to assist Dineh elders refusing to relocate off their traditional land, and attended the Institute for Social Ecology. Bill also brings his background as percussionist and sound designer to his political work, applying lessons of composition, performance, and pedagogy to the Backbone Campaign, a project he considers a kind of "theme and variation composition", helping a variety of community-based movements around the country to learn and use some of the new organizing techniques of this period. An essential aspect of this is the integration of effective political art and novel communication techniques into the organizing process. Community Organizer Steve Meacham of City Life/Vida Urbana is fighting on the frontlines of the foreclosure crisis. Meacham and his colleagues at City Life employ a community organizing strategy they call “the Shield and the Sword”. The "Shield" is a strategy of legal defense: teaching City Life members about their rights under the law, plus providing access to volunteer legal assistance. The "sword" is a public relations strategy, where City Life organizes protests in front of banks, and eviction blockades in front of people's homes. For these protests, City Life tries to attract as much media attention as possible, trying to draw public scrutiny towards what they argue are unfair banking and eviction practices in their community. "We find that the two [strategies] work extremely well in combination," says Meacham. City Life/Viva Urbana has had impressive success in a unique cooperative campaign which has returned ownership of bank-foreclosed properties back to the original homeowners. They feel that organizing techniques used in this effort can be successfully applied to many other issues and struggles.A major goal of this workshop is to build networks between various local struggles, and to promote a general exchange of skills and methods between serious local activists around the country. ONE IMAGINATION presents: BREAK THE SILENCE in downtown Long Beach, CA. Featured Artist: CANELA NEGRA Our four year anniversary is coming up and we want you to be a part of it! Meet old face and new as we reminisce on memories and look forward to building new ones. First timers highly encouraged! Thursday, May 26, 2011 (and every last Thursday of the month) 7-10PM, sign-ups begin at 6:30PM. Please arrive early to guarantee slot. Email [email protected] for more information. Also featuring: Sumiko Braun: Featured in this video is Sumiko Braun, a hip hop/spoken word artist involved with The CollectiV and One Imagination. http://oneimagination.blogspot.com http://www.sumikobraun.com and WhiteNoise: Commericals: Here are the top 3 things YOU need to know about the Private Prison money scheme:
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Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law by Laura Sullivan October 28, 2010 Last year, two men showed up in Benson, Ariz., a small desert town 60 miles from the Mexico border, offering a deal. Glenn Nichols, the Benson city manager, remembers the pitch. "The gentleman that's the main thrust of this thing has a huge turquoise ring on his finger," Nichols said. "He's a great big huge guy and I equated him to a car salesman." What he was selling was a prison for women and children who were illegal immigrants. "They talk [about] how positive this was going to be for the community," Nichols said, "the amount of money that we would realize from each prisoner on a daily rate." But Nichols wasn't buying. He asked them how would they possibly keep a prison full for years — decades even — with illegal immigrants? "They talked like they didn't have any doubt they could fill it," Nichols said. That's because prison companies like this one had a plan — a new business model to lock up illegal immigrants. And the plan became Arizona's immigration law. Behind-The-Scenes Effort To Draft, Pass The Law . The law is being challenged in the courts. But if it's upheld, it requires police to lock up anyone they stop who cannot show proof they entered the country legally. When it was passed in April, it ignited a fire storm. Protesters chanted about racial profiling. Businesses threatened to boycott the state. Supporters were equally passionate, calling it a bold positive step to curb illegal immigration. But while the debate raged, few people were aware of how the law came about. NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry. Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, pictured here at Tea Party rally on Oct. 22, was instrumental in drafting the state's immigration law. He also sits on a American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) task force, a group that helped shape the law. The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them. Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce says the bill was his idea. He says it's not about prisons. It's about what's best for the country. "Enough is enough," Pearce said in his office, sitting under a banner reading "Let Freedom Reign." "People need to focus on the cost of not enforcing our laws and securing our border. It is the Trojan horse destroying our country and a republic cannot survive as a lawless nation." But instead of taking his idea to the Arizona statehouse floor, Pearce first took it to a hotel conference room. It was last December at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C. Inside, there was a meeting of a secretive group called the American Legislative Exchange Council. Insiders call it ALEC. It's a membership organization of state legislators and powerful corporations and associations, such as the tobacco company Reynolds American Inc., ExxonMobil and the National Rifle Association. Another member is the billion-dollar Corrections Corporation of America — the largest private prison company in the country. It was there that Pearce's idea took shape. "I did a presentation," Pearce said. "I went through the facts. I went through the impacts and they said, 'Yeah.'" Drafting The Bill The 50 or so people in the room included officials of the Corrections Corporation of America, according to two sources who were there. Pearce and the Corrections Corporation of America have been coming to these meetings for years. Both have seats on one of several of ALEC's boards. And this bill was an important one for the company. According to Corrections Corporation of America reports reviewed by NPR, executives believe immigrant detention is their next big market. Last year, they wrote that they expect to bring in "a significant portion of our revenues" from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that detains illegal immigrants. In the conference room, the group decided they would turn the immigration idea into a model bill. They discussed and debated language. Then, they voted on it. "There were no 'no' votes," Pearce said. "I never had one person speak up in objection to this model legislation." Four months later, that model legislation became, almost word for word, Arizona's immigration law. They even named it. They called it the "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act." "ALEC is the conservative, free-market orientated, limited-government group," said Michael Hough, who was staff director of the meeting. Hough works for ALEC, but he's also running for state delegate in Maryland, and if elected says he plans to support a similar bill to Arizona's law. Asked if the private companies usually get to write model bills for the legislators, Hough said, "Yeah, that's the way it's set up. It's a public-private partnership. We believe both sides, businesses and lawmakers should be at the same table, together." Nothing about this is illegal. Pearce's immigration plan became a prospective bill and Pearce took it home to Arizona. Campaign Donations Pearce said he is not concerned that it could appear private prison companies have an opportunity to lobby for legislation at the ALEC meetings. "I don't go there to meet with them," he said. "I go there to meet with other legislators." Pearce may go there to meet with other legislators, but 200 private companies pay tens of thousands of dollars to meet with legislators like him. As soon as Pearce's bill hit the Arizona statehouse floor in January, there were signs of ALEC's influence. Thirty-six co-sponsors jumped on, a number almost unheard of in the capitol. According to records obtained by NPR, two-thirds of them either went to that December meeting or are ALEC members. That same week, the Corrections Corporation of America hired a powerful new lobbyist to work the capitol. The prison company declined requests for an interview. In a statement, a spokesman said the Corrections Corporation of America, "unequivocally has not at any time lobbied — nor have we had any outside consultants lobby – on immigration law." At the state Capitol, campaign donations started to appear. Thirty of the 36 co-sponsors received donations over the next six months, from prison lobbyists or prison companies — Corrections Corporation of America, Management and Training Corporation and The Geo Group. By April, the bill was on Gov. Jan Brewer's desk. Brewer has her own connections to private prison companies. State lobbying records show two of her top advisers — her spokesman Paul Senseman and her campaign manager Chuck Coughlin — are former lobbyists for private prison companies. Brewer signed the bill — with the name of the legislation Pearce, the Corrections Corporation of America and the others in the Hyatt conference room came up with — in four days. Brewer and her spokesman did not respond to requests for comment. In May, The Geo Group had a conference call with investors. When asked about the bill, company executives made light of it, asking, "Did they have some legislation on immigration?" After company officials laughed, the company's president, Wayne Calabrese, cut in. "This is Wayne," he said. "I can only believe the opportunities at the federal level are going to continue apace as a result of what's happening. Those people coming across the border and getting caught are going to have to be detained and that for me, at least I think, there's going to be enhanced opportunities for what we do." Opportunities that prison companies helped create. Produced by NPR's Anne Hawke. Refined words near the crude oil towers
One Imagination was highlighted recently in a Los Angeles Times column written by Hector Tobar. Check it out! Thousands march to demand US immigration reform
By Paula Bustamante LOS ANGELES — Thousands of immigrants poured into the streets of Los Angeles on Sunday to demand that President Barack Obama fulfill his campaign promise to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants. "Legalization or no re-election!" chanted the demonstrators participating in protest on May Day protest, a holiday mostly ignored in the United States. Most were immigrants from Central America and Mexico demanding the immigration reform Obama has promised for some of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States to gain legal status. Organizers said 10,000 immigrants protested downtown, while the Los Angeles Police Department put the crowd's numbers at 3,500. Though leaders of the pro-immigration reform movement advocate for immigrant rights, they have largely stopped short of asking the Hispanic community to vote against the president and his fellow Democrats in the 2012 elections after Hispanics played a significant role in bringing Obama to the White House. "We all known that it is the Republicans who are blocking immigration reform and that a Republican administration would simply stall all our requests, so we cannot threaten right now that we will vote against Obama," said Javier Rodriguez of the March 25 Coalition. But Alfredo Gutierrez, a former Democratic state senator from Arizona, said Obama could not be counted on to enact the promised reforms. "We should deny our votes to Obama, a man who clearly is not sincere about his intentions," he told AFP. "We will not get anything from Obama. We just need his to stop the systematic deportation of children, students and parents, because it is destroying our community." Maricarmen, an undocumented Mexican-born woman who has lived in the United States for 10 years, blamed "American double standards." "We work hard. They say we don't have papers but we are employed and we pay taxes, just like any other citizen here." She said she wanted to get legalized so she could travel to Mexico to visit her family. "I live here to work and because I need to do so, I'm not robbing anybody," added the woman who only gave her first name, adding that she was working as a cashier at a supermarket. In the fiscal year that ended September 30 alone, the United States deported a over 392,000 unauthorized immigrants, a record. Thousands more protesters marched in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in support of immigrant and worker rights, according to estimates provided by local media. Milwaukee saw its congenial political culture change after Governor Scott Walker introduced a proposal in February to strip unions of collective bargaining power. The bill sparked huge protests and led 14 Democratic state senators to flee to neighboring Illinois in a futile attempt to stop its passage. Opponents of the changes say the measures seek to kill public sector unions, which tend to back Democrats. "This is an aggressive attack on the basic democratic process and a consolidation of corporate power," said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of the Milwaukee-based Voces de la Frontera, a group tasked with rallying labor membership among the region's growing Hispanic population. Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved. |
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