Dear Readers

I am unable to post right now. Thank-you for your understanding.

Peace, struggle, and love,

Claire

 

 

 

 

 

I learned it in New Mexico. Number 1: Crows brought light back to the world.

Ξ R A I N B O W  C R O W Ξ  Rainbow Crow©2013 by Gail Garber/gailgarber.com

Rainbow Crow was the most beautiful bird in the world with the most beautiful voice. Once upon a time, the world went dark and the animals were frightened. The great gods in the sky had stolen the light from the world! The animals wondered what to do to return the light and save their world. Rainbow Crow, who was strong and brave, volunteered to fly to the gods and ask that the light be returned.

FLYING  TO  HEAVEN Rainbow Crow flew and flew, high into the sky. His muscles were weary but he kept on flying higher. Finally, when exhaustion threatened to overcome him, he arrived at the home of the Gods. With his beautiful song, he asked them to return the light. Perhaps because the Gods so enjoyed his enchanting song, they consented. The Gods gave Crow a burning torch to carry the light back to Earth.   Rainbow Crow departed for the long flight home.Crow flew and flew and, as he winged his way homeward, the smoke singed his iridescent feathers and made his beautiful voice harsh and raspy!

AN ANCIENT CROW’S GRIEF. There is still a rainbow. Finally, he returned the light to the Earth. All the animals and they were happy. But Crow was very sad. He cried because his once beautiful feathers were now blackened and, instead of a rapturous song, he had only a croak for a voice. Today, if you look closely at the feathers of a crow or raven in just the right light, you can see all the colors of the rainbow reflected in them. The rainbow still exists!

SAY ‘THANK-YOU’ WHEN YOU MEET A CROW. Crows are among the smartest and most ingenious of all birds. Thus, long ago, they realized that in spite of what they had lost, their beauty nevertheless reigns supreme.  However, being by nature modest, they try not  brag. Crows still talk about Rainbow Crow, but then again, they have something to say about nearly everything.

Hard to believe it was only yesterday

Another summer day in the desert.  Everyone in my town likes a front porch. Since we don’t believe in building inspectors here, everyone builds his own.  Peristent inspectors will find themselves spending twelve hours a day drilling small  holes in rock  in order to test the temperature of out hot springs.  Word has it, they’re not even warm.  We figure we’ll fill our springs with  the hot water we bring back from outer space.

Our SpacePort is almost ready to go!

Long ago, a cow died here. Cattle ranchers shot the coyotes before they could eat their kill.   Better to die as an animal among animals than to be slaughtered as a side of beef.  Last week, wolves were spotted on the hills directly overlooking the town.

Run, little brothers,  run and run. There are rabbits in the next valley.

 The City Council was released from the County Jail yesterday evening.  We gave it plenty of cake. The entire Council had all been voted back into office earlier that day.  Now, the town is sending them all on a fact-finding mission to Denmark. Why? Oh, we just feel it’s about time someone checked up on the Danes.

 We ended the day with a demonstration against justice and unity. They are both too noisy, and seem to involve building inspectors and rice cakes,  as well as  too much walking around. The city council suggested “Man why don’t we save ourselves all that aggravation and just have a revolution?”

We settled on an uprising/skirmish,  picked sides and scheduled it for Wednesday.

By midnight, the city council was in jail again.

It leaves for Denmark on Saturday

ALL OF US OR NONE OF US: NO ONE WALKS ALONE

        ____    ______________________

            ♠ _________________ ♠

Change.org is the world’s largest petition platform, empowering people everywhere to create the change they want to see.

There are more than 35 million Change.org users in 196 countries, and every day people use our tools to transform their communities – locally, nationally and globally. Whether it’s a mother fighting bullying in her daughter’s school, customers pressing banks to drop unfair fees, or citizens holding corrupt officials to account, thousands of campaigns started by people like you have won on Change.org – and more are winning every week.

We live in an amazing time, when the opportunity to make a difference is greater than ever before. Gathering people behind a cause used to be difficult, requiring lots of time, money, and a complex infrastructure. But technology has made us more connected than ever.

It’s now possible for anyone to start a campaign and immediately mobilize hundreds of others locally or hundreds of thousands around the world, making governments and companies more responsive and accountable.

We want to accelerate this dramatic shift – by making it easier to make a difference, and by inspiring everyone to discover what’s possible when they stand up and speak out

We’re working for a world where no one is powerless, and where creating change is a part of everyday life. We’re just getting started, and we hope you’ll join us.

                    ~ .~ .~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~~.~. ~.~.~.  

                                  ABOVE TAKEN FROM CHANGE.ORG

Dear Readers – if you are willing to support me in the form of a petition, a Twitter, Facebook, email or blog campaign, or even just write a letter, please email me at claireobrien23@gmail.com  I will provide you with ample proof (I can’t just leave it here available to anyone, as I learned the hard way how risky that is.)

I have been prevented from taking real action for three years, but several recent developments have strengthend  my position and if I’m to make my move, I need to make it now.

Those three years have changed me forever. Because I face the combined power of already powerful interests, only public support will allow me to prevail. Thus, I don’t have to tell you how extraordinarily grateful I will be for any expression of solidarity I receive.

As my parents used to sign off many years ago,

Yours in struggle,

Claire

                                                                                                                                                         

PLAYING THEIR OWN GAME: CHESS IN UGANDA

                    From CHESS USA

Phiona Mutesi was hungry one day when she went to a mission for food – and that’s where she learned how to play chess . One of the amazing things about chess is that it has no geographic or economic borders. It doesn’t require a large budget or fancy equipment, but merely the will to study, practice, and get better.

Fiona was nine she walked into the US-based Sports Outreach ministry to get some free porridge and began her journey to chess stardom. At this point she had dropped out of school and was selling corn on the streets.

“We were evicted out of our house because we couldn’t afford that money. So when I heard that, I was like, ‘maybe I can also get there to know about chess and then I get a cup of porridge’, because I was hungry [at] that time,” she explained.

Many people in Uganda have the impression that chess is a man’s sport. Phiona Mutesi proved them wrong, showing from the beginning that she is a chess prodigy. She talks about how growing up in the slums has had a unique and positive effect on her chess game.

“I very much believe that having gone through all they go through right from childhood, figuring out how to survive on a daily basis, they do easily identify themselves with the board because when they come to play, they have still to face challenges,” Katende noted. “Devise moves, think what will be the next step, what will come after that. Which I think somehow makes them understand it better.”

The kids in Uganda don’t have chess computers and books to study from. They learn from playing each other and trying to find the best moves in any given position. They play on used chess sets and the rest of their chess equipment is far from new.   This makes their style of chess playing very unique. She talks about it when she says:

“No combinations, no memorizing lines, nothing whatsoever. It’s always, think at the situation and devise the best move. Many people actually lose games to these children, simply because of that, I believe,” said Katende. “Because they expect them to play certain lines, and they don’t. They end up playing their own game.”

---

When your work is based on truth: losing much more than a job.

 REPORTER,

DESTROYED

________

Journalists whose careers are destroyed  by false allegations have an unusually high suicide rate. It  takes a lot of lies to discredit a record  based on accuracy and character. And it takes a lot more than that  to ensure that an award-winning reporter with such a record isprevented from ever again working in journalism

The L.A. Times has never apologized for its baseless attacks on reporter Gary Webb, who took his own life after being relentlessly  hounded out of mainstream journalism.  After struggling to defend himself, and failing to be heard, Webb did not give up, because he did not want to die. Instead, he labored for months writing a book establishing his veracity. Webb was probably the only person who understood that he was fighting for his life. Every lie he rebutted was another silent reporter who stood back,  unwilling to speak out,   another realization that there was no one who considered him worthy of defense.  Webb finally found got on as a stringer at a small weekly.   Thls brilliant, award-winning reporter wrote about library funding and traffic-ticket shakedowns, and he did it beautifully. But the pay couldn’t cover his mortgage,  and by the time he lost his home, Webb had also reached the end of his dwindling psychological resources.      That day, he shot himself in the head.   But everyone in the media knows who  killed Gary Webb.

                                                                                ________________________________

@longdrivesouth Webb was killed by the silence of every reporter who didn’t speak up,betrayed by the phobic careerism that passes 4 ethics

— Claire Marie O’Brien (@ClaireO12872959) May 31, 2013

El día mi vida cambió / The day my life changed

‘The day my life changed forever’

Hortensia Mata was one of the original 1965 strikers.

Back in 1965, I wasn’t aware and didn’t even know what a strike was. That is until the day that Gilbert Padilla came into the field where I worked one spring day in ’65. Gilbert Padilla was a young, tall, amiable man working for Cesar Chavez as an organizer. That day my life was changed forever, Gilbert opened our eyes to the many injustices we were living everyday.

Gilbert said, “There is going to be a meeting tonight at my house and Cesar Chavez will be there to show you how we can change things.” So that night we went to Gilbert’s home and started listening to what Cesar had to say. After listening to him speak in such a calm and decisive manner I made up my mind to go on strike as well. Cesar told us that it would be difficult and to not expect success right away. “In the end we will win,” he said.

Before I realized it, I was on strike as well. The hardships were tremendous, especially when we had nothing to eat. I would sit up all night sometimes just thinking about our house and even though it wasn’t very luxurious it was still my family’s home.

The fight in the fields was especially difficult because the police sided with the growers and every time we tried to put something together the police struck it down.

Fortunately for us we always had people to help us out any way they could.brought food to all the strikers in my crew, sometimes canned or a hot meal. Whatever it was we appreciated deeply. I am sure that if it hadn’t been for those people, I would have lost my faith.

By the time the San Francisco boycott came around in 1968, I was more determined than ever. I recall packing in a car with my other friends and co-workers and heading off to San Francisco to boycott the grapes up there. I believe that was the key to our success. Had we stayed in Delano no one would have been aware of our struggle. There wasn’t any media coverage in the Central Valley and we finally got the attention we deserved when we arrived in San Francisco.

. Suddenly, no one was buying grapes. We had the grape industry cornered. It was all a matter of time before we came to an agreement.

When the day finally came I was extremely proud of all the sacrifice I had made and had no regrets about everything I had to go through.  What I will always remember  is that united we can overcome any obstacle, including powerful companies and corporations.

Reporter’s Committee board member sues himself

Fed up with a prestigious non-profit’s long campaign to discredit the reporter it was mandated to defend, a well-known legal scholar and member of the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press’ steering committee decided late last week to sue himself.

“It wasn’t an accident at all. I’ve insisted for decades that the law is just a bunch of ideas constructed to buttress the status quo, so why NOT the idea of suing myself?” said Unger Delgado Kennedy-Horwitz by phone on Sunday. ” Hell, by now I am the status quo, and so is the RCFP! That’s why I’ll take this case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. If I lose, I pledge to appeal. If I win, I’m as equally bound to appeal, and I won’t rest until I’ve suceeded in imposing the kinds of sanctions on myself that I won’t ever forget.”

Kennedy-Horowitz paused. I got the distinct impression that he was scratching his head; in fact it emerged that he’d pulled out a few small tufts of hair.

“I’m pulling out my hair out over here” he told me. ”Hey can you call me back in a hour? There’s another unemployed reporter at my door, asking for a handout - I think they leave a secret mark to let other reporters and embittered law school graduates know they can get a sandwhich here.”

Kennedy-Horowitz took the East Coast non-profit world by surprise when he broke all ties with the venerable First Amendment group last week.  Yesterday, he confirmed that his resignation protested the RCFP’s ongoing refusal to retract defamatory statements  its director had fabricated about a Kansas reporter several years ago. The Dodge City Globe’s Claire O’Brien had attracted general wrath when she sought to shine a national spotlight on a murder trial corrupted by racist violence and refused to reveal the identity of a confidential source.

Since I am, of course, that reporter, I received news of Kennedy-Horowitz’s actions with great interest. Two or three emails of support make me get up and dance for joy; thus I saw his lawsuit as I might a small line of tanks appearing on the horizon.

When I reached him again, Kennedy-Horowitz was in a thoughtful mood, and had little to say. “I’m eating a rice cake and I don’t even like them,” he confided, “Also, I’ve resigned my membership in the ACLU.”

He sighed heavily, apparently contemplating the complexity of his legal fate, then evidently decided to keep things simple:

“Hell, all I can be sure of at this point is one thing,” Kennedy-Horowitz said in a sanctimonous tone that, given the past several years, did not strike me as hyperbolic.   “I’m suing the shit out of myself.”

Before departing to file both a motion against himself, as well as his answer to it, Kennedy-Horowitz emailed me a photo of a very small tin circle  backed by a pin. Four letters were boldly displayed on its faded surface:

R. C. F. P.

Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press.

“It’s over forty years old,” he said. “I’m mailing it to you as a reminder for you to keep. Hopefully, we will all soon remember that a free press has never been just a bandwagon packed with lawyers and academics, defined solely by a series of power differentials”

I wished Kennedy-Horowitz well,  hoping fervently that he was right. Not only was my curiosity aroused by the existential and logistical  problems presented by his very emphatic legal plan, but I really, really don’t understand the way progressive lawyers think. They will lie in a heartbeat in the defense of Truth, and bulldoze your basic rights in the name of Justice .When it comes to egalitarianism, they are secret Federalists who care with breathtaking passion about their own careers. As for the ACLU, it is a bunch of thugs that will throw you under the nearest passing bus without skipping a beat. If you must meet with it, don’t do so in a dark alley.

But I’ve never been represented by counsel, as William Hurst of Albany, NY., Mark Johnson of Topeka, Kansas, Polly Sack of GateHouse Media, Lucy Dalglish,of the RCFP, Susan Hermann of Brooklyn College, and the Kansas-Missouri ACLU all well know. Thus, Kennedy-Horowitz’s actions require me to take yet another leap (well, step) of faith.

If the scope, crude methods, disorienting ruthlessness, and broader significance of the attack on me were made genuinely available to the public, would the next reporter prevented from defending herself have an easier time of it? Yes, I think she would. At the very least, her sojourn in Siberia would stretch on for perhaps one interminable year, rather than three and a half to four – believe me, that difference is a kind of lifetime. I also think that public awareness and opinion will make  reporters increasingly unwilling to collude in censorship and attack on a lone reporter,  year after year –  just because Lucy Dalglish wants them to. I share Kennedy-Horowitz’s  hope, if not his faith that we will remember what we all know, and have always known –  and that eventually, sooner rather than later, we’ll all say no.

” No.  No!   Shame on you.”

No.

L U C Y  D A L G L I S H:  SHE’S  WATCHING  YOU.

Lucy Dalglish is the Director of the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Dean of the University of Maryland’s College of Journalism. She lied to me while acting in her capacity as an attorney and she lied about me, calling me a liar, in a statement to the Associated Press in February of 2010. She made it her business to destroy my career in her attempts to cover her unethical and illegal actions, thus conspiring to criminally defame me.

I was truthful. Dalglish was not.

Dalglish censors news, people, and organizations, particularly the Society of Professional Journalists. She lies to the public, bullies the press, corrupts students, and decides who’s allowed to be a reporter and who isn’t.

WATCHED: James Baldwin, 1963. "Who is the nigger?"

Reblogged from Flaneury:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0L5fciA6AU

"If I am not the nigger, and if its true that your invention reveals you, then who is the nigger?"

Uno de los grandes Americanos de todos los tiempos.

LOOKING AT AMERICA / través los ojos de jóvenes immigrantes

Originally published in Latina Lista at latinalista.com / text and photos by Claire O’Brien

Two very small girls waited for a 4th of July parade in a small Midwestern city a few years ago. The city’s economy is based upon a large, fluid workforce from throughout Central America – a majority of them Mexican – and an industry which has for decades been specifically recruiting workers who lack documentation. I can’t claim direct knowledge of current conditions, but I can report that in 2010, when I took these photos,  an unusally thuggish, even singular,  brand of racism permeated the culture of the city and surrounding region.

The two little girls stood like sentries, about halfway down the block from their family group, The expressions on those small faces immediately stunned me,  stopping  me in my tracks. Whatever they were focused on was most certainly not a parade. In fact, they were intently watching a couple of white families who were spread out on the wide sidewalk in front of them. The Anglos had essentially displaced the extended family of Latinos, a sure sign that the latter were recent arrivals: within six months or so, they would stand their ground.

The displacement had happened almost organically, without a word exchanged – and something very like it had probably already occured at least twice that day.

The  two girls hadn’t followed their family, although they had moved well back on the sidewalk, behind a large sign and were now standing about as close together as two people can stand. The adults glanced over at their children frequently, but did not summon them. Three or four passing children swooped around the  girls, bending to sweep up the wrapped candies that littered the ground.

The little girls maintained a gaze truly remarkable in both intensity and longevity…It seemed to me at that moment, as it does now,  that theirs were the eyes of generations of Latino people, US citizens or not, who have been watching America for two centuries. Their gaze reflected a dawning recognition of what they were not yet old enough to understand. It might very well have been an ancient memory, passed down to them from ancestors whose ghosts were likely to have been hanging about,  attracted by the prospect of a parade.

                               

 MI FAMILIA ES BUEN.  MI PADRE ES FUERTE. 

These people don’t behave themselves  like other people do

They haven’t learned their manners, and they let their kids be rude

They left their old Abuelo way back there in the street:

I hold my Abuelo’s hand,  and help him rest his feet.

Now look at el gigante boy – he’s yelling at his mother!

Hector gasps in shock at this ( He’s my middle brother.)

La Policia eat Papers here: they’re always wanting ours.

When my Papa has no more, they put him behind bars.

Maybe we could show them there are Papers at the store -

That way, when they’re hungry, they can go and get some more.

I used to pray we could go home; but now we need to stay.

Without us here, they’ll never learn the right way to behave!