The police will tell you that the reason they're arming up with surplus military gear and pursuing a shoot-first posture to their job is that being a cop is deadly business -- but as the saying goes, you're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
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Over a century after World War I broke out in Europe, the earth still bears its mutilations. Trenches are scarred in the ground, unexploded munitions litter the overgrowth of the Western Front. Further below the surface in northeastern France are lesser-known physical reminders of the Great War, where in tunnels and quarries soldiers on both sides carved sculptures and wrote their names on the chalk and limestone walls.
“There are a lot of remnants of the war; they’re horrifying and awe-inspiring and very sober,”Jeff Gusky, a photographer who has explored the subterranean art of World War I, told Hyperallergic. “But there’s something delicate, intimate, and emotional when you’re underground in complete darkness and your headlamp shines on the wall of an underground city, and there is an inscription that may not have been seen by anyone in over a hundred years. It’s like they’re speaking to you.”
While Gusky says that he’s “likely seen more than anyone alive” of these forgotten underground spaces as part of his ongoing The Hidden World of WWIproject, he’s also a full-time emergency room physician in the Houston, Texas, area. The ER job allows him to compact his practice by working 24 to 36-hour shifts that leave stretches of time to go halfway around the world for his photography, and he also sees both medicine and documenting the soldier art as having a connection in reflecting the dark side of modernity.
“The common ground, it has to do with risk,” he said. “In the ER, a big part of my job is helping people to see danger that could take their life in a moment in time. As modern people we live these very fast-paced lives, and we’re blind to a lot of danger in modern life and the same with our health. World War I is also a way for modern people to see the risks that we face ourselves, it’s a way to break through modern blindness.”
He adds that the soldiers who fought in World War I were similarly urban, surrounded by mass media, and “they went to war completely blind to the danger of progress gone dark.” The war was an exceptionally brutal one through the introduction of tanks, poison gas, and machine guns. With millions of casualties from 1914 to the war’s end in 1918, they also became anonymous in their deaths. Gusky compares the carvings to a message in a bottle from a shipwreck.
His striking black and white photographs were featured last August in National Geographic, and last month Huffington Post explored some of the preservation issues of the sites. The quarries in the region of Picardy, France, date back to the Middle Ages, and are by and large on private land, so they’ve been mostly untouched since the war albeit with some vandalism and attempted theft by trespassers. Preservation of the sites is essential to Gusky’s project, and through sharing the images he’s encouraging people to get involved in their protection and help tell the soldiers’ stories. Soissonnais 14-18, an association of French volunteers dedicated to preserving the World War I underground, was integral in his access through their connections to the landowners and the deep family ties of the region. “They shared their secrets, in return I’ve dedicated myself to bringing to life these places,” he said.
Faces emerge from the stone, both soldier portraits and caricatures of the enemy, alongside chapels, scrawled baseball game scores, idealized women, skulls, even a horse embedded in the wall that’s 2/3 life size. There are also around 2,000 soldier names, as the Associated Press reported in April, from Americans, British, Australian, French, and German soldiers, and even from as far away as Buenos Aires. Often these underground spaces connected directly to the trenches, and detonations by the enemy in the mines were always a concern, so those names and the long stairways carved to the surface are often the last moments of these people’s lives. To reach this labyrinth requires Gusky to crawl through narrow holes with a load of lights and equipment to properly light them in the dark, something the self-taught photographer continues to perfect.
“There’s a power that breaks through modern numbness and abstraction when you see another human being’s writing, not knowing whether they were going to be alive tomorrow, writing a message to the future,” he said. “They’re not carving about war or glory or killing people, but carving about home and loved ones and faith and laughter, sports, and beauty, the things that reveal their inner life.”
I’ve never seen a capybara before, even though I run this blog and they’ve been my favourite animals since I was a kid. But I was travelling through the U.S the other month and tweeted the San Antonio Zoo to ask if they had capybaras. And they did.
I had a very nice conversation with the capybara-keeper. They have one capybara. She’s a loner and not the type to have animals sit on her. She shares a pond with a Tapir frenemy and they don’t seem to get along. She is unfortunately single as there aren’t many male breeding-age capybaras available. I told the keeper about the symbiosis between birds and capybaras in the wild that leads to them being comfortable with various animals sitting on them. She seemed very interested and helped coax the capybara out with lettuce. In a moment of temporary insanity I purchased a large plush capybara from the zoo store as well as a squirrel monkey and sloth.
Here is a gif I made to commemorate the experience.
After two years of postponements, the trial of artist Zwelethu Mthethwa finally got underway last week in Cape Town. Mthethwa pleaded not guilty to the murder of a woman named Nokuphila Kumalo.
The crime for which Mthethwa is being tried took place in Woodstock, a suburb of Cape Town, in April 2013. On the side of a road, a man beat and kicked Kumalo, a 23-year-old sex worker, to death. The incident was captured on CCTV, which led to the identification of Mthethwa as a suspect. The renowned photographer has proclaimed his innocence from the start.
Following years of postponements and protests, the trial began in Cape Town on June 2, eNews Channel Africa (eNCA) reported. State prosecutor Christenus van der Vijver said the state would build its case on the CCTV footage, which allegedly helped police track down Mthethwa via his car. “Evidence would be led on the reliability and authenticity of the footage, as well as the vehicle’s tracker system,” eNCA writes.
However, Mthethwa’s lawyer, William Booth, “is contesting the admissibility and reliability of the CCTV footage,” according to IOL News. A CCTV specialist was brought into court on Monday and testified that the video could not have been altered in any way.
Van der Vijver also plans to call a forensic expert to analyze the gait of the man in the video versus Mthethwa’s.
As with the trial’s earlier court dates, protesters from two local organizations, the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) and Sonke Gender Justice, have stationed themselves outside the courthouse. The groups are advocating for sex workers’ rights and justice for Kumalo (#justice4nokuphila). “Sex workers are marginalized, treated as second-class citizens, and subjected to high levels of stigma and discrimination even at the level of law enforcement,” Cherith Sanger, advocacy manager of SWEAT, told the Daily Maverick last summer.
Zwelethu Mthethwa, Untitled (from the “Sugar Cane” series) (2007), c-print (photo by cliff1066/Flickr) (click to enlarge)
In court on Tuesday, Booth complained that the mostly female protesters were harassing Mthethwa and said the artist “had felt intimidated and would need protection when he arrived and left court if the behavior did not stop,” according to eNCA. The judge responded by telling the court that “Mthethwa’s dignity must be respected as he is innocent until proven guilty.”
It’s unclear to what degree the case against Mthethwa has affected his work or the market for it. A story in the Daily Maverick last August suggested that it hadn’t and likely wouldn’t; the piece quotes one art auctioneer, Stephan Welz, as saying, “If Zwelethu does go to prison he might produce something really interesting” (Welz later apologized). According to his biography on Jack Shainman Gallery’s website, Mthethwa has shown his work — large-format, colorful portrait photographs of working-class black South Africans — very little since 2013. Hyperallergic reached out to Jack Shainman Gallery for comment on the case but has not received a reply.
If found guilty, Mthethwa could face a minimum of 15 years jail time, Times Live reported.
Why does every straight man hate the bae Cassandra.
Because a woman that is better at masculine-coded things than they are is threatening, even though most of them probably have a hard time lifting a jug of milk.
bioware does at least one thing right: alienating this part of their audience
I REALLY WANT TO PLAY THIS GAME NOW.
DO IT. It has a decent grouping of queer, women and poc characters for a video game (by which I mean there are a few characters of each but apparently that is enough to piss straight white boys lol)
i always want ot play games but then i realize i still have so many games to play and no time.
“If you F with the concept of women, then you F with me.”
His name is Jacque Fresco. He’s a futurist and social engineer. He lectures his views on sustainable cities, energy efficiency, natural-resource management, and the role of science in society, while being entirely self-taught.
He’s also the founder of the Venus Project, an organization that advocates a resource-based economy. The project combines Fresco’s versions of sustainable development, natural resource management, energy efficiency, and advanced automation in a global socioeconomic system based on social cooperation and scientific methodology.
So maybe not usual by most people's standards, but for a couple of stunt professionals it's run of the mill.
You wouldn't recognise them on the street and you may not know their names, but they've played pivotal roles on films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Death Race; Underworld and King Kong.
Dane and Dayna Grant are the ultimate power couple.
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Kiwi stunt performer couple Dane and Dayna Grant on the set of Mad Max: Fury Road where they met and fell in love.
They spend their days being lit on fire, riding horses, stunt driving, fighting, weapons training and all but leaping tall buildings in a single bound.
So it makes perfect sense that they met on the set of one of this year's biggest action films – Mad Max: Fury Road.
"I saw Dayna straight away – she was the only girl from New Zealand and she stood out like a sore thumb," says Dane.
"I saw her bag with her name on it and my opening line was literally, 'Hi. I see you're Dayna. I'm Dane'. That was about it."
Dayna's been in the stunt business for some 20 years, starting off where most of New Zealand's thriving stunt industry did; on Xena and Hercules.
The 39-year-old's reputation and previous experience doubling for Charlize Theron earned her the call up to Mad Max, and she was immediately shipped off to Namibia to begin a vigourous six-week training boot-camp.
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Dane Grant on the set of Mad Max: Fury Road.
"You need to have a lot of strength for holding onto the side of trucks and under trucks. Everything was on the move. Instead of cutting you'd just reset and carry on and you'd still be underneath the truck, still holding on. You go until you can't go anymore," Dayna says.
"Mad Max is definitely, hands down the most... you're just happy to be alive, I guess. The stuff that we did, I've never done anything like."
Dayna also spent hours every day learning fight choreography and training with weapons – learning the ins and outs of every different firearm on the film.
That's where Dane came in.
Before fellow Kiwi Jacob Tomuri was cast as Tom Hardy's double, Dane was called in to fill in as his rehearsal double for scenes with Dayna.
"So the two of us were doing this – dare I say – very S&M-type fight, it's a love/hate mixture between these characters. They're very close, there's chains, they're holding each other in very intimate positions, and the longer we were doing it the more we're kind of eyeing each other up," Dane laughs, a little abashed.
"We've said it before and it's quite cheesy, but it really was love at first sight. While we were punching each other we were falling for each other – quite rapidly."
Nick Muzik
Kiwi stunt performer Dane Grant performing parkour.
It's an unlikely meeting ground, and Dane calls it fate, saying "stars aligned".
It was no mistake Dayna was on set – her path to stunt fame seeming equally as fated.
"I literally fell into it. I was training in the gym, did gymnastics, horse riding, dance, but I had some friends that were into it that invited me to an audition, so I went along to do this daredevil thing and I ended up with a year-long contract," she says.
She signed onto Cleopatra 2525 and Xena: Warrior Princess, and from there went on to work in lead stunt roles on Spartacus, Power Rangers, Narnia, Snow White and the Huntsman and more, heading for Fury Road.
On the other hand, at 38 years old Dane is still somewhat new to the game, having spent a lifetime travelling before an unusual interest led him to stunting.
He's been a dive instructor in Egypt's Red Sea, lived in Ghana, Jordan and the UK, where he eventually found parkour – otherwise known as street running.
"I was completely amazed by what I saw. I had a gymnastics background and this was kind of outdoor gymnastics but better – there were no rules, no-one holding up a sign saying 'you can do better'," he says.
His penchant for parkour saw him travel the world doing shows, coaching, and signing on to do parkour for commercials until he eventually nabbed his first stunt job.
"Once you do that first [job], you get into somebody's database, they pass your name on and that leads to another job and another job and then you can start calling yourself a stunt performer."
His path to Fury Road wasn't as straight forward as Dayna's, though.
He battled through a vigorous audition process in his homeland, South Africa, before surviving boot camp and getting the golden ticket, at which point it was pure luck he was chosen to fill in opposite his now wife.
Fast forward three years though, and Dane is now living in New Zealand helping Dayna run the NZ Stunt School she founded in 2010, and helping raise their one-year-old son Ryder.
With Dayna currently working as stunt coordinator on upcoming Kiwi film Ash vs Evil Dead, it's Dane's turn to be off while Dayna's on.
That's how it works in a relationship where both people stunt.
"It helps to have somebody who understands what you're going through, especially the long hours," Dane says.
"It's nice to have one person on and the other can relax and look after little one – we can almost dictate when we want to take a job or have a break."
If the success of Mad Max: Fury Road is anything to go by, the pair won't have much time to relax.
Critics and fans are already raving about the non-stop action of George Miller's latest addition to his now infamous franchise, which has been more than a decade and a reported $150 million in the making.
And as it goes in the stunt world; the bigger the success, the more jobs that result, and the more the industry will turn to New Zealand for their stunt performers.
Productions like Xena and Hercules put New Zealand on the film-industry map, as Dayna says they acted as an ongoing training ground.
"We needed to be able to do anything, and we did those shows for so many years for five or six days a week, all year round, for years," she says.
"And they weren't little gags, we were doing big stunts every day. Those shows have trained up a whole team of really talented performers."
Allan Poppleton, a Kiwi stunt coordinator, started at the same time as Dayna, beginning on Xena and coming to work on films like The Wolverine, The Expendables 2 and The Hunger Games.
He's currently on set in Boston in the US, working on upcoming film Central Intelligence with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and comedian Kevin Hart, but he makes time to take a call – especially if it gives the Kiwi stunt industry a chance to shine.
He's worked with both Dane and Dayna and says they are talented performers, and two of many – that's why the industry comes here.
"It's that thing with Kiwis – how easygoing the are. How they're hard workers, get stuck into it and do what needs to be done without making a big song and dance about it," he says.
In the US, stunt performers split jobs into specialities, he says; so one will drive, one will fight, one will ride and so on – a luxury we don't have in New Zealand.
"We don't have the workflow, they have to be a jack of all trades. That good ol' Kiwi attitude is hard to beat."
He says there's a handful of Kiwis who have done especially well in work outside of New Zealand, like Dayna, but also including Ben Cook, who doubled for James Bond in the last two films, and Zoe Bell, who's been in Kill Bill and Iron Man and had a lead role in Raze.
"The Kiwis are doing really well and they don't get a lot of recognition. It's tall poppy syndrome and you'll find it with most Kiwis; they don't really talk themselves up, so it's kind of cool for everyone to hear more about it," says Poppleton.
Dane and Dayna both say the success of Fury Road has taken them all by surprise.
"We weren't sure if it was going to be that big. You just never know what it's going to be like but you hope that every film you do is going to be epic," says Dayna.
"Between our budding relationship, keeping it professional when everything's rolling, dealing with this intense shoot in the Namibian desert, going from boiling hot to freezing cold, sand storms, fatigue – it was crazy," Dane says.
"But I cannot say it enough; the work that Dayna does – that everyone does on this – absolutely shines through in bucket loads. I'm so proud."
While Dayna Grant doubled Mad Max's leading lady, another Kiwi was also taking the lead.
Jacob Tomuri was cast to double the film's male lead, Tom Hardy – a role which changed his career in a way stunt performers only dream of.
Tomuri too, fell into the stunt life by accident, originally pursuing acting in his early 20s.
However, ahead of his third year of drama school at the New Zealand College of Performing Arts, he took a role on Lord of the Rings that changed everything.
"While I was there, they needed extras that could swing a sword – not stunt people, just extras. They selected 30 people, and then later, four of that team were chosen to join the actual stunt team," says Tomuri.
He never did his third year.
He continued to work on all three Lord of the Rings films, as well as the Hobbit, Spartacus and Avatar, among other credits, learning as he went.
Eventually, his path crossed with Dayna's and it was that relationship that saw a now 35-year-old Tomuri land his role on Fury Road.
They worked on Spartacus together and others were questioning her about her upcoming Mad Max role when talk turned to the male lead, Tom Hardy.
"I said, 'I absolutely love Tom Hardy, he's brilliant'. And Dayna looked at a picture [of Hardy] and said, 'that's a real uncanny resemblance, you could double him'," Tomuri laughs.
"Anyway she went off to Namibia and I got a phone call out of the blue saying, 'hey Dayna just dropped a photo on our desk and you'd be a great double for Tom, would you be interested?'."
After checking with his wife, Tomuri was on the next plane out.
"I'm not going to lie, it was a gruelling shoot. We were battling the elements and doing practical stunts... in harnesses all day, fighting, doing wire work – non stop.
He worked closely with Dayna and Charlize Theron, but more so with Hardy, forming an ongoing relationship which has seen him get the call onto at least two more projects with the actor.
"You do form quite a good relationship and trust with the actors. You're rolling around on the ground for days, so you do get to know each other. That's how Dane and Dayna met, after all," he laughs.
"But yeah, it's a dream for a stunt performer to be linked to an actor and I actually can't think of another actor that I would rather be linked to, he really is phenomenal. Some big things are coming for him and I might be there for the ride, which is even better."
In all honesty, I’ve been out of the loop when it comes to the reality TV star formerly known as Bruce. Too young to recall Jenner’s decathlon-winning heyday, which launched him onto Wheaties boxes and into media stardom, and having neglected to keep up with the Kardashians, I’ve really never given a moment’s thought to the spotlight-loving sexagenarian. However, as someone who’s long identified as genderqueer, and is quite curious about cisgender reactions to the trans community, I figured I should finally get around to taking a look at that infamous “coming out ” interview Jenner gave to straitlaced Diane Sawyer, especially now that the Bruce who gave it is no more.
And I’m glad I did. Though Jenner is late to the trans-in-media game—several big TV series feature prominent non-cis characters—the newly revealed Caitlyn has something to offer that those young and hip shows do not, namely, her age. While the millennial generation might deliver a collective shrug towards same-sex marriage and Laverne Cox’s Emmy, Jenner is uniquely positioned to be relatable to their head-scratching grandparents. Indeed, Jenner, baby boomer hero and loving parent and grandparent—not to mention a conservative Christian (and a Republican—the most shocking disclosure to come out of that Sawyer interview for much of the blogosphere)—is able to garner a certain respect from the white/hetero/cisgender mainstream in charge that, say, RuPaul, one of the many historically marginalized gender-benders of color, unfortunately cannot.
In other words, Jenner is basically the Clint Eastwood of the trans community. And as such she can serve as a sort of ambassador to an older generation that, like Sawyer, can’t quite grasp the difference between gender and sexuality. (A distinction that Jenner also seems to struggle with. Though Bruce claimed not to be homosexual, Caitlyn sure seems like a lesbian to this biologically female gay guy. Then again, I’m old school.) All of which, to paraphrase Dirty Harry, sure made my day.
I also wondered about the reaction from gender nonconformists of Jenner’s generation, not just to Bruce’s Sawyer interview and Caitlyn’s Vanity Fair photo shoot, but also to the fact that such an unprecedented amount of people are tuning in. So I decided to broach the subject with gender theorist and pioneer Kate Bornstein, who’s been fighting for trans visibility in media since the conservative Reagan 80s. How did she feel now that an Olympic-gold-medal-winning reality TV star had become the face of gender nonconformity for Middle America? Was this a good thing? Bad? Both? And did she see this as some sort of turning point? Was this our “Ellen” moment?
Well, yes and no. “There’s no doubt in my mind now that Time magazine was right, when they said last year that transgender has reached a tipping point,” Bornstein allowed when I spoke with her. But she continued, noting that:
Trans as a whole, however, is nowhere close to a tipping point. Trans as an identity category includes non-binary, genderqueer, drag kings and queens, butch dykes, female-to-femme, and other binary disobedient gender identities.
The irony of that Bruce Jenner interview is that while nothing of non-binary nature was mentioned, the visuals were nothing but non-binary—most noticeably, Bruce Jenner himself with a girl face and boy body language, saying ‘Yes, I’m a woman,’ and ‘I’m using male pronouns.’ All of that screams non-binary to me. Maybe it’ll reach everyone subliminally.
In other words, we’ve come a long way from the days when girls were girls and men were men. Or as my favorite non-binary comedian Eddie Izzard once put it, “I didn’t jump out of a not-wearing-dress box into a have-to-wear-dress box.” Here’s hoping the trailblazing Caitlyn can also sidestep those binary boxes and follow in his heels.
Over dinner, CEO [redacted] directed an unwelcomed "joke" to Ms. [redacted]: "Would you rather have your female genitalia on your hand so everyone could see it, or would you rather your husband have his male genitalia on his hand so everyone could see it?"
That's one of the as yet unproven allegationsin this complaint (via Courthouse News Service), which charges the company with fostering a "hostile work environment." Here's another one:
Despite objections by Ms. [redacted], Mr. [redacted] continued, bringing up such things as references to his wife, "gimp monkeys" and "impotence."
Also, another thing not to say would be:
Mr. [redacted] and another Senior Executive, Corporate Controller [redacted], described how a giraffe and a goat could be placed to mate in cross-species sex, and the breeding [of] a giraffe and a goat [hybrid].
And then also do not say:
Mr. [redacted] described how his college roommates made molds of their penises and displayed them on the mantle in their apartment.
Finally, how many times must I remind people not to do this:
On another occasion, Mr. [redacted] told Ms. [redacted] not to dream of [redacted]'s Chief Financial Officer wearing a singlet wrestling his prom date while naked midgets are cheering for him on the sidelines using Siamese furry cats as pom poms! [sic]
Another great thing about bestiaries is they’ve produced some of the least seductive merpeople in western art history. Just merpeople doing normal merpeople things.
[Warning: this post contains nominal breasts. Breast-like objects? They don’t really resemble human anatomy, but they are there.]
Merpeople sensibly dressed:
Merpeople out for leisurely swims, waving at neighbours:
Choosing between two options at the store:
[The expressions here are amazing. Those aren’t worried men in a boat, those are guys going “seriously, again?”]
At band practice:
Bowling:
Getting ripped:
And doing standard 9-5 mermaid work:
Look at those expressions of soul-crushing boredom. No one involved is enjoying this.
If you haven't watched John Oliver's report on the punitive bail system in the United States on his HBO show, find it and do it. It reveals several things that should shock our consciences, like the fact that people plead guilty to crimes, even if they are innocent, because they can't afford bail and don't want to go to jail. Of course, that would presume an ability to still be shocked, as well as presuming we still have consciences. Would that were the only thing to be shocked about.
Bear in mind, law and order fetishists who pleasure themselves to dashboard camera videos of police brutality, what the Rude Pundit is going to talk about here has to do with people, including minors, who have been accused of crimes but have not faced trial, let alone conviction, for often minor offenses. Let's focus in on Rikers Island in New York City, which is like the notorious Devil's Island but with less sharks and more prisoner beatings.
This week, as you may have seen, 22 year-old Kalief Browder committed suicide at the home he shared with his mother in New York City. When he was almost 17, he was arrested, accused of stealing a backpack. After over two months in a Bronx jail, where he stayed because his family couldn't afford bail, he was indicted by a grand jury and sent to Rikers Island without bail because he had violated probation on a previous crime - taking a joyride in a delivery truck - he had plead guilty to. At 17, he was held at Rikers for three years, the last seventeen months almost all in solitary confinement. His trial kept being put off and put off. He was even offered a deal to take three and a half years in prison in exchange for a guilty plea. Prosecutors hope that being held without trial for a long period will entice accused people to take a plea in order to get out. No muss, no fuss, a win for the good guys, right? Browder wouldn't take the plea, so back to Rikers he went, where he was beaten by guards, beaten by inmates, attempted suicide several times, was denied meals and medical care, and was finally released when the prosecutor said they had no case.
In other words, an innocent young man, a teenager, was imprisoned and tortured, and no one gave two shits about him. And his mind was destroyed by the experience. He couldn't function after all that time in solitary. He was paranoid and was hospitalized for a bit. Then, on Saturday, "Mr. Browder pushed an air-conditioning unit out of a second-floor window at his parents’ home, wrapped a cord around his neck and...pushed himself out of the opening feet-first."
There have been no arrests made in Kalief Browder's death.
This is what we are doing in this nation, where we have all the money in the world to keep trying to unfuck the fucked beyond fucked situation in Iraq. But actually fund the criminal justice system in a way that doesn't strand innocent people in jail just because they're poor? What are you? Some kind of bleeding heart pussy?
According to a New York Timesarticle from April, "As of late March, over 400 people had been locked up for more than two years without being convicted of a crime, according to city data that is to be released publicly for the first time. And there are currently a half-dozen people at Rikers who have been waiting on pending cases for more than six years." Imagine hearing about prisoners in Nigeria held without trial for six years. We'd be outraged. We might even start a hashtag protest. This state of affairs is mostly because of a backlog of cases from courts where trials move too slowly, there aren't enough judges or attorneys, and/or general incompetence reigns. By the way, the number of unconvicted people sitting in Rikers is actually down from a few years ago. And Mayor Bill de Blasio is trying to make "speedy trial" actually mean something. (Fun fact: New York's speedy trial statute has huge gaps that allow for many, many delays.)
While they are staying at Rikers, these potentially innocent people live in a population with a 40% mental illness rate. Also, until very recently, Rikers' health care for prisoners was run by a company, Corizon Health, that "repeatedly failed to screen and supervise its employees, hiring doctors and mental health workers with serious disciplinary problems and criminal histories, including for murder and kidnapping." No one, however, will be going to jail for this.
How we treat our convicted criminals in the United States is often appalling. How we treat people who haven't been convicted of any crimes ought to be criminal itself.
If our social movements aren't accessible for everyone, then who are they for?
On the surface, hugging seems pleasant. But disrespecting your child's bodily autonomy? Not so much. This list might really change your perspective.
