NEWSUS & HUMAN RIGHTS

Dear Supporters:

Only three weeks after launching my Change.org petition asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture to stop the use of so-called “pink slime” (or lean, finely textured beef – “LFTB”) in ground beef destined for school food, we’ve seen some truly extraordinary changes take place.

A mere nine days into the petition (when we’d reached over 200,000 signatures), USDA announced that starting next school year it will offer school districts a choice of beef either with LFTB or without the filler. And since that announcement many school districts around the country, including New York City public schools, the nation’s largest district, have indicated they will take advantage of this option and phase out the use of LFTB by this coming fall. To have achieved this result in such a short time period is phenomenal and shows that our voices were heard loud and clear by USDA.

If someone speeds through a crosswalk and hits a child, injuring them permanently, an arrest will be made. In deciding what charges to press, the accused’s unhappiness about being punished is not taken into account. If the child’s family considers civil litigation, the defendant’s objection to the litigation isn’t taken into account. A cornerstone of our justice system is that fear of punishment makes someone less likely to commit a crime.

Two weeks ago, people nation-wide were reeling from the news that beloved Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky had been arrested for sexually abusing boys. As saddened as I was by the news, one of my first thoughts upon hearing it was “I’m glad this didn’t happen in NY, because if it did, these victims would probably never come forward”.

New York, like many states, has a statute of limitations for the prosecution of most child sex abuses. In NY, victims are generally ineligible to seek justice in civil or criminal courts after their 23^rd birthday. It is rare for most sexually abused children to reveal the abuse immediately after it happens, and often they don’t disclose that abuse until adulthood.  Most child sexual abuse is committed by someone the victim is very close to- often a family member or someone their family is close to. Therefore, when a victim discloses, especially if they want to pursue justice in the civil or criminal court system, they often risk tearing their families apart or being disowned. Someone seeking to bring their abuser to court needs to possess a certain amount of mental health, commitment, financial resources and possibly the willingness to live as an orphan the rest of their life. Those are hard things for anyone to have acquired by the tender age of 23, especially someone who is the victim of a heinous crime.

I was homeless last winter and my gold Starbucks card kept me warm, safe and dry. It also helped me utilize social media to, in very small ways, help the lives other homeless people. I am @From_Nothing on Twitter, and I now have several thousand followers. Being able to access the Internet and tweet with my smart phone, which was paid for by a wonderful friend, while enjoying a warm cup of coffee at Starbucks, was crucial for my survival and eventually helped me end my homelessness.

I imagine that the homeless are a very daunting and sad situation for Starbucks employees and patrons to have to deal with, but in many ways having a safe place to stay helped change my life and the lives of others. I am hoping my story might help you and and others find positive ways to help the homeless.

After six Fullerton Police officers beat a mentally ill, homeless man so severely on July 5 that he died from his injuries five days later, outraged residents of the Orange County, Calif., city demanded action—namely that the police chief and officers in question be held responsible. Now, Chief Michael Sellers and the six officers are on leave. But key footage that captured the beating of 37-year-old Kelly Thomas remains under wraps because Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas refuses to release it until an investigation of the beating, likely to take months, is complete.

It’s a move that Fullerton Councilman Bruce Whitaker finds objectionable. “I fully support and urge any efforts which will result in a clear and complete explanation of events which led to the death of Kelly J. Thomas and insist that related evidence, including video and audio recordings be made public,” Whitaker stated.

Whitaker’s far from alone. A Change.org petition demanding that the footage be made public has garnered more than 2,400 signatures. Edward Singh—a resident of La Mirada, Calif., which is near Fullerton—said he launched the petition because the audio he heard of Thomas’ beating left him heartbroken. “I can still to this day hear his voice screaming for his dad while he’s being beaten to death,” Singh said.

The public has rallied around Thomas in death because the homeless man was a familiar face on Fullerton’s streets and a known schizophrenic. Thomas’ mental illness may have led him to allegedly flee from officers when they tried to search his backpack during an investigation of attempted car burglaries at a transit center. The fatal beating ensued. In addition, Thomas was reportedly stunned with an electroshock gun several times.

While the public has organized protests to speak out against the Thomas beating and demand justice, the call to release the video footage has fallen on deaf ears. District Attorney Rackauckas has only stated that the footage he’s seen doesn’t indicate that the officers intentionally tried to kill Thomas. Moreover, when Councilman Whitaker urged for release of the footage, Fullerton Mayor Richard M. Jones stressed that the councilman was only speaking for himself and told a news blog called Fullerton Stories, “It’s just not good to speculate on things until we know all the facts.”

The irony of this, of course, is that withholding the video footage prevents the public from knowing all of the facts.

“By releasing the video people could be made more aware,” Singh said. “The reality is that this (police brutality) happens all too often, and cops get away with a slap on the wrist.”

Don’t let that happen. Demand that the footage of Thomas’ beating be released at once!

Photo Credit: Dave Conner

After 18 months of strategizing, inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison in Northern California launched a headline-grabbing hunger strike on July 1 that put the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation under intense media scrutiny. Not only did California papers such as the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times weigh in on the strike, the New York Times and the Guardian of London featured opinion pieces in support of the strikers. To boot, prisoners at 13 other California prisons joined the strike as well, and a Change.org petition urging CDCR to meet the prisoners’ demands has netted more than 9,500 signatures.

A major reason the strikers have garnered so much support is because their demands are far from exorbitant. The prisoners demanded an end to long-term solitary confinement, group punishments by race and too small portions of food, to name a few. According to Marilyn McMahon, the California Prison Focus attorney who started the Change.org petition:

“California keeps prisoners basically in solitary confinement for decades, more than 20 years, and I believe that’s torture under international law…The demands they (the strikers) put forward were really modest and so reasonable, most people could look at them and sign (the petition) to say yes.”

In New York, the prosecution of child sexual abuse is a capped at a mere 23 years old, a common trend throughout the states.  Perhaps the biggest reason why so many states still have statutes of limitations for the prosecution of child sexual abuse is because so few people truly understand the crime and thus do not demand the laws be changed. Here are some ugly facts about child sexual abuse.

1)      At least 25% of girls and 15% of boys will be sexually victimized before their 18^th birthday.

2)      Over 90% of these children will be victimized by someone they know and trust, often a family member, or someone their family entrusts them to.

3)      Between 80-90% of children will not disclose their abuse before their 18^th birthday.

4)      In at least 10% of cases, there is an adult who is aware of the abuse, but does nothing to stop it.

5)      Child sexual abuse survivors are more likely to suffer from mental illness, drug addiction, to be incarcerated, disabled, unemployed, and to live under the poverty line than their non-abused peers. While there is often a direct relationship between the abuse they suffered and these effects, the relationship isn’t always clear to the survivor. CSA survivors often spend most of their early adult life digging themselves out of the wreckage the abuse has wrought upon their lives, not trying to seek legal justice.

Activists launch Change.org campaign after State Department spokesperson refuses to condemn the detentions of women for driving in Saudi Arabia.

Women’s rights activists are up in arms after the U.S. State Department refused to condemn the detention of Saudi women arrested and detained for driving.

Mark C. Toner, a State Department spokesperson, was repeatedly questioned during a State Department briefing on Thursday about the United States’ position on the arrest and detention of a number of Saudi women for driving earlier this week. In response, Mr. Toner refused to condemn such detentions, depicting the arrests as an internal issue.

When a reporter asked “What do you make of the fact that the Saudi religious police are running around, plucking women out of cars?” the State Department spokesperson replied by framing the issue as “an internal matter for Saudi Arabia.”

When a reporter asked “Do you think that it’s a good thing that the Saudi religious police are taking women out of cars when they’re driving and arresting them?” the State Department spokesperson replied “This is an issue that Saudi Arabians are grappling with.”

Finally, when a reporter asked “You won’t come out and say that it’s a bad thing for the religious police to be detaining women who are driving?” the spokesperson replied. “I’ve given you the details as I know them, which is that they were detained and then later released. They were never formally charged. So I don’t want to pump too much air into this.”