Vigil and Protest to support Mike Brown - in Ithaca, NY -- The OCCUPIED New York Times - November 26, 2014

                                       OCCUPIED

                                            ^

Of course the DOJ and probably some other government agency or agencies are continuing their investigations into filing charges against Wilson.  And, of course the police forces will continue to undergo training.  But almost 150 years after the end of the civil war and the abolition of slavery, racism and institutional racism are still rampant in this country.  We all need Ultraviolet and Black Voices Matter to help this country move forward on that. 

Ultraviolet, Black Voices Matter and the Occupy Movement are behind the organizing that led to the peaceful protests last night.  It could happen fast because we are all connected via social media.  Communication is instantaneous!  

Most of the motorists were very cooperative and turned around and/or honked and were supportive of our protest.  Some motorists (especially the ones that were very full of their own self-importance) were not so cooperative.  There were only a few dangerous moments where protesters were almost run down by angry motorists.  (Not I, though.  I know how to get out of the way when I need to.)  There was a fair bit of tire squealing.  

About 200 of us shut the streets down in Ithaca.  We started in front of the Court House and then moved on through Ithaca's one way streets.  We shut down two major State highways (Route 79 Westbound and Route 13 Northbound). 

 

After about an hour, we had police protection (which included the protection of a very sophisticated SWAT team).  We have a young black male mayor in Ithaca, Svante Myrick, who is a lot better leader than President Obama!  He belongs to the next generation!  

There was an incident very similar to the Mike Brown situation here in Ithaca that happened the same week Mike Brown was shot.  A white officer pulled a gun on a few black teenagers.  Luckily they ran away fast enough that he couldn't get a shot off at them.  (I'm sure he was relieved that he didn't have to, either!)  At any rate, the City of Ithaca Police have been through some pretty intense training since then.  I also have no doubt the CIA was here last night.  They threatened to arrest me if I didn't move fast enough when they demanded that I stay up ahead with the crowd.  It was a wild night!  A revolution is happening.  Totally peaceful.  No arrests.  That's what Ultraviolet and Black Voices Matter want!  Change.  Justice.  Peace.  I think we're making some progress.  In Ferguson, St. Louis?  I'm not so sure. 
 

All the above photos were taken on Tuesday, November 25, 2014 in Ithaca, NY by Myra Kovary

Photo taken of me taken by Matthew Hayes and copywritten by the Ithaca Journal

Posted on November 26, 2014

by Myra Kovary

Editor-in-Chief

The OCCUPIED New York Times

Sat Dec 7th: Join Tompkins County NOW to Protest Hobby Lobby's Efforts to Remove Birth Control from Health Care Act

 
Protest Hobby Lobby's Efforts to
Deny Women Contraceptive Coverage
Saturday, December 7, 2013 at 2 pm
at the Hobby Lobby Store
Ithaca, NY

Tompkins County Chapter 
of the National Organization for Women (NOW)

Tompkins County NOW is continuing the campaign to raise awareness about Hobby Lobby's efforts to remove contraceptive coverage from the affordable care act (denying women contraceptive coverage).

We will be demonstrating again on Sat, Dec 7th at 2 pm. Hobby Lobby is next to where Kmart's used to be.

Our petition on move on has gathered over 300 signatures. Please help it grow. It is at http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/our-bodies-our-choice

The demonstration will be at 

the Hobby Lobby store 

next to where K-mart used to be in Ithaca, NY 

Saturday, December 7, 2013 at 2 pm

Ithaca, NY— A branch of Hobby Lobby recently opened its doors.   A group of concerned-citizens, including members of the Tompkins County Chapter of the National Organization for Women, will demonstrate against Hobby Lobby’s challenge to the birth control mandate of the Affordable Care Act. The company refuses to abide by a portion of this law that requires it to offer certain kinds of birth control to their employees.  It claims that some of the mandated coverage violates its religious freedom.   

According to Lori Gardner, president of the local NOW chapter, “This is a case where employers are trying to control the private life of their employees. Corporations do not have the right to enforce their religious doctrine on their employees and they do not have a right to control their private lives.” 

The U.S. Department of Justice has argued that if for-profit corporations exempt themselves from requirements that are against their religious beliefs, this, in effect, allows the company to impose its religious beliefs on employees. 

In July, 2013, a federal court granted the company a preliminary injunction against the mandate.  The Obama administration appealed that ruling in September.  Hobby Lobby filed a lawsuit in Supreme Court on October 21, 2013.  The Supreme Court will hear the case and it will likely be decided before the end of the Court’s term in June 2014.  The company has more than 500 stores in 41 states.  It employs more than 13,000 full-time, health insurance-eligible employees. 

Please sign the petition at

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/our-bodies-our-choice

THIS SUNDAY: Film & Discussion

 POVERTY: Our Dirty Secret 

Michael Harrington and Today's Other America:

Corporate Power and Inequality

A Documentary Film on Poverty

Discussion to follow.

Sunday, December 2nd
 2:00 - 4:00 pm

Unitarian Annex - 208 E. Buffalo  St., Ithaca NY

The United States thought it was the richest nation in the world. Then in 1962 Michael Harrington published The Other America, and Americans discovered poverty. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson vowed to do something about it and initiated the War on Poverty. Indeed poverty rates plummeted, but now they are back up. Let us take a look back and then talk about what has happened since. And what needs to be done now.

Let's Bring Progressive Groups Together  to  discuss this topic

which impacts  so many issues that we are dealing with today.

Sponsored by: Ithaca Democratic Socialists of America, Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Council. Cosponsored by the Tompkins County Workers' Center

Info: Theresa Alt, talt@igc.org, 607-280-7649 or Rebecca Elgie, erelgie@earthlink.net, 607-272-0621

Occupy Ithaca Goes to Pakistan

                                 Occupied

                                                             ^

       The US is not at war with Pakistan. 
Yet,  U.S. DRONE ATTACKS KILL uncountable numbers  of people  
in the northern part of Pakistan every year 
-  most of them CIVILIANS. 

Ithacans, Daniel Joseph Burns and James Ricks are traveling to Pakistan as part of a humanitarian delegation to meet with the victims of drone attacks and to hear their stories.  They will be in Pakistan from October 3-10, 2012, with a group led by CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin, author of Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control and facilitated by Shahzad Akbar of the Pakistani NGO, The Foundation For Fundamental Rights in Pakistan.  The group will also participate in a massive march and rally in opposition to US Drone Strikes in Pakistan.

U.S. DRONE STRIKES

Both Danny and James are members of the Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars.  They have both been arrested and gone to trial for their beliefs. Danny served time in jail in December for his beliefs.

For more information, please visit the following websites:

http://upstatedroneaction.org/wordpress/

http://droneswatch.org/

Our own James Ricks and other Americans protest in Pakistan against US drone strikes.

FIGHT LOCALLY: Take on Healthcare's Capital-Corruptions

     SEND YOUR CMC STORY TO:        
 CayugaMedicalComplaints@gmail.com  
 (these emails Do NOT Go to Cayuga Medical Center) 

WE WILL WORK 
TO MAKE THINGS RIGHT 
 Let Us Unite and Begin Working to 
 STOP This Regular and Continuous Capital-Corruption 
 throughout Our Healthcare Systems. Let's Stand 
 TOGETHER and Fight for a Better Way Forward. 
 Let's Work TOGETHER in Standing Up 
Against such Inhumane Capital-Corruption. 

 It Is Simply No Longer O.K. 

Actual Recent Letter to CMC (adjusted for publishing): 

Dear Cayuga Medical Center,

Reasons you have not heard from me sooner are:

1. I have been suffering from an increasingly debilitating illness over the course of the past 2 ½ years - due in great part to western-medical negligence. The nature of my disorder prevents my timeliness.
2. When I have felt well enough to write, I have been overcome by a trembling fury - having to consider the way that a Human Being in need was treated by your embarrassment of an Emergency Room. I have taken great caution with preparing this letter. I cannot promise, however, that it does not still contain some of that well-deserved fury for your organization.

This past April I arrived in your Emergency Department reluctantly, by way of ambulance. That your organization refused me emergency medical services by going through the paces of letting me 'be under your roof' while waiting to shoot my uninsured ass with Ativan and turfing me out to the street once you had needlessly drugged me - I thought was audacious enough.

That you people had the arrogance to send me a bill

for your refusal of treatment - after ignoring:

1. 
   a thorough personal medical history including recent severe iron-toxicity,
2. being told what to expect and look for, and,
3. multiple direct requests for SPECIFIC tests related to my VERY THOROUGH & WELL COMMUNICATED medical history - as directed by my current treating doctor - is just reckless abandon on the part of your organization in consideration of the fact that I had not YET filed suit against ALL of you.

I am aware of the statute of limitations and taking my time - for YOUR sake.

If you want to know why I have not YET dragged your incompetent and heartless asses into court to expose your fraud and mistreatment of those who are MOST in need - it may only be a pause taken in consideration of the kindness I’ve received from YOUR BLOOD LAB when I am there regularly for my DOCUMENTED BLOOD-RELATED IRON DISORDER - you fucking, fucks.

Had it not been for the warmth, compassion, friendly smiles, and life-saving treatments that Justin, Janice, Tara, Kayla, and everyone else I’ve come to appreciate OVER THE PAST 10 MONTHS that my REGULAR aggressive therapeutic phlebotomy treatments have been performed inside of the BLOOD LAB within your own facility - you would not have been receiving the courtesy of this letter.  

Those are all the details I’m willing to disclose to you right now - but if I were you, I’d start having Legal depose your incompetent VP of PR. He’s on my short list for possible subpoenas. 

I’ve already met with him 3 times in his office. 

Every time I speak to him - I have to FIRST find him in his office. I am disabled. He knows it is not easy for me to get around. 

He finally brought in a ‘head of Nursing’ from your Emergency Dept. 
He always promises to call me SOON. 
He NEVER calls - not once.

That last meeting with him (and the Nurse), was now well over a month ago. My phone is working - but at this point I’m pretty sure he’s lied to me too many times to be trusted. Incompetent as he is, I do like him personally and I enjoyed our small talk. I wish it would have served YOUR or MY purposes at all - but at least he’s friendly.

You’ll also want to ask Nurse Carl in the Emergency Dept. why he objected to your MALPRACTICING doctor’s orders, but carried them out anyway.

I actually like Carl a lot. He can tell you about how a number of your personnel watched me CONVULSING on a stretcher in a hallway for well over 15 minutes - even dropping by to remind me that Human Beings "have to breathe" to stay alive - apparently (you fucks) - before he finally came by to save my life from their useless hands. You can ask him how. He will then be able to corroborate my very full and detailed medical history that was given - and the reason the Dispatcher, the Bangs EMT, every Nurse and Assistant, AND YOUR DOCTOR were all told to expect acidemia/acidosis... but REFUSED PROPER TESTING.

He will testify that by closing OFF an oxygen mask so that I could breathe in more co2, my physiological episode settled and I returned to semi-normal signs - given my condition. Another good reason to do those tests that were requested. Many of your personnel (one of which was the so-called “medical doctor”) kept coming in and trying to hook-up the oxygen mask without asking ANYONE any questions. That could have killed me.

Why was Ativan administered (at all - let alone...) 

LONG AFTER Nurse Carl had already helped my 

physical ‘episode’ to pass

- and just before turfing me out on the street?!

WHY WAS I FIRST DRUGGED -
THEN RELEASED once drunk on YOUR INAPPROPRIATELY ADMINISTERED DRUG - without ever receiving proper testing or treatment?!

Explain the Choice to IGNORE

my thoroughly explained and repeated

medical history and requests.

Actually, don’t. You are pretty fucked on this. Really looking forward to your hospital’s medical backing of treating iron-disorders and their secondary and tertiary effects with “Ativan”. You might even make a medical journal out of the deal. Of course, that’s only if you can prove any medical logic. You threw the wrong ‘too poor for treatment’ guy out on the street this time. I am already looking for others you have done this to. It didn’t take long for me to start finding them...

One of Us is lucky that I made it out of Your ER alive.

Just one.

With the Firmest Possible Sincerity,

The Wrong Mother Fucker to Abuse

 SEND YOUR CMC STORY TO 
 CayugaMedicalComplaints@gmail.com 

WE WILL WORK 
TO MAKE THINGS RIGHT 
- photos added and gleefully adjusted by #ONYS