April, 02 2024, 08:12am EDT
Sunrise Movement Calls Thousands of Wisconsin Voters for Ceasefire
Sunrise Movement has continued its support for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza by calling youth voters in the lead up to the April 2nd primary in Wisconsin. This follows mobilization by Sunrise volunteers in Michigan and other states with uncommitted on the ballot.
This effort for voters to vote uninstructed in Wisconsin is the latest effort by progressives to show the Biden administration that its current leadership on Gaza is out of touch with the Democratic Party’s base.
“Biden’s best chance to succeed in November is by supporting an immediate and permanent ceasefire and ending unconditional military aid to the Israeli government, " said Michele Wiendling, Political Director of Sunrise Movement. “The president is hemorrhaging the support of young voters by aiding in the destruction of people’s lives and homes in Gaza. If President Biden wants to defeat Trump, he must listen to young people, people of color, and the working class who put him in office in 2020 and immediately change course.”
This follows direct actions that young people have taken including at Biden’s 2024 campaign headquarters where Sunrise members demanded the president finance “climate not genocide” and interrupted fundraisers demanding more climate action.
“Gaza is a climate voter issue. Sunrise Movement is fighting for clean air, drinkable water, and safe communities. We believe the people of Palestine deserve that too. There has been more emissions produced by US financed bombs in Gaza than the emissions of 20 small countries. We need Biden to fight for peace so that we can collectively fight for more climate wins in the future.” said Aru Shiney-Ajay, Executive Director of Sunrise Movement.
Sunrise Movement is a movement to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process.
LATEST NEWS
Seven 'Incredible' Earth Defenders Honored With Goldman Environmental Prize
One winner said the award "signifies an international recognition that we are facing a new stage in humanity," one in which "human beings understand they are part of nature."
Apr 29, 2024
Activists who blocked fossil fuel development, protected vulnerable ecosystems, and helped enact clean air regulations are among the seven winners of this year's prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.
The San Francisco-based Goldman Environmental Foundation announced Monday that the winners of the 35th annual Goldman Prize—which some call the "Green Nobels"—are:
- Marcel Gomes, Brazil: Gomes, a journalist , worked with colleagues at Repórter Brasil to coordinate "a complex, international campaign that directly linked beef from JBS, the world's largest meatpacking company, to illegal deforestation in Brazil's most threatened ecosystems."
- Murrawah Maroochy Johnson, Australia: Maroochy Johnson, a Wirdi woman from the Birri Gubba Nation, "blocked development of the Waratah coal mine," a "carbon bomb" that "would have accelerated climate change in Queensland, destroyed the nearly 20,000-acre Bimblebox Nature Refuge, added 1.58 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere over its lifetime, and threatened Indigenous rights and culture."
- Alok Shukla, India: Shukla "led a successful community campaign that saved 445,000 acres of biodiversity-rich forests from 21 planned coal mines in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh."
- Andrea Vidaurre, United States: Vidaurre's "grassroots leadership persuaded the California Air Resources Board to adopt, in the spring of 2023, two historic transportation regulations that significantly limit trucking and rail emissions."
- Sinegugu Zukulu and Nonhle Mbuthuma, South Africa: Zukulu and Mbuthuma "stopped destructive seismic testing for oil and gas off South Africa's Eastern Cape" by "asserting the rights of the local community to protect their marine environment," safeguarding "migratory whales, dolphins, and other wildlife from the harmful effects of seismic testing."
- Teresa Vicente, Spain: Vicente "led a historic, grassroots campaign to save the Mar Menor ecosystem—Europe's largest saltwater lagoon—from collapse, resulting in the passage of a new law in September 2022 granting the lagoon unique legal rights."
Michael Sutton, executive director of the Goldman Environmental Foundation,
described the winners to The Associated Press as "an incredible group of individuals laboring, sometimes in obscurity, against overwhelming odds to prevail against governments, against industry."
Goldman Prize winners receive a $200,000 award and can apply for additional grants to fund their work.
Reacting to his win, Gomes said: "This award recognizes the impact that journalism can have to protect the environment and ultimately improve people's lives.Repórter Brasil was able to track the Brazilian meat chain from the farm to supermarkets abroad, which companies said was not possible to do."
Vicente told the AP that the prize "signifies an international recognition that we are facing a new stage in humanity," one in which "human beings understand they are part of nature."
Shukla toldThe New York Times that he hopes his award will inspire frontline communities around the world.
"There is a way," he said, "that local communities can actually resist even the most powerful corporations using just their resolve and peaceful, democratic means."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Israel Kills Daughter, Infant Grandson of Slain Palestinian Poet Refaat Alareer
"I have beautiful news for you. I wish I could tell you in person. Do you know you have just become a grandfather?" Shaima Alareer wrote to her slain father before she, her baby, and her husband were killed.
Apr 29, 2024
The daughter, infant grandson, and son-in-law of Refaat Alareer—the renowned Palestinian poet assassinated last year in an Israeli airstrike—were killed Friday in another Israel Defense Forces bombing, this one reportedly targeting a building hosting an international relief charity in Gaza City.
Shaima Alareer, her husband Muhammad Abd al-Aziz Siyam, and their 3-month-old son Abd al-Rahman were killed in the strike on a home where they were sheltering in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, Anadolu Agencyreported.
Siyam was an engineer. Alareer was an accomplished illustrator and the eldest daughter of Refaat Alareer—one of Palestine's most famous poets and professors—who was slain in a December 6 Israeli strike on Shejaiya that also killed his brother, sister, and her four children.
A month before his killing, Alareer posted his now-famous poem, "If I Must Die," on social media. The poem was written for Shaima.
"I want my children to plan, rather than worry about, their future, and to draw beaches or fields or blue skies and a sun in the corner, not warships, pillars of smoke, warplanes, and guns," Refaat Alareer explained a decade ago.
After giving birth, Shaima Alareer wrote to her slain father: "I have beautiful news for you. I wish I could tell you in person. Do you know you have just become a grandfather? Yes, dad. This is your first grandchild. He's more than a month old now. This is your grandchild Abdul Rahman whom I always imagined you would carry. I never imagined I'd lose you so soon before you got to meet him."
The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor found that the strike that killed Refaat Alareer and his relatives was "apparently deliberate" and followed "weeks of death threats" that came after Alareer—co-founder of the Palestinian writers' group We Are Not Numbers—called the Hamas-led October 7 attacks on Israel "legitimate" and mocked uncorroborated reports that Hamas militants baked an Israeli infant in an oven.
Friday's strike came amid relentless Israel attacks on Gaza by air, land, and sea, including a bombing of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza that killed at least 15 people on Saturday. Monday airstrikes targeting three homes killed at least 20 people including numerous children in the southern city of Rafah—where around 1.5 million Palestinians, most of them refugees forced from other parts of Gaza, are bracing for an expected full-scale Israeli invasion.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Columbia Gives Student Encampment 2PM Deadline to Pack Up—Or Else
One student organizer called the move "just another intimidation tactic from the university."
Apr 29, 2024
This is a developing story… Please check back for possible updates...
As Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and progressives around the world praise U.S. student protesters for pressuring their institutions to divest from Israel and its war on the besieged enclave, Columbia University on Monday gave members of a campus encampment a 2:00 pm deadline to leave or face suspension.
The Ivy League university has already suspended over 100 students, who were arrested after president Minouche Shafik invited New York Police Department officers to clear the first encampment. Since Columbia students built the initial encampment, similar demonstrations have popped up at dozens of campuses across the country throughout April.
"As you are probably aware, the dialogue between the university and student leaders of the encampment is, regrettably, at an impasse," says Columbia's notice, noting that finals are beginning and graduation looms. "The university will offer an alternative venue for the demonstrations after the exam period and commencement have concluded. If the encampment is not removed, we will need to initiate disciplinary procedures because of a number of violations of university policies."
"If you voluntarily leave by 2:00 pm, identify yourself to a university official, and sign the provided form where you commit to abide by all university policies through June 30, 2025, or the date of the conferral of your degree, whichever is earlier, you will be eligible to complete the semester in good standing (and will not be placed on suspension) as long as you adhere to this commitment," the document continues.
The notice states that "it is important for you to know that the university has already identified many students in the encampment. If you do not identify yourself upon leaving and sign the form now, you will not be eligible to sign and complete the semester in good standing. If you do not leave by 2:00 pm, you will be suspended pending further investigation."
Suspended students, the document details, are restricted from all university property, are ineligible to participate in any academic or extracurricular activities, and must notify the Department of Public Safety to conduct any official business on campus. The notice adds that those who do not leave the encampment before the deadline could ultimately be expelled.
Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student and the lead negotiator on behalf of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the student coalition that organized the encampment, toldThe New York Times that the deadline is "just another intimidation tactic from the university."
"The university is dealing with this matter as a disciplinary issue, not as a movement to divest from war," Khalil added.
Responding to the notice on social media, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine on Monday urged students not to "sign anything with administration" and called on supporters to show up to protect the encampment at noon.
The group—which is planning a 2:30 pm press conference—said that "Columbia's threat to mass suspend, evict, and possibly expel students with only a few hours' notice violates university rules."
"We have informed the university that we are prepared to escalate our direct actions if they do not adopt basic standards of conduct for negotiations," the group added. "We must take action to end the true 'state of emergency,' Columbia's complicity in genocide."
While the group said faculty who objected to Columbia's plans were informed that the administration had declared a "state of emergency," the university said in a media advisory that "the rumor... is a fabrication and totally false."
The notice came after a statement from Shafik—emailed to students across campus Monday morning—acknowledging the breakdown in talks with student organizers, noting Columbia's offers, declaring that "the encampment has created an unwelcoming environment for many of our Jewish students and faculty," and reaffirming that "the university will not divest from Israel."
It also followed Congressmen Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) leading a Monday letter to the board of trustees expressing disappointment that "Columbia University has not yet disbanded the unauthorized and impermissible encampment of anti-Israel, anti-Jewish activists on campus," and arguing that "the time for negotiation is over; the time for action is now."
Columbia's encampment has drawn national media attention and visits from supportive and unsupportive members of Congress.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)—whose daughter Isra Hirsi was suspended from Columbia University's Barnard College earlier this month—said last week that "contrary to right-wing attacks, these students are joyfully protesting for peace and an end to the genocide taking place in Gaza. I'm in awe of their bravery and courage."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular