Our community deserves real and lasting change in the Spokane Police Department.  The Police Ombudsman cannot conduct independent investigations and cannot discipline officers who use excessive force or otherwise abuse the public. This is not reform, it is just spending taxpayer money on window dressing. 
 
Rally to demand real reform, real investigations, and real accountability!  Let the city know that we will not be fooled again. Let Shonto Pete, the family of Otto Zehm, and all of the others know they are not alone.  End police abuse and hold the city of Spokane accountable! 
  

City/County Contacts Call (509-625-6255) or email City Council members through the City website: Mayor Mary Verner Richard Rush Joe Shogan Al French Michael Allen Bob Apple Steve Corker Nancy McLaughlin Call (509-477-2265) or email County Commissioners (http://www.spokanecounty.org): Bonnie Mager March Richard Todd Mielke

Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane director Liz Moore called for independent oversight of the Spokane Police Department on Friday. “Anything less is insulting to the people of this community and won’t repair the relationship between the Police Department and the people they’re supposed to protect and serve,” she said.  -  Spokesman Review, May 30,

	Israel's occupation of Gaza and its disproportionate violence there violate international law and the will of virtually all nations. Jewish American historian Norman Finkelstein tells us that Israel first violated the ceasefire with Hamas by entering Gaza on November 4th and killing 6 or 7 Palestinian militants. Hamas then retaliated, firing rockets, giving Israel the excuse it was seeking to provoke. According to Israel’s own daily newspaper, Ha’aretz, Israel’s Defense Minister Barak developed invasion plans before the ceasefire even began. Why plan the invasion? In part because Hamas had begun signaling it would join the international consensus and accept a diplomatic settlement along the 1967 borders. This meant a potential durable regional peace agreement well short of full spectrum dominance, something Israel and the U.S. have regularly sabotaged since 1948. U.S.-supplied F-16 jet fighters, recently delivered 250-pound "smart" bombs, and annual U.S. aid of $2.5 billion plus make our nation criminally complicit in the ugly, price-was-worth-it genocide in Gaza. Even the U.S.-dominated Security Council just passed Resolution 1860 by a vote of 14-0 (U.S. abstaining) calling for immediate ceasefire. Israel’s long-term siege and destruction of Gaza must end. Please stop supporting the Israeli State’s aggression. -PJALS Steering Committee _______________________ Photo captions and sources available at http://rollyo.com/startmeup/flickr/. Search for Gaza dead and Gaza injured. Most photos from Dec. 2008 and January 2009, some earlier in 2008.

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In march 2008, The Guardian/UK revealed that the Bush administration (Bush, Rice and Elliott Abrams) had secretly plotted to overthrow democratically elected Hamas (and destroy the emerging threat of an Hamas/Fatah coalition government) by funneling arms and financial support to a more cooperative player in Fatah, particularly Mohammed Dahlan, once Arafat's security chief in Gaza and a person with close ties to the CIA. Vanity Fair detailed the crime in an April 2008 article by David Rose, entitled The Gaza Bombshell. Then just this January, Norman and Matthew Olsen tell the story again in the Christian Science Monitor: An inside story of how the U.S. magnified Palestinian suffering.

So much for respecting the democratic wishes of these imprisoned and impoverished people. But then, they are only them and not us.

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The speech they don't want you to hear, ever,
And note how interchangeable become the words

    Vietnam - Iraq - Gaza.