March, 06 2015, 10:45am EDT
Mayors for the Freedom to Marry Submits Amicus Brief on Marriage to Supreme Court
WASHINGTON
Three years after its launch in 2012, Mayors for the Freedom to Marry today signed onto a friend-of-the-court brief urging the Supreme Court to end marriage discrimination nationwide. The brief includes 226 individually named mayors as well as 40 cities across the country, from towns as small as Thompson, North Dakota, to the five largest cities in the nation, as well as the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities, and the International Municipal Lawyers Association.
"We launched Mayors for the Freedom to Marry three years ago because mayors are closest to their constituents and communities and singularly able to make the case that marriage makes for stronger families and a more vibrant economy," said Marc Solomon, national campaign director of Freedom to Marry. "We're very proud of the 700 mayors who have been a part of Mayors for the Freedom to Marry over the three years of this campaign. This brief demonstrates the diversity of leaders across the country who know that America is ready for the freedom to marry and want the Supreme Court to bring our country to national resolution."
Since its launch, Mayors for the Freedom to Marry has partnered with the United States Conference of Mayors to build and grow support.
"It is time for marriage equality to be the law of the land," said U.S. Conference of Mayors CEO and Executive Director Tom Cochran. "It's the right thing to do and that's why the U.S. Conference of Mayors has joined this brief. Our organization adopted policy opposing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in 1984. In 2009 we adopted policy in support of the freedom to marry, and last June reaffirmed that policy and urged the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that the freedom to marry is the right of all Americans."
The brief was authored by the City Attorney's Office of Los Angeles and will be filed at the Supreme Court today. It states: "Municipalities, as the level of government most closely connected to the community they serve, bear a great burden when a target sector of their populace is denied the right to marry. ... When the freedom to marry is denied, municipalities are the first level of government to suffer the impact."
The brief can be found here: freedomtomarry.org/supremecourtbriefs
Freedom to Marry is the gay and non-gay partnership working to win marriage equality nationwide. Headed by Evan Wolfson, one of America's leading civil rights advocates and lawyers, Freedom to Marry brings new resources and a renewed context of urgency and opportunity to this social justice movement.
LATEST NEWS
FEC Accused of Sleeping at the Wheel as Crypto Giant Pumps Tens of Millions Into 2024 Race
"The time to hold campaign finance violators accountable is now—not after illegal election spending has corrupted our democracy," said the research director of Public Citizen.
Oct 31, 2024
The progressive watchdog group Public Citizen accused the U.S. Federal Election Commission of abdicating its responsibility by failing to act in the face of "illegal" election spending by the cryptocurrency exchange giant Coinbase, a federal contractor.
Public Citizen noted in a statement Thursday that "federal law bars campaign contributions to political parties, committees, or candidates from federal contractors."
The group's statement came a day after Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, pledged that his company would pump another $25 million into Fairshake PAC, a super PAC dedicated to electing candidates supportive of the crypto industry, which has spent big to influence the outcome of the 2024 elections. Fairshake has spent roughly the same amount of money supporting Democratic and Republican candidates, reflecting the extent to which both parties have sought to court the still-nascent crypto industry.
According to Public Citizen, Armstrong's pledge brought Coinbase's total 2024 election spending above $76 million. In August, Public Citizen filed a complaint with the FEC arguing that a portion of Coinbase's spending appears to be unlawful due to the company's multimillion-dollar contract with the U.S. Marshals Service.
"Coinbase has spent more than $50 million in what appears to be illegal campaign contributions from a federal contractor to attack candidates who might stand up to Big Crypto; meanwhile, the FEC is snoozing through the election," Rick Claypool, Public Citizen's research director, said Thursday.
"The time to hold campaign finance violators accountable is now—not after illegal election spending has corrupted our democracy," Claypool added.
The FEC is currently chaired by Sean Cooksey, a Republican appointed by former president and GOP nominee Donald Trump. Evenly divided between three Democrats and three Republicans, the agency has faced backlash for refusing to take action to stem the proliferation of AI-generated deepfakes and illegal campaign spending.
What's more, as The New York Timesreported earlier this year, the agency has moved aggressively in recent months to weaken already-inadequate constraints on political spending.
"One decision this spring that is already reshaping the 2024 presidential race allowed super PACs and campaigns for the first time to work together to plan and execute costly door-to-door canvassing operations," the Times noted.
Additionally, the commission "decided that a wealthy donor could put money into a trust that then could distribute donations to campaigns—while keeping the original source anonymous," the Times reported.
This year's federal election cycle is on pace to be the most expensive in U.S. history, according to OpenSecrets. An analysis released earlier this week by Americans for Tax Fairness found that billionaire families have pumped nearly $2 billion into federal elections so far—likely a significant underestimate, given that the sum excludes untraceable dark money.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Indigenous Brazilians Rally Against 'Death Decree' Attack on Land Demarcation
"We are fighting for life," said one Indigenous leader. "We do not want our land to be exploited, we want to continue living in harmony with nature."
Oct 31, 2024
Thousands of Indigenous Brazilians rallied and marched in the capital Brasília and staged demonstrations in at least five states on Wednesday in a bid to block a proposed constitutional amendment that critics say could halt or even reverse the process of demarcating native lands.
Constitutional Amendment Proposal (PEC) 48 was introduced in September 2023 by federal Sen. Hiran Gonçalves of the right-wing Progressives party. The amendment would constitutionally enshrine a thesis backed by the country's powerful agribusiness sector under which Indigenous land claims made after October 5, 1988—the date Brazil's current constitution was adopted—would be invalidated.
Many Indigenous Brazilians call the proposal the "PEC of death." The Articulation of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), the country's leading nongovernmental Indian advocacy group, says the amendment "is an agribusiness and anti-Indigenous proposal as it violates the original right of peoples to their ancestral territory, already recognized by the 1988 constitution, which PEC 48 seeks to alter."
"The measure also ignores the violence and persecutions that Indigenous peoples have faced for over 500 years, especially during the military dictatorship, which prevented many peoples from being in their territories on that exact date in 1988," APIB added, referring to the U.S.-backed regime that ruled through terror and torture from 1964-85 and in whose army former far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsnaro—a big supporter of PEC 48—proudly served.
On September 21, 2023, Brazil's Supreme Federal Tribunal ruled 9-2 that the Temporal Framework thesis is unconstitutional. On the same day, both houses of Brazil's Congress approved PL 2903, which contained provisions to codify the Temporal Framework.
Leftist Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva subsequently issued a veto for parts of the bill dealing with the Temporal Framework and other provisions that abolished Indigenous peoples' right to free, prior, and informed consultation; made it easier to intrude upon Indigenous lands; and would have banned the expansion of previously demarcated Indigenous lands.
However, right-wing Brazilian lawmakers overruled Lula's veto in December 2023. Despite being declared unconstitutional, lawmakers passed Law 14.701, which codified the Temporal Framework and was subsequently challenged in multiple lawsuits. In April 2024, the Supreme Federal Tribunal suspended these cases and suggested a process of mediation and conciliation between Indigenous people and agribusiness interests. That process began in August.
In a Wednesday interview with Agência Brasil, APIC executive coordinator Alberto Terena of the Terena Indigenous community said that PEC 48 "is a threat against our demarcated lands" that will exacerbate the planetary climate emergency.
"As soon as we stop protecting the environment, the climate crisis will be even worse," he argued. "Indigenous lands are the territories with the greatest preservation of the environment, the greatest biodiversity. We are fighting for life. We do not want our land to be exploited, we want to continue living in harmony with nature."
The demonstrations in Brazil came as a United Nations biodiversity summit (COP16) is underway in neighboring Colombia. Indigenous rights advocates reported that Amazon defender Txai Suruí, one of Brazil's best-known Indigenous activists, was accosted at COP16 after speaking out against the Temporal Framework.
Takakpe Tapayuna Metuktire of the Raoni Institute, which promotes Indigenous rights and sustainability, toldg1 that the Temporal Framework is a death decree for us and our children."
Brian O'Donnell, head of the international advocacy group Campaign for Nature, said in a statement Thursday that "if the world is to maintain its important cultural diversity, or achieve its biodiversity and climate goals, Indigenous peoples' territories must be recognized and secured."
"We are outraged by the assault on Indigenous territories and the disenfranchisement of Indigenous people," O'Donnell added. "Their rights to their ancestral lands must be secured. We stand in solidarity with Indigenous people in Brazil and around the world, who are calling for this ill-conceived set of policies to be scrapped and for world leaders to recognize the territorial rights of Indigenous peoples."
In addition to the Brasília rally and march, Indigenous-led demonstrations saw road blockages and other actions across the country of 200 million inhabitants. Protests took place in the states of São Paulo, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, Maranhão, and Roraima.
"We will not stop our mobilization as long as there is this assault on our rights," said Terena. "This march is not only in the streets, but in Congress and other government agencies... We want the constitution to be respected within this country."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'The Window Is Closing': Fears Grow That World Leaders Will Fail to Protect Nature at COP16
"The very limited progress we've seen so far in the negotiations at COP16 is insufficient to address the very real implications of getting this wrong," one expert said.
Oct 31, 2024
As a major international biodiversity summit approaches its Friday conclusion, environmental advocates fear that world leaders will not make the conservation and financial commitments needed to halt the destruction of nature.
The 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the Convention on Biological Diversity launched in Cali, Colombia on October 21. It is the first international meeting since nations pledged to protect 30% of land and ocean ecosystems by 2030 and generate $700 billion a year to fund the protection of nature, with a smaller goal of $200 billion per year by 2030.
Yet nations are not on track to meet these goals, even as studies released this month warn that vertebrates have declined on average by nearly three-quarters in the last half-century and that over a third of analyzed tree species are at risk of extinction.
"Each passing day without the fulfillment of agreed commitments is a missed opportunity to protect biodiversity."
"The very limited progress we've seen so far in the negotiations at COP16 is insufficient to address the very real implications of getting this wrong," Yadvinder Malhi, a University of Oxford professor of ecosystem science, toldThe Guardian. "Biodiversity is continuing to decline at an alarming rate. I really hope that the crunch discussions this week yield those commitments, for the sake of a flourishing future for people and for our planet."
World leaders failed to meet a single one of the biodiversity targets set for 2020 in Aichi, Japan. There was hope, after nations agreed to a Global Biodiversity Framework during the Kunming-Montreal talks that concluded in December 2022, that the next decade would be different. Yet progress so far has been lagging.
Ahead of COP16, nearly 85% of countries missed the deadline to submit new national biodiversity strategies and action plans, according to an analysis from Carbon Brief. Since the deadline passed, only five more countries had submitted plans as of October 25.
An official progress report published Monday by the United Nations Environment Program World Conservation Monitoring Center and the International Union for Conservation of Nature concluded that only 17.6% of land and 8.4% of the ocean are currently protected. To meet the 30 by 30 goal, nations will need to protect a land area the size of Australia and Brazil put together and a marine area larger than the Indian Ocean within the next six years.
"This report is a clear reminder that with only six years remaining until 2030, the window is closing for us to equitably and meaningfully conserve 30% of the Earth," IUCN director general Grethel Aguilar said in a statement. "The '30 by 30' is an ambitious target, but one that is still within reach if the international community works together across borders, demographics, and sectors."
A major stumbling block to meeting any targets is the question of who will pay for it, how, and how much. This has emerged as a central point of contention in the talks, with Global South nations and environmental justice advocates calling on the wealthier nations of the Global North to do more.
Wealthier countries have pledged $20 billion a year in public money by 2025, yet the African delegation said that the idea these countries would reach the goal was "wishful thinking," The Guardian reported.
On Monday, the U.K., Germany, France, Norway, and four other countries promised $163 million. But Alice Jay, Campaign for Nature's director of international relations, said actually meeting the target "would require them to announce $300 million each month from now to 2025, and then keep that up each year until 2030."
"Countries from the Global South expect more from the Global North," Nigeria Environment Minister Iziaq Kunle Salako said. "Finance is key in the context of implementing all the targets."
Brian O'Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature, told The Guardian that progress had been "too slow."
"I think political prioritization of nature is still too low," O'Donnell said. "This is reflected by progress on the targets. Several target[s] are very easy to measure: 30x30 has metrics on area and quality, finance has a dollar figure. We have new data on both that show we're not on pace."
O'Donnell added that it was "disturbing' to approach countries about their finance plans and be received as if making an unrealistic demand, rather than a follow-up on a pledge the country had already made.
"To me, that is a reflection of not a true commitment to this," he said.
As the second week of negotiations began on Sunday, Greenpeace called on wealthier nations to step up and also to offer funds for Indigenous and local communities that are on the frontlines of protecting biodiversity in their territories.
"Each passing day without the fulfillment of agreed commitments is a missed opportunity to protect biodiversity," Estefania Gonzalez, Greenpeace Andino's deputy campaigns director, said in a statement. "Countries with greater resources have both the capacity and responsibility to drive change, by meeting the agreed goals and supporting those facing the greatest impacts of biodiversity loss."
An Lambrechts, a biodiversity politics expert at Greenpeace International, said that progress had partly been held up by lobbying efforts from the private sector, as has notably been the case at international climate talks as well.
"Well-paid industry representatives are doing their worst to undermine progress to ensure they can continue profiting off nature for free," Lambrechts said. "We need less big promo shows for false solutions like 'biodiversity credits' and more of the new money for actual nature protection that is absent so far. What is clear in Cali is the world is ready for global action on biodiversity if governments can deliver a real outcome at COP16."
Indigenous advocates have also called for money to be sent to them directly, rather than through intermediaries.
"Very little reaches the territories," Tabea Cacique, a member of the Asháninka people of the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest, said at the talks, as El Paísreported. "Do not look at us as Indigenous peoples who cannot manage the funds; teach us."
Yet even as funding remains illusive, the stakes are high.
"Nature is life," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in an address at COP16 on Tuesday, "and yet we are waging a war against it. A war where there can be no winner."
"Every year, we see temperatures climbing higher," he continued. "Every day, we lose more species. Every minute, we dump a garbage truck of plastic waste into our oceans, rivers, and lakes. Make no mistake. This is what an existential crisis looks like."
In his address, Guterres called for "making peace with nature."
"Biodiversity is humanity's ally," he said. "We must move from plundering it to preserving it. As I have said time and again, making peace with nature is the defining task of the 21st century."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular