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Hayner Library Helps Community with Fine Amnesty Program, Crayon Donation and Cooling Center

4 weeks 2 days ago
ALTON - The Hayner Public Library District gives back to the community, and you can help. Through the end of July, Hayner’s fine amnesty program “Supplies for Summer” will allow patrons to return overdue library materials and pay no fine if you also donate a personal care item. Mary Cordes, the library’s executive director, explained that the goal is to support local organizations. “It’s twofold. It helps us get our materials back so they’re available for the next patron and then it also helps these entities,” she said. “We do this quarterly. Every quarter, we have a fine amnesty program. Through the end of July, we have ‘Supplies for Summer’ going.” Items like shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant and other hygiene products can be dropped off at Hayner Library along with your overdue materials. The library will waive the fine. At the end of the month, they will donate half of the supplies to Crisi

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The Good, The Bad, And The Incredibly Stupid In Trump’s AI Action Plan

4 weeks 2 days ago
We’ve spent years documenting the challenges of crafting sensible AI policy, from Biden’s misguided plan, to various state-level attempts at regulation. Now Trump’s AI Action Plan has landed, offering a striking example of how even potentially useful policy ideas can be corrupted by political theater and special interests. The plan reflects the deep influence of […]
Mike Masnick

"No permanent friends, no permanent enemies – just permanent interests."

4 weeks 2 days ago
On the latest episode of the Politically Speaking Hour on St. Louis on the Air, STLPR's Jason Rosenbaum talks with MoHealthNet director Todd Richardson about the future of the health care program for the working poor, elderly and disabled. Rosenbaum also reflects on the legacy of former Missouri Rep. Bill Clay, arguably one of the most important Show Me State political figures in modern history.

Radio silence on the reservation

4 weeks 2 days ago

Indian Time, a newspaper that served the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne, built and informed a loyal audience of Indigenous readers on the U.S.-Canada border for over 40 years.

Then, it vanished.

In late December 2024, the paper’s last edition was printed and website updates screeched to a halt. Indian Time’s hand was forced by the same pressures affecting newspapers nationwide — declining ad revenue and struggling finances. Despite breaking inimitable stories about the Mohawk Nation, the paper could not afford to keep the ink flowing.

“We thought the economic climate of Akwesasne could hold us,” said Marjorie Skidders, the longtime and last editor of Indian Time, “but it didn’t.”

Now, a population of over 10,000 people across two different countries is living under a tribal news blackout. With no paper of record, the community must rely on the local government, social media, and non-native news sources to piece together a broken portrait of Akwesasne life.

“There is no coverage of anything to hold anyone accountable, politically,” Skidders said. “There’s no coverage of meetings, there’s no coverage of gatherings.”

To better understand the demise of one of America’s oldest Indigenous newspapers and the impact on its community, Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) hosted a webinar July 22 with Skidders, former Indian Time reporter and FPF contributor Isaac White, and U.S. Press Freedom Tracker Senior Reporter Stephanie Sugars.

Since the paper’s shuttering, no publication has stepped up to fill the void, White said. His frustration is compounded by the fact that he and Skidders are still the first points of contact for community members and sources they developed while at Indian Time, whom he has to remind “that the paper is closed” when they reach out to share a tip. It takes a “sensational” story, he said, to “draw outside reporters here.”

“A lot of us will say, ‘We are the invisible people,’” White said. “That’s one of the things that hurt so bad with Indian Time being gone. Who really cares about us, except for us? And I think that that’s a fair question to ask.”

He raised a couple of timely examples: Conservative commentator Ann Coulter recently posted on social media that, “We didn’t kill enough Indians,” a remark condemned by the Native American community but that drew little attention from national news outlets.

White also noted that, with all the coverage of the Trump administration’s “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention center, there has been little mention of the fact the facility was built on land belonging to the Miccosukee Tribe.

These are stories White and Skidders would have loved to share their perspectives on, but no longer have a platform to do so, they said.

“I think that kind of encapsulates everything,” White said. “Those two instances are things that really highlight why coverage of Indian culture is not sufficient, not even close to sufficient — and why we need our independent news outlets, like Indian Time or any other ones.”

Indian Time’s uniqueness as an independent tribal publication made the loss sting all the more. Many Indigenous news outlets “fell under the wing of the tribal government,” Skidders said. That afforded Indian Time’s staff freedoms other tribal journalists often didn’t have, like reporting without fear or favor.

“We strived to work the best that we could and be independent. And we never satisfied anyone,” she added. “We were either too one way or too the other way, but we just worked to try and do the best that we could.”

Like anywhere else in the world, press freedom violations can and do occur on Indigenous lands. White himself was arrested while covering a Mohawk land claim dispute in May 2024, and a large number of arrests and assaults of journalists took place during Dakota Access Pipeline protests in 2016 and 2017.

But documenting these incidents requires additional sensitivity, Sugars said, as few tribal constitutions enumerate press freedom protections.

“There are a large number of things that we document in terms of denial of access, demands for prior review, tribal councils having control over funding, distribution, hiring, firing, decisions, things of that nature,” she said of the Tracker. “It is challenging for us to cover those things because we don’t want to be imposing our ideas about what is wrong or right.”

White also discussed cultural differences. The notion of objectivity becomes complicated in situations where Indigenous journalists are reporting on their own neighbors, to whom they are bonded outside the domain of a journalist-source relationship.

In the moments before White was arrested covering the land claim demonstration, for example, he said he helped community elders unload food and water from a cooler and prop up a canopy to shield them from the rain. “It was just a reflex,” he said, but after he was arrested, he was afraid outside journalists would see his common courtesy as unprofessional.

“I come from a longhouse. Margie comes from a longhouse. It’s something that you just do. If wood needs to be split, you just do it. If something needs to be cooked in the cookhouse, you help,” he said. “That’s just the way that we’re taught to do things.”

When White told Skidders what happened, she empathized with his moral conflict.

“It didn’t bother me,” she said. “Wherever he goes, whatever he’s doing, he’s a Mohawk first. And he’s going to behave honorably like that.”

The Akwesasne elders, like those White helped, treasured Indian Time, Skidders said. They were, after all, the “biggest population” of the paper’s readers, and they relished staying informed about the community.

“Now it’s gone,” she added about the paper. “I don’t know how we could do it again.”

White himself is trying to keep the flame alive. He runs a podcast available on YouTube called “Sage Against the Machine” (@SageAgainstTheMachinePod), which offers a more “unfiltered look” at Mohawk news. But its “raw” and conversational nature isn’t a platform to plumb deep topics like a newspaper, and it is no replacement for the dedicated work of Indian Time.

“By the book, as a journalist, you cannot do it part time,” he said. “It’s just not feasible. It’s a loss.”

Max Abrams

US Education Department to unfreeze contested K-12 funds

4 weeks 2 days ago
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said Friday it’ll soon release billions in Education Department funding that has been frozen for weeks, delaying disbursements to K-12 schools throughout the country. The funding — which goes toward migrant education, English-language learning and other programs — was supposed to go out before July 1, but the administration informed schools […]
Jennifer Shutt

Former EPA officials say Trump proposal will gut agency’s power to curb emissions

4 weeks 2 days ago
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has submitted a proposal to scrap a years-old finding that greenhouse gas emissions threaten the environment and public health, a move that former agency officials say would gut the EPA’s authority to reduce emissions and is sure to end up in the courts. The EPA sent a draft proposal to […]
Allison Prang