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Students and parents at a high school in Brownsville, Tennessee, staged protests this week following reports that some students were texting each other about “stringing a ****** up” and “hang[ing] the ****** lovers.”
BuzzFeed published an image of a group text this week that Kyler Douglas, a graduate of Haywood High School in Brownsville, had shared on Facebook in November. Douglas, 21, said a friend of his who is currently a student at the school had shared the images with him. Douglas said his friend is black and was “too scared” to go public with the images himself.
Participants in the group text discussed “stringing a n****r up” and making “an example” out of “one black guy.” Douglas said the people in the group text are members of the Haywood High baseball team. Three former students and one current student told BuzzFeed the people in the group text were made to write 10-page essays as punishment for the messages.
Eric Perry, a reporter for local ABC affiliate WBBJ-7, reported Tuesday that the school’s principal and assistant principal have been suspended.
Video from Monday showed protesters gathered inside the school. They later moved outside, where an estimated 200 people came together to share supportive messages against racism, according to local media.
Protests outside the school extended into Tuesday, with some demonstrators holding signs that bore messages such as “Together We Stand.”
The group text was brought to the attention of school administration officials on Sunday, according to Haywood County Schools Superintendent Joey Hassell.
The district has launched an investigation that involves local police, although Hassell said in a statement that he does not expect criminal charges to be filed.
“I have requested a detailed report of the investigation to date from the HHS administration,” Hassell said, adding that he has “been in communication” with police and the local district attorney’s office.
“It is my understanding that there will be no criminal charges,” he went on. “However, the school district will review the findings of the HHS investigation and determine what actions will be taken. A thorough review will occur.”
“Our job is to educate and protect all students,” he said. “Hatred, racism, and bigotry have no place in our school district.”
The investigation is expected to last through the rest of the week, Hassell said in a follow-up statement.
Thelma Taylor, the mother of a Haywood High student, told The Jackson Sun that she took particular issue with the reported initial punishment for the people in the group text.
“These athletes were punished with a 10-page essay,” Taylor said. “A girl got in a fight and was suspended from school for a week, and that’s not right.”
“Racism is still in existence in Haywood County, and it’s got to stop,” she told the Sun. “These kids are millennials, and the rules from the 1960s and ’70s don’t work for them.”
HuffPost reached out to the Haywood County School District and Brownsville police for comment, but did not immediately receive a response.
One sunny day in October, at the Jefferson Parish correctional center just across the river from downtown New Orleans, Tiffany Burns, 34, was visiting her boyfriend.
The pair had been dating for almost two years and were still giggly in love when a late July knock on the door sent him away. Scooped up by the police after being accused of robbing a suburban bank at gunpoint, Chrishon Brown, 37, was sent to the correctional center while his case worked its way through the court.
A new, unwelcome chapter of their relationship began, with Brown using all his jail funds to call Tiffany, and Tiffany visiting as often as she could.
It was a long drive from her home in the Metairie suburb west of New Orleans, and could sometimes take about an hour each way with the traffic near downtown, but Burns was happy to do it. “When I visit, sometimes I forget about the glass and it feels like we are together again.”
She felt that way during her visit on 12 October, right up until the moment she walked out the jail door and was handed a pamphlet.
“Visit an inmate from anywhere!” exclaimed the heading. A photo of a smiling blond woman using a tablet with her daughter was featured on the next page.
“From now on, no more visits,” said the jail guard, as she shut the door behind Tiffany. “If you want to see him, read that.”
“I didn’t realize that would be my last visit,” Tiffany later said.
$12.99 per call. In-person visits used to be free.
Tiffany Burns waits for her boyfriend Chrishon Brown to call from prison. Photograph: Ben Depp
Under the new system, in-person visits are no longer allowed. Instead, all visits now must be done by video, either from a smartphone, computer, or at an offsite location.
The pamphlet, published by Securus Technology, makes using a video feed to talk to your loved one seem appealing. It says:
“Do you want to see your loved one more often? Stop missing out on:
• Watching your favorite TV show.
• Singing Happy Birthday.
• Reading a bedtime story ... Never miss another moment.”
Under the new system, each video visit made from home costs $12.99 for 20 minutes. In-person visits used to be free.
This shift also raises a legal question: is in-person visitation an inmate’s legal right?
Video technology run by Securus and other companies is now used in hundreds of correctional facilities across the country.
Although data is hard to come by, Lucius Couloute, a research associate at the Prison Policy Initiative, might have the best guess. By scraping information from news articles, social media, and Google alerts, he estimates at least 600 US facilities now have video visitation programs in place. (Securus did not respond to repeated requests for that information.)
Gary York, a retired Florida prison inspector who writes about video visitation, says his experience supports those findings. He says that over the past five years, most jails in his state have turned to using only video visitation and stopped in-person visitation.
Indeed, according to the Prison Policy Initiative’s data, 74% of US correctional facilities that implement video calling end up either reducing in-person visits, or eliminating them altogether.
The brochure for the new video call system. Jefferson Parish jail has just stopped in person visits. Photograph: Ben Depp/Ben Depp for The Guardian
But why halt in-person visitation?
Security concerns, say the program’s supporters. They point to the conveniences of video, a kind of Skype for the jailed, as a way to combat a nagging security issue: contraband. York says that contraband – drugs, weapons, and more – can be introduced even in no-contact facilities where inmates are separated from visitors by glass. “I’m not going sugarcoat it and say it’s only the visitors that do it,” says York. “Inmate orderlies and officers might be picking up a bag of marijuana that a visitor leaves in the trashcan and getting paid off to deliver it to the inmate. I’ve seen it hundreds of times.”
Another reason is the reallocation of jail personnel. Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joe LoPinto was quoted in a Times-Picayune article as arguing that the new system allows his office to “allocate resources where we think they’re needed, on the streets”. In-person visitation, he said, requires twice as many officers, and York agrees. (LoPinto declined to comment for this story).
Critics, however, say that potential gains are far outweighed by the costs.
‘The impact is going to be so real’
Norris Henderson spent nearly 28 years in prison for murder in Louisiana. Today, he is the founder and executive director of Voice of the Ex-Offender, a not-for-profit group that advocates for inmates’ rights. He strongly believes that stopping in-person visitations is a move in the wrong direction.
“We should be moving toward more human contact and people connecting with other people, not less. When you move away from that,” warns Henderson, “it is easy to dehumanize.”
Léon Digard, from the Vera Institute of Justice, says that his research shows the opposite happening, with “in-person visits increasing outcomes both pre- and post-release”. Couloute additionally points to research published in the Criminal Justice Policy Review that show that in-person visits decrease recidivism.
Instead, both Digard and Couloute recommend this technology be used only as a supplement to traditional methods of visitation.
Behind the security issue lies an even more profound challenge: the emotional and psychological cost of taking away in-person visits. Advocates argue that seeing a person face-to-face, even if it’s through six inches of glass, is critical to the emotional health of prisoners.
Sister Alison McCrary is an attorney and executive director for the National Police Accountability Project. She runs the New Orleans Community-Police Mediation Program. She regularly spends her weekends offering spiritual guidance to those who have been incarcerated, particularly those on death row.
“Visitation is so important to maintaining a prisoner’s faith. So important. I can’t believe they would simply take that away,” she says, in a saddened voice. “The impact is going to be so real.”
Users pay almost $13 for a 20 minute video call. Photograph: Ben Depp
Are visitations a human right?
Ultimately, the substitution of video visitation for in-person visits raises a legal question that applies to correctional facilities everywhere: is it a human right to receive in-person visitation?
Internationally, multiple legal instruments indicate that it is.UN rules call for the allowance of visitors, while theEuropean Prison Rules emphasize that while all forms of visitation may be monitored, maximum contact is the underlying goal: “Prisoners shall be allowed to communicate as often as possible by letter, telephone or other forms of communication with their families, other persons and representatives of outside organisations and to receive visits from these persons.”
Those rules, however, are legally non-binding for US purposes. In 2003, the US supreme court unanimously decided that visitation restrictions with a “rational relation” to prison management do not violate the constitutional right of association.
Tiffany Burns tries to talk to her boyfriend. Their first attempt with the new system was not successful. Photograph: Ben Depp for The Guardian
To understand the impact that all this is having on the loved ones of inmates, I drove out to Metairie, to the home of Tiffany Burns.
Two weeks after her last in-person visit, Burns sits on her bed in her mother’s apartment.
Inside, Burns’s mother has set the table for Thanksgiving dinner, decorating it with orange and yellow crepe fall leaves. It’s a much friendlier environment than the one at the jail or the video visitation center.
In the bedroom, Burns is sitting crosslegged on the bed, nervously fussing with the cheap earphones she just rushed out to buy.
“OK, so he is supposed to call in eight minutes I guess,” she says, staring at her phone, which blinks 6.52pm.
This is her third attempt to video chat with Brown. The first time, she did not know she needed to schedule the call far ahead of time, and the second time, all the slots were filled for the days she was off work. Now, with her slot scheduled and her earphones in, she’s wondering if it will all work out.
Finally, she sees a call coming through.
Her face lights up and then slowly fades as she realizes Brown can’t hear her. She fiddles with her headphones, waves, tries gesturing to him, but ultimately, he never can hear her voice. The two end up simply giggling at the screen image of each other for the remainder of the time.
Later, I speak with Brown by phone and he explains that he believes he was only the third inmate to try to use the video program at the Jefferson Parish jail, and that the other two also said it didn’t work properly.
“We had to pay money for something that didn’t work,” he complains. “I couldn’t even hear what she was saying, and I couldn’t really see her.”
Brown is particularly upset that the in-person visitations are being halted. “How you gonna stop people’s families from coming to see them? That’s messed up. I thought that was a privilege we got here.”
GOOCHLAND COUNTY, Va. -- Bethany Lynn Stephens, a 22-year-old Glen Allen woman found dead in the woods off Manakin Road Thursday night, was mauled to death by her dogs, Goochland County Sheriff James Agnew said.
Stephens' father called 911 Thursday, at about 8:18 p.m., when he went looking for his daughter in an area of Goochland where she often walked her dogs.
He discovered her dogs in the woods, and he told the sheriff's office the dogs appeared to be "guarding" Bethany's body.
Sheriff's deputies arrived and spent 60 to 90 minutes attempted to catch the dogs -- which the sheriff described as pit bull dogs.
Bethany's body was taken to the Medical Examiner's Office.
"It appeared the attack was a violent attack initiated by the victims' dogs while the victim was out for a walk with the dogs," Sheriff Agnew said the Medical Examiner's initial report indicated. "The victim had defensive wounds on her hands and arms trying to keep the dogs away from her, which would be consistent with being attacked while she was still alive."
A white supremacist spotted Maxine Waters on a plane and decided to take a creepy selfie while she slept.
Chuck C. Johnson, a Holocaust denier who recently made the news by pushing a narrative of false sexual harassment allegations against Chuck Schumer, spotted Auntie Maxine on the plane and decided to play the part of the super creep.
He waited until she was asleep before slipping over to her seat in first class and posing with her.
The picture, which was taken on a flight from Washington, D.C. to California, is creepy enough. And the comments on it are about what you’d think from the followers of a white supremacist.
George Zimmerman even commented on the image. “I guess the WE THE PEOPLE are paying for first class ticket so she can sleep on the plane,” he commented. He also referred to Waters as another fellow Black congresswoman writing, “Corrine Brown is trying to Flee her prison sentence.”
Waters’ opponent weighs in
But perhaps most disturbing of all: Omar Navarro, Waters’ opponent for her House seat, commented on the creepy picture.
Navarro’s simple “LOL” comment has since been deleted, but it still raised a lot of eyebrows. What kind of congressional candidate looks at a white supremacist creeper pic and decides to comment on it at all?
Then again, this is the same political climate in which Roy Moore, an accused pedophile, only barely lost to Doug Jones in Alabama; and one in which Donald Trump, who has also been accused of sexual misconduct, is still the president of the United States.
So, all things considered, maybe it isn’t so surprising. Sadly, this might just be politics as usual nowadays.
Navarro has since taken down the comment.
An African convert to Judaism, who had obtained permission to study at a yeshiva run by the Conservative movement in Jerusalem, was deported on Monday morning after being detained at Ben-Gurion International Airport overnight.
Francis Kimani (“Yehuda”) Njogu, a 31-year-old citizen of Kenya, was turned away even though he had a valid three-month tourist visa to Israel, signed by Israel’s ambassador in Nairobi Noah Gal Gendler.
Njogu's conversion to Judaism, about 10 years ago, was overseen by the rabbi of the Abayudaya community in Uganda. The Abayudaya community split from Christianity in the early 20th century when its members began identifying as Jews and observing Jewish laws and customs. Last year, the Jewish Agency ruled that the Abayudaya are a recognized Jewish community.
After he converted, Njogu spent a year living among the Abayudaya. Currently a student in Nairobi, he spent a semester several years ago at the Brandeis Summer Institute in Los Angeles studying Judaism.
Earlier this year, Njogo put in a request for a three-month tourist visa to Israel, indicating in his application that he intended to study and travel in the country. His application was denied by the Ministry of Interior.
Last month, he reapplied, this time directly through the Israeli Embassy in Nairobi, where he explained that he had been accepted to a study program at the Conservative yeshiva. An embassy official contacted the yeshiva to confirm that he had, indeed, been accepted. About 10 days ago, Njogo was informed that his visa had been approved and that he should come to the embassy to pick up his passport. The visa, which contains the stamp of the Israeli ambassador to Kenya, states that the purpose of his visit is to study at the Conservative yeshiva.
Meghan Markle met the in-laws on Wednesday.
Not just any old in-laws either.
These were the slightly more obscure members of the royal family - not that that makes them any less grand or 'old-school' - who get an invite to the Queen's annual Christmas lunch.
While we can only speculate about the high-jinks and japes which happened within the palace walls, we did get glimpses of the various guests as they arrived.
Harry rather sweetly wore a token from their time conducting a long-distance relationship - but that wasn't the only item of jewellery to have caught the public's eye.
One family member turned up wearing what has been described as a 'racist' accessory to meet Meghan for the first time.
Princess Michael of Kent, who's married to a cousin of the Queen, was wearing a beige coat, black turtleneck and a brooch that raised a lot of eyebrows.
The brooch itself is a piece of 'Blackamoor' art.
'Blackamoor' art has been at the centre of a fierce debate for years, owing to how it depicts men of colour - i.e. in positions of servitude.
The brooch was spotted by Lainey Gossip , who pointed out its problematic origins writing, "To put it bluntly, this is a piece of jewelry made out of slave imagery.
"And a woman who once told black people to 'go back to the colonies' at a restaurant decided that would be what she would wear to the Queen’s Christmas lunch, where the Queen’s grandson was introducing his fiancée, who is biracial, to the extended family for the first time."
DamnMeghan Markle was greeted with 'racist' jewellery at Queen's Christmas lunch for royal family
Princess Michael of Kent was spotted sporting an item of offensive jewellery
The Queen's annual Christmas lunch is held at Buckingham Palace for extended members of her family (Image: Getty Images Europe)
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/meghan-markle-greeted-racist-jewellery-11736477
I hope Meghan can hold up to the racism she'll have to deal with long term.