Many Native IDs Won’t Be Accepted At North Dakota Polling Places

By: Camila Domonoske

Image: This June, instructions wre posted at an early voting precinct in Bismarck, N.D. In that primary election, tribal IDs that did not show residential addresses were accepted as voter ID. But those same IDs will not be accepted in the general election.
James MacPherson/AP.

Native American groups in North Dakota are scrambling to help members acquire new addresses, and new IDs, in the few weeks remaining before Election Day — the only way that some residents will be able to vote.

This week, the Supreme Court declined to overturn North Dakota’s controversial voter ID law, which requires residents to show identification with a current street address. A P.O. box does not qualify.

Many Native American reservations, however, do not use physical street addresses. Native Americans are also overrepresented in the homeless population, according to the Urban Institute. As a result, Native residents often use P.O. boxes for their mailing addresses, and may rely on tribal identification that doesn’t list an address.

Those IDs used to be accepted at polling places — including in this year’s primary election — but will not be valid for the general election. And that decision became final less than a month before Election Day, after years of confusing court battles and alterations to the requirements.

Tens of thousands of North Dakotans, including Native and non-Native residents, do not have residential addresses on their IDs and will now find it harder to vote.

They will have the option of proving their residency with “supplemental documentation,” like utility bills, instead of their IDs, but according to court records, about 18,000 North Dakotans don’t have those documents, either.

And in North Dakota, unlike other states, every resident is eligible to vote without advance voter registration — so people might not discover the problem until they show up to cast their ballot.

North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, is trailing her Republican opponent in her race for re-election. Native Americans tend to vote for Democrats.

The Republican-controlled state government says the voter ID requirement is necessary to connect voters with the correct ballot, and to prevent non-North Dakotans from signing up for North Dakota P.O. boxes and traveling to the state to vote fraudulently. In 2016, a judge overturning the law noted that voter fraud in North Dakota is “virtually non-existent.”

The state government says that residents without a street ID should contact their county’s 911 coordinator, to sign up for a free street address and request a letter confirming that address.

A group called Native Vote ND has been sharing those official instructions on Facebook.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is telling members to get in touch if they need help obtaining a residential address and updating their tribal ID. The tribe also says it will be sending drivers to take voters to the polls on Election Day.

“Native Americans can live on the reservations without an address. They’re living in accordance with the law and treaties, but now all of a sudden they can’t vote,” Standing Rock chairman Mike Faith said in a statement. “Our voices should be heard and they should be heard fairly at the polls just like all other Americans.”

Meanwhile, the Bismarck Tribune reports that a Native American organization is working to come up with a last-minute solution for voters who would otherwise be turned away:

“Bret Healy, a consultant for Four Directions, which is led by members of South Dakota’s Rosebud Sioux Tribe, said the organization believes it has a common-sense solution.

“The group is working with tribal leaders in North Dakota to have a tribal government official available at every polling place on reservations to issue a tribal voting letter that includes the eligible voter’s name, date of birth and residential address.”

A state official told tribal leaders that such letters will be accepted as proof of residency, the Tribune reports.

Heitkamp called the ID law “burdensome” and once again called for a law to protect the voting rights of Native Americans. She and other legislators have introduced such a bill year after year, unsuccessfully.

“Given the number of Native Americans who have served, fought, and died for this country, it is appalling that some people would still try and erect barriers to suppress their ability to vote,” Heitkamp said in a statement. “Native Americans served in the military before they were even allowed to vote, and they continue to serve at the highest rate of any population in this country.”

The ACLU said the Supreme Court’s decision “enables mass disenfranchisement.” “In an election that may wind up being decided by just a few thousand votes, the court’s decision could be deeply consequential for the country, not just those who live in North Dakota,” staff reporter Ashoka Mukpo wrote on Friday.

In 2016, the Harvard Law Review found that Native Americans “routinely face hurdles in exercising the right to vote and securing representation,” and that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was only a partial solution to the problem.

In: npr

Department of Homeland Security planning to collect social media info on all immigrants

The Department of Homeland Security has moved to collect social media information on all immigrants, including permanent residents and naturalized citizens.

new rule published in the Federal Register last week calls to include “social media handles and aliases, associated identifiable information and search results” in the department’s immigrant files.

BuzzFeed News first reported the new rule on Monday. It is set to go into effect on Oct. 18 after a public comment period.

According to BuzzFeed, the new rule could also affect U.S. citizens who communicate with immigrants on social media by making their conversations the subject of government surveillance.

Read more at: thehill

Contra el ecumenismo del odio

El Vaticano critica a los fundamentalistas xenófobos e islamófobos en un artículo de la revista de los jesuitas visado por el propio Papa y por el secretario de Estado

El papa Francisco, entre Ivanka (izquierda) y Melania Trump (derecha), en una audiencia en el Vaticano el 24 de mayo pasado. ALESSANDRA TARANTINO (REUTERS)

¿Quién se acuerda de Charles Maurras? Murió hace más de 60 años mientras cumplía cadena perpetua por complicidad con el enemigo alemán durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Fue extraordinaria su influencia intelectual sobre las derechas más extremas europeas, incluidas las españolas, a través de su partido antisemita, ultra y monárquico, Action Française, sobre todo entre las dos guerras mundiales. Igual de extraordinaria fue su tormentosa relación con la Santa Sede, que terminó con su excomunión y las de su seguidores y con la inclusión de un puñado de sus escritos y de la propia revista que dirigía en el Índice de Libros Prohibidos.

El tiempo de las excomuniones y del Índice de los Libros Prohibidos queda lejos, olvidado ya. Roma ya no hace cosas así, al menos desde el Concilio Vaticano II. Pero si las hiciera, no hay duda de que ahora tendríamos algo parecido a un caso Maurras a propósito de las turbulentas ideas y propuestas políticas del presidente Trump y más concretamente de su consejero estratégico Steve Bannon,un príncipe de las tinieblas que inspira las políticas más extremistas de la actual Casa Blanca, como el muro con México y el muslim ban o prohibición de entrada en EE UU a ciudadanos de seis países musulmanes.

Steve Bannon es católico, mientras que Donald Trump nació en una familia presbiteriana. La religiosidad personal de ambos es más que dudosa, como le sucedía a Maurras, hasta el punto de que fue el agnosticismo del escritor francés el que le condujo a la condena eclesial. Bannon se ha divorciado dos veces a pesar de la indisolubilidad del matrimonio católico, y de Trump se desconoce si practica o si tiene siquiera alguna idea religiosa. Pero en ambos cuenta la religión como visión política del mundo, y ahí es donde el Vaticano tiene algo que decir y lo ha dicho, uniendo además en una misma crítica al catolicismo integrista y al fundamentalismo evangelista que tan buen servicio les ha rendido al Partido Republicano para ganar en las elecciones presidenciales.

Aunque el mensaje es bien claro, en cuanto a quien lo emite y a lo que dice, la vía escogida por el Vaticano es sutil e indirecta. Ha sido la revista de los jesuitas Civiltà Cattolica la que lo ha transmitido, a través de un artículo, titulado ‘Fundamentalismo evangélico e integrismo católico en Estados Unidos, un ecumenismo sorprendente’, firmado por su director, el italiano Antonio Spadaro, y por el protestante argentino Marcelo Figueroa. Un católico y un protestante denuncian precisamente la colusión de católicos y protestantes extremistas estadounidenses en un mismo pensamiento al que califican de “ecumenismo del odio”. Según el diario italiano La Repubblica, el papa Francisco en persona, el secretario de Estado Pietro Parolin y el secretario para las Relaciones con Estados Unidos, Paul Richard Gallagher, han corregido y visado el artículo.

El papa Francisco rechaza la narrativa del miedo y de la inseguridad, sobre la que Trump y su derecha alternativa construyen muros ideológicos

La primera característica de esta desviación teológica es el maniqueísmo, un “lenguaje que divide la realidad entre el Bien absoluto y el Mal absoluto”, cuestión en la que los autores citan al propio presidente Trump y que sitúa a los inmigrantes y a los musulmanes entre las amenazas al sistema de vida de Estados Unidos.Una segunda característica que denuncian Spadaro y Figueroa es el carácter de Teología de la Prosperidad que comparten los dos extremismos católico y evangelista. Su evangelio para ricos, difundido por organizaciones y pastores multimillonarios, predica una idea autojustificativa de que “Dios desea que sus seguidores tengan salud física, sean prósperos y personalmente felices”. La tercera característica es una defensa muy peculiar de la libertad religiosa, en la que extremistas católicos y protestantes se unen en cuestiones como la oposición al aborto y al matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo o la educación religiosa en la escuela, y propugnan un sometimiento de las instituciones del Estado a las ideas religiosas e incluso a la Biblia muy similar al que inspira al fundamentalismo islámico.

Esta visión del mundo proporciona una justificación teológica a la guerra y alienta la esperanza religiosa con la expectativa de un enfrentamiento apocalíptico y definitivo entre el Bien y el Mal. Las afinidades con la idea islamista radical de la yihad son bien claras. El artículo denuncia la web de extrema derecha Church Militant, que atribuye la victoria de Trump a las oraciones de los estadounidenses, propugna la guerra de religiones y profesa el llamado dominionismo, que es una lectura literalista del Genésis en la que el hombre es el centro de un universo a su entero servicio. Los dominionistas consideran anticristianos a los ecologistas y observan los desastres naturales y el cambio climático como irremediables signos escatológicos de un final de los tiempos apocalíptico, que no hay que obstaculizar, sino todo lo contrario.

No es posible comprender esta fuerte arremetida del Vaticano contra la extrema derecha estadounidense sin recordar la intervención de Steve Bannon en una conferencia celebrada en el Vaticano en 2014, en la que denunció la secularización excesiva de Occidente y anunció “la proximidad de un conflicto brutal y sangriento, (…) una guerra global contra el fascismo islámico”, en la que “esta nueva barbarie que ahora empieza erradicará todo lo que nos ha sido legado en los últimos dos mil o dos mil quinientos años”. También hay que situarlo en el marco de tensiones entre la Casa Blanca y el Vaticano a propósito de Oriente Próximo, especialmente tras el primer viaje de Trump en el que pretendió conectar con las tres religiones, islam, judaísmo y catolicismo, pero terminó convirtiéndose en un reforzamiento de la alianza con Arabia Saudí y un estímulo al enfrentamiento con Teherán, con consecuencias inmediatas en el bloqueo a Qatar.

El pontífice no solo discrepa de sus propuestas sobre ecología, inmigración o impuestos, sino que rechaza su estrategia en favor de Riad

Curiosamente, Spadaro y Figueroa defienden las raíces cristianas de Europa, pero con una argumentación inversa a la que se escuchaba en tiempos de Ratzinger, de la que ha desaparecido el supremacismo cristiano y blanco. “El triunfalismo, la arrogancia y el etnicismo vengativo son exactamente lo contrario del cristianismo”, aseguran. El artículo termina recordando que el papa Francisco combate la narrativa del miedo y la manipulación de la inseguridad y de la ansiedad de la gente, evita la reducción del Islam al terrorismo islamista y rechaza la idea de una guerra santa contra el islam o la construcción de muros físicos e ideológicos. Con la denuncia del ecumenismo del odio, el Vaticano sitúa a Steve Bannon y Donald Trump en un infierno ideológico análogo al que abrió las puertas a Maurras en 1927, ahora hace justo 90 años, en el que se encuentran condenados los políticos que utilizan la religión para dividir en vez de unir a los seres humanos.

En: elpais

 

San Diego teacher refuses to answer Border Patrol questions at checkpoint

https://youtu.be/tplHv6hresg

Bell Middle School teacher Shane Parmely was detained for over an hour by Border Patrol agents at a checkpoint in New Mexico because she refused to say whether she was a U.S. citizen.

Parmely’s family helped her film the incident, which she posted Friday evening on her Facebook account in several segments that were widely shared. Parmely told Border Patrol agents that she believed she did not have to answer their questions. One agent showed her a card listing immigration law and a Supreme Court case decision that give Border Patrol agents authority to operate checkpoints within 100 miles of the border and to ask questions about citizenship without warrants.

“Citizens?” an agent asked her as she drove up to the checkpoint.

“Are we crossing a border?” Parmely responded.

“No. Are you United States citizens?” he repeated.

“Are we crossing a border?” Parmely repeated. “I’ve never been asked if I’m a citizen before when I’m traveling down the road.”

As the agent continued to repeat his question, Parmely told him that he could ask her the question, but she didn’t have to answer.

“You are required to answer an immigration question,” the agent said. “You are not required to answer any other questions.”

When Parmely refused to answer the question, the agent told her that she was being detained for an immigration inspection.

“So if I just come through and say, ‘Yes, I’m a citizen,’ I can just go ahead?” Parmely asked.

“If the agent is justified by the answer, then yes,” the agent responded.

“So if I have an accent, and I’m brown, can I just say, ‘Yes,’ and go ahead or do I have to prove it?” she asked. “I have a bunch of teacher friends who are sick of their kids being discriminated against.”

“Ok, I’m not discriminating against anybody,” the agent said.

Later during the encounter, Parmely’s son asked to use the bathroom. One agent told Parmely that he could not use the bathroom until his mother answered the question about her citizenship. Another agent came over shortly after to escort the boy to a bathroom.

Border Patrol agents eventually let Parmely go without answering their question.

Parmely’s videos are not an isolated incident. For years, people who view such checkpoints as a violation of their Constitutional rights have filmed and posted interactions with Border Patrol agents.

While most praised Parmely for her actions, some criticized what they saw as disrespect to law enforcement doing their jobs.

“I’m SICK of people claiming that law enforcement is the problem. Until of course you need them,” wrote Jaime N Jerry Bevan, who said that her husband is a detective.

Parmely responded, “What was the point of refusing to move to the back of the bus?”

“Enforcing racist laws perpetuates institutional racism,” Parmely added in another comment. “I’m sick of helping perpetuate racist laws just because I’m not inconvenienced by them.”

Parmely responded to a Facebook message from a Union-Tribune reporter, saying she might be able to talk later but could not for now.

The school website indicates that she teaches English, art and theater.

According to a flier from the American Civil Liberties Union, Border Patrol has the authority to stop vehicles at checkpoints and ask questions to verify citizenship.

The flier says that people can exercise their right to remain silent but may be detained if they refuse to answer citizenship questions. Agents cannot detain someone for an extended time without cause.

Border Patrol spokesman Mark Endicott issued a statement in response to the incident saying the agency’s policy is to treat people with dignity and respect.

“Border Patrol checkpoints are a critical tool for the enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws,” the statement said. “At a Border Patrol checkpoint, an agent may question a vehicle’s occupants about their citizenship, place of birth, and request document proof of immigration status, how legal status was obtained and make quick observations of what is in plain view in the interior of the vehicle.

“During the course of the immigration inspection, if an occupant refuses to answer an agent’s questions, the agent may detain the driver for a reasonable amount of time until he or she can make a determination regarding the occupant’s immigration status.”

In: sandiegouniontribune

Uber broke Apple’s iOS privacy rules and Tim Cook wasn’t happy about it

Uber broke Apple’s privacy rules in its iOS app in an effort to catch Chinese fraudsters, resulting in chief executive Travis Kalanick being hauled in to Cupertino for a personal dressing down from Tim Cook, it has been revealed.

Apple prevents developers from identifying specific iPhones for privacy reasons, arguing that a phone that is completely wiped and resold should have no links to its previous owner; to that end, in 2012, the company stopped allowing apps on its App Store to access information like the “Unique Device Identifier” (UDID) and similar identifying information.

But in an effort to prevent a particular type of fraud in China, where scammers load up stolen credit cards to make fake rides before wiping the phone and repeating the process, Uber broke Apple’s rules, according to a New York Times profile of Kalanick.

The company even went to the effort of adding code to its app so that any user opening it inside Apple’s Cupertino headquarters wouldn’t see the rule-breaking code.

That didn’t prevent Apple from discovering the subterfuge. In the meeting, Cook reportedly told Kalanick, “I’ve heard you’ve been breaking some of our rules,” and threatened to pull Uber’s app from the App Store if the company didn’t remove the fingerprinting feature.

According to security researcher Will Strafach, who analysed a version of Uber’s app from 2014 in response to the story, the company was using a chunk of code normally exclusive to Apple itself to pull iPhone serial numbers out of the device’s operating system. Those serial numbers remain the same, even if the entire rest of the device is wiped and reinstalled with a new user account. Even if Uber hadn’t been spotted by Apple, the technique no longer works: as of the most recent version of iOS, apps cannot discover the serial number this way.

In a statement, Uber said “this is a typical way to prevent fraudsters from loading Uber onto a stolen phone, putting in a stolen credit card, taking an expensive ride and then wiping the phone – over and over again. Similar techniques are also used for detecting and blocking suspicious logins to protect our users’ accounts. Being able to recognise known bad actors when they try to get back onto our network is an important security measure for both Uber and our users.”

In: theguardian