Solidarity Statement from Hong Kong to Black Communities in the US

Hong Kong…. Ferguson and New York City!

Solidarity Statement with Black Communities in Ferguson, Missouri and NYC

From Hong Kong to Ferguson and NYC, we send you our warmest solidarity!

No to injustice! No to white supremacy!

It was outrageous that the grand jury failed to indict Darren Wilson, who had shot unarmed 18-year old Mike Brown. We agree with you that: “The whole damn system is guilty as hell.”

It was even more outrageous, that after that, Eric Garner’s case also failed to be indicted!

How can anyone trust the justice system, when the police can shoot you dead while unarmed, before you even reach a court? And when a man is killed by a policeman using an illegal chokehold, recorded on video but the policeman is still not even indicted?

All the common sense evidence points to systematic bias, within the police, within the courts and within government. How can democracy exist when these state institutions of courts and law enforcement are ridden with injustice? It is clear to us that genuine democratic governance does not exist in American society.

In Ferguson, the jarring truth of racism and injustice explode with the case of Michael Brown, generating collective outrage against this system that produces these problems. We all know he is sadly, only one of many casualties of racist America.

We are aware that Black and poor communities in America face state violence, not only in the form of police shootings. It manifests in other aspects of your lives: unemployment, racist welfare laws, disproportionate policing, housing segregation, and health disparities.
We recognize that the police are not taking responsibility for your safety. Instead, not only do they squash dissent and free expression, they are sending in military ammunition into the streets of Ferguson. It seems that the US government and the police forces in your country are willing to use aspects of the military violence they have imposed on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, on to you.

London: A Call to Boycott India’s 63rd Republic Day and stand against sexual assaults on women

 DEMONSTRATE OUTSIDE INDIA HOUSE IN LONDON, Aldwych, WC2B 4NA.

11am to 1pm 26^th January 2013

As India prepares to celebrate its 63^rd Republic Day on 26 January 2013, Delhi is trying to come to terms with the recent gang rape of a young woman on a moving bus and her subsequent death. Such rapes have become rampant in the Indian cities and towns. Few months ago London Guardian commented India to be the worst country for women among the G20 nations. Indian rape laws are stringent enough; however, the executive and the judiciary are so much feudal and patriarchal that the conviction rate for rape cases in India between 2001 and 2010 was 26%. In the case of Muslim and Dalit women the rate of conviction is lmost nil as evident from the gang rape case of Bhanwari Devi in Rajasthan.

However a bigger dimension to this is that the Indian state itself has proved time and again to be the biggest perpetuator of rapes and all forms of assaults on women. State violence is institutionalised through a culture of institutional impunity to the police, the paramilitary and the army. In June 1984, hundreds of Sikh women were gang raped in the sanctity of golden temple by the Indian Army during ‘Operation Blue Star’. In the village of Kuman-Poshpura in Kashmir valley, about 100 women were mass raped by the Indian Army in a single night of 23^rd Feb 1991. Hundreds of Muslim women were gang raped by security forces during the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002, as the Chief Minister Narendra Modi just watched. The brutal gang rape and execution of 32 year old Thangjam Manorama in Manipur in July 2004 is another example of Indian Army’s ongoing repression on women in the North-East.

Protests around the world against Zionist attacks on Gaza

A Palestinian youth walks through a damaged apartment hit in an Israeli strike, in Gaza City, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012. Israeli aircraft, tanks and naval gunboats pounded the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and rocket salvoes thudded into southern Israel, as residents on both sides of the frontier holed up at home in anticipation of heavy fighting on the second day of Israel’s offensive against Islamic militants.

Posted on November 14, 2012

ingaza.wordpress.com:  “Let’s increase these protests, worldwide, every day”

(in chronological order date-wise, and geographical order on the day):

TODAY

BETHLEHEM, OCCUPIED PALESTINE: 7:30pm, Manger Square

ISTANBUL, TURKEY: 9pm, al Fateh Mosque

AL QUDS, JERUSALEM, OCCUPIED PALESTINE: 7pm, Damascus Gate

RAMALLAH, OCCUPIED PALESTINE, 7 pm, al Manara Square

WASHINGTON DC: Emergency protest for #Gaza today in Washington, DC at 3:00 pm outside the Israeli embassy. #GazaUnderAttack #PrayForGaza

LONDON, UK: TONIGHT outside the Israeli embassy in London. #Gaza

MONTREAL, CANADA: TONIGHT, 6pm, Hall Building, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve West, Metro Guy-Concordia

NEW SOUTH WALES, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA: 6pm, 182 Church Street Mall, Parramatta, New South WaleS

The campaign to boycott apartheid’s sports teams — then (South African) and now (Israeli)

Israel Dropped the Ball on Human Rights, but We Won’t! by Anna Baltzer, National Organizer, US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation October 18th, 2012

Last week, more than 100 organizations worldwide — including dozens of US Campaign coalition members — signed onto a letter of support for the first Israeli sports team boycott campaign in the United States, organized by member group Minnesota Break the Bonds Campaign (MN BBC). The Israeli basketball team Maccabi-Haifa has been in the United States playing U.S. teams including the Minnesota Timberwolves.

“Stop Playin’ with Apartheid”

When the Timberwolves refused to cancel their game with the Maccabi, almost two dozen activists protested inside the stadium calling on the team to “Stop Playing with Apartheid!” The protestors were ejected from the game for “disruptive and inappropriate messages” (meanwhile, counter-protestors waving Israeli flags were allowed to stay). According to a press release on the MN BBC website, a legal observer and civil rights attorney was assaulted and temporarily arrested by local security and police.

A boycott of Apartheid South Africa’s sports teams proved to be a particularly effective tool in the struggle to end oppression there. At the time, South African teams that had not taken a public stance against apartheid would not be invited by any self-respecting tournament or venue. It should be no different with Apartheid Israel today.

In the same way that South African teams were, almost all Israeli sports teams are cynically used as ambassadors of an apartheid state. Additionally, Maccabi is sponsored by Ya’akov Shahar, chairman of Mayer’s Cars and Trucks Ltd., the official importer to Israel of Volvo. Both companies are heavily involved in the Israeli occupation, as documented by Who Profits?, an Israeli research project. Israeli sports teams like Maccabi are also notorious for racism and racial discrimination against Palestinians.

As the activists in Minnesota stated: “Love Basketball; Hate Apartheid.”

The Palestinian call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) first made its way into U.S. basketball discourse when the US Campaign learned that legendary player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar canceled participation in an Israeli film festival following Israel’s killing of twelve unarmed Palestinian refugees attempting to exercise their internationally-recognized right of return.

It’s time to slam dunk Israeli Apartheid!

For more information on this and related campaigns, see:  http://endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=3293

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For background on the international boycott of South African apartheid’s sports, see this video documentary clip, and the articles which follow:

New Zealand: Solidarity with South African Mine Workers

Global Peace & Justice Auckland Media Release: Picketing South Africa 20 years on…

17 August 2012

For the first time in 20 years New Zealanders will picket a South African
government institution in Auckland tomorrow in protest at yesterday’s killing
of striking mine-workers by South African police.

The appalling scenes where up to 18 workers were shot dead are reminiscent of
the darkest days of apartheid – the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 and the
murder of black school children in Soweto in June 1976 come immediately to
mind.

The precise details of the killings are unclear but irrespective of this the
blame lies squarely with the ANC government which has been in power for 18
years while conditions have become worse for most South Africans.

The mineworkers strike and the struggle for decent housing, health, incomes
and education are the same struggles the ANC once supported but have turned
their backs on since gaining power.

They have betrayed the core principles of the historic “Freedom Charter” and
instead followed free-market economic policies which has meant little change
in the lives of the poorest South Africans while a wealthy elite, which
includes a few black faces now, has become obscenely rich.

Race-based apartheid has been replaced with economic apartheid.

New Zealanders didn’t protest on the streets to pave the way for a small
number of black millionaires to be created at the expense of the majority.

Last year in a withering attack on the ANC Bishop Desmond Tutu said the ANC
government was in some ways worse than the old apartheid regime and told South
African President Jacob Zuma that the day would come when people would pray
for the defeat of the ANC.

For many that day can’t come soon enough.

The picket will be held outside the new South African consulate in Auckland at
1 Kimberley Road, Epsom, Auckland from 2pm tomorrow, Saturday 18th August.

Included on the picket line will be some veterans of the anti-apartheid
struggle.

John Minto
GPJA Spokesperson
Ph (09) 8463173 (H)
Mob 0220850161
johnminto@orcon.net.nz

US, the Criminalization of International Solidarity Activism, and the Carlos Montes case

Carlos Montes: Never Stop Fighting

By Ben Ehrenreich, Los Angeles Magazine, March 1, 2012

The FBI has known about him since his days as a cage-rattling Chicano activist in 1960s L.A. A onetime fugitive and sometime company man, Carlos Montes has kept on confronting the system the only way he knows how. Now the system is closing in.

The first raid came at five o’clock in the morning last May 17. Carlos Montes awoke to a thud. It was the sound, he soon discovered, of his front door splintering open. The sun had not yet risen, and Montes’s bedroom was dark, but in retrospect, he says, he’s glad he didn’t reach for a flashlight—or for a gun. Montes, a retired Xerox salesman, had kept a loaded shotgun behind the headboard and a 9mm pistol beneath a pile of towels on a chair beside the bed since the day he had walked in on an armed burglar a year and a half before. That time a cool head had kept him alive: He persuaded the thief to drive him to a 7-Eleven, where he withdrew as much cash as he could from the ATM and refused to take another step. This time, fortunately, he was half-asleep: He stumbled toward the hallway empty-handed.

Montes, 64, is a tall man, but his shoulders are rounded and slightly stooped, which along with his long, thin legs and the short fuzz of his gray hair, gives him something of the appearance of a bird. Maybe it’s that he always seems to be in motion, as if there’s a motor in him that keeps humming even when he’s sitting still. He often seems to be on the verge of cracking a joke, or as if he’s already laughing at the joke he could be telling. Once I showed up early for an interview and found him on the phone, reserving a space in a yoga class. “Gotta take my yoga, man,” he said, laughing at himself, “or else I’ll blow it!”

Standing in the bedroom of his Alhambra home, Montes saw lights dancing toward him. He hadn’t thought to grab his glasses, but when the lights got close enough, he understood that they were flashlights. Green helmets bobbed behind them. Inches beneath each beam he could make out the black barrel of an automatic rifle.

“Who is it?” Montes shouted.

Voices shouted back: “Police!”

Then they were behind him. They shoved him past the ruins of his front door and out onto the patio. Handcuffs clicked around his wrists. It was a cool, misty morning, but Montes could see that his narrow hillside street had been transformed, rendered unfamiliar and almost unreal by the two green armored vehicles parked in front of his house and by sheriff’s black-and-whites blocking the road to the left and right.

Occupy Oakland Solidarity Demonstration in Egypt

Occupy Oakland chanted, “We Are Tahrir Square”  — from Cairo came the message, “Cairo, Oakland, We Are One Hand.”
Friday, October 28, 2011

Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike continues – now is the time for international solidarity!

The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat
www.freeahmadsaadat.org + info@freeahmadsaadat.org
Twitter: http://twitter.com/freeahmadsaadat

As Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike enters its second week, international solidarity is needed now, more than ever. Prisoners are being sent to isolation in increasing numbers, family visits are being denied, families threatened and identity cards conficated, lawyer visits denied, and belongings and clothing confiscated.

International solidarity to support Palestinian hunger strikers is also growing:

• éirígí, an Irish republican socialist political party, has called for a vigil at the Israeli embassy in Dublin on October 5 to support hunger strikers; the Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat encourages all to attend!
• The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network has issued a strong call for solidarity with the Palestinian hunger strikers, and the striking prisoners in California, including a highlight of the case of Ahmad Sa’adat. We encourage all to sign on.
• A number of international organizations, including the Platform in Solidarity with Palestine, the Irish Republican Socialist Committees, and others, have issued statements and calls in solidarity with the prisoners.
• The website mobilizing solidarity with the California prison hunger strike – where prisoners have also been denied legal visits, lawyers threatened, and retaliation used against prisoners – has also provided information in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners. We urge people to follow the California strike and provide support and solidarity!
• There is a new Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat flyer for download and distribution – download the flyer here and distribute it in your community, at a protest at the Israeli embassy and at local events.
• In Canada, Voice of Palestine Radio will feature an interview with a prisoner support activist live from Ramallah. The show will air at 8-9 PM Pacific Standard Time and can be heard on  Vancouver Cooperative Radio (CFRO) 102.7 FM live at that time for people in Vancouver, Canada. People outside of Vancouver can listen to the show live on the Internet http://www.coopradio.org/content/listen.

Carlos Montes, a voice for change – the 60s, the civil rights movement and today

[Carlos Montes, a prominent leader of Chicano people in Los Angeles for nearly 5 decades, is the latest target of FBI raids aimed at international solidarity activists.  June 16, the same day as the court hearing in his case in Los Angeles, the Committee to Stop FBI repression is leading demonstrations nationwide to protest this repression and to pledge further deepening and broadening of the international solidarity movements.  See stopfbi.net for more information. — Frontlines ed.]

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http://www.alhambrasource.org/stories/voice-change-60s-civil-rights-movement-and-today

by Tim Loc, Staff, Alhambra Source, June 16, 2011

Carlos Montes | Photo from http://www.stopfbi.net

Activist Carlos Montes, a familiar face in the 1960s Chicano Movement, moved to Alhambra 20 years ago because he saw it as a peaceful enclave that was close to his homebase of East Los Angeles. He had a rude awakening on May 17 when the FBI and deputies from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s department executed a search warrant on his home. He was arrested after the search turned up a firearm. Montes speaks to The Alhambra Source on his history with activism, and what he alleges is the FBI’s agenda of targeting activists like him.

You were a co-founder of the Brown Berets. How did it begin?

It started as a civic youth group. It became the Young Chicanos for Community Action, and then it got more involved in direct grassroots organizing. Then it became the Brown Berets, and we dealt with the issues of education and police brutality. It started small, but once it took on a broader view of the political situation it grew really fast. It became part of the movement of the 60s. I grew up in East LA, so I saw the police mistreating the youth. We’d cruise down Whittier Boulevard with the music on in the car and we would be harassed by the sheriffs. And in the schools the students were mistreated and the classes were overcrowded.

Athens, Greece: PROTEST AGAINST THE SLAUGHTER OF PEASANTS IN INDIA

July 6, 2010, Athens: 100 marched on the Indian Embassy, with the banner: "Down with the murderous attack of the Indian State / Victory to the people's resistance!"

SOLIDARITY RALLY FOR THE INDIAN PEOPLE!

JOINT STATEMENT OF LEFT ORGANIZATIONS OF GREECE

A repressive, murderous operation has been launched by the Indian state, with the deployment of hundreds of thousands of police and paramilitary forces, with the participation of criminal paramilitary organizations. It aims to break the resistance of poor peasants in vast areas of India. It is about a mass and militant resistance that involves vast areas dwelled by over 100 millions of poor Adivasi (tribal people) peasants.

The main reason for this military raid is to grab the land of the poor people and pass it to the corporations both multinationals and local for the looting exploitation of natural sources in these vast areas.

Norwegian Port Union Boycotts Israeli Ships

Responding to calls by the Palestinian Workers Union and other calls by different workers unions and organizations around the world, the Norwegian Ports Union decided to join its Swedish counterpart in boycotting all Israeli ships starting on June 15.

The workers will not be loading or unloading Israeli ships docking in their ports.
The decision came coherent with the stances of ports workers, while polls in Norway revealed that nearly half of the Norwegians support this act.

The Port Workers Union in Norway said that the boycott would be for two weeks, while the Swedish boycott would continue until June 24.

The Palestinian Workers Union voiced appeals to Arab, regional and international workers union to take serious stances against the Israeli violations, and its deadly attack against the Freedom Flotilla leading to dozens of casualties among nonviolent international activists transporting aid supplies to the besieged Gaza Strip.

Furthermore, workers unions in South Africa, which is an affiliate with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), also joined the calls for boycotting Israel but, so far, did not declare an actual boycott of Israel.

Workers Unions in Palestine welcomed the stances of Norwegian, Swedish, Greek, British, Canadian and South African unions in rejection and denouncing the Israeli attack against the Palestinians and the activists, and the ongoing illegal Israeli siege on Gaza.

***

Join the Labor and Community Picket of an Israeli Zim Lines Ship — Oakland, California

 

An Israeli ZIM lines ship

Sunday, June 20 5:30 A.M (morning)

Port of Oakland,Berth 57, Middle Harbor Rd.

 

Protest Israel’s Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla!

Boycott Israeli Ships and Goods!

Lift the Blockade NOW – Let Gaza Live!

Bring Down Israel’s Apartheid Wall!

 

Unions, labor federations and other organizations around the world have condemned Israel’s deadly attack against the Gaza Freedom Flotilla on May 31, 2010. Nine people were killed and dozens seriously injured in the Israeli commando attack in international waters on ships attempting to bring humanitarian cargo to the suffering and blockaded people of Gaza. Six people aboard the ships are still missing and presumed dead.