Rania Khalek Dispatches from the Underclass

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Less than a week into August, at least 46 people have been shot across Chicago, six fatally. That’s an average of nearly eight shootings per day. What’s most shocking (in the least surprising way) is how little attention these shootings garner in the mainstream press. It’s the same routine every year: Only in the aftermath […]

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To all you recreational drug users and dealers out there, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is listening. Well actually, it’s the NSA that’s listening and watching. But Reuters has uncovered a secret DEA unit that uses the information collected by NSA surveillance programs to launch criminal investigations of Americans—primarily drug dealers who pose no […]

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For nearly a week mainstream news outlets have been saturated with fear mongering over the Obama administration’s warning about a looming threat from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the terrorist group’s Yemeni branch. Lawmakers were told the  threat was discovered thanks to controversial NSA surveillance programs. Coincidence?

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Roy Middleton, a 60-year-old African American man living in Florida, was racially profiled twice on Saturday night and was almost killed because of it. Middleton was in his  driveway at 2:45 a.m. searching for a loose cigarette in his mother’s car when he was shot in the leg by  Escambia County sheriff’s deputes. Why? Because […]

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Marshall Coulter, 14, is in critical condition after being shot in the head on Friday by Merritt Landry, 33, a white homeowner and buildings inspector for the Historic District Landmarks Commission who believed Coulter was trying to break into his home in Marigny. But according to police, Coulter was unarmed and did not pose a threat to […]

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On the afternoon of Sunday, July 21, 30-year-old  Lamont Earl Dukes and his friend, both African American males, were stopped at a Walgreens pharmacy by a St. Louis police officer conducting a “pedestrian check”, a euphemism for stopping people of color in “high-crime neighborhoods” without probable cause.

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Over 100 Guantanamo prisoners have been on hunger strike since February to protest indefinite detention without charge trial at the hands of the U.S. government. At least 40 hunger strikers are being force-fed to prevent death, a procedure human rights organizations say amounts to torture. In case you had any doubts about the validity of […]

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From 2006 to 2010, doctors contracted by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation performed tubal litigation (surgical sterilization) on 150 pregnant inmates without proper approval, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting. State documents reveal that California paid doctors $147,460 from 1997 to 2010 to perform the procedure, meaning at least 100 more women were sterilized […]

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On June 10, 2013, 30-year-old Iraq War veteran Daniel Somers killed himself after writing a powerful letter to his family explaining his reasons for doing so. “My mind is a wasteland filled with visions of incredible horror, unceasing depression, and crippling anxiety, even with all of the medications the doctors dare give,” reads the letter, […]

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A 10-year-old Yemeni boy named Abdulaziz was killed on June 10, reports McClatchy. And it was the U.S. government that killed him. Perhaps he should have known better than to be the younger brother of  al Qaeda chief Saleh Hassan Huraydan, the target of the drone strike. At least that’s what President Obama’s former press secretary turned MSNBC […]

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