"I understand the strong emotions by some people about our family’s decision to care for a pet. As a father, it is important to make sure my children develop a healthy relationship with animals. I want to ensure that my children establish a loving bond and treat all of God’s creatures with kindness and respect."
—
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback MICHAEL VICK, after adopting a dog back in October. He was recently spotted inside a pet store in New Jersey attending a training / obedience course for his dog.
Good guy.
(via the New York Daily News)
I understand people not liking Michael Vick to a certain degree but it’s incredibly off-putting when people are like, frothing-at-the-mouth passionately angry about him being allowed to play football again or, idk, be alive
Especially when it’s people who have never gotten remotely as mad over NFL players with histories of abusing women
(via dignified-and-old)
TRUTH
Like, what is the fucking point of the justice system if we’re not going to allow people to do their time and then come back and have lives again, might as well just shoot anybody who’s committed a crime if we’re going to be like that
Black man tangentially involved in the abuse of dogs does hard time and still gets shit for it, white man directly involved in multiple sexual assaults gets a slap on the wrist from the league and nobody cares
(Roethlisberger)
Honestly, it sounds like he is legitimately trying to ensure that his kids grow up respecting and caring for animals so that they would never treat animals cruelly—against all odds (considering how we structure and run our institutions), a case of real rehabilitation.
(via cristaanne)
since the original headline didn’t wanna acknowledge that the profiling that occurs is RACIAL profiling…..
Dr. Latisha Smith, an expert in decompression sicknesses afflicting deep sea divers, has cleared criminal background checks throughout her medical career. Yet someone searching the Web for the Washington State physician might well come across an Internet ad suggesting she may have an arrest record.
“Latisha Smith, arrested?” reads one such advertisement.
Another says: “Latisha Smith Truth… Check Latisha Smith’s Arrests.”
Instantcheckmate.com, which labels itself the “Internet’s leading authority on background checks,” placed both ads. A statistical analysis of the company’s advertising has found it has disproportionately used ad copy including the word “arrested” for black-identifying names, even when a person has no arrest record.
Latanya Sweeney is a Harvard University professor of government with a doctorate in computer science. After learning that her own name had popped up in an “arrested?” ad when a colleague was searching for one of her academic publications, she ran more than 120,000 searches for names primarily given to either black or white children, testing ads delivered for 2,400 real names 50 times each. (The author of this story is a Harvard University fellow collaborating with Professor Sweeney on a book about the business of personal data.)
Ebony Jefferson, for example, often turns up an instantcheckmate.com ad reading: “Ebony Jefferson, arrested?” but an ad triggered by a search for Emily Jefferson would read: “We found Emily Jefferson.” Searches for randomly chosen black-identifying names such as Deshawn Williams, Latisha Smith or Latanya Smith often produced the “arrested?” headline or ad text with the word “arrest,” whereas other less ethnic-sounding first names matched with the same surnames typically did not.
“As an African-American, I’m used to profiling like that,” said Dr. Smith. “I think it’s horrendous that they get away with it.”
Instantcheckmate.com declined to comment. The company’s founder and managing partner, Kristian Kibak, did not respond to repeated emails and phone calls over a period of several months, and other employees referred calls to management. Company officials also declined to comment when visited twice at their call center in Las Vegas. Former employees said they had signed nondisclosure agreements that barred them from speaking openly about Instant Checkmate.
Instantcheckmate.com is one of many data brokers that use and sell data for a variety of purposes. The field is attracting growing attention, both from government and consumers concerned about possible abuse. Rapid advances in technology have opened up all sorts of opportunities for commercialization of data.
Anyone can set up shop and sell arrest records as long as they stay clear of U.S. legal limitations such as using the information to determine creditworthiness, insurance or job suitability.
Companies that compete with instantcheckmate.com include intelius.com and mylife.com. An examination of Internet advertising starting last March as well as Sweeney’s study did not find any rival companies advertising background searches on individual names along racial lines.
WHO CAN BE TRUSTED?
In its own marketing, Instantcheckmate.com sums up its mission like this: “Parents will no longer need to wonder about whether their neighbors, friends, home day care providers, a former spouse’s new love interest or preschool providers can be trusted to care for their children responsibly.”
According to preliminary findings of Professor Sweeney’s research, searches of names assigned primarily to black babies, such as Tyrone, Darnell, Ebony and Latisha, generated “arrest” in the instantcheckmate.com ad copy between 75 percent and 96 percent of the time. Names assigned at birth primarily to whites, such as Geoffrey, Brett, Kristen and Anne, led to more neutral copy, with the word “arrest” appearing between zero and 9 percent of the time.
A few names fell outside of these patterns: Brad, a name predominantly given to white babies, produced an ad with the word “arrest” 62 percent to 65 percent of the time. Sweeney found that ads appear regardless of whether the name has an arrest record attached to it.
Blacks make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population but account for 28 percent of the arrests listed on the FBI’s most recent annual crime statistics.
Internet advertising based on millions of name pairs has only existed in recent years, so targeting ads along racial lines raises new legal questions. Experts say the Federal Trade Commission, which this year assessed an $800,000 penalty against personal data site Spokeo.com for different reasons (related to the use of data for job-vetting purposes), would be the institution best placed to review Instant Checkmate’s practices.
The FTC enforces regulations against unfair or deceptive business practices. A deceptive claim that would be more likely to get people to purchase a product than they would otherwise would be a typical reason the FTC might act against a company, said one FTC official who did not want to be identified. For example, authorities could take action against a firm that makes misleading claims suggesting a product such as records exist when they do not.
“It’s disturbing,” Julie Brill, an FTC commissioner, said of Instant Checkmate’s advertising. “I don’t know if it’s illegal … It’s something that we’d need to study to see if any enforcement action is needed.”
Instant Checkmate’s Kibak, who is in his late 20s, works out of a San Diego office near the Pacific Ocean. The son of a California biology professor, he did not respond to repeated phone calls and emails seeking comment about his business.
“We would consider the answers to most of your questions trade secrets and therefore would not be comfortable disclosing that information,” Joey Rocco, Kibak’s partner according to the firm’s Nevada state registration, said in an email.
Instant Checkmate LLC maintains its official corporate headquarters at an address in an industrial zone across the highway from the Las Vegas strip. At the back of a long parking lot, the company shares a warehouse building with an auto repair shop. At one end, a large roll-up garage-style door opens to the company’s call center. Workers face a gray cinder-block wall, their backs to the entrance. Staff declined to answer questions.
DATA FIRMS PROLIFERATE
Professor Sweeney’s analysis found that some instantcheckmate.com ads hint at arrest records when the firm’s database has no record of any arrest for that name, as is the case with her own name. In other cases, such as that of Latisha Smith, the company does have arrest records for some people by that name, although not for the doctor of hypobaric medicine in Washington State.
Laura Beatty, an Internet Marketing Inc expert in helping companies achieve prominent placement in Web searches, said instantcheckmate.com appeared to choose its ads based on combinations of thousands of different first and last names and then segment them based on the first names.
“There does look like there is some definite profiling going on here,” she said. “In the searches that I looked at, it seemed like the more Midwestern- and WASP-sounding the name was, the less likely it was to have either any advertisement at all or to have something that was more geared around the arrest or criminal background.”
Internet firms selling criminal records and personal data to the public have proliferated in recent years, as low-cost computing enables even modest operations to maintain large databases on millions of Americans. Such sites sell access to users for a one-time fee - $29.95 in the case of instantcheckmate.com - or via monthly subscription plans.
Instant Checkmate, first registered in Nevada in 2010, said in a recent press release posted online that the firm had attracted more than 570,000 customers since its start and counted more than 200,000 subscribers.
According to alexa.com, an Amazon.Com Inc site analyzing website traffic, instantcheckmate.com has ranged roughly between the 500th and 600th most visited U.S. site in recent weeks, making it an increasingly major player in this area.
The company is able to target its ads on an individual name basis through a program called Google AdWords. Instantcheckmate.com and others companies like it use Google AdWords to bid to place small text advertisements alongside search results on major websites triggered by the names in their data base. Such ads typically cost a company far less than a dollar, sometimes just a few pennies, each time they’re clicked.
Google says it does not control what names appear in AdWords. “Advertisers select all of their keywords, and ads are triggered when someone searches for that name. We don’t have any role in the advertiser’s selection of unique proper names,” said a Google spokesman.
Some in Congress have raised concerns about developments in the use of personal data. In October, Senator John Rockefeller IV, a Democrat from West Virginia and chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, opened a probe into leading data brokers. “Collecting, storing and selling information about Americans raises all types of questions that require careful scrutiny,” he said.
(via aragingquiet)
"
Gay and transgender youth, particularly gender nonconforming girls, are up to three times more likely to experience harsh disciplinary treatment by school administrators than their heterosexual counterparts.
As with racial disparities in school discipline, these higher rates of punishment do not correlate to higher rates of misbehavior among gay and transgender youth.
LGBT youth make up 13-15 percent of the juvenile justice system, even though they make-up only 5–7 percent of the population overall, and 60 percent of these youth are black or Latino.
This high rate of contact with the system is due in part to harsh school sanctions often based on their perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.
"— Zero-tolerance policies perpetuate a school-to-prison pipeline for LGBT youths (via zeram)
(Source: queerkhmer, via karnythia)
"In the U.S., where ninety-six percent of the reported perpetrators of rape are white, eighty percent of the men in prison for rape are black."
—
Joseph Weinberg & Michael Biernbaum, Conversations of Consent: Sexual Intimacy without Sexual Assault (via cocknbull)
oops
(via crackerhell)
96%…wow just wow.
(via clairebearology) Not shocking being white men brought rape to the new world and still do it worldwide. (via bad-dominicana)
but someone please tell me how jim crow is over. please. and why the hell we don’t talk about this as an aspect of rape culture.
(via so-treu)
(via thecurvature)
Vincent Chin 30 years later
On June 19, 1982, Vincent Chin was at his bachelor party at Fancy Pants, a strip club in suburbanDetroit. Two white out-of-work autoworkers, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz, began trading insults at Chin from across the bar. “It’s because of you little *expletive deleted* that we’re out of work,” witnesses say Ebens yelled at Chin.
At the time, anti-Japanese sentiment was high. Many blamed the decline of theU.S.auto industry onJapan– I remember the pressure to buy products with a “Made inAmerica” sticker or patch on them, even though I was just a boy. Vincent Chin, a 27 year old Chinese American draftsman, was not Japanese, and had nothing to do with the auto industry.
After the altercation, Chin and his friends parted ways, but Ebens and Nitz weren’t done. They went looking for Chin, reportedly paying a friend $20 to help look for him. They found him at a McDonalds, dragged him outside, and one of them held Chin down while the other brutally beat him with a baseball bat. Four days later, Chin died – five days before his wedding.
Both Ebens and Nitz got three years’ probation, a $3,000 fine, and $780 in court costs. To this day, neither of them have spent a day in jail.
I will repeat that: Ebens and Nitz sought out an unarmed man, held him down, and beat him to death in front of witnesses, and to this day they haven’t spent a single day in jail.
….
Justice is not even on our side when we act in self defense. CeCe McDonald, a local transgender African American, defended herself when she and her friends were verbally and physically assaulted outside Schooner’s inSouth Minneapolis. She faces three years in a men’s prison for defending herself.
I’m not saying that I like the prison-industrial complex of this country. However, I do believe it is worthwhile to look at the inequalities. Koua Fong Lee was driving a car that malfunctioned, and another family was killed in the accident. He did not flee the scene – and his own family was in his car – and yet no one believed him when he insisted it was an accident. His own family was in his car – why would he endanger their lives as well? He spent three years in jail before the Toyota recall put his allegations that the brakes malfunctioned into a new light, and he was freed.
Contrast that to Amy Senser, who killed Anousone Phanthavong in a hit-and-run, knocking him nearly 50 feet, fled the scene, and did not turn herself in until days later, after she had consulted her lawyers. She was not jailed during the trial, and though she is convicted of two counts of vehicular homicide, and though there was expert testimony that Phanthavong was flung onto her car and there was no way she could not have known she hit a person, the jury inexplicably sent her a note saying they believed her.
Who you believe says a lot about you.
And the list goes on. John T. Williams. Oscar Grant. Chonburi Xiong. Michael Cho. Cau Thi Bich Tran. Tycel Nelson. And these are just the more well-known names. How many more dozens, or hundreds, of nameless brown people are killed twice: once by murder, and again by a racist judicial system.
30 years later, and we can’t forget Vincent Chin. And we shouldn’t.
Notice how the author of this article doesn’t divorce the murder of Vincent Chin from all the other murders of POC - but draws the parallels that this is part of the larger system. We can focus in on our particular struggles, but the moment we forget that it is, indeed, part of a larger struggle, is when we start helping white supremacy hide it’s tracks - turning each of our struggles into “isolated incidents” when there is really one problem manifested in many ways.
bao phi is good people. as soon as i saw the url i figured it was him.
tigersmilk:lifeoncinnabarisland:
If you were touched or outraged by the Troy Davis case, don’t allow the same thing to happen to another man. This is Rodney Reed and like Troy Davis there is no physical evidence tying Rodney to the crime that he was accused of committing. In fact, there is very real evidence leading to another suspect all together. Rodney was tried by an all white jury in southern Texas and sentenced to death. Let’s show the murderers that took the life of Troy Davis that we are not going anywhere anytime soon. This is a movement, not a moment.Here is a link to the free, streaming documentary regarding Rodney and his story: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4864052717720140330A summary of the case (source):
Rodney Reed has been on Texas death row since 1998. He was convicted of killing Bastrop woman Stacey Stites in 1996. In 2005, a new evidentiary hearing in front of the Bastrop trial judge was ordered by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. In March of 2006, Judge Reva Towslee-Corbett (daughter of the original trial judge) heard testimony from several witnesses which linked Stacey’s fiancée and former police officer Jimmy Fennell to the crime. The defense also showed how some of this eyewitness testimony was hidden from the defense at the time of trial. However, the judge declined to recommend that the CCA grant a new trial. In 2008, the CCA ruled to deny relief, sending the case back into the federal courts. Hidden eyewitness evidence is not the only problem in this case. Consider these facts:
- The prosecution’s only evidence linking Rodney to the crime was semen DNA taken from Stacey’s body. However, defense attorneys at trial failed to call witnesses to testify to a known sexual relationship between Rodney and Stacey, which would have accounted for the DNA evidence. They also failed to call two alibi witnesses.
- During the initial investigation the main suspect was Giddings police officer Jimmy Fennell, who was Stacey’s fiancée. Fennell failed a polygraph test on the question “Did you strangle Stacey Stites?”
- Police failed to search Stacey and Fennell’s apartment, the last place she was known to be alive. Additionally, police released the truck Stacey was driving the night of the murder to Fennell, who sold the truck a few days later..
- Two beer cans found at the scene of the crime tested positive for the DNA of at least one police officer. This test was not reported to the defense at the time of the trial.
- At the 2006 hearings, Martha Barnett testified to seeing Stacey and Fennell together the morning of the murder. Mary Blackwell testified that during a police academy class she overheard Fennell saying that he would kill his girlfriend if she cheated on him, and that he would strangle her with a belt, which was how Stacey was killed. Both women testified that they had shared their stories with the prosecutors at the time of trial.
- Defense attorney’s have shown a pattern of violence on the part of Fennell, including his history of stalking and threatening former girlfriends. Fennell was recently sentenced to prison for the rape of a woman who was in his custody while he was on duty as a police officer in the city of Georgetown, TX.
- Rodney Reed, a black man, was found guilty of murdering Stacey Stites, a white woman, by an all white jury in Bastrop. Statistics have shown that racial bias exists in the application of the death penalty, including the fact that although over 50% of murder victims are black, over 83% of the victims in death penalty cases are white.
Racism and the Occupy movement
Wow — made an argument on the Occupy Boston facebook page that cops are not our friends and especially not the friends of people of color, who are routinely abused and beaten by the police. Was responded to by someone who argued that “perhaps one should stop committing crimes if they don’t want to receive “abuse” or be “routinely beaten” from the police.” This responder’s comment was then applauded by the Occupy Boston facebook administrator!
Yeah, there’s no problem with racism in the Occupy movement at all …
(via karnythia)
Reggie Clemons could be the next Troy Davis.
From http://www.justiceforreggie.com:
In 1991, two young women went missing after visiting the abandoned Chain of Rocks Bridge in St. Louis Missouri — a popular hang-out with local teens — with their cousin. The cousin told the police an impossible tale: that the girls had been pushed from the bridge, but he was ordered to jump by an unknown assailant and survived the nearly 80-foot fall into strong currents with no injuries and dry hair. The police were naturally skeptical of his account and, within hours, he confessed to killing the girls.
Yet this man, who is white, has never spent a day in jail. Instead, the police arrested four local youths who were also on the bridge that night. Three of the young men, all African-American, received the death sentence. The fourth young man, who is white, received a 30-year sentence and will be eligible for parole soon.
Reggie Clemons is one of the youths that received the death sentence, even though prosecutors conceded that Reggie neither pushed the women nor planned their deaths. The prosecutor simply theorized that Reggie was an “accomplice” even though there is no physical evidence linking Reggie to the crime for which he received the death penalty: no fingerprints, no DNA, no hair or fiber samples.
Many of Reggie’s claims have never been heard in a court of law because of procedural rules that have barred the presentation of important evidence. After reviewing the evidence, two federal judges voted to overturn his death sentence and found that Reggie was denied a fair trial. But Reggie’s sentence of death remains.
So many people were up in arms yesterday…now that Troy Davis is gone, will you continue to fight or were you just hype for the moment?
Click the link to head to amnesty.org and learn more about Reggie’s case, sign the petition—do something. We have lots more time to act.
(via karnythia)
Derrick Mason is scheduled to die in Alabama tonight
The judge in his case has requested clemency, not least because he had inadequate legal representation which led to the suppression of mitigating factors in his case.
And again, for those who say that the death penalty in the United States is not about race—Derrick Mason is a Black man accused of killing a white woman.
You can contact Alabama Governor Robert Bentley to ask him to reconsider his denial of clemency in this case.
"Courts in GA sought the death penalty for 70% of black defendants with white victims but for only 15% of white defendants with black victim."
— ACLU (via black-culture)
(via karnythia)
"My son was conceived in Texas. A place where my family has lived in relatively the same place for nine generations. Texas is the place where my family’s home and labor and blood are built in the soil. Where their race had for most of those generations determined their destiny. James was also conceived in “the field” or what social scientists call the places where we conduct our research. For just one year I had returned to Texas to immerse myself in this place where my intellectual efforts, if not my body, are always toiling. I visited death row. I attended hearings. I sat next to lawyers who were my teachers and models for how to be a lawyer and the ability of lawyers to change and save lives. I read. I wrote. I conceived a child. Despite being submerged in the history and sadness of the death penalty, I had not connected that part of my life to the part that was about to be a parent until the day the sonographer said, “it is definitely a boy.” Happiness became worry when I thought about the black men I had met in prisons, jails, and other unproductive places over the years. I thought about how easy it can be for black men to be caught up in a system that does not value their survival or preservation. I thought about the first day he would be pulled over by the police for performing the ordinary task of driving an automobile. I thought about the intra-racial contests of masculinity that have lead to young black men being, at times, their own worst enemy. I thought of how, because he is my child and will surely have my mouth, the public school system will try to pathologize what I know to be precociousness. I thought about my father who only learned the grown up art of parenting a few years before his death with his 14th child and 3rd son who was too young at his death to fully benefit from his late maturation. All I could see were the negative statistics on the lives of black men I trade on in my professional life. If I could save anything with my work, it would be those first hours of elation without the gradual worry for the physical and mental health of the black man in my womb now born. When asked by Nikky Finney what I would save to do the work I do, I thought about that day when modern medicine confirmed what I knew from mother wit? I would save the world, if I could. I would save it for James and all the other black men, women and children, high yellow and pitch black whose mothers have the right to have their burden of worry free from the concern that their children’s blackness will make them vulnerable in ways our arms and love will not be able to protect them."
— Thoughts of an Ivory Tower Interloper: Thoughts on Saving the World on A Night When We Could Not Save One Man (via curate)
(via so-treu)
A 14-year-old boy got into a fight at a school bus stop and the school district’s police officer responded by shooting him to death
SAN ANTONIO (CN) - A 14-year-old boy got into a fight at a school bus stop and the school district’s police officer responded by shooting him to death, the boy’s mother says. She says the cop had been reprimanded 16 times in the previous 4 years, suspended without pay 5 times, and “recommended for termination for insubordination,” but the school kept him on the force “without remedial training.”
Denys Lopez Moreno sued the Northside Independent School District, of San Antonio, the district’s Chief of Police John Page and the alleged shooter, Daniel Alvarado, in Federal Court.
Lopez says her son, Derek, got into a fight with another boy at a school bus stop and punched the other boy once, in November 2010.
“Defendant, Alvarado, having responded to a call regarding a bus with a flat tire, witnessed Derek strike the other boy. He ordered Derek to ‘freeze.’ Derek hesitated and then ran from defendant Alvarado,” according to the complaint.
“In his patrol car, Alvarado began chasing Derek in the neighborhood across the street from the high school. Alvarado lost sight of the boy in the neighborhood and returned to the location of the school boy fight. At that time, he called dispatch. Dispatch recordings reflect that his supervisor directed Alvarado to stay with the other boy and to ‘not do any big search over there.’“Ignoring his supervisor’s orders to ‘stay with the victim and get the information from him,’ Alvarado placed the second boy into the patrol car and sped into the neighborhood to search for Derek.”
Lopez says her son jumped over a fence and hid in a shed in the back yard of a house. The homeowner saw him, called 911, and alerted a neighbor, who pointed Alvarado in Derek’s direction. Lopez says her son never left the shed, never approached the house or threatened the homeowner or her daughters, and posed no threat to anyone.
Nonetheless, she says: “In violation of NISD police department procedures, Alvarado drew his weapon immediately after exiting the patrol car. With his gun drawn, he rushed through the gate and into the back yard. Within seconds from arriving at the residence, Alvarado shot and killed the unarmed boy hiding in the shed.”
Jesus fucking christ.
Two boys have a fist fight & a cop shoots one to death, but we’re supposed to teach our kids to trust authority? Yeah…no. Whether anyone wants to face it or not, police forces across the country contain some deeply flawed individuals who have no business with a badge or a gun. You cannot tell at a glance which one you’re dealing with & thus you cannot trust the police.
Having the the “Talk”
I am not talking about the birds and the bees. I am talking about the talk that Black mums have to have with their sons. My brother turned 13 last month and my mum had to have the talk with him
When the police are trying to stop you
- Don’t make any sudden movements.
- Don’t reach into your bag
- Don’t reach into your pocket
- This is to prevent you from being shot
When the police are searching you
- Be compliant and passive
- No sudden movements
- Remain calm, don’t get worked up.
- Other than replying to their questions, remain silent at all times
- When speaking, keep your tone in check
- This is to prevent you from being shot or arrested
My mum told me that black parents have to have this talk. I asked her why and she replied
“We have to, for their safety and our sanity. Because in our collective memory, stories like Stephen Lawrencef still burns in our mind. For Black Moms, Having the “Police Talk” With Our Sons is Parenting 101”
There is a stalemate between the police and the communities they allegedly protect and serve. With good fucking reason. For black people, no matter how law-abiding we are, no matter how much we respect the dangers the police face as they do their jobs, history has instilled a fear of encounters with police officers, a fear that’s especially intense for our young black men.
I was there when my brother got this talk. It is one of the clearest memories I have. I could quote it to you.
It makes me sad and mad as fuck this is how it has to be. But even 13 seems to be cutting it close, now that I am thinking of the 13 year old boy who got shot down in Chicago not too long ago. My father gave me a similar talk when I was 8 to know about what my brother and I might experience. Changed my life. Scared the shit out of me. Was real as fuck. But it has to happen. It’s literally a matter of life and death.
I’m in Chicago & that 13 year old was just the latest in a long string of police victims. Black mothers here have this talk with all of their children regardless of gender. I was 12 the first time a cop harassed me (completely with calling me a nigger), & I’ve seen them harass kids younger than that in some neighborhoods. When kids as young as 7 can be falsely accused of rape & murder because of their skin color you never ever teach your kids to believe in Officer Friendly. I had this talk with my oldest son at 6 & he’s already relayed a version of it to his 5 year old brother.
