WelcomeTo My World

Saturday 30 August 2014

Michelle Alexander Talks With The Cooler Bandits

Excerpt from our interview with The Cooler Bandits consultant Michelle Alexander author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

Thursday 28 August 2014

Hands Up Don't Shoot (Justice for Michael Brown) - Sian Martin & Rhythm ...





Vocals: Sian Martin & Sharpeye...
Speech: Stafford Scott... 
Musicianship: Gareth Tasker...
Drums: Nick Van Gelder...
Musical Architecture, Film Direction, Camera & Edit: Sharpeye..

Michael Brown and the Ongoing Struggle to Decriminalize Black Life





Professor john a. powell says we can’t understand class issues and the experience of poverty without race, and that the underrepresentation of black people in the U.S. remains a significant problem

On ‪#‎Aug28‬ 1955, 59 years ago a life was taken for more than a whistle.‪#‎RememberEmmettTill‬ ‪#‎NeverForget‬ ‪#‎EmmettTill‬ ‪#‎TimeforUnity‬




On ‪#‎Aug28‬ 1955, 59 years ago a life was taken for more than a whistle.‪#‎RememberEmmettTill‬ ‪#‎NeverForget‬ ‪#‎EmmettTill‬ ‪#‎TimeforUnity‬

Source 

Emmett Till Legacy Foundation

Please spread the word: Petitions for Parole Reform




Please spread the word: Petitions for Parole Reform (3) different ones
1. http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/mandatory-short-way-release-1
2. http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/reduce-the-parole-eligibilit
3. http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/mandatory-short-way-release
Please go to all 3 an sign all three and spread the word... For Change!!!
Derrick Brooks 

Tuesday 26 August 2014

Walmart video shows John Crawford III was gunned down by cops while talk...





The attorney for the family of 22 yr-old John Crawford III says the Walmart surveillance video shows the young man talking on a cell phone and leaning on a bb gun like a cane when Beavercreek Cops rushed around a corner inside the store shot him on sight. The police version was not what was depicted on the video and as in the other cases, police blantaly lie to the public about their actions.

Government barbarity.




A letter a day to number 10. No 839.

Wednesday 27 August 2014.

Government barbarity.

Shares are encouraged and welcomed. If this letter speaks for you and you wish to send your own copy please feel free to copy and paste, and alter for your own needs, the text for your own letter.

Website updated, letters and replies plus bonus material featuring Mr Suggs, Eeyore and Ribbit.

Also on the website, download the support compilation three album set from Atona. Not to be missed.

http://www.keithordinaryguy.org.uk/

Dear Mr Cameron,

People are starving in Britain, men, women and many, many children, Mr Cameron. They are starving because you and your facile club of rich boys have decided that they should. The imposition of austerity on the poorest people in society and a now brutally punitive regime, under the guise of welfare reform, is ensuring that poor people suffer and die.

The poorest live the most fragile existence, any cut in income has a devastating and wide reaching effect. It is like a bomb going off, affecting every part of people's lives, food, warmth, clothing, shelter, travel and the ability to function both psychologically and emotionally.

It has just been revealed that were Britain to leave the EU and join the USA, Britain would be the poorest state based on GDP per capita, that is, gross domestic product divided by the number of people in the country.

This is no accident, Mr Cameron, this is government driven and I am far from alone in constantly drawing attention to the plight of ordinary people over a long period of time. That this disaster continues to unfold means only one thing, that it is as intentional and targeted as it is callous and vicious.

The Faculty for Public Health states, 'In the UK, the poorer people are, the worse their diet, and the more diet-related diseases they suffer from'. Every case of malnutrition, scurvy or other hunger related disease falls squarely at your door. Every death is blood on your hands.

What does it take, Mr Cameron? Will it take your head in a gibbet before you'll see? If so it will be far too late by then. The degree of suffering that would lead to such an eventuality would see no mercy given. If you think such an act would be barbarous, consider this, you will have brought it on yourself. The barbarity is all yours and that would be a cleaner death than many of your victims.

http://kittysjones.wordpress.com/2014/08/25/its-absolute-poverty-not-market-competition-that-has-led-to-a-drop-in-food-sales/

http://rt.com/uk/182856-britain-poorer-us-state/

http://www.fph.org.uk/uploads/bs_food_poverty.pdf
 — inPeasedown Saint John, Bath And North East Somerset, United Kingdom.

MUMIA ABU JAMAL "OUTSIDE AGITATORS"





Political Prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal Sets the Record Straight on Media, Bogus Black "Activists" and Ferguson Police Claiming "Outside Agitators Were Causing Trouble In the Streets In Response to the Murder of 18 Year Old Mike Brown Who was Gunned Down by Ferguson, Missouri police....
Audio Courtesy of Prisonradio.com

Check out our podcast at Politicallyincorrect.podomatic.com or follow us on twitter: @Contrabandclass

Deacons for Defense and Justice


Picture from google 
The Deacons for Defense and Justice was an armed self-defense African-American civil rights organization in the U.S. Southern states during the 1960s. Historically, the organization practiced self-defense methods in the face of racist oppression that was carried out under the Jim Crow Laws by local/state government officials and racist vigilantes. Many times the Deacons are not written about or cited[citation needed]when speaking of the Civil Rights Movement because[citation needed] their agenda of self-defense - in this case, using violence, if necessary - did not fit the image of strict non-violence that leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. espoused.
The Deacons are a segment of the larger tradition of Black Power in the United States. This tradition began with the inception of African slavery in the U.S. and with the use of Africans as chattel slaves in the Western Hemisphere. Stokely Carmichael defines Black Power as: “The goal of black self-determination and black self-identity—Black Power—is full participation in the decision-making processes affecting the lives of black people, and recognition of the virtues in themselves as black people.”[1] "Those of us who advocate Black Power are quite clear in our own minds that a 'non-violent' approach to civil rights is an approach black people cannot afford and a luxury white people do not deserve."[1] This refers to the idea that the traditional ideas and values of the Civil Rights Movement placated to the emotions and feelings of White liberal supporters rather than Black Americans who had to consistently live with the racism and other acts of violence that was shown towards them.
The Deacons were a driving force of Black Power that Stokely Carmichael echoed. Carmichael speaks about the Deacons when he writes, “Here is a group which realized that the ‘law’ and law enforcement agencies would not protect people, so they had to do it themselves...The Deacons and all other blacks who resort to self-defense represent a simple answer to a simple question: what man would not defend his family and home from attack?”[1] The Deacons, according to Carmichael and many others, were the protection that the Civil Rights needed on local levels, as well as, the ones who intervened in places that the state and federal government fell short.

History


The Deacons were not the first champions of armed-defense during the Civil Rights Movement. Many activists and other proponents of non-violence protected themselves with guns. Fannie Lou Hamer, the eloquently blunt Mississippi militant who outraged Lyndon B. Johnson at the 1964 Democratic Convention, confessed that she kept several loaded guns under her bed.[2] Others such as Robert F. Williams also practiced self-defense. Williams transformed his local NAACP branch into an armed self-defense unit, for which transgression he was denounced by the NAACP and hounded by the federal government (he found asylum in Cuba).[2]
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was no stranger to the idea of self-defense. According to Annelieke Dirks, “Even Martin Luther King Jr.—the icon of nonviolence—employed armed bodyguards and had guns in his house during the early stages of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1956. Glenn Smiley, an organizer of the strictly nonviolent and pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), observed during a house visit that the police did not allow King a weapon permit, but that ‘the place is an arsenal."[3] Efforts from those such as Smiley convinced Dr. King that any sort of weapons or “self-defense” could not be associated with someone holding King's position. Dr. King agreed.
In many areas of the “Deep South” the federal and state governments had no control of local authorities and groups that did not want to follow the laws enacted. One such group, the Ku Klux Klan, is the most widely known organization that openly practiced acts of violence and segregation based on race. As part of their strategy to intimidate this community [African Americans], the Ku Klux Klan initiated a “campaign of terror” that included harassment, the burning of crosses on the lawns of African-American voters, the destruction by fire of five churches, a Masonic hall, a Baptist center, and murder.[4] These incidents were not isolated since a significant amount of victimization of African Americans occurred in Jonesboro, Louisiana in 1964.
The African-American community felt that a response of action was crucial in curbing this terrorism given the lack of support and protection by State and Federal authorities. A group of African-American men inJonesboro in Jackson Parish in north Louisiana, led by Earnest "Chilly Willy" Thomas and Frederick Douglas Kirkpatrick, founded the group in November 1964 to protect civil rights workers, their communities and their families against the Klan. Most of the Deacons were war veterans with combat experience from the Korean War and World War II. The Jonesboro chapter later organized a Deacons chapter in Bogalusa, Louisiana, led by Charles Sims, A. Z. Young and Robert Hicks. The Jonesboro chapter initiated a regional organizing campaign and eventually formed 21 chapters in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. The militant Deacons' confrontation with the Klan in Bogalusa was instrumental in forcing the federal government to invervene on behalf of the black community and enforce the 1964 Civil Rights Act and neutralize the Klan.
Earnest “Chilly Willy” Thomas was born in Jonesboro, Louisiana, on November 20, 1935, in a time of extreme segregation. He believed that political reforms could be secured by force rather than moral appeal. TheCORE had a freedom house in Jonesboro that became the target of the Klan. The practice referred to as “nigger knocking” was a time-honored tradition among whites in the rural South.[5] Because of repeated attacks on the Freedom House, the Black community responded. Earnest Thomas was one of the first volunteers to guard the house. According to Lance Hill, “Thomas was eager to work with CORE, but he had reservations about the nonviolent terms imposed by the young activists.”[5] Thomas, who had military training, quickly emerged as the leader of this budding defense organization that would guard the Jonesboro community in the day with their guns concealed and carried their guns openly during the cover of night to discourage any Klan activity.
There are many accounts of how the group's name came about, but according to Lance Hill the most plausible explanation is: “the name was a portmanteau that evolved over a period of time, combining the CORE staff’s first appellation of ‘deacons’ with the tentative name chosen in November 1964: ‘Justice and Defense Club’. By January 1965 the group had arrived at is permanent name, ‘Deacons for Defense and Justice.’”[5]The organization wanted to maintain a level of respectability and identify with traditionally accepted symbols of peace and moral values. As one ex-Deacon wrote in a lyric of a song, “the term ‘deacons’ was selected to beguile local whites by portraying the organization as an innocent church group....”[5]
The Deacons are the subject of a 2003 television movieDeacons for Defense. Produced by Showtime starring academy-award winner Forest WhitakerOssie Davis, and Jonathan Silverman, the film is based on the struggle of the actual Deacons for Defense against the Jim Crow South in a powerful area of Louisiana controlled by the Ku Klux Klan. Using the story on a white-owned factory that controls the economy of the local society and the effects of racism and intimidation on the lives of the African-American community, the film follows the psychological transition of a family and community members from belief in a strict non-violent stance to belief in self-defense.[6]

Role


The Deacons were instrumental in many campaigns led by the Civil Rights Movement. A good example is the June 1966 March Against Fear, which went from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi. The March Against Fear signified a shift in character and power in the southern civil rights movement and was an event in which the Deacons participated.
Scholar Akinyele O. Umoja speaks about the group’s effort more specifically. According to Umoja it was the urging of Stokely Carmichael that the Deacons were to be used as security for the march. Many times protection from the federal or state government was either inadequate or not given, even while knowing that groups like the Klan would commit violent acts against civil rights workers. An example of this was theFreedom Ride where many non-violent activists became the targets of assault for angry White mobs. After some debate and discussion many of the civil rights leaders compromised their strict non-violent beliefs and allowed the Deacons to be used. One such person was Dr. King. Umoja states, “Finally, though expressing reservations, King conceded to Carmichael’s proposals to maintain unity in the march and the movement. The involvement and association of the Deacons with the march signified a shift in the civil rights movement, which had been popularly projected as a ‘nonviolent movement.”‘[7]
Umoja suggests that ideological shifts in the movement were becoming apparent even before the March Against Fear. By 1965, both SNCC and CORE supported armed self-defense. National CORE leadership, including James Farmer, publicly acknowledged a relationship between CORE and the Deacons for Defense in Louisiana.[7] This alliance between the two organizations highlighted the support and concept of armed self-defense many southern-born Black people embraced. A significant portion of SNCC’s southern-born leadership and staff also supported armed self-defense.[7]
The Deacons had a relationship with other civil rights groups that advocated and practiced non-violence: the willingness of the Deacons to provide low-key armed guards facilitated the ability of groups such as theNAACP and CORE to stay, at least formally, within their own parameters of non-violence.[2] Although many local chapters felt it was necessary to maintain a level of security by either practicing self-defense as some CORE, SNCC, and NAACP local chapters did, the national level of all these organizations still maintained the idea of non-violence to achieve civil rights. Nonetheless, in some cases, their willingness to respond to violence with violence led to tension between the Deacons and the nonviolent civil rights workers whom they sought to protect. Organizations including SNCC, CORE, and SCLC all had major roles in exposing the brutal tactics being used against Black people in America, particularly Southern Blacks. This was seen as crucial to getting legislation passed to protect African Americans from this oppression and help develop their status of equality in America. However, according to Lance Hill, “the hard truth is that these organizations produced few victories in their local projects in the Deep South—if success is measured by the ability to force changes in local government policy and create self-governing and sustainable local organizations that could survive when the national organizations departed.... The Deacons’ campaigns frequently resulted in substantial and unprecedented victories at the local level, producing real power and self-sustaining organizations.”[8] According to Hill, this is the true resistance that enforced civil rights in areas of the Deep South. Often it was local (armed) communities that laid the foundation for equal opportunities to be attained by African Americans. National organizations played their role, exposing the problems, but it was local organizations and individuals who implemented these rights and were not fearful of reactionary Whites who wanted to keep segregation alive. Without these local organizations pushing for their rights and, many times, using self-defense tactics, not much would have changed, according to Hill.
An example of the need for self-defense to enable substantial change in the Deep South took place in early 1965. Black students picketing the local high school were confronted by hostile police and fire trucks with hoses. A car of four Deacons emerged and, in view of the police, calmly loaded their shotguns. The police ordered the fire truck to withdraw. This was the first time in the 20th century, as Lance Hill observes, “an armed black organization had successfully used weapons to defend a lawful protest against an attack by law enforcement.”[2] Hill gives as another example: “In Jonesboro, the Deacons made history when they compelled Louisiana governor John McKeithen to intervene in the city’s civil rights crisis and require a compromise with city leaders — the first capitulation to the civil rights movement by a Deep South governor.”[9]
The history of the Civil Rights Movement focuses little on organizations such as the Deacons for a number of reasons. First, the dominant ideology of the Movement was one of practicing non-violence and this overarching view has been the accepted way to characterize the Civil Rights Movement. Second, threats to the lives of Deacons' members required that secrecy be maintained to avoid terrorist attacks on their supporters, and they recruited mature and male members, in contrast to other more informal self-defense efforts in which women and teenagers also played a role.[3] Finally, with the shift to Northern Black plight and the idea of Black Power emerging in major cities across America, the Deacons became yesterday's news and organizations such as The Black Panther Party gained notoriety and became the publicized militant Black organization.
The tactics of the Deacons attracted the attention and concern of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Investigating the group over the years, the Bureau produced more than 1,500 pages of comprehensive and relatively accurate records on the Deacons, activities, largely through numerous informants close to or even inside the organization.[8] Members of the Deacons were repeatedly questioned and intimidated by F.B.I. agents. One member, Harvie Johnson (the last surviving original member of the Deacons for Defense and Justice), was “interviewed” by two agents who asked only how the Deacons obtained their weapons, with no questions about Klan activity or police brutality ever asked.[8] In February 1965, after a New York Times article about the Deacons, J. Edgar Hoover became interested in the group. Lance Hill offers Hoover’s reaction, which was sent to the field offices of the Bureau in Louisiana: “Because of the potential for violence indicated, you are instructed to immediately initiate an investigation of the DDJ [Deacons for Defense and Justice].”[8]As was eventually exposed in the late 1970s, under its COINTELPRO program, the FBI was involved in many illegal activities to spy on and undermine organizations it deemed “a threat to the American way”. However, with the advent of other militant Black Power organizations, and the Black Power Movement becoming the more visible movement towards the latter 1960s, the involvement of the Deacons in the civil rights movement declined (as did FBI interference with them), with the presence of the Deacons all but vanishing by 1968.[1][not in citation given]
Roy Innis has said that the Deacons "forced the Klan to re-evaluate their actions and often change their undergarments", according to Ken Blackwell.[10]

The US throws 100,000 children into adult jails and prisons every year -...





Every year in the United States, an estimated 250,000 children under the age of 18 are tried, sentenced or imprisoned as adults. And of these, around 100,000 actually end up in adult jails and prisons, with many spending time in solitary confinement. This is despite the fact that the US Supreme Court has agreed that children are less deserving of blame than adults and usually deserve a chance at redemption. While the United Nations says that children who commit crimes should be placed in a closed facility as a measure of last resort. We take a closer look.

Center for Investigative Reporting's article on solitary confinement: http://cironline.org/reports/teens-ri...

Private Prisons: How US corporations make money from locking you up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQxtR...

Monday 25 August 2014

We are treated as chattel!



A letter a day to number 10. No 837.

Monday 25 August 2014. We are treated as chattel!

Shares are encouraged and welcomed. If this letter speaks for you and you wish to send your own copy please feel free to copy and paste, and alter for your own needs, the text for your own letter.

Website updated, letters and replies plus bonus material featuring Mr Suggs, Eeyore and Ribbit.

Also on the website, download the support compilation three album set from Atona. Not to be missed.

http://www.keithordinaryguy.org.uk/

Dear Mr Cameron,

I think the thing I most despise about your government is your attitude towards us. It's an age old problem, the so called elites are patronising, condescending, arrogant and proprietorial, treating us as dehumanised chattel.

Frank Field, talking about Universal Credit said, "Universal Credit will get the chop. It is destroying people’s lives."

A source close to Duncan Smith responded: "We don't want to create misery. If arrears increased it is because claimants chose not to pay their rent. Part of Universal Credit is ensuring people establish personal responsibility."

Poor people have been managing minimal resources for centuries, that's what we have to put up with from those who consider they have an assumed right to own everything, including ordinary people and keep us in want. The poor have ever been considered to be the chattel of the rich and powerful.

If Iain Duncan Smith thinks he and his department have something to teach us about personal responsibility, he has another think coming, but, of course, he thinks no such thing, he just wants us to live on less than the minimum any human being can subsist on in Britain today.

He wants to reduce us to beggarly serfs, forcing us to take whatever crumbs are on offer, in or out of work, sick, well, disabled, aged.

He has made it perfectly clear that he cares absolutely nothing for our quality of life, his reforms are entirely punitive and designed to produce slavish obedience to the state and work with complete disregard for our humanity. Chattel are not considered to have any humanity, chattel do as they are told.

Prince Phillip has said, In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, to contribute something to solving overpopulation'. It would never occur to him to lead by example, just kill off the masses. That says it all really...

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/National/article1450629.ece?shareToken=0c950d2ca66c29a6078e7c56dda34a57
— in Peasedown Saint John, Bath And North East Somerset, United Kingdom.

G+ Stalkers Don't Want a Boycott


The stalkers at Google+ are acting like former NAACP president Benjamin Jealous. He viciously attacked Mary Neal to prevent her from giving Troy Davis's sister a flyer recommending that she call a BOYCOTT4JUSTICE to prevent Troy Davis's execution. The man pushed me so hard I nearly fell to the pavement at his feet, because he was determined to protect corporate interests. I discussed Officer Wilson's grand jury composition with a black woman who argues that Ferguson's grand jury for Officer Wilson is not racist, being nine whites in a mostly black town and only three blacks (she's probably one of those paid commentators). Google+ prevents me from posting this comment:

We do know this grand jury is the recipe for NO INDICTMENT, however it came about. African Americans and everyone who cares about Michael Brown's death by police need to BOYCOTT4JUSTICE. Choose a Missouri-based product like Busch beer, and boycott them until big business tells these people [over the justice system] that it wants justice. They only care about what big business wants, so use that.

African Americans have one strength. We shop. You don't have to go picket in Ferguson. Boycott Anheuser-Busch beer or another Missouri-based company. Politicians care about what big business wants. Get Busch to tell the officials to prosecute Wilson, and he won't go before a grand jury with 9 whites and 3 blacks, like they have selected. Police will stop shooting rubber bullets and tear gas at the protesters. 


Everybody who cares about Michael Brown's murder should immediately stop buying Busch beer or whatever other product you choose to target. It doesn't even have to be from a Missouri-based company. Just let the world know your boycott is for Justice in Ferguson. MONEY is the only key to the hearts of elitists and racists. We must learn to BOYCOTT4JUSTICE.

Marching and singing does not work in the 21st century, and it did not work in the 1960's, either. If MLK and protesters had not boycotted Montgomery Buses, we'd still be marching and singing on the backs of the buses today. Labor unions made human chains across companies' entrances to prevent commerce, and they won! BOYCOTT4JUSTICE and win! Neither Rev. Sharpton and Jackson nor any other government-assigned "leader" will remind you that protests without boycotts won't work, because they are paid not to do so. Now, you have been reminded: Money Talks. God bless you.

Paragraph 1 repeated: The stalkers at Google+ are acting like former NAACP president Benjamin Jealous. He viciously attacked Mary Neal to prevent her from giving Troy Davis's sister a flyer recommending that she call a BOYCOTT4JUSTICE to prevent Troy Davis's execution. The man pushed me so hard I nearly fell to the pavement at his feet, because he was determined to protect corporate interests. I discussed Officer Wilson's grand jury composition with a black woman who argues that Ferguson's grand jury for Officer Wilson is not racist, being nine whites in a mostly black town and only three blacks (she's probably one of those paid commentators). Google+ prevents me from posting this comment:

Michael Brown 05/20/96-08/09/14 R.I.P


New Evidence of State Misconduct in False Conviction of Lorenzo Johnson


Identifiable Fingerprints Found at the Scene –
And Hidden for 19 Years.

Main Witness, Carla Brown, Was A Police Suspect –But This was Hidden from the Defense.
The Prosecution Told The Jury That Brown Had
“No Motive To Lie.”
Second Supplemental Petition was filed in Dauphin County, Pa Court of Common Pleas to reverse and vacate Lorenzo Johnson’s conviction for the 1995 murder of Tarajay Williams in Harrisburg, Pa. This is the third petition filed in a year with new evidence of Johnson’s innocence and police and prosecutorial misconduct in convicting him. A growing international campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson submitted petitions and letters and protested at the office of the Attorney General demanding his immediate release from prison.
 
On June 13, Eight Pages of police records were finally released by the Harrisburg Police Department to Johnson’s attorney. As Lorenzo Johnson said in an August 22, 2014 interview with Fox 43 investigative reporter Michael Hyland, “It was mind blowing. I knew this was something important that would help show my innocence because they withheld this for 19½ years.”
 
These Eight Pages contain police summary statements that identifiable fingerprintswere found at the scene and listed the names of four suspects. This is evidence not turned over before the trial of Lorenzo Johnson and his co-defendant Corey Walker, evidence of innocence.
 
No fingerprints were presented at trial. No physical evidence of any sort was presented to support the prosecution. In fact defense counsel were told that no fingerprints were found. This is more proof of Johnson’s innocence and the lack of integrity of the prosecution.
 
The Eight Pages show that the main prosecution witness, Carla Brown, was identified by police as a suspect. This fact was never disclosed to the defense. Three other people were also listed as suspects, confirming the eyewitness accounts of others, whose affidavits are part of the newly discovered evidence submitted to court this past year. There is no record of any police investigation of these men. And there is no information why the police went from identifying Carla Brown as a suspect in the murder of Tarajay Williams to becoming the main trial witness against Lorenzo Johnson and his co-defendant Corey Walker. In his trial summation, assistant Attorney General Christopher Abruzzo, told the jury that there was no reason not to believe Carla Brown, who had admitted on the stand she was very high on crack the night of the murder. AG Abruzzo told the jury several times that Carla Brown had “no motive to lie,” while keeping silent that she was first a suspect in the murder.
 
This Second Supplemental Petition also contained two new witness affidavits that Lorenzo Johnson was not in Harrisburg at the time Tarajay Williams was murdered. One of those affidavits came from David Hairston who refused to appear as an alibi witness for Johnson because of police lies to him.
 
In the past year, beginning with the PCRA Petition filed on August 8, 2013, Lorenzo Johnson has submitted new evidence from fourteen civilian witnesses who provide factual evidence of his innocence. An affidavit from an investigating detective is evidence that the main witness Carla Brown was “worked over” by detectives for weeks until she “told the truth.” Reports of those interviews have still not been released to the defense. Brown’s trial testimony was false, and that falsity was known to the prosecution.
 
Yet more affidavits, submitted in the First Supplemental Petition, establish the corruption of the investigation with the disclosure that the lead detective, Kevin Duffin, was the god-brother of the motive witness, Victoria Doubs. This fact was never disclosed to the defense. Additionally, at trial Doubs lied when asked if she had been given a deal in a robbery case—where she faced a minimum five years imprisonment— for her testimony against Johnson and co-defendant. The Attorney General did not correct her false statement of “no deal”.
 
Last December 2013, Pa Attorney General Kathleen Kane said she was “interested in justice” and would examine the new evidence of Lorenzo Johnson’s innocence and false conviction. There are now sixteen new witness statements and proof of corruption in the investigation. Yet the Attorney General’s office recently asked for and has been granted yet another 60-day continuation of its investigation.
 
As Lorenzo Johnson said in the Fox 43 interview, “I have to ask myself is this investigation being done in good faith or being done in bad faith? It they continue pursuing the case, it’s a long, long malicious prosecution. From day one, December 15, 1995, I’ve been saying I’m innocent. If everything is being done in good faith they should grant me a new trial right now, and let’s go back and right this wrong.”
 
In this case the wrong has been done to three families who are torn apart by these false convictions: The family of Tarajay Williams who was murdered and the real killer was never persued and prosecuted; and the Lorenzo Johnson and Corey Walker families. Lorenzo Johnson and Corey Walker can't be part of their families as sons, brothers and fathers and husbands because they are in prison for life and are innocent.
 
Lorenzo Johnson will not stop fighting for vindication and his freedom. His fight is for Every Innocent Prisoner. Read Lorenzo’s commentary, “After two years: the war for freedom."
 

-- 
SIGN THE JERICHO COINTELPRO PETITION!

Free All Political Prisoners!
 www.jerichony.org

Palestinian child prisoners raided, searched and denied needed study tools

Heavily armed “special units” of Israeli occupation prison guards raided the child prisoners’ (referred to as “Cubs” by Palestinian prisoners’ organizations) wing in Hasharon prison, searching and ransacking 5 rooms (1, 3, 5, 16, and 11) for several hours on Sunday, August 24. This unit is for Palestinian teens held in occupation prisons.
Child prisoners were handcuffed and strip-searched by these heavily armed forces; the youth refused to strip naked and the prisoners’ representative was brought in, and the children were searched wearing their underwear.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society noted that there are 37 youth, mostly from Jerusalem, held in Hasharon prison in difficult conditions. They are routinely denied visits with their relatives and family on the grounds of “security.” Fawaz Shallouda, a lawyer with PPS, said that the child prisoners face poor food quality and quantity, which was made worse with recent cuts in the amount of food. He noted that many kinds of fruits and vegetables had not been seen by the children since their arrest.
He noted that child prisoners are facing delays in receiving medical care. Ahmad Mashaal, 15, from Qalqilya, is suffering from anemia and needs periodic blood tests, however, these tests are not administered by the prison clinic.
The education of child prisoners is being severely disrupted; they are allowed only to study Arabic language and mathematics, however, they are prohibited from having calculators or graphing calculators and are allowed only pencils and rulers.
The child prisoners currently held in Hasharon are:
  1. Mahmoud Abu Khudeir
  2. Mahmoud Abu Teir
  3. Malik Abu Teir
  4. Mohammed Abu Teir
  5. Majid Abu Teir
  6. Khaled Abu Khdeir
  7. Nassim Abu Maria
  8. Khalil Abu Sanad
  9. Yahya Abu Riyala
  10. Mohammed Abu Ni’aa
  11. Fayez Beitouni
  12. Hussein Jawadreh
  13. Noureddine Zaghal
  14. Samer Hamdan
  15. Mamoun Tawil
  16. Saad Mansour
  17. Ahmed Meshaal
  18. Fathi Majadeh
  19. Wael Sabaneh
  20. Ubeida Asaid
  21. Mohammad Abbassi
  22. Ayman Abbasi
  23. Majdi Abbasi
  24. Shadi Abdullah
  25. Anwar Obeid
  26. Yazan Atallah
  27. Mohammed Alkom
  28. Maher Erekat
  29. Mohammed Farawi
  30. Mohammed Faraoun
  31. Jihad Sufi
  32. Yazan Kiswani
  33. Firas Kiswani
  34. Samir Shbeita
  35. Mohammed Abu Teir
  36. Wissam Aruri
  37. Mohammed al-Haddrah
--
Freedom Archives 

Questions and comments may be sent to claude@freedomarchives.org


SIGN THE JERICHO COINTELPRO PETITION!

Free All Political Prisoners!
 www.jerichony.org

Are You For Justice? Justice Alliance





Justice Alliance UK

Join Stephen Fry and Jo Brand in the fight to save Legal Aid. Sign the petition to fight for your right to justice: http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions...

Find out more: http://www.justiceallianceuk.wordpres...