They Are All Up In Your Constitution, Winning Your Rights

Careful reader of this blog may remember that I consider the greatest legal genius in history to be Charles Hamilton Houston. If you don’t know who he is, well, read a book because a blog post alone won’t do it. Okay, fine. I’ll give you a bit to get started.

This is the one person more responsible than any for Brown v Board of Education (Topeka, Kansas) and the success of legal efforts to end segregation everywhere in the US. This is the one person who had not merely the legal success to argue and win that case before SCOTUS (he didn’t, as he had recently died: that was his little-known protege, Thurgood Marshall), but rather the nearly incomprehensible foresight necessary to plan literally decades ahead.

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American Academy of Pediatrics is Not Down

The AAP is not down with what’s been happening to immigrant children of immigrants (both those who seek to cross within the law and those who seek to evade it). In addition to putting out a statement,

Dr Colleen Kraft, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, visited a shelter for children under the age of 12 that runs along the Texas border with Mexico.

And what did Kraft find?

The shelter in question held 60 beds and had a little playground for children. Rooms are equipped with toys, books and crayons. …

But the child who caught the paediatrician’s attention during a recent visit was anything but happy. This little girl – no older than two – was screaming and pounding her fists on a mat. Yet staff members could not comfort the infant because of the rules prohibiting physical contact.

That’s right: no hugs for toddlers is the law, because Democrats and their awful, no good, very bad refusal to capitulate to everything the Orange Tyrant wants, forever.

Or at least, I guess that what the Rs are saying today.

Ishtar fucking Inanna with the Strap-On of Birth Control, there are no words.

Mr. Dipstick Says ‘We Will Bury You’

Another day, another racist jerkface proudly claiming ownership of, well, everything.

A man was arrested after screaming racist commentary at passersby in Seattle this weekend.

According to MyNorthwest.com, University of Washington photographer and advisor Keoke Silvano was headed home when he exited the Beacon Hill station and heard the white man yelling at an African-American man.

“My people are going to bury you,” the racist man said. “We built these streets! White men built these streets!” He also frequently shouted the N-word.

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Kid Gets 5 Years For Friend’s Gun, Being Black

A teenager who was 15 years old when he ran off with some sneakers being sold on Facebook after trying them on, Dayonn Davis (who is 18 now) was tried as an adult and sentenced to 5 years in prison and 10 more on probation because the friend who accompanied him on this try-and-run shoe theft pulled a gun to cover Davis’ retreat. From CBS News:

Defense attorney Susan Henderson told Muscogee County Superior Court Judge Bobby Peters her client just wants to put the whole thing behind him and move on, the Ledger-Enquirer reported.

“He’s been extremely remorseful,” she said. “He’s got his life on track now.”

She insisted Davis didn’t know the other person would pull a gun. But the judge says that makes little difference in the eyes of the law.

If he wanted to commit non-violent violent crime as a “youth” and get away with less than 5 years, he should have joined the Stanford swim team. Not that there’s, y’know, anything significant about a Black kid getting 5 years in prison for running off with shoes while a juvenile when a white adult serves 90 days for rape. Just another day in the post-racial USA.

Fascist Policing: Milwaukee Edition; AKA No One Is Talking About Sterling Brown

I’m not sure why, but since the video of Sterling Brown’s mistreatment was released no one on FtB seems to have covered the malicious violence police committed against Brown, a rookie NBA player who may not be a superstar (yet) but is already playing a large contributing role for his team in his first year. From that, we can guess he’s making significant money and had significant local fame even before this incident put him repeatedly in the news. (BTW: I Have Forgiven Jesus spoke about this in anticipation of the video’s release, but we did not yet know what it showed.)

It’s been hard for me to start this piece. This story falls in an awkward place for me. It lacks the immediate, universal concern that appears to exist here on FtB when cops kill someone, but it’s also far more serious than the quotidian racism in policing that I also cover.

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Fascist Policing: Sacramento Edition II

Today I’d like to talk about the story of a man who wasn’t beaten by the cops, wasn’t arrested by them (at least in this encounter), wasn’t even searched by them. I want to talk about his story because it goes to the heart of the Black encounter with fascist policing today: the everyday, relentless, low-level harassment of Black residents of the US.

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Cops vs Volunteers: Race Has Nothing To Do With It, Of Course

I found yet another example of police officers abusing their powers in order to indulge their prejudices over on RawStory. While I’m sure that university sororities have done plenty of good things (heck, even fraternities, I’m sure, have done plenty of good things) there is so much awfulness in Greek life that one could reasonably (though erroneously) suppose that I’m resolutely against sororities and all they stand for.

While that’s not true, one has to wonder about this cop from the Pennsylvania State Highway Patrol:

As a part of the adopt a highway program, members of Sigma Gamma Rho were picking up trash alongside Highway 83 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, when a cop accused them of fighting each other, according to COED News.

Throughout the conversation the officer contradicted himself, according to Sigma Gamma Rho member Shawna Naomi.

Originally the officer said: “I’ve never seen anyone out here cleaning and I’m responding to a call.” Later it was revealed the cop “called in” the report himself.

After the women explained to the officer why they were cleaning the highways even pointing to the “adopt a highway sign” with their sorority name on it the cop still asked to see their IDs.

There’s a picture of the women out doing the work and enjoying themselves. At least a couple are wearing jackets or sweaters with big greek letters on them making their sorority affiliation entirely obvious. So when they were pointing to that equally-obvious official green sign declaring that their sorority has volunteered to clean up that stretch of highway, it wasn’t as if their affiliation was in any way in doubt.

Of course, the PSHP is sure to release a statement at any moment that this had nothing to do with race. So one has to ask: is it the PSHP that is resolutely opposed to sororities and everything they stand for?

Just asking questions!

 

 

 

 

 

If you read one thing today, make it this

The Baton Rouge advocate reported yesterday that the mother of a baby killed in a car crash has been charged with negligent homicide.

I’m not one to say that the loss of a child is by definition punishment enough when a parent or parents are responsible for fatal injuries to a child. I’m perfectly fine with charging parents who refuse to get medical care in the face of an obvious health crisis. I’m fine doing that whether they did so because of some issue that ultimately has a reasonable basis (:cough: Tuskeegee :cough:) or whether they did so because of some issue that has nothing rational even at some distant core (:cough: faith healing :cough:). The charges, however, need to be proportionate. In this case, they clearly are not. But you’ll have to stay with me to get more on that later.  [Read more…]

The Nature of Reality Denial

PZ has an excellent post up, which I hope you’ve seen already, regarding the hatred of the Catholic bishops. I want to call out a small piece of that larger statement here:

Children especially are harmed when they are told that they can “change” their sex or, further, given hormones that will affect their development and possibly render them infertile as adults.

If you read this as the bishops obviously intend you to read it, this portion of their statement says:

You can’t actually change your sex, so telling this to children is bad. Also, it’s even worse when you change the sex of another human being, particularly a child.

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