Showing posts with label misreadings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label misreadings. Show all posts

Friday, March 12, 2021

"As the Biden administration struggles to care for soaring numbers migrant families, teens and children streaming across the Mexico border, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sent an urgent email to senior staff Thursday night asking for volunteers..."

"... to quickly deploy to U.S. border stations and tent sites where holding cells are crammed beyond capacity....  The number of these teens and children held in detention cells along the border surpassed 3,500 this week, a record, and the minors have been arriving at a rate that far exceeds the government’s ability to place them in shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services or release them to vetted sponsors, often relatives living in the United States. With shelters run by HHS short on bed space, thousands of minors are stuck in rudimentary Border Patrol stations awaiting transfer.... More than 130 minors have been waiting 10 days in the custody of CBP, whose steel-and-concrete detention cells are designed as short-term holding cells for adults...."

From "ICE asks officers to deploy to border ‘as soon as this weekend’ to cope with surge" (WaPo). 

 That headline must have been different before, because the highest-rated comments are: "WaPo, please re-write this headline. ICE is asking internally for assistance. ICE is not calling for Trumpian militant volunteers to rush to the border to rough up immigrants." AND: "ICE should be careful when calling for 'volunteers.' They'll get a bunch of armed white guys with fat guts, no training and an itch to shoot someone who can't shoot back." 

Yes, now I see the cached headline. It was: "ICE asks for volunteers to deploy to border ‘as soon as this weekend’ to cope with surge."

The word "cages" does not appear in this new article, but a couple days ago WaPo published "At border, record number of migrant youths wait in adult detention cells for longer than legally allowed":

The Border Patrol warehouse with chain-link holding pens that were decried as “cages” in 2018 has been closed for renovations, but the conditions in the stations are not much better. Young people are waiting in cramped, austere holding cells with concrete floors and benches. Lights remain on 24 hours a day, agents say, and there are few places to play.

Are they in cages now? Were they in cages then? I don't know, but in 2018 the word "cages" was used and the same facilities are currently closed for renovations — perhaps to make them less cage-y — so there's no shift from using the word for exactly the same place. Right now, the "young people" are stuck in "cramped, austere holding cells," but would these be "cages" if only Trump were President or is there some cell/cage distinction that has to do with chain-link fencing?

Thursday, March 4, 2021

"Well, I sang a song. And that's a part of shamanism. It's about — creating positive vibrations in a sacred chamber."

"I also stopped people from stealing and vandalizing that sacred space, the Senate. Okay? I actually stopped somebody from stealing muffins out of the — out of the break room. And I also said a prayer in that sacred chamber. Because it was my intention to bring divinity, and to bring God back into the Senate." 

Said Jacob Chansley, quoted in "'QAnon Shaman' claims he wasn't attacking the country in first interview since Capitol riot arrest/Jacob Chansley, the man seen wearing face paint and a fur helmet with horns during the January 6 insurrection, tells 60 Minutes+ he was trying 'to bring God back to the Senate'" (CBS News). 

60 Minutes+ correspondent Laurie Segall pushed him: "But Jake, legally, you were not allowed to be in what you're calling the sacred chamber." 

He responded: "And that is — and that is the one very serious regret that I have, was believing that when we were waved in by police officers, that it was acceptable." He also said he regretted not receiving a pardon from Trump and that "while he regrets entering the building 'with every fiber of my being,' he doesn't regret his loyalty to the former president."

Monday, June 8, 2020

We're told not to take "defund the police" and "abolish the police" literally.

In this WaPo op-ed — "Defund the police? Here’s what that really means." — by Christy E. Lopez, who is a a Distinguished Visitor from Practice at Georgetown Law School where she co-directs the Innovative Policing Program. She tells us not to be "afraid" because it's "not as scary (or even as radical) as it sounds."
We turn to the police in situations where years of experience and common sense tell us that their involvement is unnecessary, and can make things worse. We ask police to take accident reports, respond to people who have overdosed and arrest, rather than cite, people who might have intentionally or not passed a counterfeit $20 bill. We call police to roust homeless people from corners and doorsteps, resolve verbal squabbles between family members and strangers alike, and arrest children for behavior that once would have been handled as a school disciplinary issue.

Police themselves often complain about having to “do too much,” including handling social problems for which they are ill-equipped. Some have been vocal about the need to decriminalize social problems and take police out of the equation. It is clear that we must reimagine the role they play in public safety. 
Defunding and abolition probably mean something different from what you are thinking. For most proponents, “defunding the police” does not mean zeroing out budgets for public safety, and police abolition does not mean that police will disappear overnight — or perhaps ever. Defunding the police means shrinking the scope of police responsibilities and shifting most of what government does to keep us safe to entities that are better equipped to meet that need. It means investing more in mental-health care and housing, and expanding the use of community mediation and violence interruption programs....
Why not use words that people can understand and that convey the meaning you want to put in our head? If your idea is so reasonable, why not use words that are effective in making people who care about peace and harmony agree with you?
Police abolition means reducing, with the vision of eventually eliminating, our reliance on policing to secure our public safety....
Now, that's just confusing! You said "reducing" but then you said "eliminating."
The “abolition” language is important because it reminds us that policing has been the primary vehicle for using violence to perpetuate the unjustified white control over the bodies and lives of black people that has been with us since slavery.
But the slavery abolition movement was not about reducing our reliance on slavery! Why take such an important word and undermine what it means? If you successfully "remind us" of the evils of slavery, you are making us think you are saying the police are an evil, like slavery, that must be entirely eradicated.