You Know NYC Has A Serious Drug Problem When…

The City has invested in a widespread marketing campaign, not imploring people not to use drugs, period; but to advertise that people should do drugs “safely.”

Last week, I got on a train that was wallpapered with advertisements in English and Spanish, bearing the NYC logo, that told people: “Every 6 hours a New Yorker dies from an overdose. Carry naloxone. Save a life.” “Avoid Mixing drugs.” “Avoid using alone. If you do, have someone check on you.” “Using cocaine tonight?…Safety Tips: Use with others. Carry naloxone/narcan.”

These ads clearly don’t scream a no tolerance drug-use message, or even a don’t do drugs directive. The ads seem more like an advertisement for naloxone, and permissive illegal drug use.

Can you imagine being a young child reading these befuddling messages on your daily commute? I, like many other NYC born and raised children, enhanced my reading skills daily by reading aloud posted advertisements to my parents during commutes. Can you imagine what kind of messages these ads are implanting in young minds and psyches? SMH!

According to NYC’s website the marketing campaign has a $730,000 price tag. The website also states: “The campaign will run citywide on subways, bus shelters, billboards, LinkNYC kiosks, online in local businesses and the Staten Island Ferry Terminal.”

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Does Privacy Even Exist?: The Gap In America’s Privacy Law

Four Cellphone CompaniesAccording to a ZDNet article entitled: “U.S. Cell Carriers Are Selling Access To Your Real-Time Phone Location Data,” written by Zack Whittaker, America’s top cellphone providers (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint) are selling their customers’ location data to privately-owned companies. These private companies have reportedly, in turn, provided the acquired data to the government.

The aforementioned article states: “Kevin Bankston, director of New America’s Open Technology Institute, explained that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act only restricts telecom companies from disclosing data to the government. It doesn’t restrict disclosure to other companies, who then disclose that same data to the government.

He called that loophole ‘one of the biggest gaps in U.S. privacy law.’”

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Surveillance Nation: Statistics

Surveillance• More than 2.5 trillion images are shared or stored on the internet annually.
• By 2020, it is estimated that 6.1 billion people will have phones with cameras.
• In a single year, approximately 106 million new surveillance cameras are sold.
• Worldwide, more than 3 million ATMs have cameras that watch its users.
• There are billions of pictures of citizens unknowingly captured on face-recognition technology and stored on databases, both private and governmental.
• In 2016, 2.5 million drones were purchased by American citizens.
• More than 1,700 satellites monitor the Earth.
• Manhattan has approximately 20,000 officially run cameras connected to its CCTV network. Chicago has approximately 32,000.
• High numbers of surveillance cameras can also be found in U.S. cities that have low crime rates and no history of terrorist attacks.
• Approximately 150,000 British police officers are equipped with body cams. It is reported that some British teachers have also tested out the use of body cameras.

[SOURCE: National Geographic February 2018]

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The Collateral Damage Of Police Terrorism: Erica Garner

Erica GarnerErica Garner is reportedly on life support in a Brooklyn hospital.

Erica Garner became a very vocal advocate against police terrorism after her father, Eric Garner, was killed by a NYPD officer who had inexplicably placed him in an illegal chokehold while he helplessly gasped, “I can’t breathe.”

After her father’s death, Erica Garner courageously fought ceaselessly for her father’s murderer to be punished. She spoke out about the justice department’s apathetic investigation into her father’s murder. She also lambasted NYC’s mayor for his refusal to release Officer Pantaleo’s (her father’s killer) NYPD disciplinary record. Erica Garner also could often be seen standing with the families of other victims of police terrorism.

All of her tireless efforts since the 2014 murder of her father, in addition to the grief of mourning her father, has doubtlessly taken a toll on Erica Garner, as it would anyone. Most can only imagine the physical, mental, and emotional trauma this woman and her family has endured over the past few years.

This morning, the New York Daily News reported that Ms. Garner has suffered her second heart attack in the past few months. The news source has also stated that Ms. Garner is in an intensive care unit in a Brooklyn Hospital. Please pray for this courageous mother o two and her family.

#TheseAreOurHeroes

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This Country Was Built By Whom? Who Are The Biggest Victims Of Crime?

Public Burning
“For 246 years our uncompensated labor launched wealthy institutions and private corporate fortunes in America such as Brown University and Fleet Bank, both founded by the Brown brothers, who got their start in American business building slave ships and investing in the slave trade.

Cotton made everyone associated with it wealthy- the plantation owners, the brokers, the shippers, the shipbuilders, the jobbers, the United States treasury- everyone became rich except for the people who produced the cotton. They- we- us- our forebearers- were stripped of everything- the value of our labor, our mothers, our fathers, our children, and by the tens of millions, our very lives.

And so my friends, let us tell our young that we are behind in America not because there is anything wrong with us, but rather, that something heinous happened a long time and continued for a long time after. Tell them that our people have a proud and ancient history that must be told to them, that slavery robbed us of warranted wealth and memory, that slavery extended under new guises well into the 20th century, that we have endured in America every imaginable discrimination for 346 years.

Tell them we have been the victims of the longest-running crime against humanity in the world over the last 500 years. And lastly, tell them that like all other peoples in the world who’ve suffered human rights crimes at the hands of governments- Jews, Koreans, Japanese-Americans- we too must be compensated by the government complicit in the crime against us.” -From, “The Reckoning” By: Randall Robinson

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