May, 01 2013, 05:08pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Deborah Agre (510) 548-0542 (ofc) /meca@mecaforpeace.org
Ziad Abbas (510) 717-6640 ©
The Middle East Children's Alliance Celebrates 25 Years of Work with Event with Noam Chomsky : Amps Up Campaign for Humanitarian Relief for Refugees
May 1st, 2013 marks the 25th Anniversary of the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA), an organization founded by Barbara Lubin and Howard Levine in 1988 after Barbara returned from her first trip to Palestine/Israel at the beginning of the first Intifada. She had witnessed the grave injustice, poverty and violence of the Israeli occupation paid for with US tax dollars.
BERKELEY
May 1st, 2013 marks the 25th Anniversary of the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA), an organization founded by Barbara Lubin and Howard Levine in 1988 after Barbara returned from her first trip to Palestine/Israel at the beginning of the first Intifada. She had witnessed the grave injustice, poverty and violence of the Israeli occupation paid for with US tax dollars.
MECA immediately began sending shipments of medical aid to the West Bank and Gaza and built a dental clinic in a Palestinian refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. In 1991, MECA's relief work quickly expanded to Iraq during the Gulf War and continued providing aid during the thirteen years of economic sanctions, the 2003 War and for many years after. MECA has also worked in Lebanon, where they recently sent $225,000 in milk, baby cereal, blankets and other necessities to refugees from the war in Syria taking shelter in Lebanon.
"We founded MECA 25 years ago today. I wish our work was done and the children of Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon were living in freedom with a bright future ahead of them, In fact, we are expanding our efforts to respond to the dramatic need I just witnessed in refugee camps in Lebanon. The humanitarian catastrophes have only grown during my time working in the Middle East, and this is not by accident," stated founder Barbara Lubin. "US foreign policy consistently uses brute economic and military force against civilians and the consequences of these actions will be felt for generations."
MECA is marking its 25 years of support for children and families in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon with a gala event Wednesday, May 8th , in Oakland CA, featuring founding advisors Noam Chomsky and Holly Near. Noam Chomsky is a world-renowned political theorist, philosopher, historian, author, activist, & MIT Linguistics Professor Emeritus. Noam has authored over 100 books and visited Gaza in 2012.
In MECA's 25 years they have conducted and continue numerous projects, including:
- Providing $19 million dollars in emergency humanitarian aid
- Building dozens of water treatment units at UN schools and kindergartens in Gaza
- Providing university scholarships for hundreds of students
- Supporting dozens of local partners who are working to improve the lives of children through health care, education and trauma intervention.
- Hosting hundreds of educational events, concerts, public speaking and media appearances to educate people in the US about the true costs of war and occupation
More information about MECA's current Projects and Partners can be found online. Interviews are available.
The Middle East Children's Alliance is a nonprofit organization working for the rights and the well-being of children in the Middle East. MECA supports dozens of community projects for Palestinian children and refugees from Syria. Since 1988 we have delivered $27 million in food and medical aid to Palestine, Iraq, and Lebanon. MECA welcomes the support of all people who care about children and their future.
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Oligarchs 'Terrified' Democratic Socialist Mamdani Might Win NYC Mayoral Primary
"This is a tale that we're seeing across this country, where it's a battle of organized money versus organized people," Zohran Mamdani said on the eve of the election.
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As New Yorkers head to the polls Tuesday to vote on the final day of the city's Democratic mayoral primary, support for democratic socialist state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani is surging and billionaire backers of disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo are in panic mode, with some even threatening to leave the nation's largest city should Mamdani prevail.
Polls showed Mamdani and Cuomo running neck-and-neck down the home stretch into primary day. An Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill poll published on the eve of the election showed Cuomo with a slight lead in the first round of the city's ranked-choice primary, with Mamdani ultimately winning the race after eight simulated ranked-choice elimination rounds.
The prospect a Mamdani victory is deeply worrying to many of the Wall Street bankers, corporate executives, real estate developers, mega-landlords and others who are bankrolling Cuomo—who resigned as New York governor in 2021 amid an accelerating impeachment push driven by sexual harassment allegations from at least 11 women, which he denied. Backers include billionaire former Mayor Michael Bloomberg; financiers Bill Ackman and Dan Loeb; Wall Street titans Blair Effron, Steve Rattner, and Antonio Weiss; Palantir founder and co-CEO Alex Karp; and former President Bill Clinton.
Responding to a June 20 social media post by Mamdani backer Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asking why billionaires are pouring money into Cuomo's campaign, Loeb retorted that "they love New York and don't want it to turn into a hellscape like San Francisco, Chicago, or Portland."
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Asked Monday by City & State New York reporter Sahalie Donaldson how the city's business community feels about Mamdani possibly being the next mayor, Kathryn Wylde, who heads the pro-corporate Partnership for New York City, replied, "terrified."
Mamdani—a 33-year-old first-generation U.S. citizen born to Indian parents in Uganda—would be New York's first Muslim mayor if elected, a possibility that has fueled Islamophobic bigotry in the five boroughs and beyond. The New York Police Department's hate crimes unit said last week that it is investigating several death threats against the candidate.
Endorsed by progressives including Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, the Sunrise Movement, and New York Working Families Party, Mamdani has represented the 36th State Assembly District in Queens since 2021. His platform calls for free public childcare and city buses, a rent freeze on stabilized housing, and city-owned grocery stores.
Appearing on CBS' "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" Monday night, Mamdani called the race "a referendum on where our party goes."
Like so many elections around the country, today is about organized money vs. organized people.I believe people will win.
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— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@zohrankmamdani.bsky.social) June 24, 2025 at 5:04 AM
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Addressing Mamdani's surging poll numbers, Sanders said Tuesday on social media that "the New York establishment is running scared."
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday applauded MacDonough's decision on the "cruel" GOP policy that "would have gutted America's public lands and auctioned them off to the highest bidder, in yet another bid to benefit the wealthy."
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Like the Democratic leaders, Trust for Public Land CEO and president Carrie Besnette Hauser on Tuesday called MacDonough's latest decisions "an important victory in the fight to protect America's public lands from short-sighted proposals that would have undermined decades of bipartisan work to protect, steward, and expand access to the places we all share."
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U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced that the Trump administration plans to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which has for decades protected 58.5 million acres of forests from timber harvesting and road construction.
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The environmental law group Earthjustice took issue with wildfire prevention being used to justify the rollback.
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Rollins made the announcement at the annual meeting of the Western Governors' Association. Hundreds of protestors gathered outside of the building where the event was taking place in Santa Fe, New Mexico in order to denounce efforts that might lead to federal public lands being privatized, according to The Associated Press.
The roadless rule covers areas including the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. In 2019, during the first Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture codified a regulatory framework that exempted Tongass from the roadless rule. Former President Joe Biden undid that change while he was in office.
Idaho and Colorado have adopted state roadless area rules that supersede the boundaries of the federal roadless rule boundaries for those states, according to the USDA's website, which appears to mean that not all of the 58.5 million acres would be impacted if the Trump administration goes through with this change.
"The roadless rule is one of the country's conservation success stories, safeguarding singular natural values across nearly 60 million acres of America's great forests," said Garett Rose, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Great Outdoors Campaign Director Ellen Montgomery at Environment America similarly said that "the roadless rule is the most effective conservation rule on the books at protecting mature and old-growth forests."
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Caputo at Earthjustice made some of these same points and indicated his organization is ready to sue over the move. "If the Trump administration actually revokes the roadless rule, we'll see them in court," he said.
The move follows a March executive order from U.S. President Donald Trump directing Rollins and the secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior to take steps to increase timber production.
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