Ecuador cuts off Julian Assange’s internet access at London embassy

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Government accuses WikiLeaks founder of putting international ties at risk by failing to abide by deal not to interfere in other countries

Ecuador has cut Julian Assange’s communications with the outside world from its London embassy, where the founder of the whistleblowing WikiLeaks website has been living for nearly six years.

The Ecuadorian government said in statement that it had acted because Assange had breached “a written commitment made to the government at the end of 2017 not to issue messages that might interfere with other states”.

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Israel is in ‘a critical medical state’ say former Mossad spies

Bethlehem/PNN/

Six former Israeli spies have raised concerns over the future of the country under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Describing Israel as being under “a critical medical state” the ex-spies voiced their alarm as Israel prepares to celebrate the 70th year since its independence, the day of the Nakba.

The surviving ex-Mossad intelligence agency chiefs made their remarks while discussing the prospect of a fourth-term Netanyahu-led government in Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s best-selling newspaper and a regular Netanyahu critic.

Danny Yatom, who headed Mossad during Netanyahu’s first stint in office in the late 1990s, called for his ouster, accusing him and his aides of “putting their interests ahead of national interests” as corruption investigations deepen.

Yatom also voiced concern about “the inertia in the diplomatic sphere, which is leading us toward a bi-national state [with the Palestinians], which would spell the end of [Israel as] a Jewish and democratic state.”

Zvi Zamir, Mossad director from 1968 to 1974, was quoted as saying by Yedioth: “We have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren here, and I want them to live in a healthy country – and the country is sick.”

Expressing his anguish over the fate of Israel, Zamir added: “We are in a critical medical state. It could be that the country had symptoms when Netanyahu took over, but he has brought it to the grave condition of a malignant disease.”

Kimberlé Crenshaw: Up in Arms, a Conversation About Women and Weapons

The Female Fighter Series is published in partnership with the Politics of Sexual Violence Initiative and V-Day: A Global Movement to End Violence Against Women and Girls

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In Jamaica, many years ago, legal scholar and activist Kimberlé Crenshaw critiqued an essay of mine, on the lives of female fighters. About the emotional capital built up in the telling of the women’s stories she suggested, “Sacrifice it. And build up political capital, an ask for action.”

The advice was, in retrospect, not surprising. Crenshaw was and remains steadfast in her focus on the political impact a violent society, and state, has on black women. Crenshaw, renowned for coining the term “intersectionality” over two decades ago, has pulled her theories into the practice of an overtly political feminist practice.

As the racial divide in the United States deepens, black women are increasingly taking up arms. According to data released by the Texas Department of Public Safety, black women are one of the fastest-growing demographic groups to obtain permits to carry a concealed weapon. Like combatant women elsewhere, these civilian women cite the necessity of carrying a gun—for protection and power. Crenshaw is a critical voice in understanding this trend, and the driving forces behind it.

For most American audiences, the female fighter exists in a land far, far away. To consider female militancy in this country, in our movements, requires a reckoning: the need to see police brutality against black women as state violence, checkpoints in school cafeterias as militarization, and the death rates from domestic and mass violence as mimicking those of a warzone.

The first piece in Guernica’s “Female Fighter” series, authored by Valeria Luiselli, focused on Sandra, a senior fighter in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In a subsequent conversation with Sandra on black women in the United States, she told me, “(They) are very strong, they have guts. But they can still engage in the political struggle without arms.” Militancy is always a moment in the movement. The choice to take up arms is a considered one. “Arms should not be the absolute answer,” Sandra later added, in a cautionary tone. “One should only take up arms when there is no other answer.”

For black women in the US, is that moment emerging?

The legitimate use of violence as a form of resistance was as divisive a question in the civil rights era as it is in contemporary conversations on the value of black life. Groups like Armed Empress and the Black Women’s Defense League point out that while women in the black community feel more compelled to take up arms in today’s America, historically violence has always been ‘deeply connected to the black experience,’ according to Armed Empress founder Ty Shaw.

Crenshaw’s scholarship on intersectionality and her political work through the African American Policy Forum insist that we acknowledge the impact of this violence on women, positioned at the intersection of multiple forms of oppression. Through the #sayhername and #breakingthesilence campaigns, Crenshaw has drawn the traumatic testimonies of black women into the mission of active movement-building and national debates on gender and violence.

As the political landscape in America becomes increasingly militarized, women in the alt-right are armed, white supremacists are armed, and, some hope, teachers may soon be armed. Where does this leave black women?

In the interview that follows, Crenshaw explores the possibility of black militancy among women. She is characteristically thoughtful—neither condoning nor condemning. Thinking back to the church massacre in Charleston, however, she wonders why nobody seems to be expressing outrage, acknowledging that black women are under siege. “Is anybody going to sound the bell that we have to be thinking much more strategically about how to protect our lives at this moment?”

Nimmi Gowrinathan for Guernica

Guernica: Through your work at the African American Policy Forum, how have you seen the overlapping daily, state, and structural violence shift the politics of black women and girls? Do you see a distinctive political perspective crystalizing, driven by the violence that’s been ever-present in their lives?

Kimberlé Crenshaw: I do see the shift in a conscious denunciation of both violence and the erasure of the violence. The most pronounced articulation of that is the #sayhername campaign. It’s an effort to engender a discourse about anti-black state violence with an awareness and a set of demands around the recognition that black women and girls are also subject to that violence, and they are subject to it in ways that are similar to men and boys and also subject to it in ways that are different. So the recognition around the multiple black women who’ve been killed by the police that has garnered a set of politics that aren’t fully realized. But much more than ever before there is an insistence that women’s names be lifted up in efforts to articulate and denounce violence against black people. So the recognition that black women are black people is then expressed in a way that we haven’t seen in recent history.

Guernica: You have hosted conversations with women in the Black Panthers. Can you share your thoughts on what, in the past, may have driven these women to a more militant form of resistance to state violence?

Kimberlé Crenshaw: I think that it’s important to contextualize their activism with reference to the violence that they were resisting. I would say at least two, if not three, levels of violence. First off, there’s just the violence of a socioeconomic system that was predicated on racial repression of poor people, of black people, and especially of poor black people. I think that the framework of the Panthers began with the violence of white supremacy, virulent white supremacy, all of its multiple displacements, all of its destructions, all of its authorizing of private as well as public violence. By that I mean not just the violence of “the baton against the head” but the violence of ever-restricting opportunities for living, for thriving, for working, for creating, for producing. All the ways that both the public and the private constrained African-American life have got to be the first level of violence.

Then there’s the quite explicit violence that stresses the conditions of police-state relationships with black communities, and I want to say here that typically it’s understood in terms of police brutality, as extraordinary surveillance, and a court system that backs up that violence and surveillance with continuous forms of repression. And that’s just as a general matter, just generally what black people were, are, experiencing.

And then the third level is political violence, with a capital ‘P’—essentially, the idea that to be organized, politically, and to build the capacity to serve one’s own community would be met with extraordinary state repressive violence. Efforts to kill the Panthers, across the country I might say, not just in Oakland or in Los Angeles—but a national project to seek out and destroy activists for resisting the violence of deprivation and of fear is a third level of violence.

When you add all of these different forms of violence you’re looking at a situation in which for anyone in the midst of that, their options are either death or self-defense. And, quite frankly, we need to think about how women were involved and, in particular, their way of being involved at the most fundamental levels of the work—organizing communities, feeding children, educating children, advocating for those who had been subject to the first and second forms of violence. This is the work of defending the community, the work of protection, the work of advancing a sense of self-worth, self-determination, and just a pure right to exist.

There are so many other contexts around the world where violence in pursuit of the right to exist is seen as a legitimate expression of that right, except when it’s black people and except when it’s women. And so when you add those two together, black women having the right to protect themselves and to affirm their right to exist by any means necessary is patently outside the parameters of what people consider to be legitimate uses of violence.

Guernica: The legitimacy of violence is one of the central debates in resistance movements, and one that can be divisive, even within the community itself. How do you understand the role of class in perceptions of violence?

Kimberlé Crenshaw: You know I’m glad you said perceptions of violence as opposed to simply participation and self-defense, because sometimes class gets over-determined with violence—in terms of who was in and who was out. In terms of perception, we should be careful to mark where this perception is represented, like in middle-class publications that spoke to the aspirations of an integrationist project. If we’re talking about the mid-level career professionals, those who were making their way through government, and, to a certain extent, corporate America. If we’re looking at those spaces I think it is not surprising to anticipate that they would be a constituency experiencing a fair degree of pressure against and have a fair degree of dissonance around the prospect of violence—a disconnect from the idea that at the end of the day there is nothing left to defend oneself other than violence, other than that kill-or-be-killed instinct.

We see it today when folks who are seen to be articulating visions of racial equality and justice are outside the “mainstream” and targeted by others to force other black people to come out and denounce them. It’s still the group mentality of the past, of group punishment—either you denounce or you too shall be considered to be fully part of this group that cannot be allowed to live. I don’t mean to discount the role of respectability politics and I don’t mean to discount, in reality, the fear that drove a lot of middle-class upwardly mobile, and even working-class upwardly mobile, people to distance themselves from what was seen as a far too radical and dangerous expression of self-determination. But I think it is important to just recognize that some of the dimensions of power that these groups were fighting against actually played out in the lives of middle-class and elite black folks as well. Forcing, many times, performances—or at least incentivizing performances of distance and repudiation against these groups.

Guernica: Every resistance struggle has a moment where violence becomes an option. Right now, in this country, we have a rise of intolerance, and the resulting rise of both fear and rage in marginalized communities. Do you see signs of a tipping point, where violence may, again, become an option?

Kimberlé Crenshaw: You know, I can’t fully speak to whether I’m seeing a tipping point in terms of a result to forms of violence framed as self-defense, or understood to be self-defense. What I do see is a renewed recognition of the vulnerability of black life and the debate, at times intense debate, about what that means in terms of response.

I’m thinking particularly about the killing of mostly black women at Mother Emanuel in Charleston. And I was particularly troubled by what can be seen as either the reflection of deeper vulnerability or denial about the threat that we face. The discourse of forgiveness, the discourse of de-escalation, the discourse of we have nothing to do but forgive. Even rhetorical defense seemed to be outside of the scope of possibility for so many people.

When I watched the funeral, I wept both because of the unthinkable tragedy it represents but also what I thought to be the potential green light to a premature discourse of forgiveness and homage to old spirituals of amazing grace—without the capacity to actually defend our right to self-defense in these contexts. I still feel that feeling of: Is anybody going to express outrage about this, is anybody going to say we are under siege, is anybody going to sound the bell that we have to be thinking much more strategically about how to protect our lives at this moment?

And that didn’t happen and we just got a discourse of forgiveness in a context which is entirely inappropriate, when no one is asking for forgiveness. If the killer was let out tomorrow, we’d have no reason to think he was seeking forgiveness. To give forgiveness when no one’s asked for it rather than to have a full-on discourse about how we’re going protect ourselves seemed to be the secondary tragedy. And the fact that they were women in a church made me feel more vulnerable. At the end I wonder, if he killed a dozen people, and it was all men and not in a church, would we be so quick to default to this discourse of forgiveness?

Guernica: When women are targeted, the possibility of violent resistance is often even more remote—as women taking up arms is still unexpected, often frowned upon. How do you see the gendered nature of a rise in societal, and state, violence?

Kimberlé Crenshaw: I think that the particular ways that black women experience gender-based violence at the hands of the state is another issue that has been largely unarticulated until many black women came to an awareness that their fear of police, because of potential sexual abuse, wasn’t individual. There was a reason for the group to be worried about that.

The Daniel Holtzclaw case [in 2016 an ex-cop was sentenced to 263 years in prison for the rape of several black women] was a lightning rod for that awareness, and it wasn’t surprising that black women traveled to Oklahoma City for the sentencing. That was a symbolic moment of conscious, collective recognition of vulnerability and an effort to shift away from silence around that issue by not only denouncing it, but also demanding anti-racist and women’s groups actually address this dimension of state violence that they both ignore. That seems to reflect a significant shift.

What remains the most challenging problem is to shift that discourse to include not just state violence, not just fighting back against police officers, but also recognizing the systemic violence that occurs within our community as an expression not simply of white supremacy, but white supremacy mixed with patriarchy that can play out between people of exactly the same racial and cultural background. So our ability to turn that corner, to make that shift, has yet to be fully realized. I do think that the case of [Marissa Alexander] in Florida, who was looking at a long-term conviction for shooting warning shots in self-defense, was a moment where black women were increasingly able to see that in a personal way. That they were facing the violence of partners and the violence of the state.

The Trayvon Martin case of course reflects a classic situation—where the state and private violence converge to endanger the lives and take the lives of black people. That’s far easier to mobilize around than her case, which is also a state-private convergence, but the private dimension of the violence is interpersonal violence, it is male-female, it’s within that space, being caught between trying to resist and being subject to state punishment.

It’s so fascinating, the prosecutor of Zimmerman was also [Alexander’s] prosecutor. But you know, here you have a white female prosecutor who can get behind, however ineffectively I have to say, a conventional understanding of how black people are subject to private violence, and not be able to get behind it when the black person is a woman. That recognition of our multiple marginality and vulnerability is the growing awareness we need. That case made a big difference among those who are fighting interpersonal violence. Just to see what happens when the state colludes with perpetrators, and colludes with perpetrators against black female bodies in ways that we think probably wouldn’t happen if we were white female bodies.

Guernica: Similar to responses in my own work with women in guerilla movements, when asked about the reasons for gun ownership, among black women there was almost an equal split between the threat of domestic violence and the external rise in racism in this country—the layered threat they felt as women and the threat they felt as women and black people. Do you see gun ownership for black women as reflective of an increasing need to have a blanket protection against multiple, intersecting forces of violence?

Kimberlé Crenshaw: I find it interesting how the marketing of guns for women that I’ve seen don’t include black women, but the message of gun ownership as an equalizer seems to, in particular ways, have some potential to speak to those who are most vulnerable to forms of violence.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it turns out to be the case that gun ownership for black women is increasing at a disproportionate rate. If anything it’s sort of potentially catching up to the disproportionate vulnerability that black women face across lots of different vectors. I mean, I’ve been witness to many conversations since Charleston about whether there is a black feminist case for black women to arm up, to protect themselves. And it’s not a conversation that I have remembered participating in since I went to school, at the tail end of black militant student movements, and even then the discourse on guns was not one that involved women. It was more one that involved traditional sorts of masculinist orientation toward engaging in liberation struggles with community police or community state, or sometimes community vigilantes. To the extent that there was an overt gender dimension to it, it was sort of your role as a revolutionary man to know how to shoot a gun.

So this conversation now about arming black women, I don’t think it’s really broken through. I could probably list four or five things that I’ve heard women talk about in private, and one of them is what are we going to do to defend ourselves? I’m not at all surprised if the conclusion of that conversation for many women having it is: One thing I’m going to do is exercise my legal right to bear arms.

Guernica: There was a young black woman, a graduate student in Texas, who described gun ownership as a form of empowerment that should be embraced as part of a modern feminist movement. Most contemporary movements, like Black Lives Matter, have a stated commitment to nonviolence. Do you see conversations on gun ownership happening within the organizing work of broader political movements or does it feel more isolated, linked to individual protection or threat to life?

Kimberlé Crenshaw: It could be because of where I circulate, but if anything I’ve seen a clear effort to dispel the reproduction of the “Panthers are dangerous, let’s kill them” sensibility. In the organized spaces that I’ve seen, there’s kind of a concerted effort to not engage in these questions on developing the capacity to use violence as self-defense. Most of what I’ve seen is much more an interpersonal, “I just don’t feel safe.” Of course, it’s important to note, the politics of a black women not feeling safe and buying a gun is completely different than the politics of a white woman not feeling safe and buying a gun.

Guernica: In other contexts, like for Tamil women in Sri Lanka, the draw to violence emerges from an inability to have a distinctive political voice in non-violent spaces, because that space has never existed for them. Your advocacy work reveals how limited the political space for black women and girls is, here in the US. Have you seen political spaces opening up for black women and girls that are a compelling alternative to violence? Are there new spaces emerging on social media, through radical art or intellectual dialogue, that are, or might become, political outlets?

Kimberlé Crenshaw: Over the last two years there have been spaces emerging that are both expressive and developmental. Whether and how they constitute full-on alternatives, I couldn’t say. The work we’ve been doing with black women and girls in breaking the silence identifies the violence of silence and what is permitted to do in that space. So that we are opening an alternative to speak one’s existence into the gap, into the erased part, and then the second, equally challenging task is to build community out of the resistance to erasure. That’s a different point of departure for community; it’s not just the women’s auxiliary. And it’s not just, We fight white supremacy, too. It is a space that begins with, I recognize the demand that I not see you, because I recognize the demand that I not see myself. And a radical act of the reversal of that is not only to see but to embrace. To love, in ways that are transgressive.

In other words, to put black women at the center of their politics, of their mobilization, of their conscious awareness, or their capacity to articulate what is the imperative around racial justice—the imperative is us. That is a response to a particular form of violence that is a potential alternative that we’ve been seeing play out. There’s #sayhername, there’s Girl Be Heard, and all sorts of smaller pockets of this consciousness that seem to be taking root across the country. And I think it remains to be seen where it goes and what it turns into. There are some who see its potential in terms of moving into more traditional forms of political power.

Many, many people are talking about what happened in Alabama, for example, as the picture of what it looks like when black women become far more self-consciously political actors in their own right, and the questions is: Did Alabama represent that? So that’s one potential direction, but I don’t think it’s the only potential direction this might take. Going around to college campuses, I just spent a week at Brandeis, and was really blown away by the articulation of a group identity that is born in a recognition of an erasure that is no longer tolerable. And that’s not the “black women, my queen” kind of stuff, with the baby on one hip and the gun on the another. You know, the “follow my man.” It wasn’t that kind of stuff. It was coming from, what felt to me like, a completely different point of departure. If you ask me what are some of the alternatives to resisting violence, this seems to be like, “We resist violence by affirming self-love and affirming our right to be and our right to be in solidarity with each other.”

The post Kimberlé Crenshaw: Up in Arms, a Conversation About Women and Weapons appeared first on Guernica.

Mueller reveals Manafort and Gates associate had Russian intelligence ties

vis aleksey godin

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Documents also state that Gates had admitted knowing the associate was a former officer with Russian military intelligence

Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and his deputy, Rick Gates, were in contact during the 2016 presidential campaign with a business associate known to have ties to Russian military intelligence, according to court documents.

The documents, filed late on Tuesday night by the special prosecutor Robert Mueller, also state that Gates had admitted knowing that the associate was a former officer with Russian military intelligence, the GRU.

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Gaza ‘Return March’ organizer: ‘We’ll ensure it doesn’t escalate to violence — on our end’

Palestinians in Gaza are planning 45 days of protests along the border with Israel leading up to the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, and they fear Israeli troops may open fire. One of the organizers speaks to +972 Magazine about why he believes hundreds of thousands of people will show up, and what message he’d like to send to Israelis.

An Israeli soldier raises his rifle toward unarmed Palestinian protesters along the border fence separating Israel and Gaza, Gaza Strip, near the Nahal Oz crossing, October 30, 2015. (Ezz Zanoun/Activestills.org)

An Israeli soldier raises his rifle toward unarmed Palestinian protesters along the border fence separating Israel and Gaza, Gaza Strip, near the Nahal Oz crossing, October 30, 2015. (Ezz Zanoun/Activestills.org)

A few minutes before I spoke with Hasan al-Kurd Monday night, Israel’s prime-time nightly news led with story about the march of return al-Kurd and other Palestinian activists in Gaza are planning along the border of the besieged territory this Friday — and how security officials believe their plans to stop the march will result in Palestinian casualties.

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The Israeli media has been abuzz for the past several weeks about the march and the army’s plans for stopping tens of thousands of people reaching the border fence. In an oped in Haaretz this week, a former Israeli military spokesperson warned of the optics of “innocent marchers, women, children and men, longing to return to their homes, fired upon by heavily-armed Israeli soldiers.”

According to the Channel 2 broadcast on Monday, Israel’s cabinet has been discussing “out-of-the-box” ideas. One minister proposed “parachuting food and medicine, maybe via drones, deeper into Gaza, and hopefully that will encourage the Palestinian civilians to go toward the food that was dropped from the sky instead of heading to the fence.”

Al-Kurd is amused when I tell him what I’ve just heard on the news. “We anticipated they’d try that,” he says, jokingly. We laugh, and say that maybe they should plan more marches and initiatives along the Gaza border — to convince Israel to ease the siege and relieve some of the suffering in Gaza.

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Al-Kurd, a 43-year-old school teacher and father of six from Gaza, is one of 20 organizers of the planned march, which is actually a 45-day event starting this Friday, Land Day, and culminating on May 15, Nakba Day. Seventy percent of the population of Gaza are refugees, meaning they or their parents or grandparents fled or were expelled from towns, villages, and cities inside the territory that became in Israel in 1948, an event known as the Nakba. They have never been allowed to return.

Thousands of Palestinians take part in a Return March in 2015. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

Thousands of Palestinians take part in a Return March in 2015. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

The plan is to set up camps between 700-1000 meters from Israel’s border fence, outside the Israeli army’s unilaterally imposed buffer zone, where anyone who enters is liable to be shot. In the weeks leading up to Nakba Day, there will be marches and bicycle races and other events every week, aiming to draw more attendees along the way. By mid-May, tens or hundreds of thousands are expected to join.

“We’ve been following the Israeli news,” Al-Kurd says. “It’s important for us to know what they write about us so we’ll know what to anticipate when the day comes.”

Organizers are fearful that because the Israeli media is portraying the return march as a Hamas-organized event, and considering the increasing number of border incidents in recent weeks, that the Israeli army will mete out deadly force on their nonviolent initiative.

What exactly are you planning to achieve this Friday?

“We will start the march of return on March 30, but the idea is to keep going, and gather more and more people. Within one week, we’re hoping to have at least 50,000 people close to the border. After that, we will advance 100 meters closer to the border.”

As we speak, Al-Kurd reiterates again and again that the protest will be completely nonviolent, contrary to how it is being described in Israeli media.

“We want families. We want to send a message that we want to live in peace — with the Israelis. We’re against stone throwing or even burning tires. We will make sure the protest doesn’t escalate to violence — at least from our end.”

A Palestinian protester is enveloped by tear gas in the Israeli-imposed buffer zone along the Gaza-Israel border during a demonstration against Donald Trump's declaration of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, December 8, 2017. (Ezz Zanoun/Activestills.org)

A Palestinian protester is enveloped by tear gas in the Israeli-imposed buffer zone along the Gaza-Israel border during a demonstration against Donald Trump’s declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, December 8, 2017. (Ezz Zanoun/Activestills.org)

But on the other side, according to Israeli reports, large numbers of soldiers and police forces will be waiting for you.

“We know, and we can’t do anything about that. Our message is peaceful and we’re against violence. If you remember back in 1987, Gaza was packed with Israelis. We want the siege to be lifted and to go back to these days.”

This type of initiative has been tried in the past. In 2011, thousands of Palestinians from Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza, and inside Israel marched on the country’s borders. On the Lebanese, Syrian, and Gaza borders, the army responded with gunfire, killing dozens and wounding hundreds. A number of Palestinian citizens of Israel who tried to meet the protesters on the Israeli side of the northern border were arrested.

Palestinians crossing the border from Syria into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights are wounded by Israeli army fire during a March of Return, May 15, 2011. (Hamad Almakt/ Flash90)

Palestinians crossing the border from Syria into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights are wounded by Israeli army fire during a March of Return, May 15, 2011. (Hamad Almakt/ Flash90)

I ask Al-Kurd if they’re ready for the possibility that Israel might again react with disproportionate and deadly force.

“Of course that’s a possibility, unfortunately. But what other options do we have? The situation in Gaza has become unbearable and we absolutely can’t live in Gaza anymore – that’s what prompted us to plan this march and that’s why we anticipate so many people to attend the protest.”

“We’re ready for every possible scenario, even if they start firing at us. Nowadays, to be a Palestinian is to be an almost dead person. Palestinians die every day and we know that’s part of our reality. I was at the Erez checkpoint back in 2011 [during the last return march]; I’ve seen the full force of Israel’s cruelty.”

“The whole idea is based on UN Security Council Resolution 194 (the right of return) and the current unbearable living conditions in Gaza. It is actually a peaceful act. We want to ask the Israelis to welcome as if we were visitors from another country, the same way they welcome refugees in certain countries in Europe — though we’re not actually visitors here.”

What about Hamas? How involved are they in organizing this?

“They’re not. We’re a group of 20 organizers, only two of whom are affiliated with Hamas. Actually, most of us, including myself, are leftists. All the political parties in Palestine are behind us and supporting us, and Hamas — being an elected party — is one of those parties.”

“If we’d felt that [Hamas], or any other party for that matter, tried to control the protest and make it about them, we wouldn’t let them. Hamas is actually very understanding on that point.”

What about the border with Egypt? Why not march there, I ask. The Rafah border crossing, which could ostensibly serve as a lifeline for Gaza, has been kept closed by Egypt nearly year-round for the past decade. The crossing has been opened for only a handful of days so far this year, mostly to allow Palestinians to seek medical treatment in Egypt and those stranded in Egypt to return. In all of 2017, according to the UN, the crossing was open for a mere 36 days; only 2,930 people managed to cross in both directions.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians cross from Gaza into Egypt after Palestinian militants bulldozed a section of the border wall, temporarily breaking the siege, January 23, 2008. (Rahim Khatib /Flash90)

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians cross from Gaza into Egypt after Palestinian militants bulldozed a section of the border wall, temporarily breaking the siege, January 23, 2008. (Rahim Khatib /Flash90)

In 2008, after Hamas took control of Gaza and Egypt first shut the border crossing down to regular traffic, Palestinian militants bulldozed open sections of the border wall and hundreds of thousands of people poured through to escape, buy supplies, and effectively break the siege. Eventually Egypt resealed the border.

“You’re right in pointing out that Egypt is a part of the siege, but they’re not occupying us and don’t control every daily aspect of our lives like Israel does. We’re Palestinians, and like I mentioned before, the whole protest is about UNSC Resolution 194 (the right of return for Palestinian refugees), and Egypt has nothing to do with this.”

“The Egyptian economy is bad, and should they open the siege on their end I believe both sides would benefit.”

What about Palestinians who live inside Israel? Are you in touch with them?

“We’re in touch with Palestinian leaders everywhere, including those inside the 1948 borders. We’d like to see our brothers and sisters coming to the border to welcome us — but only as long as they do it safely, not risking themselves and not coming too close to the border so that they don’t end up in clashes with the army. Even if that act is merely symbolic, it will give us a massive mental boost to keep going.”

What about the United States’ involvement? Washington recently made massive cuts to its funding for UNRWA, the Palestinian refugee agency, and Trump’s declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital certainly didn’t help.

“It actually did. The American policy against us makes a lot of people realize that we don’t have much choice but to do this.”

The organizers are hoping to mobilize as many people as they can. Al-Kurd mentions massive numbers, saying they expect half a million people to join them along the border within the first couple of weeks of the protest. I ask him what will happen when they do get the numbers he’s talking to me about.

“We want to bring a million Gazans to the border by May 15th. That would be a massive success.”

And then what?

“Israel will have two options. Either they end the siege or they start negotiations – direct or indirect, it doesn’t really matter, as long as we get a chance to live in dignity and there is relief for the pain and suffering of everyone here in Gaza.”

Is there a message you’d like to convey to the Israeli public?

“Yes. We are reaching out to them, holding an olive branch. It’s true that we’ve suffered in the past but we’re willing to put everything behind us. Let’s turn a new page together and do what’s right.

“Right now, our situation is very similar to a couple who’s separated — neither married nor divorced. That’s Gaza. So either Israel decides to let us go and end the occupation, or we remarry and have a fresh start”

Alton Sterling shooting: two police officers will not be charged with any crime

Way to go “boys!” You just created more victims and deaths at hands of police because “anything goes” rule will enable police who care little for caution and the people they claim to serve to feel even freer to shoot first!

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Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II won’t be charged for incident that occured in July of 2016 that sparked unrest throughout Baton Rouge

The two police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Alton Sterling in July 2016 in Baton Rouge will not be charged with any crime, the Louisiana attorney general announced on Tuesday. Prior to the decision, police were already preparing for city-wide protests in response.

Related: ‘They executed him’: police killing of Stephon Clark leaves family shattered

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After Feds Leave, Pepper Spray Use Skyrockets Again in LA’s Juvenile Justice System

shame and sham

Just a few years after Los Angeles County exited a monitoring agreement with the Department of Justice, the county’s probation department has seen a return of rampant use of pepper spray in settling altercations and other misbehavior at juvenile detention facilities.

According to a presentation by the LA County Probation Department at Thursday’s Probation Commission meeting, incidents involving pepper spray at the county’s Central Juvenile Hall increased 338 percent from 2015 to 2017.

Pepper spray use also increased by 214 percent at the Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey and by 192 percent at the Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar during that time, according to Luis Dominguez, acting deputy director for the Probation Department.

Pepper spray, also known as oleoresin capsicum (OC) spray, is currently only used at the county’s three juvenile halls and the set of juvenile detention camps located at the Challenger complex in Lancaster.

In preparing preliminary data for the Board of Supervisors, Dominguez said that the increase in the use of pepper spray has mirrored an increase in the number of violent incidents at camps and halls, including both youth-on-youth violence and altercations involving probation staff and youth.

“OC spray is being used as a direct result of increased assaultive behaviors and violence by youth,” Dominguez said.

But a pending piece of state legislation may force the county to figure out another way to deescalate situations.

Implementing the Probation Department’s Use-of-Force Policy

The statistics shared by the Probation Department also revealed that probation officers’ use of pepper spray is an increasingly popular option for situations when officers at camps and halls must use force to break up or prevent violent incidents.

The department uses a six-tiered system called safe crisis management to determine the appropriate use of force when responding to an incident at one of its juvenile facilities. Levels one, two and three include low-level interventions for responding to youth, such as offering a verbal warning to a youth, stepping between two youth in a fight or placing hands on a youth to stop an altercation.

Levels four and five are considered high-level interventions, such as forcing a youth to the ground.

Level six is reserved for pepper spray.

In 2017, there were 1,629 safety incidents at county juvenile halls, according to Dominguez. Probation staff members used low-level interventions — levels one, two and three — 52 percent of the time. High-level physical interventions — levels four and five — occurred 16 percent of the time, and pepper spray was used in 32 percent of the cases.

The percentage of incidents involving pepper spray is even higher at juvenile camps. According to internal county documents obtained by The Chronicle of Social Change, the department used pepper spray in 42 percent of incidents at juvenile camps in 2016.

After Federal Oversight

Over the past 15 years, LA County’s juvenile probation department has twice come under federal oversight after Department of Justice (DOJ) investigations, once for conditions at its juvenile halls in 2004 and another for its camps in 2008. Both times, the department was cited for excessive and inappropriate use of pepper spray on youth, among other issues.

LA County successfully concluded DOJ monitoring of its camps in 2015 after making progress with its policies around the use of pepper spray at its facilities. According to the terms of its last settlement agreement, probation officers must now weigh each pepper spray canister after each use and on a yearly basis.

The experience of being pepper sprayed is not uncommon for youth at probation facilities, either because of a physical altercation or a result of getting caught in the cross-fire. A series of interviews of youth at Probation-run camps and halls conducted by the Violence Intervention Program in 2016 found that 20 percent of youth in the care of the Probation Department had been pepper sprayed, including one young woman who was pregnant at the time.

Most described the experience as a burning sensation, with others reporting painful welts and difficulty breathing.

“You feel like your body is on fire,” said one youth detained at Camp Smith.

Searching for an Alternative to Pepper Spray

The increase in the use of pepper spray at LA County juvenile facilities comes at a time when the practice could be phased out at the state level. California is one of only five states that allows guards at juvenile facilities to wield the chemical spray, and a new bill by state Assemblyman Ed Chau (D) introduced this year would place strict limitations on its use in juvenile detention facilities.

That left some at the Probation Commission meeting wondering about alternatives to pepper spray.

“At least in 2011, there were almost 90 percent of juvenile facilities in the United States that prohibited the use of pepper spray or any kind of chemical intervention in any facility involving youth,” said Commissioner Cyn Yamashiro. “It seems like the writing is on the wall, and it has been for a while, that pepper spray is not going to be an option for the department moving forward.

“What’s the department going to come up with and why aren’t we employing that now instead of capsicum?”

Probation officials point to a training grant from Georgetown University’s Center on Juvenile Justice Reform that is helping to bring the department in line with best practices in the field, along with the department’s ongoing effort to implement a new model of trauma-informed care at the department’s flagship facility, Campus Kilpatrick in Malibu.

But they also say there is still a need for pepper spray as a deterrent.

“Just implementing trauma-informed-care training is not going to assist us in dealing the physical challenges that we’re facing with our youth,” Dominguez said.

According to Probation Department officials, the number of violent incidents since Kilpatrick opened last summer is about 10. Commissioner Jackie Caster hopes that the county can expand the therapeutic design and practices employed at Kilpatrick, which is based on the “Missouri Model” of small-cottage facilities employing positive youth development programs.

“I think this is an argument for speeding up the replication of the Kilpatrick model because obviously what we’ve got at the other facilities is clearly not working and certainly doesn’t sound rehabilitative,” Caster said.


Image: Central Juvenile Hall

This story was written by Jeremy Loudenback for The Chronicle of Social Change, a national news outlet that covers issues affecting vulnerable children, youth and their families. Sign up for their newsletter or follow The Chronicle of Social Change on Facebook or Twitter.

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