damnedifIknow
damnedifIknow's JournalBlack designer hits back at police 'brutality and racism' with powerful collection
'It’s not for shock value, but it’s what’s going to make you think about this…after you go to three shows,' he added. 'What’s going to make you think about this again at 11 when you’re done for the day? That’s what it’s about.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3232258/Black-designer-hits-police-brutality-racism-powerful-collection-blood-spattered-clothing-starts-NYFW-horrific-footage-police-violence-including-Eric-Garner-s-death.html
Police invade Texas woman’s home for warrantless 3AM ‘welfare check’
PFLUGERVILLE, TX — A woman has filed a formal complaint after police entered and searched her home — without consent or a warrant — all to conduct a so-called “welfare check” on her absent roommate.
The incident occurred in the early morning hours of August 2nd, 2015, as Tori Thayer was home alone sleeping a few hours before her shift began at a local restaurant. Around 3:00 a.m., Ms. Thayer heard noises at the front door and thought someone was breaking in.
She’s not here; she’s not in my house!” Ms. Thayer told them as she began recording the aggressive encounter. “Where’s your warrant? Gentlemen, can you provide me a warrant right now?”
Police ignored her requests for a warrant, as they obviously did not have one. They barked questioned at her, as deputies helped themselves to a search of the home.
“They acted as if I wasn’t even talking, they kept asking me where she was and I had already had complied and told them everything I knew, at that point I was done.” Ms. Thayer told FOX 7. “I couldn’t do anything and they just wouldn’t listen.”
Ms. Thayer insisted that her roommate had not been home in several days and that the police should immediately leave. That’s when police grabbed Ms. Thayer and shoved her to the floor.
http://www.policestateusa.com/2015/tori-thayer/
Canadian radio station offers $40,000 prize for transgender person's transition
This is one life-changing contest.
A top 40 radio station in Canada is offering $40,000 (about US$30,300) to help a listener transition to a different gender.
The New Hot 89.9 in Ottawa, Ontario, launched "The New Normal" contest Tuesday and sought personal stories from all Canadian residents. The winning entrant will be able to use the prize for hormone therapy, gender reassignment surgery and other associated costs including a new wardrobe, Program Director Josie Fenech told the Daily News.
The idea originated after Caitlyn Jenner's highly publicized transition, including her speech at the ESPY Awards in July as she accepted the Arthur Ashe Courage Award.
"That really sparked conversations internally," Fenech said. "We felt this is something people are starting to talk about and if we dig deeper into the issue there are things that people need to open their eyes and learn more about."
* Response to the promotion has been immediate as Fenech said within an hour of announcing it they received a letter from a woman who had dropped off her 13-year-old daughter was starting school as a girl for the first time.
"We are realizing how many people are going through this right now," she said. "We hope people say 'if the radio station I'm listening to is talking about it and say it's OK then maybe I can walk to school with more confidence."
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/radio-station-offers-transgender-person-transition-article-1.2355640#
The Enduring Myth of Black Criminality
In his upcoming October cover story, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores how mass incarceration has affected African American families. "There's a long history in this country of dealing with problems in the African American community through the criminal justice system," he says in this animated interview. "The enduring view of African Americans in this country is as a race of people who are prone to criminality."
http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/404674/enduring-myth-of-black-criminality/
Lawsuit filed against Donald Trump for alleged assault by his security detail
Five people on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump in which they claim they were attacked by his security team during a protest last week in New York.
The incident occurred just outside Trump Tower, where the billionaire developer had called a press conference to discuss his presidential bid.
A group of Latino activists went to the site on Fifth Aveneue to protest offensive comments made by Trump against Mexicans, and the candidate's security detail assaulted at least three people, according to the filing.
"In my case, they beat me, something I never imagined could happen to me in the United States," Galicia told EFE, adding that Trump's security personnel used violence "because they know that their boss approves of it."
Along with their lawsuit, the plaintiffs are asking the judge to issue a restraining order so that they can peacefully protest without being attacked by Trump's security team.
"I'm afraid for my safety, and we need guarantees so that his guards don't approach us and we may exercise our right to protest," the activist said."
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2015/09/10/lawsuit-filed-against-trump-for-alleged-assault-by-his-security-detail/
White supremacists threaten to assassinate ‘anti-white’ Pope Francis during US visit
White supremacists have been calling for the assassination of Pope Francis over his calls on Europeans to house refugees fleeing Syria, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that monitors extremist organizations.
SITE reported Monday that the comments were posted to the infamous white supremacist blog Stormfront in response to a Washington Post article reporting the pontiff’s call for European Catholics to shelter asylum seekers who are streaming across Europe, mainly from Syria.
“This mofo needs a third eye, right in the middle of where his two existing eyes are,” wrote someone using the handle “Freedom lover.”
Another, using the handle “Peace through Stormfront,” wrote, “White people need to be protected from the genocidal anti-white Pope and the genocidal anti-white religion he pushes.”
The Post article was published on another white supremacist forum, Vanguard News Network, with user “John Adams” responding, “The pope deserves to be executed for crimes against the White race.”
According to SITE, members of these forums have been deadly in the past. Users have included Wade Michael Page, who killed six people in a Sikh temple shooting in 2012, Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 and injured 241 in 2011 in Norway, and Frazier Glenn Miller, who killed three at a Jewish community center in Kansas."
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/09/white-supremacists-threaten-to-assassinate-anti-white-pope-francis-during-us-visit/
Bernie Sanders Declares War On America’s Corrupt For Profit Prison System With New Bill
Bernie Sanders is striking back at corporate America’s prison industrial complex with a new bill that abolishes for profit prisons.
In a statement, Sanders discussed his new legislation:
It is clear to most Americans that we need major reforms in our broken criminal justice system. We need to end the tragic reality that the United States has more people in jail than any other country on earth, and that the people being incarcerated are disproportionately black and Hispanic. We need to take a hard look at why the rate of recidivism in this country is so high and why we are not developing successful paths back to civil society for those who serve prison time. Further we need to end, once and for all, the disgraceful practice of corporations profiting from the incarceration of Americans.
As a nation, our goal must be to do everything we can to create the conditions that prevent mass incarceration. At a time when we are spending $50 billion a year on our correctional system, it makes a lot more sense to me to be investing in jobs and education for our young people than in more and more jails. Not only can we prevent thousands of lives from being destroyed, we can save billions of taxpayer dollars. Locking people up is a lot more expensive than schools.
Overall, we need bold change in our criminal justice system. A good first step forward is to start treating prisoners as human beings, not profiting from their incarceration. Our emphasis must be on rehabilitation, not incarceration and longer prison sentences. "
http://www.politicususa.com/2015/09/08/bernie-sanders-declares-war-americas-corrupt-profit-prison-system-bill.html
Irish transgender rights law takes effect
An Irish law that allows transgender people to legally change their gender without medical intervention took effect on Tuesday.
The Gender Recognition Act 2015 took effect four days after Deputy Prime Minister Joan Burton, who is also Ireland’s minister for social protection, signed it.
“The wait for legal recognition is finally over,” said Broden Giambrone, chief executive of the Transgender Equality Network Ireland, an Irish trans advocacy group, in a statement after Burton signed the law. “The practical and symbolic importance of being recognized in the eyes of the state cannot be underestimated. This is a turning point for trans rights in Ireland.”
*reland is the fourth country to allow trans people to legally change their gender without surgery and other medical interventions.
The Colombian government in June announced trans people can legally change their name and gender on identification cards and other official documents without surgery.
Maltese lawmakers earlier this year approved a sweeping trans rights bill that allows people to legally change their gender without undergoing sex-reassignment surgery, hormone therapy or any other form of “psychiatric, psychological or medical treatment.” Argentina and Denmark have enacted similar laws."
http://www.washingtonblade.com/2015/09/08/irish-transgender-rights-law-takes-effect/
Yes, People Hate Cops—but Aren’t Stooping to Their Level
A manhunt is underway for suspects in the shooting death of a police officer in Chicago. Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz was found shot after chasing three suspects: two white men and one black man.
The news comes just days after a Houston officer named Darren Goforth was killed, apparently in an execution-style shooting. A black man named Shannon Miles has been arrested and charged with capital murder.
Referring to Goforth’s death, Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman wildly speculated that the officer had been killed because of his uniform and blamed the Black Lives Matter movement for his death, saying, “We’ve heard black lives matter; all lives matter. Well, cops’ lives matter too. At any point where the rhetoric ramps up to the point where calculated, cold-blooded assassination of police officers happen(s), this rhetoric has gotten out of control.”
*But actions speak louder than words, and police have made clear just how fast they can turn any encounter into a deadly one, whether it is shooting an unarmed man in the back while he is trying to run away, as in the case of Walter Scott in South Carolina, or the gunning down of a 12-year-old child named Tamir Rice in Cleveland, who was shot “within two seconds of the police arriving.”
Statistics provide even more clarity. The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, which collects meticulous data on law enforcement fatalities, found a mere 3 percent increase in the number of police officers killed this year compared with the same time last year. That increase is well within the statistical noise, and in fact, overall police deaths are gradually decreasing, with 64 officers losing their lives in the course of their jobs in 2015 compared with 62 in the first half of 2014. The leading cause of police deaths was not violent encounters, but traffic accidents.
Data released earlier this year by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that 13 other jobs in the U.S. are far deadlier than being a police officer. Fishers and loggers are most likely to die on the job. Even when examining death by violent means, taxi drivers have jobs that are more dangerous than those of police officers.
So much for people killing police. What about police killing people? The Guardian newspaper has been keeping careful tabs on officer-involved deaths in the U.S. and found that this year alone, police have killed 779 people. While the numbers of people killed per month were initially decreasing this year, July 2015 ended up being the deadliest month of the year, with 118 people gunned down by police.
And annually, the rate of killings by police is rising, a trend opposite to that of officers dying on the job. In late 2014, the FBI reported a 20-year high in police killings of felony suspects."
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/yes_people_hate_cops_--_but_arent_stooping_to_their_level_20150903
The Ivy League, Mental Illness, and the Meaning of Life
The former Yale English professor William Deresiewicz stirred up quite a storm earlier this month with his New Republic essay “Don’t Send Your Kid to the Ivy League”—a damning critique of the nation’s most revered and wealthy educational institutions, and the flawed meritocracy they represent. He takes these arguments even further in his upcoming book, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life.
Deresiewicz, who is also the author of A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship and the Things That Really Matter, spoke to me on the phone from his home in Portland, Oregon.
How does the phrase “excellent sheep” describe the typical student at an elite college today?
The most interesting thing about that phrase is that I didn’t write it myself. It came out of the mouth of a student of mine, and just seemed perfect. They’re “excellent” because they have fulfilled all the requirements for getting into an elite college, but it’s very narrow excellence. These are kids who will perform to the specifications you define, and they will do that without particularly thinking about why they’re doing it. They just know that they will jump the next hoop.
You’ve observed that Ivy League students have an internal struggle with both “grandiosity and depression.” Can you explain this further?
Alice Miller wrote about this 30 plus years ago in the classic The Drama of the Gifted Child, but I had to experience it to see it for myself. The grandiosity is that sense of “you’re the greatest, you’re the best, you’re the brightest.” This kind of praise and reinforcement all the time makes students feel they’re the greatest kid in the world. And I would say that this is even worse than when I was a kid. Now there’s a whole culture of parenting around this positive reinforcement.
These kids were always the best of their class, and their teachers were always praising them, inflating their ego. But it’s a false self-esteem. It’s not real self-possession, where you are measuring yourself against your own internal standards and having a sense that you’re working towards something. It’s totally conditional, and constantly has to be pumped up by the next grade, the next A, or gold star. "
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/08/qa-the-miseducation-of-our-college-elite/377524/
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