Independent News
Sitting Bull’s great-grandson identified, now he wants to bury him where ‘he will be respected’
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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.
They put a spell on us: Black musicians and spooky tunes for Halloween
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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 shellThe 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 gripThe 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 ThrillerCan 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 ;).
Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: COP26 (and the G20) kick off
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We start today with the United Nations Climate Conference (COP26), which begins Sunday in Glasgow, Scotland.
Shelley Inglis writes for The Conversation about the expectations for COP26.
The Paris Agreement requires countries to report their NDCs, but it allows them leeway in determining how they reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The initial set of emission reduction targets in 2015 was far too weak to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
One key goal of COP26 is to ratchet up these targets to reach net zero carbon emissions by the middle of the century.
Another aim of COP26 is to increase climate finance to help poorer countries transition to clean energy and adapt to climate change. This is an important issue of justice for many developing countries whose people bear the largest burden from climate change but have contributed least to it. Wealthy countries promised in 2009 to contribute $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing nations, a goal that has not been reached. The U.S., U.K. and EU, among the largest historic greenhouse emitters, are increasing their financial commitments, and banks, businesses, insurers and private investors are being asked to do more.
Other objectives include phasing out coal use and generating solutions that preserve, restore or regenerate natural carbon sinks, such as forests.
The Conversation also provides this graphic tracking the global lack of action on climate change.
Matthew Taylor of the Guardian warns that COP26 will be very white and very privileged.
[T]he Cop26 Coalition – which represents indigenous movements, vulnerable communities, trade unionists and youth strikers around the world – says that up to two-thirds of those it was helping to travel to Glasgow have given up, overwhelmed by a combination of visa and accreditation problems, lack of access to Covid vaccines and changing travel rules – as well as “scarce and expensive” accommodation.
Rachael Osgood, director of immigration at Cop26 Coalition, said: “This event, because of multiple combining factors, most of which fall under the responsibility of government, is set to be the most elite and exclusionary Cop ever held.”
She said that, while it was difficult to put a precise figure on the numbers of observers, campaigners and civil society groups from the global south who had been prevented from coming, the impact on the negotiations would be significant.
“What we know for certain is that thousands of people from the global south are being excluded, and they represent tens of millions of voices from those right on the frontline of this crisis which are not going to be heard … We are looking at global north countries making decisions with minimal accountability to those least responsible and most affected, and that goes against everything Cop should stand for.”
Bob Berwyn of Inside Climate News says that social and economic inequalities (exemplified, perhaps, by attendance at this year’s summit) will probably be reflected in the levels of urgency paid to various climate issues.
Since that first IPCC report in 1990, emissions have increased 60 percent and the average global temperature has climbed about 0.75 degrees Celsius, contributing to rapid increases in deadly heat waves, tropical storms, droughts and sea level rise on every continent. According to the United Nations Emissions Gap report released Oct. 27, the most recently updated climate pledges shave about 7.5 percent off 2030 emissions, while a reduction of 55 percent is needed to meet the target of the Paris agreement. That puts Earth on track to heat 2.7 degrees Celsius by 2100, a dangerous amount of warming well beyond the Paris agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
[…]
Progress at the upcoming COP26 climate talks in Glasgow could hinge on whether negotiators talk seriously about the inequality of emissions and climate impacts, said Isak Stoddard, an Uppsala University climate researcher and the lead author of a new study that asks why world governments haven’t managed to bend the emissions curve downward, and what they could do differently.
“The wealthiest 1 percent of the world’s population emits twice as much as half the human population, and the top 10 percent more than half of all global emissions, which is so wrong in so many ways,” he said.
High emitters have the most power in global climate talks and, at the same time, often feel less vulnerable to climate impacts, which weakens their incentives to cut emissions. Those least responsible for the pollution warming the climate often suffer the worst impacts, yet have little leverage at climate talks, Stoddard and the international team of researchers wrote in the paper, published in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources.
John Rennie Short of The Conversation writes about the dangers that climate change represents to the world’s increasingly urbanized areas.
Around the globe, cities will face a much higher probability of extreme weather events. Depending on their locations, these will include heavier snowfalls, more severe drought, water shortages, punishing heat waves, greater flooding, more wildfires, bigger storms and longer storm seasons. The heaviest costs will be borne by their most vulnerable residents: the old, the poor and others who lack wealth and political connections to protect themselves.
Extreme weather isn’t the only concern. A 2019 study of 520 cities around the world projected that even if nations limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial conditions, climate zones will shift hundreds of miles northward by 2050 worldwide. This would cause 77% of the cities in the study to experience a major change in their year-round climate regimes.
For example, the study authors predicted that by midcentury, London’s climate will resemble that of modern-day Barcelona, and Seattle’s will be like current conditions in San Francisco. In short, in less than 30 years, three out of every four major cities in the world will have a completely different climate from the one for which its urban form and infrastructure were designed.
This weekend, there’s also a G20 summit taking place in Rome. Jim Tankersley and Alan Rappeport of The New York Times report that a major agreement has been reached that may prevent corporations from shifting profits to avoid taxes.
The announcement in the opening session of the Group of 20 summit marked the world’s most aggressive attempt yet to stop opportunistic companies like Apple and Bristol Myers Squibb from sheltering profits in so-called tax havens, where tax rates are low and corporations often maintain little physical presence beyond an official headquarters.
It is a deal years in the making, which was pushed over the line by the sustained efforts of Mr. Biden’s Treasury Department, even as the president’s plans to raise taxes in the United States for new social policy and climate change programs have fallen short of his promises.
The revenue expected from the international pact is now critical to Mr. Biden’s domestic agenda, an unexpected outcome for a president who has presented himself more as a deal maker at home rather than abroad.
Leaders hailed the agreement, which was negotiated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development with nearly 140 countries signing on. It would impose a minimum 15 percent corporate tax rate in nearly every country in the world and punish the few holdouts who refuse to go along. The O.E.C.D. estimates the accord will raise $150 billion per year globally from tax-fleeing companies.
Paul Krugman of The New York Times explores how, in many respects, the Republican “establishment” has become cowardly.
When we talk about the G.O.P.’s moral descent, we tend to focus on the obvious extremists, like the conspiracy theorists who claim that climate change is a hoax and Jan. 6 was a false flag operation. But the crazies wouldn’t be driving the Republican agenda so completely if it weren’t for the cowards, Republicans who clearly know better but reliably swallow their misgivings and go along with the party line. And at this point crazies and cowards essentially make up the party’s entire elected wing.
The falsehoods that are poisoning America’s politics tend to share similar life histories. They begin in cynicism, spread through disinformation and culminate in capitulation, as Republicans who know the truth decide to acquiesce in lies.
Take the claim of a stolen election. Donald Trump never had any evidence on his side, but he didn’t care — he just wanted to hold on to power or, failing that, promulgate a lie that would help him retain his hold on the G.O.P. Despite the lack of evidence and the failure of every attempt to produce or create a case, however, a steady drumbeat of propaganda has persuaded an overwhelming majority of Republicans that Joe Biden’s victory was illegitimate.
And establishment Republicans, who at first pushed back against the Big Lie, have gone quiet or even begun to promote the falsehood. Thus on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal published, without corrections or fact checks, a letter to the editor from Trump that was full of demonstrable lies — and in so doing gave those lies a new, prominent platform.
John Nichols of The Nation thinks that it’s time that those members of Congress who aided and abetted the Jan. 6 insurrectionists should be investigated and, if necessary, expelled from the legislature.
Congress should identify, investigate, and expel members of the House and Senate who aided and abetted the insurrectionists who stormed the US Capitol in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. That is the constitutionally appropriate and practically necessary response to a coup attempt that now appears to have involved not just violent right-wing extremists from across the country but also Republican representatives who swore an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
The identification process has been jump-started with Rolling Stone’s exclusive report, published Monday, revealing that congressional investigators had met with two planners of the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally, at which former President Donald Trump incited insurrectionists to storm the Capitol. Those planners disclosed to the committee that they had meetings with House members or staffers as they planned rallies protesting the results of the 2020 election.
“This is the first report that the committee is hearing major new allegations from potential cooperating witnesses,” explained Rolling Stone, in its report on interviews with two of the January 6 protest planners. “While there have been prior indications that members of Congress were involved, this is also the first account detailing their purported role and its scope.”
Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner of CNN writes about the necessity of the paid family/medical leave policy that was ultimately excised from the reconciliation bill.
We are in the midst of a deadly pandemic, in a jobs and care crisis, as the only industrialized nation in the world without some form of national paid family/medical leave. We need it badly. This life-saving and economy-boosting policy should not be delayed.Paid family/medical leave is a policy that makes it possible for people to recover from childbirth to bond with a new child, or to take care of themselves or a close loved one if a serious health crisis strikes. The fact that right now, in a pandemic which has taken more than 730,000 lives in the US, paid leave is on a political ventilator is outrageous, unconscionable, indefensible and wrong. It’s a measure of how broken our political system is right now.The situation is critical. Going into the pandemic, while a small percentage of people had this policy through their work or due to state law, our nation guaranteed zero weeks of paid family/medical leave, while all other countries on average have 26 weeks of paid leave. That — combined with our failure as yet to build a care infrastructure with quality, affordable childcare, living wages for care workers, a commitment to continue the Child Tax Credit expansion and home- and community-based services for people with disabilities and the aging — has had devastating consequences.
Paul Krugman (again!) writes for The New York Times that many economic trends are global and not national, with their current and eventual impact still an unknown.
In other words, the problems that have been crimping recovery from the pandemic recession seem, by and large, to be global rather than local. That’s not to say that national policies are playing no role. For example, Britain’s woes are partly the result of a shortage of truck drivers, which in turn has a lot to do with the exodus of foreign workers after Brexit. But the fact that everyone seems to be having similar problems tells us that policy is playing less of a role than many people seem to think. And it does raise the question of what, if anything, the United States should be doing differently.
Many observers have been drawing parallels with the stagflation of the 1970s. But so far, at least, what we’re experiencing doesn’t look much like that. Most economies have been growing, not shrinking; unemployment has been falling, not rising. While there have been some supply disruptions — Chinese ports have suffered closures as a result of Covid outbreaks, in March a fire at a Japanese factory that supplies many of the semiconductor chips used in cars around the world hit auto production, and so on — these disruptions aren’t the main story.
Charlotte Hampton and Israel Tribe write for the Los Angeles Times that Generation Z, which consumes an unparalleled amount of social media, needs to learn how to identify all of the misinformation and lies on social media platforms.
We’re coming of age in the looming shadow of the climate crisis, political unrest and a pandemic from which previous generations failed to protect us. As we expand our political voice, we need to act swiftly and strategically — an increasingly difficult task in a country that can’t agree on basic truths, and where we’re bombarded by false information on social media.
In a world already dominated by Apple and Instagram, we consume media in a way that has never been seen before. At our age, our parents were watching TV and reading newspapers; we’re scrolling through Twitter and TikTok, spending hours immersed in constantly updating information. The difference is social media is riddled with misinformation and disinformation, favoring content designed to provoke. According to a 2020 Pew Research Center study, people who rely on social media for their news are actually less politically informed.
There are many reports on the ramifications of the spread of false information via social media. Yet, there is little that helps young people spot and understand what they’re seeing. We’re not going to be able to address global problems unless we’re united on the facts.
Ross Ramsey of The Texas Tribune analyzes the political impact of Texas state representative Matt Ramsey’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum “inquiry” into a list of 850 books in Texas public school libraries.
But as a political wedge, a ban on books — or the insinuation of one, such as an “inquiry” into what books are available to public school students in Texas — can be powerful. It’s not just a shot at the books, but at the people who work in close proximity to books and ideas, like teachers and librarians and other brainy, nerdy types. A nice, fresh controversy about which books they’re feeding into children’s undiscerning little minds amplifies current culture debates about critical race theory and transgender student athletes, masks and vaccines.
Matt Krause, a state representative from Fort Worth, is running for attorney general. He’s also the head of the House General Investigating Committee, and in that role, sent a letter to the Texas Education Agency, along with a list of about 850 books, saying he is “initiating an inquiry into Texas school district content.”
He’s got a funny way of fighting cancel culture.
Kate Wells of Kaiser Health News writes that hospital emergency rooms have now become increasingly swamped with patients with serious health problems other than COVID-19.
Except for initial hot spots like New York City, in spring 2020 many ERs across the country were often eerily empty. Terrified of contracting covid-19, people who were sick with other things did their best to stay away from hospitals. Visits to emergency rooms dropped to half their typical levels, according to the Epic Health Research Network, and didn’t fully rebound until this summer.
But now, they’re too full. Even in parts of the country where covid isn’t overwhelming the health system, patients are showing up to the ER sicker than before the pandemic, their diseases more advanced and in need of more complicated care.
Months of treatment delays have exacerbated chronic conditions and worsened symptoms. Doctors and nurses say the severity of illness ranges widely and includes abdominal pain, respiratory problems, blood clots, heart conditions and suicide attempts, among other conditions.
But they can hardly be accommodated. Emergency departments, ideally, are meant to be brief ports in a storm, with patients staying just long enough to be sent home with instructions to follow up with primary care physicians, or sufficiently stabilized to be transferred “upstairs” to inpatient or intensive care units.
Finally, David Scharfenberg of The Boston Globe tackles an interesting study that utilizes cell phone data to illustrate that racial segregation is not simply a matter of where people live.
To understand segregation fully, we need to understand that movement. We need to know not just where people are from but where they go.
Until recently, it was difficult to track mobility at scale. But the cellphone location data that has transformed mapping, marketing, and media is opening up new possibilities in the social sciences too.
[…]
Sampson and his co-authors found that while there is little difference in the number of places people from white, Black, and Latino neighborhoods visit, there are big differences in where they go.
And these racial differences are so powerful they can wipe out class considerations.
Everyone have a great day!
Community Spotlight: A tribute to Mr. Bus, one of Daily Kos’ most legendary characters
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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.”
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COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT is dedicated to finding great writing by community members that isn’t getting the visibility it deserves.
An edition of our rescue roundup publishes every Saturday at 6 p.m. ET (3 p.m. PT) to the Recent Community Stories section and to the front page at 9:30 p.m. ET (7:30 p.m. PT). |
Black parents are trapped between the pandemic and Child Protective Services
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.
Qualified immunity remains intact, but legal activists keep trying to chip away at it
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.
Trump can be prosecuted for inaction during Jan. 6 insurrection, says legal scholar
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For most of us, it’s an article of faith that Donald Trump is responsible for the Jan. 6 insurrection, regardless of Republican sentators’ refusal to vote for a conviction in his second impeachment. But a prominent legal scholar believes there’s another way to hold Trump to account for that day’s horror. He believes that Trump can be prosecuted not for what he did that day, but for what he didn’t do.
In a column for Just Security, Albert Alschuler, a law professor at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, writes that there’s a far easier path to bring Trump to justice. He argues—convincingly, in my mind—that Trump’s inaction once the thugs acting in his name flooded into the Capitol is itself a crime.
Alschuler’s argument comes in two parts. First, he argues that Trump’s failure to do anything to stop the riot was a violation of the Constitution.
The Constitution gave Trump a clear legal duty to intervene. Article II, Section 3 provides, “[The President] shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” This provision permits good-faith exercises of law-enforcement discretion, but a president unmistakably violates his duty when he refuses to enforce the law because he wants a crime to occur—when, for example, he hopes to advance his own interests through the criminal conduct of others. As abundant evidence shows, that’s what transpired on Jan. 6.
(emphasis added)
Alschuler argues that while failing to stop a crime usually doesn’t make you an accomplice; there’s an exception when someone has “a legal duty to intervene.” He likens Trump to a cop who knows a robbery is about to occur and is conveniently absent when it does; there would be no barrier to charging the cop for aiding and abetting. Similarly, Alschuler argues, Trump’s failure to “ask the rioters to stop” makes him as guilty as those who stormed into the Capitol. Trump’s video message asking them to go home doesn’t suffice in Alschuler’s eyes since Article II, Section 3 obligated him to act earlier.
Alschuler thinks it would be straightforward to prove Trump wanted a crime to occur. Not only did he wait hours to tell his minions to back off, but there are multiple reports that Trump was absolutely giddy at the spectacle. He refused to act even as members of his own inner circle—as high up as his daughter Ivanka—urged him to do something. Even when he finally got around to recording a video message to the insurrectionists, it took multiple takes for him to finally deliver a clear message to end the madness.
There’s another reason Alschuler believes Trump’s inaction rises to the level of criminal conduct: He had a duty to prevent others from being harmed.
Even if his direction to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell” was not intended to start a riot, it led to violence and placed the Vice President and members of Congress in peril. A person who creates a physical danger—even innocently—has a legal duty to take reasonable measures to prevent injury from occurring. Someone who’s started a fire can’t just let it burn out of control.
This makes sense. Once it was apparent that Trump’s words put others in danger, he had a clear duty to intervene, and did nothing. Even if he didn’t actually want Mike Pence dead, there’s no dispute that he failed to act to protect him from harm.
Alschuler believes prosecuting Trump for his inaction would remove any roadblocks the First Amendment could throw up if he were ever held to account for the events of Jan. 6. While conceding that a court could rule Trump’s words at the “Save America” rally were protected speech, he believes that “Trump’s refusal to enforce the law” is absolutely fair game. In that case, even if his remarks were theoretically protected speech, “they could be received in evidence as proof of his intent.” Any potential ambiguity that existed when Trump (in)famously called for his supporters to “fight like hell” went out the window when they stormed the Capitol and he refused to do anything about it. This more than makes sense; as we all know, freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from responsibility or consequences for your words.
Looking back, seven of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach—Reps. Liz Cheney, Anthony Gonzalez, Jaime Herrera Beutler, John Katko, Peter Meijer, and Tom Rice—explicitly cited Trump’s inaction as a factor in their vote. So it seems remarkable that no one has delved into this sooner. But looking back, it’s clear that at the very least, Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 amounted to a crime of omission—a crime that would, on paper, seem very easy to prove in court.
Union reaches tentative deal with John Deere, this week in the war on workers
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After an action-packed—and sober, thanks to one of their own being hit by a car and killed near a picket line—week, John Deere strikers may have a deal. The UAW and management announced a tentative agreement, pending a vote by the workers, on Saturday.
Over the past week, the company announced it would not cut off benefits and would pay out performance bonuses the workers earned before the strike started, after threatening to withhold it in what would have been a significant act of wage theft. In Iowa, a judge rejected John Deere’s effort to get an injunction against picketers.
Now, the strike will continue through a ratification vote, which will happen Tuesday. Jonah Furman is asking workers what would get them to yes on a contrast and tweeting the responses, in a very interesting thread.
● Meanwhile, in another significant ongoing strike:
● Work is so bad that people are quitting in droves. We should see that as a good thing.
● How trade unions and climate advocates in California can form an alliance, from Capital and Main’s Aaron Cantu.
● Amazon can get you almost anything in two days, but it constantly screws up its workers’ paid leave. It’s almost like it cares more about one of these things than the other.
● Staff at Politico and E&E News are unionizing, asking their new German owner for voluntary recognition.
● No, Striketober is not about vaccine mandates, Jeff Schuhrke writes.
● Moral policy = Good economics, Rev. Dr. William Barber II, Shailly Gupta Barnes, Josh Bivens, Krista Faries, Thea Lee, and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis argue.
● Doing some last-minute Halloween candy shopping? Here’s a list of union-made in the U.S. candy.
● App-based workers speak: Studies reveal anxiety, frustration, and a desire for good jobs.
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Facebook banned Trump, but it's still letting him fib and fundraise. This needs to stop
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Oh, Facebook. Sweet, sweet Facebook. Could you go back to the day when everyone annoyed me with their latest Bejeweled Blitz and Candy Crush scores instead of their breathless invitations to join in the thorough dismantling of Western civilization?
You’d think a guy who wanted to nuke hurricanes, suggested injecting disinfectant to cure COVID-19, faced dozens of sexual assault allegations, and literally tried to end America would be a pariah, not a viable presidential candidate. But high treason isn’t what it used to be. These days, it’s not about inciting a riot and corruptly using the Department of Justice to overturn a free and fair election. Oh, no. According to Republicans, treason is trying to substantively improve people’s lives by shaking a few shekels loose from billionaires and saving the lives of people who are too fucking dumb to save themselves.
It scares me how quickly President Fifteen Flushes was able to shove Jan. 6 down the memory hole—at least in the barmy bean-brains of his troglodytic troop. And Facebook—which has banned Donald Trump from its platform for two years—seems far more concerned these days about hiding its crimes against humanity than fumigating its site against anti-American ex-presidents.
Tell me exactly why Facebook is allowing Trump to do this? Other than pure, noxious greed, that is.
While Trump is currently banned from Facebook for—erm, uh … Jesus Waffle-Noshing Christ, this can’t be right, can it?—attempting a coup against the legitimate government of the United States of America, he’s found a way around that ban, while he also skirts laws about using his current fundraising to fund a (likely) future presidential campaign.
[Trump’s] primary political action committee, Save America, has been spending more than $100,000 a week this month on Facebook ads, according to the company, many of which seek donations with deceptive claims about corruption in the last election and public support for the belief that “Trump is the true president.”
Facebook allows the ads because Trump is not posting them personally through his suspended account and the ads do not speak in Trump’s “voice,” according to a company spokeswoman. The money raised can be used to finance his current political operation — his staff, his rallies, his travel — until he announces another campaign. At that point, he would have to start fresh with a new account, but with a significant advantage: advisers may rent back the updated list of donors that Save America has collected to give him a head start. And advisers say he could transfer the money to another outside group that buttresses his bid.
Oh, isn’t that cute? You’d think that at some point, on its way to making the planet safe for fascism again, Facebook would take time to meaningfully enforce its ban. Or failing that, they could at least replace the “cares” button with a “kick a Nazi in his unsightly, languorous balls” button.
I don’t know about you, but this feels a little like Sauron marshaling his forces as he desperately searched for the One Ring. Or, if you’re not a huge nerd like me, perhaps it feels more like a big, dumb asshole taking a giant radioactive shit on our democracy.
The fundraising haul puts his political operation, which has so far reported giving little to other candidates or causes, among the largest in the country, dwarfing organizations set up to raise money nationwide. The National Republican Senatorial Committee declared less than $30 million in cash at the end of September and the National Republican Congressional Committee had $65 million in cash at the same point.
As The Post notes, Trump’s post-election-loss foray into politics is unusual, as is his continued fundraising effort (aka scam). The last losing president to make another run at the White House was Herbert Hoover, who, like Trump, also presided over a cratered economy. Now Pervert Hoover is trying to do him one better by riding his shitty economic record and treasonous ocher ass into a second, nonconsecutive term.
“What is different with Trump is the sheer amount of money raised and the often-misleading way he has raised that money,” Brendan Fischer, the director of federal reform at the Campaign Finance Legal Center, told The Post.
Gee, it would sure be nice if someone stopped him. Huh, Facebook?
Of course, if Facebook doesn’t want to bar Trump’s fundraising efforts, they could at least put the kibosh on his corrosive lies. They’re not doing that either, of course. In one series of ads cited by The Post, the Trump team claimed “53% believe Trump is the true president” and “56% believe the 2020 election was tainted.” As the paper noted, those numbers refer only to Republicans, and it remains an open question whether they’re actually Americans anymore.
So it’s time to do better, Facebook. That should be pretty easy, as the bar could not possibly be any lower.
It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
Connect! Unite! Act! Our best chance to win means acceptance and understanding
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Connect! Unite! Act! is a weekly series that seeks to create face-to-face networks in each congressional district. Groups meet regularly to socialize, get out the vote, support candidates, and engage in other local political actions that help our progressive movement grow and exert influence on the powers that be. Visit us every week to see how you can get involved!
I don’t often talk directly about what it is I do here at Daily Kos. In the past, I’ve been proud of the organizing efforts we’ve put together to arrange for in-person meetings in New York, San Francisco, Texas, Kansas City, Asheville, Minnesota, Philadelphia, and so many Netroots Nations and partner events. Beyond that, however, was always an effort that would expand our Daily Kos community with new members who can provide their unique voices and experiences. Part of bringing these new voices into our community involves acceptance and understanding—attracting alumni of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, immigrant workers, candidates, and even just advocating for participating on our site when I attend meetings of activists who want a platform to get their message out there. There are, however, complications that I don’t normally get into in a diary on Daily Kos. As we move forward with the new rules of the road and we start to talk frankly about how we treat members and each other, I want to explain exactly why being a more welcoming and understanding community makes all of us better in the end.
Understanding our language is not “how we lose”—unless you’re talking about members and opportunities
Working to bring in new writers and voices to Daily Kos can be thrilling. I can have a week where several new writers or exciting voices are ready to jump on board and talk about their campaign or a specific issue they want to be addressed. Every time that happens, it represents to me some of the best of Daily Kos, and I feel fantastic that another new voice came into the community to talk about their district, state, or issue.
If all I had to talk about were successes, though, this Connect! Unite! Act! would be a lot easier to write. Instead, I want to take a moment to talk about what we as a community need to do better if we want to bring in voices. Sometimes the way we behave, think, and write can be enough of a turn-off that it can make what I do far more difficult than I ever imagined.
You see, when we talk about issues like microaggressions, ableism, insults against faith, blanket denunciations, and unwillingness to listen to LGBTQ individuals, the experiences of the BIPOC community, all of the work that I and so many others put into bringing good voices into our community can evaporate instantly. It’s heartbreaking to put a lot of work into something and find in a few days I’m back to square one, trying to encourage someone to be heard—and that I struggle to explain that they will be treated the right way as opposed to what they have just seen.
All of this starts with just one phrase. I will not name commenters or writers who say it because it happens so often, but the phrase is simple: “This is how we lose.” Someone will write an article about how we should improve our language, be more thoughtful and accepting, and the first response is always: “This is how conservatives beat us up and this is how we lose.” What absolute and utter nonsense. Hardened conservatives were never going to vote for a Democratic candidate, but when we dismiss the concerns a writer or community member has with how we treat each other, when they are strong Democratic voters and we refuse to listen to them, we drive away opportunities by shrinking our coalition. Frankly, we make a less interesting Daily Kos.
It’s time for me to tell a few stories here
In the past year, there have been several organizations and candidates as well as elected officials I have worked with to try and get them on board and to write about their experience. In some cases, I worked for weeks or even months to wait out their obligations to their elected position, or for them to get into a healthy mental space because of how taxing things were for them. This was especially true of transgender elected officials, who worked diligently to try and put together their thoughts for the Daily Kos community about how hard it is to be in a position surrounded by some people who hate you—not for your policies, but hate you directly as a human being.
It can take me a lot of time and effort, at any and all hours, to help assure, comfort, and assist people to know that our community can offer them a safe space to tell their story. It means a lot to me that we can do this because the moments I point to as successes at Daily Kos are when we as an entire community focused on Ferguson. It’s when I look at the efforts Neeta and I put in to help make our community reach out to new and different audiences. It’s a discussion I still keep up, every single day.
That doesn’t mean those moments are always successful. I can spend a lot of time working with a group or an individual and find that within a matter of a day, all of that work goes away. Why? Because when people feel as though they are not safe to discuss their concerns here, we lose their interest, either out of fear or because they don’t want to dedicate the time. For me, I have personally had weeks where I have felt absolutely gutted because I felt so close to a voice I know our community needs, only to find it ripped away. I want to take a moment to talk about just two instances of exactly that occurring.
In working with organizations of faith that were looking to highlight how their efforts within churches build a more progressive Christian outlook on why we must look after each other, there was a lot of initial excitement about utilizing our platform. Several groups in this space had an interest in saying,
”There may be a lot of conservative Christians, but there are a lot of us who vote Democratic and are very progressive, too.” I felt such excitement about the story they had to tell about the efforts of priests and ministers to help the poor, to bring forward why faith calls them to not judge one another, to support the refugee, to be a beacon of peace. One organization was interested in talking about nuclear disarmament, something I haven’t seen on Daily Kos in at least a decade. These were all topics I found exciting and positive, and I thought: “Damn! Our community will love this!”
Then what happens? When we talk thoughtlessly about others, use our titles and our content to bash the idea that any faith can be helpful to the Democratic cause, we don’t gain allies, we lose them. Frankly, personally, even just as someone with a friendly nature, for me it’s like a dagger into my gut. I don’t often go into meetings with the head of our department and cry, but it has happened twice that I remember, and both times were the exact same reason: So much time was invested, so much effort was put in, so much excitement was had, a promise for what it would bring to the Daily Kos community, only to see it all go away. Now, before we say: “Well, we can’t guarantee the behavior of one commenter or a troll,” I want to point out that isn’t what happens. No, instead what tends to happen is that organizations will look and see if we as a community reject or approve of the kind of narrative that they want to avoid. When they see commentary like: “This is how we lose” or “bloody Christians” and lots of recommended comments bashing them, why would they stay? Why would they have an interest in participating? What can I say to them that helps them feel assured it will be different?
In some cases, I work as hard as I can to see individuals get a diary together to talk about personal issues—like being a transgender legislator—and pull the plug because of the fact there isn’t enough safety or understanding here. This spring, I reached out to legislators and activists within the LGBTQ community to tell their stories, and I received positive words. I consider them to be friends, old friends, who needed to talk about how difficult and toxic things were becoming for them.
It is crushing to me personally to see friends work so hard with me to try and put things together and then contact me to tell me they are concerned with the way our community behaves. On a Friday before a piece regarding transgender discrimination was set to run, a diary hit the recommended list that was full of the kind of discussion both of these advocates found appalling. Here it was, however, being recommended by our community. Within a matter of eight hours, more than two months’ worth of work on my side? Destroyed. I still haven’t managed to get it all put back together, and one activist—a personal friend I have known for seven years—was hurt enough that I haven’t heard from them in the same way; they don’t call me anymore, and when we do talk, I can tell things are different. From someone I could talk to every other day to the state we are in right now.
I walked into my weekly meeting then, and I cried. I felt as though I had been working so hard, but what I do is so difficult to quantify that when it falls apart, I don’t know where to go with the feeling that I could have, or should have, tried to do something different.
When we talk about the rules of the road, and microaggressions, we are talking about bringing in people who are among our strongest supporters who want to talk to us, and they want to be our friends. Making people feel comfortable and safe here by expanding our coalition is how we win. Making more voices feel uncomfortable or unsafe here? That actually is how we lose.
Ableism
From the very beginning of my time here at Daily Kos, I’ve spoken about ableism in different ways. At this point, that’s 17 years’ worth of discussions here on Daily Kos where I’ve shared information about my son’s autism, my TBI, my brother’s physical disability, and friends who passed from cruelty to the disabled. On a very personal note, the way we talk about the disabled means so much to me because I am a member of that community and nothing that will ever happen will undo that status for me. In 2019, as some know, I had to battle my own different personal demons as personal loss led to some really dark moments for me. Frankly, talking about mental health is dangerous. There are people who use it to shame others, to think less of others, and to make fun of others. We use disability in general to mock people or to make them less than us, to imply it means something.
When I see a post about “Diaper Don” mocking Donald Trump, I think to myself: “Why is this funny? If he’s incontinent, that’s a disability.” Lots of people with IBS or who have had colon disorders suffer from this problem. Would we mock any of those people for doing something that is the medically right thing for them to do?
I can despise Trump on his policy, on what he is doing people. Do I poke fun at him, making fun of more than a million Americans and applying they are all “less than” or “funny” because of a problem that isn’t in their control? I’ve had one disability advocate tell me directly that the way in which the Democratic base talked about Trump created such a struggle for disability advocates because they felt constantly under attack.
There are different ways in which this can be handled. Addressing whether or not Trump had cognitive disabilities that prevented him from serving would be certainly a fair discussion, and no advocate I’ve spoken to thought any less. The terminology used to address the issue? Well, that is a whole other matter.
I wish I could say I was perfect on this point; at times I’ve fallen into the lazy writing nature of using words and terms that later I really regret. I try to fix it when I notice and apologize accordingly. Why do these words and phrases come to mind so easily? Because we build a community that is accepting of this as a practice. The more we work to help each other stop demeaning Republicans by using disabled people as a standard of “less than,” the quicker we all help make this community welcoming for all.
An exercise for this week:
Before you write something, please think about this, a guide from Marsha Linehan called FAST:
Fair: Be fair to yourself and to the other person. Remember to validate your own feelings and wishes
Apologies: No looking ashamed. No invalidating the valid. Stick to your values.
Stick to the values: Don’t sell out your values or integrity for reasons that just aren’t important.
Truthful: Don’t lie. Don’t act helpless to stop something when you’re not. Don’t make up excuses for why you won’t change or do something different.
