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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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Recently the US city of New York, decided that BLM protestors that felt victimized by the police preventing from running amok, deserve 21500 USD (28267877.5 KRW) each.

Such a payout somewhat changes the calculus of participating in protests, peaceful or otherwise. Previously by joining a protest one showed willingness to sacrifice time and risk being temporarily detained.

But now the what the Hot Coffee Incident was in common perception notable for, harm suffered being greatly outweighed by compensation, has come true. Thus making protesting a net-gain, unless one views publicly supporting BLM to be so immoral, as there existing no sum high enough for which one would do it.

In related olds, DisruptJ6 protestors, despite alleging molestation going on for a longer period of time, and interfering with bodily autonomy in much more invasive ways, have yet to be given money.

And a week after the Jan 6 defendants sent their letter, this happened: EDIT: I misread the date; this was re an earlier complaint making the same claims.

In a case involving a Jan. 6 Capitol riot defendant, a federal judge held the District of Columbia's corrections director and jail warden in contempt of court Wednesday and asked the Justice Department to investigate whether inmates' civil rights are being abused.

.............

"It's clear to me the civil rights of the defendant were violated by the D.C. Department of Corrections," Lamberth said. "I don't know if it's because he's a January 6 defendant or not."

And shockingly, the Biden Justice Department found that the conditions their political opponents were being held in were perfectly fine.

... even as a long-term skeptic of journalism, I'm amazed how bad even the Associated Press is, given that this is all public info.

AFAICT, Worrell didn't have a broken wrist but a fifth metacarpal fracture according to the (iffy) doctor's notes or a "broken hand" by his lawyer's claims. Which is kinda a trivial thing, but come on. (and the bigger concern was about what this might predict for the minimally-treated cancer the same defendant was dealing with.)

More seriously, the US Marshall's inspection summary is here. It did not "found the building where 30 Jan. 6 defendants are being held to be sufficient". Indeed, the building's quality itself was very, very far from the top concerns that the Marshall's inspection brought at either the CTF (housing J6 defendants) or the CDF (which held more and more varied defendants. At the CDF: it found poor food quality and limits to food being used punitively, punitive disabling of water for entire blocks for days leading to standing sewage, injuries without corresponding medical or incident reports, and concerted effort by guards to threaten 'snitches'. The DC Deputy Mayor for Public Safety tried to maneuver this as about the CDF building's construction, but he also denied that water had been shut off for days.

This eventually lead to a (toothless) MOU.

Similarly, none of the concerns for the CTF (which housed the J6 defendants) focus on the building's quality, and instead the report just found that "The U.S. Marshal's inspection of CTF did not identify conditions that would necessitate the transfer of inmates from that facility at this time." And the judge's summary makes that distinction pretty clear:

It is beyond belief some of the reports of the Marshal here to the Court yesterday. We had an executive session of the full court yesterday. And he said the conditions at the D.C. Jail were deplorable; the conditions in CTF were not as deplorable. And the immediate action taken by the Department of Justice was to move all federal inmates out of the D.C. Jail; that does not mean that the conditions in CTF were meeting any standards. According to him, they were not as deplorable as the conditions in the D.C. Jail.

((And that's despite the jail barring entry to the Marshalls during a later day in the inspection, wtf.))