By Sue Sturgis - Monday, May 13, 2013

Amount the sequester will cut from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, also known as WIC: $333 million.

By Alex Kane - AlterNet

A mother is suing the New York Police Department (NYPD) over what she says was an instance of police brutality where cops pepper-sprayed her three little children...Taylor says that police officers pepper sprayed her three children, who are 5-months old and 2 and 4 years old. She claims that as she was on her way to board a Manhattan-bound L Train, officers stopped her and her husband and accused them of trying to skip a fare.

By Arun Gupta - January 2013

The U.S. government described the five as hell-bent on sowing terror to fulfill their “violent anarchist ideology.” In reality, the FBI supplied ten pounds of inert plastic explosives to drifters, suicidal drug addicts and emotionally troubled. Like hundreds of post-September 11 cases against Muslim-Americans, the FBI conjured up the terrorism it takes credit for pre- venting.

By Oliver Campbell - 24 November 2012

The dead bodies of five children, reportedly aged between 9 and 13, were found in a rubbish bin in the town of Bijie, in China’s south-western province of Guizhou on November 6...The incident...has become a focal point of widespread anger over endemic poverty...Many noted the contrast between the social conditions revealed by the tragedy, and the lavish setting of the Chinese Communist Party 18th National Congress, which occurred the same week.

Israel stole around 60% of its land for settlement expansions and Separation Wall construction. Residents are being "strangl(ed)." Every day more is taken. Palestinians are left inside an "open air prison."

A bill opposing the shackling of pregnant prisoners, AB 2530, has been passed unanimously by the California State Legislature and is now on Governor Jerry Brown’s desk, with thirty days to either approve or veto it. Last year, a previous version of this bill was also passed unanimously by the Legislature, but it was ultimately vetoed by Brown. With Brown’s decision expected anytime, local activists are urgently mobilizing to stop him from vetoing this important bill once again. AB 2530 supporters have created a webpage for the public (not just California residents) to contact the Governor.

By Zoha Arshad - August 25, 2012

Deportation is a devastating experience for a family, breaking it apart and leading to emotional and mental stress for its members. But a new report from the Centre for American Progress shows that such duress extends beyond families and into the larger community as a whole.

Palestinian families suffer just like prisoners.

By Robert Stevens - 12 April 2012

Nationally, one in every three children lives in poverty. In some areas, child poverty is between 40 and 50 percent...Statistics alone, however, cannot fully reveal the destructive human cost of such entrenched and wretched conditions...“The children arrive with the telltale signs [of malnutrition]: shrunken faces, sallow skin, dark rings around their eyes and rotting teeth. Some of the 11-year-olds are so underweight and undersized they look like six-year-olds, and those aged six often look only three or four.”

By Kristen Gwynne - March 6, 2012

...[T]he family of eighteen-year-old Ramarley Graham, who was unarmed when the [New York Police Department] shot him dead in his home last month, was previously harassed by the NYPD. Those close to the Grahams do not appear to believe the events are related, but see them as evidence of the widespread consequences aggressive policing wreaks on their communities...Taken together, one family's connection to multiple instances of police abuse paints a grim portrait of what it is like to be a young black youth living in the Bronx, constantly under the thumb of the cops.

By Bill Fletcher - Znet

Approximately two million people of Mexican ancestry were deported from the USA during the Depression. This was not only Mexican nationals, but...US citizens of Mexican ancestry. This was a blatant example of ethnic cleansing taking place in the USA which destroyed families and exiled family members, in some cases indefinitely...What's to prevent this from happening again?

By Mat Ward - Green Left Weekly

Parents who read Joel Bakan's new book, Childhood Under Siege, may find themselves un-liking Facebook...In it, the law professor ― whose previous book The Corporation was made into Canada's biggest-grossing documentary ― describes the effect of the social media giant's applications on his 13-year-old daughter...It is just one example...of corporations tapping into what makes children tick.

By Kate Randall - WSWS

The police account of the sniper-style shooting sounds like the taking down of a terror suspect. According to police radio recordings referred to by the interim police chief, police entered the school and shouted that they saw the boy with what appeared to be a firearm. A police officer yells, “Take him out!” and then the sound of fired shots reverberates on the radio call. An officer then repeats, “Subject shot.”

By Sherwood Ross - Znet Commentary

Since 1996, politicians have bragged about the success of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF)...“If kicking low-income children and their families off welfare is the measure, than TANF was a huge success”...TANF’s mantra that “any job is a good job” put even make-work jobs ahead of education. “Tens of thousands of low-income mothers were made to quit college to do up to 35 hours per week of unpaid ‘workfare’...sweeping streets, picking up trash in parks and cleaning public restrooms in exchange for benefits as low as $240 a month.”

In our new video-interview, author Victoria Law builds upon her earlier prison abolitionist critique by discussing practical alternatives for effectively confronting gender violence without using the prison system. She cites many success stories where women, not wanting to work with the police, instead collectively organized in an autonomous fashion.