organization:center for investigative reporting

Visualizing the U.S.-Mexico Border – The Intercept
▻https://theintercept.com/2016/10/26/best-of-luck-with-the-wall

https://theintercept.com/wp-uploads/sites/1/2016/10/Screen-Shot-2018-12-13-at-11.09.53-AM-1544717411.png

For all the talk of “securing the border” and “building a wall,” there is surprisingly little visual material that conveys just how vast this stretch of space is.

In total, the U.S.-Mexico border spans 1,954 miles. According to Google Maps, it would take 34 hours to drive its entire length. In places, there already is a border fence — more than 650 miles of it. Pushed and pulled by various forces, some 1 million people are estimated to pass through the official ports of entry every day.

But what does the geography of this landscape look like? Is it industrial? Desolate? Populated? All of the above?

Using the geographic coordinates of the international boundary line, in addition to location data for the existing border fence (which has been mapped by journalists at NPR and the Center for Investigative Reporting), I wrote a small computer script to download satellite imagery for the entire border.

I ended up with about 200,000 images.

Using a command-line tool called ffmpeg, I programmatically stitched the images together, and then worked with Laura Poitras and her team at Field of Vision to edit them into a short film. Jace Clayton, the artist and author known as DJ /rupture, developed an original score for the piece.
Rivers of Data

Borders begin as fictions. They are performed. They are lines drawn in the sand, spaces that bend and break and make exceptions for certain kinds of bodies.

But borders are made real by the policies built around them. The fact that borders are performed does not make them any less real. The border is quite literally what gives the nation its shape.

They thought they were going to rehab. They ended up in chicken plants
▻https://www.revealnews.org/article/they-thought-they-were-going-to-rehab-they-ended-up-in-chicken-plants

https://www.revealnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/CAAIR-final-illo-text-1139x675.jpg

Across the country, judges increasingly are sending defendants to rehab instead of prison or jail. These diversion courts have become the bedrock of criminal justice reform, aiming to transform lives and ease overcrowded prisons.

But in the rush to spare people from prison, some judges are steering defendants into rehabs that are little more than lucrative work camps for private industry, an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

The programs promise freedom from addiction. Instead, they’ve turned thousands of men and women into indentured servants.

The beneficiaries of these programs span the country, from Fortune 500 companies to factories and local businesses. The defendants work at a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Oklahoma, a construction firm in Alabama, a nursing home in North Carolina.

Perhaps no rehab better exemplifies this allegiance to big business than CAAIR. It was started in 2007 by chicken company executives struggling to find workers. By forming a Christian rehab, they could supply plants with a cheap and captive labor force while helping men overcome their addictions.

At CAAIR, about 200 men live on a sprawling, grassy compound in northeastern Oklahoma, and most work full time at Simmons Foods Inc., a company with annual revenue of $1.4 billion. They slaughter and process chickens for some of America’s largest retailers and restaurants, including Walmart, KFC and Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen. They also make pet food for PetSmart and Rachael Ray’s Nutrish brand.

Visualizing the U.S.-Mexico Border
▻https://theintercept.com/2016/10/18/best-of-luck-with-the-wall

https://prod01-cdn05.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/1/2016/10/best_of_luck_with_the_wall.gif

In total, the U.S.-Mexico border spans 1,954 miles. According to Google Maps, it would take 34 hours to drive its entire length. In places, there already is a border fence — more than 650 miles of it. Pushed and pulled by various forces, some 1 million people are estimated to pass through the official ports of entry every day.

But what does the geography of this landscape look like? Is it industrial? Desolate? Populated? All of the above?

Using the geographic coordinates of the international boundary line, in addition to location data for the existing border fence (which has been mapped by journalists at NPR and the Center for Investigative Reporting), I wrote a small computer script to download satellite imagery for the entire border.

I ended up with about 200,000 images.

#frontière #data #film #video

The surprising tools CIR used to map the US-Mexico border fence | The Center for Investigative Reporting

▻http://cironline.org/blog/post/surprising-tools-cir-used-map-us-mexico-border-fence-6255

The Center for Investigative Reporting’s collaboration with NPR on the Borderland multimedia project was an unexpected excuse to work on two of my passions: the U.S.-Mexico border fence and historical mapping.

▻http://cironline.org/sites/default/files/styles/inline-large/public/fencenotfence.jpg?itok=_c8uqnMY

signalée notre amie Elisabeth Vallet sur twitter

Journalists at CIR have been trying for more than three years to obtain accurate, detailed mapping data showing the location of the border fence system. The fences – it’s more accurate to say there are many – have cost taxpayers many millions of dollars and are key pieces of border security infrastructure. They’re also a potent symbol that chafes at our Mexican neighbors.

We filed several Freedom of Information Act requests with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and after several appeals, we received limited data showing where individual fence segments start and end. But we were told repeatedly that the actual lines showing the details of the fence segments were sensitive law enforcement information that could give away secrets to drug cartels, illegal border crossers or terrorists.

#frontières #murs #mexique #états-unis

Sterilization for women in prison : reproductive rights and choices of female inmates under pressure and coercion

▻http://bitchmagazine.org/post/california-prison-sterilize-women-reproductive-rights-investigation

Starting in 2006, Christina Cordero spent two years in California’s Valley State Prison for Women for auto theft. She arrived at the prison pregnant and was taken to see the the prison OB-GYN James Heinrich. “As soon as he found out that I had five kids, he suggested that I look into getting it done. The closer I got to my due date, the more he talked about it,” said Cordero, now age 34. Cordero finally agreed to the procedure before being released in 2008. “Today,” she said, “I wish I would have never had it done.”

Cordero is one of nearly 250 women who have been sterilized while in the California prison system over the last few decades. While millions of eyes were focused on reproductive-rights debates happening in Texas, Wisconsin, and North Carolina this month, the Center for Investigative Reporting released a report that revealed nearly 150 women were sterilized in California prisons from 2006 to 2010 without proper state oversight. According to state documents, approximately 100 additional women had been sterilized in the late 1990s. Several women said Heinrich had pressured them into the operation, sometimes when they were actively in labor or on the operating table for a C-section.

In his defense, Dr. Heinrich told the Center for Investigative Reporting that the $147,000 spent on sterilizing inmates was minimal “compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children—as they procreated more.”

Heinrich’s comment reflects the widespread attitude that certain women, such as women in prison (or women in Texas or Wisconsin if you believe those state lawmakers) should not have the right to determine their reproductive choices.

(...)

These sterilizations are part of a gamut of reproductive justices facing people in women’s prisons, and not just those in California: until recently, pregnant women in Arizona’s Maricopa County jail had been denied abortions unless they obtained a court order and prepaid transportation and security costs. Such requirements often prevented women from accessing abortions. In most states, childbirth behind bars occurs in shackles and chains.

(...)

These attacks are a gendered way of heaping more punishment onto people in women’s prisons, the majority of whom are women of color. We have to remember that the United States has a long history of coerced sterilization of women of color that reaches as late as the 1960s and 1970s. Medical staff often lied to women about the procedure, assuring them that it was reversible, or simply did not tell them that an additional procedure had been added to their prescheduled surgery. Coercing sterilization of women inside prisons is a way to continue these attacks out of the public eye.

Let’s also remember that people in men’s prisons were not offered, let alone coerced into, sterilization regardless of how many children they have.

(...)

#incarceration #pregnancy_in_prison #prisons #reproductive_justice #reproductive_rights #women_in_prison #sterilization #BirthingBehindBars

Four of five Border Patrol drug busts involve US citizens, records show | Center for Investigative Reporting
▻http://cironline.org/node/4312

The public face of the Border Patrol shows something different.

Of nearly 2,000 press releases from the Border Patrol and its parent agency, Customs and Border Protection, between 2005 and 2011 that mentioned a drug-trafficking suspect, 38 percent noted a Mexican national had been arrested.

U.S. citizens, meanwhile, were mentioned roughly 30 percent of the time, even though they represent a much higher percentage of those busted, according to the analysis. The remaining one-third of press releases did not include information on the nationality of those caught with drugs.

FBI files reveal new details about informant who armed #Black_Panthers | Center for Investigative Reporting
►http://cironline.org/reports/fbi-files-reveal-new-details-about-informant-who-armed-black-panthers-383

Revelations that prominent radical activist Richard Aoki was an #FBI informant have prompted angry denials among his supporters, but newly released records confirm Aoki was secretly providing information to agents during the period he gave the Black Panthers guns and firearms training.

The documents from Aoki’s FBI informant file – totaling 221 pages – were released after a court challenge under the Freedom of Information Act and show that Aoki was an informant from 1961 to 1977, with only brief interruptions. The records say that at various points, he provided information that was “unique” and of “extreme value.”