politics | Bitter Gertrude

Nov 14 2020

Culture

Election Lawsuits: A Calming Closer Look

I have to admit I’m writing this piece as much for myself as I am for you. As a card-carrying Gen Xer, I’m a firm believer in KNOWLEDGE IS POWER! The more we know about Trump’s election lawsuits and claims of fraud, the easier it will be to see through his nonsense.

First, let’s talk about Kayleigh’s binders. The woman who draws a taxpayer-funded salary to perform the duties of the White House press secretary has instead been wasting her time at work doing personal favors for one Donald J. Trump. You may have seen her waving around binders and claiming she has 234 signed affidavits. One brave Reuters reporter dove in and read them all when they were released, posting a thread on Twitter with examples. If you’re nervous about what evidence of fraud Republicans might have, real or invented, this thread is a calming read. They have bupkes.

A screenshot of Kayleigh McEnany on FoxNews holding two white binders, wearing a white shirt, and just being very very white in general. — OK, girl

Now let’s talk about the lawsuits themselves. I’ll limit myself to the post-election suits and a few pertinent pre-election suits; if I included all the pre-election lawsuits, this piece will be 20,000 words long. The pre-election suits are primarily the kinds of racist voter suppression attempts we’ve come to expect from the GOP. Most failed, but too many passed. Voter suppression will be a key issue between now and the 2022 midterms, so keep your eye on it. For now, let’s look at Deludinius Mendaciwhine Tantrump’s post-election lawsuits. Buckle up, kittens; here we go:

ARIZONA

Aguilera v Fontes: This is one of the “sharpie lawsuits” that alleged votes for Trump in Maricopa County, Arizona, were invalidated because poll workers gave Trump voters sharpies to fill out ballots. It’s unclear how poll workers magically knew who was planning to vote for Trump. This was an internet rumor with no evidence and even less sense, so it was DISMISSED on 11/7. SCORE: 0-1

Donald J. Trump for President Inc. v Hobbs: Believe it or not, this is an identical lawsuit to Aguilera v Fontes. It was DECLARED MOOT on 11/13 as statewide votes have been tabulated and the Trump team realized Biden’s lead in Arizona was insurmountable. The court had previously asked plaintiffs to compile this suit with Aguilera since they’re the exact same suit, and plaintiff said no– because Aguilera had already been dismissed for lack of evidence. LOL. SCORE: 0-2

Arizona Republican Party v Fontes: Basically, this asks for a hand count of votes by precinct instead of at voting centers, and asks for an expansion of current audit practices. This was filed 11/12. Even if they win, Maricopa County vote totals show Biden ahead by 2.16%.. Recounts rarely overturn elections, and when they have, the original margin of victory was 0.05 – 0.1%. My guess is this suit will be declared moot as well. ONGOING, BUT IRRELEVANT. SCORE: 0-2

GEORGIA

In re: Enforcement of Election Laws and Securing Ballots Cast or Received After 7pm on November 3, 2020: The Trump Campaign and the Georgia Republican Party sued in an attempt to stop 53 votes– you read that right, 53 votes– from being counted in Chatham County, GA because, so Trump et al claimed, they were received after the close of polls. The court issued a one page order laughing them out of court for lack of evidence. DISMISSED. SCORE: 0-3.

Brooks v Mahoney: Bunch of Republican yahoos in Georgia filed on 11/11 in an attempt to stop the statewide vote from being certified. They claim that voters’ voting and equal protected rights were denied, and therefore election results in eight Georgia counties are “illegal” and should just be thrown out entirely. Their evidence is speculative at best, mostly dependent on two things: five individuals claiming that they received mail-in ballots for dead relatives and the like, and– you’re gonna love this– the fact that Biden got more votes. They also claim that many Georgia counties have more registered voters than five-year-old population data predicted they would have, and they’re taking a Hail Mary pass at voting machines crashing in two counties, which they say is the same “glitch” that caused votes to be “miscounted” in Michigan. They must be hoping the court isn’t capable of googling the actual facts of the case from Michigan. Brooks v Mahoney is the sure_jan.gif of lawsuits. Since the entire state is undergoing a hand recount, this suit will probably be declared moot, but if not, surely it will be dismissed for lack of evidence. That said, even if Trump somehow managed to disqualify exactly the number of votes needed to win Georgia (and I’m sure that it’s just a coincidence that this lawsuit asks for exactly that), it doesn’t change the national outcome. ONGOING, BUT IRRELEVANT. SCORE: 0-3.

MICHIGAN

Donald J. Trump for President, Inc and Eric Ostegren v Benson: This one is hilarious. A dude named Eric Ostergren alleges that he was “excluded” from observing vote counting. However– and I quote the court in its ruling against Trump– “The complaint does not specify when, where, or by whom plaintiff was excluded. Nor does the complaint provide any details about why the alleged exclusion occurred.” They also submitted an affidavit from a poll worker who claims she was told by an unnamed poll worker that other unnamed poll workers said to backdate ballots. “Someone told me they heard someone else say X” is literally hearsay about hearsay. OBVIOUSLY Trump lost this one, but they’ve asked for it to be appealed, so technically it’s ONGOING. But since they already LOST this suit once, I’ll count it. SCORE: 0-4.

Stoddard v City Election Commission: Republicans sued to stop the city of Detroit from counting votes. They LOST for lack of evidence. The 11/6 court order is full of snark about their lack of evidence and reliance on “mere speculation.” SCORE: 0-5.

Polasek-Savage v Benson: On election day, Republicans asked for an emergency ruling challenging Oakland County, Michigan’s rule limiting poll watchers to one per party at absentee vote counting. DENIED. SCORE: 0-6.

Constantino v Detroit: Another one claiming Detroit election results are ~~too Black~~ “illegal.” On 11/13, the court determined that the suit was “not credible,” both for lack of evidence and for the fact that many of the plaintiff’s concerns come from a lack of understanding of vote counting procedure because they failed to attend the pre-election informational walkthrough. You may have seen articles about this suit since it’s the one that contained things like “one poll worker was a big, intimidating man wearing a ‘Black Lives Matter’ shirt” and “people were giving us dirty looks.” DENIED. SCORE: 0-7.

Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v Benson: This one also seeks to have the Wayne County, Michigan vote invalidated. Detroit is in Wayne County. It’s actually the DJT campaign plus a list of other people, including our old friend Eric “Lack of Evidence” Ostergren. This is another one about Republican poll watchers being “denied” entrance or re-entrance after leaving. The previous Michigan suits about this established that poll watchers were only denied entrance when the number of poll watchers had already reached the limit for that polling place. Previous judgments also mentioned that Republican poll watchers were so aggressive, disruptive, and combative that more than once they had to be removed by police for threatening poll workers. Nice. This one is technically ONGOING but it’s very unlikely to succeed. SCORE: 0-7.

Bally v Whitmer. This is a doozy. Filed 11/10, it alleges all the same garbage about widespread fraud– backdating, computer “glitches,” lack of “transparency” due to poll watchers being “denied,” “clerical errors,” and “many other issues and irregularities” in Wayne, Washtenaw, and Ingham Counties. In case you’re wondering why those counties were singled out, Wayne County = Detroit, Washtenaw County = Ann Arbor, and Ingham County = Lansing. You have to hand it to these people– they’re persistent. At some point soon, someone’s going to be held in contempt for filing suit after suit alleging the same disproven, worthless, evidence-free garbage. In any case, this is ONGOING, but it seems very unlikely, given past rulings on these same allegations, that it will succeed. SCORE: 0-7.

MINNESOTA, FOR SOME REASON

Donald J. Trump for President, Inc v Simon: The Trump campaign asked for all mail-in ballots received in Minnesota after election day to be segregated. The complaint was WITHDRAWN on 11/2, probably because Minnesota was already doing that. At this point, with Trump losing Minnesota by 231,633 votes. Trump has stopped claiming “fraud” in Minnesota and says he will never return to the state. I’m sure they’re broken-hearted. Personally, I think he’ll be back as soon as he’s free to start charging for tickets to his superspreader rallies. SCORE: 0-8.

NEVADA

Stokke v Cegavske: Welcome to Nevada, home of Las Vegas, acres and acres of desert, and Trump megadonor Sheldon Adelson, who has already told Trump to just coned already FFS. This suit is the same old “BUT OUR POLL WATCHERS” and gripes about signature matching software we’ve seen elsewhere. Republicans asked for a temporary restraining order to halt vote counts in Clark County, home to– you guessed it– Las Vegas, and to allow poll watchers to get closer than six feet. DENIED on 11/6. SCORE: 0-9.

Donald J. Trump for President, Inc and the Nevada Republican Party v Gloria: Republicans were hearing voices in their heads calling “Gloria,” but they were far less successful than Laura Branigan was in 1982. Whatever happened to Laura Branigan? Anyway, DISMISSED on 11/9. SCORE: 0-10.

Kraus v Cegavske: Another poll watcher case. Trumplicans wanted to stop vote counting in Clark County until they were allowed to observe the process. Poll watchers were restricted to 25 feet away from the vote counting, which is honestly kind of ridiculous, but at any rate Republican poll watchers were treated no differently than Democrat poll watchers, so the court ruled GTFOH. The Trumplicans were all, WE SHALL APPEAL and Clark County was like, GIVE ME A DAMN MINUTE and I’ll get you a doc with a settlement compromise because frfr, 25 feet is kind of ridic for both sides. The Trumplicans were like, WE DEMAND A STAY RIGHT NOW! STOP COUNTING VOTES!!!!!!! and the court ruled Settle down, Beavis. DENIED. SCORE: 0-11.

I need to get something to drink before I start in on Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvaia State Flag. It was show ponies on it and I have no idea why. It says "Virtue, Liberty, and Independence."

PENNSYLVANIA

OK, I’m back with a big glass of water and a molasses cookie. I’ll post the recipe at the end because I have the world’s best molasses cookie recipe, no lie.

Republicans filed numerous pre-election lawsuits and lost all of them. They’re not in the count here because they’re all pre-election suits focused on voter suppression rather than challenging the results in any real way, but bear it in mind that Republicans were already cramming frivolous lawsuits into the Pennsylvania system long before election day.

Woodruff v Philadelphia County Board of Elections: “So much fraud!” “Do you have evidence?” “I withdraw most of my complaint.” “Most?” “I mean, I have SOME evidence.” “Do you, though?” “………………….no.” DENIED 11/3. SCORE: 0-12.

Bognet v Boockvar. This one has a lot of moving parts. You can read the decision here. DENIED 11/9. SCORE: 0-13.

Donald J. Trump for President, Inc and Republican National Committee v Boockvar: In a rare win for the Trump campaign on 11/12, the court required Pennsylvania counties to toss out votes from voters who failed to provide supplemental ID by 11/9. The votes were already being segregated pursuant to an 11/5 court order, so this will not impact the state election results. Trumpworld is celebrating because the ruling at its heart was that Kathy Boockvar, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State and KNOWN FEMALE PERSON didn’t have the authority to grant an extension to voters three days before the election, after she was told by the USPS that Pennsylvania had been thoroughly DeJoyed and would be unlikely to return mail-in ballots on time. Trumpworld is speculating that this means wins elsewhere. It does not. Trump’s attorneys admit that the goal isn’t to flip Pennsylvania since they’re too far behind for any of their lawsuits to have that impact, and of course there’s the small matter of losing every suit but this one. Campaign attorneys say their goal is to narrow Biden’s lead to trigger a recount. As I say above, a recount is extremely unlikely to change the results. WIN. SCORE: 1-13.

Donald J. Trump for President, Inc v Montgomery County Board of Elections: The Trump campaign is asking for 592 ballots to be invalidated because the voters forgot to put their return address on the outside of the mail-in ballot envelope. DENIED 11/13. SCORE: 1-14.

In re: Motion for Injunctive Relief of Northampton County Republican Committee: Republicans wanted to prevent the Northampton County Board of Elections from disclosing the identity of canceled ballots. I guess they didn’t want people finding out their votes had been invalidated, so they wouldn’t be able to seek remedy. A garden variety voter suppression effort. DENIED 11/3. SCORE: 1-15.

Donald J. Trump for President, Inc v Boockvar: Basically, the Trump campaign has asked the court to invalidate the vote in all Pennsylvania counties that voted for Biden. If you want to read a zillion pages of Trumpian whining, be my guest. Here’s the motion to dismiss. The original complaint was filed 11/9, so it’ll be a few days before we get the court’s ruling. Unless they’ve suddenly found real evidence of fraud that’s not “Biden won,” this will be dismissed as all other claims of fraud have been dismissed. ONGOING. SCORE: 1-15.

Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v Bucks County Board of Elections: The Trump campaign initially filed on election day to stop Bucks County from counting mail-in ballots. That was DISMISSED. I’m seeing conflicting information about whether this is an appeal with new evidence or an entirely new suit or what, and honestly, I’m so exhausted by reading all these whiny, evidence-free suits that I’m not planning to find out. Regardless, the appeal (or new suit?) is ONGOING BUT IRRELEVANT, as it asks the court to toss out 2200 ballots in Bucks County, where Biden beat Trump by 17,328 votes. The hearing is 11/17, and the “evidence” they’re using is that the 2200 ballots were not sealed properly, were filled out with incomplete dates (such as leaving off the year), or did not have the full return address on the outer envelope. SHOCKING LEVELS OF FRAUD OMG SOMEONE IN BUCKS COUNTY DIDN’T INCLUDE THEIR ZIP CODE ON THE RETURN ENVELOPE THE WHOLE ELECTION IS INVALID. I’m still counting the initial dismissal, because after all this, we deserve it. SCORE: 1-16..

Pirkle v Wolf: Some random Republican voters (because Trumpworld needed to dig up some people who would have legal standing to bring the suit) claim that election officials in some counties– COINCIDENTALLY all areas Biden won– counted illegal ballots. Their *coughcough* “evidence” contains gems like “Some voters were advised they needed to cure ballot defects while others were not” with no indication of where or when this happened, who performed these actions, or who witnessed them; and “a poll watcher overheard unregistered voters being advised to return later under a different name that was registered in the poll book,” which would be classic hearsay if they had details about who overheard this, when and where it was overheard, and who was doing the advising, but– and I know this will shock you– they do not. Which makes this yet another case of hearsay about hearsay. This was just filed on 11/10, so it has yet to be laughed out of court. ONGOING. SCORE: 1-16.

Donald J. Trump for President, Inc v Philadelphia County Board of Elections: Lie-filled 11/5 claim that Republican poll watchers are being “intentionally refused,” and that an emergency stay must be issued to stop the count until this is remedied. Because poll watchers were indeed present by agreement of all parties, this was DENIED 11/5. SCORE: 1-17.

Donald J. Trump for President, Inc v Philadelphia County Board of Elections: This is actually five different requests for appeal. Each appeal is for a different area, but they all are demanding that ballots be thrown out if they have various minor envelope errors, are from people who voted by mail but then died before election day, or that were given a “secondary review” by election officials. There may be more; I just skimmed it. But honestly, who cares? They were all denied.

FIRST APPEAL 11/10 asks the court to toss 1211 ballots; DENIED 11/13.

SECOND APPEAL 11/10 asks the court to toss 1259 ballots; DENIED 11/13

THIRD APPEAL 11/10 asks the court to toss 533 ballots; DENIED 11/13

FOURTH APPEAL 11/10 asks the court to toss 860 ballots, DENIED 11/13

FIFTH APPEAL 11/10 asks the court to toss 4466 ballots; DENIED 11/13

SCORE: 1-22.

The "Game Over" screen from the old arcade video game Asteroids. — Trump is currently sending desperate emails asking his supporters for more quarters, but the fine print shows where most of the money is really going. You’ll never guess.

I’m sure there are some suits I missed, and I’m sure there are some details I got wrong. I’m not an attorney. My point is not to provide legal analysis but to provide a bit of calm. I’ve seen many legal analysts say, “Don’t look at what they’re saying on TV; look at what they’re saying in court.” Trump’s attorneys are deeply into the nitpicking weeds, focusing on things like “the envelope wasn’t sealed” and “this voter put 11/1 instead of 11/1/20.” They’re putting hearsay about hearsay into official complaints, then asking for wildly outsized remedies like “the entire county’s vote should be invalidated.” They’re even filing suits using “evidence” that was thrown out in other cases.

When your lawsuit asks for votes in an entire county to be invalidated because a Republican poll watcher thought Democrat poll watchers were “staring at her” and the room was “too loud,” you’re not a serious attorney filing a serious case. The point here is to create mistrust in our democratic processes, diminish faith in our democracy, foment anger and division, and stall as long as possible so that Trump and the RNC can grift as much money as possible from their gullible supporters.

While the suits are still ongoing, Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security has flatly stated there was no election fraud, and multiple behind-the-scenes sources have admitted that Trump himself knows as much.

While Trump will be out of office on January 20, 2021, Trumpism, with its lies, division, anger, bigotry, and hatred, will continue to exist. Republican voter suppression will continue to exist. Get ready to roll up your sleeves, but take a moment to enjoy Trump’s defeat. Why not make some molasses cookies?

World’s Best Molasses Cookies

There’s no picture because I went into the kitchen to take one and the cookies were all GONE.

Ingredients

4 cups AP flour

½ tsp salt

2 ¼ tsp baking soda

2 tsp ginger

1 ¼ tsp ground cloves

1 ¼ tsp cinnamon

2 sticks of butter (1 C)

1 cup sugar

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup + 2TB dark molasses

2 eggs

Method:

Cream the butter and sugars.
Add the molasses and eggs and mix well.
Sift together the flour, salt, baking soda, and spices.
Add the dry team to the wet team and mix. You’ll need to use your hands to finish.
Roll into balls, then roll each ball in sugar. Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet at least an inch apart and flatten slightly with the palm of your hand.
Bake at 325F for 9 – 11 mins. Cool on a baking rack.

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Tagged elections, politics, recipes, republican party, trump

Jun 15 2020

Culture

Trump Is Unwell. How We Talk About That Matters.

Donald Trump’s obvious physical and cognitive decline over the past few years has been thoroughly documented.

His slurring and difficulty with language:

The worsening weakness on the right side of his body:

2017:

2020:

His inappropriate behavior:

His problems with balance:

This has led to a great deal of concern. The man with the nuclear codes clearly has a serious neurological problem that the White House is hiding from us.

Part of Trump’s brand, however, is his narcissism and self-aggrandizement. He’s not just healthy; he’s the most healthy president ever. He’s not just smart and level-headed; he’s a “very stable genius” with “unmatched wisdom.” This insistence on presenting himself as an Übermensch when he is very clearly frail is an irresistible target for his critics. In the past few days since Trump’s alarming performance at the West Point graduation, hashtags such as #TrumpWearsAdultDiapers and #TrumpIsUnwell are burning up Twitter.

This is a tricky issue. On the one hand, mocking someone for being unable to walk or run is ableist. People with difficulties in mobility, speech, movement, and bladder/bowel control are full human beings who should not be mocked for their disabilities. When we use disability as a club to beat a politician we dislike– even a monstrous one like Trump– the people who bear the brunt of that cultural ableism are not wealthy white men. Systemic ableism always falls hardest on people experiencing other types of systemic bias– racism, sexism, transphobia.

If you think #TrumpWearsAdultDiapers is funny, bye.

It’s ableism.

I’ve had to use adult diapers at times due to my spinal cord injury. I know and love people, good people who are nothing like Trump, who wear diapers.

Criticize what he does. Trash the diaper jokes.
— Shannon Dingle, M.A.Ed. (@ShannonDingle) June 14, 2020

We cannot both be horrified at Trump’s mockery of Serge Kovaleski and also gleefully mock Trump’s physical and neurological decline.

And yet.

Some people have equated this with people in the LGBTQ+ community leaping on the “Lady G” story about Lindsey Graham. and some of my fellow PwDs are leaping on the #TrumpIsUnwell trend. When a man with extreme cultural and political power lies about belonging to a marginalized group, people notice that hypocrisy. And when that man repeatedly and aggressively uses his power to harm the marginalized group he pretends he doesn’t belong to, the hypocrisy moves from a personal foible to a public danger. Distancing yourself from something by attacking it is the oldest of old tactics.

Graham (along with every other virulently anti-gay political and religious leader like this man, this man, this man, this man, and these people) will not firmly establish himself as “straight” by working to demolish LGBTQ+ rights, although he will continue to try, and real people will continue to be hurt. Likewise, Trump will not magically become young and healthy again by mocking people with disabilities and crushing disability rights and funding, but he will continue to try, and real people will continue to be hurt.

Men like Lindsey Graham and Donald Trump, stuck within toxic masculinity, will do anything to avoid appearing “weak.” Trump has, through his words and actions, very clearly demonstrated that he associates being disabled with being “weak.”

The belief that a gay man is “weak” or a man with disabilities is “weak” is bound up in sexism as much as it is bound up in homophobia and ableism. Toxic masculinity labels certain things traditionally “feminine,” like sleeping with men or needing help with physical tasks, and therefore sees them as minimizing masculinity, as weak and laughable. Toxic masculinity’s homophobia and ableism are inextricably bound to its sexism and misogyny.

But in all the public discussion of “Lady G,” people were careful to point out that there’s nothing wrong with Graham hiring male escorts, and nothing wrong with being gay or even closeted. People were not mocking his actions. They were mocking his hypocrisy in lying about his sexuality while using his status as one of the most powerful men on earth to oppress LGBTQ+ people.

Trump refuses to admit that he’s a person with disabilities because he thinks we’re all “weak” and he doesn’t want to appear to be one of us.

This hypocrisy reveals a weak flank that presents an irresistible target. “You hate and attack who you are,” the thought goes, “so we will never stop mentioning it.”

Since everyone seems to be discussing the ramp to the speaker’s platform at West Point, here’s Vice President Biden ascending it in 2016. pic.twitter.com/YMQOoRM4Au
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) June 14, 2020

To mention it, however, does not necessarily mean to mock it.

It’s horrific to mock someone for needing help down a ramp, slurring words, or being unable to lift a glass. You think I don’t know I can’t run, or that I have difficulty with stairs? I KNOW. So the sudden onslaught of “lol he can’t walk lol look at all these videos of able-bodied people running because people who can run are better than people who can’t lol” was like a gut punch.

And yet some of those people are PwDs, claiming that we “get to” mock Trump’s physical/cognitive disabilities due to his hypocrisy. That the hypocrisy is, after all, what we’re mocking.

But are we mocking his hypocrisy– the fact that he insists (and forces his mouthpieces to stand before the press and insist) that what we can all see and hear is not, in fact, true? Are we mocking the Trump cultists who celebrate imaginary Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi “senility,” who celebrate cutting funding to programs for the disabled, who celebrate the mockery of Serge Kovaleski, who celebrate the mockery of a disabled child, but have an endless appetite for upholding an obviously frail Trump’s Übermensch self-image through gaslighting and lies?

Trump is one of us, but he pretends he’s not because he thinks we’re worthless and disgusting. Is that hypocrisy really what we’re mocking with hashtags like #TrumpWearsAdultDiapers?

If your answer is “yes,” then is it worth the possible collateral damage to the rest of the PwD community?

It’s overwhelmingly evident that Donald Trump– the man with the nuclear codes, the Commander in Chief– is indeed unwell, and the White House is attempting to hide a worsening health issue from the American public. But it should also be evident that the majority of disabilities, neurological or otherwise, would not in any way impact someone’s job performance as president. The very fact that the White House is attempting to cover this up with awkwardly transparent lies is, in itself, alarming, and leads to speculation that whatever this is does indeed impact his job performance and will continue to grow worse. Trump is already much more visibly impacted by whatever this is than Reagan ever was by Alzheimer’s while he was in office. Continuing to pretend that there’s nothing wrong with the president of the United States when we can all see that there very clearly is remains the center of the problem here.

The American people should be informed of the truth about Trump’s declining health. Criticizing the lies and the coverup– and the ableism behind them– are fair game. It’s not fair game, however, to mock the impairments themselves. Trump will never see your tweet, but your friends with disabilities will. Your anti-ableism shouldn’t stop the moment you think you can get away with an ableist joke by using “punching up” as a shield.

These are attempts to minimize a powerful man by pointing out his disabilities.

Talk about the cover-up. Talk about the hypocrisy. Mock them both! Trump is ableist and sees disability as minimizing. That does not mean we need to confirm that ableism in our mockery of him. There’s plenty to mock without mocking disability.

Tagged disability, politics, social media, trump

Jul 30 2019

Culture

For Gilroy.

From where I sit, I can be in Gilroy in about an hour and a half. Gilroy, like so much of our state, is deeply diverse, and the Garlic Festival is one of the best-attended events in the state. If you wanted to find a huge, densely packed crowd of diverse Californians, you would be hard pressed to find a better place than the Gilroy Garlic Festival.

We know very little about the shooter, but we all knew who he was, because it’s an old story, one we’ve heard many times before.

We know little about the specifics of this particular one as yet. We have a name, one I will not repeat here. And we have the inevitable far right radicalism in his online profiles.

One of his last Instagram posts– again, I will not link to anything that publicizes his name– was a picture of Smokey the Bear holding a sign saying “Fire Danger High Today” with a caption exhorting people to read a well-known white supremacist text, a hate-filled screed that advocates for endless war and the need for white men to rule over everyone else. After making that “Fire Danger” joke, the shooter went to the Garlic Festival and killed three people, including a six-year-old boy, Steven Romero. Fifteen others were injured before police killed him.

As I’ve said, it’s an old story, one we’ve heard repeatedly, relentlessly in the past few years.

The extremist ideology– primarily white nationalism– that created and sustains the radicalized far right has spawned these shooters over and over, and the mainstream right feverishly works to protect this extremism wherever it is discussed. They disingenuously wish to separate the racism and white nationalism of Trump and Trumpism from the iteration of white nationalism just one step to the right in violent hate groups. Trump/Trumpists and many of these groups claim they “deplore violence” while repeatedly signalling that violence is just fine when it’s against the “right people.”

Some far-right extremist thinking supports Trump, but others hate him because they believe his racism does not go far enough. And it’s this tiny wedge, this nitpicking, that the white nationalist mainstream right of Trump and Trumpism often uses to distance itself from white nationalist shooters. It also uses the “lone nut job” and “mental illness” lie, a lie they are only willing to extend as a shield to white male shooters. The facts are clear in this: people with mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violence than to commit acts of violence. If there’s a mental illness that ties all these shooters together, it’s right wing extremism.

This is the end result of “send her back.” This is the end result of “Mexicans are rapists.” This is the end result of “build the wall.” This is the end result of Trumpism in America. And the right is in paroxysms of joy.

It’s not that America was never racist or sexist. It’s that the right found a Golden Calf who would tell them their racism and sexism was good, right, and, overall, FUN. Of course they love him. He gleefully transgresses and anoints their own transgressions. Then he tells them that all those bad people over there– all those Democrats, “globalists” (Jews), “illegals,” Black activists, feminists, Muslims, etc– want to take all their fun away.

There’s been white supremacist violence in this country for the entirety of its existence. What’s different now is easy access to high-powered weapons, combined with the internet age– the right-wing extremist propaganda machine in a new 24-hour news cycle, combined with the new ability we have to find like-minded people who create the bubbles in which our ideologies are concentrated and intensified. Add a president who is gleefully, openly racist and sexist, who whips his crowds into a hate-filled frenzy so intense that hate crimes spike wherever he holds rallies, a president who winks and grins and says, “Isn’t hate fun?” and here we are.

While I don’t think most conservatives in the US are happy with the idea of killing children in the abstract, there are endless examples of conservatives mocking the suffering of Latinx children at the border (this, this, this), and there are numerous conservatives who defended and even celebrated the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice, who are now surely celebrating the death of little Steven Romero because they think he’s “illegal.” Conservatives don’t want to hurt “people.” They want to hurt the “right people.”

Conservatives are horrified and offended when anyone correctly associates the hatethink ideology of Trumpism with the violence it condones, both tacitly or openly.

Everyone says they want to stop these mass shootings, but the right blocks every practical measure to reduce them, instead offering the weakest and most namby-pamby of responses: Just give more people guns. This isn’t a policy white conservatives enact in their own homes– when Jayeden is hitting Traxxx and Payzleeigh with a stick, they take the stick away; they don’t hand Traxxx and Payzleeigh sticks and allow their preschoolers to re-enact Battle Royale.

And of course, by “people,” they don’t mean people of color.

We all know what the practical solutions are, but the right is in a frenzy to stop them, dumping billions of dollars into preventing even the most common-sense legislation, even those measures supported by a majority of their own rank-and-file. They won’t even allow solutions to their pretend causes of this violence, screeching with anger whenever anyone tries to expand health care coverage. Trump himself revoked Obama-era restrictions on people with mental illness purchasing guns.

So where we are is: Conservatives say the shooting is caused by mental illness, but have worked assiduously to prevent people with mental illness from getting proper care and to ensure that people with mental illness have free access to guns. What conclusion are we supposed to draw here?

We need to end hate- and fear-based propaganda. The brave Sandy Hook parents have successfully sued Alex Jones for defamation. We need to similarly hold other hatethink propagandists accountable. We’ve been tracking the toxic impact of conservative hatethink since the first Black president threw its racism into overdrive: 2014, 2019. We need to stop giving aid and comfort to white nationalists by boycotting advertisers on their shows. We need to demand that journalists call racism what it is, and that they stop pretending that “both sides” always need to be consulted. When one side is “racism is bad,” do we really need to consult “both sides”?

We need to enact sensible gun-control legislation. Most gun owners support stricter gun control measures. A full 69% of NRA members are in support of stricter background checks, and 78% of gun owners who do not belong to the NRA support them. There’s a tiny minority of people in this country who are so weak and fearful they believe any common-sense legislation is the Deep State coming to take their guns– usually because The Jews are beginning the Globalist Takeover. THOSE are the people who are controlling gun legislation in this country, with the help of billions of (probably laundered Russian) dollars poured into propaganda. “The right” in this case are the wealthy and powerful who are funding this propaganda and determining which legislation gets passed and which does not. When you ask people if they want stricter gun control laws, most say “yes.” When you ask people if they like any specific liberal policy proposal without labeling the idea as “liberal,” they say “yes.” But conservative hatethink propaganda has taught them to loathe and fear anything labeled “liberal” or “left.” They’ve been whipped up by hatethink to value hatred of the left– the “hordes” of non-white people “infesting” the nation– more than the concrete policies they actually want.

Too many wealthy and powerful people owe their wealth and power to both conservative media and the gun industry, and will fight us every step of the way. But what’s our alternative? When conservative media instructs its followers to oppose every possible solution, even the solutions to their fake reasons these shootings happen, what’s the alternative? The only way forward is to fight against the propaganda while we fight for the sensible gun control the vast majority of the country– even gun owners– want.

Tagged activism, guns, journalism, politics, social justice

Jul 11 2019

Culture

The White Case for Reparations

This photo was found in an attic in 2010. It depicts an enslaved child named John next to an unidentified enslaved child, and was stored with a bill of sale for John. Historians have dated the photo to the early 1860s. John is believed to be the ancestor of the man in whose estate the picture was found.

In June 2014, the brilliant Ta-Nehisi Coates published his landmark piece, “The Case for Reparations.” This should be required reading for all Americans. In it, Coates lays out the ways in which Black Americans have been systematically shut out of the generational accumulation of wealth through multiple, simultaneous avenues that include things like redlining and denying mortgage loans, predatory lending, gerrymandering, under-funding schools, wage theft, and outright terrorism through bombing, lynching, and the legal slavery of the 13th amendment.

Most white people strenuously reject the case for reparations. This is for several reasons: 1. We do not, on the main, understand what reparations are;

2. We reject the idea that white America owes Black America anything, insisting that the harms of slavery ended when slavery itself ended, and even if they did not, financial compensation is not appropriate. This is a deeply misguided viewpoint.

We as white people need to start viewing reparations as a white issue, a debt we chose to incur that is no more avoidable to white people in 2019 than the national debt.

Coates details the ironclad, undeniable evidence that the harms of slavery and anti-Black racism have had devastating economic impacts on the Black community in America, and continue to do so. He advocates for the passage of HR 40, a bill that calls for the study of the possibility of reparations. John Conyers had introduced the bill– again, a bill calling for just the study of the matter, not for any actual payment of reparations– in every Congress since 1989, and it had been denied a vote every single time.

That Coates is calling for Congress to simply agree to study reparations is, in itself, a testament to the ongoing stranglehold white supremacy has on the levers of power. We have refused to even discuss the possibility that Black America is owed reparations for generations of deliberate economic oppression.

White America freely admits that deliberate economic oppression has happened. It’s all a matter of the public record. Most white Americans are also well aware that race-based economic oppression is still ongoing. For example, the Senate voted in 2018 to eliminate protections against auto lenders from discriminating based on race, a policy that was just five years old. Hiring discrimination against Black people has not changed since 1989, with white applicants still 36% more likely to receive a callback than Black applicants. Black people are almost three times as likely to be denied a mortgage loan as white people. Black people are treated much more harshly at every level of the criminal justice system, and are far more likely to be wrongfully imprisoned. The legacy of slavery continues in its innumerable injustices, and it’s nearly impossible to live in America without being aware of that.

Yet white America has long refused to even discuss reparations. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee has taken up Conyers’ mantle and, together with the Congressional Black Caucus, reintroduced HB 40 in January in the hope that we will finally establish a governmental commission on reparations. The bill has just 90 sponsors, all Democrats. Establishing a commission just to study the possibility of reparations is still, in 2019, controversial.

Enslaved Black women were routinely forced to nurse the infants of their enslavers. Imagine having to nurse the infant of the people who sold your own children away from you.

No one is denying that Black Americans have been, and continue to be, aggressively and deliberately oppressed. The facts speak for themselves. What white America is arguing is that Black America does not deserve any kind of redress for that oppression.

Let’s think about that for a moment. White America feels perfectly justified in seeking millions of dollars in damages for “pain and suffering” in lawsuits over uneven carpets and spilled water. We are perfectly happy with a system that takes millions of dollars from a family business due to “negligence”– not direct, deliberate responsibility, but negligence. Yet any reparations for the extreme, horrific, deliberate racist violence and oppression that disenfranchised generations of Black Americans, that caused immense pain and suffering, permanent damage, and loss of life– and continues to do so– is not even worth discussing.

White Americans have a litany of excuses. We claim that we “don’t have a racist bone in our bodies,” that we never personally enslaved or attacked anyone, that our families came to America after the Civil War, that we ourselves are poor and disenfranchised. And even if all that were true, in every case where white Americans claim– true or not– that we have not deliberately inflicted pain and suffering, there is no denying that we have been, by any measure, deeply negligent.

White people sulk about reparations by pretending “reparations” means “poor white people will be forced to make personal cash payments to LeBron James.” Let’s take a closer look at what reparations are actually being discussed. This is a partial list, but it will give you an idea:

Creating government subsidies for home ownership– for example, setting up a fund that pays a 20% down payment on behalf of Black first-time home buyers.

Decoupling school funding from property values and distributing per-student funding equally.

Student loan forgiveness; government subsidized tuition reduction programs for Black students.

Re-asserting and strengthening the Voting Rights Act; requiring Congressional districts be drawn impartially; making partisan gerrymandering a federal crime; requiring districts to maintain a certain number of voting machines per 1000 residents; making election day a federal holiday.

Extensive criminal justice reform, including restoring the right to vote to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people.

Expanded government-funded studies into racism in health care; health insurance subsidies.

And yes, cash payments.

This is by no means a comprehensive list and I am by no means an expert. There is a wealth of information out there about what reparations can mean.

What’s important to remember is that this is not about assessing whether or which individuals deserve to benefit– a favorite complaint of white people when discussing reparations– but redressing injustice we either caused directly or allowed to happen through our negligence.

The first step, of course, is studying the issue. HB 40 would do exactly that. Why is this controversial?

White Americans are terrified that a study will daylight what we already know: that we are complicit in the violent, ongoing oppression of Black people. We identify so strongly with the idea that America is the “land of opportunity” and that we are the “good guys” that even the thought of studying the ways in which we already know we have not always lived up to that promise terrifies us. Reparations terrify us because we don’t know exactly what payout is owed, but we know it is a lot.

What’s startling to me is how obviously everyone in the nation would benefit. Reparations would boost the economy into a golden age of prosperity for everyone, not just Black people. The money spent for reparations goes right back into the economy, paying salaries, buying goods and services, investing. There’s no down side for white America but admitting that we were not, in fact, the good guys. While that will be difficult, taking a good, hard, honest look at ourselves is not a down side in the long run, but a step towards a more just society. Reparations benefit white people financially, emotionally, and ethically. But we do not pay reparations because we will benefit. We pay a debt because it’s owed.

Another image of an enslaved Black woman with a white infant. It was fairly common to have your child photographed with their enslaved Black nurse, evidently to show off your child and your wealth simultaneously.

How do we pay for all this, you ask? Who cares? No one is asking Rosie’s Bowling Lanes if they can afford the pain and suffering payout when they get sued for “negligence” because someone spilled a beer on the approach to lane 17 and Phyllis Cardstock in the Senior League slipped and broke her hip. White people aren’t angrily demanding “How do we pay for this?” when the issue is a bloated military budget, a tax giveaway to the wealthy, or a wall to keep out non-white immigrants. It’s only when Black people might benefit that we start fretting about the cost– reparations, “welfare,” “Obamaphones,” Head Start. White people would vote to detonate the sun if we found out Black people were getting daylight for free.

Of course there are some ideas about how to pay for reparations (pay it out over time; use eminent domain to acquire former plantation land and gift it to Black historical nonprofits and HBCUs; reallocate funding from the aforementioned bloated military budget; stop paying Trump millions of dollars for food and lodging for government personnel at his tacky golf resorts every single weekend; raise taxes back to Reagan era levels; establish a marginal income tax rate of 90% for every dollar over $10M earned per year from all sources). But the point is:

You pay what is owed because you owe it, not because you decide you can afford to pay it. It’s not charity; it’s a debt.

Passing HB 40 is, quite literally, the least we can do. All Black America is asking us to do is to read the damn bill. We can discuss a payment plan later.

Find your Congressional Representative here.

Tagged activism, government, politics, racism, social justice

Mar 17 2019

education

Teachers Have Been Telling You For Years that Rich People Cheat the System. Here’s What Else We Know.

Photo: Angela Litvin, Creative Commons

The nation exploded in surprise that thirty people nationwide, including two famous actresses, were indicted for participating in scams to get their children into elite universities. Educators similarly exploded in surprise, but for a different reason– we were shocked that the wealthy and powerful were being held accountable for something that’s been widespread for decades. Educators have known about this– and more– for years, yet no one has listened to educators about the widespread inequities in education.

Are you ready to listen now?

Let’s start with the obvious:

Standardized tests are worthless. Educators know that performance on a standardized test is nearly useless in measuring a student’s overall performance in a subject or in predicting a student’s future performance in that subject. A standardized test only measures how good students are at taking standardized tests, which is why plonking down $1300 for an SAT prep course can bring a student’s scores up so dramatically in a such a short period of time. I’ve been teaching both university and high school students for 30 years, so believe me when I tell you that teaching someone how to take the SAT in my subject is entirely different than teaching my subject. Take a look at the job requirements for a Kaplan employee— they’re not looking for a PhD in the subject or experience teaching it; what they want is a high SAT or ACT score in the subject. High standardized test scores can be bought if you have the money for a test training class. Add to this our longstanding knowledge that people with economic privilege score higher on standardized tests overall, and you can see what these tests are really measuring.

But that’s not the only reason standardized testing is problematic. The SAT, PSAT, and AP exams (among others) are administered by a company called College Board. On the surface, they appear to be a nonprofit devoted to creating and administering standardized tests. Have you proctored one of these exams recently? I have. When students take the PSAT, a practice exam whose scores are never distributed to anyone but the students and their high school, College Board insists on students providing full legal names, home addresses, and social security numbers when each exam is already given a unique identifying code. College Board asks for pages of optional information such as phone numbers, GPA, and whether a student’s parents are US citizens.

Here’s why: College Board makes millions selling the student data they collect to anyone with the cash to pay for it. Here’s the link— buried deep on the website– that helpfully provides various payment plans. You can buy information on individual minors for just 45 cents “per name,” pay $7.710 for the right to roam free through the collected information of minors in an “unlimited annual subscription,” or upgrade your annual subscription to an unlimited “Segment Analysis Service™” for $17,750. Here’s a chart of the kind of data you can buy— including race, GPA, “religious interest,” and whether the student is a “first generation” American.

Is the ACT better? No.

Companies that market various services to students purchase your child’s information in order to market to them. College Board pressures students to check the box opting in to “Student Search Services” by requiring test proctors to read a paragraph extolling its virtues, pretending that opting in will result in elite universities recruiting them– without considering that universities are just as likely to use that data to eliminate them from consideration. Students are also told that opting in will result in scholarships contacting them, a deeply unethical promise that plays on the very real fears around paying skyrocketing tuition. This private company’s executives are dangling the false promise of scholarships to students to entice them to hand over data– data that those executives sell to enrich themselves and ensure their own children have unfair advantages over the very students whose data they sell.

education.testing.gvarc.org.creativecommons

Photo: gvarc.org, Creative Commons

Standardized testing exists to generate wealth for testing companies, and for companies that purchase the marketing data testing companies gather.

But testing companies aren’t the only private companies lining their pockets with public education funds. Two of the most successful education profiteers are companies that market educational systems and companies that create charter schools.

In the past few decades, schools were suddenly labeled “in crisis,” and the phrase “failing schools” was everywhere. Nothing had changed– in fact, literacy rates were at an all-time high– but suddenly schools were all “failing” due in large part to “bad teachers” protected by unions. Never mind that non-union states have lower test scores than union states. Facts were not the point. This was marketing meant to shift public opinion, and it worked beautifully. Standardized tests were quickly positioned as the key factor used to measure “teacher effectiveness” and identify “low-performing schools” by demanding that scores rise by a set percentage each year in order to “pass.” This makes no sense, as pedagogical effectiveness can only be measured using a complex variety of assessments and data. Just ask anyone who’s been through a WASC report. This also makes no statistical sense, since the student population at any given site or in any given teacher’s classroom changes from year to year, so you’re comparing two different populations. But, again, this was not about facts. This was fear-mongering meant to manufacture a crisis. The crisis was manufactured by business-friendly politicians so that corporations could sell us the solutions.

In addition to the billions of tax dollars shelled out to testing companies, and the additional profiteering in selling your child’s data, there are further billions to be made in educational systems and charter schools, all of which depend on maintaining the mythology that schools are “failing” and that we must continually hemorrhage money into private companies to “save” our schools.

I’ll just take this over to the private sector #savingschools #wedogoodwork

It’s important to understand that the educational system is unfairly structured in favor of the wealthy at its core. Public school funding is based on property values. Yes, you read that correctly: higher property taxes means more money for schools, because so much about K-12 public education is district by district. This translates into endless benefits for the affluent: higher teacher salaries that attract and retain talent, smaller class sizes and more varied classes (including the art, music, and theatre programs that translate into better grades and better student retention), better facilities, better extracurriculars– in short, everything that educators know improves student outcomes. Poor Black women are jailed for “stealing” educations when they falsify residencies to get their children into higher-rated schools, but those schools are only better because the wealthy unfairly structured the system. While the children of the wealthy are given the best of everything, my public school teacher husband has had to seat students on the counters because there were not enough chairs. But there’s plenty of money in his district to spend on educational systems and charter schools.

Educational systems. Without getting too deep into the ed policy weeds, pre-2018, schools that went into “program improvement” were forced into choosing from a list of draconian measures that included firing every single teacher or purchasing an expensive “program improvement” educational system from a private company. While the rules have become somewhat less draconian, “low-performing schools” are still singled out through testing and are still required to take steps to “improve.” These “educational systems” sold by private companies are expensive and proprietary. Teachers must undergo hours of training on the new system and have almost no flexibility for what we call “differentiated education”– changing things up for individual students who have different learning styles, the gold standard in pedagogy. While I have all the academic freedom I had in university teaching in my private school classroom, my public school teacher husband is required to teach to a system that is, in a word, wretched. I’ve found multiple errors in the material the system requires his students to use, everything from teaching students erroneous grammar to study questions that don’t match the reading . Even without the errors, no educator on the planet would say a one-size-fits-all system was pedagogically useful. It’s the antithesis of effective pedagogy. Yet these essentially useless systems drain billions of tax dollars out of schools and into the pockets of the corporate profiteers who sell them, while those corporate profiteers send their own children to expensive private schools with individualized instruction.

Charter schools. Charter schools are run by private companies but, somehow, are considered public schools and funded by your tax dollars. The charter school system was a gift from a business-friendly government to private companies as the first step towards privatizing education. Literally any company that files the paperwork can start siphoning tax dollars out of the local school system and into their own pockets without having to prove they actually know how to teach. Don’t get me wrong– there are good charter schools out there run by true believers with a vision– but too many charter schools are run by people with no experience in pedagogy or school administration. In order to collect public funding, you need students, and charter schools have aggressively marketed themselves. Shady charter schools have run wild in areas that lack economic privilege, preying on desperate parents, promising a better education than the woefully underfunded public schools– schools the charters are helping to defund– and pretending to deliver results by manipulating test scores through weeding out low performers in the admissions process, “counseling out” low-performing students, and suspending them or just marking them absent on test day. Charters are notorious for low teacher pay and poor treatment of teachers because they’re exempt from hiring union teachers, just as they’re exempt from almost all the regulations and oversight we put in place to ensure high-quality public schools. While there are good charter schools, the program itself was designed as a love letter to regulation-hating corporations who wanted to privatize public education, and as such it privileged the needs of the wealthy over the needs of the students, and created a host of problems for which charter schools have become notorious among educators. And while all aspects of privatization of public schools, like charters and vouchers, have been the darling of the right, it’s worth noting that charter schools were created by the Clinton Administration and heartily supported by the Obama Administration.

Photo: Ted S. Warren/AP

This is the tip of the iceberg; there’s so much I’ve left unsaid, including the critical influence of racism on all of this. This is just a taste in the hope that people will begin to listen to educators when forming ed policy. For decades, we have formed ed policy around the lie that educators cannot be trusted to helm education, and now we have a ship that has been all but handed over to corporate raiders and privateers.

For the past few decades, education policy in America has been set largely by business-friendly politicians who have done everything they can to use public education funding to line the pockets of the wealthy. They have allowed testing companies to collect and sell personal data about minors. They have wildly overstated the efficacy of standardized tests and increased their importance in every sector of American education to create revenue for testing company executives. They have used those standardized tests to create impossible standards for schools to meet, and when schools inevitably “failed,” they forced schools to purchase expensive “program improvement” systems from private companies. They’ve used those standardized tests to justify handing public funding to private companies to open “charter schools” with no oversight. In short, bad ed policy has opened the coffers of public education and tacked up a sign saying, “Carpetbaggers Welcome.”

Believe educators when we tell you where the problems are– and where they are not. Stop allowing the wealthy to enrich themselves by raiding public school coffers. Put education policy back in the hands of educators.

Tagged education, government, politics, social justice

Jan 06 2019

Culture

Rashida Tlaib Shouldn’t Apologize. You Should for Your Sexist Double Standard.

rashida-tlaib-ap-er-190103_hpembed_19x14_992

Congressional Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). (Photo: Al Goldis/AP)

Oh, the horror! Newly sworn-in Congressional Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) attended a MoveOn event last Thursday evening during which she used some colorful language to refer to former reality TV personality and Russian mob-linked “real estate developer” Donald J. Trump. She stated that the new Democratic majority in the House was going to “impeach the motherfucker.”

Interestingly, few on either side of the aisle are complaining about the substance of Tlaib’s statement. Even Republicans are beginning to recognize that a line has been crossed when your POTUS, whose understanding of foreign affairs is limited to which foreign leader has the hottest wife and which nation’s bribes– sorry, “Trump Hotel bills“– are the largest, spouts obscure Kremlin propaganda on live television. No, what people are upset about is her use of the word “motherfucker.”

How dare she

While Tlaib is surely not the first person to refer to Trump in such a way, this event is being treated as if it’s a National Scandal. If you ever needed an example of the sexist double standard in American politics, here it is.

Tlaib’s comment has launched 1000 hot takes about how “dangerous” or “divisive” her single f-bomb was, but when men use the same kind of language, they’re consistently portrayed as lovable scamps, “tough talkers,” or “real.”

Trump himself has used profanity hundreds of times publicly at his rallies, used profane insults in his tweets about fellow politicians and about NFL players, used profanity to brag about sexually assaulting women, used profanity to insult nations with Black populations, and that’s just off the top of my head.

In Beto O’Rourke’s concession speech last November, he said of his campaign team, “I’m so fucking proud of you guys,” and everyone found it charming– so charming, in fact, someone is selling several T-shirt designs emblazoned with the quote. And don’t come at me with their different contexts; Tlaib is being slammed for her language, not for her sentiment, while Beto remains the Great White Hope of the Left.

Joe Biden’s profanity is considered charming earthiness, part of a roguish public persona that has served as the inspiration for hundreds of memes.

And in case you’re wondering whether race is playing a role here, I give you Kirsten Gillibrand’s use of “fuck” at NYU, June 2017.

Again, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Swearing is nothing new in American public life, yet when it’s done by a woman of color, suddenly it’s an unforgivable sin for which she should immediately apologize.

In many of the preposterous hot takes written from the Hypocrisy Fainting Couch, Tlaib is chastised for being “divisive” and for failing to understand that her profanity doesn’t “build bridges” to bipartisanship, as if all Mitch McConnell needs to repent his evil ways and lead his party to oust the Russian asset in the White House is a kind word and a smile.

Over and over, both in these op-eds and social media, I’ve seen people bloviating that Tlaib should apologize because “we expect more from women,” “women should adhere to a higher standard,” “we shouldn’t sink to their level.” What this means is that we have one standard for white men, wherein their profanity is winkingly categorized under “boys will be boys,” and another for everyone else, an impossibly high standard set up to ensure our failure before we even begin.

Tlaib’s moment of profanity isn’t nearly as destructive as the endless purity tests for women in politics. Is she “likeable”? Pretty enough? Nice enough? Not shrill? Not too loud and demanding, but loud and demanding enough in a non-threatening way? Does she fight hard, but only about certain issues, not about, say, sexism? Is she thin enough? Does she dress well, but not too well? Does she defer to the men or does she treat them the way they treat her?

Has she ever made any mistake ever? Then she’s “unelectable” due to her “baggage,” a label we will cement to her name through dozens of articles “asking the question,” a stance that gives us plausible deniability even as we give the idea weight and importance.

When men make precisely the same mistakes, they’re forgiven, immediately, applauded for their half-assed “I apologize if I offended anyone,” if the incident is even given that much attention. In a nation where a child molester, a judge who protected a child rapist, an open white supremacist, an “acting Attorney General” who defrauded veterans and threatened those who complained, and an entire rogue’s gallery of grifters and grafters have all garnered the approval of Republicans at the highest levels of government, a woman of color is criticized by people on both the right and the left for uttering a single swear word in the fight for justice against that very criminality.

The problem we have is not that Tlaib said a naughty word. The problem is that our systemic sexism and racism holds women, especially women of color, to an impossibly high standard, and uses their failure to meet that impossible standard as evidence that they are unfit for power. “It’s not that she’s a woman,” the lie goes, “it’s that she did this thing”– “this thing” being something for which men are routinely forgiven– or even congratulated. The left laughs at Trump for saying Tlaib “dishonored” the country moments after using the same language himself, but our own hypocrisy is no better.

Tlaib herself, to her credit, is not apologizing, and has made an iron-clad case for impeachment in an op-ed for the Detroit Free Press. I strongly recommend reading the whole thing, but I will leave you with this quote:

“This is not just about Donald Trump. This is about all of us. What should we be as a nation? Who should we be as a people?”

We should, as a people, strive to treat woman and people of color with the same respect we treat white men. Those of us on the left, who claim we uphold diversity and equity as core principles, need to stop the devastating attacks on women and people of color while we wink and nod at white men for the same behavior.

Tagged diversity, feminism, politics, social justice

Nov 28 2018

Culture, Film, Theatre

I Can’t Go On. I’ll Go On.

Photo: Associated Press

Desperate refugees are being teargassed at the border for having the audacity to take the Statue of Liberty at her word. The economy is slipping badly due to Trump’s mismanagement. The (putative) President of the United States praises the people who financed 9/11 while disparaging the Navy Seals who killed Bin Laden, praises convicted criminals while attacking law enforcement and judges, praises dictators and white supremacists while insulting US allies, disrespects the rule of law, American tradition, American values, and the Constitution, and lies, and lies, and lies again.

Meanwhile liberal lion Nancy Pelosi’s speakership is being held hostage by conservative Democrats who are insisting she hand power to House Republicans in exchange. Climate change is poised to ruin our economy on its way to ending our ability to live on this planet and somehow– insanely– this has become a partisan issue. A new study rolled out that confirmed the findings of multiple studies over the past 18 months: people support Trump due to “white anxiety”– we used to call this “racism”– a fear of people of color “dominating” the US and “displacing” white people.

And that’s just the past few weeks.

That’s a tenth of what has happened in the past few weeks.

The US is being held hostage by a minority political faction hostile to the rest of us. A Republican recently told me, “Republicans aren’t interested in democracy. We’re interested in freedom.” Freedom to oppress, freedom to discriminate, freedom to defraud.

It’s a lot.

In the theatre community, I’m seeing a lot of despair. What good is art while racism and sexism are gleefully celebrated throughout our society? What good is art when 40% of the nation supports open hatred, open ignorance, open rejection of science, knowledge, and basic facts? Why are we fiddling as Rome burns? How can it ever be enough?

Yet we MUST GO ON. Because we are more than enough. We are the most powerful tool in the resistance.

There is no way to overstate the power of art. There’s a reason this whole destructive cycle began with the establishment of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and conservative “infotainment” in the 90s. There’s a reason it ends up here, with Trump’s lying showmanship and conservative propaganda given more weight than actual journalism, science, or expertise.

The Cambridge Analytica papers showed that Steve Bannon invented the concept of the “Deep State” as propaganda, and that revelation had exactly zero impact on the people who believe in that lie. Why? Because art is more powerful than any one piece of factual evidence. The person who controls the story controls the truth.

Art matters. Representation matters. Art creates culture. Conservatives know this and are using it to promote the racist, sexist panic that preserves their political power.

When Donald Trump goes on television and insists that Mexicans are “rapists,” he knows that’s not true. When he claims white supremacists are “very fine people,” states that non-white countries are “shitholes,” says that Central American refugees are “terrorists,” “diseased,” “child grabbers,” or “Middle Eastern,” he knows that’s not true. When he insults prominent Black Americans, he invariably uses classic white supremacist language: Maxine Waters is “low IQ”; Don Lemon is “the dumbest man on television”; Andrew Gillum is “a thief”; Civil Rights icon Rep. John Lewis “does nothing” for his “burning and crime-infested” district, and many, many more. Of course he knows none of it is true.

Sure, it’s lying, but more importantly, it’s THEATRE. He’s performing for conservative white Americans who support him primarily due to “white anxiety” and “racial resentment.” He’s putting on a show for them that may as well be entitled You’re Right to Feel Superior to Black People. It runs in rep with You’re Right to Be Afraid of Brown People, Women Exist to Be Decorative and Obedient, and I Don’t Care What the Constitution Says and Neither Should You: Give Me Unrestrained Power to Shut Down The Black and Brown Infestation and Make America Great (and White) Again. It’s running eight shows a week on the Great White Way along with Fox News’ Everyone Who is Not White and Conservative is Bad, InfoWars’ The Sky Is Falling and It’s the Jews’ Fault and Mike Pence and Lindsey Graham’s experimental dance theatre piece, Hate Keeps the Closet Door Shut.

Very few people actually believe Trump’s lies. They’re just fans of the show.

You don’t fight theatre with facts. That’s why facts and logic aren’t working, why Trump’s base will swear they believe his lies over their own eyes and ears.

You fight theatre with better theatre. You fight narrative with better narrative. And we are much, much better at this than they are.

It’s hard, I know. It feels at times like all is lost, like every scrap of progress we’ve made against evil since Civil Rights is being encinerated, like every step forward we’ve made for women, people of color, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, Muslims, Jews, everyone is being dragged back to the 19th century. But they’re not winning every battle. And THEY WILL NOT WIN THE WAR.

We outnumber them. And we are better at this than they are.

You, the theatremakers, filmmakers, TV writers and producers, all of you making art: YOU ARE THE VANGUARD. Fill your stages and screens with stories that fight this evil. Celebrate difference. Hire and promote women, people of color, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities. Fund that show written and directed by Black women and promote the hell out of it. Cast a trans lead. Put three nonbinary people with disabilities on your story team.

Be deliberate. Go on. Your art is your activism, and there is nothing more powerful on this earth.

Keep pushing. They will not prevail. This moment in history is temporary. They will NOT be the ones who tell the American Story. We will. We are.

Go on.

Tagged activism, diversity, politics, social justice

Oct 28 2018

Culture

What Does it Mean When Trump Says He’s a “Nationalist”? Ask the Man Who Just Shot Up a Synagogue

A candlelight vigil outside Tree of Life Congregation yesterday evening. (Photo: Matt Rourke/AP)

Am I surprised a man opened fire in a synagogue yesterday during a baby naming, murdering 11 people while yelling “All Jews must die”? No. Jews have been a favorite target of violence– political and otherwise– for two thousand years. But open hatred of difference has now gone mainstream, and is present at the highest levels of our society. The extremist right wing, which always feared and hated Jews, people of color, and LGBTQ people, is now dominating conservative media and directing the tenor of the national discourse. Open hatred has become fashionable.

“I’m not politically correct,” goes the refrain, as the speaker defends sexual assault, racial slurs, transphobic violence, on and on. The extremist right has framed this as “truth” vs “the perpetually offended,” as if bigotry represents “truth” and those opposing it are just comically “offended,” like a schoolmarm shocked to find “FVCK” carved on a desk. Opposition to racism, sexism, transphobia, and all abuses of power is strenuously belittled and mocked by the right as “political correctness” and “virtue signaling.” They have made it fashionable to mock opposition to bigotry.

So it comes as no surprise that part of this fashionable bigotry is hatred of “globalists,” a longstanding euphemism for “Jews” repopularized in recent years by the Nazi-sympathizing alt right. “Globalist” is a reference to the very old antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews have no allegiance to any one nation and seek to dominate the globe as a whole, usually through banking (look for references to the Rothschilds) and skullduggery. Trump himself, just days before the shooting, decried the danger of “globalists” to a Houston crowd that roared its approval. In claiming to be a “Nationalist,” Trump is using alt right terminology that means he opposes “Globalist” Jews.

The extremist right believe “Jews,” as a nebulous, evil consortium (often said to be headed by philanthropist and frequent Democrat donor George Soros), are somehow “selling out” the US to other nations for personal gain– including the destruction of the “white race”– and global political power. “Nationalist” means “white Nationalist”– someone fighting for the preservation of a white-dominated, Christian America against Jewish Globalists. One of the things white Nationalists believe Jewish Globalists are plotting is the “destruction of white America” through the left’s “support of open borders,” which fosters “white genocide” by creating an “invasion” of Brown people. These Brown people are all “criminals,” “rapists,” and “terrorists,” an “infestation.” When the right claim that “the left” is funding “the caravan,” they mean that Jewish Globalists are funding it as part of their plan to destroy white domination in the US. This is why it makes no difference to these people whether immigrants are asylum seekers fleeing horrors or people seeking the American Dream. The operative for Nationalists is whether immigrants are– or are not— white.

Black people– the lowest of the low to Nationalists– are portrayed as witless fools, “duped” into voting Democrat with offers of “free stuff.” “Welfare” encourages them to “outbreed white people.” This is what the “welfare queen” slur has evolved into– a subhuman tool of Jewish Globalists encouraged to breed with free food, free phones, and subsidized rent as Jews cackle over the impending destruction of the white race. One wonders what Nationalists make of the thousands of Black Jews in America or of African Jews.

Do I think Trump knows any of this? No. Would he care if he knew? Also no. Do the roaring crowds who approve this rhetoric know? Many of them, sure. And some are just along for the ride because they love the bullying, the anger, the hate. They love that the bigotry and hatred they call “patriotism” is now at the highest echelon of government. It’s why they elected him and why they remain faithful as the rest of the nation– and the world– looks on in horror.

The chapel in the Tree of Life synagogue. (Source: tolols.org)

The mainstream right refuses to address– or even acknowledge– the popularity of white Nationalism in its ranks even as their leaders defend its principles and actors. This is a battle for the soul of the Republican Party, and an utter lack of any serious effort apart from some weak statements decrying “racism” (even as they campaign for the racists) is their admission of defeat. They’re all rushing to prove to conservative voters how loyal they are to Trump even as he screeches racist conspiracy theory rhetoric at rallies. Against that behavior, who believes mealy-mouthed tweets about being “against racism”?

Compounding this moral cowardice, the right consistently refuses to accept that anyone on the right can do any wrong. They have already begun pretending this synagogue shooting is a “false flag,” just as they are pretending the recent mail bombs are “false flags,” just as they have pretended that every murder and attack by far right extremists in recent years are all somehow orchestrated by the left. They claim the left has somehow planted every shooters’ right wing social media posts, evidence of membership in right wing groups, photos of the shooter clutching Confederate flags, giving Nazi salutes, and wearing MAGA hats– even claims of planting Nazi and pro-Trump tattoos.

The right will pretend there’s “violence on both sides” and point to an antifa kid setting fire to a trash can.

I tell you what, Tucker. I’ll GIVE you my trashcans if you BRING BACK THESE LIVES.

The false equivalency of “both sides” is dangerous, because it equates violent racist rhetoric with the rhetoric opposing it.

I agree, wholeheartedly, that there should be no rhetoric advocating violence, period. But it is dangerous– and I mean that literally, as in more people will die— to pretend that approving of a politician’s physical assault against a journalist, or popularizing lies like “Democrats are a violent mob” and “[If Democrats win, they] will overturn everything that we’ve done and they will do it quickly and violently. And violently. There is violence” are in any way equivalent to accosting right wing politicians in restaurants with protests against their actual policies, or statements calling attention to the very real rise of white Nationalism in conservative politics. Republicans are even equating putting googly eyes on a campaign billboard with Nationalist murders.

White Nationalism and the racism, antisemitism, and anti-LGBTQ sentiment underpinning it are not new to America, not by a longshot. But it’s undeniable that over the past 50 years, the US has made some small gains in the fight against it, and it has come roaring back, rearing its ugly, violent head and insisting on its dominance. This is the “movement” that caused 74% of white voters to vote for Trump as opposed to just 6% of Black voters, 26% of Jewish voters, and 28% of Latinx voters. That divide is no accident. It wasn’t “jobs” or “the economy” unless you mean the relentless drumbeat of “your taxes pay for Democrat handouts to Black people and immigrants” or “immigrants come here to take our jobs.” Much of the rhetoric on the right was racially charged in 2016, and it has only escalated from there, emboldened by what they see as a white mandate. Nine GOP midterm candidates have open ties to Nationalist or Nazi groups as the bulk of the party continues pandering to Nationalists either with dog whistle racism or open allegiance.

When we say “we must come together as a nation,” unless we’re coming together against Nationalism, all we’re doing is enabling it. At the barest minimum, we must all immediately and vociferously stand against the racist, antisemitic, anti-LGBTQ rhetorical violence spinning out of control in our political discourse. Better yet, we should stand firm against the dangerous policies such rhetoric is designed to enable.

Tagged activism, politics, racism, social justice

Sep 23 2018

Culture

“Who Will Believe Thee, Isabel?”: Measuring Kavanaugh

Next week, we will finally hear Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony detailing her memory of Judge Brett Kavanaugh attempting to violently rape her in high school, when he was 17 and she was 15. Dr. Ford has been harassed, threatened, and bullied by the GOP Senate Judiciary Committee, while their minions in the public have doxxed her and sent so many credible death threats the FBI has opened an investigation. It’s ironic given that Dr. Ford has been pleading for standard procedure to be followed and the FBI be allowed to reopen Kavanaugh’s background check in order to investigate her claims. The GOP is desperate to prevent that, shamefully lying that this is not what the FBI does, despite these same Senators stating the opposite on record multiple times in the past. That’s how desperate they are to hide whatever the FBI would find in an investigation. And considering Kavanaugh has already been caught bending the truth in his confirmation hearings about an entirely different matter, I can empathize with their panic. They’re trying to get an ethically suspect man onto the highest court in the land, and their plan was, evidently, to just move as quickly as they could before anyone noticed he was ethically suspect.

Well, that “just run fast and hope no one notices” ploy did not go according to plan, and here we are.

Now the right has moved from “he didn’t do it”– an obvious untruth, given the ethical gymnastics the GOP is performing to prevent the FBI from calling even a single witness– to “it doesn’t matter if he did. He was so young!”

This is, in a word, nonsense.

Whenever a woman accuses a man of sexual assault, men (and even, tragically, some women) line up to attack the victim and excuse the perpetrator. They eagerly tumble onto the internet in dozens, breathlessly calling the woman a liar, blaming her for the assault, saying she had it coming.

And, increasingly, what we see is “it’s fine that he did it.” The reasons are myriad– he was drunk; he was male; “boys will be boys”; and even, shockingly, asserting sexual assault is not actually a crime. Conservatives have focused their efforts in Kavanaugh’s case around his age at the time of the attempted rape– 17. “He was too young to be held accountable all these years later,” goes the tale.

This is a dangerous lie for multiple reasons. First, it teaches teenagers that it’s fine when teenage boys sexually assault teenage girls. Powerful people will stand between the boy and consequences— forever. A girl who comes forward will be humiliated, called a liar, blamed for the assault, instructed that it’s not such a big deal, told she deserved it, told that the boy’s future is unquestionably and permanently more important and more valuable than her own. She is taught that if a boy tries to rape you– or succeeds– the culture will rise up to protect him. No one in authority will stand with you. In fact, you will be punished by authority figures for even trying to tell boys no.

Conservatives are enthusiastically teaching young women and girls that they are less important than boys and men. In fact, conservatives are enthusiastically teaching young women and girls that they are less important than property. Teenagers are often arrested and charged with vandalism, police stating that the behavior needs to be “nipped in the bud” early to prevent further crime. But sexual assault is winked away with “boys will be boys.” These are the “values” of “values voters.”

However, the idea that a boy is intrinsically valuable– much more valuable than any girl he would ever assault– only holds true when the boy is white.

When an unarmed Black teenager is shot and killed, rather than mourning the loss and holding up his youthful innocence, white people rush to defame the boy. Trayvon Martin was 17 and unarmed when he was murdered by George Zimmerman. The very same people now defending Kavanaugh rushed to smear Trayvon’s character with school discipline records and “tough-looking” selfies. Michael Brown was 18 when the same people now defending Kavanaugh called Brown a “thug” responsible for his own murder. Little Tamir Rice was just 12, but the same people defending Kavanaugh still blamed this child, playing with a toy gun in a public park in an open carry state, for his own murder and called him a “thug.”

Black victims are routinely framed as dangerous and suspect, while white shooters are framed as acting in self-defense, as “troubled,” or as “social outcasts who just needed a friend.” Their good qualities always foregrounded— “brilliant,” “soft-spoken,” “an honor student.” Sweet, smiling pictures are used in the press, while the press rips apart the internet to locate the most “thuggish” possible picture of the murder victim.

When a white boy sexually assaults a girl, men claim the boy is the real victim– victimized by the girl’s truthful report. The crime is winked away as natural male behavior while the girl’s vain hope that her victimization be taken seriously becomes the real crime. When Black boys are murdered, white people claim the shooter is the real victim, acting in righteous self-defense when faced with a savage, barely-human thug.

When Black boys are accused of sexual assault, the very same people laughing and winking at Kavanaugh’s “red-blooded natural male behavior” scream for their deaths– even after those boys are exonerated by DNA evidence.

The people excusing Kavanaugh– essentially claiming it’s his right to force himself on a girl– are cut from the same cloth as people who believe Black boys should be executed for the same behavior. The sitting president of the United States believes it was Kavanaugh’s right– and his own— to sexually assault women but still calls for the execution of the Central Park Five, after they have been proven completely innocent by DNA testing.

This is what we’re dealing with here.

Seventeen-year old boys are not feral animals. They’re a few months away from voting. At 17, you’re considered old enough to enlist in the military. This means the US military is officially certain that people of that age possess the decision-making skills to make a life-altering commitment, and the discipline to serve in the US military. We believe people of that age possess the decision-making skills and discipline to choose a university and a major, to drive a car, to work. In eight states, it’s even old enough to purchase a firearm without parental consent.

Yet a sizable segment of our population believes it’s a minor, irrelevant issue that Kavanaugh at 17 attempted to force himself on a 15-year old girl, and that the real crime is her accusation. They believe no 17-year old boy should be held accountable for their behavior . . . unless they’re Black.

This isn’t about sexual assault. It’s about cultural power. It’s about protecting the rights of wealthy white men to victimize the rest of us without consequences. When a wealthy white man is involved, the victim is always the white man.

This is who we’re about to put on the Supreme Court. This is who runs the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump, and Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan, and Orrin Hatch, and Chuck Grassley, and Devin Nunes, and the entire white male conservative cadre– the real American thugs.

Shakespeare wrote Measure for Measure in 1604. That play is 414 years old. And yet it perfectly encapsulates the power dynamic white male America works strenuously to protect. The “false” of white men “o’erweighs the true” of everyone else.

Contact your Senators here.

Tagged feminism, politics, racism, social justice

Jun 15 2018

Bitter Dramaturgy, Culture

Jeff Sessions Does Not Know His Bible

Jeff Sessions. (Source: Evan Vucci/Associated Press)

Today, speaking in Indiana, Jeff Sessions used Romans 13 to justify the Trump Administration’s brand new policy of stealing children from their parents at the border and locking them in detention centers. He said, “Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution. I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order. Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.”

Sessions does not understand Romans 13.

Time for Bitter Gertrude Bible Study!

Photo by Josh Applegate on Unsplash

It appears that Sessions has not read the full chapter. For example, Romans 13:6 tells you to pay your taxes, yet the Trump Administration changed the law so wealthy people would not have to pay their fair share. Romans 13:9-10 states that all God’s laws boil down to “love your neighbor as yourself,” and that we should therefore “do no harm” to our neighbors. It says that love itself is the “fulfillment of the law.”

So I think it’s clear Sessions has not read Romans 13 in its entirety, or he would not have called attention to it.

jeffsessionsoopsmeme

No, Sessions got no further in Romans 13 than Romans 13:1-5. I won’t quote the whole thing here. (The full chapter is linked above if you’re curious.) Romans 13:1 gives you the basics of the text and the basis for Session’s quote:

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.

Romans 13:1-5 tells us to obey the law. Using this to defend the brand-new policy of the Trump Administration is an egregious– and deliberate– misuse of the text.

“Obey the law” does not mean “the law should never be changed.” If it did, Sessions and Trump would be in a Biblical bind because they very recently changed the policy to order border agents to steal children from parents at the border. This policy change was ordered specifically for its cruelty, as Trump and Sessions believed that people considering coming here to seek work or asylum would reconsider if they knew their children would be stolen from them and locked in cages. The Trump Administration has snatched infants at the breast. They’ve pulled screaming toddlers away from weeping mothers. These stories are being witnessed, recorded, and retold every single day. Those appalled by this horrific human rights violation are demanding the policy itself be changed, not that individuals disobey the law. It is not against Romans 13 to demand that an immoral law be changed. If anything, it’s required by 13:9.

“Obey the law” presents a serious Biblical problem for the Trump Administration, as border agents are stealing children from legal asylum seekers as well as from undocumented workers. It’s the law of our nation that people can come here, claim asylum, and live under US protection while their cases are being considered. The Trump Administration itself is in violation of US law by stealing the children of legal asylum seekers, in addition to being in violation of Romans 13:1-5.

“Obey the law” and “authorities have been established by God” do not give those authorities carte blanche to commit whatever cruelty they please as punishment for disobedience to the law. Undocumented people crossing into the US are breaking US law, but the Bible—and basic human decency—forbids us from torturing children simply because their parents brought them here. In fact, Romans 13:9 is very clear that cruelty is forbidden, and the Bible specifically forbids cruelty to strangers in our land repeatedly throughout the Old and New Testaments. In Matthew 25:37-46, Jesus himself damns those who did not “take in strangers.”

An infant cries as U.S. Border Patrol agents process a group of immigrants in Granjeno, Texas, outside of McCallen on June 25, 2014.

Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.” They also will answer, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?” He will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life. — Matthew 25:41-46 (Photo source: Jerry Lara/San Antonio Express-News/Zuma Press)

Romans 13 does not support what you’re doing, Jeff Sessions. The Bible is abundantly clear that what you are doing is wrong, which is likely why so many religious leaders– even (finally) conservative religious leaders – have spoken out against it and against the Trump Administration’s denial of asylum to victims of domestic abuse and gang violence. If Senate Democrats do not succeed against the Republican majority in their attempt to reverse this policy, it will not be long before the other world powers issue sanctions against us for it, as indeed we have done for similar human rights violations in other countries.

Jeff, as you pointed us to Romans 13, I point you to Isaiah 10:1-3. If Trump cared about the Bible in the slightest, I would ask you to read it aloud to him (since he won’t read it—or anything—himself):

Woe to those who make unjust laws,
to those who issue oppressive decrees,
to deprive the poor of their rights
and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
and robbing the fatherless.

I’m no Christian—I’m even a bad Jew– but I do know how to interpret text. Jeff Sessions, you lied about your own Bible to defend an unjust policy that breaks numerous Biblical precepts and US law. If you truly believe you will one day stand before your God on Judgment Day, you should repent—and quickly, before more people get hurt.

Tagged activism, politics, racism, social justice

Bitter Gertrude

Blogging about Culture, Equity, and the Arts since 2013

Tag Archives: politics

Election Lawsuits: A Calming Closer Look