And on this day finds itself another one of those Sundays that has rolled around, the day of the sun, the day of rest, or is that Saturday, the sabbath. And yet I find myself blogging about Calgary Home Exterior Renovation for some reason or a blogging another. And if you happen to find yourself as one of those human beings with one of those homes in need of siding, windows, roofing, insulation or any other one of those exterior renovations for that home, the internet has those renovate this home services you may be looking for. And when its cold outside, one can hopefully be warm inside with energy efficient windows, doors, insulation and more. And now with the age of all things internet, finding that home renovation and more can be just a website visit away.

I appreciate the guest post, Ignacio Phillips

We recently relocated to Grand Rapids. My husband got a job promotion that was pretty big and we decided that it would be best for our family to make the movie. We ended up buying a cute house that was built in the 1940s. It had been updated, so there was not too much too much that we needed to do. Of course, I had the house painted to our taste and have also been working with a decorator to get some curtains made for the house. The house has some really unique windows that require custom made treatments. We already found a great lawn service and the yard is looking top notch. I have never had a green thumb and definitely rely on others to take care of the yard. The only thing that is left for me to do is to look into Grand Rapids wireless internet providers. Not having the internet for the last three weeks has been killing me! I guess that I am getting all of the unpacking done that I wouldn’t be doing if I had the internet at the house.

And that holiday of Christmas has passed on this day, week or something like that. And happy blogger holidays. And so on this day I find myself posting Nedslist, one of those weekly email newsletters, for the sake of attempting to maintain content for this blog whenever blaghers block possible. And this is an excerpt from one of those emails that found itself in my inbox a while ago. And what, if anything, does this have to do with a No Police State.

Occupy the Hood: Communities of color and the Occupy movement

by Denise Oliver Velez

Many people in black, brown, red and yellow communities across the U.S. know the feeling of being occupied.

Some have compared it to a state of siege. We know what it is to be beleaguered. We experience our land being occupied; we view police as an occupying force; we live daily with the experience of being stopped and frisked, of our cars being pulled over, of the War on Drugs essentially being a war on us; and we are certainly the majority occupants of jail and prison cells.

As such, it is important to examine the current status of the Occupy Movement in relationship to the participation of people of color and its ability to address our issues. Depending on the location, there has been limited success, racial tension, and/or open criticism as well as concerted efforts to be inclusive.

I would like to raise some of the issues here, cite those raised by others, and look at some of the evolving solutions.

Black cultural theorist and writer Greg Tate recently wrote Top 10 Reasons Why So Few Black Folk Appear Down To Occupy Wall Street in the Village Voice in his inimitable style and evoked a twitterstorm of responses. Though he writes with snark and sharp black humor, his last four points on the list are worth considering:

8. THE NIGGAS ARE SCARED OR BORED OF REVOLUTION THEORY Say whut? Since when? When it comes to showing radical heart, we damn sure got nothing to prove. Protest history shows our folk couldn’t be turned around by deputized terrorists armed with dynamite, firebombs, C4, tanks, AKs, machine guns, fixed bayonets, billy clubs, K-9 corps, truncheons, or water hoses. Stop-and-frisk has prepped most brothers to anticipate a cell block visit just for being Slewfoot While Black. We ain’t never been skeered of fighting the good fight. We love a good dust-up on pay-per-view or in the street just on GP! Out there on the street, though, all we need is to feel like you got our backs like we got yours. Herein might lie the rub. People fresh to daily struggle may need to earn our trust more. Clearly we’re in no hurry to make loads of new friends spanking new to police brutality. 7. THE OWS BEST GO GET A LATE-PASS THEORY The sudden realization by OWS-ers that American elites never signed the social contract and will sell the people out for a fat cat’s dime—hey, no news flash over here. Black folk got wise to the game back in 1865 when we realized neither 40 acres nor a mule would be forthcoming. Also, as one sharp strapping ready for whatever you got youngblood recently put it, “I ain’t about to go get arrested with some muhfuhkuhs who just figured out yesterday that this shit ain’t right.”
REASONS WHY WE SHOULD RECONSIDER BEFRIENDING NU PEOPLE VIRGIN TO DAILY NYPD ASSWHUPPINGS Repeatedly finding oneself on the business end of a NYPD nightstick and expecting the same result is either a sign of madness or a sign of virtual blacknuss. Either way, even your most hardened Pan-Afrikanist should now be open to giving the OWS-ers a hug of solidarity. Maybe if organized, this form of outreach could function as the larger community’s first olive branch. (Air kisses and arms length for some snooty African noses still, I know).
6. THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX CRICKETS THEORY The predominant age range of OWS’s paler male participants is roughly 18-29. This age group among African American cats accounts for 40 percent of the country’s prison population—a national crisis which predates the bailout by several decades. This disgraceful disparity could likely continue after every OWS-er has been gainfully reabsorbed into the American workforce. Although Wall Street profits from our brothers’ massive enslavement by incarceration, so does Main Street. Perhaps OWS should ponder putting prison abolition on their unformulated list of demands. Until then, some black progressives, though duly sympathetic, might not hear a roar coming from Zuccotti but simply crickets.

All humor aside, the crisis of the stop-and-frisk occupation in New York is not funny if you are one of the daily victims. Look at these data from the New York Civil Liberties Union:

Stop and Frisk Practices The NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices raise serious concerns over racial profiling, illegal stops and privacy rights. The Department’s own reports on its stop-and-frisk activity confirm what many people in communities of color across the city have long known: The police are stopping hundreds of thousands of law abiding New Yorkers every year, and the vast majority are black and Latino.
An analysis by the NYCLU revealed that about 3 million innocent New Yorkers were subjected to police stops and street interrogations from 2004 through 2010, and that black and Latino communities continue to be the overwhelming target of these tactics. Nearly nine out of 10 stopped-and-frisked New Yorkers have been completely innocent, according to the NYPD’s own reports:
In 2004, 315,483 New Yorkers were stopped by the police.
279,754 were totally innocent (89 percent)
156,056 were black (50 percent)
90,468 were Latino (29 percent)
29,000 were white (9 percent)
In 2005, 399,043 New Yorkers were stopped by the police.
351, 842 were totally innocent (88 percent)
196,977 were black (49 percent)
115, 395 were Latino (29 percent)
40,837 were white (10 percent)
In 2006, 508,540 New Yorkers were stopped by the police.
458,104 were totally innocent (90 percent)
268,610 were black (53 percent)
148,364 were Latino (29 percent)
53,793 were white (11 percent)
In 2007, 468,732 New Yorkers were stopped by the police.
407,923 were totally innocent (87 percent)
242,373 were black (52 percent)
142,903 were Latino (31 percent)
52,715 were white (11 percent)
In 2008, 531,159 New Yorkers were stopped by the police.
465,413 were totally innocent (88 percent)
271,602 were black (51 percent)
167,111 were Latino (32 percent)
57,407 were white (11 percent)
In 2009, 575,304 New Yorkers were stopped by the police.
504,594 were totally innocent (88 percent)
308,941 were black (54 percent)
179,576 were Latino (31 percent)
53,466 were white (9 percent)
In 2010, 601,055 New Yorkers were stopped by the police.
517,458 were totally innocent (86 percent)
317,642 were black (53 percent)
190,491 were Latino (32 percent)
55,083 were white (9 percent)
During the first six months of 2011, 362,150 New Yorkers were stopped by the police.
317,376 were totally innocent (88 percent)
184,186 were black (51 percent)
119,853 were Latino (33 percent)
33,805 were white (9 percent)

The prison industrial complex is also one of the key issues undermining the stability of communities of color, and we are more likely to be focused on Attica or San Quentin than Wall Street, unless the linkages are made. Occupiers must pay attention to occupants.
The Sentencing Project details the status of this segment of the 99 percent:

Nationally, an estimated 5.3 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of laws that prohibit voting by people with felony convictions. Felony disenfranchisement is an obstacle to participation in democratic life which is exacerbated by racial disparities in the criminal justice system, resulting in an estimated 13% of Black men unable to vote. More than 60% of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities. For Black males in their twenties, 1 in every 8 is in prison or jail on any given day. These trends have been intensified by the disproportionate impact of the “war on drugs,” in which three-fourths of all persons in prison for drug offenses are people of color.

Rarely noted is the disproportionate incarceration of Native Americans:

There are approximately 26,000 Native Americans in US jails and prisons who have been sent there at a rate 38 percent higher than the general population. However, if Blacks, who constitute about half of all prisoners are excluded from the calculation, it is clear that this disproportion is far more egregious, when compared to non-Black ethnicities. In Alaska, for instance, if Natives do not already form a plurality in prison, they soon will, as Native incarceration rates are rising rapidly while white and Hispanic rates have remained relatively flat, and the incarceration of Black people has actually dropped in recent years. Natives are only 16 percent of the general population in that state, though they make up 40 percent of adult inmates. Between 1996 and 2000 in Alaska, the total of incarcerated white males rose just 6 percent, while the total number of Native males rose 23 percent. White female totals went up by 26 percent, but Native female inmates skyrocketed by 41 percent in just those four years. An examination of state-by-state totals shows remarkable disproportion in ethnic representation. In Arizona, where many reservations are policed by tribal authorities and hearings held in tribal courts, the rate of Indian incarceration appears not significantly higher than non-Natives. In other states, however, such is clearly not the case. In South Dakota, where 10 percent of the state population is Indian, male and female Natives make up 23 percent and 35 percent respectively, of all inmates. In Wyoming, Indians make up 2 percent of the state population but 7 percent of prisoners. In Montana, though only 6.8 percent of residents are Native, they are 18.8 percent of men and 29.6 percent of women prisoners. Still more worrisome is the fact that in the last decade, the general prison population there less than doubled, but total numbers of Indian women went up from 17 to 81, an increase of 376 percent.

Many of us who come from assorted “hoods” are in lock-up, and will never make it down to an Occupy protest location. Or we may be stopped, frisked asked for papers and incarcerated on the way.
These crucial civil and human rights issues were raised at the Occupy Wall Street General Assembly in New York, and out of that, Occupy Harlem protests were born. It is not a coincidence that those protests targeted “stop and frisk” and police brutality.
Occupy Harlem: ‘Occupy Wall Street Is Not A White Thing’ The Occupy Wall Street movement went Uptown on Friday night, as more than 100 people filled the second-floor sanctuary at St. Philip’s Church in Harlem for the first general meeting of Occupy Harlem. Unlike their downtown comrades, those in attendance were mostly black and Latino, save for a handful of whites who sat and listened intently, a few lifting their fists to shouts of “Power to the People.”
This was a group of veteran activists and young turks alike, inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement. And it was a moment decades in the making for veteran Harlem activists, like Nellie Hester Bailey, who have fought and protested and rallied for fair wages, tenants’ rights and against police brutality here for years.
“Occupy Wall Street is not a quote-unquote white thing. It is a white thing that the 1 percent and the bankers are representing white oligarchy and white plutocrats for the most part,” Bailey said. “But this is an organic movement from the bottom up. Now we have to take advantage, seize the time and the moment … and it is time that we become part of this landscape so we can begin to highlight our issues.”

And so here goes another one of those recycle this blog posts that found itself on this blog some time a while ago in an attempt to maintain content for this blog and my other blog whenever blaghers block possible. And even though the times and dates may have changed, the story still seems to remain the same.

And the headlines are there again. Another person loses their life to gun violence for whatever reason for no reason at all except that guns and gunpowder have been invented. The story has been told in the headlines before and the story will be told again in tomorrows headlines with no end in sight. Gun violence is a global epidemic these days. Is it possible to have a world free of guns. Again, I could cut and paste my other blog entries over and over in my appeal to banish guns from every human being on the face of planet earth, and to banish the images of guns in every form of advertisement and media campaign on planet earth. Guns are the worst invention of an industry ever. If only it was possible to go back in time before guns existed. What was life like before the invention of guns. Were there only sticks and stones. Is this an invention of the beast, whoever or whatever the beast may be. How is it that every other film and movie advertisement in the newspapers and on posters plastered around town has an image of a gun in it. It almost seems as if this type of advertising is required and mandatory these days. How has the morals and values of society declined so far as to where it is now acceptable to use violent imagery and references to violence as a means of promotion. Is this programming programming society. Does this not reflect on and influence society and culture. It seems as if the standards of social behavior are declining everywhere. Is there a worldwide moral breakdown? In the past blatant immorality and decadence has been pointed to as a contributing factor in the fall of civilizations. Where is this social decline pattern coming from? Are the slaughters of wars debasing the value of human life? If politicians and generals can treat millions under their care like animals dispatched to the slaughter, then what canons of religion or ethics can inhibit men from treating each other with the ferocity of jungle beasts. Will the beast, whoever or whatever it may be ever release its grip on mankind. It is not the year 1800 anymore. Will the war ever end. Where can one turn. Where is the world headed. Is another world possible. And what does this have to do with a No Police State. Peace on earth and goodwill to all mankind.

Does 2011 equal 1984 as in the title of this blog post above? Well someone in politics just passed some bill named with a bunch of numbers and letters behind it that has something to do with taking away ones liberty in the name of security, or freedom, or something like that. And so what’s that Benjamin Franklin “Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither” quote all about anyway. And so on this day finds itself as Occupy Wall Street Day 90. And Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Together are still moving fast. And Occupy Wall Street is having a press conference today in that City of New York in response to this National Defense Authorization Act, Sections 1031 and 1032, which will allow the United States government to imprison any person who commits any act they disagree with indefinitly and without trial thing as follows. And what, if anything does this have to do with a No Police State.

Defend the Bill of Rights for All of Us.

On Bill of Rights Day, Thursday, Dec 15 there will be a Press Conference on Federal Court Steps, 40 Centre St., Manhattan, 11am. A coffin of the Bill of Rights will be brought to Federal Court Foley Square, NY, NY

The Bill of rights was ratified 220 years ago, on December 15, 1791. It is shameful that today, in the United States, we are forced to come together in defense of the Bill of Rights and our civil liberties, as the representatives of the 1% who rule this country continue to take our rights away.

Congress is attempting to bury the Bill of Rights. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA) includes language proposed by Democratic Sen. Carl Levin and Republican Sen. John McCain that allows for the arrest and indefinite detention of U.S. citizens by the military, on U.S. soil and without the right of trial. This is an egregious violation of our first amendment rights and comes at a time when we are witnessing unprecedented attacks on our civil liberties.

Some of these attacks include:

Massive spying on the Muslim community, including the recent revelations of the spying by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and the CIA on mosques, Muslim businesses, and Muslim student groups;

The continuation of the policy of sending agents into mosques with phony plots designed to entrap Muslims for so called “preemptive prosecution”;

The recent raids on homes of antiwar activists by federal agents, who have carted away personal computers, cell phones, books, and other possessions and handed the activists subpoenas to appear before federal grand juries;

The recent, often violent evictions of anti-Wall Street occupations around the country; The refusal of the Chicago city government and the federal government to allow for peaceful protests when NATO and the G8 countries come to Chicago in May, 2012 to hold summit meetings.

The potential impact of the NDAA’s provisions to expand military detention without trial could render the other issues we all address seemingly trivial; any activist stands at risk of designation as a potential terrorist, especially if their interests include either foreign policy or enterprises that impact the environment.

On December 15, Bill of Rights Day actions and press conferences are planned in New York City, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco and other areas of the country. Several national coalitions — including the Muslim Peace Coalition, United National Antiwar Coalition, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Committee to Stop FBI Repression and others are co-promoting this call to action.

In New York, representatives from civil liberties, religious, social justice, and peace organizations will come together to voice opposition to the National Defense Authorization Act and other recent attacks on our civil liberties. We will discuss our plans to fight for the rights of all people and to defeat this repressive legislation.

For information on actions around the country, go to: http://bordc.org/.

Initial list of participants in NYC (List in formation)

The Muslim Peace Coalition
Bill of Rights Defense Committee
Center for Constitutional Rights – CCR,
Islamic Leadership Council of Metro NY
Islamic Circle of North America – ICNA
United National Antiwar Coalition – UNAC,
Council on American Islamic Relations – CAIR-NY
International Action Center – IAC
BAYAN USA Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines,
National Alliance for Philippine Concerns,
Pakistan USA Freedom Forum
Activists of Occupy Wall Street – OWS
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
Muslim Ummah of North America –MUNA
Islamic Center of Long Island

And on this day finds itself as Occupy Wall Street Day 88. And Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Together are still moving fast. And according to that Occupy Wall Street website, Occupy Wall Street plans to re occupy Wall Street in New York City or to at least re occupy Duarte Square Park in New York City. And their their D17 Re-Occupy Facebook event invite reads something like as follows. Occupy Wall Street Worldwide.

RE-OCCUPY 12.17.11

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17th at 12PM
DUARTE SQ. PARK, 6th AVE & CANAL
PROTECT & CELEBRATE THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT
FOR SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE
OCCUPY

Join artists, musicians, and local community members for an
all-day performance event in support of Occupy Wall Street’s
re-occupation of space in downtown Manhattan.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION and right to assemble are sacred human freedoms. Occupy Wall Street has renewed a sense of hope, revived a belief in community and awakened a revolutionary spirit too long silenced. To Occupy is to embody the spirit of liberation that we wish to manifest in our society.

On Saturday, December 17th – the 3 month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, the birthday of Bradley Manning, and the 1 year anniversary of the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi – the act that sparked the Arab Spring – Occupy Wall Street will liberate another space.

Occupations create space for community, values, ideas and a level of meaningful dialogue absent in the present political and social system. They have allowed us to realize that we cannot fix our crises isolated from one another. We need collective action, and we need civic space. We are creating that civic space.

Outdoor public space plays a crucial role in this civic process and encourages open, transparent organizing in our movement, unbeholden to a broken political system. As we saw in Liberty Square, outdoor space invites people to listen, speak, share, learn, and act. It is a source of inspiration and empowerment.

Over the last month we have seen a series of coordinated attacks on occupations across the nation in an attempt to stop the growth of a movement for social and economic justice. Outdoor space is a threat
because it is a visible form of dissent– a visible challenge to the system, visibility that screams liberation.

We occupy to liberate. We move forward in the grand tradition of the transformative social movements that have defined American history. We stand on the shoulders of those who have struggled before us, and we pick up where others have left off. We are seeking a better society for us all.

Join us as we liberate space and deepen this moment into an enduring movement.

We wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year. And any other Christmas songs I can think of for this blog. And in case you haven’t heard, it’s that Christmas time of year again for the birth of Christ according to that Gregorian calendar on the wall. And with that holiday of Christmas usually comes presents, shopping, presents and more shopping. Which brings me to the reason I find myself blogging about Shipping Deadlines, Newegg Coupons and Christmas Shipping Deadlines 2011. And if you happen to find yourself shopping online for those Christmas presents to be delivered in time, you can find some discounts, deals and promotion codes for those online stores such as Best Buy, Macy’s, Old Navy, Office Depot, Target, Dell, Walmart and more at Best Online Coupons. And you can find information for those shipping deadlines for the items you want to buy at those online stores to make sure they arrive on time before Christmas at Best Online Coupons. As now with coupons online saying Merry Christmas at a discount has never been easier.