Trigger Warning for descriptions of police violence and forcible miscarriage, as well as discussions of racism and victim-blaming.
LaDonna Dixon claims that last June, an Indianapolis police officer beat her severely after she argued with him — even though she was in handcuffs, and even though she says that she told him she was pregnant at the time. As a result, she received two black eyes, numerous other bruises, and miscarried her pregnancy shortly thereafter at the jail processing center, after being refused medical treatment. (Note: links contain graphic images of Dixon’s injuries.) Local NBC affiliate WTHR reported on the alleged assault a month and a half ago, but wider dissemination of a local television report has produced new interest. From the WTHR report:
An Indianapolis woman is suing the city in federal court. LaDonna Dixon claims the officer beat her so severely during an arrest that she had a miscarriage.
“[He was] punching me, kicking me, after he maced me,” Dixon said.
“This person was angry, was enraged and just beat her,” said Dixon’s attorney, Everett Powell. “I would say it’s a crime.”
LaDonna Dixon is suing the city over what she claims happened in her yard last June. She says she was helping a friend who collapsed from a seizure and needed medicine.
When police arrived, the complaint says Officer Scott Childers told Dixon she was disrupting emergency crews and that she needed to get in her house.
Dixon admits she argued with Childers, but says that’s when the officer turned violent.
“He says I was resisting arrest, but I don’t see how I’m resisting when I’m already handcuffed and maced,” Dixon said.
Dixon claims that the beating continued even after she told the officer she was three months pregnant. She says she miscarried at Marion County’s arrestee processing center, just hours after her arrest.
“She was beaten so bad that she passed out,” Powell said. “She was hemorrhaging directly after getting beaten like this.”
Dixon says she was refused medical attention at the jail.
Police officers should never enact violent assaults against the citizens they are hired to protect. They certainly shouldn’t enact them as a response to a citizen’s supposed audacity to verbally disagree with them. That “talking back” is what apparently prompted the officer’s outrage and beating shows the extent not only of police authority and power, but also of the expectation that this authority and power will not ever be questioned.
It’s unclear what, exactly, Dixon was being arrested for, but it’s only relevant inasmuch as the arrest itself may have been another act of corruption. What is known is that the kind of beating Dixon endured is never acceptable, and especially not once it is taken into consideration that Dixon was handcuffed and on the ground at the time of the beating. Even if Dixon had been neither restrained nor pregnant at the time of the assault, it would have still been monstrous. That she was apparently both only makes the facts all the more egregious. The assault was not only an act of violence against a woman, it was an act that also showed a deliberate and specific disregard for her health as a woman.
Trigger Warning for graphic descriptions of violence against people with disabilities, school violence, and victim-blaming.
As evidenced by a recent post, violence of all kinds is a major problem in schools, and school administrations not only frequently fail to respond appropriately to said violence, they’re also often a direct part and/or cause of the problem.
Another example, this time of a lawsuit launched in response to non-sexual violence, was recently sent to me by Kali at Ithaca PAVE. Two years ago, a disabled child was assaulted by a bully on his school bus — as he screamed and cried for help, the school bus driver two seats in front of him watched the attack and did nothing. It took another student to stop the assault. The circumstances of the assault get even more egregious once it’s taken into account that the child’s individualized education plan states that he is to have an aide with him on the school bus — an aide who was most certainly not present on the day of the attack.
Now, years later, the elementary school student remains traumatized, afraid of school, and in need of further services as a direct result of the assault. And the school refuses to make appropriate changes to his education plan.
According to court documents, on May 5, Coolbaugh’s son got on the bus after school and sat three seats behind the bus driver Jeffrey Postle. Another student got on shortly after and sat near him, purposefully pushing into him. The student began slapping and kicking Coolbaugh’s son, which her son apparently interpreted as horseplay and not bullying in nature, the complaint says.
Coolbaugh’s complaint states the student then began kicking and pushing Coolbaugh’s son in a violent manner. He borrowed a pen from Postle and began making threatening stabbing motions toward Coolbaugh’s son.
The complaint states that an on-board video camera captured the events, and that the driver can be seen in the video glancing up in the rear-view mirror at the activity in the bus. The boys were within hearing and view of the driver, Coolbaugh alleges, but the driver made no attempt to stop the harassment or protect Coolbaugh’s son.
The student then began “beating (Coolbaugh’s son) with his fists and violently threw (him) into a seat behind Postle and upon the floor under the seat and then proceeded to pound (him) about the head and shoulders with his fists,” according to the complaint.
Coolbaugh’s son called out for help from the bus driver. The boys were eventually pulled apart by another student, court documents say.
…
“My client approached the district with these circumstances and the school district responded by failing to provide any of the specific request that my client had made,” Kopko said. He said the district refused to accept changes to the boy’s individualized educational plan. “Our contention is that this boy was emotionally traumatized by this assault such that he is in desperate need of additional educational services. That is the aim of the lawsuit – not so much monetary damages, but to give this child FAPE [free and appropriate public education].”
There are several things going on here, with regards to failures by the educational system to protect the students in its care and the treatment of people with disabilities by society at large.
Trigger Warning for transphobia/transmisogyny and abuse by health care workers. Some links also contain transphobic language.
Fifteen years ago, a woman named Tyra Hunter was involved in a car accident and in need of emergency care. Adrian Williams, the firefighter/EMT who was the first responder on the scene began treating Hunter for her injuries — but upon cutting open her pant leg, abruptly stopped treatment and instead began mocking her to the other firefighters present, as onlookers begged him to help her and Hunter gasped for breath. When she was transferred to an ER, she apparently received inadequate care there, as well, and one doctor refused to treat her.
Today, access to medical care remains an enormous issue for trans* people, but is regularly ignored by cis folks. I speak not just of trans-specific health care (i.e. medical treatment specifically related to transition or one’s trans status), though such care is extremely limited and surrounded by barriers. I speak not just of issues of poverty and ability to afford to see a doctor, though this is also an enormous problem that needs immediate addressing. In this context, by “access to medical care” I mean “the confidence that once one has actually procured a visitation with a medical professional, sie will not refuse to treat you.” Even if your condition is potentially life-threatening.
Trigger Warning for rape apologism/denialism and discussions of sexual violence and rape culture.
School is supposed to be a safe place for students to learn and interact with their peers. But as far too marginalized persons know, schools frequently present an environment that is the exact opposite, from being sites of sexualized gender-based violence, to racialized violence, to homophobic and transphobic violence, and other forms of physical assault and emotional injury. Too often, we think of harassment and violence in schools as “the way things are” — how they have always been, how they will always be, and something we are all helpless to change. Rarely do we recognize that these kinds of traumas don’t have to be a part of growing up, but are usually just an exaggerated (or usually exaggerated) reflection of what takes place in adult spaces.
And even more rarely do we discuss how the schools themselves, those tasked to protect students and make schools a safe place, are actively reinforcing and/or perpetuating violence themselves.
This image by Jerry Bakewell, available under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Today is my birthday! And I figured that was the perfect excuse — as if I generally need one — to do a gratuitous Beatles post.
People generally treat the breakup of the Beatles as an incredibly tragic event. There’s no doubt that the way things ended was less than ideal and certainly sad. The fighting, the lawsuits, and the bad blood were all ugly and regretful.
But I am of the unpopular opinion that the Beatles needed to break up. Not only do I think that the end was simply unavoidable, I think that it was also for the best. Like any other band that stays together too long, the group would have eventually become a parody, and started to defile their own legacy. Further, for certain Beatles at least, the breakup was the best thing that ever happened to them, certainly personally if not professionally. George, for example, only really blossomed once he was on his own, writing his best music yet.
In declaring the Beatles’ breakup a tragedy, it’s usually forgotten that albums and albums filled with fantastic music likely would have never been created without it. Songs would have gone unwritten, and more still unrecorded. We can debate all day if the music produced had the Beatles stayed together would have been better than what they put out on their own — but there’s little honest denying that much of what was actually released was absolutely great, particularly in the five years immediately following the breakup, a period from which all but one album on this list is drawn.
It seems that many fans, especially younger ones around my age, don’t even know much about this music existing, let alone its outstanding quality. So I’ve put together a list of what I deem to be the 10 best post-Beatles releases by the solo fab four. With each album, I’ve identified what makes it great, pulled out some key tracks, and posted the video for my personal favorite song from each. Whether you use it to reminisce or inform your own music purchases, enjoy!
1. All Things Must Pass
George Harrison wouldn’t become known as the “Dark Horse” until 1974, but he earned the label all the way back in 1970. The Quiet Beatle had already stunned audiences by contributing two of the finest tracks to 1969′s Abbey Road. Most fans wouldn’t have quite guessed that George had a song like Something in him. But he had that and more — a lot more, actually. Three LPs worth.
All Things Must Pass, George’s first musical statement after the breakup of the Beatles, and his grandest, is a near-perfect masterpiece. Granted, I tend to exclude the third LP Apple Jam from my analysis. A series of instrumental tracks taken from, well, jams, it’s my humble opinion that the disc wasn’t worth the vinyl it was pressed on. The task of a double album is insurmountable enough — after conquering the first two LPs masterfully, you took it a bit too far there, Hari.
But those first two LPs, the ones filled with actual songs, are absolute gold. Opening with the laconic I’d Have You Anytime, segueing into the monster-hit My Sweet Lord, before transitioning into the enormous, epic rocker Wah-Wah, and closing with the also epic, gorgeous Isn’t It a Pity, side one alone is enough to knock you on your ass. But sides two and three impossibly manage to follow that act quite skillfully, and where side four is lacking, it can be forgiven. Where the Beatles’ White Album fails to genuinely be worth two full LPs of new songs, All Things Must Pass succeeds.
Key Tracks: My Sweet Lord, Wah-Wah, Isn’t It a Pity, Run of the Mill, Beware of Darkness, All Things Must Pass
VIDEO: George Harrison’s song Wah Wah plays over an image of Harrison at the Concert for Bangladesh. Wah Wah lyrics.
A measure designed to ease stubbornly high rates of violent crime, including rape and sexual assault, within Indian reservations will be signed into law by President Obama on Thursday.
Advocates of the Tribal Law and Order Act, which took three years to put together and passed the Senate last week, say it will ensure that more crimes, including murders and serious assaults, are reported and prosecuted amid worries that many cases go unpunished.
The measure gives tribal courts tougher sentencing powers and sets stricter rules to gather and collect more data on crimes. Special U.S. prosecutors will be appointed to tackle what advocates of the law describe as an epidemic of violence.
The president is due to sign the bill into law during a ceremony at the White House on Thursday afternoon.
The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) requires that funds do not go to sex workers or those who work with sex workers, and has done so for years. In fact, it recently came up in a post that I wrote about police abuse against sex workers in Cambodia. But while the situation is nothing new, it is discussed far too little, and needs to be highlighted whenever an opportunity presents itself. Because it’s killing people.
Back in 2003, Congress mandated that in order for any group or organization to get US global HIV/AIDS funds, it must have “a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking.” (See: Sex, American Style). The 2008 PEPFAR fact sheet states “prostitution and sex trafficking are abusive and dehumanizing to women, and they fuel the spread of HIV.” It’s not clear whether former-President Bush—who implemented PEPFAR and its anti-prostitution pledge—recognized the difference between sex trafficking and prostitution, spoke to any sex worker-run organizations that combat exploitation, or spoke to groups that seek HIV preventative care and battle sex trafficking. The anti-sex worker, anti-trafficking pledge left sex worker organizations—which incidentally work with one of the most at-risk populations for HIV (PDF)—out in the cold.
“We need HIV treatment but we don’t need the mandate that sex workers are excluded,” says Pisey Ly of Cambodia’s Women’s Network for Unity (WNU), a sex worker advocate organization. When WNU applied for US HIV prevention funds, it was denied and told to drop its sex worker status, Ly says. It refused. “The original idea behind WNU was to be an independent sex worker organization, to provide sex workers with ownership and leadership to speak about the issues that effect their lives,” Ly says. Because of PEPFAR’s anti-prostitution policy, Ly says, many donors and NGOs that once worked with Cambodian sex workers have abandoned them for fear of losing their US funding.
Meanwhile, unprotected intercourse between sex workers and clients is the main cause of new HIV infections in Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Really, you should go read the whole post. I wholeheartedly mean that — quoting as much of Kumeh’s text as I would like to would genuinely constitute copyright infringement.
Trigger Warning for descriptions of sexual assault and explicit victim-blaming and sexual assault apologism.
Earlier this week, a jury ruled against a woman who sued the Girls Gone Wild franchise on the grounds that they damaged her reputation when they included footage of her being forcibly disrobed in one of their DVDs (h/t). The woman, identified in the case as Jane Doe, never gave consent for her breasts to be showed on film, audibly refused to lift up her top for cameras, and never signed a consent form. Nevertheless, when another woman came up from behind Doe and suddenly pulled her tank top down — sexually assaulted her — her breasts were exposed and the footage was used.
A St. Louis Circuit Court jury deliberated 90 minutes before ruling against the woman, 26, on the third day of the trial. Lawyers on both sides argued the key issue was consent, with her side saying she absolutely refused to give it and the defense claiming she silently approved by taking part in the party.
The woman, identified in court files as Jane Doe, was 20 when she went to the former Rum Jungle bar in May 2004 and was filmed by a “Girls Gone Wild” video photographer. Now married, the mother of two girls and living in the St. Charles area, Doe sued in 2008 after a friend of her husband’s reported that she was in one of the videos.
“I am stunned that this company can get away with this,” Doe said after the verdict. “Justice has not been served. I just don’t understand. I gave no consent.”
But Patrick O’Brien, the jury foreman, told a reporter later that an 11-member majority decided that Doe had in effect consented by being in the bar and dancing for the photographer. In a trial such as this one, agreement by nine of 12 jurors is enough for a verdict.
“Through her actions, she gave implied consent,” O’Brien said. “She was really playing to the camera. She knew what she was doing.”
There is something gravely, gravely wrong in the U.S. court system when a jury foreman can say that a sexual assault victim “knew what she was doing” and therefore deserved what she got, as a means for deciding how he did in the case.
Warning: quoted text and linked articles contain transphobic language.
This story is enraging and heartbreaking all at once. A woman named Nikki Araguz recently lost her husband Thomas, when he died while working as a firefighter on July 3. Instead of being allowed to mourn this horrific and sudden loss of her life partner, Nikki is instead being sued by her late husband’s family.
The lawsuit attempts to void the two year marriage of Nikki and Thomas, for the purpose of preventing her from having access to his death benefits. The family brutally alleges that the entire marriage was a fraud, revealed personal details about Nikki’s life, and have dragged her into court and before television cameras during this grieving period.
A Wharton county judge is expected to hear evidence on Friday in the first step toward sorting out the estate of a firefighter killed in the line of duty, in dispute because of a lawsuit between his parents and his widow who was born a male.
Nikki Araguz on Thursday decried allegations lodged in the lawsuit by her late husband’s family that she is a fraud because she was born male.
“I’m absolutely devastated about the loss of my husband, a fallen firefighter named Thomas Araguz III, and horrified at the horrendous allegations accusing me of fraud because they are absolutely not true,” Araguz said at a Thursday press conference. “And that is all I have to say.”
She spoke briefly at the law office of Phyllis Frye, a transgender attorney, who said her six-lawyer firm is poised to fight the family’s lawsuit. Moments after her statement, Araguz stood up in tears and walked out of the press conference.
“She cries,” Frye said after the abrupt departure. “It’s been 18 days since her husband died.”
Trigger Warning for discussions of sexual violence and police violence, specifically including violence against sex workers and transphobic violence.
Earlier this year, I wrote about an Amnesty International report about sexual violence against women in Cambodia, and the judicial response (or more accurately, lack of judicial response) to sexual violence. A section of that report dealt with sexual violence against sex workers, and the fact that good portion of such violence is actually committed by law enforcement officials.
Police arrest sex workers in regular sweeps on the streets and parks of Phnom Penh. Some of the violence is opportunistic, while other abuses commonly occur in periodic crackdowns and raids by police and district authorities, at times targeting sex workers specifically and other times picking up sex workers along with other groups of marginalized people on the streets.
Police abuse sex workers with impunity. Sex workers told Human Rights Watch that police officers beat them with their fists, sticks, wooden handles, and electric shock batons. In several instances, police officers raped sex workers while they were in police detention. Every sex worker that Human Rights Watch spoke to had to pay bribes or had money stolen from them by police officers.
A 2008 Cambodian law on trafficking and sexual exploitation criminalized all forms of trafficking, including forced labor. Human Rights Watch found that police officers at times can use those sections of the law that criminalize “solicitation” and “procurement” of commercial sex to justify harassment of sex workers. The provisions are also broad enough that they can be used to criminalize advocacy and outreach activities by sex worker groups and those who support them.
Human Rights Watch urged the Cambodian government to consult with sex worker groups, United Nations agencies, and organizations working on human rights, trafficking, and health to review and address the impact on the human rights of those engaged in sex work of provisions in the 2008 law on trafficking and sexual exploitation, before implementing those provisions.
In Phnom Penh, police refer sex workers to the municipal Office of Social Affairs and from there to NGOs or the government Social Affairs center, Prey Speu. Conditions in Prey Speu are abysmal. Sex workers, beggars, drug users, street children, and homeless people held at Prey Speu have reported how staff members at the center have beaten, raped, and mistreated detainees, including children. Local human rights workers, citing eyewitness accounts, allege that at least three people, and possibly more, were beaten to death by guards at Prey Speu between 2006 and 2008.
This is sadly the problem with far too many efforts that purport to be anti-trafficking: they actually don’t work to prevent or address trafficking, but merely serve as a cover to abuse all sex workers and trafficking victims. The stigma, revulsion, and misogyny (combined with many other prejudices) directed at sex workers is enormous. And verbal taunts and harassment easily lead to physical and sexual violence. Dehumanization of sex workers through slut-shaming, classism, transphobia, etc., enforces a culture that turns the other way to such abuses, or actively affirms them. And while not the only perpetrators, law enforcement is always first in line.
Posts on this website are copyright Cara Kulwicki, all rights reserved. That means that you should not reprint them in full without permission. (Excerpts with a link back are, of course, fair use.) If you would like to cross-post something, please email me to discuss it.
Last Friday, 
