Unpersonal Diary

1. Call Out The U.N., make sure they direct their efforts toward this cause 

2. Support the International Organization For Migration (IOM).

3. Fight the “root causes” of slavery and trafficking 

4. Hold social media companies accountable 

According to the IOM, smugglers have previously used Facebook Live to broadcast videos of imprisoned migrants in Libya to send these videos to migrants’ family members as a way of extorting money for their release. The IOM is asking social media companies to ban the use of their services for the sharing of these types of videos. You can also write to Facebook, and have this stopped. 

5. Donate to global anti-slavery companies 

6.  Help raise awareness! 

7. Shop slave free 

Heard some important information on Twitter today, and thought I’d post it here for anyone who may not have heard it. This is actually a thing, devised by human rights organisation called Karma Nirvana.

The pastor also started the sermon by noting that she’d heard of another minister who read the entirety of the Sermon on the Mount at the pulpit, to be told by the so-called Christian parishioners after the service that it was offensive and they didn’t agree.

biblical literalists have like 99% not read the bible

Matthew 19:24 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!

A boy who was seen tearfully hugging a police officer at a protest in a viral picture in 2014 is believed to have died along with his entire family after the SUV they were traveling in plunged off a 100-foot cliff on the California coast.

The vehicle belonging to Jennifer and Sarah Hart was discovered Monday afternoon at the bottom of a cliff near the Pacific Coast Highway in Northern California, said Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman at a news conference. The Harts were parents of six children, including Devonte Hart, who appeared in the photo from a protest in Portland, Oregon, against police violence.

Allman said “we have every indication to believe that all six children were in” the vehicle that drove off the cliff, though authorities have only recovered the bodies of the parents three children. The bodies of Devonte and two other children were still missing Wednesday evening.

“An entire family vanished and perished during this tragedy,” Allman said, though he added that it is still also possible Devonte and two other children had been left behind with someone and weren’t inside the vehicle.

Authorities first learned of the crash when a passerby noticed the vehicle lying at the bottom of the cliff near the Pacific Ocean at the northern end of Mendocino County. The engine was cold when searchers reached it, and Allman said that authorities still don’t know exactly when or how the SUV drove off the road. He described the scene as “confusing.”

“There were no skid marks, there were no brake marks, there was no indication why this vehicle traversed approximately over 75 feet of a dirt pullout and went into the Pacific Ocean,” he explained, adding later that “we have no evidence and no reason to believe this is an intentional act.”

The family lived in Woodland, Washington.

Devonte, now 15, had become the best-known member of the family after he attended the November 2014 protest in Portland with a “free hugs” sign. Portland Sgt. Bret Barnum, who is white, reportedly saw the sign and noticed that Devonte, who is black, was crying. Barnum asked for a hug after Devonte said he was emotional over the level of police brutality facing black kids.

The image of the hug, in which Devonte is still visibly emotional, was shared thousands of times across various social media platforms. The moment also happened just months after a white officer shot and killed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, kicking off months of protests and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Devonte and his five siblings were adopted by Jen Hart and her wife Sarah. Jen said it was a frightening experience: “That night, after we finally got him to sleep, I cried harder than I had ever cried in my life,” she said. “I felt like there was no way we could raise this child, and the five others we had adopted.”

After Monday’s crash, neighbors of the Hart family told the Associated Press that they had called child welfare officials on Friday after becoming concerned because Devonte came to their house too often asking for food. The neighbors, Bruce and Dana DeKalb, also reportedly said that last year a girl from the family knocked on their door at 1:30 a.m. and said that “we needed to protect her. She said that they were abusing her.”

Clark County sheriff’s Sgt. Brent Waddell told the AP that Child Protective Services had recently visited the family.

Allman called the crash a “tragedy” Wednesday and showed reporters a photo of the family together and smiling. He said that the investigation was ongoing and authorities hope to piece together exactly what happened.

“Bruce and Dana DeKalb, who lived next door, said they rarely spoke with the family, which about 10 months ago moved to the remote wooded area in northern Clark County.

Dana DeKalb said Devonte (the boy in the “hugging” photo) had come to their home a dozen times to ask for food, saying his parents had withheld it as a form of punishment. The teen would ask the couple to leave the food by the fence they shared so his parents wouldn’t know, she said.

Such interactions prompted the DeKalbs to contact authorities, they said Wednesday outside their home.

A Clark County deputy accompanied Cowlitz County Child Protective Services to the Hart family’s home Friday but nobody answered the door, Sgt. Brent Waddell, a Clark County Sheriff’s Office spokesman, told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Wednesday.

The family and its SUV were gone the next day, Bruce DeKalb said.“ [Source]

The cropping of an image is everything when it comes to its subjectivity and the way ideas are projected unto it.

Every picture I’ve seen of this crops out the circus of photographers that surrounded these two creating a captive audience. With such a captive audience I can’t really say that the officer did anything that his superiors wouldn’t have told him to do. They were there just as much for public relations as to keep the peace otherwise the dept. wouldn’t have sent every queer looking, POC and female cop on the force.

The way this image has been propagandized is highly disturbing to me because it distracts from the real issues. This has never been about the relationship between individual officers and young Black men, but about the way in which our institutions and society protect cops, granting them license to use lethal force in ANY circumstance. Whether they do use it or decide to demonstrate “love” is irrelevant.’

I would like to add that Devonte was crying before approaching the officer while he was talking to his guardian, presumably because he was terrified. This brings the question of coercion to my mind, but I’ll let ya’ll debate over it.”

Bill Groener, 67, was a next-door neighbor of the family when they lived in West Linn, Oregon, and said the kids were home-schooled.

“They stayed indoors most of the time, even in really nice weather,” Groener said.

He said the family didn’t eat sugar, raised their own vegetables, had animals and went on camping trips.

“There was enough positive there to kind of counteract the feeling that something maybe wasn’t quite right,” Groener said.

also, they had a long history of taking their children to different social justice events, having them hold signs, and taking pictures that look like viral attempts. they joined bernie sanders on stage at one point at a campaign rally. the fact they were pretending to be activists while abusing their children says a lot.

2) “New Look uses sweatshops”

 3) “River Island pays its workers half the minimum wage" 

4) “H&M uses slave labour" 

5) “H&M uses sweatshops”

6) “Asos uses sweatshops”

7) “Bershka - owned by Inditex - uses child labour”

8) “Stradivarius- owned by Inditex - uses child labour" 

Potent minimalist art sends a strong message about police and vigilante brutality in America

Journalist and artist Shirin Barghi has created a gripping, thought-provoking series of graphics that not only examines racial prejudice in today’s America, but also captures the sense of humanity that often gets lost in news coverage. Titled “Last Words,” the graphics illustrate the last recorded words by Brown and other young black people — Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant and others — who have been killed by police in recent years.

“Lighten Up” by Ronald Wimberly

Black Migrants Sold into Slavery in Libya for as Little as $400

“Eight hundred,” says the auctioneer. “900 … 1,000 … 1,100 …” Sold. For 1,200 Libyan dinars — the equivalent of $800.

Not a used car, a piece of land, or an item of furniture. Not “merchandise” at all, but two human beings.One of the unidentified men being sold in the grainy cell phone video obtained by CNN is Nigerian. He appears to be in his twenties and is wearing a pale shirt and sweatpants. He has been offered up for sale as one of a group of “big strong boys for farm work,” according to the auctioneer, who remains off camera. Only his hand — resting proprietorially on the man’s shoulder — is visible in the brief clip.

After seeing footage of this slave auction, CNN worked to verify its authenticity and traveled to Libya to investigate further.

Carrying concealed cameras into a property outside the capital of Tripoli last month, we witness a dozen people go “under the hammer” in the space of six or seven minutes.“Does anybody need a digger? This is a digger, a big strong man, he’ll dig,” the salesman, dressed in camouflage gear, says. “What am I bid, what am I bid?” Buyers raise their hands as the price rises, “500, 550, 600, 650 …” Within minutes it is all over and the men, utterly resigned to their fate, are being handed over to their new “masters.”

After the auction, we met two of the men who had been sold. They were so traumatized by what they’d been through that they could not speak, and so scared that they were suspicious of everyone they met.

Crackdown on smugglers

Each year, tens of thousands of people pour across Libya’s borders. They’re refugees fleeing conflict or economic migrants in search of better opportunities in Europe. Most have sold everything they own to finance the journey through Libya to the coast and the gateway to the Mediterranean. But a recent clampdown by the Libyan coastguard means fewer boats are making it out to sea, leaving the smugglers with a backlog of would-be passengers on their hands. So the smugglers become masters, the migrants and refugees become slaves.

The evidence filmed by CNN has now been handed over to the Libyan authorities, who have promised to launch an investigation. First Lieutenant Naser Hazam of the government’s Anti-Illegal Immigration Agency in Tripoli told CNN that although he had not witnessed a slave auction, he acknowledged that organized gangs are operating smuggling rings in the country.“ They fill a boat with 100 people, those people may or may not make it,” Hazam says. “(The smuggler) does not care as long as he gets the money, and the migrant may get to Europe or die at sea.”

“The situation is dire,” Mohammed Abdiker, the director of operation and emergencies for the International Organization for Migration, said in a statementafter returning from Tripoli in April. “Some reports are truly horrifying and the latest reports of ‘slave markets’ for migrants can be added to a long list of outrages.“The auctions take place in a seemingly normal town in Libya filled with people leading regular lives. Children play in the street; people go to work, talk to friends and cook dinners for their families.But inside the slave auctions it’s like we’ve stepped back in time. The only thing missing is the shackles around the migrants’ wrists and ankles.

Deportation ‘back to square one’

One of the detained migrants, a young man named Victory, says he was sold at a slave auction. Tired of the rampant corruption in Nigeria’s Edo state, the 21-year-old fled home and spent a year and four months — and his life savings — trying to reach Europe.

He made it as far as Libya, where he says he and other would-be migrants were held in grim living conditions, deprived of food, abused and mistreated by their captors.” If you look at most of the people here, if you check your bodies, you see the marks. They are beaten, mutilated.“ When his funds ran out, Victory was sold as a day laborer by his smugglers, who told him that the profit made from the transactions would serve to reduce his debt. But after weeks of being forced to work, Victory was told the money he’d been bought for wasn’t enough. He was returned to his smugglers, only to be re-sold several more times.

The smugglers also demanded ransom payments from Victory’s family before eventually releasing him.

“I spent a million-plus [Nigerian naira, or $2,780],” he tells CNN from the detention center, where he is waiting to be sent back to Nigeria. “My mother even went to a couple villages, borrowing money from different couriers to save my life.”

Migrants in Libya forced by smugglers to kill sick or injured friends - by burying them alive

Migrants in Libya have been forced by smugglers to bury alive fellow migrants who are too sick or injured to board boats setting off across the Mediterranean towards Italy, it was revealed on Tuesday.

Migrants often spend months in Libya, held captive in squalid compounds or trying to earn enough money for their passage, and suffer knife and gunshot wounds at the hands of Libyan militia or ruthless gangs of traffickers.

They are even sold as cheap labour in modern-day slave markets, humanitarian organisations say. If they are too badly injured to walk to the beaches from where the rubber dinghies set out or if they are perceived as being too much trouble because of illness, then they are killed, said Flavio Di Giacomo, spokesman for the International Organisation for Migration.

“We have recently heard of cases where migrants who are wounded or sick have been buried alive by other migrants, on the orders of the traffickers,” Mr Di Giacomo told The Telegraph. 

“It’s horrific to think that traffickers can be so cruel. But they don’t care about the lives of migrants. If a migrant is a problem, they will kill them. A lot of migrants are shot dead on the beaches if they refuse to board the boats. It might be that they see the boats are overcrowded or the weather conditions are very bad.  They are scared of the sea. A lot of these people come from small African villages and it’s the first time they have seen the sea.”

A young Gambian migrant named Ousmane told IoM: “My friend got very sick in Libya. He was sick, but not dead. They buried him alive. They said he couldn’t have survived anyway. I heard him shout my name from the ground. I ran to him and saw them throwing dirt on top of him. I tried to save him, but they cut me with a knife.”

Before they even reach the coast, some migrants are sold in slave markets held in town squares or car parks for the equivalent of £170 each, after which an even worse fate awaits them.

Their new “owners” torture them in a bid to extract money out of their traumatized families back home, the IOM says. “Sometimes they are tortured while they are on the phone to their families, so that their relatives know they are suffering,” said Mr Di Giacomo.

[…]

So far this year more than 43,000 migrants have been rescued at sea and brought to Italy, an increase of 38 per cent compared with the same period last year.

The dramatic increase could be a result of smugglers’ fears that the Libyan Coast Guard is about to become more effective, having undergone months of intensive training by the EU. Traffickers are trying to put to sea as many migrants as they can because they fear a looming crackdown on their business, humanitarian groups say.

The photo above is of migrants on a rubber dinghy awaiting to be rescued in the Mediterranean off the coast of Zawiya in Libya, in April 2017.

So you’re not going to talk how the other’s husband is a black man who pursued her from her young age while he was much older and while together, cheated her before and during their marriage which resulted her stresses and miscarriages.

But yea… The other woman ya mock and called a man, unattractive and disrespected for years while she was doing her thing and being good at it found someone that loves her and respect.

Times have been hard for quite some time now, I have not be able to get anywhere ahead since the premature birth of my kid. At the moment I’m in a struggle to keep my last vehicle from being repossessed and a roof over our heads. I can’t take not be able to provide for him,I’m so far behind in bills and debt that my check is spent before it gets to me. My wife has been in and out of the hospital, surgery after surgery and I’m the only source of income that’s not covering us right now. I have decided to file bankruptcy just to keep what little I have for the family and some debt and stress relief. Desperate measure and desperate times have forced me to file bankruptcy, I really need something I never asked anyone for and that’s help. The lawyer that I recently have to take on my case will file when I have payed all cost for representing my case which is $2885 and I don’t even know where to start but asking for help to get back or as close to a normal life for myself and my family. 
I can only ask that if you happen to read this then share it with others, or donations as small as $1 are greatly appreciated and thanked personally.