Ariel Zambelich

Article excerpt: In my few days in Minnesota, I’ve been witness to countless scenes that remind me of moments I’ve seen during previous trips covering conflicts around the world. I watched heavily armored federal units roll through quiet neighborhoods. In a grocery store parking lot, angry residents screamed at agents, demanding they leave the city. Masked and armed government agents pointed weapons toward me and some protesters during an encounter in the middle of the afternoon. Curious guests in a hotel elevator wondered why I was carrying around a medical pack and gas mask. Local residents thanked me for being there to witness the situation. A drunk man at a hotel bar cursed at me, saying the media was at fault. The wars we’ve carried out as a nation abroad have come home.

"In my few days in Minnesota, I’ve been witness to countless scenes that remind me of moments I’ve seen during previous trips covering conflicts around the world," photojournalist @cengizyar.com writes. "The wars we’ve carried out as a nation abroad have come home."

More: https://propub.li/4acxEeY

Immigration Officers in Minneapolis Will Wear Body Cameras, Noem Says The change comes as the federal government has provided accounts of fatal shootings that have sometimes conflicted with local officials and witness videos.

Breaking News: Immigration officers in Minneapolis, and eventually nationwide, will be equipped with body cameras, Kristi Noem said.

NYMag blew up its story about ICE's increased presence at 26 Federal Plaza, and pasted it on a wall a few blocks away on Broadway

Maryland’s neediest residents ‘stretching food’ as SNAP benefits remain uncertain Maryland families who depend on SNAP benefits are unsure what November will bring as they potentially face a month without food aid.

Maryland’s neediest residents ‘stretching food’ as SNAP benefits remain uncertain

A Farmworkers Visa Promised Her a Better Life. It Was a Trap. Sofi left behind her child in Mexico for the promise of providing him a better life. She ended up a victim of an operation that is alleged to have exploited the H-2A visa program — and the workers it ...

Sofi left behind her child in Mexico for the promise of providing him a better life by coming to the U.S. on a farmworker visa. She ended up in a trap.

“Not all of us get to be smiled upon by the United States,” she said.

By @maxblau.bsky.social

Donate to Support Cascade PBS journalists after online newsroom axed, organized by Isabella Breda On Monday, Sept. 22, Cascade PBS announced that it would be s… Isabella Breda needs your support for Support Cascade PBS journalists after online newsroom axed

Nine Guild-represented journalists and their editors have also lost their livelihoods as a consequence of this decision. We are crowdfunding to support our affected colleagues, and you can help by donating to our layoff fund. tinyurl.com/LayoffFund

Donate to Support Cascade PBS journalists after online newsroom axed, organized by Isabella Breda On Monday, Sept. 22, Cascade PBS announced that it would be s… Isabella Breda needs your support for Support Cascade PBS journalists after online newsroom axed

It’s difficult to find the words to express how our unit is feeling right now, but we’ll take a stab at it: shocked, disappointed, angry, gutted. @cascadepbs.bsky.social’s choice to eliminate long-form written reporting is a massive loss for our community in a critical moment. tinyurl.com/LayoffFund

BREAKING: Gov. JB Pritzker says the Trump administration has sent the Texas National Guard to Great Lakes Naval Base outside Chicago, awaiting orders to deploy to Chicago.
Trump administration officials will target Mexican Independence Day (Sept. 16) celebrations. @wttw.bsky.social

“We’ll Smash the Fucking Window Out and Drag Him Out” We’ve documented nearly 50 incidents of immigration officers shattering car windows to make arrests — a tactic experts say was rarely used before Trump took office. ICE claims its officers use a “mini...

Officers who shatter car windows aren’t being disciplined — they’re being promoted.

One officer who smashed a window in front of a local TV reporter now has a senior ICE position overseeing operations on the East Coast.

This week's photostory is scenes from Patterson Park.

“The images capture the unscripted and the in-between: the quiet glance, the small ritual, the pause before the next thing,” Alec Zabrecky, the photographer, writes.
baltimorebeat.com/scenes-from-...

Issue 67 of Baltimore Beat is live! This time of the year, as summer ends and we can see the busyness of fall heading our way, it’s good to pause and appreciate it.

This issue you’ll find four different covers capturing slices of life in Patterson Park.

Citizen Is Using AI to Generate Crime Alerts With No Human Review. It’s Making a Lot of Mistakes Three sources described how AI is writing alerts for Citizen and broadcasting them without prior human review. In one case AI mistranslated “motor vehicle accident” to “murder vehicle accident.”

New from 404 Media: crime-awareness app Citizen is using AI to generate alerts, and then pushing them without any human involvement. The AI is publishing incorrect info, gory details, personal data. Only fixed after live. Comes as Citizen laid off 13 union workers www.404media.co/citizen-is-u...

Dear Katrice and Geraldine, We are deeply concerned about the manner in which The Marshall Project has been treating our members and approaching the bargaining process. Recently, The Marshall Project leadership has betrayed our organization’s values and compromised our position in the industry and the journalism we pursue. It’s time for that to change. The guild has worked tirelessly and in good faith on proposals that would keep high-quality health care affordable for Marshallers. We have also been steadfast in asserting that all recognized members deserve due process and fair treatment required under the law. The organization, in turn, has increasingly taken anti-worker stances that have eroded trust and created a culture that makes it difficult to do the work that makes us proud. Since the organization has taken such a hardline stance, refusing to work with the guild on the items listed below, we will be filing unfair labor practices with the National Labor Relations Board and stepping up our public efforts to make it clear that we demand fair treatment.

The following recent actions by the organization have taken an immense toll on the workers of The Marshall Project: 1. The organization has repeatedly denied steward representation to a member facing a Performance Improvement Plan and possible termination, as well as denying another member representation in their termination meeting last week. This denial is illegal, egregious, and completely out of line with standards across our industry and the labor movement going back decades. We are shocked that the organization would take such a hypocritical and prohibitive stance on this, given our mission. The union has filed an Unfair Labor Practice about this illegal violation of members’ Weingarten rights and demands that members be allowed steward representation in any meeting they feel is appropriate. 2. The organization has caused a retaliatory ripple effect with its actions against one employee that has touched an entire newsroom in Cleveland with negative effects that go against the stated purpose of collaboration with local media and our ability to make good on promises we made to readers. When the organization recognized members it had a duty to follow the law and not proceed with layoffs without bargaining. We have filed an Unfair Labor Practice for the illegal layoff of employees and management retaliation.

3. The organization made a unilateral change to our outside employment policy without bargaining, changing expectations to require managerial approval. We have always maintained a workplace where outside work is permitted and the organization’s sudden termination of Chris Vazquez without a steward, without an opportunity to stop the freelancing project, and without severance is unjust and defies our values. 4. The organization is employing a strategic erosion of status quo through small changes to past practice while we bargain our first contract, including erasure of our cost-of-living adjustment, a significant change to our health insurance, and modifying the evaluation process. The organization has inconsistently complied with requests for information, which does not reflect good faith in bargaining. The Marshall Project, in retaining union-busting law firm Kauff McGuire & Margolis, is willingly participating in the erosion of worker protections across our industry, a project that takes advantage of the current anti-worker political environment. When The Marshall Project voluntarily recognized our union last year, it touted a “longstanding commitment to a fair, equitable and inclusive workplace, with generous benefits.” We are demanding a return to these values.

Today, we sent a letter to @themarshallproject.org‬ leadership expressing concern about their denial of bargaining obligations. Management has repeatedly denied members Weingarten rights, engaged in an illegal layoff, and more — we need your help to demand that management bargain in good faith.

The takeaways from this survey on Local Visual Journalism by @catchlight-io.bsky.social + Prism Photo really do hit home as someone who works in visuals and local news. The entire published report is a fascinating, if not dire, read. www.catchlight.io/local-visual...

60 years later, Voting Rights Act protections for minority voters face new threats Sixty years after the Voting Rights Act became a landmark law against racial discrimination, legal challenges heading to the Supreme Court could curtail its remaining protections for minority voters.

Sixty years after the Voting Rights Act became a landmark law against racial discrimination, legal challenges heading to the Supreme Court could curtail its remaining protections for minority voters.

Here’s the moment LAPD ordered media along with protestors against the wall, despite requests for a supervisor as well as reminders that PC409.7(b) specifically exempts media from dispersal orders. Never made contact with a PIO. didn’t speak with a supervisor for a very long time after being cuffed.

A few particularly concerning photos re: press rights. They aren’t the best photos of the bunch but:

1- officer batonning photojournalist as his press pass is being displayed
2- photojournalist with a cut on his chin. Blood has run down over his shirt and press pass.
3- blood seeping into hands

Gaza's children are starving, the U.N. and relief organizations warn Hunger and disease continue to stalk Palestinians in Gaza, and aid organizations are warning that children are at greatest risk of starvation. A U.N. worker has described people as "walking corpses."

Hunger and disease continue to stalk Palestinians in Gaza, and aid organizations are warning that children are at greatest risk of starvation. A U.N. worker has described people as "walking corpses."

Anne Arundel County has 533 miles of shoreline. One mile is for public swimming. Only about a mile of the Anne Arundel County shoreline is set aside for public swimming, and with no outdoor public pools, residents’ options are limited.

Loved working on the visual edit of Wesley Lapointe’s photos and videos for this story by Alex Mann on the few public beaches in Anne Arundel county: www.thebaltimorebanner.com/community/lo...

Will Lewis emails the Washington Post staff, encouraging those who "do not feel aligned" with the company's future plans to consider the buyout offer.

Supreme Connections: Search Supreme Court Disclosures — ProPublica Search Supreme Court financial disclosures for organizations and people that have paid justices, reimbursed them for travel, given them gifts and more.

Every year, the Supreme Court’s nine justices fill out a form that discloses their financial connections to companies and people.

Using our database, you can search for organizations and people that have paid the justices, reimbursed them for travel, given them gifts and more.

How did Republicans go from condemning leaders who threaten their own citizens to becoming sycophants for one? Here, too, we find a holdover of Cold War rhetoric: the use of Third World to describe multicultural communities such as Los Angeles. In the 1950s, the terms First World, Second World, and Third World emerged as a means to describe Western-aligned nations, Soviet-aligned governments, and emerging nations not allied with either faction, respectively. Third World soon came to be used as a pejorative term for poor, nonwhite countries—full of human beings who could be considered disposable.

And that’s exactly how Trump officials and their allies are referring to communities such as Los Angeles in order to justify using military force. Last night, following the massive “No Kings” protests across the country, Trump posted on his social network Truth Social that he was directing ICE to “expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities,” which he called “the core of the Democrat Power Center”; he further described immigration as turning America into a “Third World dystopia.” The post echoed similar language from right-wing-media figures who, last week, began repeating the same rote talking points about the need to ban all “Third World” immigration. The conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk, who spoke at Trump rallies during the 2024 election campaign, displayed on his podcast, as part of an argument for Trump using the military to “take back the streets of LA. Do it and do it fast,” a chart from a white-nationalist website showing the white population of Los Angeles declining. Kirk also made explicit that he wasn’t borrowing just the chart from a white-nationalist website but also its ideological conclusions about the threat that nonwhite people pose. “This is the Great Replacement Theory,” Kirk explained. “Remember we talked about how they want to replace white Anglo-Saxon Christian Protestants with Mexican, Nicaraguans, with El Salvadorians.” The term Anglo-Saxon Christian Protestants is wildly archaic, 1930s racism. What’s next in the Republican-aligned podcast world? Rants about swarthy Sicilians and perfidious Jews?

For decades, US presidents from both parties used a simple formulation for defining a tyrant: a leader who threatens or uses military force to suppress their domestic political opposition. Now we have a president doing just that and conservatives are cheering. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

How is everyone seriously on one today, I just

LAPD fired rubber bullets at Australian journalist @laurentomasi.bsky.social

Solidarity with Politico @newsguild.org @cwaunion.bsky.social members standing up against implementations of A.I. that violate their hard-fought union contract protections. ✊

Politico’s Newsroom Is Starting a Legal Battle With Management Over AI Politico has rules about AI in the newsroom. Staffers say those rules have been violated—and they’re gearing up for a fight.

“‘This isn’t just a contract dispute, it’s a test of whether journalists have a say in how AI is used in our work. With no federal rules in place, union contracts remain one of the only enforceable frameworks for AI accountability,’ says @newsguild.org president”
www.wired.com/story/politi...

This is a fascinating and earnest attempt to (rightfully) reevaluate the role journalism plays in the collective approach to community — I imagine this will be incredibly tough work, but hoping the Globe shares their experience along the way so we can all learn from it.

Photos from one last Preakness at Pimlico Scenes from the last day of racing before Pimlico is rebuilt.

So proud of the @thebaltimorebanner.com photo crew yesterday, doing an amazing job covering the last Preakness at the old Pimlico! www.thebaltimorebanner.com/community/lo...

A screenshot of a ChatGPT conversation reading: "can you write something about robert e. lee in the voice of washington post staff writer gillian brockell?" "Certainly! Here's an excerpt written in the voice of Gillian Brockell, a staff writer at The Washington Post, reflecting on Robert E. Lee's legacy: The Complicated Legacy of Robert E. Lee: A Figure Divided by History By Gillian Brockell When Robert E. Lee's name is invoked, it is often as a symbol of Southern pride military brilliance, or a tragic, doomed cause. But history has a way of shifting its lens, and in recent years, the image of Lee -- the Confederate general, the hero of lost causes -- has become increasingly more fraught. The man who stood as the face of a rebellion that tore the nation apart now stands at the center of an ongoing reckoning over the Confederacy's legacy, and our struggle to reconcile memory with reality."

When I left the Washington Post in 2023, my colleagues and I were worried AI would hoover up our work and enable "zombies" to churn out stories based on our reporting and writing styles.

Today WaPo announced a partnership with OpenAI. And here it is: Zombie Gillian Brockell. I DID NOT WRITE THIS.