Right to free speech will be respected in any hate crime law – Law Society of Ireland Gazette

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Last resort

And the criminal law as it applies to hate speech should always be the measure of last resort, a public consultation document on the matter has concluded.

A Department of Justice statement has said that all legislative proposals are developed and put forward bearing in mind the provisions of the Constitution and human rights obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights Act 2003.

However, comments sections in various media outlets were deemed to be problematic, a consultation document on new legislation says.

The minister was launching the findings of a public consultation which received 3,526 responses to a five-question online survey, though 8% of responses were repeated, giving a true participation rate of 3,241.

The majority of responses were from Ireland (79%) with a minority from the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada (16% in total).

There were 182 detailed written submissions with 77 submissions from civil society groups, professional or academic organisations or NGOs. The remainder were from individuals.

Community and civil society groups comprised 28% of the written responses.

The minister has announced her intention to bring forward new legislation to combat incitement to hatred and hate crime in Ireland in 2021.

The minister said that many of those who participated in the consultation had been victims themselves, while others were concerned about the very real need to respect the human rights of everyone involved, including the right to freedom of speech, so that the new legislation was proportionate, as well as effective in achieving its aims.

The consultation concludes that in the long term, prevention of such hate crime incidents is much more desirable for all concerned.

Success in this regard will depend almost entirely on non-criminal, education and awareness-based measures.

Measures ranging from education and awareness to codes of conduct and professional standards are essential to any comprehensive approach to tackling hate speech and hate crime, including by effective prevention, the document says.

Launching the findings of the consultation, Minister McEntee said that victims of hate crime are targeted because of something innate such as race, sexuality or disability.

The fear that arises from hate crime can lead to a more divided society, she said.

This consultation is a really useful contribution toward the development of new criminal legislation to deal with hate crime and incitement to hatred.

I intend to bring the Heads of a Bill to Cabinet by Easter 2021, the minister said.

The new law will cover both incitement to hatred and hate crime.

The new hate crime offences will be aggravated versions of existing crimes, for example offences against the person, criminal damage or public order offences, where they are carried out because of prejudice against a protected characteristic.

Creating these new offences will mean that a crime can be investigated as a potential hate crime by garda, and evidence of the hate element can be presented in court.

Where the jury finds that the crime was a hate crime based on the evidence, and convicts the person of a hate crime, the enhanced penalty for the new offence will available to the judge at sentencing.

Where the jury finds that the hate element is not proven, they will still be able to convict the person of the ordinary form of the offence.

Minister McEntee said: As Minister for Justice, I am determined to tackle these crimes and to ensure that those who seek to divide our communities and spread hatred and fear, including online, are dealt with effectively by our criminal justice system. I want perpetrators to know that their crimes will be reported, investigated and prosecuted.

There is no place for hate crime in our society. The legislation will deal with situation where perpetrators seek to incite other people to hatred from behind the protection of a screen or an anonymous account. This is an important factor in order for this legislation to be as effective as possible in tackling all forms of hate speech.

Regarding the fundamental constitutional right of freedom of expression, I want to assure people that this legislation will be proportionate, specific, and clear, with offences capable of being proven beyond reasonable doubt. There will be no confusion as to what constitutes criminal hate speech.

It is my hope we will develop a strong and effective legislative infrastructure to help tackle this serious form of crime which will also be evidence-based, while respecting important rights to freedom of expression and association.

The consultation document says that Irelands historic approach to hate crimehas been defined by a sense of this country as monocultural, where no minority cultures exist.

It is widely held that this traditional view cannot hold in the Ireland of today, whose society is so changed, so colourful and so diverse in comparison with the country of 50f years ago.

The document disputes that Ireland was ever monocultural and says the Travelling community has experienced individual and systemic prejudice.

One of the documents conclusions is that the definition of ethnicity in any new legislation should explicitly include membership of the Travelling community on the same footing as other ethnicities.

Consultation participants cited their experiences of ill-treatment on grounds of physical and mental disability, mental illness, sexual orientation, and socio-economic status, including postcode prejudice.

Free speech should be protected for reasons of legitimate political commentary, artistic expression, and legitimate scientific discussion, and true or factual statements as well as jokes, insults and cartoons, the document says.

However, actions glorifying or encouraging violence, or unlawful discrimination, should be criminal, some participants believe.

Public figures and those with a wide platform for their views must be held to a higher standard, participants said.

The document says that hate crime involves a signalling element that can spread fear, isolation and anger.

Therefore, it can be useful to have specific forms of offences which recognise this harm and provide enhanced penalties.

Judges may consider a hate motive an aggravating factor and may reflect this in a sentence, but this is not reflected in the formal records of the conviction, the document says

It adds that the structure of the 1989 Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Actis not useful in practical terms for prosecution of incitement to hatred.

The document adds that criminal legislation will not solve the problem of hate speech and many milder forms do not reach the threshold for criminal prosecution.

Measures ranging from education and awareness to codes of conduct and behaviour are essential to any comprehensive approach to tackling hate speech and hate crime, including by effective prevention, it says, accepting that some countries restrict offences to characteristics such as race and religion.

All in all, there are many approaches to tackling hate crime internationally, reflecting the complex nature of these incidents and the requirement to protect people from criminal sanction where their behaviour does not warrant the application of the coercive powers of the State, it says.

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Right to free speech will be respected in any hate crime law - Law Society of Ireland Gazette

Art and Freedom of Expression in Cuba, Throughout the 21st Century – Hyperallergic

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In January of 2015, artist Tania Bruguera was detained by the Cuban government. Bruguera had planned to restage a performance artwork about freedom of speech in the iconic Plaza de la Revolucin in Havana, addressing the need for free expression in Cuba in response to renewed diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba. Despite her lack of official permission to perform the work, Bruguera proceeded to advertise the event, in a campaign called #YoTambienExijo (#IAlsoDemand); this resulted in her arrest and, subsequently, a series of detentions and interrogations which persist to this day.

In 2015, I wrote this essay in response to those events, but was prevented from publishing it due to the leadership at the museum where I was employed, who argued that my expressing my opinion on the matter would be construed as representing the view of that organization. I, mistakenly, listened to those objections at the time. I publish it today in its full form, in the context of the recent news of Tania Brugueras continued harassment by the Cuban government and the general pressure that the regime is placing on the Cuban arts community and the San Isidro/27N Movement a collective action formed by a group of Cuban artists demanding freedom of expression in Cuba. I feel this piece contextualizes the larger issues around freedom of expression that Cuban artists are contending with, which became a center of debate during Brugueras first detention five years ago. While Bruguera is not the only artist being attacked by the Cuban authorities during this moment, I think the issues described here might be helpful to shed light on the larger debates around art and freedom of expression in Cuba today.

Pablo Helguera, December 2020

* * *

One evening in March 2009, during the opening days of the Havana Biennial, the Centro de Arte Contemporneo Wifredo Lam was booming with activity. Those of us who entered saw a set comprising an orange backdrop, a podium, and, at the center, an open microphone. Everyone in attendance was invited to come on stage and speak their mind, as openly as they wished. There was a palpable tension in the air. The act of offering an open mic in Cuba is unheard of; simple, yet profound in its implications: the voice of an average individual could be powerfully amplified.

Like many artworks made in Cuba, the piece had an official explanation as well a more delicate subtext. Entitled Tatlins Whisper #6 and conceived by Tania Bruguera, the performance was ostensibly a tribute to the first speech Fidel Castro gave after the triumph of the Cuban revolution, famously delivered with a dove sitting on his shoulder. The subtext of the performance, to a perceptive public, was the fact that freedom of speech is forbidden in Cuba, and that public criticism of the regime crosses a line that can never be tolerated on the island.

Many Cubans who took the stage did so tentatively, as if in disbelief about the power that their voices could have. Some nervously rambled about the need for freedom of speech, hardly comprehending the fact that they could hear their own voices projected to a crowd. Others, like the budding blogger Yoani Sanchez, were professional dissidents who used the occasion to articulate stinging critiques of the Cuban government. Later Sanchez would recall, those of us who participated will never forget that minute of freedom in front of the microphone that would cost us years of official insults.

Bruguera, its organizer, has received substantial international recognition for her work. She has also developed an uneasy relationship with her countrys government. This tension finally came to a head in the past few days when Cuban authorities detained the artist as she was planning to present this performance again, this time in a public square, the Plaza de la Revolucin.

The attempted restaging of Tatlins Whisper #6 was meant to test the Cuban government after the announcement that it was reopening relations with the United States. The project seemingly came as a spontaneous response to President Obamas December 17, 2014, announcement of the upcoming normalization of US-Cuba relations. A day after that speech, Tania Bruguera published a manifesto-like letter titled Querido Ral, dear Obama, and querido Papa Francisco, which at first appeared to celebrate the historic announcement of the opening of relations between the United States and Cuba. The artist ended her letter with a proposal:

Today as an artist I propose to you, Ral, to place the work Tatlins Whisper #6 in the Plaza de la Revolucin. Lets open all microphones and let all voices be heard; lets not allow only the sound of coins as what may be offered to us to fill our lives. Let no microphone be turned off. Lets learn to do something with our dreams. [] Lets make sure that it will be the Cuban people who benefit from this historic moment. Nation is that which ails us.

No average Cuban citizen is allowed to organize a public event at the Plaza de la Revolucin. Bruguera knew this well, which is why her defiance and determination to proceed made it even more threatening to authorities. Delivering many more statements along the way, Bruguera traveled to Cuba to reenact her performance on December 26, 2014. The campaign leading up to her performance was branded #YoTambienExijo (I also demand).

Once Bruguera arrived in Havana, she initiated discussions with a range of culture officials, each of whom advised her against proceeding. On December 29, the day before the scheduled performance, she met with Rubn del Valle, director of the Consejo Nacional de las Artes Plsticas (CNAP), who objected to her event on the grounds that it was counterrevolutionary; would only provoke in negative ways; and, ultimately, would interfere with the delicate process of reopening relations with the United States. He requested that Bruguera hold the performance in the National Museum of Fine Arts. She reportedly agreed, but only on the condition that the performance be held at the museum entrance. Del Valle rejected the idea, as he wanted to control admission to the event. In the end, the meeting produced no agreements.

At around 5am on December 30, the police banged on the Bruguera family door. According to Bruguera, they did not announce themselves as the police. They took her away to talk. Other officers seized her computer and every other piece of equipment in their house, telling her family that there was a legal case against her a detail that no one shared with Bruguera herself while she was at the police station. They let her keep her cellphone, but she didnt want to use it, knowing that they would try to track whoever she called.

That was the beginning of a nightmarish three-day episode during which Bruguera was detained, released, detained again, released again, and then arrested one more time on New Years Day, to be released once more on the following day. As of this writing, she remains in Cuba; her Cuban passport has been confiscated she does not hold a US passport and will be sent back to the United States with the instructions that she never return to her native Cuba, where she grew up and where her mother lives. She is reportedly working with a lawyer to present her case to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

Those interested in discrediting Bruguera are quick to mention that she is the daughter of a revered fighter of the Cuban Revolution. Usually, this is an insinuation that the artist is so close to the regime that she is somehow exempt from the consequences that other dissidents may suffer or, worse, that as a daughter of the system she should be granted no compassion. The reality, as is often the case, is more complex.

Tanias father was Miguel Brugueras del Valle, a close confidante of el Ch and Fidel, and part of the July 26 movement that brought down the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Brugueras del Valle later served in the foreign service in Lebanon, Argentina, and Panama, and at some point was named Cubas vice minister of foreign relations and tourism. He passed away in 2006. Per her own admission in public talks, Tania had a difficult relationship with her father because of their radically different views about the future of Cuba. Overall, the family tends to be very strict about the separation between the political and the personal.

I met Tania in Chicago in 1997, when she was a rising star in the Cuban art scene. As a Cuban new to the United States, Tania was dazzled by what she saw. She was barely getting used to the world of capitalism (we just gave her a credit card, so that she understands how credit works, I remember her then-partner telling me), and she was hit hard by witnessing the inequality it brings. Her work has always had a strong political dimension, often fighting for human rights and for the disenfranchised. She has produced countless projects in the United States and Europe, most recently dealing with immigrant rights. It is, however, in Cuba where Tania is often at her best, as she can understand and negotiate the delicate social and political tensions better than anyone. I still hold this belief today, after her near-intervention at the Plaza de la Revolucin has threatened to put a stop to all her activity as an artist and free individual. Even if it is regarded as a non-event, this performance that did not happen may also be remembered as the most defining of her career.

It is impossible today to conceive of an artistic action of relevance that would not be immediately mediatized that is, subjected to the debates, discussions, and dissemination characteristic of social media. Some art, in fact, constitutes a de facto social media campaign. And this, in essence, was #YoTambienExijo.

In an insightful article reflecting on #YoTambienExijo, the Cuban-American artist Coco Fusco discussed some of the logistical challenges that Brugueras project encountered, including the communication with the Cuban art world and its use of social media: Brugueras reliance on the internet to convene the Cuban public has provoked a certain degree of skepticism from critics about her intentions. The Cuban people did not show up at the plaza and it is likely that most Cubans on the island have no idea of what #YoTambienExijo is.

While it is true that Cuba places severe restrictions on internet access, Cubans often find ingenious ways to connect with the outside world. A recent connectivity scheme in Cuba, el paquete semanal, involves renting out hard drives with a weeks worth of HDTV programming. The cost can range from $1 to $10, and while the commercial enterprise doesnt have a political dimension, it effectively allows Cubans to watch international television programming and listen to contemporary music. In the art scene, Cuban artists and curators disseminate information via email, which is, paradoxically, supplied by the Ministry of Culture. The local art scene was very much aware of the impending performance by Bruguera, to the point that it had become a running joke amongst them to say see you on the 30th at the plaza.

Of course, the performance at the Plaza de la Revolucin never took place. On the afternoon of December 30, 2014, social media channels were in a state of confusion, with photos of international reporters awkwardly standing at 3pm at the plaza, waiting for some action but Tania was nowhere to be seen. Shortly afterward, it was announced that she had been detained along with other activists and collaborators. Reinaldo Escobar, the husband of the influential blogger Yoani Snchez, was taken away, and Snchez found herself in house arrest. As people speculated about Brugueras possible whereabouts, it was reported that she was in a local prison, wearing a gray prisoners outfit.

The international response was swift. In addition to widespread online protest, the New York Times and the Washington Post soon published articles on the matter, followed by one from the New York Times condemning the Cuban governments actions. The US State Department also offered a lukewarm communiqu expressing concern for the detention of the dissidents. It is unclear whether any of this had an effect on the Cuban authorities decision to free Bruguera on the following day.

Before her second and third arrests, the Cuban authorities had already seemingly decided to launch a social media campaign to smear Bruguera. A regime-friendly blog, Cubadebate, published an interview with Rubn del Valle. In the interview, del Valle built what would become the states primary arguments to discredit Bruguera. More than a performance, I think this is a reality show, he said, characterizing her proposal as counterrevolutionary and manipulative: I told her that the streets are a permanent debate forum, and I proposed to her to do the project in factories, bus stops, in the market. None of these proposals was accepted. Official Cuban channels constructed a portrait of the artist as imposing, intransigent, and unreasonable. Furthermore, del Valle tried to connect Bruguera with far-right, anti-Cuban forces in the United States: [Tanias] main supporters and her information hub are represented by people whose essential project for the future of Cuba is the restoration of capitalism and the penetration of far-right American ideas in all the aspects of our national culture. Still, it remains an open question why the authorities did not consider allowing the performance to proceed and instead find ways to contain it. Their brutal resort to censorship and imprisonment has caused a public relations nightmare.

While Bruguera is a cultural force in Cuba, she has detractors amid the local art community. Take Lzaro Saavedra, who critiqued Tatlins Whisper #6 as a work more about itself than about the issues it purportedly addressed, when he put his two cents in on December 30 in a letter disseminated via social media. Saavedra came to prominence in the 1990s, producing conceptual artworks that are remarkable in their inventiveness and critical observations of social dynamics in Cuba; he is also known for his cartoons, as almost a Cuban version of Dan Perjovschi. In a blog post, Saavedra dismissed Brugueras performance as an aRtivist action and a publicity stunt for which the artist had nothing to lose. Rather than Tatlins Whisper #6, he proposed, it should be called La Bulla de Tania (Tanias Hubbub). He wrote:

for a Cuban artist who may live most of the time outside of Cuba and may use the fight for civil rights as an artivist medium in Cuban territory, any confrontation with the Cuban government will not have a real repercussion in their daily life because it [the government] is outside the sphere of influence for them; on the contrary, to come to Cuba is a means to accumulate work achievements for the international circuit of the global art world by direct confrontation with an authoritarian government.

Speaking with local Cuban artists and curators about the political reality in Cuba can be a confounding experience. While there is frequently outright, if confidential, recognition of the failures of the revolution, there is equally often a fierce belief in the philosophical principle of the revolution itself. For Latin Americans who lean Left, contemporary Cuba can be a difficult experience to process. The romanticism of the story about a little piece of land that one day stood up to the United States to assert its own political course is powerful, and still fuels the spirit of many. Yet the disappointment is palpable, and the way in which the revolution devolved into an ongoing socioeconomic crisis produced by a totalitarian regime is a bitter pill to swallow.

Brugueras performance came as a slap in the face for most Cuban artists a way of saying out loud what everyone already knows but is unable to say. This act alone generated uneasiness, and in some cases, derision. The critical focus was redirected toward the artist herself, to her presumably self-serving intentions and the suicidal stubbornness of doing something that she already knew no one is allowed to do. It is perhaps unsurprising that the artists plight generated more scrutiny than sympathy. This is a common issue with the criticism of activist art, which is often dismissed as both art and activism because it neither delivers on an assumed promise of social transformation nor presents viewers with traditional symbolic or formal elements to absorb and reflect upon as it happens when one is at a gallery. The problem with this kind of criticism is that it unfairly raises the ethical bar in ways that are never done to conventional artworks. In the case of this performance, nothing short of an outright human sacrifice of the artist would appear to have sufficed as a worthwhile action, since critics like Saavedra immediately point to an alleged minimum of risk and substantial career benefits for artists living outside Cuba.

However, such comments suggest that a socially motivated artwork can only be considered successful to the extent that the artist pays a high personal cost. In any case, the consequences that Bruguera suffered for her action were beyond undesirable. The local art community chose to interpret the censorship of Tatlins Whisper #6 as a selfish ploy by an artist benefitting from controversy, even though it resulted in the artist facing a forced exile from her homeland.

Saavedra concluded his post with an almost surreal admission that the absence of freedom of speech in Cuba is a fact known by everyone including the government, only that it doesnt like it to be reminded about it or see it made visible, as it was confirmed by the #YoTambienExijo campaign.

All this unveils a painful reality about the Cuban art community. Cuban artists who are truly committed to the fight for civil rights dont have a viable future, in their career or otherwise. In this sense, the resentment of some local artists for those living in countries that respect freedom of speech is understandable. As Fusco points out in her article, the graffiti artist Danilo Maldonado (El Sexto) has been repeatedly detained for works that are critical of the regime. If Maldonado were imprisoned for his work for a longer term, it is highly unlikely that he would be rescued by an international human rights campaign. The only solutions for a Cuban artist, then, may be to either leave the island or play by the rules and refrain from touching the most delicate political issues, while building an international career on the international art market (as Carlos Garaicoa or Los Carpinteros have).

Tania Bruguera is unique as an artist who has managed to exist in two very complex political and social systems, each of which has its own contradictions and inequities. The fact that this time Brugueras brush with the Cuban authorities almost resulted in her permanent imprisonment makes one think of how artists who become critics of their governments even those with prominent international careers like Bruguera never truly become untouchable (for example, Ai Wei Wei). But whatever may result from this episode, it is clear that Brugueras action has raised difficult questions about the effects of the historic reopening of US-Cuba relations. Whoever ends up writing an art history of the Cold War will need to address the place of Tatlins Whisper #6 as a work that, for better or worse, painfully laid bare the profound obstacles in the freeing of artistic expression within the political sphere.

With inevitable deaths of the Castro brothers, as well as most of those who fought in the revolution, on the horizon, there is an undeniable chance for a transformation in Cuba. For the first time in half a century, a young generation of Cubans may decide on a new course for their country. One can only hope that the Cuba to come will be one where setting up an open microphone in a plaza is no longer a state crime, but an uneventful, even uninteresting, gesture.

As arts communities around the world experience a time of challenge and change, accessible, independent reporting on these developments is more important than ever.

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Art and Freedom of Expression in Cuba, Throughout the 21st Century - Hyperallergic

Ronnie Kasrils | Against the witch hunt and in defence of free speech – News24

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Ronnie Kasrils writes that he empathises with those in the Labour Party today, who are being victimised by a double agenda: for their socialism and defending Palestinian rights.

The assault on free speech within Britain's Labour Party speaks like a ghost from my past.

I was banned from public speaking in apartheid South Africa almost 60 years ago.

My crime, aged 23, was advocating votes for all. The apartheid government accused those like me of undermining the safety of whites.When all avenues of peaceful change were blocked, we had no option but to turn to armed struggle. We argued that there was no equivalence between the state violence of the oppressor and the resistance of the oppressed.

International solidarity helped bring about the demise of the apartheid system. We empathise with those in the Labour Party today, who are being victimised by a double agenda: for their socialism and defending Palestinian rights. It is astonishing and deplorable that a witch hunt is underway within those ranks - as elsewhere.

I was invited to address a BDS event in Vienna over a year ago which the city council quickly banned.

A couple of months ago I was involved in a planned event with Palestinian freedom fighter Leila Khaled, at San Francisco State University, which was blocked. Then attempts to have our discussion broadcast via Zoom, Facebook and You Tube was obstructed. The voice opponents of free speech were desperate to gag was Leila Khaled's. The Palestinian narrative being the primary target.

Those who attack human rights, whether in advanced capitalist countries or feudal tyrannies, simultaneously attack Palestinian rights.

They follow violent precedents, and consequences.

Emergence of a terrorist state

Repressing freedom of speech in South Africa, paved the way forthe emergence of aterroriststate.

Ruthless suppression was instrumentalised in Europe's colonies; and by US imperialism on the back of slavery and genocide; and in the colonisation and dismantling of Palestine.

The latter context falls within the project to counter the national liberation upsurge of the 20th Century.

The apartheid regime's use of anti-communism as a blanket device to smash opposition; along with Joe McCarthy's witch hunting; is mirrored in manipulating "anti-Semitism" as a shield toprotectIsrael. It is an umbrella formula to delegitimise the Palestinian causeand BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) campaign.

Upholding Palestinian rights has been reflected in United Nations resolutions; and statements by Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Tutu, Angela Davis,ArundhatiRoy, Noam Chomsky; and back in time, Jewish scholars such as Eric Fromm and Martin Buber.

Apartheid alleged the South African struggle was about sweeping whites into the sea and handing the country to Russia. This echoestheclaim that giving in on human and national rights of the dispossessed Palestinians means the extinction of the Jewish people.

READ |Ronnie Kasrils: Why we are standing with suspended Labour party member Jeremy Corbyn

Those linking freedom of expression and Palestinian solidarity articulate the same goals as we did in South Africa's struggle - the objective is about changing a system, not destroying a people.

Criticising Zionism, an exclusivist ethnic-based political doctrine, is not anti-Semitic. It is the valid criticism of a reactionary political theory.

Zionism, not the Judaic religion; Israel, not the Jewish people, is the focus of criticism.

The anti-communism of apartheid South Africa, and charges of anti-Semitism against Israel's critics, are terms of Machiavellian elasticity stretched by charlatans to stifle opposition. This is the new taboo. The untouchable holy cow shamelessly peddled in Western countries that preach freedom of expression.

False allegations of anti-Semitism

Those who fall prey, who are deceived by the confusion sown, should note the lesson of the boy who cried wolf. When the real monster of anti-Semitism strikes, the most steadfast of opponents, have been on the left of the political spectrum.

False allegations of anti-Semitism weaken the fight against the real demon.This is exactly the pitfall of theInternational Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) treatise conflating criticism of Israel with hate speech. It is biased and fatallyflawed. Adubious, non-internationally represented Eurocentric document, devised by a hand-picked cabal of sophists seeking to be referee and player at the same time. With a veiled attempt at "objectivity" Israel is given umbrella-like cover, impunity for its crimes and a cudgel to beat its opponents.

In 1948 when Menahem Begin visited New York to raise funds for his party - later to become Sharon and Netanyahu's ruling Likud - Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt labelled him a "fascist". After cold-blooded massacres of Palestinians that year, an Israeli cabinet minister, Aharon Cizling, declared "now we too have behaved like Nazis and my whole being is shaken".

In terms of the IHRA's guidelines, they would be labelled anti-Semitic.JeremyCorbyn's "crime" that accusations of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party have been exaggerated, are minuscule by comparison.

Manufacturing mountains out of mole hills, characterises the sophistry of medieval inquisitors, hitching Labour to the Blair-ite anti-socialist bandwagon. Unopposed, this witch hunt will escalate, attacking popular protest wherever humanity opposes injustice.

Denialism

We say to the deceit of Labour Party leaders, Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner, who misappropriate a sacred trade union principle: Yes! "An injury to one is an injury to all" - but in your denialism you ignore the millions of Palestinians facing the bullets and bombs of Israeli aggression.

READ |Opinion: Africa's solidarity a vital pillar in fight for Palestinian statehood

The recent statement of prominent Palestinian and Arab figures with regard to the IHRA's false strictures eloquently attests to how the issue of anti-Semitism should be formulated.

They declare:

"Anti-Semitism must be debunked and combated. Regardless of pretence, no expression of hatred for Jews as Jews should be tolerated anywhere in the world."

The left and human rights movement, including Black Lives Matter and formations such as the African National Congress of South Africa, should join those Palestinian and Arab voices in formulating genuinely international guidelines regarding defence of free speech; and in combatting the scourge of anti-Semitism and all forms of racism.

-Ronnie Kasrils, is a former ANC freedom fighter, and was Intelligence Minister in South Africa. This article is based on an address to a London online Free Speech Rally, 12th December, 2020.

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Ronnie Kasrils | Against the witch hunt and in defence of free speech - News24

The Freedom Babbleon, an Online Event Celebrating Freedom and Free Speech to Take Place This Saturday – PR.com

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The East London-based education charity WORLDwrite is organising a pioneering live event: The Freedom Babbleon on Saturday 19th December. After a year of restrictions and regulations, the idea is to put freedom back on the map as the precondition for a decent life.

The East London-based education charity WORLDwrite is organising a pioneering live event: The Freedom Babbleon on Saturday 19th December. After a year of restrictions and regulations, the idea is to put freedom back on the map as the precondition for a decent life. On Saturday 19th December, 100 contributors over 8 hours, for 4 minutes a piece will share their take on why freedom is essential for humanity to thrive. An awesome line up from all walks of life, including writers, activists, academics, singers, comedians, and volunteers will share their hot tips, tales, texts and songs to inspire a love of liberty.

The full line-up is available at worldwrite dot org dot uk in News and events.Fears surrounding Covid-19 have led to a plethora of restrictions, in fact not since the McCarthy era has freedom to live our private lives or to express ourselves publicly been so constrained. But do we have to sacrifice our freedoms to stay safe? The charity believes freedom and safety need not be trade-offs if we trust people to exercise their judgement and look after each other.

WORLDwrite Director Ceri Dingle said today: We are delighted that so many high-profile speakers and talented contributors are taking part with such a huge array of subject matter from free speech in comedy and cancel culture, freedom from necessity in the developing world to lessons from the lesser-known Scottish Martyrs. Its not all about Covid and lockdowns but that is the backdrop, as many people recognise our basic freedoms have taken a hammering over the past year. 100 lovers of liberty holding forth, should make quite a day.

The Freedom Babbleon aims to make freedom the talking point, to question anti-human developments and re-ignite public debate.

This ambitious event is a collective effort by a crew of young volunteers. This is a sponsored event too, designed to help the charity re-open its Volunteer Centre in 2021.

The live broadcast of WORLDWrites new audacious event and thinkpiece, The Freedom Babbleon, will take place on Saturday, December 19, 2020 on Zoom and worldwide, from 10am to 6.15pm. Tickets are free (although voluntary donations are encouraged) and anyone can register on the WORLDwrite Eventbrite page at eventbrite dot com and search for Freedom Babbleon

For interviews or further details, please phone Kate Abley on 020 8985 5435.

Notes for EditorsWORLDwrite is a registered charity, no. 1060869. The charity runs the award-winning online Citizen TV channel WORLDbytes which champions quality citizen reporting and provides free film training to young people to make this possible. WORLDwrite is committed to international understanding and global equality. The charitys founding principles include: democracy for all and the more direct the better; freedom of speech and advancing civil liberties; challenging distrust, fear and intervention in everyday life; support for freedom of movement and the advancement of new knowledge, ideas and critical thinking. Its pioneering events and films reflect its educational objectives and ethos.

WORLDwrite-produced documentaries include the award-winning, internationally-screened Every Cook Can Govern: The life, works & impact of C.L.R. James, the multi-award winning film Women: a success story and the acclaimed documentary Sylvia Pankhurst: Everything Is Possible.

More details are available on the charitys website at worldwrite dot org dot uk

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The Freedom Babbleon, an Online Event Celebrating Freedom and Free Speech to Take Place This Saturday - PR.com

Year-ender 2020: From access to internet and free speech to land acquisition, a look at 5 key verdicts by Supreme Court – Jagran English

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Year-ender 2020: As the year comes to an end, here's a look at some of the landmark verdicts that were delivered by the Supreme Court in 2020.

New Delhi | Jagran News Desk: The year 2020 was a roller-coaster for the world in many ways. From the raging coronavirus pandemic to India-China border standoff along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh to death of former President Pranab Mukherjee, several key things happened throughout 2020 that impacted the world in many ways. The year 2020 was also an important one from the perspective of the Indian judiciary as the Supreme Court of the country gave several key verdicts, changing the way the nation used to work. So as the year comes to an end, here's a look at some of the landmark verdicts that were delivered by the Supreme Court in 2020:

'Freedom of speech constitutionally protected'

In a landmark verdict, the Supreme Court in January this year ruled out that expressing views via the internet is an integral part of the fundamental right to speech and expression under Article 19 of the Constitution.

While hearing a plea on internet shutdown in Jammu and Kashmir, the apex court internet stands as the most utilised and accessible medium for the exchange of information in the world and the right of trade and commerce through it is also constitutionally protected.

"We declare that the freedom of speech and expression and the freedom to practice any profession or carry on any trade, business or occupation over the medium of internet enjoys constitutional protection under Article 19(1)(a) (freedom of speech and expression) and Article 19(1)(g) (right to practise any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business)," the court said.

'Land acquisition won't lapse if compensation is deposited'

In another major development, the apex court this year said that disputes over land acquisition and payment of fair compensation to owners cannot be re-opened under the 2013 Act if the legal processes have been completed before January 1, 2014.

The court said that Section 24(2) of the Act of 2013 does not give rise to a new cause of action to question the legality of concluded proceedings of land acquisition and it applies to a proceeding pending on the date of enforcement of the Act of 2013.

"It does not revive stale and time-barred claims and does not reopen concluded proceedings nor allow landowners to question the legality of mode of taking possession to reopen proceedings or mode of deposit of compensation in the treasury instead of court to invalidate acquisition," it noted.

'Quota policy not meant to deny merit'

In 2020, the Supreme Court also said that "quota policy is not meant to deny merit". A bench headed by Justice UU Lalit ruled against the idea of "a communal reservation" and said that general category in employment is open to all including reserved category candidates.

"But the converse can never be true and will be opposed to the very basic principles which have all the while been accepted by this Court. Any view or process of interpretation which will lead to incongruity as highlighted earlier, must be rejected," the three-judge bench of the apex court said this year.

Women officers in Army to be granted permanent commission

The Supreme Court this year also directed the central government to grant permanent commission to women officers in the Indian Army, saying "there will not be any absolute bar on giving them command postings".

Rejecting government's argument of "physiological limitations", the top court said that women have the equal right to get permanent commission and command postings in the Armed Forces and there is a need to change the "mindset" to end gender bias in security forces.

RTI requests for pleadings

In March this year, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, which was headed by Justice Banumathi, said that people cannot file right to information (RTI) requests to obtain pleadings. Restricting the application of the RTI Act, 2005, the apex court said that people "must resort to using the procedure established by the Gujarat High Court rules".

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Year-ender 2020: From access to internet and free speech to land acquisition, a look at 5 key verdicts by Supreme Court - Jagran English

Republican members of Oversight and Reform Commission demand emergency hearing about online censorship – NorthcentralPa.com

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Washington, D.C. Congressman Fred Keller (R-Pa.) has joined his colleagues from the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in demanding that Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) hold an emergency hearing about online censorship in light of the news that Hunter Biden's business dealings are under federal investigation.

House Oversight Republicans claim that a New York Post article regarding Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings was censored by Facebook and Twitter. The committee further expressed concerns of political bias among large tech companies and the silencing of conservative voices and values. Chairwoman Maloney refused to hold a hearing about the issue.

Last week, Hunter Biden confirmed that his taxes are indeed under federal investigation. In response, the Oversight Republicans sent a second letter to Chairwoman Maloney demanding an emergency hearing about censorship.

On the second letter, Congressman Fred Keller made the following statement:

Despite Big Techs censorship of Americans free speech in the Hunter Biden cover-up, we now know he is under federal investigation. This level of unchecked censorship is unacceptable and has no place in the United States. I urge Chairwoman Maloney to hold an emergency hearing to hold Big Tech accountable for its clear violations of Americans free speech.

The full text of the letter follows:

Dear Madam Chairwoman:

On October 15, 2020, we requested you hold an emergency hearing on Big Techs repeated efforts to interfere in the 2020 election. At that timejust days before the November 3, 2020 presidential electionFacebook and Twitter censored a news article about Joe Bidens son, Hunter Biden, regarding his Ukrainian business dealings while his father was Vice President.These Big Tech companies both limited and/or denied distribution of the New York Posts report, and Twitter locked the New York Posts account.

Last week, both Hunter Biden and the Biden-Harris Transition Team acknowledged Hunter Biden is under federal investigation for his tax affairs. Reporting indicates this investigation is related to his overseas business dealings. In light of Hunter Bidens admission that he is under investigation, especially after Big Techs unjustifiable censorship of the New York Posts report, we are renewing our hearing request. Big Techs silencing of viewpoints and censorship of news undermines our electoral process, our institutions, and our U.S. Constitution.

As we explained in our October 15 letter, shortly after the New York Post posted its story on Facebook the company reduc[ed] its distribution in an apparent attempt to limit access to the story. Just as concerning, Facebook reportedly refused to answer basic questions about its decision. Twitter also censored the article and warned users that it is potentially spammy or unsafe, and locked the New York Posts Twitter account.

As Hunter Biden admitted last week, he is under federal investigation regarding his taxes, potentially related in part to the very matters the New York Post reported, yet for which it was censored. Indeed, additional reporting from NBC News refers to a 2017 email to Hunter Biden regarding his income from Burisma and need to amend Bidens 2014 tax returns to reflect the unreported income. An NBC spokesperson did not dispute the authenticity of the email, which came from a laptop dropped off at a computer hardware store in Delawarethe same laptop and same computer hardware store discussed in the New York Posts October 14 article censored by Big Tech for being potentially spammy or unsafe. Big Techs effort to selectively limit speech based on political affiliation is a disturbing patten[sic] of censorship in our nationa nation that holds out the First Amendments right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press as two of our most paramount freedoms.

As Big Tech platforms continue to limit speech based on political ideology, we must immediately hold a hearing to learn who are responsible for making these decisions and what policies enable Big Tech to selectively limit and/or censor speech on social media. We reiterate our request the Committee hold an emergency hearing on this important matter as soon as possible.

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Republican members of Oversight and Reform Commission demand emergency hearing about online censorship - NorthcentralPa.com

Old ACLU Head Explains How Defending The Rights Of 15 Or 20 Nazis Actually Helped The Civil Rights Movement – Daily Caller

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As 2020 comes to a close, the future of freedom of speech continues to be shaky. Organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), created to defend free expression, are shying away from their history in favor of a more political leaning, while cancel culture has become all the rage among both the media and the public.

In 2018, a leaked memo from the ACLU suggested that the organization was beginning to depart from its neutral, absolutist stance on freedom of speech. The memo wrote that a case could be declined if the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values.

This is a far cry from the ACLU of the past, which defended the right for neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, in the late 1970s. Ira Glasser, ACLUs longtime-former executive director, still backs that decision, he told Reason in a podcast. In fact, he explained how defending this group of maybe 15 or 20 crazies helped the Civil Rights movement.

Skokie passed three new laws, Glasser explained in the podcast. One was a law banning anybody from marching in uniform. That was later used against the Jewish war veterans who wanted to have a parade. They passed a ban on speech that the town found offensive. If that law had ever been upheld, every town in the South could have banned civil rights marches, which they found offensive. And they passed an insurance bond requirement, just like Chicago.

This situation, according to Glasser, came about because of Skokies decisions. The union was already fighting for theMartin Luther King Jr. Association regarding insurance bonds the city of Chicago had decided that any group wishing to demonstrate in Marquette Park, home to tense clashes between opposing sides at the time, needed to put up a $250,000 insurance bond, Reason noted.

What the public sees is, Oh, theres the ACLU representing the Nazis,' Glasser explained. We never see it that way. We were trying to oppose the government using the insurance bond requirement to prevent free speech. For us it didnt matter who the client was, because we would use that client to strike down the bond requirements, and that would apply to everybody.

Glasser continued on to point out what happened after the ACLU won the case for the neo-Nazis Skokie organized a massive counter-demonstration and the neo-Nazis pulled out. Instead, they went to Marquette Park, because the Skokie case ultimately allowed for demonstrations in the Chicago park.

They [neo-Nazis] also confronted a massive counter-demonstration there that never would have happened without the case, Glasser said. It completely overwhelmed them; they couldnt be seen or heard. Right after that they fell apart.

The civil rights leader Martin Luther King (C) waves to supporters 28 August 1963 on the Mall in Washington DC (Washington Monument in background) during the March on Washington.( -/AFP via Getty Images)

Today, Glasser expressed concern about the direction many have taken in defending free expression.

He pointed out a moment where he spoke at a top law school and immediately noticed how diverse the crowd of students were. This, he said, was impossible back when he was fighting for free expression at the ACLU. After speaking to the group, Glasser recalled how multiple people got up to assert that their goals of social justice for blacks, for women, for minorities of all kinds were incompatible with free speech and that free speech was an antagonist.

But my experience was that free speech wasnt an antagonist. It was an ally. It was a critical ally, he told Reason before noting that various famous activists knew it. For people who today claim to be passionate about social justice to establish free speech as an enemy is suicidal.

Glassers concerns about the current climate and the future are not without merit: President-elect Joe Bidens transition leader for government-owned media companies, Richard Stengel, advocated for restricting free speech and making hate speech a crime in a 2019 Washington Post op-ed.

Meanwhile, cancel culture is becoming increasingly prevalent in suppressing free speech. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, for example,had the cancel mob come for her after expressing her beliefs on biological sex earlier in 2020. (RELATED:Matthew McConaughey Rips Cancel Culture, Says You Cant Erase Someones Entire Existence)

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National Public Health Experts Urge Biden-Harris Transition Team To End War On Drugs And Lead Coordinated Public Health Response To The Opioid…

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BOSTON, Dec. 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- In collaboration with the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and Open Society Foundations, the Franois-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University today urged the Biden-Harris transition team to advance public health policy recommendations detailed in a new report, titled From the War on Drugs to Harm Reduction: Imagining A Just Overdose Crisis Response, to help address the opioid crisis equitably and amend harsh criminal justice practices disproportionately imposed on Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities.

"Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, when overall overdose-related deaths were beginning to decline, the number of overdose deaths among people of color continued to rise across the country," said Dr. Mary T. Bassett, director of the FXB Center. "Under the new administration, we are confident our recommendations will go far in closing these inequitable gaps. As President-Elect Biden understands first-hand the experience of loving someone who lives with drug addiction, we know that his commitment to a just response is real, and that countless others affected by the ongoing crisis can feel hopeful toward achieving necessary reforms for real change."

The report's recommendations recognize and respond to structural health disparities, racially motivated drug policies, class inequalities and sustained disruption of social safety nets. Some of the recommendations include:

To download the full report and related infographic, please click here.

About the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University

The FXB Center is an interdisciplinary center that conducts rigorous investigation of the most serious threats to health and wellbeing globally. We work closely with scholars, students, the international policy community, and civil society to engage in ongoing strategic efforts to promote equity and dignity for those oppressed by grave poverty and stigma around the world. To learn more, please visit fxb.harvard.edu.

SOURCE FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University

https://fxb.harvard.edu/

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National Public Health Experts Urge Biden-Harris Transition Team To End War On Drugs And Lead Coordinated Public Health Response To The Opioid...

Let’s Reject the Violent vs. Nonviolent Crime Dichotomy to End the War on Drugs – Truthout

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Novembers election saw criminal legal system and drug policy reform win big at the polls. Oregon became the first state to decriminalize all drugs, and voters overwhelmingly passed other reforms to drug laws, even in deeply red states like South Dakota. Policing took center stage in the national dialogue. And both the vice president and president-elect in their first addresses to the nation promised to root out systemic racism in the criminal legal system.

The people have spoken, and we are on the precipice of a new moment for justice reform. But how we understand the scope of this collective call for change and the challenge to which Biden and Harris will have to rise stands to shape what our new world may look like for decades to come.

Central to determining the outcome of that question will be whether or not we as a nation move past one particular old and dangerous habit: for decades, reforms have underscored a dichotomy between nonviolent and violent offenses. This contrast often gets good traction, since it allows people who support drug policy and lower-level criminal legal reform to avoid having to grapple with the question of violence. It has been a winning strategy but only for certain victories and people, and not without long-term costs.

The first shortcoming of this false binary is straightforward: it curtails the chance of ending mass incarceration. More than half of the people incarcerated in the U.S. are serving jail or prison sentences for charges of violence. This means truly transformative reductions in the number of people locked up in the U.S. will have to include changing our responses to these crimes. There is no other way about it.

A more subtle but no less insidious cost to this narrow understanding of reform is that the reinforcement of the violent vs. nonviolent dichotomy has at best ignored and, at worst, amplified the narrative that has long underpinned mass incarceration in the United States: the familiar though fabricated story of an imagined monstrous other from whom we have to be protected at any cost. It is that well-worn story that makes us choose prisons over hospitals, prisons over schools, and prisons over yes noncoercive drug treatment. Its a story as old as our countrys founding and steeped, as our nation is, in deep-seated racism.

From a human perspective, reformers failure to contend with this narrative has left a critical dimension of our nations racism unchallenged and unchecked. From a policy perspective, it has inadvertently reinforced the notion that some people are beyond the reach of reform efforts and, in so doing, has exacerbated barriers to sentencing reform and alternative strategies like restorative justice that would tackle serious violence differently and in a much more transformative way. So, while it has obviously limited the prospects of ending mass incarceration for crimes of violence, it has also inadvertently created barriers to ending the war on drugs.

Just like the stories about merciless superpredators or gang members, year after year, Hollywood cranks out the same one-dimensional tropes of violent international drug trade organizations with stories that are almost entirely divorced from the very real daily harms caused by prohibitionist policies from increasing the likelihood of overdoses to diverting critical resources away from meeting peoples basic needs and into enforcement. Like the narrative about robbers and murderers, this narrative of the malicious drug seller (almost always Black or Brown) is disconnected from the reality of people who sell drugs and conceals the structural harm done to communities behind stories of individual evil. Together, these stories limit what we can envision and tolerate in our responses to violence, whether related or unrelated to the drug trade, even as evidence shows prison actually increases, rather than decreases, the likelihood that someone will cause further harm.

But this imaginary division is not our only option. Instead, we can choose to confront the historical roots and systemic racism of the drug war and mass incarceration and to see the alignment between people who want to end both. Moving past the violent vs. nonviolent false binary will allow the drug policy reform movement to affirm that while drug markets are not inherently violent, at the same time, unregulated drug sales can cause harm. Drug reform work can then build on and borrow from existing alternative responses to violence work and allow us to find ways of repairing harm that do not over-rely on punishment.

When the wide sphere of people who say they are committed to drug policy and justice reform set aside this tired and harmful narrative, we will no longer have to pretend that instances of drug users causing harm to themselves or others do not exist in order to win. Policymakers will then be able to broaden the terrain beyond rethinking drug possession, but also include reforming our nations approach to people who sell drugs. This will give us an opportunity to address the challenges associated with drugs and violence, recognizing that prohibition has made them inextricable from each other. We can then adopt transformative justice responses to violence that allow us to imagine what it might look like for our nation not just to stop criminalizing drugs, but to also enact reparations for the harm inflicted on our communities after many years of criminalization, harm that often drives both problematic drug use and violence.

And people committed to criminal legal reform more broadly can finally move into the terrain of other violent crimes like assault, robbery and murder that do not always arise from the drug trade but almost always arise from the same underlying conditions that gave birth to the war on drugs. Then we can advance solutions that align with what the evidence proves time and again: that alternatives to incarceration produce better results and more safety including in responding to violence.

If 2020 has shown us anything, its that our survival is tied to one another in countless ways and that we cannot win one groups freedom or well-being by depleting the dignity and chances of another. It will not be enough for policymakers, including the president- and vice-president-elect, to just stay in cautious political territory and only tinker with our nations responses to nonviolent crime while avoiding the rest. The mandate of this moment and the people is far greater. The sooner our new leadership comes to terms with the scope of what will be expected of them, the sooner we will become, for the first time, a nation that keeps its promise of safety and equity for all.

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Let's Reject the Violent vs. Nonviolent Crime Dichotomy to End the War on Drugs - Truthout

Opioid overdose prevention sites are overdue in Chicago – Crain’s Chicago Business

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As a medical and public health student at Northwestern, Ive witnessed the advances weve made in treating opioid use disorders and overdoses. A medication called naloxone (brand name Narcan) allows for seemingly miraculous saves by blocking the action of opioids, often bringing patients back from the brink of death.

Despite the increasing use of naloxone in Illinois, overdose deaths have continued to rise. The opioid crisis resulted in 2,233 deaths in Illinois in 2019 and has grown even worse during the stress and isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

How can it be that deaths from opioid overdoses continue to decimate our communities when such incredible, life-saving medicine exists?

One answer is that, much like giving an anti-venom medication to someone bitten by a rattlesnake, the key is administering naloxone as quickly as possible. We recently completed a research study of opioid overdose deaths in Illinois using coroner report data from the Statewide Unintentional Drug Overdose Reporting System, which showed the majority of deaths occur before emergency services arrive. Life-saving work is being done by groups like Chicago Recovery Alliance by giving community members naloxone and teaching them how to use it. Yet even training community members wont save the lives of the many people dying alone in their homes, abandoned buildings, motels, gas stations and sidewalks.

Overdose prevention sites would be much safer places to use drugs than the isolated locations where our friends and loved ones are dying. These buildings have trained staff who can quickly administer naloxone. They can provide clean supplies like syringes to prevent HIV and HEP-C transmission and simple on-site testing services to determine whether drugs are contaminated by fentanyl or other dangerous additives. They also can support recovery by connecting people with social resources and medical treatment opportunities.

Canada has had official sites for years. Studies looking at these sites have shown massive decreases in deaths from overdoses. The first official site in North America opened in Vancouver in 2003. Since then, they have had millions of visits, reduced lethal overdoses in the surrounding area by a third and intervened in thousands of overdoses without losing a single life.

Despite the success of these sites internationally, the U.S. still does not have any official sites of our own. In our pursuit of a failed war on drugs, we have instead waged war on and stigmatized friends and loved ones, making it harder for them to get treatment. In the war-on-drugs mentality, the solution has been to arrest and imprison people struggling with substance use disorders. But if our own children or parents were struggling with opioid use, would we rather they use heroin alone in an abandoned building or in a safe environment?

Chicago has an incredible opportunity in front of us to save lives in our communities with evidence-based treatments. While some residents may be concerned about public safety, the creation of Canadian sites actually reduced public drug use, resident complaints, and discarded syringes in the surrounding areas.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker in January signed an executive order establishing a steering committee for addressing the opioid crisis. One result of its work is the ongoing effort to open an overdose prevention site in Chicago's West Side, where there were more than 2,500 fatal and non-fatal opioid overdoses in 2019.

Sanctioned overdose prevention sites are allowed to operate legally in Illinois. However, their success will require coordination and support from local political and law enforcement leaders. Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx has already come out in support of overdose prevention sites. Mayor Lori Lightfoot has not yet taken a public position.

Each of us can do our part by calling the mayor and our aldermen, asking them to support the creation of overdose prevention sites in Chicago. This is a crucial first step in saving lives and turning the tide on the devastation of the opioid crisis.

Robert Tessier is a fourth-year student at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, where he is earning his M.D. and MPH degrees.

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Opioid overdose prevention sites are overdue in Chicago - Crain's Chicago Business

Forced, Rapid Adoptions Are a Weapon of the Drug War – Filter

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I hate myself. The words slipped out of my youngest childs mouth with a casual levity. Only 5 years old, her voice still carries that bright, fluted tonality unique to young children. The first time she said it, she was sitting in a little pink play-chair set against the wall in her grandmothers living room, where shed been living with her sister.

Im ugly, she added. Im dumb.

These arent things that she or her 6-year-old sister have been told at homeat least not that Ive heard. Since the moment she was born and placed on my breast, where she immediately latched on and nursed contentedly for almost an hour, shes been showered with love and affection. Neither child has ever experienced anything resembling abuse or neglect.

But in early 2018, a little over a month after I hauled my family from our home in Seattle to my in-laws home in Broward County, Florida so their father could recuperate from mental illness, he and I were removed from the homeand our daughters from our custodyby child services.

This followed an argument I had with my in-laws, after which they made allegations of abandonment and drug use against me. The abandonment charges would eventually be dismissed, and the claims of drug use negated by slews of tests. But by that point, my daughters were already living with them, I was already homeless in a strange state without resources, and we were ordered to complete numerous requirements within 15 months. When their father and I did not complete those mandates in time and to the courts satisfaction, our parental rights were permanently severed. Our daughters were adopted out to their paternal grandparents.

When the removal first happened, my youngest had just been weaned from my breast; my sudden abduction from her daily life broke an unspoken covenant of love and trust between us. She has never received an explanation that she can understand. Its become clear to me that she is doing what so many children in this painful situation do: blaming herself, and transmuting the pain into self-harm.

Sadly, what my babies are experiencing is not uncommon.

I hated myself. Theres a lot of self-loathing because you feel like theres something wrong with you. Its like trying to fit a puzzle piece into a puzzle where it doesnt belong, recounted Pennie, who asked that she be identified by her first name only. Now 51, she was adopted out of the foster system by a Mormon couple at the age of 11, while her mother was undergoing psychiatric care.

I dont think [the adoption] was right. I feel my mother was vulnerable and they just kind of redistributed me to a wealthier [family] [but] you need more than clothes and food as human beings and human children.

The public is familiar with the concept that wrenching children from their families is harmful and wrong. When news broke about the Trump administration policy to separate children and parents at the Mexico-US border as a de facto punishment for seeking asylum, media responded with a flood of stories describing the extreme trauma inflicted.

These articles widely failed to address the parallels between the separations at the border and the separations within our borders.

The Associated Press reported childrens symptoms ranging from inconsolable crying, to chest pains, to delusions and night terrors, with the possibility of growing into depression or cancer in adulthood. Child psychiatrist Dr. Gilbert Kliman told the AP that he predicted, an epidemic of physical, psychosomatic health problems that are costly to society as well as to the individual child grown up. I call it a vast, cruel experiment on the backs of children.

Dr. Colleen Kraft, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, was quoted in an article published by the University of Michigan School of Public Health: We know very young children who are exposed to this type of trauma go on to not develop their speech, not develop their language, not develop their gross and fine motor skills, and wind up with developmental delays.

But these articles widely failed to address the parallels between the separations at the border and the separations within our borders. Through the so-called child welfare system, children are not only wrenched from their families suddenly and without regard to their needs and desires; they are also funneled through an expedited adoption scheme that leaves children forever wanting their parents. These adoptions are often conducted in less than two years, even when the only issue facing a family was poverty or substance use.

A huge problem in our field is that in our obsession to achieve permanency, we are often forcing families into arrangements they dont want, Vivek Sankaran, clinical professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School and director of the Child Advocacy Law Clinic and the Child Welfare Appellate Clinic, told Filter. This is particularly acute in situations involving substance use, where it does take, as we all know, time for folks to heal and to recover and to address the trauma that might be contributing to an addiction.

As Sankaran observed, this timeline realistically leaves very little space for recovery from substance use disorder.

Enormous monetary boons, built into the foster system via the Clinton administrations Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), require agencies to file for termination of parental rights once a child has been out of home-care for 15 out of 22 months, or else risk losing funding. Exceptions exist, including when a child is in kinship care, like mine were; or when it is not in the best interests of the child to sever ties to their parents, which some argue constitutes the majority of cases. But agencies are not obliged to make those exceptions.

The severing of children from their families takes place in a whirlwind procedure paraded as an act of necessary saviorism. To me, adoption is ownership Your birth certificate is like a title to your car, a deed to your house. I feel like I was literally signed over like a product. It turns children into commodities, said Pennie.

And, as Sankaran observed, this timeline realistically leaves very little space for recovery from substance use disorder, which often involves the need to address co-occurring or pre-existing trauma and mental illness, and rarely results in total abstinence right away (if at all).

In fact, recent research out of Canada found that the act of separating mothers who use drugs from their children increased the incidence of chaotic substance use and non-fatal overdose. This was compounded for Indigenous mothers, whose overdose rates were doubled within the studys cohort.

Pennies story offers another example of the extreme harm imposed by child services on parents who use drugs; although her mother previously struggled with mental health concerns and used substances, it was only after losing her child that she became addicted to heroin.

They were silent for a moment. What do you say to someone who is telling you that they would prefer to endure rape again, rather than what youre doing to them?

Having undergone the violence of child removal and rapid, forced adoption, I know intimately how damaging the adoption system is to parents, particularly those struggling with trauma or substance use. During my required mediation prior to the termination filing, I looked the attorneys in the eye and told them that this was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. Worse than the sexual and physical violence that caused the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that they had trotted out as proof of my parental unfitness.

They were silent for a moment. What do you say to someone who is telling you that they would prefer to endure rape again, rather than what youre doing to them?

Then, in a rather sheepish tone, the attorney for the state, a stand-in from the drug court system due to staffing issues, admitted that before the ASFA timeline, parents with addiction had a chance. But not anymore.

Kids want their parents, they want their mother This system has been allowed to develop to be a hammer and treat every case like a nail, said Tracie Gardner, vice president of public policy at Legal Action Center and a mother who has been directly impacted by this system. There is no subtlety, no assessment, preventative services that are weak, and there are few tools to deal with families where there is a parent struggling with their drug use. Its zero-tolerance, its abstinence-only, its punitive and its scorched-earth.

Of course, the harms of these forced adoptions extend well beyond the childs youth, and hurt other people besides the child and parent. When children are adopted outside of their family, they lose contact with their ancestry.

Pennie describes her birth certificate, which still bears the names of her now-estranged adopters, as a forgery. Though shes been able to reconnect with her family as an adult, she was raised apart from her sister and extended relatives; people who may not fulfill the role of a parent or primary caregiver, but still make up an important part of ones identity and growth.

Their adoption was committed with no thought to the network of love it would sever.

When childrens rights are terminated as to their parents, and parents rights terminated as to them, we put the memories and history of a child in the hands of a system that knows nothing about that family and compiles a scrapbook through government records, said Erin Miles Cloud, a former parent attorney and one of the co-founders of Movement for Family Power, a parent advocacy organization that did some pro bono work on my case. She described these physical scrapbooks, such as those created by workers in the New York City system, as an issue that is enormously under-discussed.

I have always wondered what memories they create about [the childs] family member, their parent, and how they navigated the War on Drugs, she continued. It perpetuates this insidious pathology with no actual healing and also no actual agency in the reckoning of memory, especially for young children who then become incredibly reliant on these other people to help them sift through some of their memories.

When children are forcibly adopted within families, as with my daughters, it permanently alters the topography of that family. My daughters often discuss missing their Aba, my mother, and their elder half-brother; both live across the country, where we had planned to return once their father stabilized. My aunts constantly mourn their inability to see them, and my daughters have virtually no relationship with my father, who also lives across the country. Their adoption was committed with no thought to the network of love it would sever.

Dinah Ortiz is a grassroots harm reductionist and parent advocate in New York City, who has written for Filter about the structural racism of the child welfare system, which includes disproportionate targeting of Black, Indigenous and Latinx families for surveillance and removal. Ortiz lost her own daughter to forced adoption in Florida 18 years ago. She had planned to place her newborn daughter with her brother and his wife while briefly incarcerated. But child services removed Ortiz baby immediately after birth due to concerns about her substance use, and ultimately mandated adoption by her brother against her will.

Ortiz described returning to drug use after her baby was taken as a means to numb the pain.

We were really, really close. Thats why I made the arrangement with them because we were very close, me and him and his wife, Ortiz recalled. Now, however, she no longer considers him family, opting to call him simply my daughters adopter. She has not spoken with the couple in almost two decades, since they cut off contact with her child.

Fortunately, her daughter sought her out at the age of 16 and they are working to rebuild their relationship. But nothing can undo the trauma and wreckage of those lost years. Ortiz described returning to drug use after her baby was taken as a means to numb the pain.

The foster system destroys families, destroys lives, destroys the very children they claim to be protecting, said Joyce McMillan, a directly impacted mother, activist and founder of JmacForFamiliesan advocacy organization geared toward the abolition of the child welfare system.

The violence of snatching a child from their parent as they scream mommy; the trauma of that gets forever sketched in their souls, she said. We talk about when people get shot and the hole it leaves; when a child gets removed from families it doesnt just leave a hole in the heart, it leaves shrapnel [in the form of] depression, in some cases mental breakdown, fear, loneliness [and] isolation.

For my family, this gruesome violation hangs over everything, all the time. When I am apart from my daughters, my life feels like a small, windowless room. When I am with them, I feel like a ghost, haunting a life that is no longer mine. I can look at them, hold them, smell them, play with them, but nothing I say or do really matters, because their lives are now dictated by someone else, someone whose values are completely at odds with my own.

I can also see the hurt of my absence, how they try to reckon with it quickly so they can squeeze as much enjoyment as possible from our few hours togetherbut it still spills out in declarations of self-hatred, or accusations that I dont love them.

Now my daughters have been given the same message: If you, too, struggle, you wont be worthy of parenthood, agency or a full life.

On the morning after a rare holiday sleepover, my elder daughter woke up crying relentlessly. Her eyes were wild with fear and pain. For nearly half an hour, no amount of comforting could quell her loud, frantic tears.

Finally, I was able to calm her enough so that she could croak out a single explanatory sentence: I dont want a new mommy. A few minutes of hugs and reassurances later, she finally revealed that shed dreamed her father and I were taken away, and I was replaced by a stranger.

When the state took my daughters, they confirmed my worst fears as an abuse survivor: that I was made lesser by having been the victim of sexual and physical violence, and am no longer worthy of participation in regular society because of it.

Now my daughters have been given the same message: If you, too, struggle, you wont be worthy of parenthood, agency or a full life.

What if, instead, they had been allowed to share in my recovery, to watch me struggle and work and overcome? This could have been an opportunity to teach them about resilience, resolve and recovery. Instead, it has become a powerful lesson in self-loathing. The state chased permanencybut the only permanency achieved is the grief that now permeates all of our lives.

Photograph courtesy of Elizabeth Brico

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Congressional Package Repeals Ban on Student Aid to Those with Past Drug Convictions – Norml

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Language included in the appropriation package approved by Congress and signed into law includes provisions repealing the longstanding federal ban on providing student aid eligibility to those with certain drug convictions.

As first reported by Marijuana Moment, provisions in the nearly 6000-page package amend a 1998 federal law that mandated those applying for student aid to disclose if they ever had a drug-related conviction, and barred hundreds of thousands of applicants from receiving funding. The new law strikes the subsection of the Higher Education Act that established the drug-related eligibility standard.

Rachel Wissner, co-interim executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), told Marijuana Moment: Over the last two decades, we have been fighting alongside other drug policy reform and education organizations to scale back the penalty. Now that the penalty has fully been repealed, SSDP looks forward to the opportunity to work with Congress and the new administration on broader drug policy reform that ensure those who have been most harmed by the war on drugs are not left behind. We celebrate that Congress has finally accepted that a drug conviction does not mean that someone should be denied access to higher education.

The new law also restores the eligibility of those incarcerated to apply for student aid (Pell grants). Those in prison have been ineligible to receive Pell grants since the passage of an expansive 1994 crime bill.

Commenting on the reforms, Rep. Robert C. Scott (D-VA), Chairman of the House Education Committee, said: Congress has a responsibility to expand access to quality higher education, which remains the surest path to the middle class. While this is not the comprehensive overhaul of the Higher Education Act, and there is still work to be done, this proposal will help millions of students.

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Congressional Package Repeals Ban on Student Aid to Those with Past Drug Convictions - Norml

How Some Problematic Provisions Got Added to the Historic MORE Act – Filter

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The Marijuana Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, which was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on December 4 by a vote of 228 to 164, has been viewed by many drug policy reform advocates as a major victory. Among other things, the bill would decriminalize marijuana possession at the federal level.

However, some advocates have expressed concern at how the MORE Act may fall short of truly supporting social equity. For example, the version passed by the House includes a clause stating that if someone has a prior felony marijuana conviction, that can be used against them during the application process to obtain a federal permit to start a cannabis enterprise.

In order to better understand the acts promises and perils, Filter interviewed Queen Adesuyi, a policy manager with the Office of National Affairs of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA*). Adesuyi is one of the co-leaders of DPAs Marijuana Justice Coalition, and worked on the passage of the MORE Act.

Adesuyi described the MORE Act as not only historic but really monumental, pointing to the bills racial justice framing and the positive impact it will have on people impacted by the War on Drugs. She additionally described how the bills decriminalization provision will benefit veterans (who will be allowed to access medical marijuana through the Department of Veterans Affairs under the bill), people who rely on federal benefits (who can currently be denied benefits due to marijuana use), and people who currently face severe immigration-related consequences for marijuana use.

But Adesuyi was also frank about what she termed the problematic provisions of the bill, which she said were inserted by the House Ways and Means Committee after the bill made it out of the House Judiciary Committee. Our interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Lucia Geng: Could you talk about the significance of the MORE Act being passed by the House?

Queen Adesuyi: The MORE Act passing out of the House is not only historic but really monumental because, at minimum, we now have made it so that Congress can no longer address marijuana reform without talking about the really harmful racial disparities that came out of targeted policing and over-enforcement of marijuana laws. The House decided to address marijuana prohibition and voted to end marijuana criminalization on the federal level through this important lens, and that sets a precedent.

The initial campaigns around marijuana legalization in this country were, for the most part, race- neutral until DC. And we ended up seeing the consequences of that, for example, in Colorados initial years building out the legalization industry in that state. They were barring people with marijuana convictions from the industry, just flat-out. And that is a disgrace. And I think its reflective of what happens when you do policy work with a colorblind lens.

What parts of the bill were thrown in at the last minute? Why were they thrown in?

The bill that we built was reported out of the Judiciary Committee when the Judiciary Committee voted on this bill last November. About two weeks ahead of the [full House] vote, the Ways and Means Committee came back to the coalition and DPA with a round of revisions. There was an addition that they included that we were able to negotiate down. They wanted to include an increase on the excise tax from 5 percent to 25 percent, which would have been really devastating to small businesses. We were able to get that tax back down to 5 percent, and its an increasing tax, so I believe it goes up to 8 percent.

But I think one of the most painful additions, for me, was the felony exclusion language thats in there. Despite the fact that this bill was literally from its inception intended to try to get people who have been operating in the informal market to enter the regulated market, Ways and Means decided to include a way for someone with a felony federal or state marijuana conviction to be used against on an application process for a federal permit.

That really was an optics thingagain to placate nervous and shaky moderate Dems.

This is extremely painful because it really, really cuts at the foundations of this bill and the principles that have guided the advocacy that moved this bill along. But it was something that Ways and Means was adamant about. And given the timeline in terms of when they brought it to us, and some missteps in terms of prioritization of what to negotiate on, that kind of allowed for that exclusion to still be in there with the hope that it will no longer be there in the next iteration of the MORE Act.

The [Congressional] leadership requested that some amendments [regarding expungement and sentencing] be added to help them, in their minds, secure the vote for shaky moderate Democrats.

For expungement, they ended up carving out folks who were labeled as kingpins and convicted under the kingpin statutes, really as a way to seem like theyre not trying to give a pat on the back to quote-unquote traffickers.

On the resentencing side, it previously was open to anyone who is currently incarcerated for a federal cannabis offense. Leadership requested that they added a qualifier, nonviolent, in front of federal cannabis offense. And that really was an optics thingit didnt actually change anything because federal cannabis offenses are inherently nonviolent in and of themselvesagain to placate nervous and shaky moderate Dems, who are apparently concerned about the GOP putting out a billboard with the Willie Horton sentiment, where they can be accused of voting to release quote-unquote violent offenders.

Basically, this whole process showed us that we still have a long way to go in doing education in Congress around collateral consequences and the impact of them feeding into the dichotomy of nonviolent versus violent offenders. And in really working on moving members of Congress, in terms of their perceptions of people who sell drugs.

What would you say to someone who thinks that DPA should have maybe joined other advocacy groups (such as Minorities for Medical Marijuana) in not supporting the bill in its changed form?

I think thats a really great question. I would say to those folks that their concerns around the problematic provisions that got added at the last minute to the MORE Act are valid. We share those same frustrations with those provisions, and also feel really, really bad about how Democrats and the political process tried to hamper our principled efforts to try to bring marijuana justice to Congress.

It was really difficult to walk away from the entire vehicle because of the longer-term implications.

As folks who led this effort, as folks who have maintained the advocacy behind moving this effort, it was really difficult to walk away from the entire vehicle because of the longer-term implications that were able to see, in terms of our ability to actually move anything at all.

I dont want to minimize the impact of the problematic provisions that are in the MORE Act because they are significant. But one thing I would tell folks is that the Congressional Budget Office released a report that found that the MORE Act would generate nearly $14 billion in revenue. Thats nearly $14 billion of revenue that would go straight to community reinvestment and straight to people of color and people directly impacted by criminalization who are looking to enter the industry.

Theres some confusion about the money going to law enforcement. That is not true: The MORE Act does not give a single dollar to law enforcement. It also would cut federal prison funding by $1 billion. And it would reduce time served of currently incarcerated folks on the federal level for marijuana offenses and what would have been future incarceration. It cuts that time served by 73,000 person years. So the bill would save 73,000 human years of culminated incarceration.

Which future initiatives do you see DPA and other advocates taking on in this space?

One, were gonna definitely continue our legislative effort in the House. The bill passing out of the House despite all the ways that we would have wanted it to improvethat is still going to put us in a really great negotiating place and political place to work to get those provisions out and to strengthen the bill for next Congress.

Well be leading the effort to try to figure out what regulation can and should look like. And we also are working to try to influence the next administration to see if theres any actions that can be taken on the executive level to address pro-marijuana prohibition, especially as we see the Senate leader of the MORE Act sitting in the position of the vice president-elect. So were hoping that we are successful with influencing her and the administration to move the president-elect along, because as you might know, President-elect Biden doesnt support descheduling. At least, he hasnt said that publicly.

Marijuana legalization is not ending the War on Drugs, and you dont want members of Congress to get comfortable with that idea.

Were hoping to continue to build out support for reform beyond marijuana. As you saw in the election, we successfully fought through drug decriminalization in Oregon. And theres plenty of other states and jurisdictions that decriminalization would be viable in, and theres also support and talk throughout Congress about the issue around drug decriminalization. Its been so many years in the making, but we finally successfully got presidential candidates speaking about marijuana justice on debate stages, and speaking about marijuana in a way that should be extended to all substances. People should not be in jail or prison for drug use. And thats not just the case for marijuana.

We want to have the wins weve had with marijuana extended because thatll get us closer to actually dismantling the War on Drugs. Marijuana legalization is not ending the War on Drugs, and you dont want members of Congress and other policymakers to get comfortable with that idea.

* DPA previously provided a restricted grant to The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter, to support a Drug War Journalism Diversity Fellowship.

Photograph by Martin Falbisoner via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 3.0

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Family mourns Filipino mother and son shot by police over noise – Reuters

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PANIQUI, Philippines (Reuters) - Relatives of a woman and her son shot dead by an off-duty policeman in the Philippines called for justice at their wake on Tuesday amid public outrage over an incident that went viral on social media after it was caught on camera.

Sonya Gregorio, 52, and 25-year old son Frank Gregorio, were shot in the head on Sunday after a row over noise, triggering accusations from activists that President Rodrigo Dutertes war on drugs had created a culture of police impunity.

I lost a mother who was the most loving mother to us. I lost a brother who was also a very loving and caring brother. Its very hard for us, said Tasha Delos Santos.

I hope our family gets justice.

Duterte on Monday condemned the Tarlac shooting and said he only defends police who do their duty, warning there will be a hell to pay for rogue officers.

In a video recorded on a family members mobile phone, policeman Jonel Nuezca was seen engaging in a heated argument with the Gregorios over the use of a homemade cannon in Tarlac province, north of Manila. The devices, which make a booming sound, are typically used to celebrate New Year.

When Sonya wrapped her arms around her son as the row intensified, Nuezca shot her in the head before doing the same to Frank. Before fleeing, Nuezca shot Sonya Gregorio again.

Nuezca surrendered to police that night and faces two counts of murder. The government has promised a thorough investigation.

They werent criminals, they were the nicest family here, said neighbour Gonyong Liwanag.

Critics and rights groups say Dutertes talk of killing criminals and promises to protect law enforcement have emboldened police to commit and cover up murder. Police reject that.

Government data show that 5,942 suspected drug dealers have been killed by police since 2016. Rights group say that number is an understatement and accuse police of summarily executing users and pushers. Police say those killed had resisted arrest.

Reporting by Adrian Portugal; Writing by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Martin Petty and Philippa Fletcher

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Legalize and regulate non-medical use of all drugs, prioritizing opioids – Policy Options

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Personal possession and use of all drugs in Canada should be decriminalized immediately, but we need to go further. To combat the illegal market and save more lives, we need to legalize and regulate drugs. We should prioritize the provision of safe access to opioids given the toll the opioid crisis is exacting. Legalization and regulation are the options that cause the least harm.

The lessons of legalization and regulation of cannabis

Its been two years since recreational cannabis was legalized and regulated, something that once seemed impossible. Cannabis reforms have not been without problems, but they have been widely regarded as successful. The criminalization of individuals for merely using and possessing that substance has essentially ended. A drug long thought to be limited to the criminal element in dark alleys has been hauled into the daylight and bought and sold within a tight and transparent regulatory framework.

With legalization has come a fundamental shift in thinking that non-medical use of drugs should be addressed as a public-health issue, not with use of penal sanctions. People who use drugs should not be punished and they should get support if they need it.

Increasing support for decriminalization

There has been recent, significant momentum toward decriminalization of drugs for personal use. Those endorsing such reform include the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, The Canadian Association of Social Workers, many medical officers of health, including Bonnie Henry, the New Democratic Party and B.C. Premier John Horgan along with the Vancouver city council and Jane Philpott, the former minister of health. An August editorial in the Globe and Mail also voiced support for it.

The Prosecution Service of Canada has begun to pull back from prosecution for personal possession of drugs, limiting it to cases involving public safety, according to a directive it issued in August. Decriminalization combined with other harm-reduction strategies such as safe-injection sites can lower rates of fatal overdoses and HIV infection caused by tainted needles. It can also create a path to help for those who are dependent.

The positive impact of decriminalization is not theoretical. Portugal has had mostly positive results from its decision two decades ago to decriminalize personal possession and use of all drugs. There has been no significant increase in harmful use, including for kids; the country did not become a haven for people coming to it just to use drugs; HIV infections and drug overdoses have gone down.

A ballot measure in Oregon to decriminalize drugs passed in Novembers U.S. election with strong support. Norway is also proceeding to roll back penal sanctions for consumption of substances. Its time for Canada to follow suit and decriminalize drugs now.

Legalize to confront the illicit market

Decriminalization, however, does not address the illicit supply of drugs coming from ruthless criminals making billions of untaxed dollars and peddling tainted substances that cause sickness and death. Legalization and regulation confront that system of narconomics. Yet even just decriminalization has met with consistent opposition from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He has said repeatedly that legalizing and regulating cannabis is as far as he is prepared to go to reform laws dealing with illicit drugs.

Legalizing the sale of illegal drugs seems a bridge too far despite cannabis legalization. There is widespread acceptance that the war on drugs has been a failure. Consumption for some drugs has increased, the illicit market is thriving, and individual lives are ruined.

But many people who are open to arguments favouring legalization wonder how it would be done. How is it possible to create an acceptable legal market for all non-medical use of drugs? That question must be answered.

A recent effort to address this critical challenge was undertaken by the British think tank Transform Drug Policy Foundation with the publication in October of How to Regulate Stimulants: A Practical Guide. Transform focuses on the reform of laws that criminalize non-medical use of drugs. It is highly regarded and consulted with the government of Canada regarding the legalization of cannabis. It has published work on legalization. The prestigious Global Commission on Drug Policy has also published such reports. Because stimulants, especially cocaine, are widely used, the October report focused on these drugs. But its discussion about how to regulate effectively and responsibly can be applied to any substances.

The opioid crisis and legalization

The numbers are horrific. Within the COVID-19 pandemic the opioid epidemic has taken a deadly toll. In B.C. there were more than 100 illicit drug toxicity deaths a month from March to August of this year far more than in a comparable period last year (181 in June 2020 vs. 76 in June 2019). Data from Ontario indicate that the number of fatalities from opioids in that province increased by about 50 per cent this year over last year. In Alberta, related deaths from April to June this year were 302, significantly exceeding the previous three-month high of 211 in 2018. Urgent action is required to protect individuals from street drugs.

There is already something of a pathway to legalization of opioids in this country. Some police forces have stopped charging for simple possession and use of opioids, but the practice is uneven. Such lack of uniformity explains the increasing support for formal decriminalization. In addition, the federal government is permitting safe supply projects. In these instances, dependent individuals are given access to opioids so that they are not consuming street drugs, which can be toxic. But the future of such projects is uncertain, and we need more of them.

So in constrained and shifting circumstances there is a sort of legalization and regulation unfolding regarding opioids: some de facto decriminalization combined with some safe supply. But much more needs to be done and quickly.

There is room for debate about the details of legalization and regulation of non-medical use of drugs. Transform, the British think tank, focuses the debate by breaking down the regulatory scheme into components including production, distribution outlets, availability, higher- and lower- risk products. There is much in its October report to guide policy-makers if there is the political will to move forward with legalization and regulation. Transform is also clear about the goals of drug policy: improve public health, protect human rights and promote social justice, as mentioned in the executive summary of its report.

These components analyzed by Transform can be applied to the production and sale of opioids for non-medical use to sketch a route forward. As a starting point, provision of safe supply could be expanded and improved. A further step could be to allow doctors to prescribe heroin (an opioid) for those adults determined to use the drug despite counselling about its dangers. At some level this is a horrible suggestion, but it is better than having people get these drugs on the street from a criminal network that pays no taxes, has committed crimes for a thriving system of narconomics, and doesnt care whether the drug is tainted. In all of this we should remember that drugs were largely available with little legal restriction until the 1900s. Punishing people for using drugs was, in many ways, a project of the 20th century.

Expanding safe supply and prescribing heroin both fall short of full legalization of opioids. But together with decriminalization, they would end criminalization of people who use drugs, further confront the illicit market, and save more lives. After careful assessment of the impacts, further measures such as those suggested by Transform could be contemplated.

The least bad policy

Legalization of drugs is no cause for celebration. Its no panacea for all the harms caused by drugs, including the ones that are now legal. Its also not a basis for encouraging drug use. Legalization needs to be accompanied by widely available support for those who are dependent.

Many details must be hammered out, including the appropriate conditions for prescribing opioids for medical purposes. But when measured against the costs and pain of the current situation, legalization together with regulation is, as The Economist somberly put it back in 2009: The least bad policy.

Photo: Shutterstock.com, by Darwin Brandis

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Unless we start paying, making music will become the preserve of the elite – The Guardian

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A few weeks ago, I spent 27 on a record with the enticing title Live Drugs. I bought it because I am a fan of its creators, the Philadelphia-based rock group the War on Drugs, and also because I was in the midst of a pandemic-related phase of insomnia and anxiety and it seemed to offer the prospect of a bit of uplift. But the main reason was the prospect of some kind of reconnection with something I almost seem to have forgotten: live musical performance, and what its like to hear and watch a band with a multitude of other people.

Live Drugs was recorded in an array of places across the world over a period of five years; one review called it a grand love letter to live music. Its best moments suggest a kind of inarticulable dialogue between the group and its audience, something heard most spectacularly on the 12-minute evocation of 21st-century living titled Under the Pressure, when thousands of people passionately sing along not with the words, but the guitar part. They sound like a football crowd.

It takes a lot of human labour to create a moment like that, and right now all of that work is in a state of suspended animation. People who earn a living seeing to sound, lights and the transport of people and equipment are either unemployed or doing another job. Something similar applies to the string and horn players often hired by successful bands, who also play in orchestras and ensembles. The advertising sections of music magazines and Sunday supplements are smattered with announcements of gigs and concerts scheduled to take place from the spring onwards; having written off 2020, the people behind the UKs summer festivals seem to be tentatively starting to put next years run together. But no one knows for sure if any of these events are actually going to happen.

A comparatively small number of successful musicians like, one imagines, the War on Drugs may have used the last nine months to take stock and quietly work on new material. But for most, the Covid crisis boils down to struggle, anxiety and, in many cases, mounting debt. The UK Musicians Union reckons that 70% of its members are unable to do more than a quarter of their pre-pandemic work, and that 87% of musicians will this year earn less than 20,000. Thirty-four per cent are apparently considering leaving professional music altogether. About a third of the unions members do not qualify for any of the governments help for people whose professional lives have been upturned: in Scotland and Wales, at least some of the public money dedicated to emergency help for the arts has gone to individuals, but in England, the so-called Culture Recovery Fund is exclusively focused on organisations and venues.

For many musicians, all that remains as a source of income is the revenue from recordings. But if the conventions that govern paying people in this way have always been stacked against actual creators, the 21st century has made things even worse. The facts may now be well known, but that does not make them any less shocking: Spotify is estimated to pay about 0.0028 (or 0.28p) per stream to rights holders, a term that encompasses both massive record companies and artists who put out their own music; and on YouTube, the per-stream rate is put at a mere 0.0012. Thousands of musicians who have signed contracts with corporate record companies and ended up in debt to their overlords (or unrecouped) receive no money at all. Shut down live music, and the result for many will be instant penury. as Guy Garvey, the lead singer with the Mancunian band Elbow, recently put it: Musicians cant eat, they cant make the rent. We need to make the system better.

Culture is subject to the same basic economic rules as everything else. In 30 years of writing about music, I have seen it enough times: when the industry is subject to shocks, the victims tend not to be the big music companies, large-capacity venues or huge-selling artists but people and businesses on the edge, both financially and artistically. In recent years there has been sporadic panic about the arts increasingly being dominated by people from privileged enough backgrounds to enable them to ride out hardship. Here lies a danger that is too often overlooked: that starved of funds and deprived of the live element that represents its absolute foundation, what we used to call popular music will become elitist, wholly dependent on big money, and lousy with it.

Even in impossible circumstances, musicians still work transcendent miracles. In spite of this years grimness or, in some cases, because of it this has been a very good year indeed for records. The artists of the year, to my mind, are a mysterious British collective called Sault, who have released two albums thematically connected to the Black Lives Matter movement, seemingly conceived as sweeping song cycles, and full of brilliant tracks. Plenty of the other names on this years end-of-year albums lists are almost as revelatory. Some of the best musicians in there probably sell a comparative handful of records and CDs, count their streams in the tens or hundreds of thousands and, outside festival season, play gigs to small audiences. In other words, they live precariously and in times like these, their situation will verge on the impossible.

So which way back? Last week, I had a conversation with Mark Davyd, the founder and chief executive of the Music Venue Trust, the charity that represents 270 such establishments all over the country. He talked about piloting fast pre-gig Covid testing, which could establish within an hour whether a ticket-holder was infected with Covid-19, and anti-viral snoods that might be worn by audiences. The Musicians Union is pushing for a musical version of the eat out to help out scheme, so that public money might subsidise the takings lost when venues can only admit socially distanced audiences. Streaming needs to be fixed so that musicians earn money from it as a matter of right. And over and above occasional charitable donations, the corporate music industry should find a way of making a sustained contribution towards grassroots musicians survival. Talent is not best served by poverty, and creators and their associates ought not to starve.

The rest of us need to wake up at last to the fact that the expectation of free recorded music is now in danger of killing something that human beings cannot live without. If you have the money and some remaining Christmas spirit, you should log out of Spotify, go to either an online outlet or a bricks-and-mortar record shop, buy a few physical products, and contribute a little to the livelihood of a musician or two. Given the magic they conjure up, its a very small price to pay.

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These are benefits of recreational marijuana that are overlooked – AZ Big Media

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On Tuesday November 3rd, 2020, Arizona citizens voted in support of Prop 207, the Smart and Safe Arizona Act, that has been termed Recreational Marijuana. When we think of the term recreation, synonyms like fun, enjoyment, and pleasure come to mind. However, Smart and Safe is much more profound, going beyond what the term recreational marijuana would suggest by focusing on benefits that include the repair of community, political, social, and economic issues.

Dr. William Troutt is director of medical education for Harvest Health & Recreation.

Smart and Safe expands the previously limited legal use of marijuana for severe and specific medical conditions to include all responsible adult use. The intent was not just to restore civil rights and freedom of choice but more broadly to address major consequences of cannabis prohibition prison overcrowding with nonviolent offenders, economic and social barriers stemming from a felony conviction, racial and economic disparities in the justice system, friction between our law enforcement and communities, disallowance of a safer alternative to alcohol and tobacco use, and lacking resources for treatment of substance abuse.

In this light, the phrase recreational marijuana use does not seem to do justice to this landmark moment in history and our aspirations. However, when you look deeper at the origins and uses of the word recreation, it starts to feel quite appropriate. The term recreation has its foundation in health and healing. Marijuana benefitshave included restoration, curing of a person, to make a new, recovery from illness, to invigorate and to refresh. And now with Smart and Safe, industry and activists have found common ground in cannabis to address deep divisions and imbalances between our government, laws, communities, and people, with the promise of re-creation to restore unity, heal inequalities, invigorate economics, and revitalize faith in democracy.

I have been on the front line of this reconciliation in Arizona, first with the 2010 Arizona Medical Marijuana Act and now with the 2020 Smart and Safe Arizona Act. As with many others, my family, and my life, have been deeply impacted by the war on drugs. Now, I am seeing a path to recovery. It is being built through cooperation, understanding, tolerance, unity, medicine, and recreation.

I joined a start-up company in 2012, Harvest Health & Recreation. They asked me to share my knowledge of cannabis culture and botanical medicine, and to serve as an advocate for patients, caregivers, and the communities we serve. As Harvests Medical Director for the last eight years, I have collaborated with industry leaders, government representatives, business stakeholders, and medical organizations to advance cannabis programs and assist patients and our communities in their quest for safe, informed cannabis access. Personally, I have witnessed medical success stories, courage, and unity, which have rejuvenated my hope and optimism for the future. For thousands of years cannabis has been used for food, fuel, fiber, medicine, spirituality/religion, health, and leisure. And now in Arizona we can appropriately call its use recreation. I, for one, believe that this expanded access to legal cannabis for responsible adult recreational use by any definition is healthy for our communities.

Dr. William Troutt is director of medical education for Harvest Health & Recreation.

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Lantern To Become First Platform To Offer Recreational Cannabis Delivery in Colorado – PRNewswire

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DENVER, Dec. 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Lantern, the leading on-demand cannabis e-commerce marketplace and home delivery platform in the U.S., has today announced plans to be the first on-demand cannabis delivery service to offer recreational delivery in Colorado, beginning early 2021. Residents of Aurora, whose City Council passed a vote in favor of recreational delivery on December 21st, will likely be the first in the state to access Lantern's services once the city finalizes the permitting process next year. Lantern is an independently operated subsidiary of Drizly Group, the largest online marketplace and delivery service for alcohol in North America and a market leader in Colorado.

Colorado authorized medical and adult-use cannabis delivery to commence in 2020 and 2021, respectively, but state laws require individual municipalities to opt in to delivery services. Although medical deliveries are currently permitted in Boulder, Superior, and Longmont, Aurora will be the first city in the state to allow recreational deliveries. Lantern's leading edge on-demand delivery model is first-to-market in Colorado and will enter new territories within the state as more municipalities approve recreational delivery in the coming year.

Once Aurora's local law goes into effect, customers over the age of 21 in Aurora will be able to conveniently place recreational cannabis orders online at LanternNow.com and have products delivered to their doorstep within an hour. Lantern's user-friendly platform enables new and returning customers to discover products that best align with their lifestyles and preferences. Local dispensaries will be able to list their full menus on Lantern's platform and drive consumer engagement and product discovery opportunities through Lantern's intuitive interface.

"Colorado consumers have been waiting for nearly two years for recreational delivery to come online and Lantern is eager to offer our best-in-class services to eager customers," said Meredith Mahoney, President of Lantern. "Our sister company, Drizly, has already built an outstanding following and reputation in the state and we are confident that Lantern will apply these same market insights to provide timely and reliable cannabis deliveries throughout the state."

Lantern supports the city of Aurora's vote to prioritize social equity business owners in the delivery market and commends the city for taking an important step toward undoing the harm that the War on Drugs has on BIPOC. Lantern takes its commitment to social equity in the cannabis industry seriously, and has implemented a robust incubator program in Massachusetts. Lantern will continue to dedicate time and resources to local community organizations working to help social equity business owners obtain licenses in the Colorado delivery market as well.

About LanternLanternis the leading cannabis e-commerce marketplace and delivery platform in the U.S. With the speed and convenience of on-demand delivery, Lantern partners with the best local dispensaries and cannabis brands to bring transparency, safety, and access to cannabis for both new and experienced consumers through intuitive, personalized shopping experiences. Lantern's best-in-class expertise in regulated industries helps dispensaries operationalize on-demand delivery, helping them to reach new customers, tap into key consumer insights, and diversify their businesses to grow sales. Lantern is an independently operated company within Drizly Group, the most popular and reliable online alcohol delivery platform in North America.

Media ContactNoah BethkeMATTIO Communications[emailprotected]

SOURCE Lantern

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Lantern To Become First Platform To Offer Recreational Cannabis Delivery in Colorado - PRNewswire

Cutthroat Island, One Of The Biggest Flops Ever, Discovers To Be Rediscovered 25 Years Later – Forbes

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01/96. MATHEW MODINE AND GEENA DAVIS STAR IN THE NEW MGM RELEASE "CUTTHROAT ISLAND."

In a normal world, Wonder Woman 1984 would have opened theatrically worldwide this past June and once again debunked conventional wisdom about what kind of movies make money. Even after years of blockbusters like Twilight, Mamma Mia, Alice in Wonderland, The Hunger Games, Frozen, Lucy, The Force Awakens, Hidden Figures, Wonder Woman, Ocean's 8 and Captain Marvel, there still exists an implicit presumption that every big "female-led" movie is yet another zero-sum test for the box office bankability of movies for/from/featuring women. Wonder Woman 1984 will open theatrically and on HBO Max on Christmas Day, costing it any number of likely box office records.

In a skewed irony, today is the 25th anniversary of Cutthroat Island, which is "responsible" for much of that conventional wisdom. It grossed $10 million worldwide on a $100 million budget, becoming one of the biggest box office bombs (especially when adjusted for inflation) of all time. It's now streaming on Amazon Prime, and a recent rewatch confirms what I felt about the picture on December 22, 1995. It's no masterpiece or action classic, but it's a huge-scaled, impressively practical and unpretentious bit of over-the-top Hollywood junk food. The whole thing plays like a sloppy first draft for both Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl and The Mummy.

Carolco Pictures was already on the edge of bankruptcy before this film opened to mostly empty theaters. For that matter, MGM, the film's distributor, was in the process of being sold (time is a flat circle) and thus failed to provide much of a marketing campaign. Ironically, Carolco went with this picture instead of the pricier (but likely more commercial) Crusade, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and directed by Paul Verhoeven, only to see this film soar over-budget. The budget issues allegedly came about partially because director Renny Harlin was distracted by finding a male lead who would play second-fiddle to a female action hero.

Michael Douglas wanted equal time while Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves, Daniel Day-Lewis and pretty much every white male actor of that era allegedly said no. By the time Harlin could turn his attention to production design, he hated what he saw, thus necessitating a revamp of the sets in a brief time. Yes, the challenges of finding a male lead were in the news at the time, before Matthew Modine (a fine actor but not precisely a butts-in-the-seats draw) said yes. Comparatively, Chris Pine seems to relish playing second-fiddle in the films like Wonder Woman, A Wrinkle in Time and Into the Woods.

What stood out then and stands out now about Cutthroat Island is its total lack of pretension. Even with the A-level budget, it's an unapologetic B movie. It's noticeably less naval-gazing and ponderous than Kevin Reynolds and Kevin Costner's Waterworld, another insanely over-budget action fantasy from 1995 that stood out for its old-school "build the giant sets and do the ridiculous stunts" showmanship. Yes, there's too much slow-motion for many of these action beats. However, you can damn well see what's going on at all times. I liked the sheer scale of the thing and how it was just a goofy action spectacular that just happened to feature a female in the lead role.

Yes, there are a few too many "Hey, it's a woman doing the thing!" bits, but it's also lovely that Davis' Captain Morgan doesn't have to soften up or learn to be more like a lady to win the day. She's a scoundrel through and through, while Langella's Dawg Brown is worse and willing to team with the British government. Like the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, it makes no bones about who the real bad guys are. The film doesn't try to make any aggressive political points, even as it subtly argues for how class inequities create the perception of heroism and villainy.

Renny Harlin offers a fair share of hack-and-slash action. The first piece of the treasure map is tattooed on a man's (quickly removed) scalp. The movie isn't remotely as bloody and cruel as Die Hard 2 or Cliffhanger, but it's violent enough to make kids think they were getting away with something back when the PG-13 meant something. The third-act showdown is impressively staged and impressively long, with a healthy dose of sword fights, ship-to-ship combat and a role reversal whereby the woman has to rescue the dude-in-distress. That also applies to a second-act beat where Morgan is injured in battle, and the Modine's William Shaw has to fix her up.

Absent the expectations of its budget or the undue pressure put on the very idea of a female-led action flick, Cutthroat Island is good fun for the whole family (my kids, aged five to thirteen, enjoyed it too) and a relic from a time when movies like this weren't expected to start a franchise. However, it's understandable why it bombed back in the day. Geena Davis was/is a respected Oscar-winning actress, but she wasn't an "opener," while Modine certainly wasn't as big of a draw as any number of the actors who turned the role down. Would Michael Douglas, in the love interest/co-star role, made a difference?

Maybe, and it's not like Douglas wasn't making a mini-career out of being upstaged by women (Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, Disclosure) at the time. Nonetheless, pirate movies were considered box office poison right until critics got their first look at Curse of the Black Pearl 7.5-years later. Mostly negative reviews (Ebert was an exception) didn't help, nor did an unusually crowded Christmas season. In terms of competition, it went up against (deep breath) Toy Story, Jumanji, Grumpier Old Men, Heat, Father of the Bride part II, Sabrina, Sudden Death, Tom & Huck, Dracula Dead and Loving It and Nixon. It grossed just $2.3 million over the Fri-Sun frame.

You can trace its failure to the whole "women can't open big action movies" mentality. But here's the rub: The number one movie that Christmas was Forrest Whitaker's adaptation of Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale, which earned $14.13 million for an eventual $67 million domestic cume. That romantic melodrama starred Angela Bassett, Whitney Houston, Loretta Devine and Lela Rochon and was precisely the kind of film that "surprises" the pundits when it over-performs theatrically. While Cutthroat Island put a considerable dent in the notion of women headlining action movies, it's not like the success of Waiting to Exhale led to a slew of like-minded (and demographically-targeted) flicks. Conventional wisdom always wins.

Cutthroat Island is one of a handful of "big" female-led offerings over the last 25 years (see also: Charlize Theron's Aeon Flux) that failed for understandable reasons but were nonetheless used to designate an entire gender as box office poison no matter the many exceptions to the rule. Wonder Woman 1984 was supposed to the final word on this, a female-led action spectacular that was EXPECTED to be the biggest movie of the year (at least domestically). Patty Jenkins' superhero sequel's complicated and compromised release is a grim irony considering how much conventional wisdom Wonder Woman had to debunk. Cutthroat Island walked to Wonder Woman could run.

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Cutthroat Island, One Of The Biggest Flops Ever, Discovers To Be Rediscovered 25 Years Later - Forbes

Island Fin Pok will open a new Tampa Bay location in 2021 – Creative Loafing Tampa

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Orlando-based fast casual chain Island Fin Pok announced a plan to open 20 new locations over the next few years. One location is open currently in Wesley Chapel with new locations in Sarasota and Tampa Bay expected to open in 2021.

According to a press release, the announcement is a response to a new partnership between Island Fin Poke and Matthew McNulty, Managing Partner of Pelagic Hospitality Group. McNulty will be the area representative helping expand Island Fin Pok in West Florida. Pelagic Hospitality Group is responsible for the upcoming Island Fin Pok restaurants in Pasco, Pinellas, Hillsborough, Manatee, Sarasota, Charlotte, Lee, and Collier Counties.

As a St. Petersburg native, I am so excited to help Island Fin Poke grow in the area. I think that poke is such an underserved segment in the quick-service restaurant market; its a unique menu with plenty of healthy and fresh options, said McNulty in the release. The people here will definitely enjoy what Island Fin Poke has to offer.

Island Fin Pok provides guests with boat-to-bowl, locally- and responsibly-sourced ingredients to customize the perfect bowl with endless possibilities. Co-founder Mark Settington hopes to give customers a bit of Hawaii in each meal.

Having a business partner like Mark who embodies these principles and does everything to make sure that each guest has a warm and interactive experience is so important. When you walk through the doors of an Island Fin Poke, you can expect to be welcomed right into the ohana, McNulty adds.

There are 10 locations in five states and 30 locations across the country in varying development stages. Of the 20 new locations coming soon, nine have commitments from local franchisees. Other operating locations proved successful even during COVID-19 by pivoting and staying current on local rules and regulations for staff and customer safety.

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Island Fin Pok will open a new Tampa Bay location in 2021 - Creative Loafing Tampa