Portside

Pete Seeger, folk singer and activist for peace, civil rights, labor rights and the environment, left us just two years ago - January 27, 2014. Recently, Seeger's FBI file has been released. Included in the file is Pete's correspondence with Victor Grossman. The Editors of The Volunteer, founded by the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, asked Grossman if he had any recollections of Pete's visit to East Berlin in 1967. Here's his story.

Like almost all 11th hour FBI terror busts, the only thing the media has to go off is a DOJ criminal complaint that’s released to the press. Statements from the accused or their lawyer very rarely reach the public. And the criminal complaint and FBI press release are framed to deliberately deceive the media.

He first became a target of government snoops merely because he was upset about a racist and unconstitutional idea and, as a private citizen, wrote a letter about it.

With the US government pressing for prison and deportation, Palestinian activist Rasmea Odeh needs our solidarity now more than ever.

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The case, filed in 2002, was the first broad legal challenge to the policies and practices that swept hundreds of mostly Muslim men into detention on immigration violations in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. The defendants include John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, and Robert S. Mueller III, the former F.B.I. director. Orders came from officials at the highest levels of government. Now we have the chance to ensure that they are held accountable.

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The FBI's practice of falsely testifying to guilt based on pseudo scientific "hair comparisons" has lead to a mass disaster of false convictions – at least hundreds of cases. Now begins the "herculean effort to right the wrongs."

Billie Holiday had been effectively murdered by a conspiracy to break her, orchestrated by the narcotics police - but what could she do? At Billie's funeral, there were swarms of police cars, because they feared their actions against her would trigger a riot. In his eulogy for her, the Reverend Eugene Callender said: 'We should not be here. This young lady was gifted by her creator with tremendous talent . . . She should have lived to be at least eighty years old.'