Police believe they are winning the long war with the overseas crime bosses who sponsor violence on the streets of Merseyside.

Senior officers have described the hacking of the EncroChat messaging system as a "game changer" in their battle with the region's organised crime groups.

The penetration of the encrypted system has allowed police to see the secret messages sent by criminals as they discuss drugs, guns and murder plots.

The EncroChat breakthrough , known to police as Operation Venetic, has also brought into focus the so called "Mr Bigs" who control crime on Merseyside from the safety of villas and hotel suites in Amsterdam, Marbella and Dubai.

Senior officers have said that some of these criminals are responsible for stabbings, shootings and the exploitation of children working in County Lines drug gangs.

From Curtis Warren in the 1990s to Liam Cornett, the ECHO has long reported on the demise of criminals who controlled organised crime groups from the seeming safety of overseas boltholes.

Warren ran his operation from a farmhouse in the Dutch countryside while Cornett, very much the next generation in organised crime, was based in Spain. Cornett, who grew up on the streets of north Liverpool, was jailed for 26 years earlier this year for conspiracy to supply Class A drugs.

Assistant Chief Constable Ian Critchley told the ECHO that although the business model of organised crime had changed since the 90s, in essence it was the same.

He said: "We are still talking about the same types of people. They are bullies who use people to sell drugs. They trade in fear and violence to get what they want.

"We know some of these people are linked to the misery of crime we see on Merseyside - from children being exploited in County Lines drug gangs to stabbings and shootings. The very highest levels of violence."

Assistant Chief Constable Chris Green, head of the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit, spoke to the ECHO about the long war with men who controlled crime across the region.

He said: "Organised crime groups use hierarchical structures and we often see individuals who rise through the ranks and then choose to live overseas. But this is in no way unique to Merseyside.

"We see people at the top of these structures who have the ability to try and control the minds of other, possibly younger, criminals.

"But my message to these people is simple. Leaving Merseyside does not make you untouchable.

"If anything, Operation Venetic has shown how close our ties are with other forces across Europe and with international bodies such as Interpol."

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He said that such individuals were still "very much on the radar", adding: "We have seen so many success stories of these kinds of people being arrested overseas and being brought back to the UK to face justice.

"They might be out of sight but not out of our reach."

Jayne Lloyd, the National Crime Agency's (NCA) head of investigations for the North, said that the movement of criminals overseas represented a change in the way organised crime worked.

She said: "In the 1990s the individuals who controlled organised crime locally would be based in the North West. But this began to change and people who rose through the hierarchy would move overseas.

"This was partly a response to increased police surveillance and activity. They sit above a layer of lieutenants, many of whom they have known since childhood."

Ms Lloyd agreed that the people at the top were utterly ruthless.

She said: "They don't care when subordinates disappear - they are just replaced."

ACC Critchley stressed that the reality of organised crime was devoid of glamour.

He said: "Speak to my officers who have taken part in raids over recent weeks as part of Operation Venetic. Homes where there are firearms, drugs and dangerous dogs. That is the reality of crime in our city."

ACC Critchley had a message for the so called "untouchables" from Merseyside now resident overseas.

He said: "Look at Liam Cornett. His organised crime group was linked to County Lines drugs and firearms. The very long custodial sentence handed to him is what is facing his contemporaries."

And ACC Green also acknowledged that the information accessed through EncroChat had allowed the force to arrest and charge individuals who seemed beyond their reach in the past.

He said: " There have been certain individuals who have been active in criminality for decades. Yes it's been frustrating having the intelligence that people are involved in organised crime but not having the evidence. Some of these people traded in fear, violence and immorality as part of their existence.

"We are talking about very destructive people with no respect for anything .

"Their only purpose in life appears to have been greed.

"Fortunately, it now appears that they are no longer beyond the law.

"And when they are hopefully convicted we will continue to target the full reach of their criminality.

"We will look to target the assets they have accrued over time.

"I have confidence the courts can deliver justice and that our community can recover from these people.

"Lets's remember, we are talking about a handful of people who create misery for the many.

"We will be working hard with all the decent people out there to make all of our communities safer and stronger."

Anyone with information about organised crime on Merseyside should call police on 101 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111

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War on Mr Bigs running crime in Liverpool from luxury homes abroad - Liverpool Echo

If the goal is to save black lives, its not working. If the goal is to get rid of police, its working, says Peter Moskos, professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City and a former Baltimore cop.

In the wake of the brutal police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, protests have erupted nationwide, and politicians have responded by cutting and disempowering police.

Meanwhile, crime has spiralled in precisely the communities the Black Lives Matter movement hopes to defend. Were dismantling the NYPD now, and violence has gone up 200 per cent, he says.

In the increasingly polarised debate around policing in America, Moskos offers a unique perspective. He calls himself a pro-cop liberal its a very small Venn diagram, he jokes.

A Harvard-trained sociologist, Moskos spent 14 months working as a policeman in the ghettos of Baltimores Eastern District. He published a book about it in 2008, Cop in the Hood.

He has chronicled countless police killings, but that didnt make the video of Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyds neck for eight minutes any less disturbing for him.

Its a different league, Moskos says. I have seen a lot of these and usually Im like, well, is there a way I can see it from the cops perspective? But this one was just I dont get it. And no one really gets it He killed the guy.

The universal condemnation of that sadistic killing and the swift action taken against Chauvin were a rare example, he goes on, of the system actually working.

Everyone has condemned the killing, including police unions. Ive never seen that before, he says. The guy was charged and arrested. That is our system of justice.

But the protests nevertheless spread like wildfire, burnishing a long-running narrative about racist cops and resurrecting the Black Lives Matter movement.

This has prompted drastic political responses not just in Minneapolis, where the city council voted to abolish its police department, but also across the country.

In NYC, mayor Bill de Blasio has cut the police budget, halted the hiring of more officers, and disbanded the NYPDs plain-clothes anti-crime unit, credited with taking thousands of illegal guns off the street.

This, Moskos says, has meant a withdrawal of police from high-crime areas that has sent violence in the city skyrocketing. In June alone, 270 people were shot in the city, a 154 per cent increase on the previous year

The stories behind the statistics are heartbreaking. At a Brooklyn cookout a few Sundays ago, one-year-old Davell Gardner Jr was shot dead in his stroller.

Such horrors, Moskos says, reflect a police department in collapse, as a consequence of political choices:

I compare it to Jenga, because they kept pulling away these blocks of policing. And individually, it wouldnt matter. If they had gotten rid of plainclothes cops first, the foundation would have stood. But they pulled one too many, and suddenly the whole things come tumbling down.

For New York City, this looks as though it will cap the end of a remarkable period of (relative) safety.

The crime drop experienced across America in the 1990s was particularly pronounced in New York. In 2019, there were 319 murders in the city, marking an 86 per cent decline from 1990.

Given the number of shootings in the past 28 days, if that becomes the yearly average, we frittered away half of [the violent-crime drop] overnight, Moskos says.

The NYPD is arguably the best police department America has ever seen. But we have to dismantle it, because, you see, a cop killed a man in Minnesota. It just makes no sense to me.

Indeed, even on the lightning-rod issue of the day police killings the NYPD has a striking record:

Cops in New York this year have killed three people, which is now typical for New York. All three of them had fired guns and two of them had murdered somebody. What else can they do?

There are thousands of police departments in the US, all with varying records, practises and problems. But the protests, Moskos says, take no account of this, leading politicians in cities where police are actually getting a lot of things right to cave in to demands to defund police.

It is ultimately black and Hispanic communities, Moskos says, who will pay the price for all this. Defunding or defanging police is going to cause more people to die, and more black people to die, he says, bluntly.

I find it interesting now, with this recent increase in violence, newspapers wont mention the race of victims. The New York Times is obsessed with racial disparity. And theres a chance that 100 per cent of shooting victims recently have been black or Hispanic. I mean, normally its like 97 per cent. So, there might be a white person in there. But theres a chance that it is literally 100 per cent of shooting victims in New York are black and Hispanic this year, and they dont even mention it at some point, thats just racist negligence.

Moskos is no tough-on-crime conservative who thinks law and order is the answer to the problems of Americas inner cities.

He is a prison abolitionist. He says the war on drugs has destroyed black communities and helped to plunge them into unending cycles of violence. He thinks a European social welfare system would do much to address Americas deep-seated problems of racial and class inequality.

But he is also practically minded, and believes that in the absence of the big changes, you need to do what works in the here and now.

For him this means proactive policing cops clearing drug corners, maintaining order and giving communities the space they need to reassert control over their own neighbourhoods. (This does not, he stresses, mean locking more people up incarceration, he points out, went down in New York as police became more proactive and crime fell.)

Police serve a role in crime prevention, he says. And that is not an accepted fact, especially in the academic world. For decades, he says, academia has been in thrall to the root causes explanation for crime.

We should focus on poverty and unemployment and racism and structural inequality and healthcare. All those things matter but policing has to do with the cards we are dealt. I dont want to wait for society to be fixed.

Police have to be part of the solution, he says, and this is why the anti-police narrative and the misleading claims about endemic police racism need to be challenged.

The idea that this is a national emergency, or that police are out executing black men, its demonstrably false, we know from the numbers now, he says. Yes, theres a racial disparity, but theres a racial disparity everywhere in America. The racial disparity doesnt seem to be incredibly out of whack when taking other variables into account, including perpetrators of violent crime.

A study by Harvard economist Roland Fryer found in 2016 that while black people are more likely to be manhandled and pepper-sprayed by police, there is no racial disparity in terms of lethal force when all context is taken into account. Fryer, an African-American, called it the most surprising result of my career.

Far more important to look at here, Moskos says, are regional disparities in police killings.

If we could get California down to the national average, California alone, that would save one hundred or two hundred lives. That seems kind of doable, but then we have to move away from the laser-like focus on race.

To put it bluntly, he adds, white people get shot too, and for a long time, people didnt believe that, because usually those shootings dont become national news because theres no racial angle.

If you want to reduce shootings, we can do it and we should do it, but at some point you do have to keep it in perspective.

Moskos is the first to say so when he thinks cops and police departments get things wrong, but hes almost unique in this field in actually knowing and liking the people he is criticising.

Cop in the Hood is candid about the problems of policing, but it also gives police officers themselves a fair shake, who quickly absorbed him into the fold when he joined to write his book.

They were more tolerant of me as a liberal Harvard grad student than l think liberal Harvard grad students would be of them, he says. A lot of the misunderstanding comes from that class snobbery.

Cops are one group of public servants largely untouched by political correctness, and Cop in the Hood quotes some pretty robust exchanges between cops about the neighbourhoods they work in.

At one point, one white cop wonders out loud about napalm[ing] the whole area. A black cop disagrees, suggesting flood[ing] the place, biblical-like, would be preferable.

But we can perhaps forgive them for being a bit jaded. Police officers dont see the good. Thats not their job, writes Moskos. Nobody calls 911 to report a graduation party, an anniversary, or another hard day at work. People dont need police when theyre happy and everything is going well. Police see misery at its best.

Some people are so critical of policing and really do have no clue as to what the job actually entails, he tells me. Cops have to deal with dead people. And yes, you remove yourself and you make tasteless jokes about murders and all that, but at some point cops believe, and sometimes for good reason, that they are the only people who care.

When Moskos was a cop, more than 10 per cent of men in Baltimores Eastern District were murdered before the age of 35. Its disturbing to see that level of deprivation, he tells me.

When you see some three-year-old kid on a mattress without sheets and theres no electricity in the house and bottles of piss in the corner and moms turning tricks. I mean, the kid has no chance.

The response of many cops to the Black Lives Matter movement, he says, was how dare you say I dont care about black lives?.

The dangers of paternalism is a recurring thread in Moskoss work. The American criminal justice system, he writes, has been shaped by moral crusaders who deepened the problems they set out to solve.

Prisons are a key example. His 2011 book In Defence of Flogging explores how cruel and damaging the prison system is by comparing it to corporal punishment, which prisons were originally brought in to replace.

The gambit of the book, he tells me, is a simple thought experiment: imagine youve been convicted of a crime, and youre asked to choose between five years in prison or five Singapore-style lashes. What would you choose?

Pretty much everyone chooses the Singapore-style lashes, he says. But we dont allow that because its incomprehensible, cruel and unusual. So instead we do something thats worse.

Prisons were introduced to America by Quakers in the 18th century, championed as a more enlightened alternative to the floggings, executions and public shamings of the old world.

They were called penitentiaries because they were intended as places of repentance. They stemmed from a firm and paternalistic conviction that crime is a moral disease, Moskos writes.

But not only has prison proved ineffective at reforming criminals, it has also fuelled crime. When released, people who go to prison are more likely to commit a crime than similar criminals who dont go to prison, he writes.

Moreover, the rise of mass incarceration in recent decades has gutted entire communities. When too many young men from one neighbourhood are in the criminal justice system the area reaches a tipping point, after which it cant function properly, he writes. Crime increases because a significant proportion of the male population is not present.

Weve normalised a system that I think is worse than corporal punishment, Moskos tells me. The caveat is that there are a few people who were just afraid of, who we actually lock up because we dont want them to kill us. But that number is so small. A few thousand people in America, probably.

The prison population in America was 2.3million in 2016.

We have more prisoners than China, and they have a billion more people than we do, he writes in In Defence of Flogging.

Another progressive paternalism that continues to haunt America is prohibition. While the war on drugs was coined by Richard Nixon, its logic, Moskos argues, sprung from the progressive prohibitionist movement, responsible for Americas disastrous 13-year experiment with alcohol prohibition from 1920 to 1933.

Just as prohibition of alcohol fuelled organised crime, the war on drugs is fuelling violence in Americas inner cities, he says. Not all violence is directly related to the drug trade, but a lot of it is. It stems from it. Youre creating a group of people who are by choice and necessity outside the law, who have to be armed.

For Moskos, it seems, the anti-police movements of today fit into this tradition of progressive paternalism, of well-meaning white reformers pushing their morality and ideological experiments on to the poor.

Its a bunch of white progressives telling black people that they dont need police, he tells me. They could try it in their neighborhood first, but they dont want to do that.

Before I would just say its paternalistic or wrong. Now Im just saying this is racist. If youre white and telling other neighbourhoods they dont need police, and theyre getting killed its horrible.

Indeed, another disparity we often dont talk about is the one between white and black attitudes to police numbers. In 2015, a Gallup poll found black Americans were 20 per cent more likely than white Americans to say that they wanted more police on their streets.

We have young white people yelling at older black cops and screaming that theyre racist, Moskos goes on, nodding to some of the more absurd viral moments of the recent protests. I mean, the protests were whiter than the police department.

He is currently working on a book about the 1990s New York crime drop, an oral history based on the recollections of cops. Now that violence in the city is spiralling again, it must be a bittersweet undertaking.

Mournfully, Moskos says all the city needs to do to bring violence down again is start doing what we were doing literally one year ago. But hes not hopeful of this happening any time soon.

Theres no political consequence to politicians of rising crime, especially in cities that dont have a diverse political slate, he says. Thats the problem: if murders went back to 1,000 [a year in New York], it affects politicians less than if cops killed one person.

At some point someone has to push back on the narrative. But that wont happen, because of politics I could be wrong, things could be less bleak. But Ive never been this pessimistic, ever.

Tom Slater is deputy editor at spiked. Follow him on Twitter: @Tom_Slater_

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The protests were whiter than the police department - Spiked

Why won't the U.S. ever win the war on drugs? Here's why America is complicit, according to the Netflix documentary series The Business of Drugs.

The United Stateswill never win the war on drugs because, according toThe Business of Drugs, a Netflixdocumentary series hosted by Amaryllis Fox, America is complicit in a distribution operationthat most people don't fully understand. The Business of Drugs doesn't identifyone specific reason why the U.S. drug war will fail, butdoes explain various factors that make it almost impossible to stop the worldwide distribution of drugs like cocaine, heroin, and meth, along with synthetics and opioids.

The Business of Drugs isn't focused solely on the U.S. drug war, and that thematic choiceconnects to America'sinability to prevent narcotics trafficking. Divided into six episodes, all of which prioritizesocietalrealitiesover societalcliches, the Netflix documentary series aims to educate streamers about the relationship between Digital Age economics andculture shifts. The Business of Drugs opens with Fox explaining her backstory, as she was raised by an economist and lived in various international locations before ultimately working as a CIA analyst for 10 years. She's the wife ofRobert F. Kennedy III and the inspiration for the upcoming Apple TV+ series starring Brie Larson.In The Business of Drugs, Fox travels the world and attempts to understand the motivating factors for drug producers and distributors.

Related:How To Fix A Drug Scandal: Biggest Reveals From Netflix's Documentary

In the first episode of The Business of Drugs on Netflix, appropriately titled "Cocaine," Fox pieces together a narrative that ultimately connects to the United States drug war. She visits the Colombian port town Buenaventura, and learns thatthe only viable way to survive, at least for many locals, is to participate in cocaine production and distribution. The problem, however, is that a pyramid structure allows the most powerful figures to control rates that never really seem to change.Now, in 2020,the "value chain" allows Mexican drug cartels to sustain power through violence, with Sinaloa being the "gold standard" for the operation. Essentially, risk equals profitability, and cocaine demand from the United States means that many drug-hungry Americans inadvertently fund"a chain of human suffering," according to Fox. The Business of Drugs host also states that "Legalization may seem pretty extreme to most Americans, but as long as thedemand continues to climb, and the prices remain astronomically high became of no legal competition, I can't help wonder whether legalization and regulation is the only real option."

Fox digs deeper in The Business of Drugs episode about heroin, as she details how Kenya has become the new hub for international distribution. The host, who once lived in Africaas a child, admits that she doesn't correlate acity like Mombasa with heroin, andtherein lies the problem for the U.S. drug war. Methods of distribution continue to rapidly change in different parts of the world, andnarco-traffickers find new ways to exploit people working for them. According to Fox, "the real story lies in distribution." She states that the drug war involves fighting "darkness" and "evil," and that the war on drugs "has not made a dent." Overall, the Netflix documentary serieslinks American complicity to American naivete.

The Business of Drugs features a revelatory episode about meth production and distribution in Myanmar, with Fox reinforcing the idea thatTruly understanding the way things connect is the only we we can hope to change them." To her, it's seemingly impossible to prevent meth distribution if people don't know that Myanmar produces pills like McDonald's produces hamburgers. That's not a joke either, as one intervieweeconfirms.

As for synthetic drugs like MDMA, otherwise known as "Molly" or "Ecstasy," The Business of Drugs shows that America mostly correlates the drugs with clubs kids rather than with itstherapeutic potential, especiallyfor people suffering from PTSD. InThe Business of Drugs series finale on Netflix, Fox sums up the U.S. drug war problem by referencing "a terrible collision of circumstances." Regulations affects big business, big business affects politicians. Meanwhile, innovative drug distributors find new ways to deliver their product while manipulating rates and employees whoneed drug money to survive. The war on drugs isn't necessarily about good vs. bad, it's about information and power (among many other sociopolitical and economic factors).

More:Ecstasy May Be The Answer To PTSD Reveals Netflix's Business of Drugs

The Walking Dead: How Long Rick Was In The Coma

Q.V. Hough is a Screen Rant staff writer. He's also the founding editor at Vague Visages, and has contributed to RogerEbert.com and Fandor.

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The Business of Drugs: Why The US Drug War Can NEVER Be Won - Screen Rant

What George Floyd and Breonna Taylor can teach us about the history of the War on Drugs and needed police reforms

The murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor ignited protests around the nation calling for major police reform. The calls for police reform include many layers, and one important question to rise is the role of policing drug use and the militarized way the War on Drugs has been fought in this country for over 40 years. Using armed police to deal with drug abuse has been one of the most ineffective and costly aspects of the War on Drugs costly in terms of resources and costly in terms of lives. Now is the time to finally change the way we envision our countrys War on Drugs and how we, as a society, handle the effects of drug use and abuse.

Using armed police to deal with drug abuse has been one of the most ineffective and costly aspects of the War on Drugs

The arrest, murder, and original autopsy report for George Floyd reminds us of the long history of deeply rooted stereotypes associating black men with drug use and drug crimes. During Floyds arrest when he was face down on the pavement on a south Minneapolis street corner, Officer Thomas Lane told Officer Derek Chauvin that he was worried about excited delirium. Chauvin responded with thats why we have him on his stomach. A few minutes later George Floyd was dead.

Excited delirium is a controversial diagnosis in which people can become aggressive, incoherent, and exhibit superhuman strength after taking stimulant drugs such as methamphetamine or cocaine. It is important to note that this condition is not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association nor the World Health Organization. In fact, critics of this diagnosis often argue it is used to excuse death caused by use of force from police officers. Research shows that in cases of unexpected death associated with the controversial state of excited delirium, the deaths were associated with restraint, with the person in the prone position, and pressure on the neck.

Even more problematic is the fact that excited delirium is disproportionately cited as the cause of death in cases where black and Hispanic men die in the custody of police. There is also ample evidence to suggest that even without the concern of excited delirium, police use more force against people of color than against whites. For example, a recent study after the murder of George Floyd showed that in Minneapolis the police use force against black people 7 times more often than against white people. And recent research shows that at the national level black men are approximately 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by the police. Moreover, there is a substantial amount of research showing black people are more likely than white people to be pulled over and searched while driving, despite the fact that drugs are found more often on white people.

George Floyds death was not caused by excited delirium. Even though the police were not called for a drug-related crime in this case, we must take this opportunity to acknowledge the fear and stereotypes present during Floyds arrest, and be critical of how they may have contributed to his murder at the hands of police.

The Hennepin County Medical Examiner autopsy report for George Floyd reported the presence of fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system at the time of his death. This prompted many media outlets to highlight this piece of the autopsy report, such as that published by celebrity website TMZ, suggesting somehow Floyd was to blame for his own death.

The mention of drugs in this case conjures an image of the black male drug user that is rooted in a long history of stereotyping black men as drug users who are threatening and criminal. This false narrative is dangerous and is often used to divert conversations from the real consequences of the abuse of power by police. It also works to erase how the War on Drugs has led to the over-policing of drug crimes in black and brown communities.

According to experts in this field and multiple autopsy reports, including the aforementioned report by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner, Floyds death was not caused by drug use, and we need to be vigilant against letting the presence of drugs in Floyds system distract us from the fact that he was murdered by a police officer. Being a drug user should not be viewed as a justification for murder.

Associating black men with drug use and criminality is nothing new. For example, in 1914, the New York Times published an article by a prominent physician stating cocaine gave black men supernatural powers and made them impervious to bullets. The associations made between black men and drug use and crime contributes to the extreme racial bias in how the War on Drugs continues to play out, targeting poor communities of color.

In 1982 when the War on Drugs was announced, drug use rates were on the decline in the United States. Despite this fact, policing for drug crimes on the street increased substantially, especially in communities of color, and incarceration rates for drug crimes skyrocketed, especially among black men. This all occurred even though black and white people used drugs at essentially the same rates.

Research shows that even though black people represent 12.5% of illicit drug use in the United States, they represent 29% of those arrested for drug offenses and 33% of those incarcerated for drug offenses. Even in an era of states legalizing marijuana around the nation, black people are arrested at higher rates for marijuana possession in every single state despite data showing black people do not use more marijuana than white people. Simply put, the War on Drugs has negatively impacted black and brown lives far more than it has impacted white lives, and it is imperative that we, as a country, finally fight to end the War on Drugs.

We should all be wary of police treating United States citizens as enemies in a war like the one we have seen with the War on Drugs. This was recently demonstrated in the tragic death of Breonna Taylor, a black woman who was killed by police during the execution of a no-knock warrant while she was sleeping in her home.

This case, along with George Floyds case, has fueled wide-spread protests around the world. A common demand within these protests has called for defunding the police, arguing that armed police are not the appropriate way to handle many of the reasons people call for help in the first place. Drug use and intoxication is a good example of this. Drug abuse is defined by the American Psychological Association as a mental health condition, and the criminality of drug use lies within the definitions of what drugs are legal to use based on laws that have changed throughout the history of our country and continue to change even today.

For example, all drug use used to be legal in this country, and during the time of prohibition, alcohol was once criminalized and made illegal. Laws related to drug use change as society changes. Police officers, the people charged with enforcing whatever drug laws are on the books at the time, are not experts in drug abuse and mental health. In fact, unlike mental health care providers and social workers who are educated about drugs and their effects and how to handle situations involving drug abuse and intoxication, police are trained to use a continuum of force and arrest authority to manage situations. This may result in the escalation of force, and sometimes deadly force, being used in situations that may have turned out differently if police were not the first to respond, especially considering police training inadequately prepares officers to de-escalate situations. This is an area of public safety that should be deferred to professionals with the expertise and sensitivity to handle these challenging situations, and we are starting to see more focus on this approach due to recent events.

The cost for the War on Drugs has not been shared equally. The increased militarization of police, which coincided with the implementation of the War on Drugs, has not made our communities safer. Instead, the militarized fight of the War on Drugs has been utilized disproportionaley on black and Latino citizens and has contributed to the mass incarceration of our citizens, mainly lower income people of color, and the unjust murders of many civilians, including Breonna Taylor.

The United States now incarcerates more people per capita than any other nation in the world. Research also shows that increased military equipment positively correlates with increased police killings of civilians. Furthermore, in the four decades after the declaration of the War on Drugs and subsequent police militarization, drug use among American citizens has increased.

Clearly, the use of SWAT teams and military weapons to battle drug-related crime has been wholly ineffective at reducing drug use and drug trafficking. Our communities should not be treated as warzones and the people of this country should not be treated as wartime enemies, especially when the militarized tactics do not work to reduce drug use and instead have been shown to be racially biased. Put simply, we should not be treating public health issues, such as drug use and abuse, with militant police responses.

The call for police reform has been around long before the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and recent polls show that nearly 70% of Americans believe the murder of George Floyd represents a broader problem within law enforcement rather than an isolated incident. Now is the time for us to finally take a critical look at law enforcement in our country and reimagine what policing and community safety could look like, including the way we police drug crimes and enforce drug laws. In so doing, we can finally ensure justice, safety, and human dignity are actual priorities in our society.

The demonization and conflation of drug use and blackness in this country has, for far too long, been rationale and justification for murder. Let this moment be an opportunity to change that narrative. The murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor should not turn into more cases where we blame black people for the circumstance in which they find themselves. To do so would strip George Floyd and Breonna Taylor of their humanity and betrays the complete and utter lack of humanity shown by the officers in these cases. This is a narrative we have seen play out far too often in our country. George Floyd did not die from drug use. He was murdered at the hands of a police officer who had taken an oath to protect and serve.

Breonna Taylor was not a casualty of war. She was a victim of a decades-long campaign that has proven to be ineffective and damages the fabric of our society by punishing low-income black and brown communities unequally. George Floyds six year-old daughter Gianna Floyd said daddy changed the world. May her words ring true for generations to come and may we finally end the War on Drugs.

Jessica Siegel and Jessica Hodge

Jessica A. Siegel is Associate Professor, Psychology & Neuroscience, at the University of St. Thomas. Her research examines the long-term effects of methamphetamine exposure on the brain and behavior using a mouse model. She is currently exploring the effects of adolescent methamphetamine exposure on brain function and behavior, specifically examining the dopamine transporters in the striatum and serum cortisol levels. She is also interested in how other drugs, such as nicotine, interact with the effects of methamphetamine in the adolescent brain. She teaches Brain & Human Behavior and Drugs & Behavior in the Psychology Department, and Principles of Neuroscience and Neuropharmacology in the Neuroscience Program.

Jessica Hodge is an Associate Professor in the Department of Justice & Society Studies and the Faculty Director with the Center for the Common Good at the University of St. Thomas. Prior to joining the faculty at UST, Dr. Hodge was an Assistant Professor at UMKC where she was also affiliated with the Womens and Gender Studies program. She received a doctorate in Criminology from the University of Delaware, and her primary research interests and publications are related to gender and crime issues, juvenile justice policies and practices, and the development and enforcement of hate crime laws.

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Police Murders and the War on Drugs - LA Progressive

Breonna Taylor was a 36-year-old Black emergency medical worker who was killed in March while police in Louisville, Kentucky carried out a no-knock warrant as part of a narcotics investigation.

Breonna Taylor died as a result of the war on drugs, said Josh Alb as he shouted to demonstrators on the steps of Newark City Hall on Friday. The police went into her house for a no-knock warrant for drugs that were never there. This is one of the biggest pieces missing from the conversation surrounding her.

The war on drugs was a narcotics prohibition campaign that was created under former President Richard Nixon in the 1970s. Alb said the policy is still being used today to harm Black people like Taylor.

Alb, a William Paterson University student who lives in Newark and works in the cannabis industry, led about 30 demonstrators down Broad Street on Friday while shouting her name. They called for the legalization of marijuana to begin to end the war on drugs.

Legalization could happen soon - at least in New Jersey. Voters will decide if it should become legal on Nov. 3.

State lawmakers gave up on trying to legalize marijuana legislatively. And not every legislator supports legalization, like state Sen. Ron Rice. The former Newark police officer who leads the state Legislative Black Caucus says marijuana is still unsafe and is wary of who will actually profit from the legal recreational industry.

Demonstrators marched to Peter Francisco Park near Newark Penn Station and were joined by Ken Wolski, the executive director of the Coalition for Medical Marijuana - New Jersey. Newarkers, he noted, were more likely to face harsher penalties when found in possession of marijuana than residents in suburbs.

Because of school zone laws, said Wolski, who set up a table in the park to register people to vote. You can hardly stand anywhere in the City of Newark and not be in a school zone. You get an enhanced penalty for any kind of marijuana violation and that is just unfair - unfair.

It has such a devastating effect on the minorities and the poor in our inner cities.

Ken Wolski, Executive Director for the Coalition for Medical Marijuana of New Jersey (CMMNJ), speaks to the crowd at Peter Francisco Park in Newark during the March Against the War on Drugs protest on Friday, July 17, 2020

An American Civil Liberties Union report released this year that examined 2018 arrest data showed that Black New Jerseyans were arrested for marijuana at a rate 3.45 times higher than white residents despite similar usage.

Gov. Phil Murphy last year signed a bill that would create automated expungement of past marijuana convictions. A bill to decriminalize marijuana passed in the state Assembly last month.

But Leo Bridgewater, Minorities 4 Medical Marijuanas veteran outreach director, said there are still issues with the industry. Medical dispensaries in New Jersey and elsewhere in the nation cant access federal coronavirus stimulus dollars.

They just wrote a $3 trillion check a couple of months ago and none of us get any of that money, said Bridgewater, who served in the Iraq War and now lives in Trenton. Nobody in this industry gets that money, thats not for us.

Leo Bridgewater, national director of veteran outreach at Minorities for Medical Marijuana (M4MM), speaks to the crowd at Peter Francisco Park in Newark during the March Against the War on Drugs protest on Friday, July 17, 2020

Alb, meanwhile, said the war on drugs has also been used to discredit other Black people like Geroge Floyd, a 46-year-old father who was killed in May by police in Minneapolis. His death sparked nationwide protests, including several in Newark.

Two autopsies were conducted on Floyd, one by the medical examiner in the county where he was killed and another that was commissioned by his family. Both ruled his death a homicide.

The familys autopsy said he died from asphyxiation. But the county medical examiner reportedly said Floyd experienced cardiopulmonary arrest while being restrained by the officer and noted Floyds other conditions, including heart disease, fentanyl intoxication and recent methamphetamine use.

Alb said listing what drugs may have been Floyds system at the time was a way that could ultimately clear the cops involved in his killing.

You cant tell me that someones co-morbidity is meth or fentanyl when a police officer is kneeling on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds, Alb said. That aint meth at that point.

Protesters gather in front of City Hall in Newark during the March Against the War on Drugs on Friday, July 17, 2020

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Rebecca Panico may be reached at rpanico@njadvancemedia.com.

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Activists take to the streets to call for marijuana legalization in N.J. - NJ.com

Were told were at war. Not surprising since weve been at war 93 percent of the time. Thats some 223 years of our 244-year existence. So, that is the question: Why are we always at war?

The United States has never gone a decade without war check it out. The statistics dont include the two wars that were never seemingly intended to be won: the war on drugs and the war on poverty. No community in the world is immune to them.

Whether it's legal or illegal drugs, suicide, despair or poverty, you only have to look around your own streets to see how these problems have become a plague, especially when you can have a full-time job and still be homeless in an age where there are more billionaires than ever. The death toll from these "wars" is far greater than armed conflict.

Is it any wonder with rampant depression, job insecurity, declining wages, etc.? And, now the earth shattering, hyper-promoted trauma of COVID-19 is added, surpassing even the threat of terrorism, which just by coincidence is no threat at all right now. Again, why are we always at war? Why do we defund veterans and reward war profiteers?

As for the trauma of war in World War I, it was called shell-shock; World War II it was called battle-fatigue; Korean War it was called operational exhaustion; Vietnam War and every war since it was called post-traumatic stress disorder. So, what will the new trauma PC term be for all of us trapped in this apocalyptic, locked-down decade of COVIDism?

Graham Hill, Tehachapi

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Letter to the editor: Why are we always at war? - Tehachapi News

Colombias opposition decided to make politics interesting by introducing a bill that seeks to end the war on drugs by decriminalizing cocaine and regulating its production.

The bill is sponsored by Senators Feliciano Valencia, an indigenous leader, and centrist Senator Ivan Marulanda, and seeks legislation on cocaine similar to American marijuana laws.

The cocaine regulation bill is part of a package introduced by members of the the leftist opposition and the centrist voting block last year to end the so-called war on drugs, and implement effective counternarcotics strategies and policies to curb drug abuse.

The cocaine regulation bill seeks strict state control over the cultivation of coca and the production of cocaine, which is currently controlled by illegal armed groups and drug trafficking organizations.

While the bill does not rule out the legal export of cocaine for scientific purposes, it mainly intends to cut the finances of drug trafficking organizations and illegal armed groups like the ELN, Marulanda told newspaper El Tiempo.

This bill is part of the fight against drug trafficking because it is about getting rid of those mafias that profit from it, destroying the Colombian people along the way.

The senior Green Alliance senator stressed he considers himself a victim of the war on drugs and drug trafficking alike as he lost close political allies like former Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara and Liberal Party dissident Luis Carlos Galan, who were killed by the Medellin Cartel in the 1980s.

The control over coca cultivation and cocaine production by mafias and illegal armed groups exposes Colombian society to all kinds of risks, because they will seek their profit regardless of legal and moral limits.

The state assuming this control would destroy what has become an entire illegal economy and allow the scientific investigation of both coca and cocaine for their medicinal properties both in Colombia and abroad.

To curb cocaine dependency, the bill seeks to regulate the sale of cocaine by allowing adults to register as a consumer and, with the permission of a physician, allow them to buy a gram of cocaine per week from licensed cocaine sellers.

A similar bill introduced last year seeks to decriminalize marijuana and introduce improved access to healthcare for users suffering drug dependency.

Senator Jose Obdulio Gaviria (center top) and late drug lord Pablo Escobar (center bottom)

While there is relatively broad consensus in Colombia that repressive strategies to curb drug use and international drug trafficking have failed, the approval of the bill is likely to cause opposition, both in Colombia and from the United States, which has been able to increase regional influence through the war on drugs.

In Colombia, the fiercest opposition comes from Duques far-right Democratic Center (CD) party, which is led by former President Alvaro Uribe, who has been tied to drug trafficking since the early days of the Medellin Cartel.

According to CD Senator Jose Obdulio Gaviria, a cousin of late drug lord Pablo Escobar, the CD would fully oppose the legalization of cocaine, the drug that partly financed Duques 2018 election, according to evidence investigated by the Supreme Court and the prosecution.

Gaviria told El Tiempo his party would oppose the bill above all for geopolitical reasons. According to Escobars cousin,Colombia cannot become a pariah country.

Senator Rodrigo Lara, the son of the assassinated justice minister, told the newspaper that he did not oppose the decriminalization of cocaine, but considered the proposal nonviable without international support.

This regulation will come at some point, but the problem is that legalizing cocaine cannot be a unilateral decision by Colombia, there should be a factor of diplomatic integration; in the meantime, we have no alternative other than to combat criminal groups.

Influential counternarcotics expert Daniel Rico told El Tiempo that the decriminalization of cocaine would have an impact on organized crime groups finances, but would unlikely deal a major blow to these organizations because of their ability to switch to different criminal activities.

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Colombia to kick off congressional year with cocaine decriminalization bill - Colombia Reports

How are tax revenues from legal marijuana being spent in California, the nations largest state? To a large degree, they are not going towards helping the poor, Black and Brown neighborhoods most harmed by the War on Drugs. They are going to the police.

The organizations Youth Forward and Getting It Right From the Start co-produced a report on 28 Californian cities that legalized recreational marijuana sales since 2016. (Roughly two-thirds of cities and towns still ban sales, despite state-level legalization.) Released back in April, the reports importance has been amplified by intervening events, and the ensuing debates around policing and its funding.

Itfound that in three years, 23 of the 28 cities increased their police budgets by at least 10 percent, as of the 2019-2020 fiscal year. Eight cities saw an increase of at least 25 percent.

Were not just talking about rural, Republican-run towns: These numbers include the states two largest cities, Los Angeles and San Diego. Of all 28 cities studied, the average increase in police budgets was 19 percent over three years.

The report highlights the example of Greenfield, a small but fast-growing city in Monterey County. Before legalization, Greenfield spent $2.3 million on its police department of about 16 full-time employees. Its police budget has since grown 56 percent to $3.6 million, and the department has more than doubled its workforce, to about 34 full-time employees.

As the report explains, California law allows both the state and local governments to collect taxes on marijuana business. But in almost all of the cities studied, cannabis tax money goes into the citys general fund instead of being saved for a specific use. Police spending in these cities represents, on average, almost two out of every five dollars spent.

And many of the police departments in these cities have created new units specifically to enforce the new marijuana laws. San Diego prioritizes its cannabis tax money for proactively cracking down on illegal operators. Its neighbor, Los Angeles, spends millions each year on investigating and enforcing laws relative to illegal cannabis businesses.

Filter has previously reported on the new war being waged on illicit cannabis businesses and growers all across California. An irony is that some of these businesses were legal medical cannabis providers before 2016, but couldnt earn a recreational license under the new system.

Others have come up against barriers to earning a license in cities like San Diego and Los Angeles, where legal businesses are largely white-owned and require significant start-up funding. An equity initiative to support Black and Brown cannabis businesses in San Diego has stalled because the mayor prefers cannabis tax money to go to the police.

And a similar initiative in Los Angeles has for years been haunted by incompetency and under-funding. Filter reported in 2019 about how $10 million that was supposed to go to LAs cannabis equity program instead went to police overtime payso they could arrest people for cannabis.

Race is a clear factor in all of this new cannabis enforcement. San Diego still disproportionately arrests Black and Hispanic people for marijuana, even after legalization. In Los Angeles, marijuana arrest rates for both groups have increased since legalization.

The Youth Forward and Getting It Right From the Start report did also show some ways that the state, counties and cities are spending cannabis tax money to benefit poor, Black and Brown residents. The states Community Reinvestment Grant Program paid out $28 million in 2019 to support programs for employment, physical and mental health, and people returning home from prison.

As encouraging as they are, the authors wrote, such efforts represent just the tip of the iceberg of what could be achieved if California cities and counties were to invest cannabis revenues appropriately.

Photo by Toms Del Coro via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0.

Originally posted here:

Californian Cannabis Tax Revenues Are Used to Boost Police Budgets - Filter

Creating drug-free school buffer-zones sounds like a good idea. However, the consequences and disparate impacts of these zones with the high-stakes mandatory minimum sentences that accompany them have led to the mass incarceration of thousands of Black and Brown residents.

Now this same failed policy is being used to prevent communities of color from opening cannabis retail shops in their own neighborhoods denying the economic opportunities marijuana legalization was designed to create.

As a former Suffolk County prosecutor, I can speak first-hand to the impacts school zones have had on our families. The perverse justification of think of our (white) kids, provided cover for law enforcement to heavily punish and incarcerate predominantly Black and Brown kids who lived and were caught within these sentencing enhancement zones.

In densely populated urban areas, smoking a joint on your school-zoned stoop led to possession, arrest, conviction, and mandatory-minimum sentences. Smoking a joint on your front porch of leafy, more spread-out suburbs was just kids being kids. Same behavior; disparate impact.

While Bostons school zones have been largely reformed and eliminated, sensitive use buffers continue to materially block Black and Brown people from opportunities to create generational wealth in Bostons new cannabis industry. From the failed War on Drugs and the resulting prisons filled with our youth, we have seen the profoundly disparate human and societal toll of school buffer zoneszones that our communities of color overwhelmingly fall within.

Speaking at the signing of Bostons new cannabis ordinance, City Council President Kim Janey said, We have to do everything that we can to dismantle this pipeline to prison that continues to criminalize Black and Brown people. Amen.

Today, Boston prohibitseven the submissionof an adult-use application located within 500 feet of a public or private school serving grades K-12 under the pretense that the prohibition is a requirement of state law. This is false. Bostondoeshave a choice and the City Council has an obligation to support communities of color by creating buffers that work forallresidents.

State law allows Boston to reduce buffers by ordinance or by-law. The states Cannabis Control Commission has itself acknowledged that overly-strict zoning rules and large buffer zones sharply limit the number of parcels available to potential operators, favoring large corporations with substantial financial resources while disproportionately harming smaller local companies.

School buffer zones will reduce viable adult-use sites and significantly raise costs (and the stakes) for Black and Brown entrepreneurs. Today, liquor stores are often located in school zones. Why should cannabis be treated any differently?

Communities like Cambridge and Somerville have already successfully reduced school buffers to 300 feet, recognizing the restorative justice intended by cannabis legalization and how these overly restrictive buffers run counter to those goals. The Boston City Council also has a choice: to choose to respect the self-determination of communities of color and recognize that we, as people of color, are able to advocate and choose for ourselves.

As a Black woman, I have been proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with so many of our residents as the Black Lives Matter movement has swelled to become the single largest, organized protest in modern history. While protests can inspire, our policy choices make them meaningful.

Thanks to Mayor Walsh and Councilor Janey, we can celebrate the symbolism of the cannabis ordinances passage. However, without further urgent action by the City Council, this ordinance will be a symbol of an unfulfilled promise, rather than a symbol of true restorative justice.

Linda Champion is a Black Korean-American attorney and former Suffolk County prosecutor. She serves as an advisor to the president of Whittier Street Health Center, Board Vice-Chair to CUE Realty, a wholly owned subsidiary of Urban Edge and an advisor to Boston Showstoppers.

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Let's ease the 'buffer-zone' burden on pot businesses in communities of color - Dorchester Reporter

HOLYOKE Compared to some of the big businesses currently dominating Massachusetts recreational marijuana industry,Frank Dailey said he knows thenew cannabis dispensaryhe opened last week,Boston Bud Factory, isthe little guy.

ButDailey said such a distinction is what helpsmake the citys second adult-use marijuanastore, at 73Sargeant St., unique. It giveshim an opportunity to provide customers with quality marijuana products andcannabis education in a more relaxed, individually-focused environment.

We dont want to be the big guys, Dailey said. We want to be the little neighborhood store.

ASpringfield native, Dailey attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst where he received a bachelors degree in chemical engineering. He soon became a process engineer until he moved into working in operations management. He co-owns Boston Bud Factory withCarlo Sarno, a Longmeadow businessman who Dailey described as a background manager hes support and Im the day-to-day.

The recreational marijuana dispensary first inked a host community agreement with the city of Holyoke in May 2018 and was given its provisional license by the state Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) about a year later. The store was granted its final retail license in April, but did not get the green light to open until just recently.

Dailey said he was an economic empowerment applicant with the CCC, a program implemented to give priority review and licensure to businesses looking to open in areas that aredisproportionately impacted by the war on drugs. Daileyplans on holding job fairs at nearbyNueva Esperanza when its safe to do so, as he wants the store to hire employeeswho live inthe neighborhood.

The selection of products onBoston Bud Factorys 800-square-foot retail floorat the moment include vaporizers, joints, flower, edibles, tinctures and other items from suppliers within the state, including Green Thumb Industries, which manufactures marijuana products at 28 Appleton St. in Holyoke. Dailey said he wants to add smaller suppliers to his roster so customerscan get different tastes of cannabis from around Massachusetts.

We want a selection from all across the state, Dailey said. The little guysthat are battling the same battles we have and are looking for opportunities into the market.

He plans on starting a deli-style flower selection process, where cashiersweigh out marijuana in front of the customer instead of sellingit pre-packaged. In addition, Daileyconstructedaconsultation area/education center in his store that is filled with cannabis literature so customers can read and learn about pot.He said being able to display to customers the product as they learn about it enhances their buying experience.

Most of the dispensaries dont have areas where you can just sit there and look around, he said. We welcome people, post-COVID and safely, to come in and spend time here and educate themselves.

Meanwhile, Dailey is waiting for a second license from the CCC for a manufacturing operation in the far back of the store, which he hopes to receive sometime in August. He already has the machinery set upfor the CO2 extraction process neededtocreate his own brand of vape cartridges and other products in a smallproduction room.

That all gets back to my chemical engineering background, Dailey joked.

Ultimately, Dailey said hes excited to finally open his business and hopes to open more dispensaries in the future.He said that ifthe CCC eventually allowssocial consumption of marijuana, he would be interested in setting up an area for that on the dispensarysroof.

Getting this store open was the first step, he said. Anything is possible.

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'We don't want to be the big guys': Boston Bud Factory opens in Holyoke - GazetteNET

The Business of Drugs features the ideal host to deliver a crucial message about the war on drugs. Here's what you need to know about Amaryllis Fox.

Now streaming on Netflix, The Business of Drugs features the ideal host to communicate the show's important message about the relationship between moderneconomics and the war on drugs. Raised in various international locations,Amaryllis Fox studied international law at Oxford University, and later became a CIA analyst upon creating a historical data algorithm that was used to predict terrorist attacks. However, it'snot just Fox's experiences and knowledge that benefit the Netflix docuseries, but rather, the way she chooses to deliver her ideas to a world of curious streamers.

The Business of Drugs opens with a breakdown of Fox's credentials. The host discusses her10 years working with the CIA as a field operative and how she helped track down weapons of mass destruction. With the appropriate context established, Fox looks straight into the camera and explains why it's so crucial to think deeper about international drug production and distribution. In theNetflix docuseries, Fox is blunt when addressingthe economics of cocaine, synthetics, heroin, meth, cannabis, and opioids, but personablewhen interviewing people with insiderinformation.

Related: How To Fix A Drug Scandal: Biggest Reveals From Netflix's Documentary

In pop culture, Fox is perhaps best known for appearing in American Ripper, a 2017 investigative docuseries about serial killer H.H. Holmes. WithThe Business of Drugs, she's front and center as the featured commentator;she doesn't try to scareher audience like so many American politicians from the 1980s, a time when the war on drugs was reduced to convenient talking points and cultural cliches. Instead, Fox tries to show the human side of the illegal narcotics industry.

Fox never boasts about her professional accomplishments, but instead recalls her childhood experiences in Africa and Southeast Asia, and what she learned as the daughter ofan economist who helped developing countries. It's this personal background that makes Fox so well-suited to host this series: While investigating the rise of heroin distribution inAfrica most notably inKenya Fox offers cultural insightabout her formative years in the continent, and how she looks back on thoseexperiences differently as an adult. During an episode about meth arguably the most revelatory episode of the Netflix docuseries Fox states thatSoutheast Asia is in my blood...Southeast Asia made me who I am.There's a sense of world culture that grounds the host's opinions, as she clearly valuesthe importance of understanding how drug economics correlate with cultural shifts, and vice versa.

Because Foxhas a deepunderstanding and curiosity of differentcultures, she's more effective as an interviewer. In The Business of Drugs, the host casually converses with a masked cocaine dealer from Compton, California, and smiles when discussing sociopolitical conflict withMyanmar politician Yawd Serk, only to then explain to the audience that his anti-meth campaign is merely a "propaganda exercise." Fox opens each episode by describing what she wants to learn, and concludes by reinforcing the fact that the complex business of drugs continues to rapidly change.During the Netflix docuseries, Fox'snuanced approach stands out most when speaking with an American drug dealer about the consequences of his product. First, she's able to get an honest answer, and then acknowledges to the audience that the dealer is "spouting evil." But then Fox circles back to the premiseabout unregulated capitalism and middle-level criminals whodeflect attention from the biggerpicture.

In The Business of Drugs, Fox enters dangerous territory while traveling and speaks candidly with her overall assessments. Do Americans really know that the United States funds "a chain of human suffering"? And do people in general know that Myanmar produces more meth pills in a single year than McDonald's produces hamburgers? Fox is admittedly nostalgic for the past, but recognizes that being willfully naiveaboutdrug economics is part of the problem. As she puts it, "there's a terrible collisions of circumstances." The Netflix docuseries shows that Fox isn't a typical host who merely poses questions for the audience to consider. Instead, she reassesses her own perspectives and identifiescultural talking points thatneed to be part of the conversationmoving forward.

More:How To Fix A Drug Scandal True Story: What The Documentary Leaves Out

The Walking Dead: How Long Rick Was In The Coma

Q.V. Hough is a Screen Rant staff writer. He's also the founding editor at Vague Visages, and has contributed to RogerEbert.com and Fandor.

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The Business of Drugs: Why Amaryllis Fox Is The Perfect Host - Screen Rant

Under current law, certain drug offenses in California carry with them mandatory jail and prison sentences. On Monday, Senator Scott Wiener along with co-sponsor Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo announced SB 378, which would grant judges more discretion by repealing laws that were established during the height of the War on Drugs era in 1986which enacted these mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses.

For a lot of people in progressive California it is surprising to hear that in 2020, with all of the reforms that weve been working on for years, that there are still mandatory jail or prison sentences for non-violent drug offenses, Senator Wiener explained.

The current law denies judges the discretion to sentence drug offenders to more appropriate terms such as probation or diversion.

But here we are in California, in 2020, with mandatory prison or jail sentences for non-violent drug sentences, he said.

SB 378 would give the judge the ability to decide whether to incarcerate or whether to put someone on probation or diversion.

In California, we tragically were pioneers in the 70s and 80s and 90s in mass incarceration, Senator Wiener said. California led the way in mass incarceration, finding ways to sentence people to longer periods of time for more and more crimes.

Courts eventually found that prison conditions were so overcrowded that they were unconstitutionaland it was unconstitutional despite the fact that we built dozens of new prisons.

We have seen the damage that mass incarceration has caused tearing communities apart, tearing families apart, he said.

Senator Wiener argued that mass incarceration is a public health issue in California, and in the short and long term, he said, we must work to offer non-incarceration options to drug offendersparticularly those struggling with substance use disorderinstead of defaulting to prison or jail time.

Not only is mass incarceration bad for public health, Senator Wiener said, its also a giant expense for California in a time when we face massive budget cuts and a potentially catastrophic recession due to the COVID-19 pandemic and economic shutdown. Mass incarceration costs our state unnecessary billions that should be going to things like schools, healthcare, and infrastructure.

Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo and Senator Nancy Skinner have introduced previous versions of this bill in past years, and will co-author SB 378. It is sponsored by the Drug Policy Alliance.

Incarcerating non-violent drug offenders is the wrong direction for California, and its time repeal these jail and prison mandates,saidSenator Scott Wiener.

Mass incarceration is deeply harmful to our state part of the structural racism afflicting our entire criminal justice system and we must end it.It makes no sense to force judges to sentence non-violent drug offenders to jail or prison, he said. Californias addiction to over-incarceration tears families and communities apart, doesnt make us safer, and costs taxpayers dearly. California needs to reduce our jail and prison population and begin closing down prisons. Now is the time to take this step toward decarceration.

Assemblymember Carrillo noted, This legislation is important especially as we address issues of institutionalized systemic racism that plagues our communities.

She noted that, under the current law, judges are prohibited from evaluating all of the circumstances and applying their own discretion in sentencing. Instead, judges are forced to incarcerate people who would better be treated and evaluated in their own community.

These minimums disproportionately impact and affect minority communities, she said. Every year mass incarceration impacts our families across our state and consumes billions that California should be investing in education, health and mental health programs.

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin said, Mandatory minimums for far too long have disproportionately impacted people of color in poor working communities.

He said it is unusual for him to advocate for a law that would strip power away from his office.

Mandatory minimums have been a tremendous power grab by district attorneys from judges, he said. (The) power has been abusedit has led to spiraling incarceration, its led to disproportionate sentencing for people of color.

At the same time, Boudin said, The war on drugs has continued to cost the state of California over $47 billion a year even though we know it is a failureit does not work.

He said it is not an effective or empirically founded response to the very real challenges that our communities face.

Senator Wiener noted that this law would not eliminate maximum punishment in cases where judges deemed it warranted, it simply takes away the mandate.

San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju called this clearly a step in the right direction.

He noted that a lot of the amount that people go to prison for are really tiny amounts that are being sold.

Many of these people are attempting to support addiction or have mental health issues or are housing insecure.

He noted the case of a 40-year-old Black woman, with a documented history of mental health problems. She was in possession of .04 grams of crack4/100ths of a Sweet N Low packet. She sold to an undercover officer who was willing to pay $20 for a crumb that she had just bought for $5.

It is not uncommon for someone in that situation in courtrooms across the state to be sentenced to prison and then to be ineligible for housing or other benefits, he said.

This is expensive injustice, he said. The racial inequalities [exist] because of where law enforcement is choosing to use their resources [to] start.

Nick Stewart-Oaten, speaking for the California Public Defender Association, noted that the bill attempts to address an inequity created from a bill passed in 1986during the heart of the drug war.

The current mandatory minimums that this bill is trying to address are incredibly disproportionate, he explained. Right now if I sell a small amount of drugs Im ineligible for proobation. But if I assault somebody I am eligible for probation.

This kind of discrepancy in the law between nonviolent and violent offenders really needs to be addressed, he said, noting that, with the cost of incarceration at over $80,000 per year and the length of these sentences which often extends to ten years or more, the costs figure to be nearly $1 million for many of these cases.

Mandatory minimums are a remnant of the failed, costly and racist War on Drugs, said Glenn Backes, policy consultant for Drug Policy Alliance. Current law ties the hands of judges, they are powerless. This bill gives the judge the authority to order probation services and supervision, when it makes sense, given local norms and local resources.

In a release from Senator Wieners office, they said, As our country reckons with the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and begins a massive rethinking of our criminal justice system, we must take seriously the ways we can begin to end our system of mass incarceration. The War on Drugs and its disproportionate criminalization of Black and brown communities must end, and SB 378 would repeal one of the eras worst leftover laws.

David M. Greenwald reporting

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Legislation Introduced That Would End Mandatory Incarceration for Nonviolent Drug Offenders - The Peoples Vanguard of Davis

The protesters in Portland, Ore., known as the Wall of Moms are among self-identified mothers willing to take lead positions during demonstrations. Theyre not the first. In recent decades, mothers across the globe have played significant roles in a variety of conflicts. Whether in opposition to their national governments or challenging other forms of authority such as law enforcement, these women have often been at the forefront of key moments.

Here are a few notable examples:

Norma Lewis holds a flower while forming a Wall of Moms during a Black Lives Matter protest in Portland, Ore., on July 20, 2020.

(Noah Berger / Associated Press)

While then-Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee onto George Floyds neck, Floyd repeatedly called out for his mother, later prompting signs that read All mothers were summoned when George Floyd called out for his momma at protests across the United States.

In Portland, where Black Lives Matter uprisings have continued unabated since Floyd was killed in police custody in late May, hundreds of women clad in yellow formed a Wall of Moms between demonstrators and agents this week following reports that federal agents in unmarked vehicles were apprehending activists.

The women were joined at the demonstrations by some husbands and dads who used leaf blowers to help keep tear gas away from protesters.

Members of the Cuban female dissident group Ladies in White demonstrate during their weekly march in Havana in 2010.

(Javier Galeano / Associated Press)

Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White) was founded in 2003 by the wives and female relatives of 75 dissidents sentenced to prison on treason charges during Cubas Black Spring, including doctors, journalists and teachers.

For almost a decade, the women protested the incarcerations by attending Mass at St. Ritas Church in Havana each Sunday dressed in white. Then, they silently walked through the streets carrying gladiolas.

The last of the 75 imprisoned dissidents were freed in 2011, and most went into exile in Spain. Nevertheless, the damas continued to agitate for the release of all political prisoners, sometimes facing violence and harassment at the hands of government police. In 2018, the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington, D.C., presented the group with the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, a $250,000 award presented to a group or individual who has made a significant contribution to advance human freedom.

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group made up of women whose children disappeared during the 1970s war against subversion, protest in front of the Government House in Buenos Aires on Dec. 8, 1983, during the last march under military dictatorship.

(Eduardo Di Baia / Associated Press)

Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo began demonstrating in pairs at a public square outside the government palace in Buenos Aires in 1977. Wearing white headscarves to symbolize the diapers once used by their missing children, these mothers (and grandmothers) demanded to know what happened to their loved ones during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship a regime that killed an estimated 30,000 people and tortured thousands of others in clandestine detention camps.

The mothers and grandmothers, some of whom were Holocaust survivors, marched for four decades, putting their own lives at risk. In December 1977, three of the groups members were abducted, drugged and loaded onto a plane, then thrown into the Atlantic ocean.

Because hundreds of babies were taken from the disappeared and raised by military families, Las Madres de La Plaza de Mayo also helped reunite the children of kidnapped people with their living relatives. Their advocacy also helped bring former military officials to trial for their role in the abductions. In 1986, the group split into two, each with its own objectives.

The symbolism of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo remains strong: In 2017, tens of thousands of demonstrators raised white headscarves in protest against the early release of those convicted of crimes against humanity.

Mothers and widows of dead Ukrainian servicemen hold a memorial rally in front of the Russian Embassy in Kyiv 2019.

(Sergei Supinsky / AFP via Getty Images)

Shortly after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, Russian-backed groups seized parts of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, prompting a military operation to reclaim them. In August of that year, Ukrainian officials came to an agreement with the rebels, who pledged to provide a humanitarian corridor to allow Ukrainian troops to retreat. But the agreement was not fulfilled. Ukrainian troops were shot at while trying to exit, resulting in hundreds of deaths. Though Ukrainian veterans maintain the presence of the Russian military in the conflict, Moscow has denied that its forces took part in the battle.

Since then, the mothers and widows of Ukrainian servicemen killed at the Battle of Ilovaisk hold memorial rallies in front of the Russian Embassy in Kyiv. Every August, they carry their countrys yellow and blue flag, along with photos of their loved ones, and hold memorial rallies to mark the anniversary of the battle. At the demonstrations, the women tie red balloons representing the bloodshed to the gates of the Russian Embassy. Theyve also created mutual aid groups to support the families of military personnel.

Mothers of Russian soldiers carry a protest banner in Nazran, Ingushetia, Russia, in 1995. The banner says: The March of Mothers Compassion.

(Shakh Aivazov / Associated Press)

As the Soviet Union disintegrated, Chechen separatists declared independence from Russia in the early 1990s. The first Chechen war broke out in 1994, and after less than two years of fighting, Russian forces withdrew from the region. Russian troops were accused of torching and pillaging houses, as well as raping and executing civilians. Chechen forces held captured Russian soldiers, some of whom refused to fire on the civilians who surrounded their tanks. Tens of thousands of people were killed in the conflict.

A group that formed as the Soldiers Mothers Committee to protect young Russian conscripts from hazing and other forms of army brutality years before the war broke out decided to take additional action during the conflict. Some 100 members of the committee, undeterred by snow and strong winds, participated in a 56-mile antiwar march to Chechnyas capital. They carried placards that read War in Chechnya Is a Shame and Bring Our Sons Home, along with signatures collected throughout Russia in opposition to the campaign against Chechen separatists.

As the conflict dragged on, hundreds of women poured into the region to seek the release of their sons from Chechen prisons, or to find their bodies.

Mothers call for justice in the March of Dignity on Mothers Day 2014 in Mexico City.

(Yuri Cortez / AFP via Getty Images)

In Mexico, Mothers Day events now typically involve marches led by the mothers and wives of tens of thousands of people who have gone missing since former President Felipe Caldern launched a war on drugs in 2006.

Wearing T-shirts emblazoned with enlarged photos of their missing children or other relatives, the mothers march through the capital and other parts of the country. Aside from the annual marches, many have banded together to form collectives, taking it on themselves to find their missing loved ones by combing through mass graves.

At a recent seminar on Mexicos disappeared, social anthropologist and psychoanalyst Elena Azaola Garrido said that although fathers participate in the search collectives, the vast majority of these groups are led by and composed of women.

Azaola Garrido said the mothers who search for the missing suffer tremendously. Aside from threats from organized crime and corrupt government officials, their own family members sometimes criticize them fiercely, telling them let it go already and Why are you so hung up on that?

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Mothers in Portland and beyond lead protests - Los Angeles Times

Aswang, an award-winning documentary that takes an unflinching look at how the Duterte administrations war on illegal drugs has upended the lives of ordinary people here and killed thousands, gets its name from a mythical monster in Philippine cultural lore.

The film by Filipina director Alyx Ayn Arumpac tells the story largely through the eyes of a small boy whose teenage friend died in the crackdown. The documentary was streamed and viewed by nearly half a million Filipinos when it made its debut in the Philippines earlier this month.

Myths and old tales seem to have come to life, says a trailer on YouTube to Arumpacs 85-minute film. Night after night, the darkness unravels bodies face down on the streets.

On Sunday, the director took part in an online discussion with Philippine human rights activists and journalists about the making of the documentary, which won Arumpac the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) Prize at the 2019 International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam.

The film offered nothing new. It was not an expos, its not an investigative work. We were surprised, nevertheless. Everyone was talking about it, she said during the discussion hosted by organizers of Daang Dokyu, a Filipino film festival that showcases documentaries, and Dakila, a local NGO that brings together artists and activists.

Arumpac started working on Aswang in 2016, the year the Duterte administration launched the crackdown on narcotics after Rodrigo Duterte was elected as president that June on a campaign pledge to rid the country of the scourge of drug addiction and trafficking.

International human rights groups and the United Nations have criticized the now four-year-old crackdown for its brutality, but government officials have defended it as necessary for law and order in the country. President Duterte once said that the crackdown was his way of saving the future of the Filipino youth.

Since the campaign began in mid-2016, Philippine police have claimed more than 6,000 deaths of suspected drug dealers and addicts during anti-narcotics operations and raids. Rights groups, however, have said that the number could be four times higher, with many extrajudicial killings carried out by pro-government vigilantes.

Government officials did not immediately respond to requests from BenarNews for comments on this report.

Shoestring project

For the first two years while making her film, Arumpac joined a group of photojournalists who documented the war on drugs night after night on the streets of Metro Manila. Back then Arumpac did not have a day job, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it gave her more time to focus on filming scenes from the drug war and its aftermath, she said.

Unlike foreign filmmakers who came to the Philippines with crews in tow, Arumpac mostly filmed her project on her own, quietly shooting footage with camera in hand.

Funding was an initial problem, but the director said this did not deter her from carrying on with her work in tracking and documenting killings from the drug war. Arumpac said she used her own money and borrowed cameras from friends.

It would take four years before Filipinos would glimpse the rawness of the images that the filmmaker painstakingly captured through her lens.

I had to stop five minutes into the film. I was so struck by the power. I couldnt describe how I felt. I had to stop watching it because it was too powerful. I had to stop to digest it before I proceeded, said Che-che Lazaro, a multi-awarded journalist and veteran documentarian who helped moderate Sundays discussion.

Arumpac said she also wanted viewers to share the feelings she experienced while filming scenes.

It was made by trying to show you how I felt while doing this coverage for two years. Using the audio-visual powers of cinema, we attempted to show the viewers how I felt while I was there observing and witnessing everything, the director said.

One of the major problems was access and the idea that youre a Filipino and you live here. You have to consider everyones safety, she said.

The films title comes from the Aswang, a monster from Filipino lore that hunts and kills people at night.

The idea of naming her work after the mythological predator came to the director when Arumpac saw her first images of people slain in the drug war.

Precisely because I thought the killers were sending a message. Sometimes the killings were too blatant. Youd think its staged because it was too brutal and violent. Youd see pictures of heads with tape wrapped around them. Youd see things stuffed inside their mouths. The manner by which they died was too brutal, it was stripped of dignity, Arumpac said.

An unconventional film

Aswang veers from traditional documentary storytelling. There are no talking heads and experts appearing on camera or in voiceovers to make sense of what the viewer is seeing.

The characters and sequence of events are not fully explained. Instead, the film uses a very creative narrative by tapping into Philippine mythology to explain current events, said Nerissa Balce, a professor at Stony Brook University in New York, who participated in Sundays online forum.

Rather than the traditional form of documentary films that used experts or what film makers might call talking heads, Arumpac doesnt use that but explains the horror of Filipino life under Dutertes drug war though a Philippine myth, Balce said.

In the documentary, the myth of the Aswang is an allegory, a symbolic language or metaphor to the violence committed by that Duterte government against the poor, Balce added.

A real-life character who features prominently in the film is Jomari, 10, a Filipino boy who was left to fend for himself after both his parents were detained on drug charges.

In 2017, Jomaris teenage friend, student Kian Lloyd delos Santos, fell victim to rogue policemen who were enforcing the crackdown on illegal drugs. Kians death sparked widespread protested here, and was a clear case of mistaken identity. Three policemen were later convicted of murder in connection with his killing.

We often say in the media that issues last only nine days or two weeks. But Aswang showed us that these events, this tragedy, have a human dimension. The [victims] were not just mere statistics, Lourd de Veyra, a Philippine journalist and musician who helped lead the online discussion about Arumpacs film.

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Documentary Takes Viewers to the Mean Streets of Philippine Drug War - benarnews

July 22, 2020 Some societies center on social control, others on social investment.

Social-control societies put substantial resources into police, prisons, surveillance, immigration enforcement, and the military. Their purpose is to utilize fear, punishment, and violence to divide people and keep the status quo in place perpetuating the systemic oppression of Black and brown people, and benefiting no one but wealthy elites.

Social-investment societies put more resources into healthcare, education, affordable housing, jobless benefits, and children. Their purpose is to free people from the risks and anxieties of daily life and give everyone a fair shot at making it.

Donald Trump epitomizes the former. He calls himself the law and order president. He even wants to sic the military on Americans protesting horrific police killings.

He has created an unaccountable army of federal agents who go into cities like Portland, Oregon without showing their identities and assault innocent Americans.

Trump is the culmination of forty years of increasing social control in the United States and decreasing social investment a trend which, given the deep-seated history of racism in the United States, falls disproportionately on Black people, indigeneous people, and people of color.

Spending on policing in the United States has almost tripled, from $42.3 billion in 1977 to $114.5 billion in 2017.

America now locks away 2.2 million people in prisons and jails. Thats a 500 percent increase from 40 years ago. The nation now has the largest incarcerated population in the world.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has exploded. More people are now in ICE detention than ever in its history.

Total military spending in the U.S. has soared from $437 billion in 2003 to $935.8 billion this fiscal year.

The more societies spend on social controls, the less they have left for social investment. More police means fewer social services. American taxpayers spend $107.5 billion more on police than on public housing.

More prisons means fewer dollars for education. In fact, America is now spending more money on prisons than on public schools. Fifteen states now spend $27,000 more per person in prison than they do per student.

As spending on controls has increased, spending on public assistance has shrunk. Fewer people are receiving food stamps. Outlays for public health have declined.

America cant even seem to find money to extend unemployment benefits during this pandemic.

Societies that skimp on social investment end up spending more on social controls that perpetuate violence and oppression. This trend is a deep-seated part of our history.

The United States began as a control society. Slavery Americas original sin depended on the harshest conceivable controls. Jim Crow and redlining continued that legacy.

But in the decades following World War II, the nation began inching toward social investment the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, and substantial investments in health and education.

Then America swung backward to social control.

Since Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs, four times as many people have been arrested for possessing drugs as for selling them.

Of those arrested for possession, half have been charged with possessing cannabis for their own use. Nixons strategy had a devastating effect on Black people that is still felt today: a Black person is nearly 4 times more likely to be arrested for cannabis possession than a white person, even though they use it at similar rates.

Bill Clinton put 88,000 additional police on the streets and got Congress to mandate life sentences for people convicted of a felony after two or more prior convictions, including drug offenses.

This so-called three strikes youre out law was replicated by many states, and, yet again, disproportionately impacted Black Americans. In California, for instance, Black people were 12 times more likely than white people to be incarcerated under three-strikes laws, until the state reformed the law in 2012. Clinton also reformed welfare into a restrictive program that does little for families in poverty today.

Why did America swing back to social control?

Part of the answer has to do with widening inequality. As the middle class collapsed and the ranks of the poor grew, those in power viewed social controls as cheaper than social investment, which would require additional taxes and a massive redistribution of both wealth and power.

Meanwhile, politicians whose power depends on maintaining the status quo, used racism from Nixons law and order and Reagans welfare queens to Trumps blatantly racist rhetoric to deflect the anxieties of an increasingly overwhelmed white working class. Its the same old strategy. So long as racial animosity exists, the poor and working class wont join together to topple the system that keeps so many Americans in poverty, and Black Americans oppressed.

The last weeks of protests and demonstrations have exposed whats always been true: social controls are both deadly and unsustainable. They require more and more oppressive means of terrorizing communities and they drain resources that would ensure Black people not only survive, but thrive.

This moment calls on us to relinquish social control and ramp up our commitment to social investment.

Its time we invest in affordable housing and education, not tear gas, batons, and state-sanctioned murder. Its time we invest in keeping children fed and out of poverty, not putting their parents behind bars. Its time to defund the police, and invest in communities. We have no time to waste.

Robert Reichs latest book is THE SYSTEM: Who Rigged It, How To Fix It, out March 24.He is Chancellors Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written 17 other books, including the best sellers Aftershock,The Work of Nations, Beyond Outrage, and The Common Good. He is a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, founder of Inequality Media, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentaries Inequality For All, and Saving Capitalism, both now streaming on Netflix.

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Robert Reich: The Real Choice: Social Control or Social Investment (VIDEO) - YubaNet

A couple of weeks ago all international students living in the United States learned that they would soon be required to leave the country. A rapid-fire succession of lawsuits and public outrage forced the Trump administration to back off from the order targeting international students whose universities moved classes online due to coronavirus concerns. It was a close call. For days, the fates of more than a million lawful residents of this country hung in complete uncertainty, disrupting their lives and the pursuit of their dreams.

I was on an F1 student visa for seven years. A year and a half ago, I would have been one of those students. This whole affair reminded me of life as an international student; of how difficult it is to get and keep a student visa, how many rules you have to follow, of constant uncertainty and stress.

My mom, dad, sister and I moved to Pittsburgh in the summer 2011. As I boarded the airplane leaving my native Mexico City, all my earthly possessions reduced to two suitcases and a carry-on, I thought enthusiastically about the U.S. as land of opportunities. I hoped to become a great musician. Id work hard, master my craft, and all the sacrifices made would end up being justified.

My dad was following a professional dream as well. He had been offered a job at the UPMC Childrens Hospital new telemedicine center. He was leaving a country in need that he greatly loved because, paradoxically, he could help more people virtually, from far away.

This was also an escape. The low rumble of dread had been steadily growing since 2006, when the U.S.-backed war on drugs exploded all around Mexico. I remember hearing about heads on spikes and bodies found hanging from bridges, first, in shock. Later, as acts of unspeakable violence became more and more commonplace, they became part of the static of everyday life.

The economic crisis of 2008 only made things worse. So that, by the time we left Mexico City, in spite of leaving friends and family, our holidays, our food, our roots behind, we felt as though we might just be headed for a better life.

Already in the U.S., we learned that, since I was almost 20 years old, I wouldnt be able to remain as a dependent on my fathers O1 extraordinary person immigration status. If I wanted to stay here, with my family, pursuing my dream, I would have to be enrolled in an American university before I turned 21.

So I fought. I emailed the head of Duquesne Universitys piano department, Kenneth Burky, who luckily turned out to be a kind soul who guided me through the application process.

I knocked on door after door, trying to get a scholarship, since my parents wouldn't be able to afford a full tuition. I was not legally allowed to get a loan. I remember my mom trying to hold back tears as we talked to university secretary after secretary, hoping some sort of deal would come through.

When I finally started at Duquesne in spring 2012, the culture shock was instantaneous. My classmates came from similar backgrounds to one another, lived together in dorms and had gotten to know each other over the fall semester. Slowly, I found my footing, got involved in music composition, found a tutor and mentor in retired Duquesne professor David Stock.

I graduated in three and a half years. Then the uncertainty started all over again. I applied to grad schools. At every step the question emerged: Should I keep pursuing my dreams, knowing it will make it unlikely for me to find the stability required of immigrants to keep their status?

By that point, the stunting effect of being on an F1 Visa had begun to take its toll. I wasnt allowed to legally work outside of the university. My university job couldnt consist of more than 20 hours a week. I saw my friends grow, get their own apartments, careers, travel.

The life of an immigrant is an endless pile of paperwork, a long list of terms you memorize, that define you, to aspire to, to fear: O1, H1, I94, F1, J1, OPT, I20 A failed class, a misdemeanor, a clerical error can cost you your status.

I was accepted at Carnegie Mellon Universitys master of music composition program. My plan was to get a Ph.D. and apply for a university job. A longshot, but a way of keeping my status.

Then the 2016 election happened. I woke up to the ugliest side of the American underbelly; watched the man who called people like me rapists and criminals in the opening remarks of his presidential campaign become president. And after he won, I heard of people who speak my language, who come from my culture, whom Ive met, being raided at 6 in the morning, after a lifetime of peaceful, law-abiding existence in this city.

Now it was 2017, time to start the process all over again, to prepare for the GRE, take the TOEFL language exam for the umpteenth time, write essays, send portfolios, fill out applications. I was working a part-time university job and held two assistantships to pay for my tuition.

And I hit a wall. It was November 2017 when I decided I wasnt going to move forward. I was burnt out. I had a very difficult conversation with my parents. At first, they were in shock, fearing that I wouldnt be able to get a tourist visa to re-enter the US and come visit them. Then, they came to a reluctant acceptance of my choice.

Marina Lopez Gonzalez Duran lived on an F1 student visa for seven years, a status that would have forced international students to leave the United States this fall before a plan from the Trump administration was scrapped. (Photo by Ryan Loew/PublicSource)

In January 2018, I went into a deep depression. Everything Id fought and hoped for was gone. The country I thought was the key to my dreams had turned out to be a harsh, unforgiving, hateful place.

And then, in what I thought was my last semester in the U.S., I met the man who was to become my husband. I fell in love and I found the will to keep fighting. Will and I got married in the Spring of 2019, and last November I finally obtained my green card.

What really gets to me about the current situation is that if I somehow had been stronger and had found it within me to go through with doctoral applications, it would be me whod be targeted by the deportation order now rescinded. After almost a decade of being in this country, of being careful about what I say online, of being in my best behavior, of keeping my grades up, it would have been me.

My story is in no way special or unique. There are many other people like me, who come here to pursue their dreams. Our stories are complex and diverse. We are not a monolith, but we are a net good for this nation.

There is a false narrative of division between different types of immigrants, claiming that somehow people who had the resources and opportunities to apply the right way are better than those who were desperate enough to risk it all and come here in spite of threats of violence and deportation.

Recent events have proven that we are not so different in the eyes of those who wish us gone from this land; it isnt about how you got here, its about who you are.

First, people from certain countries were barred from entering the U.S. Then, the most vulnerable, undocumented inmigrants and refugees were targeted. Then, there was the legal challenge to DACA. A few weeks ago, the White House announced it would be suspending work visas for a number of highly skilled people in the STEM fields. And now, its international students. Some of these attacks will be successful, and some won't, but their insistent onslaught proves my point.

This is scapegoating, plain and simple. It's a lack of imagination to not be able to see the net good that all this diverse talent from all over the globe brings into this country, and how we can coexist with and aid the advancement of American born citizens.

And it is a shame; it is this country expunging what makes it unique, strong, and beautiful.

Marina Lopez Gonzalez Duran is a musical composer and budding writer based in Pittsburgh, she can be reached at marinalopezcomposer.com.

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I lived for 7 years on an international student visa in Pittsburgh. Living in Trump's America is scary and uncertain. - PublicSource

Although no one will catch a drug overdose by sitting next to someone on a bus or at a bar, the widespread prevalence of drug abuse in a society does resemble an infectious disease epidemic in other ways.

The origins of the opioid epidemic is more complex, but a difference in policies produces a difference in results. First and foremost, the problem can be prevented by good public health policies and can be made much worse by bad social policies. Take for example the Netherlands, where the COVID-19 case rate soared in March, but had declined sharply by the end of June.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the COVID-19 infection rate continues to rise sharply.

Similarly, U.S. drug policies are a major disaster. With a rate of 314.5 deaths per million and an estimated total of 67,367 drug-related deaths in 2018, the U.S. lost more lives to the use of drugs than the next 20 countries combined, according to Statista.

In West Virginia, COVID-19 has claimed 93 lives over the past three months, according to The Guardian. That is only a fraction of those killed by drug overdoses, which caused nearly 1,000 deaths in the state in 2018 alone, mostly from opioids but also methamphetamine (also known as meth).

Continuing the comparison of West Virginia with the Netherlands, conveniently, the Dutch population is approximately 10 times that of the Mountain State, 17 million versus 1.7 million. The Dutch lost 262 people to drug overdoses, while WV lost almost 1,000.

That is 40 times the Dutch per capita rate!

These differences in outcomes are so great that we the American people must demand that our so-called leaders explain why they are ignoring the Dutch experience.

President Trump has cited the fact that the Dutch are sending their children back to school, but he has ignored the different outcomes in pandemic policies. As they support Trump on his back to school demands, Fox and the other pro-Trump media have ignored these major differences in COVID-19 policies and outcomes, but the so-called Mainstream Media, like Fox, have always ignored Dutch drugs policies, especially regarding marijuana.

On June 10, President Trump went to Florida to meet with the US Southern Command which has long been tasked with fighting the Drug War in the Eastern Pacific as well as the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.

According to WPTV, they bragged that A joint operation between the U.S. military and multiple law enforcement agencies has led to more than 1,000 arrests and the seizure of around 264,000 pounds of illegal drugs worth billions of dollars across the Western Hemisphere since early April.

He knows the numbers: Last year, 70,000 precious American lives were taken because of the poison the cartels bring into our country, Trump said. Well work relentlessly to seize illegal drugs, arrest vile traffickers.

Trump talks about stopping our endless wars, but the Drug War has been going on longer than any of them, and the death rate is higher than all the rest combined.

Photo by Darwin Brandis/Getty Images

As an excellent editorial in the Orange County Register notes, In the name of a quixotic war to eradicate drugs, millions of Americans have been criminalized and saddled with the collateral consequences of a criminal conviction, drugs have become more dangerous, cartels and street gangs have been enriched and alternatives to the hammer of the justice system have been underfunded and underutilized

According to the Costs of War Project out of Brown University, The War on Drugs has come at a cost of over $1 trillion over decades and helped spur a so-called opioid crisis.

Meanwhile in Canada, there has been an amazing role reversal between the police and the so-called Liberal Party of Le Grande Poseur, Justin Trudeau, darling of the American Left.

The Globe and Mail, Canadas leading national newspaper, reports:

Canadas police chiefs are calling on Ottawa to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of hard drugs, which they argue is urgently needed to slow opioid deaths and help people addicted to illicit substances.

The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police released a report Thursday underscoring how the criminal-justice system has been ineffective in dealing with people who are battling substance use and addiction issues.

We have less than two Canadians die per day of homicide and we have 11 Canadians a day dying of overdose, said Adam Palmer, head of the CACP and a Vancouver police constable. So its a significant public safety issue and a publichealth issue that we need to have a different approach with.

Police are put out to deal with these things on the front lines and in many cases are not the best people to be dealing with them.

Appallingly, the Trudeau government says that it will not follow their advice, even though Canada ranks fourth in the world for overdose deaths, 179.8 per million.

Meanwhile, Portugal, which decriminalized possession of all drugs twenty years ago, is seeing a declining rate in overdose deaths. According to stats from the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction: The drug-induced mortality rate among adults (aged 15-64 years) was 4 deaths per million in 2017, which is lower than the most recent European average of 22 deaths per million.

Richard Cowan is a former NORML National Director and current syndicated author. His work on CBD, hemp and marijuana can be found here: Marijuana Weekly News.

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Drug Overdoses Kill More People In West Virginia Than COVID-19 - The Fresh Toast

A proposal to hire three new detectives at the Buncombe County Sheriffs Office divided the county Board of Commissioners on July 21 and not just along party lines. Democrats Amanda Edwards and Al Whitesides joined the boards three Republicans in a 5-2 vote approving the move, which would match a $375,000 federal grant with $734,000 in county funds through fiscal year 2025.

Two of the new positions, explained Democratic Sheriff Quentin Miller in a presentation to the board, would be undercover narcotics detectives targeting the large-scale drug trafficking corridors that run through Asheville to urban centers such as Atlanta, Charlotte and Knoxville. The remaining hire would primarily investigate arson cases, of which the county has solved fewer than a third since 2015.

Board Chair Brownie Newman, a Democrat, said he was confident that Miller and his force would be able to hold some additional people accountable with the new resources. But he questioned whether further enforcement would be the most effective approach for the department, especially regarding opioid trafficking.

Weve been fighting this war on drugs for forever, and Im skeptical that its the best investment of our dollars, frankly, Newman said. Theres a lot of different strategies that we need to be pursuing to tackle it; we dont have enough treatment.

After Democrat Jasmine Beach-Ferrara said she would oppose the funding, Republican Anthony Penland, who is running against her for the same District 2 board seat in November, challenged his colleagues to ride along with a deputy and watch enforcement in action. Beach-Ferrara countered that she had done so with not only the Sheriffs Office, but also the Asheville and Charlotte police departments.

I would respectfully ask that, in the future, you consider that your colleagues on commission have done their due diligence and are taking a very deep dive into one of the most critical policy issues of our time, she admonished Penland. We need to move past a very tired script in which if you have a conversation where you disagree, it means youre anti-law enforcement.

Meanwhile, Edwards said that she had been prepared to vote against the measure but changed her stance after talking with the families of county residents impacted by opioids. A vote for this is not a vote against reform, she emphasized, adding that she would continue to speak with the sheriff about implementing 21st-Century Policing and other changes.

Following the vote, the commissioners read numerous messages related to law enforcement as part of the boards general public comment period. The overwhelming majority, including several dozen emails and voicemails that Newman elided as a single message due to their similarity, demanded that Buncombe officials defund the sheriffs office and detention center by at least 50% and reinvest the money into community services.

The electronic comments were consistent with over a dozen comments delivered during the countys June 16 budget hearing, as well as thousands of comments received by Asheville City Council calling for the Asheville Police Department to be defunded. Community demands for systemic changes to law enforcement have escalated in recent months following racial justice protests throughout Western North Carolina catalyzed by the May 25 police killing of Black Minneapolis resident George Floyd.

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Buncombe commissioners disagree over Sheriff's Office funding - Mountain Xpress

Josh Hartnett depicts real life reporter Victor Malarek, who travels to Thailand to investigate a ... [+] bungled Canadian police sting operation in Daniel Roby's 'Most Wanted.'

Josh Hartnett is in Paris getting ready to go to work on the anticipated HBO docu-series Exterminate All The Brutes.

Its great, he says by phone, except that were all isolated. We have a lot of hoops to go through in order to make this work, so were just waiting on that. But its beautiful here from my window.

The four-part series will explore the far-reaching repercussions of European colonialism, and is based on various works, including Sven Lindqvists titular book. The series, created by Raoul Peck, combines documentary footage, animation and scripted scenes (performed by a cast that includes Hartnett).

The San Francisco-born, Minneapolis-raised actor, whose long list of credits includes roles in action movies including Pearl Harbor, Black Hawk Down and Wicker Park, to independent projects including Mozart And The Whale and August, is pleased to be one of the first productions approved by the Screen Actors Guild to begin, following months after the global pandemic shut down nearly all shoots. How far the docu-series will get remains to be seen, but the 42-year-old actor is optimistic.

In the meantime, Hartnett is promoting (remotely) his new film Most Wanted, in which he plays Victor Malarek, a Canadian investigative reporter who discovers that a police sting operation may have unlawfully entrapped an innocent man and cost him freedom. The drama, written and directed by Canadian filmmaker Daniel Roby, is based on a true story involving a recovering heroin junkie named Daniel (Antoine Olivier Pilon) who, through a series of events, is pegged as a drug trafficker, illegally importing heroin on a mass scale to Canada from Thailand.

A costly police investigation is led by a shady investigator named Barry Cooper, eager to boost his sagging reputation within the department. Even when he finds out that the drug trafficker isnt who he is suspected to be, Cooper (Stephen McHattie) and his team continue to pursue him with the cooperation of Thai authorities. If it means allowing an innocent man to be sentenced to life in a Thai prison and covering up the loss of one of his officers in the process, so be it.

On a tip, Hartnetts Malarek begins sniffing around the case and uncovers clues that an innocent man is being wrongly accused. He convinces his reluctant newspaper editor to send him to Bangkok to investigate and his findings lead him to fight for Daniels freedom from his 100-year prison sentence, even it if means putting his own family at risk. Comedian Jim Gaffigan plays a shady informant who hatches the scheme that sets the operation in motion.

Saban Films Most Wanted arrives in theaters and On Demand Friday July 24.

Angela Dawson: Tell me about getting involved with this project. What was your interest in playing Victor Malarek?

Josh Hartnett: Initially, my interest came from the script and what the character goes through. It was a well-written script. It was a very long script. But I spoke to Daniel Roby, the director and writer, and he was so passionate about it and had spent so much time on it already in putting it together by the time I read it. Hes really an engaging guy. He got me into the idea of this character. I went to Toronto to meet Victor; I was in New York at the time. So, we spent a day going to (The Globe and) Mail, visiting his old haunts and his house. We talked about what he had gone through. Hes a very charismatic guy who had a clarity of purpose, second to none. Like he is in the film, he has a fantastic b.s. detector.Hes very bright but not in a precious way. He knows how to read people and I found him very compelling, in that sense. But theres also a gentleness and graciousness about him. I feel that had I not met him, I may not have had a complete sense of who he is and what he went through.

He was a kid who grew up in a boys home, so I got a sense of why he is compelled to do what he does. Doing investigative journalism is more than a job for him; its more of a calling for him. So, I respected him a lot. It was really a gift to be offered this part.

Dawson: The story is very timely in terms of shedding light on matters of law enforcement oversight and discussions of judicial reform.

Hartnett: Unfortunately, its kind of a timeless film. When Id read the script, I couldnt believe that something like this could happen just right next door from Minnesota. Just over the border in Canada, the government had created this system where it compelled (federal) officers to do what they did. The law enforcement agencies, at the time (the late 1980s), were engaged in this war on drugs, and they had a quota, essentially, of arresting people and making drug busts. It put law enforcement in a situation which could lead to an abuse of power.

This is, ultimately, what the story is about: an abuse of power, which is so relevant right now. It was relevant at the time we were making the film two years ago, and it was relevant in (the 1980s), when these events took place. Its been an issue for such a long time. Thats why the story highlights that we need good, independent journalists that will speak truth-to-power and will give us the facts surrounding these abuses of power.

It made making the film unsettling at the time we were doing it when journalists and newspapers were constantly being undermined and being compared with and put on an even playing field with online reports of conspiracy theorists. Its unnerving to me that were in that situation.

This story highlights the importance for these (fourth estate) institutions to remain funded in order to continue keeping the public informed about whats really going on behind the scenes. Otherwise, were just reading propaganda.

Josh Hartnett (right) plays Canadian investigative reporter Victor Malarek, who travels to Thailand ... [+] to help exonerate wrongly accused Daniel Leger (Antoine Olivier Pilon) from prison.

Dawson: How was it filming in Thailand?

Hartnett: This was put together on a (tight) budget. We didnt have a lot of extra room. What Daniel was about to accomplish in the short time we had to do it is absolutely mind-boggling to me. Its a real testament to his filmmaking style that he foresaw a lot of the issues that were going to be at play during the production process.

Our experience making it was shooting every day and shooting quickly. There was no setup time. It was fascinating, particularly shooting in the prison, which is actually a recently decommissioned prison and getting a real sense of what it was like there, and how the real character, Alain Olivier, survived it. You think about what you would do once you were inside those walls and you believe you will be there for life. Its a terrifying prospect, of course. We were able to experience that, firsthand, at the place where so many had been incarcerated. That helps in terms of the filmmaking process; it helps in terms of getting into mind frame of these characters, and the necessity that they all felt, and that Victor felt to do the right thing.

Bangkok is amazing, although I didnt get to see much of it. Daniel took us out one night to a fantastic restaurant but it takes about two hours to get anywhere by car in Bangkok, so we didnt venture out very often. It was mostly about getting to set and working our butts off all day. Of course, we had to try to keep cell phones off and out of sight in the background. But it was really an extraordinary city. Just so fast-paced and so many people around. I lived in New York for 20 years, and you think about the huge population and everybody living on top of each other, but it is nothing in comparison to Bangkok.

Dawson: What were you working on prior to the pandemic shut down? And what are you working on now?

Hartnett: Ive got (Lech Majewskis) Valley Of The Gods. John Malkovich is in that with me. I did something on the other end of the spectrum, which is Guy Ritchies new heist film (Cash Truck). I play kind of a goofy character in that. And Im working on (I Am Not Your Negro filmmaker) Raoul Pecks (Exterminate All The Brutes), which is something hes been working for the past 10 years. Its mostly documentary, and Im in (the scripted parts). That should be out by the end of the year. Im shooting for about three weeks here in France. Then, Im off to shoot another film in Oklahoma. Well have to see how things go.

Read the rest here:

Josh Hartnetts Most Wanted Dramatizes Need For Free Press And Police Oversight - Forbes

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. Saratoga Jewish Community Arts is presenting a virtual panel discussion on the film 13th.

This award-winning 2016 documentary by director Ava DuVernay explores the confluence of race, justice and mass incarceration in the United States.

In the film, titled after the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which abolished slavery throughout the U.S., DuVernay contends that slavery has been perpetuated since the end of the Civil War through criminalizing behavior and enabling police to arrest poor freedmen and force them to work for the state under convict leasing; suppression of African Americans by disenfranchisement, lynching and Jim Crow; politicians declaring a war on drugs that weights more heavily on minority communities and, by the late 20th Century, mass incarceration of people of color.

This documentary provides an opportunity for meaningful conversation about things that matter, program coordinator Phyllis Wang said in a press release. As Jews we are challenged with expressions of anti-Semitism whether through word or violence. Yet there are others, including a segment of Jews, who are challenged as soon as they show their face merely by the color of their skin.

Participants are encouraged to watch 13th on their own at a time of their choosing, then log in at 7 p.m. on Sunday, July 26 for a Zoom discussion forum in which panelists will focus on questions regarding the 13th Amendment, media and popular culture representations of Black Americans and mass incarceration.

Panelists will include Daniel Nathan (Skidmore College); Reverend Michael Bell; Pastor Mark Kehrer; Timothy Harper (Skidmore College); Kenneth Evans (Financial and Business Services); Song Lee (UVM) and Tanesha Ingram (community organizer, activist).

Individual panelist biographies will be included in the program that will be provided to registrants prior to the event.

The documentary is available through Netflix, HBO, YouTube, Amazon, Amazon Prime and other outlets.

The event format is a bit different from the SJCAs usual practice. As we all are experiencing the need to find alternative ways to deliver our education, entertainment etc., this film program will be an on your own viewing opportunity, Wang said in the release.

Nevertheless, Wang encourages participation. She added, If you want to talk about things that matter with people that matter, then join the discussion!

Advance registration is required and can be completed online at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwvdO-rrjkiE9YFVMBBiqOXt2j9DNHORxfF.

After registering, attendees will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Zoom session.

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Saratoga Jewish Community Arts to present virtual panel discussion on the film '13th' - The Saratogian