Bender Voice Actor John DiMaggio Reacts to Fans Boycotting ‘Futurama’ Reboot if He’s Recast

Zack Sharf - 
Variety

In the 24 hours since Hulu announced it was bringing back David X. Cohen and Matt Groening’s animated sci-fi comedy series “Futurama,” original cast member John DiMaggio has used social media to champion the many fans who are upset over his potential recasting in the reboot. DiMaggio, who voiced Bender and several minor characters, is not currently attached to the project. His original co-stars Billy West, Katey Sagal, Tress MacNeille, Maurice LaMarche, Lauren Tom, Phil LaMarr and David Herman are all returning.

As reported by Variety, the producers of the series are hopeful DiMaggio will return. An individual with knowledge of the project said a deal for DiMaggio’s return was still being worked out at the time of the reboot’s announcement. Should one not happen, Bender will be recast.

More from Variety

'Futurama' Revival Ordered at Hulu With Multiple Original Cast Members Returning

The possibility of a recast Bender sent “Futurama” fans into a frenzy, with many of them threatening to boycott the reboot should DiMaggio not return. The voice actor shared articles of the fan boycott to his Twitter page, accompanied by Bender’s famous “cheese it!” line.

DiMaggio reposted one fan message that reads: “Hulu should just pay DiMaggio, love ‘Futurama’ but Bender is the face of the show.” He also reposted another message that mentioned he is “ready, willing and able” to join the reboot, but he just needs “a balanced and contextual deal.”

While DiMaggio has not gone into detail about where his “Futurama” reboot deal stands, he did send the following message to fans hours after the reboot’s announcement: “Thanks for the concern and the props, everyone. I really appreciate it. Don’t worry, I’ll keep you posted, but until then… CHEESE IT!”

“When presented with the opportunity to bring fans and viewers new episodes of ‘Futurama,’ we couldn’t wait to dive in,” said Craig Erwich, president of Hulu Originals and ABC Entertainment, in a statement announcing the reboot. “This iconic series helped blaze the trail for the success of adult animation since its initial launch and we look forward to Matt & David continuing to pave the way and further establishing Hulu as the premiere destination for fans of the genre.”

Production on Hulu’s “Futurama” reboot will begin this month with an eye towards a 2023 premiere.


'Futurama' Revived at Hulu

Tim Baysinger - Wednesday
TheWrap


"Futurama" is coming back… again. Hulu has ordered a 20-episode revival of Matt Groening's futuristic animated comedy, the second time that show has been brought back.

It first aired on Fox for five seasons from 1993-2003 and was Groening's follow-up to "The Simpsons." It was later revived for a three season run on Comedy Central in 2007, airing its last episode in 2012. That run included four straight-to-DVD specials that were recut as 30-minute episodes.

Groening is returning alongside co-creator David X. Cohen. The original voice cast, including Billy West and Katey Segal, are returning along with Tress MacNeille, Maurice LaMarche, Lauren Tom, Phil LaMarr and David Herman. John DiMaggio, who voiced the alcoholic wise-cracking robot Bender, is said to be finalizing a deal to return.

"When presented with the opportunity to bring fans and viewers new episodes of Futurama, we couldn't wait to dive in. This iconic series helped blaze the trail for the success of adult animation since its initial launch and we look forward to Matt & David continuing to pave the way and further establishing Hulu as the premiere destination for fans of the genre," Craig Erwich, president, Hulu Originals and ABC Entertainment, said in a statement.

"I'm thrilled to have another chance to think about the future... or really anything other than the present," said David X. Cohen.

"It's a true honor to announce the triumphant return of 'Futurama' one more time before we get canceled abruptly again," commented Matt Groening.

"What I love about animation is that it's possible for a successful show to take a pause and then resume years later, even on a different platform, and pick up right where it left off. Futurama is one of those shows. The excitement from Hulu about returning Matt and David's genius creation for all-new episodes has been off the charts. I'm thrilled that this incredible team will get to tell more stories, and that our Planet Express crew will have more adventures together. It's a win for the fans who have loved the show since the beginning, and for the ones who will now discover it for the very first time," commented Marci Proietto, Head of 20th Television Animation.

REST IN POWER

Betty Davis, Iconic Funk Singer, Has Died

Amanda Wicks, Madison Bloom

 - Wednesday
Pitchfork

© Betty Davis, February 1976 (Fin Costello/Redferns)

NEW YORK - 1st FEBRUARY: American singer Betty Davis posed in New York in February 1976. (Photo by Fin Costello/Redferns)

Iconic funk singer Betty Davis has died, Rolling Stone reports. The news was confirmed to Rolling Stone by Davis’ close friend, Danielle Maggio (an ethnomusicologist who has been researching the singer’s body of work), as well as Allegheny County communications director Amie Downs, who said that Davis died of natural causes.

Davis’ records were distinctive thanks to her wild and overtly sexual vocal performances. The first, her self-titled debut, arrived in 1973. She followed it with two more: 1974’s They Say I’m Different and 1975’s Nasty Gal. Before her own music career took off, Davis married Miles Davis in 1968. The couple remained together for only one year, but it proved to be an influential relationship for the jazz musician. She introduced him to the rock icons of the time, including guitarist Jimi Hendrix. And, not only did Miles go include Betty on the cover of his 1968 album Filles de Kilimanjaro, but also the album contained the song “Mademoiselle Mabry.”

Born in North Carolina, Betty Mabry ended up slightly farther north in Pittsburgh, where she spent her childhood. She eventually moved to New York in the 1960s, and flourished within the city’s artistic scene. For her debut album, Davis worked with bassist Larry Graham and drummer Greg Errico (of Sly and the Family Stone), keyboardist Merl Saunders, and guitarists Neal Schon and Douglas Rodriguez. Slow sales plagued the album, as well as her two follow-ups, and she slowly receded from view. All three albums were later reissued along with her early sessions with Miles Davis and a previously unreleased 1976 LP, Crashin’ from Passion.

A documentary about Davis’ life premiered in 2017. And, in 2019, Davis returned with the new song “A Little Bit Hot Tonight.” Davis wrote, arranged, and produced the track, which was sung by Danielle Maggio.

See the video on YouTube.




Pioneer in electronic and electro-acoustic music dies

Wednesday

A composer, professor and pioneer in electronic and electro-acoustic music, who helped develop the Synclavier, an early digital synthesizer, has died.

Jon Appleton died Jan. 30 in White River Junction, Vt., at the age of 83, his son JJ Appleton said Wednesday.

Appleton, who was born in Los Angeles, became part of the faculty at Dartmouth College in 1967 and developed one of the first programs and studios for electronic music in the country.

“That really was a pioneering vision of his to create a center for electronic music at Dartmouth and it propelled Dartmouth very quickly to the forefront of the work in electronic, electro-acoustic music,” said colleague and friend Theodore Levin, the Arthur R. Virgin Professor of Music at Dartmouth.

While he was a musical visionary and one of the pioneers of electronic and electro-acoustic music, he “wasn't a geek or a gearhead ... whirling knobs and moving slider bars to make weird sounds,” contrary to stereotypes, particularly in the early years, Levin said.

“He couldn’t have been farther from that. He was at heart a kind of musical romantic,” he said.

Appleton's interest in electronic music was on the side of electro-acoustic, “as a way to extend the expressive possibilities and potential of acoustic musical instruments and the human voice,” Levin said.

“I think he regarded his electronic music as a kind of folk music for our age,” he said.

The Synclavier, developed in 1975 by Appleton, Dartmouth Thayer School of Engineering research professor Sydney Alonso and student Cameron Jones, went on to become the Rolls Royce of the music industry, selling for $75,000 to $500,000, and used by Sting, Stevie Wonder, Frank Zappa, and many other musicians, according to Dartmouth Engineer Magazine.

At Dartmouth, Appleton was the Arthur R. Virgin Professor of Music Emeritus and the Ted and Helen Geisel Professor in the Humanities Emeritus. He also had been a visiting professor at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan; the University of California, Santa Cruz; the Moscow Conservatory in Russia and the University of Hawaii.

He was beloved by many of his students, said JJ Appleton.

“He was a composer, a very accomplished one, but he was also a very accomplished professor and mentor to a lot of people,” he said.

Lisa Rathke, The Associated Press



'2001,' 'Blade Runner' effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull dies

Tuesday


Douglas Trumbull, a visual effects master who showed movie audiences indelible images of the future and of space in films like “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Blade Runner,” has died. He was 79.

His wife Julia Trumbull said he died Monday of complications from mesothelioma.

Director Edgar Wright tweeted, “RIP to an actual visionary, Doug Trumbull...he directed a childhood favourite of mine, the sci fi gem ‘Silent Running.’ Watch it tonight.”

Producer and documentarian Charles de Lauzirika, who worked with Trumbull on “Blade Runner: The Final Cut,” tweeted that, “He wasn’t just innovating magnificent visuals, but also pursuing the big ideas behind whatever story he was telling.”

Born in Los Angeles in 1942, Trumbull’s father was visual effects supervisor Donald Trumbull, who worked on “The Wizard of Oz.” He got his start at Graphic Works Films, where a short of his caught the attention of Stanley Kubrick who was beginning work on “2001: A Space Odyssey.” At 23 years old, he not only talked himself into a key job on “2001" but helped innovate the process that would be used to create the iconic star-gate sequence.

"It was a really unique time because we were at these Borehamwood Studios outside of London and it was a highly unionized studio," he said in an interview. “Here I am, this weird, L.A., young 23-year-old cowboy kid that they took on as kind of a mascot more than anything. It didn’t frighten them that I would crossover between all these different departments and get components built for me to do the things I wanted to do. They were totally supportive and thought it was funny and weird and whatever, and this kid’s going to do it and Kubrick says it’s okay, so we’ll do it, and we did some pretty amazing stuff that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.”

Over the course of his career, which recently included work on Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” he pushed forward filmmaking techniques like slit-scan photography, which was used for “2001." He also developed the Showscan film process, in which 70mm film is projected at 60 frames per second to create a sense of heightened reality.

After he made a name for himself on “2001,” he worked on Robert Wise's adaptation of “The Andromeda Strain,” Steven Spielberg's “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Wise's “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” and Ridley Scott's “Blade Runner.”

He made his directorial debut with “Silent Running,” a dystopian sci-fi film starring Bruce Dern in which plant life is becoming extinct on earth. Roger Ebert, in his review, wrote that Trumbull “is one of the best science-fiction special-effects men. ‘Silent Running,’ which has deep space effects every bit the equal of those in ‘2001,’ also introduces him as an intelligent, if not sensational, director.”

He also directed the 1983 sci-fi film “Brainstorm,” which had the distinction of being Natalie Wood’s last role. Wood died during a break in production after most of her scenes had been completed. The tragic death and the subsequent fights with MGM soured Trumbull on the business and he said in an interview that he had no interest in doing another Hollywood feature.

“I just had to stop,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2013. “I had been a writer-director all my life, and I decided it wasn’t for me because I was put through a really challenging personal experience. I do not think the story has ever been told. I don’t know the story myself, but I know what my experience was. I decided to leave the movie business.”

He didn't exactly retire though — he developed the “Back to the Future” ride at Universal Studios in Orlando and Los Angeles from his new home in the Berkshires. And Trumbull would eventually return to Hollywood films after some 30 years with work on “Tree of Life," where he consulted on the beginning of the universe sequence, and an experimental sci-fi short “UFOTOG" among other projects.

Trumbull got three Academy Award nominations for visual effects (for “Blade Runner,” “Star Trek” and “Close Encounters”) and, in 1992, a special scientific and engineering award for his work helping to design the CP-65 Showscan Camera System for motion picture photography.

In 2012, he received the Academy’s Gordon E. Sawyer Award, a special technical Oscar for his contributions to the industry. More recently, he was at work on a documentary about “2001” and developing a sci-fi script with John Sayles.

The family said in a statement that, “In Trumbull’s memory and his love of the giant screen, we hope that you will support your local theaters.”

Lindsey Bahr, The Associated Press

Turkish opposition head refuses to pay power bill in price rise protest

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey's main opposition party leader said late on Wednesday he will not pay his electricity bills until President Tayyip Erdogan withdraws recent price increases, as signs of discontent over surging inflation emerged across the country.

In January, inflation jumped to nearly 50% after a currency crash late last year triggered by Erdogan's unorthodox low interest rate policy, raising the cost of living for Turks already struggling to make ends meet.

In response, the government has raised the minimum wage by 50% but also increased the prices of gas, power, petrol and road tolls to account for import price volatility.

"I will not pay any of my electricity bills from today until Erdogan withdraws the price hikes which he signed on December 31," Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu said overnight.

In a video released on his Twitter account, Kilicdaroglu also called for a reduction in the value-added tax imposed on power bills to 1% from 18%.

Electricity prices were raised by as much as 125% for high-demand commercial users and by around 50% for lower-demand households at the beginning of January.

Kilicdaroglu's announcement came after shopkeepers, city councils and a religious community group spoke out this week about the rising energy bills.

Some restaurant owners posted notices on windows highlighting ballooning electricity bills, social media posts showed, while Turkey's Alevi religious minority decided not to pay power bills for their places of worship, known as cemevis.

The record currency depreciation and soaring prices have hit Erdogan's opinion poll ratings ahead of elections set for no later than June 2023. The government says credit, exports and investment will help the country weather inflation.

Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said this week a new measure on power bills would be announced "very soon".

(Reporting by Daren Butler; Editng by Robert Birsel)

Refugee camp in Bogota park evokes pain of conflict

AFP - Wednesday

Far from their ancestral homes, more than 1,000 indigenous people displaced by conflict have been squatting in squalor since September in one of the Colombian capital's most emblematic parks.

© Juan BARRETO

"No-one should live in these conditions," said one volunteer delivering supplies to the camp

"We want rights and dignified conditions... food and security," said Luz Mary Queragama, one of the group's representatives.


© Juan BARRETO

The National Park is a rare island of greenery in the capital but it is now filled with tarpaulin, camp fires and washing lines

There are around 550 children among about 1,300 people camping in the National Park that sits alongside one of the busiest avenues in Bogota.

Some children are suffering from "malnutrition" and cold, said Queragama.

The majority of the squatters come from the Embera indigenous community based in the southwest regions of Cauca and Choco.

They say they fled violence by armed groups in their homelands and cannot return.

After five months of fruitless negotiations, the humanitarian problem has become a "historic crisis" according to the Colombian press.

- 'Rats and tuberculosis' -

With its shady paths, huge trees and playgrounds, the National Park is a rare island of greenery in the capital that attracts crowds at the weekend.


© Juan BARRETO

An Embera indigenous child plays in a makeshift camp

But instead of walkers, the park is now filled with tarpaulin, camp fires and washing lines.

Bare-footed children run around while mothers carrying babies on their backs sweep the paths and tidy up their makeshift shelters.

The smell of cooked corn and plantains fill the air.

There are just two public toilets in the park, while clothes are washed under a bridge using a sewer.

Men carrying sticks provide security for the camp.

"No-one should live in these conditions," said one volunteer delivering supplies to the camp.

"There are rats, tuberculosis, all sorts of illnesses ... the mayor's office is neglecting them, the government is doing nothing for them," she added, without giving her name.

The mayor's office insists it deployed "immediate humanitarian assistance" and is trying to find shelter for the refugees in Bogota ahead of helping them to "return in safety" to their homes.

But the squatters accuse the government of failing them.

In January, the interior ministry agreed to work with the mayor's office to coordinate the displaced people's return home.

The mayor's office says close to 1,200 Embera people have already returned to their villages with another 400 rehoused elsewhere.

Mayor Claudia Lopez has ruled out the "installation of an indigenous territory in the city."

- Unprecedented -

Indigenous people have been the most affected by Colombia's interminable conflict, after black Colombians.

A series of bloody attacks and murders in Cauca, where armed groups are battling over control of the lucrative drug trade, has caught the national attention.

During 60 years of conflict, Bogota -- home to eight million people -- welcomed hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the conflict.

Since the 2016 peace deal signed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the government, the capital has been home to 380,000 of the conflict's victims, including more than 19,000 indigenous people.

Most of them live in poverty in the poor south of the capital, getting by selling their handicrafts and begging.

But the gathering of more than 1,000 indigenous people in a single location of the capital is unprecedented.

The coronavirus pandemic -- which has left 40 percent of Colombians living in poverty -- has made things worse, particularly since the end of a housing allowance that forced many to head to the National Park.

The current priority for the mayor's office is to carry out a census of the occupants of the camp.

But the last time municipal officials tried so they were beaten and kicked out.

"They are illegally occupying a public park and preventing the public from using it," said one traffic policeman.

"They cut down trees for wood. They beg during the daytime and drink at night," she complained.

"It's a terrible situation for local residents," said a cook who works in a nearby restaurant.

"Some more or less political organizations bring them food and encourage them to stay there. It's getting very difficult."

A bloody tragedy flared up tensions at the end of January.

An Embera mother and her two young daughters were crushed to death by a truck, whose driver was beaten to death by a mob.

The only solution is "to have everyone rehoused here in Bogota," said Queragama.

"What we need from the government is guarantees that we will have housing here in the city, not outside Bogota.

"If there are government guarantees, we can start talking about a return to our territories."

But she fears that the "government is lying to take us back to our territory (and) to leave us there."

hba-dl/bc/bgs

Guatemala's Supreme Court strips anti-corruption judge of immunity


GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Guatemala's highest court announced on Wednesday it had revoked immunity from prosecution for Judge Pablo Xitumul, a prominent anti-graft crusader, in the latest setback in the fight against corruption in the Central American nation.

Xitumul is a judge in the country's high-risk courts, which were created after the U.N.-backed anti-corruption commission CICIG pushed reforms to investigate organized crime and corruption.

He has faced a slew of legal challenges that he regards as revenge for some of his high-level rulings, which have involved a former leader and top officials.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court decided by a majority to revoke his immunity, clearing the way for him to be investigated over a traffic-related incident from 2019.

The Supreme Court's move comes after other prominent anti-corruption judges and officials have been removed from their posts, jailed, or pushed into exile.

Xitumul was among a handful of judges on Guatemala's high-risk courts who submitted a formal complaint to the public prosecutor's office last year saying they were being persecuted and harassed by unidentified armed individuals.

In 2013, he handed down an 80-year sentence for genocide to the deceased former dictator, Efraín Ríos Montt. The sentence was later overturned.

Five years later, Xitumul also sentenced former Vice President Roxana Baldetti to 15 years in prison for corruption.

Last year, he drew praise from the United States ambassador to Guatemala, William Popp, who congratulated him for "being a fundamental pillar for a democratic state."

(Reporting by Sofia Menchu; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded to Marjorie Taylor Greene's 'gazpacho police' gaffe: 'She clearly banned all books from her house'

aharoun@insider.com (Azmi Haroun)

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene "clearly banned all books from her house years ago."

The comment was in response to Greene mistakenly saying "gazpacho police," instead of "Gestapo."

Gazpacho is a beloved Spanish cold soup, and the Gestapo were the horrific Nazi secret police.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said her Republican colleague Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene "clearly banned all books from her house years ago" after Greene mistakenly said "gazpacho police" instead of "Gestapo" on Wednesday while criticizing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the US House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot.

"Not only do we have the DC jail, which is the DC Gulag, but now we have Nancy Pelosi's gazpacho police spying on members of Congress," Greene said on the far-right channel OAN's show "Real America with Dan Ball." "Spying on the legislative work that we do, spying on our staff, and spying on American citizens that want to come talk to their representatives."

Greene surely meant to say "Gestapo," the name of the Nazis' secret police in the 1930s and 1940s. Gazpacho is a Spanish cold soup, popular across the world.

Responding to a request for comment about the gaffe, a representative for Greene told Insider, "No soup for those who illegally spy on Members of Congress, but they will be thrown in the goulash."

During the show segment, Greene was criticizing subpoenas handed out to affiliates of former President Donald Trump by the House January 6 committee. She also lamented the treatment of people jailed in Washington, DC, on charges related to the attack.

There is no evidence the Capitol Police are spying on lawmakers, their staff members, or private citizens.

It wasn't the first time Greene had compared Democratic leadership or the Biden administration to the Nazi regime. In June, Greene eventually apologized after repeatedly comparing COVID-19 measures like vaccine and mask mandates to the Holocaust.

Greene was panned online over her latest comment, with Ocasio-Cortez poking fun at efforts by GOP legislators and some school boards to ban books in schools.



"At least she leads by example. She clearly banned all books from her house years ago," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response to the gaffe.

"For real though when you see how the GOP openly embrace and leverage fascist members of their party vs how much some Dems run away and frame their own base mobilizers as 'just as extreme' it's not hard to see how that asymmetry/false equivalence has contributed to where we are," she continued in an additional tweet.

More than 760 people have been arrested and charged with crimes related to the attack on the Capitol.

Ocasio-Cortez's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Read the original article on Business Insider

Senate candidate who smoked blunt in ad burns Confederate flag in latest spot

Brad Dress - Wednesday

The Hill

Gary Chambers, a U.S. Senate candidate in Louisiana who went viral last month for smoking a blunt in a campaign ad, burned a Confederate flag while decrying restrictive voting laws in his latest video released on Wednesday.

In a one-minute video titled "Scars and Bars," Chambers is seen wearing a camo jacket as he pins a Confederate flag on a clothesline and ignites it with a lighter - right after he cites the famous Declaration of Independence line "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

As the flag burns, the Louisiana Democrat argues that inequality lingers and "remnants of the Confederacy remain" in the South. The candidate mentions gerrymandered districts and restrictive voting laws as "byproducts" of the Confederacy.

"The attacks against Black people, our right to vote and participate in this democracy, are methodical," he said. "Our system isn't broken. It's designed to do exactly what it's doing, which is producing measurable inequity."

According to the Brennan Center, 19 states passed 34 restrictive voting laws in response to a conservative push to tighten up elections following former President Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Earlier this year, Congressional Democrats attempted to push through a voting rights package to address the restrictive voting laws but failed to secure enough votes in the Senate.

Chambers is running to unseat Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) in the upcoming midterm election. He gained national attention last month with the release of a campaign ad in which he puffs on a blunt while arguing for the legalization of cannabis, the criminalization of which disproportionately affects Black people.

The candidate is a co-founder of a media outlet called The Rouge Collection and ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. House seat last year in Louisiana.

In Wednesday's video, Chambers mentioned other issues that affect Black Americans, including access to health care, which has been highlighted during the pandemic, as minorities have had higher rates of severe illness and death from COVID-19.

Chambers said 1 in 9 Black Americans do not have health insurance and 1 in 3 Black children live in poverty.

"It's time to burn what remains of the Confederacy down," he said in the video. "I do believe the South will rise again, but this time it will be on our terms."

Proposed Alabama bills would protect Confederate monuments and raise fines if they're removed

By Maya Brown, CNN - Wednesday

An Alabama legislative committee has advanced two bills designed to further protect Confederate monuments and criminalize people who attempt to remove them.

State Sen. Gerald Allen introduced the bills Tuesday. Under one of the proposed bills, the fine for removing a monument would increase from a flat fee of $25,000 to $5,000 for each day a monument isn't restored.

These bills come at a time when Americans continue to debate whether Confederate monuments should remain or be taken down across the country.

About 73 Confederate monuments were removed or renamed in 2021 and there are now 723 left in the United States, according to a Southern Poverty Law Center report released last week. There are also an additional 741 roadways, 201 schools, 51 buildings, 38 parks and 22 holidays honoring the Confederacy. According to the SPLC, there are about 156 Confederate symbols throughout Alabama.

The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee's move Tuesday puts the bills in line for a vote by the Senate.

Jerome Dees, the Southern Poverty Law Center's Alabama policy director, told CNN he believes the proposed bills are part of a broader movement across the South to "preserve the Confederacy" and oppression that the monuments represent.

"The legislation that we're seeing are just reiterations of old Jim Crow oppression that works to continue that same psychological and mental pressure," he said.
What the bills would mean

One of the bills would make it a Class C felony to mark or damage a monument or a Class B felony if damage is done during a "riot, aggravated riot or unlawful assembly." The Class C felony carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years and the Class B felony could lead up to 20 years behind bars.

The other bill requires governments that demolish a historic building to make certain that the building or park that replaces it keeps the same name.

Dees said he believes the proposed bills are "wrong" from both a moral standpoint and a good governance standpoint.

"These are oppressive pieces of legislation that work to enshrine the Confederacy further, and also work to strip agency from local citizens and elected officials who just want to have a say in what their cities and their communities truly mean," Dees said.

Alabama is one of the six states that have preservation laws. In an attempt to amend the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act, which forbids the "relocation, removal, alteration, renaming, or other disturbance of any monument located on public property" for 40 years or more, the bill would also raise the fine from $25,000 to $5,000 per day. It would additionally empower the attorney general to sue any government found in violation.

Even with the $25,000 fine, several Alabama cities have removed Confederate monuments since the law was passed in 2017.

Last October, the city of Montgomery renamed a street named after Confederate President Jefferson Davis and changed it to Fred D. Gray Avenue to honor the civil rights activist and attorney who represented Rosa Parks and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The city must pay the fine or may face a lawsuit. In 2020, the city of Birmingham was fined for placing a plywood barrier around the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Linn Park. That same year the city of Huntsville received a fine for removing a Confederate statue from the outside the Madison County courthouse.

A Confederate statue in Tuskegee has also been a target of community resistance for years and is now at the center of an upcoming lawsuit.

Allen's proposed bill also calls for the Alabama Historical Commission to design, construct and erect a statue of the late civil rights leader John Lewis.

"The statue shall include a protective barrier and pedestal base and shall be placed near the southeastern entrance to the Edmund Pettus Bridge," the bill text says.

Dees told CNN the SPLC's hope is that the Alabama legislature hears the voices of individuals from the local community who have spoken against the Confederacy.


© Jake Crandall/The Montgomery Advertiser via AP

Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed, second from left, poses with Fred Gray Jr. and Stanley Gray after the city council voted unanimously to rename Jefferson Davis Avenue after Gray's father, civil rights attorney Fred Gray last year.

USA
500,000 people have signed a petition supporting nurses' demands for safer working conditions. Meet the nurses leading the charge.

insider@insider.com (Allana Akhtar) -

© Provided by Business Inside

rNurses Abby Donley and Blake Lynch launched a petition calling for better working conditions for healthcare workers. Their petition is the fourth most-signed on Change.org in the last 12 months. Abby Donley and Blake Lynch

500,000 people signed a petition demanding better working conditions for nurses.
The petition launched by Nurses Abby Donley and Blake Lynch is Change.org's 4th largest in the last year.
Donley and Lynch said the aim to raise awareness about why nurses need to work with fewer patients.

Abby Donley, an intensive care nurse based in New York, believes she has post-traumatic stress disorder from the first COVID-19 wave in March 2020.

"The whole ICU was full of my patients," said Donley, who left hospital work in 2021 after 13 years as an ICU nurse. "To see all of your patients...paralyzed, sedated on a ventilator, and ultimately expired, it was pretty traumatic for me."

Donley said her hospital was over capacity due to the influx of coronavirus patients, and she felt that she couldn't give her patients the care they needed because she was stretched too thin due to understaffing. If hospital nurses don't have enough time with patients, Donley explained, they cannot adequately preform their job duties.

California is currently the only state that sets nurse-to-patient ratios in hospitals, often referred to as "safe-staffing ratios" that limit the number of daily patients a nurse can adequately treat at one time. ICU nurses in California, for example, can care for just two patients at once.

In an effort to make working conditions better for her peers, Donley, cofounder of the non-profit IMPACT in Healthcare, and fellow nurse Blake Lynch, who worked in hospitals for 8 years, launched a petition calling for hospitals to ensure nurses work with a safe level of patients at once.

At more than 500,000 signatures, Donley and Lynch's safe-staffing petition is currently the fourth-most-signed campaign on Change.org over the last 12 months, a company spokesperson told Insider. The petition ranks in the top 10 largest healthcare campaigns of all-time.

"This is one of several petitions started by nurses on Change.org during the pandemic that have seen remarkable signature growth," Change.org campaign director Alex Rapson said in an email to Insider. "Nurses are proving time and again that they are leaders in social change."
Nurses say without immediate change, they will reach a breaking point

Donley and Lynch said short-staffing was worsening before the pandemic. Healthcare worker burnout reached record levels the year before COVID-19 hit.

Keeping the number of patients assigned to a nurse low both saves lives and decreases hospital expenses, according to data from Australia, which began regulating nurse-to-patient ratios in 2016. Since the laws went into effect, researchers found that 145 patients deaths were avoided and hospitals saved anywhere between $54 to $81 million as fewer people needed to be re-admitted.

The pandemic magnified hospital staffing problems, prompting 1 in 5 healthcare workers to quit during the pandemic, with many citing burnout as their reason for leaving.

Lynch worked in a hospital setting until 2019, when he transitioned to making videos about nursing for his roughly 3.5 million followers on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Lynch said he wants to help the public and other healthcare workers better understand how nurse-to-patient ratios impact care.

"We want to point out that nurses aren't being treated with respect or dignity when they've gone through the hardest time in their profession the past two years with," he said. "It's just getting worse and worse."

Lynch and Donley are calling for better oversight of hospitals to ensure workplaces enforce safe-staffing policies. The two nurses want the Joint Commission, a non-profit that accredits hospitals and makes sure they are complying with nationwide safety standards, to require hospitals limit the number of patients per nurse. The Joint Commission did not respond to a request for comment.

"I have four patients in the ICU — I should only have two paralyzed, intubated, or sedated COVID patients that need a lot of care — and I come home and I feel like I harmed those patients because the bare minimum is all they got," Donley said. "That's not nursing."

Supreme Court of Canada considers if mandatory listing on sex registry is constitutional

The fallout from a 2011 Edmonton sexual assault case has come before the Supreme Court of Canada.


© Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

The Supreme Court of Canada held a virtual hearing Tuesday morning to consider the sentencing of an Edmonton sex offender.

Janice Johnston - 

cbc.ca

Tuesday

The country's top court has been asked to consider striking down two sections of Canada's sex offender laws as unconstitutional.

In 2011, the Stephen Harper's CONSERVATIVE government altered the Criminal Code so the names of sex offenders would automatically be placed on the sex offender registry.

The changes meant judges no longer had discretion on whether to submit names of sex offenders to the registry. It also mandated that anyone convicted of two sex offences or more would automatically be placed on the registry for life.

On Tuesday morning, appearing virtually in the Supreme Court, Edmonton defence lawyer Elvis Iginla asked the justices to replace mandatory placement with judicial discretion.

Iginla represents Eugen Ndhlovu who pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual assault in 2015. He admitted that in 2011, when he was 19 years old, he sexually assaulted two women at a house party.

Ndhlovu was sentenced in provincial court to six months in jail followed by probation for three years.

Ndhlovu had no prior criminal record and was deemed a low risk to reoffend but, because he was convicted on more than one count of sex assault, his name was automatically added to the registry for life.

Ndhlovu filed an appeal with the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta, arguing his charter rights had been violated.

The Court of Queen's Bench judge agreed. Justice Andrea Moen struck down the 2011 legislative changes, meaning that sex offenders in Alberta convicted of two or more offences would no longer be automatically placed on the list.

"In my view, the mandatory registration for all sex offenders upon conviction of two or more offences, without regard to the seriousness of the offences or the offender's propensity to reoffend, is overbroad," Moen wrote.

The case advanced to the Alberta Court of Appeal, where there was a split decision. Two of three judges ruled automatically adding the names of sex offenders to a national registry for life does not violate the offender's charter rights.

The third justice dissented, ultimately leading to Tuesday's hearing before the Supreme Court of Canada.

Crown argues for status quo

Alberta Crown prosecutor Jason Russell argued in favour of maintaining the current legislation.

"The objective is to formulate a comprehensive database for law enforcement," Russell said. "We just don't have the tools to say which offender is going to re-offend."

Russell compared automatic listing on the registry to mandatory DNA orders for certain designated offences.

He acknowledged there's a modest impact on the offender's privacy rights, but argued that for most offenders the information remains unused in a highly secured database unless they are suspected of re-offending.

The subject of judicial discretion led to some spirited debate between the judges and lawyers.

"Let's cut to the chase," Justice Malcolm Rowe said to Russell. "The parliament of the day said, 'We don't like judges exercising their discretion. We want to make this an iron rule with no exceptions. It's plain on its face. We don't care what the circumstances are.'

"And you're saying that's perfectly fine."

Russell agreed.

The court also heard from interveners representing attorneys general for Canada and three provinces.

Five additional interveners representing criminal lawyers associations, civil liberties groups and the Ontario HIV Legal Network filed factums in support of Iginla's appeal.

Iginla said he thought that overall the hearing went well.

"They knew what the issues were," Iginla told CBC News following the hearing. "They asked some very tough questions.

"Anytime you appear before an appellate court, all you can really hope for is that they listen to you … and the point you're trying to make.

"So I couldn't have asked for more."

The court has reserved its decision.