Though the U.S. contains less than 5 percent of the world’s population, it confines nearly 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Furthermore, as of 2008 it had 2.3 million in jails and prisons, according to the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College, London.

Reducing the population in the Monroe County jail is the goal of a local, grassroots organization, Decarcerate Monroe County (DMC). In its own words, DMC “is a local coalition challenging the belief that cages, coercion and confinement keep our community safe. DMC believes people are safe when they have their basic needs met and when they feel empowered and free.”

Peace & Justice News is a collection of news items collected by Bloomington Alternative contributor Linda Greene. Today's edition includes:

• Global education strike planned for the fall
• Surveillance of citizens with automatic license plate recognition cameras
• Drone use inside the United States
• Feminist punk band Pussy Riot on trial in Russia
• Pfizer bribing foreign physicians to hike sales
• Cutting funding for nuclear weapons
• Cuba lifts ban on anti-Castro musicians on the radio
• Women farm workers win sexual harassment case
• British workers in solidarity with trade unionists in Turkey
• Expulsion from school for pregnancy

While Mitt Romney trips over his tongue with hysterical predictability and Barack Obama persists in calling America's economic criminal class folks, the two leading progressive candidates for president are putting it on the line, in Dr. Jill Stein's case boldly crossing it.

Less than a month after securing the Green Party nomination, Stein emerged from a Philadelphia jail on Aug. 2 declaring that a night behind bars should be "a required experience for anyone in public office." Both she and running mate Cheri Honkala were arrested the day before for protesting foreclosure policies at a Fannie Mae office on the city's Banker's Row.

And in a lengthy Q&A with The Nation's Sasha Abramsky, Justice Party candidate Rocky Anderson called the Democratic Party "irredeemable" and Obama a "phony" on the issue of gay marriage.

"His position on equality was evolving?" the former Democratic mayor of Salt Lake City asked incredulously.
 

Peace & Justice News is a collection of news items collected by Bloomington Alternative contributor Linda Greene. Today's edition includes:

• Indiana’s Camp Atterbury one of 64 U.S. drone bases
• Vote for Hyatt as the country’s worst hotel employer
• Congressional opponents of women’s health attacking again
• Happy 50^th to Walmart
• Global elite evades taxes to the tune of $21 trillion
• Most minimum-wage workers at large, profitable companies
• New Israeli ship operates without people on board
• Petition demanding troop withdrawal from Afghanistan now
• Judge prevents closure of Mississippi’s last abortion clinic
• Activist arrested near White House for protesting hemp ban

Peace & Justice News is a collection of news items collected by Bloomington Alternative contributor Linda Greene. Today's edition includes:

• 2012 likely to be journalists’ deadliest year so far
• Protestors charged with third-degree riot for defending house from foreclosure
• Aid for Haitian earthquake victims goes to build hotels
• Facts about inequality in the U.S.
• Community-labor alliance spurs unionization effort
• War Resister confined to sanctuary of Canadian church
• Military recruiting troops through motorsports marketing
• Texas Wal-Mart becomes nation’s largest single-story library
• Chinese Apple workers undergoing superexploitation
• Torture in CIA 'black site' secret prison in Poland

Peace & Justice News is a collection of news items collected by Bloomington Alternative contributor Linda Greene. Today's edition includes:

• Chinese labor leader Li Wangyang: suicide or murder?
• Antiwar feelings high among vets of recent wars
• Victory for reproductive justice in the House of Representatives
• U.S. military patrolling American streets
• A win for Brooklyn Bridge arrestees filing a class action suit
• Drones used over U.S. to be weaponized
• TIAA-CREF’s role in the Israeli occupation
• Working Families Party victorious in Oregon primary
• Lawsuit against State of California for use of solitary confinement
• Arson at Miami travel agency that arranges trips to Cuba

• Living well without God
• Animal rights activist plaintiff in First Amendment case
• Military spending, taxes unending
• Help end 21 years of solitary confinement for prisoner
• Single-payer health care can save $570 billion
• Mali union activist Tiecoura Traore visits the U.S.
• If you have a large student loan debt, it’s your fault
• 43rd Venceremos Brigade to leave for Cuba
• Corporations profiteering on women’s health
• Rio Tinto supports Olympic Summer Games, locks out workers

The Kinsey Institute chose not to dignify minister Douglas Wilson with a protest when he gave a talk in Bloomington described as a two-part lecture called "Sexual by Design," the first half Creation Sexuality and the second Redemption Sexuality. His April 13 speech in IU's Woodburn Hall included a commentary on Alfred Kinsey's ideas and activities.

Though the Kinsey Institute chose silence as the appropriate response to Wilson's presence in Bloomington, IU students and members of the larger community thought Wilson's views were too repulsive and dangerous to ignore. About 75 people gathered outside Woodburn Hall with signs lauding diversity and condemning hate, with some wearing "Out and Proud" buttons and either carrying or wearing rainbow flags, the symbols of LGBTQ liberation. The group walked over to nearby Ballantine Hall, where Wilson spoke.

Last November's pepper-spray attack on nonviolent University of California Davis (UCD) students resulted from poor leadership and lack of communication among campus police authorities and university leaders, according to a University of California task force report released on April 11. The report condemned the actions of the campus police officers and their use of excessive force against student demonstrators.

According to an April 11 KTVU article, Lt. John Pike and other campus police authorities who doused a line of seated student protesters with pepper spray used canisters larger than campus police officers were authorized and trained to utilize. The incident drew widespread public condemnation, and many called for UCD Chancellor Linda Katehi's resignation. The report provided findings about the incident along with a set of recommendations to prevent future clashes.

"Our overriding conclusion can be stated briefly and explicitly," wrote former California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso and the report's co-authors, according to an April 11 Chicago Tribune article. "The pepper-spraying incident that took place on Nov. 18, 2011, should and could have been prevented."

Poverty is increasing worldwide, but it doesn't affect everyone with the same intensity: it hits women and children hardest.

In response to dire poverty faced by women around the world, the People's Movement Assembly launched the World Courts of Women on Poverty, to be held this spring in four U.S. cities -- Oakland, Louisville, Detroit and Philadelphia.