Officials have voted unanimously to rename 'Dixie' highway after Harriet Tubman

By Alisha Ebrahimji, CNN

© MPI/Archive Photos/Getty Images American abolitionist leader Harriet Tubman escaped slavery and led many other slaves to safety using the Underground Railroad.

A highway in Florida won't be keeping its name much longer after a county voted to change the name of a handful of "Dixie" highways to "Harriet Tubman Highway."

Miami-Dade County commissioners unanimously approved plans Wednesday to rename portions of The Dixie Highway, which runs 5,786 miles through 10 states from Michigan to Miami, according to CNN affiliate WPLG.

"The time is always right to do what is right," said Miami-Dade District 9 Commissioner Dennis Moss, quoting Martin Luther King, Jr.

Moss led the effort to rename the highway after Tubman, a famous African American abolitionist.

Depending on your perspective, the word Dixie takes on a different meaning for different people. Most commonly, it's associated with the old South and Confederate states. Dixie was considered the land south of the Mason-Dixon line, where slavery was was legal.

Injustice hiding in plain sight

Moss started looking into the name change after reading a letter from a man named Modesto Abety, former CEO of the Children's Trust in Miami-Dade County.

Abety's granddaugther asked him why "Dixie" was still on the name of the roadways considering its association with slavery, Moss told CNN.

"I moved forward with legislation and of course I did it because Dixie is associated with the southern Confederate states," he said.

Moss said the injustice has been hiding in plain sight for years, but he's grateful and proud his colleagues understand the importance of this name change and what the term Dixie has stood for in the past.

The decision to rename Dixie Highway after Tubman came as a suggestion from Abety's granddaughter.

"She was the antithesis of slavery," Moss said. "I thought that suggestion was a good suggestion."

It's important to Moss to set a precedent by not only removing the Dixie name from roadways that Miami-Dade County controls, but to urge the state of Florida to remove it from roadways in which it has jurisdiction.

A stepping stone on the path to change

While the name change was approved by Miami-Dade County commissioners, it's up to each state to act on other parts of the highway. State lawmakers will need to go through their own approval process for the parts each state owns.

The support hasn't been entirely unanimous, but to Moss' surprise, he said there's been little opposition.

It's unclear just how much the renaming process will cost the county, but Moss said he and his colleagues are prepared to do whatever it takes to see that they are changed once and for all.

"If this was an Adolf Hitler Highway, or if this was in our community, a Fidel Castro Highway, [the money] wouldn't even be a consideration as it relates to changing the signs," Moss said. "So let's not allow that to be an impediment and let's do what's right."

Not enough guards, too many inmates: Mississippi prisons a perilous place to work


Joseph Neff and Alysia Santo, The Marshall Project 

PARCHMAN, Miss. – The attack on Jennifer White came as she started a morning shift at the most dangerous unit at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, the sprawling Delta prison farm here.

© Barbara Gauntt/Clarion Ledger, Barbara Gauntt Jennifer White left her career as a correctional supervisor at Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman in 2016 after a second serious attack by an inmate.

Just two officers had been guarding dorms housing more than 250 men. A prisoner charged them at shift’s end, beating them badly. White arrived in time to blast him with pepper spray. He knocked her to the floor.


White, now 50, says the next few seconds have replayed thousands of times in her mind: the man on top of her, smashing her in the jaw, his eyes full of rage. The popping feeling in her knee. It took nine long minutes for help to get there, according to an incident report.

After the 2016 attack, White left Parchman and holed up in her house, away from family, friends and church. Using a wheelchair while she recovered from her knee injury, she grew so haunted by suicidal and homicidal thoughts that she checked herself into a mental hospital.

“I don’t trust anyone anymore,” she says. “Everybody is a threat to me.”

Violence against and among people incarcerated in Mississippi has become a national scandal. Since Christmas, at least 18 prisoners have died, prompting the U.S. Department of Justice this month to say it will investigate conditions at four of the state’s six large prisons.

But violence against guards is also a scourge of the Mississippi system, an investigation by The Marshall Project found. Our analysis of state records and hundreds of pages of court documents, along with interviews with more than 30 prison employees, revealed a profoundly dangerous environment for everyone behind bars.

Prisoners have attacked guards more than 340 times a year, on average, since 2016, according to our analysis; there were an average of 1,300 guards on the job each year. They were beaten, stabbed with makeshift knives, sexually assaulted, and often “dashed” – prison slang for being doused with urine, feces or hot water – according to state records and interviews. The state acknowledged that about 115 of these assaults each year caused serious injuries.

More: Mississippi prison crisis: 18th inmate dies since Dec. 29, second in 24 hours

More: Justice Department investigating Mississippi prison conditions amid slew of deaths

More: Modern day debtors prison? Mississippi makes people work to pay off debt

Inmates, officers and experts agree about the principal cause of the violence: Mississippi prisons are so short staffed that nobody there is safe.

As more staff leave, the threat to the remaining officers grows, making it harder to hire and keep workers. Guards say many colleagues don’t show up for work every day, so it’s common for a single officer to try to control 200 people in cells or dorms.
Too many vacancies

Half of all correctional-officer jobs in Mississippi’s state-run prisons are empty. A Marshall Project survey of all 50 state corrections systems nationwide found only Alabama had a higher vacancy rate, at 58%. At least 12 states reported vacancies over 20%.

Violence has erupted in understaffed prisons in Alabama, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and New Mexico in recent years. In North Carolina, five prison workers were killed in 2017; a federal report said understaffing – 1 in 4 positions were unfilled – opened the door to mayhem.

More: An unfair system arrested millions of blacks, urged compassion for whites

More: Jay-Z, Yo Gotti follow through on lawsuit over Mississippi prisons: 'Lives are in peril'

More: 'Ticking time bomb': Violence surges amid guard shortage, lockdown at Mississippi prison

More: What happened when this prison couldn't hire enough guards? It put gangs in charge

Corrections officials across the country agree that the lack of guards is one of their biggest problems. Yet lawmakers in many states have had little appetite for confining fewer people or raising officers’ salaries – especially in Mississippi, where starting pay for guards is $25,650. Officers at privately run prisons in the state start at $23,400.

Other states, especially those with corrections-officer unions, pay more – as much as $56,680 in Massachusetts. Nationwide, prison guards and jailers made an average $49,300 in 2018, according to federal data. In Mississippi, that number was far lower: $30,840.

“You have legislators down there acting like they're shocked that something happened at their prison,” says Bryan Stirling, the corrections director in South Carolina, who pushed through pay raises there. “They're just sticking their heads in the sand and hoping the problem goes away.”

Mississippi corrections officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment.© Sarah Warnock, Clarion Ledger Leslie Jones was twice attacked by prisoners when he was an officer at Wilkinson County Correctional Facility in Woodville, MS.

Corrections officers have the reputation, sometimes deserved, for excessive violence and indifference to the humanity of the people they watch. But many guards say they are trying to do their best in a low paying, low status job in a dangerous workplace. And they understand that sometimes people in prison attack them out of desperation.

Leslie Jones, a thick-set and blunt-spoken former corrections officer, says he fought with prisoners several times a week during his three years at the Wilkinson County Correctional Facility on the border with Louisiana. It’s one of three Mississippi prisons operated by a private company, Management & Training Corporation.

Jones says he couldn’t get angry with a man who knocked him out and busted his lips and eyebrows in 2017.

“His life was in jeopardy,” Jones says, noting that the prisoner wanted out of his unit because gangs had threatened his life. “The quickest way to get off a zone is attacking an officer.”

Jones saves his anger for MTC, which he says runs a prison that puts everyone in danger. He says that at its worst, Wilkinson had only seven guards when it should have had 28 on a shift. The physical conditions are terrible, Jones says, and inmates face few consequences for assaulting officers.

“Your life ain’t worth two ramen noodle packs, and the thing is, MTC could stop it,” Jones says. He left Wilkinson in 2018.

A spokesman for Utah-based MTC did not respond to Jones’s allegations or to questions about attacks at the prison.

But in a statement, Issa Arnita says the company is working to improve safety at its facilities: “Our brave correctional professionals work in an environment that has inherent risk, and we do everything we can to minimize those risks.”© Kathleen Flynn for the Marshall Project The Wilkinson County Correctional Facility in Woodville, Mississippi.

Monthly reports to the state show guards at Wilkinson had the highest rate of assaults and injuries among the state’s large prisons in the 36 months ending in mid-2019. A lawyer for the state described the reports as internal working documents that were not “verified and/or reconciled for accuracy.”

A functional prison needs guards to walk the floor, supervise people in the units, break up fights, and help when a fellow officer is in danger. Without enough staff, incarcerated men and women can’t take showers, visit with their families, get medical care, or exercise, among other things. At Wilkinson, the men missed about 70% of scheduled medical visits in 2018, according to an internal audit. The audit also said video surveillance showed men locked in cells when staff reported them bathing or exercising.

Arnita says MTC has retrained staff and set new procedures to ensure inmates make their medical appointments.© Juan Bernabeu for The Marshall Project Juan Bernabeu for The Marshall Project
Gangs in charge

In the vacuum left by staff shortages, gangs have taken control of several Mississippi prisons. Some officers work with gangs, providing contraband and preferential treatment, which contributes to the violence, according to staff interviews and court filings. A smuggled cellphone can bring in as much as a week’s pay for a guard, according to many officers we interviewed.

Prisoners can’t escape the violence, but corrections officers do – by leaving their jobs. Turnover is high, and the total number of guards at the state’s six large prisons has fallen by a third since 2016, from 1,616 to 1,060 last year. The biggest losses occurred at publicly run prisons. As the staff shrank, the number of attacks also fell. Over the same period, the population in the large prisons grew by 4% to more than 13,000.

As officers quit, those remaining must guard more and more people on their own. The worst problem has been at Southern Mississippi Correctional Institution, in Leakesville near the Alabama border, the site of the first killing in the recent spate of violence. It had only one officer for every 20 prisoners in 2019, up from 1 for every 12 in 2016, state records show.

When there isn’t enough staff, prison managers often resort to “lockdowns,” keeping people in cells or dorms almost 24 hours a day, sometimes for months at a time. The constant caging creates a pressure cooker that leads to violence.

Adding to the problem: The electronic door locking systems at Parchman and Wilkinson failed in the mid-2010s, several staffers say, allowing prisoners to open their cell doors and go on the attack.© Kathleen Flynn for the Marshall Project Sgt Bryan Gaston recently left his job at Wilkinson County Correctional Facility in Woodville, Mississippi, due to what he and numerous others describe as abhorrent conditions. Several years ago he was recruited to the facility. He said the previous 18 years in corrections he had waste thrown on him just once. Since arriving at Wilkerson, he has had it thrown on him numerous times. He also said that reports of the incidents were never made, and there were no repercussions for such behavior. He said he has had infection set in on one of his eyes following a “dashing”, which is a term used in the prison for when the inmates throw excrement. Once, an inmate attempted to stab him, hitting his utility belt. On the second swing hit him in the knuckle, and he still bears the scar.
Prisoners on the attack

That’s what happened to Colton Smith. When he first started working at Wilkinson in 2014, he was enthusiastic. The job paid $9.50 an hour, more than many others in the area, and he could work overtime. Smith had seen his father make a successful living as a prison officer, and he planned to follow in his footsteps. He recalls telling the warden, “I’m gunning for your job,” on his first day of work.

A few months in, Smith dozed off during an overnight shift in the long-term solitary unit, he says. A prisoner popped open one of the malfunctioning cell locks, blasted Smith with the officer’s own pepper spray and stabbed him twice with a prison-made knife.

The attacks kept coming, Smith says. Another man doused him with boiling water. A third slipped out of his handcuffs and used them like brass knuckles to beat Smith unconscious. After a fourth prisoner sliced him 10 times with a shank, Smith says he began reliving the attacks in his dreams. He went on medication for anxiety and depression.© Kathleen Flynn for the Marshall Project Sgt Bryan Gaston's wife shows a photo of a boil on his eyelid that appeared after a prisoner threw feces and urine in Gaston's face while he worked at Wilkinson County Correctional Facility in Woodville, Mississippi.

Stress like Smith’s is endemic among guards. Research papers and government studies have found that correctional officers suffer high rates of PTSD, depression, divorce and alcoholism.

In interviews, Smith grew teary as he described growing sullen and irritable while neglecting his wife and son. “The anger and hate embeds itself in you,” he says. “I almost lost my family.”

Smith quit in 2018, even though he had worked his way up to sergeant, a job that paid $13 an hour. He now works for $8 an hour as a housekeeper at a hospital and attends nursing school. MTC did not respond to questions about Smith’s attacks.

Prison officials went back to using traditional locks, which caused its own set of problems. At Wilkinson, a prisoner seized keys from a female officer working solo in long-term solitary, the prison’s most dangerous unit. He unlocked three friends; they opened the cell of Jerome Harris and stabbed him in the head, chest and back, according to an MTC incident report. Harris lost his left eye and almost all vision in his right in the 2018 attack, according to a lawsuit that MTC settled.© Juan Bernabeu for The Marshall Project Juan Bernabeu for The Marshall Project
Loss of a livelihood

Dashing is designed to humiliate more than hurt.

Bryan Gaston is 6 foot 9 and 300 pounds, a Navy veteran with 16 years of correctional experience in Oklahoma and Colorado. He says that before coming to Wilkinson prison in 2017, only one prisoner threw liquid at him.

At Wilkinson? “Countless,” he says.

“The nastiest feeling you could ever feel in your entire life is to have another person's human waste dripping off of you,” he says. The dashings left him with a recurring infection that’s blurred his vision in one eye. A lifelong hunter, Gaston can barely pass marksmanship tests he used to ace. He says his doctor ordered twice yearly tests for hepatitis and HIV. He now works at a prison in a nearby state.

Of 33 Mississippi prison employees The Marshall Project interviewed, all but seven say they had been dashed.

In this environment, even guards who say they want to do their job well and care for the people inside ended up disillusioned at best, depressed and suicidal at worst.

That’s what happened to White, the former Parchman lieutenant, who sought out mental health care. Today, she advocates counseling for staff and prisoners alike: “They aren’t getting that type of help to straighten their mind out.”

She says she has forgiven her attacker and prays daily that God will also soften the heart of the man she once wanted to murder. But she also feels a profound sense of loss.

“He took away my life,” she says. “He took it all.”

This investigation was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, the USA Today Network, the Clarion Ledger, Mississippi Today and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting. The Marshall Project is a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system; sign up for their newsletters, or follow them on Facebook or Twitter.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Not enough guards, too many inmates: Mississippi prisons a perilous place to work

New Arizona Game and Fish commissioner criticized for Safari Club International membership


Helena Wegner, The Republic | azcentral.com


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The newest member of the Arizona Game and Fish Commission is stirring concerns from two wildlife advocacy organizations because of his affiliation with the world’s largest trophy-hunting organization. 

© Arizona Land and Water Trust Pronghorn on Babacomari Ranch in southeast Arizona.

Todd Geiler received approval from the Senate on Tuesday to join the Arizona Game and Fish Commission.

But the Humane Society of the United States and the Sierra Club Grand Canyon Chapter say they have some concerns with Geiler's ties to Safari Club International.

Safari International is a nonprofit organization that advocates for hunters. This includes providing opportunities to hunt big game trophies around the world. The organization views their work as promoting wildlife conservation efforts because the money raised from the hunting experience goes toward conserving the species.

Geiler is a member of Safari Club International, an affiliation that was listed on Gov. Doug Ducey's press release announcing his nomination.

Kellye Pinkleton, the Arizona senior state director of the Humane Society of the United States, said her organization takes issue with trophy hunting — when an animal is killed for body parts, bragging rights or trophy hanging.

The Humane Society’s mission is to end cruel practices toward animals, including trophy hunting.

“It is troubling that he has ties to largest trophy hunting organization that often just serves the wealthy,” Pinkleton said. “Safari Club celebrates senseless killing, buying and selling of dead animals for bragging rights.”

Pinkleton said she doesn't oppose Geiler's confirmation to the commission, but she would like to see more representation of conservationists and biologists.

"We believe the commission should reflect all Arizonans and not just those with close ties to a trophy-hunting organization like SCI," she said in an email.

Sandy Bahr, the director for Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter, disapproved of Geiler's confirmation and disputed Safari International's characterization as a conservation organization.

“They (commission members) shouldn’t be advocating for things like wildlife killing contests,” Bahr said.
Geiler: Pronghorn recovery program prompted membership

Although some members of Safari Club join because of trophy hunting, Geiler said he did so because of the organization’s involvement in Sonoran Pronghorn recovery. One of SCI’s headquarters is in Tucson.

“I am proud of my memberships in numerous conservation groups that have worked to enhance, restore and perpetuate wildlife across our state whose members are the backbone of funding conservation in Arizona and the nation without using a dime of state general fund tax dollars,” he said in an email.

Geiler said no photos will surface of him next to a hunted endangered animal.

Eric S. Sparks, a current game and fish commissioner, served as a legal committee vice chairman for the Safari Club International from 1999 to 2009. No other commissioners listed an affiliation to the club on the commission's website.

Ducey nominated Geiler in January from a list of candidates provided by the Arizona Game and Fish Commission Appointment Recommendation Board.

“The governor is pro-animal and pro-hunting. We think Game and Fish does an excellent job managing our wildlife, protecting public safety, and promoting recreation,” Ducey spokesman Patrick Ptak wrote in a text message. “The Commission is an important part of that success and we are proud of the job they are doing. We stand by our appointments.”

Geiler is an avid hunter and leader in his community who comes from a family involved in farming, ranching and eye care. He maintains a optometrist practice in Prescott that was started by his grandfather in 1946.

As a boy, Geiler learned how to hunt from his great grandfather, grandfather and father. Geiler and his wife mentor teenagers and women interested in learning about firearms and hunting.
Lack of diversity on the commission?

Bahr from the Sierra Club opposed Geiler's nomination to at the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee hearing on Feb. 12.

Despite commissioners having knowledge of wildlife, she said there are no women, people of color or wildlife biologists serving on the game and fish commission.

The Arizona Game and Fish Commission Appointment Recommendation Board perpetuates the lack of diversity by choosing nominees with similar backgrounds, she said.

State Sen. Andrea Dalessandro, D-Green Valley, said she has issues with candidates sent from the recommendation board to the committee. She voted against Geiler's nomination.

Sen. Juan Mendez, D-Tempe, shared the same concern.

“The people that have been put in front of us are lacking in diversity, so the whole system is broken,” Mendez said.

Pinkleton said current commissioners do not accurately represent Arizonans because most of them are hunters or anglers.

Because the department manages wildlife, Pinkleton said someone with a scientific or wildlife biologist background would better serve the commission and Arizonans.

The current commission is made up of five men from different Arizona counties. According to the department's website, no more than three members can be from the same political party.

Including Geiler, the commission has three Republicans, one Democrat and one independent.

At the committee hearing, Bahr also said she opposed Geiler's nomination because of his attitude toward predators and his opposition toward restrictions on the use of lead ammunition in the Kaibab National Forest and other areas.

Geiler filed a declaration in 2012 opposing "any and all proposed prohibitions and/or restrictions on the use of lead ammunition" in Kaibab and other hunting areas in Arizona.

When asked about that In an interview, Geiler said he supports the department's encouragement for hunters to use non lead ammunition like copper bullets.

Contact the reporter at helena.wegner@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on The Republic | azcentral.com: New Arizona Game and Fish commissioner criticized for Safari Club International membership

THE MEN GET PAID MORE TO LOSE!
US Soccer says unequal pay for women is fair because 'men are bigger, stronger, faster,' as USWNT sues for $67 million
Meredith Cash

© David Vincent/AP
Initial filings from the US Women's National Team's gender discrimination lawsuit against the US Soccer Federation suggest that the two parties are further apart than ever.
The USWNT players are seeking $67 million in back pay, which their lawyers argue is commensurate with the amount they would have been compensated had they been given the rate "set forth in the USMNT CBA."

The USSF, meanwhile, alleges that the USWNT players have no grounds for a discrimination lawsuit because men are "bigger, stronger, faster."
Since the federation claims the USMNT and USWNT players "perform such different jobs," it is requesting the case be dismissed in its entirety.

Trial is set for May 5, three months before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics begin.

It's looking more and more like the US Women's National Team's gender discrimination lawsuit will play out in court, as initial court filings suggest that the two parties are further apart than ever.

According to documents filed by the players' attorneys Thursday night, the USWNT players are seeking $67 million in back pay from the US Soccer Federation based on purported violations of Title VII and the Equal Pay Act. Their lawyers argue that the amount - split between the 38 EPA class members and 72 Title VII class members - is commensurate with the amount they would have been compensated had they been given the rate in the men's collective bargaining agreement with US Soccer.

© VI-Images / Getty Images

The team is asking for a summary judgment, which would require the judge, R. Gary Klausner, to forgo a trial and make a ruling.

The USSF, meanwhile, wants Klausner to dismiss the case entirely because the men's and women's players "perform such different jobs" that there's no basis for a direct comparison between the two and thus no grounds for a discrimination lawsuit.

US Soccer contends that men's and women's soccer are separate entities because "men are bigger, stronger, faster."

The federation's lawyers also argue for the case's dismissal because the women wanted a different compensation structure from the men and because USWNT players were, in actuality, paid more than the USMNT players were.

Should the judge reject both the USWNT players' motion for summary judgment and the USSF motion for dismissal, the lawsuit will likely move to trial. Though both parties requested a trial date after the 2020 Olympics, Klausner set the date for May 5, mere months before the games begin in Tokyo.

Read more:
US Men's National Team players broke their silence on equal pay and gender discrimination, calling for the women's team to earn 'triple' the men's pay

The USWNT has an embarrassment of riches, and it could be a problem heading into the 2020 Olympics

The United States Women's National Team used pages from their equal pay lawsuit as confetti during World Cup victory parade

26 celebrities who are calling for the USWNT to earn equal pay

A mile-wide toxic waste site sits on the ocean floor near Stellwagen Ban

About 19 miles east of Boston Harbor, beside a national marine sanctuary that’s home to one of the world’s richest fishing grounds, lies one of the nation’s largest offshore dumping sites of radioactive waste. 

© David N. Wiley/Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary Video taken of the Foul Area industrial waste site near Stellwagen Bank showed a barrel with a large hole in it on the ocean floor. The federal government is using sediment dredged from Boston Harbor to cap a dump site that contains an estimated 80,000 barrels of waste, some of them with highly toxic materials.

In less than 300 feet of water, thousands of barrels litter the seafloor, a mile-wide toxic junkyard that fishermen call “The Foul Area.”

It’s called that because many have tangled — or fouled — their gear in the barrel field, at times even pulling up containers filled with toxic chemicals. Government reports and congressional testimony over the years have suggested the dumping ground may include plutonium and other highly dangerous materials discarded after the completion of the Manhattan Project during World War II.

Now, the federal government is trying to bury the barrels at least three feet deep with roughly 10 million tons of sediment dredged from a $340 million project to widen shipping channels in Boston Harbor. Capping the toxic material — which includes unexploded munitions — was seen as a safer way of minimizing risks, rather than trying to bring the rusting barrels to the surface.

It’s also cheaper. Federal officials say there’s effectively no additional cost to the overall dredging project, as the sediment from the harbor would have had to be taken elsewhere anyway.

“I’ve been watching concerns about this waste site for decades, and this is a really creative solution to a longstanding environmental problem,” said Ken Moraff, water division director for the Environmental Protection Agency in New England, which has been working on the capping project with the Army Corps of Engineers since 2018.

But others have raised significant doubts about the project and the impact on the adjacent Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, which was founded in 1992 to protect an 842-square-mile underwater plateau that is home to an estimated 130 species, from abundant lobsters to endangered North Atlantic right whales. At its closest point, the dumping ground is less than a quarter mile from Stellwagen.

David Wiley, the sanctuary’s research coordinator, led a seminal study of the area in the early 1990s. His report, which found that the federal government kept few records of what was dumped there, estimated that there could be as many as 80,000 barrels of toxic waste, most from hospitals, universities, and companies throughout the region. At least 4,000 of them were thought to contain radioactive waste, from the same sources.

With many of those barrels corroding in the salt water over decades — the federally sanctioned dumping occurred from around 1946 until it was banned in 1977 — Wiley worries about the potential consequences of dropping massive amounts of clay, gravel, rock, and sand on top of them.

“I am concerned about leakage,” Wiley said. “They could leak from the initial pressure placed upon them, as they are being covered."

His surveys of the dumping grounds, which included sending down a submersible to record video of the area, found that about half of the identifiable barrels remained intact. The other half had clear signs of openings, some of them from rifle shots fired at them to ensure they sank while being dumped overboard.

Wiley said he isn’t reassured by promises from the Army Corps and the Environmental Protection Agency that the area is being monitored for leaks, and will continue to be. Because no one knows exactly what’s down there, he said, there’s little reason to believe that any testing would be comprehensive.

“I’d call that monitoring plan problematic,” he said. “There are so many things that could be escaping that might not be tested for.”

Charles McCreery, a oceanographer who retired from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, has spent years studying the “Foul Area” dump and similar sites around the country, which he said include toxic compounds such as pesticides, PCBs, and DDT. The dump in Massachusetts Bay has the distinction of being in shallower waters and closer to shore than any other such site, he said.

If dropping millions of tons of rock-filled sediment punctures the barrels or moves the other toxic material, it could contaminate many of the crustaceans and other bottom-feeding creatures that inhabit the area, some of which people eat, he said.

“This is a human health and environmental concern,” McCreery said. “The chemicals sequester into the fat of marine organisms and contaminate the food chain.”

There are also concerns about the sediment dredged from Boston Harbor, which until the 1990s was widely considered the nation’s dirtiest harbor, with mounds of raw sewage and a vast range of pollutants submerged in the seafloor.

Angela Sanfilippo, president of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association, knows of fishermen who became sick after pulling up barrels in their nets.

When she learned that the harbor sediment would be deposited in the area, she called it “a disaster.”

“All that debris could shift in a storm and affect Stellwagen,” she said. “We want clean water and clean fish. This is infuriating and should stop right now.”

Federal officials overseeing the dredging project insisted that the concerns are largely unwarranted.

“The material from Boston Harbor has been evaluated and is suitable for ocean disposal,” said Dave Deegan, a spokesman for the EPA in Boston.

Sediment that has been identified as contaminated won’t be used in the project but rather stored in specially built areas beneath the harbor floor, he said. The dredged material being used to cap the barrel field is mainly Boston blue clay, which the EPA has determined to be safe.

The agency’s monitoring of the area for contamination will “ensure that conditions are appropriate for ocean life in that area," Deegan added.

Steven Wolf, who is managing the capping project for the Army Corps of Engineers, said the sediment is being dumped over the barrel field from split-hull scows that use sophisticated positioning technology to pinpoint where it lands.

The Army Corps is trying to avoid dropping the sediment directly on the barrels, he said. Instead, it is being released in large piles along the perimeter of the field, with the goal that the sediment will gently shift over the barrels.

“It’s going well,” he said, adding that the project should be finished next year.

Wolf also dismissed concerns that any leaked radioactive or other toxic chemicals would pose more of a harm to marine life as a result of the project.

“The critters that dig and burrow only go down a few inches, and this will seal or sequester the waste from the water column,” he said. “Ultimately, this is a way to put these containers out of contact with people — for many, many lifetimes.”

For those who have spent years fighting to clean up Boston Harbor and protect Massachusetts Bay, the potential benefits of the project outweigh the potential harms.

Capping the barrels, they said, is better than just leaving them there to decompose and foul fishing gear.

“I’m fairly convinced that what we’re going to have is a capping, not a crushing of the barrels,” said Bruce Berman, a spokesman for Save the Harbor/Save the Bay, an environmental advocacy group. “Thankfully, we’re past the cowboy days of ocean dumping, and this has been a transparent process.”

Peter Shelley, who spent years waging legal battles to clean up Boston Harbor at the Conservation Law Foundation, said he thought the project would “likely reduce risks.”

“The alternative of cleaning the site up would be really difficult ... to do without spreading the waste everywhere,” he said.

1916: 'The Americanese Wall, As Congressman Burnett Would Build It'
“The Americanese Wall, As Congressman Burnett Would Build It” satirizes the 1917 immigration act imposed by Congressman John Lawson Burnett by drawing literacy tests as a wall. Evans drew the wall with pens sticking out of it, while Uncle Sam looks on.

"UNCLE SAM: YOU'RE WELCOME IN --- IF YOU CAN CLIMB IT"

[Pictured: “The Americanese Wall, As Congressman Burnett Would Build It” by Raymond O. Evans for Puck Magazine.]

1912: 'Next From Cradle to the Mill'

“Next From Cradle to the Mill” is a brutal portrayal of child labor early in the 20th century. A monsterous figure with “Necessity” written on it takes a child by the hand menacingly. In the background, a man’s head is down on a desk, while two children walk toward a factory that says “Machinery Operated by Children.” AND IT ALSO SAYS "MEN NEED NOT APPLY"

The cartoon brings to mind the public hearing of Camilla Teoli, who worked as a child at a wool factory and experienced a disfiguring accident.

[Pictured: “Next! From Cradle to the Mill” by Art Young for Puck Magazine dated April 1912.]

1920: 'The Accuser'
“The Accuser” shows a woman reprimanding the U.S. Senate for killing what’s lying on the ground: “ The treaty of peace.” This referred to the Treaty of Versailles, which brought to an end to the war between the Allied Powers and Germany.
[Pictured: “The Accuser” by Rollin Kirby for New York World dated March 20, 1920.]




1920: 'Go Away!'
In “Go Away!” Rollin Kirby drew Congress from behind doors gesturing to Armenia with a sign that says “With malice towards all, with charity towards none.” This cartoon represents America’s non-recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

[Pictured: “Go Away!” by Rollin Kirby for New York World dated June 12, 1920.]



1921: 'The Only Way to Handle It'
This cartoon shows America’s reluctance at the time to take in refugees. “The Only Way to Handle It” portrays Uncle Sam using a funnel to let in refugees, with an influx from the top.


[Pictured: “The Only Way to Handle It” by Hallahan for Providence Evening Bulletin dated May 7, 1921.]




FOR THE REST GO HERE
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/political-cartoons-from-the-past-100-years/ss-BB105R3u

Author who sparked 'American Dirt' scandal is escorted away from Long Beach teaching jobBy Daniel Hernandez, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — Myriam Gurba, the novelist and Long Beach high school teacher who sparked a row in U.S. publishing over the bestselling novel “American Dirt,” has been placed on administrative leave and was escorted from her school on Friday. 

© Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/TNS Myriam Gurba speaks during a panel discussing "American Dirt," and Latinx visibility in the U.S. publishing industry at Antioch University in Culver City, Calif., on February 6, 2020.

Gurba broke word of her removal from Long Beach Polytechnic High School via Twitter, a platform she’s used to intensifying effect since last month after disclosing that a magazine rejected her scathingly negative review of Jeanine Cummins’ “American Dirt.” Gurba and other readers have derided the thriller-romance story set in Mexico for what they have deemed stereotypical or harmful depictions of Mexican life.

But in recent days, Gurba has turned her attention to brewing allegations of abuse or battery on the part of another Long Beach Poly teacher, Libby Huff. She also has raised unconfirmed allegations against a separate teacher at another school.

Gurba said earlier this week that her school administration had begun ostracizing her for speaking out in support of the students who alleged abuse at the hands of Huff. That teacher is on leave from the district; Long Beach police are also investigating the allegations against her.

On Twitter, Gurba railed this week against the district, her school and Huff.

A counselor at Long Beach Poly walked into Gurba’s classroom Friday to tell her she had to leave school grounds. “They said that my social media was disruptive to the school,” Gurba said in an interview.

The teacher and author of the novel “Mean” said she was placed on administrative leave without being given any more explanation. A district official confirmed the decision.

“Our school district placed Poly High School teacher Myriam Gurba on paid administrative leave today,” said Chris Eftychiou, spokesperson for the Long Beach Unified School District, in an emailed response to questions. “The school district is not at liberty to provide further details because of confidentiality rules affecting personnel matters.”

In a Twitter post, Gurba criticized the school and her district for not “protecting” her and students. “Women and children (are) treated as problems by LBUSD,” Gurba wrote. She also tweeted: “I would rather have my dignity than a job.”

Gurba said she is a teacher of AP psychology. On Friday afternoon she told the Los Angeles Times she was in touch with a lawyer but not clear on what action she would take, if any. She added that she has contacted her union about a response to the district’s actions.

During the controversy over “American Dirt,” under growing pressure from Gurba and other critics, Cummins and her publisher, Macmillan Books, apologized for the novel’s publicity rollout and canceled a planned promotional tour. The debate also led to a simmering and often emotional discussion about cultural appropriation and the mechanics of a books industry that many claim sidelines or erases U.S. Latino voices.

“American Dirt,” meanwhile, has continued to sell well. It currently sits at third place on the Amazon bestseller list.

———

(Times staff writer Dorany Pineda contributed to this report.)

———

©2020 Los Angeles Times

These trees turn the color of rainbows as they lose their bark, and the pictures are magical


Erin McDowell 2/11/2020




Slide 1 - 4 of 14: Eucalyptus deglupta trees, otherwise known as rainbow eucalyptus trees or rainbow gum trees, are known around the world for their bright, neon-striped bark. The rainbow effect is created as the bark peels off throughout each season, revealing the fresh, bright-green bark below. As each layer of bark matures, it turns shades of blue, purple, orange, and red. Though rainbow eucalyptus trees are native to the Philippines, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea, they can also be found in the US. Visit Insider's homepage for more stories . No, your eyes aren't playing tricks on you - these trees really are the color of the rainbow. Found mainly in Hawaii, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea, Eucalyptus deglupta trees, otherwise known as rainbow eucalyptus trees, are one of nature's most beautiful natural wonders. If you want to know exactly how the trees' bark becomes rainbow-hued, or just want to look at some beautiful photos of rainbow eucalyptus trees, you're in luck.Next Slide

CHLORINATED CHICKENS

Boris Johnson just gave a clear signal he plans to ditch UK food standards to secure a Trump trade deal

© Reuters
The UK government has given its clearest sign yet that it plans to shift away from accepting EU food standards in order to secure a post-Brexit trade deal with Trump.

The UK farming industry fears that Johnson will ditch current EU standards which forbid the sale of products such as chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected beef.

Johnson is refusing to sign up to maintain EU rules after the end of the Brexit transition period.

The United Kingdom has just given its clearest sign yet that it plans to ditch its commitment to maintaining EU food standards after Brexit in order to secure a post-Brexit trade deal with Donald Trump.

UK officials will break away from strict EU rules on sanitary and phytosanitary measures, which cover food and agricultural goods, at an upcoming meeting of the World Trade Organisation, City AM reports.

The UK is currently in an 11-month, post-Brexit transition period, during which it will continue to follow all EU rules and regulations - including those relating to food standards.

However Johnson's government will at this meeting make a "clear statement about future intentions" on how the UK will approach food standards in its future trade deals with the US and other countries, City AM reports.

Last month, the National Farmers' Union's Brexit director told Business Insider that the industry fears the government will ultimately trade away current UK food standards in talks with "fearsome" US negotiators.

"We all know in a trade negotiation, at some point, it [the UK] is going to need to make concessions," Nick von Westenholz told Business Insider.

"And this isn't a negotiation with a small partner where the UK can flex its muscles.

"This is a negotiation with one of the largest economies in the world with an absolutely fearsome reputation for negotiating trade deals, and one which under the current administration is even more transactional in the way it views trade relationships."

EU rules block US food like chicken and beef from entering its markets due to rules on hygiene and animal welfare.

While Prime Minister Johnson has said the UK will not lower its food standards after leaving the EU, he has also said his government's policy will be dictated "by science and not by mumbo jumbo."Boris Johnson wants to break free from EU rules

© Oli Scarff – WPA Pool/Getty ImagesAny shift away from EU rules at the WTO meeting would irk Brussels. The Brexit deal agreed by the UK ties the country to a "duty of sincere cooperation" clause, which obliges both sides to act in good faith during the departure process.

The NFU is urging the government to include a legal commitment to maintaining current levels of food standards in a piece of legislation called the Agriculture Bill. However, ministers are refusing to do so.

The UK is set to begin negotiating a trade deal with the US in the next few weeks.

The Trump administration has said it will prioritise access to Britain's agricultural markets when trade talks begin.

The US Trade Representative's objectives for negotiations, published last year, said the UK "should remove expeditiously unwarranted barriers that block the export of U.S. food and agricultural products."

It added that "unjustified trade restrictions" enforced in the UK as a result of its recently-expired EU membership "eliminate practices that unfairly decrease U.S. market access opportunities."

Trump water plan blasted by Northern California tribe
The chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe of Shasta County blasted President Trump on Wednesday, calling a federal-state water coordination plan a "salmon extinction plan." 

© Ron Holman President Donald Trump visits Bakersfield on Wednesday, February 19, 2020.

During his visit to Bakersfield, Trump signed a reworking of federal rules that some say would allow federal authorities to pump more water from Northern California southward to cities and farms.

It was Trump's fifth visit to the Golden State since taking office, this week stopping in Los Angeles and Rancho Mirage.

During his visit to Bakersfield, he signed a record of decision in water allocation rules that Republican lawmakers and farm and water agencies say will allow for more flexibility in water deliveries.

But fishing and tribal groups said the new environmental rules would hurt salmon and other endangered species.

"The Trump salmon extinction plan would end the current legal requirement to return salmon to our river, set the stage for the raising of Shasta Dam, which would flood more of our tribe’s sacred sites, give the federal Bureau of Reclamation permission to kill off our salmon below Shasta Dam, and allow the Bureau to kill even more salmon in the Delta," Caleen Sisk, chief and spiritual leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe in Shasta County, said in a statement.

The Winnemem have long been advocates for the winter-run chinook salmon that spawn in the Sacramento River as it runs through the Redding area.

Before Shasta and Keswick dams were built, the winter-run salmon spawned upstream of Lake Shasta in the McCloud River, the ancestral home of the Winnemem. And the endangered winter-run numbers have plummeted over the past 20 years.

After an initial study by federal scientists found the rule changes would harm salmon and whales, the Trump Administration ordered a new round of review, the Associated Press reported.

Paul Souza, Pacific Southwest director for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the overall effort "ensured the highest quality" of evaluation of the rule changes.

"We strongly disagree that the proposal will reduce protections for endangered species," Souza said.


Related: Effort to protect Shasta County plant grows into one more Shasta Dam controversy

Beyond operational changes in the federal Central Valley Project water system, the administration's changes allow for more habitat restoration, upgrades in fish hatcheries and the water system itself, monitoring of species and other improvements, Souza said.

Congressman Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, said the rule changes signed by Trump on Wednesday would benefit the North State, farmers, cities and towns and wildlife refuges.

"For too long California water has been utterly wasted by sending vast quantities of it out to the ocean for no environmental benefit or for human use," LaMalfa said. "Today’s Record of Decision begins to change that policy failure that has harmed families, farms, workers, and our economy across the state.”

The record of decision also was endorsed by the California Farm Bureau Federation.

“The federal agencies have taken a holistic look at the California water system and offered an alternative that promises to improve the health of the environment without devastating people whose communities and livelihoods depend on reliable water supplies," Farm Bureau President Jamie Johansson said.

“We should embrace this new approach and give it a chance to succeed,” he said. “We know all too well that the policies of the past 25-plus years haven’t worked.”

While agricultural interests hailed the new environmental rules, fishing groups spoke out against them and urged Gov. Gavin Newsom to stop them from taking effect.

“Months ago, Governor Newsom pledged to fight against the federal plan to suck our rivers dry and irrigate poison-laced deserts in the San Joaquin Valley,” Noah Oppenheim, executive director of Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations said in a statement. 

© Christian Monterrosa, AP California Gov. Gavin Newsom

“The Governor must not allow his agencies to lock arms with the Trump Administration and join the race to the bottom on water policy,” Oppenheim said.

Conservation groups also worry about the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation issuing a permanent water contract to the Fresno-based Westlands Water District, the nation's largest irrigation water district

Shasta Dam raising project runs into legal, congressional roadblocks

The bureau is under the Interior Department, led by Secretary David Bernhardt, who was a lobbyist for Westlands through 2016.

Congress in 2016 approved legislation allowing California water agencies to pay to make their federal water contracts permanent. Westlands has indicated it is interested in doing just that.

Related: Trump rewards San Joaquin Valley farmers with more water, despite protests from fishermen

Conservation groups and some Northern California water agencies fear Westlands' permanent contract — and political power — will help it claim a bigger share of water when drought and over-demand reduce supplies, Patricia Schifferle, an California water-law expert and activist, told the AP.

In December, Newsom's administration said it planned to sue the Trump Administration over its proposed new rules, saying they do not do enough to protect endangered species.

That lawsuit still has not been filed. Wade Crowfoot, secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency, said state officials are still negotiating with the Trump Administration about whether they would change the proposed rules to address the state's environmental concerns.

"From our perspective, if we can resolve our concerns and ensure adequate protection of these endangered species, then we think it would be important to do so and we could avoid probably years of litigation," Crowfoot said.

Shasta Dam puts on a display


Damon Arthur is the Record Searchlight’s resources and environment reporter. He is among the first on the scene at breaking news incidents, reporting real time on Twitter at @damonarthur_RS. Damon is part of a dedicated team of journalists who investigate wrongdoing and find the unheard voices to tell the stories of the North State. He welcomes story tips at 530-225-8226 and damon.arthur@redding.com. Help local journalism thrive by subscribing today!

This article originally appeared on Redding: Trump water plan blasted by Northern California tribe

Firefighters union responds to Toledo councilman's post on response times


Michael Bratton

TOLEDO, Ohio (WTVG) - The message is big and bold, and it's all being directed at Toledo City Councilman Larry Sykes. 

© Provided by Toledo WTVG

"He was out of order, uninformed and very irresponsible," Toledo Firefighters Local 92 president Dan Desmond said of Sykes.


Desmond put the phrase, which reads, "Confused? This is not a fire station either," on the marquee outside his downtown offices on Tuesday after fallout from a Facebook post by Skyes.

In the post, Sykes wrote out concerns about firefighters response time to a woman in a wheelchair who collapsed outside Fire Station 1 last Thursday. Despite signage, the building serves only as administrative space. It's something Desmond says Sykes should have known.

"Very much so in this specific case, councilman Sykes should have done his due diligence," Desmond said. "It doesn't take long — a phone call — 'Hey, what's going on?'"

Despite having no assigned crews, administrators from Station 1 still helped while nearby Station 3 responded three minutes later.

“Looking at this case and looking at the times, it was a good run," Pvt. Sterling Rahe with Toledo Fire and Rescue said.

Sykes attended council's Committee of the Whole meeting Tuesday but left early. 13abc then tried to talk with him outside of Government Center, but he said he was busy.

The councilman released a statement instead that reads in part: "After feedback from our firefighters and community members, I learned that the tone of the post implied that our firefighters do not respond to calls for service in a timely manner. That was not my intent. I am appreciative of their service and will be mindful of the tone of my post to ensure the message does not convey otherwise."

Meanwhile, at Local 92, Desmond says the apology is well deserved. When it comes to signage at Station 1, he says keeping it as is is just fine.

“Leave it up, take it down, it doesn’t make any response time any better," Desmond said. "It doesn’t help that patient that’s lying on the sidewalk.”

TO EXPOSE SEXISM AT UBER, SUSAN FOWLER BLEW UP HER LIFE

The risks and rewards of blowing the whistle at Uber

By Elizabeth Lopatto@mslopatto Feb 19, 2020


SusanSusan Fowler wrote her last real line of code at Uber. It’s not that she hasn’t tried since she left the company in 2016; there was a Coursera course she’d tried to take, just to learn something new. It’s just that she got so anxious she couldn’t even finish a simple program.

Do you miss it? Coding?

“I don’t miss it because I associate it with so many of my negative experiences,” Fowler says. She read Gretchen Carlson’s book, Be Fierce: Stop Harassment and Take Your Power Back, and one thing stuck out to her: women who speak up about harassment in a profession never work in that profession again.

In her case, it’s also true. Fowler is no longer a software engineer.
“I DO LIVE MY LIFE A LOT DIFFERENTLY NOW. I’M ALWAYS LOOKING OVER MY SHOULDER.”

We are sitting at an amusingly named diner-type location in the Bay Area. I will not be more specific, as Fowler has been stalked by private detectives and others in the aftermath of her extremely viral blog post about sexual harassment at Uber. In fact, she would only meet me if I promised not to reveal where.

“I do live my life a lot differently now,” she says. “I’m always looking over my shoulder.”

It is two weeks before her memoir, Whistleblower, will go on sale. In addition to her regular jitters, Fowler now has pre-publication jitters. Though you wouldn’t know it to look at her. She sits very still, with excellent posture, in a black leather jacket, a gray boatneck top, and jeans. She doesn’t appear to be wearing makeup; her hair looks like it’s air-dried. She looks, in other words, like an ordinary upper-middle-class woman in her late 20s who happens to be on her lunch break. She is, in fact, on her lunch break.

YouYou know who this ordinary woman is because she did something extraordinary. In February 2017, Fowler wrote a 2,900-word blog post about the sexism she encountered while working at Uber. When she published it to her personal site, she wasn’t expecting the headlines it generated half an hour later. She never expected that it would lead to Travis Kalanick, the company’s brash CEO and founder, being forced out of his job.
Susan Fowler’s memoir ‘Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber’

She didn’t just detail sexual harassment — though, her first day, she was fending off a brazen sexual advance from her direct supervisor. In Whistleblower, Fowler writes that she started to feel sick to her stomach when she realized what was happening. But it was unmistakable. “I felt a wave of relief wash over me when I remembered that I worked at a large company, one with a sizable human resources department,” she writes.

If you’re one of the 6 million people who read Fowler’s blog post in the weeks after it was published, you already know how this goes: Fowler was told her boss was a “high performer.” And besides, this was his first offense. It wasn’t until later, when Fowler befriended other female engineers, that she discovered she’d been lied to. Several other women had run-ins with the same man, and all had been told by HR that it was his first offense. “It’s the Uber playbook,” she says. “I always thought, There’s got to be a script, somewhere, right?”

She encountered that over and over, in a Kafkaesque battle with Uber’s human resources department. To read these incidents one by one is to marvel at Fowler’s persistence. At one point, she wondered if it was possible to report HR to HR. She wanted the system to work. She brought her complaints to Thuan Pham, who was — and still is — Uber’s chief technology officer. Pham did nothing, Fowler writes. In fact, he did nothing on several occasions when women, including Fowler, complained about the sexist environment.
“I WASN’T USED TO PEOPLE IN AUTHORITY NOT STANDING UP FOR ME.”

It’s hard not to feel, reading her account at book length, that she kept going because she was convinced someone, somewhere, cared about what was happening to her. Having been homeschooled for most of her childhood in Arizona, the main authority figures Fowler encountered growing up were her parents. “I wasn’t used to people in authority not standing up for me,” she tells me, “and not keeping their word.”

Sexual harassment is often the tip of the iceberg for other kinds of labor violations and misconduct, Fowler says. The cultural problems within Uber started at the top: Kalanick and Pham liked watching their employees battle for status. Mike Isaac’s Super Pumped, a book about Uber, details the ways that rulebreaking and lawbreaking were the norm at the startup under Kalanick.

Uber wore Fowler down. It wasn’t the first time she’d had run-ins with sexual harassment. That started much earlier when she was a student at the University of Pennsylvania and couldn’t get the administration to take her seriously about a classmate who was threatening to kill himself if she didn’t return his affections.

“I LEARNED MORE ABOUT HOW TO DEAL WITH SEXUAL HARASSMENT OR MISTREATMENT AT PENN THAN I LEARNED ABOUT PHYSICS OR PHILOSOPHY.”

When she brought her problems to the school, she was given the runaround by the other student’s adviser, the chair of the physics department, and Penn’s administration staff. Fowler also believes that a graduate degree in philosophy was denied her as a result. This derailed her initial career interest, becoming a physicist, as well as her backup career interest, becoming a philosophy professor. She’d gone into engineering after graduation because she knew how to code. She’d never really meant to be a software engineer in the first place. But that initial encounter was where Fowler learned lessons she’d later use at Uber: how to document mistreatment. “I always kind of joke to myself that I learned more about how to deal with sexual harassment or mistreatment at Penn than I learned about physics or philosophy,” she tells me.

Fowler’s first two jobs in the tech industry were at smaller companies that had no HR departments to do battle with. At her first job, at financial data company Plaid, she discovered that her male colleagues, who worked fewer hours than her, still made $50,000 more than she did. At her next job, PubNub, which made infrastructure for notifications, she had a boss who told her that any man she dated would secretly also have sex with prostitutes and that all women were the same and just wanted to leech money off men. When he told her that PubNub had installed hardware that would allow the company to read employees’ texts and that he was looking forward to reading the intimate texts she might send to someone she was dating, she took an interview with Uber. Perhaps the solution was to work at a place big enough to have a real HR department.
“I WAS TURNING INTO A TERRIFIED, DEFENSIVE, PANICKED PERSON.”

About six months in, Uber’s internal culture began to seriously affect Fowler’s well-being. She wasn’t sleeping much. She was anxious, getting into fights with her boyfriend and mother. She started having panic attacks. “I was so used to being reprimanded in my meetings at work that I was turning into a terrified, defensive, panicked person,” she writes. She wasn’t alone, either; the engineers who’d been employed by Uber the longest “all seemed to have suicidal thoughts.” Fowler discovered she was becoming someone she didn’t like. And so she left Uber — and engineering altogether.

WhistleblowersWhistleblowers are an oddity. The decision to make wrongdoing public is, in some ways, about sacrificing one’s loyalty — to an institution, to an employer, to individuals — for the sake of one’s sense of fairness. People who are willing to do this are rare, not least because there are serious consequences for it. By taking action, certain parts of the whistleblower’s social identity are obliterated.

Fowler told me, in an email after we met, that she’s heard herself identified as “‘a #MeToo’ girl.” She’s been told that the only thing anyone is interested in hearing about from her is sexual harassment. To some degree, her memoir is about staking out other kinds of identity: we see her as a member of her family and falling in love with her husband. Indeed, Fowler’s now-infamous experiences at Uber don’t begin until midway through the book, a kind of structural rebellion against the collapse of her identity.
“BASED ON EVERYTHING I KNEW, SHARING MY STORY WITH THE WORLD WOULD LIKELY RUIN MY LIFE.”

Fowler risked her own status, her livelihood, her safety, and her own privacy. This is a tremendous assumption of danger to make sure the truth is told publicly. “Based on everything I knew, sharing my story with the world would likely ruin my life,” Fowler writes in her book.

She spent days in a state of profound anxiety, knowing that not saying anything would be wrong but unable to compose the post. “I remember so many days when it would be sitting there, and it would be weighing on me. And I would say, ‘Okay, I’m not going to write it today. I’m going to write it tomorrow,’” Fowler says. “And I’d tell myself this. Just one more day.”


The book that pushed her into the blog post was Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, about surviving Nazi concentration camps. “I’m reading this, and I’m thinking, Would I actually be a good person if I was in that situation?” she says. “When we’re in these difficult situations, it’s our character that shows. I had just gone through this, and how dare I walk away and wash my hands of that whole situation.”
“HOW DARE I WALK AWAY AND WASH MY HANDS OF THAT WHOLE SITUATION.”

She sat down to compose and was very careful not to betray any emotion; she was a woman, after all, and her emotions could be used to discredit her. No names, only formal titles. And not a single sentence could be written without evidence. Its publication was months before the #MeToo movement when powerful men were accused of sexual misconduct, and Fowler’s work is different. Most #MeToo stories involved multiple women whose accounts were similar enough for a reporter to establish a pattern. And nearly all #MeToo stories focused closely on specific men, not the entirety of the system that protected them.

Fowler, on the other hand, presented Uber. Not one sexist manager. Not two. But all of them — and the HR system that shielded them. When Fowler wrote it, she didn’t imagine she would change much. She thought, maybe, someone else would be able to use it in a lawsuit. “I still have no idea what happened,” she says.

Uber was already struggling with a reputation that it was unsafe for female passengers; several lawsuits had been filed, and there had already been several rounds of bad press. Kalanick had already done an interview with GQ in 2014 where he said he had women on demand; “We call that Boob-er.” By the time Fowler wrote her post, the misogyny wasn’t a secret. Within 30 minutes, reporters had already picked up the post. It confirmed that Uber’s problems with women were so bad as to be illegal. Fowler’s phone was rendered useless under the weight of the incoming text messages, phone calls, and messages on social media. (Her Gmail and Twitter apps failed first.)
“YOU DON’T WANT YOUR NAME TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH SEXUAL HARASSMENT.”

Fowler heard from the CEO of Stripe, her employer at the time, as well as her direct manager who commended her bravery. The head of communications at Fowler’s new employer was less supportive: “You don’t want your name to be associated with sexual harassment,” she told Fowler.

To try to stop the bleeding, Kalanick opened an investigation into Uber’s culture, but it was already too late. Days after Fowler’s blog post, Mike Isaac published an investigation in The New York Times detailing a “Hobbesian” culture, essentially corroborating Fowler’s complaints about a toxic environment. In March 2017, just a month after Fowler’s blog post, Isaac published a story about “Project Greyball,” which had been created specifically to circumvent authorities that might limit the company.

Fowler’s book opens with her sitting down with former US attorney general Eric Holder, one of the principals of the investigation. But according to Whistleblower, it was not the only investigation that was ongoing at Uber. There was one by Holder, another by law firm Perkins Coie, and a third by Uber’s internal lawyers, which Fowler writes was meant to “destroy evidence and scare and intimidate employees.”
WHEN FOWLER WAS YOUNGER, SHE HAD THE IDEA THAT IF SHE DID THE RIGHT THING, EVERYTHING WOULD WORK OUT

When Fowler was younger, she had the idea — maybe, she says, she got it from the movies — that if she did the right thing, everything would work out. Everything would fall into place; the wrongs would be righted. That is not what happened after the blog post. What happened was that someone also began investigating Fowler.

Besides reporters, someone began contacting friends and family members of Fowler’s, asking for personal information. One woman called Fowler, claiming to be a PI working on a case against Uber; when Fowler got off the phone, she discovered the firm the woman worked for pretty much exclusively helped companies discredit people who’d been sexually harassed or assaulted. Someone was trying to hack Fowler’s social media accounts — and, in the case of her Facebook account, did so successfully several times. Her sister’s Facebook account was also compromised.


And there were fewer people Fowler felt she could talk to about this because her conversations, increasingly, were being leaked to reporters. Plus, someone was engaging in a smear campaign. A reporter contacted Fowler saying a source had told them that she had been paid off by Lyft. (This is not true.) When that rumor didn’t stick, other noxious ones circulated: she’d lied about being sexually harassed; Uber execs had orgies and women, including Fowler, joined them; Fowler was such a terrible writer that her husband had written the post for her.
“THERE ARE TIMES I WISH I HAD NOT DONE IT, BECAUSE OF HOW TERRIBLE IT WAS.”

Then someone started following her. “I was followed and stalked by private investigators up until the writing of this book,” she writes. A former Uber employee, Morgan Richardson, claimed a private investigator for the company had illegally broken into her home, and Fowler was afraid that might happen to her, too. Fowler’s old friends from Uber faded out of her life. One person said that the company had found out she was talking to Fowler, despite the use of encrypted messaging that self-destructed, and that she was afraid of retaliation.

“There are times I wish I had not done it because of how terrible it was,” Fowler says. “But the thing I keep telling myself is that you do the right thing no matter what. Like, yes, it sucks. Yes, it’s terrible. But would I go back and do it again? Absolutely.”

Ultimately, an abridged version of the Holder investigation was released. (The full version has never been made available.) The first recommendation at the top of the list was “Review and Reallocate the Responsibilities of Travis Kalanick.” A day after the investigation’s recommendations were released, Kalanick went on indefinite leave; seven days later, he resigned.

Much has been made of Kalanick’s determination, how hard he drove himself and others, and how forceful he was. In talking to Fowler, I didn’t get the sense that she was a particularly conflict-prone person. Rather, she went out of her way to make me feel comfortable and put me at ease. But throughout the book, several phrases recur: “I was determined,” “I decided,” “I made up my mind.” It is easier to recognize determination in someone like Kalanick. But ultimately, he was ejected from his own company by someone as strong-willed as he was. It is possible to imagine a world in which Fowler would have been an ideal Uber employee.

TheThe harassment did eventually tail off, though Fowler appears to be steeling herself for it to start up again. Fowler asked Dara Khosrowshahi, Kalanick’s replacement as CEO, if there were still investigators following her; he said he’d “killed all that crap.” (“Uber’s use of private investigators, he said, was ‘just insane,’” Fowler writes of her conversation with Khosrowshahi. “It was ‘unreal what was going on.’”)
“THE WAY THAT PEOPLE TREAT THEIR EMPLOYEES IS ALSO HOW THEY VIEW THE REST OF THE WORLD.”

When I ask if there have been real changes to Silicon Valley’s larger culture since her blog post and the #MeToo revelations that followed, she is quiet for a moment, choosing her words. Not all companies are Uber, she tells me. Uber is the obvious bad example of what happens when certain things that are entrenched in Silicon Valley culture go all the way. What drove it to be so harmful was an extreme version of the disruptor mentality — a total lack of accountability and a sense that the laws simply didn’t apply. “I think that attitude has changed a little bit [in Silicon Valley],” she says. “A big part of it is the renewed scrutiny that has come toward the technology companies.”

She hopes it keeps getting better, particularly as journalists do their best to shine a light on these companies, their values, and how they treat their employees. “If I learned anything from working at Uber, it’s that the way that people treat their employees is also how they view the rest of the world,” she says. At Uber, in particular, the contempt with which the employees were treated mirrored the contempt with which the customers were treated.

But Fowler is careful to say that she no longer works in tech. Her view is different now. I ask if Silicon Valley needs a reckoning, if there’s something the technology industry needs to do to come to terms with what it actually is. “I haven’t really thought about that,” Fowler says. Because she doesn’t work in tech anymore, it’s hard for her to gauge how things still need to change. Her last job as an engineer was at Uber, and she left in 2016. Four years is a long time in the tech world, after all.

Don’t feel too bad for Fowler. She feels lucky. Though she’s been prevented by the institutional forces that protect sexual harassers from her first choice of career (physics), her second choice (philosophy), and her third choice (software engineering), she likes journalism and speaks glowingly of her job as an editor at The New York Times. “I’m in the right place,” she says. “I’m exactly where I need to be right now.” She’s working on a big project. It is about privacy.