News Round Up! July 27, 2010

The RISE News Round Up is a selection of RISE-relevant articles from around the internet.  Have a news story to add? Want to respond to something you’ve read? Leave a comment!

Sexual Assault Left Out of Military’s PTSD Reform

Although the Department of Veteran’s Affairs recently announced reforms that will allow ease veterans’ difficulties when claiming benefits for PTSD, it remained pointedly silent on the issues of PTSD resulting from military sexual trauma (MST). This post from COLORLINES argues that women of color will be disproportionately affected by the DVA’s continued silence on the matter.

A Few Blocks, 4 Years, 52,000 Police Stops

This article from The New York Times chronicles the debate over the NYPD’s “Stop, Question, Frisk” policy through the lens of its use in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Is stopping every citizen once a year (on average) without justification warranted if it lowers the rate of violent crime? What if the connection to lower violent crime is heavily disputed?

Jim Webb’s Anti-Immigrant Rant

Again from COLORLINES, the story of Senator Jim Webb’s Wall Street Journal piece, in which he argues against affirmative action. By drawing a line between “black Americans” in need of “remediation” for historical wrongs and other people of color (who seem to be doing just fine and dandy here in the USA according to Webb), Webb argues that affirmative action started hurting not only white people, but African-Americans as well. Interesting argument, Senator.

Race, Lies, and Videotape: Lessons from the Shirley Sherrod Saga

Fitting in nicely with the above link, Richard Kim takes the right (and the left) to task in his post on The Nation’s blog. He traces the Tea Party’s (and Jim Webb’s) rhetoric of “reverse racism” back to its roots in earlier conservative politics, and expresses his disapproval with how the Obama administration and the NAACP missed the chance to have a honest conversation about the state of racism by focusing on all the wrong issues in this “scandal.”

Farmer’s Markets, CSAs Struggle to Get Food Stamp Customers

Although the number of people who are using their food stamps (or, to be precise, their EBT cards) at farmers’ markets and CSAs is rising, this article from City Limits magazine outlines the various reasons why it is still extremely difficult for people receiving these benefits to get access to fresh fruit and vegetables. For farmers’ markets, the difficulty of having a wireless EBT card reader is cited as the greatest challenge; for CSAs it’s getting the USDA to sign off on your CSA as a valid acceptor of EBT cards.