COVID-19 disaster protest in Maryland, USA

This 22 May 2020 video says about itself:

‘Children Are Infected, Inmates Are Dying’

Maryland’s largest public sector union staged a socially-distanced protest to demand more PPE, testing, and safer working conditions.

Kids Aren’t Spared From the Coronavirus. A New Inflammatory Condition in Children is on the Rise. Fevers, rashes, nausea and other less-visible symptoms point to the mysterious Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome apparently related to the coronavirus. By Leslie Nemo, May 22, 2020 8:16 PM.

Mosquito-borne diseases hurt poor people more

This video says about itself:

Baltimore: ‘This is what poverty in the US looks like’ – BBC News

Ian Pannell reports from the city of Baltimore, where 25% of the population lives in poverty.

This report was first published in February 2017.

From the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in the USA:

In Baltimore, lower income neighborhoods have bigger mosquitoes

Larger mosquitoes better at transmitting disease, put residents at risk

October 16, 2019

Low-income urban neighborhoods not only have more mosquitoes, but they are larger-bodied, indicating that they could be more efficient at transmitting diseases. So reports a Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies-led study, published in the Journal of Medical Entomology, investigating how socioeconomics influences mosquito-borne disease risk in Baltimore, Maryland.

As part of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, Cary Institute scientists have been investigating how environmental and social conditions regulate mosquito numbers. Tiger mosquitoes (Aedes albopictus) were the focus of this study. This invasive species dominates in urban areas, where it is an aggressive day-biter that targets people and can transmit an array of viruses including dengue fever, Zika, chikungunya, Eastern Equine Encephalitis, and West Nile virus.

Cary Institute disease ecologist Shannon LaDeau, senior author on the study, explains, “More people are living in cities. At the same time, many other species are also adapting to city living. Invasive species like the tiger mosquito increasingly thrive in temperate urban areas, living among us and fundamentally altering the risk of local disease emergence. ”

Previous studies have found that wing length is an accurate proxy for body size in mosquitoes, and body size influences traits that are important to disease transmission. LaDeau and colleagues measured wing length of tiger mosquitoes trapped across a continuum of neighborhoods in Baltimore, Maryland. Results where clear: mosquitoes from less affluent blocks were larger than mosquitoes from more affluent blocks.

Block-to-block differences in abandoned buildings, vacant lots, and trash removal influence mosquito populations, biting patterns, and disease risk. LaDeau explains, “People living in neighborhoods with abandoned infrastructure are more at risk, because tiger mosquitoes flourish in less managed landscapes. They can breed in the water filling a bottle cap or crushed can. Abundant juvenile habitat sets the stage for healthy adult mosquitoes.”

Adult female tiger mosquitoes were collected from 13 residential blocks in Baltimore over the course of three summers. Trapping took place in June and July, 2015-2017. Blocks were distributed among five neighborhoods ranging in socioeconomic status — with varying levels of management and occupancy.

For each block, the team measured the percentage of abandoned structures and counted discarded container habitats — defined as any object that could potentially hold water — to determine whether differences in these features across blocks influenced numbers of juvenile tiger mosquitoes and adult female body size.

Over the three years of the study, 1097 mosquitoes were collected and measured. The team found that mosquitoes from blocks with higher abandonment had larger wings than those collected on more affluent blocks with less abandonment. Wing length differences of less than one millimeter can affect traits like fecundity, longevity, and ability to spread disease.

They also counted juvenile tiger mosquitoes and related these numbers to the abundance of unmanaged container habitats in a block. Less affluent blocks averaged 400 habitats per square kilometer with 80% containing mosquito larvae. More affluent blocks averaged only 50 containers per square kilometer with less than 5% containing mosquito larvae.

Lead author Grace Katz worked on the project as a high school intern and was responsible for measuring hundreds of wings. She explains, “Understanding how landscape features influence mosquito size and their ability to make us sick is important if we want to better manage mosquitoes in cities.”

LaDeau concludes, “The trends we’re seeing in mosquito numbers and body size map onto socioeconomic patterns at the block-level. There are environmental justice and equity implications at play. Residents of less affluent neighborhoods are exposed to more mosquitoes. If those mosquitoes have greater longevity or fitness, as previous studies on body size suggest, then residents may be at a greater risk of contracting mosquito-borne illnesses. There’s a pressing need to address infrastructure abandonment and waste management to protect all residents.”

*Mosquito samples used for this study were collected with the financial support of the National Science Foundation Baltimore Ecosystem Study (NSF-LTER DEB 1027188) and the NSF Coupled Natural Human Systems Program (DEB 1211797).

Donald Trump’s racist attack on Baltimore, USA

This 28 July 2019 video from the USA says about itself:

Black People Were Right About Trump

Trump and his racist efforts came from the conservative movement. Brooke Thomas, Jayar Jackson, and David Dennis Jr. break it down on The Damage Report.

By Joseph Kishore in the USA:

The political strategy behind Trump’s racist diatribe against Baltimore

29 July 2019

Donald Trump’s racist diatribes against Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings and the city of Baltimore mark a calculated escalation of his efforts to base his reelection campaign on the incitement of an openly fascistic movement.

On Saturday, Trump tweeted that Cummings’ district, which encompasses half of Baltimore City, is a “rat and rodent infested mess”, a “disgusting & filthy place” and a “corrupt mess”. He concluded, “No human being would want to live there.”

On Sunday, Trump retweeted a statement from the fascistic columnist of the UK Sun newspaper, Katie Hopkins, referring to Baltimore as a “sh*thole”, a reference to his previous statements denigrating African countries with the same insult. Hopkins is known for her vicious attacks on immigrants, including a statement in 2015 that “migrants are like cockroaches” and “are built to survive a nuclear bomb.”

Trump’s filthy rants follow his attacks on four Democratic congresswomen two weeks ago, during which he wrote that all four should “go back” to the “crime infested places from which they came.” He declared that the congresswomen, all of whom are US citizens, “hate our Country” and support “terrorism”. In April 2018, Trump denounced “sanctuary cities” in California for promoting a “ridiculous, crime infested & breeding concept.”

Trump is not just talking. His latest statements take place as the administration is intensifying its attack on immigrants, threatening mass roundups throughout the country and confining thousands in concentration camps on the US-Mexico border.

Words have meaning and consequences. The denunciation of an American city and its citizens by a sitting president in such blatantly racist terms has no precedent in the history of the United States. Trump is playing with fire, and he knows it. He and his advisers believe that his racist comments will not only encourage and rally his supporters on the far right. Trump also calculates that his blatant provocations will intensify an already unstable political environment, with an immense potential for violence, and create conditions that will enable him to invoke dictatorial powers to uphold “law and order”.

The president also escalated his denunciation of socialist and “radical left” politics over the weekend. He tweeted Sunday morning that “Consideration is being given to declaring ANTIFA [antifascists], the gutless Radical Left Wack Jobs who go around hitting (only non-fighters) people over the heads with baseball bats, a major Organization of Terror (along with MS-13 & others). Would make it easier for police to do their job!” This means that the government is preparing direct measures to criminalize left-wing views.

Given the scale of the provocation, the response of the Democratic Party is a typically gutless combination of cowardice and evasion. While the Congressional testimony by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller last week was a debacle for the Democrats, this has not stopped them from intensifying their obsessive and neo-McCarthyite denunciations of “Russian meddling” and “foreign interference” in American politics.

The premise of the Democrats’ narrative of a Russian plot is that the real threat to American democracy comes from the Kremlin, rather than the White House. Moreover, the Democrats’ pretense of opposition to Trump is exposed by the fact that he can count in their support when he needs it.

The extent of agreement of all factions of the political establishment was expressed in the overwhelming passage last week by the House of Representatives of a budget bill backed by the Trump administration, which includes a record $738 billion in military spending. …

At the same time, the campaign over “foreign interference” in US politics—of which no serious evidence has ever been presented—has been utilized to implement a regime of internet censorship and attacks on free speech. The Democrats have spearheaded the campaign against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for exposing the secrets of American imperialism while maintaining a complete silence on the fate of whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who remains in prison for refusing to testify against Assange.

The Democrats’ overriding concern is to block the development of any independent movement of the working class. …

The Trump administration must be removed from office, but the question is how and by what methods. By now it should be clear that the policy of the Democrats has been aimed at keeping Trump in office. Even if they were to remove Trump through some sort of palace coup, it would leave the basic policy of the ruling class unaltered. The immediate consequence would be an escalation of war threats against Russia.

The urgent task of the working class is to break free of the political straitjacket of the two capitalist parties and intervene independently.

The fight against the Trump administration must be developed as a mass movement from below. Opposition to the Trump administration’s fascistic attack on immigrants and racist appeals must be connected to the great social questions that are motivating growing struggles of the working class internationally: the fight against inequality, attacks on jobs and wages, censorship, and war.

Any claim that such a perspective is unrealistic is refuted by developments in Puerto Rico, where mass protests forced the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló. It is part of a growing wave of social unrest, including the yellow vest movement in France, the ongoing demonstrations in Hong Kong, and the mass protests in Algeria. While the eruption in Puerto Rico, independent of the establishment parties … has succeeded in forcing out Rosselló, the social and political forces behind him—in Wall Street and in Washington—remain.

What the events in Puerto Rico demonstrate, however, is not only that a mass movement is possible, but it is the much more likely path of development.

The removal of governments will not come through the maneuvers in the political establishment but from the intervention of the working class. This requires new organizations of struggle. The Socialist Equality Party calls for the development of a network of popular workplace and neighborhood committees, independent of all political parties … to link up every separate struggle in a common offensive against the capitalist ruling elite. This must be connected to a clear anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and socialist program.

When President Trump characterized immigrants as “animals,” some people waved it away, claiming he was only referring to gang members. But his use of “infest” in connection to human beings is impossible to ignore. The president’s tweet that immigrants will “infest our Country” includes an alarming verb choice for anyone with knowledge of history. Characterizing people as vermin has historically been a precursor to murder and genocide. The Nazis built on centuries-old hatred of Jews as carriers of disease in a film titled “Der Ewige Jude,” or “The Eternal Jew.” As the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum notes on its website, in a section helpfully titled “Defining the Enemy:” “One of the film’s most notorious sequences compares Jews to rats that carry contagion, flood the continent, and devour precious resources”: here.

TRUMP SLAMMED BALTIMORE YEARS AGO, BLAMING OBAMA Trump pummeled Baltimore years ago in a series of tweets — but back then he held Barack Obama responsible for the city’s crime, pointing out that he was an “African American president” and sarcastically referring to him as “great.”  [HuffPost]

TRUMP AGAIN ASSAILS BALTIMORE, ATTACKS MORE U.S. CITIES At a raucous rally in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Thursday night, Trump continued to drag the city of Baltimore through the mud ― and extended his attacks to Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. [HuffPost]

HUNGER-STRIKING IMMIGRANTS FORCED TO HYDRATE Three Indian nationals seeking asylum in the U.S. have been forced to receive IV drips at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Texas as they approach their third week of a hunger strike, according to their attorney. [AP]

Amazon, bad conditions for workers

This 26 April 2019 video from the USA says about itself:

BRUTAL Story About Working For Amazon

Amazon has fired hundred of workers at just one their facilities. Ana Kasparian, Brooke Thomas, and Adrienne Lawrence, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down.

“Amazon’s fulfillment centers are the engine of the company — massive warehouses where workers track, pack, sort, and shuffle each order before sending it on its way to the buyer’s door. Critics say those fulfillment center workers face strenuous conditions: workers are pressed to “make rate”, with some packing hundreds of boxes per hour, and losing their job if they don’t move fast enough. “You’ve always got somebody right behind you who’s ready to take your job,” says Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and a prominent Amazon critic. Documents obtained by The Verge show those productivity firings are far more common than outsiders realize. In a signed letter last year, an attorney representing Amazon said the company fired “hundreds” of employees at a single facility between August of 2017 and September 2018 for failing to meet productivity quotas. A spokesperson for the company said that, over that time, roughly 300 full-time associates were terminated for inefficiency.

The number represents a substantial portion of the facility’s workers: a spokesperson said the named fulfillment center in Baltimore includes about 2,500 full-time employees today. Assuming a steady rate, that would mean Amazon was firing more than 10 percent of its staff annually, solely for productivity reasons. The numbers are even more staggering in North America as a whole. Amazon operates more than 75 fulfillment centers with more than 125,000 full-time employees, suggesting thousands lose their jobs with the company annually for failing to move packages quickly enough.”

Read more here.

Amazon tells injured worker keep working, or the sack

This October 2017 video from the USA says about itself:

Jeff Bezos Is Now The Richest Man In The World With $90 billion | CNBC

Jeff Bezos became the richest man in the world Friday morning, after adding nearly $7 billion to his wealth overnight.

Meanwhile, Amazon.com boss Bezos became still a lot richer. Right now, he may become a bit less rich as his wife is divorcing him.

How did Bezos become so rich?

Eg, by practices like reported in this article by Nick Barrickman in the USA:

“Amazon is really cold-hearted to its workers”

Injured Amazon worker forced to work to avoid being fired

19 January 2019

A worker employed at an Amazon fulfillment center in east Baltimore contacted the International Amazon Workers Voice [IAWV] to relay her experiences with the massive web technology corporation and her efforts to obtain help after being injured on the job.

The worker is married with two children. She is employed as a picker, i.e., someone who selects items that are then packaged and loaded onto trucks for shipment to various destinations around the world.

The worker noted that her problems with the company began roughly three weeks ago. “I was picking when I felt my shoulder strain”, she said. She went to Amazon’s in-house medical facility, Amcare.

The difficulties began almost immediately, when she was told by an Amcare physician that her shoulder pain was “not an injury” and she had simply “been working too much”.

“I’d had the pain before then,” she said, adding that “after three or four days off, strains will usually go away. This time it didn’t.”

She told the IAWV, “I was treated like a liar.”

Amcare said she should wait two hours to see if the pain subsided. When it didn’t, she was forced to take unpaid time off (UPT), during which she visited a physician, who determined that she had a shoulder sprain. “The doctor told me that they see these types of injuries ‘all the time’ from Amazon employees”, she noted.

According to the worker, Amcare is comprised of personnel who are unqualified to give medical diagnoses. A 2016 Gawker article, which quotes testimony from Amazon employees, describes Amcare as “like a school nurse’s office, and equally as competent.”

A whistle-blowing website, Amazonslavery.wordpress, says “AMCARE’s objective is to keep the employees at their workstations, which means giving false, uninformed medical evaluations.”

After returning to work with documented proof that an injury had taken place, the worker was confronted by human resources, who told her she would not be accommodated for her injury because nowhere on her physician’s paperwork did it say she was owed any relief. However, she was told she would potentially be eligible to receive workers’ compensation.

After a prolonged period waiting for the company’s workers’ compensation provider, Sedgwick, to respond to her application, she was forced to return to work as a picker without workers’ comp and without any accommodation for her shoulder injury. She told the IAWV she doubted she would ever receive compensation from the company.

“Amazon is really cold-hearted to its workers”, she said.

The International Amazon Workers Voice has reported on the criminal methods employed by Sedgwick, including the hiring of private detectives to spy on workers who request funds owed to them by the company and the ignoring of injuries, even when presented with written confirmation from a physician.

As of this writing, the worker has received no word about compensation. Having nearly exhausted her UPT hours, she has been compelled to return to work.

“I was told by Amazon that they would take care of the situation,” she said. “Then I was told in an email that my [UPT] time had run out. I even had to go to Amazon on a day that I was recuperating and straighten the situation out” so as not to be fired for taking time off to heal.

Despite her physician’s recommendation that she be restricted to lifting objects 10 pounds or less, the worker was forced back onto heavier lifting because the company claimed no such “easy” positions were available. Only a few days prior to this, however, management had offered her just such an “easier” position.

The IAWV has reported a number of similar instances at Amazon’s Baltimore facility. The corporation has taken advantage of deindustrialized areas such as Baltimore, exploiting the lack of jobs with decent pay to take advantage of and brutalize the workforce.

According to the Baltimore Business Journal, Maryland officials have spent roughly $46 million in tax subsidies to lure Amazon to the state and allow it to abuse its workers, including $16.2 million in 2018 for the construction of a fulfillment center at Sparrow’s Point in the Baltimore suburbs. The fulfillment center, employing 1,500 workers, stands on the ashes of what was once the largest steel mill in the United States.

Speaking of the Sparrow’s Point fulfillment Center, the injured worker said she had already heard of a worker being victimized there, supposedly for stealing a piece of candy.

“Amazon is a really cold-hearted company”, she repeated.

She expressed her gratitude to the IAWV for reporting her story and wholeheartedly agreed on the need for workers to begin speaking to one another and organizing a struggle against the massive web commerce corporation.

Amazon wrongfully fires worker

This 17 April 2018 video says about itself:

Amazon Employees Have To PEE IN BOTTLES Under Horrendous Working Conditions | What’s Trending Now!

According to an undercover report from journalist James Bloodworth, some Amazon warehouse employees fear going to the restroom, as the 10-minute walk could get them written-up or even fired.

By Nick Barrickman in the USA:

“I think the whole shipping business is a little corrupt”

Amazon worker wrongfully fired for theft reveals company’s dead-end appeal system

18 December 2018

A former employee at Amazon’s BWI-5 facility in Baltimore, Maryland contacted the International Amazon Workers Voice to describe what can only be called a nightmare of corporate red tape.

Hired in 2016, the 25-year old worker—“D”—was a permanent warehouse employee, meaning he had surpassed the standards of the internet giant and had survived the corporation’s onerous and indefinite probationary period without an infraction, allowing them to receive minor benefits granted to “permanent” workers.

Unfortunately, job protection and the right to a fair hearing were not among the benefits that were listed. In August 2017, D was terminated from his position as a warehouse associate for allegedly stealing an item of food from the in-house food vending system—a Twix ice cream bar. “I had been in a conversation with friends before my shift started and forgot to pay for it at the ‘Canteen’ [vending company] kiosk,” he said.

“As I began my shift, I was approached by one of the managers and was told that I had been called to the Human Resources office.” Waiting in HR, D struggled hard to figure out why the manager had requested his presence. “I finally realized that I had forgotten to pay [for the ice cream].” The worker noted that he had a tendency to be forgetful but had never stolen anything in his life or had any previous infractions at the company.

D was about to enter a bureaucratic system from which he would not emerge unscathed. “I met a person from loss prevention as well as a HR representative named ‘Brandy.’ I was taken back to the office and the guy from loss prevention talked with me, trying to get a sense of my personality. He chatted with me about video games and things like that,” D said.

The gentleman from loss prevention then explained the real purpose for the meeting. “He asked me if I had anything I wanted to say to him,” D told the IAWV, after which the young worker willingly confessed to forgetting to pay for the ice cream treat. “It shook me,” D stated, “I had never been in a situation like that before” and only wished to come clean.

D was forced to sign a statement explaining the reasons for the failure to pay at the automated kiosk before being informed that he was being suspended and could expect a phone call Sunday which would determine the company’s final judgement. “I was then escorted out,” the worker said.

“This is when things start to get bad on Amazon’s part,” D explained.

Sunday came, but Amazon did not call.

“I’m thinking, ‘no problem, they’re probably just busy.’ So on Monday, I went back to Amazon and spoke to security.” D was informed that the company was still in the process of investigating his “theft” and would promptly call back the next day.

Tuesday came, but nobody called.

Giving the company the whole day to follow through on its promises before returning to inquire about his job status Wednesday, this time D was confronted by a hostile company representative. “On Wednesday, I was not greeted nicely,” he said. An unknown representative from HR approached D, aggressively telling him off. “She said to me: ‘You know what you did. I don’t know why you’re back.’” At that point, loss prevention representatives approached the startled worker, informing him that he had been officially terminated.

Despite this inconsiderate treatment, the young worker was determined to appeal the company’s decision and keep his job. “I really like Amazon, I didn’t want to have to do this,” he said, referring to his decision to speak out about his experiences.

D continued, explaining the runaround the company was giving him:

“I called Amazon’s Employee Resource Center [ERC], which is basically a hotline for associates to appeal decisions made by management.” There, the confused worker was informed that he was amazingly still employed at the company: “The system said that I was on UPT [Unpaid Time Off], even though they said they had terminated me.” D was told he would need to be “legitimately terminated” before appealing his firing.

D was forced into the undignified predicament of having to beg the company to fire him, so he could then file an appeal. This situation went on for two weeks.

Finally, an HR rep, “Charles”, called D to inform him that he had been fired, again. Seizing the opportunity to file an appeal, D was informed that the charge of theft could not be appealed. “I was told that my profile had been flagged and I could never work for Amazon ever again.”

At this point, D’s determination began to falter. “There was no legitimacy to any of it, I wasn’t shown any footage of the ‘theft’ taking place so I could verify it was me. For all I know they had seen some other guy stealing. I took his [the HR manager’s] word for it. I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have given up. I feel like I was lied to,” D declared.

“It feels good just to have someone to talk about this with… it’s been my struggle for the past year. I was a permanent worker. You’ve got to have a clean record to become a permanent worker, I think they could have worked with me,” he said.

“I’m just an average 25-year-old guy, I live with my family. As bad as it sounds, I don’t feel like I’m the same as those other workers [who relay their experiences of abuse to the IAWV]. I actually liked working for the company, I wanted to stay there and move up, even become a manager myself,” he said. “I like the people, the problem is the people in charge,” he said. “Amazon treats people like they’re expendable. At some point, everyone in the city will know how bad they are, their reputation as an employer will suffer.”

D’s facility, located in east Baltimore, was opened in 2015 on the former site of a General Motors auto plant, which had previously employed thousands of workers at significantly higher wages until its final shuttering in 2005. Amazon, whose average “associate” makes little more than the minimum wage, has sought to expand its presence into deindustrialized regions such as Baltimore. Last year the corporation announced that it would open another distribution center at the former location of the now-shuttered Bethlehem Steel, once the largest steel mill on the US east coast.

Last month, several contractors working at the east Baltimore facility were killed under unclear circumstances when a minor tornado touched down in the vicinity of the distribution hub.

Commenting on the weather-related tragedy, D stated that he and fellow workers had doubts about the structural integrity of the Amazon building the workers were housed in, suggesting that there was likely cost cutting involved in their deaths.

Currently, D is employed at United Parcel Service (UPS). Asked about the conditions there, he said: “The building I’m in has no break system [in place]. It’s illegal. They don’t like us to work 8 hours, but there is no set system. For us, we have “break” if a [delivery] truck is late. I think the whole shipping business is a little corrupt. They think people are robots. They really don’t care.”

Asked about his opinion of the Teamsters trade union, D explained “I never liked them; I think the management pays them, they know all about [the company’s break system], they don’t care. You could tell them about it and, even if they sent someone to investigate, they’d just end up becoming part of the problem, too.”

D’s experience, first at Amazon and then at UPS, is indicative of an entire generation of young working-class people who are becoming radicalized by growing levels of inequality and exploitation and corporations that treat their employees with disdain and contempt. From autoworkers, to UPS and Amazon workers, to the millions employed in low-paying service work, the conclusions he and many, many others are beginning to draw about the capitalist system terrify the ruling class more than anything.

“Eventually, when packages start showing up late [due to work stoppages], people will notice,” the young worker added.

“I work for UPS now, but I still handle packages for Amazon, as well as the US Postal Service,” he continued, suggesting the irrationality of forcing UPS and Amazon workers, as well as other workers in the industry, to struggle against one another for jobs.

“Some drivers [at UPS] had their hours cut yesterday, because Amazon is now delivering packages with its ‘Air’ system. Overnight delivery, in the middle of Christmas season!”

“The workers are the ones that make this company its money,” he concluded.

The author also recommends:

Jeff Bezos’ $100 billion: The case for expropriation
[27 Nov 2017]

‘Stop university collaboration with Trump’s ICE’

This 21 September 2018 video from Maryland in the USA says about itself:

Protest Targets Johns Hopkins Multi-Million Dollar Contract with ICE

Dozens of students, faculty and community members marched through campus on Friday and delivered a petition demanding Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University end its contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general’s office released a report this week detailing the inhumane conditions prevailing at the Adelanto Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Processing Center in California’s Mojave Desert. The report was the product of an unannounced visit by inspectors this past May, nearly one year after three deaths occurred within a three-month period at the facility. The report outlined numerous horrors, including denial of medical and dental care, the use of punishing confinement prior to conclusive rulings on allegations of inmate infractions and the terrible revelation that nooses fashioned out of bed sheets hung in at least 15 of the 20 inspected cells: here.

Police brutality in Baltimore, USA

This 12 August 2018 video from Maryland in the USA is called Caught On Video: Baltimore Cop Beats The Crap Out Of Unarmed Black Man.

A Baltimore police officer has been suspended after a video went viral showing him attacking a man on a sidewalk.

Baltimore police officer resigns after video of vicious assault sparks outrage: here.

No sexual harassment accountability for politicians in Maryland, USA

This video from the USA says about itself:

Activists Discuss How Public Officials Thwart Accountability for Sexual Harassment

5 May 2018

In part three of our series of conversations about sexual misdeeds in Maryland’s state capital we discuss how the system that is supposed to help women and men who suffer abuse are rigged to protect public officials.

STIFFING TAXPAYERS Former Rep. Blake Farenthold (Republican-Texas) has said he will not pay back the tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars he used to settle a sexual harassment suit, breaking his earlier promise. [HuffPost]

Related articles

• Trump’s racist ‘Scottsboro’ false accusations fall flat
• Islamophobic bomb attack on United States mosque

After the March for our Lives against gun violence in the USA

This video from the USA says about itself:

Students’ NRA Fight Sparking Anti-Corruption Movement?

24 March. 2018

TYT Politics’ Emma Vigeland spoke with Michael Solomon and Simon Debesai, two student activists from Springbrook High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, who helped organize the Washington D.C. walkout to protest the government’s inaction on gun control.

More Than A Million March For Gun Control – Including In Trump’s Backyard: here.

Related articles

• ‘Never again!’ U.S. students stage walkout against gun violence
• Garth Brooks shares uplifting message to ‘March for our Lives’ students