I recently supported a cause that means a lot to me. If you're able, please consider contributing to help someone facing unimaginable challenges. Every little bit helps. Please share! https://t.co/HMkgmVqAPu
Excited to announce today that we have closed on the old State Farm campus in East Tulsa and will repurpose it as the @cityoftulsagov new public safety center!
For years, public safety leadership has been asked to worked in crumbling facilities. The water in Police HQ that comes out of the tap is brown. In Fire HQ, they have to abandon their building any time water gets too high in the Arkansas River because it is in a flood plain. Same for the facility that maintains our fire trucks. And Tulsa Area Emergency Management - the team that leads our response to natural disasters - works out of a moldy basement with unreliable heating and air.
I know that if my fellow Tulsans - who love our first responders - had seen these conditions firsthand they would’ve been as embarrassed and outraged as the City Council and I were. Thanks to voters who approved Improve Our Tulsa last summer, these conditions will be a thing of the past.
Our new Public Safety Center will bring together those who keep us safe for better collaboration in better working conditions: @TulsaFire HQ; @TulsaPolice Department HQ; Tulsa Police Mingo Valley Division; Tulsa Area Emergency Management; and City Medical will all be relocated to this center. Additionally, the City will build a modern maintenance facility for Fire trucks and Police cruisers.
All of this to say: thank you Tulsa for supporting the men and women who keep our city safe!
"Declassified British files highlight a little known aspect of the joint MI6/CIA coup against Iran’s democratically elected government in August 1953 – UK covert action in support of leading radical Shia Islamists, the predecessors of Ayatollah Khomeini."
Today, because of the efforts of so many, I can announce that we have identified the first 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre victim since we began our search for them five years ago.
From the very beginning, at the forefront of this search have been the victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. While this search is important for many reasons, at the most human level for every person who has worked on this effort we just wanted to find these victims and reunite their remains with their families.
I committed the City from the outset to follow the truth wherever it led us, and at each step we have followed the guidance of technical experts to determine what we should do. And those steps have been many.
The process to date has included:
*Historical research to identify sites
*Geophysical work to narrow scope
*Core sampling to test sites
*Test excavations to test sites
*Excavation
*Forensic analysis in the field
*Forensic analysis in the lab
*DNA extraction and testing
*DNA genealogical connections
For Burial #3, that long line of testing and refining evidence led researchers to a letter, written in 1936 by an attorney on behalf of his client who was seeking Veterans benefits. That letter was from C.L. Daniel’s mother, confirming he died in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
C.L. Daniel was a veteran who served our country in World War I, who was killed in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, and whose family did not know where he had been buried for the last 103 years - until this week. When I read that letter, as a parent, I can’t help but think about Mrs. Daniel who knew her son had been killed but never knew what became of his remains.
Identifying Mr. Daniel’s remains has been, candidly, an emotionally powerful experience for every person on our team. It makes every challenging day of this search worth it. But it is also important in the larger context of the search.
His remains show no signs of gunshot wounds. They were identified purely due to the expertise of our team of experts, and give us hope that other remains found in similar circumstances could be those of other victims.
We also have documented evidence that there are at least 17 other victims buried in Oaklawn Cemetery. So this identification affirms our need to continue this search with the knowledge that identification and reunification is possible.
I want to express Tulsa’s profound gratitude to everyone who brought us to today - from the local historians and the leaders who developed the 2001 State Commission Report to our team of experts, who are pouring their hearts and minds into this search today.
I want to thank my colleagues on the Tulsa City Council and the citizens of Tulsa for continuing to fund this search. There have been times when, as I’ve said, it felt like we were searching for a needle in a pile of needles. But today, I hope this generation of Tulsans can appreciate that you helped this family find their relative after he was missing for 103 years.
https://t.co/ooKPaFQjLU
When you donate some of your mental wealth to others then you are multiplying optimism by a scale factor of 10, supersizing hope and jumboizing positivity. Read more in my blog below:
https://t.co/YaiI9tSmFf
After years of accusing Julian Assange of hacking, of doing something different to journalism, the plea deal's agreed facts state that the case was about receiving and publishing info from a source: journalism.
Julian’s lawyers reveal the twists and turns behind the freedom deal
12 years ago I carried the Olympic Torch for the London 2012 Olympic Games. I was nominated for my fundraising I did for cancer charities. This is me flanked by security on my approach to the next handover to the ice stadium and passing the flame to Torvill and Dean, Olympic champion ice skaters. I did this after my first Stage IV head and neck cancer illness, got myself fit again and proved 'em wrong! I milked every second of it!
Barry Pollack, US attorney for Julian Assange speaking at a press conference today following the WikiLeaks founder and publishers return home to Australia: "The case is over"
JULIAN ASSANGE IS FREE
Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK.
This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations. This created the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalised. We will provide more information as soon as possible.
After more than five years in a 2x3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a day, he will soon reunite with his wife Stella Assange, and their children, who have only known their father from behind bars.
WikiLeaks published groundbreaking stories of government corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful accountable for their actions. As editor-in-chief, Julian paid severely for these principles, and for the people's right to know.
As he returns to Australia, we thank all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom.
Julian's freedom is our freedom.
[More details to follow]
SAIPAN (AP) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will appear in court Wednesday to plead guilty to a felony for publishing U.S. military secrets under a deal that will set him free to return home to Australia after years holed up and imprisoned while fighting extradition to America.
The hearing, which will take place in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Pacific, is the stunning culmination of the U.S. government’s yearslong pursuit of the publisher who has been painted both as a hero and a reckless criminal for exposing hundreds of thousands of sensitive military documents.
A private jet carrying Assange is expected to land in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, ahead of the hearing, where Assange is expected to plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defense information.
The U.S. Justice Department agreed to hold the hearing on the remote island because Assange opposed coming to the continental U.S. and because it’s near Australia, where he will return after he enters his plea.
The deal — disclosed Monday night in court papers — represents the final chapter in a more than decade-long legal odyssey over the fate of the eccentric computer expert, whose hugely popular secret-sharing website made him a cause célèbre among press freedom advocates who said he acted as a journalist to expose U.S. military wrongdoing. U.S. prosecutors have said his actions recklessly put the country’s national security at risk.
Though the deal with prosecutors requires Assange to admit guilt to a single felony count, it also allows him to avoid spending any time in an American prison. He will get credit for the five years he has already spent in a high-security British prison while fighting extradition to the U.S. to face charges. Before being locked up in London, Assange spent years hiding out in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault, which he has denied. The abrupt conclusion enables both sides to claim a degree of success, with the Justice Department able to resolve without trial a case that raised thorny legal issues and that might never have reached a jury at all given the plodding pace of the extradition process.
Last month, Assange won the right to appeal an extradition order after his lawyers argued that the U.S. government provided “blatantly inadequate” assurances that he would have the same free speech protections as an American citizen if extradited from Britain.
His wife, Stella Assange, told the BBC from Australia that it had been “touch and go” over 72 hours whether the deal would go ahead but she felt “elated” at the news. A lawyer who married the WikiLeaks founder in prison in 2022, she said details of the agreement would be made public once the judge had signed off on it.
“He will be a free man once it is signed off by a judge,” she said, adding that she still didn’t think it was real. Assange on Monday left the London prison, where he has spent the last five years, after being granted bail during a secret hearing last week. He boarded a plane that landed hours later in Bangkok to refuel before taking off again toward Saipan. A video posted by WikiLeaks on X, showed Assange staring intently out the window at the blue sky as the plane headed toward the island.
“Imagine. From over 5 years in a small cell in a maximum security prison. Nearly 14 years detained in the UK. To this,” WikiLeaks wrote. The top Australian diplomat in the United Kingdom accompanied Assange on the flight.
The guilty plea resolves a criminal case brought by Republican President Donald Trump’s administration over the receipt and publication of war logs and diplomatic cables that detailed U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Prosecutors alleged that Assange conspired with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to obtain the records.
Current and former OpenAI and Google DeepMind employees sign open letter warning of AI risks, insufficient whistleblower protections and the threat of retaliation: https://t.co/mtrKUu9orQ
We're talking a lot about scary severe weather later today.
What we're doing to prep: Arranging extra staffing, making sure equipment is working, communicating expectations.
What YOU'RE going to do: NOT panic, keep track of the weather, know where to shelter. #okwx#arwx