June 27, 2016


News and Views


NO NEED TO PANIC – BRITAIN HAS TIME TO RECONSIDER

http://www.wsj.com/article_email/after-brexit-vote-europes-leaders-debate-timing-of-u-k-s-departure-1466983952-lMyQjAxMTE2MTIzNzEyMzc4Wj

After ‘Brexit’ Vote, Europe’s Leaders Debate Timing of U.K.’s Departure
Officials in Brussels and Berlin suggest giving Britain a chance to reconsider its decision to quit the EU

By STEPHEN FIDLER and LAURENCE NORMAN in Brussels and
BERTRAND BENOIT in Berlin
Updated June 26, 2016 8:01 p.m. ET

Photograph -- Pro-European campaigners protested against the result of the EU referendum in London on Saturday. Some European officials are suggesting Britain should be given a chance to rethink its decision to leave the EU. PHOTO: TOLGA AKMEN/LONDON NEWS PICTURES/ZUMA PRESS
Photographs -- The historic vote to break away from the European Union has plunged the U.K. into political uncertainty. Dipti Kapadia looks at how Europe's political leaders reacted to the news. Photo: Reuters
Related: BREXIT COVERAGE

‘Brexit’ Sparks Political Turmoil Across U.K.
Traders Brace for More Volatility
A U.K. Revolution With No End in Sight
Brexit Vote Complicates Europe’s Terror Fight, Sanctions Stance
Merkel Plays for Time as Brexit Negotiations Begin
Scots Press for Second Vote on Independence
Exit Heightens Fears of EU Disintegration
Cameron Loses His Brexit Gamble
Britain Fires a Shot Heard Around the World


Pressure abated on the U.K. to serve swift notice of its intention to leave the European Union after last week’s referendum, as senior European policy makers suggested Britain should be allowed time to rethink the decision.

Senior officials from 27 European Union states met in Brussels on Sunday and agreed that they would have to wait at least until the appointment of a new British prime minister, likely to be in October, before the U.K. notified them formally of its intention to quit. This marks a shift from recent days, when foreign affairs ministers called on the U.K. to announce it would leave as soon as this week, allowing negotiations over an exit to begin.

In Berlin and Brussels, officials suggested they would wait until the chaos in British politics subsided and leave open the possibility that the U.K. would have a change of heart.

The referendum result isn’t binding on the U.K. Parliament. But despite the political turmoil and financial impact, there was no sign in London that it would be ignored. “In the end, there was a clear result. More than 17 million people voted to leave the EU—more than have ever assented to any proposition in our democratic history,” Boris Johnson, who led the “Leave” campaign, wrote in an op-ed for the Telegraph newspaper. Still, U.K. political analysts say a general election is possible later this year.

“Politicians in London should have the possibility to think again about the fallout from an exit,” Peter Altmaier, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff, told a consortium of German regional newspapers in an interview to be published on Monday. To leave now would be “a deep cut with far-reaching consequences” and the process of reapplying for membership would take a long time, Mr. Altmaier added.

EU officials said the view that the U.K. should be given time to rethink had growing sympathy in European capitals, including Rome and Dublin. “If they treat the referendum as a nonevent, we’ll treat it as a nonevent,” said one senior official in Brussels. “The [democratic] decision of the people today can overturn the democratic decision of yesterday.”

The main assumption, however, continued to be that the U.K. would leave—and there was agreement in Brussels among the 27 governments that negotiations over a British exit couldn’t start until after the formal notification to leave had come from London. Departing Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday that such a notification wouldn’t happen until a new prime minister took over, probably in October.

“We are working on the assumption that the U.K. is on the way to leave,” said a senior EU official after the Sunday meeting in Brussels. But he said there would be no negotiations over the divorce settlement until the U.K. officially started the process of leaving by invoking Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty.

The toughest line in public, and in private, has come from France, which has argued that the longer the uncertainty, the greater the financial and economic pain will be for the U.K. and for Europe.

“It must be done in the fastest way possible, the most organized possible way and while preserving the interests of the 27 member states who continue to keep Europe working,” said French Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron.

But Germany has taken a different tack, and Ms. Merkel said on Saturday that she wouldn’t pursue a punitive line in exit talks. “There is no reason to be particularly nasty during these negotiations. They should be conducted in a rational way,” she said.

In her approach, Ms. Merkel is heeding calls from her country’s business community. If Britain couldn’t be kept in the EU, they have said, it should be offered a different partnership with generous trade terms.

A German official familiar with the chancellor’s thinking went further on Sunday, saying Berlin assumed that the U.K. would leave but would prefer it if this outcome could be avoided. Any scenario that would threaten the political and economic stability of the U.K. wouldn’t be in Germany’s interest, the official added.

The historic vote to break away from the European Union has plunged the U.K. into political uncertainty. Dipti Kapadia looks at how Europe's political leaders reacted to the news. Photo: Reuters

A rupture of trade ties with the U.K. would cost Germany dearly. Last year, German exports to Britain totaled £60.7 billion ($83 billion), almost twice as much as British exports to Germany and almost double Chinese and U.S. exports to the U.K., according to British trade statistics. Britain was Germany’s third-largest export market last year after the U.S. and France, according to Germany’s Federal Statistics Office.

The next step in the process is a regular EU summit in Brussels on Tuesday at which Mr. Cameron will address the other leaders. Among other things, he is expected to say that the U.K. doesn’t intend to adopt the presidency of the EU, as scheduled, in the second half of next year. Separately, on Saturday, Jonathan Hill, the U.K.’s commissioner to the EU, announced he was stepping down.

On Wednesday, leaders of the 27 nations will meet without Mr. Cameron and start discussing the future of the bloc without the U.K., including ideas to rejuvenate the EU and deepen unity of action. EU capitals are also likely to start informal discussions on how to approach the negotiations with the U.K. in coming weeks. However, there will be no formal negotiations over what approach to take until Britain triggers Article 50.

Exit talks will cover the terms of the divorce, including questions such as how much of the EU’s Paris climate commitments to cut carbon usage and how much of the EU’s common aid commitments should be accepted by the U.K.

Senior EU officials said that once Article 50 is triggered and the exit talks begin, the U.K. and the other 27 member states could start discussing how future ties, including trade arrangements, will work. However, they said no deal could be formally struck on trade or other areas of common cooperation until the U.K. had formally left the bloc—though interim arrangements might be agreed upon, for example, to stop tariffs from rising before they are cut again.

Several diplomats said they expected the U.K. to seek a deal that they call “Norway-minus”—less close than Norway, which is outside the bloc but accepts free movement of workers with the EU as the price for being in the bloc’s single market.

They said the U.K. might want more control over free movement of labor—but the price for that would be losing its access to the EU’s services market and the EU passport that gives financial-services firms in Britain the right to ply their trade throughout the EU. That suggests free trade is possible in goods, but that other countries would seek to benefit from the City of London’s exclusion from the single market.

Other EU officials said the U.K.’s signal to leave would prompt difficult internal negotiations among the 27 countries, including over the shrunken EU budget. The U.K. is the third-largest contributor to the budget after Germany and France, providing about an eighth of its resources.

EU diplomats said that, assuming the British don’t do a stunning about-face, they are expecting the new prime minister to trigger Article 50 on or around Nov. 1, setting the clock running on the two-year timetable for negotiations that would run out on Oct. 31, 2018. They said there was a strong desire that the U.K. should be out in time for elections for the European Parliament in May 2019. The legal date for departure could therefore be set for Jan. 1, 2019, 46 years to the day after the U.K. joined.

—Valentina Pop in Brussels and William Horobin in Paris contributed to this article.

Write to Stephen Fidler at stephen.fidler@wsj.com, Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com and Bertrand Benoit at bertrand.benoit@wsj.com



http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/25/article-50-brexit-debate-britain-eu

What is article 50 and why is it so central to the Brexit debate?
It’s only 250 words long but has instantly become the defining clause in a war of words between Britain and the EU

Jennifer Rankin in Brussels, Julian Borger and Mark Rice-Oxley
Saturday 25 June 2016 07.32 EDT


Image -- Article 50 says: ‘Any member state may decide to withdraw from the union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.’ Photograph: Francois Lenoir/Reuters
Related: City of London could be cut off from Europe, says ECB official


Rarely have 250 words been so important – five short, obscure paragraphs in a European treaty that have suddenly become valuable political currency in the aftermath of Britain’s decision to leave the EU.

Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty sets out how an EU country might voluntarily leave the union. The wording is vague, almost as if the drafters thought it unlikely it would ever come into play. Now, it is the subject of a dispute between EU leaders desperate for certainty in the wake of the Brexit vote, and Brexiters in the UK playing for time.

Article 50 says: “Any member state may decide to withdraw from the union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.”

It specifies that a leaver should notify the European council of its intention, negotiate a deal on its withdrawal and establish legal grounds for a future relationship with the EU. On the European side, the agreement needs a qualified majority of member states and consent of the European parliament.

The only real quantifiable detail in the article is a provision that gives negotiators two years from the date of article 50 notification to conclude new arrangements. Failure to do so results in the exiting state falling out of the EU with no new provisions in place, unless every one of the remaining EU states agrees to extend the negotiations.

No country has ever invoked article 50 – yet.

When could it happen?
Britain’s Brexit vote does not require the government to pull the trigger immediately because the referendum is not legally binding. Indeed, how and when to notify has become the main tactical dispute in the hours that have followed Thursday’s vote.

In his resignation speech, David Cameron made it clear he was in no hurry to push the button. “A negotiation with the European Union will need to begin under a new prime minister and I think it is right that this new prime minister take the decision about when to trigger article 50 and start the formal and legal process of leaving the EU,” he said.

As such, he has done a favour for the people who did most to unseat him – Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. Both have argued there should be no hurry to pull the trigger: doing so would set the clock ticking, putting Britain at a negotiation disadvantage at a time when its political class is in disarray.

But there is strong pressure from two quarters to get the ball rolling. Ukip sees no reason for delay, with party leader Nigel Farage calling for action “as soon as humanly possible”. Perhaps more importantly, European leaders, frustrated, angry and hugely disappointed in Britain’s self-imposed exodus, want matters resolved smartly to keep uncertainty to a minimum and prevent exit contagion from spreading.

The German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said on Saturday after meeting counterparts from the five other EU founding states: “We say here together that this process must start as soon as possible.” Earlier, Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU commission president, said: “It doesn’t make any sense to wait until October to try and negotiate the terms of their departure. I would like to get started immediately,” he said.

What can the EU do?

But however much Europeans want to accelerate the process, there are scant legal means to jump-start it.

Kenneth Armstrong, professor of European Law at Cambridge University said: “There is no mechanism to compel a state to withdraw from the European Union. Article 50 is there to allow withdrawal, but no other party has the right to invoke article 50, no other state or institution. While delay is highly undesirable politically, legally there is nothing that can compel a state to withdraw.”

. . . .




ALLEGED RNC ATTEMPTS TO DERAIL DEMOCRATIC PARTY NOMINATIONS --

In attempt to verify the story of this strange RNC document, I have looked in several places. Since Socialism and Sanders followers are involved, I pulled two related articles, especially about the actual text of the damning document. I questioned its’ existence because the RNC plan looks like another “dirty trick” like the Watergate plot. I don’t have time to try to analyze these, but will simply say that each article is a spinoff from Huffington Post and the others, have been taken because they will hopefully answer questions and also provide some interesting related content.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/clinton-vp-choice_us_577027f7e4b0f1683239e34a?section=

The RNC Plans To Turn Bernie Backers Against Hillary Clinton’s VP Pick
In a strategy memo provided to The Huffington Post, the committee outlines how it will attack the top candidates.
Senior Politics Editor, The Huffington Post
06/26/2016 08:00 pm ET | Updated 10 hours ago

Photograph -- CHUCK BURTON/ASSOCIATED PRESS, Clinton is going to choose her running mate soon. The RNC has already done some digging.
Photograph -- NICK WASS/ASSOCIATED PRESS, Elizabeth Warren is one of the three candidates the RNC believes are in Clinton’s top tier of VP choices.
Photograph -- PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS, Tim Kaine is also in the top tier of VP candidates the RNC expects Clinton to pick. The committee sees an opportunity to turn Sanders supporters against a Clinton-Kaine ticket.
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/GETTY IMAGES -- If HUD Secretary Julian Castro becomes Clinton’s running mate, the RNC plans to paint him as inexperienced.


The Republican National Committee is planning to cleave liberal voters away from Hillary Clinton as part of a campaign to counteract her forthcoming pick of a vice presidential running mate.

In a detailed memo outlining its strategy to combat Clinton’s VP choice, the committee says it will frame the selection as both a cynical play to certain constituencies and as an emotional letdown for voters who backed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the Democratic primary.

The goals, the memo says, are to “drive wedges between these top contenders and either Clinton and/or traditional Democrat constituencies, such as labor, environmentalists, and gun control advocates, and other traditional left-wing constituencies;” and “[w]here applicable, frame the choice as an insult to the large, deep base of Bernie Sanders supporters who are struggling with the notion of supporting Hillary Clinton as the presumptive Democrat nominee.”

Titled “Project Pander,” the RNC’s strategy memo also reveals which candidates the committee views as most likely to be selected. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), HUD Secretary Julian Castro and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) occupy the top tier; Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Labor Secretary Thomas Perez and Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) are in the second.

Authored by Raj Shah, the research director and deputy communications director at the RNC, the memo telegraphs a campaign of subterfuge that is traditionally executed in private. Parties normally don’t like their fingerprints on the attacks against the opposition. But this has been an untraditional election, with both sides relatively unapologetic about the mud they are slinging.

Sean Spicer, the RNC’s communications director and chief strategist, said that the committee already has conducted extensive field research in San Antonio, Boston and Richmond, Virginia (homes to Castro, Warren and Kaine, respectively) in addition to investigative work on all six potential choices.

“We’ve audited previous research efforts from allied folks, ID-ed relevant video and historical paper archives,” Spicer said. He added that the committee had filed more than 20 freedom of information requests at the local, state and federal level on these potential VP choices and was ready to deploy operatives for further dirt-digging within 12 hours of an announcement.

Clinton’s campaign was unperturbed by the RNC’s operations, a spokesman said in an email. Nor were they worried about a fissure happening within the party, noting that recent opinion polls show Democratic voters coalescing more quickly around Clinton than Republican voters around their party’s presumptive nominee: Donald Trump.

“We aren’t concerned,” said spokesman Brian Fallon. “While the Democratic party is quickly uniting around Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump actually appears to be losing ground in his bid to consolidate Republicans. More and more members of Trump’s own party are realizing he is temperamentally unfit to be President, and there is no amount of Googling by RNC researchers that can fix that.”

Though the RNC’s research efforts underscore the high stakes of Clinton’s choice of running mate, the actual value of a vice presidential pick tends to be overstated. Data shows that the selection rarely helps win a state’s electoral votes, though it can marginally improve voter perceptions of a ticket. A pick can, however, create its share of headaches, either by providing damaging distractions (see: Eagleton, Thomas or Palin, Sarah) or by underwhelming voters (Lieberman, Joe or Quayle, Dan).

The RNC’s overarching goal is to duplicate, in one form or another, such a letdown.

With respect to Kaine, the committee’s plan of attack will be to paint him as a “career politician” whose positions on trade and abortion makes him unpalatable for supporters of Sanders. (Without irony, the RNC’s memo also says they will portray a Clinton/Kaine ticket as too liberal for the electorate because of Kaine’s support for Obamacare and his time as a lawyer for the ACLU).

For Castro, the committee will argue that he is woefully inexperienced and that the limited record he has is a disappointment to liberals: from supporting NAFTA to pushing, while mayor of San Antonio, to get a Connecticut-based gun manufacturer to move its headquarters to the city.

“Castro could easily be portrayed as a John Edwards-esque pick,” the memo reads, “whereby someone with good looks but a thin resume is viewed as a novice on the national stage.”

A Warren choice, the RNC concedes, would go over well with Sanders supporters. But it would be “an extreme lurch left” that the committee would paint as “intensely liberal and uncompromising.” Interestingly, the RNC hints that it would use the selection of Warren as a means of diminishing Clinton, both by playing up Warren as, in some ways, the more powerful of the two and by portraying Clinton as captive to her base.

“A Clinton-Warren ticket reeks of insincerity,” the memo reads.

Many of the individual attacks that the RNC plans to level at potential VP picks have been used before. Kaine, for instance, took heat from liberals for his stance on abortion when he was named chair of the Democratic National Committee; Warren endured charges that she exaggerated her Native American heritage while running for Senate in Massachusetts.

The presidential campaign, however, is a much larger stage and it comes with much deeper scrutiny. The RNC’s gambit is that Donald Trump’s unique appeal to working-class white voters — including many who backed Sanders’ candidacy — also represents a potential pitfall for Clinton as she rounds out her ticket.



http://www.inquisitr.com/3248414/secret-gop-memo-targets-bernie-sanders-backers-clinton/

The Inquisitr
Secret GOP memo targets Bernie Sanders Backers – Clinton VP pick to be smeared by Bernie Voters, report says
Jonathan Vankin
June 26, 2016

As Democrats worry about whether Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders — as well as their supporters — can reconcile their differences and make for a smooth-running party convention late next month in Philadelphia, the Republican National Committee is secretly plotting to use die-hard supporters of Sanders to undermine and attack whoever Clinton picks as her vice-presidential running mate, according to a new report.

A leaked, secret internal memo, obtained by Huffington Post Senior Politics Editor Sam Stein, outlines RNC schemes to provoke outrage among Bernie Sanders supporters over any candidate picked by Clinton as her VP choice.

The RNC operation, code-named “Project Pander” according to Stein, aims to “frame the choice as an insult to the large, deep base of Bernie Sanders supporters who are struggling with the notion of supporting Hillary Clinton as the presumptive Democrat nominee.”
While Clinton has not named any possible candidate as her vice-presidential pick, various media reports have linked her to several top Democrats, including Virginia Senator Tim Kaine — now believed to be at the top of Clinton’s list — Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, former San Antonio Mayor and current secretary of housing and urban development Julian Castro, and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker.
Watch Hillary Clinton discuss possible vice-presidential picks and other topics in the following video interview.

Castro is of Latino descent, Booker is African-American, and Warren is known as one of the most progressive members of the Senate whose tough-on-Wall Street stance could broaden Clinton’s appeal to backers of Bernie Sanders, who regularly delivered a jeremiad against Wall Street as part of his regular campaign stump speech.
Of course, the presence of Warren on the ticket would create the first all-woman major party presidential ticket in American history. She would be the third woman selected as a vice presidential nominee by one of the two major parties. In 1984, New York congressional representative Geraldine Ferraro was picked by Democratic nominee Walter Mondale as his running mate. And in 2008, Republican John McCain infamously selected Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Neither the Mondale-Ferraro ticket nor the McCain-Palin slate won their respective elections.

This year, Democrats have been concerned by the stark opposition of some Sanders supporters to the nomination of Hillary Clinton. Threats by activists to “crash” the Democratic National Convention, starting July 25, coupled with Sanders’ own refusal to issue an endorsement of Clinton and his continued attacks on her in interviews even with the primary season ending almost three weeks ago have raised doubts about Sanders intentions in the upcoming general election campaign.

Nonetheless, a new poll showed that the vast majority of Sanders supporters are softening their stance and say that they will back Clinton, while a vocal minority has remained steadfastly against her, in some cases promising to vote for her opponent, Donald Trump.

According to the memo uncovered by The Huffington Post, the Republican National Committee hopes to use and even widen those divisions by feeding Sanders backers attacks to use against the eventual Clinton VP nominee.

The Republicans plan to “drive wedges between these top (Clinton VP) contenders and either Clinton and/or traditional Democrat constituencies, such as labor, environmentalists, and gun control advocates, and other traditional left-wing constituencies,” the memo authored by RNC Research Director Raj Shah says.

MORE ELECTION COVERAGE FROM THE INQUISITR:
New Poll Shows ‘Bernie Or Bust’ Collapsing — For Donald Trump, That’s Bad News As Clinton Opens Wide Lead
Bernie Sanders Fart-In: Supporters Promise Flatulent Protest Of Hillary Clinton Convention Speech
Presidential Polls: Trump Tanks In Swing States, Clinton Could Cruise To White House If Trends Continue
Donald Trump Vs. Hillary Clinton Latest Polls: Trump Tightens Electoral College Race, Clinton Leads Nationally



Cheri Honkala, below, is said to be planning a demonstration worthy of The great Donald Trump in its’ grotesquery. It may be an outright hoax, and I’m pretty sure it won’t come about, or at least not in sanders’ name, but here it is. Honkala, who claims to be a fellow Socialist and from what she has done probably is, proposes a “fart-in.” That’s the kind of thing that CBS won’t talk much about, understandably. I did find a local CBS station that covered it, however, in Philadelphia. I personally prefer to think she is engaging in satire.

She is in general more radical than sanders, i think. Political activist saul alinsky actually planned it first, however. Jump down one article to read about him. The RNC used obama’s connections with him to smear him in the elections, but to no avail. Then, below that is one on honkala, a well known advocate for the poor.


http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/real-time/Cheri-Honkala-plans-Worlds-largest-fart-in-for-Hillary-Clintons-DNC-speech.html

At least one protest at the upcoming Democratic National Convention here in Philadelphia looks like it will be a real gas.

As TruthDig reports, local activist Cheri Honkala of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign is organizing “the world’s largest ‘fart-in’” to take place July 28 at the Wells Fargo Center for Hillary Clinton’s expected nomination acceptance speech.

In order to fuel up for the protest, Honkala says that she will host a “massive bean supper” for supporters of Bernie Sanders in her Kensington home shortly before the planned protest — dubbed “Beans for Hillary” — begins.

The “fart-in” concept, meanwhile, goes back to the 1970s, when community organizer Saul Alinsky first proposed the practice in an interview with Playboy magazine, as the American Mirror points out. In it, he suggested utilizing a “flatulent blitzkrieg” at the Rochester (N.Y.) Philharmonic in order to protest against Rochester rich and powerful.

Clinton clinched the Democratic nomination earlier this month following the Washington, D.C., primary, which she won with 79 percent of the vote compared to Sanders’ 21 percent. Overall, Clinton won more than 55 percent of the popular vote, with Sanders garnering just under 43 percent.

“We cannot afford more of the same,” Honkala told Truthdig. “We are either going to build third party movements or an American Spring.”



http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/alinsky.asp
How to Create a Social State

A supposed list of Saul Alinsky's rules for 'How to Create a Social State' wasn't written by him at all.

David Mikkelson
Jan 21, 2014

Saul Alinsky was the Chicago-born archaeology major who, in the midst of the Great Depression, dropped out of graduate school and became involved first with the labor movement and then with community organizing. It was in the latter field that he made his mark, working from the late 1930s through the early 1970s as a community organizer (first in poor areas of Chicago, and later in various cities across the U.S.) seeking, often through unconventional means, to "turn scattered, voiceless discontent into a united protest." Along the way he authored the books Reveille for Radicals and Rules for Radicals to provide "counsel to young radicals on how to effect constructive social change," the latter of which opened with the following explanation of its purpose:

What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.

Critics of President Barack Obama (who also worked as a community organizer in Chicago prior to embarking on his political career) have often linked his name with that of Saul Alinsky, sometimes in ways that suggest the two men knew each other and worked together. However, they never even met: Alinsky died of a heart attack in 1972, when Barack Obama was but a ten-year-old child living in Hawaii. Another prominent Democrat, Hillary Clinton, has also often been linked with Alinsky because she wrote her senior thesis on the topic of "An Analysis of the Alinsky Model" while she was a student at Wellesley College in 1969.

The above-quoted list of steps for "How to create a social state" is another example of a political attempt to tie the names of Saul Alinsky with those of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But the list is not something taken from the actual writings of Saul Alinsky, nor does it even sound like something he would have written (e.g., the line about "controlling health care" is anachronistic for his era, and the idea of "increasing the poverty level as high as possible" is the very antithesis of what Alinsky worked to achieve). This list is simply a modern variant of the decades-old, apocryphal Communist Rules for Revolution piece that was originally passed along without attribution until Alinsky's name became attached to it (presumably because someone out there thought it sounded like something Alinsky might have written).

The closest analog (in form, if not in content) to the above-reproduced list of "How to create a social state" to be found in the writings of Saul Alinsky is the following list of "power tactics" Alinsky outlined in his 1971 book Rules for Radicals. Note that Alinsky's list is devoted solely to tactics (i.e., methods for accomplishing goals) and does not specify any particular targets of those tactics (e.g., health care, religion, gun control):

Always remember the first rule of power tactics: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

The second rule is: Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

The third rule is: Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.

The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.

The sixth rule is: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.

The seventh rule: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment, like going to church on Sunday mornings.

The eighth rule: Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.

The ninth rule: The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

The tenth rule: The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.

The eleventh rule is: If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative.

The twelfth rule: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying "You're right — we don't know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us."

The thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.


http://stonestreetpress.com/1916/saul-alinskys-flatulent-blitzkrieg-his-own-account-of-his-famous-fart-in-taking-on-eastman-kodak-in-rochester-and-winning/

Saul Alinsky’s “flatulent blitzkrieg” –his own account of his famous fart-in, taking on Eastman Kodak in Rochester –and winning!

In 1972 Saul Alinsky did a long interview with with Playboy magazine. (If you would like to read the whole thing, go to “Wiki Saul Alinsky” and you will find the link in the bibliography at the end.) One of his many Community Organizer exploits is the following story of how he bested Eastman Kodak of Rochester. Eastman Kodak turned out to be no match for his intellect, serious purpose –and his sense of fun. [Smile please, indeed.] Have a look at this article if you were a twenty something in 1970.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheri_Honkala

Cheri Honkala
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cheri Lynn Honkala (/ˈʃɛri ˈhɒŋkələ/; born 1963) is an American anti-poverty advocate, co-founder of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) and co-founder and National Coordinator of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign. She has been a noted advocate for human rights in the United States and internationally.[2] Her interests have led her into politics; she is possibly best known for being the Green Party's nominee for vice-president in the 2012 U.S. presidential election.

In 2011, Honkala was the Green Party candidate for Sheriff of Philadelphia, running on the promise of refusing to evict families from their homes.[3][4] She was featured prominently in the 1997 book Myth of the Welfare Queen by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Zucchino.[5]

She is the mother of actor Mark Webber.[3]

Early life[edit]
Cheri Honkala was born into poverty in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1963. Her father, Maynard Duane Honkala, was of Finnish ancestry, and her mother had Cheyenne Native American ancestry.[6][7][8] She grew up watching her mother suffer from domestic violence.[9][10] Honkala's mother quietly endured this abuse for fear of losing her kids. Honkala was removed from the household and spent most of her youth incarcerated in a total of nine youth detention facilities.[10][11]

When Honkala was 17, her 19-year-old brother Mark, who suffered from mental health issues, committed suicide.[10][12] Because he was uninsured, he could not afford to get the professional help he needed. At the time of Mark's suicide, Honkala was already a mother (with a son, Mark, named after her brother), living out of her car and going to high school. Despite her difficult upbringing, she managed to graduate.[11]

After living in an apartment in Minnesota, Honkala and her young son were forced to move out and live out of their white Camaro.[13] She and her son became homeless after the Camaro was demolished by a drunk driver.[10][13] Honkala could not find a shelter that would allow them to remain together that winter. To stay together and keep from freezing, Honkala decided to move into an abandoned Housing and Urban Development (HUD) home. She would later comment, "I chose to live, and I chose to keep my son alive."[13] She called a press conference, in which she said, according to her, "This is me, this is my nine-year-old son, and we're not leaving until somebody can tell us where we can live and not freeze to death."[10]

Work as organizer[edit]
For the past 25 years, Honkala has been a leading advocate for the poor and homeless in America. While still living in Minnesota, she formed the Twin Cities anti-poverty groups "Women, Work and Welfare" and "Up and Out of Poverty Now."[14][15] In Philadelphia, she co-founded the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) and the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC). She has organized numerous protests, holding marches, demonstrations and setting up tent cities, in the course of which activities she claims to have been arrested for civil disobedience violations more than 200 times.[16] She is known internationally for her work advocating for the rights of poor people in the United States, and has received recognition in numerous publications for her role in bringing attention to issues such as homelessness and home foreclosures and has been called "the protester's protester."[17] Currently based in Philadelphia, she has devoted most of her attention to the rise in home evictions among lower income families.[11]

Kensington Welfare Rights Union[edit]
Main article: Kensington Welfare Rights Union
After moving to Philadelphia with her son in the late 1980s, Honkala co-founded in 1991 the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (named after the Kensington area in northern Philadelphia, where Honkala lived), a "Philadelphia based interracial organization of welfare recipients and other poor people."[18] In the winter of 1993, when homeless shelters were full, the organization took over an abandoned Catholic Church to use as a shelter.[15][19] In late 1994, KWRU broke into and took over vacant HUD homes destined for low-income housing and subsidized rent, although all the inhabitants (which included Honkala herself) were eligible under the rules. They chose to ignore the bureaucracy and its delays, particularly the paperwork, but paid rent into an escrow account to avoid actual trespassing charges. This became known as the Underground Railroad Project.[15]

From that time, the volunteers of the organization regularly (and illegally) took over HUD homes to provide accommodations for homeless families. To provide a support system to these families, the organization set up what they called an "'Underground Railroad,' a network of other poor people, students, social workers, doctors and lawyers."[20] Said Honkala: "Stealing slaves out of captivity was against the law... But it was right. Sometimes the law is wrong. Sometimes you have to appeal to a higher authority."[21]

In the spring of 1994, the Quaker Lace factory (a manufacturer of lace tablecloths) in the Kensington area of Philadelphia burned down, leaving an empty lot. The following summer, Honkala and KWRU constructed a large tent city on the site.[15] Because Philadelphia authorities could not produce documentation establishing who owned the property, it was unable to evict the residents. (Eventually, they were driven out by flooding.) This very public action resulted in a substantial increase in donations to KWRU.[15]

In September 1995, while the tent city was still standing, Honkala staged a protest by camping out for a day-and-a-half, with others from the tent city, on Independence Mall within sight of the Liberty Bell, to make the plight of Philadelphia's homeless visible to residents and tourists next to one of the city's most famous landmarks. Although she argued that she and the others were merely exercising their right to free speech and had not hurt the park, she was cited and later tried for "residing in a park area." She was sentenced to six months' probation and fined $250.[22][23] In July 1997, she was involved with the Liberty Bell once more, when she led a group on the "March for Our Lives" from the Bell to the United Nations building in New York to protest so-called welfare reform as a violation of the human rights of the poor. This action led directly to the formation of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign.[9][15][24]

In October 1996, Honkala with KWRU staged a sit-in on the floor of the rotunda of Harrisburg's capitol building.[25] The organization created a makeshift "city" that it dubbed "Ridgeville" after Republican Governor Tom Ridge, who had slashed social service benefits.[15] (Ridge would later become the first Secretary of Homeland Security). Part of the purpose of the protests was to point out to the homeless the opulence of Gov. Ridge's lifestyle, including the governor's mansion, supported at state expense.[15] The protest was supported by legislators opposed to the cuts, who bought meals for the protesters.[15]

In April 1997, Honkala was arrested on a charge of "defiant trespassing" for attempting to build shacks for homeless families in Philadelphia on an empty industrial lot, though at the time, the shelter system was full and people were living on the streets.[15]

The organization's leaders maintained that "some U.S. laws, such as the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, which limits the amount of time a family can receive federal assistance, violate Articles 23, 25 and 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Those articles guarantee, respectively, the right to work for a living wage under humane conditions; the right to adequate food, housing, medical care and social security; and the right to education."[21]

Starting in June 1998, KWRU led the New Freedom Bus Tour, which traveled across the country, gathering stories of human rights violations to present as a petition to the United Nations.[15][18][26] "Under the banner 'Freedom from Unemployment, Hunger and Homelessness,' the KWRU team collected additional evidence on the [negative] impact of [welfare reform] and held educational sessions teaching the poor about their economic rights."[18] (A second such bus tour was organized by the PPEHRC in November–December 2002, which traveled to 27 cities to record human rights violations.)[9]

Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign[edit]
Main article: Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign
In the late 1990s, Honkala started another nonprofit, the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, of which she became National Coordinator.[11] The PPEHRC represents "a network of over 40 poor people's organizations from across the U.S."[27] One commentator has written that the campaign "is the only [national] movement to come out of welfare reform that has been organized by poor people, and not their advocates."[28]

This organization was formed in direct response to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 (also known as the Welfare Reform Act), signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton, which she and her allies claim hurts recipients of welfare.[11] The organization's mission statement reads, "The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign is committed to uniting the poor across color lines as the leadership base for a broad movement to abolish poverty. We work to accomplish this through advancing economic human rights as named in the universal declaration of human rights — such as the rights to food, housing, health, education, communication and a living wage job."[29]

Part of the purpose of the organization is to make homelessness and the homeless visible, in order to force politicians to act. Honkala claims that the latter simply want the homeless to be invisible, so they won't have to deal with the problem. In a speech, Honkala said: "That's what [the authorities] are saying [to you]: 'Go hide! Go be under a bridge, or... hide under a bench, and we won't arrest you, we won't do anything to you, because you will be quiet!'"[10] As Honkala declared, "When you have nothing, you still have your voice."[30]

In October 1999, PPEHRC organized a month-long March of the Americas, from Washington, DC, to the United Nations in New York.[15] Participants in the march included low-income families from the US, Canada and Latin America. The group "marched 15 miles a day for 32 days, sleeping in tent cities, churches and community centers at night, and holding press conferences and protests in local communities."[27]

In July 2000, a PPEHRC march for the opening day of the Republican Party's National Convention in Philadelphia drew 10,000 homeless and poor people from around the country. (Of the several protest marches during that convention, this was the only one denied a permit by city authorities.)[9]

In November 2000, at the historic Riverside Church in Manhattan in New York City, the PPEHRC held a "Poor People's World Summit to End Poverty," consisting of several hundred activists from some 30 countries, to share "experiences and [work] to build an international movement for economic human rights drawing explicitly on international treaties."[31]

On July 4, 2003, Philadelphia held a celebration for the opening of the National Constitution Center, a new facility housing the Liberty Bell. Poor and homeless families from the city held a peaceful protest to demand their economic rights. "As the demonstrators marched toward Constitution Center single-file, carrying their own mattresses and led by children, park rangers, federal guards, and city police formed lines to prevent the families from approaching. Singing 'We Shall Not Be Moved,' the demonstrators locked arms and refused to leave the sidewalk. Protest leaders Honkala and Galen Tyler had prepared a 'Declaration of Economic Human Rights' to present at the Center. As they moved toward the Center, police moved to stop them, threw them to the ground, handcuffed them, and placed them under arrest... Honkala was charged with one first-degree felony and four other felony counts. Police officers claimed that Honkala had struck one of them in the chest. However, a video taken at the time clearly shows Honkala carrying a mattress and being struck by the officer... all the charges were subsequently withdrawn by the District Attorney's office."[9]

In August 2004, Honkala marched with the PPEHRC in New York City (without a permit) to protest President Bush and the Republican National Convention (RNC) and to publicly call for greater attention by the government to the needs of the poor and homeless.[32]

2011 campaign for Sheriff of Philadelphia[edit]
In early 2011, Honkala announced her run for Sheriff of Philadelphia on a "No Evictions" platform, with a campaign slogan of "Keeping families in their homes and protecting the 'hood."[11][33] When asked why she accepted the Green Party's invitation to run, Honkala said: "I’ve been involved in too many fights in my life where I thought I was separate from the machine and the corporate money, only to find out later on that I was being used as a pawn for the Democratic Party… [The Green Party] has a strict policy of no corporate money, which I liked."[11]

As a publicity stunt, Honkala during the campaign rode a horse down Allegheny Avenue in Philadelphia while wearing a white hat resembling a Stetson, in imitation of the image of a Wild West sheriff.[33][34] During her campaign, Honkala addressed the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park in Manhattan to express solidarity with the group's anti-foreclosure aims and to ask for help in "occupying Philadelphia" on election day.[35]

She finished in third place with over 10,000 votes.[36]

2012 vice-presidential campaign[edit]
Main article: Jill Stein presidential campaign, 2012
Nomination[edit]
On July 11, 2012, Jill Stein, then the presumptive nominee of the Green Party for President in the 2012 U.S. presidential election, announced that she had selected Honkala as her vice-presidential running mate.[37][38][39] Said Stein: "My running mate has been on the front lines fighting for the American poor, taking on the banks, taking on foreclosures, standing up for children most at risk.”[39]

Stein and Honkala were officially nominated by the Green Party at its national convention in Baltimore on Saturday, July 14.[40]

Political activism during campaign[edit]
On August 1, 2012, Honkala was arrested along with Stein and three others during a sit-in at a Philadelphia bank to protest housing foreclosures by Fannie Mae, on behalf of several city residents struggling to keep their homes.[41][42] The event began as a PPEHRC protest involving Honkala which Stein, after the former became her running mate, decided to join. The organization demanded that the mortgage company halt foreclosure proceedings against two Philadelphia residents. Fannie Mae executive Zach Oppenheimer had previously promised in writing to meet with the two women at the center of the controversy to negotiate a solution, but no such meeting ever took place. The protestors entered the Fannie Mae building and vowed to stay until Mr. Oppenheimer kept his word. Two lower-level officials met with the group, but when no resolution was obtained, most of the protesters exited the building, leaving only the core group, including Honkala, to be subject to arrest.[41] They were charged with "defiant trespassing" and released the following day.[43]

John Nichols, a commentator for The Nation magazine, compared the position of the Green Party candidates on this issue to the anti-banking rhetoric of President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the New Deal.[44]

She visited the PPEHRC encampment in Tampa, Florida, nicknamed "Romneyville," and strongly supported its plan to protest the 2012 Republican National Convention in that city, beginning on the convention's opening day in August.[16]

On October 16, 2012, Honkala and Stein were arrested after they tried to enter the site of the second presidential debate at Hofstra University.

Policy positions[edit]
Stein and Honkala are running on a platform they call the Green New Deal, "an emergency four part program of specific solutions for moving America quickly out of crisis into the secure green future." The program's name is inspired by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in the Depression era.[45]

The four pillars of the Green New Deal, "the central platform of the Stein/Honkala ticket"[46] are:

An Economic Bill Of Rights – a) a Full Employment Program that will create 25 million jobs by implementing a nationally funded, but locally controlled direct employment initiative, replacing unemployment offices with local employment offices; b) defense of worker’s rights including the right to a living wage, to a safe workplace, to fair trade, and to organize a union at work without fear of firing or reprisal; c) the right to quality health care which will be achieved through a single-payer Medicare-for-All program; d) the right to a tuition-free, quality, federally funded, local controlled public education system from pre-school through college, and forgiveness of current student loan debt; e) the right to decent affordable housing, including an immediate halt to all foreclosures and evictions; f) the right to accessible and affordable utilities; g) the right to fair taxation that’s distributed in proportion to ability to pay.

A Green Transition – a) investment in green business by providing grants and low-interest loans to grow green businesses and cooperatives; b) investment in green research by redirecting research funds from fossil fuels and other dead-end industries toward research in wind, solar and geothermal; c) the creation of green jobs by enacting the Full Employment Program which will directly provide 16 million jobs in sustainable energy and energy efficiency.


Real Financial Reform – a) relief of the debt overhang holding back the economy by reducing homeowner and student debt burdens; b) democratization of monetary policy to bring about public control of the money supply and credit creation; c) a policy of breaking up oversized banks that are “too big to fail”; d) termination of taxpayer-funded bailouts for banks, insurers, and other financial companies; e) the regulation of all financial derivatives; f) the restoration of the separation of depository commercial banks from speculative investment banks, as was the case under the Glass-Steagall Act; g) a 90% tax on bonuses for bailed out bankers; and h) support for the formation of federal, state, and municipal public-owned banks that function as non-profit utilities.

A Functioning Democracy – a) the revocation of corporate personhood by amending our Constitution to make clear that corporations are not persons and money is not speech; b) the protect of our right to vote by supporting the proposed “Right to Vote Amendment”; c) the enactment of the Voter Bill of Rights; d) the commissioning of a thorough review of federal preemption law; e) the creation of a Corporation for Economic Democracy*, f) the strengthening of media democracy by expanding federal support for locally owned broadcast media and local print media; g) the protection of our personal liberty and freedoms by, among other things, revoking the Patriot Act; h) a dramatic scaling back of the military-industrial complex.[46]

[NOTE: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/preemption, Preemption - Legal context
“When state law and federal law conflict, federal law displaces, or preempts, state law, due to the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. U.S. Const. art. VI., § 2. Preemption applies regardless of whether the conflicting laws come from legislatures, courts, administrative agencies, or constitutions. For example, the Voting Rights Act, an act of Congress, preempts state constitutions, and FDA regulations may preempt state court judgments in cases involving prescription drugs.

Congress has preempted state regulation in many areas. In some cases, such as medical devices, Congress preempted all state regulation. In others, such as labels on prescription drugs, Congress allowed federal regulatory agencies to set national minimum standards, but did not preempt state regulations imposing more stringent standards than those imposed by federal regulators. Where rules or regulations do not clearly state whether or not preemption should apply, the Supreme Court tries to follow lawmakers’ intent, and prefers interpretations that avoid preempting state laws.”]

Campaign goals[edit]

The Stein-Honkala campaign has set itself two main goals: to get its candidates on the ballots of as many states as possible before election day (November 6)[47] and to make itself eligible to participate in the televised presidential debates, to take place in October.[48][49] According to the rules of the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), the nonprofit organization that sponsors and produces the presidential and vice-presidential debates, to qualify for a place in the debates the Green Party's presidential slate must a) appear on a sufficient number of state ballots to make it theoretically possible for its candidates to receive enough electoral votes to win the election, and b) receive an average of 15% support from respondents in five selected national polls.[50] The CPD's selection criteria have often been criticized as prohibitively restrictive.[51][52]

Criticisms[edit]

Honkala has been a controversial figure throughout her career as a protester and organizer.[53] Said Feather O. Houstoun, a former secretary of the (Pennsylvania) State Department of Public Welfare, "She has not been working, rolling up her sleeves on issues like Community Legal Services does. She has never availed herself [of] that opportunity, while other groups have."[54] John Kromer, a former director of the city's office of Housing and Community Development, faxed a five-page letter to KWRU, in which he claimed that the group was actually preventing its poor followers from obtaining housing through its tactic of breaking into vacant homes, rather than utilizing established organizations. He wrote: "No good can come of an organization-building strategy, which is based on misleading poor people or preventing them from obtaining access to available assistance and support."[55]

Honkala admits that the group failed to rehabilitate any of the homes illegally taken, but asserts that the group was instrumental in helping 500 formerly homeless people find housing through existing programs. Honkala added: "I get criticized on a regular basis for not being a team player. But I have no qualms about holding a protest tomorrow at anybody's offices if they are denying anybody the basic necessities of life. You're not supposed to do that in Philadelphia."[55] Honkala has been a controversial figure throughout her career as a protester and organizer.[53] Said Feather O. Houstoun, a former secretary of the (Pennsylvania) State Department of Public Welfare, "She has not been working, rolling up her sleeves on issues like Community Legal Services does. She has never availed herself [of] that opportunity, while other groups have."[54] John Kromer, a former director of the city's office of Housing and Community Development, faxed a five-page letter to KWRU, in which he claimed that the group was actually preventing its poor followers from obtaining housing through its tactic of breaking into vacant homes, rather than utilizing established organizations. He wrote: "No good can come of an organization-building strategy, which is based on misleading poor people or preventing them from obtaining access to available assistance and support."[55] Honkala admits that the group failed to rehabilitate any of the homes illegally taken, but asserts that the group was instrumental in helping 500 formerly homeless people find housing through existing programs. Honkala added: "I get criticized on a regular basis for not being a team player. But I have no qualms about holding a protest tomorrow at anybody's offices if they are denying anybody the basic necessities of life. You're not supposed to do that in Philadelphia."[55]

Honkala has had many offers of employment to help homeless people, some of them high-paying, and has turned them all down.[9][56] This has led to claims that she is embracing her outsider status, rather than working within the system for change. Honkala replied, "I say 'no'... because the No. 1 thing I need to be doing is using my skills to build a movement... a massive movement to end poverty in this country."[56]

She has often been taken to task for her confrontational tactics in dealing with the authorities. Here is how author David Zucchino described Honkala's behavior at the first Liberty Bell protest:

Cheri loved to make people uncomfortable... She wanted people to squirm and recoil when they saw poor people. She was convinced that America sought desperately to keep its poor out of sight so as not to be reminded of the social policies she believed exacerbated poverty. If the country was going to turn its back on the poor, she was not going to let anyone feel ambivalent about it. She would assault people with her high-pitched nasal voice—in public demonstrations, in confrontations with elected officials, in media interviews, and in front of a ragged tent on Independence Mall.[57]

During the church takeover incident, William Parshall, the deputy city managing director, known as the Philadelphia "housing czar," was asked whether Honkala's in-your-face tactics "made his job difficult." Parshall replied that he was far more concerned with such pending problems as national and state welfare cuts. He added, "The question is, what are we going to do about it? That's the question Cheri should be asking," implying that Honkala was not taking a realistic view of the matter.[58]

Zucchino in his book details many confrontations between Honkala and the authorities, but also instances in which she reached a mutually satisfactory compromise with them. For example, during the first Liberty Bell protest, she negotiated successfully with park authorities to leave the site without the necessity of admitting guilt or of enduring mass arrests.[59]

Recognition[edit]

Honkala in the media[edit]

Honkala and her activities on behalf of the poor have been profiled many times in various media.

In print and photography[edit]

Honkala was one of two women profiled in Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Zucchino's book, The Myth of the Welfare Queen (1999). According to one review, Honkala, as depicted in the book, "helps create a tent city to protest welfare cuts, joins the occupation of an abandoned church and the takeover by protesters of empty houses owned by HUD. She tirelessly seeks publicity for her cause, battles with bureaucrats, and rallies and comforts fellow protesters."[5]

She was the subject of Chapter 6, "Using Economic Human Rights in the Movement to End Poverty: The Kensington Welfare Rights Union and the Poor People's Economic Human Right Campaign" by Mary Bricker-Jenkins, Carrie Young and Honkala, in the book Challenges in Human Rights: A Social Work Perspective, edited by Elizabeth Reichert (2007).[60] She was also briefly profiled in Katherine Martin's book Women of Courage: Inspiring Stories from the Women who Lived Them (1999).[61]

Since the mid-1990s Honkala has been extensively documented by photographer Harvey Finkle. A YouTube video was created consisting of many of Finkle's photos of Honkala and of other poor people.[62] She also wrote the introduction to Finkle's book of photographs of the urban poor, Urban Nomads: A Poor People's Movement (1997).[63] One of the last photos taken by the late photographer Richard Avedon (1923–2004) was a portrait of Honkala for the series Democracy 2004, which appeared in an October 2004 issue of The New Yorker magazine.[64]

Interviews and articles on Honkala have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including The Village Voice,[28][65] The Philadelphia Inquirer,[3] Philadelphia Weekly,[4] Yes! magazine,[33] Salon[56], Truthdig[66] and The Nation.[26]

On video[edit]

Honkala has been repeatedly and prominently featured in the work of documentary filmmakers Peter Kinoy and Pamela Yates, the latter a co-director of the award-winning film When the Mountains Tremble.[67] Their work with Honkala has included Takeover (1990), a film, financed by Bruce Springsteen[68] (during the making of which they first met Honkala), "about homeless women that was planned as the first in a series on 'heroes of the new American depression;'"[69] Poverty Outlaw (1997), the story of a homeless woman "who must break the law to survive"[70] and which tells the story of the birth and growth of the KWRU;[71] Outriders (1999), about the New Freedom Bus Tour;[72] and The Battle for Broad (2000), about KWRU's and PPEHRC's march during the Republican National Convention in 2000 in Philadelphia.[73] (Living Broke in Broke Times is a compilation film condensing Takeover, Poverty Outlaw and Outriders.)[74]

In the 1990s, the Television Trust for the Environment, as part of its "Life" series, broadcast on BBC World News a short documentary on Honkala and the KWRU called The Philadelphia Story. In the profile, Honkala talks about gated communities and her complex feelings about the state of the country.[75][76]

The independent film, August in the Empire State, directed by Keefe Murren and Gabriel Rhodes, profiles several persons during the 2004 Republican National Convention, including Honkala, who is depicted leading her PPEHRC march against the RNC. In the film, Honkala discusses her commitment to the principle of Gandhian nonviolent resistance.[32][77]

In February 2008, on its flagship public affairs program, People & Power, Al Jazeera English ran a video profile of Honkala entitled "Homeless Hero," depicting a campaign by the Nashville Homeless Power Project, which had invited Honkala to that city to organize "the first major homeless action in the history of Tennessee."[10] The video shows the construction of an encampment to confront Nashville's mayor, during his budget address, with the issue of homelessness. (The mayor never appeared.)[10]

On September 7, 2012, Honkala was a guest of Bill Moyers for the program Moyers & Company, "Challenging Power, Changing Politics", along with her Green Party Presidential running mate, Jill Stein, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.[78]

Honors and awards[edit]

Honkala has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards:

Philadelphia Magazine – list of the 100 Most Powerful Philadelphians[79]
Philadelphia Weekly – “Woman of the Year” (1997)[15][79]
Ms. Magazine – Woman of the Year (2001)[79]
Bread and Roses Human Rights Award[79]
Pennsylvania Association of Social Workers' Public Citizen of the Year[79]

Front Line Defenders (The International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders), a Dublin-based human rights organization, named her one of the "12 most endangered" activists in America[9][79]
Mother Jones magazine – Hellraiser of the Month (April 2005)[79][80]

In addition, the organization Honkala co-founded, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, was a 1999 co-winner (with Dr. Juan Garcés) of the prestigious Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, given by the Institute for Policy Studies.[81]

In January 2004, Honkala was invited to speak at the annual World Social Forum (WSF) in Mumbai, India on the subject of the "War against the Homeless."[82] In 2006, Honkala again addressed the WSF, this time in Caracas, Venezuela, to discuss poverty and homelessness in the United States, information that many of her listeners do not often receive from mainstream U.S. media sources.[83]

Personal life[edit]
Honkala in 1990 married a Philadelphia-based union official whom she had met at a convention the previous year. They divorced not long afterwards.[12]

Honkala is the mother of the actor and director Mark Webber (born 1980). Webber has appeared in a number of high-profile Hollywood films including Snow Day, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Woody Allen's Hollywood Ending, in which he played the Allen character's rebellious son.[84] He has supported his mother's causes in a number of ways, including holding benefit events, such as art auctions, on her behalf.[17]

Honkala is also the mother of Guillermo Santos (born 2002).[85]



DEFINITION, DISCUSSION FOR A “CORPORATION FOR ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY.” This plan does go farther than any socialistic reorganization that I’ve seen, and it would not be enacted in this country, with or without Bernie Sanders. I wouldn’t even vote for it, should it be proposed. We desperately need controls on what capitalists can do, however, and the plan in here of having businesses being restricted to a certain size rather than the humongous entities of modern capitalism, and UNABLE to move to another country when they workers’ income seems too high to them. They can’t run off to a country where they don’t have to pay taxes or provide a living wage to their workers. Read it just to see what some prototypes are today. This idea of starting a socialist state looks like a serious discussion, and a similar sounding “corporation” was recommended by Honkala. The final selection on Honkala’s organization is from Wikipedia – “Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign.”



http://www.thenextsystem.org/economic-democracy/
Economic Democracy
DAVID SCHWEICKART | MARCH 1, 2016

Pages-from-DavidSchweickart
Download the PDF


An Ethically Desirable Socialism That Is Economically Viable

This paper by David Schweickart, published alongside three others, is one of many proposals for a systemic alternative we have published or will be publishing here at the Next System Project. You can read it below, or download the PDF. We have commissioned these papers in order to facilitate an informed and comprehensive discussion of “new systems,” and as part of this effort we have also created a comparative framework which provides a basis for evaluating system proposals according to a common set of criteria.

The big challenges that capitalism now faces in the contemporary world include issues of inequality (especially that of grinding poverty in a world of unprecedented prosperity) and of “public goods” (that is, goods people share together, like the environment). The solution to these problems will almost certainly call for institutions that take us beyond the capitalist market economy. (Italics added.)[1]

So wrote Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen, sixteen years ago. Needless to say the intervening years have only strengthened his thesis—inequality and environmental degradation have gotten much worse and grinding poverty persists. But does there exist a viable alternative that might take us beyond the capitalist market economy, a new system that would preserve the strengths of competitive capitalism while at the same time eliminating, or at least mitigating, its worst features?

It is important to be clear and unequivocal: the answer is “Yes.” And it is simple enough to state. What we need to do is extend democracy to the economy itself. To formulate the project in terms of slogans, we need to

Democratize labor!
Democratize capital!
Democratize democracy!

Economic Democracy: The Basic Model
Consider the structure of free market capitalism. It consists, essentially, of three kinds of institutions:

Markets for goods and services: enterprises compete with one another to provide consumers what they need or want.

Wage labor: in order to work, one must have access to “means of production.” One’s “capacity to work,” i.e., one’s “labor-power”—to use Marx’s term—is a commodity like any other, to be bought and sold. People must compete for jobs, and, once hired, do what they are told.

Private allocation of investment funds: private financial institutions raise money from those who have excess, and allocate it to businesses promising the highest profitability.

Let us imagine an economic system, which we will call Economic Democracy, that keeps the first set of institutions in place, i.e., competitive markets for goods and services, but a) replaces (most) wage labor with cooperative labor and b) replaces those out-of-control financial markets with a more democratic mechanism for handling investment.

This will be the “basic model.” To be clear: this will be a simplified model of an alternative, noncapitalist economy. Real-world economies will always be more complicated than the models that describe them. And yet, if we are going to comprehend the essential dynamic of an economic system, modeling is necessary. Marx gave us a “model” of capitalism that remains, to this day, at least in my view, indispensable for grasping the workings of our current system. Here we are considering a model for a different system, perhaps the “next system.”

A brief elaboration of each of these key institutions:

1) Historical experience makes it clear that markets are a necessary component of a viable socialism. Central planning does not work for a sophisticated economy. The knowledge and incentive problems are too great. But these markets should be largely confined to goods and services. They should not dominate labor or capital. And, of course, they should be regulated so as to protect the health and safety of both consumers and producers.
2) Enterprises in Economic Democracy are regarded, not as entities to be bought or sold, but as communities. When you join a firm, you have the right to vote for members of a worker council, just as you have the right to vote for the city or town council governing your place of residence. This council appoints upper management and oversees major enterprise decisions. Although managers are granted a degree of autonomy, they are ultimately answerable to the workforce.

Regarding income: All workers share in the profits of the enterprise. These shares need not be equal, but everyone’s income is tied directly to the performance of the firm; hence, there is incentive to work diligently and efficiently—and to see to it that your co-workers do the same.

Investment decisions in the present shape fundamentally our collective future. Democratic control is essential.

3) Some sort of democratic control of investment is essential if an economy is to develop rationally. This has always been the case, but, given the ecological terrors we now face, never before has rational development been more urgently needed. Investment decisions in the present shape fundamentally our collective future. Democratic control is essential.

But democratic control of investment is impossible if we must rely on private investors for the generation and allocation of these funds. The solution to this problem is simple. Don’t rely on private investors for either of these functions. Let us generate our investment funds publicly via a capital-assets tax: a flat-rate property tax on all businesses. (In effect, this tax replaces the interest and dividend payments to shareholders and creditors in a capitalist economy.) These revenues constitute the national investment fund. All of these revenues are reinvested in the economy. They are not used for other governmental services. (A separate income or consumption tax will fund ongoing governmental expenses.)

These publicly-generated funds are allocated in a manner that combines planning at the national, regional, and local levels with market criteria. The allocation proceeds essentially as follows: A certain portion of the national investment fund is set aside for public projects that are national in scope. The remaining funds are allocated to all regions of the country. Regions do not compete for capital. Each region of the country gets, as a matter of right, its fair share—prima facie its per capita share. (The national legislature can make exceptions, but these will likely be rare, since giving more to one region than its per capita share entails that other regions will get less. Investment allocation is a zero-sum game.)

Some of these regional funds are set aside for public investments that are regional in scope. The remainder go to communities, also prima facie on a per capita basis. These funds go to public investment banks, which lend them to existing enterprises or to individuals wanting to start new businesses, utilizing both economic and social criteria—including, importantly, employment creation and environmental concerns. Coherent long-term investment planning at the national, regional, and community levels thus becomes possible. The allocative mechanism is straightforward and transparent, hence readily subject to democratic oversight and control.

The three basic institutions, markets for goods and services, workplace democracy, and social control of investment constitute the defining features of Economic Democracy, but there are other structures that should be part of our “next system.” Let me comment briefly on four of them.

The government as employer of last resort

It has long been a tenet of socialism that everyone who wants to work should have access to a job. Everyone should have a genuine right-to-work. The government will ensure this right. If a person cannot find work elsewhere, the government will provide that person with a job, low-wage, but decent, doing something useful.

Socialist savings and loan associations

Economic Democracy separates two functions the capitalist financial institutions conflate: investment funding and saving/borrowing for personal consumption. The former is central to long-term societal development and hence is subject to democratic control. Economic Democracy can get along without the latter, since it eliminates the need for private savings to generate investment capital. Nevertheless, savings and loan associations, structured as credit unions or worker cooperatives, can provide benefits to people without causing significant harm. S&Ls would offer individuals consumer credit so that, for example, they could take out loans and pay them off over time with interest. (Housing would doubtless comprise a major portion of these loans. Individuals would not have to wait until they had saved up enough to buy a house before doing so.) Money for these loans would come from private savers who get rewarded by having their savings protected, while also receiving interest on their savings.

An Entrepreneurial-Capitalist Sector

In my view, Marx’s critique of capitalism remains unsurpassed, but there is an important economic issue that Marx neglected: namely, the function of the entrepreneur in society. Marx’s analysis of capitalism focuses on the capitalist qua capitalist, i.e. as the provider of capital. This is a passive function, one which can readily be taken over by the state—as is the case in our basic model.

Although workplace democracy should be the norm throughout society, it needn’t be the case that all businesses conform to this norm.

But there is another role played by some capitalists—a creative, entrepreneurial role. This role is assumed by a large number of individuals in a capitalist society, mostly by “petty capitalists,” who set up their own small businesses, but also by some “grand capitalists,” individuals who turn innovative ideas into major industries. Although workplace democracy should be the norm throughout society, it needn’t be the case that all businesses conform to this norm. The petty capitalist, after all, works hard, and so is anything but a parasite. It takes energy, initiative, and intelligence to run a small business. These small businesses provide jobs for large numbers of people, and goods and services to even more. They would continue to play a vital role in the “next system.”

Petty capitalists may provide important services to society, but they do not provide much in the way of technological or organizational innovation. There is also an honorable role to play in a socialist society for entrepreneurial capitalists who operate on a grander scale. Such an entrepreneurial capitalist class need not pose a serious threat to a society in which democratic workplaces are predominant. Democratic firms, when they have equal access to investment capital, need not fear competition from capitalist firms. On the contrary, since capitalist firms must compete with democratic firms for workers, they will be under pressure to at least partially democratize their own operations by, for example, instituting profit sharing and more participatory work relations.

Democratic firms, when they have equal access to investment capital, need not fear competition from capitalist firms.

Moreover, there is a rather simple legal mechanism that can be put in place to keep this capitalist class in check. The basic problem with capitalists under capitalism is not their active, entrepreneurial role (which relatively few actually play), but their passive role as (richly-rewarded) suppliers of investment capital. Economic Democracy offers a transparent, rational substitute for this latter role—the capital-assets tax. So the trick is to develop a mechanism that would prevent the active, entrepreneurial capitalist from becoming a passive, parasitic one.

Such a mechanism is easy enough to envisage: a simple, two-part law stipulating that a) an enterprise developed by an entrepreneurial capitalist can be sold at any time, but, if it exceeds a certain size, it may be sold only to the state, at a price determined by the value of its capital-assets, and b) the enterprise must be sold when the owner retires, dies, or decides to move on to another venture. When the state purchases an enterprise, it turns it over to the enterprise’s workers, to be run democratically.

Thus the entrepreneurial capitalists serve two socially useful functions. They are a source of innovation and an incubator for new democratic enterprises. Entrepreneurial capitalists have an honorable role to play in our socialist “next system.”

Socialist protectionism

The institutions of Economic Democracy discussed so far apply to a national economy. What about economic relations with other countries? Since firms that are worker-controlled won’t relocate abroad, and since funds for investment are publicly generated and required by law to be reinvested in domestic firms, neither jobs nor capital will be “exported.” And because there are no stocks or businesses to buy, foreign capital won’t flow into the country either.

Foreign trade in and of itself is not objectionable—so long as the trade is “fair.”

Foreign trade in and of itself is not objectionable—so long as the trade is “fair.” An economically democratic country can trade freely with countries whose worker incomes and environmental regulations are comparable to those of its own. But for countries with lower worker incomes or laxer social or environmental regulations, an Economic Democracy will follow a policy of fair trade, not free trade. The point is to allow for healthy competition while blocking race-to-the-bottom destructive competition and at the same time acknowledging our human obligation to strive to eliminate poverty, environmental degradation, and other forms of social injustice everywhere.

Our main economic mechanism for doing so is “socialist protectionism,” which consists of two parts: (1) a “social tariff” is imposed on imported goods, in order to compensate for low wages and a lack of commitment to socially beneficial practices on the part of the exporting country (e.g., protecting the environment, worker health and safety, etc.) and (2) rebating all these tariff proceeds back to the countries to which the tariffs were applied—either to the governments themselves or to organizations struggling to improve conditions within the countries.

There are additional things rich countries operating as Economic Democracies might do to address the problems of global poverty. They might make their “intellectual property” freely available to poor countries, devote a portion of their publicly-funded research to problems faced by poor countries and help to create “intermediate technologies” that make work easier and more satisfying without rendering rural workforces redundant or generating urban unemployment.

The intended long-run effect of these social protectionist policies is to allow poor countries to devote fewer of their resources to producing for wealthy-country consumption, thereby ensuring that they have more resources available to satisfy the needs of their own people. The point of socialist protectionism is not to protect one’s own workforce at the expense of workers elsewhere, but to protect one’s own workers so as to enhance the life prospects of people everywhere—and of the planet itself.

Brief Conclusion (and so

It is my contention that such a system, as outlined above, would be economically viable. Moreover, it need not suffer the massive evils of contemporary capitalism, among them staggering inequality, intractable unemployment, overwork on the part of those who have jobs, “irrational” economic instability having nothing to do with natural causes, and massive environmental degradation. (See my After Capitalism for the evidence and arguments.)[2]

I should add that overcoming these defects requires more than the institutional changes advocated here. It is important to realize that we do not, at present, live in a democratic society. The massive economic inequality that capitalism has generated has severely compromised our political system as well, making a mockery of the concept of “rule by the people.” Hence the need to “democratize democracy!”

Of course, it must also be recognized that democratizing institutions will produce a just and sustainable society only if the majority of our citizens want to live in such a society. Democratic institutions must always face the problem of: “garbage in, garbage out.” If the majority of a population are racist or sexist or homophobic or addicted to mindless consumption, then democratic institutions will give us racist, sexist, homophobic, ecologically-destructive outcomes. What is being proposed here is only part of the global movement now underway to create a just and sustainable world.

We need a new economic system if we, our children, and our grandchildren are going to live in a just, humane, peaceful, and sustainable world.

It is crucial to realize, however, that the massive evils enumerated above cannot be resolved within a capitalist framework. We need a different set of institutions. We need a systems change if we are going to survive as a species. We need a new economic system if we, our children, and our grandchildren are going to live in a just, humane, peaceful, and sustainable world. To quote from the closing lines of a Carolyn Forché poem written decades ago, but now more telling than ever:

It is either the beginning or the end of the world.
The choice is ourselves or nothing.[3]
What follows are some answers to specific questions posed by the Next System Project.

. . . . There are some 15 or more additional pages under the heading of questions and answers.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_People%27s_Economic_Human_Rights_Campaign

Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) is a coalition of grassroots organizations, community groups, and non-profit organizations in the United States of America committed to uniting the poor across color lines as the basis for a broad movement to abolish poverty. The PPEHRC seeks to advance economic human rights as outlined in Articles 23, 25, and 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These include the rights to education, food, health, housing, communication, and a living wage job.[1

History[edit]
The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign was founded by Cheri Honkala and formally established in 1998. The PPEHRC was spearheaded by the now defunct affordable housing advocacy organization Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU). In June 1998 KWRU organized the New Freedom Bus Tour, a national bus tour to bring awareness to the issues of poverty and economic human rights. During the tour KWRU made contact with many groups and organizations from across the country that were interested in working to gain and ensure economic human rights for all people. In October 1998 the Poor People’s Summit on Human Rights was held in Philadelphia, PA with many organizations dedicated to economic human rights in attendance. It was out of this meeting and the New Freedom Bus Tour that the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign was formed. The Poor People's Economic Human Right's Campaign is currently organizing the March For Our Lives. You can contact Cheri Honkala, the national organizer, at 215-869-4753.[1]

Member Organizations[edit]

Most member organizations of the PPEHRC are community-based and headed by people living in poverty themselves. The organizations are varied, nor do they all focus exclusively - or even primarily - on the economic aspect of human rights. However all member organizations agree to endorse and participate in the collective work of the campaign.[2]

University of the Poor[edit]
The University of the Poor is a community-based, web-centered institution dedicated to training and educating leaders in the larger movement to end poverty. It was created in 1999 as the national education division of the PPEHRC and was intended to focus on the unity and development of the leaders of the campaign. The University of the Poor is not a degree-granting organization.[2]

The University of the Poor was brought about as a result of the gathering of economic human rights groups that occurred for the March of the Americas. During the march it was realized that each group had complementary skills, knowledge, and experiences that would benefit the movement if they were shared and taught among member groups.[3]

The University of the Poor carries out Economic Human Rights Organizing Schools with grassroots organizations across the United States. These schools are based on the needs and struggles of each organization, teaching the lessons accumulated by the experiences of the movement to end poverty. These schools use strategies such as roundtable discussions, "train-the-trainer" sessions, and provide specific, action-oriented tools like books and videos[3]

As of May 1, 2008, the founders and staff of the University of the Poor resigned from the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC). The University of the Poor was reconstituted as an independent organization, one no longer affiliated with the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC).[3]

Events[edit]
The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign and its member organizations have held many events to raise awareness of and draw attention to the systematic denial of economic human rights in the United States. These events also seek to highlight those who benefit from this denial of economic human rights.[2] Included in these events are:

1998- New Freedom Bus Tour[1]
1999- March of the Americas: representatives from Central and South America and Canada joined PPEHRC organizations on a march from Washington, D.C. to the United Nations in New York City; the march started in October, lasted a month, and concluded with a conference focused on education and organization for building the movement.[2]
2000- March for Economic Human Rights[1]
2000- March on the opening day of the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, PA that was attended by thousands of people[2]
2001- March for Compassion and Spiritual Renewal[1]
2001- Poor People’s Summit to End Poverty[2]
2002- National Freedom Bus Tour: crossed the country between November 10 and December 10.[2]
2002- March for Our Lives[1]
2003- Poor People’s March for Economic Human Rights through the South: held in August to commemorate the thirty-fifth anniversary of the 1968 Poor People’s March which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was organizing when he was assassinated.[2]
2004- March on the opening day of the Republican National Convention in New York City[2]
2005- Week-long University of the Poor Leadership School: classes, workshops, and other activities held at Bryn Mawr College in July, which brought together more than a hundred leaders of PPEHRC member organizations from across the United States.[2]
2006- National Truth Commission: held in Cleveland, Ohio in July; brought people together from across the United States and around the world to bring attention to the indisputable suffering of people living in extreme poverty; a panel of domestic and international commissioners and social leaders heard and evaluated testimonies of violations on the rights to health, education, housing, water, and other basic needs, as well as on the removal of children from or the failure to return children to their homes as a result of failure by the government to meet the economic human rights of families.[2]



http://linkis.com/www.philly.com/phill/36CSq

News — DNC
ACLU sues Philly over DNC permit denial
by Julia Terruso, Staff Writer
Updated: JUNE 24, 2016 — 1:08 AM EDT

Photograph -- CLEM MURRAY / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Activist Cheri Honkala (center), head of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, announces at a press conference June 23, 2016, that the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the city for denying a permit to allow the campaign to march down South Broad Street on the opening day of the Democratic National Convention.


The American Civil Liberties Union sued the City of Philadelphia in federal court Thursday over denial of a permit for a protest march down Broad Street on the opening day of the Democratic National Convention.

The suit comes five weeks after longtime activist Cheri Honkala, who heads a group known as the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, sought a permit to march from City Hall to the Wells Fargo Center beginning at 3 p.m. July 25.

Honkala, who aims to highlight the plight of the homeless, said she thinks officials want to create a "festival" atmosphere here during the July 25-28 convention.

"Those that are homeless in Philadelphia don't feel like going to a festival during the convention," she said.


The city rejected the permit, saying it would substantially interfere with traffic in the area and conflicted with an already posted schedule of events.

The city has said it will not permit marches in Center City between 7 and 9 a.m. and 3 to 6 p.m. because of rush hour.

The ACLU argues that banning marches during those hours violates the First Amendment. The group is asking a judge to order officials to allow the march.

"Rush hour is basically half of the afternoon of every workday," said Mary Catherine Roper, deputy legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania.


The city has designated FDR Park at Broad and Pattison Avenue in South Philadelphia as a major gathering place for protesters that week, but Roper said their visibility there is limited.

"Let's be frank - most people are not going to be hanging out around FDR Park to watch the protests," Roper said. "During the day, Philadelphians and all of the people coming here for the convention are going to be in Center City Philadelphia attending meetings, going to restaurants . . . participating in the life of Philadelphia. The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign represents part of the life of Philadelphia that should be as visible."

Roper said the city would not need to shut down Broad for a long length of time, - only when marchers pass.

"Given the number of other things we interrupt traffic for in Philadelphia, I think the First Amendment ranks up there in terms of a good reason to make a little delay in traffic," the lawyer said.

Lauren Hitt, the Kenney administration's chief spokeswoman, said the city Law Department had just received the ACLU's complaint and declined to comment Thursday. Hitt previously confirmed that no permits were being issued for protests during rush hours in Center City.

"It would impede the travel of ambulances and other public safety vehicles, and we won't have a sufficient number of public safety personnel available to protect demonstrators and nonparticipants from traffic-related hazards," she said last week when asked about rush-hour protests.

The suit comes on the heels of a victory for the ACLU of Ohio in a similar suit in Cleveland. The group argued that restrictions on where and when protesters can demonstrate at the July 18 to 21 Republican convention there violate free-speech rights, and a judge on Thursday ordered officials to redraw lines around Cleveland's "event zone" where protests are limited, Cleveland.com reported.

U.S. District Judge James Gwin also said in his verbal ruling that the city needed to rethink rules on when protests could occur. Similar to those in Philadelphia, Cleveland officials had said they would only allow protests a few hours each day of the convention, and not in high-traffic areas at peak times downtown.


So far, 23 groups have applied for permits to protest in Philadelphia during the Democrats' convention.

Honkala, who had a permit request denied in 2000 for the Republican convention here and marched anyway, said she would be undeterred this year regardless of the lawsuit's outcome.



THIS HILL.COM ARTICLE IS ABOUT THE -- PERHAPS FICTIONAL -- DOCUMENT


http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/283862-gop-stirs-clinton-sanders-tensions

GOP stirs Clinton-Sanders tensions
By Harper Neidig
June 16, 2016, 08:05 pm


The Republican National Committee is promoting a report that accuses the Democratic Party of conspiring to nominate Hillary Clinton in the early days of the presidential primary.

In an email, the RNC sent to reporters a story published by the New York Post about a document that purportedly shows the Democratic National Committee was strategizing to make Hillary Clinton president — and not a generic Democratic candidate — in the spring of 2015.

The story is based on a document posted on the blog of a user named “Guccifer 2.0,” and appears to be part of a trove of documents stolen from the DNC by Russian government hackers.

The alleged memo to the DNC, dated May 26, 2015, says that the party should work to “provide a contrast between the GOP field and HRC.”

HRC is a common abbreviation for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Sanders launched his campaign nearly a month prior to the date of the memo — though according to RealClearPolitics, he was still trailing Clinton by nearly 57 points in the polls.

It’s unclear whether the document that the hacker claims is from the DNC is a real one.

On Thursday night a senior DNC official did tell The Hill that documents were stolen in a breach and suggested they were part of a Russian “disinformation campaign.”

“Our experts are confident in their assessment that the Russian government hackers were the actors responsible for the breach detected in April, and we believe that today’s release and the claims around it may be a part of a disinformation campaign by the Russians,” the official said. “We’ve deployed the recommended technology so that today our systems are secure thanks to a swift response to that attack and we will continue to monitor our systems closely.”

The RNC sent out the article in an email blast to reporters, highlighting a point in the report that the memo “appears to show the DNC working on behalf of Hillary Clinton from the start of the presidential campaign — just as Bernie Sanders has claimed.”

An RNC spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The RNC push comes as Clinton and Sanders are in discussions after the end of the Democratic primary to unify the party.