California prison hunger strike starting 3rd week

To protest inhumane conditions, prisoners in the Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit (SHU) began a huger strike on July 1. Prisoners in the SHUs at Corcoran and Folsom joined them. Now, not only are pisoners throughout the state prison system hunger striking in solidarity, but family and friends of prisoners are as well.

“The prisoners are progressing rapidly to the organ damaging consequences of dehydration. They are not drinking water and have decompensated rapidly. A few have tried to sip water but are so sick that they are vomiting it back up. Some are in renal failure and have been unable to make urine for three days. Some are having measured blood sugars in the 30 range, which can be fatal if not treated.”

A few have tried to sip water but are so sick that they are vomiting it back up.
SHU prisoners at Pelican Bay have said they are willing to risk their lives and will continue to strike until their demands are met.
-SF Bay View

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) finally responded to pressure from strikers and outside supporters, and on Thursday began initial negotiations with the Pelican Bay SHU strike leaders and an outside mediation team approved of by the prisoners.
A peaceful general strike is now being called for in all California prisons.

Click here for more info about the strike and to take action.

Not quite Revolutionary, but Gangsta

Steady mobbin.
And it aint hard to understand.
As society deteriorates, blacks in America are feeling it more than others.

In 2004, the median net worth of white households was $134,280, compared with $13,450 for black households, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by the Economic Policy Institute. By 2009, the median net worth for white households had fallen 24 percent to $97,860; the median black net worth had fallen 83 percent to $2,170.
-Huffington Post

Fortunately, most blacks have had a lot of practice suffering through hard times.

In this community, Friday's disappointing jobs report appeared to change little if anything, merely affirming an unmistakeable reality: a chronic shortage of jobs.
-Huffington Post

For now, many hold out hope that Obama can bring about some positive change, but there are clearly many others who are taking matters in their own hands.
Civilization is largely dependent on the people respecting authority. The authorities have proven themselves to be a fraud, and people have lost respect. More and more people will follow suit as more and more of the fraud comes to light.

This actually reminds of a recent story from my personal life.
Two of the houses along my property are vacant. They only recently became that way. I saw a broken window one morning, and then all of the windows on both houses were covered with plywood by nightfall. The other day, I overheard a heated conversation at the one that had been getting work done on it by a new owner. Apparently, thieves had stolen all the copper pipes and wiring out of it.
lol.
And that's what you deserve for kicking out the family that had been living there.

1, 2 , 3, 4, FIF!

Attorney General Eric Holder has managed to stay out of the news during his tenure, but given the current landscape, is that a good thing?

In November 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder vowed before television cameras to prosecute those responsible for the market collapse a year earlier, saying the U.S. would be “relentless” in pursuing corporate criminals.
In the 18 months since, no senior Wall Street executive has been criminally charged, and some lawmakers are questioning whether the U.S. Justice Department has been aggressive enough after declining to bring cases against officials at American International Group Inc. (AIG) and Countrywide Financial Corp.
Prosecutions of three categories of crime that could be linked to the causes of the crisis -- corporate, securities and bank fraud -- declined last fiscal year by 39 percent from 2003, the period after the accounting scandals at Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc., Justice Department records show.
-Bloomberg

Some of the biggest Wall Street gangs have benefitted from the crisis quite substantially. Goldman Sachs’ 2009 profits were a record for the firm and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)’s earnings have been at an all-time high as well. But that isn't stopping the Justice Dept. from acting as a lap dog for these and other corporate crooks.
Back in March, Holder’s DoJ was actually caught conspiring with Bank of America (whom DoJ should have been investigating for fraudulent foreclosure and debt collection practices) to try to silence Wikileaks.
Not only has the DoJ been helping silence whistleblowers, they’ve been trying to divert America’s attention away from the real problems. Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, at a May 3 Congressional hearing, pointed out that Federal prosecutors have been more focused on immigration offenses than the financial crisis.

“The department is spending its resources prosecuting nannies and busboys who are trying to get back to their families,” she said. “And yet we have not brought any prosecutions on the bandits on Wall Street who brought the nation and the world to the brink of financial disaster.”
-Bloomberg

The Justice Dept. claims that they are pursuing corporate fraud, but the reality is, they aren’t pursuing fraudulent corporations.

Using government data compiled by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research center, Bloomberg News identified cases coded as corporate fraud by the Justice Department last year. Most involve people accused of stealing from companies, not wrongdoing by firms themselves.
-Bloomberg

Once again, we see that the Justice Dept. is protecting corporate criminals, not prosecuting them.
The FBI claims that after 911, they had to reassign agents away from criminal cases in favor of “national security” cases. Ummm, the FBI doesn’t consider the fleecing of our government to be an issue of “national security?”
Apparently not. And apparently, putting black men in both the White House and the DoJ has done nothing to bring white collar criminals to justice.


I plea Da Fif

Racism in Oakland Parking Tickets

Oakland parking officers were ordered to avoid enforcing neighborhood parking violations in two of the city's wealthier neighborhoods but told to continue enforcing the same violations in the rest of the city.
In essence, the cash-strapped city sought to generate revenue off of poor people instead of rich people.

"It's not fair," said Shirnell Smith, 44, a parking officer for 22 years who has lived in Oakland for 24 years. Smith and the union representing parking officers said the policy has resulted in tickets being issued disproportionately to poor, black and Latino people.

See video here