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#ban private prisons
-fae
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Unexpected post from a cranky capitalist:
Ban private prisons. The profit motive is incompatible with imprisoning our fellow citizens.
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ausetkmt · 1 year
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What the DOJ’s decision to end private prisons means for Florida - The New Tropic
the Department of Justice announced that it would stop contracting with private prison companies because it found that they were significantly lacking in resources, less safe, and less cost effective than their government-run counterparts
When a prison is privately contracted, it’s completely operated by a private company — that means everything from staffing to services like daily meals and medical care is taken care of by that company. Private prisons get paid per inmate, so the more prisoners, and the more beds in their building, the more money they make.
The private prison industry really took off in the 1980s, when the government was seeking cheaper solutions for managing the country’s packed prisons.
In the Justice Department’s memo about ending the use of private prisons, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates wrote that the federal prison population had increased by 800 percent from 1980 to 2013. “Private prisons served an important role during a difficult period, but time has shown that they compare poorly to our own Bureau facilities,” the memo reads.
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This was a pretty big deal, nationally. But it doesn’t mean much for Florida, which has the 10th highest rate of incarcerations nationwide.
Of the 103 federal prisons controlled by the Department of Justice, 13 are run by private companies. None of them are in Florida, though. The federal prisons in Florida are already publicly run and all the rest, whether public or private, are run by the state.
In sum: The US has federal prisons and state prisons. The DOJ decision only applies to federal prisons, so it won’t bring any changes to Florida. But it could start to change the conversation on the value and effectiveness of private prisons around the country.
At the federal level:
There are 211,000 inmates in US federal prisons, 22,104 of them in private prisons. These are the ones affected by the DOJ announcement.
Lots of people are putting pressure on the Department of Homeland Security to stop using private prisons for immigration detention facilities, too. There are 33,000 inmates in Immigration Detention Facilities, with nine of the 10 largest operated by private companies.
Two of the largest private prison companies, Florida-based GEO Group (who donates a bunch of cash to Sen. Marco Rubio) and the Corrections Corporation of America, get a big portion of their business.
Florida has nine immigrant detention centers, including the the Krome Detention Center in Miami-Dade.  (In Florida, Krome is operated by Akal Security. The Broward Transitional Center is operated by GEO Group. These will continue to be privately operated.)
At the state level:
In Florida, the Department of Corrections oversees adult prisons. The Department of Juvenile Justice oversees prisons for inmates under the age of 18.
There are 56 state prisons, and seven are private. There are roughly 100,873 inmates, and more than 11,000 in private facilities. We’re not going to see anything change there because of this announcement.
All of 21 of Florida’s Juvenile Detention Centers are privately run. There are 1,306 beds in total. In FY 2009-10, 25,008 inmates went through the 21 centers. These also aren’t changing.
(There are also 67 county jails, which house inmates while they’re on trial or incarcerated a short amount of time aka less than one year.)
What decides whether you get put in a federal prison or a state prison?
Federal prisons house inmates who violate federal laws. State prisons house inmates who violate state laws.
If you commit a crime in one state, it’s a state crime. If you commit a crime across different states, it’s a federal crime. For example, a drug deal only in Florida is a state crime but multiple drug deals across Florida, Georgia, and New York is a federal crime. Also crimes that are against federal institutions are federal crimes — like IRS violations or mail fraud.
The Department of Justice will start phasing out their contracts with private prisons, hoping to cut the number of inmates in private prisons in half by May 2017. But state prisons and immigration detention centers are still business as usual.
“The DOJ announcement doesn’t have any direct effect in Florida, but it sends a powerful message that decision makers in Florida should pay attention to,” according to Adam Tebrugge, Staff Attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.
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selkiecoded · 2 months
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very cool of utah to propose a trans bathroom ban, i love living here
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matarsack · 2 years
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i think the world doesn’t know what it really means to live in a theocratic dictatorship. Let me tell you about our experiences living in the islamic regime of iran.
1. Your parents were born to muslim parents so they’re automatically muslim. You’re automatically a muslim too. You didn’t choose your religion and you can’t opt out of it or you will be executed.
2. The compulsory hijab law makes you a criminal if you choose not to wear hijab even tho you didn’t choose to be a muslim and you don’t consider yourself a muslim but the regime has forced you into that role whether you like it or not. And when you ‘break that law’, they can do with you as they please.
3. little girls as young as 7 yrs old are forced to wear hijab at school even tho the islam itself says the age is 9. and all the schools are gender segregated so imagine how they force you to get used to hijab even when you’re just surrounded by other girls. And all day long at school they tell you horrible stories about what will happen to you in hell if someone sees even a strand of your hair.
4. the regime modifies all the textbooks, story books, cartoons and movies to represent the ideal woman with full on hijab. The iranian media is ordered to photoshop every photo of a woman that may be showing a little skin. And if they’re iranian, no hair is supposed to be seen or that will be photoshopped away. Women are mostly excluded from billboards and tv commercials.
5. imagine going to work or meeting up with a friend when suddenly the morality police kidnap you in broad daylight and force you into a van to take you to a station where they will treat you like a criminal and if you don’t agree to get humiliated and do as they say, they will put you in prison. And in case of Mahsa Amini and so many more before her, they will beat you to death. My sister was barely 18 when she got kidnapped and they didn’t let her call home and she’d been so fucking scared and we had no idea where she was. Imagine all the psychological trauma.
6. If you’re in a car and not wearing hijab they will fine you and seize your car. So when u get into a taxi the driver will ask you to keep your hijab on otherwise they’ll get fined. And if you refuse they’ll ask you to get off the car.
7. And its not just about hijab. In Ramadan, they get even more vicious. If they catch you eating or even drinking water on the street they will give you lashes as punishment and even imprison you for breaking the law. If you work in a state-owned company it’s even worse. They will close the cafeteria and take away the water dispensers. All restaurants are banned from delivering food before iftar. It’s a fucking mess. Everyone has to pretend they’re fasting or they’ll be severely punished.
8. And how could I forget about this! iranian women are banned from singing! the islamic regime prohibits women’s singing voices to be heard by men so imagine the horror of having 50% of the population banned from ever becoming a singer. If they identify a female singer in iran, they will take her to jail and force her to repent her sins in the most humiliating way so that she will never dare sing again.
9. And every time the regime gets wind of a private gathering of men and women trying to have fun and live their fucking private lives, the police crash the party and take everyone to jail bc the Islamic regime bans iranian men and women from having fun.
10. Did you know that the islamic regime doesn’t allow women’s faces to be printed on their obituaries or headstones? They put a flower for our faces instead and if they see a headstone with a woman’s face printed on it they’ll smash it to pieces. That’s how religious dictatorship continues to oppress and erase women even after their deaths.
So if you see Islam has become for many iranians a symbol of oppression and torture and discrimination, that’s why. The regime uses islam as a weapon to silence and punish anyone who opposes them. You can love islam all you want from the safety of your home in a free country and talk about how kind and benevolent the religion is, but in iran, it’s a whole different story.
Our economy is fucked. All govt officials are corrupt as fuck. Most websites are banned in iran. Even tumblr is banned. The world has cut the iranian ppl from many services. We don’t have intl credit cards like visa card. Amazon doesn’t do delivery to iran. We cant get netflix, spotify or even a gamepass subscription. we don’t get any Apple services here. iran isn’t listed as a country you could choose when signing up for a lot of services. and when we decide to leave iran and escape this hellhole, every country out there will make it sooo much harder for us to get a visa just bc we had the misfortune to be born in iran at the wrong time.
This is the story of iran for the past 44 years. Held hostage by a corrupt regime that uses religion to suppress and torture the people and being abandoned by the rest of the world bc our lives don’t matter.
Please be our voice. Once they shut down the internet completely and silence our voice, they will start slaughtering us to stifle the protests just like they did in 2019. Please help us. We want this fucking regime gone.
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Senate Bill 686 of the 118th Congress (The Restrict Act)
I’m honestly a bit disappointed here at Tumblr for not talking about this bill more, so I’m going to share what I’ve learned about it with you all
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The link above goes to a pdf file going over the entire bill that has only been introduced atm as shown in the image just above from congress.gov.
Now, people only see this as a means to ban Tiktok, but that’s just the mask this truly cruel bill is hiding behind.
To boil it all down, this bill lets the Secretary of Commerce to have the power to ban…basically ANYTHING on the internet.
This includes hardware like video game consoles or Wifi networks as well as software and applications such as VPNs.
It also gives the government the power to monitor, basically everything you do online, private messages, posts on social media, streams, you name it, they can monitor it.
And the punishment for using, say, a VPN to access Tiktok, will result in 20 years in prison with a 1/4 million fine, a full million if you did it on purpose.
Now, I please ask you all to go to your representatives and tell them about how you don’t want this bill to be passed whatsoever. Heck, if you have to, (passively) threaten them with supporting their opponent in the next primary in any way they can. Just remember to be respectful and civil.
If you don’t want to do that, I respect that decision, and I understand that you wouldn’t want to deal with politics. But, I at least ask you to signal boost this post by reblogging it to your own followers and give any other thoughts about this that you might have in the tags or just normally.
I don’t want this lovable hellsite we all call home and made such good friends and memories on to be under the eyes of those pedophilic heathens who can’t seem to even know how to unlock a smartphone.
I thank you all for reading this, and I hope you all have a good day/night.
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fatehbaz · 7 months
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This April [2021], the Iowa Department of Corrections issued a ban on charities, family members, and other outside parties donating books to prisoners. Under the state’s new guidelines, incarcerated people can get books only from a handful of “approved vendors.” Used books are prohibited altogether [...].
In 2018, the Michigan prison system introduced an almost identical set of rules, and Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington have all made attempts to block book donations, which were only rolled back after public outcry. Across the United States, the agencies responsible for mass imprisonment are trying to severely limit incarcerated people’s access to the written word [...].
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The official narrative is that donated books could contain “contraband [...]" -- the language used in Michigan [...]. This is a flimsy justification that begins to fall apart under even the lightest scrutiny. [...] [Contraband] [...] [is] not originating from nonprofit groups like the Appalachian Prison Book Project or Philadelphia’s Books Through Bars. [....] The old cartoon scenario of a hollow book with a saw or a gun inside just isn’t realistic, and its invocation is a sign that something else is going on.
That “something else,” predictably enough, is profit. With free books banned, prisoners are forced to rely on the small list of “approved vendors” chosen for them by the prison administration. These retailers directly benefit when states introduce restrictions. In Iowa, the approved sources include [B&N] and [B-a-M], some of America’s largest retail chains -- and, notably, ones which charge the full MSRP value for each book, quickly draining prisoners’ accounts. An incarcerated person with, say, $20 to spend can now only get one book, as opposed to three or four used ones; in states where prisoners make as little as 25 cents an hour for their labor, many can’t afford even that.
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With e-books, the situation is even worse, as companies like [GTL] supply supposedly “free” tablets which actually charge their users by the minute to read.
Even public-domain classics, available on Project Gutenberg, are only available at a price under these systems -- and prisons, in turn, receive a 5% commission on every charge. All of this amounts to rampant price-gouging and profiteering on an industrial scale.
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The rise of these private vendors has also been mirrored by the systematic dismantling of the prison library system. In the last ten years, budgets for literacy and educational resources have seen dramatic cuts, reducing funding to almost nothing [...]. In Illinois, for instance, the Department of Corrections spent just $276 on books across the entire state in 2017, down from an already meager $605 the previous year. (This means, incidentally, that each of the state’s roughly 39,000 prisoners was allotted seven-tenths of a cent.)
Oklahoma, meanwhile, has no dedicated budget for books at all, requiring prison librarians to purchase them out-of-pocket. [...]
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These practices become all the more abhorrent when you consider the impact books can have behind bars. By now, the social science on their benefits is well-established [...]. [O]ther inmates have reported that reading meant “the difference between just giving up mentally and emotionally and making it through another day, week, or year,” countering the dehumanizing effects of their imprisonment. A book can offer a brief, irreplaceable moment of calm in hellish circumstances. [...]
[There is] a shameful pattern in American society, where many people simply don’t think about the incarcerated on a day-to-day basis, let alone sympathize with their worsening conditions. [...] One of the most common arguments for the American carceral system, and its continued existence, is that of rehabilitation. According to its defenders, a prison is not simply a place of suffering, where unwanted populations are sent to disappear. Nor is it a callous money-making machine, intended to squeeze free labor from them in a regime of functional slavery. Instead, prison rehabilitates -- so the story goes. [...] In these terms, the basic legitimacy of mass imprisonment, and its allegedly positive social role, is taken for granted. [...] But the practice of book banning exposes the lie. Not only do American prisons have little interest in education, healing, and growth, but they will actively prevent them the moment there is a dollar to be made or an ounce of power to be secured.
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Text by: Alex Skopic. "The American Prison System's War on Reading". Protean (Protean magazine online). 29 November 2021. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]
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zvaigzdelasas · 2 months
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[The Economist is Private UK Media]
Making someone do porridge (or “eat rice and beans”, to use the Korean expression) for expressing their political views is [...] not generally associated with [South Korea]. Yet Lee Yoon-seop, a South Korean poet, is currently languishing in prison for just this. The 68-year-old was sentenced to 14 months in November for threatening South Korea’s “existence and security”. His crime? Writing a poem in praise of the North.
The law used to prosecute Mr Lee, the National Security Act (nsa), is designed to protect South Korea from spies and traitors. But it also bans South Koreans from visiting or making contact with the North, reading or watching North Korean media or saying anything good about Kim Jong Un’s [...] regime. Though South Korea replaced its former military dictatorship with a democracy in 1987, such restrictions on free speech show that some of the generals’ autocratic tendencies endure.[...]
The NSA was modelled on a law designed to quash pro-independence activities during Japan’s occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945. Since 2003 there have on average been more than 60 NSA prosecutions a year, often for pretty clear espionage cases. A businessman and an army officer were arrested for allegedly selling military secrets to North Korea. Soldiers in the South have been prosecuted under the act for endangering morale by distributing pro-North propaganda.
But the NSA is too often used to prosecute satirists and raid the homes and offices of leftists. Some cases have been ridiculous. Kim Myeong-soo, a PhD student, received six months in prison and a two-year suspended sentence for selling books on North Korea that were widely available in public libraries. A South Korean woman was given a two-year sentence, suspended for four years, for owning recordings of 14 North Korean songs.
This is not Mr Lee’s first offence. But the claim that the sexagenarian posed a threat to South Korea is absurd. His ode was published on a North Korean website. Access to such sites is banned by the NSA and forbidden from a South Korean IP address. [...] It consists of a list of South Korean problems that Mr Kim, in the poet’s view, would instantly solve given the chance.
Mr Lee’s real offence appears to have been believing his own nonsense. By contrast, police decided not to investigate a man under the draconian law for selling shirts with a smiling Mr Kim and the slogan “Walk a flowery path, comrade”. That was OK, officials said, because he was selling them to make a buck.
Worse, the issue points to a broader authoritarian tendency in the South. Its president, Yoon Suk-yeol, often demonises his political opponents by calling them “anti-state forces”, a phrase lifted directly from the NSA. Unfavourable press coverage is routinely labelled “fake news” and the offices of offending outlets have been raided. The administration and its allies have sued more press outfits for defamation—which in South Korea can be a crime even when the offending words are manifestly true—in Mr Yoon’s first 18 months in office than any of its three predecessors did in total.
Yet even a more liberal government would be unlikely to remove the NSA’s illiberal clauses. No administration has made a serious attempt to address it in 20 years. There is no significant political support for scrapping the law [...]. The current administration at least flirted with allowing South Koreans access to North Korean media, but recently abandoned the idea. [...]
Mr Yoon talks often about South Korea’s democratic values. They are at the heart of his pitch for the country to be a strategic link between East and West, developed and developing countries. For that reason alone he should take them more seriously. South Korea is undoubtedly a democracy, but not a terribly liberal one so long as it locks up old men for their dotty opinions. Reforming the NSA would be a better rebuttal to the sentiment Mr Lee expressed than banning it.
22 Jan 24
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Prison-tech is a scam - and a harbinger of your future
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve
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Here's how the shitty technology adoption curve works: when you want to roll out a new, abusive technology, look for a group of vulnerable people whose complaints are roundly ignored and subject them to your bad idea. Sand the rough edges off on their bodies and lives. Normalize the technological abuse you seek to inflict.
Next: work your way up the privilege gradient. Maybe you start with prisoners, then work your way up to asylum seekers, parolees and mental patients. Then try it on kids and gig workers. Now, college students and blue collar workers. Climb that curve, bit by bit, until you've reached its apex and everyone is living with your shitty technology:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware
Prisoners, asylum seekers, drug addicts and other marginalized people are the involuntary early adopters of every form of disciplinary technology. They are the leading indicators of the ways that technology will be ruining your life in the future. They are the harbingers of all our technological doom.
Which brings me to Minnesota.
Minnesota is one of the first states make prison phone-calls free. This is a big deal, because prison phone-calls are a big business. Prisoners are literally a captive audience, and the telecommunications sector is populated by sociopaths, bred and trained to spot and exploit abusive monopoly opportunities. As states across America locked up more and more people for longer and longer terms, the cost of operating prisons skyrocketed, even as states slashed taxes on the rich and turned a blind eye to tax evasion.
This presented telco predators with an unbeatable opportunity: they approached state prison operators and offered them a bargain: "Let us take over the telephone service to your carceral facility and we will levy eye-watering per-minute charges on the most desperate people in the world. Their families – struggling with one breadwinner behind bars – will find the money to pay this ransom, and we'll split the profits with you, the cash-strapped, incarceration-happy state government."
This was the opening salvo, and it turned into a fantastic little money-spinner. Prison telco companies and state prison operators were the public-private partnership from hell. Prison-tech companies openly funneled money to state coffers in the form of kickbacks, even as they secretly bribed prison officials to let them gouge their inmates and inmates' families:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/02/mississippi-corrections-corruption-bribery-private-prison-hustle/
As digital technology got cheaper and prison-tech companies got greedier, the low end of the shitty tech adoption curve got a lot more crowded. Prison-tech companies started handing out "free" cheap Android tablets to prisoners, laying the groundwork for the next phase of the scam. Once prisoners had tablets, prisons could get rid of phones altogether and charge prisoners – and their families – even higher rates to place calls right to the prisoner's cell.
Then, prisons could end in-person visits and replace them with sub-skype, postage-stamp-sized videoconferencing, at rates even higher than the voice-call rates. Combine that with a ban on mailing letters to and from prisoners – replaced with a service that charged even higher rates to scan mail sent to prisoners, and then charged prisoners to download the scans – and prison-tech companies could claim to be at the vanguard of prison safety, ending the smuggling of dope-impregnated letters and other contraband into the prison system.
Prison-tech invented some wild shit, like the "digital stamp," a mainstay of industry giant Jpay, which requires prisoners to pay for "stamps" to send or receive a "page" of email. If you're keeping score, you've realized that this is a system where prisoners and their families have to pay for calls, "in-person" visits, handwritten letters, and email.
It goes on: prisons shuttered their libraries and replaced them with ebook stores that charged 2-4 times the prices you'd pay for books on the outside. Prisoners were sold digital music at 200-300% markups relative to, say, iTunes.
Remember, these are prisoners: locked up for years or decades, decades during which their families scraped by with a breadwinner behind bars. Prisoners can earn money, sure – as much as $0.89/hour, doing forced labor for companies that contract with prisons for their workforce:
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/
Of course, there's the odd chance for prisoners to make really big bucks – $2-5/day. All they have to do is "volunteer" to fight raging wildfires:
https://www.hcn.org/articles/climate-desk-wildfire-california-incarcerated-firefighters-face-dangerous-work-low-pay-and-covid19/
So those $3 digital music tracks are being bought by people earning as little as $0.10/hour. Which makes it especially galling when prisons change prison-tech suppliers, whereupon all that digital music is deleted, wiping prisoners' media collection out – forever (literally, for prisoners serving life terms):
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/captive-audience-how-floridas-prisons-and-drm-made-113m-worth-prisoners-music
Let's recap: America goes on a prison rampage, locking up ever-larger numbers of people for ever-longer sentences. Once inside, prisoners had their access to friends and family rationed, along with access to books, music, education and communities outside. This is very bad for prisoners – strong ties to people outside is closely tied to successful reentry – but it's great for state budgets, and for wardens, thanks to kickbacks:
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2021/12/21/family_contact/
Back to Minnesota: when Minnesota became the fourth state in the USA where the state, not prisoners, would pay for prison calls, it seemed like they were finally breaking the vicious cycle in which every dollar ripped off of prisoners' family paid 40 cents to the state treasury:
https://www.kaaltv.com/news/no-cost-phone-calls-for-those-incarcerated-in-minnesota/
But – as Katya Schwenk writes for The Lever – what happened next is "a case study in how prison communication companies and their private equity owners have managed to preserve their symbiotic relationship with state corrections agencies despite reforms — at the major expense of incarcerated people and their families":
https://www.levernews.com/wall-streets-new-prison-scam/
Immediately after the state ended the ransoming of prisoners' phone calls, the private-equity backed prison-tech companies that had dug their mouth-parts into the state's prison jacked up the price of all their other digital services. For example, the price of a digital song in a Minnesota prison just jumped from $1.99 to $2.36 (for prisoners earning as little as $0.25/hour).
As Paul Wright from the Human Rights Defense Center told Schwenk, "The ideal world for the private equity owners of these companies is every prisoner has one of their tablets, and every one of those tablets is hooked up to the bank account of someone outside of prison that they can just drain."
The state's new prison-tech supplier promises to double the amount of kickbacks it pays the state each year, thanks to an aggressive expansion into games, money transfers, and other "services." The perverse incentive isn't hard to spot: the more these prison-tech companies charge, the more kickbacks they pay to the prisons.
The primary prison-tech company for Minnesota's prisons is Viapath (nee Global Tel Link), which pioneered price-gouging on in-prison phone calls. Viapath has spent the past two decades being bought and sold by different private equity firms: Goldman Sachs, Veritas Capital, and now the $46b/year American Securities.
Viapath competes with another private equity-backed prison-tech giant: Aventiv (Securus, Jpay), owned by Platinum Equity. Together, Viapath and Aventiv control 90% of the prison-tech market. These companies have a rap-sheet as long as your arm: bribing wardens, stealing from prisoners and their families, and recording prisoner-attorney calls. But these are the kinds of crimes the state punishes with fines and settlements – not by terminating its contracts with these predators.
These companies continue to flout the law. Minnesota's new free-calls system bans prison-tech companies from paying kickbacks to prisons and prison-officials for telcoms services, so the prison-tech companies have rebranded ebooks, music, and money-transfers as non-communications products, and the kickbacks are bigger than ever.
This is the bottom end of the shitty technology adoption curve. Long before Ubisoft started deleting games that you'd bought a "perpetual license" for, prisoners were having their media ganked by an uncaring corporation that knew it was untouchable:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIqyvquTEVU
Revoking your media, charging by the byte for messaging, confiscating things in the name of security and then selling them back to you – these are all tactics that were developed in the prison system, refined, normalized, and then worked up the privilege gradient. Prisoners are living in your technology future. It's just not evenly distributed – yet.
As it happens, prison-tech is at the heart of my next novel, The Bezzle, which comes out on Feb 20. This is a followup to last year's bestselling Red Team Blues, which introduced the world to Marty Hench, a two-fisted, hard-bitten, high-tech forensic accountant who's spent 40 years busting Silicon Valley finance scams:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle
In The Bezzle, we travel with Marty back to the mid 2000s (Hench is a kind of tech-scam Zelig and every book is a standalone tale of high-tech ripoffs from a different time and place). Marty's trying to help his old pal Scott Warms, a once-high-flying founder who's fallen prey to California's three-strikes law and is now facing decades in a state pen. As bad as things are, they get worse when the prison starts handing out "free" tablet and closing down the visitation room, the library, and the payphones.
This is an entry to the thing I love most about the Hench novels: the opportunity to turn all this dry, financial skullduggery into high-intensity, high-stakes technothriller plot. For me, Marty Hench is a tool for flensing the scam economy of all its layers of respectability bullshit and exposing the rot at the core.
It's not a coincidence that I've got a book coming out in a week that's about something that's in the news right now. I didn't "predict" this current turn – I observed it. The world comes at you fast and technology news flutters past before you can register it. Luckily, I have a method for capturing this stuff as it happens:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/
Writing about tech issues that are long-simmering but still in the periphery is a technique I call "predicting the present." It's the technique I used when I wrote Little Brother, about out-of-control state surveillance of the internet. When Snowden revealed the extent of NSA spying in 2013, people acted as though I'd "predicted" the Snowden revelations:
https://www.wired.com/story/his-writing-radicalized-young-hackers-now-he-wants-to-redeem-them/
But Little Brother and Snowden's own heroic decision have a common origin: the brave whistleblower Mark Klein, who walked into EFF's offices in 2006 and revealed that he'd been ordered by his boss at AT&T to install a beam-splitter into the main fiber trunk so that the NSA could illegally wiretap the entire internet:
https://www.eff.org/document/public-unredacted-klein-declaration
Mark Klein inspired me to write Little Brother – but despite national press attention, the Klein revelations didn't put a stop to NSA spying. The NSA was still conducting its lawless surveillance campaign in 2013, when Snowden, disgusted with NSA leadership for lying to Congress under oath, decided to blow the whistle again:
https://apnews.com/article/business-33a88feb083ea35515de3c73e3d854ad
The assumption that let the NSA get away with mass surveillance was that it would only be weaponized against the people at the bottom of the shitty technology adoption curve: brown people, mostly in other countries. The Snowden revelations made it clear that these were just the beginning, and sure enough, more than a decade later, we have data-brokers sucking up billions in cop kickbacks to enable warrantless surveillance, while virtually following people to abortion clinics, churches, and protests. Mass surveillance is chugging its way up the shitty tech adoption curve with no sign of stopping.
Like Little Brother, The Bezzle is intended as a kind of virtual flythrough of what life is like further down on that curve – a way for readers who have too much agency to be in the crosshairs of a company like Viapath or Avently right now to wake up before that kind of technology comes for them, and to inspire them to take up the cause of the people further down the curve who are mired in it.
The Bezzle is an intense book, but it's also a very fun story – just like Little Brother. It's a book that lays bare the internal technical workings of so many scams, from multi-level marketing to real-estate investment trusts, from music royalty theft to prison-tech, in the course of an ice-cold revenge plot that keeps twisting to the very last page.
It'll drop in six days. I hope you'll check it out:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle
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avtrbee · 2 years
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saving grace
summary: morpheus is captured by roderick burgess, but is swiftly rescued by his wife
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A/n: yeah ik, ik, i should be working on love game but hehe this was way too irresistible. basically a Love game au where morpheus treated you right and you save morpheus from his imprisonment at the height if burgess’ power. Think of this as what could have been is morpheus was a better husband from the beginning. gif not mine !!
Jessamy was your final warning that Roderick Burgess is not your normal opponent. He was such a ridiculously luck-favored individual that despite failing to capture Death, he had imprisoned the next best thing. He stole his tools, bringing him prosperity. The magician Burgess became renowned in the waking world, a man of miracles, blessed by the gods who created magic themselves, and- some say, has a demon locked in his basement.
You had tried to enter it once, thinking that you could just pop by and drag Dream from his cage, but someone had tipped Burgess to write runes around every entrance and exit in his house that weaken you and can ban you from entering, unless someone wanted you in. You have a strong hunch that they were the same person to warn the magician not to break the summoning circle, and enclose Dream inside a glass sphere.
You were with Jessamy, helping her dodge every bullet Burgess had tried to aim. It is through Jessamy that you finally get your first glance of the mansion’s inner lodgings, preening forward as Jessamy lights up a fire and hides in the corners of the mansion until, finally, you are greeted with the first sight of Dream in a year.
His unruly hair was the first thing you saw, before he slowly lifted his head up in hope. Morpheus is stripped bare, without his helm, ruby and pouch of sand. Without any robes. He looks at Jessamy with adoration. Wherever Dream the Endless goes, there will always be his loyal raven not too far behind. But there was a quick lift of his lips as he spots his bird- a private smile. That one is for you.
Though you were far, far away from Earth, you could hear the small clink Jessamy’s beak made as she frantically pecked on the glass orb that holds your husband. You watch in devastation how the hope in Morhpeus’ eyes faded away, replaced by a look of utter resignment. Still, he lifts his hand to touch his glass cage to his precious bird. 
While in her head, you could feel Jessamy’s emotions, how she was as desperate as you to set her lord go, her utter relief at how she finally entered the house after months of trying, and her overwhelming fear that something was going to go wrong. You feel how Jessamy pushes and fails to push this lingering fear of death that she senses in the air, trying her best to focus on the glass, to keep pecking, and pecking until-
Until nothing. 
You open your eyes with a start and mouth agape, grasping your sheets in freight as you feel a phantom pain at your back. You try to remember where you are as you get up from bed. You feet touches a lush red rug that stretches a little more after the bed ends, a floor with pristine marble walls that shimmer as you walk, and a mirror on your right that if you go through would take you to your own realm.
Home. This is where you are, home in the Dreaming, home to the private chamber you share with your husband, Dream. Dream, who is not here. Dream, who is in the waking world, held prisoner by some amateur magician who got lucky.
You know what you must do. You exit your room and walk towards his throne room in a hurry, up the stairs to his seat of power uninterrupted until you sense a quiet presence with you.
Lucienne is at the foot of the steps, looking at you in both sadness and fear as she spots your bow and quiver with your person, your trusted weapons that will aid you in whatever comes next.
“My lady,” she starts, and her warm dark gaze falls on you as you stare at her eyes back. Somehow there is an entire conversation that was said in silence as you look at each other's gaze. You can hear her warnings, her hesitations on your leave, her worry on the slowly deteriorating state of the Dreaming. You can hear her attempts to persuade to stay, that perhaps Morpheus would free himself soon. In your ears, you can also hear your replies, your attempts to soothe her worry, your promises to come back. It is not lost to you that you may be repeating the exact same thing your husband said. 
“Safe travels.” She says instead and you know you have gotten her blessing.
You slip into the waking world without a moment’s thought.
-
There are three facts you recite to yourself as you approach the Burgess Manor in all its splendor. First, there is a party tonight. The Burgess monarch seems to love these parties, having one at every month, each growing more extravagant than the last. There is a growing crowd of eager party goers hoping to catch a glimpse and the favor of the Burgess monarch. Two, thanks to the runes carved above every entrance of the house, you must be invited inside.
You walk towards the crowd in confidence, putting on a show to anyone who is looking. You glance to your right as you see yourself in the reflection of a car window- utterly gorgeous. Lips as red as the blood you will cry tonight, eyes as dark as sunless sky and your smile as deadly as your fury. Three, you are the most beautiful girl in the party. 
Not that it matters, you think to yourself as you walk through the crowd who parts as you strut. They will all see who they want to see.
You catch a boy guarding the front door as he lets other guests in. You follow the line of people, before catching the arm of an unsuspecting man, halting him from entering the door.
“Wha- oh. Oh, hello, may I help you?” His initial anger has immediately faded as he saw you, replaced by an infatuated grin. You squint your eyes when you realize he is not a reminder of his lady wife when he looks at you, but rather a girl from a whore house a couple of blocks from his home.
“I can’t help but to notice you were unaccompanied on this lovely night,” you start, tugging his arm closer until you are hugging it. “I was wondering if I can keep you company tonight…?”
The nameless man smiles easily. “Well, since you asked so nicely.”
You giggle in delight and the man leads you towards the door. As you passed by the carved runes of the door, you felt a wave of fatigue run over that almost made you stumble. The man you are thankfully does not notice, as his head was still in the clouds of scoring a woman so beautiful. 
But despite his luck, the man quickly announces his leave as soon as he sees Roderick Burgess on a chair. He is more eager to save his dying company than to have the presence of Love themselves, it seems. You do not mind and laugh comfortingly as he mournfully apologizes as he takes his leave, giving you not one, but four longing glances as he approached his target. You do not mind. The nameless man had let you inside and led you to Roderick Burgess in less than five minutes. You would have considered blessing him if only he was faithful to his marriage. 
You slink behind people, accepting a glass of champagne to blend in but never leaving your sights off the man who had imprisoned Dream. He is constantly surrounded by different people, some part of his household, but most were his fellow amateur magicians and cultists, eager to get his acquaintance. You wait until he is finally alone. He stands to walk, and you follow. 
“All that talking must be tiring.” You have heard that he has a lover already, a young blonde girl that is often seen hanging on his arms in these types of events. But the fact that you had not seen her yet tonight makes you optimistic. That and how you wear his old wife’s face, the one that face that Randall inherited- its why he loved him the best, you know you have won. “Isn’t it tiring?”
It takes a second for him to reply, too taken aback by a dead face. “It is but a necessary evil of the powerful,” he says, offering you his arm. You happily accept and cling to it. “Do you drink, fair lady?” 
“I do, but I am not as fond of wine, sir.” You reply. You place your hand on his chest as a spur of red magic ignites out of your palms. You feel his heart and squeeze. “I’m afraid you must drink twice as much for the both of us tonight.”
Love me, love me, love me, your magic inside him chants.
Roderick Burgess smiles and laughs like a happy man, and you knew you spoke like his dead wife came to life. Despite his sins against Morpheus, you find comfort to at least provide him this brief fantasy. A human’s grief has always hit you a hard, and you would have felt bad for exploiting his mourning if he did not have you husband locked under his house.  You know what you must do. 
You patiently wait with a smile getting harder to hide as the hours pass by. You watch as Roderick Burgess receives drink after drink, never declining a glass of wine that was offered. You wait until he is stumbling in his walk, until he needs you by his side to keep himself from falling.   
The party was long over when he was finished. All guests had retreated home, or had passed out in the living room. Roderick Burgess clings on your shoulder as he thinks you are leading him to his bedroom. He is too drunk to notice that you have not climbed the stairs, but rather down to the hallway, towards the door to his basement.
You halted at the door that Jessamy had previously entered. “What is behind this door, sir? Surely not another one of your living rooms?”
Roderick took a glance at the door and laughed. “A great failure,” he replies. “But a blessing in disguise nonethelessh.”
His voice slurs and you smile. “Impossible. Failure does not know Roderick Burgess,” you say and he laughs even harder. “After all, they whisper of the demon you keep in your basement.”
He shrugs himself off your grip as he stumbles towards the door. “Failure? I know it well, girl. My son, gone. My wife-“ he mournfully looks at you before quickly looking away out of grief or lust, you do not know.  “-is dead. You think I do not know what you are doing? You’re just like the rest of them! So hungry for power, so hungry for what I can give.”
You seethe. He cannot give anything. Every single blessing that was brought forth to his life was because of your husband's stolen tools. 
“You are jushh like the rest of ‘em,” he declares, his words getting louder and sloppier. “But tonight, I shall show you, thanks to the wonderful company you’ve given me tonight.”
You did not give him good company. Roderick had fun by himself drink after drink. You had merely waited. 
He swings the basement doors open and enters and you follow quietly behind him like a silent shadow. There is a stone hallway that you go through before finally, you see your husband’s sphere cage. At the sound of your voice, Morpheus lets out a small grin. His eyes were curious, head tilting in confusion on what you were doing down here. You make it a point not to look at him.
“He is not a demon,” Roderick starts, walking to Dream. He stops before the summoning circle. “He is Endless. More than a God, but less than Death.” Roderick turns to you and beckons you with his hand. You accept his hand gracefully, and Roderick leads you beside him. At the corner of your eye, you see Morpheus look at your conjoined palms. “I had tried to summon Death for my Randall. I got him instead,” he spits angrily. 
“Then what does he do?” You ask, eyeing at the summoning circle. You see Dream’s prison, but you do not know how to break it yet. You must be smart. “And this?” You ask, your foot gesturing to the runes written on the floor. 
You were tugged back harshly before your foot could even touch the circle. “Break that circle and he will kill you.” Roderick hissed in an angry breath. Morpheus’ eyes darken at Roderick’s grating action, but dared not to move. 
“He does not bargain,” Roderick starts, looking back at Morpheus and you take it as your cue to move back slowly. You feel your bow appear in your hands, strong and steady just like how you must be. There is already an arrow ready on it waiting for you. “nor does he show any sort of emotions.” 
You nock the arrow, keeping your eyes on the man. Before you, Morpheus eyes your weapon but keeps a passive face giving nothing away from your scheme.
“He cannot do anything at all.” Roderick raises a hand and gestures for you without turning. “Come, love. Say hi. Don’t be afraid, he cannot even speak.”
You look at Morpheus in the eye and raise your bow to Roderick’s head. “Hello, Dream.”
Morpheus looks at you now with all the fondness in his eyes and the softest smile on his lips- the rare kind of look reserved for a selected few that you receive in bulk. “Hello, wife.”
You could see Roderick’s confused frown reflected on the glass sphere before turning his head to you. As if in slow motion, you watch his eyes darken in fury and embarrassment as he realizes he has been tricked. He opens his mouth, but your arrow hits his head first. You watch as your arrow disappears as soon as it hits its mark, and you wait for Roderick Burgess to hit the floor before you scramble to the floor and erase as much of the summoning circle as you can. You frantically scrub every written symbol you can reach until there is a wide gap.
“My Love,” Morpheus calls, halting your action. You turn to him, relishing to see him through your eyes. You raise your hand against the sphere and Dream does the same. So close and yet so far. 
“I am sorry about Jessamy,” you whisper, guilt lacing every word. Your husband closes his eyes in pain, as if reliving the exact memory of his trusted bird dying in front of him. “What must I do?” You look around quickly. “Morpheus, we don’t have much time and I- I am weakened here. There are runes, and if you want to get out you must do it now.”
“I cannot break this cage from the inside, my Love.” Dream says with the same resigned look on his face. “Leave me, if you must-“
“No!” You shriek. “No, please, Morpheus-“ You look around again, searching for the room for anything that might help. There were two desks before the sphere, probably for the guards stationed around Dream, but you do not see any firearms. There is nothing strong enough to break his cage, until the thought finally dawns upon you.
“I must cry,” you realize. 
You drop to the floor as soon as you say the words, squeezing your eyes shut as the familiar pain of your blood tears start streaming from your face. You have felt fire burn before, but nothing will ever compare to the poisonous magic your tears bring. Your head feels like it's frozen and on fire at the same time, but your eyes carry the most damage your tears bring, making them feel like a hot white pain. It is a burn, poison and freezing at the same time.
Despite your weakened state, you managed to clutch a single arrow out. You grip on it like it's your lifeline before putting it’s tip under your eye to catch your blood tears. 
“Love, why must you weep for me?” Morpheus asks, kneeling down in his cage, trying his best to be as close as he could. 
You try to laugh. “I have been deprived of my husband for almost a decade, my lord,” you reply weakly, still bowing at your burning eyes. As soon as you know the arrow is coated fully with your blood tears, you halt crying and weakly nock the arrow immediately. “He was taken from me.”
Morpheus, familiar to the power your blood tears hold, had backed away as far as he could in his glass cage. You waste no moment aiming your arrow towards the glass and shoot. The glass explodes with a loud boom that echoes across the room, shaking the basement and the house above you. Distantly, you hear screams above and you wonder if you had accidentally caused an earthquake. Your arrow makes you fly across the room, hitting the stone wall that you were behind before.
But all thoughts leave your head when a familiar touch holds your face gently. Morpheus is finally in front of you, his hands feeling so warm despite not being human. He looks at you with stars in his eyes and a smile of adoration on his mouth.
“But crying pains you.”
You feel his thumb wipe your blood tears away, staining your cheeks even redder. “I would cry rivers of blood if it means having you back.”
You smile in his hands, eyes bloodshot and cheeks stained red. Morpheus has never seen you so beautiful. Slowly, he leans forward and gives you a kiss on your head before cradling your head again to look at you. 
Your husband is not one to say his words aloud, but you heard thank you, I’m sorry, and I love you through his kiss all the same. 
“Let us go home,” you say, grasping his hand and kissing his palm. 
“As long as Dream of the Endless is with Love, his wife,” Morpheus starts. “He is already home.”
if you like this fic, check out my masterlist!
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otherkinnews · 1 month
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Republicans introduce a 7th anti-furry bill and work to undermine student freedoms on a wider scale
(This blog post was written by Orion Scribner and N. Noel Sol, originally posted on February 18, 2024 to the Otherkin News Dreamwidth, at this link.)
Content warnings: Rated G. An urban legend that describes an unsanitary situation. Sexism against transgender people, including attempts to prevent them from participating in sports and using facilities like everyone else, and attempts to stop them from transitioning.
Summary: In 2023, Republicans began to propose laws (bills) in the US that would be against people who identify as animals. They base these on an urban legend that says schools provide litter boxes for students who identify as animals. Republicans made up that legend in parody of transgender students asking to use school restrooms (Scribner and Sol, 2024). The newest of these bills is Missouri House Bill 3678 (MO HB 2678). It’s the third such bill in 2024, bringing the historic total of these bills up to seven. This bill was written as part of a Republican effort to undermine public schools (which can’t ban transgender students from using the right restrooms, and students have First Amendment rights) in favor of religious charter schools (where students aren’t protected in those ways). The following blog post is a seven minute read.
What the Missouri bill says
Missouri House Bill 3678 (MO HB 2678) has the title “Prohibits students from engaging in ‘furry’ behavior while at school.” You can read this bill and see the latest actions on its official site, the Missouri House of Representatives, or on a third-party legislation tracking site, LegiScan. This bill was introduced this week, on February 13th, and read a second time on the 14th. It would add a law into the Revised Statutes of Missouri (RSMo). It would go in the part of the state laws about education, in Chapter 167, titled “Pupils and Special Services.” It would say:
“A student who purports to be an imaginary animal or animal species or who engages in anthropomorphic behavior consistent with the common designation of a ‘furry’ while at school shall not be allowed to participate in school curriculum or activities. The parent or guardian of a student in violation of this section shall remove the student from the school for the remainder of the school day.”
The same as the other bills like it, this bill is based on an urban legend, not on anything that was done in real life by students, furries, and/or people who identify as animals (McKinney, 2022a). This bill's wording looks like it was based on a bill from another state, Oklahoma House Bill 3084 (OK HB 3084), or its predecessor last year, Oklahoma Senate Bill 943 (OK SB 943). It shares their inaccuracies: though there are real people who identify as animals, surveys show that most furries don’t, and the dictionary definition of the word “anthropomorphic” means resembling a human, not resembling an animal (Scribner and Sol, 2024).
Who wrote the bill, and what is its context with that author’s other motivations?
The Missouri bill’s only sponsor (writer) is Cheri Toalson Reisch (she/her). She is a Missouri Republican who has supported anti-transgender bills in the past. One of those is MO SB 39, which would ban transgender students from participating in their gender’s sports division (both in private and public schools, up to and including in colleges and universities). Another one is MO SB 49. It would bar minors from accessing gender transition related surgeries or medications, removes adult coverage of hormone replacement therapy and any gender-affirming or transitioning surgeries from the Missouri Medicaid program, and denies prisoners and inmates access to any surgeries related to gender transitioning. She described both these bills as a “great move in the right direction,” and has been vocally critical that they were not harsher (Central MO Info, 2023).
Reisch is familiar with the urban legend started by conservatives of students using litter boxes in school bathrooms. She has posted about it on Facebook, telling her constituents that it is actively happening in Missouri and accusing the Columbia school district of taking part in it, stating “This is happening in Columbia Public Schools also. Yes, the janitor has to clean the litter box” (McKinney, 2022a). That's never happened. Schools say they have not been providing litter boxes to students in this way, and even deny that they have had any students identifying or behaving as animals, according to reliable fact checking resources (Reuters, 2022; Palma, Snopes, 2023).
Reisch has a history of being especially critical of the Columbia school district, which is one of the largest and most successful school districts in the state (McKinney, 2022b). She’s used this urban legend to attack the district’s legitimacy. This may be because Reisch prioritizes independently-run charter schools over standard public schools. Earlier this year, she sponsored MO HB 1941, which would allow for charter schools to operate within the Columbia school district without the district’s sponsorship.
Why are Republicans criticizing public schools and favoring charter schools?
In the US, the normal types of schools for children up to about age 18 are called public schools. Families don’t have to pay for their children to attend them. They represent the ideal that everyone growing up in the country should have equal access to school, regardless of income, class, race, religion, or ability. Because public schools are government establishments, the US Constitution protects the students’ rights there. The First Amendment of the Constitution protects the freedom of speech and religion of everyone, and that’s for students in public schools, too. In the landmark 1969 case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, students sued because they had gotten suspended for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. The Supreme Court decided that it would be as tyrannical to prevent students from expressing political opinions within public schools as it would be in any other government establishments. The Court said students don’t “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” In 1948, McCollum v. Board of Education had decided that public schools can’t give religious instruction during the school day. In 1962, Engel v. Vitale decided they can’t make students pray (Pew Research Center, 2019). Public school dress codes often aren’t as fair as they should be, but for the most part, their students can wear what they want and what their parents allow.
In contrast, what are known as charter schools in the US are privately owned, so they’re allowed to have requirements or education goals which would be considered a violation of the First Amendment. Some of them have religious affiliations and may be owned or operated by religious organizations. This can affect the way the school is run. For example, Oklahoma charter St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School has planned Catholic religious instruction classes, and the school’s active and intentional participation in what it refers to as “the evangelizing mission of the Church” (Fitzpatrick, 2023). Charter school dress codes can be much more strict. They are often segregated by gender stereotypes, forcing girls to wear skirts and boys trousers, no exceptions. This has been challenged in some places against specific schools, such as in North Carolina earlier this year in a lawsuit against the Charter Day School Inc (Chung, 2023). These challenges are the outlier and not the norm, however; gender-segregated dress codes are still a very common practice for charter schools overall. Charter schools also require applications and choose students based on random lottery systems. However, studies find that charter schools are more likely to ignore parents inquiring about the enrollment process if the student has a disability or other special needs (Darville, 2018). Unlike public schools, they don’t welcome everyone.
The freedom of expression in public schools is important for transgender students. In 2020, the case ​​G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board decided in favor of transgender-friendly restroom policies in high schools. This precedent helps protect transgender students’ rights in public schools, but doesn’t apply to charter schools. During the course of the case, the Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund told the Court why to decide against transgender rights. In an effort to invalidate transgender people, the Fund compared transgender people to otherkin. The Fund used the word “otherkin,” and described them at length, mostly accurately but derisively (Brief Amicus Curiae, 2017, G.G. v. Gloucester Cty Sch Bd). This case was part of what inspired the Republicans to later make up the litter box urban legend. We don’t know if that particular brief inspired the legend too.
Republicans may be promoting charter schools because this would give them greater control over impressing their views about gender, religion, and politics on young generations. They may be undermining public schools because the separation of church and state limits their power to do so there. The urban legend and these bills are part of that.
Background about all of the furry bills and the urban legend that inspired them
To learn about this year’s first two anti-furry bills, read our post about them from last week (Scribner and Sol, 2024). That post also summarizes the four anti-furry bills last year, and the litter box urban legend. For further information about those aspects, you can watch our lecture about last year’s bills and what you do about bad bills (Chimeras, Scribner, and Shepard, 2023), and watch Chimeras’s lecture about the litter box urban legend (Chimeras, 2022).
What happens next with Reisch’s anti-furry bill?
The bill is at 25% progression toward becoming a law. The House heard the bill twice, but it hasn’t been voted on. At the time that we write this blog post, they haven’t scheduled the bill’s next hearing.
About the writers of this blog post
We are Orion Scribner (they/them) and N. Noel Sol (she/they), a couple of dragons. We never write articles with the assistance of procedural generation or so-called artificial intelligence (AI), and that type of content isn’t allowed on Otherkin News.
References
“Brief Amicus Curiae of Public Advocate of the United States, U.S. Justice Foundation, and Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund in Support of Petitioner.” Gloucester County School Bd. v. G. G. ex rel. Grimm, No. 16-273, 2017 WL 192454 (Jan. 10, 2017). http://files.eqcf.org/cases/16-273-amicus-brief-public-advocate-et-al/
Central MO Info (May 19, 2023). “Representative Toalson Reisch Disappointed in Senate’s Version of Trans Bills.” Central MO Info. https://www.centralmoinfo.com/representative-toalson-reisch-disappointed-in-senates-version-of-trans-bills/
Chung, Andrew (June 26, 2024). “US Supreme Court turns away case on charter school's mandatory skirts for girls.” Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-turns-away-case-charter-schools-mandatory-skirts-girls-2023-06-26
Darville, Sarah (Dec. 21, 2018). “Want a charter school application? If your child has a disability, your questions more likely to be ignored, study finds.” Chalkbeat. https://www.chalkbeat.org/2018/12/21/21106398/want-a-charter-school-application-if-your-child-has-a-disability-your-questions-more-likely-to-be-ig/
Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962). https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-supreme-court/370/421.html
Fitzpatrick, Cara (Sept. 9, 2023). “The Charter-School Movement’s New Divide.” The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/charter-schools-religion-public-secular/675293/
G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board. 972 F.3d 586 (4th Cir. 2020). https://casetext.com/case/grimm-v-gloucester-cnty-sch-bd-8
House of Chimeras (Aug. 12, 2022). "Litter Boxes in School Bathrooms: Dissecting the Alt-Right’s Current Moral Panic." OtherCon. https://youtu.be/WVjXOmN2IlU
House of Chimeras, Orion Scribner, and Page Shepard (2023). “Litter Box Hoax 2: Legislature Boogaloo.” OtherCon 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsXy_ctC4Jc&t=1425s
Legiscan. MO HB 2678. https://legiscan.com/MO/bill/HB2678/2024
Legiscan. MO HB 1941. https://legiscan.com/MO/bill/HB1941/2024
Mccollum v. Board Of Education, 333 U.S. 203 (1948). https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-supreme-court/333/203.html
McKinney, Rodger (Aug. 25, 2022). “State Rep. Cheri Reisch criticized for 'unwarranted' claim that CPS students use litterboxes.” Columbia Daily Tribune. https://www.columbiatribune.com/story/news/politics/elections/local/2022/08/25/state-rep-cheri-reisch-criticized-for-unwarranted-claim-that-cps-columbia-students-use-litterboxes/7895082001/
McKinney, Rodger (Feb. 6, 2022). “State Rep. Cheri Reisch states 'Columbia sucks' when referring to public schools in education hearing” Columbia Daily Tribune. https://www.columbiatribune.com/story/news/education/2022/02/06/cheri-reisch-states-columbia-sucks-when-referring-to-cps-in-education-hearing-mo-leg-basye/6662719001/
Missouri House of Representatives. MO HB 2678. https://house.mo.gov/Bill.aspx?bill=HB2678&year=2024&code=R
Missouri Senate. MO SB 49. https://www.senate.mo.gov/23info/BTS_Web/Bill.aspx?SessionType=R&BillID=44407
Missouri Senate. MO SB 39. https://senate.mo.gov/23info/BTS_Web/Bill.aspx?SessionType=R&BillID=44496
Palma, Bethania. (January 30, 2023). “How Furries Got Swept Up in Anti-Trans 'Litter Box' Rumors.” Snopes. https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/01/30/how-furries-got-swept-up-in-anti-trans-litter-box-rumors/ Archived on March 30, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230330232007/https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/01/30/how-furries-got-swept-up-in-anti-trans-litter-box-rumors/
Pew Research Center (Oct. 3, 2019). “Religion in the Public Schools.” https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/10/03/religion-in-the-public-schools-2019-update/
Reuters Fact Check (October 18, 2022). “Fact Check-No evidence of schools accommodating ‘furries’ with litter boxes.” https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-furries-rogan-litterbox-idUSL1N31J1KT Archived February 13, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230213110524/https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-furries-rogan-litterbox-idUSL1N31J1KT
Scribner, Orion, and N. Noel Sol (Feb. 9, 2024). “Will Oklahoma Call Animal Control on Students?” Otherkin News. https://otherkinnews.dreamwidth.org/92680.html Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969). https://openjurist.org/393/us/503
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kendrene · 2 years
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Friendly reminder that they are trying to make abortion illegal because they want you to get pregnant at 16. They want you to be a parent at 16. They want more children to be born of underprivileged, marginalized groups. Children who will grow up to receive poor education, who will then not be able to go to college and crawl over the poverty line. They want kids who’ll grow up and end in prison (free labor) or take the worst paid jobs (anything no matter the condition is better than starving right?) in order to just put something on the table. People that can be kept ignorant, that will resent whatever those in power will tell them to resent, be it the immigrant, the disabled, the queer etc. 
They will not only make it harder if not impossible to have an abortion. They will also ban schools from teaching sex ed (not that they are doing a good job right now) unless it is sex ed based on abstinence. 
And if you think this is only America, think again. There are places here in Italy where you can’t get an abortion because doctors can “object” and refuse to carry out abortions in public hospitals. There’s a region in Italy where there is no OB in the public system who will perform an abortion. You have to go to a different region or pay privately.
Think about Poland.
A right isn’t something you automatically get to keep forever just because of a court ruling or a law. Laws can be changed, precedents overturned. We have all grown complacent, we all stopped fighting. We all in some small part opposed some right be extended to a different subcategory of people because we thought, due perhaps to inherent bias, that it eroded ours.
We are complicit every time we do not exercise our right to vote because “all the candidates suck”. It’s an excuse, and boy are we so full of excuses. 
What happened in Poland, what’s possibly going to happen in the USA, what’s been subtly, insidiously happening in Italy for decades can happen in your country too.
Don’t grow complacent.
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pooks · 26 days
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time to nag about my headcanon "Percy has Seer powers" and why that is a great idea
first of all, a little clarification; this isn't common knowledge to the younger siblings. only Arthur, Molly, Bill and Charlie knows. they kept this secret after Fabian and Gideon Prewett died
this implies that they died to protect Percy, who was just this tiny toddler who had absolutely no control over what he could See
the result is to keep his Seer powers secret
some background info; Percy's Seer powers is a rare gift that is apparently passed down from the Black side
Cedrella, aka their paternal grandmother, had it and has taught Percy how to use and control it. that's why Percy had a more closer bond to his granny than the rest of the family.
Arthur did not inherit it, but one of his brothers did. unfortunately, his poor brother is dead (it's not Billius, but someone else cause Arthur had three brothers accourding to the wiki) because he rather die than to let himself being caught by Voldemort and used as a tool.
while he doesn't understand Seer powers too well, Arthur respects it and is trying to be supportive for Percy.
also at a later point, Percy had 1 Bad Incident™ involving his Seer powers and it slightly traumatised him enough to not try to use it again
he takes divination in his third year for two reasons; 1, he also want to achieve 12 NEWTS like Bill. 2, he wants to understand his weird future-seeing power.
Oliver, his roommate (oh my god they were roommates) finds out by accident and keeps nagging him about the future Quidditch match results. Percy refuses cause that's SPOILERS
and now ONTO THE FUN STUFF
Percy can look far into the future, but he settles for the fun stuff
he occassionally makes references to memes and vines
his siblings doesn't understand them at all
at least until they're all adults with families in the future
and they be like "YOU KNEW"
and Percy just smiles innocently even though he absolutely isn't
Harry and Hermione aren't safe from Percy's Seer Shenanigans either
everytime Hermione is working with a crossword, Percy's eyes flashes green for a moment and when he opens his mouth, Hermione hits him with a pillow cause he was about to reveal the answer
Harry asked Percy once if his Seer powers was why Fudge promoted him. Percy simply smiled and said "yes, that was the reason. but the idiot didn't realized that i tricked him all the time and sent him on a wild goose chase."
aaaaand some Ministry shitshow stuff;
HEADCANON TWO; PERCY MADE LIFE SOUR FOR FUDGE AND THE IDIOT NEVER REALIZED IT
ofc Percy would be petty af once he figured out Fudge only wanted him because of his Seer powers. which means the fucker looked at the classified information in his personell file. Percy is obvs mad about that, but it's too late to tell his family about it and he decides to be an absolute menace about it without being caught
"getting caught means that you weren't smart enough to get an escape plan"
Percy takes full offense of being treated like a tool instead of a human with rights
he burns several draft-ups for the "updated law for underage magic" because they're fucking awful and he knows the bastard wants to ruin Harry's education. that also means he would ruin his baby siblings' educations.
he also burnt the suggestion papers about giving Azkaban prisoners the dementor's kiss without trial.
the law suggestions about banning human rights for werewolves, wizard hybrids and squibs also got BURNT INTO ASHES
Percy: I decide the future now. >:)
Scrimgeour makes an early bird appearence cause Fudge can't find the law suggestions anymore and he was the idiot to not keep copies.
after investigating privately, Scrimgeour finds out that Percy burnt them up and this madlad explains why.
suddenly Scrimgeour fully supports Percy and says his late uncles would be proud. bonus: Scrimgeour simply says to Fudge that he can't find things that may be gone forever, it's sadly "lost media" now.
Percy, getting the idea from the twints, orders dragon fertilizer (it's dragon dung lol) subscription from norway's dragon research center and sanctuary and sends it to Umbridge, using her forged signature
he's careful to not get caught, so he looks into the future (a bit at the time, though)
feel free to add some of your own ideas/suggestions/headcanon about Seer!Percy Weasley :)
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Meet Elbira Zipitria
Elbira Zipitria was born in Zumaia (Gipuzkoa) in 1906, but her family soon moved to Donostia where she later became a teacher. After a few years, she left the school where she worked in and founded the first ikastola in Donostia. Ikastola is the name given to private schools offering an education 100% in Basque.
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She wasn't just a teacher but an activist, and was a member of the Basque Nationalist Party, as well as other associations related to the development of Basque language.
During the Spanish Civil War she escaped to Lapurdi, and came back in 1939. In 1943 ikastolak and Basque language were banned, but Elbira found a legal loophole - all teachers with a degree could privately educate children younger than 9 years - and started to give private classes to children 100% in Basque, at first in the students' homes but, as more students demanded her classes, she would teach in her own house.
Soon there were too many children for just one teacher, so Elbira also started forming new teachers to help her with her clandestine ikastola. When the teachers were ready, they started giving classes in their homes, so the ikastola grew, one teacher and one home at a time. In 1957 one of these teachers opened the first clandestine ikastola in Bilbo, and others opened ikastolak in other Gipuzkoan towns. The already existing ikastolak implemented the Zipitria method, and all the teachers formed by Elbira soon began to teach the new generation of teachers.
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Elbira worked until 1968, when the net of illegal Basque schools was too big and became noticed by the Government, that sent the police to make registrations, forced to close them down, and overall made their job impossible since a new law prohibited to open any private school center without a proper registration. The net of ikastolak was dead.
But Elbira Zipitria met with all the ikastola teachers and decided to open a school - another clandestine ikastola in fact - with the help of priest José Elgarresta Iturbe. Since it was supported by a priest, the center was officially acceptable to open and so the Ikastola Orixe was born in 1970. Elbira retired just one year later.
Elbira Zipitria was a corageous defender not only of Basque language, but of education of both kids and adults. She, her teachers, and the students' parents, all of them risked themselves to severe fines and prison if caught, but somehow managed to teach for +25 years unnoticed. If that wasn't enough, she developed a long-lasting methodology for education in Basque and helped Euskadi keep our language alive amidst a cruel and suffocating ban.
Of course she deserved a statue:
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spacelazarwolf · 2 years
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so i saw a tik tok (erininthemorn, go follow her on tik tok and/or twitter, she’s awesome) about how florida is trying to ban medicaid from covering trans related healthcare services, which means private insurance is likely to follow. she quite rightfully stated that this is genocide, they are trying to wipe trans ppl out of existence
unrelated to her or her video specifically, i saw a lot of comments under her post about how you can get generic hrt for cheap or find it through other ways, and i think this is a great time to remind folks that testosterone is extremely heavily restricted, more so than estrogen. estrogen is much easier to find on the black market and the material consequences for being caught with it without a prescription aren’t as severe as being caught with testosterone without a prescription
what this does NOT mean: trans women have it so easy and trans men have it the hardest ever in the world
what this DOES mean: this is an opportunity to talk about the unique ways these kinds of bills affect trans men and other trans people who need to take testosterone
what this ALSO means: stop fucking saying gross shit about testosterone while the government genocides us for needing it. take it to therapy or to a friend, but i don’t want to hear a fucking thing about how testosterone makes people “aggressive animals who can’t control themselves” or “testosterone is poison” because there are trans people who need testosterone that WILL die without it. there WILL be trans people who take their own lives because the one thing that would have made their body not feel like a prison is now completely out of reach for them
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astrowaffles · 1 year
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Stopping the JNT from being arrested: a comprehensive rulebook by Iwaizumi H.
General Audiences | Chaos, attempt at humour
1. A volleyballer in prison is a volleyballer who won't be volleyballing for a long, long time.
2. If you see Sakusa and Atsumu "sharing hand sanitizer" by holding hands, say nothing.
3. Just because Kageyama always catches him does not make Hinata less banned from jumping on our setter. If either of you are injured then we are in deep trouble.
4. Just because Oikawa is in the proximity does not mean you can send out search parties to find and assassinate him. See rule 1.
 OR: Whoever's idea it was to put the entire monster generation on one team, Iwaizumi hopes both sides of their pillow are warm tonight.
The JNT Rulebook
Failure to meet these rules will result in suspension from the Japanese Men's National Volleyball Team, if you aren't arrested first.
sincerely,
Iwaizumi H.
 1. A volleyballer in prison is a volleyballer who won't be volleyballing for a long, long time. 
       a) it's no use phoning home for bail. the last time we tried that, Akaashi spent the whole two minute phone call cackling. - Bokuto
 2. If you see Sakusa and Atsumu "sharing hand sanitizer" by holding hands, say nothing.
 3. Just because Kageyama always catches him does not make Hinata any less banned from jumping on our setter. If either of you are injured then we are in deep trouble.
 4. Just because Oikawa is in the proximity does not mean you can send out search parties to find and assassinate him. See rule 1.
 5. If Hoshiumi is seen one more time with Hinata on his shoulders to "bring revenge down on the heads of everyone over 5'8"" we will be forced to tape them both to the floor.
 6. Just because Kuroo said it does not mean it is true.
         a) No, you will not jump higher if you drink out of the JVA's special water bottles.
         b) No, Kuroo is not obligated to tell the whole truth "because we're buddies". Kuroo can leave out whatever bits he likes, which is why what he says is usually Not True.
 7. Gravity is real and if it wasn't, volleyball wouldn't work. 
 8. If you continue to rickroll Kageyama he will stop opening his emails out of sheer fear, and we need him to read his official communications. Stop it.
 9. Do not trust what Kenma says. Remember he is funding Kuroo's shenanigans.
 10. If the "your mom" jokes don't stop, Suna Rintarou will be put into isolation.
         a) "your brother" and "your twin" jokes are equally unacceptable, as our reserve setter appears to be on the verge of a mental breakdown.
         b) "your cousin" jokes are banned by proxy to prevent said reserve setter being murdered by Sakusa.
 11. Oikawa is trying to annoy you into revealing our strategies. If you feel you may fall into his trap, avoid him or fetch the athletic trainer (me), who will deal with him accordingly.
 12. Bokuto: one more rant about Akaashi and I will call him personally, and you can explain to him why you are slacking off at practice. 
 13. Taking pictures of Hoshiumi with a rat filter on is not funny.
 14. Throwing volleyballs is not an effective method of communication.
 15. Ridiculous service ace competitions are to be reserved for private practice. Atsumu does not need another black eye.
 16. Hinata and Kageyama are hereby banned from communicating with just eyebrow raising. It's creepy and Bokuto was very close to hiding himself in a cupboard yesterday.
         a) this also applies to talking in tandem.
         b) it also applies to finishing each other's sentences.
 17. Ushijima is the captain and if he says throwing flying squirrels out of the top floor window to "see if they actually fly" is a bad idea, then it is a bad idea.
 18. Atsumu is the reserve setter and therefore does not need be on court "in case Kageyama trips".
 19. If calling your old highschool captains is what it takes to get you to work, I will do so. 
 20. Personal questions about Oikawa are banned.
 21. Team Brazil players are banned from the Team Japan village. If I find any I will decapitate them. 
 22. Atsumu is not a tiny baby, he is 6'1''. Just because that makes him one of the smallest on the team does not make him short. Refrain from pushing him into insanity this early in the season.
 23. Arm wrestling is banned.
         a) I will always win and it is stupid to think that it will ever change. No, your lucky underwear does not make a difference, Bokuto.
 24. Either Yaku takes his voice down a notch or I take his kneecaps.
 25. If you were represented by a bird in highschool, you are hereby banned from making any important decisions.
         a) I am well aware this excludes our captain from making decisions. I stand by that.
 26. Kageyama cannot speak Italian so please stop harassing him for lessons.
 27. Eavesdropping on other teams is not banned but it is frowned upon by the Olympic committee. Don't get caught.
 28. Don't bother eavesdropping on Oikawa, it won't get us anywhere. I already know his main strategies anyway.
 29. Sakusa is a grown man, no you cannot adopt him.
 30. Meian Shugo is a lovely man who will not appreciate being dragged out to Tokyo. Jackals, keep your chaos away from me.
 31. One more heavy sigh from Komori will push me off the edge. Shut it.
 32. It scares everyone shitless when they hear high-pitched screams in the middle of the night. Someone buy Sakusa some pesticide.
         a) Bokuto you are not scared of spiders, there is no need for you to scream too.
 34. I appreciate that we have an A team and a B team, but we are all Team Japan, so the expressions "bench warmer", "loser", "second place", "spare parts" and "extra Kageyama" are all banned.
         a) no-one seems to care that we have two liberos as well as two setters. Targeting Atsumu is not tolerated. Keep it in your heads.
         b) yes, that includes Sakusa. He does not have a "bullying Atsumu pass", no matter what he says.
 35. Bringing a tape measure to games so you can find out who's the tallest person in the room and then attempting to fight them is definitely frowned upon. I am assigning Ushijima to guard Hoshiumi.
 36. I am well aware that Sakusa is MSBY's guard dog. Luckily the JNT is full of terrifying men over 6'0'', so he can stop growling whenever an "enemy" walks past.
 37. Speaking of height, Kageyama is far too big to be racing around gyms. In fact, so are all of you. Hinata, stop encouraging it.
 38. Barking at Team Argentina is not acceptable behaviour. It can actually be filed as a hate crime.
 39. Ushijima is the team ace. It is irrelevant if Sakusa was #1 ace in highschool or not.
         a) I would also take the complaints a lot more seriously if they were actually from anyone except Atsumu.
 40. Being gay does not provide legal protection.
         a) You cannot report a hate crime if the "hate crime" is Oikawa's existence.
         b) even if you could, Oikawa is also gay.
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