Togo : Fifth Review under the Extended Credit Facility Arrangement-Press Release; Staff Report and Statement by the Executive Director for Togo
Published October 31, 2019 at 07:00AM Read more at imf.org
Why have a forum on reparations in Charleston and why now?
This year marks 400 years since enslaved, kidnapped people were purchased by the forefathers and – mothers of America. Are the events that began 400 years ago connected to today? William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
The event will be held on Saturday, November 2nd at 1 pm at the Gaillard Center in Charleston, South Carolina.
Why Charleston?
The first step to any successful reparations program is a reckoning – acknowledging and addressing the effects of past mistakes. When you attempt to understand America’s 246-year history of enslaving Black people, it is critical to understand that the Civil War didn’t end white supremacy in America. Rather, it heralded in a new era of white supremacy in different forms – Jim Crow Laws and Black Codes, “separate but equal” being affirmed by the Supreme Court, redlining to prevent Blacks from becoming homeowners and the war on drugs ushering in mass incarceration. When trying to understand how these legacies of white supremacy have impacted America in 2019, there is no better place to begin than Charleston.
The American Slave Coast by Ned and Constance Sublette explains how Charleston played a key role in the two primary phases of the slave trade. Charleston’s location was an ideal landing place for ships carrying human cargo during the importation phase, which lasted until around 1808. The domestic breeding stage, which began after America outlawed the importation of enslaved people, helped maintain the slave populations through the mass rape of Black women to produce new slaves. . The American Slave Coast reminds us that many white plantation owners used the term “natural increase” to describe this horrific practice. The International African American Museum estimates that 80 percent of African Americans can trace their roots back to Charleston.
Founded in 1670, Charleston was the 5th largest city in the country just 30 years later in 1700. By 1708, a census found that South Carolina was 42.5 percent white, 42.5 percent Black, and 15 percent enslaved Native American.
While the existence of slavery was never a question to the new American nation, who was going to profit from slavery was a matter of great concern. The newly ratified United States Constitution guaranteed that the “Migration or Importation of such persons” (enslaved human beings) could not be prohibited by Congress until 1808.
South Carolina was concerned that although a state could not pass a law prohibiting the trade until 1808, the Constitution itself could be amended before then South Carolina was concerned that because a state could not pass a law prohibiting the trade until 1808, the Constitution would be amended before then. South Carolina doubled down to protect its interests and found its answer in Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution which prevented any amendment of Article 1 Section 9 until 1808. Not surprisingly, in 1807, South Carolina merchants imported the highest volume of enslaved people in any one-year period in the history of the North American slave trade.
The trade routes and contacts that were used during the international trade continued to create wealth and privilege for white people in Charleston even after the international slave trade ended, via the domestic slave trade.
Charleston’s recent apology for the role it played in the buying and selling of enslaved people in America is a start, but not enough. If Charleston – and America – is to truly have a reckoning with our past, action must follow the apology. For example, Charleston’s segregated schools and neighborhoods withstood the test of civil rights laws and the Fair Housing Act, and Charleston is still one of the most segregated cities in America. A jury in North Charleston refused to convict the police officer who murdered Walter Scott. Most recently, the murder of nine innocent African American churchgoers at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston are still painfully fresh in our collective consciousness.
Charleston continues to be proud of John C. Calhoun, who was a prominent South Carolina politician for almost three decades. Calhoun also was a proud racist who made it clear that he saw a major difference between white people and Black people being quoted as saying, “with us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and the poor, but white and black; and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals, if honest and industrious; and hence have a position and pride of character of which neither poverty nor misfortune can deprive them.”” Calhoun also believed that the freedom of one race depended on the bondage of the other. “I fearlessly assert that the existing relation between the two races in the South, against which these blind fanatics are waging war, forms the most solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable political institutions.”
The Gaillard Center in downtown Charleston, where this forum will be hosted, shares a disturbing commonality with Mother Emanuel AME Church – they are both located on Calhoun Street. The remains of enslaved people were also found in the 2013 structural renovations of the Gaillard Center. It’s clear that in Charleston, the past is not dead – it’s alive and well.
Why Now?
The arguments in favor of reparations have been known and recognized for decades. Individual efforts began immediately following the Civil War. Members of the National African American Reparations Commission have fought for reparations since before Representative John Conyers introduced H.R. 40 for the first time in 1988. This is not a new struggle, so what is different now?
The advocacy of those who have been engaged in the struggle for reparations for decades have worked like water on stone, never letting the potential promise of reparations die. Additionally, new voices have added to the movement for America’s reckoning with its past. Ta-Nehisi Coates article “The Case for Reparations” continues to impact people. Groups like Movement for Black Lives and efforts like The 1619 Project from the New York Times have brought new ideas to the table. H.R. 40 now has 118 cosponsors – before this year it never had more than 52.
Much of the critique of the renewed light shone on the history of enslaved people by projects like the New York Times 1619 Project can be put into two broad categories: 1) Why do you hate America? 2) Reparations would unfairly hold people accountable for something they never did or benefitted from. Here is why both are wrong.
Some people confuse critiquing America with hating America. True love allows for and encourages criticism, especially when it relates to an issue like racial justice. The refusal to look at our history and our present circumstance in order to find the unvarnished truth is a betrayal of the principles our country claims to hold dear. At the end of the day, you cannot support reparations unless you truly love America. Not a superficial love, but rather the kind of love that demands that we face the truth because we will be better for it.
What about the complaint that the Civil War ended 154 years ago and Blacks in America need to get over it? Our history is full of proof that demonstrates the legacy of slavery has had a continual impact on criminal law, economic and educational opportunity, access to quality health care, and housing in America. This objection is countered by the provisions of H.R. 40. Before there can be any recommendations about reparations, a committee will have to investigate our history to see if the facts justify a system of reparations and let the truth come out.
In We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke to the true reason why a caricature has been made of the movement for reparations. He said, “Mocking of reparations as a harebrained scheme authored by wild-eyed lefties and intellectually unserious black nationalists is fear masquerading as laughter”. It’s time for our country to quit hiding behind that mask of fear and finally reckon with our past.
Published November 1, 2019 at 01:27AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2BWnHmm
Why have a forum on reparations in Charleston and why now?
This year marks 400 years since enslaved, kidnapped people were purchased by the forefathers and – mothers of America. Are the events that began 400 years ago connected to today? William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
The event will be held on Saturday, November 2nd at 1 pm at the Gaillard Center in Charleston, South Carolina.
Why Charleston?
The first step to any successful reparations program is a reckoning – acknowledging and addressing the effects of past mistakes. When you attempt to understand America’s 246-year history of enslaving Black people, it is critical to understand that the Civil War didn’t end white supremacy in America. Rather, it heralded in a new era of white supremacy in different forms – Jim Crow Laws and Black Codes, “separate but equal” being affirmed by the Supreme Court, redlining to prevent Blacks from becoming homeowners and the war on drugs ushering in mass incarceration. When trying to understand how these legacies of white supremacy have impacted America in 2019, there is no better place to begin than Charleston.
The American Slave Coast by Ned and Constance Sublette explains how Charleston played a key role in the two primary phases of the slave trade. Charleston’s location was an ideal landing place for ships carrying human cargo during the importation phase, which lasted until around 1808. The domestic breeding stage, which began after America outlawed the importation of enslaved people, helped maintain the slave populations through the mass rape of Black women to produce new slaves. . The American Slave Coast reminds us that many white plantation owners used the term “natural increase” to describe this horrific practice. The International African American Museum estimates that 80 percent of African Americans can trace their roots back to Charleston.
Founded in 1670, Charleston was the 5th largest city in the country just 30 years later in 1700. By 1708, a census found that South Carolina was 42.5 percent white, 42.5 percent Black, and 15 percent enslaved Native American.
While the existence of slavery was never a question to the new American nation, who was going to profit from slavery was a matter of great concern. The newly ratified United States Constitution guaranteed that the “Migration or Importation of such persons” (enslaved human beings) could not be prohibited by Congress until 1808.
South Carolina was concerned that although a state could not pass a law prohibiting the trade until 1808, the Constitution itself could be amended before then South Carolina was concerned that because a state could not pass a law prohibiting the trade until 1808, the Constitution would be amended before then. South Carolina doubled down to protect its interests and found its answer in Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution which prevented any amendment of Article 1 Section 9 until 1808. Not surprisingly, in 1807, South Carolina merchants imported the highest volume of enslaved people in any one-year period in the history of the North American slave trade.
The trade routes and contacts that were used during the international trade continued to create wealth and privilege for white people in Charleston even after the international slave trade ended, via the domestic slave trade.
Charleston’s recent apology for the role it played in the buying and selling of enslaved people in America is a start, but not enough. If Charleston – and America – is to truly have a reckoning with our past, action must follow the apology. For example, Charleston’s segregated schools and neighborhoods withstood the test of civil rights laws and the Fair Housing Act, and Charleston is still one of the most segregated cities in America. A jury in North Charleston refused to convict the police officer who murdered Walter Scott. Most recently, the murder of nine innocent African American churchgoers at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston are still painfully fresh in our collective consciousness.
Charleston continues to be proud of John C. Calhoun, who was a prominent South Carolina politician for almost three decades. Calhoun also was a proud racist who made it clear that he saw a major difference between white people and Black people being quoted as saying, “with us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and the poor, but white and black; and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals, if honest and industrious; and hence have a position and pride of character of which neither poverty nor misfortune can deprive them.”” Calhoun also believed that the freedom of one race depended on the bondage of the other. “I fearlessly assert that the existing relation between the two races in the South, against which these blind fanatics are waging war, forms the most solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable political institutions.”
The Gaillard Center in downtown Charleston, where this forum will be hosted, shares a disturbing commonality with Mother Emanuel AME Church – they are both located on Calhoun Street. The remains of enslaved people were also found in the 2013 structural renovations of the Gaillard Center. It’s clear that in Charleston, the past is not dead – it’s alive and well.
Why Now?
The arguments in favor of reparations have been known and recognized for decades. Individual efforts began immediately following the Civil War. Members of the National African American Reparations Commission have fought for reparations since before Representative John Conyers introduced H.R. 40 for the first time in 1988. This is not a new struggle, so what is different now?
The advocacy of those who have been engaged in the struggle for reparations for decades have worked like water on stone, never letting the potential promise of reparations die. Additionally, new voices have added to the movement for America’s reckoning with its past. Ta-Nehisi Coates article “The Case for Reparations” continues to impact people. Groups like Movement for Black Lives and efforts like The 1619 Project from the New York Times have brought new ideas to the table. H.R. 40 now has 118 cosponsors – before this year it never had more than 52.
Much of the critique of the renewed light shone on the history of enslaved people by projects like the New York Times 1619 Project can be put into two broad categories: 1) Why do you hate America? 2) Reparations would unfairly hold people accountable for something they never did or benefitted from. Here is why both are wrong.
Some people confuse critiquing America with hating America. True love allows for and encourages criticism, especially when it relates to an issue like racial justice. The refusal to look at our history and our present circumstance in order to find the unvarnished truth is a betrayal of the principles our country claims to hold dear. At the end of the day, you cannot support reparations unless you truly love America. Not a superficial love, but rather the kind of love that demands that we face the truth because we will be better for it.
What about the complaint that the Civil War ended 154 years ago and Blacks in America need to get over it? Our history is full of proof that demonstrates the legacy of slavery has had a continual impact on criminal law, economic and educational opportunity, access to quality health care, and housing in America. This objection is countered by the provisions of H.R. 40. Before there can be any recommendations about reparations, a committee will have to investigate our history to see if the facts justify a system of reparations and let the truth come out.
In We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke to the true reason why a caricature has been made of the movement for reparations. He said, “Mocking of reparations as a harebrained scheme authored by wild-eyed lefties and intellectually unserious black nationalists is fear masquerading as laughter”. It’s time for our country to quit hiding behind that mask of fear and finally reckon with our past.
Published October 31, 2019 at 07:57PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2BWnHmm
Abortion is legal in all 50 states, and we intend to keep it that way.
On Tuesday, a federal court issued a decision in our challenge to Alabama’s near-total ban on abortion blocking the law from taking effect. The decision comes on the heels of similar rulings blocking abortion bans in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, and Utah. In other words, the ACLU has an undefeated, 7-0 record challenging state abortion bans in court. None of the state abortion bans passed earlier this year will be permitted to take effect. Abortion is – and will remain – legal in all 50 states.
The Alabama ban, like all the others, is the anti-abortion movement’s true agenda on full display—ban abortion, punish women, jail doctors, and shame people seeking care. The politicians who pass these bans are part of a concerted, national effort to unravel access to abortion and ultimately the legal right to it. Despite strong public support for safe, supported abortion care, these politicians hope that the balance of the Supreme Court has turned against abortion rights with enough votes to aggressively and systematically dismantle abortion access.
Not on our watch.
The bans, however, are by no means the only threat to abortion access in this country. We cannot lose sight of the fact that politicians can effectively outlaw abortion for thousands of people without having to overturn Roe v. Wade. Take Louisiana, for example, where the Supreme Court is considering a law requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a local hospital – a law virtually identical to the one the Supreme Court already struck down in 2016 in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt. If the Court allows the Louisiana law to take effect, it would shutter all the clinics in the state except for one.
Indeed, across the country, politicians have created a web of medically unnecessary, politically-motivated restrictions that push abortion care out of reach for many, but particularly for low-income people, young people, and people of color. Since 2011, state legislators across the country have passed 479 such restrictions, leaving increasingly vast areas of our country with few or no abortion providers at all. Today, there is only one clinic left standing in Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, and West Virginia. These restrictions, whether they ban certain methods, require a patient have multiple visits, or require clinics to set up hospital-like facilities, have nothing to do with women’s health or safe care and everything to do with making abortion nearly impossible to obtain.
Whether it’s an outright ban or a more subtle attempt to push abortion out of reach, my colleagues and I will continue takingthesestates to court to make sure that abortion care with dignity and respect remains available to all.
But let’s not stop there. Alabama has the second-highest infant mortality in the country. Georgia, another state that passed a law banning abortion, has the highest maternal mortality rate in the country. If legislators in these states really cared about women, children, and families, they would address those life-threatening issues, not try to pass laws that force people to remain pregnant against their will.
Legal victories are critical and important, but justice requires more. Instead of criminalizing health care, interfering with personal decisions, and substituting political agendas for the expertise of health care professionals, our politicians should be doing everything they can to ensure people can have healthy pregnancies and healthy deliveries, to ensure that people can raise their families in safe communities, without fear of violence, wanting for food or shelter, access to childcare, jobs, and education. That would be more than a victory—it would be justice.
Published November 1, 2019 at 12:29AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/321z1rR
Abortion is legal in all 50 states, and we intend to keep it that way.
On Tuesday, a federal court issued a decision in our challenge to Alabama’s near-total ban on abortion blocking the law from taking effect. The decision comes on the heels of similar rulings blocking abortion bans in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, and Utah. In other words, the ACLU has an undefeated, 7-0 record challenging state abortion bans in court. None of the state abortion bans passed earlier this year will be permitted to take effect. Abortion is – and will remain – legal in all 50 states.
The Alabama ban, like all the others, is the anti-abortion movement’s true agenda on full display—ban abortion, punish women, jail doctors, and shame people seeking care. The politicians who pass these bans are part of a concerted, national effort to unravel access to abortion and ultimately the legal right to it. Despite strong public support for safe, supported abortion care, these politicians hope that the balance of the Supreme Court has turned against abortion rights with enough votes to aggressively and systematically dismantle abortion access.
Not on our watch.
The bans, however, are by no means the only threat to abortion access in this country. We cannot lose sight of the fact that politicians can effectively outlaw abortion for thousands of people without having to overturn Roe v. Wade. Take Louisiana, for example, where the Supreme Court is considering a law requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a local hospital – a law virtually identical to the one the Supreme Court already struck down in 2016 in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt. If the Court allows the Louisiana law to take effect, it would shutter all the clinics in the state except for one.
Indeed, across the country, politicians have created a web of medically unnecessary, politically-motivated restrictions that push abortion care out of reach for many, but particularly for low-income people, young people, and people of color. Since 2011, state legislators across the country have passed 479 such restrictions, leaving increasingly vast areas of our country with few or no abortion providers at all. Today, there is only one clinic left standing in Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, and West Virginia. These restrictions, whether they ban certain methods, require a patient have multiple visits, or require clinics to set up hospital-like facilities, have nothing to do with women’s health or safe care and everything to do with making abortion nearly impossible to obtain.
Whether it’s an outright ban or a more subtle attempt to push abortion out of reach, my colleagues and I will continue takingthesestates to court to make sure that abortion care with dignity and respect remains available to all.
But let’s not stop there. Alabama has the second-highest infant mortality in the country. Georgia, another state that passed a law banning abortion, has the highest maternal mortality rate in the country. If legislators in these states really cared about women, children, and families, they would address those life-threatening issues, not try to pass laws that force people to remain pregnant against their will.
Legal victories are critical and important, but justice requires more. Instead of criminalizing health care, interfering with personal decisions, and substituting political agendas for the expertise of health care professionals, our politicians should be doing everything they can to ensure people can have healthy pregnancies and healthy deliveries, to ensure that people can raise their families in safe communities, without fear of violence, wanting for food or shelter, access to childcare, jobs, and education. That would be more than a victory—it would be justice.
Published October 31, 2019 at 06:59PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/321z1rR
The FBI is Tracking Our Faces in Secret. We’re Suing.
Many of us wear masks on Halloween for fun. But what about a world in which we have to wear a mask every single day to preserve our privacy from the government’s oppressive eye?
Face recognition surveillance technology has already made that frightening world a reality in Hong Kong, and it’s quickly becoming a scary possibility in the United States.
The FBI is currently collecting data about our faces, irises, walking patterns, and voices, permitting the government to pervasively identify, track, and monitor us. The agency can match or request a match of our faces against at least 640 million images of adults living in the U.S. And it is reportedly piloting Amazon’s flawed face recognition surveillance technology.
Face and other biometric surveillance technologies can enable undetectable, persistent, and suspicionless surveillance on an unprecedented scale. When placed in the hands of the FBI — an unaccountable, deregulated, secretive intelligence agency with an unresolved history of anti-Black racism — there is even more reason for alarm. And when that agency stonewalls our requests for information about how its agents are tracking and monitoring our faces, we should all be concerned.
That’s why today we’re asking a federal court to intervene and order the FBI and related agencies to turn over all records concerning their use of face recognition technology.
The FBI’s troubling political policing practices underscore the urgent need for transparency. Under the leadership of the agency’s patriarch — the disgraced J. Edgar Hoover — the FBI obsessively spied on left-wing, Indigenous rights, anti-war, and Black power activists across the country. Hoover infamously tried to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr., encouraging the civil rights leader to kill himself to avoid the shame Hoover’s leaks to journalists would bring to him and his family. The FBI was also involved in the 1969 killing of Fred Hampton, a brilliant Chicago leader in the Black Panther Party who was assassinated by Chicago Police while he lay asleep in his bed next to his pregnant girlfriend.
While Hoover’s reign may be history, the FBI’s campaign against domestic dissent is not.
Since at least 2010, the FBI has monitored civil society groups, including racial justice movements, Occupy Wall Street, environmentalists, Palestinian solidarity activists, Abolish ICE protesters, and Cuba and Iran normalization proponents. In recent years, the FBI has wasted considerable resources to spy on Black activists, who the agency labeled “Black Identity Extremists” to justify even more surveillance of the Black Lives Matter movement and other fights for racial justice. The agency has also investigated climate justice activists including 350.org and the Standing Rock water protectors under the banner of protecting national security.
Because of the FBI’s secrecy, little is known about how the agency is supercharging its surveillance activities with face recognition technology. But what little is known from public reporting, the FBI’s own admissions to Congress, and independent tests of the technology gives ample reason to be concerned.
For instance, the FBI recently claimed to Congress that the agency does not need to demonstrate probable cause of criminal activity before using its face surveillance technology on us. FBI witnesses at a recent hearing also could not confirm whether the agency is meeting its constitutional obligations to inform criminal defendants when the agency has used the tech to identify them. The failure to inform people when face recognition technology is used against them in a criminal case, or the failure to turn over robust information about the technology’s error rates, source code, and algorithmic training data, robs defendants of their due process rights to a fair trial.
This lack of transparency would be frightening enough if the technology worked. But it doesn’t: Numerous studies have shown face surveillance technology is prone to significant racial and gender bias. One peer-reviewed study from MIT found that face recognition technology can misclassify the faces of dark skinned women up to 35 percent of the time. Another study found that so-called “emotion recognition” software identified Black men as more angry and contemptuous than their white peers. Other researchers have found that face surveillance algorithms discriminate against transgender and gender nonconforming people. When our freedoms and rights are on the line, one false match is too many.
Of course, even in the highly unlikely event that face recognition technology were to become 100 percent accurate, the technology’s threat to our privacy rights and civil liberties remains extraordinary. This dystopian surveillance technology threatens to fundamentally alter our free society into one where we’re treated as suspects to be tracked and monitored by the government 24/7.
That’s why a number of cities and states are taking action to prevent the spread of ubiquitous face surveillance, and why law enforcement agencies, at minimum, must come clean about when, where, and how they are using face recognition technology. There can be no accountability if there is no transparency.
Published October 31, 2019 at 08:29PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2BZNh9X
The FBI is Tracking Our Faces in Secret. We’re Suing.
Many of us wear masks on Halloween for fun. But what about a world in which we have to wear a mask every single day to preserve our privacy from the government’s oppressive eye?
Face recognition surveillance technology has already made that frightening world a reality in Hong Kong, and it’s quickly becoming a scary possibility in the United States.
The FBI is currently collecting data about our faces, irises, walking patterns, and voices, permitting the government to pervasively identify, track, and monitor us. The agency can match or request a match of our faces against at least 640 million images of adults living in the U.S. And it is reportedly piloting Amazon’s flawed face recognition surveillance technology.
Face and other biometric surveillance technologies can enable undetectable, persistent, and suspicionless surveillance on an unprecedented scale. When placed in the hands of the FBI — an unaccountable, deregulated, secretive intelligence agency with an unresolved history of anti-Black racism — there is even more reason for alarm. And when that agency stonewalls our requests for information about how its agents are tracking and monitoring our faces, we should all be concerned.
That’s why today we’re asking a federal court to intervene and order the FBI and related agencies to turn over all records concerning their use of face recognition technology.
The FBI’s troubling political policing practices underscore the urgent need for transparency. Under the leadership of the agency’s patriarch — the disgraced J. Edgar Hoover — the FBI obsessively spied on left-wing, Indigenous rights, anti-war, and Black power activists across the country. Hoover infamously tried to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr., encouraging the civil rights leader to kill himself to avoid the shame Hoover’s leaks to journalists would bring to him and his family. The FBI was also involved in the 1969 killing of Fred Hampton, a brilliant Chicago leader in the Black Panther Party who was assassinated by Chicago Police while he lay asleep in his bed next to his pregnant girlfriend.
While Hoover’s reign may be history, the FBI’s campaign against domestic dissent is not.
Since at least 2010, the FBI has monitored civil society groups, including racial justice movements, Occupy Wall Street, environmentalists, Palestinian solidarity activists, Abolish ICE protesters, and Cuba and Iran normalization proponents. In recent years, the FBI has wasted considerable resources to spy on Black activists, who the agency labeled “Black Identity Extremists” to justify even more surveillance of the Black Lives Matter movement and other fights for racial justice. The agency has also investigated climate justice activists including 350.org and the Standing Rock water protectors under the banner of protecting national security.
Because of the FBI’s secrecy, little is known about how the agency is supercharging its surveillance activities with face recognition technology. But what little is known from public reporting, the FBI’s own admissions to Congress, and independent tests of the technology gives ample reason to be concerned.
For instance, the FBI recently claimed to Congress that the agency does not need to demonstrate probable cause of criminal activity before using its face surveillance technology on us. FBI witnesses at a recent hearing also could not confirm whether the agency is meeting its constitutional obligations to inform criminal defendants when the agency has used the tech to identify them. The failure to inform people when face recognition technology is used against them in a criminal case, or the failure to turn over robust information about the technology’s error rates, source code, and algorithmic training data, robs defendants of their due process rights to a fair trial.
This lack of transparency would be frightening enough if the technology worked. But it doesn’t: Numerous studies have shown face surveillance technology is prone to significant racial and gender bias. One peer-reviewed study from MIT found that face recognition technology can misclassify the faces of dark skinned women up to 35 percent of the time. Another study found that so-called “emotion recognition” software identified Black men as more angry and contemptuous than their white peers. Other researchers have found that face surveillance algorithms discriminate against transgender and gender nonconforming people. When our freedoms and rights are on the line, one false match is too many.
Of course, even in the highly unlikely event that face recognition technology were to become 100 percent accurate, the technology’s threat to our privacy rights and civil liberties remains extraordinary. This dystopian surveillance technology threatens to fundamentally alter our free society into one where we’re treated as suspects to be tracked and monitored by the government 24/7.
That’s why a number of cities and states are taking action to prevent the spread of ubiquitous face surveillance, and why law enforcement agencies, at minimum, must come clean about when, where, and how they are using face recognition technology. There can be no accountability if there is no transparency.
Published October 31, 2019 at 02:59PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2BZNh9X
Lao People’s Democratic Republic : Technical Assistance Report-Risk-Based Banking Supervision
Published October 30, 2019 at 07:00AM Read more at imf.org
Democratic Republic of Sao Tome and Principe : Request for a 40-month Arrangement Under the Extended Credit Facility-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Democratic Republic of Sao Tome and Principe
Published October 29, 2019 at 07:00AM Read more at imf.org
France : Financial Sector Assessment Program-Technical Note-Issues in Insurance Supervision and Regulation
Published October 29, 2019 at 07:00AM Read more at imf.org
France : Financial Sector Assessment Program-Technical Note-Nonfinancial Corporations and Households Vulnerabilities
Published October 29, 2019 at 07:00AM Read more at imf.org
France : Financial Sector Assessment Program-Technical Note-Balance Sheet Risks and Financial Stability
Published October 29, 2019 at 07:00AM Read more at imf.org
France : Financial Sector Assessment Program-Technical Note-Risk Analysis of Banking and Insurance Sector
Published October 29, 2019 at 07:00AM Read more at imf.org
France : Financial Sector Assessment Program-Technical Note-Select Topics in Financial Supervision and Oversight
Published October 29, 2019 at 07:00AM Read more at imf.org
France : Financial Sector Assessment Program-Technical Note-Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism Regime in France
Published October 29, 2019 at 07:00AM Read more at imf.org
France : Financial Sector Assessment Program-Technical Note-Macroprudential Policy Framework and Tools
Published October 29, 2019 at 07:00AM Read more at imf.org
France : Financial Sector Assessment Program-Technical Note-Key Attributes of Effective Resolution Regimes for Insurance Companies
Published October 29, 2019 at 07:00AM Read more at imf.org
The First Step Act was Exactly that, a First Step. What Comes Next?
This weekend, presidential hopefuls and our current president will flex their criminal justice reform muscle at the Second Step Presidential Justice Forum in South Carolina. Unlike past campaigns, where candidates tried to outdo each other with “tough on crime” agendas, presidential hopefuls now tout their “smart on crime” policies. Candidates vie for who has the most innovative plan for fixing the criminal justice system, with many committing to our Rights for All policy that aims to reduce incarcerations rates by 50 percent.
This one-upmanship involves those running for president acknowledging the system’s many failings and inequalities and calling out its blatant racial and wealth-based disparities. They then will describe how the system is broken, and layout plans to fix it. The First Step Act is sure to be front and center in those plans.
Whether the candidates helped usher the legislation through Congress or signed it into law, those on the center stage will tout the bipartisan law as a success and an important initial effort in reforming the criminal justice system. While this may seem like a rare bipartisan step toward reform, a hearing on the First Step Act before the House Judiciary Crime Subcommittee last week revealed that there are still many steps needed before we can declare victory.
It is evident that the First Step Act has had an impact in the nearly one year since its enactment. As Bureau of Prisons (BOP) officials testified last Thursday, 3,100 people have been sent home from prison based on the “good conduct time” provision that makes those in prison eligible for early release if they demonstrate good behavior while incarcerated. In addition, as of last week a little over 2,100 people have received sentence reductions because an earlier law — the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA) — was made retroactive by the First Step Act. The FSA significantly reduced the sentencing disparities that existed between crack cocaine and powder cocaine, and about 100 additional people have received sentence reductions because of a First Step compassionate release provision that affords these reductions to the elderly and sick.
The First Step Act’s reduction of mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses and expansion of judicial discretion for some mandatory minimum sentences is also a step in the right direction. The act recognizes the humanity of those in prison by eliminating practices like juvenile solitary confinement and the shackling of pregnant women.
The continued and long-term impact of the First Step Act, however, will depend on the implementation of several provisions in the law.
The law requires that the Department of Justice (DOJ) create a risk and needs assessment tool to determine the number of incarcerated people eligible for early release and rehabilitative programming. In order to keep sending people home from prison, it’s critical that the DOJ does not create a tool that perpetuates the criminal justice system’s racial and gender disparities.
As Professor Melissa Hamilton explained at last Thursday’s hearing, with the tool’s current design, “African-American males are far less likely to ever earn the best incentives and rewards from the First Step Act.” Andrea James of the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls testified that she “is skeptical that this system can be implemented in a way that fully respects the individual circumstances and background of each incarcerated person,” particularly women. The American Civil Liberties Union and coalition partners continue to caution DOJ on its current approach to the tool and as members of Congress demanded at the hearing, DOJ must make the tool both transparent and accessible.
Additionally, the BOP must provide the rehabilitative and reentry programming that the law requires. Successful participation in this programming can determine whether or not someone in prison becomes eligible for early release to a halfway house. Essentially, without that programming, no one goes home. As the ACLU and other partner organizations have called for, Congress has committed $75 million to BOP and DOJ to implement programming associated with the First Step Act. But at last Thursday’s hearing, Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, director of the Bureau of Prisons, put that number in context and said: “we’ll need $75 million more.”
John Walters of the Hudson Institute reiterated the director’s comments, saying $75 million is just a “small drop in the bucket” that amounts to only “$400 per person.” According to Walters, it would take at least four times that amount to “meet the high expectations ” set by the First Step Act. It is abundantly clear that the success of the First Step Act is contingent upon sufficient funding, and Congress and the administration cannot afford to shortchange this law.
Finally, the sentencing provisions of the First Step Act must be made retroactive. Just as we’ve seen the immediate impact of making the Fair Sentencing Act retroactive, we will see a similar effect by remedying the unjust mandatory minimum sentences of the past. In recognizing the error of its ways, Congress needs to ensure that its new law provides relief to all those impacted, not just those who were sentenced at the right time when laws were reformed. Legislation must be advanced to make the First Step Act retroactive.
As Chairwoman Karen Bass (D-Calif.) recognized at the hearing, “we are just at the beginning of a very long process.” And, as Ranking Member Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) said, “if not implemented correctly, there will be no subsequent steps.” The First Step Act was exactly that — a first step. At this weekend’s forum in South Carolina, candidates and those in office must be ready to discuss the next steps in order to achieve the comprehensive criminal justice reform that they seek.
Published October 25, 2019 at 07:26PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2qGoCEV
The First Step Act was Exactly that, a First Step. What Comes Next?
This weekend, presidential hopefuls and our current president will flex their criminal justice reform muscle at the Second Step Presidential Justice Forum in South Carolina. Unlike past campaigns, where candidates tried to outdo each other with “tough on crime” agendas, presidential hopefuls now tout their “smart on crime” policies. Candidates vie for who has the most innovative plan for fixing the criminal justice system, with many committing to our Rights for All policy that aims to reduce incarcerations rates by 50 percent.
This one-upmanship involves those running for president acknowledging the system’s many failings and inequalities and calling out its blatant racial and wealth-based disparities. They then will describe how the system is broken, and layout plans to fix it. The First Step Act is sure to be front and center in those plans.
Whether the candidates helped usher the legislation through Congress or signed it into law, those on the center stage will tout the bipartisan law as a success and an important initial effort in reforming the criminal justice system. While this may seem like a rare bipartisan step toward reform, a hearing on the First Step Act before the House Judiciary Crime Subcommittee last week revealed that there are still many steps needed before we can declare victory.
It is evident that the First Step Act has had an impact in the nearly one year since its enactment. As Bureau of Prisons (BOP) officials testified last Thursday, 3,100 people have been sent home from prison based on the “good conduct time” provision that makes those in prison eligible for early release if they demonstrate good behavior while incarcerated. In addition, as of last week a little over 2,100 people have received sentence reductions because an earlier law — the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA) — was made retroactive by the First Step Act. The FSA significantly reduced the sentencing disparities that existed between crack cocaine and powder cocaine, and about 100 additional people have received sentence reductions because of a First Step compassionate release provision that affords these reductions to the elderly and sick.
The First Step Act’s reduction of mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses and expansion of judicial discretion for some mandatory minimum sentences is also a step in the right direction. The act recognizes the humanity of those in prison by eliminating practices like juvenile solitary confinement and the shackling of pregnant women.
The continued and long-term impact of the First Step Act, however, will depend on the implementation of several provisions in the law.
The law requires that the Department of Justice (DOJ) create a risk and needs assessment tool to determine the number of incarcerated people eligible for early release and rehabilitative programming. In order to keep sending people home from prison, it’s critical that the DOJ does not create a tool that perpetuates the criminal justice system’s racial and gender disparities.
As Professor Melissa Hamilton explained at last Thursday’s hearing, with the tool’s current design, “African-American males are far less likely to ever earn the best incentives and rewards from the First Step Act.” Andrea James of the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls testified that she “is skeptical that this system can be implemented in a way that fully respects the individual circumstances and background of each incarcerated person,” particularly women. The American Civil Liberties Union and coalition partners continue to caution DOJ on its current approach to the tool and as members of Congress demanded at the hearing, DOJ must make the tool both transparent and accessible.
Additionally, the BOP must provide the rehabilitative and reentry programming that the law requires. Successful participation in this programming can determine whether or not someone in prison becomes eligible for early release to a halfway house. Essentially, without that programming, no one goes home. As the ACLU and other partner organizations have called for, Congress has committed $75 million to BOP and DOJ to implement programming associated with the First Step Act. But at last Thursday’s hearing, Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, director of the Bureau of Prisons, put that number in context and said: “we’ll need $75 million more.”
John Walters of the Hudson Institute reiterated the director’s comments, saying $75 million is just a “small drop in the bucket” that amounts to only “$400 per person.” According to Walters, it would take at least four times that amount to “meet the high expectations ” set by the First Step Act. It is abundantly clear that the success of the First Step Act is contingent upon sufficient funding, and Congress and the administration cannot afford to shortchange this law.
Finally, the sentencing provisions of the First Step Act must be made retroactive. Just as we’ve seen the immediate impact of making the Fair Sentencing Act retroactive, we will see a similar effect by remedying the unjust mandatory minimum sentences of the past. In recognizing the error of its ways, Congress needs to ensure that its new law provides relief to all those impacted, not just those who were sentenced at the right time when laws were reformed. Legislation must be advanced to make the First Step Act retroactive.
As Chairwoman Karen Bass (D-Calif.) recognized at the hearing, “we are just at the beginning of a very long process.” And, as Ranking Member Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) said, “if not implemented correctly, there will be no subsequent steps.” The First Step Act was exactly that — a first step. At this weekend’s forum in South Carolina, candidates and those in office must be ready to discuss the next steps in order to achieve the comprehensive criminal justice reform that they seek.
Published October 25, 2019 at 11:56PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2qGoCEV
Thailand : Financial Sector Assessment Program-Detailed Assessment of Observance-Insurance Core Principles
Published October 24, 2019 at 07:00AM Read more at imf.org
Thailand : Financial Sector Assessment Program-Detailed Assessment of Observance-Basel Core Principles For Effective Banking Supervision
Published October 24, 2019 at 07:00AM Read more at imf.org
Bosnia and Herzegovina : Technical Assistance Report-Implementation of a New Reserve Requirement Framework
Published October 24, 2019 at 07:00AM Read more at imf.org
Why is Missouri So Afraid of Finding out Whether Lamar Johnson is Innocent of Murder?
In 1994, the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office committed gross prosecutorial misconduct in order to convict Lamar Johnson of murder. They knowingly presented perjured testimony, fabricated facts to negate Johnson’s strongly corroborated alibi, and buried the fact that a prime witness against him was a paid jailhouse informant. Twenty-five years later, that same Circuit Attorney’s Office, now led by Kim Gardner, is doing everything it can to get Johnson a new trial so the truth can vindicate him. But the Missouri establishment is fighting her tooth and nail, all while Johnson languishes in prison for a crime he almost certainly didn’t commit.
The only reason Johnson has a fighting shot at liberty today is that Gardner, like a handful of recently elected, reform-minded prosecutors, created a Conviction Integrity Unit to review questionable cases like his. Gardner’s CIU produced a 70-page report cataloging the misconduct in Johnson’s case and used it to move for a new trial. It should have been a no-brainer, but a Missouri judge rejected the request — not based on the evidence itself, but because Johnson had technically missed the deadline for filing a new trial motion.
The trial court got it wrong, and today the ACLU, ACLU of Missouri, and the Innocence Project filed an amicus brief explaining why. It’s simple — Missouri courts, like all state and federal courts — have the inherent authority to prevent miscarriages of justice like this. Specifically, no potentially innocent man should be held behind bars and refused a retrial because of a technicality, without so much as a hearing to test the evidence and expose the state’s wrongdoing. The trial court could have actively avoided this black letter law in denying the motion.
Given the clarity of the legal question here, we have to ask ourselves why the Missouri courts — as well as the state Attorney General, who opposed the new trial motion and would represent the state in further proceedings — are bending over backward to avoid learning the truth. After all, the justice system in Missouri has always supported a prosecutor’s discretion to follow the evidence where it leads, just as Gardner and her CIU have done here. Is the difference that Gardner dared to use that discretion to vindicate a man, rather than keep him locked up? Is it that Johnson is Black? Is it that Gardner is a young, Black, female elected prosecutor who has upset St. Louis’ good old boys club, including investigating the notorious St. Louis police? Or is it that punishment and racism are so deeply ingrained in our criminal justice system that any indication that we get it wrong from time to time — even if getting it wrong means stealing a man’s life — must be fought to the hilt, lest the entire house of cards comes crashing down?
These are all fair questions to ask because Lamar Johnson’s story is hardly unique, nor is the institutional pushback against Kim Gardner’s attempts at reform. Nationwide, a new wave of prosecutors who dare to challenge mass incarceration have been met with resistance at every turn, even when deploying the same discretion that previous prosecutors have enjoyed.
In Boston, District Attorney Rachael Rollins dropped criminal charges against protestors exercising their First Amendment rights and was forced to defend that discretionary decision in Massachusetts’ highest court (she won). In Philadelphia, the federal U.S. attorney is waging a public war against local DA Larry Krasner instead of working hand in hand with him to administer justice. In Baltimore, Governor Larry Hogan is attempting to steal cases from State Attorney Marilyn Mosby to show how tough on crime he is. And in Chicago, the local police union has publicly expressed “distrust” in State Attorney Kim Foxx, who was elected in part because she correctly distrusted the police’s own cover-up of the Laquan McDonald murder.
Unsurprisingly, these prosecutors also share another thing in common — they’ve all instituted Conviction Integrity Units to help ensure that wrongful convictions become a thing of the past.
To be clear, none of these prosecutors is perfect, nor is prosecutorial discretion an unmitigated good. When prosecutors do what is right, they deserve support, just as they deserve critique when they are wrong. Unfettered discretion helped get us into the mass incarceration mess in the first place. Even reform-minded prosecutors can better restrain their discretion across a variety of issues, including not appealing tainted convictions and not coercing plea bargains from vulnerable defendants, even though they can.
But when prosecutors recognize the damage their predecessors have done — including the horrific harm of a wrongful conviction — deploying discretion to right that wrong is the height of justice and should be celebrated, not demonized. Accordingly, we hope the Missouri appeals court will deploy its discretion to right the wrongs done by the district court in Lamar Johnson’s case, and give him the new trial he so obviously deserves.
Published October 24, 2019 at 11:00PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/31G9lB2
Why is Missouri So Afraid of Finding out Whether Lamar Johnson is Innocent of Murder?
In 1994, the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office committed gross prosecutorial misconduct in order to convict Lamar Johnson of murder. They knowingly presented perjured testimony, fabricated facts to negate Johnson’s strongly corroborated alibi, and buried the fact that a prime witness against him was a paid jailhouse informant. Twenty-five years later, that same Circuit Attorney’s Office, now led by Kim Gardner, is doing everything it can to get Johnson a new trial so the truth can vindicate him. But the Missouri establishment is fighting her tooth and nail, all while Johnson languishes in prison for a crime he almost certainly didn’t commit.
The only reason Johnson has a fighting shot at liberty today is that Gardner, like a handful of recently elected, reform-minded prosecutors, created a Conviction Integrity Unit to review questionable cases like his. Gardner’s CIU produced a 70-page report cataloging the misconduct in Johnson’s case and used it to move for a new trial. It should have been a no-brainer, but a Missouri judge rejected the request — not based on the evidence itself, but because Johnson had technically missed the deadline for filing a new trial motion.
The trial court got it wrong, and today the ACLU, ACLU of Missouri, and the Innocence Project filed an amicus brief explaining why. It’s simple — Missouri courts, like all state and federal courts — have the inherent authority to prevent miscarriages of justice like this. Specifically, no potentially innocent man should be held behind bars and refused a retrial because of a technicality, without so much as a hearing to test the evidence and expose the state’s wrongdoing. The trial court could have actively avoided this black letter law in denying the motion.
Given the clarity of the legal question here, we have to ask ourselves why the Missouri courts — as well as the state Attorney General, who opposed the new trial motion and would represent the state in further proceedings — are bending over backward to avoid learning the truth. After all, the justice system in Missouri has always supported a prosecutor’s discretion to follow the evidence where it leads, just as Gardner and her CIU have done here. Is the difference that Gardner dared to use that discretion to vindicate a man, rather than keep him locked up? Is it that Johnson is Black? Is it that Gardner is a young, Black, female elected prosecutor who has upset St. Louis’ good old boys club, including investigating the notorious St. Louis police? Or is it that punishment and racism are so deeply ingrained in our criminal justice system that any indication that we get it wrong from time to time — even if getting it wrong means stealing a man’s life — must be fought to the hilt, lest the entire house of cards comes crashing down?
These are all fair questions to ask because Lamar Johnson’s story is hardly unique, nor is the institutional pushback against Kim Gardner’s attempts at reform. Nationwide, a new wave of prosecutors who dare to challenge mass incarceration have been met with resistance at every turn, even when deploying the same discretion that previous prosecutors have enjoyed.
In Boston, District Attorney Rachael Rollins dropped criminal charges against protestors exercising their First Amendment rights and was forced to defend that discretionary decision in Massachusetts’ highest court (she won). In Philadelphia, the federal U.S. attorney is waging a public war against local DA Larry Krasner instead of working hand in hand with him to administer justice. In Baltimore, Governor Larry Hogan is attempting to steal cases from State Attorney Marilyn Mosby to show how tough on crime he is. And in Chicago, the local police union has publicly expressed “distrust” in State Attorney Kim Foxx, who was elected in part because she correctly distrusted the police’s own cover-up of the Laquan McDonald murder.
Unsurprisingly, these prosecutors also share another thing in common — they’ve all instituted Conviction Integrity Units to help ensure that wrongful convictions become a thing of the past.
To be clear, none of these prosecutors is perfect, nor is prosecutorial discretion an unmitigated good. When prosecutors do what is right, they deserve support, just as they deserve critique when they are wrong. Unfettered discretion helped get us into the mass incarceration mess in the first place. Even reform-minded prosecutors can better restrain their discretion across a variety of issues, including not appealing tainted convictions and not coercing plea bargains from vulnerable defendants, even though they can.
But when prosecutors recognize the damage their predecessors have done — including the horrific harm of a wrongful conviction — deploying discretion to right that wrong is the height of justice and should be celebrated, not demonized. Accordingly, we hope the Missouri appeals court will deploy its discretion to right the wrongs done by the district court in Lamar Johnson’s case, and give him the new trial he so obviously deserves.
Published October 24, 2019 at 06:30PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/31G9lB2
South Dakota Governor Caves on Attempted Efforts to Silence Pipeline Protesters
South Dakota’s governor and attorney general today backed down from their unconstitutional attempts to silence pipeline protestors. In response to a lawsuit we filed alongside the ACLU of South Dakota and the Robins Kaplan law firm, the state has agreed to never enforce the unconstitutional provisions of several state laws that threatened activists who encourage or organize protests, particularly protests of the Keystone XL pipeline, with fines and criminal penalties of up to 25 years in prison.
The settlement agreement reached today and now headed to the court for approval is an important victory for the right to protest. It comes soon after a federal court temporarily blocked enforcement of the pieces of the laws that infringed on First Amendment protected speech, and makes the court’s temporary block a permanent one.
The laws include the “Riot Boosting” Act, which gave the state the authority to sue individuals and organizations for “riot boosting,” a novel and confusing term. The court warned against the laws’ broad reach, noting that the laws could have prohibited:
Sending a supporting email or a letter to the editor in support of a protest
Giving a cup of coffee or thumbs up or $10 to protesters
Holding up a sign in protest on a street corner
Asking someone to protest
Under the First Amendment, that is impermissible.
The court rightly recognized the stakes of this case. And it put these anti-protest efforts in perspective, asking “if these riot boosting statutes were applied to the protests that took place in Birmingham, Alabama, what might be the result?” The answer: “Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference could have been liable under an identical riot boosting law[.]”
Indeed, South Dakota’s unconstitutional anti-protest efforts echoed the suppression of past social movements. From the start, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem called on “shut[ting] down” “out-of-state people” who come into South Dakota to “slow and stop construction” of the pipeline. Her harmful calls were reminiscent of government attempts throughout our history to delegitimize and minimize significant social movements as the work of “outside agitators,” including Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
South Dakota’s quick and costly retreat (they’ll have to cover plaintiffs’ attorney’s fees under the settlement agreement) should serve as a lesson for other legislatures considering similar efforts to silence dissent.
In the last few years, we have witnessed a legislative trend of states seeking to criminalize protest, deter political participation, and curtail freedom of association. These bills appear to be a direct reaction from politicians and corporations to some of the most effective tactics of those speaking out today, including water protectors challenging pipeline construction, Black Lives Matter, and those calling for boycotts of Israel. These legislative moves are aimed at suppressing dissent and undercutting marginalized and over-policed groups voicing concerns that disrupt current power dynamics.
But the First Amendment guarantees people the right to voice their opposition. This includes our clients—four organizations: the Sierra Club, NDN Collective, Dakota Rural Action, and the Indigenous Environmental Network, and two individuals: Nick Tilsen with NDN Collective and Dallas Goldtooth with Indigenous Environmental Network—all of whom are protesting construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and encouraging others to do the same.
Construction of the Keystone XL pipeline may be imminent. Pre-construction activities resumed this month, and a hearing on the new Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the pipeline, which will serve as the basis for approval of any future permits, is coming up next Monday.
With the laws we challenged proclaimed unenforceable, protesters and protectors no longer have to worry about incarceration or fines as they protest against the construction. That is, at a minimum, how democracy should work.
Published October 24, 2019 at 10:29PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/33WKGcS
South Dakota Governor Caves on Attempted Efforts to Silence Pipeline Protesters
South Dakota’s governor and attorney general today backed down from their unconstitutional attempts to silence pipeline protestors. In response to a lawsuit we filed alongside the ACLU of South Dakota and the Robins Kaplan law firm, the state has agreed to never enforce the unconstitutional provisions of several state laws that threatened activists who encourage or organize protests, particularly protests of the Keystone XL pipeline, with fines and criminal penalties of up to 25 years in prison.
The settlement agreement reached today and now headed to the court for approval is an important victory for the right to protest. It comes soon after a federal court temporarily blocked enforcement of the pieces of the laws that infringed on First Amendment protected speech, and makes the court’s temporary block a permanent one.
The laws include the “Riot Boosting” Act, which gave the state the authority to sue individuals and organizations for “riot boosting,” a novel and confusing term. The court warned against the laws’ broad reach, noting that the laws could have prohibited:
Sending a supporting email or a letter to the editor in support of a protest
Giving a cup of coffee or thumbs up or $10 to protesters
Holding up a sign in protest on a street corner
Asking someone to protest
Under the First Amendment, that is impermissible.
The court rightly recognized the stakes of this case. And it put these anti-protest efforts in perspective, asking “if these riot boosting statutes were applied to the protests that took place in Birmingham, Alabama, what might be the result?” The answer: “Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference could have been liable under an identical riot boosting law[.]”
Indeed, South Dakota’s unconstitutional anti-protest efforts echoed the suppression of past social movements. From the start, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem called on “shut[ting] down” “out-of-state people” who come into South Dakota to “slow and stop construction” of the pipeline. Her harmful calls were reminiscent of government attempts throughout our history to delegitimize and minimize significant social movements as the work of “outside agitators,” including Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
South Dakota’s quick and costly retreat (they’ll have to cover plaintiffs’ attorney’s fees under the settlement agreement) should serve as a lesson for other legislatures considering similar efforts to silence dissent.
In the last few years, we have witnessed a legislative trend of states seeking to criminalize protest, deter political participation, and curtail freedom of association. These bills appear to be a direct reaction from politicians and corporations to some of the most effective tactics of those speaking out today, including water protectors challenging pipeline construction, Black Lives Matter, and those calling for boycotts of Israel. These legislative moves are aimed at suppressing dissent and undercutting marginalized and over-policed groups voicing concerns that disrupt current power dynamics.
But the First Amendment guarantees people the right to voice their opposition. This includes our clients—four organizations: the Sierra Club, NDN Collective, Dakota Rural Action, and the Indigenous Environmental Network, and two individuals: Nick Tilsen with NDN Collective and Dallas Goldtooth with Indigenous Environmental Network—all of whom are protesting construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and encouraging others to do the same.
Construction of the Keystone XL pipeline may be imminent. Pre-construction activities resumed this month, and a hearing on the new Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the pipeline, which will serve as the basis for approval of any future permits, is coming up next Monday.
With the laws we challenged proclaimed unenforceable, protesters and protectors no longer have to worry about incarceration or fines as they protest against the construction. That is, at a minimum, how democracy should work.
Published October 24, 2019 at 05:59PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/33WKGcS
I Went to Mexico to Meet Asylum-Seekers Trapped at the Border. This Is What I Saw.
Two weeks ago, I traveled to northern Mexico along with Mexican photographer Guillermo Arias to meet with asylum-seekers who’ve been trapped at the southern U.S. border by Trump Administration policies. Neither of us was prepared for what we saw there.
We visited two cities – Ciudad Juarez and Matamoros – to track down people who had been placed into the deceptively misnamed “Migrant Protection Protocols” that have slammed America’s door shut to people fleeing persecution and violence in their home countries. Before we arrived, we wondered whether the stories we’d read of kidnappings, assaults, and despair were as widespread as they sounded. It didn’t take long for us to get our answer.
There is – right now, at this very moment – a humanitarian crisis unfolding at our southern border. And we are not paying enough attention to it.
First, a little context. The Trump Administration has been waging an all-out war on the U.S.’s asylum system, which for more than 50 years has provided shelter for people who need protection. To accomplish this reversal of tradition, they’ve put into place a series of policies that have made it nearly impossible for people to quickly and safely claim asylum at the southern border. Chief among them is the forced return to Mexico program, which has trapped tens of thousands of people in dangerous cartel-controlled cities in northern Mexico while they wait for distant court dates inside the U.S.
The circumstances these vulnerable people are facing in the meantime are dire. We saw them first-hand.
Mexican asylum-seekers sleep on the street near the Paso del Norte bridge in Ciudad Juarez, October 7, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.
Everywhere we went, people told us stories of being kidnapped or extorted while stuck in Mexico. Many were sleeping in tent encampments on the streets while safety across the border was literally within sight, but legally out of reach. Some were packed into shelters set up by the Mexican government, sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder on thin mattresses on the floor of converted warehouses. Others were living in privately-run shelters with no security protocols to prevent intruders from intimidating or preying on them.
Matamoros is a small city right across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, just along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. It’s in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where corruption and cartel-related violence is so bad that the U.S. state department has given it the same travel advisory as Afghanistan and Somalia. It’s also become home to thousands of people who’ve fled Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and other parts of Mexico searching for safety.
Previously, they would have been processed through the asylum system and then either detained or released inside the U.S. while their claims were evaluated by an immigration judge. But now, they’re given a sheet of paper that tells them to come back to the border months later for their first hearing. In the meantime, they’re stuck, with nowhere to go and most often nobody to help them. Next to the Matamoros-Brownsville bridge, a tent camp has sprung up on a patch of pavement and dirt that around 2,000 asylum-seekers call home. The camp is growing every day.
Children of asylum-seekers eat near the Puente Nuevo Internacional bridge in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.
The night before we visited, a storm system had swept through Texas, flooding the inside of the low-quality tents people were living in with rain. There was mud everywhere, and it was cold. Few people had the clothing to cope with the chilly temperatures, and the first few people we talked to were shivering, their teeth chattering as they spoke. Everywhere we looked, there were very young children sitting on curbs or hanging onto their parents.
One young man told us that in a tent nearby there was a Honduran woman with a newborn baby, so we stopped in to visit them. She’d delivered just five days earlier. Only 21 years old herself, she’d been living in the tent with her four-year-old daughter since being sent back to Matamoros by Customs and Border Protection agents. She said that when she’d first told CBP officers that she was pregnant, they suggested she get an abortion before telling her to come back for a court date over a month in the future.
A young mother sits inside her tent with her newborn child and daughter in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.
The tiny child was bundled into blankets in the small tent where it was spending its first days of life. Her mother coughed when she spoke, visibly exhausted. She said that she’d fled an abusive spouse and was too afraid to return to him. Later, one of the few health responders who visits the camp regularly told me that she was fearful about whether the child would survive conditions at the camp, which she said reminded her of refugee camps she’d worked at in Bangladesh.
“If there’s a cholera outbreak here, half of them could die,” she said.
Further up the hill next to the camp, along a wooded grove, lies the Rio Grande. There are a few makeshift showers near the camp, but they aren’t nearly enough for the entire camp to bathe, so many choose to wash and do their laundry at the bank of the river. The river is rife with pollution, and people living in the camp have developed rashes and other skin problems from bathing in it. Next to a small, muddy clearing, a series of white crosses stood in remembrance of the children who’ve died by drowning in the river in recent months.
Wooden crosses honoring children of asylum-seekers who drowned in the Rio Grande in Matamoros, October 12, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.
A few nights before we visited the camp in Matamoros, some of its frustrated residents had staged a protest against conditions in the camp and the policies that have trapped them there, shutting down the bridge for 15 hours. “They keep telling us we have to wait longer and longer,” one told Buzzfeed News. “When will it end?”
Walking among the tents and meeting their gracious and welcoming occupants, I felt the weight of my country’s responsibility for their suffering. The insecurity, desperation, and discomfort of the people we were speaking with isn’t a corollary effect of the policy, it’s the core intent. The “Migrant Protection Protocols” were designed to make it so uncomfortable and dangerous for people who are seeking asylum that they will simply give up, exhausted and defeated, and return back to the dangerous situations they fled.
Many have, indeed, already done so.
Further along the border, in Ciudad Juarez, we visited a network of shelters that have been set up in recent months to cope with the roughly 17,000 asylum-seekers who’ve been returned there since mid-April. On one side of the spectrum was the newly-opened federal shelter, supervised by the Mexican government, which was housing over 500 people the week we were there. A converted warehouse with no individual rooms, people were sleeping on rows and rows of small mattresses lined up against the walls and across the middle of the large hall. Its inhabitants were there waiting for court hearings as far out as January of next year.
Asylum-seekers inside the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 9, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.
We met with Venezuelans who’d fled the political crisis in their country and El Salvadorans who spoke of witnessing family members gunned down in front of them. People told us they’d been dropped off on darkened streets in Juarez by Customs and Border Protection with no idea where to go or what to do. One parent told us she’d had to wrestle with a man who tried to abduct her daughter in front of her. Some spoke of the dawning realization that they might now have no choice but to return to the very danger they’d run away from to begin with.
As we walked through the shelter, a woman approached us cautiously. She broke into tears and told us that a few nights earlier she’d woken up to see a man from the shelter trying to sexually assault her underage daughter. Could we help, she asked? We passed on her story to one of the administrative staff at the shelter.
At night, people gathered in a circle to sing hymns, the glittering lights of Juarez in the distance.
Asylum-seekers pray at the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 9, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.
The Mexican government has been providing assistance to asylum-seekers who’ve grown exhausted with the long wait times and difficult conditions, helping to arrange travel back to their countries of origin. A staff member showed us a list of people who’d relented and returned home. In just two months, 205 people had made use of the program and left for Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. 97 of them were minors.
While that shelter was crowded and lacking the barest level of privacy, it did have security protocols set up to protect people living there. There were heavy gates surrounding the facility and guards who checked the names and credentials of every visitor. This was not the case in other shelters we visited.
At one, a small horseshoe of villas surrounding a decrepit playground on the outskirts of Juarez, there was no gate or security guards at all. The risks facing people stuck there were immediately apparent. Juarez is a dangerous city, and criminals there have realized that migrants have relatives who will often pay ransoms if they are kidnapped. An unsecured shelter is a prime target.
We were there to interview a woman who said she’d been kidnapped near the border by Mexican police officers. She played messages for us that the kidnappers had sent from her phone to her relatives back home. And she told us that not long ago a truck filled with masked men had driven into the shelter and slowly circled the courtyard. Since then she hadn’t left her corner of the shelter very often.
An asylum-seeker in a private shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 10, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.
As she was telling us her story, we heard crying outside. A legal aid worker who’d brought us to the shelter said that a family living next door had just received word from their son that he’d been kidnapped that day. The boy had been picked up near the shelter and was now texting his mother the ransom demands of his assailants. Our escort offered to take her to a new shelter but she declined, saying she feared that it might seem like she was abandoning her son.
In the wake of a kidnapping the victim’s family may be placed under observation by the culprits, and we were told that the presence of journalists with cameras could further endanger the young man. So we quickly left.
In just a brief visit, we’d heard one detailed story of a kidnapping-for-ransom and witnessed another family living through that trauma in real time. The experience underscored the insecurity and fear that tens of thousands of asylum-seekers are being subjected to across the U.S. border right now.
Supporters of the new, punitive asylum processes say that most of the people seeking shelter at our southern border are liars who are after better work opportunities in the U.S. That simply did not gel with much of what we heard. One man said he’d been a municipal employee back home. He liked Honduras, and he hadn’t wanted to leave. But a street gang had threatened to murder him and his son if the young boy didn’t start selling drugs for them, so he felt they had no choice but to flee.
Another young woman from Nicaragua showed us pictures of the street demonstrations she’d participated in against President Daniel Ortega’s government. One of her friends who she’d marched with was killed and others were arrested, so she fled north. Only 19, she looked like a high-school student, speaking in a soft voice with her shoulders drooping as she recounted her separation from her sister at the border.
I have covered challenging stories across the world. For both Guillermo and I, this was a particularly difficult trip. I will not soon forget the eyes of the people we spoke with, at once tired and hopeful, nor their stories of determination, horror, and resilience. The shame I felt as an American while interviewing them was profound. Our country is turning its back on vulnerable people who need our help, right at our doorstop. We have to do better.
The danger they face will not soon come to an end, either. ACLU lawyers have filedsuitagainst every anti-asylum policy the Trump Administration has tried to implement, but the courts have allowed several policies to go forward for now while the litigation against them continues.
A young boy sits in the parking lot at the Leona Vicario Federal shelter in Ciudad Juarez, October 7, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU.
The attack on vulnerable people seeking asylum at our border is a political crisis, and we have to start approaching it as the matter of life-and-death that it is. We need our elected representatives – including Democrats vying for the nomination – to take a clear stand and explain what they’ll do to roll back these abusive policies as soon as possible.
At stake is our identity as a country. The people asking us for help at our border are no less human than we are, and we have the capacity to help them. How will we respond to their suffering? Wil we allow the most hateful and uncaring among us to write our history, or will we fight back and demand better? There are tens of thousands of eyes cast towards us at the border right now waiting for our answer.
Published October 24, 2019 at 03:34PM
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