NYPD surveillance document reveals spying on Palestine solidarity movement

Mondoweiss
Alex Kane

The Associated Press reveals today that New York Police Department (NYPD) intelligence agents traveled around the country and spied on a number of social justice groups and individuals, including those in the Palestine solidarity movement.

The revelation, based on a 2008 police document the AP obtained, is the latest in their months-long investigation into New York Police Department spying. The AP series has exposed the NYPD's massive surveillance of Muslims communities in the Northeast. (Read more Mondoweiss coverage of the NYPD spying operation here.)

From the AP:

In April 2008, an undercover NYPD officer traveled to New Orleans to attend the People's Summit, a gathering of liberal groups organized around their shared opposition to U.S. economic policy and the effect of trade agreements between the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

When the undercover effort was summarized for supervisors, it identified groups opposed to U.S. immigration policy, labor laws and racial profiling. Two activists — Jordan Flaherty, a journalist, and Marisa Franco, a labor organizer for housekeepers and nannies — were mentioned by name in one of the police intelligence reports obtained by the AP.

"One workshop was led by Jordan Flaherty, former member of the International Solidarity Movement Chapter in New York City," officers wrote in an April 25, 2008, memo to David Cohen, the NYPD's top intelligence officer. "Mr. Flaherty is an editor and journalist of the Left Turn Magazine and was one of the main organizers of the conference. Mr. Flaherty held a discussion calling for the increase of the divestment campaign of Israel and mentioned two events related to Palestine."

Why Are State Newspapers Silent When It Comes to ALEC Ties to Voter ID?

PRWatch

atch

he links between the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and "voter ID" legislation have been well-documented, but newspapers in the states impacted most severely by the voter suppression legislation have been largely silent on this connection. A new analysis by Media Matters finds that "the largest newspapers in the seven states that enacted voter ID laws in 2011 have largely ignored ALEC’s influence." ALEC is a group that brings together right-wing state legislators and corporations to vote on cookie-cutter "model" bills behind closed doors. The bills largely benefit corporations and Republican political interests.

As CMD has previously reported, ALEC began to focus on voter ID shortly after 2008, when the highest general election turnout in nearly 60 years swept America's first black president into office with strong support from college students and African-Americans. Soon, "Preventing Election Fraud" was the cover story on the Inside ALEC magazine, and ALEC corporations and politicians approved "model" voter ID legislation in 2009. Around 34 voter ID bills modeled after the ALEC template were introduced in 2011.

The legislation -- which requires that voters show a state-issued ID to vote -- has been criticized as an effort to disenfranchise students, the elderly and minorities, who are less likely to have the appropriate type of ID. According to a 2011 report by the Brennan Center for Justice, as many as 5 million people do not have the ID required under the new laws and as a result could be disenfranchised in 2012.

Only One State Newspaper Noted Link Between ALEC and Voter ID

Since CMD released a trove of "model" ALEC bills in July 2011, including the template "model" voter ID bill, national (and even international) media outlets have documented the ALEC roots of voter ID. Outlets including Rolling Stone, Democracy Now!, CNN, Mother Jones, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera English, The Guardian, The Associated Press and scores of others have produced pieces documenting the link between ALEC and the nearly-identical voter ID legislation that have sprouted up across the country in the past year. 

2012 election: Disenfranchised voters, hacked machines?

Editor's Note:  Roger Johnston suggests that the matter be handled by the Department of Homeland Security.  Yeah.  Right.

CBSNews
Brian Montopoli

Will the 2012 elections reflect the will of the American people?

That question seems increasingly relevant today in the wake of a new report suggesting many Americans will have a harder time casting ballots next year - and a finding last week that voting machines can be hacked with "just $10.50 in parts and an 8th grade science education."

The report, from the liberal think tank the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, found that new laws put in place this year could "make it significantly harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012."

The study points to GOP-driven voting reform efforts that Republicans say prevent fraud - but which some Democrats suggest are specifically designed to disenfranchise the young, minority and low-income voters who largely vote with their party.

"Some states require voters to show government-issued photo identification, often of a type that as many as one in ten voters do not have," reads the Brennan Center for Justice report. "Other states have cut back on early voting, a hugely popular innovation used by millions of Americans. Two states reversed earlier reforms and once again disenfranchised millions who have past criminal convictions but who are now taxpaying members of the community. Still others made it much more difficult for citizens to register to vote, a prerequisite for voting."

The most significant change, the report suggests, is the fact that new laws will be in effect in five states - Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin -requiring photo identification at the polls, something the Brennan Center suggests could make it harder for 3.2 million Americans to vote.

Republicans say it is ridiculous that Americans must routinely show photo identification in their daily life but have not been required to do so when casting ballots. Democrats say that more than 21 million Americans don't have such identification and that Republicans are seeking to disenfranchise them while claiming concerns about voter fraud, which Democrats say is a relatively minor concern. At least 34 states have introduced voter identification laws this year, according to the Brennan Center.

Among the other new laws are measures eliminating early voting on Sundays in Ohio and (on the Sunday before Election Day) in Florida, when some African-American churches organize voters to go to the polls. A ban on election-day voter registration was instituted in Maine, which will likely reduce the number of new, largely-young voters casting ballots.

The new laws, many of which were passed as a result of Republican takeovers of statehouses around the country in 2010, fall under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department, which could potentially argue that they violate the Voting Rights Act. As the New York Times points out, the Supreme Court upheld a voter identification law in Georgia in 2008, "saying that while it found no evidence of the fraud the law was intended to combat, it also found no evidence that the new requirements were a burden on voters."