ANONYMOUS - OUR VOICE

Watch Donald Trump Throw Out One Mexican Heckler Making An Example Showing Exactly What Trump Will Do With Illegal Mexic...

<img alt="Mandatory Credit: Photo by Erik Pendzich/REX Shutterstock (4849079ay) Donald Trump Donald Trump announces his presidential bid, New York, America - 16 Jun 2015" class="attachment-large wp-post-image" height="377" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/jorge-ramos-donald-trump.jpg" width="670" />
<p style="float: right; margin: 0 0 10px 15px; width:240px; height: auto;"><img src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/jorge-ramos-donald-trump.jpg" style="max-width: 100%; height: auto;" width="240" /></p>
<div class="pf-content">
<p><strong>By Walid Shoebat</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/jorge-ramos-donald-trump.jpg"><img alt="Mandatory Credit: Photo by Erik Pendzich/REX Shutterstock (4849079ay) Donald Trump Donald Trump announces his presidential bid, New York, America - 16 Jun 2015" class="size-full wp-image-84454" height="377" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/jorge-ramos-donald-trump.jpg" width="670" /></a></p>
<p>You follow the rules of the game, you stay, and if you don’t you’r out. Donald Trump today made an excellent example when Univision anchor Mexican born Jorge Ramos stood up out of turn and out of control was thrown out by Donald Trump as he heckled his way forcing himself on the GOP presidential candidate to shout off some remarks:</p>
<p><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ymB1LCNvquA" width="660" height="415" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p>Once Jorge promised to follow the rules, he was allowed back in Trump’s borders and was allowed to play with the rest:</p>
<p><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fSaSba3nwVY" width="660" height="415" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p>You follow the rules, Trump emphacized and you’r in, you don’t, then get out.</p>
<p>This is America. What a GREAT COUNTRY. Way to go TRUMP.</p>
<p><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/someone_with_balls_trump_tank_top.jpg"><img alt="someone_with_balls_trump_tank_top" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-84455" height="350" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/someone_with_balls_trump_tank_top.jpg" width="350" /></a></p>
</div>
<p><sub><i>-- Delivered by <a href="http://feed43.com/">Feed43</a> service</i></sub></p>

anonymous armageddon isis islam war Watch Donald Trump Throw Out One Mexican Heckler Making An Example Showing Exactly What Trump Will Do With Illegal Mexic...

By Walid Shoebat You follow the rules of the game, you stay, and if you don’t you’r out. Donald Trump today made an excellent example w...

Lois Lerner’s Secret Email Account Revealed Mimicking Hillary’s Coverup Which Leads All The Way To The White House

<img alt="lerner-obama-lost-emails" class="attachment-large wp-post-image" height="450" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/lerner-obama-lost-emails.jpg" width="800" />
<p style="float: right; margin: 0 0 10px 15px; width:240px; height: auto;"><img src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/lerner-obama-lost-emails.jpg" style="max-width: 100%; height: auto;" width="240" /></p>
<div class="pf-content">
<p><strong>By Walid Shoebat</strong></p>
<p>First it was a destroyed hard drive, then it was a busted Blackberry and now we find out Lois Lerner <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/geoffrey-dickens/2015/08/25/lois-lerner-aka-toby-miles-trouble-again-networks-censor">used</a> another personal e-mail account “tobomatic@msn.com” to conduct government business that utilized the alias “Toby Miles.” It was a <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/aug/24/irs-finds-yet-another-lois-lerner-email-account/">mere accident</a> that the “Toby Miles” address was discovered,  in the criminal complaint from the House Ways and Means Committee because a message was sent that was copied to Lerner’s official address:</p>
<p><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/tob1-copy.jpg"><img alt="tob1 copy" class="aligncenter wp-image-84442" height="281" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/tob1-copy-1024x542.jpg" width="531" /></a></p>
<p>This IRS targeting scandal has more twists than an old episode of Law and Order. Lerner’s <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/08/25/surprise-irs-finally-reveals-lois-lerners-secret-email-account/">tactics to Hillary</a> Clinton’s secret email server, and recalling how the IRS stalled for months by pretending another trove of Lerner correspondence had been lost to history because her hard drive went kablooey (as modern hard drives so rarely do) and no backups had been made, in defiance of every single agency and Administration policy covering data security, except backups <em>had </em>been made, and they were found within hours of someone actually, you know, <em>looking for them.</em></p>
<p>So why Lerner as well as Hillary would need an e-mail address under a false identity?</p>
<p>What we have been reporting on for years on Hillary, Huma Abedin, Lerner and others, while few listened at the time, the perfect storm hit and the facts came to roost. Nothing can be hidden for long. The snow always melts and the dirt hidden under it will be revealed. Lerner was into many things illegal, from her own attacks on Tea Party conservatives to playing favoritism aiding and abetting Malik Obama, president Obama’s brother. Malik Obama has extensive<a href="http://shoebat.com/2013/05/28/confirmed-barack-obamas-brother-in-bed-with-man-wanted-by-international-criminal-court-icc-for-crimes-against-humanity/" target="_blank"> ties</a> to the government of Sudan and Malik’s role as <em>Executive Secretary</em> of the <em>Islamic Da’wa Organization</em> (IDO) which he helps lead as Executive Director. IDO is a member organization of “The Union of Good” (UG), which the U.S. Treasury designated as “Terrorist”. There is one very uncomfortable fact that such skeptics simply cannot refute; <a href="http://www.barackhobamafoundation.org/letter.pdf" target="_blank">Lois Lerner’s signature</a> is at the bottom of Malik Obama’s 501(c)(3) approval letter. That signature was put there <em>after</em> calls for an investigation by the <a href="http://nlpc.org/stories/2011/05/08/irs-asked-investigate-charity-run-obamas-brother" target="_blank">National Legal and Policy Center</a> (NLPC) in May of 2011. It was also put there after illegally back-dating the tax-exempt status 38 months.</p>
<div id="attachment_42464" style="width: 365px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/IRS_BHOF_Approval.jpg"><img alt="Malik Obama's Foundation approved by Lois Lerner on June 26, 2011." class=" wp-image-42464" height="291" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/IRS_BHOF_Approval.jpg" width="355" /></a>
<p class="wp-caption-text">Malik Obama’s Foundation approved by Lois Lerner on June 26, 2011.</p>
</div>
<div id="attachment_38327" style="width: 466px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Lois_Lerner_Signature.jpg"><img alt="Lois Lerner's signature at the bottom of Malik Obama's tax-exempt approval letter." class="size-full wp-image-38327" height="157" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Lois_Lerner_Signature.jpg" width="456" /></a>
<p class="wp-caption-text">Lois Lerner’s signature at the bottom of Malik Obama’s tax-exempt approval letter.</p>
</div>
<p> </p>
<p>During these days of investigation, Fox <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/06/13/irs-says-it-cannot-locate-lois-lerner-emails-prior-to-2011/">reported</a> “The IRS said it cannot locate many of Lerner’s emails prior to 2011 because her computer crashed during the summer of that year” and that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p> Lerner headed the IRS division that <span style="text-decoration: underline;">processed applications for tax-exempt status</span>. The IRS acknowledged last year that agents had improperly scrutinized applications for tax-exempt status by Tea Party and other conservative groups.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The IRS was <span style="text-decoration: underline;">able to generate 24,000 Lerner emails from the 2009 to 2011</span> because Lerner had copied in other IRS employees. The agency said it pieced together the emails from the computers of 83 other IRS employees.</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">But an untold number are gone</span>. Camp’s office said the missing emails are <span style="text-decoration: underline;">mainly ones to and from people outside the IRS</span>, “such as the <span style="text-decoration: underline;">White House</span>, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Treasury</span>, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat offices.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There were “750,000 documents” missing. Overall, the IRS said it is producing only “67,000 emails” to and from Lerner, covering the period from 2009 to 2013. Why are only all the correspondence to the White House, Treasury and DOJ missing?</p>
<p>Lerner’s troubles mimics Hilary’s affair with private emails where the pertinent emails were also “missing” some of which were “classified” which were later “found”. With new revelations on email scandals, this one would most likely lead to the White House. It is time for the FBI to widen their investigation on these scandals. Concealing information from <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/congress/">Congress</a> is considered a major offense, punishable by fines and significant jail time.</p>
</div>
<p><sub><i>-- Delivered by <a href="http://feed43.com/">Feed43</a> service</i></sub></p>

anonymous armageddon isis islam war Lois Lerner’s Secret Email Account Revealed Mimicking Hillary’s Coverup Which Leads All The Way To The White House

By Walid Shoebat First it was a destroyed hard drive, then it was a busted Blackberry and now we find out Lois Lerner used another pers...

The Dystopian Danger of Police Body Cameras

<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<h2>The Dystopian Danger of Police Body Cameras</h2>
<span>The Dystopian Danger of Police Body Cameras</span>
<div>
<div>This article originally appeared on <span>Brennan Center for Justice</span></div>
</div>
<a href="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/field/image/0312_Un%20polic%C3%ADa%20es%20visto%20con%20una%20c%C3%A1mara%20en%20su%20torso%20en%20Nueva%20York.jpg?itok=PnQaHZ2t" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/styles/slide_narrow/public/field/image/0312_Un%20polic%C3%ADa%20es%20visto%20con%20una%20c%C3%A1mara%20en%20su%20torso%20en%20Nueva%20York.jpg?itok=PnQaHZ2t" /></a>
<div>
<p>Police-worn body cameras are the newest darling of criminal justice reform. They are touted as a way to collect evidence for criminal investigations, oversee and expose abusive police practices, and exonerate officers from fabricated charges. While the nation continues to debate how effective these body cameras are for police departments, less attention has been paid to the appearance of body cameras in other public sectors, most recently in our schools.</p>
<p>Since Michael Brown was shot by a member of the Ferguson, Missouri, police department last summer, at least 16 cities have introduced body camera programs. In the past month alone, at least seven cities have begun studying, initiated, or expanded body camera programs. President Obama has asked Congress to allocate $75 million for technology and training in body-worn cameras, and the Department of Justice recently provided the first $20 million in grants.</p>
<p>As these programs began to proliferate, schools took notice. In Houston, Texas, 25 school officers have started wearing body cameras in a pilot program, and the school district plans to expand the program to all 210 members of the force.</p>
<p>An Iowa school district has even taken this initiative one step further, buying cameras for principals and assistant principals to wear while interacting with students and parents. While the administrator overseeing the program has said the cameras are not intended to monitor every activity, he expressed the hope that any complaint could be investigated through body camera footage, suggesting that principals would need to record early and often.</p>
<p>The spread of body cameras into our schools may come as surprise to some, but it shouldn’t. It is not unusual for surveillance technologies to leap from one world to another, or to be deployed for one purpose and gradually used for many more. Several examples tell the story.</p>
<p>Local police departments have been making liberal use of a controversial new surveillance tool originally meant for terrorism investigations. Called Stingrays, these devices can ferret out the location of a target’s cell phone in real time, often sucking up bystanders’ phone and location information in the bargain. Police and the FBI frequently do not request a warrant to use a Stingray, and when they do, the applications are often so vague and misleading that judges may not know what they are approving. Most notably, while the money to pay for Stingrays frequently comes from federal anti-terrorism funds, they are routinely used for run-of-the-mill criminal investigations.</p>
<p>On the federal level, fusion centers are a prime example of mission creep. Originally meant to remedy the shortcomings in information-sharing identified after 9/11, fusion centers were supposed to focus narrowly on preventing future terrorist attacks. Faced (thankfully) with a shortage of terrorist threats, however, their goals were expanded to include “all hazards” and “all crimes,” including combating thefts from bakeries. Indeed, a scathing 2012 Senate report found that the centers produced reports that were not only “shoddy, rarely timely, [and] sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties,” but also “more often than not unrelated to terrorism.” Even the Department of Homeland Security inadvertently reinforces fusion centers’ mission creep: the three “success stories” for 2014 touted on DHS’s web page, while combating assuredly important crimes, have nothing to do with terrorism.</p>
<p>This history suggests that for body cameras — and any other surveillance technology — the right question to ask is not, “are we comfortable with this particular technology, used for the particular governmental purpose currently asserted, with the particular controls currently in place?” Rather, the more accurate and far-reaching question is, “what do we think of the other uses that might be spawned once this technology is introduced?”</p>
<p>For body cameras, it is already evident that they will be introduced in many more contexts than simply law enforcement. If they are being placed on principals, they will eventually be placed on teachers. If they are placed on teachers, they will eventually be placed on child care providers, and then on youth ministers, and so on and so on.</p>
<p>The normalization of one kind of surveillance technology will also help hasten the normalization of other types. Indeed, the plans in both Iowa and Houston were justified in part on the fact that the school hallways are already lined with surveillance cameras — so why not add body cameras to the mix?</p>
<p>Body cameras may turn out to do exactly what their proponents are hoping: foster a more accountable police while improving behavior on both sides of the badge. But we cannot forget that when we approve a tool of surveillance for one purpose, we are simultaneously approving it for many other purposes as well, and we would do well to make that a part of the discussion.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.brennancenter.org/blog/dystopian-danger-police-body-cameras" rel="nofollow">Originally published by Brennan Center for Justice</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/141202-police-body-camera-11a_ac10793b3c97b869ebf76a443b5acc06.jpg" rel="nofollow"><img alt="police body cameras, police surveillance, Michael Brown, Stingray" src="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/141202-police-body-camera-11a_ac10793b3c97b869ebf76a443b5acc06.jpg" title="police body cameras, police surveillance, Michael Brown, Stingray" /></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/192969-235227.jpg" rel="nofollow"><img alt="" src="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/192969-235227.jpg" /></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/body-cameras-002.jpg" rel="nofollow"><img alt="" src="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/body-cameras-002.jpg" /></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/duluth-police-body-camera-close-up-wdio-ss-crop.jpg" rel="nofollow"><img alt="" src="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/duluth-police-body-camera-close-up-wdio-ss-crop.jpg" /></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/police_officer_on-body_camera_a.jpg" rel="nofollow"><img alt="" src="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/police_officer_on-body_camera_a.jpg" /></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/police-body-camera-890x395_c.jpg" rel="nofollow"><img alt="" src="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/police-body-camera-890x395_c.jpg" /></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/police%2Bbody%2Bcamera.jpg" rel="nofollow"><img alt="" src="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/police%2Bbody%2Bcamera.jpg" /></a></p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<p>The spread of body cameras into our schools may come as surprise to some, but it shouldn’t.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Local doctors are in the crosshairs over whether corn that’s been genetically modified to resist pesticides is a source of prosperity or of birth defects and illnesses.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<p>This is a dangerous person, in words and deeds – dangerous to those who constantly make a killing from war, vast inequities and the plunder of the planet.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>5 days 6 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div><span><em>5 days 5 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div><span><em>6 days 2 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Of course, there is little political will to organize anything this effective in California because the banking lobby deploys too much money throughout the political process.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>5 days 6 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Alexis Tsipras fought the austerity, and the austerity won.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>3 days 23 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Clashes intensify as protests sparked by the city's garbage problem widen in scope, and the prime minister calls an emergency parliament session.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Despite half its population claiming African roots, Brazil's police have been implicated in what rights groups call a genocide against black people.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Due to burgeoning resistance movements, the Cascadia region in the Pacific Northwest has proven to be extraordinarily challenging for companies seeking to make it a carbon energy export hub.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div><img src="http://www.occupy.com/article/dystopian-danger-police-body-cameras" /></div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div><span>loading</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p><sub><i>-- Delivered by <a href="http://feed43.com/">Feed43</a> service</i></sub></p>

armageddon news revolution The Dystopian Danger of Police Body Cameras

The Dystopian Danger of Police Body Cameras The Dystopian Danger of Police Body Cameras This article originally appeared on Brennan...

Pesticides In Paradise: Hawaii's Spike In Birth Defects Points To GMO Crops

<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<h2>Pesticides In Paradise: Hawaii's Spike In Birth Defects Points To GMO Crops</h2>
<span>Pesticides In Paradise: Hawaii's Spike In Birth Defects Points To GMO Crops</span>
<div>
<div>This article originally appeared on <span><a href="http://www.guardiannews.com/" rel="nofollow">The Guardian</a></span></div>
</div>
<a href="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/field/image/3456_0.jpg?itok=ymI8py2I" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/styles/slide_narrow/public/field/image/3456_0.jpg?itok=ymI8py2I" /></a>
<div>
<p>Pediatrician Carla Nelson remembers catching sight of the unusually pale newborn, then hearing an abnormal heartbeat through the stethoscope and thinking that something was terribly wrong.</p>
<p>The baby was born minutes before with a severe heart malformation that would require complex surgery. What worried her as she waited for the ambulance plane to take the infant from Waimea, on the island of Kauai, to the main children’s hospital in Honolulu, on another Hawaiian island, was that it was the fourth one she had seen in three years.</p>
<p>In all of Waimea, there have been at least nine in five years, she says, shaking her head. That’s more than 10 times the national rate, according to analysis by local doctors.</p>
<p>Nelson, a Californian, and other local doctors find themselves in the eye of a storm swirling for the past three years around the Hawaiian archipelago over whether a major cash crop on four of the six main islands, corn that’s been genetically modified to resist pesticides, is a source of prosperity, as the companies claim – or of birth defects and illnesses, as the doctors and many others suspect.</p>
<p>After four separate attempts to rein in the companies over the past two years all failed, an estimated 10,000 people marched on 9 August through Honolulu’s Waikiki tourist district. Some held signs like, “We Deserve the Right to Know: Stop Poisoning Paradise” and “Save Hawaii – Stop GMOs” (Genetically Modified Organisms), while others protested different issues.</p>
<p>“The turnout and the number of groups marching showed how many people are very frustrated with the situation,” says native Hawaiian activist Walter Ritte of the island of Molokai.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/3455.jpg" rel="nofollow"><img alt="pesticides, GMOs, Hawaii" src="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/3455.jpg" title="pesticides, GMOs, Hawaii" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Seventeen Times More Pesticide</strong></p>
<p>Waimea, a small town of low, pastel wood houses built in south-west Kauai for plantation workers in the 19th century, now sustains its economy mostly from a trickle of tourists on their way to a spectacular canyon. Perhaps 200 people work full-time for the four giant chemical companies that grow the corn – all of it exported – on some 12,000 acres leased mostly from the state.</p>
<p>In Kauai, chemical companies Dow, BASF, Syngenta and DuPont spray 17 times more pesticide per acre (mostly herbicides, along with insecticides and fungicides) than on ordinary cornfields in the US mainland, according to the most detailed study of the sector, by the Center for Food Safety.</p>
<p>That’s because they are precisely testing the strain’s resistance to herbicides that kill other plants. About a fourth of the total are called Restricted Use Pesticides because of their harmfulness. Just in Kauai, 18 tons – mostly atrazine, paraquat (both banned in Europe) and chlorpyrifos – were applied in 2012. The World Health Organization this year announced that glyphosate, sold as Roundup, the most common of the non-restricted herbicides, is “probably carcinogenic in humans”.</p>
<p>The cornfields lie above Waimea as the land, developed in the 1870s for the Kekaha Sugar Company plantation, slopes gently up toward arid, craggy hilltops. Most fields are reddish-brown and perfectly furrowed. Some parts are bright green: that’s when the corn is actually grown.</p>
<p>Both parts are sprayed frequently, sometimes every couple of days. Most of the fields lie fallow at any given time as they await the next crop, but they are still sprayed with pesticides to keep anything from growing. “To grow either seed crops or test crops, you need soil that’s essentially sterile,” says professor Hector Valenzuela of the University of Hawaii department of tropical plant and soil science.</p>
<p>When the spraying is underway and the wind blows downhill from the fields to the town – a time no spraying should occur – residents complain of stinging eyes, headaches and vomiting.</p>
<p>“Your eyes and lungs hurt, you feel dizzy and nauseous. It’s awful,” says middle school special education teacher Howard Hurst, who was present at two evacuations. “Here, 10% of the students get special-ed services, but the state average is 6.3%,” he says. “It’s hard to think the pesticides don’t play a role.”</p>
<p>At these times, many crowd the waiting rooms of the town’s main hospital, which was run until recently by Dow AgroSciences’ former chief lobbyist in Honolulu. It lies beside the middle school, both 1,700ft from Syngenta fields. The hospital, built by the old sugar plantation, has never studied the effects of the pesticides on its patients.</p>
<p>The chemical companies that grow the corn in land previously used for sugar refuse to disclose with any precision which chemicals they use, where and in what amounts, but they insist the pesticides are safe, and most state and local politicians concur. “The Hawai‘i legislature has never given the slightest indication that it intended to regulate genetically engineered crops,” wrote lawyer Paul Achitoff of Earthjustice in a recent court case.</p>
<p>As for the birth defects spike, “We have not seen any credible source of statistical health information to support the claims,” said Bennette Misalucha, executive director of Hawaii Crop Improvement Association, the chemical companies trade association, in a written statement distributed by a publicist. She declined to be interviewed.</p>
<p>Nelson, the pediatrician, points out that American Academy of Pediatrics’ report, Pesticide Exposure in Children, found “an association between pesticides and adverse birth outcomes, including physical birth defects”. Noting that local schools have been evacuated twice and children sent to hospital because of pesticide drift, Nelson says doctors need prior disclosure of sprayings: “It’s hard to treat a child when you don’t know which chemical he’s been exposed to.”</p>
<p>Her concerns and those of most of her colleagues have grown as the chemical companies doubled to 25,000 acres in a decade the area in Hawaii they devote to growing new varieties of herbicide-resistant corn.</p>
<p>Today, about 90% of industrial GMO corn grown in the US was originally developed in Hawaii, with the island of Kauai hosting the biggest area. The balmy weather yields three crops a year instead of one, allowing the companies to bring a new strain to market in a third of the time.</p>
<p>Once it’s ready, the same fields are used to raise seed corn, which is sent to contract farms on the mainland. It is their output, called by critics a pesticide delivery system, that is sold to the US farmers, along with the pesticides manufactured by the breeder that each strain has been modified to tolerate.</p>
<p>Corn’s uses are as industrial as its cultivation: less than 1% is eaten. About 40% is turned into ethanol for cars, 36% becomes cattle feed, 10% is used by the food industry and the rest is exported.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/3456_1.jpg" rel="nofollow"><img alt="" src="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/3456_1.jpg" /></a></p>
<p><strong>"We Just Want to Gather Information"</strong></p>
<p>At a Starbucks just outside Honolulu, Sidney Johnson, a pediatric surgeon at the Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children who oversees all children born in Hawaii with major birth defects and operates on many, says he’s been thinking about pesticides a lot lately. The reason: he’s noticed that the number of babies born here with their abdominal organs outside, a rare condition known as gastroschisis, has grown from three a year in the 1980s to about a dozen now.</p>
<p>“We have cleanest water and air in the world,” he says. So he’s working with a medical student on a study of his hospital’s records to determine whether the parents of the gastroschisis infants were living near fields that were being sprayed around the time of conception and early pregnancy. He plans to extend the study to parents of babies suffering from heart defects.</p>
<p>“You kind of wonder why this wasn’t done before,” he says. “Data from other states show there might be a link, and Hawaii might be the best place to prove it.”</p>
<p>Unbeknownst to Johnson, another two physicians have been heading in the same direction, but with some constraints. They’re members of a state-county commission appointed this year to “determine if there are human harms coming from these pesticides”, as its chairman, a professional facilitator named Peter Adler, tells a meeting of angry local residents in Waimea earlier this month. Several express skepticism that the panel is anything but another exercise in obfuscation.</p>
<p>The panel of nine part-time volunteers also includes two scientists from the chemical companies and several of their critics. “We just want to gather information and make some recommendations,” Adler tells the crowd of about 60 people. “We won’t be doing any original research.”</p>
<p>But one of the two doctors, a retired pediatrician named Lee Evslin, plans to do just that. “I want see if any health trends stand out among people that might have been exposed to pesticides,” he says in an interview. “It won’t be a full epidemiological study, but it will probably be more complete than anything that’s been done before.”</p>
<p>The panel itself, called the Joint Fact-Finding Study Group on Genetically Modified Crops and Pesticides on Kauaʻi, is the only achievement of three years of failed attempts to force the companies to disclose in advance what they spray and to create buffer zones – which they do in 11 other states, where food crops receive much less pesticides per acre.</p>
<p>The pushback from the expansion of the GMO acreage first emerged when Gary Hooser of Kauai, a former state senate majority leader who failed in a bid for lieutenant governor in 2010, ran for his old seat on the Kauai County council in 2012.</p>
<p>“Everywhere I went, people were concerned about GMOs and pesticides. They were saying, ‘Gary, we gotta do something’,” he recounts over coffee at the trendy Ha Coffee Bar in Lihue, the island’s capital. “Some were worried about the GMO process itself and others by the threats of the pesticides, and it became one of the dominant political issues.”</p>
<p>Once elected, Hooser, who has a ruddy complexion, piercing blue eyes and arrived in Hawaii as a teenager from California, approached the companies for information about exactly what they were spraying and in what amounts. He was rebuffed.</p>
<p>In the process of what he called “doing my homework”, he discovered that the companies, unlike regular farmers, were operating under a decades-old Environmental Protection Agency permit to discharge toxic chemicals in water that had been grandfathered from the days of the sugar plantation, when the amounts and toxicities of pesticides were much lower. The state has asked for a federal exemption for the companies so they can avoid modern standards of compliance.</p>
<p>He also found that the companies, unlike regular farmers, don’t pay the 4% state excise tax. Some weren’t even asked to pay property taxes, worth $125,000 a year. After pressure from Hooser and the county tax office, the companies paid two years’ worth of back taxes.</p>
<p>So with the backing of three other members of the seven-member Kauai council, he drafted a law requiring the companies to disclose yearly what they had grown and where, and to announce in advance which pesticides they proposed to spray, where and when. The law initially also imposed a moratorium on the chemical companies expanding their acreage while their environmental impact was assessed.</p>
<p>After a series of hearings packed by company employees and their families wearing blue and opponents wearing red, the bill was watered down by eliminating the moratorium and reducing the scope of the environmental study. The ordinance then passed, but the companies sued in federal court, where a judge ruled that the state’s law on pesticides precluded the counties from regulating them. After the ruling, the state and the county created the joint fact-finding panel officially committed to conducting no new research.</p>
<p>Hooser is confident the ruling will be overturned on appeal: the Hawaii constitution “specifically requires” the state and the counties to protect the communities and their environment.</p>
<p>In his appeal, Achitoff of Earthjustice argued that Hawaii’s general pesticide law does not “demonstrate that the legislature intended to force the county to sit and watch while its schoolchildren are being sent to the hospital so long as state agencies do not remedy the problem.”</p>
<p>In the Big Island, which is called Hawaii and hosts no GMO corn, a similar process unfolded later in 2013: the county council passed a law that effectively banned the chemical companies from moving in, and it was struck down in federal court for the same reasons. A ban on genetically modified taro, a food root deemed sacred in Hawaiian mythology, was allowed to stand.</p>
<p>In Maui County, which includes the islands of Maui and Molokai, both with large GMO corn fields, a group of residents calling themselves the Shaka Movement sidestepped the company-friendly council and launched a ballot initiative that called for a moratorium on all GMO farming until a full environmental impact statement is completed there.</p>
<p>The companies, primarily Monsanto, spent $7.2 million on the campaign ($327.95 per “no” vote, reported to be the most expensive political campaign in Hawaii history) and still lost.</p>
<p>Again, they sued in federal court, and, a judge found that the Maui County initiative was preempted by federal law. Those rulings are also being appealed.</p>
<p>In the state legislature in Honolulu, Senator Josh Green, a Democrat who then chaired the health committee, earlier this year attempted a fourth effort at curbing the pesticide spraying.</p>
<p>In the legislature, he said, it’s an open secret that most heads of the agriculture committee have had “a closer relationship with the agro-chemical companies than with the environmental groups”.</p>
<p>Green, an emergency room doctor who was raised in Pennsylvania, drafted legislation to mandate some prior disclosure and some buffer zones. “I thought that was a reasonable compromise,” he says. Still, he also drafted a weaker bill as a failsafe. “If even that one doesn’t pass, it’s going to be obvious that the state doesn’t have the political will to stand up to the chemical companies,” he said in a phone interview at the time. “That would be terrible.”</p>
<p>The chairman of the senate agricultural committee, Cliff Tsuji, didn’t even bring the weaker bill to a vote, even though Hawaii’s governor had pledged to sign any bill that created buffer zones.</p>
<p>Asked by email what he would do now, Green replied with a quip: “Drink scotch.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/23/hawaii-birth-defects-pesticides-gmo" rel="nofollow">Originally published by The Guardian</a></p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<p>The spread of body cameras into our schools may come as surprise to some, but it shouldn’t.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Local doctors are in the crosshairs over whether corn that’s been genetically modified to resist pesticides is a source of prosperity or of birth defects and illnesses.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<p>This is a dangerous person, in words and deeds – dangerous to those who constantly make a killing from war, vast inequities and the plunder of the planet.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>5 days 6 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div><span><em>5 days 5 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div><span><em>6 days 2 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Of course, there is little political will to organize anything this effective in California because the banking lobby deploys too much money throughout the political process.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>5 days 6 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Alexis Tsipras fought the austerity, and the austerity won.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>3 days 23 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Despite half its population claiming African roots, Brazil's police have been implicated in what rights groups call a genocide against black people.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>How the group’s mission went from racial integration to black separatism — and eventually to lobbying on behalf of corporate interests and the police state.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>We can’t say we are protecting our children’s future unless we are doing what science says we must do to recover climate stability.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div><img src="http://www.occupy.com/article/pesticides-paradise-hawaiis-spike-birth-defects-points-gmo-crops" /></div>
</div>
<p><sub><i>-- Delivered by <a href="http://feed43.com/">Feed43</a> service</i></sub></p>

armageddon news revolution Pesticides In Paradise: Hawaii's Spike In Birth Defects Points To GMO Crops

Pesticides In Paradise: Hawaii's Spike In Birth Defects Points To GMO Crops Pesticides In Paradise: Hawaii's Spike In Birth D...

Big Banks Seen As Hidden Culprit In Wave of For-Profit College Closures

<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<h2>Big Banks Seen As Hidden Culprit In Wave of For-Profit College Closures</h2>
<span>Big Banks Seen As Hidden Culprit In Wave of For-Profit College Closures</span>
<div>
<div>This article originally appeared on <span>Inside Higher Ed</span></div>
</div>
<a href="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/field/image/84969557.jpg?itok=uuCnmIlL" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/styles/slide_narrow/public/field/image/84969557.jpg?itok=uuCnmIlL" /></a>
<div>
<p>The messy unwinding of Corinthian Colleges was an unprecedented dance among various actors: the U.S. Department of Education, state attorneys general, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and buyers like ECMC’s Zenith Group – not to mention members of Congress and student and consumer groups.</p>
<p>But another, far less visible, entity also had a strong interest in and influence on the outcome: Bank of America and a handful of other banks.</p>
<p>The extent to which those institutions, which lent money to help keep Corinthian afloat, were involved in managing the for-profit college giant as it hurtled toward ruin is becoming clearer in the company’s ongoing bankruptcy proceedings. And it highlights the significant power and influence banks that lend to for-profit colleges are increasingly wielding over those institutions, especially as many companies in the industry face greater cash flow problems and stiffer regulatory scrutiny.</p>
<p><strong>Banks’ Role at Corinthian</strong></p>
<p>In the Corinthian case, two state attorneys general have formally raised questions about the extent of Bank of America’s influence over Corinthian during the events leading up to its bankruptcy. California's Kamala Harris and Massachusetts' Martha Healey told the bankruptcy judge that they wanted more information about whether the $18 million that Bank of America and other lenders received from the Zenith sale could or should be available for the company’s creditors, including students and possibly the states.</p>
<p>A bankruptcy judge dismissed those concerns last month when he took the first step in approving Corinthian’s liquidation plan and put the proposal to a vote of the company’s creditors in the coming weeks. Still, the documents in the case reveal the influence wielded by Bank of America and other lenders as Corinthian collapsed and was, controversially, sold off to Zenith.</p>
<p>When the Education Department delayed Corinthian’s access to federal funds in June 2014, sparking a cash flow crisis, the company turned to its lenders for an immediate $9 million loan. The group of banks, led by Bank of America, agreed to provide the funds but required Corinthian to appoint a “chief restructuring officer” of their liking and give the banks final say over the company’s future agreements with the Education Department. For much of last fall and winter, the Education Department was scrambling to orchestrate the sale of most Corinthian campuses in order to avert the immediate collapse of the company and the displacement of tens of thousands of students and billions worth of loan discharges.</p>
<p>The banks also, according to court testimony, were heavily involved in the sale of Corinthian campuses. They received updates on the company’s talks with the Education Department within 24 hours, were informed of potential bidders before the general public was and reviewed draft sale agreements.</p>
<p>“They expressed their view that they wanted to be repaid,” William J. Nolan, the restructuring consultant hired by Corinthian, said in court testimony. He added that “interactions with the Department of Education or otherwise was making it difficult” for that to happen.</p>
<p>In the end, Corinthian’s lenders signed off on the sale of much of the company to ECMC’s Zenith Group last fall, agreeing to let some of the sale proceeds go to the Education Department and a student refund account.</p>
<p>Bank of America and other lenders shared in $18 million as a result of the sale, according to court testimony.</p>
<p>The Education Department received $12 million up front that it said would be used to help students. The department is slated to receive an additional $17 million payout over the next seven years, though a department official said it has not started receiving any of that money.</p>
<p>The student refund account, which under the agreement was supposed to be $30 million, was used for at least $8 million in refunds and had a remaining balance of $4.3 million when Corinthian went bankrupt. That money is slated to go to a committee of former Corinthian students under the bankruptcy plan pending before the court. (Separately, the CFPB negotiated $480 million worth of private debt relief for former Corinthian students, funded by ECMC, in exchange for not holding Zenith responsible for liability stemming from its lawsuit against Corinthian.)</p>
<p>The sale was widely panned by consumer and student groups, some of whom argued that it would have been better for the campuses to simply close and students to receive the loan discharges available to borrowers whose colleges shut down.</p>
<p>The banks, which were owed roughly $100 million by Corinthian, apparently weren’t thrilled with the arrangement, either.</p>
<p>“It wouldn’t have been their first choice,” Nolan said, in court, of that arrangement. “And I can’t speak for them, but they had a view.”</p>
<p>Still, had the banks not signed off on the sale, and forced Corinthian into bankruptcy earlier, they might have stood to recoup even less of what they were owed. Corinthian’s cash on hand at the time of the bankruptcy was only about $6 million.</p>
<p>An Education Department official, who declined to be named, said that the department did not communicate or negotiate with Bank of America or other lenders about the Zenith sale. The department declined to comment about any ongoing discussions with the lenders.</p>
<p><strong>At Anthem, a Quick Campus Sell-Off</strong></p>
<p>Banks and other lenders also played an outsize role in the recent collapse of another large for-profit college chain, Anthem Education.</p>
<p>In March 2014, the Education Department temporarily suspended Anthem’s access to federal funds over concerns the company had improperly received millions of dollars. That exacerbated financial problems at the privately held company that had been mounting for years, according to court filings.</p>
<p>Anthem’s lenders, led by Bank of Montreal, stepped in to provide some of the cash the company needed to repay the Education Department the improperly obtained funds -- a bill that eventually totaled $17 million -- and to provide working capital for other parts of the struggling business, according to filings from various legal cases.</p>
<p>In exchange for the infusion of cash, the lenders required Anthem to hire a chief restructuring officer with whom Bank of Montreal, the chief lender, would maintain “direct access.” And several months later, under the direction of that chief restructuring officer, Anthem sold off some of its Florida Career College campuses to International Education Corporation just days before filing for bankruptcy.</p>
<p>As a result of the sale, tens of thousands of students were able to continue their studies under a new owner. But, as some consumer advocates and for-profit critics have noted, the students would have been eligible to have their federal loans wiped out completely had their campuses gone into bankruptcy and closed.</p>
<p>Anthem’s restructuring officer, Sean Harding of FTI Consulting, wrote in court testimony that Bank of Montreal, the company’s other lenders, its stockholders and the U.S. Department of Education all “worked together” to sell off the campuses immediately before the bankruptcy. He said it was “the best available option” for the company, would avoid layoffs and would allow students to continue their education.</p>
<p>The sale of the campuses also brought an immediate financial benefit to Anthem’s lenders, which received an up-front $1 million fee as part of the transaction, court filings show. Once the assets of Anthem’s remaining campuses were divided up in bankruptcy court, the company’s lenders were able to recoup only a few million more dollars out of the $50 million they were owed.</p>
<p><strong>Other For-Profits</strong></p>
<p>When it comes to for-profit education companies that aren’t in as dire financial condition as Corinthian and Anthem but are nonetheless struggling, banks and lenders can still be extremely influential in how those companies are run.</p>
<p>Companies like ITT and Education Management Corporation have turned to lenders to help them post letters of credit required by the Education Department when it has concerns over a company’s finances or management. “The lenders are exercising more control in these situations,” said Trace Urdan, a for-profit industry analyst, most recently with Wells Fargo. “They get to dictate terms, impose additional restrictions on management.”</p>
<p>Many of those terms try to keep the company in line with existing Education Department rules. In fact, nearly all lenders' agreements with major for-profit colleges say the college will default on its obligations if the Education Department uses nearly any tool in its regulatory arsenal against the institution – imposing heightened cash monitoring; suspending, terminating or limiting access to Title IV; not approving a new campus. Some also set a threshold – like 10 or 20 percent – for the share of campuses that can fail the Obama administration’s gainful employment standards without defaulting on their agreements.</p>
<p>Ben Miller, a former Education Department official who is now senior director for postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress, said he was concerned that some of those debt agreements were attempts to tie the department’s hands when it comes to taking action against a for-profit college.</p>
<p>“The covenants being written into some of these debt agreements are essentially veiled threats at the department,” he said. “They make it so there is no way the department can’t act blindly.”</p>
<p>The Education Department says it monitors the agreements that colleges have with their lenders as part of its annual review of whether a college is meeting financial responsibility standards.</p>
<p>Asked whether the debt agreements factor into enforcement decisions, a department official said that the department “takes required oversight action based on the violation of the regulations and risk associated with violation.”</p>
<p>Some nonprofit colleges running into trouble with debts have struck agreements with their lenders that have the effect of giving lenders greater control over the affairs of the college. Those agreements, however, appear far less sweeping and complex than some of the debt agreements – and renegotiated agreements – that for-profits make with their lenders, which are typically commercial banks.</p>
<p>Lenders to any company typically place conditions on the capital they pump into the business. If a business can’t meet those conditions or repay the money, the lenders will come after them for it, even if that means pushing them into bankruptcy.</p>
<p>But for-profit higher education companies are unusual, experts said, because the usual safety valve of bankruptcy isn’t a viable option because federal law says that a college that enters bankruptcy is permanently banned from accepting federal student aid money, on which most for-profit colleges rely heavily for revenue.</p>
<p>“For lenders, exercising their rights against schools is a self-defeating act,” said Urdan. “The lenders will stretch and stretch and stretch beyond the point that they would in any other circumstance because the underlying asset becomes worthless if the school declares bankruptcy.”</p>
<p>That dynamic has led some in the for-profit industry – and the lawyers who represent the colleges in it – to call on Congress to ease the prohibition on federal loans and grants going to colleges that have declared bankruptcy. The argument is that troubled colleges should have the option to restructure in bankruptcy without permanently ending their business.</p>
<p>Short of that law changing, though, lenders are going to great lengths to avoid colleges entering bankruptcy: they’re renegotiating their agreements with the colleges and granting forbearances in exchange for concessions from management.</p>
<p>“It means that they have a very powerful voice at the table,” Urdan said. But, he added, when the prospect of bankruptcy is imminent, “at some point they go from trying to do whatever they can to keep the company out of bankruptcy to grabbing as much money as they can.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/08/20/profit-education-sector-faces-financial-woes-and-greater-regulatory-scrutiny-banks" rel="nofollow">Originally published by Inside Higher Ed</a></p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<p>The spread of body cameras into our schools may come as surprise to some, but it shouldn’t.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Local doctors are in the crosshairs over whether corn that’s been genetically modified to resist pesticides is a source of prosperity or of birth defects and illnesses.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<p>This is a dangerous person, in words and deeds – dangerous to those who constantly make a killing from war, vast inequities and the plunder of the planet.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>5 days 6 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div><span><em>5 days 5 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div><span><em>6 days 2 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Of course, there is little political will to organize anything this effective in California because the banking lobby deploys too much money throughout the political process.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>5 days 6 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Alexis Tsipras fought the austerity, and the austerity won.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>3 days 23 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Of course, there is little political will to organize anything this effective in California because the banking lobby deploys too much money throughout the political process.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Clashes intensify as protests sparked by the city's garbage problem widen in scope, and the prime minister calls an emergency parliament session.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Many held placards reading “Don't trade our needs for corporate greed” and “Enough is enough.”</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div><img src="http://www.occupy.com/article/big-banks-seen-hidden-culprit-wave-profit-college-closures" /></div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div><span>loading</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p><sub><i>-- Delivered by <a href="http://feed43.com/">Feed43</a> service</i></sub></p>

armageddon news revolution Big Banks Seen As Hidden Culprit In Wave of For-Profit College Closures

Big Banks Seen As Hidden Culprit In Wave of For-Profit College Closures Big Banks Seen As Hidden Culprit In Wave of For-Profit Colleg...

Fighting Inequality In Seattle, Students Lead Protests to Change School and Transit Policies

<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<h2>Fighting Inequality In Seattle, Students Lead Protests to Change School and Transit Policies</h2>
<span>Fighting Inequality In Seattle, Students Lead Protests to Change School and Transit Policies</span> <a href="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/field/image/5-20-2013%20protest%20school%20closures%20More%20than%20just%20a%20test%20score%20Sarah-ji.jpg?itok=XFPBoxHx" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/styles/slide_narrow/public/field/image/5-20-2013%20protest%20school%20closures%20More%20than%20just%20a%20test%20score%20Sarah-ji.jpg?itok=XFPBoxHx" /></a>
<div>
<p>In 2001, my parents, my siblings and I emigrated from Uganda for a better life. We traveled across seas, leaving everything tangible behind, in hopes of an idealized life abroad. We battled internal pains, suffered tremendous loss, and sold a piece of each of our souls to arrive in the land where dreams come true. Once we got here, we quickly realized the illusions we had seen on pamphlets in Africa were just that, illusions. The promises that were offered were nothing but solid sales pitches.</p>
<p>Traveling to America, we never dared to assume that we would be characterized by the color of our skin. We too had heard the great words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and expected to be judged on the content of our character. In Uganda, everyone was the same color; racial discrimination and prejudice were newfound pains pushed upon us in the United States. Through our everyday struggle of searching for employment and housing, we never expected our skin color would be such a negative barrier in a country that claimed to be dedicated to "freedom and justice for all."</p>
<p>How naive of us.</p>
<p>As a black and Muslim immigrant, I could write for days about the ways in which my family has experienced racism in the United States – both at the individual and institutional levels. Being a young person, one of the primary sources of the institutional racism I experience is the public school system.</p>
<p>The school I currently attend is Rainier Beach High School, located in South Seattle. Although Seattle is one of the most homogeneous major cities in the country, with nearly 70% of the population being white, my neighborhood in the South End is very much the opposite. In fact, a few years ago the neighborhood where my school is located, 98118, was considered to be among the most diverse zip codes in the country.</p>
<p>At Beach, we have approximately 95% students of color and over 50 languages spoken, making us the most diverse school in the Seattle School District. Nearly nine in ten students here receive free/reduced lunch, meaning the majority of us come from low income families, many of whom are immigrants. These statistics are exactly why I selected Beach when choosing a high school. I wanted to receive my education in a diverse multi-cultural setting. I didn’t want to be the only brown girl in my class. I wanted to belong.</p>
<p>In addition to our status as a culturally rich school, we also have impressive athletic achievements, most notably multiple state championships in basketball, as well as academic achievements. For instance, Beach achieved the highest graduation rate in the district, and we are seeing a steady upward trend in test scores and attendance rates. We've also been recognized on the national level for our International Baccalaureate program. Given all the positive data, one would expect the city and school district to shower Rainier Beach with resources and support. Unfortunately, this has not been the case.</p>
<p>For so long we have been told that there is no funding in the district budget to give RBHS the support it needs. Built in 1960, our school is the only one in the district that has not yet received a full renovation. Just last year we had nearly 15 power outages, some of them causing us to attend school in the dark and cold, or even to close school for the day. Our school still has chalkboards, whereas schools in whiter and more affluent neighborhoods have smart boards and more advanced technological tools that enhance student learning. Each year, students here organize walk outs and protests, and attend school board and city hall meetings – but we only receive promises of a new building. Promises that go unfulfilled.</p>
<p>Another public school policy that disproportionately affects students and families of lower income is the "Walk-Zone" rule. Seattle Public Schools doesn't provide school buses to middle or high schools; rather, students are expected to use the city Metro buses. The Walk-Zone rule requires students who live within 2.5 miles of their school to walk or pay for their own public transportation.</p>
<p>This rule greatly affects students’ attendance rates at Rainier Beach because we don’t have the privilege of being driven to school. Many of us don't have access to a car at all, whereas some schools in the north end of the district actually have a lottery process to get a student parking pass. We come from working families, often single-parent homes with multiple kids to support. For someone like me with younger siblings, it means getting them to school before continuing on my own way to school. In order to do this I have to wake up hours earlier, and this has a negative consequence on my attendance and tardy rates.</p>
<p>The cost of a round trip bus ticket to school is $3 a day. To put this in perspective, remember that 88% of students at RBHS have free or reduced lunch. This means their family's income is low enough that they cannot afford $1.50 a day for lunch. If a student cannot afford $1.50 a day for lunch, how can they be expected to pay for a bus that costs twice as much as lunch? Does that make any sense at all?</p>
<p>These injustices are the reasons why I decided to apply for an internship with Children's Defense Fund Freedom Schools this summer at Rainier Beach. CDF Freedom Schools is a national movement that empowers young scholars to make a difference for themselves, their families, their communities and their world. Rooted in literacy, the books we read at Freedom Schools flipped the standard U.S. education curriculum so that it fit our personal multicultural narratives. Books like "The Rock And The River" by Kekla Magoon tell the story of characters of color with struggles that black and brown students can relate to, an experience they don't often have in the U.S. school system.</p>
<p>On July 31, near the conclusion of the six-week CDF Freedom School program, we participated in a National Day of Social Action. All CDF Freedom Schools across the country came up with individual ways to make an impact in their community. Being a CDF Freedom school site hosted at Rainier Beach High, we decided to take on some of the aforementioned injustices Rainier Beach students face: transportation and conditions of the school building.</p>
<p>We organized a rally and march from the Seattle Schools District Office through downtown to City Hall, a distance of 1.7 miles that took about 40 minutes to walk – not even half as far as most students affected by the walk-zone travel each day to get to and from school. At City Hall, we were joined by CDF Freedom Schools elementary site with some scholars as young as five years old. There, in City Hall Plaza, we held Harambee – a Swahili word meaning "Let's pull together," where we sang, danced and cheered.</p>
<p>And we weren't alone. We were joined in solidarity by many community members and organizations such as the Transit Rider's Union. Scholars made speeches and gave personal testimonies of the violence and sexual harassment they have encountered on their long walks to school. We demanded Orca Cards (bus passes) and a new school building. After this, the Mayor of Seattle, Ed Murray, came and addressed us. He spoke a sweet talk, however we all know that talk is just talk. After all, the Seattle City Council just approved $210 million to build a new youth jail. That money should be invested in education, not incarceration.</p>
<p>After the Day of Social Action, a representative from the school board came and visited our site, telling us the district had heard us loud and clear and would work to achieve the changes we asked for as quickly as possible. The school board suggested we send letters to the mayor as a follow-up, because they would need the city council to be on board. Interestingly enough, when I spoke to the mayor, he told me we should be speaking with the school district to get the results we were looking for.</p>
<p>But we don’t just want Orca Cards. We want the Walk-Zone policy to change, and we want all inequitable policies to be challenged. We don’t just want a building renovation: We want a renovation inside the hearts and souls of the people we elected to represent us. Until those things are achieved, we will be here on the front lines, fighting.</p>
<p>We are Rainier Beach, we are Freedom Fighters, we are people of color, we are immigrants, we are youth – our voices matter, and boy, are we loud.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/5360144-4x3-940x705.jpg" rel="nofollow"><img alt="Seattle school protests, income inequality, wealth inequality, Seattle school policies, Seattle transit inequality" src="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/5360144-4x3-940x705.jpg" title="Seattle school protests, income inequality, wealth inequality, Seattle school policies, Seattle transit inequality" /></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/hydrant.jpg" rel="nofollow"><img alt="" src="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/hydrant.jpg" /></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/protest.jpg" rel="nofollow"><img alt="" src="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/protest.jpg" /></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/seattle_teacher_strike_wide_crowd.jpg" rel="nofollow"><img alt="Seattle school protests, income inequality, wealth inequality, Seattle school policies, Seattle transit inequality" src="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/seattle_teacher_strike_wide_crowd.jpg" title="Seattle school protests, income inequality, wealth inequality, Seattle school policies, Seattle transit inequality" /></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/seattle-teacher-picket.jpg" rel="nofollow"><img alt="" src="https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/seattle-teacher-picket.jpg" /></a></p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<p>The spread of body cameras into our schools may come as surprise to some, but it shouldn’t.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Local doctors are in the crosshairs over whether corn that’s been genetically modified to resist pesticides is a source of prosperity or of birth defects and illnesses.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<p>This is a dangerous person, in words and deeds – dangerous to those who constantly make a killing from war, vast inequities and the plunder of the planet.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>5 days 6 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div><span><em>5 days 5 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div><span><em>6 days 2 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Of course, there is little political will to organize anything this effective in California because the banking lobby deploys too much money throughout the political process.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>5 days 6 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Alexis Tsipras fought the austerity, and the austerity won.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>3 days 23 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Leaders of influential civil rights movement release the most comprehensive set of policy proposals yet calling for federal and state laws to combat police killings.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>How the group’s mission went from racial integration to black separatism — and eventually to lobbying on behalf of corporate interests and the police state.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>The declaration cites Islamic teachings and urges Muslims to phase out greenhouse gas emissions and commit to renewable energy.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div><img src="http://www.occupy.com/article/fighting-inequality-seattle-students-lead-protests-change-school-and-transit-policies" /></div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div><span>loading</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p><sub><i>-- Delivered by <a href="http://feed43.com/">Feed43</a> service</i></sub></p>

armageddon news revolution Fighting Inequality In Seattle, Students Lead Protests to Change School and Transit Policies

Fighting Inequality In Seattle, Students Lead Protests to Change School and Transit Policies Fighting Inequality In Seattle, Students...