KTF Weekly Newsletter: The Danger of Officer Safety, Europe’s Shadow Immigration System, Trans Children in Texas
Hi all,
Quick note before we start: both our newsletter and podcast are run through the company Substack, which now has an iOS app. So for you iPhone users, if you so desire, you can get notified about and voraciously consume all of our content via an app instead of your email inbox. Ditto any other creators you follow on Substack. And an android app is in the works — waiting list here if you’re interested. Alright, now, here are this week’s highlights as we seek to leave colonized faith for the kingdom of God.
Jonathan’s recommendations:
Washington State’s legislature passed a law on Monday that created a first-of-its-kind alert system for missing indigenous women. The Guardian reported earlier this year that indigenous women go missing at rates higher than women of any other ethnic group in the United States. And “American Indian and Alaska Native women in Washington go missing at a rate more than four times higher than the state’s white residents” according to the Urban Indian Health Institute. The implementation of a system like this is long overdue. The alert system would work similarly to that of the AMBER Alert system for children or the Silver Alert for elderly individuals. Our society must be awakened to the reality of those most vulnerable if we are to address their needs in any meaningful way.
The list of people killed in the name of officer safety got another tragic addition in Minnesota last month when Amir Locke was murdered by police on February 2. A no-knock warrant made it possible for officers to barrel into his home while he slept without warning. Journalist, Radley Balko, articulates clearly that things done in the name of officer safety often end up endangering everyone involved. Though police and media push the narrative of warrior cops on a battlefield against crime, it is incumbent upon followers of Jesus to imagine new avenues for public safety that don’t include an us-versus-them mentality and posture.
Suzie’s recommendations:
In an extensive piece of investigative reporting, the New Yorker’s Ian Urbina exposes a system of inhumane detention centers in Libya run by “a quasi-military organization” and funded primarily by the European Union to intercept migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean. Urbina describes this for-profit prison network as a “shadow immigration system” designed to keep the dirty work allegedly required to prevent migrants from reaching European shores out of sight and out of mind. While international law provides special protections for refugees, followers of Christ must be attentive to the ways that rich countries wield such distinctions arbitrarily and use them to exonerate themselves of cruelty towards the poor and oppressed.
As a brown child of immigrant parents growing up in America, journalist Wajahat Ali experienced his fair share of xenophobia and Islamophobia. However, rather than responding to animosity with equal antipathy, in his recent memoir, Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American, Ali demonstrates the power of responding to hatred with humor. In addition to previewing the book, this interview with Ali and NPR’s Sam Sanders covers a variety of topics including Ali’s life after 9/11, the double standard in how the US deals with white domestic terrorists, and why he wants to be like Bugs Bunny. It is an entertaining and enlightening listen.
Sy’s recommendations:
I have a couple of policy articles this week. The first is on a new, life-saving, and quite radical experiment going on in New York City: safe injection sites. These are places people can legally go to use drugs under the supervision of medical staff. The purpose of them is to reduce overdosing and addiction, which is — to probably almost everyone — counterintuitive. But the idea came from people who use drugs themselves who wanted treatment and compassion instead of criminalization, and early studies show it could save the city many dozens of lives and millions of dollars per year. The article also recounts the fascinating and tragic history of how these controversial sites came about, which stretches back to HIV/AIDS activism in the 1980s. Also, featured prominently in the history is one of the founders of VOCAL NY, where the guest from our Shake the Dust episode on abolition, Keli Young, works as an organizer.
Second, I have an article by Professor Dorothy Roberts sent in by a subscriber about the recent move in Texas to define gender-affirming medical treatment of transgender children as child abuse. As the author explains, the child welfare system is already awful for most children, and particularly for trans children. She details the discrimination they face, and why this system is a harmful and truly vindictive way for Texas to approach the highly sensitive questions around how to treat transgender kids. Professor Roberts was also my criminal law professor, and we mentioned her seminal book on racism in the child welfare system in our Shake the Dust episode on foster care.
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
The KTF team