This Week in America

Cops attack infants (and other non-violent protesters) with rubber bullets and dogs.

Lesbian has gay slurs carved into her body, spray-painted on her walls, and home set on fire in Lincoln, Nebraska. This in a city where they recently decided to overturn a "fairness" amendment protecting the LGBT community, and instead put it to the public for a vote.
I can honestly say, I'm terrified of Lincoln, and will not go there alone. It isn't just the LGBT people that need to be watching out there-if you're a person of colour, poor, disabled, or otherwise seen as "different" it is not a safe place to be. I've never encountered such a hostile city, in the US or elsewhere. Having had someone threaten to kill me because they thought I was Latina (my car had the nerve to break down at an intersection and inconvenience him) while others heard ,and did nothing to help as I was threatened by a very large, angry man screaming and reaching for me in my car window I feel I have some credibility on the subject. Nearly eight years later, I've been to Lincoln perhaps a handful of times and never alone. Never. I know politicians and business people will assert this isn't representative of the city, but it would take a whole hell of a lot of goodness being displayed to convince me otherwise. The local police still won't call it a "hate crime", but the FBI has been called in and presumably they can determine if having "Dyke" carved into your stomach is evidence of a hate crime, or if it was just some kids fucking around and setting someone's house on fire after an assault. I mean really, what do they need to determine it, a note from the assailants saying, "This is a hate crime?"