Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • Hong Kong Protests, Silenced on the Streets, Surface in Artworks

    Even though police silenced the 2019 pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, artists, writers, and filmmakers are producing work about the protests in more abstract and ambiguous ways to evade authorities. For example, the Goethe-Institut’s Hong Kong branch hosted a mixed show that included photographs of the 2019 protests that the artist had punched, ripped, or cut in order to hide protestors’ identities. Even though Chinese law criminalizes anything that the government deems as promoting “secession, subversion, or collusion with foreign powers,” several other exhibits are also featuring protest art.

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  • People Are Using an Ancient Method of Writing Arabic to Combat AI Censors

    To get around algorithms that have flagged and removed Palestinian content, users on platforms like Facebook and Instagram are using an old version of Arabic, dating back at least a thousand years, that doesn’t have diacritical points (dots above or below letters). Converting Arabic into a dotless form in social media posts makes it much more challenging for AI machines to identify because they use a binary code to identify each letter.

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  • The FBI is supposed to track how police use force – years later, it's falling well short

    Five years after the FBI started tracking how often police use force, the majority of police departments still fail to comply and the FBI refuses to release publicly what information it has collected. The policy was enacted in response to the realization that no one had definitive data on how often the police kill people, use teargas, or other incidents of force. What little data exists showed racial disparities in whom police use force against. But compliance was made voluntary and the FBI made public release of the data contingent on 80% of police departments complying, a goal it's nowhere near.

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  • Police banned from participating in NYC Pride events and march through 2025

    NYC Pride, which commemorates a LGBTQ+ uprising against police harassment and brutality, banned police participation in its events. About 200 NYPD members from the Gay Officers Action League typically participate in the pride march. However, since police presence for some LGBTQ+ people, including people of color and trans people, causes fears of violence rather than security, private companies will provide first response and security and volunteers will be trained in de-escalation tactics. The NYPD will be at least a block away and only intervene if necessary. The policy will be reviewed again in 2025.

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  • Washington School kids receive lesson on ‘Participatory Budgeting'

    Student leaders formed the Participatory Budget Committee at a Merced River School and ran the voting process for students decide which initiatives would be funded. The students had a budget of $5,000 to allocate and used actual county voting booths. The winning project was the modernization of campus restrooms. Students learned about participatory budgeting and brainstormed a set of four projects they felt were most needed at the school. They held regular meetings, highlighting the importance of civic involvement.

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  • Is new California police deadly force law making a difference?

    More than a year after taking effect, California's law restricting when police can use deadly force has had some effects on police accountability and training, but a number of flaws illustrate how long and difficult the process of change will be. The Act to Save Lives, which limits the use of deadly force to cases when it is needed to defend a life, has been cited by prosecutors in two homicide prosecutions. A number of police departments have followed the law's training dictates. But many others have been slow to roll out the training, and the state is not requiring officers to take it to stay certified.

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  • The Ferguson movement is on the cusp of revolutionizing political power in St. Louis

    Frustrated at the slow pace of criminal justice reform after the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, the grassroots group Action St. Louis formed to seize political power and make change happen from the inside of the system rather than pressuring for change from the outside. After years of organizing and politicking, it flipped key offices – St. Louis city and county prosecutors, the Board of Aldermen, and the mayor – outflanking the police union's candidates with officeholders committed to re-imagining public safety policy.

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  • Can police be taught to stop their own violence?

    When Minneapolis police officers were videotaped standing by or trying ineffectively to intervene in George Floyd's murder by a fellow officer, horrified police departments nationwide rushed to embrace a peer intervention program called ABLE (Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement). ABLE is based on a five-year-old program that has helped transform the culture of New Orleans' once-troubled police department, cutting shootings, taser uses, and citizen complaints. Officers are taught how to overcome rank and cultural inhibitors with actions and language that stop brutality by their colleagues.

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  • ‘Blind date' for political rivals? TV show is breaking down barriers.

    The Canadian reality show, “Political Blind Date,” pairs two politicians from opposing sides to spend two days together visiting each other’s constituents and wrestling with difficult issues. Fifty politicians have participated over five seasons, averaging about 195,000 viewers per episode. The aim is not to get them to change their minds, but to humanize people with opposing political beliefs and break down the increasingly common ‘us versus them’ mindset in politics. Advocates say that this has a “trickle down” effect on viewers forging greater understanding and more respectful debate.

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  • How two Black CEOs got corporate America to pay attention to voting rights

    A small group of prominent Black business leaders personally urged their corporate peers to oppose the restrictive voting laws being considered in dozens of states. Public statements framing voting rights as a moral, non-partisan issue led to hundreds of corporations - including Microsoft and Target – publicly opposing the bills, with some threatening to withhold investment and campaign donations in states that pass such laws. The Major League Baseball All-Star game was pulled from Georgia. Organizers believe White executives were more likely to listen to Black executives than Black grassroots activists.

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