April, 26 2016, 12:45pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Ali Issa, War Resisters League, ali32123@gmail.com, (718)310-9968Â
Ursula Rozum, Syracuse Peace Council ursula@peacecouncil.net, (315) 414-7720
Community Groups from Across NY State Hold Press Conference to Oppose Militarization of Police and Syracuse PD Participation in Verona SWAT Expo
Groups decry extreme anti-Muslim views featured as keynote at New York Tactical Officers Association Conference this week
Where: 511 State St., Syracuse, NY 13202
When: Wednesday, April 27, 2pm
Who: Syracuse Peace Council, Capital Area Against Mass Incarceration, War Resisters League, Palestine Solidarity Collective (full list below)
This coming Wednesday the 27th, the Clarion Project's Ryan Mauro - designated as an extremist by the Southern Poverty Law Center for his anti-Islam views - will be addressing attendees of the New York Tactical Officers Association Conference. Attendees will include police officers from from across NY state, including the NYPD and the Syracuse PD, as well as officers from around the country: LA, Colorado, and Ohio.
This has caused alarm among advocacy groups such has the Council on American Islamic Relations which called this past Thursday for police departments to probe Mauro's upcoming training.
It has also led local media in Syracuse, as well as other websites, to question both Mauro and the Larry Beresnoy, Executive Director of the New York Tactical Officers Association which puts on the conference. This has only led to defenses of Clarion by Beresnoy, who will not allow media to attend the conference, and will not disclose the full list of attendees, nor its funding sources.
Mauro promotes the surveillance and profiling of Muslim Americans, often propagates the myth that there are Muslim 'no-go' zones across the US., attempts to link CAIR and other groups to terrorist activity, and has even argued that Islamists have infiltrated the Republican Party. The organization for which he works, The Clarion Project, was at the center of controversy for supplying the NYPD with anti-Islam films such as The Third Jihad, that then police chief Ray Kelly apologized for showing to his department.
NYTOAC also features several major weapons manufactures at their expo including Northrup Grumman - the 5th largest arms dealer in the world, amidst ongoing concern regarding the militarization of the police, including the NYPD.
Finally, at at least one of NYTOAC's workshops will promote the idea that SWAT Teams are the ideal entity to engage people having mental health crises, though a third or more of people killed by the police have such a disability. According to the ACLU there are more than 100 SWAT raids a day in the US, the great majority of which impact Black and Latino neighborhoods. (See this video of SWAT testimony.)
The many US conferences like NYTOAC, such as the controversial Urban Shield in the Bay Area (see recent Guardian coverage), are often funded directly by the Department of Homeland security through the Urban Areas Security Initiative.
A cross-community effort, including Black Lives Matter Upstate, the Syracuse Peace Council and the Arab American Association of New York, to oppose this conference which produces such harmful effects in so many communities, promotes militarized mentalities among the police, and dovetails disturbingly with the rising culture of fear in the US and worldwide. WRL's petition calling for its cancellation has reached nearly 2,000 singers.
Endorsing organizations:
AF3IRM NYC * Arab American Association of New York (AAANY) * Black Lives Matter Upstate NY * Capital Area Against Mass Incarceration (CAAMI) * CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities * Civilian Soldier Alliance * Equality for Flatbush * The Icarus Project * Iraq Veterans Against the War * Jewish Voice for Peace - National * Jewish Voice for Peace - Westchester * Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice * Muslim American Women's Policy Forum * New Yorkers Against Bratton * Organization for a Free Society (OFS) * Palestine Solidarity Collective * Raha - Iranian Feminist Collective * Stop LAPD Spying * Syracuse Peace Council * Queer Detainee Empowerment Project (QDEP)
The United States' oldest secular pacifist organization, the War Resisters League has been resisting war at home and war abroad since 1923. Our work for nonviolent revolution has spanned decades and has been shaped by the new visions and strategies of each generation's peacemakers.
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Russia's Putin Secures Another Term
The controversial leader won a record number of votes for a post-Soviet candidate even as opponents organized a protest at noon on the election's third and last day.
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Despite protests on Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin won reelection with more votes than any candidate since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Exit poll the Public Opinion Foundation (POF) put the final tally after three days of voting at 87.8%, the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) at 87%, and Russia's Central Election Commission (CEC) at 87.3%. Putin will now serve another six-year term, meaning he will have been at the helm of the Russian state for longer than any leader since Catherine the Great, surpassing Josef Stalin.
The election comes less than a month after the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and is likely to lead to more tensions between the Russian and U.S. governments.
"It gives me some hope to see how many people are not happy with the dictatorship, the war, with what's happening in Russia."
"For a U.S. administration that hoped Putin's Ukraine adventure would be wrapped up by now with a decisive setback to Moscow's interests, the election is a reminder that Putin expects that there will be many more rounds in the geopolitical boxing ring," Nikolas Gvosdev, director of the National Security Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told the Russia Matters project.
With most of Putin's prominent opponents either dead, imprisoned, or in exile, the elections results were considered a foregone conclusion by both friends and foes of his administration.
A Putin spokesperson said in 2023 that the election was "not really democracy" but instead "costly bureaucracy," according to CNN. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said the election was "obviously not free nor fair."
However, Russian opponents of Putin did find a way to demonstrate their position with a protest called "Noon Against Putin." The protest was called for by St. Petersburg politician Maxim Reznik, according to The Guardian. Participants were instructed to head to a polling place at noon and cast a paper ballot for one of the candidates running against Putin, or to write-in another candidate or spoil their ballot.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny had endorsed the protest before his death last month in a Russian prison, leading the Independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper to dub it "Navalny's political testament."
The action drew crowds to polling places both in Russian cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Yekaterinburg and at Russian embassies around the world.
"This is the first time in my life I have ever seen a queue for elections," one woman waiting in line in Moscow told
CNN. Russian journalists reported that the lines at some stations within the country reached the thousands, according to Reuters.
Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, who had also endorsed the protest, voted at the embassy in Berlin, while several protesters gathered outside the embassy in London.
"I expected there to be a lot of people, but not this many," London-based participant Maria Dorofeyeva told The Guardian, adding, "It gives me some hope to see how many people are not happy with the dictatorship, the war, with what's happening in Russia. And we want to stop it."
Ruslan Shaveddinov of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation told Reuters:
"We showed ourselves, all of Russia and the whole world that Putin is not Russia (and) that Putin has seized power in Russia."
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The U.S. was one of many Western countries that paused funding for UNRWA after the agency announced in January that it had fired 12 staffers over Israeli allegations that they had been involved in Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel. However, some countries including Canada, Sweden, the European Union, and Australia have since restored funding. A report has also emerged that Israel tortured UNRWA staffers into falsely confessing to involvement in the Hamas attack.
"Netanyahu has wanted to get rid of UNRWA because he had seen them as a means to continue the hopes of the Palestinian people for a homeland of their own."
Van Hollen's remarks on Sunday come days after he argued for the restoration of UNRWA funds on the floor of the U.S. Senate and criticized Republican legislators who wanted to permanently end funds for the organization that supports some 6 million Palestinian refugees in countries across the Middle East, including around 2 million in Gaza.
During his speech, he pointed out that the Netanyahu government had not shared the underlying evidence that UNRWA staffers participated in October 7 with either UNRWA itself or the U.S. government. He also urged his colleagues to read a classified Director of National Intelligence report on Netanyahu's claims of UNRWA complicity with Hamas.
On "Face the Nation," Van Hollen said that the person in charge of operations on the ground in UNRWA was a 20-year U.S. Army veteran.
"You can be sure he is not in cahoots with Hamas," the senator told Brennan.
He also repeated claims that Netanyahu has wanted to eliminate UNRWA entirely since at least 2017.
"Netanyahu has wanted to get rid of UNRWA because he had seen them as a means to continue the hopes of the Palestinian people for a homeland of their own," Van Hollen said, adding that the right-wing Israeli leader's "primary objective" was preventing the formation of a Palestinian state.
However, the dismantling of UNRWA would be especially catastrophic amid Israel's ongoing bombardment and invasion of Gaza, which has killed more than 31,000 people and put the survivors at risk of famine. No other organization has the infrastructure in place to distribute the necessary aid.
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Russell said that not enough aid was reaching those who needed it, calling both air drops and sea deliveries "a drop in the bucket."
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