Nora Caplan-Bricker | By Picking Anti-Abortion Tim Kaine, Hillary Is Testing Feminists' Loyalty
Nora Caplan-Bricker, Slate
Caplan-Bricker writes: "After months of speculation that Hillary Clinton might select Sen. Elizabeth Warren as her running mate, creating the first-ever two-woman ticket, or perhaps Labor Secretary Tom Perez, a civil rights lawyer who would've been the first Latino VP, her choice of Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine will bitterly disappoint some of her most progressive supporters."
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Nora Caplan-Bricker, Slate
Caplan-Bricker writes: "After months of speculation that Hillary Clinton might select Sen. Elizabeth Warren as her running mate, creating the first-ever two-woman ticket, or perhaps Labor Secretary Tom Perez, a civil rights lawyer who would've been the first Latino VP, her choice of Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine will bitterly disappoint some of her most progressive supporters."
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New Leak: Top DNC Official Wanted to Use Bernie Sanders's Religious Beliefs Against Him
Sam Biddle, The Intercept
Biddle writes: "Among the nearly 20,000 internal emails from the Democratic National Committee, released Friday by WikiLeaks and presumably provided by the hacker 'Guccifer 2.0,' is a May 2016 message from DNC CFO Brad Marshall. In it, he suggested that the party should 'get someone to ask' Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders about his religious beliefs."
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Sam Biddle, The Intercept
Biddle writes: "Among the nearly 20,000 internal emails from the Democratic National Committee, released Friday by WikiLeaks and presumably provided by the hacker 'Guccifer 2.0,' is a May 2016 message from DNC CFO Brad Marshall. In it, he suggested that the party should 'get someone to ask' Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders about his religious beliefs."
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Sandra Bland's Former Jailer Admits Falsifying Records
teleSUR
Excerpt: "A U.S. police officer admitted on Friday to falsifying Sandra Bland's prison records, after she was arrested and found dead inside a cell in Texas last year, according Bland's family lawyer."
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teleSUR
Excerpt: "A U.S. police officer admitted on Friday to falsifying Sandra Bland's prison records, after she was arrested and found dead inside a cell in Texas last year, according Bland's family lawyer."
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Margaret Hilaire, center, bows her head in prayer during a demonstration in Katy, Texas,
calling for the firing and indictment of Texas State Trooper Brian Encinia, who arrested
Sandra Bland. (photo: Brett Coomer/AP)
U.S. police officer admitted on Friday to falsifying Sandra Bland’s prison records, after she was arrested and found dead inside a cell in Texas last year, according Bland's family lawyer.
A year after Sandra Bland was arrested after a routine traffic stop in Texas, new details appear about the role of the police in her death.
U.S. police officer admitted on Friday to falsifying Sandra Bland’s prison records, after she was arrested and found dead inside a cell in Texas last year, according Bland's family lawyer.
Cannon Lambert, a lawyer for Bland’s mother, said a Waller County Jail policeman in charge of checking up on Bland had lied on prison records.
The officer said under oath and written on the report that he had seen Bland an hour before she died, which in fact was not true.
Bland, a 28-year-old Black woman, was pulled over in Texas on July 10, 2015 for failing to signal a lane change. Officer Brian Encinia alleged Bland assaulted him and that why was he arrested her.
The Black activist, who fought against police brutality, was given a US$500 bail, and on July 13, was found hanging in her cell. Police called her death a suicide, but friends and family protested saying she was killed.
Due to public outcry and the circumstances of her death, the district attorney in Texas announced that Bland’s death would be investigated as a murder.
Officer Encinia was placed on administrative duty and later charged with perjury after he lied about the reason he pulled Bland out of her car for an action that only required a written warrant.
A grand jury in Texas announced in December that no officer will be indicted over the death of Sandra Bland.
The circumstances around her death became part of the Say Her Name campaign which protests the deaths of Black women at the hands of law enforcement in the U.S.
A protest against the Keystone XL pipeline in Washington, D.C. (photo: Kristina Banks)
uch has been said about the pros and cons of online activism, but when it comes to keeping fossil fuels in the ground, having protesters on location during leasing auctions has been key in recent years. This tactic could soon be rendered obsolete if the fossil fuel industry, along with many in Congress and the federal government, get their way and make oil and gas leasing auctions exclusively online affairs.
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/38158-fossil-fuel-industry-has-a-new-way-to-disrupt-environmental-protesters
The Real Reason the RNC Was So Angry
Arun Gupta, YES! Magazine
Gupta writes: "Despite the talk of 'Make America Safe Again' at the Republican National Convention, the real message in Cleveland was that Obama is to blame for growing racial divisions that are weakening America."
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Arun Gupta, YES! Magazine
Gupta writes: "Despite the talk of 'Make America Safe Again' at the Republican National Convention, the real message in Cleveland was that Obama is to blame for growing racial divisions that are weakening America."
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Abortion Is Not a Privilege
Olivia Cappello & Kate Castle, Jacobin
Excerpt: "On June 27, the Supreme Court invalidated the onerous anti-abortion laws known as Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers (TRAP). The anti-abortion movement claims these laws - which have proliferated since 2010 - protect women's health."
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Olivia Cappello & Kate Castle, Jacobin
Excerpt: "On June 27, the Supreme Court invalidated the onerous anti-abortion laws known as Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers (TRAP). The anti-abortion movement claims these laws - which have proliferated since 2010 - protect women's health."
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Syrian Kids Are Posting Photos of Pokemon Go to Get People to Pay Attention to Their Plight
Esther Yu-Hsi Lee, ThinkProgress
Lee writes: "People living in the western hemisphere have been unmoved by five years of raging civil war in Syria that has killed 400,000 people, injured more than one million, and displaced 11.3 million people."
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Esther Yu-Hsi Lee, ThinkProgress
Lee writes: "People living in the western hemisphere have been unmoved by five years of raging civil war in Syria that has killed 400,000 people, injured more than one million, and displaced 11.3 million people."
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Fossil Fuel Industry Has a New Way to Disrupt Environmental Protesters
Ari Phillips, Wired
Phillips writes: "Much has been said about the pros and cons of online activism, but when it comes to keeping fossil fuels in the ground, having protesters on location during leasing auctions has been key in recent years."
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Ari Phillips, Wired
Phillips writes: "Much has been said about the pros and cons of online activism, but when it comes to keeping fossil fuels in the ground, having protesters on location during leasing auctions has been key in recent years."
READ MORE
A protest against the Keystone XL pipeline in Washington, D.C. (photo: Kristina Banks)
uch has been said about the pros and cons of online activism, but when it comes to keeping fossil fuels in the ground, having protesters on location during leasing auctions has been key in recent years. This tactic could soon be rendered obsolete if the fossil fuel industry, along with many in Congress and the federal government, get their way and make oil and gas leasing auctions exclusively online affairs.
Earlier this month, the House Committee on Natural Resources passed a bill that would require lease sales for offshore oil and gas drilling to be held online. At the same time, the Obama administration is helping to shift onshore public lands auctions online after years of unwelcome confrontation with environmental activists—the most familiar of these being a 2008 act of civil disobedience by Tim DeChristopher during an oil and gas drilling rights auction in Utah.
DeChristopher entered the auction and started winning bids to drilling rights on more than 150,000 acres of publicly owned Utah wilderness. After winning more than a dozen leases worth more than $2 million—leases he never planned to pay for—DeChristopher was eventually sentenced to two years in federal prison for criminal fraud. The media attention his actions brought to the issue helped make oil and gas leasing one of the main confrontation points between environmentalists and the Obama administration throughout Obama’s time in office.
Tim Ream, Climate and Energy Campaign Director with WildEarth Guardians, told me that Obama’s “public lands and energy policies completely undermine his climate policy.”
“The administration doesn’t like us shining a light on Obama’s biggest climate failure,” he said. “That’s what we do at auctions.”
Ream said that since last November, “Keep It In The Ground” protesters—a campaign to protect public lands from drilling—have been at every public lands and waters fossil fuel auction trying to raise awareness for the cause and pressure the administration.
“We have to keep 80 percent of fossil fuels in the ground,” he said. “That starts with US public lands and it starts with ending all new leasing.”
Studies show that phasing out fossil fuel leases on public lands is crucial to keeping climate change within the 2° C temperature increase that most scientists believe is necessary to avoid cataclysmic impacts. To complement the efforts of the on-the-ground protesters, environmental groups recently filed a legal petition with the Department of Interior asking for a moratorium on federal fossil fuels leases.
Ream said officials have tried a number of tactics to shake the protesters at auctions, including postponing them, moving locations at the last minute, and shifting locations to more remote areas. He said there have been no arrests though, “for fear of the publicity.”
Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA), one of the authors of the bill to mandate online auctions for offshore oil and gas leases, said the primary reason for his bill is to “modernize” the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s offshore leasing process. “Internet-based oil and gas leasing will open investment opportunities and competition for additional businesses, improve the transparency and efficiency of the process,” he said during a legislative hearing.
Another way of putting this, according to Friends of the Earth, is that “moving the auctions online serves one purpose: to make it easier for the fossil fuel industry to take control of our public lands, shielded from public scrutiny and input.”
According to Offshore Magazine, of the 1.7 billion offshore acres, only 1.3 percent, or 22 million acres, are currently under lease and some 87 percent of US offshore area is barred from exploration, including the entire Atlantic.
Environmentalists have fought hard to keep it this way. As recently as March, the Obama administration changed course and decided not to open Atlantic waters to more oil and gas drilling after activists and coastal residents fought the proposal. New oil and gas drilling in along the US East Coast, which many fear would also have negative local impacts on marine life, fishing, and tourism, has not happened in around 30 years.
“We heard from many corners that now is not the time to offer oil and gas leasing off the Atlantic coast,” Sally Jewell, the Interior Secretary, said at the time. “When you factor in conflicts with national defense, economic activities such as fishing and tourism, and opposition from many local communities, it simply doesn’t make sense to move forward with lease sales in the coming five years.”
Kaitlin Butler, a program director with the Science and Environmental Health Network, told me that “across the country, communities are waking up to the harsh reality that government isn’t failing to act on the climate crisis, but in many ways actively participating in exacerbating it.”
Butler said the “auctions provide a space for the public to hold the government responsible,” and that the “ramp up in lobbying for online auctions is happening because the climate justice movement is growing.”
“Moving auctions online makes it easier for corporations to ignore frontline communities,” she said. “It shields the fossil fuel industry from the voices and concerns of the communities who are directly impacted by the extraction projects and by climate disruption.”
Public lands fossil fuel development has become so contested that it was recently revealed by The Intercept that federal agents have gone undercover to spy on the anti-fracking movement. According to emails released under an open records act request, state and federal agents went undercover among some 300 protesters at a gathering in May in Colorado.
According to a statement from Marissa Knodel with Friends of the Earth, this was another “shameful” example of the federal government collaborating with the fossil fuel industry.
“Instead of wasting time and resources spying on non-violent citizens, the Obama administration should listen to the people on the front lines of climate change,” she said. “Instead of hiding fossil fuel auctions by moving them online, the Obama administration should keep fossil fuels in the ground.”
Earlier this year, author and environmentalist Terry Tempest Williams bought leasing rights to 1,750 acres of land in Utah to spare it from fossil fuel development. In explaining to the Bureau of Land Management if her bid was legitimate, she responded that “you can’t define what energy is for us. Our energy development is fueling a movement.”
In discussing the experience on Democracy Now!, Tempest said the “lands go up for lease auction, that gives the highest bidder the opportunity to speculate, to drill for oil and make an enormous profit, as we know…It’s oil and gas companies. It’s very secretive. If you talk to them, they won’t tell you who they’re representing.”
She said the whole process is very emotional and disheartening for her because it turns public lands into something not public at all, but rather makes them available to the highest bidder from a “secret society for oil and gas companies."
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