Native Guitar Tour Showcase.

Jir Anderson performs at the 2016 Under the Native Stars show during Gathering of Nations. Credit: Jason Morgan Edwards.

Jir Anderson performs at the 2016 Under the Native Stars show during Gathering of Nations. Credit: Jason Morgan Edwards.

The southwest is a vibrant breeding-ground for Native talent. A newly emerging source for musicians is the Native Guitars Tour. Led by Jir Anderson (Cochiti), NGT is in its sixth year of existence and offers an alternative venue outside of showcases like Gathering of Nations and Santa Fe Indian Market.

NGT tends to be a two-night show with bands covering a myriad of genres.

“What I really wanted to do was provide a stage for fellow Native artists. I wanted to [showcase] contemporary music: rock, blues, R&B, metal and reggae,” Anderson said. He started the showcase after networking with bands while touring across the U.S. and Canada. His vision for NGT: “more national opportunities for Native artists.”

Anderson is not just focused on new and emerging talent. For the 2016 Under The Native Stars show during GoN, he featured singer/songwriter, Sage Bond (Navajo/Apache); indie rockers, Scatter Their Own (Lakota); Seattle soul band, Daisy Chain, featuring Leilani Finau (Haida Tsimpsian and Samoan); and veteran Navajo blues band, The Levi Platero Band (formerly The Plateros).

[…]

Catch the next NGT showcase on August 30 at The Palace in Santa Fe, with a tentative lineup that includes: The Jir Project Band, Native Roots, Scatter Their Own and The Levi Patero Band.

ICTMN has the full story.

Congress Will Not Allow the CDC to Study Gun Violence.

AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais.

AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais.

On June 2, Obama gave a provactive argument for common sense gun laws. He compared the issue of gun violence to auto fatality rates. Though direct action was taken to lower car-related deaths, such as seatbelt laws and required air bags, no studies are even allowed to be conducted on gun violence.

“Why don’t we treat this like everything else we use? We used to have really bad auto fatality rates. The auto fatality rates have actually dropped, precipitously, drastically, since I was a kid. Why is that? We decided to have seatbelt laws. We decided to have manufacturers put air bags in place. We decided to crack down on drunk driving and texting. We decided to redesign roads so that they were less likely to have a car bank. We studied what is causing these fatalities using science and data and evidence, and then we slowly treated it like the public health problem that it was.

We are not allowed to use any of that when it comes to guns because when you propose anything it is suggested that we are trying to wipe away gun rights and promote tyranny and martial law. Do you know that Congress will not allow the Center of Disease Control to study gun violence? They are not allowed to study it because the notion is that by studying it, the same way we do with traffic accidents, somehow that is going to lead to everyone’s guns being confiscated. If you buy a car and want to get a license—first of all you have to get a license, people have to know you know how to drive—you don’t have to do any of that in respect to buying a gun.”

[…]

Obama also notes that those put on airplane watch-lists are still free to purchase weapons. “Because of the National Rifle Association, I can not prohibit those people from buying a gun.”

Full Story and video at Out.

Where to Walk.

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Facebook Los Angeles LGBT Center

The deadly attack in Orlando happened just has Pride Month was kicking into high gear across the nation.

In LA, the scare did not deter people from gathering at gay bars such as Akbar in Silverlake, which was filled to capacity on Sunday night, with revelers looking for comfort amongst friends.

Sunday also saw vigils springing up across the nation and several world countries, with more to come today and throughout the week.

If you go to weareorlando.org, you will find a list of events which have been scheduled, across the States, and around the world. You’ll find yourself scrolling down, and down, and down. The outpouring of love and strength is immense. Even though no one from ND entered local vigils at the site, there were two vigils in Fargo and Moorehead, and one vigil already observed in SD, with two more planned. If you can make one in your area, please do. Every person who shows makes a difference, demonstrates that we will stand strong, we will continue to fight, that our very existence is resistance.

Via Out.

No One Is Safe.

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ChadMichael Morrisette’s art installation “No One Is Safe.” (Mark Boster/ Los Angeles Times)

Each victim has a different face.

It’s a small, but vital, detail in ChadMichael Morrisette’s art installation, “No One Is Safe,” a response to Sunday’s deadly mass-shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla.

Morrisette spent four hours Sunday placing 50 distinct mannequins on the roof of his home near the intersection of Fountain and Fairfax avenues in West Hollywood, a visceral representation of the 50 people, the gunman among them, slain in Orlando.

“I’m not celebrating today. I’m not going to Pride,” Morrisette texted his boyfriend, after waking Sunday morning, his 36th birthday, and watching the reported death toll from the tragedy rise. “Instead, I started working.”

It took the visual artist, who also operates his own business as a brand consultant, four hours to put together the roof display, with the help of a few friends, who Morrisette called “loving enough to come and celebrate that way.”

The process was intense, even beyond the effort needed to get the mannequins in position.

“It was emotional stepping over the bodies, laying them out,” Morrisette said, each time reminded of what those on-site at the crime scene must have experienced.

The faces weren’t the only things that differentiated these mannequins from the rest in Morrisette’s collection.

While the mannequins used in Morrisette’s business are pristine, the models that found their way to his roof were flawed, not yet receiving the care needed to patch their missing eyes or fingers.

“Some have damage you can’t see from a distance. Pulling them from a pile of broken bodies, it began to make it a little bit more real,” Morrisette quietly explained. “It wasn’t beauty being represented. It was shattered and broken.”

Mannequins from ChadMichael Morrisette's art installation "No One Is Safe." (Mark Boster/ Los Angeles Times)

Mannequins from ChadMichael Morrisette’s art installation “No One Is Safe.” (Mark Boster/ Los Angeles Times)

Mannequins from ChadMichael Morrisette's art installation "No One Is Safe." (Mark Boster/ Los Angeles Times)

Mannequins from ChadMichael Morrisette’s art installation “No One Is Safe.” (Mark Boster/ Los Angeles Times)

Response to the display has been immediate and powerful. Morrisette admits hiding behind his privacy hedge to watch people’s faces as they take in the message being communicated by his work.

“People are moved. They stop and get out of their vehicles. They do U-turns. One person just bowed to me as they walked by, out of respect,” Morrisette said. “Stopped cars sit at the light and have a moment to reflect, and those are the faces I like to watch. That’s when I know I’ve actually caused someone to think about something.”

Artist ChadMichael Morrisette sits on the roof of his West Hollywood home where he has placed 50 mannequins, as a way of dealing with his grief and expressing his feelings over the mass killing in Orlando. (Mark Boster/ Los Angeles Times)

Artist ChadMichael Morrisette sits on the roof of his West Hollywood home where he has placed 50 mannequins, as a way of dealing with his grief and expressing his feelings over the mass killing in Orlando. (Mark Boster/ Los Angeles Times)

Full Story Here. Hat tip to Morgan.

A bunch of, just, disgusting homosexuals at a gay bar, okay?

threestooges-800x430“The good news is that there’s 50 less pedophiles in this world, because, you know, these homosexuals are a bunch of disgusting perverts and pedophiles. That’s who was a victim here, are a bunch of, just, disgusting homosexuals at a gay bar, okay? And then I’m sure it’s also gonna be used to push an agenda against so-called “hate speech.” So Bible-believing Christian preachers who preach what the Bible actually says about homosexuality — that it’s vile, that it’s disgusting, that they’re reprobates — you know, we’re gonna be blamed. Like, “It’s all extremism! It’s not just the Muslims, it’s the Christians!” I’m sure that that’s coming. I’m sure that people are gonna start attacking, you know, Bible-believing Christians now, because of what this guy did.I’m not sad about it, I’m not gonna cry about it. Because these 50 people in a gay bar that got shot up, they were gonna die of AIDS, and syphilis, and whatever else. They were all gonna die early, anyway, because homosexuals have a 20-year shorter life-span than normal people, anyway.”
— Steven Anderson, preacher at Faithful Word Baptist Church, Tempe, AZ in response to the slaughter in Orlando.

I felt like I had been dipped in sewage just reading that, and dipped again posting it. If Steven Anderson wants to talk disgusting, I suggest he get in front of a mirror. It was just a short while ago that I brought up in a thread here that a lot of people (Americans in particular) still believe in the gay man equals pedophile canard. And there it is, in neon arrogance, the self-righteous judgment smug only Christians can work up into such a fine froth. There were women who died in Orlando. There were hetero people who died in Orlando. There were queer people who died in Orlando. Some of them were parents. All of them were loved. But here’s the same old Christian crap of old, disease riddled predators. Naturally, the only thing Anderson is truly concerned about is whether or not people might start looking at him sideways, possibly accusing him of hate speech. Oh, and of course, us lefty pinko commie rainbow warriors might take his bible away. Disgust, thy name is Steven Anderson, and all those like you.

Radical right-wing Christians must recognize the part their anti-gay rhetoric, legislation, hate speech and repeated attacks on the LGBT community played in the slaughter at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. Yes, the terrorist homophobe who reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIL before he repeatedly pulled the trigger deserves all our anger and outrage. We will hear plenty about his radicalized religious beliefs in the coming days, but that is likely all the religious analysis we will hear in the media. But, we cannot let religious ideologues in the far-right Christian camp off the hook. Steven Anderson is not an anomaly. America has been painstakingly codifying beliefs he expressed into law. Polished politicians blunt the edges of Anderson’s words though the language of legislation but the hate and fear remains.

They will claim the assertion they have any role in the massacre as an attack on their religion – much like the consistent and well-orchestrated “war on Christmas” we heathens rage every year. They will tell you that their prayers are enough to overcome this act of terror. They will tell you Jesus wants you to arm yourself. “Get your guns before Obama takes them.” They will tell you this is about radicalized Islamist terrorists. They will whistle away the notion that guns or gays had anything to do with this tragedy.

And here is a major problem. Along with people busily straight-splaining, the rest are focusing on that terrible Muslim problem, because that’s the only terrorism that counts, and this was oh-so-definitely Islam based (even though it wasn’t), but you have a lot of Christians bristling over the idea that they might have had anything to do with this. Abrahamaic based religions all have the same root, and they have the same deep-rooted bigotry. How that bigotry is expressed isn’t the important bit – it’s why this expression is being allowed in the first place, why so many people who don’t have a personal stake in the current Christian war on all things queer, sit idly by, maybe let a small tsk escape their lip, shake their head, and decide to do nothing at all. Here in the U.S. open bigotry is being turned into law. People act like politicians spilling the most awful, bigoted bile is simply entertainment, yet another bad reality show.

The multitude of ways right-wing Christians discriminate against and kill – directly or indirectly – LGBT people can be incredibly nuanced.

[…]

Around the country LGBT couples are fighting for the right to adopt children. HIV is criminalized around the country putting a big red X on gay men and others. Gay men – by law – cannot donate blood. Most people didn’t even know that until Orlando. Federally funded abstinence-only programs populate our public schools masquerading as sexual education. What the actually do is preach sexual purity until heterosexual marriage, and they stigmatize girls and LGBT kids. How about the Great Bathroom Panic of 2016? It isn’t secular humanists behind these laws and programs; it is right-wing Christians serving in state and national office.

What message is all of this sending to our LGBT citizens? That you are less than, you are poison, your blood is tainted even if it’s not, you are after our children, you cannot love who you love. The message coming from the far right is “We Hate You”. Donald Trump gloat-tweets, Paul Ryan doesn’t mention guns or gays in his statement – just Islamic terrorists. The GOP’s (political party of choice for the far right Christian camp) presumptive presidential nominee and the US Speaker of the House deny any connection between the slaughter at Pulse and anti-gay hate crime.

The rest of Andy Kopsa’s excellent article is here.

World Blood Day, Oh the Irony.

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Happy World Blood Donor Day! (You Still Can’t Donate).

While the husbands of men wounded in Sunday’s Orlando nightclub shooting are crying and praying, they can’t easily offer their spouses the one thing so many others can: their blood.

Defying federal policy, Patty Sheehan — Orlando’s lesbian city commissioner — announced after the shooting that she was recommending the city temporarily lift the Food and Drug Administration-mandated ban on blood donated from sexually-active gay and bisexual men. In response, Orlando hospitals appear to be welcoming donations from all queer men and transgender women — also included in the FDA ban — but it’s still murky whether the federal government will crack down on Sheehan’s directive and blood will actually get to the injured.

The Orlando massacre, in a grim coincidence, came two days before the World Health Organization’s World Blood Donor Day, observed today. While the mass shooting, the nation’s worst, briefly brought the FDA’s discriminatory policy to the world’s attention, it was quickly forgotten in the barrage of news updates about the Orlando killer and his victims.

[…]

The current prohibition has been in place since December, when the FDA amended its ban, so now instead of barring any male donors who had sex with men since 1977, the new rules turn away those who haven’t had gay sex in 12 months. For many, that’s still an outright ban on any gay or bisexual man, no matter the semantics.

[…]

GMHC and FCB Health joined together to launch a campaign called the Blood Equality campaign, which will plaster cities with posters that read, “My blood is type O, not type homo” and “My blood is type A, not type gay.”

Democratic legislators like Mike Quigley of Illinois, Barbara Lee of California, and out Wisconsin senator Tammy Baldwin also want the FDA to reconsider the ban, which the agency considers imperative to keeping the nation’s blood supply free of HIV. The three politicians disagree with the FDA’s assertion and jointly released the following statement late on Monday:

“The resiliency of the American people is always magnified after a tragedy, and we are witnessing that compassion as Floridians rally around the people of Orlando, and the local LGBT community, by lining up to donate much needed blood after Sunday’s horrific shooting at Pulse nightclub. However, we find it unacceptable that gay and bisexual men are banned from donating desperately needed blood in response to this tragedy. Blood donations are needed now more than ever, yet gay and bisexual men remain unable to donate blood due to an outdated and discriminatory FDA rule. For years, we have worked through both authorizing and appropriations committees to overturn the FDA’s donor referral policy for men who have sex with men. We’ve made progress; this past year, the FDA reversed a lifetime ban to a 12-month deferral policy. But this revision does not go far enough in ending an outdated policy that is medically and scientifically unwarranted and that perpetuates inaccurate stereotypes. Tragedies like the one we witnessed in the early morning hours on Sunday show how crucial it is for FDA to develop better blood donor policies that are based on science and on individual risk factors; that don’t unfairly single out one group of individuals; and that allow all healthy Americans to donate. Given the enormous response by the citizens of Orlando, including members of the LGBT community, to donate blood to help heal their community, the FDA should lift this prejudicial ban once and for all.”

Nations like Spain have ended blanket deferrals for gay and bisexual men, instead considering the sexual behavior of individuals when deciding who qualifies as a donor.

Full Story Here.

24. (22)

When Grover Cleveland, an assimilation supporter, started his first term, an estimated 260,000 American Indians lived on 171 reservations comprising 134 million acres of land in 21 states. Whitehouse.gov

When Grover Cleveland, an assimilation supporter, started his first term, an estimated 260,000 American Indians lived on 171 reservations comprising 134 million acres of land in 21 states. Whitehouse.gov

Grover Cleveland opened his second term as president of the United States with a call for “humanity and consistency” toward Indians as efforts continued to assimilate them into mainstream American culture.

“Our relations with the Indians located within our border impose upon us responsibilities we cannot escape,” he said in his second inaugural address, in March 1893. “Every effort should be made to lead them, through the paths of civilization and education, to self-supporting and independent citizenship. In the meantime, as the nation’s wards, they should be promptly defended against the cupidity of designing men and shielded from every influence or temptation that retards their advancement.”

[…]

The day before Cleveland took office a second time, in March 1893, Congress authorized the Dawes Commission, which extended the allotment policy to the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole). The commission, headed by Henry Dawes, also introduced citizenship records called the Dawes Rolls, which required individuals to enroll by claiming only one line of ancestry—even if they had mixed heritage from several different tribes.

[…]

The Dawes Rolls, which ultimately stripped some individuals of their ancestry, are still used to determine citizenship or as a requirement for tribal membership. The federal government uses the Dawes Rolls to determine blood-quantum status when issuing Certificates of Indian Blood.

Cleveland’s second term, which came on the heels of the Wounded Knee Massacre and was the first administration free of Indian wars, was marked by a distinct change in federal relationships with Indians. Four months after Cleveland took office, Frederick Jackson Turner delivered his “Frontier Thesis” to a gathering of historians at the World’s Fair in Chicago, an enormous event celebrating the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage.

Turner, a professional historian, declared that the American frontier was gone, a statement that came three years after the U.S. Census Bureau announced the disappearance of a contiguous frontier line.

Calling the frontier “the meeting point between savagery and civilization,” Turner argued that America’s unique character was defined by “the influence of the frontier.” He pointed to “the disintegration of savagery” as one of several developmental stages America endured on its path to industrialization.

[…]

The end of the frontier also marked a new era for Indians. In his first message to Congress, in December 1893, Cleveland said the government had a “sacred duty” to improve the condition of the Indians.

“I am sure that secular education and moral and religious teaching must be important factors in any effort to save the Indian and lead him to civilization,” Cleveland said. “I believe, too, that the relinquishment of tribal relations and the holding of land in severalty may in favorable conditions aid this consummation.”

During his second term, Cleveland opened to white settlers “surplus” lands purchased from the Yankton Sioux in South Dakota, the Alsea in Oregon, the Kickapoo in Oklahoma and the Nez Perce in Idaho. The allotment program, which opened surplus land to settlers, diminished Indian land holdings from more than 155 million acres in 1881 to about 78 million in 1900.

In his final message to Congress, in December 1896, Cleveland announced the discovery of “a very valuable deposit of gilsonite or asphaltum” on the Uncompahgre Ute reservation in Utah. Calling the find an “important source of public revenue,” Cleveland assured Congress that the government would secure a “fair share” of its value, while a “nominal sum” would be extended to “interested individuals.”

[…]

In the same speech, Cleveland called himself a “sincere friend of the Indian,” and reported that the Indian population topped 177,000. More than 110,000 individuals had accepted allotments, and 23,000 of the 38,000 total school-age children were enrolled in nearly 200 government-operated Indian schools.

“It may be said in general terms that in every particular the improvement of the Indians under Government care has been most marked and encouraging,” he said.

Alysa Landry’s full article here.

35 Degrees South: Winter Green.

From Lofty:

Today was cold but sunny so I rode the bike down the quickest way to the City and back home another way. The pictures illustrate what I like most about this time of year. The fresh green grass thinly covers the sun blasted slopes of the season just past, without making the bones of the hills invisible. Down the hill I go into the lusher valley below. Even the urban park I ride through has a fresh green surface past the gnarly head height oak branch. Back up to 2000ft and the green is not always from grass, and not everything that grows is green.

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3greenslopes

4greenvalley

5greenurbanpark

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7notgreen

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