Hat tip to Jonathan Hodges for the great find.
“White Shoes” nude photography series highlights slavery’s roots in NY Financial District
The Village Voice points out, “New York was the capital of American slavery for more than 200 years.”
Huffington Post author Priscilla Frank writes,
Revisiting the spaces haunted by such atrocious tales, Faustine drapes her body across the implicated grounds like a bold protestor or a spiritual medium. Her bare flesh recalls the stories of so many strangers that went untold, simultaneously raising questions about why bodies matter and, more specifically, which bodies matter.
I can’t stop crying, thinking about police brutalizing girls in classrooms. We must vote.
Edited to add: I just learned that the assault victim is a girl who was recently orphaned.
Where did we go wrong, my friends and neighbors? I want to ask, to scream, to demand answers. How did we get to the point where we not only allow armed law enforcement officers into our children’s schools to serve as para-security guards … but beyond that point, to where we are today: where the same men who shoot pudgy grown men in the back because they failed to pay child support and band together to choke the life right out of a New Yorker for selling loose cigarettes, are let loose in our babies’ classrooms to brutalize, terrorize and humiliate them and after they do haul them off, no doubt, to lock them up in jails or detention schools or juvenile halls – to make them look the wrongdoers.
1% of US population in prison and they have 70-100% occupancy guarantees
This is totally bizarre and should be unbelievable: about 1% (1 in 100) of the US population is in prison at any given time these days … and a growing number of prisons have contracts with state governments guaranteeing them occupancy rates as high as 100%. When inmate populations drop below the contracted rate, private prison contractors get their money by threatening to sue. Huffpost explains:
Arizona’s contractually obligated promise to fill prison beds is a common provision in a majority of America’s private prison contracts, according to a public records analysis released today by the advocacy group In the Public Interest. The group reviewed more than 60 contracts between private prison companies and state and local governments across the country, and found language mentioning quotas for prisoners in nearly two-thirds of those analyzed.
Biden helped put millions in prison & tightened noose on student loans
Along with Bill Clinton, Biden helped drastically increase the United States prison population. According to the ACLU 1 in 99 US adults are living in prison and, “One in 31 adults are under some form of correctional control, counting prison, jail, parole and probation populations.”
New York Times calls for firing of brutal officer & systemic change to NYPD
Not being exactly known as the champion of the average New Yorker makes the New York Times’ scathing editorial calling out the NYPD for brutality all the more remarkable. In an uncommon act of public representation, the NYT Editorial Board calls for the dismissal of the latest officer caught in a brutal and illegal act of racism and demands that systemic changes be made to the police department’s operating policies.
…the New York City police officer who jumped and assaulted an innocent man, James Blake, in Manhattan last Wednesday, has disgraced the department. Commissioner William Bratton and Mayor Bill de Blasio should make an example of him. They should make it clear that his unprovoked aggression — caught by a security camera, so there is no doubt about what he did — reflects everything that causes people to distrust and hate the N.Y.P.D. The officer’s further transgressions — not identifying himself to Mr. Blake, not apologizing, failing to void the arrest in follow-up paperwork — speak to an appalling lack of judgment by someone unfit for the job.
Expert framing of Jorge Ramos’ challenge to Donald Trump
Jorge Ramos, the influential anchor of Univision and an American immigrant from Mexico, has been denouncing Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. Yesterday at a Trump press conference in Iowa, Ramos stood and questioned Trump on his immigration views. Trump at first ignored him, then scolded him for speaking without being called on and repeatedly ordered him to “sit down,” then told him: “Go back to Univision.” When Ramos refused to sit down and shut up as ordered, a Trump bodyguard physically removed him from the room. After the press conference concluded, Ramos returned and again questioned Trump about immigration, with the two mostly talking over each other as Ramos asked Trump about the fundamental flaws in his policy. Afterward, Ramos said: “This is personal. … He’s talking about our parents, our friends, our kids and our babies.”
Are New Jersey gentrifiers taking us for a ride?
Christie’s education voucher law allows public school students to attend schools in another district, with your tax dollars paying the receiving school’s tuition fees and the complete bill to, “provide and pay for students’ transportation to new schools up to 20 miles away.” Sounds a bit like specially chartered buses and other things extraordinarily expensive, doesn’t it? Wowza!
Bush started us on path to Nazi-ism. Trump goes much farther.
So, I’m reading this article shared by Truthout editor William Rivers Pitt about Trump’s extremist stand on deporting immigrants and his incessant hatemongering. And, I recently read a corroboration of Bernie Sander’s statement that Hitler was elected to govern Germany. All of a sudden that light-bulb goes on in my head: Trump could actually be a modern version of Hitler.
Trump’s fascist authoritarianism was thrown into stark relief by the courageous act of journalism “committed” by Mexican immigrant and Univision news anchor Jorge Ramos and Trump’s heavy-handed, dismissive treatment of him at a recent press conference. Ramos is one of the US Latino community’s most influential voices … Glenn Greenwald writes about the Ramos challenge:
Play about Central Park’s land 1825 Black Village showing at Kean U through 9/20.
…help justify destroying people’s homes and cemeteries, using eminent domain to make way for what would become the most visited city park in the country. The village was leveled in 1857, the same year construction began on Central Park.
Big Brands making a killing from inmate labor, a slavery replacement
Very neatly written exposition of how prisons have replaced slavery as a means of augmenting the wealthy of the wealthy – on the backs of society’s most vulnerable.
“Insourcing,” as prison labor is often called, is an even cheaper alternative to outsourcing. Instead of sending labor over to China or Bangladesh, manufacturers have chosen to forcibly employ the 2.4 million incarcerated people in the United States. Chances are high that if a product you’re holding says it is “American Made,” it was made in an American prison.
US Colonel: slavery was the SINGLE reason for the Civil War (video)
Colonel Ty Seidule, Professor of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point, sets the record state on the question of what the reason was for the United States Civil War. In this interesting short video Col. Seidule makes the case that the single reason was slavery. Does a good job with it, too.
Here are some highlights:
The buzz term “States’ Rights” was coined by Southern state residents and referred to the right they believed they possessed, to continue slavery.
10 ways well-meaning white teachers bring racism into schools
2. Being ‘Race Neutral’ Rather than Culturally Responsive
In my work with teachers, I sometimes meet teachers who claim that they “don’t see Color,” both in naïve attempts to be “progressive” but also in an ill-advised attempt to avoid tracking students based on race/ethnicity.
But our students don’t need a “race neutral” approach to their education.
Ramos is a champion of truth and real reporting, not a disrupter
Anyone who thinks of criticizing Univision’s Jorge Ramos for confronting Donald Trump on August 25, should know what Ramos experienced with Trump before the confrontation … should also understand why Ramos felt it was important for him, as one of the US Latino community’s most notable leaders, to get Trump’s immigration policy out in the open and on record … and should definitely understand the sorry state into which United States journalism has fallen in recent decades. Those who do, will appreciate Ramos for taking a stand in defense of real reporting and will applaud his bravery and service to the public.
Cop openly admits to stopping man for looking him in the eye
As soon as he realizes a policeman he passed is tailing him, John Felton starts his camera’s video going. Which makes it all the more incredible when the cop openly tells Felton that the main reason he tailed him looking for a reason to stop him, is that Felton made eye contact with him. Oh boy 🙁
The David Pakman Show offers good coverage and clips from the video.
From the video:
“You’ve been tailing me for how long? You just needed a reason to pull me over,” Felton says. “No disrespect, I don’t have nothing against police officers, but all this sh*t that’s going on now? That’s some scary sh*t. To have a police officer just tail you, and then you pull me over, ’cause you said I didn’t signal — what? Do you know how it looks?”