Where Have All The Care Givers Gone?
by
Carl Jarvis
After twenty years out in the field, serving older blind and low
vision folks, and becoming closely acquainted with many age related
needs that our program is not equipped to be of assistance, I can
honestly say that the number one service provided
to the elderly is Lip Service.
Not only are the care-givers woefully under paid, there are not nearly enough
to provide the level of service needed. In addition, there is not
nearly the number of supervisors overseeing the quality of services
provided. There is not enough room to do more than give a couple of
examples, but they represent a serious lack in our care for our
Seniors.
Several years back, we visited an elderly woman who was a double
amputee as well as being visually impaired. She met us at the door on
a scooter. She later told us that the artificial limbs rubbed and
caused sores that did not heal well. As we entered the living room,
we noticed a woman seated in a recliner, watching TV, while eating a
sandwich. We just figured this was a relative or friend. "This is my
care giver", she said, introducing the woman by name. We spent nearly
two hours doing our initial intake, and the woman never stirred from
her seat. The home was not so clean and tidy that there was no work
to be done. On our second visit the care giver was not present. We
asked what sort of things was the woman supposed to do to help.
"She's supposed to clean and prepare meals in advance, so all I have
to do is to heat them up". So we wondered out loud if she was
satisfied with a helper who sat around all day.
"I don't dare complain. She takes me shopping, but she's not supposed
to do that. If I lose her I'd have a hard time getting groceries."
In another home, the poor client was being ordered about by her
helper. "You need to call the supervisor and have this woman removed
from your home. Can't you get someone else?" She shook her head,
"This is the third care giver I've had assigned to me this year. They
tell me if I'm so fussy, maybe I can just get along with no one."
This woman needed assistance every day, but she had someone only four
hours three days a week. And they were cutting that time in half.
As we age and become more child-like, heartless predators move in on
us, eager to help us out,...out of our life's savings.
Why is it when we talk about keeping our nation safe from Terror, that
we don't include our elderly citizens? How does building drones or
bullets keep Grandma from having her bank account raided, or Grandpa
from being bullied by some angry, under paid orderly? We ship
billions of our dollars around the world in the belief we are
promoting peace and democracy. Since the only people I see benefiting
from such generosity are the Billionaires, why don't we let them fend
for themselves for a few years while we spend those dollars helping
our own people?
Just a thought.
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Oregon rally demands $15 wage
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2015 07:55:40 -0800
Subject: Re: Oregon rally demands $15 wage
To: Charles Krugman <ckrugman@sbcglobal.net>, Blind Democracy
Discussion List <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Chuck,
Sorry we'll be missing you on the front line of this battle. Too
often in my past I stood on the sideline and watched, saying exactly
your words. But in my old age I've learned that silence actually
supports the Ruling Classes cause. Sure it's true that folks on fixed
low income will not benefit by increasing the wage minimum to $15 per
hour. But it's just as true that they will not benefit by holding
down the wage minimum. Why do we always mix issues? I do it all the
time, so I'm not pointing all my fingers at others. But let's decide
first if the wage minimum is currently a bare living wage. If we
agree it's not, let's get busy and fight to raise it to at least a
bare minimum. I submit that $15 is pretty much the bare bottom....and
I'm not talking about my little grand daughter's bare bottom.
Demanding and winning this long overdue raise is heavily opposed by
the folks who hold the purse strings. At best it is an uphill battle.
But if we win, and we can if *All of us support this increase, we will
then be in a far better position to go the next step. Do you believe
the Ruling Class will be generous to those on fixed and disabled
pensions, just because they have to go without medicines or shoes or
food? History shows us that it is pressure from the masses, not love
from on top that brings about reform.
Why not link the demand for a living minimum wage to the need to
provide free education to our children? Or what about the growing
Elder Abuse in our nation? Perhaps, along with lumping these issues
together, we need to demand an end to racial prejudice.
The fact is, we fight these inequities one at a time. I believe the
ball is rolling for gathering support to raise the minimum wage across
the Land. Please, Chuck, re-think your position and put your shoulder
to the task. You can do that while you are helping to mount the next
battle, the one for respectable living standards for disabled and
fixed low income people.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/28/15, Charles Krugman <ckrugman@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> and while they demand a $15 minimum wage they don't consider those on fixed
> incomes such as SSI or general relief or others on fixed incomes whose
> benefits aren't increased when the minimum wage goes up. When they consider
> these forgotten people at the lower end of the scale I might consider
> supporting such a minimum wage increase. This is one bandwagon I am not so
> ready to climb on to.
> Chuck
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carl Jarvis
> Sent: Friday, February 27, 2015 9:32 AM
> To: Blind Democracy Discussion List
> Subject: Oregon rally demands $15 wage
>
> Roger and All Who Struggle for Human Dignity,
>
> "Go, go, go Oregonians!"
> At 16 years of age, I hired on with a company dealing in TV antennas.
> The year was 1951 and rooftops all around Seattle were beginning to
> sprout those strange metal wracks. I was paid wage minimum. 75 cents
> per hour. Since that time the minimum wage has been raised many
> times. And each time the howl goes up by the business community,
> "We're going to be put out of business!"
> So what's happened to that dire prediction?
> But even as the minimum wage has been raised again and again, the poor
> keep getting poorer. That 75 cents an hour came to 30 dollars per
> week, and $1,560 per year. Thirty dollars a week doesn't appear to be
> much in today's marketplace, but you could rent a small apartment for
> $20 or $25 a month. A family of four could easily eat on $60 per
> month. If you are too young to remember, just check it out. $15 per
> hour is not going to derail Capitalism. In the short term it will
> help many poor and struggling folk. But in the long run the cost of
> living will continue climbing and eat up the short term gains.
> By the way, $15 per hour comes to $600 for a 40 hour week. Try
> renting an apartment in Seattle or Portland for $600 per month.
> But it's a start. But only a start. We need to begin educating the
> Working Class to use their collective power to change the "Bottom
> Line" from Profit to People First.
> Another thing to muddy up the waters, is the fact that America has
> only about 5% of the world's population. Raising our minimum wage
> must be accompanied by planning to raise the living standard around
> the globe. If we once again push through a higher minimum wage, but
> fail to follow through, we can be assured that in due time we will
> again be shopping for dinner in the local restaurant trash cans.
> And by the way, shame on our president for not backing a meaningful
> minimum wage.
> Doesn't he understand the meaning of the word, Leader?
>
> Carl Jarvis
>
>
> On 2/27/15, Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@aol.com> wrote:
>> http://socialistaction.org/oregon-rally-demands-15-wage/
>>
>>
>> Oregon rally demands $15 wage
>>
>> Published February 26, 2015. | By Socialist Action.
>> Feb. 2015 $15 Oregon
>>
>> By ANN MONTAGUE
>>
>> SALEM, Ore.—Hundreds of Oregonians came to Salem on Jan. 24 to rally and
>> march and demand a statewide $15 minimum wage. Organized by labor and
>> community groups, the event not only showcased how the movement has
>> expanded outside of Portland to the rest of the state but also the
>> growing passion to end poverty wages. Buses came from Portland and vans
>> arrived from southern Oregon.
>>
>> While most unions in Oregon endorsed the march, the Oregon School
>> Employee Association (OSEA) and Pineros y Campesinos Unidos Del Noroeste
>> (PCUN) turned out the most rank and file. The WalMart strikers from
>> Klamath Falls who are currently being harassed on the job also spoke at
>> the rally.
>>
>> The first speaker was Tom Chamberlain, president of the Oregon AFL-CIO,
>> and he clearly was inspired by the crowd to give an uncharacteristic
>> red-meat speech. He called out the labor commissioner for promoting the
>> bill for $12 and not $15 and railed on the Democratic governor and his
>> leader of the House and Senate, all of whom have opposed raising the
>> minimum wage.
>>
>> But the rally was really to support low-wage workers like the food
>> service worker at the Portland Zoo, the school bus driver, and the home
>> care worker who spoke to the rally about the dignity of her work and
>> ended by saying, "$13 is not a living wage, $14 is not a living wage,
>> $15 comes close, but we are worth more."
>>
>> After the rally, people took to the streets for a short march. About 150
>> marchers stayed for a meeting, with breakouts by geographic region to
>> plan next steps in their area.
>>
>> At the same time, more studies are being released and discussed in the
>> press about the effects that a $15 minimum wage would have on Oregon
>> communities. The University of Oregon Labor Education And Research
>> Center just released its 2014 Oregon Workforce Report, entitled, "The
>> High Cost Of Low Wages In Oregon." It states that over 400,000
>> Oregonians are employed in low-wage work.
>>
>> The part of the report that is getting the most media exposure reveals
>> that the state pays $1.75 billion a year in safety net assistance to
>> these low-wage workers and their families, in effect subsidizing
>> employers. Also, Lake Research Partners conducted a poll of likely
>> Oregon voters and found that 54% support increasing the current minimum
>> wage of $9.25 an hour to $15 an hour and adjusting for inflation annually.
>>
>> The major argument that the governor and other Democrats use to oppose
>> raising the minimum wage to $15 is what they call the "Benefit Cliff."
>> They claim the higher wage will mean workers will lose public benefits,
>> and therefore, raising wages would only hurt workers.
>>
>> The head of the Oregon Center For Public Policy (OCPP) came out with a
>> blistering attack on this policy, pointing out that a $15 increase would
>> mean real gains for workers. "Over half a million workers will see
>> bigger paychecks—extra money that will help their families get ahead."
>> He also tore apart the cry that workers would lose child-care subsidies,
>> stating that the program is so under-funded now that hardly any workers
>> receive the benefit. He called for raising the minimum wage to $15 and
>> increasing funding to the child-care assistance program.
>>
>> The goals of the statewide action were to bring together 15 Now chapters
>> to plan the next steps of the campaign, raise the visibility of the
>> movement , and bring in new layers of activists. Soon after the rally,
>> 15 Now received the endorsements of the United Steelworkers of Oregon
>> and USW local 8378, as well as the Lane County Central Labor Council
>> (Eugene/Springfield) and the University of Oregon Student Labor Action
>> Project (SLAP).
>>
>> In Portland, 15 Now was invited to do a workshop for the upcoming
>> Community Summit of several hundred community activists and Neighborhood
>> Association members.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Share this:
>>
>> Facebook1
>> Twitter3
>> Google
>> Tumblr
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Posted in Labor. | Tagged $15, 15 Now, labor, minimum wage, Oregon.
>>
>>
>>
>>
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From: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2015 07:55:40 -0800
Subject: Re: Oregon rally demands $15 wage
To: Charles Krugman <ckrugman@sbcglobal.net>, Blind Democracy
Discussion List <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Chuck,
Sorry we'll be missing you on the front line of this battle. Too
often in my past I stood on the sideline and watched, saying exactly
your words. But in my old age I've learned that silence actually
supports the Ruling Classes cause. Sure it's true that folks on fixed
low income will not benefit by increasing the wage minimum to $15 per
hour. But it's just as true that they will not benefit by holding
down the wage minimum. Why do we always mix issues? I do it all the
time, so I'm not pointing all my fingers at others. But let's decide
first if the wage minimum is currently a bare living wage. If we
agree it's not, let's get busy and fight to raise it to at least a
bare minimum. I submit that $15 is pretty much the bare bottom....and
I'm not talking about my little grand daughter's bare bottom.
Demanding and winning this long overdue raise is heavily opposed by
the folks who hold the purse strings. At best it is an uphill battle.
But if we win, and we can if *All of us support this increase, we will
then be in a far better position to go the next step. Do you believe
the Ruling Class will be generous to those on fixed and disabled
pensions, just because they have to go without medicines or shoes or
food? History shows us that it is pressure from the masses, not love
from on top that brings about reform.
Why not link the demand for a living minimum wage to the need to
provide free education to our children? Or what about the growing
Elder Abuse in our nation? Perhaps, along with lumping these issues
together, we need to demand an end to racial prejudice.
The fact is, we fight these inequities one at a time. I believe the
ball is rolling for gathering support to raise the minimum wage across
the Land. Please, Chuck, re-think your position and put your shoulder
to the task. You can do that while you are helping to mount the next
battle, the one for respectable living standards for disabled and
fixed low income people.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/28/15, Charles Krugman <ckrugman@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> and while they demand a $15 minimum wage they don't consider those on fixed
> incomes such as SSI or general relief or others on fixed incomes whose
> benefits aren't increased when the minimum wage goes up. When they consider
> these forgotten people at the lower end of the scale I might consider
> supporting such a minimum wage increase. This is one bandwagon I am not so
> ready to climb on to.
> Chuck
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carl Jarvis
> Sent: Friday, February 27, 2015 9:32 AM
> To: Blind Democracy Discussion List
> Subject: Oregon rally demands $15 wage
>
> Roger and All Who Struggle for Human Dignity,
>
> "Go, go, go Oregonians!"
> At 16 years of age, I hired on with a company dealing in TV antennas.
> The year was 1951 and rooftops all around Seattle were beginning to
> sprout those strange metal wracks. I was paid wage minimum. 75 cents
> per hour. Since that time the minimum wage has been raised many
> times. And each time the howl goes up by the business community,
> "We're going to be put out of business!"
> So what's happened to that dire prediction?
> But even as the minimum wage has been raised again and again, the poor
> keep getting poorer. That 75 cents an hour came to 30 dollars per
> week, and $1,560 per year. Thirty dollars a week doesn't appear to be
> much in today's marketplace, but you could rent a small apartment for
> $20 or $25 a month. A family of four could easily eat on $60 per
> month. If you are too young to remember, just check it out. $15 per
> hour is not going to derail Capitalism. In the short term it will
> help many poor and struggling folk. But in the long run the cost of
> living will continue climbing and eat up the short term gains.
> By the way, $15 per hour comes to $600 for a 40 hour week. Try
> renting an apartment in Seattle or Portland for $600 per month.
> But it's a start. But only a start. We need to begin educating the
> Working Class to use their collective power to change the "Bottom
> Line" from Profit to People First.
> Another thing to muddy up the waters, is the fact that America has
> only about 5% of the world's population. Raising our minimum wage
> must be accompanied by planning to raise the living standard around
> the globe. If we once again push through a higher minimum wage, but
> fail to follow through, we can be assured that in due time we will
> again be shopping for dinner in the local restaurant trash cans.
> And by the way, shame on our president for not backing a meaningful
> minimum wage.
> Doesn't he understand the meaning of the word, Leader?
>
> Carl Jarvis
>
>
> On 2/27/15, Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@aol.com> wrote:
>> http://socialistaction.org/oregon-rally-demands-15-wage/
>>
>>
>> Oregon rally demands $15 wage
>>
>> Published February 26, 2015. | By Socialist Action.
>> Feb. 2015 $15 Oregon
>>
>> By ANN MONTAGUE
>>
>> SALEM, Ore.—Hundreds of Oregonians came to Salem on Jan. 24 to rally and
>> march and demand a statewide $15 minimum wage. Organized by labor and
>> community groups, the event not only showcased how the movement has
>> expanded outside of Portland to the rest of the state but also the
>> growing passion to end poverty wages. Buses came from Portland and vans
>> arrived from southern Oregon.
>>
>> While most unions in Oregon endorsed the march, the Oregon School
>> Employee Association (OSEA) and Pineros y Campesinos Unidos Del Noroeste
>> (PCUN) turned out the most rank and file. The WalMart strikers from
>> Klamath Falls who are currently being harassed on the job also spoke at
>> the rally.
>>
>> The first speaker was Tom Chamberlain, president of the Oregon AFL-CIO,
>> and he clearly was inspired by the crowd to give an uncharacteristic
>> red-meat speech. He called out the labor commissioner for promoting the
>> bill for $12 and not $15 and railed on the Democratic governor and his
>> leader of the House and Senate, all of whom have opposed raising the
>> minimum wage.
>>
>> But the rally was really to support low-wage workers like the food
>> service worker at the Portland Zoo, the school bus driver, and the home
>> care worker who spoke to the rally about the dignity of her work and
>> ended by saying, "$13 is not a living wage, $14 is not a living wage,
>> $15 comes close, but we are worth more."
>>
>> After the rally, people took to the streets for a short march. About 150
>> marchers stayed for a meeting, with breakouts by geographic region to
>> plan next steps in their area.
>>
>> At the same time, more studies are being released and discussed in the
>> press about the effects that a $15 minimum wage would have on Oregon
>> communities. The University of Oregon Labor Education And Research
>> Center just released its 2014 Oregon Workforce Report, entitled, "The
>> High Cost Of Low Wages In Oregon." It states that over 400,000
>> Oregonians are employed in low-wage work.
>>
>> The part of the report that is getting the most media exposure reveals
>> that the state pays $1.75 billion a year in safety net assistance to
>> these low-wage workers and their families, in effect subsidizing
>> employers. Also, Lake Research Partners conducted a poll of likely
>> Oregon voters and found that 54% support increasing the current minimum
>> wage of $9.25 an hour to $15 an hour and adjusting for inflation annually.
>>
>> The major argument that the governor and other Democrats use to oppose
>> raising the minimum wage to $15 is what they call the "Benefit Cliff."
>> They claim the higher wage will mean workers will lose public benefits,
>> and therefore, raising wages would only hurt workers.
>>
>> The head of the Oregon Center For Public Policy (OCPP) came out with a
>> blistering attack on this policy, pointing out that a $15 increase would
>> mean real gains for workers. "Over half a million workers will see
>> bigger paychecks—extra money that will help their families get ahead."
>> He also tore apart the cry that workers would lose child-care subsidies,
>> stating that the program is so under-funded now that hardly any workers
>> receive the benefit. He called for raising the minimum wage to $15 and
>> increasing funding to the child-care assistance program.
>>
>> The goals of the statewide action were to bring together 15 Now chapters
>> to plan the next steps of the campaign, raise the visibility of the
>> movement , and bring in new layers of activists. Soon after the rally,
>> 15 Now received the endorsements of the United Steelworkers of Oregon
>> and USW local 8378, as well as the Lane County Central Labor Council
>> (Eugene/Springfield) and the University of Oregon Student Labor Action
>> Project (SLAP).
>>
>> In Portland, 15 Now was invited to do a workshop for the upcoming
>> Community Summit of several hundred community activists and Neighborhood
>> Association members.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Share this:
>>
>> Facebook1
>> Twitter3
>> Tumblr
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Posted in Labor. | Tagged $15, 15 Now, labor, minimum wage, Oregon.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Get Involved
>>
>>
>> Join Socialist Action
>> Donate to help support our work
>> Get email updates
>> Events
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Subscribe to Our Newspaper
>>
>>
>> JAN. 2014 p.1 jpegJAN. 2014 p. 12
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Subscribe Today
>>
>>
>>
>> Subscriptions to the monthly print edition of Socialist Action are
>> available for the following rates:
>>
>> - 12 month subscription for $20
>> - 24 month subscription for $37
>> - 6 month subscription for $10
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Learn More
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Email Updates
>>
>>
>>
>> Enter your email address to subscribe to our free e-mail Socialist
>> Action Newsletter. Also to receive notifcations of new web posts by email.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Learn More
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
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Friday, February 27, 2015
Oregon rally demands $15 wage
Roger and All Who Struggle for Human Dignity,
"Go, go, go Oregonians!"
At 16 years of age, I hired on with a company dealing in TV antennas.
The year was 1951 and rooftops all around Seattle were beginning to
sprout those strange metal wracks. I was paid wage minimum. 75 cents
per hour. Since that time the minimum wage has been raised many
times. And each time the howl goes up by the business community,
"We're going to be put out of business!"
So what's happened to that dire prediction?
But even as the minimum wage has been raised again and again, the poor
keep getting poorer. That 75 cents an hour came to 30 dollars per
week, and $1,560 per year. Thirty dollars a week doesn't appear to be
much in today's marketplace, but you could rent a small apartment for
$20 or $25 a month. A family of four could easily eat on $60 per
month. If you are too young to remember, just check it out. $15 per
hour is not going to derail Capitalism. In the short term it will
help many poor and struggling folk. But in the long run the cost of
living will continue climbing and eat up the short term gains.
By the way, $15 per hour comes to $600 for a 40 hour week. Try
renting an apartment in Seattle or Portland for $600 per month.
But it's a start. But only a start. We need to begin educating the
Working Class to use their collective power to change the "Bottom
Line" from Profit to People First.
Another thing to muddy up the waters, is the fact that America has
only about 5% of the world's population. Raising our minimum wage
must be accompanied by planning to raise the living standard around
the globe. If we once again push through a higher minimum wage, but
fail to follow through, we can be assured that in due time we will
again be shopping for dinner in the local restaurant trash cans.
And by the way, shame on our president for not backing a meaningful
minimum wage.
Doesn't he understand the meaning of the word, Leader?
Carl Jarvis
On 2/27/15, Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@aol.com> wrote:
> http://socialistaction.org/oregon-rally-demands-15-wage/
>
>
> Oregon rally demands $15 wage
>
> Published February 26, 2015. | By Socialist Action.
> Feb. 2015 $15 Oregon
>
> By ANN MONTAGUE
>
> SALEM, Ore.—Hundreds of Oregonians came to Salem on Jan. 24 to rally and
> march and demand a statewide $15 minimum wage. Organized by labor and
> community groups, the event not only showcased how the movement has
> expanded outside of Portland to the rest of the state but also the
> growing passion to end poverty wages. Buses came from Portland and vans
> arrived from southern Oregon.
>
> While most unions in Oregon endorsed the march, the Oregon School
> Employee Association (OSEA) and Pineros y Campesinos Unidos Del Noroeste
> (PCUN) turned out the most rank and file. The WalMart strikers from
> Klamath Falls who are currently being harassed on the job also spoke at
> the rally.
>
> The first speaker was Tom Chamberlain, president of the Oregon AFL-CIO,
> and he clearly was inspired by the crowd to give an uncharacteristic
> red-meat speech. He called out the labor commissioner for promoting the
> bill for $12 and not $15 and railed on the Democratic governor and his
> leader of the House and Senate, all of whom have opposed raising the
> minimum wage.
>
> But the rally was really to support low-wage workers like the food
> service worker at the Portland Zoo, the school bus driver, and the home
> care worker who spoke to the rally about the dignity of her work and
> ended by saying, "$13 is not a living wage, $14 is not a living wage,
> $15 comes close, but we are worth more."
>
> After the rally, people took to the streets for a short march. About 150
> marchers stayed for a meeting, with breakouts by geographic region to
> plan next steps in their area.
>
> At the same time, more studies are being released and discussed in the
> press about the effects that a $15 minimum wage would have on Oregon
> communities. The University of Oregon Labor Education And Research
> Center just released its 2014 Oregon Workforce Report, entitled, "The
> High Cost Of Low Wages In Oregon." It states that over 400,000
> Oregonians are employed in low-wage work.
>
> The part of the report that is getting the most media exposure reveals
> that the state pays $1.75 billion a year in safety net assistance to
> these low-wage workers and their families, in effect subsidizing
> employers. Also, Lake Research Partners conducted a poll of likely
> Oregon voters and found that 54% support increasing the current minimum
> wage of $9.25 an hour to $15 an hour and adjusting for inflation annually.
>
> The major argument that the governor and other Democrats use to oppose
> raising the minimum wage to $15 is what they call the "Benefit Cliff."
> They claim the higher wage will mean workers will lose public benefits,
> and therefore, raising wages would only hurt workers.
>
> The head of the Oregon Center For Public Policy (OCPP) came out with a
> blistering attack on this policy, pointing out that a $15 increase would
> mean real gains for workers. "Over half a million workers will see
> bigger paychecks—extra money that will help their families get ahead."
> He also tore apart the cry that workers would lose child-care subsidies,
> stating that the program is so under-funded now that hardly any workers
> receive the benefit. He called for raising the minimum wage to $15 and
> increasing funding to the child-care assistance program.
>
> The goals of the statewide action were to bring together 15 Now chapters
> to plan the next steps of the campaign, raise the visibility of the
> movement , and bring in new layers of activists. Soon after the rally,
> 15 Now received the endorsements of the United Steelworkers of Oregon
> and USW local 8378, as well as the Lane County Central Labor Council
> (Eugene/Springfield) and the University of Oregon Student Labor Action
> Project (SLAP).
>
> In Portland, 15 Now was invited to do a workshop for the upcoming
> Community Summit of several hundred community activists and Neighborhood
> Association members.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Share this:
>
> Facebook1
> Twitter3
> Google
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>
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> Posted in Labor. | Tagged $15, 15 Now, labor, minimum wage, Oregon.
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"Go, go, go Oregonians!"
At 16 years of age, I hired on with a company dealing in TV antennas.
The year was 1951 and rooftops all around Seattle were beginning to
sprout those strange metal wracks. I was paid wage minimum. 75 cents
per hour. Since that time the minimum wage has been raised many
times. And each time the howl goes up by the business community,
"We're going to be put out of business!"
So what's happened to that dire prediction?
But even as the minimum wage has been raised again and again, the poor
keep getting poorer. That 75 cents an hour came to 30 dollars per
week, and $1,560 per year. Thirty dollars a week doesn't appear to be
much in today's marketplace, but you could rent a small apartment for
$20 or $25 a month. A family of four could easily eat on $60 per
month. If you are too young to remember, just check it out. $15 per
hour is not going to derail Capitalism. In the short term it will
help many poor and struggling folk. But in the long run the cost of
living will continue climbing and eat up the short term gains.
By the way, $15 per hour comes to $600 for a 40 hour week. Try
renting an apartment in Seattle or Portland for $600 per month.
But it's a start. But only a start. We need to begin educating the
Working Class to use their collective power to change the "Bottom
Line" from Profit to People First.
Another thing to muddy up the waters, is the fact that America has
only about 5% of the world's population. Raising our minimum wage
must be accompanied by planning to raise the living standard around
the globe. If we once again push through a higher minimum wage, but
fail to follow through, we can be assured that in due time we will
again be shopping for dinner in the local restaurant trash cans.
And by the way, shame on our president for not backing a meaningful
minimum wage.
Doesn't he understand the meaning of the word, Leader?
Carl Jarvis
On 2/27/15, Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@aol.com> wrote:
> http://socialistaction.org/oregon-rally-demands-15-wage/
>
>
> Oregon rally demands $15 wage
>
> Published February 26, 2015. | By Socialist Action.
> Feb. 2015 $15 Oregon
>
> By ANN MONTAGUE
>
> SALEM, Ore.—Hundreds of Oregonians came to Salem on Jan. 24 to rally and
> march and demand a statewide $15 minimum wage. Organized by labor and
> community groups, the event not only showcased how the movement has
> expanded outside of Portland to the rest of the state but also the
> growing passion to end poverty wages. Buses came from Portland and vans
> arrived from southern Oregon.
>
> While most unions in Oregon endorsed the march, the Oregon School
> Employee Association (OSEA) and Pineros y Campesinos Unidos Del Noroeste
> (PCUN) turned out the most rank and file. The WalMart strikers from
> Klamath Falls who are currently being harassed on the job also spoke at
> the rally.
>
> The first speaker was Tom Chamberlain, president of the Oregon AFL-CIO,
> and he clearly was inspired by the crowd to give an uncharacteristic
> red-meat speech. He called out the labor commissioner for promoting the
> bill for $12 and not $15 and railed on the Democratic governor and his
> leader of the House and Senate, all of whom have opposed raising the
> minimum wage.
>
> But the rally was really to support low-wage workers like the food
> service worker at the Portland Zoo, the school bus driver, and the home
> care worker who spoke to the rally about the dignity of her work and
> ended by saying, "$13 is not a living wage, $14 is not a living wage,
> $15 comes close, but we are worth more."
>
> After the rally, people took to the streets for a short march. About 150
> marchers stayed for a meeting, with breakouts by geographic region to
> plan next steps in their area.
>
> At the same time, more studies are being released and discussed in the
> press about the effects that a $15 minimum wage would have on Oregon
> communities. The University of Oregon Labor Education And Research
> Center just released its 2014 Oregon Workforce Report, entitled, "The
> High Cost Of Low Wages In Oregon." It states that over 400,000
> Oregonians are employed in low-wage work.
>
> The part of the report that is getting the most media exposure reveals
> that the state pays $1.75 billion a year in safety net assistance to
> these low-wage workers and their families, in effect subsidizing
> employers. Also, Lake Research Partners conducted a poll of likely
> Oregon voters and found that 54% support increasing the current minimum
> wage of $9.25 an hour to $15 an hour and adjusting for inflation annually.
>
> The major argument that the governor and other Democrats use to oppose
> raising the minimum wage to $15 is what they call the "Benefit Cliff."
> They claim the higher wage will mean workers will lose public benefits,
> and therefore, raising wages would only hurt workers.
>
> The head of the Oregon Center For Public Policy (OCPP) came out with a
> blistering attack on this policy, pointing out that a $15 increase would
> mean real gains for workers. "Over half a million workers will see
> bigger paychecks—extra money that will help their families get ahead."
> He also tore apart the cry that workers would lose child-care subsidies,
> stating that the program is so under-funded now that hardly any workers
> receive the benefit. He called for raising the minimum wage to $15 and
> increasing funding to the child-care assistance program.
>
> The goals of the statewide action were to bring together 15 Now chapters
> to plan the next steps of the campaign, raise the visibility of the
> movement , and bring in new layers of activists. Soon after the rally,
> 15 Now received the endorsements of the United Steelworkers of Oregon
> and USW local 8378, as well as the Lane County Central Labor Council
> (Eugene/Springfield) and the University of Oregon Student Labor Action
> Project (SLAP).
>
> In Portland, 15 Now was invited to do a workshop for the upcoming
> Community Summit of several hundred community activists and Neighborhood
> Association members.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Share this:
>
> Facebook1
> Twitter3
> Tumblr
>
>
>
>
> Posted in Labor. | Tagged $15, 15 Now, labor, minimum wage, Oregon.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Get Involved
>
>
> Join Socialist Action
> Donate to help support our work
> Get email updates
> Events
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Subscribe to Our Newspaper
>
>
> JAN. 2014 p.1 jpegJAN. 2014 p. 12
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Subscribe Today
>
>
>
> Subscriptions to the monthly print edition of Socialist Action are
> available for the following rates:
>
> - 12 month subscription for $20
> - 24 month subscription for $37
> - 6 month subscription for $10
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Learn More
>
>
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> Email Updates
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> Enter your email address to subscribe to our free e-mail Socialist
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> Select Month February 2015 (11) January 2015 (10) December 2014 (12)
> November 2014 (11) October 2014 (9) September 2014 (6) August 2014
> (10) July 2014 (11) June 2014 (10) May 2014 (11) April 2014 (10)
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> Learn More
>
>
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> Pamphlets/Books
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> of today such as global warming, women's liberation, the Middle East and
> other subjects.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Learn More
>
>
>
>
>
> Socialist Action (U.S.): socialistaction@lmi.net | (510) 268-9429
>
> Socialist Action / Ligue pour l'Action socialiste (Canada):
> barryaw@rogers.com
>
> Copyright © 2015 Socialist Action. All Rights Reserved. Site Design by
> Lucid Digital Designs | Site Utilities
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
example of the People's peaceful power
The following from Liberty Underground, makes the point that People
Power can peacefully change the rules. My only caution is that we do
not really believe we've won the war, as the article states. We've
won an important battle, but the war continues so long as Corporate
Capitalism rules.
Carl Jarvis
*******
HOW THE NET NEUTRALITY WAR WAS WON
An article from Waging Nonviolence details how powerful activism, led
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, was responsible for yesterday's
ruling on net
neutrality.
"We don't like to occupy," said Kevin Zeese, an organizer with Popular
Resistance, the local activist group responsible for the occupation.
"It's a tactic
that we use very sparingly, but we decided the situation was urgent
enough that we had to do it in this case."
The occupation did not change the FCC's rulemaking notice, which was
already locked in at that point. But activists won one key concession
from the FCC:
Wheeler announced that during the period for public comments on the
FCC's proposed rules, he specifically wanted to hear if people thought
Title II was
the way to go.
"That was really amazing because before we occupied, we were told that
reclassification was off the table -- it was politically impossible and
would not
be considered," Zeese said. "But when they say it's politically
impossible, our job as activists is to make it politically doable."
The response was overwhelming. In the following months, 3.7 million
public comments were left on the FCC's website. More than 99 percent
of the comments
were in support of strong net neutrality rules.
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/activism-won-real-net-neutrality/
Power can peacefully change the rules. My only caution is that we do
not really believe we've won the war, as the article states. We've
won an important battle, but the war continues so long as Corporate
Capitalism rules.
Carl Jarvis
*******
HOW THE NET NEUTRALITY WAR WAS WON
An article from Waging Nonviolence details how powerful activism, led
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, was responsible for yesterday's
ruling on net
neutrality.
"We don't like to occupy," said Kevin Zeese, an organizer with Popular
Resistance, the local activist group responsible for the occupation.
"It's a tactic
that we use very sparingly, but we decided the situation was urgent
enough that we had to do it in this case."
The occupation did not change the FCC's rulemaking notice, which was
already locked in at that point. But activists won one key concession
from the FCC:
Wheeler announced that during the period for public comments on the
FCC's proposed rules, he specifically wanted to hear if people thought
Title II was
the way to go.
"That was really amazing because before we occupied, we were told that
reclassification was off the table -- it was politically impossible and
would not
be considered," Zeese said. "But when they say it's politically
impossible, our job as activists is to make it politically doable."
The response was overwhelming. In the following months, 3.7 million
public comments were left on the FCC's website. More than 99 percent
of the comments
were in support of strong net neutrality rules.
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/activism-won-real-net-neutrality/
Why Does the FBI Have to Manufacture Its Own Plots if Terrorism and ISIS Are Such Grave Threats?
Keep Fear Alive!
Once War was declared on Terror, law agencies were compelled to hunt
it down, dig it out and destroy it. But if they did too good a job,
well, listen to the following words of former FBI assistant director
Thomas Fuentes, "...If you're submitting budget proposals for a law
enforcement agency, for an
intelligence agency, you're not going to submit the proposal that "We won
the war on terror and everything's great," cuz the first thing that's gonna
happen is your budget's gonna be cut in half."
One of our greatest problems in our efforts to save Humankind and the
Planet Earth, is how to develop a government that does not immediately
begin to reinvent itself as the final, most perfect form of
government. With the ever growing Corporate Capitalist form now in
power, we can see how the Ruling Class creates agencies solely for the
purpose of protecting those in power. Agencies such as the FBI and
Homeland Security, along with the CIA, will only receive funding as
long as the Ruling Class feels threatened. So of course it is in the
best interest of those agencies to "find" lots of Terrorists. Even if
they must invent them. Institutions, as necessary as they are,
present a very real threat to the people they are purported to be
protecting or serving. Once created, they tend to begin to develop
ways to make themselves permanent. Institutions make rules and wrap
themselves in them, becoming rigid and brittle and out-dated, like the
government they represent. This is the reason for replacing
governments from time to time. Replacing Capitalism is long overdue.
In the ideal world, the people would gather, debate and finally set in
place a new government, totally removing the current one. But this
the real world. Entrenched governments do not pack up their
briefcases and quietly turn control over to others. Like the agencies
and institutions set in place to protect the government, the
government itself has become the protector of the rich and powerful.
Once the People of the World understand that the Rich and Powerful
protect themselves by hiding behind government, institutions and
religions, we can get down to the business of developing a People
First, World-Wide government. Institutions will serve at the pleasure
of the people, and only for short terms. The same must be done with
governing bodies. When we actually learn how to Educate our children,
they will be prepared to take their turn in managing the public's
affairs.
Learning to change government peacefully will not be an easy process.
We have been long conditioned to solve our differences with force and
violence. Looking around the Globe, we can see how well this has
turned out.
We need to constantly remind ourselves that we hold the real power.
Without our backs, the Ruling Class is impudent. But so long as they
continue to divide and conquer us, we will remain their faithful
servants.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/26/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> Greenwald writes: "The FBI and major media outlets yesterday trumpeted the
> agency's latest counter-terrorism triumph: the arrest of three Brooklyn
> men,
> ages 19 to 30, on charges of conspiring to travel to Syria to fight for
> ISIS."
>
> Pulitzer Prize winner Glenn Greenwald. (photo: AP)
>
>
> Why Does the FBI Have to Manufacture Its Own Plots if Terrorism and ISIS
> Are
> Such Grave Threats?
> By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
> 26 February 15
>
> The FBI and major media outlets yesterday trumpeted the agency's latest
> counter-terrorism triumph: the arrest of three Brooklyn men, ages 19 to 30,
> on charges of conspiring to travel to Syria to fight for ISIS (photo of
> joint FBI/NYPD press conference, above). As my colleague Murtaza Hussain
> ably documents, "it appears that none of the three men was in any condition
> to travel or support the Islamic State, without help from the FBI
> informant." One of the frightening terrorist villains told the FBI
> informant
> that, beyond having no money, he had encountered a significant problem in
> following through on the FBI's plot: his mom had taken away his passport.
> Noting the bizarre and unhinged ranting of one of the suspects, Hussain
> noted on Twitter that this case "sounds like another victory for the FBI
> over the mentally ill."
> In this regard, this latest arrest appears to be quite similar to the
> overwhelming majority of terrorism arrests the FBI has proudly touted over
> the last decade. As my colleague Andrew Fishman and I wrote last month -
> after the FBI manipulated a 20-year-old loner who lived with his parents
> into allegedly agreeing to join an FBI-created plot to attack the Capitol -
> these cases follow a very clear pattern:
> The known facts from this latest case seem to fit well within a
> now-familiar
> FBI pattern whereby the agency does not disrupt planned domestic terror
> attacks but rather creates them, then publicly praises itself for stopping
> its own plots.
> First, they target a Muslim: not due to any evidence of intent or
> capability
> to engage in terrorism, but rather for the "radical" political views he
> expresses. In most cases, the Muslim targeted by the FBI is a very young
> (late teens, early 20s), adrift, unemployed loner who has shown no signs of
> mastering basic life functions, let alone carrying out a serious terror
> attack, and has no known involvement with actual terrorist groups.
> They then find another Muslim who is highly motivated to help disrupt a
> "terror plot": either because they're being paid substantial sums of money
> by the FBI or because (as appears to be the case here) they are charged
> with
> some unrelated crime and are desperate to please the FBI in exchange for
> leniency (or both). The FBI then gives the informant a detailed attack
> plan,
> and sometimes even the money and other instruments to carry it out, and the
> informant then shares all of that with the target. Typically, the informant
> also induces, lures, cajoles, and persuades the target to agree to carry
> out
> the FBI-designed plot. In some instances where the target refuses to go
> along, they have their informant offer huge cash inducements to the
> impoverished target.
> Once they finally get the target to agree, the FBI swoops in at the last
> minute, arrests the target, issues a press release praising themselves for
> disrupting a dangerous attack (which it conceived of, funded, and recruited
> the operatives for), and the DOJ and federal judges send their target to
> prison for years or even decades (where they are kept in special GITMO-like
> units). Subservient U.S. courts uphold the charges by applying such a broad
> and permissive interpretation of "entrapment" that it could almost never be
> successfully invoked.
> Once again, we should all pause for a moment to thank the brave men and
> women of the FBI for saving us from their own terror plots.
>
> FBI website data on domestic terrorism. (photo: The Intercept)
> One can, if one really wishes, debate whether the FBI should be engaging in
> such behavior. For reasons I and many others have repeatedly argued, these
> cases are unjust in the extreme: a form of pre-emptory prosecution where
> vulnerable individuals are targeted and manipulated not for any criminal
> acts they have committed but rather for the bad political views they have
> expressed. They end up sending young people to prison for decades for
> "crimes" which even their sentencing judges acknowledge they never would
> have seriously considered, let alone committed, in the absence of FBI
> trickery. It's hard to imagine anyone thinking this is a justifiable
> tactic,
> but I'm certain there are people who believe that. Let's leave that
> question
> to the side for the moment in favor of a different issue.
> We're constantly bombarded with dire warnings about the grave threat of
> home-grown terrorists, "lone wolf" extremists, and ISIS. So intensified are
> these official warnings that The New York Times earlier this month cited
> anonymous U.S. intelligence officials to warn of the growing ISIS threat
> and
> announce "the prospect of a new global war on terror."
> But how serious of a threat can all of this be, at least domestically, if
> the FBI continually has to resort to manufacturing its own plots by
> trolling
> the internet in search of young drifters and/or the mentally ill whom they
> target, recruit and then manipulate into joining? Does that not, by itself,
> demonstrate how over-hyped and insubstantial this "threat" actually is?
> Shouldn't there be actual plots, ones that are created and fueled without
> the help of the FBI, that the agency should devote its massive resources to
> stopping?
> This FBI tactic would be akin to having the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
> constantly warn of the severe threat posed by drug addiction while it
> simultaneously uses pushers on its payroll to deliberately get people
> hooked
> on drugs so that they can arrest the addicts they've created and thus
> justify their own warnings and budgets (and that kind of threat-creation,
> just by the way, is not all that far off from what the other federal law
> enforcement agencies, like the FBI, are actually doing). As we noted the
> last time we wrote about this, the Justice Department is aggressively
> pressuring U.S. allies to employ these same entrapment tactics in order to
> create their own terrorists, who can then be paraded around as proof of the
> grave threat.
> Threats that are real, and substantial, do not need to be manufactured and
> concocted. Indeed, as the blogger Digby, citing Juan Cole, recently showed,
> run-of-the-mill "lone wolf" gun violence is so much of a greater threat to
> Americans than "domestic terror" by every statistical metric that it's
> almost impossible to overstate the disparity:
>
> Graph indicating murders caused by guns in comparison to terrorism. (photo:
> Mary Altaffer/AP)
> In that regard, it is not difficult to understand why "domestic terror" and
> "homegrown extremism" are things the FBI is desperately determined to
> create. But this FBI terror-plot-concoction should, by itself, suffice to
> demonstrate how wildly exaggerated this threat actually is.
> UPDATE: The ACLU of Massachusetts Kade Crockford notes this extraordinarily
> revealing quote from former FBI assistant director Thomas Fuentes, as he
> defends one of the worst FBI terror "sting" operations of all (the Cromitie
> prosecution we describe at length here):
> If you're submitting budget proposals for a law enforcement agency, for an
> intelligence agency, you're not going to submit the proposal that "We won
> the war on terror and everything's great," cuz the first thing that's gonna
> happen is your budget's gonna be cut in half. You know, it's my opposite of
> Jesse Jackson's 'Keep Hope Alive'-it's 'Keep Fear Alive.' Keep it alive.
> That is the FBI's terrorism strategy - keep fear alive - and it drives
> everything they do.
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
> valid.
>
> Pulitzer Prize winner Glenn Greenwald. (photo: AP)
> https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/26/fbi-manufacture-plots-terroris
> m-isis-grave-threats/https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/26/fbi-manuf
> acture-plots-terrorism-isis-grave-threats/
> Why Does the FBI Have to Manufacture Its Own Plots if Terrorism and ISIS
> Are
> Such Grave Threats?
> By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
> 26 February 15
> he FBI and major media outlets yesterday trumpeted the agency's latest
> counter-terrorism triumph: the arrest of three Brooklyn men, ages 19 to 30,
> on charges of conspiring to travel to Syria to fight for ISIS (photo of
> joint FBI/NYPD press conference, above). As my colleague Murtaza Hussain
> ably documents, "it appears that none of the three men was in any condition
> to travel or support the Islamic State, without help from the FBI
> informant." One of the frightening terrorist villains told the FBI
> informant
> that, beyond having no money, he had encountered a significant problem in
> following through on the FBI's plot: his mom had taken away his passport.
> Noting the bizarre and unhinged ranting of one of the suspects, Hussain
> noted on Twitter that this case "sounds like another victory for the FBI
> over the mentally ill."
> In this regard, this latest arrest appears to be quite similar to the
> overwhelming majority of terrorism arrests the FBI has proudly touted over
> the last decade. As my colleague Andrew Fishman and I wrote last month -
> after the FBI manipulated a 20-year-old loner who lived with his parents
> into allegedly agreeing to join an FBI-created plot to attack the Capitol -
> these cases follow a very clear pattern:
> The known facts from this latest case seem to fit well within a
> now-familiar
> FBI pattern whereby the agency does not disrupt planned domestic terror
> attacks but rather creates them, then publicly praises itself for stopping
> its own plots.
> First, they target a Muslim: not due to any evidence of intent or
> capability
> to engage in terrorism, but rather for the "radical" political views he
> expresses. In most cases, the Muslim targeted by the FBI is a very young
> (late teens, early 20s), adrift, unemployed loner who has shown no signs of
> mastering basic life functions, let alone carrying out a serious terror
> attack, and has no known involvement with actual terrorist groups.
> They then find another Muslim who is highly motivated to help disrupt a
> "terror plot": either because they're being paid substantial sums of money
> by the FBI or because (as appears to be the case here) they are charged
> with
> some unrelated crime and are desperate to please the FBI in exchange for
> leniency (or both). The FBI then gives the informant a detailed attack
> plan,
> and sometimes even the money and other instruments to carry it out, and the
> informant then shares all of that with the target. Typically, the informant
> also induces, lures, cajoles, and persuades the target to agree to carry
> out
> the FBI-designed plot. In some instances where the target refuses to go
> along, they have their informant offer huge cash inducements to the
> impoverished target.
> Once they finally get the target to agree, the FBI swoops in at the last
> minute, arrests the target, issues a press release praising themselves for
> disrupting a dangerous attack (which it conceived of, funded, and recruited
> the operatives for), and the DOJ and federal judges send their target to
> prison for years or even decades (where they are kept in special GITMO-like
> units). Subservient U.S. courts uphold the charges by applying such a broad
> and permissive interpretation of "entrapment" that it could almost never be
> successfully invoked.
> Once again, we should all pause for a moment to thank the brave men and
> women of the FBI for saving us from their own terror plots.
>
> FBI website data on domestic terrorism. (photo: The Intercept)
> One can, if one really wishes, debate whether the FBI should be engaging in
> such behavior. For reasons I and many others have repeatedly argued, these
> cases are unjust in the extreme: a form of pre-emptory prosecution where
> vulnerable individuals are targeted and manipulated not for any criminal
> acts they have committed but rather for the bad political views they have
> expressed. They end up sending young people to prison for decades for
> "crimes" which even their sentencing judges acknowledge they never would
> have seriously considered, let alone committed, in the absence of FBI
> trickery. It's hard to imagine anyone thinking this is a justifiable
> tactic,
> but I'm certain there are people who believe that. Let's leave that
> question
> to the side for the moment in favor of a different issue.
> We're constantly bombarded with dire warnings about the grave threat of
> home-grown terrorists, "lone wolf" extremists, and ISIS. So intensified are
> these official warnings that The New York Times earlier this month cited
> anonymous U.S. intelligence officials to warn of the growing ISIS threat
> and
> announce "the prospect of a new global war on terror."
> But how serious of a threat can all of this be, at least domestically, if
> the FBI continually has to resort to manufacturing its own plots by
> trolling
> the internet in search of young drifters and/or the mentally ill whom they
> target, recruit and then manipulate into joining? Does that not, by itself,
> demonstrate how over-hyped and insubstantial this "threat" actually is?
> Shouldn't there be actual plots, ones that are created and fueled without
> the help of the FBI, that the agency should devote its massive resources to
> stopping?
> This FBI tactic would be akin to having the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
> constantly warn of the severe threat posed by drug addiction while it
> simultaneously uses pushers on its payroll to deliberately get people
> hooked
> on drugs so that they can arrest the addicts they've created and thus
> justify their own warnings and budgets (and that kind of threat-creation,
> just by the way, is not all that far off from what the other federal law
> enforcement agencies, like the FBI, are actually doing). As we noted the
> last time we wrote about this, the Justice Department is aggressively
> pressuring U.S. allies to employ these same entrapment tactics in order to
> create their own terrorists, who can then be paraded around as proof of the
> grave threat.
> Threats that are real, and substantial, do not need to be manufactured and
> concocted. Indeed, as the blogger Digby, citing Juan Cole, recently showed,
> run-of-the-mill "lone wolf" gun violence is so much of a greater threat to
> Americans than "domestic terror" by every statistical metric that it's
> almost impossible to overstate the disparity:
>
> Graph indicating murders caused by guns in comparison to terrorism. (photo:
> Mary Altaffer/AP)
> In that regard, it is not difficult to understand why "domestic terror" and
> "homegrown extremism" are things the FBI is desperately determined to
> create. But this FBI terror-plot-concoction should, by itself, suffice to
> demonstrate how wildly exaggerated this threat actually is.
> UPDATE: The ACLU of Massachusetts Kade Crockford notes this extraordinarily
> revealing quote from former FBI assistant director Thomas Fuentes, as he
> defends one of the worst FBI terror "sting" operations of all (the Cromitie
> prosecution we describe at length here):
> If you're submitting budget proposals for a law enforcement agency, for an
> intelligence agency, you're not going to submit the proposal that "We won
> the war on terror and everything's great," cuz the first thing that's gonna
> happen is your budget's gonna be cut in half. You know, it's my opposite of
> Jesse Jackson's 'Keep Hope Alive'-it's 'Keep Fear Alive.' Keep it alive.
> That is the FBI's terrorism strategy - keep fear alive - and it drives
> everything they do.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
Once War was declared on Terror, law agencies were compelled to hunt
it down, dig it out and destroy it. But if they did too good a job,
well, listen to the following words of former FBI assistant director
Thomas Fuentes, "...If you're submitting budget proposals for a law
enforcement agency, for an
intelligence agency, you're not going to submit the proposal that "We won
the war on terror and everything's great," cuz the first thing that's gonna
happen is your budget's gonna be cut in half."
One of our greatest problems in our efforts to save Humankind and the
Planet Earth, is how to develop a government that does not immediately
begin to reinvent itself as the final, most perfect form of
government. With the ever growing Corporate Capitalist form now in
power, we can see how the Ruling Class creates agencies solely for the
purpose of protecting those in power. Agencies such as the FBI and
Homeland Security, along with the CIA, will only receive funding as
long as the Ruling Class feels threatened. So of course it is in the
best interest of those agencies to "find" lots of Terrorists. Even if
they must invent them. Institutions, as necessary as they are,
present a very real threat to the people they are purported to be
protecting or serving. Once created, they tend to begin to develop
ways to make themselves permanent. Institutions make rules and wrap
themselves in them, becoming rigid and brittle and out-dated, like the
government they represent. This is the reason for replacing
governments from time to time. Replacing Capitalism is long overdue.
In the ideal world, the people would gather, debate and finally set in
place a new government, totally removing the current one. But this
the real world. Entrenched governments do not pack up their
briefcases and quietly turn control over to others. Like the agencies
and institutions set in place to protect the government, the
government itself has become the protector of the rich and powerful.
Once the People of the World understand that the Rich and Powerful
protect themselves by hiding behind government, institutions and
religions, we can get down to the business of developing a People
First, World-Wide government. Institutions will serve at the pleasure
of the people, and only for short terms. The same must be done with
governing bodies. When we actually learn how to Educate our children,
they will be prepared to take their turn in managing the public's
affairs.
Learning to change government peacefully will not be an easy process.
We have been long conditioned to solve our differences with force and
violence. Looking around the Globe, we can see how well this has
turned out.
We need to constantly remind ourselves that we hold the real power.
Without our backs, the Ruling Class is impudent. But so long as they
continue to divide and conquer us, we will remain their faithful
servants.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/26/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> Greenwald writes: "The FBI and major media outlets yesterday trumpeted the
> agency's latest counter-terrorism triumph: the arrest of three Brooklyn
> men,
> ages 19 to 30, on charges of conspiring to travel to Syria to fight for
> ISIS."
>
> Pulitzer Prize winner Glenn Greenwald. (photo: AP)
>
>
> Why Does the FBI Have to Manufacture Its Own Plots if Terrorism and ISIS
> Are
> Such Grave Threats?
> By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
> 26 February 15
>
> The FBI and major media outlets yesterday trumpeted the agency's latest
> counter-terrorism triumph: the arrest of three Brooklyn men, ages 19 to 30,
> on charges of conspiring to travel to Syria to fight for ISIS (photo of
> joint FBI/NYPD press conference, above). As my colleague Murtaza Hussain
> ably documents, "it appears that none of the three men was in any condition
> to travel or support the Islamic State, without help from the FBI
> informant." One of the frightening terrorist villains told the FBI
> informant
> that, beyond having no money, he had encountered a significant problem in
> following through on the FBI's plot: his mom had taken away his passport.
> Noting the bizarre and unhinged ranting of one of the suspects, Hussain
> noted on Twitter that this case "sounds like another victory for the FBI
> over the mentally ill."
> In this regard, this latest arrest appears to be quite similar to the
> overwhelming majority of terrorism arrests the FBI has proudly touted over
> the last decade. As my colleague Andrew Fishman and I wrote last month -
> after the FBI manipulated a 20-year-old loner who lived with his parents
> into allegedly agreeing to join an FBI-created plot to attack the Capitol -
> these cases follow a very clear pattern:
> The known facts from this latest case seem to fit well within a
> now-familiar
> FBI pattern whereby the agency does not disrupt planned domestic terror
> attacks but rather creates them, then publicly praises itself for stopping
> its own plots.
> First, they target a Muslim: not due to any evidence of intent or
> capability
> to engage in terrorism, but rather for the "radical" political views he
> expresses. In most cases, the Muslim targeted by the FBI is a very young
> (late teens, early 20s), adrift, unemployed loner who has shown no signs of
> mastering basic life functions, let alone carrying out a serious terror
> attack, and has no known involvement with actual terrorist groups.
> They then find another Muslim who is highly motivated to help disrupt a
> "terror plot": either because they're being paid substantial sums of money
> by the FBI or because (as appears to be the case here) they are charged
> with
> some unrelated crime and are desperate to please the FBI in exchange for
> leniency (or both). The FBI then gives the informant a detailed attack
> plan,
> and sometimes even the money and other instruments to carry it out, and the
> informant then shares all of that with the target. Typically, the informant
> also induces, lures, cajoles, and persuades the target to agree to carry
> out
> the FBI-designed plot. In some instances where the target refuses to go
> along, they have their informant offer huge cash inducements to the
> impoverished target.
> Once they finally get the target to agree, the FBI swoops in at the last
> minute, arrests the target, issues a press release praising themselves for
> disrupting a dangerous attack (which it conceived of, funded, and recruited
> the operatives for), and the DOJ and federal judges send their target to
> prison for years or even decades (where they are kept in special GITMO-like
> units). Subservient U.S. courts uphold the charges by applying such a broad
> and permissive interpretation of "entrapment" that it could almost never be
> successfully invoked.
> Once again, we should all pause for a moment to thank the brave men and
> women of the FBI for saving us from their own terror plots.
>
> FBI website data on domestic terrorism. (photo: The Intercept)
> One can, if one really wishes, debate whether the FBI should be engaging in
> such behavior. For reasons I and many others have repeatedly argued, these
> cases are unjust in the extreme: a form of pre-emptory prosecution where
> vulnerable individuals are targeted and manipulated not for any criminal
> acts they have committed but rather for the bad political views they have
> expressed. They end up sending young people to prison for decades for
> "crimes" which even their sentencing judges acknowledge they never would
> have seriously considered, let alone committed, in the absence of FBI
> trickery. It's hard to imagine anyone thinking this is a justifiable
> tactic,
> but I'm certain there are people who believe that. Let's leave that
> question
> to the side for the moment in favor of a different issue.
> We're constantly bombarded with dire warnings about the grave threat of
> home-grown terrorists, "lone wolf" extremists, and ISIS. So intensified are
> these official warnings that The New York Times earlier this month cited
> anonymous U.S. intelligence officials to warn of the growing ISIS threat
> and
> announce "the prospect of a new global war on terror."
> But how serious of a threat can all of this be, at least domestically, if
> the FBI continually has to resort to manufacturing its own plots by
> trolling
> the internet in search of young drifters and/or the mentally ill whom they
> target, recruit and then manipulate into joining? Does that not, by itself,
> demonstrate how over-hyped and insubstantial this "threat" actually is?
> Shouldn't there be actual plots, ones that are created and fueled without
> the help of the FBI, that the agency should devote its massive resources to
> stopping?
> This FBI tactic would be akin to having the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
> constantly warn of the severe threat posed by drug addiction while it
> simultaneously uses pushers on its payroll to deliberately get people
> hooked
> on drugs so that they can arrest the addicts they've created and thus
> justify their own warnings and budgets (and that kind of threat-creation,
> just by the way, is not all that far off from what the other federal law
> enforcement agencies, like the FBI, are actually doing). As we noted the
> last time we wrote about this, the Justice Department is aggressively
> pressuring U.S. allies to employ these same entrapment tactics in order to
> create their own terrorists, who can then be paraded around as proof of the
> grave threat.
> Threats that are real, and substantial, do not need to be manufactured and
> concocted. Indeed, as the blogger Digby, citing Juan Cole, recently showed,
> run-of-the-mill "lone wolf" gun violence is so much of a greater threat to
> Americans than "domestic terror" by every statistical metric that it's
> almost impossible to overstate the disparity:
>
> Graph indicating murders caused by guns in comparison to terrorism. (photo:
> Mary Altaffer/AP)
> In that regard, it is not difficult to understand why "domestic terror" and
> "homegrown extremism" are things the FBI is desperately determined to
> create. But this FBI terror-plot-concoction should, by itself, suffice to
> demonstrate how wildly exaggerated this threat actually is.
> UPDATE: The ACLU of Massachusetts Kade Crockford notes this extraordinarily
> revealing quote from former FBI assistant director Thomas Fuentes, as he
> defends one of the worst FBI terror "sting" operations of all (the Cromitie
> prosecution we describe at length here):
> If you're submitting budget proposals for a law enforcement agency, for an
> intelligence agency, you're not going to submit the proposal that "We won
> the war on terror and everything's great," cuz the first thing that's gonna
> happen is your budget's gonna be cut in half. You know, it's my opposite of
> Jesse Jackson's 'Keep Hope Alive'-it's 'Keep Fear Alive.' Keep it alive.
> That is the FBI's terrorism strategy - keep fear alive - and it drives
> everything they do.
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
> valid.
>
> Pulitzer Prize winner Glenn Greenwald. (photo: AP)
> https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/26/fbi-manufacture-plots-terroris
> m-isis-grave-threats/https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/26/fbi-manuf
> acture-plots-terrorism-isis-grave-threats/
> Why Does the FBI Have to Manufacture Its Own Plots if Terrorism and ISIS
> Are
> Such Grave Threats?
> By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
> 26 February 15
> he FBI and major media outlets yesterday trumpeted the agency's latest
> counter-terrorism triumph: the arrest of three Brooklyn men, ages 19 to 30,
> on charges of conspiring to travel to Syria to fight for ISIS (photo of
> joint FBI/NYPD press conference, above). As my colleague Murtaza Hussain
> ably documents, "it appears that none of the three men was in any condition
> to travel or support the Islamic State, without help from the FBI
> informant." One of the frightening terrorist villains told the FBI
> informant
> that, beyond having no money, he had encountered a significant problem in
> following through on the FBI's plot: his mom had taken away his passport.
> Noting the bizarre and unhinged ranting of one of the suspects, Hussain
> noted on Twitter that this case "sounds like another victory for the FBI
> over the mentally ill."
> In this regard, this latest arrest appears to be quite similar to the
> overwhelming majority of terrorism arrests the FBI has proudly touted over
> the last decade. As my colleague Andrew Fishman and I wrote last month -
> after the FBI manipulated a 20-year-old loner who lived with his parents
> into allegedly agreeing to join an FBI-created plot to attack the Capitol -
> these cases follow a very clear pattern:
> The known facts from this latest case seem to fit well within a
> now-familiar
> FBI pattern whereby the agency does not disrupt planned domestic terror
> attacks but rather creates them, then publicly praises itself for stopping
> its own plots.
> First, they target a Muslim: not due to any evidence of intent or
> capability
> to engage in terrorism, but rather for the "radical" political views he
> expresses. In most cases, the Muslim targeted by the FBI is a very young
> (late teens, early 20s), adrift, unemployed loner who has shown no signs of
> mastering basic life functions, let alone carrying out a serious terror
> attack, and has no known involvement with actual terrorist groups.
> They then find another Muslim who is highly motivated to help disrupt a
> "terror plot": either because they're being paid substantial sums of money
> by the FBI or because (as appears to be the case here) they are charged
> with
> some unrelated crime and are desperate to please the FBI in exchange for
> leniency (or both). The FBI then gives the informant a detailed attack
> plan,
> and sometimes even the money and other instruments to carry it out, and the
> informant then shares all of that with the target. Typically, the informant
> also induces, lures, cajoles, and persuades the target to agree to carry
> out
> the FBI-designed plot. In some instances where the target refuses to go
> along, they have their informant offer huge cash inducements to the
> impoverished target.
> Once they finally get the target to agree, the FBI swoops in at the last
> minute, arrests the target, issues a press release praising themselves for
> disrupting a dangerous attack (which it conceived of, funded, and recruited
> the operatives for), and the DOJ and federal judges send their target to
> prison for years or even decades (where they are kept in special GITMO-like
> units). Subservient U.S. courts uphold the charges by applying such a broad
> and permissive interpretation of "entrapment" that it could almost never be
> successfully invoked.
> Once again, we should all pause for a moment to thank the brave men and
> women of the FBI for saving us from their own terror plots.
>
> FBI website data on domestic terrorism. (photo: The Intercept)
> One can, if one really wishes, debate whether the FBI should be engaging in
> such behavior. For reasons I and many others have repeatedly argued, these
> cases are unjust in the extreme: a form of pre-emptory prosecution where
> vulnerable individuals are targeted and manipulated not for any criminal
> acts they have committed but rather for the bad political views they have
> expressed. They end up sending young people to prison for decades for
> "crimes" which even their sentencing judges acknowledge they never would
> have seriously considered, let alone committed, in the absence of FBI
> trickery. It's hard to imagine anyone thinking this is a justifiable
> tactic,
> but I'm certain there are people who believe that. Let's leave that
> question
> to the side for the moment in favor of a different issue.
> We're constantly bombarded with dire warnings about the grave threat of
> home-grown terrorists, "lone wolf" extremists, and ISIS. So intensified are
> these official warnings that The New York Times earlier this month cited
> anonymous U.S. intelligence officials to warn of the growing ISIS threat
> and
> announce "the prospect of a new global war on terror."
> But how serious of a threat can all of this be, at least domestically, if
> the FBI continually has to resort to manufacturing its own plots by
> trolling
> the internet in search of young drifters and/or the mentally ill whom they
> target, recruit and then manipulate into joining? Does that not, by itself,
> demonstrate how over-hyped and insubstantial this "threat" actually is?
> Shouldn't there be actual plots, ones that are created and fueled without
> the help of the FBI, that the agency should devote its massive resources to
> stopping?
> This FBI tactic would be akin to having the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
> constantly warn of the severe threat posed by drug addiction while it
> simultaneously uses pushers on its payroll to deliberately get people
> hooked
> on drugs so that they can arrest the addicts they've created and thus
> justify their own warnings and budgets (and that kind of threat-creation,
> just by the way, is not all that far off from what the other federal law
> enforcement agencies, like the FBI, are actually doing). As we noted the
> last time we wrote about this, the Justice Department is aggressively
> pressuring U.S. allies to employ these same entrapment tactics in order to
> create their own terrorists, who can then be paraded around as proof of the
> grave threat.
> Threats that are real, and substantial, do not need to be manufactured and
> concocted. Indeed, as the blogger Digby, citing Juan Cole, recently showed,
> run-of-the-mill "lone wolf" gun violence is so much of a greater threat to
> Americans than "domestic terror" by every statistical metric that it's
> almost impossible to overstate the disparity:
>
> Graph indicating murders caused by guns in comparison to terrorism. (photo:
> Mary Altaffer/AP)
> In that regard, it is not difficult to understand why "domestic terror" and
> "homegrown extremism" are things the FBI is desperately determined to
> create. But this FBI terror-plot-concoction should, by itself, suffice to
> demonstrate how wildly exaggerated this threat actually is.
> UPDATE: The ACLU of Massachusetts Kade Crockford notes this extraordinarily
> revealing quote from former FBI assistant director Thomas Fuentes, as he
> defends one of the worst FBI terror "sting" operations of all (the Cromitie
> prosecution we describe at length here):
> If you're submitting budget proposals for a law enforcement agency, for an
> intelligence agency, you're not going to submit the proposal that "We won
> the war on terror and everything's great," cuz the first thing that's gonna
> happen is your budget's gonna be cut in half. You know, it's my opposite of
> Jesse Jackson's 'Keep Hope Alive'-it's 'Keep Fear Alive.' Keep it alive.
> That is the FBI's terrorism strategy - keep fear alive - and it drives
> everything they do.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
The Disappeared: Police Detain Americans at Abuse-Laden 'Black Site' in Chicago
When a Ruling Class becomes so indifferent to the needs of those it
rules, to the point where the Ruling Class replaces governing with
Bully Tactics, it is time to remove that Ruling Class from power.
Rom Emanuel, the Ruling Classes number one lackey in Chicago, just
received 45% of the vote in Tuesday's election. This, after spending
over 4 million dollars. While this failure to win outright is a
positive sign, some of us shake our heads over the thought that 45% of
the voters are so brain dead that they simply follow the Pied Piper,
tootling them along to do the beck and call of their Masters. April's
election will tell the tale. Meanwhile, Chicago remains a city in
turmoil. Rom Emanuel, close colleague of President Barak Obama, has
paid lip service to the Working Class needs while toiling to carry out
the demands of his Masters, the Ruling Class.
Mark my words, there is a fierce war raging in our Land. And at the
moment, despite small victories, we, the People, are losing. We are
losing because most of us do not even suspect that war has been
declared upon us. But we now live in Two Americas, the America we
live and work in, and the America behind gates, closed to us by
private guards. That America is one most of us will never enjoy.
That is the America we all have been dreaming about. But there is not
room for our kind. We are merely another resource for the real
America to draw from in order to continue living their Great American
Dream.
They buy our minds with their never ending propaganda. They put our
children in financial bondage in return for a meaningless education.
They take our sons and daughters and place them in harms way in order
to further the Empire's expansion. And when times are tough, they
take our homes, our savings, our pensions, our future security.
They buy Souls and send their Lackeys, like Rom Emanuel, to chat us up
and tell us that they are one of us. Before we believe their words we
need to see their deeds. They present us with a phoney front. Behind
their human-appearing facades lurks pure Greed. Greed is the master
of the Ruling Class. Greed will cause its subjects to turn on anyone
who gets in its conquering path.
Anyway, that's enough rambling for one day. Most of us will glance at
rants such as this, and then go back to our daily grind, thinking that
somehow our troubles will take care of themselves and someone else
will do the work of defeating the ever more oppressive Empire.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/24/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Keep in mind, this is Chicago, the home of our esteemed President and the
> city where his trusted ally, Rom Emanuel, may (God forbid), very well be
> re-elected as mayor today.
> Miriam
>
> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
> Home > The Disappeared: Police Detain Americans at Abuse-Laden 'Black Site'
>
> ________________________________________
> The Disappeared: Police Detain Americans at Abuse-Laden 'Black Site'
> By Spencer Ackerman [1] / The Guardian [2]
> February 24, 2015
> The following story first appeared in the Guardian. [3]
> The Chicago [4] police department operates an off-the-books interrogation
> compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys
> while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA
> black site.
> The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago's west side known as Homan
> Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units.
> Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part
> of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to
> basic constitutional rights.
> Alleged police practices at Homan Square [5], according to those familiar
> with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation
> into
> Chicago police abuse [6], include:
> * Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.
> * Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.
> * Shackling for prolonged periods.
> * Denying attorneys access to the "secure" facility.
> * Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours,
> including people as young as 15.
> At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square "interview room"
> and later pronounced dead.
> Brian Jacob Church, a protester known as one of the "Nato Three", was held
> and questioned at Homan Square in 2012 following a police raid. Officers
> restrained Church for the better part of a day, denying him access to an
> attorney, before sending him to a nearby police station to be booked and
> charged.
> "Homan Square is definitely an unusual place," Church told the Guardian on
> Friday. "It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the
> Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It's a domestic black site.
> When you go in, no one knows what's happened to you."
> The secretive warehouse is the latest example of Chicago police practices
> that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism.
> While those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square - said to house
> military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage - trains its
> focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown.
> Unlike a precinct, no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked.
> Witnesses, suspects or other Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to
> have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where
> they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and
> relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts. Those
> lawyers
> who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned
> away, even as their clients remain in custody inside.
> "It's sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police
> station visits, this place - if you can't find a client in the system, odds
> are they're there," said Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes.
> Chicago civil-rights attorney Flint Taylor said Homan Square represented a
> routinization of a notorious practice in local police work that violates
> the
> fifth and sixth amendments of the constitution.
> "This Homan Square revelation seems to me to be an institutionalization of
> the practice that dates back more than 40 years," Taylor said, "of
> violating
> a suspect or witness' rights to a lawyer and not to be physically or
> otherwise coerced into giving a statement."
> Much remains hidden about Homan Square. The Chicago police department has
> not responded to any of the Guardian's recent questions - neither about any
> aspect of operations at Homan Square, nor about the Guardian's
> investigation
> of Richard Zuley [7], the retired Chicago detective [8] turned Guantánamo
> Bay torturer [9]. (On Monday evening, it instead provided a statement to
> MSNBC [10] regarding the Guardian's Zuley investigation: "The vast majority
> of our officers serve the public with honor and integrity," said the
> statement, adding that the department "has zero tolerance for misconduct,
> and has instituted a series of internal initiatives and reforms, to ensure
> past incidents of police misconduct are not repeated". Without providing
> any
> specifics, it claimed "the allegations in this instance are not supported
> by
> the facts.")
> When a Guardian reporter arrived at the warehouse on Friday, a man at the
> gatehouse outside refused any entrance and would not answer questions.
> "This
> is a secure facility. You're not even supposed to be standing here," said
> the man, who refused to give his name.
> A former Chicago police superintendent and a more recently retired
> detective, both of whom have been inside Homan Square in the last few years
> in a post-police capacity, said the police department did not operate out
> of
> the warehouse until the late 1990s.
> But in detailing episodes involving their clients over the past several
> years, lawyers described mad scrambles that led to the closed doors of
> Homan
> Square, a place most had never heard of previously. The facility was even
> unknown to Rob Warden, the founder of Northwestern University Law School's
> Center on Wrongful Convictions, until the Guardian informed him of the
> allegations of clients who vanish into inherently coercive police custody.
> "They just disappear," said Anthony Hill, a criminal defense attorney,
> "until they show up at a district for charging or are just released back
> out
> on the street."
> 'Never going to see the light of day': the search for the Nato Three, the
> head wound, the worried mom and the dead man
>
> 'They were held incommunicado for much longer than I think should be
> permitted in this country - anywhere - but particularly given the strong
> constitutional rights afforded to people who are being charged with
> crimes,"
> said Sarah Gelsomino, the lawyer for Brian Jacob Church.
> Photo Credit:
> Phil Batta/Guardian
> Jacob Church learned about Homan Square the hard way. On May 16 2012 [11],
> he and 11 others were taken there after police infiltrated their protest
> against the Nato summit. Church says officers cuffed him to a bench for an
> estimated 17 hours, intermittently interrogating him without reading his
> Miranda rights to remain silent. It would take another three hours - and an
> unusual lawyer visit through a wire cage - before he was finally charged
> with terrorism-related offenses at the nearby 11th district station, where
> he was made to sign papers, fingerprinted and photographed.
> In preparation for the Nato protest, Church, who is from Florida, had
> written a phone number for the National Lawyers Guild on his arm as a
> precautionary measure. Once taken to Homan Square, Church asked explicitly
> to call his lawyers, and said he was denied.
> "Essentially, I wasn't allowed to make any contact with anybody," Church
> told the Guardian, in contradiction of a police guidance on permitting
> phone
> calls and legal counsel to arrestees.
> Church's left wrist was cuffed to a bar behind a bench in windowless
> cinderblock cell, with his ankles cuffed together. He remained in those
> restraints for about 17 hours.
> "I had essentially figured, 'All right, well, they disappeared us and so
> we're probably never going to see the light of day again,'" Church said.
> Though the raid attracted major media attention, a team of attorneys could
> not find Church through 12 hours of "active searching", Sarah Gelsomino,
> Church's lawyer, recalled. No booking record existed. Only after she and
> others made a "major stink" with contacts in the offices of the corporation
> counsel and Mayor Rahm Emanuel did they even learn about Homan Square.
> They sent another attorney to the facility, where he ultimately gained
> entry, and talked to Church through a floor-to-ceiling chain-link metal
> cage. Finally, hours later, police took Church and his two co-defendants to
> a nearby police station for booking.
> After serving two and a half years in prison, Church is currently on parole
> after he and his co-defendants were found not guilty in 2014 of
> terrorism-related offenses [12] but guilty of lesser charges of possessing
> an incendiary device and the misdemeanor of "mob action".
> The access that Nato Three attorneys received to Homan Square was an
> exception to the rule, even if Jacob Church's experience there was not.
> Three attorneys interviewed by the Guardian report being personally turned
> away from Homan Square between 2009 and 2013 without being allowed access
> to
> their clients. Two more lawyers who hadn't been physically denied described
> it as a place where police withheld information about their clients'
> whereabouts. Church was the only person who had been detained at the
> facility who agreed to talk with the Guardian: their lawyers say others
> fear
> police retaliation.
> One man in January 2013 had his name changed in the Chicago central
> bookings
> database and then taken to Homan Square without a record of his transfer
> being kept, according to Eliza Solowiej of Chicago's First Defense Legal
> Aid. (The man, the Guardian understands, wishes to be anonymous; his
> current
> attorney declined to confirm Solowiej's account.) She found out where he
> was
> after he was taken to the hospital with a head injury.
> "He said that the officers caused his head injuries in an interrogation
> room
> at Homan Square. I had been looking for him for six to eight hours, and
> every department member I talked to said they had never heard of him,"
> Solowiej said. "He sent me a phone pic of his head injuries because I had
> seen him in a police station right before he was transferred to Homan
> Square
> without any."
> Bartmes, another Chicago attorney, said that in September 2013 she got a
> call from a mother worried that her 15-year-old son had been picked up by
> police before dawn. A sympathetic sergeant followed up with the mother to
> say her son was being questioned at Homan Square in connection to a
> shooting
> and would be released soon. When hours passed, Bartmes traveled to Homan
> Square, only to be refused entry for nearly an hour.
> An officer told her, "Well, you can't just stand here taking notes, this is
> a secure facility, there are undercover officers, and you're making people
> very nervous," Bartmes recalled. Told to leave, she said she would return
> in
> an hour if the boy was not released. He was home, and not charged, after
> "12, maybe 13" hours in custody.
> On February 2, 2013, John Hubbard was taken to Homan Square. Hubbard never
> walked out. The Chicago Tribune reported that the 44-year old was found
> "unresponsive inside an interview room [13]", and pronounced dead. The Cook
> County medical examiner's office could not locate any record for the
> Guardian indicating a cause of Hubbard's death. It remains unclear why
> Hubbard was ever in police custody.
> Homan Square is hardly concerned exclusively with terrorism. Several
> special
> units operate outside of it, including the anti-gang and anti-drug forces.
> If police "want money, guns, drugs", or information on the flow of any of
> them onto Chicago's streets, "they bring them there and use it as a place
> of
> interrogation off the books," Hill said.
> 'That scares the hell out of me': a throwback to Chicago police abuse with
> a
> post-9/11 feel
>
> 'The real danger in allowing practices like Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib is the
> fact that they always creep into other aspects,' criminologist Tracy Siska
> told the Guardian.
> Photo Credit:
> Chandler West/Guardian
> A former Chicago detective and current private investigator, Bill Dorsch,
> said he had not heard of the police abuses described by Church and lawyers
> for other suspects who had been taken to Homan Square. He has been
> permitted
> access to the facility to visit one of its main features, an evidence
> locker
> for the police department. ("I just showed my retirement star and passed
> through," Dorsch said.)
> Transferring detainees through police custody to deny them access to legal
> counsel, would be "a career-ender," Dorsch said. "To move just for the
> purpose of hiding them, I can't see that happening," he told the Guardian.
> Richard Brzeczek, Chicago's police superintendent from 1980 to 1983, who
> also said he had no first-hand knowledge of abuses at Homan Square, said it
> was "never justified" to deny access to attorneys.
> "Homan Square should be on the same list as every other facility where you
> can call central booking and say: 'Can you tell me if this person is in
> custody and where,'" Brzeczek said.
> "If you're going to be doing this, then you have to include Homan Square on
> the list of facilities that prisoners are taken into and a record made. It
> can't be an exempt facility."
> Indeed, Chicago police guidelines appear to ban the sorts of practices
> Church and the lawyers said occur at Homan Square.
> A directive titled "Processing Persons Under Department Control [14]"
> instructs that "investigation or interrogation of an arrestee will not
> delay
> the booking process," and arrestees must be allowed "a reasonable number of
> telephone calls" to attorneys swiftly "after their arrival at the first
> place of custody." Another directive, "Arrestee and In-Custody
> Communications [15]," says police supervisors must "allow visitation by
> attorneys."
> Attorney Scott Finger said that the Chicago police tightened the latter
> directive in 2012 after quiet complaints from lawyers about their lack of
> access to Homan Square. Without those changes, Church's attorneys might not
> have gained entry at all. But that tightening - about a week before
> Church's
> arrest - did not prevent Church's prolonged detention without a lawyer, nor
> the later cases where lawyers were unable to enter.
> The combination of holding clients for long periods, while concealing their
> whereabouts and denying access to a lawyer, struck legal experts as a
> throwback to the worst excesses of Chicago police abuse, with a post-9/11
> feel to it.
> On a smaller scale, Homan Square is "analogous to the CIA's black sites,"
> said Andrea Lyon, a former Chicago public defender and current dean of
> Valparaiso University Law School. When she practiced law in Chicago in the
> 1980s and 1990s, she said, "police used the term 'shadow site'" to refer to
> the quasi-disappearances now in place at Homan Square.
> "Back when I first started working on torture cases and started
> representing
> criminal defendants in the early 1970s, my clients often told me they'd
> been
> taken from one police station to another before ending up at Area 2 where
> they were tortured," said Taylor, the civil-rights lawyer most associated
> with pursuing the notoriously abusive Area 2 police commander Jon Burge.
> "And in that way the police prevent their family and lawyers from seeing
> them until they could coerce, through torture or other means, confessions
> from them."
> Police often have off-site facilities to have private conversations with
> their informants. But a retired Washington DC homicide detective, James
> Trainum, could not think of another circumstance nationwide where police
> held people incommunicado for extended periods.
> "I've never known any kind of organized, secret place where they go and
> just
> hold somebody before booking for hours and hours and hours. That scares the
> hell out of me that that even exists or might exist," said Trainum, who now
> studies national policing issues, to include interrogations, for the
> Innocence Project and the Constitution Project.
> Regardless of departmental regulations, police frequently deny or elide
> access to lawyers even at regular police precincts, said Solowiej of First
> Defense Legal Aid. But she said the outright denial was exacerbated at
> Chicago's secretive interrogation and holding facility: "It's very, very
> rare for anyone to experience their constitutional rights in Chicago police
> custody, and even more so at Homan Square," Solowiej said.
> Church said that one of his more striking memories of Homan Square was the
> "big, big vehicles" police had inside the complex that "look like very
> large
> MRAPs that they use in the Middle East."
> Cook County, home of Chicago, has received some 1,700 pieces of military
> equipment from a much-criticized Pentagon program transferring military
> gear
> to local police. It includes a Humvee, according to a local ABC News report
> [16].
> Tracy Siska, a criminologist and civil-rights activist with the Chicago
> Justice Project, said that Homan Square, as well as the unrelated case of
> ex-Guantánamo interrogator and retired Chicago detective Richard Zuley [7],
> showed the lines blurring between domestic law enforcement and overseas
> military operations.
> "The real danger in allowing practices like Guantánamo or Abu Ghraib is the
> fact that they always creep into other aspects," Siska said.
> "They creep into domestic law enforcement, either with weaponry like with
> the militarization of police, or interrogation practices. That's how we
> ended up with a black site in Chicago."
> Spencer Ackerman writes for The Guardian from Washington, DC.
> Share on Facebook Share
> Share on Twitter Tweet
> Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@alternet.org'. [17]
> [18]
> ________________________________________
> Source URL:
> http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/disappeared-police-detain-american
> s-abuse-laden-black-site
> Links:
> [1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/spencer-ackerman-0
> [2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/
> [3]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-america
> ns-black-site
> [4] http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/chicago
> [5]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-homan-square-black-si
> te
> [6]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/19/evidence-chicago-detective-ri
> chard-zuley
> [7]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/18/guantanamo-torture-chicago-po
> lice-brutality
> [8]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/19/chicago-police-richard-zuley-
> abuse-innocent-man
> [9]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/18/american-police-brutality-chi
> cago-guantanamo
> [10]
> http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/citations-the-february-23-2015-trms
> [11]
> http://www.cbsnews.com/news/terror-indictments-for-chicago-nato-protesters-b
> rian-church-jared-chase-brent-vincent-betterly/
> [12]
> http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-04-25/news/chi-sentencing-today-for-
> nato-3-prosecutors-seeking-14year-terms-20140425_1_nato-3-prison-terms-judge
> -thaddeus-wilson
> [13]
> http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-02-04/news/chi-man-in-custody-found-
> unresponsive-dies-20130202_1_bronzeville-neighborhood-police-custody-homan-s
> quare-neighborhood
> [14] http://www.alternet.org/blank
> [15]
> http://directives.chicagopolice.org/lt2014/data/a7a56e4b-12ccbe26-df812-ccbf
> -527447d507470630.html
> [16]
> http://abc7chicago.com/news/widespread-militarization-of-illinois-police-for
> ces-uncovered-by-i-team/259740/
> [17] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on The Disappeared:
> Police
> Detain Americans at Abuse-Laden 'Black Site'
> [18] http://www.alternet.org/
> [19] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>
> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
> Home > The Disappeared: Police Detain Americans at Abuse-Laden 'Black Site'
>
>
> The Disappeared: Police Detain Americans at Abuse-Laden 'Black Site'
> By Spencer Ackerman [1] / The Guardian [2]
> February 24, 2015
> The following story first appeared in the Guardian. [3]
> The Chicago [4] police department operates an off-the-books interrogation
> compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys
> while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA
> black site.
> The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago's west side known as Homan
> Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units.
> Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part
> of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to
> basic constitutional rights.
> Alleged police practices at Homan Square [5], according to those familiar
> with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation
> into
> Chicago police abuse [6], include:
> * Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.
> * Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.
> * Shackling for prolonged periods.
> * Denying attorneys access to the "secure" facility.
> * Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours,
> including people as young as 15.
> At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square "interview room"
> and later pronounced dead.
> Brian Jacob Church, a protester known as one of the "Nato Three", was held
> and questioned at Homan Square in 2012 following a police raid. Officers
> restrained Church for the better part of a day, denying him access to an
> attorney, before sending him to a nearby police station to be booked and
> charged.
> "Homan Square is definitely an unusual place," Church told the Guardian on
> Friday. "It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the
> Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It's a domestic black site.
> When you go in, no one knows what's happened to you."
> The secretive warehouse is the latest example of Chicago police practices
> that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism.
> While those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square - said to house
> military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage - trains its
> focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown.
> Unlike a precinct, no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked.
> Witnesses, suspects or other Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to
> have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where
> they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and
> relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts. Those
> lawyers
> who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned
> away, even as their clients remain in custody inside.
> "It's sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police
> station visits, this place - if you can't find a client in the system, odds
> are they're there," said Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes.
> Chicago civil-rights attorney Flint Taylor said Homan Square represented a
> routinization of a notorious practice in local police work that violates
> the
> fifth and sixth amendments of the constitution.
> "This Homan Square revelation seems to me to be an institutionalization of
> the practice that dates back more than 40 years," Taylor said, "of
> violating
> a suspect or witness' rights to a lawyer and not to be physically or
> otherwise coerced into giving a statement."
> Much remains hidden about Homan Square. The Chicago police department has
> not responded to any of the Guardian's recent questions - neither about any
> aspect of operations at Homan Square, nor about the Guardian's
> investigation
> of Richard Zuley [7], the retired Chicago detective [8] turned Guantánamo
> Bay torturer [9]. (On Monday evening, it instead provided a statement to
> MSNBC [10] regarding the Guardian's Zuley investigation: "The vast majority
> of our officers serve the public with honor and integrity," said the
> statement, adding that the department "has zero tolerance for misconduct,
> and has instituted a series of internal initiatives and reforms, to ensure
> past incidents of police misconduct are not repeated". Without providing
> any
> specifics, it claimed "the allegations in this instance are not supported
> by
> the facts.")
> When a Guardian reporter arrived at the warehouse on Friday, a man at the
> gatehouse outside refused any entrance and would not answer questions.
> "This
> is a secure facility. You're not even supposed to be standing here," said
> the man, who refused to give his name.
> A former Chicago police superintendent and a more recently retired
> detective, both of whom have been inside Homan Square in the last few years
> in a post-police capacity, said the police department did not operate out
> of
> the warehouse until the late 1990s.
> But in detailing episodes involving their clients over the past several
> years, lawyers described mad scrambles that led to the closed doors of
> Homan
> Square, a place most had never heard of previously. The facility was even
> unknown to Rob Warden, the founder of Northwestern University Law School's
> Center on Wrongful Convictions, until the Guardian informed him of the
> allegations of clients who vanish into inherently coercive police custody.
> "They just disappear," said Anthony Hill, a criminal defense attorney,
> "until they show up at a district for charging or are just released back
> out
> on the street."
> 'Never going to see the light of day': the search for the Nato Three, the
> head wound, the worried mom and the dead man
>
> 'They were held incommunicado for much longer than I think should be
> permitted in this country - anywhere - but particularly given the strong
> constitutional rights afforded to people who are being charged with
> crimes,"
> said Sarah Gelsomino, the lawyer for Brian Jacob Church.
> Photo Credit:
> Phil Batta/Guardian
> Jacob Church learned about Homan Square the hard way. On May 16 2012 [11],
> he and 11 others were taken there after police infiltrated their protest
> against the Nato summit. Church says officers cuffed him to a bench for an
> estimated 17 hours, intermittently interrogating him without reading his
> Miranda rights to remain silent. It would take another three hours - and an
> unusual lawyer visit through a wire cage - before he was finally charged
> with terrorism-related offenses at the nearby 11th district station, where
> he was made to sign papers, fingerprinted and photographed.
> In preparation for the Nato protest, Church, who is from Florida, had
> written a phone number for the National Lawyers Guild on his arm as a
> precautionary measure. Once taken to Homan Square, Church asked explicitly
> to call his lawyers, and said he was denied.
> "Essentially, I wasn't allowed to make any contact with anybody," Church
> told the Guardian, in contradiction of a police guidance on permitting
> phone
> calls and legal counsel to arrestees.
> Church's left wrist was cuffed to a bar behind a bench in windowless
> cinderblock cell, with his ankles cuffed together. He remained in those
> restraints for about 17 hours.
> "I had essentially figured, 'All right, well, they disappeared us and so
> we're probably never going to see the light of day again,'" Church said.
> Though the raid attracted major media attention, a team of attorneys could
> not find Church through 12 hours of "active searching", Sarah Gelsomino,
> Church's lawyer, recalled. No booking record existed. Only after she and
> others made a "major stink" with contacts in the offices of the corporation
> counsel and Mayor Rahm Emanuel did they even learn about Homan Square.
> They sent another attorney to the facility, where he ultimately gained
> entry, and talked to Church through a floor-to-ceiling chain-link metal
> cage. Finally, hours later, police took Church and his two co-defendants to
> a nearby police station for booking.
> After serving two and a half years in prison, Church is currently on parole
> after he and his co-defendants were found not guilty in 2014 of
> terrorism-related offenses [12] but guilty of lesser charges of possessing
> an incendiary device and the misdemeanor of "mob action".
> The access that Nato Three attorneys received to Homan Square was an
> exception to the rule, even if Jacob Church's experience there was not.
> Three attorneys interviewed by the Guardian report being personally turned
> away from Homan Square between 2009 and 2013 without being allowed access
> to
> their clients. Two more lawyers who hadn't been physically denied described
> it as a place where police withheld information about their clients'
> whereabouts. Church was the only person who had been detained at the
> facility who agreed to talk with the Guardian: their lawyers say others
> fear
> police retaliation.
> One man in January 2013 had his name changed in the Chicago central
> bookings
> database and then taken to Homan Square without a record of his transfer
> being kept, according to Eliza Solowiej of Chicago's First Defense Legal
> Aid. (The man, the Guardian understands, wishes to be anonymous; his
> current
> attorney declined to confirm Solowiej's account.) She found out where he
> was
> after he was taken to the hospital with a head injury.
> "He said that the officers caused his head injuries in an interrogation
> room
> at Homan Square. I had been looking for him for six to eight hours, and
> every department member I talked to said they had never heard of him,"
> Solowiej said. "He sent me a phone pic of his head injuries because I had
> seen him in a police station right before he was transferred to Homan
> Square
> without any."
> Bartmes, another Chicago attorney, said that in September 2013 she got a
> call from a mother worried that her 15-year-old son had been picked up by
> police before dawn. A sympathetic sergeant followed up with the mother to
> say her son was being questioned at Homan Square in connection to a
> shooting
> and would be released soon. When hours passed, Bartmes traveled to Homan
> Square, only to be refused entry for nearly an hour.
> An officer told her, "Well, you can't just stand here taking notes, this is
> a secure facility, there are undercover officers, and you're making people
> very nervous," Bartmes recalled. Told to leave, she said she would return
> in
> an hour if the boy was not released. He was home, and not charged, after
> "12, maybe 13" hours in custody.
> On February 2, 2013, John Hubbard was taken to Homan Square. Hubbard never
> walked out. The Chicago Tribune reported that the 44-year old was found
> "unresponsive inside an interview room [13]", and pronounced dead. The Cook
> County medical examiner's office could not locate any record for the
> Guardian indicating a cause of Hubbard's death. It remains unclear why
> Hubbard was ever in police custody.
> Homan Square is hardly concerned exclusively with terrorism. Several
> special
> units operate outside of it, including the anti-gang and anti-drug forces.
> If police "want money, guns, drugs", or information on the flow of any of
> them onto Chicago's streets, "they bring them there and use it as a place
> of
> interrogation off the books," Hill said.
> 'That scares the hell out of me': a throwback to Chicago police abuse with
> a
> post-9/11 feel
>
> 'The real danger in allowing practices like Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib is the
> fact that they always creep into other aspects,' criminologist Tracy Siska
> told the Guardian.
> Photo Credit:
> Chandler West/Guardian
> A former Chicago detective and current private investigator, Bill Dorsch,
> said he had not heard of the police abuses described by Church and lawyers
> for other suspects who had been taken to Homan Square. He has been
> permitted
> access to the facility to visit one of its main features, an evidence
> locker
> for the police department. ("I just showed my retirement star and passed
> through," Dorsch said.)
> Transferring detainees through police custody to deny them access to legal
> counsel, would be "a career-ender," Dorsch said. "To move just for the
> purpose of hiding them, I can't see that happening," he told the Guardian.
> Richard Brzeczek, Chicago's police superintendent from 1980 to 1983, who
> also said he had no first-hand knowledge of abuses at Homan Square, said it
> was "never justified" to deny access to attorneys.
> "Homan Square should be on the same list as every other facility where you
> can call central booking and say: 'Can you tell me if this person is in
> custody and where,'" Brzeczek said.
> "If you're going to be doing this, then you have to include Homan Square on
> the list of facilities that prisoners are taken into and a record made. It
> can't be an exempt facility."
> Indeed, Chicago police guidelines appear to ban the sorts of practices
> Church and the lawyers said occur at Homan Square.
> A directive titled "Processing Persons Under Department Control [14]"
> instructs that "investigation or interrogation of an arrestee will not
> delay
> the booking process," and arrestees must be allowed "a reasonable number of
> telephone calls" to attorneys swiftly "after their arrival at the first
> place of custody." Another directive, "Arrestee and In-Custody
> Communications [15]," says police supervisors must "allow visitation by
> attorneys."
> Attorney Scott Finger said that the Chicago police tightened the latter
> directive in 2012 after quiet complaints from lawyers about their lack of
> access to Homan Square. Without those changes, Church's attorneys might not
> have gained entry at all. But that tightening - about a week before
> Church's
> arrest - did not prevent Church's prolonged detention without a lawyer, nor
> the later cases where lawyers were unable to enter.
> The combination of holding clients for long periods, while concealing their
> whereabouts and denying access to a lawyer, struck legal experts as a
> throwback to the worst excesses of Chicago police abuse, with a post-9/11
> feel to it.
> On a smaller scale, Homan Square is "analogous to the CIA's black sites,"
> said Andrea Lyon, a former Chicago public defender and current dean of
> Valparaiso University Law School. When she practiced law in Chicago in the
> 1980s and 1990s, she said, "police used the term 'shadow site'" to refer to
> the quasi-disappearances now in place at Homan Square.
> "Back when I first started working on torture cases and started
> representing
> criminal defendants in the early 1970s, my clients often told me they'd
> been
> taken from one police station to another before ending up at Area 2 where
> they were tortured," said Taylor, the civil-rights lawyer most associated
> with pursuing the notoriously abusive Area 2 police commander Jon Burge.
> "And in that way the police prevent their family and lawyers from seeing
> them until they could coerce, through torture or other means, confessions
> from them."
> Police often have off-site facilities to have private conversations with
> their informants. But a retired Washington DC homicide detective, James
> Trainum, could not think of another circumstance nationwide where police
> held people incommunicado for extended periods.
> "I've never known any kind of organized, secret place where they go and
> just
> hold somebody before booking for hours and hours and hours. That scares the
> hell out of me that that even exists or might exist," said Trainum, who now
> studies national policing issues, to include interrogations, for the
> Innocence Project and the Constitution Project.
> Regardless of departmental regulations, police frequently deny or elide
> access to lawyers even at regular police precincts, said Solowiej of First
> Defense Legal Aid. But she said the outright denial was exacerbated at
> Chicago's secretive interrogation and holding facility: "It's very, very
> rare for anyone to experience their constitutional rights in Chicago police
> custody, and even more so at Homan Square," Solowiej said.
> Church said that one of his more striking memories of Homan Square was the
> "big, big vehicles" police had inside the complex that "look like very
> large
> MRAPs that they use in the Middle East."
> Cook County, home of Chicago, has received some 1,700 pieces of military
> equipment from a much-criticized Pentagon program transferring military
> gear
> to local police. It includes a Humvee, according to a local ABC News report
> [16].
> Tracy Siska, a criminologist and civil-rights activist with the Chicago
> Justice Project, said that Homan Square, as well as the unrelated case of
> ex-Guantánamo interrogator and retired Chicago detective Richard Zuley [7],
> showed the lines blurring between domestic law enforcement and overseas
> military operations.
> "The real danger in allowing practices like Guantánamo or Abu Ghraib is the
> fact that they always creep into other aspects," Siska said.
> "They creep into domestic law enforcement, either with weaponry like with
> the militarization of police, or interrogation practices. That's how we
> ended up with a black site in Chicago."
> Spencer Ackerman writes for The Guardian from Washington, DC.
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@alternet.org'. [17]
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[18]
>
> Source URL:
> http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/disappeared-police-detain-american
> s-abuse-laden-black-site
> Links:
> [1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/spencer-ackerman-0
> [2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/
> [3]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-america
> ns-black-site
> [4] http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/chicago
> [5]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-homan-square-black-si
> te
> [6]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/19/evidence-chicago-detective-ri
> chard-zuley
> [7]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/18/guantanamo-torture-chicago-po
> lice-brutality
> [8]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/19/chicago-police-richard-zuley-
> abuse-innocent-man
> [9]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/18/american-police-brutality-chi
> cago-guantanamo
> [10]
> http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/citations-the-february-23-2015-trms
> [11]
> http://www.cbsnews.com/news/terror-indictments-for-chicago-nato-protesters-b
> rian-church-jared-chase-brent-vincent-betterly/
> [12]
> http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-04-25/news/chi-sentencing-today-for-
> nato-3-prosecutors-seeking-14year-terms-20140425_1_nato-3-prison-terms-judge
> -thaddeus-wilson
> [13]
> http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-02-04/news/chi-man-in-custody-found-
> unresponsive-dies-20130202_1_bronzeville-neighborhood-police-custody-homan-s
> quare-neighborhood
> [14] http://www.alternet.org/blank
> [15]
> http://directives.chicagopolice.org/lt2014/data/a7a56e4b-12ccbe26-df812-ccbf
> -527447d507470630.html
> [16]
> http://abc7chicago.com/news/widespread-militarization-of-illinois-police-for
> ces-uncovered-by-i-team/259740/
> [17] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on The Disappeared:
> Police
> Detain Americans at Abuse-Laden 'Black Site'
> [18] http://www.alternet.org/
> [19] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
rules, to the point where the Ruling Class replaces governing with
Bully Tactics, it is time to remove that Ruling Class from power.
Rom Emanuel, the Ruling Classes number one lackey in Chicago, just
received 45% of the vote in Tuesday's election. This, after spending
over 4 million dollars. While this failure to win outright is a
positive sign, some of us shake our heads over the thought that 45% of
the voters are so brain dead that they simply follow the Pied Piper,
tootling them along to do the beck and call of their Masters. April's
election will tell the tale. Meanwhile, Chicago remains a city in
turmoil. Rom Emanuel, close colleague of President Barak Obama, has
paid lip service to the Working Class needs while toiling to carry out
the demands of his Masters, the Ruling Class.
Mark my words, there is a fierce war raging in our Land. And at the
moment, despite small victories, we, the People, are losing. We are
losing because most of us do not even suspect that war has been
declared upon us. But we now live in Two Americas, the America we
live and work in, and the America behind gates, closed to us by
private guards. That America is one most of us will never enjoy.
That is the America we all have been dreaming about. But there is not
room for our kind. We are merely another resource for the real
America to draw from in order to continue living their Great American
Dream.
They buy our minds with their never ending propaganda. They put our
children in financial bondage in return for a meaningless education.
They take our sons and daughters and place them in harms way in order
to further the Empire's expansion. And when times are tough, they
take our homes, our savings, our pensions, our future security.
They buy Souls and send their Lackeys, like Rom Emanuel, to chat us up
and tell us that they are one of us. Before we believe their words we
need to see their deeds. They present us with a phoney front. Behind
their human-appearing facades lurks pure Greed. Greed is the master
of the Ruling Class. Greed will cause its subjects to turn on anyone
who gets in its conquering path.
Anyway, that's enough rambling for one day. Most of us will glance at
rants such as this, and then go back to our daily grind, thinking that
somehow our troubles will take care of themselves and someone else
will do the work of defeating the ever more oppressive Empire.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/24/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Keep in mind, this is Chicago, the home of our esteemed President and the
> city where his trusted ally, Rom Emanuel, may (God forbid), very well be
> re-elected as mayor today.
> Miriam
>
> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
> Home > The Disappeared: Police Detain Americans at Abuse-Laden 'Black Site'
>
> ________________________________________
> The Disappeared: Police Detain Americans at Abuse-Laden 'Black Site'
> By Spencer Ackerman [1] / The Guardian [2]
> February 24, 2015
> The following story first appeared in the Guardian. [3]
> The Chicago [4] police department operates an off-the-books interrogation
> compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys
> while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA
> black site.
> The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago's west side known as Homan
> Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units.
> Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part
> of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to
> basic constitutional rights.
> Alleged police practices at Homan Square [5], according to those familiar
> with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation
> into
> Chicago police abuse [6], include:
> * Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.
> * Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.
> * Shackling for prolonged periods.
> * Denying attorneys access to the "secure" facility.
> * Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours,
> including people as young as 15.
> At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square "interview room"
> and later pronounced dead.
> Brian Jacob Church, a protester known as one of the "Nato Three", was held
> and questioned at Homan Square in 2012 following a police raid. Officers
> restrained Church for the better part of a day, denying him access to an
> attorney, before sending him to a nearby police station to be booked and
> charged.
> "Homan Square is definitely an unusual place," Church told the Guardian on
> Friday. "It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the
> Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It's a domestic black site.
> When you go in, no one knows what's happened to you."
> The secretive warehouse is the latest example of Chicago police practices
> that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism.
> While those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square - said to house
> military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage - trains its
> focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown.
> Unlike a precinct, no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked.
> Witnesses, suspects or other Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to
> have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where
> they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and
> relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts. Those
> lawyers
> who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned
> away, even as their clients remain in custody inside.
> "It's sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police
> station visits, this place - if you can't find a client in the system, odds
> are they're there," said Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes.
> Chicago civil-rights attorney Flint Taylor said Homan Square represented a
> routinization of a notorious practice in local police work that violates
> the
> fifth and sixth amendments of the constitution.
> "This Homan Square revelation seems to me to be an institutionalization of
> the practice that dates back more than 40 years," Taylor said, "of
> violating
> a suspect or witness' rights to a lawyer and not to be physically or
> otherwise coerced into giving a statement."
> Much remains hidden about Homan Square. The Chicago police department has
> not responded to any of the Guardian's recent questions - neither about any
> aspect of operations at Homan Square, nor about the Guardian's
> investigation
> of Richard Zuley [7], the retired Chicago detective [8] turned Guantánamo
> Bay torturer [9]. (On Monday evening, it instead provided a statement to
> MSNBC [10] regarding the Guardian's Zuley investigation: "The vast majority
> of our officers serve the public with honor and integrity," said the
> statement, adding that the department "has zero tolerance for misconduct,
> and has instituted a series of internal initiatives and reforms, to ensure
> past incidents of police misconduct are not repeated". Without providing
> any
> specifics, it claimed "the allegations in this instance are not supported
> by
> the facts.")
> When a Guardian reporter arrived at the warehouse on Friday, a man at the
> gatehouse outside refused any entrance and would not answer questions.
> "This
> is a secure facility. You're not even supposed to be standing here," said
> the man, who refused to give his name.
> A former Chicago police superintendent and a more recently retired
> detective, both of whom have been inside Homan Square in the last few years
> in a post-police capacity, said the police department did not operate out
> of
> the warehouse until the late 1990s.
> But in detailing episodes involving their clients over the past several
> years, lawyers described mad scrambles that led to the closed doors of
> Homan
> Square, a place most had never heard of previously. The facility was even
> unknown to Rob Warden, the founder of Northwestern University Law School's
> Center on Wrongful Convictions, until the Guardian informed him of the
> allegations of clients who vanish into inherently coercive police custody.
> "They just disappear," said Anthony Hill, a criminal defense attorney,
> "until they show up at a district for charging or are just released back
> out
> on the street."
> 'Never going to see the light of day': the search for the Nato Three, the
> head wound, the worried mom and the dead man
>
> 'They were held incommunicado for much longer than I think should be
> permitted in this country - anywhere - but particularly given the strong
> constitutional rights afforded to people who are being charged with
> crimes,"
> said Sarah Gelsomino, the lawyer for Brian Jacob Church.
> Photo Credit:
> Phil Batta/Guardian
> Jacob Church learned about Homan Square the hard way. On May 16 2012 [11],
> he and 11 others were taken there after police infiltrated their protest
> against the Nato summit. Church says officers cuffed him to a bench for an
> estimated 17 hours, intermittently interrogating him without reading his
> Miranda rights to remain silent. It would take another three hours - and an
> unusual lawyer visit through a wire cage - before he was finally charged
> with terrorism-related offenses at the nearby 11th district station, where
> he was made to sign papers, fingerprinted and photographed.
> In preparation for the Nato protest, Church, who is from Florida, had
> written a phone number for the National Lawyers Guild on his arm as a
> precautionary measure. Once taken to Homan Square, Church asked explicitly
> to call his lawyers, and said he was denied.
> "Essentially, I wasn't allowed to make any contact with anybody," Church
> told the Guardian, in contradiction of a police guidance on permitting
> phone
> calls and legal counsel to arrestees.
> Church's left wrist was cuffed to a bar behind a bench in windowless
> cinderblock cell, with his ankles cuffed together. He remained in those
> restraints for about 17 hours.
> "I had essentially figured, 'All right, well, they disappeared us and so
> we're probably never going to see the light of day again,'" Church said.
> Though the raid attracted major media attention, a team of attorneys could
> not find Church through 12 hours of "active searching", Sarah Gelsomino,
> Church's lawyer, recalled. No booking record existed. Only after she and
> others made a "major stink" with contacts in the offices of the corporation
> counsel and Mayor Rahm Emanuel did they even learn about Homan Square.
> They sent another attorney to the facility, where he ultimately gained
> entry, and talked to Church through a floor-to-ceiling chain-link metal
> cage. Finally, hours later, police took Church and his two co-defendants to
> a nearby police station for booking.
> After serving two and a half years in prison, Church is currently on parole
> after he and his co-defendants were found not guilty in 2014 of
> terrorism-related offenses [12] but guilty of lesser charges of possessing
> an incendiary device and the misdemeanor of "mob action".
> The access that Nato Three attorneys received to Homan Square was an
> exception to the rule, even if Jacob Church's experience there was not.
> Three attorneys interviewed by the Guardian report being personally turned
> away from Homan Square between 2009 and 2013 without being allowed access
> to
> their clients. Two more lawyers who hadn't been physically denied described
> it as a place where police withheld information about their clients'
> whereabouts. Church was the only person who had been detained at the
> facility who agreed to talk with the Guardian: their lawyers say others
> fear
> police retaliation.
> One man in January 2013 had his name changed in the Chicago central
> bookings
> database and then taken to Homan Square without a record of his transfer
> being kept, according to Eliza Solowiej of Chicago's First Defense Legal
> Aid. (The man, the Guardian understands, wishes to be anonymous; his
> current
> attorney declined to confirm Solowiej's account.) She found out where he
> was
> after he was taken to the hospital with a head injury.
> "He said that the officers caused his head injuries in an interrogation
> room
> at Homan Square. I had been looking for him for six to eight hours, and
> every department member I talked to said they had never heard of him,"
> Solowiej said. "He sent me a phone pic of his head injuries because I had
> seen him in a police station right before he was transferred to Homan
> Square
> without any."
> Bartmes, another Chicago attorney, said that in September 2013 she got a
> call from a mother worried that her 15-year-old son had been picked up by
> police before dawn. A sympathetic sergeant followed up with the mother to
> say her son was being questioned at Homan Square in connection to a
> shooting
> and would be released soon. When hours passed, Bartmes traveled to Homan
> Square, only to be refused entry for nearly an hour.
> An officer told her, "Well, you can't just stand here taking notes, this is
> a secure facility, there are undercover officers, and you're making people
> very nervous," Bartmes recalled. Told to leave, she said she would return
> in
> an hour if the boy was not released. He was home, and not charged, after
> "12, maybe 13" hours in custody.
> On February 2, 2013, John Hubbard was taken to Homan Square. Hubbard never
> walked out. The Chicago Tribune reported that the 44-year old was found
> "unresponsive inside an interview room [13]", and pronounced dead. The Cook
> County medical examiner's office could not locate any record for the
> Guardian indicating a cause of Hubbard's death. It remains unclear why
> Hubbard was ever in police custody.
> Homan Square is hardly concerned exclusively with terrorism. Several
> special
> units operate outside of it, including the anti-gang and anti-drug forces.
> If police "want money, guns, drugs", or information on the flow of any of
> them onto Chicago's streets, "they bring them there and use it as a place
> of
> interrogation off the books," Hill said.
> 'That scares the hell out of me': a throwback to Chicago police abuse with
> a
> post-9/11 feel
>
> 'The real danger in allowing practices like Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib is the
> fact that they always creep into other aspects,' criminologist Tracy Siska
> told the Guardian.
> Photo Credit:
> Chandler West/Guardian
> A former Chicago detective and current private investigator, Bill Dorsch,
> said he had not heard of the police abuses described by Church and lawyers
> for other suspects who had been taken to Homan Square. He has been
> permitted
> access to the facility to visit one of its main features, an evidence
> locker
> for the police department. ("I just showed my retirement star and passed
> through," Dorsch said.)
> Transferring detainees through police custody to deny them access to legal
> counsel, would be "a career-ender," Dorsch said. "To move just for the
> purpose of hiding them, I can't see that happening," he told the Guardian.
> Richard Brzeczek, Chicago's police superintendent from 1980 to 1983, who
> also said he had no first-hand knowledge of abuses at Homan Square, said it
> was "never justified" to deny access to attorneys.
> "Homan Square should be on the same list as every other facility where you
> can call central booking and say: 'Can you tell me if this person is in
> custody and where,'" Brzeczek said.
> "If you're going to be doing this, then you have to include Homan Square on
> the list of facilities that prisoners are taken into and a record made. It
> can't be an exempt facility."
> Indeed, Chicago police guidelines appear to ban the sorts of practices
> Church and the lawyers said occur at Homan Square.
> A directive titled "Processing Persons Under Department Control [14]"
> instructs that "investigation or interrogation of an arrestee will not
> delay
> the booking process," and arrestees must be allowed "a reasonable number of
> telephone calls" to attorneys swiftly "after their arrival at the first
> place of custody." Another directive, "Arrestee and In-Custody
> Communications [15]," says police supervisors must "allow visitation by
> attorneys."
> Attorney Scott Finger said that the Chicago police tightened the latter
> directive in 2012 after quiet complaints from lawyers about their lack of
> access to Homan Square. Without those changes, Church's attorneys might not
> have gained entry at all. But that tightening - about a week before
> Church's
> arrest - did not prevent Church's prolonged detention without a lawyer, nor
> the later cases where lawyers were unable to enter.
> The combination of holding clients for long periods, while concealing their
> whereabouts and denying access to a lawyer, struck legal experts as a
> throwback to the worst excesses of Chicago police abuse, with a post-9/11
> feel to it.
> On a smaller scale, Homan Square is "analogous to the CIA's black sites,"
> said Andrea Lyon, a former Chicago public defender and current dean of
> Valparaiso University Law School. When she practiced law in Chicago in the
> 1980s and 1990s, she said, "police used the term 'shadow site'" to refer to
> the quasi-disappearances now in place at Homan Square.
> "Back when I first started working on torture cases and started
> representing
> criminal defendants in the early 1970s, my clients often told me they'd
> been
> taken from one police station to another before ending up at Area 2 where
> they were tortured," said Taylor, the civil-rights lawyer most associated
> with pursuing the notoriously abusive Area 2 police commander Jon Burge.
> "And in that way the police prevent their family and lawyers from seeing
> them until they could coerce, through torture or other means, confessions
> from them."
> Police often have off-site facilities to have private conversations with
> their informants. But a retired Washington DC homicide detective, James
> Trainum, could not think of another circumstance nationwide where police
> held people incommunicado for extended periods.
> "I've never known any kind of organized, secret place where they go and
> just
> hold somebody before booking for hours and hours and hours. That scares the
> hell out of me that that even exists or might exist," said Trainum, who now
> studies national policing issues, to include interrogations, for the
> Innocence Project and the Constitution Project.
> Regardless of departmental regulations, police frequently deny or elide
> access to lawyers even at regular police precincts, said Solowiej of First
> Defense Legal Aid. But she said the outright denial was exacerbated at
> Chicago's secretive interrogation and holding facility: "It's very, very
> rare for anyone to experience their constitutional rights in Chicago police
> custody, and even more so at Homan Square," Solowiej said.
> Church said that one of his more striking memories of Homan Square was the
> "big, big vehicles" police had inside the complex that "look like very
> large
> MRAPs that they use in the Middle East."
> Cook County, home of Chicago, has received some 1,700 pieces of military
> equipment from a much-criticized Pentagon program transferring military
> gear
> to local police. It includes a Humvee, according to a local ABC News report
> [16].
> Tracy Siska, a criminologist and civil-rights activist with the Chicago
> Justice Project, said that Homan Square, as well as the unrelated case of
> ex-Guantánamo interrogator and retired Chicago detective Richard Zuley [7],
> showed the lines blurring between domestic law enforcement and overseas
> military operations.
> "The real danger in allowing practices like Guantánamo or Abu Ghraib is the
> fact that they always creep into other aspects," Siska said.
> "They creep into domestic law enforcement, either with weaponry like with
> the militarization of police, or interrogation practices. That's how we
> ended up with a black site in Chicago."
> Spencer Ackerman writes for The Guardian from Washington, DC.
> Share on Facebook Share
> Share on Twitter Tweet
> Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@alternet.org'. [17]
> [18]
> ________________________________________
> Source URL:
> http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/disappeared-police-detain-american
> s-abuse-laden-black-site
> Links:
> [1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/spencer-ackerman-0
> [2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/
> [3]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-america
> ns-black-site
> [4] http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/chicago
> [5]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-homan-square-black-si
> te
> [6]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/19/evidence-chicago-detective-ri
> chard-zuley
> [7]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/18/guantanamo-torture-chicago-po
> lice-brutality
> [8]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/19/chicago-police-richard-zuley-
> abuse-innocent-man
> [9]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/18/american-police-brutality-chi
> cago-guantanamo
> [10]
> http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/citations-the-february-23-2015-trms
> [11]
> http://www.cbsnews.com/news/terror-indictments-for-chicago-nato-protesters-b
> rian-church-jared-chase-brent-vincent-betterly/
> [12]
> http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-04-25/news/chi-sentencing-today-for-
> nato-3-prosecutors-seeking-14year-terms-20140425_1_nato-3-prison-terms-judge
> -thaddeus-wilson
> [13]
> http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-02-04/news/chi-man-in-custody-found-
> unresponsive-dies-20130202_1_bronzeville-neighborhood-police-custody-homan-s
> quare-neighborhood
> [14] http://www.alternet.org/blank
> [15]
> http://directives.chicagopolice.org/lt2014/data/a7a56e4b-12ccbe26-df812-ccbf
> -527447d507470630.html
> [16]
> http://abc7chicago.com/news/widespread-militarization-of-illinois-police-for
> ces-uncovered-by-i-team/259740/
> [17] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on The Disappeared:
> Police
> Detain Americans at Abuse-Laden 'Black Site'
> [18] http://www.alternet.org/
> [19] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>
> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
> Home > The Disappeared: Police Detain Americans at Abuse-Laden 'Black Site'
>
>
> The Disappeared: Police Detain Americans at Abuse-Laden 'Black Site'
> By Spencer Ackerman [1] / The Guardian [2]
> February 24, 2015
> The following story first appeared in the Guardian. [3]
> The Chicago [4] police department operates an off-the-books interrogation
> compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys
> while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA
> black site.
> The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago's west side known as Homan
> Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units.
> Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part
> of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to
> basic constitutional rights.
> Alleged police practices at Homan Square [5], according to those familiar
> with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation
> into
> Chicago police abuse [6], include:
> * Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.
> * Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.
> * Shackling for prolonged periods.
> * Denying attorneys access to the "secure" facility.
> * Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours,
> including people as young as 15.
> At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square "interview room"
> and later pronounced dead.
> Brian Jacob Church, a protester known as one of the "Nato Three", was held
> and questioned at Homan Square in 2012 following a police raid. Officers
> restrained Church for the better part of a day, denying him access to an
> attorney, before sending him to a nearby police station to be booked and
> charged.
> "Homan Square is definitely an unusual place," Church told the Guardian on
> Friday. "It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the
> Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It's a domestic black site.
> When you go in, no one knows what's happened to you."
> The secretive warehouse is the latest example of Chicago police practices
> that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism.
> While those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square - said to house
> military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage - trains its
> focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown.
> Unlike a precinct, no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked.
> Witnesses, suspects or other Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to
> have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where
> they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and
> relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts. Those
> lawyers
> who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned
> away, even as their clients remain in custody inside.
> "It's sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police
> station visits, this place - if you can't find a client in the system, odds
> are they're there," said Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes.
> Chicago civil-rights attorney Flint Taylor said Homan Square represented a
> routinization of a notorious practice in local police work that violates
> the
> fifth and sixth amendments of the constitution.
> "This Homan Square revelation seems to me to be an institutionalization of
> the practice that dates back more than 40 years," Taylor said, "of
> violating
> a suspect or witness' rights to a lawyer and not to be physically or
> otherwise coerced into giving a statement."
> Much remains hidden about Homan Square. The Chicago police department has
> not responded to any of the Guardian's recent questions - neither about any
> aspect of operations at Homan Square, nor about the Guardian's
> investigation
> of Richard Zuley [7], the retired Chicago detective [8] turned Guantánamo
> Bay torturer [9]. (On Monday evening, it instead provided a statement to
> MSNBC [10] regarding the Guardian's Zuley investigation: "The vast majority
> of our officers serve the public with honor and integrity," said the
> statement, adding that the department "has zero tolerance for misconduct,
> and has instituted a series of internal initiatives and reforms, to ensure
> past incidents of police misconduct are not repeated". Without providing
> any
> specifics, it claimed "the allegations in this instance are not supported
> by
> the facts.")
> When a Guardian reporter arrived at the warehouse on Friday, a man at the
> gatehouse outside refused any entrance and would not answer questions.
> "This
> is a secure facility. You're not even supposed to be standing here," said
> the man, who refused to give his name.
> A former Chicago police superintendent and a more recently retired
> detective, both of whom have been inside Homan Square in the last few years
> in a post-police capacity, said the police department did not operate out
> of
> the warehouse until the late 1990s.
> But in detailing episodes involving their clients over the past several
> years, lawyers described mad scrambles that led to the closed doors of
> Homan
> Square, a place most had never heard of previously. The facility was even
> unknown to Rob Warden, the founder of Northwestern University Law School's
> Center on Wrongful Convictions, until the Guardian informed him of the
> allegations of clients who vanish into inherently coercive police custody.
> "They just disappear," said Anthony Hill, a criminal defense attorney,
> "until they show up at a district for charging or are just released back
> out
> on the street."
> 'Never going to see the light of day': the search for the Nato Three, the
> head wound, the worried mom and the dead man
>
> 'They were held incommunicado for much longer than I think should be
> permitted in this country - anywhere - but particularly given the strong
> constitutional rights afforded to people who are being charged with
> crimes,"
> said Sarah Gelsomino, the lawyer for Brian Jacob Church.
> Photo Credit:
> Phil Batta/Guardian
> Jacob Church learned about Homan Square the hard way. On May 16 2012 [11],
> he and 11 others were taken there after police infiltrated their protest
> against the Nato summit. Church says officers cuffed him to a bench for an
> estimated 17 hours, intermittently interrogating him without reading his
> Miranda rights to remain silent. It would take another three hours - and an
> unusual lawyer visit through a wire cage - before he was finally charged
> with terrorism-related offenses at the nearby 11th district station, where
> he was made to sign papers, fingerprinted and photographed.
> In preparation for the Nato protest, Church, who is from Florida, had
> written a phone number for the National Lawyers Guild on his arm as a
> precautionary measure. Once taken to Homan Square, Church asked explicitly
> to call his lawyers, and said he was denied.
> "Essentially, I wasn't allowed to make any contact with anybody," Church
> told the Guardian, in contradiction of a police guidance on permitting
> phone
> calls and legal counsel to arrestees.
> Church's left wrist was cuffed to a bar behind a bench in windowless
> cinderblock cell, with his ankles cuffed together. He remained in those
> restraints for about 17 hours.
> "I had essentially figured, 'All right, well, they disappeared us and so
> we're probably never going to see the light of day again,'" Church said.
> Though the raid attracted major media attention, a team of attorneys could
> not find Church through 12 hours of "active searching", Sarah Gelsomino,
> Church's lawyer, recalled. No booking record existed. Only after she and
> others made a "major stink" with contacts in the offices of the corporation
> counsel and Mayor Rahm Emanuel did they even learn about Homan Square.
> They sent another attorney to the facility, where he ultimately gained
> entry, and talked to Church through a floor-to-ceiling chain-link metal
> cage. Finally, hours later, police took Church and his two co-defendants to
> a nearby police station for booking.
> After serving two and a half years in prison, Church is currently on parole
> after he and his co-defendants were found not guilty in 2014 of
> terrorism-related offenses [12] but guilty of lesser charges of possessing
> an incendiary device and the misdemeanor of "mob action".
> The access that Nato Three attorneys received to Homan Square was an
> exception to the rule, even if Jacob Church's experience there was not.
> Three attorneys interviewed by the Guardian report being personally turned
> away from Homan Square between 2009 and 2013 without being allowed access
> to
> their clients. Two more lawyers who hadn't been physically denied described
> it as a place where police withheld information about their clients'
> whereabouts. Church was the only person who had been detained at the
> facility who agreed to talk with the Guardian: their lawyers say others
> fear
> police retaliation.
> One man in January 2013 had his name changed in the Chicago central
> bookings
> database and then taken to Homan Square without a record of his transfer
> being kept, according to Eliza Solowiej of Chicago's First Defense Legal
> Aid. (The man, the Guardian understands, wishes to be anonymous; his
> current
> attorney declined to confirm Solowiej's account.) She found out where he
> was
> after he was taken to the hospital with a head injury.
> "He said that the officers caused his head injuries in an interrogation
> room
> at Homan Square. I had been looking for him for six to eight hours, and
> every department member I talked to said they had never heard of him,"
> Solowiej said. "He sent me a phone pic of his head injuries because I had
> seen him in a police station right before he was transferred to Homan
> Square
> without any."
> Bartmes, another Chicago attorney, said that in September 2013 she got a
> call from a mother worried that her 15-year-old son had been picked up by
> police before dawn. A sympathetic sergeant followed up with the mother to
> say her son was being questioned at Homan Square in connection to a
> shooting
> and would be released soon. When hours passed, Bartmes traveled to Homan
> Square, only to be refused entry for nearly an hour.
> An officer told her, "Well, you can't just stand here taking notes, this is
> a secure facility, there are undercover officers, and you're making people
> very nervous," Bartmes recalled. Told to leave, she said she would return
> in
> an hour if the boy was not released. He was home, and not charged, after
> "12, maybe 13" hours in custody.
> On February 2, 2013, John Hubbard was taken to Homan Square. Hubbard never
> walked out. The Chicago Tribune reported that the 44-year old was found
> "unresponsive inside an interview room [13]", and pronounced dead. The Cook
> County medical examiner's office could not locate any record for the
> Guardian indicating a cause of Hubbard's death. It remains unclear why
> Hubbard was ever in police custody.
> Homan Square is hardly concerned exclusively with terrorism. Several
> special
> units operate outside of it, including the anti-gang and anti-drug forces.
> If police "want money, guns, drugs", or information on the flow of any of
> them onto Chicago's streets, "they bring them there and use it as a place
> of
> interrogation off the books," Hill said.
> 'That scares the hell out of me': a throwback to Chicago police abuse with
> a
> post-9/11 feel
>
> 'The real danger in allowing practices like Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib is the
> fact that they always creep into other aspects,' criminologist Tracy Siska
> told the Guardian.
> Photo Credit:
> Chandler West/Guardian
> A former Chicago detective and current private investigator, Bill Dorsch,
> said he had not heard of the police abuses described by Church and lawyers
> for other suspects who had been taken to Homan Square. He has been
> permitted
> access to the facility to visit one of its main features, an evidence
> locker
> for the police department. ("I just showed my retirement star and passed
> through," Dorsch said.)
> Transferring detainees through police custody to deny them access to legal
> counsel, would be "a career-ender," Dorsch said. "To move just for the
> purpose of hiding them, I can't see that happening," he told the Guardian.
> Richard Brzeczek, Chicago's police superintendent from 1980 to 1983, who
> also said he had no first-hand knowledge of abuses at Homan Square, said it
> was "never justified" to deny access to attorneys.
> "Homan Square should be on the same list as every other facility where you
> can call central booking and say: 'Can you tell me if this person is in
> custody and where,'" Brzeczek said.
> "If you're going to be doing this, then you have to include Homan Square on
> the list of facilities that prisoners are taken into and a record made. It
> can't be an exempt facility."
> Indeed, Chicago police guidelines appear to ban the sorts of practices
> Church and the lawyers said occur at Homan Square.
> A directive titled "Processing Persons Under Department Control [14]"
> instructs that "investigation or interrogation of an arrestee will not
> delay
> the booking process," and arrestees must be allowed "a reasonable number of
> telephone calls" to attorneys swiftly "after their arrival at the first
> place of custody." Another directive, "Arrestee and In-Custody
> Communications [15]," says police supervisors must "allow visitation by
> attorneys."
> Attorney Scott Finger said that the Chicago police tightened the latter
> directive in 2012 after quiet complaints from lawyers about their lack of
> access to Homan Square. Without those changes, Church's attorneys might not
> have gained entry at all. But that tightening - about a week before
> Church's
> arrest - did not prevent Church's prolonged detention without a lawyer, nor
> the later cases where lawyers were unable to enter.
> The combination of holding clients for long periods, while concealing their
> whereabouts and denying access to a lawyer, struck legal experts as a
> throwback to the worst excesses of Chicago police abuse, with a post-9/11
> feel to it.
> On a smaller scale, Homan Square is "analogous to the CIA's black sites,"
> said Andrea Lyon, a former Chicago public defender and current dean of
> Valparaiso University Law School. When she practiced law in Chicago in the
> 1980s and 1990s, she said, "police used the term 'shadow site'" to refer to
> the quasi-disappearances now in place at Homan Square.
> "Back when I first started working on torture cases and started
> representing
> criminal defendants in the early 1970s, my clients often told me they'd
> been
> taken from one police station to another before ending up at Area 2 where
> they were tortured," said Taylor, the civil-rights lawyer most associated
> with pursuing the notoriously abusive Area 2 police commander Jon Burge.
> "And in that way the police prevent their family and lawyers from seeing
> them until they could coerce, through torture or other means, confessions
> from them."
> Police often have off-site facilities to have private conversations with
> their informants. But a retired Washington DC homicide detective, James
> Trainum, could not think of another circumstance nationwide where police
> held people incommunicado for extended periods.
> "I've never known any kind of organized, secret place where they go and
> just
> hold somebody before booking for hours and hours and hours. That scares the
> hell out of me that that even exists or might exist," said Trainum, who now
> studies national policing issues, to include interrogations, for the
> Innocence Project and the Constitution Project.
> Regardless of departmental regulations, police frequently deny or elide
> access to lawyers even at regular police precincts, said Solowiej of First
> Defense Legal Aid. But she said the outright denial was exacerbated at
> Chicago's secretive interrogation and holding facility: "It's very, very
> rare for anyone to experience their constitutional rights in Chicago police
> custody, and even more so at Homan Square," Solowiej said.
> Church said that one of his more striking memories of Homan Square was the
> "big, big vehicles" police had inside the complex that "look like very
> large
> MRAPs that they use in the Middle East."
> Cook County, home of Chicago, has received some 1,700 pieces of military
> equipment from a much-criticized Pentagon program transferring military
> gear
> to local police. It includes a Humvee, according to a local ABC News report
> [16].
> Tracy Siska, a criminologist and civil-rights activist with the Chicago
> Justice Project, said that Homan Square, as well as the unrelated case of
> ex-Guantánamo interrogator and retired Chicago detective Richard Zuley [7],
> showed the lines blurring between domestic law enforcement and overseas
> military operations.
> "The real danger in allowing practices like Guantánamo or Abu Ghraib is the
> fact that they always creep into other aspects," Siska said.
> "They creep into domestic law enforcement, either with weaponry like with
> the militarization of police, or interrogation practices. That's how we
> ended up with a black site in Chicago."
> Spencer Ackerman writes for The Guardian from Washington, DC.
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@alternet.org'. [17]
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[18]
>
> Source URL:
> http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/disappeared-police-detain-american
> s-abuse-laden-black-site
> Links:
> [1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/spencer-ackerman-0
> [2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/
> [3]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-america
> ns-black-site
> [4] http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/chicago
> [5]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-homan-square-black-si
> te
> [6]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/19/evidence-chicago-detective-ri
> chard-zuley
> [7]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/18/guantanamo-torture-chicago-po
> lice-brutality
> [8]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/19/chicago-police-richard-zuley-
> abuse-innocent-man
> [9]
> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/18/american-police-brutality-chi
> cago-guantanamo
> [10]
> http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/citations-the-february-23-2015-trms
> [11]
> http://www.cbsnews.com/news/terror-indictments-for-chicago-nato-protesters-b
> rian-church-jared-chase-brent-vincent-betterly/
> [12]
> http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-04-25/news/chi-sentencing-today-for-
> nato-3-prosecutors-seeking-14year-terms-20140425_1_nato-3-prison-terms-judge
> -thaddeus-wilson
> [13]
> http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-02-04/news/chi-man-in-custody-found-
> unresponsive-dies-20130202_1_bronzeville-neighborhood-police-custody-homan-s
> quare-neighborhood
> [14] http://www.alternet.org/blank
> [15]
> http://directives.chicagopolice.org/lt2014/data/a7a56e4b-12ccbe26-df812-ccbf
> -527447d507470630.html
> [16]
> http://abc7chicago.com/news/widespread-militarization-of-illinois-police-for
> ces-uncovered-by-i-team/259740/
> [17] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on The Disappeared:
> Police
> Detain Americans at Abuse-Laden 'Black Site'
> [18] http://www.alternet.org/
> [19] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>
>
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> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
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