Items

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  2020-10-20

  "Bennett Walsh resigns as Holyoke Soldiers' Home superintendent; suit over firing dropped"

  This MassLive article reports on Holyoke Soldiers' Home superintendent Bennett Walsh's decision to drop a law suit after Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker had him fired in light of the facility's poor response to the pandemic.
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  2020-04-01

  POTUS45 COVID19

  As an Australian who has traveled extensively in the US and who has met many kind and generous people over the years, watching America being ravaged by the virus in those early months was horrifying. Especially my beloved NYC. This was compounded by the incompetence and wilful neglect of the Trump administration. And so, this project - the visual smashing together of two mediated narratives POTUS45 and COVID19 - began out of rage in April of 2020 when the death count had (only) reached 100,000. Pasting up these posters across the streets of Melbourne - in a time of helplessness, of lock-downs, of isolation and of global death counts - felt cathartic. It won't of course bring back the dead or heal the suffering of the long haulers, but it was a physical act of artistic expression and global solidarity. That was a year ago, POTUS45 is gone (for now), but the cost of his administration's negligence is represented in the statistics of April 2021 that were unfathomable a year ago.
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  2021-04-06

  News Article: Gov. Ducey signs COVID-19 liability shield

  By Associated Press Originally Published: April 6, 2021 10:11 a.m. PHOENIX – Gov. Doug Ducey on Monday signed legislation giving businesses, nursing homes and others a broad shield from lawsuits related to COVID-19, making Arizona the latest state to limit liability after the pandemic. Republican lawmakers approved the legislation in party-line votes in the House and Senate last week, saying businesses struggled during the pandemic and shouldn’t have to worry about frivolous lawsuits. The measure was opposed by consumer advocates, who say it will reward bad actors who flouted health guidance and endangered their workers or the public. They say there’s been no deluge of COVID-19 lawsuits. Business and medical groups have pushed hard for a liability shield since the start of the pandemic. The Arizona bill is one of dozens introduced across the country and in Congress. Ducey called for the measure in his State of the State address in January. The bill raises the bar for winning a pandemic-related lawsuits against businesses, health care providers, nursing homes, nonprofits, governments, churches and schools. Instead of proving negligence by a preponderance of the evidence, plaintiffs would have to prove “gross negligence” or “willful misconduct” by clear and convincing evidence.
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  2020-07-20

  ⁣Photos from Justice for Womxn Lost To State Violence protest

  "Most rape and assault is never reported to law enforcement in the first place. Of the cases that are, less than 1 percent are referred to prosecutors, and even fewer result in convictions. There are currently hundreds of ongoing lawsuits against police departments across the country, alleging a culture of institutionalized negligence, antipathy, and outright hostility toward survivors. Beyond the structural violence endemic to policing, police themselves are four times more likely than the average person to be domestic abusers.⁣ ⁣ These things are often framed as proof that policing is “broken,” but that again accepts the premise of the police on their own terms. Gender-based violence enabled by and within the criminal legal system is by design, and it is inseparable from the way that “crime” itself is construed: racialized, atomized, and alienated from broader social problems.⁣ ⁣ Far from being protected, it’s under the guise of “fighting crime” that Black women, trans women, indigenous, undocumented, and poor women have been subjected to a system of violent policing that continually exposes them to gender-based harm at the same time as it hems them into the margins of society. This system is self-protecting—it conspires to conceal the means through which it reproduces and justifies itself, making it difficult to imagine an alternative." - Isabel Cristo, The New Republic⁣ ⁣Photos from Justice for Womxn Lost To State Violence protest, July 18, 2020
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  2021-01-28

  The New Utopia

  This Vox article by Sarah Khan is about the phenomenon of "pandemic tourism" to tropical places such as Tulum, Mexico; and Honolulu, Hawaii. According to Khan, these tourists, usually Western, seek to escape quarantine restrictions in their home countries and risk the health of foreigners by bringing COVID-19 with them.