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Five Places Where Police Shooting Scandals Have Altered the Political Landscape

by Dann4778eehk Posted on February 17, 2016

Mother Jones

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With national attention focused on the mistreatment of people of color by police, and incumbents in many cities reeling from police-abuse scandals, some Black Lives Matter organizers have launched bids for elected office. Here are five places where officer-involved shootings have altered the political landscape.

Cook County, Illinois: State’s attorney Anita Alvarez has been under fire since November for her handling of the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald by a Chicago police officer. Her top challenger is Kim Foxx (profiled here), who was raised in a notorious housing project but made it to law school and became an assistant state’s attorney. Foxx, who has been pounding Alvarez over the McDonald case, promises to overhaul prosecutorial practices in Cook County and supports assigning officer-involved shootings to a special prosecutor. She’s still polling a close second, but she has racked up key endorsements, including those of the Cook County Democratic Party—and Alvarez’s former campaign co-chair.

Baltimore: Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, stung by criticism over her handling of last April’s Freddie Gray-related unrest, is not seeking reelection. Stepping into the void is Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson, a lead organizer of protests in Ferguson and Baltimore—his hometown—and a national voice for the movement. McKesson, 30, left his job as a public school administrator to become a full-time organizer, and has built his mayoral platform around police and education reform and tackling unemployment.

Ferguson, Missouri: In the first local election since a white police officer killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, voters have elevated two black candidates to the Ferguson City Council, tripling black representation on the six-member panel. (Voter turnout was 20 percent higher than it was in the previous municipal election.) State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, who helped organize local protests after Brown’s death, aims to ride the activist wave all the way to the halls of Congress. She says she wants to see more federal resources directed to educational programs at the state level.

St. Paul, Minnesota: Black Lives Matter leader Rashad Turner, 30, is running for the Minnesota House with a platform focusing on criminal justice and education reform, employment, and housing. Turner, who first trained to be a cop but then switched to education, led the Black Lives Matter protest at the Minnesota State Fair last August. To win, he’ll need to unseat incumbent Democrat Rena Moran, the state’s first black female state representative, currently in her third term.

Cuyahoga County, Ohio: Tim McGinty, the prosecutor who argued to members of a grand jury that they shouldn’t indict the Cleveland police officer who gunned down 12-year-old Tamir Rice in a local park, now faces a very tough reelection bid. Exhibit A: He failed to secure the county’s Democratic Party endorsement.

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Five Places Where Police Shooting Scandals Have Altered the Political Landscape

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Boutros Boutros-Ghali, First UN Secretary-General from Africa, Has Died

by Alanna3121 Posted on February 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who served as the United Nations secretary-general in the 1990s, has died at 93. The UN Security Council confirmed the news of his death.

During his tenure, the Egyptian diplomat was widely criticized for his handling of the conflicts in Rwanda and Bosnia. After years of tension with the United States, the Clinton administration ultimately blocked him from a second term. Boutros-Ghali was the first secretary-general from Africa.

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Boutros Boutros-Ghali, First UN Secretary-General from Africa, Has Died

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There’s Finally an Agreement to Stop the Fighting in Syria—and It’s Probably Doomed

by theacntnt1985-01 Posted on February 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Less than two weeks after peace talks over the Syrian civil war abruptly ended, the International Syria Support Group—a body of about 20 countries and international organizations involved in the war, including the European Union and the United Nations—announced on Thursday that they had finally brokered the terms of a halt to the brutal war that has killed nearly half a million people. The “cessation of hostilities” between regime forces and rebel groups, if successful, would be the first general stop to the fighting in almost four years. It seemed to meet some of the Syrian opposition’s demands for humanitarian relief and a halt to Russian airstrikes against civilians and rebels. But none of this means the agreement is likely to succeed.

The International Syria Support Group group pledged its members would push “all parties to allow immediate and sustained humanitarian access to reach all people in need” and “take immediate steps to secure the full support of all parties to the conflict for a cessation of hostilities.” Those parties, however—the Syrian government and mainstream rebel groups—weren’t actually part of the negotiations. Thursday’s agreement merely sets the terms for how a cessation of hostilities would look, leaving the United States, Russia, Iran, and others to convince their allies on the ground to abide by the pact.

How exactly they’ll convince the regime and the opposition to play along hasn’t yet been decided; the declaration gives the ISSG a week to figure out the details of the agreement and implement them. “We will only be able to see whether this was a breakthrough in a few days,” admitted German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier during the announcement, which took place at a security conference in Munich. Secretary of State John Kerry also tempered expectations for the cessation agreement. “The real test is clearly whether or not all the parties honor those commitments and implement them in reality,” he said. “What I’ve said again and again is we cannot guarantee success in the outcome.”

The fact that the opposition’s High Negotiations Council, a body made up of dissident Syrian politicians and rebel leaders, is not taking part in the discussions in Munich means the agreement may not get crucial buy-in from armed groups on the battlefield. Such support is critical for political negotiations or agreements to hold.

The Washington Post reported that while rebels may accept the “ceasefire”—the United States and Russia are divided on whether to use the term—out of exhaustion and lack of options, they are still highly skeptical. “We no longer trust words. There have been too many recently, matched with opposite action on the ground from the Russians,” Issam Rayess, a spokesman for the rebels’ Southern Front coalition that fights near Damascus, told the Post‘s Liz Sly. “Within a week everything will have been destroyed,” one civilian told her. And no matter what the rebels decide, the agreement will also have no effect on jihadi groups like ISIS or Jabhat al-Nusra, Syria’s homegrown affiliate of Al Qaeda.

The High Negotiations Council has adopted a wait-and-see approach. When the Geneva talks stopped earlier this month, the HNC said it would not return to the table until Russian airstrikes ended and humanitarian aid began flowing to starving and decimated areas of Syria. The United Nation’s Syria envoy hopes to restart the talks by February 25, and HNC spokesman Salim al-Muslat says the cessation of hostilities must actually take effect before the opposition returns to talks. “If we see action and implementation, we will see you very soon in Geneva,” he told reporters on Thursday.

But even if the fighting does stop for any significant length of time, the two sides are still no closer to agreeing on the most basic issue of the war: what to do with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The opposition and its backers will not accept any political solution that allows Assad to stay in office. But on the same day the cessation was announced, Assad told the French wire service AFP that he has no plans to give up any territory or power, instead reconfirming his intent to regain control of the entire country. “This is a goal we are seeking to achieve without any hesitation,” he said in an interview on Thursday. “It makes no sense for us to say that we will give up any part of Syria.” As Middle East analyst Brooklyn Middleton noted on Twitter, Assad’s statement means the cessation of hostilities will mostly be an illusion of progress rather than an actual achievement.

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There’s Finally an Agreement to Stop the Fighting in Syria—and It’s Probably Doomed

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Flint Is Still a Disaster, But Obama Just Proposed a Giant Cut to Water Funding

by EdwardStead Posted on February 9, 2016

Mother Jones

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President Obama has called Flint, Michigan’s water crisis “inexplicable and inexcusable.” But his administration’s proposed 2017 budget, released today, cuts the Environmental Protection Agency’s water infrastructure funding by roughly a quarter billion dollars.

The EPA’s State Revolving Fund (SRF) provides loans to improve state and local water quality and is the primary source of federal funding for water infrastructure improvements. The 2017 budget proposes a $158 million increase to the Drinking Water SRF, which would help municipalities replace pipelines, fix water main breaks, and generally improve aging water infrastructure—the type of changes that could help places that, like Flint, have an aging water infrastructure. But the budget also proposes a $370 million cut to the Clean Water SRF, which goes toward projects making water sources cleaner overall, from reducing urban runoff pollution and improving wastewater treatment to researching how unregulated chemicals in our water supply affect human health.

In light of the disaster in Flint, the proposed cuts have provoked criticism from both sides of the aisle: Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said he was “grossly disappointed” by the proposal, while Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) accused Obama of prioritizing climate change over water. Overall, federal water infrastructure spending has been relatively stagnant for years:

Mae Wu, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, equates the proposed budget with “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” “Cutting funds that help keep pollution out of our water (CW SRF) and moving the money to remove pollution once it’s already in our drinking water (DW SRF) is no solution at all,” she wrote in an NRDC blog post. “At best it is a short-term band-aid approach to addressing the chronic levels of underinvestment in our water infrastructure by local, state, and federal government.”

The bigger problem, says Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, is that the nation’s water challenges overall continue to be woefully underfunded. “We’re talking about a hundred million here, a hundred million there,” says Gleick, who notes that the single F-35 fighter costs roughly $100 million. “Overall, our budget priorities are still distorted.”

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Flint Is Still a Disaster, But Obama Just Proposed a Giant Cut to Water Funding

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Here’s Why Chris Christie’s Zika Quarantines Would Be Pointless

by HelenaDiederich Posted on February 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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During Saturday night’s Republican primary debate, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he would use quarantines to prevent the Zika virus outbreak from spreading in the United States. From a Washington Post transcript:

MARTHA RADDATZ (ABC MODERATOR): Governor Christie, at the peak of the Ebola outbreak in west Africa, you ordered an American nurse who landed at Newark Airport be detained and quarantined. As fear spreads now of the Zika virus and with the Rio Olympics just months away, is there a scenario where you would quarantine people traveling back from Brazil to prevent the spread in the United States?

CHRISTIE: You bet I would. And the fact is that because I took strong action to make sure that anyone who was showing symptoms—remember what happened with that nurse. She was showing symptoms and coming back from a place that had the Ebola virus active and she had been treating patients. This was not just some—like, we picked up her just for the heck of it, alright?

We did it because she was showing symptoms, and the fact is that’s the way we should make these decision. You make these decisions based upon the symptoms, the medicine, and the law. We quarantined her, she turned out to test negative ultimately after 48 hours, and we released her back to the State of Maine.

That position might make for a tough-sounding talking point during a debate. But it’s totally pointless as a matter of public health, experts said.

“Zika is rarely, if ever, spread from person to person, so quarantining infected people will do nothing to stem a Zika outbreak,” said Laurie Garret, a global health expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Zika, a mosquito-borne virus, has spread to more than 1 million people throughout Latin America. The symptoms of the virus itself are usually mild or nonexistent. But it could be dangerous for pregnant women: Zika has been tentatively linked to a spike in cases of microcephaly, a birth defect in which infants are born with small heads and can have incomplete brain development.

Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of California-Davis Children’s Hospital, agreed that a quarantine wouldn’t be much help in controlling an outbreak. “The vast majority of transmissions are from mosquito bites, and most of the country doesn’t have the Zika-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquito in high concentrations,” he said. “So I don’t think a quarantine is necessary or would be beneficial in any way.”

Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, gave a somewhat more measured response when asked a similar question about Zika during Saturday’s debate:

CARSON: Do we quarantine people? If we have evidence that they are infected, and that there is evidence that that infection can spread by something that they’re doing, yes. But, just willy-nilly going out and quarantining a bunch of people because they’ve been to Brazil, I don’t believe that that’s going to work. What we really need to be thinking about is how do we get this disease under control?

Christie received substantial criticism for his response to 2014’s Ebola outbreak. He ordered the quarantine of a nurse, Kaci Hickox, after she returned from fighting Ebola in Sierra Leone. Last October, Hickox filed a lawsuit against Christie for false imprisonment and other claims, arguing that she had not, in fact, exhibited any symptoms indicative of Ebola when she landed at New Jersey’s Newark airport. Ultimately, she did not end up having the virus. That legal case is ongoing.

“The merits of Christie’s actions in the Hickox case will no doubt be decided in court, probably long after he has withdrawn from the presidential race,” Garret said. “But his Zika comments can be addressed immediately.”

Garret added that Christie didn’t quarantine a woman who was New Jersey’s first confirmed Zika case, identified in late January while visiting the state from Colombia.

Elizabeth Talbot, an epidemiologist at Dartmouth College’s School of Medicine, said a more effective solution is to focus on controlling and eradicating the mosquitoes that can carry Zika.

“Our public health energies are best invested in providing education about preventing bites and prioritizing the protection of pregnant women by advising them to postpone travel to affected regions whenever possible,” she said in an email. “The CDC is also recommending that meticulous attention be given to protect persons from mosquito bites if they are identified with Zika in the US following travel. This is so that our Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in the southernmost US do not become infected with Zika and transmit Zika disease in the US. Preventing mosquito bites for ill patients is not the same thing as quarantine, which can be an inflammatory or even scary word.”

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Here’s Why Chris Christie’s Zika Quarantines Would Be Pointless

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8 Climate-Friendly Superfoods for 2016

by LamarMcLendon Posted on January 16, 2016

Superfoodsare gaining popularityand for good reason. They directlysupport the immune system, reduceinflammation, support mental health,pack a nutritional punch,and boost energy, stamina and longevity.

Here are eightsuperfoods to watch in 2016 that are not only good for you, but also good for the planet:

1. Crickets

Long-consumed in many parts of the developing world, crickets are makingtheir way into cookies, milkshakes and other food items in the U.S.Photo credit: Shutterstock

Crickets are loaded with protein. They also thrive in hotter climates and survive off decaying waste and very little water and space,Mother Jonesreported.For this reason, crickets and other insects havebeenhailedas the next climate-friendly superfood. They can be ground into baking flour or protein powder, and addedto cookies, brownies ormilkshakes.

While eating cricketsor any type of insect for that matterhasnt completely caught on in the U.S., its making progress. Last year, fast food chainWayback Burgersput outa fake press release as anApril Fools jokeabout insect-filled milkshakes, but the idea was so popular that theyrolled out theirOreo Mud Pie Cricket Protein Milkshake.

2. Pulses

Theyre the dried seeds of lentils, beans and chickpeasand the UN hasdeclared2016 to be their year. They already make up 75 percent of the average diet in developing countries, but only 25 percent in developed ones, according to the UN.

That could all change, though. Pulses contain 20 to 25 percent protein by weight, approaching the protein levels of meat, which average30 to 40 percent. They also require far less water than meat to produce.

3. Amaranth

Amaranth is a complete source of protein.Photo credit: Shutterstock

Amaranth is the new quinoa, trend expert Daniel Levine toldThe Huffington Post. Its a grain-like seed that cooks quickly and can be added to salads, soups and stews. Its a complete source of protein just like quinoa, and it is loaded withfiber,B vitamins andseveral important minerals. Additionally, its beenshownto reduce inflammation, and lower cholesterol levels and blood pressure.

4. Kefir

Kefiris the trendiestfermentedfood right now (sorry, kombucha and kimchi).Its high in nutrients andprobiotics, and is incredibly beneficial for digestion andgut health.Many people consider it to be a healthier and more powerful version ofyogurt.

To make it,grains (yeast and lactic acid bacteria cultures) are added to cow or goat milk. The concoction ferments over a 24-hour period and then the grains are removed from the liquid.

5.Teff

Sometimes written as tef or tef, this pseudo-grain (its technically a seed)has a high nutritional profile and a taste similarto that of amaranth or quinoa. Thisancient grainhas survived for centuries without muchhybridization or processing.Like most other ancient grains, its high in fiber, calcium and iron.

Traditionally cultivated inEthiopia and Eritrea, teff can be grown in a variety of conditions.Teff thrives in both waterlogged soils and duringdroughts, making it a dependable staple wherever its grown. No matter what the weather, teff crops will likely survive, as they are also relatively free of plant diseases compared to other cereal crops,Whole Grains Councilsaid.

Teff can grow where many other crops wont thrive, and in fact can be produced from sea level to as high as 3,000 meters of altitude, with maximum yield at about 1,800-2,100 meters high, the council said. This versatility could explain why teff is now being cultivated in areas as diverse as dry and mountainous Idaho and the low and wet Netherlands.

6. Moringa

Moringa can be ground intoa powder.Photo credit: Shutterstock

Its often called the the miracle tree or the tree of life, according toTIME. Its commonly found inAsian and African countries, and almost every part of itpods, leaves, seeds and rootsis edible. Its agood sourceof Vitamin B6, Vitamin C and iron. Not only does it pack a nutritional punch, its also afast-growing, drought-tolerant plantthat is a promising biofuel and medicinal source.

7. Kelp

Kelp grows super fast (up to two feet per day), and requires neither freshwater nor fertilizer. And rather than contributing to our carbon footprint, as many fertilizers and food sources do, seaweed cleanses the ocean of excess nitrogen and carbon dioxide,Mother Jonesreported. One kelpfarmer on the Long Island Sound evenclaimshesrestoringthe ocean while producing a sustainable food and fuel source.

8. Waste-Based Food

This isnt as weird as it sounds. In order to reducefood waste, restaurants are findingcreative waysto use the edibleparts of plants and animals that are often thrown out. Last year, award-winning chef Dan Barber held atwo-week pop-upat Blue Hill, his restaurant in New York City, where he cooked with spent grain, cocoa beans, pasta scraps andvegetablepulp.

Written by Cole Mellino. Reposted with permission from EcoWatch.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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8 Climate-Friendly Superfoods for 2016

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Why North Korea’s Nuclear Test Isn’t Business as Usual

by NealAQPXdtff Posted on January 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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There’s still plenty of doubt about whether North Korea did in fact detonate a sophisticated hydrogen bomb on Wednesday local time, or if the explosion that triggered a 5.1-magnitude earthquake was a nuclear test more akin to previous ones in 2006, 2009, and 2013. Even as the UN Security Council held an emergency session on Wednesday, the White House said initial US findings were “not consistent with North Korean claims of a successful hydrogen bomb test”—something that would have represented a major ramp-up in North Korea’s nuclear capabilities.

But this test was not business as usual for North Korea in one important way, believes Charles K. Armstrong, a leading expert in Korean history and politics at Columbia University: “It’s not clear that they are really interested in using this as a negotiating tactic.”

That diverges somewhat from previous nuclear brinkmanship from North Korea’s leaders. In the past, the international community has managed to cool some of the persistent tensions set off by North Korea’s nuclear tests and missile launches by offering energy and food. That, in turn, was aimed at getting the country’s leaders back to the negotiating table, on a long and fraught road to potential nuclear disarmament. Now, Armstrong explains, Kim Jong Un appears less interested in building leverage for negotiations than in bolstering his internal political clout—and after North Korea’s continued broken promises on nuclear testing, it’s not clear that the United States and its allies could even offer him more enticements.

“There’s not much we can do anymore to increase the economic pressure on North Korea,” Armstrong said in a phone interview Wednesday.

In any case, this time the nuclear test appears to be more geared toward amassing power for the young leader than engineering a way to get much-needed relief. “Number one: They’ve conducted this nuclear test for themselves,” Armstrong said. “Not so much, this time, for the outside world, but to demonstrate the strength of the Kim Jong Un leadership, and the position that they are a force to be reckoned with.”

“I think they are very serious about a nuclear program,” he added. “They do want to engage with the US, in my view, and break out of their isolation and improve their economy, but in a kind of perverse way, they feel this is the best way to do it. They want to negotiate from a position of strength.”

Other North Korea experts have expressed similar sentiments. “North Korea’s armament program is on its own timetable, and it’s not unlikely that every potential new stage is tested out as quickly as possible, regardless of what is going on elsewhere in the world,” B.R. Myers, the author of several books on North Korea and a North Korea analyst at Dongseo University in South Korea, told Slate. “I think the West needs to get away from the habit of regarding the regime’s nuclear tests and ballistic launches as isolated provocations timed to generate maximum attention.”

Nuclear ambitions are key to the regime’s identity, Armstrong says, and shouldn’t be discounted. “The pillar of North Korea’s sense of identity and power under Kim Jong Un is having nuclear weapons,” he explained.

One dominant theory is that North Korea provokes the international community with nuclear and missile tests to try to exact aid as an inducement to calm down. After North Korea’s first nuclear test in October 2006, the six-party talks between the regime and the United States, South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia fell apart, only to come together the following year when North Korea was promised shipments of 50,000 tons of fuel oil in return for a “freeze” of the country’s Yongbyon nuclear facility. But North Korea’s second nuclear test in May 2009 effectively ended discussion of US energy assistance to North Korea.

In 2012, Kim Jong Un promised his country would suspend nuclear tests and allow inspections in exchange for American food aid. But that also fell apart when North Korea launched a long-range missile later that year. North Korea again tested a nuclear device in February 2013.

This time, another key world event might be driving Kim’s decision-making: 2016 will be the first time in 36 years that the entire ruling Workers Party has met for a congress, hosted in the capital in May. “This is a very big deal,” Armstrong told me. “The nuclear test is part of the preparation in a way. It’s demonstrating Kim Jong Un’s strong leadership, and that North Korea is a strong and powerful state in the run-up to his major meeting.”

In this high-stakes game of nuclear chess, Armstrong stresses that it’s important not to lose sight of the North Korean people.

“What I hope does not happen, however, is cutting off of humanitarian aid, because this is really gravely needed by many millions of people in North Korea,” he said. “I would hope there can be a way found to move forward without making the people of North Korea suffer more than they already have.”

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Why North Korea’s Nuclear Test Isn’t Business as Usual

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Flint Kids Have So Much Lead in Their Blood That the Mayor Declared a State of Emergency. Thanks GOP.

by TeresaBirtles Posted on December 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Children in Flint, Michigan, have such high levels of lead in their blood that Mayor Karen Weaver declared a state of emergency on Monday, calling the situation a “manmade disaster.” The origins of the escalating situation in Flint go back to 2011, when Republican Gov. Rick Snyder appointed an emergency financial manager to balance Flint’s budget—largely by cutting costs on basic public services. Here’s what you need to know:


America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead


Is There Lead In Your House?


An Interview With Pioneering Toxicologist Howard Mielke


How Dangerous Is the Lead in Bullets?


Does Lead Paint Produce More Crime Too?


How Your Water Company May Be Poisoning Your Kids

More MoJo coverage of the dangers of lead.

What’s going on?

In April of 2014, Flint switched its water source from Detroit to the Flint River in an effort to save money. The decision, made by emergency manager Darnell Earley, was met with skepticism: Residents complained that the water was smelly and cloudy. Water tests have since shown high levels of lead, copper, and other bacteria, including E. coli. (GM started hauling in water to its remaining Flint plant last year after noticing that the Flint water was corroding engines.)

According to the Hurley Medical Center study below, the proportion of kids under five with elevated levels of lead in their blood has doubled since the switch to Flint River water, to roughly four percent. In some areas, that number has leapt up to more than six percent. “This damage to children is irreversible and can cause effects to a child’s IQ, which will result in learning disabilities and the need for special education and mental health services and an increase in the juvenile justice system,” wrote Weaver in the state of emergency declaration. In October, the city transitioned back to the Detroit water system, though lead levels still remain higher than the federal action level.

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Pediatric Lead Exposure Flint Water (PDF)

Pediatric Lead Exposure Flint Water (Text)

Why are the lead levels so high in Flint?

Flint, the birthplace of General Motors and once a prosperous city, has been in a state of decline for decades. The population has halved since its peak in the 1960’s and 70’s; by 2013, the city had lost roughly three quarters of its property tax base and suffered from a 16 percent unemployment rate. The problem has been met with austerity: Under a controversial law passed by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, who has been criticized for close ties with the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the state can now appoint emergency managers with the ability to override local policies and make sweeping decisions in the name of “fiscal responsibility”—a policy that stripped half of the state’s black residents of their voting rights.

Flint emergency manager Darnell Earley implemented steep budget cuts, including last year’s decision to save money by changing the city’s water source. In March, Earley nixed a city council vote to “do all things necessary” to switch back to the Detroit system in March, calling the decision “incomprehensible.” He stepped down the next month. The series of events has led to litigation: In November, Flint residents filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that the contaminated water caused them to experience myriad health conditions, including skin lesions, hair loss, depression, vision loss, and memory loss. The same month, the ACLU and Natural Resources Defense Council sued the city, governor, and public officials, claiming that public officials have known for years that drinking Flint River water could result in contamination problems. Michael Steinberg, legal director for the ACLU of Michigan, said, “In their short-sighted effort to save a buck, the leaders who were supposed to be protecting Flints’s citizens instead left them exposed to dangerously high levels of lead contamination.”

How are residents getting by?

Those who can afford it are buying bottled water, but Flint is one of the poorest cities in the nation—41 percent of residents live in poverty. Many still use city water for bathing and cooking.

What are the effects of lead poisoning?

It’s easy to diagnose someone with high lead levels—it simply takes the prick of a finger and a blood test. The symptoms manifest slowly, often years later. According to the World Health Organization, “Lead affects children’s brain development resulting in reduced intelligence quotient (IQ), behavioural changes such as shortening of attention span and increased antisocial behaviour, and reduced educational attainment. Lead exposure also causes anaemia, hypertension, renal impairment, immunotoxicity and toxicity to the reproductive organs. The neurological and behavioural effects of lead are believed to be irreversible.”

What are state officials doing?

A pipeline connecting Flint and other central Michigan counties with Lake Huron is in the works and scheduled to be completed by late 2016. In the meantime, according to a recent Washington Post article, the state has offered more than $10 million to pay for the temporary switch back to the Detroit water system, in addition to covering the costs of water testing and water filters.

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Flint Kids Have So Much Lead in Their Blood That the Mayor Declared a State of Emergency. Thanks GOP.

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After Laquan McDonald’s Shooting, Chicago Targets Police Contract Protections

by RubenVergara Posted on December 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story appears courtesy of the Chicago Reporter, a nonprofit investigative news organization that focuses on race, poverty, and income inequality.

In the fallout from the release of the Laquan McDonald video, Chicago’s top cop lost his job. But the police officer who shot the teenager 16 times is still employed.

Officer Jason Van Dyke, who is captured on police dash cam video shooting McDonald, can thank the police union.

The Fraternal Order of Police contract with the city shapes how Chicago handles police misconduct allegations, disciplines rank-and-file officers, as well as when the city pays legal costs for police officers accused of wrongdoing. While activists have long called for changes to the contract, many people in local government have not been eager to take on that fight—until now.

With cries of reform ringing louder than before and a federal investigation of the police department, aldermen are demanding changes to a union contract that breezed through the City Council in 2014.

“Yes, the FOP is strong,” said Dick Simpson, a political science professor and former Chicago alderman. “But there is huge public pressure at the moment to provide oversight for police and to curb police abuse and corruption.”

The police contract expires in 2017. The Black Caucus is demanding that an officer’s liability risk be tied to their employment, as well as other changes, including tougher punishment for misconduct.

Ald. Howard Brookins (21st) said the contract makes it harder to cut ties with cops like Van Dyke who had numerous citizen complaints against him and had reportedly cost the city more than $500,000 in legal settlements and fees. And critics said the evidence against Van Dyke was damning enough for him to be fired immediately.

“We have to be able to get rid of bad police officers,” Brookins said. “Maybe that’s something we shouldn’t have to bargain for.”

The union contends that changes to the contract would discourage people from becoming cops.

FOP President Dean Angelo said the contract contains fair and necessary protections for cops and doesn’t tie authorities’ hands in misconduct cases such as Van Dyke’s as much as some people think. He cast the aldermen as opportunists riding the wave of public outrage over a white cop shooting a black youth.

“It’s easy now in this environment to point fingers at us,” Angelo said.

Brookins acknowledged that there hasn’t been momentum on the council to change the contract. But now, he said, “There is a political will.”

The police contract

The current police contract, which was approved by the City Council unanimously in November 2014, sets the bar high for firing or suspending a cop.

Part of the agreement, known as the police bill of rights, gives cops a layer of due process beyond what most citizens enjoy. The contract allows officers to get in writing information about an investigation, including who will question them and what they’ll be asked. Cops who shoot civilians can delay making an official statement for several days, and investigators can’t interview them without providing transcripts of every prior interviews or notifying them.

Another union protection came into play in McDonald’s death. Experts suggested the officers who saw the shooting—whose accounts clash with the video—should have been subject to lie detector tests, but the police bill of rights in the contract gives them the right to refuse the tests. In addition, police complaint and disciplinary records must be destroyed in five or seven years based on the type of alleged offense, making it harder to show a pattern of misconduct.

The union recently halted a city effort to grant requests for police misconduct records dating back to the 1960s, arguing that the city violated the union agreement by keeping the files. Investigators are also limited in how they can use past allegations of abuse to resolve new claims, according to the contract.

The superintendent has to file charges with the Chicago Police Board and win an evidentiary hearing to fire an officer or issue a lengthy suspension. Even when investigators sustain allegations against an officer, the contract allows police to skirt the police board. For example, if the Independent Police Review Authority recommends suspending an officer, the contract lets him appeal the decision through arbitration, a process that experts characterize as heavily stacked in favor of cops.

“The incentives of the chief of police on down are further dampened by the knowledge that anything they do can be undone easily in arbitration,” said Max Schanzenbach, a law professor at Northwestern University. “So they have these cops well known to have numerous citizen complaints and settlements paid out for them, but they’re not dismissed from the force.”

Angelo contends that the FOP shields its officers from unfair discipline due to unfounded allegations just as any union would do for its members. He said the life or death stakes many cops operate under and the possibility of false complaints affords them special consideration.

While the public has expressed outrage over cops like Van Dyke, who, until recently, collected a check on desk duty, there’s little the city can do if the cop hasn’t been charged with a crime or had a complaint against them sustained.

The police department was able to suspend Van Dyke without pay when he got charged with murder by the State’s Attorney’s office a year after McDonald’s death, but the department did not fire him. The Independent Police Review Authority froze its investigation after forwarding the case to county prosecutors.

A call for contract reform

Ald. Ameya Pawar (47th) said he wants a separate expedited disciplinary process in the contract for fatal shooting cases like Van Dyke’s where evidence of excessive force is obvious, even without criminal charges or a drawn out investigation.

“There are a lot of questions around why this officer was not removed,” Pawar said.

Some aldermen are scrutinizing the issue of indemnification, or covering legal costs for cops sued for alleged misconduct.

Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd) released a statement calling for the police union to chip in for misconduct settlements, which cost the city more than $50 million last year. She argued that “residents of Chicago should not be solely responsible for the cost of settlements in police cases.”

Ald. Will Burns (4th) a close ally of the mayor, also issued a statement that said “officers with a high number of complaints are a liability for the city of Chicago, and erode the critical trust between police and community.” He said the contract should be reviewed to allow authorities to suspend or fire cops with too many complaint as well as officers subject to excessive force lawsuits settled by the city.

Alderman Howard Brookins at City Hall. Photo by Grace Donnelly

Brookins suggested the city should take a cue from the private sector and write risk management clauses into the union contract.

“If you kept getting your company sued and cost them millions of dollars, you would be out of there,” he said. “And if you kept getting in too many car accidents, even if you said they weren’t your fault, your insurance company would drop you as a liability risk.”

But Angelo said that making an officer’s liability risk cause for termination would discourage people from signing up for a job that is inherently risky.

“We do a job less and less people want,” Angelo said. “That would minimize the population of people who want to perform this calling.”

Critics of the union contract don’t just want to change what’s in the agreement. They also want to change the negotiation process and give the public a forum to air concerns well in advance of a City Council vote on the contract.

Not much public input, if any, goes into union contract negotiations. The FOP and the city’s negotiators typically hammer out an agreement in private, sometimes with the help of an independent arbitrator, and present it to City Council for a vote.

Several experts said the city should hold public hearings about the police contract before negotiations are finalized.

“We need to put some sunlight on those union provisions that are offensive and which ones need to be changed, and then organize at the local level to get city council and mayors who won’t yield to union demands,” said police misconduct expert Sam Walker. “The police union is very effective in playing the crime card against their critics: ‘Oh, you’re against the police, you support the criminals.’ They’ve been doing that for decades.”

Despite increasing national scrutiny of police union contracts and how they affect police accountability, Walker said that they are still an underrated issue. That’s partly because much of the public isn’t aware of their problematic provisions, he said, but also because police unions have proven adept at getting their way in city halls and statehouses across the country.

Brookins and Schanzenbach both said that some of the most challenging concerns about the contract would require changes to state law. Illinois requires cities to negotiate disciplinary procedures as part of collective bargaining and foot the bill for cops sued for misconduct. A state law known as the police officer bill of rights was modeled after one of the most criticized parts of the contract.

But there’s still a lot officials and residents in Chicago can do, Walker said, including targeting the next round of contract negotiations.

“When a contract comes up for a vote by City Council,” Walker said, “it’s too late.”

Angelo said FOP has not been twisting the city’s arm in negotiations.

“The contract has been negotiated for almost 35 years,” he said, “and we certainly didn’t pull the wool over officials in the city of Chicago’s eyes time and time again.”

Political will to take on the FOP

Fighting the FOP isn’t easy. Matthew Piers, who was a top city lawyer under Mayor Harold Washington, said he lost his battle against the union in the 1980s. When Piers, now 64, joined the Chicago Law Department in 1984, the city had approved Chicago’s first FOP contract several years earlier. He had to work within the framework of union agreements made by Washington’s predecessor, Jane Byrne. One of those agreements was the indemnification clause, and Piers was charged with deciding whether the city would pay legal costs for police officers accused of misconduct.

Piers quickly ran afoul of the union for his refusal in numerous cases to foot the bill for cops he believed had intentionally harmed civilians. One such case involved a cop who was accused of raping a woman in the back of his car. The physical evidence, Piers said, left little doubt that nonconsensual sex had occurred, so he declined to represent the officer. But the FOP, which blasted him as anti-police for his stance, took the case to arbitration, citing the union contract. The arbitrator ordered the city to pay legal bills for the officer, who Piers said kept his job.

“Your conduct could cost the city millions with there being no repercussions for you as an individual,” Piers said. “That disconnect—I found it troubling then, and I find it troubling now.”

There have been several versions of the FOP contract ratified since the 1980s, but the provisions that City Council members want to put under a microscope aren’t new.

Angelo wonders why aldermen are talking so tough about a contract that they approved just last year. Aldermen could have questioned the contract or raised the issue of discipline, but, Angelo said, “I didn’t hear a word from any of them.”

“I don’t know if those people read what they voted on,” he said. “But if they didn’t read this contract before they voted on it and now are blaming us—shame on them.”

Brookins said he has raised concerns about the FOP contract in the past, but didn’t feel he had the political capital to be more vocal or force a change until now.

“Even when I was first elected in 2004, it was not popular or desirable to talk against the police,” Brookins said. “Everybody wanted to be the friend of law enforcement, to be tougher on crime, and going against the police, they equated that as siding with the criminals. So lawmaker after lawmaker has been tougher and tougher on crime, saying we support our police officers. So almost anything they wanted they got that they bargained for.”

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After Laquan McDonald’s Shooting, Chicago Targets Police Contract Protections

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The Government’s New Food Rules Will Be a Huge Deal. Bacon Lovers Are Not Going to Be Happy.

by GilbertV90 Posted on December 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Obama administration is soon expected to reveal its new dietary guidelines for Americans, with advice about which foods to pile onto your plate—and which ones to avoid—if you want to stay healthy.

Evidence suggests dairy doesn’t do a body good—so why does the government still push three servings a day?

Once illustrated by the Food Pyramid (and now by a circular graphic called MyPlate), the guidelines are updated every five years, and they’re hugely influential, affecting everything from school lunch menus and government agricultural subsidies to aid programs for low-income families and research priorities at health agencies. They’re supposed to be based on scientific studies and recommendations from nutrition experts, but given all the different theories about what makes a healthy diet—not to mention all the different stakeholders, including Big Ag—past guidelines have sparked plenty of controversy. This year’s drafting process has been particularly contentious. Here’s a primer:

Meat eaters, take note. The government has cautioned in the past against eating too much red meat. But this year, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee—which reviews scientific studies and gives the government advice about how to write its guidelines—has recommended that you watch your intake of all meats, including leaner options like chicken, as my colleague Maddie Oatman reported in February. Seafood will probably still be considered healthy, though, and the government will likely scrap its previous advice about limiting cholesterol—which means that you can replace your breakfast sausage and bacon with a hearty helping of eggs.

Watch that sweet tooth. The new guidelines will likely recommend that you cut down your sugar intake—big time. The Advisory Committee concluded that most people shouldn’t consume more than about four to nine teaspoons of sugar per day, depending on your body mass index. What does that mean for your snacking? A single eight-ounce cup of low-fat strawberry yogurt has six teaspoons of sugar, to put things in perspective. Right now, some studies suggest we eat as many as 30 teaspoons of sugar every day. Here’s a look at several surprisingly high sources.

Shoddy science? In September, food writer and activist Nina Teicholz ruffled feathers by questioning the scientific integrity of the dietary guidelines. In an investigation published by a major British medical journal, she claimed that the Advisory Committee had used some studies by outside professional organizations with backing from Big Food, like the American Heart Association. She also claimed that some members of the committee had received support from groups like the International Tree Nut Council, Unilever, and Lluminari, a health media company that works with General Mills and PepsiCo. The government fired back, arguing that Teicholz’s claims were based on factual errors and that the Advisory Committee had conducted “a rigorous, systematic and transparent review of the current body of nutrition science.” More than 180 scientists called for a retraction of Teicholz’s investigation, but others have agreed that the food industry plays too big a role in what the government tells us to eat. (Check out this Mother Jones feature about how Big Dairy has convinced the government to promote milk, despite evidence showing that too much of it may be harmful for adults.)

Sorry, tree huggers. This year’s dietary guidelines won’t consider the environmental footprint of foods—and that’ll make Big Ag happy. Back in February, the Advisory Committee published a report urging the government to focus on sustainability as a component of healthy eating. Committee members argued that if we don’t think about the planet now—by promoting diets high in fruits and vegetables and lower in meat products—we’ll likely face problems later on. “Access to sufficient, nutritious, and safe food is an essential element of food security for the U.S. population,” they wrote. “A sustainable diet is one that assures this access for both the current population and future populations.” That advice didn’t please Big Ag, whose backers sent letters to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, arguing that environmental impact was beyond the scope of the dietary guidelines. And he listened: In October, Vilsack made it known that the guidelines would pinpoint good foods for human health—not foods with a light impact on the planet.

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The Government’s New Food Rules Will Be a Huge Deal. Bacon Lovers Are Not Going to Be Happy.

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