REDEYE 7/25/18

Peace Accord means death
El Pais (Spain) 7/5 – Every three days a social leader in Colombia is assassinated.  There have been 178, according to police calculations, since the signing of the peace accords with the FARC on November 24, 2016…
This past Wednesday, in the Caceres municipality in the northwest of the country, Ana Maria Cortes, the local coordinator for the electoral campaign of leftist candidate Gustavo Petro was assassinated.  On Tuesday, Margarita Estupiñan, the president of the Communal Action Board for the Tumaco neighborhood, was shot in the doorway of her home.
These assassinations are a a dramatic reflection of the precarious situation that still exists in Colombia.
The regular lack of defense for community leaders shines a spotlight on local landowners and mafia groups; since the peace accords there has been increasing confrontations between criminal bands and armed groups for control of the territory.
U.S. impoverishes & kills millions of kids
NYT, 6/28 — America systematically shortchanges tens of millions of children, including homegrown kids….American kids are more likely to be poor, to drop out of high school and even to die young….Tear apart homegrown families…through mass incarceration, excessive juvenile detention and overuse of foster care. One black child in 10 spends time in foster care — and 61,000 foster kids have simply gone missing since 2000….
“A shockingly high number of children in the U.S. live in poverty,” the United Nations…[official] Philip Alston…declared
….Almost one-fifth of American children live in poverty…and they account for more than one-fifth of homeless people.
Alston [said] “there’s a very direct link” between the mistreatment of immigrant children at the border and the indifference toward low-income children all across the country….
…A U.N. official…finds that kids here have worms….Two researchers…found that some three million children live in “extreme poverty,” with a cash income of less than $2 per person per day….
Since about 1970…American kids have been dying at higher rates. A child is more likely to die by the age of 19 in the U.S. than in…peer countries….
Half a million kids still suffer from lead poisoning each year….A tropical disease specialist at Baylor’s College of Medicine warns that here in the United States, “Millions of children living in poverty may be affected by toxocariasis, a parasitic roundworm infection….”
…Trump is…cutting benefit programs in ways that will hurt poor kids. Trump’s tax cuts add to the deficit…sticking children with the bill.
Thousands separated from parents: a “form of state terror”
NYT, 6/23 — Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security shrugged off accusations that [separating migrant children from their parents] was a “form of state terror.” After all, she said, “We do it every day in every part of the country….”
…Family separation…is…happening…thousands of times a day. “In the United States,” she said,” we call that law enforcement….”
…Prosecutors and the police routinely separate children from their parents….It comes with no warning, sometimes in the middle of the night….
INCARCERATING PARENTS. A quarter of a million American children…have a single mother in jail, where most detainees are awaiting trial or committed a minor offense….Another 150,000 have a mother in prison….One in four black children …have their father incarcerated before they turn 14….Some have the potential to be lost. The Dallas Morning News found that children whose parents were behind bars had slept in state offices, [and] run away from foster homes. “No one in the criminal justice system is responsible for the safety of children whose mothers go to jail.”
Women who give birth while incarcerated are usually separated from their babies….
INCARCERATING CHILDREN. More than 30,000 children are locked up in juvenile facilities in this country….Black children are incarcerated at a rate five times higher than white children….Children are still held in appalling conditions…[including] solitary confinement for months at a stretch.
REMOVING CHILDREN FROM THE HOME. There are some 400,000 children in the foster home system, many of whom are prohibited from any parental contact….
These children are typically taken by officials they have never met, without warning, then subjected to intrusive interrogations, medical examinations and sometimes strip searches…..Many of the cases were unfounded, and…agencies disproportionately go after black and Latino parents.
France: Youth fight cops’ racist murder of immigrant workers
NYT, 7/5 — …A police killing….[showed]….images from the western city of Nantes of burned-out cars, smashed bus shelters and shattered store fronts:…symbols of…policing in minority neighborhoods….Police pulled over a 22-year-old man acquaintances identified as Aboubakar, the son of immigrants from Guinea, during a traffic stop….
…The young man was shot in the neck and died before he made it to the hospital….
What followed was a night in which angry youths in three Nantes neighborhoods threw fire bombs and burned eight buildings and some 30 cars….Said Gergard Mauger, at the CNSR research institute…”For 40 years we’ve had 10 percent unemployment, much higher in these neighborhoods. The first victims of it are the immigrants.”
En-Némèr, who runs a local youth group….said, “They had beefed up the police presence to ‘protect’ the neighborhood….
Mr. En-Némèr, who knew Aboubakar from soccer matches organized by his group, vigorously disputed the police account. He said 10 witnesses interviewed by him and his group all agreed. There had been no aggression from the young man….[He] was complying with the officers. He wasn’t aggressive….
“They fired at him without warning….” There was lots of blood coming from his neck, but it was too late.”
Aboubakar was known as “cheerful” and “respectful,” Mr. En-Némèr said….
…Officials in Nantes said the shooting would be investigated, and a march was being organized….For Mr. En-Némèr, though the shooting demonstrated that “you might as well re-establish the death penalty.”