Via: TakePart.com
Take Action: Lend Your Voice For Fair Sentencing of Youth
Lies, Smears and Jerry Brown’s Chance to Give Kids Doing Life in Prison a New Start
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Life Without Parole: Juvenile Injustice
Via: TakePart.com
Take Action: Lend Your Voice For Fair Sentencing of Youth
Lies, Smears and Jerry Brown’s Chance to Give Kids Doing Life in Prison a New Start
Papa Don't Leave!
The link below brings you to an infographic image. Take a look and respond and feel free to look at other infrographics .
http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1206/papa-don-t-leave/flash.html
http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1206/papa-don-t-leave/flash.html
Working on Holidays: The New Class Divide?
Working on Holidays: The New Class Divide?
An employee restocks a shelf at a Walmart Supercenter in Troy, Ohio
As the holiday season gets underway, I think back to my childhood and the times enjoyed with my family. We were lucky. My immigrant parents realized the American Dream, and on the fourth Thursday of every November we had much to be thankful for. Even if my dad sometimes wasn’t there because he had to work, we didn’t mind. As a doctor, he and his fellow health care professionals knew that sickness takes no holiday. Policemen and firemen, plumbers and 911 operators: all kinds of Americans know well the sacrifices and pride that comes with providing essential services.
But while the right to one’s health and safety may be inalienable, the right to shop is not. Yet Walmart recently announced that it would open at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day; Target and Toys “R” Us followed suit, with plans to open at 9 p.m. They are hardly alone. Gap Inc. stores (Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic) will be open Thanksgiving Day, as will Sears and Kmart. Shoppers may appreciate the extra hours, but what about all the people who will have to end their Thanksgiving meal, or forgo it altogether, in order to man the cashiers and stock the shelves?
Working on holidays has always presented something of a class divide. From the 1870s through the 1920s, middle- and upper-class Americans often lived with “the help” — mostly women of color whose job it was to cook and clean and care for others, day and night. While shows like Downton Abbey seek to give life to servants, they also sanitize what was a brutal, backbreaking existence. It was common for a housemaid’s day to begin well before the family rose and extend until after they retired for the evening. They did so seven days a week; working more than 80 hours a week — more than the 65 hours worked by most factory workers at the time. While we often imagine that these women were young and single, Evelyn Nakano Glenn’s research on such care providers has shown how over 30% of them were married, many with children. As they toiled for families not their own, they left their children, parents, siblings and husbands behind. November and December was no doubt one of the hardest times of the year, and their own families felt their absence.
The labor movement was central to changing this sorry state of affairs (though labor laws almost never cover domestic workers). Unions raised wages, lowered hours, instituted worker protections, guaranteed a minimum wage and secured holidays off for workers. Those who did have to work on national holidays were guaranteed overtime pay. As Bruce Western and Jake Rosenfeld have shown, when unions were strong, such benefits even extended to nonunionized workers. But as unions have declined, part-time work has increased. And this has meant lower wages and greater uncertainty. Working at $11 an hour for 25 hours a week means making $14,300 a year. For most retail workers, that’s one of the better jobs available. And still, it’s a job without health insurance, or a retirement plan, with constant scheduling changes that make it hard to take additional employment. Most of these workers wish they could work more, but employers would rather hire other part-timers. So when the boss says, “Can you work Thanksgiving?” workers have no real choice but to be “willing.”
(MORE: Do the Suburbs Make You Selfish?)
Today, working on holidays carries no guarantee of extra pay, and not working can mean losing one’s job. Some workers are fighting back; Walmart employees have plannedover 1,000 Black Friday strikes because of stagnant wages and health care premiums that will soon triple. Americans have a choice of helping these workers regain the protections, or walking past them in order to shop for more things. And that is the irony to the trend of stores opening on Thanksgiving. On the same day that we give thanks for all we have, why must we also rush out to buy more? Observers might say, “It’s just the logic of the market!” But the logic of the market is not some mystical process. It is the result of the decisions that we make. People work on Thursday so we can be thankful for all that we have. Perhaps it’s time for shopping moratoriums so that everyone can give thanks, instead of just those who have more to be thankful for.
Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2012/11/19/working-holidays-the-new-class-divide/#ixzz2DHy8PQvS
How to Stop Sexual Assault in the Ranks
How To Stop Sexual Assault in the Ranks
Air Force women Trisha Loede, left, of the 39th Air Base Wing, hugs Ann Mitchell of the 39th Force Support Squadron, following a "dirty dash" at Incirlik air base in Turkey earlier this year as part of Women's History Month.
In the wake of the recent release of the Air Force investigation into sexual misconduct by Basic Military Training instructors at Lackland Air Force Base, Congress is likely to address the issue of military sexual violence through provisions in the pending National Defense Authorization Act.
With proposals ranging from creating military Special Victims Units, to reserving case-disposition authority for high-ranking officers, to strengthening penalties for offenders, legislators have vowed to get tough on crime against women in uniform.
But are they having the right conversation?
While enhanced prosecution is a laudable and necessary goal, the narrative of a broken criminal justice system only presents half the story behind the epidemic of military sexual violence. With its focus on the acts of individual offenders, the criminal justice system is simply not structured to serve as a vehicle for institutional reform or a means of empowering victims, whose role is usually limited to providing testimonial evidence.
The system, moreover, affords enormous discretion to police and prosecutors, up to and including the authority to opt against taking any action at all. In cases of sex offenses, prosecution is particularly sparse; around a quarter of police reports result in criminal indictment, and only half of those indictments yield convictions.
In the civilian world, recognition of these shortcomings has prompted the development of civil remedies for crime victims. Successful civil suits exercise an important deterrent effect, holding perpetrators accountable and encouraging negligent third parties to adopt enhanced safety practices. Victim lawsuits against third parties can be credited for the implementation of such standard security measures as the installation of door peepholes in hotel doors, the provision of adequate lighting in apartment common areas, and the employment of security guards on college campuses.
By exposing employers to significant financial consequences for failing to prevent and respond to sexual violence against employees, civil suits act as a powerful deterrent against workplace crime. Not only may victims sue their perpetrators, they can also bring negligence claims against employers who knew or should have known of the potential for the crime to occur. In addition, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act obligates employers to act when employees report threats, harassment or other potentially violent conduct in the workplace. Unless an employer can prove that it exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct harassment or assault, the employer can be held liable for the misconduct of its employees as well as for any retaliation suffered by victims for reporting such incidents.
Uniformed personnel, however, are barred from these avenues for relief.
Not only may they not bring personal injury claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act, they are also prohibited from suing the military for discrimination and harassment under Title VII. In fact, while military contractors and civilian Department of Defense employees may seek such remedies, uniformed personnel performing identical work in the same setting may not.
The absence of these remedies undoubtedly shaped the experience of the Lackland recruits, who reportedly felt compelled to agree to their instructors’ demands for fear of the consequences to their career if they disobeyed orders. In any other employment setting, they could have held their organization liable in the event of such retaliation.
Beyond imposing a toll on employers who fail to abide by the law, civil litigation also empowers victims by offering them an opportunity to vindicate their individual rights. Unlike in criminal court, where the prosecutor directs the course of the case, plaintiffs in civil proceedings can control such decisions as what type of evidence to bring and how much to seek in damages.
Few would argue that military personnel lack the right to be protected against crime; why deny them the means to enforce that right?
Rachel Natelson is the Legal Director for Service Women’s Action Network, a nonpartisan civil rights organization that works to transform military culture by securing equal opportunity and freedom to serve without discrimination, harassment or assault; and to reform veterans’ services to ensure high quality health care and benefits for women veterans and their families.
Read more: http://nation.time.com/2012/11/23/how-to-stop-sexual-assault-in-the-ranks/#ixzz2DHxHJuDI
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Born Good? Babies help unlock the origins of morality
You will need headphones to watch and listen to the 60 Minute Video link below.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50135408n
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50135408n
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)