#because really they just want to protect their experience they dont care about the wider community

[redysetdare]

I'm an "AroAce Stereotype" I'm Romance averse/Repulsed> I'm Sex repulsed I'm non-partnering I hate the idea of marriage in all forms I don't want a QPR at all I'm loveless I'm someone who gets uncomfortable at sexual talk and sex jokes I'm someone who often has innuendos or sexual concept fly over my head. I'm someone who can't tell when someone is flirting with me I'm someone who can't pick up on romantic or sexual tension I'm someone who finds "shipping" to be annoying I'm someone who says "They just seem like friends to me" I'm someone who believed that attraction could be turned on or off I'm someone who can't make sense of romance at all and cant figure out what makes it different from every other relationship. I'm someone who thinks romance is stupid and sex is gross and I don't understand the big deal everyone makes about it I'm someone who never was upset to find out I was AroAce but rather relieved as I have a genuine fear of being stuck in a romantic relationship that i do not want. In all cases I am not an AroAce who can be considered "normal" by the standards of allo society.

I'm not just a stereotype for you to shit on. I'm not the reason aphobes are aphobic I'm not a problem that you need to erase and refute to be accepted by allos. I'm not an experience that you and ignore as "not really how aspec people are" just because You are not part of it. Stop leaving us behind. Stop throwing us under the bus. We deserve support too. We deserve to not be demonized and shunned because we're an "stereotype". We are not the problem. We are not a problem to be fixed. start fighting aphobes on their logic instead of trying to make up for our existence.

#text #ace #aro #asexual #aromantic #aroace #arospec #acespec #aspec #mostly talking abt aroace experience because thats me #but this can go for other aspec identities too #aphobia #im just tired of other aspec people agreeing with the oppressors that certain experiences are wrong #and promising that THEY aren't like that THEY are normal and shouldn't be ridiculed #but never do anything to protect the rest of us from ridicule #because really they just want to protect their experience they dont care about the wider community #and it's frustrating #because we should all be supporting each other because thats how things get better #if we tell aphobes there are exceptions then suddenly all aspec people can become an exception #because they dont care about us being socially acceptable aspecs they care about us not being aspec period #they dont want us to exist because then they have to question their world view and that dont like doing that #so they'll play nice with the ones they can pretend are normal before they decide that you're not good enough either

[myceliumbutch]

hi. you seem cool. and i've wanted to tell someone my observation for a while.

on youtube, when i search 'trans man', a good portion of the results are about a tiktok of a trans man who is crying and upset about being a man and what he's come to find that entails. i can't watch any of the videos because everything frames it as if he regrets being a trans man in the first place, or he's stupidly getting upset as "what did you expect?" sorta thing. and i dont know, perhaps he does regret transition. i just cant watch any of it because it is so transphobic.

Thank you for mentioning this to me actually. I watched the first reaction that popped up, a woman from Prager U talking about a video of a trans man talking about the loneliness he faces in transitioning. And what he talks about in his original tiktok is something I see a lot of trans masculine people talking about.

Masculinity is lonely! Gaining then losing that connection is really hard. You see people here talk about it some but it's also seen in older media, it's a central point in the seminal "Stone Butch Blues".

However he is being used to further the right's points (presumably) against his will. The woman from Prager U refers to him as "biologically female" and posits that his pain is from transitioning - having female feelings and female emotions while being perceived as male. Not only incorrect, this also downplays the emotions of men, positioning them as creatures incapable of love, connection, spontaneity, or emotions. To her credit, she does reach out to her male audience for takes, but this is not much credit, as it shouldnt take much to acknowledge that men are suffering. This is one of the right's biggest points! They love to talk about decline in male university attendance, suicide rates, ect ect. If they gave half a shit about men this would be a great point about how maleness is in crisis or whatever. But they dont care about men, they care about their status quo and the protection of cishet white malehood.

I don't have a tiktok so I can't see his channel, but his video and point doesn't mean that he regrets transitioning. He said he's been out for like, 8 years? Emotional turmoil doesn't mean you want to change genders. Hell women express discontent with a lot about their gender, doesn't mean they want to be men.

Really I have one larger takeaways from this. We cannot let transphobes take this narrative.

Transmasculine loneliness is OUR experiences. It is OUR pain it is OUR feelings and letting right wingers talk over us is painful. However since we, generally speaking, refuse to have a conversation about it, they get the narrative! The refusal of the wider trans community to take our issues seriously creates more room for the transphobic right to use our tears for their own, selfish ends.

#asks #genuinely thank you for showing me #transphobia #trans man #transmasculine #transmasc

[mikoriin]

yeah i wouldve loved to share my experience with them!

i am a former trans man now cis woman, and i was on testosterone for about a year and a half. my initial dysphoria when it came to my female body was do to trauma. i saw womanhood and my body as being an object for mens use because of what i went though and also with everything going on in my life at the time of my transition i thought i needed to take control. control of something, anything. so i took control of my identity. if i was a boy, men wouldnt desire me. if i said i was trans then i meant it. and i was, and i was happy

however, when i began to physically transition when i was 19 i noticed something was wrong. i was becoming a man and i realized…this isnt what i want. this isnt what i need. my trans self was a way to protect the little girl that had been abused for so many years and when i saw myself become an actual man i didnt like it. i felt even worse dysphoria about my body. and so i stopped testosterone.

i hadnt begun my detransition until late 2019, right before we moved. i was very very confused because i no longer associated with who i was then, and being a man was miserable to me. i cant remember everything going through my head at the time, just that when i thought of how i would like to present, and what would make me the most comfortable, i felt being woman aligned was best. for a while i said i didnt care what people referred to me as, that i could go any pronouns or presentation. but the more i opened myself up to what i was thinking and feeling, the more i missed being feminine and girly and being myself. everything masculine that i ever did was performative because i wanted to be respected and seen as who i said i was. and i still think that if you tell someone ‘this is who i am’ even if its only for a short period of time, they should respect that. you shouldnt have to perform to be seen as the gender you are or you feel you are at the time. 

its been four years so far off T and 3 years since my detransition. i have my periods again because i am on birth control and let me tell you birth control REALLY helps. my boobs perked back up, my hips got wider, facial and body hair no longer grows as thick and as fast, weight distributes differently. i am a Woman. and ive never been happier with myself in my life. 

not everyone who transitions is going to be happy with the results, and that may lead them to detransition. however, that doesnt mean you arent still trans if you feel cis isnt right for you. you dont even have to physically transition at all to be a binary trans person either! gender is such an array of colors and sounds and textures. its different for each person. i was happy when i was trans because it protected me, but i no longer need that protection now because i am an adult who is recovering and healing from my trauma. play with your gender, experiment, research and identify with things that seem right to you. there is no wrong way to be trans, or even to be cis. and i wanna say, if you do realize youre cisgender in the end, no matter how long it has been (for me it was 7 years i identified as a boy) there is nothing wrong with it because at least you have the experience. 

#replies #detransition #this is a big touchy topic but im open to discussion!

[haltquirk]

// i might make the fallout au a verse for this blog?? idk. i have hcs about what all the characters are and actually now that im thinkin about it im gonna ramble under the cut. its based around fallout 4 a lot since im hyperfixating on that but id be down to expand on it or move away from that

shouta is a synth, unit designation Z1-18. he was a courser but members of the railroad captured him while he was on a reclamation mission. they were originally just going to kill him but a member argued that they should try to save any synth they can, including coursers. he was shocked that someone who he considered his enemy was willing to defend him like that, and immediately got pretty attached to that dude. he ends up working with the railroad after unlearning the toxic shit the institute taught him about not being human and all. since lots of their missions overlap, he helps yuuei out sometimes.

said dude is hizashi, who runs put your hands up! radio. he uses his platform to secretly send messages to railroad agents. different songs might mean different things. like a certain song might mean “courser in this area” and he signals the area by mentioning the place by name. he keeps his affiliation with the railroad hidden to avoid ruining the best source of communication and information gathering, and also to avoid getting Murdered. to mask his involvement in the railroad and have a wider source of information, he joins yuuei, also helping them coordinate stuff and do missions.

toshinori is a pretty famous vault dweller. he left his vault, and was the only survivor when a big raider party (all for one) hit the place. he was trained in wasteland survival by a caravan guard (nana). he did lots of independent training then fought tooth and nail to get her to take him under her wing. from then on he was n and out of his vault traveling a lot, until the vault got hit. then he left and vowed hed clean up all the raiders. nana died trying to help him get revenge. he (thought he) killed the leader of the raider band all for one, which was the dominant raider band. after that things seemed to settle down for a bit, partially because he formed (or maybe just joined up with and helped?) yuuei, a band of self described heroes.

izuku is also a vault dweller. his vault opened before he was even born and he grew up hearing stories about the heroic all might, cleansing the wasteland. he completely idolized him. eventually his vault starts getting all kinds of fucked up and they ask for volunteers to go out and find stuff to fix it. obviously he volunteers. he’s laughed right out of the room but decides to go anyways, and he spends a lot of time trying to hunt down yuuei to join them

ochako is a wastelander. her family runs a lil farm, just trying to get by. her parents pay protection money to raiders to avoid getting hit, and its her life goal to make it so they dont have to do that. she joins up with izuku to try and join yuuei so she can do that

katsuki was raised in the same vault as izuku. he was the one everyone thought was gonna end up, like, becoming overseer and going to get what they need and all kinds of stuff. he also goes out to try and find what the vault needs, and find them protection. im also kind of toying with the idea of connecting him to the brotherhood of steel?? i thought about making him a squire but i wanted him to be from izukus childhood

tenya was pretty much raised around yuuei. his brother is a big name hero and hes training to be like him. 

shouto is a brotherhood squire and the son of elder enji, who has been nicknamed endeavor for all his hard work in expanding brotherhood influence. his father was shitty to his mom and obsessed with having the perfect child to succeed him as leader of the brotherhood. his mother had a breakdown, hurt him, and was subsequently locked up for it. eventually he escapes the brotherhood and ends up tagging along with izuku

eijirou is a ghoul. hes pretty chill about it and doesnt really see it as a bad thing. he feels like it makes it easier for him to protect his friends. idk i dont have much backstory for him other than He Ghoul

eri is a ghoul, and a glowing one. she was kept by a rogue group of ex-institute scientists calling themselves the eight precepts of death, who studied her and tried to use her to develop something to make everyone immune to radiation, or something to reverse being a ghoul, or some kind of weapon. lots of experimenting done to her. she ends up getting cared for mostly by shouta since the radiation doesnt hurt him.

#It’s not a hero’s job to deal with ordinary citizens. (ooc) #im too lazy to type more but <3 <3 <3

[lodelss]

“They Don’t Care if You Die”: Immigrants in ICE Detention Fear the Spread of COVID-19

Mario Rodas, Sr. first found out there was a deadly virus spreading through the country while he was watching television at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility in Massachusetts. In early March, Rodas had been pulled over and arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents while driving to the supermarket with his wife, a legal resident and the mother of his three U.S. citizen children. Since then, he’d been in the custody of ICE, mostly at Plymouth.

The more Rodas heard about the disease, the more fearful the 59-year-old became.

“I was scared for my health,” he told the ACLU. “I was worried because I have diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. It was stressful, you know?”

Just days later, word spread through the prison — a staff member had tested positive for Covid-19. When they heard the news, Rodas’s son — also named Mario — and the rest of his family were terrified.

“Just do whatever you can to stay alive and hopeful,” he said he told his father over the phone. “We are doing everything we can to get you out of there.”

Mario Rodas, Sr. in family photos with his wife and children.

Across the country, there are nearly 36,000 people in the custody of ICE on an average day. Some are in county jails and state prisons, others are in facilities run by private contractors like the GEO Group. Many are asylum seekers who have asked the U.S. to protect them from persecution abroad. Others — like Rodas — are undocumented workers who lived in the U.S. for years before being swept up by ICE.

Now, public health officials say that overcrowding and poor access to sanitation inside ICE detention facilities is a crisis in the making, with two doctors contracted by the Department of Homeland Security calling them a “tinderbox” for infections in a letter to Congress on March 19.

“As local hospital systems become overwhelmed by the patient flow from detention center outbreaks, precious health resources will be less available for people in the community,” they wrote.

Across the country, tensions are rising inside of ICE facilities, with detained immigrants and their families fearing that cramped conditions and an indifferent bureaucracy are a deadly threat to their safety — and to the wider public’s health. So far, at least 20 detainees and dozens of staff at facilities housing them are confirmed to have contracted COVID-19. Many others are under quarantine, raising fears that the virus is spreading undetected and potentially infecting guards who shuttle in and out for their shifts before returning home.

These numbers are likely a significant underestimate due to shortages of COVID-19 tests. In a hearing last week on an ACLU lawsuit, an attorney working for the government admitted that there were no tests available at two Maryland facilities, while simultaneously arguing that detainees there were not at risk due to the lack of confirmed cases. ICE has said they aren’t required to disclose information about staff at privately-run detention facilities who have tested positive.

“The nature of these facilities is such that it’s really impossible to engage in the social distancing that we’re all practicing right now,” former director of ICE John Sandweg told Democracy Now.

After the staffer at Plymouth fell ill, Rodas said that guards started bringing him and the others in his cell block to meals in shifts. But each group was still as large as 80 people at a time, and none were given masks or gloves to wear.

“The government is asking everyone to stay home and not have physical contact with other individuals. But meanwhile, my dad was out there amongst 80 to 150 other individuals, and you don’t know if they could potentially have something and be contagious,” said Rodas’s son.

Realizing the danger he was in, Rodas’s lawyer, Kerry Doyle, reached out to friends at the ACLU of Massachusetts. On March 25, the ACLU filed a petition asking a judge to order ICE to release Rodas along with another detained immigrant on the grounds that their medical conditions placed them at high risk for COVID-19 complications, in violation of their constitutional rights.

Two days later, the judge issued a ruling. Rodas would be able to go home.

“They released him on pretty strict conditions,” said Doyle. “He has a GPS bracelet.”

Rodas’s son rushed to Plymouth to pick him up. “I was so happy, I couldn’t believe it,” he told the ACLU. Now, Rodas is quarantining in a room in the house until 14 days have passed since his release.

“I think that the whole thing highlights how easy it is for immigration [authorities] to release detainees that have cases that are low priority and allow them to go back home during these very uncertain times,” said his son.

Mario Rodas, Sr. being released from Plymouth County Correctional Facility on March 27th.

Mario Rodas, Jr.

The suit that led to his father’s release was one of a series that have been filed across the country in recent weeks seeking similar orders. Fifteen were filed by the ACLU and its affiliates, with over thirty people released from detention as a result of those suits so far.

Alfredo Garza was one of those lucky few. He was released on March 26 from the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, a private facility run by the GEO Group in Washington, following a suit filed by the ACLU and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. Garza suffered a heart attack while detained this past January and says he was chained to a bed in the hospital while receiving treatment.

“Doctor care is terrible there,” he said. “The worst there is.”

In 2018, an investigation by Seattle Weekly revealed that the Tacoma facility had been providing substandard medical care to immigrants housed there.

Washington was the first state in the country to experience a substantial outbreak of COVID-19, and in early March Garza says that he and others in the facility became afraid when another detainee fell ill with what they assumed was COVID-19.

“They took him out in a suit, like one of the people who catch bees,” he said.

Geo Group and ICE have not confirmed any cases of COVID-19 in Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, but Garza says that his unit was placed under quarantine and kept away from contact with others anyway:

“We said, ‘Hey we need sanitizer or chlorine.’ But they said, ‘No, we don’t have any.’”

After the ACLU’s suit was filed, Garza was released along with another detainee who suffers from high blood pressure. Since then, 80 people housed in the facility have gone on hunger strike to raise attention to the danger they say they face from the pandemic.

“I have a friend who has diabetes and he was worried when he found out that there were people with coronavirus inside,” Garza said. “They didn’t even tell him, ‘Hey, we are going to put you somewhere else’ or ‘We’re going to do something.’ They don’t care if you die.”

Despite widespread calls from public health experts that the detained population must be drastically reduced in order to prevent COVID-19 from spreading unchecked and taxing the healthcare system, so far ICE has largely refused pressure to release people in its custody.

On Tuesday, the agency indicated it had identified 600 detainees deemed “vulnerable” to COVID-19, and released 160 of them. But that same day, lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asked a judge to stay a ruling that would have released 22 detainees with medical conditions from two county jails in Pennsylvania.

“Families were getting ready to pick up their loved ones when the stay came down,” said Michael Tan, Deputy Director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the ACLU. “ICE is playing an unacceptable game of Russian Roulette with people’s lives.”

Karlyn Kurichety is a supervising attorney with Al Otro Lado, a California-based organization that provides legal services to asylum seekers and other immigrants. She says that her clients in the Adelanto ICE Processing center — another Geo Group-run facility — are scared.

“It’s just cruel and really disturbing, there’s basically no precautions being taken,” she said. “The detainees are not given any information about COVID-19. There are no signs, no talks, no advisories, nothing of that nature.”

Adelanto has put strict measures in place requiring visiting attorneys to wear N95 masks — despite the fact that even health care workers in the state aren’t able to find them. Since then, Kurichety says she hasn’t been able to visit her clients —most of whom are asylum seekers — or arrange a non-recorded phone call to discuss their case.

Recently, she says she spoke with one client who told her that two people in his dorm collapsed with symptoms that sounded like those of COVID-19. The dorm was subsequently placed under quarantine. Another said that he’d been cleaning his cell with body wash.

“It’s like if you wanted to design a situation where a virus would spread, this is what you’d do,” she said.

On March 30, the ACLU filed suit on behalf of six detainees in Adelanto with serious medical conditions, arguing that “without a rigorous testing regime, it is impossible to conclude that COVID-19 has not already entered Adelanto.”

Two days later, a federal judge ordered all six released.

But Kurichety says that those who remain are fraying emotionally.

“They’re really scared. I would say it’s almost like panic,” she said. “Their families, too, because we’ve been talking to their sponsors and sometimes they break down in tears. They’re really frightened for their loved ones.”

Published April 8, 2020 at 04:11PM via ACLU https://ift.tt/39TXN14

#IFTTT #Blogger

[nancydhooper]

“They Don’t Care if You Die”: Immigrants in ICE Detention Fear the Spread of COVID-19

Mario Rodas, Sr. first found out there was a deadly virus spreading through the country while he was watching television at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility in Massachusetts. In early March, Rodas had been pulled over and arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents while driving to the supermarket with his wife, a legal resident and the mother of his three U.S. citizen children. Since then, he’d been in the custody of ICE, mostly at Plymouth.

The more Rodas heard about the disease, the more fearful the 59-year-old became.

“I was scared for my health,” he told the ACLU. “I was worried because I have diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. It was stressful, you know?”

Just days later, word spread through the prison — a staff member had tested positive for Covid-19. When they heard the news, Rodas’s son — also named Mario — and the rest of his family were terrified.

“Just do whatever you can to stay alive and hopeful,” he said he told his father over the phone. “We are doing everything we can to get you out of there.”

Mario Rodas, Sr. in family photos with his wife and children.

Across the country, there are nearly 36,000 people in the custody of ICE on an average day. Some are in county jails and state prisons, others are in facilities run by private contractors like the GEO Group. Many are asylum seekers who have asked the U.S. to protect them from persecution abroad. Others — like Rodas — are undocumented workers who lived in the U.S. for years before being swept up by ICE.

Now, public health officials say that overcrowding and poor access to sanitation inside ICE detention facilities is a crisis in the making, with two doctors contracted by the Department of Homeland Security calling them a “tinderbox” for infections in a letter to Congress on March 19.

“As local hospital systems become overwhelmed by the patient flow from detention center outbreaks, precious health resources will be less available for people in the community,” they wrote.

Across the country, tensions are rising inside of ICE facilities, with detained immigrants and their families fearing that cramped conditions and an indifferent bureaucracy are a deadly threat to their safety — and to the wider public’s health. So far, at least 20 detainees and dozens of staff at facilities housing them are confirmed to have contracted COVID-19. Many others are under quarantine, raising fears that the virus is spreading undetected and potentially infecting guards who shuttle in and out for their shifts before returning home.

These numbers are likely a significant underestimate due to shortages of COVID-19 tests. In a hearing last week on an ACLU lawsuit, an attorney working for the government admitted that there were no tests available at two Maryland facilities, while simultaneously arguing that detainees there were not at risk due to the lack of confirmed cases. ICE has said they aren’t required to disclose information about staff at privately-run detention facilities who have tested positive.

“The nature of these facilities is such that it’s really impossible to engage in the social distancing that we’re all practicing right now,” former director of ICE John Sandweg told Democracy Now.

After the staffer at Plymouth fell ill, Rodas said that guards started bringing him and the others in his cell block to meals in shifts. But each group was still as large as 80 people at a time, and none were given masks or gloves to wear.

“The government is asking everyone to stay home and not have physical contact with other individuals. But meanwhile, my dad was out there amongst 80 to 150 other individuals, and you don’t know if they could potentially have something and be contagious,” said Rodas’s son.

Realizing the danger he was in, Rodas’s lawyer, Kerry Doyle, reached out to friends at the ACLU of Massachusetts. On March 25, the ACLU filed a petition asking a judge to order ICE to release Rodas along with another detained immigrant on the grounds that their medical conditions placed them at high risk for COVID-19 complications, in violation of their constitutional rights.

Two days later, the judge issued a ruling. Rodas would be able to go home.

“They released him on pretty strict conditions,” said Doyle. “He has a GPS bracelet.”

Rodas’s son rushed to Plymouth to pick him up. “I was so happy, I couldn’t believe it,” he told the ACLU. Now, Rodas is quarantining in a room in the house until 14 days have passed since his release.

“I think that the whole thing highlights how easy it is for immigration [authorities] to release detainees that have cases that are low priority and allow them to go back home during these very uncertain times,” said his son.

Mario Rodas, Sr. being released from Plymouth County Correctional Facility on March 27th.

Mario Rodas, Jr.

The suit that led to his father’s release was one of a series that have been filed across the country in recent weeks seeking similar orders. Fifteen were filed by the ACLU and its affiliates, with over thirty people released from detention as a result of those suits so far.

Alfredo Garza was one of those lucky few. He was released on March 26 from the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, a private facility run by the GEO Group in Washington, following a suit filed by the ACLU and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. Garza suffered a heart attack while detained this past January and says he was chained to a bed in the hospital while receiving treatment.

“Doctor care is terrible there,” he said. “The worst there is.”

In 2018, an investigation by Seattle Weekly revealed that the Tacoma facility had been providing substandard medical care to immigrants housed there.

Washington was the first state in the country to experience a substantial outbreak of COVID-19, and in early March Garza says that he and others in the facility became afraid when another detainee fell ill with what they assumed was COVID-19.

“They took him out in a suit, like one of the people who catch bees,” he said.

Geo Group and ICE have not confirmed any cases of COVID-19 in Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, but Garza says that his unit was placed under quarantine and kept away from contact with others anyway:

“We said, ‘Hey we need sanitizer or chlorine.’ But they said, ‘No, we don’t have any.’”

After the ACLU’s suit was filed, Garza was released along with another detainee who suffers from high blood pressure. Since then, 80 people housed in the facility have gone on hunger strike to raise attention to the danger they say they face from the pandemic.

“I have a friend who has diabetes and he was worried when he found out that there were people with coronavirus inside,” Garza said. “They didn’t even tell him, ‘Hey, we are going to put you somewhere else’ or ‘We’re going to do something.’ They don’t care if you die.”

Despite widespread calls from public health experts that the detained population must be drastically reduced in order to prevent COVID-19 from spreading unchecked and taxing the healthcare system, so far ICE has largely refused pressure to release people in its custody.

On Tuesday, the agency indicated it had identified 600 detainees deemed “vulnerable” to COVID-19, and released 160 of them. But that same day, lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asked a judge to stay a ruling that would have released 22 detainees with medical conditions from two county jails in Pennsylvania.

“Families were getting ready to pick up their loved ones when the stay came down,” said Michael Tan, Deputy Director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the ACLU. “ICE is playing an unacceptable game of Russian Roulette with people’s lives.”

Karlyn Kurichety is a supervising attorney with Al Otro Lado, a California-based organization that provides legal services to asylum seekers and other immigrants. She says that her clients in the Adelanto ICE Processing center — another Geo Group-run facility — are scared.

“It’s just cruel and really disturbing, there’s basically no precautions being taken,” she said. “The detainees are not given any information about COVID-19. There are no signs, no talks, no advisories, nothing of that nature.”

Adelanto has put strict measures in place requiring visiting attorneys to wear N95 masks — despite the fact that even health care workers in the state aren’t able to find them. Since then, Kurichety says she hasn’t been able to visit her clients —most of whom are asylum seekers — or arrange a non-recorded phone call to discuss their case.

Recently, she says she spoke with one client who told her that two people in his dorm collapsed with symptoms that sounded like those of COVID-19. The dorm was subsequently placed under quarantine. Another said that he’d been cleaning his cell with body wash.

“It’s like if you wanted to design a situation where a virus would spread, this is what you’d do,” she said.

On March 30, the ACLU filed suit on behalf of six detainees in Adelanto with serious medical conditions, arguing that “without a rigorous testing regime, it is impossible to conclude that COVID-19 has not already entered Adelanto.”

Two days later, a federal judge ordered all six released.

But Kurichety says that those who remain are fraying emotionally.

“They’re really scared. I would say it’s almost like panic,” she said. “Their families, too, because we’ve been talking to their sponsors and sometimes they break down in tears. They’re really frightened for their loved ones.”

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247012 https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/they-dont-care-if-you-die-immigrants-in-ice-detention-fear-the-spread-of-covid-19 via http://www.rssmix.com/

[phemiec]

But...but...what about gay cops? Shouldn't it be a good thing if cops and stuff are trying to participate and support? And the phrase "there are no queer friendly cops" is like... what about gay cops? o: I'm not trying to start discourse, but like... gay cops. I'm pals with some gay cops. One of my dad's cop friends has a gay son and takes him to pride and stuff D: why can't cops and corps be involved?

I know gay cops too, but they come to pride out of uniform, as gay people and allies. Not as cops. The police protect the interests of those in power and have only ever supported marginalized groups when it is politically popular or convenient to do so. If there are exceptions to that rule it is because of individual cops, usually disobeying orders, not cops as a whole.Corporations first priority is always money, not lgbt people. They are permittited to join parades when they help pay for them but this has always been controversial and personally I believe if companies really supported lgbt people they'd donate without needing a place in the parade. They dont care about us, they want ad space.I used to really love big city pride parades, I went to toronto pride every year for 10 years, and marched many times. But seeing year after year with more uniformed cops and cereal companies than actual lgbt people has just left me jaded. There are SOME good things about pride being more inclusive to the wider public and less politisized, specifically the allowance for younger and closeted lgbt people to experience some acceptance/support and have a chance to be themselves publicly and openly. But we cant forget that this experience was fought for, and if we make protestors the enemy and institutions the face of pride, we're betraying that.Pride is supposed to be political, the first prides were riots and protests and if we forget that and let them be taken over by systems that only care about us when we're popular we risk forgetting where we came from and how far we still have to go. Im not going to talk about this anymore or respond to the other asks i got about this because I've made how i feel clear and im not a political blog, but i hope you can understand where I'm coming from now.

#pride #keep pride political #asks #anonymous #rant

[storylikethewind]

Canada Day and Canadian Exceptionalism

 (It’s not quite Canada day here yet but i’m not sure if I’ll be on tomorrow and i’ve been having some comprehensibility issues so i want to type this while i can make some knd of sense). There’s also not actually a lot of in-depth information here. My brain is kind of fuzzed and all over the place.But i wanted to get it out just in case so this is just another reminder that Canada is a colonial settler state. It is stolen land, much of it still unceded land, meaning that the first nations peoples never officially signed over anything and it was taken by force, and by rights indigenous people should still control what goes on there. The Canadian (and previously British) government that colonized it is guilty of the genocide and continuing oppression of and violence against First Nations, Metis, and Inuit/Circumpolar peoples. Besides straight genocide, Canada and the RCMP have established residential schools and trends like the “”sixties scoop”” to attempt to strip indigenous peoples of their identity and erase languages (they were also hotbeds of abuse). Native communities experience unforgivably high rates of poverty, addiction, suicide, and environmental violence (particularly in water quality) due to systemic racism and federal and civilian indifference. Nothern communities are heavily exploited-Canada seems willing to violate the land with pipelines, fracking, and other destructive measures but thinks seals are a cute enough part of nature to warrant unnecessary protections, at the expense of Inuit lives. Today indigenous people are still fighting for reparations, the return and proper treatment of their land and sacred saces, and the reformation of the (shitshow) “Indian Act” (particularly in regards to injustices against native women and those of ‘uncertain parentage’), among many other issues. Violence against indigenous women is so epidemic and police/non-native indifference so deeply entrenched that even though they make up only 3% of the population, they make up 10% of female victims of homicide, and are at an extremely increased risk to be victims of other violent crimes and sexual violence. A national enquirey is still on going and many indigenous people and groups have been expressing frustration because the governemnt still isn’t listening to them on this issue (among MANY, obviously).

[Here is a google doc (still getting updated, from the looks of it) of indigenous organisations to donate to. I’m going to try to get more specific links in here later, but I need to organize all my bookmarks. Look at the Highway of Tears site for just a small example of the vast MMIW issue and the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center for a wider view. Alethea Arnaquq-Baril’s film Angry Inuk is focused on the cultural prejudice and systemic violence inherent in anti-sealing, but also touches on a lot of the issues faced by Inuit in Canada (its also just a great movie and everyone should watch it)

Unsettling Canada 150 is a specific call to action and fantastic breakdown of why the 150th is nothing to celebrate, and is based on activist Arthur Manuel’s book Unsettling Canada: A National Wake Up Call. It includes written resources, videos, samples of the book, and specific organized actions on July 1st.]

Canada was also a slave-owning, slave-trading state and many places in Canada were built on the backs of slaves, and anti-Black violence is endemic in Canada. The famous McGill University was named after a slave-owner. Canada has seen the same systemic injustice and violence for Black people in its prison systems, its schools, its historical erasure. Desmond Cole talks about it in his documentary The Skin We’re In and Charmaine Nelson talks here about how erasure works in Canadain education under a veneer of “inclusivity” that dominates Canada’s international image. (An example: going to uni in Nova Scotia, I learned about Africville, a Black community in Halifax that the city tore down and forced everyone out of. It became a focal point of a powerful cultural/political movement among Black Canadians, especially on the east coast. But schools almost never mention it, and even for life-long, non-Black residents of the province, they had almost never heard of it until then). Canada also has entrenched Islamophobia and xenophobia. We, like the US, interred Japanese and Japanese-descended residents and passed laws against so-called “Barbaric Cultural Practices”. We continue to detain immigrants and refugees and have plenty of white supremacist groups and hate groups in our borders. (Read Sarah Adjekum’s article on “The Myth of Canadian Exceptionalism” for a good overview of a number of issues).

We’ve had eugenics and the forced sterilization of the mentally ill, and those with mental disabilities in particular still face stigmatization and difficulty getting treatment (I went off my meds living in Canada because even though I had healthcare, it didn’t cover my psychiatrist or pills, and it lead to several psychotic breaks. I know that’s anecdotal but the point is Univeral healthcare isn’t always). 

Despite Trudeau frequently using pride as a photo-op, LGBTQIA+ groups still suffer prejudice and violence, particularly where they intersect with race (violence against two-spirit people is often included in the MMIW discussions), and transgender Canadians still face a huge uphill battle and transphobia in the medical community. “Universal Health Care is the best” is not a good enough answer when so many important things are still out of reach.

This is all really basic stuff but I think thats the problem--lots of Canadians still dont know it or, more likely, don’t want to think about it when they could be feeling smug and superior to the US. American exceptionalism is ridiculous because its so unwarranted, but I think Canadian exceptionalism is even more dangerous because the country has such good PR, so no one outside thinks there’s a problem. And inside, lots of Canadians (especially white, and straight, upper-class, English-speaking, neurotypical/non-disabled etc.) don’t want to admit it. The idea that Canada is a good country for everyone is insidious and wrong and claiming it is further endangers and erases all the people who suffer. Being ‘better than America’ in terms of colonialism and violence is such a low bar its near meaningless. We need to be much better, period, and we need to listen to all the people calling for justice instead of ignoring them because they don’t fit Canada’s friendly, peaceful branding.

Sorry this isn’t very well organized let me know if the links dont work or if something should be added/removed

#canada #canada 150 #canadian exceptionalism #canadian colonialism #im sorry this is such a mess #im having a disordered thinking night at the worst time #warning: written by a tired schizophrenic

[lodelss]

“They Don’t Care if You Die”: Immigrants in ICE Detention Fear the Spread of COVID-19

Mario Rodas, Sr. first found out there was a deadly virus spreading through the country while he was watching television at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility in Massachusetts. In early March, Rodas had been pulled over and arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents while driving to the supermarket with his wife, a legal resident and the mother of his three U.S. citizen children. Since then, he’d been in the custody of ICE, mostly at Plymouth.

The more Rodas heard about the disease, the more fearful the 59-year-old became.

“I was scared for my health,” he told the ACLU. “I was worried because I have diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. It was stressful, you know?”

Just days later, word spread through the prison — a staff member had tested positive for Covid-19. When they heard the news, Rodas’s son — also named Mario — and the rest of his family were terrified.

“Just do whatever you can to stay alive and hopeful,” he said he told his father over the phone. “We are doing everything we can to get you out of there.”

Mario Rodas, Sr. in family photos with his wife and children.

Across the country, there are nearly 36,000 people in the custody of ICE on an average day. Some are in county jails and state prisons, others are in facilities run by private contractors like the GEO Group. Many are asylum seekers who have asked the U.S. to protect them from persecution abroad. Others — like Rodas — are undocumented workers who lived in the U.S. for years before being swept up by ICE.

Now, public health officials say that overcrowding and poor access to sanitation inside ICE detention facilities is a crisis in the making, with two doctors contracted by the Department of Homeland Security calling them a “tinderbox” for infections in a letter to Congress on March 19.

“As local hospital systems become overwhelmed by the patient flow from detention center outbreaks, precious health resources will be less available for people in the community,” they wrote.

Across the country, tensions are rising inside of ICE facilities, with detained immigrants and their families fearing that cramped conditions and an indifferent bureaucracy are a deadly threat to their safety — and to the wider public’s health. So far, at least 20 detainees and dozens of staff at facilities housing them are confirmed to have contracted COVID-19. Many others are under quarantine, raising fears that the virus is spreading undetected and potentially infecting guards who shuttle in and out for their shifts before returning home.

These numbers are likely a significant underestimate due to shortages of COVID-19 tests. In a hearing last week on an ACLU lawsuit, an attorney working for the government admitted that there were no tests available at two Maryland facilities, while simultaneously arguing that detainees there were not at risk due to the lack of confirmed cases. ICE has said they aren’t required to disclose information about staff at privately-run detention facilities who have tested positive.

“The nature of these facilities is such that it’s really impossible to engage in the social distancing that we’re all practicing right now,” former director of ICE John Sandweg told Democracy Now.

After the staffer at Plymouth fell ill, Rodas said that guards started bringing him and the others in his cell block to meals in shifts. But each group was still as large as 80 people at a time, and none were given masks or gloves to wear.

“The government is asking everyone to stay home and not have physical contact with other individuals. But meanwhile, my dad was out there amongst 80 to 150 other individuals, and you don’t know if they could potentially have something and be contagious,” said Rodas’s son.

Realizing the danger he was in, Rodas’s lawyer, Kerry Doyle, reached out to friends at the ACLU of Massachusetts. On March 25, the ACLU filed a petition asking a judge to order ICE to release Rodas along with another detained immigrant on the grounds that their medical conditions placed them at high risk for COVID-19 complications, in violation of their constitutional rights.

Two days later, the judge issued a ruling. Rodas would be able to go home.

“They released him on pretty strict conditions,” said Doyle. “He has a GPS bracelet.”

Rodas’s son rushed to Plymouth to pick him up. “I was so happy, I couldn’t believe it,” he told the ACLU. Now, Rodas is quarantining in a room in the house until 14 days have passed since his release.

“I think that the whole thing highlights how easy it is for immigration [authorities] to release detainees that have cases that are low priority and allow them to go back home during these very uncertain times,” said his son.

Mario Rodas, Sr. being released from Plymouth County Correctional Facility on March 27th.

Mario Rodas, Jr.

The suit that led to his father’s release was one of a series that have been filed across the country in recent weeks seeking similar orders. Fifteen were filed by the ACLU and its affiliates, with over thirty people released from detention as a result of those suits so far.

Alfredo Garza was one of those lucky few. He was released on March 26 from the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, a private facility run by the GEO Group in Washington, following a suit filed by the ACLU and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. Garza suffered a heart attack while detained this past January and says he was chained to a bed in the hospital while receiving treatment.

“Doctor care is terrible there,” he said. “The worst there is.”

In 2018, an investigation by Seattle Weekly revealed that the Tacoma facility had been providing substandard medical care to immigrants housed there.

Washington was the first state in the country to experience a substantial outbreak of COVID-19, and in early March Garza says that he and others in the facility became afraid when another detainee fell ill with what they assumed was COVID-19.

“They took him out in a suit, like one of the people who catch bees,” he said.

Geo Group and ICE have not confirmed any cases of COVID-19 in Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, but Garza says that his unit was placed under quarantine and kept away from contact with others anyway:

“We said, ‘Hey we need sanitizer or chlorine.’ But they said, ‘No, we don’t have any.’”

After the ACLU’s suit was filed, Garza was released along with another detainee who suffers from high blood pressure. Since then, 80 people housed in the facility have gone on hunger strike to raise attention to the danger they say they face from the pandemic.

“I have a friend who has diabetes and he was worried when he found out that there were people with coronavirus inside,” Garza said. “They didn’t even tell him, ‘Hey, we are going to put you somewhere else’ or ‘We’re going to do something.’ They don’t care if you die.”

Despite widespread calls from public health experts that the detained population must be drastically reduced in order to prevent COVID-19 from spreading unchecked and taxing the healthcare system, so far ICE has largely refused pressure to release people in its custody.

On Tuesday, the agency indicated it had identified 600 detainees deemed “vulnerable” to COVID-19, and released 160 of them. But that same day, lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asked a judge to stay a ruling that would have released 22 detainees with medical conditions from two county jails in Pennsylvania.

“Families were getting ready to pick up their loved ones when the stay came down,” said Michael Tan, deputy director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the ACLU. “ICE is playing an unacceptable game of Russian Roulette with people’s lives.”

Karlyn Kurichety is a supervising attorney with Al Otro Lado, a California-based organization that provides legal services to asylum seekers and other immigrants. She says that her clients in the Adelanto ICE Processing center — another Geo Group-run facility — are scared.

“It’s just cruel and really disturbing, there’s basically no precautions being taken,” she said. “The detainees are not given any information about COVID-19. There are no signs, no talks, no advisories, nothing of that nature.”

Adelanto has put strict measures in place requiring visiting attorneys to wear N95 masks — despite the fact that even health care workers in the state aren’t able to find them. Since then, Kurichety says she hasn’t been able to visit her clients —most of whom are asylum seekers — or arrange a non-recorded phone call to discuss their case.

Recently, she says she spoke with one client who told her that two people in his dorm collapsed with symptoms that sounded like those of COVID-19. The dorm was subsequently placed under quarantine. Another said that he’d been cleaning his cell with body wash.

“It’s like if you wanted to design a situation where a virus would spread, this is what you’d do,” she said.

On March 30, the ACLU filed suit on behalf of six detainees in Adelanto with serious medical conditions, arguing that “without a rigorous testing regime, it is impossible to conclude that COVID-19 has not already entered Adelanto.”

Two days later, a federal judge ordered all six released.

But Kurichety says that those who remain are fraying emotionally.

“They’re really scared. I would say it’s almost like panic,” she said. “Their families, too, because we’ve been talking to their sponsors and sometimes they break down in tears. They’re really frightened for their loved ones.”

Published April 8, 2020 at 08:41PM via ACLU https://ift.tt/39TXN14

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