Joanne Dixon

Everyday Erinyes #91

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 9:16 am Politics

Sep 092017

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. Even though there are many more which I can’t include. 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.”

Well, I thought I had my lead on Tuesday, when I read about a cop in Georgia who ran over a black man he thought was a suspect (he wasn’t), and then arrested him. But Wednesday, that story got beat. Point by point:

1. Cop thought black man was a suspect. Okie Jeremy Thacker knew his victims (plural) were homeless; that’s why he ran over them.

2. Victims plural. Three from the runover, plus another hit in the head with a pipe outside a coonvenience store.

3. One victimm died (the cop’s victim was alive enough to arrest.) The other three were injured.

Do I even need to say this – deplorable – is a Trump supporter? I would say a Trump voter – but, you know, to be a voter you have to actually vote, and I don’t see any evidence that he is smart enough for that.

But it doesn’t take much in the way of brains to kill. It dies, however, take a special kind of malice to target people who are at the lowest points in their lives to kill.

You don’t suppose his lawyer will try to pass this off as a “mercy killing”?

Tisiphone, go. Go get him. I can’t discuss him any more. Thanks.

Everyone probably saw the story about a police detective in Utah who assaulted a nurse – for obeying the law instead of his illegal order.

To recap, Detective Jeff Payne violently and illegally arrested [Alex] Wubbels after she refused his demands to draw blood from a patient. With her supervisor on speakerphone backing her up, Wubbels read the hospital policy aloud and correctly did her job. An increasingly angry Payne snapped and dragged her outside, aggressively handcuffing her, all with the alleged blessing of his own supervisor.

But wait, there’s more.

The officer is now under prosecutorial investigation. Or, I guess technically, it’s still an internal investigation, but it was at the behest of screaming prosecutors.

The University of Utah hospital where this happened has tightened up their policies. No more officers entering through the emergency room.

“Law enforcement who come to the hospital for any reason involving patients will be required to check in to the front desk of the hospital,” said chief nursing officer Margaret Pearce of the University of Utah Hospital. “There, a hospital house supervisor will meet the officers to work through each request.”

The detective in question also ha a part time job as a paramedic. He has been fired from that.

Now, let’s take a moment to examine why there might be more to this story. The reason nurse Alex Wubbels was refusing to allow Detective Payne to draw blood from a patient is because the patient was a victim in a fatal accident. The patient was not accused of any crimes, had not been arrested, was not conscious to give consent—but he was a victim of a deadly accident resulting from a high speed police chase.

Trying to cover the Department’s ass? Hoping to find some reason to blame the victim? Of course they had no way of knowing – then – that this victim was himself a police officer (off duty) from Rigby, ID. The Rigby Police Department thanked Nurse Wubbels for protecting the rights of their officer. “Protecting the rights of others is truly a heroic act,” the letter said.

Alecto, I hope you can get to the bottom of this, and I hope it is widely made public when determined. There is definitely deliberate concealment involved.

[UPDATE on above story]

Child Welfare arms of government take a lot of flak, and, unfortunately, much of it is deserved. This situation is just such a perfect storm, it is worth noting.

Carl Brewer (D) is running in Kansas to replace Governor Sam Brownback, who has been offered a post in the Trump administration (but would be term-limited in 2018 in any case.) Brewer, a former mayor of Wichita, is one of four Democrats eyeing the Governorship.

Brewer’s son Carlo is – was – the father of Evan Brewer, who had been allowed by the Kansas Department of Children and Family Service (DCF) to live with his mother and her “boy friend,” despite four complaints. Carlo Brewer recently contacted state officials and local police about the welfare of his son.

While the DNA evidence is still out, officials are pretty sure the body found encased in concrete in the home they were renting is that of Evan.

If you click through – if you can stand it – the diarist gives two other stories of the deaths of children who should not have had to die.

Now, even before 1980, and even in more enlightened states, it has always been difficult for child protective services to get the funding they needed to do their job. Prennially understaffed, perennially undertrained, perennially having their hands tied, it has never been easy to work for the protection of children. But how much more difficult would it be in Kansas, where for over six years no taxes have been collected, where the government has resorted to selling confiscated sex toys on the internet to pay the bills, and where, under Republican governance, children don’t count anyway? I think, until I find out different, I’ll reserve my anger for the mother of this poor baby, and for her boy friend.

And my deepest grief for Carl Brewer, and for Carlo Brewer.

Megaera, I have confidence that you can be a Fury to the murderers while putting on your Eumenides hat for the bereaved.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 here.

Everyday Erinyes #90

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 9:01 am Politics

Sep 022017

I don’t have a link to the first thing I wasnt to share; I am just quoting from an email. The email is from Mark Kelly (“Mr. Gabby Giffords,” but don’t tell him I said that), and the only link it has is to a donation page. But following and fighting the gun lobby is Mark and Gabby’s life, so I am confident he know whereof he speaks.

Congress returns next weekend from recess and the gun lobby is ready for them to pass their “concealed carry reciprocity” legislation that will allow almost anyone to carry a loaded, concealed firearm in public places.

How ready are they? How close do they think they are? How certain are they that this is coming?

The gun lobby is so certain that they just held a three day event promoting concealed carry accessories. They sold INSURANCE in case the member erroneously shoots someone with their concealed weapon and is held liable. And the day ended with a literal “Concealed Carry Fashion Show,” complete with a runway and models, to show off the latest gear.

I’m sorry, I am speechless. Megaera, can you cope?

In New Mexico, they seem to have the right idea on dealing with a situation like the one they have – a situation where one black girl in a high school class was singled out by a threatening photo which was posted on Snapchat – on the school’s official Snapchat group.

Firstly, they realized that the photo did not represent a real event – that it had been digitally altered (not that that was difficult – it only took me one glance, and I’m no expert). So they did not overreact against everyone in the class. They looked for and apparently quickly found the actual perpetrators, who were suspended. One was also kicked off the football team (an action too often neglected). Charges against them for a hate crime are also still being contemplated “because it’s this serious.”

Serious it is. Humor is a serious thing. Humor can hurt. Humor can kill. I have often seen parents laugh at their children for something they find amusing which the child is too young to understand. I have seen parents, not just laughe at their children, but set them up to be laughed at with prompting and interrupting until the child is so frustrated that they can find it funny.

Allow me to quote from C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters:

Humour is for them the all consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing grace of life. Hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is ‘mean;’ if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and twits his fellows with having been scored off, he is no longer ‘mean’ but a comical fellow. Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humourous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can be passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful—unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke…

Alecto, am I being unreasonable to demand that we need to teach children how humor can be used to hurt instead of to heal? And teach them not to do that? And to call out the wrongness of it whenever it is done?

This last piece of news is, to me, though shocking, yet still good news.

23 August 2017 – The United Nations body monitoring implementation of the global convention on prohibiting racial discrimination has called on high-level politicians and public officials of the United States to unequivocally and unconditionally reject and condemn racist hate speech and crimes in Charlottesville and throughout the country.

In a decision issued under its ‘early warning and urgent action’ procedure, the Committee, which monitors implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, stated “there should be no place in the world for racist white supremacist ideas or any similar ideologies that reject the core human rights principles of human dignity and equality.”

Friends – fellow resisters – what we are suffering is real, and visible to objective outside observers, who will help as best they can by calling it out.

Hopefully, the humiliation of having our beloved nation held up to the world publicly as a bad example will some day turn out to have been a small price to pay. Hopefully. Tisiphone, please help us in any way you can, if not to eliminate the disease, at least to get it out of government.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 here.

Everyday Erinyes #89

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 5:17 am Politics

Aug 262017

On Wednesday, a vigil to honor of the life of a transgender woman of color who died there was held on the streets of The Grove in St. Louis. About 100 people attended the candlelight event, and several staged a protest march down one street. During the vigil, a car drove through those marching. Fortunately, only minor injuries were reported. The driver was as of Friday in custody, charged with felony fleeing (I believe that’s the technical term there for “hit and run.”)

The deceased was Kenny “Kiwi” Herring, 30, who leaves behind a wife and son. The cause of death was a police officer’s bullet. There is (hardly surprisingly) disagreement between the official police account and the stories of Herring’s neighbors.

I don’t know anything about Unicorn Booty’s reliability; its address line merely indicates that it is a news source (all kinds of news) which addresses the LGBT community. However, the account is straightforward, free from loaded vocabulary, and appears to represent each party (victim, neighbors, police) fairly. The author links to the Twitter account of David Carson, a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where there is a discussion about the justifiability of running a car through a crowd of people.

I’m not sure what world a person lives tham who thinks that their personal annoyance (or avoiding it) is of more value than the lives of people in the street. The answer to the question, “Is (whatever it is that you are saying is wrong) a capital crime?” for many people appears to be “Yes.” Perhaps these are the same people who think White Christians are the most discriminated against group in the country. It has proven to be pretty well impossible for humans to get through to these people on a level of logic and reason. Megaera, maybe you have a chance.

In a way, it’s almost a relief to turn to a story where the actors are motivated by money. I can kind of understand that. We all need it to provide shelter, food, and other necessities of life. And many of us want a little more because we want to be able to have nice things. But – OK, forget I said all of that. Because I can’t understand wanting so much of it so badly that you need to make other people to suffer to get it.

We all know about the Governor of Florida, Rick ~~Voldemort~~ Scott, pushing for drug testing of anyone who is desperate enough to want benefits in Florida, and pushing it long after it had been proved to be horribly expensive for the State, saving something on the order of $1 in benefit payments for every $1000 spent (that’s from very skimpy memory, so I’m sure the figures won’t check. But it was on that order of magnitude.) Pushing drug testing – while his wife was the owner of all the drug testing facilities used by the state. This story from Iowa is similar.

Judge Linda R. Reade was the chief judge of the Northern District of Iowa in 2008. Appointed by George W. Bush in 2003, she was married to Michael Figenshaw, who owned stock in both the Corrections Corporation of America (now CoreCivic) and Wackenhut Correctional Corporation (now GEO Group), the USA’s two largest prison companies) as part of his retirement account. Between Reaade’s appontment in 2003 and 2011, when Figenshaw sold these stocks, CA’s stock price rose 434%, and GEO’s rose 642%.

In 2008, in Postville, Iowa, the then-largest workplace immigration raid ever was sprung on the Agriprocessors plant there, which was, at the time, the largest kosher slaughterhouse in the country. Nearly 400 workers were arrested, of whom about 270 were sentenced to five months in federal prison. That was not usual in 2008. It was then customary to charge workers with civil violations and then deport them. So many people were charged that several federal judges, of whom the most senior was Reade, took nine business days to handle their cases. This was not done in courtrooms, but at the National Cattle Congress, a fairground in Waterloo. Five days BEFORE this raid, Figenshaw bought a lot more CCA and GEO stock – somewhere between $30K and $100K.

Not every federal prison is run by CCA or GEO – but a lot of them are. And in my opinion it’s not important to determine which defendants from this circus were specifically sent to CCA/GEO prisons. If they weren’t, they made it possible for others to be.

Judge Reade received a lot of flak for the circus-like atmosphere in which the proceedings were conducted, and for the fact that she had met repeatedly with ICE before the raid. Those meetings were put forward as a reason she should have recused herself. There were a couple of other resons put forward why she should recuse, yet she persisted (it isn’t always a good thing.) Had the stock ownership been publicly known, I’m thinking her failure to recuse might have led to her learning even more about those prisons – from the inside.

Today, dozens of people who were sentenced by Reade while her husband owned prison stock remain behind bars…. In January, Reade was honored for her decade of service as the top federal judge in Iowa’s Northern District at a ceremony at the federal courthouse in Cedar Rapids. She remains on the bench and has a lifetime tenure.

Tisiphone, do you think this is right?

Meanwhile, Alabama is proving that ignorance and difficulty understanding how government works are not confined to racists. Also, I suppose, that no matter how badly the group you are in has been treated, you can always find another group to misunderstand.

I probably hardly need to point out that none of this story would have happened had our entire country not gone nuts about public education and decided that the only way to assess how the schools are doing is through standardized test scores.

This leads to the spectacle of a State Board of Education member saying at a school board meeting,

“Is it against the law for us to establish perhaps an academy on special education or something on that order,” asked Bell, “so that our scores that already are not that good would not be further cut down by special-ed’s test scores involved?”

This led to a vicious Op-Ed at AL dot com, including

Bell doesn’t seem to have a clue about Alabama’s public education system for special needs students, but she is pretty concerned that those students “bring down” the rest.

Alabama has a process for building out IEPs consistent with LRE requirements. The underlying idea is that our students are better off in the classroom together. The idea that a SBOE member would even seriously ask the question about returning to a practice of institutionalization demonstrates a tragic lack of knowledge and thoughtfulness.

Now, I do think that the author of the Op-Ed may well be overreacting – both because I for one don’t even see “academy” and “institution” in the same ball park – and also because the Op-Ed author doesn’t seem to me to have established his own bona fides of thoughtfulness (he seems to think that Sessions hung the moon, for one thing.) And I don’t think it’s entirely Ms. Bell’s actual qualifications he has in mind, either.

No, I think the true villain of this piece is our national obsession with standardized testing – which has repeatedly been demonstrated to interfere with learning far more than it assists. And I don’t mean the testing interferes so much – it’s the obsession that gets in the way.

Weren’t we already fighting this battle when I was in junior high and high school? I don’t suppose it will ever be permanently settled, but maybe you, Alecto, can help calm things down a little.

I do have one piece of good news I want to share. In Colombia, the indigenous U’wa people, whose ancestral territory includes over a million and a half mountainous acreage in tundra and cloud forests, have long been displaced to a single reservation about a third of that size. They have been working, through legal means and community action, to reclaim some of that.

Last month, ten families packed up and returned to a location from which they had been removed in favor of salt mining. If all goes well, over the next six months, fifty more families will join them, and hopefully, they all can be incorporated into a new reservation.

This is important for us as well as for them, since their presence is the best insurance we have against further climate-destroying development. If you ladies have time to put on your Eumenides hats and drop by, maybe with supplies, it would be greatly appreciated.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 here.

Everyday Erinyes #88

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 10:33 am Politics

Aug 192017

Back in the day, when white supremacy was considered an aberration, not main stream, a fellow called Gordon Winrod took it to lengths considered extreme then – and now and forever, I hope! He set up a cult at a compound in Ozark County, Missouri. The Ozark County Times:

Winrod was pastor of Our Savior’s Church and had been linked to the Christian Identity Movement. For years he published ‘The Winrod Letter’ a newsletter that was chock full of anti-Jewish rhetoric. Winrod claimed law enforcement, government and most business leaders were Jews, and he often referred to the court system as the ‘Jewdiciary.’

Not content with suckers who joined his cult voluntarily, Winrod kidnapped six of his grandchildren from their homes in 1994 and 1995 In May 2000, authorities raided his compound. The kidnapped grandchildren were then aged between 9 and 16 (doing the math, the youngest can have been no older than four when kidnapped.) These children locked themselves in a bunker. However authorities were able to talk them in surrendering.

Winrod was convicted and sentenced to 30 years. After serving ten of the 30, he was released in 2012. Apparently, for five years he lived quietly with a daughter and son-in-law. However, recently the granddaughter who escaped being kidnapped wrote on Facebook that he is now starting up again, this time on a property in Kulm, North Dakota, which some family members purchased for him.

If I may digress for a minute, it must be really something else to be a member of that family. With the financial support he is getting, there are clearly some members who are in agreement with him. But there are also some who emphatically are not. A family that puts the “dys” into “dysfunctional” – because it can’t be “fun.” The granddaughter who escaped, Shannon Maresh, appears to have been brought up by sane parents, and took to Facebook to make sure that the people of Kulm, ND are forewarned:

Edgeley and surrounding area friends: I’m not sure if you remember the years of my life where my parents were afraid to leave me alone for fear I would disappear. You may have even been concerned about your own children. This fear even extended to the school. My siblings and cousins disappeared and I quickly became an only child. My family was shattered. The man responsible was Gordon Winrod. He and his followers have one creed: to hate everyone who doesn’t believe as they do and follow Gordon Winrod’s teachings. We, you…us? We are all ‘blood sucking Jews,’ whatever that means. The point is, he and his followers fully believe that if you aren’t one of them it is not wrong to steal, cheat, lie, or kill you. Well, he is back. He was released from jail after being convicted of kidnapping and brainwashing. He is now setting up shop in the old Kulm school. Hide your kids. Hide your wives. And whatever you do, don’t drink the Cool Aid. Seriously though. This man is a predator and his followers are dangerous.

Tisiphone, I think this one is for you. Take reinforcements.

While we are on the subject of hate groups, I just had to include this, even though there is no action at this point, because the KKK members involved are so awful.

A Florida jury found two prison guards guilty Tuesday of plotting to kill a black man who was a former inmate in retaliation for a fight with another prison guard. The three guards were all members of the KKK.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, the Columbia County jury found David Elliot Moran, 49, and Charles Thomas Newcomb, 45 guilty of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. A third guard, Thomas Jordan Driver, who was also involved, plead[ed] guilty in March.

What makes this story so poetic is that they didn’t want to do the killing themselves, so they approached someone else in the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan to hire to do it for them. What are the odds that the man they approached was an undercover FBI informant? Of course, this project has blown his cover, but he probably feels it was worth it.

“These men had positions of trust, which they violated when they conspired to kill a former inmate, and we worked closely with law enforcement partners to ensure they are held accountable for their crimes,” said Special Agent in Charge James Spero of Homeland Security.

Driver gave a photo of the former inmate to the informant and they discussed whether they should shoot the man or inject him with insulin to make the death look like an accident. The FBI made it look like the homicide was carried out and even took photos of the man who had been taken into protective custody.

When a cellphone photo was shown of the fake murder scene the men said that they were happy and shook the FBI informant’s hand “in gratitude.”

They are facing up to thirty years in prison. Sic semper omnes. At that, Megaera, you might just want to sit in when the sentencing hearing is held (you’ll have to follow up; the date is not yet set) and encourage the maximum.

I just can’t get off the subject of hate today, so here is one more story about something involving hate which shouldn’t happen to a dog.

But it did.

“[A] Phoenix, AZ woman was shocked when her neighbors’ dog turned up at her door with a Nazi swastika painted on its head.”

Since the woman in question is of Hispanic heritage, and her adopted children are racially mixed, she naturally reacted with fear. In fact, she was scared enough that she apparently didn’t want to speak to the media – a cousin did that for her.

Her oldest child knew what the symbol stood for immediately. The younger two started asking questions, which she found tough to answer. Recent violence associated with this and related symbols dod not make it any easier.

Police investigated, and were told that the owners painted it “as a joke.” Well, it isn’t funny.

Carlos Galindo-Elvira — regional director for the Anti-Defamation League in Arizona — told KPNX that he understands the homeowner’s fear.

“Certainly, it brings fear, and there is a cause for concern. This is a symbol used by neo-Nazis, by skinheads and by white supremacists,” Galindo-Viera said. “To find a dog in your neighborhood with that symbol on its head could be scary.”

[The homeowner’s cousin] said the family is still uneasy, “We don’t know where this is headed. It could’ve been a joke to the kids. If it is, where is it going to lead next?”

“It’s not a joke. It’s not funny,” Galindo-Elvira said. “It’s hurtful, and it can become harmful.”

The owners of the dog are youthful, which may lend credence to the idea that they thought it was a joke. The police said the dog did not appear to be neglected or abused. I, and several people commenting on the story, are still concerned as to the paint itself being abusive, but there’s not enough evidence to be sure the paint is harmful. Being such a neutral color, it’s possible it’s not highly chemical.

Alecto, since forever humor has been a blessing to humans, but it has also been used to be hurtful and to mask evil. Perhaps you can teach these “kids” some ways to use it better.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 here.

Everyday Erinyes #87

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 9:32 am Politics

Aug 122017

In a week when “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli was convicted, if not yet sentenced, of 3 (out of 8) securities fraud charges related to overcharging on pharmaceuticals (to wit, the EpiPen), and we were reminded that the chairman of the board of his company literally said (OK, gestured) “F*** you” to America, it may not come as a surprise that Mylan is not the only corporation – um – doing that to the American people with pharmaceuticals. But it may not have made your radar that the Executive Branch of the Federal Government is actively engaged in ensuring that large sums of money not only flow to pharmaceutical dealers, but also flow right out of the country.

Knowledge Ecology International may not be the best known watchdog group in the world, but they seem to have been the only one to have caught on that the National Institutes of Health is proposing to grant the exclusive worldwide license for a new liver cancer drug to Salubris Biotherapeutics, Inc. Now, Salubris wasn’t always a Chinese holding. But it was acquired last October by Shenzen Salubris, run by the former mayor of Shenzen, billionaire Ye Chenghai, who with his famil controls 66% of the company.

Maryand’s Lieutenant Governor attended the ribbon cutting cermony of the new headquarters in May. It’s in Gaithersburg.

According to the Huffington Post, the National Institutes of Health, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, developed the treatment and registered the patents, which means this was done with taxpayers’ money.

The National Institutes of Health defended its decision in a statement to HuffPost on Wednesday, arguing “an exclusive license incentivizes companies to invest in the development of early stage … technologies so they can benefit public health.”

“NIH considers carefully when a technology should have an exclusive or non-exclusive license,” a spokesman said in the statement.

But the only one talking about this seems to be Jamie Love, the director of KEI.

“Is anyone in the White House paying any attention to these NIH patent licenses?” Jamie Love, the director of KEI, asked in an email to HuffPost on Tuesday. “The NIH wants to turn this over, life of patent, with zero agreements on the price, to Ye Chenghai, the former mayor of Shenzhen, in total secrecy as regards every important element of the license.”

Love added: “It’s time to hold hearings on the NIH licensing practices, so people have a better understanding of what is going on.”

Unfortunately, the notice filed with the Federal Register provides for just 15 days of public comments, which will neither be published nor made suject to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Almost simultaneously, Bernie Sanders in the Senate and Pete DeFazio in the House proposed

a new rule that would require federal agencies and federally funded nonprofits, such as research universities, to secure a reasonable pricing agreement from a manufacturer before granting it exclusive rights to drugs, vaccines or other health care products.

Sanders’ proposal aims to stop the Department of Defense from awarding drugmaker Sanofi Pasteur an exclusive license and $173 million in research funding to produce a Zika vaccine developed over the past year by the U.S. Army. Zika virus, a tropical, mosquito-borne disease also spread through sexual transmission, causes devastating birth defects.

The French pharmaceutical giant demanded a license that would prevent other drugmakers from competing to manufacture the vaccine at a lower cost, then refused to agree to sell the vaccine back to taxpayers at a fair price. The company has a history of charging up to eight times more for its drugs in the U.S. than in France or the United Kingdom.

Senator Angus King and Representative Marcy Kaptur are working on budget amendments aimed at stopping the DOD and NIH respectively from commiting this kind of atrocity. But these Senators and Representatives need all the help they can get. Not that I am trying to attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity, but Tisiphone, maybe you can halp.

In the Mayfair neighborhood of North Philadelphia, apparently the white supremacists can keep their cool if people of color live around the corner, just not on the same street – and they had better not park on the street that aren’t allowed to live on, either.

So we have Cottman Avenue, which, from what I can see on Google maps, is a fairly major road which has some businesses on it, running roughly from northwest to southeast. One block northeast of it is Teesdale Street – some of the time. Teesdale Street only runs two or three blocks and is residential. But six or eight blocks down, Teesdale Street picks up again and runs for another two or three blocks. Lather, rinse, repeat. Teesdale Street is where the white folks live. People of color live on Cottman, and parking is kind of tight.

So sometimes someone who lives on Cottman can’t find parking there. A few residents have found places on Teesdale at one time or another, but if they do, something happens. A note is left on their vehicle, signed KKK, telling them not to do that. Or their tires are spiked. The flat tires happened to Bernadette Waites (pictured) and to her mother. Her next-door neighbor, Lima, received the note.

“I was scared, and I was thinking, maybe they followed me or maybe they know where I live, and I don’t want to fear for my life that somebody would do something to me if I was to park around there again,” she said.

“I just want it to stop,” Lima said. “But that we’ve been living around people who have been preying on us the whole time, it’s really sad.”

So grudging, and so petty. Megaera, please.

In San Diego, there’s a woman who worked for almost ten years at the Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church in San Diego, CA. She was initially hired as a youth pastor, and later was promoted to Minister of Missions and Serving. But in March of this year, the church called a new Pastor to lead the congregation.

The new pastor, from Texas, pretty much immediately started sexually harassing her. I won’t go into detail, you’ve heard it all before; women who read this have experienced it all before. Except the one comment where he compared his body to a “Lamborghini that couldn’t be kept in the garage.”

OK, the comments on this story are priceless. They have compared his body to everything from a “beat-up Fiat” to, at best, a “Buick.” Everyone agrees the comparison to a Lamborghini is outrageous. However, whatever it is compared to, it is not the job of the Minister of Missions to take it out of the garage and ride with it.

But the congregation must have thought otherwise. She was first placed on administrative leave and then forced to resign. I think her attorney puts it well:

“Like many of my female clients, Minister Neldon is working in a male-dominated industry that, in many way, is no different than other employers who simply refuse to accept that discrimination is illegal in America,” said Neldon’s attorney Dan Gilleon. “It’s a shame. You’d think a business that claims moral superiority would behave better. Minister Neldon will pay a price for speaking out, as is the case for many women who blow the whistle. But, true to her word, my client is thinking of the other women out there who might benefit once it finally sinks in for employers that civil rights will be enforced in the courtroom.”

I’ve lately been emcouraging as many people as I can to read an article on how, for right wing “Christians,” a hierarchy serves them in lieu of a moral code. This story fits right in to that. And it’s, if not as old as time, certainly as old as human history. Alecto, at the very least perhaps you can give attorney Gilleon some much needed moral support.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 here.

Everyday Erinyes #86

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 9:21 am Politics

Aug 052017

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. Even though there are many more which I can’t include. 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 just have two items this week (I am not immune from getting distracted any more than anyone else), and this first one is almost too small to call in Furies – except that, if you substitute the word “petty” for the word “small,” you’ll see why it gets under the skin.

Cynthia Coleman, who lives in Georgia, is legally blind, and needs a service dog to get around. She was looking for a new church, so she called around ahead of time to see whether churches she was considering could accomodate her service animal. She thought she had found one (and I would have no qualms about doxing it, but its name isn’t in the story, and Google was not my friend on this), which told her essentially “Sure” over the phone, and attended the next Sunday.

Because of her visual issues, if she is to see the pastor, she must sit in the very front of the church. Which she did. However, after some minutes, she was approached by four or five deacons in what she felt was an aggressive manner. They insisted she move to the back of the church because her dog, Hook, MIGHT become agitated and disrupt the service (like maybe pee on a state of Jesus?)

Coleman is more gracious about this than I might be.

Although their complaint is fair, Coleman believes they should have handled it with a completely different approach.

“Had they said, ‘We don’t know how this works; can you help us?’ It would have been a different situation, but they treated us as though we were the leper in the church, and I just didn’t appreciate it,” she said.

Knowing how well and thoroughly trained service animals (which I thought everyone knew, or SHOULD know), especially seeing-eye dogs, who were the first in the profession, I don’t think the complaint is fair. And her suggestion of how they might have handled it should have been done, but on the phone beforehand, in my opinion.

I don’t know for sure if her crime was being blind while black, or just being blind, since I don’t know about the church. Nevertheless,

The local news reports didn’t include the name of the church and there is technically nothing illegal about forcing a disabled person to sit in a specific spot. Churches are also exempt from anti-discrimination laws. So, it would be entirely legal if they banned her or anyone else from the church for being blind and having a service dog. This is how churches were able to ban LGBT people in the wake of the same-sex marriage debate.

Megaera, perhaps you can find out more.

The other story which got under my skin this week is about something which pretty generally gets under my skin whenever I encounter it – “eminent domain.”

If you have not yet discovered that Richard (“R. J.”) Eskow can REALLY, REALLY WRITE, I earnestly encourage you to read his take on this story from northern Virginia, where, to make a long story short, Dominion Virginia Power is doing its best to use eminent domain to take away the land and homes of a community of people of color who have owned this land in their family since their ancestor, Livinia Blackburn Johnson, purchsed it in 1899 under the 1866 federal law which allowed people of color to own property.

Virginia’s State Corporation Commission greenlighted Dominion in late June to seize land to make room to install multiple 100-foot-high towers which will carry 230,000 volt power lines, which will power a new computer data center, which in turn will serve primarily amazon dot com.

Set in a remote area off Lee Highway, the Carver Road neighborhood became the chosen route by default, after other options were either deemed too costly or torpedoed by opposition from local homeowners associations.

Now, those local homeowners associations which “torpedoed” other routes are in wealthy neighborhoods built largely on land bought by Disney in the 1990’s in order to build a Civil War theme park, which itself got torpedoed by common decency. I did say this is a long story, and clearly it is also a convoluted story, but it boils down to, after all the other land in the area was taken by the wealthy, there is only this one vulnerable neighborhood left, belonging to the descendants of people who were historically screwed, and who seem to have inherited being screwed right along with the land.

I thought I saw a petition opposing this land grab earlier this week, but I cannot now find it. If anyone else sees it, please post a link in a comment. And I am not going to try to out-write Richard Eskow, which I doubt can be done by anyone, but certainly not by me. I hope my readers will have the time to check out his full article. Certainly Tisiphone and Alecto will need to read it all before charging in.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 here.

Pithy Progressive #8

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:14 pm Politics

Aug 012017

Back in the day when Democrats could actually run as Democrats, we never had to ask questions like the ones we are looking at today: How can we get Democrats elected to offices since a Teflon President has apparently passed on that mantle (now usually referred to as IOKIYAR) to an entire guilty party, for whom people CONTINUE TO VOTE?

Sarah Smith is one of the new group called Justice Democrats. Of course there is nothing new about them, but the group is new. It’s handy in that the candidates come pre-vetted, so to speak. Sarah is running to represent Washington’s 9th Congressional District. Here are her own words:

I am the middle of three daughters, born to hardworking, compassionate parents who sacrificed everything for us to have a good life. My dad grew up as part of the Greatest Generation in London, collecting metal scraps from bombed out buildings in order to survive. My mom grew up in a crowded apartment in Eastchester, NY. They both knew what it was like to come from nothing and taught my siblings and I that anyone can overcome the circumstances of their birth with hard work and opportunity.

Unfortunately, we were hit hard by the Great Recession. My dad was forced to retire and to sell our family’s home. My close, loving family split in different directions to survive. I was working my way through college, staring down vanishing job opportunities and mounting student debt. This was the future awaiting me? It was a harsh lesson that you can’t always pull yourself ahead through hard work alone. I was lucky enough to have friends who were able to put a roof over my head when things got especially difficult.

But when the going gets tough, I’ve found I just get tougher. Steeled by my father’s strong ethical compass and firm sense of integrity, and with the encouragement of my entire family, I pursued my college education in hopes that I could change my circumstances.

Like so many in the 9th, I’m a middle class working woman and wife, living in Kent, trying to keep up with a mortgage payment and student loan bills. I’ve worked any job I could to keep that roof over my head today. I’ve been a foreclosure specialist, a paralegal and a liability negotiator. Today I work full-time as an administrative coordinator for a small business.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been socially, if not politically, engaged. I’ve marched, donated, served and organized for Planned Parenthood, the World Wildlife Fund and the Humane Society. Through the years I’ve worked with refugees, Indian-Americans, young girls and feminist groups.

Working families like ours have lived on the edge of disaster for a long time. Yet despite all the times Congress has threatened the social safety net that helps people get their lives back on track, the net was always there. There were holes in that net, to be sure. That’s why I’ve helped coordinate food drives to aid families impacted by program cuts. But the net was still there. That all seemed to change November 8th, 2016. The 115th Congress is more hostile to the needs of working families than I’ve seen in my lifetime. It was, for me, an awakening, and I knew it was time to abandon my armchair liberalism and get involved.

I started attending marches and rallies, signed up to be a Planned Parenthood Defender, and began attending local Neighborhood Action Coalition meetings. I got involved with my local legislative district and became a precinct committee officer so I could be closer to the action and get more people engaged on the local level. Brand New Congress put out a call to action, looking for citizens to run for Congress, and someone in my community nominated me.

The importance of doing the right thing and standing up for our values was drilled into me my entire life. I felt those values calling me to serve as I’d never served before, and I embraced it. I’m running for Congress because I believe it’s time for regular people to be represented by regular people. Congress can only serve America when it stands as a true reflection of Americans — the full spectrum of our society.

Washington’s 9th district needs someone who can represent this community of loud, resistant, social justice-oriented constituents. I am ready to continue the fight for social and economic change.

Our district is home to Boeing, Microsoft, and Amazon — some of the most innovative industry happening in our country today. There is no reason the people of the 9th couldn’t shift that creative intelligence to new industries. I want to see the 9th become a leader in manufacturing solar equipment to drive the Green Energy revolution. I’m going to fight for federal grants to upgrade our infrastructure to support our modern society, creating jobs that will balance the income disparity for people who lack the skills to work in aerospace engineering or tech.

Like so many Americans, I have long felt frustrated and disenfranchised, believing Congress cares more about the financial health of giant, multinational corporations than working people like us and our ability to survive economically. I’m running to create a Brand New Congress that works for real people living real lives. Together, I believe we can take responsibility for our community with compassion and invest in our futures together.

You can find Sarah and other Justice Democrats at justicedemocrats dot com. I expect to be featuring others.

Cross posted to Care2 here.

Everyday Erinyes #85

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 8:45 am Politics

Jul 292017

Before I start this week, I want to reemphasize that for many of us, maintaining outrage is a way to stay energized. But there are other ways. I realize not everyone who reads this is Christian, but I think we can agree both that many activists are Christian, and that Christan activists are a big part of the solution. Besides that, techniques for hanging on to mental health are often non-religion-specific, and even if they are presented as such, they are almost always adaptable. Sojourners this week had an article which referenced two older articles on staying strong which don’t require outrage.: The Activist’s Guide to Contemplation and Sustaining the Daily Grind of Activism. Might be worth a look.

I almost didn’t bother with this story. The report of a teenager (or any age, really) receiving law enforcement attention while doing something that would not receive such attention if done by a white has become so daily now. But the more I read, even as it became seemingly LESS conclusive, the more troubling I found it.

So it starts, from the officer’s viewpoint (and apparently he is an officer, although he looks more to many viewers like a retiree working part time security), with a call to the station that someone is knocking on doors in the neighborhood, and then targeting homes whose doors were knocked on for burglary.

From the teen’s viewpoint, it starts while he and a crew of mostly family were working on a yard from a customer they had solicited door to door.

So the officer asks him what he’s doing. He says he and his crew are mowing the lawn. The officer says he’d seen him going door to door. He says, yes, he was looking for more yard work, and shows the officer his business cards from a stack from which he was handing them out. The officer asks him for ID. He says he doesn’t have any on him. The officer says something to the effect of “When an officer asks you for ID, you show ID.”

Um, no. There is no legal requirement for anyone to carry ID on his or her person. If you are driving, a driver’s license, yes, but that may be not on your person but somewhere in the vehicle. He had shown the officer, as I said, a business card. A business card needs to pretty well accurate if your customers are going to be able to find you. You may use a business name, but you still have to be findable.

So the teen asks the officer for identification. Well, that went over like crepitation in church. The order of events after that is not quite clear to me (I’m bad with videos), but handcuffs may have been brought out, the teen’s crew defended him (including words to the effect “you can’t do this just because he’s black,” and at one point he left and went home.

Later that day, the officer showed up at the teen’s home (which he apparently had no trouble finding, although he complained the teen had lied to him), and not alone (there were police cruisers up and down the street). There was also a K-9 four-legged officer, and a taser. The teen has said that both were used. The article in Rare has a photo of injuries which could have been caused by a K-9.

The police are defending their officer 100%. After all, the teen had LIED to him! About the spelling of his name! And about his age! Clutch them pearls! The thing is, as we have all been saying since Michael Brown or even earlier, none of the offenses they are alleging carries a death sentence, or a taser sentence, or a dog-bite sentence. And, had this teen been white, it’s hard to believe that the tasering or dog-bite would have occurred. Megaera, if you learn any new definitive details here, please keep us up to date. Otherwise, I’d have to go with @JayT584 who tweeted the photo of injuries and added “white cop wants to play ‘slave catcher'”

This next story might be good news were it not too little, too late.

On April 20, 2012, seven heavily armed Johnson County sheriff’s officers conducted an early morning raid on the house of Adlynn and Robert Harte based on vegetative samples found in the couple’s trash. It turns out those samples were tea leaves, and officers found a hydroponic tomato garden instead of marijuana.

The Hartes sued the county for $7 million on unlawful search-and-seizure claims, which a federal judge tossed after finding the officers were entitled to qualified immunity.

On Tuesday, however, a three-judge 10th Circuit panel disagreed – and Circuit Judge Carlos Lucero offered a sarcastic summary in the ruling of the mistakes made by the officers.

“Law-abiding tea drinkers and gardeners beware: One visit to a garden store and some loose tea leaves in your trash may subject you to an early morning, SWAT-style raid, complete with battering ram, bulletproof vests, and assault rifles,” Lucero wrote. “Perhaps the officers will intentionally conduct the terrifying raid while your children are home, and keep the entire family under armed guard for 2 ½ hours while concerned residents of your quiet, family-oriented neighborhood wonder what nefarious crime you have committed. This is neither hyperbole nor metaphor – it is precisely what happened to the Harte family in the case before us on appeal.”

I am tickled to be able to say I know this judge – I knew him when he was a lawyer (That’s him above, with his wife Dottie). He always did have this kind of sense of humor, but he seems to have refined it putting decisions into writing. Had I known he would get to the point of being this smart – and this witty – I would have backed him when he was running for Senate. But maybe Federal Circuit Court judge is even better. It’s non-political and has lifetime tenure.

But, Tisiphone, you really must do something about the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department.
And stop laughing. It really is serious.

As sad as this next story is, I think it is not only a good idea, but should be emulated by all fifty states and seven (I think it is) territories, including the District, and I am asking Alecto to work on that.

Arizona Driver’s Manual Now Includes How to Avoid Being Shot by Police

The “Reader’s Digest version” here is that state leaders surveyed a cross section of drivers about what they would do if stopped by a traffic officers, then surveyed Arizona Police Departments about what a driver should do if stopped. Neither the drivers nor the officers had consistent answers, even among their own group.

Realizing that confusion exists on both sides about appropriate behavior during a traffic stop, [Democratic State Rep. Reginald] Bolding and his colleagues believed it was time to update the state’s driver manual.

The new guidelines are in the article, but there is a lot more about the facts that (1) even following the guidelines perfectly would not prevent all fatalities. Philando Castile did so, and we all know how that turned out. And, (2) isn’t it sad that we need to teach motorists to “bend over backwards” in order not to be killed in error by an officer of the law. To that, I say, it’s good to have consistent guidelines, which, even if they don’t save every life, will put survivors who can demonstrate compliance by their loved one in a better position to claim abuse and press their cases.

While Law Enforcement Officers have been far from perfect, and there are major issues with their hiring and training, as well as with the propensity of Law Enforcement to protect their own even when wrong, nevertheless, as long as we have our insane gun laws, to that a police officer can literally have NO idea whether someone they are approaching is armed or not, it’s not unreasonable for them to be jumpy.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 here.

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