#and criminalize being poor or disabled in public. guys. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

snowdropluck204 · 2 months ago

Text

A Date With Death - Spencer Reid x Unsub Fem! Reader - Pt 2

Hiya my lovelies... It's been a while... Mainly because I've been trying to write an original book, but hit a snag, so I'm back to my criminal minds centre of my brain to try and get some inspiration, hopefully this works... Anyway! I hope you enjoy this chapter! Xxx

TW: Murder, gore, blood, mentions of rapists, paedophiles, abuse, y/n being mistaken for male, assisted suicide.

Tag List: @vexis-world @inexplicableeee @flowercrownsandtrauma @alysianc @btsiguess-kpop @devilslittlebabyxx @delusional-4-fake-people @mega-kittyglitter-1 @esposadomd

(y/n) pov

I watched from around the corner of the hallway, waiting for Isabel Jackson to come home, waiting for her to stumble back to her hovel as she did most nights, either from her graveyard shift or from a night of drinking. This particular woman, wasn't as bad as a lot of the people I had previously disposed of, she hadn't killed anyone herself, but she was the reason for two young men, taking their own lives.

I sighed, thinking about the news articles, I remembered this case, it happened about two years ago and was thrown out of court. Because a woman couldn't possibly be capable of raping and abusing four, strapping young men? Could she? Granted the public believed that the person killing all these people was a man, probably not thinking anyone participating in such gruesome events could be a woman. I sighed once more. This was all for one purpose.

I watched, through the camera doorbell, as the woman came home, stumbling into her apartment and promptly passing out, as I could see all the cameras' feeds on my tablet. I waited, for around an hour, before walking up to the door, my mask on, I had decided to lean into the press and media, wearing a mask again, but this time, one of my own design. It was a kabuki mask, one of a skull, bright, innocent colours, like that of my original candy skull mask, but this one was mine. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out a long, black rectangular box, a device I had invented, I waved it across the door lock, hearing the soft kachunck as the tumblers fell into place. I looked up at the camera, knowing that the police would be able to see me, I waved.

I opened the door and stepped inside. I took great care in disabling the security system, the cameras, the alarms, of course it wasn't difficult, I was the one who had designed the system, I had been the one to sell them to her...

3rd Person pov

The police, and therefore the BAU, had been notified of finding another body, matching the unsub's MO. A man had called the police, stating that he had just come off his shift at the graveyard, the same one the body was found, when he saw someone leaving, couldn't see a face or clothing, it was barely lit in the early morning. But he walked over, feeling the whole thing was rather sketchy, seeing a dead body just outside the gates of cemetery.

The victim still carried his I.D, whether it was left on the body by design or the killer had forgotten about it was unknown. The man's name was David James, he had been previously convicted of domestic assault, and later, sexual assault and paedophilia. Spencer called Garcia, asking for a background check on the latest victim and receiving a call, not two minutes later with what she had found.

Spencer put the call on speaker phone, holding it up awkwardly, so that Morgan and Hotch could listen into the call, "Go ahead Garcia," Spencer said, eagerly awaiting what she had found.

Garcia sighed, coming through the phone crackled and morphed, "This guy was creepy, not like Hannibal creepy, but just icky kinda creepy. He was arrested a few years ago, police having gotten a call from the neighbours that they heard screaming coming from his place, he was taken in by the police, his wife was bloodied and bruised, with broken fingers, obviously he'd beaten the stuffing out of her, poor woman. There wasn't enough evidence to make it stick, because without the wife's testimony, apparently the rest of the evidence was circumstantial... Morons." Garcia groaned.

"But then there was a sticking of one charge, being sexual assault and paedophilia... Ew... Apparently he molested his own daughter when she was ten... He spent only a year in jail, he made a deal and walked with no parole, that was about five years ago, and unfortunately his daughter couldn't deal with the trauma, she took her own life in a foster home, two years ago. Her mom ran away when she found out her husband was released from prison... She was found a year ago, overdosed, they were buried together at Linwood Cemetery." Garcia finished her deep dive, Spencer was intrigued.

"Wait, Linwood Cemetery?" He asked softly. Garcia confirmed. "That's where the body was found," He informed her. "So the killer knows the specifics about his crimes, knows where his family and previous abuse victims were buried and left him outside the graveyard?" Spencer asked, crouching down to look at the body, seeing a note on one side of the corpse. "That's new..." He said, wearing rubber gloves and picking up the note.

The note read, "No entry for sinners."

"A note from the unsub?" Hotch asked, looking over Spencer's shoulder.

"I don't think so," Morgan responded, "The guy who found the body works here, he seemed to be a pretty big fan of the unsub, he was wearing a pin that said "Don't fear the reaper." Like that song?" He said, "I think this is just that weirdo trying to get fifteen seconds of fame." Morgan rolled his eyes at the idea.

Garcia had been following the media response towards the unsub, most people were completely enamoured with him, that he was doing work that should have been taken care of.

Spencer leaned back towards the body, taking care to look through every aspect of the scene, the body was facing up, arms crossed over his chest, a white lily laced between the fingers, cleaned of most of the blood, which hadn't leaked much onto the ground where he was lying, so the unsub had cleaned up most of the blood at a separate location, most likely the victim's home, before bringing him here. This could have been a sign of remorse... Or a way of leaving less evidence.

The garrote was once again, wrapped around the neck, digging painfully into the skin, leaving deep, bloody grooves in the throat and the handle had the word paedophile carved jaggedly. The carving seemed different to the other victims, this one was angry and harsh, you could see just how much pressure was forced into the wood. Spencer's brow furrowed in concentration, "The unsub seems to have a connection with paedophiles, either they were assaulted as a child or knew somebody who was being assaulted and didn't do anything, that feeling of guilt probably followed them into adulthood and they're trying to compensate for their lack of power then, by forcing their will on these types of felons now.

This kind of unsub is especially dedicated, I doubt he'd stop until he's caught, there's only a finite amount of people he could kill, eventually the felons would become harder to locate, or the unsub would simply get too old... Either way, we need to catch them or he'll just continue..." Spencer finished, running a hand through his hair in frustration. Hotch looked on at him in worry, seeing him so befuddled was odd, to everyone on the team.

When they were ready, the team went back to the local station, ready to give the cops the profile they were working with. Standing in a circle around the group of desks in the bullpen, each member of the team filled in the police on what they knew. "We believe we're searching for a man in their mid twenties, not necessarily poor or well off, more middle class, probably has a job working with parts, computers, cars, something he can have control over." Hotch began.

Morgan stepped forward, to continue, "We believe something happened to this man in his childhood, either he was sexually abused or someone in his life was and he was powerless to do anything about it, now he's taking the law into his own hands to fix what he couldn't fix back then."

Elle began to speak, "He won't be open about his feelings on the news and the press, this isn't about fame and media portrayal, this is personal, he has a target in mind, we just don't know who that is yet, but we do know that he won't stop until this object of his obsession is taken care of, or until we catch him."

Spencer watched his teammates thoughtfully, he was conflicted about his feelings regarding these killings, it was obviously a horrible thing to have to look at the string of victims this unsub had left behind, but these were bad people, so maybe they deserved this kind of end? He stepped forward, "This unsub is most likely calm and collected, someone you could tell your troubles to, someone you can share secrets with, someone charismatic and easygoing. They might be religious, probably some kind of old druid or pagan religion, and they're the kind of person to feel deeply upsetting about hearing about the loss of a person, even if they didn't know them."

Spencer was frustrated with himself, most of the profile wasn't conclusive. The unsub might not be religious, they might have just been incredibly intelligent and throwing the police off by adding a religious format to the killings... They might not have been sympathetic towards their victims, but want to seem as though they are... Everything about this profile felt... Wrong...

One of the local cops came into the room out of breath, "Sorry to interrupt, we've found another body, almost half a mile away from the last..." He said anxiously, Spencer glanced at the rest of the BAU, Gideon meeting his tired eyes. Each time he thought they were getting closer, the unsub seemed to be at least three steps ahead of them...

They were probably on their next victim already...

(y/n) pov

Isabel Jackson, wasn't difficult to deal with, she was so wasted that she barely woke up before I slit her throat, the feeling of her blood seeping into my clothes made me feel ill, I couldn't help the shivering and retching as got back to my car. I sighed, realising there was still someone else I had to visit, someone who wasn't on my list necessarily, but was someone I genuinely did care about.

When I saw the text I was left, I couldn't ignore it, I drove to a suburb neighbourhood, mostly populated by elders, this house was no different. I stepped in through the gap in the back fence, walking through the backyard under the cover of night, I used my key to get into the house through the back door, walking through the house I'd known all my life. This house in particular belonged to a lovely old man named Reggie, he was just the sweetest old fellow, but now...

I walked into the room that was once a cosy living room, now it had been converted into a bedroom, after Reggie got too weary and frail to handle the stairs, the room was now filled with bottles of pills and ointments, heart monitors, IV drips and Reggie... Poor, poor Reggie.

Stage four, terminal pancreatic cancer, he'd beaten cancer once, when I was still small, but he was exhausted, too tired to fight, I stepped closer to the bed, seeing Reg, sleeping, even sleeping he looked tired, each breath looked like it was agony to take. I sat next to him, taking his cold hand in mine, "Reg?" I said softly, trying not to choke on tears and the lump in my throat.

He startled awake, seeing me, he settled back against the pillows. Being that I was inside the house, the curtains were closed, I had taken off my mask, showing my face, I probably looked almost as tired as he was. He smiled weakly, raising his hand from mine to cup my cheek, "Is that my little duck?" He asked, teasingly, that same glint in his eye from all those years ago that never seemed to fade. I smiled, nodding.

When I was a child, from when I was five til I was about eight, I had an obsession with ducks, I had shirts with them, I wore a onesie with a bill and duck tail, apparently I even spent a good few weeks quacking at people... Reggie never let me forget it, I remember when I was a teenager I would roll my eyes at his teasing comments, now, I couldn't even laugh. I leaned into his hand resting against my cheek.

Reggie took in my appearance, a small frown came onto his face, "Never expected my lil duck to become a murderer..." He mumbled. I sighed, nodding, even though it pained me to hear his comment.

"I know Reg... But I have to do this... for everyone that they hurt, or could hurt... For chick..." I told him, my eyes filling with tears, struggling to keep them from trailing down my cheeks. Reggie's eyes grew sad when I mentioned her, he knew exactly who I was doing this for. "When I got the text from your daughter... I didn't know what to do... I didn't know if I would be hearing your last words or taking them..." At that, I broke, leaning my head against his bed, soaking the covers with my tears, my chest sore from my sobs.

I felt Reggie's shaky hand rest on my head, I looked up at him, "You know what I want you to do, but don't feel you have to... I don't want this resting on your conscious." His voice was almost pathetic, quiet, he was simply ready to die...

I sighed, pulling open my bag, the kit I brought out was relatively lightweight, but the gravity of what I was about to do seemed to be pulling my down. I pulled out some syringes. "I got these from a nurse friend I have, they'll put you into a sleep you won't wake up from..." I told him, trying to be stoic, but I could feel myself breaking. This man was like a grandpa to me, to chicky... We would play here after school when our parents were working, hell even when they were, Reggie would chase us about, we'd play tag, hide and seek, and Reg would make us hot chocolate with a horrific amount of marshmallows and whipped cream as he'd tell us stories about monsters and dragons and princesses that were sick of being saved.

Reggie leaned back, closing his eyes, as I injected the serum, "Thank you, my little duck..." He whispered, as his eyes fell closed and his face went slack. I sighed, the dam breaking as I sobbed over the loss. After a few minutes, I laced the flower between his fingers, kissed his head and turned off the beeping monitor, I wiped my face, pulled down my mask and left the house, not even bothering to hide from anyone that could have seen me. I got in my car, and drove, I didn't know where I was driving until I got there...

I was in the field me and chick used to visit, meadow and streams everywhere, my knees began to ache, like they couldn't hold me up anymore. I fell to the floor and began to dig with my gloved hands, I felt like I'd been digging for hours, but I leaned over and screamed. I screamed and screamed until my voice was raw, all the sound being swallowed by this hole in the ground...

Hope this chapter was okay, this was more about setting out a background for your character! Hopefully it won't take me too long to write part three, granted I say that every time... Wish me luck! Xxx

#cute #love #fanfiction #romance #x reader #comfort #open requests #spencer reid x reader #criminal minds #x fem!reader #murder #unsub!reader #angst #cw: gore

35 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 2 years ago

Text

This story is part of a joint investigation between Lighthouse Reports and WIRED. To read other stories from the series, click here.

Mitch Daniels is a numbers guy, a cost-cutter. In the early 2000s, he tried and failed to rein in congressional spending under then-US president George W. Bush. So when he took office as Indiana governor in 2005, Daniels was ready to argue once again for fiscal discipline. He wanted to straighten out Indiana’s state government, which he deemed rife with dysfunction. And he started with its welfare system. “That department had been rocked by a series of criminal indictments, with cheats and caseworkers colluding to steal money meant for poor people,” he later said.

Daniels’ solution took the form of a $1.3 billion, 10-year contract with IBM. He had lofty ambitions for the project, which started in 2006, claiming it would improve the benefits service for Indiana residents while cracking down on fraud, ultimately saving taxpayers billions of dollars.

But the contract was a disaster. It was canceled after three years, and IBM and Indiana spent a decade locked in a legal battle about who was to blame. Daniels described IBM’s sweeping redesign and automation of the system—responsible for deciding who was eligible for everything from food stamps to medical cover—as deficient. He was adamant, though, that outsourcing a technical project to a company with expertise was the right call. “It was over-designed,” he said. “Great on paper but too complicated to work in practice.” IBM declined a request for comment.

In July 2012, Judge David Dryer of the Marion County Superior Court ruled that Indiana had failed to prove IBM had breached its contract. But he also delivered a damning verdict on the system itself, describing it as an untested experiment that replaced caseworkers with computers and phone calls. “Neither party deserves to win this case,” he said. “This story represents a ‘perfect storm’ of misguided government policy and overzealous corporate ambition.”

That might have been an early death knell for the burgeoning business of welfare state automation. Instead, the industry exploded. Today, such fraud systems form a significant part of the nebulous “govtech” industry, which revolves around companies selling governments new technologies with the promise that new IT will make public administration easier-to-use and more efficient. In 2021, that market was estimated to be worth €116 billion ($120 billion) in Europe and $440 billion globally. And it’s not only companies that expect to profit from this wave of tech. Governments also believe modernizing IT systems can deliver big savings. Back in 2014, the consultancy firm McKinsey estimated that if government digitization reached its “full potential,” it could free up $1 trillion every year.

Contractors around the world are selling governments on the promise that fraud-hunting algorithms can help them recoup public funds. But researchers who track the spread of these systems argue that these companies are often overpaid and under-supervised. The key issue, researchers say, is accountability. When complex machine learning models or simpler algorithms are developed by the private sector, the computer code that gets to define who is and isn’t accused of fraud is often classed as intellectual property. As a result, the way such systems make decisions is opaque and shielded from interrogation. And even when these algorithmic black holes are embroiled in high-stakes legal battles over alleged bias, the people demanding answers struggle to get them.

In the UK, a community group called the Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People is trying to determine whether a pattern of disabled people being investigated for fraud is linked to government automation projects. In France, the digital rights group La Quadrature du Net has been trying for four months to find out whether a fraud system is discriminating against people born in other countries. And in Serbia, lawyers want to understand why the introduction of a new system has resulted in hundreds of Roma families losing their benefits. “The models are always secret,” says Victoria Adelmant, director of New York University’s digital welfare state project. “If you don’t have transparency, it’s very difficult to even challenge and assess these systems.”

The rollout of automated bureaucracy has happened quickly and quietly, but it has left a trail of scandals in its wake. In Michigan, a computer system used between 2013 and 2015 falsely accused 34,000 people of welfare fraud. A similar thing happened in Australia between 2015 and 2019, but on a larger scale: The government accused 400,000 people of welfare fraud or error after its social security department started using a so-called robodebt algorithm to automatically issue fines.

Another scandal emerged in the Netherlands in 2019 when tens of thousands of families—many of them from the country’s Ghanaian community—were falsely accused of defrauding the child benefits system. These systems didn’t just contribute to agencies accusing innocent people of welfare fraud; benefits recipients were ordered to repay the money they had supposedly stolen. As a result, many of the accused were left with spiraling debt, destroyed credit ratings, and even bankruptcy.

Not all government fraud systems linked to scandals were developed with consultancies or technology companies. But civil servants are increasingly turning to the private sector to plug knowledge and personnel gaps. Companies involved in fraud detection systems range from giant consultancies—Accenture, Cap Gemini, PWC—to small tech firms like Totta Data Lab in the Netherlands and Saga in Serbia.

Experts in automation and AI are expensive to hire and less likely to be wooed by public sector salaries. When the UK surveyed its civil servants last year, confidence in the government’s ability to use technology was low, with around half of respondents blaming an inability to hire top talent. More than a third said they had few or no skills in artificial intelligence, machine learning, or automation. But it’s not just industry experience that makes the private sector so alluring to government officials. For welfare departments squeezed by budget cuts, “efficiency” has become a familiar buzzword. “Quite often, a public sector entity will say it is more efficient for us to go and bring in a group of consultants,” says Dan Sheils, head of European public service at Accenture.

The public sector lacks the expertise to create these systems and also to oversee them, says Matthias Spielkamp, cofounder of German nonprofit Algorithm Watch, which has been tracking automated decision-making in social welfare programs across Europe since 2017. In an ideal world, civil servants would be able to develop these systems themselves and have an in-depth understanding of how they work, he says. “That would be a huge difference to working with private companies, because they will sell you black-box systems—black boxes to everyone, including the public sector.”

In February 2020, a crisis broke out in the Dutch region of Walcheren as officials realized they were in the dark about how their own fraud detection system worked. At the time, a Dutch court had halted the use of another algorithm used to detect welfare fraud, known as SyRI, after finding it violated people’s right to privacy. Officials in Walcheren were not using SyRI, but in emails obtained by Lighthouse Reports and WIRED through freedom-of-information requests, government employees had raised concerns that their algorithm bore striking similarities to the one just condemned by the court.

Walcheren’s system was developed by Totta Data Lab. After signing a contract in March 2017, the Dutch startup developed an algorithm to sort through pseudonymous information, according to details obtained through a freedom-of-information request. The system analyzed details of local people claiming welfare benefits and then sent human investigators a list of those it classified as most likely to be fraudsters.

The redacted emails show local officials agonizing over whether their algorithm would be dragged into the SyRI scandal. “I don’t think it is possible to explain why our algorithm should be allowed while everyone is reading about SyRI,” one official wrote the week after the court ruling. Another wrote back with similar concerns. “We also do not get insight from Totta Data Lab into what exactly the algorithm does, and we do not have the expertise to check this.” Neither Totta nor officials in Walcheren replied to requests for comment.

When the Netherlands’ Organization for Applied Scientific Research, an independent research institute, later carried out an audit of a Totta algorithm used in South Holland, the auditors struggled to understand it. “The results of the algorithm do not appear to be reproducible,” their 2021 report reads, referring to attempts to re-create the algorithm’s risk scores. “The risks indicated by the AI algorithm are largely randomly determined,” the researchers found.

With little transparency, it often takes years—and thousands of victims—to expose technical shortcomings. But a case in Serbia provides a notable exception. In March 2022, a new law came into force which gave the government the green light to use data processing to assess individuals’ financial status and automate parts of its social protection programs. The new socijalna karta, or social card system, would help the government detect fraud while making sure welfare payments were reaching society’s most marginalized, claimed Zoran Đorđević, Serbia’s minister of social affairs in 2020.

But within months of the system’s introduction, lawyers in the capital Belgrade had started documenting how it was discriminating against the country’s Roma community, an already disenfranchised ethnic minority group.

Mr. Ahmetović, a welfare recipient who declined to share his first name out of concern that his statement could affect his ability to claim benefits in the future, says he hadn’t heard of the social card system until November 2022, when his wife and four children were turned away from a soup kitchen on the outskirts of the Serbian capital. It wasn’t unusual for the Roma family to be there, as their welfare payments entitled them to a daily meal provided by the government. But on that day, a social worker told them their welfare status had changed and that they would no longer be getting a daily meal.

The family was in shock, and Ahmetović rushed to the nearest welfare office to find out what had happened. He says he was told the new social card system had flagged him after detecting income amounting to 110,000 Serbian dinars ($1,000) in his bank account, which meant he was no longer eligible for a large chunk of the welfare he had been receiving. Ahmetović was confused. He didn’t know anything about this payment. He didn’t even have his own bank account—his wife received the family’s welfare payments into hers.

With no warning, their welfare payments were slashed by 30 percent, from around 70,000 dinars ($630) per month to 40,000 dinars ($360). The family had been claiming a range of benefits since 2012, including financial social assistance, as their son’s epilepsy and unilateral paralysis means neither parent is able to work. The drop in support meant the Ahmetovićs had to cut back on groceries and couldn’t afford to pay all their bills. Their debt ballooned to over 1 million dinars ($9,000).

The algorithm’s impact on Serbia’s Roma community has been dramatic. Ahmetović says his sister has also had her welfare payments cut since the system was introduced, as have several of his neighbors. “Almost all people living in Roma settlements in some municipalities lost their benefits,” says Danilo Ćurčić, program coordinator of A11, a Serbian nonprofit that provides legal aid. A11 is trying to help the Ahmetovićs and more than 100 other Roma families reclaim their benefits.

But first, Ćurčić needs to know how the system works. So far, the government has denied his requests to share the source code on intellectual property grounds, claiming it would violate the contract they signed with the company who actually built the system, he says. According to Ćurčić and a government contract, a Serbian company called Saga, which specializes in automation, was involved in building the social card system. Neither Saga nor Serbia’s Ministry of Social Affairs responded to WIRED’s requests for comment.

As the govtech sector has grown, so has the number of companies selling systems to detect fraud. And not all of them are local startups like Saga. Accenture—Ireland’s biggest public company, which employs more than half a million people worldwide—has worked on fraud systems across Europe. In 2017, Accenture helped the Dutch city of Rotterdam develop a system that calculates risk scores for every welfare recipient. A company document describing the original project, obtained by Lighthouse Reports and WIRED, references an Accenture-built machine learning system that combed through data on thousands of people to judge how likely each of them was to commit welfare fraud. “The city could then sort welfare recipients in order of risk of illegitimacy, so that highest risk individuals can be investigated first,” the document says.

Officials in Rotterdam have said Accenture’s system was used until 2018, when a team at Rotterdam’s Research and Business Intelligence Department took over the algorithm’s development. When Lighthouse Reports and WIRED analyzed a 2021 version of Rotterdam’s fraud algorithm, it became clear that the system discriminates on the basis of race and gender. And around 70 percent of the variables in the 2021 system—information categories such as gender, spoken language, and mental health history that the algorithm used to calculate how likely a person was to commit welfare fraud—appeared to be the same as those in Accenture’s version.

When asked about the similarities, Accenture spokesperson Chinedu Udezue said the company’s “start-up model” was transferred to the city in 2018 when the contract ended. Rotterdam stopped using the algorithm in 2021, after auditors found that the data it used risked creating biased results.

Consultancies generally implement predictive analytics models and then leave after six or eight months, says Sheils, Accenture’s European head of public service. He says his team helps governments avoid what he describes as the industry’s curse: “false positives,” Sheils’ term for life-ruining occurrences of an algorithm incorrectly flagging an innocent person for investigation. “That may seem like a very clinical way of looking at it, but technically speaking, that's all they are.” Sheils claims that Accenture mitigates this by encouraging clients to use AI or machine learning to improve, rather than replace, decision-making humans. “That means ensuring that citizens don’t experience significantly adverse consequences purely on the basis of an AI decision.”

However, social workers who are asked to investigate people flagged by these systems before making a final decision aren’t necessarily exercising independent judgment, says Eva Blum-Dumontet, a tech policy consultant who researched algorithms in the UK welfare system for campaign group Privacy International. “This human is still going to be influenced by the decision of the AI,” she says. “Having a human in the loop doesn’t mean that the human has the time, the training, or the capacity to question the decision.”

Despite the scandals and repeated allegations of bias, the industry building these systems shows no sign of slowing. And neither does government appetite for buying or building such systems. Last summer, Italy’s Ministry of Economy and Finance adopted a decree authorizing the launch of an algorithm that searches for discrepancies in tax filings, earnings, property records, and bank accounts to identify people at risk of not paying their taxes.

But as more governments adopt these systems, the number of people erroneously flagged for fraud is growing. And once someone is caught up in the tangle of data, it can take years to break free. In the Netherlands’ child benefits scandal, people lost their cars and homes, and couples described how the stress drove them to divorce. “The financial misery is huge,” says Orlando Kadir, a lawyer representing more than 1,000 affected families. After a public inquiry, the Dutch government agreed in 2020 to pay the families around €30,000 ($32,000) in compensation. But debt balloons over time. And that amount is not enough, says Kadir, who claims some families are now €250,000 in debt.

In Belgrade, Ahmetović is still fighting to get his family’s full benefits reinstated. “I don’t understand what happened or why,” he says. “It’s hard to compete against the computer and prove this was a mistake.” But he says he’s also wondering whether he’ll ever be compensated for the financial damage the social card system has caused him. He’s yet another person caught up in an opaque system whose inner workings are guarded by the companies and governments who make and operate them. Ćurčić, though, is clear on what needs to change. “We don’t care who made the algorithm,” he says. “The algorithm just has to be made public.”

Additional reporting by Gabriel Geiger and Justin-Casimir Braun.

161 notes · View notes

bookdragonlibrary · 1 year ago

Text

Elemental analysis

I finally watched this movie and when the first trailer came out, I thought I would dislike it but I was WRONG!

Anyway, some analysis like always because the movie is so cool :)

The first analysis you can make of it it's how it well portrayed racism, but I found another reading: how to make things accessible for disable people.

Follow me on this :)

First, about racism:

Based on the short history lesson we have at the beginning, water people are the first to arrive at Elemental City, making it the most accessible for them (water everywhere) and also, the most racist comments are made by water people (the guy on the train where the couple arrived, the guard at the station, Wade's uncle, etc.). So water people represent the people that "were there first". Not necessarly white people, as Asian people in Asian countries could also be racist to Black and Latinx people. Since they were there first, that also explains why water people seem to be the most welloff of the four people.

Fire people being seen as dangerous by default. What I like about the film is characters (only water people) say fire people are dangerous, but the film shows more scenes of Ember being cautious about not being light off because of water being everywhere (city made by and for water people remember?) than the contrary and she is always precautious to not light a fire (except that one scene when she explodes out of stress in the office). But water, clouds and trees could also be dangerous: floods, tsunami, storms, tornados, thunderstorm, a tree falling on you/your house, etc. And fire could also be beneficial (a fireplace, a spitfire) and create and be useful(glass). The only thing making it possible and safe is the environment and organisation. To compare to our real world, it is more plausible for a person of colour to be killed on the streets by "accident" than white people and white people could also be dangerous or criminal.

Which leads to my second point: disability and accessibility.

Fire people are the last of the four people to have come to Elemental City. The first arrival could have been around where the couple arrive. With the tree guard being unfamiliar to their names and giving them "regular names" instead easier for other people to pronounce. (A lot like when Asian people come to Western place they have to choose a Occidental name easier for the people to pronounce instead of them making this one adaptation for a person who already have their environment completely brand new and unacustomed of or when we translate Asian names because we aren't accustomed to the sounds in their language. A thing that was already done to Native Americans.)

When Ember is older, we see more fire people around in a town that have more accomodations for them (but only in their ghetto) with stone instead of wood and the pipeline being shut down. But the place isn't as well maintained than in other area with the double safe door being broken and out of the knowledge of the responsible company, like in poor areas (where POC and immigrants often live) the infrastructure are often poor maintained as well.

But the City hasn't made the other areas accessible for them (with that skyline subway and waterfall just above their heads) or the behaviour aware of their presence (the ola thing for a minus one). The station where the flower is wasn't made of and thought of to be accessible to fire people. So it was easier for authority to just forbid them to go than make accomodations for them to go in safely. Just like authority forget disable people exist and need accomodations to acess certain things like entring and circulating inside a building or take the subway. And I'm talking of both physical disable people and neurodivergent people who are often overwhelmed or seen as weird in public.

So Elemental City could also being seen as a city for able people (water people), different people who can function in this society (as clouds and trees can function with water) and disable people (fire people) for whom circulating in this city takes a lot of energy, planification (umbrella) and being aware of their environment.

Feel free to tell me your thoughts about this and English isn't my first language so sorry if I was a bit clumsy in my choice of words. Please correct me (and explain me if you have the energy) if I did so.

#elemental #pixar #racism #ableism #analysis

4 notes · View notes

nathank77 · 6 months ago

Text

5/30/24

6:09 p.m

I called Walmart this case has been moved up to ethics. I said some of this and when I fight this case, this is what I am saying:

I contacted an attorney regarding my discrimination/harassment lawsuit and he wants to see my photos and get a hold of your video camera footage since you guys won't let me upload my proof that I didn’t damage the product.

Beyond that I am darker skinned individual who- is being followed around the store and singled out and harassed by two white employees and treated as if I am a criminal. I am being harassed and discriminated against because I am a disabled man with a darker skin tone.

My attorney told me to start walking around Walmart recording my interactions as I have a clear cut harassment and discrimination case.

If you guys ask me to stop buying waters at this Walmart you’re violating my basic human rights to go shopping and get a basic human necessity.

The emotional distress this causes me every time I need to go to Walmart causes me to go into panic attacks and get heart palpitations the night before and while I am there.

I am being singled out by two employees at this Walmart and if corporate doesn’t do anything about it, it will be a public relations nightmare- local hispanic disabled man being discriminated against and harassed by his local Walmart, corporate sides with employee.

My lawyer said I haven’t done anything illegal and I cannot be removed from the store if I do not steal anything or damage products, and I am not damaging the product. Which is why having the ability to provide my photos is important.

My lawyer said that this is a clear cut win and If I want to open the case he will be obtaining video camera footage from the Torrington Walmart store from 5/29/24.

He told me that Steve taking my photos although technically legal is not okay- why? Well it's like taking pictures of someone with autism strumming, it's like taking photos of someone having a panic attack. Which I was having a panic attack.

Steve's photo of me obsessively checking is not going to help Walmart its proof that I am being discriminated against and followed around at Walmart because I am disabled with OCD.

My lawyer has advised me to contact you as if you guys side with the employees. This has caused me extreme suffering, I have had panic attacks, I have had severe anxiety about it and its all because Walmart lacks mental health awareness and keep siding with the employees at that local Walmart

Everytime I go to Walmart I will be recording from the second I walk into the store, until I leave, as if other employees start to follow me around from here on out its because Steve showed them my photo.

The only solution to this is to fire the guy who has been following me and fire Steve. I know you can fire the guy who singles me out and follows me, I've only complained about it 3 separate times. Once to management. And twice to corporate.

The only solution is to educate your employees on mental health awareness.

As for Steve or any other employee at any Walmart if I start getting followed around this is just going to be easier for my lawyer to slam dunk the case.

If you want to follow me around the store, do it with the cameras to make sure I am not stealing anything otherwise, its harassment.

And I asked to be informed of what Steve was doing with my photo.

Fuck with me Walmart I dare you: Hispanic disabled man being discriminated against and harassed by white employees at local Walmart. GO AHEAD. You're a fucking multi-billion dollar company, and this is a mental health discrimination case as well as a racial discrimination case, having two white employees follow me around the store like I am a criminal. I have a darker skin and I look ghetto because I am poor. Try me.

0 notes

codenamesazanka · 3 years ago

Text

Related: More generally, this time more about the main conflict between Villains and Heroes, and how quirks play into it,

my other thumbs-up for Horikoshi’s worldbuilding is in the way he recognizes there’s not just quirks - there’s things like disability, background, education, socioeconomic class, rural vs urban attitudes, etc. All of which affects how someone’s quirk is perceived and what they go through in life.

We’ve got characters with deadly quirks that are successfully integrated into the world, a functional member of society; and characters with similarly deadly quirks who wallow in the criminal underworld; and we’ve got characters with powerful, strong, flashy quirks that easily become a Hero, and we’ve got characters with even better quirks than that ending up being a Villain bank robber. From what we’ve seen, a lot of the reason for differing trajectories in life is where these characters originate, which range from being born into a fabulously wealthy family, to being an dirt poor homeless orphan.

My favorite example of this disparity is the movie Villain Nine. Nine has a quirk that allows him to control the weather. As another character comments on it, it’s a god-like power, recalling the many deities in human tales who can bring rain or sun, storms or snow. It’s definitely a super strong, flashy quirk. There’s so many applications for it. Bring the guy to a drought-ridden land and he’s a Hero. in the old days, they would’ve made him king, probably.

Yet Nine, as an adult, wanders the streets in tattered clothing, implied to be left behind from the rest of society. He says his life has been filled with circumstances that have suppressed him, and it started when he was born apparently in a public toilet. His backstory is not expanded on, but one can imagine the story of his parents is not a happy, unfortunate, healthy one, and things did not get better. It’s why he resent the current state of society, why he desired a world of a pure hierarchy where strong rule and get what they deserve.

There are claims, both in series(?) and in fanon, that the world of HeroAca is already like this, one where people with strong quirks succeed, while people with weak quirks don’t (and if you’re quirkless, forget it). Nine contradicts this completely, and not just him: there’s Jin with his incredible Double, Mr. Compress with his amazingly useful marble quirk, and hell, Overhaul has his break-and-repair quirk, complete with his medical knowledge to use it. All of them lived on the margins of society, ending up either dead or rotting in jail.

Similarly - and this is where the elements of the Mutant Metaphor pops up again - there are bias against people with ‘dangerous’ quirks, but it’s not a straightforward ‘everyone with a ‘evil’ quirk is discriminated against.’ While you have Shinsou who always gets his ability called Villainous, Toga with her quirk that requires blood drinking to work its effect - and who could forget Shigaraki Tomura, whose very touch destroys - there are characters with quirks that, while doesn’t immediately gets pinged as creepy, can very much be lethal depending on how they use it. Bakugou makes explosions with his hands, while even Uraraka can kill someone via dropping them from a great height.

in regards to these similarities, it can be said that this there is no inequality, that Villains are created by their own choices; or that the issues with Hero Society that Horikoshi tries to convey fails, inconsistent on what society accepts and who society tolerates.

But I argue this is exactly why it works, because much like how it is in real life, there are numerous factors to how marginalization and suppression works. My Hero Academia understands the layers of power in the world, understands the intersections of fortunes or injustices, both the contradictions and the sources that feed upon each other, weaving a complex web that ultimately reveals giant gaping holes in the structure of Hero Society. Poverty is one of them; the failures of social services like foster care or quirk counseling is another, as are the class and family you come from. There’s a reason why Iida can get away with vigilantism and attempted murder; Jin has one traffic accident that wasn’t even his fault and he got a record for it.

In the end, all this gets blamed on the individual for being a Villain who just didn’t work hard enough, who didn’t pull themself up by the bootstrap. That’s the key to it: issues are systemic, bleeding into various categories, but so well faded into the background, so easily disguised as individual flaws that the suffering can be denied and ignored.

#nalslastworkingbraincell #bnha #mha #heroaca #Hero Society #bnha Society #Heroes and Villains

133 notes · View notes

maxwell-grant · 4 years ago

Note

Can we talk about the Black Bat both in general, and and how he may have been an influence on two superheroes (Dr. Mid-Nite and Daredevil) and a supervillain (Two-Face), but was proven in a court of law to have no connection with the superhero who immediately comes to mind (Batman).

Having finally read a couple of his original stories and runs, yeah I got some thoughts on him.

While not the first bat-themed pulp character, nor the first fictional detective with a disability turned superpower (that would be Max Carrados, who actually was blind), Black Bat’s main claim to fame nowadays is his correlation to superheroes with the mixed traits he has that would all become massively popularized by characters who debuted afterwards. Regarding the Batman lawsuit, it wasn’t so much proven that they have no connection, as much as the publishers of both characters argued they did it first, and then agreed to stay out of each other’s territory, with Batman staying out of pulp magazines and The Black Bat staying out of comics (not that it would stop his publishers from rebranding him as “The Mask” and doing comics).

Black Bat actually couldn’t have inspired Batman, because Batman debuted 4 months prior. Plus, both were already ripping off the same guy, and both of them were far from the first bat-themed pulp characters at the time. And the idea that he inspired Daredevil I find too much of a reach. Dr Mid-Nite I can definitely see the resemblance, and while Two-Face doesn’t have much similarities to Tony Quinn past the origin and the anti-hero aspects, “handsome crusading District Attorney disfigured after getting splashed in the face by acid goes on a rampage” is not exactly vague enough of a concept to pass for coincidence. Two-Face debuted just 3 years after Black Bat, while Bat was still a pretty successful character (he managed to outlast nearly every other pulp hero), so it’s very possible that Kane and Finger had a look at Black Bat’s origin and used it as the basis for their Jekyll & Hyde-themed villain.

Okay so, that’s that for Black Bat, but what’s the character actually like? What’s there to him other than historical oddities? Does he have what it takes to survive and thrive again in a modern landscape?

The thing that sticks out to me about Black Bat is that he is a pulp character who feels like he was designed specifically with the arrival of the superheroes in mind, as when comic book superheroes began to carve a space for themselves, one of the responses the pulps had was to put out new heroes intended to be a part of both worlds, hybrids of pulp heroes and superheroes who could try to capture success in either format, characters like Ka-Zar and Black Hood who started in one and then jumped to the other.

Black Bat’s got a lot of the usual hallmarks of dark detective pulp heroes and his adventures are largely him battling ordinary criminal masterminds and gangsters, but he’s got an iconic costume, he’s got a super dramatic origin story that the stories keep coming back to (unlike most pulp heroes whose origin stories are not usually mentioned), and he’s got superpowers brought in the aftermath of a tragic accident. Not just skills anyone can have by training hard enough, actual superpowers, even if they don’t see as much usage as his pulp hero skillset.

To the world that knew about him, Anthony Quinn, once a virile, upstanding representative of law forces whose name had held terror for evil doers, was now an impotent blind man whose sight had been permanently destroyed by acid thrown at him in a crowded courtroom, and whose face was horribly scarred about the eyes. For a long time he had seemed to live in a world apart.

Such actually had been the case during the long months when Tony Quinn had lived in a sea of blackness. But Nature had been as kind as possible, giving him something in return for what had been taken from him. As a result he had since realized that his senses of feel, smell, and hearing were far more acute than formerly. Under his sensitive fingers whatever he touched had begun to tell strange new stories. His sense of smell had sharpened. His ears had become the ears of a hound, picking up with ease and sifting multitudinous sounds that once had been inaudible.

More months had gone by until, in the darkness of a lonely night, a girl with golden hair and blue eyes hadcome in through an open window like an angel out of nowhere to offer him hope where eye specialists had said there was no hope. Through a delicate operation by an unknown small town surgeon the corneas of the eyes of Carol Baldwin's policeman father - dying from paralysis brought on by a gangster bullet - had been given to him. An extraordinary thing had occurred. When at last Tony Quinn had been allowed to remove the bandages, he had been astounded by the miracle that had happened. His were the eyes of darkness as well as the eyes of day!

Interestingly also, Black Bat actually became one of the most prolific of pulp heroes when brought over to Germany. When German publishers Pabel decided to reprint a couple of Black Bat novels for the KRIMINAL-ROMAN serial, they discovered “Die Schwarzen Fledermaus” was somehow so popular that in 1962, they retitled it Fledermaus (Bat) and ran with it, reprinting all the original 60+ stories and then, when those ran out, creating 900 more at least. In fact, it seems like they are still publishing Black Bat stories even today, and now that he’s public domain it’s something just about anyone could get into.

Problem with that is, it’s not easy to conceive of The Black Bat having any kind of substantial popularity again, when he’s doomed by design to always be compared to Batman, to always just be seen as first glance as “oh it’s earless Batman with Daredevil’s shtick and Two-Face’s backstory”, and of course he doesn’t have a chance in hell of playing catch-up to the popularity of those characters (well, at least outside of Germany). Whatever niche he could have as an alternative to Batman is also null by the fact that said niche of Not-Batmen is already filled out quite extensively. He doesn’t have an incredibly strong personality the way Batman and The Shadow do, nor is he, despite being ostensibly a serial killer, enough of a trigger-happy anti-hero to latch on to the appeal of characters like The Spider or Punisher. The latest Black Bat comic run by Dynamite played up his ruthlessness, outlaw status and drew him on the covers perpetually holding guns and often with a big creepy smile. But smiling murder pulp Batman is already a niche that Midnighter fills considerably better than Black Bat ever could. So what’s left for him?

If I had to find a unique niche for Black Bat, I’d play his unique traits in ways that separate him from the super characters that ran with those later. I’d ditch the whole “oh woe is me I’m poor and helpless because I’m blind” shtick that’s terribly condescending to actually blind people, and make him at least truly blind in some form. Maybe he’s blind by day and by night he sees too much, or maybe his vision has some terrible secrets that go beyond mere enhanced eyesight. Maybe his powers are growing and expanding in ways he doesn’t know where they will lead him. But alongside that, one take on the character could be based on the fact that he really has nothing to lose. He is not Batman, he is not The Shadow, he isn’t Daredevil, he’s got little reputation to speak of, and he’s never going to be any of those characters.

He’s lost the position he’s coveted his whole life, he’s lost the respect of his peers, his former professional ethics don’t mean shit now, he’s had a long and painful brush with darkness that scarred him for life in ways both literal and metaphorical, and in the aftermath he’s begun spontaneously developing abilities that would be incredibly painful and uncomfortable for an average person to just develop without years of growing up with them. And then, a mysterious woman walked through his window one day, gave him the eyes of a dead man, and now he sees things in ways no person was ever supposed to, and now he goes around at night terrorizing and killing criminals in an animal-themed costume.

The most he has to lose currently is the life of his sidekicks who’ve worked very hard to help him heal and focus and find a new purpose, which only means that they are on the chopping block everytime you wanna give a gut punch to Tony Quinn. And no matter how famous, or even great, his adventures are, or how prolific and successful he is or even has been, he’s always going to be the Bat-themed superhero who couldn’t cut it. He’s Not-Batman, stripped of all the grand splendour and allmighty self righteousness and reputation and role as foundational figure of an entire genre and most popular bestest superhero of all time ever praise be thy Bat God, sharing more traits with one of Batman’s most personal and tragic villains than the titular character.

That’s not an indictment, that just means that Black Bat ultimately should have more narrative freedom, since he is unburdened by reputation and status. He is a public domain nobody best known by his association with characters who eclipse him in popularity, who’s always going to have that accursed Bat prefix and costume to damn him by association, so why not work with it? He could be the character you go into to tell stories that you couldn’t tell with Batman or other big name superheroes, the grimiest, sickest, even weirdest crime tales of all. What does the Black Bat have to lose?

Those who have nothing to lose stand everything to gain, after all.

Also, Masks 2 once presented an alternative version of the character called The Black Bats, who dresses like a baseball player and dual-wields baseball bats, which is nutty and I’d definitely prefer Black Bat to ditch the generic pulp hero guns and instead just go crazy batting everything in his way.

“I gotta tell ya, this is pretty terrific! Hahahahah, yeah!”

#replies tag #pulp heroes #pulp fiction #the black bat #tony quinn #batman #two-face

27 notes · View notes

juliabohemian · 4 years ago

Text

Why FACTS do not seem to matter to the United States

Just a few commonly held misconceptions that interfere with people’s ability to appreciate facts:

1. You only have value if you are productive.

This completely disregards children, the elderly, the disabled and the mentally ill. It suggests that anyone who isn’t productive is a drain on the system, and therefore expendable. This is a product of capitalism, which benefits profit over quality of life.

This is also why people feel guilty for just relaxing. Like it’s not okay to just take some time to decompress. We’ve turned productivity into a fetish. Being busy is considered some kind of accomplishment and even used as a measurement of someone’s social or professional prowess.

2. Your accomplishments don’t count unless you suffered for them.

This is a concept perpetuated by the rich, in order to justify the mistreatment of those who keep them rich. It is a product of the Christian-based romanticization of suffering as an inevitability of life. It discourages believers from questioning those who keep them poor, or from trying to change their own circumstances. If you aren’t sure what I mean, Google Joel Osteen.

Suffering IS a part of life. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be.

Thoughts and prayers.

3. Anything you need in life has to be earned.

This is also a product of capitalism. Basically, the notion is that you’re entitled to nothing. Not even a roof over your head or food to eat. It doesn’t matter whether you need it to survive. If you don’t have the cash to pay for it, your life is expendable.

4. If you work really hard, you can achieve anything.

This particular concept was first conceived during the early days of colonialism. But it really took off after WW2 when, due to the economic rebound, it was actually possible for someone to survive off of minimum wage. People who experienced those conditions firsthand are extremely unlikely to believe that the same isn’t possible for everyone, regardless of any evidence to the contrary. If you just pull up those darn bootstraps, you can make it happen!

This belief also completely disregards the ways in which systemic racism and bias against other marginalized groups separates them from the resources they need to succeed.

4. If you are poor or homeless, it’s probably your fault somehow.

The purpose behind this is to relieve us of any responsibility to care for those around us who are struggling. When we see a homeless person, we have an immediate reaction. Whether it is guilt about what we have, or guilt because we have no intention of giving them cash, or guilt because we know we are in no position to help them. People relieve that discomfort by falling back on the belief that the homeless and the poor are irresponsible, lazy, stubborn, mentally ill, or on drugs. That way it is okay not to care about them. It’s okay to vote against programs that might benefit them.

5. If we just stop enabling the poor, they will stop being poor.

This is based on the misconception that people are poor by choice. The belief is that if we remove programs that are helping poor people, the poor will stop being so stubborn and quit being poor.

It completely disregards the actual reasons why people are poor.

This same concept also applies to LGBT, the disabled and the mentally ill. As there is also a widely held misconception that these things are all the result of personal choice and therefore, can be altered at will. Taking away the rights of these groups will magically force them to conform to the norm (straight/Christian/Caucasian).

6. Poor people/immigrants/people of color don’t “care” about education.

This is like paying someone with Monopoly money and then getting mad at them for not spending it. It might look, on the surface, like it has value. But it doesn’t.

If your personal experience with public education is that it does not lead, in any way, to upward social mobility, it is unreasonable to expect you to value it. If you want members of marginalized groups to place more value on education, then you need to make it more useful for them. The burden is on us, as educators, to do that. Not on the students and their families.

7. Whiteness = Normalcy

This belief is even held by those who might think of themselves as being liberal, but who use such unfortunate terms as colorblindness. “I’m color blind!” they will say, proudly. Which, on the surface, might seem like a good thing. But it isn’t, because it completely robs any non-Caucasian of their identity, suggesting that their goal should be to blend in with us instead.

Fans of colorblindness are “fine” with black people, as long as those black people straighten their hair and abandon their ghetto vernacular.

Further evidence of this belief is seen through all of the white people who love to watch NFL football, but got their panties in a bunch when Colin Kaepernick dared to protest against police brutality when his sole purpose for existing was to entertain them. How dare he ruin their enjoyment of football by bringing something to their attention that they’d rather ignore. It’s perfectly okay for black people to occupy certain spaces, as long as they serve a purpose for white people while they are there. They second they use that space to try and benefit their own people, they are cancelled.

Sadly, many people of color actually subscribe to this notion (or more like surrender to it) which is basically a form of Stockholm Syndrome. Most likely because they have subconsciously come to the conclusion that if you cannot beat someone, you might as well join them. And you really can’t blame them for doing whatever they have to do to survive.

8. Policemen can do whatever they want because they are heroes.

I hate the word hero. A person can be heroic. They can do heroic things. A person cannot BE a hero. Because it suggests that they are defined by their title, as opposed to their beliefs or actions. And that’s not how reality works. People have free will and are therefore not bound by their titles.

This notion of cops being heroes has always been around in the United States, but it really took off after 9-11. It was a dark time and we were desperate to feel safe. So, we put our faith in the first responders. And there were plenty of fireman and cops who did great things during that event. But suddenly, after 9-11, ANYONE in a uniform was a hero. It didn’t matter what they did or why. Their title and uniform were all the qualifications they needed to be considered a hero in the eyes of the people.

Unfortunately, that shift encouraged a wave of completely new people to become cops. Most of whom should not even have access to firearms, let alone a free pass to do whatever they want, without any sort of legal accountability. They saw becoming a cop as an opportunity to fight back against anything that they interpreted as a threat to their perception of what America should be.

The second thing that contributed to the elevation of cops to hero status was the invention of smartphones. In the early days of smartphones, many people genuinely believed that having video evidence of law enforcement, brutally beating unarmed people of color would make some kind of difference. Bizarrely, it has had the opposite effect.

Imagine Dorothy reaching OZ and seeing with her own eyes that there is a guy behind the curtain with a microphone and choosing to continue believing in the wizard anyway. That’s how many right wing Americans have reacted to seeing evidence of police brutality. It only strengthened their faith in law enforcement.

Every time another person of color is murdered at the hand of police, someone will inevitably offer an excuse or explanation on their behalf. The victim had a criminal history. The victim reached for a weapon. The victim was acting suspiciously. Policemen have hard jobs. Policemen are under stress. Really ANYTHING to avoid coming to the conclusion that a police officer did a bad thing, on purpose. Because that would never happen, right? People are bound by their titles. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Really, unless we actively seek to determine the source of these misconceptions (public school curriculum, news media, fictional media etc.) so we can dismantle them, we will forever be quoting facts to a people who care not for logic, and who will cling desperately to their bias until they take their last breath.

41 notes · View notes

flo-ggs · 4 years ago

Text

Who We Don’t See On TV

In 2018 and 2019, there were a total of twenty-six recurring transgender characters who appeared on television, including streaming services. About one in six Americans report that they personally know at least one transgender person ("Where We Are On TV"). More than ninety percent of American households watch television on a regular basis (Leavitt 41). What this means is that for five out of six Americans, the only trans people they ever see—and this is assuming there are any—are a handful of characters on TV. If you live in America, and pay any attention, you know that vitriol directed the way of the trans community is pervasive—and it's not so hard to imagine feeling the same way if your only experience of trans people comes from Fox News and Ace fucking Ventura. That's just one example—but media in general presents a skewed perspective of just about every minority group, with one obvious exception.

Cultivation theory provides a psychological model for how media alters our perception of the world around us. The information we take in and the stories we're told change the way we contextualize what we see, reshaping or reinforcing the framework on which we hang our experiences ("Cultivation Theory"). If you see a Muslim committing an act of terror on television—and then see the same thing happen again and again—you'll begin to draw a connection between the two ideas. That's an obvious and simplified example, but there are innumerable subtler ways in which media builds connections between concepts that gradually become part of our own perception of the world. It's worth examining what connections exactly are being drawn, who's drawing them, and how exactly they're changing the world we live in.

Essentially every demographic—with, of course, the exception of one very special minority group—is drastically underrepresented in entertainment media. There are many subtle issues with the state of diversity in entertainment, but this isn't one of them—it's a simple fact that our math is just off. The selection of people who are represented in media differs significantly from the actual population—the world of entertainment is not like ours. A study of 900 films released from 2007-2016 found that 31% of speaking roles were female—a demographic which famously constitutes almost exactly half of the population (Smith 6). This is as clear-cut as it gets—I fail to imagine what a reasonable explanation for this inequity could sound like. Other statistics featured in the report are the total 1.1% of movie characters who were LGBT (far fewer than exist in reality) and the 2.7% who were depicted as disabled (the real-life statistic is closer to 1 in 4), among others (Smith 8, CDC). The simple fact of underrepresentation is far from the extent of the problem; there's also the issue of the quality of that representation, which is overwhelmingly inadequate.

While a great diversity of characterization exists among ingroup characters—just about every white man that can be written, has—minority characters tend to be constructed from a limited bank of stereotypes. Characters from the least-represented demographics suffer the most from this oversimplification. Indigenous Americans, for instance, are very seldom seen on-screen, and when they are, they're depicted most often not as modern people but as 18th and 19th century stereotypes (Leavitt 40). The less we see of a group of people, the flatter and less realized those few glimpses are. It's clear that the majority-white population of writers who rely on other media for cues on how to represent marginalized groups, in the absence of diverse characterizations, are falling back on decades- or centuries-old stereotypes to tell their stories, and in that way, ill representation begets ill representation. That brings us to the problem of artists. A hefty majority of the people producing mainstream art are, not surprisingly, the same kind of people we see in front of the camera—white fellas. In the timespan covered by the Annenberg study, women made up 4% of film directors, while 6% were Black—and directors of other ethnicities were sequestered to an even more vanishingly small niche. The common factor is that every aspect of the entertainment industry is full to bursting with white guys, despite them being a comparatively small portion of the population.

The big question is: why is this an issue? And the answer is obvious and intuitive but nonetheless it's going to take a few pages to answer here.

In 2017, the most popular dream career among children in the US was to be a doctor. In 2019, two years later, more children aspired to be internet personalities than any other profession (Taylor). Children now feel that they are living in a world where "Youtuber" is a viable and fulfilling career. Which is to say that the landscape of media children were consuming palpably altered their worldview—they're identifying themselves with the people that entertain them, wishing to model their own lives after theirs. Media doesn't just entertain us—it is, in part, a substance with which we construct our self-image and our expectations of the world around us. This is especially true of young people, and when young people are presented with entertainment that belittles, stereotypes, or simply omits them, it can inflict real damage. It's been demonstrated that exposure to television is associated with lower self-esteem in all children with the exception of white boys—striking evidence of both the reality and real negative outcomes of inadequate representation. The messaging may not always be clear to us, but it gets through to children: you are not the type of person that we value.

One group that is constantly and severely devalued in this way is indigenous Americans. Contemporary depictions are so infrequent and negative as to subject them to what is known as "relative invisibility"—an almost total absence of any realistic or aspirational representations in culture (Leavitt 41). The effect of this pattern of representation is far from negligible. A study of indigenous American students found that greater exposure to media with indigenous American characters actually led to increased negative feelings about themselves, their place in the community, and their future aspirations (Leavitt 44). It's apparent from this result that a greater quantity of representation is not, on its own, an inherent positive. Exposure to a narrow and largely negative range of portrayals of oneself can narrow and negativize one's worldview and self-image. It's easy to imagine how one's dreams for the future could begin to feel futile if the only professions media seems to think you're suited for are mystical wise man and noble savage. Quantity of representation is not enough—in fact, if the quality of representation is lacking, greater saturation can actually do more harm than good, causing real harm to marginalized people whose self-identity and mental health may be damaged by poor portrayals.

When films and shows with stereotypical representations of indigenous Americans are released, indigenous Americans aren't the only ones watching. The same is true of Black people, Muslims, queer people, and every other heavily stereotyped community. While self-esteem is a real issue, we must also be concerned with the esteem in which others hold us. Prejudice presents a serious threat to many—prejudice informed in part by the media that we constantly consume.

There are real-life political consequences of entertainment. Evidence indicates a relationship between audiences viewing negative portrayals of Black people and negative opinions about policies related to affirmative action, policing, and other race-related legal issues, as well as a general tendency to hold unfavorable beliefs regarding Black intelligence, work ethic, and criminality (Mastro). This is deeply relevant as policy regarding the legal treatment of Black people is one of the most significant issues in the public consciousness, especially in the last few years. The concept of Black people as innately criminal, reinforced by stereotypical media portrayals, has been and continues to inform the debate around issues such as police violence and reform. Voters watch movies and television—so do congresspeople—and the way certain communities look in movies and television contributes to policy decisions that will save or end lives.

The Latin American community deals with similar portrayals in media—they are most often shown as inarticulate, unintelligent, unskilled laborers or criminals (Mastro). These portrayals, too, are highly relevant to American politics. The 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump relied heavily on leveraging negative stereotypes about Latin American and specifically Mexican immigrants—they were characterized as violent, predatory, and a threat to the American way of life. Those stereotypes, however, were not invented for the purpose of promoting Donald Trump as a presidential candidate—their utility as a political tool came from the fact that this was already a popular way of viewing Mexican immigrants. The widespread stereotypes about Latin American people are reinforced and reiterated by our entertainment, and in this case, formed the foundation of a winning presidential campaign.

There are good examples, too—in the 1990s and 2000s, American support for gay marriage rocketed from around 20% to nearly 60%, an incredibly rapid change in public opinion caused largely by advocacy in the media (Baume). Gay marriage was then nationally legalized in 2015. The way people are portrayed in our entertainment has serious real-world consequences, good and bad; human lives depend on how the most vulnerable people in our society are shown to the rest of us.

The solution isn't just more. That's part of it, but as we know, increasing the quantity of representation can be harmful rather than helpful if that representation isn't also high-quality. There is some correlation between the two—a greater number of portrayals of a group generally means more divergence from stereotypes—but there's a more fundamental issue at play. There are an abundance of stories that involve characters from marginalized groups, and yet the overwhelming majority of people producing stories in the mainstream are the same white men. As a culture, we enjoy stories about different types of people, but seem to be very comfortable allowing those stories to be told to us by an extremely homogenous group of writers and directors. The entertainment industry often even seems uncomfortable allowing minority actors to play minority roles; although casting white actors to play people of color has mostly fallen out of fashion, it's still commonplace to cast non-disabled and non-queer actors to play disabled and queer characters. This isn't necessarily an unacceptable practice in itself, but it's common enough to create a sense that queer and disabled actors are being actively excluded from entertainment. Of the limited number of disabled characters who appear on-screen, only 5% are played by disabled actors (Pearson). Actors such as Adam Pearson, who was never considered for the leading role in a film about Joseph Merrick (whose condition Pearson shares), are routinely passed up in favor of non-disabled actors (Pearson). Queer actors are similarly underrepresented. As one would expect, minority representation is vastly increased by the presence of minority directors and writers—movies by Black directors have six times as many Black speaking roles on average (Smith 3). The possibility of high-quality, equal representation is clearly tied to increasing diversity behind the camera.

But—what if straight white men just make better entertainment? Maybe they make up such a huge majority of the media industry because their work is simply more valuable. From a certain angle, this is sort of true. The value assigned to entertainment is, in part, determined by the critical response it receives, and media critics are mostly white men. In 2017, 78% of the top film critics were men, and 82% were white (Choueiti 2). It's not strange to enjoy media you see yourself represented in, and it's not surprising that the media we consume the most is mostly comprised of people who look like the people who we allow to determine its quality.

The entertainment industry as it stands today is a self-congratulatory stew of white men. Most representation of anyone outside that group is done on their terms, and as such, lacks both quantity and quality. The only way to break out of the narrow range of representations of marginalized people is to inundate the entertainment business with those people. We need women, queer people, people of color, and disabled people in the media, behind cameras and in front of them. The way these people are portrayed has real and severe consequences—for their mental health, physical safety, and place within our culture. Diversity in entertainment is not a frivolous issue. It matters, a lot, and it won't solve itself.

Works Cited

Baume, Matt. "Why Opinion Changed So Fast On Gay Marriage." Youtube, uploaded by Matt Baume, 25 June 2015.

"CDC: 1 in 4 US adults live with a disability." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 16 August 2018.

Choueiti, Marc et al. "Critic's Choice?: Gender and Race/Ethnicity of Film Reviewers Across 100 Top Films of 2017." Annenberg Foundation, USC Annenberg, June 2018.

"Cultivation Theory." Communication Theory, 2012.

Indiana University. "TV viewing can decrease self-esteem in children, except white boys." ScienceDaily, 30 May 2012.

Leavitt, Peter et al. "'Frozen in Time': The Impact of Native American Media Representations on Identity and Self-Understanding." Journal of Social Issues, 2015.

Mastro, Dana. "Race and Ethnicity in US Media Content and Effects." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, Oxford University Press. 26 September 2017.

Pearson, Adam et al. "'Actors don't black up, so why do they still crip up?' – video." The Guardian, 10 September 2018.

Smith, Stacy L., Choueiti, Marc. "Black Characters in Popular Film: Is the Key to Diversifying Cinematic Content held in the Hand of the Black Director?" USC Annenberg, 2011.

Smith, Stacy L. et al. "Inequality in 900 Popular Films: Examining Portrayals of Gender, Race/Ethnicity, LGBT, and Disability from 2007-2016." Annenberg Foundation, USC Annenberg, July 2017.

Taylor, Chloe. "Kids now dream of being professional YouTubers rather than astronauts, study finds." Make It, CNBC, 19 July 2019.

#progress #media #film #tv #television #essay #discrimination #self-esteem #representation #wwdsotv

1 note · View note

justsomeantifas · 6 years ago

Link

If nearly a decade interviewing the wealth managers for the 1% taught me anything, it is that the ultra-rich and the ultra-poor have a lot more in common than stereotypes might lead you to believe.

In conversation, wealth managers kept coming back to the flamboyant vices of their clients. It was quite unexpected, in the course of discussing tax avoidance, to hear professional service providers say things like:

“I’ve told my colleagues: ‘If I ever become like some of our clients, shoot me.’ Because they are really immoral people – too much time on their hands, and all the money means they have no limits. I was actually told by one client not to bring my wife on a trip to Monaco unless I wanted to see her get hit on by 10 guys. The local sport, he said, was picking up other men’s wives.”

The clients of this Geneva-based wealth manager also “believe that they are descended from the pharaohs, and that they were destined to inherit the earth”.

If a poor person voiced such beliefs, he or she might well be institutionalized; for those who work with the wealthy, however, such “eccentricities” are all in a day’s work. Indeed, an underappreciated irony of accelerating economic inequality has been the way it has exposed behaviors among the ultra-rich that mirror the supposed “pathologies” of the ultra-poor.

In fact, one of the London-based wealth managers I interviewed said that a willingness to accept with equanimity behavior that would be considered outrageous in others was an informal job requirement. Clients, he said, specifically chose wealth managers not just on technical competence, but on their ability to remain unscandalized by the private lives of the ultra-rich: “They [the clients] have to pick someone they want to know everything about them: about Mother’s lesbian affairs, Brother’s drug addiction, the spurned lovers bursting into the room.” Many of these clients are not employed and live off family largesse, but no one calls them lazy.

As Lane and Harburg put it in the libretto of the musical Finian’s Rainbow:

When a rich man doesn’t want to work

He’s a bon vivant, yes, he’s a bon vivant

But when a poor man doesn’t want to work

He’s a loafer, he’s a lounger

He’s a lazy good for nothing, he’s a jerk

When the wealthy are revealed to be drug addicts, philanderers, or work-shy, the response is – at most – a frisson of tabloid-level curiosity, followed by a collective shrug.

Behaviors indulged in the rich are not just condemned in the poor, but used as a justification to punish them, denying them access to resources that keep them alive, such as healthcare and food assistance. Discussion of poverty has become almost impossible without moral outrage directed at lazy “welfare queens”, “crackheads” and other drug addicts, and the “promiscuous poor” (a phrase that has cropped up again and again in discussions of public benefits over more than a century).

These disparate perceptions aren’t just evidence of hypocrisy; they are literally a matter of life and death. In the US, the widespread belief that the poor are simply lazy has led many states to impose work requirements on aid recipients –even those who have been medically classified as disabled. Limiting aid programs in this way has been shown to shorten recipients’ lives: rather than the intended consequence of pushing recipients into paid employment, the restrictions have simply left them without access to medical care or a sufficient food supply. Thus, in one of the richest counties in America, a boy living in poverty died of a toothache; there were no protests, and nothing changed.

Meanwhile, the “billionaire” in the White House starts his days at 11am – the rest of the morning is coyly termed “executive time” – and is known for his frequent holidays. “Nice work if you can get it,” quipped an opinion piece in the Washington Post.

We don’t hear much about laziness, drug addiction or promiscuity among the wealthiest members of society because – unlike Trump – most billionaires are not public figures and go to great lengths to seek privacy. Thus the motto of one London-based wealth management firm: “I want to be invisible.” This company, like many other service providers to the ultra-rich, specializes in preserving secrecy for clients. The wealthy people I studied not only had wealth managers but often dedicated staff members who killed negative stories about them in the media and kept their names off the Forbes “rich list”.

Many even present themselves as homeless – for tax purposes – despite owning multiple residences. For the ultra-rich, having no fixed residence provides major legal and financial advantages; this is exemplified by the case of the wealthy businessman who acquired eight different nationalities in order to avoid taxes on his fortune, and by the UK native I interviewed in his Dubai apartment building:

“I am not tax resident anywhere. The tax man says ‘show me a utility bill’, and the only utility bill I can present is for the house I own in Thailand, and it’s in a language that the European authorities aren’t familiar with. With all the mobility going on in the world, international marriages, governments can’t keep up with people.”

Meanwhile, the poor can end up being “resident nowhere” because no one will allow them to stay in one place for very long; as the sociologist Cristobal Young has shown, the majority of migrants are poor people. In addition, the poor are routinely evicted from housing on the slightest pretext, frequently driving them into homeless shelters – which are in turn forced to move when local homeowners engage in nimby (not in my back yard) protests. Even the design of public spaces is increasingly organized to deny the poor a place to alight, however temporarily.

It is as if the right to move around, to take up space, and to direct your own life as you see fit have become luxury goods, available to those who can pay instead of being human rights. For the rich, deviance from social norms is nearly consequence-free, to the point where outright criminality is tolerated: witness the collective shrug that greeted revelations of massive intergenerational tax fraud in the Trump family.

For the poor, however, even the most minor deviance from others’ expectations – like buying ice cream or soft drinks with food stamps – results in stigmatization, limits on their autonomy, and deprivation of basic human needs. This makes life far more nasty, brutish and short for those on the lowest rungs of the socio-economic ladder, creating a chasm of more than 20 years in life expectancy between rich and poor. This appears to some as a fully justified consequence of “personal responsibility” – the poor deserve to die because of their moral failings.

So while the behavior of the ultra-rich gets an ever-widening scope of social leeway, the lives of the poor are foreshortened in every sense. Once upon a time, they were urged to eat cake; now the cake earns them a public scolding.

#capitalism #poverty #child death #classism #class warfare #drugs mention #health care #neoliberalism #violence #income inequality #links

6K notes · View notes

azuresquirrel · 7 years ago

Text

WHAT UP PALS, I’M DOING A GOOFY LIVEBLOG OF THE FLASH mostly for the benefit of @spaceoperetta and whoever else finds me mildly amusing LET’S GO FAST.

EPISODE ONE.

Oh man I only watched one episode of Glee that this actor showed up in and but it’s going to take me a while to get used to him being Barry Allen and not that evil snot-nosed gay kiddo.

WHY HELLO THERE HAZY-FOCUSED IDYLLIC FLASHBACK OF TOTALLY DEAD MOM. WHAT A NEW AND GROUNDBREAKING SUPERHERO TROPE.

HI THERE DAWSON’S DAD WHO DIED FROM CAR ICE-CREAM (thank you forever lemedy for sending me that video)

And Barry’s mom was eaten by some CGI? I guess?

PRESENT DAY: Collins from Rent is investigating some shit with some jerkass who looks like the poor man’s Santino Fontana.

Oh great, Barry’s Sherlock I guess. JOY.

So Barry’s job is . . . CSI? BEING WILL GRAHAM? I never actually put thought into what Barry’s job was.

“your sad little nerdy dream” IRIS IS A QUEEN. “you look amazing’ and she eye-rolls at him. THAT BLACK JACKET WITH ROSES IS SOME GODDAMN UTENA DREAM AESTHETIC.

What city does this take place in? You know what, it doesn’t matter what city this takes place in, Barry definitely cannot afford whatever the rent is on this . . . apartment? Lab??

HARRISON WELLS APPEARS after extremely awkward relationship talk. I guess I should maybe not call him JD’s Gay Brother anymore.

BARRY YOU’RE NOT DOING A VERY GOOD JOB OF GOTTA GO FAST.

Awww, Barry’s got a little Charlie-conspiracy-board of his mom’s death. HEALTHY.

Yeah I’m pretty much paying no attention to the actual criminal plot/technoobabble about particle accelerators, I’M WAITING FOR MY SON.

Oh so NOW Barry’s going to be GOTTA GO FAST because of particle accelerator . . . lightning . . . which also maybe killed his mom/SENT HER TO THE SHADOW REALM. (I HOPE YOU’RE NOT HERE FOR ACCURACY)

MY SON!!!!! HE’S SINGING ALONG TO “POKERFACE.” HE TRULY IS MY SON.

Cisco is . . . looking at Barry . . . in a VERY not heterosexual way. While playing Lady Gaga tunes. Like. Dudes.

Also Catilin is here and I’ve taken it from others’ blogging that she gets a super raw deal on this show, but also her name is DR. SNOW like that’s badass.

Barry’s been in a coma for nine months = WOW SUBTLE REBIRTH SYMBOLISM THERE.

I know this is a pilot but this sure is GOTTA GO FAST-ing through the plot/premise.

“Your heart was going too fast for the EKG to register it.” I just fucking laughed. I’m not a scientist but WOW THIS SHOW.

Barry is learning how to GOTTA GO FAST while reuniting with Iris in a fucking coffeeshop, are we sure this isn’t just filmed fanfic?

Oh like that’s the bad guy or whatever. With the awesome power of FOOOOOOOOOG.

Barry just fucking VIBRATES HIMSELF INTO A CAR like jesus fucking Christ Barry, who allows you to do things by yourself.

And apparently in the space of a commercial break Barry goes to STAR Labs and says ‘HEY I HAVE A TERMINAL CASE OF GOTTA GO FAST’ and they set up a whole goddamn experiment and Cisco gets him into a fucking SKINTIGHT ROMPER????? LIKE????

(Cisco is 120% responsible for that outfit I will hear nothing otherwise)

Oh right so like . . . some time-travelling version of Harrison is TOTALLY the CGI that ate Barry’s mom right? I FORGET THE TIMELINE/TIMETRAVEL BULLSHIT ON THIS SHOW.

Okay so Badguy of the Week is supposedly white dude Storm but Storm is awesome so I’m sticking to this guy having the power of FOOOOOOOOOG.

Mmmmm this seems like a good time to bring up the traumatic murder of your mom that you’ve been obsessing over for at least a decade to a guy who TOTALLY isn’t the dude who murdered her.

Oh so I guess Iris is dating the dude who’s so boring that I literally blank out whenever he’s onscreen. PLEASE let this delaying the obvious endgame couple subplot not last long.

Iris is rocking these fucking great rose ensembles.

FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOG.

I’m just saying we’re spending an awful lot of time on boring white dude side characters when we could have more CISCO.

Oh so I guess all of the Badguy/Monsters of the week were all caused by the ~particle excellerator~ doohickey.

Mmmm yeah the thing to do for a kid who just got out of a nine month coma is to yell “YOUR DAD KILLED YOUR MOM” in a public street the very next day. HELPING!

Metahumans, you mean BADGUYS OF THE WEEK.

Pffff all of Harrison’s looks in this scene of Barry yelling like an angry kitten are basically “JUST AS PLANNED.”

Oh shit so Momma Barry wasn’t eaten by CGI as THE WORLD’S WORST COPS LET AN 11-YEAR-OLD LIFT UP THE TARP COVERING HIS MOM’S BODY. CHRIST.

Am I supposed to know who this guy is? Is this Green Arrow? I DEEPLY DO NOT CARE. (it is Green Arrow. I STILL DO NOT CARE)

“You’re better because you can inspire your city in a way I never could” = my show sucks ass

Cisco’s face = “MY FANTASY THREESOME”

He . . . he literally made Barry’s suit. Like. Guys. GUYS.

This CGI tornado is basically “OH NO, IT’S COMING VERY SLOWLY TOWARDS US.”

Cisco: “Mmm yes I put a direct link to my line in your helmet. Because. Superhero reason. Those are the reasons. Yep.”

Cisco about a guy he met two days ago: “He can do it. I know he can do it.” Me: *looks into camera*

Harrison saying “I’m responsible for all of this” like he’s supposed to be contrite but he TOTALLY has an o-face right now.

IS BARRY GONNA DESTROY CGI TORNADO BY LITERALLY JUST FUCKING RUNNING AROUND IT? AMAZING.

“I don’t want you telling Iris about anything you can do. I want her safe.” WOOOOW THE MOST FUCKING ORIGINAL SUPERHERO TROPE IN THE WOOOOOOORLD.

SORRY BARRY THIS ISN’T GOING TO END WELL FOR YOUR DAD, JUST A HUNCH. THIS IS A CW SHOW, NOT ACE ATTORNEY.

Cisco literally adding bling to Barry’s suit while ironically wearing a Bazinga T-shirt = ICONIC.

Okay I’m taking The Flash liveblogging as mostly a goofy lark and don’t want to get all Discoursey and such but um . . . there are ways to show that Harrison is a duplicitous assholethat we should not trust WITHOUT doing the whole Faking a Disability trope. I’M JUST. THROWING THAT OUT THERE.

One episode down and my conclusions are that Iris is way too cool to be stuck in the “hero’s love interest CAN’T KNOW ABOUT SUPERHEROICS FOR HER OWN GOOD” plot and Cisco is my not-straight son and the true hero of this show.

#Azuresquirrel Watches The Flash #me looking at .gifsets: 'Cisco probably isn't straight'#me watching this episode: 'WELL THEN.'#oh yeah also Cisco is the main character now those are the rules #don't @ me about DC canon bullshit I DON'T KNOW THIS COMIC CRAP

20 notes · View notes

trekwiz · 4 years ago

Note

UBI anon here (💚). I understand your position on UBI and I don’t necessarily disagree with it. I suppose my verdict on it is still out. But I’m an asshole, and love advocating for the devil... To me, your positioning is quite interesting. Especially considering the reasoning behind the Corona virus stipulations... as I could use the same logic during normal years to justify a UBI as part of the role of governance. (I.e. Lack of livable wages -> crime -> government duty) (crime affects all)

Hi anon. I apologize in advance for the long post.

I would address your comment in three parts: first on the difference between population and personal issues, second in terms of defining "need" in regards to government duty, and third in regards to personal rights.

I would suggest there needs to be a pretty bright line between population issues and individual issues in regards to government action. When that line is blurred, we get really weird agenda-driven communal values. As I mentioned in my previous answer, that is especially apparent to LGBT people who were on the receiving end of that logic.

I'm not sure if you saw the news and public reaction when gay kids finally started demanding the right to participate in dances with same sex partners in the early 00's. But schools and communities argued for a communal value that went something like this, "We need to protect our children from becoming gay, so these gay kids should sacrifice a bit of joy for the good of everyone."

Ultimately, the country was meeting the needs and desires of one group, at the expense and detriment of another. They chose who has to lose something, without their consent.

No one ever sees themselves as the bad guy. Universally, your beliefs are protective, or positive in some way, from your perspective. It's very easy to argue for a personal bias/agenda to be seen under the lens of collective behavior, when there's no reason it should be seen as anything but an individual desire.

Any individual concern can be reframed to appear as a population issue by focusing on numbers. Having eggs for breakfast wasn't a personal experience; millions of people had eggs for breakfast. But having eggs for breakfast really was a personal choice, and it didn't impact my neighbor; having eggs didn't make them eat eggs. The outcome was the same, but the decision was independent. As another example, it's the difference between listening to loud music on a farm, vs listening to loud music in a densely packed apartment complex. One is inherently a personal action, and the other is inherently communal.

A virus is inherently communal. Individual protections, at least with this kind of virus, are impossible. Your behaviors won't protect yourself; there is nothing you can do to avoid getting infected by acting alone--unless you're super rich and can hide in a bunker for a few years.

And, like the loud music in an apartment complex, your behaviors have a distinct impact on other people. It might sound dramatic, but you literally have the power to determine if someone else dies, or ends up with a lifelong disability. There's a distinct, and undeniable communal need, and it's similar to the reason we ban indoor smoking. While it's a soundbite, the old standard, "your right to swing your first ends at my nose" is the driving force here: once your behavior affects others, it's up to you to change, not them. By taking actions that hurt other people, you're infringing on their right not to participate--it's a decision you don't get to make.

On the second point, I would suggest linking government to crime via livable wages muddies the idea of governmental need in a particularly dangerous way. I briefly suggested that police don't need to be militarized, and so that's not a necessary government expense. I'll expand on that as an example, as I think it demonstrates how a muddy standard like that can be abused.

Those who have come to defend police brutality and a police state suggest that military equipment is necessary for police because it protects them. Their job necessarily involves danger that puts their lives at risk. Protecting law enforcement officers is certainly a government interest; they spend money on training, and wages theoretically correlate to experience that would be lost when an officer dies. Military equipment protects the people and the investment.

But is it necessary? Necessity is a combination of factors, with no one being the sole decider--and this list isn't exclusive, just a good start to the conversation. Does it make them more effective? Can the same goal be achieved through alternative means? Will the government cease to function in an important way if it doesn't have this funding?

When we examine militarized police in that lens, it doesn't really meet the standard for necessity. They're less effective when they have this kind of equipment: they increase violence and violent crime in communities as an instigating force, and they decrease communal trust, which necessarily impacts their ability to investigate real crimes in the future. It also encourages vigilante justice when the police are seen as this ineffective and untrustworthy--people are circumventing the law, which has a serious impact on governance.

The intended goal can be achieved through alternative means; there's good science around de-escalation tactics, and they're known to work in other developed countries. Ending the arms race between criminals and police generally reduces overall violence rates, and is protective to communities. And by foregoing the funding for militarized gear, no function of governance has been impacted. Laws will still be enforced; there's no negative impact on governance. The idea that it's a "need" is weak; it serves a personal agenda, not a necessary governmental function.

During a pandemic, there's a strong argument for governmental need for UBI. I won't outline all of the reasons, I'll stick with the most easy to apply one: if every member of government does everything right, someone in their community who didn't have the means to stay home could still infect them. If we think only about those we can reasonably care about, (so, assuming we're all unswayed by the impact of Trump being infected because--well, fuck that fascist) what happens if CDC employees become compromised due to an infection in the community, and that infection spreads throughout the agency?

The impact isn't temporary or localized. We'll be losing a large amount of expertise necessary for running the agency. An agency that works solely to protect populations, rather than individuals. The expertise that could prevent another botched pandemic response would need to be rebuilt from the ground up, with people who may not even be familiar with the relevant government processes. That will necessarily impact the government and the public for an extended period of time. We're already feeling some of that impact just from it being merely mismanaged (maliciously); imagine how much worse it would be if that expertise were simply wiped out and not available again when Trump is out of office?

UBI is an effective way to back up a stay at home order, and other similar precautions. It means bills won't go unpaid, and people can still eat. They won't be forced to choose between eating and preventing spread; if they're in a position where they can't choose to stay home, that risk to government personnel remains. There isn't really a great alternative; suspending regular bills won't reduce the need to pay for food, and deferring payments only increases the risk of someone needing to defy stay at home orders to prevent bankruptcy later. And depending on who is impacted--which is hard to predict--parts of government can cease to function without it, during a pandemic. A pandemic of this nature could theoretically wipe out the whole judicial branch of government, as an example. That would be disastrous.

Under situation normal, there's no real argument to be made for a government need. There are other ways to reduce crime, especially from a regulatory standpoint. Education is a start--and preventing education funding from being tied to property taxes is a good way to ensure poor communities don't get stuck in a cycle of poverty fed by poor education. Putting money into infrastructure explicitly meant to undo the impact of redlining would help.

And if you've tried to apply for a job in the last 15 years, you know there's a lot the government should be doing in regards to regulation and enforcement of labor laws. The issues leading to unlivable wages are relatively well known. It's no secret that many companies are using illegal unpaid internships (unpaid internships are only legal under a narrow set of criteria), or are misclassifying employees as contractors--which is a serious tax evasion scam at the worker's expense.

There are no enforcement mechanisms against companies that advertise these practices until a worker complains about it, even if they state their intentions to ignore the law in a job listing. And sometimes--with Uber as an example of a company breaking long-standing law about employee classification--enforcement doesn't happen unless workers spend a lot of their own money suing.

Stronger minimum wage laws tied to the local cost of living (and by local, I mean reasonable commute--employees should not be expected to live an hour+ away from where they work because the company doesn't want to pay them enough to live locally) is a good start, but the loopholes related to that need to be closed.

For example, companies react to wage increases by cutting hours and hiring more people in retaliation--there's no real need to do it, it's just an excuse to coerce employees into acting against their own interests. The true impact on pricing from reasonable wages is negligible. One possibility is to lock the ratio between part time employees and full time employees, with some exceptions based on necessity. If you have 4 part-time cashiers, you can probably do well with 2 full-time cashiers.

Whereas a workplace that needs extra bodies for a short period of time--for example, maybe a facilities management office that sometimes handles construction will need additional people to transport and handle materials every so often, but not regularly--should be able to operate that way with evidence that there's truly a need.

Arguably, a shorter work week would make a difference as well. 40 hours is a lot to begin with, and some salaried people are regularly working 50-60 without additional pay. Balancing a living wage for a 30 hour week would greatly assist people in getting more education to aim for even better paying jobs. And the additional leisure time should reduce the stresses that lead to crime.

Hiring practices are currently obtuse, and a lot of resumes are never seen by a human. Banning the use of screening by ATSes (and by people unfamiliar with the relevant field--a scientist shouldn't be screened out by an HR employee who failed intro biology) could make hiring a bit more fair for everyone. And blinding interviews as much as reasonable could help--look up information about how gender ratios started to become more even when orchestras switched to blind interviews using carpeted floors, it's really interesting. (The sound of heels on hard surfaces led to decreased hiring of women when blinding alone was in use.)

I'd even suggest that a wage ratio cap would be reasonable. Largely because it doesn't prevent the top members of a company from making unlimited money, so long as they pull up everyone below them.

And it all necessarily needs to include regulation and enforcement against predatory lending practices in regards to student loans, housing, and "payday loans." Crime and poverty are a complex interaction of systems, and you can't choose just one area to focus on.

Back to the point: there are alternative ways to solve the underlying problem. It doesn't necessarily make the government more effective: it's addressing one facet of crime when a coordinated effort against multiple causes could do it better through acts of governance*. And ultimately, parts of the government won't fail because it doesn't have UBI.

*I'm generally very uncomfortable when the government takes action that's outside of "governance." That kind of behavior is too easily abused by personal agendas. Governance is, generally, regulation and enforcement. When you creep out of that scope, you get into my third point: infringement of personal rights (in contexts that are personal and not population).

Ultimately, we're not a hive-mind; we're not a collective. While issues with a population-scale impact should necessitate individual action, the status quo should have the minimal impact on our ability to lead our lives as we see fit.

We've lost our understanding of what the freedom of religion clause of the 1st amendment is about. It was meant to put a barrier between religion and government, so the government couldn't coerce you, even minimally (like, say, the 10 commandments in a courthouse), to follow someone else's religious beliefs. But there's an underlying "why" there.

If I force you to eat Key Lime Pie because my religion demands it, or I force you to eat Key Lime Pie because it's simply my favorite dessert, is there a difference? The clause was created not because forcing religion on others, in specific, is bad. It was created because religion was a common method of forcing your way of life onto someone else, and that is bad.

It's couched in secular terms, but UBI is based on a set of personal beliefs about how we should behave, with an underlying assumption that we should all be collectivist. It compels collective financial support on an issue with a personal scope. I've seen how that plays out, when homophobia was a communal value. And it's the most easily abused model of governance.

You win, so you get to have your personal values made standard for the next 2-8 years. Great. But then you lose, and your opponent now has the power and means to have their personal values made standard for the next 2-8 years. Trump should be a caution against this mindset; the things you think you're doing for good, offers someone like him the power to do similar things for bad. You want to give out a basic wage, Trump wants to give out militarized weaponry to police and Nazis.

A system that permits personal belief to be the driving force of tax and government policy is a system that permits these kinds of wild, dangerous swings. Gerrymandering is the result of a system that empowers personal beliefs to rule over others.

As a final thought, consider this: in the US, something like UBI could be weaponized by people like Trump. Take part in protests? Sorry, no more income for you. Formed a union? You're not eligible. The government agent who sends the UBI payment has religious-based bigotry against gay people? Sorry, they have a right not to pay you. You're writing politically "hostile" news? You and all of your coworkers have just lost a significant chunk of your income. Convicted of a felony? Income suspended, sorry, good luck staying out of prison.

If your ability to survive is heavily tied to a government payment, AND the system permits and encourages personal beliefs to be a valid reason to guide government policy, marginalized people will always have the most to lose.

#asks #ask trekwiz #anon asks #anon #ask

0 notes

realcleargoodtimes · 4 years ago

Link

JUSTICE IN AMERICA FOR BLACK AND OTHERS, REALY? HERE’’S THE CASES SHOWING IT’S NOT TRUE!

ge Les Hayes once sentenced a single mother to 496 days behind bars for failing to pay traffic tickets. The sentence was so stiff it exceeded the jail time Alabama allows for negligent homicide.

Marquita Johnson, who was locked up in April 2012, says the impact of her time in jail endures today. Johnson’s three children were cast into foster care while she was incarcerated. One daughter was molested, state records show. Another was physically abused.

“Judge Hayes took away my life and didn’t care how my children suffered,” said Johnson, now 36. “My girls will never be the same.”

Fellow inmates found her sentence hard to believe. “They had a nickname for me: The Woman with All the Days,” Johnson said. “That’s what they called me: The Woman with All the Days. There were people who had committed real crimes who got out before me.”

In 2016, the state agency that oversees judges charged Hayes with violating Alabama’s code of judicial conduct. According to the Judicial Inquiry Commission, Hayes broke state and federal laws by jailing Johnson and hundreds of other Montgomery residents too poor to pay fines. Among those jailed: a plumber struggling to make rent, a mother who skipped meals to cover the medical bills of her disabled son, and a hotel housekeeper working her way through college.

Hayes, a judge since 2000, admitted in court documents to violating 10 different parts of the state’s judicial conduct code. One of the counts was a breach of a judge’s most essential duty: failing to “respect and comply with the law.”

Despite the severity of the ruling, Hayes wasn’t barred from serving as a judge. Instead, the judicial commission and Hayes reached a deal. The former Eagle Scout would serve an 11-month unpaid suspension. Then he could return to the bench.

Until he was disciplined, Hayes said in an interview with Reuters, “I never thought I was doing something wrong.”

This week, Hayes is set to retire after 20 years as a judge. In a statement to Reuters, Hayes said he was “very remorseful” for his misdeeds.

Community activists say his departure is long overdue. Yet the decision to leave, they say, should never have been his to make, given his record of misconduct.

“He should have been fired years ago,” said Willie Knight, pastor of North Montgomery Baptist Church. “He broke the law and wanted to get away with it. His sudden retirement is years too late.”

Hayes is among thousands of state and local judges across America who were allowed to keep positions of extraordinary power and prestige after violating judicial ethics rules or breaking laws they pledged to uphold, a Reuters investigation found.

Judges have made racist statements, lied to state officials and forced defendants to languish in jail without a lawyer – and then returned to the bench, sometimes with little more than a rebuke from the state agencies overseeing their conduct.

Recent media reports have documented failures in judicial oversight in South Carolina, Louisiana and Illinois. Reuters went further.

In the first comprehensive accounting of judicial misconduct nationally, Reuters reviewed 1,509 cases from the last dozen years – 2008 through 2019 – in which judges resigned, retired or were publicly disciplined following accusations of misconduct. In addition, reporters identified another 3,613 cases from 2008 through 2018 in which states disciplined wayward judges but kept hidden from the public key details of their offenses – including the identities of the judges themselves.

All told, 9 of every 10 judges were allowed to return to the bench after they were sanctioned for misconduct, Reuters determined. They included a California judge who had sex in his courthouse chambers, once with his former law intern and separately with an attorney; a New York judge who berated domestic violence victims; and a Maryland judge who, after his arrest for driving drunk, was allowed to return to the bench provided he took a Breathalyzer test before each appearance.

The news agency’s findings reveal an “excessively” forgiving judicial disciplinary system, said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University who writes about judicial ethics. Although punishment short of removal from the bench is appropriate for most misconduct cases, Gillers said, the public “would be appalled at some of the lenient treatment judges get” for substantial transgressions.

Among the cases from the past year alone:

In Utah, a judge texted a video of a man’s scrotum to court clerks. He was reprimanded but remains on the bench.

In Indiana, three judges attending a conference last spring got drunk and sparked a 3 a.m. brawl outside a White Castle fast-food restaurant that ended with two of the judges shot. Although the state supreme court found the three judges had “discredited the entire Indiana judiciary,” each returned to the bench after a suspension.

In Texas, a judge burst in on jurors deliberating the case of a woman charged with sex trafficking and declared that God told him the defendant was innocent. The offending judge received a warning and returned to the bench. The defendant was convicted after a new judge took over the case.

“There are certain things where there should be a level of zero tolerance,” the jury foreman, Mark House, told Reuters. The judge should have been fined, House said, and kicked off the bench. “There is no justice, because he is still doing his job.”

Judicial misconduct specialists say such behavior has the potential to erode trust in America’s courts and, absent tough consequences, could give judges license to behave with impunity.

“When you see cases like that, the public starts to wonder about the integrity and honesty of the system,” said Steve Scheckman, a lawyer who directed Louisiana’s oversight agency and served as deputy director of New York’s. “It looks like a good ol’ boys club.”

That’s how local lawyers viewed the case of a longtime Alabama judge who concurrently served on the state’s judicial oversight commission. The judge, Cullman District Court’s Kim Chaney, remained on the bench for three years after being accused of violating the same nepotism rules he was tasked with enforcing on the oversight commission. In at least 200 cases, court records show, Judge Chaney chose his own son to serve as a court-appointed defense lawyer for the indigent, enabling the younger Chaney to earn at least $105,000 in fees over two years.

In February, months after Reuters repeatedly asked Chaney and the state judicial commission about those cases, he retired from the bench as part of a deal with state authorities to end the investigation.

Tommy Drake, the lawyer who first filed a complaint against Chaney in 2016, said he doubts the judge would have been forced from the bench if Reuters hadn’t examined the case.

“You know the only reason they did anything about Chaney is because you guys started asking questions,” Drake said. “Otherwise, he’d still be there.”

BEDROCK OF AMERICAN JUSTICE

State and local judges draw little scrutiny even though their courtrooms are the bedrock of the American criminal justice system, touching the lives of millions of people every year.

The country’s approximately 1,700 federal judges hear 400,000 cases annually. The nearly 30,000 state, county and municipal court judges handle a far bigger docket: more than 100 million new cases each year, from traffic to divorce to murder. Their titles range from justice of the peace to state supreme court justice. Their

#Tomydrake 2016 complint agaistChaney #Chaneyc hose his own son in 200 cases9confictof interest)#Indianan three jude caused a brawl outside of a White Caste ending with two of the judges shot

0 notes

the-record-newspaper · 7 years ago

Text

“Rhyme and Reason”

Unsolved: Murder at Jumpingoff Place Part XI

April Billings

By LARRY J. GRIFFIN

Special Reporter for The Record

In an initial interview for this series, I posed the question once again. April paused before thoughtfully responding, “I would ask him why? Why did you take my Mama from me?”

April Billings has been asked—more than once—about what she would ask Lynn Bare if she has the opportunity to sit across the table and gaze into the eyes of the man who was indicted for the murder of her mother, Sherry Hart.

The “why,” the “rhyme and reason” of his impulsive actions has been debated variously for the last 33-years by family members, law enforcement, reporters, TV programs, and other interested parties. There are several which have been ventured; but, none have garnered widespread support.

The one that appears to be most frequently offered is that Bare was simply a violent young man who lacked empathy for anything or anybody. Perhaps. Clearly, the public only knows him through a couple of mug shots—one actual and one that factors in the variable of change-over-time—descriptions in news articles, and TV news sound bites. All describe his heinous actions, as recounted in the statement given to Ashe County Sheriff Gene Goss by Co-defendant Jeffery Burgess on March 29, 1985—the date both men were taken into custody by authorities.

But none of those ask the most important question—why? Why would the 19-year-old, who had never been in serious trouble with the law and did not in his formative years demonstrate aberrant, oppositional behavior toward those in authority, attempt sexual assault and commit cold-blooded murder?

Without question, violent behavior is the product of a dysfunctional brain. Dr. Daniel Amen, a highly acclaimed brain-health advocate, double-board certified psychiatrist, and best-selling author is one of the world leaders in applying brain-imaging science to help people whose brains are troubled. In a practice that spans 28-years, Dr. Amen has scanned over 125,000 brains of individuals whose ages range from 9-months to 101-years.

The imaging technology that he employs at his six clinics throughout the US is a “single-photon emission computed tomography” or SPECT scan. Somewhat similar in nature to an MRI, fMRI (functional MRI) or PET scan, SPECT allows the practitioner to ascertain whether a “living brain” is essentially healthy, overactive, or under active. Over activity and under activity in areas of the brain indicate functional problems. Unlike the aforementioned imaging tools, SPECT also allows a physician to evaluate brain activity averaged over a few minutes; so, it is better at showing the state of someone’s brain at rest or during a concentration task, rather than just a single moment in time.

The Amen Clinic website allows the visitor to peruse SPECT scans of individuals suffering from conditions such as; PMS, learning disabilities, substance abuse, traumatic brain injuries, PTSD, anorexia, anxiety and depression, and of those who commit violence. Each category includes cases studies, replete with SPECT scans, and interpretations which a lay-person can comprehend.

One of the case studies, included in the “Violence” category, is that of a 16-year-old gang member named, Jose, who was taken into custody after he and another gang member beat a teenager nearly to death. Subsequent to being charged with attempted murder, Jose was ordered by the public defender to undergo neuropsychological testing.

SPECT scans were administered by Amen clinicians and interpretations rendered. The results were telling, revealing significant abnormalities. During a “resting phase,” Jose’s brain scan revealed mildly decreased prefrontal cortex (PFC) activity. (The PFC is the largest area of the brain responsible for—among other functions—making decisions in light of consequences, attention to tasks, and impulse control.) While doing an active “concentration task,” marked decreased activity was noted in the PFC and both temporal lobes (responsible for processing of emotions and governing mood). Significantly, deficient activity in both of those brain regions is consistent with ADHD, learning disabilities, and aggressive tendencies. Additionally, the SPECT studies revealed that young Jose suffered from depression.

Dr. Amen avers that scans of those who exhibit violent behavior share similar brain anomalies: “Abnormalities in the left temporal lobe (either increased or decreased activity), which is often the seat of aggressive thoughts; decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex, leading to poor internal supervision – such as impulse control and judgment; and increased activity in the anterior cingulate gyrus, which can cause repetitive thoughts and difficulty shifting attention (i.e. a person may get stuck on aggressive thoughts).”

According to two teachers who worked with him in the 7th and 8th grades, Lynn Bare was an under-motivated student who was learning disabled and had difficulty focusing. During his 8th-grade year, he and Jeff Burgess were enrolled in the same “remedial reading” class. It is reasonable to conclude that Lynn’s brain was dysfunctional in some areas, analogous to those that Dr. Amen identified in violent offenders.

The puzzle piece that is definitely missing is a predisposition toward excessively aggressive and/or violent behavior. Both former teachers described the adolescent Bare as affable, very likeable, and appropriately compliant relative to their instructions. The retired Ashe County educator asserted that Lynn “gave you no trouble.” Moreover, she maintained that he was neither belligerent nor given to animosity. “He was happy,” said she.

Certainly it is a possibility that some circumstance altered Bare’s life and summoned to the surface a latent violent predisposition that had been simmering within the subcutaneous layer of his emotional skin. However, if that was the case, Lynn’s teachers—especially his 8th grade Remedial Reading teacher, Ms. Margaret Cooper—would have surely caught a glimpse of his propensity for the use of violence to resolve conflicts.

Another explanation for Bare’s criminal behavior is that he was under the influence of a “mind-altering substance”—alcohol and/or drugs. In a follow-up interview, Lynn’s Cousin, Alena, noted that she really had nothing negative to say about him. “I loved him very much….We worked together [at Holly Farms] and I got to see him everyday. He was the sweetest guy. So kind….That’s why it was such a shock to have heard what had happened. It hurt so bad. I knew his life was over now….”

When asked why she thought Lynn committed such an uncharacteristic violent act, Alena was unequivocal in her response—“Drugs. I think he was on something that he could not handle.”

According to residents who live there, Ashe County was still “dry” in 1984. “If you wanted to get alcohol in those days, you had to take a trip to Wilkes,” recalled an anonymous Ashe native. And the county’s “cruising culture” could always find a way to acquire alcohol and drugs if they wanted to do so. It is possible that all three cruisers on that fateful Sunday evening in January, 1984—Lynn, Jeff, and Sherry—could have been under-the-influence. At that time, all three would have been of legal drinking age—the legal age in NC was changed to “21” on September 1, 1986.

Alcohol and drugs have a deleterious impact upon an array of brain functions. They cloud the prefrontal cortex (PFC) thereby dulling judgment and impairing impulse control. Moreover, these substances can heat-up the emotion-processing center of the brain and strip away inhibitions. In other words, there is a “foot on the emotional accelerator modulated by a failing braking system”—a recipe for disaster.

Neither the case file housed in the office of the Wilkes County Clerk of Court nor any other record uncovered to-date alludes to either defendant being under the influence during the commission of the crime for which they were charged. The absence of that information, however, does not definitively rule out the possibility of the use of mind-altering substances. Certainly, the presence of alcohol or drugs could account for the eruption of violent behavior in an otherwise amiable young man.

A third plausible explanation for Lynn Bare’s actions that evening can best be understood within the context of some general brain development principles. The PFC is the largest lobe of the brain; it comprises one-third—33.3%--of it. It is the area responsible for all of a human’s “executive functions”—the ability to solve problems, pay attention to that which is important, make responsible decisions in light of consequences, and control impulses—among other activities. Essentially, the PFC makes us human—the larger the PFC, the more sophisticated the thinking ability. (By contrast, a dog’s PFC is approximately 4% of his brain’s composition; a cat’s about 3%. Perhaps that is the salient reason that a cat requires nine lives to survive his explorative endeavors.)

In humans, the ability to make consistently productive decisions in light of consequences and maintain appropriate impulse control remains imperfect until about 25-years-of-age when the PFC reaches maturity. In a significant number of males, full PFC development may not be realized until 26-or 27-years-of-age. Automobile insurance companies seem to have embraced this developmental eventuality because premiums are generally reduced for drivers who turn 25-years-old.

Of significance, Lynn Bare and Jeff Burgess were 19-years-old when they invited 24-year-old Sherry Hart to go cruising with them. None of their prefrontal cortices had fully matured to the point that they could make consistently responsible decisions by weighing consequences and exercise appropriate impulse control. If alcohol or drugs were introduced into the “equation” that evening, their imperfect executive abilities would have been further diminished.

When a woman or man is threatened, the brain shifts into a survival “fight or flight” reactionary mode. There is no doubt that Ms. Hart’s “fight or flight” response was “full-throttle” that evening when she ran from the wooded area, frantically appealing to Jeff Burgess for protection from her assailant. Likewise, even though she was bleeding from a head wound, adrenaline fueled Sherry’s ability to fight for her life on the crest of a 1,200 foot precipice near Jumpingoff Rock.

Lynn Bare’s “fight or flight” response had shifted into gear as well as he pursued Ms. Hart who had run back to the Mustang. Perhaps he was angry at having his sexual overtures thwarted and impulsively struck his victim with the .38-caliber pistol he brandished. Possibly, with lightning-speed, he contemplated the consequences attendant to attempted sexual assault and was not going to allow himself to be arrested and jailed. Only a pervasive question remained: “How can I make this all go away?” Reasoning, good judgment, and impulse control had been abandoned; reflexive, impulsive reaction had supplanted them all—Bare dragged Sherry from the Mustang and with one push, his problem disappeared.

When Jeff Burgess returned to the drop-off spot-- as he had been ordered to do—he saw the car door open to the black of night, and a different man collapse in the passenger’s seat. He was not the same 19-year-old cousin and constant companion with whom he decided to go cruising earlier that Sunday evening. For the first time, Burgess stared into the haggard face of a desperate man and heard the ominous threat, “If you tell anyone about this, I will kill you and your family.”

It is only natural that April Billings should ask the question of Lynn Bare, “Why? Why would you take my mama from me?” After hearing her response, I said to her, “You realize that you may likely not get an answer to that question. I doubt that a man who is currently 53-years-old will be able to adequately explain the rhyme and reason behind his actions that January evening, 33-years ago when he was 19-years-old.”

For Sherry Hart’s only child, the answer to her penetrating, “why,” may be a tragic yet uncomplicated matter of a desperate 19-year-old who abandoned all reason and moral judgment in favor of impulsive, reactive, violent behavior that took a doting mother away from her six-year-old daughter.

2 notes · View notes