Louisiana to become El Salvador, i.e., hell.

[CONTENT WARNING: child rape, teen suicide, fanatical hostility to bodily autonomy and consent, extreme misogyny, and probably some other shit I could be too triggered to recall.]

Photo of a Salvadoran woman crying in court, flanked by two law enforcement personnel.In In this December 2017 photo, Salvadoran Teodora Vasquez, found guilty of what the court said was an illegal abortion via a miscarriage, arrives in a courtroom to appeal her 30-year prison sentence.
(AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)

Perhaps you have heard about Louisiana’s latest bill classifying all abortions as homicides? Anyone found to help facilitate an abortion, from the person(s) performing it to the involuntary organ donor who wants or needs it will be charged with homicide, with the potential penalty of life in prison. There is no exception for rape, incest, or when fetuses are incompatible with life (e.g. anencephaly).

The bill, HB813, passed out of committee on a 7-2 vote; it now faces the full legislature, and if passed, will land on the desk of Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards. But before you entertain visions of victorious vetoes dancing around in your head, you should know that Governor Edwards has been a hardcore advocate for involuntary organ donation (by other people) as a governor, and previously as a state lawmaker. He has already signed into law one of the most draconian anti-abortion laws in the country, outlawing the procedure upon the detection of a heartbeat, which is about six weeks gestation and before many people know they are pregnant.

[Read more…]

It’s Day 15 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

Today we’ll learn how racial inequities compound other racial inequities. However, because we are learning this from today’s New York Times (via its email newsletter), we must first slog through a shit ton of obligatory crap to get to the important part of the story, the part about how racial inequities compound other racial inequities. I swear, nobody is better at burying the lede than the Times. Let’s go see if we can find it!

The email starts like this:

The New York Times "The Morning" email newsletter heading.

February 15, 2022

Good morning. Traffic deaths are surging during the pandemic.
__________

[Read more…]

It’s Day 11 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

Today, we’ll listen to the extraordinary history and personal stories of the Black women quilters of Boykin a.k.a. “Gee’s Bend”, Alabama, population 208.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I know next to nothing about quilting. I can just barely sew a button. And I may or may not have used duct tape extensively to “fix” unraveling hems on many items of clothing. Nevertheless, these stories gripped and captivated me. Yes, this is about quilting. But it’s so much more than that. This is about art and artists. About unfathomably painful histories and extraordinary resilience. About women and community. But specifically about Black women, and Black community.

For a very brief (3:27) introduction, watch this segment from Robin Roberts on Good Morning America. Given the time limitation inherent in this type of media platform, Roberts does a good job here of showcasing the Gee’s Bend quilters’ history and culture, and how they come alive in these quilting traditions.


But to say this only scratches the surface is quite the understatement. These stories run deep. [Read more…]

It’s Day 2 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

Today, we’re going to STFU and listen to Mallence Bart-Williams. She gave this TEDx talk in Berlin in 2015, and it has both haunted and inspired me since I first viewed it. In 2016 I made a transcript and posted it on my old blog; comments on that post have continued to trickle in over the years, many of them from Africans.

I said this yesterday, but it’s worth repeating. If this makes you uncomfortable (and it certainly seems to unsettle the overwhelmingly white audience in Berlin) then please sit with that discomfort, and learn everything you can from it.

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Day 1 of Black History Month 2022 is here.

It’s Day 1 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

At least here at Death to Squirrels, we are. Because (1) listening to (and boosting) Black voices is important, and (2) no one learns anything while they’re busy talking. Or blogging. Whatever. You know what I mean.

Today, I share with you a powerful piece from the January+February 2022 Issue of Mother Jones by Lori Teresa Yearwood, titled “I Escaped the Trauma of Homelessness—Only to Face Your White Savior Complex.” [CONTENT NOTE: sexual assault and other egregious violations of autonomy; police, pastors and others behaving cruelly; homelessness: mental health (mis)diagnoses and stigma; trauma.]

photographic image of Lori Teresa Yearwood standing in front of a pond or strem with birds around it. She is wearing a beautifuolly embroidered red sweater and smiling.Lori Teresa Yearwood
(image: Niki Chan Wylie via Mother Jones)

I hope that you will read it, and if it makes you uncomfortable, that you will sit with that discomfort, and learn everything you can from it.

IMNSHO: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s finest speech.

Before I got sick, I would post every year on this occasion my favorite speech of King’s, that I know of or have ever heard, in its entirety. It was delivered by Dr. King in my much loved, adopted home town at Manhattan’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, and entitled Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. When I last wrote about it here in 2017 I said this:

It has become my tradition on this day of remembrance to post the text of a speech delivered by Dr. King on April 4, 1967 at Manhattan’s Riverside Church entitled Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (audio recording here), along with a short commentary about why I believe these words are so important. The speech is truly magnificent, yet it tends to be given short shrift relative to other works of the slain civil rights leader.

King’s “I Have A Dream” speech is of course his most well-known and celebrated. He gave it from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, at the closing of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and major television networks broadcast it live. The text is short (by King’s standards) and is notable for, among other things, painting a vivid picture of what racial justice looks like.

“Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is also frequently cited. He wrote it in response to an April 12, 1963 open letter by eight white Alabama clergymen, who took issue with King and his tactics. Its central focus is a beautiful, powerful defense of non-violent activism. But what always strikes me most about it is King’s crushing disappointment upon learning that the greatest enemies to social progress are not, in fact, those who are openly and hatefully opposed to it, but those “allies” who rend their garments and advocate moderation, patience and gradualism in the face of immediate, deadly and enduring injustice. King held up a mirror, and in doing so, he showed us what ally-ship looks like.

Four years later, he spoke the words of Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. Here, he showed us exactly how inextricably linked are the battles against discrimination, oppression, poverty, injustice, and many other social ills to the evils of war. This is a broader, much more sweeping vision; in my opinion, these are his finest words. Yes, there are religious references. Yet King tethers these to his eloquent defenses of secular ideas of justice, compassion and love to make the same case; in this way they function to bolster his arguments (for the religious-minded) instead of standing in for them.

As King said in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

We have a lot of work to do.

PEACE.

__________

I have nothing to add to that today (nor, apparently, the energy and focus to do so even if I had wanted to. *sigh*). Speech below the cut. [Source.]

[Read more…]

My friend Tony.

Some of you may know Tony as a frequent and frequently excellent commenter at various sites on FtB. He now blogs ferociously at The Orbit. As a gay black atheist living in Florida, Tony is subject to multiple intersectional marginalizations that many of us will never experience, and of course the crap economy only amplifies these effects. He has been struggling off and on with joblessness (although there is a bright spot of hope on that front in the not-too-distant future), and is a few hundred dollars short on his rent this month. If I can help it, I would not like to see “homeless” added to his burdens.

I know that times are tough for many of us, and no one should feel obligated to give what they do not have. But if you can spare just a few dollars, they really do add up. Despite the ugliness that plagues our movement on a regular basis, there is also goodness and strength in this community. I think it’s important to put our social justice talk into action when it really counts, such as when one of our own finds himself in need.

Please donate whatever you can to Tony via PayPal here.

And Tony has another problem you can help with: he likes squirrels. I KNOW RIGHT. I have been trying desperately to enlighten him on this urgent matter before the coming Squirrelpocalypse, but he remains under the spell of the enemy rodent menace and has so far proven resistant to my pleas.

So when you donate via PayPal, there is a space below the amount that says “Write a note (Optional).”

Make it good.  :D

#deathtosquirrels