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Military Veterans Blast Romney for Supporting Voter Suppression

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By Tula Connell, AFL-CIO

“Romney’s in a bizarro world. He’s suppressing millions of votes in this election and then he lies …”

U.S. military veterans severely criticized Mitt Romney today for supporting laws limiting the right of residents to vote in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, where Republican-controlled legislatures recently enacted new voting laws. In a press conference this morning, the veterans also took Romney to task for accusing President Obama of suppressing the vote of military veterans because the Obama campaign filed a lawsuit seeking to block an Ohio law that restricts a successful early voting program.
Said former Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), who served two deployments in Iraq after 9/11:
When it comes to Mitt Romney, I feel he’s in a bizarro world. He’s suppressing millions of votes in this election and then he lies and says President Obama is trying to suppress the vote. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
After the 2000 presidential election voting debacle, Ohio enacted a series of laws to protect the right to vote, including a 2005 measure allowing in-person early voting three days prior to the election. This year, the Ohio Republican legislature eliminated the three-day early voting period, for everyone except members of the military. The Obama lawsuit seeks to restore voting rights for all Ohioans, not just those serving in the armed forces.
Also speaking at the press conference today, which marks the 47th anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act, Former Rep. John Boccieri (D-Ohio), an Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran, says Romney’s attack on Obama is not based on facts but is “purely political.”
It’s saddening to see Republicans use veterans as cover fire for their true motives, which is to make it harder to vote across the state.
In Pennsylvania, Republican state lawmakers this year passed a law that severely limits the type of identification acceptable for voting—making more than 400,000 voters in Philadelphia alone unable to meet the new requirements, and making a military ID unacceptable. That means “we have veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan” who don’t have a driver’s license and so can’t vote, said Murphy.
The way the Republicans wrote the bill in Pennsylvania, [a military] ID isn’t good enough to vote.
Gil Parr, who served in the U.S. Airforce from 1962-1965, is among veterans in Pennsylvania whose military ID isn’t good enough to let him vote.
Also speaking at the press conference, sponsored by the Center for American Progress, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Paul Eaton, a 30-year U.S. Army veteran, had the strongest words against Romney’s potential role as the nation’s commander-in-chief. Saying the military looks for “cool, calm, predictable leaders,” Eaton said,
I regret that we have someone in the Republican Party right now who is failing on each count.
The AFL-CIO voter outreach campaign is addressing such challenges registered voters face as inadequate election administration, lack of access to required photo ID and intimidation and dirty tricks on Election Day. Find out more at the AFL-CIO website MyVoteMyRight.org, a resource hub for voters that includes state-by-state fact sheets on voting laws and voter registrations rules.

Slave Theater auctioned at foreclosure sale

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New owner can build up to ten stories along Fulton Street corridor

 

By Nico Simino

After years of neglect, family squabbles, so-called squatters, and partial structural collapse, the Slave Theater, 1215 Fulton Avenue, will be auctioned off by the city, as this news paper goes to press.
The theater, which was mired in all of these problems and more, is finally close to finding an actual owner after the previous owner, Judge John L. Phillips, lost it due to mental deterioration.
Since 2001 the theater has been in languish over who actually owned the property. Several people have claimed rights to the property, but the state recognizes Rev. Samuel Boykin, Judge Phillips nephew, as the legitimate owner.
Clarence Hardy, the self-described chief of the Slave Theater who has been there since the mid-90’s, and Rev. Paul Lewis, who held twice-weekly services on the second floor as part of his Messengers for Christ World Healing Center, have both at times also claimed ownership.
Hardy and Lewis were both accused of squatting by Boykin, who claims he has been trying to get both Hardy and the church evicted from the property for several years, and spending in excess of $100,000 in doing it.
In recent months, Boykin succeeded in getting both Hardy and Lewis evicted, but now the property is going to auction because there is about $190,000 in liens and about $2 million in back taxes and other fees owed – neither of which Boykin can pay.
Now that the property is in foreclosure, the city has taken it back and will auction it off to the highest bidder. A city Department of Finance Spokesperson said that whoever buys the property must also satisfy $27,000 in city back taxes.
According to the city’s Department of Buildings, the theater is zoned mixed use commercial meaning whoever the next owner is can build almost anything they want up to ten stories high.
Currently the building is a complete mess for the most part, the seats and wall are deteriorating and the ceilings are starting to crumble.
Earlier this year, On Feb. 4, an outdoor smoking area collapsed during a reggae party, injuring four people and brought in the Buildings Department. It was following this incident that Hardy and Lewis were evicted.
City Councilman Charles Barron hopes that the theater doesn’t become just “another commercial entity,” especially as the neighborhood grows and developers are attracted to it now, due to gentrification.
Judge Phillips, a longtime Bed-Stuy resident, bought the Slave Theater in theater in 1982 and named it to remind Black people of their history. Filled with African-American political art, the theater hosted speakers and showed films of, by, and about Black people. Soon, it became a meeting center for activists like the Reverend Al Sharpton, Attorney Alton Maddox and Scholar Amos Wilson.
Phillips died in 2008 without a will.

Green Thumbs Up for Greenest Block Winners

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The winners of the 2012 Greenest Block in Brooklyn Contest were announced yesterday at a press conference on the champion residential block, Lincoln Road between Bedford and Rogers Avenues in the neighborhood of Prospect-Lefferts Gardens.
Tying for second place: Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Macon/MacDonough/Stuyvesant/Lewis Block Association (for MacDonough Street between Stuyvesant and Lewis Avenues) and Park Slope’s 8th Street Block Association (for 8th Street between 8th Avenue and Prospect Park West).
Third place: Bainbridge Street Homeowners and Tenants Block Association for Bainbridge Street between Malcolm X Blvd. and Stuyvesant Ave.,Bedford-Stuyvesant
Fourth place: B&W Sterling Street Block Association for Sterling Street between Washington and Bedford Avenues, Crown Heights.
Blocks were judged on a variety of criteria, including color and total visual effect, citizen participation, variety and suitability of plants, soil condition and use of mulch, street tree and tree bed care, and all-around best horticultural practices. A panel of more than 20 judges, including journalists and professional horticulturists from Brooklyn Botanic Garden, visits each contestant’s block from mid-June throughout July.
The 2012 residential winner, Lincoln Road between Bedford and Rogers Avenues, distinguished itself with beautiful and meticulously maintained curbside gardens, a communal Children’s Garden, excellent horticultural maintenance, and its conscientious efforts to reach maximum participation from block residents.
Other residential winners include:
Best Street Tree Beds
First place: Bainbridge Street between Malcolm X Blvd and Stuyvesant Ave, Bedford-Stuyvesant
Second place: Sterling Place between Flatbush and 7th Avenues, Park Slope
Third place: Greene Ave. between Franklin and Bedford Ave., Bedford-Stuyvesant

Best Community Garden Streetscape
First place: St. Marks Avenue Prospect Heights Community Garden, St. Marks Avenue btw. Vanderbilt and Carlton Aves.
Second place: Bridge Plaza Community Garden, Sterling Place/nr. Flatbush Ave.

Best Window Box
First-place tie: Barbara and David Arky, 487 10th Street, and Diane Kosup, 716 Macon Street, Bedford-Stuyvesant Second place: Janet Clarke, 115 Bainbridge
Third place: Lorraine Wilson, 99 Sterling
Said Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, “All of Brooklyn wins when thousands of residents and businesses spend hours every day tending to their flowers, trees and shrubs and organizing cleanup and beautification projects to spruce up their blocks.”
New York City Councilman Mathieu Eugene, State Senator Eric Adams, state Assemblyman Karim Camara  and a representative from Congresswoman Yvette Clarke’s office were also on hand to applaud the efforts of the block participants.
Since its inception in 1994, the Greenest Block in Brooklyn Contest has encouraged greening activities on more than 1,600 Brooklyn blocks.. It is estimated that more than 600,000 Brooklynites have participated in this borough-wide beautification and greening effort over the past 18 years.

For more information, visit bbg.org/greenbridge.

Guest View: Voter Suppression and John Roberts’ New World Order

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By Bill Blum, Truthdig

 

As the presidential campaign heads for the stretch, the political and legal battles over voter suppression are also coming to a head. To understand the unfolding class warfare – and that’s exactly what it is – it’s important not just to grasp the specifics of the many suppression schemes sweeping the nation. It’s vital to place those schemes in the larger context of the American right’s long-cherished goal of redrafting the nation’s legal architecture and forging a new corporate political order.
Consider the specifics first. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, since the start of 2011, 16 states – accounting for 214 electoral votes – have passed restrictive voting laws. Each law is different, with states such as Florida seeking to curb voter registration drives and others such as South Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania imposing new requirements on voters to produce government-issued photo IDs at the polls.
The laws raise different technical legal issues. States such as Texas and South Carolina, with a legacy of discrimination against the electoral rights of minorities, are required to obtain “pre-clearance” from the Justice Department or the courts under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act before implementing new laws. States such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, under the direction of Republican governors, only recently entered the suppression arena and don’t require pre-clearance but are still subject to the general anti-discrimination provisions of the act.
Pennsylvania is among the few states that also recognize the right to vote under their own constitutions and thus offer opponents additional grounds to bring legal challenges.
Details aside, the scope of the suppression movement and its potential impact are staggering. The Brennan Center reports that as many as 11 percent of eligible voters – roughly 21 million Americans – lack current, unexpired government-issued photo IDs. The percentages are even higher among seniors, African-Americans and other minorities, the working poor, the disabled and students – constituencies that traditionally skew Democratic and whose disenfranchisement could prove decisive in any election.
Given the absence of any credible evidence of widespread voter fraud (the Bush administration ended a five-year witch hunt in 2007 with a mere 86 convictions), it’s not surprising that suppression opponents in Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania and elsewhere have filed a myriad of lawsuits to delay, block and overturn various recently enacted suppression laws. No doubt there are many trial judges of good will and integrity who will find merit in such challenges. Decisions on both the Pennsylvania and Texas ID laws are expected in the next few weeks.
But with the exception of rulings based solely on state law, as may prove to be the case in Pennsylvania, any justice opponents receive in the lower courts will likely prove temporary, pending an inevitable review by the Supreme Court. Indeed, there are already petitions from North Carolina and Alabama before the court that seek to invalidate Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. So Supreme Court review isn’t a matter of if, but when.
Whatever petition the Supreme Court decides to take up, the suppression movement will find a welcome setting. In 2008, in a 6-3 decision that may rank as the most shortsighted ever authored by former Justice John Paul Stevens, the court upheld Indiana’s highly restrictive voter ID law (Crawford v. Marion County Election Board).
In 2009, in a case involving a Texas utility district with an elected board that had sought an exemption from Section 5’s pre-clearance requirement, the court sidestepped a direct ruling on the provision’s constitutionality but nonetheless noted that the pre-clearance rule raises “serious constitutional questions” (Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder). Last term, in another Texas case, the court overturned a lower-court order that had voided a racially biased statewide redistricting plan (Perry v. Perez).
The stage is thus set for a full-scale constitutional attack on Section 5 and perhaps other aspects of the Voting Rights Act.
But as devastating as that development would be on its own, gauging the full measure of the act’s demise requires a broader perspective that, at a minimum, connects the suppression movement to two other lines of court decisions aimed at reshaping American law and politics: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and its progeny, and the Roberts court’s virulently anti-labor jurisprudence.
Under the guise of formal equality, the court in Citizens United held that corporations, unions and individuals possess the same First Amendment rights to make “independent” expenditures (those that are not directly coordinated with candidates) on political campaigns. Shortly afterward, the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C. followed with a ruling that such expenditures – typically made to what have come to be called super PACs and even more shadowy nonprofits – may be unlimited (SpeechNow.org v. FEC). And to round out the edges of the corporate personhood doctrine and prevent states from carving out local exceptions to Citizens United, the Roberts court in June declared a Montana law limiting political spending by corporations unconstitutional (American Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Bullock).
From the outset, the formal legal equality announced in Citizens United masked a fundamental inequality in the court’s views on how corporations and unions actually go about raising and disbursing political action funds. Whereas corporations are free to spend their assets on politics even if individual shareholders don’t want them to, in a series of decisions since 2007 and continuing with this term’s opinion in Knox v. Service Employees International Union, Local 1000, the court has endorsed right-to-work laws, lambasted union dues as “coercive,” and made it increasingly onerous for public employee unions – the last bastions of organized labor – to keep up with their corporate counterparts in financing political causes.
With the anticipated triumph of voter suppression, the American right will finally achieve the new political order it has long craved – a trifecta of institutionalized class domination in which (1) the poor, the elderly and minorities in large numbers are denied the right to vote; (2) labor unions are crippled; and (3) massive corporations – considered “people” under the law and set free to spend unlimited sums to rig the outcome of elections – have become the only “people” who matter.
The question that remains is how long we, the other people, will permit the new order to endure.

Organized Resistance Grows against Fundamental Islam and Sharia in Mali

Mary Alice Miller
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By Mary Alice Miller

During the weeks since fundamentalist Islamic militants have taken over vast expanses of northern Mali, their intent to impose Sharia is clear. The visible destruction of several ancient Mali shrines, deemed World Heritage Sites by UNESCO, took the world’s breath away. Fighting, beatings, and harassment drove thousands across the country’s borders, into displacement camps. A couple accused of adultery were buried up to their necks, and then stoned to death. Women are being required to discard their traditional African dress for burkas. Young people are prevented from listening to music. The threat of cutting off a thief’s hand seems to be a turning point.
The Islamists have condemned one of their young recruits, a member of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO). The recruit is accused of stealing weapons to sell. The punishment? Amputating his hand.
In response to the condemnation, hundreds of Mali citizens protested. When a radio journalist was beaten unconscious by Islamic gunmen during a live on-air report, Mali citizens held a second demonstration. The journalist has regained consciousness in a local hospital. Oumar Ould Hamaha, a spokesperson for MUJAO, confirmed the attack to the Reuters news agency. “We don’t care about secularism, democracy, the international community, or others. People must accept that we will impose Sharia whether they like it or not,” he said. “It is not tramps like journalists who are going to stop us.” But, published reports state the amputation has been postponed, for now.
Make-shift citizen militias are training to resist Islamic fundamentalists who have taken over the Tarueg resistance movement. Given a choice, the Tuareg had preferred to side with the Islamists when the Tuareg declared separation of northern lands from the secular government in the south. But now, the fundamentalists have given them no choice. The Islamists overpowered the secular Tuareg who practice a more relaxed form of Islam and declared uncompromising Sharia.
The citizen militias have no weapons, little knowledge of military theory or tactics, and nothing remotely resembling uniforms. The Mali Army, who initiated the coup on behalf of the Tuareg in the north, is of little help. It is preoccupied with citizenry in the south who do not appreciate the coup, or its aftermath. The coup itself was a spur of the moment opportunity; the Malian Army is not keen on challenging the well-equipped and determined Islamic militants in the north. The fledgling citizen militia, fed by the Malian Army, is a convenient buffer between the fundamentalists and the army.
What the citizen militias lack in weaponry, they make up for with determination. They are concerned about their relatives who could not escape. The Islamists are taking their daughters as spoils of conquest. Daily rhythms of life, such as women going to market alone, are forbidden by the fundamentalists. All told, there are 4,000 who are training to take on the Islamists. “Our goal is to liberate the north, whatever the price,” said one.
That price may be steep. Neighboring countries have pledged 3,000 soldiers to help oust the Islamists, for fear of the insurgency spreading discord to neighboring countries. Although Nigeria has its hands full dealing with Boko Haram, a violent Islamic sect, a spokesman for Nigerian President Jonathan said, “Nigeria is committed to resolving the crisis in Mali especially as President Jonathan is a co-mediator in the crisis.” Ivorien President Alassane Ouattata has announced that member states of the Economic Community of West Africa would also deploy troops in Mali soon if the situation did not rapidly improve. The Ivorien President who is also chairman of ECOWAS said, “If the (Malian) situation does not evolve positively and quickly, yes, there will be a military intervention in Mali. It seems to me inevitable.” The ECOWAS contingent would include soldiers from Niger, Nigeria, Chad and other countries, as well as Malian soldiers. The African Union is also seeking military intervention.
Any outside military assistance, including direct intervention, would require formal international support from the United Nations Security Council.
In the meantime, Malian fighters who had been recruited into Gadaffi’s Libyan army are well-armed with the best weaponry oil money can buy. After the fall of Libya, 2,000 soldiers returned to Mali, with stockpiles of weapons and artillery taken from Gaddafi’s arsenals. Members of the Boko Haram, who have a decade long history of violent attacks against the citizenry of northern Nigeria, including bombing of innocent worshipers during church services, were also in Gadaffi’s army and also obtained their armaments for Libya.
The international community is cautiously investigating the sources of financing for fundamentalist Islamists in Nigeria, Mali, and beyond.
The biggest concerns are that the vast northern Mali lands would be transformed into a haven and training grounds for al Qaeda while concurrently degenerating into lawless space for international drug trans-shipments. A bigger fear is that the instability in Mali could spread, destabilizing other countries in the region.

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