Petition for Clemency for Peltier

Current signers include
Russell Means, Noam Chomsky, Peter Matthiessen, James Messerschidt, Matt Rothschild (Progressive magazine), Jeffrey St. Clair/Alexander Cockburn (Counterpunch) and Eric Seitz
President Obama: Free Leonard Peltier
We, the undersigned, call on President Obama to extend immediate and unconditional clemency to Leonard Peltier, an American Indian Movement activist wrongfully imprisoned for more than 33 years. We call further for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission based on the South African model to investigate the respective roles of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the American Indian Movement in the violence that ravaged the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the 1970s, as well as examine the historical context in which the conflict occurred.1 Dozens of Native activists and Lakota traditionalists were murdered on the reservation between 1973 and 1976, most of them at the hands of death squads created by a corrupt tribal dictatorship with the complicity of the BIA and the FBI.2 The United States Senate's recent apology to Native Americans rings particularly hollow in light of Peltier's Aug. 20 federal parole denial, which the respected indigenous activist and artist views as tantamount to a death sentence. In light of the fact that Leonard Peltier has been the subject of government misconduct from the time of his extradition from Canada in1976 to the present-day suppression of FBI documents, has already served more time than the presumptive maximum federal sentence, and has an impeccable prison disciplinary record, his continued imprisonment is unjustifiable on any grounds3. By freeing Peltier and ordering the release of all documents related to the case, President Obama would send a strong message to Indian Country and the world that his administration is serious about fulfilling his campaign commitments to human rights and transparency.
Name_____________________________________

Organizational Affiliations/Occupation (for identification purposes)
________________________________________________________________________
Please sign and return to: 701-235-5045 (fax) or mail to: LPDOC
PO Box 7488
Fargo, ND 58106

Watch Power Paths tonight on PBS

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/power-paths/index.html

We need to create a way of life where a community is not forced to cannibalize their mother in order to live.”
—Winona LaDuke, Anishinaabe activist

POWER PATHS offers a unique glimpse into the global energy crisis from the perspective of a culture pledged to protect the planet, historically exploited by corporate interests and neglected by public policy makers.

The film follows an intertribal coalition as they fight to transform their local economies by replacing coal mines and smog-belching power plants with renewable energy technologies. This transition would honor their heritage and support future generations by protecting their sacred land, providing electricity to their homes and creating jobs for their communities.

Their story is a parable for our time, when the planet as a whole hungers for alternatives to fossil fuels. For environmental trailblazers, it’s proof that going green is not only possible—it’s the only choice we have.
The POWER PATHS story begins in the 1960s, when two massive coal mines open on Navajo and Hopi reservations in Arizona. Between them, they produce enough coal to satisfy the unquenchable energy thirsts of Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. They also comprise the single largest strip-mining complex in the world. For more than 30 years, the mines—and the Mohave Generating Station they supply—scar sacred native land, drain the natural aquifers and pollute the Southwestern skies.
Meanwhile, beneath the high-tension power lines that carry electricity to the neon-saturated Vegas Strip, Native American reservation dwellers have no electricity or running water.
Sickened by the economic disparity and the mounting toll on their land and health, some Navajo and Hopi tribe members begin pressuring their tribal governments not to renew the mining leases, but to no avail. As a result, a handful of grassroots organizers from both tribes join forces with The Sierra Club, the Grand Canyon Trust and the National Parks and Conservation Association to fight back. Calling themselves the Just Transition Coalition, they take on wealthy and entrenched adversaries from Peabody to Southern California Edison.
They succeed in closing the power plant (and subsequently the mines) in 2005. But the ecological and moral victory comes at a cost: About half of the adults on the reservations had worked for the mines, and are now unemployed.
Undeterred, the Just Transition Coalition shifts gears and heads for California, where they win a legal battle to use the shuttered Mohave plant’s cap-and-trade pollution credits to finance investment in solar panels and wind turbines for their reservations.
In one scene, a Navajo mother screws a light bulb into a kitchen socket for the first time and sees it light up, enabling her children to stop depending on sunlight or dangerous kerosene lanterns in order to do their homework. She weeps in relief and gratitude.
Today, more tribes are seeking investments and partnerships to create green-energy economies on the reservation, with hopes that one day, renewable energy will replace casinos as a primary means for economic development and tribal self-sufficiency.
As the nation at large struggles to disengage itself from the chains of a fossil-fuel-based economy, POWER PATHS signals cause for hope that an alternative is not somewhere in the future, but possible right now. And Native Americans are leading the way.

Update

In June 2009, the 21st Navajo Nation Council voted 62 to 1 to establish a Navajo Green Economy Commission, according to the Sierra Club. The legislation, which is designed to take advantage of federal stimulus funds for green jobs, is intended to stimulate the economy by developing a sustainable energy infrastructure on the Navajo reservation.
P.O. Box 613 Flagstaff, AZ 86002 US

Censored News Third Birthday

Censored News celebrates three years of publishing. Photo collage by Brenda Norrell

Censored News 2007 -- 2009

http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

Censored 2006

http://bsnorrell.tripod.com/

Carlos Marentes:

"Congratulations to Brenda Norrell and Censored News for bringing the news that the system will not publish to protect the interests of the rich and privileged class."

The Sanctuary Movement and Manzo

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

Photo: Dia de los Muertos at San Xavier on Tohono O'odham land on Oct. 31, 2009. Crosses in memorial for those who died crossing the Sonoran Desert. Photo Brenda Norrell

TUCSON -- In the heart of the barrios of Tucson, there lives and breathes the inexplicable truth that it is possible to do great works with one's life, saving the lives of countless peoples who face torture and death.
Before the Sanctuary Movement's Central American underground railroad, there was the former Manzo Area Council. Indigenous Peoples were among those who found shelter in this country because of the heroic acts of the people in these movements. Following the birth of Manzo, the Rev. John Fife and co-founder James Corbett, the late Quaker rancher who died in 2001, announced the existence of the Central American underground railroad. At a recent dinner honoring Manzo, Fife said the credit for the Sanctuary Movement should go to Manzo, comprised of a small group of women from Tucson's west side. Those include Manzo's Margo Cowan and Lupe Castillo. Fife and the Asylum Program of Arizona, honored Cowan, Cathy Montaño Gamez, Margie Ramirez Atkins and Sister Ann Gabriel Marciacq of the St. Joseph Carondelet order for their work, which led to saving the lives and sheltering those who fled torture and death in their own countries.
Listen to this program, recorded by Amanda Shauger at KXCI Tucson and read more at:
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kxci/arts.artsmain?action=viewArticle&id=1572700&pid=218&sid=14

Read Mother Tongue: Demetria Martinez' award-winning book Mother Tongue is based in part upon Martinez's 1988 trial for conspiracy against the United States government in connection with smuggling Salvadoran refugees into the country, a charge that with others carried a 25 -year prison sentence. A religion reporter at the time, covering the faith-based Sanctuary Movement, Martinez was found not guilty on First Amendment Grounds.

Profiteering from misery: Alaskan Natives' migrant prison

Profiteering from misery: Alaskan Natives' private migrant prison for profit is disturbing trend in violation of the traditional teachings of Native Americans

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
Photo: San Xavier land/Photo Brenda Norrell

UPDATED
TUCSON -- Native Americans say the disturbing trend of profiteering from foul and abusive private migrant prisons by American Indian Nations violates traditional teachings to honor the sacredness of life and all humanity.

The San Xavier District of the Tohono O'odham Nation has planned a migrant prison in secret for years. Recently, outcry from neighbors at Sahuarita, Ariz., halted the plan. However, a second site selected in secret is east of Three Points, Ariz. and has not been made public.

Mike Wilson, Tohono O'odham who puts out water for migrants against the wishes of the Tohono O'odham government, is among those opposing the migrant prison.

"The Tohono O'odham Nation is anxious to take blood money from the Department of Homeland Security. Shamefully, we who were once oppressed are now the willing oppressors," Wilson said.

The residents of Sahuarita and city officials of the City of Green Valley, including the mayor, were opposed to the prison. David Garcia and Wilson, both Tohono O'odham, met officials at the Pima County Board of Supervisors meeting on May 12, 2009 and opposed the prison.

Jose Matus, Yaqui and director of the Indigenous Alliance without Borders/Indigena Alianza sin Fronteras, points out that many of those arrested by the US Border Patrol, and dying in the Sonoran Desert, are Indigenous Peoples from southern Mexico and Central America. They are desperate for food and jobs after being forced off their lands by multi-national corporations. An increasing number of the dead are Mayan women, walking with their children.

Meanwhile in Montana, the private security firm American Police Force is under a state Attorney General probe, after masquerading as the police force in Hardin, Montana, a town with a long history of racism and attacks on American Indians. American Police Force is linked to Texas-based CorPlan Corrections, which is pitching the private prison to Tohono O'odham and other Indian Nations.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney was indicted in Texas for prison profiteering. Cheney invested in the Vanguard Group, which profits from private prison contractor GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut, which split into GEO and Wackenhut Transportation.)

The Vanguard Group reported $1.24 trillion in assets, in mutual funds, in 2009, with global offices, including offices in Scottsdale, Arizona and Valley Forge, Penn. Vanguard Group is among the top investors in Corrections Corporations of America, CCA, operating private prisons in Arizona and throughout the United States.

Wackenhut Transportation, owned by G4S, currently has a contract to transport detained and arrested migrants in buses at the Arizona border. The buses constantly flow from the border to Tucson. Aso, at the Arizona border, Elbit Systems, the Israeli contractor of the Palestine Apartheid Border, was subcontracted by the border wall profiteer Boeing for spy apparatus on the Arizona border.

In another twist, there's an Israeli/US border prison connection. US based Emerald Corrections was granted a prison contract in Israel. Israel’s government awarded a 22year contract to a consortium of Africa-Israel Investments, Minrav Holdings Ltd and Emerald Correctional Management to finance, design, build and operate the country’s first private prison at Be’er Sheva. Emerald operates the prison at San Luis, Arizona, on the US/Mexico border and others in Texas.

Private prisons, packed with migrants, were quickly built in Texas and along the Southwest border during the Bush administration. American Indians continue to be imprisoned at a disproportionate rate and receive longer prison terms than non-Indians, according to the ACLU. While the abuses in private prisons continue, Cheney has not been prosecuted.

Already, Alaskan Natives are in the private prison profiteering business, according to New York Times, citing the abuses today from a filed complaint of a migrant detention center in New York. Mildew, frigid temperatures and hunger were repeated complaints.

"In vivid if flawed English, it described cramped, filthy quarters where dire medical needs were ignored and hungry prisoners were put to work for $1 a day," New York Times reported.

A subsidiary of Ahtna Inc., an Alaska Native regional corporation, Ahtna Technical Services Inc., operates the Varick Street Detention Facility with the help of a Texas subcontractor.

Ben Carnes, Choctaw prison rights activist, was surprised by the news of Native-run prisons. "Wow. I always thought that if the First Nations were in the prison industry, they would manage it as a positive advancement in corrections, instead of just another stinking jail."

After viewing a photo of an outdoor migrant detention center on the Tohono O'odham Nation, often described as "The Cage," Carnes said, "The people cannot keep ignoring how the US imposed tribal council system is operating before they end up in those dog cages!"

Read the article below from the New York Times.

Corrupt prison hustlers linked to Tohono O'odham prison:
(Link to prison hustle in Choctaw and Chickasaw lands)
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2009/10/corrupt-prison-hustlers-linked-to.html

New York Times: Immigrant Jail Tests U.S. View of Legal Access
By NINA BERNSTEIN
New York Times
Published: November 1, 2009
A startling petition arrived at the New York City Bar Association in October 2008, signed by 100 men, all locked up without criminal charges in the middle of Manhattan.
Daniel I. Miller, a former detainee at the Varick Street center, complained of abuses there. "These people have no rules," he said.
In vivid if flawed English, it described cramped, filthy quarters where dire medical needs were ignored and hungry prisoners were put to work for $1 a day. Read article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/nyregion/02detain.html?_r=1

Indianz.com
http://www.indianz.com/
A subsidiary of Ahtna Inc., an Alaska Native regional corporation, runs an unusual immigrant detention facility in New York City under a $79 million, three-year contract with the federal government.
Ahtna Technical Services Inc. operates the Varick Street Detention Facility with the help of a Texas subcontractor. The jail houses up to 250 adult male aliens who face deportation for various reasons.
The Obama administration cites the jail as a model for the way legal services are provided to detainees. But the New York City Bar Association says detainees are frequently denied counsel and live under harsh conditions.
Ahtna has about 1,200 shareholders.
Relevant Documents:
Contract with Homeland Security for the operation of the Varick Federal Detention Processing Facility

http://www.ice.gov/doclib/foia/contracts/ahtnatechnicalservicesinchsceop07c00019asofp00012.pdf

ACLU: Racial profiling and prison sentences of American Indians
"Indian political participation is further diminished by the disproportionate number of tribal members disfranchised for commission of criminal offenses. There is a pattern of racial profiling of Indians by law enforcement officers, the targeting of Indians for prosecution of serious crimes, and the imposition of lengthier prison sentences upon Indian defendants. These injustices result in the higher incarceration of Indians and dilute the overall voting strength of Indian communities." (OCt. 14, 2009)
http://www.nativelegalupdate.com/2009/10/articles/aclu-alleges-widespread-voting-rights-problems-in-native-communities

US Detention Facilities:
http://www.globaldetentionproject.org/countries/americas/united-states/list-of-detention-sites.html