Daily Archives: May 27, 2012

A train station is where passengers begin a journey, or change direction. For the past year, Freedom Station has been a place where San Diego sailors and Marines with broken bodies start their journey to a new life.

It looks much like many apartment complexes in old San Diego neighborhoods. A handful of cottages circle a courtyard.

But every detail is ready to pass a drill instructors inspection. The grass is military-style neat. There is a white picket fence in front of each door.

And the residents, most in their 20s, arent ordinary. Josue Barron is missing a leg above the knee, and one eye is glass and bears the emblem of his infantry unit 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. Timothy Read also lost part of a leg, and one wrist bears scars where doctors stitched it back on after a roadside bomb blast.

Barron likes to sit on the small porch of his cottage in the afternoons. Other residents call out greetings as they come home from their doctors appointments.

Being combat wounded, with all these guys here, I felt comfortable. If I was living in any other neighborhood, I wouldnt be able to talk to my neighbors because they have nothing in common with me, said Barron, 22, who lives with his wife and their dog in the small house while waiting for his medical discharge.

Here, we all are transitioning, and we all have our own demons, said David Smith, 23, an injured Marine veteran who was one of Freedom Stations first residents. But were all doing it together, so its easier.

Operated by a grass roots San Diego nonprofit group, Freedom Station officially opened one year ago, on Memorial Day weekend.

Since that time, the quiet complex has been home to 15 injured service members, who were once resident patients at San Diego Naval Medical Center in Balboa Park. An additional 23 are on a waiting list.

Sandy Lehmkuhler was volunteering at the Navy hospital, one of the militarys national centers for amputee care, when she got the idea.

Original post:
Next stop for wounded vets: Freedom Station

Internet freedom advocates are finding creative ways to get their message out to the masses.

Source: http://www.dccomics.comThe latest unique effort comes from Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian and online advocacy group Fight for the Future. Their plan: a "Bat-Signal for the Internet." According to Forbes, once it launches next month it will provide participating website administrators with code they can add to their sites that can be triggered in the case of a freedom-infringing episode.

The code will add to the sites widgets or banners that ask users to do things like call politicians or boycott companies. It supposedly even could trigger another blackout similar to the one that occurred in January when Google, Wikipedia, Craigslist and other sites went dark and posted messages in protest of SOPA.

Legislation such as SOPA, PIPA, and CISPA, which threaten the freedom of the Internet, seem to be popping up like a game of Whac-a-Mole and squashing them means online advocates rallying their followers. This is apparently another way to do it.

"People who wish to be tapped can see, 'Oh look, the Bat-Signal is up. Time to do something,'" said Ohanian. "Whatever website you own, this is a way for you to be notified if something comes up and take some basic actions ... If we aggregate everyone thats doing it, the numbers start exploding."

According to Forbes, Fight for the Future and Ohanian have been focused most recently on defeating CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protect Act. The bill, which was passed in the House of Representatives last month, aims to protect the U.S. from cyber terrorism and other online attacks. One of two versions of the bill will likely come up for a vote in the Senate early next month.

The problem with CISPA is it includes a provision that would let companies share users' private data with government agencies, and not just regarding threats of cyber attacks; companies will now be able to share users' private data in the event of "computer crime," exploitation of minors, and to protect individuals from "the danger of death or serious bodily harm."

This broad definition has privacy watchdogs up in arms.

Rainey Reitman, activism director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is an outspoken contributor to the CISPA debate. In a radio debate last month, Reitman said that while CISPA proponents employ rhetoric that the bill will "fend off a cyber Pearl Harbor," what they're really doing is inciting fears of security threats when, in fact, such concerns have existed for years. "I do think there is a need for companies to get more information from the government in a timely fashion. The problem that arises with CISPA is that it does so much more than that," she said.

"It also opens the floodgates for companies to intercept communications of everyday Internet users and pass unredacted personal information to the governments," she said, adding that several amendments to the bill would have addressed such concerns but they never made it to the House floor for a vote.

Read the rest here:
Internet Freedom Advocates Take a Page From Caped Crusader

Ron Danyi has been Bradley Hagerty's teacher for four years.

During that time, first at Northeast Middle School and this school year at Freedom High, Danyi has come to see a transformation in the boy whose life was dominated by a seizure disorder and learning disability.

"He just didn't have the self-confidence," Danyi said.

Bradley's seizures have kept him from getting a permit like other teens approaching driving age. And Bradley's learning disability kept him from comprehending directions, so he'd rarely speak up in class except to apologize for not understanding.

"The self-esteem building is the hardest thing in teaching," Danyi said.

Especially when a student is wracked with fear.

"With his seizures, his fear is when he has them, kids may make fun of him if he falls," said Bradley's stepfather, Ken Haas.

The 15-year-old freshman has found confidence in an unlikely place: the stage.

"Theater is one of the great equalizers," said Freedom English teacher Jennifer Wescoe.

Drama I has been offered as an English elective for years at Freedom. And when the Bethlehem Area School District revamped high school special-education services by moving Danyi from Northeast to Freedom, Wescoe opened Drama I to Danyi's students. It's Freedom's first full-inclusion drama class, in which 17 special-education students are learning and performing plays and musicals alongside five regular-education students.

Read more:
Freedom High special education students make academic and social gains via drama class