#indiana department of education

[batboyblog]

Things the Biden-Harris Administration Did This Week #29

July 26-August 2 2024

President Biden announced his plan to reform the Supreme Court and make sure no President is above the law. The conservative majority on the court ruled that Trump has "absolute immunity" from any prosecution for "official acts" while he was President. In response President Biden is calling for a constitutional amendment to make it clear that Presidents aren't above the law and don't have immunity from prosecution for crimes committed while in office. In response to a wide ranging corruption scandal involving Justice Clarence Thomas, President Biden called on Congress to pass a legally binding code of ethics for the Supreme Court. The code would force Justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political actions, and force them to recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have conflicts of interest. President Biden also endorsed the idea of term limits for the Justices.

The Biden Administration sent out an email to everyone who has a federal student loan informing them of upcoming debt relief. The debt relief plan will bring the total number of a borrowers who've gotten relief from the Biden-Harris Administration to 30 million. The plan is due to be finalized this fall, and the Department of Education wanted to alert people early to allow them to be ready to quickly take advantage of it when it was in place and get relief as soon as possible.

President Biden announced that the federal government would step in and protect the pension of 600,000 Teamsters. Under the American Rescue Plan, passed by President Biden and the Democrats with no Republican votes, the government was empowered to bail out Union retirement funds which in recent years have faced devastating cut of up to 75% in some cases, leaving retired union workers in desperate situations. The Teamster union is just the latest in a number of such pension protections the President has done in office.

President Biden and Vice-President Harris oversaw the dramatic release of American hostages from Russia. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former Marine Paul Whelan held since 2018, Russian-American reporter for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Alsu Kurmasheva convicted of criticizing the Russian Military, were all released from captivity and returned to the US at around midnight August 2nd. They were greeted on the tarmac by the President and Vice-President and their waiting families. The deal also secured the release of German medical worker Rico Krieger sentenced to death in Belarus, Russian-British opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza, and 11 Russians convicted of opposing the war against Ukraine or being involved in Alexei Navalny's anti-corruption organization. Early drafts of the hostage deal were meant to include Navalny before his death in Russian custody early this year.

A new Biden Administration rule banning discrimination against LGBT students takes effect, but faces major Republican resistance. The new rule declares that Title IX protects Queer students from discrimination in public schools and any college that takes federal funds. The new rule also expands protections for victims of sexual misconduct and pregnant or parenting students. However Republican resistance means the rule can't take effect nation wide. Lawsuits from Republican controlled states, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming, means the new protections won't come into effect those states till the case is ruled on likely in a Supreme Court ruling. The Biden administration crafted these Title IX rules to reflect the Supreme Court's 2020 Bostock case.

The Biden administration awarded $2 billion to black and minority farmers who were the victims of historic discrimination. Historically black farmers have been denied important loans from the USDA, or given smaller amounts than white farmers. This massive investment will grant 23,000 minority farmers between $10,000 and $500,000 each and a further 20,000 people who wanted to start farms by were improperly denied the loans they needed between $3,500-$6,000 to get started. Most payments went to farmers in Mississippi and Alabama.

The Biden Administration took an important step to stop the criminalization of poverty by changing child safety guidelines so that poverty alone isn't grounds for taking a child into foster care. Studies show that children able to stay with parents or other family have much better outcomes then those separated. Many states have already removed poverty from their guidelines when it comes to removing children from the home, and the HHS guidelines push the remaining states to do the same.

Vice-President Harris announced the Biden Administration's agreement to a plan by North Carolina to forgive the state's medical debt. The plan by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper would forgive the medical debt of 2 million people in the state. North Carolina has the 3rd highest rate of medical debt in the nation. Vice-President Harris applauded the plan, pointing out that the Biden Administration has forgiven $650 million dollars worth of medical debt so far with plans to forgive up to $7 billion by 2026. The Vice-President unveiled plans to exclude medical debt from credit scores and issued a call for states and local governments to forgive debt, like North Carolina is, last month.

The Department of Transportation put forward a new rule to bank junk fees for family air travel. The new rule forces airlines to seat parents next to their children, with no extra cost. Currently parents are forced to pay extra to assure they are seated next to their children, no matter what age, if they don't they run the risk of being separated on a long flight. Airlines would be required to seat children age 13 and under with their parent or accompanying adult at no extra charge.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced it is giving $3.5 billion to combat homelessness. This represents the single largest one year investment in fighting homelessness in HUD's history. The money will be distributed by grants to local organizations and programs. HUD has a special focus on survivors of domestic violence, youth homeless, and people experiencing the unique challenges of homelessness in rural areas.

The Treasury Department announced that Pennsylvania and New Mexico would be joining the IRS' direct file program for 2025. The program was tested as a pilot in a number of states in 2024, saving 140,000 tax payers $5.6 million in filing charges and getting tax returns of $90 million. The program, paid for by President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, will be available to all 50 states, but Republicans strong object. Pennsylvania and New Mexico join Oregon and New Jersey in being new states to join.

Bonus: President Biden with the families of the released hostages calling their loved ones on the plane out of Russia

[thebeckiest]

Hello! I'm a teacher in Indiana, and things have been getting steadily more dire since I started teaching. Indiana is not a great place to teach because we have a GOP supermajority and, wow, do those guys hate public educators.

Anyway our attorney general (who I have no kind words for so I'll keep them to myself) has set up an "Education Transparency Form" so concerned members of the public can report "socialist indoctrination." He didn't bother to tell the department of education or schools that he was doing this.

Anyway, would you all do me the kind favor of spamming this thing?

[beardedmrbean]

Children have been pushed out of schools, and hospitals have been left overcrowded after a surge of migrants into a remote city in Indiana, residents claim.

The population of Logansport has increased by 30 per cent since 2021 following a wave of migrants, Chris Martin, the city’s mayor,  told the Pharos-Tribune.

That would put the number of migrants arriving at more than 5,000, in a county that had a population of just 18,000 people in 2020, according to census data.

At the same time, the number of Haitian immigrant students in the Logansport schools has increased 15-fold, from 14 in 2021 to 207 this year, according to the New York Post.

It is understood that migrants have been drawn to the central Indiana city for jobs at a local meat-packing plant.

However, their rapid arrival has put the city’s health and education system under strain, with parents claiming they have been forced to pull their children from school to stop them from falling behind.

Nancy Baker, 44, a mother of two, said that her 16-year-old daughter, Cheyanne, dropped out of high school because teachers did not have enough time for the English-speaking pupils.

“There were way too many kids and it seemed to her that since they didn’t speak the language, or didn’t understand what was going on, they were getting more attention,” she told the New York Post.

“And so she and the other kids who grew up here who were having issues or struggling in certain things weren’t able to get the attention that they needed — the help they needed from the school.”

Barrie McClian, a retired teacher, said public schools and healthcare centres had been “impacted terribly” by the surge in arrivals.

“They have to figure out how to educate all these folks, without having anybody who knows how to translate for a lot of the languages. So those are big problems,” he told Mail Online.

Safety concerns

The influx of outsiders to the town has also raised concerns over safety, with Ms Baker claiming her daughter is scared to leave the house after being chased by a group of migrants.

“She was walking by herself and she was walking that way and two of them were going this way, she just kinda smiled at them as they walked by. They started yelling for her after they got past her. She turned around and she looked at them and they were like, ‘Come here! Come here!’” Ms Baker told the Post.

She added that her daughter had to run down the street to a coffee shop and was now “scared to go outside”.

Meanwhile, local health officials have raised concerns that the rapid influx of migrants is placing emergency rooms under strain.

“This surge has created a drastic climb in medical visits,” Serenity Alter, Cass County health department administrator, told The Post.

“It has been necessary for the hospital, health department and express clinics to boost translation services in order to ensure that medical needs are understood.”

The city is the latest flashpoint in the debate around immigration that is proving to be one of the most divisive issues in the lead up to the election.

It comes after Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance drew attention to Springfield, Ohio, where the former president claimed without evidence that illegal Haitian migrants were eating cats and dogs.

The Republican candidate has also highlighted problems with immigration in Aurora, Colorado, where he alleged armed members of the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua have overrun the town.

Logansport residents voiced their concerns about the city’s response to the impact of legal immigration during a meeting of the city council last Monday, with some calling on the Republican mayor to resign.

Attendees also claimed the city’s services were being impacted, with one stating that “rents are high” and that schools and the police department are overwhelmed, Fox 59 reported.

The mayor admitted there had been “some assimilation issues” from the arrival of people with “different culture beliefs” but called on politicians to “stop playing politics” with the town.

“We would rather you do your job and actually do something instead of talking about this,” Mr Martin told The Post.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Jaryn Crouson

Professors connected to anti-Israel protests head programs that received millions of taxpayer dollars, according to a report released Wednesday by government transparency group Open The Books.

The Department of Education has spent $283 million on foreign studies grants since 2020, with over $22.1 million going towards programs studying the Middle East, Open The Books found. The study analyzed the top three grant recipients, Indiana University, Columbia University and Georgetown University, and found that each highlighted anti-Israel professors as distinguished staff in their programs.

“These universities all have multibillion dollar endowments,” Amber Todoroff, deputy policy editor at Open The Books, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “They get tax breaks, government-backed student loans, and enormous sums through federal grants and contracts. Through these Title VI grants, they’re getting funding specifically for departments that have hosted radical professors, instigating shameful protests nationwide. It’s high time Congress takes a closer look at how this money is being spent, and, with so many new ways to learn languages and international culture, if it’s even necessary at all.”

Universities received these funds in the form of two different grants: National Resource Centers grants, which go directly to departmental programs, and Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grants, which can be used to give students fellowships to study foreign regions or languages, according to Open The Books.

Columbia received $2.8 million in FLAS grants from 2020 to 2024, according to the report. Its program is meant to “examine transnational connections, develop Islamic studies, and deepen specialist expertise on the region,” according to Columbia’s 2018 grant proposal.

The 2018 application mentioned Joseph Massad, a professor in the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies department, as a selling point for the university’s program, noting that his classes “focus on the modern history, gender, political economy, international relations, politics and culture of the region.” The university received $653,632 in an FLAS grant in the 2022-2023 school year that was used in part to fund a fellowship for a student to take Massad’s “Gender and Sexuality in the Arab World” class, according to Open The Books.

Massad was alleged by students to be biased “against both Israel and the West” in his classes, according to Open The Books, citing nonprofit group Middle East Forum. The professor published an article the day after Hamas’ attack in 2023 calling it a “stunning victory,” and he gave a talk at the university in 2002 titled “On Zionism and Jewish Supremacy.”

Columbia experienced intense anti-Israel campus protests during the spring semester that resulted in over 100 arrests and multiple safety concerns. (RELATED: Many Pro-Palestinian Protesters Remain In ‘Good Standing’ At Columbia)

🧵On October 8, Professor Joseph Massad described the Oct. 7 brutal terror attack as “awesome” and a “stunning victory.” He also happens to be the chair of an important academic approval Committee. Watch as @Columbia President claims: “he is no longer a chair of that… pic.twitter.com/rRU32HQnTv — House Committee on Education & the Workforce (@EdWorkforceCmte) April 17, 2024

Indiana University raked in $2.84 million in federal grants from 2020 to 2023 for its Middle East program, and touted professor Abdulkader Sinno its 2018 grant application for his specialization in “the evolution and outcomes of civil wars, ethnic strife and other territorial conflicts; Muslim representation in Western liberal democracies; Islamist parties’ participation in elections,” according the report. Sinno reportedly served as a faculty advisor for the university’s Palestinian Solidarity Committee, which was involved in hosting an “anti-Israel counter protest” where members confronted participants of a Hillel demonstration.

Sinno attempted to sidestep university policies to host the pro-Palestinian speaker Miko Peled for the organization, booking the speaker as an academic event rather than student event, according to the university’s students newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student. The decision led to a two-semester suspension from teaching and a year suspension from advising student groups, according to Open The Books.

Even after the suspension, Sinno gave a speech at an “alternative” graduation for anti-Israel activists during which he praised them for being part of a “proud tradition” and said that their protesting showed “empathy and caring,” according to WFYI.

More than 50 protesters were arrested on Indiana University’s campus in April after a clash with police that left multiple injured, according to Fox 59.

Georgetown received $2.64 million from the Department of Education from 2020 to 2023 in FLAS funding, and it named Associate Professor and Director of Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies Dr. Fida Adely in its 2018 grant proposal, the report found. Adely is a member of the Faculty for Justice in Palestine’s National Advisory Board, according to Open The Books, which is a group that “encourages academic and cultural boycotts of Israel and Israeli academic institutions,” according to its website.

Hundreds rallied on Georgetown’s campus during the spring semester, hosting an encampment that lasted more than a week and scuffled with police, according to the university’s student newspaper, The Hoya. Adely participated in an October rally, calling on the university to divest from Israel-linked companies, according to a separate student paper, The Georgetown Voice.

“By funding schools that teach radical ideologies and practice a far-Left DEI philosophy, controversial professors and administrators are also gaining access to a vast ecosystem of tax dollars, and influence over impressionable young people,” the report concluded. “These funds can be used to advance their research, build their standing as credentialed academics, gain tenure, and impact international policy discussions. Meanwhile, our national interest in these grants comes into considerable question. Are we encouraging more professionals who will be credible in these fields and represent U.S. interests, or more folks who are determined to ‘dismantle’ the ‘settler colonialism’ they see all around them?”

Columbia, Georgetown, Indiana University, Massad, Sinno and Adely did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

[handeaux]

Dorelle Heisel Plumbed Brain Mysteries And Psychedelicized Cincinnati’s Social Circles

Dorelle Markley Heisel called Cincinnati her home for several decades, but her mind was in another dimension. She was known as “Cincinnati’s Brain Lady” and held college faculty positions in literature, psychology and fine art. She pioneered biofeedback techniques to control mental and bodily functions while introducing Cincinnati’s strait-laced society to the psychedelic subculture of the Sixties.

Virginia Dorelle Markley was born in 1917 in Danville, Illinois but spent her childhood shuttling between her father’s Palm Beach restaurant and her mother’s St. Louis hotel. At DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, she was student royalty – literally – voted May Queen in her senior year.

It was at DePauw that she met and became engaged to W. Donald Heisel, a Cincinnati native and Western Hills High School alumnus. At the time of his 1940 marriage to Dorelle, Heisel was assistant secretary to Cincinnati’s Civil Service Commission and was, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer [21 May 1940] “one of the city’s youngest executives.” The Heisels built a new house on a quiet cul de sac in Westwood, where they raised two daughters.

Don Heisel earned a reputation as the “godfather of public administration in the Tristate” [Cincinnati Enquirer 6 March 1988] because of the many governmental officials he mentored at the University of Cincinnati and at Xavier University. Dorelle, who had earned a degree in English from DePauw, added a bachelor’s (1952) and master’s (1965) in education from UC while also taking classes at the Cincinnati Art Academy.

Dorelle taught English for several years in Cincinnati high schools and at the Ohio Mechanics Institute. During the summers she was a fixture at Pogue’s Department Store. Hundreds of Queen City baby boomers likely display pastel portraits of themselves, sketched by Dorelle at her stand in the Pogue’s children’s department. She hated the drab institutional brown walls in her husband’s office, so one day she hauled her pastels over to City Hall and executed a large mural of the Cincinnati skyline, drawn from memory.

UC’s University College recruited Dorelle in the mid-1960s and she flourished there, teaching literature, art appreciation and psychology. With assistance from the Procter & Gamble company, she brought innovative technology into her classrooms with a push-button feedback device that allowed students to register immediate opinions regarding class content. She told the Cincinnati Post [14 March 1968]:

“When students become frustrated with a lecture or feel lost or just plain bored, they can indicate their anxiety by signaling me on the monitor.”

Dorelle’s interest in media and their effects on human communication led her to Canadian theorist Marshall McLuhan, known for his books “Understanding Media” and “The Medium Is The Massage.” Among the earliest mentions of McLuhan in Cincinnati newspapers is a reference to a 1966 Evening College class taught by Dorelle to introduce the Canadian theorist’s ideas to Cincinnati.

Simultaneously with her investigations of media and biofeedback, Dorelle dove into what was then known as the human potential movement. She presided over a multi-week UC Evening College class titled “Actualizing Your Potential: A Group Happening.” Enquirer reporter Jo Thomas sat in on the course and reported [21 August 1969] a most unusual classroom experience.

“I will not lecture,” Heisel said. “You will live out experiences, and I will ask you questions. Answer them in your head without verbalizing them. Writing is so slow and the mind works at such speed.”

Dorelle invited the students to form themselves into trains of about nine “cars,” kindergarten-style and take turns being the “engine” or the “caboose.”

“Elderly women hung on to 20-year-olds. Bald men chugged in front of bearded men. Around and around the room the trains went, gathering momentum and enthusiasm. One train burst out of the classroom door into the bright hall, chugging with gusto.”

The explosion of new ideas generated by the psychedelic Sixties energized Dorelle and she launched a series of public lectures to share her excitement. One wonders how her Cincinnati audiences, among such mainline organizations such as the Federation of Jewish Organizations and the Kiwanis Club, reacted to her exposition titled “Turn On, Tune In, Find Out!”

An early adopter of technology, Dorelle acquired a variety of devices to assist her research into altering thought patterns via biofeedback. Among these contraptions were the electromyograph and the alphaphone that made brainwaves audible or visual. She claimed that biofeedback, in addition to curing a variety of conditions from depression to migraines, transported users into a new state of being that she called the Kairos Dimension.

"The Kairos Dimension is nature taking its electronic course through you by providing strategies for amplifying your sensory range,” she announced in her 1974 book, “The Kairos Dimension.”

The titles of Dorelle’s non-credit classes and community lectures indicate the paths her biofeedback research led her down: “Brainfun: Steering Minds In New Directions,” “The Holographic Mind,” “How Biofeedback Opens Social Spaces,” and “How Biofeedback Supports Excitement And Growth.” Here is the course catalog description for one of these classes:

“Feelings of stress, tension and pressure take place only in muscles, never in the chemical-electrical brain that sends out orders. New research gives us a more accurate model of how we guide and control our range of ‘body sculptures.’ Small group exploration of the latest technologies.”

As the Human Potential movement evolved into various New Age philosophies, Dorelle’s biofeedback strategies caught on among that crowd. When the Montreal Star compiled a list of 50 important New Age books in 1975, Dorelle’s “Biofeedback Exercise Book” was featured along with books on transcendental meditation, herbal remedies, gestalt therapy and “The Joy of Sex.”

The nationally syndicated television show, P.M. Magazine, hosted Dorelle in November 1983 as “Cincinnati’s Brain Lady who enables you to see your brain on a television screen.” For a brief period, UC’s radio station WGUC aired a show devoted to Dorelle’s “Kairos Dimension.”

The Heisels divorced in 1977 and throughout the 1980s Dorelle’s public appearances waned. A Body/Mind/Spirit Festival at Avondale’s Unitarian Church in 1988 found her discussing biofeedback along with proponents of shamanism, tarot cards, crystals, chelation therapy and psychic powers.

Dorelle retired from UC and relocated to Plano, Texas where one of her daughters lived. In retirement, she played bridge and painted portraits. She died, aged 79, in November 1996.

[darkmaga-returns]

Small Communities Across America Are Being Overwhelmed And Stretched Thin As Migrants Take Up Resources And Aid

Jon Hall

Oct 28, 2024

Back in September, a proposal was introduced in Pennsylvania to potentially house migrants in an abandoned school building. USA Up Star, a disaster response company based out of Indiana who owns the school building, wrote the county board to ask about turning the school into migrant housing.

The school building was shut down in 2009 and sold off after being founded in 1895 to provide an education for children of service members and local war veterans of the community.

USA Up Star’s request to turn the school campus into migrant housing was denied due to township zoning regulations. The board’s letter to the company mentioned that the decision could be appealed but hasn’t been as of yet.

Nearby county officials spoke out on the increase in demand the migrants pose to Greene county where the abandoned school is located:

“In addition to impacting the housing market, an increase in population puts an increased demand on basic services such as water, sewer, trash removal… It also puts a strain on school systems, child care services… health care providers, and public safety personnel such as our fire departments, EMS, police and the criminal justice system.”

Locals crowded a township board meeting to raise their concerns over the potential of the school being converted to migrant housing. Among these concerns was the fact the migrants are unvetted, with residents fearing they’re associated with gangs, drugs, or human trafficking.

Representatives Rob Kauffman and Senator Doug Mastriano - Republicans - vowed to do everything they could to prevent plans being put together to convert the campus.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Chris Geidner at Law Dork:

When it comes to the Biden administration’s long-awaited Title IX sex discrimination education rule, which went into effect Thursday, America truly is two nations. Due to a series of lower-court injunctions, the Education Department is blocked from enforcing the rule, which includes LGBTQ school protections, in 26 states across the country.

The steps that led us to such a place over the past 50 days tell both a story of how much anti-transgender animus has made its way into the federal courts — and a story of how irrelevant the U.S. Supreme Court has made itself and its rulings through its repeated actions disregarding, minimizing, or outright reversing those rulings. The 423-page rule that went into effect Thursday defines sex in the sex discrimination ban of Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 as including both sexual orientation and gender identity. This is reasoning that, the Biden administration argues, follows from the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s sex discrimination ban includes bans on both sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination.

The rule also includes provisions addressing “sex-separated facilities” and “hostile-environment harassment,” both of which include language that provides protections for transgender students. The rule does much more, however, including setting for the standards for schools to use in handling sex-based harassment complaints, pregnancy protections, and setting forth general obligations under the landmark law. That rule is now in effect, but the Education Department is blocked from enforcing it in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming. (As discussed below, the department is also blocked from enforcing the rule in more than 2,500 specific schools across the country — many of which are in the 24 states that do not have an injunction in place.) The Supreme Court, moreover, has allowed this to happen without even ruling as of mid-day Thursday on the Justice Department’s requests in two of the cases to pare back the injunctions during appeals.

[...]

What happened?

A series of lawsuits were filed challenging the rule, mostly brought by Republican attorneys general but also brought by some far-right organizations and primarily arguing that the rule violates the Administrative Procedure Act due to the three provisions addressing gender identity and transgender protections. They were almost all filed in jurisdictions that would increase the likelihood of a far-right judge hearing the case — and a more conservative appeals court considering appeals. The efforts paid off. Some of the most conservative district court judges in the nation heard the challenges and granted preliminary injunctions against enforcement of the rule — including U.S. District Judges Terry Doughty, Reed O’Connor, and Matthew Kacsmaryk, known for their far-right rulings on efforts to combat misinformation on social media, the Affordable Care Act, and mifepristone, respectively, all of which were reversed by the Supreme Court. In addition to those three judges in Texas and Louisiana, four others — U.S. District Judges Danny Reeves, John Broomes, Rodney Sippel, Jodi Dishman — issued injunctions from their courts in Kentucky, Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, respectively.

The Biden Administration’s Title IX rule went into effect yesterday, but in 26 states and in over 2,500 schools across America, the new rule is being blocked from enforcement.

[henrysglock]

1981 Sure Was A Year in Indiana

This post initially started in my head when I was puzzling over what school in 1959 might look like in The First Shadow (perks of a 90 minute drive to work: I was liable to do way too much thinking). However, the more I dug into the subject, the more Lucas started jumping out at me.

Specifically: Lucas and school buses started jumping out at me.

So, when I started this analysis back in July, I was sitting in a corn field (legit) trying to figure out exactly how I want to approach this, because it's another case of the Duffers underpinning a character's experience with the supernatural with the real sociopolitical aspects of the time period.

I say this started out with The First Shadow because of three specific characters: First, it was "Betty Olsen" (read: Patty Newby). Now, Sue Anderson (Sinclair), and Charles Sinclair have joined her in my concerns. If you know anything about America, you at least know that the 1950s-1970s were a time of major political upheaval. Namely, the Civil Rights Movement was just occurring during this time. I had, and still have, concerns about how the writers of The First Shadow are planning to handle school in the show.

However, this detail about Lucas's experiences makes me retain a sliver of hope that they won't fuck it up completely.

As such, I'd like to give a quick history lesson as background for anyone who may not know much about US history.

Despite adopting pro-integration language in 1949, Indiana's school desegregation process concluded 5 years later, in compliance with Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Due to the large Ku Klux Klan presence in its government, Indiana was the last non-confederate state to adopt pro-integration language, and it remained largely segregated despite Brown v. Board of Education due to discriminatory housing policies and wealth gaps between its black and white residents.

So, Brown v. Board of Education was not enough to drive integration of schools in Indiana. That task required legal pushes from cases like Bell v. School City of Gary (1963) and Banks v. Muncie Community Schools (1970). In fact, it was such a struggle to get Indiana to integrate that the U.S. Department of Justice had to get involved, filing its first (of many) lawsuits against Indianapolis Public Schools in 1968. These lawsuits would continue into the 1990s.

Most importantly for the coming analysis, though, is Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971), which gained footing via the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education was a landmark US Supreme Court case which argued that federally supported busing would be an effective pro-integration effort with the aim of making opportunities for equal education more widely accessible in the face of redlining's aftermath. Federally supported busing was implemented in 1971.

However, Indiana did not take up federal busing until 1981, an entire decade later. Even then, requirements were uneven (specifically: black children were to bus to white schools, and not vice-versa) and have generated lasting negative impacts on communities of color, such as community destruction and worse segregation now than before (as per UCLA's 2017 Civil Rights Project study conducted in conjunction with IU School of Education's Center for Evaluation and Education Policy).

This is where history talk ends and my analysis begins.

All of this information was a couple of well placed GoogIe searches away, which means: If I can find it, so can the writers.

What's stood out to me most is that, despite not busing to school, Lucas keeps ending up around buses.

Namely, Lucas keeps ending up in life-threatening situations on or near school buses. He and El (a superpowered and highly reactive white girl) have their fight in front of the junkyard school bus. He's harmed in this situation, knocked unconscious for several seconds. Then, later in the season, Lucas and the gang hide in that school bus when HNL is hunting them down, intent on arresting or killing them. In ST2, Lucas ends up in that same school bus during the demodog attack.

Max, then, buses to school in ST4. This is linked to Billy's death, given that he was her ride to school in ST2 and that his death was the reason she was forced into poverty/living in the trailer park farther from the center of town. This directly plays into her unfortunate fate in ST4, which is incredibly traumatic for Lucas and carries quite a bit of racial tension (see: Jason and his groupies, the placement of a black boy being seen as harming a white girl and being beaten for it, Erica being attacked simultaneously simply for being in a playground after curfew while having a tenuous link to our white suspect, Eddie).

None of these are good, safe, or comfortable experiences.

There's only one good experience happening on or near a school bus: Lucas and Max's first heart-to-heart as an interracial couple happens on top of the junkyard school bus.

Even then, it's still tainted a life-threatening situation and the two of discussing how much of an asshole Billy is. Billy, whose racism shines through quite clearly in his treatment of Lucas and his perception of lumax as an interracial couple.

Supernatural life-or-death danger, and specifically anti-blackness, become linked to school buses around the same time that bus integration becomes prominent as an integration strategy in Indiana. Despite not busing himself, Lucas faces his life or death situations most often on a school bus. Bus integration was a major controversy in the path to school integration, and buses were massively unsafe for black students, particularly those in more conservative areas. Thus, the supernatural becomes subtext for the cultural climate of Hawkins: Unsafe for black families, the danger typically lingering just under a veneer of acceptance.

We see this brought to light more blatantly in ST4 with Lucas's experiences surrounding Jason. Jason is "normal". He's a "good kid". He's not Billy, the rough-around-the-edges trouble maker. He's Jason Everyman, shining star of the basketball team and a "friend" to Lucas. His violence lingers just under that veneer of normalcy and acceptance, ready to lash out as soon as Lucas does something he doesn't agree with, and that much is made brutally clear (many say tactlessly, I'm inclined to agree, especially if we extend this scenario to encompass Erica's experiences too). Once again, the supernatural underpins reality. The life-or-death situation with Vecna is inextricably linked to Jason's violence. A villain that lingers beneath the surface of Hawkins and is emerging from the town's depths underpins the previously undisclosed normalized racial violence now appearing on screen.

This is by no means me saying they've handled this gracefully. They haven't. I agree that Billy's arc re: Lucas and lumax, as well as the Sinclair siblings' treatment in Season 4, were both handled poorly.

The above remains the basis of my concerns regarding The First Shadow.

They're tactless and painfully tone-deaf, definitely...but they also don't seem to be unaware of the political climate in 1980s Indiana.

[lboogie1906]

Elizabeth Duncan Koontz (June 3, 1919 - January 6, 1989) was the first African American president of the National Education Association which at that point was an 820,000-member Association of Classroom Teachers. She was born in Salisbury, North Carolina. Her parents were Samuel E. Duncan, former president of Livingstone College, and Lena Bell Jordan Duncan, an educator at Salisbury’s Dunbar Elementary School. The last of seven children, She began elementary school at four and graduated salutatorian of her class from Joseph Charles Price High School and enrolled in Livingstone College. Three years later, she received a BA. She earned an MA from Atlanta University. She married Harry Koontz (1947) a mathematics educator.

In 1960, she became the first African American to serve as secretary of the NEA. She authored Guidelines for Local Associations of Classroom Teachers.

She held several positions as an educator in North Carolina and served as president of the Association of Classroom Teachers of the NEA (1965-66) her career break came in 1968, as president of the National Education Association. Her term in office was highlighted when she established the NEA’s Human and Civil Rights Division. She was appointed the first African American director of the US Department of Labor Women’s Bureau by President Richard Nixon. She collaborated globally and addressed relevant and pressing issues in an attempt to eliminate discrimination against women and minorities in the workforce. She was a proponent of the Equal Rights Amendment. She appeared on the covers of the August 1, 1969, Jet magazine and the October 1969 issue of Teacher.

She received honorary doctorates from Livingstone College, Howard University, Coppin State College, Eastern Michigan University, Northeastern University, and Bryant University, Indiana University. An elementary school in Salisbury was named in her honor.

She was the assistant state school superintendent in North Carolina (1975-82). She was a member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence #zetaphibeta

[mariacallous]

Republican Congressman Jim Banks sent letters in recent days to a number of high-profile figures in the U.S. far-right, saying that they had been added to a Ukrainian NGO's list of individuals and groups responsible "in the U.S. impeding aid to Ukraine."

The congressman alleged that Texty, the Ukrainian NGO in question, previously worked with the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Texty released a statement on June 13 that its team was facing "unprecedented pressure, manipulation, slander, demands to strip us of donor funding, and threats of physical violence."

Banks, who is running for Senate in Indiana, had said on June 11 that "other Ukrainian NGOs have published similar lists, which have published the personal information of those named in apparent attempts to intimidate them."

Banks added that he sent an accompanying letter to key congressional committee members, urging them to stop "partnering with any actors overseas who encourage the harassment of Americans."

Banks also posted on his personal X account that he was put on an "enemies list" that was "compiled by the Ukrainian government.

What's really behind the governmental funding allegations?

Inna Gadzynska, a journalist at Texty and one of the authors of the report, told the Kyiv Independent that the outlet has no connection to either the Ukrainian or U.S. governments, does not consider its report to be a "hit list," and did not publish any personal information.

Gadzynska added that Texty did not receive any government funding for the project.

The following day, Banks wrote that Congressional Republicans had moved to "defund" the "Ukrainian NGO that created a 'watch list' that consisted of conservative lawmakers and private American citizens."

The Kyiv Independent reached out to Banks' press office for comment several times, but received no response.  

Elon Musk then commented below the post, saying that the NGO should be "added to the list of sanctioned terrorist organizations."

Rogan O'Handley, a prominent "MAGA influencer" active on X with the handle "DC_Draino," shared the letter he had received from Banks, claiming that "(President Volodymyr) Zelensky has added (him) to his 'enemies' list."

O'Handley then added that a "Ukrainian NGO 'funded with our tax dollars' has labeled me an enemy of their state."

Texty's report has been widely shared on social media, with false claims about the organization, the list's contents, and its connections to the Ukrainian and U.S. governments growing with every retweet.

Far-right conspiracy theorist and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote that Zelensky's "thug regime has deemed me an enemy of the state" and put "elected members of Congress like me on their state KILL list."

What exactly is Texty's report?

Texty's report, labeled "Roller Coaster: From Trumpists to Communists. The forces in the U.S. impeding aid to Ukraine and how they do it," was released on June 6.

The report contains an in-depth exploration of 388 individuals and 76 organizations involved in the "ecosystem of mutual support" of opponents of aid for Ukraine.

Texty's website states it is a media outlet founded by Anatoliy Bondarenko and Roman Kulchynsky in 2010 and has won several journalism awards, including the European Press Prize in 2024. Texty says its research is "funded exclusively" by its readers.

The claims about the alleged financial support by the U.S. State Department appear to stem from the fact that Bondarenko previously was a volunteer trainer at the TechForum Ukraine almost ten years ago.  

The forum was a program from TechCamps, a "public diplomacy program hosted in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) at the U.S. State Department."

The program "brought together more than 60 local journalists, civil society, community leaders, and private sector partners in Eastern Europe with local and international technology experts."

"The two-day workshop helped increase digital and media literacy and gave participants the tools to communicate effectively in the 21st century."

Besides the single two-day workshop conducted almost 10 years ago, there is no other evidence to support the claim that the U.S. State Department or any other government entity has supported Texty, financially or otherwise.

In a statement on X on June 9, Texty said that it had "faced an unprecedented wave of hate" after the report was published.

"Claims that the list of U.S. opponents of aid to Ukraine is a 'kill list,' persecution, or doxxing, or that the Texty editorial team is trained or funded by the U.S. government is an outright lie."

Texty reiterated that "Bondarenko was a trainer who taught activists at one of the TechCamps" but said that it was just one of many training sessions it had conducted.

Gadzynska told the Kyiv Independent that Bondarenko was not paid for his work as a trainer. Bondarenko did receive a grant from the U.S. Embassy in 2020 to help "counter disinformation about Coronavirus," she added.

Texty also previously received USAID grants via other organizations, but Gadzynska emphasized that the report in question was not funded by any institutional donor.

In any case, Bondarenko had "no relation" to the report and did not contribute to it, Gadzynska said.

The aim of the report was not to "harass" or "intimidate" the individuals and groups named but rather to "openly and objectively examine issues that are key to our country's survival, such as who the U.S. opponents of aid to Ukraine are and why they oppose it," Texty said.

Gadzynska emphasized that the report did not call the listed individuals and groups "enemies."

Texty "operate(s) as an NGO and never takes money from the Ukrainian government," she said, adding that the outlet has criticized Zelensky "before and after the presidential election in 2019."

Gadzynska also shared with the Kyiv Independent some of the vitriolic and threatening messages that Texty received after the report was published, which insulted Ukraine and claimed that the report was an act of "declaring war" on the U.S.

Which other figures are mentioned by Texty?

As the title suggests, the report is not limited to the far-right politicians and commentators who are often the face of American opposition to Ukraine.

It also includes a number of prominent individuals and organizations from the left, such as the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft (QI) and the "anti-war" organization CodePink, mostly known for its opposition to Israel.

Anatol Lieven, a U.K. journalist and director of QI's Eurasia Program, told the American Conservative media outlet that "it is completely inappropriate that a foreign institution that participates (in) training funded by U.S. taxpayers' money should use that money to try to limit public debate in the U.S. on a matter of vital U.S. interest."

Lieven has written about the need for a ceasefire in Ukraine and says that the war is "Russia's fault," but also regularly references Russian talking points, such as the unfounded assertion that "most Crimeans still appear to want to be part of Russia."

To support his claim, Lieven cited a survey by the independent Russian polling firm the Levada Center conducted in 2019 when Crimea was already under Russian occupation.

Previous polls conducted before the illegal annexation, such as one by the International Republican Institute in May 2013, found that only 23% of respondents wanted to be part of Russia, compared to 67% who wanted some form of autonomy within Ukraine.

In a co-written article with George Beebe published by QI in January 2024, Lieven wrote that the U.S. "will have to offer some serious incentives" to Putin to end the war.

"If we want a prosperous Ukraine with a viable path toward liberal governance and European Union membership, we will have to concede that it cannot be a NATO or U.S. ally, and that this neutral Ukraine must have verifiable limits on the types and quantities of weapons it may hold."

Lieven's comments were indicative of the wide range of narratives harmful to Ukraine that come from across the political spectrum.

CodePink, an ostensible left-wing "pro-peace" organization, also mentioned Texty's report, reiterating claims that Bondarenko "trains foreign journalists and media companies in the State Department's TechCamp."

While regularly calling for an end to the conflict, CodePink also says that "expansion of NATO and the aggressive approach of Western nations have helped cause the crisis, and we demand an end to NATO expansion." CodePink is also opposed to sanctions that "harm ordinary Russians."

Medea Benjamin, one of the co-founders of CodePink, has also repeated Russian propaganda talking points. In a November 2022 interview with Chris Hedges, a political commentator who has a show on the Russian state-owned media outlet RT, Benjamin falsely claimed that Crimea is a part of Russia and that Russian speakers are being discriminated against in Ukraine.

CodePink takes a "leftist position," Texty said, but "uses every Russian propaganda thesis to support its beliefs."

Tucker Carlson's allegations of Ukraine's 'hit list'

It is not the first time that far-right figures in the U.S. have falsely claimed that the Ukrainian government has created a public "hit list" of opponents of Ukraine.

After far-right political commentator Tucker Carlson interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin in February 2024, a widely distributed post on X claimed that Carlson had been placed on a "kill list" by the Ukrainian government.

Carlson traveled to Moscow to record the two-hour and seven-minute interview, during which he seldomly interrupts Putin as he echoes Russian propaganda and shares false narratives on a wide variety of topics, including his justification for Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

In fact, Carlson had been added to a list compiled by the Ukrainian NGO Myrotvorets, which studies threats to Ukraine's national security, and has been in the Myrotvorets database since 2023.

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #25

June 28-July 5 2024

The Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Is putting forward the first ever federal safety regulation to protect worker's from excessive heat in the workplace. As climate change has caused extreme heat events to become more common work place deaths have risen from an average of 32 heat related deaths between 1992 and 2019 to 43 in 2022. The rules if finalized would require employers to provide drinking water and cool break areas at 80 degrees and at 90 degrees have mandatory 15-minute breaks every two hours and be monitored for signs of heat illness. This would effect an estimated 36 million workers.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced $1 Billion for 656 projects across the country aimed at helping local communities combat climate change fueled disasters like flooding and extreme heat. Some of the projects include $50 Million to Philadelphia for a stormwater pump station and combating flooding, and a grant to build Shaded bus shelters in Washington, D.C.

The Department of Transportation announced thanks to efforts by the Biden Administration flight cancellations at the lowest they've been in a decade. At just 1.4% for the year so far. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg credited the Department's new rules requiring automatic refunds for any cancellations or undue delays as driving the good numbers as well as the investment of $25 billion in airport infrastructure that was in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

The Department of Transportation announced $600 million in the 3rd round of funding to reconnect communities. Many communities have been divided by highways and other Infrastructure projects over the years. Most often effecting racial minority and poor areas. The Biden Administration is dedicated to addressing these injustices and helping reconnect communities split for decades. This funding round will see Atlanta’s Southside Communities reconnected as well as a redesign for Birmingham’s Black Main Street, reconnecting a community split by Interstate 65 in the 1960s. 

The Biden Administration approved its 9th offshore wind power project. About 9 miles off the coast of New Jersey the planned wind farm will generated 2,800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power almost a million homes with totally clear power. This will bring the total amount of clean wind power generated by projects approved by the Biden Administration to 13 gigawatts. The Administration's climate goal is to generate 30 gigawatts from wind.

The Biden Administration announced funding for 12 new Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs. The $504 million dollars will go to supporting tech hubs in, Colorado, Montana, Indiana, Illinois, Nevada, New York, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin. These tech hubs together with 31 already announced and funded will support high tech manufacturing jobs, as well as training for 21st century jobs for millions of American workers.

HHS announced over $200 million to support improved care for older Americans, particularly those with Alzheimer’s and related dementias. The money is focused on training primary care physicians, nurse practitioners, and other health care clinicians in best practices in elder and dementia care, as well as seeking to  integrate geriatric training into primary care. It also will support ways that families and other non-medical care givers can be educated to give support to aging people.

HHS announced $176 million to help support the development of a mRNA-based pandemic influenza vaccine. As part of the government's efforts to be ready before the next major pandemic it funds and supports new vaccine's to try to predict the next major pandemic. Moderna is working on an mRNA vaccine, much like the Covid-19, vaccine focused on the H5 and H7 avian influenza viruses, which experts fear could spread to humans and cause a Covid like event.

[nanowrimo]

30 Covers, 30 Days 2023: Day 16

And here we are with day 16! Put on your headphones for Children's Fiction novel The Mixtape Mystery by SarahZ. This cover was designed by the amazing returning designer, Roshanak Keyghobadi!

The Mixtape Mystery

Thirteen year old Sarah lives a typical life in Hershey, Pennsylvania until her world is turned upside down when she stumbles upon an old, mysterious mixtape in her parents’ attic. This tape, created by her long-lost uncle who disappeared in the 1980’s, isn’t an ordinary recording. It possesses the power to transport her back in time to the vibrant era of her parents’ youth.

With each song on the mixtape, Sarah embarks on a new adventure, reliving her mom's teenage experiences in the ’80’s, even meeting the uncle that until now she never knew she had.

The Mixtape Mystery is an engaging middle-reader novel that combines the magic of time travel, the nostalgia of the 1980’s, and the universal themes of family, friendship and self-discovery.

About the Author

Sarah divides her time between working in the public school system and performing in the wonderfully creative community of Lancaster, PA. She loves the unique perspective of 5th and 6th grade kids as they dance on the cusp of early childhood and adolescence. Sarah writes for them, hoping to offer mirrors and windows to kids about the complex and curious experience of childhood. The Mixtape Mystery is her first NaNoWriMo attempt and is so grateful for the motivation it’s provided!

About the Designer

Roshanak Keyghobadi is an Assistant Professor at the Visual Communications Department, Farmingdale State College - SUNY. She holds a doctoral degree in Art and Art Education from Columbia University and her MFA (Indiana University) and BFA (University of the Arts) are both in Graphic Design. She studied Visual Communication at Tehran University’s College of Fine Art prior to moving to New York. Roshanak conducts lectures, does research and writes regularly about design histories and designers in global context. Her essays have been published in the United States (AIGA Voice, Design Observer) and Iran (Neshan). She was also the managing editor of Graphis publications in New York City. Roshanak’s artworks have been exhibited in museums and galleries nationally and internationally and featured in books and magazines (Fiber art Now) and newspapers (NYTimes). She has been designing book covers for National Novel Writing Month's 30 Covers 30 Days since 2015!

[reasoningdaily]

https://x.com/AfricanArchives/status/1702803593739305429?t=IEuPO-htAKpQUrQ8VMqvKw&s=09

MEET John Morton Finney

John Morton Finney was a Buffalo soldier who fought in World War 1, earned 11 degrees and practiced law until he was 106 years old. He was believed to be the longest practicing attorney in the United States.

—John Morton-Finney (June 25, 1889 January 28, 1998) was an American civil rights activist, lawyer, and educator who earned 11 academic degrees, including 5 law degrees.

—He spent most of his career as an educator and lawyer after serving from 1911 to 1914 in the U.S. Army as a member of the 24th Infantry Regiment, better known as the Buffalo soldiers, and with the American Expeditionary Forces in France during World War I.

—Morton-Finney taught languages at Fisk University in Tennessee and at Lincoln University in Missouri, before moving to Indianapolis, Indiana, where he taught in the Indianapolis Public Schools for forty-seven years.

—Morton-Finney was a member of the original faculty at Indianapolis's Crisps Attucks High School when it opened in 1927 and later became head of its foreign language department. He also taught at Shortridge High School and at other IPS schools.

—Morton-Finney was admitted as a member of the Bar of the Indiana Supreme Court in 1935, as a member of the Bar of the U.S. District Court in 1941, and was admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972.

[infamousbrad]

"He listed his most recent work as a handyman when he applied in 2018 to the South Bend Police Department, which was facing an officer shortage."

(Washington Post subscription-free gift article.)

I have cared about corrupt police officers for almost as long as I can remember, since my otherwise beloved father admitted to me, during an argument, that he had been a corrupt cop during his years with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department back in the '50s, when his night-shift assignment was to straight-up murder people for being on the wrong side of the color line, along Jefferson Avenue in South St. Louis, after sunset.

Whistleblower after whistleblower has come forward, especially in the last three decades, saying that fewer than 15% of the cops in the SLMPD are honest cops; even the ones who don't engage in murder, rape, or robbery cheerfully commit perjury to cover up crimes within the department.

Those whistleblowers got nowhere, and, after the post-Ferguson attempt to clean up the SLMPD, the then-chief basically said the quiet part out loud:

The choice is not between good cops and bad cops. It's between bad cops and no cops at all. There simply are not enough honest people willing to become police, and the few who do are made short work of by the bad cops and their supervisors and their union reps as soon as they even attempt to report one, let alone testify against them.

So when the South Bend police department found out that one of the cops they hired, with less training than a medium-name rent-a-cop agency gives its watchmen, turned out to be a pedophile rapist* the department absolutely moved heaven and earth to protect him, and so did the local judge. Just like they are again, right now, for a second pedophile rapist cop from the same department whose case is still going on.

Because in America, except maybe in a few fabulously wealthy neighborhoods, it's that stark: the authorities are not going to choose "no cops" over "bad cops," and those are they only choices they think they have.

*Who is also a Baptist-college educated youth minister. Pretend you're surprised that they sheltered a pedophile, too. For the third year in a row, the Southern Baptists just voted down an accountability program for sexually abusive pastors and youth pastors. I'm not saying they're all pedophiles either, but if they weeded out all the pedophiles, they wouldn't have enough people willing to work for them, either.

[leviathangourmet]

Let this sink in: There are more people enslaved today than at any other point in human history, including when the Trans-Atlantic slave trade was legal. The summer’s top film Sound of Freedom has succeeded in not only becoming a surprise box office hit but also in bringing the reality of modern slavery back into the spotlight.

The International Labor Organization estimates 40.3 million men, women, and children are subjected to human trafficking per year. The true figure is likely far higher.

Human trafficking involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain labor or a commercial sex act. The US Department of Health and Human Services says human trafficking is the fastest-growing criminal industry in the world, generating an estimated $150 billion in profits annually—that’s the entire net worth of McDonald’s.

But are children really trafficked that often? According to UNODC’s 2020 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, compiled using official figures from 148 countries, one in three trafficking victims detected is a child. In a survey of 260 survivors of domestic minor sex trafficking, one in six were trafficked under age 12.

Though the Trans-Atlantic slave trade has long since passed, the remnants of this tragedy are regularly brought to the forefront of conversation. Yet somehow, many Americans live in either blissful or willful unawareness of modern slavery, and its vast number of victims. The untrained eye can easily miss the signs of it happening all around us, and it’s easier to go about our comfortable lives if we don’t have to wrestle with this weighty reality.

Thankfully, Sound of Freedom has brought this injustice back into the public forum, where it belongs.

Angel Studios, makers of the hit series The Chosen, released Sound of Freedom on July 4 to 2,600 theaters nationwide. So far, the film has raked in over $100 million at the box office, surpassing Disney’s Indiana Jones which was released the same day. The film is inspired by the true story of Tim Ballard, a Homeland Security Investigations officer whose career in locking up pedophiles compels him to rescue children exploited for sex and child sexual abuse material (CSAM, or child porn). It highlights the trafficking networks that prey on vulnerable children and the role American sex buyers play in fueling it worldwide.

Despite the fact that fighting child trafficking is a cause people of all ideological backgrounds should be able to get behind, this film has sparked quite a controversy.

Some critics have gone to lengths to associate the film with conspiracy theories and “right-wing extremism,” primarily using guilt-by-association arguments. Their implied message is “child trafficking isn’t a big problem” and it’s blatantly irresponsible.

Others celebrate the film’s message but lament that it promotes the search and rescue style method of fighting trafficking when, in reality, most anti-trafficking work doesn’t look like this in practice, particularly in the US. Most trafficking doesn’t involve being kidnapped by a stranger, rather victims are often exploited by family members or someone close to them. These kinds of concerns are valid, especially for anti-trafficking organizations, and trafficking survivors, who need to re-educate new volunteers that think they’ll be kicking down doors. Still, it doesn’t negate the fact that this film has sparked a fresh surge of people who are asking “How can I help end modern slavery?”

That is the all-important question.

First, we must cut off the demand. Sex trafficking would end today if men stopped buying sex. The desire to purchase another human for sex is, in large part, one natural byproduct of porn use.

Anti-trafficking and filmmaking nonprofit Exodus Cry interviewed scores of sex buyers, and every single one shared that they began consuming porn in childhood. The effect of porn use on shaping sexual appetites is alarming and well-documented. In Exodus Cry’s documentary Raised on Porn, one convicted consumer of child sexual abuse material shares the escalating nature of porn addiction, “After a while, the stuff that worked before doesn’t work as well… I found illegal pornography, child porn… I got the rush. It worked like nothing else did anymore.”

As shown in Sound of Freedom, as well as Exodus Cry’s documentary Nefarious: Merchant of Souls, American men are among the most frequent child sex buyers, often flying to countries where they have unfettered access to trafficked children.

Our nation is one of the top countries for sex trafficking and the top consumer of CSAM. We cannot fight slavery while actively participating in it.

Second, we must demolish the “sex work is work” narrative. Prostitution and trafficking are often intertwined. In prostitution, women and children exist to fulfill the sexual desires of men. Buyers often view them as less than human, a product to be bought and discarded. Unlike what sex work advocates want you to believe, prostitution isn’t sexual liberation, it’s sexual slavery.

Most women in prostitution (approx. 90%) are under pimp control, meaning they are likely not receiving the money earned, and fear of their pimp keeps them trapped in a life of exploitation. Eighty-nine percent of those in prostitution surveyed across nine countries wanted to escape it. Prostitution isn’t empowering, it’s usually exploitative and it’s often trafficking.

Third, we must urge legislators to pass laws that criminalize sex buying, pimping, and brothel-keeping while decriminalizing those in prostitution and providing them with resources to find a life outside of exploitation. This legislative model, called the Nordic or Abolitionist Model, is the only law with a proven track record to uproot trafficking.

Without fail, every country that legalizes “sex work” sees higher rates of sex trafficking than countries that have made sex buying illegal. This drives more men to consume women and children for sex. Traffickers and pimps capitalize on that demand.

There’s so much we can do to fight today’s iteration of slavery, and films like Sound of Freedom can help audiences realize that the injustice they see on the big screen can be cut off by starting with the small screen.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Chris Geidner at Law Dork:

Two weeks after U.S. District Judge John Broomes, a Trump appointee in Kansas, issued a broad injunction blocking enforcement of the Biden administration’s new Title IX rule set to go into effect on August 1, it is still not clear the geographic area affected. Rather than questions about the effect of Broomes’s order being answered, each day instead just seems to add to them. The latest questions come out of a Monday filing in which two organizations suing the Education Department claimed that nearly 700 colleges across the country should be covered by the injunction. The issues have arisen in an ongoing federal case in Kansas where four states — Alaska, Kansas, Utah, and Wyoming — and three organizations — Young America’s Foundation, Female Athletes United, and Moms for Liberty — are challenging the rule, issued under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, because of the protections it asserts for LGBTQ students.

The rule is also blocked in 11 other states — Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia — under three separate preliminary injunctions. But, the scope of Broomes’s order means it could affect enforcement of the rule in hundreds of schools across the country — with Moms for Liberty seeking to expand that exponentially. On July 2, Broomes issued a preliminary injunction in the case — blocking enforcement of the rule when it goes into effect in the four states and in any school attended by members of the organizations. For Moms for Liberty, the injunction was to apply to any school attended by a child of a member.

On July 12, though, Moms for Liberty asked Broomes to extend the injunction to more than 850 counties across the nation — previously covered at Law Dork. The Justice Department filed its opposition to the request over the weekend, arguing that “the requested relief would vastly expand the scope of the injunction far beyond any reasonable fit to the harms [Moms for Liberty] alleges.” The Monday filing from the plaintiffs exposed another significant aspect of the scope of Broomes’s ruling — as the Young America’s Foundation and Female Athletes United claimed members in nearly 700 colleges across the nation. The colleges include many of the largest schools by enrollment and highest-ranked schools in the country — including the top 5 schools in both of those categories. The groups also submitted a list claiming members in nearly 500 K-12 schools in 44 states and Washington, D.C.

Right-wing anti-trans groups such as Female Athletes United and Young America’s Foundation are seeking to block the revised Title IX rules from going into effect at 700+ universities and colleges across the USA in the Kansas v. Department of Education case.