Joanne Dixon

Everyday Erinyes #129

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 10:05 am Politics

Jul 212018

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

I’m not going to try to compete with the horrifying news that is coming out this week, with all its implications, and new facets being examined at least daily. In fact, I’m not going to comment on anything going on in the United States at all. I picked up a story regarding Australia – certainly not wanting to pick on Lona or Animae – but it’s been going on for five years now, very few people outside Australia are aware of it, and it hasn’t been picked up by any other place I go for news, although it’s an AP story, so one would think they would all have received it.

It appears that Australia is having its own issues with refugees and other unexpected immigrants. Now, unlike the US, Australia does not share a land border with any other nation. Oz is therefore unable to set up border checkpoints and keep people from crossing the border.
So, instead, to prevent people coming in boats from staying, they re-boat them.

Australia drew a line in the sand on July 19, 2013, to stem a rising tide of asylum seekers brought by people smugglers on long and treacherous ocean voyages. No refugees who attempted to reach its shores by boat from that date forward would ever be allowed to make Australia their home.

Five years later, the polarizing policy — both lauded as a template for other countries and condemned as a cruel abrogation of Australia’s international obligations — appears to have succeeded as a deterrent. The rickety fishing boats that were arriving from Indonesian ports at a rate of more than one a day have virtually stopped.

Not that there aren’t other immigration detention facilities, including some operated by the government and some by contractors (in other words, “private prisons.”) But facilities on Australian land (even if that land is an island) are easier to see. People confined in Papua New Guinea are easier to forget. Some have been forgotten for five years.

I am not trying to badmouth the Australian people – just as in the US, there are Australians who are outraged by this situation. In fact, our own Animae has posted a petition to the government to end this suffering – a petition which is close to 30,000 signatures but of course still needs more. On the other hand, many Australians, like Americans, DO approve of this tough refugee policy. which makes it difficult to make changes without repercussions. One expert says of the government “They’ve really painted themselves into a corner.”

Megaera, I assume that, however you all parcel this out, you will be on this situation,since it really exemplifies “grudging” (and stubbornness.) Good luck. You and whoever works with you will need to be creative.

But I don’t want to just stay in Australia – there is a trend surfacing in Ghana which has worldwide implications – and scary ones at that.

We pink (“white”) people are generally aware that our group demonstrates bias against people of color, and that that bias on our part, even if unconscious (or maybe expecially if unconscious) negatively affects their lives. Some of us are also aware that, among people of color, there exists a cultural preference for lighter sking over darker skin – but not every pink person knows even that. We who do tend to just accept it as a fact and not think about it much. But I’m going to make you think about it now.

Products to whiten or lighten the skin have become a multiBillion-dollar market. The cosmetics market in West Africa is dominated by products like these. The use of such products has spread to, and taken hold in, the Caribbean countries and even parts of Asia (as well as throughout the so-called “African diaspora,” which most certainly includes the United States.) Estimates are that 70% of West African women use some kind of bleaching cream, as well as about 35% in South Africa. Some of these products contain hydroquinone, a topical ingredient that disrupts the synthesis and production of melanin, leaving the skin less protected from West Africa’s intense sunshine. Last year Ghana banned such products – but I have no information on this particular black market, so I have no way to know how much may still be getting used in Ghana. Nor do I know how many or which countries have NOT banned hydroquinone. I’m guessing that it’s not banned everywhere.

Per Lafayette College Professor Yaba Blay:

While it’s true that skin bleaching represents a multifaceted phenomenon, with a complexity of historical, cultural, sociopolitical, and psychological forces motivating the practice, the large majority of scholars who examine skin bleaching at the very least acknowledge the institutions of colonialism and enslavement historically, and global White supremacy contemporarily, as dominant and culpable instigators of the penchant for skin bleaching.

But so far I have only discussed people, primarily women, endangering their own skin, that is not the trend which most concerns me. Rather, it’s this:

A disturbing skin bleaching trend in Ghana has officials worried for the health of pregnant women and their unborn babies….

Ghana’s Food and Drug Authority (FDA) said using Glutathione tablets for skin bleaching purposes is “dangerous” and emphasized that “… no product has been approved by the FDA in the form of a tablet to lighten the skin of the unborn child,” BBC Africa reported. The trend continues to grow, however, with pills being smuggled into the country inside airport luggage, oftentimes in large quantities.

Anyone besides me remember thalidomide?

Of course it is only natural that any woman would want only the best for her child. If cultural preferences for lighter skin over darker are that strong, it is natural that a mother might want to lighten the skin color of her child, if possible.

But it isn’t.

Earlier this year, health officials issued a stern warning against women taking pills during pregnancy to lighten the skin of their unborn children while still in utero. Health experts warned that the illegal drugs could lead to birth defects, as well as cause damage to the baby’s limbs and internal organs.

This makes me want to cry … not that crying will do any good. Alecto and Tisiphone, maybe you can figure out a way, or ways, to do some good.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

Everyday Erinyes #128

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:31 am Politics

Jul 142018

Cairo, Illinois is the southernmost town in Illinois. It sits in a little pocket formed by the Missouri and Ohio Rivers as they flow into each other to become the Mississippi River. On the other side of the Missouri River is Missouri; on the other side of the Ohio River is Kentucky.

Google map of Cairo, Illinois

Cairo has a history, starting in the first half of the nineteenth century when multiple attempts were made to establish it (chartered 1818, settled 1836-37, collapsed 1840, re-chartered 1857, and this time it took off.) Not all of the history is pretty. In 1842, after the first collapse, Charles Dickens visited it. He used it as the prototype for the City of Eden in Martin Chuzzlewit. I haven’t read all of Dickens, and Martin Chuzzlewit is one I have missed, but apparently, for City of Eden, read Republic of Gilead.

After the re-chartering in 1857, Cairo enjoyed a period of prosperity through trade. In 1862, General Grant made it a headquarters, and had Fort Defiance built there, but this diverted much of its trade commerce to Chicago (where the railroads went), and it never really recovered. Instead, its economy devolved into agriculture, lumber, and sawmills.

Being, as it was, at an important confluence of important rivers, and with steamboat transportation increasing, it couldn’t be kept totally down, and the railroads returned, and the ferry industry took off, since there were no bridges. By the early 1900s, it had seen a number of mansions and public buildings erected, many of which still exist and are on the National Register of Historic Places.

Race relations were abysmal, and lynchings were sufficiently prevalent that even some whites were lynched (by other whites). Bridges constructed in 1929 and 1937 ended the ferry industry, and we all know what the airlines did to the railroads everywhere, so the 20th century was one of economic decline for Cairo. Not that they would have anyway, but with many jobs lost by the 1960s, the white population of Cairo did not take kindly to the Civil Rights Act, nor to any persons of color attempting to exercise their civil rights.

The Interstate being built in 1978 to bypass Cairo was its economic death knell. From its highest population of 15,203 in 1920, it had fallen to 2,831. Why am I going through all of this? Because, already a ghost town, it has become a target for Ben Carson’s HUD.

In April 2017, Demarion Duncan learned he’d have to move. That in itself would not be the end of the world; the McBride public housing project in Cairo, Illinois, where the 12-year-old Duncan lived with his mom, dad, and two younger siblings, was falling apart…. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development had been debating what to do with public housing in Cairo for seven years and two presidential administrations, since federal inspections first uncovered grift, decay, and racial discrimination at the Alexander County Housing Authority. The mostly black residents of McBride and Elmwood, a sister project nearly two dozen blocks north that housed about 80 families, lived in squalor, while the white housing authority brass, under Executive Director James Wilson, blew public funds on boozy Vegas getaways and prioritized maintenance of the predominantly white high-rise across town. In the final year of the Obama administration, HUD placed the housing authority under receivership, but it left the future of Cairo’s public housing unresolved.

Ben Carson resolved public housing in Cairo by destroying it. Well, except the white part. He condemned McBride and Elmwood and gave residents a year to move out, on the grounds that Cairo was a dying town. (One suggestion was that a few tenants of McBride – there would not be room for all – could move into the white project. In a town with a history like Cairo’s, if I were a person of color, I would not be happy about that prospect, even though it might be the only way not to have to leave town.) Demarion Duncan and his classmates were facing the prospect of being scattered all over the midwest. Now in sixth grade, they had mostly been classmates forever. With the help of their teacher, Mary Beth Goff, they wrote letters to Ben Carson.

Magnolia Manor, a post-bellum Victorian mansion, now being operated as a museum in Cairo, Illinois

I won’t go into detail on the letters’ content. Some are cited and quoted in Mother Jones. They were mailed in April 2017.

Carson found himself on the defensive. The students made CNN. The president watches CNN. Carson wrote back promptly. In a warm but brief letter, he thanked the students for their messages. “You are living proof of the old saying, ‘Home is where the heart is,’” he wrote. In a separate letter to the superintendent, he got to the point. “I’ve had teams of experts searching for any viable solution to preserve affordable housing opportunities in Cairo, from rebuilding to utilizing manufactured housing,” he wrote. “Sadly there are very limited viable financial options for a nearly bankrupt housing authority.”…

“The kids said, ‘We don’t even think he read our letters,’” Goff told me. “There’s no way he could have read what we wrote” and written what he did.”

A lot has been said about Ben Carson not knowing what he is doing. Well, “Carson may not know what he’s doing, but he knows what he wants. He once told an interviewer that poverty is ‘more of a choice than anything else’; by proposing to raise rents in subsidized buildings, slash budgets, and tear down homes, Carson and the Trump administration are forcing the working poor to choose something else.”

The infamous Ben Carson

I worry about everyone living in subsidized housing. The minimum rent has been $50 per month for some time. Carson has proposed tripling that. I am not in subsidized housing, I have a mortgage, but I can certainly tell you I could not afford to triple my mortgage payment. I could not afford to triple just the principal payment, leaving the interest and escrow constant. Heck, I could not afford to increase it by the $100 that tripling the minimum would impose on the poorest of the poor. Of course, states have some say in how these things are administered. The Mother Jones article will tell you plainly, if not using my words, that Illinois is not there for these people of Cairo.

Dear Furies, this story, which I have really just skimmed over, is as convoluted as – well, as a federal witch hunt would be if there were such a thing. You will have to call up every unnamed Fury to begin to deal with it (I hope some are trained as accountants.) We have to try.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

Everyday Erinyes #127

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 9:50 am Politics

Jul 072018

It really is a mystery why the story of seven Republican Senators and one Republican Congresswoman (who decided the best place to spend their Fourth of July was an Moscow) was not the biggest story of the week. Yes, there was a terrible human tragedy in Thailand – but the United States has never cared about foreign children (at least in the sense of them being news – I don’t mean to belittle the millions of American who have hearts and DO care), and this seems like an odd time to start.

There are many reasons why this event looks, for lack of a better word, fishy. For one thing, the stated purpose of the event (as far as it can be determined from the vagueness of various statements by the participants) was to “improve relations.” That is called “diplomacy.” It is constitutionally the function of the Exectutive branch, not the Legislative branch. Specifically, it comes under the purview of the State Department. Not that Mike Pompeo could possibly ever dot he best job of it – but Congress is supposed to be doing their own jobs, not other people’s.

For a second thing (random order), not one of these Senators is running for reelection in 2018 (the Representative is, because every representative is, every two years), which leads to the speculation that they may be hoping this little trip may be forgotten by 2020 – a good bet, if Democrats don’t aggressively continue to bring it up, especially since the reporting was so underwhelming.

In connection with the above, one person (“Space Butler”) commenting at Daily Kos points out that

Also hate to double comment, but have you noticed where some of these Senators come from? Montana, where Tester is up for reelection, ND where Heitkamp is up for reelection, AL where Doug Jones will be up in 2020, a Rep from Texas where Cruz is up for reelection, Kansas is headed towards a close fought gubernatorial race this year likely, Wisconsin where we have Baldwin running this year, and Louisana apparently Kennedy is looking to challenge JBE for governor in the next election there.

(The thing about Daily Kos is that the article authors and those making comments are all in the same pool. Any member can write either without prior approval; though there is moderation, it’s not applied to matters of fact: those are policed by the whole community with counter-comments. So it is good to be aware of just who is writing and what is their reputation for accuracy, and how hard is it to check. In the case of the above comment it’s not hard at all.)

Thirdly, certainly legislators do like to get out of DC at every opportunity, but why Russia? Why now? Well, one thought is, and some have even admitted this openly as a general principle, they always have time for their donors.

Fourthly, the results of the trip, at least for the United States, appear to be questionable at best. In fact, even before the trip, Russia appeared to be more amused than engaged.

“What trouble did we cause?” one Russian TV analyst said last week, before the senators arrived. “We just elected Trump, that’s all.”

And afterwards:

Duma member Vyacheslav Nikonov.. said he had met with many American lawmakers in years past and that this meeting “was one of the easiest ones in my life.” The question of election interference, he said, was resolved quickly because “the question was raised in a general form… One shouldn’t interfere in elections — well, we don’t interfere.”

I personally can’t help wondering, as a taxpayer, wouldn’t it have been cheaper to put up a huge billboard on Capitol Hill:

Dear America, we don’t really care what you think, we are a fully owned subsidiary of Russia, and our allegiance is there. /s/ The GOP

It would have sent the same message for less money.

Dear Furies, apparently we Democrats, particularly our party leaders, need some training in your techniques, specifically in rubbing the guilt of the guilty in their faces without mercy until they break down. And not stopping until the breakdown is complete. Whether you should concentrate on Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and the present DNC, or work at helping us put in new leadership with more Erynical skills, or a combination of the two, I will leave to you. But we certainly need something,

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

Pithy Progressive #10

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 8:42 am Politics

Jul 032018

Sean Patrick Maloney is a Congressman from New York’s 18th District. But he is running in November to be the Attorney General of the State. I received an email from him which caused me to drop my jaw – not that I didn’t know that certain feminine products are taxed by many states on the grounds thay they are luxuries; I was aware of that. (Sean may have had to look it up for this, but he knows now.) The whole thing is just so petty that I think it needs to be shared as necessary, up to November and likely beyond.

Bustle dot com picked up the story, as did a couple of other outlets, but I wouldn’t call it wide exposure at this point. I am furnishing the link, though I’ll mostly quote the email – which is a trifle less organized, because he is PISSED OFF.

The Republican leadership in Congress just PUNISHED my office for buying tampons for our staff and visiting constituents, Joanne.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Last week, I made the “mistake” of including feminine hygiene products in my office’s purchases — along with tissues, hand sanitizer, and first-aid supplies.

And now, the GOP is DEMANDING that I personally write a check to reimburse the $37.16 we spent on feminine hygiene products, because in their own words, “tampons are NOT office supplies”. They think they’re a luxury.

Joanne, this incident says everything you need to know about how the Republican Party views women.

I’m running to be New York’s next Democratic Attorney General because we must fight back against this type of discrimination our mothers, sisters, and daughters continue to face everyday.

In 2016, the State of New York stopped taxing women’s periods by ending its discriminatory ‘tampon tax.’

Because Joanne, women shouldn’t be punished for simply being women.

Women’s rights aren’t a matter of convenience — they’re a matter of equal justice under the law.

But the GOP is hanging on to their aging, sexist policies that are clearly discriminatory towards women.

At a time when the U.S. Supreme Court could be shaped in Donald Trump’s image for a lifetime, we need to elect leaders who won’t hesitate to take down these blatantly sexist policies.

Let’s put an end to these ludicrous, sexist policies, Joanne.

Sean Maloney for New York

-Sean Patrick Maloney
Candidate for New York Attorney General

SMDH.

I don’t put links to donation sites in these posts; though of course they are not hard to find, I want to be reportorial raather than pushy.

Bustle did point out a couple of things Sean left out, such as the roughly $5.9 BILLION that women in the US need to spend each year on sanitary supplies. (Now you know why many women do the happy dance when they reach the age of menopause. But I assure you, and our younger sisters, that we haven’t forgotten what it was like.) Oh, and the fact that the House Administration Committee claims he is lying. (I know who I would and wouldn’t believe, and I’ll bet you do too.) And the fact that Sean wrote his personal check to the committee – while making the Twitter video he posted to publicize the insanity – sorry, that’s insanitea.

I’m sure I don’t need to point out that the next Attorney General of New York will inherit any and all cases regarding Donald J. Trump, his family, and his staff, and the breach by any of them by any laws of the State of New York. Not living in New York, I can’t vote for him, but I certainly encourage anyone who can to do so.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

Everyday Erinyes #126

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:23 am Politics

Jun 302018

Heron Greenesmith starts his article at the Huffington Post by saying ” am going to speak ill of Justice Kennedy.” Well, so am I – except I wouldn’t call him “Justice” Kennedy. “Injustice” Kennedy is, I think, a better fit.

Greenesmith is a policy attorney for LGBTQ people, specializing in advocacy for bisexual and pansexual communities; he is also a board member of the Massachusetts LGBTQ Bar Association. So he is keenly aware of Kenndy’s specific record on LGBTQ issues, and he points out that it is as mixed as his overall record. Many times Kennedy was the one justice whose vote could not be predicted – and that was also true on issues where people remember him for a reasonable deciding vote. He voted abysmally on other cases involving the same issue.

On LGBTQ, for example, his positive record is based narrowly on relationship recognition. On other civil rights issues touching the LGBTQ community, he undermined that community, even while he was a rock for same-sex marriage.

His record on abortion is likewise mixed. In 2007, for instance he wrote the opinion upholding a federal ban on some abortions. He also joined the majority on the Hobby Lobby case, which purported to be about “religious exemptions” for for-profit corporations, but which in fact was about employers denying women birth control AND abortion. (If anyone ever sees a for-profit corporation in church during a service, please let us know, especially the media – that would be a journalistic sensation.)

He has also struck down gun control laws, supported strip searches, and joined the majority on Citizens United. (If anyone ever sees a for-profit corporation in a voting booth on Election Day, please, let us know, especially the media – that would be a journalistic sensation. No, there’s not an echo in here. It’s just me.)

During the last week of this spring term, Kennedy joined in (unfortunately majority) opinions which are so hard-right that they annihiliate his reputation as a swing judge, instead portraying him as

… a hard-right, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-health care, anti-worker conservative. These three cases represent three pillars of Trump’s administration: disdain for immigrants and Muslim people; disdain for health care, particularly for women and low-income people; and disdain for labor organizing and the working class.

But Greenesmith goes even further to point out that the TIMING of the retirment is as much a slap in the face to America as the decisons themselves.

By retiring now, at the end of the spring 2018 term, Kennedy has made a clear and indisputable statement: He wants Trump to be able to appoint his successor, and he wants the closely divided Senate to confirm that candidate before the November midterms.

Greenesmith doesn’t mention something else that struck me about the timing of his retirement announcement. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has noticed that media coverage of immigrants, refugees, children separated from their families at the border has dramatically dropped off since Wednesday. I can’t fault the media for giving coverage to the catastrophe that is the Supreme Court, since it’s damnably important, a life and death matter. But so are our children. I have no idea how much this was considered by anyone who was even peripherally in on Kennedy’s decision of when to announce. But I have to wonder.

HuffPo has published two other opinion pieces on Kennedy’s departure. Eric Segall, the Kathy and Lawrence Ashe professor of law at Georgia State University College of Law emphasizes gun control, and how Kennedy’s absence is likely to shape the Court. Robin Marty, a reporter who covers abortion rights, abortion clinic access and the anti-abortion movement (and whose work can also be seen at Care2 and truthout), addresses – well, let me quote her title: “What To Do When – Not If – Roe Vanishes.” Neither author is a fan of Kennedy. I’m sure he has no fans here either.

Alecto, Megaera, Tisiphone – there’s nothing you can do about Injustice Kennedy at this point. There may be, although the chances appear frighteningly slim, something you can do about stalling the confirmation of the monster who will be appointed (we already know he, or God forbid she, will be a monster, because that’s who Orange Judas hires.) And maybe – for the future – it may not be possible to pass it right away, but we will probably need time to get it right anyway – Help Congress and/or their staff in drafting proposed legislation to prevent ANY Federal Official, from nominating anyone, to any position which requires confirmation, while under investigation, for activities which may be proved criminal. And to void any appointments made by any federal official who is later proved to have engaged in criminal activities at or before the time the appointment was made. That’s not going to be easy to draft and make it iron clad.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

Everyday Erinyes #125

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 8:09 am Politics

Jun 162018

I admit that I sat on this story for a few days after running it by TC. That was because I consider it so important, that I wanted to make sure it got the maximum possible attention that I can bring to it. I don’t have a lot of power that way, but at least making it a Furies article will make it expected, and will get it some degree of email promotion. I do hope everyone who sees it will promote it too, particularly ayone who is volunteering with a campaign. The campaign you are working may already be aware, but if not, they need to be. Bring it to the campaign manager.

Robert L. Borosage is a leading progressive writer and activist. He created a range of progressive organizations including most recently the Campaign for America’s Future, ProgressiveMajority, and ProgressiveCongress.org. He guided the Institute for Policy Studies for nearly a decade. He served as issues director for the Jesse Jackson 1988 presidential campaign, and consulted on many progressive campaigns, including Senator Paul Wellstone and most recently, Representative Jamie Raskin. A contributing editor of The Nation, Borosage’s articles have been published by Reuters, the Huffington Post, Progressive Breakfast, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Borosage is not just some guy who blogs, and he didn’t just fall off the turnip truck either. He has the experience and he has the credentials to know what he is talking about. And he is talking about what may well turn into one of the ugliest elections in history – and will, if Trump and Steve Bannon – currently running around Europe – have anything to say about it. He is talking about 2016 on steroids. He is talking about the Trump campaign relentlessly framing every House and Senate election as Trump versus Pelosi. Can Trump do that? Maybe. Last Tuesday’s primaries were noteworthy for the progressives who won their primaries. But they were also noteworthy, some of them, on the Republican side, with what passes for Republican moderates, including incumbents, being defeated by mouth-frothing Trump candidates.

Trump will reprise the themes of 2016: Trump against the failed political class, America First against the feckless elite globalists, and, of course, the politics of racial fear and division.

Trump will take credit for the economy, touting the benefits of his top-end tax cuts. But, Bannon warns Republicans, “ads on tax cuts alone [are] not going to resonate.”

The key is Trump’s right-wing nationalist populism. Trump will posture on trade, take on the Chinese, stand up for the American worker, and claim that companies are coming back home.

“The wall,” Bannon argued, is central to this. It is more than “totemic.” Immigration “is about not just sovereignty. It’s about jobs,” Bannon said. Trump has limited the flow of “massive illegal immigration,” Bannon claimed (incorrectly), and “that’s why we have the lowest black unemployment in history…and wages starting to rise particularly in agriculture.”

So, Bannon predicted, when the fiscal year ends in September, if the Congress doesn’t include “full funding” of the wall in the continuing resolution, Trump will shut down the government.

Borosage is leaning heavily here on an interview Fareed Zakaria did with Steve Bannon from Italy. But he also points out that Bannon’s predictions sound very much like the things that are coming out of Trump’s mouth. Of course, Trump as a right-wing populist is a yooge lie. But it is also a lie we will have to respond to. How, then, should we respond?

Well, not by praising globalism. Globalism sucks, and pretty much everyone in the bottom 90%, Republican and Democrat, can see that. And not by arguing that America IS already great, either. “Forty percent of the country can’t afford the price of basic goods, and those costs are still rising faster than wages. The soaring rate of suicides and decline in life expectancy for two years running might sober the cheerleaders a bit.”

Instead, we need to take him on directly. “Race-baiting politics can’t be ducked; they must be confronted. And Trump’s fake populism has to be exposed and contrasted with the real thing.”

The strongest response, as research by Demos has suggested, is to expose the truth. Trump and the Republican Congress are hurting most Americans with kickbacks for the rich, cuts in education, and attempts to roll back health care, Medicare, and Social Security. Then they try to put the blame on the poor, blacks, and recent immigrants, using racial appeals to divide us and distract us from the heist they are running on working people.

I’m going to go all Star Wars for a minute here – and I’m not even a real fan. But even I could get a chuckle out of the elaborate “Trumppa the Hutt” cartoon I show above. However, that was a chuckle. Trump voters have NO sense of humor. No matter how telling a cartoon or a cartoon-like image is, you might just as well show a Trump voter an egg timer. It would probably get more attention.

They are, however, susceptible to fear – that is obvious, and has been demonstrated over and over. Can we turn the fear that led them to Trump into fear of Trump? The photo of Darth Trump with the blue wash does that for me! But I am not the one who needs to be convinced. My personal opinion, as distinct from what Borosage says, is that images and words along that line may have some effect where humor will not.

A normal person would think that, with so many claiming to be Christian, they might be able to be reached through their religion. Most of us who can have tried that without much result. However, if anyone attends a church where hymns are sung (and Christ is honored), a new one has been written to call attention to the evils of our immigration policies. Its author, Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, has copyrighted it, but at the same time gives permission at the link to churches seeking to support immigrant families to use it freely. She set it to the tune of “Oh Sacred Head Now Wounded” – most people who sing hymns at all know that tune, sometimes with different words. There are a few additional details at the site, including the specific scripture it is based on. Please share it where it will do some good. Here it is:

When Jesus went to Egypt,
Safe on his mother’s arm,
His parents stayed beside him
To keep him safe from harm.
And when they crossed the border,
They were allowed to be
Together – seeking refuge –
A Holy Family.

O God, we pray for children
And families coming here
Now facing separation,
And filled with grief and fear.
For children, loved and treasured,
Are ripped from loving kin.
This deed, by any measure,
Is torture. It’s a sin!

O God, you’re like a mother
Who won’t forsake her own.
You’re like a loving father
Who welcomes his son home.
Now give us, by your Spirit,
The strength to challenge wrong,
To seek the best for children,
And keep all families strong.

Alecto, Megaera, Tisiphone, we will have need of your ferocity, of your – dare I say it – fury to make it through this election cycle. Please help us, and anyone standing up for truth, to be strong.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

A Day Without Furies

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 8:57 pm Politics

Jun 082018

TomCat was not feeling good enough to post any Sam Bee Thursday (from Wednesday), and I figured

a. If he’s up to posting today (meaning Saturday), he’ll want to post Bill,

b. The amount available on YouTube in segments was short, only a teaser and two “Acts”,

c. I’m walking wounded too, having done a full day out of the house for the first time since I got sick a month ago, and am too exhausted to look for something Erinyes-worthy.

So, here she is – first the teaser (the promo)

I was interested that Sam was also wanting to reclaim the word – and that she is not going to push it, at least for now. But Sam does have sense – and sensitivity.

Act I

This segment would go a long way toward drawing attention to the actual problem which made Sam blow up in the first place – if Americans could read and hear any words longer than four letters.

Act II

Isn’t it ironic that so many people are “scared” of transgender people when they SHOULD be scared of straight white males (not all of them, of course, but that’s the group the most dangerous people are in.)

That’s all, folks, for this show. the Furies and I will be back eventually.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

Everyday Erinyes #124

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:07 am Politics

Jun 022018

Right after I put up a post last Tuesday about an injustice in one of the 57, give or take, main criminal justice systems in the United States, the Huffington Post (not, certainly, as a response to me, but possibly as a response to the publicity the case was getting,) posted its own article about criminal justice reform.

One way criminal justice can be addressed, of course, is through legislation. It was through legislation on Sentencing Reform that Matthew Charles was able to be released before his original sentence was up, ans was able to become a model citizen. But, because legislation itself must be very specific, particularly with definitions, just in order to be enforced, thre was an exception in that law under which Charles fell on a technicality, and when prosecutors appealed his release, the evidence was clear that under that law he should not have been released.

Another way that reform can be felt in criminal justice is through prosecutorial discretion. Unfortunately, some prosecutors just don’t have any discretion. The new judge in the Charles case practically begged the prosecution to review the case again and exercise some discretion, and the prosecution declined. She felt compelled to read into the records in her disposition that the resulting resentencing might be law, but it was certainly not justice.

One reason so many prosecutors just don’t have any discretion is due to the metrics on which prosecutors are traditionally elected (and, possibly, to the fact that they are elected at all. At the Federal level, they aren’t. Below that level, they mostly are.)

For decades, the process by which America chose its district attorneys was simple: Top prosecutors piled up convictions and issued harsh sentences, built reputations as “tough on crime,” and, most of the time, won re-election. When they retired, their assistants often replaced them. And prosecutors almost always ran for re-election unopposed.

Now all that is changing: Voters fed up with a system that has made the U.S. the world’s leading prison state have swept a wave of reform-minded district attorneys into office.

As good as that sounds, the wave is not a huge one. Furthermore, to continue the water metaphor, to make any large and lasting effects, the wave has to be strong enough to override Niagara Falls. The little drops scattered throughout the system won’t have much permanent impact unless they get together.

That is where the organization Fair and Just Prosecution comes in. Founded after the 2016 elections by Miriam Krinsky, herself a former federal prosecutor who left disillusioned after fifteen years, is a bipartisan nonprofit which

trains and connects prosecutors who want to move past an incarceration-based model of justice to one that is more equitable, humane and accountable.

The connecting is particularly important. When you are trying to swim up Niagara Falls, you need support. When you are trying to do something that has never been done before, you need to share with and learn from others trying to do the same thing. The phrase “best practices” is meaningless if there aren’t at least a few people practicing those practices who can show that they in fact work.

Now – here’s how bad it is. There are roughly 2,400 prosecuting attorneys in the United States. Twenty-four of them – just about one per cent – is the base number currectly affiliated with FJP. (There are a few more, but not enough more for the author of the article to rephrase that to “more than thirty.”) But that number can potentially grow every time a reform-minded DA is elected, and more are running this year.

On the other hand, those affiliated include some very high profile prosecutors. Larry Krasner (D) of Philadelphia. Dan Satterberg (R) of Seattle. Beth McCann (D) of Denver. Aramis Ayala (D) of Orlando. Please be sitting down and with no coffee in the mouth when you read the next sentence – Satterberg helped launch a program in 2011 which handles low-level drug and prostitution crimes outside the traditional system which has been successful enough to inspire McCann to investigate bringing it to her city.

Although the prosecutors involved in the organization don’t agree on every issue, they all agree that the criminal justice system is too large, that alternatives to incarceration can be effective and that it’s critical to address the racial disparities of the criminal justice system.

Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, you may be wondering why I am bringing up such a positive program for you. Well, it’s because I want you to put on your Eumenides hats and support the good people trying to swim up the Falls – heaven knows they need all the help they can get. And you can also hope in spreading knowledge of the FJP and specifically of the good work it is accomplishing. And that, as Krinsky says, “We can’t incarcerate our way out of poverty, mental illness and drug addiction.”

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

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