01 June 21
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Reader Supported News
RSN: Joel Segal and Harvey Wasserman | The "Lysistrata Method" to Solve the Middle-East Madness ... Because We Men Are Idiots
Joel Segal and Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
Excerpt: "The Palestinian-Israeli nightmare has a solution: men must exit the process."
The blood rivalry is deepening. It’s being used to fuel anti-Jewish/anti-Muslim hatred, spiraling into an epic abyss extending far beyond the Middle East. Global catastrophe stares us in the face.
Parallel disputes have been mitigated, including Northern Ireland’s unhinged 350-year Catholic-Protestant civil war, where women played a key role in bringing about peace.
But this one stands alone. It demands a game-changer.
As everywhere, men are responsible for nearly all the violence. We must now defer to the ultimate arbiters of birth and survival — women.
Only those who bear the first joy and pain of childbirth can grasp the magnitude of this situation.
Here’s how it can go:
Simultaneous referenda must be staged within the Israeli and Palestinian communities.
Only those who identify as women can vote. Each side will elect seven females to negotiate a binding mediation.
Seven is a workable number for each “team.” Fourteen is about the max any group discussion can handle.
Facilitators will be chosen by each side. These too will all identify as women. At least some will not be Israeli, Palestinian, Christian, Muslim, or Jewish.
All Middle-Eastern fighting, rocket shooting, new settlements, etc. must cease as discussions proceed.
The process will drag on. But each side must agree that they will not give up, and that the solution they finally birth will be binding.
To enforce the outcome, we respectfully suggest that throughout the world, all those who identify as women further agree that should anyone identifying as male violate the agreement, all intimate relations with all men everywhere will cease until the situation is resolved.
This “Lysistrata Method” originated in a 411 BC play by Aristophanes (a guy) protesting Athens’ catastrophic war with Sparta. Greek society did not buy in. A plague/pandemic devastated the city.
For you who scoff at this “Lysistrata Method,” here’s the ultimate question: What else you got?
Throughout history, women have led the charge for peace. Amidst this apocalyptic Middle-Eastern miasma, they must now take definitive control.
Guys … brace yourselves!!!
Joel Segal and Harvey Wasserman co-convene the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection zoom Mondays at 5 p.m. EST. Harvey’s People’s Spiral of US History is available via solartopia@gmail.com. Joel was instrumental in passing the Affordable Care Act.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
A protest against police violence. (photo: Kristin Murphy/Deseret News)
Report Documents 32,542 Police Killings in US Since 2000 With Vast Undercount of People of Color
Democracy Now!
major new report on police killings suggests far more people of color have been killed by police than previously known. The report by the Raza Database Project and UnidosUS found at least 2,600 Latinos were killed by the police since 2014, a figure 24% higher than previous counts. Overall, researchers documented the deaths of over 32,000 people who have been killed by police since 2000. People of color accounted for 60% of the deaths despite making up roughly just 40% of the population.
We’re joined right now by Roberto Rodríguez, the director of the Raza Database Project, a network of some 50 researchers, scholars, journalists, activists and family members of victims killed by law enforcement. He’s also a professor at the University of Arizona and the author of several books, including Yolqui, on police violence in Black, Brown and Indigenous communities, and Justice: A Question of Race, where Roberto Rodríguez details his own experience after a brutal beating at the hands of L.A. sheriffs in March of 1979.
Professor, thanks so much for joining us. First, lay out what you found.
ROBERTO RODRÍGUEZ: Well, you know, I’ve been researching this since '79, and I, myself, was surprised. We found many more killings than expected. We didn't even include the Border Patrol killings, which is about 128 in the last 10 years. We’ll include that in the final report. But what we found is that there is no systematic effort to count, to collect this data. The FBI is supposed to, but they don’t. It’s up to the media and independent researchers. And it’s very difficult.
But regardless, again, we combined about five different databases and found those 32,000-plus. You know, I’m going from memory: I think the Black community suffers from about over 6,600 killings since 2000; the Latino, or the Brown population, is about 5,700; the Asian community, about 3,000; and the Native community, over 500. Proportionately, the Native community actually is the highest. But something that’s very important to note, it’s not really the percentages that’s the most important here; it’s the number, because, in other words, what if we were killed at the 40% rate instead of 60? Believe me, it would not be acceptable, because we’re still talking those same numbers, and it’s through the roof.
And I think one of the other important things, aside from what we found, is that there were 6,000 cases of unidentified, unknown. And much of it, often, is when the police say “no information available.” And they do not release it like the same day, the next day, the next week, sometimes a few weeks later, sometimes a few months later, other times never. That complicates our research. And that’s why we’re going to — between now and the release of the final report, which will be at the end of the summer, we’re going to track down those 6,000 cases as best as we can.
The thing to remember, it’s not going to be the most accurate thing in the world, but it’s going to be more accurate than what exists now. That’s why I emphasize this shouldn’t be up to us. This should be the government that requires every law enforcement agency to report. They don’t. You know, they never have. And I think that’s the most poignant aspect of this. Yeah, it’s like everything is normalized. It’s taken for granted. In Europe — more Latinos are killed in this country than in all of Europe combined. More African Americans are killed than all of Europe combined. You know, that’s unacceptable, completely.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Roberto, I wanted to ask you — looking at these figures, which are really astounding, it seems that, on average, every day in America, at least one Latino and one African American is killed, either in the custody of police or through shootings. Can you talk about your decision to include those deaths in custody, as well?
ROBERTO RODRÍGUEZ: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it answers itself. They’re under — it’s like Sandra Bland, for example, you know? She was under custody of officers. So, if somebody is in a jail or in the police car — you know, we have cases where somebody shoots themselves when they’re handcuffed in the back of the car, and they shoot themselves in the front. I mean, in other word — and they claim that’s a suicide. No. So, we have to claim any death where the responsibility lies with the officers.
You know, there’s even cases we did not include, and we’re going to. We have to. All the people that die along the border, they’re not there — they don’t die accidentally. We have the documentation where the government says they drove people — or, they drive people into the desert so they can die. And that way, it will discourage people from coming through. How do you not include that? You know, how do you not include a Border Patrol that makes it policy to chase people? Cars overturn. You know, 10 people die, etc. It’s even bigger than what we’re talking about, you know.
And then, again, it’s all about dehumanization. And I’m not exaggerating when I say I track this violence to 1492, which means when Europeans came here, they decided that the people here, like myself, that we were not human. Africans that were brought here also were not human, according to them. In my opinion, it’s the same dynamic taking place today; otherwise, we wouldn’t see this massive amount of both the killings and the disparity.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of the tremendous explosion in numbers, especially among Asian Americans and Native Americans, that you found when you began to go into that “other” category, could you talk about that, as well?
ROBERTO RODRÍGUEZ: Yes. Yes, well, you know, it was accidental. So, there’s three categories that we weren’t looking at in the past. We were just looking at — like, Washington Post is the standard. The Guardian used to be, but they stopped, you know? But The Guardian has — or, rather, the Post has five categories: white, Black, Hispanic, other and unknown. So, I was used to going into the Hispanic category, because that’s what they call it. So, I would look in there. One day, by accident, I think I stumbled onto the “unknown” category, and I saw Garcias, Lopez, Sanchez. And I’m like — I go, “Wait a minute. How could that — why would they be in the unknown category? They belong in that other category.” And then I said, “Oh, you know, let me look at the white category.” Same thing: Lopez, Sanchez, Gonzalez. And I’m like, “Wait a minute. Something’s wrong here.” And then I checked the “other.” Now, “other” actually has — that’s where they place primarily people from the Middle East, Asian Pacific and Native, you know? They don’t have separate categories. I don’t think you find a lot of Latinos in the “other” category, but definitely in the “unknown” and the “white” category. And it’s just too many.
And it’s convenient — well, I don’t blame the media for this. You know, it’s literally the government. That’s why I say it’s their responsibility. But it’s convenient because it continues the dialogues. The nation can simply see it as like this is a problem between white and Black America, when in reality it is that, but it’s even bigger, much bigger, like you said.
The one that I want to continue researching, the Asian figures. Those are through the roof. Personally, I had zero idea, because I’ve been monitoring, since 2014, you know, the databases, and I had never seen that before. So, I’m not sure, you know, what the deal is. We’re going to pursue that.
You know, one of the things that we asked ourselves as a group: Should we count all deaths, in custody, etc.? And everybody said yes. And personally, I wanted just the ones that are unjustified. But how do you determine what’s unjustified, when you don’t have a judicial system that works? You know, it’s like, I would say, 99.9% impunity both in the killings that we examined and also the Border Patrol. You know, you can count in one hand, with a finger or two to spare, of police officers that are doing hard time, say, 30, 40, 50 years to life. You know, I doubt there’s even five. Personally, I think that’s the actual solution. Until you see that, you’re not going to see anything. No reform is going to fix anything, because all a cop has to say is “I feared for my life.” You know? And that absolves everything.
AMY GOODMAN: I also wanted to bring into this conversation, Roberto Rodríguez, Marissa Barrera. She became an advocate against police violence after police in Woodland, California, killed her brother Michael in 2017. She’s the founder of the nonprofit Voices of Strength, which works with the families of other victims killed by police. She’s joining us from Sacramento, California. Marissa, welcome to Democracy Now! So sorry to hear about your brother, Michael Barrera. Tell us what happened to him in 2017.
MARISSA BARRERA: Hello, and thank you for having me this morning.
In 2017, my brother, he was murdered by police in our hometown. The details are still not all clear, but we do know — and this is through physical evidence and audio, video, pictures now at this point — that he was — before being killed by police, he was assaulted in his home by a known assailant. And just moments later, he was murdered by multiple officers.
And he was killed in a similar way to George Floyd. He had five officers on top of him. And the struggle lasted moments. He had a Taser used on him excessively, according to their own policies. And he was being beaten, and he was ultimately suffocated to death. He had a knee in his back. There is question whether he had two knees from this officer who was sitting on his back who is over 250 pounds. My brother was saying, “I can’t breathe.” He was struggling. He was asking for help.
We don’t know who assaulted him in his house, but we have reason to believe that it had to do with the police, for the fact the way he was murdered. He was unarmed. He was not posing a threat to these officers. And he was telling them he was not a threat and asking them why they were trying to kill him, as they already had guns and stuff, and they were rounding up on him. So, we do have reason to believe that they were involved in some way, as my brother was speaking on things going on in the community, such as missing people and missing teenagers, just days before he was murdered this way.
We do have the video evidence. We do have the audio. We have the damages done to his body. But just after this happened, they covered it up. They put a false narrative on him to make him look like he was this criminal who was out there trying to harm people and trying to kill the police. That really starts to tell you what happened to my family.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Marissa — Marissa, I wanted to ask you, specifically, what was — what were you initially told by authorities had happened? What was their initial account to you?
MARISSA BARRERA: So, I do want to say we were not informed by the police of my brother’s murder. We found out by an acquaintance in town who was at the hospital. We arrived. They were refusing to let my family in with my brother. They were refusing to let my mother see my brother in his final moments. He was already deceased, but he was two doors down from us, and they had police blocking us. At that point, they just told us that he was found dead in somebody’s yard. There was some kind of altercation.
I found out, by going to his home and finding police blocking off his home, where he was not killed, that police had killed him. So, just fast-forward that day, we were told by the sergeant of Woodland PD, Sergeant Guthrie, that my brother was in some kind of fight, a struggle with multiple cops, that he was running from cops, it was a foot chase, that he was unarmed, and he was killed. Fifteen minutes later, they released — the Woodland PD released into our local news, the Daily Democrat, that my brother had multiple weapons — he had a golf club, a chef’s knife, scissors — that he was naked, in a trench coat, that he was breaking into cars, and that he was charging and attacking officers. They said so many horrible things about my brother, only 15 minutes after they told my family to our face that he was an unarmed man who was killed by multiple officers, and they didn’t know why.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Marissa Barrera, founder of the nonprofit Voices of Strength. Marissa, tell us what you are demanding now.
MARISSA BARRERA: So, what we are demanding now — fast-forward four years later, so many facts and truth have came out. All that I shared with the first narrative was not true. My brother was dressed. He was assaulted in his home before cops, and he did not assault them. And I’ve seen the video, I’ve heard the audio.
So, we want full transparency. We want his case reopened. But right now with everything going on in the country and police killings being brought to light, we are asking, with other families, that all of our cases be opened, because there is so much corruption, so much horrible things behind all of our killings. So, that is why I work with the other families, as well, because it’s happening to all of us. How bad my brother’s story is, which I just shared a piece of it — it’s horrible — but all the other families that I work with, they have similar stories, just as bad. We have our own just unique twist to it, but, ultimately, we go through the same things.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I’d like to bring Roberto Rodríguez back into the conversation.
ROBERTO RODRÍGUEZ: Yes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Roberto, this whole issue of reform, there’s been all this talk now in the past year since the death of George Floyd about ways to reform or even defund the police. You have a long history in dealing with police abuse. What is your sense of where these calls for reform or transformation of policing are going to go?
ROBERTO RODRÍGUEZ: Yeah. Well, I’m in full support of all of that. The problem, what I’m saying, is that if an officer simply says they were in fear for their life, none of those reforms are going to help. But that doesn’t mean you stop everything that you can do. It’s kind of like body cameras. That was not happening before. You know, accountability projects, etc., all that stuff, I mean, there are a number of things that have happened, a number of reforms, and they’re all good. Personally, I mentioned a second ago, 30, 40, 50 years to life, that’s the only thing that’s going to stop this. However, one of the things that we’re doing as part of the project is looking at going to the International Criminal Court at the U.N., and the OAS version also. We’ve gone to the U.N. before, the Convention on Racism. We know they’re racist. It’s not enough. It’s got to go to the criminal level, where they hunt down Nazis 70 years after the fact. Marissa just mentioned families. You know, killings have no statute of limitation. That’s why you’re able to hunt down people. And what Marissa said is accurate: Every single family has a story, and they’re powerful, and they have to live and relive, you know? And it’s inhumane. So, I personally think that anybody that comes up with a reform and can pass one, great, you know? But we can’t stop there. We have to continue, you know, with transparency, access to videos, everything.
You know, when the cameras started happening, people said, “Oh, it’s going to be over now.” But, you know, all the killings that we’re talking about, how many prosecutions? I had to watch probably over a thousand videos to do my book, the Yolqui book. And I can tell you, it doesn’t really matter. You can see it, and then they’ll say, “Ah, you didn’t see what happened before.” Or they’ll say, “Oh, you didn’t see what happened afterwards.” You know, there’s a man out of Bakersfield, Francisco Serna, who was killed. They thought he had a weapon, and they found a crucifix on him, Francisco Serna. There was a Daniel Covarrubias, out of the state of Washington, who was killed carrying a cellphone. You know who he was? The great-grandson of Chief Joseph. That cellphone, right? To me, that’s the scariest thing, even scarier than the crucifix. You know why? Because everyone has a cellphone. So, if they want to claim that “I saw a shiny object,” you know, and they’re going to find a cellphone on pretty much everybody.
You know, the problem is not police by themselves; it’s the judicial system, and it’s the politicians that are cowardly, that will not step forward. It’s our society as a whole. You know, I mean, I don’t have to tell you; you cover this every single day. We live in a society based on those that have and those that don’t, you know? So, basically, we — and I look at it like those that are considered human, those of us that are not considered human. And you’re right — I’m sorry. Go ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: Oh, I just wanted to thank you very much for being with us and say that we want to have you back on when you have your final report. Roberto Rodríguez is the director of the Raza Database Project, which just published the preliminary report titled “Deaths of People of Color by Law Enforcement Are Severely Under-Counted.” Roberto Rodríguez is a professor at the University of Arizona, author of several books, including Yolqui: A Warrior Summoned from the Spirit World: Testimonios on Violence, on police violence in Black, Brown and Indigenous communities, also the book Justice: A Question of Race, where Roberto Rodríguez details his own experience after a brutal beating at the hands of L.A. sheriffs in March of 1979. And we want to thank Marissa Barrera, founder of the nonprofit Voices of Strength, who works with families of other victims killed by police. Her own brother, Michael Barrera, was killed by Woodland, California, police in February of 2017.
Coming up, we go to Canada, where the bodies of 215 children have been found on the grounds of a former residential school where Indigenous children were sent after being forcibly separated from their families. Stay with us.
A march to demand universal health care in Maryland in 2013. (photo: United Workers/flickr)
An Everyday Story of US Healthcare – or How a Visit to the ER Can Cost You $10,000
Emma Brockes, Guardian UK
Brockes writes: "I had dropped my kids off at school and was lifting one of their scooters, when I turned sharply and felt something ping in my foot. It wasn't much; a bad cramp, I thought, more painful than usual, which would probably wear off by the time I got home."
The fear of dying in New York was uppermost in my mind as my bruised foot swelled and turned black: I could never afford it
had dropped my kids off at school and was lifting one of their scooters, when I turned sharply and felt something ping in my foot. It wasn’t much; a bad cramp, I thought, more painful than usual, which would probably wear off by the time I got home. I limped back to my apartment, took painkillers and put it on ice. By the next morning, the foot had begun to turn black. By the evening, the flesh was rising like dough. “Ew,” said a friend, when I showed it to her that night. “You need a pedicure. Also: you need to see a doctor right now.”
It’s either laziness, Britishness, or a strain of my general belief in denial, but in most circumstances I’d rather suffer than bother the doctor. In the US, this impulse is compounded by the knowledge that, however much you spend on health insurance, even the smallest engagement with the medical establishment will result in a cascade of bills. I’m still fighting with my insurers over a $1,000 charge from last summer.
“It’ll be fine,” I said, and an hour later, when it wasn’t – the skin was now purple and gently contoured like foam – booked a 10pm video appointment with a podiatrist. He logged on via his phone from what seemed to be the parking lot of a restaurant in Long Island. “What’s all this?” he said. “Do you really need this appointment?” I showed him the foot. He squinted at the screen, crossed the lot and got into his car, where he turned on the light and squinted again. “OK, I don’t want panic you, but you need to seek emergency care right away.” My friend, meanwhile, had sent a photo of the foot to her brother in California, who is a doctor and also very much her brother. “Ew, she needs a pedicure,” he replied. “No one needs to see that. Also, that could be a blood clot, she needs to get to the ER.”
I left my kids with my friend and got in a taxi. “How bad is a blood clot?” I’d asked my friend’s brother before leaving, and he’d reassured me it was no big deal as long as it didn’t detach. “Then what?” “You’ll die instantly.” This was concerning, particularly since the solution, he said, was “not to jiggle the leg”, but at that point my fears lay elsewhere. It’s expensive to die in New York, and as we crossed Central Park, I rang my insurers to get pre-authorisation (a promise with approximately the value of Neville Chamberlain’s piece of paper, but you may as well try.)
Then I rang my friend Oliver. It’s curious to me now, what surfaced in that moment. “Can you make sure, if anything happens, that you take the girls to England,” I asked, as he scrambled to catch up. “What? Are you near the hospital? How far off are you?” “Make sure they know about England,” I repeated. “Take them for the summer, on holiday, to England.” I sounded mad. It’s amazing, looking back, that I didn’t mention the Isle of Wight, and which hotel they should stay at. “OK, but just let me know when you get to the hospital,” he said.
The ER was half-empty. I have always wondered whether, in an emergency, my personality would undergo an exciting change, converted in the heat of the moment from a sort of vaguely up-myself diffidence to something more thrusting and American. Now I know. “How are you, how can we help?” said the check-in clerk and reflexively I replied, “I’m fine.” For five minutes, I sat in the waiting room wondering if I was about to keel over and should be raising more alarm. Another five minutes passed, and the triage nurse came over. Even delivered in my apologetic, half-assed fashion, the words “suspected blood clot” had an immediate effect and I was sent straight through to the doctor.
It wasn’t a blood clot. It wasn’t a broken bone, either. No one that night could figure out what it was, except maybe a rip in the tendon, although they were very thorough and drew blood to rule out the possibility of low platelets. I don’t know what lesson to extract from all this, either, other than something reassuring about consistency of character.
Mainly, I’m aware, with weary resignation, that although the swelling has gone down and the foot is definitely on the mend, in other ways this is just the beginning. After an ultrasound, X-ray, blood test and patient transport all over New York’s premier hospital, I’m waiting for the inevitable $10,000 bill and the hours I will spend on the phone to contest it. It’s the story of American healthcare; the real pain starts now.
Amazon workers. (photo: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
At Amazon Warehouses, Serious Injuries at Higher Rates Than Other Firms
Jay Greene and Chris Alcantara, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Amazon, the second-largest private employer in the United States, is also a leader in another category: how often its warehouse workers are injured."
READ MORE
Left: Natalie Jackson. Right: A sign showing support for Trayvon Martin on July 13, 2013, in Sanford, Florida. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Trayvon Martin's Lawyer Is Running for Congress: 'If Not Me, Then Who?'
Cameron Joseph, VICE
Joseph writes: "A civil rights attorney whose clients include Trayvon Martin's family is running for Congress."
She just won endorsements from civil rights super-attorney Ben Crump and George Floyd’s brother Philonise.
Natalie Jackson announced her campaign for an Orlando-based House seat this week, a year after George Floyd was murdered, and told VICE News that the fight for police reform and civil rights will be at the core of her campaign.
Jackson has worked closely with civil rights super-attorney Ben Crump, who has represented the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and many other Black Americans killed by police in recent years. Crump and Philonise Floyd, George’s brother, endorsed Jackson in a short video released Wednesday.
She said she decided to run during a recent conversation with Crump as they worked for the family of Andre Hill, an unarmed, 47-year-old Black man who was killed by a police officer in Columbus, Ohio, responding to a nonemergency call last December. The officer claimed he saw a gun when Hill was just holding a cell phone, had his bodycam off during the encounter, and didn’t provide medical assistance after shooting Hill.
“In that conversation, I was like, ‘Who will it be? If not me, then who?’” she said she told Crump. “You can't change things without political participation.”
The case led Columbus to create criminal penalties for police who don’t activate their body cameras or fail to provide first aid if they injure citizens.
Jackson’s mother is a member of the local NAACP, but she took a long path to activism. Jackson enrolled in the ROTC to pay her way through college and spent nearly a decade as a Naval intelligence officer. She then went to law school, interned for then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and went into private practice.
She first worked with Crump on a 2008 case in which a NASCAR airplane killed two people in a crash. When the family of Martin, an unarmed teenager who was shot and killed without provocation by vigilante George Zimmerman in Florida, hired Crump for the case, he brought in Jackson partly because she’d grown up in the family’s hometown of Sanford, just outside Orlando.
That case was formative. She called Zimmerman’s not guilty verdict “devastating” and realized she’d been naive about racial issues.
“That changed the trajectory of my career,” she said. “Trayvon Martin was my awakening. Since that time, I’ve realized we need to come together as a people to fight the power brokers of the United States who broker in division, and separation, and keeping us separate and keeping us at an economic disadvantage.”
It’s unclear how much of a chance Jackson will have in the race.
Jackson said she was just beginning to build out a campaign operation and hire staff and advisers. And while she’s had informal conversations with a handful of lawmakers involved in police reform, she said she plans to get more information at a Congressional Black Caucus candidate boot camp in July.
“This is pretty much a grassroots campaign,” she said.
She’ll have competition: Florida state Sen. Randolph Bracy is already running, and former Florida State Attorney Aramis Ayala is expected to run for the seat as well.
And Jackson’s career isn’t spotless. In 2016, she was briefly suspended from the Florida bar after an audit revealed bookkeeping issues. She said she takes “full responsibility” for the “accounting mishap” and got behind on bookkeeping during and after Martin’s case because she was spending so much time on the road.
It’s also unclear exactly where Jackson will run. Rep. Val Demings is running for Senate, leaving an open seat, and has represented a solidly Democratic, minority-majority district. But Florida, like all states, has to redraw its congressional maps before the next election, and won’t finalize those lines for months.
But Jackson is well-known locally, with a record of fighting for Black families. She’s been involved in numerous other Florida cases with people who faced housing discrimination, believed they were racially profiled at stores, or were injured or killed by police. That includes two cases she’s partnered with Crump on: filing a lawsuit for Terre Johnson, a homeless Black man injured in an altercation with an Orlando officer, and the families of A.J. Crooms and Sincere Pierce, two Black teenagers who were killed by police during a stolen-car investigation.
With racial justice at the forefront of activists’ minds, her campaign will be one to watch.
Despite Facebook's claims that takedowns were automatic and universal, there was 'overwhelming evidence of the disproportionate impact these takedowns have had on political speech and dissent.' (photo: Solen Feyissa/Unsplash)
Social Media Companies Like Instagram Are Censoring Dissent
Rishika Pardikar, Jacobin
Pardikar writes: "In recent weeks, Instagram and Facebook have censored posts focused on COVID-19 in India and protests in Colombia and Palestine - with little explanation as to why."
n May 6 and 7, Instagram users in India noticed that some of their posts were starting to vanish. Gone were their COVID-19-related posts that demanded improved conditions for overworked crematorium workers, publicized volunteer-led relief efforts, and linked coronavirus deaths in the country to “abject callousness” of the government. Stranger still was the removal of private chats on the matter.
“There is a growing trend of internet shutdowns, takedown of social media content, particularly around political speech in India over the last few years,” said Vidushi Marda, global AI research and advocacy lead at ARTICLE 19, an international freedom of expression organization that has been tracking the deleted content.
In India right now, whether or not people have access to COVID-19 information on social media is a matter of life and death. Such censorship, however, is not unique to the country. Over the past month, activists and researchers have also collected numerous examples of suppressed content related to unrest in Palestine and Colombia, as well as posts related to the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in the United States and Canada.
On May 7, Instagram said that “this is a widespread global technical issue not related to any particular topic” and that the issue had been “fixed.”
But the following day, the company acknowledged that there were issues with posts relating to unrest in Colombia and Palestine.
“We are so sorry this happened,” Instagram noted in a statement. “Especially to those in Colombia, East Jerusalem, and Indigenous communities who felt this was an intentional suppression of their voices and stories — that was not our intent whatsoever.”
But Instagram failed to acknowledge reports of censorship in India.
A representative of Facebook, which owns Instagram, wrote in response to questions about why dissent in India, Colombia, and Palestine seemed to have been disproportionately impacted: “This was a widespread global technical issue that affected users around the world, regardless of the topic of their Stories. We fixed it as fast as we could so users around the world could continue expressing themselves and connecting with each other through Stories.”
Despite the company’s claims that the takedowns were automatic and universal, Marda said there was “overwhelming evidence of the disproportionate impact these takedowns have had on political speech and dissent.”
In India, she noted that ARTICLE 19 observed “significant overlap between posts about activism, COVID-19 relief and government critique.” All of this, she said, points to “a significantly larger problem than just a single automation tool,” and noted “the opacity of content moderation practices” means that there are gaps in accountability.
Such digital suppression isn’t simply a matter of being able to speak freely. In each of these countries, thanks to government failures and limited media coverage, people have come to rely on social media to share information, track resources, and protect themselves from violence.
Part of the problem is automated content moderation, which uses machine learning to filter content. The systems are blunt instruments that often misunderstand context and remove too much or too little content, noted a report by the New Delhi–based Observer Research Foundation. These developments, adds the report, can negatively impact minority groups because these tools are often trained on English-language data sets, so they have trouble properly parsing dialects and rarely used languages.
“[There is] overwhelming evidence of the disproportionate impact these takedowns have had on political speech and dissent,” said Marda. “[This is] precisely why . . . human rights organizations and defenders around the world have pointed to the dangers of automated content moderation for years.”
India’s History of Digital Censorship
Because of the Indian government’s monumental failure in tackling the coronavirus, people in the country have come to rely on social media to seek and provide COVID-related help like oxygen supplies and vaccinations. Many people have also used social media to collate lists of supplies into a larger, searchable database.
Silicon Valley–driven censorship in India, therefore, has become a matter of survival, despite the fact that Instagram has yet to acknowledge it.
“Despite documented instances of censorship [in India] and Instagram users highlighting them very prominently, there was a complete lack of recognition [by Instagram] of what’s happening in India,” said Apar Gupta, executive director of Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), a New Delhi–based organization that seeks to ensure that technology respects fundamental rights.
Digital suppression in the country isn’t new, despite the fact that the Indian Constitution guarantees the right to freedom of speech and expression.
In 2020, India had the highest number of government-instigated internet shutdowns in the world. The digital crackdowns were one of the reasons Reporters Without Borders recently ranked India 142 out of 180 countries in terms of press freedoms.
On April 28, Facebook temporarily hid posts critical of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi that included the hashtag #ResignModi for “violating its community standards.” A Facebook spokesperson later said that the posts were hidden “by mistake, not because the Indian government asked us to.”
“Silicon Valley platforms have a very natural interest in keeping governments happy in the regions that they operate,” Gupta said, pointing to the fact that India is Facebook’s biggest market.
The lack of institutionalized free speech protections is further compounded by laws and regulations in India that allow the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to not disclose censorship orders sent to social media companies, said Gupta.
Users are therefore often given no official explanation why their posts were suppressed.
Content Moderation in Colombia
There have also been numerous reports of censorship related to ongoing protests in Colombia over proposed tax increases and the resulting police crackdowns.
“We identified a specific problem with Instagram,” said Carolina Botero Cabrera, a researcher with Karisma, a Bogotá-based civil society organization that works on technology and human rights. “We have over 1,000 reports of censorship, around 90 percent of it was by Instagram and the content was overwhelmingly about the [ongoing] protests,” she added.
Deleted posts reportedly related to the national unrest, unemployment numbers in the country, and the death of a protestor.
For Colombia, a country with a long-lasting civil war, such automated content moderation is all the more contentious because journalists and human rights activists often find that their content is removed, their reach is diminished, or their accounts are blocked because their content is deemed too violent.
Jesús Abad Colorado, an experienced Colombian photojournalist, recently had his Twitter account blocked after he posted photographs of an armed dispute in the Chocó Department in Western Colombia. A few days later, when an independent media outlet livestreamed an interview with Colorado about the dispute, their account was blocked, too.
Another challenge, said Botero, is that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — People’s Army (FARC), the longtime leftist guerrilla group that disarmed and became a political party in 2017, “was flagged as a terrorist organization [by social media companies at the time] even though they were in peace negotiations.”
The peace process spanned about four years, culminating in a peace agreement in 2016. “Any research about the peace process will have to deal with important problems to [understand] FARC’s position, actions, and voice,” said Botero, noting that blocked social media accounts and deleted content hamper documentation of the process.
Suppressing Palestinian Voices
As tensions escalated in Israel and Palestine, digital suppression in the region also appeared to increase.
“We have over 100 reports of censorship on Instagram,” said Alison Carmel Ramer, a researcher at 7amleh, a digital rights organization based in Haifa, Israel.
Ramer’s research and other reports found that most of the censored content was related to Israeli forces storming Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque. Other censored content was related to the eviction of Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem.
Muslim, a media publication, also documented blocks on Instagram livestreams related to Palestine.
According to ِRamer, Facebook told 7amleh that a majority of the Instagram takedowns were mistakes because they did not violate community standards and that they have restored the content.
“This means there is a problem in the way content is moderated,” said Ramer. “Why is content which is not against community standards being taken down? [Facebook] also did not tell users under which policy the content was taken down.”
In general, Palestinian content is “over-moderated,” Ramer added, noting posts are often suppressed either because they are considered hate speech, or the posts appear to be connected to terrorist organizations. Many Palestinian leaders are designated as terrorists by the United States, meaning Facebook censors content related to them. Ramer also explained how hate speech in the region written in Hebrew is not censored to the same extent as hate speech in Arabic.
A March 2021 report by 7amleh that analyzed 574,000 social media conversations in 2020 showed that one out of every 1ten Israeli posts about Palestinians and Arabs contained violent speech, a 16 percent increase compared to 2019. “We have sent reports like this one to Facebook for several years and every year, [but] we find that this content just remains online,” Ramer said, adding that Facebook has not informed them of what, if any, actions it intends to take.
A recent report in the Intercept also noted how Facebook censors the word “Zionist.”
“Zionism is a political ideology,” Ramer said. “Political speech must be protected. Words like “Zionist” and “shahid” [martyr in Arabic] should be protected.” Censorship in the region is especially concerning because of the long-standing lack of transparency around Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, political activist Noam Chomsky told us.
“Israel’s brutal repression of Palestinians for many years, with strong support from the United States particularly, is a shocking crime in itself and has ominous international repercussions as well,” said Chomsky. “There have been extensive efforts to block efforts to bring the facts and their significance to the general public. These efforts amount to direct participation in the crimes.”
When asked about social media companies’ ability to freely censor content, Chomsky replied, “Their enormous power should not be tolerated.”
The Path Ahead
At ARTICLE 19, Marda said that, in order to align itself with international human rights standards, Facebook “must publicly and transparently acknowledge the reasons for recent takedowns” and “provide information for the substantive and legal reasons for takedown.”
Marda added that Facebook should also “restore all blocked content” and “publicly commit to not bowing to governmental or judicial pressure that requires it to act in violation of international human rights standards and jurisdiction-specific standards on freedom of expression.”
Florida's beloved manatee is having a devastating year. More than 749 manatees have died since the start of 2021, a number some longtime advocates fear could grow to over 1,000. (photo: CNN)
Manatees Are Dying in Droves This Year
Scottie Andrew, CNN
Andrew writes: "Despite their portly frame and inherent meekness, Florida's manatees are survivors."
espite their portly frame and inherent meekness, Florida's manatees are survivors.
When power plants began popping up along Florida's East and West coasts, manatees learned to follow the flow of the unseasonably warm water.
When boats with sharp motors increasingly flooded their habitats, they learned how to live with debilitating injuries, or tried to.
And when their favorite source of food began to disappear when toxic algae infested the water, they learned to eat less, often at the cost of their health.
Their gentle nature belies a deceptive resilience. Unathletic as they may seem -- they tip the scales at around half a ton -- they're built to endure.
But how much more can one species take?
Decades of environmental stress culminated this year in one of the worst manatee die-offs in recent history: As of May 21, at least 749 manatees have died in Florida in 2021, in what the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has called an unusual mortality event, or UME.
Manatee advocates who've sounded the alarm for years saw it coming.
"Manatees are literally that sentinel species," says Patrick Rose, executive director of the Save the Manatee Club, a 40-year-old nonprofit co-founded by Jimmy Buffet. "They're warning us of what else is going to come if we don't do a better job while there's still time to do something about it. If we don't, our own lives will suffer."
Florida, the third-most populous state in the US and still growing, stands to lose more than its state marine mammal if manatees go extinct. The same issues that have caused their mass deaths are disrupting freshwater and saltwater sanctuaries, killing off fish and other species and mucking up the water that millions rely on for their livelihoods. Florida beaches are now as well known for red tide as they are for pristine white sand and watercolor sunsets.
Rose thinks around 1,000 manatees could wind up dead by the end of the year. If manatees continue to die at such a rate, with an estimated 7,500 animals left in the wild (before factoring in this year's deaths), it could be only a matter of years left to save them -- and clean up Florida's water.
A sea of problems faces manatees
West Indian manatees had been on the mend for many years before their fortunes changed. Their recovery from near-extinction in the 1970s to a population over 7,000 was heralded as a victory for conservation. The US Fish and Wildlife Service, in a decision that proved controversial, even downlisted the West Indian manatee from endangered to threatened in 2017 due to the major population gains.
But problems had been bubbling below the surface for decades, and in 2021 it seems they've boiled over. The stressors facing manatees are numerous and entwined, and one can't be conquered without addressing the other, said Michael Walsh, a clinical associate professor at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine who specializes in aquatic animal health.
The trouble, Walsh says, begins in the water.
When nutrients from wastewater or runoff containing fertilizers, microplastics or toxic chemicals leach into a manatee's marine habitat -- whether freshwater or saltwater -- they can throw off the balance of the water and cause harmful algae blooms to form.
The blooms blanket the surface of the water and shade out the seagrasses underwater that rely on the sun to survive, killing the grasses.
The seagrasses that survive the malevolent blooms are then overgrazed by manatees whose sources of food have shrunk, so the plants can't quickly regrow and continue to feed the manatees, Walsh said.
And when seagrasses die, gone is the manatee's favorite food source. They may start to nosh on other plants that don't fortify them the same way, or make do with less food (manatees should eat somewhere around 10% of their body weight per day, which translates to about 100 pounds of grass for an 1,000-pound adult manatee) and begin to lose weight. Over time, this leads to malnutrition and, eventually, starvation, Walsh said.
While climate change is generally warming water temperatures, warmer temperatures can foster the growth of harmful algae, which may kill seagrasses in their favorite warm water oases. So manatees may travel hundreds of miles until they find a new source of food and, hopefully, warm water. But the colder it gets, the more food they'll need to consume to stay warm, Walsh said. If there's less food, they'll succumb more quickly to cold stress -- for their impressive girth, they don't have enough blubber to keep themselves warm when the water temperature drops below 68 degrees Fahrenheit.
What's more, manatees have learned to rely on the warm water outflows from power plants on both coasts of the state -- about two-thirds of all manatees stay warm this way, according to a 2013 estimate. If those plants close as the state transitions to more sustainable energy sources, manatees will lose a reliable haven for warmth, leaving them with few options for wintering, Rose said.
There's also the problem of people: Florida has around 21.4 million residents, according to a 2019 Census Bureau count (a figure that may be higher now, given the number of Northeastern expats who moved down during the pandemic). Couple unimpeded population growth with an infrastructure system the American Society of Civil Engineers described as "deteriorating," and the pressure on water treatment systems in the state can be debilitating.
"Add up starvation, together with red tide, severe cold weather mortality ... these are just absolute catastrophic losses that they may never be able to recover from," Rose said.
Just under 90 manatees have been rescued in 2021 so far, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. But most manatees who've died have not been necropsied, and some of their bodies were too decomposed to study, according to the commission's preliminary mortality report for the year.
The last comparable unusual mortality event occurred in 2010, when temperatures in Florida fell to historic lows in a cold snap that proved extremely dangerous for manatees. More than 760 manatees died that year, according to the FWC.
But 2021's count is already approaching that number, and the year isn't even halfway through.
What went wrong in manatees' favorite habitat
Perhaps no ecosystem in Florida is a better example of the dire state of the manatee than the Indian River Lagoon. An ecologically rich estuary that spans more than 150 miles along the East Coast -- enough room for manatees to forage and raise their calves without bumping snouts -- more than one-third of the country's manatees call it home at some point throughout the year.
But just as decades of human-made environmental degradation have caught up with manatees, the Indian River Lagoon is dying, too. An estimated 58% of the estuary's seagrasses have died in the last 11 years, according to the St. Johns River Water Management District, a regulatory agency that oversees the Indian River Lagoon.
Some parts of the lagoon are rife with microplastics, or small pieces of plastic that may never fully break down, even more so than in other well-tread waterways in Florida. A 2018 study found that crabs and oysters in Mosquito Lagoon, part of the Indian River Lagoon system, contained averages of 4.2 and 16.5 microplastic pieces per individual, the highest volume of microplastics recorded in invertebrates at the time.
As with manatees, the pollution, algal blooms and poor water treatment infrastructure are likely responsible for the Indian River Lagoon's problems, too, says Duane De Freese, marine biologist and executive director of the Indian River Lagoon Council and the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program.
Now, parts of the lagoon resemble a graveyard. CNN affiliate WPEC shared photos in early May of manatees washed up on the shore of the Indian River Lagoon, their bodies like deflated balloons. Their bones, picked clean by vultures, were haphazardly strewn across the sand where they'd washed up.
Manatee deaths are simply a "symptom of a system that is under stress and near collapse," De Freese said.
"This is about more than just the environment," he said. "It's about human health, it's about quality of life, it's about the economic vitality of our coastal communities. And if we fail to act in a science-driven way to solve these problems, as the population grows, these problems will grow with it."
And the natural elements that Floridians treasure -- clean water, fresh seafood, tourism, robust fisheries and, naturally, manatees -- will decline along with the environment, he said.
Saving the Indian River Lagoon requires money, which De Freese says is lacking. Though Gov. Ron DeSantis has passed laws like the Clean Waterways Act, which would fund projects to reduce nutrient pollution in vulnerable waters, overhauling the state's water infrastructure requires more than one bill, De Frees said.
But water quality and conservation is becoming a bipartisan issue among Florida lawmakers.
Republican Rep. Brian Mast and Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy introduced a bill in Congress this month that would improve federal funding for research and rehabbing of manatees and other marine life. The Palm Beach Post reported that Florida members of the House of Representatives wrote to President Joe Biden to ask for "robust funding" to support the Everglades, where some manatees spend their winters. Biden has confirmed his proposed infrastructure bill would be used to protect and restore the Everglades and other "major land and water resources."
Although "the ship turns a bit slower" up in Washington, De Frees said, support among lawmakers for cleaning up Florida's waters is good news. Those policies just need to be implemented quickly -- within the next few years, really -- to make a difference.
Novel solutions could be key to saving them
Saving Florida's manatees -- and restoring Florida's water quality -- has inspired a cooperative, occasionally tenuous relationship among manatee advocates and agencies, from Rose's Save the Manatee Club and the US Fish and Wildlife Service to veterinarians like Walsh and even US Geological Survey biologists who study the way polluted water impacts manatee health.
Also a recent addition to that crew -- farmers.
Jim Anderson lives in Ruskin, a coastal community known best for its tomato crops (and tomato festival). But about 25 years ago, after he noticed nearby seagrass beds were being torn up by boat propellers, Anderson switched from farming sod to farming seagrasses.
Since then, Anderson has operated a seagrass nursery for his business, Sea & Shoreline. He and his team grow half a million plants of 150 varieties, suitable for freshwater and saltwater. Seagrass restoration is a new industry in the state, and there's room for collaborators, he said.
In regions of freshwater and saltwater habitats where seagrass cover is sparse, Sea & Shoreline will plant seagrasses and place a protective cage over them to keep hungry manatees from eating them before they've taken root. Every few weeks, a dive team cleans the cage and mows the grass to foster its growth, he said.
Anderson and his team have found success already in another favorite spot of manatees -- Crystal River in western Florida. Sea & Shoreline has planted over 50 acres of seagrass there in the last four years and vacuumed up the toxic algal blooms. It's restored the pristine water clarity that lent the river its name, he said.
"It's expensive to do it, but how expensive is our water quality?" he said.
The prognosis of Florida's beloved 'sea cow'
Manatees would prefer not to fight for survival. They float through the water unrushed, soaking up their surroundings like bulbous gray sponges with snouts. Unlike the more aggressive dolphins or sharks of Florida, manatees do not provoke conflict. They'd rather flee, almost apologetically, than upset another creature.
But manatees have had to fight for decades. It's a battle they've won before through persistent conservation efforts, though humans are as much their downfall as their salvation.
Rose, now 70, has spent the last 40 years advocating on behalf of the "sea cows." He's seen their numbers shrink to less than 1,000 and bounce back again. Rose is "not willing to accept that we can't fix this," he said.
"But, I will tell you," he said, "it's going to be really, really hard."
Having delayed his retirement indefinitely to continue his work, Rose has some hope for the manatee's survival. Walsh and De Freese do too, and Anderson is optimistic that his seagrass restoration will continue to pay off for Florida's sea cow.
They're but four men in the campaign for manatees' survival. Local activists, Floridians who treasure their coasts and the life that relies on clean water, have kept the heat on officials to help save manatees. Their work continues until the day manatees can graze and swim and feel comfortable in the home they share with humans -- a day, manatee defenders hope, that will come while manatees still have some fight left.
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