Our schools support parents as they teach their children values. Segregation and racial supremacy are not American values. In 2015 is it embarrassing for a suburb of Washington, DC and home of Justice Thurgood Marshall to have a high school bearing the name of a Confederate general who fought for white supremacy and slavery. In 2015, it is inappropriate for Fairfax County to continue to honor a Confederate general 150 years after the Civil War by having his name attached to a diverse public high school. The Confederacy fought against the United States of America to maintain a system of white supremacy and slavery. Instead, Fairfax County should honor long-time Falls Church resident Thurgood Marshall who, as head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, was the chief architect of the legal strategy to dismantle segregation. As a result of his brilliant advocacy in Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court declared racial segregation in the schools unconstitutional. While on the Supreme Court, Justice Marshall issued numerous opinions stressing the vital importance of equal educational opportunities for all children. On October 2, 1967, Thurgood Marshall was confirmed as a justice on the United States Supreme Court. In 1968, Justice Marshall and his wife moved to the Falls Church area in Fairfax County. He lived in the very high school area that the present JEB Stuart High School is located until he died in 1993.

In the aftermath of the horrific white-supremacist massacre of nine African-Americans in Charleston, S.C., calls are being raised across the country for the removal of Confederate symbols from public places. But in Richmond, Va., the former capital of the slavery-defending Confederacy, during the 150th anniversary year of Emancipation and the end of the Civil War, prominent elected officials are defending their decision to spotlight racist symbols in an international sports event. The UCI Road Word Championships bicycle race, scheduled to take place in Richmond Sept. 19-27, is one of the cycling world's most prestigious competitions. It also likely will be the largest sports event held in the United States in 2015. Some 450,000 people are expected to attend, along with representatives of 500 U.S. news outlets, reporters from 100 countries and a worldwide TV viewing audience of 300 million. Truly, this event will showcase not only Richmond and the state of Virginia, but the entire country. And yet, U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones – all Northern-born Democrats and chairmen of Richmond 2015, the official race organizing committee – have chosen to highlight Richmond's Monument Avenue, a virtual shrine to the Confederacy. (The fourth committee chairman is Thomas F. Farrell II, Chairman, CEO and President of Dominion Resources, Virginia's most politically influential corporation.) Hundreds of millions of people will watch as riders pass statues of Generals Robert E. Lee, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart and Naval Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury. Then, for the critical half-way point of the race, the riders will circle around the towering monument to Jefferson Davis, the slave-owning Confederate president. The route even manages to skip the avenue's one statue dedicated to an African-American, Richmond-born tennis champion and human rights activist Arthur Ashe, who was particularly known for his activism against the racist apartheid system of South Africa. The route then continues over Shockoe Bottom, the former slave-trading area that once was the epicenter of the U.S. domestic slave trade and an area that Gov. McAuliffe and Mayor Jones had been promoting for a commercial baseball stadium, until that for-profit developer's scheme was blocked by a prolonged community struggle. Many of the corporate principals of Richmond 2015 are the same business leaders who heavily promoted the stadium proposal. So, 150 years after Emancipation and the end of the Civil War, Sen. Warner, Gov. McAuliffe, Mayor Jones and CEO Farrell are saying that the finest this country has to present to the world are the monuments to the traitors who fought to preserve slavery – and that this outrageous statement is being made at the same time they are failing dismally to properly memorialize the site that once was the fountainhead of the domestic slave trade. Simply put, the message is: Black Lives and History Really Do Not Matter. In Richmond, the Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality, a community organization and a founding member of UNAC that has been fighting since 2002 to reclaim Shockoe Bottom, is calling on the race organizers to move the route off Monument Avenue and for the city to finally commit to a proper memorialization of Shockoe Bottom. The Defenders also are calling for progressives to join them in a National Presence in Richmond at noon on Saturday, Sept. 19, the opening day of the UCI race – at the Jefferson Davis monument. UNAC endorses these demands and strongly encourages all our members and allies to be in Richmond on Sept. 19 to let the world know that we reject this honoring of the slavery-defending Confederacy and demand a proper memorialization of all slavery-related sites, including Richmond's Shockoe Bottom.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a trade agreement dictated by the corporate and wealthy interests who will reap its rewards. If adopted, the majority of Americans will be the losers. They’re using negotiations that they have branded as “trade talks” to impose many non-trade policies that could lower our standard of living, export our jobs and undermine our rights. TPP is being negotiated in secret. Corporations are at the table. The American people are not. Congress won't even know what it is voting on until all the negotiations are over. Congress' decision to give the president Fast Track authority means TPP can't be modified or amended to protect the American people. If you like NAFTA, you'll love TPP! Requirements like “renewable/recycled” or “sweat free” and obligations for firms to meet basic health, safety, minimum and prevaling wage, child labor, human rights and other standards could be challenged, even on work for the government paid for with our tax dollars. Corporations will be able to sue our government for unlimited compensation if they believe labor, environment, food safety or other standards affected their "expected future profits". More American workers will lose their jobs and incomes as companies export our jobs to wherever they can pay the lowest wages with the fewest restrictions, including places with child labor and modern forms of slavery. Shouldn't the American people get to vote whether we are subjected to this corporate power grab dressed up as a trade agreement? Shouldn't we have at least as much democracy as the Greek people in deciding our fate?

Our Government shouldn't be bought.

Whereas, Arlington County prides itself on diversity and a welcoming attitude toward all ethnic groups, and *Arlington County, where Freedmans Village was located, was the destination for African Americans liberated by President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War, and *African American soldiers were trained at Camp Casey in Arlington County to fight to end slavery and to preserve the United States, and *Arlington County was never part of the Confederacy, and *Confederate President Jefferson Davis sought to perpetuate the enslavement of African Americans, and has no personal relationship to Arlington County, We, the undersigned, consider continued use of the name Jefferson Davis in connection with Route 1 and Route 110 not only to have no relevance to Arlington County, but also to be a symbol viewed by many as racist, similar to flying the Confederate flag, and therefore petition the Arlington County Board to take appropriate steps to initiate the removal of the name Jefferson Davis from those roadways. For information about Jefferson Davis Highway from the Department of Transportation: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/jdavis.cfm For more information on Camp Casey: https://consortiumnews.com/2015/02/26/the-mystery-of-the-civil-wars-camp-casey/ See also, "Lynching and Jeff Davis Highway:" https://consortiumnews.com/2015/02/12/lynching-and-jeff-davis-highway/

This effort is endorsed by Foreign Policy in Focus, the Asia Institute, and World Beyond War, and is being launched on July 9, 2015. You can sign, and ask everyone you know to sign, this declaration here: http://diy.rootsaction.org/p/man Exactly 60 years ago today, leading intellectuals led by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein gathered in London to sign a manifesto voicing their concern that the struggle between the Communist and Anti-Communist blocs in the age of the hydrogen bomb guaranteed annihilation for humanity. Although we have so far avoided the nuclear war that those intellectuals dreaded, the danger has merely been postponed. The threat, which has reemerged recently with the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, has only grown more dire. Moreover, the rapid acceleration of technological development threatens to put nuclear weapons, and many other weapons of similar destructiveness, into the hands of a growing circle of nations (and potentially even of “non-state actors”). At the same time, the early possessors of nuclear weapons have failed to abide by their obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to destroy their stockpiles. And now we are faced with an existential threat that may rival the destructive consequences even of a full-scale nuclear war: climate change. The rapacious exploitation of our resources and a thoughtless over-reliance upon fossil fuels have caused an unprecedented disruption of our climate. Combined with an unmitigated attack on our forests, our wetlands, our oceans, and our farmland in the pursuit of short-term gains, this unsustainable economic expansion has brought us to the edge of an abyss. The original 1955 manifesto states: “We are speaking on this occasion, not as members of this or that nation, continent, or creed, but as human beings,” members of the human species “whose continued existence is in doubt.” The time has come for us to break out of the distorted and misleading conception of progress and development that has so seduced us and led us towards destruction. Not only intellectuals but anyone informed, aware, and caring bears a particular responsibility of leadership by virtue of their specialized expertise and insight regarding the scientific, cultural, and historical forces that have led to our predicament. Between a mercenary element that pursues an agenda of narrow interests without regard to consequences and a frequently discouraged, misled, and sometimes apathetic citizenry stand the responsible individuals in every field of study and sphere of activity. It falls to us to decry the reckless acceleration of armaments and the criminal destruction of the ecosystem. The time has come for us to raise our voices in a concerted effort. The original text, issued in London on July 9, 1955, is here: http://www.umich.edu/~pugwash/Manifesto.html SIGNERS OF THE NEW PETITION INCLUDE: Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus, MIT Helen Caldicott, author, activist Naomi Klein, author Larry Wilkerson, Retired United States Army Colonel. Benjamin R. Barber, President, Global Parliament of Mayors Project David Swanson, Director, World Beyond War John Feffer, Director, Foreign Policy in Focus Emanuel Pastreich, Director, The Asia Institute Leah Bolger, Chair, Coordinating Committee, World Beyond War Ben Griffin, Coordinator, Veterans For Peace UK Michael Nagler, Founder and President, The Metta Center for Nonviolence John Horgan, Science journalist & author of "The End of War" Kevin Zeese, Co-director, Popular Resistance Margaret Flowers, M.D., Co-director, Popular Resistance Dahr Jamail, Staff Reporter, Truthout John Kiriakou, Associate Fellow, Institute for Policy Studies and CIA Torture Whistleblower Kim Hyung yul, President of The Asia Institute, Professor of History, Sook Myung University Choi Murim, Professor of Medicine, Seoul National University Coleen Rowley, Retired FBI agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel Ann Wright, Retired U.S. Army Colonel and former US diplomat Mike Madden Vice President, Veterans For Peace, Chapter 27 Chante Wolf, 12 year Air Force, Desert Shield/Storm veteran Member of Chapter 27, Veterans For Peace William Binney, Former NSA Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis, Co-founder of the SIGINT Automation Research Center. Jean Bricmont, professor, Université Catholique de Louvain

The TPP is a disaster that towers over considerations of gentility and lesser-evilism. This is Congress, as our supposed representatives, giving the power to overturn its own laws to corporations. This is NAFTA on steroids, economically and environmentally destructive at home and abroad. Most of it has nothing to do with trade, but is rather about empowering banks and corporations with powers that couldn't be passed separately or transparently because they're too terrible and unpopular. It's time we take a stand against wrecking the world, even with corrupt politicians who can find someone slightly more corrupt to run against. Here are the senators who voted for Fast Track: http://1.usa.gov/1GtAdTH And the House members who voted for Fast Track: http://1.usa.gov/1GAl1TT Let them know the consequences if they vote for the TPP.

Remember the shocking revelation that the Bush White House let 140 Saudis fly out of the country in the days immediately after the 9/11 attacks, even though it claimed 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis? One of these flights had two dozen bin Laden family members on board and another had elite Saudi royals including Prince Ahmed bin Salman, a reported intermediary between Al Qaeda and the House of Saud. Then, causing great concern to high-ranking members of the Congressional Joint Intelligence Committee which in 2002 produced the first investigative report of the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration blacked out 28 full pages that document members of the Saudi royal family as the principle financiers of the Sept. 11 attacks. Despite promising 9/11 family members that he would release them, President Obama has so far maintained the suppression of these 28 pages. Former Senator Bob Graham, who co-chaired the Joint Intelligence Committees' investigation, has said that the 28 pages “primarily relate to who financed 9/11 and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier.” Graham has also said that the 28 Pages reveal the Saudi funding came primarily through the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C. The Saudi Arabian Ambassador at the time was Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the very same Bandar nicknamed “Bandar Bush” by George W. because of his longstanding close affiliations with the Bush family. In addition to Graham, both co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission and even former CIA Directors have called for their release. All of the members of Congress who have read the 28 pages are saying that releasing them would not compromise national security. Quite the opposite. On June 2, Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) went so far as to say that the 28 pages contain the "best intelligence" we have for preventing another 9/11. Senator Graham has said the U.S. government’s shielding of Saudi Arabia’s role in funding extremism helped pave the way for the rise of ISIS. The content of the pages is so shocking that Massie has also stated: “I had to stop every couple of pages and … try to rearrange my understanding of history … It challenges you to rethink everything.” On June 2, 2015, Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) introduced a Senate bill, the Transparency for Families of 9/11 Victims and Survivors Act of 2015 (S.B. 1471) – the companion bill to bi-partisan House Resolution 14 (H.RES.14). S.B. 1471 mandates the immediate declassification and release of the 28 Pages. We need your help to get a filibuster-proof majority of Senators to read the pages and become co-sponsors. Over 70 percent of the 400 questions compiled by the 9/11 Families Steering Committee for the 9/11 Commission -- many on the U.S.-Saudi relationship -- were never answered, and now the Supreme Court has allowed the 9/11 victims’ families to sue the Saudis in federal court. They need your help to get the 28 Pages finally released.

This will give a good chance to Africans to better they life and get a training that will help them with the new technology, jobs

Tunisia is the latest example of a nation using truth and reconciliation to address past horrors, specifically torture. The United States has not put an end to torture, to lawless imprisonment, to warrantless spying, or to any of the other criminal elements of its aggressive warmaking, which continues ever more free from even the pretense of adherence to law.

Did you know that a single tube of face wash can contain over 330,000 microbeads and well over 1,000 personal cleansing products contain microbeads? Several studies have shown that microbeads absorb pesticides and other toxic chemicals as they go down the drain. Most treatment plants do not have filters that are fine enough to filter and capture these .5mm beads, causing them to slip through and into our waterways. This is causing fish, birds and other animals to mistaken these beads for, which leads to them ingestion these plastics – bringing these microbeads to our plates. This is an extremely dangerous matter that is allegedly good for the skin, but is an extremely alarming issue that is and will continue to impact our oceans and environment. We do not have the technology, manpower or equipment to easily remove these .5mm beads from our oceans and as of right now, the problem is just continuing to grow. The State of California and New York recently passed legislation prohibiting the production, manufacture, distribution and sale of products containing plastic beads fewer than 5 millimeters in size. The Wisconsin Legislature and several members of Congress have also introduced similar bills this year. I need your help in making sure we keep our water ways clean and healthy!

Only those earning $115,000 and below pay the full amount ie 15% of their total net imcome. One can make a billion dollars and still will only pay 15% on $115,000.00. This is not fair. This is regressive and the cap should be done away with and the richest among us should be forced to pay their fair share. Then Social Security would be solvent for milliniums.