Today at a noon press conference, Dan Weeks made official his support for Rebecca Livengood’s campaign for Alderwoman of Ward One. This gives Ward One Democrats a great chance to work together to bring more students into the process and achieve change on the issues we care about over the next months.

As Obama observed, we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red states either:

Montana lawmakers overwhelmingly passed what its sponsor called the nation’s most strongly worded criticism of the federal Patriot Act on Friday, uniting politicians of all stripes. The resolution, which already galloped through the Senate and passed the House 88-12 Friday, must survive a final vote before it officially passes. . .The resolution, which does not carry the weight of a law but expresses the Legislature’s opinion, encourages Montana law enforcement agencies not to participate in investigations authorized under the Patriot Act that violate Montanans’ constitutional rights. It requests all libraries in the state to post a sign warning citizens that under the Patriot Act, federal agents may force librarians to turn over a record of books a person has checked out and never inform that citizen of the request. The resolution asks Montana’s attorney general to review any state intelligence information and destroy it if is not tied directly to suspected criminals. It also asks the attorney general to find out how many Montanans have been arrested under the Patriot Act and how many people have been subject to so-called “sneak and peaks,” or government searches of a person’s property without the person’s knowledge. . .

Graduate student employees in religious studies write to the administration:

Just over a year ago, more than 100 women, several from Religious Studies, committed civil disobedience to protest the structural inequalities facing women at universities. The Yale Daily News explicitly endorsed their demand for affordable child care as one important remedy. But this change must come as pasrt of a wholesale rethinking, from the top down, of the work that is necessary to transform Yale into an equitable and accessible institution.

Zach offers some associations with Rudy Giuliani other than “strong and effective leadership“:

I associate the name “Rudolph Giuliani” with the murder of Amadou Diallo. i associate that name with the murder of Patrick Dorismond and the illegal leak of his police record to the media in a disgusting attempt to excuse the crime and depict his life as worthless. i associate Rudolph Giuliani with all those pictures of Abner Louima’s brutalized face – his teeth broken from having the Plunger with which he was raped shoved down his throat – on that hospital bed. I also associate Rudy Giuliani with involvement in city workers’ union election fraud aimed at keeping leadership amenable to the Giuliani vision of the theme park, safe for suburbanite city in power. I associate Giuliani with police tanks in tompkins square, LES community gardens destroyed to sate the greed of wealthy developers, the neoliberal city ruled at gunpoint, racial formations policed with repeating pistols. I associate Giuliani with political corruption, technocratic, arrogant, power, questionable use of public resources for private enjoyment, armed police officers patrolling the halls of public high schools, massive payoffs. The first political demonstration i ever went to was the October 22, 1998 march against police brutality, down Broadway from Union Square to City Hall. Because of the experience of growing up in Giuliani’s New York, i started organizing. I wrote stuff in my school paper. I went to protests and marches. i wanted to get arrested and participate in civil disobedience. I tried to take over my student government. (Electorally, believe it or not.) I started an “anarchist collective.” And then i wound up in New Haven, and saw a related but subtly different form of urban imperialism at work.The post-9/11 hagiographic rewriting of Rudolph Giuliani does a great deal of violence, and this is a violence directed precisely against those who suffered so much from Giuliani’s policies the first time around.

Jack Newfield’s The Full Rudy provides a telling exploration of just how cruel – and counterproductive – Giuliani’s leadership style is.

Chinese Yale graduates students call attention to racism at Helen Hadley Hall:

Graduate student residents of Helen Hadley Hall protested alleged discrimination by University housing administrators at a press conference and rally yesterday. Students speaking at the rally, which was organized by the Graduate Employees and Students Organization, claimed that managers of the dormitory discriminate against Asian graduate students in their enforcement of housing regulations. After the rally, which drew about 75 people, a petition signed by approximately 80 people was delivered to managers of the building, who declined to comment on the issues presented at the press conference. At the rally, students voiced their concerns and dealings with the alleged discrimination. Qian Wan GRD ’06, a GESO organizer, said a manager has discriminated against Chinese students in her enforcement of rules about posters in the dormitory. When posters with the same message in English and Chinese were posted in the building as a test of the policy, Wan said only the Chinese-language posters were taken down. “Many Asian students, in particular Chinese, have found that the manager here is discriminating,” Wan said. “She has absolute power in the building.”…Xiaoye Li GRD ’07 said dormitory rules prohibiting individuals from having overnight guests stay for more than three nights were applied differently to Chinese and non-Chinese residents. Li said the parents of a non-Chinese resident in Helen Hadley lived with her for two weeks without interference from the dormitory manager. “Our Chinese students never feel this type of leniency,” Li said.

My piece in today’s YDN on why Chuck Pennacchio’s progressive approach on choice, not Bob Casey’s conservatism, is the right way to take on Santorum is on-line here:

Menitove is right to observe that the Democrats are losing the votes of Americans who express agreement with their economic policy but disagreements over so-called “social issues.” The brilliance of the Republican strategy, as Thomas Frank has argued, is in reframing issues like abortion or marriage rights as aesthetic class struggles between the values of “liberal elites” and regular Americans. Beating that strategy back requires talking candidly about America’s deepening class divide and offering progressive economic alternatives that too many Democrats — cowed by charges of “class warfare” or fear of sacrificing corporate donations — have refused to suggest. It also requires making a better case for equal rights and personal choice and against the extremism of a party whose platform would have us constitutionalize bans on abortion and gay adoption.

No Democrat, not even Gov. Bob Casey’s son, can outflank the party of Santorum and Bush on dedication to stripping women of their right to choose. What anti-choice Democrats can do is alienate scores of Democratic-leaning voters, particularly in Pennsylvania’s suburban swing counties, just as Ron Klink did in his failed race against Santorum five years ago. And they can further set back the work of progressive Democrats in winning the support of the majority of Americans who are personally anxious about abortion but opposed to its restriction. Pennsylvanians know that the single best way to return women’s wombs to the control of the state is to elect a Senate that will put up no resistance to Bush’s extremist nominees — judges equally committed to eroding the Democratic values Casey supports, like rights at work, and the ones he doesn’t, like the right to choose. And they know — and will be reminded for the next year and a half — that no one would work harder to get those judges onto the bench than Rick Santorum. What Pennsylvanians need is a Democratic candidate who will make the case for why those appointments would be a disaster.

Read more about Pennacchio in the Inquirer piece here.

Elections in Zimbabwe:

Zimbabweans formed long queues outside polling stations today as voting took place in elections most observers expect will be rigged in favour of President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party. Despite light rain, residents of the capital, Harare, started gathering at the polls up to three hours before they opened. There were some delays as electoral officials completed last-minute preparations under the watchful eye of police. Mr Mugabe was confident as he turned up to vote in a poor Harare suburb, accompanied by his wife, Grace, and young son Chatunga. “It’s going to be a victory for us – by how much, well, that is what we will see,” he said. The leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Morgan Tsvangirai, also said he was confident of victory, as he cast his vote in a primary school in an upmarket part of Harare. “The people will speak today and I am hoping that the outcome will be an MDC victory. I have no doubts about that,” he said. “We are not happy with the way the electoral playing field has been organised, and I think we all agree that, on all benchmarks, this is not going to be a free and fair election.” At stake today are 120 seats in parliament. A further 30 are appointed by Mr Mugabe, giving his Zanu-PF a headstart over the MDC.

Terri’s Schiavo’s ordeal is over. Zichronah livrachah.

Not dark yet, but it’s getting there:

A report backed by 1,360 scientists from 95 countries – some of them world leaders in their fields – today warns that the almost two-thirds of the natural machinery that supports life on Earth is being degraded by human pressure.
The study contains what its authors call “a stark warning” for the entire world. The wetlands, forests, savannahs, estuaries, coastal fisheries and other habitats that recycle air, water and nutrients for all living creatures are being irretrievably damaged. In effect, one species is now a hazard to the other 10 million or so on the planet, and to itself. “Human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted,” it says. The report, prepared in Washington under the supervision of a board chaired by Robert Watson, the British-born chief scientist at the World Bank and a former scientific adviser to the White House, will be launched today at the Royal Society in London.

Nathan on today’s decision by the Supremes:

In a close 5-4 decision (O’Connor the positive swing vote on this one), the Supreme Court held today that a coach complaining of violations by Birmingham public schools of Title IX rules requiring equality in womens’ sports was protected against retaliation for his charges. Title IX is silent on whether a whistleblower who has not suffered direct harm themselves have a right to sue for such retaliation. However, the court explained that any time a law prohibits discrimination, a person speaking out on the existence of such discrimination — even if the initial discrimination was not aimed at them — have themselves suffered discrimination if any retaliation then occurs. This is a major victory for whistleblowers, since it announces a principle that those witnessing illegal activity need not wait for direct harm to themselves to act…Such witnesses are often the best people to help enforce laws, because they are in a better position to monitor social harm than government agencies…How far this principle will be expanded to other areas of the law will be seen, but it does mean that the failure of a law to specifically protect whistleblowers does not automatically shut the court room door to a legal claim.

The long arm of the law:

Hours after a judge ordered that Terri Schiavo was not to be removed from her hospice, a team of state agents were en route to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted — but they stopped short when local police told them they would enforce the judge’s order, The Herald has learned. Agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told police in Pinellas Park, the small town where Schiavo lies at Hospice Woodside, on Thursday that they were on the way to take her to a hospital to resume her feeding. For a brief period, local police, who have officers at the hospice to keep protesters out, prepared for what sources called “a showdown.” In the end, the squad from the FDLE and the Department of Children & Families backed down, apparently concerned about confronting local police outside the hospice. “We told them that unless they had the judge with them when they came, they were not going to get in,” said a source with the local police. “The FDLE called to say they were en route to the scene,” said an official with the city police who requested anonymity. “When the sheriff’s department and our department told them they could not enforce their order, they backed off.”