Saturday, September 29, 2018

Mulheres unidas contra Bolsonaro 
Women rally against fascism in Brazil

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New York, NY - Brazilian women, individuals of all genders, sex orientation, immigrants, minorities, people of all religions, age, races and ethnicities gathered in Union Square on September 29, 2018 to support women in Brazil currently standing against the presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro, over allegations of racism, misogyny, homophobia and xenophobia.
Such as in many other countries, Brazil has faced the rise of neo-fascism and has suffered with its consequences, which are reflected in politics and in the society as a whole. Amidst the scenario of the coup, oppression, censorship, authoritarianism, discrimination, hatred and violence, the alt-right politicians along with the hegemonic elite and the mainstream media want to maintain their privileges at any cost.
Brazilians reaffirm their request for justice for Marielle Franco, a Rio councilwoman brutally murdered over six months ago, protesting against misogyny, racism, class prejudice and against any kind of intolerance, against the alt-right presidential candidate, the fascist Jair Bolsonaro, who represents a setback for minorities and for all citizens of the world who respect human rights and who want a more fair and peaceful society.
These are a few of the things Jair Bolsonaro said on camera:

  • Females should get paid less because they can get pregnant
  • That he have 4 sons and on the 5th time he got weak and had a daughter
  • He said to another politician that she is too ugly to be raped
  • That if the parents were more disciplinarians their kids wouldn't turn up to be gay
  • A good criminal is a dead criminal
  • He also compared the black communities directly descendants from slaves who rebelled and organized themselves against slavery (Quilombolas) with cattle, and said they are not worth it, not even for "procriation".

On top of everything he is ex-military and he is in favor of the military dictatorship. We were in a military dictatorship from 64 to 85 and hundreds of people disappeared (we still don't have bodies or records of what happened to them). During this time torture was a thing when questioning "criminals" and there was this specially cruel torturer called Brilhante Ustra that one of the things he liked to do was to insert alive rats on women vaginas. Former president Dilma Rousseff meet him when she was a prisoner (she was part of the youth movement against the dictatorship). When she was facing the impeachment and Bolsonaro when there to say his vote he said "in honor of Ustra, the terror of Dilma Rousseff". 
There are multiple demonstrations organized this weekend all over Brazil and the world by females against Jair Bolsonaro.
Women rally against fascism in Brazil

#Activism #AltRight #BRADONYC #Brazil #DefendDemocracyinBrazil #DilmaRousseff #DirectAction #elections #EleNAO #EleNUNCA #JairBolsonaro #NewYork #NotHim #NYC #OPovoDecide #osfilhosdelenao #PeacefulProtest #PeacefulResistance #politics #PresidentialCandidate #rally #stopfascism #streetphotography #UnionSquare #VoltaDilma #womenagainstfascism #worldagainstbolsonaro

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Thursday, September 27, 2018

Professors’ union march through Wall Street to demand funding for quality education, and raises for faculty and staff

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New York, NY — Nearly a year after the expiration of their union contract, hundreds of CUNY faculty and staff marched through the Financial District on September 27, 2018 to demand public investment in The City University of New York and raises for underpaid faculty and staff. Led by a brass band and carrying lighted signs, hundreds of union members picketed outside the NY Stock Exchange before chanting their way to the investment banking firm of William C. Thompson, chairperson of the CUNY Board of Trustees.
Full-time salaries at CUNY lag thousands of dollars behind those at comparable institutions such as Rutgers and University of Connecticut. Adjuncts who work at CUNY earn a near-poverty wage despite their PhDs or other advanced degrees. Nearly a year after the expiration of their last contract, CUNY faculty and staff are marching through the Financial District to protest the inequality that leaves CUNY starved of funding while Wall Street profits soar. They will end the march at the investment banking office of William C. Thompson, Jr. (the CUNY Board of Trustees Chair) to demand funding for a contract that offers competitive salaries and ensures academic quality
“CUNY needs investment and an administration willing to demand it. Wall Street is awash in profits, yet public institutions like CUNY are starved of funds. It’s time for Wall Street to pay its share and time for the CUNY trustees, led by Bill Thompson, to demand public funding for quality CUNY education and a fully funded contract for CUNY faculty and staff,” said Professor Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the union of CUNY faculty and professional staff.
After years of declining per-student investment by New York State in the CUNY senior colleges, the faculty, student advisors and other professionals at CUNY are underpaid and expected to work in conditions that undermine student success. Much of CUNY’s infrastructure is crumbling. Full-time salaries at CUNY lag thousands of dollars behind those at comparable institutions such as Rutgers and University of Connecticut. The 12,000 adjunct faculty who work at CUNY now teach the majority of courses, but are paid a near-poverty wage despite having PhDs or other advanced degrees. The union has called for an increase in adjunct pay to $7,000 a course, to bring pay at CUNY in line with adjunct pay at Fordham, Penn State and Rutgers.
The professors also protested the inequality that leaves their public university starved of funds while Wall Street profits soar. Wall Street posted $25 billion in profits in 2017. Traders this year are earning record salaries. The industry is swollen with cash, thanks to federal tax cuts. Meanwhile, CUNY’s collective bargaining costs are not fully funded by New York State and CUNY colleges have been forced to cut their already reduced budgets for academic programs and student support.
Former NYC Comptroller Bill Thompson is a leading executive at the investment banking firm Siebert Cisneros Shank & Co., L.L.C. He was appointed by Governor Cuomo in 2016 to head the CUNY Board of Trustees, the body that approves both the University’s budget requests and its collective bargaining agreements.
The union is demanding State and City funding to back up the next union contract so that CUNY will not have to cannibalize academic programs or continue to raise tuition to find the necessary funds. The PSC’s 30,000 members are ready to fight for the raises and investment needed to ensure an intellectually rich college education for CUNY students.
“By failing to invest adequately in CUNY,” said Bowen, “New York is making a policy decision not to invest in the future of hundreds of thousands of working-class, poor and middle-class students. This rich city in this rich state must do better. CUNY needs competitive salaries that would allow the University to keep the talented, committed faculty and staff students need. And CUNY’s underpaid adjuncts need wage justice. The 30,000 members of the PSC are united in the demand for a fair and fully funded contract that enables us to serve the people of New York.”
Wall Street posted $25 billion in profits last year, while CUNY students got tuition hikes, underpaid professors and crumbling buildings. Hundreds of thousands of CUNY students depend on CUNY’s faculty and staff to provide the excellent education that allows CUNY to lead the nation in moving students out of poverty and into the middle class. But after years of declining per-student investment from the State, this work is underpaid and too often performed in conditions that undermine student success. Full-time salaries are uncompetitive. Twelve thousand faculty members are low-wage, part-time adjuncts. CUNY needs a raise—a raise that is funded with public dollars, not with tuition hikes and further cuts to academic programs.
CUNY professors' union march on Wall Street to demand fair contracts


#7KContract #7KStrike #Activism #CUNY #CUNYContractNow #CUNYcontracts #cunyneedsaraise #CUNYrising #CUNYstruggle #CuomoFundCUNY #demonstration #DirectAction #FairContracts #FairWages #Labor #LaborRights #LivingWage #MinimumWage #MinWageRealityCheck #NewYork #NYC #politics #Protest #PSCCUNY #rally #ResistAusterity #‎Solidarity #StopStarvingCUNY #Union #UnionWorkers #WorkerRights #UnionProud #UnionStrong #WallStreet 

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Wednesday, September 26, 2018

#FamiliesBelongTogether national day of action calling for JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo to stop financing for-profit immigration detention centers

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New York, NY - Hundreds of protesters, including moms, kids, immigrants and allies, rallied outside JPMorgan Chase headquarters in New York City on September 26, 2018, to deliver hundreds of thousands of petitions and letters urging the bank to stop financing Geo Group and CoreCivic, two large for-profit prison corporations profiting from immigration detention centers. 
Earlier this year, Mariee, a 19-month old toddler, died shortly after being released from a CoreCivic-run immigration detention center in Dilley, TX - where there have been reported cases of negligence and abuse. A vigil for Mariee Juarez was held as part of the action.
A similar action was also held at Wells Fargo headquarters in San Francisco today against the bankrolling of for-profit prison corporations that are profiting off the pain and separation of immigrant families. 
The day of action was led by the #FamiliesBelongTogether coalition, which has helped lead the fight against the Trump Administration’s cruel immigration policies since organizing the historic national day of action. The coalition is made up of more than 100 organizations representing tens of millions of members nationwide, including MomsRising, Presente.org, National Domestic Worker Alliance, the Center for Popular Democracy, MoveOn, Make the Road New York, Hand in Hand, In The Public Interest, Little Sis, AVAAZ, Enlace, Candide Group, CREDO, CMSM, Courage Campaign and more.
In all 50 states, more than 7,000 people have committed to deliver letters urging local JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo branches to stop financing Geo Group and CoreCivic. Protesters will also deliver more than 400,000 signatures and letters to these companies, which they deem to be #BackersofHate, alongside symbolic items like stuffed animals and blankets to represent the children still detained and separated from their families. Just this week, the Trump Administration escalated its attacks on immigrants by pushing out a new “public charge” regulation proposal that, if adopted, would make immigration a pay-to-play game, putting the wealthy ahead of families who’ve waited years to be reunited.
Yaritza Mendez, Immigration & Civil Rights Coordinator at Make the Road NY, said, “We have stood outside Jamie Dimon’s house and played for him the cries of immigrant children. Now we stand outside his office because one of those children has died. JPMorgan Chase has refused to withdraw from financing private prisons and immigrant detention companies despite the horrors taking place at their facilities. Our loved ones and neighbors are being criminalized and put in cages, and it must end. We will continue to stand up to JPMorgan Chase and Jamie Dimon until they stop bankrolling oppression.”
Approximately 71% of the average daily population in ICE custody are held in privately operated jails. Since ICE was created in 2003, 85 detention centers nationwide have reported a total of 176 deaths. CoreCivic and GEO Group depend on debt financing from banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, to conduct their day-to-day business operations, finance new facilities, and acquire smaller companies.
An analysis of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings over the past ten years shows that Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase has played a leading role in financing these debts. JPMorgan Chase is the single largest financier to GEO Group and CoreCivic, holding 62 percent more debt than the second biggest lender to these two corporations. In doing so, these companies are complicit in and profiting from the mass incarceration and criminalization of immigrants and continuing detainment of immigrant families by the Trump administration.
The millions of Americans represented by the #FamilesBelongTogether coalition, made up of more than 80 organizations, call on Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase to end this complicity and immediately stop their financial support for GEO Group and CoreCivic, private prisons that are profiting from mass incarceration and the criminalization of immigration.

Call on Chase to defund immigration prisons



#AbolishICE #Activism #BackersOfHate #Chase #CoreCivic #CorporateGreed #demonstration #deportation #DeportICE #DetentionCenters #DirectAction #EndMassIncarcerarion #FamiliesBelongTogether #FamilySeparation #ForProfit #GEOGroup #headquarters #ICEfreeNY #immigration #immigrationCustomsEnforcement #JamieDimon #JPMorgan #KeepFamiliesTogether #MarieeJuarez #NewYork #NoBorders #NoHumanIsIlegal #NoWall #NYC #ProtectFamilies #RefugeesWelcome #ResistTrump #SanctuaryCity #StopDeportations #StopMassIncarceration #WellsFargo

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Tuesday, September 25, 2018

DRAWDOWN: The most comprehensive plan to reverse global warming

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New York, NY - DRAWDOWN: The most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming was presented at the New York Society for Ethical Culture on September 24, 2018.

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Featuring:
  • Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org
  • Lynne Twist, Co-founder of Pachamama Alliance.
  • Presentation by Dr. Katharine Wilkinson, senior writer, V.P of communication and engagement at Drawdown.
  • Chad Frischmann, V.P and research director at Drawdown.
  • Karen Washington, urban farmer, food justice advocate and co-owner at Rise & Root Farm.
  • Lauren Zullo, director of sustainability at Jonathan Rose Companies. 
  • Dan Zarrilli, Chief resiliency officer, director of OneNYC.
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Project Drawdown describes when and how humanity can reach drawdown, the point in time when the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases begins to decline on a year-to-year basis.

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Project Drawdown is a broad coalition of researchers, scientists, graduate students, PhDs, post-docs, policy makers, business leaders, and activists who have come together to map, measure, and model the best available solutions that can cumulatively reverse global warming within the next thirty years.

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Drawdown maps, measures, models, and describes the 100 most substantive solutions to global warming. For each solution, we describe its history, the carbon impact it provides, the relative cost and savings, the path to adoption, and how it works. The goal of the research that informs Drawdown is to determine if we can reverse the buildup of atmospheric carbon within thirty years. All solutions modeled are already in place, well understood, analyzed based on peer-reviewed science, and are expanding around the world.
DRAWDOWN: The most comprehensive plan to reverse global warming

#350org #Activism #BillMcKibben #DRAWDOWN #NewYork #NYC #OneNYC #PachamamaAlliance 

© Erik McGregor - erikrivas@hotmail.com - 917-225-8963

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Sunday, September 23, 2018

Silent procession in solidarity with Puerto Rico

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New York, NY - Hundreds of New Yorkers dressed in white participated on a silent procession through the streets of New York on September 23, 2018 to focus the nation's attention on this callous and craven neglect of U.S. Citizens in Puerto Rico still struggling for survival in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. 
Close to one year after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the Island remains in crisis owing to the lack of resources and empathy from its U.S. colonizer. It took more than six months for the death count to come even close to reality. Schools have closed. More than 100,000 left the Island. Many areas remain in the dark without electricity. Disease is climbing and the Island's debt continues in debate.
This year's event falls on the anniversary of one of the island's largest insurrections, "El Grito de Lares" uprising. Organizers, youth, seniors, clergy, and participants will dress in white as a symbol of hope bearing banners blasting "Memoriam for Lives Lost, USA Citizens, Surviving Trauma and Rebuilding Puerto Rico" and "Exempt P.R. from the Jones Act".
Participants walked 2.5 miles in unity, as one, in silence; from East Harlem to Trump Tower on 57th Street and Fifth Avenue remaining in peace for approximately 15 minutes before dispersing. 
Puerto Rico and California joined in solidarity with a Silent Procession on the same day at the same time in the town of Mayagüez, on the Island of Vieques and in the City of Los Angeles. 


Silent procession in solidarity with Puerto Rico

#AbolishJonesAct #AbolishTheDebt #austerity #Colonialism #CorporateGreed #cutbacks #DebtCrisis #DirectAction #EconomicInequality #HurricaneMaria #HurricaneRelief #JonesAct #JuntaFiscal ‪#‎JustRecovery‬ #JustRecoveryJustTransition #LaGenteAntesQueLaDeuda #NewYork #NoALaJunta #NYC #NYC4PR ‪#‎OurPowerPRnyc‬ #PROMESA #PuertoRico #PuertoRicoNoSeVende #ResistTrump #SeAcabaronLasPromesas #SilentProcession #UnitedAgainstPromesa

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Friday, September 21, 2018

Puerto Ricans are still struggling for survival one year after Hurricane Maria

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New York, NY - On the one year anniversary of Hurricane Maria, hundreds gathered in Union Square on September 20, 2018, demanding justice for Puerto Rico. Many Puerto Ricans are still struggling for survival and fighting to remain, reclaim, and rebuild.
The crisis unfolding in Puerto Rico continues to magnify as the United States government interferes within emergency aid and threatens to bury Puerto Rico in more debt.  
What is happening in Puerto Rico is a climate crisis fueled by a long legacy of colonization and extraction.


One year anniversary of Hurricane Maria

#austerity #Colonialism #CorporateGreed #cutbacks #DebtCrisis #EconomicInequality #HurricaneMaria #JuntaFiscal ‪#‎JustRecovery‬ #JustRecoveryJustTransition #LaGenteAntesQueLaDeuda #NewYork #NoALaJunta #NotoDisasterCapitalism #NYC ‪#‎OurPowerPRnyc‬ #PROMESA #Protest #PuertoRico #PuertoRicoNoSeVende #ResistTrump #SeAcabaronLasPromesas #September20 #UnionSquare #UnitedAgainstPromesa

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Thursday, September 20, 2018

Joseph Percoco sentenced to 6 years for corruption

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New York, NY - Joseph Percoco former close aide to Governor Cuomo was sentenced on September 20, 2018 by Judge Valerie Caproni at the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse to 6 years in prison, for bribery and corruption charges after accepting more than $300,000 in bribes from companies that wanted influence with the Cuomo administration. 
The sentencing — which also included three years of supervised release — marked the final downfall for Percoco, whose close ties with the Cuomo family date to his work for the late Gov. Mario M. Cuomo.
The victims of the CPV related bribery scheme which resulted in the development of a 650 MW fracked gas power plant will speak to the media after the sentencing. Protect Orange County members have submitted 90 letters to Judge Caproni describing how they were victimized and requesting a harsh sentence for his actions of betraying the public trust.
In March, a jury found Percoco guilty of corruption for taking bribes from businessmen in two schemes, both of which involved payments to Percoco's wife, Lisa Toscano-Percoco.
Peter Galbraith Kelly, a Connecticut-based executive at Competitive Power Ventures, an energy company, hired Lisa Percoco for a "low-show" $90,000-a-year job at CPV teaching schoolchildren about energy. The money was a back-door way for Kelly to help CPV's power plant in Orange County get an agreement with the state. At the time, the state was looking for replacement sources to generate energy in the event the Indian Point nuclear plant along the Hudson River closed.
Judge Valerie Caproni, in turn, told Percoco and the defendant's lawyer there was no white collar crime as serious as public corruption, the type of which has become all too familiar in the state Capitol. "I hope that this sentence will he heard in Albany," Caproni said, calling the crime one of "greed and arrogance."
Joseph Percoco will report to federal prison at the end of December.


Joseph Percoco sentenced to 6 years for corruption

#Activism #AndrewCuomo #bribery #BuiltOnBribes #CloseAide #CompetitivePowerVenture #conviction #CorDevelopment #corruption #CourtHearing #courthouse #CPV #CPVValley #FossilFree #GovernorCuomo #guilty #JosephPercoco #JudgeValerieCaproni #NewYork #NYC #OrangeCounty #PowerPlant #prison #scandal #sentencing #ThurgoodMarshall #TopStaffer

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