The mother of the woman who died under mysterious circumstances in a Texas jail is planning on filing a wrongful-death lawsuit.

Top of the Alty World

"Unanswered Questions: Sandra Bland lawsuit says jail ignored her ‘uncontrollable crying’"—Fusion

The "100 percent effective" Ebola vaccine, might not actually be that effective—Wired

Protests erupted in Mexico following the killing of five Mexican journalists.—Democracy Now!

Donald Trump has fired a campaign adviser amidst a series of racist Facebook posts.—Rolling Stone

Top of Alty Utah

A poll finds most Utahns want to continue fighting against Obamacare.—Utah Policy

Survey shows access to parking in Salt Lake City is a major complaint, but some say its simply the new normal.—Salt Lake City Weekly

Downtown Salt Lake City Council candidates Babs De Lay talks transit, development and homelessness issues.—SL City News

Salt Lake City councilwoman and Breathe Utah Policy director Erin Mendenhall talks about clearing the air on the Wasatch front.—RadioActive!

Rantosphere

Utah Politico Hub sounds off on the news that 42 Utah prison inmates have gone on a hunger strike over conditions at the prison.

Now, it’s easy for me to think “You guys worked hard to get in there, you get what you deserve.” But I’m not sure that’s how I should be thinking. The ACLU and advocacy groups feel differently than that, of course. Inhumane is inhumane, and our job as the humane part of society is to humanely rehabilitate if possible, and secure in all cases, those who break the law seriously enough to land in prison. To dehumanize them would make us hardly better than those who broke the law. And in that case, we are simply living in a society in which the rule of law no longer applies.—Utah Politico Hub

The Long View

Foreign Policy examines Operation Underground Railroad, a Utah-based group that makes headlines for rescuing women from sex-trafficking rings, though critics say such raids don't always have happy endings.

Detractors, including many health and human-rights advocates, argue that stings are only as good as their ability to actually improve lives—and that they often do the opposite. “The appeal of the rescue is that it’s a happy ending,” says Janie Chuang, who teaches courses on trafficking at American University’s Washington College of Law. “But it’s not. It’s a really hard life.”

In some cases, victims are quickly cut loose because governments lack the resources or concern to assist them. Others choose to leave protective services; sometimes they fear that authorities will abuse them or that traffickers will do the same to their families. (This is to say nothing of rescued adults who weren’t trafficked at all but had chosen to be sex workers, a distinction that raid groups often fail to make.) Mother Jones found in 2003 that girls and women saved in an IJM bust in Thailand were “locked into two rooms of an orphanage by Public Welfare authorities” and were allowed outside for only one hour each day. Following up on the operation featured on Dateline, the Nation reported in 2009 that some of the rescued children were addicted to intravenous drugs and made deals with the police to keep using; at least a dozen ran away and returned to brothels. “You hear about the raid, but you don’t hear a lot about the safe houses, the rehab 
process,” says Gretchen Soderlund, a professor at the University of Oregon who studies trafficking.—Foreign Policy