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Immigrant Rights Advocates Mark Father’s Day with Vigils & Visits at Detention Centers

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By Jessica Corbett / Common Dreams

As families across the United States celebrated Father’s Day on Sunday, immigrants and advocates held a vigil at the Ursula Border Patrol Processing Center in South McAllen, Texas to express support for children who were torn from their asylum-seeking parents at the Southern border and are now being held in the facility.

In the just six weeks since President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions imposed a “cruel” so-called zero-tolerance policy that enables federal immigration agents to separate families at the border—to prosecute the parents and detain the children—Department of Homeland Security (DHS) records recently obtained by journalists show that nearly 2,000 children have been taken into custody.

“We are witnessing a whole new level of attack on migrant families,” said People’s Action director George Goehl, who attended the vigil in Texas.   [Read more…]

Immigrant Children’s Detention Center in Texas Displays Ominous Trump Mural

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By Julia Conley / Common Dreams

Children who are taken to the former Walmart which now serves as a detention center for young immigrants in Brownsville, Texas, are greeted by a mural of the man responsible for their incarceration—President Donald Trump.

MSNBC journalist Jacob Soboroff was given a tour of the facility, now known as Casa Padre. He shared images of the mural, which includes the quotation, “Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.”   [Read more…]

The More Things Change: Tulsa’s Race Massacre History Books Turned Into A Race “Riot”

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By Abby Zimet / Common Dreams

Lessons from the past: Last week marked the 97th anniversary of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s 1921 Race Massacre, wherein mobs of white vigilantes, abetted by complicit government and law enforcement officials, looted, burned, bombed from the air and virtually destroyed the black, thriving, middle-class Greenwood community widely known as Negro Wall Street, in the process killing at least 300 of its 10,000 black residents, and likely many more.

Then perhaps America’s most preeminent, albeit segregated, black community, Greenwood was created by post-World-War-One blacks fleeing the Deep South; divided by railroad tracks from white Tulsa, they built scores of black-owned businesses, hotels, restaurants and law offices, as well as a library and hospital even as racial hostilities, lynchings and the ranks of Klan members grew — in Tulsa, to over 3,200.   [Read more…]

Anthony Bourdain—’As Honest and Fearless in His Words as He Was in His Travels’

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By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams

Celebrated chef, television host, and writer Anthony Bourdain—whose global travels brought an American audience perspectives on the food and political climates of Laos, Africa, the occupied Gaza Strip, and other distant cultures that are rarely depicted on major television networks—has died of apparent suicide at the age of 61.

“It is with extraordinary sadness we can confirm the death of our friend and colleague, Anthony Bourdain,” CNN, which has aired Bourdain’s show “Parts Unknown” since 2013, said in a statement Friday morning. “His love of great adventure, new friends, fine food and drink, and the remarkable stories of the world made him a unique storyteller. His talents never ceased to amaze us and we will miss him very much.”

While Bourdain’s shows and writings were ostensibly centered on his experience of strange, exotic, and extraordinary food across the globe, he frequently offered incisive and deeply humane political commentary that laid waste to conventional narratives and held the powerful to account for their crimes.   [Read more…]

Dear Betsy DeVos, I Will *Never* Report My Students to Immigration and Customs Enforcement

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By Steven Singer / Common Dreams

Teachers fill a lot of roles in our public schools.

We’re mentors to kids in need. We’re aides to students struggling with new concepts and skills. We’re homework-givers, pencil-providers, idea-encouragers, lunch-buyers, scrape-bandagers, hand-holders, hug-givers, good listeners, counselors, caregivers and – yes – sometimes even butt-kickers.

It’s no wonder that we occasionally get mistaken for mothers and fathers.

But one thing we will never be is a snitch.   [Read more…]

War and Moral Injury

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Veterans often wrestle with the things they’ve done in war. When will ordinary Americans do the same?

By Saurav Sarkar / OtherWords

“As a sniper I was not usually the victim of a traumatic event, but the perpetrator of violence and death,” recalled Garrett Reppenhegen of Iraq Veterans Against the War in an essay for Salon.

“My actions in combat would have been more acceptable to me if I could cloak myself in the belief that the whole mission was for a greater good,” he reflected. “Instead, I watched as the purpose of the mission slowly unraveled.”

These words illustrate the concept of moral injury — where a soldier’s conscience has been shaken by what he or she has done, resulting in lasting trauma.

For so many of us, war is something that happens somewhere else. It’s a television news update or a click on the screen, at worst. The real costs of U.S. wars happen to other people, in other places.

Will ordinary Americans ever have to reckon with moral injury?   [Read more…]

As Monsanto Glyphosate Case Moves to Trial, Man Dying of Cancer Gets Day in Court

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By Jessica Corbett / Common Dreams

A California man dying of cancer will soon become the first person ever to take agrochemical giant Monsanto to trial over allegations that the company has concealed findings that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the company’s popular weedkiller Roundup, causes cancer.

Before DeWayne Johnson, a 46-year-old father of three, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma at the age of 42, he worked for a school district in California, “where his responsibilities included direct application of Roundup and RangerPro, another Monsanto glyphosate product, to school properties,” according to his “landmark” lawsuit (pdf).

“Monsanto does not want the truth about Roundup and cancer to become public,” Johnson’s attorney, Michael Miller, told the Guardian. “We look forward to exposing how Monsanto hid the risk of cancer and polluted the science.”   [Read more…]

A Net Neutrality Vote in the House of Representatives Needs a Push from You

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By Ernesto Falcon / Common Dreams

The United States Senate has voted to overturn the FCC and restore net neutrality protections, the fate of that measure currently rests in the House of Representatives. While many will think that the uphill battle there makes it a lost cause, that is simply not true. Together, we have the power to win in the House of Representatives.

Now that the Senate has officially voted 52-47 to reverse the FCC’s so-called “Restoring Internet Freedom Order”  under an expedited procedure known as the Congressional Review Act (CRA). It is now pending a vote in the House of Representatives. And while many will incorrectly assume since House Republican leadership has expressed their opposition to ever voting on net neutrality, nothing will come of it, the wishes of the leadership are frankly irrelevant.

What actually matters is whether 218 members of the House of Representatives from either party want to vote to protect net neutrality through a process called a “discharge petition.”   [Read more…]

Democrats Act to Avoid Disaster in 49th, Other Key California House Races

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By David Nir / Daily Kos 

As they previously had in California’s 39th District, the DCCC (aka D-Trip) is getting involved in the 48th and 49th Districts as well, running TV and radio ads to make sure Democrats don’t get locked out of next month’s top-two primary. And as before, the committee is targeting Republicans rather than taking sides among the Democratic candidates.

In the 48th, located along the Orange County coast in Southern California, the D-Trip goes after former county GOP chair Scott Baugh, saying he was accused of credit card fraud and was “charged with four felonies in connection with an investigation into an election-rigging scheme.” Unmentioned, of course, is that those charges were ultimately dropped, though the ad notes that Baugh did have to pay almost $48,000 in fines to settle the matter. According to The Hill, the DCCC is spending $407,000 to air this spot, with another $169,000 on the radio.

Meanwhile, in the 49th, which is based in the San Diego suburbs, the committee is attacking Assemblyman Rocky Chavez, accusing him of breaking his promises to “never raise taxes” and “oppose wasteful spending.” The Hill says that there’s $524,000 behind this ad.   [Read more…]

DeVos ‘Corruption Racket’ Continues as Education Dept Shuts Down Probes Into Predatory Colleges

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“The U.S. Department of Education sells out to the for-profit college industry.”

By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams

Continuing her policy of turning a blind eye to the predatory behavior of private colleges at the expense of defrauded students, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has reportedly derailed a special investigative unit within her department that was tasked with probing abuses by for-profit schools.

According to the New York Times, which first reported on DeVos’s efforts Sunday, members of the team—established at the tail-end of the Obama administration—”have been marginalized, reassigned, or instructed to focus on other matters, according to current and former employees.”

“The unwinding of the team has effectively killed investigations into possibly fraudulent activities at several large for-profit colleges where top hires of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, had previously worked,” including DeVry Education Group, the Times reports.

  [Read more…]

Charter Schools Threaten the Existence of Public Education

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Privately-run, mostly taxpayer-funded schools financially harm public education.

By Jeff Bryant / People’s Action Blog

Proclaiming May 6-12 National Charter Schools Week, President Trump kicked off a huge public relations campaign by the charter industry to ballyhoo the supposed success of these schools, although that success is a matter of bitter and ongoing dispute.

But one outcome of these privately-run, mostly taxpayer-funded schools certainly produce is they financially harm the public education system.

“The term ‘existential threat’ is way overused, but charters and vouchers really are a threat to the existence of public education,” Brad Miller tells me. Miller is a highly-rated practicing attorney and a former U.S. House of Representative from North Carolina.

While in office, he warned Congress of the risks of the subprime mortgage market in 2004, five years before that market melted and brought about the collapse of the housing loan and banking industry and the Great Recession.

The facts back Miller up.   [Read more…]

The Trump Administration’s Stupefying Hypocrisy About the Well-Being of Children

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By Abby Zimet / Common Dreams

In another day of unfathomable cognitive dissonance, a blindingly heedless Melania unveiled her (stolen-from-Obama) initiative to keep kids safe from cyber-bullying and drugs so they can “do all they can to be best in everything” even as, in a galaxy really not very far from there, the soulless cretins of her philandering husband’s administration were doing everything in their depraved power to make life hell for said children.

Melania’s “Be Best” campaign – proving she can multi-task by both plagiarizing and committing heinous crimes against grammar – is based on “the pillars of well-being, social media and opioid abuse” (wait, what?), featuring a website and leaflet that turns out to be a page-by-page replica of an Obama-era Federal Trade Commission website and leaflet “Net Cetera: Chatting with Kids About Being Online,” with very minor tweaks.   [Read more…]

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