A decade ago, Alyssa McLemore, a 21-year-old woman of Aleut and African American heritage, called 911, and then the phone went dead. She was never found. That’s not for lack of trying. Her aunt, Tina Russell, has been looking all that time, mostly on her own. Since last year, she’s had the support Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, an advocacy group started among First Nations people of Canada that has since spread to the United States.
McLemore is one of the thousands of American Indian women who have disappeared in the U.S. Nobody knows for certain how many because there is no single federal database compiling the cases of missing Native women.
At The Guardian, Hallie Golden writes—'Sister, where did you go?': the Native American women disappearing from US cities:
According to FBI figures, Native Americans disappear at twice the per capita rate of white Americans, despite comprising a far smaller population. Research funded by the Department of Justice in 2008 found Native women living on tribal lands are murdered at an alarming rate—more than 10 times the national average in some places.
But with nearly three-quarters of American Indian and Alaska Natives living in urban areas, those crimes are not confined to reservations or rural communities.
In a recent report from the Urban Indian Health Institute (UIHI) researchers said they contacted police departments in 71 cities, but more than 60% would not demonstrate that they were accurately tracking disappearances, or provided them with compromised data.
The UIHI report identified Seattle as the city with the highest number of cases. Annita Lucchesi, a Southern Cheyenne descendant and cartographer who co-authored the report, said that although Seattle is seen as a liberal space, it’s not that way for everyone. [...]
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“Mr. Barr, the American people know you are no different from Rudy Giuliani or Kellyanne Conway, or any of the other people who sacrifice their once decent reputation for the grifter and liar who sits in the oval office. [...] A lot of respected nonpartisan legal experts and elected officials were surprised by your efforts to protect the president. But I wasn't surprised. You did exactly what I thought you'd do, that's why I voted against your confirmation. I expected you would try to protect the president. And indeed, you did.” ~~Sen. Mazie Hirono, May 1, 2019
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2005—Buffett: Thumbs Down on Bush's SS Piratization
Warren Buffet doesn't think much of Bush's SS scam. This quote below is from the Omaha World-Herald (registration required):
Warren Buffett, the 74-year-old chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, and his 81-year-old partner, Charlie Munger, launched an impassioned defense of Social Security at the company's annual meeting Saturday, with Munger terming Republican efforts to overhaul the program "twaddle."
While they did not directly discuss President Bush's proposal to allow Americans to divert some of their Social Security taxes to individual investment accounts, Buffett and Munger said the country faces far more pressing problems than the projected Social Security insolvency in 40 or 50 years. [...]
Munger, who called himself a "right-wing Republican," said, "Republicans are out of their cotton-picking minds to be taking on this issue now. "Munger cited nuclear tensions with North Korea and Iran as issues the administration should be working on instead of "wasting its good will over some twaddle." [...]
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Greg Dworkin detects a Biden bump. Barr hearing begins, as Mueller finally speaks. Perv-a-Lago emoluments detailed. Joan McCarter says Mitch McConnell, who is terrible, should be investigated, and is only fake-interested in raising the smoking age.