Katie Rucke

Katie Rucke is a MintPress staff writer and investigative report specializing in the war on drugs, criminal justice, marijuana legislation, education and watchdog investigations as well as whistle-blowers. Her investigations related to the coverage of the 2010 Toyota recall scandal, and coverage of the trials of Anonymous hacker and proclaimed activist Jeremy Hammond as well as Bradley Manning have received international acclaim. Rucke has been recommended by the Wikileaks organization as a trusted journalist in 2013. Rucke has also written pieces for Yahoo! and various community magazines. Follow Katie on Twitter: @katierucke

Banned But Not Forgotten: Book Censorship In The U.S.

From best-sellers to sex surveys, the U.S. has a history of keeping controversial texts off shelves, even though the First Amendment should be protecting books from such a fate.

Katie Rucke
作者 Katie Rucke

Under the First Amendment, the U.S. government cannot outright ban literature in the United States, but as Mark Crispin Miller, author and professor of media studies at New York University, explained, books can be hidden from public view or written off as conspiracy theory in order to prevent people from reading them. While censorship is often

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#YesAllWomen, Except Sex Workers

Is feminism excluding sex workers?

Katie Rucke
作者 Katie Rucke

Following Elliot Rodger’s killing spree in Isla Vista, California, last month, in which the 22-year-old killed six people and injured 13 others as he sought revenge on women for refusing to date him, many women turned to social media networks to share stories of sexual harassment they have encountered, as well as tell tales of unwanted cat-calls

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ACLU Report Reveals Increasingly Militarized Police In U.S.

SWAT teams were designed to capture dangerous criminals, but unnecessary SWAT deployments are putting innocent lives at risk.

Katie Rucke
作者 Katie Rucke
SWAT

A new report from the American Civil Liberties Union compares U.S. police officers’ treatment of American citizens to the U.S. military’s treatment of the country’s enemies in 800 different instances. In its report, “War Comes Home,” the ACLU determined that police departments throughout the U.S. are growing increasingly militarized. State

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Great Lakes Communities Struggle Against Proposed Nuclear Waste Facility

The fate of a proposed nuclear waste facility near the Canadian shores of Lake Huron is left to the democratic process.

Katie Rucke
作者 Katie Rucke
Rescuing Wetlands

For the past 15 years, Ontario Power Generation -- one of the largest producers of electricity in North America -- has been working to obtain approval from the Canadian government to build an underground repository near the Great Lakes to store its nuclear waste. As the approval process for the Deep Geologic Repository, or DGR, nears an end,

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Report: California Unlawfully Sterilized Female Prisoners

The California State Auditor releases a report slamming the state’s prisons for performing tubal ligations on inmates without obtaining the appropriate consent.

Katie Rucke
作者 Katie Rucke
California Prisons Suing Counties

Of the 144 bilateral tubal ligations performed on California prison inmates from fiscal years 2005-6 to 2012-3, at least 39 of the procedures -- commonly known as getting one’s tubes tied -- were carried out without lawful consent, according to a report released last week from California State Auditor Elaine Howle. Part of the reason an exact

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Sowing And Spraying Trouble In Paradise: How GMOs Are Destroying Kauai

Big Agriculture is wearing out its welcome on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, which is being used a major testing ground for genetically modified seeds and pesticides.

Katie Rucke
作者 Katie Rucke
Food and Farm Seed Farming

Back in 1970, Joni Mitchell tried to warn us about what would happen to “paradise” if corporate interests were put ahead of the environment and people’s health. She pleaded with farmers to “put away that DDT now.” “Give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and the bees, please,” she sang. But as residents of the Hawaiian island of

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Coming Soon: Showers On Wheels

Hoping to expand the San Francisco homeless community’s access to restroom and shower facilities, one woman converts an old bus into a mobile hygiene station.

Katie Rucke
作者 Katie Rucke
Homeless Library Patrons

For the 6,436 homeless people who call San Francisco home, around 59 percent were unsheltered, according to the 2013 Homeless Point-in-Time Count report, meaning the bulk of these people don’t have access to a restroom or a shower. In the entire city, there are currently only eight shower facilities for homeless people to use. As these

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