Tag Archives: rights

There’s a new video game to indulge your worst climate change fears.

by AndyMcQuade Posted on September 5, 2016

Former ACLU attorney Laura Murphy reviewed the company’s policies and platform after allegations from non-white customers that they were denied housing based on race.

Those include Kristin Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who wrote in the New York Times about being denied three Airbnb reservations in a row when planning a trip to Buenos Aires: “Because Airbnb strongly recommends display of a profile picture … it was hard to believe that race didn’t come into play.”

In an email to users, co-founder Brian Chesky outlined the steps Airbnb plans to take to address discrimination. As of Nov. 1, Airbnb users must agree to a “stronger, more detailed nondiscrimination policy.” That includes “Open Doors,” a procedure by which the company will find alternate accommodations for anyone who feels they’ve been discriminated against.

But not everyone believes Airbnb’s policy change will fully address the problem.

Rohan Gilkes, who was also denied lodging on Airbnb, says the new changes don’t go far enough. Instead, he told Grist, they need to remove users’ names and photos entirely: “It’s the only fix.”

Meanwhile, Gilkes is working to accommodate people of color and other marginalized groups: His new venture, a home-sharing platform called Innclusive, is set to launch soon.

Continued here: 

There’s a new video game to indulge your worst climate change fears.

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Another oil pipeline is dead, raising the stakes for Dakota Access.

by MatthiaSwinburn Posted on September 2, 2016

Former ACLU attorney Laura Murphy reviewed the company’s policies and platform after allegations from non-white customers that they were denied housing based on race.

Those include Kristin Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who wrote in the New York Times about being denied three Airbnb reservations in a row when planning a trip to Buenos Aires: “Because Airbnb strongly recommends display of a profile picture … it was hard to believe that race didn’t come into play.”

In an email to users, co-founder Brian Chesky outlined the steps Airbnb plans to take to address discrimination. As of Nov. 1, Airbnb users must agree to a “stronger, more detailed nondiscrimination policy.” That includes “Open Doors,” a procedure by which the company will find alternate accommodations for anyone who feels they’ve been discriminated against.

But not everyone believes Airbnb’s policy change will fully address the problem.

Rohan Gilkes, who was also denied lodging on Airbnb, says the new changes don’t go far enough. Instead, he told Grist, they need to remove users’ names and photos entirely: “It’s the only fix.”

Meanwhile, Gilkes is working to accommodate people of color and other marginalized groups: His new venture, a home-sharing platform called Innclusive, is set to launch soon.

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Another oil pipeline is dead, raising the stakes for Dakota Access.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, Landmark, LG, ONA, PUR, Ringer, The Atlantic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Another oil pipeline is dead, raising the stakes for Dakota Access.

It’s like Uber, but for public transit. Also, it is Uber.

by Kieran63O330 Posted on September 2, 2016

Former ACLU attorney Laura Murphy reviewed the company’s policies and platform after allegations from non-white customers that they were denied housing based on race.

Those include Kristin Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who wrote in the New York Times about being denied three Airbnb reservations in a row when planning a trip to Buenos Aires: “Because Airbnb strongly recommends display of a profile picture … it was hard to believe that race didn’t come into play.”

In an email to users, co-founder Brian Chesky outlined the steps Airbnb plans to take to address discrimination. As of Nov. 1, Airbnb users must agree to a “stronger, more detailed nondiscrimination policy.” That includes “Open Doors,” a procedure by which the company will find alternate accommodations for anyone who feels they’ve been discriminated against.

But not everyone believes Airbnb’s policy change will fully address the problem.

Rohan Gilkes, who was also denied lodging on Airbnb, says the new changes don’t go far enough. Instead, he told Grist, they need to remove users’ names and photos entirely: “It’s the only fix.”

Meanwhile, Gilkes is working to accommodate people of color and other marginalized groups: His new venture, a home-sharing platform called Innclusive, is set to launch soon.

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It’s like Uber, but for public transit. Also, it is Uber.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, Landmark, LG, ONA, PUR, The Atlantic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on It’s like Uber, but for public transit. Also, it is Uber.

The Supreme Court Just Blocked North Carolina’s Sweeping Voting Restrictions

by MarianMessina Posted on August 31, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Supreme Court turned down North Carolina’s request on Wednesday to implement a restrictive voting law that a lower federal court blocked last month. The law would have imposed strict ID requirements, shortened early voting periods, and eliminated same-day voter registration, among other barriers to voting. Critics had said the 2013 law was racially discriminatory, and the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals last month agreed, observing that the state legislature had targeted voting restrictions at African Americans “with almost surgical precision.”

The state waited 17 days after that decision to file an “emergency” request with the Supreme Court for a stay of the ruling, which would have allowed the state to proceed with the November election under the restrictive rules. The eight-member court deadlocked 4-4 on Wednesday on whether to grant that request, falling short of the majority required for a stay of the lower court’s ruling. The February death of Justice Antonin Scalia once again affected the outcome of a highly politicized case, as his vote with the court’s four-member conservative bloc would have allowed North Carolina to proceed with its law.

The North Carolina law was one of the most dramatic and restrictive voting measures enacted in any state since the 1965 Voting Rights Act prohibited discrimination against minorities in voting. The Supreme Court itself paved the way for its passage in 2013 with its decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted the section of the Voting Rights Act that required preclearance by the Department of Justice to enact changes affecting minority voting rights in areas with a long history of discrimination. North Carolina was one of those areas, and it initiated its voting law the day after the Shelby County decision came down.

Allison Riggs, a senior attorney for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice who helped argue the case before the appeals court, issued the following statement after the decision:

The Supreme Court acted in the best interest of North Carolina voters, allowing elections this fall to proceed absent the cloud and concern of racially discriminatory voting laws. This decision opens the door for fair and full access to the democratic process for all voters. Hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians will now be able to vote without barriers. The voting booth is the one place where everyone is equal and where we all have the same say.

Read the decision here:

US Supreme Court

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The Supreme Court Just Blocked North Carolina’s Sweeping Voting Restrictions

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A Federal Appeals Court Just Sided With the Ohio GOP in a Voting Rights Case

by MikelFoy988 Posted on August 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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A divided panel of judges on the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that a lower court erred by reinstating Ohio’s “Golden Week,” a period when Ohio voters could register to vote and cast absentee ballots at the same time.

“This case presents yet another appeal (there are several pending in the Sixth Circuit alone) asking the federal courts to become entangled, as overseers and micromanagers, in the minutiae of state election processes,” reads the majority opinion written by Judge David McKeague. He added that Ohio is a “leader” compared with other states when it comes to early voting opportunities, and that the “undisputed factual record shows that it’s easy to vote in Ohio. Very easy, actually.”

The case, Ohio Democratic Party v. Husted, was filed after Republican state lawmakers introduced a host of voting restrictions in 2013, including the elimination of Golden Week and same-day voter registration. The Ohio Democratic Party, among others, sued in May 2015, arguing that the reductions violated the 14th Amendment and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discriminatory voting practices or procedures. A district court judge in Ohio agreed, ruling in May 2016 that the cuts impose “a modest, as well as a disproportionate, burden on African Americans’ right to vote.”

Judge Jane Stranch, the one dissenting vote on the ruling, wrote that the majority opinion overturned a decision that was based on a 10-day bench trial that included more than 20 witnesses (8 of whom were experts) and produced a 120-page opinion that dismissed many of the claims by voting-rights advocates. But this decision acknowledged that the elimination of both Golden Week and same-day voter registration went too far, even as the lower court disagreed with other challenges to voting restrictions originally brought in the case. Judge Stranch noted that the trial included evidence that African Americans in Ohio used early in-person voting and Golden Week at higher rates than whites in 2008 and 2012, and that it demonstrated the importance of early voting for black voters because of factors including more limited overall access to transportation and less flexible work schedules than their white counterparts.

“A great deal of work underlies the district court’s conclusion on this important subject,” Stranch wrote. “Both that work and the substantial support found in the record stand in opposition to the majority opinion’s blithe assertion ‘that it’s easy to vote in Ohio. Very easy, actually.'”

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican, celebrated Tuesday’s ruling:

Marc Elias, one of the main Democratic lawyers working the case (and the attorney for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, which was not a party to this case), tweeted:

The Constitutional Accountability Center, a judiciary advocacy group, which had filed an amicus brief in support of keeping Golden Week on the books, slammed Tuesday’s decision. David Gans, the center’s director of the Human Rights, Civil Rights, and Citizenship Program, wrote in a statement, “Today’s 2-1 decision…rubber-stamps Ohio’s decision to cut back on early voting and same-day registration, failing to ensure that the state respected the voting rights of all Ohioans. The court’s decision will make it harder for racial minorities and others to cast a ballot this coming Election day.”

Rick Hasen, an elections expert at the University of California-Irvine, wrote on Tuesday that Ohio’s 29-day early voting period was already “exceedingly generous.” He acknowledged that while he “might support Golden Week as good policy, I worry when courts are used in this way to prevent every cutback in voting, especially after voting rights proponents had settled a suit with Ohio on favorable terms.”

Unless the Ohio Democratic Party appeals to the full 6th Circuit or the US Supreme Court, Golden Week and same-day registration will not be in place for the election in November.

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A Federal Appeals Court Just Sided With the Ohio GOP in a Voting Rights Case

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The Director of HBO’s "All the Way" Talks LBJ, MLK, and What They Can Teach Today’s Pols

by GitaBuckner Posted on May 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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It’s an age-old question: how to balance principle and compromise. In All the Way, the new HBO film based on the play by Robert Schenkkan and directed by Jay Roach (Game Change, Recount, Trumbo, Austin Powers), the star attraction is Bryan Cranston’s masterful portrayal of President Lyndon Baines Johnson in the year after JFK’s assassination, as LBJ lied, wheedled, and bullied his way to passing the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 and then won the presidential election of that year. Cranston’s transformation into a man brimming with brio and confidence and also profoundly burdened with anxiety, insecurity, and paranoia is one of the best cinematic depictions ever of an American president. (Move over, Daniel Day-Lewis). But the true beauty and power of the film is its engaging exploration of the inelegant (if not often ugly) nexus of politics and policy. In All the Way, Johnson is a pathological prevaricator who personally betrays his closest political allies (who happen to be southern Democrats and racists)—but it’s all for the greater good of ending segregation. And it works. But there’s a high political price: in the film’s telling, Johnson has doomed his party in the South. (Indeed, Richard Nixon would capture the White House four years later, partly due to his “Southern strategy” of exploiting white resentment and racism.) And, of course, on the other side of the ledger, Johnson’s conniving conduct sunk the nation deeper into the bloody tragedy of Vietnam—and the film notes how that mighty mistake overshadowed his significant accomplishments. Yet All the Way ultimately chronicles a moment when good was achieved—but by a greatly flawed man using dishonest means. That’s what makes the whole damn thing so fascinating.

I talked to Roach about how he turned Schenkkan’s much-acclaimed Broadway play into this gripping political morality tale, which premieres on the cable network on May 21.

Mother Jones: You’ve directed films about modern politics, as well as the Austin Powers movies. But more recently, you’ve gone back in time. You directed Trumbo and now All The Way. What drew you to the LBJ project?

Jay Roach: I saw Robert Schenkkan’s great play on Broadway, while Bryan and I were prepping for Trumbo. Steven Spielberg and HBO reached out to me to see if I wanted to direct the adaptation. I said yes immediately, then realized I was committing to back-to-back projects with Bryan without knowing if Trumbo was going to work out. Could have been awkward. Thank goodness, it wasn’t.

It’s always about story for me. I was drawn in by the incredible predicament LBJ finds himself in in November 1963. He’d wanted to be president his whole life, but after JFK’s assassination, LBJ becomes the “accidental president.” He knows he is perceived as the usurper. However, rather than just consolidate power to win the 1964 election, he chooses to pick up Kennedy’s agenda and immediately joins up with Dr. Martin Luther King and takes on one of the most controversial pieces of legislation he could have prioritized, the Civil Rights Act. In doing so, he lost the support of the South, which he thought he needed to get reelected. I think this proves how sincere he was about civil rights.

MJ: The film looks at politics at a time when segregation was legal and Southern Democrats on Capitol Hill were the obstructionists trying to block civil rights. What about this is relevant today?

JR: Because of the horrible history of Vietnam, most people forget how much was accomplished during LBJ’s term. He worked closely with Dr. King and the other civil rights leaders, and also with representatives and senators from both parties, to push through the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That helped protect the rights of minorities and women, and it is still being used today to protect the rights of gay and transgender people. And then LBJ passed the Voting Rights act of 1965, re-enfranchising millions of Americans who had been frozen out of the democratic process. He also passed other crucial legislation that improved the quality of life for millions of Americans for generations: Medicare, Medicaid, and 60 separate pieces of legislation funding public education, including Head Start. He pushed through major funding bills for transportation, immigration reform, the environment, and the arts (which led to funding for PBS, NPR, and the American Film Institute).

It’s incredibly encouraging to remember that when we elect presidents and representatives who believe that government can work to improve the lives of citizens, we can actually accomplish much for Americans. In those early years, Johnson did put the country first—above party and above personal advancement—and he solved problems.

MJ: In the movie, Johnson is depicted as a man who could be full of confidence and simultaneously riddled with deep insecurity, paranoia, self-loathing, and anxiety. How did that affect his ability to be a leader? Did that make him a difficult character for Cranston to play?

JR: Johnson was an incredibly capable leader, but he was also deeply flawed. After JFK, he knew how he would be perceived—as the usurper from Texas, doomed to perpetual comparison to President Kennedy. And he was to some extent innately anxious, restless, insecure, even self-pitying. You can hear all that in the many phone calls recorded when he was in office. That was part of the attraction for Bryan in taking on this part. Complex characters are what every actor prefers. Directors, too. For both of us, this was an opportunity to tell a story that goes behind the history—to the psychology of the man, possibly even to the heart and soul of the man.

MJ: Johnson did whatever it took to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed. He lied. He cut deals. He compromised. Are there any lessons here for President Barack Obama or other modern-day politicians?

JR: I can only hope the film becomes part of the conversation about what is needed for great leadership, what is required to solve problems for citizens and to raise us up as Americans. For LBJ and for Dr. King—and for the legislators from both sides that they worked with—compromise was not a dirty word. Those who remained inflexible— the segregationists—lost their battles. They were too dogmatic to keep up with history. I hope that for those people who continue to resist the full application of civil rights for every person in our country, this is a cautionary tale.

MJ: My teenage daughter saw the movie with me. Afterward, she asked, “Why does everyone today say John Kennedy was a great president and no one knows much about Johnson?” As you made this film, did you think that Johnson has been shortchanged in popular culture and public history? Might that because of Vietnam and because he essentially left the presidency under a cloud by withdrawing from the 1968 race?

JR: When we look back in time, it’s hard to see through the horrors of Vietnam, which were to some extent rightly pinned on LBJ, It’s tough to recognize and remember all of LBJ’s incredible accomplishments, all the hundreds of important pieces of legislation he was able to pass by working with both sides, throughout his administration. It didn’t help him, either, to be sandwiched between JFK and Nixon in the national timeline.

MJ: In All the Way, Cranston is physically transformed into LBJ. Was that necessary for the movie to succeed? You did not do the same with Anthony Mackie, who played Martin Luther King Jr. and who played him in what might be regarded as an understated fashion?

JR: I work to give every actor what he or she needs to fully interpret a historical character, to feel like the character when he or she walks out on the set. Bryan’s transformation worked for him, and it works beautifully for the story. But Anthony and I talked at great length, and we decided not to try to impersonate Dr. King. Instead, we wanted to channel the essence of the man, especially as he might have come across when he was hammering out political strategy in rooms with the other civil rights leaders. Dr. King is so iconic. We all know what a great speaker he was. And we present some of that, but we also learned, as we watched tapes of his interviews, that he was incredibly strong and calm and quietly powerful in rooms when he was out of the public eye and collaborating with others.

MJ: Bobby Kennedy is a looming presence in this movie, yet he does not appear as a character. What led you to keep him off-stage?

JR: In the play, Robert Schenkkan made the choice to keep Robert Kennedy off-stage to serve as a sort of exaggerated figure of fear for LBJ—a combination of real and imagined threat. (LBJ worried constantly that RFK would step in and run for president, eliminating Johnson’s ability to rise above being the “accidental president.” ) It was an expressionistic choice, but not a big reach. RFK remained attorney general after JFK’s assassination, but he was not that active in the civil rights fights. He was running for Senate, and LBJ helped him campaign, but that story wasn’t so relevant regarding the fight for civil rights.

MJ: You’ve now worked with Bryan Cranston on two projects. What can you tell us about him that fans of Breaking Bad and his films may not know?

JR: I’ve worked with Bryan in two very serious roles, but it turns out he’s an extremely funny man. Between takes while we were shooting All the Way, he would sometimes stay in character as LBJ. This was not for any “method acting” reasons, but so he could harass us all in hilariously aggressive ways, using LBJ’s larger than life “Texas Twists,” his Texas accent, and his pre-sexual-harassment-law political incorrectness. Throw in Bradley Whitford who plays the role of Sen. Hubert Humphrey doing a fantastic and fully inappropriate imitation of Bill Clinton, and Frank Langella who plays Sen. Richard Russell doing his Nixon, and you had a pretty funny Oval Office experience between takes. The Three Amigos of the presidency. They were walking around the set, talking about the pluses and minuses of secretly recording calls and conversations in the Oval Office.

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The Director of HBO’s "All the Way" Talks LBJ, MLK, and What They Can Teach Today’s Pols

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Native Americans Are Taking the Fight for Voting Rights to Court

by CarynX74xvmpk Posted on March 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday night, the long lines of Arizona primary voters highlighted the potentially disastrous fallout from a 2013 Supreme Court ruling that gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The specter of a new disenfranchisement controversy was all too familiar for a group of people who have been fighting for their right to vote in Arizona and much of the West for years: Native Americans. “What’s happening in Indian Country is reflective of what’s happening nationwide,” says Daniel McCool, political science professor at the University of Utah and coauthor of the book Native Vote.

Earlier this month, Indian Country Media Network reported that Native American and Alaska Natives have flagged voting-related problems in 17 states, via litigation or tribal diplomacy with local officials. For example, in Alaska—which will hold its Democratic caucuses Saturday—Alaska Natives scored a victory in September 2014, when a federal judge concluded that state election officials violated the Voting Rights Act when they failed to translate voting materials for Alaska Natives in rural sections of the state. After nine months of talks, they reached a settlement to get election pamphlets translated into six dialects of Yup’ik and Gwich’in through 2020, granting them language assistance ahead of the caucuses this weekend.

9 Facts that Blow Up the Voter-Fraud Myth

Meanwhile, congressional efforts to protect voting rights for Native Americans and Alaska Natives have come to a halt. Last July, Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) announced a bill that would prevent states from moving polling places to inconvenient locations, banishing in-person voting on reservations, and altering early voting locations. The bill, inspired by a voting access case in Montana that compelled three counties to open satellite offices on reservations, has stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Here are a few other cases to keep in mind:

Poor Bear v. Jackson County: In September 2014, members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe from the Pine Ridge Reservation filed a lawsuit against Jackson County, South Dakota, alleging that county officials refused to create a satellite office where Sioux residents could register and file in-person absentee ballots. For tribal citizens, the closest place to submit their absentee ballots is the county auditor’s office in Kadoka, a town that’s 95 percent white and roughly 27 miles away. (Native Americans must travel twice as far as white residents in the county to submit ballots in person, according to the lawsuit.) Voters can also submit absentee ballots by mail, but they have to submit an affidavit to prove their identity if they lack a tribal photo ID card, a potential hardship for Native American voters.

The county commission declined to approve the office because “it believed funding was not available,” despite a Help America Vote Act plan that allowed the county to use state funds to create the office. After residents filed for a preliminary injunction, the commission agreed to open a temporary satellite voting office in the runup to Election Day 2014. Last November, in an agreement with South Dakota’s secretary of state, the Jackson County Commission approved a satellite site through 2023.

Brakebill v. Jaeger: In January, seven members of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians filed a lawsuit against North Dakota state secretary Alvin Jaeger, alleging that the strict requirements under the state’s voter ID law imposed a discriminatory burden on Native Americans. When the state enacted House Bill 1332 in April 2015, it limited the forms of permissible identification at voting booths, required forms of identification to display the voter’s home address and date of birth, and eliminated a provision that allowed voters to use a voucher or affidavit if they failed to bring an ID. The lawsuit alleges that the bill “disenfranchised and imposed significant barriers for qualified Native American voters by establishing strict voter ID and residence requirements.”

According to the lawsuit, Native Americans in North Dakota have to travel an average of nearly 30 miles to obtain a driver’s license. The lawsuit also claims that many Native Americans lack tribal government IDs with residential addresses, which is an alternative form of ID under state law. In February, Jaeger tried to get the case tossed out, arguing that the voter ID law was constitutional. The judge has yet to decide.

Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission v. San Juan County: Less than two years ago, prospective Navajo Nation voters in San Juan County, Utah—where Native Americans are nearly 47 percent of the population—had to travel an average of two hours to submit a ballot in the predominantly white city of Monticello, without access to reliable public transportation. That’s because in 2014, according to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and others in late February, the county closed polling places and switched over to mail-in ballots, placing a “disproportionately severe burden” on Navajo residents. The county has yet to respond in court to the case.

It wasn’t the first time San Juan County has been sued for violating the Voting Rights Act. In fact, the Navajo Nation claimed in a previous lawsuit that the county commission “relied on race” when it decided not to change the boundary lines for a largely Native American district in 2011, three decades after they were initially drawn. In February, US District Judge Robert Shelby ordered the county to redraw its election district lines after he ruled that its current boundaries, which were set after a settlement with the Justice Department in the 1980s, were unconstitutional.

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Native Americans Are Taking the Fight for Voting Rights to Court

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Berta Cáceres is the most recent environmental activist to be killed trying to protect her home

by LaurenceLedger Posted on March 4, 2016

Activists draw a flower on the floor with chalk as part of a makeshift altar for slain environmental rights activist Berta Caceres during a protest outside the morgue in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, March 3, 2016. REUTERS/Jorge Cabrera

Berta Cáceres is the most recent environmental activist to be killed trying to protect her home

By on 3 Mar 2016commentsShare

In the middle of last night, Berta Cáceres, leader of the indigenous environmental activist group National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) and winner of the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize, was assassinated in her home.

Perhaps that sentence does not mean much to you on its own — after all it’s just a sentence, about a woman you’ve never met, in a country you’ve likely never been to, fighting for something you understand in theory but do not relate to. Berta Cáceres — like many, many other indigenous women — was an environmental activist because if she were not, her community would be utterly destroyed. Cáceres led grassroots campaigns against hydroelectric dams on lands belonging to her people, the Lenca; most prominently the proposed Agua Zarca project in Río Blanco. Her work pushed the largest dam builder in the world, Chinese company SINOHYDRO, to withdraw from the project.

Perhaps that, too, does not carry much weight. Let me reword: This dam threatens to force people off of lands that they have called home for millennia. And, in fighting against it, they are subject to very real danger.

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According to Global Witness, 101 environmental activists were murdered between 2010 and 2014 in Honduras alone, and 40 percent of those were indigenous. (For perspective: Approximately 16 percent of the Honduran population is indigenous and Afro-descendant.)

From an Ensia report on violence against environmental activists worldwide:

“Many of those murdered were ‘accidental’ human rights defenders,” says John Knox, a professor of international law at Wake Forest University and independent expert on human rights and the environment of the United Nations Human Rights Council. “They got involved because it was their own land, their own forests, their own water they were defending.”

As a result, Cáceres has been subject to death threats from those with interests in the hydroelectric project, including agents of DESA, the Honduran energy company — to the extent that she was granted a degree of protection by the InterAmerican Commission for Human Rights — and last night, tragically, her enemies made good on those threats.

When we talk about how indigenous women are on the front lines of climate change, this is a striking example: A woman murdered in the so-called safety of her home for fighting for her people’s right to their land, at a time when communities all over the world are losing their grip on their land, thanks to rising tides and more unpredictable disasters.

Berta Cáceres at the Global Greengrants’ Summit on Climate Justice and Women’s Rights in August 2014.Eve Andrews / Grist

In 2014, I had the honor of interviewing Cáceres about the unique challenges that indigenous women face in battling climate change, and she said something that has stuck with me since (translated from Spanish):

“I am absolutely convinced that if I were a man, this level of aggression wouldn’t be so violent. There are always campaigns against leaders. [But] as women we’re not only leading campaigns like the fight against this hydroelectric project, but also against … the whole militarization culture that’s involved in our defense of the public good of nature. We are women who are reclaiming our right to the sovereignty of our bodies and thoughts and political beliefs, to our cultural and spiritual rights — of course the aggression is much greater.”

In speaking with Cáceres, I almost couldn’t believe that she was receiving such threats — who would want to kill a woman so kind, so strong, so obviously good? Well, she triumphantly stood in the way of a corporation that sought to profit off her land, and that was enough.

Cáceres’ death is an incredible tragedy, because the world is minus one person who brought tangible light into it. It also calls attention to the fact that those who fall under the impossibly vague, much-maligned umbrella of “environmental activists” face danger that most of us cannot fathom.

So, at the very least, remember this next time you hear about land rights, or climate change, or violence against women: It is a much darker and more dangerous fight than we can often imagine — to the direct detriment of those fighting it.

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Berta Cáceres is the most recent environmental activist to be killed trying to protect her home

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This Court Ruling Brings Another State Down to One Abortion Clinic

by CandidaEasterbr Posted on February 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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The US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit on Wednesday upheld a Texas-style law requiring all abortion providers in Louisiana to have admitting privileges with local hospitals.

The now-active law will shutter three of the four clinics left in Louisiana. This means that for many women, the closest option will be the clinic in Jackson, Mississippi, which is the only clinic remaining in Mississippi, where strict abortion regulations took the number of clinics from 14 in 1981 to just 1 in 2012.

The Louisiana law, which was signed by Gov. Bobby Jindal in 2014, requires physicians who perform abortions to have “active admitting privileges at a hospital that is located not further than thirty miles from the location at which the abortion in performed.” Texas’ omnibus anti-abortion law from 2013, which is getting a hearing in front of the Supreme Court next week, included a similar provision. And the 2013 admitting privileges law in Mississippi was responsible for closing all but one clinic in the state.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, along with Louisiana women’s health care providers, announced their intent to fight Wednesday’s court decision, which overturned a lower court ruling to block the law, by appealing to the Supreme Court.

“Today’s ruling thrusts Louisiana into a reproductive health care crisis, where women will face limited safe and legal options when they’ve made the decision to end a pregnancy,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “We will immediately seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court so these clinics are able to reopen and continue serving the women of Louisiana.”

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This Court Ruling Brings Another State Down to One Abortion Clinic

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The Supreme Court Just Rejected the Country’s Most Extreme Abortion Ban

by LoisCropper Posted on January 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Monday, the US Supreme Court permanently laid to rest North Dakota’s controversial “fetal heartbeat” law that would have banned abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.

The law, approved by North Dakota’s state Legislature in 2013, was widely cited as the strictest abortion ban in the country because it would have effectively outlawed abortion after the first detection of a fetal heartbeat, which often occurs at six weeks, before many women even know they are pregnant. Six-week bans are so extreme that in many conservative states, which have passed large numbers of abortion restrictions, they have failed to gain traction.

In 2013, after the measure was passed, North Dakota’s sole abortion clinic, the Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo, sued the state, and a judge blocked the law just a month before it was set to take effect that summer. After a series of appeals, a federal judge again ruled the law unconstitutional in July. Once more the state appealed the ruling and it went to the Supreme Court. But the court on Monday refused to review the lower court’s ruling, effectively overturning the ban.

Arkansas is the only other state that has banned abortion after the detection of a fetal heartbeat. That ban, which outlawed abortion after 12 weeks, was also struck down in court last year. The Supreme Court last week decided not to hear the state’s appeal.

Abortion rights advocates are now turning their attention back to the Texas case headed to the Supreme Court this spring. “This utterly cruel and unconstitutional ban would have made North Dakota the first state since Roe v. Wade to effectively ban abortion—with countless women left to pay the price,” said Nancy Northup, whose group the Center for Reproductive Rights is behind both the North Dakota and Texas cases. “We continue to look to the nation’s highest court to protect the rights, health, and dignity of millions of women and now strike down Texas’ clinic shutdown law.”

Oral arguments for the Texas case are scheduled to take place on March 2.

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The Supreme Court Just Rejected the Country’s Most Extreme Abortion Ban

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