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THE INDYPENDENTIssue #178, July 26 – Sept 4, 2012A FREE PAPER FOR FREE PEOPLEJim CrowTHEN & NOWby Nicholas Powers, p8DAVIDHOLLENBACH.COMNYC IMMIGRANTS TARGETEDP5PEOPLES’ PENSIONP14YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENTP6

HOUSINGSunset Park Tenants Launch Rent Strike4 JULY 26 – SEPTEMBER 4, 2012 THE INDYPENDENTBy Laura GottesdienerOn the front stoop of a four-storybrownstone in Brooklyn, threewomen sat and strategized.“We should have broken down the dooryesterday,” Sara Lopez lamented. “The daythey help us,” she said, waving toward anofficial from the Department of HousingPreservation and Development standing onthe street, “will be the day a dog dances outsideon one leg.”Francisca Ixtilico, a short woman whohad been an organizer in Mexico, nodded.Breaking down the door had been her idea.She always had thegroup’s most radicalideas, which sheusually introducedwith the phrase“What we did inMexico was…” SueTrelles, the mostpoised and stylishof the trio, held hertongue; she wasn’tthe door-breakingtype, but she waswilling to fight forher right to live withdignity.The problem wasthat the building’slandlord, OrazioPetito, and his superintendentkeptthe basement doorlocked tighter thanFort Knox, preventingcity inspectorsfrom cleaning outthe rotting garbageor fixing theovertaxed fuse boxthat sparked andshorted, threateningto set the wholebuilding on fire. Ofcourse, the door wasreally just one barrierin a thousandthat the women hadbeen battling alltheir lives: slumlordscontent to let them burn or freeze to death;employers who coerced and threatened themafter accidents or mistreatment; police whonever seemed to come when help was neededon their block; and the vague but everpresentforces of racism, sexism, languagebarriers, and threats of deportation. Butwhen confronted with the laundry list of oppressionthat low-income immigrant womenface in Brooklyn, the best thing to do, Lopezand her neighbors argue, is to start with theproblem most likely to burst into flames.That’s why, for over a year, Lopez,Trelles and Ixtilico have been knocking ondoors, holding meetings and organizing amulti-building rent strike at 545, 553, and557 46th Street in Sunset Park that is nowdrawing media attention. But as photos oftangled wiring and firecracker fuses appearon the nightly news, the real story is not thecrumbling building or the landlord’s abuses,but the neighborhood activists who haveturned this injustice into a powerful exampleof community-building and communityledorganizing.The rent strike started two years ago. SaraLopez woke up early one morning. No onesleeps much in these three buildings — inthe winter there’s no heat, in the summerthere’s no electricity, and all year there arerats and cockroaches scurrying in the walls— but that morning Lopez had slept evenworse than usual, and she was angry.“I thought and thought and decided thatI needed to do something,” she said. “So Iknocked on 51 doors because I got mad atso much injustice.”She enlisted Trelles to help, and at eachdoor they spread a clear message: Stop payingrent. They didn’t make any political argumentsabout private property or capitalismor self-governance. Instead, Lopez — aretired public employee who says she stillhas faith in the power and intentions of thelocal government — was espousing a radicalismborn from necessity and experience.She knew that tenants could run the buildingsbetter than Petito, whom she called unpayaso, which means “clown” in Spanishbut sounds far more poisonous hissed in herHonduran accent. In the winter of 1982, aftera former landlord simply abandoned thebuildings without heat, Lopez brought thebuildings’ families together to govern themselves— collecting money to pay the billsand replace the boiler and forming teamsto clean the hallways, put the trash out andmake repairs.“We were the owners for six months,” sheremembered.The negligent landlords returned, however.Now, Lopez has once again brought thetenants together, hosting community meetingsthat grew until the whole first-floorhallway was packed. Many of the residentswere afraid; a number of the tenants lackedU.S. residency papers, and once the strikebegan Petito was quick to knock on thosefamilies’ doors first, waving forged evictionnotices and threatening to call immigration.Ixtilico wasn’t intimidated. She recognizedSara’s ideas from her Catholic organizinggroup in Mexico, which used strikesand direct action to win house repairs, stopevictions and pressure local government tofund sports fields and other public projects.She placed a small red sign in her windowfor all the world to see: “Rent Strike.” Othertenants soon followed suit.The campaign’s bold words and actionshave inspired community members not onlyto stand up for their rights as tenants, butalso to reconsider social and political marginalizationitself. About 80 percent of theHOUSING RIGHTS: Tenant leader Sara Lopez speaks at a July 5 press conference organized with support from Occupy Sunset Park.neighborhood’s residents live below thepoverty line, and the majority speak eitherSpanish or Mandarin as a first language. Butin a society where immigrant women whospeak little English are often bullied, intimidatedor ignored, these women are loud, assertiveand highly public about their rightto live with dignity. And they are teachingothers to push back as well.“What do you want to know about me?”Lopez asked. “I am a fighter, I fight for myrights, and I have a knife.” She started tolaugh. As the fluent English speaker, Lopezis the de facto spokesperson of the group,but that doesn’t mean she censors herself.Trelles told me she was “proud to be animmigrant” from Ecuador and showed offher spotless apartment, decorated with herdaughters’ academic awards and equippedwith flashlights so her youngest can keepworking and reading during power outages.Ixtilico chased a younger tenant down thesidewalk, insisting that she stop being afraidand tell me her story. (The woman did, sayingshe too had joined the rent strike, butasked that I not include her name because ofher immigration status.) As for the men, thetrio seem to appreciate them, love them andhumor them — but, like many of the rentstrikes in New York City’s history, this is awomen’s show.As the strike spread to include the majorityof residents in all three buildings, theneighborhood began taking notice. Carsand walkers slowed to read the signs anddiscuss the strike, the news coverage andtheir own decrepit buildings.“I’ve lived here for 12 years, and I’ve neverseen something take off like this,” saidPriscilla Grim, who lives a few blocks awayfrom the buildings and works with the socialmedia team of OccupyWallSt.org. Grimand other neighborsfrom Occupy SunsetPark and writersfrom the OccupyaffiliatedSpanishnewspaper Indig-Nación joined thestrikers three weeksago, bringing neworganizing toolsand media attentionwhile learningfrom the women’slow-tech, word-of-SUNSET PARKERPIX/FLICKRmouth campaign.Soon, the residentsand Occupy SunsetPark began gatheringfor bilingualmeetings, sharingresources and planningpress conferencesand marchesand even carried outa brief occupationof assemblyman FelixOrtiz’s districtoffice. Housing activistsfrom TakeBack the Land andthe New York Citysquatters’ movementjoined in, pushingthe conversation towardtransformativevisions of communitycontrol of thebuildings.The strikingwomen already saw and believed in suchvisions, even if they didn’t have words forthem quite yet. One afternoon, as the womenwaited to see if anyone from the rotatingcast of building inspectors, health workers,fire marshals, police officers, elected officialsor news cameramen would be willingor able to open the basement door, a man ina suit and a shiny black SUV drove up andstarted taking photos of the buildings. Heclaimed to be a prospective landlord checkingout a possible investment.“He’s probably a detective,” Lopez said,shielding her face from the camera’s lens.“Besides, we don’t want any more landlords,”said Ixtilico.Laura Gottesdiener is a freelance writerin New York City. She is the author of ADream Foreclosed: The Great Eviction andthe Fight to Live in America, forthcomingfrom Zuccotti Park Press.This is adapted from an article that originallyappeared at wagingnonviolence.org.

AUSTERITYFinding a FutureNYC SUMMER JOBS PROGRAM OPENS DOORS FOR YOUTH BUT LACKS FUNDS TO MEET SURGING DEMANDBy Alina Mogilyanskaya6 JULY 26 – SEPTEMBER 4, 2012 THE INDYPENDENTOn July 5, nearly 30,000 New YorkCity youth went off to their first dayas participants in the city’s SummerYouth Employment Program (SYEP).That morning, Jason Ebanks stood infront of a classroom at the Henry Street Settlement,a social services provider based inthe Lower East Side. A former SYEP participantwho went on to graduate from SUNY-Buffalo, Ebanks, 27, was there to teach thissummer’s SYEP orientation. In a city whereyouth and teen unemployment has spikedin recent years, the Settlement’s classroomwas filled with scores of young people. Butit was less busy than at the beginning of thepast two summers, when the Settlement hadthe government funding to offer summerjobs to 1,500 young people, 256 more thanthis year. And the drop-off was even moremarked from 2009, when federal stimulusmoney allowed the Settlement to offer theprogram to 3,000 youth.“I can say that my SYEP experience wassurely what sparked the interest that createdthe drive that pushed me and helps me, to thisday, persevere through most things,” saidEbanks, who worked as a junior camp counselorin the Bronx in the summer of 2000.“We will never know how many CornelWests, Octavia Butlers or Malcolm X’s we’vemissed out on by cutting these budgets.”For many of Ebanks’ students, this willbe their first real job — an opportunity towork, earn income and learn adult life skills.The program provides youth ages 14–24with seven weeks of work experience, oftenas counselors or aides at summer day campsor in government agencies, community centers,cultural institutions or professional offices.Almost 75percent of SYEPparticipants areblack and Latinoyouth, who asa group suffer an unemployment rate wellabove 30 percent.The program also includes weekly educationalsessions on responsibility, time andmoney management, workplace expectationsand exploration of career and educationalopportunities. Participants are paidminimum wage, $7.25 per hour, for bothwork and classroom time, taking home asalary every two weeks.“It’s really important for minors becauseit gives them the opportunity to apply forand get jobs that they otherwise couldn’t,”said Nandrianina Rarivoson, a 20-year-oldUnion College junior who is interning at alaw office through SYEP. She recalls tryingto find a retail job at age 16, to no avail. Shereceived her first paid job through SYEP inLIFE LESSONS: Jason Ebanks, 27, helps participants in the summer youth employment program develop adult life skills. He says participating inSYEP as a teenager transformed his life.2010 when she was hired as a teacher’s assistantat the Red Apple Child DevelopmentCenter. Last summer, she was rehired at RedApple for a full-time summer staff positionas head counselor.100,000 LEFT OUTFor many, SYEP provides that first crucialopportunity to get a foot in the door ofthe professional world, but for the roughly100,000 young people who also applied butwere not chosen through the Departmentof Youth and Community Development’s(DYCD) lottery this summer, the outlook isdifferent.“They’re looking for jobs, or if not, they’rein the house all day or trying to find somethingto do,” said Larry White, a 21-year-oldSYEP participant, of six of his friends whoapplied to SYEP this summer but were notselected. While White is working as a leadershipmentor with teens at Grand StreetSettlement, his friends who are looking forjobs are trying to find a position working inthe parks, with youth, or in retail, he says.“They’re out every morning, trying to get interviewson the spot, resumé in hand.”Last year, a DYCD survey of youth participantsindicated that without SYEP, 77percent of them would not have had a summerjob. Tenzing Andrugtsang, a 15-yearolddoing data entry at Bellevue Hospitalthrough SYEP, says that without the program,she wouldn’t be employed. “I’d haveto wait until I was 17 or 18 to get a job, perhapsat a retail store like other teens,” shesaid. When asked what she’d be doing withher summer if she didn’t have the Bellevueposition, she replied, “Honestly, nothing.”Mayor Bloomberg is being criticized for cutting programsdirected at young people who he says he wants to help.UNDERFUNDEDFounded in the late 1960s, SYEP is widelypraised for giving disadvantaged youth apositive alternative to being out of workand on the street during the summer. Witha budget of $43 million ($20.6 million ofwhich comes fromthe city), it is hobbledby a shortageof funding that allowedit to placeless than a fourth of this year’s 132,187applicants. The number of summer jobs offeredby the program is expected to declinefrom 31,628 last year to about 29,000 thisyear, according to Andre White, directorof SYEP. This was caused in part by a recentdrop in private funding, on which theprogram has become more dependent sinceMayor Michael Bloomberg cut $3.3 millionfrom its budget in 2011.“It’s kind of a back-door cut, which is alot harder to fight and to really galvanizepeople around,” said Kevin Douglas, seniorpolicy analyst at United NeighborhoodHouses and the main spokesman of theCampaign for Summer Jobs, a coalition ofcitywide SYEP providers that advocates forSYEP funding. “They thought they were goingto rely on private dollars, and that’s avery risky strategy to budget the future on.”Asked if it would be feasible to providea job for every SYEP applicant if fundsweren’t limited, White replied, “We’d definitelyput all 131,000 kids to work if we hadthe money.”Kristina Sepulveda, director of youthemployment services at Henry Street Settlement,echoes the sentiment. The Settlementreceived 7,492 SYEP applications and wasable to offer 1,244 spots this summer, althoughit had thousands more possible jobsavailable. “We have three times more worksiteslots than kids,” Sepulveda said. “Thedemand from employers is there.”“It’s a shame that we always have to be havingconversations every year about how manyslots are we going to lose, how many slotscan we bring back,” added Melissa Mark-Viverito (D, WFP-East Harlem), a memberof the City Council’s Committee on YouthServices. “The fact that it’s a program thatis even on the chopping block to me doesn’tmake sense because it’s a wise investmentand the returns are so much more for us asa society.”UNCERTAIN FUTUREIn June, DYCD, which oversees SYEP, releaseda concept paper that hints at thecontinued financial pressures the programis facing. Under this draft plan, DYCD estimatesproviding 23,000 summer jobs nextyear while reducing all participants’ workassignments from seven weeks to six. Thehours of 14- and 15-year-olds would beASHLEY MARINACCIO

capped at 20 perweek.Advocates areconcerned thata further scalingback of SYEPwould not onlys h o r t c h a n g eparticipants inthe programbut could also affect younger children andworking families across the city. Over halfof all SYEP participants work at summerdaycare or day camp centers, looking afterand leading younger children in educationaland recreational activities.As the number of SYEP participants decreases,so does the number of children thatcan be served by these centers. “It’s kindof like a multiplier effect: the less kids thatare in SYEP, the less kids that can actuallybe served through other programs,” saidDouglas of the Campaign for Summer Jobs.Putting SYEP participants on a six-weekwork schedule will likely force summer daycareand day camp providers to scale downtheir programs from seven to six weeks aswell, putting an additional burden on familieswho rely on these facilities during thesummer.“What does that mean for working parents?”asked Gregory Rideout, deputyprogram officer for youth services andworkforce development at Henry Street Settlement.“They’ve got three to four weeksbefore school starts in which they’re goingto have to figure out their own childcare.”In an interview, Andre White of SYEPstressed that the concept paper is only a proposal.As The Indypendent went to press, theDYCD was still accepting public comments.A LARGER PATTERNMOTIVATED: Larry White, 21, of Brooklyn, about to enter an SYEP educationalsession taught by Jason Ebanks at the Henry Street Settlement.The underfunding of SYEP follows on theheels of a drive this spring by Bloombergto cut city funding for childcare and afterschoolprograms by $170 million, a movethat was thwarted by the City Council. CutsOPPORTUNITY: Nandrianina Rarivoson, 20, of Brooklyn, on her way to alaw office where she is interning this summer through SYEP.in public education spending in recent yearshave contributed to overcrowded classrooms,while CUNY community collegeshave seen funding cuts coupled with risingtuition. According to the New York CityJOBS NOT JAILSNew York City’s spending on summer jobs for youth is dwarfed by what it spends on a police forcethat disproportionately targets young people of color:# of participants in youth summer jobs program in 2009: 52,255# of participants in youth summer jobs program in 2010: 35,725# of participants in youth summer jobs program in 2011: 31,628# of participants in youth summer jobs program in 2012: 29,000 (est.)# of applicants not accepted for 2012 youth summer jobs program in 2012: 103,000 (est.)Total spending on NYC youth summer jobs program: $43 millionCity funds allocated for NYC summer jobs program: $20.6 millionFY 2012 budget for the New York Police Department: $4.55 billionFY 2012 overtime spending by the NYPD: $585 millionMoney spent on policing Occupy Wall Street, (Sept. 2011 to March 2012): $17 million# of stop-and-frisks experienced by black and Latino males ages 14-24 in 2011: 341,581Sources: Summer Youth Employment Program, New York City Council Public Safety Committee,NYPD, NYCLUASHLEY MARINACCIOLiberties Union, 42 percent of all stop-andfrisksperformed in 2011 targeted black andLatino youth ages 14-24, though they makeup only 5 percent of the city’s population.At a July 5 press conference held at theQueens Botanical Garden to mark the firstday of SYEP, Bloomberg seized on the opportunityafforded by media presence to railagainst critics of the NYPD’s policing practices,in particular, stop-and-frisk.“Right here in New York City, we haveinterest groups, politicians and now judgesthat are hell-bent on reversing the progressthat we’ve made,” Bloomberg said. “Wehave an aggressive effort by some here totake us backwardsin time. I can justtell you, we are notgoing to let thathappen.”I r o n i c a l l y ,Bloomberg madeheadlines last summerwhen he announcedhe wasteaming up withfellow billionaireGeorge Soros todonate $60 millionin seed money towarda three-year,$127.5 million cityprogram known asthe Young Men’sInitiative. YMI’sstated goal is “totackle the broaddisparities slowingthe advancement of black and Latino youngmen.” As envisioned, YMI would bring togetherunder one umbrella a number of cityinitiatives, from overhauling the city’s Departmentof Probation to providing mentoringand literacy services to “disconnected”youth. One thing it doesn’t envision is directingany funds toward creating actualjobs for young people.For Councilwoman Mark-Viverito, themayor’s policies toward the city’s disadvantagedyouth continue to be frustrating andcontradictory.“It just doesn’t seem to connect the dots,”said Mark-Viverito of Bloomberg’s parallellaunch of YMI and insistence on stop-andfrisk,both programs targeting young blackand Latino men, albeit in very differentways. “And then when you couple that withcutting programs that are directed at youngpeople, SYEP, after-school programs, thechildcare slots, again, it doesn’t really seemto connect with what he is saying.”“It’s like everything is being done in a vacuum,and one thing detracts from another.”ALINA MOGILYANSKAYAw w w.g reyediting.comA r e yo u writing t o change t h ew o r l d?M a k e su r e yo u r m e s s ag e i sc l e a r — l e t G r e y E d i t i n g polis hyo u r b o o k, a r t i c l e, o r we b s i t e.We s p e c i a l i z e i n social a n dp o l i t i c a l n o n f i c t i o n.- DEVE LOPMENTAL E DITING -- COPY E DITING -- PROOFREADING -- INDEXING -- COPY WRITING -267-971-76 5 4SAR AH@GRE YE D ITING.COMFOLLOW US!FACE BOOK: GREY E DITINGT WIT TE R: @ GREYE DITINGTHE INDYPENDENT JULY 26 – SEPTEMBER 4, 2012 7

RACEJIM CROW AMERICAWHY OUR SOCIETY’S RACIAL CASTE SYSTEM STILL EXISTSROB LAQUINTA8 JULY 26 – SEPTEMBER 4, 2012 THE INDYPENDENTBy Nicholas PowersImagine living in Jim Crow America. Youare born to a single mother who is oneof the ten million black people in poverty.On the television, in casual talk or musicyou learn by age five that black equalsnegative and white, positive. Subconsciouslyyou see your skin as a weight, a burden. Yougo to an urban school with a daily gauntletof metal detectors, bag searches and patdowns. You hear stories of family relativesjailed for drugs, who you never met just beingreleased. As you grow up, you talk onthe street corner but police stop and friskyou all the time. The feeling of their handson your body linger long after they’ve left.You never feel safe. Your idols are peoplewho look like you in videos rapping on howto kill, steal, and buy. You don’t talk like thewealthy. You know where to buy drugs.You graduate but there are no jobs. Youhang out, smoke and drink. Everything isfalling apart. You try to make a drug deal,quick cash you think, nothing serious butyou’re sweating. And you get busted, cop aplea and now have a record. You get bustedagain and again until you are living insidea cell. The walls squeeze your soul and youwant to scream but instead you sleep a lotand fight, years later you get out. No onewill hire you. No one can let you stay attheir apartment, it’s against the rules. Youbeg on the train sometimes, but run inshame when you bump into a relative.One day you’re walking with yourchild, who is having trouble at school.Teachers say they’re throwing tantrumsin class and is going be labeled retarded.Later, you are going to a friend’s buildingand see your child not in school but on thecorner, it’s the same corner you stood onyears ago, and a strange roaring sound fillsyour head. You begin yelling — you wantyour child to run from the corner, run fromthis life, run from everything you’ve become.ANTIQUATEDJim Crow — the name calls up antiquatedimagery of “whites only” signs, “colored”waiting rooms and, at worst, a grinningwhite mob gloating over the charred bodyof a Black man. These images disgust andhorrify us, but it also comforts us to viewthem as evidence of a past that has recededin the rearview mirror of history. Ahead ofus, the rising sun logo of the Obama campaignwelcomes us to a post-racial America.“We’re sort of in that la-la land of believingwe’re in this post-racial place. It’s notjust a modern phenomenon,” anti-racismscholar Tim Wise said in a 2009 interviewwith the Open Society Institute. “Whitefolks, going back 40 to 50 years, did not,even in the early ’60s, think that racism wasreally a big deal worth focusing very muchattention on. A small minority did realizethat, but the vast majority said at that timethat people of color had equal opportunitywith white folks.”“Rearview racism” describes the viewthat bigotry is visible only as a relic of thepast and not as a real, lived and present reality.This view assumes that we live in anequal nation in which radical change is notneeded. It amplifies the internalized racismof the oppressed, as seen, for example, in a2007 Pew Research Center survey in whichmiddle-class Blacks said there was a “widening”gulf of values between themselvesand poor Blacks.Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow:Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindnessshatters the “rearview mirror” byforcing readers to see how, with new wordsand methods, our nation reproduces racialcaste. The book focuses on the criminal justicesystem — a central conduit that transformscitizens into domestic aliens. In thename of the war on drugs, she writes, policepatrol, stop, frisk and arrest poor people inghettos. This practice has left 80 percent ofBlack men in most major cities with criminalrecords. Once released from incarceration,she explains, they enter a “hidden underworldof legalized discrimination” whereex-felons can’t vote, can’t get jobs, can’t findhousing and can’t escape the stigma of havinga record.People of color of every class experiencesome degree of discrimination, but theBlack poor are the true target of the newJim Crow. The Black poor, once a part ofa cross-class alliance with the Black middleand upper classes, were abandoned after thelegal victories of the civil rights movement.Left behind in the coffin of the inner cities,poor Black families have been living thecontinuous nightmare of Jim Crow since theend of the Reconstruction era.THE OLD JIM CROWWhen the smoke of civil war cleared in1865, African-Americans staggered ontothe roads and searched for those who hadbeen sold into slavery. Names were carriedby memory for miles across the war-blastedland in hopes of finding lost kin. Sometimesthey were dead. But even when newly emancipatedpeople found their parents or childrenalive, their joyful embraces were mixedwith pain as their hands felt scars on theirloved ones’ backs.In her book Sugar of the Crop: My Journeyto Find the Children of Slaves, authorSana Butler interviewed the last, dying offspringof slaves. She asked them what happenedin the years after the Civil War. Anelderly woman named Jenny told her, “Ourparents no longer lived for themselves. Theirmindset was — I no longer have a life. I amliving for the future.” Jenny’s parents didn’ttell her the details of slavery because “theydidn’t want me to be angry. They wanted meto come up with my own reality.”Slowly, in the wake of war, life restarted.Five million Black people had left slaveryand become citizens. They were dirt poor.They were trapped in the South. In orderto provide for them, the Radical Republicansin Congress created the Federal Freedmen’sBureau, which oversaw the laborcontracts of former slaves, opened schoolsand distributed food and medicine. In 1869,President Ulysses S. Grant vowed to protectBlack people’s right to vote; two years later,Black politicians were elected to state officesacross the South.And then the terror began. White militiasshot Black voters, stuffed ballot boxes andparaded in the streets. They called themselvesthe Ku Klux Klan, the White Leagueand the Red Shirts — groups whose namesburned fear into the mind. In the wake ofthe elections of 1876, conservative PresidentRutherford B. Hayes withdrew federal soldiersfrom Southern capitals and abandonedBlacks to the rage of their former owners.New laws came down like an iron curtainbetween Black people and freedom. Polltaxes and literacy tests were followed bythe physical separation of public space. Lifeshrank inside paranoia. If whites were onthe sidewalk, you jumped off. When whitestalked, you lowered your head and voiceuntil your whole being fit into the shuffling,smiling caricature of Jim Crow: a buffoonish“coon” image that let whites imagineBlacks as nonthreatening servants. If Blackspushed for rights, whites projected morethreatening imagery onto them, such asthe rapist Black male “brute” or lascivious“Jezebel,” and then hung, raped or burnedBlack people alive.Family members come back from prison traumatized andunable to find jobs. Sickness kills relatives who don’t havehealthcare, riddling the family with holes of despair.Segregation deepened into a chasm. In1890, Louisiana politicians passed the SeparateCar Act dividing trains into white and“colored.” When it was challenged, the SupremeCourt ruled in Plessy v. Fergusonthat “separate but equal” was legal. Racistswere free to force Black children intoseparate schools and to grow up in separateneighborhoods and work in separatejobs. Black citizens could be arrested, triedand sentenced in all-white courts. It was acultural cycle that, like a boa constrictor,choked those trapped inside — and it continuestoday.CHILDHOOD LESSONS“Show me the smart child,” the tester saidto a Black girl. They were in a classroomlooking at a cartoon series of identical girlswhose skin went from white to brown. TheBlack girl pointed to the image of the whitegirl. When asked why, she said, “Becauseshe’s white.” The tester asked, “Show methe dumb child.” Hesitating, the Black girlpointed to an image of the Black girl.On April 2, CNN aired an Anderson Cooper360 series that investigated the effect ofracism on children. It recreated the “DollTests,” made famous by Kenneth Clark in1940, in which he gave two identical dolls,one brown, the other white, to Black children,then asked which was prettiest. Theyoverwhelmingly chose the white doll.Racism pours into the minds of childrenand warps their self-image. Cooper describedit as a “deluge” of messages fromthe surrounding adult culture. In the test,when asked which skin color looked worst,70 percent of older Black children and 61percent of the youngest picked the darkestshade.FAMILY LIFEOut of 40 million African-Americans, 10million live in suffocating poverty — andthey are being joined by the new poor. Accordingto the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2008the poverty rate was around 13 percent —nearly 40 million people. Three years afterthe 2008 Wall Street crash, in 2011, the ratehad swelled by nearly three million. TheseAmericans once lived in the middle class butlost their jobs, lost their homes and wept inshock as their furniture was thrown on theirfront lawns.Poverty recreates poverty. Looking at JimCrow America and at the Black poor, wecan see the effect of generational scarcity.Families are broken by the stress of hopelessness—they work too hard for too long,earn too little and become estranged or getcaught in a downward spiral of drugs andjail. The Children’s Defense Fund, in a 2011report entitled Portrait of Inequality: BlackChildren in America, found that 40 percentof Black children live in poverty, and thathalf of Black children live only with theirmother. Black children are seven timesmore likely to have at least one parent(usually the father) in prison.FAILING SCHOOLSThe stress of poverty follows children intothe schools. Portrait of Inequality notesthat “at nine months Black babies scorelower on measures of cognitive developmentthan white babies.” At 24 months, thegap triples. By age four, Black children areon a slippery slope of worsening test scores.The chaotic life of poverty and its toll onrelationships often means that parents fightand split up. Family members come backfrom prison traumatized and unable to findjobs. Sickness kills relatives who don’t havehealthcare, riddling the family with holes ofdespair. The book Black Children: Social,Educational and Parental Environments,edited by Harriet Pipes McAdoo, exploreschildren’s coping mechanisms: when a fatherloses a job or a mother is sick, childrenalternate between self-isolation and “actingout” to demand love. In school this behaviorcan lead to punishment or interferewith learning. Portrait of Inequality foundthat a black child is “one and a half timesmore likely than a white child to be placedin a class for students with emotional disturbances”and twice as likely to be labeledmentally retarded.Black youth are more likely to be suspendedand expelled, forcing them to slip furtherbackward. Nearly forty percent of Black childrenare trapped in “drop out factories.” Oureducation system works like a filter that letsfew Black students into college —Black malesages 18 and up comprise only 5 percent of theU.S. college educated population, but nearly40 percent of the prison population. And forContinued on page 10THE INDYPENDENT JULY 26 – SEPTEMBER 4, 2012 9

RACE10 JULY 26 – SEPTEMBER 4, 2012 THE INDYPENDENTNew York CityMilanoSchool ofinternationalaffairS,ManageMent,and UrbanPolicyGraduate Programs with a Consciencewww.newschool.edu/milano1FOR PUBLIC ENGAGEMENTAn Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity InstitutionJIM CROWContinued from page 8the few who graduate from college, readyto perform the entry-level skilled work thatused to be the ladder to the middle class,there is little work: such jobs account for 95percent of the jobs destroyed by the 2008Wall Street crash.‘THE NEW N-WORD’The prisons are filled with Black high schooldropouts. In the academic journal Daedalus,sociologists Bruce Western and BettyPettit noted that in 1980, roughly 10 percentof Black high school dropouts were in jail.Twenty-eight years later, 37 percent wereimprisoned. If the trends hold, 68 percent ofBlack dropouts born from 1975 to 1979 willend up in jail.And as Michelle Alexander points outin The New Jim Crow, whites and Blacksdo drugs at roughly the same amount, butBlacks are arrested at much higher rates.She writes, “The U.S. penal population explodedfrom around 300,000 to more than2 million, with drug convictions accountingfor the majority.” Of the 2.1 million men inprison, 42 percent are Black: nearly 900,000men. Even when released, these men arebarred from full participation in society.One Black pastor quoted by Alexandersaid: “Felony is the new N-word. They don’thave to call you a nigger anymore. They justsay you’re a felon. In every ghetto you seealarming numbers of young men with felonyconvictions. Once you have that felonystamp, your hope for employment, for anykind of integration into society, it beginsto fade out. Today’s lynching is a felonycharge.”VOTER SUPPRESSIONFelons can’t vote. And when voter suppressionlaws pass, neither can the poor. In a repeatof the poll tax, literacy tests and voterintimidation of the old Jim Crow era, todaythe right to vote is being re-segregated. InAlabama, Kansas, Rhode Island, SouthCarolina, Tennessee, Texas, Florida andWisconsin, Republican governors and lawmakersare enacting strict new voting laws.These range from purging voter rolls of “illegals”to demanding that voters show photoIDs, which poor people, who move oftenand don’t have money to get new IDs, oftendon’t have.Ben Jealous, the president of the NAACP,recently said on Democracy Now!, “Morestates have passed more laws pushing morecitizens in our country out of the ballot boxin the past 12 months than in — you know,than since the rise of Jim Crow. You have togo back to the 1890s to find a year when wepassed more laws pushing more voters outof the ballot box than we have seen in thepast 12 months, five million people pushedout, disproportionately Black and brown.”CYCLE OF LIFE“I did thirteen years in prison,” Tony, myneighbor in Bed-Stuy, said as we sat on thestoop. “Even now it’s hard to get work.” Wewatched young men light a joint, eyeing thestreet for cops. Nearby, a young girl withpigtails chased a boy who was laughing sohard he hiccupped. I looked at them andwondered how long it would be before theydropped out of school and began smokingand fighting on the block. How long untiltheir first arrests?Here is the cycle of life in Third WorldNew York: Black and Latino kids go to brokenpublic schools from which nearly halfdon’t graduate, they enter a jobless economy,and they become racially profiled teenswho are stopped and frisked and jailed, whoreturn home unable to find work, housingor support, who become absent fathers orbeleaguered mothers, who end up exhaustedand old, helplessly watching from the stoopas their children go to the same brokenschools to begin the cycle all over again.And the rage twisting inside me is thatthey are the most vulnerable among us.They don’t have savings to pay lawyers orfines; they don’t have status to protect themor a social movement to trumpet their cause.They are the descendants of Americanslaves, and their lives have been cannon fodderfor our schools and prisons. They andtheir families have lived through centuriesof a racial nightmare that no one, not evenour first Black president, wants to name.Small towns in America love to post welcomesigns. I wanted to walk to the end ofmy block and nail into the sidewalk one thatreads: “Welcome to Jim Crow America.”FRIEND US ONFACEBOOK.FOLLOW US ONTWITTER:@THEINDYPENDENTINDYPENDENT

FIRST PERSONWhen Domestic Violence Hits Close to HomeBy John TarletonIwas home alone in the kitchen of myground-level brownstone apartment onthe night of the Fourth of July when Iheard a woman’s screams amid the poppingof fireworks set off by neighborhood kids.“Help! Help! A man is trying to kill me!”I continued typing on my laptop for about30 seconds, not fully registering what I washearing. The cries for help continued. Livingin a big city can diffuse our sense of personalresponsibility and in a flash I thought ofKitty Genovese, the Queens woman whose1964 stabbing death became a symbol ofurban malaise when it was later reportedthat 37 of her neighbors had ignored herpleas for help over the course of more thanhalf an hour.I stepped out my backdoor to try andlocate where the screams were comingfrom.It was a neighbor who lives on the thirdfloor of our building in West Harlem. Shehad barricaded herself in her bedroom followinga violent altercation with her boyfriend.She urged me to call the police. Withher boyfriend looming outside her door andher cell phone in another part of her apartment,she couldn’t make the call herself.CALLING THE POLICEI took a deep breath. My first impulse is todistrust the police. Too often the cops usetheir power callously and without regard forthe people they are supposed to “serve andprotect.” But I did as she asked and called911.The NYPD, however, was nowhereto be seen. Venturing out of my apartment,I found her boyfriend standingimpassively on the front stoop of thebuilding. He took out his cell phone andshowed me that he had also placed a 911call. He said that his girlfriend was “troubled”and that he was concerned abouther well-being after she had attacked himand torn up the apartment in the process.I continued upstairs to check on myneighbor. The door to her apartment wasslightly ajar. After I announced myself andrepeatedly knocked on the door, a woman’sface peeked out at me. She blinked and asingle tear appeared. A dark bluishblackmark marred the left sideof her face just below theeye. (Her mascarahad run, she later told me.)I ascertained that shewas not seriously hurt.When I mentionedthat her boyfriendwas downstairs,shebecame agitated.Sheurged meto tellh i mt oTHELARSENPROJECT.COMleave. When I conveyed her message, theboyfriend insisted he would stay until thepolice came because he wanted to make sureshe was OK. I urged him to go home and callit a night. He wouldn’t hear of it.DISASTER ZONEI went back upstairs. This time, the womanallowed me into her apartment. I steppedacross piles of magazines that were lying onthe floor near the front door. Her bedroomlooked as if a tornado had blown through— a shelving unit was toppled and booksand personal effects were scattered on theground. The kitchen floor was also a messwith items that had fallen from another shelf.“I would never do this to my own home,”she said.I asked why her boyfriend called 911 andstayed on the scene. She explained that hewas in a custody battle with another womanwho was the mother of his small child. Aftertrashing the apartment, the boyfriend hadcalmed down and realized he needed to stickaround and discredit her version of events.After what had just happened, she couldtestify against him in his child custody case.Noting that her boyfriend is a military veteran,the woman worried aloud that the policewould take his side.The woman was just finishing telling meher story when we heard the heavy footstepsof police officers coming up the woodenstaircase. The four officers (three male, onefemale) were calm and professional. Theyasked me to stand off to the side. Afterlistening to the woman and her boyfriendexplain what had happened and askingfollow-up questions of both parties, thepolice took the boyfriend to jail.Afterwards, I spoke with the womanin the front foyer of our building. I askedif she would take her boyfriend back.She shook her head and said, “no.” Theywere done. She appeared both stunnedby what had transpired and relieved tohave survived the ordeal.“I’m so embarrassed,” she said. “I’mcollege-educated and have had good professionaljobs. I never thought somethinglike this could happen to me.”WHERE DO I GET MY COPY OF THE INDYPENDENT ?BELOW 14 TH ST.WBAI - 99.5 FM120 Wall St., 10th fl.DC 37 Headquarters125 Barclay St.Bluestockings172 Allen St.LES People’s Federal Credit Union39 Avenue BHousing Works126 Crosby St.Hudson Park Library66 Leroy St.Seward Park Library192 E. Broadway at Jefferson St.Whole Earth Bakery130 St. Mark’s Pl.Mamoun’s Falafel Restaurant22 St. Mark’s Pl.Brecht Forum451 West St.Shakespeare & Co.716 Broadway at Washington Pl.Theater for the New City155 First Ave.14 TH TO 96 TH ST.Epiphany Library228 E. 23rd St.Chelsea Square RestaurantW. 23rd St. & Ninth Ave.Columbus Library942 Tenth Ave.Manhattan Neighborhood Network537 W. 59th St.Muhlenberg Library209 W. 23rd St.St. Agnes Library444 Amsterdam Ave.ABOVE 96 TH ST.George Bruce Library518 W. 125th St.Book Culture526 W. 112th St.Aguilar Branch Library172 E. 110th St.Harlem Library9 W. 124th St.Hamilton Grange Library503 W. 145th St.Uptown Sister’s BooksW. 156th St. & AmsterdamBloomingdale Library150 W. 100th St.BROOKLYNBrooklyn Museum200 Eastern Pkwy.BAM30 Lafayette Ave.Tillie’s of Brooklyn248 DeKalb Ave.Tea LoungeUnion St. & Seventh Ave.Video Gallery310 Seventh Ave.Verb CaféBedford Ave. & N. 5th St.Pillow Café505 Myrtle Ave.Sisters’ Community Hardware900 Fulton St.Pacific Street Library25 Fourth Ave.Outpost Café1014 Fulton St.Blackbird Café197 Bedford Ave.’sNice Café323 Fifth Ave.Oslo Café328 Bedford Ave.Archive49 Bogart St.Atlantis Super Wash484 Atlantic Ave.Superior Suds303 Flatbush Ave.Bedford Library496 Franklin Ave.Parkside Deli203 Parkside Ave.BRONXBrook Park141st St. & Brook Ave.Mott Haven Library321 E. 140th St.High Bridge Library78 W. 168th St.Mi Casa Bakery18 E. Bedford Park Blvd.STATEN ISLANDSt. George Library Center5 Central Ave.Port Richmond Library75 Bennett St.Everything Goes Book Café208 Bay St.A FREE PAPERFOR FREE PEOPLEPhone: (212) 904-1282Email: contact@indypendent.orgFor complete list: indypendent.org/about/distribution-locations.THE INDYPENDENT JULY 26 – SEPTEMBER 4, 2012 11

LOVE THEINDY?DO YOU LOOK FORWARD TO EVERYISSUE OF THE INDYPENDENT? IF SO,BECOME A MONTHLY SUPPORTERTODAY! FOR AS LITTLE AS $5 AMONTH — LESS THAN YOU PAYFOR COFFEE AND A BAGEL IN THEMORNING — YOU CAN HELP KEEPTHE PAPER YOU LOVE GOING STRONG.12 JULY 26 – SEPTEMBER 4, 2012 THE INDYPENDENTNAMEADDRESSE-MAILPH#CC#SECURITY CODEEXP DATEMONTHLY DONATION AMOUNT:•$5 •$10 •$15 •$20 •$25 •$35 •$50 •$75 •$100 •OTHER••••SEND MAIL TO: THE INDYPENDENT, 666 BROADWAY, SUITE 510, NEW YORK, NY 10012OR CALL THE INDY OFFICE AT 212-904-1282 AND WE WILL REGISTER YOU BY PHONE.VISIT US AT: INDYPENDENT.ORG/DONATEOR IF YOU HAVE A SMARTPHONE,SCAN

REVIEW“Few revolutionary initiatives formed out of the 1960s left such a profoundintellectual and political legacy as the STO.... [A] deeply researched,balanced, and remarkable history.”—David Roedigertruth andrevolutionGetting Beneaththe Tri-Corner HatThe Rise of the Tea PartyBy Anthony DiMaggioMonthly Review Press, 2011At the beginning of Occupy WallStreet, many pundits grasping fora narrative to describe the nascentmovement compared it to the Tea Party.And, for a hot minute, Occupy was theTea Party of the left. The linchpin of thiscomparison is the assumption that bothare grassroots movements calling out thosein power. But Anthony DiMaggio’s lateststudy, The Rise of the Tea Party, rejects theTea Party as a movement and sets out to uncloakits costume, calling it nothing morethan a re-branding of the Republican Party.The Rise of the Tea Party is DiMaggio’sfollow-up to Crashing the Tea Party, a searingtakedown of this right-wing phenomenon.Much has changed since the Tea Party’semergence in the healthcare “town hells” inthe summer of 2009. Obamacare has beenupheld by the Supreme Court, WisconsinGov. Scott Walker with big-money backingeviscerated collective bargaining rights formost public workers, survived a heated recallelection and presumptive Republicannominee Mitt Romney is seen as a moderateby the far-right.All of this begs the question, what is theTea Party?As a grassroots movement, DiMaggiocontends the Tea Party is a massive fraud,and there is little difference between self-describedTea Partiers and their conservativeRepublican counterparts.For starters, DiMaggio finds that self-describedTea Party legislators’ voting recordsare indistinguishable from their Republicancolleagues. Local Tea Party chapters are generallyinactive or nonexistent, and any partytalking points are generated by moneyed Republicanelites like Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks. DiMaggio reports that the 2010 TeaParty national gathering in Nashville, Tenn.was a complete failure, with headliners likeSarah Palin, who demanded an exorbitantspeaking fee.Further, local organizing efforts areanathema to Tea Partiers influenced by AynRand’s objectivist philosophy and disdainof collective action DiMaggio writes. Rand,who wrote extensively against the VietnamWar protests and the Civil Rights movement,fetishized rugged individualism andcommodified social relations in terms oftime, money and what one could gain materiallyand emotionally from each interaction.Widespread Ayn Rand worship has beenpart of the right for decades, but how doesthis explain large turnouts for the Tea Party’srallies in Washington, D.C., especiallyin the fall of 2010? According to DiMaggio,the powerful echo chamber of the conservativemedia, with Fox News superstar GlennBeck’s leadership, spurred people to attend.The beginning of the book draws on EdwardHerman and Noam Chomsky to offerreaders a media theory primer that is bothbeneficial and a bit tedious — as anyonefamiliar with Chomsky’s brilliant yet bonedrystyle can attest. DiMaggio uses Chomsky’spropaganda model (outlined in ManufacturingConsent) to explain that mediacorporations are motivated by profits, andthus, err on the side of pro-business coverage,especially when public-interest reportingthreatens their bottom line. Withoutmajor corporate media backing, DiMaggiosays, Tea Partiers are merely the same oldaging and majority white Republican base.Tea Party activists supported a corporatistagenda of deregulation and lowered incometaxes for businesses and the rich whileattacking the remnants of New Deal andliberal healthcare reform. Polling shows TeaPartiers are generally more affluent than averageAmericans, are predominantly whiteand mostly rely on the conservative mediafor their news.This last point is the takeaway — as aresult of over reliance on right-wing media,many Republicans often hold contradictoryand ignorant beliefs. In a poll of voters inAlabama and Mississippi last March, 52percent of respondents believed PresidentObama is Muslim — another 36 percentsaid they weren’t sure. Further, many conservativesrely on government programs likethe earned-income tax credit and free schoollunches to make ends meet, while also callingfor an end to government assistance.This belief system is the raison d’être ofthe Tea Party.GREG FARRELL— Bennett Baumera history of the sojourner truthorganization, 1969-1986a new work of history byWith essays by Vijay Prashad, MollyCrabapple, Cindy Milstein, Michael Yotam staudenMaier Marom,Lester Spence, Manissa McCleave Maharawal,Michael Premo, Peter Gelderloos,Matt Smucker, Marisa Holmes, Joel Olson,Chris Dixon, Kristian Williams, Yvonne YenLiu, Rose Bookbinder, and many more.And an afterword by David Graeber350 pages | $21.00 | september 2012www.akpress.orgbluestockingsradical bookstore | activist center | fair trade cafe172 ALLEN ST • 212-777-6028b l u e s t o c k i n g s . c o mTUE AUG 7, 7PM • FreeREADING: JERRY MANDER, THECAPITALISM PAPERS: FATAL FLAWSOF AN OBSOLETE SYSTEM.Mander researches, discusses andexposes the momentous and unsolvableenvironmental and social problem ofcapitalism, arguing that capitalism is nolonger a viable systemMON AUG 13, 7PM • FreeREADING: JOAN DOBBIE ANDGRACE BEELER, BEFORE THERE ISNOWHERE TO STAND: PALESTINE/ISRAEL: POETS RESPOND TO THESTRUGGLE.This anthology features poems “thatstrives for understanding in the belief thatpoetry can create understanding andunderstanding can dull hatred.”SAT SEPT 15, 7PM • FreeREADING: KATE KHATIB, MARGARETKILLJOY AND MIKE MCGUIRE:WE ARE MANY: REFLECTIONSON MOVEMENT STRATEGY FROMOCCUPATION TO LIBERATION.Join us for an evening of discussionaround the past, present, and possiblefuture of the Occupy movement.edited by kate khatib, margaret killjoy, and mike mcguireTHE INDYPENDENT JULY 26 – SEPTEMBER 4, 2012 13

the UNLIKELYSECRET AGENTby Ronnie Kasrils“A wonderful book abouta courageous and extraordinarywoman who was highly principled,yet endowed by nature withall the clandestine skills.”—John le CarréREVIEWthe thrillingTRUE storyof onewoman’s ightagainst theapartheidsystem*winner ofSouth Africa’stop literaryprize,the AlanPaton AwardBETH WHITNEY14 JULY 26 – SEPTEMBER 4, 2012 THE INDYPENDENTnew from MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS $14.95 pbk| 183 pagesto order: www.monthlyreview.org | 800.670.9499AMERICAN INSURGENTSA Brief History of American Anti-Imperialism | Richard Seymour | $17“In the tradition of HowardZinn’s A People’s Historyof the United States . . .Richard Seymour showshow US imperialism hasgenerated significantdomestic opposition rootedin grassroots movementsfor racial, economic, andsocial justice.”—Michael Letwin, New YorkCity Labor Against the Warwww.haymarketbooks.orgWhat TheyGain, WhatWe LoseThe People’s Pension: The Struggleto Defend Social Security SinceReaganBy Eric LaursenAK Press, 2012In the tumultuous politicalbattles of the Great Depression,massive social movementsand disruptive strikes forced theU.S. government to implement aseries of major programs to easethe human impact of the country’seconomic woes. One of these programs— Social Security — offeredan alternative vision that allowedworkers to save money and retirein relative comfort.Eric Laursen’s The People’s Pensionbegins nearly half a centuryafter the creation of the program,with the emergence of a coordinatedmovement to attack SocialSecurity. Since the election ofRonald Reagan in 1980, conservativepoliticians, think tanks andfoundations have waged a steadybattle to discredit, cut or dramaticallytransform the program.Labor unions and senior citizens’groups led a broad movement thathas largely succeeded in defendingSocial Security.The People’s Pension covers inminute detail the specific politicians,lobbyists and organizationsthat have acted againstSocial Security over the last threedecades. The book is massive,with a total of 818 pages and anunfortunate over-emphasis on theactivities of Washington insiders.In many respects, though, thebook is a significant accomplishment.Written by an independentjournalist and distributed by ananarchist publisher, The People’sPension is a formidable piece ofresearch, and its coherent, readablenarrative is a gift to activistsand scholars alike. In his closingchapter, Laursen even takes anadmirable stab at demonstratingthe relevance of anarchist conceptsof mutual aid and popular directdemocracy in bolstering the movementto save Social Security andpublic benefits.Laursen consistently and thoroughlydemonstrates that SocialSecurity, despite conservativerhetoric, is not broken, not aboutto go bankrupt and not necessarilyin need of a massive overhaul.Social Security functions remarkablywell and has helped millionsof people make ends meet. “SocialSecurity,” Laursen writes, “had by1980 evolved into the most successfulantipoverty program inU.S. history.”Laursen is particularly astute inhis extensive analysis of the hypearound generational rivalry. Inthese narratives, “greedy geezers”are stealing the wealth of today’syoung workers. This rhetoricemphasizes generational dividesto promote fear and reactionarypolitics. Social Security, Laursenconvincingly argues, should beheralded as a system of solidarityand care between generations.The People’s Pension is muchweaker, however, in demonstratingwhy conservatives have put somuch effort into attacking such apopular program. Laursen attributesthese attacks to a combinationof self-interest and ideology,but he is consistently vague aboutwhat business elites stand to gain.He alludes to a few possible causes,including fear of future taxes andthe potential windfall of investmentfees for the financial servicesindustry if Social Security is privatized,but he fails to examine theseclaims any further.Both austerity cuts to SocialSecurity and privatization have arational economic logic for businesselites. But by failing to examinethe underlying economic impetusfor attacking Social Security,Laursen mislabels the problemin his closing chapter as one ofbureaucrats removed from publicconcerns. Laursen’s chief solution— democratizing the managementof Social Security — could neverbe successful without confrontingthe power of employers in Americansociety.As documented throughout ThePeople’s Pension, labor unionsand social movements have largelyrelied on lobbying, electoralpolitics and symbolic protests todefend public benefits. We need togo beyond the halls of Congress tofight back in our workplaces, todisrupt the profit of corporations,to build militant organizationsof workers and the poor, and todevelop solutions to the economiccrisis that make banks and corporationspay.Michelle O’Brien is a graduatestudent in the Department ofSociology at New York University,studying the politics of welfare.A longer version of this review willappear on The Rank-and-Filer, apolitical blog for radical social serviceworkers, at rankandfiler.net.— Michelle O’Brien

THE INDYPENDENT JULY 26 – SEPTEMBER 4, 2012 15

Accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower US Army Intelligence Analyst PFC Bradley Manningfaces life in prison at a court martial in Fort Meade, Maryland, for exposing thetruth about government corruption in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world.www.bradleymanning.orgThe Bradley Manning Support Network on Facebook & Twitter: SaveBradley