The Rev. Dr. Anna Pauline “Pauli” Murray lived one of the most remarkable lives of the 20th century. Their legal arguments & interpretation of the U.S. Constitution were winning strategies for desegregation, women’s rights, & LGBTQ+ rights based on Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Their personal exploration of gender identity & their struggle for gender-affirming medical care was ahead of their time.
Every now and then I used to do a commentary on a book I was readying over on the dead bird site. I did one on my old instance, which I brought over. I think I'd like to do another one today. I just finished reading How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley. It's the new paperback edition with a new preface, and you can find it here:
If mentioning Hitler annoys you, he does it a lot. But there are other points, too, that I underlined in the book.
Yes, I am one of those heathens that underlines, annotates, stars and exclamation points and even - gasp - dogears page corners of my books. I'm a visual learner. It's how I remember things and can find them later - by recognizing at a glance the pattern of markings on the page I'm looking for.
As always, not everything I underlined is profound or amazing, just things I wanted to think about or remember.
Leaders of the U.S.House of Representatives & the head of the United States Postal Service today unveiled the new stamp honoring late civil rights leader, Rep. John R. Lewis. The stamp design features a 2013 photograph of the Georgia Democrat taken by Marco Grob for Time magazine.
"Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”
From The Intellectualist at the hellsite, here's Senator Mike Braun [R-IN] saying he's open to SCOTUS changing settled law and depriving people of equal protection in** mixed racial marriages.**
Thus allowing states to reimplement old miscegenation laws, or banning so-called mixed ethnic marriages, requiring SCOTUS overturn Loving v Virginia in 1967.
Yael Khan, an elderly Jewish lady who lost her family in the Holocaust, was wearing a sign calling out Israeli war crimes and carrying a Palestinian flag in London yesterday and was arrested by the Met when she refused to take off the sign, on the grounds that "the sign could incite hate against a particular community".
WTF IS GOING ON IN THIS COUNTRY? #UKPolitics#CivilRights#CeasefireNow
Five former Memphis, Tenn., police officers were charged Tuesday with federal civil rights violations in the beating death of Tyre Nichols as they continue to fight second-degree murder charges in state courts arising from the killing.
Sam Griffiths, a father who runs his own business, was remanded in custody for 28 days and charged under new anti-protest laws for "interfering with key infrastructure" after marching against new oil and gas licenses.
He chose to face a crown court trial and refused to answer the question of whether he would continue to slow march.
This is what authoritarianism looks like.
Investigate the real criminals. #JustStopOil#UKPolitics#ClimateCatastrophe#CivilRights
When police took Jimmy into custody, they followed protocol for people charged with a crime: mug shot, fingerprints.
But Jimmy had not been charged with a crime. His father asked the county to bring Jimmy in for a mental evaluation & treatment after he'd threatened to hurt family members & himself.
On his booking form, under "offence," was a single word: “LUNACY," a charge that doesn't exist.
A #Texas appeals court reversed the conviction of #CrystalMason, a Black woman, who had been sentenced to 5 yrs in prison on a charge of illegally voting in 2016, acquitting her in a case that #CivilRights attys cast as part of a broader fight for #VotingRights.
Mason voted w/a provisional ballot in 2016 but did not know she was ineligible to do so. The ballot WAS NOT COUNTED, but she was convicted in 2018.
Continuing the love for Harry Belafonte, I got my mind on all the famous actors and musicians and great #Black talent of his era, the 40s-70s, onto the #CivilRights era, especially the politically active outspoken leaders
Yall got recommendations for plays, movies, music, etc
The very fun and not-at-all-chilling thing conveniently buried in the basement of the article is that the only way "speed governing" mechanisms in cars can work is by tracking everywhere they go. Do you think that data floats away into sweet nothingness after it's collected? NO. No it does not.
"Also known as speed limiters or “Intelligent Speed Assistance,” some speed governors can use GPS technology or cameras to cap vehicle speeds based on where the car is driving."
Today in Labor History October 1, 1964: The Free Speech Movement began on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, when activist Jack Weinberg was arrested for refusing to show his identification to the campus police while standing at an illegal political literature table. Thousands of students spontaneously surrounded the police car, which remained there for 32 hours, with Weinberg inside. Protesters used the car as a speaker's podium. The Free Speech Movement lasted for two years and was the first mass act of civil disobedience on an American college campus in the 1960s. Students were fighting for, and won, the right to have public political activities on campus, particularly in support of the Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam War Movements.
I recently read a toot about the burden of being a caregiver for a person with Alzheimer’s disease and can sympathize with their perspectives since I was once a caregiver for a parent with Alzheimer’s disease. My brother and I moved our parents into a retirement community when the symptoms of my father’s Alzheimer’s disease became too much for my mother to handle. My father had recently struck my sister-in-law. My mother lived in the assisted living part of the facility and my father moved into a memory care unit. My mother visited my dad almost daily. My brother and I visited him most weekends and took him out bowling or golfing. It was tiring and stressful—as working parents, my wife and I had two young children to drag along for those visits that occupied one day of most weekends. Yes, being a caregiver for a parent with Alzheimer’s was stressful for the 5-6 years the disease lasted until his death.
When we moved our father into the Alzheimer’s unit, he was too mentally incompetent to consent. My brother walked him through signing his name onto an admission form, letter by letter. Notably, no disability rights attorney or judge was there to object, to defend his civil rights. No disability rights advocates argued he would be better off homeless or imprisoned. I suspect this is how things work for most families that make the difficult choice to move an aging parent into such a place. My reason for bring up the absence of such bureaucratic impediments will be clearer a bit later in this thread.
My father lived in that memory care unit for the last 5 years of his life and my family was fortunate that he recognized us until about the last six weeks. On some days, he delusionally believed that he was back living in his childhood home with brothers and sister. On other days he was more in touch with reality. He probably would not have chosen to live the last years of his life in such a place. But he quickly got accustomed to it. When we returned from our bowling or golf outings with him, he willingly returned to his new home and waved goodbye with a smile on his face.
Of course DeSantis is a #climate denier: Right now, climate denial comes in the same package as covid denial, #CivilRights denial (in its entire rainbow spectrum), #evolution denial, etc.
DeSantis, whatever he is, is not stupid. Do not underestimate this man, and do not underestimate the number of people who might vote for him.
Soon enough, it could be "Don't Say Climate" for Florida and, if voters aren't careful, for the nation.
April 4, 1968, #CivilRights leader Reverend #MartinLutherKing Jr., was shot & killed while standing on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in #Memphis, #Tennessee. Considered one of the greatest Americans to ever live, he was assassinated 56 years ago today.
Sharing this mixed media painting I did of Martin Luther King Jr. one of the greatest civil rights leaders in the history of the United States! Happy Thursday:)
A Virginia-based tech company will pay >$38k in penalties for posting a #discriminatory#job ad that only sought to hire White US citizens, the #Justice Dept announced.