March 17, 1966 Cesar Chavez and the National Farm Workers Association left Delano for Sacramento, the capital of California, a 340-mile march which would take three weeks. They were calling public attention to the plight of farm workers and for their struggle for the right to organize a union.
March 17, 1968 In London’s Trafalgar Square, at the largest anti-Vietnam War protest in Britain to date, 25,000 people marched. They were demonstrating against American action in Vietnam and British support for the United States policy. Some then attempted to storm the U.S. Embassy, resulting in 200 arrests and fifty taken to hospital, nearly half police officers.
March 17, 1978 The oil supertanker Amoco Cadiz ran aground and, in the worst oil spill ever, lost its entire cargo of 1,619,048 barrels (223,000 tons).A slick 18 miles wide and 80 miles long polluted approximately 200 miles of France’s Brittany coastline. The Amoco Cadiz disaster was the first marine environmental catastrophe to be covered by the world’s media in real time. one of the victims Read more
March 17, 2003 President George W. Bush warned U.N. weapons inspectors to leave the Iraq within 48 hours. They were in country searching for weapons of mass destruction (WMD), conducting 900 inspections at 500 locations in four months.Bush had given Saddam Hussein the same amount of time to step down from power or suffer the consequences of the planned invasion. Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector, and Mohamed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the inspectors had found no WMDs, or any evidence of a renewed Iraqi nuclear weapons program. Despite increasing cooperation from Iraqi authorities relenting to international pressure, the inspectors were unable to complete their work due to the American threat of war. U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq before they were forced to leave by President George W. Bush Hans Blix’s report to the UN Security Council just ten days earlier
So there is still no peace deal and Trump is left arguing whether Putin treated his envoy abysmally before rejecting it or just sent him packing after he was forced to listen to another 3-hour Putin lecture on his alternate version of European history.
this guy’s distinguishing quality is his boundless contempt for anyone who voices the slightest disagreement with him. you can see in his voice and mannerisms that he thinks he’s better than everyone around him. (which to my mind is just compensation for his palpable self-loathing)
NEW: Here are the 10 “democratic” senators that voted to sell out veterans, the American people, and their colleagues in the House. Cortez MastoDurbinFettermanGillibrandHassanKingPetersSchatzSchumerShaheen
As someone who has criticized Mark Kelly in the past, all I can say is that this video is fantastic, this message is fantastic, and can we have more of this from the Dems please.👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
Made a mistake on the interest payment numbers. I took short term debt that needs to be refinanced and incorrectly extrapolated. So the interest savings won't be as significant as I stated.
1. Texas AG Ken Paxton is usurping the authority of Texas Courts in a brazen act of autocratic power.He's ordering court ordered gender changes void.He's demanding licenses and birth certificates revoked, with reverted replacements for trans people.Subscribe to support my journalism.
This was the DOGE staffer who was previously fired for racist and nazi tweets but was brought back after JD Vance and Elon supported him. http://www.yahoo.com/news/doge-st…
I’m not leaving the Dem party. I’ve been here for 33 years. If guys like Schumer wanna vote with republicans, THEY can leave the Dem party and join the GOP.
Why did Trump repeat Russian propaganda and lie about this? Why would he claim that a Ukrainian army in Kursk could only be saved from annihilation if Putin benevolently agreed to Trump’s request not to do so? Why is the US President deceiving Americans with Russian lies?
After all these are only migrant children being abuse, right. These people turn a blind eye to clergy abuse but claim just knowing LGBTQ+ people exist is sexualizing children. Just having a story read to them by a man dressed up in costume as a woman is sexual abuse, seeing a drag show is sexual abuse and they demand the erasing of drag queens along with all the LGBTQ+ to save the children. But a for profit detention center creditably accused of forced oral, anal, and in the cases of girls vaginal rape of children by staff as a means of punishment or control, that is OK because the kids are not white. Sick as fuck. Hugs
The lawsuit against Southwest Key included allegations of abuse at an El Paso facility. The administration said it will no longer use the company’s services.
Southwest Key national headquarters in Austin. A federal lawsuit against the company over allegations of abuse at its child migrant shelters has been dropped by the Trump administration. Credit: Eddie Gaspar/The Texas Tribune
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McALLEN — The Trump administration moved to drop a civil lawsuit Wednesday against the largest provider of housing for migrant children over allegations of sexual abuse and harassment of unaccompanied minors, saying it also would no longer be using that company’s services.
The motion to dismiss the suit against Austin-based Southwest Key Programs was filed after the federal government announced it had moved all unaccompanied children to other shelters and would no longer be using that provider.
The complaint, filed last year during the Biden administration, alleged a litany of offenses between 2015 and 2023 as Southwest Key Programs, which operates migrant shelters in Texas, Arizona and California, amassed nearly $3 billion in contracts from the Department of Health and Human Services.
“Out of continuing concerns relating to these placements, HHS has decided to stop placement of unaccompanied alien children in Southwest Key facilities, and to review its grants with the organization. In view of HHS’ action, the Department of Justice has dismissed its lawsuit against Southwest Key,” the HHS said in a statement.
Children were warned not to report the alleged abuse and threatened with violence against themselves or their families if they did, according to the lawsuit. Victims testified that in some instances, other workers knew about the abuse but failed to report or concealed it, the complaint said.
“DOJ’s lawsuit revealed horrific sexual abuse and inhumane treatment of children detained in Southwest Key shelters,” said Leecia Welch, an attorney who represents unaccompanied children in a separate case. “It’s shocking to me that the government now turns a blind eye to their own contractor’s actions. I hope the impacted children will have other legal recourse and support in healing from their abuse.”
At least two employees have been indicted on criminal charges related to the allegations since 2020.
The civil lawsuit had sought a jury trial and monetary damages for the victims.
Southwest Key Programs furloughed employees across the country. “Due to the unforeseen federal funding freeze and the stop placement order on our unaccompanied minor shelters and Home Study Post Release programs by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, we have made the difficult decision to furlough approximately 5,000 Southwest Key Programs’ employees,” the company said in a statement shared Tuesday.
According to allegations in the 2024 lawsuit, Southwest Key employees, including supervisors, raped, inappropriately touched or solicited sex and nude images of children beginning in 2015 and possibly earlier.
Among the accusations: One employee “repeatedly sexually abused” three girls ages 5, 8 and 11 at the Casa Franklin shelter in El Paso, with the 8-year-old telling investigators the worker “entered their bedrooms in the middle of the night to touch their ‘private area.’ ”
The lawsuit also alleged that another employee, at a shelter in Mesa, Arizona, took a 15-year-old boy to a hotel and paid him to perform sexual acts for several days in 2020.
Children were warned not to report the alleged abuse and threatened with violence against themselves or their families if they did, according to the lawsuit. Victims testified that in some instances, other workers knew about the abuse but failed to report or concealed it, the complaint said.
“DOJ’s lawsuit revealed horrific sexual abuse and inhumane treatment of children detained in Southwest Key shelters,” said Leecia Welch, an attorney who represents unaccompanied children in a separate case. “It’s shocking to me that the government now turns a blind eye to their own contractor’s actions. I hope the impacted children will have other legal recourse and support in healing from their abuse.”
At least two employees have been indicted on criminal charges related to the allegations since 2020.
The civil lawsuit had sought a jury trial and monetary damages for the victims.
March 13, 1830 The term “rat,” referring to a worker who betrays the interests of fellow workers, first appeared in print. The New York Daily Sentinel reported on replacement workers who had agreed to work for two-thirds of the going rate. “ . . . [many printers are out of work, others are being paid about 2/3 the regular pay; they should join in cooperative associations, ‘as we have done’] “ [While] the master printers [fill] their offices with boys and two-thirds men, alias ‘rats,’ it will be difficult to find a remedy.”
March 13, 1864 The first contingent of 14,030 Navajo reached Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Men, women and children had been forced to march almost 400 miles from northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico to Bosque Redondo, a desolate tract on the Pecos River in eastern New Mexico. Traveling in harsh winter conditions for almost two months, about 200 Navajo died of cold and starvation along the way. More died after they arrived at the barren reservation. The forced march, led by Kit Carson, an Indian agent and military leader in both the Mexican and Civil Wars, became known by the Navajos as the “Long Walk.” A grueling 400-mile march to imprisonment in a sterile land. More on The Long Walk
March 13, 1945 Pax Christi, an international Catholic peace organization, was founded in France. From their website: “Pax Christi is a ground up organization – it began with a few committed people who spoke out, prayed and worked for reconciliation at the end of the second world war, and is now active in more than 60 countries and five continents, with more than 60,000 members worldwide.” Pax Christi history
March 13, 1968 Clouds of nerve gas drifted outside the Army’s Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, poisoning 6,400 sheep in nearby Skull Valley. Sign near Dugway: Warning Hazardous Area: This area may contain Chemical, Biological and Radiological contaminated material and explosives . . . Read more about Dugway – the home of Amerian WMD
March 11, 1988 Ten days of protest and direct action ensued demanding an end to nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site. The site, larger than the state of Rhode Island, is an outdoor laboratory and national experimental center for testing nuclear weapons. The actions resulted in over 2,200 arrests, the largest number of arrests in U.S. history for a political protest outside Washington, D.C.
March 11, 2011 More than 85,000 Wisconsin citizens rallied outside the Capitol in Madison to welcome the return to the state of fourteen Democratic state senators. Known as the Wisconsin 14, they had left the state to deny the senate a quorum, thus delaying passage of legislation which took away public employees right to collectively bargain and restricting other rights of union members. State Senate Minority Leader Mark Miller remarked about the gathering, “This is what democracy looks like!” The Wisconsin 14
As anyone who follows me on this blog might or should know I love the content Ethel produces. I followed this young woman from when they were a teen struggling with their sexuality and their finally blossoming out and accepting herself as they are. How she feels inside themselves, and how they deal with that in the world around them. It is a hard struggle. I know I had to do it as a gay teen constantly surrounded and barraged by anti-gay propaganda, and that is what Ethel went through as a trans girl. It was complicated by her being autistic, which there is nothing wrong with being autistic, but it did mean a lot of people did not understand her and were unable to appreciate how detailed she can be. I know it is hard for her to cover these haters talking about abusers as she was abused as a child. However she stands up and gives grand videos supporting trans people and she includes her own strengths to the issue. Hugs
There is no meaningful difference between the claims made by gender ‘critical’ fascists when targeting trans people and those made by the Nazis of Nazi Germany. Said monster has been empowered by the press for too long and now threatens us all.
Hi, welcome to Essence of Thought with me, Ethel Thurston, as your host.
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Pax Christi, an international Catholic peace organization, was founded in France. From their website: “Pax Christi is a ground up organization – it began with a few committed people who spoke out, prayed and worked for reconciliation at the end of the second world war, and is now active in more than 60 countries and five continents, with more than 60,000 members worldwide.”
Scottie's Playtime 