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Governor Jerry Brown on Monday called for an additional $8 billion in spending cuts in California within his revised budget plan for the 2012-2013 fiscal year. The revision is his attempt to quell California’s current $16 billion budget deficit. Brown’s proposed plan would increase spending for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation by $807 million, pushing the total CDCR budget to a whopping $8.889 billion. Meanwhile Governor Brown has reduced In-Home Supportive Services workers pay by 7% and cut an additional $400 million from The California Medical Assistance Program. Critics of Brown’s proposal argue that expanding the state’s prison system is a step in the wrong direction for California – a state which houses the most prisoners in solitary confinement than any other state, country or nation on earth.

In her groundbreaking book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, civil rights lawyer, advocate, legal scholar, and author, Michelle Alexander, argues that the racial oppression of the Jim Crow era has not been lost to a more racially enlightened age. Featuring an introduction by Cornel West, the new paperback edition of Alexander’s book has sold over 175,000 copies and spent six weeks on the New York Times paperback, nonfiction, best-seller list since its release this January. In The New Jim Crow, Alexander explores the idea that the institutional racism of an earlier era exemplified by poll taxes and housing discrimination is exercised today as the more socially acceptable practice of mass incarceration of black Americans, especially black men. Alexander further makes a compelling case that mass incarceration undermines the well-being of entire communities and weakens the very foundation of American democracy.

In a speech given just days ago, on May 10th 2012 at the New Philadelphia AME church in Rancho Dominguez, Southern California, Michelle Alexander laid out her thesis, starting with how it took her many years to understand the true extent of the crisis of mass incarceration.

THANK YOU GIFTS:

Michelle Alexander speech – DVD – $75

Michelle Alexander speech – CD – $50

The New Jim Crow – new paperback – $100

Michelle Alexander pack (all of the above) – $180

Call 818-985-5735 or visit click here to make a pledge.

Much of the information is already reported under federal law but can be hard to find in voluminous federal banking reports, said Miguel Santana, city administrative officer. The new law would bring the information together on a city website that the public could search by census tract, he said.

Banks that decline to provide the information will be deemed unqualified to bid for a piece of the city’s $6 billion in deposits and pension funds, Santana said. The law will enable the city and its residents to identify which banks are helping the community and which aren’t, said Councilman Richard Alarcon, who wrote the legislation.

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The election is on June 5th, 2012.

On May 11, 2012, Uprising host Sonali Kolhatkar interviewed Mike Powelson about the race and his platform.

Watch a video of the interview here:

Visit www.michaelpowelsonforcongress.org for more information.

Martina Steiner recorded this interview.

Youths clashed with Israeli police and soldiers in several parts of the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, but there was no repeat of last year’s violence, when Israeli soldiers killed up to 13 protesters on the borders with Syria, Lebanon and Gaza.

To some, the hunger strike proved the value of “popular resistance” as favored by President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah group. But his rivals in the Islamist Hamas movement in Gaza said their own confrontational attitude had paid dividends.

Two of the Palestinian prisoners had not eaten for 77 days, raising fears of a backlash if they had died. Under a deal brokered by Egypt, Israel agreed to end solitary confinement for 19 prisoners and lift a ban on visits by relatives living in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

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The governor, who unveiled his revised budget proposal in the Capitol on Monday, is facing a nearly $16-billion budget gap, far larger than the $9.2 billion he predicted in January. He warned that the deficit could grow significantly if voters reject his proposed ballot measure to raise the state sales tax and income levies on the wealthy.

That would trigger additional cuts, including reductions in public education equivalent to lopping three weeks off the school year, he said.

“I’m linking these serious budget reductions … with a plea to the voters: Please increase taxes temporarily,” Brown said at a morning news conference.

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Recent elections in Europe were widely seen as a referendum against austerity measures, which had been adopted by governments to quell the fiscal crisis. Greece, where mass protests propelled a number of parties to be represented in their Parliament, has yet to form a government. In fact, the on-going failure to form a government in Greece is being blamed for the Euro’s new low. In France, the newly elected Francois Hollande was formally named President in a ceremony today. Hollande is France’s first Socialist president in 17 years – he heads to Germany in his first act as President, to debate Chancellor Angela Merkel over using austerity as a way out of the financial crisis.

Just days after the elections in France and Greece on May 6th, acclaimed economist Richard Wolff addressed the Brecht Forum in New York, analyzing the European elections and their financial recession in the context of the US situation. Richard Wolff is a Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He has also taught at Yale and the University of Paris, and has recently begun hosting a weekly hour-long radio program Economic Update on WBAI, 99.5 FM.

THANK YOU GIFTS:

• Richard Wolff speech at Brecht Forum – DVD – $75
• Richard Wolff speech at Brecht Forum – CD – $50
• Richard Wolff book with David Barsamian – Occupy the Economy – $75
• RICHARD WOLFF PACK – Book – DVD – CD – $150

Call 818-985-5735 or visit www.kpfk.org for more information.