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September 2017

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What I’m Reading – September 10, 2017

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Horrific Executive, Legislative, or Judicial Action

“A not so fun fact about what Donald Rumsfeld once called “known unknowns”: ICE doesn’t know or won’t say how many American citizens have been arrested and imprisoned by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. It’s illegal for ICE to imprison Americans, but so long as its agents don’t believe you are one, the burden is on you to prove it—without being entitled to a lawyer, since most deportation hearings are civil proceedings.” ICE Wrongly Imprisoned an American Citizen for 1,273 Days. Judges Say He’s Owed $0. (by Harry Siegel for The Daily Beast)

“First: Sessions claimed that DACA “contributed to a surge of unaccompanied minors on the southern border.” This allegation, often touted by far-right xenophobes, is false. A study published in International Migration, a peer-reviewed academic journal, found that the surge in unaccompanied minors actually began in 2008. (DACA was announced in 2012.) The authors pointed to a host of factors contributing to this phenomenon, including escalating gang violence in Central America, as well as drug cartels’ willingness to target and recruit children in Mexico. But the study found that DACA was not one of these factors. Its authors concluded that “the claim that DACA is responsible for the increase in the flow of unaccompanied alien children is not supported by the data.”” Jeff Sessions Spews Nativist Lies While Explaining Why Trump Is Killing DACA (by  Mark Joseph Stern for Slate)

“Funding for this work quite often features the US government. US global health funding has topped $10bn in each of the past three years. But all that is now at risk, after President Donald Trump’s decision to reinstate the so-called Global Gag rule, which will ban funding to any non-US aid groups that offer abortion services or advice funded from other partners.” Insult to injury: how Trump’s ‘global gag’ will hit women traumatised by war (by Tara Sutton, Joe Parkin Daniels, and Ruth Maclean for The Guardian)

Sports

“Let me say why this was such an exceptionally brave thing to do. One, it’s always courageous to tell the truth when you are bullied or beaten. If you hold that inside, it can kill you. You tell the truth and shame the devil. Two, we know what kind of reaction a statement like this can provoke in the police. Rather than apologizing to Michael Bennett, they will interpret this as an attack on all of them. That, to me, is the sickest part of police culture. Not every police officer brutalizes people, but the overwhelming number of police officers will protect those who do. It’s called “the blue line of silence” for a reason.” Stand With Michael Bennett, Even if It’s Uncomfortable (by Dave Zirin for The Nation)

Corporate Irresponsibility

“So, Equifax, I have to ask: Now that you have failed at your one job, why should you be allowed to keep doing it? If a bank lost everyone’s money, regulators might try to shut down the bank. If an accounting firm kept shoddy books, its licenses to practice accounting could be revoked. (See how Texas pulled Arthur Andersen’s license after the Enron debacle.) So if a data-storage credit agency loses pretty much everyone’s data, why should it be allowed to store anyone’s data any longer? Seriously, Equifax? This Is a Breach No One Should Get Away With (by Farhad Manjoo for The New York Times)

“Gamble sold more than 13 percent of his stake in Equifax. Loughran sold 9 percent of his holdings and Ploder disposed of 4 percent. Equifax said in its statement that intruders accessed names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and driver’s-license numbers, as well as credit-card numbers for about 209,000 consumers. The incident ranks among the largest cybersecurity breaches in history.” Three Equifax Managers Sold Stock Before Cyber Hack Revealed (by Anders Merlin for Bloomberg)

“The $16.60 per hour Ms. Ramos earns as a janitor at Apple works out to about the same in inflation-adjusted terms as what Ms. Evans earned 35 years ago. But that’s where the similarities end. Ms. Evans was a full-time employee of Kodak. She received more than four weeks of paid vacation per year, reimbursement of some tuition costs to go to college part time, and a bonus payment every March. When the facility she cleaned was shut down, the company found another job for her: cutting film. Ms. Ramos is an employee of a contractor that Apple uses to keep its facilities clean. She hasn’t taken a vacation in years, because she can’t afford the lost wages. Going back to school is similarly out of reach. There are certainly no bonuses, nor even a remote possibility of being transferred to some other role at Apple.” To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider the Janitors at Two Top Companies, Then and Now (by Neil Irwin for The New York Times)

Justice

“When you enjoy your freedoms, and you tell those who want their freedoms that they have to wait, that they have to go slowly, that they have to give you time to make uncomfortable adjustments to the amount of privilege that their inequality has afforded you, what you are saying is, “You were not born with these rights. You were not born as deserving as me. I have the power and privilege to determine when it is time for you to receive freedom and equality, and my approval is conditioned on how comfortable and safe you make me feel about how that freedom and equality will impact the privileges I enjoy.”” There Is No Middle Ground Between Racism And Justice (by Ijeoma Oluo for The Establishment)

Fight Back

“When I forwarded Elliot’s message to his listed family members on Facebook, hoping that someone, anyone, would do a single goddamned thing about their son or uncle or cousin who reads Neo-Nazi blogs and fantasizes about raping and murdering women he disagrees with politically, one defended him as “excitable.” As if he were a badly behaved Pomeranian prone to pissing on the rug and telling women that they will be raped, murdered and set on fire when guys like him take charge.” Is Doxxing Ever Okay? (by Andrea Grimes for Dame)

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