Category Archives: Social Justice

Add Another Woman of Color to SCOTUS, Please

Civics, General, Social Justice, Women, ,

“People ask me sometimes, ‘When do you think it will be enough? When will there be enough women on the court?’ And my answer is when there are nine.”

~ Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, PBS Interview, February 5th, 2015

Imagine that: NINE women on the U.S. Supreme Court!

And why not?

The Supreme Court has been in existence since 1789. That’s 232 years and counting. One hundred ninety-two years passed before President Ronald Reagan nominated the first woman nominee, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1981.

Since then, only four women have become U.S. Supreme Court justices.

That is slow-as-molasses progress, don’t you think?

The sex ratio in the United States continues to favor females. In 2010, there were 7.43 million more women, with the difference projected to decrease to 7.42 million by 2025.

Simply put, there are more females than males in America!

Why can’t our nation’s highest court reflect that fact? We’ve had over two and a quarter centuries’ worth of mostly (white) men deciding issues for everyone in America.

Now, President Joe Biden has the privilege of nominating a woman to join SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States). An African American one no less.

‘Bout time!

These politicians whining about Biden being politically correct for making good on his campaign promise to nominate the first Black woman to SCOTUS have convenient amnesia. What they don’t say is that Presidents Reagan and Trump each made a similar promise and nomination during their presidencies.

Here’s a tiny sampling of the cynical, racially-tinged bellyaching out there:

“But which Black woman, exactly? Biden didn’t tell us. Biden didn’t mention the Supreme Court nominee’s legal qualifications or judicial philosophy or ability to perform one of the most important jobs in the country. He didn’t even tell us she was a nice person. All he said was she’s going to be Black and she’s going to be female, because to him, that’s all that matters.

Bridget Floyd would be the obvious choice. She is not a judge or a lawyer or whatever, but in this case, who cares? Clearly, that’s not the point anymore – this law stuff.”

~ Tucker Carlson, Fox News host

“Objectively best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan, who is solid prog & v smart,”
“Even has identity politics benefit of being first Asian (Indian) American. But alas doesn’t fit into latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get lesser black woman. Thank heaven for small favors?” [tweet]

~ Ilya Shapiro, Vice President, Cato Institute, and incoming executive director of Georgetown Law School’s Center for the Constitution

“The fact that he’s willing to make a promise at the outset, that it must be a Black woman, I gotta say that’s offensive. You know, you know Black women are what, 6% of the US population? He’s saying to 94% of Americans, ‘I don’t give a damn about you, you are ineligible’.

And he’s also saying — it’s actually an insult to Black women. If he came and said, ‘I’m gonna put the best jurist on the court and he looked at a number of people and he ended up nominating a Black woman, he could credibly say, ‘OK I’m nominating the person who’s most qualified.’ He’s not even pretending to say that he he’s saying, ‘If you’re a White guy, tough luck. If you’re a White woman, tough luck. You don’t qualify.'”

~ Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX)

Oh, boo hoo hoo!

(Note: in 2019, Black women represented 7% of the U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.)

Black women have too often been dehumanized throughout our history, from the days of slavery to the present day. For example, enslaved women were used for gynecological experiments because of a prevailing perception that Blacks had a higher tolerance for pain – a perception that persists today. African American women and girls are seldom seen as victims and instead seen as deserving of harm or unable to be harmed, a dangerous perception that has perpetuated a long legacy of impunity for violence against them; when abuse occurs, they are less likely to be believed and supported. A report published by Georgetown Law Center found that “adults view Black girls as less innocent and more adult-like than their white peers.” The men mentioned above and their like-minded supporters seem to think Black women have little or no brains. That they can’t possibly be qualified enough to be a judge, let alone a SCOTUS justice.

But of course there are Black women who are qualified! They are part of a very long line of trailblazing women from many fields who continue to contribute to our society. I only included one link about extraordinary African American women under my Sources, but there are countless links to explore!

Those men and their colleagues will say whatever brings in the bucks or votes, of course. Likely appealing to their fan base or voters with more puke-worthy, disgusting comments that reek of racism and misogyny, similar to the ones mentioned above.

Meanwhile, may President Biden choose the best candidate possible. And hopefully, may he get another opportunity to choose another female SCOTUS justice before the next election, maybe even a Chief Justice. That’d be a good bit of progess.

Methinks Justice Ginsberg would have made a good Chief Justice.

Sources

PBS
Wikipedia – Supreme Court of the United States
Supreme Court
Wikipedia – History of the Supreme Court of the United States
Statistica
Population USA
Salon
Daily Beast
Portside
New York Times
The Guardian
CNN
Business Insider
ACLU
Ohio State University
Huffington Post

Islamophobia Personified Through Two U.S. Congresswomen

Civics, General, Social Justice, Women, , , ,

Something has been eating at me.

I have been debating in my head the last few weeks whether or not to give space to a couple of Congresswomen whose behavior I find despicable. But after contemplating the fact that I have unhesitatingly called out people who harm (or inspire others to harm) others they don’t like in my blog posts, I thought: oh, why the hell not?!

So here I mention two Congresswomen who I think make Congress look very bad (as if Congress needed any help in that regard), as well as their respective constituents: Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA).

Let’s start with Rep. Boebert. Muslim Advocates reports:

Speaking to constituents over the Thanksgiving holiday, Boebert told a made-up story about being in a Capitol Hill elevator with Omar and telling an approaching Capitol police officer “Well, she [Omar] doesn’t have a backpack, we should be fine.” At another event a few months prior, Boebert told a different version of the story where she called Rep. Omar part of a “Jihad Squad.” She also said that Omar and Tlaib were “black-hearted, evil women.” Boebert subsequently used a phone call with Omar not to apologize publicly but to double down on her hate and call Omar “anti-American” and a “terrorist sympathizer.”

Just reading that makes my tummy turn in disgust.

A September Staten Island Conservative Party dinner event video was uncovered on Tuesday, November 30th by CNN’s Kfile and was shared at the time on Facebook but didn’t make national news. Boebert said,

“One of my I staffers, on his first day with me, got into an elevator in the Capitol. And in that elevator, we were joined by Ilhan Omar,” Boebert said in September. “It was just us three in there and I looked over and I said, well, lookey there, it’s the Jihad Squad. She doesn’t have a backpack, she wasn’t dropping it and running so we’re good.”

She apparently thinks she’s funny?

What kind of person would laugh at that?

As a result of her videos, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) – one of the first two Muslim women in Congress along with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), received a profanity-laden voicemail with racial epithets which she played during a news conference and which she said was among hundreds of such messages she has reported since joining Congress.

In the grainy recording, an unidentified man can be heard saying:

We see you, Muslim sand n***** bitch. We know what you’re up to. You’re all about taking over our country. Don’t worry, there’s plenty that will love the opportunity to take you off the face of this fucking earth. Come get it, you fucking Muslim piece of shit. You jihadist. We know what you are. You’re a fucking traitor. You will not live much longer, bitch, I can almost guarantee you that. We the people are rising up, and you will be tried before a military tribunal, and you will be found guilty.

Boebert initially took steps to ease the situation, according to multiple news sources, apologizing “to anyone in the Muslim community I offended”. But after declining to apologize directly to Omar during a tense phone call on Monday, November 29, which Omar abruptly ended, Boebert again went on the attack. Rep. Omar said the voicemail was left for her after Boebert released another video criticising her.

To my mind, Rep. Boebert is behaving worse than a severely immature teenager. Can you imagine being in school or work and having a bully make sick jokes to anyone who will listen that you are a terrorist?

Who’s the black-hearted woman here?!

In the letter to the Office of Congressional Ethics, Muslim Advocates and Bend the Arc note that not only do Boebert’s anti-Muslim attacks sully the reputation of the House of Representatives, they also invite additional hate and threats against the Muslim members of Congress, their staff and all religious minorities.

“We are deeply disturbed by Rep. Boebert’s abhorrent rhetoric. The death threat [voicemail] shared by Rep. Omar illustrates the danger we face when those in positions of power shamelessly spread politically-charged lies and hate-filled messages,” said Rabbi Jason Kimelman-Block, Washington Director of Bend the Arc: Jewish Action. “We stand in solidarity with our Muslim neighbors, and all targeted communities in denouncing hate speech and calling on our leaders to hold Rep. Boebert accountable.”

She’s not the only one who needs to be held accountable. How about Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA), a.k.a. MTG?

After her fellow GOP Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado shared the fake story with constituents about getting into an elevator with Omar at the Capitol —comparing the Muslim congresswoman to a suicide bomber which resulted in strong backlash and after Boebert issued an apology to the Muslim community (but not to Rep. Omar personally), MTG posted an Islamophobic tweet attacking Representative Ilhan Omar, saying people should “never apologize” to her and the group of progressive lawmakers Greene has dubbed the “Jihad Squad.”

“Democrats want us censored, shut down, and imprisoned. Never apologize to Islamic terrorist sympathizers, communists, or those who fund murder with our tax dollars,” the far-right congresswoman wrote on Twitter.

“@IlhanMN and the Jihad Squad are all three and are undeserving of an apology.”

I take issue with people who refuse to apologize when they have attacked – intentionally or not, another person or group of people because of their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious beliefs (or none at all), or socio-economic background.

What does MTG care that her fellow Congresswoman has gotten death threats ever since she became a Congresswoman and more recently as a result of Rep. Boebert’s elevator “joke”?

This is a person who repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians — including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry — and FBI agents in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress, as CNN’s KFile previously reported.

This is someone who also:

• Endorsed 9/11 trutherism conspiracies and falsely claimed there was no evidence a plane crashed into the Pentagon, according to reporting from Media Matters.

• In 2018, questioned whether the Parkland shooting that killed 17 people was a planned event and called Parkland survivor and activist David Hogg a “paid actor.” In a recently surfaced video from March 2019, Greene follows Hogg as he walks toward the U.S. Capitol and can be heard making false and baseless claims as she asks him a series of questions related to gun rights and how he was able to meet with senators.

• On and offline, frequently engaged with extreme anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim rhetoric. Some of the targets of her comments included her future colleagues in the House of Representatives, like Tlaib and Omar, and President Barack Obama, who Greene falsely said is Muslim.

And to add to her illustrious infamy, the representative from Georgia on December 20th used her time in the limelight at the Turning Point USA’s “AmericaFest” rally to call out the diversity of the attendees, only to highlight that the event can’t possibly be racist:

“So I’ve never been to one of these events before. And when I walked in yesterday, I was like, ‘What kind of people come here?'” she continued. “So I’m walking around and seeing some good people and I see white people, Black people, brown people, yellow people…

“And then there’s talk of freedom and loving America and conservative principles, some crazy people in here were talking about how much they love this guy named Jesus. And I heard—someone I really like—I think I heard that a lot of people here like a guy named Donald J. Trump.

“And then I said ‘Oh, oh, I know exactly what this is. The Left calls this a white supremacist party,’ Okay, okay, I know what I’m going to now.”

You get the picture.

(Yellow people? C’mon, MTG. It’s the 21st century, not the 19th century. The term “yellow people” stems from “yellow peril,” a racist ideology dating back to the 19th century used to misrepresent people from Asia, painting them as a group to be feared and reduced to something less than white Europeans.)

She spoke of “talk of Freedom and loving America”…I wonder if MTG knows that service by Muslims in the United States military dates back to the American Revolutionary War, where records indicate that there were some Muslims who fought on the revolutionary side? Or that Muslims have fought in all major United States conflicts, including the War of 1812, the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War? More recently, they have served in the Gulf War, Iraq War, and the War in Afghanistan.

Those Muslim veterans helped fight for our freedoms – including the freedom of Reps. Boebert and Greene to be insufferable assholes toward their fellow Muslim members of Congress, Muslims in America, and every American who finds Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and racism UN-American and unacceptable.

Rep. MTG apparently doesn’t agree with her fellow Republican Congresswoman Boebert in issuing a public apology to Muslims and holds the dubious distinction of supporting violence against those she disagrees with or simply doesn’t like. She has a long record of conspiracy theory-laden remarks as well as disparaging remarks about people who don’t look like her or share her beliefs.

Yes, this is a person who relies heavily on social media for her news. In a statement, she did not deny that she liked posts and replied to comments but claimed that many people have run her Facebook page.

“Over the years, I’ve had teams of people manage my pages. Many posts have been liked. Many posts have been shared. Some did not represent my views. …”

Rep. MTG, you just let other people say anything on your behalf, is that right?

Geez!

Ok, so enough of the dastardly deeds of these two Congresswomen. I had to unload this weight off of my mind that is their stinking, despicable Islamophobia – rooted in these Congresswomen’s own ignorance – which has appealed to like-minded people’s fears and which has inspired violence toward their fellow Americans who happen to have a different religion than theirs.

These two Congresswomen seem to carry their Islamophobia like a badge of honor. Worse, they don’t give a flying fig that their sentiments have consequences – of inspiring like-minded people to make threats of physical violence, death, or violent verbal harrassment toward Muslim members of Congress.

It’s too bad that that sort of behavior isn’t condemned by the entirety of Congress. Calls to remove them from committees are just a slap on the wrist.

Hey, Congress? Take a lesson in growing a spine from the more than 350 students from Fairfax High School in Virginia: they walked out in protest on Dec. 16 to show their solidarity with a student who was allegedly attacked in an Islamophobic incident.

According to a Change.org petition, a Black Muslim student, identified as Ekran Mohammad, was allegedly harassed by a group of boys, who threw her onto a desk and removed her hijab on Tuesday, December 14, 2021.
.
The Daily Kos reported that

…both the attackers and the victim were reported to have received equal punishment and made to have in-school suspension in the same room, students told NBC News. After expressing that she felt unseen, the victim’s classmates not only came together but marched in protest for her.

“If we don’t feel safe in our environment, in our school, then something has to be done,” Mohammad said.

One student told NBC News that she and her friends were working on a project when a group of students began to harass them. They were “making these Islamophobic jokes, talking about Jewish people and Nazis, creating the Islamic symbol and putting an X across it,” a student identified as Eliza Gill said.

That’s when Mohammad confronted one of the boys and reportedly “lightly shoved him away,” to which he reacted violently.  “[He] threw me across the room. I hit my left side on the desk, and my chest hit the chair,” Mohammad said. He allegedly then removed her hijab.

Unfortunately, not only was Mohammad’s experience allegedly not taken seriously, but suspending her in the same room as her attackers raised questions by students and others alike. Following the incident, Mohammad allegedly spent the evening in the emergency room during which medical reports show contusions and bruises. This evidence was given to the police, WTOP reported.

Investigations into the incident are ongoing, according to a press release issued by the city’s police department. The police department also noted that it was not notified by the school regarding the assault but instead heard about it due to the student rally.

The school officials did not take responsibility in dealing with the incident, much in the same spirit that Congress remains deaf toward Reps. Boebert and Greene in their attacks against their Muslim Congresswomen. You could argue: well, you’re comparing apples and oranges here – Congresswomen and high school students!

Really, are the Congresswomen behaving any better than the students who attacked Ekran Mohammad? Reps. Boebert and MTG are supposed to be adults and represent their constituents. They have greater responsibilities. But they’re spewing Islamophobic rhetoric whenever it’s most convenient with no care that their words may have deadly consequences.

“There’s multiple witnesses who can attest to racist and Islamophobic comments and overtures being made immediately prior to the incident into the assault,” said Abed Ayoub, legal director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which represents the 16-year-old student.

“It’s the students that brought attention to this, and we need to remember that,” Ayoub said. “We need to empower them and realize the important role they played in standing up for one of their own.”

Hear, hear!

Those 350+ Fairfax High School students in Virginia who walked out in protest to show their solidarity for their fellow student have demonstrated they have far more backbone than much of Congress has toward their fellow members of Congress who are Muslim.

Thank goodness those students are part of our future.


Sources

Muslim Advocates
Yahoo
Newsweek – Marjorie Taylor Greene Attacks Ilhan Omar, ‘Jihad Squad’ After Boebert Apology
HuffPost
The Guardian
Rolling Stone
World Socialist Web Site
CNN
Daily Kos – Rep. Greene uses racist term for Asian Americans while trying to prove conservatives aren’t racist
Wikipedia – Color Terminology for Race
Newsweek – Marjorie Taylor Greene Refers to ‘Yellow People’ in Speech on GOP Diversity
Wikipedia
Daily Kos – Hundreds of Virginia high school students protest after Muslim girl is allegedly attacked at school
WDVM

A Glimmer of Justice

General, Social Justice, Women, ,

Last Monday, a German woman and former member of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) group was given a 10-year prison sentence by a Munich court for letting a Yazidi girl enslaved in Iraq die of thirst.

According to Iraq Solidarity News,

The defendant was “found guilty of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity through enslavement, attempted murder and aiding and abetting the war crime of attempted murder by omission, and membership in a foreign terrorist organisation,” according to a statement released by the plaintiffs’ lawyers.

The landmark case was one of the first trials in the world in which an ISIS member was convicted of war crimes against the Yazidis, a religious and ethnic minority persecuted and enslaved by ISIS in Iraq and in Syria.

An estimated 10,000 Yazidi people were killed in northern Iraq in the mass atrocities. About 7,000 Yazidi women and girls, some as young as nine, were enslaved and forcibly transferred to locations in Iraq and eastern Syria, notes Iraq Solidarity News.

It is hard for me to fathom that these crimes against humanity occurred on such an unimaginable, massive scale against one group of people because of their religious beliefs in the 21st century. It brings to mind the atrocities against Muslims during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s and the Nazis targeting Jewish people (and other “undesirables”) during WWII.

Where did all this hate come from?

Is it a sense of entitlement + blind passion for one’s religion that makes one want to be “pure” – and thus expecting everyone around to be the same? Plus a good dose of assholery that makes one think they are better and above the law than anyone who doesn’t follow their interpretation of whatever religion the perpetrator of violence chose?

There are fundamentalists of varying extremes in every branch of religion, whether it’s Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and whatever else -ism there is out there.’

I don’t begrudge anyone practicing their religious beliefs, be it privately at home or in a sanctuary with fellow worshippers; if it gives their life meaning and purpose, good for them.

But when religious leaders and followers use the name of their Almighty to justify and condone violence against others because of their contempt of others who don’t share their beliefs, when they want to be the morality police and shove religion down people’s throats through imposing a theocracy over their fellow citizens…well, I sure as hell don’t want anything to do with them or their beliefs. Do you?

Witch trials, wars, genocide…how many of those were done in the name of God to “cleanse the world of evil” throughout the centuries? It’s sick.

The German defendant and her ISIS spouse “purchased” a Yazidi woman and her 5-year old child, as household “slaves” in Mosul in 2015. Mother and child were held captive for about six weeks and “subjected to almost daily beatings which the defendant often instigated,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers said in a statement.

I’m glad some measure of justice has come for the mother of her late child. Is 10 years enough punishment for six weeks of sheer terror and a dead child? The husband is facing trial end of November as well. The mother will never get her daughter back and goodness knows what abuses and terror both had to endure.

One can only hope that those responsible for crimes against humanity will have their day in court, be held accountable, and punished to the fullest extent of the law. And not just everyday citizens like the German defendant and her spouse who enslaved and abused a family and killed a child through neglect, but people in positions of power, too. Hold all of them accountable for the world to see.

Whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.If the God-given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God-given sense of justice in your heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well. And from this derives all those crimes of religion which have overrun the world.

~ Voltaire

Sources

Iraq Solidarity News

Relentless Deep Diggers

General, Media, Social Justice, Women, ,

Last Friday, the Nobel Prize Committee stood up for democracy and awarded its 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to journalists Maria Ressa(Philippines) and Dmitry Muratov (Russia), “in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions.”

After the last five years of our ears being assaulted by cries of “fake news!” by the last U.S. president and his minions who whined anytime they were confronted with inconvenient facts by reporters or criticized in the slightest by anyone, this announcement of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to these fearless journalists was like a breath of fresh air to me. A reminder that there are people in this world who do care about holding people in power accountable and informing citizens with FACTS.

Here’s an article from The Conversation for you that better expresses what I could write in this blog post:

Nobel Peace Prize for journalists serves as reminder that freedom of the press is under threat from strongmen and social media

I wrote of my respect and admiration of Maria Ressa in January of this year, so I am extra happy she was awarded this honor. I spent my college years managing one college paper and reporting and editing for two – and have developed over the years a soft spot in my heart and great respect for journalists like Ms. Ressa and Mr. Muratov who relentlessly dig deep to expose abuses of power, knowing that they may be jeopardizing their safety and lives in the process but continuing to work nonetheless. I admire their determination to hold those in power accountable and inform their fellow citizens.

They and their fellow like-minded journalists would be just the sort of journalists I’d aspire to emulate if I were a working journalist: possessing unrelenting, dogged determination to get the truth out.

I think we need journalists like Ressa and Muratov as long as there are humans on earth or any other planet. They are essential to humankind. They are the courageous and gutsy ones who warn us about powerful people and corporations whose abuses of power would endanger our lives, intentionally or not.

Stand with them. They deserve our respect.

Sources

The Conversation
The Independent
BBC

21st Century-style Bounty Hunting

Civics, Social Justice, Women, , ,

What explains my absence from not posting a blog entry this month so far?

The real answer is procrastination…but it feels better to blame the Texas legislature and Texas Governor for writing and signing the Texas Heartbeat Act (SB 8/HB 1515), which was assigned into law on May 19th, 2021 and became effective on September 1st, 2021.

This law is the first six-week abortion ban in the United States, and the first of its kind to rely on enforcement by private individuals through civil lawsuits, rather than by the government through criminal or civil enforcement. The act establishes a system in which members of the public can sue anyone who performs or facilitates an illegal abortion for a minimum of US$10,000 in statutory damages.

Think bounty hunting. Vigilantes.

Instead of civilians encouraged to hunt for slaves escaping to seek freedom, it will be civilians hunting for anyone who supports women seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies – be it physician, clinic, driver who took the pregnant woman to the clinic, etc.

ABC News reports that the Texas law bans abortions after embryonic cardiac activity can be detected, which can be as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. Remember, however, back in June I noted:


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.

Also, the law requires minors have parental consent to obtain an abortion, which may be difficult to come by in cases of incest. Texas minors can get judicial approval to get an abortion without parental consent, but it may not be realistically feasible for a teen to confirm a pregnancy, go through the court system for a judge’s sign-off, and book an abortion appointment within two weeks of a missed period after being raped.

Perhaps the scariest aspect of the bill is that there are no exceptions for cases of rape, sexual abuse, incest, and fetal anomaly diagnoses.

Well, to me anyway, that is not only scary and stupid, but also disrespectful to more than half the population of America.

Oh yes, let’s not forget that five of the six conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court denied the emergency motion filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights on August 30, 2021, seeking to block the Texas Heartbeat Act from going into effect. So I’m a bit pissed at those justices, too.

Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s more liberal members, Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor, all wrote or joined dissents. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sotomayor wrote that “presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand”.

Hear, hear, Justice Sotomayor!

This Texas Heartbeat Act business has gotten me tied up in a knot of fury!

I’ve said before that I passionately believe Uncle Sam needs to stay out of every woman’s womb. Who wants the government to interfere with one’s intimately personal affairs? Who wants the government to interfere with a woman’s medical visits with her health provider?

Do YOU want anyone other than yourself telling you when and whether you ought to have offspring?

And if you do not, and you unexpectedly became pregnant, do you want the government and society to force you to carry the pregnancy to term, regardless of YOUR circumstances – in effect, having strangers who know absolutely nothing about you dictate to you what to do with YOUR body?

These politicians who dream up anti-abortion bills to control women’s reproductive choices and the governors who sign said bills into laws in the name of “pro-life” – do they ever imagine what it might be like to have Uncle Sam interfere in THEIR private lives? Could they imagine if someone wanted or needed a vasectomy or an erectile dysfunction medication that he had to jump through invasive, non-medically necessary procedures and interrogations deemed mandatory by medically-ignorant politicans?

And could they imagine if someone decided to seek a procedure because they didn’t want to be a father anymore, there might be a posse of civilians who thought otherwise about his reproductive choice and hunt down anyone (e.g. physician, clinic, driver) who supported this individual – with lawsuits, greenlighted by the state?

Methinks they would neither appreciate nor approve that!

You do notice that the White House, Congress, and state and local legislatures around the country are still predominately comprised of white males to this day, right? They don’t possess a uterus. And I don’t think they have a clue what a woman feels when she’s pregnant, or what she’s endured if she’s been brutally violated – let alone have any clue about menstrual cycles and the myriad reproductive health issues that can occur monthly or during a pregnancy.

So why the hell are politicians making laws governing women’s bodies?

If men were impregnated by a rapist or family member, would they happily accept Uncle Sam and society telling them they HAVE TO carry the pregnancy forward, NO EXCEPTIONS?

Why don’t these anti-choice politicians get off their high holy horse and stop fucking with women’s lives? They scream freedom and independence until it comes to controlling women. They don’t want freedom and independence for women? (or perhaps, only for the women in their families, but not poor and minority women?) Most of them are not doctors! And the few who are and who also endorse regulating women’s reproductive choices…well, they’re beneath comment.

Do these “pro-life” (mostly male) politicians know anything about women’s reproductive health?

Granted, probably a lot of us aren’t wholly familiar with the intricate details of female reproductive health and pregnancy, but the difference between everyday citizens and sanctimonious politicians is that the latter have publicly made morons of themselves by expounding on their “knowledge” of women.

Recall these lovely gems:

“From what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist.”

~former Representative Todd Akin (R-MO), on pregnancy caused by rape. August 2012

“It [the new law] doesn’t require that [carrying a rapist’s baby to term] at all, because, obviously, it provides at least six weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion.”

~Texas Governor Greg Abbott, on being asked why a rape victim would have to carry a pregnancy to term. September 8, 2021

Gestation, as an ABC reporter recently clarified, is measured from a person’s last menstrual period, and ovulation – when a person can become pregnant – occurs about two weeks after that. So the new Texas Heartbeat Act, in reality, gives a person about four weeks after conception — or two weeks after a missed period — to confirm a pregnancy and book an appointment for an abortion within that tight timeframe.

Moreover, some victims of rape or incest are young and may not yet have a full understanding of or familiarity with their menstrual cycles to be able to so quickly identify a pregnancy.

Leave women alone, dammit! It’s their bodies, their lives. Especially leave them alone if you don’t support taxpayer-funded safety net programs to help these women raise their children. Allow me to indulge by reposting the following comment I take to heart:

“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

A woman’s body is hers alone. What’s her pregnancy and reproductive choice got to do with your lives, Mr./Ms. Anti-choice politician?

It’s not like pregnancy is a highly transmissible virus and an imminent threat to public health.

Her body, her choice.

Worry about your own morality and look in the mirror first, please, dear elected “pro-life” officials.


Sources

ABC News
CNN
Wikipedia
Planned Parenthood
Huffington Post – Todd Akin on Abortion: Legitimate Rape …
The Cut
NBC News
NPR
The Guardian
PoliticusUSA
Media Matters
Huffington Post – No, Virginia’s Governor Did Not Endorse Killing Babies

Dumbing Down America: Outlawing Critical Race Theory

Civics, General, Social Justice,

I’ve been feeling rather hot lately, both literally and figuratively.

Literally, I am feeling too hot and sweaty because it’s just blazing hot outdoors. Figuratively, I am hot because certain people want to dumb down America’s future generations by creating laws to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT).

What is CRT you ask?

Critical race theory is a field of intellectual inquiry that demonstrates the legal codification of racism in America.

Through the study of law and U.S. history, it attempts to reveal how racial oppression shaped the legal fabric of the U.S. Critical race theory is traditionally less concerned with how racism manifests itself in interactions with individuals and more concerned with how racism has been, and is, codified into the law.

CRT recognizes that racism is not a bygone relic of the past. Instead, it acknowledges that the legacy of slavery, segregation, and the imposition of second-class citizenship on Black Americans and other people of color continue to permeate the social fabric of this nation. 

So far, Tennessee, Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Florida have passed laws to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory. And state legislators in Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, and West Virginia have introduced legislation banning what they believe to be critical race theory from schools. Apparently, these states’ legislators are highly sensitive about teachers asking young people to consider how systemic racism has impacted the fabric of our society.

These laws push back against the heightened awareness of the nation’s history of racial injustice in the wake of the popularity of the 1619 Project and last summer’s massive protests over the murder of George Floyd.

The 1619 Project, is a long-form journalism project developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, writers from The New York Times, and The New York Times Magazine which “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United States’ national narrative”. The project was first published in The New York Times Magazine in August 2019 for the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the English colony of Virginia.

Here are sections from identical legislation in Oklahoma and Tennessee that propose to ban the teaching of the legislators’ imagined conception of CRT:

(1) One race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex;

(2) An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously;

(3) An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of the individual’s race or sex;

(4) An individual’s moral character is determined by the individual’s race or sex;

(5) An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;

(6) An individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex.

David Miguel Gray, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis asserts that as a philosopher of race and racism, he can safely say that Critical Race Theory does not assert the aforementioned concepts:

“What most of these bills go on to do is limit the presentation of educational materials that suggest that Americans do not live in a meritocracy, that foundational elements of U.S. laws are racist, and that racism is a perpetual struggle from which America has not escaped.”

Take a look at number 6:

An individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex.

Is there some sort of projection going on here?! Who in their right mind would dream up a concept that children should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex?

WHO is really experiencing discomfort and psychological distress here?!

Fragile politicians who’d rather sweep ugly history under the rug and who don’t want their children and grandchildren to feel the same as they do, I think. (Or not-necessarily-fragile politicians who just want to be re-elected and who don’t want to hear from constituents who might be fragile.) Fugeddabout slaves, generations of brutal injustices and discrimination, eh?! Systemic racism – it is what it is, ok? Let’s move on. Tough shit!

To my mind, these legislators appear to want to pretend racial injustice isn’t real (especially if they’ve never been affected by it). They seek to diminish or erase Critical Race Theory as if racial injustice is a thing of the past, or worse, doesn’t exist – the way they do with the Insurrection of 1/6.

Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor and central figure in the development of critical race theory, said in a recent interview that critical race theory “just says, let’s pay attention to what has happened in this country, and how what has happened in this country is continuing to create differential outcomes. … Critical Race Theory … is more patriotic than those who are opposed to it because … we believe in the promises of equality. And we know we can’t get there if we can’t confront and talk honestly about inequality.”

As someone who has always loved history and appreciates people like Kimberlé Crenshaw who dig into the past and critically analyze it to understand our present, I wholeheartedly share her sentiments.

Why limit students’ exposure to the history of racial oppression? These state legislators may be okay with suppressing information and creating amnesia on certain matters, but I certainly am not okay with their actions! I’m not into dumbing down American citizens. Especially young American citizens.

Sources

The Conversation
Alternet.org
Wikipedia
American Bar Association

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

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