July, 13 2015, 02:15pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Tony Newman 646-335-5384
Michael Collins 404-539-6437
President Obama Grants Clemency to 46 People, Will Make Big Push for Criminal Justice Reform This Week
Obama to Address Mass Incarceration at NAACP Convention Tomorrow and Become First President to Visit a Prison on Thursday
WASHINGTON
Today, President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of 46 people incarcerated in federal prison. This follows the commutation of eight people incarcerated in federal prison for drug offenses in December of 2014, and 22 in March 2015. Fourteen of the people who received commutations today were serving life in prison for nonviolent drug offenses.
In taking this step, the President has now issued nearly 90 commutations, the vast majority of them to non-violent offenders sentenced for drug law violations under draconian sentencing laws. President Obama has been under significant public pressure from advocacy groups and family members of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses who are serving long, mandatory minimum sentences.
"We can't end mass incarceration until we end the drug war. The President's actions today are welcome, but we need much more action," said Michael Collins, policy manager at DPA's office of national affairs. "The public overwhelmingly supports ending the drug war and letting states decide their own drug policies. It's long past time to rectify the US's embarrassing record on mass incarceration."
According to White House counsel Neil Eggleston, "While I expect the President will issue additional commutations and pardons before the end of his term, it is important to recognize that clemency alone will not fix decades of overly punitive sentencing policies."
In an address to the NAACP scheduled for tomorrow, the President is expected to make a major speech on criminal justice reform and mass incarceration. On Thursday, he will become the first President to visit a federal prison.
Last year, President Obama and then-Attorney General Eric Holder made a number of forceful public statements against mass incarceration in the U.S., promising significant rollback of mandatory minimums and harsh sentencing guidelines.
In making today's announcement, President Obama stated that, "We spend over $80 billion in incarcerating people, often times who've only been engaged in nonviolent drug offenses."
The President went on to say, "I'm commuting the sentences of 46 prisoners who were convicted many years or in some cases decades ago. These men and women were not hardened criminals, but the overwhelming majority had been sentenced to at least 20 years. Fourteen of them had been sentenced to life for nonviolent drug offenses so their punishments didn't fit the crime ... I believe there's a lot more we can do to restore the sense of fairness at the heart of our justice system and to make sure our tax dollars are well spent even as we are keeping our streets safe."
"I am elated that President Obama continues to use his executive powers to grant freedom to those drug offenders who have served draconian sentences." said Anthony Papa, media relations manager for the Drug Policy Alliance, who was granted clemency in New York State in 1997 after serving 12 years under the notorious Rockefeller Drug Laws. "I hope this sends a message to governors of states that have the power to grant clemencies to those who deserve a chance to be reunited with their families."
The Drug Policy Alliance is the nation's leading organization promoting drug policies grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights.
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NYC Driver Rams Into Anti-Genocide Protest, Hospitalizes One
"Zionists on the streets and in police precincts have declared open season on young people fighting for Palestinian liberation," said one Columbia University student group.
May 07, 2024
One pro-Palestinian protester was hospitalized on Tuesday after a pro-Israel driver "intentionally drove" into a group of picketers outside the home of one of Columbia University's trustees on New York City's Upper East Side, as demonstrations against Israel's bombardment of Gaza continued.
According to Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), the protesters "were attacked on the crosswalk" by an "Upper East Side Zionist."
CUAD reported that the man drove up to the demonstrators, who have been calling on Columbia to divest from companies that contract with Israel and for the U.S. government to stop supporting the Israel Defense Forces, and asked for a flyer before grabbing a protester by the arm.
He then "circled the block to drive into our peaceful demonstration," striking one person who was "arrested and handcuffed to the bed while in the hospital," said CUAD.
The New York Police Department
toldUSA Today that an argument broke out between the driver and the protesters and that "as the group of roughly 25 demonstrators walked away, a driver hit one person with his Volvo."
CUAD noted that the alleged attack took place as U.S. politicians including President Joe Biden have condemned the campus protest movement, with at least one lawmaker
applauding abusive behavior by anti-Palestinian counter-protesters and New York City Council member Vickie Paladino (R-19) saying last week that the student movement is being led by "monsters, and it's now our job to slay them."
Paladino's "call for vigilante justice was almost fulfilled today," said CUAD.
USA Today also reported that at a separate protest on the Upper West Side near the apartment building of the co-chair of Columbia's board of trustees, "a woman punched a demonstrator in the face, seemingly at random."
In Los Angeles last week, city police stood by while a mob of pro-Israel counter-protesters
attacked nonviolent students who had set up an encampment in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, where Israel has killed at least 34,789 and on Monday invaded Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced.
On Tuesday, in honor of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Annual Days of Remembrance, Biden gave a speech on antisemitism, conflating protests in support of Palestinian rights with the hatred of Jewish people.
CUAD and independent reporter Talia Jane said the driver is a relative of the late Meir Kahane, an American-born Israeli far-right extremist.
The driver's "actions today model a trend in which Zionists weaponize their discomfort over political slogans as an excuse to assault Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, Black, brown, and dissident Jewish protesters in violent retaliation for imagined threats," said CUAD. "Just as white supremacists ran over a protester in Charlottesville, Zionists on the streets and in police precincts have declared open season on young people fighting for Palestinian liberation."
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TikTok Sues US Government Over 'Unconstitutional' Potential Ban
One expert said legislators' admissions "that the ban was motivated by a desire to suppress content about the Israel-Gaza conflict will make the law especially difficult for the government to defend," said one First Amendment expert.
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A top First Amendment expert on Tuesday said TikTok has a strong case against the U.S. government as the social media platform filed a federal lawsuit against a potential ban—particularly since proponents of the law have admitted it is aimed at blocking Americans' access to news out of Gaza.
The platform filed the lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit nearly two weeks after President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversaries Act into law as part of a larger foreign aid package.
Under the law, TikTok parent company ByteDance, a Chinese firm, has 270 days to sell the platform, allowing it to continue operating in the U.S. If it does not sell TikTok, the app will no longer be available on U.S. networks and app stores.
As Common Dreams reported Monday, Republican lawmakers including U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) have linked TikTok to the burgeoning anti-war protest movement spreading across the U.S., with the latter saying in an interview with Secretary of State Antony Blinken last Friday that "there was such overwhelming support" in Congress to shut down TikTok because of the frequent posting of Palestine-related content on the app.
"Restricting citizens' access to media from abroad is a practice that has long been associated with repressive regimes, so it's sad and alarming to see our own government going down this road," said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, on Tuesday. "TikTok's challenge to the ban is important, and we expect it to succeed. The First Amendment means the government can't restrict Americans' access to ideas, information, or media from abroad without a very good reason for it—and no such reason exists here."
"The fact that some legislators have acknowledged that the ban was motivated by a desire to suppress content about the Israel-Gaza conflict will make the law especially difficult for the government to defend," Jaffer added.
The law's sponsors claim it "is not a ban because it offers ByteDance a choice: divest TikTok's U.S. business or be shut down," reads the lawsuit. "But in reality, there is no choice. The 'qualified divestiture' demanded by the act to allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally."
Even if selling the app within the time frame was feasible, added TikTok and ByteDance, the law "would still be an extraordinary and unconstitutional assertion of power," ultimately allowing Congress to "circumvent the First Amendment by invoking national security and ordering the publisher of any individual newspaper or website to sell to avoid being shut down."
"And for TikTok, any such divestiture would disconnect Americans from the rest of the global community on a platform devoted to shared content—an outcome fundamentally at odds with the Constitution's commitment to both free speech and individual liberty," the plaintiffs continued.
At The Philadelphia Inquirer on Tuesday, columnist Will Bunch noted that about a third of Americans between the ages of 18-29 get their news from TikTok, according to a recent Pew survey—as Romney openly stated he fears last week.
As Bunch wrote:
During the war in Gaza, most mainstream Western journalists have been blocked from entering the war zone. The best source of real-time information is often the phone video of airstrikes and their aftermath either shot by Palestinian journalists—more than 90 of whom have been killed—or civilian bystanders. Look, there's disinformation about every issue on social media—it's a serious problem. I'm a clueless boomer myself about TikTok, but I do spend way too much time on X/Twitter and I can tell you exactly what is radicalizing young people about Gaza.
The reason so many under-30 folks have adopted the Palestinian cause isn't disinformation, from Hamas or China or anyone else. They've been radicalized by the truth—daily videos of young children, some of them bloodied, some of them already dead, covered in dust and targeted by 2,000-pound dumb bombs made right here in America.
"If the real motivation for zapping TikTok from your phone is to silence legitimate political speech, just because a lot of members of Congress don't like it," wrote Bunch, "then this bill is the worst attack on the First Amendment since the government was sending World War I critics like Eugene V. Debs and Kate Richards O'Hare to prison, more than 100 years ago."
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Congress Urged to Tax Big Oil for Price Fixing and 'Issue Every American a Refund'
The Groundwork Collaborative's leader also said that "the Department of Justice should criminally prosecute Scott Sheffield," the former Pioneer CEO whom the FTC blocked from joining ExxonMobil's board.
May 07, 2024
Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens on Tuesday responded to U.S. government allegations of fossil fuel industry price fixing with calls for federal prosecution and congressional action to return money to the American public.
"Americans have been working harder and harder to cover rising energy costs, with the understanding that supply chain snags and geopolitical forces were keeping prices high," Owens said. "Now the Federal Trade Commission has uncovered the real source behind the price at the pump: collusion."
"The Department of Justice should criminally prosecute Scott Sheffield and Congress should tax back the industry's windfall profits and issue every American a refund," she added, referring to Pioneer Natural Resources' founder and longtime CEO.
Owens' statement came after members of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) declined to contest ExxonMobil's controversial $64.5 billion acquisition of Pioneer—which was completed Friday—but approved a consent order barring Sheffield from serving on Exxon's board of directors or as an adviser to the fossil fuel giant.
"This complaint is a wake-up call about the dangerous consolidation of Big Oil's economic and political power."
The FTC voted 3-2 to accept the order and place related documents on the record for public comment. Citing communications including in-person meetings, public statements, text messages, and WhatsApp conversations, a commission complaint accuses Sheffield of trying to collude with the representatives of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and OPEC+.
"Mr. Sheffield's past conduct makes it crystal clear that he should be nowhere near Exxon's boardroom. American consumers shouldn't pay unfair prices at the pump simply to pad a corporate executive's pocketbook," said Kyle Mach, deputy director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition. "The FTC will remain vigilant in its enforcement efforts to protect competition in these vital markets."
Pioneer toldFortune that the company and its founder "believe that the FTC's complaint reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the U.S. and global oil markets and misreads the nature and intent of Mr. Sheffield's actions," but neither party would take "any steps to prevent the merger from closing."
ExxonMobil "learned of the FTC's allegations regarding Sheffield from the agency and said in a statement that they are 'entirely inconsistent with how we do business,'" according to Fortune. "Exxon has agreed to the terms of the consent decree," which also "prohibits the oil giant from appointing any Pioneer employee or director to its board for five years."
Still, since the FTC's allegations were initially reported by The Wall Street Journal last week and then confirmed with the complaint's release, demands for additional action by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Congress have mounted.
Cassidy DiPaola, Fossil Free Media's director of communications, on Monday called the complaint "explosive" and said that Democrats "must respond with bold action to hold this rogue industry accountable," including:
- Aggressive congressional and DOJ investigations into the full extent of Big Oil's price fixing;
- A windfall profits tax to claw back ill-gotten gains; and
- End taxpayer subsidies for oil and gas.
"But accountability is just the first step. This complaint is a wake-up call about the dangerous consolidation of Big Oil's economic and political power. We can't let them use megamergers to entrench their control and crush clean energy competition," she stressed. "Ultimately, this is about the future we choose: One where we remain at the mercy of Big Oil's greed and destruction, or one where clean, democratically controlled energy powers our communities. It's time to make the right choice."
In response to the Journal's reporting, Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, similarly said that "Congress must immediately hold hearings on Big Oil's alleged collusion with OPEC to raise gasoline prices for Americans."
"Congress must not only investigate Pioneer's alleged role in conspiring with OPEC, but whether there existed a broader conspiracy by U.S. oil companies to collude with OPEC nations," he argued. "Big Oil must be held accountable for any conspiracy by or among American oil companies and OPEC members."
The reporting was notably published on the same day as the U.S. Senate Budget Committee's hearing about a nearly three-year investigation into fossil fuel companies and trade groups' decadeslong "campaign of deception and distraction," which has evolved from denying the planet-heating impact of their products to pretending to be part of the solution to the climate emergency.
"The joint report and documents we discovered show how, time and again, the biggest oil and gas corporations say one thing for the purposes of public consumption but do something completely different to protect their profits," Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, testified during the hearing. "Company officials will admit the terrifying reality of their business model behind closed doors but say something entirely different, false, and soothing to the public."
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