Author Archives: MuhammadStillman

‘He’s a political prisoner’: Standing Rock activists face years in jail

by MuhammadStillman Posted on June 23, 2018

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Standing Rock saved Little Feather’s life. Then the U.S. government took it from him.

Little Feather was one of thousands of Native Americans who traveled to North Dakota in 2016 to fight the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline. The 45-year-old member of the Chumash Nation was battling drug addiction at the time, said his wife, Leoyla Cowboy. But the “water protector” movement gave him a sense of purpose, a renewed connection to indigenous elders, and sobriety.

But last year as the oil pipeline began operations, authorities jailed him and charged him with felonies stemming from his involvement in the demonstrations. Little Feather’s case and the prosecution of hundreds of others is part of what activists say is an aggressive campaign by U.S. law enforcement to suppress indigenous and environmental movements, using drawn-out criminal cases and lengthy prison sentences.

“He has been taken from us, and it’s a huge void in our lives,” Cowboy, 44, told the Guardian in a recent interview after Little Feather, also known as Michael Giron, was sentenced to three years. “He is a political prisoner … We were protecting our land. It’s something we have to do, and we’re going to be met with this violence from these agencies, from the federal government, from the state.”

As Red Fawn Fallis prepares for her sentencing next week in the movement’s most high-profile prosecution, activists are speaking out about the toll the cases have taken — continuing to drag on and tear apart families — all as Standing Rock has almost entirely disappeared from headlines.

After Donald Trump took office and ordered expedited approval of the $3.7 billion pipeline last January, the crackdown on activists escalated. The cases stemmed from clashes with police in late 2016 when thousands gathered at Oceti Sakowin and other campsites by the pipeline, facing a highly militarized operation, brutal shows of force, mass arrests and widely condemned jail conditions.

Under Trump, who has had financial ties with the pipeline company, the U.S. Department of Justice has pressed forward with six cases against Native Americans. North Dakota prosecutors meanwhile have pursued more than 800 state cases against people at Standing Rock, including 165 still pending, according to the Water Protector Legal Collective, a legal support team.

“They needed these convictions to make examples of people,” said Rattler, another federal defendant who, like Little Feather, agreed to a plea deal. “We got their attention, and they are scared of us.”

Rattler, a Lakota Oglala man, and Little Feather were each charged with two felonies — civil disorder and use of fire to commit a felony — related to a standoff on Oct. 27, 2016, when police deployed pepper spray and armored vehicles in response to a roadblock set up by activists. More than 140 people were arrested.

The arson charges related to the fact that “several fires were set by unidentified protesters” to thwart police, as prosecutors wrote in one court filing.

If the men were convicted, they faced a mandatory minimum of 10 years. Activists argued the charges were excessive, and some thought the men would prevail in a courtroom, especially considering reporting by the Intercept, which uncovered how a private security firm had used military-style counter-terrorism methods to target and infiltrate the protests.

But the defendants and their attorneys ultimately had concerns about the risks of a trial. One survey of jury-eligible locals found that 82 percent to 94 percent had prejudged protesters as guilty or were biased against them.

“Having a fair trial in Bismarck was going to be impossible,” said Rattler, 45, whose legal name is Michael Markus. “If you go to court in North Dakota, you are going to get convicted.”

Wasté Win Young, a Standing Rock member who is still facing trespassing and rioting charges in North Dakota court, said she was now regularly targeted and racially profiled by locals and police in the area.

“It’s just surreal still living here,” she said, noting that the fossil fuel industry had a lot of influence in the area and that there was heavy local bias against the demonstrations. “They feel like their security, their well-being was threatened by the so-called violent protesters, which was not the case at all.”

Still, Young said she was not afraid to go to court: “I stood my ground and it was in honor of my ancestors and to protect their way of life.”

Red Fawn Fallis was originally accused of shooting at law enforcement, facing a potential life sentence. The case moved forward even after it was reported that a paid informant for the FBI had developed a romantic relationship with her during the protests and was the owner of the gun she allegedly fired. Prosecutors eventually dropped the charge in exchange for her pleading to lesser offenses, and on Monday, she is expected to receive a seven-year prison sentence.

The U.S. attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Rattler, who is expected to get three years in prison, said the pending case meant he was restricted from freely traveling to indigenous ceremonies and other events.

“That’s been going on for hundreds of years — the federal government telling indigenous people where they can and can’t go,” said Ollie, Rattler’s partner who requested not to use her full name. “They do it just because they can.”

Sandra Freeman, Rattler’s attorney, said it had been difficult coming to terms with the reality of his plea agreement: “He is someone who is a really gentle, non-violent person who has accepted significant, significant time in the Federal Bureau of Prisons.”

Despite everything, Rattler said he was glad he was involved in the movement and wanted to eventually continue the work: “I have no regrets about what I did.”

After Little Feather’s personal transformation at the Standing Rock camps, Cowboy said she was eager to start their lives together: “I have been praying for a person like Little Feather all my life.”

But her husband has been incarcerated since last March when police pulled them over and arrested him while the newlyweds were traveling to an indigenous march in Washington D.C.

With sentencing over, there was some relief in knowing he would eventually come home, Cowboy said. But she also recognized that there would be lasting consequences.

While she was inspired to see the momentum from Standing Rock spread to other fights, she said, it sometimes felt like those still suffering from the North Dakota movement had been left behind. “They are forgetting that we are still here.”

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‘He’s a political prisoner’: Standing Rock activists face years in jail

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Jimmy Kimmel takes on Sarah Palin. And wins.

by MuhammadStillman Posted on May 3, 2016

Jimmy Kimmel takes on Sarah Palin. And wins.

By on May 3, 2016Share

In between stumping for Donald Trump and raving about the media on Facebook, Sarah Palin has a new gig: promoting Climate Hustle, a climate change conspiracy film by noted tool of the fossil fuel industry Marc Morano. Really, it’s perfect for her.

Jimmy Kimmel, unimpressed with Palin’s new mission, took her to task during his show Monday night.

“I have a theory,” Kimmel said. “I think maybe Sarah Palin wants global warming. It’s cold in Alaska. It would be welcome up there. But, the idea that she knows more than 97 percent of scientists is offensive and dangerous. No matter what Sarah Palin and these geniuses she surrounds herself with try to tell you, climate change is not a liberal-versus-conservative thing.”

Hopefully Palin was watching, and maybe even learned a little something. Check out the full video above, and believe us, it’s worth it.

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Jimmy Kimmel takes on Sarah Palin. And wins.

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3 Troubling Ways the Charter School Boom Is Like the Subprime Mortgage Crisis

by MuhammadStillman Posted on January 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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Acting US Secretary of Education John King has called charter schools “good laboratories for innovation.” It’s that kind of language that’s helped the number of public charters jump from 1,542 in 1999 to 6,723 in 2014—when more than 1 million students sat on charter school waiting lists, including a whopping 163,000 in New York City alone.

But, as four researchers argue in a recent study in the University of Richmond Law Review, charter schools could be on the same path that led to the subprime mortgage crisis.

Preston Green III, an urban education professor at the University of Connecticut and one of the study’s authors, warns that the underregulated growth of these publicly financed, privately run institutions could result in a “bubble” in black, urban school districts. Many black parents, he argues, are unhappy with the state of traditional public education in their communities and view charter schools as a better alternative. As families see wait lists pile up, they may tolerate policies that allow more schools to open, even as they overlook the much-reported consequences of underregulated schools: poor academic performance, unequal discipline, financial fraud, and the exclusion of high-cost students, such as those with disabilities. It was such an issue that in 2014, the Department of Education released a letter reminding charter schools that if they receive federal funds, they must comply with the federal statutes disallowing discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or disability.

“It’s just a long-forming bubble,” Green says. “We are at ground zero for this.”

Just how similar are the charter school boom and the mortgage crisis? We broke down the report with Green to see.

More authorizers, more problems: Much like the banks that sold mortgages to a secondary market leading up to the housing crisis, charter authorizers—the institutions that determine whether to allow a charter to open—carry a similar decision-making power. Since school districts, which made up nearly 90 percent of authorizers in 2013 and green-light more than half the nation’s charter schools, tend to each oversee only five or fewer charters, proponents look to independent institutions to grant additional charters. Higher-education institutions make up the next largest share of authorizers, followed by nonprofits and state education agencies. If more states grant approval power to more authorizers, even more charter schools will result. (The Center for Education Reform notes that states with multiple authorizers have almost three and a half times more charter schools than states with only school district approval.)

But these independent authorizers, the paper argues, may be less likely to screen charters and ultimately assume less risk if they fail. Green notes that the school districts, not these other institutions, are responsible for figuring out what to do with students—the independent authorizers, he adds, “don’t have skin in the game.” A 2009 study from Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that, in states that allow different institutions to approve charters, academic performance for students appeared to wane. In those states, low-performing charter schools at risk of closing can find a new authorizer—”authorizer hopping”—to keep the school running and, researchers argue, to avoid accountability measures.

“Misalignment of incentives”: Just as the banks sold mortgages to Wall Street and hired servicers to collect payments and modify loans, charter schools enlist the help of education management organizations (EMOs) to run the schools’ day-to-day operations. While servicers raked in money from fees and foreclosed loans, management companies, many of which are for-profit, receive money from appointed charter board. These charter boards are supposed to ensure compliance, but, as the paper notes, the for-profit companies running the schools “have the incentive to increase their revenues or cut expenses in ways that may contradict the goals of charter school boards.”

Between 35 percent and 40 percent of charter schools are operated by EMOs, and one study found that these charters educate 45 percent of students. According to Green, charter school boards aren’t looking closely enough at these organizations and “are not well-equipped” to deal with them. Conflicts of interest may arise between the boards and the EMOs; for example, a Virginia-based operator named Imagine Schools recruited people to a Missouri school board and negotiated a lucrative deal on the school it managed. (Last January, a federal judge ordered Imagine to pay nearly $1 million to the school for what the judge called “self-dealing.”) For-profit management companies may also charge charters with exorbitant rents for space to house students and can choose to not take in students considered “too expensive,” such as students with disabilities.

Predatory practices hit charter schools, too: In the subprime mortgage world, lenders steered borrowers into risky loans and targeted homebuyers, particularly black and Hispanic borrowers, with excessive fees, bundled products, loan flipping, and forced arbitration. Green says charter schools have engaged in practices that take advantage of “vulnerable parents who lack the political power and financial resources to advocate for change in the existing system.” In Milwaukee, for example, some charter schools handed out gift cards to teens and parents who recommended the school to others, even though no public schools offered such financial incentives. (The city’s aldermen quashed the practice in 2014.)

Once kids have enrolled, though, overly punitive policies create a hostile environment for those seen as difficult. In Chicago, Noble Network of Charter Schools demanded students follow a strict discipline policy or face fines. (That school phased out the imposition after years of public pressure.) Green also points to another instance: At Success Academy, the prominent charter school network in New York City led by Eva Moskowitz, one Brooklyn principal created a “Got to Go” list of difficult students. (The New York Times reported last week that the principal took a leave of absence.) Success Academy has long faced accusations that it has filtered out underperforming and difficult students.

“Choice is a powerful motivator,” Green says. “I’m for choice, but I want the choices to be good. We need to be screening these schools much more carefully.”

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3 Troubling Ways the Charter School Boom Is Like the Subprime Mortgage Crisis

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