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For Immediate Release
January, 11 2011, 04:10pm EDT
Contact:
Frida
Berrigan - 347-683-4928, frida.berrigan@gmail.com
Jeremy Varon- 732-979-3119, jvaron@aol.com
Justice Department Blockaded, No Arrests Made, in Shut Down Guantanamo Action Today
Sixty anti-torture
activists blockaded the entrances to the Department of Justice for an hour and
a half this afternoon. The action was to protest Washington's failure to close
the Guantanamo detention center and continued use of torture against detainees
at Guantanamo and other prisons that comprise the "gulag" operated by the
military and security agencies around the world.
WASHINGTON
Sixty anti-torture
activists blockaded the entrances to the Department of Justice for an hour and
a half this afternoon. The action was to protest Washington's failure to close
the Guantanamo detention center and continued use of torture against detainees
at Guantanamo and other prisons that comprise the "gulag" operated by the
military and security agencies around the world.
Visit
Witness Against Torture's Website, www.witnesstorture.org, for photos and video of today's blockade and text of
WATs's letter of demands to Attorney General Eric Holder.
Direct
link: https://witnesstorture.org/pr-01-11-11-after-action
"Sixty people blocked three
entrances to the Justice Department," said Matt Daloisio of Witness Against
Torture, which organized the day of action against torture. No arrests were
made. "Warnings were issued at one point, but the police appeared to change
their plans and called off bringing buses to take away the blockaders. U.S.
authorities have deeply disgraced this country by refusing to end torture and
provide its War-on-Terror prisoners with speedy trials. Rather than call more
attention to this fact by detaining activists who put themselves at risk today
to bring this message to the public, they backed off."
The Day of Action extended beyond Washington. Ten were
arrested at the Federal Building in Chicago, Illinois this afternoon, and actions
were also held in Miami, San Francisco, Pittsburgh and elsewhere.
"This first day of action was a
significant success," said Cooke. The actions kick off an 11-day Fast for Justice to end torture and close
Guantanamo. Over 100 people around the country have signed up for the 11-day,
liquid-only fast. Close to 50 fasters will be in Washington for the entire
period, holding a vigil each day in front of the Justice Department.
The blockade followed a rally at
the White House attended by more than 350 people and that included Witness
Against Torture, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty
International, and British journalist Andy Worthington, author of The Guantanamo Files and co-director of the documentary Outside
the Law: Stories from Guantanamo.
Witness Against Torture is a grassroots movement that came into being in December 2005 when 24 activists walked to Guantanamo to visit the prisoners and condemn torture policies. Since then, it has engaged in public education, community outreach, and non-violent direct action. For the first 100 days of the Obama administration, the group held a daily vigil at the White House, encouraging the new President to uphold his commitments to shut down Guantanamo.
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'National Security Threat'? 95-Year-Old Human Rights Scholar Richard Falk Interrogated for Hours by Canada
"Clearly, the international repression of the Palestinian cause knows no bounds."
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Ninety-five-year-old Richard Falk—world renowned scholar of international law and former UN special rapporteur focused on Palestinian rights—was detained and interrogated for several hours along with his wife, legal scholar Hilal Elver, as the pair entered Canada for a conference focused on that nation's complicity with Israel's genocide in Gaza.
"A security person came and said, ‘We’ve detained you both because we’re concerned that you pose a national security threat to Canada,'” Falk explained to Al-Jazeera in a Saturday interview from Ottawa in the wake of the incident that happened at the international airport in Toronto ahead of the scheduled event.
“It was my first experience of this sort–ever–in my life,” said Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author or editor of more than 20 books, and formerly the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories.
Falk, who is American, has been an outspoken critic of the foreign policy of Canada, the United States, and other Western nations on the subject of Israel-Palestine as well as other issues. He told media outlets that he and his wife, also an American, were held for over four hours after their arrival in Toronto. They were in the country to speak and participate at the Palestine Tribunal on Canadian Responsibility, an event scheduled for Friday and Saturday in Ottawa, the nation's capital.
The event, according to the program notes on the website, was designed to "document the multiple ways that Canadian entities – including government bodies, corporations, universities, charities, media, and other cultural institutions–have enabled and continue to enable the settler colonization and genocide of Palestinians, and to articulate what justice and reparations would require."
In his comments to Al-Jazeera, Falk said he believes the interrogation by the Canadian authorities—which he described as "nothing particularly aggressive" but "random" and "disorganized" in its execution—is part of a global effort by powerful nations complicit with human rights abuses and violations of international law to “punish those who endeavour to tell the truth about what is happening” in the world, including in Gaza.
Martin Shaw, a British sociologist and author of The New Age of Genocide, said the treatment of Falk and Elver should be seen as an "extraordinary development" for Canada, and not in a good way. For a nation that likes to think of itself as a "supporter of international justice," said Shaw, "to arrest the veteran scholar and former UN rapporteur Richard Falk while he is attending a Gaza tribunal. Clearly, the international repression of the Palestinian cause knows no bounds."
Canadian Senator Yuen Pau Woo, a supporter of the Palestine Tribunal, told Al-Jazeera he was “appalled” by the interrogation.
“We know they were here to attend the Palestine Tribunal. We know they have been outspoken in documenting and publicizing the horrors inflicted on Gaza by Israel, and advocating for justice,” Woo said. “If those are the factums for their detention, then it suggests that the Canadian government considers these acts of seeking justice for Palestine to be national security threats–and I’d like to know why.”
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No one works hard enough to justify being a billionaire. pic.twitter.com/Ezvf5fPLfv
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— Billie Eilish clocking billionaires.pic.twitter.com/BVpRExp1GQ
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Like Platner, the group behind the call—including economists like Joseph Stiglitz, Thomas Piketty, Ha-Joon Chang, and Jayati Ghosh—emphasized the inequality-as-a-policy-choice framework. Piketty, who has called for the mass taxation of dynastic wealth as a key part of the solution to runaway inequality, said “we are at a dangerous moment in human history” with “the very essence of democracy” under threat if something is not done.
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No one from above is coming to save us. It’s up to us to organize, use our immense power as the working class, and win the world we deserve. pic.twitter.com/Xm3ZIhfCJI
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At a rally with New York City workers outside a Starbucks location on Thursday, Mamdani referenced the massive disparity between profits and executive pay at the company compared to what the average barista makes.
Zohran Mamdani says that New York City stands with Starbucks employees!He points out their CEO made 96 billion last year. That’s 6,666 times the median Starbucks worker salary. Boycott Starbucks. Support the workers. Demand they receive a living wage.
[image or embed]
— Kelly (@broadwaybabyto.bsky.social) November 12, 2025 at 10:45 PM
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