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More GITMO From front page
Witness Against Torture has launched a
rolling fast on behalf of the 41 prisoners
still mercilessly detained in
Guantanamo. Organized as
#foreverhumanbeings, participants like
ourselves choose a day or days upon
which to fast, bringing awareness to the
fate of each of the 41 men. All potentially
face lifetimes of detention. Five have
been cleared for release by the US
government itself. But they were still in
Guantnamo when Trump took office,
and Trump has halted all transfers from
the prison.
This fast has already begun and is
ongoing throughout June until it ends on
the 5th of July. It will span a period of 41 days, including the holy month of
Ramadan.
Guantnamo has always been a place of torture and the violation of human
rights. It must close, no matter who is president. President Obama failed in
his pledge to shutter the prison. Trump has threatened to bring new captives
there. The thought of Trump whose reckless disregard for the US
Constitution is every day revealed having Guantnamo as his private,
offshore gulag is terrifying. Any day, we could learn that the Trump
administration has sent a new captive to Guantnamo.
The continued existence of Guantnamo also feeds a resurgent Islamophobia
and politics of fear and hate, typified by Trumps unconstitutional Muslim
travel ban. Guantnamo never housed simply the worst of the worst www.witnessagainsttorture.com, #foreverhumanbeings, #41menatGitmo
Summer of Love Continues from Front page -
That evening we protesters came out in force and so did the police who
were taking seriously our lack of respect for the standing President. I was with
a longtime girlfriend who was feeling ambivalent about Johnson. We had
asked the Ouija Board about him and it painstakingly spelled out E, then
V. Was an occult indictment of the President about to be delivered? The
next letter was A. EVA? Where was this going? To an L. EVAL. Counterculture. Its time again for a renewal.
What a sneaky, judgmental Ouija Board The outcome was that she was with
me in the street outside Century City, hundreds of us facing rows of cops
there to shield our Eval President.
Poor Lyndon. The novelist du jour, Norman Mailer, would soon be asking us
to hang the Presidents portrait upside down. No wonder the cops were
worried. More than worried. As we stood there in the front row, I watched a
sergeant go down the line of anxious cops and one by one they took o their
ties and watches. These werent robocops in those days, just guys in cotton
uniforms. But the billyclubs were stout enough and I told my friend we are
going to start moving to the back of the demo, quickly. It was only a few
minutes and then the cops charged.
It took 33 years at another demo in L.A. protesting Gores nomination before
a cops billyclub found my flesh. But on this summers day in L.A, me and my
friend were far enough away when the billyclubs began to flail. Running down
Olympic Blvd a young black woman flashed me the V. It was the first time I
had ever seen the peace sign with those two fingers. It spoke to me hey
white boy, welcome to the real world.
Hate was prominent in the Summer of Love. You couldnt have a demo
without the Nazis and the Cubans showing up. Sometimes, as in a demo in
Torrance, the two would arrive simultaneously, surrounding the protesters,
only to start fighting each other. The L. A. Peace Movement, however, had 30
or 40 monitors who trained resolutely and, when the violence started, would
literally smother it. I was too much of an anarchist to put on a white armband
but we need something like a Hug Brigade in this age of fresh hate.
The Summer of Love rolled on anyhow. L.A. couldnt match the Haight,
although me and my friends had Venice West. By October, a bunch of us were
burning our draft cards everywhere and in San Francisco there was a funeral
for Hippy and the birth of Freak to take its place. Fledgling stoners were
listening to the Jeerson Airplane nonstop. Joni and Neil and CSN were
giving L.A. a sound of its own. Alcohol was out the window and Weed ruled.
Weed still rules and the Freaks in October 67 began moving north. The
Hippies were coming and they kept coming from all over the world. We had
ignited a world-wide movement but kept busy grounding it with our weekly
Boogies and dreaming it into being with Countercultural institutions. It took a
few years but we dubbed ourselves the Mateel Nation thanks to our tribal
poet Jim Deerhawk and we brought black music here to
speak for our white culture. Love is the answer, sang our
poet.
The winter of hate has passed here in SoHum, but the
hate hasnt. Spring arrived in time to host several
wannabe death squad types spying with drones!!,
destroying campsites!!, slashing tents!!, brandishing
machetes when caught!!. In our small community it has
been easy to identify the perps as part of the
leadership of our local vigilante mob, under the
influence of Money. Hate and Love, it seems, are still
printed on the fists of each of our hands, brandished
under our noses like those old days, fifty years ago.
Choosing seems too easy.
www.greenfuse.work
terrorists, as the Bush administration
claimed. The vast majority of men held
there never engaged in hostilities against
the United States. By staying open,
Guantnamo reinforces the terrible lie
that all Muslims are dangerous, to be
feared or even cut out of American life.
To work to close Guantnamo is to
support tolerance, pluralism, and respect
for the rule of law.
Witness Against Torture formed in 2005
when 25 Americans went to Guantnamo
Bay and attempted to visit the detention
facility. The group began to organize
more broadly to shut down Guantnamo,
end indefinite detention and torture and
call out Islamophobia.
During this campaign to close down Guantanamo, the words and profiles of
the detainees will be offered through social media. On June 23, an all-day
vigil at the White House will take place. Along with the fast, participants will
be encouraged to coordinate phone calls, emails and draw links between
Guantnamo, institutionalized Islamophobia, all forms of racism, and abuses
in the US criminal justice and prison systems
Witness Against Torture will carry on in its activities until torture is decisively
ended, its victims are fully acknowledged, Guantnamo and similar facilities
are closed, and those who ordered and committed torture are held to
account. Please join in this campaign of support for the men locked away,
now forever, at Guantnamo and work with the campaign to close the prison!
We need a Summer of Love more than ever. Whatever the ups and downs of
1967, the years that followed right into the mid-seventies were revolutionary in
their after-eects. Social Revolutionary that is feminism, the gay movement,
American Indian Movement, you name it, our Movement included it. With an
Alternative Media to record it. Although the mainstream establishment shut
this revolution out of common consciousness, it continued under the radar in
places like Northern California where we were busy going Beyond
Downey is gone. At the behest of Humboldts money interests, the ex-Sheri
has overseen decades of illegal evictions from along the Freeway Forest, the
area between the two highways stretching from Garberville to Dean
Creek.This has been since the Seventies a handy campsite for travelers .
This practice became unacceptable when the hippies stopped buying land.
By the midNinties the welcome signs came down in GarbervilleThe deputies
went on the oensive, using the same tactics copied by the vigilantes: slash
the tents, threaten the tenants, garbage bag and dump their belongings,
heedless of the eect upon the victims. It is a recipe for death squads.
The supervisors serve the will of rich people and must be removed, one after
another, unless common sense convinces them to follow the Sheri into early
retirement. It is not that County representatives have enabled hate and
vigilante excesses they demand it. Time after time the County
representatives have sermonized about the weakness of the law against the
homeless and then gone on to organize the vigilantes.
I remember a Chamber meeting where representatives from law
enforcement and the county told the merchants the sad tale of law easing up
on evil-doers who thanks to a state measure would soon be on the streets of
SoHum in the hundreds. The reaction from the merchants is all on film
Vigilante! was the cry from every corner of the room. We will take the law
into our own hands, was the general response. I have come to realize that
this was Cop Theater, a set-up meant to provoke this extreme response.
The politicians may direct the action, but the money-seekers set the agenda.
Property-rights continue to serve as the fuzzy, feel good justification for a
ruthless politics that serves profits. To some, the idea of Ownership is of
such ideological important that any private property anywhere in the region
is considered to be under the exclusive guardianship of self-appointed local
business interests.The cops (or vigilante substitutes) are expected to police
this Distopia.
A profit driven business sense of law enforcement entitlement is coupled with
a resistance to any political control of its for-profit agenda. This belief system
is, in fact, ocial Deep North policy. And when instant law enforcement
gratification is not forthcoming, then Vigilante action is recruited to do the job
by the County to placate the rich and powerful. The local Chamber and
Rotary consistently reward vigilante behavior with annual awards.
Our response must be a direct action movement on an
Occupy/Standing Rock model. We know, and the County
knows, who owns what and where in places like the
SoHum Freeway Forest. It is time to start humanizing
landwasted by the freeway with no value except to
poor people. Our Human Rights Advocates movement
is ready to take on the responsibility for secure, clean,
life enhancing camps in areas outside the private
property system. We must do it for ourselves. We invite
you to join our Summer of Love.
Paul Encimer
thepeopleswhistle@greenfuse.work