Looks like we get a whole year of white tears up until the movie is released
Watch: This video of Black parents talking to their kids about police brutality will break your heart
Though this shouldn’t have to be the case, teaching their children to deal with the police is often a lesson that Black parents have to instill in their children at an early age. A heartbreaking new video released on Monday shows just what those conversations can look like.
Gifs: WatchCut Video
allerasphinx: > the majority of white women voted for trump because bigotry was more important to them
let that marinate and really sink in
this is what we mean when we say that your feminism must be intersectional
this is what we mean when we say that racism, transmisogyny, ableism, must be as important to the feminist movement as the wage gap
this is what we mean when we say that white exclusionary feminism is dangerous and destructive
Gasp, an American-born Chinese actor who doesn’t speak with a Chinese accent? Who would have thought?! And wtf is a “Chinese accent”?
Once slavery was abolished in 1865, manufacturers scrambled to find other sources of cheap labor—and because the 13th amendment banned slavery (except as punishment for crimes), they didn’t have to look too far. Prisons and big businesses have now been exploiting this loophole in the 13th amendment for over a century.
“Insourcing,” as prison labor is often called, is an even cheaper alternative to outsourcing. Instead of sending labor over to China or Bangladesh, manufacturers have chosen to forcibly employ the 2.4 million incarcerated people in the United States. Chances are high that if a product you’re holding says it is “American Made,” it was made in an American prison.
On average, prisoners work 8 hours a day, but they have no union representation and make between .23 and $1.15 per hour, over 6 times less than federal minimum wage. These low wages combined with increasing communication and commissary costs mean that inmates are often released from correctional facilities with more debt than they had on their arrival. Meanwhile, big businesses receive tax credits for employing these inmates in excess of millions of dollars a year.
While almost every business in America uses some form of prison labor to produce their goods, here are just a few of the companies who are helping prisoners pay off their debt to society, so to speak.
- Whole Foods. The costly organic supermarket often nicknamed “Whole Paycheck” purchases artisan cheese and fish prepared by inmates who work for private companies. The inmates are paid .74 cents a day to raise tilapia that is subsequently sold for $11.99 a pound at the fashionable grocery store.
- McDonald’s. The world’s most successful fast food franchise purchases a plethora of goods manufactured in prisons, including plastic cutlery, containers, and uniforms. The inmates who sew McDonald’s uniforms make even less money by the hour than the people who wear them.
- Wal-Mart. Although their company policy clearly states that “forced or prison labor will not be tolerated by Wal-Mart”, basically every item in their store has been supplied by third-party prison labor factories. Wal-Mart purchases its produce from prison farms where laborers are often subjected to long, arduous hours in the blazing heat without adequate sunscreen, water, or food.
- Victoria’s Secret. Female inmates in South Carolina sew undergarments and casual-wear for the pricey lingerie company. In the late 1990’s, 2 prisoners were placed in solitary confinement for telling journalists that they were hired to replace “Made in Honduras” garment tags with “Made in U.S.A.” tags. Victoria’s Secret has declined to comment.
- Aramark. This company, which also provides food to colleges, public schools and hospitals, has a monopoly on foodservice in about 600 prisons in the U.S. Despite this, Aramark has a history of poor foodservice, including a massive food shortage thatcaused a prison riot in Kentucky in 2009.
- AT&T. In 1993, the massive phone company laid off thousands of telephone operators—all union members—in order to increase their profits. Even though AT&T’s company policy regarding prison labor reads eerily like Wal-Mart’s, they have consistently used inmates to work in their call centers since ’93, barely paying them $2 a day.
- BP. When BP spilled 4.2 million barrels of oil into the Gulf coast, the company sent a workforce of almost exclusively African-American inmates to clean up the toxic spill while community members, many of whom were out-of-work fisherman, struggled to make ends meet. BP’s decision to use prisoners instead of hiring displaced workers outraged the Gulf community, but the oil company did nothing to reconcile the situation.
From dentures to shower curtains to pill bottles, almost everything you can imagine is being made in American prisons. Also implicit in the past and present use of prison labor are Microsoft, Nike, Nintendo, Honda, Pfizer, Saks Fifth Avenue, JCPenney, Macy’s, Starbucks, and more. For an even more detailed list of businesses that use prison labor, visit buycott.com, but the real guilty party here is the United States government. UNICOR, the corporation created and owned by the federal government to oversee penal labor, sets the condition and wage standards for working inmates.
One of the highest-paying prison jobs in the country? Sewing American flags for the state police.
NERDS UNITE IN SUPPORT OF BOY GENIUS, AHMED MOHAMED
Police in Texas have arrested a 14-year-old boy for building a clock. Ahmed Mohamed, who lives in Irving and has a keen interest in robotics and engineering, put the device together on Sunday night. When he took it to school the next day, he was pulled out of class, interviewed by police officers, and taken in handcuffs to juvenile detention, after being told by teachers that his creation looked like a bomb.
The people and institutions that care about technology, science, and social justice are correct to rally in support of Mohamed because we need every talented and curious kid with thick glasses we can find.
Please don’t spread the name and face of the Charleston shooter, call him a white terrorist because that’s all he is, don’t give him the respect of learning his name or recognizing his face. All he wants is to be famous, now he will be infamous. He only deserves to be known as a white homegrown terrorist and imagined as a monster because that’s what he is. Instead learn the names and faces of the victims, they deserve to be remembered not the monster.
Remember:
Clementa Pinckney
A Democrat state senator who was also the pastor at the Emanuel African Methodist Church.
Cynthia Hurd
A librarian at the Charleston County Public Library. She’d been working there for 31 years and was a manager as St. Andrews Regional Library.
Sharonda Coleman-Singleton
She was a revered and a mother of three, she was also the coach of the track team.
Tywanza Sanders
A recent graduate from Allen University in Columbia. He was recently working as a barber. It is said that he died trying to save one of his family members.
Please, if you hear about more of the victims, add their names and a little about their life.
Go to this link to learn more about these victims. What I posted is only a short summary.
Also if anything like this happens again, do this instead of showing the shooter/terrorist. This is a tragedy and I will do my best to raise awareness, I hope you will too. Thank you.
People calling this a hate crime. That’s an understatement.
What needs to be understood is that Emanuel AME is and has been one of the key black institutions in Charleston. It is the oldest AME church in the South. It’s the largest black church building in Charleston by capacity. It is probably the most prominent black church in Charleston. Church members and the church itself have played a central role in black liberation struggles for the past 2 centuries. From the Denmark Vesey slave uprising to the church’s recently murdered pastor Clementa Pinckney who was also a state senator and proponent of the police body cam bill.
The murderer Dylan Roof is from the state captial Columbia, meaning he may have come from two hours away. He sat through the Bible study meeting for around an hour before opening fire. This was a very intentional act at the very heart of the black community in the SE USA. The word “terrorism” is way, way overused in today’s society. But if this isn’t terrorism then that word has no meaning.
Millennials Are Less Tolerant Than You Think — Science of Us
"The fact of the matter is that millennials who are white — that is, members of the group that has always had the most regressive racial beliefs, and who will constitute a majority of U.S. voters for at least another couple of decades — are, on key questions involving race, no more open-minded than their parents. The only real difference, in fact, is that they think they are."
antique-romantic
