In a return to coercive sterilization policies from the early 20th century, a judge in White County, Tennessee, is providing inmates 30 days credit toward jail time if they undergo a sterilization or contraception procedure.
General Sessions Judge Sam Benningfield signed a standing order on May 15, 2017, providing that men who undergo a vasectomy, and women who have a long-term contraceptive implanted in their arms, will get 30 days off their jail sentence. Both procedures are to be performed by the Tennessee Department of Health. State health officials have reported an increase in crimes involving opioid pain pills and heroin in recent years, especially in rural communities like White County.
First elected in 1988, the judge said he decided to implement the program to help people with convictions “start thinking about taking responsibility for themselves.” In an interview with WTVF, he explained, “I hope to encourage them at some point finally to take, you know, personal responsibility and to give them a chance, if/when they do get out, not to be burdened again with additional children.”
Vikings were historically recorded trading in the far east, middle east, and into large parts of northern Africa. They set up colonies and outposts, married local women, and absorbed local customs and traditions.
So your rascism is ahistorical and you are wrong.
The agent’s decision to allow me to write about our conversations came after learning that ice was making a push, beginning this week, to arrest young undocumented immigrants who were part of a large wave of unaccompanied minors who crossed the border in recent years and who, until now, had been allowed to live in the U.S. Rather than detaining these young people, the government had placed them in the care of families around the country. Most of them are trying to lead new lives as American transplants, going to school and working. ice now plans to pursue those who have turned eighteen since crossing the border, and who, as a result, qualify for detention as legal adults. “I don’t see the point in it,” the agent said. “The plan is to take them back into custody, and then figure it out. I don’t understand it. We’re doing it because we can, and it bothers the hell out of me.”
Ok, so people are making fun of this because yes, “What else is new? That’s what we’ve been saying. Tell me something I don’t know!” and I get it. It is like when they did a study on the fact that women gain weight after pregnancy. In other news water is wet and fire is hot. But if they document it in a conscious, systematic way maybe they can fix it. We did research that teachers, even female teachers tend to call on boys more and give them more attention, so then we were educated on ways in which to fix that bias in our classrooms. If we can see objectively that they do it, therefore removing any of the baggage of the harmful stereotypes and racist preconceived notions that the people who need to hear this most may carry. When someone shares their story (like girls feeling overlooked in the classroom, or black drivers being pulled over for driving while black and generally being harassed) people can think ‘oh they are just making a fuss’ or ‘it couldn’t have been that bad’ or ‘ they must have done something wrong to deserve how they were treated’. To study it in this way, and hopefully others, gives people the tools they need to stop dismissing it and start fixing it. I know it shouldn’t be necessary, but hopefully it can do some good.
Celebrating someone’s death seems like a really macabre thing to do. Like I get that people don’t like him because of how his administration dealt with the AIDS epidemic, but promoting someone’s death as a good thing doesn’t sit well with me.
during his administration, we had a problem with abuse of patients in mental healthcare facilities (asylums, but don’t call them that), and his response to it was just to shut down the entire system. he closed all public mental healthcare facilities because a few of them were mistreating patients, and all those mentally ill people suddenly found themselves homeless without the skills necessary to survive in the general populous. he’s the reason why our healthcare system is so terrible, and he’s to blame for the homelessness epidemic (i’ll get into the next reason why he’s responsible for our high homeless population in a sec). millions of people lost everything because of reagan. thousands died.
he also completely restructured our economy. from 1776 until he became president, we had an economic system like no other (look up the American School), but he removed most of the rules and regulations we had to keep the system in place because our system at the time limited accumulation of wealth. we had a built-in buffer that kept most people middle class. when he restructured our economy so he and his friends could get richer, reagan removed the safeguards that kept us out of poverty (most of the time), so now the lower echelons of society were in freefall towards homelessness. people lost their homes and businesses because the rich could do basically whatever they wanted now. superstores like wal-mart rose to prominence and pushed out small businesses because of this. our government also greatly reduced its expenditure on infrastructure. ronald reagan’s greed is why we don’t have enough trains and all our roads are falling apart.
he also expanded our already bloated military while in power. one of his slogans was “peace in strength.” his goal for our country was to get an iron grip around the rest of the world and impose our own agendas on other countries at gunpoint.
One of the first things reagan did when he came to power was to ignore the supreme court’s earlier ruling, ignore the constitution, and try to enforce a mandatory daily christian prayer time in all schools. when government workers went on strike against him and his policies, he fired 11,345 people. he put 11,345 people out of a job because they didn’t like him.
he lowered taxes for the rich, but increased taxes on the poor, contributing to the aforementioned lack of infrastructure and homelessness crisis. he also began privatising the government, which put thousands of jobs at risk and made wealthy capitalists the men who run our country. reagan is responsible for trickle down economics.
after the great depression, our government put in social programs to help people stay afloat, like universal healthcare for the elderly and disabled, basic income (the government paid people to dig ditches if they couldn’t find any other jobs. the ditches didn’t serve any purpose, but those people needed money and the government was willing to give money to anyone who worked), and food stamps. ronald reagan slashed all these programs and more, like the EPA, which made sure we were a “green” country.
as a result of these slashes, people who had been secure on government assistance programs were now having to take out loans and get into debt, which jeopardised our economy. we had a stock market crash because people were becoming too poor to buy stocks, and our national debt increased by 3 times. we went from $997 billion in debt to $2.85 trillion in 1987.
he also pushed us further into the cold war. previously, our relations with russia were cooling down a bit, but during reagan’s second term, he began actively threatening russia again. ronald reagan brought us to the brink of a nuclear war that would have killed all humans on earth.
Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher, the most hated prime minister in UK history, were close friends. he was also personal friends with Donald Trump.
Under reagan, we resumed a history of violent military imperialism in foreign countries, most notably lebanon, afghanistan, and pakistan. In lebanon, we tried to stop a revolution against an oppressive regime, and in afghanistan and pakistan, reagan ordered the CIA to train civilians and create a military force to fight russia for us. Reagan created the taliban, a militant group that even today publicly dismembers people for playing games in public. they cut off children’s hands. He also began dealing weapons with China, betraying our longstanding ally, Taiwan, destabilising politics in the pacific. Under his orders, we secretly aided african and south american military dictatorships in crushing their opposition. He assisted Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran who started the 1979 revolution, in purging political opposition from the government. in 1988 our military shot down an iranian commercial flight, killing 290 civilians.
Reagan was a Nazi sympathiser and referred to slain SS officers as “victims” of the war. just to make sure you read that right: Ronald Reagan supported the Nazis.
He declared the war on drugs, a movement that has greatly increased the disproportionate incarceration rates of african american and latino men in this country.
During Reagan’s second term, 115,000 people were diagnosed with AIDS and 70,000 died of it. Reagan did nothing to curb the spread, despite knowing that the AIDS epidemic almost exclusively affected black people and the LGBT community. when he learned how many people were dying and who they were, he laughed. he laughed at our suffering while we were dropping dead.
In short, Ronald Reagan was a wealthy, selfish, greedy, capitalistic, imperialist, racist, ableist, homophobic, genocidal, antisemitic, warmongering, backstabbing murderer. Ronald Reagan was a monster.
holy shit new york is conducting an investigation of whether this jewish woman who is principal at a lower-class, black and latinx high school in the city is a communist because she’s known for the anti-racism and anti-segregation work she does
Over the years, Ms. Bloomberg has become one of the most outspoken and visible critics of New York City’s public schools, regularly castigating the Education Department’s leadership at forums and in the news media. Most of her criticism is aimed at actions that she says perpetuate a segregated and unequal educational system and that penalize black and Latino students. Through the years, she has helped organize protests and assemblies to push for integration and equal resources and treatment for her almost entirely black and Latino student body.
[…]
According to a letter sent to Ms. Bloomberg’s lawyers from the general counsel for the Education Department, Ms. Bloomberg and two unnamed teachers at the school are accused of belonging to the Progressive Labor Party, a Communist organization. They are also accused of recruiting students and inviting them to participate in the party’s activities, including marches.
Ms. Bloomberg, 53, denies those allegations.
A diminutive woman whose students often tower over her, Ms. Bloomberg did not set out to become an activist against her employer. She started her career teaching in Chicago before coming to work in New York City’s schools. When she was named principal of Park Slope Collegiate in 2004 — at the time, it was one of three small high schools in the former John Jay High School building in Park Slope — she said she found a deeply neglected school with a leaky roof, toilets that overflowed, moldy walls and doors that would not open properly. The student body was being neglected as well, she said, with few of its graduates ready for the rigors of college.
[…]
But that changed in 2010, when she learned the education department wanted to open a new high school in her building to serve white middle- and upper-class families in the neighborhood who had shunned Park Slope Collegiate. City officials proposed creating a selective secondary school to be called Millennium Brooklyn High School as a sister school to the overwhelmingly white Millennium High School in Manhattan.
Ms. Bloomberg said she did not understand why the white parents in the neighborhood could not simply send their children to one of the existing high schools. She said she thought the district had an excellent opportunity to integrate this black and Latino high school with white students from Park Slope and neighborhoods nearby.
But department officials were adamant about creating the new high school, which would screen students for test scores and behavior. As an enticement, the department promised to fix up the dilapidated John Jay building if Millennium came in.
“That really did it,” Ms. Bloomberg said.
She had been begging, for years for money to fix up her school. “You mean there is money? They’ve been sitting on money or they can find money if it’s for white students?” Ms. Bloomberg recalled thinking. “This was too much. It was right in our faces. It became clear to the students: ‘You’re not good enough.’”
[…]
But a fire had been lit. Over the years, Ms. Bloomberg supported her students in fighting the installation of metal detectors in their school, helped organize school assemblies to talk about police violence, and had spoken out passionately against segregation and what she considers racist Education Department policies.
Some teachers at Park Slope Collegiate disagreed with the assemblies and other protests that Ms. Bloomberg, who is extremely popular among her students and their parents — had supported and refused to participate.
[…]
Ms. Bloomberg denies any knowledge of organizing efforts for the Progressive Labor Party at the school. She said she could not control what groups other school workers or parents might belong to. She also said all events at Park Slope Collegiate were organized by the school and not by any outside organization.
This is precisely what happened in the 50s and 60s during the Red Scare to (White) people who organized with Black people for human rights equality.
My stepdad was one of those guys. He organized with Paul Robeson in NYC in the late 50s/early 60s. FBI came to his house to try to intimidate him multiple times. He requested his file via FOIA once – thing was a couple hundred pages long, completely redacted.
It is very significant that she is Jewish tho, not just “white.” Jews are accused of being communists (and fascists… somehow) on the regular. It goes along with the whole “Jews are more loyal to other Jews than to their country” trope, which often leads to violence (and was used to perpetuate the Holocaust, just saying.)
Jews were disproportionately affected by McCarthyism. Jews are always, ALWAYS accused of being the “other,” of being the rebel and rabblerouser disguised as a decent person trying to indoctrinate your children and rise up to control the world.
This is very specifically anti-semitic.
Yeah, the idea behind a lot of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories is that Jews are an insidious menace hellbent on bringing about “white genocide” by facilitating race mixing through communism.
Exhibit A:
This is why anti-Semitism and other forms of racism (anti-Blackness, anti-Latinx sentiment, etc.) are actually far more closely linked than people realise. Because white supremacists don’t see us as individuals asking for equal rights and protections, they see us all as a cabal of degenerates trying to topple the “natural order of things” by putting them on the bottom of the social pyramid (which, of course, it was totally fine to do to us, because we’re all “obviously inferior”).
So yeah, if you have a situation where a Jewish woman is being accused of communism for fighting on behalf of her Black and Latinx students, this right here is definitely the underpinning of that accusation.
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 