|
|
|
|
|
Dear Friends,
Happy New Year! It's funny to say that since it's already the end of January. We hope you are rested and well as we all transition into 2023. As the new year begins we reflect back to our work in 2022, "We Are More Boldly and Unapologetically Moving Into Our Future" and we wanted to highlight the many actions we took as an organization last year to continue to work for justice and joy. This year we continue this work, and signed on to support many pieces including Amicus Briefs, sign on letters, and endorsement of legislation all protecting girls and gender expansive youth of color who are system-impacted. This 2023, National Crittenton will continue to be at the forefront of change fighting for a world where she/they* can achieve their potential and live unapologetic, liberated lives without fear of violence and/or injustice.
In Solidarity,
National Crittenton
|
|
|
We Signed The Protect Black Women & Girls Act
Working with Girls For Gender Equity, we are urging the House judiciary to mark up the Protect Black Women & Girls Act and bring it to a vote. This bipartisan effort would create an interagency task force to look at issues, needs, and ways to support Black women and girls with respect to legal issues, education, and more. The task force would produce a report which would ultimately be written by the Civil Rights Commission. Read more here!
|
|
|
|
|
Partnership launched to eliminate incarcerating ‘girls,’ gender-expansive youth
DavisVanguard.org - 1.20.23
SACRAMENTO, CA – In 2021 alone, more than 1,400 girls and gender-expansive youth were either incarcerated or detained in California, according to information provided this week by a coalition that notes the youths are disproportionately of color, LGBTQ, and poor.
Yet, justice proponents said research has shown that the low-level offenses for which these youths are typically criminalized for can be effectively mitigated through community-based programs. However, correctional facilities are largely still unable to provide such programs.
Ending Girls’ Incarceration in California Action Network has announced the Office of Youth and Community Restoration (OYCR) and the Vera Institute of Justice will provide a statewide technical assistance effort.
|
|
|
New LA Mayor Karen Bass to declare state of emergency on homelessness
CNN- 12.12.22
Karen Bass was sworn in as the first female mayor of Los Angeles on Sunday, marking another historic achievement in her career.Bass focused her remarks Sunday on her plans to solve the city's housing crisis, with some 40,000 people living on the streets, and said her first act as mayor will be to declare a state of emergency on homelessness.
"Today, too many Angelenos have no choice but to crowd multiple families into one home, and to work multiple jobs just to barely pay rent," Bass said. "Tragically, our city has earned the shameful crown as being home to the most crowded neighborhoods in the nation -- Pico Union, South L.A., East L.A., the East Valley," she added. "And Angelenos, we know our mission -- we must build housing in every neighborhood."
Though billions of dollars in state, city and county money are being directed toward interim and permanent housing units, construction has moved slowly. The latest count measured a 1.7% rise in homelessness from the last count in 2020.
|
|
|
GA public school students sue district over discriminatory dress code
The Root 1.11.23
A Georgia school district is being sued by a group of students for what they are calling a discriminatory dress code. According to the suit filed in U.S. District Court, students in Effingham County, Georgia say they were not allowed to wear Black Lives Matter t-shirts to school and school-sponsored events, even though their white classmates wear Confederate flag-embellished clothing on the regular.
The lawsuit was filed by three unnamed Black students who currently attend high school in Effingham County. In the suit, one of the teens claims she was not allowed to attend a high school football game because she was wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt. The teens are represented by a parent of one of the students.
But the Effingham County school district is doubling down and defending its stance against Black Lives Matter clothing, saying it’s in line with their district policy which prohibits students from wearing items of clothing that “may contribute to disruption.” But the students involved in the suit are calling BS, saying the district’s one-sided enforcement of the rules violates Black students’ civil rights and is a “deliberate indifference to acts of racial animosity.”
|
|
|
‘I don’t want to die’: fighting maternal mortality among Black women
NY Times - 1.18.23
ST. LOUIS, Mo. — Tara Ervin will never forget the week her sister Kelly died.
It was July 1996 and Kelly, 34 weeks pregnant, was in the emergency room with swollen feet and what the doctors said was likely a bladder infection. She was sent home with antibiotics but returned less than 48 hours later in worse shape, vomiting profusely. A blood test confirmed the worst as Kelly’s doctors rushed to deliver her son by emergency cesarean. They told her family they were sorry, they had done everything they could to save her.
An otherwise healthy 28-year-old had died from toxemia poisoning caused by preeclampsia, a serious complication of pregnancy that went untreated. Friends showed up at Kelly’s baby shower the next day, only to learn she was gone. Kelly’s family put photos of her newborn in her coffin.
“I thought that was something that only happened in the movies,” Ms. Ervin said in a recent interview, vowing that her sister’s death would not be in vain. “I don’t want any other family to endure the trauma we endured.”
|
|
|
|
|
Asian Americans say Monterey Park killings revive fears, trauma of rising anti-Asian hate around US
USA Today- 1.22.23
MONTEREY PARK, Calif. – As investigators began probing the killing of five women and five men at a dance studio in this predominately Asian American community, Asian Americans across the nation say the shooting has revived the fears and trauma brought on by a wave of hate incidents and tragedies that have struck the community over the past few years.
On Sunday evening, authorities identified the shooter as Huu Can Tran, a 72-year-old Asian man, and said he died of a self-inflicted wound earlier in the day. Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said that the suspect was carrying what he described as a semi-automatic pistol with an extended magazine and that a second handgun was discovered in the van where Tran was found dead.
“Even if we cannot be sure an attack was racial in intent, it nonetheless can be racial in effect,” Frank Wu, president of Queens College, City University of New York, said before the attacker was identified. “For a community already traumatized, this is just another terrible moment. It is easy to understand why Asian Americans are anxious.”
|
|
|
MMIW documentary to premiere at Sundance
ICT News - 1.2.23
“Murder in Big Horn,” a three-part documentary set on the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations, will premiere at the internationally acclaimed Sundance Film Festival.Through interviews with law enforcement, state medical examiners, tribal leaders and victims’ families, the documentary tells the story of several missing or murdered Indigenous women in Montana.
Specifically, “Murder in Big Horn” follows the cases of Selena Not Afraid, 16, who was found dead in Big Horn County, Kaysera Stops Pretty Places, 18, who was found dead in Hardin, Henny Scott, 14, who was found dead near Lame Deer, and Shacaiah Harding, 19, who was last seen in Billings in 2018.
Ivan and Ivy MacDonald, sibling Blackfeet filmmakers, helped produce the series. The MacDonalds’ cousin, Ashley Loring HeavyRunner, is one of thousands of missing or murdered Indigenous women, a crisis so prevalent it has its own acronym, MMIW. HeavyRunner, 20, was last seen on the Blackfeet reservation in 2017.
|
|
|
Women’s March holds nationwide rallies on 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade
New York Times- 1.22.23
With signs declaring “Abortion Is Health Care” and chants about fighting back, activists in dozens of cities nationwide rallied in support of abortion rights on Sunday, the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that was overturned by the Supreme Court, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion.
The events, which were expected to draw thousands of people from Honolulu to Hartford, make up the latest iteration of the Women’s March, the protest series that began in 2017 in the wake of the election of President Donald J. Trump. They closely followed the March for Life in Washington, the annual anti-abortion demonstration that was transformed on Friday into a victory rally celebrating the rollback of Roe.
In Texas, which led the way in strict abortion bans even before the fall of Roe, marchers gathered in downtown Dallas at John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza. In Boston, people rallied for abortion rights in the nation’s oldest public park, Boston Common. In Florida, which bans abortion after 15 weeks, more than a dozen events were scheduled.
|
|
|
Sanders bans ‘Latinx’ on first day as Arkansas governor
The Hill- 1.12.23
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) signed an executive order this week banning the use of the term “Latinx” and its derivatives from all official Arkansas government communications.
The former Trump White House press secretary signed seven orders on her first day as governor on Tuesday, generally focused on red-meat issues like “Latinx,” the use of TikTok on government devices and a review on the teaching of critical race theory in schools.
Sanders’s order to ban Latinx is titled Executive Order to Respect the Latino Community by Eliminating Culturally Insensitive words from Official Use in Government. The term Latinx is a gender-neutral form of “Latino” or “Latina” that gained some traction among progressive circles as an inclusive term.
Though it failed to catch on as a term to describe the entire U.S. Hispanic community, it’s still popular among groups who seek to promote further LGBTQ+ inclusion. Since its inception, though, the term has been criticized for being unpronounceable in Spanish, and some have said it diminishes Spanish language inclusion.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
