December, 07 2012, 02:14pm EDT
ACLU of Florida, FLIC and Coalition Call on Nelson, Rubio and Local Leaders to End Controversial Federal Immigration Program
Federal 287(g) agreements in Collier County and Jacksonville have led to thousands of deportations for minor offenses, increased potential for racial profiling
MIAMI
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida today called on local and federal officials to end agreements between two local sheriff's offices and federal immigration authorities because of damage to community trust in law enforcement, waste of local law enforcement resources, and the potential for increased racial profiling.
Currently, the Collier County Sheriff's Office and the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office have agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as part of the program, known as 287(g), which deputizes local police officers to perform immigration enforcement functions on behalf of the federal government. The ACLU sent letters signed on to by 40 state and local organizations, as well as a petition signed by nearly 2,000 Floridians, to decision-makers including Florida Senators Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson urging them not to allow the agreements to be renewed when they expire at the end of the year.
"The year-end deadlines for the renewal or the expiration of the 287(g) agreements have created a critical moment for leaders to decide whether we allow these injustices to continue, or whether we ensure that police attention is 100 percent focused on public safety and leave immigration enforcement to federal authorities where it belongs," stated Howard Simon, Executive Director of the ACLU of Florida. "This is our opportunity for our leaders to create a state that treats all residents with dignity and respect."
The 287(g) program allows state and local law enforcement agencies to enter into an agreement with ICE to enforce immigration laws within their jurisdictions, empowering local police to ask questions about the immigration status of individuals in their jurisdictions and detain them on behalf of ICE. The program has produced countless complaints about abusive police practices, racial and ethnic profiling, and the deterioration of relationships between police and the communities they serve.
57 law enforcement agencies in 21 states participate in the program. The Collier and Jacksonville agreements are the only 287(g) agreements in Florida. Collier County has participated in the program since 2007 and Jacksonville since 2008. Collier County's participation in the 287(g) program has resulted in 4,316 deportations, one of the highest rates of all the jurisdictions participating in the program across the country.
Some law enforcement officers such as Collier County Sheriff Kevin Rambosk have touted the 287(g) program as an effective mechanism to remove criminals from neighborhoods and make the community safer. Jacksonville Sheriff John Rutherford similarly claims that participation in the 287(g) program is about taking criminals off the streets and not to prosecute individuals arrested for minor offenses.
However, the facts show that minor offenders are being targeted under the program. According to an in-depth study, in the first ten months of 2010, half of the detainers issued by 287(g) officers nationwide were placed on people apprehended for misdemeanors, traffic violations, and noncriminal immigration offenses.
"The large number of arrests for minor violations resulting in immigration consequences raises serious concerns about racial profiling in the implementation of the 287(g) program," stated ACLU of Florida Staff Attorney Shalini Agarwal.
The ACLU of Florida along with the Florida Immigrant Coalition (FLIC) organized a coalition letter, signed onto by 40 state and local organizations, calling on Florida Senators Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio and Representatives Corrine Brown, Ander Crenshaw and Connie Mack IV to pressure the Department of Homeland Security to allow the 287(g) program agreements to expire altogether at the end of the year. The letter states that "[t]he most tangible effect of the program has been generating fear and a marked mistrust of police among both documented and undocumented individuals in the Latino community."
Along with the letter, the ACLU of Florida also sent the names of nearly 2000 Floridians who had signed onto a petition urging their Senators to take action to end the program.
"Like the infamous Arizona anti-immigrant law, this delegation of federal immigration enforcement power to local police officers is ripe for abuse and has fueled a toxic environment of mutual mistrust between police and the immigrant community here in our state," said Maria Rodriguez Executive Director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition. "We urge our leaders to put a stop to this program that has fed the dual injustices of racial profiling and targeting of the immigrant community here in Florida."
The ACLU of Florida also sent a letter to Jacksonville Sheriff John Rutherford requesting a meeting with the sheriff to discuss why the city should not renew its 287(g) agreement, even if the federal program continues. The letter quotes former Miami Police Chief John Timoney, who has been a critic of local enforcement of federal immigration law: "All our citizens are directly affected, whether they are immigrants or not, by these policies. Immigrant victims and witnesses of violent crimes will not come forward if they fear their 'local police' will deport them. This affects everyone, as it hampers law enforcement efforts to thwart criminal activity in our neighborhoods."
The ACLU of Florida will continue collecting names on its online petition and pressuring local and federal officials to end participation in the program until a final decision is reached by year's end. The National ACLU also sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano today calling on her to end the program. ACLU state affiliates in other states with participating jurisdictions have similarly called on their elected officials and law enforcement leaders to end the program.
A copy of the coalition letter sent to the Senators and Representatives is available here: https://aclufl.org/pdfs/2012-12-07-ACLUFL-287gLetter.pdf
The ACLU of Florida's online petition is available here: https://www.aclu.org/secure/FL-End-287g-anti-immigrant-agreements-petit...
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
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20 Years Later, the Stain of Corporate Media's Role in Promoting Iraq War Remains
"It should not be forgotten that this debacle of death and destruction was not only a profound error of policymaking; it was the result of a carefully executed crusade of disinformation and lies," said one prominent critic.
Mar 20, 2023
As the world this week mark the 20th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, journalism experts weighed in on the corporate media's complicity in amplifying the Bush administration's lies, including ones about former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's nonexistent nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons upon which the war was waged.
"Twenty years ago, this country's mainstream media—with one notable exception—bought into phony Bush administration claims about Hussein's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, helping cheerlead our nation into a conflict that ended the lives of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis," Los Angeles Times columnist Robin Abcarian wrote Sunday.
That "one notable exception" was a group of journalists at the Washington, D.C. bureau of Knight Ridder—which was acquired by McClatchy in 2006—who published dozens of articles in several of the company's papers debunking and criticizing the Bush administration's dubious claims about Iraq and its WMDs. Their efforts were the subject of the 2017 Rob Reiner film Shock and Awe, starring Woody Harrelson.
"The war—along with criminally poor post-war planning on the part of Bush administration officials—also unleashed horrible sectarian strife, led to the emergence of ISIS, and displaced more than 1 million Iraqis," Abcarian noted.
She continued:
That sad chapter in American history produced its share of jingoistic buzzwords and phrases: "WMD," "the axis of evil," "regime change," "yellowcake uranium," "the coalition of the willing," and a cheesy but terrifying refrain, repeated ad nauseam by Bush administration officials such as then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
"Of course," wrote Abcarian, "there was never any smoking gun, mushroom-shaped or not."
According to the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit investigative journalism organization, Bush and top administration officials—including then-Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Rice—"made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq."
Those lies were dutifully repeated by most U.S. corporate mainstream media in what the center called "part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."
"It should not be forgotten that this debacle of death and destruction was not only a profound error of policymaking; it was the result of a carefully executed crusade of disinformation and lies," David Corn, the Washington, D.C. bureau chief for Mother Jones, asserted Monday.
Far from paying a price for amplifying the Bush administration's Iraq lies, many of the media hawks who acted more like lapdogs than watchdogs 20 years ago are today ensconced in prestigious and well-paying positions in media, public policy, and academia.
In a where-are-they-now piece for The Real News Network, media critic Adam Johnson highlighted how the careers of several media and media-related government professionals "blossomed" after their lie-laden selling of the Iraq War:
- David Frum—Bush's lead writer who coined the term "Axis of Evil" to refer to Iraq, Iran, and North Korea—is "a well-paid and influential columnist for The Atlantic and a mainstay of cable TV."
- Jeffrey Goldberg, then a New Yorker reporter who pushed conspiracy theories linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11 and al-Qaeda to Iraq, is now editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.
- MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, an erstwhile Iraq War hawk, rebranded himself as a critic of the invasion and occupation, and is a multimillionaire morning show host on that same network.
- Fareed Zakaria hosts "Fareed Zakaria GPS" on CNN and writes a weekly column for The Washington Post.
- Anne Applebaum, a member of the Post's editorial board at the time who called evidence of Iraq's nonexistent WMDs "irrefutable," now writes for The Atlantic and is a senior fellow at the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
"The almost uniform success of all the Iraq War cheerleaders provides the greatest lesson about what really helps one get ahead in public life: It's not being right, doing the right thing, or challenging power, but going with prevailing winds and mocking anyone who dares to do the opposite," wrote Johnson.
Other journalists not on Johnson's list include MSNBC's Chris Matthews—who infamously proclaimed "we're all neocons now" as U.S. forces toppled Hussein's statue while conquering Baghdad—and "woman of mass destruction"Judith Miller, who although forced to resign from The New York Times in disgrace over her regurgitated Bush administration lies about Iraq's WMDs remained an influential media figure over the following years.
In an interview with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft—which is hosting a discussion Wednesday about the media's role in war and peace—Middle East expert Assal Rad noted:
Rather than challenging the narrative of the state, calling for evidence, or even humanizing the would-be victims of the war, the Iraqi people, reporters such as Thomas Friedman with significant platforms like The New York Times most often parroted the talking points of U.S. officials. There was little critical journalism to question the existence of WMDs and little reflection on important issues, such as the U.S. role in supporting Saddam Hussein in the 1980s against Iran, international law, or the humanity of Iraqis.
While there was some contrition from outlets including the Times as the Iraq occupation continued for years and not the "five days or five weeks or five months" promised by Rumsfeld, journalist Jon Schwarz of The Intercept noted that media lies and distortions about the war continue to this day.
"Perhaps the most telling instance of the media's acquiescence was a year after the Iraq invasion," said Rad, "when President Bush's joke at the White House Correspondents' dinner about finding no weapons of mass destruction was met with uproarious laughter from an audience of journalists."
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Climate Groups Reject 'Risky, Untested' Technofixes in IPCC Report
"Solving the climate crisis is not about what works on paper but what delivers in practice. There is no time to waste with false solutions."
Mar 20, 2023
Longtime critics of "false solutions" to the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency responded to a United Nations report released Monday by reiterating their warnings about relying on underdeveloped and untested technologies that could enable major polluters to continue producing massive amounts of planet-heating emissions.
Noting the 2015 Paris agreement's two primary temperature targets for this century, the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states that "all global modeled pathways that limit warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot, and those that limit warming to 2°C, involve rapid and deep and, in most cases, immediate" greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions in all sectors this decade.
"We must heed the IPCC's urgent messages, without falling into the trap of assuming that carbon dioxide removal will save the day."
Modeled mitigation pathways, the report continues, "include transitioning from fossil fuels without carbon capture and storage (CCS) to very low- or zero-carbon energy sources, such as renewables or fossil fuels with CCS, demand-side measures and improving efficiency, reducing non-CO2 GHG emissions," and carbon dioxide removal (CDR).
As the document details:
CCS is an option to reduce emissions from large-scale fossil-based energy and industry sources provided geological storage is available. When CO2 is captured directly from the atmosphere (DACCS), or from biomass (BECCS), CCS provides the storage component of these CDR methods. CO2 capture and subsurface injection is a mature technology for gas processing and enhanced oil recovery. In contrast to the oil and gas sector, CCS is less mature in the power sector, as well as in cement and chemicals production, where it is a critical mitigation option. The technical geological storage capacity is estimated to be on the order of 1000 GtCO2, is more than the CO2 storage requirements through 2100 to limit global warming to 1.5°C, although the regional availability of geological storage could be a limiting factor. If the geological storage site is appropriately selected and managed, it is estimated that the CO2 can be permanently isolated from the atmosphere.
"Implementation of CCS currently faces technological, economic, institutional, ecological environmental and socio-cultural barriers," the report notes. "Currently, global rates of CCS deployment are far below those in modeled pathways limiting global warming to 1.5°C to 2°C. Enabling conditions such as policy instruments, greater public support, and technological innovation could reduce these barriers."
The report further says that "biological CDR methods like reforestation, improved forest management, soil carbon sequestration, peatland restoration, and coastal blue carbon management can enhance biodiversity and ecosystem functions, employment and local livelihoods. However, afforestation or production of biomass crops can have adverse socioeconomic and environmental impacts, including on biodiversity, food and water security, local livelihoods, and the rights of Indigenous peoples, especially if implemented at large scales and where land tenure is insecure."
While the world's top scientists—and the governments that signed off on the report—recognized issues with CCS and CDR, climate campaigners expressed frustration that such technologies were featured as partial solutions.
"It's very alarming to see carbon dioxide removal featuring so centrally in the IPCC report," declared Sara Shaw at Friends of the Earth International (FOEI). "We can't rely on risky, untested, and downright dangerous removals technologies just because big polluters want us to stick to the status quo."
"A fair and fast phaseout of oil, gas, and coal needs to happen in this decade, and it can, with the right political will," she stressed. "We must heed the IPCC's urgent messages, without falling into the trap of assuming that carbon dioxide removal will save the day."
Fellow FOIE leader Hemantha Withanage explained that "in my country, Sri Lanka, the impacts of climate change are being felt now. We have no time to chase fairy tales like carbon removal technologies to suck carbon out of the air."
"The IPCC evidence is clear: Climate change is killing people, nature, and planet," he said. "The answers are obvious: a fair and fast phaseout of fossil fuels, and finance for a just transition. The fantasy of overshooting safe limits and betting on risky technofixes is certainly not a cure for the problem."
Lili Fuhr at the Center for International Environmental Law agreed that "the takeaway of the IPCC synthesis is irrefutable: An immediate, rapid, and equitable fossil fuel phaseout is the cornerstone of any strategy to avoid catastrophic levels of global warming."
"Building our mitigation strategies on models that instead lock in inequitable growth and conveniently assume away the risks of technofixes like carbon capture and storage and carbon dioxide removal ignores that clarion message and increases the likelihood of overshoot," Fuhr warned. "The most ambitious mitigation pathways put out by the IPCC set the floor, not the ceiling, for necessary climate action.
Research shows that overshooting Paris temperature targets, even temporarily, could dramatically raise the risk of the world experiencing dangerous "tipping points," as Common Dreamsreported in December. The IPCC report notes that "the higher the magnitude and the longer the duration of overshoot, the more ecosystems and societies are exposed to greater and more widespread changes in climatic impact-drivers, increasing risks for many natural and human systems."
As Corporate Accountability director of climate research and policy Rachel Rose Jackon put it Monday: "Breaching 1.5°C is not an option. Governments will be effectively signing millions of avoidable death warrants for those who contributed least to the crisis."
While arguing that the IPCC document "demands a last and final reckoning" that leads to Global North governments "doing their fair share," the campaigner also emphasized that "the report should have actually named the solutions that will keep us below 1.5°C instead of leaving the door open for an inadequate suite of industry-backed removals and dangerous distractions."
Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter targeted U.S. lawmakers and President Joe Biden in a statement Monday.
"The IPCC is sending one key message above all else: We must stop burning fossil fuels, drilling for fossil fuels, and building new infrastructure to deliver fossil fuels," Hauter said. "Unfortunately, policymakers continue to lock in new dirty energy schemes—most notably the Biden administration's approval of a massive new oil drilling project in Alaska."
"Tragically, Congress and the White House continue to waste money on carbon removal technologies that have been a failure. Relying on these scams instead of taking actions to stop fossil fuel expansion will only lead to further climate catastrophe," she added. "President Biden's actions to expand oil and gas drilling and ramp up fossil fuel exports undermine his professed climate goals and invite further catastrophe. The IPCC's message is clear, and political leaders must answer the call with actions to match the moment."
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Seniors to Bolster Youth-Led Climate Strikes With Day of Action Against Dirty Banks
"We have to show young people we have their back," said veteran climate advocate Bill McKibben.
Mar 20, 2023
Determined not to leave all the responsibility for climate action with young campaigners like Greta Thunberg and the Sunrise Movement, older Americans are organizing a nationwide Day of Action planned for Tuesday, with the aim of wielding the relative political and economic power of people aged 60 and up to pressure big banks to stop funding fossil fuel projects.
Following actor and activist Jane Fonda's "Fire Drill Friday" protests that began in Washington, D.C. in 2019, longtime climate advocate Bill McKibben founded Third Act last year to mobilize older Americans who wanted to show solidarity with the Generation Z activists leading worldwide climate protests in recent years.
The grassroots effort quickly attracted 50,000 members, many of whom are taking part in the organization's Stop Dirty Banks action on Tuesday—a nationwide blockade of the branches of banks like Wells Fargo, Chase, Citibank, and Bank of America, which have collectively poured $1.1 trillion into fossil fuel projects since the 2015 Paris climate agreement was forged.
Nearly 100 public actions on Tuesday will include a literal "Rocking Chair Rebellion," as McKibben has called the movement, with advocates placing painted rocking chairs at the entrances of bank branches, slicing credit cards with giant pairs of scissors, and displaying papier mache orcas that will eat credit cards to demonstrate that older Americans will no longer support companies that back plant-heating oil and gas projects.
"We have everything we need to turn toward clean energy," said Akaya Windwood, a longtime social justice leader who leads Third Act's advisory council, in a video posted to social media ahead of the protest. "All we're lacking is the political and economic will, so we're calling out the big banks to disinvest in fossil fuels and invest in air that all of us can breathe."
Windwood filmed herself cutting up her credit card ahead of the Day of Action, as did writer Rebecca Solnit, mountain climber Kitty Calhoun, and ocean conservationist Wendy Benchley.
In an op-ed for Common Dreams last week, McKibben, who is 62, noted that his generation on the whole has amassed more "structural power" than the young people who have worked to pressure lawmakers to support the Green New Deal and organized school walkouts as part of the Fridays for Future movement.
"We all vote, so the political impact of the 70 million Americans over 60 is much magnified," wrote McKibben. "And we ended up—fairly or not—with something like 70% of the country's financial assets, so we can put some pressure on banks."
McKibben added that it is "ignoble and impractical" to leave climate action up to younger people.
"So far the kids have had to do all of the work and they've done an amazing job but it's not fair to ask 18-year-olds to solve this problem," the author and 350.org cofounder toldThe Guardian. "We have to show young people we have their back. I'm going to be dead before the climate crisis is at its absolute worst, but being nearer the exit than the entrance concentrates one's mind to notions of legacy and we are the first generation to leave the world in a worse place than we found it."
McKibben will join rally-goers on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., where activists will stage a "rocking chair rebellion" in an intersection outside two of the "big four" banks.
The nationwide Day of Action is being held a day after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its latest report on the climate crisis, showing, as United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said, that all licensing and funding of new oil and gas extraction must be ceased and all public and private funding of coal must come to an end.
From California to New York, McKibben said Monday on social media, advocates have been alerting bank branches about the coming public actions—displaying all-night projections at Wells Fargo and Chase locations that warn, "Banks: Cut it out or we'll cut it up."
"Banks have particular reason to listen to older people, because so much of the money in the vault belongs to them," wrote McKibben last week. "And because we're hard to outwait. Youth climate organizers have only a decade or so before they're on to the next stage of their lives. Sixty year-old climate activists are likely to have twice that long or more—and we've often got lots of free time."
"Chase and Citi and Wells Fargo and Bank of America should be worried: we're not going anywhere any time soon," he added. "We'll just keep rocking on."
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