curate:
rekomuse:tjjourian:teflonwonton:hahaihateeveryonehaha:del-corona:lakrymosa
Democracy Now, November 29, 2011: Battlefield America: U.S. Citizens Face Indefinite Military Detention in Defense Bill Before Senate
AMY GOODMAN: Here in this country. U.S. citizens abroad as well as others abroad and others abroad in this country as well as U.S. citizens.
DAPHNE EVIATAR: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re picked up off the street and you have no trial.
AMY GOODMAN: And it could be for things you’ve done here in this country. If you communicate with Al Qaeda, you’re suspected of being even a supporter of Al Qaeda in some way or of Al Qaeda’s associated forces. And the U.S. gets to decide who they think is associated with Al Qaeda, and that list grows longer almost every day.
AMY GOODMAN: Now again, suspected. This is not that you’ve been convicted.
DAPHNE EVIATAR: Suspected. And this is military custody without trial. So, this is for example what we have in Guantanamo Bay and at Bagram only you’re now expanding the battlefield, as you said, to the United States. And, explicitly, some members of congress have said recently, yes, the battlefield now is the United States as well and the U.S. military ought to be able to operate here as well. And one other point, another very controversial provision in the bill and what the administration has particularly objected to, is the mandatory military custody provision which would say anyone suspected of terrorism in any way connected to Al Qaeda would have to be put into military custody. So, the government wouldn’t even have the option. So, all these FBI investigations that are thwarting terrorist attacks and local police investigations, immediately that would have to be turned over to the U.S. military, and that would become a military action here in the United States, on U.S. soil.
In juvenile detention centers across the United States, one in eight detained children experience abuse in any given year—12 percent of all kids in juvenile detention. Eighty percent of them are victimized by a member of the facility’s staff. “In detention facilities, there are extreme power differentials between staff and detainees, and very little oversight,” Stannow says. “When people have unchecked power, bad things happen. When predators have unchecked power, horrendous things happen.
nickgerber:
I’m in a place I don’t often find myself. I’m equally horrified and proud. I’m disgusted with the police for beating non violent protestors and I’m so amazed at the resilience of the protesters who have been maced, beaten, arrested, denied due process, and generally fucked over by the police…
killanois:
yourunlikelyhero:
mangosupasonic:
faineemae:
cherriesinchocolate:
The #ItsNotRape Twitter tag.
Things are pixelated and censored because I’m using this picture for a school presentation, but really. Ugh.
To them, it’s “it’s not rape until it happens to me.”
fuck that, especially the “dark skin girl.”
FUCK ALL OF THAT.
Fuck everyone on that list.
ugh. To everyone on that list
I fucking hate humanity.
The average life span of a transgendered person is twenty-three years. The statistic is shocking, until it begins to make sense. Gender non-conformists face routine exclusion and violence. Transgendered people are disproportionately poor, homeless, and incarcerated. Many of the systems and facilities intended to help low-income people are sex-segregated and thereby alienate those who don’t comply with state-imposed categories. A trans woman may not be able to secure a bed in a homeless shelter, for example. Spade writes that just as the feminist movement tended to “focus on gender-universalized white women’s experience as ‘women’s experience,’” the lesbian- and gay-rights movement has focused primarily on a white, middle-class politic, centered on marriage and mainstream social mores.
“
| — |
Guernica / Trans-Formative Change
Dean Spade is the first openly trans law professor. Meaghan Winter interviews him for Granta.
H/T The Rumpus
(via irunfrombears)
^^^ a very basic intro to some of the reasons why i in no way support the human rights campaign or other mainstream “gay rights” organizing
(via dressupbox)
The average lifespan of a trans* person is 23. Twenty-three years old. That is heartbreaking.
(via stfuconservatives)
|
SWOP, at its most basic, is an anti-violence campaign. As a multi-state network of sex workers and advocates, we address locally and nationally the violence that sex workers experience because of their criminal status. Operating in one of the most prominently violent societies today, sex workers in America experience this phenomenon pointedly in the context of their criminal status. Yet, sex workers are seldom afforded protection or recourse from violent acts committed against them because of the precarious, often graft-ridden relationship between sex work and law enforcement. Society tolerates violence against sex workers because of the stigma and myths that surround prostitution. Only until these falsehoods are corrected and sex workers are legitimized will we be able to effectively prevent and minimize the structural and occupational challenges of sex work. We are here for the Whore Revolution!
2. Prison and police accountability activists have generally organized around and conceptualized men of color as the primary victims of state violence. Women prisoners and victims of police brutality have been made invisible by a focus on the war on our brothers and sons. It has failed to consider how women are affected as severely by state violence as men. The plight of women who are raped by INS officers or prison guards, for instance, has not received sufficient attention. In addition, women carry the burden of caring for extended family when family and community members are criminalized and wherehoused. Several organizations have been established to advocate for women prisoners; however, these groups have been frequently marginalized within the mainstream anti-prison movement.
3. The anti-prison movement has not addressed strategies for addressing the rampant forms of violence women face in their everyday lives, including street harassment, sexual harassment at work, rape, and intimate partner abuse. Until these strategies are developed, many women will feel shortchanged by the movement. In addition, by not seeking alliances with the anti-violence movement, the anti-prison movement has sent the message that it is possible to liberate communities without seeking the well-being and safety of women.
# Prisons don’t work. Despite an exponential increase in the number of men in prisons, women are not any safer, and the rates of sexual assault and domestic violence have not decreased. In calling for greater police responses to and harsher sentences for perpetrators of gender violence, the anti-violence movement has fueled the proliferation of prisons which now lock up more people per capita in the U.S. than any other country. During the past fifteen years, the numbers of women, especially women of color in prison has skyrocketed. Prisons also inflict violence on the growing numbers of women behind bars. Slashing, suicide, the proliferation of HIV, strip searches, medical neglect and rape of prisoners has largely been ignored by anti-violence activists. The criminal justice system, an institution of violence, domination, and control, has increased the level of violence in society.
INCITE! works with groups of women of color and their communities to develop political projects that address the multiple forms of violence women of color experience in our lives, on our bodies, and in our communities.
We identify “violence against women of color” as a combination of “violence directed at communities,” such as police violence, war, and colonialism, and “violence within communities,” such as rape and domestic violence.
