Seattle is opening the nation’s first multilingual, immigrant- and refugee-targeted domestic violence hotline. This is a terrific idea, and kudos to all involved for putting it together. But one thing about the article stood out: the city will be paying AT&T $6,000 a year for the operation. That’s small potatoes for the city, but it’s small potatoes for AT&T as well. And doesn’t AT&T have kind of a big karmic debt to pay after its mi casa es tu casa accomodation of Bush’s cadre of warrantless spies. (Not to mention its unsavory lobbying of congress to get a bill passed granting it retroactive immunity for its lawbreaking, rendering moot the lawsuits against it.) Domestic violence has nothing to do with domestic spying, but I think the least AT&T could do is to give us our immigrant DV line for free. If it can spend $20 million getting out of a court case, it can spend a few thousand to help prevent domestic violence.
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