One more day

November 2, 2020


      We have just one day left until the polls close and we find out just what kind of country we’re going to be.  Will our fellow Americans vote to continue being led by a corrupt, sadistic circus clown with the intellectual acuity of a pre-verbal toddler and the emotional maturity of a middle school bully?  Will a majority of Americans vote for a continuation of a campaign of genocide against immigrants, of forced sterilization and forced family separation of non-white asylum seekers?  Will they signal with their votes that Black lives don’t matter, and that the Rule of Law doesn’t either?

     We’re so scarred by the trauma of 2016, that all we see when we look at polls showing Biden with a lead in battleground states is all the ways that they could be wrong. We try to read the tea leaves of the surge in turnout in Texas and Georgia, afraid to dream of flipping these long Republican-held states.

     There are worrying signs that even if we prevail at the polls, right wing forces will reject the will of the people to hold on to power by any means necessary.  In Texas, Republicans rushed into federal court in an effort to invalidate 127,000 votes cast by drive-through voting in heavily Democratic Harris County.  In Alamance County, North Carolina, police pepper-sprayed voters in the midst of a peaceful march to the polls. In Texas, a Trump train convoy tried to run a Biden/Harris campaign bus off the road, and not to be outdone, yesterday Trump train convoys snarled traffic in New York and New Jersey.

     The truth is that the answer to the question of what kind of country we’re going to be can’t be found on 538, or on our Twitter feeds, or even in the back of a pickup truck in a Trump train.  We won’t know the answer even after the polls close, because the answer lies with us.  The answer is in how we respond once all the votes are counted.  If we’ve learned nothing else these past four years, we’ve learned that democracy is not a spectator sport. We will have the America we’re willing to work to build.  It’s up to us.  It always has been.


#VOTE


   

Liberty and justice for all

October 27, 2020


      Yesterday, with eight days left until Election Day, after almost 64 million Americans had already voted, in a ruthlessly hypocritical move, Republicans voted to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.  Determined not to wait a minute more than necessary, Barrett was then hastily sworn in at The White House, instead of The Supreme Court, by Clarence Thomas, rather than Chief Justice Roberts.  The symbolism was not subtle. It was grotesquely fitting that the self-loathing, sexual harasser who replaced civil rights giant, Thurgood Marshall, administered the oath to the retrograde, repressive handmaid eager to erase all of the gains for women won by her predecessor, the Notorious RBG.  With her installation, the Supreme Court  now has three justices from the Republican legal team in Bush v. Gore, solidifying a supermajority with hostility to voting rights.

      After all, even an 8 member Supreme Court has been working overtime to disenfranchise Americans who aren’t Republican.  Last week, the Supreme Court was only one vote shy of a majority that would have overruled a decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court interpreting Pennsylvania state law.  Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas “would have required Pennsylvania to stop accepting absentee ballots when the polls close on November 3rd,” (Source:  “High Court allows 3 day extension for Pennsylvania ballots,” by Mark Sherman and Marc Levy, APnews.com, 10/20/20).  Given the absence of any opinion accompanying their votes, it is impossible to know their rationale. Continue reading “Liberty and justice for all”

The Long Road Ahead

October 19, 2020

      With just over two weeks left before Election Day, our collective anxiety is at a fever pitch.  Chastened by the trauma of 2016, we ignore the polls.  Early turnout numbers from Texas and Georgia are encouraging, but the threat has not receded.  Between the twin perils of surging Coronavirus case numbers and Trump’s full-throated embrace of his role as a stochastic terrorist, danger feels omnipresent.

Saturday, at a rally in Michigan, Trump once again attacked Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who was the target of a kidnap and murder plot thwarted by the FBI just last week! Echoing the exact language of far-right domestic terrorists,Trump said Whitmer “wants to be a dictator,” and led his followers in chants of “lock her up,” (Source: “The return of ‘lock her up’: Trump won’t stop attacking Gretchen Whitmer,” by Cameron Peters, Vox.com, 10/18/20). Continue reading “The Long Road Ahead”

The banality of evil

      Little of consequence transpired at last night’s Vice Presidential debate.  Vice President Pence didn’t raise his voice or ooze contempt like Trump did last week, but the difference was one of style, not substance.  Like Trump, Pence flouted the rules,  ignoring his time limits to parrot Fox News talking points in a soporific monotone, running roughshod over hapless moderator, Susan Page.  Pence lied constantly and refused to answer Page’s questions, yet imperiously demanded that Senator Kamala Harris answer his! 

    Senator Harris walked an admirable tightrope, remaining firm and factual, while avoiding the trap that Pence was trying to set with his mendacious mansplaining of coming across as an “angry Black woman.”  Pence dodged questions about climate change and Trump’s white supremacy, while stubbornly insisting that there was no systemic racism in law enforcement and proudly touting his anti-abortion bona fides. (Source:  “Virus Takes Center Stage as Pence and Harris Skirmish in Debate,” by Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin, The New York Times, 10/8/20)..

    Back at the Coronavirus cluster in The White House, 34 people at or close to The White House have tested positive and 7 of the 8 members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are in quarantine after the head of the Coast Guard tested positive.  Meanwhile, our steroid-addled Commander-in-Chief tweets endless streams of nonsense while roaming the narrow hallways of The White House maskless, a one man bioterror threat, and no one invokes the 25th Amendment.

     Yet the recklessness and lunacy on display is distracting us from seeing how partisan judges and faceless bureaucrats are methodically setting the stage to thwart the will of the people, poll margins be damned.  At the state and federal level, Republicans are working feverishly to build the framework for our votes not to be counted and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

      A month ago, the 11th Circuit flouted the will of Florida voters, trampling the rights of formerly incarcerated people to hold that they could not regain their right to vote without paying their outstanding legal financial obligations.  The ruling disenfranchised 775,000 Floridians, a decision made more outrageous by the fact that Florida’s haphazard recordkeeping prevents people from even knowing what they owe, (Source:  “Full 11th Circuit Rules Against Florida Felons in Voting Rights Case,” by Alex Pickett, Courthousenews.com, 9/11/20).

      Last week, The Supreme Court sided with South Carolina Republicans and reinstated the prerequisite that absentee ballots be signed by a witness in order to be counted, an onerous requirement during a pandemic. This follows the Court’s July decision upholding a similar law in Alabama, (Source:  “Supreme Court Revives Witness Requirement For South Carolina Absentee Ballots,” by Adam Liptak, The New York Times, 10/5/20).

      Then yesterday we learned that the Justice Department changed a policy that has been in place since 1980 prohibiting prosecutors from not only “making any announcement about ongoing investigations close to an election, but also from taking public steps …before a vote is finalized,”(Source:  “DOJ Frees Federal Prosecutors To Take Steps That Could Interfere With Elections, Weakening Longstanding Policy,” by Robert Faturechi and Justin Eliott, ProPublica.org, 10/7/20).

     This flurry of court decisions and bureaucratic actions make you wonder just what kind of regime they are scrambling to maintain.  The answer was made abundantly clear in truly chilling reporting from The New York Times regarding the Trump administration’s child separation policy.  Although DHS has justifiably borne the brunt of the blame for the horrific practice of ripping children from their parents and putting them in cages, yesterday’s story made clear that “the Justice Department’s top officials were a ‘driving force’ behind the policy,” (Source:  “Border Policy Was Clear: ‘We Need to Take Away Children,’” by Michael D. Shear, Katie Benner and Michael S. Schmidt, The New York Times,10/7/20).   It is hardly surprising to learn that Jeff Sessions, the diminutive martinet and committed racist,  was pushing for Brown children to be callously snatched from their parents. Yet Rod Rosenstein, whose bespectacled appearance and mild manner concealed an odious contempt for human rights, told federal prosecutors that “it did not matter how young the children were,” (ibid).  Never forget that these judges and federal officials who drape themselves in the mantle of respectability wield the law as a cudgel to persecute and disempower the marginalized.  This is what we’re fighting against on November 3rd.  26 days.

#FloridaRightsRestorationCoalition

#JaimeHarrison.com

#BidenHarris (joebiden.com)

#Protectthevote

The Great Debate?

September 30, 2020

     Last night’s “sh-tshow” masquerading as a debate left us demoralized and terrified.  Every loathsome aspect of Trump’s personality was on full display— he was dishonest, hateful and boorish.  Over the course of 95 interminable minutes, his braying voice oozing with contempt, Trump mocked Biden’s intellect, dishonored his dead son, and instructed white supremacists to “stand by.”  The debate, something we endured, rather than watched, left us all exhausted by Trump’s barrage of vitriol.

     Biden spoke for all of us when he called Trump a “clown.”  He could be forgiven for his breach of protocol when he told Trump to “shut up, man!” (Source:  “Trump incessantly interrupts and insults Biden as they spar in acrimonious first debate,” by Anne Gearan, Phillip Rucker and Annie Linskey, The Washington Post, 9/30/20).

      Trump’s performance was hardly surprising, given that it had been merely 48 hours since The New York Times’ bombshell reporting exposed him as a serial tax cheat and terrible businessman, who is in debt to the tune of almost half a billion dollars to who knows who.  Trump knows that remaining in office is the only way to stave off almost certain financial ruin and possible prison time.  Is it any wonder that he spewed venom and insults in an effort to make us all as miserable as he is?

    What is most dispiriting is not Trump’s performance.  After all, cornered animals attack.  What is most dispiriting is knowing that even after this performance, 40% of this country will continue to support him.  40% of our fellow Americans will support a poop flinging baboon if he promises to deport Latinx folks and imprison Black ones.  It is knowing that people considered by their peers  to be “principled, brilliant lawyer[s]” will sprint over the grave of RBG and jettison those “principles” to accept a Supreme Court nomination from a walking national security threat in a cheap suit.

     The awful truth is that the most contemptible elements of our society have coalesced around this man- the bigoted, the greedy, the misogynist, the religious zealots fighting modernity.  Our only hope is to beat Trump so resoundingly that we force these people back to the fringes where they belong.

     We know Biden is not a stellar candidate.  Most of us cringed when he described police brutality as the fault of a “few bad apples,” or at the alacrity with which he said he didn’t support the Green New Deal.  Yet, we also know that Biden has the most progressive policy platform of any Democratic nominee in history; one that seriously addresses climate change, wealth inequality and systemic racism (Source:  “Biden Goes Big Without Sounding Like It,” by Peter Beinart, TheAtlantic.com, 8/3/20). We also know that Biden is a decent, empathetic, honorable man and we know all too well what Trump is.  Last night was a preview of what we can expect if Trump is re-elected.  We have 34 days.  Make them count.

#FairFight

#BidenHarris

#Indivisible

Rest In Power, Notorious RBG

September 21, 2020

      The collective wailing of millions of American women that erupted at 8:00 p.m. Friday night, when we learned that indomitable Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died, could probably have been heard from space.  We cried, we raged, we screamed, at the unrelenting cruelty of the Annus Horribilis that is 2020.  We sat in blinkered disbelief that the universe would snatch the great and good among us in rapid succession, yet leave evil to bestride the world like a colossus.

       Mitch McConnell leaned into his reputation as The Grim Reaper, announcing within hours of RBG’s death that Trump’s nominee to replace her would get a hearing, disregarding Justice Ginsburg’s “fervent wish that I not be replaced until a new president is installed.”  In so doing, as we knew he would, McConnell jettisoned his own rule that Supreme Court justices could not be replaced in an election year.

       As grief began to congeal into despair, we struggled not to capitulate to the learned helplessness fostered by a society that tells its citizens that our fates are in the hands of a superhuman, preternaturally gifted few, like John Lewis or RBG, who single-handedly shoulder the burden of fighting for equality against evil, omnipotent malefactors backed by white supremacists and bankrolled by the Koch Brothers.

     It is hard to overstate the daunting  impact of RBG’s legacy on the lives of American women.  As a lawyer, in a strategically chosen series of cases, RBG secured the coverage of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause for women, (Reed v. Reed); and pushed the Supreme Court to invoke heightened “intermediate scrutiny” in cases involving distinctions “on the basis of sex,” (Craig v. Boren).  As a Supreme Court justice, in 1996 Justice Ginsburg authored the landmark decision in United States v. Virginia which eradicated the male only admissions policy of the Virginia Military Institute, paving the way for opportunities for women in the military.  In her later years as a Justice, as the Court lurched rightward, RBG became known for her stinging dissents, most notably in Shelby County v. Holder, the 2013 case which kneecapped the Voting Rights Act.  In the face of such a record, it is easy to think that we can’t possibly measure up. 

      Yet, as those who criticized RBG for failing to retire in 2009, or more substantively, for a deeply flawed decision in City of Sherrill v. Oneida Nation of New York, 544 U.S.197(2005), which held that a repurchase of tribal lands did not restore tribal sovereignty, RBG was not infallible.  Of course not, she was human.  Flattening her legacy to erase her mistakes, or discarding it to focus on the rare times she disappointed us, lets us all off the hook and surrenders our own agency.  As she said herself, “the spirit of liberty must live in the hearts of the women and men of this country,” and that while it would be easy “to appoint Platonic guardians who would rule wisely for us … then we wouldn’t live in a democracy.”  We must take that spirit of liberty and the power that RBG gained for us and FIGHT for this democracy, for her and for us.

Rest In Power, Notorious RBG.

We charge genocide

September 15, 2020

     As Bob Woodward continues the media blitz for his new book, “Rage,” each day brings the release of a new Trump recording, confirming what we’ve long known to be true.  On each tape, we hear Trump, in his own words, practically crowing that he is a racist who makes common cause with murderous dictators.  Most chillingly, we hear him calmly admit that he downplayed the lethality of the coronavirus in order to protect the stock market, his sole measure of a healthy economy. 

    What is more disturbing, though, is what it reveals about us.  It is a profound commentary on our national,character that, not only did a majority of white Americans vote for a corrupt sociopath whose only concern was money, they  voted for one too stupid to understand the nexus between public health and the economy.  We have watched nearly 200,000 of our fellow Americans die preventable deaths that by and large, were not marked or mourned in any meaningful way.  Worse still, a majority of Republicans found the number of COVID-19 deaths “acceptable” presumably because Black, Latinx and Indigenous people were disproportionately those who died, (Source:  “More than 176,000 in US have died of COVID-19; 57% of Republicans polled say that is acceptable,” by William Cummings, USAToday.com, 8/24/20). Continue reading “We charge genocide”

Civil war

September 10, 2020

     After four years, we thought we had lost the capacity to be shocked.  We thought we had become inured to the daily onslaught of policies motivated by cruelty and greed; the barrage of grade school insults by tweet; the daily briefings full of the dangerously ignorant musings of a profoundly stupid man. We thought we understood what it meant to say that, with Trump, there is no bottom.  It turns out, we were wrong.

     Yesterday, Bob Woodward released excerpts from his new Trump book, “Rage.” The recording of his taped interview with Trump was released in which Trump said this on February 7th:  “You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed.  And so that’s a very tricky one.  That’s a very delicate one.  It’s also more deadly than even your serious flu,” (Source:  “Trump intentionally misled Americans on coronavirus,” by Robert Costa and Philip Rucker, The Washington Post, 9/9/20).

      Despite knowing this, for months, Trump publicly downplayed the seriousness of the virus, telling Americans that it would “go away on its own” and that it was all going to be fine, (Source:  “ ‘It will go away’:  A timeline of Trump playing down the coronavirus threat,” by Aaron Blake, The Washington Post, 9/1/20).  Worse still, Trump politicized the response to the virus, undermining public health. Trump’s campaign defied socially distanced seating arrangements and mask requirements at his June Tulsa rally.  A few weeks later, prominent Black Trump supporter and former presidential candidate, Herman Cain, who attended the rally, died from COVID-19.

    It is shocking to imagine that the person occupying the office of the presidency would actively lie to the American people in a manner certain to lead to more Americans dying, until you think about which Americans were dying.  Although the initial sentiment about the coronavirus was “we’re all in this together,” by April, the picture began to emerge that Black people were disproportionately contracting COVID-19, and dying from it, (Source:  “Early Data Shows African-Americans Have Contracted And Died of Coronavirus at an Alarming Rate,” by Akilah Johnson and Talia Buford, ProPublica.org, 4/3/20).

      Two weeks later, Trump was urging an end to the lockdown orders, tweeting “Liberate Michigan,” in support of the legion of heavily armed white men who had descended on that state’s capitol, demanding that Governor Gretchen Whitmer open bars and bowling alleys, in the midst of a raging pandemic, (Source: “Trump tweets “liberate” Michigan and two other states with Democratic governors,” by Craig Mauger and Beth LeBlanc, The Detroit News, 4/17/20).

      As the months wore on, it became clear that Black, Latinx and Indigenous people, who were over-represented among frontline workers and plagued by pre-existing conditions that were the result of healthcare disparities, were bearing the brunt of the burden of the pandemic, (Source:  “The Fullest Look Yet At The Racial Inequity of the Coronavirus,” by Richard A. Oppel, Jr., Robert Gebeloff, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Will Wright and Mitch Smith, The New York Times, 7/5/20).

      Divorcing Trump’s actions from these facts would require us to ignore everything we know about him.  He is a virulent racist who began his career in real estate discriminating against Black people and began his presidential campaign viciously maligning Mexican immigrants.  He excoriated Woodward for suggesting that they examine their white privilege, dismissively saying that Woodward “drank the kool-aid,” (Costa, Rucker, The Washington Post, 9/9/20).

       If you think I’m being hyperbolic, consider the other major news that broke Wednesday— that the Director of National Intelligence ordered intelligence doctored to downplay not only Russian election interference, but the threat posed by violent white supremacists, (Source:  “D.H.S. Downplayed Threats From Russia and White Supremacists,” by Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Nicholas Fandos, The New York Times, 9/9/20).  Consider the fact that Trump has refused to condemn the 17 year old vigilante who murdered two protestors in Kenosha.

       Trump, and those who support him, are distressingly comfortable with Black Death, to put it mildly.  Commentators from Eddie Glaude to Anand Giridharadas have said we’re in the midst of a cold Civil War.  I’m afraid they’re mistaken.  It isn’t a cold one.

#VOTELIKEYOURLIFEDEPENDSONIT

American Dream or American Nightmare

 

September 2, 2020

 

      We are all gripped by fear.  Fear that snatches us up by the collar and hisses, unmasked, in our faces, “We hate you…and we will kill you!”  We are not afraid of the things that Trump and the RNC told us to be afraid of. We’re not afraid of Black people moving to the suburbs— we’re already here. We’re not afraid of antifa and anarchist protesters— those are mostly peaceful, woke white kids whose parents raised them right.  We are not afraid that “socialism” will run amok in Joe Biden’s America.  Socialism? Joe Biden? Have you met Joe Biden?

      No, we are afraid of what a mentally impaired, stochastic terrorist is unleashing on this country. Trump has nothing left—  no platform, no plan for rescuing a shattered economy, and a plan to rely on “herd immunity” to curb the soaring COVID-19 infection rates, that will result in 2.13 million dead Americans.  So, as Trump always does, he pivots to fear and racism.  As commentators from Charles Blow to Joy Reid have pointed out, Trump is hardly original in this regard, (Source:  “Trump, Vicar of Fear and Violence,” by Charles M. Blow, The New York Times, 8/30/20).  “Fear of a Black Planet” was not just a classic Public Enemy album, but a pithy descriptor of the subconscious dread that drives far too many white people to vote for plutocrats who shred the safety net to line their own pockets and to shrug at abuses of power and the incineration of the Rule of Law, (Source:  “The past year of research has made it very clear:  Trump won because of racial resentment,” by German Lopez, Vox.com, 12/15/17). Continue reading “American Dream or American Nightmare”

Black rage

August 25, 2020

     The specter of Black death haunts us, a dispiriting backdrop that persists in our daily life, regardless of whether the President is an urbane Black liberal or a corrupt, frothing-at-the-mouth racist.  By now, we have all heard the story of Jacob Blake, the 29 year old father of three who was shot seven times in the back by Kenosha, Wisconsin cops in front of his three young children.

     Blake was in the midst of trying to defuse an argument between two women when the police arrived.  Video shows officers shooting him in the back as he tried to enter his S.U.V.  Although Blake has survived thus far, Kenosha erupted in justifiable anger, with some protestors setting fire to buildings and vehicles, (Source:  “Fires in Kenosha Reflect Anger After Police Shooting of Jacob Blake,” by Julie Bosman, The New York Times, 8/25/20).

     Although Democratic Governor Tony Evers condemned the shooting and called for a special legislative session to work on measures to address “use of force by law enforcement,” he also called out the National Guard and imposed an 8:00 p.m. curfew.  These moves led to the depressingly familiar tableau of soldiers in full riot gear facing off against citizens; deploying tear gas and rubber bullets against people principally armed with incandescent, righteous rage.  Rage at knowing how hollow the black squares and yellow murals were.  Rage at the emptiness of belatedly acknowledging Juneteenth, itself a holiday that commemorates enslaved people finally being freed two and one half years after the Emancipation Proclamation (h/t Michael Harriott).  Rage  from recognizing that resistance to de-funding the police comes, not only from gun-toting racists policing their gated community, but from self-described liberals quick to call the police on a Black person who doesn’t “belong” in their leafy suburb or tony high rise, (Source:  “As Mayor of Minneapolis, I Saw How White Liberals Block Change,” by Betsy Hodges, The New York Times, 7/9/20).

       It’s time to face the brutal fact that an organization with roots in slave patrols cannot be reformed to believe that Black Lives Matter, no matter how many Black officers join the force.  It is long past time to take some of the billions given to police forces nationwide and invest in housing, education and social services in the Black and Brown communities suffering from a century of disinvestment, (Source:  “The Color of Law,” by Richard Rothstein, Liveright Publishing, 2017).  And for God’s sake, don’t respond to Black rage by decrying damage to property.  It just reminds us of the sickening truth— our lives don’t matter to you because we no longer are.