Over-Policing, the Cost of Being Poor, and Working-Class Candidates
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This week's independent news roundup features content from OptOut participants regarding over-policing, inequality, the corporate-funded D.C. tip sheet industry, and a lot more.
Over-Policing
Former police officer Eric Adams, the new Democratic mayor of New York City, is making good on his promise to be a "tough-on-crime" leader. His rejection of City Council members' request to end solitary confinement and his "Blueprint for Public Safety," which expands policing, show that Adams is eager to maintain the status quo and fund the carceral state, reports Prism.
More by Reina Sultan
For New York Focus, Freddy Medina, who is currently incarcerated in Beacon, New York, argues that, as in the 1990s, an increased police presence in schools does not address the root of the problem leading to guns in schools.
Freddy Medina
Activists and local politicians, including city counselors from Minneapolis and Somerville, Mass., talked with In These Times about what's next for the defund the police movement.
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Labor & Inequality
The Daily Poster is one of the best independent critics of corporate-funded media. This time, Andrew Perez exposes D.C. tip sheet company Punchbowl News for taking money from Kroger in exchange for running corporate propaganda that casts the company, whose poverty wages and poor Covid-19 protections have led to recent worker strikes, as one that offers “great pay and great benefits.”
The daily tip sheets put together by well-connected writers provides "a reliable avenue for corporate interests to inject their money and viewpoints straight into the political conversation," writes Perez.
Key to Punchbowl’s business model, like the rest of the Beltway tipsheet industry, is allowing corporations and powerful lobbying groups to tell apparently any self-serving lie or spin they want, and pretending that’s all fine and normal.
Andrew Perez
In Sludge: Some of the companies that contributed to Joe Biden's $62 million inauguration budget won big with the bipartisan infrastructure bill as their trade associations lobbied against the greater White House agenda, which would have helped stem the U.S.'s massive inequality with large social spending programs.
Donald Shaw
Eoin Higgins of The Flashpoint continues his excellent reporting on labor and inequality, this time featuring a struggling Michigan man who couldn't afford a grave marker for his mother, who recently died, nor could he pay the lawyer and county fees that would allow him to manage her affairs.
Eoin Higgins
OptOutlet Feature: Status Coup
Status Coup News is a key outlet in our independent network. It features relentless on-the-group video reporting at protests, labor strikes, and other events that the corporate media often overlook.
Jordan Chariton of Status Coup spoke with Janine Jackson, host of FAIR's Counterspin podcast, about his latest scoop on the Flint water crisis.
Janine Jackson
Tim Black of TBTV also talked with Jordan about Jordan's career as an independent, tireless on-the-ground reporter. We're glad to have both TBTV and Status Coup in our network!
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In Other News
The Rational National interviews Nabilah Islam and Isra Allison of Matriarch, an organization that helps working-class, progressive women run for office, which held a candidate training event yesterday.
Joshua Frank has an interesting piece in Counterpunch that addresses vaccine apartheid and one of the many incoherent talking points of anti-vaxxers.
Joshua Frank
The Markup's excellent reporting has led the Life360 app to stop selling precise location data. Life360, a family safety app that earned 20% of its revenue from selling location data in 2020, "acts as a firehose of data for a controversial industry that has operated in the shadows with few safeguards to prevent the misuse of this sensitive information," according to The Markup's previous report.
Jon Keegan
In The Gravel Institute's latest video, Marquette political science professor Philip Rocco tells the history of Wisconsin—how its progressivism has been overshadowed by conservative politicians and their anti-union policies.
That's all for this week. Thank you for reading and for supporting truth-telling independent media!
About OptOut
OptOut is an independent news aggregation app developed by the OptOut Media Foundation, a nonprofit charity devoted to assisting independent news outlets (EIN: 852348079). The app will launch in the Apple App Store in early 2022, and an Android version will follow. See the links below for more information.
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