Progressive Calendar 03.24.12 /2
From: David Shove (shove001umn.edu)
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2012 03:43:10 -0700 (PDT)
*P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R    03.24.12  *

1. Sustain              3.24 9am
2. Occupy/women  3.24 1pm
3. CUAPB             3.24 1:30pm
4. Northtown vigil    3.24 2pm
5.* *Cavlan party       3.24 6pm

6. Tom Taylor mem 3.25 12noon Ramsey MN

7. Michael Gould-Wartofsky - Repress U, Class of 2012: seven steps to a
Homeland Security Campus [U of M mentioned]

--------1 of 7--------

Sustain 3.24 9am

Sustainable Communities & Neighborhoods Conference- 9 am to 4 pm Saturday
March 24 at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, Minneapolis
Engaging 600 suburban and urban volunteers from neighborhoods,
congregations, schools and suburban environmental commissions.


--------2 of 7--------

From: kim defranco kimdefranco [at] yahoo.com
Occupy/women  3.24 1pm

Honor the Struggles for Women's Liberty this Women's History Month ...
Occupy Women's Rights Rally!
When: Saturday, March 24th, @1 p.m.
Where: The People's Plaza (Hennepin County Government Center, 4th Ave & 5th
St., Downtown Mpls)
Join us to celebrate the historic and heroic struggles of women for
democratic rights. Throughout history women have taken to the streets,
organizing and leading movements for the abolition of slavery, for union
rights, for civil rights, education rights, to name just a few. Women
suffragists engaged in a 70 year struggle for the basic right to vote.
African American women had to fight for the full entitlement to vote for 45
years longer.

Come hear speeches and join us in celebration and conversation about
women's historic struggles!
Performances by Desdamona, Misty Rowan, The Running Riot, Mankwe Ndosi and
others. Speakers will include women and girls highlighting women's historic
and current struggles!

Confirmed speakers include Reps. Karen Clark and Susan Allen, Rosemary
Williams - Foreclosure Activist, AmeeXiong - Lao Family Community Cntr.,
Karen Law - Pro-Choice Resources, Arriana Lopez - Women’s Student Activist
Collective,  Phyllis Walker-AFSCME 3800, Brittany Lewis-Occupy the Hood,
Liz Loeb – Take ActionMN, Ana Vasquez – MN Immigrant Rights Action Cmmtee,
Ebony Harris - Welfare Rights Committee, Rosemary Rocco – lifelong activist
and many others!

Our right to vote is now under attack!
Stand firm with us against the MN Voter ID Amendment

The Amendment would:
Disenfranchise over 200,000 elderly, disabled, and homeless
Deny the vote to 500,000 who use Election Day registration
Wreak havoc on absentee voters, especially Native Americans
Disenfranchise poor and low income women and communities

Organized by Events Committee of Occupy Minneapolis. Initial Endorsers
include: Women Against Military Madness; Welfare Rights Committee; Occupy
the Hood; Occupy Minneapolis; AFSCME Local 3800; MN Metro Branch of Women's
Int'l League for Peace & Freedom; Women’s Student Activist Collective; MN
Committee to Stop FBI Repression; Students for a Democratic Society– U of
M; Feminist Caucus of the DFL; Anti-War Committee; Grandmothers for Peace;
Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, Pro Choice Resources, MN NOW,
TakeActionMN
FFI: womensrightsm24 [at] gmail.com ; go to our Facebook event @ Occupy Women’s
Rights Rally
http://www.facebook.com/events/309357529122417


--------3 of 7--------

From: Michelle Gross <mgresist [at] visi.com>
Subject: CUAPB 3.24 1:30pm

Meetings: Every Saturday at 1:30 p.m. at Walker Church, 3104 16th Avenue
South http://www.CUAPB.org <http://www.cuapb.org/>

Communities United Against Police Brutality
3100 16th Avenue S
Minneapolis, MN 55407
Hotline 612-874-STOP (7867)


--------4 of 7--------

From: Vanka485 [at] aol.com
Subject: Northtown vigil 3.24 2pm

Peace vigil at Northtown (Old Hwy 10 & University Av), every Saturday 2-3pm


--------5 of 7--------

From: greenpartymike ollamhfaery [at] earthlink.net
Cavlan party 3.24 6pm

COME CELEBRATE MICHAEL CAVLAN’S BIRTHDAY
and HIS COMING OUT PARTY-
COMING OUT TO RUN FOR US SENATE IN MINNESOTA 2012
and yes FUNDRAISER

SATURDAY MARCH 24th
6 PM- 9 PM
MAY DAY BOOKS
301 CEDAR AVE S (in the basement)
Suggested donation for entry $10 but no-one will be turned away
because of lack of funding.

Lydia Howell will be making her famous Vegetarian Chili
Michael will make Irish Shepard’s Pie.
There will be a short movie classic
Then an auction of a variety of historic progressive, Irish and Native
American items.
Then Town hall with questions and answers.

Also available will be signed copies of Michael’s now classic and ironic
essay titled “Censorship- A Liberal Value.”

For those who are not paying attention, Michael Cavlan is running
for the US Senate challenging current war supporting and cilvil liberty
eroding Senator Amy Klobuchar

Come find out why the corporate political establishment are afraid of.

NOTE- To those firebaggers who can’t make it or do not live in Minnesota
well, you can contribute as well.

Send an envelope with a check  to
The Committee To Elect Michael Cavlan
We do not and will not use paypal because of their shameful behavior
in regards to Bradley Manning and Wikileaks.

We suggest that other progressives and activists for our rights, do the
same.
Any of you who want to contact me, just email
openprogressivemichael [at] gmail.com
So come


--------6 of 7-------

From:leskela [at] gmaail.com
Tom Taylor memorial 3.25 12noon Ramsey MN

Memorial services for our dear friend,Tom Taylor: March 25, NoonArrive at
noon
Service is at 1pm* People are welcome to come at 10:30 to help set
upLocation:Bruce Bacon’s Garden Farme
7363 175th Avenue Northwest
Ramsey, MN 55303

Pot Luck Picnic to followWe are striving for a waste free event. Please
bring your own: §  chair/blanket§  dish to share§  beverage§  plates,
forks, etc.,Also, bring photos, memories and your favorite stories about
Tom Taylor. There will be photo boards to contribute to and a confessional
for recording your favorite Tom stories.In lieu of flowers:Tom Taylor fund
at NE Bank
Att'n Teller/Tom Taylor or Chuck Fred Taylor
77 NE Broadway Street
Minneapolis, MN 55413Land Stewardship Project
http://www.landstewardshipproject.org/The Green Party of Minnesota
http://www.mngreens.org/Organic Consumers Association
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ You can bring any donations for the April
11 Silent Auction here also. Sue Leskela for Tori Johnston


--------7 of 7--------

Repress U, Class of 2012: Seven Steps to a Homeland Security Campus
by Michael Gould-Wartofsky
Published on Thursday, March 22, 2012 by TomDispatch.com

Campus spies. Pepper spray. SWAT teams. Twitter trackers. Biometrics.
Student security consultants. Professors of homeland security studies.
Welcome to Repress U, class of 2012.

Since 9/11, the homeland security state has come to campus just as it has
come to America’s towns and cities, its places of work and its houses of
worship, its public space and its cyberspace.  But the age of (in)security
had announced its arrival on campus with considerably less fanfare than
elsewhere -- until, that is, the “less lethal” weapons were unleashed in
the fall of 2011.

Today, from the City University of New York to the University of
California, students increasingly find themselves on the frontlines, not of
a war on terror, but of a war on “radicalism” and “extremism.”  Just about
everyone from college administrators and educators to law enforcement
personnel and corporate executives seems to have enlisted in this war
effort.  Increasingly, American students are in their sights.

In 2008, I laid out seven steps the Bush administration had taken to create
a homeland security campus.  Four years and a president later, Repress U
has come a long way.  In the Obama years, it has taken seven more steps to
make the university safe for plutocracy.  Here is a step-by-step guide to
how they did it.

1. Target Occupy

Had there been no UC Davis, no Lt. John Pike, no chemical weapons wielded
against peacefully protesting students, and no cameras to broadcast it all,
Americans might never have known just how far the homeland security campus
has come in its mission to police its students.  In the old days, you might
have called in the National Guard.  Nowadays, all you need is an
FBI-trained, federally funded, and “less lethally” armed campus police
department.

The mass pepper-spraying of students at UC Davis was only the most public
manifestation of a long-running campus trend in which, for officers of the
peace, the pacification of student protest has become part of the job
description.  The weapons of choice have sometimes been blunt instruments,
such as the extendable batons used to bludgeon the student body at
Berkeley, Baruch, and the University of Puerto Rico.  At other times,
tactical officers have turned to “less-lethal” munitions, like the CS gas,
beanbag rounds, and pepper pellets fired into crowds at Occupy protests
across the University of California system this past winter.

Yet for everything we see of the homeland security campus, there is a good
deal more that we miss.  Behind the riot suits, the baton strikes, and the
pepper-spray cannons stands a sprawling infrastructure made possible by
multimillion-dollar federal grants, “memoranda of understanding” and
“mutual aid” agreements among law enforcement agencies, counter-terrorism
training, an FBI-sponsored “Academic Alliance,” and 103 Joint Terrorism
Task Forces (which provide “one-stop shopping” for counterterrorism
operations to more than 50 federal and 600 state and local agencies).

“We have to go where terrorism takes us, so we often have to go onto
campuses,” FBI Special Agent Jennifer Gant told Campus Safety Magazine in
an interview last year.  To that end, campus administrators and campus
police chiefs are now known to coordinate their operations with Department
of Homeland Security (DHS) “special advisors,” FBI “campus liaison agents,”
an FBI-led National Security Advisory Board, and a Federal Law Enforcement
Training Center, which instructs local law enforcement in everything from
“physical techniques” to “behavioral science.”  More than half of campus
police forces already have “intelligence-sharing agreements” with these and
other government agencies in place.

2. Get a SWAT team

Since 2007, campus police forces have decisively escalated their tactics,
expanded their arsenals, and trained ever more of their officers in
SWAT-style paramilitary policing.  Many agencies acquire their arms
directly from the Department of Defense through a surplus weapons sales
program known as “1033,” which offers, among other things, “used grenade
launchers (for the deployment of less lethal weapons)... for a
significantly reduced cost.”

According to the most recent federal data available, nine out of 10 campus
agencies with sworn police officers now deploy armed patrols authorized to
use deadly force.  Nine in 10 also authorize the use of chemical munitions,
while one in five make regular use of Tasers.  Last August, an 18-year old
student athlete died after being tased at the University of Cincinnati.

Meanwhile, many campus police squads have been educated in the art of war
through regular special weapons training sessions by “tactical officers’
associations” which run a kind of SWAT university.  In October, UC Berkeley
played host to an “Urban Shield” SWAT training exercise involving local and
campus agencies, the California National Guard, and special police forces
from Israel, Jordan, and Bahrain.  And since 2010, West Texas A&M has
played host to paramilitary training programs for police from Mexico.

In October, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte got its very own
SWAT team, equipped with MP-15 rifles, M&P 40 sidearms, and Remington
shotguns.  “We have integrated SWAT officers into the squads that serve our
campus day and night,” boasted UNC Charlotte Chief of Police Jeff Baker.
 The following month, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a SWAT team staged an
armed raid on an occupied building, pointing assault rifles at the heads of
activists, among them UNC students.

3. Spy on Muslims

The long arm of Repress U stretches far beyond the bounds of any one campus
or college town. As reported by the Associated Press this winter, the New
York City Police Department (NYPD) and its hitherto secret “Demographics
Unit” sent undercover operatives to spy on members of the Muslim Students
Association at more than 20 universities in four states across the
Northeast beginning in 2006.

None of the organizations or persons of interest were ever accused of any
wrongdoing, but that didn’t stop NYPD detectives from tracking Muslim
students through a “Cyber Intelligence Unit,” issuing weekly “MSA Reports”
on local chapters of the Muslim Students Association, attending campus
meetings and seminars, noting how many times students prayed, or even
serving as chaperones for what they described as “militant paintball
trips.”  The targeted institutions ran the gamut from community colleges to
Columbia and Yale.

According to the AP’s investigation, the intelligence units in question
worked closely not only with agencies in other cities, but with an agent on
the payroll of the CIA.  Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, facing mounting
calls to resign, has issued a spirited defense of the campus surveillance
program, as has Mayor Michael Bloomberg.  “If terrorists aren't limited by
borders and boundaries, we can't be either,” Kelly said in a speech at
Fordham Law School.

The NYPD was hardly the only agency conducting covert surveillance of
Muslim students on campus.  The FBI has been engaging in such tactics for
years.  In 2007, UC Irvine student Yasser Ahmed was assaulted by FBI
agents, who followed him as he was on his way to a campus “free speech
zone.”  In 2010, Yasir Afifi, a student at Mission College in Santa Clara,
California, found a secret GPS tracking device affixed to his car.  A
half-dozen agents later knocked on his door to ask for it back.

4. Keep the undocumented out

Foreign students are followed closely by Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) through its Student and Exchange Visitor Information
System (SEVIS).  As of 2011, the agency was keeping tabs on 1.2 million
students and their dependents.  Most recently, as part of a transition to
the paperless SEVIS II -- which aims to “unify records” -- ICE has been
linking student files to biometric and employer data collected by DHS and
other agencies.

“That information stays forever,” notes Louis Farrell, director of the ICE
program.  “And every activity that’s ever been associated with that person
will come up.  That’s something that has been asked for by the national
security community... [and] the academic community.”

Then there are the more than 360,000 undocumented students and high-school
graduates who would qualify for permanent resident status and college
admission, were the DREAM Act ever passed.  It would grant conditional
permanent residency to undocumented students who were brought to the U.S.
as children.  When such students started “coming out” as part of an
“undocumented and unafraid” campaign, many received DHS notices to appear
for removal proceedings.  Take 24-year old Uriel Alberto, of Lees-McRae
College, who recently went on hunger strike in North Carolina’s Wake County
jail; he now faces deportation (and separation from his U.S.-born son) for
taking part in a protest at the state capitol.

Since 2010, the homeland security campus has been enlisted by the state of
Arizona to enforce everything from bans on ethnic studies programs to laws
like S.B. 1070, which makes it a crime to appear in public without proof of
legal residency and is considered a mandate for police to detain anyone
suspected of being undocumented.  Many undocumented students have turned
down offers of admission to the University of Arizona since the passage of
the law, while others have stopped attending class for fear of being
detained and deported.

5. Keep an eye on student spaces and social media

While Muslim and undocumented students are particular targets of
surveillance, they are not alone.  Electronic surveillance has expanded
beyond traditional closed-circuit TV cameras to next-generation
technologies like IQeye HD megapixel cameras, so-called edge devices
(cameras that can do their own analytics), and Perceptrak’s video analytics
software, which “analyzes video from security cameras 24x7 for events of
interest,” and which recently made its debut at Johns Hopkins University
and Mount Holyoke College.

At the same time, students’ social media accounts have become a favorite
destination for everyone from campus police officers to analysts at the
Department of Homeland Security.

In 2010, the DHS National Operations Center established a Media Monitoring
Capability (MMC).  According to an internal agency document, MMC is tasked
with “leveraging news stories, media reports and postings on social media
sites… for operationally relevant data, information, analysis, and
imagery.”  The definition of operationally relevant data includes “media
reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities,” “partisan
or agenda-driven sites,” and a final category ambiguously labeled
“research/studies, etc.”

With the Occupy movement coming to campus, even university police
departments have gotten in on the action.  According to a how-to guide
called “Essential Ingredients to Working with Campus Protests” by UC Santa
Barbara police chief Dustin Olson, the first step to take is to “monitor
social media sites continuously,” both for intelligence about the
“leadership and agenda” and “for any messages that speak to violent or
criminal behavior.”

6. Coopt the classroom and the laboratory

At a time when entire departments and disciplines are facing the chopping
block at America’s universities, the Department of Homeland Security has
proven to be the best-funded department of all.  Homeland security studies
has become a major growth sector in higher education and now has more than
340 certificate- and degree-granting programs.  Many colleges have joined
the Homeland Security and Defense Education Consortium, a spinoff of the
U.S. Northern Command (the Department of Defense’s “homeland defense”
division), which offers a model curriculum to its members.

This emerging discipline has been directed and funded to the tune of $4
billion over the last five years by DHS.  The goal, according to Dr. Tara
O’Toole, DHS Undersecretary of Science & Technology, is to “leverag[e] the
investment and expertise of academia… to meet the needs of the department.”
 Additional funding is being made available from the Pentagon through its
blue-skies research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and
the “intelligence community” through its analogous Intelligence Advanced
Research Projects Activity.

At the core of the homeland security-university partnership are DHS’s 12
centers of excellence. (A number that has doubled since I first reported on
the initiative in 2008.)  The DHS Office of University Programs advertises
the centers of excellence as an “extended consortium of hundreds of
universities” which work together “to develop customer-driven research
solutions” and “to provide essential training to the next generation of
homeland security experts.”

But what kind of research is being carried out at these centers of
excellence, with the support of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars each
year?  Among the 41 “knowledge products” currently in use by DHS or being
evaluated in pilot studies, we find an “extremist crime database,” a
“Minorities at Risk for Organizational Behavior” dataset, analytics for
aerial surveillance systems along the border, and social media monitoring
technologies.  Other research focuses include biometrics, “suspicious
behavior detection,” and “violent radicalization.”

7.  Privatize, subsidize, and capitalize

Repress U has not only proven a boon to hundreds of cash-starved
universities, but also to big corporations as higher education morphs into
hired education.  While a majority of the $184 billion in homeland security
funding in 2011 came from government agencies like DHS and the Pentagon,
private sector funding is expected to make up an increasing share of the
total in the coming years, according to the Homeland Security Research
Corporation, a consulting firm serving the homeland security industry.

Each DHS Center of Excellence has been founded on private-public
partnerships, corporate co-sponsorships, and the leadership of “industry
advisory boards” which give big business a direct stake and say in its
operations. Corporate giants allied with DHS Centers of Excellence include:

*Lockheed Martin at the Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses
to Terrorism (START), based at the University of Maryland at College Park.

*Alcatel-Lucent and AT&T at the Rutgers University-based Command, Control,
and Interoperability Center for Advanced Data Analysis (CICADA).

*ExxonMobil and Con Edison at the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of
Terrorism Events (CREATE), based at the University of Southern California.

*Motorola, Boeing, and Bank of America at the Purdue University-based
Center for Visual Analytics for Command, Control, and Interoperability
Environments (VACCINE).

**Wal-Mart, Cargill, Kraft, and McDonald’s at the National Center for Food
Protection and Defense (NCFPD), based at the University of Minnesota-Twin
Cities*.

What’s more, universities have struck multimillion-dollar deals with
multinational private security firms like Securitas, deploying unsworn,
underpaid, often untrained “protection officers” on campus as “extra eyes
and ears.”  The University of Wisconsin-Madison, in one report, boasts that
police and private partners have been “seamlessly integrated.”

Elsewhere, even students have gotten into the business of security.  The
private intelligence firm STRATFOR, for example, recently partnered with
the University of Texas to use its students to “essentially parallel the
work of… outside consultants” but on campus, offering information on
activist groups like the Yes Men.

Step by step, at school after school, the homeland security campus has
executed a silent coup in the decade since September 11th.  The university,
thus usurped, has increasingly become an instrument not of higher learning,
but of intelligence gathering and paramilitary training, of profit-taking
on behalf of America’s increasingly embattled “1%.”

Yet the next generation may be otherwise occupied.  Since September 2011, a
new student movement has swept across the country, making itself felt most
recently on March 1st with a national day of action to defend the right to
education. This Occupy-inspired wave of on-campus activism is making
visible what was once invisible, calling into question what was once beyond
question, and counteracting the logic of Repress U with the logic of
nonviolence and education for democracy.

For many, the rise of the homeland security campus has provoked some basic
questions about the aims and principles of a higher education: Whom does
the university serve? Whom does it protect? Who is to speak? Who is to be
silenced? To whom does the future belong?

The guardians of Repress U are uninterested in such inquiry. Instead, they
cock their weapons.  They lock the gates.  And they prepare to take the
next step.

© 2012 TomDispatch.com
Michael Alexander Gould-Wartofsky is a writer from New York City and a
MacCracken Fellow in Sociology at New York University. A native of New York
City and a graduate of Harvard College, his work has appeared in The
Nation, The Huffington Post, The Harvard Crimson, Monthly Review, Common
Dreams, TomDispatch, and in the collections Poets Against the War (Nation
Books, 2003) and Imagining Iraq (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). He is currently
writing a book about Occupy Wall Street. His website is
www.michaelgouldwartofsky.com.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


        Shove Trove
  • (no other messages in thread)

Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.