Category: Economic Equality

French Journalists Talk About Ligue du LOL Group Harassment

~ mcequality

It appears that an powerful group of male journalists in France, known online in a group cornily dubbed the “Laughing Out Loud League,” have been casually promoting the harassment of their women peers.

RFI (Radio France Internationale) reports that the group was a private Facebook group started in 2009 by the Libération writer Vincent Glad. The “Ligue du Lol” sort of sounds like the “Binders” groups that American women have created for writing and other fields, except this is for influential douchebags. “The original idea was for this group of young males-on-the-make in the world of Paris media to share private jokes, sometimes about their female colleagues,” RFI reports.

via French Journalists Talk About Ligue du LOL Group Harassment

Ligue du LOL: Secret group of French journalists targeted women – BBC News

~ mcequality

Several senior French journalists have been suspended or fired for allegedly co-ordinating online harassment through a private Facebook group.
The largely-male Ligue du LOL (League of LOL) mocked women, including other journalists, with rape jokes and photoshopped pornographic images.
Dozens of women have spoken out since the group was uncovered by the major French daily Libération.
Libération’s online editor Alexandre Hervaud is among those suspended.
People in the League of LOL set up anonymous Twitter accounts in order to harass prominent journalists, writers and activists – predominantly targeting women.
Vincent Glad, a well-known freelancer who also worked for Libération, admitted founding the group in 2009. He has also been suspended from the paper.

via Ligue du LOL: Secret group of French journalists targeted women – BBC News

Videos Show Southwest Key Staff Dragging, Shoving Migrant Kids

~ mcequality

Using state public-records laws, The Arizona Republic has obtained video from surveillance cameras showing staff at a now-shuttered Southwest Key shelter for migrant children in Arizona physically dragging and pushing children in their care. But authorities determined that the physical aggression used against the children last September does not constitute a crime.

This week, Splinter’s Samantha Grasso reported that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office closed three cases of child abuse reported at the Hacienda Del Sol children’s shelter, operated by Southwest Key in Youngtown, Arizona, after only reviewing security camera footage and without interviewing the Southwest Key employees allegedly involved or the minors reported to have been abused.

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In the videos obtained by the Republic, incidents that occurred on Sept. 14, 17, and 21 involved shelter staff dragging, pulling, and slapping a young boy, and dragging another child against their will. The videos are blurred to protect the identities of the children.

via Videos Show Southwest Key Staff Dragging, Shoving Migrant Kids

Jazmine Headley’s Arrest and the ‘Slow Violence’ of Poverty

~ mcequality

On Tuesday afternoon, elected officials in New York City gathered in front of City Hall to denounce the violent arrest of 23-year-old Jazmine Headley, which had happened the previous Friday while she and her 1-year-old son were waiting at one of the city’s public assistance offices. Headley’s arrest was captured in a hard to watch video taken by a bystander; in it, you can see a swarm of security guards and police officers surrounding her as she sits on the floor clutching her son Damone, repeatedly calling out, “They’re hurting my son!” before an officer ripped the one-year-old out of her arms. At one point, an officer takes out a bright yellow taser and waves it around at the people watching in horror.

In the days that followed, the consequences had continued to compound for Headley, who did nothing to provoke the reaction of the Human Resource Administration security guards and NYPD officers except, perhaps, commit the sin of being black and in need of childcare assistance and a place to sit. The Brooklyn district attorney had dropped all charges against Headley, but as of Tuesday afternoon, she was still being held, without bail, at Rikers Island, the city’s jail, as a result of an outstanding warrant related to a credit card fraud case in New Jersey.

via Jazmine Headley’s Arrest and the ‘Slow Violence’ of Poverty

Denial of abortion leads to economic hardship for low-income women | Reuters

~ mcequality

Women who want an abortion but are denied one are more likely to spend years living in poverty than women who have abortions, a new study suggests.

Carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term quadrupled the odds that a new mother and her child would live below the federal poverty line, researchers reported in the American Journal of Public Health on Thursday, a few days before the 45th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion.

“It’s very powerful to see that women’s decision-making is exactly right on,” said lead author Diana Greene Foster, a professor at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, a research group at the University of California, San Francisco.

via Denial of abortion leads to economic hardship for low-income women | Reuters

‘Norms Are Being Challenged All the Time’: Joanne Freeman on Civility and the History of Congressional Brawls

~ mcequality

A famous act of political violence is often used to illustrate the utter collapse of civic norms in the run-up to the Civil War: the caning of Charles Sumner by his fellow congressman, Preston Brooks of South Carolina, on the floor of the Senate.

It turns out, though, that this was just one of dozens of incidents of violence in Congress in the period between 1930 and the first shots fired at Fort Sumter, ranging from physical menacing to threats to brawls to duels—including one that killed an elected representative. This phenomenon, which has been little-understood thanks in no small part to the euphemism-laden legislative records of the era, has been rediscovered in The Field of Blood, a fascinating and upsettingly timely new book by Joanne B. Freeman. A professor of history at Yale, one of the world’s leading experts on Alexander Hamilton, and co-host of the podcast Backstory, she’s studied political violence for decades.

via ‘Norms Are Being Challenged All the Time’: Joanne Freeman on Civility and the History of Congressional Brawls

Federal inspectors find nooses, “serious violations” at ICE facility

~ mcequality

Federal inspectors conducted an unannounced visit of an immigration detention center in southern California and found “serious violations” throughout the facility, where guards improperly placed adult inmates in disciplinary segregation and ignored more than a dozen “nooses” fashioned out of bedsheets.

The report, conducted by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, also showed that medical staff at the Adelanto, Calif., facility disregarded federal regulations governing the treatment of inmates by doing only cursory checks of inmates and making them wait months, sometimes years, to receive basic dental care, leading to tooth loss and “unnecessary extractions.”

via Federal inspectors find nooses, “serious violations” at ICE facility

The 2019 Women’s March Will Take Place in January

~ mcequality

Break out your poster board from wherever you… store your poster board… because the National Women’s March is BACK, baby. Or, at least, it will be back in January 2019, per organizers.

The New York Times reports that the third annual National Women’s March will take place on January 19 of next year, with planned actions in cities across the nation and world. The main march will take place in Washington D.C., though organizers say they’re still hammering out the route and other permit-related details.

via The 2019 Women’s March Will Take Place in January

Brett Kavanaugh, Sexual Assault, the Threat to ‘Every Man’

~ mcequality

“I am willing to talk to the Senate Judiciary Committee in any way the Committee deems appropriate to refute this false allegation, from 36 years ago, and defend my integrity,” Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh said on Monday in what has now been his second statement denying sexual assault allegations made by Christine Blasey Ford.

Ford has agreed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee but senators remain divided over whether to postpone voting on Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee or let Thursday’s vote carry on as scheduled. Trump himself seems committed to Kavanaugh’s nomination. When asked on Monday if Kavanaugh offered to resign, Trump responded: “What a ridiculous question.”

via Brett Kavanaugh, Sexual Assault, the Threat to ‘Every Man’

‘Sexist, unsafe’ world experienced by young girls – BBC News

~ mcequality

An “alarmingly high” number of girls and young women feel unsafe outside their home, according to annual research for Girlguiding UK.
The survey of 1,903 13 to 21-year-olds in the UK found nearly two-thirds either felt unsafe, or knew someone who was fearful walking home alone.
More than half had suffered harassment, or knew someone who had, it said.
But girls are responding more robustly than before and were also more likely to call themselves feminists, it said.
The research, the tenth over as many years, found more girls claim to understand what feminism means, with almost half saying they are feminists – up from a third in 2013.
One young woman, from the 11 to 16-year-old age group, told researchers a feminist was “a person who strongly believes in gender equality and that everyone no matter their background should be treated equally.”

via ‘Sexist, unsafe’ world experienced by young girls – BBC News