Photo courtesy of Eureka Recycling
Eureka Recycling will continue as St. Paul’s recycling provider, the city announced June 24. That’s a big win for all of us in the city, as well as for the non-profit Eureka Recycling. After a lengthy contract process, the city rejected bids by the nation’s two biggest trash-and-recycling companies. So what comes next? Continue reading
Filed under environment, St. Paul Notes
Journalist Shane Bauer worked undercover as a prison guard at a private CCA prison for four months.
Privatization means profits over people, every single time. Shane Bauer worked four months in a private prison, going undercover as a prison guard to report on what actually happens there. “Don’t ever say thank you” was one of the early lessons he learned, and perhaps one of the least damaging. Continue reading
Filed under prisons
Noemi Romero from The Excluded website
Hours after today’s disastrous Supreme Court immigration decision, a website called The Excluded popped up in my Facebook feed. The Excluded faces and stories of longtime U.S. residents who live every day at risk of deportation.
“Noemi Romero, 24, has lived in Arizona practically her whole life. At the age of 21 while she was raided by Sheriff Arpaio’s deputies while working to save money to pay for her DACA application. She can no longer able to apply due to her felony for working.”
Filed under immigration
Fatuma Ali told about her old job, running a ride at the Mall of America. “I know what it’s like not to be able to leave the job,” she said. One day she was sick. “I had to stay at my ride for five hours, while being sick in the garbage can every 30 minutes,” she recalled. She had no sick time. If she had left her job, she said, she would have been fired. Continue reading
Filed under health care, St. Paul Notes, work
[CORRECTED 6/21/2016] Sick pay for sick days, a nurse’s strike, and the desperate situation of home health care aides and the people they care for: three stories about workers in Minnesota highlight both the positive power of organizing and the need for more support for workers. Continue reading
Filed under health care, work
Sarah Deer’s powerful new book, The Beginning and End of Rape focuses on sexual violence in Native America. The beginning goes back to the European invasion, with rape used as a tool of genocide and conquest. Now, as then, when European American men rape Native women, U.S. legal systems help them escape punishment. In an eminently readable book, law professor and MacArthur genius grant winner Sarah Deer describes the historical trajectory of rape and rape laws, beginning with the historical connection between rape and conquest / genocide / white patriarchy and legal systems. Continue reading
Filed under gender, human rights, race
A new UN refugee agency report shows 65.3 million people forcibly displaced from their homes around the world. Of that number, 21.3 million are refugees and 3.2 million are aseeking asylum. Another 40.8 million internally displaced persons live inside their home coujntries, but have been forced out of their homes.
Numbers can only hint at human suffering. Continue reading
Filed under human rights, immigration
After the tragedy of Orlando, followed by outrageous and hateful political reactions, we need some good news. And we have it. One of the good news stories is related to Orlando, and the others come from Minnesota. Continue reading
Filed under environment, gender, housing
Georgia Senator David Perdue seems to have told people to pray for President Obama’s death last week. Of course, he was only praying from the Bible. Psalm 109, to be specific. He quoted one verse: Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
From 2013-14 Civil Rights Data Collection
As the school year ended, we got a peek at what is really happening to the 50 million students in 95,000 U.S. public schools. The Office of Civil Rights (U.S. Department of Education) released a first look at the 2013-14 Civil Rights Data Collection on June 7. That’s a whole lot of data, and more will come over the next few months. Here are six take-aways from the first round: Continue reading
Filed under education, race, Uncategorized
Seems like every week brings more news of government surveillance. You’d think the right wing would be up in arms about this government overreach and invasion of privacy—but it’s their folks who are taking the photos and setting up the databases of protesters and immigrants and anyone else who happens to get captured on some […]
On June 16, Kash Patel announced on social media that an alleged plot to mount a drone attack on Trump’s UFC fight had been “stopped cold.” And then the story went away. Why? This attack was not international terrorism. Even Patel could not spin it as a left-wing plot. Those arrested came from home-grown, right-wing […]
Bombing schools and hospitals is a war crime. Deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure is a war crime. Yesterday’s fulminations from the Führer in the White House go beyond war crimes to announce that he intends genocide: the wiping out of an entire people and civilization.
ICE is only one of the federal agencies surveilling people. Federal surveillance reaches far beyond immigrants. Federal agents use massive databases, facial recognition, cell phone photos, and license plate records. Beyond surveillance, they target and threaten people involved in protests, bringing the full weight of federal power to bear on individuals. Their actions often remain […]
Five years after the violent attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, the attacks on democracy and on elected officials continue. Yesterday, two politicians currently under attack by the Trump administration spoke out with anger and eloquence.
Mary Turck