Students and parents at Little Elm High School in Little Elm, Texas, are furious following a demonstration Friday where several students were tasered, pepper sprayed, dragged by their hair, thrown around and shot with rubber bullets for, according to students, protesting the school's lax attitude toward sexual harassment and assault. Four students were also arrested. Curiously, while city spokesperson Erin Mudie initially told Fox News Digital that the "four juvenile students were arrested … for assaulting/spitting on officers," this was later amended in the Dallas Morning News to say "she couldn't comment on what they were arrested for as a result of the incident."

Either that or as a result of video footage of the police attacking students published on social media after she initially spoke to the media.

Parents of the students involved in the protest spoke to the media later that day to express their horror over what happened to their kids, at school, where they are supposed to be safe

According to students on social media, the protest was sparked by an incident in which a girl was sexually assaulted by a male student, reported it to the school administration (as did two eyewitnesses), and was given in-school-suspension for falsely accusing him and lying, because he said he didn't do it and because they found video footage of her talking to him on the bus prior to the assault. They say the demonstration they planned had been peaceful until the school called the police to come in and take care of it.

The female student whose complaint sparked the demonstration initially posted about her assault and the aftermath on Snapchat, leading to the demonstration on Friday. Other witnesses posted their own corroborating statements to social media as well.

https://www.wonkette.com/texas-teens-tasered-arrested-for-protesting-schools-handling-of-sexual-assault
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There is some video at the link. It's disturbing.

Katey O’Connor is an English Language Arts teacher at Muncie Central High School in Indiana. As part of her unit teaching V for Vendetta by Alan Moore, a graphic novel about standing up to governmental oppression and fascism, O’Connor had a project option for students make posters about current political issues that matter to them. The posters ranged from discussing body image, child labor, racial inequality, and more. Many chose to focus on the Black Lives Matter protests: a timely and relevant topic for today’s teenagers. The posters were displayed outside a O’Connor’s classroom, where a school resource offer (SRO) took issue with them.

At least one student took video of the incident, where three school resource officers and O’Connor appeared to be having a heated debate about the nature of systemic racism in the U.S., though most of the conversation could not be heard. O’Connor had stepped in after hearing officers speaking to the student who made the poster and trying to debunk it, after which the student left. The observing students were uncomfortable with the officer’s criticism of O’Connor, the project, and the students’ messages.

Later, O’Connor was instructed that because of a statement by the attorney general, should would have to bring the posters in from the hallway, which would mean that only her own students would be able to easily view them.

Students organized a protest over the weekend, demonstrating on Monday with signs and chanting “Black Lives Matter.” They asked why only the posters dealing with anti-Black violence had been targeted. Students protested peacefully and had discussions with school administrators as well as school resource officers. Andy Klotz, chief communications officer for the school, acknowledged that the students brought up valid concerns and the school want students to feel heard.

https://bookriot.com/school-police-censor-blm-posters/

It was May 1945 when what would become one of America’s most ubiquitous home-cooking techniques first entered the English lexicon. In her cookbook, How to Cook and Eat in Chinese, 55-year-old Chinese immigrant Chao Yang Buwei described a process common in her homeland, wherein cooks would cut meat and vegetables into small bites and tumble them rapidly together over heat. The Mandarin term for the technique, ch’ao, “with its aspiration, low-rising tone and all, cannot be accurately translated into English,” Chao lamented. For short, she decided, “We shall call it ‘stir-fry.’”

The term soon burrowed its way into the American vernacular and has since taken on a life of its own. Nowadays, stir-frying isn’t just a method—“stir-fry” has become its own category of recipes. Yet most home cooks have never heard of Chao, despite her lasting impression on the way Americans talk about food.

Chao came to cooking unexpectedly. A doctor by profession, she gave up her medical career to move to the United States in 1921 after her husband, the famed linguist Chao Yuenren, was offered a job at Harvard. Bored at home and speaking little English, she turned to cooking dishes that reminded her of China: fleecy rice boiled as soft as it was in Zhangzhou; soups with mushrooms and pork flavored with soy sauce.

She eventually relented when a friend pleaded with her to write a cookbook. Chao’s eldest daughter helped her translate recipes from Chinese to English, before her husband, finding the prose inert, put his own gloss on the language, often adding phrasing that even Chao recognized as clumsy. This stylistic clash resulted in a cookbook that Chao was “ashamed to have written,” as she declared in an author’s note.

https://www.motherjones.com/food/2021/11/chao-yang-buwei-forgotten-chinese-chef-who-taught-america-to-stir-fry-taste-makers/

The Chicago Red Stars’ head coach has resigned amid multiple allegations of abuse, shortly after the team played in the National Women’s Soccer League championship game.

Allegations around Rory Dames came to light after an investigation by the Washington Post was published on Monday. Dames resigned from the Red Stars late on Sunday night, in advance of the newspaper’s report.

The article detailed a range of abuse, from verbal attacks to inappropriate off-hours communications. It also alleged he demanded players spend time with him outside of a professional setting.

Dames is alleged to have made inappropriate jokes about players’ ethnicity and religion, commented on players’ appearances and attempted to punish players by withholding time with their families.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/nov/22/dames-becomes-fifth-male-nwsl-coach-to-resign-in-12-months-amid-abuse-claims

Will Westlake, a Starbucks barista in Hamburg, New York, whose store recently filed for a union election, was told by a manager he could attend an earlier mandatory anti-union meeting on 8 November because he was scheduled to work early the next day.

The meeting was in a nearby hotel and when Westlake arrived he found out he was the only worker in attendance, with six members of Starbucks management. The meeting lasted for about one hour.

“That was basically how my last anti-union meeting was, totally separated from the rest of my co-workers and having to be surrounded,” said Westlake. “They started off by going around and saying that they wanted me to vote no for the union. And then they went back and forth talking about how great all the benefits are at Starbucks and if we vote in a union, we may not have any of those benefits.”

Westlake emphasized the numerous anti-union meetings have been framed as listening sessions, but it’s the workers who have been doing most of the listening: the sessions have largely consisted of management presenting anti-union talking points, with little feedback from workers involved.

Westlake’s experience is just one part of an aggressive anti-union campaign run by the giant coffee chain as six Starbucks stores in the Buffalo, New York, area have filed for union elections with the National Labor Relations Board in recent weeks. If successful, the stores would be the first Starbucks corporate locations to unionize in the US.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/23/starbucks-aggressive-anti-union-effort-new-york-stores-organize

anis Elliott started testing the private well water that comes out of the faucets in her home for nitrates after she attended an environmental meeting more than five years ago. Elliott lives in the small unincorporated town of Avon, Iowa not too far south of Des Moines.

Nitrate finds its way into surface and groundwater that eventually becomes drinking water. Studies have linked ingesting too much nitrate in drinking water to cancer and that concerns the retired teacher. Too much nitrate also can cause blue-baby syndrome and birth defects.

She points to neighbors' houses where people have died from cancer. Her husband had prostate cancer (and overcame it).

The Environmental Protection Agency's health standard is 10 parts per million.

One year, the nitrate level got up to 19 parts per million.

"Which is almost double the federal legal limit for drinking water," Elliott says. "So, we were drinking poison for a year."

https://www.npr.org/2021/11/20/1057622131/climate-change-iowa-clean-drinking-water

In the aftermath of Kyle Rittenhouse's acquittal in Kenosha, Wis., last week, advocates are turning back to the case of Chrystul Kizer, who is also arguing it was self-defense when she killed her adult sexual abuser, set his house on fire and stole his car in 2018.

Kizer, who was 17 at the time, is accused of shooting Randall P. Volar III in the head; Volar had previously been arrested on child sexual assault charges.

Kizer was released from jail in June 2020 after groups such as the Chicago Community Bond Fund raised money to pay her $400,000 bond. She is still awaiting trial.

Prosecutors say the killing was premeditated. But what's notable in this case is that Kizer's lawyers are invoking a self-defense argument that has never been used in a homicide case in the state before.

https://www.npr.org/2021/11/22/1057976496/rittenhouse-verdict-chrystul-kizer-self-defense

Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins had spent years advocating for the removal of undocumented immigrants when he received a prized photo in his inbox in February 2019. It came from a group that has long fought to slash the number of immigrants allowed into the United States.

In the photo, Jenkins and more than three dozen other sheriffs posed under a chandelier in the East Room of the White House with a beaming President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

Jenkins, serving his fourth term as sheriff in the western Maryland county, quickly forwarded the photo to an acquaintance. “Check this out,” he wrote in an email obtained by The Washington Post.

“Pretty important!” she replied moments later. “You all meet to discuss how to get rid of the illegals?”

“Indeed!” Jenkins wrote back. “I have had the pleasure of being with the Pres on at least five occasions.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2021/trump-ice-sheriffs-immigrants-287g/

Everyone thought the Cyber Ninjas were in it for the money.

The Republican-controlled Arizona Senate picked the Florida-based company to run the sham recount of votes in Maricopa County earlier this year, even though they had no prior experience of running election audits.

The company’s efforts were so amateurish that even the Republican-led Maricopa Board of Supervisors labeled them a bunch of “grifters and con artists.”
But it turns out that even though a variety of conspiracy-loving groups raised almost $6 million dollars to fund the audit, that money hasn’t made its way to the Cyber Ninjas.

This week the company’s CEO Doug Logan said that rather than making him rich, the sham Maricopa County recount left him $2 million in debt.

But it turns out that even though a variety of conspiracy-loving groups raised almost $6 million dollars to fund the audit, that money hasn’t made its way to the Cyber Ninjas.

This week the company’s CEO Doug Logan said that rather than making him rich, the sham Maricopa County recount left him $2 million in debt.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3vdjk/cyber-ninja-ceo-doug-logan-in-debt
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The driver of an SUV that hurtled through a barricade and slammed into a Christmas parade in suburban Waukesha on Sunday was fleeing from a domestic disturbance moments before he killed at least five people and injured more than 40 others, police said.

Waukesha Police Chief Dan Thompson said Monday that Darrell Brooks Jr., 39, was fleeing a domestic disturbance with a report of a knife when he rammed into the parade. Brooks was not being chased, Thompson said. He will be charged with five counts of intentional homicide, Thompson added.

The deceased victims' ages range from 52 to 81 years old. Thompson said 48 others were injured in the crash, which was captured on the city's livestream as the car rammed struck high school band, children's dance group and the Milwaukee Dancing Grannies.

Local hospital officials said earlier Monday at least six children remain in critical condition. Children's Wisconsin Hospital received 18 patients from the ages of 3 to 16, including three sets of siblings, doctors say.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/11/22/waukesha-wisconsin-christmas-parade-updates/8716684002/