In 2014, Alabama became one of a handful of states requiring voters to show government ID in order to vote. The rule was only allowed as a result of the 2013 Supreme Court decision removing Alabama and a handful of other states, from jurisdiction under the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, passed after the famous "March on Washington," to prevent voter suppression. During a September 2015 special session, the Alabama state legislature voted to immediately close 31 driver license bureaus in the state, making it harder to get the ID required to vote. The closed bureaus are disproportionately located in counties with high Black voter registration rolls. Today, eight of the 10 counties with majority Black voters have no driver license bureaus at all. Mercedes-Benz opened its only U.S. manufacturing plant in 1993 just south of Birmingham. The plant sits on 1,000 acres of land given by the state of Alabama for free to Mercedes. The luxury car company has publicly touted its responsible corporate citizenship in the state. In 2012 governor Bentley visited Germany to personally thank the Mercedes corporation for opening the plant in Alabama.

Currently the shows on BET are either boring or just not interesting. BET used to have plenty of programs that were entertaining, enjoyable to watch , and had a huge fan base. Then all of a sudden BET took them off of the air!?!? Shows like Baldwin Hills, College Hill, Spring Bling, Rip The Runway, Hell Date, The Basement, and countless others. I and hundreds of others would agree that BET needs to bring them back !

We are starting this petition to prove that people support our initiative to end explicit discrimination in our class. We want Professor Johnston to follow the University Policy. It is also our goal to bring awareness to the discrimination that happens every day in the "real world" even though most employers have policies against it. Please support us! Even though this is an experiment, the discrimination is real and the grades WILL NOT be changed unless we do something to persuade our professor to change his mind. #FollowYourPolicy #Stand4Three #StudentsForEquality Below is the letter we will be presenting to our Professor on October 20th and we need as many signatures as possible. Thank you for your support! Dear Professor Johnston, On September 3, 2015, you gave our Public Management and Administration class at Arizona State University an assignment in which you explicitly used discrimination against nearly half of the class. The assignment itself was not out of the ordinary, but the rules were as listed: Special grading rules for this assignment 1. If you sit in the back row of the class, you must submit your assignment by noon on Friday (instead of Sunday at noon like the rest of the class). 2. You must show two forms of ID to turn in your assignment, white students must also bring a bill that shows your current address. 3. If you want credit for your assignment, then during class on Tuesday you must submit to having your cheek cells collected with a swab at the beginning of class. 4. Veterans (and active military personal) will receive an extra five points on the assignment. Please bring proof of service on Tuesday. 5. If you bring in sunglasses or a hat, you will receive an extra five points on the assignment. 6. The average score for male students will be adjusted to 77% of the average score for female students. 7. Students can receive 100% for this assignment if they donate $25 to support a course project later in the semester. The money is not due now, only the pledge for donating the money - if you choose this option, just write Module 3 - I promise to make a $25 donation to the course on your wiki. You do not need to do the assignment if you pledge to donate $25. For all students, this option will exempt you from all other rules except 2 and 3. For male students, the 77% reduction is not applied if you chose this option. 8. Samantha and Kevin, for helping to set up these rules, will receive a 100% base score and an extra 20% bonus for great performance. While many of us understood the point you were trying to make in giving the rules based on statistics found in the “real world”, we believe legally and morally, these rules are unjust and must be changed. There are still three of our classmates who have received 77% for doing the same amount of work. Like many people who are discriminated against by employers, there is a policy against this kind of behavior, but it is still happening anyway. This is in violation of the University’s nondiscrimination policy: “Arizona State University is committed to providing an environment free of discrimination, harassment, or retaliation for the entire university community, including all students, faculty members, staff employees, and guests. ASU expressly prohibits discrimination, harassment, and retaliation by employees, students, contractors, or agents of the university based on any protected status: race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, and genetic information. "Inappropriate conduct need not rise to the level of a violation of federal or state law to constitute a violation of this policy and to warrant disciplinary action/sanctions. All individuals identified in the Applicability section of this policy are responsible for participating in and assisting with creating and maintaining an environment at ASU free from all forms of prohibited discrimination, including harassment and retaliation. All individuals identified in the Applicability section of this policy are required to cooperate with any investigation of allegations of violations of this policy. Providing false or misleading information or failure to cooperate may result in disciplinary action.” According to recent studies and news, there is very slow process in equality in the work place due to an unconscious bias, which exists and is very difficult to change. Emily Peck of the Huffington Post explains: “These days, sexism has (mostly) moved beyond the crass discrimination of the "Mad Men" years, shape-shifting into something we now call unconscious bias -- the things a lot of us believe about women without even realizing it. These attitudes are harder to combat, or even prove, but they show up again and again in the research. A lot of people, for example, believe on some level that women are less competent than men. There's also something called a "maternal bias," in which mothers who do well at their job are disliked -- and kept from advancing -- because they're believed to be terrible parents. Women hold 45 percent of entry-level jobs at the companies surveyed, and their ranks thin out as you go higher. Only 27 percent of vice presidents at those companies are women, as are 23 percent of senior vice presidents and 17 percent of C-suite execs. These figures are a very slight improvement from 2012 (see the chart below). Very slight -- that’s where that 100-year estimate comes from. “ – “At This Rate, It’ll Take 100 Years to get Gender Equality at Work: Things are Getting Better…Very, Very Slowly” by Emily Peck The difference in our class is that you are committing explicit discrimination and have challenged us as a class to do something about it. By bringing awareness and involving others, we hope you will reconsider the grades of the three classmates that are still receiving 77% for this assignment. We the undersigned are prepared to take further action if all of our classmates are not...

I have been collecting data for those killed in southern California in preparation for the national march to stop police terror and murder in NYC on Oct. 22-24. The brief summaries submitted by the police are heart-rending (and collected by The Guardian US). Something must be done so that these murders are not forgotten as the inexorable news cycle moves on to the next atrocity.

Remember Antonio Weiss? He’s the notorious Wall Street banker whose appointment to the Treasury Department got blocked by Elizabeth Warren and grassroots groups like Rootstrikers because of his outrageous history of helping corporations use ‘inversions’ to avoid U.S. taxes. Now he’s back at it again. He managed to sneak into an unconfirmed position at the Treasury Department and he is currently leading the response to Puerto Rico’s debt crisis. Weiss’s old investment bank, Lazard, has too much to gain from the outcome of the debt crisis in Puerto Rico – and he is way too closely tied to Lazard, having just receiving a $21 million golden parachute from them when he joined the government. Sign the petition to tell Treasury Secretary Jack Lew: Remove Antonio Weiss from the response to Puerto Rico’s debt crisis. Rootstrikers and our allies at Hedge Clippers released a report that makes it clear it’s unacceptable for Weiss to make these decisions: “The Antonio Weiss Files: Vultures, Bribes & Conflicts of Interest in Puerto Rico.”[1] Predatory lending by Weiss’s bank, Lazard, and hedge funds are a big part of what drove Puerto Rico to take on an unsustainable level of debt. Top Lazard bankers were even accused of bribing Puerto Rico’s governor to get better roles in debt deals! Hedge funds have swooped in to buy as much distressed Puerto Rico debt as they can – and made it clear they will use every option available to make sure the pain of resolving the debt crisis falls on Puerto Ricans, through drastic austerity measures. We need a response to this debt crisis that’s fair and equitable for the people of Puerto Rico, not based on what’s most profitable for Lazard and its hedge fund friends. Sign the petition: Tell Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to pull Antonio Weiss off the Treasury’s response to the debt crisis in Puerto Rico and let someone without his conflict of interest lead the effort.

RoundUp, the weed-killer brought to you by Monsanto. It’s sprayed on lawns all throughout the country, including on public parks, school playgrounds, and sports fields. What you probably don’t know is that in March, the cancer research arm of the World Health Organization announced that glyphosate – the key ingredient in RoundUp – is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” And recently the California EPA announced that it plans to label glyphosate as a chemical “known to cause cancer.” In the WHO report, scientists cited evidence from studies showing that glyphosate has been linked to tumors in mice and rats and has caused DNA damage to human cells. Another study found that exposure to this dangerous chemical can result in significant liver and kidney damage. In addition to being used on lawns and parks, glyphosate is the number one herbicide used in agriculture. Nearly all U.S. corn, soy, and cotton is treated with glyphosate. People have a right to know about the serious health risks of this weed-killer. The California EPA’s public comment period ends October 20th, and they need to hear from people like you.

Please join me in making five demands of Congress and President Obama. Our lawmakers should:[1] *stop paying Mexico tens of millions of dollars to intercept and deport these refugees before they reach our border. A high-ranking State Department official has proposed spending $90 million to do more of this in 2016; we should instead spend that money to help these refugees. *help Mexico pay for places for migrants to be held that are humane while their refugee claims are evaluated. *develop a system for these refugees, much like Europe is now doing for Syrians, to equitably allocate people who are fleeing harm throughout this continent — including sending them to safer countries in Latin America, to Canada and to the United States. *increase the number of refugees we allow to pre-9/11 levels — 130,000, from the current 70,000 — to allow more of these families to have a safe harbor here in the U.S. *approve a proposed tripling aid, now before Congress, to the northern triangle Central American countries (El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala) to help reduce the causes of the violence pushing these families out. Source: 1. http://www.enriquesjourney.com/how-to-help/the-refugees-at-our-door/

The recent and anti-immigrant rhetoric spouted by some of the Republican presidential candidates is deeply disturbing and unacceptable. Rather than promoting inclusion, many Republican candidates, such as Donald Trump and Jeb Bush, are fostering racist and xenophobic fears towards Latinos, Asian-Americans, and immigrants. This is creating a hostile and dangerous climate for immigrants and people of color, as evidenced by the recent beating of a homeless Latino man by Trump’s supporters. The Republican Party must stand for tolerant dialogue on these and other issues affecting Americans.

During the first Democratic presidential debate, CNN journalist Anderson Cooper challenged Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders about his supposed “electability” issues in this way: “The question is really about electability here, and that’s what I’m trying to get at. You — the — the Republican attack ad against you in a general election — it writes itself. You supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. You honeymooned in the Soviet Union. And just this weekend, you said you’re not a capitalist. Doesn’t — doesn’t that ad write itself?” [1] Anderson Cooper is showing his pro-Empire bias by trying to re-write the history of U.S. foreign policy in Nicaragua on the side of the Empire. Millions of Americans “supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.” In 1979, the Sandinista National Liberation Front overthrew the US government-installed Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, promising to address Nicaragua’s extreme poverty and the lack of basic government services like education and health care for the majority of the population. In 1982, Nicaragua was recognized by the World Health Organization as the third world country that had made the most progress in health care. Under the Reagan Administration, the CIA organized a terrorist army (the “Contras”) to attack the Nicaraguan government. Millions of Americans participated in a solidarity movement to oppose US military intervention in Nicaragua, including public radio host Ira Glass [2], actors Ed Asner, Mike Farrell and Diane Ladd, civil rights leader Julian Bond [3] and engineer Ben Linder, who was killed in a terrorist attack by the CIA’s army. [4] The US-Nicaragua solidarity movement succeeded in passing the Boland Amendment in Congress, cutting off US funding to the CIA’s terrorist army, which led the Reagan Administration to try to fund the Contras illegally through arms sales to Iran. When this illegal arrangement was exposed, it became the Iran-Contra scandal. [5] Challenge Anderson Cooper to provide evidence for his unsubstantiated claim that having opposed the CIA’s illegal war against Nicaragua in the 1980s is a political liability in the United States today by signing our petition. References: 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/14/us/politics/democratic-debate-transcript.html 2. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/378/transcript 3. http://www.csmonitor.com/1984/1123/112357.html 4. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/09/23/in-search-of-ben-linders-killers 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boland_Amendment

This television show is one of the all time most dreadful things in existence. The fact that humans actually indulge in torturing innocent animals is bad enough, but to glorify it by creating a mock competition is unredeemable and repugnant, comparable to the mass slaughter of Christians and Jews and all the disenfranchised throughout history.

Too often, unauthorized gun buyers are able to sneak past background checks; this is because background checks are conducted by fax machine, voice mail, and email. Too many straw purchasers are arming inner city gangs; they do this because we have no data analytics on bulk purchases (nor do we analyze who habitually reports bulk gun thefts). I have no faith in the Congress to pass meaningful gun legislation. Thus, it is up to the Executive branch to manifest change via legal executive action. The Executive branch has been tasked with conducting background checks, and have been blessed with a budget to execute these laws. It is well within the legal purview of the executive branch to implement these tools. It would take a big effort, but at least its possible. Legislative change, sadly, is not. We need to modernize the system anyway; it is no longer the 1990's. Let's stop talking about banning guns, and start banning fax machines instead.

Our health is at stake. Leaf blowers are deleterious for many reasons: the horrendous noise, the carcinogenic emissions, and, the stirred -up particulate matter. There is a reason why many communities around the country are banning leaf blowers, and, not other landscaping equipment. In November, 2015 the Newton Aldermen will be voting on an ordinance to limit the use of leaf blowers. It is crucial that citizens sign this petition and write their Aldermen, now!