The data comes amid an ongoing explosion in anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.
According to a new report, anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes in K-12 schools have quadrupled in U.S. states that have laws restricting the rights of LGBTQ+ students.
A Washington Post analysis of FBI data on anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes taking place in K-12 schools and on college campuses, published on March 12 found that anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes “serious enough to be reported to local police” more than doubled across the country in recent years. The Post found that while an average of 108 anti-LGBTQ+ school hate crimes were reported between 2015 and 2019, that average rose to 232 between 2021 and 2022. According to FBI data, the most common hate crimes reported at schools were intimidation, simple assault (assault where no weapon was used), and vandalism.
However, this rise in school hate crimes was more pronounced in the 28 states that have enacted policies restricting LGBTQ+ students’ self-expression and/or limiting how teachers can talk about gender and sexuality in school. In these states, reported anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes on K-12 and college campuses more than tripled from an average of 28 per year between 2015 and 2019 to an average of 90 between 2021 and 2022.
As the Post points out, this increase is even more staggering when you remove college campuses and look at the anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes in K-12 schools only. In states that have enacted restrictive laws, there were more than four times the number of anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes across elementary, middle, and high schools, per year, from 2021 to 2022, compared with the years 2015 to 2019.
Although it’s only March, the American Civil Liberties Union is currently tracking a whopping 478 anti-LGBTQ+ bills across the U.S. this year, with 190 of those bills targeting student and educator rights.
Gerald Declan Radford, 65, initially claimed he shot Lay in self-defense. Prosecutors believe that Declan was the aggressor and was motivated by Lay’s sexual orientation.Meanwhile, nonprofits that work with LGBTQ+ youth have reported an increase in crisis calls. According to the Post, The Trevor Project received over 500,000 crisis contacts during the fiscal year ending in July 2023 compared to the 230,000 the group received the previous year, while the Rainbow Youth Project received over 1,400 calls to its mental health crisis hotline per month in 2023 compared to 1,000 per month in 2022. According to the Rainbow Youth Project, calls from Oklahoma to the group’s hotline more than tripled after details about Nex Benedict, the trans Oklahoma teen of Choctaw ancestry who died the day after three older girls reportedly beat them in a school bathroom, became national news.
“Young people will say, ‘My government hates me,’ ‘My school hates me,’ ‘They don’t want me to exist,’” the Rainbow Youth Project’s founder and executive director, Lance Preston, told the Post. “That … is absolutely unacceptable. That is shocking.”
Category: Crime
Trump Hush Money Case: Trial By Liar!
⚠️⚠️PAY ATTENTION⚠️⚠️
AP NEWS
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
DAILY BEAST-Allison Quinn May 21,2024
Unmasking counterprotesters who attacked UCLA’s pro-Palestine encampment
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/16/us/ucla-student-protests-counterprotesters-invs/index.html
I forget who or where I got this from. But the video on the page clearly shows the violence at the protest for Palestinian rights was caused not by the students, but by supporters of Israel. It has been reported that some of these outside agitators were funded by right wing dark money big donors. Warning the video shows brutal horrifying attacks / assaults on students with weapons, chemical sprays, and anything they could, often a bunch would single out one protester and beat that person to the ground. I will post the article but you will have to go to the link to see the videos and lots of pictures. Also please note that the college security and police simply stood by and let the protestors be attacked. So much for serve and protect. Hugs. Scottie
11 minute readA young man in a white plastic mask beats a pro-Palestinian protester. Another in a maroon hoodie strikes a protester with a pole. A local instigator pushes down barricades.
Law enforcement stood by for hours as counterprotesters attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA on April 30, which erupted into the worst violence stemming from the ongoing college protests around the country over Israel’s war in Gaza.
While a criminal investigation is underway into the assaults that occurred at UCLA, the identities of the most aggressive counterprotesters have gone largely unknown. A CNN review of footage, social media posts, and interviews found that some of the most dramatic attacks caught on camera that night were committed by people outside UCLA – not the university students and faculty who were eventually arrested.
Many at the scene appeared dedicated to the pro-Israel cause, according to social media and their own words that night. The violent counterprotesters identified by CNN, which included an aspiring screenwriter and film producer and a local high school student – were joined by unlikely allies, several of whom are known throughout southern California for frequenting and disrupting a variety of protests and public gatherings.
The young man sporting the white mask and a white hoodie in widely shared video clips is Edan On, a local 18-year-old high school senior, his mother confirmed to CNN, though she later said he denies being at UCLA. Video shows On joining the counterprotesters while waving a long white pole. At one point, he strikes a pro-Palestinian protester with the pole, and appears to continue to strike him even when he was down, as fellow counterprotesters piled on.
“Edan went to bully the Palestinian students in the tents at UCLA and played the song that they played to the Nukhba terrorists in prison!” his mother boasted in Hebrew on Facebook, referencing Hamas. She circled an image of him that had been broadcast on the local news.
“He is all over the news channels,” his mother wrote in a now-deleted post.
Some counterprotesters had been spotted on campus days earlier, drawn by a high-profile pro-Israel rally as inflammatory videos and claims rapidly spread across social media.
Many at the scene Tuesday hid their faces behind masks and scarves. Some attackers sprayed protesters with chemical irritants, hit them with wooden boards, punched and kicked them and shot fireworks into the crowd of students and supporters huddled behind umbrellas and wooden planks, attempting to stay safe. For hours, they sought to pull away pieces of the barrier, scooping up fallen wooden planks and poles to use as makeshift weapons, lunging toward pro-Palestinian protesters who emerged from the camp to protect it from being breached.
As protesters chanted, “We’re not leaving” from the encampment, some counterprotesters shouted back, “You are terrorists, you are terrorists!”
Video footage shows that some counterprotesters instigated the fighting, while others did little to intervene. Then police did little as a large group of counterprotesters calmy walked away, leaving behind bloody, bruised students and other protesters.
The Los Angeles Police Department and California Highway Patrol referred all questions about the incident to the UCLA Police Department, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Law enforcement did not track injuries from the attack. But according to the encampment’s organizers, more than 150 students “were assaulted with pepper spray and bear mace,” and at least 25 protesters ended up being transported to local emergency rooms to receive treatment for injuries including fractures, severe lacerations and chemical-induced injuries.
“I actually thought someone would get killed,” said Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel’s Director Emeritus, who called 911 around midnight as he watched the violence on live TV. “They came to beat people up.”
The next day, Hillel at UCLA posted an open letter from student leaders denouncing what it called “fringe members of the off-campus Jewish community” who did not represent “the estimated 3,000 Jewish Bruins at UCLA.”
“We cannot have a clearer ask for the off-campus Jewish community: stay off our campus,” it stated. “Your actions are harming Jewish students.”
‘You guys are about to get f—ed up’
In one of the more dramatic videos of the night, a protester wearing the colors of the Palestinian flag underneath an LA Kings jersey was knocked to the ground and beaten by multiple counterprotesters as he guarded the encampment.
One of those assailants was On, who rushed into the middle of the fray with his pole. When CNN showed On’s mother a video of him attacking the protester, she said Edan, who she confirmed is a senior at Beverly Hills High School, was only defending himself. His mother – who previously described a smaller group of UCLA students protesting the war last year as “human animals” on social media – said dozens of his schoolmates had also gone to campus on the 30th and that her son intends to join the Israel Defense Forces.
The school district said federal law prohibits sharing information about students, including confirming their identities. On could not be reached for comment directly. When CNN contacted On’s mother for an interview with him, she replied that her son was in Israel and that he claimed he wasn’t at UCLA despite her earlier confirmation.
The man in the LA Kings jersey was ultimately dragged into a group of counterprotesters and kicked by an aspiring Los Angeles screenwriter and producer who CNN identified as Malachi Marlan-Librett, according to a review of social media photos, footage from the protest and interviews with multiple people who knew him. According to his LinkedIn, he graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2019 and attended a UCLA professional film and television program the following year.
A man in a maroon hoodie joined Marlan-Librett in dragging the protester into the mob.
The protester was later seen in a video receiving treatment for a bloody head injury at the encampment. Marlan-Librett and the man in the maroon hoodie, along with other counterprotesters, such as an unmasked man wearing a red bandana around his neck, were seen committing multiple acts of violence throughout the night.
They became prime targets for online researchers who told CNN they had created internal nicknames such as #UCLARedBandana, #UCLANeffHat and #UCLAMaroonHoodie as they attempted to identify them.
In one violent episode captured on video, Marlan-Librett is seen carrying the end of a broom in his hand, using it to strike a protester in the head before kicking him. Even after the protester retreats, Marlan-Librett sneaks up on him from behind and strikes him in the head once again. Marlan-Librett didn’t respond to calls and texts from CNN.
In another video, the man in the maroon hoodie runs toward the encampment yelling, “You guys are about to get f**ked up.” In the over 3-hour-long livestream, the young man is in the thick of the scrum and can be seen hitting another man with a pole before arming counterprotesters with wood planks. The man could be heard yelling at protesters, “F**k you, f**king terrorists,” then, “The score is 30,000” – a reference to the number of Palestinians killed by Israel’s bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza.
Just minutes earlier, the man pepper-sprayed a journalist in the face, while she was filming the crowd. “I had to walk off because I literally could not see anything,” the local journalist, Dolores Quintana, told CNN. “And it was getting in my mouth. And so, I was starting to choke.”
She said a volunteer came out of the encampment to wash out her eyes with water and saline. Quintana took a selfie when she could open her eyes again. In the photo, her face was drenched and pale, with red blotches on her forehead.
“This was the worst situation I ever found myself in as a journalist,” she said. “I was afraid they were going to kill somebody.”
Local provocateurs in the fray
According to multiple acquaintances of the man in the maroon hoodie, he attended Los Angeles Valley College with his brother. Both brothers were enrolled at USC in the fall 2023 semester for a couple weeks before disenrolling, according to the school.
CNN could not reach the man in the maroon hoodie, and he did not have any apparent connection to UCLA.
Neither did Tom Bibiyan, a 42-year-old who was once a local Green Party official. Bibiyan was stabbed at a KKK rally where he was a counter-protester in 2016 and has since become an ardent Trump supporter. His colorful Instagram page is a mix of right-wing memes, numerous posts defending famous men against sexual assault allegations and pro-Israel content.
Video footage shows Bibiyan among those at the front line of people rushing the encampment in an attempt to remove protective metal barriers, as campus security guards watched the violence unfold.
“The moment we rushed the terrorist encampment last night at ucla to take it apart,” he captioned a video he posted to Instagram. “F**k them kids,” he said in a separate post, which has since been deleted.
A CNN journalist reached Bibiyan outside his home, wearing the same jacket he had worn at UCLA, but he refused to say why he had taken part in the violence. “You’re being a little rude, and I’m going to call the police if you don’t leave,” he said.
Other older men spotted among the mob looked familiar to local public school mom Angie Givant as she followed what happened that Tuesday night on social media: a group of right-wing provocateurs who she’d seen protesting LGBTQ rights in public schools at school board and city council meetings around Los Angeles.
“As soon as there were rumors that, you know, things were going to go down at UCLA, there was a mobilization of very familiar reactionary extremists,” she told CNN.
One of the older men, Narek Palyan, joined the group of counterprotesters despite having posted anti-Jewish tropes on his social media accounts. Palyan, who didn’t appear to engage in the violence, claimed to CNN he has a child at UCLA, though a student was not seen accompanying him that night. “I was definitely keeping the peace, at least trying to,” he said.
Student journalists attacked
UCLA junior and student journalist Catherine Hamilton said that when a firework landed a few feet away from where she was standing and she saw the men approaching in masks, it was clear to her that they were about to do something they didn’t want to be recognized for.
“In that moment when that firework went off and started ringing in my ears, I was like, something very bad is going to happen on this campus,” she said.
When the police finally arrived hours later to break up the chaos, Hamilton and her colleagues regrouped to head back to their newsroom. As they walked past a line of cops and along a well-lit street in the center of campus, just before 3:30 am, she says they were encircled by a small group of counterprotesters mainly dressed in black. She told CNN the man leading the group was someone whom she immediately recognized. He was a counterprotester who had previously verbally harassed her and taken a photo of her press badge, she said.
Within seconds, they sprayed the student journalists with a type of mace or pepper spray and flashed lights in their faces. As she tried to get away, Hamilton said, she was repeatedly struck in the chest and abdomen.
One of the journalists confronted the attackers and shoved one before he was pummeled to the ground and beaten, according to video footage of the incident.
‘I was expecting us to start working on an obituary’
The day after the attack, UCLA’s chancellor called the events “a dark chapter” in the school’s history that “has shaken our campus to its core.”
A parent who was at the encampment with their child, a UCLA student, also described the night as feeling like “a civil war movie” with embers raining down and the wounded being treated all around. The parent said they were frantic to find help, calling UCLA campus police six times in a row.
One fourth-year UCLA student – who requested anonymity due to safety concerns – told CNN he was hit in the corner of his forehead with a traffic cone. Minutes later, video captured a counterprotester smashing a wooden plank into the back of his head.
With two deep cuts on his head, he said he rushed to the hospital and ultimately received 14 staples and three stitches for the injuries.
The violence directed at the protesters and his access to medical treatment reminded him of why they had set up the encampment in the first place, trying to raise awareness about the mass deaths and destruction from Israel’s war in Gaza, and calling for the university to divest from any financial ties with Israel. “I had the privilege of going to a hospital,” he said. “In Gaza, there are zero fully functioning hospitals.”
Thistle Boosinger, a 23-year-old member of the encampment who is not a UCLA student, had her hand smashed the night of the violence. She described how her assailant took a piece of wood above his head before slamming it down on her hand. “At first, I just screamed,” she said. “And then after like five minutes where my adrenaline wore off, it was so extremely painful.”
In a video call, Boosinger held up her hand wrapped in gauze and described her injury. “My bone is broken totally in half below my knuckle … [which is] shattered into a bunch of pieces and jumbled up.”
Dylan Kupsh, a UCLA graduate student, said he linked arms with other protesters in an attempt to defend the encampment and keep people safe. “We were … trying to keep the barricade wall up because that was literally protecting our lives,” Kupsh said. It wasn’t long before he was pepper sprayed, forcing him to seek medical treatment as the attacks continued.
Kupsh and others still wonder what would have happened had the encampment been breached that night.
“I hate to say it,” said Catherine Hamilton, the student journalist, “but I was expecting us to start working on an obituary the next day because I thought something that serious would happen to the students in the encampment.”
Do you have information to share about the attack at UCLA? Email us at watchdog@cnn.com.
CNN’s Audrey Ash, Isabelle Chapman, Scott Glover and Curt Devine contributed to this story.
Israel says it will return video equipment seized from AP
Israel is desperate to keep any information or pictures of their genocide and total destruction of Gaza from leaking out to the public. I just found out this morning that Israel military is telling the roving gang thugs that are blocking and destroy aid trucks food supplies where these trucks will be. Also the Israeli military has again targeted food and medical people, including shelling the emergency room and using tanks to shell the only other semi functioning hospital in Northern Gaza. The Israeli government / military is doing everything they can to destroy every aspect of Palestinians lives, culture, buildings, all so the people if any remain will have no way to survive if they try to stay there. The goal is to force the survivors to leave, be relocated so Israel can regain the land it claims as its own. Hugs. Scottie
Updated 5:57 PM EDT, May 21, 2024The Israeli government will return a camera and broadcasting equipment it had seized from The Associated Press on Tuesday, reversing course hours after it blocked the news organization’s live video of Gaza and faced mounting criticism for interfering with independent journalism.
The AP’s live video of Gaza was back up early Wednesday in Israel.
The government seized the AP equipment positioned in southern Israel after accusing it of violating a new media law by providing images to the satellite channel Al Jazeera.
Israeli officials used the new law on May 5 to close down Qatar-based Al Jazeera within Israel, confiscating its equipment, banning its broadcasts and blocking its websites.
After Israel seized the AP equipment, the Biden administration, journalism organizations and an Israeli opposition leader condemned the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pressured it to reverse the decision.
Israel’s communications minister, Shlomo Karhi, said late Tuesday on the social platform X: “I have now ordered to cancel the action and return the equipment to the AP.”
Karhi said the defense ministry will undertake a review of news outlets’ positioning of live video of Gaza. Officials hadn’t previously told AP the positioning of its live camera was an issue. Instead, they repeatedly noted that the images appeared in real-time on Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera is one of thousands of AP customers, and it receives live video from AP and other news organizations.
“While we are pleased with this development, we remain concerned about the Israeli government’s use of the foreign broadcaster law and the ability of independent journalists to operate freely in Israel,” said Lauren Easton, AP’s vice president of corporate communications.
Officials from the Communications Ministry arrived at the AP location in the southern town of Sderot on Tuesday afternoon and seized the equipment. They handed the AP a piece of paper, signed by Karhi, alleging it was violating the country’s foreign broadcaster law.
Shortly beforehand, AP was broadcasting a general view of northern Gaza. The AP complies with Israel’s military censorship rules, which prohibit broadcasts of details like troop movements that could endanger soldiers. The live video has generally shown smoke rising over the territory.
The AP had been ordered verbally last Thursday to cease the live transmission, which it refused to do.
Israel’s opposition leader Yair Lapid called the government’s move against AP “an act of madness.”
Karhi responded to Lapid that the law passed unanimously by the government states that any device used to deliver Al Jazeera content could be seized.
Journalism organizations condemned Israel’s seizure of AP equipment, and the Biden administration also applied pressure.
“As soon as we learned about the reports, the White House and the State Department immediately engaged with the government of Israel at high levels to express our serious concern and ask them to reverse this action,” said Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the National Security Council. “The free press is an essential pillar of democracy and members of the media, including AP, do vital work that must be respected.”
When Israel closed down Al Jazeera’s offices earlier this month, media groups warned of the serious implications for press freedom in the country.
“Israel’s record on press freedom already has been dismal throughout the war,” the Foreign Press Association said in a statement on Tuesday. “It has prevented independent access to Gaza for foreign journalists.”
The AP live video shot from Sderot has provided a rare independent glimpse of the situation in Gaza.
Israel has long had a rocky relationship with Al Jazeera, accusing it of bias against the country. Netanyahu has called it a “terror channel” that spreads incitement.
Al Jazeera is one of the few international news outlets that has remained in Gaza throughout the war, broadcasting scenes of airstrikes and overcrowded hospitals and accusing Israel of massacres. AP is also in Gaza.
During the previous Israel-Hamas war in 2021, the army destroyed the building housing AP’s Gaza office, claiming Hamas had used the building for military purposes. The AP denied any knowledge of a Hamas presence, and the army never provided any evidence to back up its claim.
The war in Gaza began with a Hamas attack in Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 250 others taken hostage. More than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed since then, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.
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Kirka reported from London. Zeke Miller, Aamer Madhani, and Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Several LGBTQ bars targeted with pellet gun in Hillcrest
This is the result of the hate campaign driven by fundamentalist Christian bigots and their thug troops. They are calling these nonlethal rounds but they can seriously injure, cause blindness, or cause lift time serious problems. This is terrorism. They want to force gay people back in the closet, these thugs want the LGBTQ+ out of the public and out of society. They glorify what Putin has done to gay people in Russia. Hugs. Scottie
San Diego Police say Rich’s, The Rail, #1 on Fifth Avenue and PECS in the Hillcrest and North Park neighborhoods were hit by the suspect early Saturday morning.
This kind of hate has never happened to this extent in my lifetime.
Our country has become a piece of shit right before our eyes
It has been worse (lynchings, “fag bashings,” etc.), but it’s not supposed to get worse after it’s been getting better. The backsliding is terrifying.
Still Jail Free After All These Years A Parody Freedom Toast & Don Caron
Parody of Still Crazy After All These Years by Paul Simon. Parody lyrics written by The Freedom Toast – Vocal Performance and Video by Don Caron
Executive Producers Don Caron and Jerry Pender
The way we talk about immigrants has changed. Now the country could too.
I want to thank personnelente at https://personnelente.wordpress.com/2024/05/17/immigration-facts/ for the link. The fact is far too many lies are being told about immigrants due to racism and political advantage. The facts show that immigrants commit fewer crimes than citizens, and that immigrants add to the economy not diminish it. The US economy does far better with immigrants than without them. Hugs. Scottie
The myth that immigrants, documented or otherwise, drive wages lower and crime higher thankfully seems to be petering out. That’s not enough
There is a video at the link above.
An increasing number of Americans are becoming concerned about immigration. As am I. And I am an immigrant. But my concern isn’t tied to the specter of hordes of criminals crossing our borders, as Donald Trump and many of his supporters insist, or to immigrants causing the cost of urban housing to soar, or to low-skilled or unskilled workers driving down wages.
I’m worried instead that our changing attitudes about immigration, our rhetoric and our behavior, will ultimately curtail immigration policy to the point where we cause serious damage to our nation. In a fast-developing, fast-urbanizing world in which a fierce global battle for labor and talent is well underway, America is already underperforming. We have one thing going for us, though: robust immigration rates. And we’re about to give it up.
Post 9/11, America reframed the debate about immigration to be one of national security and borders, rather than economic imperatives, growth or national prosperity.
In terms of sheer numbers, America has more people living in it who weren’t born in the country than any other nation in the world, by a lot. The Pew Research Center estimates that there were 50.6 million people who are not native-born in the United States in 2020. That’s more than the immigrant populations of the next four largest nations combined. But, as a percentage of its population, America now ranks 25th among nations with populations greater than 1 million; roughly 1 in 7 of America’s residents are foreign-born. For the world’s pre-eminent “nation of immigrants,” that number isn’t all that high. As many as 1 in 5 of Canada’s residents are foreign-born, and in Australia foreign-born residents make up almost 30% percent of the population.
What is behind this shift? Post 9/11, America reframed the debate about immigration to be one of national security and borders, rather than economic imperatives, growth or national prosperity. It’s telling that unlike most other countries, in the U.S., immigration now falls under the Department of Homeland Security, rather than economic development, or the Commerce Department or under a department called, say, “Immigration.”
Nearly a quarter century later, this reframing has left us with an enduring misunderstanding about what immigrants contribute to this country. Without reversing this narrative, and a strong national strategy for maintaining — and likely increasing — high immigration numbers, America could soon start to suffer irreparable economic harm.
The myth that immigrants, documented or otherwise, drive wages lower seems to be petering out. Much of the mythology around this stemmed from a largely debunked 2015 Harvard study written by George Borjas called “The Wage Impact of the Marielitos,” which argued that Cuban refugees who formed the 1980 Mariel boatlift caused a large drop in wages for native-born workers in Miami. This proved false. And on a much larger scale, our national unemployment rate of under 4%, with wages rising faster than inflation, lays waste to the idea that an influx of workers hurts the economy in general, or wages in particular.
https://x.com/Scottiestoybox/status/1792188359181320518
And then there is the spreading notion, racist-but-effective, of “migrant crime.” While crime is of course committed by every demographic group, Americans who are not native-born commit less of it than native-born Americans, perhaps in some part because they have a unique disincentive — deportation — to do so. In fact, since the 1960s, immigrant men are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than those born in the U.S. The data proves that rampant migrant crime is a feeling, not a fact.
When we mainstream these counterfactual notions, we distance ourselves from meeting the long-term imperative of maintaining America’s position as the world’s top destination for immigrants. Our continued economic success hinges on growing our levels of immigration. We simply can’t afford to mess this up.
As a percentage of its population, American immigration numbers lag behind competitor nations, like my home country of Canada, which have long understood the benefits of strong immigration and have taken great pains to make themselves attractive destinations for immigrants (as Canada did for my parents, who emigrated from Kenya). We want — we need — our working-age population to grow; more labor means a better, stronger economy. In the face of an imminent drop in those numbers as the baby boom generation retires, immigrants are more critical than ever. Immigrants will fill in this worker gap.
Prioritizing immigration will keep our population from stagnating and possibly shrinking. More than three-quarters of immigrants in the U.S., according to Pew Research, live and work in this country as a result of following normal immigration channels. Given new U.S. Census Bureau data, Brookings estimates that high immigration will allow us to counter an aging populace and help build our working-age population.
With each slip of the tongue when referring to undocumented migrants as “illegals,” we are not simply perpetuating a myth among Americans but, perhaps more dangerously, we are solidifying a reputation as a country that is unwelcoming to the very migrants we so desperately need.
Immigrants also help to alleviate critical worker shortages in a wide range of American industries, filling in the gaps by doing jobs that native-born workers either don’t want to do, or aren’t educated to do. Foreign-born workers comprise 22% of all workers in the U.S. food supply chain, 38% of home health aides, 29% of doctors, 23% of pharmacists and 15.2% of nurses. In STEM fields, more than one-fifth of workers are foreign born, and foreign-born migrants are responsible for more than 75% of patents from the top 10 patent-producing U.S. universities. Those patents lead to startups. Those startups lead to jobs. The workers in those jobs pay taxes and consume, and often launch startups of their own.
The data is clear. In the words of Alexander Hamilton — (or at least the version of him written into the eponymous play by Lin Manuel Miranda), — immigrants get the job done.
With each passing day, each slip of the tongue when referring to undocumented migrants as “illegals,” we are not simply perpetuating a myth among Americans but, perhaps more dangerously, we are solidifying a reputation as a country that is unwelcoming to the very migrants we so desperately need. In doing so, we are putting our future in peril.
I’m not the only immigrant in my family. Every member of my family for four generations and over the last 125 years has ended up becoming an immigrant, from India, to South Africa and Mozambique, to Kenya, to Canada and the United Kingdom and, in my case, to America. We know what it’s like to look for and, ultimately, to find a home. And we will fight to make that home a better place for our children and for those who come after us.
Immigrants are not our problem in America — yet. Let’s make sure we don’t get there.
This is an adapted excerpt from Ali Velshi’s newest book, “Small Acts of Courage.”
Israeli Activists Block & Attack Aid Shipment For Starving Gazans
By my dogs that love gravy, what has Israel become. They have become the very thing that gave them a state, that gave them world sympathy. They have become the apartheid fascist nation that makes one group out to be subhuman, to be lessor, to blame all things on. Israel has taken its first Jewish victimization and while victimizing others still claims to be the victim. Shades of tRump. The phrase “NEVER AGAIN” used to stand for something … but to have meaning it has to apply to everyone. Israeli government has for decades trashed it.
The Israeli government worked for decades to teach their people that Palestinians were not humans like them, that they should either die and go away or simply be happy being slave labor mistreated having nothing. The government has been teaching their people the same message that the southern states during slavery and still today want to teach about black people. These people also claim that Hamas is refusing to release the hostages without knowing or understand that their own government is the ones blocking that. Hamas has been trying to make a deal to release the hostages they took for 5 or more months but Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu has been blocking it. For two reasons. One because as soon as the war is over he loses his protection from prosecution for breaking the laws, the ultra religious groups want the Palestinians gone, and the wealthy including tRump’s son-in-law want to build luxury resorts along the coast of Gaza. See the real issues.
Oh and one important issue. These food trucks were being escorted my the Israeli military who simply did nothing as they people attacked the trucks, harmed the drives, and destroyed the aid. Yes the young people knew where to be on unpublished shipments of food, had support of a well funded by a shadow group support, and the military that was there to protect the food aid simply did nothing. Total government support of this vile disregard of the death and starvation of other humans. Just to drive them out, kill them, and get their land.
To be clear, Israel had become an oppressor nation. They are out of compliance with international laws and with moral decency. It could have and would have been stopped long ago except … money. The AIPAC … The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is the largest most powerful lobby in DC. They spent 603 million in lobbing congress, both parties but mostly republicans to do everything for Israel that is possible. To give Israel aid money, weapons, to defend them at the US, everything for Israel and to hell with the US needs. It is scary how many republicans are in debt or working for foreign government, Russia, Israel, Egypt.
