"California will begin paying for free legal help with immigration for undocumented farmworkers who are involved in state investigations of wage theft or other labor violations, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced this week.

The $4.5 million pilot program will provide qualifying farmworkers with referrals for legal help with their immigration status. 

Roughly half of California’s farmworker population is believed to be undocumented. Fear of deportation and difficulties finding jobs can discourage workers from filing labor complaints or serving as witnesses in cases alleging unsafe work temperatures, wage theft, or employer retaliation for unionizing, officials said...

Respecting immigrant rights

Farmworkers in labor investigations who qualify for the new state program will receive a direct referral to legal services organizations that already offer immigration services, such as the Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County or the United Farm Workers Foundation, which spoke in support of the program. 

The free legal services workers could receive include case review, legal advice and representation by an attorney, according to Newsom’s office...

Deferred deportation

State officials said the pilot program aligns with a new Biden administration policy that makes it easier for undocumented workers who are victims of labor rights violations to request deferred action from deportation. Because the federal Department of Homeland Security can’t respond to all immigration violations, it exercises “prosecutorial discretion” to decide who to try to deport.

State officials said they won’t ask for workers’ immigration status, but noncitizens granted this deferred action may be eligible for work authorization.

This year, California labor department officials began supporting undocumented workers’ requests for prosecutorial discretion or deferred action from federal immigration officials, including when employers threaten workers with immigration enforcement to prevent workers from cooperating with state investigators. 

“The Department of Industrial Relations’ Labor Commissioner’s Office … was the first state agency to request deferred action from DHS for employees in an active investigation, and that request was successful,” Hickey said. “This is an important process for undocumented workers to be aware of.”"

-via CalMatters, July 21, 2023

And of course they’re defending this policy by saying it’s to fight child sex trafficking. What a surprise, that this particular moral panic is being used to smokescreen measures that will endanger vulnerable and desperate people exercising their rights!

I think it needs to become common knowledge that "inability to read social cues" can show up as overcompensating.

You don't know how much misbehaviour is allowed, so you become the perfect child who never tests rules.

You don't know if someone is irritated with you, so you'll be extra generous and self-effacing.

You don't know how much is expected of you at work so you'll kill yourself in a minimum-wage job and not notice that nobody else is working like this.

"Hardworking and quiet" should be as much of an autism red flag as "ignores rules and doesn't know when to stop talking". Or why don't we just start using words to communicate so i can stop tracking everybody's eyebrow twitches, that would be great.

What type of kangaroo is this?

"This week, the Department of Transportation (DOT) announced a new rule requiring airlines to make bathrooms more accessible for disabled people. All new single-aisle aircraft will be fitted with fully-accessible lavatories.

Most flights inside the United States are single-aisle and as technology has improved, they are used more frequently for long flights, including coast-to-coast trips that can last as long as six hours. Double-aisle plans are already subject to the regulation but are primarily used for international flights.

Out Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg announced the new regulations, saying, “Traveling can be stressful enough without worrying about being able to access a restroom; yet today, millions of wheelchair users are forced to choose between dehydrating themselves before boarding a plane or avoiding air travel altogether.” ...

The secretary has made it a priority to improve service on airlines during his tenure. In 2022, six airlines were forced to pay millions of dollars in refunds to hundreds of thousands of customers and were also fined millions for causing the issues. The department’s firm stance on the side of customers has continued through this year after multiple companies have had meltdowns, stranding thousands of travelers.

All planes delivered to airlines starting in 2026 must include several upgrades. Planes already in service will not need to be retrofitted unless the plane is renovated.

“These aircraft must have at least one lavatory of sufficient size to permit a passenger with a disability (with the help of an assistant, if necessary) to approach, enter, and maneuver within the aircraft lavatory, to use all lavatory facilities, and leave by means of the aircraft’s onboard wheelchair if necessary,” the DOT said in a statement.

Accessible faucets and controls, grab bars, accessible call buttons and door locks, minimum obstruction to the passage of an onboard wheelchair, and an available visual barrier for privacy are also required upgrades."

-via LGBTQ Nation, July 28, 2023

Wayyyyyyy fucking overdue but I'll take it!! Also, very nice curb cut effect: We all get to be less miserable on airplanes, and older people don't have to worry as much about airplane bathroom fall risks.

So what this paint company does is take iron pollution from abandoned mines that are polluting soils and rivers and makes iron based red pigment paints out of it.

Basically they realized hey no one's cleaning this shit up, it's polluting the streams, killing all the fish, making the water undrinkable and there's a huge market for it so why not make money by cleaning it the fuck up?

They remove this stuff by the industrial bucket load from the rivers. The idea is if it's in a painting, if it's in your home, it's not poisoning wildlife.

anyway its cool as shit, please support tf out of these people https://gamblinstore.com/reclaimed-earth-colors-set/

Luke and Yoda throughout the years.

Mark Hamill remembers Carrie Fisher.

found on: reddit

FEMA is doing an emergency alert test on all TVs, radios, and cell phones on October 4, 2023, at approximately 2:20pm ET.

If you live in the US and you have a phone you need to keep secret for any reason, make sure that it is turned off at this time.

Yes, I'm doing this months in advance, and yes, my blog has very little reach, but I figure better to post about it more than less.

Please reblog and add better tags than mine, I'm bad at tags.

@stvksn on ig

i hope your god has asked you for mercy and i hope you've refused to forgive him

is so insanely powerful. that's gonna be seared in my brain for a long time. fuck.

Jesus fucking Christ dude. A house show in Minneapolis got shot up. Two guys walked up, unloaded into the crowd, and ran off. One dead and six injured.

Yeah. Okay. News stories were kinda making it sound like it was more Senseless Minneapolis Urban Violence, but folks that were there are saying this seems like a targeted attack on the venue and the scene for being trans positive. My fucking hometown scene got hit by a fucking terror attack.

Give em money. Everyone involved really needs it.

Lanternfish

*dry food crunches* Ridiculously small kitten: “Myam myam myam. Njam njam njam njam njam njam njam! Myam myam myam nyam nyam myam. Mmmam. Mrrrrram. Meep!”

Oh here it is again. The best video ever

so um….looks like Bradley Cooper (goy) has been cast to play Leonard Bernstein, a Jewish man, in his upcoming film Maestro (a biopic about a real Jewish composer). rather than hiring a Jewish actor to tell a story about a Jewish man, they cast a goy…who will be wearing a prosthetic nose.

and if that weren’t enough - they cast Carrie Mulligan, an Irish woman, to play Leonard’s wife…who was a Latina. and Maya Hawke, a white woman who is neither Latina nor Jewish, has been cast to play their daughter.

AND don’t forget that Bradley Cooper grabbed the rights to Bernstein’s music before Jake Gyllenhaal, A JEWISH MAN WHO WAS GOING TO MAKE A BIOPIC ABOUT BERNSTEIN, was able to. we could have had a respectful biopic about a Jewish man, told by Jews. instead we get this.

i…don’t have words to explain how insidious this is. the absolute goydacity to keep a Jewish man from telling this story, whitewash the other people in a true story, and to cast a goy instead of a Jewish person to tell a true story about a Jewish man, and have that goy wear a prosthetic nose. they would rather Jew-ify a goy than cast an actual Jew. i’m disgusted.

Because I'm only seeing other Jews posting about this, non-Jews I need you to be aware that for the past month or two there has been a wave of bomb threats and swattings at synagogues all across the US. They usually do it when services are being livestreamed. I haven't seen a single non-Jew talking about this. High holidays are coming up in a few weeks, which is when most attacks happen against our communities. We're worried, and we need people to know what's happening to us.

(this article was published August 15 2023)

Drone Dragon 1500

1,500 drones light up the sky over Shenzhen on June 22 with a flying dragon

this amazing display kicked off China's Dragon Boat Festival, taking place on the 5th day of the 5th month of the Chinese calendar, commemorating the ancient poet Qu Yuan