sigh

Youth Jailed Since April For Alleged $5 Grocery Theft, Found Dead In Jail Cell

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Youth Jailed Since April For Alleged $5 Grocery Theft, Found Dead In Jail Cell

ithinkthereisaflawinmycode:

4mysquad:

#JamychealMitchell

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Youth Jailed Since April For Alleged $5 Grocery Theft, Found Dead In Jail Cell

 

A young man was arrested by Portsmouth, Virginia police over a mere $5 in groceries that he stole because he was hungry.

The arrest came on the same day a Portsmouth cop shot and killed an unarmed African American 18-year-old.

But now, Jamycheal Mitchell, 24, has been found dead in his jail cell, after spending four months behind bars with no conviction and no bail.

Mitchell had no muscle mass left by the time he died. As a registered nurse, she said she believes he was starving himself, apparently to pressure the “justice” system to  stop locking him up indefinitely.

Mitchell was accused of stealing a $1 bottle of Mountain Dew, a Snickers bar and a Zebra Cake. Combined, these amounted to a total of $5 he is accused of stealing from a 7-Eleven.

For that, he has been locked up for months, awaiting trail, and it is not even clear that he committed those crimes. There may have, perhaps, been a dispute about payment. Or perhaps he began consuming the food in the store and his credit or debit card was declined. Both of these scenarios could result in the same charges.

Perhaps still, he was poor, hungry, and stole food from time to time. Are we really in the business of locking people in cages for months over stealing food?

Mitchell’s death has not been covered by national, or even local media in Virginia, aside from a brief mention on the 11 o’clock news. Help us SPREAD THE WORD before the police start shaping the narrative of this young man’s death!

#BlackLivesMatter 
#StayWoke 

Black lives matter.

 

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peachhbomb:


‘A US air strike killed nearly 60 civilians, including children, in Syria on Tuesday after the coalition mistook them for Islamic State fighters.
Some eight families were hit as they tried to flee fighting in their area, in one of the single deadliest strikes on civilians by the alliance since the start of its operations in the war-torn country.’

#PrayForSyria and please spread awareness. 

The Murphy Bill

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wetwareproblem:

myoldpseudonym:

In the midst of the senseless police violence we’ve seen this fourth of July week,
the Murphy Bill slipped through the House of Representatives and few
people noticed.

PLEASE help stop this bill from passing the Senate.

This is a well-intentioned but terribly designed bill which would strip
civil liberties from the mentally ill, especially those already
marginalized because of their race, class, and/or gender identity, and
especially, especially the homeless. And frankly, it’s not great for
otherwise-privileged mentally ill people, either, though with money you
can find ways to get around it.

If you feel able, write or call your US Senator (contact information here) and tell them you want mental health reform, but you REALLY don’t
want it like this. And if you feel strongly, please share this post.

Below is the letter I sent to Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein today. Feel free to use any parts that apply if you are able to contact an elected official.

Note that I’m a very privileged person and my diagnoses are not as serious as many other people’s. I use the words “like me” in this letter mostly for rhetorical effect, not because I think I’ve suffered anything the way a schizophrenic person with no home has. If you feel you can speak more personally about this problem, if you have had interactions with this terrible system, if you can talk about your experiences with a condition like psychosis or autism that others vilify and belittle, it would be great for those narratives to reach the ears and eyes of our officials. If you can’t talk about it, know that people are still fighting for you and you’re worth the fight.

    As a young constituent who plans to vote, all the time, I am
writing today to ask you to oppose the Murphy mental health bill, which
just passed the House as H.R. 2646, and which the Senate will vote on
soon.

    Please, please oppose this bill when the Senate votes on it.

    I recently graduated with two degrees from [school]
despite crippling anxiety, depression, and intrusive disturbing
thoughts. My situation is overwhelmingly privileged. Most of my equals
in mental health do not have the resources to seek appropriate treatment
for their conditions, and when in emergency situations they end up in
the mental health care system, they are treated with appalling
disrespect and violence.

    This bill severely limits critical
legal advocacy on behalf of people like me with psychiatric diagnoses
and increases the likelihood of violence being used against us even in
hospitals.

    It reduces privacy protections for people like me with psychiatric diagnoses.

    It redirects federal money from innovative programs, particularly
substance abuse programs, to involuntary outpatient commitment, which is
expensive and ineffective. It centralizes mental health care when such
care should be more specialized.

    And, most importantly, it
increases needless institutionalization, which causes many low-income
people with mental illnesses to lose their jobs and be unable to find
new ones. This further reduces their access to long-term, effective
treatment.

    Our mental health care system is in desperate need
of reform, but the Murphy mental health bill is a step backwards. It’s a
cruel one at that. Please, please help protect us, the mentally ill.
Among us are some of the most marginalized people in the country: people
of color with mental illness, trans folks with other diagnoses, the
chronically underemployed, and the homeless.

Please help us stay safe. Please oppose this bill.

LINKS:

Full Murphy Bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/2646/actions

Analysis: https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/07/hr-2636-coming-to-a-vote/

US Senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

This is critical, people. Please, for the love of all that is good, take action on this. If you can’t, signal boost it. They are literally saying that our civil liberties matter less than what they want to do to us.

Too much personal information time: I’m a Canadian looking to emigrate to the US soon. I’m also severely mentally ill. This bill, if it passes? Will probably be my cause of death.

I was institutionalized for a week, half a lifetime ago. It was the single worst experience of my life. That week has shaped my life more than anything else. Basically all of my self-care is an effort to stay the fuck away from institutions. I have thought long and hard about this, and I can say with complete confidence that I will die before I let them send me back.

I know I tend to exaggerate a bit, so I want to emphasize that I am being deadly serious here. There is not a single word of hyperbole in this post.

This bill is very likely to kill me, and I’m certain I’m not alone. Don’t let them do this to us. I can’t stop it – I can’t influence it at all – so I’m depending on all of you. Please, please do everything you can to stop this. Please help save my life.

Belgium: Jewish boy ‘gassed’ with deodorant by classmates in showers to simulate Nazi gas chambers

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antisemitism-eu:

The whole thing started two years ago when the children were 10 – it’s frightening to think that, young as they were, they already knew so much about gas chambers and the extermination of European Jews (one and a half million being children).  For them, playing the Nazis and tormenting a classmate, because he is Jewish, was their idea of having fun.  Nothing wrong about that.  It went on and on and nobody cared or noticed. 

JTA reports:

Belgian elementary school students are accused of anti-Semitic
bullying of a Jewish classmate, whom they allegedly sprayed with
deodorant while he was showering at school to simulate Nazi gas
chambers.  The three students told their Jewish classmate they were “gassing” him during the incident, according to his mother.

The Jewish student was subjected to anti-Semitic abuse over the past
two years at his elementary school in the Brussels suburb of
Braine-le-Chateau, according to a statement Friday by the Belgian League
Against Anti-Semitism. All the involved students are now 12 years old.

The mother of the alleged victim filed a police complaint last week
over the bullying, which she said her son detailed to her. Francis
Brancart, an education board official, confirmed Thursday that his
office was looking into the matter, which he said may require the
opening of an independent inquiry, the news agency Belga reported. He said he could not confirm the veracity of the complaints.

The alleged incident in the showers happened early last year. The
three students pressed the deodorant canisters’ nozzles to the boy’s
body, his mother said, causing burns and skin irritations on his back.
She said it was one of dozens of incidents in which her son was
subjected to violence, anti-Semitic jokes and intimidation.

The student complained to faculty but his mother said the teacher in
charge ignored the complaints, even after her son asked for and got
permission to stay indoors during recess to avoid harassment.  […]

The principal said the teacher handling the mother’s complaint did
not relay the anti-Semitic character of the harassment to her. She said
the three students involved in the deodorant incident were reprimanded
for their behavior, which they said was part of a game.

LBCA president Joel Rubinfeld told Belga he interviewed other
students who confirmed the anti-Semitic nature of the “gassing” incident
and the recurrence of jokes and taunts referencing the Holocaust in the
student’s bullying by the three other classmates.

The case reported last week is one of several recent anti-Semitic
incidents in Belgium, including the bullying of a high school student
who was forced
to change schools amid alleged inaction by the institution where the
harassment occurred. Last year, Belgian media reported on the online
shaming by classmates of a pro-Israel high school student who also left
the public education system for a Jewish school.

Such cases, Rubinfeld said last year, are turning Belgian schools into “Jew-free” zones.

read more

The New Antisemite: http://ift.tt/1V7eUxp

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feeemalesarestrongashell:

for those of you who have been following the news about amber heard, an openly bisexual woman, divorcing from johnny depp due to domestic violence- THIS is EXACTLY why biphobia is so fucking important to address and why bi women have such high rates of IPV. the trope that bi women love “everyone” and are just big sluts leading to violence, right here.

22-Year-Old Black Woman Dies in Custody

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nevaehtyler:

Symone

Nicole Marshall, a 22-year-old mother of a 3-year-old girl, died in custody on Tuesday, May 10.

According to Marshall’s family she was in a serious car accident on April, where her car rolled over multiple times.

However, she wasn’t taken to the hospital. Instead the police took her

to the Walker County Jail in Huntsville, Texas.

Symone’s sister, Honey, said:

“When I talked to her from jail, she complained that her head was hurting and she kept blacking out. I called the jail several times and requested for them to take her to a real hospital and they wouldn’t do so. If they would have this, her death could have been prevented and my sister would still be here. My heart hurts so bad. She was my best friend. I am so angry that they did this to her. She moved to Texas for a fresh start in life a few months ago. She was doing good down there, had a job and was about to buy a house. She’s a beautiful person, never been in trouble before and didn’t deserve this.”

Texas police and Walker County jail officials refused to comment or release information about the accident.

Marshall’s family hasn’t been able to get details from officials either.

Natasha McKenna, Sandra Bland, Gynnya McMillen and now Symone Marshall. We can’t take this anymore…We want justice!

#JusticeForSymoneMarshall   #SayHerName

#BlackLivesMatter   #StopPoliceBrutality

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