TO DO: Stop Deportation
Source: Migrant Lives Matter

http://action.ndlon.org/c/1509/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=18144

Migrants Lives Matter: Organizational Support Letter

Dear Representative,

In preceding decades the Democratic party has enjoyed crucial political support from immigrant communities.  This support has meant the difference between election and defeat for you and your party.  Despite this support, your actions have been nothing short of disastrous for our communities. Since the election of the “Deporter-in-Chief,” President Obama, there has been no substantial improvement for our communities other than temporary measures which protect only a few.  On the contrary, under your watch and often with your support, immigrants have been massively incarcerated, deported, and too many have died as a result. 

We are writing to you today as Migrant Lives Matter, a campaign led by undocumented immigrants, our families, and communities in solidarity across California.  These communities together have been at the forefront of fighting the deportation policies and practices that your party has initiated and supported.  The Deferred Action measures that have been instituted so far have come into fruition only because of our unyielding efforts, not yours.  The more devastating detention and deportation policies remain intact and continue to result in four hundred thousand deportations a year and rising.  We are holding your party - The Deportation Party - accountable for your actions and inactions that have caused grave violence and injustice against our communities. 

It is the Deportation Party that drafts, approves and implements policies of marginalization and criminalization which result in widespread incarceration and deportation.  Now, the Deporter-In-Chief is manipulating the current humanitarian crisis of child refugees and families to request emergency funds to expedite their detention and removal.  The vast majority of the  $3.7 billion requested is to be used to further militarize the border, expand detention facilities and weaken due process rights for all migrants.  This unconscionable rush to deport refugee children and families, and your party’s failure to oppose this effort, will cement your legacy as an unforgivable one for our communities. 

Trust for you, your Party and your President among our communities has been broken —not irreparably, but deeply.  The following demands are immediate measures that you must take to re-establish trust and regain our support. 

We demand from you the following: 

1. Advocate vigorously and publicly for the expansion of Administrative Relief to protect all undocumented immigrants and advocate in this same manner for an immediate end to all deportations and the release of all detained immigrants without delay.

2. Defeat, by any means at your disposal, the HUMANE Act and any and all other requests for funding that would further militarize the border, expand detention centers, and immigration enforcement.

3. Grant Refugee Status to all who are seeking asylum, including refugee children and families arriving at the US-Mexico border. 

4. Extend existing protections to ensure that all refugee children and families can receive refugee status, including Mexican and Canadian citizens who are currently excluded.

Our communities can spare no more time and will mince not one more word about your role in our marginalization and criminalization.  We expect a response to our demands by Thursday, July 31, 2014.  Please contact Luis Ojeda from California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance (CIYJA) at lojeda@ciyja.org.  We urge you to take action without further delay and show our communities the respect and dignity we deserve.

Sincerely,

Migrant Lives Matter Campaign

To Sign Petition, Click Here To Go To Migrant Lives Campaign

Article: Migrant Deportation
Source: nbc news

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/immigration-border-crisis/undocumented-women-children-deported-honduras-n155606

Undocumented Women, Children Deported to Honduras

The first undocumented immigrants were returned to Honduras from the U.S. detention facility in New Mexico on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security said.

About 40 Hondurans, including children, were bused to the Roswell, New Mexico, airport Monday morning from a federal law enforcement training facility at Artesia that was converted last month to house about 400 Central American women and children.

Homeland Security officials told NBC News the flight was just the "initial wave" of deportations, with one saying, "We expect additional migrants will be returned to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador in the coming days and weeks." U.S. immigration officials say the influx of women and children from the Central American countries has spiked in recent months, fueled by false rumors of a June "deadline" under which they could stay in the U.S. legally. The prospect of deporting children back to their dangerous homelands has galvanized immigration activists.

TO DO: Corporate Divestment
Source: AVAAZ

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/israel_palestine_this_is_how_it_ends_rb/?sGpZAgb

Israel-Palestine: This is how it ends

1,500,000

1,107,265

1,107,265 have signed. Let's get to 1,500,000

As a new round of violence kicks off in Israel-Palestine and more children are killed, it's not enough just to call for another ceasefire. It’s time to take definitive non-violent action to end this decades long nightmare.

Our governments have failed -- while they have talked peace and passed UN resolutions, they and our companies have continued to aid, trade and invest in the violence. The only way to stop this hellish cycle of Israel confiscating Palestinian lands, daily collective punishment of innocent Palestinian families, Hamas firing rockets, and Israel bombing Gaza is to make the economic cost of this conflict too high to bear.

We know it works -- when EU countries issued guidelines not to fund the illegal Israeli settlements it caused an earthquake in the cabinet, and when citizens successfully persuaded a Dutch pension fund, PGGM, to withdraw, it created a political storm.

This may not feel like a direct way to stop the current killing, but history tells us that raising the financial cost of oppression can pave a path to peace. Sign the petition on the right and call on 6 key banks, pension funds and businesses to pull out -- If we all take smart action now and turn up the heat, they could withdraw, the Israeli economy will take a hit, and we can turn the calculation of the extremists politically profiting from this hell upside down.

SIGN THE PETITION

To the CEOs of ABP, HP, Veolia, Barclays, Caterpillar, and G4S:

In the wake of the terrible violence unfolding in Israel-Palestine, we, citizens from around the world, are deeply concerned about your companies’ continued investment in companies and projects that finance illegal settlements and the oppressive occupation of the Palestinian people. 17 EU countries recently issued warnings to their citizens against doing business or investing in illegal Israeli settlements. Given those legal considerations, you now have the opportunity to withdraw investments and respect international law. This is a chance to be on the right side of history.

SIGN PETITION

(TO GO TO PETITION SITE)

In the last six weeks three Israeli teenagers were murdered in the West Bank, a Palestinian boy was burnt alive, an American kid was brutally beaten up by Israeli police, and now almost 100 Gazan kids have died in Israeli air strikes. This is not the "Middle East conflict", it's becoming a war on children. And we are becoming numb to this global shame.

The media makes out like this is an intractable conflict between two equal warring parties, but it is not. Palestinian extremists' attacks on innocent civilians are never justified and Hamas’ anti-semitism is disgusting. But these extremists claim legitimacy by fighting the grotesque, decades-long oppression by the Israeli state. Israel currently occupies, colonises, bombs, raids, and controls the water, trade and the borders of a legally free nation that has been recognised by the United Nations. In Gaza, Israel has created the largest open-air prison in the world, and then blockaded it. Now as bombs fall, the families literally have no way to get out.

These are war crimes and we wouldn't accept that anywhere else: why accept it in Palestine? Half a century ago Israel and its Arab neighbours went to war and Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Occupying territory after war happens all the time. But no military occupation should turn into a decades-long tyranny which only fuels and benefits extremists who use terror to target the innocent. And who suffers? The majority of loving families on both sides that just want freedom and peace.

To many, particularly in Europe and North America, calling for companies to withdraw investments from financing or taking part in Israel's occupation of Palestine sounds completely biased. But this campaign is not anti-Israel -- this is the most potent non-violent strategy to end the ritual violence, ensure Israelis' security and achieve Palestinian freedom. Although Hamas deserves much pressure too, it is already under crippling sanctions and facing every kind of pressure. Israel's power and wealth dwarfs Palestine, and if it refuses to end its illegal occupation, the world must act to make the cost unbearable.

Dutch pension fund ABP invests in Israeli banks that help fund the colonisation of Palestine. Massive banks like Barclays invest in suppliers of Israeli arms and other occupation businesses. British G4S provides extensive security equipment used by the Israeli Defence Force in the occupation. France's Veolia operates transport for Israeli settlers illegally living on Palestinian lands. Computer giant Hewlett-Packard supplies sophisticated surveillance to control the movement of Palestinians. And Caterpillar provides bulldozers that are used to demolish Palestinian homes and farms.

If we can create the biggest global call ever to get these companies to pull out, we will show clearly that the world will no longer be complicit in this bloodshed. The Palestinian people are calling on the world to support this path and progressive Israelis support it too. Let’s join them.

Our community has worked to bring peace, hope, and change to some of the world’s toughest conflicts, and often that means taking difficult positions to address the root cause. For years our community has looked for a political solution to this nightmare, but with this new round of horror unfolding in Gaza, the time has come to turn to sanctions and disinvestment to finally help end the horror for Israelis and Palestinians.

For further questions check out the Q&A page, and some sourceshere.

Article: Violence in Gaza
Source: The World Post/Huff Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-falk/understanding-the-gaza-ca_b_154777.html

Richard Falk

United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories

Understanding the Gaza Catastrophe

Posted: 01/02/09 11:00 AM ET

For eighteen months the entire 1.5 million people of Gaza experienced a punishing blockade imposed by Israel, and a variety of traumatizing challenges to the normalcy of daily life. A flicker of hope emerged some six months ago when an Egyptian arranged truce produced an effective ceasefire that cut Israeli casualties to zero despite the cross-border periodic firing of homemade rockets that fell harmlessly on nearby Israeli territory, and undoubtedly caused anxiety in the border town of Sderot. During the ceasefire the Hamas leadership in Gaza repeatedly offered to extend the truce, even proposing a ten-year period and claimed a receptivity to a political solution based on acceptance of Israel's 1967 borders. Israel ignored these diplomatic initiatives, and failed to carry out its side of the ceasefire agreement that involved some easing of the blockade that had been restricting the entry to Gaza of food, medicine, and fuel to a trickle.

Israel also refused exit permits to students with foreign fellowship awards and to Gazan journalists and respected NGO representatives. At the same time, it made it increasingly difficult for journalists to enter, and I was myself expelled from Israel a couple of weeks ago when I tried to enter to carry out my UN job of monitoring respect for human rights in occupied Palestine, that is, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as Gaza. Clearly, prior to the current crisis, Israel used its authority to prevent credible observers from giving accurate and truthful accounts of the dire humanitarian situation that had been already documented as producing severe declines in the physical condition and mental health of the Gazan population, especially noting malnutrition among children and the absence of treatment facilities for those suffering from a variety of diseases. The Israeli attacks were directed against a society already in grave condition after a blockade maintained during the prior 18 months.

As always in relation to the underlying conflict, some facts bearing on this latest crisis are murky and contested, although the American public in particular gets 99% of its information filtered through an exceedingly pro-Israeli media lens. Hamas is blamed for the breakdown of the truce by its supposed unwillingness to renew it, and by the alleged increased incidence of rocket attacks. But the reality is more clouded. There was no substantial rocket fire from Gaza during the ceasefire until Israel launched an attack last November 4th directed at what it claimed were Palestinian militants in Gaza, killing several Palestinians. It was at this point that rocket fire from Gaza intensified. Also, it was Hamas that on numerous public occasions called for extending the truce, with its calls never acknowledged, much less acted upon, by Israeli officialdom. Beyond this, attributing all the rockets to Hamas is not convincing either. A variety of independent militia groups operate in Gaza, some such as the Fatah-backed al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade are anti-Hamas, and may even be sending rockets to provoke or justify Israeli retaliation. It is well confirmed that when US-supported Fatah controlled Gaza's governing structure it was unable to stop rocket attacks despite a concerted effort to do so.

What this background suggests strongly is that Israel launched its devastating attacks, starting on December 27, not simply to stop the rockets or in retaliation, but also for a series of unacknowledged reasons. It was evident for several weeks prior to the Israeli attacks that the Israeli military and political leaders were preparing the public for large-scale military operations against the Hamas. The timing of the attacks seemed prompted by a series of considerations: most of all, the interest of political contenders, the Defense Minister Ehud Barak and the Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, in demonstrating their toughness prior to national elections scheduled for February, but now possibly postponed until military operations cease. Such Israeli shows of force have been a feature of past Israeli election campaigns, and on this occasion especially, the current government was being successfully challenged by Israel's notoriously militarist politician, Benjamin Netanyahu, for its supposed failures to uphold security. Reinforcing these electoral motivations was the little concealed pressure from the Israeli military commanders to seize the opportunity in Gaza to erase the memories of their failure to destroy Hezbollah in the devastating Lebanon War of 2006 that both tarnished Israel's reputation as a military power and led to widespread international condemnation of Israel for the heavy bombardment of undefended Lebanese villages, disproportionate force, and extensive use of cluster bombs against heavily populated areas.

Respected and conservative Israeli commentators go further. For instance, the prominent historian, Benny Morris writing in the New York Times a few days ago, relates the campaign in Gaza to a deeper set of forebodings in Israel that he compares to the dark mood of the public that preceded the 1967 War when Israelis felt deeply threatened by Arab mobilizations on their borders. Morris insists that despite Israeli prosperity of recent years, and relative security, several factors have led Israel to act boldly in Gaza: the perceived continuing refusal of the Arab world to accept the existence of Israel as an established reality; the inflammatory threats voiced by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad together with Iran's supposed push to acquire nuclear weapons, the fading memory of the Holocaust combined with growing sympathy in the West with the Palestinian plight, and the radicalization of political movements on Israel's borders in the form of Hezbollah and Hamas. In effect, Morris argues that Israel is trying via the crushing of Hamas in Gaza to send a wider message to the region that it will stop at nothing to uphold its claims of sovereignty and security.

There are two conclusions that emerge: the people of Gaza are being severely victimized for reasons remote from the rockets and border security concerns, but seemingly to improve election prospects of current leaders now facing defeat, and to warn others in the region that Israel will use overwhelming force whenever its interests are at stake. 

That such a human catastrophe can happen with minimal outside interference also shows the weakness of international law and the United Nations, as well as the geopolitical priorities of the important players. The passive support of the United States government for whatever Israel does is again the critical factor, as it was in 2006 when it launched its aggressive war against Lebanon. What is less evident is that the main Arab neighbors, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, with their extreme hostility toward Hamas that is viewed as backed by Iran, their main regional rival, were also willing to stand aside while Gaza was being so brutally attacked, with some Arab diplomats even blaming the attacks on Palestinian disunity or on the refusal of Hamas to accept the leadership of Mamoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority.

The people of Gaza are victims of geopolitics at its inhumane worst: producing what Israel itself calls a 'total war' against an essentially defenseless society that lacks any defensive military capability whatsoever and is completely vulnerable to Israeli attacks mounted by F-16 bombers and Apache helicopters. What this also means is that the flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, as set forth in the Geneva Conventions, is quietly set aside while the carnage continues and the bodies pile up. It additionally means that the UN is once more revealed to be impotent when its main members deprive it of the political will to protect a people subject to unlawful uses of force on a large scale. Finally, this means that the public can shriek and march all over the world, but that the killing will go on as if nothing is happening. The picture being painted day by day in Gaza is one that begs for renewed commitment to international law and the authority of the UN Charter, starting here in the United States, especially with a new leadership that promised its citizens change, including a less militarist approach to diplomatic leadership.

TO DO: Human Rights/Water
Source: Blue Planet Project

http://www.blueplanetproject.net/index.php/home/local-campaigns/detroit/

Tell Detroit to turn the taps back on: Water is a human right!

Water is a human right. Yet every week, hundreds of Detroit residents are having their water ruthlessly cut off by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, despite living on the Great Lakes, which carry one-fifth of the world’s water supply.

People are given no warning and no time to fill buckets, sinks or tubs. Families, seniors, sick and injured people and those with special needs are left without running water and working toilets, including vulnerable populations, sick people and others with special needs. People recovering from surgery cannot wash and change bandages. Children cannot bathe and parents cannot cook.

The plan to cut off water to 150,000 households by the end of the summer is part of the plan to sell off and privatize Detroit’s water system. In order to make the utility attractive to investors, lower-income households are being forced to pay exorbitant rates for their water and sewer services or see their access cut. Water rates have risen in Detroit by 119 per cent in the last decade. With unemployment rates at a record high, and the poverty rate at about 40 per cent, Detroit water bills are unaffordable to a significant portion of the population.

By allowing thousands of people to be denied access to water and sanitation services, the U.S. government is violating its international obligation to respect and protect the human right to water and sanitation.

Show your solidarity with the people in Detroit. Tell U.S. President Barack and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder to uphold the human right to water and stop the water cut-offs!

Sign the Petition

Tell Detroit to turn the taps back on: Water is a human right!

Dear President Obama and Governor Snyder:

Water is a human right and all people deserve access to safe and affordable water. The United Nations General Assembly recognizes that access to water and sanitation are essential to the realization of all human rights.

The federal government managed Detroit’s water and wastewater system until March 2013, but handed it over to the state after U.S. District Judge Sean Cox ruled that it was and would be within state and federal guidelines. The U.S. government is obligated to respect the human right to water and sanitation, yet the thousands of water cut-offs currently taking place in Detroit, Michigan is a violation of this basic human right.

I urge you to step in to support the Detroit community, the quality of life of its residents, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department and all its customers by maintaining full public control of our municipal water system. Detroit’s water system is at risk of being sold or leased to a private buyer. The privatization of water results in higher costs and its greatest impact is on access and affordability for people who are poor.

Water is life. Please stop the water shut-offs and work to make water accessible and affordable for all.

Sincerely,

go to petition website: 

Sign Now

1,865 signatures

Article: Human Rights/Water
Source: the Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2014/jun/25/detroits-water-war-a-tap-shut-off-that-could-impact-300000-people

Detroit's Water War: a tap shut-off that could impact 300,000 people

A right-wing state and corporate push to cut off water is economic shock therapy at its most ruthless and racist, but resistance is growing

On the city streets with the Detroit 300 community police force's armed A-team

Children in Detroit attending a rally against water shut-offs in the city on June 20, 2014. Photograph: Justin Wedes

Martin Lukacs

Wednesday 25 June 2014 15.58 EDT

It was six in the morning when city contractors showed up unannounced at Charity Hicks' house.

Since spring, up to 3000 Detroit households per week have been getting their water shut-off – for owing as little as $150 or two months in bills. Now it was the turn of Charity's block – and the contractor wouldn't stand to wait an hour for her pregnant neighbour to fill up some jugs.

"Where's your water termination notice?" Charity demanded, after staggering to the contractor's truck. A widely-respected African-American community leader, she has been at the forefront of campaigns to ensure Detroiters' right to public, accessible water.

The contractor's answer was to drive away, knocking Charity over and injuring her leg. Two white policemen soon arrived – not to take her report, but to arrest her. Mocking Charity for questioning the water shut-offs, they brought her to jail, where she spent two days before being released without charge.

Welcome to Detroit's water war – in which upward of 150,000 customers, late on bills that have increased 119 percent in the last decade, are now threatened with shut-offs. Local activists estimate this could impact nearly half of Detroit's mostly poor and black population – between 200,000 and 300,000 people.

"There are people who can't cook, can't clean, people coming off surgery who can't wash. This is an affront to human dignity," Charity said in an interview with Kate Levy. To make matters worse, children risk being taken by welfare authorities from any home without running water.

Denying water to thousands, as a sweltering summer approaches, might be bad enough in itself. But these shut-offs are no mere exercise in cost-recovery.

The official rationale for the water shut-downs – the Detroit Water Department's need to recoup millions – collapses on inspection. Detroit's high-end golf club, the Red Wing's hockey arena, the Ford football stadium, and more than half of the city's commercial and industrial users are also owing – a sum totalling $30 million. But no contractors have showed up on their doorstep.

The targetting of Detroit families is about something else. It is a ruthless case of the shock doctrine – the exploitation of natural or unnatural shocks of crisis to push through pro-corporate policies that couldn't happen in any other circumstance.

The first shock was the slow disaster that struck Detroit over the last four decades: the flight of corporations toward cheaper, overseas labour; the movement of white, wealthier Detroiters to the suburbs, draining the city's tax base; a Wall Street-driven financial crisis that left many homeless or jobless; and the deliberate starving of the city of funds owed them by the Republican state legislature.

On its heels has come a round of economic shock therapy. Taking advantage of the severe decline in revenue from Detroit's first shock, the media, corporations and right-wing politicians drummed up a crisis of fear about financial debt. This has become the pretext for a swift assault on Detroit's public resources: an attempt to dismantle its schools, to slash its pensions, and to transfer its parks and art and land into the hands of private corporations.

The public water system, a prized resource worth billions and sitting on the Great Lakes, is now the latest target – and the water shut-offs are a way to make the balance-sheet more attractive in the lead up to its privatization.

As Detroiters like Charity Hicks have taken a stand, they have been met by a third shock: literal blows of police force and violence, intended to dampen any resistance.

Taking full advantage of Detroit's plight required the removal of another obstacle: democracy. No Detroit politician, subject to the pressures of an electorate, could imagine going after the city's water. But in 2013, using Detroit's debt as his excuse, Michigan's Republican governor Rick Synder imposed an "emergency manger" – a trustee to govern Detroit unilaterally. When Detroiters overwhelmingly voted in a referendum against the "emergency manager" law, Synder passed a new one overnight – with a provision rendering referendums meaningless.

Having made his reign democracy-proof, Detroit's emergency manager has proceeded to drive the city toward bankruptcy. With the bankruptcy dominating media headlines across the country, the real nature of Detroit's crisis has been obscured and ignored. It has left the banks and corporations free to pursue a liquidation of the city's assets. And nothing is off the table.

There is one other way the situation in Detroit would never have come to pass: if this was a city predominantly of white people instead of black. Too much of America views Detroit like the policemen viewed Charity – as deviant, inferior and beyond repair. This racism has meant decades ofblock-busting, red-lining, police brutality and the legislative punishment of the city. And it has done something more insidious: it has written off the people of Detroit.

"Every day, we're shown that black lives, black quality of life, black communities, don't matter," says Charity.

The attitude was expressed in a recent statement of L Brooks Patterson, the elected executive of the mostly white Detroit suburb of Oakland: "I made a prediction a long time ago, and it’s come to pass. I said, 'What we’re going to do is turn Detroit into an Indian reservation, where we herd all the Indians into the city, build a fence around it, and then throw in the blankets and corn.'"

The US banks and corporations who now have Detroit on the hook want these ugly truths to stay submerged. They haven't flinched while the water has been shut-off. Nor did they flinch when Detroiters' heat was cut – in 2013, before the worst winter on record, 169,407 households were disconnected. But they loudly protested when organizations proposed a tour of the city for the US judge who will rule on Detroit's bankruptcy – that, they insisted, would be too "dangerous."

The view the judge would see is in radical contrast to Detroit's prevailing image: a city with a flowering network of community gardens, more than any in the United States, feeding residents and nurturing solidarity; a rich artistic and musical culture; and neighbourhoods organizing for meaningful education and to restore local democracy. No one denies Detroit is racked by crime, poverty and unemployment – but it is also hard to miss its vibrant renewal.

It is from this incredible web that a challenge to the water shut-offs is emerging. Community organizations have filed a human rights complaint to the United Nations, demanding Michigan state impose a moratorium on the shut-offs. UN experts have already responded critically. There are daily acts of civil disobedience: cars being parked over water valves to prevent shut-offs; neighbours teaching each other to turn the water back on. A new initiative called the Detroit Water Brigade – an Occupy Sandy-style response to disaster zones created by the deprivation of water instead of its excess – is accepting supplies from around the country, opening local service hubs, and coordinating calls to action.

And the Detroit People's Water Board, a broad coalition co-founded by Charity Hicks, continues its work of raising consciousness about water justice and conservation, setting out a vision for water as a public trust, not a commodity – a source of life, not of private enrichment.

"This is a test being looked at by cities across the US - even the world," Charity says. "We will not let water be used as a weapon to remake the city in a corporate image. We will re-establish what it is to live in a democracy, with a water system that is part of the commons, that affirms human dignity and that ensures everyone's access."