United States | News & Politics

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/27288708

March 12, 2025

"The ALU statement sets a good example of how the labor movement needs to treat immigrant workers: as fellow workers, as brothers and sisters.

This question has become urgent as the Trump administration has escalated raids, arrests, and deportations of immigrants under the guise of expelling “foreign criminals” from the United States. "

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/27288470

By Mark Satinoff
March 6, 2025

“The election results today are a result of Amazon’s willingness to break the law and use its enormous wealth to try and break our movement,” said a statement by the #CAUSE leadership following the vote. “We will continue organizing. This is only the beginning.”

“In the weeks leading up to the vote #Amazon threw its full weight and power into its union-busting arsenal of intimidation and lies,” Mary Hill, known affectionately by many workers as Ma Mary, told World-Outlook in a phone interview. Hill is a co-founder and vice president of CAUSE. “Amazon flew in union busters from all over the country, at least 30 of them. They were all over the place, like roaches. They get paid $3,000/day plus expenses.”

The last few days, I have been thinking about the "No one is going to save us" bit. We have to save ourselves.

But what can we do? Clearly, this is where voting got us. It is time for us to seek out those government positions.

But how? I am lucky to live in a very blue state. But my congressman is one of the Dems that just rolled over instead of shutting down the aweful budget.

So where can we find information on running against them? How do we recreate what AOC did in her district? How do we lead instead of sit back and wait for someone else to step up?

Do we form a new party and let the Dems die? Let's start the conversation beyond just "VOTE!". We need to BE THE LEADERS. Can anyone lay out the process for running for a federal office?

In Newnan, Georgia, in 1899, pieces of Sam Hose’s heart, liver, and bones were sold after he was lynched; that same year, spectators at the lynching of Richard Coleman in Maysville, Kentucky, took flesh, teeth, fingers, and toes from his corpse.167 Spectacle lynchings were preserved in photographs that were made into postcards and distributed unashamedly through the mail.168

These killings were not the actions of a few marginalized vigilantes or extremists; they were bold, public acts that implicated the entire community and sent a clear message that African Americans were less than human, their subjugation was to be achieved through any means necessary, and whites who undertook the duty of carrying out lynchings would face no legal repercussions.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/58584654

This came up in my health care forum.

Right now, you can legally detain someone medically when they are a danger to themselves or others for up to 72hrs. The details vary by state, but this is how we lock down individuals trying to suicide or someone mentally off the rails making threats of violence.

This variation on that law would also make opposition to Trump qualify.

Civil commitment can follow as with individuals who have profound mental illness and are not safe to be out in the world.

This is the loudest scream that democracy is dead short of hauling people out into the street and shooting them.

It’s important to note the police are currently the people who bring individuals in for the 72hr mental health holds.

A Los Angeles man was awarded $50 million from a jury Friday in his case against Starbucks after he suffered life-altering burns when a cup of scalding hot tea spilled into his lap in 2020.

It happened at an Exposition Park drive-thru window, where Postmates driver Michael Garcia was awaiting a delivery on Feb. 8, 2020. When the barista handed him a tray full of drinks, at least one overturned. His noticeable reaction can be seen in security camera footage from inside the location at 1789 West Jefferson Boulevard.

"Starbucks says if our hands are off the drink, then no matter what happens, we're not responsible," said Garcia's trial attorney Nicholas Rowley. "So, if I'm Starbucks and I hand you a drink that doesn't have a lid that's secured, and it's a scalding hot, 180-degree drink, or if I hand you a drink that's in a container and it's loose and it's not secured, and it falls right on you — the moment that I take my hands off of it, then you're responsible and I, the corporation, am not."

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/19578768

“You wake up one day and discover you’re dead,” Johnson told me. “It’s been truly surreal.”

That’s the biggest difference — my deceased guy turns out to be very much alive. Musk is contending that hordes of dead people are listed as alive in the Social Security databases, and are fraudulently still drawing benefits (which the Social Security director disputes).

Johnson is 82 and still kicking. Yet sometime last month, someone or something led Social Security to both tag him as dead and start clawing back his benefits.

Archived copies of the article:

• archive.today
• web.archive.org
• ghostarchive.org

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/40037424

The Trump administration has repeatedly conflated participation in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza with support for Hamas. It has also accused demonstrators of supporting “terrorists”.

Kordia’s arrest marks the second time in less than a week that a Palestinian student at Columbia University has been taken into ICE custody for deportation. On Saturday, protest spokesperson Mahmoud Khalil likewise was arrested and placed in immigration detention, first in New Jersey and later in Louisiana.

Civil liberty advocates say the arrests are meant to stifle free speech rights, and Khalil’s lawyer this week argued he has not been able to contact his client privately, in violation of his right to legal counsel.

Khalil is a permanent resident of the US, with a green card, and his American wife is eight months pregnant. The Trump administration, however, says it plans to strip him of his green card.

“It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America. When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in the news release.

But the arrests and student visa revocation were not the only strong-armed actions the Trump administration took against Columbia in the last 24 hours.

In a letter issued late on Thursday night, the administration demanded that Columbia’s Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS) be placed in an “academic receivership” wherein an outside authority takes control, often as punishment for mismanagement.

The letter specified that the university must come up with a plan to create the academic receivership role no later than March 20.

Failure to comply, the letter warned, would negatively affect “Columbia University’s continued financial relationship with the United States government”.

Setting up a receivership was just one in a list of demands, which included abolishing the university’s judicial board for hearing disciplinary matters, banning masks on campus and adopting a controversial definition of anti-Semitism that some fear could limit legitimate criticisms of Israel.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/27224996

Jessica Corbett Mar 14, 2025

'This Felt Like a Kidnapping Because It Was': Family of Mahmoud Khalil Releases Arrest Video

Khalil's wife said that "officers in plain clothes—who refused to show us a warrant, speak with our attorney, or even tell us their names—forced my husband into an unmarked car and took him away from me."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/27204942

By Areeb Ullah Published date: 14 March 2025 13:31 GMT

"The university was also told to begin the process of placing Columbia's world-renowned Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies department under academic receivership. This process requires an outside chair, who could be appointed by the government, to run the department for five years. "

"Other demands listed by the White House include a mask ban on campus, giving "full law enforcement authority" to campus security by allowing them to "arrest and remove agitators", and reforming the admissions process for its undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. "