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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.

What are you working on in your local area
to move our progressive agenda along?

This post was originally published on this site

I have a special place in my heart for Texas. It’s the first state I moved to after I left home. I went through Basic Training at Lackland Air Force Base and was stationed in San Antonio for years. I was on my own and completely independent for the first time in my life, so I fell in love with the fierce independent streak on which Texans pride themselves. I immersed myself in the local culture: I hung the Lone Star flag, listened to Tejano music, wore cowboy boots, and always visited the Alamo whenever I strolled through the Riverwalk.

That tiny stone building, an abandoned Spanish mission that briefly became a fortress in 1836, still looms large in Texas folklore. Every school child is taught the story, and Texan public school teachers are literally required to describe the Alamo defenders as “heroic.” It was here, the legend goes, that Texas freed itself from a tyrannical dictator, Santa Anna, with American heroes led by Davy Crockett, William Travis, and Jim Bowie. Students are taught these Americans put up an epic struggle against overwhelming Mexican invaders, and that they all died for Texas’ freedom. Though the battle was lost, their sacrifice inspired Texans across the land to fight with the rallying cry, “Remember the Alamo,” which has long been the official state motto.

It’s a great story of heroism and patriotism, but there’s one big problem: None of it is true.

In order to teach history, we have to be willing to face history. This means being willing to follow the historical record wherever it leads us, even if it contradicts false narratives we were taught our whole lives. Instead, Texas is desperately trying to cling to the fake heroic Anglo narrative.

The state has recently passed laws that whitewashed slavery, forcing discussions on “multiple perspectives” of “controversial issues,” to include the “pros” of slavery and even “opposing views” on the Holocaust, whatever that means. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has even required “patriotic education”—little more than thinly veiled propaganda—to be distributed across the state. The fierce grasp of these lies might seem bizarre, but it’s rooted deep in the mythology of Texas’ history; its entire foundation is based on the so-called “cradle of Texas liberty.” These new laws are, I believe, a reaction to the truth about what Texas is and always has been all about.

In June, three Texas historical researchers released a book called Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, which gives the facts about what really happened; it’s not quite the story of heroism that is taught across Texas and the rest of the U.S. The response to the book was swift. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who ironically has railed against “cancel culture” all year, personally intervened to cancel a discussion about the book at a museum where he is a board member. This followed Abbott signing a bill that created “The 1836 Project,” named after the year the Battle of the Alamo was fought, in order to “promote patriotic education and increase awareness of the Texas values.” It echoed Donald Trump’s failed attempt to whitewash history in America’s schools with his now-defunct 1776 Commission last year. Both were obvious sneers at Nikole Hannah-Jones’ Pulitzer Prize-winning The 1619 Project.

Abbott also signed a ridiculous “critical race theory” bill that severely restricts how teachers address uncomfortable history. Texas’ Republican leaders want truth dismissed as propaganda, while insisting the “heroic Anglo narrative” be taught as the truth. This entire struggle over indoctrination in schools, and the greater struggle for the GOP when facing any harsh reality—whether it’s election losses or simple scientific facts—is encapsulated in facing the reality of Texas’ favorite myth.

In May, I wrote about how living museums, like Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, were struggling to depict the honest facts of American history, specifically when it comes to Black Americans. When the historically-recreated town was founded by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. in the 1930s, it was likely that this issue never crossed his mind. After all, he just wanted a glowing, educational tribute to our Founding Fathers.

The full narrative of other cultures doesn’t fit neatly into our nation’s sanitized mythology of white heroes. Yet to its credit, Colonial Williamsburg has been tackling this difficult issue head-on, adding not just slave quarters, but recreations of stories of joy and success featuring populations who have long been ignored, including African Americans, Native Americans, and even LGBTQ colonists.

The result? A more accurate, and much more interesting, historical site.

Many of us already know the fable of the Alamo. After all, Texas has chosen most of our nation’s textbooks, which feature a very skewed narrative of not just the Alamo, but our nation’s founding. For decades, conservative activists have recognized the importance of infiltrating our schools with their brand of right-wing propaganda and white American exceptionalism. Here are just a few examples: Enslaved people are referred to as “workers,” Moses is described as a Founding Father, and Native American victories against the American Cavalry are characterized as “massacres,” while Anglo victories are simply “battles.”

The Battle of the Alamo is perhaps the most infamous bit of revisionist U.S. history; most people educated in the States are familiar with the grandiose narrative told in San Antonio for the past 200 years. In the mid-20th century, Hollywood really spread it on thick with several shows and films about the Alamo.

Walt Disney, convinced that communists were behind his labor strikes, decided he needed to counter their influence with “American values.” Disney created a mini-series depicting a completely made-up version of Davy Crockett, showing him killing Native Americans and dying a heroic death at the Alamo. Boys in the U.S. were soon buying Crockett merchandise, like coonskin caps and cap guns. The Disney version was so popular, it made it to Europe, where one of those Crockett-loving boys grew up to become a famous musician. England’s own Phil Collins has accumulated a massive collection of Alamo memorabilia since childhood, and recently donated 400 pieces to the historic site, although several pieces seem to have dubious authenticity.  

The Disney series was followed by John Wayne’s infamous movie, The Alamo, which was directed by Wayne himself, who also starred as Davy Crockett. Wayne spent $1.5 million of his own money to make the film, in large part because he wanted to turn the Alamo into a “national political symbol, a romantic bulwark against shifting political winds.” He succeeded. 

Yet everything about this story of the Alamo is just plain wrong, including the reason the “heroes” were fighting in the first place. The white immigrants at the Alamo weren’t fighting for freedom or independence. They were fighting for slavery.

The truth about the Alamo

In the early 1820s, a newly independent Mexico was attempting to colonize the vast lands of Texas (called Tejas at the time) as an economic strategy, and invited settlers to come and live there, as long as they paid import duties. Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, but the nation allowed an exemption in the Tejas region because of the outcry from the white settlers, whose entire economy was based on cotton and thus very dependent on slavery.  

That is, until 1833, when Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna was elected Mexico’s president. One of the first things Santa Anna did was abolish slavery in the Tejas region. For white settlers, this was a bridge too far. Stephen F. Austin, the so-called “Father of Texas,” wrote many letters to Mexican authorities about the importance of slavery for the Anglo settlers. William Travis’ letters about fighting for freedom get a lot of attention by Texan historians, but Austin’s letters speak about the settlers’ true concern: 

“Nothing is wanted but money,” [Austin] wrote in a pair of 1832 letters, “and Negros are necessary to make it.”

American settlers in Tejas tried to circumvent the new law by converting enslaved people to lifetime indentured servants, but Mexico responded by passing a law saying such contracts could not last longer than 10 years. Mexico was a post-colonial nation founded on egalitarian principles, and Santa Anna was determined to enforce the end of slavery throughout Mexico, including in Tejas.

While it is true that Texas had formally declared independence from Mexico a few days before the battle at the Alamo, no legitimate historian believes that declaration was the reason for the battle. While delegates were meeting in Washington-on-the-Brazos to declare independence from Mexico on March 2, 1836, the Alamo had already been under siege for days. It fell under Santa Anna’s full assault on March 6, so it was unlikely the defenders even knew that independence had been declared. 

The Battle of the Alamo, in fact, shouldn’t have even happened. Travis was warned multiple times of Mexican armies approaching, but decided to ignore the warnings until it was too late. Gen. Sam Houston even sent Bowie to destroy the Alamo, saying it was too remote and unnecessary to defend. Bowie also decided to ignore those orders. The siege at the Alamo lasted for as long as it did because the men at the mission had no choice but to fight, as they were encircled and trapped.

Crockett, despite Hollywood depictions of a legend who went down fighting, likely went down another way, according to the evidence. Jeff Long’s well-researched Duel of Eagles showed Crockett to be an “aging, semiliterate squatter of average talent” who surrendered and begged to be spared. Multiple sources verify this. In fact, Crockett’s surrender was even used as evidence by American newspapers of Santa Anna’s brutality. Yet in the 1950s, when Disney and Wayne were building the mythology of the Crockett character, that didn’t fit the hero narrative they wanted.

Yet if there’s one person responsible for the myth that surrounds the Alamo today, it’s Travis. His infamous “Victory or Death” letter, sent to the U.S. government during the battle, begged for reinforcements. The letter was woven with flowery language about fighting for “liberty, patriotism, and everything dear to the American character”; this would be considered “spin” in today’s parlance. His words didn’t get him any reinforcements, but the letter did succeed in making Travis a martyr. Travis never mentioned his refusal to abide by Mexican laws abolishing slavery in any of his letters.

The heroic Anglo narrative of the Alamo also excludes the many local Tejanos who fought alongside the white rebels, including Juan Seguin, Gregorio Esparza, Jose Toribio Losoya, and others. Monuments were built to Bowie and Travis—who were actually Mexican citizens, while Crockett was officially an immigrant.

However, Losoya, unlike Crockett, didn’t surrender. He died fighting at the Battle of the Alamo. Seguin, who hated Santa Anna because he saw him as a dictator, joined the Texas Revolution and served as a captain, leading troops against Santa Anna’s rule.

But good luck finding any T-shirts in the Alamo gift shop with their likeness.

Esparza was the last Texan defender to enter the Alamo. He was instrumental in the taking of the squares on the north side of the city during the siege of Bexar. A former principal of Esparza Elementary School, Melva Matkin, realized that her students, mostly Hispanic, had no idea who Esparza even was. She rectified this by creating a two-week schoolwide unit on Esparza.

Several African Americans also fought at the Alamo, both free and enslaved, men and women, who were also written out of the historical record. A man named Joe, enslaved by Travis, fought bravely but remained enslaved even after Travis was killed. Greenbury B. Logan, a freedman serving as a private, fought so heroically that he was issued a donation certificate for 640 acres of land; at the same time, a Texas legislator submitted a formal proposal barring free Black people from emigrating to Texas.

Speaking of Travis, the popular phrase “drawing a line in the sand” came from a supposed gesture Travis made at the entrance to the mission. You can see it when you visit the Big Lie shrine. As cool as that move might have been, it simply didn’t happen. Some five decades after the battle occurred, an amateur historian described the moment in an 1888 book entitled A New History for Texas Schools; an ignored and forgotten footnote read: “Some unknown author has written the following imaginary speech of Travis.” 

Of course, a bunch of racist settlers refusing to follow Mexican laws on abolition, with most killed because it was too late to escape does not make for much of a hero story. Yet this kind of revisionist storytelling has had real damaging consequences, even affecting our foreign policy. American politicians have often referenced the Alamo as a justification for spreading American democracy to third-world nations, including Texas’ own President Lyndon Johnson:

Johnson’s vision of America was steeped in the mythology of Texas. His great-great-uncle John Wheeler Bunton was a delegate to the convention that wrote Texas’ declaration of independence in 1836 and fought in the Battle of San Jacinto. Johnson saw his ancestor and the colonists in New England who declared themselves free of a foreign power as part of the same tradition—a view of history not accepted by the Northeasterners he was always uneasy around.

The most celebrated aspect of the Texas struggle for independence—the vow at the Alamo to fight to the death, to never retreat—took a darker turn in Johnson’s decision to pursue the war in Vietnam.

“Hell, Vietnam is just like the Alamo,” Johnson told the National Security Council.

“Hell, it’s just like if you were down at that gate and you were surrounded and you damn well needed somebody. Well, I’m going to go—and I thank the Lord that I’ve got men who want to go with me.”

Another Texas politician, George W. Bush, loved to reference the Alamo in his speeches; Texas soldiers even erected a large replica of the Alamo on a military base outside of Baghdad. Even Donald Trump, who has no connection to Texas, brought up the Alamo in service of his personal persecution complex during his last State of the Union address.

It’s been pointed out to me many times that without the Alamo myth, the story of Texas is no different than the founding of Iowa … except it’s actually worse. After all, at least Iowa wasn’t founded as a slaveholding republic. Yet many Texans feel they need the Alamo story. As one of the authors of Forget the Alamo stated, the myth speaks to what many Texans desperately want to believe about their state: that it arose from heroic circumstances, and that there’s a reason Texas is special. This includes the current crop of Republican Texas legislators.

Instead of allowing critical thinking and a serious examination of the historical record, Abbott and his allies decided to go the despotic route and unilaterally declare the false mythology is now fact. In a move that critics decry as a pure expression of fascism, the Texas governor requires his “patriotic education” to be provided at state parks, landmarks, monuments and museums. Additionally, a pamphlet about Texas history, devoid of any negativity, is distributed to anyone who receives a Texas driver’s license.

As part of Republicans’ war against critical race theory, another new Texas law severely limits how teachers can address slavery, the Holocaust, or other “controversial” topics. The Texas law requires “multiple perspectives when discussing widely debated and currently controversial” issues.

Gina Peddy, executive director of curriculum and instruction for the Carroll Independent School District, recently addressed teachers in a training session on what books they are allowed to have in classroom libraries. She conceded that teachers are “terrified” of the law, and offered advice, using an awful example with the Holocaust.

“And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.”

The only books that offer a “differing perspective” that the Holocaust was a good thing or didn’t happen are white supremacist, Nazi garbage. Yet the new Texas law demands that those viewpoints get represented.  

Furthermore, one of the prohibitions under the law is that teachers can’t talk about the belief that one race is superior over the other. The problem with that is Texas’ founding documents specifically declare that the Caucasian race was superior to the African American race as a justification for slavery. That’s in the historical record. A teacher therefore can’t have a discussion about widely held beliefs during that time period—a belief which directly led to the Civil War. However, it’s perfectly acceptable for a teacher to have a lesson plan that argues the “pros” and “cons” of slavery, because, you know, balance.

Without a hint of irony, Abbott also approved a ludicrous law that forbids social media companies from “censoring” conservatives, even if they violate user agreements designed to slow the spread of dangerous disinformation. So on one hand, teachers are being censored from teaching the realities of Texas’ history, while on the other, Texans can sue Facebook if the platform flags a post recommending people eat horse paste instead of getting a lifesaving vaccine.

It’s beyond frustrating, but despite the failure in leadership, my love for Texas and its people (and its barbecue) endure. Its right-wing slant is due to a combination of voter suppression, a constant campaign of disinformation, and of course, extreme gerrymandering.

Yet the Republican Party continues to lose its grip on power ever so slowly, which is why they have resorted to extreme fascist tactics to curb democracy, such as promoting white supremacist propaganda, attacking voting rights, and severely oppressing women and minorities.

Yet these extremists have gone too far. Texas is not the deep red bastion that their political representation would have you believe it is. There are far more democracy-loving citizens who believe in education than hatemongers who want to use white supremacist propaganda to hold onto power. If enough Texans get angry enough to vote, the Republican dominance of Texas could end—along with the multiple pain points that its citizens are suffering right now. It will happen, sooner or later.

Facing reality with the Alamo is a good place to start. I understand people’s fear of the truth, but the truth is what history is about. And there were true stories of heroism from that day, but we can’t learn about them if we insist on teaching a myth. Learning the negatives about the Alamo doesn’t wipe away any of the positives, and the honest perspective can show how much progress has been made. In the case of Colonial Williamsburg, the new buildings and programs make the place seem much more real, much more inclusive, and much more compelling. I saw more people of color there than I’ve ever seen before, and white visitors didn’t stop buying tickets. The museum simply grew up, and it’s time the Alamo did as well.  

I recently visited family in San Antonio, and returned to the Alamo for the first time in two decades. The visitors were overwhelmingly white, and there’s a good reason for that. My Tejano friends told me that, as children, they hated the Alamo part of social studies, because they were made to feel less American. A Tejano public artist put it this way: “You feel like you’re a bad person, a bad Mexican, when you’re there.”

The best way to remember the Alamo, ironically, is to forget it—or at least the false myth being presented as fact for conservative propaganda. Real history happened at the Alamo, and learning about it won’t make the Texas experiment any less amazing—it will just be much more honest and inclusive.  

However, that’s not the goal for Republican lawmakers. This is another tactic for mobilizing white grievance over what they believe is their right to dictate the heroic narrative. Republicans have much to fear in Texas, to include their state’s rapidly changing demographics, and Americans’ increasing willingness to confront racism.

Whether they admit it or not, these Republican lawmakers are acting out of fear because they realize that their day of reckoning is upon them. No matter how many book events they cancel, no matter how much they try to control what teachers teach, and no matter how much they try to suppress their citizens’ right to vote, it won’t stop the change coming to Texas.

The citizens of the Lone Star State are angry and taking a stand. It’s kind of their thing, even if that’s not exactly what happened at the Alamo. 

This post was originally published on this site

Content Warning: Child abuse and neglect

I grew up in and around a quirky small town in Ohio where my father had also been born and raised. My mother set a remarkably useful foundation for me in my youngest years, but my father died just after my seventh birthday, and well, to use the clinical term, shit went sideways.

I know my own motivations for covering up the neglect, hunger, and abuse I experienced for nearly six years, but I’ve never understood those of the adults around me who looked the other way, even as some of them “did what they could” for me. The few I’ve been able to talk to claim without exception that they “just didn’t know” how bad things were, an excuse which only holds up till I poke around a bit. Those conversations usually end up with various explanations for why they looked the other way, reasons why they didn’t think they “should get involved.” I try not to hold grudges, or be judgmental, because that’s not helpful to my own healing and my ability to reflect on the strange joys of my childhood.

But then, every so often, I hear about a child abuse or neglect case, and the wounds are ripped back open, and I flash back to being locked in an empty apartment, or forgotten in dirty motel rooms for weeks at a time. Stories like this one out of Houston, where four children—one of them dead, and some with special needs—were left alone in an apartment for months, their mother dropping off food every so often. Their neighbors also did what they could, but it wasn’t enough, and they also claim they didn’t know how bad things were. 

And that’s when the angry tears flow.

One day maybe we will know why the 15-year-old boy at the heart of this story finally decided to call 911. Maybe we’ll find out how he got to that point where, despite his mother’s threats, this young man realized that the best thing he could do for himself—and the two little brothers still alive and left in his care—was to ask for help.

It’s extremely important to note that it was the eldest brother who saved himself and his siblings. Something changed for this brave teenager, who reportedly texted his mother to say that he “couldn’t take it anymore” before taking action for himself and his siblings; despite the flood of interviews these folks are now doing, it was not a family member or a concerned neighbor who stepped up. Instead, adults in a position to effect real change looked the other way, even when warning signs blared.

I don’t doubt that these neighbors feel immense guilt, and they should. But it’s only when we accept this hard truth—that it takes a village—can we figure out how to do better for the children in our respective communities.

My mother conditioned me to keep secrets, to lie to adults in the position to help me, to tolerate suffering, and to fear the unknown. That last one was the most crucial part to her plan to keep me, despite being unable to care for me. By touting the potential horrors of foster care, and threatening that we’d be separated forever, she ensured that I would choose my bad life with her—and even fight for it—when confronted with the promises and threats made by authorities, every time. This was our cycle for over 10 years. 

Children, to oversimplify things, are often neurologically hardwired to be deeply attached to their caregivers beyond reason; they don’t always know better, or what’s possible, even in the best of circumstances—circumstances which these boys did not enjoy. Instead, authorities in Harris County, home to Houston, note that the children lived in “absolute fear” of their mother, 35-year-old Gloria Williams, and her boyfriend, 31-year-old Brian Coulter, who was not their father.

Couple the neighbors’ inaction with the children’s fear, and then add the pandemic, which added to isolation worldwide and eliminated in-person classes even in ruby-red Texas, and it’s somewhat easier to see how these particular kids and their suffering could have gone undetected.

The pandemic has made matters worse for vulnerable children, according to Bob Sanborn, president and CEO of Children at Risk.

“It was very easy for these kids to fall through the cracks,” Sanborn said. “Texas has always relied on teachers to be that line of first defense for child abuse and these kids never got to that place where a teacher could identify what was going on with them, or begin an investigation, or alert CPS or others to what was happening.”

But only somewhat easier. 

Alief ISD confirmed to ABC13 that in 2019 and 2020, the school district filed truancy papers against the mother. Two of her children apparently failed to show up to school. District officials said the kids were last enrolled in May of 2020. A September 2020 home visit went unanswered, according to the district.

[…]

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services is seeking emergency custody of the three boys. A spokeswoman confirmed CPS has a history with the family but there was no active investigation at the time they were found.

The children were living in an apartment with no furniture or bedding for nearly a year, according to preliminary investigations, a space swarmed by cockroaches and flies. After Coulter allegedly beat to death eight-year-old Kendrick Lee last November, he covered the body with a blanket. He and Williams then simply moved to a new home less than 30 minutes away, leaving Kendrick’s body and his three brothers—now 15, 9, and 7—behind. Despite sporadic food deliveries, the 15-year-old reported not having seen his mother “in months.”

Just one neighbor reports complaining of the smell of human decomposition, and she only complained to building management, not authorities. When management did nothing, she turned off her air conditioner to mitigate the stench. The neighbor also claims she thought the apartment was abandoned.

After initially being interviewed and released the day after the children were found, Coulter and Williams are now in custody, with $1M and $900,000 bonds, respectively. Stunningly, they were arrested at a local library, where they were reading news coverage about the case. 

The surviving three boys are now being cared for by Harris County Child Protective Services, and have to navigate the long path forward to whatever healing is possible after such trauma. Meanwhile, family members and neighbors, educators and others, must live with their failure to protect these young Black boys from harm, and find a way forward. Hopefully the future means they look a little closer, and take action if they ever find themselves in a similar position to save a life. 

***

It’s been nearly 25 years since I walked away from my mother; I haven’t seen her in over 24 years; we last spoke on the phone 19 years ago. I’ve come to terms, as best as one can, with the fact that I’ll never see her alive again, but this is exactly the fearsome scenario that she promised me: If I left her, I’d lose her forever.

It turns out that it wasn’t much of a loss; I feared the unknown, but my new life turned out to be better than what I knew. I can only hope for the same for these three boys, even if it’s too late for little Kendrick.

In the end, the lesson from this is a simple one: If you see something, say something. It’s on each of us to protect the most vulnerable among us.

This post was originally published on this site

Facebook is a menace. COVID-19 is a menace. Conservatism is a cesspool. Together, those three ingredients have created a toxic stew of malevolent death and devastation. We can talk about all those things in the abstract, look at the numbers and statistics, and catch the occasional whiff of seditionist right-wing rhetoric. But I hadn’t really fully understood just how horrifying that combination of right-wing extremism, Facebook, and a killer virus was until I became a regular at the Herman Cain Awards subreddit. This series will document some of those stories, so we are aware of what the other side is doing to our country.

Today’s cautionary tale chose Q over Fauci.

Foreshadowing.

I just wish this was a legally binding meme, stating that refusal to take vaccine meant individual wouldn’t take a hospital bed from a more deserving person. That would really communicate how “firm” the person really stood.

WAKE UP SHEEPLE. The New World Order can’t carry out its plans for, uh, a new order in the world? Is that what they’re going for? Well, ain’t gonna happen IF YOU DON’T MASK. 

Remember when “compassion” meant caring about others?

I don’t know if COVID “killed” compassion, but it certainly showed us who has it, and the unfortunate millions of anti-vaxxers, mostly conservatives, oftentimes religious, who don’t.  

Guys, there’s no science. He went looking and it wasn’t even there!

They ain’t always wrong. Please, don’t go to stadiums or restaurants if you’re unvaccinated. Keep your COVID to yourself. 

Random googling. Here’s Christiane Northrup:

Christiane Northrup is a obstetrics and gynaecology physician and author who has embraced pseudoscientific alternative medicine and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. She has a history of opposing vaccination and has embraced QAnon ideology during the COVID-19 pandemic. Northrup reaches a significant audience through popular books and multiple social media platforms and spreads misinformation, notably about COVID-19.

Carrie Madej:

Carrie Madej’s video makes a false claim that the vaccines will change recipients’ DNA (which carries genetic information).

“The Covid-19 vaccines are designed to make us into genetically modified organisms.”

Larry Palevsky:

FALSE: According to Dr. Lawrence Palevsky, anyone who gets vaccinated against the COVID-19 can transmit the spike protein of the virus that is produced by their cells.

Explanation: There is no report or scientific study that corroborates the claim that the spike protein has been found in the saliva of people that have been vaccinated for the COVID-19. In reality, the protein is produced in cells in the area of the muscle that each individual received the vaccine and there is not a mechanism that would allow the production of the protein in the upper respiratory system.

This is the anti-vaxxer misinformation all-star team. 

I do find it interesting that for a movement that is singularly focused on discrediting the scientific and medical establishments, they cling to tightly to any random crank with a PhD. 

ATTENTION ALL BUSINESS OWNERS: Please review all the Facebook profiles every morning, before work, so you are properly caught up on everyone’s notices. 

Meanwhile, HIPAA only applies to doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers. A business can ask to see your vaccination card, and you are free to refuse to show it. And just like no shoes, no shirt, no service, they are well within their rights to deny the unvaccinated service. 

This video is hogwash. 

Really, we can stipulate that anything posted to “WeLoveTrump.com” is hogwash. 

First of all, this guy is a veterinarian, which isn’t a problem for the anti-vaxxers since they love to ingest horse dewormer. Though reading more about this guy, he’s got a novel theory: 

Dr. Bossche asserts that vaccines are like antibiotics in that, when they are both overused and imperfect, they allow germs to mutate in dangerous ways. With antibiotic use, the bacteria that have developed a mutation or acquired a gene that gives them protection from the antibiotic will escape death and soon become the dominant strain. That’s antibiotic resistance. Bossche claims that the same thing will happen with the coronavirus. Because, he says, the vaccines are imperfect, they will allow the virus to keep being transmitted from person to person and thus mutate inside of us, until a dangerous new variant emerges.

Turns out, the virus only mutates when our body’s immune system is unable to ward it off. In other words, this catastrophe he warns off is most likely if no one is vaccinated. That said, funny how all these cranks have their own crackpot theories, and anti-vaxxers embrace them all. The vaccine creates super viruses by working to well! The vaccines actually don’t work at all! The vaccine sheds spike proteins! The vaccine is a Trojan horse to implant everyone with a microchip! The vaccine is actually poison to kill everyone! The vaccine is key to the long-running New World Order masterplan to take over humanity! The vaccine was rushed and hasn’t been properly tested. 

OMFG would it be too much to ask for them to settle on one or two logically consistent arguments against the vaccine? 

Relying on WeLoveTrump.com kills brain cells. 

Relying on WeLoveTrump.com kills lots of brain cells.

I might take this shit more seriously if these assholes cared about those kids after they were born, instead of fighting Democratic efforts to create and extend the child tax credit and other programs that benefit children. 

I would also take them more seriously if they cared about a disease that has left 140,000 children without a parent. 

Conservatives don’t care about abortion because of babies. They care about abortion because women (sluts, harlots in their minds) should bear the consequences of their actions. It’s about taking away a woman’s agency and exerting control over her body, the end. 

It’s liberals who actually fight to provide for those children.

Apparently, WeLoveTrump.com’s job is to find every ridiculous doctor and uncritically hype their nonsense. This one has carved out a niche by prescribing Ivermectin to whoever wants it. 

Sigh. It’s never-ending bullshit. Never. Ending. 

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. FDA experts did not say this, and strongly refuted this false claim in an email to The Associated Press. A speaker who is not affiliated with the FDA made these statements during the open public hearing portion of a Sept. 17 FDA vaccine advisory panel meeting.

That speaker used the VAERS self-reporting system to try and back up his bogus claims. I explained VAERS in greater depth in this story. In short, VAERS is evidence of nothing. 

Every single date Q has given for some major event has been a bust. Literally every single one of them. But somehow, they’re not the ones being lied to. 

Hell, Q quit the game! No longer posting after every Trump prediction failed to materialize, and their God King lost the election. And yet this thing has survived.

Here’s the fact check. Hold on to your seats … it’s false. 

Social media users are sharing a speech made by attorney Thomas Renz in which he claims that through access to the Medicare Tracking System, he discovered that more than 48,000 people have died within 14 days of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) told Reuters that no such database exists […]

Reuters did not find a website or database called “Medicare Tracking System.” A spokesperson for CMS told Reuters via email that the claim is false.

They pretend that some random dude is an FDA commissioner. They make up websites to support made up numbers. 

If your ideology depends on fabricating “proof,” perhaps rethink your trajectory in life? 

Context, from a Reddit comment:

According to his FB their parents were killed in a car accident when he was 19. He essentially raised his siblings. This lady has now lost all of her sibling-parents in the last few weeks, at least one (this one) to COVID. 

Wow, that’s genuinely tragic. I feel for his sister. He was the rock of the family after losing both parents, and WeLoveTrump.com and Q destroyed it all. 

Facebook lost a prolific distributor of dangerous and deadly mis- and disinformation.  WeLoveTrump.com lost a reader and amplifier. Trump lost a voter. 

You’d think self-interest would motivate these people to rethink things. “Hmmm, we’re killing off our strongest supporters, maybe that’s not the best idea?” But nope. They like this, the sick fucks.