just yell fire
just yell fire, inc. p. o. 5647 vancouver, wa 98668
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just yell fire is a 1. 5 million girl revolution across 64 countries combating violence against young women, founded by
thank you for reaching out to just yell fire, the million girl revolution combating violence against young women and girls. below are the best ways to get in touch with the right person in the just yell fire organization to help with your specific need .
dallas jessup was just a teenager when she made the video' just yell fire.' today she' s continuing that mission to help girls and young women stay safe .
dallas jessup is available for select speaking engagements with a just yell fire or young revolutionaries who rock theme or custom keynotes for your organization .
someone at the youth venture organization sent an email after running across my just yell fire project either in the news or through an online source .
when something goes wrong in your life just yell' plot twist!' and move on. - anonymous
teens, parents, teachers, law enforcement, shelter leaders, elected officials, and women’s organizations across america and around the world have lauded the just yell fire films and programs. dallas jessup has traveled more than 200, 000 miles speaking at schools, colleges, law enforcement events (including the fbi national academy), and testified to the u. s. congress to get the just yell fire information into the hands of girls everywhere .
urltoken empower teen girls and save one, ten, or ten thousand from rape or abduction. in what some describe as the coolest high school project ever, two of portland' s st. mary' s academy high school girls expect to put predators and date rapists out of business nationwide when their new film just yell fire. just yell fire is free to any teen girl either as a dvd or download from the website: urltoken .
just yell fire offers four inspiring, life - saving, and entertaining programs that empower girls and young women to know their rights, to stand up for themselves, to be aware of dangers they face (and how to avoid them), and to escape violence when trouble finds them. the just yell fire million girl revolution is based on the premise that young women have the right to live the life they want - on their own terms .
“i just couldn’t let her down, ” he would tell the police in his confession. “i mean, her son had just torn her to pieces... . she don’t hit her kids, she don’t yell at them. ”
watson, peter. 2005. ideas: a history from fire to freud .
her self - defense program is making a difference. in her free downloadable videos, she gives 10 defensive steps that a person can use to stop an attacker just long enough to gain time to escape. she named her program just yell fire because, she says, yelling
help
doesn' t draw as much attention .
the next 911 call came just eight minutes later: a brush fire had been set near a ditch bank and burned a 10th of an acre of woods .
expanding our train the trainer project to teach just yell fire violence prevention and safety techniques to girls 11 to 19 to teach more teachers and coaches so they can teach their kids. expanding partnerships with law enforcement including what we' re doing now with two state attorneys general .
“it isn’t just flint. ” how the next water crisis could happen anywhere .
schirato, tony & susan yell. 1996. communication and cultural literacy: an introduction. sydney. allen & unwin .
a man from seattle whose daughter escaped from an abductor because of what she learned from just yell fire also e - mailed jessup to say thank you .
it' s notes like that that keep me going ,
she says. and feed her commitment to keep even more young women safe .
“i just couldn’t let her down, ” he would tell the police in his confession. “i mean, her son had just torn her to pieces... . she don’t hit her kids, she don’t yell at them. ” she didn’t do drugs. she didn’t have any outlets .
later i learn that the stairwells also qualify as fire stairs; normally these require heavy doors that reduce the spread of fire. but jobs, inspired by the way fire stairs work on yachts, had suggested that, in cases of flagration, glass encasing the stairwells should be drenched by high - ­pressure sprinkler heads producing a dense mist, a proposal that apparently satisfied the santa clara county fire department .
( then 14), that began in 2006. the just yell fire message is that a girl who knows her rights and how to stand up for herself is the front line defense against sexual assault, dating violence, hate crimes, human trafficking, date rape drugs and other dangers facing girls in high school and college .
it was a little more than 24 hours after the first fire had been set. now there were six .
after graduating from vanderbilt university in nashville, tenn. , in may with a degree in communications, jessup plans to continue directing her nonprofit organization, called just yell fire .
i love what i do ,
she says .
i love doing presentations. working one - on - one with the girls is one of the most rewarding things i do .
among the million girls who have seen and studied the just yell fire film we get from 5 to hundreds of emails each day from girls, parents, teachers, shelters, and law enforcement letting us know we' re successfully turning the tables on predators with girls fighting back because neither police nor parents can be everywhere. we hope to affect 5 million more by 2010 .
just yell fire™ is taking on a crisis social problem: violence and abuse against young women and girls. the numbers are horrific: 1 in 4 becomes a sexual assault victim, 1 in 3 face dating abuse, and too many encounter random violence, date rape drugs, hate crimes, or traffickers. we believe every girl has the right to live a life free of fear, abuse, or violence and we' re fighting back .
we' re doing three things: a) continuing to promote the website using social media, traditional media, and by creating buzz to get this information out; b) setting training sessions around the country (our train the trainer program see urltoken) for teachers and coaches - that' s how we' ll get to millions more girls; and c) working with federal and local law enforcement to get just yell fire programs into the schools .
love is a weird act: a temporary insanity, an optimistic delusion. fire is a passionate element, and it captivates even as it destroys .
“you could say anything to him and he would laugh, ” tonya says. “his smile would just light up his face. ”
finally, the fire took and the figure ran back toward the road. johnson and burke chased after, but just as they were clearing the forest, the minivan reappeared. the figure, wearing dark, baggy clothes, jumped in through the passenger’s side and the van drove off .
since 2006 just yell fire has grown into a 1. 5 million girl revolution across 64 countries as we empower girls to know their rights, to stand up for themselves, to be aware of dangers they face, and to escape violence when trouble finds them. ladies, watch our free films, learn to be safe and be part of our revolution; then tell your friends and your school to join us too. you have the right to live the life you want on your own terms. stay safe .
“they’re not insured, they’re vacant — they’re just old shacks that have been there for a hundred years, ” she told the operator who answered. she hadn’t heard anything. she hadn’t seen anything. “oh my god, ” she said as the fire presumably grew bigger. “ there she goes. ”
“well, ” the supervisor qualifies. “just everybody else is usually really sad or mad by the time they’ve been working here this long. ”
a few weeks later, just down the street, someone burned out an old pickup truck, and residents watched firefighters put out the flames .
nimses is launching in nigeria. the app is not just another icon for your screen. this is a wallet full of every minute ...
“i think so, ” charlie said. they never stayed to watch any of them burn, he said. they just lit them and ran .
accomack is a small county that looked half - gutted even before the fires started, where love and fire could combine to transform two ordinary people’s lives into an epic romance .
it was the 44th fire of the series, and it took place at the residence of j. d. shreaves, a single father who works for a tree - pruning company .
we ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. but the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. - mother teresa
in the coming weeks, she would get used to the sirens. everybody would. they would sound just after bedtime or just before, twice a night or once a week, from parksley, tasley, melfa, bloxom. the county vibrated with fire engines groaning over gravel driveways. the county vibrated with suspicion. the county went about its business. the county burned down. people assumed that the culprit must be someone who lived among them, and people would be right. it would be a love story .
this scenario lasts for 12 years (good thing he took your clothes off during the day)! by this point, the enemy has decided to leave and forget about the man. so he gets up and goes back to the city. my my my, look what he' s missed. in fact, he can' t handle all of the changes and he starts to yell at the people that they are bad and haven' t learned anything from the 12 years he' s been living in the cave. never mind that the people have been living in fear under the enemy rule. nope. just yell at everyone and make them feel bad .
practice is always informed by a sense of agency (the ability to understand and control our own actions), but that the possibilities of agency must be understood in terms of cultural trajectories, literacies and dispositions (schirato & yell 1996: 148) .
for example, he suggests that in a comparable manner to the action of creativity a fire needs three factors to be in place in order for it to occur; in this case tinder, oxygen and a spark. without any one of these necessary components being operative fire will simply not occur. but people tend to look at the spark alone to isolate the cause of fire. similarly when investigating creativity both researchers and lay - people will most often attempt to account for creativity by concentrating on individuals alone. however this disregards the necessary social and cultural factors at play. csikszentmilahyi suggests that :
the accomack county sheriff’s office doesn’t have its own fire investigators, so the virginia state police sent special agents to examine the properties. the agents determined that all of the fires had been intentionally set .
now what? well, he assumes he' ll have to be hiding for years and years. so, he' ll need to save the clothing he has. yep, during the day he just takes off all of his clothes and buries himself in the ground with just his head exposed. at night, he can go out and forage .
“well, what if i do start crying? ” i ask the woman who warns me to keep it together no matter how awfully i’m treated. “are they really going to fire me for that? ”
she ran next door to warn her neighbor, who, like clark, lives in a low - slung ranch house off of a silent road. at 10: 41 p. m. on nov. 12, 2012, she called the eastern shore 911 center, flustered and out of breath. “i’m just calling — somebody done set the house on fire on dennis drive. ”
“deciding which employees are going to sit in the main building” and which would have to work in the outer buildings. “and he just got a big laugh out of it. ”
it was the first time, she said, that she realized charlie had anything to do with the arsons. at her trial, she insisted what she has always insisted, in testimony, police questioning and in her jailhouse interview: she thought they were just getting out of the house for a while. she thought they were just going for a ride .
indeed, it was irresponsible to green light such a direct insult to another country and not expect there to be repercussions. in this analogy, it was sony studios that was going to yell “fire! ” in a crowded political theater and many people (economically and reputation - wise) were and are being injured. thinking of the film as a comedy sony, rogen, franco and company thought they could get away with yelling “fire”, but having actually used the real name of the target of their ridicule any kind of artistic license is revoked and the subsequent material can easily be interpreted as u. s. government sanctioned propaganda against north korea barely disguised as an action / comedy .
“hey, buddy, ” miles thornton, who made the 11: 43 call, said to the operator. “there’s a structure fire over on savannah road. ” thornton had stepped outside for a cigarette when he heard a crackling sound, which was coming from an empty house seven miles north of the original fire in parksley. “i looked over, ” thornton explained, “and all i saw was orange in the sky. ”
lois gomez’s christmas lights were half up on dec. 15, 2012. she hadn’t decided whether to bother with the rest of the decorations, which were meanwhile stored in the family’s detached garage. in the middle of that night, she got up for a drink of water and heard a passerby banging on her door, yelling that the garage was on fire — approximately the 30th fire since the arsons had begun a month before. the family kept chickens in a pen attached to the garage, and as gomez watched her property burn, she realized that whoever set the fire had taken the time to let out all the birds, which were now running around the lawn at 4 a. m .
his daughters sobbed as he called the police. “girls, calm down, ” he told them. “your daddy’s here with you. ” he was no expert, but the lit rag — it was obvious the fire was set intentionally .
tonya bundick was initially charged with one count of conspiracy and one count of arson — the final fire on airport road where police had stopped the gold minivan. she was originally placed in accomack county jail, where charlie was also being held .
we want to hear, did we miss an angle we should have covered? should we come back to this topic? or just give us a rating for this story. we want to hear from you .
a long - vacant house on dennis drive in parksley, va. , was the first to be set on fire, on nov. 12, 2012. nothing about the arsons pointed to insurance fraud, as many of the properties weren’t insured .
in the course of rolling out my project i' ve met 100 other kids who are chaning the world in huge ways! my book young revolutionaries who rock, saving the world one revolution at a time, comes out at the beginning of 2009. i use these kids and their phenomenal projects to inspire teens around the world to start their own projects. i hear regularly by email and at events where i' m speaking that kids and even adults are inspired to take on seemingly impossible social problems after looking at the just yell fire project. as a martial artist (black belt tae kwon do and a second degree instructor of filipino street fighting) i also connect with martial artists around the country to help empower youth to not only protect themselves but to change the world themselves .
charlie looked up at the sheriff, whom he’d known for 20 years the way people in this county just know one another. “todd, ” he said, “i’m sorry, but i didn’t light them all. ”
there are things charlie and tonya agree on, about what led them to the house on airport road. there are aspects to the story charlie and tonya don’t agree on at all, having to do with how a love story became a fire story .
now, what if he is a leader of the people? how can he still inspire them? again, not such a hard problem. he just gets word to his followers that he is hiding in the woods. tells the children to go outside with bows and arrows and other toys so that the enemy thinks they are just going to play in the forest. when the children get to the cave, he shares words of inspiration .
just after one in the morning on nov. 13 — three hours later and 13 miles away from where clark called 911 — helen hasty went to let her dog out and saw flames surrounding some outbuildings on the farm she owned .
williams is an arson profiler, the founder of the center for arson research. she has interviewed more than 1, 000 arsonists, by her estimate, and she divides them into categories: revenge arsonists, thrill - seekers, disordered - coping fire starters. most of them are white. most of them are men. some of them, such as john orr, a famous thrill - seeking arsonist who lit an estimated 2, 000 fires in southern california while maintaining his day job as a fire investigator, revel in the havoc they secretly create .
really, i had no idea all this would happen ,
ms. jessup says from her home in vancouver, wash .
it' s been amazing. i just thought that maybe i could help my friends at school .
“he wasn’t a mean - spirited person at all, ” wessels says. people wouldn’t have used his business if he were. he was always friendly around the shop; he just seemed like a doofus whose addiction kept causing him to screw up .
raised $ 600, 000 in cash but mostly in services for a professional crew of 30 and 100 volunteer extras to do a multiple day shoot to create just yell fire, the first film ever to teach girls 11 to 19 how to get away from attackers every time, a dating bill of rights, and some prevention tips from police. raised another $ 50, 000 or more to fund dvds to be made and mailed free to any girl anywhere who asks. 130 volunteers made the film, about 6 or 7 of my friends help me package and mail dvds, and we have 4 corporate partners and the recent commitment of jygy social network to help financially as well as the band enation that will assist to create revenues (one of their guys won 3 emmys, two are on people magazine' s world' s sexiest men list... plus their music is clean and great) .
so he admitted that he’d lied; the house was still standing. and then they drove back to the house together, in the dark, empty county where both of them had grown up and both of them struggled. this time, charlie would later say, tonya lit the fire .
the entire collection of noble rock stars just froze. the silence was palpable…it was uncanny how the whole room was there to pay deference to this man, just as the awaiting media were. the musicians in the room, big stars, genuinely famous across the planet and rightly full of their own achievement, seemed to unite in recognising that here was the head boy, the role model that defined pop star, that personified creativity, songwriting and fame (barrow & bextor 2004: 15 - 16) .
“charlie ‘wasn’t a mean - spirited person at all, ’ wessels says. people wouldn’t have used his business if he were. he was always friendly around the shop, he just seemed like a doofus whose addiction kept causing him to screw up. ”
she lit the next dozen, too, he says, and it wasn’t until the 15th fire, on nov. 21, that this changed: tonya was nearly spotted by police posted near the site. unable to bear the thought of her being caught, charlie announced that he would take over .
so we can see why it is so important for actor george clooney, president obama, sony ceo michael lynton, sony executive amy pascal, seth rogen and other parties involved to see the interview as alternately just an action / comedy or just a satire. because this film so resolutely reflects the ideological conflicting positions between the u. s. and north korea, the only country where the film might appear as bellicose propaganda is the very target of attack within the film itself: north korea and its leader kim - jong - un .
by that fall whisenhunt had heard that a former hp campus in cupertino might be available. the 100 - acre plot was just north of apple’s planned site. what’s more, it had deep meaning for jobs. as a young teen he had talked his way into a summer job at hp, just at the time when its founders—jobs’ heroes—were walking that site and envisioning an office park cluster for their computer systems division. now hp was contracting and no longer needed the space. whisenhunt worked a deal, and apple’s project suddenly grew to 175 acres .
charlie insisted that he just wanted to do what was right, and that he hadn’t been told of any special deal he would get for testifying against tonya. “i’d do whatever i could to make her happy, ” he said. “i didn’t want to lose her. ”
rape defense courses offer complicated moves and are designed for adult women. martial arts can be expensive and take years to become proficient. until the just yell fire program there was nothing out there for teenage girls and young women that they could learn in an hour to get away from bad situations - every time. we teach simple street fighting skills that become an instinctive response to an attack and give the information for free as a film. we' ve affected 1 million girls using internet distribution in 41 countries. it' s amazing how quickly a 250 pound attacker will let go of a 100 pound girl after an eye gouge, an ear tear and a bite - all unexpected and therefore effective. it' s free at our site urltoken. we even pursuaded celebrities josh holloway and evangeline lilly (from tv' s lost) to do cameos in the film to assure maximum interest in this important initiative. it was a 2008 american library association most notable video 2008 and teen choice award nominee .
a friend had come over to her house in parksley, va. , once the kids from clark’s living - room day care went home. he left about 10: 30 that monday evening, but a few minutes later knocked on her door again. “hey, ” he told her. “that house across the field is on fire. ”
if that were true, though, it meant an aberration from the pattern. shreaves’s house wasn’t abandoned; it was occupied by a family. and then there was the sequencing — the fact that the fire was set in the 25 minutes he was gone. it meant someone had timed it perfectly. it meant someone had been watching him .
to withstand earthquakes, the ring is mounted on huge steel base isolators that ensure the building can move up to 4. 5 feet in any direction without losing its vital services. “i love that the ambition was about more than just surviving, ” ive says. “the building could still function. ”
it' s been an unlikely journey for jessup. her 45 - minute video, made in 2006 when she was just 14, has been downloaded 1. 8 million times from her web page, www. justyellfire. com. a year ago, she finished her second video, targeting college - aged girls .
we will be fired if we say we just can’t or won’t get better, the workamper tells me. but so long as i resign myself to hearing how inadequate i am on a regular basis, i can keep this job. “do you think this job has to be this terrible? ” i ask the workamper .
charlie says he figured it was a joke, but tonya kept talking about it. finally, he realized she was serious. she dropped him off near the abandoned house. he went inside. he sat for 10 minutes. he didn’t light anything. he then went back out to the car and lied to her. he told her he’d set the fire, and they drove away .
i hated it at the time but later when i started to write and produce, i realized that having to learn and play all those hits had instilled in me an instinct for what works and what doesn’t. i didn’t have to think about how to construct a hit. i just knew (quoted in mcintyre 2008: 3) .
or that when she was a 14 - year - old, ponytailed freshman at a private all - girls high school in portland, ore. , she' d fly to new york to be a guest on the
good morning america
tv show – just a few months after her self - defense video was first posted online by her mother .
if they are aware how inhumane the reality is. but awareness has a long way to go, and logistics doesn’t just mean online retail; food packagers and processors, medical suppliers, and factories use mega - 3pls as well. and a whole lot of other industries— hotels, call centers—take advantage of the price controls and plausible deniability that temporary staffing offers .
she knew which one he was talking about. it had been a nice house once: two stories, white paint. but now it was empty and it had a peeled, beaten look to it. it had been a long time since anyone lived there, so she couldn’t think of how it could have caught fire — except that it was so dry that maybe the weather had something to do with it .
months passed and fires accumulated. houses, shacks, cabins. billboards, piles of tires. nothing that pointed to insurance fraud; many of these places weren’t insured. this was a county that didn’t have much, and what it didn’t have was burning down. a storage building burned down, and an airplane hangar burned down, and a methodist church almost burned down but didn’t. a commercial garage caught fire, and so did the propane tank inside it, and that fire was on christmas eve and the flames lit the horizon. for weeks, people had been wondering whether whispering pines — a ramshackle, shuttered motel that used to have a aaa - rated restaurant — would burn down, and it would, eventually, but the next day there would be another building, and another, and there was always something else burning .
charlie smith and his fiancée, tonya bundick, who lived next door to the gomezes, were in the crowd. after the fire was extinguished, according to an investigation document, tonya asked fellow onlooker joanna thornes who she thought was responsible. she told thornes that the arsonist was too smart to be caught. the police had canvassed the area and had visited charlie and tonya’s house twice, tonya remembers, to ask if they’d seen anything .
a new girl, whose family had just moved to the us from pakistan, came in wearing clothes not culturally in style in the us .
the other girls were making fun of this girl ,
he recalls .
dallas went to the little girl and made her feel comfortable. then dallas went to the father and talked to him about the clothes his daughter was wearing .
as advocates for israel, we may sometimes may seem like extremist or fanatics, but our goal is to instill a love of the jewish homeland. we sacrifice and give of ourselves to reach this goal. we meet those living in the diaspora, but we also bring them “to the woods” of eretz yisrael to inspire jews everywhere. by using the content available from organizations like israel forever we can light the fire of the jewish spirit and open the doors of israel engagement for jews everywhere .
there are other disadvantages to working in books. in the summer, it’s the heat. lots of the volumes are stored on the second and third floors of this immense cement box; the job descriptions we had to sign off on acknowledged that temperatures can be as low as 60 and higher than 95 degrees, and higher floors tend to be hotter. “they had to get fans because in the summer people were dying in here, ” one of the supervisors tells us. the fans still blow now even though i’m wearing five shirts. “if you think it’s cold in here, ” one of my coworkers told me when she saw me rubbing my arms for warmth one morning, “just hope we don’t have a fire drill. ” they evacuated everyone for one recently, and lots of the fast - moving employees had stripped down to t - shirts. they stood outside, masses of them, shivering for an hour as snow fell on their bare arms .
but on the night of that first date with charlie, a set - up by mutual friends, they both opened up, talking for hours in the parking lot. he told her about his troubled past. she told him about her kids. she loved how easygoing he seemed, and the way he laughed. “you could say anything to him and he would laugh, ” tonya says. “his smile would just light up his face. ”
later that month, charlie told wayne wessels that he wished he knew who was responsible for the arsons. he said that he had half a mind to find a passed - out junkie, drive him to an abandoned building and plant a lighter on him, just to collect the $ 25, 000 in reward money. wessels thought the joke was out of character and in poor taste but chalked it up to the stress the whole county was feeling .
she smiles. “oh, yeah. ” this town somewhere west of the mississippi is not big; everyone knows someone or is someone who’s worked for amalgamated. “but look at it from their perspective. they need you to work as fast as possible to push out as much as they can as fast as they can. so they’re gonna give you goals, and then you know what? if you make those goals, they’re gonna increase the goals. but they’ll be yelling at you all the time. it’s like the military. they have to break you down so they can turn you into what they want you to be. so they’re going to tell you, ‘you’re not good enough, you’re not good enough, you’re not good enough, ’ to make you work harder. don’t say, ‘this is the best i can do. ’ say, ‘i’ll try, ’ even if you know you can’t do it. because if you say, ‘this is the best i can do, ’ they’ll let you go. they hire and fire constantly, every day. you’ll see people dropping all around you. but don’t take it personally and break down or start crying when they yell at you. ”
we might try to describe the conclusion that the cancelling of the release of the interview is not the censorship of freedom of speech by analogy. for example, if you scream, ” fire! ” (and there really isn’t one) in a crowded movie theater and people are trampled to death and / or severely injured in the chaos to exit the theater - you’re freedom of speech rights are not going to protect you from criminal and civil punishments for screaming “fire! ” and there wasn’t one. freedom of speech extends only so far as one does not harm or impinge upon the rights of others in the exercising of it. well, the same can be said about the interview as a propaganda film whose plot explicitly involves the murder of a living national leader (regardless of whether or not the u. s. is friendly or unfriendly with that national leader) and that country (or its allies) threaten to attack moviegoers because of this film’s blatant underlying message of “death to its national leader”. the movie studio has a moral and civil responsibility not to release the film to protect moviegoers that trumps freedom of speech .
charlie and tonya were arrested, driven to separate police stations and taken into interrogation rooms. state police officer scott wade, who had been home enjoying a night off, was called in to question tonya. she told him that she and charlie had been driving around that night when he asked her to stop and let him out of the car. she did, she told wade, and then a few minutes later she swung back to pick him up. she didn’t know he’d gone to light the fire, she said. she didn’t know anything about the arsons .
she and charlie had driven 20 miles to the wal - mart in pocomoke on the night of the last fire, she said. her boys had birthdays coming up and they wanted smartphones. they were home alone that night. she thought they could be on their own for a few hours — the older one was 13. yes, her older son had a behavioral disorder. yes, he’d been put out of school several times. yes, she and charlie would drive to mcdonald’s some nights for coffee, because it was the only chance she had to get out of the house .
“i think we do have a shot, ” he told the council, “of building the best office building in the world. ” what he didn’t tell them—during what none of them could have known would be his last public appearance—is that he was not just planning a new campus for the company he cofounded, built, left, returned to, and ultimately saved from extinction. through this new headquarters, steve jobs was planning the future of apple itself—a future beyond him and, ultimately, beyond any of us .
back in books, i take a sharp shock to my right hand when i grab the book the scanner cramping my left hand demands me to and make some self - righteous promises to myself about continuing to buy food at my more - expensive grocery store, because i can. because i’m not actually a person who makes $ 7. 25 an hour, not anymore, not one of the 1 in 3 americans who is now poor or “near poor. ” for the moment, i’m just playing one .
“this really doesn’t have to be this awful, ” i shake my head over skype. but it is. and this job is just about the only game in town, like it is in lots of towns, and eventually will be in more towns, with us internet retail sales projected to grow 10 percent every year to $ 279 billion in 2015 and with amazon, the largest of the online retailers, seeing revenues rise 30 to 40 percent year after year and already having 69 giant warehouses, 17 of which came online in 2011 alone. so butch up, sally .
most of the time, the fires were random, spur of the moment. only a few of them were personal. like the fire at j. d. shreaves’s house. shreaves was tonya’s ex - boyfriend. they dated for six months and had broken up a couple of years earlier. shreaves had seen tonya and charlie out and about since then and thought their conversations were cordial. but on valentine’s day night, when shreaves was taking his daughters to their grandmother’s, charlie was peering in his windows to make sure nobody was home, pulling back the siding of the single - story house, stuffing an old shirt underneath, and using a cigarette lighter to ignite the blaze .
from the temp agency, amalgamated has ordered the exact number of humans it should take to fill this week’s orders if we work at top capacity. lots of retailers use temporary help in peak season, and online ones are no exception. but lots of warehousing and distribution centers like this also use temps year - round. the bureau of labor statistics found that more than 15 percent of pickers, packers, movers, and unloaders are temps. they make $ 3 less an hour on average than permanent workers. and they can be “temporary” for years. there are so many temps in this warehouse that the staffing agency has its own office here. industry consultants describe the temp - staffing business as “very, very busy. ” “on fire. ” maximizing profits means making sure no employee has a slow day, means having only as many employees as are necessary to get the job done, the number of which can be determined and ordered from a huge pool of on - demand labor literally by the day. often, temp workers have to call in before shifts to see if they’ll get work. sometimes, they’re paid piece rate, according to the number of units they fill or unload or move. always, they can be let go in an instant, and replaced just as quickly .
the board approved foster + partners’ design in 2012. just as apple’s consumer products are obsessively prototyped, its new headquarters would be no different. there would be working models of various sections of the ring scattered around the area: a mocked - up stretch of a tunnel in one of the hp buildings before it was demolished; an actual working café near infinite loop that served as a scaled - down replica of the apple park version. “we viewed the construction process as a manufacturing project and wanted to do as much outside of here as possible. then you begin to put together legos, ” says cook, who built his reputation as a master of supply chain efficiency .
the meetings often lasted for five or six hours, consuming a significant amount of time in the last two years of jobs’ life. he could be scary when he swooped down on a detail he demanded. at one point, behling recalls, jobs discussed the walls he had in mind for the offices: “he knew exactly what timber he wanted, but not just ‘i like oak’ or ‘i like maple. ’ he knew it had to be quarter - ­cut. it had to be cut in the winter, ideally in january, to have the least amount of sap and sugar content. we were all sitting there, architects with gray hair, going, ‘holy shit! ’”
there are people who make the goals. one of the trainers does. she works here all year, not just during christmas. “i hated picking for the first month, ” she told me sympathetically the other day. “then you just get used to it. ” she’s one of many hardcore workers here, a labor pool studded with dedicated and solid employees. one of the permanent employees has tried to encourage me by explaining that he always makes his goals, and sometimes makes 120 percent of them. when i ask him if that isn’t totally exhausting, he says, “oh yeah. you’re gonna be crying for your mommy when today’s over. ” when i ask him if there’s any sort of incentive for his overperformance, if he’s rewarded in any way, he says occasionally amalgamated enters him in drawings for company gift cards. for $ 15 or $ 20. he shrugs when he admits the size of the bonus. “these days you need it. ” anyway, he says, he thinks it’s important to have a good attitude and try to do a good job. even some of the employees who are total failures are still trying really hard. “i heard you’re doing good, ” one of the ladies in my training group says to me. her eyebrows are heavy with stress. i am still hitting less than 60 percent of my target. still, that’s better than she’s doing. “congratulations, ” she says, and smiles sadly .
at wal - mart, she said, charlie wanted to buy a package of steak - umms. she told him no. they were trying to stay on a budget. he acted petulant. they left, and in the car, he asked if she wanted to stop at another wal - mart down in onley. she said fine, thinking maybe he’d decided on something else to buy her sons. in the second wal - mart, she went to the underwear section. he followed her there, just like he used to follow her into her clothing shop, or from room to room after they first started dating. now, it bothered her. she asked him, “do you have to be up in my ass while i’m looking at underwear? ”
during my tour, when we pass through an aboveground parking garage, ive quivers with enthusiasm as he describes what we’re seeing. he points out how smooth the edges are on the concrete beams and how carefully molded the curves are at the rectangular building’s corners, like perfectly formed round - rects on a dialog box. further­more, infrastructure like water pipes and electrical conduits is hidden in the beams, so the whole thing doesn’t look like a basement. “it’s not that we’re using expensive concrete, ” ive says, defining what he calls the transformative nature of this parking garage. “it’s the care and development of a design idea and then being resolute—no, we’re not going to just do the easy, least - path - of - resistance sort of standardized form work. ”
“just look around in here if you wanna see how bad it is out there, ” one of the associates at the temp office said to me, unprompted, when i got hired. it’s the first time anyone has ever tried to comfort me because i got a job, because he knew, and everyone in this industry that’s growing wildfire fast knows, and accepts, that its model by design is mean. he offered me the same kind of solidarity the workers inside the warehouse try to provide each other at every break: why are you here? what happened that you have to let people treat you like this? “we’re all in the same boat, ” he said, after shaking my hand to welcome me aboard. “it’s a really big boat. ”
soon, we move on to practical training. like all workplaces with automated and heavy machinery, this one contains plenty of ways to get hurt, and they are enumerated. there are transition points in the warehouse floor where the footing is uneven, and people trip and sprain ankles. give forklifts that are raised up several stories to access products a wide berth: “if a pallet falls on you, you won’t be working with us anymore. ” watch your fingers around the conveyor belts that run waist - high throughout the entire facility. people lose fingers. or parts of fingers. and about once a year, they tell us, someone in an amalgamated warehouse gets caught by the hair, and when a conveyor belt catches you by the hair, it doesn’t just take your hair with it. it rips out a piece of scalp as well .
apple will ultimately plant almost 9, 000 trees. muffly was told that the landscape should be futureproof and that he should choose drought - tolerant varieties so his mini forest and meadows could survive a climate crisis. (as part of its ecological efforts to prevent such a crisis, apple claims, its buildings will run solely on sustainable energy, most of it from solar arrays on the roofs .) jobs’ aims were not just aesthetic. he did his best thinking during walks and was especially inspired by ambling in nature, so he envisioned how apple workers would do that too. “can you imagine doing your work in a national park? ” says tim cook, who succeeded jobs as ceo in 2011. “when i really need to think about something i’m struggling with, i get out in nature. we can do that now! it won’t feel like silicon valley at all. ”
jobs hated air - conditioning and especially loathed fans. (he vigilantly tried to keep them out of his computers .) but he also didn’t want people opening windows, so he insisted on natural ventilation, a building that breathes just like the people who work inside it. “the flaps and the opening mechanism, ” behling explains, “all have to relate to sensors that measure where the wind is coming from and how the air goes through it. ” unlike sealed buildings in which the temperature is rigidly controlled, the ring circulates outside air. the concrete in the floor and ceiling is embedded with tubes of water and is supposed to lock in a temperature between 68 and 77 degrees, so that the heating or cooling system will kick in only on very hot or cold days. (in theory some workers can use thermostats to adjust the temperature in a given pod, but only by a couple of degrees. )
the computers screening us for suitability to pack boxes or paste labels belong to a temporary - staffing agency. the stuff we order from big online retailers lives in large warehouses, owned and operated either by the retailers themselves or by third - party logistics contractors, a. k. a. 3pls. these companies often fulfill orders for more than one retailer out of a single warehouse. america’s largest 3pl, exel, has 86 million square feet of warehouse in north america; it’s a subsidiary of deutsche post dhl, which is cute because deutsche post is the german post office, which was privatized in the 1990s and bought dhl in 2002, becoming one of the world’s biggest corporate employers. the $ 31 billion “value - added warehousing and distribution” sector of 3pls is just a fraction of what large 3pls’ parent companies pull in. ups’s logistics division, for example, pulls in more than a half a billion, but it feeds billions of dollars of business to ups inc.
just yell fire is a freely distributed 2006 film aimed at teaching young girls to defend themselves against attackers . started as a school project by dallas jessup and catherine wehage , then freshman at st. mary 's academy in portland , oregon , the project grew to include the celebrity endorsement of josh holloway and evangeline lilly of the television show lost . the video teaches viewers weak points on an attacker 's body and how to effectively cause enough pain to those points to escape . it also tells viewers how to avoid becoming a target for rape and kidnapping to begin with . the film 's title references a point made in the video : that yelling " help " or " rape " may frighten potential witnesses or rescuers away , while yelling " fire " tends to draw a crowd . 
just yell fire is a freely distributed 2006 film aimed at teaching young girls to defend themselves against attackers. started as a school project by dallas jessup and catherine wehage, then freshman at st. mary's academy in portland, oregon, the project grew to include the celebrity endorsement of josh holloway and evangeline lilly of the television show lost. the video teaches viewers weak points on an attacker's body and how to effectively cause enough pain to those points to escape. it also tells viewers how to avoid becoming a target for rape and kidnapping to begin with. the film's title references a point made in the video: that yelling " help " or " rape " may frighten potential witnesses or rescuers away, while yelling " fire " tends to draw a crowd.
just yell fire is a freely distributed 2006 film aimed at teaching young girls to defend themselves against attackers. started as a school project by dallas jessup and catherine wehage, then freshman at st. mary's academy in portland, oregon, the project grew to include the celebrity endorsement of josh holloway and evangeline lilly of the television show lost. the video teaches viewers weak points on an attacker's body and how to effectively cause enough pain to those points to escape. it also tells viewers how to avoid becoming a target for rape and kidnapping to begin with. the film's title references a point made in the video: that yelling " help " or " rape " may frighten potential witnesses or rescuers away, while yelling " fire " tends to draw a crowd.