Watch this film I helped out on No-No A Dockumentary

on Netflix now:

Journalist Will Potter Describes Being First and Only Journalist to Visit Federal Communication Management Unit

from the Sparrow Project :

In a new TED Talk released today, investigative journalist and TED Senior Fellow Will Potter describes his experience as the first and only journalist to visit secretive prisons on U.S. soil that are referred to by prisoners and guards as “Little Guantanamo.”

Communications Management Units, or CMUs, are experimental prison units in the United States for so-called “second-tier terrorists.” There’s an estimated 60-70 prisoners in CMUs and they are overwhelmingly Muslim, along with several animal rights and environmental activists.

“According to the Bureau of Prisons, CMUs are for prisoners with quote ‘inspirational significance.’ I think that’s a polite way of saying they are political prisons, for political prisoners,” Potter says in the talk. “Prisoners are sent to the CMU because of their race, religion, or political beliefs.”

There are currently two CMUs, located within larger federal prisons in Terre Haute, Indiana and Marion, Illinois. Neither underwent the formal review process required by law when they were opened.

CMUs are not solitary confinement, but they radically restrict prisoner communications with the outside world to levels that meet or exceed the most extreme prisons in the country.Will Potter was allowed to visit environmental activist Daniel McGowan, who was being held at the CMU in Marion. Approval of this visit came as a shock since no other journalist has been allowed inside the CMUs and because documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act have revealed that the Counter Terrorism Unit has monitored Potter’s speeches, articles, and his book Green Is The New Red. Attorneys and prisoners have said that inmates are transferred to the CMUs without notice and without opportunity to challenge their new designation, in what they say is a clear violation of due process rights.

“Three months after our visit, McGowan was transferred out of the CMU. Then without warning, he was sent back,” Potter says in the TED talk. “I had published leaked CMU documents on my website, and the Counter-Terrorism Unit said McGowan had called his wife and asked her to mail them. …For that, he was sent back to the CMU.”

Potter says CMUs are part of a dangerous post-9/11 trend that he has been documenting, in which the rhetoric of terrorism is used to justify rollbacks in fundamental rights.

“This story is not just about prisoners, it is about us,” he says. “It is about our own commitment to human rights.”

About Will Potter

Will Potter is an award-winning investigative journalist, author, and TED Senior Fellow based in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege. He specializes in civil liberties post-9/11 and how protest has been labeled as terrorism; Glenn Greenwald described Potter as “the most knowledgeable journalist in the country on these issues.” He is currently a Knight Fellow in Law Reporting at the University of Michigan.

Kids Who Die

It’s been 77 years since civil rights activist and poet Langston Hughes wrote his chilling poem “Kids Who Die” which illuminates the horrors of lynchings during the Jim Crow era. Now, as we approach the one year mark of Michael Brown's death and the Ferguson uprising that sparked a movement, we can see how Hughes' words still ring true today.

colorofchange.org/amovementgrows/

Via the Insideplaya

Leonard Nimoy fought for pay equity for Nichelle Nichols

from Boing Boing

Just in case you needed more reasons to miss the recently departed Leonard Nimoy: Last year, the website TrekMovie reported that during the filming of the original Star Trek series in the 1960s, Nimoy fought for pay equity for Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura. The revelation came courtesy of Walter Koenig, the actor who played Chekov.

Koenig: When it came to the attention of the cast that there was a disparity in pay in that George [Takei] and I were getting the same pay but Nichelle was not getting as much, I took it to Leonard and he took it to the front office and they corrected that.

He will be missed.

How Stevie Wonder helped create Martin Luther King Day

from Boing Boing:

Did you know Stevie Wonder was instrumental in the creation of Martin Luther King Day? I didn't. Cuepoint has the inspiring story.

...In 1979, President Jimmy Carter, who had been elected with the support of the unions, endorsed the bill to create the holiday. Carter made an emotional appearance at King’s old church, Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. But Congress refused to budge, led by conservative Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, who denounced King as a lawbreaker who had been manipulated by Communists. The situation looked bleak.

By then, Wonder had matured from a young harmonica-playing sensation to a chart-topping music genius lauded for his complex rhythms and socially-conscious lyrics about racism, black liberation, love and unity. He had kept in touch with Coretta Scott King, regularly performing at rallies to push for the holiday. He told a cheering crowd in Atlanta in the summer of 1979, “If we cannot celebrate a man who died for love, then how can we say we believe in it? It is up to me and you.”

"How Stevie Wonder Helped Create Martin Luther King Day" (Cuepoint)

Eyes on the Prize Back to the Movement, 1979-mid 1980s

Final Episode, number 14 in the series

The series concludes with an examination of two cities—one southern, one northern. In Miami, Florida, viewers witness the destruction of Overtown, a once-thriving community, as it was ravaged by urban renewal and the construction of an interstate highway. Politically powerless, the community's economic plight was worsened by the steady arrival of another minority group—Cuban immigrants. In 1980, when white police officers were cleared of charges following the death of a black businessman, Miami's black community exploded in the largest riot since Detroit, 1967. In the north, frustrated by an unresponsive city administration, black Chicagoans successfully organized for political change through a reform candidate and brought about the election of Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor. The series ends with a look back at the people who made this movement a force for change in America. We listen to those who have worked for justice in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, as they reflect on their on-going struggle. Viewers come to realize how far America has traveled to arrive at this racial crossroads

Eyes on the Prize The Keys to the Kindgdom, 1974-1980

Episode 13

This show examines the relationship between law and popular struggle as it chronicles efforts to inject substance into promises of equality. The movement's focus is on the keys to the kingdom: jobs and education. In Boston, black parents organize to improve their children's education through court-ordered integration; the response of the white community was swift and often violent. In Atlanta, Mayor Maynard Jackson, the city's first black mayor, used the legal remedy of an affirmative action program to guarantee black involvement in the construction of Atlanta's airport. Affirmative action programs did not go unchallenged, however, as Allan Bakke took his suit against the University of California all the way to the Supreme Court.

Eyes on the Prize A Nation of Law?, 1967-1968

Episode 12

By the late 1960s, the anger in poorer urban areas over charges of police brutality was smoldering. In Chicago, Fred Hampton formed a Black Panther Party chapter. As the chapter grew, so did police surveillance. In a pre-dawn assault by the police, Panthers Hampton and Mark Clark were killed. The deaths came at a time when movement activists were increasingly becoming targets of police harassment at both the local and federal levels through COUNTELPRO, the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program. During this same period, inmates at New York's Attica prison took over the prison in an effort to publicize intolerable conditions. During the police assault which ended the takeover, several inmates and guards were killed. For some, Attica came to symbolize the brutality of a hardened political regime.

Eyes on the PrizeAin't Gonna Shuffle No More, 1964-1972

Episode 11

An awareness and sense of pride emerged through the struggle of World Heavyweight Champion Cassius Clay to be called by his new Islamic name, Muhammad Ali. No longer content to use the mainstream culture as their standard and rejecting images which traditionally stereotyped them as servile and inferior, a new generation of African Americans began to redefine itself. Propelled by the Black Consciousness Movement, they celebrated black values and culture and their African roots. Howard University students demanded a more black-oriented curriculum, and African-Americans of every persuasion met to forge a new unity at the Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana.

Eyes on the Prize The Promised Land 1967-1968

Episode 10

In the final year of Martin Luther King's life, the movement turned its attention to the economic issues confronting the nation and the rumblings of a far off war in Vietnam. Moved by the increasing level of poverty, Dr. King and his staff searched for a strategy, in effect, an economic redistribution of wealth. They began to organize a Poor People's Campaign, a march of the poor to Washington, D.C., where they would erect Resurrection City to embarrass and motivate a reluctant government. In the midst of organizing the campaign, Dr. King was called away to help black sanitation workers on strike in Memphis. On April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Martin Luther Jr. was assassinated. Though devastated by the loss of their leader, King's staff struggled to continue the campaign. Soon after its construction, Resurrection City was shut down, marking the end of a chapter of the civil rights movement.

Eyes on the Prize Power! 1967-1968

Episode 9

Out of the ashes of the urban rebellions, blacks looked for new ways to take control of their communities; the ballot box, the street and the schools became the dominant platforms. In Cleveland, the black community, together with a segment of white voters, achieved an historic victory: the election of Carl Stokes as the first African American mayor of a major city. In Oakland, young black men and women attempted to confront continuing police harassment by forming the Black Panther Party. In Brooklyn, New York, black and Hispanic parents struggled to improve their children's education through community control of schools. While these efforts had varying degrees of success, they nevertheless resulted in greater empowerment for their communities.

Eyes on the Prize Two Societies, 1965-1968

Episode 8

Against the backdrop of the long hot summers of the mid-1960s, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference went to Chicago in an attempt to apply southern movement tactics to the urban north. Their strategies were tested as they came up against the powerful political machinery of Mayor Richard Daley. A year later, in Detroit, frustration and anger built to urban violence as blacks and law officers clashed on city streets and America appeared to be a nation out of control.

Eyes on the Prize The Time Has Come, 1964-1965

Episode 7

During the decade of civil rights protest in the south, a sense of urgency and anger emerged from the black communities in the north. This urgency was best articulated by Malcolm X, then National Minister of the Nation of Islam. Viewers follow the trajectory of Malcolm X's influence, both within the movement and outside. The program shows the influence of his philosophy on the staff of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as they organized the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama and as they issued the call for "Black Power" during the 1966 Meredith March Against Fear in Mississippi.

Eyes on the Prize Bridge to Freedom,1965

Episode 6

In Bridge to Freedom, the lessons of a decade are brought to bear in the climactic 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, when thousands joined together to march fifty miles for freedom. During the drive to make voting rights a national issue, strategic and ideological differences began to surface between Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s SCLC and the younger activists on SNCC. As white "blacklash" and segregationist resistance intensified, President Lyndon B. Johnson promised to further the movement's legislative goals. Then, as the movement began to splinter into factions, the Voting Rights Act became federal law.

The history of America spying on Black civil rights leaders

from our friend Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing:

"February is Black History Month and that history is intimately linked with surveillance by the federal government in the name of 'national security," writes Nadya Kayyali at an Electronic Frontier Foundation blog post today.
"Indeed, the history of surveillance in the African-American community plays an important role in the debate around spying today and in the calls for a congressional investigation into that surveillance. Days after the first NSA leaks emerged last June, EFF called for a new Church Committee. We mentioned that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was one of the targets of the very surveillance that eventually led to the formation of the first Church Committee." "This Black History Month, we should remember the many African-American activists who were targeted by intelligence agencies. Their stories serve as cautionary tales for the expanding surveillance state.

Read: The History of Surveillance and the Black Community. [EFF.org]

EYES ON THE PRIZE Mississippi, Is This America, 1962-1964

episode 5

Focuses on the extraordinary personal risks faced by ordinary citizens as they assumed responsibility for social change, particularly during the 1962-64 voting rights campaign in Mississippi. The state became a testing ground of constitutional principles as civil rights activists concentrated their energies on the right to vote. White resistance to the sharing of political power clashed with the strong determination of movement leaders to bring Mississippi blacks to the ballot box. In Freedom Summer 1964, tension between white resistance and movement activists climaxed in the tragic murder of three young civil rights workers.

EYES ON THE PRIZE No Easy Walk 1962-1966

episode 4

No Easy Walk explores a crucial phase in the civil rights movement—the emergence of mass demonstrations and marches as a powerful protest vehicle. In Albany, Georgia, police chief Laurie Pritchett challenged Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s tactics of nonviolent mass demonstration. In Birmingham, Alabama, school children steadfastly marched against the violent spray of fire hoses and were jailed as a result. The triumphant 1963 March on Washington, D.C. captured worldwide attention and garnered broad national support, helping to shift federal policy.

EYES ON THE PRIZE Ain't Scared of Your Jails, 1960-1961

Episode 3

Ain't scared of your jails chronicles the courage displayed by thousands of young people and college students who joined the ranks of the movement and gave it new direction. In 1960, lunch counter sit-ins spread across the South, may organized by the new, energetic Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In 1961, on the Freedom Rides, many young people faced violence and defied death threats as they labored to obliterate segregation in interstate bus travel below the Mason-Dixon Line. The growing movement toward racial equality influenced the 1960 Presidential campaign; and federal rights versus state's rights became an issue.

EYES ON THE PRIZE Fighting Back, 1957-1962

EPISODE 2

Fighting Back follows the struggle for equality from the schoolroom to the courtroom and back as blacks reject the existing system of "separate but equal" education. In 1954, the Supreme Court also rejects the system with its historic Brown v. Board of Education decision. The legal battle won, in 1957 nine black teenagers dare to integrate Little Rock's Central High School. In 1962, a resolute James Meredith enrolls at the Univeristy of Mississippi. Students, parents, and lawyers unite to guarantee a better education and a better future for their children.

EYES ON THE PRIZE, famed civil rights documentary series, is finally back!HERE, and on DVD!

Eyes on the Prize is a famed documentary series on the civil rights movement that all but disappeared because of trouble clearing the copyrights to clips of leaders like Martin Luther King for the reissue. Nearly ten years ago, a civil disobedience campaign brought attention to society's loss as a result of this series no longer being available for home and classroom use, and the resulting furore brought the intransigent rightsholders back to the bargaining table, and this indispensable video back from the dead -- you can even buy it on DVD now.

Episode 1 (of 14)

This will be an ongoing Sunday series here on this blog - Thank You PBS!



I WILL POST A NEW EPISODE EVERY SUNDAY ...

This episode description:

Awakenings focuses on the catalytic events of 1954-1956. The Mississippi lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till led to a widely publicized trial where a courageous black man took the stand and accused two white men of murder. In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to yield her bus seat to a white man and triggered a yearlong boycott that resulted in the desegregation of public buses. Ordinary citizens and local leaders joined the black struggle for freedom. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was formed. In response, may white southerners closed ranks in opposition to the burgeoning black rights movement. Racial discrimination finally became a political issue.

Heads up from Boing Boing, Thank You.