Speaking out about El Salvador; New documentary slated for this summer

MINNEAPOLIS, SATURDAY JUNE 12 – “One of my three addictions is El Salvador,”

Said Wayne Wittman, to those gathered at the Resource Center of the Americas to commemorate the life of Archbishop Romero. Wittman, Steve Boyer and Duane Krohnke spoke about their many visits to El Salvador in delegations with Augsburg College Center for Global Education, Peter Yarrow, Veterans for Peace, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, and others.

Their most recent visit brought them to the massive marches commemorating the 30^th anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, on March 24, 2010. Romero was one of the world’s great champions for the poor and oppressed, constantly speaking out against violence until 1980, when he was shot in the chest at the conclusion of Mass.

The American visitors to El Salvador saw "Monseñor: The Last Days of Oscar Romero” at its world premiere in El Salvador, and this summer the documentary about his life will be released in the U.S.

Many who gathered had visited El Salvador and shared insight on the causes of conditions there, including poverty, crime, & the impunity of war criminals, as well as the responsibility that Americans have—

to stop our military aid to Central America, change America’s policies of aggressive free trade, and shift immigration issues into the light of macro-economic crises rather than that of individual morality.

The U.S.’ Involvement in El Salvador

The US has been involved in El Salvador’s affairs at least since Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, when Roosevelt reached out to Central America with a paternal attitude.

What the US accomplished by military force in the past, it now attempts to accomplish through trade agreements like CAFTA, the Central America Free Trade Agreement.

Before 1980, the US used Low Intensity Conflict to protect its interests (corporations) in Central America. Oscar Romero was one of few in the Catholic Church who spoke out against Low Intensity Conflict strategies used in El Salvador: torture, rape, and cycles of indiscriminate assassinations & selective assassinations.

According to the 1989 volume War Against the Poor,

“US low-intensity conflict strategy in El Salvador utilized generalized terror against civilians in order to sow fear and shape the collective memory of the people. It was hoped that once terrorized the people could be intimidated into silence with lesser amounts of violence, that is, through selective terror. If over time selective terror proved an insufficient deterrent to the 'crimes of the poor,' then violence escalated accordingly.”

Between 1980 and 1992, the Salvadoran Civil war was fought in the context of the global Cold War, with Cuba and the USSR backing the Marxist-Leninist rebels and the United States backing the right wing military Salvadoran government. It was not just a proxy war of superpowers, but also an economic & psychological war against poor people's movements & their ability to organize from the bottom up.

The military fought the rebels with American guns and helicopters, paid itself with American aid money, and sent its officers to the School of the Americas in the state of Georgia, where they graduated with degrees in torture, assassination, mass murder and mass intimidation. Every November Americans protest this training at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia—though now the School is renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

In 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney remarked that El Salvador was our model of democracy. His ominous remark hung over the debate at the Resource Center of the Americas like a shadow. How many more countries will we spread democracy to, if democracy looks like civil war, impunity, kidnappings, and the endless intimidation of civilians?

This sort of democracy came to Nicarague as well as El Salvador, where Father Miguel D’Escoto told Minnesotan Professor Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, years ago,

“A nation that wages war against the poor in Nicaragua will ignore the needs of its own poor. A country which in the name of ‘democracy’ fights wars against the self-determination of other peoples cannot remain a democracy. I have felt for a long time that the U.S. people will one day be the most repressed in the world.”

(War Against the Poor, Nelson-Pallmeyer, 1989)

President Mauricio Funes

On March 15, 2009, Mauricio Funes, a television journalist, became the first president from the FMLN party. Like President Obama, he is a center-left politician who decided to resume relations with Cuba in 2009. Also like Obama, his platform was transparency and revealing the corruption of past governments, but his popularity has declined throughout his first year in office.

Those marching on March 24 demanded an investigation of Romero’s death, the end of impunity, and refusal of amnesty to the perpetrators of the massacre, though many of them are dead.

First Recognition of Romero by Salvadoran Government

Today a mural with images of Romero hangs in the departure zone of the San Salvador International Airport. It was the government’s first recognition of Romero’s assassination as a tragedy. When his life was commemorated this year, the government recognized him as the country’s Spiritual Guide.

Roberto D’Aubuisson

The speakers' delegation passed a notable statue in San Salvador: a monument to Roberto D’Aubuisson, unmarked but for a plaque in remembrance of D’Aubuisson's son. Roberto D’Aubuisson founded the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), which he led from 1978 to 1985. He was behind the paramilitary death squads and ordered the assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero in 1980.

They saw a demonstration against D’Aubuisson at the monument, and a counter-demonstration. They saw a man in black spray-painting swastikas and epithets on the sidewalk near the monument; police stood by and later cleaned up the spray paint. The delegates noticed that police tended to avoid confrontation in the open.

The US embassy recognizes this as a culture of impunity. The embassy told the delegates that only 5% of common crimes result in convictions in El Salvador, corruption and impunity prevail, and there is a greater fear of crime in cities now than there was fear in the countryside during the Civil War.

CAFTA

The speakers spoke about the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by CAFTA when they projected their photos of shanty towns and cardboard homes in El Salvador.

The Central American Free Trade Agreement is a force of globalization acting on not only the imports & exports of economies, but the farms, villages, and towns of Latin America. It frees the flow of capital from country to country, but restricts the flow of people. Foreign companies are free to set up shop in countries where they can use up the natural resources, offer goods at prices that kill local competition, and bust unions mercilessly. When governments try to impose regulations for environmental protection or worker safety, they are often hindered by the free trade agreements, and multinational corporations can actually sue them for denying their rights to invest however they like.

Liberation Theology

Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara once said that when he gave food to the poor they called him a saint, but when he asked why people were poor they called him a communist. This association with communism is the main accusation made against Romero's sort of liberation theology, which still divides religious people in El Salvador.

The American delegates who spoke had noticed a sharp struggle between the rich, powerful, and very real Opus Dei and liberation theology. One encourages bodily suffering and endurance of suffering on earth for the rewards in heaven; the other wants to end the suffering of the poor.

Upcoming Trips to El Salvador

Americans continue to visit El Salvador to learn Spanish, listen and join in solidarity with people's movements. Minneapolis' Holy Trinity Lutheran Church is taking a delegation there this summer, and the Centro de Intercambio y Solidaridad is taking a special delegation there in November.

http://www.cis-elsalvador.org/

Gold Mining Controversy

The American delegates learned of a fight over potential gold mining in the Department of Cabanas. The Canadian mining company Pacific Rim opposes El Salvador's ban on gold mining for environmental reasons. Pacific Rim is prospecting for what it calls the El Dorado Project.

Three anti-mining activists from the Cabanas Environment Committee have already been killed in 2009: Gustavo Marcelo Rivera, Ramiro Rivera, and Dora Alicia Recinos Sorto. Their murders fit the pattern of Low Intensity Conflict: mysterious, unidentified killers go after the opponents of the Church, the government and foreign companies, then the government says that guerrilla fighters are responsible and denounces their terrorist tactics.

Journalists and staff of the independent Radio Victoria have also received death threats for their coverage of this controversy in Victoria, Cabanas.

RECOMMENDED ACTION:

• Send appeals to authorities:

• calling on them to order a prompt, full and independent investigation into the threats against Radio Victoria staff, and the recent killing of Ramiro Rivera and Dora Alicia Recinos Sorto, environmental activists in Cabañas department, and to bring those responsible to justice

• requesting that they ensure that full protection is provided to all Radio Victoria staff and volunteers, and to members of the Cabañas Environment Committee and their relatives who have received threats

APPEALS TO:

Presidente Mauricio Funes
(President)
Casa Presidencial
Alameda Dr. Manuel Enrique Araujo, No. 5500
San Salvador, El Salvador
Fax: +503 2243 9947

Fiscal General
(Attorney General)
Fiscalía General de la República
Final 4a Calle Oriente y 19a Avenida Sur, Residencial Primavera
Santa Tecla, La Libertad
San Salvador, El Salvador
Fax : +503 2523 7170
E-mail: astor.escalante@fgr.gob.sv
E-mail: cc: radelgado@fgr.gob.sv

Comisionado Carlos Asencio Girón
Director de la Policía Nacional Civil
(National Police Director)
Policía Nacional Civil
6ta. Calle Oriente entre 8va y 10ma
Ave. Sur, # 42 Barrio La Vega
San Salvador, El Salvador
E-mail: carlosascencio@pnc.gob.sv

Please send copies and messages of support to:

Radio Victoria
Av. José Matias Delgado #47
Victoria, Cabañas, El Salvador, C.A.
E-mail: radiovictoriapopular@yahoo.es

Peter Erlinder Jailed for Helping Rwandan Opposition

KIGALI, RWANDA – As President Paul Kagame’s regime faces elections,
as well as the International Criminal Tribunal proceedings about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, his administration has jailed opposition leaders and used other repressive tactics.
Things are heating up in Rwanda, and they’re starting to in St. Paul as well, where concerned Americans are pushing back.
St. Paul’s Peter Erlinder, law professor at William Mitchell Law School, long time human rights lawyer and Lead Defense Counsel for the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda,
was arrested by Rwandan Authorities the morning of Friday, May 28.

Background

Erlinder had traveled to Rwanda's capital, Kigali, on May 23 to join the defense team of Rwandan presidential candidate Madame Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza. Umuhoza was jailed in April, and released on bail one day later. According to Erlinder, her lawyer, “Ingabire was arrested on trumped-up, political thought-crimes, including: association with a terrorist group, propagating the genocide ideology, genocide denial, revisionism and divisionism, all arising from the “crime” of publicly objecting to the Kagame military dictatorship, and Kagame’s version of the Rwandan history.“
Erlinder is being held in a Rwandan prison and was recently denied bail. He is reportedly being interrogated at the Rwandan Police Force's Kacyiru headquarters.
In the run-up to the national election, the administration of President Kagame has engaged in increasing repressive tactics including shutting down independent media and jailing opposition candidates and their supporters under a vague charge of "genocide ideology" ¬the same charge Professor Erlinder is now accused of.
The Genocide Ideology Law is vaguely worded, requires no link to any genocidal act, and can be used to criminalize a wide range of legitimate forms of expression. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and even the U.S. State Department have denounced it as a tool of political repression. The Kagame administration has used it widely to target political opponents.
The Obama administration has done little to address Professor Erlinder's situation. This is because the US backs the Kagame regime.
According to The Guardian, Erlinder’s arrest prompted other defense lawyers at the UN tribunal to refuse to participate in proceedings.

In a joint statement to the court and the UN security council, seen by the Guardian, more than 30 defense lawyers said they fear for their own safety, demanding Erlinder's release.
"We hereby resolve to postpone all activities, other than those which strictly conserve the interests of our mandates, until such time as the minimum conditions or the normal exercise of our missions have been restored by the removal of threats," the statement says. "[We are] aware of the dangers which immediately and directly threaten most of our number."

The People Push Back

Sarah Erlinder, Arizona attorney and NLG member said, "My father has made a career defending unpopular people and unpopular speech -- and is now being held because of his representation of unpopular clients and analysis of an historical narrative that the Kagame regime considers inconvenient. We can help defend his rights now by drawing U.S. government and media attention to his situation and holding the Rwandan government accountable for his well-being."
On the evening of Tuesday, June 8, Minneapolis groups rallied in support of Peter Erlinder, at the Federal Building behind Minneapolis City Hall. Communities United Against Police Brutality and Women Against Military Madness brought their message to the people downtown and the government workers as they were leaving work for the day. St. Paul supports are now planning a benefit event for Peter Elinder. They’ll meet on Sunday, June 13 at 1:00pm, in Room 105 at Hamline University School of Law, 1536 Hewitt Avenue, Saint Paul.

Though local universities don’t want to touch the issue, several organizations want to hold an event to raise awareness of Peter’s arrest, the role of defense attorneys, or a benefit to raise money for his defense. Representative Betty McCollum responded to pressure and introduced a bill in the House calling for the Government of Rwanda to release Peter Erlinder. Representative Keith Ellison has agreed to co-sponsor the bill. According, to Minnesota Public Radio, McCollum said the Rwandan embassy in Washington D.C. hasn't responded to repeated inquiries from her office. She said that pattern could eventually jeopardize the partnership between the two countries.
Only two representatives have commented on voting for House Resolution 1426.
Minnesotans continue calling their Congressmen and Secratary of State Hilary Clinton. This is not a local issue but a State Department issue. When an aide answered the phone this week, they said, "Minnesota? You must be calling about Peter Erlinder!"

Call and demand the immediate release of Professor Peter Erlinder:

Senator Al Franken
(202) 224-5641
Or send an email at franken.senate.gov/contact/


Senator Amy Klobuchar
202-224-3244
Or send an email at klobuchar.senate.gov/emailamy.cfm

Representative Keith Ellison
202-225-4755
Or send an email at forms.house.gov/ellison/webforms/issue_subscribe.htm

Representative Betty McCullom
(202) 225-6631
Or send an email at
forms.house.gov/mccollum/webforms/issue_subscribe.htm

Write to: publicaffairs@panet.us.state.gov

---Many thanks for the contributions of National Lawyers’ Guild Minnesota, Women Against Military Madness, The International Humanitarian Law Institute & Communities United Against Police Brutality to this article & cause. ---

May 29 Marches to Take Down the Fort

On May 29 and 30, protesters gathered outside historic Fort Snelling by Minneapolis, Minnesota. They protested the state & the maintenance of the Fort by the state, entering the grounds without paying the admission fee, by invitation from Dakota activists who passed freely by their rights under the Treaty of 1805.
Please read more about this long-running campaign at
http://www.takedownthefort.com/

Here I present the reflections of an observer.

There is a cycle to oppression and resistance. A cycle of give and take.
The cycle is like the oscillations of sound waves when people chant, sing, and pray together.
If it is steady, it has an effect; if the singers are disciplined, their song will grow and resound; if resistance continues no matter what sets it back, it will influence the whole world. Though oppression has been normalized, resistance is a part of all of us too; it speaks to each of us with relevance too.
It speaks even louder than fear to the wild core of our souls. It speaks with actions, and here I meekly summarize with words the way of human determination that will win back the world.
We will win because we must. Because the ecosystems must be restored, we must win back the planet with paradigms of Mother rather than of Lord.
he environment demands equilibrium again. This doesn’t come easy in the city, but suddenly the heat of the day is breezy as Dakota people gather and pray.
There was a prayer in the parking lot of St. Peter’s Church, before a group of Minnesota’s indigenous activists took up their signs and their staff, before they marched in a line over Mendota Bridge.
There was a prayer and a song that lifted their spirits and thanked Wakan Tanka for the day and their lives.
It was always said that Native American spirituality is incorporated in every aspect of life, like tobacco smoke permeating the smells of labor and cooking and cars and clothes.
It’s still true. Ceremonies and spirituality are still as important to culture as water is to the trees.
Yet I find myself in a culture somewhat drained, among the white American Left, a spectrum of people who shed religious and spiritual heritages, teachings, and hierarchies, like a porcupine sheds quills.
That is to say, we carry around both emotional baggage and spiritual confusion, though we don’t see it; when we feel threatened we do see it as our quills stand up, our baggage is apparent, and we throw off the spiritual and emotional inklings we carry like weapons against attackers. Our critiques of the spiritual and metaphysical are sharp and stinging.
The Left believes in hard work for justice, and when it sees neighbors pause to pray, it asks where divine justice was when we needed it.
Where was the Creator during the American genocide? Where was the Savior throughout over 500 years of colonization of the African and American continents? Where were the Spirits during China’s Great Leap Forward?
The refrain goes, ‘No, no, it’s not enough to pray. There’s a lot of work to do before justice has its day.’
So many arguments flit back and forth over this issue, which appeal to critical thinkers on an intellectual level but often surface because of the deep wounds where we stung ourselves.
The anarchist, anti-theist arguments drift away as smoke billows over the heads of activists and lifts up their prayers.
Today, May 29, 2010, a hot parking lot filled up with intention and power as indigenous people and allies came together: intentions to set things right, to remember injustices of the past, to let nature take its course with Fort Snelling.
The old military post at the confluence of Mississippi and Minnesota crumbles; large white families pour in for opening day of tourist season; the legislature allocates money to the Minnesota Historical Society for renovation and restoration of a most violent racist period.
Today white children picnicked in the shade of the Visitor Parking Lot with George Washington stickers on their T-shirts-- and observed native children carrying banners and clapping and shouting along with Dr. Waziyatawin
at the megaphone, in the shade outside the Fort.
Wandering white adults enjoyed Memorial Day weekend with a cigarette atop the Fort’s reinforced rotunda, looking down over the cheering and chanting brown people who came to meet them. Their stickers bearing dead presidents showed their casual monetary support for the Fort that was once the military’s defense of traders and settlers, against the Dakota people in its concentration camp downhill.
Tax-payer funding was challenged and, in a way, so was the entire consumer routine of our lives. Why continue rebuilding this model of the original foundation of Statehood? So that future generations can reenact settler life in elementary school, reenact the Civil War in middle school, tour Cold War sites in high school, and then enlist against the War on Terror??
Someone waved a sign that read, ‘They don’t have reenactments at Auschwitz.’
I’ve been to Auschwitz.
Rather than historical reenactments, I saw the words of Churchill greeting tourists: “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
In that way, history too has a wavelength. History is a turning oscillation of similar events. Only by learning—by Consciousness – do we get to higher planes called the future.
It takes discipline to learn, to open your mind, to change the song sung by the generations, in the same way it takes discipline to chant, to sweat, to endure these afternoons with messages for the masses while staying on your toes between barricading Sheriff cars and plain-clothes police.
How will Mnisota’s wheel turn now?
Will the big wheel of fear turn and grind us down, or will we switch gears like equal peers, leaving behind the racist fears?
Latinos and allies met the native marchers at the Fort to protest all the steps backward our nation takes. The Arizonan law against illegal immigration, SB1070, was heavy on the hearts of those who walked from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement building to Fort Snelling.
As speakers related at the megaphone, already their friends and family down south were being harassed & pulled over by cops in the state where brown skin is probable cause for suspicion of illegal immigration. The northern blue states would not be immune to this case of racial profiling; in the past legislative session a similar law was proposed for Mnisota. It had just a few sponsors—Congress people who we will not vote for again—but next year it will be reintroduced as if it made sense.
How will the wheel turn? When will we find the frequency of harmony and peace?
Maybe it can’t be found in this world of well-funded violence and state-supported ignorance—but it can be created by people, powerhouses of conscious energy that we are.
The sacred staff touched the Fort’s stone wall. The cheers rose up for one and all. People harmonized in solidarity: Dakota people, SEIU, MIRAC, First Nations United, and CUAPB. The chants grew louder:
‘Take Down the Fort!’
By their rights native people entered, presented the treaty of 1805, and invited everyone gathered to invade the Fort and educate from inside.
Within the visitor center and ‘historic’ re-creation, no marker mentions the imprisonment of displaced native people or the hanging of leaders.
With history preserved in a supposed moral vacuum, with costumed actors firing canons every day on site, dark days are ahead in the land of the free and the home of the hidden mass graves.
In spite of it all, these people standing up for their rights have an attitude of gratitude towards the spirits they thank. It sounds so cliché, but it’s what we need to have strength to fight another day:
an attitude of gratitude, humility, disciplined persistent positivity.
That’s how we can influence history’s waves so that they do indeed arc towards justice in the end.

Torture and Minnesota's Congressmen

This letter comes from the hearts of anti-torture activists in T3, or Tackling Torture at the Top. Let's hope our Congressmen hear & act!

Dear Senators Klobuchar and Franken, Representatives Ellison and McCollum:

We are a group of people who met with a staff member of each of your offices between January 5, 2010, and April 2, 2010. Most of us attended more than one of these meetings. Our concern is torture and torture accountability. With three of you, we specifically addressed the issue of investigations of credible claims of torture committed in our names and under color of law since September 11, 2001. We are concerned with investigating, and if necessary prosecuting, not only perpetrators but also those who ordered, authorized, "legalized" or conspired to commit acts of torture. At the fourth meeting, our focus was on military commissions, a "Truth Commission," and raising the torture issue in a public manner, but the issue of prosecutions was also discussed. So far the response from the four of you has been uniform.

Silence.

We are aware of Congressman Ellison's participation in the "Reckoning With Torture" program at Georgetown Law School, where he read from recently released documents on torture, as well as his House Judiciary Committee questioning of John Yoo on the definition of "implement." We also are aware of Senator Franken's raising the issue of regulatory versus treaty standards for rendition at a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on the implementation of human rights treaties. But none of you has been at all visible in calling for holding accountable those who violated our most fundamental values, our treaty obligations, and several federal statutes.

June has been designated by the United Nations as "Torture Awareness Month." With that in mind:

ARE YOU AWARE that the statute of limitations applicable to the Federal Torture Statute is eight years? We began what Major General Antonio Taguba called our "systematic regime of torture" eight years ago.

ARE YOU AWARE that since 9/11, up to 100 detainees have died in our custody from other than battlefield wounds, suicides, or natural causes? The precise number is not known because our government has ceased releasing the data.

ARE YOU AWARE that secret places of detention are being discovered to this day? One at Bagram and another at Guantanamo have just recently been revealed.

ARE YOU AWARE that we rendition people to countries that we describe in our own State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices as having systematically violated the human rights of people held in its prisons? We say we're getting "diplomatic assurances" that torture will not occur. The Convention Against Torture, ratified by the United States Senate in 1994, includes nothing about "diplomatic assurances" in its prohibition against rendition.

ARE YOU AWARE that the Convention Against Torture, in Article 2, says: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture"? Yet we have heard from several government officials, e.g., Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and John Yoo, that we have to understand the times. After all, we had just been attacked.

ARE YOU AWARE that President George W. Bush advocated greater accountability than President Obama advocates with respect to torture? On June 26, 2004, the U.N.'s International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, President Bush issued a statement that included the following: "America stands against and will not tolerate torture. We will investigate and prosecute all acts of torture and undertake to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment in all territory under our jurisdiction." In looking forward, President Obama has taken a step backwards.

ARE YOU AWARE that Article 14 of the Convention Against Torture says: "Each State Party shall ensure in its legal system that the victim of an act of torture obtains redress and has an enforceable right to fair and adequate compensation"? Yet our Justice Department continually argues in court against such redress, invoking state sovereignty and state secrets doctrines.

ARE YOU AWARE that judges, inspectors general, general counsel of the military branches, Pentagon investigators, and F.B.I. interrogators have all said that we have tortured human beings in our custody?

ARE YOU AWARE that the Convention Against Torture, in Article 12, says: "Each State Party shall ensure that its competent authorities proceed to a prompt and impartial investigation, wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed in any territory under its jurisdiction"? Yet President Obama wants to investigate only those who exceeded the standards prescribed by the faulty OLC memos.

ARE YOU AWARE that since the Federal Torture Statute was passed in 1994, only one person has ever been charged and convicted under it? And that was for torture committed for the government of Liberia. His name was Chuckie Taylor, he was the son of the President of Liberia, Charles Taylor, and he tortured people as part of that country's Anti-Terrorism Unit. Torture justified as anti-terrorist. Does that sound familiar?

In our meetings with your staff members, we heard about taking the lead from President Obama, lack of seniority, and a lack of political will in Washington to deal with this issue. We reject these as reasons for inaction. First, we all learned in elementary school that the checks and balances embodied in our Constitution ensure that no one branch exceeds its power. The role of Congress is not simply to ratify executive branch decisions. Second, Hubert Humphrey in his 1948 civil rights speech defied Democratic Party leadership before he was even elected to the Senate. Third, our most courageous leaders have created, not followed, the political will. Hubert Humphrey on civil rights, Eugene McCarthy on the War in Southeast Asia, and Paul Wellstone on the invasion of Iraq were at their best when they opposed the political will in Washington, not succumbed to it.

For one of you to come out and take a leadership role -- if you will, a prophetic role -- on torture accountability might not be politically wise. It is not a unifying issue. You all are politicians, but this isn't about politics. We are asking you to be statesmen and stateswomen. This issue is literally about the soul of our country. Nothing could be more important.

Only recently did we apologize to and compensate those Japanese-Americans we had shamefully incarcerated a half century earlier. Fifty years from now, people will surely ask: "In the time when America tortured people, where was Senator Klobuchar? Where was Senator Franken? Where was Representative Ellison? Where was Representative McCollum? Were they not aware of what was happening?"

Silence.

Rally Friday + Update on the Foreclosure Five

Stop Foreclosures!
Justice for Michael Kidd!

On Friday, April 9, 4:30 p.m., friends, neighbors and other supporters will join the Minnesota Coalition for a People's Bailout at the home of Michel Kidd, 1321 23rd Ave North, in Minneapolis.

Mr. Kidd has been fighting to keep his home for over a year. He has had enough of the mortgage servicer, Aurora Financial, stalling, changing terms, 'forgetting' about past agreements and items faxed and mailed several times and apparently refusing to negotiate in good faith.

Mr. Kidd is an independent trucker. In 2004 he put down $45,000 cash and got a regular, fixed-rate mortgage. Because of the recession, his trucking business slowed. Last year, he tried to renegotiate the terms of his mortgage so his payments would be more affordable - with the expectation, based on the terms of the federal Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), that the home's current value to be taken into account.

In 2004, when Kidd bought the house, it was valued at $190,000. Now it is valued between $65,000 and $90,000. Aurora Financial, in direct contradiction the federal HAMP program, is not offering to refinance the home at its "net present value."

Mick Kelly, of the Minnesota Coalition for a People's Bailout, puts it bluntly: "Michael Kidd is being robbed. Aurora is pressuring him into taking a bogus deal that only makes Aurora richer. They are basically turning his house into an ATM for the banks."

Michael Kidd and many others who have lost homes on the north and south sides of Minneapolis are examples of the racial disparities in home foreclosures and remodifications. As an African American born and raised in North Minneapolis, Kidd says he could have moved away, but chose to stay and build his community. "I won't just be speaking for me, but for thousands in my situation," said Mr. Kidd. "There are empty homes all around this neighborhood. We don't need any more."

The Minnesota Coalition for a People's Bailout will join Michael Kidd in demanding that Aurora Financial come to the table, follow the rules of the HAMP program and renegotiate the mortgage at the home's current value. Give Mr. Kidd a deal he can afford.

Contacts: Mick Kelly 612-715-3280,
Rick Jacobs 612-788-418

The Latest on the Minnesota Five

Leslie Park's bank just issued an ultimatum that she obtain financing to close on buying her home for $100,000 by May 15th. Clearly time is critical. IF YOU KNOW of any lender who would facilitate a fixed-rate mortgage agreement with her even though her good credit rating was ruined as a result of her bank's policies and actions --PLEASE contact us ASAP!

Meanwhile she will be speaking Friday, April 9, 4:30 p.m., on behalf of Michael Kidd (1321 23rd Ave. in North Minneapolis)-see below for details.

Barbara Byrd STILL has not received ANY response from EMC Mortgage. She waits for a call, watches for a letter, and listens every day for a knock on the door, wondering what's going to happen.

Linda Norenberg is PREPARING to celebrate her victory--but NOT until papers are signed on a rate that she can afford to keep her family home in Robbinsdale. Hats off to Linda, her family and supporters...and especially to her generous lawyer Kelly for keeping up the pressure for so many months on the bank, holding out for an acceptable outcome.

Ann Patterson is tired of making trial payments -several months past the "trial period"-to Wells Fargo that were not paying down principal. Rather than continue living in limbo indefinitely, she has taken initiative and informed Wells Fargo that she will not give her house back to the bank on a short sale-a sale that only would benefit the bank, yet still slam her credit rating. She hopes to move her family into rental housing as early as next month. Watch for details and date for likely yard-sale. Meantime, the bank keeps asking for her current payment! Apparently they still don't get it.

Rosemary Williams started out today from New Orleans on the PPEHRC caravan and March to Fulfill the Dream
http://www.ussf2010.org/node/68
-- from the Delta to Detroit in time for the U.S.Social Forum (USSF) being held June 22-26. She has been making preliminary contacts with activists in the cradle of the Civil Rights Movement in cities en-route like Selma, Birmingham, and Montgomery. Many of us from Minnesota will be joining the caravan and/or attending the USSF. She plans on returning to Minneapolis briefly in mid-April, then rejoining the marchers as she continues inspiring others along the way with her message of resistance.

Health Care Reform needs another push-- and another.

This week in March, Americans note that federal health care reform has been in the works for a whole year.
Bills have been written and amended; support has been promised and at times withdrawn.
As time went on, progressives pushed again and again for a strong single-payer health care system to emerge from federal law or their state legislatures. As time went on, a resurgence of conservative activists grew more fearful and vocal about the dangers of such change. President Obama started out the year speaking on the bright shining idea of a public option, or state-funded insurance plan that could cover any citizen who chooses it. The President's stance grew weaker and more beholden to private insurance companies as the debates dragged on, from summer to fall.
We lost Senator Ted Kennedy in this last fateful year, and still his long fight for reform, including meaningful health care reform, is impressed upon us. But what will actually be done?

Can Americans get beyond the scary rumors, spun out by lobbyists and paid provocateurs, that pit us against each other? Can members of Congress stop the filibusters and see the truth of the thousands of lobbyist-written pages in the bills on their docket?

If a health care reform bill is passed this year, with the help of petitions and protests and citizen-funded ad campaigns, will it be enough to dig us out of our hole of debt and poor health? Or will new laws be enacted to restrict consumers as well as health care industries, to make abortions more costly than ever, and to tax the people at rates higher than inflation?
It's hard to tell, when no single person has the time to even read the grossly lengthy bills written in legal-ese.
Still, progressives keep on pushing for what they want: single-payer health care for all, not a weak public option, not a government take-over of medicine.

IndyMedia volunteers recently released a compilation of the actions and advice of the local health care reform movement. The Health Care Reform Movement: Rumors and Facts includes the expert analysis of Dr. Joel Albers, active with the Universal Health Care Action Network of Minnesota, and Dr. Lisa Nilles, active with the Minnesota Universal Health Care Coalition.

This short documentary should clarify the issues and propel us to pass meaningful reform. It can be viewed online:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc8aMQi6H6E

Eye on Justice to air locally, online

In metropolitan Minnesota, Comcast pays a price for its media monopoly. The internet, cable, phone, and billboard company's contract monopolizing the cable TV running throughout the Twin Cities mandates opening several cable channels to locally produced PEG-- Public, Education, and Government programming.
In Minneapolis, only 3 of these channels are utilized by busy volunteer media-makers: cable channels 16, 17, and 75. Anyone can submit TV shows as long as they are non-commercial. Check out the guidelines at www.mtn.org
Groundbreaking new shows are being prepared to air on Minneapolis Television Network and St. Paul Network, like a news/talk show about police brutality and local politics: Eye On Justice. This project is an effort of the entirely volunteer-driven grassroots group, Communities United Against Police Brutality, to reach out to the public and open people's eyes to some famous cases of police misconduct.
You can keep your eye on justice (and injustice) by sneaking a peek at the first three shows by CUAPB TV, online:
eyeonjustice.blip.tv
Each is about 45 minutes. Upcoming shows will explore more famous and shocking true cases of law enforcement out of control, illustrating that nationwide trend. They will draw on reporting done by Twin Cities IndyMedia Collective and footage from CopWatch shifts, when CUAPB members tape actualities of police conduct out in the streets.
If you have such a story to tell, please contact this group of Cop and Court Watchers:
www.cuapb.org
Their 24-hour hotline is 612-874-STOP