#defenders union!

[new-berry]

Fabian and Jamaal.

[miltonthecatherder]

Defenders of Wildlife is on strike today and tomorrow for Unfair Labor Practices (ULP), including withholding salary increases and improved benefits for union staff and refusing to bargain in good faith. This has been going on for over two years! The union, Defenders United, is encouraging anyone to write to Defenders of Wildlife leadership to urge them to end the strike by restoring salary raises and access to benefits and bargaining with Defenders United in good faith.

There’s a link below to write President and CEO Jamie Clark and Board of Directors Chair Mark Caylor to urge them to accept the union’s demands to end the strike, along with links to the union’s Twitter and website for more information and updates. If you don’t want to write a letter yourself, there’s one prefilled for you to sign. If you do write something, please be professional and respectful. Nothing will be accomplished through harsh or disrespectful language. Remember, the goal is to get Defenders leadership to accept the demands and you catch more flies with honey than vinegar!

People in the D.C. area may also join the picket virtually or in person at the Defenders of Wildlife office in Washington, D.C. (address: 1130 17th Street NW. Be careful! It’s really hot outside!). If you can donate to Defenders of Wildlife, you can donate and put “Union Staff” in the honoree name field. More information about the strike and how to support the union is available at their website.

[ohnoitsz1m]

Blehh more oc stuff

I gave Jury-7 some friends and I'm starting to nail down what exactly their deal is 👍

[isekai-ed]

Criticism towards that isekai maid webcomic are a lil silly with the way they say the author is exaggerating about how frequent maids get slapped by isekai-ed mcs when they're commenting on why the trope even exists in the first place when the mc comes from a time more informed about class and work dynamics and it's not the only trope addressed by the webcomic. Trying to make this seem like a exclusively english-speaking audience/westerner nitpicking when in-house maids are still a thing in Asia, immigration is a hell hole and xenophobia is rampant?? A commentary on the problematic themes in the rofan/isekai genre is suddenly too preacy but dozens of manhwa awarding its entitled narcissistic mcs are ok, groundbreaking even? Who's picking needles from haystacks here?

[antidrumpfs]

UAW chief rips Trump as 'scab' who 'didn't do a damn thing' for auto industry

UAW president Shawn Fain: "I truly find it pathetic when I hear Trump—a scab—talk about how he's going to bring back the auto industry and bring it back fast. When he was president, he didn't do a damn thing to help the auto industry. Plants were closing and left this country, and he did nothing to help it.”

[colestyledc17]

OMG IVE DOUBLED?!??!?!?!)

-@dakotacolestyle

HOWDID YOU DO THAT. THATS SO COOL. WEVE SOUBLED WE SHOULD UNIONIZE. DC LIFE ADVICE: TALK TO YOUE LOCAL WORKPLACE UNION

[awesomecooperlove]

⭐️💥🌟✨⚡️☀️💫🌙HAPPY HOLIDAYS BEAUTIFUL PATRIOTS HUMANITARIANS FREEDOM FIGHTERS🫡🧑🏾‍🦱👩🏻‍🦳👴🏼🧔🏽‍♂️👩🏼‍🦱👨🏽‍🦱👱🏻‍♀️

STAY SAFE UNITED STRONG AND NEVER GIVE UP

THANK YOU FOR BEING YOU

HERE ABOVE AND BEYOND… YOU ARE IMPORTANT PART OF AWAKENING OUR BROTHERS ARE SISTERS

GODSPEED

🥳🥳🥳

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Pennsylvania’s public defenders are so underfunded and overburdened that the commonwealth violates the constitutional rights of more than 100,000 criminal defendants every year, the state chapter of American Civil Liberties Union claims in a lawsuit filed Thursday.

For decades, Pennsylvania has left counties to pay for attorneys to defend people facing criminal charges who can’t afford to pay for a lawyer themselves. The result is an inconsistent patchwork in which public defenders are forced to contend with unmanageable caseloads that leave them unable to properly represent clients, the lawsuit says.

The suit was filed in Commonwealth Court on behalf of 17 people, many of whom have been jailed while awaiting trial for six months or longer, claiming public defenders have failed to properly represent them and that the state has neglected its constitutional duty to provide representation.

“The inconsistent and insufficient funding of indigent defense in Pennsylvania makes us less safe,” ACLU of Pennsylvania Executive Director Mike Lee said in a news release about the lawsuit. Lee added that with the exception of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is tied with Mississippi for the lowest funded state public defender system on a per-resident basis.

The U.S. and Pennsylvania constitutions both provide the right to counsel for anyone charged with a crime and facing jail time, ACLU of Pennsylvania Legal Director Witold Walczak said.

“That right means more than a warm body with a law degree at your side; it requires an effective professional who has the time and resources to prepare a defense,” Walczak said. “Pennsylvania’s grossly under-funded system leads to overwhelming caseloads that make effective representation practically impossible, even for the most dedicated lawyers.”

The 152-page suit details the experiences of the plaintiffs and others in criminal cases where they lacked timely and adequate representation from public defenders. Most have only spoken to their attorneys once or twice and one plaintiff claims he only met his attorney because they happened to walk past while he was cutting grass outside the jail, the suit claims.

In one example, a Northampton County man sat in jail for nearly three months on charges of driving an unregistered vehicle without proof of insurance until a public defender argued for a reduction in his bail.

The suit, which is a proposed class-action on behalf of the 17 plaintiffs and others in similar situations, names Gov. Josh Shapiro, state Senate Pro Tempore Kim Ward, and House Speaker Joanna McClinton as defendants. A spokesperson for Ward said she has not received a copy of the suit and would need time to review it before commenting.

Spokesperson Nicole Reigelman noted that McClinton began her career as a public defender, and “knows firsthand the value that indigent defense plays in the judicial system.”

“Since being elected in 2015, she has used her experience as a defender to inform her policy agenda and has been an outspoken champion of legislation to improve access to legal counsel for indigent clients. Speaker McClinton celebrated when funding for indigent defense was finally included in the 2023-24 state budget and continues to advocate for additional dollars,” Reigelman said in a statement.

The current state budget included $7.5 million for indigent defense, the first time the state has provided funding for public defenders. In his February 2023 budget address, Shapiro noted that Pennsylvania is one of only two states that didn’t provide funding for public defenders, which he called a “shameful distinction.”

The suit notes that amount falls far short of providing adequate funding. It also states that every county in Pennsylvania, with the exception of Philadelphia, falls below the national average of $19.82 per resident spent on indigent defense.

Pennsylvania counties spent a total of $125 million on their public defender’s offices in 2020, while similarly-sized Michigan is budgeted to spend $319 million in 2024. Massachusetts, which is considerably smaller, budgeted $331 million.

And because counties are limited in their ability to generate tax revenue, they could not provide adequate funding without significant tax increases. The suit notes that the same factors that limit revenues, such as high unemployment, poverty and limited higher education, are also indicators of higher crime rates.

The ACLU also argues that Pennsylvania agencies have been warning for decades that the state’s delegation of funding for public defenders to the counties results in the systemic denial of counsel to criminal defendants.

A state Supreme Court study in 2003 found that sparse resources and “exploding and unmanageable caseloads” allow public defenders little time, training or assistance in communicating with clients in a meaningful way or to conduct pre-trial investigations, secure expert testimony or otherwise prepare for hearings and trials.

The report recommended that Pennsylvania institute a statewide system for funding and overseeing indigent defense. The state failed to act on the recommendation. Nearly a decade later, a legislative commission reached a similar conclusion. And in 2020 the Pennsylvania Interbranch Commission for Gender, Racial and Ethnic Fairness warned that the underfunding of indigent defense services cost the state hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to incarcerate and retry defendants due to failure of public defenders to represent them effectively.

In connection with the funding for public defenders as part of the 2023-24 budget, the General Assembly created the Indigent Defense Advisory Committee.

“As one of its first official acts, one of the Committee’s two proposed standards recognized that “[t]he responsibility to provide indigent defense representation rests with the state; accordingly, there should be adequate state funding and oversight of Indigent Defense Providers,” the lawsuit notes.

[gummoboost]

There's an element of the ultra/leftcom mentality that I do charitably respect, a sort of undivided focus on class analysis at the cost of all else. That being said, the seeming inability of any sort of international tendency to show up in a material way isn't lost on me. A lot of my irl interactions with trots specifically have left a sour taste.

AuSAlt despite its size seemingly leans into adventurism, it's members celebrating their presence at marches, despite the tone of the protests being that of anger and/or grief. The recent protest in Naarm seeking to disrupt arms shipments was met with a pretty fuckin severe police response, as was expected by organisers and protesters alike. AuSAlt decided it was a good place to boost membership, collecting full names and phone numbers, just like they do at every rally.

SAlliance is a slightly more radical Greens party, the CPA and CPA-ML don't materially show themselves besides simply attending, bodies in spaces style. I've experienced as much solidarity with either of those orgs as with the ICP or ICT, neither of which have a proper presence in this part of the world.

I have no grand conclusion, no goal in writing this. Simply ideas and thoughts I've been trying to put to the page for a while now, and I'm enough drinks in to give up on coherence and doubts. Read theory, show up, do the work.

[coochiequeens]

He killed a literal baby. And now he wants to sue the state for damages?!

By Anna Slatz February 14, 2024

A trans-identified male currently serving a 55-year sentence for the murder of his infant stepdaughter has launched a lawsuit against the Chaplain at his prison after he was allegedly denied a hijab despite identifying as a Muslim woman. Autumn Cordellioné, previously known as Jonathan C. Richardson, is seeking $150,000 in damages.

As previously reported by Reduxx, Cordellioné was first arrested in 2001 after his 11-month-old stepdaughter died in his care while her mother was at work. The night of the infant’s death, Cordellioné had been visited by friends who later told police that he had been “acting strangely.”

Despite claiming the little girl was inside sleeping, Cordellioné had loud music playing in the home, and his guests noted that he appeared to have a fresh, bleeding tattoo of the child’s name carved into his arm.

Autumn Cordellioné as of August 2023. Photo Courtesy: Indiana Department of Corrections.

Later that night, after his friends left, Cordellioné went to his neighbor and asked him to call 911, claiming the child was unresponsive. When emergency personnel arrived, they were briefly able to resuscitate the girl, but she died shortly after being rushed to the hospital. 

Cordellioné was interviewed by police, who noted he was “calm and unemotional” during questioning, and his story about what happened to the baby changed dramatically over the course of the two interviews conducted.

At first, Cordellioné claimed he found the baby unresponsive after doing some household chores. But in the next interview, Cordellioné said the child was being “fussier than usual” and he attempted to throw her up in the air repeatedly in an effort to calm her down. He said her “head bopped forward and back up in a rough type of a manner,” and that the child continued to cry so he proceeded to shake her aggressively in an effort to calm her down.

During a failed appeals hearing, detectives from the case recounted how Cordellioné “physically showed” how he had manhandled the girl, getting up out of his chair and demonstrating the action in a rough manner.

An autopsy subsequently found that the baby had died of asphyxiation by manual strangulation. Cordellioné was booked awaiting a court hearing, and would later tell a prison official “all I know is I killed the little fucking bitch.”

Cordellioné was found guilty and sentenced to 55 years in prison for the horrific crime. He is currently incarcerated at the Branchville Correctional Facility, an institution for male offenders.

Last August, Cordellioné joined forces with the American Civil Liberties Union to sue the Indiana Department of Corrections, citing “discrimination” on the basis of his gender identity. That case is currently in progress.

But Reduxx has now learned that that Cordellioné has also launched a separate suit against the prison’s Chaplain, Tony Gray. Gray has been a Chaplain at the facility since 2014, and volunteered at the institution prior to being offered an official role.

Branchville Chaplain Tony Gray. Photo Source: Indiana Department of Corrections

In the lawsuit, filed on November 3, 2023, Cordellioné accuses Gray of violating his First, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment constitutional rights.

According to court records obtained by Reduxx, the incident of complaint took place in May of 2023 after Gray informed Cordellioné that he was not allowed to don a hijab outside of his cell. In response, Cordellioné said: “I wear the hijab in order to cover my head and ears for modesty purposes, as I am an Islamic practicing transwoman.”

At the time, Cordellioné’s registered religion was “Wiccan” and Gray pointed that out, to which Cordellioné replied that he was an “eclectic practitioner who is a member of the Theosophical Society in America.”

The Theosophical Society is headquartered in Chennai, India, and is considered an “esoteric new religious movement.” Founded in 1875, it describes itself as a “unsectarian body of seekers after Truth,” and its practitioners appear to dabble in the philosophy and beliefs of multiple religions simultaneously. One of its founders is Russian mystic Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who stated in 1889 that “the purpose of establishing the Society was to prepare humanity for the reception of a World Teacher.”

Cordellioné is claiming that his equal protection rights were violated when he was barred from wearing a hijab outside of his cell, noting that male Muslims in the facility are allowed to wear kufis or taqiyah — a short, rounded brimless prayer cap.

“Islamic faith mandates the wearing of a kufi for males … Islamic faith also mandates females of the faith wear hijabs when outside the home and when not amongst men of their family. Tony Gray allows male Muslims to wear their sufis, but denies me, a transwoman, the same privilege.”

From the legal complaint filed by Cordellioné.

Cordellioné also alleges that Gray’s refusal to allow him to wear a hijab violated his eighth amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment. In his argument, Cordellioné claims the he was subjected to “harassment and ridicule” by the Islamic community in his prison because he had not been allowed to wear a hijab.

“[Gray] should be aware, as Chaplain, the stigma and shame that is attributed to Islamic women when they go uncovered and without a hijab,” Cordellioné writes in his complaint. “Women are viewed as whores, tempters of men, and adulterators; by Islamic society both in and out of prison. I have been shunned, made a social pariah, and amongst my own religious community.”

He continues: “Without the support of the Islamic community, I will struggle and likely fail to achieve salvation for by [sic] Mohammed’s teachings a Muslim who knows of the teachings, yet strays from them, will never reach heaven.”

In his stated request for relief, Cordellioné is seeking the ability to wear his hijab in prison, as well as $150,000 in compensation.

Since filing, there has been some back-and-forth with the court surrounding Cordellioné’s financial situation, with the court requesting a nominal initial filing fee of $36.55, but Cordellioné claiming he does not have the money to pay it. If he cannot demonstrate deficiency in the time the court has specified, his case might be dismissed.

[pechebeche]

please support unions and strikes even when they are inconvenient to you please do not only pay attention to strike requests that encourage you to do whatever the hell you want, please also pay attention to strike requests that inhibit you and might make your life a little harder. please do not only support workers when it is easy

[paulic]

what the fuck did Paul mean by “in another world we could stand on top of a mountain with our flag unfurled”????!!!?? I very much doubt he meant the pride flag but do you mean ENGLAND? DO YOU MEAN THE ENGLISH FLAG PAUL MCCARTNEY??????????????? Do you feel like you can’t admit to being British in this world

[thetimelordbatgirl]

Hey uh, guys, if people call out Hunter Demo for potentially strike skirting when doing a vague countdown that could be for Cosmic Fury's release and your response is, "But power rangers is non-union!", I need you to stop what your doing and rethink what you just said because that's not exactly a good thing to use to defend this potential strike skirting.

[littlechillis]

Amanda LOOOOOOK

CUTIE PIESSSSSS !!!!!

[scribefindegil]

Overwhelming urge to write a little fic where Reigen goes to check up on Shinra after (manga) Mogami arc to make sure he is uhh. alive VS the knowledge that Reigen repressing all his Mogami-related guilt into oblivion is basically why Separation Arc happened and he wouldn't touch anything related to it with a ten-foot pole

[hearty-an0n]

remember when jars had like 8 straight starts and then he kinda fell off and everyone started saying he sucks ☝️☝️