Brittany Daughenbaugh couldn’t sleep, so the Capital University student decided to go on a Pokemon Go hunt in the early hours of Thursday morning. She had seen the men across Francis Street but paid them no mind. She was on the trail of a good catch.

“Suddenly, they’re behind me,” Daughenbaugh, 20, said Monday. One man wore a “Make America Great Again” hat and the other a “Trump-Pence” sweatshirt.

She said the sweatshirted man grabbed her arm and told her, “Don’t you worry, honey. President Trump says this is OK.” He then punched her in the face and the arm. She fell, hit her head on the pavement and blacked out.

[…]

She wrote a lengthy Facebook post Friday about the attack, in part as a warning to other Capital students to be careful, but also to encourage only nonviolent opposition to the bigotry and aggression.

“Protest and fight, but do it peacefully. Do not burn the flag. Do not vandalize. Do not fight hate with hate,” she wrote. “The only way to fix this is with willpower, passion and love.”

Her post drew scores of comments of support, but one man wrote that the facial bruise in her Facebook photo was a “terrible makeup job.”

“Take your agenda and lies someplace else and quit trying to get attention and smear someone’s name,” he wrote.

Full story at The Columbus Dispatch.

The day a racial slur was discovered spray-painted on Spokane’s Martin Luther King Jr. Family Outreach Center, dozens of people gathered in solidarity to denounce the act and paint over the red graffiti.

Staff at the center found the graffiti on the side of the building when they came in to work Tuesday morning. Freda Gandy, the center’s director, said some of the children saw it before heading to school.

“Our kids should not have to see this,” she said. “It’s not OK.”

At noon, Gandy and Phil Tyler, president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, spoke to a crowd of people that included Spokane Mayor David Condon and Assistant Fire Chief Brian Schaeffer, in addition to police officers and community members.

Gandy said she shouldn’t have to worry about shielding children from seeing the N-word spray-painted on their building before school.

“We didn’t ask for this,” she said. “Our kids didn’t ask for this.”

Tyler addressed the crowd and asked for them to all look at the red letters in front of them and see “racism’s ugly face.”

“I say to the individuals who did this: ‘You did not break us,’ ” he said to the crowd. “You strengthened our resolve. You strengthened our resolve.”

Full story at The Spokesman Review.

WSU student finds his car covered in slurs.

…She said she was walking through the Safeway parking lot Wednesday night when she suddenly felt pain in her abdomen. Out of nowhere, she said, she was hit with a brick. Soon after, she started to have difficulty breathing.

“I just thought to myself, if I pass out from not being able to breathe and I hit the ground, it’s over,” Stevens recalled.

As she struggled with the pain, Stevens said she could hear people yelling. The words her attackers used shocked her.

“I heard someone yell ‘Stupid n***** b****,’” she said. “Then they yelled ‘Are you scared? Are you scared now? Because you should be,’ and then they said ‘Now we got a president who finally feels how we feel.’”

Stevens said the 3 men in their 30s and 40s told her they’d rape her and even made references to President-elect Donald Trump.

When they drove off, Stevens said no one stepped in to help.

Please, everyone, BYSTANDER INTERVENTION.* Full story at KOIN 6.

Wasting no time, Texas legislators filed three abortion-restrictive bills and the first anti-LGBTQ piece of legislation this filing period, assuring another heated fight for pro-choice advocates and LGBTQ allies beginning Jan. 10, the first day of the 2017 legislative session.

In the start of a likely avalanche of anti-choice legislation, Rep. Byron Cook, R-Corsicana, has introduced the bill version of the proposed Health and Human Services Commission rule that forces women to cremate or bury their fetal remains after an abortion or miscarriage. House Bill 201 would impose penalties on providers if they don’t follow the draconian rule, including a fine of up to $1,000 and the threat of license revocation. Reproductive health advocates have slammed the rule as another ideologically-motivated impediment to abortion access and flat-out unconstitutional during a series of public hearings.

Another bill, HB 87 presented by Rep. Matt Schaefer, R-Tyler, would remove the current exception allowing women with severe, irreversible fetal abnormalities to obtain abortion care. (Abortion is illegal at 20 weeks of pregnancy, as imposed by the remaining parts of HB 2.) Schaefer also proposed a bill to increase the reporting frequency at abortion facilities. Lawmakers are clearly undeterred by the smackdown delivered by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Texas-based Whole Woman’s Health case, which reinforces that women’s health laws must be backed by science and medical necessity – but how far the bills go in light of the ruling remains to be seen.

On the anti-LGBTQ front, Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, proposed Senate Bill 92, a bill that would prevent a city, county, or political subdivision from adopting or enforcing anti-discriminatory protections “on a basis not contained in the laws of this state.” (Texas law offers no protection on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.) Further, Hall’s bill would repeal local ordinances already in effect. Hall’s bill is sure to be one of many anti-LGBTQ pieces of legislation: Stay tuned for the anticipated and misleading “Women’s Privacy Act.” Touted by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the bill would prevent transgender residents from using the facilities that align with their gender identity. The anti-LGBTQ act stands as Item 6 in Patrick’s Top 10 priorities of the legislative session list, released today. The fetal tissue law and a ban on partial-birth abortion come in at No. 8.

Full story at the Austin Chronicle.

A well-known Seattle city councilwoman has been on the receiving end of vicious threats and racist comments after encouraging protesters to shut down President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, reports Q13 Fox.

[…]

After a video of Sawant’s speech went viral, she was deluged with over 200 phone calls to her Seattle office.

“A staffer was told on phone: ‘I will come and tattoo a swastika on your head and on that b*tch’s head,’” Council spokesperson Dana Robinson Slote stated in an email.

“Go back to India b*tch,” one email read. “I am tired of being shamed because I’m a white male. You automatically think I’m a racist. How about you go the f*ck back to India or wherever you came from?”

Another emailer complained that conservatives didn’t riot when Barack Obama was elected, before adding, “Stop being such a cry baby bitch and go hang yourself.”

Via Raw Story.

We’ve seen these before, littered all over the University of Michigan. Now they are all over the place at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Full story at NBC-DFW.

*Bystander Intervention.