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Rennie Gibbs (Facebook photo)

 A new front in the culture wars over abortion.

The Guardian / By Ed Pilkington

July 4, 2011  

Rennie Gibbs is accused of murder, but the crime she is alleged to have committed does not sound like an ordinary killing. Yet she faces life in prison in Mississippi over the death of her unborn child.

Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby’s death – they charged her with the “depraved-heart murder” of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.

 Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby. But her case is by no means isolated. Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.

 “Women are being stripped of their constitutional personhood and subjected to truly cruel laws,” said Lynn Paltrow of the campaign National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). “It’s turning pregnant women into a different class of person and removing them of their rights.”

Bei Bei Shuai

 Bei Bei Shuai, 34, has spent the past three months in a prison cell in Indianapolis charged with murdering her baby. On 23 December she tried to commit suicide by taking rat poison after her boyfriend abandoned her.

 Shuai was rushed to hospital and survived, but she was 33 weeks pregnant and her baby, to whom she gave birth a week after the suicide attempt and whom she called Angel, died after four days. In March Shuai was charged with murder and attempted foeticide and she has been in custody since without the offer of bail.

 In Alabama at least 40 cases have been brought under the state’s “chemical endangerment” law. Introduced in 2006, the statute was designed to protect children whose parents were cooking methamphetamine in the home and thus putting their children at risk from inhaling the fumes.

Amanda Kimbrough

Amanda Kimbrough is one of the women who have been ensnared as a result of the law being applied in a wholly different way. During her pregnancy her fetus was diagnosed with possible Down’s syndrome and doctors suggested she consider a termination, which Kimbrough declined as she is not in favour of abortion.

 The baby was delivered by caesarean section prematurely in April 2008 and died 19 minutes after birth.

 Six months later Kimbrough was arrested at home and charged with “chemical endangerment” of her unborn child on the grounds that she had taken drugs during the pregnancy – a claim she has denied.

 “That shocked me, it really did,” Kimbrough said. “I had lost a child, that was enough.”

 She now awaits an appeal ruling from the higher courts in Alabama, which if she loses will see her begin a 10-year sentence behind bars. “I’m just living one day at a time, looking after my three other kids,” she said. “They say I’m a criminal, how do I answer that? I’m a good mother.”

Women’s rights campaigners see the creeping criminalization of pregnant women as a new front in the culture wars over abortion, in which conservative prosecutors are chipping away at hard-won freedoms by stretching protection laws to include foetuses, in some cases from the day of conception. In Gibbs’ case defence lawyers have argued before Mississippi’s highest court that her prosecution makes no sense. Under Mississippi law it is a crime for any person except the mother to try to cause an abortion.

US judge frees 2 men wrongly jailed 30 years; Phillip Bivens, second from right, with (from left) attorney Robert McDuff and Emily Maw and Richard Davis of the Innocence Project New Orleans.

“If it’s not a crime for a mother to intentionally end her pregnancy, how can it be a crime for her to do it unintentionally, whether by taking drugs or smoking or whatever it is,” Robert McDuff, a civil rights lawyer asked the state supreme court.

 McDuff told the Guardian that he hoped the Gibbs prosecution was an isolated example. “I hope it’s not a trend that’s going to catch on. To charge a woman with murder because of something she did during pregnancy is really unprecedented and quite extreme.”

He pointed out that anti-abortion groups were trying to amend the Mississippi constitution by setting up a state referendum, or ballot initiative, that would widen the definition of a person under the state’s bill of rights to include a fetus from the day of conception.

Some 70 organisations across America have come together to file testimonies, known as amicus briefs, in support of Gibbs that protest against her treatment on several levels. One says that to treat “as a murderer a girl who has experienced a stillbirth serves only to increase her suffering”.

Another, from a group of psychologists, laments the misunderstanding of addiction that lies behind the indictment. Gibbs did not take cocaine because she had a “depraved heart” or to “harm the fetus but to satisfy an acute psychological and physical need for that particular substance”, says the brief.

Lynn Paltrow, second from left

Perhaps the most persuasive argument put forward in the amicus briefs is that if such prosecutions were designed to protect the unborn child, then they would be utterly counter-productive: “Prosecuting women and girls for continuing [a pregnancy] to term despite a drug addiction encourages them to terminate wanted pregnancies to avoid criminal penalties. The state could not have intended this result when it adopted the homicide statute.”

Paltrow sees what is happening to Gibbs as a small taste of what would be unleashed were the constitutional right to an abortion ever overturned. “In Mississippi the use of the murder statute is creating a whole new legal standard that makes women accountable for the outcome of their pregnancies and threatens them with life imprisonment for murder.” 

From protection to punishment

At least 38 of the 50 states across America have introduced fetal homicide laws that were intended to protect pregnant women and their unborn children from violent attacks by third parties – usually abusive male partners – but are increasingly being turned by renegade prosecutors against the women themselves.

 South Carolina was one of the first states to introduce such a fetal homicide law. National Advocates for Pregnant Women has found only one case of a South Carolina man who assaulted a pregnant woman having been charged under its terms, and his conviction was eventually overturned. Yet the group estimates there have been up to 300 women arrested for their actions during pregnancy. 

In other states laws designed to protect children against the damaging effects of drugs have similarly been twisted to punish childbearers. 

Ed Pilkington is the Guardian’s New York correspondent. He is a former national and foreign editor of the paper, and author of Beyond the Mother Country.

2004 March for Women's Lives Photo by Jo Freeman

Students and supporters rally against Prop. 2 in Lansing in 2006

• Tyranny of the majority overcome in Michigan

• “Thousands of talented Black, Latino and Native American students now have chance to receive education at the state’s finest universities”

By Diane Bukowski

BAMN attorney Monica Smith describes her experience in law school as Shanta Driver and George Washington listen, July 1. 2011

DETROIT, July 1 — In a stunning and long-thirsted for victory against the forces of reaction in this country, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals declared Michigan’s Proposal 2 unconstitutional July 1, paving the way to re-instate affirmative action programs in the state.

Michigan voters passed Proposal 2, a state constitutional amendment, in Nov. 2006. It struck down all programs in public educational institutions granting “preferential treatment . . . to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin.”

That included not only students, but workers and businesses contracting with the institutions. Nine out of ten Black voters voted against Proposal 2, but it passed by 58 percent because white voters supported it two to one.

NAACP, ACLU and others also rallied at state capitol in 2006, following BAMN's lead

“This decision means that thousands of talented Black, Latino and Native American students will now have a chance to receive an education at the state’s best universities,” said attorney Shanta Driver, who is National Chairperson of the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), the plaintiff in the case. “It is a great victory for the new civil rights movement.”

Driver and attorneys George Washington and Monica Smith spoke at a press conference in their downtown Detroit law offices July 1. They said the Sixth Circuit essentially ruled that Michigan could not prevent minorities from seeking admission programs that benefited them while allowing other groups, including children of alumni, athletes, and those scoring good grades in privileged high schools, to seek their own admission programs.

California "Civil Whites Initiative" 209

BAMN has a similar lawsuit pending in the Ninth Circuit against California’s Proposition 209.

“This puts affirmative action back on the national agenda,” Washington said. “The Sixth Circuit’s decision today applies to Proposition 209 and means that the Ninth Circuit has to reexamine its 1996 decision upholding 209.”

The 2-1 decision by the Sixth Circuit, authored by Judge Ransey Cole, Jr., was bold and unequivocal. (Click on  Prop 2 DECISION_BY_SIXTH_CIRCUITto read the full decision.)

“Our task is to determine whether Proposal 2 is constitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” Cole wrote. “Fortunately, the slate is not blank. The Supreme Court has twice held that equal protection does not permit the kind of political restructuring that Proposal 2 effected. . . . we find that Proposal 2 unconstitutionally alters Michigan’s political structure by impermissibly burdening racial minorities. Accordingly, we REVERSE the district court’s grant of summary judgment for the Defendants-Appellees and order the court to enter summary judgment in favor of the Plaintiff-Appellees.”

Students at UM rally against Missouri Civil Rights Initiative April 2008 Photo by Nick King

The Sixth Circuit also denied motions by the presidents and boards of the University of Michigan, Wayne State University, and Michigan State University to be dismissed as defendants, in effect ordering them to restore their affirmative action programs.

Cole wrote that two previous Supreme Court decisions, Seattle, 458 U.S. at 467, and Hunter, 393 U.S. at 393, clarify that equal protection of the law is also “an assurance that the majority may not manipulate the channels of change in a manner that places unique burdens on issues of importance to racial minorities . . . . an electoral minority is by definition disadvantaged in its attempts to pass legislation.”

U.S. Sixth Circuit Judge Ransey Guy Cole, Jr.

He thereby shot down arguments by the State Attorney General that people of color in Michigan could overturn the law by conducting their own referendum campaign.

In effect, he took a page straight out of The Tyranny of the Majority, Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy, by Lani Guinier, former candidate for head of the U.S. Justice Civil Rights Department. She proposes alternative scenarios for an electoral process that inherently disadvantages citizens in “minority” groups, who will always lose in a racially-charged climate.

Washington, Driver and Smith said the BAMN court victory resulted from years of struggle by hundreds of .thousands of people, beginning with a 2003 march of 50,000 on the U.S. Supreme Court, when the Court was about to hear two lawsuits challenging the University of Michigan’s affirmative action programs.

Smith entered Wayne State’s law school in 2006 just before Prop 2 passed, and graduated in 2009.

WSU Law School Student Board of Governors

“There were 22 Black students in my class [a total of 145 students graduated in 2010 according to WSU law website],” Smith said. “The next year that number dropped to 11. We have been fighting for years for equality, for the right to live up to our full potential. I graduated from Cass Technical High School, which was 95 percent Black, and I faced many kinds of discrimination at Wayne State, but I passed the bar on my first try. The reason we are victorious now is because we built a movement, we showed our opponents that we do have the power and we will win!”

UM Med School residents, class of 2013

Driver added, “As we watch the rise of the new Jim Crow, this victory is really sweet. Affirmative action programs were always desegregation programs. We saw the most dramatic effects of Proposal 2 in law schools and medical schools. WSU’s medical school used to rank among the best in the country in graduating Black doctors. Their numbers dropped dramatically after Prop 2 passed. At UM’s law school, there was a 75 percent drop in the number of Black and Latino students. We had seen it happen in California with Proposition 209, and we knew it would happen here.”

Michigan’s Attorney General Bill Schuette said in a statement that he will appeal the ruling through a formal request for rehearing enbanc (with the full U.S. Sixth Circuit Court). He claimed Proposal would remain in force pending their decision.

Michigan Attorney Bill Schuette

He cynically called Proposal 2 “The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative” (MCRI), the name used by the group which put it on the ballot, led by California regent Ward Conerly and financed by millions in donations from right-wing foundations. BAMN battled to keep the proposal off the ballot, gathering numerous affidavits from witnesses indicating that its petition gatherers were telling signers that it supported affirmative action.

“MCRI embodies the fundamental premise of what America is all about: equal opportunity under the law,” said Schuette. “Entrance to our great universities must be based upon merit, and I will continue the fight for equality, fairness and rule of law.”

But BAMN’s attorneys welcomed the opportunity to broaden the struggle. They said if the case ends up at the U.S. Supreme Court, they will mobilize millions more across the U.S. in support of affirmative action.

George Wallace standing in Mississippi school door to prevent Blacks from attending

“Schuette and Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder are standing in the schoolhouse door just as George Wallace did in Mississippi,” Washington said.

The attorneys also stressed the necessity of building a movement for fully-financed, free public education at all levels.

Smith recently coordinated the battle to save Catherine Ferguson Academy, a Detroit Public School which garnered national attention because it educates teen mothers and their children as well. On June 16, CFA achieved a partial victory, when the district announced the school would remain open as a charter.

Rally to save CFA May 11, 2011

Most of the Detroit Public School system has been decimated. Over half of its schools have closed during two state take-overs since 1999, thousands of Detroit resident teachers and support staff have lost their jobs, and private contracts have been doled out to wealthy corporations like candy.

Under state law, Detroit Public Schools students receive approximately $7,600 in state per-pupil aid, while students from wealthy suburbs like Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills receive approximately $12,000.

Smith said the effect on Detroit’s youth has been disastrous, and along with the ban on affirmative action further limits their opportunities to achieve their full potential by attending college and securing well-paying jobs to support their families.

Go to www.bamn.com for more information on the group’s national struggles; Monica Smith can be reached at 313-585-3637,

Translation of Gaddafi speech by Karim Budabuss:

The leader is talking now. He is saying that this is a historical day, and he is challenging Sarkozy, Cameron and Obama to switch on their TVs and watch the crowds and he is saying that they will find out that they are delusional because they entered a war which they never win, he also says if you continue targeting our houses we can do the same because Europe is not far away but he said let’s not do this and watch the crowds, kids and women. They are not here because I ordered them to, it is their free will. In this war you are not facing me you are facing these crowds. I am nothing, if you want peace with Libyans, it is up to the crowds. If you want anything , negotiate with the crowds. The regime is not a Gaddafi regime, it is a Libyan regime. Even if many got scared, defected and escaped, the Libyans will remain, and each coward will be replaced with a hero. Is it a democracy to bomb the civilians? We don’t want a democracy which comes with bombs. The socialist Jamahyria will win, the real democracy which serves the people.

I advise you to stop bombing, and stop becoming merecenaries for some rebels. The Libyans said their words, they marched, their tribes made it clear that the future is for Libyans, the oil is for Libya, Libya is ours. You are delusional, a group of traitors convinced you that Libya is easy to get, you hired mercenarie , propaganda, psychological war, but all that didn’t allow you to make any progress on the ground. Turn on your TVs and watch the longest Libyan flag 4.5 km, I didn’t make this flag, people donated to make this flag. Those rebels are no different from who betrayed Libya during the Italian invasion. Libyan people go in millions without weapons to liberate the regions under rebel control. You Libyan people are the only one who can finish this war with a victory. If they want to negotiate we welcome that, otherwise we are continuing and they are definitely losing no matter how many weapons they drop with parachutes to the rebels. We will not betray our history nor our children and their future. The glory is for you brave Libyans, the struggle will continue.

Translation from: http://www.facebook.com/VivaGaddafi

(VOD ed. note: Cynthia McKinney is back in the U.S.; at time of press conference sponsored by Min. Louis Farrakhan in video above, she was still in Libya)

Press Conference on War Against Libya
Atlanta, Georgia (in front of Congressman John Lewis’s District Office)
29 June 2011

Pres. Obama places medal of freedom on U.S. Cong. John Lewis; Lewis did not join the majority of the House of Representatives in voting against continued funding for the war on Libya

At a time when the American people have been asked to tighten their belts, teachers are receiving pink slips, the vital statistics of the American people reveal a health care crisis in the making, and the U.S. government is in serious threat of default, our President and Congress have decided that a new war, this time against the people of Libya, is appropriate.

This comes at a time when the U.S., by one estimate, spends approximately $3 billion per week for war against Iraq and Afghanistan.  The President and Congress continue to fund the war against Libya despite the fact that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that the U.S. had no strategic interest in Libya; and despite the fact that the Senate Chairwoman of the Select Committee on Intelligence admits that the U.S. really does not know who the “rebels” are; while the rebels themselves, according to a Telegraph report of 25 March 2011, admit that Al Qaeda elements are among their ranks. 

So while the apparatus of our government has been used for over ten years to inform the American people and the global community that Al Qaeda is an enemy of freedom-loving people all over the world, our President chooses to ally our military with none other than Al Qaeda elements in Libya and other people whom U.S. intelligence say they do not know.

Libyans rally in support of Qaddafi at house where his son and three little grandchildren were murdered by US/NATO bombs

Additionally, U.S. Admiral Locklear admitted to a Member of Congress that one of NATO’s missions was to assassinate Muammar Qaddafi.  And, indeed, NATO bombs have killed Qaddafi’s son and three grandchildren, just as US bombs in 1986 killed his daughter.  NATO bombs just recently killed the grandchildren of one of Qaddafi’s associates in a targeted assassination attempt. Targeted assassination is not within the scope of the United Nations Security Council Resolution and targeted assassination is against U.S. law, international law, international humanitarian law, and international human rights law.  Targeted assassination is also a crime.  We certainly cannot encourage others to abide by the law when we so openly break it.

While in Libya, I witnessed NATO’s targeting of civilians:  NATO bombs and missiles landed in residential neighborhoods, hit schools, exploded near hospitals, destroyed parts of the public broadcasting infrastructure, and narrowly missed killing students at Al Fateh University.  When civilians are targeted in war, or “low kinetic” activities, crimes are committed.

Israel's deadly assault on Gaza

NATO practices in Libya are exactly like Israel’s practices in Gaza:  fishermen are killed as they go about their fishing business, a naval blockade allows arms to flow to NATO’s Libyan allies, but stops food, fuel, and medicine from entering non-NATO ally-held areas.  The entire population suffers as a result.  Collective punishment is illegal when Israel practices it against the people of Gaza and collective punishment is illegal when NATO practices it.

NATO and hyperbolic press accounts have introduced a kind of race hatred that the Libyan people have been trying hard to erase.  Approximately 50% of Libya looks like me.  Innocent darker skinned Libyans have been targeted, tortured, harassed, and killed.

The people of Libya have the right to self-determination.  They have a right to “resource nationalism.”  They have a right to live in peace.  They have a right to determine their future and they need not exercise their rights underneath the shock and awe of NATO bombs and missiles.

•  New Catherine Ferguson charter operator Evans Solutions runs prison schools as Blanche Kelso Bruce Academy (BKBA)
• Blair Evans (shown at left) is former DPD Police Chief and Sheriff Warren Evans’ brother
• Original BKBA resident agent was Jeriel Heard, now Chief of Wayne Co. Jails and Courts
• For-profit Evans Solutions not registered with state as a business
• Non-profit BKBA not registered with IRS
• Numerous past no-bid contract scandals involving Evans Solutions, Inc.

 By Diane Bukowski

June 29, 2011 

DETROIT – The major daily media, and even so-called “progressive” media, have celebrated the supposed “salvation” of Catherine Ferguson Academy and its young mothers and children by Blair Evans. Evans allegedly runs a for-profit company variously called Evans Solutions, Inc., or Evans Educators, as local activist and urban farm advocate Grace Lee Boggs termed it (http://michigancitizen.com/cfa-an-important-victory-p9982-77.htm.).

Evans Solutions, Inc. HQ in former Akwaaba Center at 8045 Second

Evans Solutions runs Blanche Kelso Bruce Academy (BKBA), an alleged non-profit agency, which will also take over two other Detroit public schools this fall, Barsamian and Hancock. BKBA primarily runs charter schools in juvenile prisons and involuntary “residential” settings.

Evans is the brother of former Wayne County Sheriff and Detroit Police Chief Warren Evans, who previously co-owned Evans Solutions. According to Detroit Free Press columnist Rochelle Riley, Blair Evans “began his career in juvenile justice and information technology before moving into charter education 10 years ago.”

Evans touted as farmer

 “Evans is well-known by CFA,” Michigan Citizen weekly columnist Shea Howell said on the Boggs Blog. “He accompanied the group to South Africa. He is committed to ideas of urban agriculture and has worked with Will Allen of Growing Power in Milwaukee. Evans came to the school saying he was glad they had ‘found a solution to what was becoming not just a local but a national and international concern.’”

CFA grad (l) with mother at June 16 rally outside school

CFA advocates earlier expressed apprehension about its takeover by Evans Solutions and/or Blanche Kelso Bruce Academy. CFA is an alternative school for teen mothers and mothers-to-be, one of only three in the country according to its principal Asenath Andrews. Infants and children come to school with their young mothers, where they also receive age-appropriate instruction.

 “When I was told I was being assigned to CFA, I thought I was going to a detention center of some kind, but CFA turned out to be entirely different,” one young CFA graduate told VOD during the June 16 rally (see VOD story at  .) She and her mother credited CFA with her current post-high school education and career ambitions. CFA graduates 90 percent of its students, all of whom continue on to college.

Another CFA advocate said, “CFA students are not ‘criminals’ because they are teen mothers or pregnant. They deserve not to be treated as such.”

CFA has complete curriculum, not just urban farm

CFA has a complete academic curriculum in addition to its much touted urban farming program.

CFA student listens to teacher Nicole Conaway, who was arrested during April 15 sit-in to save the school, at rally June 16

Its qualified Detroit Public School teachers, however, have been told that they will have to re-apply for their jobs at CFA. Evans Solutions’ human resources representative has so far missed two meetings scheduled with them to talk about their terms of employment, wages and benefits.

“Blanche Kelso Bruce Academy is a strict discipline academy that opened in September 2001 in two sites,” according to an Oct. 2010 report by BKBA’s charter authorizer, Wayne RESA.

“It now has six sites, with plans to open two more. As a strict discipline academy, B.K. Bruce Academy enrolls students who have been placed by the courts or students who have been expelled from their previous schools and are required by law to attend strict discipline academies only, or are referred by their parents. . . . Due to the demographic nature of student population (i.e., court placement), the number of students fluctuates throughout the year. Although enrollment figures show approximately 375 students are enrolled in the six sites operated by the Academy, it is estimated that the Academy serves approximately 2000 students annually.”

Blanche Kelso Bruce runs lock-up schools, files no non-profit reports required by IRS

According to Wayne RESA and other state records, Blanche Kelso Bruce Academy runs schools in the following “residential” (read lock-up) institutions:

*Spectrum Juvenile Justice Services: HQ Westland, MI. The mission is to rehabilitate delinquent youthful offenders, substance abusers, sex offenders, violent offenders and those with specialized learning needs.

Wayne County Juvenile Detention Center across from adult prison in downtown Detroit

**Wolverine Human Services, based in Grosse Pointe Park, got more than $37 million state funds in 2007 to lodge and provide education and counseling for juvenile offenders who commit violent crimes, the company’s tax return indicates. The not-for-profit organization runs residential camps, mostly for 13- to 17-year-olds, in Buena Vista, Detroit and Vassar.

1. Wayne Co. Juvenile Detention Center: numerous past reports of abuse of residents.

2. Calumet Center: Spectum  operates two juvenile detention centers for males, Calumet Center in Highland Park and Eliot Center in Detroit.  Unclear if BKBA still operates Calumet.

Calumet Youth Detention Center, Highland Park

3. The Wolverine Assessment and Diagnostic Center: emergency placement for males, ages 6-18. Many clients have been removed from violent or emotionally tense situations. Clients are also placed at the center after being removed due to the client’s behavioral problems.

Wolverine Diagnostic Assessment and Treatment Center

4. Depaul Youth Treatment Center: A medium-security mental health facility, The Center will provide short and long term mental health treatment services.Will serve youth referred by the Wayne County Care Management Organizations. 27 Boys, 12 to 17 years old.

5. St. Jude’s Home for Boys: residential group facility for males, ages 12-17 suffering effects of abuse and/or neglect. Many of these clients have failed in foster homes or relative placements.

St. Jude Home for Boys

6. Samaritan Center:  A Michigan charter school, serving youth outside of “the educational mainstream” in grades 5-12. Partnering with local, regional and national resources to effectively serve  students and their families. 

7. Victor Center: WHS provides long-term treatment services to male adolescents, ages 12-17, who present as cognitively low functioning and have a history of sexually reactive behavior or sexual acting out. All clients are referred through the Michigan Department of Human Services.

BKBA receives per-pupil state aid, approximately $7,600 for each student, along with unknown amounts of other federal funds available for at-risk and impoverished children through various grants. Records of how it uses these public funds are not publicly available. BKBA is not listed on Guidestar.org, which provides copies of financial reports and annual IRS form 990’s for non-profits. If the non-profit does not send these to Guidestar, the IRS does.

As indicated above, state records show no evaluation of academic achievement for BKBA facilities, except for one “level 5” rating for Samaritan Center under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.

VOD has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with Wayne RESA for these records for all BKBA facilities with its charter authorizer, Wayne County RESA.

Evans Solutions not registered with state or county

Warren Evans in trailer for reality show "The Chief"

It is questionable whether Evans Solutions, Inc. itself even exists. It is not registered, either under that or any similar name, including Evans Educators, with the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth. All private corporations in Michigan are required to register with the state. Neither is it registered on Wayne County’s “assumed names” list. It has no website.

According to earlier media reports, Evans Solutions, Inc. was co-owned by Blair and Warren Evans until Warren Evans allegedly put his share of the business into a trust. Warren Evans headed the police department under Mayor Dave Bing until the existence of a secret contract with a film company to profile him in a regular series surfaced last year, and he was fired.

Aiyana Jones classmate Diamond Howard with her photo, father Charles Jones grieves behind her

He was police chief when Detroit cop Joseph Weekley and a Special Response Team (SRT) shot and killed seven-year-old Aiyana Jones after bombing her home, while A&E’s “48 Hours” was filming. No discipline, discharge, or criminal charges have been brought against them to date.

Evans Solutions is headquartered at 8045 Second Avenue, former home of the Akwaaba Center.

Wayne County Treasurer records show only two taxpayers at that address: the Pan-African Orthodox Church and Residential Care Alternative, Inc. In the Wayne County Register of Deeds, Evans Solutions, Inc. appears only because of numerous liens placed on it by the Michigan Employment Security Commission (MESC).

BKBA President is Genesee Asst. Prosecutor; agent is Chief of Wayne County Jails

Jeriel Heard, BKBA agent, now County Chief of Jails

Blanche Kelso Bruce Academy is registered with the state, but Evans’ name is not listed as its resident agent, president, CEO, or director. He has been described as its superintendent in one report. Its president is listed as Anson E. Rhodes, of 950 Dewey St. Lapeer Michigan, an attorney currently employed as an Assistant Prosecutor in Genesee County.

According to state documents, BKBA was incorporated in 2001. Its resident agent then was Jeriel Heard, currently Chief of Wayne County Jails and Courts under county Sheriff Benny Napoleon. According to the County’s website, he was an Assistant Wayne County Executive and Director of the Wayne County Department of Community Justice from 1997 through 2002. Prior to that, Heard held the position of Deputy Director of the Department of Community Justice from 1991 to 1997.

(Click on http://www.waynecounty.com/sheriff_divisions_exec_jheard.htm.)

Neither Evans Solutions, nor Evans Educators, nor Blair Evans, nor BKB were among the eighteen charter operators who bid on 45 Detroit Public Schools slated for the chopping block under former DPS czar Robert Bobb (victim of what some might call a “what goes around comes around” fate).

Evans Solutions involved in numerous no-bid contract scandals

Wayne Co. Sheriff Benny Napoleon among those sued in whistleblower lawsuit citing Evans Solutions

The connections between Evans Solutions, BKBA and law enforcement figures are likely no accident. Scandals have surfaced repeatedly since 2000  regarding  Evans Solutions contracts  involving Wayne County, the Wayne County Jail, Detroit Public Schools, and the Wayne County Airport Authority.

They include:

• A whistleblower lawsuit filed in Wayne County Circuit Court against Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano, Asst.Exec. Azzam Elder, and Sheriff Benny Napoleon in Nov. 2010 by Ralph Kinney. Kinney, employed by the County since 1986, was Director of its Dept. of Community Justice in 2003, and later Asst. County Executive until he was fired in Nov. 2007. 
• He alleges among other matters, “In approximately Feb. 2003, Mr. Kinney discovered and turned over information to the FBI regarding questionable contracts between Wayne County and Evans Solutions, Inc., a company closely connected to then Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans.” Kinney says Wayne Co. Undersheriff Larry Meyers met with him to threaten him with being charged with a crime if he continued cooperating with the FBI. He was in fact later charged, but the charges were dismissed in 36^th District Court.

• 

  Wayne Co. Exec. Robert Ficano (r) and his executive Azzam Elder (l) are being sued by Ralph Kinney; Ficano aide Turkia Mullin is in center

   A similar whistleblowers’ lawsuit was filed by Marlene Hagans, Deputy Director of Children and Family Services, after her discharge the following year.

• Former Wayne Co. Commissioner Susan Hubbard filed an affidavit stating, “In March, 2003, Daniel Mercier informed me he had been hired by Ralph Kinney to investigate suspected illegal activity in the Wayne County Dept. of Children and Family Services, including various contracts between the Department and various entities who were supposed to provide services for the Depart. Mercier said such contracts included those related to Evans Solutions, Inc., a company owned at least in part by Blair Evans, the brother of Warren Evans.”

• 

  Bruce Nisbet, Pres/CEO Spectrum Human Services

  As a result of allegations by Kinney and Hagans, Inspector General David Esper audited Dept. of Children and Family Services (formerly the Dept. of Community Justice) contracts. In a 28-page report, Esper found that the department failed to bid out two multiyear contracts for the operation of an 80-bed secure juvenile treatment facility. One contract was with Calumet Center for $20 million and one with Spectrum Human Services Inc for $25 million.

• The Free Press reported, “Among those named in the report were Jeriel Heard, director of the community justice department from 1997 to 2002, and Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans. Heard is alleged to have steered a lucrative contract to a company — Evans Solutions Inc. — co-founded by Evans and run by the sheriff’s brother, Blair Evans.”
• Previously, Wayne County Auditor General Brian Dunleavy filed a whistleblower suit against county officials alleging that he had been discharged for forwarding audits to the FBI identifying more than $1 million in overpayments to nonprofit agencies contracted to provide care for troubled youth, and claims that Warren and Blair Evans benefited from no-bid contracts with the Wayne County Airport Authority.

• 

  Robert Bobb’s Inspector General John E. Bell, Jr. of the FBI should have been looking into Bobb’s no-bid contracts.

  Apparently, Blair Evans was not scared off by the Auditor Generals or the FBI, which has never lodged charges against him. A Wayne County jail employee alleged later, “Blair Evans received $373,000 thru 7 different payments to Evans Solutions between August 2007 to September 2008. He was supposed to design a program to get inmates working in the jail kitchen certifed in culinary arts. Problem is they have all the cashed checks, but cannot find ANY inmates that went through the program.” 

• According to a May, 2011 report by former DPS czar Robert Bobb, a company called Evans Consulting Services, also not listed with the state, received total of $421,855 from a DPS no-bid contract in the previous six months. In his Nov. 2010 report, Bobb also listed over $55,000 in payments to an unregistered company called Evans Food Services. 

VOD ed. note: Prior to this story’s publication, Blair Evans did not respond to a phone call and a follow-up email from VOD asking to interview him, although he has been quoted extensively in various other newspapers. He is welcome to respond to this article in writing to Voice of Detroit, P.O. Box 32684, Detroit, MI 48232.

Members of Detroit and Muskegon delegations to Benton Harbor march against PA 4 visit beautiful Jean Klock Park beach May 7, 2011 Photo: Diane Bukowski

RACHEL MADDOW BLOG  http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/

By Laura Conaway
–
Wed Jun 29, 2011 3:32 PM EDT

The thing about living in Michigan and having an emergency financial manager take over your school district or your town is that the emergency manager really does have dictatorial power. If that person says your school is closing, then it’s closing, unless that person changes his or her mind.

Sign at entrance to Jean Klock Park beach

In Benton Harbor, a mostly black and poor town with an emergency manager, folks are just waking up to an order the manager issued on May 4 that restricts access to the public waterfront park. Jean Klock Park was deeded to Benton Harbor in 1917 “in perpetuity.”

Part of it has been turned into a luxury golf resort, with the help of an economic development group that until recently included the sponsor of the emergency manager law on its board of directors.

Harbor Shores Golf Club in Benton Harbor

Under the new order, first reported by the Michigan Messenger, people will only be able to use the park between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. — no more early morning walks along the lake. What’s more, emergency manager Joseph Harris has decreed: “The annual season during which Jean Klock Park is open begins on each May 1 and ends on the following September 30, inclusive.” That would appear to mean that “in perpetuity” could stop in the fall and pick up again in the spring.

Harbor Shores condos encroashing on Jean Klock Park

Friends of Jean Klock Park say it had been open from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. year-round. Park advocate Clellen Bury has posted a letter to Mr. Harris suggesting that the park has been closed off because of preparation for upcoming athletic events, including a Senior PGA tournament next year. The new order violates both the deeding of the park and the city’s lease with the golf resort, the advocate writes. The message includes this: “As my tax dollars are being used to pay for your salary, I would appreciate a full and prompt response to the concerns and points I have raised in this letter.”

Children of Benton Harbor need Jean Klock Park

But Mr. Harris need answer to no one in Benton Harbor. He has stripped the local elected officials of all but their most ceremonial powers. Benton Harbor is now run by one state-appointed person. Over on Eclectablog, you can find a critique of the emergency manager law from a Tea Party perspective — I recommend reading it. UPDATE: We’ve got a call in to Mr. Harris, and he’s hosting a town hall tonight. If we find out more, we’ll post it.

Rev. Edward Pinkney leads mass march against golf course opening, sponsored by Whirlpool, last year Photo: Daymon Hartley

Sent by Cynthia McKinney, June 29, 2011

Cynthia McKinney

June 29, 2011

 

The US Corporate Media, and the US government, continue to methodically hide, from the public, the fact that the Libyan rebels they are supporting have been, and continue to, rape, mutilate and brutally murder Black Africans within Libya. The rebels are not who they say they are—they are brutal racist killers who are completely being supported by the US government and its corporate media minions. The video above is an example of the aforementioned…from 

http://yourworldnews.org/blog/?p=791

Uploaded by Libyaalwasatiya on Jun 26, 2011

Two young African-American men are taken from the Grand County Jail and lynched in the public square. August 9, 1930 Marion, Indiana, USA

This is the fate of everyone pro gaddafi without any trial, any justice just kill them, this is pure murder. What you do now will haunt you later, where is the shuyookh of the ummah why aren’t they talking about this (harj/killings) or have they all become puppets? Why don’t they come out on television stopping this, this is getting ridiculous killings by rebels and nato and claims from G this will never end until you’re all dead and it made Shaykh al Qaradawi and NATO happy. Wake up you drunken fools! To kill one soul is not a party, you will abide in hell therein wallahi you guys are effing drunk with anger running your blood like a need runs a vein.You don’t know what you’re doing, stop supporting this this is fitnah a huge fitnah of harj/killings.

Lynching in the U.S.

COMMENTS

• Shameful, vile, disgusting. I can’t believe that so many on the left are choosing to deliberately overlook the character of the so-called “revolutionaries” in Libya.
• A bunch of primative savages. A disgrace and an outrage to humanity. What people will do for oil profits. On the left, ignoring this? What did Bush and his fellow criminals do to Iraq for oil profts? They murdered and displaced its people .pludering the country. This is sick, and the cancer started growing here in the USA.
• John McCain’s heroes… no comment…
• rebels monsters
• This is just a video of NATO supported rebels lynching a black man. I had heard from other sources that racism, violence, and fundamentalism are common among them. Many of the rebels are apparently former mujaheddin. My reference to DU and drones come from other news reports.
• We could add to this that Congress is not happy that the President entered this war without even consulting them. The Constitution says only Congress has the authority to declare war.
• Let me get this straight. NATO is using depleted uranium and US drone bombers against civilians in Tripoli in order to protect a gang of thugs who are lynching black people?
• these people are scumbags, filthy animals. It was so hard for me to watch this video. Extremely upsetting
• I didn’t expect anything less, they are all complicit.
• speechless 

Pres. Barack Obama claims wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will end but supports war on Libya

VOD editor:  Absolutely heart-wrenching and sickening; the video above made my chest hurt and my heart race. I can only imagine what effect it would have on millions of African-Americans whose heritage includes hundreds of thousands of incidents like the 1930 lndiana lynching shown above.

How can Pres. Barack Obama stand before the U.S. public as he did in his press conference this week and support the US-NATO war on Libya? 

STOP!!!!

by Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity

Chained prisoners make their way to the library at Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, near the California-Oregon border. This is the only time prisoners of different races are chained together.

Prisoners in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison (California) are going on an indefinite hunger strike as of July 1, 2011 to protest the cruel, inhumane, and torturous conditions of their imprisonment.  The hunger strike has been organized by prisoners in an inspiring show of unity across racial and geographic lines upheld and exacerbated by prison officials.

The hunger strikers have developed these five core demands:

1. Individual Accountability — This is in response to PBSP’s application of “group punishment” as a means to address individual inmates’ rule violations.  This includes the administration’s abusive, pretextual use of “safety and concern” to justify what are unnecessary punitive acts.  This policy has been applied in the context of justifying indefinite SHU status and progressively restricting our programming and privileges.

2. Abolish the Debriefing Policy, and Modify Active/Inactive Gang Status Criteria — The debriefing policy is illegal and redundant, as pointed out in the Formal Complaint (IV-A, p. 7).  The Active/Inactive gang status criteria must be modified in order to comply with state law and applicable CDC are rule and regulations (eg, see Formal Complaint, p. 7, IV-B) as follows:

• cease the use of innocuous association to deny inactive status;
• cease the use of informant/debriefer allegations of illegal gang activity to deny inactive status, unless such allegations are also supported by factual corroborating evidence, in which case CDCR-PBSP staff shall and must follow the regulations by issuing a rule violation report and affording the inmate his due process required by law. 

3. Comply with US Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons 2006 Recommendations Regarding an End to Long-Term Solitary Confinement — CDCR shall implement the findings and recommendations of the US commission on safety and abuse in America’s prisons final 2006 report regarding CDCR SHU facilities as follows:

• End Conditions of Isolation (p. 14).  Ensure that prisoners in SHU and Ad-Seg (Administrative Segregation) have regular meaningful contact and freedom from extreme physical deprivations that are known to cause lasting harm (pp. 52-57).
• Make Segregation a Last Resort (p. 14).  Create a more productive form of confinement in the areas of allowing inmates in SHU and Ad-Seg (Administrative Segregation) the opportunity to engage in meaningful self-help treatment, work, education, religious, and other productive activities relating to having a sense of being a part of the community.
• End Long-Term Solitary Confinement.  Release inmates to general prison population who have been warehoused indefinitely in SHU for the last 10 to 40 years (and counting).
• Provide SHU Inmates Immediate Meaningful Access to: i) adequate natural sunlight ii) quality health care and treatment, including the mandate of transferring all PBSP-SHU inmates with chronic health care problems to the New Folsom Medical SHU facility. 

4. Provide Adequate Food — Cease the practice of denying adequate food, and provide a wholesome nutritional meals including special diet meals, and allow inmates to purchase additional vitamin supplements.

• PBSP staff must cease their use of food as a tool to punish SHU inmates.
• Provide a sergeant/lieutenant to independently observe the serving of each meal, and ensure each tray has the complete issue of food on it.
• Feed the inmates whose job it is to serve SHU meals with meals that are separate from the pans of food sent from kitchen for SHU meals. 

5. Expand and Provide Constructive Programming and Privileges for Indefinite SHU Status Inmates — Examples include:

• Expand visiting regarding amount of time and adding one day per week.
• Allow one photo per year.
• Allow a weekly phone call.
• Allow two (2) annual packages per year.  A 30 lb. package based on “item” weight and not packaging and box weight.
• Expand canteen and package items allowed.  Allow us to have the items in their original packaging (the cost for cosmetics, stationary, envelopes, should not count towards the max draw limit).
• More TV channels.
• Allow TV/Radio combinations, or TV and small battery operated radio.
• Allow hobby craft items — art paper, colored pens, small pieces of colored pencils, watercolors, chalk, etc.
• Allow sweat suits and watch caps.
• Allow wall calendars.
• Install pull-up/dip bars on SHU yards.
• Allow correspondence courses that require proctored exams. 

Pelican Bay supermax prisoners (Photo: California DOCR)

Note: The above examples of programs/privileges are all similar to what is allowed in other Supermax prisons (eg, Federal Florence, Colorado, and Ohio), which supports our position that CDCR-PBSP staff claims that such are a threat to safety and security are exaggerations.

Click here to find updates and more info on the upcoming action and look into different ways you can get involved and show your solidarity.

Click here to sign an online petition to support the hunger strike!

For more information, visit http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity@wordpress.com . Read James Crowford and Mutop DuGuya (a/k/a Bow Low), “Why Prisoners Are Protesting.”

Excerpt from: Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Unit’s Peaceful Protest Hunger Strike Starting July 1, 2011 by James Crowford, Mutop DuGuya (a/k/a Bow Low) 

This place is a plantation or a prison colony and we prisoners are the slaves (a status legitimized by the 13th amendment to the U.S. constitution). The guards are free to do with us as they please. They have complete control of our medical care, mail, visits, property, supplies, law library access, laundry, yard, isolation, the lights in our cell, family, friends, lock downs, etc. This is an environment in which the prison guards can torture prisoners both physically and psychologically over extended periods of time. One such attack is the dehumanizing yet widely used “potty watch” which is used under false pretenses—not to find drugs, but to humiliate other human beings.

The actual objective or goal of all this is to force every indefinitely held SHU prisoner to “debrief” (to turn rat, snitch, turncoat, however you want do define it). Some SHU prisoners break and give their captors names just to escape the terrible conditions of confinement. These prisoners are rewarded by being placed in Special Need Yards (SNY) where living conditions are better. This has been happening since the 1990s and it continues today. Ninety-five percent of the debriefers lie in order to get out of the SHU and then go on to become lifetime stoolies for the cops.

The CDCR [California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation] uses every trick they can to force men into debriefing, including ever increasing levels of what can only be described as torture. But if you are innocent, or if you are a principled person, they force you to endure every hardship in an effort to break you. It is this ever increasing attack that has forced us prisoners to put aside our historical differences in order to address the protracted attack on our lives and to expose the criminal activities and abuses against all indeterminate SHU prisoners in the state of California.

Effective July 1st we are initiating a peaceful protest by way of an indefinite hunger strike in which we will not eat until our core demands are met. This hunger strike will be carried on by all races, New Afrikans (Blacks), Mexicans (i.e. of all walks), whites and others who realize we are silently being murdered by CDCR/CCPOAA Union as well as the U.S. judicial system who have turned a blind eye while we suffer a civil death at the hands of profiteers. Continue reading →

CFA student addresses rally; other students to her left, teacher Nicole Conaway at right

By Diane Bukowski
June 28, 2011

DETROIT – Hundreds rallied outside the Catherine Ferguson Academy here June 16, prepared to keep the school open “by any means necessary” (BAMN), as the group which helped young mothers organize the nationally-renowned battle for CFA is popularly called.

UAW women workers support young women of CFA

They included dozens of supporters from the United Autoworkers (UAW), proudly displaying a banner proclaiming “Sisters in Solidarity,” students from Henry Ford High School who came in a school bus with their marching band, opponents of the “Dictator Act” (Public Act 4), who traveled from as far away as Traverse City, Michigan, CFA alumnae, and many others, especially youth. All were inspired by the example of resistance CFA students set when they occupied their school April 15.

BAMN leader Shanta Driver, CFA teacher Nicole Conaway, supporter actor Danny Glover, and Principal Asenath Andrews

CFA Principal Asenath Andrews and actor Danny Glover, who flew in from California, embraced on a makeshift farm wagon stage to celebrate that day’s announcement by DPS czar Roy Roberts that the school would remain open as a charter. But it was the young students of CFA, which educates teen mothers and mothers-to-be and their children, teacher Nicole Conaway, who with 12 students were brutalized and arrested in the April 15 sit-in, and the young leaders of BAMN who were the real stars of the day.

VOD interviewed 17-year-old CFA student Ashley Matthews, mother of a two-year-old daughter, after the sit-in. Her sentiments reflected the pride the battle instilled in the students, and the life-long lessons they learned.

Ashley Matthews slammed against police car during arrests at CFA April 15, 2011

“When I came home, my mom and step-dad watched us on the news,” Matthews said. “My mom broke out in tears when she saw how the police treated me. She told me, ‘I’m so proud of you.’ This was the most joyful moment of my life. I was so flabbergasted by all the support and I felt so much pride because I actually stood up for something I believe in . . . . It’s time for all of us to stand up, it’s our future. We can’t find another school that does what Catherine Ferguson does. I am thankful to BAMN and our supporters because they truly showed us we do have a sense of hope, that there is something you can do about what happens.”

Not only did CFA students occupy their school, they took over Detroit’s main street, Woodward Avenue, on May 10, marching miles from CFA to the Fisher Building on West Grand Blvd., which houses DPS executive offices, despite police harassment and tickets.

VIDEO OF MARCH MAY 10

They also called on students, DPS workers and parents across Detroit to follow their example. They declared that such direct action was the only way to win the battle against the ongoing genocidal destruction of DPS, including the closures of half its schools and the massive privatization of its essential services, resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs to Detroiters since 1999.

Tristan Taylor at right as CFA mother with baby speaks on struggle for her school June 16, 2011

“The battle for Catherine Ferguson has been a real turning point that expressed our power and ability to mobilize people to come out, and properly defend people when they were arrested,” BAMN organizer Tristan Taylor said. “When we went to the precinct after the arrests, that was the moment the cops started to fear us, and we changed the balance of forces. There is a fierce urgency now to occupy more schools. We must not be afraid of creating the explosion necessary to defend public education.”

“I think they should join us and fight back,” CFA student Breanna Thomas, 17, said as dozens of drivers at Grand River and Wyoming repeatedly honked their horns in support of their protest outside Horace Sheffield III’s DABO (Detroit Association of Black Organizations) on May 16. DABO, which runs a “last chance academy,” bid unsuccessfully on CFA.

Breanna Thomas, 17 speaks at June 16 rally

“Look what we have done with the little people we have,” Thomas said. “We must fight back. We are going to do an occupation again if they do not keep CFA open.”

The cynical betrayal by DPS’s new czar Roberts, who used his powers under PA 4 to hand a no-bid contract to Evans Solutions, Inc. to run CFA and two other schools on the closure chopping block, was clearly aimed at heading off another occupation of the school. Evans Solutions is a for-profit enterprise purportedly owned by Blair Evans, former Wayne County Sheriff and Detroit Police Chief Warren Evans’ brother.

It was not among the 18 companies which originally bid on the schools and is not registered with the state as a business. It operates “strict discipline academies” in the Wayne County Juvenile Detention Center and six other penal institutions for youth.

(More on Evans Solutions in the following article.)

BAMN leader Monica Smith with other youth supporting CFA students June 16

BAMN leaders include its national coordinator, attorney Shanta Driver, Tristan Taylor, and Monica Smith, who was also arrested during the April 15 sit-in. They along with many other Black youth have led BAMN throughout the attacks on DPS and the children of Detroit since 1999.

In a release distributed at the rally, they called the announcement a “partial victory,” which achieved only two of their original demands, keeping the school open and keeping Principal Andrews.

“The people who offer the funding [to keep CFA open] will demand that every student, teacher, staff person and administrator have nothing more to do with BAMN, and that BAMN is barred from the school,” they said in the statement.”But that policy can only be enforced if we choose to abide by it. . . . We will have to make sure that the brave and bold BAMN student leaders—teens, babies and toddlers, and Nicole Conaway, the one Catherine Ferguson teacher who stood with us, are not expelled, fired, transferred or jailed.

Henry Ford High School marching band joins fight for public education June 16 at CFA

“We know that there will be new attempts to sell off our school, cut back our programs and classes, etc. All civil rights victories are partial until the oppressed take power. The pact that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. signed to end the 1963 struggle in Birmingham that we attribute today to breaking the back of the old Jim Crow was very limited in scope. Dr. King’s real victory from Birmingham was that it provided millions of people who had lived as second-class citizens for decades, with the inspiration to fight and the belief that poor Black people could beat the whole white establishment.”

Supporters came from all over the state

All DPS teachers were issued lay-off notices prior to June 16, and it is yet unclear who will be called back, if anyone. CFA staff was to meet June 23, but VOD has not received an update yet on their status.

Detroit Federation of Teachers President Keith Johnson, who was not present at the CFA rally, said at an earlier meeting that he had met with Roberts and that Roberts expressed his intentions to break the DFT contract, which already includes significant give-backs.

In contrast to the bold actions of the young women of CFA, he said DFT under its current leadership is not proposing any immediate action, but waiting for a propitious moment to file legal action.

CFA grad with mother at rally June 16

Many DFT teachers have said that Johnson holds office illegally, and have supported Cass Technical High School teacher Steve Conn, who is affiliated with BAMN, is his bid for the presidency.

Take action and organize your school– Join BAMN (The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary, BAMN) at 855-ASK-BAMN  (855-275-2266), call BAMN leader and CFA struggle coordinator  Monica Smith at 313-585-6367 or email BAMN Coordinator Donna Stern at donna.stern@ueaa.net 

Website at http://www.bamn.com 

Follow us on twitter: @followBAMN

VIDEO of CFA students speaking at forum, by Michigan Messenger reporter Minnie Foreman

June 28, 2011

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Riot police fired tear gas at youths hurling rocks near the Greek finance ministry Tuesday, trying to quell the anger unleashed by a general strike as parliament debated new cost-cutting measures.

The latest austerity measures must pass in two parliamentary votes Wednesday and Thursday if Greece is to receive bailout funds from the EU and the IMF that will keep it from becoming the first eurozone nation to default on its debts.

Greek unions lead mass demonstration amid general strike June 28 2011

The clashes with police came at the start of a two-day general strike called by unions furious that the government’s new $40 billion austerity program will slap taxes on minimum wage earners and other struggling Greeks. The measures come on top of other spending cuts and tax hikes that have sent the Greek unemployment rate soaring to over 16%.

Hooded youths ripped up paving stones and set trash bins on fire in central Athens as police gave chase and fired tear gas and stun grenades. Earlier, about 20,000 people had marched peacefully in two separate demonstrations, while another 7,000 protested in the northern city of Thessaloniki without incident.

Greek police line up to attack protesters 6 28 11

Everyone from doctors and ambulance drivers to casino workers and even actors at a state-funded theater were joining the strike or holding work stoppages for several hours.

Hundreds of flights were canceled or rescheduled as air traffic controllers walked off the job for four hours in the morning — and were holding another walkout in the evening. Strikes by public transport workers snarled traffic across the capital, while other protesters blockaded the port of Piraeus.

“The situation that the workers are undergoing is tragic and we are near poverty levels,” said Spyros Linardopoulos, a protester with the PAME union at the Piraeus blockade. “The government has declared war and to this war we will answer back with war.”

Tourists stranded by ferryboat strikers in Greece 6 28 11

Lawmakers began debating the latest austerity measures Monday and were continuing Tuesday. The package and an additional implementation law must be passed so the European Union and the International Monetary Fund release the next installment of Greece’s $156 billion bailout loan.

Without that $17 billion installment, Greece faces the prospect of a default next month — a potentially disastrous event that could drag down European banks, hurt other financially troubled European countries and even shock the whole global financial system.

Greek prime minister George Panandreou and U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton

But even lawmakers from the governing Socialists have been upset over the latest measures demanded by international creditors, and Prime Minister George Papandreou has struggled to contain an internal party revolt. He reshuffled his cabinet earlier this month to try to ensure his party’s support for this vote, but the Socialists still only have a 5-seat majority in the 300-member Parliament.

Papandreou urged lawmakers Monday to fulfill a “patriotic duty” by voting in favor of the new measures, but two of his own lawmakers have suggested they won’t.

European officials have also been pressuring Greece’s the main conservative opposition party to back the austerity bill.

Mass protest in Syntagma in Athens June 26, 2011

“Both the future of the country and financial stability in Europe are at stake,” European Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said. “I fully respect the prerogatives and the sovereignty of the Greek Parliament in the ongoing debate. And I trust that the Greek political leaders are fully aware of the responsibility that lies on their shoulders to avoid default.”

But conservative party leader Antonis Samaras has refused, arguing that while he backs some austerity measures, the overall thinking behind the package is flawed.

Greece remains frozen out of bond markets and is surviving on the $156 billion in promised bailout loans. But the initial plan had assumed that Greece would be able to return to the markets next year.

That won’t happen, and a result Athens is negotiating for a second bailout, which Papandreou has said will be roughly the same size as the first.

Papandreou said he hoped the terms would be better than those for the first bailout.

“I call on Europe, for its part, to give Greece the time and the terms it needs to really pay off its debt, without strangling growth, and without strangling its citizens,” he said.

Papandreou’s new finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, said the government acknowledged the new cuts were “unfair” and that he hoped negotiations over a second bailout would be concluded by the end of the summer.

“These measures will take us from running budget deficits to achieving primary surpluses,” he said. “It’s a difficult but necessary step.”

But many Greeks insist they should not be forced to pay for a crisis they believe the politicians are responsible for.

“We don’t owe any money, it’s the others who stole it,” said 69-year-old demonstrator Antonis Vrahas. “We’re resisting for a better society for the sake of our children and grandchildren.”

Even with the new austerity measures, many investors still believe that Greece is heading for some sort of default because its overall debt burden is too great.