Preying on the Poor: For-Profit Probation Edition
By Sarah Solon for ACLU
Welcome to Alabama, the state of the never-ending seat belt ticket. Hali Wood is 17. She's applied to work at several grocery stores in her home town of Columbiana, but none are hiring. A few months back, cops ticketed Hali for not wearing a seat belt. The fine: $41. Hali has paid $41 and then some, but she's still hundreds of dollars in debt. Why? Because the court contracts with JCS, a for-profit probation company that forces Hali to choose between paying their exorbitant fees and going to jail.
Modern-Day Debtors’ Prison? Judges Push Back Against the South’s Privatization Wave
By Daniel Ross for AlterNet
Kathleen Hucks was almost a model probationer. In 2006 she was convicted of driving under the influence, possession of marijuana, and driving with a suspended license in Columbia County, Georgia. She successfully completed her probation and paid all of her court-issued fines.
Modern-Day Debtors’ Prison? Judges Push Back Against the South’s Privatization Wave
By Daniel Ross for AlterNet
Kathleen Hucks was almost a model probationer. In 2006 she was convicted of driving under the influence, possession of marijuana, and driving with a suspended license in Columbia County, Georgia. She successfully completed her probation and paid all of her court-issued fines.
How Did We Get Here? Tracing the Rise of Fox’s Right-Wing Media Empire
By Allegra Kirkland for AlterNet.
hink back to the heady days of July 2004. Presidential campaign season was in full swing, with John Kerry and John Edwards joining forces against the Bush ticket. The media obsession of the summer was Kerry’s uneven voting record, with new headlines emerging almost weekly even as George Bush quietly continued setting the county on fire. In the midst of this mayhem, director Robert Greenwald and his team at Brave New Films released Outfoxed, a documentary that exposed the concerted efforts of Fox News to promote a partisan Republican agenda through the guise of a traditional news service. It’s been 10 years since that seminal film was released. AlterNet caught up with Greenwald to chat about how American politics has evolved—or devolved—over the last decade.
LETTER: Watch film, join fight against Kochs
For The Register-Mail
Our screening of Brave New Films’ “Koch Brothers Exposed: 2014 Edition” Tuesday evening upstairs at the Galesburg Public Library, drew 21 people. That was more than I expected. I’m sure that none of them knew the full extent of how and how fast Charles and David Koch are taking us to a complete oligarchy. “Gasps of dismay” were heard during the screening.
Conscious Cinema: DIY Screening Series Shows Documentaries You Won't See Elsewhere in Long Beach
By Sarah Bennett for Long Beach Post
Everything seems to happen fortuitously for Leonard Baric, the Long Beach resident behind the long-running DIY film series Conscious Cinema. During election season 2004, just as he was beginning to ask questions about the growing war in Iraq, he happened to stumble across Cal State Long Beach professor Liz Philipose's weekly documentary screening that was aimed at dissuading people from voting for George Bush. As a liberal activist, Baric attended each one, absorbing knowledge on the social and political events of the time through a medium he had not previously considered.
Brooklyn College Defends Academic Freedom By Saying No To Koch Millions For Its Business School
By Steven Rosenfeld for AlterNet
Unlike an estimated 150 colleges and universities that have taken $56 million from the billionaire libertarian industrialist Koch brothers since the 1980s—and then integrated their extreme right-wing agenda into business classes while censoring other views—the New York City college keeps rejecting Koch cash, an aggrieved libertarian business school professor complained in a detailed report by InsideHigherEd.com.
The existential crisis of the liberal millionaire
By KENNETH P. VOGEL and TARINI PARTI for Politico
David Brock has a message for liberal millionaires: Don’t sweat being called hypocrites.
Brock, a former “right-wing hit-man”-turned-top-big-money-Democratic-operative, is part of a behind-the-scenes campaign to convince donors it’s OK to attack the Koch brothers for spending millions of dollars while doing the exact same thing for the left.
Los Angeles: Where Your Boss Is Mostly Likely to Steal Your Pay
By Jordan Melograna for the Huffington Post
At Brave New Films, much of our work focuses on the ways powerful people profit from exploiting non-powerful people. Whether it's private prison companiesprofiting from locking up poor people for non-violent offenses, or the world's billionaires buying governmental policies that benefit them at the expense of the working classes. Our newest video tackles wage theft -- the various ways that employers save a buck or two by stealing from employees.
Los Angeles: The Wage Theft Capitol of the U.S.
By Jordan Melograna For City Watch
ACTION REPORT-At Brave New Films, much of our work focuses on the ways powerful people profit from exploiting non-powerful people.
Whether it's private prison companies profiting from locking up poor people for non-violent offenses, or the world's billionaires buying governmental policies that benefit them at the expense of the working classes. Our newest video tackles wage theft -- the various ways that employers save a buck or two by stealing from employees.