RSN: Moira Donegan | Alabama Is Jailing Pregnant Marijuana Users to 'Protect' Fetuses
13 September 22
A Serious, But Very Solvable Fundraising Problem
To end this fundraiser, quickly we need about “300” donations. We have gotten that in “1” day many, many times. “300” of you will visit RSN in the next “30” minutes.
With urgency.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
12 September 22
Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News
In Alabama, pregnant women who are arrested for drug offenses are not allowed to post bail and go free. Ashley Banks learned that the hard way
Alabama has an exceptionally high incarceration rate, locking up about 938 people per 100,000 residents. But even in a state with a disproportionate prison population, an arrest for small-scale drug possession would not usually lead to such an extended pre-trial jail stay. But Banks fell victim to a peculiar Alabama law that advocates say Etowah county enforces with special zeal: pregnant women who are arrested for drug offenses are not allowed to post bail and go free, the way other people are. They have to stay in state custody: either in jail, or in a residential drug rehab program. The logic is that the women are a danger to their fetuses: they need to be imprisoned by the state, and kept from their freedom, in order to protect their pregnancies.
In Banks’s case, jail officials tried to send her to rehab, but after an assessment, the facility turned her away: Banks, they said, was merely a casual marijuana user, not an addict, and did not need in-patient drug treatment. Too healthy for rehab, but not trusted enough by the state to be set free, she was kept in limbo in jail. Meanwhile, Banks’s pregnancy wasn’t going well. She has a family history of miscarriages, and was experiencing bleeding in jail. At one point, jail officials assigned her to sleep in a bed that was already occupied by another prisoner; Banks slept on the floor.
She’s not the only one. Another woman, Hali Burns, was taken to the Etowah county jail just six days after giving birth to her son, with police saying that she had tested positive for a drug used by pregnant women with opioid addictions to help manage cravings and withdrawal. When she was thrown in jail, Burns was still physically recovering from giving birth. But the jail had no facilities for her to pump or tend to her wounds. Her partner tried to bring pads and underwear to her, so that she wouldn’t have to bleed into her clothes, but Etowah county authorities wouldn’t let her have them. The risk for infection was great – the indignity was even greater.
Stories like Banks’s and Burns’s – the needless and disproportionate incarceration, the loss of freedom and recourse inflicted on them on the basis of their pregnancies, the cruelty justified by authorities as “protection” for a fetus – are becoming more common. Alabama criminalizes more women for pregnancy than any other state. Just last year, Kim Blalock, a mother of six from Florence, Alabama, was charged with a felony for filling a longstanding prescription from her doctor while pregnant. Prosecutors charged that the medication, which Blalock was taking as prescribed, could have hurt her fetus, and that she should have known not to refill it. (Blalock later gave birth to a healthy baby boy.)
But these jailings are not just an Alabama thing: the trend of imprisoning pregnant and postpartum women for supposedly endangering their fetuses is one that’s growing nationwide. Over 32 years, from 1973, when Roe v Wade was decided, to 2005, the United States saw a total of 413 pregnancy prosecutions throughout the whole nation, according to Afsha Malik, a research associate at the reproductive justice group National Advocates for Pregnant Women and the co-author of a recent report on pregnancy criminalization. But over just a 14-year period, from 2006 to 2020, there were more than 1,300 such cases. That steep increase happened while Roe was still in place; now that it’s fallen, pregnancy criminalization is likely to accelerate even more. “We know that we’re going to see more examples of pregnant people being criminalized for behavior that may be [seen as] justified for the general public, like using substances,” Malik told the Nation. “[Other] cases that we’ve seen are going to accelerate, like [for] falling down the stairs, having a home birth, not seeking prenatal care, having HIV, having a self-induced abortion, and experiencing a pregnancy loss.”
Still, Etowah county seems to be a hotbed for this particular kind of misogynist cruelty. NAPW says that the county has jailed 150 pregnant women in recent years; as many as 12 are currently held in its jail.
The Dobbs decision didn’t create this state of affairs, but it’s likely to worsen it. The policy in place in Etowah county and elsewhere reveals the warped logic and hateful absurdities of the anti-choice worldview. The movement claims to see embryos and fetuses as persons, and in practice they speak as if these “persons” are not women’s equals, but their superiors: the fetus is conceived of as more important than the woman, more worthy, less tainted by those things that make a pregnant woman so unappealing – her femaleness, her sexuality, her tendency to have human desires and human struggles, like irritation or addiction or anger. In the service of protecting and advancing this superior being of the fetus, the anti-choice movement claims, it is justifiable, even necessary, to steal the freedom of those lesser women.
And yet the practice of imprisoning women to “protect” their fetuses and infants does not make sense on its own terms. Jails are dirty, desperate and violent places; Banks, who had a high-risk pregnancy, frequently bled during her incarceration and had no access to medical care. Burns, who was arrested just a few days after giving birth, was not able to care for her new son, or her toddler daughter. None of what the anti-choice movement is doing can be said to protect anyone – not the fictional “persons” imagined in an embryo or fetus, not the real, living children deprived of their mothers, and certainly not the pregnant and postpartum women, shamed and thrown into cages, still bleeding from giving birth. One begins to suspect that the only value the anti-choice movement really sees in fetal “persons” is the pretext that it allows them for misogynist sadism.
Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Grand Junction, Colorado. (photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Haberman wrote that Trump seemed to recognize he had lost to Biden immediately following the election, but his mood later changed, according to CNN.
“I’m just not going to leave,” Haberman writes Trump told one aide, the network reported.
“We’re never leaving. How can you leave when you won an election?” Trump reportedly told another.
Haberman’s book, titled “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America,” will be released early next month.
The New York Times reporter, who previously worked for Politico, the New York Post and New York Daily News, gained a reputation during the Trump presidency for repeatedly breaking scoops on the administration.
Haberman writes in her new book that Trump in the immediate aftermath of the election asked advisers to tell him what went wrong, telling one adviser “we did our best,” CNN reported, adding that he also told junior press aides, “I thought we had it.”
But later, Trump reportedly began expressing his intention to not leave the White House in January 2021 upon the start of Biden’s term as Trump’s team began attempts to overturn the election.
“Why should I leave if they stole it from me?” Trump asked during a conversation with Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, CNN reported.
The Hill has reached out to a Trump spokesperson for comment.
Trump and his allies’ actions following the 2020 election have come under scrutiny through multiple investigations.
A House select committee is investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack and is expected to hold an additional public hearing later this month. A separate Justice Department probe is also examining the attack.
In Georgia, an Atlanta-area district attorney is investigating whether Trump and his allies unlawfully attempted to overturn the election in the state. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney who helped lead the post-election efforts, said he is a target of the probe.
Trump has indicated he is also mulling a third bid for the White House in 2024. He has said he has made up his mind if he will run, but Trump has yet to make a formal campaign announcement.
Protesters hold signs inside the South Carolina statehouse on August 30, as lawmakers debate an abortion ban. (photo: Sean Rayford/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images)
Ahead of the midterms, severe abortion restrictions are coming up against public opinion — and people’s real lives.
Five Republicans joined Democrats in opposing the bill in South Carolina’s Senate, with GOP state Sen. Tom Davis threatening a filibuster should the measure as written come to a vote. Davis joined all three Republican women in the Senate, as well as one male GOP colleague, in filibustering the severe restrictions passed by the state’s House; Davis and one woman Republican senator, Penry Gustafson, voted in favor of an eventual compromise measure.
South Carolina has already passed an onerous law banning abortion after six weeks, with exceptions up to 20 weeks in the case of rape or incest. The compromise legislation the Senate did pass reduces that time period to 12 weeks and requires police to collect DNA from an aborted fetus.
It is more restrictive than the so-called “fetal heartbeat” bill the General Assembly passed last year, before the Supreme Court decided the Dobbs vs. Jackson case, which overturned Roe v. Wade, but avoids the total ban with no exceptions that House Republicans initially attempted to pass. That ban is stayed while South Carolina’s Supreme Court hears a challenge to the law under the right to privacy, and the state’s pre-Dobbs 20-week ban is presently in effect, the Associated Press reported Thursday.
Thursday’s defeat of the South Carolina bill — as well as a number of legal challenges to similarly restrictive measures in states like Idaho, North Dakota, and Indiana, and ballot measures to protect abortion rights in Michigan and Kansas — speaks to the practical difficulties in passing and enforcing abortion bans.
“We have a tendency to think of banning abortion as an on-off switch,” Rachel Rebouché, the dean of Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, told Vox on Saturday. But in a post-Dobbs landscape, “the amount of legal complexity is going to amplify.” That is playing out, she said, in states like Idaho and North Dakota where restrictions have faced court challenges, and in legislatures as the dangers of severely restricting abortion access become clear.
South Carolina got a reality check on abortion restrictions
South Carolina’s House of Representatives wrote the thwarted bill banning abortion after fertilization; although it passed there, and the 30-member Republican majority in the Senate had enough votes to pass it, they didn’t have a filibuster-proof majority. Senate Democrats exploited that vulnerability and made a coalition with Davis as well as Sens. Katrina Shealy, Sandy Senn, and Penry Gustafson — all women — and one other Republican.
“Yes, I’m pro-life,” Shealy, who had previously voted for abortion restrictions, said during Thursday’s special session. “I’m also pro-life for the mother, the life she has with her children who are already born. I care about the children who are forced into adulthood that was made up by a legislature full of men so they can take a victory lap and feel good about it.”
Ultimately, Republicans had to go back to the negotiating table and came out with a six-week ban and more onerous restrictions on abortions after rape and incest. The original bill, which passed the House, had exceptions for rape and incest as well as the life and health of the mother, Republican state Rep. Neal Collins told Vox. “The Senate ... passed a bill that bans abortion after six weeks, with the same exceptions as well as [exceptions for] fetal anomalies, which is pretty much the same exact bill that we passed last year, we called it the ‘fetal heartbeat’ bill.”
Now, the bill will have to go back to the House, which can either concur with the Senate version of the bill or not — in which case the General Assembly would have to form a committee of three Democrats and three Republicans from each chamber to try and come to a compromise that suits both chambers. That could happen as soon as next week.
The new bill restricts the exceptions for rape and incest to 12 weeks, a significant departure from the “fetal heartbeat” bill that allows exceptions up to 20 weeks. The new bill also requires two doctors to affirm that fetal anomalies are fatal, and mandates that DNA from an abortion due to rape and incest go to law enforcement. “I presume that’s for evidence-gathering in case they’re going after whoever is raping or committing incest,” Collins said.
The special session brought into stark relief what happens when the rhetoric of anti-choice politicians clashes with real life — real people’s problems, needs, and beliefs — after the Supreme Court demolished the legal guardrails of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto told Vox.
“[Anti-choice legislators] could make whatever political points they wanted to because they had a backstop,” he said. “They knew nothing they passed was ever going to go into effect. They could pass all they wanted to, and it didn’t matter — and it allowed them to let their rhetoric to just soar to the red meat of their party because they could gin up the party knowing that nothing they said was ever going to be enacted into law. Then, all of a sudden [...] it’s like the dog that caught the bus.”
South Carolina legislators are now understanding, as well, that a full abortion restriction is not popular with voters, Hutto said. National polling on the topic indicates as much; a Pew Research Center study released just prior to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade shows that 61 percent of Americans support abortion in all or some cases. Those numbers can be abstract when extrapolated to a legislative district. But legislators are now having to confront what those numbers mean in context; in a Facebook post dated August 30, Collins wrote that he polled his most conservative constituents regarding abortion access. Of the 43 surveys which were returned, “The results clearly show the vast majority of even very conservative people want exceptions to abortion,” he wrote.
“Even churchgoing, Southern Baptist, conservative ladies” by and large aren’t willing to impose their own beliefs about abortion onto others, Hutto said, challenging the monolithic concept of Southern voters and indicating that abortion could be a major issue in the November midterms — even in a conservative state like South Carolina. “The governor’s race in South Carolina is now competitive,” Hutto said. Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican who ascended to the office when Nikki Haley left to join the Trump administration, indicated he would sign a total abortion ban if it came across his desk; with that statement on the record and abortion becoming an increasingly contentious issue for voters, Democrats have at least a chance at taking the governor’s mansion in November. “Choice is on the ballot,” Hutto said.
There are many levers of pressure against abortion restrictions
Among the several states with abortion bans on the books, only some have actually been able to go into full effect in the wake of the Dobbs decision. Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Missouri, Idaho, and Tennessee all have in place bans on nearly all abortions, with only some states offering exceptions in the case of serious health risks to the parent. Six-week bans have taken effect in Ohio, Kentucky, and Georgia, but are being challenged in court, as are Florida’s 15-week ban, the Idaho, Louisiana, and Kentucky laws, and a Wisconsin ban dating from 1849, according to CNN.
Lawsuits are a meaningful method of fighting these laws, or at least delaying them, even after Dobbs, Rebouché told Vox. “Overturning Roe has not kept abortion out of courts,” she said, adding that “it’s a matter of time” before the bans enacted face a challenge of some sort. That could look like state-level legislation protecting abortion, referenda to codify abortion rights in state constitutions, and pressure from international human rights bodies and corporations, though neither of those bodies has any legislative or enforcement power.
“Some of our states are really outliers in the international order on abortion,” Rebouché said. “International rights bodies have taken countries to task over these kinds of things,” and “stigma and shame” can be very powerful motivators.
But securing the right to abortion right now depends on the interplay between voter participation and the courts, a dynamic that played out recently in Michigan. Voters there will have a referendum on their midterm ballots in November, after the state’s supreme court knocked down a state election board’s decision to omit the measure from the ballot over typographical errors on petitions calling for the referendum, as the New York Times reported Thursday.
In August, Kansas voters soundly defeated the legislature’s attempt to inject language into the state’s constitution explicitly stating that it does not grant the right to an abortion, as the Associated Press reported at the time. The Kansas Supreme Court in 2019 had affirmed the right to an abortion under the state’s Bill of Rights; the August referendum upheld that judgment.
“Kansas was a shock to everyone’s systems,” David Cohen, a professor at Drexel University’s Kline School of Law and Rebouché’s co-author on a paper about the post-Dobbs legal landscape called “The New Abortion Battleground,” told Vox. “I don’t think anyone saw what happened coming.” Michigan, he said, “is going to give us a big look at the future,” in terms of how states might navigate around abortion bans and legally enshrine the right to abortion. California and Vermont have such referenda on their ballots this coming November, but the outcome in those situations is likely more predictable than in Kansas, Michigan, or Kentucky, which has a ballot initiative to eliminate Kentuckians’ right to abortion under the state constitution.
In the long term, the Supreme Court’s makeup will have to change before there’s any real challenge to Dobbs, Cohen said. “As soon as that happens, [progressives] will be the ones asking the court to overturn precedent,” which could take the form of arguments on the grounds of religious freedom, the vagueness of anti-abortion legislation, equal protection claims, and right to travel claims, Cohen said.
In the meantime, should support for abortion rights rally voters in November, as Democrats are hoping it will, the calculus of what’s possible at the federal level could change, too, Cohen said. While a number of Republican senators have tried to propose nationwide restrictions on the right to abortion, others, like Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) have discerned that the momentum and appetite for such measures aren’t there. “I just don’t see the momentum at the federal level,” he told the Washington Post on July 25 — before the anti-abortion measure in his own state failed.
As legislators are forced to confront how unpopular abortion bans actually are and how difficult they are to enforce, there’s potentially more room for pushback in the form of legal protections. The Women’s Health Protection Act, which failed in the Senate in May and which President Joe Biden has promised to sign should it pass, could have a chance if Democrats hold on to the House and pick up enough Senate seats. “Would I ever put money on that? No,” Cohen said. “But there’s a chance.”
Activists and members of Carl Dorsey's family stand in solidarity on the anniversary of his murder outside the Essex County Courthouse in Newark on Jan. 1, 2022. The family still has no answer from the attorney general as to why Dorsey, who was unarmed, was fatally shot by plainclothes officer Rod Simpkins. (photo: Ande Richards/|NJ Advance Media/NJ.com)
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
The family of a Black man killed by Newark police while he was unarmed is demanding answers after the investigation into his death dragged on for nearly 20 months. The facts, they say, are clear: Carl Dorsey was shot dead just after midnight New Year’s Day 2021 by undercover police detective Rod Simpkins in Newark, New Jersey. Simpkins was in an unmarked police minivan and in plainclothes when he arrived at the scene after reportedly hearing gunshots. Within seconds of exiting his car, Simpkins fired his gun at Dorsey. It’s unclear if he first announced himself as a police officer.
Dorsey’s family says an investigation by New Jersey Attorney General’s Office has so far led nowhere. Now their attorney has filed a civil lawsuit against Simpkins and several other officers who were there that night, along with the Newark Police Department and its police chief, Darnell Henry, and the city of Newark. Robert Tarver is a former state prosecutor. He spoke Sunday to Democracy Now! about how the case seeks punitive damages and accuses police of excessive force.
ROBERT TARVER: We filed a lawsuit seeking damages under what’s called Section 1983 of the United States Code, which says that when an officer, acting under color of state law or federal law, takes a life or uses excessive force, unnecessary force, then he can be held liable for damages. We also sued under the New Jersey Civil Rights Act, which basically says the same thing, that where you violate the New Jersey state Constitution — and clearly they did here, because the Constitution gives you the right to liberty, which is life — when that happens, then we have the right to seek damages. …
Let’s put it into context. January the 6th, 2021, is when insurrection occurred in Washington, D.C. Since that time, we’ve had numerous investigations, numerous arrests. Numerous people have been prosecuted. Some have been to trial. We’re dealing with one incident here in New Jersey. And it’s one incident that is captured on video. And the Attorney General’s Office has done nothing to let this family know what the outcome is of their investigation.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Robert Tarver, the attorney for Carl Dorsey’s family. Democracy Now! spoke to him over the weekend. We also spoke to Carl’s lifelong friend, Nyeemah Dorsey-Bey, who described what it was like to lose him.
NYEEMAH DORSEY-BEY: He was a funny human being. He loved to draw. He loved to be with his family. He always tried to get everybody together for family functions, whether we had a dispute, whether we didn’t talk. He would try to get everybody together. You know what I mean? Because everybody, we only live once, but at the same time, we have to enjoy ourselves and each other while we have that time to do it. You know, Carl was a really strong family structure brother. It’s like there’s no more I can say about that. Like, he was well loved, definitely. He’s the oldest brother out of all of us. I’m the second oldest. I’m about to get emotional, I’m so sorry, because every — just bringing it up just makes me — I’m sorry.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by two guests. In Newark, New Jersey, Madinah Person is the sister of Carl Dorsey, the unarmed African American killed by an undercover Newark police detective on January 1st, 2021. In New York City, Larry Hamm, chair of the People’s Organization for Progress.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Larry, if you can start off by talking about the whole case and the protests that you’ve been holding, demanding answers?
LARRY HAMM: Well, as you know, Amy — and thank you for inviting me on this morning — Carl Dorsey was killed on January 1st, 2021. He was killed by detective Simpkins. And immediately, there were demonstrations organized by groups in Newark, including the People’s Organization for Progress. And since that time, we’ve been working closely with Madinah, who is on this morning, with Carl’s stepdad, Abdul Mohammad, and the family. And we support the family in their struggle for justice.
In New Jersey, there’s an independent prosecutor bill, so when local police kill someone, that case is no longer taken by the county prosecutor. That case is taken over but the Attorney General’s Office. And the Attorney General’s Office has had this case, as you said earlier, Amy, for almost two years, going on 20 months now. In that bill, there are benchmarks where the attorney general is supposed to report his findings. We are well beyond those benchmarks now.
So we’re calling on the attorney general, Matt Platkin, to meet with the family, to meet with Carl Dorsey’s family, and also to report to the community, because this is a concern for the family, but it’s also a concern for the community, and make their findings known. Two years is too long not to hear anything from the attorney general about this case. In addition, we’re calling on the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, who represents the Justice Department, to also look at this case, to in fact see if any of Carl’s civil rights were violated — that is, federal civil rights laws were violated in this case. And lastly, we’re calling on the state Legislature to pass police reform legislation that it has had for two years, including legislation that would enable Newark and other municipalities to establish police review boards with subpoena powers, because we believe, ultimately, the best antidote to police brutality is community control of the police.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Madinah into this conversation. Madinah Person, first of all, our condolences to you. Even as this death happened almost two years ago, I know it is so deeply painful to you right through to today. Can you talk about how you learned that your brother Carl had been killed?
MADINAH PERSON: Sure. Good morning. So, on New Year’s Day, I received a call about 7:30 or so in the morning, and the call was from my sister, Nyeemah. And I thought that she was calling to wish me a happy new year. I spoke to her the night before, around 11 or so o’clock at night, and we both told each other that we would call each other around midnight to wish each other a happy new year. And we didn’t get around to doing that, so the next call I got from her was, again, around 7:30 in the morning.
And I pick up the phone, and she’s crying hysterically. She can barely speak. And I asked her, I said, “What’s wrong?” And when she finally was able to speak, she said, “They killed Carl.” And I said — like, I was just in shock. So, the first thing that I could think of even to say was, I said, you know, “Why are you playing like that? Like, don’t play like that. Stop playing.” And she’s like, “I’m not playing. The Newark police killed Carl.”
And so, mind you, at this time, she was actually living out of state, in Delaware. So she dropped everything that she was doing, too. We decided to meet at my aunt Wanda’s house. The whole family did. So, by the time I got to my Aunt Wanda’s house, my cousin was there, and everyone’s of course hysterical and crying. And for some reason, there was this bit of hope that maybe he wasn’t dead. So, the family was kind of hanging onto that idea. And they wanted me to call the hospital that he supposedly — that I think — the hospital that he was taken to. They wanted me, as his sister, to call the hospital to see if he was in their morgue. And I just — I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to hear that kind of news, and especially not over the phone. But it was later on in the day confirmed that he died.
AMY GOODMAN: Have the state spoken you? I mean, have the Newark police? Have the investigators? What communication have they had with your family, with Carl’s family?
MADINAH PERSON: Absolutely none. I’ve heard from no one, not a police officer, not the Attorney General’s Office. Absolutely no one related to this case has reached out to myself, has reached out to our attorney, has reached out to anyone in our family. We’ve had multiple family members call the Attorney General’s Office, and, again, they have received no information. We have absolutely no details, no — we know nothing about anything that’s going on, if anything is going on. We don’t know anything about any kind of progress. And I know nothing.
AMY GOODMAN: And what are you demanding in this civil lawsuit that has just been filed?
MADINAH PERSON: Well, we’re demanding justice for my brother, and we need people to be accountable for what happened to him. We need the officer who killed him to be held accountable for his actions. We need the Newark Police Department to be held accountable for their inactions in not firing this police officer years ago, because it’s my understanding that he — like, this is a pattern for him. Like, he’s pulled out a gun in plainclothes on civilians before, and he was allowed to still be on the force afterwards, which is unacceptable. And we need the Attorney General’s Office to be held accountable for their — for the lack of discipline from the Newark Police Department.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask Larry Hamm, as we wrap up: What new did you learn from the video that was released? And has officer Simpkins been involved with other cases of misconduct?
LARRY HAMM: Yes, Amy, this officer has been involved in other cases and does have a reputation. And frankly, we call on the city of Newark to fire this officer. We feel that he shouldn’t be on the force. The tape is clear: He shot and killed an unarmed man. He shouldn’t be on the force. So, once again, we’re calling on the attorney general to step forward, to meet with the family. Right now right here I’m calling on Attorney General for New Jersey Matt Platkin to immediately set up a meeting with the family of Carl Dorsey, with Madinah and her sister, his stepdad and any other family members, and meet with them and tell them what’s going on with the case, and then tell the community. In addition, I want to say that we’re going —
AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds.
LARRY HAMM: Yes. We’re going to have a demonstration for Carl Dorsey next Monday, September 19th, 5:00 p.m., in front of the Federal Building, 970 Broad Street in Newark, New Jersey.
AMY GOODMAN: Larry Hamm, I want to thank you for being with us, chair of the People’s Organization for Progress, and Madinah Person, sister of Carl Dorsey, the unarmed Black man killed by an undercover Newark police detective on New Year’s Day 2021.
The majority-Black city of Jackson, Mississippi, is where we head next, where some of the water is on, but it is dark brown. Stay with us.
A man holds a welcome sign at New York City’s Port Authority bus terminal before migrants arrive from Texas on 17 August. (photo: Jeenah Moon/Reuters)
Incident occurred amid growing tension as Republican states bus thousands of asylum seekers to Democratic cities
Meiver Martinez, 21, an asylum seeker from Venezuela, was struck in the face early Wednesday by a city Department of Homeless Services (DHS) officer at the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Armory shelter.
The incident was caught on camera and the officer, who has not been named, was later suspended.
Martinez was also allegedly struck with batons after other officers became involved, according to Martinez, and eyewitnesses. He was taken by ambulance to an area hospital to be treated for his injuries, according to a hospital report.
The physical aggression towards Martinez occurred amid growing tension over thousands of asylum seekers being bussed from some Republican-held states, acting unilaterally, to Democratic-led cities, without any liaison.
After reaching and crossing the US-Mexico border this summer, Martinez had been put on a bus to New York by the Texas authorities, he recounted via an advocate briefing the Guardian, while awaiting the outcome of his attempt to claim asylum.
New York City was among the first to welcome such migrants, with mayor Eric Adams condemning opposition by the Texas Republican governor, Greg Abbott, to providing more options locally.
But the city has struggled to provide adequate, suitable resources. Many have been forced to rely on the already-overcrowded shelter system.
On Thursday, the Washington DC mayor, Muriel Bowser, announced a state of public emergency over migrants who are also being bussed to that city from Texas and Arizona. The week before, 75 such migrants arrived to Chicago.
On Wednesday afternoon, Martinez told the Guardian the incident began after he returned around 6am to the Brooklyn shelter from working a night shift cleaning a school.
While trying to catch up on some sleep, Martinez said an officer on site began jabbing him in the back, apparently prompting him to leave his shelter bed in advance of the 8am checkout.
“When he does that, I get up and tell him he can’t do that, that he’s an official and can’t be hitting us,” said Martinez. “If he wants me to get up, tell me to, but he can’t [do more than that].”
Video of the incident taken by bystanders also shows the officer swearing at Martinez several times, in English, at one point yelling: “Put on your clothes and get the fuck out.”
In response, Martinez becomes angry and repeatedly yells “don’t hit me”, in Spanish, at the officer, gesticulates and kicks a nearby locker. Then, the officer is seen punching Martinez across the face or head.
Martinez speaks little English and also used his native Spanish to talk to advocates, who interpreted for reporters, with the Guardian independently checking the translation of these interviews.
A shelter worker is seen rushing to separate the officer from the resident. Then additional officers were called to the shelter, allegedly pinning down Martinez, hitting him with batons, and tasing him several times. This according to Martinez and several others who witnessed the officers’ behavior towards him, with more bystander video, viewed by the Guardian, appearing to capture some of that subsequent violence.
Eye witnesses also described officers on the scene trying to force them out of the room and take away phones, they told the Guardian.
“They wanted to take my phone, and they wanted me to erase the video … I wouldn’t give them the phone, and they were, like, not letting me go,” said Luis, 21, who was in the room during the incident and spoke via an informal interpreter, and also asked for his last name to be withheld.
Later video footage shared with the Guardian shows Martinez on a gurney, handcuffed behind his back and semi-conscious, being taken to a waiting ambulance.
Martinez later showed the Guardian his injuries, with bruises visible on his abdomen and arm.
The officer who initially hit Martinez was suspended, the New York Times reported.
DHS did not reply to several requests for comment on the officer’s suspension.
The agency also did not comment on accusations that officers attempted to block recording by other residents, and other aspects of the incident.
Ariadna Phillips, from the community group South Bronx Mutual Aid, said: “Every New Yorker should have safe, affordable, permanent housing. Our shelter system is broken.”
Yohandy Echeverria, 27, another Venezuelan who was also in the room during the incident, called the interaction with officers “an abuse of authority”.
“They have a lot of advantage over us,” Echeverria said of shelter authorities.
Several asylum seekers at the Brooklyn shelter told the Guardian on Wednesday, without disclosing their names, that they often wait up to several hours for a limited supply of shelter beds, and accused some staff of routinely yelling at them.
“We don’t really have any choice but to take it,” said Echeverria.
Finding work is difficult, they recounted, as many migrants lack the necessary paperwork to secure jobs.
Often sad and depressed, Echeverria said it’s hard to find enough to eat most days, adding that he’s lost weight since his arrival in the US.
“It’s a very sad situation obviously because many of us fled very difficult, violent situations even to get here,” he said.
He added: “Many of us had to spend days in the jungle, on trains that are dangerous. To flee all of that and to be here in a situation where we’re being treated in this way, is very upsetting. Very surprising.”
The Mexican military has been implicated in human rights abuses, including the disappearance and murder of a group of students in 2014. (photo: Eduardo Verdugo/AP)
The Senate’s 71-51 vote in favour of the bill on Friday comes after the lower house of Congress already approved the measure. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is expected to sign it into law.
When the National Guard was created under a constitutional reform in 2019, it was placed under civilian control – but most of its training and recruitment has been done from within the country’s military.
Lopez Obrador, commonly referred to as AMLO, has waved aside concerns over the increased militarisation of public security, saying the guard must now be under military command to prevent corruption.
But opposition parties have said they plan to file court appeals challenging the new legislation, which they argue violates the Constitutional guarantee on civilian control.
“Public safety is not achieved by violating the rule of law, by violating the Constitution,” said Senator Claudia Anaya Mota of the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
The Mexican military has been criticised for a record of abuses and rights groups have warned that removing civilian control over the National Guard could lead to similar violations.
“We have already seen the disastrous results of the militarization of public security forces in Mexico over the last 16 years,” Edith Olivares Ferreto, executive director of Amnesty International Mexico, said in a statement on Friday, criticising the Senate’s decision.
“We call on the executive branch to design a plan for the progressive withdrawal of the armed forces from the streets, prioritizing the strengthening of civilian police forces and the development of public prevention policies aimed at guaranteeing public safety.”
Nada Al-Nashif, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, also said that “the reforms effectively leave Mexico without a civilian police force at the federal level, and further consolidate the already prominent role of the armed forces in security in Mexico”.
“The security forces should be subordinated under civilian authorities,” Al-Nashif said in a statement.
But Lopez Obrador on Friday lashed out at critics, including the United Nations.
“When did the United Nations take a stand?” he said during a regular news conference, questioning what the body had done to prevent war from breaking out between Russia and Ukraine.
“These organisations that supposedly defend human rights, almost all these organisations are made up of people on the right from different countries of the world … because they earn a lot of money for simulating, for pretending, for being go-betweens for authoritarian governments,” he said.
Mexico has seen record levels of violence in recent years, and members of the opposition and activists have accused the National Guard of various cases of abuse.
The ranks of the National Guard, made up of more than 110,000 members, are largely filled with members of the army and marines. Those officers retained their place in the military and were considered on loan to the guard.
Before coming to power in 2018, Lopez Obrador had pledged to send the military back to the barracks. But he has tasked them with a wide variety of assignments, including fighting drug cartels, helping with various infrastructure projects, such as a new airport in the capital, and building bank branches in rural areas.
Late last month, a Truth Commission investigating the 2014 disappearance of 43 students said that six of the students were handed over to an army commander who ordered that they be killed. The shocking revelation directly tied the military to one of Mexico’s worst human rights scandals.
Colorado River. (photo: Hugh Carey/AP)
The intensifying crisis facing the Colorado River amounts to what is fundamentally a math problem.
The 40 million people who depend on the river to fill up a glass of water at the dinner table or wash their clothes or grow food across millions of acres use significantly more each year than actually flows through the banks of the Colorado.
In fact, first sliced up 100 years ago in a document known as the Colorado River Compact, the calculation of who gets what amount of that water may never have been balanced.
“The framers of the compact — and water leaders since then — have always either known or had access to the information that the allocations they were making were more than what the river could supply,” said Anne Castle, a senior fellow at the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado Law School.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of a collaborative series on the Colorado River as the 100th anniversary of the historic Colorado River Compact approaches. The Associated Press, The Colorado Sun, The Albuquerque Journal, The Salt Lake Tribune, The Arizona Daily Star and The Nevada Independent are working together to explore the pressures on the river in 2022.
During the past two decades, however, the situation on the Colorado River has become significantly more unbalanced, more dire.
A drought scientists now believe is the driest 22-year stretch in the past 1,200 years has gripped the southwestern U.S., zapping flows in the river. What’s more, people continue to move to this part of the country. Arizona, Utah and Nevada all rank among the top 10 fastest growing states, according to U.S. Census data.
While Wyoming and New Mexico aren’t growing as quickly, residents watch as two key reservoirs — popular recreation destinations — are drawn down to prop up Lake Powell. Meanwhile, southern California’s Imperial Irrigation District uses more water than Arizona and Nevada combined, but stresses their essential role providing cattle feed and winter produce to the nation.
Until recently, water managers and politicians whose constituents rely on the river have avoided the most difficult questions about how to rebalance a system in which demand far outpaces supply. Instead, water managers have drained the country’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, faster than Mother Nature refills them.
In 2000, both reservoirs were about 95% full. Today, Mead and Powell are each about 27% full — once-healthy savings accounts now dangerously low.
The reservoirs are now so low that this summer Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton testified before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that between 2 million and 4 million acre-feet would need to be cut next year to prevent the system from reaching “critically low water levels,” threatening reservoir infrastructure and hydropower production.
The commissioner set an August deadline for the basin states to come up with options for potential water cuts. The Upper Basin states — Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming — submitted a plan. The Lower Basin states — California, Arizona and Nevada — did not submit a combined plan.
The bureau threatened unilateral action in lieu of a basin-wide plan. When the 60-day deadline arrived, however, it did not announce any new water cuts. Instead, the bureau announced that predetermined water cuts for Arizona, Nevada and Mexico had kicked in and gave the states more time to come up with a basin-wide agreement.
STILL LEFT OUT
A week before Touton’s deadline, the representatives of 14 Native American tribes with water rights on the river sent the Bureau of Reclamation a letter expressing concern about being left out of the negotiating process.
“What is being discussed behind closed doors among the United States and the Basin States will likely have a direct impact on Basin Tribes’ water rights and other resources and we expect and demand that you protect our interests,” tribal representatives wrote.
Being left out of Colorado River talks is not a new problem for the tribes in the Colorado River Basin.
The initial compact was negotiated and signed on Nov. 24, 1922, by seven land-owning white men, who brokered the deal to benefit people who looked like them, said Jennifer Pitt of the National Audubon Society, who is working to restore rivers throughout the basin.
“They divided the water among themselves and their constituents without recognizing water needs for Mexico, the water needs of Native American tribes who were living in their midst and without recognizing the needs of the environment,” Pitt said.
Mexico, through which the tail of the Colorado meanders before trickling into the Pacific Ocean, secured its supply through a treaty in 1944. The treaty granted 1.5 million acre-feet on top of the original 15 million acre-feet that had already been divided, 7.5 million each for the Upper and Lower Basins.
Tribes, however, still don’t have full access to the Colorado River. Although the compact briefly noted that tribal rights predate all others, it lacked specificity, forcing individual tribes to negotiate settlements or file lawsuits to quantify those rights, many of which are still unresolved. It’s important to recognize the relationship between Native and non-Native people at that time, said Daryl Vigil, water administrator for the Jicarilla Apache Nation in New Mexico.
“In 1922, my tribe was subsistence living,” Vigil said. “The only way we could survive was through government rations on a piece of land that wasn’t our traditional homeland. That’s where we were at when the foundational law of the river was created.”
COMPETING INTERESTS
Agriculture uses the majority of the water on the river, around 70% or 80% depending on what organization is making the estimate. When it comes to the difficult question of how to reduce water use, farmers and ranchers are often looked to first.
Some pilot programs have focused on paying farmers to use less water, but unanswered questions remain about how to transfer the savings to Lake Powell for storage or how to create a program in a way that would not negatively impact a farmer’s water rights.
Antiquated state laws mean the amount of water that a water right gives someone access to can be decreased if not fully used.
That’s why the Camblin family ranch in Craig in northwest Colorado plans to flood irrigate once a decade, despite recently upgrading to an expensive, water-conserving pivot irrigation system. Nine years out of 10, they’ll receive payment from a conservation group in exchange for leaving the surplus water in the river. But in Colorado, the state revokes water rights after 10 years if they aren’t used.
Not only would losing that right mean they can’t access a backup water supply should their pivot system fail, but their property’s value would plummet, Mike Camblin explained. He runs a yearling cattle operation with his wife and daughter, and says an acre of land without water sells for $1,000, about a fifth of what it would sell for with a water right attached.
There are other ways to improve efficiency, but money is still often a barrier.
Wastewater recycling is growing across the region, albeit slowly, as it requires massive infrastructure overhauls. San Diego built a robust desalination plant to turn seawater to drinking water, and yet some agricultural users are trying to get out of their contract since the water is so expensive. Some cities are integrating natural wastewater filtration into their landscaping before the water flows back to the river. It’s all feasible, but is costly, and those costs often get passed directly to water users.
One of the biggest opportunities for water conservation is changing the way our landscapes look, said Lindsay Rogers, a water policy analyst at Western Resource Advocates, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting water and land in the West.
Converting a significant amount of outdoor landscaping to more drought-tolerant plants would require a combination of policies and incentives, Rogers explained. “Those are going to be really critical to closing our supply-demand gap.”
After years of incentive programs for residents, Las Vegas recently outlawed all nonfunctional grass by 2026, setting a blueprint for other Western communities. For years, the city has also paid residents to rip out their lawns.
In Denver, Denver Water supplies about 25% of the state’s population and uses about 2% of the water. The city has had mandatory restrictions in place for years, limiting home irrigation to three days per week.
This summer, in southern California, the Metropolitan Water District instituted an unprecedented one-day-a-week water restriction.
Still, regardless of the type of water use, more concessions must be made.
“The law of the river is not suited to what the river has become and what we see it increasingly becoming,” Audubon’s Pitt said. “It was built on the expectation of a larger water supply than we have.”
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
Comments
Post a Comment