No State Budget, But Banks Still Get Paid Millions

Published on Portside (https://portside.org)

No State Budget, But Banks Still Get Paid Millions

http://chicagoreporter.com/no-state-budget-but-banks-still-get-paid-millions/

Curtis Black

Friday, January 22, 2016

Chicago Reporter

  While the state’s budget impasse is holding up funds for everyone from college students to domestic violence victims, Illinois continues to pay banks millions of dollars every month for complex borrowing deals that other local governments have challenged in court, according to a new report [1].

   The state is currently paying $6 million a month for 19 interest rate swaps, according to the report from ReFund America Project [2]. The swaps were sold as a way to save money by protecting taxpayers from rising interest rates. Illinois has paid over $600 million for the deals and could pay $1.45 billion for them before they are ended.

   “There’s no money going to emergency services, nothing going to rape counseling or homeless services," said Nathan Ryan of Grassroots Collaborative, [3] which endorsed the report. "But the checks are going out on time, in full, twice a month to these banks for these swaps.”

   The report comes just as Chicago hits the pause button on buying out its remaining interest rate swaps. Many of them had termination penalties amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, triggered when the city’s credit rating dropped to junk status. According to ReFund America, the state could be on the hook for $124 million in penalties by the end of the year if (as expected) its credit rating continues to drop.

   Gov. Bruce Rauner’s office has said they are exploring options for negotiating settlements on the deals. The state and city should follow the lead of other local governments and take a more aggressive legal posture, said Saqib Bhatti, co-author of the report.

  Last week Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration scaled back a multi-billion-dollar borrowing proposal before the City Council, eliminating a $200-million bond sale to buy out the last interest rate swap in its portfolio, after the Progressive Caucus questioned the maneuver and requested more information.

   To date Chicago has paid or authorized $296 million in termination penalties, on top of a half-billion dollars in swap payments through 2015, according to ReFund America. The $200 million bond that was proposed and postponed would have financed a swap penalty of $106 million over 30 years.

   The aldermen requested a copy of the law department’s review of the swaps, which concluded the city has no legal recourse. Ald. John Arena (45th Ward) said the aldermen are looking at the review and may “ask the legal department to go further," including exploring the experiences of cities that have sued banks, alleging that the swap deals were fraudulent.

   The law department’s review discusses one such case: An arbiter awarded an Alabama sewer utility, which charged that banks had misrepresented the terms of a swap deal. The memo argues that the case isn’t relevant to Chicago’s swaps. According to ReFund America, at least eight small local government bodies have successfully challenged swap deals in court, some winning full refunds, and Houston and Reno have legal claims that are in process. (The Chicago Tribune has reported on some of these cases. [4])

   Two other cases involving big cities are of particular interest. In 2012 Baltimore filed a class action lawsuit against JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America [5], and others charging that their artificial manipulation of Libor – a benchmark interest rate that was used in many of Chicago’s swaps – robbed their clients of millions of dollars in returns on investments such as interest rate swaps. In 2013, Philadelphia filed a similar suit [6].

  The banks being sued by Baltimore and Philadelphia include those that sold big swaps to Chicago and Illinois. The lawsuits are fallout from the still unfolding Libor-rigging scandal [7], in which some big banks are accused of misrepresenting interest rates to profit from trades. With a half-trillion worth of state and local interest rate swaps on the books in the United States before the financial crisis, the artificial lowering of Libor by banks in collusion with each other is estimated to have cost municipalities at least $6 billion [8].

   Overall, it’s a striking illustration of the brutal efficiency of the big banks at extracting every possible ounce of profit. Through recklessness and fraud, they crashed the economy, costing millions of people their jobs and their homes. For this they were rewarded with a trillion-dollar government bailout. Then, as cities and states struggled with the fallout from the crisis, slashing services to their most needy residents, the banks picked their pockets to pull out an additional few billion, just because they could.

   Maybe they can get away with it, but it certainly seems worthwhile putting up a fight to stop them.

Curtis Black is a blogger for The Chicago Reporter.

   The Chicago Reporter is a nonprofit investigative news organization that focuses on race, poverty and income inequality. The Reporter was founded by civil rights activist John McDermott in 1972 to measure the city's progress toward racial equality.  You can donate here [9].

Source URL: https://portside.org/2016-01-25/no-state-budget-banks-still-get-paid-millions

Links:

[1] http://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Turned-Around-Jan-2016.pdf
[2] http://www.refundproject.org/
[3] http://www.thegrassrootscollaborative.org/
[4] http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-82396201/
[5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/2012/07/11/gJQAN3V7dW_story.html
[6] http://articles.philly.com/2013-07-31/business/40897826_1_interest-rate-swaps-london-interbank-offered-rate-libor
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal
[8] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-09/rigged-libor-hits-states-localities-with-6-billion-muni-credit.html
[9] https://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/50480/p/salsa/donation/common/public/?donate_page_KEY=8223

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Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Drones and 'What Makes Us Different'

 www.commondreams.org/views/2016/01/25/drones-and-what-makes-us-different

Monday, January 25, 2016

Drones and 'What Makes Us Different'

Joseph Nevins

  The documentary Drone makes painfully clear that it is the U.S. government’s ability to kill at a distance—with impunity and with widespread support, or at least resignation, of the citizenry—that "makes us different" from other nations. (Still image: Drone, The Documentary)

    Seven years ago this month and three days after Barack Obama assumed the presidency on January 20, 2009, the first drone strike of his administration took place--in a small village in the region of Pakistan known as North Waziristan. It targeted the family compound of Faheem Qureshi, fracturing the young teen’s skull and destroying one of his eyes, while killing, among others, two of his uncles and a 21-year-old cousin. The White House’s intended target, it was later revealed, was not, nor had he ever been, present at the site. About ten months later, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced its decision to award Obama the annual Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

   In his speech at the Oslo City Hall upon accepting the prize on December 10, 2009, Obama insisted that “the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war,” suggesting that U.S. war-waging is somehow superior, more ethical, than those of the country’s adversaries. “That is what makes us different from those whom we fight,” he proclaimed. “That is a source of our strength.”

    No doubt there are many things that distinguish the United States—not least the enormity of its military budget, and its global network of military bases. But as the documentary Drone (which premiered in the United States and Canada in late November and which includes footage from Obama’s speech) makes painfully clear, it is the U.S. government’s ability to kill at a distance—with impunity and with widespread support, or at least resignation, of the citizenry—that also “makes us different.”

    Just as white America must be made to overcome...  an “endemic anti-black bias” to help bring an end to the grossly disproportionate killing of African Americans by police, so, too, must the United States as a whole be made ... to stop the Pentagon’s killing ways abroad.

   Remotely piloted aircraft, what are popularly known as drones, allow the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence apparatus to track and monitor individuals from afar with little risk. According to Brandon Bryant, a former drone operator interviewed in the film states, “We’re the ultimate voyeurs, the ultimate peeping toms. No one is going to catch us.”

    It also allows the Pentagon to engage in what is effectively a global assassination program with little domestic cost. “It’s never been easier for an American president to carry out a killing operation at the ends of the earth at any time in American history,” explains Mark Mazzetti, a reporter with The New York Times. “And when you define the world as a battlefield, that’s a very broad range of operations you can carry out.”

   An explosive series of articles published in October by The Intercept shows just how far-reaching—and, perhaps most damningly, indiscriminate—these operations are. Based on classified documents leaked to the online magazine by an unnamed whistleblower within the U.S. intelligence apparatus, the series exposes the falsehoods underlying official Washington’s spin on drone strikes. While Obama administration officials claim that civilian casualties are not common in drone strikes, the documents make clear that the Pentagon typically does not know who it has killed.

      U.S. airstrikes carried out in northeastern Afghanistan between January 2012 and February 2013 (as part of Operation Haymaker), for example, killed more than 200 people, only 35 of whom were the intended targets. During one five-month period of the operation, according to the documents, nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets. In Yemen and Somalia, where the U.S. has far more limited intelligence capabilities to confirm the people killed are the intended targets, the equivalent ratios may well be much worse.

That the U.S. government can and does kill in this way, and often in countries with which the United States is not even at war, with little protest at home, demonstrates one of the ways imperialism functions: the deaths of “others,” particularly those associated, even if only by virtue of where they happen to reside, with people and places constructed as threats, are not only undeserving of sympathy, they’re also barely noticed.

     Writing soon after the November release of the video of the horrific police murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald—shot 16 times as he was moving away from Chicago police officers—New York Times columnist Charles Blow argues that the “only reason that these killings keep happening is because most of American society tacitly approves or willfully tolerates it. There is no other explanation. If America wanted this to end, it would end.”

     Blow goes on to say that the “exceeding sad and dreadfully profound truth is that America — the majority of America, and that generally means much of white America — has turned away, averted its gaze and refused to take a strong moral stance in opposition. That’s the same as granting silent approval.”

     These observations could just as easily apply to the Obama administration’s brutality toward Faheem Qureshi and the killing of his loved ones—and of so many others around the world. Just as white America must be made to overcome what Blow calls an “endemic anti-black bias” to help bring an end to the grossly disproportionate killing of African Americans by police, so, too, must the United States as a whole be made to “see the issue [in this case drones] as an intolerable human cruelty” to stop the Pentagon’s killing ways abroad.

     Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the London-based human rights organization Reprieve, offers a similar analysis while speaking to a crowd of Pakistanis during the film Drone: “Until America sees your children as they see my children, we will never get justice in the world.”

      Realizing the radically egalitarian vision implied by these words is obviously no easy task. This makes it all the more important that those of us who see all children, and adults, as being inherently of equal worth back the efforts of those opposing killer drones—from those of courageous U.S. air force veterans publicly denouncing the drone program to peace groups such as CODEPINK.

    Supporting such efforts would be one small way to acknowledge what the United States has done to Faheem Qureshi and his family, something the Obama administration has thus far refused to do, and constitute a step in the long journey to a more just world. As Brandon Bryant, one of the air force whistleblowers has asserted, “At the end of our pledge of allegiance, we say ‘with liberty and justice for all.’ I believe that should be applied to not only American citizens, but everyone that we interact with as well, to put them on an equal level and to treat them with respect.”

      In other words, we need to act in a fundamentally different way than one which involves the nationalist proclamation of “what makes us different” (and supposedly better).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Concepcion Picciotto, who held vigil outside the White House for decades, dies

Friends,

If you were a protester at the White House, you knew Concepcion.  She defined the word dedicated.  In an antiwar protest circa 2006, we took a coffin to the White House from Lafayette Park.  The police did not arrest our delegation, so when we returned to the park we saw members of the Fire Department dousing a fire at the anti-nuke display.  It seems members of the nut-case Freeper movement torched it.  I don't know if the Freepers are still active, but they were quite a nuisance in those days.

Max

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/concepcion-picciotto-who-held-vigil-outside-the-white-house-for-decades-dies/2016/01/25/e0f829e2-c3b0-11e5-a4aa-f25866ba0dc6_story.html

National

Concepcion Picciotto, who held vigil outside the White House for decades, dies

Connie Picciotto, who has maintained a long protest vigil in front of the White House, in 2013. (Bill O'Leary/TWP)

By Caitlin Gibson January 25 at 5:52 PM  

Concepcion Picciotto, the protester who maintained a peace vigil outside the White House for more than three decades, a demonstration widely considered to be the longest-running act of political protest in U.S. history, died Jan. 25 at a housing facility operated by N Street Village, a nonprofit that supports homeless women in Washington. She was believed to be 80.

She had recently suffered a fall, but the immediate cause of death was not known, said Schroeder Stribling, the shelter’s executive director.

Ms. Picciotto — a Spanish immigrant known to many as “Connie” or “Conchita” — was the primary guardian of the anti-nuclear-proliferation vigil stationed along Pennsylvania Avenue.

[Connie Picciotto has kept vigil near the White House for decades. Why, and at what cost?]

In a 2013 profile in The Washington Post, Ms. Picciotto said she spent more than 30 years of her life outside the White House “to stop the world from being destroyed.”

Connie Picciotto hands out literature to tourists in Lafayette Square on April 3, 2013. (Bill O'Leary/WASHINGTON POST)

Through her presence, she said she hoped to remind others to take whatever action they could, however small, to help end wars and stop violence, particularly against children.

Ms. Picciotto, a diminutive woman perpetually clad in a helmet and headscarf, was a curious and at times controversial figure in Washington. Fellow activists lauded her as a heroine. Critics and even casual passersby, reading her hand-lettered signs, dismissed her as foolish, perhaps unwell. Ms. Picciotto was quick to share elaborate accounts of persecution by the government, which she considered responsible for many of her physical ailments.

Ellen Thomas, a demonstrator who protested alongside Ms. Picciotto for decades, told The Post in 2013 that the truth was somewhere in between. She acknowledged that there were “issues that haven’t been addressed” where Ms. Picciotto’s mental health was concerned but lauded her dedication and stamina.

Ms. Picciotto spoke little of her life before 1960, when she emigrated to New York City and worked as a receptionist for the economic and commercial office of the Spanish Embassy. She met an Italian man who became her husband in 1969, with whom she adopted an infant daughter, she said.

Ms. Picciotto first came to the White House in 1979, she said, after she came to believe that her husband had orchestrated an illegal adoption and arranged to have Ms. Picciotto separated from their child and committed. She believed she was the target of a web of conspiracies — involving doctors, lawyers and the government — and hoped that elected officials could help get her daughter back.

But that never happened. Ms. Picciotto said she last saw the child when the girl was a toddler.

She had just given up on reconnecting with her daughter when she metWilliam Thomas, a self-described wanderer, philosopher and peace activist who founded the peace vigil along Pennsylvania Avenue. Ms. Picciotto joined Thomas there in 1981 — since she could not help her own child, she said, she wanted to do what she could to help other children — and the two became a fixture in the park.

They were joined in 1984 by Ellen Benjamin, who soon married Thomas. The budding romance sparked hostility from Ms. Picciotto, who questioned Ellen Thomas’s motives for joining the protest and believed the new woman was after William Thomas’s money.

But despite that perpetual tension, Ellen Thomas told The Post, the trio protested together in the park for 25 years. The group’s grass-roots nuclear disarmament campaign was known as Proposition One, and its crowning achievement came in 1993, when a nuclear disarmament petition circulated by the activists resulted in a ballot initiative passed by District voters.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s congressional delegate, helped the activists prepare a nuclear disarmament and conversion act, which she has since introduced in nearly a dozen sessions of Congress. The legislation has never reached the floor for a vote.

Norton told The Post in 2013 that although the value of the vigil’s presence could not be readily quantified, it has served as an important and ongoing reminder to all who passed by.

“They want to keep the issue of nuclear proliferation and its potential terrible consequences before the public,” Norton said of the protesters. “And they have chosen a prime spot to do it. . . . We won’t ever know what the success is, because it doesn’t have a specific end of the kind we are used to.”

From their rudimentary encampment on the red-brick walkway in Lafayette Square, the protesters demonstrated against wars and military conflicts, survived historic blizzards and scorching heat waves, and endured tense confrontations with passersby and police.

The vigil evolved into a well-recognized feature of the city’s landscape. The makeshift shelter became a regular stop for D.C. tour guides and a topic of discussion in local college classrooms. The vigil and its keepers made a cameo appearance in Michael Moore’s 2004 political documentary film “Fahrenheit 9/11” and starred in another feature-length documentary, “The Oracles of Pennsylvania Avenue” (2011).

When Thomas died in 2009, Ms. Picciotto vowed to continue her protest in his honor. But the vigil’s future was called into question in recent years, as its aging caretaker faced health problems and the possibility of eviction from the home she shared with other activists in Northwest Washington.

After Ms. Picciotto was hit by a cab in 2012 while riding her bicycle, she came to rely heavily on the help of younger activists to maintain the vigil, which could not be left unattended, according to National Park Service rules.

For months, the activists — many of whom lived with Ms. Picciotto at Peace House, a rowhouse owned by Ellen Thomas — took turns guarding the vigil, allowing Ms. Picciotto to scale back her watch to just a few hours each day.

But on two occasions in recent years, activists abandoned their station during overnight shifts, and the shelter and its signs were quickly removed by police. In both instances, the station and its signs were later returned by authorities.

Peace House was sold last year,, and Ms. Picciotto eventually found shelter at N Street Village, within walking distance of her vigil. “I have to be here,” she said of her work. “This is my life.”

Caitlin Gibson is a feature writer at The Washington Post.

© Copyright 1996-2016 The Washington Post Company 

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

US Escalates Battle to Keep Guantánamo Force-Feeding Tapes Hidden

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/34797-us-escalates-battle-to-keep-guantanamo-force-feeding-tapes-hidden

A chair used for force-feeding. (photo: Charles Dharapak/STF)

US Escalates Battle to Keep Guantánamo Force-Feeding Tapes Hidden

By Cora Currier, The Intercept

24 January 16

   The government has refused to meet the deadline for the release of videotapes that show a detainee at Guantánamo being force-fed while on hunger strike.

   A federal judge had given the government until Friday, January 22, to release around 11 hours of footage in which a Syrian detainee, Abu Wa’el Dhiab, is forcibly removed from his cell, restrained, and force-fed. Dhiab’s lawyers have called the footage “extremely disturbing.”

    In a notice filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., lawyers for the Justice Department said that they would appeal the judge’s order to release the tapes. The government has previously said that the videos are properly classified, and that if released, they might “inflame Muslim sensitivities overseas.”

  The lawsuit originated when Dhiab asked a judge to halt what he said was a painful and punitive procedure of force-feeding. Dhiab was released to Uruguay in December 2014, but a group of news organizations, including The Intercept’s parent company, First Look Media,intervened in the case to argue that the videos should be made public.

   U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler originally ordered the videos released in October 2014, but the government has pushed back with appeals and delayed with arguments over redactions.

   “It’s disappointing that — yet again — Obama’s lawyers have suppressed the evidence that shows most eloquently why the president is right, and Guantánamo ought to close,” Cori Crider, an attorney with the human rights group Reprieve, said in a statement. Crider, who has seen the tapes, said they “would make your blood run cold.”

   In an editorial published Wednesday, the Miami Herald — whose reporter Carol Rosenberg is the most stalwart observer of operations at the detention center — said that appealing to prevent the release of the videos would be tantamount to “aiding, basically, a government cover-up” of detainee abuse.

   The paper compared the tapes to the infamous photos of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, writing that “disclosure of such horrors, though difficult to hear and to see, is at the foundation of Americans’ right to know what it being done on their behalf.”

   Rosenberg has been tracking the number of Guantánamo detainees on hunger strike since a mass protest began in March 2013. At one point, more than 100 detainees were refusing food, and nearly half of them were being tube-fed. The Pentagon stopped publicly reporting the numbers of detainees refusing food or being force-fed in December 2013, saying that it was simply a way for the detainees to “draw attention to themselves, and so we’re not going to help them do that.”

   In recent weeks, the Obama administration has transferred 16 men out of Guantánamo, part of a final-year push to close the prison.  Last week, 10 Yemeni prisoners were sent to Oman. Many of Guantánamo’s so-called forever prisoners — men the Obama administration could not charge with a crime, but whom it deems too dangerous to release — have been alerted that they are eligible for hearings with interagency review boards, which will evaluate their status (although how swiftly those reviews will actually proceed is an open question).

    The Pentagon announced Thursday that two men had been resettled in Balkan nations. A third man, Mohammed Bwazir of Yemen, refused to go to the unnamed country that had agreed to take him.

   “He’s been in Guantánamo so long that he was terrified about going to a country other than one where he had family,” Bwazir’s lawyer told the Miami Herald.

With today’s transfers, 91 detainees remain at Guantánamo.

C 2015 Reader Supported News

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Baltimore Activist Alert - January 26 through March 30, 2016

20] Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Exhibition - through Mar. 30

21] A World on Fire: Strengthening Humanitarian Response – Jan. 26

22] Labor rights in Bangladesh – Jan. 26

23] Philadelphia Peace Vigil – Jan. 26

24] Protest JHU drone research – Jan. 26

25] Native Americans and radioactive pollution – Jan. 26 & 28

26] Community needs – Jan. 26

27] Refugee webinar – Jan. 27

28] Book talk on Jesse Holland’s "The Invisibles” – Jan. 27

29] The Black Diaspora – Jan. 27

30] Film COWSPIRACY – Jan. 27

31] Film HANDS UP – Jan. 27

32] See the play SWEAT – Jan. 27

33] Protect public and environmental health – Jan. 27

34] Student debt crisis – Jan. 28

35] Lobby for solitary confinement bills – Jan. 28

36] Land Trusts – Jan. 28

37] Film SALT OF THIS SEA – Jan. 28

38] Nuclear security – Jan. 28

39] People’s State of the Union – Jan. 28

40] Volunteer at Peace Center – Jan. 28

41] Peace group meets – Jan. 28

------

20] – Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Exhibition is a project that began as a call from Beau Beausoleil in 2007 for writers which quickly moved on to incorporate artists, artist books and now includes printmakers all who are responding to bear witness to a tragic loss of a center of literacy and humanity in Iraq. One of the purposes of this project is to let those in the Iraqi Arts Community know that we will not let them endure the destruction of Iraqi culture in silence, that we have a collective voice and we will use it. This was a street of booksellers, printers, and readers. A street where people still felt "safe" among all the words and books. How can we not see the commonality between al- Mutanabbi Street and any street in the world that holds a bookshop or cultural institution? This is the starting point: where language, thought, and reality reside; where memory, ideas, and even dreams wait patiently in their black ink.

A diverse coalition of DC-area universities and arts and literary organizations will present Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here DC 2016, a book arts and cultural festival through Sat., Mar. 5 throughout the Washington, D.C., area. Major exhibitions, programs, and events will commemorate the 2007 bombing of Baghdad’s historic bookselling street, celebrate the free exchange of ideas and knowledge, and stand in solidarity with the people of Iraq. Exhibitions of artwork created in response to the bombing will be featured at multiple venues, including the George Mason University School of Art Gallery, Atrium, Fenwick Library and the Workhouse Art Center, Gelman Library and the Corcoran School of Art and Design at The George Washington University, the Brentwood Arts Exchange, Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, McLean Project for the Arts, Northern Virginia Community College, Olly Olly Gallery, and the Smithsonian American Art/Portrait Gallery Library.

 The exhibitions that are featured at the School of Art Gallery, the Fenwick Library, the Mason Atrium Gallery, and the Workhouse Art Center (plus partners) include three components: Letterpress Printed Broadsides; Artist Books; and Absence and Presence (a call to printmakers). Additionally, each gallery provides new interpretive documentary materials, hands-on workshops, and panels and conversations that will be built around the exhibitions. For a complete list of sites and dates and times go to http://www.amsshdc2016.org/contact-us.html. 

This is a list of some of the sites.  You can see the exhibit, for example, at the Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, 1632 U St., WDC, through Wed., Mar. 30.  It is entitled “Night and the Desert Know Me,” and the curators are Shanti Norris and Spencer Dormitzer.  The exhibit at the Brentwood Arts Exchange, 3901 Rhode Island Ave., Brentwood, MD 20722, runs through Sat., Mar. 12 -- “Selections from Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here.” The curator of the exhibit is Phil Davis.  Also see the exhibit at the Tyler Gallery, Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, 500 17th St. NW, WDC, through Sun., Mar. 20--“Al-Mutanabbi Street in Books, Prints & Poetry.” Enjoy a reception on Fri., Mar. 4 from 1 to 2:30 PM.  Also you can see this exhibit at the ​Smithsonian American Art/Portrait Gallery, 750 9th St. NW, Room 2100, WDC 20001-4505 from Mon., Feb. 1 through Wed., Mar. 30 -- “Come Together: American Artists Respond to Al-Mutanabbi Street.” The curator is Anne Evenhaugen, and a reception on Mon., Feb. 1 from 5 to 7 PM.

21] – On Tues., Jan. 26 at 9:30 AM come to the United States Institute for Peace, 2301 Constitution Ave. NW, WDC 20037, for A World on Fire: Strengthening Humanitarian Response - The global humanitarian system is stretched to its limits. The world faces the greatest flood of refugees since World War II, and the United Nations is handling an unprecedented number of simultaneous crises. Join US Institute of Peace and Oxfam America for a discussion of how the international community can strengthen the humanitarian system and increase the ability of constructive national leaders and civil society organizations to withstand catastrophic events that can spur a cycle of crisis, conflict and violence.

  The humanitarian system has been weakened by shocks of growing intensity and frequency. The gap between humanitarian needs and the system’s capacity to respond is likely to widen as climate change triggers natural disasters that disproportionately affect the world’s poorest people. Without the tools and support to recover from such events, vulnerable populations risk getting caught in a vicious sequence of calamity, conflict and collapse. The approaching U.N.-sponsored World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul in late May will give the global community – including public and private donors, assistance professionals, and national and local leaders in affected areas – a chance to address and respond to the growing number of conflict-related and other humanitarian crises. Speakers at the USIP-Oxfam forum will include Jemilah Mahmood, a doctor and founder of MERCY Malaysia who until recently led the Summit secretariat. The panelists will highlight innovations that could broaden the current toolkit during crisis and strengthen the international system for aid in the face of its expanding challenges.  RSVP at ttps://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-world-on-fire-strengthening-humanitarian-response-tickets-20131556026.

22] – On Tues., Jan. 26 from 1 to 2 PM in the Cannon House Office Building, Room 234, attend the launch of the International Labor Rights Forum's report on worker voice and safety in Bangladesh's apparel industry--Workers’ Voices and Safety in the Apparel Industry: Towards a New Phase of Social Safety Reforms.  Please join Representatives Rosa DeLauro, Sander M. Levin, Jan Schakowsky, and Jackie Speier for a briefing and discussion of strategies to protect workers’ right to have a say in their safety. The presentations will include expert presentations on workers’ ability to secure their safety at work. 

Two and a half years after the Rana Plaza building collapse and the launch of the first industrial reform programs to address the pervasive fire and structural hazards in Bangladeshi garment factories, workers report they will not be safe without a voice at work.  A new 100-page report Our, describes a chilling web of social relations of intimidation and violence that spans factories and apparel companies, workers’ communities, government agencies, law enforcement, and even their families. The more than 70 workers interviewed for the report spoke passionately about the ways they and their coworkers were silenced, denied access to knowledge, excluded from meaningful participation in matters of their own safety, sometimes violently and brutally, often more subtly. Workers spoke about excessive production quotas and wages so low they are effectively trapped in abusive conditions, and about sexual harassment and abuse for which the victims are blamed. RSVP appreciated, but not required, to liana@ilrf.org.

23] – Each Tuesday from 4:30 - 5:30 PM, the Catholic Peace Fellowship-Philadelphia for peace in Afghanistan and Iraq gathers at the Suburban Station, 16th St. & JFK Blvd., at the entrance to Tracks 3 and 4 on the mezzanine.  The next vigil is Jan. 26.  Call 215-426-0364.

24] – Vigil to say "No Drone Research at JHU" each Tuesday at 33rd & North Charles Sts. Join this ongoing vigil on Jan. 26  from 5:30 to 6:30  PM.  Call Max at 410-366-1637.

25] –Hear from people directly affected by the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle. Hear from communities that will warn you about what is happening to their communities from radioactive pollution.  The panel presentation will include members of the Sioux Nation, the Navajo Nation, and Acoma Pueblo. On Tues., Jan. 26 from 6 to 9 PM, there is a Meet and Greet in the La Casa Building with the Environment & Social Justice Organization, 3166 Mount Pleasant St. NW, WDC. The delegation of Native Americans will alert people to the impacts that radiation poisoning from multiple local sources is having on their communities. They call themselves the canaries in the coal mine and they want to warn us about the invisible killer that they are experiencing.  The delegation is as follows Harold One Feather – Standing Rock Sioux Nation, Klee Benally – Navajo Nation, JD Buckley - Oglala Sioux Nation, Petuuche Gilbert – Acoma Pueblo, Charmaine White Face – Oglala Sioux Nation, Leona Morgan – Navajo Nation and Tommy Rock – Navajo Nation.

On Thurs., Jan. 28 from 7 to 9 PM, hear them at the Nipponzan Myohoji Temple, 4900 - 16th St. NW, WDC.  Email bhdefenders@msn.com or go to http://www.cleanupthemines.org/contact/.  

26] – Come to the GW Progressive Student Union for Organizing Across Issues- A Panel on Community Needs and the Intersections of Movements in Gelman Library #702, 2140 H St. NW, WDC, on Tues., Jan. 26 from 7 to 8:30 PM.  What is community organizing? How do progressive movements intersect? Come hear from organizers in the DMV working on a range of social justice issues about community needs and the intersection of struggles. Go to https://www.facebook.com/events/918511484923462/.

27] – On Wed., Jan. 27 at noon you are invited to a live-streamed conversation called “Overwhelmed: Syrian refugee crisis in context.” Raed Jarrar of AFSC says If you’re like me, not a day goes by when you’re not reminded of the tragedy and terror facing millions of Syrians. Women with babies strapped to their backs, walking across international borders. Families are crying and cold as they emerge from overcrowded rubber dinghies on the shore. People seeking safety pressing against fences lined by armed guards.  RSVP for the webinar at http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/50601/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=83947.  Also speaking are Layla Razavi, director of Human Migration and Mobility, who coordinates AFSC’s immigrant rights programs across the U.S. and Giovanna Negretti, AFSC’s Middle East regional director, based in Amman, Jordan. 

28] –Go to Busboys and Poets (14th and V), 2021 14th St. NW, WDC, on Wed., Jan. 27 at 6:30 PM for a book talk on Jesse Holland’s "The Invisibles: The untold Story of African American Slaves in the White House." This is an unconventional and eye-opening tour of D.C. in Black Men Built the Capital, pointing out the many iconic buildings and monuments—including the Capital Dome’s Statue of Freedom—constructed at least in part by enslaved men. In his second book Holland, a longtime AP Washington correspondent who now serves the organization as the race, ethnicity and demographics writer, focuses on the many and far-reaching and often overlooked roles African Americans played in the history of the White House. Ten of the first twelve presidents were slave owners, and they brought slaves with them to the capital. Holland fleshes out the lives of these men and women, recounts their experiences in the new capital, and profiles the early chief executives’ attitudes on race. Contact Susan Coll, at events@politics-prose.com.

29] – Come to the UNION TEMPLE Baptist Church, 1225 W St. SE, WDC 20020, on Wed., Jan. 27 from- 6:30 to 8:30 PM to hear from the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, a United Nations body of independent experts dedicated to improving the human rights situation of the Black Diaspora. Pan-African Community Action and Empower DC will host this DMV Community Town Hall Meeting with the delegation to hear from the Black community living in the DC, Maryland and Virginia area directly impacted by issues like gentrification, police brutality, and gender oppressions.  There will be a special artistic performance by Tarica June [https://taricajune.bandcamp.com/].  Contact paca@protonmail.com or call 202-787-5229.

30] – On Wed., Jan. 27 from 7 to 9 PM in the Duggan Room [lower terrace level of the new church, which sits back from the road at 11701 Clopper Road, Gaithersburg 20878, the Eco-Action Team's Green Screen at St. Rose presents COWSPIRACY, a shocking yet sometimes humorous video, depicting the "most destructive industry facing the planet today."  Art Milholland, M.D. Board Member of Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility, will guide a discussion of such questions as How can I limit the emergence of drug resistant bacteria or Why was Sister Dorothy Stang murdered while in the Amazon Basin of Brazil? Come away with recipes for delicious meatless meals. Email pmcuff@aol.com.

31] –  Go to GW Betts Theatre, 800 21st St. NW, WDC, on Wed., Jan. 27 from 7 to 9 PM to see HANDS UP by SimplyZinhle Productions which captures the spirit of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, from Ferguson to Baltimore.  Following the documentary screening, there will be a panel discussion and Q&A moderated by award-winning Washington Post investigative reporter, Cheryl Thompson. RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hands-up-king-week-documentary-screening-tickets-20696743517?utm-medium=discovery&utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-source=cp&utm-term=listing.

32] – On Wed., Jan. 27 at 7:30 PM be there for Union Night – Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s World Premiere of SWEAT which takes place at Arena Stage, Kreeger Theater.  Performances will run through Sun., Feb. 21.  A group of close friends shares everything: drinks, secrets and laughs. But when rumors of layoffs shake up the local factory, the fragile bonds of their community begin to fray and a horrific crime sends shock waves across two generations. This gripping world premiere by acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage (Ruined) explores America’s industrial decline at the turn of the millennium by examining the inhabitants of one Pennsylvania town who still struggle to reclaim what’s lost, find redemption and redefine themselves in a new century.  Call 202.488.4380 to get your tickets.

33] – Maryland’s 90-day legislative session has begun, and with more than 2,300 bills in line for drafting, this is definitely a year to pay close attention. Learn about bills that will protect public and environmental health, and to hear from and speak to Maryland law-makers.  Natalie Burke, president of CommonHealth ACTION, will speak on opportunities to address health disparities in Maryland. Health in Annapolis Night is happening on Tues., Jan. 26 from 5 to 7 PM in the MILLER SENATE OFFICE BUILDING, 11 BLADEN ST., ANNAPOLIS 21401.  RSVP at RCRehr@gmail.com.

34] – On Thurs., Jan. 28 from 9 AM to 4 PM, the Young Invincibles will host student debtors from across the country and provide them with information on student loan repayment programs, how to use their debt story as an advocacy tool, and hear from US Senator Elizabeth Warren about the future of student debt reform. This is happening at the University of the District of Columbia- Union Station, 801 North Capital St. NE, WDC.  The event was organized to inform the public of the severity of the student debt crisis. The total student debt in this country has surpassed 1.3 trillion dollars and has become the second largest source of debt in the United States. The average college graduate is currently graduating with just under $30k of debt and delinquencies on student debt payments has risen greatly in recent years. Minorities from poor socioeconomic backgrounds are carrying much of this student debt burden because of the necessity of using loans to fund their higher education. Email Jasmin.Hicks@younginvencibles.org.

35] – On Thurs., Jan. 28 from 9:30 AM through 2 PM, attend Maryland Advocacy Day in House Office Building, Room 406, 6 Bladen Street, Annapolis protect public and environmental health.  Register by contacting suzanneohatnick@comcast.net.

36] – On Thurs., Jan. 28 from 11 AM to 1 PM, with a light lunch included, come to the University of Maryland School of Social Work Auditorium, 525 W. Redwood St., Baltimore 21201 and join the University of Maryland School of Law Community Development Clinic, The University of Baltimore Community Development Clinic, and the University of Maryland Social Work Community Outreach Service to unveil the innovative findings of the Baltimore Housing Roundtable’s White Paper Report!  Community + Land + Trust describes how Baltimore’s development policies have failed to create affordable housing and good paying jobs for low-income residents and offers an alternative vision that prioritizes human rights and human needs. The creation of community land trusts and a renewed vacant housing initiative will create neighborhood-based institutions to drive development, employ city residents, and create permanently affordable housing that is equitable and inclusive. Harry Smith, Director of Sustainable Economic Development & Dudley Neighbors, Inc will be speaking on a successful Land Trust initiative in Boston. Explore innovative approaches to Baltimore’s development challenges, learn from area experts, and enjoy a light reception! RSVP at http://www.unitedworkers.org/community_land_trust_tools_for_development_without_displacement.

37] –    On Thurs., Jan. 28 from 12:30 to 2:15 PM, join the Palestine Center at the Jerusalem Fund Jerusalem Fund, 2425 Virginia Ave. NW, WDC 20037,  for SALT OF THIS SEA, an award-winning classic by one of the younger auteurs of Palestinian cinema, Annemarie Jacir, who is considered the first Palestinian woman to direct a feature film.  It is also her first feature.  Attendance is free and open to the public.  "Sixty years after her grandparents' exile from Jaffa, Soraya (Suheir Hammad) leaves Brooklyn to live in her homeland. Discovering that her family's bank account was frozen after the Arab-Israeli War, she becomes determined to reclaim her birthright, through whatever means necessary.  With the help of her disillusioned lover Emad (Saleh Bakri) and his filmmaker pal Marwan (Riyad Ideis), they plan on one big heist to settle the historical debt. Driving through the countryside like an Arab (and pacifist) Bonnie and Clyde, Soraya and Emad discover their roots while rejecting their status as exiles." Go to http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/d/EventDetails/i/57079.

38} – On Thurs., Jan. 28 from 2 to 3:30 PM, check out "Energizing Nuclear Security: A Sensible Summit Proposal" with five speakers at the Stimson Center, Eighth Floor, 1211 Connecticut Ave. NW, WDC. RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1UBvDdfKwn0Tk_Hu67qZ4Sh-

39] – At the DC Public Library-Mt. Pleasant, 3160 16th St. NW, WDC, on Thurs., Jan. 28 at 6:30 PM, tune in to the second annual People's State of the Union in Washington, DC. Reflect on the urgent need for change and transformation in the city and country. What are the stories that our elected leaders- from council members to president- need to hear? How can we shift power by telling and sharing our own stories? Join the People's State of the Union story circle! This is a powerful way of coming together, getting to know one another, and reflecting on the state of the community, country, and world.  A free toolkit is available at www.usdac.us/psotu.  Go to https://www.facebook.com/events/673486356087040/.

40] – Volunteer with the Washington Peace Center, 1525 Newton St., WDC, on Thurs., Jan. 28 from 7 to 8 PM.  As the New Year begins to pick up speed, there are lots of opportunities for volunteers to get involved with the Peace Center.  Take part in planning the Activist Awards Grassroots Gala, table at events, and support the local trainers’ network. Come to the Spring Orientation! RSVP at Darakshan@washingtonpeacecenter.org or calling 202-234-2000 - please include your general volunteering availability.

41] – The Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore now meets on Thursdays at 7:30 PM, and the meetings take place at Max’s residence.  There will be a meeting on Thurs., Jan. 28 at 7:30 PM.  The agenda will include Freddie Gray & local organizing, killer drones and Obama, an action at the State of the Union, the refugees, the MLK march and the unending wars. Call 410-323-1607 or email mobuszewski at verizon.net.

To be continued.

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/.

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs