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Green America Rolls Out Handy Chocolate Scorecard

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Lindt. Nestle. Hershey. Divine. Godivia. Alter Eco. Equal Exchange.

You have plenty of luscious options when selecting chocolate treats. With that wide selection is a rich opportunity to wield your spending power and reward firms that support environmental responsibility and fair labor practices for farmers.

Maybe you’re browsing for Halloween. Or you’re on the prowl for a scrumptious personal indulgence.

Green America, a nonprofit organization that focuses on economic action for social justice and environmental sustainability, encourages choosing wisely when buying chocolate. Especially if it involves links with child labor. And deforestation.

“It is an ideal product for voting with our dollars,” says Todd Larsen, executive co-director of Consumer and Corporate Engagement for Green America. “We can choose to purchase from brands that are working to build farmer income, address child labor, and promote ecological farming practices.”

Green America’s Chocolate Scorecard

Green America’s fresh ranking of chocolate companies features report-card grades, with emphasis on labor and environmental factors.

The scorecard is designed as a valuable resource for discriminating shoppers who appreciate information about ethical sourcing practices in products they purchase.

Green America Chocolate Scorecard. Source: GreenAmerica.org

Labor certifications, including Fairtrade, IMO Fair for Life, and UTZ, were factored into each brand’s ranking. (See more certifications and what they mean on Green America’s website.) Other factors, including efforts to support farmers — especially in West Africa — rounded out the scores.

“… we are not only looking at how much certified cocoa a major chocolate company has, we are also looking to see if the company has innovative programs and projects in place to address some of the other underlying issues of child labor in cocoa and if the company is working to address deforestation,” Green America’s website states.

Focusing on eliminating farmer poverty interconnects with and assists in resolving other social and environmental issues, according to Charlotte Tate, labor justice manager at Green America.

Harvesting cacao. Image: Adobe Stock

Examples of chocolate companies’ noteworthy programs and practices include:

Divine: 44 percent ownership by a farmers cooperative in Ghana
Alter Eco: investing in agroforestry, which integrates cacao with other crops for a healthy and diverse ecosystem, and offers additional produce and revenue for farmers
Endangered Species: donates 10 percent of profits to animals, habitat, and humanity

The Rankings

Firms leading the pack with grade A rankings include

Alter Eco
Divine
Equal Exchange
Endangered Species
Shaman
Theo Chocolate
Tony’s Chocolonely

Check out your favorite chocolate’s ranking in Green America’s scorecard. Photo by Pete Wright on Unsplash

Green America points out it did not include every chocolate company in its rankings, and notes that many of the A-rated firms are members of Green America’s Green Business Network of “socially and environmentally responsible businesses.”

Mars, Nestle, Hershey, and Lindt earned middle rankings.

Godiva received an F.

Green America’s website features a separate page offering extra information about the scores, including Godiva’s.

“Godiva has stated on its website that it has a goal of sourcing 100 percent sustainable cocoa by 2020. It has not indicated which certifications it is sourcing from, what progress it is making with this goal, or what additional steps it is taking to address child labor and farmer income. While its competitors publish annual reports on their progress, Godiva only reports minimal information on its website.”

Earth911 emailed a Godiva spokeswoman about its Green America grade, and she issued a quick reply.

“GODIVA condemns forced labor or any practice that exploits, endangers, or harms people, especially children. We do not own farms and purchase our cocoa through third parties, which puts us at a distinct disadvantage on scorecards such as these that don’t allow for an accurate representation of our longstanding commitment to people and planet. We ensure ethical sourcing through agreements with our suppliers to comply with our GODIVA Code of Conduct, which explicitly prohibits the use of forced and child labor.”

Let chocolate manufacturers know that you support environmental responsibility and fair labor practices. Photo by amirali mirhashemian on Unsplash

Speaking Out

While thoughtfully directing your dollars is a powerful tool to support preferred products, perhaps you’ll want to add fuel to your position.

Write a note directly to the firms you’re supporting or avoiding, explaining why you decided to purchase — or not purchase — their products.

Another route is signing a petition, such as Green America’s request to Godiva: “… share your progress with the public through a corporate responsibility report on your website that makes your progress on farmer income, child labor, and environmental protection fully transparent.”

Feature image by Security from Pixabay 

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earth911

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Green America Rolls Out Handy Chocolate Scorecard

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Top Ways the World Will Manage Climate Change (Beyond Reusable Water Bottles)

We all know we need to do our part to manage climate change?well, almost everyone knows this scientific fact. We know we need to drive less, recycle, stop using plastic, eat organically and opt for less packaging and reusable bags. And, if you?re like me, you?re trying to do all of these things. But, what if we ? as citizens, business owners, policy makers, or government leaders – knew the most important ways to manage climate change? Then, we could be sure we?re each doing as many of them as possible to make the greatest difference.

The group Project Drawdown ranked the most effective climate change solutions, dividing the many activities under categories such as the best ways to manage climate change based on food, movement of people and goods, homes and cities, land use, electricity use, waste management and empowering women.

Here are some of the top-ranked selections under each of the categories:

Under Project Drawdown?s food category, the organization ranked eating a plant-based diet, throwing away less food, composting waste and cooking over cleaner stoves among the top solutions. Check out my blog, ?New Study Found Plant-based Diet Reduces Heart Failure Risk by 41%? to not only help climate change but to help improve your health, too.

Project Drawdown also looked at the way we move people and goods around the planet and found that we could all help climate change by flying less and flying on more fuel efficient planes when we need to fly. It also recommended that we invest in high-speed trains, ship goods more efficiently and drive electric cars. It seems to me that there is an obvious trend toward decreasing our use (and waste) of fossil fuels and decreasing emissions of these greenhouse gases.

The homes we inhabit and the cities we live in also contribute to climate change and it astounds me that so many town, city, state and national governments continue to institute laws, regulations and policies that restrict people and communities that want to ?go green.? From outdated building codes to front yard vegetable gardens, government officials need to get informed before they get their heels in to support the status quo. Some of the top-ranked ways to fight climate change under the ?Our Homes and Cities? category include green roofs, smart thermostats and LED lighting, as well as designing (or redesigning) cities to be more walkable.

The United States has lost millions of acres of prime agricultural land to development in the last few decades. That doesn?t include wilderness lands that have been developed or opened up for development by governments that don?t understand climate change science. Project Drawdown ranks the protection, preservation and restoration of important ecosystems like coastal wetlands and tropical forests, as well as the return of lands to indigenous peoples as top ways we can combat climate change. The organization also ranked the planting of bamboo because of the plant’s rapid growth and capacity to absorb greenhouse gases at a much higher rate than most plant and tree species.

Our rapid pace of development also leads to challenges with materials and waste management. Top-ranked solutions in these areas include building with greener cement compounds. Cement is ubiquitous in our lives and most of us don?t give it a second thought. But the cement industry is the third largest emitter of carbon dioxide on the planet next to two countries (China and the U.S.), not two other industries. Cement making requires huge volumes of water (another climate change alarm bell) that could be used for drinking and growing crops, and it creates large amounts of dust that increase respiratory problems. Its negative impacts on the natural environment are innumerable. While we must address this massive threat, Project Drawdown also suggests we demand government and industry clean up chemicals in our air conditioning and refrigeration. On a more personal level, we can do a better job of recycling or repurposing more of our household goods and cutting back on rampant consumption.

It is almost impossible for most people today to imagine life without electricity even though its widespread use in society is less than a century old. Electricity generation and use is often sold as ?clean energy? but its impact on climate change is real. Among the top-ranked solutions regarding electricity use, Project Drawdown included wind, wave and solar power as better ways to generate electricity. As an added bonus, none of these energy generating options have been proven to cause cancer despite the ?windmill? claims of a high-ranking government official. Project Drawdown also included nuclear power in the rankings but the images from Chernobyl remain a horrific reminder of the dangers of this form of energy generation.

Last but not least, kudos to Project Drawdown for recognizing that empowering women will have a positive impact in our fight against climate change. Increased access to education, increased access to family planning and closing the gender gap in small-scale farming are some of the solutions the organization ranked high.

Check out all the rankings and let us know what things you are doing to combat climate change and help the planet.

Related Stories:

Trump’s Climate Change Denial Has Backfired
Climate Change No Longer a Security Threat (Or So Says Trump)
Media Coverage of Climate Change Takes Another Dive

Dr. Michelle Schoffro Cook, PhD, DNM shares her food growing, cooking, and other food self-sufficiency adventures at FoodHouseProject.com. She is the publisher of the free e-newsletter World?s Healthiest News, founder of Scent-sational Wellness, and an international best-selling and 20-time published book author whose works include: Be Your Own Herbalist: Essential Herbs for Health, Beauty, & Cooking. Follow her work.

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Top Ways the World Will Manage Climate Change (Beyond Reusable Water Bottles)

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Kirstjen Nielsen and Brock Long visited Puerto Rico, and it was really weird

Kirstjen Nielsen, Secretary of Homeland Security, and Brock Long, head of FEMA, went on tour in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands Friday. Their mission, nearly a year after Hurricane Maria devastated both territories? To “meet with and thank Federal Emergency Management Agency personnel working on hurricane recovery and preparedness efforts,” according to a news release.

Local media on the islands reported that Long and Nielsen aren’t making themselves available to press during their visits and are limiting public appearances. But we sure got a sense of what’s happening on social media:

Twitter quickly responded to Nielsen’s tweet with a chorus of “too little, too late.”

Last month, FEMA — which is part of Department of Homeland Security — released a report admitting to some of its blunders during the response to Hurricane Maria. That included not having enough qualified staff, food, water, or other supplies on hand to deal with the disaster.

Outrage over the federal response to Maria is still simmering. Now it’s compounded by the frustration of Maria survivors — some of who still face uncertain housing prospects, even as we go deeper into this year’s hurricane season. After several extensions, FEMA plans to end its transitional shelter assistance again at the end of the month, but advocates say that a longer-term plan to help people get back into homes is needed.

And because tossing out paper towels just isn’t enough these days, Nielsen spent time handing out school supplies to children in San Juan before visiting a school in St. Croix.

Nielsen has been facing a lot of kid-related criticism lately. Her department forcibly separated families at the U.S.-Mexico border, lost track of who belongs with who, and has now missed deadlines to reunite them. Some members of Congress, including Senators Dick Durbin and Kamala Harris, have called for her to leave office over the policy.

So, of course, photos of Nielsen handing out backpacks on DHS’ Twitter account didn’t sit well with everyone.

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Kirstjen Nielsen and Brock Long visited Puerto Rico, and it was really weird

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EPA guard physically shoved a reporter out of the building

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Scott Pruitt convened an EPA national drinking water summit in response to criticism that the EPA and White House had intervened to block a report that disclosed the harmful effects of certain contaminants in drinking water. Now, the summit has become a center of a new controversy. The Associated Press, CNN, and E&E News were barred from covering Pruitt’s speech on Tuesday.

The summit was intended to solicit feedback on a class of chemicals, perfluorinated compounds, PFAS, that can be found in nonstick coatings and firefighting foam. The study, which has still not yet been released by the Trump administration, finds the chemicals can cause health problems and developmental defects at levels far below what the EPA officially considers to be safe.

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When AP reporter Ellen Knickmeyer showed up at the EPA building to report on the day’s events, guards barred her “from passing through a security checkpoint inside the building.” When she asked “to speak to an EPA public-affairs person, the security guards grabbed the reporter by the shoulders and shoved her forcibly out of the EPA building.”

Several outlets still made it in, though they were only allowed to remain for Pruitt’s speech and not for the meetings. The outlets with reserved seats included Wall Street Journal, Politico, The Hill, The Washington Post, Bloomberg BNA, and one of Pruitt’s favorites, The Daily Caller.

“This was simply an issue of the room reaching capacity, which reporters were aware of prior to the event,” EPA spokesperson Jahan Wilcox said in a statement to Mother Jones. “We were able to accommodate 10 reporters, provided a livestream for those we could not accommodate and were unaware of the individual situation that has been reported.”

An hour after emailing this statement, the EPA announced it was opening the second portion of its summit to all reporters and invited Mother Jones to attend.

This is only the most recent event in Pruitt’s contentious history with press, blocking reporters from press lists and from attending the administrator’s events. Emails recently released under the Freedom of Information Act show Pruitt’s staff going to great lengths to limit public access to the administrator over the last 16 months. EPA staff determined whether reporters belonged to “friendly” and “unfriendly” outlets, and discussed strategies for blocking the so-called unfriendly press from events.

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EPA guard physically shoved a reporter out of the building

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Is Scott Pruitt an EPA chief or a pop star?

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Is Scott Pruitt an EPA chief or a pop star?

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Federal officials accidentally emailed a reporter their plans to spin Puerto Rico.

In a memo leaked last week, Department of Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert recommended White House staff pivot to a “theme of stabilizing” with regard to messaging around the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico.

President Trump, however, appears to have missed that particular update. On Thursday morning, he threatened to pull federal relief workers from the devastated island just three weeks after Maria made landfall.

Meanwhile, most of Puerto Rico is still without power, hospitals are running out of medical supplies, and clean water remains scarce.

Trump isn’t the only prominent Republican refusing to recognize the severity of the crisis. In an interview with CNN on Thursday morning, Representative Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, accused host Chris Cuomo of fabricating reports of the severity of the disaster.

“Mr. Cuomo, you’re simply just making this stuff up,” Perry said. “If half the country didn’t have food or water, those people would be dying, and they’re not.”

45 Puerto Rican deaths have been officially confirmed so far, and reports from the ground indicate the unofficial number of deaths due to the storm is higher.

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Federal officials accidentally emailed a reporter their plans to spin Puerto Rico.

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Donald Trump is threatening to end federal relief to Puerto Rico — on Twitter, of course.

In a memo leaked last week, Department of Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert recommended White House staff pivot to a “theme of stabilizing” with regard to messaging around the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico.

President Trump, however, appears to have missed that particular update. On Thursday morning, he threatened to pull federal relief workers from the devastated island just three weeks after Maria made landfall.

Meanwhile, most of Puerto Rico is still without power, hospitals are running out of medical supplies, and clean water remains scarce.

Trump isn’t the only prominent Republican refusing to recognize the severity of the crisis. In an interview with CNN on Thursday morning, Representative Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, accused host Chris Cuomo of fabricating reports of the severity of the disaster.

“Mr. Cuomo, you’re simply just making this stuff up,” Perry said. “If half the country didn’t have food or water, those people would be dying, and they’re not.”

45 Puerto Rican deaths have been officially confirmed so far, and reports from the ground indicate the unofficial number of deaths due to the storm is higher.

Source:

Donald Trump is threatening to end federal relief to Puerto Rico — on Twitter, of course.

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The Intercept Discloses Top-Secret NSA Document on Russia Hacking Aimed at US Voting System

Mother Jones

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On Monday, the Intercept published a classified internal NSA document noting that Russian military intelligence mounted an operation to hack at least one US voting software supplier—which provided software related to voter registration files—in the months prior to last year’s presidential contest. It has previously been reported that Russia attempted to hack into voter registration systems, but this NSA document provides details of how one such operation occurred.

According to the Intercept:

The top-secret National Security Agency document, which was provided anonymously to The Intercept and independently authenticated, analyzes intelligence very recently acquired by the agency about a months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort against elements of the US election and voting infrastructure. The report, dated May 5, 2017, is the most detailed US government account of Russian interference in the election that has yet come to light.

While the document provides a rare window into the NSA’s understanding of the mechanics of Russian hacking, it does not show the underlying “raw” intelligence on which the analysis is based. A US intelligence officer who declined to be identified cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis is not necessarily definitive.

The report indicates that Russian hacking may have penetrated further into US voting systems than was previously understood. It states unequivocally in its summary statement that it was Russian military intelligence, specifically the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, that conducted the cyber attacks described in the document:

Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate actors … executed cyber espionage operations against a named U.S. company in August 2016, evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions. … The actors likely used data obtained from that operation to … launch a voter registration-themed spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations.

Go read the whole thing.

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The Intercept Discloses Top-Secret NSA Document on Russia Hacking Aimed at US Voting System

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The Kushner Backchannel Story Is Hard to Make Sense Of

Mother Jones

Last night the Washington Post and the New York Times both reported that Jared Kushner buttonholed the Russian ambassador last December about setting up a secret communications backchannel with Moscow. This was during the transition period, six or seven weeks before Trump was inaugurated. The stories differ in the details they provide:

The Times reports that the purpose of the backchannel was for Michael Flynn to discuss Syria, but doesn’t report how the backchannel would work.
The Post reports that Kushner proposed using secure facilities in the Russian embassy, but doesn’t report what Kushner wanted to talk about.

The White House has not denied this story. It has simply refused to comment.

What do we make of this? Even after pondering it for several hours, I’m not sure what to think. I assume the Post has good sources for its report that Kushner wanted to use Russian embassy facilities, which suggests he was looking for a channel that was safe from monitoring—and leaking—by American intel agencies. In fact, the Post directly asserts this. But if the Times is right about Syria, that doesn’t make sense. There have been a lot of leaks recently, but not last December. And certainly there was no reason to suspect that any intel agency would leak conversations about Syria.

So maybe they really wanted to talk about something else. But what? It would need to be something that was (a) highly sensitive, and (b) dodgy enough that some do-gooder in the intel community might feel like it needed to be leaked. There’s been plenty of speculation about what that could be, but nothing grounded in reporting.

Also unknown: did Trump know about this? Or were Kushner and Flynn freelancing?

Also: what was the rush? In a few weeks Trump would have access to all the secure comms he wanted. Why was it so urgent to have galactic-class secure comms right away?

And: who wrote the anonymous letter that first tipped off the Post in mid-December?

The whole thing will remain something of a mystery until we know more about it. However the Post reports that the Russian ambassador was taken aback by Kushner’s naivete in thinking that Russia might agree to expose its embassy facilities to an American. Subsequent commenters have used stronger terms than naivete.

Also, everyone agrees that Kushner’s multiple meetings with various Russians were withheld from his security clearance application. That’s not good.

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The Kushner Backchannel Story Is Hard to Make Sense Of

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Women Are Now Living With the Fear of Deportation If They Report Domestic Violence

Mother Jones

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President Donald Trump’s January executive orders on immigration worried advocates working with survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, who argued that their clients and other victims of crime would no longer be willing to seek help or cooperate with law enforcement. Their concerns were further justified when police departments in Los Angeles and Houston announced that Latinos in those cities were reporting sexual assaults at lower rates in the wake of hostile rhetoric and enforcement activity targeting undocumented immigrants. Now, a new survey provides the data that demonstrates a noticeable shift in immigrant survivors’ contacts with victim services providers in recent months.

“The results of this survey are troubling,” Cecilia Friedman Levin, senior policy counsel for ASISTA Immigration Assistance, said in a recent press call discussing the survey results. “It represents that there is uncertainty and distrust around the institutions that are supposed to provide survivors with protection and safety.”

The “2017 Advocate and Legal Service Survey Regarding Immigrant Survivors” was conducted last month by a coalition of national organizations focused on domestic violence and sexual assault. The sponsors included the Tahirih Justice Center, ASISTA, the National Network to End Domestic Violence, and the Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence. The groups collected responses from roughly 700 advocates and attorneys from 46 states and Washington, DC, asking them about the issues confronting immigrant survivors seeking services and information about specific incidents. They found that a majority of respondents are seeing an increase in fear among their immigrant clients, some of whom are fearful of even calling 911 or seeking medical assistance. Here are some of the highlights:

62% of respondents—a group that includes both social and legal services providers—said they have seen an increase in immigration-related questions from survivors;
78% of respondents said that survivors had expressed concerns about contacting police due to fears that it would open them up to deportation;
75% said that survivors had expressed concerns about going to court for a matter related to their abuser, a concern that was likely exacerbated by the highly reported courthouse arrest of a domestic violence victim seeking a protective order against her abuser earlier this year;
43% of respondents also said that the survivors they have worked with have dropped criminal or civil cases related to their abuse because they were fearful of potentially opening themselves up to enforcement.

Anecdotes from respondents also shed light on the increased level of fear among immigrant survivors. “Survivors have a lot of questions about how they can safety plan under the new administration,” the report says, adding that some victims now question if they should submit petitions for relief to the federal government. In another response, the survey report notes that a 16-year old survivor attempted suicide because she feared that her offender would report her family to federal enforcement officials.

In the months since the immigration executive orders were announced, there has been confusion about what protections were still in place for the vulnerable subset of survivors of domestic abuse. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has maintained that agency protections covering immigrant survivors and other victims of crime are still in place. But, in practice, the picture is quite different. The administration has largely overlooked these crime victims both in its statements on immigration and in the resources it has provided. Last month, the Department of Homeland Security launched a new office focused on crimes committed by immigrants and the president’s proposed 2018 budget promises to dedicate significant resources to immigration enforcement and crack down on sanctuary jurisdictions that refuse to participate in aggressive targeting of undocumented immigrants. The shift in tone has already had an effect: Earlier this week, a Baltimore defense attorney was arrested after allegedly offering an immigrant rape victim $3,000 to not testify against her alleged assailant, telling the woman that she risked deportation should she appear in court.

Immigrant survivors can still qualify for protections under the Violence Against Women Act, a 1994 law protecting victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. But the administration’s activity could further exacerbate survivors’ reluctance to seek assistance. “We’ve seen a lot of people reach out and ask specifically for what people can do outside of the legal system because they’re afraid of deportation, or they’re afraid of law enforcement and they’ve been hearing a lot about raids,” Qudsia Raja, policy director at the National Domestic Violence Hotline, told reporters. “We’re having to work with advocates on safety planning outside of legal recourse.”

Advocates are also concerned that legislation working its way through Congress would negatively impact survivors’ willingness to report. Of particular concern is the Davis-Oliver Act, a bill that would give state and local law enforcement the power to enforce federal immigration laws, impose harsher penalties on undocumented immigrants, and punish sanctuary cities. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) has argued that the bill is necessary to ensure public safety.

Those who actually work with immigrants disagree. They say public safety will suffer if harsh immigration policies are allowed to push immigrant survivors into the shadows. “The fear among immigrant survivors is still rampant,” Archi Pyati, chief of policy and programs at the Tahirih Justice Center, a group working with women and girls fleeing gender-based violence, told Mother Jones. “So long as the federal government continues down this road there are going to be immigrant women who are going to be hurt.”

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Women Are Now Living With the Fear of Deportation If They Report Domestic Violence

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