This is the post that sticks with me, when I think about how drug campaigns should be run. This is the post that I remember, that haunted me, because it was honest, it was raw in a way “DARE” and other such things never managed. 

Telling a Kid ‘dont do drugs’ is all well and good, and sometimes it may work, done a certain way….but this. 

This is the post I remember, even years later, the one that makes me stop and shudder.  Ifuxdalion was right. This was more haunting to read then any anti drug campaign I’ve ever been subjected to in school as a kid. 

Whereas the reality is far more like

"Something I've learned while in law school is about the social construction of crime. I work in a legal clinic on wage theft cases, where employers have "improperly paid" workers by not paying, paying below min wage, withholding overtime, paid sick time, etc.

Most theft is wage theft. Meaning, the dollar value of stolen wages is greater than the value, each year, of all burglaries + robberies, shoplifting, auto theft, combined. Yet, wage theft is not a crime."

Below this tweet is an image comparing the cost of robbery, auto theft, burglary, larceny and wage theft in billions. Robbery only hits 0.34 billion, auto theft 3.8 billion, burglary 4.1 billion, larceny 5.3 billion, and wage theft accounts for greater than 19 billion dollars. The data is sourced from the FBI and EPF.

"If you steal $100 from your employer, you will get arrested. If you call the police because your paycheck is $100 light, the police will tell you to file a complaint with the AG, and the AG will settle the case for between $50 and $200.

(That's actually not true, because AG's only take on big cases where thousands of dollars are at stake, but they will settle big cases by typically requiring the employer to properly pay what is owed. No jail, no criminal record.)

If the AG doesn't want to take the case, it will give you a Private Right of Action to sue the employer in civil court for what you are owed, plus damages. It can take a 6 to 18 months to win at trial, and months or years to collect on the judgement if you win.

This is what we mean when we say crime is socially constructed. Not all social harms are criminalized. Not all actors committing social harm are criminalized.

I settled a case for $27k for three clients last year. We spent a MONTH negotiating the non-disclosure agreement because the employer stated if all his employees sued him and settled like this, he would go BANKRUPT. His business model DEPENDED on wage theft.

These employers go on to hold elected office. 45 famously used wage theft to improve his finances on construction projects, leaving a trail of victims in his wake. Some sued and he had to pay them. Others didn't have resources to pursue multi-year litigation + got nothing."

Then the user responds to someone else asking a question.

The question:

"Can you explain this reasoning? Why expanding criminal liability is a bad idea? For whom?"

The user replies:

"What should we do about it? Criminalize employers or decriminalize theft or something else?

Wage theft shows that we believe restitution is important. Giving the money back is important. Currently, AG keeps track of bad actors and will increase future penalties for bad actors.

It also shows when harm is committed, we don't have to lock someone in a cage or label them a felon, both of which destroy years of life even after the sentence is over. We can demand restitution instead of punishment.

It also shows how ridiculous the label "high crime neighborhood" is. And the arbitrary and racist response of police surveillance in HCN. Because we defined it that way.

Consider the social construction of murder:

The people committing the most harm aren't in jail, don't live in high crime neighborhoods. And "black people commit more crime" is true only because of how we have defined crimes, and how we then surveil their community in response to find more crimes.

There are so many orgs trying to address harm and create accountability within community + without incarceration. We call ourselves prison abolitionists.

Just a few: @ byp100, @ survivepunishNY, @ justicehealing, @ DeeperThanWater, @ BlackAndPinkBos and @ BlmBoston"

Found a video of a girl showing off Diet Soda detector strips (if there's any diabaddies that see this and want it I can link them, they're super helpful), and half of the comments were "you're diabetic you should just be drinking water..." First of all, not only are you just wrong, but you seriously expect diabetics to just never enjoy themselves? Ever?.

Saw another comment under a video about type 1 saying "you did this to yourselves. you ate too much sugar and you got yourself into this situation." And it's just so funny because they're Wrong™️. Type one diabetes is autoimmune and fully hereditary, and not at all effected by diet.

I mean, I know the answer. It's diet culture. People on their fancy diets think they're a superior human being because other people are "unhealthier" than them, and they hear diabetes and think "big fat and lazy with a bad diet" and think they're allowed to walk all over them since they're so superior. Despite the fact that it's a completely false stereotype that doesn't apply to most diabetics.

A lot of type 2's start out as hypoglycemic -- their pancreas is over-producing insulin, causing blood sugar crashes. Insulin stuffs sugar into fat cells, causing people to get fat, if there's too much of it. The overproduction of insulin is a response to slow-growing insulin resistance. Because sugar is a vital part of human energy, people who cannot easily process sugar due to insulin resistance and insulin over-response may crave sugar in order to have enough energy to function.

And now going back to the top point, I know exactly what video op is referring to and she made a different video a few weeks prior specifically about harmful comments to t1d’s and instead of getting the point, heaps of comments were basically to the effect of “but we can bully t2ds bc they brought this on themselves, they deserve to be mocked”. HUH. DO YOU HEAR YOURSELVES.