Racist White Woman Verbally Attacks Family for Speaking Spanish in Virginia Restaurant

~ mcequality

The woman’s choice of words, “get the fuck out, back to your fucking country,” is quite ironic given the U.S.’ history of meddling in Guatemala’s affairs. In 1954, the CIA led a coup that overthrew Guatemala’s democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz, replacing him with a military dictatorship. That led to a brutal civil war six years later that lasted 36 years and claimed the lives of over 200,000 people—roughly 100 times the population of Lovettsville.

Since then, tens of thousands of Guatemalans have fled economic misery and gang violence, from gangs imported in the 1980s from the United States, and from drug cartel violence, created by the U.S.’ insatiable demand for cocaine.

via Racist White Woman Verbally Attacks Family for Speaking Spanish in Virginia Restaurant

The FDA Has No Sexual Harassment Policies For Grant Recipients

~ mcequality

A new report by BuzzFeed News has found that federal agencies like the Food and Drug Administration are, if you can believe it, wildly unprepared to handle sexual misconduct claims.

BuzzFeed News reports that last year, University of California, San Francisco found that anti-Big Tobacco researcher Stanton Glantz had violated its sexual harassment policies and created “a work environment that was intimidating and offensive.” UCSF was not required to report the findings to agencies, including the FDA and the National Institutes of Health, who fund UCSF projects. However, Eunice Neeley, one of the women researchers who worked under Glantz, says she informed both the NIH and the FDA.

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In a comment to BuzzFeed News, FDA spokesperson Nina Devlin said that the agency “does not currently have policies in place specifically addressing funding for grantees with sexual harassment charges.”

via The FDA Has No Sexual Harassment Policies For Grant Recipients

Voter Suppression Is Real and It Really Affects Black People

~ mcequality

I think we all can agree that the 2018 midterm elections are critical. This means that our votes matter more now than ever. But what happens when you’ve registered and are ready to participate in this good ol’ democracy but can’t?

Let’s talk about voter suppression.

Voter suppression is simple—it’s a set of tactics used to block voters from exercising their right to vote. And there’s a long, long history of voter suppression in the United States.

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Black men were allowed to vote after the Civil War thanks to the 15th Amendment, which was ratified in 1870. Because of Jim Crow laws, black folks were forced to take literacy tests and pay poll taxes, among other barriers to voting.

via Voter Suppression Is Real and It Really Affects Black People

DOJ Says Discriminating Against Trans Workers is OK

~ mcequality

Lawyers from the Department of Justice told the Supreme Court on Wednesday that, in their opinion, American businesses are free to discriminate against trans employees.

The DOJ weighed in as the court decides whether or not it will take a case about trans employment rights. Its intervention is actually creating a split between two parts of the government against one another. The DOJ says that discrimination against trans workers is fine, but the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (which would actually have to apply and enforce that law) says that it’s not.

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Per Bloomberg Law:

Solicitor General Noel Francisco told the [Supreme Court] that a civil rights law banning sex discrimination on the job doesn’t cover transgender bias. That approach already has created a rift within the Trump administration, contradicting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s view of the law it’s tasked with enforcing.

via DOJ Says Discriminating Against Trans Workers is OK

New Study Reports Teen Girls Feel Empowered and Objectified

~ mcequality

About three-quarters of girls 14 to 19 in the survey said they felt judged as a sexual object or unsafe as a girl. By far, they said society considered physical attractiveness to be the most important female trait — a view that adult women share, surveys have found. Girls were also more likely than boys to say they felt a lot of pressure to put others’ feelings before their own.

About half said they hear boys making sexual comments or jokes about girls daily, including a quarter of girls 10 to 13. One-third of teenage girls have heard these comments from men in their families.

via New Study Reports Teen Girls Feel Empowered and Objectified

Nobel Peace Prize for anti-rape activists Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege – BBC News

~ mcequality

The 2018 Nobel Peace Prize has gone to campaigners against rape in warfare, Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege.
Ms Murad is an Iraqi Yazidi who was tortured and raped by Islamic State militants and later became the face of a campaign to free the Yazidi people.
Dr Mukwege is a Congolese gynaecologist who, along with his colleagues, has treated tens of thousands of victims.
Some 331 individuals and organisations were nominated for the prestigious peace award this year.
The winners announced in the Norwegian capital Oslo on Friday won the award for their “efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war”, Berit Reiss-Andersen, the Nobel committee chair, said.

via Nobel Peace Prize for anti-rape activists Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege – BBC News

Girlguiding says girls not at risk from trans inclusion – BBC News

~ mcequality

Girlguiding has defended its decision to allow transgender members and leaders – after it expelled two volunteers who objected to the policy.
Helen Watts, one of the expelled volunteers, said girls had a right to “female-only spaces”.
But Girlguiding says including people who identify as female to join or lead groups does not put girls at risk.
Simply being transgender “does not make someone more of a safeguarding risk than any other person”, it said.
Chief guide Amanda Medler and acting chief executive Ruth Marvel explained the organisation’s policy in a letter sent to parents and members on Tuesday.
“In the last few days you may have seen that Girlguiding’s equality and diversity policy has been criticised in the media, with accusations that our inclusion of trans members puts girls at risk,” they wrote.

via Girlguiding says girls not at risk from trans inclusion – BBC News

‘Norms Are Being Challenged All the Time’: Joanne Freeman on Civility and the History of Congressional Brawls

~ mcequality

A famous act of political violence is often used to illustrate the utter collapse of civic norms in the run-up to the Civil War: the caning of Charles Sumner by his fellow congressman, Preston Brooks of South Carolina, on the floor of the Senate.

It turns out, though, that this was just one of dozens of incidents of violence in Congress in the period between 1930 and the first shots fired at Fort Sumter, ranging from physical menacing to threats to brawls to duels—including one that killed an elected representative. This phenomenon, which has been little-understood thanks in no small part to the euphemism-laden legislative records of the era, has been rediscovered in The Field of Blood, a fascinating and upsettingly timely new book by Joanne B. Freeman. A professor of history at Yale, one of the world’s leading experts on Alexander Hamilton, and co-host of the podcast Backstory, she’s studied political violence for decades.

via ‘Norms Are Being Challenged All the Time’: Joanne Freeman on Civility and the History of Congressional Brawls

Federal inspectors find nooses, “serious violations” at ICE facility

~ mcequality

Federal inspectors conducted an unannounced visit of an immigration detention center in southern California and found “serious violations” throughout the facility, where guards improperly placed adult inmates in disciplinary segregation and ignored more than a dozen “nooses” fashioned out of bedsheets.

The report, conducted by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, also showed that medical staff at the Adelanto, Calif., facility disregarded federal regulations governing the treatment of inmates by doing only cursory checks of inmates and making them wait months, sometimes years, to receive basic dental care, leading to tooth loss and “unnecessary extractions.”

via Federal inspectors find nooses, “serious violations” at ICE facility