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Q&A: Feminist author Caroline Criado-Perez talks about the sometimes-deadly lack of data on the female body

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10 months ago

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Note: This Q&A first published in Mississippi Today’s InformHer newsletter. Subscribe to our free women and girls newsletter to read stories like this monthly.

Caroline Criado-Perez, a feminist author and public speaker living in London, talked about her latest book, “Invisible Women,” last week at Lemuria Books in Jackson. 

Her book, published in 2019, explores the gender data gap. From frustrating examples of a freezing office or a shelf out of reach, to deadly examples of an undiagnosed heart attack or crashing a car whose safety features don’t account for women’s measurements, Criado-Perez’s book is full of the real-world consequences of a world built without women in mind.

While the lack of research on the female body is an age-old problem, she argues, it becomes all the more pressing with the emergence of artificial intelligence and the increasing reliance on “Big Data.”

Criado-Perez is working on a new book about the reproductive journey of women, and how little science knows about it. She says she plans to use Mississippi as a case study. She sat down for an interview with Mississippi Today.

Editor’s note: This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

Mississippi Today: Tell us about the arc of your career and how you got to the point where you were writing your book “Invisible Women.”

Caroline Criado-Perez: Yeah so that’s a question with a very long answer. Really the story of me writing this book is the story of me becoming a feminist. I didn’t grow up as a feminist. I would say I was sort of anti-feminist – I was really quite misogynistic. And I think that was a very normal thing for young women in the ‘90s. I didn’t really identify with women and I just thought, you know, we’re all equal now and everyone should just stop complaining.

And it wasn’t until I went to university – I went as a mature student, I was 25 I think – and it was the first time I had to read any feminist analysis. And I had to read this book called Feminism and Linguistic Theory, which introduced me to the idea of the “generic masculine,” so, using “he” gender-neutrally or “man” gender-neutrally. The author of this book pointed to research that showed that when people hear these words or read these words, they think of men. And that completely blew my mind because it made me realize that I was picturing a man and I was incredibly shocked that I never noticed that, as a woman, that I’m just picturing men all the time.

That really kick-started the whole process for me because having had that realization, I started noticing it in other areas, where we act like we’re speaking gender-neutrally and we’re actually talking about men. So, after my first degree I went and studied feminist and behavioral economics and that is where I sort of discovered the whole economy is built around this mythical man – even though we speak about it being objective like a science. And there were various other bits and pieces I was doing that made me notice it in other areas and then finally I came across it in health, and that was when I was writing my first book. And that was when I started reading some research, the very early stages of my understanding of how much health and our knowledge of the human body is actually knowledge of the male body. That we’re not as good at diagnosing heart attacks in women as in men, and women are 50% more likely to be misdiagnosed if they have a heart attack. And more than anything I just couldn’t believe that this wasn’t on the front page of every newspaper, why did people not know this, why was everyone not talking about this – women are more likely to die if you have a heart attack: what?! And this is because we haven’t researched female bodies?

So that is how it ended up being a book. Essentially because I had all these things going around in my head and I felt like I was going crazy, that everyone was just blithely acting like we were speaking gender-neutrally when I knew we were talking about men. And just the fact that it was a huge, systematic issue, I knew that it wasn’t going to be an article – it had to be a book. Because it was just in everything.

MT: I’m interested in this term you use near the beginning of your book, “absent presence.” What is the experience of being defined by an absence, a negative space, a silence?

CP: I mean, I suppose for someone who recognizes the negative space, it’s intensely frustrating to know that there are all these gaps and all these silences that, as a society, we just skip over and we don’t notice that they’re there.

This is why I start the book with the Simone de Beauvoir quotation about representation being the work of men, and how they describe the world from their own point of view – which they confuse with the absolute truth. I f—–g love that quote so much. Because I feel like it sums up my book in a quotation because it’s not about these men having deliberately described the world and excluded women from it. They think that’s really what it is like. They think they’re really talking about the real world and they don’t see these absent presences, this silent figure of the woman.

But as a woman, you’re constantly knocking up against it, against the ways in which the world has not been designed for you. And having done the research I’ve done, I now experience the world in quite a different way than I did before, and it’s not a more comfortable way – it’s a much more uncomfortable way, because I’m constantly frustrated.

And of course, when it comes to health care it’s something that one thinks about a lot – you know, has this drug been tested in my body, is this the correct dosage for me, do they know how this drug interacts, and what if I’m on contraception, have they actually done any research? And nine times out of 10, no, they haven’t. Or they don’t know how the menstrual cycle might interact with it.

So it’s intensely frustrating and sometimes frightening, I think, to then just experience the world in which, for the most part, we are still speaking gender-neutrally when we’re talking about men.

MT: You talk about how this is an age-old problem – we live in a world made by men with men in mind. Can you tell us why, in a world that increasingly relies on “Big Data,” it matters so much more? How it becomes deadly, even?

CP: Yeah, so I mean, the gap in data for women is already deadly, if you’re thinking anywhere from car design to health care, but the real danger is becoming exponential, because of the introduction of AI into every single part of our world. And the problem with developing AI using bad data, biased data, is that machine learning is not like a human, in that it doesn’t simply reflect our biases back at us – it amplifies them.

I’ve read so many papers since “Invisible Women” came out where researchers will be like, “we’ve developed this AI and it performs better than a radiologist at detecting lung cancer” or “can predict heart attacks five years before they happen,” and then when you look at the paper, not only are the datasets incredibly male-biased, so you’ve got that bias already baked in, but also, they’re not even thinking about sex.

One paper I’m thinking about that came out shortly after “Invisible Women” was published was about predicting heart attacks. And there are sex-specific risk factors. So, if you’re going to be predicting heart attacks in men versus women, you don’t want to have, as this paper did, something like a 70% male dataset, but you even more don’t want to have that data all mixed up together. Because that’s not going to work for men or women. And yet, there was absolutely no mention of sex in the paper. So, that is frightening. Because the problem with that is it could make the situation worse.

When I find AI exciting is when researchers are using AI to address problems that we aren’t addressing otherwise. So, for example, one woman I spoke to was developing AI to detect victims of domestic violence via injury patterns, potentially years in advance of them ultimately having to be taken to a shelter or something. Because of course victims don’t necessarily report, and it’s not something that we’re investing a lot of money in in health care – because there’s not a lot of money in it and doctors don’t necessarily have the time to do the sort of questioning of a victim, et cetera. So there is exciting potential for AI. But if we’re just using it to do what we’re already doing but faster, that’s where the massive pitfalls are.

MT: As a health reporter, I’m interested in the subject of endocrine-disrupting chemicals you bring up in your book. We know that these chemicals are in everything, but they’re especially pervasive in feminine products, such as toiletries and makeup – and even menstrual products that women put inside their bodies. And as you know, not only are they more common in female products – they’re also worse for women, because of how they mimic and disrupt women’s hormones. How do we begin to address the issue? How can data help?

CP: The first thing that needs to change is obviously labeling – that’s a huge one, that people have the right to know what is actually in these products. That is one of the things that makes me most frustrated. I mean, as you can imagine, since writing the book I am scanning product ingredients all the time. If there’s anything that says “fragrance” I’m like “nope, that’s out, not using that.” And it’s amazing how many products just have these random ingredients in them and they don’t have to disclose what they are. Nobody knows. Nobody knows that “fragrance” means they could put anything in there. That’s deeply frustrating.

But my answer is always going to come back to: we have to collect data on this. And that is the thing that we’re not doing. And that is just incredible to me. The problem we have is not only are there endocrine-disrupting chemicals in these products, but also, how are these affecting not only the women who use them but also the women who work with them and the women who produce them.

And, as I say in my work, it’s not just that we haven’t tested them on women – for example, absorption into female skin, which can be different, or the way that it might accumulate in a female body, because of differences in fat in the body – but also the way in which women encounter them. Because it tends not to be in discrete “now I’m going to be exposed to this chemical, and tomorrow to that chemical.” We’re exposed to a cocktail of chemicals, and that’s not how they’re tested. So the way they’re tested is in itself biased against the way women are exposed to them, as well as the fact that we aren’t even testing them on women anyways.

And I feel that this really ties into this attitude that somehow the female workplace is this cozy, safe place, that women are never exposed to any form of danger. Because historically, the sort of headline-grabbing dangerous jobs have been done by men. By the way, because they were high-paying and women were barred from doing them, but let’s not let that get that in the way of the story that “women are lazy and they don’t want to do scary, difficult jobs.” But the female-dominated jobs that are low-paid, we simply have not been measuring how dangerous they are – from the perspective of exposure to chemicals.

MT: So, it seems like the call to action of this book is to begin filling in some of these gaps in data. But if we think of the modern world as being made up of data, then the idea of collecting all this new data can feel almost like building a new world – and that might be intimidating to some. What would you say to people who feel overwhelmed by this imperative?

CP: Well, there’s no getting around the fact that it is a huge job, and it is intimidating. And if you tried to do it all, you would be overwhelmed. But nobody could possibly fix this on their own. It’s like saying “you – go fix patriarchy.” It’s not how it works. Everybody has their own area that they can address. And so, people who work in research can collect sex disaggregated data. That’s a really great thing that people who work in research can do. People who work in HR, there’s a lot that they can do when it comes to looking at how their companies consider diversity, for example, in decision making.

People who have children, there’s so much that they can do to address how the future generation even notices that the “default male” operates. Like, if you look at kids’ TV, kids’ books, it’s “default male” all over the place – all the characters are male and if there’s a female character, her characteristic is that she’s female. I’m not saying that you’re going to be able to protect kids from that, but have a conversation with them. And I wish that had happened to me when I was little, that someone had taken the time to point out “isn’t it weird that in the real world, there’s all these women, and in your stories, it’s all boys?” I think that that’s a really powerful thing and I actually think that that’s something that everyone can do is have these conversations and notice when the “default male” is in operation – because I think that that really is half the battle.

If you think about the car crash stuff, that we have historically used an average male car crash test dummy, as if that’s representative of humans overall – when you say it like that, it obviously sounds ridiculous. But we’re so used to using the male body as the human body that people don’t even notice that it’s happening. As soon as you tell people “by the way, cars have not been tested to be safe for an average female body,” they understandably get really freaked out and start demanding change from car manufacturers – which is something very cool that’s happening in America at the moment. So, a really big part of it is just spreading the word and making the changes you can make.

MT: So, we’re talking about the gap in data around the female body and how that plays out in the health care system. One of the things I’ve noticed is that when people bring up this gap and try to address it – and particularly when talking about the menstrual cycle and how it interacts with medicine or what have you – that people tend to think of it as “woo-woo” or “mystical.” I think the fact that talking about something as fundamental as the menstrual cycle is met with such disbelief sheds light on just how uncommon it is to talk about the female body. Has that been your experience? Why is that?

CP: Right. That’s just sexism. It’s like, “oh, that has to do with ladies.” So, you’re reminding me of this report that came out, and again it was after “Invisible Women” was published, and it was about women and asthma. And there were all these testimonials from women who said “I went to the doctor and told them I feel like I get asthma flare-ups in relation to my menstrual cycle, I can tell where in my menstrual cycle I am, based on my flare-ups.” And the doctors were like “that’s just nonsense, you’re making it up” – because women can’t possibly know what’s going on with our bodies. Anyways, it transpires that actually, yes it is. It is hormonally-linked.

So that is something that, hashtag-not-all-doctors, but that they will say because there is this idea that lingers on somehow, in these people who are trained in science, that women are somehow just hysterical and should be less believed than men. But, I mean, that’s just misogyny.

MT: So you’re writing a new book. Tell us about how it relates to health care and how you’re using Mississippi as a case study.

CP: Yeah, so the book is about a woman’s reproductive journey from the beginning of whether or not she’s going to have children and going through things like pregnancy and how little we know about, firstly, how to treat a pregnant woman for anything, because we don’t do any research on women, let alone pregnant women. And then, how little we know about reproduction, so things like miscarriage and the disorders of pregnancy we know very little about, and of course that ties into abortion.

So that’s the area I’m wanting to focus on while I’m in Mississippi – for the obvious reason of Dobbs, and also my husband is from Mississippi, and also I had a miscarriage in January last year when we were last here, which was briefly scary, particularly as a British person, being here and thinking “if this goes wrong, am I going to be able to get the care I need?”

So I’m just really interested in understanding what it is actually like for a woman whose pregnancy goes wrong in Mississippi right now. Because I know there are these exceptions, but also, they’re never used. So, the focus for that chapter is I want to look at what happens to women who need an abortion and legally, supposedly, can get one, but actually, can’t get one. And then the rest of the book is looking at fertility and infertility through to the menopause.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Crystal Springs commercial painter says police damaged his eyesight

Published

6 hours ago

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November 22, 2024

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mississippitoday.org – Mina Corpuz – 2024-11-22 12:21:00

CRYSTAL SPRINGS – Roger Horton has worked decades as a commercial painter, a skill he’s kept up with even with the challenge of having what his wife has called “one good eye.” 

It hasn’t stopped him from being able to complete detailed paint jobs and create straight lines without the help of tape. But last year following a head injury, he and others said people have been pointing out a change in his work. Horton says the sight in his right eye is clouded, like he is looking underwater.

Affected vision, short term memory and periods of irritability – potential symptoms of concussion – followed after he was arrested last September. During an encounter with several police officers, Horton alleges more than one slammed his head into a cruiser and placed handcuffs on so tight that he started to bleed. 

“(The officer) was kind of rough with me and all, and he takes my head and I said, ‘What’d I do?’” he recalled recently. 

Horton ended up being convicted of two misdemeanor charges and has paid off the fines, but a year later he still has questions about the arrest and treatment by the police. 

To date, he has not seen a doctor to evaluate his eye and check for vision or cognitive issues. Horton and his wife Rhonda don’t have a car, and transportation to doctor’s appointments in the Jackson area remains a challenge. 

The Hortons have lived in Crystal Springs all their lives, and they have lived in the home the past five years that belonged to Rhonda’s mother. 

More than a quarter of all people in Crystal Springs live below the poverty line, and that includes the couple. Rhonda Horton said it’s hard to make a living because there aren’t a lot of jobs, but they support themselves as painters. 

That’s how they met Yvonne Florczak-Seeman, who lived in Illinois and purchased her first historical property in Crystal Springs in 2019. She splits her time between the two states. 

“We painted that porch bar and the rest is history,” Rhonda Horton said, adding that they went on to complete detailed work on mantles, kitchen cabinets and a cigar room at Florczak-Seeman’s North Jackson Street residence. 

Over the years, the couple built a relationship with Florczak-Seeman, who is seeking to open a women’s empowerment center called the Butterfly Garden, in the building next to city hall. 

Yvonne Florczak-Seeman poses for a portrait at her business, The Butterfly Garden, in Crystal Springs, Miss., Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

Florczak-Seeman has supported the couple numerous times, including helping them pay a late water bill and offering them work. She called them talented painters and hired them again to paint the interior of the future center, located at East Railroad Avenue. 

In pieces, Rhonda Horton told Florczak-Seeman about her husband’s arrest and later the injuries she said he sustained from it. Florczak-Seeman had questions about the encounter and other potential injustices at play, so she offered to help. 

“I just want them to pay for what they’ve done not just to him, but everybody,” Rhonda Horton said. “That’s what I want, justice.” 

The Arrest

On Sept. 24, 2023, Horton was walking home from a friend’s house when officers approached him. One grabbed his arms to handcuff him, and he remembers them cutting his wrist and causing it to bleed.

Then, he said, a second officer slammed his head into the top of the police car, followed by another officer who slammed his head again. During the encounter, a bag of marijuana that Horton said he found fell out of his pocket onto the ground. 

An officer put Horton in the back of the cruiser and took him to the station where Horton asked to speak to the police chief and call his wife. He said the police took his phone and clothes.

Afterward, he was taken to the Copiah County Detention Center in Gallman. 

Police Chief Tony Hemphill disputed Horton’s allegation of mistreatment, saying he did not sustain any injuries that required hospitalization. He said Horton’s wrist was cut while he resisted arrest. 

“He was not brutalized and targeted,” Hemphill said. “If he had just complied, he wouldn’t have had to come up there (to jail) that night.”

Two police reports from the night of the September 2023 arrest detail how officers had responded to a possible assault and were given the description of a white man. While in the area, they encountered Horton — the only person who fit that description. 

Hemphill said a mother called police after her daughter told her she was assaulted. He said officers approached Horton on the street and tried to talk with him to rule him out as a suspect. 

That’s when Horton began “fighting, pulling away, and kicking against (the officer’s) patrol vehicle, trying to run,” according to a police report from the night and Hemphill. Horton denies doing any of that. 

The next day police took Horton from the county jail to the Crystal Springs police station. There, police informed him a teenage girl reported being assaulted. After learning about the assault allegation, Horton remembered feeling shocked and saying it couldn’t be true because he was not on the street where the alleged incident took place. 

Hemphill confirmed the police investigated the assault allegation and found it not credible, meaning Horton wouldn’t face any related charges. He said he communicated this to Horton and his wife early on and since then, which the couple disputes. 

As Horton was being arrested and detained, his wife grew worried because she had just spoken with him on the phone and expected him to arrive home shortly. Rhonda Horton and her adult son started calling Roger’s phone, each not getting an answer. 

Then during one of the calls by her son, someone who did not identify himself answered Roger’s phone and said, ‘Your daddy’s dead’ and then hung up, Rhonda Horton said. 

She was starting to assume the worst had happened. Rhonda Horton wouldn’t have confirmation her husband was alive until he called from the county jail in the early morning. 

The next morning as she talked with the police chief, Rhonda Horton asked the chief about who answered the phone and told her son that Roger was dead. The chief told her the person who answered must have been from the county. 

Hemphill later told Mississippi Today that he did not know about the call and that type of behavior by his staff “is not going to be tolerated.” Similarly, Copiah County Sheriff Byron Swilley said he had not heard about it and could not say whether a member of his department made the comment to Rhonda and Roger Horton’s son. 

A Sept. 25, 2023, citation signed by Hemphill, shared with Mississippi Today, summoned Roger Horton to municipal court for the misdemeanor charges of possession of marijuana and resisting arrest and directed him not to have contact with the alleged victim in the assault case. No contact orders are typically for cases such as domestic violence and sexual assault and they are set by a judge.

LaKiedra Kangar, who works in municipal court services, said the no contact order was put in place because of the assault allegation. She confirmed Horton was not charged with the offense following the police department’s investigation of the allegation. 

Weeks passed. Roger Horton went to court for the misdemeanor charges, to which he pleaded guilty.  Felony assault charges were not part of the hearing. Municipal Court Judge Matthew Kitchens ordered Roger to pay over $900 in fines for the misdemeanors. 

Horton was able to pay for some of the fine through at least 10 hours worth of court-ordered community service, which he said involved painting buildings for the city. 

Months later after learning about Horton’s arrest and how he said the police treated him, Florczak-Seeman said she wanted to know more. Horton didn’t have access to his arrest documents, so she accompanied him and his wife to the police department to ask for them. 

The first visit, Horton asked but did not receive the arrest report. Florczak-Seeman asked if he had a fine for any of the charges, which police said Horton did even after completing some community service hours. Florczak-Seeman paid for the remaining balance and had him work for her for two days to pay that off. 

This year, they went to the police department a second time so Horton could ask for his arrest paperwork. An officer told him he didn’t need it and that the rape allegation had been investigated and found not to be credible, Horton told Mississippi Today. 

Florczak-Seeman asked why Horton couldn’t receive the report. She said Hemphill asked if she was Horton’s attorney, and Florczak-Seeman clarified she was his representative. 

The chief left for a few minutes and returned with two pieces of paper and handed them to Horton. Hemphill told Mississippi Today he did not recall whether he was the one who handed the report to Horton. 

Florczak-Seeman took the document from Horton and began to read it as they stood in the lobby. She said she was horrified to see the name of the alleged, underage victim and her address in the report.

Hemphill said the victim’s personal information should have been restricted and not doing so was an oversight. 

After reading the report, Florczak-Seeman went down the street to the mayor’s office at city hall to explain what happened, and how she believed the mayor had grounds to fire the police chief because he provided that document to Roger with the alleged victim’s information. 

Crystal Springs Mayor Sally Garland Credit: Crystal Springs website

Mayor Sally Garland confirmed she had a conversation with Florczak-Seeman about the police chief’s employment. 

She said she reviews all complaints about city officials, and Garland said she goes to the department head to get a better understanding of the situation. If she determines there are potential grounds for termination, a hearing would be scheduled with the Board of Aldermen, and the group would vote on that decision.   

Garland did not find grounds for termination, and Hemphill remains police chief. 

A Strange Visit

The Hortons and Florczak-Seeman hadn’t given much thought about the 2023 arrest, until weeks ago when a teenaged girl suddenly showed up in Florczak-Seeman’s yard. 

At the end of September at the North Jackson Street home, Florczak-Seeman heard screaming and found the teenage girl who came onto her property. She asked what was wrong, and the teenager said she was chased by a dog, which Florczak-Seeman and Rhonda Horton did not see. 

The teenager asked for a soda, and Rhonda Horton went inside to get one. Florczak-Seeman asked where the teenager lived, and she gave an answer that Florczak-Seeman said conflicted with what two girls who were standing nearby on the public sidewalk said she told them. 

Then Florczak-Seeman asked the teenager’s name and recognized it as the name of the alleged victim on Horton’s arrest record. Immediately, Florczak-Seeman said she turned to Horton and told him to stay back, and she told the teenager to get off her property, which she did. 

At the moment, they were not able to verify whether the teenager was the alleged victim from the report. Neither the Hortons nor Florczak-Seeman had seen her before, and they only knew her name from the arrest report.

“That didn’t make sense at all,” Rhonda Horton told Mississippi Today. 

Florczak-Seeman called 911 to report the situation and ask for police to come, which they did not. Hemphill told Mississippi Today a dispatcher informed him about the call with Florczak-Seeman, including details with the teenage girl and how she wanted to report the girl for trespassing. 

Florczak-Seeman is one of the people who have noticed a difference in Horton’s vision. It’s clear when comparing the detailed and clean paint job Roger completed at her Jackson Street property in 2019 and the center where he painted last year.

During an interview at the center in October, Florczak-Seeman pointed to the ceiling and noted spots that Horton did not paint. She remembers telling him about them and realized that he couldn’t see them. 

“The spots on my ceiling are still not painted, and they’re not painted as a reminder of the injustices that happened in this situation and why I got involved,” Florczak-Seeman said. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

Job opening: Jackson Reporter

Published

7 hours ago

on

November 22, 2024

By

mississippitoday.org – Mississippi Today – 2024-11-22 15:00:00

Mississippi Today, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newsroom focused on investigative and accountability journalism, is building a dedicated team of reporters to provide in-depth coverage of Jackson, Mississippi.

As the state’s largest and capital city, Jackson matters greatly to us and all Mississippians. Launched in 2016 as the state’s flagship nonprofit newsroom focused on Mississippi government and policy, Mississippi Today is focusing our lens beyond the statehouse and to the city of Jackson, serving our readers with the watchdog reporting they’ve come to expect from Mississippi Today. Our newsroom, with a proven record of providing impactful government accountability, aims to serve the city more directly with this team.

Our Jackson team will focus on sharp investigative reporting, watchdog accountability journalism and meaningful cultural storytelling. We aim to both elevate the voices of those working for positive change in the community while offering a balanced perspective on the city’s obstacles and triumphs. Our goal is to deliver impactful, honest journalism that will inform, inspire and empower Jackson’s citizens.

The team will be led by Pulitzer Prize winner Anna Wolfe, an investigative reporter with a decade of experience covering Jackson.

Roles and Responsibilities:

  • We are purposefully casting a wide net, hoping to connect with journalists of many different backgrounds who may be uniquely qualified to help us launch this team. If you’re a reporter with any of the following experience or attributes, this team may be for you.
  • Investigative reporting focused on uncovering systemic issues within government and politics. The bigger the impact of your reporting on government leaders or systems, the better.
  • Political reporting covering not only high-profile candidates for offices, but experience delving into issues and ideas that affect a community. We hope to delve deeply into a deep distrust in the city’s institutions.
  • Cultural reporting that highlights the often-overlooked success stories of citizens who are making a positive impact on their communities.
  • Strong understanding of Jackson (or similar large urban centers) and the unique challenges facing the city and its residents.
  • Commitment to the mission of balanced, impactful journalism that centers and respects the voice of the community.
  • Collaborative mindset and ability to work within a team-oriented newsroom.

The starting salary for this position is $58,000. Compensation is commensurate with experience level.

Expectations:

  • Work with a small team of journalists who are focused on social inequities and racial equality in our area.
  • Willingness to collaborate closely with a small team of like-minded journalists.
  • Get people to talk, find willing sources and protect them while telling sensitive and timely stories.
  • Build trust: Many people who have been impacted by inequities in Mississippi have been victims of predatory practices and forces. This will require empathy, patience and savvy.
  • Work with our Audience Team and data and visual journalists to create compelling story presentations.

Qualified candidates should have:

  • Experience working as a reporter in a newsroom.
  • Ability to work quickly, with accuracy and good news judgment.
  • Comfortability in digital or multimedia journalism spaces.
  • Ability to independently develop and cultivate sources.
  • Ability to use social media for research and to engage readers.

What you’ll get:

  • The opportunity to work alongside award-winning journalists and make significant contributions to Mississippi’s top nonprofit, nonpartisan digital news and information sources.
  • Highly competitive salary with medical insurance, and options for vision and dental insurance.
  • Use of appropriate technology and equipment. 
  • 29 days paid time off.
  • Up to 12 weeks of parental family leave, with return-to-work flexibility.
  • Simple IRA with 3 percent company matching. Group-term life insurance provided to employees ($15,000 policy).
  • Support for professional training and attending industry conferences.

How to Apply:

We’re committed to building an inclusive newsroom that represents the people and communities we serve. We especially encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply for this position, including women, people of color, LGBTQ people and people who are differently abled. Please apply here.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Central, south Mississippi voters will decide judicial runoffs on Tuesday

Published

9 hours ago

on

November 22, 2024

By

mississippitoday.org – Taylor Vance – 2024-11-22 11:16:00

Some Mississippi voters head to the polls Tuesday to decide who should represent them on the state’s highest courts. 

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday. Absentee voting has begun, and in-person absentee voting at county circuit clerk’s offices ends at noon on Saturday. 

In the Jackson Metro area and parts of central Mississippi, incumbent Supreme Court Justice Jim Kitchens will compete against Republican state Sen. Jenifer Branning of Neshoba County. In areas on the Gulf Coast, Jennifer Schloegel and Amy St. Pé will face each other for an open seat on the Court of Appeals. 

Candidates for judicial offices in Mississippi are technically nonpartisan, but political parties and trade associations often contribute money to candidates and cut ads for them, which has increasingly made  them almost as partisan as other campaigns. 

In the Central District Supreme Court race, GOP forces are working to oust Kitchens, one of the dwindling number of centrist jurists on the high Court. Conservative leaders also realize Kitchens is next in line to lead the court as chief justice should current Chief Justice Mike Randolph step down.

Kitchens is one of two centrist members of the high court and is widely viewed as the preferred candidate of Democrats, though the Democratic Party has not endorsed his candidacy. 

Kitchens, first elected to the court in 2008, is a former district attorney and private-practice lawyer. On the campaign trail, he has pointed to his experience as an attorney and judge, particularly his years prosecuting criminals and his rulings on criminal cases. 

In an interview on Mississippi Today’s ‘The Other Side’ podcast, Kitchens said his opponent, who primarily practices real estate law, would be at a “significant disadvantage” because the state Supreme Court often reviews criminal cases and major civil lawsuits that are sent to them on appeal. 

“I’m sure she has an academic knowledge about the circuit courts that she perhaps learned in law school or perhaps has been to some seminars, but she does not have the hands-on trial experience that I have,” Kitchens said. “And that’s so important to the work that I do.” 

Branning, a private-practice attorney, was first elected to the Legislature in 2015. She has led the Senate Elections and Transportation committees. During her time at the Capitol, she has been one of the more conservative members of the Senate leadership, voting against changing the state flag to remove the Confederate battle emblem, voting against expanding Medicaid to the working poor and supporting mandatory and increased minimum sentences for crime.

While campaigning for the judicial seat, she has pledged to ensure that “conservative values” are always represented in the judiciary, but she has stopped short of endorsing policy positions — which Mississippi judicial candidates are prohibited from doing. 

Branning declined an invitation to appear on Mississippi Today’s podcast. 

“Mississippians need and deserve Supreme Court justices that are constitutionally conservative in nature,” Branning said in a recent interview with radio station SuperTalk Mississippi. “And by that, I mean justices that simply follow the law. They do not add or take away.”

The two candidates have collectively raised around $187,00 and spent $182,00 during the final stretch of the campaign, according to campaign finance reports filed with the Secretary of State’s office. 

Since she initially qualified in January, Branning has raised the most amount of money at $879,871, with $250,000 of that money coming from a loan she gave her campaign. She spent around $730,000 of that money. Several third party groups have supported her campaign. 

Kitchens has raised around $514,00 since he qualified for reelection. He’s spent roughly $436,000 of that money, and some of his top contributors have been trial attorneys. 

For the open Court of Appeals seat, Schloegel and St Pe, two influential names on the Gulf Coast, are working to turn out their voters in a close election. 

Schloegel is a Chancery Court judge in Harrison, Hancock and Stone counties. St. Pé  is an attorney in private practice, a municipal court judge in Gautier, and a city attorney for Moss Point. 

Schloegel has raised roughly $214,000 since she qualified, and has spent almost that same amount of money this election cycle. St. Pé has raised around $480,000 this year and spent approximately $438,067 during that timeframe. 

Whoever wins the race, it ensures that a woman will fill the open seat. After the election, half of the judges on the 10-member appellate court will be women, the most number of women who have served on the court at one time. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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