Omaha NE October 7, 2009 - Meatpacking remains “one of the most dangerous jobs in America,” according to a Lincoln nonprofit group, citing its survey in which packinghouse workers reported higher injury rates than official statistics.

Of 455 workers surveyed, 62 percent reported being injured in the previous year, according to the Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest.

Nebraska, October 13 - Credit Nebraska Appleseed for perseverance in its effort to improve working conditions in the state's meatpacking plants.

Appleseed, a nonprofit public law center in Lincoln, has been pushing for improvements in the meatpacking industry for more than a decade.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a favorite tool of prosecutors in immigration cases, ruling unanimously that a federal identity-theft law may not be used against many illegal workers who used false Social Security numbers to get jobs.

The question in the case was whether workers who use fake identification numbers to commit some other crimes must know they belong to a real person to be subject to a two-year sentence extension for “aggravated identity theft.”

The answer, the Supreme Court said, is yes.

Letter Published in The New York Times on February 5, 2009

To the Editor:

“Another Jail Death, and Mounting Questions” (news article, Jan. 28) reports yet another detainee death in a facility that contracts with the federal government to hold immigrants facing deportation.

On Jan. 16, you reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials had ordered an end to their contract with a Rhode Island detention facility where Hiu Lui Ng, a computer engineer from China, died last year.

MINNEAPOLIS, Jan 30 - On June 24, 2007, Douglas Johnson from Minneapolis sat at a dinner in Washington, D.C.'s, historic Tabard Inn, brainstorming strategies for stopping coercive interrogation tactics the White House had authorized in the name of fighting terror.

No point in mincing words. They were talking about torture.

On Jan. 22 this year, President Obama sat a few blocks from the scene of that dinner and signed an executive order banning the interrogation tactics at issue.

Many Americans know the arc of the events leading up to Obama's order. But few know the behind-the-scenes work it took to build support that would help the new president end a practice which had bitterly divided the nation.

By Douglas Johnson,
Executive Director of the Center for Victims of Torture (Minneapolis), a member of the Midwest Coalition for Human Rights.

In his inaugural speech, President Barack Obama spoke of the "false choice between our safety and our ideals." These words were a subtle but important signal that monumental policy change would be coming in regard to U.S. interrogation rules.

Just two days later we saw those words put into action with Obama's signing of the executive order "Ensuring Lawful Interrogation" — along with  two others that ordered a systemic review of detention policies and the closing of  the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay within a year.

Dodging 'moral responsibility'  

CHICAGO, Dec 22 - After five years of fighting to keep Chicago Police torture cases from being reopened, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is seeking to shift responsibility for a handful of the remaining cases to the Cook County state's attorney's office.

In a court motion filed earlier this month, Madigan's chief deputy, Alan Rosen, said the office was willing to continue on eight cases on which it had already invested considerable effort but asked that responsibility for five other cases be returned to State's Attorney Anita Alvarez.

DAYTON, Oct 10 - University of Dayton President Daniel J. Curran will become the first president of a U.S. Catholic university to sign a national petition calling for the president to reject cruelty and torture.

"As a Catholic, Marianist University, we affirm the statement of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that the use of torture must be rejected as fundamentally incompatible with the dignity of the human person and ultimately counterproductive in combatting terrorism," Curran said.

FREMONT, Jul. 31 - A proposed ordinance targeting illegal immigration in Fremont may be dead, but the discussion of the problems fueling the debate is just getting under way, say those involved in the issue.

Fremont Mayor Don “Skip’’ Edwards cast the deciding vote late Tuesday night against a proposal that would have banned renting to, harboring and hiring illegal immigrants.

Opponents and supporters found much to disagree on in the public debate in recent weeks. But those on both sides of the issue agreed Wednesday the issue needs attention.

“We know we have a problem,’’ Edwards said. “That has never been debated.’’

More than 20 years after being tortured into giving confessions by Chicago police officers, dozens of black men remain behind bars.

Michael Tillman was 20, with a 3-year-old daughter and an infant son, when he was brought into the Area 2 police station on Chicago's South Side for questioning. His mother, Jean Tillman, says that although he had gotten into some trouble with the law as a youngster, he had been on the straight-and-narrow, working as a janitor and paying his bills, since he and his girlfriend had their first child. That was July 22, 1986.

He hasn't been home since.