For immediate release:

Prominent activists, hundreds of groups urge U.N. to champion a global ban, call fracking a climate and human rights disaster

New York, NY – On the eve of international youth-led climate strikes and next week’s United Nations Climate Change Summit, nearly 500 grassroots groups, faith communities, celebrities, activists and organizations from across the world are calling on the United Nations to endorse a worldwide ban on fracking.

Actors Mark Ruffalo, Emma Thompson and Amber Heard, authors and activists Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, Karenna Gore and Wenonah Hauter, fashion icons Vivienne Westwood and Joe Corré, human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson, iconic childrens’ singer Raffi, climate experts Dr. Robert Howarth and Dr. Sandra Steingraber, and nearly 500 grassroots groups sent an open letter to U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres stating that the “continued production, trade and use of fracked hydrocarbons for energy, petrochemicals and plastics torpedoes our global efforts to tackle climate change and violates basic human rights.”

The seven members of the Kings Bay Plowshares received a notice of hearing June 4 answering their request for an oral argument before District Court Judge Lisa Wood. The seven are ordered to be in Brunswick, GA in U.S. District Court on August 7 at 10 a.m.

Today, June 15, 2018, is a depressing milestone in the long history of U.S. detention at Guantánamo Bay. Today the Guantánamo prison, set up after the 9/11 attacks, has been open for 6,000 days.

Most of the men held at Guantánamo over the last 6,000 days (16 years, five months and four days) have been held without charge or trial, in defiance of international laws and treaties governing the treatment of prisoners. There are only two acceptable ways to deprive an individual of their liberty: either as a criminal suspect, to be tried in a federal court; or as a prisoner of war, held unmolested until the end of hostilities. The men at Guantánamo are neither. Instead, after 9/11, the Bush administration conceived of a novel category of prisoner — one without any rights whatsoever — and implemented this at Guantánamo.

For immediate release:

Human Rights Activists to Protest Trump’s Order to Keep Guantanamo Open in Grand Central Station, Thursday 2/1 @ Noon
What:  Demonstration/vigil to Protest Trump’s Guantanamo Policy
Where:Main Terminal, Grand Central Terminal
When:  Noon, Thursday, February 1

A protest rally and press conference are scheduled for 6:00pm, Tuesday May 9, 2017 at the entrance of the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum Complex, Pier 86, W. 46 St. and 12 Ave., NY, NY 10036, to address the museum's solicitation and then rejection for its new “Drones” exhibit of a display of quilts commemorating those killed by U.S. drone attacks. The display, which has appeared across the U.S. and internationally, is organized by retired Navy Commander Leah Bolger, who served 20 years of active duty and is a former president of Veterans For Peace.