What These Cops Do to This Black Mother and Her Young Children Is Past Despicable
Source: socialaction2014.wordpress.com
Imagine if the child had a cell phone in his hand. The police may have shot him.
Human Rights
A is for Activist – Kindle edition by Innosanto Nagara
A is for Activist is an ABC board book written and illustrated for the next generation of progressives: families who want their kids to grow up in a space that is unapologetic about activism, environmental justice, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, and everything else that activists believe in and fight for. The alliteration, rhyming, and vibrant illustrations make the book exciting for children, while the issues it brings up resonate with their parents’ values of community, equality, and justice. This engaging little book carries huge messages as it inspires hope for the future, and calls children to action while teaching them a love for books.
Source: www.amazon.com
VIDEO: Extended Interview with Mumia Abu-Jamal on New Pennsylvania Law Restricting Prisoners’ Speech
Mumia Abu-Jamal speaks with Democracy Now! about Pennsylvania’s new law that authorizes the censoring of public addresses of prisoners or former offenders if judges agree that allowing them to speak would cause “mental anguish” to the victim.
Source: www.democracynow.org
The ‘victim’ could choose to not listen.
And the convicted are not always guilty.
What happened to the liberty of free speech?
Human Rights Watch: Migrants Returned to Danger [VIDEO]
Serious Flaws in Border Screening of Fleeing Central Americans.
(San Pedro Sula) – The US government’s rapid-fire screening of unauthorized migrants at the border is sending Central Americans back to the risk of serious harm, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
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Source: soboco.org
Death and Racism
The article on The Root hit me hard;
Reject the “He was a good kid” or “He was a criminal” narrative and lift up the “Black lives matter” narrative.Those who knew him say Brown was a good kid. But that’s not why his death is tragic. His death isn’t tragic because he was on his way to college the following week. His death is tragic because he was a human being and his life mattered. The good-kid narrative might provoke some sympathy, but what it really does is support the lie that as a rule black people, black men in particular, have a norm of violence or criminal behavior. The good-kid narrative says that this kid didn’t deserve to die because his goodness was an exception to the rule. This is wrong. This kid didn’t deserve to die, period. Similarly, reject the “He was a criminal” narrative surrounding the convenience store robbery because even if Brown did steal some cigars and have a scuffle with the shopkeeper, that is still not a justification for his killing. All black lives matter, not just the ones we deem to be “good.”
It caused me to think back about why, during the George Zimmerman case, I did not debate nor defend against accusations that Trayvon was a “thug.” Here we are again with Michael Brown, and there are folks trying to posture Michael as deserving of death because he was not a “good kid. “
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Source: blackbutterfly7.wordpress.com
Thank you @XenaBb7 for the HT
Refugees and Dissidents
By Matt Hanson
Introduction
In North America, and elsewhere around the world, for example in Mediterranean countries such as Greece and Italy, there is a growing antipathy for migrants. The United States and Canada are not alone in the increasing volume of political distaste for migrants. In the United States in particular, there is an inherent contradiction within this debate, and this crisis of asylum, as concerns the identification of migrants as invaders.
With unabated trends favoring economic globalization, such as the overshadowing precedence of international free trade agreements, wealthy nations have a greater responsibility to receive economic migrants, and equally, forced migrants fleeing life-threatening persecution. To deny this responsibility is to reject the foundations of humanity, and to delegitimize the standard of national boundaries as security zones. Instead, national boundaries fulfill their original purpose, militarized demarcations, where the history of an invasion has simply taken another form.
In other words, the misperception of migrants as invaders exposes the fundamental myth of the modern nation state as a cultural, social, political, or economic distinction. As is most apparent outside of North America and Europe, however within as well, cultural, social, political and economic phenomena observably transcend state boundaries, merging in varying forms transnationally. Similarly, all people, as such, are a part of the transnational social capital that exists in every nation individually, and collectively throughout the globe. The inequalities of the global marketplace are manifest in the story of the modern immigrant.
Immigrant is a very different term than migrant. With its special legal, political, social and cultural ramifications, immigration is a process whereby a foreigner resides permanently in a country other than that of their origin. Immigration also connotes official identification, as recognized by the country wherein one is immigrating. Whereas migration is a primordial concept, immigration entails the officialdoms of international law, and domestic policy.
Anti-immigration is the result of geopolitical insecurity, while deeply rooted in forms of racism steeped in multigenerational, and colonialist inequality.
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Source: unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com
Migrant Workers sue for being underpaid, poor housing, unsafe transportation and inadequate water
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Grand Rapids, accuses Johnston, Iowa-based DuPont Pioneer and two recruiters of violating federal wage and migrant labor laws.
…allegations include poor housing, unsafe transportation to the fields and inadequate water.
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Source: www.usaonrace.com
‘A cemetery for our people’: Guatemalan consul sees life and death of Texas migrant crisis
In 2013 Alba Caceres sent back 48 bodies from South Texas. But it’s not the dead she worries about so much as the living
Source: www.theguardian.com
It’s not just a Texas migrant crisis.
Click through to see the map showing how many human remains were found in border states.
Do Heat-Sensitive Inmates Have A Right To Air Conditioning?
Jails and prisons without air conditioning can be uncomfortable for both prisoners and guards. But for inmates with health conditions that make them heat-sensitive, hot cells can pose serious risks.
Source: www.npr.org
The Alarming Rise of Migrant Deaths on U.S. Soil—And What to Do About It
More migrants’ lives could be saved with a few inexpensive adjustments in water availability, rescue beacons, and search-and-rescue capability. A directive by the Department of Homeland Security for the Border Patrol to establish water drums, particularly alongside rescue beacons, would be an important step to avoid preventable deaths on U.S. soil. Increasing the number of rescue beacons, as well as providing additional funds to expand Border Patrol Search, Trauma, and Rescue Unit teams (BORSTAR), particularly in southwest border sectors with high numbers of migrant deaths, could also help to assist migrants in distress.
Many of the recovered remains of migrants, which now number in the thousands, are unidentified. Local officials in Brooks County, Texas, estimate that the costs of dealing with the unidentified dead, including mortician fees and autopsies, amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. No unified procedure exists to process remains and DNA samples of bodies found in the border region. Many remains have not had their DNA sampled, and there has been no consolidated effort to match the DNA of unidentified remains with family members searching for missing loved ones.
Measures such as the following would greatly contribute to identifying these remains and provide answers to family members of missing migrants about the whereabouts of their loved ones:
- Providing federal funding to counties and tribal governments for the handling and DNA analysis of migrant remains;
- Creating a Missing Migrants program within the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs); and
- Encouraging genetic laboratories receiving federal grant monies to process samples from unidentified remains and compare the resulting genetic profiles against samples from the relatives of missing migrants
Immigration reform legislation currently before the U.S. Senate (S. 744) includes billions of dollars in new funding for border security. It makes no mention, however, of steps to prevent needless deaths of migrants on U.S. soil, or to help cash-strapped counties identify the dead. The current bill offers an important legislative opportunity to stem the rise of this alarming human tragedy on the U.S. side of the border.
Click through to read more.
Source: www.wola.org
Texas recently sent 1000 National Guard to the border. That should prevent some deaths. But we need to prevent all the deaths.