Happy July 4th?

Civics, General, Social Justice,

The United States’ Independence Day is here, but I feel cautious about it.

Why?

Because in less than a year, we’ve had a presidential election which the losing former president continues to rant and rave about as a stolen election – and what everyone else except his followers regard as The Big Lie; we’ve witnessed the 2020 election followed by string of failed court cases to contest the election as well as ongoing bogus “audits” of multiple states’ ballots; we’ve survived a horrific insurrection on United States committed by followers of the former Dear Leader – incited by no less than him.

And according to the Brennan Center for Justice, state lawmakers have enacted nearly 30 laws since the 2020 election that restrict ballot access, according to their new tally as of June 21st.

More than half of these new laws make it harder to vote absentee and by mail, after a record number of Americans voted by mail in November.

The Brennan Center for Justice reports that by May 14, 2021, legislators introduced 389 bills with restrictive provisions in 48 states. Twenty-two bills with restrictive provisions have already been enacted. In addition, at least 61 bills with restrictive provisions in 18 states are moving through legislatures: 31 have passed at least one chamber, while another 30 have had some sort of committee action (e.g., a hearing, an amendment, or a committee vote).

Morever, on July 1st, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld voting restrictions in Arizona and signaled that challenges to new state laws making it harder to vote would face a hostile reception from a majority of the justices.

On a brighter note, the next day, July 2nd, the New Hampshire Supreme Court struck down a 2017 state law crafted by Republicans that implemented new requirements for same-day voter registration that critics say made it more difficult for college students to vote.

In a unanimous 4-0 decision, the state Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling from last year that found the law, known as Senate Bill 3, violated New Hampshire’s constitution “because it unreasonably burdens the right to vote.”

The state Supreme Court said that the law “must be stricken in its entirety.”

Yippee!

Yet Georgia and Texas have already passed severely restrictive laws, some of which I discussed in detail in my March 1st post. I think it’s worth pointing out again that multiple news sources report that various state lawmakers have argued that these restrictive measures are necessary because, “the public has lost confidence in our election system,” but they refuse to acknowledge the reason some voters believe elections are unfair. However, some of those same legislators spent months spreading disinformation about the integrity of the 2020 election.

I think it would be exquisite justice if these hundreds of laws boomerang back to these lawmakers in the fashion that New Hampshire’ Senate Bill 3 was by the state’s Supreme Court: “must be stricken in its entirety”. Even more so, if the public said “enough!” via the ballot box and sent these lawmakers home.

Meanwhile, Congressional Democrats had better use its majority power to pass the For The People Act, H.R.1/S.1, which sets national minimum standards for our elections based on bipartisan best practices, ensuring that Americans’ ability to access the ballot isn’t dependent on which state they live in. The Act also aims to set up automatic voter registration, expand early voting, ensure more transparency in political donations and limit partisan drawing of congressional districts, among other provisions.

It apparently is something too toxic for the GOP, as demonstrated recently: they filibustered a vote in the Senate to start debate on it, in June. They didn’t even want to talk about it! Cowards.

Congressional Democrats must do the same for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, H.R. 4. which would revitalize the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to defend against racial discrimination in our elections.

And the president must not leave office without having signed these bills. I requested that of him in a letter I sent by post this week.

When those bills are passed and President Biden signs them, THAT will definitely be something to celebrate!

Pooh on the naysayers and cynics! They can take a take a trip to the nearest toxic waste dump and deposit their poison there. Or go move to the country of their favorite authoritarian regime, since they seem to despise democracy so much with their willful and deafening silence on the 1/6 Insurrection and their stifling, voting rights laws.

Who in their right mind would want to celebrate that?

Sources

The New York Times
The Texas Tribune
CNN
Brennan Center for Justice at New York University
Wikipedia – Voter Suppression
CNBC
Campaign Legal Center – The Bipartisan Origins &Impact of the For the People Act (H.R. 1/S 1)
Campaign Legal Center
Human Rights Campaign

Happy, Happy Juneteenth National Independence Day!

Civics, General, Social Justice, Women,

Can you believe it: Juneteenth (June 19th) – is finally a national holiday – a nationwide holiday commemorating the end of slavery?! Yay! Officially it is called Juneteenth National Independence Day and historically known as Jubilee Day, Black Independence Day, and Emancipation Day.

On Thursday, June 17th, 2021, President Joe Biden signed a bill that was passed by Congress to set aside Juneteenth, or June 19th, as a federal holiday. “I hope this is the beginning of a change in the way we deal with one another,” he said.

The Senate approved the bill unanimously; however, 14 House Republicans — many representing states that were part of the slave-holding Confederacy in the 19th century — opposed the measure. Fourteen white male Republicans.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation declared “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states (that had seceded from the United States) “are, and henceforward shall be free” on January 1st,1863, it could not be enforced in many places until after the end of the Civil War in 1865. Places like Galveston, Texas, where slaves didn’t get word of their official emanicpation until a certain Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger and his troops arrived at Galveston on June 19, 1865, with news that the war had ended and proclaiming freedom for slaves in Texas. That was more than two months after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia.

The following year, the now-free people started celebrating Juneteenth in Galveston. Its observance has continued around the nation and the world since. It is celebrated with concerts, parades and readings of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Now the rest of America has (officially) caught up. ‘Bout time!

Well, 14 House Republicans might still be living in the 19th century. Why didn’t they support the bill to make Juneteenth a national holiday?

Here’s a sampling of their mindset:

“We have enough federal holidays right now. I just don’t see the reason in doing it,” he said. “I don’t think it rises to the level I’m going to support it.”
– Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas

“Let’s call an ace an ace. This is an effort by the Left to create a day out of whole cloth to celebrate identity politics as part of its larger efforts to make Critical Race Theory the reigning ideology of our country. Since I believe in treating everyone equally, regardless of race, and that we should be focused on what unites us rather than our differences, I will vote no.”
– Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Montana

“I don’t believe it’s healthy to reach into the dead past, revive its most malevolent conflicts and reintroduce them into our age,”
– Rep. Tom McClintock, R-California

“Juneteenth should be commemorated as the expression of the realization of the end of slavery in the United States – and I commend those who worked for its passage. I could not vote for this bill, however, because the holiday should not be called ‘Juneteenth National Independence Day’ but rather, ‘Juneteenth National Emancipation (or Freedom or otherwise) Day.’  This name needlessly divides our nation on a matter that should instead bring us together by creating a separate Independence Day based on the color of one’s skin.”
– Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas

And Tom Tiffany, R-Wisconsin, told a tv station that House Democrats had “used their majority to balkanize our country and fuel separatism by creating a race-based ‘Independence Day.’”

Oh, for fuck’s sake! Get over your yourselves!

Race-based ‘Independence Day’?! No comment.

“We have enough federal holidays” – how much is too much, Rep. Jackson? How does Juneteenth not rise to your level, sir? WHAT is your level? Celebrating the end of slavery in America isn’t worth having an official day to remember?

“It’s not healthy to reach into the dead past”, Rep. McClintock? Is it healthier to keep your mind narrow and closed? Is it healthier to sweep the ugly and painful aspects of our history under the rug than to address and acknowledge past wrongs?

This isn’t about YOU.

Pooh on you!

You could learn a thing or two from Ms. Opal Lee, the 94-year-old activist from Fort Worth, Texas, who is oft-referred to as the “Grandmother of Juneteenth”. At age 89, Lee was determined to walk 1,400 miles from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington D.C. in an effort to create the holiday (she logged 300 miles) and spent years focused on this effort. She told a story to an online audience hosted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, that highlighted how far the nation has come, even as recent months have illustrated how far it still has to go on rights and inclusion.

When she was a child growing up in Texas – a week after nine-year-old Lee moved with her family to an all-White neighborhood – an all-white mob of about 500 surrounded the house, prompting her mother to send Lee to stay with friends. When her father showed up with a gun to protect his home, a local police officer said, in Lee’s telling to the online audience, “If you bust a cap, we’ll let the mob have you.”

Her parents slipped away when it got dark, and the mob tore the house apart and burned it, she said.

The date of the attack was Juneteenth.

“If those people had allowed us to stay in that community, they would have found that we were just like them. All we wanted was a decent place to stay, and my father had a job. My mom was working two,” said Lee. “That was all we wanted. We would have been good neighbors, but they didn’t give us the opportunity to show them that.”

Do those 14 people who voted NO on the bill to make Juneteenth a national holiday even have the slightest clue of the hate and pain that Opal Lee and her family had to endure for decades? Do they give a rat’s ass?

Ms. Lee’s determination and passion to make Juneteenth a holiday is incredibly inspiring to me and so many others. As a former educator whose job involved social work, Lee now strives to ensure future generations know about Juneteenth. She authored a children’s book entitled, “Juneteenth: A Children’s Story” (which I just now learned as I am writing and researching this post).

Lee told her online audience that what’s important is to continue to seek equality and push back when fairness and equality are denied, as with the recent spate of legislation to restrict voting rights and bar some public school teaching on racism:

“We are going to soldier on. We are not going to let those kinds of things stop us from getting over to our children what they need to know.”

Days before she witnessed Congress pass a bill to make Juneteenth a nationwide holiday commemorating the end of slavery, she told CNN:

“I’m not just going to sit and rock, you know?”

Hear hear!

Sources

PBS
CNBC
National Archives
Wikipedia – Emancipation Proclamation
Crosscut
Mvorganizing.org
NPR
USA Today – Juneteenth 2021 celebrations: What to know about the holiday
Wikipedia – Juneteenth
CNN
The Harvard Gazette
MSN
USA Today – Who are the 14 House Republicans who voted against a Juneteenth holiday? And why?
The New York Times

Get the Hell OUT of Women’s Wombs, Uncle Sam

Civics, General, Women,

This headline caught my attention the other day:

Texas high school valedictorian scraps approved speech — and speaks out on new anti-abortion law

On May 30th, 2021, at Lake Highlands High School’s graduation in Dallas, TX, Paxton Smith scrapped her valedictory address – which had been approved by school officials – and told her audience it felt wrong to her “to talk about anything but what is currently affecting me and millions of other women in this state.”

She said:

I have dreams, hopes, and ambitions. Every girl here does. We have spent our whole lives working towards our futures, and without our consent or input, our control over our futures has been stripped away from us. I am terrified that if my contraceptives fail me, that if I’m raped, then my hopes and efforts and dreams for myself will no longer be relevant. I hope you can feel how gut-wrenching it is, how dehumanizing it is, to have the autonomy over your own body taken from you.”

WOW!

Ms. Smith has got guts. And a strong sense of self-confidence, to scrap her school official-approved speech and instead speak publicly and passionately about women’s reproductive health and how the new anti-abortion law signed by her governor could affect her and millions of other women.

The Texas law – one of the nation’s strictist abortion measures – outlaws ending a pregnancy as early as six weeks, before many women are even aware they are pregnant, and after a “fetal heartbeat” has been detected. It includes cases where the woman was impregnated as a result of rape or incest. There is an exception for medical emergencies.

Similar “heartbeat” bills have been passed by other states and held up by the courts, but Texas’ version has a twist, notes the Texas Tribune.

Instead of having the government enforce the law, the bill turns the reins over to private citizens — who are newly empowered to sue abortion providers or anyone who helps someone get an abortion after a fetal heartbeat has been detected. The person would not have to be connected to someone who had an abortion or to a provider to sue.

WTF?!

It is yet another so-called “fetal heartbeat” measure, which medical experts say is a scientifically misleading phrase. Why?

Because pulsing cells can be detected in embryos as early as six weeks, this rhythm — detected by a doctor, via ultrasound — cannot be called a “heartbeat,” because embryos don’t have hearts.

Obstetricians say the term “fetal heartbeat” is misleading, and that this scientific misunderstanding, among countless others, may contribute to negative public opinion toward abortion, reports The Cut.

Robyn Schickler, OB/GYN and Physicians for Reproductive Health fellow explained to The Cut that what is detectable at or around six weeks can more accurately be called “cardiac activity”. She and others argue that what doctors can detect is essentially communication between a group of what will eventually become cardiac cells.

Jennifer Kerns, an OB/GYN and professor at the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF), added:

These are cells that are programmed with electrical activity, which will eventually control the heart rate — they send a signal telling the heart to contract, once there is a heart. It is this early activity which ultrasounds detect — not a heartbeat.

Electrical activity from a cluster of pulsing CELLS. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, you anti-choice, anti-science lawmakers!

Nationally, according to a report the Planned Parenthood Federation of America released in March 2021, legislation limiting abortion in 2021 has skyrocketed in comparison to a similar time frame in 2019. Compared to bills introduced from January through mid-March 2019, medication abortion restrictions and bans have tripled to 33, anti-abortion constitutional amendments have tripled to 14. Compared to just one abortion restriction enacted by this point in 2019, 12 have been enacted so far this year by states.

Overall, state legislatures have introduced 516 abortion restrictions, compared to 304 by mid-March 2019.

Why are politicians so hell-bent on policing women’s bodies?

Mr. or Ms. Politician, you’re not being “pro-life” when you consider only the fetus, not giving a flying fig about a pregnant woman’s life and moreover cutting social safety net services like SNAP and Medicaid. You’re just reducing the woman to a mere baby vessel. “Pro-birth” is more accurate, I think.

Would you, Mr. or Ms. Politician, savor the idea of having the government intrude on your private doctor visits? Of course not! Only if it involves someone else, right? (like someone female, and especially someone female and a minority?) You like government so small it can fit into a woman’s womb?

Get the hell OUT of my and other women’s wombs. You don’t belong there. What’s next? A government minder in the room during an exam of your wife/mother/sister/friend because you don’t trust the women in your life or her doctor?

How would you feel if politicians wanted to intrude on you or your husband/father/brother/friend’s doctor-patient relationship in some way – such as a law dictating a doctor had to report to the state when a man has a vasectomy – including reporting if the man refused to do so if forced by the state; and also a law wherein a doctor has to report each time a patient is prescribed erectile dysfunction medication or testoserone and testosterone-enhancing drugs? Or a law rebooted from the not-too-distant-past that essentially says you need sterilization because of who you are, e.g., a minority, a low-income earner, someone with a criminal record, etc.?

Would you not dread the state knowing about your or your loved one’s junk business?

Politicians wouldn’t care at all about your junk or that of the men in your family any more than they care about pregnant women’s lives, regardless of their circumstances. Privacy and respect be damned! You’re just another sperm bank or baby vessel who needs oversight from unseen, holier-than-thou lawmakers who don’t trust you to think for yourself, let alone believe you deserve the freedom to have bodily autonomy!

I hope millions upon millions of women will take inspiration from young Paxton Smith and mobilize against these intrusive, restrictive, and dehumanizing laws against women.

I hope that her generation will become an undeniable force to be reckoned with in making these sorts of laws completely unacceptable, disgusting, and horrific to society – making anti-choice measures ancient history – a notion dreamed up by barbarian minds consumed with controlling women’s bodies and their lives.

And I fervently hope that Ms. Smith’s generation – of all genders – will be the one that permanently and legally enables all women – here in the USA and around the globe, to live freely without fear of government interference into their private health matters forevermore. That would be an incredible achievement to materialize in my lifetime.

I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.

~Sister Joan Chittister, Benedictine nun, 2004

Sources

Alternet
Common Dreams
HuffPost
Popsugar
Berkeley Political Review
ThoughtCo.
Mic.com
PBS
Texas Tribune
NPR
Planned Parenthood
Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF)
The Cut
Wired

Stand Up for Journalists, Whistleblowers, and Peaceful Protestors Who Hold Those in Power Accountable

Civics, General, Media, Social Justice, , ,

Do you know about the press freedom violations that have occurred in the past year?

In a year’s time span – from May 26, 2020 (the day after George Floyd’s murder by a police officer, Derek Chauvin, to Chauvin’s conviction on April 20, 2021, where he was found guilty of second and third degree murder and second degree manslaughter by a jury.

Freedom of the Press Foundation’s project, U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, reports that press freedom violations were reported across 36 states and more than 80 cities. In that time, an average of 1.6 assaults of journalists occurred per day. The majority of the assaults documented — more than 85% — were by law enforcement.

Specifically, that’s 580 assaults of journalists. 153 arrests or detainments. 112 reports of equipment damaged in the field.

Here’s the article:

Between the bookends: 1 year of press freedom violations

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Perhaps the Founding Fathers ought to have added a few words about police not having the right to beat the crap out of journalists and detaining or arresting them for reporting on people peaceably assembling – especially when they assemble to protest police brutality?

Virginia was the first state to formally protect the press. The 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights stated, “The freedom of the Press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic Governments.”

Do we have a despotic government, regardless of who is in charge? I’m not talking about just the federal government, but also state and local governments.

The rough manhandling and other abuses against journalists – as well as whistleblowers and peaceful protestors – by law enforcement over the decades, have sometimes made me wonder about government being despotic. That thought has been magnified in the past several years by our preceding president who was (and still is) allergic to being held accountable and who reveled in publicly bullying and belittling journalists.

You’d think publicly bullying and belittling journalists (and in some cases, detaining or arresting them) were the hallmarks of dictators in faraway lands, not of presidents in America!

What a fucking insult to the U.S. Constitution and to those who have the courage to report on corruption and injustices in our society.

Notice the photo in the link: it shows a freelance journalist glancing back as a police line advances in Minneapolis’ Fifth Precinct on May 30, 2020 – shortly before police pushed him over a wall.

Stand up for journalists, whistleblowers, and peaceful protestors who work tirelessly for the public good – to hold those in power to account for their abuses.

Sources

U.S. Press Freedom Tracker
National Constitution Center
History.com

A Bit of Dirty Laundry on Ethnic Cleansing

General, Social Justice, ,

Can you imagine a stranger coming to your home that your family lived in for generations and the stranger squats right there in your abode, as if it were their home all along, waiting for you to pack up and leave because the state gave him or her the right to do so? A government that has unfailingly discriminated against you and your people of a certain ethnicity, race, or religion for generations?

Who could be so cruel?

People who don’t like another group of people. And willing to use violence if need be.

I can NOT even fathom such a scenario of being forced from my home for no other reason than because of who I am, what I look like, or what I believe (or don’t believe). But it has been the painful reality for too many around the globe. For centuries.

It’s called ethnic cleansing.

Political leaders have long made up excuses to “soften” their actions toward those they oppress – like expelling people as a supposed “punishment” for war crimes, although though the ones being displaced are only “guilty” for being of the same ethnic background as the actual persons who committed crimes against humanity – as was done in December 1944 when Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced to a startled House of Commons that the Allies had decided to carry out the largest forced population transfer – what is nowadays referred to as “ethnic cleansing”, in human history. Millions of civilians living in the eastern German provinces that were to be turned over to Poland after the war were to be driven out and deposited among the ruins of the former Reich, to fend for themselves as best they could.

What was planned, he forthrightly declared, was “the total expulsion of the Germans… For expulsion is the method which, so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting.”

Greed (or revenge) for land or other resources is another excuse, such as in 146 B.C. during the Battle of Carthage the Romans broke through the city wall of Carthage – now modern day Tunisia – the city was leveled and after its citizens surrendered, they were sold into slavery. And the land surrounding Carthage was eventually declared ager publicus (public land), and it was shared between local farmers, and Roman and Italian ones.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

But at the end of the day, a primary objective was and still is to get rid of a group of people.

According to Wikipedia:

Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal or extermination of ethnic, racial and/or religious groups from a given area, often with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal (deportation, population transfer), it also includes indirect methods aimed at coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction.

Although many instances of ethnic cleansing have occurred throughout history, the term was first used by the perpetrators as a euphemism during the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s. Since then it has gained widespread acceptance due to journalism and the media’s heightened use of the term in its generic meaning.

The Final Report of the Commission of Experts established pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 defined ethnic cleansing as “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas”.

The official United Nations definition of ethnic cleansing is “rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove from a given area persons of another ethnic or religious group”.

There are too many examples (unfortunately) of ethnic cleansing in human history to include here, but I’ll give you some glaring examples:

China

c. 350 AD: Ancient Chinese texts record that General Ran Min ordered the extermination of the Wu Hu, especially the Jie people, during the Wei–Jie war in the fourth century AD. The Wu Hu, or The Five Barbarians, refers to five ancient non-Han peoples who immigrated to northern China in the Eastern Han dynasty, and then overthrew the Western Jin dynasty and established their own kingdoms in the 4th–5th centuries.

People with racial characteristics such as high-bridged noses and bushy beards were killed; in total, 200,000 were reportedly massacred.

Europe

c. 1250–1500 AD: Many European countries expelled from their respective territories the Jews on at least 15 occasions. Spain was preceded by England, France and some German states, among many others, and succeeded by at least five more expulsions.

Nova Scotia

1755–1764: During the French and Indian War, the Nova Scotian colonial government, aided by New England troops, instituted a systematic removal of the French Catholic Acadian population of Nova Scotia – eventually removing thousands of settlers from the region and relocating them to areas in the Thirteen Colonies, Britain, and France. Many eventually moved and settled in Louisiana and became known as Cajuns. Many scholars have described the subsequent deaths of over 50% of the deported Acadian population as an ethnic cleansing.

United States of America

1830-1850: The Trail of Tears was part of a series of forced displacements of approximately 60,000 Native Americans by the United States government known as the Federal Indian Removal Act of 1830. Members of the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations (including thousands of their black slaves) were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to areas to the west of the Mississippi River that had been designated ‘Indian Territory’.

The forced relocations were carried out by government authorities after the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830 and signed by President Andrew Jackson.

The relocated peoples suffered from exposure, disease, and starvation while en route to their newly designated reserve. Thousands died before reaching their destinations or shortly after from disease.

Ottoman Empire

1894–1896: in an effort to Islamize the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Abdul Hamid II ordered the killing of ethnic Armenians (along with other Christian minorities) living in the Ottoman Empire, based on their religion. These killings later became known as the Hamidian massacres, named after Sultan Abdul Hamid II. It has been estimated that the total number of people killed ranges from 80,000 to 300,000.

Canada

You’re familiar with the horrific treatment of thousands of Japanese Americans by the United States government during WWII, yes? Forced from their homes and shipped to faraway concentration camps? Did you know that Canada not only did the same thing, but at the end of the war, they forced many of their own citizens back to Japan, a war-torn country that many of them had never even seen before?

After Canada declared war on Japan, Major General Ken Stuart stated, “From the Army point of view, I cannot see that Japanese Canadians constitute the slightest bit of menace to national security.” Sadly, his words didn’t matter at all, and by February 1942, orders were given to evacuate all Japanese Canadians and relocate them into what were deemed “protective areas.”

Just like their Japanese American counterparts, thousands of Japanese Canadians were given a matter of hours to collect what they could before being loaded onto trains and taken to ghost towns. With no running water or electricity, the ghost towns of British Columbia became holding centers for thousands of men, women, and children. About 20,800 people were moved, and of those, more than 13,000 were Canadian citizens who were born in the country. Their property was seized and much of it sold to finance the cost of moving them.

When the war ended, those who were moved to internment camps were given two choices, and neither was good. In order to prove their loyalty to their new nation (which was the only country that many had ever known), they were told that they needed to move to the eastern part of Canada. Those who didn’t want to leave their homes in British Columbia were given only one other choice – repatriation to Japan.

What a raw deal, to put it mildly.

Palestine

The 1948 Palestinian exodus occurred when more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs – about half of prewar Palestine’s Arab population – fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Palestine war.

The exodus was a central component of the fracturing, dispossession and displacement of Palestinian society, known as the Nakba (Arabic: al-Nakbah, literally “disaster”, “catastrophe”, or “cataclysm”) in which between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed and Palestinian history erased, and also refers to the wider period of war itself and the subsequent oppression up to the present day.

The precise number of refugees, many of whom settled in refugee camps in neighboring states, is a matter of dispute but around 80 percent of the Arab inhabitants of what became Israel (half of the Arab total of British-created Mandatory Palestine) left or were expelled from their homes. About 250,000–300,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled before the Israeli Declaration of Independence in May 1948, a fact which was named as a casus belli (“occasion for war” – an act or event that provokes or is used to justify war.) for the entry of the Arab League into the country, sparking the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

I regret to tell you that there are SO many more ethnic cleansing events throughout history to the present day. You may be aware of some of them, as I am, particularly the more notorious ones in during the 20th century, including the Turkish massacre of Armenians during World War I; the Nazis’ annihilation of some 6 million European Jews in the Holocaust; the forced displacement and mass killings carried out in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda during the 1990s.

But I didn’t know about the many lesser known ones and thought they were just as notable to share with you; however, I don’t want to overwhelm you with too much detail and historical facts, important as they are. But if you’ve read this far, you’ve got an idea of what horrors humans can inflict on one another.

Regarding Palestine, you’ve no doubt heard of the horrible conflict now raging between Israel and Palestine if you’ve been watching the news. What’s not being covered, at least on broadcast news as far as I can tell (even on liberal-leaning MSNBC), is what lies at reason for the confrontations: the likely Israeli takeover of Palestinian homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem.

This sort of thing between Israeli settlers and Palestinians has been going on for decades, but intensified yet again over the last weeks. The New York Times reports that since the start of the May, the prospect of the evictions has prompted daily protests, arrests, and confrontations between Palestinians and the Israeli police and Jewish extremists.

Tensions reached a peak at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound – Islam’s third holiest site – in Jerusalem on Friday night, May 7th, where police officers threw stun grenades and fired rubber-coated bullets as worshipers attempted to pray, and worshipers threw bottles and stones. Some of the stun grenades landed in the mosque. Injuries, deaths, and destruction continue as I write this.

To pour salt on the wound, the upsurge in violence came during the last week of Ramadan as Israel celebrated “Jerusalem Day“, marking its capture of East Jerusalem in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

I won’t attempt to describe the fear and pain felt by Palestinians threatened by the loss of the only homes they’ve known for generations, so I will just share the link to a video made by a Palestinian writer describing what is going on:

‘We are very scared’: Palestinian writer explains Israel’s ‘forced ethnic displacement’ in powerful clip

On Sunday, May 9th, the Israeli Supreme Court delayed a decision on whether to expel six Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem after the attorney general requested more time, in part because of the tensions the case has stirred. The court was to decide on Monday, May 10th, whether to uphold an expulsion order for the families in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, in a hearing that many feared would set off a wave of unrest.

Instead, the case has been delayed by up to 30 days to allow the attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, to review it. The Israeli government has argued that the Sheikh Jarrah case is a private real-estate dispute between the Palestinian families and a secretive Jewish settler group, which bought the land two decades ago on which the Palestinians’ homes were built in the 1950s.

This is the present day: The New York Times notes that for many Palestinians, the families’ plight has become emblematic of a wider effort to remove Palestinians from parts of East Jerusalem and of the past displacements of Arabs in the occupied territories and within Israel – the only home they’ve known for centuries.

Getting rid of people. Because of who they are. Threatened with losing their homes, their livelihoods (or worse), just as many of their forbears lost their homes over the past decades. Because for any number of reasons, one group of people feels they can and will dispose of another group of people.

It is the 21st century and we are still witnessing ethnic cleansing.

Let that sink in.

Sources

Alternet
Wikipedia – List of ethnic cleansing campaigns
Wikipedia – Ethnic Cleansing
History.com – Ethnic Cleansing
Wikipedia – Trail of Tears
History.com – Trail of Tears
Britannica
HuffPost
Listverse
The New York Times
Wikipedia – 1948 Palestinian exodus
MSN
AlJazeera

The Colors of Politics, Religion, and Oppression

General, Social Justice, ,

Ever since I was little, I’ve thought colors were important. Colors help identify things in nature; colors help us identify which clothing belongs to us in a family’s dirty laundry pile; colors help us identify different buildings when traveling or when going for a job interview and finding the right place; colors draw us to the arresting eyes or hair or complexion of people; colors help remind us of what foods we are consuming; colors help us remember which color to wear if we wish to support a protest.

We need color!

I cannot imagine not being able to see and revel in the infinite varieties that surround us throughout our lives; I’m aware of the good fortune of being able to appreciate colors, an ability that some lack.

I’m drawn to bright, bold hues such as those displayed by tulips and other springtime flowers as well as icy, sparkly gold and silver of year-end holiday festivities. I even like the blinding white of snow (as long as I’m not caught in a blizzard).

Colors can dictate your mood – at least it does for me. Wearing black reminds me of funerals; I’ve attended so many since the age of five. No color there, to my mind; a room painted in black conveys claustrophobia and darkness to me, nothing else. I know black looks good on some people, perhaps giving them the aura of sophistication or the illusion of looking slimmer. Black is not for me.

RED is for me. I LOVE red! Red is passionate. Red symbolizes love on Valentine’s Day. Red symbolizes good luck and happiness in Asian cultures and is worn by brides in some countries. That’s how I prefer to think about red.

Red symbolizes political ideologies, too. Communism. America’s Republican party – thanks largely to mass media since the 2000 U.S. presidential election.

Red also symbolizes Canada’s “liberal red”. In the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland, red is also the colour of the labor movement and the Labour (spelled Labor in Australia) parties in those countries. All major socialist and communist alliances and organizations have used red as their official color; red was chosen to represent the blood of the workers who died in the struggle against capitalism.

Red is on the flags of countless countries around the globe representing governments of all political stripes that ebb and flow with time. The oldest symbol of socialism (and by extension communism) is the Red Flag, which dates back to the French Revolution in the 18th century and the revolutions of 1848.

Before this nascence, the colour red was generally associated with monarchy or the Church due to the symbolism and association of Christ’s blood.

GREEN is my second-favorite color. Earthy. I love most shades of green! Except when vegetables are overcooked and then become a sickly shade of green-gray. Red and green…Christmas colors, that’s for me, though I’m not a big Christmas person.

Green is also on many countries’ flags. Brides in some countries wear green. There is a political party called the Green Party, which is in many countries, including the USA and often used by environmental groups. Green has sometimes also been linked to agrarian movements, such as the Populist Party, in the U.S. in the 1890s and the current-day Nordic Agrarian parties, as well as the National Party of Australia, a conservative party traditionally representing regional and agricultural interests. Irish Nationalist and Irish Republican movements have used the color green.

Green, considered the holy colour of Islam, is used to represent Islamism such as Hamas, Saudi Arabia and Islamist parties. Green is a color used for protest, such as the Iranian Green Movement (or Persian Spring) in 2009.

In most of Latin America, green is associated with pro-choice movements, the colour started being used in Argentina as a symbol of third wave feminism and abortion rights, with a green scarf as a symbol.

BLUE is also a popular color. Not my favorite color; I don’t ever want to live in a blue house or have a room in my home painted blue, no matter how pretty the shade. Yes, that’s how strongly I feel about blue! I don’t mind wearing blue jeans, though. You just won’t find a lot of blue in my wardrobe; it doesn’t have high priority when I choose what I want to wear. And I do enjoy a clear blue sky on a sunny day and can admire other people’s blue homes or rooms…I just don’t want to be part of it; it will make me FEEL blue to be surrounded in blue.

Blue symbolizes political ideologies as well. People associate it with their country’s flag. Or the police (in America). Or the Democratic party (USA) – though blue was used briefly by President Grover Cleveland and President Benjamin Harrison to represent the Republican Party in the late 1880s and and used by Texas for similar color-coding to assist its Spanish-speaking and illiterate citizens during that same time period. Blue is the color of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and British conservatives of the UK; “Tory blue” is associated with more right-wing, conservative political thought.

Globally, blue is used by left-leaning parties (Japan, South Africa, Belgium) and right-leaning parties (Romania, South Korea, Austria). In Brazil, both left and right like blue!

In the realm of religion, blue is of prime significance in Judaism.

In everyday life, blue can be the color of an ID card…which can translate into real world life and death situations if a person possesses one…or not.

To illustrate in stark terms the meaning of blue for many people in one part of the world, I share below an article with you by a Palestinian, Layal Hazboun, who writes of her father, who, like countless others, desired the blue ID card, which grants rights to Palestinians living in Israel.

These rights include having medical insurance, traveling via Israeli airports, and opening a bank account in Israel. But for a long while Hazboun’s father only had a green ID card.

According to Aljazeera’s The colour-coded Israeli ID system for Palestinians:

As Israel expanded its control and occupation over four territories in the aftermath of the Six Day War in 1967, it devised a system of population control that remains in place five decades later.

After the 1967 war, the Israeli military declared the occupied territories to be closed areas, making it mandatory for Palestinian residents to obtain permits to enter or leave. Palestinians who were abroad during that time missed out on the subsequent population census and were not granted identification papers.

The clear delineator that has separated and dictated the lives of these Palestinians is the colour-coded identification system issued by the Israeli military and reinforced in 1981 through its Civil Administration branch. Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip have green IDs – generally issued once they turn 16 – while Palestinians in East Jerusalem and Israel have blue IDs.

The cards affect everything from freedom of movement to family unity.

To me, the blue and green identification card system seems terribly complicated on the face of it. There seems to be many different layers of each card, depending on where one lives and what one needs it for. You can read more about this here and in the Aljazeera link above.

Read Layal Hazboun’s story, and learn how colors are used in the worst way: to dehumanize and divide Palestinians. In this light, blue and green symbolize suffering or limited freedom(s):

In Palestine, green and blue are more than colors

Is Israel’s decades-long use of the blue and green identification card system forced upon Palestinians much different than the Nazi leaders forcing Jews to wear the Jewish badge between 1939 and 1945?

In the parts of German-occupied Poland, Governor General Hans Frank ordered, on November 23, 1939, that all Jews over the age of ten wear a “Jewish Star”: a white armband affixed with a blue six-sided star, worn over the right upper sleeve of one’s outer garments. There were heavy penalties for those caught not wearing it.

Later, on September 1, 1941, Security Police Chief Reinhard Heydrich decreed that all Jews in the Reich six years of age or older were to wear a badge which consisted of a yellow Star of David on a black field to be worn on the chest, with the word “Jew” inscribed inside the star in German or in the local language of whichever region Germany had occupied.

On a historical note: over the course of more than ten centuries, Muslim caliphs, medieval bishops, and – eventually – Nazi leaders used an identifying badge to mark Jews. It’s horrible. Period.

The Nazis used the badge not only to stigmatize and humiliate Jews but also to segregate them and to watch and control their movements; so too has Israel forced Palestinians to have green or blue ID cards to control their movements and segregate them, which ultimately affects every aspect of their lives. For decades.

WHY has the world tolerated this for so long?

Just please remember: Palestinians are our fellow human beings and ought not to be ignored.

The naysayers who challenge Palestinians’ very existence and dignity deserve every criticism and pushback, particularly if they claim to be God-loving persons.

To my mind, I think you dehumanize yourself every time you dehumanize others – or support those who do.

I hope someday that Palestinians will not have to have their lives dictated by ID cards, no matter what color.

Sources

Harvard Gazette
Enchroma
We Are Not Numbers!
Wikipedia – Iranian Green Movement
HuffPost
Wikpedia – Green Party of the United States
Green Party US
Aljazeera
Palestinian Diary
United States Holocaust Museum
Metro UK
Learning in Palestine
Wikipedia – Political Colour
Color Combos

Impunity is Not an Option Here

General, Social Justice, , ,

Can you imagine how you would feel if a lunatic burst through the door of your workplace, accusing you and your coworkers of something you did not do, threatening you, and berating you with racially tinged words?

Last Tuesday, April 6, 2021, a 50-year-old woman identified as Sharon Williams by police, stormed into Good Choice for Nails Salon near Manhattan’s Chinatown, berating and threatening the workers. “You brought coronavirus to this country!” she yelled, according to police.

Then she went outside, continued her rampage, and spewed hateful remarks at an Asian pedestrian on the sidewalk.

When a male bystander intervened, she called him “a Chinese motherfucker,” according to police. But he wasn’t just any bystander: he was an undercover NYPD officer.

Hahahahahaha!! Serves you right, Ms. Williams.

The officer then called for backup, and Williams was arrested and charged with “harassment as a hate crime and aggravated harassment as a hate crime,” officials told the The Washington Post.

Sharon Williams may not have been armed with a lethal weapon, but her mouth spewed the sort of vitriol that has targed Asian Americans since the start of the pandemic. Sometimes resulting in physical harm – and death.

Data released by Stop AAPI [Asian American Pacific Islander] Hate showed that almost 3,800 incidents of anti-Asian hate were reported over the past year during the pandemic. The number only accounts for those reported, so the actual number of crimes is expected to be much higher. Additionally, of the 3,800 anti-hate incidents reported, 68% targeted women and over 500 occurred in 2021 alone, according to Stop AAPI Hate.

I wonder how Ms. Williams would feel if she were in a workplace where everyone looked like her and a lunatic burst through the door, spewing racist vitriol and accusing her and her coworkers of something she did not do nor had any control over?

Did she need her 15 minutes of fame?

Was Ms. Williams’ mind so embroiled in racist animosity toward Asian Americans that she just HAD TO give her piece of mind to anybody who appeared Asian – assuming perhaps that the people she harassed were Chinese just because she went to Chinatown? Did she assume that just because the virus supposedly started in China that every person she may perceive as Chinese is guilty? Did she think she’d get away with her very public racist harassment of people who don’t look like her?

Where the hell does she get her information about COVID-19 anyway? Has she drunk the former president’s racist rhetoric around the coronavirus referring to it as “kung flu” and “China virus”? (ethnicity is not a virus nor does a virus have an ethnicity, Ms. Williams!)

She isn’t someone I’d want to be in the presence of.

Last year, in an effort to stop the rise in attacks against Asian Americans, the NYPD created an 18-member Asian hate-crime task force. And last month NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea announced the department would increase its outreach to Asian communities and deploy plainclothes Asian American officers in Chinatown and other areas of the city with larger Asian American population. This announcement created immediate backlash from some reform advocates, who noted that the department had agreed last year to disband its plainclothes “anti-crime” units; those officers were involved in a disproportionate number of civilian complaints and shootings. However, this announcement sparked immediate backlash from some reform advocates, who noted that the department had agreed last year to disband its plainclothes “anti-crime” units that have long been involved in a disproportionate number of civilian complaints and shootings.

One critic, Joo-Hyun Kang, the director of Communities United for Police Reform, said the new initiative is “a toxic plan that’s being imposed on our communities for the NYPD’s public relations goals.”

She added,

The NYPD routinely protects white supremacy, has no track record of preventing hate violence in any community and in Asian communities regularly harasses and targets elders who collect bottles and cans, delivery workers, sex workers, youth and others.

Apparently, no plainclothes Asian American officer was present when an Asian-American man was attacked in Central Park in broad daylight while walking through the park with his wife and five-year-old son…likely because it isn’t an area with a heavily concentrated Asian American population. The attack reportedly took place around 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, March 27.

The assailant allegedly started whispering something in the man’s wife’s ear that was sexual in nature; when the Asian American man tried to reason with the attacker, he got sucker punched. His injuries were serious enough to land him in nearby Mount Sinai Hospital.

That attacker is still on the loose.

I lost count long ago of how many stupid racist comments, dirty looks, and harrassments I’ve received over the years and to the present day because of who I am and what I look like. I can only count ONE time (thankfully) when my life was threatened for that reason. So when I learn about people who are attacked (or worse) for who they are – especially those with whom I identify ethnically and culturally, it pains me. It makes me sad and it makes my blood boil.

Reading details about racist attacks on people is sometimes visceral for me because it brings back unpleasant memories which are all too relatable. I can empathize with them. And it can be news I don’t want to think about too much because it’s too close for comfort – I imagine the victim could have been one of my family members.

I’d likely be fit to be tied if that were to happen, which I hope it never will, of course.

I shall keep writing about this as long as anti-Asian hate crimes keep happening. Name the perpetrators and name their crimes. Why remain silent and sweep their misdeeds under the carpet?

This is not the 19th century, when the perpetrators of one of the worst mass lynchings in U.S. history in Los Angeles’ Chinatown in 1871 literally got away with murder. Nineteen Chinese immigrants were killed, 15 of whom were hanged by the mob in the course of the riot. According to the first Associated Press account, the mob consisted of at least 500 people, or 8 percent of the city’s population.

Authorities arrested and tried 10 people. Eight were convicted of manslaughter and sent to San Quentin prison. Their convictions were overturned on appeal due to a legal technicality.

So yes, the convicted got away with murder. Never mind the hundreds of other participants who committed goodness knows what else. The tragedy was quickly forgotten; the local newspapers made no mention of it in the year-end recap of major events of the year, according to the Los Angeles Public Library.

Go beyond Los Angeles to Rock Springs, Wyoming, where on September 2, 1885, 150 white miners in Rock Springs, Wyoming, brutally attacked their Chinese coworkers, killing 28, wounding 15 others, and driving several hundred more out of town. The massacre was defended in the local newspaper, and, to a lesser extent, in other western newspapers.

Or Seattle, Washington, where on February 6–9, 1886, anti-Chinese sentiment caused by intense labor competition – and in the context of an ongoing struggle between labor and capital – erupted in violence between the Knights of Labor rioters and federal troops ordered in by President Grover Cleveland. The incident resulted in the removal of over 200 Chinese civilians from Seattle and left two militia men and three rioters seriously injured. Congress paid $276,619.15 to the Chinese government in compensation for the rioting, but the actual victims never saw any such compensation. Though 13 men were tried in court in relation to the riot, not a single one was ever convicted of a crime.

Throughout the American West (and particularly in California) during the second half of the 19th century, countless Chinese immigrants were attacked: lynched, murdered, assaulted, and their homes and businesses were pillaged and burnt. No one was ever held accountable then.

So in this 21st century, whenever ignorant, hateful people choose to broadcast their racial animosity by harming others, let’s overwhelm them with bright sunshine for the whole world to see!

Impunity is not an option here.

I may have osteoporosis of the spine, but I’ll be damned if I become spineless about today’s anti-Asian hate crimes and other injustices by remaining silent. I hereby take this vow – to myself.

Sources

Daily Kos
Washington Post
Alternet.org
TMZ
Wikipedia – Anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States
History.com
Wikipedia – Rock Springs Massacre
Wikipedia – Seattle riot of 1886
Teaching Resources – University of Illinois
Today
Los Angeles Public Library
Orange County Register
China Underground
Wikipedia – Chinese massacre of 1871
LA Times – The racist massacre that killed 10% of L.A.’s Chinese population and brought shame to the city
My Central Oregon
LA Times – Column: Chinese immigrants helped build California, but they’ve been written out of its history
US Department of State – Office of the Historian
Wikipedia – History of Chinese Americans
Gothamist
Stop AAPI Hate

When Asian American Lives Don’t Matter

Social Justice, Women,

I have a story to tell you on this first day of April:

A 65-year-old Asian American woman fell on Monday, March 29, 2021, near Times Square in New York City because a man passed by in a hurry and accidentally knocked her over.

At least a few bystanders happened to witness her fall in the Heaven’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, according to police, who released the video in an appeal for help identifying the careless man.

The woman was headed to church when the man knocked her down. The witnesses – lobby staffers at the apartment building where the incident occurred outside its doors – stopped being bystanders and rushed out to help the woman. They sat her down in the lobby of the apartment building she was in front of, offered her tea. One even ran down the street to bring her flowers. They didn’t let her leave until they felt she was calm and well enough to walk on her on.

Ain’t that sweet of them?!

The Asian American woman went on her way to church and only suffered minor bruises and bumps.

The. End.

If you believe that story, then you’ve been living under a rock.

That was my brief fantasy version of an event this past Monday, March 29th.

No, the real story is that the 65-year-old Asian American woman, identified by police as Vilma Kari, was violently attacked in broad daylight near Times Square on Monday by a man who knocked her to the ground and started furiously kicking her head, allegedly shouting, “Fuck you, you don’t belong here” at her.

According to video released by the NYPD that showed the horrific attack, there were at least three bystanders in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan. Who did NOTHING. Nada. Just stood around. The video showed a few passing cars as well that did not stop. Two of those bystanders were building security personnel of the apartment building where Ms. Kari was attacked outside its doors.

So much for security, eh?

Three men versus one attacker…surely they had a chance to stop him? At least scare him away? But who wants to get involved in helping an Asian woman being brutally attacked?

Apparently, no one.

She could have been my mother, auntie, sister, or a friend.

Or yours.

Now the public finds out that the suspect, identified by police as Brandon Elliot, served 17 years in state prison for stabbing his mother to death in 2002 and that he was released on lifetime parole in November 2019. He’s been charged with “two counts of assault as a hate crime and one count each of attempted assault as a hate crime, assault and attempted assault,” according to local news.

Mr. Elliot looks to be a BIG man in the video. He. Kicked. Her. Head. Furiously and repeatedly.

Are there any words for this?! Yet another attack on the Asian American community.

And the “security” personnel didn’t do a damn thing. Just stood by and watched. Didn’t even try to help her, let alone call 911 for help. Did they enjoy watching Mr. Elliot viciously kick Ms. Kari in the head? Were they scared he’d beat the shit out of them if they got involved? What sticks out is that they made no effort whatsoever to intervene.

Cowards.

Ms. Kari was taken to the hospital, where doctors found she had a fractured pelvis and contusions to the head, according to WABC TV.

“The victim sustained a serious physical injury and was removed by EMS to NYU Langone Hospital,” and is stable, the police said.

I feel so bad for Ms. Kari and her family. I hope she will recover — physically and emotionally — and not suffer too badly from this horrible crime. She was attacked for being who she was. She did absolutely nothing wrong.

When will this anti-Asian hatred end?

I don’t know. But I say to the bullies like Mr. Elliot who scream “You don’t belong here”: take your poison to the nearest toxic waste dump where it belongs, please. Go to your local public library and read a history book about Asian Americans. Turn your brain back on instead of being a radioactive asshole. A fucking pariah to your community. To America.

Peace.

Sources

The Post Millennial
The New York Post
CNN
MSN
Independent
CBS

Blood Boiling Material

General, Social Justice, Women, ,

My blood has been boiling over in recent days due to the mass murder on March 16th, 2021 in Georgia. A young man aged 21 killed eight people – seven women and one man at three different massage spas.

He told investigators he targeted these places because he wanted to “take out that temptation” from his “sexual addiction” issues. And according to some reports, he had spent time in rehab for sex addiction in 2019 and 2020.

Robert Aaron Long, the gunman, has been described by former classmates in news reports as a highly religious baptist who took a bible to high school with him every day and was on a crusade to remove “temptation” when he opened fire in the massage spas.

Oh, it’s the women’s fault, is that what you mean by removing “temptation”, Mr. Long?

It’s so easy to blame others for your problems, isn’t it?

What happened to personal responsibility? Like avoiding places you claim “tempt” you?

Or managing your problem by pouring ice cold water on your junk?

Mr. Long, I think your deep religiosity has fucked up your head. Badly. Bringing a bible to school every day doesn’t make you a “good” person. If you believe your heavenly father is in control, then why did you wrest that control from him and take out eight people’s lives yourself?

Those people whose lives you took weren’t responsible for YOUR feelings of “temptation”. You decided to end their lives.

You told police you were not motivated by race?

That is hard to believe given that you went to three different Asian spas and that six out of your eight victims were Asian women.

And news reports have you saying you told authorities that you claim you targeted Asian women to eliminate “temptation.”

Your objectification of Asian women as “temptation” is disgusting. Dehumanizing.

Eight lives are gone, eight families are suffering a loss of their loved ones because of you. On top of that, since you nearly killed another man during your killing spree, that man will now have a long and painful recovery thanks to you.

And you’ve shaken the Asian American community not only in Georgia, but across the nation. To date, nearly 3,800 anti-Asian hate incidents have been reported over the course of the pandemic by reporting forum STOP AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) Hate. Women make up a far higher share of the reports, at 68 percent, compared to men, who make up 29 percent of respondents. (The nonprofit does not report incidents to police.)

Mr. Long, you’ve just shone the stadium lights on anti-Asian hate in the worst possible way.

America will be much safer with you in a cage.

There is someone else who has got my blood boiling.

He is Capt. Jay Baker of Georgia’s Cherokee County Sheriff’s office, who has come under fire for his comments on gunman Long:

He was at pretty much fed up and kind of at the end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did.

Well, golleeeeee, Capt. Baker! We all have bad days, don’t we?! Would there be any human being left on earth if we each acted out on our “really bad day” as Mr. Long did?

Just a “really bad day”? I think a lot of people are having trouble wrapping their head around that. Apparently Mr. Long’s parents kicked him out the night before the shootings, according to the news reports – and they also turned him in after the shootings. Small comfort to the families of his victims.

Saying a mass murderer had a really bad day is beyond the pale. I’m sure the victims’ families really loved hearing that from you, Capt. Baker. Must have felt as comforting as Arctic air biting their skin against their burning, overwhelming grief.

It’s not helpful that in defending you, your colleague, Cherokee County Sheriff Frank Reynolds, said,

In as much as his words were taken or construed as insensitive or inappropriate, they were not intended to disrespect any of the victims, the gravity of this tragedy or express empathy or sympathy for the suspect.

And noted that your remarks launched “much debate and anger.”

Really?!

Are you wondering WHY your remarks launched much debate and anger?

I’m not.

And now the public learns that you apparently promoted shirts on your now-deleted Facebook account that featured racist language and blamed China for the pandemic. “Covid 19 IMPORTED VIRUS FROM CHY-NA,” the shirts said, in the same spirit as former President Donald Trump.

Your alleged words:

• “Place your order while they last,” – with a smiley face emoji alongside a picture of the shirts in a post on March 30 last year.

• “Love my shirt… Get yours while they last,” you reportedly wrote alongside pictures of the shirts in April.

If this is true, then Georgians deserve far better in a public servant. Especially one entrusted with the power to ensure the safety of their fellow citizens.

How can anyone in their right mind implicitly trust a law enforcement officer with a record of racist and/or misogynistic behavior to keep them safe on the streets?

I would not want to be in the presence of that officer. At. All.

May the eight victims killed by Mr. Long rest in peace and may their families find some measure of solace in community support and solidarity with them.

And may the gentleman Mr. Long gravely wounded recover fully; I hope he can give damning testimony against Long so that justice may prevail.

Sources

The New York Times
NBC News – Asian America
NBC News – ‘Stop AAPI hate: Around 3,800 anti-Asian incidents recorded in the past year (video)
ABC News
MSN
USA Today
USA Today – Asian women: Shooting points to racist tropes (video)
heavy
CBS News
CBS Atlanta
WWL-TV
The Wrap
Hide Out
My Central Oregon
The Independent
Newsweek

Celebrate Women!

General, Social Justice, Women, ,

March is Women’s History Monthh in the United States, established by Congress to coincide with International Women’s Day (IWD) which falls on March 8th. The latter is observed around the globe to commemorate the cultural, political, and socioeconomic achievements of women and is often an event organized as a rallying point to build support for women’s rights and participation in the political and economic arenas.

I don’t know if I’ve been asleep at the wheel (I hope not!), but only in the last couple of years did I notice that major network news as well as my own local news actually mention International Women’s Day.

What took so long?!

Didn’t US media want to recognize half of humanity? Just for a day?! Or are we as the United States of America – the wealthiest, most powerful nation on the planet, so full of ourselves that we don’t need to to participate in acknowledging women’s contributions to society on a global scale? We’ve got Women’s History month – which covers women in the US (though the UK, Australia, and Canada have their own versions) and that’s good enough?

Let the rest of the world and countless NGOs (non-governmental organizations) address and celebrate women’s achievements and call for addressing inequality?

International Women’s Day isn’t titillating news?

This year marks the 110th anniversary of the first official International Women’s Day, which was on March 19th, 1911, and which was observed by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland. Across Europe, women demanded the right to vote and to hold public office, and protested against employment sex discrimination.

This event was preceded by the first “Woman’s Day” celebration which took place in Chicago on May 3rd, 1908. Organized by the U.S. Socialist Party, it brought together an audience of 1,500 women who demanded economic and political equality, on a day officially dedicated to “the female workers’ causes.”

The following year, on February 28th, 1909, in New York City, the Socialist Party of America celebrated “National Woman’s Day“, with 15,000 women who protested long work hours, low pay, and the lack of voting rights in New York City.

Inspired by these American initiatives, an International Socialist Women’s Conference was organized in August 1910 ahead of the general meeting of the Socialist Second International in Copenhagen, Denmark. Leading German socialists Luise Zietz and Clara Zetkin proposed the establishment of an annual International Woman’s Day as a strategy to promote equal rights, including suffrage, for women.

More than 100 female delegates from 17 countries unanimously endorsed the proposal!

International Women’s Day became an official holiday in Russia in 1913; however, women still experienced difficulties caused by WWI. While men were off at war, women dealt with food shortages and a government who wouldn’t listen to them.

Not listening has consequences…bad move, dudes!

On March 8th, 1917 (February 23 in the former Russian calendar), tens of thousands of Russian women took to the streets demanding change. The unified cry for help paved the way for Russian women to be granted voting rights soon after. The official International Women’s Day eventually switched to March 8th.

Though gaining broader recognition in the United States only recently (according to my observations), it’s been widely celebrated worldwide.

According to Wikipedia:

IWD is an official holiday in several countries worldwide, including Afghanistan,Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, China (for women only), Cuba, Georgia, Germany (Berlin only), Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Madagascar (for women only), Moldova, Mongolia,Nepal, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Zambia.

In some countries, such as Australia, Cameroon, Croatia, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, and Chile; IWD is not an official public holiday, but is widely observed nonetheless.

Regardless of legal status, in much of the world, it is customary for men to give female colleagues and loved ones flowers and small gifts. In some countries (such as Bulgaria and Romania) it is also observed as an equivalent of Mother’s Day, where children also give small presents to their mothers and grandmothers.

Can you imagine having a day off of work for International Women’s Day?! Woo hoo!

I was quite pleased to see my local news station as well as a major network news channel mention IWD on March 8th this year (finally). Kudos to them.

On the national level we have Women’ History Month, which began much later in our history; March was designated as Women’s History Month by Congress in 1987. Women’s History Month is a celebration of women’s contributions to history, culture and society, inspired by the first International Women’s Day in 1911.

But it was not until 1978 – when the school district of Sonoma, California organized a week-long celebration of women’s contributions to culture, history and society – that the seeds planted for the future Women’s History Month. Presentations were given at dozens of schools, hundreds of students participated in a “Real Woman” essay contest and a parade was held in downtown Santa Rosa.

The History website states that a few years later, the idea had caught on within communities, school districts and organizations across the country.

And in February 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued the first presidential proclamation declaring the week of March 8 as National Women’s History Week.

He said:

From the first settlers who came to our shores, from the first American Indian families who befriended them, men and women have worked together to build this nation. Too often the women were unsung and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed. But the achievements, leadership, courage, strength and love of the women who built America was as vital as that of the men whose names we know so well.

As Dr. Gerda Lerner has noted, ‘Women’s History is Women’s Right.’ It is an essential and indispensable heritage from which we can draw pride, comfort, courage, and long-range vision. I ask my fellow Americans to recognize this heritage with appropriate activities during National Women’s History Week, March 2–8, 1980.

I urge libraries, schools, and community organizations to focus their observances on the leaders who struggled for equality – Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Tubman, and Alice Paul. Understanding the true history of our country will help us to comprehend the need for full equality under the law for all our people.

This goal can be achieved by ratifying the 27th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states that ‘Equality of Rights under the Law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.’

(Carter was referring to the Equal Rights Amendment, which was never ratified, not to the amendment which did become the 27th Amendment to the United States Constitution after his presidency.)

The U.S. Congress followed suit the next year, passing a resolution establishing a national celebration. Six years later, the National Women’s History Project successfully petitioned Congress to expand the event to the entire month of March…after a series of joint resolutions, that is.

In contrast to the creation of International Women’s Day – which took just a few years, it took nearly a decade for the United States to officially recognize and celebrate the contributions of women. Think about that. I thought we’re supposed to be the the leader of the free world. The most powerful nation on Earth that other nations look up to?

Why was it so hard for our elected leaders to recognize and commemorate women’s contributions to America?

I don’t know the answer to that. But I suspect that there was strong resistance from some elected officials and members of society alike to lifting up half of humanity – by recognizing women who throughout history have advocated and continue to advocate for women’s health and freedom to control their own reproductive health without governmental interference, family-friendly workplace conditions, suffrage for just not themselves but every citizen, laws to protect them from domestic abuse, laws to protect them against gender discrimination at work, laws to eliminate gender discrimination in the home (such as in matters of abuse, finance, divorce, and inheritance), and so on.

Maybe this resistance is really rooted in a power mentality, in which certain folks have the idea women should “stay in their place”, that women need to stay put at home – barefoot, pregnant, and uneducated so they can be controlled?

Not!

Women are no less worthy than men. And no one is entitled to have their way with women. We are not property. Not sex objects. Not punching bags. Not cute doggies meant to obey, sit, cook, and clean, at anyone’s whim. Not brainless dolls meant to stay quiet, not think too much, and be told “Don’t worry your pretty little head!”

And certainly not prisoners meant to be told when and where to go beyond the confines of our home.

Women ought to go anywhere they damn well please! I’m not into dehumanizing women, thank you very much.

I don’t think one day internationally and one month nationally to put women front and center of our attention is asking too much. Not when women in the United States and all around the world are still experiencing pay ineqity, gender discrimination at work or school, threats to their reproductive health, threats to their well-being if they are in an abusive relationship or living in a conflict-ridden area, threats to their livelihoods if they’ve lost their jobs due to a pandemic, and relentless misogyny if they dare speak their minds.

Let women speak their minds!

Clearly and loudly. Without fear of retribution. Without any apology for being who we are and regardless of what we look like and where we came from.

I say hurray to all those who made International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month possible!

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
~ Audre Lorde

Sources

Wikipedia – Women’s History Month
Women’s History Month.gov
History.com
International Women’s Day
Origins – Ohio State University
Good Housekeeping
Wikipedia – International Women’s Day
ThoughtCo
United Nations