Victories

National Geographic reports that a recent law in Spain requires new buildings to include solar power.

 New York Must Stop Denying Aid to Battered Immigrants

Last December a group of battered immigrant women filed a lawsuit against New York City. The city had denied them food stamps and other aid. One plainatiff was a woman from Senegal helping to prosecute a man who tortured her and murdered her sister. Another was a woman from Bangladesh whose husband kicked her in the stomach while she was pregnant. He also cut up her clothes and threatened to kill her when she tried to go to work. These were two of many hundreds of women who fled to domestic violence shelters but couldn’t buy food or medicine because NY denied them benefits.

Federal Judge Jed Rakoff ordered the city to stop illegally denying food stamps and other aid to battered immigrant women and children. He also ordered them to fix the computer menu that caseworkers used. The list of eligible immigration categories omitted “battered qualified alien.” That is the legal category in which these women and children fit. The judge ordered the city to fix the computers in February, which they did. But they continued to deny the women aid and fought the lawsuit.

The lawsuit seeks back benefits ranging from a few hundred to two thousand dollars per family. Their lawyer, Ronald Abramson also scored a victory. He worked on the case for months without charge. Now he is likely to collect over a million dollars in legal fees from the city.

The Chicago City Council passed an ordinance requiring stores like Wal-Mart and Home Depot to pay employees at least $10 an hour by 2010. They must also provide $3 an hour worth of benefits. The victory took place on July 26 after months of lobbying by unions and community groups.

The ordinance would effect stores that occupy over 90,000 square feet and are part of companies grossing over $1 billion a year. This is the first ordinance in the country to single out large retailers for wage rules.

Some economists say the new ordinance would stifle development and deprive consumers of cheap goods. But poverty experts say that efforts elsewhere to raise wages have not choked off growth. Wal-Mart and other companies can easily afford to meet the new standards. Costco already pays at least $10 an hour to starting workers around the country. Wal-Mart pays starting workers in Chicago $7.50 an hour.

The bill would affect 35 stores already in Chicago including Kmart, Target, Toys “R” Us, Sears and Lowes. Most of these stores spoke out against the bill. The Illinois Retail Merchants Association condemned the bill. They said it was likely to hamper job creation and was a form of illegal discrimination. They said they would challenge it in court. But working people were overwhelmingly in favor of the law.

Unfortunately Mayor Daley vetoed the bill when big business threatened to build their stores elsewhere.  Four council members changed their votes for the same reason.

Library Connection in Connecticut successfully fought against an FBI “national security letter” (NSL) demanding patron records without a court order. The government gagged Library Connection from saying they got the NSL, even after the group’s name was revealed in the New York Times.

The ACLU sought an emergency order from the Supreme Court to lift the gag last October. The government responded by requiring all court documents be filed under seal, including “sealing” copies of New York Times available to readers everywhere.

In August the Supreme Court unsealed the documents. These documents show how the government censored direct quotes from previous Supreme Court cases cited in ACLU legal papers. These include cases that held the government can’t prevent the publication of information once it is disclosed to the    public.

Ann Beeson, ACLU lead counsel in this case said, “The unsealed documents show the absurdity of the government’s insistence that the Library Connection staff could not speak out—even after the government’s negligence revealed that they were the John Doe plaintiffs.”

In September the FDA announced that non-prescription emergency contraception will be available to women age 18 and over. It will be kept behind the pharmacy counter. The National Organization for Women (NOW) is advocating for federal legislation that will increase access to emergency contraception for everyone.

On July 25, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved healthcare coverage for uninsured people. It will cover uninsured people regardless of income, immigration status or pre-existing medical condition. It will replace expensive emergency-room care accessed by people who have nowhere else to go. The yearly city costs for emergency-room care are about $104 million.

The plan will require employers of over 20 workers to provide healthcare coverage. Those that already provide some form of group insurance must show that they spend a minimum of one dollar per worker hour on healthcare. Those that don’t offer insurance will be required to pay between $1.06 and $1.60 per worker hour into the new Health Access Plan.

The new plan will emphasize preventive care and early treatment. It will let workers have a doctor of their choice. It will provide access to care at public and private hospitals and clinics. It won’t cover dental and only covers some eye care and elective surgery.

The new plan will be partly financed by the city with additional funds from business and the workers themselves. It will cover between 82,000 and 85,000 San Franciscans who are currently uninsured.

On Sept. 21, 1996, Detroit police officer Eugene Brown shot and killed Lamar Wayne Grable. They claimed to mistake him for a suspect they were chasing. Lamar was a writer and a young entrepreneur.

Lamar’s mom, Arnetta Grable spent years fighting for justice. She brought a civil suit against Brown. Brown admitted he “could have” shot Grable many times as he lay on the ground. But the city defended him and dragged out the case to the state Supreme Court. Finally in 2003, the Supreme Court ended the struggle when they refused to hear Detroit’s appeal. Grable was awarded $4 million.

On the tenth anniversary of her son’s death, Arnetta Gable created the Lamar Wayne Grable Scholarship Awards as a memorial to her son. She hosted an award dinner where she distributed six $3,000 annually renewable college scholarships in her son’s name. She acknowledged many community members who supported her in her fight for justice in her son’s death. Grable also founded the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality.

On Sept. 27, in a Chicago federal court, public interest lawyers argued that Bank of America, Aetna and JP Morgan Chase must surrender millions made off the free labor of enslaved African Americans. All three companies admitted playing a role in enslaving Africans. But they refuse to share any of the profits. Both Chase and Bank of America admitted that they owned thousands of slaves. These companies also issued life insurance policies to slave owners on their slaves.

            Plaintiff Deadria Farmer-Paellmann sparked this nationwide class action three years ago. She researched and exposed the role major corporations played in slavery. Farmer-Paellman is a Jersey City lawyer and Executive Director of the Restitution Study Group. This group started the corporate restitution movement.

Deadria found an insurance policy in her great-grandfather, Abel Hines,’ name. She said “Finding that insurance policy with my great-grandfather’s name on it brought to my mind the magnitude of the profits this company earned by way of the suffering of the enslaved.”

Attorney Mayer said, “This is not ancient history, but a living case involving corporations still in existence. They have been holding slave profits for 150 years without giving anything back to the people they took it from.”

Attorney Afran said, “Basic human decency demands that such profits be given back to an aggrieved community. No plaintiff will personally receive any money from this case.” Instead the suit demands that the banks create a slave-era profits trust fund for the benefit of the descendants of enslaved Africans.

In September a Federal judge ruled that the Noongar people were the traditional owners of a 2,300 square mile area of Western Australia. This includes the state capital, Perth, a city of 1.7 million. Judge Murray Wilcox ruled that the Noongar people maintained their culture and customs since European settlement in 1829. And they had Native title over the land. This means that Noogar people can hunt and fish on the land, but cannot move homeowners out.

The Western Australia state government said it would appeal the ruling. State Deputy Premier Eric Ripper said there had been too much disruption to Noongar society for it to have survived in any meaningful way. Therefore their Native title claim was not valid.

Ted Hart of the Southwest Aboriginal Land and Sea Council fought the three-year court battle. He said, “We’re not after people’s backyards or their farms. We’re after recognition. And if we get any type of benefit, it’s to run businesses and train our people.”

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf signed the Law Reforms Ordinance of 2006. This allowed the immediate release of 1,300 women prisoners who were facing charges for adultery. This accusation is sometimes made against rape survivors. Under the previous 1979 law, women accused of having sex outside of marriage could not be freed on bail. If convicted, they could be sentenced to death by stoning. But such punishments were not carried out.

An estimated 800,000 people, a quarter of all the people in Lebanon rallied on Sept. 22 to celebrate their “divine victory” over Israel and its US backers. They crowded into a 37-acre square in a suburb of Beirut. It had been reduced to rubble by Israeli bombing. The rubble had been cleared and there was a plastic chair for nearly everyone, and a baseball cap for protection from the sun.

Israel started a 34-day war after Hezbollah, a Lebanese resistance organization, kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. This was an attempt to get Arab prisoners released from Israeli jails. Israel used its US-supplied bombs to demolish Lebanons’s infrastructure. They expected this would make the Lebanese people blame Hezbollah for the war. But the Lebanese people clearly blame Israel and the US for the war, and view Hezbollah as their only defender.

Every day that Israel bombed Lebanon, Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel in retaliation—4,000 in all. Tel Aviv’s military withdrew without meeting their goals: to get the two Israeli soldiers released and to push the Lebanese resistance away from Israel’s borders.