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When state and federal aid lagged in the days after the fire, Indigenous-led and faith-based organizations stepped up to provide shelter and resources to survivors, said Tamara Paltin, a West Maui county councilmember. A host of volunteer-powered distribution tents provided food, clothing and medication, as well as acupuncture and lomi practitioners.

“As far as I’ve been taught, the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi still exists,” she said. “We’re a nation occupied by the US.”

[-] JohnBrownsDream@hexbear.net 21 points 1 year ago

The date listed on the indictments is May 25, 2020, the day George Floyd was murdered by police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis. Although this predates any Stop Cop City protesting, it’s possible that the attorney general’s office plans to link the Stop Cop City movement with the larger protests that followed Floyd’s death.

On top of everything else that's effed about this it's really insidious that they're trying to tie these RICO charges to the larger BLM movement. I shudder to think what kind of precedent it would set if this doesn't get thrown out.

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When “defund police” became a national cry in 2020, police organizations mobilized to beat it back by laying every uptick in crime or high-profile violent incident at the feet of Black Lives Matter and any public official in support of the movement. This national reckoning happened to come at a crucial juncture in Oakland’s budget cycle, and the city council surprised activists by voting, in June 2020, to create a task force to Reimagine Public Safety with a goal “to reduce OPD budget by 50 percent by investing in crime prevention and community.”

One year later, then-police chief LeRonne Armstrong, the department’s 10th chief in 10 years, linked “out-of-control” crime in the city to the first actual budget cut, which had been approved by the council only days before. [emph. mine] Shortly thereafter, then-Mayor Libby Schaaf made international headlines for “reversing course,” saying “defund the police went ‘too far,’” though no cuts had yet been implemented and Schaaf had always publicly opposed them.

In October 2022, ABC News investigated claims that defunding has contributed to increasing crime numbers and found that in the vast majority of cities, police funding has increased since 2020. Oakland followed this national trend, with an 18 percent increase between 2019 and 2022.

[-] JohnBrownsDream@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago

If you might ever need to be reached at the number being shared there's always the route of VoIP products like Google Voice (free), or Twilio or MySudo (not free), where one can create virtual numbers for different use cases. In general it's more secure to share a VoIP number anyway since it isn't vulnerable to the same SIM swapping attacks that cell numbers are. I don't know that it's possible to create a Google Voice account without providing a real cell #. One could probably get around that with a burner phone.

Where there is only a short-term need for a reachable number for SMS verification or communication purposes there are services that provide temporary SMS numbers, like mobilesms.io. Because these numbers are recycled frequently, definitely don't use them to register anything important like a bank account or email address.

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Say the line, Bernie (www.theguardian.com)
[-] JohnBrownsDream@hexbear.net 19 points 1 year ago

Fair point. It's still striking to me how much public money is being thrown at a project that will benefit just a handful of private citizens.

[-] JohnBrownsDream@hexbear.net 30 points 1 year ago

A quarter billion dollars to build just a prototype and retread the Concorde fiasco with all its attendant environmental destruction. What does this have to do with exploring space, which is what I thought was NASA's mission?

[-] JohnBrownsDream@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

The other source video option is Bush getting a shoe thrown at him. Excellent.

Still too bad it missed.

[-] JohnBrownsDream@hexbear.net 8 points 1 year ago

That's not a quote that's even in the article. How about:

Given these differences in wealth portfolios, bailing out financial assets after 2008 while allowing homeowners to drown directly concentrated the national wealth into the hands of the richest white families.

[-] JohnBrownsDream@hexbear.net 82 points 1 year ago

Healthcare please yes-honey-left

[-] JohnBrownsDream@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago

What I mean is that Ukraine still fighting Russia with so much money being thrown at their defense doesn't seem to jive with a narrative of a foundering Russian military

[-] JohnBrownsDream@hexbear.net 3 points 1 year ago

If that's the state of the Russian military it says a lot that even with billions being thrown at Ukraine they're still fighting a year and half later

JohnBrownsDream

joined 4 years ago