Tacoma SDS

After nearly a year of reporting and production, our radio series on immigration, detention, and deportation in Washington State is airing this month. For those of you in Seattle, tune in to KUOW 94.9 during Morning Edition the week of February 22nd to catch this four-part series.

And for everyone else, we'll post a link to the series as soon as it's online.

Happy listening!

Howard Zinn, historian and author of A People's History of the United States, has died of a heart attack. He was 87.

Zinn was born in New York and worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yards and served as a bombardier in World War II. He attended school on the GI bill, was active in the civil rights movement, and protested Vietnam.

On his last day at BU, Dr. Zinn ended class 30 minutes early so he could join a picket line and urged the 500 students attending his lecture to come along. A hundred did so.

Zinn is survived by his daughter, his son, and five grandchildren.

Silence has long shrouded the men and women who die in the nation’s immigration jails. For years, they went uncounted and unnamed in the public record. Even in 2008, when The New York Times obtained and published a federal government list of such deaths, few facts were available about who these people were and how they died.

But behind the scenes, it is now clear, the deaths had already generated thousands of pages of government documents, including scathing investigative reports that were kept under wraps, and a trail of confidential memos and BlackBerry messages that show officials working to stymie outside inquiry.

Mumia Abu-Jamal, an innocent man on death row and the world's best-known political prisoner, now faces an immediate new threat to his life from the US Supreme Court. The Court ruled last year on Mumia's appeal, by summarily refusing to even consider a reversal of his unjust 1982 murder conviction in a blatantly racist court. And last week, the Supreme Court discussed a cross-appeal by the State of Pennsylvania to reinstate Mumia's death
sentence, which had been put on hold by a federal court in 2001. A ruling could be announced as early as Tuesday this week.

A federal appeals court panel on Tuesday strongly backed the powers of the government to hold Guantánamo detainees and other noncitizens suspected of committing terrorist acts.

In a sweeping opinion, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that the presidential war power to detain those suspected of terrorism is not limited even by international law of war.

For a closer look at the Bangor Sub Base go here:

http://tinyurl.com/yamdg7f

The “Disarm Now Trident Plowshares Action”

Another photo of the Green Point

The Green Point is arriving today.

Current location may be found here:

http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/default.aspx?level0=100

The Green Point was in Kuwait September 8th through the 12th, and is now heading into the coastal waters off of occupied Turtle Island. It is expected at the Port of Tacoma this weekend. East Blair One terminal on Alexander is the expected point of landing. The ship is estimated to be arriving early Saturday AM around 0800, and is expected to generate traffic on I-5 late nights from Monday through Wednesday, 9PM - 3AM each night.

The GEO Group Awarded Contract for the Expanded Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington
BOCA RATON, Fla., Oct 20, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The GEO Group (NYSE:GEO) ("GEO") announced today that it has been awarded a contract by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") for the continued management of the company-owned Northwest Detention Center (the "Center") located in Tacoma, Washington. The Center houses immigration detainees for ICE. GEO has substantially completed a $50.0 million, company-financed 545-bed expansion of the existing 1,030-bed Center.