Mediaboss Marketing

If youve ever wondered how seriously state legislators value your constitutional right to open government, you can thank the Florida Society of News Editors for bringing it out in the sunshine.

The problem is worse than we thought.

The FSNE unveiled its first Sunshine scorecard last week, grading all 160 legislators against their votes on public record bills that Floridas Amendment Foundation either supported or opposed.

Not a single state lawmaker received an A. Only nine had a B. There were 71 Cs which is considered average. And half of the legislators received a subpar grade, with 77 Ds and three Fs.

Florida might have the nations most robust open government laws, but theyre clearly under assault by our lawmakers. The public should be outraged, especially after a legislative session in which much of our budget and policy was decided behind closed doors.

For decades, Florida has been the countrys shining example of how to keep politicians honest. Were one of the few states that guarantee open government in the state constitution. And Florida takes it a step further, requiring the Legislature to pass bills for exemptions. In theory, that should keep lawmakers from gutting the Sunshine Law.

But legislators have continued pecking away at openness.

Floridas Sunshine Law now has nearly 1,200 exemptions. Under the guise of privacy issues, state officials have hid details about children killed in foster care, seniors killed in nursing homes, and prisoners killed while locked up.

Lawmakers have hidden from the public how much taxpayer money is given to companies for incentives and how much vendors are paid by contract.

This year, the Legislature tried to put a giant dagger in the Sunshine Law by allowing two or more elected officials from the same governmental body to speak about official business privately away from the public. More than half of the Florida House voted for it, but state law fortunately requires two-thirds of the Legislature to vote for Sunshine Law exemptions. That one didnt pass, but plenty supported for it, including eight lawmakers from Broward and Palm Beach counties.

If that wasnt enough of an eye opener, the Sunshine scorecard makes it clear that not enough politicians care about your right to open government.

Im getting some really interesting responses (to the scorecard), Barbara Petersen, president of Floridas First Amendment Foundation, told the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board. People are asking when are you going to score the courts? People are paying attention to it and the legislators seem to be paying attention to it as well.

Neither party fared well on the scorecard but Republicans especially struggled the most common grade for Democrats was a C-minus while more of the GOP scored a D-plus.

No South Florida Republican scored higher than a C and most were D-plus or lower. While four Broward and Palm Beach County Democrats scored B-minus or B-plus, many had Ds.

Its unacceptable. Florida needs to return to its roots as a state that prides itself on open government.

Petersen admits the scoring system isnt perfect. No one received an A because a single bill that was opposed by the First Amendment Foundation passed unanimously. That bill shielded the arrest records of people who are found innocent in court. The First Amendment Foundation was right to oppose it.

If a person is accused of sexual assault in four counties, but not convicted, it shows a pattern of criminal behavior, Petersen said earlier this year.

It also wipes away the arrest records of public figures like Casey Anthony and George Zimmerman who were exonerated in court but remain suspicious in the public eye.

Expect changes to next years scorecard to give credit to lawmakers who helped improve bills the First Amendment Foundation initially opposed.

This had never been done before and of course there are some little kinks that need to be worked out, Petersen said.

The Sunshine scorecard will only improve, and were fortunate to have a transparent tool that keeps politicians honest. Now its on them to prove they care about your right to an open government.

Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Rosemary OHara, Andrew Abramson, Elana Simms, Gary Stein and Editor-in-Chief Howard Saltz.

View post:
Florida lawmakers failing open government | Editorial - Sun Sentinel

NewsBusters (press release) (blog)

'The Carmichael Show' Blames Republicans for Mass Shooting, Mocks Police NewsBusters (press release) (blog) Nekeisha: We are here with Officer G. Zimmerman. Police Officer: I-it's Greg. There's no relation. It's, it's a common last name. Nekeisha: We're here with George Zimmerman's brother, Greg. Maxine: Whoa, what's going on in here? Do we have to have our ... and more »

Visit link:
'The Carmichael Show' Blames Republicans for Mass Shooting, Mocks Police - NewsBusters (press release) (blog)

We spoke to a UNF expert about the developments between social media and the interactions between police and the public.

Juliette Dryer, WTLV 6:36 PM. EDT June 27, 2017

Devonte Shipman recorded the encounter and posted it on Facebook (PHOTO: Devonte Shipman)

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - The viral Facebook video showing a JSO officer stopping a young man for jaywalking reached nearly 500,000 views as of Tuesday evening. The video was uploaded two months after a video surfaced of a different JSO officer appearing to spit on a man.

In the wake of these videos, and others of police encounters nationwide, First Coast News looked into the impact social media has had on relations between police and the communities they serve.

It is the new norm, saidJeffriAnne Wilder, Ph.D. of encounters with police being recorded and uploaded to social media. Wilder is an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Florida and the founding director of UNFs Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnic Relations.

Wilder said she believed these types of encounters with police are nothing new, rather people now have the ability to share them with a mass audience.

I think everyday people are continuing to do this in order to hold people accountable and to make sure theres an accurate record and reflection of whats really happening, Wilder said.

Wilder said the social media movement started after the acquittal of George Zimmerman as a way for people to share their injustices.

These kinds of videos just show how important it is to address these issues that happen at the local level, also at the federal and state level, she said.

Wilder also warned people to have all the facts before rushing to judgment.

We live in a sort of instantaneous, in-the-moment type of society where we make snap judgments on things without having all of the facts, she said. We also need to make sure that were getting the balanced perspective and the full picture of whats happening.

Wilder cautioned the presence of a camera could escalate the situation. First Coast News crime analyst Mark Baughman agreed.

Someone feels like they have to record it, and the officer is wondering why do you have to record it, Baughman said. So theres a mind game between the two of them.

Baughman has 35 years of law enforcement experience at the local and federal level. He said the presence of a camera could change the way an officer acts, along with the way the person behind the camera acts.

Antagonizing him, trying to goad the officer into some type of verbal exchange where they get cursed at or yelled at or get the officer to do something inappropriate, Baughman said.

Live streaming is a relatively recent feature on social media. The shooting of Philando Castile last year gained widespread attention when his girlfriend livestreamed the aftermath on Facebook.

In the Jacksonville jaywalking video, one officer on scene appeared to ask one of the men whether he was live streaming.

It may draw more of an audience if people see it live and think oh, Im right around the corner from there Im gonna go over that way. When they probably shouldnt be involved in it, Baughman said.

2017 WTLV-TV

More here:
Helping or hindering? Social media's impact on police and community relations - First Coast News

Two years ago this week, a young woman did something nearly unthinkable: Brittany Bree Newsome approached the South Carolina statehouse, scaled a 30-foot flagpole, and took down the Confederate flag.

You come against me with hatred, oppression, and violence, Newsome shouted with the flag in her hand. I come against you in the name of God. This flag comes down today.

Newsomes move, for many, was nothing short of cathartic. Weeks before, white supremacist Dylann Roof gunned down nine parishioners and injured three more during Bible study at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The day before Newsome climbed the flagpole, former President Barack Obama gave a moving eulogy for South Carolina state senator Rev. Clementa Pinckney, one of the shootings victims, in which he called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds, describing it as a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation.

Newsomes move caused an uproar but soon after, then-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley signed a bill removing the flag from the Statehouse grounds permanently. This year, New Orleans has removed several Confederate monuments from across the city, but local groups are calling for more.

Only a few years ago, Newsome says she would have been considered a hashtag activist. She worked as an artist in residence at Saatchi & Saatchi ad agency in New York, and was focused on art and filmmaking. Then the George Zimmerman verdict came, acquitting him of murdering Florida teenager Trayvon Martin. She said that verdict coupled with the Supreme Courts 2013 ruling on voting rights was a wake-up call. She went from tweeting to protesting and marching. Today Newsome says she is an artist and an activist who wants to use her background in communications to give voice to social justice issues.

Looking back on the anniversary of her bold act, Newsome reflects on the days leading up to the protest, and what racial activism looks like in the Trump era.

Why did you feel the flag needed to be taken down?

On one hand there is a kind of general history that's represented by the Confederate flag and then it resonated for me in a personal way. My ancestors were enslaved in South Carolina. I know their names. This is not something that's abstract for me in any kind of way. I grew up with my grandmother who was raised in Greenville, who told me about her experiences seeing the Ku Klux Klan beat her neighbor and things like that. The massacre in Charleston brought a refocus on the flag.

Why did you choose that day? Did President Obamas call for the removal of the flag encourage you to do it or had you decided before then that you would take it down?

We [Charlotte activists] actually decided before. The Tuesday before [I scaled the pole] we had a meeting. There were about 10 to 12 of us activists who were on the ground that day involved in the action who, prior to the massacre happening in Charleston, had had previous conversations about how we would like to take the flag down in South Carolina, but it wasn't a concrete plan. It was just something as people who had grown up in the Carolinas this was just something that has always been an issue.

I was riding down to Columbia to take the flag down when I was listening to [President Obamas] eulogy and it only confirmed for me that we were doing the right thing very much in the spirit of the history of civil disobedience and the history of the civil rights movement in this country. We were doing it very much with that historical awareness. This flag was raised in 1961 really as a statement against the civil rights movement that was going on at the time. Then here we were with a kind of new modern civil rights movement going on and here we are, this attack on a black leader in a church.

How did you prepare for that day?

When we came together that Tuesday one of the people who had been in that conversation brought some other activists together who had a background in environmental activism, including a Greenpeace activist who had experience scaling trees. It was that Tuesday we had the meeting, when I agreed that I would do this. I asked everyone if I could just have a day. I didn't want to talk with anyone. I knew that this was not only very dangerous, I knew that this could be life altering either way. It was something I really couldn't talk to my family about. This was so secret what we were about to do so I took a day on Wednesday and then Thursday and Friday that was when I trained.

I worked with a Greenpeace activist and with James Tyson. He was the man who stood at the bottom of the pole when I scaled, kind of like the safety. He has a farm in South Charlotte, North Carolina, and he had a light post on his property, so we started on that but it was wider than we knew the actual flag pole would be. We tried lamp posts in a park a couple of times. We eventually did find a flagpole to practice on at a school. It really resembled what I would have to climb in South Carolina.

You said you took a day to yourself before training. What did you do? Did you meditate? Did you listen to gospel music? Were you thinking about your ancestors, or were you thinking about the enormity of the task at hand? Did you ever think, "Maybe I shouldn't do it, I want to back out?"

Everything that you mentioned, these were all things that were going through my mind. It was a mix of all of that because at the time that I agreed to do it I felt an overwhelming call. When we were in the house where they had the meeting, I stepped away to another room to really pray, to really read some scripture and pray even before I told them that I would volunteer to do that role. Then the next day, it was kind of like a wave of fear. I really thought about the enormity of it. I might have contacted one of the activists to talk about it again, and just to really make sure that I was very, very sure that this was what I wanted to do.

Upon reflecting on all of those things, I knew that I would regret it more if I had an opportunity to do this which I felt was very much the right thing to do and we had not done it. I honestly believe that the flag would still be up today had we not put that additional pressure on the state.

I read that you recited the Lord's Prayer and Psalm 27 when you were taking the flag down. Tell me about that.

I had no doubt about the decision that I had made at the time, but that didn't mean that I was oblivious to how dangerous it was and so it really did require faith on my part. I very much believe that God called me to scale the flagpole that day and I believe that God would bring me safely down. But faith is something that we practice, so even in that moment just praying and staying focused and calling out to God was very important.

How did it feel holding that flag in your hand?

The only word that can come to mind for me is triumph. It was triumphant at that point, and I recognized just how powerful the symbolism of it all was. There was the actuality of it and then there was the symbolism of it. I could just feel like at that moment I really did symbolize the struggle. Like it wasn't just Bree Newsome scaling the flagpole.

This was like the struggle of all these generations of black people to dismantle white supremacy. That's what it felt like and that's what I symbolized in that moment and I think that's part of why it resonated so much with everyone because there were so many people who wanted to do that. So many people thought that flag and South Carolina's refusal to lower the flag and so many people, I'm sure, were like, "Man, I wish I could just climb up there and just take it." In that moment as people were watching me it was like we were all there selectively doing that.

It just felt triumphant. Even if they raise the flag back up again as they did, it was part of, I think, what put that final pressure on them that needed to go ahead and lower it. To have this moment where we demonstrate this agency as black people and I think in the same way that it demonstrated power and agency for the Greensboro Four to go and sit down at the Woolworth's counter. "You're saying we can't sit here? We're going to sit here." You're saying we cant lower this flag? We are going to lower this flag today. It was just a feeling of triumph.

Ive heard you talk about this powerful image of a Black woman taking down the Confederate flag. Tell me about that.

There were other people who I think could have had the same courage, who believed as strongly. Everybody couldn't risk being arrested or everybody wasn't necessarily physically able to do it. That narrowed it down to about three of us. Of those three I was the only person of color. Of course at that point when we were looking at the situation I mean, we recognized like how powerful that is. Not just a visual of it, the visual image of the black woman scaling the pole, but of course as people learned who I was and I'm not just a symbol at that point.

I am a descendant of the people who for whom this flag represented enslavement. My ancestors were in South Carolina at the time when South Carolina seceded from the Union to fight this war to keep them enslaved. For me it was just powerful to represent all of that, you know? I don't know any other way to put it and I just kind of remain humbled by it because it's like, yes, it's Bree Newsome scaling the flagpole but that moment was so much bigger than me. It really is. It represents so much more than me.

You were arrested and jailed. How long were you in jail for taking the flag down?

I want to say about seven hours. It was probably around 7 in the morning when they took us to jail. I probably got out somewhere around like 4 o'clock that afternoon.

What were your thoughts while you were in jail?

At first I thought we had accomplished the mission. The mission was to get this flag down. By the time we had been processed we'd already gotten word that the flag was back up and so at that point I was like, "Well, I don't know how much of an impact it will make that we took this flag down but we took the flag down.

In jail they had the TV on but they didn't have the news on so we didn't have any way to know what was going on. It really didn't occur to me how much of an impact it had had until word started trickling through the guard. One guard came and told us that Dwayne Wade had offered to pay our bail and that's when I was like, "Oh, wow.

I had injured myself when I was going over the fence. James was helping me over the fence and at one point one of the spokes went into my right hand and so they were treating that when I was at the jail. So I'm talking with the nurse and that's when she's telling me how much commotion is going on around what we did. That's how we were able to kind of find out that it really had made a big impact. It wasn't until we were able to get out of jail to really see everything that was going on.

What did your parents say?

My first interaction with my parents was after everything had calmed down so I kind of learned my parents initial reaction after the fact. I still feel bad to a certain extent just because of the stress that I put them through. Their first reaction was they thought that I had just gone down there by myself and that day had made the decision to scale the pole because I was actually supposed to be going to Columbia, Maryland, that weekend for my friend's bridal shower. I couldn't tell anybody because it was so secret what we were about to do.

It was shocking to everyone outside of the folks who knew what we were going to do to see me on TV. That's where they found out about it. It was probably a couple hours between my parents finding out about it and then them really being able to talk to me.

My sister was the first person I called. She was in Augusta, Georgia, so she was able to come to Columbia. When I talked to my mom about it after the fact, I think her first reaction and her greatest fear was what's going to happen to me in jail. She had this fear of like she didn't know where I was and, obviously, I mean, you know how contentious the issue is. Just in New Orleans here recently they've had the folks who were hired to remove the monuments have had their cars fire-bombed.

I remember my mother's words distinctly. She said, and this was when I was on the phone with her at the jail, "We love you, we support you, we just don't want another martyr." Again, this is just within a couple weeks of this massacre at Charleston. We just had a civil rights leader assassinated.

It's two years later. What do you remember most about that day?

I would have to say probably just the unique view that I had of being up on the pole and looking down at the police officers and just that moment. I just remember looking out at the building when I was holding the flag, you know? Just that feeling of unhooking the flag and holding it in my hand. That's probably maybe the most visceral kind of memory that I had.

We were parked around the corner before we drove up and we had a couple folks out there who were jogging or pretending to be joggers so they could give us the heads up for when the police stepped away from the monument. We were sitting there in the back and I remember saying, "Like, wow, we're about to make history." We knew that. We knew it to a certain extent but it still. ... History is still something that it's like, it's easier to understand in retrospect, you know?

Recently, Confederate monuments have been removed in New Orleans and the names of Confederate soldiers and others are being taken off schools and government buildings in Southern states like Virginia. What are your thoughts on that?

I think its great, of course. Its necessary and has to happen. Its a sign of progress that cities and schools are removing these monuments, but there has to be education around it. We cant think just because we removed these things then the problem is solved. We have to have an honest conversation about history and the history of slavery. Removing the flag in South Carolina was one thing, but racism exists in South Carolina as policy and social practice. We have to look at policy and how we are interacting with each other if we are going to address racism.

Two years after you felt the flag in your hand, what are your thoughts on race relations today in the Trump era?

I don't know. I see good things. I see bad things, right? I mean, Donald Trumps whole rise to political power has been a racist reaction to Barack Obama. Whether we talk about it or not, that's really what it represents. At the same time I see a lot of pushback. They are trying to roll out this agenda but there has been greater pushback to the agenda than I think that they were expecting, and the fact that the majority of Americans did not vote for him, that also kind of gives me hope.

I think we're still in the thick of it. We still [have] a long ways to go. It's by no means over and I would really argue that I think a lot of the movement that happened since the Trayvon Martin case to now, is in many ways just the beginning.

I tell folks Emmett Till happened in 1955. The Voting Rights Act didn't get passed until 1965. We got to remember, we still got to push. When the Confederate flag came down people were like, "Oh, man. We won." It's this victory and it feels really good in that moment. It is a victory, but we still got a lot more battles to fight. We just got to pace ourselves.

Lottie Joiner is a Washington, DC-based freelance writer who covers race, social justice, civil rights, and culture. She has written for the Washington Post, USA Today, the Daily Beast, Time.com, TheAtlantic.com and Essence magazine.

Read the original:
Bree Newsome reflects on taking down South Carolina's Confederate flag 2 years ago - Vox

In 2013, the movement began with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media, following with acquittal of George Zimmerman in the fatal shooting of African-American teenager Trayvon Martin. The cause has been taken up by a number of celebrities, including Beyonces sister Solange.

The OED has a strict criterion for new words, which includes several independent examples of the word being used, and also evidence that the word has been in use for a reasonable amount of time.

The exact time-span and number of examples may vary: for instance, one word may be included on the evidence of only a few examples, spread out over a long period of time, while another may gather momentum very quickly, resulting in a wide range of evidence in a shorter space of time, a spokesman for the OED said.

We also look for the word to reach a level of general currency where it is unselfconsciously used with the expectation of being understood: that is, we look for examples of uses of a word that are not immediately followed by an explanation of its meaning for the benefit of the reader.

See the original post:
How woke are you? Take our quiz to find out as word is added to dictionary - Telegraph.co.uk