Speaking of which, the FBI has stepped up its surveillance of peaceful dissent ways unseen since, well, the last time the FBI fomented a national scandal through surveillence of peaceful dissent…
Author Archives: Josh Eidelson
The Iraqi Governing Council is shutting down an Arab television network because
Qubad Talabani, the council president’s son and spokesman, told CNN that the council does not consider al Arabiya’s reporting “an element of the free press,” but rather a “tool” for inciting violence and acts of terrorism.
I’m not sure how one would spin shutting down oppositionist media sources as a victory in the war on terror, or in the extension of democracy abroad…
Norman Solomon asks when the mainstream media accepted as catechism that the occupation of Iraq is advancing the War on Terror.
Tom Hayden gives his account of the FTAA resistance in Miami here.
The protest could easily have been contained by a handful of officers, or might have simply faded as the day ended. Instead, at approximately 5pm, the commanding officer summoned the activist lawyers to announce that those milling, waiting or sitting in the parking lot had become an “unlawful assembly” with three minutes to disperse. In addition, he said with a straight face, there was “intelligence” that some in the crowd had rocks. There was no evidence shared with regard to this secret intelligence and no rocks were seen in the events that followed…
Solnit and six others sat down suddenly on the sidewalk, holding their hands up in V-signs. A phalanx of 25 police closed in on them as we took photographs and notes from a few feet away. In moments the seven on the sidewalk were handcuffed and led away. More police were swarming everywhere now, overwhelming the remaining protestors by 10-to-one.
One block away, the dispersing crowd was walking backwards as more police marched on them with helmet visors down and guns and clubs drawn. By now five of my students had joined this retreating witness, all holding their hands over their heads and chanting “We are dispersing” again and again.
How could the police not notice how young they were, how utterly unthreatening, how innocent?
I moved alongside the advancing and retreating lines to take a photograph when I noticed that a policeman was aiming a shotgun straight at my chest. Fear leaped in me, then he pointed the weapon down. But a moment later he was looking down the barrel at me again. I was holding a camera, notebook and pen. Suddenly I found myself asking him, “Are you really pointing that fucking gun at me?”
After several months of community mobilization, Yale – New Haven Hospital has now agreed to remove most of liens it placed on the homes of those in New Haven unfortunate to be both poor and sick. This is a great step forward in the struggle for a Hospital that deals justly with its employees and its patients. Check out CCNE’s new report for more on the issue.
The Massachusetts Supreme Court just found denial of gay marriage unconstitutional. This is an incredible civil rights victory.
The Times reports on a new national clergy lobby designed to speak from a place of religious faith in calling for economic justice, civil liberties, and ethical foreign policy, and to disrupt the conservative monopoly on religion in political discourse:
“Clergy have to be careful not to rush in with solutions to big problems, but when they see gross injustice they have an obligation not to be silent,” [Sloane] Coffin said. “The arrogance and self-righteousness of the present administration are very dangerous. And silence by members of the clergy, in the face of such arrogance, is tantamount to betrayal of the Gospel or the Torah or the Koran.”
Several of the political group’s founders are from Midwestern and Southern states, including Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia, which Mr. Pennybacker called “battleground areas” in which moderate and progressive Christians have been losing their “political voice” to Christian conservatives.
Jenny Backus, a Democratic consultant working with the new group, said: “There’s been a concerted effort by Christian conservatives to question the faith of people who disagree with their positions in the same way that they question their patriotism. The Clergy Leadership Network will now be the amen corner for people of faith who express disagreement with the administration and the Christian Right.”
…”In many people’s minds the words `conservative’ and `liberal’ are firmly linked with positions on lifestyle issues,” Mr. Green said. “Within such a diverse coalition, these clergy undoubtedly have congregations with different views on gay rights and abortion. But they may be able to find common ground on issues like war and peace, social welfare and the need for jobs.”
Last night, incidentally, was the first meeting of Yale’s newly revived Jews for Justice group, also in part an effort to create a space for Jews on the left to articulate a social justice agenda supported by our Jewish tradition and our Jewish values, while providing a counterbalancing voice to those on this campus and nationally arguing that only hawkish views are authentically Jewish, or that only foreign policy should be a Jewish issue.
Dennis Kucinich has agreed to a date with the winner of an on-line contest here to select a first lady for the candidate. If you’re
a dynamic, out-spoken woman who was fearless in her desire for peace in the world and for universal single-payer health care and a full employment economy,
it’s not too late to sign up…
One of the headlines in today’s Wall Street Journal reads: “Yale Versus Yale.”
There are, of course – what with the number of perverse policies pursued by the leaders of this University – any number of struggles here which that could refer to – turns out that it’s the righteous work of several Yale Law students on behalf of victims of the debt-collection policies of the Yale – New Haven Hospital:
Since last spring, the hospital has been one of the prime focuses of a national outcry over hospital billing practices. An article in The Wall Street Journal described the case of Quinton White, a 78-year-old widower who was still paying his wife’s Yale-New Haven bill 20 years after her death, largely because of high interest charges and fees. A short while later, the Service Employees International Union issued a report that profiled other people who were coping with the hospital’s collection tactics.
In response, Yale-New Haven forgave Mr. White’s debt, and it has recently abandoned its long-time collection law firm. Connecticut Gov. John Rowland signed legislation that slashes to 5% from 10% the amount of interest that hospitals in the state can tack onto their bills. Other states, including California and Illinois, began to seek remedies as well. Meanwhile, the American Hospital Association urged its 4,800 members across the country to adopt kinder, gentler collection methods, and its spokesman said Thursday that “every hospital has looked at what they’re doing,” and some “are asking some very tough questions.”
But such responses haven’t stopped the students at Yale Law School. They plan to argue that the hospital has garnisheed wages, imposed housing liens and initiated foreclosures on poor people’s homes despite the existence of a multimillion-dollar fund set up years ago to provide the poor with access to the hospital’s care that the hospital could have used. They have already filed three lawsuits, sent the hospital multiple “demand” letters and arranged for debts to be forgiven in several cases. They are also threatening to bring a class-action suit against Yale-New Haven.
More power to them.
Faced with a compelling narrative Tuesday – students come together in a broad and diverse coalition to demand that Yale cease redlining Fair Haven, and the head of ONHSA shows up to announce a dramatic change in University policy after years of organizing in the community for change, the YDN and the Reigister found a peculiar way of covering it: The YDN wrote a story about the student demand which downplayed the concession by the administration, and the Register wrote a story about the change in University policy which downplays the students’ demand for it…This is one of those cases where you would need at a minimum to read both stories to begin to get a sense of what’s going on here.
The YDN Editorial Board wrote another somewhat pretentious, somewhat convoluted, somewhat inane staff editorial today, this one predicated on the idea that over the past year, Yale has suddenly become a household name:
Television viewers who feel they “know” Yale through sound bites and snapshots projected on their screens may never take a closer look at the true Yale. For years, Yale has established itself as a silent doer, quietly pursuing its mission of providing a world-class education without being wooed by tempting offers of mass market exposure. Becoming a media darling may make it seem like we’re more flash than substance, and is likely to widen the gap between external and internal perceptions of the University.
One difference in internal and external perception of the University may be that only at Yale are there people who perceive Yale as a “silent doer” uninterested in advancing its own reputation or competing for the spotlight, untouched by the concerns of the market…
Yale Vice President for New Haven and State Affairs (currently serving also as VP for Finance and Administration) Bruce Alexander showed up today at a student press conference calling on him and President Levin to extend Yale Homebuyer Program to Fair Haven and thus cease red-lining that poor and predominately Latino community out of Yale’s full benefit package. Alexander committed himself and Levin to push the Corporation to extend the program, a huge victory for our student coalition (the Undergraduate Organizing Committee, the Pan-Ethnic Coalition, Dwight Hall’s Executive Committee, MEChA, Concerned Black Students, Yale Peace, SLAM, and Jews for Justice) and for the broad social movement that been fighting this fight already for years. Now we have to keep the pressure on to follow through, and to keep moving forward for greater justice in this community.
Josh Eidelson 