‘Open season on anyone with a tent’: Maine advocates react to Supreme Court homelessness ruling / by Evan Popp

_{^{A demonstration against city sweeps of homeless encampments outside Portland City Hall on Sept. 26, 2023. (Courtesy of Samuel Crankshaw/ACLU of Maine)}}

‘Our state and local leaders still have a choice,’ said the ACLU of Maine. ‘They can either continue attempting — and failing — to punish people out of poverty or they can address the root causes of homelessness.’

_{Reposted from Maine Morning Star}

The ACLU of Maine is urging local communities not to punish unhoused people for trying to survive after the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld an Oregon city’s ordinance that bans sleeping and camping on municipal property.

In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority decided that the camping rules put in place by Grants Pass, Oregon, do not violate the Constitution. The decision reverses a 2022 ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals against the ordinance.

The case began in 2018 when three unhoused people sued the city of Grants Pass, arguing that banning sleeping and camping on city property when there isn’t adequate access to shelter goes against the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

Although the matter pertained to an Oregon city’s ordinance, legal and homeless advocates around the country, including in Maine, were closely following the case. And as oral arguments got underway in April, over 70 people rallied in Portland’s Monument Square to denounce the criminalization of homelessness.

The ACLU of Maine decried the high court’s ruling on Friday and warned that municipalities should not use the decision as a rationale to further crack down on unhoused people.

_{Evan Popp studied journalism at Ithaca College. He is part of Maine Morning Star following three years at Maine Beacon writing about statewide politics. Before that, he worked for the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper and interned at the Progressive magazine, ThinkProgress and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.}

Guilty! Jury convicts Trump on all 34 criminal counts / by Mark Gruenberg and John Wojcik

_{^{Former President Donald Trump walks to make comments to the media after a jury convicted him of felony crimes for falsifying business records in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election, at Manhattan Criminal Court, Thursday, May 30, 2024, in New York. | Seth Wenig/AP}}

_{Reposted from Peoples World}

NEW YORK—“Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!” people in the New York courtroom heard, over and over again yesterday, May 30, after the jury emerged from two days of deliberation. They heard the word 34 times after the jury decided unanimously that Trump was guilty of every single one of the 34 felony crimes with which he was charged by the people of New York.

They decided unanimously that he falsified records to cover up a sex scandal that was about to derail his presidential campaign. The verdicts are reverberating across the nation today and also around the world as an entirely new type of presidential campaign gets underway in America – one that aims to put a convicted criminal in the White House.

If the Republican Party has its way that party, transformed now into a fascist party, will have as its standard bearer in the 2024 election a convicted felon who will be sentenced on July 11. The sentencing date is just four days before the start of the Republican convention which is slated to officially nominate him for his third try at the presidency.

Under New York State law Trump could receive probation or up to four years in prison for the crimes for which he was found guilty yesterday. None of that counts the possible sentences he could receive for crimes that are being tried in numerous other state and federal cases. None of those additional trials, however, are expected to happen until after the election.

Although Trump becomes the first president or ex-president, ever, to be convicted of a felony he can still run for the office. Crafters of the U.S. Constitution decided impeachments would bar felonious presidents. Senate Republicans, however, let Trump beat impeachments, twice.

Jurors convicted Trump on all counts of falsifying business records in a plan to cover up his past sexual affairs with stripper Stormy Daniels and former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal during the presidential election campaign eight years ago.

Trump knowingly signed checks to his lawyer-fixer-bagman Michael Cohen after Cohen, at Trump’s direction, paid off the two to shut them up. And then Trump OK’d the second part of the scheme by having staffers disguise the checks on his company’s books as “legal fees.”

That raised the crimes, ordinarily misdemeanors, to be felonies, as did their use as illegal campaign contributions under New York law. The illegal contributions were the hush money Trump paid to shut Daniels and McDougal up.

Trump paid $130,000 to Daniels via Cohen, and evidence included a video of the two men discussing the deal, plus photostats of the canceled checks. Trump paid $150,000 to McDougal, via Cohen, who taped their phone conversation about that. Trump asked how much was needed, then agreed. Cohen was the prosecution’s star witness, confirming and discussing the payoffs.

Trump is coasting to this year’s Republican presidential nomination, at a convention that will open in Milwaukee on July 15, four days after his sentencing by State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan. Surveys differ about how the guilty verdicts will hurt the political prospects of serial liar, white nationalist, misogynist, and criminally convicted Trump. The right-wing propaganda machines are working overtime to convince people that Trump is not a criminal who perpetrated fraud upon the American people but is, instead, a victim.

One survey shows two-thirds of Republicans and Trumpites believe the leaders of what has become their cult is a victim of a conspiracy led by his Democratic foe this fall, President Joe Biden. Another, earlier, survey says half of Trump’s voters would abandon him after any conviction, and even more would do so if Trump is sent to jail.

Trump is expected to appeal his conviction. Each count carries sentences ranging from fines up to one-and-a-half to four years in prison. New York criminal law favors concurrent rather than consecutive sentences in cases where counts intertwine with each other.

Would be a disaster for workers

The political impact of Trump’s conviction is important because Trump’s plans are a disaster for workers, the Constitution, voting rights, civil rights, people of color, and others he hates—which is almost anyone who’s not a white male right-wing “Christian.”

Trump’s plans for workers include a national right-to-work law, abolition of Project Labor Agreements and prevailing wages for federally funded construction, destruction of worker rights, and deregulation of everything from job safety and health to the nation’s oil companies. At a fundraiser the week before, Trump demanded those execs donate a billion bucks to his re-election drive. Quid pro quo.

Trump would also renew campaigns to turn the civil service into a spoils system—where the money you get from government contracts, payments, or even Social Security—depends on who you voted for. And Trump would again attempt to privatize, and de-unionize, the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital system and other agencies.

And as “a dictator on day one” he’d trash the Constitution and start deporting millions of people. Nobody, including Trump himself, believes he’d stop being a dictator after day one.

The dozen jurors vindicated the prosecution’s case in the six-week drama, the first criminal trial of four big cases Trump faces as he tries to regain the presidency.

His lawyers managed to stall the other three trials. That includes two—one each in Georgia and D.C.—dealing with Trump’s ordering, aiding, and abetting the Trumpite insurrection and invasion of the U.S. Capitol three years ago.

Trump’s lawyers couldn’t save him this time. Justice Merchan previously fined Trump $10,000 for violating a gag order banning Trump from insulting and threatening prosecutors, jurors, court officials, and even the justice’s family.

“SCOTUS did not issue any opinion on presidential immunity today,” presidential historian Michael Beschloss tweeted about Trump’s claim to the Supreme Court that an ex-president—him—is permanently immune from federal criminal prosecution. That claim is delaying the D.C. case. “Anyone have any opinion on why they seem to be taking their time on doing so?” Beschloss deadpanned.

Outside the courthouse, Trump again denounced Justice Merchan—calling the trial “disgraceful”—but his Trumpites were quiet.

By contrast, Democratic President Joe Biden, Trump’s foe this fall, kept his reaction low-key. “No one is above the law,” he commented. His campaign’s communications director, Michael Tyler, told the New York Times: “There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: At the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee.”

Other commenters were not as low-key as Biden, but all repeated Trump is not above the law.

No one above the law

“Today’s verdict shows no one is above the law, not even a former president,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten, a New York City civics teacher who also holds a law degree.

“The jury decided clearly and unanimously on the charges before it—and now Trump is a convicted felon. It’s time for political leaders of all stripes to stand up and say loud and clear that a criminal should not be allowed anywhere near the White House.” Trump’s Republicans, though, show no signs of political courage against their party’s tyrant and his adoring hordes.

“Today, we should take comfort in the fact that our laws and Constitution apply equally to all and that in the face of Trump’s baseless attacks, a jury of everyday Americans acted to protect our freedoms, our families, and our futures,” Weingarten concluded.

“No one in this country is above the law–including former President Trump,” said Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., a “Squad” member and a School Administrators member. “Being convicted for falsifying business records with hush money is only the beginning of being held accountable for his crimes.

“Trump attempted to illegally overturn election results in Georgia and worked to incite the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, both in an effort to overthrow our government to advance his fascist cause. His continued calls for protests are just another dog whistle for his followers: Destroy our democracy.

“Republicans will continue to claim this was a political conviction, but they can’t continue to hide behind their lies, misinformation, and racist attacks. It’s time we ensure Trump is banned from running for any public office again and from there, finally take action to fix our democracy.”

The jury “delivered a unanimous guilty verdict” against Trump, showing “no one is above the law,” tweeted Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-Conn., a National Education Association member, Waterbury social sciences teacher and former National Teacher of the Year.

“Our justice system was tested in unique ways during this trial,” Hayes continued. “The rule of law, the presumption of innocence, due process, and trial by jury are cornerstones of our democracy. Donald Trump had his day in court and today he is a convicted felon.”

Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., another “Squad” member, reminded people Trump is still a danger.

“Trump is not a man persecuted because of his politics,” said Pressley. “He has been defrauding people, exacting harm, and evading legal accountability for decades. From discriminating against Black tenants to defrauding small businesses, to bribery, hush money schemes, election interference, and insurrection, this man has broken the law to advance his own interests at the expense of other people and to the detriment of our democracy.

“Accountability is welcome and long overdue. This man is undoubtedly unfit to serve in public office. The threat he poses to our nation and our democracy cannot be overstated.”

And Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., also a “Squad” member, started a town hall session with her Bronx constituents by declaring: “He was found guilty on all 34 counts. The rule of law applies to everyone.” The crowd applauded.

_{^{We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!}}

_{Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People’s World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but tough when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners.}

_{John Wojcik is Editor-in-Chief of People’s World. He joined the staff as Labor Editor in May 2007 after working as a union meat cutter in northern New Jersey. There, he served as a shop steward and a member of a UFCW contract negotiating committee. In the 1970s and ’80s, he was a political action reporter for the Daily World, this newspaper’s predecessor, and was active in electoral politics in Brooklyn, New York.}

Poor People’s Campaign mobilizing massive movement vote for 2024 and beyond / by Mark Gruenberg

_{^{On June 29 the Poor People’s Campaign will lead another Mass March on Washington in the nation’s capital as it campaigns to register up to 18 million new low income and poor voters.}}

_{Reposted from Peoples World}

WASHINGTON—The Poor People’s Campaign will conduct a mass march on Washington, June 29, and a mass mobilization of “7,000 activists so we can reach 15-18 million people from now through Election Day, to get them to vote, and beyond,” co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, the Rev. William Barber II says.

Ties between the massive civil rights and economic justice organization and the labor movement will become even stronger than they are now since the goals of the Poor People’s Campaign and the AFL-CIO are similar.

“This is not a political vote, this is a movement vote,” Barber declared at the April 29 D.C. press conference. “This is hard work, but necessary work, and we’ll do it from the bottom up. Tell your folk to come out because it is high time to hear from impacted voters.”

But the campaign will not just concentrate solely on this year’s presidential race. Instead, it will push candidates on key issues: workers rights, women’s rights, voting rights, raising the minimum wage to be a living wage, quality public schools, affordable health care for all, shifting spending from the military to domestic needs and combating the scourge of hate in the U.S., especially from right-wing white nationalist Christian preachers.

After all, Barber pointed out, the last time lawmakers voted on raising the federal minimum wage, which has been at $7.25 an hour for 15 years, 57 senators—all the Republicans plus seven Democrats–voted it down.

“Workers’ rights, civil rights, and human rights are on the ballot this election,” said AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond, reaffirming the federation’s long support for the Poor People’s Campaign.

“Voters will decide: Do we want to stay the course and keep on this path toward a more compassionate government or revert to this morally bankrupt nation?

“The American labor movement is committed to registering and mobilizing union members and union families around the mass mobilization on June 29. We’re going to elect lawmakers who will advocate for workers and poor people to elect leaders who will put people over profits, protect our democracy, and advance worker and civil and human rights.”

Barber also warned that candidates who want to gain the support of the millions of poor and low-wealth people in the U.S. will have to outline not just what they did, “but what they plan to do in their first 50 days” in office.

Must bend the arc

“We are gathered as advocates, activists, moral leaders, and organizers who believe we must bend the arc of history towards justice,” added co-chair, the Rev. Liz Theoharis, paraphrasing the venerated civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“We are saying yes to voting rights, to workers’ rights, to women’s rights, to LGBT rights, and to lifting from the bottom so that people can thrive, and not just survive.” And on a video the campaign released on social media, Theoharis states: “Economic justice and saving our democracy are deeply connected.”

If just one-fifth of the poor and low-wealth people who are registered to vote but did not do so in the presidential election four years ago hit the polls this November, they will change the direction of the country, the two added.

The campaign won’t be alone as advocates for change. They’ll have the help from the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees, and other unions, plus Common Cause and Protestant, Jewish, Hindu, and Islamic faith leaders, all of whom spoke.

“We demand an end to systemic injustice and to the scourge of economic injustice,” said Redmond.

“We’re adding this to our political plans,” Redmond told People’s World in a brief interview as he was leaving. “We’re going to activate and woo these low-wage workers.” Next week the federation’s Executive Council will map out details of its political mobilization, he added.

“What is at stake in this election is our democracy, our economy, and our future,” SEIU Vice President Rocio Saenz told the audience. “We’re going to organize, mobilize, and project our power.”

SEIU, he added, will demand support that “all jobs should be good jobs, with family-sustaining wages with health care, and that there be no more distracting attacks on immigrants nor” emphasis on “divisive social issues.”

The campaign has a track record of mobilizing poor and low-wealth people since it began as Moral Mondays marches in Barber’s home state, North Carolina.

The Moral Mondays marches targeted North Carolina’s heavily gerrymandered, heavily Republican legislature revoking voting rights from Blacks, the poor, students, workers, women, and the differently abled. The crowds were in the tens of thousands through the streets of the state capital of Raleigh.

But Barber once said that the Republican state legislative majority “took 45 minutes” to yank access to the ballot after the right-wing Republican-named U.S. Supreme Court majority gutted the key sections of the Voting Rights Act.

When he sought the presidency four years ago, Democrat Joe Biden spoke—and listened—to Poor People’s campaigners at a church in North Carolina. Since then Biden himself has not met with representatives of the Poor People’s campaign but has sent aides to meet with them.

Fourth leading cause of death

And Barber noted, again, that poverty, the fourth-leading cause of death in the U.S., did not come up at all in presidential campaign debates during recent primaries or between Biden and then-Republican President Donald Trump. The Poor People’s Campaign and the AFL-CIO say they intend to change that this time around.

Speakers told the D.C. gathering they’ve had trouble surviving.

For example, William Cail, a personal care assistant from Massachusetts and a Service Employees member, said his SEIU1199 affiliate just won a new three-year contract. But for workers like him, its raises still aren’t enough to live on in the high-income high-cost Bay State.

And Democratic Gov. Maura Healey wants to pay subsidies to corporations, he added afterwards, while cutting thousands of people needing personal care—the elderly, children, and disabled—from the state rolls. That would throw hundreds of personal care assistants into either vastly reduced hours or no work at all, he said.

And Virginia Case Solomon, now president of Common Cause, told the crowd, “I was a teenaged mom who needed help from WIC (the federal Women, Infants, and Children’s feeding program) and food stamps. Everybody should have such help and such access to services” as the Poor People’s Campaign advocates, among other items on its agenda.

The campaign will demand that politicians and the powers that be put the issue of eradicating poverty and reducing wealth inequality in the richest nation in the world at the top of the national agenda, said the Revs. Barber and Theoharis.

“There’s not a state in the union without at least 30% of its voters who are poor and low-wage,” Barber told the packed crowd in a National Press Club meeting room. That includes all the swing states in the last presidential election four years ago.

In each state, the number of registered—but poor and low-wealth—voters who did not vote exceeded the margins Democratic presidential nominee Biden gained over Republican incumbent Trump.

Barber ticked many of the states off, with the numbers, including Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Michigan. Barber added his home, North Carolina, which Trump narrowly won.

Biden and Trump will face off again this November, barring unexpected developments that could upend the close race between the two.

For Biden, the unexpected development would be massive alienation of key Democratic voting blocs over his support of Israel’s war on Gaza.

For Trump, the unexpected development would be a conviction and possibly a prison sentence in any of the four criminal and civil trials he faces.

Burkina Faso gives way to justice / by Julio Morejon Tartabull

_{Havana (Prensa Latina) Paraphrasing an African sentence, it could be affirmed that in Burkina Faso “no matter how high the grass grew, it failed to hide the truth”, regarding the assassination of President Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara in 1987.}

Almost three and a half decades after the assassination of the president and a group of his close collaborators, the trial against the perpetrators of the crime – to which the Blaise Compaoré government vetoed any substantial reference – shows signs of interest in doing justice, although its full exercise is limited by the absence of two defendants.

The results of the trial opened in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, were at first convincing -according to the media- after learning that the three main defendants in the murder of Sankara (1949-1987) received life sentences, who was He calls him the African Che Guevara.

According to politicians and public opinion, this judicial decision put an end to impunity and improved the face of the new government led by Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who came to power through a coup in January 2022.

In the hearing that took place in a military court, Blaise Compaoré, president of Burkina Faso (1987-2014), and Hyacinthe Kafando, head of his security device, were sentenced in absentia to prison for life, while nine others culprits received various sentences for the 1987 coup.

Applause erupted in the courtroom as the long-awaited verdict was read, bringing down the curtain on a case that has afflicted the impoverished and volatile state for 34 years.

THEY FLED FROM THE TRUTH

Compaoré, who during his mandate delayed the holding of the process to clarify what happened on October 15, 1987, acted cunningly as Joseph Mobutu did in the Congo -later Mobutu Sese Seko- in 1961, both betrayed their respective bosses and companions in the performance of power.

Mobutu destroyed the aspirations of Patricio Emery Lumumba to maintain Congolese sovereignty in the face of the neo-colonial offensive of the transnationals; Blaise Compaoré first stopped and then reversed the nationalist process that brought former Upper Volta out of political anonymity, then Burkina Faso (Country of worthy men).

“Yes, justice has been done. For the people, because they are 34 years of struggle of a people. We must not forget, it is 34 years in which the Burkinabe people fight against impunity. And with this case, I think it’s a great victory,” Prospere Farama, attorney for the prosecution, told the press.

In 2016, the then president of the country, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, ousted by the military coup in January, alluded to Sankara’s murder when he opined that the solution to the case would be “the starting point of a true reconciliation, awaited by the entire national community”.

Details of the friction between Sankara and Compaoré surfaced in the judicial investigations that lasted six months and several witnesses underlined the existence of an international conspiracy to depose the leader for considering him problematic by challenging the world order and publicly and openly criticizing the former metropolis. , France.

“The tragedy of October 15, 1987 was the result of pressure exerted by various heads of state, including Félix Houphouët Boigny,” said Abdoul Salam Kaboré, Minister of Sports in the Sankara government, referring to the role of the former ruler of Costa de Ivory and a key ally of Paris in the plot.

Regarding the absence of the main defendant, Mariam, the widow of Thomas Sankara, said: “It is not fair, it really is not fair, that he is not here. I should be, I should have the courage to be here, but you know, not everyone is brave, they run from the truth.

Lawyers for the family of the murdered president demanded that Compaoré be extradited from the Ivory Coast – where he is in self-exile – for his guilt in the death of the anti-colonial leader.

TRACKS OF THE ASSASSINCIDE

The crime was officially given a tribal connotation to demarcate it from its political character and Compaoré himself referred to the event on more than one occasion as an “accident”, but despite trying to cover it up, the truth made its way through the bushes .

Long before the judicial process, the media insisted on the subregional dimension of the assassination and coup d’état, which was linked to guerrillas of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), as one of them, Prince Jormie Johnson, confirmed in his memoirs.

The notorious torturer and assassin of the Liberian president Samuel Kanyon Doe in 1990 pointed out that the conspiracy against the president was related to the permanence in Burkina Faso territory of a faction of the NPFL and that was only possible with the support and influence of the plotted military chiefs against Sankara.

Another explanation of the events appears in Ludo Martens’ book “Sankara, Compaoré et la révolution burkinabé”, in which former general Gilbert Dienderé stated: “We had been warned that Compaoré, Lingani and Zongo would be arrested that night (…) Our reaction was to arrest Sankara before the irreparable (…).

The former general, the only one present at the Ouagadougou hearing of the three main defendants, was referring to Major Jean Baptiste Boukary Lingani and Captain Henri Zongo, executed in 1989 by Compaoré. Some investigators affirm that he eliminated them to get rid of the other two linked to the assassination.

Dienderé, identified as the ideologue and architect of President Sankara’s death, was removed as chief of the General Staff on November 27, 2014, shortly after the overthrow of Compaoré, but in 2015 he led a failed coup attempt for which he currently serving 20 years in prison.

All this is commented on after the sentence was passed against those involved in the assassination of the revolutionary, whose example shined the dome of continental honor and inserted the country of worthy men in the trajectory of world progressive work.

At the 25th Conference of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) -predecessor of the African Union (AU)- Sankara described foreign debt as a colonial tool used to strangle and keep Third World states in poverty.

His government lasted four years and among the priorities he assumed were the fight against hunger and misery, the development of educational programs and the guarantee of an elementary health system for all the citizens of Burkina Faso, plans frustrated by the assassination, although his ideological legacy persists.

_{Julio Morejon Tartabull is a journalist for the Africa and Middle East newsroom of Prensa Latina.}

_{Prensa Latina, April 16, 2022, https://www.prensa-latina.cu/}