BAMN Newsletter #2, 12/22/11
Topics:
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Court Hearings Set for Affirmative Action Lawsuits in MI & CA;
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Occupy Cal;
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Climate Change
Court Hearings Set for Affirmative Action Lawsuits in MI & CA
- Hearing for lawsuit against Prop 209 (ban on affirmative action in California) scheduled at 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco February 13, 2012
- Hearing for lawsuit against Prop 2 (ban on affirmative action in Michigan) scheduled at 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati on March 7, 2012
The presence of thousands of students at the hearings – inside and outside the court house – will have a tremendous impact on the Court’s ruling. Your help is needed to fund buses so that high school and college students can attend.
Sponsor a student to attend the hearing! Donate $40 today!
BAMN defends its victory for affirmative action in Michigan
Excerpts from BAMN’s legal brief in defense of last summer’s victory at the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that overturned Prop 2 and restored affirmative action in Michigan. The ruling is scheduled to be reviewed by the full panel of 6th Circuit Court judges on March 7, 2012.
BAMN’s challenge to affirmative action ban gains broad support.
Our challenge of Prop 2 has gained broad support. Eight amicus (“friend of the Court”) briefs have been filed in support of the BAMN legal challenge to Prop 2. Briefs were filed by the following parties: 1) The Michigan Civil Rights Commission, (2) Committee of Law Professors and Constitutional Historians, (3) California Social Science Researchers and Admissions Experts; (4) the cities of Oakland and San Francisco and the counties of San Francisco and Alameda, (5) the California NAACP, (6) the City of Grand Rapids and (7) Distinguished Political Science Professors on the issue of how state-wide ballot measures are uniquely disadvantageous to minority interests, (8) Historians, Constitutional Scholars and Social Scientists (34 scholars who have devoted much of their careers to the study of the abolition movement, Reconstruction-era history, civil rights, and race relations.) Summary of the arguments of two of the briefs. All briefs available on-line.
Occupy Cal
Sign the Petition to Defend the Heroes of the Movement for Public Education!
SIGN & CIRCULATE this petition demanding that all charges be dropped against the Occupy Cal Protesters!
BAMN Files Lawsuit Against Police Brutality at “Occupy Cal” Protest
Twenty-four students and community members filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court on Nov. 29, 2011 against the police brutality they suffered at the “Occupy Cal” protest at UC-Berkeley November 9, 2011. The plaintiffs are represented by BAMN.
The 43-page complaint includes detailed accounts of peaceful protesters being clubbed in the face, yanked by their hair, forcefully jabbed in their chests, stomachs, and groins, and beaten while lying on the ground.
Short video documentary on BAMN’s Police Brutality lawsuit produced by CAL TV
Video clips of press conference on Occupy Cal police brutality lawsuit.
BAMN statement to Occupy Cal movement
How we can maintain the movement’s momentum, increase its social power and win concrete victories
BAMN was in the front lines and giving speeches throughout the day at Berkeley on November 9, 2011 during the Occupy Cal day of action. The demands of the protest were to reverse the fee hikes, cuts, and privatization in California’s public universities and across the world. When protesters set up an encampment, UC-Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau used tremendous police violence to try to clear protesters who were protecting the tents.
Climate Change
Build an Independent, Mass, Youth-led Environmental Movement
Just as it took mass movements and struggles to end the slave economies in the British Empire and the United States, and the mass militancy of the Civil Rights Movement to end Jim Crow, so it will take mass struggles to beat down the resistance of our carbon-addicted elites to necessary change. BAMN recognizes that just as it was the poor, the oppressed and the young who were the base and vanguard of those movements, so it will be with our fight to liberate humanity from the carbon economy.
To build this movement we have to free ourselves from the material and mental shackles that hold us to the false view that only the rich and powerful can control human destiny. We have to reject the commonly held view that we can persuade the rich and powerful to change their disastrous policies on climate change through rational argument, as long as we keep the environment separate from all other issues.
Watch the Video of BAMN’s presentation on climate change and the fight against racism at the American Geophysical Union Convention held on December 8, 2011
