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MAS teacher Curtis Acosta takes us through Xipe Totec in the space he created with the students in TUSD… now banned and empty as he leaves the school district this week… his Latino Literature class.
Don’t Mess with Meskins By Rodolfo F. Acuña In West Texas, during the struggles to desegregate the schools in the [...]
Goodbye Curtis Acosta from Abie Morales on Vimeo. Curtis Acosta was a Mexican American Studies teacher in TUSD, teaching Latino [...]
In case you missed it, the episode featuring the now viral Kitchen’s Nightmare with Amy’s Baking Company is below. Other [...]
Spring is typically the driest time of year in Arizona, and the lack of rainfall over the last two months [...]
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Former Grand Canyon University administrator Timothy Serey has sued the Christian college for alleged discrimination. Serey, the school’s former executive director of [...]
…Early into the weeks of volunteering I have noticed something about myself. I’m terrified. As I get ready in the morning to go on my assignment I feel fear that is like barbed wire poking the outside of my lungs on the edge of each breath….. It’s only a few hours at a […]
DEBATE over Corky Gonzales library?!
WASHINGTON — At least 37 people were killed when a powerful tornado with winds of up to 200 miles (320 kilometers) per hour pulverized an Oklahoma City suburb, hitting at least two schools and wiping out blocks of homes. [Editor's note: since publication the AP has reported the death toll is at 51.]
The Oklahoma medical examiner’s office gave the latest death toll, which was carried by all the major US television networks, which said the number of fatalities was expected to rise.
“Our first responders are stretched,” Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett told CNN. “The state, the National Guard are going to be involved.”
Reporters for KFOR-TV saw pupils as young as nine being “pulled out” of the school in Moore, a residential community of 55,000 just south of Oklahoma’s state capital.
Anxious parents were being kept at a distance while search and rescue workers scrambled to free the pupils.
A second elementary school, Briarwood, was also hit but did not immediately appear to have sustained casualties. Early reports indicated that many students survived.
From its news helicopter, KFOR’s cameras captured scenes of widespread destruction, with street after street of single-story homes in Moore stripped of their roofs and cars piled atop each other like toys.
Utility lines were down and gas lines exposed, triggering localized fires. The Moore Medical Center was evacuated after it sustained damage, a spokeswoman for the hospital told CNN.
The National Guard was called out to help rescue efforts.
Storm spotters estimated the wedge-shaped tornado, which struck in mid-afternoon, to be as big as two miles (3.2 kilometers) wide. It briefly dissipated, only to recycle to the east, threatening the town of Meeker.
“We anticipate that these storms are going to continue to build around Oklahoma,” a grim Governor Mary Fallin told CNN, while the National Weather Service urged residents to take cover.
On Twitter, the National Weather Service gave the tornado a preliminary rating of EF-4, indicating that it packed winds of 166 to 200 miles per hour (267-322 km/h) — more severe than a category five hurricane.
In downtown Oklahoma City, tornado sirens went off at least three times Monday afternoon, and the Interstate 35 highway — a busy north-south artery through the American heartland — was closed to all but emergency vehicles.
In Moore, live images from KFOR showed people wandering among the debris and even a couple of untethered horses from a local stables that somehow managed to survive the punishing storm.
“I had no idea it was coming,” said a stable worker, who told how he survived the “unbearably loud” twister by taking cover in one of the stalls.
Monday’s tornado followed roughly the same west-to-east track as a May 1999 twister that killed 44 people, injured hundreds more and destroyed thousands of homes in Moore and the south of Oklahoma City.
Tornadoes frequently touch down on Oklahoma’s wide open plains, but the fact that Monday’s twister struck a populated urban area raised fears of a high casualty toll.
Because of the hard ground, few homes are built with basements in which residents can take cover.
Oklahoma City lies well inside the so-called “Tornado Alley” stretching from South Dakota to central Texas that is particularly vulnerable to tornadoes.
On Sunday, a powerful storm system churning through the US Midwest spawned tornadoes in Iowa, Kansas and Oklahoma, destroying homes and killing at least two people, US media reported.
Fallin declared a state of emergency Sunday for 16 Oklahoma counties due to tornados, severe storms and flooding over the weekend.
In Washington, a White House official said President Barack Obama was getting updates “as information come in from the ground” and that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) stood ready to provide assistance.
“The administration continues to urge all those in affected or potentially affected areas to follow the direction of state and local officials as this severe weather continues,” the official added.
Copyright © 2013 AFP. All rights reserved.
WASHINGTON — At least 37 people were killed when a powerful tornado with winds of up to 200 miles (320 kilometers) per hour pulverized an Oklahoma City suburb, hitting at least two schools and wiping out blocks of homes. [Editor's note: since publication the AP has reported the death toll is at 51.]
The Oklahoma medical examiner’s office gave the latest death toll, which was carried by all the major US television networks, which said the number of fatalities was expected to rise.
“Our first responders are stretched,” Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett told CNN. “The state, the National Guard are going to be involved.”
Reporters for KFOR-TV saw pupils as young as nine being “pulled out” of the school in Moore, a residential community of 55,000 just south of Oklahoma’s state capital.
Anxious parents were being kept at a distance while search and rescue workers scrambled to free the pupils.
A second elementary school, Briarwood, was also hit but did not immediately appear to have sustained casualties. Early reports indicated that many students survived.
From its news helicopter, KFOR’s cameras captured scenes of widespread destruction, with street after street of single-story homes in Moore stripped of their roofs and cars piled atop each other like toys.
Utility lines were down and gas lines exposed, triggering localized fires. The Moore Medical Center was evacuated after it sustained damage, a spokeswoman for the hospital told CNN.
The National Guard was called out to help rescue efforts.
Storm spotters estimated the wedge-shaped tornado, which struck in mid-afternoon, to be as big as two miles (3.2 kilometers) wide. It briefly dissipated, only to recycle to the east, threatening the town of Meeker.
“We anticipate that these storms are going to continue to build around Oklahoma,” a grim Governor Mary Fallin told CNN, while the National Weather Service urged residents to take cover.
On Twitter, the National Weather Service gave the tornado a preliminary rating of EF-4, indicating that it packed winds of 166 to 200 miles per hour (267-322 km/h) — more severe than a category five hurricane.
In downtown Oklahoma City, tornado sirens went off at least three times Monday afternoon, and the Interstate 35 highway — a busy north-south artery through the American heartland — was closed to all but emergency vehicles.
In Moore, live images from KFOR showed people wandering among the debris and even a couple of untethered horses from a local stables that somehow managed to survive the punishing storm.
“I had no idea it was coming,” said a stable worker, who told how he survived the “unbearably loud” twister by taking cover in one of the stalls.
Monday’s tornado followed roughly the same west-to-east track as a May 1999 twister that killed 44 people, injured hundreds more and destroyed thousands of homes in Moore and the south of Oklahoma City.
Tornadoes frequently touch down on Oklahoma’s wide open plains, but the fact that Monday’s twister struck a populated urban area raised fears of a high casualty toll.
Because of the hard ground, few homes are built with basements in which residents can take cover.
Oklahoma City lies well inside the so-called “Tornado Alley” stretching from South Dakota to central Texas that is particularly vulnerable to tornadoes.
On Sunday, a powerful storm system churning through the US Midwest spawned tornadoes in Iowa, Kansas and Oklahoma, destroying homes and killing at least two people, US media reported.
Fallin declared a state of emergency Sunday for 16 Oklahoma counties due to tornados, severe storms and flooding over the weekend.
In Washington, a White House official said President Barack Obama was getting updates “as information come in from the ground” and that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) stood ready to provide assistance.
“The administration continues to urge all those in affected or potentially affected areas to follow the direction of state and local officials as this severe weather continues,” the official added.
Copyright © 2013 AFP. All rights reserved.
It’s yet another story of how social media can apparently become a tool for abuse — and evidence of it. But the lesson seems all wrong. In Chicago this weekend, prosecutors announced three teenaged boys will tried as adults for aggravated criminal sexual assault after allegedly raping a 12-year-old girl — and posting a video of the attack on Facebook.
Prosecutors say the girl went to the home of Scandale Fritz last December and, “after she declined his demands for sex, he raped and sodomized her,” and then “demanded the girl have sex with the other two boys” while he recorded it. Chillingly, prosecutors add that Fritz’s companion Kenneth Brown can be seen holding a gun in the video. After the incident, the girl filed a police report and was examined at a local hospital. Two days after the alleged assault, the video appeared on all three boys’ Facebook pages. Prosecutors say that Fritz has already provided “a handwritten statement to his involvement.”
This is just the latest in a demoralizing spate of stories involving sexual assault as porny entertainment. Last year, Jared Len Cruise was convicted of sexual assault in a brutal gang rape of an 11-year-old Texas girl — a crime that was recorded on a cell phone and circulated around the girl’s school. In April, 17-year-old Halifax student Rehtaeh Parsons committed suicide 18 months after allegedly being raped — and having a photo of the event distributed among her classmates. After her death, her mother wrote on her Facebook page, “Rehtaeh is gone today because of the four boys that thought that raping a 15-year-old girl was OK and to distribute a photo to ruin her spirit and reputation would be fun.” Local authorities had found “insufficient evidence to proceed with charges,” despite the fact that the image alone would be considered child porn under Canada law.
And in Steubenville, Ohio – perhaps the most infamous example — Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond were convicted in March of raping a classmate and then sharing images from the night and “hundreds of text messages from more than a dozen cell phones.” It was a collection of gleeful, callous boasting that the judge later declared “profane and ugly.”
The Chicago story is still unfolding, but here’s what is known so far: It involves a young man, who prosecutors say admits to making a video, and a 12-year-old child. Yet again, it wasn’t enough to just do something awful. It had to be documented; it had to become a trophy to be shown off. In an interview with Business Insider last month, psychology professor and sexual violence expert Dr. Rebecca Campbell noted that, “Sexual assault is a crime of power and dominance. By distributing images of the rape through social media, it’sa way of asserting dominance and power to hurt the victim over and over again.”
It’s an act of brazen aggression, and one that says the victim’s experience is just a show to be shared. That it can also become a tool of justice, evidence of a crime, seems only now to be becoming more evident. Yet whether it makes any difference in stopping assault — or merely the covering up of it — remains to be seen. When he sentenced the Steubenville rapists earlier this year, Judge Thomas Lipps warned other teens to “to have discussions about how you talk to your friends, how you record things on the social media so prevalent today.” The lesson in all of it still doesn’t seem to be about rape. Rather, it’s not to get caught bragging about it.
The Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh in April, the world’s worst garment industry catastrophe which killed over 1,000 people, has sparked intensive debate over who is to blame for the devastation.
Many have pointed the finger at global corporations’ failure to provide adequate fire and building safeguards for factory workers. Such controversy has resulted in pressure upon the major retailers to sign a legally binding agreement aimed to improve conditions in the country, which to date has the support of 19 corporations.
However, only one company, PVH — which owns brands including Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein and Van Heusen – is American. The Gap and Walmart, two of the major producers in Bangladesh, continue to resist signing any agreement that is legally binding or enforceable. Instead, Walmart has said it will conduct its own investigations into its supplier factories.
The question that remains is what can we as consumers do to ensure that a tragedy of this magnitude does not happen again? Merely sitting back as bystanders and depending on the corporate moguls to solve a problem which has been proliferating over decades is not the answer.
As shoppers, we have an ability and opportunity to honor our values to promote the rights of workers and advocate for change in an effort to ensure that these types of disasters do not occur again. We can do this by joining and supporting a demonstration on May 21 in San Francisco at the Gap shareholder meeting to sign the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh.
Take Action, Be Vocal
According to Liana Foxvog of International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF), the most important thing that consumers can do is to get involved and provide a voice. “There are not many sources where workers rights are respected in the global garment industry so we are urging consumers to be more than just consumers and raise their voices,” she said.
Foxvog told AlterNet that it is vitally important that consumers pay attention to how companies are treating workers in Bangladesh and that global companies know that consumers will not accept unsafe practice or the repression of worker’s rights to unionize.
“Taking action is the most important step for consumers and this can be done either in the form of attending protests, writing letters to store managers and foreign companies and signing petitions,” she said.
A number of petitions calling for better working conditions in Bangladesh have been circulating since the April tragedy. The Gap “death traps” is an example of a petition instigated by ILRF which has been gaining momentum across the US and calling on consumers to take action across the country.
Foxvog argues that it’s time for companies to make a change from the past to work together on programs in agreement with global and Bangladeshi unions in order to protect workers lives and ensure safety mechanisms are in place.
Selective Shopping
As consumers, we have the power to control where and how we spend our money. There are a number of consumer shopping guides that are available in order to search for union-made clothing shops.
While an outright boycott of the industry seems like an obvious and highly desirable option, unions and activists have expressed reluctance at taking such extreme measures.
As Muhammud Yanus, Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize winner explains, such actions would drastically affect the social and economic future of the Bangladeshi workers.
“We cannot allow this industry to be destroyed. Rather, we have to be united as a nation to strengthen it,” Yanus said.
A less radical but equally effective approach consumers can take is to make a conscience effort to shop only at those companies that have agreed to sign the legally binding agreement to improve working conditions in Bangladesh.
Investing in corporations that support fair working rights rather than companies that are guilty of exploitation, sends a clear message to anti-union corporations such as Walmart and the Gap that consumers will not tolerate unfair labor practices and thus provide some incentive for these corporations to amend their practices.
At the end of the day, we want to generate concrete action so that corporations are pressured to undertake necessary repairs to make these factories safe. For these reasons, it is important the consumers make informed choices about where to shop.
Promote Transparency Through Social Media
Social media is a powerful tool to create change and rally support against unfair labor practices. Through social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and news blogs, consumers can increase awareness of the garment industry practices through naming and shaming those guilty of exploitation – whether it be global corporations, local governments or factory owners – while keeping the issue at the forefront.
These measures not only push those culpable in the industry toward affirmative action, but pressure corporations to disclose the locations and addresses of their manufacturers thereby promoting transparency and preventing companies from hiding behind the corporate veil.
Join Civil Action Groups
For those of us who want to get more involved, joining a civil action movement targeted at improving rights for workers is another way to make a difference.
By campaigning against anti-union companies, it is envisioned that retailers that profit from low wages in Bangladesh will be compelled by consumers to pay high prices to factories and accordingly undertake the necessary repairs in compliance with local building codes.
Such an example of civil action campaigning is evidenced by the efforts of USAS, together with human rights groups and the ILFP who will be holding a demonstration in front of the Gap shareholder meeting on May 21 in San Francisco as a means to call upon the company to sign the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh.
“The only thing that is going to change conditions in Bangladesh is companies stepping up and deciding to put money on the table to renovate the factories and include workers and their unions as part of the solution…that is why we are asking people to put pressure on the Gap,” Garrett Strain, International Campaigns Coordinator with United Students Against Sweatshops, stressed.
Do Not Turn a Blind Eye
As Angelo Young reported in the International Business Times citing a study into human behavior titled, “Sweatshop Labor Is Wrong Unless The Shoes Are Cute,” a major problem with consumers is that despite our strong convictions that we do support fair labor markets, there is a huge disparity between what we say as consumers, and what we actually do.
Young argues that the more desirable an item is the more likely a consumer will cognitively disregard his moral stance on unethical labor practices thereby perpetuating its increasing demand. In this sense, a shopper is able to reconcile the bad labor practices by choosing to ignore the realities of exploitation. Therefore, it is important that we recognize and acknowledge that as consumers, we are both part of the problem and the solution.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (CN) – A woman died on a courthouse floor because Alabama sheriff’s deputies refused to give her her medicine – after arresting her for an old traffic ticket, the woman’s daughter claims in court.
Ayunna Johnae London sued St. Clair County Sheriff Terry Surles, jail administrators Austin Nash and Terry Marcrum, Southern Healthcare Partners, and its employee Jennifer Eisel, in Federal Court.
London claims her mother, Dwana Voncia London-Richardson, died gasping for breath in court after callous and unconstitutional treatment from the defendants.
Richardson suffered from asthma and other serious health problems, but the defendants refused to give her her medication, accused her of faking, and let her die in the courtroom, her daughter claims.
Southern Healthcare Partners, which provided medical care to inmates at the St. Clair County Jail, failed to treat her mother properly, London says.
Her 45-year-old mother died in May 2011 at the St. Clair County Courthouse while in the sheriff’s custody.
Richardson was arrested on May 19, 2011, in Tarrant City, Ala., for failing to pay a 2008 traffic ticket. She was sent to the St. Clair County Jail.
London claims that when she visited her mom in jail two days later, her mother could hardly walk, had trouble breathing and complained of pain in both legs.
London claims the jail staff refused to give her mom her asthma medication and stopped other inmates from helping her.
“Ms. Richardson told Ayunna that she was sick, that both her legs were hurting her so badly that she could not walk to the tray area to pick up her food, and that they would not give her her medicine,” the complaint states.
“Ms. Richardson told Ayunna that several of the inmates were trying to help her out by going to get her tray for her, since she could hardly walk, but the jailers told them that they were ‘babying’ her, and moved Ms. Richardson to a different area in the jail, away from the inmates that were trying to help her.”
Jail staff refused to take Richardson to the hospital, despite her worsening condition, her daughter says.
On May 23, deputies took her mother to court and ignored her need for medical care until it was too late, London says.
“Ayunna headed to the St. Clair County Courthouse early that morning,” the complaint states. “She could not locate where court was being held. She saw deputy (or jailer) John Doe standing at the fire station, talking to a firefighter so she pulled into the station to ask where court was being held.
“When she pulled into the fire station, she saw her mother lying on the ground next to the police car with her legs extended under the police car.
“She asked them what had happened and her mother told her that she did not know, that she had just passed out. Ms. Richardson was sweating and struggling breathing.
“Ayunna had one of her mother’s asthma pumps in her car so she asked if her mother could sit in her car and get some air.
“Ayunna gave her mother the asthma pump but it was not working. Her mother’s breathing continued to get worse.”
London says the deputies still refused to take her mom to the hospital, and said would be locked up if she didn’t keep her court date.
“Ms. Richardson was unable to walk,” the complaint states. “Deputy (or jailer) Doe obtained an office chair from the courthouse and they used it to wheel Ms. Richardson to the courtroom.
“Ayunna set beside deputy (or jailer) Doe and her mother, fanning her mother, whose breathing continued to get worse.
“After sitting in the courtroom waiting for about twenty minutes, Ms. Richardson stated that she ‘could not take anymore,’ and she told deputy/jailer Doe that she needed help.
“Ayunna also pleaded with deputy/jailer Doe to get someone to help her mother.
“Deputy/jailer Doe responded as though he believed Ms. Richardson was just putting on.
“Ms. Richardson then stated ‘I need to lay down.’
“Ms. Richardson laid down on the courtroom floor and her body started to shaking.
“Deputy/jailer Doe took no action to assist Ms. Richardson or to clear the courtroom.
“Everyone in the courtroom watched as Ms. Richardson died in court, on the courtroom floor.
“Ayunna stayed beside her mother trying to do CPR to bring her back for about twenty minutes, but she failed.”
Emergency personnel arrived 45 minutes later and took Richardson, who was unresponsive, to the hospital.
London says her mother was pronounced dead within 5 minutes of arriving at the hospital.
She seeks punitive damages for constitutional violations, wrongful death and negligence.
She is represented by Charles Tatum Jr. of Jasper, Ala
The most egregious rights violations tend to happen against the voiceless; those who have neither the platform nor resources to articulate their grievances to the broader world.
Last week, however, the US Department of Justice was caught in a very public transgression against the freedom of an influential and empowered private organisation when it was revealed that it had engaged in a spying campaign against the Associated Press (AP) – one of the country’s largest news agencies.
In what has been described as a “massive and unprecedented intrusion“, AP revealed that Obama’s Department of Justice had engaged in a surveillance campaign targeting its reporters and editors. This campaign included the covert acquisition of phone records from AP staff; including from their home and personal cell numbers.
In a public letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, AP President Gary Pruitt said the surveillance would:
Reveal communications with confidential sources and disclose information… that the government has no conceivable right to know.
It would seem, however, that soliciting such confidential knowledge was just what the government was after, as it sought to obtain information regarding AP’s reporting on CIA operations in Yemen. Indeed, far beyond this incident of spying on the press, it has been demonstrated over the past several years that the US government under Obama has developed a seemingly insatiable appetite for its citizens’ private information. Furthermore – and to the detriment of the American right to privacy – they have shown few qualms about the means they are willing to employ to acquire such data.
Digital documentation
In 2010, the Washington Post‘s landmark report “Top Secret America” – an investigative effort to document the rapidly expanding and unaccountable security apparatus developing in the country – uncovered a stunning fact about the depth of surveillance Americans today find themselves under.
According to the report:
Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications.
In a world where such media have become the primary means of communication for millions of citizens, this level of undisclosed documentation is incredibly significant. Government spying on citizens’ internet activities is not simply an intrusion into their external communications, but in many ways it represents surveillance of a significant chunk of their mental lives as well.
Never before has such an immense repository of information been available to a state – but without so much as public disclosure, this huge trove of knowledge is being created by the US government for purposes that have never been properly articulated.
A particularly insidious example of how Americans have been robbed of their right to privacy can be seen ingovernment monitoring of social media and email platforms. When services such as Twitter, Facebook and Gmail first launched and millions of Americans rushed to take part in what seemed to be another opportunity for benign internet socialising, they could not have been expected to know that they were sharing intimate private thoughts and information not just with friends and family, but with the state as well.
In 2010, the Department of Homeland Security quietly began a programme to monitor social media in conjunction with the military contractor General Dynamics. This programme – disclosed only after privacy organisations filed lawsuits that revealed its existence - casts its surveillance net broadly enough that any internet user who uses certain keywords (some apparently as innocuous as “wave”, “pork” and “Mexico”) would be considered suspicious and subject to more intensive investigation. Of course, the rationale for these designations continues to remain as opaque as the programme itself.
Earlier this year, Google released its semi-annual report on online transparency and specifically cited the US government as among the worst culprits for its requests to view the private data of internet users. While theoretically law enforcement and other government agencies should require warrants to search through sensitive private information such as emails, recent investigations by the ACLU suggest that theFBI has been circumventing these requirements and reading individuals’ email accounts without specific legal authorisation.
Furthermore, companies such as Facebook and Google may now face monetary fines if they refuse to share client data and consent to wiretaps requested by government agencies. In a world where people increasingly use the ample cloud-memory space afforded by services such as Gmail as a storage locker for information, the apparent belief on the part of government that individuals’ email accounts do not qualify as “private” is deeply troubling.
Big data, big brother
A glimpse into what the future of domestic surveillance may entail can be seen in a new type of software developed by the defence firm Raytheon. Better known in the public imagination for its production of cruise missiles and air warfare simulators, Raytheon has begun to branch out into the creation of surveillance products as well with the development of its new “Riot” software.
The programme – demonstrated in a report by The Guardian‘s Ryan Gallagher – mines individuals’ social media usage in order to track their movement and even predict their future behaviour. In a video with Raytheon’s “principal investigator” Brian Urch, he demonstrates in amazing detail how the programme can be used to track and predict the future location of one of the company’s own employees.
As Ginger McCall of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre told Gallagher regarding the implications of the programme:
Users may be posting information that they believe will be viewed only by their friends, but instead, it is being viewed by government officials or pulled in by data collection services like the Riot search.
It is unlikely that any individual operating a Twitter and Facebook account to connect with loved ones would imagine their posts could one day be used by the employees of a government defence contractor to predict their future behaviour; but incredibly enough, such a scenario is becoming increasingly possible.
Another sign of increasing government commitment to the use of “Big Data” to keep tabs on online and telephone communication is the creation of a massive $2bn data centre in Utah under the aegis of the National Security Agency (NSA). The sprawling complex built in the remote Utah desert is intended tocapture and store all types of online data, including “private emails, mobile phone calls, Google searches, travel itineraries and purchases“, towards the goal of achieving “total information awareness“.
What this will mean in the long-term for the average citizen – whose personal privacy has already been hopelessly compromised by technological monitoring, and who will now be subject to a massive and open-ended programme of Big Data analytics – is as yet unclear. What is clear, however, is that the post-9/11 environment of fear has allowed huge amounts of resources to be committed to projects such as this, which will empower the US government with a level of information about its citizens unprecedented in human history.
The human impact of surveillance
When considering the implications of the massive digital Panopticon being developed today, it is important to reflect upon the impact upon individual liberty which even crude, old-fashioned surveillance causes. With the revelation that the New York Police Department had been conducting blanket-spying on Muslimsliving in New York City and its environs – using methods such as paid informants, wiretapping, detailed cataloguing of Muslim neighbourhoods, documentation of Muslim-owned businesses, infiltration of houses of worship, and many other invasive tactics, it can be observed what effects intensive monitoring can have on ordinary individuals.
Throughout six years of spying on entire communities for no other reason than their religion, not a single lead or terrorism investigation was generated by the programme. Nonetheless, the damage done to the psyches of individuals who knew their community was deeply infiltrated was palpable. Communities and personal relationships were torn apart by government-induced suspicion and paranoia, as people became too afraid to speak or even associate with one another. As documented in AP’s report on the programme:
“Interviewees stress that the ever-present surveillance chills – or completely silences – their speech.”
“Every other store on this street could be an informant. You start wondering about each one: how did this person get his liquor license so quickly?”
“‘Nobody will trust you with things that they did trust you with before… Trust is gone. My own neighbor – he doesn’t say it, obviously no one says it. But I feel like it’s on their faces.”
Given what relatively crude means of surveillance can do to a community, what long-term effect will a pervasive, technologically-advanced, multi-billion dollar national spying programme have on the fabric of society? One means of combatting seditious and unwanted speech is to simply make ordinary people too afraid to speak and commiserate with each other whatsoever, and the surveillance state being built today may ultimately accomplish this goal.
As much as is still possible, citizens should seek to jealously guard their personal information and to be judicious with what they share on seemingly-innocuous social media outlets. One thing that can be assured is that the infrastructure exists to document - allegedly in the minutest detail - an increasing amount of private data, and until citizens begin to lobby government for safeguards upon their privacy the surveillance state will only continue to grow.
The potential consequences for individual liberty cannot be overstated, and it is incumbent upon those who wish to protect Constitutionally enshrined personal freedoms to make sure that government surveillance becomes an issue of urgent public scrutiny and oversight.
Murtaza Hussain is a Toronto-based writer and analyst focused on issues related to Middle Eastern politics.
This article first appeared at Orion Magazine under the title “The Discontent of Our Winter.” You can enjoy future Orion articles by signing up to the magazine’s free trial subscription program.
My children have snow anxiety. For the record, this started in the winter of 2011–12 when no snow fell—at all—and sleds, saucers, skis, and snowball makers sat dejectedly on the porch, unused, next to the irrelevant and despondent snow shovel. Week after week, month after month, Faith and Elijah scanned the skies and studied the forecast. When June-like temperatures hit in March, the sight of the toboggan filled them with so much despair that they wordlessly dragged it back to the barn and put it in storage.
Which did not go unnoticed by their dad and me. When had our kids ever put stuff away without being asked? It was as unprecedented as a snowless winter in upstate New York. Nobody had ever experienced that either.
During the unfrozen winter of 2011–12, the grown-ups all walked around saying, “This is crazy!” True enough. When the temperature in the mudroom hits eighty degrees before the daytime:nighttime ratio hits parity, some synonym for insane is what the thesaurus should take you to. But “This is crazy!” also implies that we possess no rational explanation for June arriving in March. And I noticed that my son and his friends never said things like that to each other. They spoke more grimly, along the lines of, Global warming. It’s here. Now we can’t go sledding. Probably ever. So what do you want to do, dude?
When snow and ice finally fell in April—hard enough and fast enough to cancel school—it fell on tulip and magnolia petals and killed off the entire cherry crop.
The toboggan stayed in the barn.
But wishful thinking springs anew in the hearts of children, even in the face of permanent catastrophe, so, after a cherryless summer and a fall with few apples, Faith and Elijah conferred hopefully about the upcoming winter. Last year was a global warming winter. But maybe global warming winters come only every other year. Maybe this year would be normal.
The snow fell. The sleds came out. The snow melted.
The snow fell again. And turned to rain. The ground thawed and great lakes of water filled the low areas, and the sleds that had been parked at the bottoms of sledding hills across the county bobbed around like flotillas of small boats at harbor.
The sight of floating sleds made the adults say, “It’s crazy!” all over again.
The kids just gave up. Let the record show that in February 2013, the children of Trumansburg, New York, gave up on winter. As a season, it was no longer reliable. You could wake up in the morning to a wonderland—snowflakes dutifully falling, the front yard all white, perfect, hushed, squeaky—and by the time school let out in the afternoon, the miraculous world had already reverted back to brown, gray, mushy, yucky.
“Don’t get excited,” said Faith to Elijah right before Valentine’s Day when he looked out the window at first light and announced a fresh snowfall. “It won’t last.”
My children were born just before and after the turn of the century. They are old enough to reminisce about the days before winter went bad and became the crazy uncle in the seasonal family. Faith’s fashionable friends discuss the clothes they used to wear—month after arctic month—when they were little and the snow was piled high from November to March. Kids today, they note with disinterested interest, just don’t have the same relationship to their snow pants.
I think I’m on to something here, and I’d like to make a prediction. I predict that the cohort of kids who are now ten to fifteen years old are going to have a very different worldview than those born just a few years after them. My kids and their friends and everyone roughly their age will, in fact, be the last human beings to remember a stable, predictable procession of seasons.
Let me put a finer point on this. My kids, who are in middle school, know that winter is supposed to be cold and that January pond ice should be thick enough for skating. They possess snowman-making techniques, snow-fort construction skills, and an elaborate ethos about exactly what kind of snowballs can and can’t be used for ambushing the friends of one’s sibling and what body parts are and are not off-limits (no ice balls, never in the face). They have methods for assessing the slide-ability and pack-ability of any given snowfall. They know which methods of tucking snow pants into snow boots work and which leak. They have strong opinions on gloves versus mittens and the proper way to make a snow angel. And yet, for the last two years, they have had almost no opportunity to exercise this knowledge.
Meanwhile, a friend calls to tell me that her otherwise very bright granddaughter, who is of nursery-school age, is having trouble learning the names of the seasons. They make no sense to her. “But grandma, you said that winter was cold!” Winter, when she said it, wasn’t. And there was the added problem of the forsythias. They bloomed this year during a warm spell that spanned the twelve days of Christmas. April showers bring May flowers. When the nursery rhymes no longer match the empirical evidence, what’s a three-year-old to think?
Here are two more stories for the record. Because of climate change, Elijah gave up on Little House in the Big Woods. He liked the first half. But the episodes involving horse-drawn sleighs and maple-syrup snow cones were too painful. He refused to read on. “It’s not that way anymore, Mom,” he said matter-of-factly, and set the book aside.
I was stunned. But then it happened to me. While rereading the poem “Corsons Inlet” by A. R. Ammons—“I went for a walk over the dunes again this morning / to the sea, / then turned right along / the surf”—which had once been the subject of my own master’s thesis, I found that I couldn’t go on. It’s not that way anymore, Archie. And how come, in 1965, you didn’t see it coming? Corson’s Inlet, a last undeveloped stretch of beach in New Jersey, was destroyed during Hurricane Sandy.
I set the book aside. Matter-of-factly.
Not to say that our hearts have all turned to stone around here. Here’s my other story: After days of wild, record-breaking weather, our village winter festival was canceled because of rain and flood warnings. When I told Elijah the bad news on the walk home from school, he began to cry. I told him I was sorry.
He said, “I’m not upset about the festival. I’m upset because the planet’s dying. I know this is all because of global warming.”
This is what I heard myself say: “Look, Mom is on the job. I’m working on it. I’m working on it really hard, and I promise I won’t quit.”
And then I cried. And not only because my son believes himself to be alive on a dying planet, but because all the generations of parents before mine have been unable to deal with the facts and mount a response of sufficient scale to solve the problem, meaning that all of us now have a monumental task before us. I cried because keeping my promise makes me arise before dawn to get on buses, puts bullhorns in my hand in faraway cities, may yet land me in jail, and, in these and other ways, takes me away from my children so that I can prove them wrong.
This article first appeared at Orion Magazine under the title “The Discontent of Our Winter.” You can enjoy future Orion articles by signing up to the magazine’s free trial subscription program.
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