[justsomeantifas]

This secretly taken photo comes from a Texas courtroom during mass trial where dozens of immigrants are chained and tried all at once. Here’s what’s happening:

· Lawyers Are Representing Dozens of People At Once (Literally)

What you see is somewhere between 20 and 40-something people, all triple-shackled, not to each other but individually, their hands in handcuffs chained to their waists, and their feet shackled. And they clunk and clang into court. I mean, there’s this clanging sound of chains. And they go through these mass processes in less than an hour, usually. And they often—they are instructed to answer in groups or answer en masse. So you’ll hear like 40 people being asked a question, and they’ll say, ”Sí,” all at once, or they’ll say, “No.” And it’s just—it’s really uncanny. It’s shocking. It doesn’t feel like due process. One after one after one after one after one, with only one lawyer, they plead guilty: ”Culpable,” ”culpable,” ”culpable,” ”culpable.”

They’re getting somewhere between seven and 10 minutes of counsel right before the proceedings. 

…

There were 60 defendants, and they were split into 20—into three groups of 20. And so, each group of 20 had a lawyer. And I interviewed one lawyer who told me that, of his 20, not one of them had been separated from a child, and not one of them had an asylum claim or a credible fear claim. So, then, in the third group, I was able to interview the attorney, who spoke Spanish, unlike the first one, and seemed very concerned about the immigration issues. And he told me that, of the 20 that I saw him representing, 10 of them had been separated from a total of 15 children, including one woman who was separated from three children. And, you know, he obtained that information by just really speaking with these people.

· International Law is Being Broken

Denying people the right to request asylum:

Traditionally, you go to the port of entry, and you—which is this big building at the bottom, you know, in Brownsville. It’s the big curved bridge. You go to the bottom of the bridge to the U.S. side, to the port of entry, and you tell the agents that want to request asylum. And that is your legal right. You’re in the United States at that point, and you request asylum.

So, what’s been happening up and down the border is—and this has been going on probably for at least a year and a half, that I’m aware of, anyway—is that they’re putting agents up at the top of the bridge, because, you know, there’s sort of an invisible line, which is often marked with a plaque, but there’s a line dividing the United States and Mexico. So, they want—what the government wants at this point is for people not to be able to step into the United States at that invisible line, because then they can’t apply for asylum. And so they’ve got these agents at the top of the bridge, and they’re standing there. And they’re asking everybody who they’re suspicious about—you know, and suspicious of not—you know, of maybe they’re going to apply for asylum, but asking people for their documents. And then they won’t let people go into the United States. So, I mean, it’s almost like they’re not even in Mexico. Technically, they’re in Mexico, but they’re like six inches from the United States. And that’s illegal. I mean, that’s against American law, and it’s against international law. But that’s what’s happening up and down the border.

Separating families: 

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International, said in a statement that the U.S. government’s separating children from their parents as they seek asylum is “a flagrant violation of their human rights. Doing so in order to push asylum seekers back into dangerous situations where they may face persecution is also a violation of U.S. obligations under refugee law.”

· Border Patrol is Lying About Violence

Multiplying the number of assaults:

CBP claimed that there were 454 assaults on agents nationwide in 2016, a 20 percent increase from the previous year. In 2017, according to CBP, there were 786 assaults, a 73 percent spike from the previous year. But The Intercept obtained data from CBP showing that the agency was using an unconventional method to count assaults.

I started investigating the claims the Border Patrol has been making for about, oh, the past several months, that it’s a very dangerous job and that their assault statistics were way, way up from last year. And I got data from the Border Patrol which showed that, in fact, assaults were down and injuries are down, but they were using this accounting method—they were counting in this very strange, unconventional way. 

And, for example, what I was told from law enforcement people is that, you know, police and law enforcement officials usually—like, if somebody is assaulted, that’s considered one assault. I mean, somebody could throw seven rocks at you, and that would be—and you’re one agent, so that’s counted as one assault. But the Border Patrol was—or still is, I guess—multiplying the number of agents assaulted—and, by the way, an assault doesn’t necessarily cause an injury, and in most cases with the Border Patrol it doesn’t—but multiplying the number of agents assaulted by the number of perpetrators and the number of weapons. 

So, the example that they gave me was six agents assaulted by seven perpetrators who used a water bottle, a rock and a tree branch. So, when you multiply and multiply and multiply, you get 126 assaults. Conventionally, that would be counted as six assaults.

Immigrants who are tried and acquitted for assault are also included in these inflated statistics:

A recent trial in south Texas provides a good case in point. In November, Border Patrol agent Steven Yackanin chased Eliseo Luis García, a young Guatemalan migrant, through a field near the Rio Grande. The area was only about a mile from where Claudia Patricia Gómez González would later be shot to death.

After Luis was apprehended and taken to lockup, another immigrant there noticed that Luis had blood coming out of his ear. Luis explained that he had been trying to escape and that, as a result, Yackanin and some other agents beat him up.

Yackanin claimed it was he who was assaulted by Luis, and he filled out a Department of Labor form to authorize medical care. He was diagnosed with an elbow sprain and a bruise.

Luis was charged with assault and went to trial. His public defender attorney introduced into evidence photographs of the immigrant and the Border Patrol agent, each standing next to a door with markings. The markings suggest that the Guatemalan immigrant stood about 5 feet tall and weighed perhaps 100 pounds. Yackanin was a full head taller and appeared 60 pounds heavier. The jury apparently believed Luis. He was acquitted.

Even so, the Border Patrol will likely fold the charges against Luis into its fiscal year 2018 assault statistics. Likewise for Claudia Patricia Gómez González, the young Guatemalan woman shot last week. Her death will probably be analyzed as the outcome of a purported assault against a Border Patrol agent.

· Parents and Children are Being Separated

Public defenders unable to find their defendant’s children:

One woman who spoke about her children in open court was from Honduras. “Is my little girl going to go with me when I get deported?” she asked Morgan.

“Your Honor,” interjected Jeff Wilde, director of the Federal Public Defender’s office in Brownsville, “both she and the man next to her have their children with them. They had a credible fear claim [for asylum]. … Their children have been separated from them, and I’ve been unable to figure out where their children are at this point.”

A young father then said he’d been separated from his 6-year-old and was very worried.

Threats and taking children away:

Another parent who appeared in Morgan’s court was from a Central American country that provides no meaningful protection to women and children who are victims of homicidal domestic violence. She asked for her identity to be concealed, because she fears retaliation by the U.S. government. We will call her Delia. Before fleeing her country, she was for years beaten up, cut, assaulted with guns, and threatened with death by her partner. He also threatened to kill their young child. When she hid in another city, he found her and dragged her home.

Delia said she fled her country weeks ago and went on the road to Mexico, eventually crossing the Rio Grande with her child on an inner tube. She saw three Border Patrol agents watching her and floated in their direction, so she could turn herself in.

Delia said that when she arrived later that night at the hielera — the Border Patrol processing office — she told the officers that she and her child needed asylum. She described the beatings and assaults and death threats. “Oh, come on!” she said the officers snickered. “You and everyone else with that old story!”

“You’re going to be deported,” she remembers them telling her. “And your child will stay here.” The next morning, the child was taken. Delia fell on her knees during the removal, wailing and begging not to be separated. Officials looked on indifferently, she said, as her child screamed incessantly.

Uncertainty of policy: 

In Brownsville, Judge Morgan also started alluding to biblical matters. It was Thursday, the fourth day of “zero tolerance” in his court, and defendants were telling their stories. The judge had just asked Holly D’Andrea, the assistant U.S. attorney handling illegal entry prosecutions that day, if it were true that families were being reunited in detention. D’Andrea sounded uncertain, but answered that she thought it was true.

“Tell you what,” the judge said slowly, with a hard edge in his voice, “if it’s not, then there are a lot of folks that have some answering to do.

· Sources

I’d suggest reading these in full:

Hidden Horrors of “Zero Tolerance” - Mass Trials and Children Taken From Their Parents

Border Patrol Continues to Exaggerate Danger to Agents to Justify Violence Against Immigrants

“Hidden Horrors”: Reporter Debbie Nathan on Mass Trials & Kids Separated from Parents at the Border

[justsomeantifas]

“I like how they left out ‘illegal’“ 

Well for one thing, “illegal” is dehumanizing language but since I’m sure you don’t care about that I’m pretty sure even you would be able to comprehend that we’re talking about immigrants who are “undocumented.” You notice how these news stories are explicitly about human rights violations happening to immigrants and asylum seekers. It’s not that hard and nobody is trying to hide anything like you’re implying. 

Also interesting how you have no empathy for these immigrants because they’re “”illegal”” but nothing here about the illegal actions being committed against them. You know the ones that are breaking US and international law buuuuut whatever. 

[sparrf-blog]

[publicfrenemy-no1]

(me and almost everyone I know)

[jetherit]

Jenny Holzer, 1982

[popthirdworld]

“When I was 26, I went to Indonesia and the Philippines to do research for my first book, No Logo. I had a simple goal: to meet the workers making the clothes and electronics that my friends and I purchased. And I did. I spent evenings on concrete floors in squalid dorm rooms where teenage girls—sweet and giggly—spent their scarce nonworking hours. Eight or even 10 to a room. They told me stories about not being able to leave their machines to pee. About bosses who hit. About not having enough money to buy dried fish to go with their rice.

They knew they were being badly exploited—that the garments they were making were being sold for more than they would make in a month. One 17-year-old said to me: “We make computers, but we don’t know how to use them.”

So one thing I found slightly jarring was that some of these same workers wore clothing festooned with knockoff trademarks of the very multinationals that were responsible for these conditions: Disney characters or Nike check marks. At one point, I asked a local labor organizer about this. Wasn’t it strange—a contradiction?

It took a very long time for him to understand the question. When he finally did, he looked at me like I was nuts. You see, for him and his colleagues, individual consumption wasn’t considered to be in the realm of politics at all. Power rested not in what you did as one person, but what you did as many people, as one part of a large, organized, and focused movement. For him, this meant organizing workers to go on strike for better conditions, and eventually it meant winning the right to unionize. What you ate for lunch or happened to be wearing was of absolutely no concern whatsoever.

This was striking to me, because it was the mirror opposite of my culture back home in Canada. Where I came from, you expressed your political beliefs—firstly and very often lastly—through personal lifestyle choices. By loudly proclaiming your vegetarianism. By shopping fair trade and local and boycotting big, evil brands.

These very different understandings of social change came up again and again a couple of years later, once my book came out. I would give talks about the need for international protections for the right to unionize. About the need to change our global trading system so it didn’t encourage a race to the bottom. And yet at the end of those talks, the first question from the audience was: “What kind of sneakers are OK to buy?” “What brands are ethical?” “Where do you buy your clothes?” “What can I do, as an individual, to change the world?”

Fifteen years after I published No Logo, I still find myself facing very similar questions. These days, I give talks about how the same economic model that superpowered multinationals to seek out cheap labor in Indonesia and China also supercharged global greenhouse-gas emissions. And, invariably, the hand goes up: “Tell me what I can do as an individual.” Or maybe “as a business owner.”

The hard truth is that the answer to the question “What can I, as an individual, do to stop climate change?” is: nothing. You can’t do anything. In fact, the very idea that we—as atomized individuals, even lots of atomized individuals—could play a significant part in stabilizing the planet’s climate system, or changing the global economy, is objectively nuts. We can only meet this tremendous challenge together. As part of a massive and organized global movement.

The irony is that people with relatively little power tend to understand this far better than those with a great deal more power. The workers I met in Indonesia and the Philippines knew all too well that governments and corporations did not value their voice or even their lives as individuals. And because of this, they were driven to act not only together, but to act on a rather large political canvas. To try to change the policies in factories that employ thousands of workers, or in export zones that employ tens of thousands. Or the labor laws in an entire country of millions. Their sense of individual powerlessness pushed them to be politically ambitious, to demand structural changes.

In contrast, here in wealthy countries, we are told how powerful we are as individuals all the time. As consumers. Even individual activists. And the result is that, despite our power and privilege, we often end up acting on canvases that are unnecessarily small—the canvas of our own lifestyle, or maybe our neighborhood or town. Meanwhile, we abandon the structural changes—the policy and legal work— to others.”

- Naomi Klein

[screenshotsofdespair]

[screenshotsofdespair]

[theearlofbirds]

[theearlofbirds]

[theearlofbirds]

[peterni]

Carluddon Tip

[2sman]

Darius Kazemi’s bot (at GitHub)

[necklacings]

[necklacings]

2016

[publicfrenemy-no1]

finally updating this shit

[likeniobe]

Recently, my son said to me after seeing a ballet on television: ‘It’s beautiful, but I don’t like it.’ And I thought, Are many grown-ups capable of such a distinction? It’s beautiful, but I don’t like it. Usually, our grown-up thinking is more along the lines of: I don’t like it, so it’s not beautiful. What would it mean to separate those two impressions for art making and for art criticism?

“59. it’s beautiful, but I don’t like it” from 100 essays I don’t have time to write, sarah ruhl

[publicfrenemy-no1]

[publicfrenemy-no1]

[publicfrenemy-no1]