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By donating unused airline miles for flights, people have helped reunite hundreds of asylum-seeking families separated at the southern border by the previous administration. The organization heading the effort, Miles4Migrants, told Newsweek in March 2019 that people had donated nearly 47 million miles to reunite separated families as of that time. 

That’s major. But now, the organization has announced an even bigger effort, aiding the tens of thousands of Afghan refugees evacuated here as part of Operation Allies Rescue. In a release received by Daily Kos, Miles4Migrants and partner Welcome.US said they’re seeking to secure 450 million miles, “needed to provide every evacuee with a flight to their new home.”

Miles4Migrants and Welcome.US said in the statement that several major airlines have already “come together in an unprecedented way” to donate 20,000 tickets for Afghans evacuated through Operation Allies Rescue, including 7,000 flights from United Airlines and 6,000 flights from American Airlines. “These corporate commitments match an additional 20,000 flights already supported through frequent flyer miles and credit card points donated by the American people over the last two months.”

But “[e]ven with 40,000 flights and 300 million miles secured since August 15, there is still work to be done to ensure that every Afghan evacuee has an opportunity to travel to their new communities for free,” Miles4Migrants and Welcome.US continued, kicking off this effort to raise hundreds of millions of additional airline miles. The two groups said they have a goal of ultimately raising as much as a billion miles to aid Afghan refugees.

“Typically, refugees fund their own travel, and those who cannot afford the cost can receive interest-free loans from the federal government,” the groups said. “While Congress recently appropriated funds to meet the needs of newly arrived Afghan evacuees including travel costs, any funding not spent on flights can be reallocated to provide housing and other essential resettlement services.”

This is an excellent opportunity for everyday people looking to help in refugee resettlement but don’t know what to do or where to go. Not only is it a wonderful way to use airline miles that may just be sitting there in part due to the pandemic, but it’s a straightforward process, something I found out first-hand when I donated miles earlier this year. If you think this is something you’re interested in, click here to find out more.

“We have been moved to see how the American people and the private sector have rallied to support the Afghan people and all displaced persons over the past two months,” Miles4Migrants Co-founder Andy Freedman said. “Our Billion Mile Challenge is the next step to ensuring that our nonprofit partners and the individuals they support will be able to travel to safe new homes without the burden of financial debt. We are grateful to both Welcome.US and our airline and corporate partners for their unprecedented support.”

The Biden administration also just announced a new program that will allow groups of private individuals to sponsor Afghan refugees. Under the Sponsor Circle Program for Afghans, groups of vetted individuals would form “sponsor circles” responsible for securing housing and financial support for families, and help situate them in their new communities. Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said the program “has the added benefit of helping the American public directly engage with resettlement on a personal level. We see it all the time in our volunteers.”

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by Dr. Jamie R. Riley and Duy Pham

This story was originally published at Prism.

Imagine a society free of the deeply rooted impacts of structural and institutional racism. A society where race is no longer a determining factor in how families and communities fared economically. A society where Black families and other communities of color had equitable access to jobs, fair pay, adequate training, free education, affordable health care, and child care—allowing us to create more opportunities to build generational wealth and achieve some aspects of the American Dream. Policymakers can make real progress today on this vision, yet time and time again, they choose not to. And we are tired of waiting.

Policymakers now have the chance to make a once-in-a-generation investment in the future of Black communities and communities of color. The Biden-Harris administration’s Build Back Better agenda would make historic investments that communities with low incomes and communities of color have long been excluded from. Passing the agenda in full would provide the economic and employment resources needed for Black Americans and families to finally experience some level of equity. Additionally, it would provide a framework for us to “build back Black,” meaning a sustainable commitment to centering racial equity in federal legislation and programs.    

For centuries, Black Americans have been denied access to economic opportunity, criminalized, and blamed for systemic divestment. When opportunity was promised to all Americans, it was only a reality for white Americans. For example, the nation made bold and transformative investments in the wake of the Great Depression to lift millions of poor white Americans into the middle class. Yet policymakers intentionally left out Black people and other communities of color.

Continued divestment and discrimination have resulted in a staggering percentage of Black families navigating poverty, living in overpoliced but underserved and underresourced communities, and often experiencing much greater rates of unemployment or jobs in low-paying industries. These issues are rooted in many of the exclusionary and racialized policies and practices used throughout history to limit access and opportunity for Black people. These practices and policies have included Jim Crow laws, mass incarceration, exclusionary restrictions in legislation like the New Deal, voter suppression, redlining, school segregation, and employment discrimination.

Regardless of efforts to pass more expansive federal legislation and enact widespread public benefit programs, Black people today still face the generational impact of poverty at greater percentages than their white counterparts. For instance, the Census Bureau reported that the median Black household in 2020 earned just 61 cents for every dollar of income the median white household earned.

In its entirety, the Build Back Better agenda can reshape the economic landscape for many communities of color that have struggled to access well-paying jobs, fair pay, and adequate benefits. Build Back Better can also assist in reshaping neighborhoods by providing jobs—creating safer, more vibrant, well-resourced communities. In addition to establishing paid family and medical leave and investing in child care and universal pre-kindergarten (critical supports that all communities of color lack access to), the proposed bill would make a transformative investment in good jobs and workforce training for historically oppressed communities.  

The proposal would make large and long-overdue investments in the public workforce system, incentivize proven wealth-building strategies such as subsidized and transitional jobs for young people, and direct significant resources in workforce training services to those impacted by our nation’s racist criminal legal system. The proposal would establish a civilian climate corps to mobilize communities and invest in the fight for environmental justice. Furthermore, Build Back Better would make community colleges free and dedicate nearly $30 billion to historically Black colleges and universities and other minority-serving institutions. While not a panacea, this groundbreaking investment would significantly bolster the skills and education of Black communities, allowing them greater access to economic opportunity and generational wealth.

Unfortunately, policymakers continue to weaken the transformative proposals and once again create obstacles to racial justice and economic opportunity. They’ve taken what was once a $3.5 trillion investment in our nation’s social fabric and whittled it down to under $2 trillion as moderate Democrats refuse to stand with the majority of Americans. Members of Congress are currently making plans to weaken—or even eliminate—investments in free community college, paid leave, and climate justice provisions, all of which are devastating compromises to Black Americans and other communities of color.  

Congress must recognize that the full Build Back Better agenda is a long-overdue lever for racial justice and must deliver results for Black communities and other communities of color. The pandemic has only exacerbated existing racial inequalities, with Black people once again bearing the brunt of inaction. The historic turnout of communities of color during the 2020 election assured Democratic control of the House, Senate, and White House. And that turnout was prompted by an urgent demand for policymakers to institute the kind of massive investment represented by the full Build Back Better agenda. Yet we have only seen a weakening of the promised agenda. Without a prioritized focus on dismantling systemic and structural racial barriers in employment and building wealth, there is no building back better. It’s time we build back Black.

Dr. Jamie R. Riley has worked as a racial justice and social change agent in higher education and/or non-profit administration for the past 15 years.

Duy Pham is a policy analyst focused on CLASP’s justice portfolio and sits on the youth team.

Prism is a BIPOC-led non-profit news outlet that centers the people, places, and issues currently underreported by national media. We’re committed to producing the kind of journalism that treats Black, Indigenous, and people of color, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and other invisibilized groups as the experts on our own lived experiences, our resilience, and our fights for justice. Sign up for our email list to get our stories in your inbox, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

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No matter what topic we cover, it’s always important to remember those of us who live with multiple marginalizations and thus may face unique barriers or obstacles in both the short and long term. This mindset is especially true as we navigate ongoing battles like the novel coronavirus pandemic, where folks with compromised immune systems, incarcerated people, and unhoused people are particularly vulnerable, for example. Unhoused people, in general, are deeply vulnerable to all sorts of abuse and discrimination, pandemic or not, and one story out of North Carolina has many people unable to turn away from all too common reality.

In this case, Joshua Rohrer, a veteran of the Iraq war who lives with PTSD related to his military service, was arrested for panhandling in Gastonia, North Carolina, on Oct. 13. Rohrer alleges that his service dog, Sunshine, was tased during the arrest, then was later hit by a car and killed. This is horrifying no matter what, but additionally so because Rohrer’s two-year-old dog was part of his PTSD treatment plan prescribed by Veterans Affairs (VA), according to Military Times. 

Rohrer maintains that he wasn’t doing anything illegal when he was stopped by police. Rohrer was standing on a median near a shopping mall in Gastonia when someone called the police; the caller told 911 Rohrer wasn’t bothering or harming anyone, but suggested he was using Sunshine as a way to get money from people out of sympathy, and described the situation as “bullcrap.” According to Rohrer, he was there, but he was waving at people and chilling when he says a woman offered him money. As soon as he took the money, Rohrer says the police pulled up “aggressively” with lights on. 

From there, an officer informed Rohrer he’d be receiving a ticket for panhandling, which is illegal under some specifications in the state. Rohrer argued he wasn’t panhandling and the officer called for backup. Rohrer was also asked to show state ID when he said he only had his VA-issued ID. 

Justyn Huffman, a witness to Rohrer’s arrest, told local outlet WCNC that when Rohrer didn’t move fast enough to get his ID, “they slammed him up against the car and they put cuffs on him.” Huffman added that officers surrounded Rohrer during the arrest. 

According to Rohrer, Sunshine jumped onto the hood of the car in an attempt to comfort him, which prompted the cops to yell at Rohrer, but he said he couldn’t calm her down without being able to physically interact with her. Rohrer says Sunshine nipped at one of the officer’s ankles as she jumped down, and the officer tased her. (Some reports say Sunshine nipped the officer’s boot, not his ankle.)

According to Huffman, he and fellow witness Nydia Conley were screaming at the police not to shoot the dog. He recalls Sunshine bolting to a store nearby with a taser prong still on her body. Conley described the scene as “traumatizing.” Meanwhile, according to Huffman, police slammed Rohrer onto the pavement before being taken away for booking.

Rohrer says he cited his right to keep his service dog with him as someone with a disability but says police laughed at him.

“I begged them to bring her to me or to give her to an officer to take with them,” Rohrer said. “But they wouldn’t listen, they didn’t care.” He stressed that he “begged” the police not to separate them but says they didn’t care about either of them or the fact that he needed her. 

Dave Dowell, a  Veteran Affairs advocate, was at first able to locate Sunshine, but she ultimately slipped out of her leash and bolted. Rohrer was released from jail the next day and within two days, found her. She had been hit by a car and killed. Dowell said Sunshine’s death has made Rohrer suicidal and depressed. 

Rohrer faces charges for panhandling and resisting arrest. According to a statement from the Gastonia Police Department, the department is investigating the incident to “determine if the conduct of our officers was appropriate.”

Some in the community are protesting to raise awareness for both Rohrer and Sunshine. 

Crystal Rogers, for example, told WCNC she frequently saw the pair sitting at the median and had no problems. Rogers described Rohrer as a “good man” who was polite and conversational. That’s lovely, but in the big picture, people shouldn’t need to be polite, friendly, or even “good” to deserve basic protection, dignity, and rights. Disabled people—and especially disabled people who live with multiple marginalizations, like disabled homeless folks and disabled people of color—are given mere shreds of dignity in this country, and that’s something we should all keep close in our activism. 

You can listen to the full original 911 call below.

As well as coverage of the protest.

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by Ray Levy Uyeda

This story was originally published at Prism.

In just two months, Texas lawmakers have put challenges to landmark civil rights protections that threaten to upend the groundwork hard-won by generations of activists. The first is an upsetting rebuke to the 1973 Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade: Texas Senate Bill 8, which bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and deputizes individuals to bring civil suits against anyone who helps a patient obtain an abortion after that period of time.

The latest challenge is a letter written by Texas state Rep. James White to Attorney General Ken Paxton, which seeks to clarify whether individuals are legally required to abide by another SCOTUS ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized marriage for same-sex couples.

“The State of Texas has not amended or repealed its marriage laws in response to Obergefell v. Hodges,” White wrote to Paxton. “And the Supreme Court has no power to amend formally or revoke a state statute or constitutional provision—even after opining that the state law violates the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution.”

Beyond these seemingly discrete confrontations of SCOTUS rulings is a deeper connection, experts say, between the ways that anti-abortion attacks are linked to other attacks on civil rights and legal efforts to achieve a more racially just society.

“They’re definitely related,” said Aziza Ahmed, professor of law at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) School of Law. “There’s a lot of factors that contribute to this moment that we’re in, in which conservatives are basically trying to undo all these rights that marginalized people have, that women have, [and] that trans people have.”

Undercutting basic rights only recently extended to marginalized people is made possible by a conservative Supreme Court with the end goal of appeasing a specific demographic group, Ahmed explained.

“Now, of course, which individuals are a very important piece of this, because in every one of those scenarios, some individuals are empowered, while others are disempowered,” Ahmed said. “So in the abortion context, it’s these bounty hunters that are empowered, while the abortion providers and the [patients] are disempowered.”

If changes to the law in order to limit self-determination of some in favor of a power grab for others is made functionally possible by the high court, it’s made ideologically possible by the legal foundation of the country, Ahmed said. According to Ahmed, the conservative Republican Party in Texas is communicating to its constituents, who are largely white, that their right to personal freedoms, i.e., power, is worth the expense of another person’s agency.

“The whole foundation of our country is this,” Ahmed said. “We celebrated freedom and liberty at the very foundation of this country while we enslaved people; this paradox has always existed. Being able to mobilize the language of freedom and liberty and choice while marginalizing the needs of other people to benefit those who are in power is sort of a systematic feature of American democracy.”

Ahmed points to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 as the origin point or inspiration for the kinds of laws like Texas’ SB 8. The 19th century federal law allowed any private citizen to hunt enslaved and formerly enslaved Black people who had attempted to escape to their freedom. The law, as explained in an interview with Slate by fellow UCI professor Michelle Goodwin, who’s written extensively on the subject, “provided for citizen participation in the preservation of American slavery.” White bounty hunters even earned a profit for every enslaved Black person they stalked and captured.

But the methods of punishment for exercising bodily autonomy aren’t the only thing these laws have in common. Historically, legislators and legal vigilantes have learned from successes of anti-Black and segregationist legal strategies of the 20th century that relied on claims about individual freedoms and state’s rights to enact racist legislation.

For instance, until 1923, the Texas Democratic Party legally mandated that only white people could cast ballots in primary elections. Texas allowed political parties to establish their own rules, even if those rules contained racist statues. The Supreme Court found that the rule was unconstitutional. So-called “white primaries” no longer exist, but other forms of voter control and fearmongering do.

Starting just after the Reconstruction period ended in the late 1870s, white people attacked Black voters at the polls with legal impunity. In southern states, white “poll watchers” attempted to intimidate Black voters from casting their ballots by burning down and destroying Black businesses and homes and killing Black people. Methods of securing “election integrity” by way of poll watching and voter challenging continue today. Often, racist justifications about skin color or documentation status are used to deny someone the right to vote.

At the root of the legislation that seeks to allow for disparate access to public utilities and legal rights are the very tenets of racism, homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny that built unequal systems to begin with. The way forward, Ahmed said, is similar to the work that set the foundation for civil rights wins.  

“It’s really going to take a lot of grassroots activism and momentum to change all this. The fixes aren’t going to come from the courts alone or from the legislature, especially not the Supreme Court today.”

Ray Levy-Uyeda is a Bay Area-based freelance writer who covers justice and activism.

Prism is a BIPOC-led non-profit news outlet that centers the people, places, and issues currently underreported by national media. We’re committed to producing the kind of journalism that treats Black, Indigenous, and people of color, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and other invisibilized groups as the experts on our own lived experiences, our resilience, and our fights for justice. Sign up for our email list to get our stories in your inbox, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

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Science has confirmed what many in the Indigenous community already knew: Ernie LaPointe, a writer and Vietnam veteran, is the great-grandson—and closest living descendant—of legendary Lakota Sioux Chief Sitting Bull. 

“To my knowledge, there’s never been any real challenge to Ernie LaPointe and his siblings’ direct descent from Sitting Bull,” Kim TallBear, who is a member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate and associate professor in the faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta, told NBC News.

“We have detailed genealogies that we keep through oral history, and now also tribal genealogical documentation,” TallBear says about the new findings from the journal Science Advances. 

“To our knowledge, this is the first published example of a familial relationship between contemporary and a historical individual that has been confirmed using such limited amounts of ancient DNA across such distant relatives,” according to the study’s authors. 

Sitting Bull, leader of the Hunkpapa Lakota, was best known for leading his people in resistance against the U.S. government’s efforts to colonize tribal land. His most famous battle was against General George Armstrong Custer’s troops, who were defeated in 1867 in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. 

LaPointe’s mother’s oral history was verified by the Smithsonian researchers and Sitting Bull’s hair and wool leggings were returned to the family. But in order to have the Lakota chief’s remains moved from their current burial site in Mobridge, South Dakota, to a location that honors his great-grandfather’s legacy, he would need to unequivocally prove his ancestry. 

But, as TallBear points out, it’s not an easy thing for Indigenous people to accept traditional exploration of their ancestry. 

“Any time we participate with a scientist in reaffirming genetic definitions of what it means to be Indigenous, we are de facto helping to uphold their definitions over our own,” TallBear says. “But we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place because settler institutions control the disposition of Sitting Bull’s remains.”

Eske Willerslev, one of the lead authors of the study from the University of Copenhagen, says he felt bound to help LaPointe in his efforts to bury his relative’s bones. 

“I reached out because I’m an ancient DNA researcher,” he said. “I told LaPointe, ‘If you want to do this, I think I can help you.'”

The New York Times reports that the discovery was done by testing an inch-long piece of Sitting Bull’s hair via a new method of sequencing, using so-called ancient DNA from small and older samples. 

“The method can handle what previous methods couldn’t handle,” Willerslev told the Times. “It can work on very, very tiny amounts of DNA, and it can go back further generations.”

LaPointe says he’s hoping that the DNA discovery will help build his case for exhuming and reburying his great-grandfather, also known as Tatanka-Iyotanka. 

“We’re going to put him somewhere else,” he told the Times on Thursday. “Where he will be respected.”

Sitting Bull was killed during a bungled arrest and it is believed his body was moved to the southern portion of the Standing Rock Reservation. The Times reports that the site has been severely neglected;  LaPointe says that, when he visited recently, the area was littered with condoms and smelled of urine. 

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As folks across the nation and their kids celebrate Halloween with trick or treating, costumes, candy, and spooky tales, let’s get into the mood this Black Music Sunday with an appropriate soundtrack to accompany your day’s activities.

Whether it’s jazz, blues, R&B, pop, or funk, Black musicians have been weaving spells, invoking hoodoo, superstitions, and witchcraft into tunes that may not scare you, but could raise the dead and make skeletons dance.

Boo! Get on up and shake those bones!

No Halloween would be complete without Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which was both an album and a song. Released on Nov. 30, 1982 and produced by Quincy Jones, Thriller is still the bestselling album worldwide.

As Jackson’s official YouTube channel notes, “Thriller” absolutely and permanently changed the world of music videos.

Michael Jackson’s 14-minute short film “Thriller” revolutionized the music video genre forever. Hailed as the greatest music video of all time by MTV, VH1, Rolling Stone and others, “Thriller,” directed by John Landis, is also the only music video selected to be included in the Library of Congress’ prestigious National Film Registry.

Tingles still go up my spine whenever I hear Vincent Price’s monologue … and that haunting laugh!

Price’s full monologue:

Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y’all’s neighborhood
And whosoever shall be found
Without the soul for getting down
Must stand and face the hounds of hell
And rot inside a corpse’s shell

The demons squeal in sheer delight
It’s you they spy, so plump, so right
For although the groove is hard to beat
It’s still you stand with frozen feet
You try to run, you try to scream
But no more sun you’ll ever see
For evil reaches from the crypt
To crush you in its icy grip

The foulest stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grizzly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doom
And though you fight to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist
The evil of the Thriller

Can you dig it?

In 2017, Daily Kos Staff member True Blue Majority wrote about the 35th anniversary of the release of Thriller the album—reminding us how times have changed since the “Thriller” video premiered on MTV in December 1983.

Surprisingly, “Thriller” was never officially released as a single, although it got a lot of airplay anyway, and of course is a Halloween staple now. It was brilliant to have Vincent Price do his pseudo-rap at the end.

I’ll let someone else write about how the MJ videos are so closely associated with the songs—I’ve always been more auditory than visual and when I finally saw the [14] minute epic Thriller video I was upset that it was arranged differently than the album version I had grown to love.  Plus I was never into the zombie thing anyway. I do like the remix version where the video was edited to fit the arrangement of the song as it appears on the album.

There was a period when the Thriller video was so popular they played it every hour. A [14] minute video played once an hour was one quarter of MTV’s daily programming! VCRs were relatively rare and expensive in 1983, although the price was starting to come down, and music videos weren’t available on videotape anyway, so the only way the vast majority of people could see this music video/movie musical short was when someone called and told you it was coming on. Or by watching MTV all day hoping it would come on, which was the point of putting hot videos in heavy rotation. And this was before “everyone” had cable.  Sometimes late at night local commercial TV stations would show a half hour of the week’s top videos. That’s how I finally saw it.

There were plenty other spooky tunes before “Thriller,” of course. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins springs to mind.

Back in February, William J. Wright wrote about Hawkins for GRUNGE, diving into the myths that Hawkins himself created around his “shock rocker” stage persona.

Born Jalacy J. Hawkins in Cleveland, Ohio, on July 18, 1929, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins had a lifelong penchant for the grandiose and never shied from a little personal mythmaking. Consequently, much of Hawkins’ life prior to fame is shrouded in mystery. A cursory look at available sources reveals much contradictory information, often stemming from Hawkins himself.

…

A true original even before he began incorporating the horror elements that would make him famous into his show, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins was determined to be his own man. An iconoclast with little regard for trends, Hawkins frequently clashed with producers and other musicians. In 1954, Hawkins joined Fats Domino’s band. The pairing proved disastrous. Domino’s characteristically laid-back approach just didn’t mesh with Hawkins’ big, bold, bluesy shout. Nevertheless, it was Hawkins’ sartorial choices that led to his ouster from Domino’s band. According to Contemporary Black Biography, the “Blueberry Hill” singer fired Hawkins after he showed up for a performance in a leopard-skin suit.

…

In 1955, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins recorded his signature song, “I Put a Spell on You.” Originally conceived and produced as a straightforward blues ballad, this version of Hawkins’ dark ode to unrequited love went largely unnoticed. His second attempt at the song in 1956, however, would make him a star and the song a rock ‘n’ roll standard.

Here’s Hawkins putting a spell on The Arsenio Hall Show audience back in 1989.

For a fun read, check out Steve Bergsman’s Hawkins biography, I Put a Spell on You: The Bizarre Life of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. 

Central to Hawkins’ performance was the coffin he would rise from on stage. In the 1970s, I was working as a bartender in a Manhattan theater district bar called Charlie’s. It was a hangout for show biz folks and Times Square denizens, and one of the regular customers was Hawkins.

Weirdly, Hawkins had gotten permission from the owner to store his stage coffin in the back room of Charlie’s, and quite a few customers got pictures taken while lying in it. It was comical to watch guys accuse each other of being scared to do it, and then bravely climbing in and stretching out, sweating a bit as they worried that doing so would bring them bad luck, or an early death.

There are a number of wild tales about the coffin.

Back in the 1980s, Hawkins discussed being trapped in the coffin by the Drifters in 1955 on DJ Johnny Otis’ radio show.

Back to the music: Hawkins also did a spooky cover of Tom Waits’ “Whistling Past the Graveyard.”

Lyrics: 

Well I come in on a night train

With an arm full of box cars

On the wings of a magpie

Cross a hooligan night

And I busted up a chifforobe

Way out by the Cocomo

Cooked up a mess a mulligan

And got into a fight

Chorus:

Whistlin’ past the graveyard

Steppin’ on a crack

I’m a mean motherhubbard

Papa one eyed jack

You probably seen me sleepin’

Out by the railroad tracks

Go on and ask the prince of darkness

What about all that smoke

Come from the stack

Sometimes I kill myself a jacket

Suck out all the blood

Steal myself a station wagon

Drivin’ through the mud

Hawkins certainly bewitched a long string of artists to cover “I Put a Spell on You.” The last person on Earth who I thought would do so was Nina Simone, which she released on an album of the same name in 1965. It’s also the title of her autobiography.

Simone, whose activism I’ve featured here in the past, had the ability to make almost any tune her own with her inimitable style. NPR placed I Put A Spell On You near the top (No. 3) of their 2017 list of the 150 greatest albums made by women, noting, “The song, originally released in 1956 by Jay Hawkins, cemented his ‘Screamin’ moniker. But in Simone’s hands, it became something more, a kind of simmering sorcery.”

Watch Simone perform it live in the Netherlands in October 1965.

While I’ll close with those resounding chords from Simone, trust that I’ve got lots more Halloween music to share, from Stevie Wonder to Ray Parker Jr., Cab Calloway to Bessie Smith, and so much more. So grab some candy and join me in the comments below.

I ain’t afraid of no ghosts ;).

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“Hello, human diary! This is Mitt Romney, your better.” Nine years ago, in what feels like a much simpler time, The Chronicles of Mitt satirized Romney and his presidential campaign. These 120 treasured stories have become part of the Daily Kos canon and a benchmark for sly humor from the writer who recently motivated Community member Gaelsdottir to exclaim, “Dammit Hunter, I laughed so hard I almost fell off my chair, and it’s been a LONG, LONG TIME since I laughed that hard. Why are there no Pulitzers for making people laugh until they cry while reading the regular news!”

In the first edition, Hunter set the tone with his insipid characterization. “My adviser units have advocated that I begin writing a diary of my experiences during this election. They believe the exercise will encourage the development of human-like emotions, which according to focus groups are a desirable quality.”

The fan-favorite feature of the Chronicles, still praised nostalgically nine years later, kicked off with Hunter reporting Mitt’s “Every Town Counts” bus tour. Let’s look back to Romney’s 2012 election campaign to see why one Community member said, “These are cracking me up. Especially the bizarre bus obsession, it plays perfectly to the ‘there’s something not quite right’ vibe that the Romneybot emits.”

Hunter described Romney’s tour as “traveling from New Hampshire to Michigan over the course of five days, during which time he will be talking with ‘real Americans,’ which is the single thing that consistently gets Mitt Romney in trouble more than anything else. … For Mitt, this stuff has got to be the campaign equivalent of jumping the Grand Canyon on a rocket-bike … I can’t wait. Mitt Romney’s return to retail campaigning has the potential to be awesome.”

It was Hunter’s account of the tour through Mitt and Mr. Bus, however, that infused this bland campaign with awesomeness and established it as legendary. In response to one of Hunter’s recent stories, Zack from the SFV exclaimed, “This is brilliant! Almost Mr. Bus level quality.” One month ago, when Community member Cameronprof asked “Who/What was your favorite Daily Kos Person/Unique Event?” aieeai succinctly replied, “Hunter’s Mr. Bus!”

The tour stirred up Romney’s vehicular affection, according to Hunter, who covered the relationship from Day One, June 15. “That Palin person was correct—it is rather satisfying to travel around in a vehicle with your own name plastered prominently upon it … and I am already beginning to bond with my new mechanical friend.” One day after that first tour ended, the bus was awarded an honorific. “I do miss my new friend, Mr. Bus, but I have been assured that he will occupy the time by touring political rallies organized by my opponent, honking severely at each one in order to let them know who is boss.”

The Mr. Bus stories ended in the last edition of The Chronicles on Nov. 8, along with Mitt’s presidential aspirations. “Hello, human diary. It is I again, Mitt Romney, your better. It seems that the nation has once again failed me. My staff and I had a final meeting, during which I canceled all of their remaining credit cards and we discussed what could have gone wrong. I must confess this result has taken us all by surprise. … As my last act as candidate, I have informed the staff, whom I am no longer paying, that they are to deliver Mr. Bus to my California home.”

Mr. Bus served as a metaphor for Romney, the candidate, and his campaign, traveling with no purpose (no policies), except to drive in circles honking at people (President Obama’s rallies) considered “inferior,” and annoying everyone, even those in Romney’s party.

Hunter’s Mitt-mocking seems gentle now, teasing instead of the annihilating intent of current satire. However, nine years ago the Republican opposition was spearheaded by milquetoast Mitt. In The Chronicles, Hunter captured the comparatively banal essence of the 2012 election, as when Mitt contemplated “vice presidential unit” options. “My advisers are insistent that I select a Caucasian fellow, preferably one that is as dull as possible. … We are certain that we do not want a human female … There was an ethnic fellow in Florida that my advisers were briefly considering, but we all agree that American campaigns have far too many ethnic people involved already, and are loath to add one more.”

Who isn’t wistfully looking back to a time when a Republican could be satirized by bus metaphors, instead of Hitler comparisons?

Ten rescued stories 1 PM PDT Friday, October 22 to 1 PM PDT Friday, October 29, 2021

Community Spotlight’s mission is to ensure that the best stories from the Daily Kos Community aren’t overlooked. We encourage members who write excellent stories with original views to keep writing by promoting work that isn’t receiving enough attention. We further support a healthy Community by not rescuing topics and specific stories designed to provoke bitter comment battles, although we relish strong arguments presented fairly and backed up by credible sources.

Good news: You don’t have to search to find our rescued stories! The nightly News Roundup, an Open Thread published six days a week at 7:30 PM PDT, includes links to each day’s rescued stories.

Reminder: The numbers in parentheses after each author’s name indicate the year they joined Daily Kos, how many stories they’ve published, and how many we’ve rescued.

Climate Brief: Using satellite data to verify country-by-country methane emissions by billlaurelMD (2004-174-37)

The author begins by asking, “Ready for some really cool stuff that potentially will help with greenhouse gas mitigation?” Then, he answers by explaining why methane is a greenhouse gas of particular concern, the significance of detecting methane, problems with measurements, and NGOs attempting to resolve the problems.

40 years by megsk8z (2017-21-7) Rescued to Recommended

Megsk8z describes vividly yet conversationally how she and her husband made it through 40 years of marriage to celebrate their wedding anniversary, through family car trips, traditional gender role assignments, and the inversion of traditional roles following a health scare. “We didn’t break. We bent, together, holding tight to each other, riding the storm out.”

A sea story…. by boomheist (2015-8-3) Rescued to Recommended

A container ship is on fire in the Pacific ocean near the city of Vancouver. It’s crippled, shedding containers, endangering other ships that are stacked up waiting to unload, and in the middle of an enormous storm with 30-foot seas. “A ship fire is a sailor’s worst nightmare, bar none,” boomheist writes, and explains why firefighting at sea is so fraught and dangerous, and has become more difficult.

Perspective…. by boomheist (second rescue this week)

Boomheist takes readers on a space and time tour of Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula,“one of the last settled regions in all of the continental United States … in just the 130 years since this land was first opened, or settled by non-native people, most of the ancient forest has been cut down but then regrown (except for the heart of the peninsula where the million acre park lies), two dams have been built and then removed (and the big salmon seem to be coming back), all evidence of dozens of lumber mills and resorts has been removed … things are tough, out this way, as they seem tough in all out of the way places.”

365 Days of Climate Awareness 75—Uncertainty by agramante (2009-91-9)

“It’s a sad fact of life in science and in general that we cannot produce absolute measurements. We can have highly accurate standards … but we can never measure something with perfect accuracy.” As a result, understanding the nuance in these differences between error and uncertainty is important to understanding how we measure weather and climate phenomena. Through examples, including an image depicting the differences between accuracy and precision, agramante explains this nuance.

The American dream: Reflections from the South Side of Chicago by Hyde Park Johnny (2006-343-?)

We’re taught that protecting personal freedom and liberty is the function of the federal government, but is this true? American history as taught in public schools leans heavily on myth and lies, contends the author, who then offers evidence that provides an analytic frame for reviews of three contemporary events: the federal raid on Ruby Ridge, Idaho; the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas; and the Chicago police’s raid on the Black Panthers that resulted in Frank Hampton’s murder. “Even Amnesty International reports that the United States of America is violating peoples’ human rights. … Throughout history, many philosophers agree that people need to be controlled or influenced so as to make proper choices in life. I disagree.”

The business of Academia by pastdoc (2011-5-1)

Pastdoc details how the structural issues that plague higher education come from viewing college education as solely a business. Problems arise from “shared governance” that gives faculty putative control of the curriculum, while the Board of Trustees “decides the budget, salaries, promotions, tenure, buildings and maintenance … There are countries where an educated citizenry is valued and people are willing to pay taxes so that everyone can get the education they need. The United States is not one of these.”

Write on: Last minute NaNoWriMo prep! by bonetti (2010-29-?)

Bonetti offers tips on arrangements that help writers meet the challenge of National Novel Writing Month that begins Monday. “NaNoWriMo has a fixed goal of 50,000 words (1,667 per day for 30 days), and undertaking this goal requires making tradeoffs to carve the time out to write. Some people dive in and it Just Works For Them™, others crash and burn on the organizing side.” Bonetti discusses elements that need to be considered when planning out daily writing time, and what other writers have done. “I heard of one participant who saves her Halloween candy and eats one piece every 100 words, which handily disposes of both leftover candy and provides a reward structure.” 

How much solar + wind capacity is needed to replace coal + gas electric generation by RustyRobot (2020-26-3)

The author takes on a big question related to climate change, but keeps it simple by addressing just power generation, and excluding “transmission, storage, or any of the other thousand things that need to be handled.” The analysis is presented in a graph that shows the amount of electricity generated by coal plus gas in a recent year alongside various combinations of wind and solar, and how much increased capacity for wind or solar generation is needed to compensate for fossil fuel generation. 

Daily Bucket: Photo sequences 1 and 2 by Appy (2016-22-2?)

Nature-lover and photographer Appy has been “trying harder to find stories by taking sequences of photos leading to some type of exciting conclusion. … I consider birds in flight to be a miracle of nature, and what could be more compelling than witnessing a miracle?” This story shows two series of photos showing birds in flight along with a description of the dedication needed to take these photos. “I had to employ the ‘sneak up in plain sight’ strategy. Sneaking up in plain sight is a technique of moving so slowly it is indiscernible. You appear not to be a threat because you don’t appear to be moving. It took me about 45 minutes to gain about 35 yards.”  

This post was originally published on this site

by Ray Levy Uyeda

This story was originally published at Prism.

The start of the school year and relaunch of in-person classes signals a desire to return to a pre-pandemic normal that could be catastrophic for Black parents. After keeping their children home for remote learning during the initial days of the pandemic, many are now trapped between two impossible options: send their children to school where they risk getting ill and possibly spreading the virus at home, or keep them home for their safety and risk a possible investigation by Child Protective Services (CPS).

“They are traumatizing our children,” said Tanesha Grant, the founder of Parents Supporting Parents NY. “These kids are scared, the parents are scared. And then they have the nerve to threaten us with [Administration for Children’s Services (ACS)]. We’re trying to keep our children alive, ourselves alive.”

Black people are three times more likely than white people to be hospitalized for COVID-19 and twice as likely to die from the virus’ complications, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). There are also growing indications of racial disparities affecting breakthrough rates for Black, Latinx, and Indigenous populations. The confluence of systemic forces that create these realities—generations of medical abuse and neglect that precipitate preexisting conditions, and the income and wealth gap for instance—mean that Black people and families continue to bear some of the harshest impacts of the pandemic with the least access to resources to help them recover and navigate the shifting risk levels as they try to ensure their children can go to school safely.

Trapped between children’s health and CPS

In New York City, where Grant lives, keeping a child from school—known as student absenteeism—is considered educational neglect and grounds for investigation. It’s also home to the largest public school system in the country. Grant knew that Black parents were on their own long before the pandemic started, but that sense of isolation was magnified by the lack of support and consistent direction from local government and public school officials when COVID-19 hit the U.S. As an early epicenter for the virus’ spread, the state had ample time to revise its COVID-19 mitigation strategies to support the needs of students and parents, but Grant said that schools aren’t keeping parents apprised of basic information, such as student infection rates. Parents have little choice but to make the best possible decision they can with the available data—and risk getting punished for it.

“I had a parent call me who decided to keep her child out of school because she had an underlying condition. So the school told her, ‘Well, we’re not going to send home [class] work because you should be sending your child into school,’” Grant said.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, mid-September—around the time that most public schools had started or were starting up again—saw an 8% increase in the number of children who contracted a COVID-19 infection. Children currently make up over a quarter of all new infections. Black and Latinx children are more likely than white children to be hospitalized for a COVID-19 infection, and Black children are the most likely to be admitted to intensive care units with life-threatening inflammation that results from infection. Unsurprisingly, 63% of parents agree that schools that do not require vaccination for students and staff should mandate mask usage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

However, even in a Democratic-run state resourced with vaccines and masks, Black parents are often put in the position of having to fight for their child’s safety in school while the definition of “safe” keeps changing. For many there are no easy choices, and Grant said many Black parents in New York City are so scared of ACS that they’re willing to risk their child’s health by sending them to school instead of keeping them home.

“How messed up is that?” Grant said.

Who does child welfare services actually protect?

The telos of Child Protective Services (CPS), a department housed in the federal Health and Human Services administration, is rooted in the period of legalized American slavery. The legacy of enslavement, which routinely separated families to turn a profit, grew racist ideas about the “fitness” of Black parents and entitlement of white people to make parenting decisions in the “best interests” of Black children. These legally and socially codified rules led to the creation of “child welfare services,” which disproportionately impact low-income families of color, particularly Black families—to this day, over half of Black children and families can expect to be investigated by CPS. The pathways between CPS and foster care systems are well-documented, and so too are the pathways between foster care and incarceration. In other words, experts say that the surveillance of Black families creates and perpetuates a cycle of criminalization of Black people and parents that traumatizes Black children.

Amanda Wallace, a co-founder of Operation Stop CPS, a grassroots movement dedicated to protecting families of color from the system of children’s protection, is a former child abuse investigator who understands the harms of the child welfare apparatus. In May, Wallace and Operation Stop CPS co-founder Tafarrah Austin were fired from their CPS positions when they published a guide for parents about how to reclaim power from CPS. Having seen the ways Black parents are treated by the system, Wallace said that “CPS is just a belief that the best interest of children is for there to be some type of oversight,” but that oversight is really a means to “over-police parents.”

During the pandemic, while still employed by CPS, Wallace and her colleagues received increased reports of neglect and abuse of children; reports of students failing to sign into online classes, falling asleep in front of their computers, or not completing their homework. Professionals, or those who have direct contact with a child thought to be neglected or abused, make up 68.6% of reports to CPS, according to the 2019 Child Maltreatment report. That same year, CPS received 4.4 million reports, of which almost half are not actually investigated or “screened in” by CPS workers.

“So CPS was called … And they would say, ‘Oh, well, you know, nobody’s there to watch them or you know, they’re neglecting them from going to bed on time and stuff like that,’” Wallace said.

Wallace explained that Black parents are often treated as adversaries of their own children who need to be pulled from their families into the safety of government-sanctioned care providers. In her experience, Wallace said that CPS investigators find that parents thought to be neglecting or abusing their children actually live in poverty, which she says isn’t indicative of a parent neglecting their child—instead it’s really evidence of social safety nets neglecting whole families. In Wallace’s opinion, that some parents care for their children in ways that are perceived differently than how people in power parent their children is used to push a false narrative that CPS has the power to dictate who is or is not raising their children “correctly.”

“[CPS] definitely affects Black and brown children so much more—just think about [how] it comes to the school system,” Wallace said. “The school being the number one reporters. At-risk schools … have these trainings that teach them what to look for, and it looks like poverty, right? I mean, neglect looks like poverty.”

Mask bans put Black families at further risk

Though Wallace said there’s no difference in how a CPS operator is deputized across Democratic and Republican states, in places like Texas or Florida where baseline public health measures like mask usage are politicized, Black parents are further cornered.

In May, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed an executive order banning mask mandates in public buildings and institutions. Leading public health organizations, like the CDC, state that mask usage significantly reduces the transmission of COVID-19, and that all who are medically able to use masks should. Vaccines further help reduce the effects of the faster-spreading and more severe delta variant of the virus, though for those who are unable to be vaccinated or those who might be severely debilitated by illness even with a vaccine, mask usage can be a lifesaving move. Despite the executive order, some cities and public entities across Texas are instituting local mask mandates that district attorneys have made clear they won’t prosecute.

Recently, the Department of Education (DOE) opened an investigation into the state’s ban on mask mandates. A letter sent by the DOE claimed that bans “may be preventing schools in Texas from meeting their legal obligations not to discriminate based on disability and from providing an equal educational opportunity to students with disabilities who are at heightened risk of severe illness from covid-19.”

In her work as a member of Texas Parent to Parent’s family support team, Greta James-Maxfield hears a lot of stories from parents about fighting school officials on behalf of their disabled children. For parents like James-Maxfield, who have disabled children and require different services than other students might, the open and public demand for resources puts her in a public position. Sexism and racism directed toward parents like James-Maxfield is often a hurdle and can make it even harder to advocate for more accessible education for disabled students. Who gets listened to and who gets ignored can largely depend on who has perceived power and influence.

“Going into a room full of [school officials and administrators] that have been deputized by a school district, generally, they’re not going to be Black,” James-Maxfield said. “There is a very special kind of racism reserved for Black folks.”

In the case that their children aren’t protected by districts—mask mandate or not—James-Maxfield said that some parents are grappling with whether or not to send their children back to school. And that itself is a risk; in Texas, children must attend 90% of their classes, after which the school creates a plan to address truancy, including loss of driving privileges or counseling. If they suspect parental neglect is the root of a child’s attendance, schools can file a criminal complaint against a parent.

A simple solution, Grant said, would be to allow students who want to learn from home to continue to do so. Remote learning is just one of her demands of the district where her son is enrolled, along with providing the tools, like laptops, so that students are able to do so.

What Grant’s demand really amounts to is that public entities—from municipal governments to federally funded child welfare agencies to public schools—treat Grant and other Black parents with respect. At a time when the government has offered inadequate support for Black parents to navigate the pandemic, Grant asked, why is it that Black parents are treated as the ones who are inadequate? Expecting Black parents to send their children into the equivalent of a burning building, when they know the building is on fire, and holding the threat of CPS over their heads if they don’t, makes no sense.

“I have been dealing with this system since I was a Black child,” Grant said. “I know what it does. And no one is going to gaslight me and no one is going to take away my human right to protect my son.”

Ray Levy-Uyeda is a Bay Area-based freelance writer who covers justice and activism. Find them on Twitter @raylevyuyeda.

Prism is a BIPOC-led nonprofit news outlet that centers the people, places, and issues currently underreported by national media. We’re committed to producing the kind of journalism that treats Black, Indigenous, and people of color, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and other invisibilized groups as the experts on our own lived experiences, our resilience, and our fights for justice. Sign up for our email list to get our stories in your inbox, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

This post was originally published on this site

by Aria Velasquez

This story was originally published at Prism.

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled again in favor of law enforcement officers invoking qualified immunity in cases of excessive use of force. Based on a pair of 2016 cases from Oklahoma and California, the decisions were handed down without the court hearing oral arguments or any sign of dissent from the justices.

The rulings are the latest event in a long-simmering battle for activists trying to abolish the troublesome judicial doctrine that allows flagrant human rights abuses at the hands of police and other government actors to go unchecked.

“Every part of qualified immunity is so frustrating,” said Alexa Gervasi, an attorney for the Project on Immunity and Accountability at the Institute for Justice. Gervasi and her colleague, Anya Bidwell, have been fighting for their clients’ rights to get their excessive force and police brutality cases heard in court.

Qualified immunity doesn’t simply shield officers once they’re in a courtroom; in many cases, it prevents suits from even making it into the courtroom in the first place. A government agency or a police officer’s invocation of qualified immunity can block a civil suit from moving forward for years until a state or federal court settles whether a plaintiff had a clearly outlined right that was violated.

If the courts decide that a plaintiff didn’t have a clearly established right before a violation occurred, they essentially treat it as though the violation never happened. For example, last year in Texas, two teachers were allowed qualified immunity in cases that accused them of abusing students in their care. In one case, a first-grader claimed a teacher threw him onto the floor and put him in a chokehold. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals was unwilling to say that students had an established Fourth Amendment right against excessive force at school, so the teacher’s action was upheld.

“All these doctrines have just one goal … to prevent a plaintiff with constitutional claims from opening the courthouse door,” Bidwell said.

Recently, some states have made news with new laws claiming to end qualified immunity on the state level. Colorado and New Mexico have added laws to their books in the past two years that were initially reported as abolishing qualified immunity for police officers. However, both states still have it on the books. The reforms have limited the way officers use the legal defense, but it still exists.

Qualified immunity’s persistence can be partially blamed on police unions, as they have been some of the most vocal opponents of reforming it, but the police are only one part of the equation. Judges, attorneys, “law and order” politicians, and the people who vote for them all share some degree of accountability for their role in a system that is built to brutalize marginalized people.

Legal activists are trying to fight back, but they’re aware of the long, uphill climb they have to make before anything meaningful happens.

“If we don’t get rid of [qualified immunity], certain ‘bad apples’ will continue to violate people’s rights with impunity,” said Christopher E. Brown, a civil rights attorney who specializes in excessive force cases.

For Brown, the best way to start the conversation around the possibility of ending qualified immunity is to frame it as a discussion about accountability.

“Why do we treat officers with kid gloves in these situations?” he said.

Lisa Holder, a Los Angeles-based attorney and of counsel at the Equal Justice Society, views qualified immunity as something artificial that can be abolished in due time.

“Qualified immunity is not embedded in the Constitution,” Holder said. “It’s judge-made jurisprudence,” meaning that it can eventually be undone.

But how do activists like Holder, Bidwell, Gervasi, and others in their field cope when the odds seem eternally stacked against them?

For Holder, it’s about imagination.

“The narrative is the same narrative we use when we talk about reimagining public safety. It’s about coming up with a style of policing that is not just about controlling the movement of Black and brown people,” she said.

For Gervasi, the approach is multipronged.

“Some judges give me hope. We’re not fighting alone, and that helps,” she said, referencing other advocates and activists fighting alongside them. And when all else fails, “I just go to bed at night knowing I’m right.”

Aria Velasquez is a freelance journalist and audio producer currently based in New York. Velasquez is working towards her MA in journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

Prism is a BIPOC-led non-profit news outlet that centers people, places, and issues currently underreported by national media. We’re committed to producing the kind of journalism that treats Black, Indigenous, and people of color, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and other invisibilized groups as the experts on our own lived experiences, our resilience, and our fights for justice. Sign up for our email list to get our stories in your inbox, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.