BREAKING EMERGENCY RESPONSE: COME TO COOPER UNION @ 6PM FOR A RALLY TODAY! Free Cooper Union students announced that security is warning them right now of disciplinary actions if they don’t leave the president’s office by 6pm. If you’re available, please come to show solidarity!

Please, if you’re in NYC, come to show your support. Show up ready to defend free education on demand.

Democracy Now! on the Cooper Union occupation.

April 16, 2013 - from my email:

Hey folks!

The People’s Record News Update: This week in the fight to decriminalize across the United States!
March 20, 2013

• In Maryland, the Maryland Senate votes to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana, while a House committee considers legalizing as much as an ounce. The marijuana debate has expanded beyond medical uses to recreational ones. The Maryland Senate approved a bill that reduces small amounts of marijuana from criminal possession to a civil fine Tuesday. A bill in the House goes even further.
  
  The bill legalizes the sale of marijuana to adults 21 and older. It removes all penalties for possession of up to one ounce and allows adults to grow up to three plants. The prospects of any of the marijuana bills making it through both chambers and to the governor’s desk for his signature remain uncertain. A Senate bill decriminalizing marijuana up to 10 grams now moves to the House. Source

• In Dallas, members of NORML, the nation’s largest group that advocates the legalization of marijuana protested along Greenville Avenue near the Old Town Shopping center in Dallas this weekend. It was estimated that about 100 members are here at the Dallas St. Patrick’s Parade and Festival. The group was denied a permit to march in be parade. Source

• In Atlanta, marijuana activists gathered in Midtown at this weekend’s Southern Cannabis Reform Conference to unite and discuss how to reform antiquated marijuana laws. Several pro-marijuana groups gathered at the Spring4th Center in Midtown to promote the idea of drug decriminalization and discuss ways to improve community outreach. The two-day summit was organized by Peachtree National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), Georgia Campaign for Access, Reform and Education (CARE), the American Cannabis Coalition, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, and Georgia NORML, among others. Source

• In New Hampshire, advocates of medical marijuana won overwhelming support Wednesday in the House for a bill that would sanction five marijuana dispensaries and allow patients or caregivers to grow up to three plants for medical use.
  
  The bipartisan vote of 286-64 marked the fourth time in six years such a medical marijuana bill has won House approval. Two previous measures were vetoed by then-Gov. John Lynch; a third was killed in the Senate. Source

• In New York City, a new report released today by the Drug Policy Alliance and the Marijuana Arrest Research Project documents the astonishing number of hours the New York City Police Department has spent arresting and processing hundreds of thousands of people for low-level misdemeanor marijuana possession arrests over the last 11 years. The report finds that NYPD used approximately 1,000,000 hours of police officer time making marijuana possession arrests during Mayor Bloomberg’s tenure. These are hours that police officers might have otherwise have spent investigating rape or wall street banker’s or conducting internal investigations regarding the NYPDs habitual racism & brutality.  Source

• In Florida, two top Democratic fundraisers have committed to providing the money and know-how to get the question of legalizing medical marijuana on the state ballot in 2014.  Just a few months ago, the initiative to legalize could barely afford to photocopy the petition. Now, it has commissioned a poll and plans to hire a company to manage a $10 million campaign. Source

mothernaturenetwork:

NYC coding program pushes for computer science curriculum

The city thinks that every kid should learn to code to keep up in today’s world, and it’s started a program to make it happen.            

It’s pretty rare that I get to reblog stuff that makes me hopeful in a ‘well that’s a good thing’ way and not in a ‘well at least the decay of the system/colonial empire/capitalism is coming right along’ way. This is one of the good ones.

I wish they would offer some free adult coding courses.

Hey brilliant tumblr hacktivists, coders, and knowledgeable people, what are some good resources for self-teaching coding & the like?

Hey NYC Tumblr family, our incredibly talented friend Alejandro is putting on his show, THE BROWN QUEEN, on March 12 at the LGBT Center in Brooklyn. He was generous enough to let us stay at his place while we were working on our project in New York. He’s a passionate performer, a compassionate human being, and super queer queen with an incredibly bright mind & personality. Help us return the support and share this show on your dash & with all of your NYC contacts. Come out and see it if you can. It’s going to be really entertaining. 

The story of a gay Chican@ boy born in El Paso, Texas, who eventually claimed New York City as his queendom. 

The Brown Queen begins with Diana Ross on the radio, while cruising downtown El Paso in a 1963 Rebel Rambler. The story travels from an early Chican@ upbringing in the borderlands of Tejas, to Sioux City, Iowa, and finally New York City. Through his tale, discover how the Brown Queen arrives at a fabulously queer life in New York City. 

A performance of growth, endeavor, and celebration. 


Friends and Foes:

It would be an honor to have y’all come and watch me take it to the floor at my place of employment. 
CATEGORY IS: CENTER REALNESS

In the past three years I have had the opportunity to bring small excerpts of my show at different events and now I’m gonna do it all. Not just the tip. 

So please come support me—it’s gonna be a shit show, but really funny. 

THE BROWN QUEEN
TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 2013
8pm
$5
The LGBT Community Center
208 West 13th Street
New York, NY 10011

photo by: Camilo Godoy
postcard: Untitled Queen 


Much love, 

Alejandro
aka
Mz. Bootz
aka
The Brown Queen
aka
Quesa

Here’s a link to the event.

Hey comrades,

Recently, a campaign to target Sallie Mae’s central, detrimental role in the student debt crisis has began to build great traction. Conversations have been sparked amongst various collectives and organizations as to how everyone can participate to effectively target Sallie Mae and how together, this can be an avenue to make strong demands and envision alternatives on fundamental issues like free public higher education, racial justice, and equal access to education for immigrants.

Organizers at Jobs with Justice and Student Labor Action Project have already begun to coordinate efforts against the already beleaguered corporation by organizing workers in Sallie Mae call centers, to pressuring the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for tougher regulation to pursuing legal recourse for Sallie Mae’s redlining practices.

Here in New York, folks from New York Students Rising, Strike Debt, Occupy Student Debt Campaign, and All in the Red have been discussing what it would look like to continue to focus on Sallie Mae together in the context of building a broad-based coalition.  

We’d like to open up the discussion to organizers and activists across New York City (there will be a national call following this) to unpack what this could look like locally and nationally in the coming months. Please send this to anyone in and around NYC who may be interested and indicate your availability on this Doodle if you’d like be a part of the call: http://www.doodle.com/8tz3w6nwc7a63xvd

Best, Matt Tinker, (479-366-8609) #allinthered

Janna Powell (484-695-1204) #allinthered

NYPD lawsuits rise dramatically, cost NYC $550.4 million in last FY
December 30, 2012

In the 2011 fiscal year alone, New York City paid out a staggering $550.4 million— or about $70 per New York resident— to settle a litany of lawsuits ranging from personal injury claims to medical malpractice.

A large chunk of that over half a billion dollar figure— a five percent increase over the year before— stems from lawsuits brought against the New York Police Department. Lawsuits against the NYPD cost city taxpayers $185 million, more than any other city agency.

Using a report conducted by City Comptroller John Liu, The Daily News reports there were 8,882 lawsuits against the NYPD, a dramatic 35 percent increase over the previous fiscal year.

Between July 1, 2011, and June 30, 2012, the NYPD reportedly paid $22 million to settle civil rights cases made against officers.

Such settlements included $1.2 million paid out to two Colombian brothers who spent a combined 17 years in prison for armed robbery charges that were eventually thrown out.

In 2011, it was revealed the city shelled out nearly $6 billion to settle all sorts of claims from 2000-2010.

Source
Photo: An NYPD officer sucker punches Felix Rivera-Pitre, a Queens resident, during an OWS protest.

New York City residents are paying for a police force to brutalize their communities, racially profile through Stop & Frisk & jail their neighbors. These figures are outrageous, yet unsurprising. 

When we organize, we win! 

Across New York City parents, teachers and students are getting organized - from the bottom up - to take on mayoral control of schools and the drastic cuts to K-12 and higher ed programs that make it harder for kids to succeed and teachers/parents to support them towards that success.

We know that when we organize, we win. We did it when we kicked Cathie Black out of the chancellorship, and we’ll do it again when we send Mayor Bloomberg out of office with his failed policies in his greedy hands. This weekend, there are two important events happening towards that goal:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Coalition for Public Education 3rd Annual Convention    
Saturday, 9-5pm
Community Service Society of NY - 105 E. 22nd Street, New York, New York
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/501379333205516/

and

Envisioning Student Unionism in NYC
Ya-Ya Network: 224 W. 29th St, New York, New York 10001
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/480974888601877/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Let’s come together and take on the corporate model of education, and proclaim that WE ARE STUDENTS/TEACHERS/PARENTS, NOT CUSTOMERS!

See you soon,

Justin Wedes
Editor, OurSchoolsNYC
Co-Principal, Paul Robeson Freedom School 

MUST WATCH: Video shows NYPD officer assault during Stop & Frisk
July 27, 2012

The video shows a police officer striding toward a young man standing on a platform at the 45th Street subway station in Brooklyn. A few seconds later, the officer pats him down. Shortly afterward, the young man appears to fidget against a wall and the officer slams him to the ground, ripping a subway ad from the wall in the process. The officer does it again, then puts the young man in a headlock and handcuffs him.

That scene was captured by David Galarza, a local activist, who said he recorded it last Thursday night. At a news conference on Thursday in Brooklyn, Mr. Galarza and other local activists said the officer’s confrontation with the young man, Sean Pagan, 19, was another example of the police’s mistreatment of the predominantly Hispanic and Asian residents of Sunset Park.

This time, however, they say they have a video to support their contention.

“These are young people of color who are victimized many times, and this kind of excessive force, sometimes it’s captured, sometimes not,” Mr. Galarza said before screening the video for reporters at a Latino community center in Sunset Park. “There was an arrest of a young man, but not of the officer who did the groping, and who did the choking.”

Source

What a shocking video that shows the horror people of color in NYC endure if they are stopped & frisked. 

According to NYCLU, in 2011 New Yorkers were stopped by police 685,724 times.  

- 605,328 were totally innocent (88 percent).
- 350,743 were black (53 percent).
- 223,740 were Latino (34 percent).
- 61,805 were white (9 percent).
- 341,581 were aged 14-24 (51 percent).

NYPD targets police brutality activist in an attempt to silence him
July 22, 2012

The NYPD and New York City courts are trying to silence you—and everyone who stands up for justice and against racism—by going after a leading anti-police-brutality and anti-racial-profiling activist, Joseph “Jazz” Hayden.

Jazz has been fighting police abuse and violence for years and is a founding member of the Campaign to End the New Jim Crow. Long before the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy started to become notorious nationwide and tens of thousands marched to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s house in protest, Jazz was one of the dozens of activists dedicated to organizing against it and documenting police racism. His website AllThingsHarlem.com has four years of his videos showing New York police as they target and search young Blacks and Latinos.

Now the NYPD is striking back. Two police officers conducted an illegal search of Jazz’s car in December of last year—the same police who Jazz videotaped a few months earlier conducting another illegal car search involving two other African American men. In the video, police can be heard trying to intimidate Jazz, saying, “We know your background. I know who you are.”

The cops let those two men go without any charges or tickets, having had no legal reason to stop them in the first place and being unable to charge them for the real reason they picked out: being Black.

But the police didn’t forget Jazz, and in December, when the same two officers stopped him, they said, “We know you.” Jazz was detained and held for nearly two days before a prosecutor tried to force him to post a $16,000 bond.

Jazz is facing two felony counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree, which could put him behind bars for two to seven years if he is convicted.

The weapons? A penknife and a commemorative mini-replica of a baseball bat. Both are absurdly harmless and completely legal to carry, unlike the car search the police conducted to “discover” them.

Source

Taking a stand: A protester, identified as a Vietnam veteran, stands in the middle of Sixth Avenue during a march to the Bank of America HQ in New York City - shortly before his arrest.

May Day in New York City