Daily Archives: July 1, 2017

Freedom is one of the most cherished American principles. But freedom means more than the ability to speak your mind, practice your religion, or choose your own democratically elected leaders. Our freedoms dont end with the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Freedom is also the ability to enjoy economic security and stability. And that means more than making a decent living and having enough to pay the bills. Its about both financially supporting our families and having time to be there for them. Freedom is the ability to take your mom or dad to a doctors appointment, to attend a parent-teacher conference, and to retire with dignity.

At our union, we champion policies that benefit all Americans. We fight for affordable healthcare for all, especially now, as Congress is considering legislation which would inexplicably throw millions of people off the insurance rolls. Pat Waller, a union member who is a labor and delivery nurse at a rural hospital in southern Ohio, is speaking out against Medicaid cuts that threaten the health coverage of new mothers and babies.

We fight to improve the quality of public services. Union member Tyrone Wooten is an environmental technician at a medical facility in Flint, Michigan. He knows firsthand the devastating impact of the water supply contamination in his community. And he traveled 14 hours by bus last year to Washington, to protest the testimony of the Michigan governor, whose austerity policies led to the water crisis in Flint.

Were also on the front lines when it comes to retirement security. AFSCMEs nearly 250,000 retiree members, led by Gary Tavormina who began his public service career as a corrections officer in New York State in 1957 are active in protecting public pensions and safeguarding Social Security.

Its hard to believe anyone could be against pregnant women and infants having quality health services, families having clean drinking water, or retirees having rock-solid Social Security benefits. But many people actually are. The privileged and powerful CEOs, massive corporations, and the wealthiest 1 percent do not just oppose these freedoms. They rig the rules to undermine them and they spend billions of dollars lobbying against them.

And because unions fight for these freedoms, the moneyed interests have made us a target. They want to use the courts to chip away at the rights and protections unions have won for everyone. They have now petitioned the Supreme Court to take a case called Janus v. AFSCME, in which the plaintiffs seek to impose right-to-work as the law of the land in the public sector.

Right-to-work threatens the ability of working people to stand together in a strong union, drives down wages and weakens workplace protections, while redistributing wealth upward. Moreover, right-to-work has its roots in the Jim Crow south, where segregationists pushed it to restrict the labor rights of African Americans and keep them from finding common cause with their white coworkers. Right-to-work, in other words, was created to inhibit freedom.

Americans value their freedom, and they define it broadly. It is the ability to earn a decent paycheck without sacrificing family life. It is the opportunity to live in a safe community and send your kids to a decent school. It is the peace of mind of knowing that an injury or illness wont ruin you financially and that you can live in some modest comfort in your golden years.

The labor movement believes in and are the guardians of all of these freedoms. So, as the corporate special interests gear up for another well-funded attack, we will do everything in our power to protect and defend our freedom to join together in a union.

Lee Saunders is president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, a labor union of 1.6 million American workers.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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Unions not corporations stand for freedom of American workers - The Hill (blog)

DeMarlo Antwin Berry no longer can recognize Las Vegas.

The 42-year-old Nevada man was freed from prison after 23 years behind bars for a crime he didnt commit. He felt a little overwhelmed by changes in the city where he was arrested when he was 19.

On Friday he sat flanked by his wife of seven years and lawyers who fought to get him exonerated and released from his sentence of life without parole. He looks forward to a steak-and-fries dinner and said he just wants to go to barber school and live a normal life.

It was a surreal moment, just taking it all in, Berry told reporters, noting the unfamiliar buildings, homes and freeways he saw.

He had with him only his release papers and a debit card for his prison commissary account. His lifelong girlfriend-turned-wife, Odilia, wasthere.

It means everything to me, said Odilia Berry, wearing a necklace bearing the word Amazin and offering her thanks to God that her husband was free.

The dismissal of Berrys conviction came after Steven Jackson, now 45 and serving life without parole in California for his conviction in a separate murder in 1996, confessed to Samantha Wilcox, a lawyer from Salt Lake City working on Berrys case for free with the Rocky Mountain Innocence Center.

Berrys legal team also found a former jailhouse informant, Richard Iden, who recanted his trial testimony that Berry told him hed killed Carls Jr. restaurant manager Charles Burkes.

They really did the job. They did the footwork. If theywerent as thorough as they were, we wouldnt be here, Berry said as he sat in a posh Las Vegas law office. Id just be another number in prison.

Nevada is one of 18 states in the nation that doesnt provide compensation funds for wrongfully convicted and newly released inmates, said Jensie Anderson, Rocky Mountain Innocence Center legal director. Sheestimated that 4 percent of the 13,500 inmates in Nevada prisons, or more than 500, may be wrongfully convicted.

DeMarlo Berry hugs his attorney Samantha Wilcox following a news conference after his exoneration held at the law office of Eglet Prince in downtown Las Vegas on Friday, June 30, 2017. The 42-year-old Nevada man freed from prison after 23 years behind bars for a crime he didnt commit said Friday he felt a little overwhelmed by changes in the city where he was arrested when he was 19. (Richard Brian/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP) (Richard Brian Las Vegas Review-Journal @vegasphotograph)

DeMarlo Berry shed his shackles in what once was familiar territory. Before he was arrested in April 1994, he used to sell drugs and hangout at a bar several blocks away, according to testimony at his trial in 1995.That bar is gone now, closed as a nuisance by the City Council in 1996.

Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County doubled in population during Berrys time away. Downtown hotels like the Lady Luck closed; Fitzgeralds changed names; and a canopy was built over the Fremont Street corridor that most knew back then as Glitter Gulch.

Berry termed his feeling of freedom sensory overload. He said hed heard people describe his prison time as his entire adult life, but he said he still has a lot adult life in me.

Hell learn in coming days how to use a cellphone, a computer and the internet.

One thing hell keep from behind bars is work ethic, he said.

I figured that in order to be a better person than I was when I came in, you have to learn to do something different, Berry said, so I took it upon myself to learn a trade. Barbering.

Attorney Lynn Davies said it was too soon to say whether Berry would sue over his wrongful conviction and incarceration.

Berry said he wasnt angry.

Forgiving is, I guess, a large word, he said. I just want to continue with life. I have a second chance at life, and Ill take the opportunity.

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Man released from jail after 23 years for crime he didn't commit finds freedom surreal - Fox News

I love the Fourth of July. I love the flags and fireworks, burgers and baseball, parades and pancake breakfasts.

But Independence Day means more than just the things we eat and see. It also means pausing from the daily grind to come together with family and friends and give thanks for the freedoms we enjoy. The right to vote and speak and petition the government for change are a few of my favorite freedoms.

How much freedom do you enjoy?

For Vinny, a computer programmer turned homeless person, the answer is not so much. When I sat down with Vinny in Concord a few years ago, he was preparing for a court date to challenge a peculiar fine concerning the right to lay down his head on public land.

As he relayed to me over lunch at the Friendly Kitchen, he and more than a hundred of his fellow homeless people had been given a days notice to leave their encampment on an overlooked stretch of land they had occupied without incident for years. When they refused, having nowhere else to go, they had their belongings confiscated and were handed fines.

The bureaucrats, politicians say its your choice to be homeless but you dont get to choose where you live, Vinny said, adding that he would never choose this life.

It was not the only fundamental freedom Vinny wished he had. When our conversation turned to politics, the fifty-something independent with close-cropped hair and a sturdy build relayed to me that he had lost the right to vote. I was taken aback.

In my months spent traveling through 30 states by Greyhound bus on a poverty research tour, I had met countless low-income people in homeless camps and shelters who had lost the right to vote but none in the first-in-the-nation primary state I called home.

Vinny explained that he had recently been released from state prison for possession of prescription opioids (illegally obtained by his girlfriend to feed her addiction) and was subject to voting and employment discrimination now that felon followed his name.

By our system of so-called democracy, if I want to go and vote for somebody I cant, Vinny said. Im an ex-felon. I have no voice whatsoever. So how can you bring change by the way the system is right now?

In point of fact, people in New Hampshire who finished serving time behind bars regain the right to vote. Not so in Florida, where Vinny used to live, and 33 other states, where people with felony convictions are disenfranchised long after they have completed their prison sentence. More than 6 million American citizens, most of them impoverished, are currently disenfranchised because of a conviction.

But that does not mean that New Hampshire makes it easy for people like Vinny to vote. In fact, if the recently approved Senate Bill 3 is signed by Gov. Chris Sununu, low-income people who lack a stable address, as well as New Hampshire students living in college dorms, will find it significantly more difficult to vote and will be subject to de facto literacy tests when registering at the polls.

If they are unable to prove their New Hampshire domicile with official documentation, they may even be visited by government agents following Election Day and subject to fines up to $5,000 on the presumption of voter fraud.

It is the first such law in the country to be adopted following President Donald Trumps unproven claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2016 elections claims made all the more outlandish by the mounting evidence that Russian hackers went to great lengths to intervene in our election on Trumps behalf.

Voting rights or no, Vinny did not lack for political opinions. He fervently believed that politics comes down to money and people like him lose out time and again. Like anything else, its big business, he said, adding I think the money thats in it is all big businesses (that) control the vote (and) get their bills passed.

To prove his point, he mentioned drug companies that spend millions in campaign donations and lobbying to grease the wheels and get powerful painkillers approved by the FDA, resulting in people like his girlfriend addicted and people like him behind bars.

His words are a sobering reminder that even in the Live free or die state of New Hampshire, freedom is not enjoyed equally by all. Our system of so-called democracy is falling short.

As lawmakers in Concord conclude this legislative session with a state budget that spends more on business tax cuts for the top 3 percent than homelessness or opioid addiction not to mention rolling back voting rights and rejecting campaign finance reform we would do well to consider that definition of American freedom put forward by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the eve of World War II: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear.

How free can a person be when voting laws or spending by special interests suppress his right to speak at the polls, when punitive drug policies exacerbate his want and fear?

This July 4th, lets celebrate the freedoms we enjoy and fight like Americans for those freedoms that have yet to be realized for all. Happy Independence Day!

(Dan Weeks is chairman of Open Democracy and author of Democracy in Poverty: A View From Below (PoorInDemocracy.org) published by the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard.)

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My Turn: Fight for freedom continues - Concord Monitor

I attended a public elementary school in San Diego during WWII. Among the excellent teachers who still have a fond place in my memory was Lila Dickson, who was my teacher in both fifth and sixth grades.

She kept us up to date on what was going on in the world, and at that time not much of it was very good. She also taught us about how our government worked and about our responsibilities as citizens.

Perhaps the most important thing I learned in those years was this: My freedom ends where the other persons freedom begins.

During those school days she taught us how that concept was violated when some students, while standing in line, chose to take more space than others and accomplished this with a push. They did not show respect for the freedom of their fellow students to also have space.

This concept of freedom also worked well when California residents decided to limit where people could smoke. Ergo, my right to smoke ended when my smoke reached your nostrils.

And when we, as a people, decided that the noise created by automobiles with fancy but noisy engines, as well as those with thunderous sound systems, would not be allowed on the streets. Their freedom to make noise ended when my freedom to have reasonable quietness began. This seems like a very simple concept, and it can be applied in ever so many ways from the close and personal to the local, state, national, and even at planetary levels.

For example, should businesses, large or small, be allowed to pollute the water, air or ground in such a way that it becomes unusable or otherwise dangerous for you and me? Should developers be allowed to build more homes than a community can support in terms of water availability, clean air supply, and a satisfactory quality of life for current residents? The Fourth of July is a splendid time to think on these things as this holiday always initiates a great deal of discussion about our freedoms what they are and their importance.

As we engage in conversations about freedom during this holiday, let us give thought to the idea of where freedoms are located as we remember our freedom ends where the other persons freedom begins.

Freedom is, indeed, a two way street!

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Sally White: Where freedom ends - Santa Clarita Valley Signal

We are just about ready to celebrate our nations independence and rejoice in the freedoms we have as Americans. I love the Fourth of July the food, the fireworks, the family fun. Even with our countrys weaknesses and imperfections, we live in a great land. Happy Fourth of July! Have fun and be safe!

As Christians, we know that our freedom was bought and paid for by Jesus on the cross. We can live in freedom, no longer enslaved by sin. Our day of liberty came when we asked Jesus to come into our lives. Galatians 5:1 basically says Christ has set us free to live in complete liberty; we never have to be harnessed again in the bondage and the slavery of sin. (Dorettes paraphrase)

Within the last month, two of my very dear friends have both published books that talk about freedom in different ways. Karen Jensen Salisbury released a book called I Forgive You, But and Tracy Wilde released her book called Finding the Lost Art of Empathy. I recommend both books highly, and to me their messages dovetail in a beautiful way. We all have suffered hurts. We live on an earth with a curse and people often hurt people, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Situations and circumstances can wound and pierce our heart. What both books emphasize in different ways is that forgiveness leads to freedom and freedom leads to loving others and ourselves with empathy.

Everyone I know wants peace, freedom and love in their lives, but most dont have the understanding that so often it starts with forgiveness. Unforgiveness can affect us in so many negative ways. In Karens book I Forgive You, But, she uses the example that unforgiveness is like drinking poison and praying for the other person to die. What actually happens is just the opposite. A slow death happens in us. Unforgiveness perpetuates pain, and only hurts us and those around us. Bitter people dont draw people to them, they push them away. I Peter 5:9 reminds us that we do not suffer alone; suffering goes on all around the world. (Dorettes paraphrase) We are not one isolated hurting heart, people have experienced hurts everywhere. We have to make a choice in our hurt, to forgive.

In Finding the Lost Art of Empathy, Tracy talks about the power of forgiveness when she was recovering from a tragedy in her own life. Her world was upside down and her physical body was suffering as well as her heart. Through the kind-hearted empathy of her trusted doctor, he suggested that her physical ailments were connected to her brokenness, and asked her if she had forgiven the other person involved. Her honest answer was that she didnt know. He then asked if she would repeat a phrase after him. She repeatedly said this, I forgive myself and others for all the wrong that has been done to me. Her doctors wisdom to walk Tracy toward forgiveness, not only healed her heart, but healed her body.

So my question to you is this, are you suffering in your heart or your body? Maybe freedom for you can start with forgiveness. This might be a great weekend to get free, and find true freedom!

The Rev. Dorette Schaal, of Amazing Grace Fellowship in Twin Falls, may be reached at 208-736-0727, 208-736-0727, on Twitter @doretteschaal and at Facebook.com/Encouraging Word.

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Pastor's Corner: Freedom in forgiveness - Twin Falls Times-News

HONG KONG Tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents marched through the streets in defense of their cherished freedoms Saturday, in the face of what many see as a growing threat from mainland China, exactly two decades after the handover from British rule.

Earlier in the day, Chinas president, Xi Jinping, marked the 20th anniversary of the handover with his sternest warning yet to the territorys people: You can have autonomy, but dont do anything that challenges the authority of the central government or undermines national sovereignty.

Under the terms of the 1997 handover, China promised to grant Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy for at least 50 years, but Xi said it was important to have a correct understanding of the relationship between one country and two systems.

One country is like the roots of a tree, he told Hong Kongs elite after swearing in a new chief executive to govern the territory, Carrie Lam. For a tree to grow and flourish, its roots must run deep and strong. The concept of one country, two systems was advanced first and foremost to realize and uphold national sovereignty.

Many people in Hong Kong accused China of violating the territorys autonomy in 2015 by seizing five publishers who were putting out gossipy books about the Chinese leadership and allegedly distributing them on the mainland.

Some are also angry that Beijing intervened to disqualify newly elected pro-independence lawmakers who failed to correctly administer the oath of office last year. Many people are worried about a steady erosion of press freedom, and that in a range of areas China is increasingly determined to call the shots.

But Xi made it clear that challenges to Beijings authority would not be allowed.

Any attempt to endanger Chinas sovereignty and security, challenge the power of the central government and the authority of the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, or use Hong Kong for infiltration or sabotage activities against the mainland, is an act that crosses the red line and is absolutely impermissible, he said.

But that message didnt appear to go down well on the streets of Hong Kong. Organizers said more than 60,000 people joined Saturdays annual march, which they said was meant to deliver a message to the Chinese president.

Hes threatening Hong Kongs people, saying he has the power to make us do what he wants, said Anson Woo, a 19-year-old student.But I still have hope. Seeing all the people around me today, the people of Hong Kong are still fighting for what we value.

A poll by the Chinese University of Hong Kong showed people here attach even greater importance to judicial independence and freedom of the press than to economic development. Any notion that Hong Kong as a city is only about making money is clearly not accurate.

We have to take the chance to express our views while we still can, said Chan Sui Yan, a 15-year-old schoolgirl.They say it is one country, two systems, but right now we are losing a lot of the rights we value.

Some chanted slogans demanding democracy, criticizing the territorys ruling elite or the Communist Party. many called for the release of Nobel laureate and democracy icon Liu Xiabo, imprisoned in China since 2008 and this week taken to a hospital under close guard for treatment for advanced liver cancer.

We want to show the mainland there are other voices, outside the official voice, said teacher Tong Siu, 53.We want to safeguard the core values of Hong Kong.

In his speech, Chinas leader said that the concept of one country, two systems was a great success, and should be implemented unswervingly and not be bent or distorted.

While his words made it clear that sovereignty took precedence over autonomy, he said neither aspect should be neglected. Only in this way will the ship of one country, two systems break the waves, sail steadily and last the distance, he said.

Yet many people here say Hong Kongs autonomy was again badly distorted in March, with Lams election as chief executive. Although the former bureaucrat trailed well behind rival candidate John Tsang in opinion polls, she was chosen by a panel of 1,200 members of the territorys elite that was packed with pro-Beijing loyalists.

Although Tsang was also an establishment figure, political experts say Beijing seemed to want someonein the chief executives chairwho would not challenge its authority.

Xi did not shy away from raising two controversial demands that have previously brought Hong Kong residents out on the streets inthe hundreds of thousands.

Chinas leader said the territory needed to improve its systems to defend national security, sovereignty and development interests, as well as enhance education and raise public awareness of the history and culture of the Chinese nation.

Chinas demand that the territory pass a national security law caused massive street protests14 years ago, while plans to implement a program of patriotic education brought more people onto the streets in 2012 and helped politicize the territorys youths.

Both plans were subsequently shelved, but Lam hasindicated she aims to put themback on the table. But she also argues the time isnt right to satisfy a popular demand for greater democracy by allowing a future chief executive to be chosen by universal suffrage.

Marchers said moves to interfere with the education system smacked of brainwashing.

Martin Lee, Hong Kongs veteran pro-democracy political leader, said China was deliberately confusing patriotism with obedience.

When they say you must love the country, what they mean is you must obey the Communist Party, he said. We have no problem with the Communist Party as long as it adheres to the promises made to us.

But Lee said China had not fulfilled its promise to grant Hong Kong greater democracy.

They kept on postponing democracy, he said. Thats why young people are losing their patience.

On Saturday morning, a small group of pro-democracy protesters said they were attacked by hired thugs when they tried to stage a demonstration, and subsequently were briefly detained and beaten by police.

Joshua Wong, who led protests against patriotic education in 2012 and in favor ofdemocracy in 2014, was among the group andcalled the incidentanother violation of the promise to maintain Hong Kongs values, including the right to free speech. One country, two systems has given way to one country, one-and-a-half systems, he told The Washington Post.

Why would Hong Kong people want to accept patriotic education from a country that isruled by a single party dictatorship? he said. This is the core question. If the government is not elected by the people, how can we have a sense of belonging?

Luna Lin contributed to this report.

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Hong Kong residents march to defend freedom as China's president draws a 'red line' - Washington Post

Peggy Garner had a deeper and different understanding of liberty than Patrick Henry he who famously shouted Give me liberty or give me death. Peggy Garner had no liberty. She was a slave.

Patrick Henry detested taxation without representation by a distant British Parliament. Peggy Garner paid no taxes and had no liberty. Imprisoned on a plantation and a black female, she had perhaps the least liberty of all.

But when Peggy Garner escaped across a frozen river to Ohio, with her four children, perhaps she faintly heard Patrick Henry when hunted down by slave catchers. Give me liberty or give me death? Peggy chose death, wanting to kill her children and herself rather than be returned to slavery. She had killed just one child, slitting her throat, before being restrained.

Opposites help define each other, much as the meaning of light resides in total darkness. Peggy Garners act of desperation tells us what liberty means in a deeper and different way than even Jeffersons majestic claim that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

We get a deeper sense of the gradual, grinding progression of actualizing Jeffersons bold claim for all Americans when two centuries elapsed between a colonial editors shutting down his paper rather than pay the Stamp Act tax of 1764 and Martin Luther King, Jr.s soaring words on the national mall in 1963. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

And while black females were perhaps last in line for liberty, and white males particularly wealthy ones first in line, our liberty largely started with wealthy white males claiming those rights and then, with commoner whites and free blacks and some courageous women, fighting with guns, guts, and French help to secure freedom from British rule.

Two people illustrate the gradual trickle down progression of liberty over the next several centuries. David Acheson immigrated to America from northern Ireland in 1788 with the clothes on his back and a letter of introduction from his minister. Nine years later he was a successful banker, businessman, and politician who was invited to dine with President George Washington. The vast expanse of our new country soon from sea to shining sea opened up opportunities for those with ambition and talent to pursue their dreams, the American dream.

No one really wanted war. But Lincoln knew it was coming, perhaps unavoidable due to historical circumstance and economic pressures. Julia Ward Howe awakened around dawn at her Washington hotel and peered out the window. Having watched Union troops parade the day before, new words came to her for the rhythmic music of John Browns Body.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword; His truth is marching on.

David Achesons grandson of like name marched to those stirring words on his way to Gettysburg. He fell in battle a few hours later, giving his life that others might be free to live theirs more fully. His blood sacrifice and that of thousands more fulfilled the last verse of The Battle Hymn of the Republic As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.

Julia Ward Howe fought for womens rights and emancipation from a paternalistic culture, her own husband was something of a tyrant, for the next 50 years, being a fighting feminist before the phrase existed. Deep in her heart, she knew that one eternal truth that was marching on was that none of us are truly free until we all are free free to fully develop our God-given talents as both an act of self-fulfillment and a contribution to our national welfare.

For, as Peggy Garner, David Acheson, Julia Ward Howe, and many others knew, the freedom we celebrate on the Fourth of July must be for all people and for as long as we are willing to sacrifice blood and treasure to preserve it. God bless America and let us not let our liberty slip away. Many paid a high price for us to have it.

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Many paid a high price for us to have freedom - Edmond Sun