Detroit Greens a local of the Green Party of Michigan

THIS FRIDAY'S PROTEST
Andiamo Dearborn Restaurant
7- 8 pm

Join us for our weekly Friday picket from 7-8 pm outside Andiamo Restaurant in Dearborn, 21400 Michigan Avenue!!

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Hi everyone,

The monthly meeting of the Detroit Greens will take place at the Urban Network Bookstore, 5740 Grand River near McGraw, Thursday May 20 at 7pm

Proposed Agenda

1. Updates
State Membership Meeting
Annual National Meeting
US Social Forum and Greens

2. Local updates - recent police murder, etc.

3. 2010 Elections
Filing
Slate plans

4. Other events and announcements

by Adrienne Maree Brown. Originally published at The Luscious Satyagraha.

there is no justice. not for aiyana stanley jones.

there is punishment, and perhaps accountability. someone to point towards, many people, a trail of blame, stories, mistakes and tears.

but there is no justice.

i'm just home from a vigil for aiyana. i don't like to go to these things because they make me feel too raw and hopeless. my partner, however, knew that we had to go and make sure aiyana's story was told. so here it is: she was alive yesterday, 7 years old. she went to bed on a couch in a first floor room with her grandmother last night. in the wee hours of the morning, cops raided her house. a man outside the house shouted that there were kids inside. a man on the second floor of the house was a suspect in the murder of a 17-year-old last Friday.

the police threw a "flash bang" through the front window. it blinded everyone inside; it lit aiyana on fire.

the news reported a tussle with the grandmother, during which the firearm discharged. everyone in the family says there was no tussle, that the grandmother was throwing herself over the baby when aiyana was shot in the head.

what do you call the blinded, terrified groping of a grandmother who knows her grandchildren are in the room, blasted from safety and sleep into chaos and danger, whose granddaughter is on fire? how do you comfort a man like aiyana's father, which was forced to lie face down in his daughter's blood by the same police officers who killed her?

the police shot and killed aiyana. they shot her in the forehead. her family saw her brain on the couch. by accident, perhaps. which doesn't even matter to a 7-year-old. you don't get let off any hooks for your intentions in this case, officer.

apparently a crew from the television show 48 Hours were with the police during the raid. i can't help but wonder what their footage shows, and if filming for the show had anything to do with the drastic tactics and fatal timing - flash bombing a home in the middle of the night when the women and children are most likely to be home and sleeping.

standing on the sidewalk with over 100 black people, some shell-shocked, some sharing bits and pieces of the tragic gossip, some railing against the mayor, some staring at each other or holding each other in quiet sadness...i only saw the children. they were running, kicking, punching each other. playing. they were all 7 to me, however big or small. they were all potentially aiyana. yesterday she was with them, today she is martyred for no cause.

several members of imam luqman's family were present, in prayer as we approached the house, present in solidarity with the particular grief of losing a loved one to violence at the hands of authority figures.

as we left the crowd, a man walked past us - more literally was dragged past us, barely able to walk, wailing in grief. his voice ripped through the southern twilight on the street, the realest voice there. i had spent the whole day around beautiful, vibrant children - little boys who ran circles around me and kicked everything because they were ninjas, and then grabbed my hands gently and easily to cross the sidewalk. and then i held a 2-day-old baby, totally fresh, just barely opening his eyes to say hello. what is more valuable than our children? this man, stumbling down the sidewalk weeping - this is how it feels when society offers up our babies as human sacrifices in pursuit of an unattainable justice.

i wanted to hold him. i wanted to say it would be ok, that there would be justice for aiyana. but i don't believe, right now, there is any real justice for the violent deaths of our youth.

every thread i pick up in the story leads to more impossible questions.

why are police officers legally able to use military tactics on a house with children in it on a sunday morning...or any morning, on any house, with anyone in it?
why do the grieving faces of people on this street look so unsurprised?
and when 17-year-old Jerean Blake was killed Friday, wasn't that equally devastating? did we do enough as a community at that moment?
do we know how to keep our children safe?
can we admit that we don't know anything about how to be the kind of society where this could never happen?

to step back from the immediate events is to see what happens in communities who internalize the corporate military worldview that some people are expendable. the way we function as an economy that places profit first is that it's normal for people in uniform to throw bombs into the home of civilians and shoot children.

an economy that valued people first could never justify those tactics.

i think of the children in my life - those blessed and loved and safe, and those who will never really be safe because of how the world sees them. the way aiyana died, the last minutes of her life - that is terrorism. to know that that kind of terror and pain can happen to a child in this time - IS happening to children, funded by our tax dollars, right now, in iraq, afghanistan, palestine, arizona, and here in detroit - is to understand that as things stand, there is no justice. nothing will make it right, nothing will take away the pain, nothing will heal us - and anyway, there is no time to heal. not for aiyana.

detroit police, at the behest of the detroit city government, are on the offensive in this war against our community. this is national in scope - international really. we cannot keep half-healing from the wounds inflicted on us - we have to fundamentally shift the way we participate in our lives and in the creation of our local economies and societies. we have to demand that police fundamentally shift how they are allowed to function in our communities - they must be disarmed, we must demand they focus their training on the humanity of communities, unlearning these tactics of creating devastation from a safe distance.

we have to make today's events impossible - that is the only way to regain our humanity. then, maybe, we can use the word justice.

Adrienne Maree Brown is the executive director of The Ruckus Society and a National Coordinator for the 2010 US Social Forum. She sits on the board of Allied Media Projects. Adrienne facilitates the development of organizations throughout the movement. She lives in Detroit, MI.

2010-05-08 Washington, DC -- The Green Party of the United States congratulates Caroline Lucas and British Greens on Ms. Lucas' election to the House of Commons on May 6. Ms. Lucas, the first Green member of Parliament, will represent Brighton Pavilion.

"The election of the first Green to the British House of Commons is cause for celebration among Greens in the US and for everyone who wants to see a new direction in politics and an end to the stranglehold of the pro-war pro-corporate old parties," said Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party's 2008 nominee for President of the United States and former member of the US House of Representatives from Georgia. "If Greens can win a seat in the UK, we can win one or more seats in Congress here in America."

While Ms. Lucas is the only Green Member of Parliament, the Scottish Green Party holds two seats in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood and there are two Green members in the London Assembly. 13 Green city councillors serve in Brighton and Hove.

more at: http://www.gp.org/press/pr-national.php?ID=315

By Wenonah Hauter and Maureen Taylor, pubished in the Detroit Free Press, May 6, 2010

Like many cities around the country, Detroit is looking to raise revenue to expedite its economic recovery. While selling the city's Water and Sewerage Department to a private company may sound like an efficient means of doing so, privatizing the drinking water and sewage systems would result in higher rates, degraded service and job cuts.

by Anita Stewart, the Green Party candidate for Hillsborough County (FL) Soil and Water Conservation Board

More on the Oil Gush...

In the coming days and weeks and decades, we will see the true casualties and the destruction of our once pristine beaches, ecosystems and wildlife.

Floridians and Americans from elsewhere are talking about a boycott of BP and other oil companies. It is important to realize this: BP PAYS for barrels of Dawn dishwashing soap that it donates to the local wildlife sanctuaries for cleanup after accidents such as this latest one in the Gulf of Mexico. It is merely part of the payoff exchange plan for doing business and the unsuspecting public is unaware of these connections. But the problem goes even deeper than that...

We now know that the blame cannot be put squarely on the shoulders of the oil company, BP and others. Our current leadership has acted irresponsibly and candidates and members of our government, representatives, leaders, etc., took money as contributions and donations from these oil companies and contractors in payoffs for legislation to allow for over 37,000 oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. And this has been going on for years! See: http://www.cccarto.com/gulf_platforms.html

Meeting theme: "Another US is possible, another party is necessary"; Green Party meeting coincides with the US Social Forum, also in Detroit, June 22-26

WASHINGTON, DC -- The Green Party of the United States will hold its 2010 Annual National Meeting in Detroit, Michigan, from Thursday, June 24 to Sunday, June 27.

The Green Party's meeting will overlap with the United States Social Forum (http://www.ussf2010.org), which convenes in Detroit from June 22 to 26. Many Greens will also participate in the US Social Forum. More than ten thousand activists, organizers, artists, and others from the US and many more from other countries are expected to attend the Social Forum.

For information about the Green Party meeting's schedule of events, registration, and lodging, visit the web site (http://greenpartymeeting2010.wordpress.com). The Media Credentialing page is also online (http://www.gp.org/forms/media). Reporters are encouraged to register ahead of time, but media registration will also take place on-site.

Saturday, May 15, 9 am – 5 pm

Great Wall Chinese Restaurant

4832 W. Saginaw Hwy, Lansing, MI 48917

Sign in, coffee and catch-up at 9 am. Meeting starts at 10 am. All Green Party members, supporters and potential candidates are encouraged to attend.

The Green Party Annual National Meeting will be held in Detroit, June 24-27 at the same time as the U.S. Social Forum, June 22-26 (www.ussf2010.org ).

Greens demand an end to mountaintop removal mining, poisoning of water, lethal worker safety violations, and industry corruption and control over government policy

Obama's offshore drilling plans threaten Alaska and the Atlantic coast with public health disasters and devastations of natural habitats

On Earth Day 2010, Green Party candidates and leaders said that coal and offshore drilling for oil represented two severe threats to America's public and environmental well-being, and urged President Obama and Congress to reverse course on both.

"There are millions of jobs waiting to be created in conservation, retrofitting, new and clean energy sources, expansion of public transportation, and environmental clean-up," said Martin Zehr, co-chair of the Green Party's EcoAction Committee (http://www.gp.org/committees/ecoaction/index.php). "President Obama promised many such jobs, declaring correctly that they would help jump-start the economy. Instead, we're seeing no cessation of mountaintop removal mining, continued promotion of the 'clean coal' myth, and a new White House plan to open up 167 million acres of ocean along America's pristine Alaskan and Atlantic coasts for offshore oil and gas drilling."

"It's not a matter of only reducing foreign oil imports. The century of global climate change demands that we drastically reduce fossil fuel consumption and replace it with alternative kinds of energy," said Mr. Zehr.

more at http://www.gp.org/press/pr-national.php?ID=311

Celebrate 40th anniversary of Earth Day: RALLY

Date: Thursday, April 22, 2010
Time: 1:00pm - 2:30pm
Location: Hart Plaza, Detroit

Call for action on clean energy and climate legislation!!!

Leaders from across the clean energy movement – community groups, youth, environmentalists, veterans, people of faith, conservationists and more – have signed a “declaration” calling on the U.S. Senate to take swift action on clean energy and climate legislation.

Forty years after the first Earth Day, these leaders are urging the Senate to take action on clean energy and climate solutions for Michigan and the rest of the nation.

By paving the way for America to build a clean energy economy, Congress will take meaningful action in the spirit of Earth Day to protect the environment, create jobs and enhance America's national security.

Join us in celebrating the 40th anniversary of Earth Day!