Social justice
fromTruthout
10 hours agoI Will Choose Death Over Treatment Unless New York Changes Its Parole Laws
Parole reforms are urgently needed for incarcerated individuals facing life sentences without hope of release.
Valentina expressed her emotional struggle, stating, 'I cried a lot. I dreaded going to school.' This highlights the profound impact of her mother's incarceration on her daily life.
In the early 20th century, sociologist Max Weber noted that sweeping industrialization would transform how societies worked. As small, informal operations gave way to large, complex organizations with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, leaders would need to rely less on tradition and charisma, and more on organization and rationality. He also foresaw that jobs would need to be broken down into specialized tasks and governed by a system of hierarchy,
On January 18, a photograph of a pair of safety goggles in a hardware store floated across my Instagram timeline. "#JOURNALISTS covering #iceprotest in #Minneapolis: Less lethal projectiles move 400-600 feet per second. Z87.1 glasses no longer provide the protection required," read the caption. The post came from Crisis Ready Media and was shared by the National Press Photographers' Association (NPPA).
During a confrontation with ICE agents, two legal observers had their faces scanned by a federal officer to include in a vague database. "We have a nice little database, and now you're considered domestic terrorists," the ICE agent said at the time. It wasn't clear at the moment whether the agent was bluffing. But now, new details reported by CNN reveal that Alex Pretti, the ICU nurse murdered by ICE agents in Minneapolis was indeed closely tracked by a border agent system before his killing.
He is not worthy of the presidency. He takes bribes blatantly. And now he's being a racist, blatantly. They were supposed to deport the dangerous criminals. They were not supposed to go after small children, storm schools, bring terror upon, you know, the little kids and the women and children, not just the immigrants in the school. All the children are scared.
Yet while "Abolish ICE" serves as a unifying chant in the streets, Democrats are once again seeking to temper and co-opt people's demands into a narrow version of reform. The demands outlined by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer could not be more toothless: requiring ICE agents to unmask, wear body cameras, and to follow a code of conduct modeled on other law enforcement agencies.
Like us, you may feel paralyzed in the face of the relentless images of violence we see every day. Suffering children, military occupations, the devastated neighborhoods, the cries of parents mourning their dead-these scenes haunt us. Whether it is happening in Palestine or Minneapolis, we are witnesses to suffering, and that witnessing takes a heavy toll. Clearly, the devastating situations in the West Bank and Gaza and in Minneapolis differ
A student-led coalition has gathered more than 2,600 signatures from law students, legal academics, and law student organizations across 109 law schools calling on Congress to pass the Federal Officer Accountability Act. As the Department of Homeland Security disappears suspected migrants without due process, arbitrarily harasses citizens, and point blank kills innocent people on camera, a shocked public has learned what lawyers have talked about for years: the government has stacked the immunity deck to functionally shield law enforcement from accountability.
"Are you okay?" These were Alex Pretti's last words, said to a woman after ICE agents had tackled and pepper-sprayed her. Videos from bystanders show Pretti holding up a phone, attempting to document what was happening before he himself was pepper-sprayed, wrestled to the ground, and killed by those officers. He lost his life not for committing violence, but for documenting it, and stepping in to protect someone facing it.
In a Texas town at the edge of the Rio Grande and a tall metal border wall, rumors swirled that federal immigrationofficials wanted to purchase three hulking warehouses to transform into a detention center. As local officials scrambled to find out what was happening, a deed was filed showing the Department of Homeland Security had already inked a $122.8 million deal for the 826,000-square-foot (76,738-square-meter) warehouses in Socorro, a bedroom community of 40,000 people outside El Paso.