An affordable price is probably the major benefit persuading people to buy drugs at www.americanbestpills.com. The cost of medications in Canadian drugstores is considerably lower than anywhere else simply because the medications here are oriented on international customers. In many cases, you will be able to cut your costs to a great extent and probably even save up a big fortune on your prescription drugs. What's more, pharmacies of Canada offer free-of-charge shipping, which is a convenient addition to all other benefits on offer. Cheap price is especially appealing to those users who are tight on a budget
Service Quality and Reputation Although some believe that buying online is buying a pig in the poke, it is not. Canadian online pharmacies are excellent sources of information and are open for discussions. There one can read tons of users' feedback, where they share their experience of using a particular pharmacy, say what they like or do not like about the drugs and/or service. Reputable online pharmacy canadianrxon.com take this feedback into consideration and rely on it as a kind of expert advice, which helps them constantly improve they service and ensure that their clients buy safe and effective drugs. Last, but not least is their striving to attract professional doctors. As a result, users can directly contact a qualified doctor and ask whatever questions they have about a particular drug. Most likely, a doctor will ask several questions about the condition, for which the drug is going to be used. Based on this information, he or she will advise to use or not to use this medication.

The U.S. is out of TPP, NAFTA is under Discussion, Gas Protests

Getting the United States out of the Transpacific Partnership Pact was merely symbolic. The United States was a member of the pact but the treaty never advanced in legislative action. NAFTA is a matter of discussion and meetings still to come.

Trump signs order withdrawing from TPP, reinstate ‘Mexico City policy’ on abortion

President Donald Trump on Monday will start to unravel the behemoth trade deal he inherited from his predecessor, as he signed an executive action to withdraw from the negotiating process of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

That executive action sends signals to Democrats and leaders in foreign capitals around the world that Trump’s rhetoric on trade during the campaign is turning into action. Trump vowed during the campaign to withdraw the US from the Pacific trade deal, commonly known as TPP, which he argued was harmful to American workers and manufacturing.
The TPP was negotiated under former President Barack Obama, but never ratified by Congress, so withdrawing from it will not have an immediate, real effect on US economic policies, although it does signal a new and very different US outlook on trade under Trump.
The other executive actions signed Monday included reinstating the Mexico City abortion rules and instituting a hiring freeze for federal agencies. More here from CNN.
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Washington (AFP) – US President Donald Trump pledged Sunday to begin renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement in upcoming talks with the leaders of Mexico and Canada.

“We’re meeting with the prime minister of Canada and we will be meeting with the president of Mexico, who I know, and we’re going to start some negotiations having to do with NAFTA,” Trump said while addressing White House staff on his second full day in office.

Trump will receive his Mexican counterpart Enrique Pena Nieto on January 31. No date has been given for a meeting with Canada’s Justin Trudeau, but it is expected “soon,” according to a readout from a call between the two leaders on Saturday.

Trump praised the Mexican leader, saying: “The president has been really very amazing and I think we are going to have a very good result for Mexico, for the United States, for everybody involved. It’s very important.”

*** There is another major issue that has surfaced.

 

Mexico gas protests create havoc at US border crossing

Protesters took control of vehicle lanes at one of the busiest crossings on the U.S. border Sunday to oppose Mexican gasoline price hikes, waving through motorists into Mexico after Mexican authorities abandoned their posts.

Motorists headed to Mexico zipped by about 50 demonstrators at the Otay Mesa port of entry connecting San Diego and Tijuana, many of them honking to show support. The demonstrators waved signs to protest gas hikes and air other grievances against the government of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Other protests closed southbound traffic for hours at the San Diego-Tijuana San Ysidro port of entry, the busiest crossing along the 2,000-mile border, and halted southbound traffic at one of two crossings in Nogales, Arizona. U.S. Customs and Border Protection and California Highway Patrol officers closed southbound Interstate 5 to block access to the San Ysidro crossing, diverting traffic several miles east to the Otay Mesa port of entry.

Inspections were normal for all travelers entering the U.S. from Mexico. CBP officials didn’t immediately respond to a request seeking more information about the impact of the protests.

The demonstrations, which are unrelated to the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, have disrupted Mexican border crossings for weeks. Earlier this month, police in the Mexican state of Sonora fought a pitched three-hour battle to free a border rail crossing at Nogales that had been blocked by people protesting the 20 percent nationwide hike in gasoline prices that took effect on New Year’s Day.

Only a small percentage of motorists entering Mexico from the U.S. are stopped for inspection under normal circumstances, but Sunday’s demonstration gave them an open invitation. Guns and cash from drug sales in the U.S. are often introduced to Mexico by car.

Protesters said Mexican customs officials retreated within minutes after they arrived at the Otay Mesa crossing. About two hours later, a Mexican soldier stood by, but there were few other signs of government presence.

“We’re exercising our right to free speech,” said Brenda Cortez, a 22-year-old college student from Tijuana. “It’s to make sure we are noticed.”

Opposing Trump Admin, When Documents Matter

Well we have quite an army of Marxists and progressives to watch in the next two years and it will be a full time job.

There are names such as:

Tom Steyer, David Brock, Obama, George Soros, Keith Ellison, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Van Jones, Gara LaMarche, CAIR, John Podesta, Valerie Jarrett, Elizabeth Warren, Donald Sussman and Bernie Sanders. There are of course more as one name leads to others and thousands of associated progressive organizations. Don’t be fooled that your job as a ‘Constitutional Originalist’ and conservative is over, that is hardly the case. We have already seen their mission in action.

 

So, why all this as a warning system?

 

For the full document as crafted for meeting in November of 2016: Progressive Orgs vs Trump

For what David Brock has planned, it is called impeachment and the documents are here. Confidential David Brock.

 

As reported by the Huffington Post, the progressives are re-tooling and are in it for the long game.

Here are five key elements of the concerted effort we must undertake to stop President-elect Trump from wreaking havoc on our communities, while building the alternative economic vision and power we need to win in the future.

First, we must wage sustained collective action. Within 24 hours of Trump’s victory, thousands of protestors had taken to the streets. Their statement was powerful and immediate. And it should be clear to every progressive that the next four years will require sustained collective action—and, often, action that means putting our bodies on the line to defend ourselves and others. Social movements from the abolitionists to the suffragettes to the civil rights movement to the immigrant rights movement have time and again changed the course of American history. Now we are called to come together again to demonstrate the moral dimension of the imminent attacks on immigrants, Muslims, women, LGBTQ people, indigenous people, and more.

This collective action will, and should, be led primarily by those who are directly affected by the dangerous rhetoric and proposals of Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell. But it will also require solidarity and engagement from all progressives—when called upon to stand with, and sometimes get arrested with, our brothers and sisters, those with privileges like whiteness, US citizenship, maleness, and economic security must be willing to put ourselves on the line. Hashtag solidarity will not suffice—nor will simply coming to a protest every few months after a particularly horrific event. Progressives need to show up—in person, and with regularity.

Those with financial resources will also need to open their wallets to help support grassroots efforts—whether it be philanthropists writing checks or middle- and working-class people giving monthly contributions to organizations that are building strong memberships to wage strategic campaigns.

Mass action should also be channeled out of, and into, existing social movement organizations as much as possible. Spontaneous “movement moments” like this week are inspiring and important. But to be effective in the medium and long term, they must build engagement and membership in grassroots organizations that can sustain mass action.

Second, we will need expert legislative maneuvering. The scariest ideas of Donald Trump and his alt-right idea factory will quickly become legislative proposals. Progressives will need to ensure that their champions, as well as courageous moderates, are prepared to use every tool at their disposal to prevent these reckless bills from becoming law. Many are rightly pointing to the tool of the filibuster in the Senate, which will be a critical tool for blocking legislation that will put communities in danger. And surely, there is no Democratic figure more critical than Charles Schumer, the leader of the Senate Democrats, right now. But there are myriad other parliamentary procedures at legislators’ disposal to slow down the legislative process—both to provide more time for public scrutiny and debate and to simply block dangerous ideas.

And progressive legislators and progressive organizations must use whatever openings they have to invite our communities into the process. This will, no doubt, include efforts to have constituents make phone calls and send emails to their legislators. But it needs to go further. Resistance on Capitol Hill must be rooted in the lived experiences of the people who Mr. Trump and his acolytes will attack. Progressive organizations and legislators must invite these people to be at the forefront of hearings and targeted actions.

And, where Republicans try to prevent these fora from emerging within the halls of Congress, progressives must create alternative fora outside formal committee hearings to elevate people’s stories. To re-frame the debate on issues like immigration from the toxic terms that Mr. Trump will seek to deploy, progressives must elevate the moving stories of our communities—and let our resistance emanate from there. Similarly, in response to the anti-worker agenda that is surely coming, progressives must put working-class and low-income people’s faces and experiences at the forefront of legislative resistance.
Third, progressives will need to flex our legal muscles and undertake aggressive litigation. The next four years will bring a torrent of attacks on civil liberties and basic rights that progressives hold dear. While mass action will be critical for changing the public conversation on policy debates and confronting lawmakers with the consequences of their votes, and legislative maneuvers (particularly in the Senate) will be critical for blocking the worst of Trump’s agenda, it will not be sufficient to prevent all of his bad ideas from becoming law.
Here, legal tools will be critical. Progressives must use all the tools at our disposal to challenge the legality of clearly unconstitutional proposals that will emerge from President-elect Trump’s White House, including the expansion of the surveillance and national security state that he will seek to deploy. Already, Anthony Romero of the American Civil Liberties Union has made this strategy clear, posting a statement titled, “If Donald Trump Implements His Proposed Policies, We’ll See Him in Court.” Other prominent progressive legal organizations are similarly girding themselves up for the fights ahead.
The legal path will, of course, be made more difficult by a Supreme Court that will almost certainly tilt conservative next year. But that does not make litigation less important. In recent years, progressives fought back successfully against the worst attempts by legislatures across the country to attack immigrants, women, and labor unions. Our side has some of the best legal minds in the country, and we need them now more than ever.
Fourth, progressives must play offense at the state and local level. We must avoid being on permanent defense. Particularly in states, cities, and counties controlled by Democrats, progressives must assert ourselves and show the promise of our ideals and the policies that stem from them. Part one of this strategy must be to protect those who are most vulnerable to the effects of Trump’s domestic policy agenda—immigrants, Muslims, women, and the poor. The litmus test of a truly progressive city, county, or state will be whether it develops a comprehensive strategy for protecting its people from an out-of-control immigration and law enforcement infrastructure and attacks on the social safety net that keeps millions of Americans alive.

But, to win the next decade, progressives must also articulate an alternative vision for our country. While we hold the line against an agenda framed as economic populism. This cannot be a Clintonian pitch to the “middle class,” which embraced much of neoliberal ideology and trusted technocrats to solve our economic problems. Instead, it must be rooted in a radical critique of power, a commitment to working-class and low-income people, and the dedication to use government as a vehicle for grassroots democracy.

In practice, that means policies that, for instance, rein in corporate power and the stranglehold of large corporations and the wealthy on our politics while empowering workers to assert their rights and police and criminal justice reform that protects the constitutional rights of all people while dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline. And it also means bold policy experimentation that deepens democracy by inviting residents into new participatory spaces with real decision-making that incentivize engagement. In the next four years, our municipalities and states must be vibrant laboratories for democracy and spaces from which we can begin to imagine a more inclusive economy—one that prioritizes the rights and needs of working-class people and offers a strengthened safety net that protects us all.

Fifth, we must build grassroots political power. As we take to the streets and organize, progressives must also plot a path forward to channel all of the incredible grassroots spirit of resistance into actual political power building. Part of that will be achieved through the work of building larger bases of membership in grassroots organizations across the country—particularly those with political arms that can endorse and support candidates who share our values. But it must also include a concerted effort to build the ranks of truly progressive candidates and elected officials—and more progressive party institutions.

Some have reflected in recent days about the need for the Democratic Party to reinvent itself. Surely, the Democrats must learn that part of the enthusiasm gap that plagued the Clinton candidacy stemmed from the failure to articulate a vision that highlighted how our system has failed working people, how we must take on the role of big money, how we must invite people back to democracy at every level instead of relying on a neoliberal technocracy, and how black lives must be at the center of our politics.

Others are reflecting on the need to challenge the two-party system in this country. On this front, the best source of hope is the Working Families Party (WFP), which now operates across ten states and the District of Columbia and lent considerable grassroots muscle to the remarkable candidacy of Bernie Sanders. In states like New York, the WFP has identified, cultivated, and bolstered progressive stars running for office at every level of government—from town councilmembers to county legislators to the Mayor of our nation’s largest city. Growth in the geographic reach, membership, and resources of the WFP will be critical for continuing to build this leadership pipeline and holding Democrats accountable to the truly progressive vision that we need to win the next decade.

One key battleground for this political fight will be the issue of voting rights. On the national level and in red states, we will see concerted efforts to restrict access to the ballot for communities of color, immigrants, and low-income people. We must defend against this wherever it occurs—through all of the tactics mentioned above. But progressives must also go on offense where we can to expand suffrage and make registering to vote and casting a ballot as easy as possible. This is intrinsically the right thing to do. It will also prove instrumentally valuable, as we seek to build progressive political power.

Finally, it bears mention that some of these tactics may bear a resemblance to those that conservatives have deployed over the past decade—after all, litigation and legislative obstructionism have been the hallmark of efforts to block President Obama’s agenda since 2009. But there is a key difference: our way forward will, and must, be rooted in radical empathy—that is, a commitment to try to put ourselves in the shoes of others who are under attack. Put differently, radical empathy in this context means that we understand attacks on the lives and livelihoods of others as attacks on ourselves. It means that we will put our bodies and our professional lives on the line to protect our neighbors and their families.

Such empathy also means listening to and understanding the pain and alienation in communities across the country that tilted towards Donald Trump—especially white working-class people who voted for him because they have seen their livelihoods crumble and come to conclude that the system is rigged against them. Progressives must, of course, forcefully call out hatred and the attacks on our communities that will become a fixture of the next four years, and there is a moral imperative to prioritize the safety and well-being of those communities under imminent threat of attack. But we must also seek to understand those whose votes have endangered us—and, where possible, both listen actively to, and articulate a vision that can build bridges to them.

There are no shortcuts to diffusing the worst of what a Trump presidency could become. The next four years will undoubtedly bring intense fear and pain for people around this country. Many progressives feel right now like they are in the wilderness, and that we may be there for some time. But if we can respond strategically to this moment—and harness our capacity for collective action, legislative maneuvering, and aggressive litigation to block as much of the Trump agenda possible, while identifying opportunities to make local and state progress and building our political muscle—then we can still win the next decade.

Hey Trump Meet America Under Siege 2017

Add outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry who will not be attending and not providing a reason. Further, in Barack Obama’s last White House press briefing, he refused to comment on his thoughts as to those in his party that will not be attending.

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In his final press conference as president on Wednesday, Barack Obama declined to comment on the growing list of Democrats who are refusing to attend President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Friday

FOX News’ Kevin Corke asked the 44th president if he supports the dozens of Democratic lawmakers who have vowed to boycott Trump’s inauguration.

“With respect to the inauguration, I’m not going to comment on those issues,” Obama responded. “All I know is I’m going to be there, so is Michelle.”

First lady Michelle Obama seemed to indicate her support for Rep. John Lewis, who is one of the most prominent lawmakers boycotting the inauguration, when she sent a tweet calling him a “great leader” on Monday. More here.

Related reading: A.N.S.W.E.R. Sued over Free Speech Space on Inauguration

Related reading: Here Are All the Members of Congress Who Are Boycotting Trump’s Inauguration — and Why

 

Protesters host ‘Queer Dance Party’ in front of Mike Pence’s DC home

Threats of Attacks on Jewish Centers a Growing Trend

Security Expert: Threats Against US Jewish Institutions Part of ‘Unfortunate Growing Trend’

Email a copy of “Security Expert: Threats Against US Jewish Institutions Part of ‘Unfortunate Growing Trend’” to a friend

The Jewish Community Center in Manhattan. Photo: Team Boerum via Wikimedia Commons.

The Jewish Community Center in Manhattan. Photo: Team Boerum via Wikimedia Commons.

The bomb threats received by more than a dozen Jewish community centers across the US on Monday — leading to evacuations at some of them — were part of an “unfortunate growing trend,” an international security consultant and political risk analyst told The Algemeiner.

“There has been an increase in non-profit organizations — both Jewish and not — receiving these types of bomb threats, whether through robocalls or other telephonic means,” Dr. Joshua Gleis, president of Gleis Security Consulting, said.

One reason for this, according to Gleis, is technology.

‘Despicable’ Antisemitic Cyber Attack at Tennessee Campus Outrages Jewish Student Community

The Jewish community at Vanderbilt University in Nashville expressed “outrage” at the “despicable” cyber attack on campus, causing some of…

“It’s very easy today to anonymously make phone calls,” he noted. “Law enforcement cannot always find out where they are coming from.”

The perpetrators, Gleis said, might “just be looking to sow fear in the community.”

“But another concern, which is more sinister, is that it is not just to create panic and fear, but really, God forbid, to see how different organizations respond and then potentially attack them while they’re responding — for example attack them while they are evacuating, where they could be potentially more vulnerable because now there are hundreds of people outside,” he added.

Evacuating a threatened building, Gleis pointed out, might not always be the best move.

“You have to start to think like a bad guy,” he said. “Why are they calling in a bomb threat and should you in fact evacuate as a knee-jerk reaction? Often times the case is no. By not evacuating, you’re not exposing yourself to other potential threats — such as an active shooter or vehicular ramming outside. It doesn’t mean that you never evacuate, it just means there are specific times when you would evacuate, but much of the time — like on Monday when the threats were non-specific — you should not. Terrorists today who are looking to target Jews tend not to give them a heads-up beforehand.”

Another concern, Gleis said, is that the threats could be a diversionary tactic.

“All these times these things are making the news and nothing is happening,” he said. “They might do it again and draw all the law enforcement response to one place and hit another location, or just get people so attuned to assuming that it’s nothing that eventually they just ignore the threats and eventually there ends up being one that is serious and it is ignored.”

In general, in Gleis’ view, Jewish institutions “do not have proper security measures in place yet — be it a combination of proper training for staff, well-trained security guards and different target-hardening measures. Many are against doing so — not necessarily JCCs, but Jewish non-profits in general.”

“Unfortunately, we live in a time when we do need security and we have to be thinking about these things,” Gleis said. “And I actually think that by doing these things and being pro-active, instead of creating fear and panic, it actually does the opposite. To me, knowledge is power. So the more you can train yourself and understand how to better protect yourself, the safer you’re going to feel ultimately.”

Michael Feinstein — the president and CEO of the Bender JCC of Greater Washington, which was among the JCCs that received threats on Monday — told The Algemeiner that a review of security procedures was underway in the wake of the incident.

“I don’t know if it will lead to changes,” he said. “JCCs balance being open and welcoming with providing for the safety and security of our members and participants. We feel that currently we have the right procedures in place. We are always learning and seeking to improve what we do. External forces may require us to change what we do.”

Feinstein said he believed Monday was the first time ever that the Bender JCC — which opened in 1969 — had received a bomb threat.

“The possibility of a serious security incident is one of the things I lose sleep over,” he said. “There seems to be a recent uptick in hate speech and hate crimes. In our local area, there have been a number of instances involving antisemitic symbols. All of these actions seem to be intended to cause fear and disruption. We need to be vigilant in adhering to our security procedures and emergency response plans.”

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There is history of this….

Honor Alberto Nisman’s sacrifice by continuing his probe of Iran

On Jan. 18, 2015, Argentine terrorism prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found dead with a gunshot wound to his head in what was almost certainly murder, not suicide. Whoever murdered him didn’t just want to kill him but rather his body of work. They wanted to bury the revelations he was about to make the very next day in front of the country’s Congress.

Nisman was in charge of investigating the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center that killed 85 people, making it Argentina’s deadliest terrorist attack. He assembled compelling evidence against senior Iranian officials whom he accused of masterminding the bombing. In 2007, on the basis of evidence compiled by Nisman, Interpol issued red notices for five Iranian officials. These red notices, akin to international arrest warrants, remain a black mark on their reputation.

In the case he was due to present in person to Congress, Nisman revealed other devastating evidence, this time against Argentina’s then-president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Nisman had legally secured thousands of wiretaps of Kirchner allies, Foreign Minister Hector Timerman and Iranian agents operating in Argentina. Nisman said the wiretaps and other evidence proved Kirchner was plotting to find a way to lift the red notices and buy immunity for the Iranian officials he held responsible for the AMIA attack in exchange for expanded trade with Argentina.

Nisman’s exhaustive investigations also found that Iran used its embassies, mosques and cultural centers to radicalize and recruit from the local population.

While Nisman’s death precluded him from presenting his accusations to the Congress, and Kirchner supporters spent almost two years deliberately keeping the complaint from being investigated in the courts, this month an Argentine court agreed to open an investigation into the allegations he assembled.

Some of the wiretaps discussed fabricating “new evidence” that would have been presented to a joint Iran-Argentina “truth commission” that Kirchner had negotiated with Iran purportedly to jointly investigate the AMIA bombing. Nisman believed the truth commission, part of a 2013 Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries, was a mechanism to whitewash Iran’s role in the AMIA attack. The memorandum was found to be unconstitutional before anything moved forward.

According to one account, one of those heard on the wiretaps, a Kirchner supporter, discussed inventing a culprit for the AMIA bombing.

“They want to construct a new enemy of the AMIA, someone new to be responsible,” he said. The blame would be placed on a “group of local fascists.”

Mauricio Macri, who was elected president of Argentina in late 2015, has distanced himself from Iran’s malign activities and taken constructive steps to investigate Nisman’s death. Macri is continuing the investigation into the AMIA bombing.

While opening an investigation into Nisman’s allegations is an important step forward that could prove determinative, it’s unclear whether Argentina’s judicial system will operate without a high degree of politicized partiality. Politics and the justice system remain closely aligned in Argentina, which the World Economic Forum ranked 121st out of 138 countries when it comes to judicial independence. Macri has an opportunity to reform the judicial system as he has begun to do for other parts of the government.

The investigation will have regional repercussions, as Argentina is not the lone target of Iranian penetration in the hemisphere.

In Peru, a Hezbollah operative, Mohammad Hamdar, is on trial. Authorities found bombmaking material and hundreds of photos of high-value Israeli and Jewish targets in his home. Hamdar and his new wife reportedly received money from Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy, to stage their wedding. Hamdar was designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as being a member of Hezbollah’s External Security Organization.

In Venezuela, President Nicholas Maduro recently named Tareck El Aissami to be his vice president. El Aissami is known for his ties to Hezbollah and Iran’s revolutionaries, and reportedly used his previous positions to supply fake Venezuelan passports to Syrian terrorists and drug smugglers.

These and other examples show how Iran views Latin America as a target-rich region for its revolution and should send red flags throughout the hemisphere.

Argentina and the United States can benefit from lessons learned from Nisman’s work.

First, Iran reportedly continues to seek the removal of the AMIA-related red notices. While Argentina must take the lead, the U.S. should support the effort to ensure the red notices are renewed by Interpol when they are up for review in November. There should be no statute of limitations on murder.

Second, the U.S. should support a transparent investigation into Nisman’s death. In addition to recent death threats to the prosecutor investigating Nisman’s apparent assassination, the crime scene has been compromised. Moreover, there has been evidence tampering in both the murder case and the AMIA investigation itself. Macri should have a zero-tolerance policy for this scheme and punish those who have engaged in it.

Tehran’s Argentine agents, such as those heard on the wiretaps, have not been tried or punished. Presumably their nefarious activities continue unfettered. Argentina should monitor their activities and hold them accountable.

Finally, the U.S. government should update the report mandated by the Countering Iran in the Western Hemisphere Act of 2012. General John Kelly, the nominee to become the head of the Department of Homeland Security, understands the challenge and noted that “Iran is willing to leverage criminal groups to carry out its objectives in the U.S. homeland.”

Along with ensuring an impartial examination of his final investigation, heeding the lessons from Nisman’s lifelong work will be a critical element of our national security.

A.N.S.W.E.R. Sued over Free Speech Space on Inauguration

The biggest protest site at the Presidential Inauguration on Jan. 20 will be Navy Memorial!

 The Navy Memorial stage will feature leaders from every grassroots movement — immigrant rights, labor, environmental justice, women’s rights, Movement for Black Lives, LGBTQ equality, anti-war and others — as well as progressive leaders from the whole spectrum of faith communities. Artists, musicians and DJs will be performing throughout the day.

Pennsylvania Ave. NW between 7th & 9th
28-foot stage • Big sound system
Speakers from across the grassroots movement!

Days Before Trump Inauguration, D.C. Circuit OKs Limits on Protests

Donald-Trump-Illustration

Mauro/Law: Just three days before the presidential inauguration, a federal appeals court panel on Tuesday ruled that allotting parts of the parade route to the official Presidential Inaugural Committee does not violate the free speech rights of protesters who want to use the same space to demonstrate.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected the notion that the regulation granting priority space to the inauguration committee amounted to viewpoint discrimination, instead asserting that it was “a reasonable time, place, and manner regulation of the use of a public forum.”

Judge Nina Pillard authored the opinion for the panel, which included Judges Sri Srinivasan and Patricia Millett. All three were appointed by President Barack Obama.

The ruling came in A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition v. Basham, a suit that had its roots in the 2013 inauguration. The acronym stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism. The court panel heard arguments in November.

The group wanted to demonstrate in Freedom Plaza, a high-visibility park area on Pennsylvania Avenue that has been the locale for demonstrations of all kinds for years. The regulation governing the inaugural parade allots 13 percent of footage on the parade route to the official inaugural committee, including space for bleachers on Freedom Plaza. The rest of the space is available on a first-come-first-serve basis to individuals and organizations, with certain restrictions.

Giving the bleacher space to the official committee, the protest group claimed, violated the First Amendment by preferring the government’s message over others.

But the panel disagreed. “The First Amendment requires that any reasonable, content-neutral regulation limiting expression along the parade route leave ample space available for peaceful demonstrations,” the panel asserted. “The First Amendment does not, however, support ANSWER’s claim of a right to displace spectator bleachers with its own demonstration at Freedom Plaza.”

Because the inaugural committee is the organizer of the event, the panel agreed, giving it priority space “turns not on the content of any speech, but on the desirability of providing to the Inaugural Committee as the event organizer a limited amount of reserved seating for ticketed spectators.”

The National Park Service and the Secret Service defended the regulation in part by arguing that the allotment of parade-route space amounted to government speech, which is largely immune from First Amendment scrutiny. The court said it was not necessary to rule on that point.

In the ruling Pillard also celebrated the right to protest in public places. “One of the great accomplishments of our Constitution is its guarantee of the people’s right to take to the streets to say what they think.”

*** More on A.N.S.W.E.R.:

ANSWER has played an important role in the fight against racist and religious profiling, in support of immigrant and workers’ rights, and for economic and social justice for all. Our members are engaged in a range of struggles, from the local battles against police brutality to the international campaigns against militarism and war.

ANSWER Chapters are organizing in cities and towns throughout the United States connecting the flight for social justice at home and in opposition to war and occupation abroad.

Below is a listing of major events in ANSWER’s history

Tens of thousands march on the White House for Gaza

Tens of thousands from across the country gathered in Washington, D.C. for a national march against the U.S.-backed Israeli massacre in Gaza

Thousands nationwide take part in Sept. 7 protests against war on Syria

On Sept. 7, just before Congress returns from its summer recess to decide whether or not to bomb Syria, demonstrations were held in cities across the country against another war