Month: May 2014

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Fighting Against the New Jim Crow

 

“How mass incarceration affects communities of color.”

 

“When inner-city schools lack funding for books, when the cutting of federal food stamp programs force single mothers to take on more low-wage jobs and less of their child’s education, when programs like stop-and-frisk disproportionately incarcerate Black men and remove them from the household, it’s time to move past the idea that this is an accident. There is a systemic and long-seated set of economic and social conditions entrapping low-income communities and Black communities in an endless pattern of criminalization, incarceration and poverty. There is a glass ceiling holding down Black and brown youth on the ladder of American opportunity.”

 

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

For more on this topic check Michelle Alexander‘s book ‘The New Jim Crow‘

See on www.bet.com

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Most dangerous body of water in the U.S.

See on Scoop.it – Community Village Daily

 

The most dangerous body of water in the U.S. is a deep canal on the Mexican border with California where over 550 people, mostly immigrants, have drowned. Scott Pelley reports.

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

75% of these deaths could be prevented. Check the video at about 9:00 minutes.

This news story would be better if they dropped the word ‘illegal’.

This is the first I’ve heard about these death canals. They seem like they are designed to kill people. 

See on www.cbsnews.com

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Asians in the Library

See on Scoop.it – Community Village Daily

 

“Asians in the Library” (2011) is a YouTube video, a three-minute racist rant against Asians made by Alexandra Wallace (pictured), a White American student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). It came right after a tsunami had killed 10,000 people in Japan. Three years later it is still the top suggested completion for “Asians” on Google.

 
See on abagond.wordpress.com

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U.S. Border Patrol’s Response To Violence In Question

See on Scoop.it – Community Village Daily

If an agent kills a Mexican across the border, what happens? Some argue not enough. It’s hard to sue in these cases, and reports show the Border Patrol is rarely holding its own people accountable.

See on www.npr.org

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How Charter Schools and Testing Regimes Have Helped Re-Segregate Our Schools

See on Scoop.it – Community Village Daily

 

“In Brown, Chief Justice Warren wrote: “To separate [children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” Yes, and separating children by race or class or test scores into pseudo-private charter schools is affecting not only those students but our communities and our nation in the very ways we once tried to undo.”

 
See on www.thedailybeast.com

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Report slams child labor in U.S. tobacco fields

 

(CNN) — Children can’t light up, but there are some who suffer the effects of nicotine exposure as they labor in U.S. tobacco fields.
There is not an exact figure for how many children work in America’s tobacco fields, but Human Rights Watch interviewed nearly 150 for a new report on the dangers these workers face.
“I would barely eat anything because I wouldn’t get hungry,” one child worker, Elena G., 13, told the human rights group. “Sometimes I felt like I needed to throw up. … I felt like I was going to faint. I would stop and just hold myself up with the tobacco plant.”
Nearly 75% of the children interviewed reported similar symptoms — nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, headaches, dizziness, irritation and difficulty breathing. These are symptoms of acute nicotine poisoning, Human Rights Watch said.
And nicotine is not the only danger.
Exposure to pesticides from adjacent fields and accidents with sharp tools are also common, the report said.
“Once they sprayed where we were working. We were cutting the flower and the spray was right next to us in the part of the fields we had just finished working in. I couldn’t breathe,” Jocelyn R., 17, told HRW. “I started sneezing a lot. The chemicals would come over to us.”
See on www.cnn.com