Stop the Raids!

 

TBR-Op-ed, www.RootsAction.org

RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act of 1970) laws were initially designed to prosecute powerful organized crime syndicates like the Mafia. Over the past few years, RICO has been used to excessively charge young people of color from low-income neighborhoods as if they were gangsters.

Click here to sign this petition to Congress:

STOP THE RAIDS, REFORM RICO AND END OVER-PROSECUTION OF OUR COMMUNITIES.

We are asking you to act now to #ReformRICO and stop prosecutors from using these federal laws, originally designed to take down the Mob, to score easy convictions against poor communities of color. Innocent teens and young adults are often forced to take plea deals when faced with first-degree conspiracy counts on which they can face a maximum of 25-years-to-life in prison.

The overwhelming majority of those charged never see trial. RICO laws are disastrous and have ruined lives, torn apart families and contributed to the enormous racial inequities we have come to expect with mass incarceration.

Click here to add your name.

Trump's inaugural pledge for "law and order" is coded messaging to law enforcement agencies, both local and federal, that will empower them to continue their abusive, racialized policing. This will mean more arrests and more incarceration at a time when America should be moving away from needless punishment of Blacks and Latinos.

Collaboration between local police departments and federal law enforcement in large, military-style "gang" raids have been cheered on by sensationalized media reports. The reports describe these young men as all being dangerous and part of organized criminal enterprises -- which they were not.

Over the past few years we have seen the emergence of a bipartisan consensus for criminal and civil justice reforms. Movements are growing across our nation urging legislators to change unfair laws that hurt families and communities of color. A wasted $80 billion a year spent on prisons actually dehumanizes inmates, many of whom are detained in inhumane conditions, some tortured in solitary confinement and denied visits or communication with their families.

Sign this petition, spearheaded by family members of those charged with RICO.

After signing the petition, please use the tools on the next webpage to share it with your friends.

This work is only possible with your financial support. Please chip in $3 now.

-- The RootsAction.org Team

P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Frances Fox Piven, Lila Garrett, Phil Donahue, Sonali Kolhatkar, and many others.

  www.RootsAction.org

 

 Blowing The Whistle On Drones
TBR-Op-ed, info@rootsaction.org

As one of the very few drone whistleblowers in the world, Cian Westmoreland needs and deserves our support.

Cian is the first recipient of the Drone Whistleblower Fellowship. In the past he was a U.S. Air Force technician who worked on the drone program. Now he takes to heart a statement by Martin Luther King Jr. that remains crucial in 2017: “Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.”

Please support the work of Cian Westmoreland by making a tax-deductible contribution to the Drone Fellowship Program of the RootsAction Education Fund.

Speaking clearly about compelling moral issues, Cian offers a blunt perspective on the U.S. drone war: “In this war on terror, we have become terror. Drones are heartless by design, and the act of killing through them can become routine and bureaucratic.”

Cian reports: “I have been connecting, speaking, writing and helping where I can all over Europe.” He has put in a lot of time in Germany, which hosts U.S. military bases directly involved in the drone war.

When Cian speaks out, he is educating activists, journalists, elected officials and the general public. In early winter, for instance, he spoke to 3,000 “hackers and hacktivists” from around the world at the huge Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg. There he addressed “the Global Assassination Grid.”

At the Hamburg conference, “I spoke of the various layers of dehumanizing elements in the drone program to include the structural, political, and psychological. It was not only understood but well received. A professor of mathematics at Cambridge University approached me afterward and said that he’s noticed the problem of students not connecting their work to real life, and that my talk inspired him to go back and show my speech to them.”

It’s far from easy, living out of a suitcase, far from home, doing this kind of work. The pressures are severe, and the resources are thin. Please help Cian Westmoreland keep going with a tax-deductible donation to the Drone Fellowship program.

It’s vital for Cian to be doing what he’s doing at this time. As he explains: “Germany is now getting prepared for Trump’s world, and Germans are now at a point where they are discussing the need to take a normative stance against Trump’s stance on Muslims and the brutal war strategy of annihilation that the Secretary of Defense, General James Mattis, is promising.”

Cian adds: “It appears that Germany is now deciding how they will work with the United States. Will they be compliant or will they resist?”

Meanwhile, Cian is also engaged in public outreach elsewhere in Europe, most crucially in the U.K. and Italy where two other critical pieces of the global drone infrastructure are based.

We hope that you’ll keep supporting Cian Westmoreland’s important work as a drone whistleblower. You can show support now by making a donation to the Drone Whistleblower Fellowship.

For Cian, stepping forward as a whistleblower has been very difficult -- and morally imperative.

Now, your tax-deductible contribution -- in solidarity with Cian Westmoreland’s whistleblowing work -- is needed to support the first Drone Whistleblower Fellowship.