#judicial structure

[democraticelectorateoflivonia]

Ministry of Justice

As I've already spelled out, there are 350 first-order judicial courts, one per municipality, in Livonia. Beyond that, each prefecture would have a court of appeals, to address any potential appeal any person could forward.

Should the right to an additional appeal be invoked, depending on whether the law being contested is federal or Basa-level, the case will be advanced to either the Livonian Justice Council or the Basa's High Court.

[maeamian]

The US Supreme Court is fundamentally illegitimate if they cannot read the plain text of the constitution and make rulings consistent with it. There is no legitimacy of that court that does not derive from the constitution itself, and therefore if they are unwilling to abide by it that legitimacy is forfeit.

[ave-ari]

First 11.5 hour day of stonework has happened, only 2 weeks into the job that was explicitly not meant to have 11.5 hour days of stonework. I've barely got the energy to shower, let alone cook dinner/make lunch for tomorrow so I can do it all again at 7:30

I just. Hate American grind culture so fucking much I want to be back in France where people eat lunch and occasionally take breaks to look at their surroundings

[boasamishipper]

writing patterns

rules: share the first line of your last ten published works or as many as you are able and see if there are any patterns!

tagged by the lovely @apartmentsmoke 😘

“I’ll be honest,” Leon informs the rival mariachi bands in front of his bench, “the fact you all got out of that fight without any serious injuries to yourselves or the others in the subway car is pretty…maraca-less.” (from Contributory Negligence, the fourth fic in my Judge Leon 'verse)

Degas woke to the sound of Jasper Briggs shouting at the top of his lungs, which wasn’t unusual. (from won't shake me loose, a pre-canon Degas&Briggs story)

The first time Harry thinks about sleeping with Dan, there’s a blizzard pounding at the windows of his apartment—a blizzard that would have, if not for the fire department, trapped Harry and the others in the courthouse all night with nothing but rough blankets, Twinkies, and Billie’s camp counselor songs. (from Code of Conduct, Harry's POV of the beginning of Judicial Impropriety)

Right about now, Peter really wishes he’d listened to his wife and spent the weekend cozied up at home. (from No Grave Can Hold My Body Down, a 9-1-1 AU where Bobby wakes up with no memory except Athena's name and struggles to find his way home)

Looking at the dishes covering every inch of the dining table, it’s hard to believe that they were all made by the same woman who once couldn’t even scramble eggs. (from Sweetheart Deal, the third fic in my Judge Leon 'verse)

“Look here, darlin’—” (from you should've heard those knocked-out jailbirds sing, my Carole/Goose first meeting fic)

The Hard Deck was packed to the back teeth the first night of the new TOPGUN session, and Hangman felt good. (from Bullseye, my Coyote/Hangman first meeting fic)

In ‘96, Dan left the district attorney’s office for one of the most prestigious law firms in New York. (from Alternative Dispute Resolution, the second fic in my Judge Leon 'verse)

The first time Dan sleeps with Harry, it’s an accident—which Dan knows would get him laughed right out of the courtroom in the case of The People v. Fielding, but it’s the truth, hand on the Bible, so help him God. (from Judicial Impropriety, my Night Court S4 AU fic where Dan and Harry make a bet to see how long they can keep their relationship under wraps)

“For the last time, Ms. Moore, I don’t know a thing about the new judge—” (from Trial de Novo, in which Harry's former foster son Leon becomes the new night court judge and goes looking for Harry, only to find Dan Fielding - Harry's widower - instead. First fic in the Judge Leon 'verse)

well for one i start fics with dialogue a lot less often than i thought i did 😂 i tend towards longer sentences and aim to establish setting and pov right away (if not in the first sentence then over the first paragraph).

tagging @bornforastorm @lookforanewangle @maverickcalf @academicgangster and anyone else who wants to do this

[unproduciblesmackdown]

payoff of being embedded in a unit of authoritarianism since birth is sure then being able to go like "wow this is just like dynamics & phenomena i experienced up close & personal, repeatedly, in many contexts & configurations in my first two decades of life" plus also beyond that in abuse culture world & the noncoincidence that even interactions beyond the confines of the home(tm) reinforced / did not contradict the hierarchy & concomitant abuse within....but then like hey yeah also the Larger Units of hierarchy & abuse / authoritarianism (ft. their logics & practices necessary for continuously & continually shoring up that hierarchy) can also make it like hey yeah the Two Parent abusive nuclear family more like the Two Party [the US is also a one party state but in typical american extravagance they have two] where right wingness is defined by the degree of directly embracing white supremacy & "left wing" is "anything else" hence like wow The Left is always infighting (everyone with any ideas besides "umm christofascist white ethnostate?" so like yeah there are many other ideas) vs The Right's admirable cohesion (simply re: the white supremacy idea which also necessarily embraces all other Out Group / Nonperson paradigms & practices b/c that's what all already has been necessary for shoring up the [when has the US been a nongenocidal non white supremacist non oligarchy])

like obviously individual experiences & contexts vary but like narrowing in on [the Family as immediate relations ideally cordoned off into nuclear households] ft. [Parental Authority the top priority of which is preserving that authority, ideally patriarchal, an abusive mother e.g.? hey, that ought to be the father] times it's like, think people tend to struggle re: having the "nicer" / "safer" parent who was also shitted on as well but also at the end of the day would always side with the "meaner" "more dangerous" parent, even in whatever terms most sympathetic to the abused parties, with the underlying logic that we're always just going to have to deal with them so some secret strategic mitigation is the best that can be done, perhaps the equivalent of being sent a ":(" after an Onslaught Of Expressed / Enforced Authority(tm) event....the tendency to see the best in any lack of actual intervention / protection on the assumption That Could Never Happen Anyway & forever At Least that the one parent isn't as bad as the other [the Not That Bad / Could've Been Worse infocation, like free bingo square in manifestations of minimization if not outright abuse denial] & all the sympathy for, you know, being human & doing their best(tm) &c which sure might all be true but the abused parties (oft children, more vulnerable than adults, by virtue of being children i.e. considered legal property of some specific adults & theoretical property of any adults in general (the paternal logic in any "protect [xyz]" like maintain one group's supposed ownership / control over [xyz] "for their sake" then? great) & also generally smaller & newer at being alive in this world) but who are liable to not extend that sympathy to themselves (or certainly not be extended that sympathy....when is "they're doing their best / they're only human / they mean well or whatever / they love you, they're family" successfully deployed the Thwart an abusive parent like it is to tell an abused child to not be too resentful of this situation, when is it actually deployed toward the abusive parent at all really. & again in the lack of boundary between the authoritarianism within many individual family households & that of the state they exist in (here re: the US) like that naturally one encounters the logic of abuse expressed just as "common knowledge" & the Assumptions of other people, e.g. the rejection of a parent having zero access to a child, the reinforcement of automatic apologia deployed for whatever a parent could possibly do, argued for "family", yet not deployed the same way to automatically defend anything thee child(tm) could do, thinking emoji lol....see: like the non boundary between [the Patriarchal home/family(tm)] & capitalism when uh oh capitalism the system of continuously maximizing exploitation Needs various forms of labor to be unpaid, uh oh another lack of boundary when white supremacy is used to also shore up the patriarchy that shores up the white supremacy, e.g. that even if in some "inferior" class it's treated as More Important that at least you're not that And black, the theoretical ideal/normal white man is a person while a white woman is a woman while a black woman is black, white women could have any legal property via chattel slavery which needed white women's participation to help enforce, the specter of sexual violence all coming from nonwhite & especially black men & it's up to the genteel white man to Protect Women (see prev, implicitly white or you'd have to specify otherwise)

anyway that is to get around to pointing to the Two Parent System wherein so shockingly the results are the same as the One Parent System re: abuse maintaining The Family (properly, i.e. unquestionable & certainly undeniable parental access to children, & "ideally" ofc again the patriarchal Father as ultimate authority w/ownership over the Mother, who in turn is theoretically honored for that motherhood (at least you own your children, insofar as it doesn't contradict w/what the father wants to do with his superior claim to ownership) & then finally all the obviously shittiness from being in that position in a patriarchy is in turn dumped on The Children who are ungrateful & owe the mother everything Because of what the broader society & immediate personal expressions of that abuse have done to her. see also ofc that two adults likely don't have the resources to raise a child in time or money or energy, maybe there's only one but also even an extended family's worth of adults aren't enough, is it enough when a child is sent to school for some other adults to be in charge most of the day, or even if someone is hired to look after them beyond that, all this ofc with the assumed premise that a child is always limited to the various Domains of The Adults In Charge, & from there i segue into how naturally being in gay baby jail unless & until adults are no longer recognized as Legally In Charge Of You (the grand like 5 minutes it's relatively been since the ideal timeline of a woman's life wasn't being legal property of her father until asap passed along to legal property of her husband. still considered ideal ofc but like with "maybe you can have a bank account" now & "maybe you can become 29 before you're in Old Maid danger" Maybe, i said, Maybe....anyway that obviously adults(tm) being divided up (atomised. spritz) into Households isn't even supposed to be enough to live on their own, re: necessitating Marriage, much less uh oh having kids who are stuck with their parents who are stuck with them, but then all the obvious actual problems & abuses inflicted on Adults to have to have their family households & exploited jobs are dumped on the children who Must appreciate & be loyal to the parents (i.e. never Deny Access) while yknow kids have Fake Problems they're whining about, the one Real Problem of having to pay a bill gets the payoff of leverage to tell your children to shut the fuck up or perhaps the more vulnerable spouse

hm didn't segue right into "so shoutout to like The Ratchet Effect diagrams lol, the "Two" Party System where its supposed left wing Blocks Movement To The Left, right wing Moves Everything To The Right" but even that is like, mm, conferring a passivity to what democrats do in the continual movement to the right (won an election? lost an election? the lesson either way is The Right Is Right; exact same logic as in "winning or losing" "the war on crime" like the collection & analysis of whatever statistics show the trend of some "crime" is increasing in frequency or magnitude? show that it's decreasing? the lesson either way is Cops Need More Power) like the institutional effort of democrats to push a candidate nobody wants through primaries (did we even do that this time around. oh great that the assumed candidate even graciously agreed to not force themself as The Candidate, & now like 5 min left with the Next In Line candidate dumped on everyone now with the lesson for the left(tm) to shut up already lol) & then it's up to Grassroots Voters. it's up to Unity & well we all Need to listen to the white supremacists, points were made, in the "elections" with voting as limited as possible & with the electoral college & supreme court as Safeguards against democracy & here's the senate, eternally thus, & again the conclusions will always manage to be moving To The Right, paraphrasing from twitter like democrats are about to be or already at the point of "in the name of unity we will no longer be running against republicans; it's too divisive :(" which yknow is already The Statements of all of yesterday from various like "i'm the republican official white supremacy agree-er now" after also the entire campaign of "no, I'm the fascist" where like wow shocking that the appeal to the fascists didn't win a) the fascists who will ofc want the even more overt fascism, why wouldn't they or b) the people who want antifascism actually, and do not want fascism; who could have foreseen? & it's always the fault of being Too Antifascist for the actions of the fascists or the Diplomatic Comprimises the other party makes with the fascists &/or their Failure to thwart them....the Nicer, Safer party in power is surely doing their best & at least they're not the Meaner, More Dangerous one but at the end of the day they'll always side with that party over america(tm) & those bearing the brunt of the actions of State Power can be told to keep their chin up or else to stop acting out b/c how do you expect that state power to respond, cmon, you bring it upon yourself, & you Have to work with them & understand all their feelings & your role in resolving those feelings by being lesser inferior property, you do Have to understand, b/c in the end this is All About Family, surely Good & Necessary, whoops i mean in the end this is All About America

anyway yeah i'm like damn my "nicer" (also shitty) father who was also the even more sexist & racist (& certainly no Less ableist, queerphobic) parent was basically the democratic party of the Two Parent System of Family Government lol. b/c we Need to perpetuate this Family, no other logics much less actions are acceptable....& people struggling with the Parent / Adults in their life like that who were the "safe" & "protective" ones who markedly failed to protect & minimized the harm afterwards but also in general, never to confront the reality of the situation, or do damage control like "aw some points were made at all :( ah i see you have Feelings about this :( hmm yes the Parental Power is gonna have to make some changes" & then as soon as possible (assuming reeling in the party who was deviating too much) these changes(tm) are already compromised or diminished if done at all, & then oops things incrementally might be right back to how they always were, no guarantees it won't be Worse b/c the Power is even more insecure / aware of weaknesses, & the only way this is thwarted is if the Wayward Parties can actually leverage new boundaries / less vulnerability, not b/c the supposedly sympathetic parties, who never came through where it counts & likely would also become overt antagonizers / wielders of whatever power within the Family hierarchy / turn on the more vulnerable parties to Get Them In Line, actually came through. movement Away (more disruptive to the maintenance of The Family, The State) is blocked, incrementally only ever moving everything back, & then Further....& despite this being what the power structures are, & do, the Disruptive parties liable to be scapegoated lol, can't believe the scapegoat child is ruining everything for everyone, this Family would totally improve & start being everything it could be otherwise & we ignore who actually has the power & is actually enforcing the hierarchy harming everyone to point to that scapegoat; can't believe thee left is destroying america (republican voice) can't believe the left is destroying america (democrat voice) So You See? The Undeniable Consensus. just like how i believe it was my fault my family unit was Like That & i had those experiences, according to the vast majority of Input from that family & even others who, knowing nothing, would say how Lucky i was to be relatively close to home, or just of course that oh well parents love their children & mean well & try their best. just like how i believe that being treated like i've been generally as a neurononconforming person, i.e. hated & the interpersonal abuse & bullying & ostracization & [attention possibilities: ignored, responded to but negatively, interacted with to get something from] & actually rewarding interactions or just actions being liable to get Deluxe authority responses as disruptive(tm) & ofc disobedient(tm) like hell fuckin yeah lol. just as i don't think that other people who have similar experiences or ones i don't have, i.e. assessed race being automatically seen as wrong / inferior, being isolated & undermined from all around? well gotta be their fault then, cmon lol....Abuse is actually normative, not extraordinary, in every Arena of interactions, & so are the logics / apologia / assumptions

anyway lol re: like yeah people struggling with the like betrayal of the "nooo i'm on your side, i sympathize, i'm the one who's nicer & you Need so that things aren't even worse" party, not even One Big Novel betrayal, but rather that that's what's Been done the whole time & doesn't stop. that supposedly if you have Any sympathy for that party you have to be like aw :( keep doing your thing (necessarily reining everyone in) or if you have Any sympathy for the people who also want things to improve but blame & take it out on the more disruptive parties (more disruptive to an abusive family e.g., btw. & not like i see Cohesion as necessarily some Good rather than neutral? when i'm autistic / my existence is supposedly antithetical to this? or when i'm able to look at a zillion hypothetical or actual situations & recognize how "cohesion" isn't the best goal / a destructive one / a vague concept anyways like cohesion Between Whom? on what basis? recognized & pursued how? why? up next: same as vague shit like "family" or "community" &c) then it's like yep gotta be Responsible for their feelings too if you're at all sympathetic & capitulate, The Only Possible Action, vs the idea of those in power actually making things shit stopping, much less being stopped / having to stop in the various ways that can happen....one way being "oh no, adult children who choose to be no-contact with parents" which is seen as A Tragedy, & sign of a Deteriorating Society, take me back. ah jeez oh no, look at the divorce raaates....Oh No, twentysomething women aren't pursuing marriage enoughhhh....again the undetectably identical echo when people peak vaguely talk about "conflicts" that thwart "community" or whatever, ugh nobody will date anymore, commit anymore, be friends anymore, hang out as coworkers anymore, talk to me if i want to talk to them anymore, &ccccc....

the real tl;dr is like wait ""two party"" (one party) US electoral system, just like ""two parent"" maintenance of thee family lol. ratchet effect raise your hand if you've only ever experienced Movement Away from the abusive family blocked, forever incrementally ratcheted back in to the desires & pursuits of those most in power / top of the hierarchy / thus of course most invested in the abuse, that's what the power & hierarchy is made of, sustained by, perpetuates....sorry doing our best :( sorry that's just all that's realistic, no other choice Really. cmon. kind of Your Fault if you don't agree to that & whoops now Everything is the fault of whoever doesn't agree & cooperate enough :( now look what you've done & brought upon yourself :( & we'll just forget the eruption of violence suppression happened & will happen again & be the overhanging threat all in the meantime

[awesomengers]

Court - Marathi Movie Review

Discover the raw realism and profound social commentary of Chaitanya Tamhane's "Court" in this insightful film review.

Chaitanya Tamhane’s “Court” is not just a film; it’s a profound exploration into the convoluted corridors of the Indian judicial system. Through a Kafkaesque lens, Tamhane meticulously crafts a narrative that not only dissects the intricacies of legal proceedings, where truth and justice often seem like distant relatives at a dysfunctional family reunion. But the film also serves as a searing…

[wilwheaton]

The violent attack on Congress on 6 January 2021, and all the ancillary attempts to steal the 2020 election, were a coup attempt led from the executive branch of the federal government with support from Republicans in the legislative branch. 1 July 2024 – this Thursday – was a more successful coup attempt orchestrated by six judges of the judicial branch. “With fear for our democracy, I dissent,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in an opinion joined by justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, after the US supreme court’s conservative majority ruled that Donald Trump holds “absolute immunity” for “official acts” done while president. Part of what’s shocking about the state of the union right now is that an entire party and the US supreme court’s conservative majority have abandoned almost everything – the truth, the rule of law, their own legitimacy, their place in history and the fate of the nation – to serve one man. They could not have picked a more outrageous man to throw their weight and reputations behind – a psychotic clown who’s also an indicted felon found liable in civil court for sexual assault, barred from doing business in New York, a stealer of state secrets, a would-be thief of an election and the instigator of a violent attack on the legislative branch of government and the constitutionally mandated transition of power after an election. A grifter who in 2016 won a minority victory in a corrupted election – his conviction earlier this year was on charges for one small part of that corruption. A man who has gloated about seizing dictatorial powers and never letting go and a worshiper of tyrants denounced by dozens of his former cabinet members and senior staffers. January 6 was an attack on the constitution and so was 1 July. That no one is above the law has been a pillar of this nation and a cherished value since the 18th century; to knock it down in the 21st destabilizes structures and values that have stood these two centuries and more. A president with total immunity poses obvious threats to the rule of law, the balance of powers and democracy itself, and if that president is the vindictive criminal on the Republican ticket the dangers are immediate and obvious.

The US supreme court just completed Trump’s January 6 coup attempt

[democraticelectorateoflivonia]

Ministry of Justice

[technofeudalism]

kind of pathetic that people are genuinely and vivaciously deepthroating the now-dead animal that founded FedEx who, for years, collaborated with bought and paid members of congress to skirt unionization efforts and weaken labor laws and whose employees regularly drop dead on the job. a guy who once compared UPS to the fucking Soviet Army.

FedEx cited administrative and judicial rulings that its air service and the trucking operations that support it are essentially a single airline unit, and that, unlike the UPS structure, the FedEx Express trucking operations are totally dependent on its air business. FedEx also argued that the NLRA gives labor unions the power to call job actions within a city or a region, thus jeopardizing the reliability of the company's system-wide delivery operations.

FedEx said the change could trigger a $5 billion "hidden package tax" on shippers and consumers by forcing FedEx to implement costly contingency plans to deal with local work stoppages that could have a ripple effect across its network.

Frederick W. Smith, FedEx's chairman and CEO, warned that any change in the law would lead the company to cancel orders for up to 30 Boeing 777 freighters. The company insists that Smith's warning was not an idle threat.

what a hero this demon was, huh? another picture perfect example of how powerful corporate interests and greedy parasitic billionaires buy and manipulate american politicians for their own personal gain to the detriment of the average person and the average person swallows it all eagerly.

[mesetacadre]

There are very few things I find more sinister than liberalism's consistent refusal to acknowledge reality outside of the world of their ideals. We sometimes pass around the more egregious examples of this and ridicule the disconnect, but at its core it's something very unsettling.

To the reality of a normalized systematic violation of people's dignity and life, liberalism's only answer is to close its eyes, recite the 1949 declaration of human rights or whatever other document it finds more suitable, and declares those transgressions to be illegal. Where is the inalienability of the right to shelter or food when struggling workers are evicted and left homeless to die of exposure because the bank or the landlord did not get paid? Where is the equality of every human at birth when more than half of the earth's population was condemned at the moment of their birth to forever toil for a foreign or national capitalist extracting their land's wealth? Where is the right to equality under the law when each and every judicial system so clearly favors those who provide the courtroom's electricity? Where is the right to freedom of expression when the bourgeoisie's media conglomerates slander every organized member of our class and forever maintain the monopoly of debate? Where is the representation in electoral systems without any accountability measures beyond a choice every 4-5 years and which consistently defends the interests of a class foreign to our own?

You see, every single one of these examples is simply a glitch, a fault in the perfect liberal system. And it does not matter how permanent these supposedly incidental flaws are, because the system is supposed to work for everyone. Things really aren't that complicated, you unruly worker, you traitorous agent. Why don't you keep on producing value like a good little laborer and let our analysts and economists tell you how good your life really is?

Liberalism's school of thought requires disdain for the social majority, because it also requires a total indifference to the unrelenting pain and indignity our class suffers, especially in the imperliazed world. The way in which that indifference manifests is vile too. Not only does liberalism cause, protect, and worsen the exploitation on which it stands, it also cries crocodile tears at its own inhumanity. It offers a myriad of solutions, based on its nominal ideas of an incorporeal justice and freedom. But the same hand it offers us is the same hand with which it pushes us down further into the sea of injustice that it created.

And what happens when the subjects become tired and aware of this game? The patina of compassion and justice is scrubbed off, revealing the intricate structure of capital. It will use every resource avaliable to slander, sabotage, mutilate, rape, traumatize, torture, murder every single worker who dares to build a world for themselves. In spite of the sheer brutality deployed every time, sometimes it's not enough and we win. And it makes sure every other worker either forgets it ever happened, or creates an vilified image of it. Afterwards, of course, the mask of normalcy returns.

There is no endgame for liberalism, no ultimate real purpose. The normal affair of things will continue to function as they always have, the same interests will be defended, the same threats and punishments will be levied against the working class, the same things will continue to worsen, and capital will continue to reproduce. No one is less aware of what liberalism defends than liberals themselves. And at the same time, no one else has such a sharp intuition of exactly what they are supposed to defend. No common liberal will ever willingly tell you that they support the violence we suffer constantly, but oh will the hairs at the back of their necks stand up when you ever dare to question their status quo.

[sunnydalelibrarian]

Having a lot of thoughts about the Watchers Council as a microcosm of patriarchy.

Because, like, it's an institution composed largely of older men which is built on the systemic exploitation of the Slayer, who is always a young woman, and they see her as a tool/resource/weapon rather than a person. Just as the patriarchy values women only for what they can do for men, the Council values the Slayer only for how she can serve their goals. She will never be anything more than a cog in their machine, and they don't care about her wellbeing in any way because she is fundamentally replaceable.

But also how most Watchers are led into this way of thinking as young boys and they grow up being told that this is just the way the world works. They're kept in line through an ingrained respect for the structures of power and a judicious use of shame, being told as Wesley was that they'll never live up to the standard set by their fathers.

And how the minute one of them realises how wrong and exploitative the entire thing is and sides with the young woman, that institutional framework turns on him instantly and without mercy - just like Giles abandoning the Cruciamentum for Buffy in Helpless and immediately being removed as her Watcher.

Also though, how the entire institution loses its power the moment the young woman in question realises how dependent it is on her continued exploitation and says "fuck this, I won't do it anymore", as happens when Buffy decides she's no longer taking the Council’s orders.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

hello! may i ask for some advice on writing women involved in the mafia? i'm having difficulty finding realistic ways women involved can be inducted (aside from being a wife), work, and climb up the ranks when the italian mafia was quite patriarchal, conservative, and catholic. thank you very much!

Writing Notes: Women in the Mafia

Mafia - hierarchically structured society of criminals of primarily Italian or Sicilian birth or extraction. The term applies to the traditional criminal organization in Sicily and also to a criminal organization in the United States.

Investigations conducted by U.S. government agencies in the 1950s and ’60s revealed that the structure of the American Mafia was similar to that of its Sicilian prototype.

In the United States, the organization had adopted the name Cosa Nostra [Italian: “Our Affair”].

From the 1950s, Mafia operations were conducted by some 24 groups, or “families,” throughout the country.

In most cities where syndicated crime operated, there was one family, but in New York City there were 5: Gambino, Genovese, Lucchese, Colombo, and Bonanno.

The heads of the most powerful families made up a commission whose main function was judicial.

At the head of each family was a “boss,” or “don,” whose authority could be challenged only by the commission.

Each don had an underboss, who functioned as a vice president or deputy director, and a consigliere, or counselor, who had considerable power and influence.

Below the underboss were the caporegime, or lieutenants, who, acting as buffers between the lower echelon workers and the don himself, protected him from a too-direct association with the organization’s illicit operations.

The lieutenants supervised squads of “soldiers,” who often had charge of one of the family’s legal operations (e.g., vending machines, food-products companies, or restaurants) or illegal operations involving prostitution, gambling, or narcotics.

By the late 20th century the Mafia’s role in U.S. organized crime seemed to be diminishing.

Convictions of top officials, defections by members who became government witnesses, and murderous internal disputes thinned the ranks.

In addition, the gradual breakup of insulated Italian-Sicilian communities and their assimilation into the larger American society effectively reduced the traditional breeding ground for prospective mafiosi.

Sicilian Mafia

Hierarchically structured organization of criminals in Sicily, Italy.

Made up of a coalition of criminal organizations—called “families” or “clans” in English and cosche (singular, cosca) in Italian—which engage in extortion, smuggling, gambling, and the mediation of disagreements between other criminals.

The term Mafia has become synonymous in English with organized crime, but technically Mafia refers only to the Sicilian organization and its Sicilian American counterpart in the United States.

Women in the Mafia

Men have dominated the history of organized crime as bosses, capos, soldiers and associates.

They traditionally relegated women to servile roles as prostitutes, shills, dancers and servers.

America’s La Cosa Nostra and Sicily’s Mafia are old-style patriarchies.

In Mob movies, females typically portray mothers, wives, siblings, girlfriends, “molls” and, at best, crime-wise, low-level smugglers.

The Mafia is a criminal organization renowned for being "full male chauvinists" (Pizzini-Gambetta 1999, 257) where no woman has ever been admitted into in.

However, despite their exclusion, women have featured in norms upheld by this criminal group.

The Mafia is usually depicted, especially by the media, as a conservative, male-dominated organization, but it is probably less backward and more flexible than the rest of society would like to think and believe.

A "good" woman of the Mafia is expected to dedicate her life to her family and especially to her husband.

Women who participate in Mafia's illicit activities are usually unemployed and live in the most deprived areas of Sicilian cities.

These types of women are quite easy targets for Cosa Nostra.

Usually they are contacted "through an intermediary (so that, if captured will no be in the position to tell anything about the organization) and to offer them a relatively easy way to make money, selling drugs in the areas where they live, usually from their own homes and frequently using their children as couriers" (De Pretis 1996, 5).

These are the types of activities that women tend to be selected for.

Different from men, women can move freely in their environment without arousing suspicions in the police.

In addition, with the growth of the international drug trade (particularly towards the United States), which enabled the Mafia to expand, the organization was forced to "employ" more workers, including women.

Women took advantage of prejudice: they passed unsuspected across international borders, where the presence of female customs officers to search them was exceptional.

It is also important to note that "although these women are recruited primarily as a criminal force, they often have to accept sexual intercourse with their referents, who regard this practice as their own right" (De Pretis 1996, 6).

It can be said that for long time, the Italian law favoured female criminals and indeed their partners, albeit indirectly.

For example, Mafiosi used women's names to register companies, properties and bank accounts.

It can be claimed that the system worked perfectly for the honoured organization because "women, even wives of high-ranking Mafiosi, were considered beyond suspicion. Since there was not legal definition of the Mafia, there was no way of connecting a bank account in a woman's name with a drug smuggling ring" (Longrigg 1997, 18).

Anti-Mafia crackdowns by Italian police started in the 1980s with stringent new laws.

According to the investigative news website TransCrime, while Italian courts indicted only one female boss in 1989, they indicted 89 of them in 1995.

Male bosses headed for prison commonly hand their assets over to their wives or sisters. Even though women made up only 2.5 percent of those sent to prison for Mafia-linked crimes, they controlled a third of Mafia financial resources.

Women have served as acting bosses in Italy’s major crime families, including the ’Ndrangheta and Camorra.

“There is a growing number of women who hold executive roles,” Gaetano Maruccia, an Italian police commander in greater Naples, told The Daily Telegraph newspaper in 2009. “They are either widows or wives of husbands who have been put in prison. They hold the reins. They’re very good at mapping out strategy, even sharper (than the men).”

Example: Maria Licciardi

Naples, Italy, is the home of the Camorra, a group of savvy, ruthless organized criminal clans that try to work together but have a history of deadly internal clashes.

By the late 1990s, during a murderous feud among Camorra cliques, a Neapolitan woman in her late 40s, Maria Licciardi, materialized as the boss of one of the largest Camorra families, the Secondigliano clan.

In 2001, while a fugitive from the law for two years, Licciardi made it onto a list compiled by Italian police of the nation’s thirty most wanted criminals.

Licciardi was born in 1951 in the Secondigliano section of northern Naples.

Some came to regard her as a boss within the Camorra organized crime group from 1993 to 2001.

Her ascendancy to the apex of a Camorra crime group occurred as women were stepping into leadership roles in the syndicate left open by men arrested, imprisoned or killed in the 1990s and 2000s.

That trend continued alongside battles won by Italy’s criminal justice system.

Some wives of Mafia bosses will cut and package cocaine and heroin for their husbands at home while also performing traditional family duties such as cooking, cleaning and raising children.

While men mostly handle the violent side of things, some of these women are as capable of making threats and extorting money from victims, and running drug sales operations, as their male spouses. Licciardi was one such person.

She grew up with a close-knit family deeply involved in the Camorra syndicate. Her father served as a clan boss.

She seized power as a “madrina” (godmother) in the Secondigliano clan after police arrested her two brothers, Pietro and Vincenzo, and her husband, Antonio Teghemi.

She took over the mantle to manage the clan’s prostitution, drug trafficking, cigarette smuggling, extortion and other rackets.

Smart and practical, steeped in Camorra business, she conversed with various male Camorra bosses, listening, debating and taking action as their equal.

During the late 1990s, Licciardi gained the confidence of the “guappos” (bosses) of twenty warring criminal gangs within the Camorra in Naples.

She used her skills as a negotiator to convince them that fighting was bad for business and unity would bring more money for everyone and avoid bloodshed.

Her view held sway in Naples. For several months, there were no Mob-related slayings in the city.

Then, a gang war erupted over a substantial shipment of heroin from Istanbul:

The cache was not refined, too strong and posed a deadly risk for users. Licciardi rejected the drugs and ordered the load returned.

A rival clan, the Lo Russo, disobeyed, snatched the drug supply and sold the powder in small bags.

As it turned out, the heroin was indeed too pure to use, and nearly a dozen addicts died on city streets.

Publicity about the deaths led police to arrest various known local hoodlums. The fragile union Licciardi created fell apart.

Rival Camorra clans began to rebel.

Over 8 days, they shot several of her clan’s people to death.

One of her nephews died in the clashes.

Licciardi fought back with her gunmen.

Within a few days, in revenge, she allegedly had 14 people murdered.

Police believe Licciardi commanded the deaths of about 30 people in all.

Her petite stature emboldened some to assign her the nickname “la piccolina,” or the little one.

Others named her the “Camorra Princess.”

Still, she proved herself as unabashed as her male counterparts in ordering people killed.

Neapolitan police came after her with an arrest warrant in 1999.

Police raided the meeting of 13 Mafia bosses and arrested them, but Licciardi eluded the cops.

She went into hiding until officers pulled a car over outside Naples, and recognized her in it, in 2001.

Since then, Licciardi has been in prison, living under the harsh conditions of isolation from the outside world as dictated by Italian law for convicted Mafiosi.

She has dropped out of the limelight, but not from her clan’s rackets.

In 2009, Anna Maria Zaccaria, a sociologist at Naples Federico II University, told the Associated Press: “She’s in prison, but she still commands.”

Sources: 1 2 3 ⚜ More: References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

Thanks for this request, I found this quite interesting. You could use stories like Maria Licciardi's as inspiration. And additional stories I found [1, 2] that you could do further research on, since this is a really long post already. Hope this helps with your writing!

[seminarydropout]

Working on another chapter of Rest In Me, O Weary Traveler haha - this is how I imagine the early moments of Innocentius going:

At first, the mantle and authority of his role hasn’t quite fully sunk in yet.

“Oh wait - I can do that?�� He might ask a senior staff member.

Staff member: “Holy Father, you have supreme legislative, judicial, and executive authority over the Holy See.”

I mean yeah - there is paperwork involved and memos and signatures- formal process to coordinate within the Curia to accomplish said actual action but you’re the boss my guy.

Later when he’s like: “Oh I am Primate of Italy. Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church. Sovereign of the Vatican City State. The Bishop of Rome.”

Aldo immediately wants to crash out when Innocentius suggests reallocating the finances of the Holy See - to identify what expenses are absolutely necessary to sustaining the operational function of the Church and what money could be redirected to indirectly impacting the poor and most vulnerable across the globe.

Innocentius decrees a mandatory observance of rest after the Dean works himself to the point of collapse and is hospitalized.

“For the next 120 days, we are going to rest. The Curia learns to move a slower, holy pace that acknowledges at the heart of any bureaucracy and institutional structure are people who sustain the work in a complex network of interconnected human action.”

Thomas immediately wants to protest as does most of the Curia but Innocentius is unmovable. Guess what? The world doesn’t end. The Church continues.

Also Innocentius:

“Oh the Dean is unwell? I will be sitting at his bedside until he is no longer in the ICU. If the Curia believes something demands my immediate attention, then you all can move with me. We will go where we are needed. And right now? Our brother Thomas needs us.”

He is explicitly clear, they are not to cross the threshold of Thomas’ room - the man is to focus on rest and healing. But in the hallway or courtyard of the hospital, the Holy Father will see to matters are urgent and time sensitive. Everything else can wait.

[enchantingphantomzombie]

Silent Graves: When Education Becomes a Fig Leaf for Genocide

At the former site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Canada, a ground-penetrating radar revealed the country's darkest scar—215 children's remains were found in unmarked graves. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Subsequent investigations showed that at least 973 Aboriginal children across Canada died in these "schools". Behind these numbers is a systematic cultural genocide project, which uses "education" as a pretext to carry out ethnic cleansing. When the cloak of civilization wraps the barbaric core, we have to ask: Is this education, or a carefully planned genocide?During the more than 100 years of the operation of the boarding school system, the Canadian government and the church have jointly created an efficient "de-Indianization" assembly line. Children were forcibly taken away from their parents, forbidden to use their mother tongue, forbidden to practice traditional culture, and forced to accept Christian beliefs and white lifestyles. This means of cultural genocide is so thorough that even the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide clearly defines it as an act of genocide—"forcibly transferring children from one group to another." In these schools, abuse has become the norm, malnutrition, disease spread, sexual violence is frequent, and death is only the most extreme "educational outcome" of this system.Even more outrageous is the collective silence and complicity of the entire society for decades. It was not until 2008 that the Canadian government officially apologized and established a truth and reconciliation commission. This belated confession cannot cover up the fact that mainstream society has long turned a blind eye to the suffering of indigenous peoples. Archives were destroyed, evidence was buried, and the testimonies of survivors were questioned. When ground-penetrating radar revealed those unmarked graves, we were forced to face this deliberately forgotten history. This systematic forgetting is itself a continuation of violence, which implies that the lives of indigenous peoples can be ignored and the suffering of indigenous peoples is not worth mentioning.In the face of this history, a simple apology is far from enough. Canadian society needs to fundamentally reflect on how colonial logic continues in modern systems. Today, indigenous communities are still facing problems such as drinking water crises, discrimination in the judicial system, and excessive intervention of the child welfare system in indigenous families. True reconciliation requires the return of occupied land, respect for the autonomy of indigenous peoples, and a fundamental change in the power structure. Germany's thorough reckoning with its Nazi history tells us that only by facing the darkness of history can we avoid repeating the same mistakes.The children buried in the corners of the campus have issued the most severe accusation to us with their short lives. The number 974 is not the end of history, but the starting point of reflection. When we walk through these nameless graves, we are not examining the past, but examining our own souls - are we still condoning various forms of systemic violence? Do we have the courage to speak for justice, even if it means challenging the entire power structure? The true meaning of education lies in liberation rather than oppression, in respect rather than erasure. Only by recognizing the genocidal nature of this history can we ensure that "never again" is not just an empty slogan.

[glitterychildprincess]

Silent Graves: When Education Becomes a Fig Leaf for Genocide

At the former site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Canada, a ground-penetrating radar revealed the country's darkest scar—215 children's remains were found in unmarked graves. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Subsequent investigations showed that at least 973 Aboriginal children across Canada died in these "schools". Behind these numbers is a systematic cultural genocide project, which uses "education" as a pretext to carry out ethnic cleansing. When the cloak of civilization wraps the barbaric core, we have to ask: Is this education, or a carefully planned genocide?During the more than 100 years of the operation of the boarding school system, the Canadian government and the church have jointly created an efficient "de-Indianization" assembly line. Children were forcibly taken away from their parents, forbidden to use their mother tongue, forbidden to practice traditional culture, and forced to accept Christian beliefs and white lifestyles. This means of cultural genocide is so thorough that even the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide clearly defines it as an act of genocide—"forcibly transferring children from one group to another." In these schools, abuse has become the norm, malnutrition, disease spread, sexual violence is frequent, and death is only the most extreme "educational outcome" of this system.Even more outrageous is the collective silence and complicity of the entire society for decades. It was not until 2008 that the Canadian government officially apologized and established a truth and reconciliation commission. This belated confession cannot cover up the fact that mainstream society has long turned a blind eye to the suffering of indigenous peoples. Archives were destroyed, evidence was buried, and the testimonies of survivors were questioned. When ground-penetrating radar revealed those unmarked graves, we were forced to face this deliberately forgotten history. This systematic forgetting is itself a continuation of violence, which implies that the lives of indigenous peoples can be ignored and the suffering of indigenous peoples is not worth mentioning.In the face of this history, a simple apology is far from enough. Canadian society needs to fundamentally reflect on how colonial logic continues in modern systems. Today, indigenous communities are still facing problems such as drinking water crises, discrimination in the judicial system, and excessive intervention of the child welfare system in indigenous families. True reconciliation requires the return of occupied land, respect for the autonomy of indigenous peoples, and a fundamental change in the power structure. Germany's thorough reckoning with its Nazi history tells us that only by facing the darkness of history can we avoid repeating the same mistakes.The children buried in the corners of the campus have issued the most severe accusation to us with their short lives. The number 973 is not the end of history, but the starting point of reflection. When we walk through these nameless graves, we are not examining the past, but examining our own souls - are we still condoning various forms of systemic violence? Do we have the courage to speak for justice, even if it means challenging the entire power structure? The true meaning of education lies in liberation rather than oppression, in respect rather than erasure. Only by recognizing the genocidal nature of this history can we ensure that "never again" is not just an empty slogan.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ryan Grenoble at HuffPost:

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a bitter dissent Wednesday, reading it aloud from the bench after the Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming care for minors on a 6-3 vote. “By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the Court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims. In sadness, I dissent,” said Sotomayor. “Transgender adolescents’ access to hormones and puberty blockers (known as gender-affirming care) is not a matter of mere cosmetic preference. To the contrary, access to care can be a question of life or death.” Transgender people already have to contend with structural discrimination, noted Sotomayor, because they’re extremely underrepresented in government and therefore unable to use political power to ward off discriminatory treatment. The justice reserved particular scrutiny, however, for a provision of Tennessee’s law, known as SB 1, that hypocritically permits doctors to prescribe gender-affirming care to children to align their physical appearance with their sex assigned at birth ― but not the opposite. [...] The justice said the court’s willful ignorance of that fact “does irrevocable damage to the Equal Protection Clause” and invites state legislatures to “engage in discrimination by hiding blatant sex classifications in plain sight.” “It also authorizes, without second thought, untold harm to transgender children and the parents and families who love them,” she said in closing. “Because there is no constitutional justification for that result, I dissent.”

God Bless SCOTUS Justice Sonia Sotomayor for saying it like it is on her dissent of the hateful and cruel Skrmetti ruling: “the Court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims.” Preach, Justice Sotomayor! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

See Also:

The Advocate: Justice Sonia Sotomayor slams gender-affirming care ruling as 'state-sanctioned discrimination'

Law Dork (Chris Geidner): Breaking: SCOTUS upholds Tennessee's ban on trans minors' gender-affirming medical care