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What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White

What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White

Know Anyone Who Thinks Racial Profiling Is Exaggerated? Watch This, And Tell Me When Your Jaw Drops.


This video clearly demonstrates how racist America is as a country and how far we have to go to become a country that is civilized and actually values equal justice. We must not rest until this goal is achieved. I do not want my great grandchildren to live in a country like we have today. I wish for them to live in a country where differences of race and culture are not ignored but valued as a part of what makes America great.

Thursday, May 31, 2018

SPLC statement on DeVos’ suggestion that schools can report undocumented students to ICE | Southern Poverty Law Center

"The SPLC strongly opposes the suggestion this week by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos that schools can report undocumented students to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 

Not only does DeVos’ suggestion conflict with settled law, it also fundamentally undermines the promise of our schools as a place where all students can thrive.

All children have the right to enroll in public schools, regardless of their immigration status. The Supreme Court’s decision in Plyler v. Doe, affirming the right of immigrant children to participate in public education, has been the law of the land for over 35 years. Under that precedent and under our nation’s civil rights laws, schools cannot be in the business of immigration enforcement or discrimination. 

When Alabama tried to intimidate immigrant families away from enrolling their children in school by seeking information about the immigration status of children and parents, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rightly struck down that law.

Practices that chill immigrant students’ access to school are unconstitutional. The SPLC will continue to advocate for the right of all students, no matter their background, to enroll in public school."

(Via.)  SPLC statement on DeVos’ suggestion that schools can report undocumented students to ICE | Southern Poverty Law Center:

Standing Rock Water Protector Sentenced to Three Years in Prison | Democracy Now!

H14 water protector giron 3 year prison sentence



"In news from North Dakota, a water protector who took part in the protests at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access pipeline has been sentenced to 36 months in prison. Michael “Little Feather” Giron was arrested on October 27, 2016, while defending the Oceti Sakowin treaty camp. He has been held in jail for the past year. Little Feather’s wife Leoyla Cowboy said on Wednesday, “The legacy of genocide and broken treaties has shown us that when indigenous people stand up to protect the water and the land from the colonization of resources, we will always be met with repression and violence. This struggle continues.”



Standing Rock Water Protector Sentenced to Three Years in Prison | Democracy Now!

Jarrett on Roseanne: Make it a teaching moment

Valerie Jarrett's extraordinary family tree - CBS News





"On 60 Minutes this week, correspondent Norah O'Donnell interviews Valerie Jarrett, President Obama's senior advisor, and close personal friend. Jarrett's been at his side for the past seven years and, unlike some staff members, she plans to stay there.



"I came in knowing I was going to stay until the end, if the president would have me," she tells O'Donnell. "That's the commitment that I made to him."



But how did Jarrett become such a powerful figure in the White House? Where did she get her political instincts and steely resolve? As O'Donnell explains in the 60 Minutes Overtime video above, it might have something to do with her trailblazing family.





"Valerie Jarrett comes from one of the most prominent African-American families in American history," O'Donnell says. It was also a family of "firsts." Jarrett's great-grandfather Robert Robinson Taylor is believed to be the first African-American graduate of MIT and the country's first accredited African-American architect. His son, Robert Rochon Taylor, was a housing activist who became the first African-American chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority.



Jarrett's mother, Barbara Taylor Bowman, is an early childhood education expert for whom a Chicago street is named. Bowman "is an incredibly accomplished educator," explains producer Henry Schuster. "She's worked with some of the most prominent developmental psychologists in the world."



Jarrett's father, Dr. James Bowman, Jr., was a groundbreaking pathologist and geneticist. In her interview, Jarrett describes hearing about his first day as a resident at what was then called St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago, where he was told that he couldn't enter the front door because of the color of his skin. He decided it was time to break the rules.



"His attitude was, look, I'm going to be a physician here. I'm coming in the front door," Jarrett tells O'Donnell. "And so, the first day of work, he showed up and he walked in the front door. And everybody was aghast. And the next day, when he showed up for work, all of the black staff that worked in the hospital -- from the nurses to the orderlies to the administrators -- were waiting by the front door and they walked in with him. And so he, in a sense, integrated the front door of the hospital."







Jarrett gets emotional recounting the story. "I just can't even imagine what it would be like to have gone all the way through medical school and be at the top of your class and do so well and then be treated that way," she says. "But it also taught me the lesson [that] you have to stand up for yourself. And just because somebody says no doesn't mean that you have to listen. You can do what you think is right. And I think both of my parents were trailblazers in that respect."



Given her family's history, perhaps it's no surprise that Jarrett was drawn 25 years ago to Michelle Robinson and Barack Obama, a young Chicago couple who would go on to blaze trails of their own. After interviewing Michelle for a job in the Mayor's Office, she met Barack, her then-fiancé, and the trio became fast friends. The Obamas later bought a house on the same street as Jarrett's family. "The fact that I've known the president and the first lady for 25 years gives me a perspective that maybe others don't have," Jarrett says.



That closeness also makes her protective of the president, O'Donnell explains. Jarrett seems to bristle, for instance, when asked why some African-American academics, such as Cornel West, have criticized the president for not doing more to address racism.



"Well, you know what? My theory is this: Rather than having commentaries from the cheap seats, get involved and see what you can do," Jarrett says. "What can you do around your own community, within your own family, to try to improve race relations in our country? I think this is a responsibility that we all have as citizens."



As for her special access to the president and first lady, if Jarrett has gossip, she isn't sharing.



"Is there anything you know about them that we don't know?" O'Donnell asks her.



"Sure," Jarrett says. "And we're going to keep it that way."



Valerie Jarrett's extraordinary family tree - CBS News

Trump doesn’t denounce Roseanne’s racist tweet Donald Trump criticizes ABC’s CEO—but not Roseanne’s racist tweet. Lawrence talks with Clarence Page and Mark Thompson. - The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC



The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC

Outrage over Trump child separation policy saps his zeal to troll Rachel Maddow points out that while Donald Trump usually delights in doubling down on racially inflammatory trolling of Americans on immigration issues, he hasn't handled his new policy of taking kids away from parents with quite the same zeal. - The Rachel Maddow Show on msnbc – Latest News & Video



The Rachel Maddow Show on msnbc – Latest News & Video

Hayes: Roseanne reflects a chunk of the Trump base Chris Hayes argues that it's no coincidence that the conspiracy-minded comedian and conspiracy-minded president are so closely aligned. - All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC



All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Glenn Greenwald: Why Did ABC Ignore Roseanne Barr’s Hateful Tweets Again...

Trump responds to 'Roseanne' cancellation by being silent on racism

'America NEED to Hear THIS': Watch Charles Blow Turn UP the HEAT on Trum...

Trump Asked Sessions to Retain Control of Russia Inquiry After His Recusal - The New York Times

 

"WASHINGTON — By the time Attorney General Jeff Sessions arrived at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort for dinner one Saturday evening in March 2017, he had been receiving the presidential silent treatment for two days. Mr. Sessions had flown to Florida because Mr. Trump was refusing to take his calls about a pressing decision on his travel ban.

When they met, Mr. Trump was ready to talk — but not about the travel ban. His grievance was with Mr. Sessions: The president objected to his decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Mr. Trump, who had told aides that he needed a loyalist overseeing the inquiry, berated Mr. Sessions and told him he should reverse his decision, an unusual and potentially inappropriate request.

Mr. Sessions refused.

The confrontation, which has not been previously reported, is being investigated by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, as are the president’s public and private attacks on Mr. Sessions and efforts to get him to resign. Mr. Trump dwelled on the recusal for months, according to confidants and current and former administration officials who described his behavior toward the attorney general.

The special counsel’s interest demonstrates Mr. Sessions’s overlooked role as a key witness in the investigation into whether Mr. Trump tried to obstruct the inquiry itself. It also suggests that the obstruction investigation is broader than it is widely understood to be — encompassing not only the president’s interactions with and firing of the former F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, but also his relationship with Mr. Sessions.

Trump Asked Sessions to Retain Control of Russia Inquiry After His Recusal - The New York Times

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Claudia Gómez González Wasn’t Killed by a Rogue Border Agent—She Was Killed by a Rogue Agency | The Nation

Claudia-Gomez-Gonzalez



"The killing of Claudia Patricia Gómez González on May 23 by a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent has sparked outrage across the United States. Gómez Gonzalez, a 20-year-old immigrant from Guatemala, embodied the aspirations of so many who come to this country: Trained as a forensic accountant, she left her homeland because she wanted to keep studying. With no way to earn the money to further her education at home, she traveled north to earn a living and reunite with her boyfriend in Virginia. Her dreams were met with a bullet in the head.



Americans are right to be horrified by the murder at the hands of a federal border agent and to demand justice for Ms. Gómez Gonzalez’s family. But, as the horror seeps in, we must also realize that this is not just a case of a rogue agent; rather, it is the latest killing by a rogue agency whose abuses must be stopped.



CBP has a harrowing history of lethal violence. A recent investigation by The Guardian found that, since 2003, CBP agents have killed 97 people. While the causes of death span a wide range—from being run over by agents’ cars to being killed by tasers or beatings—the majority of killings were from bullet wounds, in many cases from shots to the back. Of the 97 people killed by CBP in this timespan, at least six were children. "



Claudia Gómez González Wasn’t Killed by a Rogue Border Agent—She Was Killed by a Rogue Agency | The Nation

Opinion | The Weasel of Oz - The New York Times

"Assuming that you have maintained the ability to be astonished by Donald Trump’s antics and insolence, The Washington Post reported last week that in 2017, before Trump was to deliver a speech to Congress, he “huddled with senior adviser Jared Kushner and [Stephen] Miller in the Oval Office to talk immigration.” As The Post reported:
“Trump reminded them the crowds loved his rhetoric on immigrants along the campaign trail. Acting as if he were at a rally, he recited a few made-up Hispanic names and described potential crimes they could have committed, such as rape or murder. Then, he said, the crowds would roar when the criminals were thrown out of the country — as they did when he highlighted crimes by illegal immigrants at his rallies, according to a person present for the exchange and another briefed on it later. Miller and Kushner laughed.”

That Trump is a racist and white supremacist is settled fact at this point.

After Charlottesville, and the “shithole countries” comment and the use of MS-13 — “These aren’t people. These are animals” — as a coded cudgel against all immigrants, if you still don’t believe that Trump is a racist — and most people do — then you’re not paying attention, are willfully ignorant, or are probably a closet racist yourself.

The racism has become almost routine. Now it is the continued revelations of the degree to which Trump takes the presidency as a giant game, in which he is all-powerful, in which supplicants must come pleading, in which he has an unmatched ability to retain power by manipulating and deceiving the populace.

Its like he’s playing the role of the Wizard of Oz, only this man is a weasel.

This isn’t even the first time that we’ve gotten a peek behind the curtain and have seen Trump’s hubris about his ability to tap into people’s anxieties — and hatreds — and his ability to bend reality to suit his designs.

It is the same way that he used “build the wall” as a rallying cry to keep supporters engaged and enraged. It is the way he seized on the N.F.L. protest issue, and recast it to his supporters — mostly white — as a them-against-us battle of unpatriotic ingratitude by the players — mostly black.

In a stunning acquiescence to Trump’s racial hostility, the N.F.L. last week ruled that its players on the field must stand for the national anthem or their teams could be fined. They can also remain in the locker room, out of view and protest there until the anthem is finished.

In other words, the players must make their pain more palatable by removing it from public consideration, to hide their light under a bush, to “eat in the kitchen when company comes,” as Langston Hughes wrote in his 1926 poem best known by its first line: “I, too, sing America.”

But Trump wasn’t satisfied to simply accept the win. He sought to milk the manipulation even more, suggesting to Brian Kilmeade of “Fox & Friends” that protesting players may even need to be deported. As Trump put it: “You have to stand proudly for the national anthem or you shouldn’t be playing, you shouldn’t be there — maybe they shouldn’t be in the country.”

Demonization of those who are different — in race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or even conviction — is a common thread in Trump’s power play. He directs it at the media in a different way.

Last week, “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl recalled an exchange she had with Trump in 2016 in which she pressed him on why he repeatedly insults journalists. His response, according to Stahl, was: “You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.”
For Trump, it’s all about manipulation, and he will lie, bully and demean to that end, even if his deceit is discovered.
On Saturday, Trump falsely claimed on Twitter:

“The Failing @nytimes quotes ‘a senior White House official,’ who doesn’t exist, as saying ‘even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed.’ WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.”

Well, it turns out that the official not only exists, but audio surfaced of him giving the briefing in the White House itself. And while he never uses the word “impossible,” he describes a timeline that sounds impossible.
Trump has not apologized for that lie or corrected it, and the tweet is still available on Twitter.

This is the strategy: Never apologize. Just move on, create a new moment — one that rivals or even outshines the last — and change the subject. This way, you keep your detractors playing on your court and by your rules and you never play on theirs.


In the film, the Wizard of Oz finally confesses: “I’m a humbug!” Trump never will."

 

Opinion | The Weasel of Oz - The New York Times

Supreme Court Declines To Take Up Appeal Of Restrictive Abortion Ban In Arkansas : NPR

 

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 Supreme Court Declines To Take Up Appeal Of Restrictive Abortion Ban In Arkansas : NPR:

Report: Breitbart, Trump Campaign Pushed Bernie Sanders Activist to Tell Black Voters to Stay Home - The Daily Beast



... And is this surprising? I became very disenchanted with many Bernie Sander's supporters condescending attitude towards people of color. As a result, I was sorry that I had voted for Bernie Sanders in the Georgia Democratic Primary. I said this repeatedly on Facebook.
"A former Bernie Sanders activist was “recruited” by Breitbart to turn out the black vote for Donald Trump, and told Bloomberg News that he would tell people to not bother voting if they couldn’t “stomach Trump.” Bruce Carter, founder of Black Men for Bernie, said he started Trump for Urban Communities after being disillusioned by the Democratic National Committee’s treatment of the Vermont senator. Breitbart staffer Dustin Stockton then started to court him to hit the trail for Trump, and promised access to Steve Bannon. Carter was soon connected to Bannon, who was just named Breitbart executive chairman, and Karen Giorno, senior Trump campaign adviser—who all strategized that Florida, Philadelphia, and North Carolina were going to be the “three initial markets” to target, and said Bannon connected him with a pro-Trump fundraiser in Texas. Stockton told Bloomberg News that Trump “vastly outperformed the projection models in the 12 areas Bruce was targeting” in those areas. “I never like telling people not to vote. But from a tactical and strategic position, we looked at it: If you could get them to vote for Trump, that was a plus two.” It was a “plus one,” Stockton said, if they simply didn’t vote at all. Bannon declined to comment.
Report: Breitbart, Trump Campaign Pushed Bernie Sanders Activist to Tell Black Voters to Stay Home - The Daily Beast: ""

Starbucks chairman: Trump's rhetoric has 'given license' to racism

America refuses to deal with it's brutal, policing problem. Video shows violent arrest of woman at beach - CNN Video

 

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(Via. )Video shows violent arrest of woman at beach - CNN Video: "

Hurricane Maria: Harvard study estimates thousands died in Puerto Rico due to hurricane, far exceeding official death toll - The Washington Post

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"At least 4,645 people died as a result of Hurricane Maria and its devastation across Puerto Rico last year, according to a new Harvard study released Tuesday, an estimate that far exceeds the official government death toll, which stands at 64.
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that health care disruption for the elderly and the loss of basic utility services for the chronically ill had significant impacts across the U.S. territory, which was thrown into chaos after the September hurricane wiped out the electrical grid and had widespread impacts on infrastructure. Some communities were entirely cut off for weeks amid road closures and communications failures.
Researchers in the United States and Puerto Rico, led by scientists at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, calculated the number of deaths by surveying nearly 3,300 randomly chosen households across the island and comparing the estimated post-hurricane death rate to the mortality rate for the year before. Their surveys indicated that the mortality rate was 14.3 deaths per 1,000 residents from Sept. 20 through Dec. 31, a 62 percent increase in the mortality rate compared to 2016, or 4,645 “excess deaths.”
“Our results indicate that the official death count of 64 is a substantial underestimate of the true burden of mortality after Hurricane Maria,” the authors wrote.

The official death estimates have drawn sharp criticism from experts and local residents, and the new study criticized Puerto Rico’s methods for counting the dead — and its lack of transparency in sharing information — as detrimental to planning for future natural disasters. The authors called for patients, communities and doctors to develop contingency plans for natural disasters.

Maria caused $90 billion in damages, making it the third-costliest tropical cyclone in the United States since 1900, the researchers said.

A memorial book for Ivette Leon.Photo by: Erika P. Rodr’guez/Erika P. Rodr’guez for The Washington PostMore than eight months after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the island’s slow recovery has been marked by a persistent lack of water, a faltering power grid and a lack of essential services — all of which have imperiled the lives of many residents who have been struggling to get back on their feet, especially the infirm and those in remote areas, some of which were the hardest hit in September.

Counting the dead in such natural disasters is always a difficult task, even under ideal circumstances; in Puerto Rico it was hampered by numerous systemic failures and what the Harvard researchers found was a complex method for certifying the deaths in San Juan. The researchers noted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that deaths can be directly attributed to storms like Maria if they are caused by forces related to the event, from flying debris to loss of medical services; in Puerto Rico such deaths continued for months.

Among those who died as a result of medical service lapses was Ivette Leon, 54, a Boy Scout den mother who died on Nov. 29, about 18 hours after she was released from the hospital in post-hurricane Puerto Rico. Leon had fallen ill, suffering from pain all over her body, vomiting and chills. Physicians told her it was an infection, gave her medication, and released her to her family.

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Miliana Montanez cradled her mother’s head as she lay dying on the floor of her bedroom here in Caguas, gasping for air and pleading for help.

There was nothing her family could do. It took 20 minutes to find cell reception to make a 911 call. Nonworking traffic signals slowed down the ambulance struggling to reach their neighborhood through crippling congestion.
 A view of the countryside in Caguas, Puerto Rico.Photo by: Erika P. Rodr’guez/Erika P. Rodr’guez for The Washington PostLeon’s eyes bulged in terror as she described to her daughter the tiny points of light that appeared before her eyes moments before it was all over. She took one last exasperated gulp of air. That’s when paramedics arrived. Far too late.
“The worst part was knowing I could do nothing to help her,” said Montanez, a 29-year-old mother of two. “Knowing she didn’t die peacefully means I will never have closure.”

Leon’s death reverberated through her family and her community. Her son, a college student in a town two hours away, sees no point in coming home anymore. Her husband is withdrawn and is close to losing his job. Her daughter struggles to understand what happened as she fights off despair and anger recalling all the chaos that revolved around Leon’s last moments on the floor of her home.

THE UNCOUNTED

Puerto Rico’s government faced immediate scrutiny after initially reporting that 16 people had died as a result of the storm, which strafed much of the island on Sept. 20. That number more than doubled after President Trump visited in October, when he specifically noted the low death toll. The number kept rising until early December, when authorities said 64 had died.

The official toll included a variety of people from across Puerto Rico, such as those who suffered injuries, were swept away in floodwaters, or were unable to reach hospitals while facing severe medical conditions. No. 56 was a person from the city of Carolina who was bleeding from the mouth but could not reach a hospital in the days after the storm. Once arrived, the patient was diagnosed with pneumonia and died of kidney failure. No. 43, from Juncos, suffered from respiratory ailments and went to the hospital — only to be released because of the coming storm. That person later returned, dead.
The new study indicates there likely were thousands more, like Leon, who died in the weeks and months that followed but were not counted. Their deaths have long raised questions about the manner and integrity of the Puerto Rico government’s protocols for certifying hurricane-related deaths.
Gov. Ricardo Rosselló’s administration did not immediately release mortality data nor did they provide much information publicly about the process officials were using to count the dead. But officials and physicians acknowledged privately that there were likely many, many more deaths and bodies piling up in morgues across the island.
After pressure from Congress and statistical analyses from news organizations that put the death toll at higher than 1,000, Rossello enlisted the help of George Washington University experts to review the government’s death certification process. He promised that “regardless of what the death certificate says,” each death would be inspected closely to ensure a correct tally.
“This is about more than numbers, these are lives: real people, leaving behind loved ones and families,” Rossello said at a news conference in late February.
Lynn Goldman, dean of GW’s Milken Institute School of Public Health, expects an initial report to be released in coming weeks. The school’s findings will include the first government-sponsored attempt by researchers and epidemiologists to quantify Hurricane Maria’s deadliness. Experts are assessing statistical mortality data and plan to dive into medical records and to interview family members of those who have passed, though the scope and funding of the deeper investigation is still unclear, as its timing.
Some cases are obviously storm-related, Goldman said, such as someone dying after a tree branch falls on his head while clearing debris or someone who suffers a heart attack during the storm and was unable to get help. But death certificates bearing the phrase “natural causes” will require further investigation.
The Center for Investigative Journalism in Puerto Rico has gone to court in an effort to seek the island’s Department of Health and Demographic Registry’s mortality data for the months since November, the last month information was available. The Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics also announced in recent weeks it would perform an independent death count and use subpoena powers to retrieve the data. Spokesman Eric Perlloni Alayon said in a statement the government is still trying to verify the death toll and does not plan to release any new data.
The Harvard researchers reported that there are several reasons the death toll in Puerto Rico has been drastically underestimated. Every disaster-related death, they said, must be confirmed by the government’s Forensic Sciences Institute which requires that bodies by brought to San Juan or that a medical examiner travel to the local municipality. And it can be difficult to track indirect deaths from a worsening of chronic conditions due to the storm.
The researchers said that the government of Puerto Rico stopped sharing mortality data with the public in December 2017.
“As the United States prepares for its next hurricane season, it will be critical to review how disaster-related deaths will be counted, in order to mobilize an appropriate response operation and account for the fate of those affected,” the authors wrote.
Natural causes
Many families here are awaiting clarity on what happened to their loved ones when “natural causes” became the only explanation. That is what was written on Leon’s death certificate the morning a local law enforcement official brought the document to the family home. The Puerto Rico Department of Justice’s Yamil Juarbe said in a statement it is customary for local officials in these cases to review bodies for any signs of trauma and talk to relatives to learn about the deceased’s medical history. That information is collected and sent to the central office of the Institute of Forensic Sciences.
Leon’s family said her name was misspelled on the death certificate and her death was incorrectly attributed to diabetes; they say she did not have any known chronic diseases. Officials later corrected the documents, but it was one of several indignities and oversights the family tracked.
Leon’s demise began with a virus, the first signs showing as she was delivering donations to families of Boy Scouts who had lost their homes in a another city, Humacao. During Thanksgiving week, Leon had planned a feast for her family but felt too sick to finish the turkey. She seasoned the bird and a local bakery roasted it. Then the vomiting and diarrhea began.
She sought treatment at Auxilio Mutuo, a private hospital in San Juan, one of the few to remain open throughout the emergency response because of a power generator. The hospital never lost water service or electricity, said hospital spokeswoman Sofia Luqui, and the 600-bed facility experienced higher than usual patient volume after several other hospitals were forced to close.
Leon arrived on the afternoon of Nov. 27 and waited hours overnight before a doctor told her she had diverticulitis and prescribed antibiotics. Leon was never admitted but spent those hours hooked to medical equipment in the emergency room. The next afternoon Leon was sent home with prescription drugs but did not improve. At 7 a.m. the following morning, Montanez said her father summoned her to the family home because Leon was short of breath.
It took 20 minutes to obtain cell reception and call 911 from their metropolitan Caguas neighborhood. It took another 10 minutes, records show, before the ambulance could reach Leon’s home because of road congestion and failing traffic lights. Paramedics tried to revive Leon using CPR, but she was already dead upon their arrival. Montanez tried for days to have an autopsy performed, but she said no government agency or private medical organization had the capacity to conduct one.
Per her wishes, Leon was cremated a few days later in a rushed ceremony because the funeral home was damaged by the storm and was facing an influx of bodies.
“Nobody was ready. This was a monster and we all had to improvise,” said Victor Torres, general manager of Borinquen Memorial in Caguas, PR. “But we did the best we could.”
Montanez stays awake many nights replaying her mother’s last days. She tries to remember the woman who joked so often, and so wryly, that her children often weren’t sure when she was being serious. She recalls how Leon gave each of her neighbors a whistle to call for help in an emergency during Puerto Rico’s prolonged blackout, and how she organized trick-or-treating by lantern light for the children in the barrio so they wouldn’t miss out on Halloween after the hurricane.
But mostly Montanez thinks about the storm. The darkness. The lack of services. It should have been different, she says.
“Everything failed. From day one, everything was failing,” Montanez said. “There are many stories like ours.”
McGinley reported from Washington.Hurricane Maria: Harvard study estimates thousands died in Puerto Rico due to hurricane, far exceeding official death toll - The Washington Post

Being inside of a system doesn’t necessarily change it, more often than not, you become absorbed in it until the system that you sought to reform, reforms you.


Starbucks to close 8,000 stores for racial-bias education on May 29 after arrest of two black men. Unfortunately the training is not mandatory which undercuts the substantive value of this training and makes it more of a publicity activity. - The Washington Post



Starbucks to close 8,000 stores for racial-bias education on May 29 after arrest of two black men - The Washington Post

Monday, May 28, 2018

Must watch: Chris Hayes on 'despicable' new Trump policy


Must watch: Chris Hayes on 'despicable' new Trump policy

Coffee shop racism; where America's racial divisions are exposed | World news | The Guardian

Starbucks will close more than 8,000 on Tuesday May to conduct ‘racial-bias education’ following the arrest of two black men in one of its cafes.



"Many say the Starbucks incident exposed discrimination that people of color and black people in particular face every day



When two black men were arrested in a Starbucks store in Philadelphia in April, it prompted a national debate. The coffee chain swiftly announced it would close 8,000 of its US stores on Tuesday 29 May, so staff can undergo racial bias training.



Many believe such incidents do not only happen at Starbucks. Businesses across the US, some say, are guilty of a behavior so commonplace it is starting to be given its own term: “coffee shop racism”.



Alfredo Weeks, an instructor at the Columbus College of Art and Design and co-owner of a graphic design studio, was moved to write about the phenomenon.



“I open the door to a coffee shop, and as soon as I get inside I feel the stares,” he wrote. “From colleges to coffee shops there is an undertone of Jim Crow era discrimination deeply embedded in today’s culture.”



According to Weeks, the video of the men being arrested in Starbucks exposed discrimination that people of colour and black people in particular face every day. While such behaviour is clearly not restricted to coffee shops, in recent months a number of high-profile examples have been seen in cafes.



In May, Starbucks was in the news again after an employee wrote a racial slur on a customer’s cup. In October last year, two community board members in Brooklyn complained after they saw a coffee shop employee give Halloween candy to white children, but not black children



This month, a video emerged showing a white man verbally abusing a woman who was wearing a niqab at a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf store in Riverside, California. Staff refused to serve the man.



Why have coffee shops become a place where America’s racial divisions and biases are being exposed?



Rashad Robinson, executive director at Color of Change, said changing neighborhood demographics may be partly to blame. Cities across the US are experiencing gentrification, typically as white people move into black or hispanic neighborhoods, leading to rent increases and different business dynamics.



“A lot of these coffee shops where we’re seeing these problems are opening up [in] gentrifying neighborhoods,” Robinson said. “Starbucks is a perfect example. You know when the Starbucks shows up there’s all the stories of, like: ‘Oh there goes the neighborhood.’”



In such gentrifying neighborhoods, he said, there is often not much interaction between newcomers and people who have lived there for decades. But one place where people from different races and economic backgrounds do encounter each other is the local coffee shop.



“They are definitely spaces where people are congregating in a country that’s increasingly segregated in so many other ways,” Robinson said.



“People don’t go to school together. They don’t worship in the same places. They have moments where they’re living in the same neighborhood but oftentimes people are being pushed out and people are coming in, and that represents the neighborhood changing. So they’re not in harmony, oftentimes.



“So these things are happening and people don’t always have the expertise of relating to one another.”



Away from chains like Starbucks, the world of “third wave” coffee – shops where coffee is treated as an artisan or craft beverage not unlike wine – is predominantly white, said Keba Konte, owner of Red Bay Coffee, a roastery and coffee shop in Oakland, California.



Konte wasn’t sure if racist incidents could be said to occur more frequently in coffee shops than anywhere else – he pointed to a recent incident in a Waffle House restaurant in Alabama where employees called 911 on a black woman, who was then arrested – but said a “euro-centered” environment in some coffee shops could lead to discrimination.



“Coffee shops, especially the specialty coffee shop, they’re very white-centered in terms of the culture, the aesthetic, the music, the flavors, the employees,” Konte said. “So if you’re in an environment that is really built around, you know, white culture, then I think these things tend to happen.”



On the day Starbucks closes its stores, Konte, whose staff is entirely made up of women, people of color and the formerly incarcerated, will be hosting a live-streamed round table discussion, featuring black business owners. As a black man, he said, he was all too familiar with what the men in the Philadelphia Starbucks experienced.



“There are a lot of these videos that are documenting this kind of abuse,” he said. “Some of them end in arrest, some of them end in the police killing someone. We understand that for every video that captures these incidents there are dozens and dozens of these events that are not captured on video.”



‘TEXT BOOK racism’

If the incidents captured in coffee shops reflect society at large, they can also be indicative of substandard treatment elsewhere. The Starbucks arrests prompted Junaid Nabi, a medical doctor and fellow in Bioethics at Harvard Medical School, to write a blog on “How coffee shop racism harms black patients”.



“This reprehensible incident is an important reminder of how implicit racial bias – or in this case coffee shop racism – works,” Nabi wrote. “[But] the service industry is not the only sector where this is a problem. Implicit racial biases are in fact important indicators of the broader negative perception of black people – which in clinical practice often leads to low-quality care and harm.”



Nabi said the same “implicit bias” that led to the Starbucks manager calling the police can lead to black patients being undertreated for pain compared to white patients. He cited a study by psychologists from the University of Virginia that found a “significant number” of white medical students believed in false biological differences between white and black patients, such as “black people’s skin is thicker” and that “black people’s blood coagulates more quickly”.



Kamau Bell, a comedian who hosts the show United Shades of America on CNN, spoke about his own brush with coffee shop racism. Staff at a shop in Berkeley, California, he said, ordered him to leave after he arrived and began chatting with a group of white women, one of whom was his wife.



Bell said staff accused him of harassing the women. When Bell’s wife pointed out the mistake, he said, a staff member insisted it had not been race related.



“Actually a black man being told to leave a restaurant because the restaurant believes that his presence is harassing four white women and their kids, even though there is literally no evidence to support that, is TEXT BOOK racism,” Bell wrote in a blogpost soon after the event.



“It is so old school it has a wing in the racism museum, right between the sit-ins at lunch counters and a southern redneck telling a black man on a business trip, ‘You ain’t from around here, are ya, boy?’”



Speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle after the video of the arrests in Philadelphia emerged, Bell said the incident was “bigger than two black men kicked out of a coffee shop”.



“The same racism that gets the black men kicked out of the coffee shop,” he said, “is the same racism that gets that black teenager shot at when he’s asking for directions”.



Coffee shop racism; where America's racial divisions are exposed | World news | The Guardian

US lost track of 1,500 undocumented children, but says it's not 'legally responsible' - CNNPolitics

New DHS policy could separate families caught crossing the border illegally



"(CNN)The federal government has placed thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children in the homes of sponsors, but last year it couldn't account for nearly 1,500 of them.



New DHS policy could separate families caught crossing the border illegally

Steven Wagner, a top official with the Department of Health and Human Services, disclosed the number to a Senate subcommittee last month while discussing the state of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) that oversees the care of unaccompanied immigrant children.



Wagner is the acting assistant secretary for the Administration for Children and Families, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. ORR is a program of the Administration for Children and Families.

CNN reported earlier this month that, in his testimony, Wagner said during the last three months of 2017, the ORR lost track of nearly 1,500 immigrant children it had placed in the homes of sponsors.



Wagner's statement has attracted more attention amid reports that immigrant children are being separated from their parents at the US border.

Wagner said the Department of Homeland Security referred more than 40,000 immigrant children to the ORR during the 2017 fiscal year.



After a stay in an ORR shelter, the majority of children are sent to live with sponsors who have close ties to the children -- typically a parent or close relative, Wagner said, though some end up living with "other-than-close relatives or non-relatives."



Between October and December 2017, Wagner told the subcommittee, the ORR reached out to 7,635 unaccompanied children to check on them. But the ORR "was unable to determine with certainty the whereabouts of 1,475 children," Wagner testified. An additional 28 had run away.



That's more than 19% of the children that were placed by the ORR. But Wagner said HHS is not responsible for the children.



"I understand that it has been HHS's long-standing interpretation of the law that ORR is not legally responsible for children after they are released from ORR care," Wagner said.

The office is "taking a fresh look at that question," he added. But if the ORR were to be legally responsible for the well-being of unaccompanied immigrant children, it would need a significant increase in resources.



In a statement, a spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families said it was reviewing the statements and recommendations made at last month's hearing, but it would not comment on them prior to making an official response to Congress.

"When an unaccompanied alien child is placed with a sponsor, he or she ceases to be in the custody of the US government and all HHS-provided subsistence -- food, shelter, clothing, healthcare and education -- ends at that point and the child becomes the responsibility of his or her parent, guardian or sponsor," the statement added.

The ORR has a series of evaluations to determine if a sponsor is suitable to provide and care for a child. Those policies have also been enhanced since February 2016. Among the ORR's practices, it evaluates potential sponsors' relationship with the children and conducts background checks to ensure children are protected from human traffickers or smugglers, Wagner said.



Wagner's statement has received increased scrutiny a month after the Department of Homeland Security defended an agency policy that will result in more families being separated at the border.



At a Senate hearing earlier this month, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said similar separations happen in the US "every day."

Nielsen said the policy will refer everyone caught crossing the border illegally for prosecution, even if they are claiming they deserve asylum or have small children. Any parents who are prosecuted as a result will be separated from their children in the process.



"Our policy is if you break the law, we will prosecute you," Nielsen said. "You have an option to go to a port of entry and not illegally cross into our country."



US lost track of 1,500 undocumented children, but says it's not 'legally responsible' - CNNPolitics

Saturday, May 26, 2018

Must watch: Chris Hayes on 'despicable' new Trump policy. Must watch: Chris Hayes on 'despicable' new Trump policy. The Sisyphean cycle continues as the proverbial rock of American human rights abuses rolls downhill at an even faster pace in the wake of liberal Democrats selling out DACA students.

Warriors Coach Steve Kerr Calls NFL Ban On Protests 'Fake Patriotism' | HuffPost







Patriotism is earned and should never be demanded. The requisite reciprocity does not exist in America for people of color. To demand patriotism to one's abuser is tyranny. "There is, however, an alternative opinion that African Americans ought not to love the United States. Holders of this view see African-American patriotism as a pathology akin to the “love” that exploited wives feel toward their battering husbands or that mistreated children feel toward their abusive parents. Often ignored, this tradition attracted a bit of attention during the frenzied controversy over Obama ’s association with Reverend Jeremiah Wright. I know this tradition well. My father espoused it. His view of the United States was more unforgiving than that voiced by Reverend Wright. Some will think that my father, too, was “crazy.” They are wrong. He was an intelligent, thoughtful, loving man, who, tragically, had good reason to doubt his government’s allegiance to blacks and thus to himself. " - Randall Kennedy, Harvard Law School

"Warriors Coach Steve Kerr Calls NFL Ban On Protests ‘Fake Patriotism’
Forbidding players to take a knee during the national anthem is “idiotic,” the coach said."

Warriors Coach Steve Kerr Calls NFL Ban On Protests 'Fake Patriotism' | HuffPost

Friday, May 25, 2018

Stabbed at a neo-Nazi rally, called a criminal: how police targeted a black activist | World news | The Guardian

Cedric O’Bannon, a California activist and journalist who was stabbed at a neo-Nazi rally in Sacramento.



"Cedric O’Bannon tried to ignore the sharp pain in his side and continue filming. The independent journalist, who was documenting a white supremacist rally in Sacramento, said he wanted to capture the neo-Nazi violence against counter-protesters with his GoPro camera.



But the pain soon became overwhelming. He lifted up his blood-soaked shirt and realized that one of the men carrying a pole with a blade on the end of it had stabbed him in the stomach, puncturing him nearly two inches deep. He limped his way to an ambulance.



But the police did not treat O’Bannon like a victim. Records obtained by the Guardian reveal that officers instead monitored his Facebook page and sought to bring six charges against him, including conspiracy, rioting, assault and unlawful assembly. His presence at the protest – along with his use of the black power fist and “social media posts expressing his ideals” – were proof that he had violated the rights of neo-Nazis at the 26 June 2016 protests, police wrote in a report."



Stabbed at a neo-Nazi rally, called a criminal: how police targeted a black activist | World news | The Guardian

Google will always do evil

Google will always do evil



"One day in late April or early May, Google removed the phrase "don't be evil" from its code of conduct. After 18 years as the company's motto, those three words and chunks of their accompanying corporate clauses were unceremoniously deleted from the record, save for a solitary, uncontextualized mention in the document's final sentence.



Google didn't advertise this change. In fact, the code of conduct states it was last updated April 5th. The "don't be evil" exorcism clearly took place well after that date.



Google has chosen to actively distance itself from the uncontroversial, totally accepted tenet of not being evil, and it's doing so in a shady (and therefore completely fitting) way. After nearly two decades of trying to live up to its motto, it looks like Google is ready to face reality.



In order for Google to be Google, it has to do evil."



Google will always do evil

Amazon's Alexa recorded private conversation and sent it to random contact | Technology | The Guardian

An Amazon ‘Alexa’ Echo Dot device



I have caught this inadvertent turning on of Alexa many times when I am on the phone, however, I always say Alexa cancel.  I have never heard it sending a message or attempting to send one to one of my contacts.  It is obviously very possible if you do not hear Alexa interjecting into your conversation.



John H Armwood



"No matter how suspicious it has seemed that Amazon is encouraging us to put listening devices in every room of our homes, the company has always said that its Echo assistants are not listening in on or recording conversations. Over and over again, company spokespeople have promised that they only start recording if someone says the wake word: “Alexa”.



It’s a spiel Danielle, an Alexa user from Portland, Oregon, had believed. She’d installed Echo devices and smart bulbs in every room in her house, accepting Amazon’s claims that they were not invading her privacy. But today she asked the company to investigate after an Alexa device recorded a private conversation between her and her husband and sent it to a random number in their address book without their permission.



Danielle found out her Alexa was recording when she received an alarming call from one of her husband’s colleagues saying: “Unplug your Alexa devices right now, you’re being hacked.”



She told KIRO-TV in Seattle that at first she didn’t believe the co-worker, but then she said: “You sat there talking about hardwood floors.” Danielle realised the colleague must have heard everything.



“I felt invaded,” she told KIRO-TV. “A total privacy invasion. Immediately, I said, ‘I’m never plugging that device in again because I can’t trust it.’”



An Amazon customer service representative confirmed that Danielle’s audio had been sent to the number and apologised but didn’t provide any information about why the device had been activated. A spokesperson for the company said it had “determined this was an extremely rare occurrence”.



At 6pm ET on Thursday, an Amazon spokesperson provided an updated statement with an explanation for why they believe Alexa forwarded the conversation. They said:



“Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like ‘Alexa’. Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a ‘send message’ request. At which point, Alexa said out loud ‘To whom?’ At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customer’s contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, ‘[contact name], right?’ Alexa then interpreted background conversation as ‘right’.”



Recognising the improbability of this series of mishaps occuring, they added: “As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely.”



Although Amazon maintains this was a malfunction rather than proof Alexa is always listening, the company has filed patent applications in the past for functionalities that involve always listening, such as an algorithm that would analyse when people say they “love” or “bought” something. The patent included a diagram where two people have a phone conversation and were served afterwards with separate targeted advertisements."



Amazon's Alexa recorded private conversation and sent it to random contact | Technology | The Guardian

A Donald Trump le dicen los Tigres del Norte, somos más americanos.

"Somos Mas Americanos" " Los Tigres Del Norte" By: Alfredo urrutia Aka...

The New COINTELPRO? Meet the Activist the FBI Labeled a “Black Identity ...

Thursday, May 24, 2018

Opinion | Was Slavery a Factor in the Second Amendment? - The New York Times





"Every mass shooting, like the most recent at Santa Fe High School in Texas that left 10 people dead, reignites a passionate debate over the Second Amendment. For many Americans, if there is an image that comes to mind when they think about that amendment, it is the musket in the hands of minutemen at Lexington and Concord.



A dramatic but little-known story reveals that a more accurate image may be the musket in the hands of slave owners. It explains why, when he entered Congress and wrote a Bill of Rights, James Madison included a right to bear arms, and why it included the clause “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State …”



The story begins in June of 1788. Virginia was holding a convention in Richmond to decide whether to ratify the Constitution the founders had drafted in Independence Hall the previous year. Eight states out of the nine necessary to adopt the Constitution had already ratified, but Rhode Island, North Carolina, New Hampshire and New York looked unlikely to ratify. All hope for the ninth hung on Virginia.



The Virginia convention featured a dramatic debate between federalists, who favored ratification, and antifederalists, who opposed it. The debate pitted James Madison, a federalist and the principal drafter of the Constitution, against George Mason, the intellectual leader of the antifederalists, and Patrick Henry, Virginia’s governor and a renowned orator.



Mason and Henry raised many arguments against ratification. One concerned the militia. To appreciate their arguments, we must bear three things in mind about the time and place of the debate.



First, the majority population in eastern Virginia were enslaved blacks. Whites lived in constant fear of slave insurrection. Everyone knew about the 1739 slave rebellion in Stono, S.C., when blacks broke into a store, decapitated the shopkeepers, seized guns and powder, and marched with flying banners, beating drums and cries of “Liberty!” Up to 100 joined the rebellion before being engaged by a contingent of armed, mounted militiamen. Scores died in the ensuing battle.



Second, the principal instrument for slave control was the militia. In the main, the South had refused to commit her militias to the war against the British during the American Revolution out of fear that, if the militias departed, slaves would revolt. But while the militias were effective at slave control, they had proved themselves unequal to the task of fighting a professional army. Bunker Hill was the last militia victory during the Revolution. The Continental Army (aided by the French Navy) won the war.



Third, previously the militias were creatures of state governments. The new Constitution changed that. It divided authority over militias between the national and state governments, but gave the lion’s share of authority — including the power to organize, arm and discipline the militias — to Congress.



During the debate in Richmond, Mason and Henry suggested that the new Constitution gave Congress the power to subvert the slave system by disarming the militias. “Slavery is detested,” Henry reminded the audience. “The majority of Congress is to the North, and the slaves are to the South,” he said.



Henry and Mason argued that because the Constitution gave the federal government the power to arm the militias, only the federal government could do so. “If they neglect or refuse to discipline or arm our militia, they will be useless: the states can do neither — this power being exclusively given to Congress,” Henry declared.



“The power is concurrent, and not exclusive,” Madison replied. That was a blunder. The Constitution expressly parceled out different powers over the militia to Congress or the states. Henry ridiculed Madison for suggesting a state could exercise a power given to the federal government, or vice versa. “To admit this mutual concurrence of powers will carry you into endless absurdity — that Congress has nothing exclusive on the one hand, nor the states on the other,” Henry said.



The vote was close, but Virginia ratified. Unexpectedly, and unbeknown to Virginia, New Hampshire had done so as well. The Constitution was adopted.



In the fall, Madison ran for Congress. His opponent, the rising young politician (and future president) James Monroe, lambasted Madison for not including a bill of rights in the Constitution. Because he believed rights were best protected by the structure of government, Madison previously opposed a bill of rights. Now he was fighting for his political life in a congressional district where a bill of rights was popular. Madison changed his position and promised voters that, if elected, he would write one.



As we know, he included a right to bear arms. Only four of the 13 state Constitutions had such a provision. The Virginia Declaration of Rights, written by none other than George Mason in 1776 when states controlled the militias, did not have one. Following its debate and decision to ratify, the Virginia convention proposed Congress consider a declaration of 20 rights, including a right to bear arms, and 20 constitutional amendments, including one giving states the power to arm their militias if Congress did not.



I believe it likely that Madison sought to correct the problem Henry and Mason had railed against in Richmond. Madison was determined that nothing in the Bill of Rights contradict anything in the main body of the Constitution; and the states had traditionally armed their militias simply by requiring that members bring their own guns with them when called to duty.



Consider, against this background, the language of Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”



Today, the Second Amendment is often extolled as a “safeguard against tyranny.” Even the Supreme Court used that phrase in 2008 when, for the first time, it held that the amendment grants a right unrelated to the militia.



Would we think differently about the amendment if we realized that its genesis was, at least in part, a concern with preserving a form of governmental tyranny?"



Opinion | Was Slavery a Factor in the Second Amendment? - The New York Times

Opinion | Was Slavery a Factor in the Second Amendment? - The New York Times





"Every mass shooting, like the most recent at Santa Fe High School in Texas that left 10 people dead, reignites a passionate debate over the Second Amendment. For many Americans, if there is an image that comes to mind when they think about that amendment, it is the musket in the hands of minutemen at Lexington and Concord.



A dramatic but little-known story reveals that a more accurate image may be the musket in the hands of slave owners. It explains why, when he entered Congress and wrote a Bill of Rights, James Madison included a right to bear arms, and why it included the clause “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State …”



The story begins in June of 1788. Virginia was holding a convention in Richmond to decide whether to ratify the Constitution the founders had drafted in Independence Hall the previous year. Eight states out of the nine necessary to adopt the Constitution had already ratified, but Rhode Island, North Carolina, New Hampshire and New York looked unlikely to ratify. All hope for the ninth hung on Virginia.



The Virginia convention featured a dramatic debate between federalists, who favored ratification, and antifederalists, who opposed it. The debate pitted James Madison, a federalist and the principal drafter of the Constitution, against George Mason, the intellectual leader of the antifederalists, and Patrick Henry, Virginia’s governor and a renowned orator.



Mason and Henry raised many arguments against ratification. One concerned the militia. To appreciate their arguments, we must bear three things in mind about the time and place of the debate.



First, the majority population in eastern Virginia were enslaved blacks. Whites lived in constant fear of slave insurrection. Everyone knew about the 1739 slave rebellion in Stono, S.C., when blacks broke into a store, decapitated the shopkeepers, seized guns and powder, and marched with flying banners, beating drums and cries of “Liberty!” Up to 100 joined the rebellion before being engaged by a contingent of armed, mounted militiamen. Scores died in the ensuing battle.



Second, the principal instrument for slave control was the militia. In the main, the South had refused to commit her militias to the war against the British during the American Revolution out of fear that, if the militias departed, slaves would revolt. But while the militias were effective at slave control, they had proved themselves unequal to the task of fighting a professional army. Bunker Hill was the last militia victory during the Revolution. The Continental Army (aided by the French Navy) won the war.



Third, previously the militias were creatures of state governments. The new Constitution changed that. It divided authority over militias between the national and state governments, but gave the lion’s share of authority — including the power to organize, arm and discipline the militias — to Congress.



During the debate in Richmond, Mason and Henry suggested that the new Constitution gave Congress the power to subvert the slave system by disarming the militias. “Slavery is detested,” Henry reminded the audience. “The majority of Congress is to the North, and the slaves are to the South,” he said.



Henry and Mason argued that because the Constitution gave the federal government the power to arm the militias, only the federal government could do so. “If they neglect or refuse to discipline or arm our militia, they will be useless: the states can do neither — this power being exclusively given to Congress,” Henry declared.



“The power is concurrent, and not exclusive,” Madison replied. That was a blunder. The Constitution expressly parceled out different powers over the militia to Congress or the states. Henry ridiculed Madison for suggesting a state could exercise a power given to the federal government, or vice versa. “To admit this mutual concurrence of powers will carry you into endless absurdity — that Congress has nothing exclusive on the one hand, nor the states on the other,” Henry said.



The vote was close, but Virginia ratified. Unexpectedly, and unbeknown to Virginia, New Hampshire had done so as well. The Constitution was adopted.



In the fall, Madison ran for Congress. His opponent, the rising young politician (and future president) James Monroe, lambasted Madison for not including a bill of rights in the Constitution. Because he believed rights were best protected by the structure of government, Madison previously opposed a bill of rights. Now he was fighting for his political life in a congressional district where a bill of rights was popular. Madison changed his position and promised voters that, if elected, he would write one.



As we know, he included a right to bear arms. Only four of the 13 state Constitutions had such a provision. The Virginia Declaration of Rights, written by none other than George Mason in 1776 when states controlled the militias, did not have one. Following its debate and decision to ratify, the Virginia convention proposed Congress consider a declaration of 20 rights, including a right to bear arms, and 20 constitutional amendments, including one giving states the power to arm their militias if Congress did not.



I believe it likely that Madison sought to correct the problem Henry and Mason had railed against in Richmond. Madison was determined that nothing in the Bill of Rights contradict anything in the main body of the Constitution; and the states had traditionally armed their militias simply by requiring that members bring their own guns with them when called to duty.



Consider, against this background, the language of Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”



Today, the Second Amendment is often extolled as a “safeguard against tyranny.” Even the Supreme Court used that phrase in 2008 when, for the first time, it held that the amendment grants a right unrelated to the militia.



Would we think differently about the amendment if we realized that its genesis was, at least in part, a concern with preserving a form of governmental tyranny?"



Opinion | Was Slavery a Factor in the Second Amendment? - The New York Times

How the Mueller Investigation Could Play Out for Trump - The New York Times


How the Mueller Investigation Could Play Out for Trump - The New York Times

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Border agent asks for ID after women speak Spanish

The Birth of the New American Aristocracy - The Atlantic





"For about a week every year in my childhood, I was a member of one of America’s fading aristocracies. Sometimes around Christmas, more often on the Fourth of July, my family would take up residence at one of my grandparents’ country clubs in Chicago, Palm Beach, or Asheville, North Carolina. The breakfast buffets were magnificent, and Grandfather was a jovial host, always ready with a familiar story, rarely missing an opportunity for gentle instruction on proper club etiquette. At the age of 11 or 12, I gathered from him, between his puffs of cigar smoke, that we owed our weeks of plenty to Great-Grandfather, Colonel Robert W. Stewart, a Rough Rider with Teddy Roosevelt who made his fortune as the chairman of Standard Oil of Indiana in the 1920s. I was also given to understand that, for reasons traceable to some ancient and incomprehensible dispute, the Rockefellers were the mortal enemies of our clan. Only much later in life did I learn that the stories about the Colonel and his tangles with titans fell far short of the truth.



At the end of each week, we would return to our place. My reality was the aggressively middle-class world of 1960s and ’70s U.S. military bases and the communities around them. Life was good there, too, but the pizza came from a box, and it was Lucky Charms for breakfast. Our glory peaked on the day my parents came home with a new Volkswagen camper bus. As I got older, the holiday pomp of patriotic luncheons and bridge-playing rituals came to seem faintly ridiculous and even offensive, like an endless birthday party for people whose chief accomplishment in life was just showing up. I belonged to a new generation that believed in getting ahead through merit, and we defined merit in a straightforward way: test scores, grades, competitive résumé-stuffing, supremacy in board games and pickup basketball, and, of course, working for our keep. For me that meant taking on chores for the neighbors, punching the clock at a local fast-food restaurant, and collecting scholarships to get through college and graduate school. I came into many advantages by birth, but money was not among them.


The meritocratic class has mastered the old trick of consolidating wealth and passing privilege along at the expense of other people’s children.



I’ve joined a new aristocracy now, even if we still call ourselves meritocratic winners. If you are a typical reader of The Atlantic, you may well be a member too. (And if you’re not a member, my hope is that you will find the story of this new class even more interesting—if also more alarming.) To be sure, there is a lot to admire about my new group, which I’ll call—for reasons you’ll soon see—the 9.9 percent. We’ve dropped the old dress codes, put our faith in facts, and are (somewhat) more varied in skin tone and ethnicity. People like me, who have waning memories of life in an earlier ruling caste, are the exception, not the rule.



By any sociological or financial measure, it’s good to be us. It’s even better to be our kids. In our health, family life, friendship networks, and level of education, not to mention money, we are crushing the competition below. But we do have a blind spot, and it is located right in the center of the mirror: We seem to be the last to notice just how rapidly we’ve morphed, or what we’ve morphed into.



The False Promise of Meritocracy



The meritocratic class has mastered the old trick of consolidating wealth and passing privilege along at the expense of other people’s children. We are not innocent bystanders to the growing concentration of wealth in our time. We are the principal accomplices in a process that is slowly strangling the economy, destabilizing American politics, and eroding democracy. Our delusions of merit now prevent us from recognizing the nature of the problem that our emergence as a class represents. We tend to think that the victims of our success are just the people excluded from the club. But history shows quite clearly that, in the kind of game we’re playing, everybody loses badly in the end.



2.



The Discreet Charm of the 9.9 Percent



Let’s talk first about money—even if money is only one part of what makes the new aristocrats special. There is a familiar story about rising inequality in the United States, and its stock characters are well known. The villains are the fossil-fueled plutocrat, the Wall Street fat cat, the callow tech bro, and the rest of the so-called top 1 percent. The good guys are the 99 percent, otherwise known as “the people” or “the middle class.” The arc of the narrative is simple: Once we were equal, but now we are divided. The story has a grain of truth to it. But it gets the characters and the plot wrong in basic ways.



It is in fact the top 0.1 percent who have been the big winners in the growing concentration of wealth over the past half century. According to the UC Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, the 160,000 or so households in that group held 22 percent of America’s wealth in 2012, up from 10 percent in 1963. If you’re looking for the kind of money that can buy elections, you’ll find it inside the top 0.1 percent alone.



A Tale of Three Classes (Figure 1):



The 9.9 percent hold most of the wealth in the United States.



Every piece of the pie picked up by the 0.1 percent, in relative terms, had to come from the people below. But not everyone in the 99.9 percent gave up a slice. Only those in the bottom 90 percent did. At their peak, in the mid-1980s, people in this group held 35 percent of the nation’s wealth. Three decades later that had fallen 12 points—exactly as much as the wealth of the 0.1 percent rose.



In between the top 0.1 percent and the bottom 90 percent is a group that has been doing just fine. It has held on to its share of a growing pie decade after decade. And as a group, it owns substantially more wealth than do the other two combined. In the tale of three classes (see Figure 1), it is represented by the gold line floating high and steady while the other two duke it out. You’ll find the new aristocracy there. We are the 9.9 percent.



So what kind of characters are we, the 9.9 percent? We are mostly not like those flamboyant political manipulators from the 0.1 percent. We’re a well-behaved, flannel-suited crowd of lawyers, doctors, dentists, mid-level investment bankers, M.B.A.s with opaque job titles, and assorted other professionals—the kind of people you might invite to dinner. In fact, we’re so self-effacing, we deny our own existence. We keep insisting that we’re “middle class....”



The Birth of the New American Aristocracy - The Atlantic

Monday, May 21, 2018

Why He’s Holding Out in East Harlem, Despite the Demolition - Video - NYTimes.com

Why He’s Holding Out in East Harlem, Despite the Demolition - Video - NYTimes.com

'Jesus never charged a leper a co-pay': rise of the religious left | US news | The Guardian

The Eviction Machine Churning Through New York City - The New York Times





"She was hardly the only tenant facing eviction by the owners, the Orbach Group, a New Jersey-based company that had recently paid about $76 million for her building and 21 others nearby, a Monopoly move that effectively snapped up most of the residential real estate along a block of West 109th Street. Orbach had filed eviction suits in housing court against scores of her neighbors in rent-regulated apartments.

What happened to Ms. Carranza and the others shows how New York City’s housing court system, created in part to shelter tenants from dangerous conditions, has instead become a tool for landlords to push them out and wrest a most precious civic commodity — affordable housing — out of regulation and into the free market."


The Eviction Machine Churning Through New York City - The New York Times

Afro-Colombian activist Francia Márquez, 2018 Goldman Prize Winner, on S...

Sunday, May 20, 2018

Are racist incidents on the rise in Trump era? AM Joy on MSNBC



AM Joy on MSNBC

Texas school had a shooting plan, armed officers and practice. And still 10 people died. - The Washington Post





Texas school had a shooting plan, armed officers and practice. And still 10 people died. - The Washington Post

“There is power in love”: Bishop Michael Curry’s fiery royal wedding add...

Opinion | John Kelly’s Ancestors Wouldn’t Have Fit In Either - The New York Times





"I had forgotten that memory of my mother, sitting by herself, reading aloud from a church newsletter. It was the only way she could read, having had only a grade school education. As an American teenager fluent in English, I felt pity for her, and perhaps a bit of shame.



The memory came back to me on learning of the White House chief of staff John Kelly’s words about undocumented immigrants coming from south of the border, whom he described as people who would not “easily assimilate into the United States, into our modern society.”



“They’re overwhelmingly rural people. In the countries they come from, fourth-, fifth-, sixth-grade educations are kind of the norm. They don’t speak English,” Mr. Kelly said. “They don’t integrate well; they don’t have skills. They’re not bad people. They’re coming here for a reason. And I sympathize with the reason. But the laws are the laws.”



Mr. Kelly feels sympathy for these people, some of whom are like my mother, born into a rural background. But Mr. Kelly — like President Trump, who last week called certain undocumented immigrants “animals” — cannot empathize with them. His inability to see or feel the world as they do is shared by many Americans..."



Opinion | John Kelly’s Ancestors Wouldn’t Have Fit In Either - The New York Times

Opinion | Voices From Venezuela: ‘Nobody Wants to Be a Pawn in a Game’ - The New York Times





"On Sunday, a presidential election is taking place in Venezuela against the background of a deepening economic crisis. The oil-rich country is suffering water and power shortages, and its people are struggling to pay for food and medicines. Many people have fled to neighboring countries.



Despite this, few expect President Nicolás Maduro to lose. Prominent opposition leaders have been banned from running and the Democratic Unity Roundtable, the main opposition organization, called on the electorate to abstain from voting.



We asked readers in Venezuela to describe their daily lives, how they cope with the shortages and what they are planning, or hoping, for the future. Here are some of the responses, edited for length and clarity. U.S. dollar conversions have also been added.



‘One generation is in exile, and the other left behind’

Our family has separated: The young have left, looking for a better future, and we, the older ones, have stayed in Venezuela. Those of us who fought hard to have a family business have to stay here to look after it as long as we can. We are all traveling back and forth, to see our children and grandchildren scattered all over the world. One generation is in exile, and the other left behind."



Opinion | Voices From Venezuela: ‘Nobody Wants to Be a Pawn in a Game’ - The New York Times

Saturday, May 19, 2018

GoFundMe campaign raises money to send Mariachi band, taco truck to racist NYC lawyer - CNET

Racist Ranter

"A GoFundMe campaign has raised more than $1,000 to send a Mariachi band and taco truck to a New York attorney whose racist rant went viral earlier this week.

Aaron Schlossberg was recorded berating cafe employees for speaking Spanish in New York City on Tuesday. He was reportedly kicked out of his office space on Thursday and had a formal complaint filed against him by a New York congressman. 

Schlossberg couldn't be reached at the telephone number listed on his firm's website. 
The Twitterverse also wanted to respond to his bigoted tirade. The ALT-Immigration Twitter account suggested sending a Mariachi band to sing La Cucaracha at Schlossberg's office. Followers of the account apparently liked the idea and put the call into action.
 
 

(Via.)

Friday, May 18, 2018

Tamara Johnson Shealey Talks Race, Georgia Politics and Building to Win... inally, a candidate that thinks and speaks the truth I see. Please vote😍😀😀 for her if you live in Georgia's 40th Senate District. Please vote on Tuesday no matter what district you live in.

Chris Cuomo fact-checks Trump's claim on immigration

Giuliani gets angry when confronted with his own words

Israel’s Massacre of Palestinian Civilians Should Spark Horror—and Action | The Nation

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"It is long past time to end the blockade of Gaza—and to reckon with the one-state reality in which Palestinians and Israelis live.By Ian S. Lustick

The barrier enclosing the two million Palestinians “living” in the Gaza Strip is not a border between two countries, as the media have insistently called it. It is a wall erected by Israel to make the suffering of those living inside the Gaza ghetto as invisible as possible to those living outside it.

Israel has told Gazans that anyone attempting to breach this wall and escape from Gaza will be shot. Anyone approaching it will be shot. And that is precisely what has happened over the weeks of protests by Palestinian refugees seeking to highlight their seventy-year exile from land they can see just beyond the wall. Scores of Palestinians have been killed, including journalists and children. Thousands more have been injured by live fire, with many losing legs and arms to amputations. Alongside this, there has been a report of one Israeli soldier hurt by a stone.

There are many words for what this is. Palestinians speak of heroism, resistance, dedication, and martyrdom. The Israeli government calls the shoot-to-kill and shoot-to-injure policies “self-defense.” Individual soldiers call it “following orders.” Israeli human rights groups, meanwhile, call the policy ordered by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman “grossly illegal.” My grandmother would have called it a shanda (Yiddish for a “disgrace”). But whether it is heroism or self-defense; whether the orders to shoot are legal or illegal; the mounting Israeli gun violence the world has been forced to witness along the Gaza ghetto wall is, without a doubt, disgusting. For any human being, no matter what their political views or ties to Israel or to Palestinian Arabs, the continuous mass shooting of Palestinian civilians is, or should be, emotionally and spiritually intolerable.

That it is psychologically and politically possible for Palestinians to continue sacrificing themselves in this way testifies to the desperation of their circumstances; that it is psychologically and politically possible for Israelis to murder and maim so many men, women, and children trying to escape from the ghetto within which they have been concentrated, or just trying to attract the world’s attention to their suffering, is a tragic and humiliating stain on the Jewish state and the Zionist movement that created it. It is also an entirely self-defeating for a state struggling against efforts to “delegitimize” its existence.

To be sure, there is always Israeli hasbara, or propaganda, to help those seeking some way to suppress the revulsion and pain that any decent person must feel at the stories coming out of Gaza. This hasbara insists that the protests are nothing more than a cynical Hamas publicity stunt. It tells us that armed Hamas terrorists are hiding themselves among the demonstrators, using the miserable masses to conceal their efforts to kill Israelis. Who could doubt this? When the British ruled Palestine, the underground Jewish army prided itself on hiding arms factories in grammar schools and synagogues. And as we know, in any besieged ghetto there will be ghetto fighters, and they will be treated as heroes by those on the inside, and terrorists by those on the outside. But if there are certainly men of violence among the masses of protestors, let us not forget that alongside the many Israeli soldiers who surely suffer some pangs of conscience, there are some, as we have seen on videotape, who high-five one another for using fancy sniper rifles to put big holes in human bodies hundreds of yards away.

As for those in charge of the security policies of the current Israeli government, they know all too well what they are doing, what horror they are inflicting. The security hawks that staff leading think tanks and Israeli government ministries regularly speak of the need to “mow the lawn” in Gaza, to keep the population there on a “strict diet,” and to “manage the conflict” by using purposefully inflicted suffering to sear into Palestinian hearts the belief that resistance is futile. When Israel adopted its policy of enforcing a hermetic seal around Gaza in 2007, a political geographer at Haifa University named Arnon Soffer offered his full-throated endorsement, but added that it would eventually mean, not shooting armed men, but “putting a bullet in the head of anyone who tries to climb over the security barrier.” “If we want to remain alive,” he said, by which he meant if Israel wants to remain a “Jewish” state, “we will have to kill and kill and kill.”

The struggle for a two-state solution is not moribund; it is dead. This is true even if the pretense that negotiations could succeed remains a useful excuse—a way for Israel, the Palestinian Authority, the United States, and the peace-process industry to exploit or ignore the deepening oppression of the current one-state reality. As documented by the Israeli military, there are now more Palestinians under the control of the Israeli state than there are Jews. Indeed, for all intents and purposes the Palestinians of Gaza and of the West Bank, citizens of no other country, are already within the Jewish state. They are citizens of no other recognized state. As measured by how much impact the State of Israel has over the intimate details of their lives, and indeed over whether they will live at all, they are as much inhabitants of the State of Israel as black slaves were inhabitants of the United States or as Africans in the Bantustans were inhabitants of apartheid South Africa. The five-decade occupation of the West Bank and the dozen-year blockade of Gaza, combined with regularly inflicted violent punishment, just mark differences in the way the Israeli state governs different populations in different regions."