Social Justice // Current

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1 day ago

Torture victim exonerated and released from prison

On Tuesday, July 07, 2009, 43-year-old Ronald Kitchen, who confessed under extreme physical duress to a taking part in five... more

savory
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How inclusive and welcoming toward LGBT Jews is your shul?

Steps shuls can take to be more inclusive and welcoming to LGBT Jews.

davidfcooper
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The Youth Movement: RESCUE Event brings about US Bill to Save the Child Soldiers in Uganda

San Diego based NGO (www.InvisibleChildren.com) On April 25th 2009 over 80,000 supporters staged a global awareness event... more

eamartinez22
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Jewish events (mainly arts) this week

Israeli movies, GLBT photography exhibit, and Jewish music acts this week in Manhattan.

davidfcooper
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Online Vigilantes, Or "Crowdsourced Justice"

"The Chinese credit the 'human flesh search engine' for successfully locating 'the kitten killer of... more

Tyrannous
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Revolution, or more getting screwed by the rich?

This is the time of opportunity. We can demand publicly funded elections and make honest men and women of our elected officials.... more

uppityprogressive
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Worldchanging Interview: Wangari Maathai

Sustainability in a bright green world is about much more than environmentalism. It is about preserving our natural resources, yes. But it's also about seeing those resources holistically, and understanding that a healthy environment is the foundation for human health and happiness, for international security, and for economic stability.

Few people embody this vision as passionately as Dr. Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan scholar, activist and politician who in 2004 became the first woman from Africa, and the first environmentalist, to join the ranks of Nobel Peace Prize laureates.

Maathai has made a life's work of challenging tradition, questioning authority and exceeding expectations. At a time when few Kenyan women were educated, she won a scholarship to attend college in the United States, where she studied biological sciences as an undergraduate and later earned a masters degree from the University of Pittsburgh. After returning to Kenya and the University of Nairobi, she become became the first woman in her country to be awarded a Ph.D.

In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, which has mobilized women across Kenya to plant trees – and has paid them to do so. The Movement has since planted more than 30 million trees, and was recently depicted in the documentary Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai. Maathai has been a fearless activist and spokesperson for issues including women's economic rights, poverty and education. She was elected to Kenya's parliament by an overwhelming majority vote in December 2002, and served as Assistant Minister for Environment, Natural Resources and Wildlife from 2003 until 2007.

Earlier this year, she released her third book, The Challenge for Africa, in which she puts forth realistic but ambitious strategies for Africans to end a decades-long cycle of corruption, poverty, ignorance, environmental degradation and other deep-rooted problems. The solutions, she says, must start with the African people themselves; they must embrace and exude an image of their positive potential rather than their victimhood, and that they must demand respect and justice beginning with their own governments.

We had the honor of speaking with Dr. Maathai during her visit to Seattle in April...Sustainability in a bright green world is about much more than environmentalism. It is about preserving our natural resources,... more

Worldchanging
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4 responses

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2 months ago

Exclusive: The Exoneration of Thaddeus Jimenez

Thaddeus Jimenez ("TJ") was exonerated on May 1, 2009 through the work of the Center on Wrongful Convictions. TJ is the... more

savory
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2 months ago

New Movie 'American Violet' Depicts Drug War Racism

Movie description>>"Based on true events during the 2000 election, AMERICAN VIOLET tells the astonishing story of Dee Roberts (critically hailed newcomer Nicole Beharie), a 24 year-old African American single mother of four young girls living in a small Texas town who is barely able to make ends meet.

While police drag Dee from work in handcuffs, dumping her in the squalor of the women’s county prison, the powerful local district attorney (Academy Award® nominee Michael O’Keefe) leads an extensive drug bust, sweeping her housing project with military precision. Dee soon discovers she has been charged as a drug dealer.

Even though Dee has no prior drug record and no drugs were found on her in the raid, she is offered a hellish choice: plead guilty and go home as a convicted felon or remain in prison, jeopardizing her custody and risking a long prison sentence.

She chooses to fight the district attorney and the unyielding criminal justice system, risking everything in a battle that forever changes her life and the Texas justice system. AMERICAN VIOLET also stars Academy Award® nominee Alfre Woodard, Emmy Award® winner Charles S. Dutton, Tim Blake Nelson, Will Patton and Xzibit.

NOTE: American Violet was initially inspired by an NPR story by Wade Goodwyn.

That was six years ago. Much of the film was informed by thousands of pages of information provided on a range of stories by the ACLU among others. A variety of media reports and legal documents, including sworn testimony, depositions and affidavits, all of which can be found on the public record also helped us find authentic patterns and voices for our storytelling. Finally, taped interviews with community members who had experienced circumstances similar to those outlined in our work proved useful.

However, American Violet is not a documentary. It is a narrative feature film that is, as it says, based on true events. Some scenes and characters have been fictionalized for dramatic effect and have no relationship to the historical record. Names have been changed to protect the innocent and also to protect this film."Movie description>>"Based on true events during the 2000 election, AMERICAN VIOLET tells the astonishing story of Dee... more

ninthstate
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10 responses

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3 months ago

Special Ed Kids pipelined to the military

Seattle Public Schools sent out letters to families of kids over 16 who "earned one or more D" grades to tell them of an... more

uppityprogressive
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10 responses

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3 months ago

Newsome VS the Governator!

Running for Governor of California! Maybe now we can finally see the end of the Reagan era policies. Before Reagan, community... more

uppityprogressive
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7 responses

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3 months ago

Murder for Hire

This is where the Australian Billionaire Murdock is taking us: On the two-year anniversary of the Waco inferno, militia admirer... more

uppityprogressive
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15 responses

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3 months ago

12 Year Old Makes Marriage Equality History

Amazingly articulate young girl sways legislators in Vermont. In her interview with Amy Goodman, she said she thought it was about... more

uppityprogressive
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6 responses

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4 months ago

John Yoo's Legal Groundwork for Subverting the Republic

Naomi was right. History will not vindicate Bush and his crime family. History will indict him. I hope the nation does as well.

uppityprogressive
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3 responses

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4 months ago

Free Our Economy: Healthcare Now!

Baucus told the head of CBO last Wednesday that the CBO will play a significant role in efforts to overhaul the U.S. healthcare... more

uppityprogressive
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1 response

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5 months ago

Over 120,000 march on Dublin in protest of Irish economy

"Tax the Greedy, Not the Needy" This is where the 'class war' that only the rich, like O'Riley and... more

uppityprogressive
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5 responses

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5 months ago

U.S. Congressman John Conyers, Jr. : Issues

Dear XXXXX:

Thank you for your recent communication asking me to support HR 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act. I am a co-sponsor of the legislation and appreciate the time you have taken to let me know you support it, too.

HR 676 is one of many pieces of legislation highlighting the need for health care reform within our country. While some Americans question the need for health care reform, I believe the fact that more than 45 million Americans lack insurance coverage, and that more and more consumers are losing control over their own treatment process and their choice of provider, means that our system of health care needs a major overhaul. The health care issue will not go away, and I am committed to fight for health care reform that provides universal coverage. Universal coverage is the only way to ensure that health care becomes affordable. By assuring that people get primary care instead of emergency room care, bringing healthy people into insurance pools will lower costs for everyone, and end cost-shifting -- the means by which insured patients pay for the bad debt of the uninsured patient.

I support a single-payer system as the best means of accomplishing universal coverage. Since 1993 and every subsequent session of Congress, I have introduced the American Health Security Act (HR 1200). The plan laid out in this bill would provide universal health coverage, and tax payers would save $175 billion per year in health care expenses. Also, eighty percent of Americans would pay less for their health care while gaining a health benefit package that includes all inpatient and outpatient care, prescription drugs, mental health benefits, and comprehensive long-term care. HR 1200 would accomplish all of this and still provide a deficit reduction of approximately $100 billion per year.

I will continue to support any legislation that moves the U.S. closer to universal coverage for all Americans. Again, I want to thank you for contacting me. As your Representative in Congress, it is critical that I understand the views of my constituents.

I look forward to hearing from you in the future.

Sincerely,

Jim McDermott
Member of CongressDear XXXXX: Thank you for your recent communication asking me to support HR 676, the United States National Health Insurance... more

uppityprogressive
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4 responses

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5 months ago

Free Press Update on the Broadband Stimulus Package | Free Press

Whoo hoo! Net neutrality from the stimulus bill! Go Bama! Beginning the effort to assure neutral access to high speed internet... more

uppityprogressive
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17 responses

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5 months ago

Prophet of Boom (and Bust)

He compares the current mistaken focus on bailouts � from Wall Street to the auto industry � to the early mistakes of another president faced with economic disaster: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose initial rejection of the revolutionary concepts of John Maynard Keynes helped prolong the worldwide economic misery of the late 1920s and 1930s.
It may take another heretic to pull America out of its current downhill slide this time around.

�Ravi is a phenomenon � the best predictive record of any economist, past or present � and he does it all by reference to recorded, empirical facts, not paradigm [or] ideology,� said Prof. Rajani Kannepalli Kanth, a visiting scholar at Harvard University who specializes in political economy and social anthropology.
His supporters think Batra should long ago have won a Nobel Prize and that President-elect Barack Obama ought to be calling him with offers of cabinet posts or at least asking for his advice.
But instead, despite his sterling record and best-selling books, Batra remains somewhat isolated in the economics field, the result of one bad call and, more to the point, an economic theory that flies in the face of today�s accepted wisdom � in the face, that is, of the theories and practices that got us in the horrendous spot we�re in today.

�We are on the verge of a social revolution � it�s already started [with Obama�s election]. The second part, where the theories are discarded and new ideas take over and new reforms take over � that part has yet to occur, and that will take a few years,� he predicted. �After that occurs, the age of acquisitors will be over, and there will be a new age with a totally different attitude toward taxation and the economic system.�

The revolution, which he believes could happen in a couple of years or sometime soon after that, should bring in a new chapter of greater economic equality and less poverty and suffering � first in the U.S., then rippling out to the rest of the world, he thinks.
�The U.S. has never been in any other age other than the age of acquisitors. So this will be a new experience for the U.S.,� he said.He compares the current mistaken focus on bailouts � from Wall Street to the auto industry � to the early mistakes of another... more